Month: November 2007

Objects Are Farther Than They Appear

The billboards in Vegas make it seem that each casino is right there right where you can grab it. But that is not true – it is always a struggle to get from one to the other, or even to find the exit. A property that is “on the other side of the block” can be a mile away. This is the lesson of the conference I attended here in Las Vegas.

Event recap:
Thursday: dinner with P- at Mario Bateli’s Enoteca di San Marco in the Venician. Food on par with the dishes served in Otto, etc. However, they needed more waitstaff, because they were obviously slammed.

Cirque du Soliel Love: excellent show. They weaved a selection of famous and not so famous Beatles songs, plus some choice studio outtakes with the famed acrobatic performers to create a truly psychadellic experience. Recommended.

Friday: I played a judge, first in moot court, then in a historical reinactment of a Japanese internment trial. Both experiences were fantastic. Our alma mater’s moot team did well, placing as a semifinalist and 2nd best brief. Finally, got to meet Survivor winner and conference speaker Yul Kwon. What a nice guy in person, and caused a lot of the women to swoon!

Other Strip events: rode the NY-NY rollercoaster, drank slurpees while walking through the Bellagio, and watched the free water light show at the Wynn while sipping port wine. Awesome!

Connecting Flight here at DFW has a one hour ground delay. Will be home by 6.

A Mid-November Pre-Thanksgiving Friday/Saturday

“The Death of E-Mail,” as this Slate article notes? No way! I still e-mail. I love e-mail. E-mail, don’t go away… (ok, yeah, I’m being facetious. Just a tad; darn teenagers think they rule the world with fads and dropping e-mail for Facebook and MySpace).

Readings: just finished reading former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins’ book – “‘The Trouble with Poetry’ and Other Poems” – and now reading another Collins book: “The Art of Drowning.” I had never read his poems, beyond what I’ve viewed of these very clever animated versions of his work on YouTube – so finally getting around to reading his work has been great. Accessible (but not low-brow), witty and funny, and visually stimulating; as noted in a previous post, I think Collins’ poems are reminiscent of Emily Dickinson’s (the American style of poetry, perhaps? I’m so not up on poetry) – but thankfully not as dreary or disjointed or just plain strange (I certainly feel that way of some of Emily Dickinson’s poetry).

Delayed response on-line on my part – tv critic David Bianculli left the Daily News on November 5, 2007, with his farewell column – just in time for the tv writers strike, and to have his own on-line magazine on the subject of tv, TV Worth Watching. Plug in Bianculli’s name in the search function of our blog here, and you can see how much I cite to him. I’ll miss him in the Daily News; I am now bookmarking his website, which looks pretty cool.

Query – am I really watching less tv, or is it because I’m too busy trying to write my so-called novel?

Late breaking news: could it be? The tv writers and the studios are going back to the negotiating table? Well, the tv writers’ strike continues, so far as anyone can tell…

NY Times with an article on how to spend a weekend on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

Procrastinating — it’s been going around by word of e-mail (umm, rather than by mouth, if you will), so try out Free Rice, a vocabulary game. For every word you get right, you get 10 grains of rice to help fight hunger. It doesn’t seem terribly much (those of us rice eaters can figure that 10 grains barely fill your spoon), but seems like a nice way to waste one’s time. Learn words (or at least improve your skills in the Process of Elimination or using those old SAT break-down-the-roots to get to a definition tactics) and get some rice for others.

Groundwork, or Why Costo for Travel

Made it into Vegas early Wednesday. Perfect 3 point on-time landing with American Airlines.  New for Vegas this year – all of the car rental companies are now in a new Rent-A-Car mall. There is only one bus for all rental car companies that take you there. Literally, it is a mall in reverse – each rental company has a store, and then you go to the parking garage and pick up your car.  NY should do  that

Once in the rental car, I really had to make a pit stop and get some supplies for the room. I remembered that there was a Costco nearby. If you do a lot of driving travel, you should really have a Costco card along with AAA. First, Costcos usually have cheap gas (here, 11 cents cheaper per gallon). Second, cheap food – their quarter pound hot dog and 20 oz refillable soda combo is only $1.50. Third, if you need extra clothes (as I did in Seattle), drinks (the one in Vegas has perfect selections of wines or liquors for that room party), or medications, you can pick up cheap quantities. Fifth, in addition to their national Kirkland products, there are also local items that work well as souvenirs (this was most applicable in Hawaii).  Finally, clean restrooms are always available. For an driving oasis, this is it.

Staying at the Suncoast. Dropped off at the Marriott, got shanghaied into helping out shopping with bags. Buffet was pretty good at $13 – totally broke the bank on them with their ox tail stew, which usually retails for $8 -$10 a serving. P– drove in at about 10 PM, and we had a late supper. Then we totally crashed out.