Now that we're moving in September, I'm working to finish reading all the issues of The Henderson Press up to the latest one. I'm on Volume 3, No. 11, and I've got 23 more in order to get to Volume 3, No. 34. I'm sure it's a combination of editor Carla J. Zvosec and reporter Guy Dawson that shows that The Henderson Press finally gets it: In profiles of businesses, you can't just skim the surface and report on what a business offers. You have to dig deep into a story, get the origins of the business, what inspired it, what the businesspeople set out to do, and how it's grown and changed. That's what reporters did in Zvosec's early days.
In this issue, dated March 15-March 21, 2012, there's an article on page 7 about the local Skyline Casino. At the beginning, reporter Dawson writes that the Skyline is undergoing renovations, takes in a quote by Mike Young, the general manager, goes into the remodeling details, and then delves into its history, who owned it first and who owns it now. The current owner, Jim Marsh, owns antique slot machines and has them on display throughout the casino. I've read a few of Dawson's articles in previous issues and I've found that he has an instinct for interesting details, no matter if he's writing about the Skyline Casino or a family taxidermy business that he reported on in the previous issue. Editor Zvosec is smart in letting Dawson pick out those pieces of Henderson not often thought about by the public at large. The Henderson Press was a zig-zag publication in its early days, unsure of what it wanted to be, and going through many different reporters and editorial oversight at the time, but now, with reporters like Dawson, and Buford Davis, who makes City Council issues even more interesting than they were before in this newspaper, it has matured into a strong community force that looks to make sure its citizens are well-informed about what's going on around them, no matter that it comes out once a week. But where the Las Vegas Review-Journal is published every day and has to cover the news very quickly, The Henderson Press gets time to digest the news that affects the city and report on it in a calm, even-handed manner. I have to get settled in Las Vegas first, but once my life's back in a straight line, I would have no problem going into Henderson every week to get a copy of The Henderson Press somewhere. I like what it has become, and plan to support it for as long as Zvosec and her reporters keep it going as it is.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
Going Home!
Just a quick post to reveal why I've been away for so long:
The house is up for sale. We've had 14 showings this past week alone and offers are forthcoming, which may trigger a bidding war, according to our realtor. We had to bring in two cleaning women (mother and daughter) to scour the house, and they did an incredible job. It looks better than when we moved in eight years ago, and still does after all these showings because we make sure that it's always presentable. It also helps that Meridith and I sit in the patio with our two dogs so the potential buyers can walk through unimpeded. If they were in their kennels in the house, their barking would have been bothersome to the sellers, I'm sure, and we wouldn't be facing three offers so far. That may go higher.
I can't give any official word just yet, but things are moving swiftly enough that we will be residents of Las Vegas at the second week of September. That's real, confirmed, solid, set. We're going home!
I'm working on my book projects slower than before in order to prepare to move. But once in Las Vegas, full speed ahead, including my book about the making of the Airport movies. I found out that Airport is being released by Universal on Blu-ray next week as part of its 100th Anniversary. The extras contain only the theatrical trailer. Nothing about the history of it or how it single-handedly pulled Universal out of bankruptcy. It means there's an opening for my co-author and I and we have all the resources for it. I know that in Las Vegas, I'm going to accomplish a lot more than I have, especially armed with a library card that means so much because it's home to me.
Plus, time to shop for a car after we get settled. I need one and Meridith needs one. You can't get around Las Vegas much without one. If I can find a decent used Toyota Corolla, I'll be overjoyed. That's what I want.
That's all for now. After nine years of struggle in Santa Clarita, we're finally moving to where we belong, to where the word "home" means home and not just to say, "I'm tired of these errands. Let's go home," just to reference where our beds are, as it is here. I can't wait to get to the Whitney Library to ransack their Nevada history section and to put on hold what the other branches have, to have the job I've wanted for a long time, to have a Nevada driver's license, to explore every inch of the Las Vegas Valley and eventually the state. I no longer bear any animosity toward Santa Clarita and Southern California. I felt like a tourist in the Walmart Supercenter on Carl Boyer Drive some time ago, and that was a start. Now I feel nothing toward Santa Clarita. I'm ready to move and forget about all of it, filling my soul with the new life that awaits me.
The house is up for sale. We've had 14 showings this past week alone and offers are forthcoming, which may trigger a bidding war, according to our realtor. We had to bring in two cleaning women (mother and daughter) to scour the house, and they did an incredible job. It looks better than when we moved in eight years ago, and still does after all these showings because we make sure that it's always presentable. It also helps that Meridith and I sit in the patio with our two dogs so the potential buyers can walk through unimpeded. If they were in their kennels in the house, their barking would have been bothersome to the sellers, I'm sure, and we wouldn't be facing three offers so far. That may go higher.
I can't give any official word just yet, but things are moving swiftly enough that we will be residents of Las Vegas at the second week of September. That's real, confirmed, solid, set. We're going home!
I'm working on my book projects slower than before in order to prepare to move. But once in Las Vegas, full speed ahead, including my book about the making of the Airport movies. I found out that Airport is being released by Universal on Blu-ray next week as part of its 100th Anniversary. The extras contain only the theatrical trailer. Nothing about the history of it or how it single-handedly pulled Universal out of bankruptcy. It means there's an opening for my co-author and I and we have all the resources for it. I know that in Las Vegas, I'm going to accomplish a lot more than I have, especially armed with a library card that means so much because it's home to me.
Plus, time to shop for a car after we get settled. I need one and Meridith needs one. You can't get around Las Vegas much without one. If I can find a decent used Toyota Corolla, I'll be overjoyed. That's what I want.
That's all for now. After nine years of struggle in Santa Clarita, we're finally moving to where we belong, to where the word "home" means home and not just to say, "I'm tired of these errands. Let's go home," just to reference where our beds are, as it is here. I can't wait to get to the Whitney Library to ransack their Nevada history section and to put on hold what the other branches have, to have the job I've wanted for a long time, to have a Nevada driver's license, to explore every inch of the Las Vegas Valley and eventually the state. I no longer bear any animosity toward Santa Clarita and Southern California. I felt like a tourist in the Walmart Supercenter on Carl Boyer Drive some time ago, and that was a start. Now I feel nothing toward Santa Clarita. I'm ready to move and forget about all of it, filling my soul with the new life that awaits me.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Relishing the Calm Before the Busy
Yesterday was a domestic maze of vacuuming, straightening up shelves, and books in boxes, and DVDs in that one plastic blue storage bin I have. Everything had to be finished by 4:30, which was when our realtor was to arrive to take pictures to post in our "for sale" listing. He came at 4:41, took all the pictures, gave his impression on the current market in our area, and exclaimed over features he hadn't noticed before, which may help sell our place faster, including a door at the back of the garage that opens outside. Most units have doors that open into either the laundry room or the kitchen, but we also have one that opens into the master bedroom. Plus, two sensor lights in the patio, not just one.
There's still much to do. Mom wants to move the birds to the window in the middle of the dining room area, on top of that white cart, and move the table the birds' cage is sitting on next to our wooden, multi-shelf wall unit so we can put water and candy there for prospective buyers when they walk around. Plus, a cleaning service still has to come in to really vacuum deeply, scrub the tubs and the toilets, and get everything fully sparkling again.
So this is it. It's finally happening. And I'm sitting here, fully at peace, because I know that we'll finally have a city to call home, definitely by the end of the month. I'm not worried about the tasks still to come, about the packing, about loading the boxes onto the truck of whatever moving company we use, hoping it all gets there intact, unlike when we moved from Pembroke Pines, Florida to Valencia nine years ago, and half of our stuff was missing, and the other half looked like shit. Bad enough that I knew basically nothing about the Santa Clarita Valley right then, but we had to deal with this too.
It's much easier this time because we're moving to where we know we belong. Plus, instead of driving across the country in five days, it'll just take four hours and crossing one state line. California into Nevada, leaving California behind for good. Save for Buena Park and Baker, both of which I want to use in a novel and a play, respectively, I never want to know anything about California ever again. I understand that myriad residents of Southern California go to Las Vegas for the weekend, and that's fine. As long as they turn around and go back, I'll have no trouble with them. Fortunately, it's somewhat difficult to pick them out since the crowd on the Strip is so varied and so interesting. Las Vegas is for everyone, and I'm proud to soon be part of that.
I'm not worried about any of the tasks ahead. They'll all be done, we'll move into our new home (details to come, but not right away since we're still in the final stages, and it won't be ready to move into until the end of the month, which is exactly when we intend to move from here), and I'll begin exploring every inch of the Las Vegas Valley like never before. We'll get our new drivers' licenses, new library cards, I'll happily do whatever I must in pursuit of my new job, and life will be as great as it was for us back in 1992, the last time I think we were truly happy, when we lived in Casselberry, Florida, had annual passes to Walt Disney World, and our neighborhood in the Deer Run development was home. 20 years is a long time to go without the feeling of home, so it's no wonder I'm going to immediately eat up as much as I can right away. The excitement of a tourist inside a resident, but living more reasonably, since a resident cannot live like a tourist. We still have to keep regular hours, and get up early in the morning and go to work like anyone else who does the same around the world. The casinos being open around the clock, bless those who can work those late-night shifts and those well into the night. I couldn't.
It feels a little odd to be moving to where we finally belong. I'm not entirely used to that, just yet. It's brand-new to me. But I'm sure I'll adjust quickly once I see our new home in person and the full-on view of the Strip when you pull out of the development. This time, at least, the final time, I know exactly what it looks like and what to expect and all that I'll be able to enjoy there. A major improvement on knowing nearly nothing about our apartment in Valencia, thinking it would be one way, and it turning out to be completely different from what I thought it would be. This is accurate. I know the layout, I know our proximity to middle schools in the area, and how long it takes to get to the Strip, to the nearby Whitney library branch, and to my beloved Pinball Hall of Fame. I am truly going to be home. And I am at peace for good.
There's still much to do. Mom wants to move the birds to the window in the middle of the dining room area, on top of that white cart, and move the table the birds' cage is sitting on next to our wooden, multi-shelf wall unit so we can put water and candy there for prospective buyers when they walk around. Plus, a cleaning service still has to come in to really vacuum deeply, scrub the tubs and the toilets, and get everything fully sparkling again.
So this is it. It's finally happening. And I'm sitting here, fully at peace, because I know that we'll finally have a city to call home, definitely by the end of the month. I'm not worried about the tasks still to come, about the packing, about loading the boxes onto the truck of whatever moving company we use, hoping it all gets there intact, unlike when we moved from Pembroke Pines, Florida to Valencia nine years ago, and half of our stuff was missing, and the other half looked like shit. Bad enough that I knew basically nothing about the Santa Clarita Valley right then, but we had to deal with this too.
It's much easier this time because we're moving to where we know we belong. Plus, instead of driving across the country in five days, it'll just take four hours and crossing one state line. California into Nevada, leaving California behind for good. Save for Buena Park and Baker, both of which I want to use in a novel and a play, respectively, I never want to know anything about California ever again. I understand that myriad residents of Southern California go to Las Vegas for the weekend, and that's fine. As long as they turn around and go back, I'll have no trouble with them. Fortunately, it's somewhat difficult to pick them out since the crowd on the Strip is so varied and so interesting. Las Vegas is for everyone, and I'm proud to soon be part of that.
I'm not worried about any of the tasks ahead. They'll all be done, we'll move into our new home (details to come, but not right away since we're still in the final stages, and it won't be ready to move into until the end of the month, which is exactly when we intend to move from here), and I'll begin exploring every inch of the Las Vegas Valley like never before. We'll get our new drivers' licenses, new library cards, I'll happily do whatever I must in pursuit of my new job, and life will be as great as it was for us back in 1992, the last time I think we were truly happy, when we lived in Casselberry, Florida, had annual passes to Walt Disney World, and our neighborhood in the Deer Run development was home. 20 years is a long time to go without the feeling of home, so it's no wonder I'm going to immediately eat up as much as I can right away. The excitement of a tourist inside a resident, but living more reasonably, since a resident cannot live like a tourist. We still have to keep regular hours, and get up early in the morning and go to work like anyone else who does the same around the world. The casinos being open around the clock, bless those who can work those late-night shifts and those well into the night. I couldn't.
It feels a little odd to be moving to where we finally belong. I'm not entirely used to that, just yet. It's brand-new to me. But I'm sure I'll adjust quickly once I see our new home in person and the full-on view of the Strip when you pull out of the development. This time, at least, the final time, I know exactly what it looks like and what to expect and all that I'll be able to enjoy there. A major improvement on knowing nearly nothing about our apartment in Valencia, thinking it would be one way, and it turning out to be completely different from what I thought it would be. This is accurate. I know the layout, I know our proximity to middle schools in the area, and how long it takes to get to the Strip, to the nearby Whitney library branch, and to my beloved Pinball Hall of Fame. I am truly going to be home. And I am at peace for good.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
With Jenny Diski and Sam Shepard, My Permanent Collection is Now Ready for Moving
During the past two weeks, I've ordered four books that are absolutely essential for my permanent collection, so I have them before we move and don't have to wish that I have them. (Soon, I won't have to distinguish between my permanent collection and my temporary collection, which are books I bought but won't likely keep after I'm done reading them. I'll have not only the Whitney library branch of the Clark County system, but I hear that the main library branch of the system, the original, is not too far from us either.)
First was Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski:
It's a dryly funny, low-key travelogue, first about Diski's journey on a cargo ship from Hamburg, Germany, to Tampa, Florida and then to Port Royal, near Savannah, Georgia, then across America entirely by train. I want to say that I first checked it out of the Valencia library, but I'm probably wrong, because I remember buying it from a seller on abebooks.com to read, and that might have been the first time. I think it had to be long after I gave up on the now-Santa Clarita library system because Santa Clarita is already isolated enough, and there was the City Council, cutting off the valley from the County of Los Angeles entirely in order to have their own library system. The County has millions upon millions of books in circulation. I don't think the Santa Clarita system has even that many yet, and I wasn't game for finding out. I didn't bother getting a new library card and have relied mostly on abebooks.com for the past few years, and sometimes Amazon.
After I first read Stranger on a Train, I donated it, but while I was reading Greyhound by Steffan Piper two weeks ago, it kept nagging me. I needed it back in my collection. Not only because I'm researching travel books both fiction and nonfiction for two novels I want to write, but because I loved the journey she took, what she saw in our country. You can't let the words rush by. I speed read, but over all the years I've been reading, I have an instinct for slowing down for just those books that need it. Books like this one, and like Nixon in Winter by Monica Crowley, but only because of the complexity of historical government policy. It takes time to absorb.
This being the second time I've bought Stranger on a Train, it's not going anywhere, at least until it falls apart from re-reading and I have to buy a new copy to replace it. But that won't happen for a few years. I can't wait to get back to the equivalent of this, in which checking out a book from the library three or more times means I need to buy it. That happened at the Valencia library with The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes and The Music of Your Life by John Rowell.
I discovered Sam Shepard out of curiosity when Day out of Days, his book of generally short stories and sketches, was published in 2010. I checked it out from the Valencia library in hardcover, and was so hungry for more than I checked out his earlier works, Cruising Paradise and Great Dream of Heaven, in rapid succession, followed by his plays.
When we moved from South Florida to Southern California in August 2003, I had no insight into the region that could help me get used to it. I spent my first few weeks as a student at College of the Canyons in the library, pulling down memoirs, literary anthologies, and novels about Los Angeles, trying to understand it, trying to understand this valley, trying to find something I could connect to. I didn't find anything, except I learned that while Los Angeles claims it's in the desert, it's not. It may have been a desert once, but it's not a true desert, not with many different climate zones, depending on which mountains you are and how high up you are, and all of that. Plus, Los Angeles doesn't know the meaning of what it is to be a desert since it gets all the water it needs, whereas Nevada has to make sure it gets the water it needs every year, and now has to fight for more, because under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, it gets 300,000 acre-feet of water per year, which back then, never took into account that the population of Nevada, especially in the Las Vegas Valley, would get bigger. So there are water squabbles going on even today. Los Angeles is never hurting for water because you know the Hoover Dam, all that power it generates? Most of it actually goes to California, to Los Angeles.
So I've never understood Southern California, and only found minimal things to connect to, such as Anaheim and Buena Park, but we don't go to either very often, though Buena Park will figure into one of my novels, to honor that now-closed Po Folks restaurant across from Medieval Times there, which I grew up on in South Florida until a corporate outfit took ownership of that Po Folks and everything went downhill.
The first time we went to Las Vegas in 2007, I got out of our rented SUV at the far end of the America's Best Value Inn property on East Tropicana Avenue (since they allowed pets in those rooms, and our dog Tigger was with us), looked around, and worried that we had made a sorry mistake. It all looked so abandoned, with the airport right nearby, and there was a parking garage for one of the casinos, with the monorail on a track right next to it. What had we done?
But after we got settled, put Tigger in the kennel we brought with us, and made sure the room was cool enough for him, we went to the Mirage, to the Carnegie Deli there, and that was it. Walking across that casino floor to Carnegie, I immediately understood the excitement of Las Vegas, why people flock there, and it only got better those next two days. I loved the sights, and I watched the people, and I realized that there are so many stories happening in Las Vegas in 30 seconds alone than what happens in Los Angeles in even 20 seconds. If you can't write in Las Vegas, quit. I won't have any trouble there.
On one of our many trips, driving into Nevada, we passed by a riverboat-shaped casino, which I later learned was called the Nevada Landing Hotel and Casino. The trip after that, passing by that same spot in Jean, Nevada Landing was gone. I know that it was torn down, but I loved the sheer poetry of it: A riverboat disappearing in the desert. That's when I knew that there was more to this desert than only what Las Vegas offered. There was some kind of magic here, in its scenery, in its history (I don't think the desert ever forgets), in how people live in the desert.
That was around the time I discovered Sam Shepard the writer. I knew about Sam Shepard the actor, having seen him in Voyager, co-starring with Julie Delpy, both eventually becoming lovers, until the disturbing, sad twist at the end. I was impressed with him as an actor, but until Day Out of Days, I had no idea of the riches he brought as a writer.
Shepard became one of my heroes because he helped me understand the desert more than any history book ever could. He told me I was right, that the desert has mystery and magic and that it's different for each person, depending on who they are and where they come from. It's always there for everyone, not always welcoming, but you make your way through it the best way you know how, or you think you know how.
I got more out of Day Out of Days than I got out of any of the books about Los Angeles at the College of the Canyons library. I realize now that the meaning of L.A. differs for each person, that there's no overall meaning, but I need meaning. I need to know that a city is alive, that it offers lifelines. Las Vegas, for me, offers that in never ignoring its history like Los Angeles does. There are museums, such as the Clark County Museum, which embraces that history, and the libraries stock so many books about the history of Las Vegas and Nevada, all of which I'll read. Every single one.
Recently, while turning all my makeshift box bookshelves vertically to put my books in that way and line up those boxes against the wall under my window, left and right, I realized that I need Sam Shepard in my collection. I needed Day Out of Days, Cruising Paradise, and Great Dream of Heaven with me before we move, so I didn't have to lament that they weren't part of my collection. Over the past three months, I've gone back and forth about whether I should have them and I finally said, "Hell with it. I need them and I'm going to have them."
I ordered them, all paperback editions, and Day Out of Days arrived first:
I like the hardcover edition better because it has a stronger desert feel:
It conveys the bleached-out look of the desert better than the paperback edition because yes, the sun blazes in the desert, but there are always some gray areas about it. Not only white, and hotter white. However, I can live with the paperback edition, because with how much I'm bound to read it, I'd rather get right to it than dealing with hardcover. Sure it preserves the pages better, and paperback's bound to wear out faster, but also for the sake of weight, especially when moving, this is much easier.
Then Cruising Paradise arrived a few days after Day Out of Days, and this is one of the rare instances that I love the paperback edition cover more than the hardcover edition:
The copy that I'm holding looks a deeper brown than that, and it conveys perfectly the vastness of the desert, especially by way of those bicyclers. Compare that to the hardcover edition cover:
Too newsprint gray. The desert is never, never that gray.
My biggest disappointment came today with the arrival of Great Dream of Heaven in the mail. Here's the cover of Random House's Vintage paperback edition:
Instead of that one, I received from Wonder Book, the abebooks.com seller that I use all the time for other books, an edition from Britain, by Secker & Warburg, despite them advertising the Vintage edition. I like British books because they have heavier covers and the pages are sturdier. So that should be reason enough to keep it. And maybe I will. But it's taller than my other Sam Shepard books, by a few inches. Plus, the title isn't uniform. Great Dream is printed in blue on the cover, and of Heaven is printed in bright orange.
I'm torn because I like the Vintage cover better. The hardcover edition from the same publisher had the cover in gray, just like Cruising Paradise. The sky blue tint of the paperback edition is much nicer. Yet this British edition has on its inside back cover a full photo of Sam Shepard, though as I just learned from the Amazon page for the Vintage paperback edition, Shepard's photo on that back cover is smaller, but of better quality, whereas the photo of Shepard in this British edition has been blown up a bit to cover that entire inside cover. It looks better on the Vintage edition.
It would seem dumb to give up a book that offers a sturdier cover and stronger pages, but Shepard's meant to be pliable. He's never been stiff in any of his works, and I want what I like. I'll order the Vintage paperback edition (fortunately, I didn't pay much for the British edition), because it fits alongside Day Out of Days, which has a green border on the front. I checked out Great Dream of Heaven in hardcover from the Valencia library, but I want Shepard as I will know him best. And I'd rather have the title look uniform. I want all blue.
With these four books, my permanent collection is complete. I'm sure I'll add others in the years to come in Las Vegas, but it doesn't happen very often. The latest ones before these were Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, and The Loop by Joe Coomer, both in June. Last February, I added three: Taft 2012 by Jason Heller, The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty, and Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks. Overall, though, that doesn't happen often. I'm very picky.
First was Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski:
It's a dryly funny, low-key travelogue, first about Diski's journey on a cargo ship from Hamburg, Germany, to Tampa, Florida and then to Port Royal, near Savannah, Georgia, then across America entirely by train. I want to say that I first checked it out of the Valencia library, but I'm probably wrong, because I remember buying it from a seller on abebooks.com to read, and that might have been the first time. I think it had to be long after I gave up on the now-Santa Clarita library system because Santa Clarita is already isolated enough, and there was the City Council, cutting off the valley from the County of Los Angeles entirely in order to have their own library system. The County has millions upon millions of books in circulation. I don't think the Santa Clarita system has even that many yet, and I wasn't game for finding out. I didn't bother getting a new library card and have relied mostly on abebooks.com for the past few years, and sometimes Amazon.
After I first read Stranger on a Train, I donated it, but while I was reading Greyhound by Steffan Piper two weeks ago, it kept nagging me. I needed it back in my collection. Not only because I'm researching travel books both fiction and nonfiction for two novels I want to write, but because I loved the journey she took, what she saw in our country. You can't let the words rush by. I speed read, but over all the years I've been reading, I have an instinct for slowing down for just those books that need it. Books like this one, and like Nixon in Winter by Monica Crowley, but only because of the complexity of historical government policy. It takes time to absorb.
This being the second time I've bought Stranger on a Train, it's not going anywhere, at least until it falls apart from re-reading and I have to buy a new copy to replace it. But that won't happen for a few years. I can't wait to get back to the equivalent of this, in which checking out a book from the library three or more times means I need to buy it. That happened at the Valencia library with The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes and The Music of Your Life by John Rowell.
I discovered Sam Shepard out of curiosity when Day out of Days, his book of generally short stories and sketches, was published in 2010. I checked it out from the Valencia library in hardcover, and was so hungry for more than I checked out his earlier works, Cruising Paradise and Great Dream of Heaven, in rapid succession, followed by his plays.
When we moved from South Florida to Southern California in August 2003, I had no insight into the region that could help me get used to it. I spent my first few weeks as a student at College of the Canyons in the library, pulling down memoirs, literary anthologies, and novels about Los Angeles, trying to understand it, trying to understand this valley, trying to find something I could connect to. I didn't find anything, except I learned that while Los Angeles claims it's in the desert, it's not. It may have been a desert once, but it's not a true desert, not with many different climate zones, depending on which mountains you are and how high up you are, and all of that. Plus, Los Angeles doesn't know the meaning of what it is to be a desert since it gets all the water it needs, whereas Nevada has to make sure it gets the water it needs every year, and now has to fight for more, because under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, it gets 300,000 acre-feet of water per year, which back then, never took into account that the population of Nevada, especially in the Las Vegas Valley, would get bigger. So there are water squabbles going on even today. Los Angeles is never hurting for water because you know the Hoover Dam, all that power it generates? Most of it actually goes to California, to Los Angeles.
So I've never understood Southern California, and only found minimal things to connect to, such as Anaheim and Buena Park, but we don't go to either very often, though Buena Park will figure into one of my novels, to honor that now-closed Po Folks restaurant across from Medieval Times there, which I grew up on in South Florida until a corporate outfit took ownership of that Po Folks and everything went downhill.
The first time we went to Las Vegas in 2007, I got out of our rented SUV at the far end of the America's Best Value Inn property on East Tropicana Avenue (since they allowed pets in those rooms, and our dog Tigger was with us), looked around, and worried that we had made a sorry mistake. It all looked so abandoned, with the airport right nearby, and there was a parking garage for one of the casinos, with the monorail on a track right next to it. What had we done?
But after we got settled, put Tigger in the kennel we brought with us, and made sure the room was cool enough for him, we went to the Mirage, to the Carnegie Deli there, and that was it. Walking across that casino floor to Carnegie, I immediately understood the excitement of Las Vegas, why people flock there, and it only got better those next two days. I loved the sights, and I watched the people, and I realized that there are so many stories happening in Las Vegas in 30 seconds alone than what happens in Los Angeles in even 20 seconds. If you can't write in Las Vegas, quit. I won't have any trouble there.
On one of our many trips, driving into Nevada, we passed by a riverboat-shaped casino, which I later learned was called the Nevada Landing Hotel and Casino. The trip after that, passing by that same spot in Jean, Nevada Landing was gone. I know that it was torn down, but I loved the sheer poetry of it: A riverboat disappearing in the desert. That's when I knew that there was more to this desert than only what Las Vegas offered. There was some kind of magic here, in its scenery, in its history (I don't think the desert ever forgets), in how people live in the desert.
That was around the time I discovered Sam Shepard the writer. I knew about Sam Shepard the actor, having seen him in Voyager, co-starring with Julie Delpy, both eventually becoming lovers, until the disturbing, sad twist at the end. I was impressed with him as an actor, but until Day Out of Days, I had no idea of the riches he brought as a writer.
Shepard became one of my heroes because he helped me understand the desert more than any history book ever could. He told me I was right, that the desert has mystery and magic and that it's different for each person, depending on who they are and where they come from. It's always there for everyone, not always welcoming, but you make your way through it the best way you know how, or you think you know how.
I got more out of Day Out of Days than I got out of any of the books about Los Angeles at the College of the Canyons library. I realize now that the meaning of L.A. differs for each person, that there's no overall meaning, but I need meaning. I need to know that a city is alive, that it offers lifelines. Las Vegas, for me, offers that in never ignoring its history like Los Angeles does. There are museums, such as the Clark County Museum, which embraces that history, and the libraries stock so many books about the history of Las Vegas and Nevada, all of which I'll read. Every single one.
Recently, while turning all my makeshift box bookshelves vertically to put my books in that way and line up those boxes against the wall under my window, left and right, I realized that I need Sam Shepard in my collection. I needed Day Out of Days, Cruising Paradise, and Great Dream of Heaven with me before we move, so I didn't have to lament that they weren't part of my collection. Over the past three months, I've gone back and forth about whether I should have them and I finally said, "Hell with it. I need them and I'm going to have them."
I ordered them, all paperback editions, and Day Out of Days arrived first:
I like the hardcover edition better because it has a stronger desert feel:
It conveys the bleached-out look of the desert better than the paperback edition because yes, the sun blazes in the desert, but there are always some gray areas about it. Not only white, and hotter white. However, I can live with the paperback edition, because with how much I'm bound to read it, I'd rather get right to it than dealing with hardcover. Sure it preserves the pages better, and paperback's bound to wear out faster, but also for the sake of weight, especially when moving, this is much easier.
Then Cruising Paradise arrived a few days after Day Out of Days, and this is one of the rare instances that I love the paperback edition cover more than the hardcover edition:
The copy that I'm holding looks a deeper brown than that, and it conveys perfectly the vastness of the desert, especially by way of those bicyclers. Compare that to the hardcover edition cover:
Too newsprint gray. The desert is never, never that gray.
My biggest disappointment came today with the arrival of Great Dream of Heaven in the mail. Here's the cover of Random House's Vintage paperback edition:
Instead of that one, I received from Wonder Book, the abebooks.com seller that I use all the time for other books, an edition from Britain, by Secker & Warburg, despite them advertising the Vintage edition. I like British books because they have heavier covers and the pages are sturdier. So that should be reason enough to keep it. And maybe I will. But it's taller than my other Sam Shepard books, by a few inches. Plus, the title isn't uniform. Great Dream is printed in blue on the cover, and of Heaven is printed in bright orange.
I'm torn because I like the Vintage cover better. The hardcover edition from the same publisher had the cover in gray, just like Cruising Paradise. The sky blue tint of the paperback edition is much nicer. Yet this British edition has on its inside back cover a full photo of Sam Shepard, though as I just learned from the Amazon page for the Vintage paperback edition, Shepard's photo on that back cover is smaller, but of better quality, whereas the photo of Shepard in this British edition has been blown up a bit to cover that entire inside cover. It looks better on the Vintage edition.
It would seem dumb to give up a book that offers a sturdier cover and stronger pages, but Shepard's meant to be pliable. He's never been stiff in any of his works, and I want what I like. I'll order the Vintage paperback edition (fortunately, I didn't pay much for the British edition), because it fits alongside Day Out of Days, which has a green border on the front. I checked out Great Dream of Heaven in hardcover from the Valencia library, but I want Shepard as I will know him best. And I'd rather have the title look uniform. I want all blue.
With these four books, my permanent collection is complete. I'm sure I'll add others in the years to come in Las Vegas, but it doesn't happen very often. The latest ones before these were Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, and The Loop by Joe Coomer, both in June. Last February, I added three: Taft 2012 by Jason Heller, The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty, and Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks. Overall, though, that doesn't happen often. I'm very picky.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
More New DVD reviews
I'm not afraid of the personal uncharted territory I'm going to explore in my books, going further than the length of an essay in What If They Lived?, and never having written a novel before. I have an inkling of what I want to write in those two Vegas-centered novels, the time period, a few of the characters, but I have to wait until I'm living in Las Vegas to get a feeling for the city as it is today, and to have the resources to see what it was like in the late 1940s, more than the books I've read have provided me with so far. Being in transition right now, I don't yet feel the sense of security I need in order to begin. I know that security in life is impossible since everything changes, but I mean the security of knowing that I'm home, that I can look to my city for inspiration and know that I'll get it all the time. A little bit longer, then I'll have it. As we get ready to move, I'm sure I'll have more to write about.
In the meantime, I've been pouring my creative energy into my DVD reviews, to keep my writing limber. I've written nine reviews in the past two weeks. I'm comfortable with this because I have to work within a certain framework, that of the DVD I'm reviewing, and figure out what kind of review to write with what I have, whether I can get personal in a review based on the subject matter or just write about if I liked a movie or didn't like it. This set of reviews runs the gamut of all that:
Black Hand
The Devil Makes Three
Rings on Her Fingers
Claudia
Kidnapped (1938)
The Kent Chronicles
Garrow's Law: Series 3
Vega$: The Third Season, Volume Two
Megacities
Lake Effects
In the meantime, I've been pouring my creative energy into my DVD reviews, to keep my writing limber. I've written nine reviews in the past two weeks. I'm comfortable with this because I have to work within a certain framework, that of the DVD I'm reviewing, and figure out what kind of review to write with what I have, whether I can get personal in a review based on the subject matter or just write about if I liked a movie or didn't like it. This set of reviews runs the gamut of all that:
Black Hand
The Devil Makes Three
Rings on Her Fingers
Claudia
Kidnapped (1938)
The Kent Chronicles
Garrow's Law: Series 3
Vega$: The Third Season, Volume Two
Megacities
Lake Effects
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