Today at Century 18 at Sam's Town, American Beauty was playing at 2 and 7:30, part of Cinemark's Classic Series. I was thinking of going because even though I accidentally bought it twice over for my DVD collection (I couldn't cancel my Amazon order for Paramount's release of it on DVD by the time I found the original edition I used to have at the Goatfeathers Too antique shop in Boulder City), I hadn't seen it in a movie theater since 2000, and I wanted to see how it played to me at one now. But suppose, say, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory appears next month as part of the series. I'd much rather see that since I've never seen it in a movie theater.
But then, while walking Kitty before my family and I went out, before I was going to ask them to drop me off at Sam's Town, I met Nick, one of my neighbors down the street, on my side of the street. He was walking to his car parked next to the curb in front of his house and he asked me if I knew who was letting their dog crap on the empty lot next to his. Sometimes he crosses over to the lot to walk to his car and steps right in it and he hates that. I told him it wasn't me, showing the bag I have to pick up our dogs' business, but I knew what he was talking about because it annoys me, too. I sometimes walk Tigger and Kitty on those empty lots because of that space, because I can pick up more easily there, but then there's other dogs' efforts left behind.
I learned that he's a plumber who lives here, but is based in Southern California, convenient because the rest of his family lives in Los Angeles, in West Covina, in San Pedro, so whenever he has a job in L.A., he stays with them. Las Vegas is getting a new mega-resort called Resorts World Las Vegas that needs all kinds of construction people, including plumbers, and he's on the list. There's positions open for 400 plumbers, but 800 have signed up for the chance to be hired. He wants it because it would let him spend more time here. He still has the work in Southern California, so he's covered either way. He and his wife have lived here for eight years, his grandmother having bought that particular property 10-12 years ago, and they like it. His wife works at Vons, and it seems to be an easy existence. The work is there, family is there, and he likes his work. That's all you can really ask for in life and maintain total peace of mind, if not for the dog crap. He wants to find who's been doing it and plans to go to the owners of this mobile home park to tell them what's been going on, that things are not well-managed, that the front office expects everyone to pull weeds around their property, but doesn't do their part, with empty lots overgrown with weeds. Plus, if you're renting, it should be the park's responsibility to pull those weeds. That's what you'd think Maintenance is there for.
Nick had to get going and invited me over for a beer or wine some time, though I drink neither, but I'd be glad to talk with him some more some other time. After he left, I thought that yes, I could go see American Beauty, but I would only see the same people that I always see whenever I go to Sam's Town. Then the movie would be over and since Mom and Dad and Meridith would be out, I'd walk home since there's nothing else I can think of doing there. I decided instead that I'd watch American Beauty on DVD some time in the next few weeks. I wanted to go out into Las Vegas and see other people, especially the tourists here on spring break. I like them because they're pumping money into our local economy. Tourism is our main industry, and we need it.
It turns out that I chose well. On the way to the Walmart next to one of the taxiways and runways at McCarran, we drove past one of the runways seen clearly there, and as we were, a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 was landing. One of the things we did on my birthday was park at the McCarran observation lot so I could watch another Virgin Atlantic 747 land. It was incredible seeing it come in to land, but to see it land as we were driving by it? That was totally unexpected and in fact, I noticed across the way at the international terminal that there was no 747 there. And then suddenly, there it was behind us, next to us. The speed of driving makes it even more awe-inspiring.
Then came visits to the Flamingo and Ellis Island and the Tropicana. The Flamingo looks decrepit, and some of the fixtures there look like they've been there since it opened in 1946. Not worth visiting again.
The Tropicana was fine, but too much white decoration in walls and tile and furniture. They're going for a South Beach look in Florida, which is fine, but I can't stand there not being contrasts.
At Ellis Island, the first paragraph of what may be my first novel hit me, and I hurriedly typed it into my cell phone. I began research for it fully last night, and I'm excited about it, and interested to see where it goes. It combines so many of my interests, though the challenge here will be making my interest organic to my main character and not merely making him my mouthpiece. I like the first paragraph, but I have to play with the introduction of the narrator after the explanation that opens my novel.
And to think that if I had gone to see American Beauty, I would have missed out on all of this.
Showing posts with label pleasure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pleasure. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
A New Collection
When I was eight, nine, 10 years old, I had a baseball card collection. I don't know why. I never watched baseball and I liked basketball more. It didn't make any sense. The bottle cap collection I had from Publix milk and orange juice made more sense. I even collected the rings around the caps and those came in handy when Mom helped me make a science project in elementary school that was a ring toss game.
I had a few pet rocks, and when I was heavily into aviation in my teens, I wrote to airlines and got from them those emergency information cards. I also got issues of their inflight magazines which led to my first published writing: A sidebar about Y2K prevention for Meridian Magazine, the inflight magazine of the now-defunct east coast-based Midway Airlines, when I was 14.
On our first or second visit to Las Vegas, when we ventured into Henderson, we stopped at the Smith's in a shopping center that includes a AAA office, Brooklyn Bagel, Popcorn Girl, the Cracked Egg restaurant, and Ohana Hawaiian BBQ, our favorite Hawaiian place so far in Southern Nevada. In that Smith's, I spotted a toy flour truck, which was hauling sacks of flour, and I bought it. It reminded me that when I was in kindergarten, I collected Matchbox, Micro Machines, and other kinds of toy cars. But this time, I wanted to do it differently, and so about a year before we moved, I began collecting toy working vehicles. I have a garbage truck, a school bus I bought at Six Flags Magic Mountain, a gas truck, an ice cream truck, a food truck (hot dogs, hamburgers and sodas), an airport fire truck, and countless others. I haven't found a taxicab yet, but I want one. Maybe construction vehicles, such as a cement truck, but I'm not sure yet. The only police car I've bought is a vintage Nevada Highway Patrol one that I ordered online, and will likely be the only one for me since it relates to my home. I'm not sure about fire trucks. I see them around all the time anyway. Maybe a Nevada one.
At Sprouts late this afternoon, I pulled basil from the rack of one of the refrigerated cases, basil that you can grow. I opened it up so I could smell the salty complexity of my favorite herb, and Mom asked, "Do you want to grow it?"
Me? No. Not here anyway. If I eventually decide I want to, I'd rather wait until we get to Pacific Islands in Henderson, after we get settled. But I'd rather buy ready-grown basil to use right away.
As we walked into the aisle where lip balm, ointments, pollen, and other natural products were, I thought about another collection. But nothing I'd have to physically collect. Something different from the norm of collecting.
No matter where we go shopping, be it Sprouts, Walmart, Smith's, Vons, Target, or even when we're just visiting shops on the Strip, I always look at the back of products to see where they come from. In fact, I did that at Sprouts, finding out that some kind of orange-infused lotion came from Salt Lake City.
Then I hit upon it: I want to collect city and town names. I don't mean Googling a state and copying those names into a Word file. I mean looking up whichever cities and towns I spark to and studying them, learning their history, even if I might not want to go there, such as, say, a town in Alaska (it always sounds too damn cold for me). The real beginning of this can be pinpointed a few months back, when we were new here and I decided that I wanted to learn more about Florida than I felt I did when I was there. I was born in Plantation, but we lived in Sunrise at the time. I really don't know anything about Plantation, nor what it was like in 1984.
Odd-sounding names will of course be part of it, as well as cities and towns in New Mexico, including, naturally, Taos. I want to do more than just looking at the back of a product and seeing a city name. I want to know where it is, what it looks like, what the population is, what kind of government they have, all of that. I'm already doing that with Boulder City, having begun studying it long before we moved, and I always have a yen to go back. But I want to know more of the United States. The biggies, such as New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and others, stay out. I want to know about the not-so-obvious cities, the history of those that are content with the size they are. It might help my writing, since I have two road trip novels in mind, but mainly, I want to know about what I can't see, what I can't experience every day because I'm here, and those cities and towns are there, over there, way over there, and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over there. I think this collection will be as fun to maintain as my toy working vehicles.
I had a few pet rocks, and when I was heavily into aviation in my teens, I wrote to airlines and got from them those emergency information cards. I also got issues of their inflight magazines which led to my first published writing: A sidebar about Y2K prevention for Meridian Magazine, the inflight magazine of the now-defunct east coast-based Midway Airlines, when I was 14.
On our first or second visit to Las Vegas, when we ventured into Henderson, we stopped at the Smith's in a shopping center that includes a AAA office, Brooklyn Bagel, Popcorn Girl, the Cracked Egg restaurant, and Ohana Hawaiian BBQ, our favorite Hawaiian place so far in Southern Nevada. In that Smith's, I spotted a toy flour truck, which was hauling sacks of flour, and I bought it. It reminded me that when I was in kindergarten, I collected Matchbox, Micro Machines, and other kinds of toy cars. But this time, I wanted to do it differently, and so about a year before we moved, I began collecting toy working vehicles. I have a garbage truck, a school bus I bought at Six Flags Magic Mountain, a gas truck, an ice cream truck, a food truck (hot dogs, hamburgers and sodas), an airport fire truck, and countless others. I haven't found a taxicab yet, but I want one. Maybe construction vehicles, such as a cement truck, but I'm not sure yet. The only police car I've bought is a vintage Nevada Highway Patrol one that I ordered online, and will likely be the only one for me since it relates to my home. I'm not sure about fire trucks. I see them around all the time anyway. Maybe a Nevada one.
At Sprouts late this afternoon, I pulled basil from the rack of one of the refrigerated cases, basil that you can grow. I opened it up so I could smell the salty complexity of my favorite herb, and Mom asked, "Do you want to grow it?"
Me? No. Not here anyway. If I eventually decide I want to, I'd rather wait until we get to Pacific Islands in Henderson, after we get settled. But I'd rather buy ready-grown basil to use right away.
As we walked into the aisle where lip balm, ointments, pollen, and other natural products were, I thought about another collection. But nothing I'd have to physically collect. Something different from the norm of collecting.
No matter where we go shopping, be it Sprouts, Walmart, Smith's, Vons, Target, or even when we're just visiting shops on the Strip, I always look at the back of products to see where they come from. In fact, I did that at Sprouts, finding out that some kind of orange-infused lotion came from Salt Lake City.
Then I hit upon it: I want to collect city and town names. I don't mean Googling a state and copying those names into a Word file. I mean looking up whichever cities and towns I spark to and studying them, learning their history, even if I might not want to go there, such as, say, a town in Alaska (it always sounds too damn cold for me). The real beginning of this can be pinpointed a few months back, when we were new here and I decided that I wanted to learn more about Florida than I felt I did when I was there. I was born in Plantation, but we lived in Sunrise at the time. I really don't know anything about Plantation, nor what it was like in 1984.
Odd-sounding names will of course be part of it, as well as cities and towns in New Mexico, including, naturally, Taos. I want to do more than just looking at the back of a product and seeing a city name. I want to know where it is, what it looks like, what the population is, what kind of government they have, all of that. I'm already doing that with Boulder City, having begun studying it long before we moved, and I always have a yen to go back. But I want to know more of the United States. The biggies, such as New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and others, stay out. I want to know about the not-so-obvious cities, the history of those that are content with the size they are. It might help my writing, since I have two road trip novels in mind, but mainly, I want to know about what I can't see, what I can't experience every day because I'm here, and those cities and towns are there, over there, way over there, and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over there. I think this collection will be as fun to maintain as my toy working vehicles.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
The Ghosts of Boulder City
Last Saturday, a friend of mine, a resident of Boulder City, my favorite city in all of Southern Nevada, showed me around. We went to TuTu's Books, which you have to climb stairs to get to, and I learned from Mom later that the block that TuTu's is on is actually houses that were divided for businesses to move in.
I want to move into TuTu's. The next day, I thought about where the biography section was, overlooking another block of stores, where I saw a man and a woman walking a dog below, and I wanted to replace the biography section with a bed for myself. I wouldn't need as big a TV as I have now. Just one to bring in Jeopardy!, The Big Bang Theory, and How It's Made, along with a DVD player for my movies. But being that I would have not only the books in TuTu's, but also my own collection, plus being within walking distance of the Boulder City Library, I don't think I'd watch TV all that often. Not that I do now anyway. For example, I Tivo'd Monday Mornings on TNT last night, which I want to see because it's based on a novel by Sanjay Gupta that I really like. I still haven't gotten to it.
We went to Goatfeathers, which is the largest antique store I've ever seen, with two upstairs areas, one of them for dishes and mugs and other kitchen supplies. And we went to another antique store where they've got a good handle on furniture, armoires and sturdy squat bookcases that I'd be hard-pressed to find in such good condition at the average furniture store. Later, we went to the Boulder Dam Brewing Co. for dinner, where I had an excellent blue cheese burger and the fries were pretty good, too.
But all that paled in importance, though refocused itself later, in comparison to the parking lot behind the Bureau of Reclamation building, where I was led to see the view of Lake Mead from there. I saw houses stretching to the lake, mountains cradling the lake, and I found the meaning of life. I felt such inner peace that I don't think I've ever felt before, not like this, not as pronounced. The other time I did, though it was far less than this, was every Friday in Pembroke Pines, in our development at Grand Palms, when I came home from school, and the sunlight through the trees, golden on the sidewalks, made it feel like the universe was aligned.
Then came the biggest discovery of all: Finding peace on Earth. We had bumped into my friend's former co-worker at that Bureau of Reclamation building, and she took us up to her office to see the view of Lake Mead from her window, which was also spectacular, but I always need the air around me in order to appreciate that view. I chatted with her for a few minutes, and then it was time to go, since she had work to do, even though it was a Saturday. But she had the right idea since there was no noise in the building, it was totally quiet, and certainly you could get a lot done that way. I told her that when I was in middle school and my teachers made us get in groups, I hated it because I always knew I could get the work done faster on my own. Ironic that those teachers were promoting socialization, yet would always tell us to be quiet and get to work.
We walked downstairs, back to the entrance/exit of the building, pushed the door open to the outside, went out, and went down the short stairs that rise to, and fall from, the building. In front of us was the half-bowl shaped park for dog walkers, joggers, and people like us, just strolling and looking around.
We started down the lip of the half-bowl, down that hill, and even though I couldn't see the sunset happening at that moment, I could feel it. The streetlights had come on, no sickly orangish glow here. Pure, gentle white lights. I looked at those lights in the park, and across the street at other buildings, and I felt peace on Earth. As my friend's former co-worker reminded me when I exclaimed my love of Boulder City, it is a unique situation. And she's right. Boulder City was created by the government to house the workers building Hoover (then Boulder) Dam, because they didn't want them living in Las Vegas, getting caught up in that debauched (their perception) lifestyle, and proving unreliable. A city manager was appointed in Sims Ely of Arizona, who ruled with an iron fist while sticking to the strict letter of the rules (no madness for power in that head), and there was no liquor, no gambling, and no prostitution allowed. I'm not sure yet if there was a curfew on the reservation, but there must have been. Actually, I think there was, because workers could go to Las Vegas, where they invariably did to spend their paychecks and have fun (those without families, of course), but if they were late getting back, they weren't allowed back on the reservation until the next morning, and I'm sure Mr. Ely had a few words for them.
Long after Boulder City passed from government to municipal hands, some of the same rules have stayed. There is alcohol now, but there's no gambling and no prostitution. That's mainly what helps keep the peace in Boulder City, that and the overwhelming friendliness of its residents and those who work there. I'm not sure if I would move there yet. For one, I'm close to becoming an employee of the Clark County School District as a library assistant, but I need to establish myself, and I could only get there if I know of a vacancy in the elementary school library there, and that I could transfer into it. But I need to accrue time working in the district.
Not only that, though. There is TuTu's, and there is a Vons supermarket at the edge of town, and restaurants, and those antique stores, and the Boulder City Library, but if you need socks, or shoes, or jeans, you have to drive to Henderson, or Las Vegas if you want to go that far. But it's not that difficult because my friend's former co-worker lives in Las Vegas on Windmill Lane, and commutes to Boulder City. It's much calmer there, which is probably what attracted her to it. However, you're obviously using gas to get to where you need to go from Boulder City, 14 miles out, however many miles it is to where you want to go (and there's also no movie theater in Boulder City, but the nearby Hacienda Hotel and Casino has a two-screen theater. For anything more extensive, there's Henderson or Las Vegas), however many miles back, and then those 14 miles back into Boulder City. But I'm gauging it based on where I currently am in Las Vegas. In Henderson, which we're moving to in September, it's closer to Boulder City. Five or so miles are shaved off of the drive. It may not be for me for now, but I'm still considering moving there when I retire.
Getting to the title of this post, there's always a hullabaloo in city history about ghosts living in the Boulder Dam Hotel, and it's likely true. My friend said that when she stayed there for six weeks to learn a new job within the Bureau of Reclamation after two years with the Bureau in Yuma, Arizona, she heard noises all around, and it wouldn't surprise me because the Hotel has changed ownership so many times and gone through so many iterations that it's never able to rest. But when my friend and I walked through Boulder City, I felt like there were more ghosts than just those in the Boulder Dam Hotel. I noticed them there, too, when I was with my family, going to the Boulder Dam Museum on the second floor, way in the back. I didn't hear the noises, but I could sense that the building was steeped in enough history that there were more figures wanting their stories told. I would be more interested as to why they ended up in the hotel. What keeps them there? Is it a kind of purgatory unknown to us? Or do they feel most at home there? I don't have a hardcore belief in ghosts, but I think that with some towns' focus on its history, like Buena Park where Knott's Berry Farm is, where its history hangs so heavily, there is a better chance that ghosts are around, wanting to be noticed, wanting their stories to be told.
Goatfeathers is where I began sensing those ghosts. Not sensing like ghost hunters do, but a feeling about it. I know that antique stores are fertile ground for ghosts anyway because of all kinds of things left behind either by death or by not needing them anymore. They all have stories. Sitting in front of me is a model of a 19th-century Victoria house in Charlotte, North Carolina. I bought this because it's the kind of house I wish I had if I didn't mind, and could afford, upkeep, and I had more money than God on a Wednesday. It's not only that this house was of the 19th century. It's that this sat somewhere in someone's house, maybe someone who collected models of houses like this one, who explored the different styles of houses, tracing them through history, trends based on the time period, perhaps.
In fact, when I looked around in Goatfeathers, I had this overwhelming feeling of wanting to tell stories about so many items there. Take, for example, some of the glasses I found. I could write a short story about the glass, either in a cupboard, or where it might have come from, or who used it. If I could find out where it had been, it would be eerie if I found out that the short story I wrote was accurate. It's not only that Goatfeathers encourages you to look around, but it also invites you to sniff out potential history of all that it stocks. We'll never know what the history was, but we can tell stories from what we feel about the history of those objects when we look at them. I think there are ghosts of sorts in Goatfeathers. They want their stories to be told. I don't think they care if those stories are accurate, which they're not meant to be. They just want to be noticed.
Down that hill, into the park, the ghosts were there, too. An old turbine from Hoover Dam sits in one section of the park, and it's part of it, but it's the same thing with those ghosts in the park, too, the ones who have lived there as humans, who have loved it: Find the story you want to tell, and that's acknowledgement enough for us. Even if it's just the atmosphere, that's good enough.
The history of Las Vegas is there, but you really have to dig for it. In my mobile home park, I sense its history only when it rains (as it will on Friday), and the sky remains gloomy with the threat of more rain. Otherwise, you have to dig. The Strip doesn't offer any time for reflection, but then, that's not the point of it. At least there are books that reveal all. But in Boulder City, the present and the past co-exist as peacefully as the landscape.
It's 4:49 p.m. The sun is getting ready to set here. But in my mind, I'm back in Boulder City, in that park, waiting for the streetlights to grow brighter as the sky gets darker, feeling so at peace that that's where I want to be forever. We're going back on Saturday, during the day, so Mom can see what Goatfeathers is like, and to eat wherever we're going to eat. There are so many restaurants in Boulder City, that while I thought of Mel's Diner because they have patty melts, which I love, Mom bookmarked the tripadvisor list of Boulder City restaurants, and I spotted Boulder PIT Stop, which also has burgers. So that's another one to consider. And Dad and Meridith haven't seen the list yet, so they may have other ideas too. It's great to have these choices again! But no matter if we decide on something that's far off from my original thought of Mel's Diner, I will have the Boulder City I love. It looks even more beautiful at sunset, but during the day, there's that same peace. No tension. Just history and the possibility of so many stories to explore. And the ghosts. They're always happy to know you're there. They want you there. So come in and wander. The peace will touch you too.
I want to move into TuTu's. The next day, I thought about where the biography section was, overlooking another block of stores, where I saw a man and a woman walking a dog below, and I wanted to replace the biography section with a bed for myself. I wouldn't need as big a TV as I have now. Just one to bring in Jeopardy!, The Big Bang Theory, and How It's Made, along with a DVD player for my movies. But being that I would have not only the books in TuTu's, but also my own collection, plus being within walking distance of the Boulder City Library, I don't think I'd watch TV all that often. Not that I do now anyway. For example, I Tivo'd Monday Mornings on TNT last night, which I want to see because it's based on a novel by Sanjay Gupta that I really like. I still haven't gotten to it.
We went to Goatfeathers, which is the largest antique store I've ever seen, with two upstairs areas, one of them for dishes and mugs and other kitchen supplies. And we went to another antique store where they've got a good handle on furniture, armoires and sturdy squat bookcases that I'd be hard-pressed to find in such good condition at the average furniture store. Later, we went to the Boulder Dam Brewing Co. for dinner, where I had an excellent blue cheese burger and the fries were pretty good, too.
But all that paled in importance, though refocused itself later, in comparison to the parking lot behind the Bureau of Reclamation building, where I was led to see the view of Lake Mead from there. I saw houses stretching to the lake, mountains cradling the lake, and I found the meaning of life. I felt such inner peace that I don't think I've ever felt before, not like this, not as pronounced. The other time I did, though it was far less than this, was every Friday in Pembroke Pines, in our development at Grand Palms, when I came home from school, and the sunlight through the trees, golden on the sidewalks, made it feel like the universe was aligned.
Then came the biggest discovery of all: Finding peace on Earth. We had bumped into my friend's former co-worker at that Bureau of Reclamation building, and she took us up to her office to see the view of Lake Mead from her window, which was also spectacular, but I always need the air around me in order to appreciate that view. I chatted with her for a few minutes, and then it was time to go, since she had work to do, even though it was a Saturday. But she had the right idea since there was no noise in the building, it was totally quiet, and certainly you could get a lot done that way. I told her that when I was in middle school and my teachers made us get in groups, I hated it because I always knew I could get the work done faster on my own. Ironic that those teachers were promoting socialization, yet would always tell us to be quiet and get to work.
We walked downstairs, back to the entrance/exit of the building, pushed the door open to the outside, went out, and went down the short stairs that rise to, and fall from, the building. In front of us was the half-bowl shaped park for dog walkers, joggers, and people like us, just strolling and looking around.
We started down the lip of the half-bowl, down that hill, and even though I couldn't see the sunset happening at that moment, I could feel it. The streetlights had come on, no sickly orangish glow here. Pure, gentle white lights. I looked at those lights in the park, and across the street at other buildings, and I felt peace on Earth. As my friend's former co-worker reminded me when I exclaimed my love of Boulder City, it is a unique situation. And she's right. Boulder City was created by the government to house the workers building Hoover (then Boulder) Dam, because they didn't want them living in Las Vegas, getting caught up in that debauched (their perception) lifestyle, and proving unreliable. A city manager was appointed in Sims Ely of Arizona, who ruled with an iron fist while sticking to the strict letter of the rules (no madness for power in that head), and there was no liquor, no gambling, and no prostitution allowed. I'm not sure yet if there was a curfew on the reservation, but there must have been. Actually, I think there was, because workers could go to Las Vegas, where they invariably did to spend their paychecks and have fun (those without families, of course), but if they were late getting back, they weren't allowed back on the reservation until the next morning, and I'm sure Mr. Ely had a few words for them.
Long after Boulder City passed from government to municipal hands, some of the same rules have stayed. There is alcohol now, but there's no gambling and no prostitution. That's mainly what helps keep the peace in Boulder City, that and the overwhelming friendliness of its residents and those who work there. I'm not sure if I would move there yet. For one, I'm close to becoming an employee of the Clark County School District as a library assistant, but I need to establish myself, and I could only get there if I know of a vacancy in the elementary school library there, and that I could transfer into it. But I need to accrue time working in the district.
Not only that, though. There is TuTu's, and there is a Vons supermarket at the edge of town, and restaurants, and those antique stores, and the Boulder City Library, but if you need socks, or shoes, or jeans, you have to drive to Henderson, or Las Vegas if you want to go that far. But it's not that difficult because my friend's former co-worker lives in Las Vegas on Windmill Lane, and commutes to Boulder City. It's much calmer there, which is probably what attracted her to it. However, you're obviously using gas to get to where you need to go from Boulder City, 14 miles out, however many miles it is to where you want to go (and there's also no movie theater in Boulder City, but the nearby Hacienda Hotel and Casino has a two-screen theater. For anything more extensive, there's Henderson or Las Vegas), however many miles back, and then those 14 miles back into Boulder City. But I'm gauging it based on where I currently am in Las Vegas. In Henderson, which we're moving to in September, it's closer to Boulder City. Five or so miles are shaved off of the drive. It may not be for me for now, but I'm still considering moving there when I retire.
Getting to the title of this post, there's always a hullabaloo in city history about ghosts living in the Boulder Dam Hotel, and it's likely true. My friend said that when she stayed there for six weeks to learn a new job within the Bureau of Reclamation after two years with the Bureau in Yuma, Arizona, she heard noises all around, and it wouldn't surprise me because the Hotel has changed ownership so many times and gone through so many iterations that it's never able to rest. But when my friend and I walked through Boulder City, I felt like there were more ghosts than just those in the Boulder Dam Hotel. I noticed them there, too, when I was with my family, going to the Boulder Dam Museum on the second floor, way in the back. I didn't hear the noises, but I could sense that the building was steeped in enough history that there were more figures wanting their stories told. I would be more interested as to why they ended up in the hotel. What keeps them there? Is it a kind of purgatory unknown to us? Or do they feel most at home there? I don't have a hardcore belief in ghosts, but I think that with some towns' focus on its history, like Buena Park where Knott's Berry Farm is, where its history hangs so heavily, there is a better chance that ghosts are around, wanting to be noticed, wanting their stories to be told.
Goatfeathers is where I began sensing those ghosts. Not sensing like ghost hunters do, but a feeling about it. I know that antique stores are fertile ground for ghosts anyway because of all kinds of things left behind either by death or by not needing them anymore. They all have stories. Sitting in front of me is a model of a 19th-century Victoria house in Charlotte, North Carolina. I bought this because it's the kind of house I wish I had if I didn't mind, and could afford, upkeep, and I had more money than God on a Wednesday. It's not only that this house was of the 19th century. It's that this sat somewhere in someone's house, maybe someone who collected models of houses like this one, who explored the different styles of houses, tracing them through history, trends based on the time period, perhaps.
In fact, when I looked around in Goatfeathers, I had this overwhelming feeling of wanting to tell stories about so many items there. Take, for example, some of the glasses I found. I could write a short story about the glass, either in a cupboard, or where it might have come from, or who used it. If I could find out where it had been, it would be eerie if I found out that the short story I wrote was accurate. It's not only that Goatfeathers encourages you to look around, but it also invites you to sniff out potential history of all that it stocks. We'll never know what the history was, but we can tell stories from what we feel about the history of those objects when we look at them. I think there are ghosts of sorts in Goatfeathers. They want their stories to be told. I don't think they care if those stories are accurate, which they're not meant to be. They just want to be noticed.
Down that hill, into the park, the ghosts were there, too. An old turbine from Hoover Dam sits in one section of the park, and it's part of it, but it's the same thing with those ghosts in the park, too, the ones who have lived there as humans, who have loved it: Find the story you want to tell, and that's acknowledgement enough for us. Even if it's just the atmosphere, that's good enough.
The history of Las Vegas is there, but you really have to dig for it. In my mobile home park, I sense its history only when it rains (as it will on Friday), and the sky remains gloomy with the threat of more rain. Otherwise, you have to dig. The Strip doesn't offer any time for reflection, but then, that's not the point of it. At least there are books that reveal all. But in Boulder City, the present and the past co-exist as peacefully as the landscape.
It's 4:49 p.m. The sun is getting ready to set here. But in my mind, I'm back in Boulder City, in that park, waiting for the streetlights to grow brighter as the sky gets darker, feeling so at peace that that's where I want to be forever. We're going back on Saturday, during the day, so Mom can see what Goatfeathers is like, and to eat wherever we're going to eat. There are so many restaurants in Boulder City, that while I thought of Mel's Diner because they have patty melts, which I love, Mom bookmarked the tripadvisor list of Boulder City restaurants, and I spotted Boulder PIT Stop, which also has burgers. So that's another one to consider. And Dad and Meridith haven't seen the list yet, so they may have other ideas too. It's great to have these choices again! But no matter if we decide on something that's far off from my original thought of Mel's Diner, I will have the Boulder City I love. It looks even more beautiful at sunset, but during the day, there's that same peace. No tension. Just history and the possibility of so many stories to explore. And the ghosts. They're always happy to know you're there. They want you there. So come in and wander. The peace will touch you too.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Back to My Temple
Handel's Messiah doesn't trumpet from invisible speakers when I walk into the Pinball Hall of Fame, my temple, for the first time since 2010, and my first time as a resident. Golden light doesn't pour down from a massive hole in the ceiling that wasn't there five seconds before. No.
The Pinball Hall of Fame isn't a monastery by dint of all the brightly-lit, sometimes noisy pinball machines on display. But it is my monastery. It's where I go for spiritual pinball fulfillment. I have played lots of pinball machines before, at Don Carter Lanes in Tamarac, Florida when I was in a Saturday morning kiddie bowling league, and other places, but never like this, never with pinball machines of different eras and arcade machines in rows for you to walk up and down, to find that one machine that is exactly you, to gape at the history of pinball right in front of you, carefully and lovingly restored and well-maintained. Any pinball machine that comes here has a new life, a new home, a way to always be remembered, to always be active.
The first time I went there, I was stunned by all that was available to me. I wanted to play everything. I laughed out loud when I saw The Addams Family and Twilight Zone pinball machines, because those had been the ones I played at Don Carter Lanes, the ones I could always rely on for a few free games because some kid had put quarters in them, but had to rush back to play their frame of bowling, and forgot about it. I always knew when to look, especially when there was a crowd around Mortal Kombat, because someone was bound to leave quarters in those pinball machines.
This time, at the Pinball Hall of Fame yesterday afternoon, I walked in and I didn't feel that rippling excitement that I did that first time, or even that second time. But that second time, I was just exhausted from all the rushing around, which took a major toll on me. I didn't have as much fun as I usually do there because I wasn't sure what was going on inside my body, though it was likely a combination of too much caffeine, too much junk food, too little sleep. Because I don't do caffeine anymore, because I eat better, because sleep comes easily with the previous two, I was better prepared for what I was looking for: The Tron: Legacy pinball machine, Galaga, and The Pinball Circus, the rarest pinball machine in the world, with only two prototypes in existence, one at the Pinball Hall of Fame.
Before we left the house for Mom and Meridith to go to their pedicure appointment at a shopping center on Tropicana Avenue that used to have Albertsons as its anchor and for me to go to the Pinball Hall of Fame, I also added the Wheel of Fortune pinball machine to my list, to play it for Mom, and the Superman pinball machine, to play it for Meridith.
Now, here I was, inside, looking around, looking down the ends of the rows from my vantage point. And the first thing I did? Popcorn. 25 cents. Drop a quarter in, making sure one of the free white paper bags is under it, and the popcorn comes out. I ate as I walked past the rows, first spotting the Tron: Legacy pinball machine and grinning. Next, my search for Galaga in the row on the far right side of the building, where all the arcade machines were. One Ms. Pac-Man machine had other games running on it including the war game, 1942, but it didn't look like Galaga was on it. The other Ms. Pac-Man machine that actually had Ms. Pac-Man on it was all that it had. No Galaga. Disappointed? No. It just means that during the two weeks of vacation that Dad and Meridith have, starting after work today, if we go back to the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas in Primm, I'm rushing right back to that Galaga machine in the food court, eager to try to get past Stage 17. That's all.
My first game was the Wheel of Fortune pinball machine for Mom. On Ball 3, the ball got stuck at the top, and I looked for where the ball was at the top, also looking for a volunteer who usually cleans the glass of each pinball machine, or the main guy who runs the place, to try to get my ball back. But it was time for me to try a skill I had previously only watched at Don Carter Lanes and other arcades with pinball, because the previous two times I was at the Pinball Hall of Fame, I didn't need to do this: I bumped the cabinet of the machine to try to put the ball back into play.
During this attempt, I discovered that some machines are more sensitive than others. If you bump the cabinet too hard, the machine displays "TILT," and your game ends immediately. I bumped the cabinet just enough to make it noticeably jiggle and the screen said "Danger," but the ball went back into play. The game ended pretty quickly after that. As you hit the barrier under each contestant in the machine, they guess a letter of the puzzle, which of course is "POWER BONUS." Pretty easy. But I didn't get further than the "P" and the "O" in "BONUS."
The Pinball Hall of Fame also has a drink vending machine, with varying prices for cans, plastic bottles, and glass bottles. It's $1.50 for Yoo-Hoo. That's what I bought, and I made the mistake of chugging it down faster than I've ever done with any other drink, just to get back to playing. I had an annoying headache later last night from that.
After chucking the glass bottle into the trash can next to the vending machine, I went searching for The Pinball Circus and found in the second-to-last row to the right. Sitting before me was $1.5 million dollars of pinball machine. Two prototypes were made, and according to the written text cards taped above the machine, one was tested in a Chicago location, and it was found to have made just as much money as Indiana Jones and Star Trek, the two most popular pinball games at the time of its testing. Both Indiana Jones and Star Trek were table-top pinball machines, whereas Pinball Circus is a vertical machine. Plus, another partner in the cost of this machine was not to pay an extra $1,000 related to something with the machine, so both prototypes were ditched in a back room at Williams Gaming (this was years before they ended pinball production and focused squarely on slot machines), until years later when two former WMS employees came together to give the Pinball Hall of Fame one of the prototypes, because of its rightly perceived standing as a museum for pinball machines as well. This is only one of two in the entire world.
The photos I took of the text cards on my cell phone (I couldn't take any of the actual machine itself because it remains mostly dark when it's not in play, only lighting up when you're playing it) are inconveniently blurry, and I can't quite read clearly the bit that says pinball fans kept searching for "The Holy Grail of Pinball," as this machine was billed, but never got to play it. That's exactly what I'm going for in one of the novels I want to write, albeit with a fictional rare pinball machine. It was hugely inspiring to me to read that part. The next time we go, which may well be during this two-week vacation of Dad's and Meridith's, I'm going to have Meridith take photos of these two text cards with the digital camera we have, hoping it'll come out clearer because I need this information.
During my only shot at Pinball Circus, I loved that when you shoot the pinball up the ramp that leads to the mechanized elephant, it lands on the elephant's snout and the elephant tips its head back to put it on the metal coiled ramp that runs right back down. I loved that! I think I saw the acrobat attached to the ceiling of the machine spin a couple times, but I'm not sure. I was so occupied with watching the elephant.
During Ball 2, the ball lodged somewhere in the left side of the machine and all I could do was hit the flipper buttons as well the "Launch Ball" button and the "Extra Ball" button in a vain attempt to put the ball back into play. I was not going to push the cabinet of a $1.5 million dollar machine, and especially not this one, the rarest pinball machine in the world. This is a shrine, a valuable part of the history of pinball. I was thinking of asking the main guy to see about it, but he's not the kind you approach about that, since he was doing something else at the counter in the back. They get to it when they get to it, and I'm sure they noticed it long after I left, when they shut down the machines for the night. Chances are it'll have been fixed before I go there again. I wasn't disappointed because I got to see the machine in person and study it. Some websites have photos of the inner workings of the machine, and there is YouTube video of the machine in action as well, but to actually be able to play it briefly was an enormous honor and is solely responsible for putting me back on my research for this one novel.
Tron: Legacy came next, and I wish I could own this machine. It's one of my favorite movies, and of course has Castor/Zuse (Michael Sheen) in audio clips on it, and it's so much fun to see the thin neon tubes line up along two of the paths the ball can take, to simulate light cycle racing. It's $0.75 for one game, or $2.00 for three, and later on, I put in $2.00. When I put a $20 bill in the change machine after I had had my popcorn and before I started anything else, I was amazed at how many quarters had come out. After we'd gotten home and I expressed my surprise over this, Meridith told me that $20 is 80 quarters. Well, it seemed like a hell of a lot more, and I'm glad I had the foresight to bring a plastic baggie with me in which to put those quarters.
The rest of the time was part walkaround, part being a vulture on other people's pinball games. I played the Superman pinball machine for Meridith, I played the Elton John Capt. Fantastic pinball machine, I played the Popeye pinball machine, I played the Space Jam pinball machine (I didn't even know they made one of those!), I played the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine, which has a nice variation on the theme music, I played with the Peppy the Clown marionette, which you operate to music, pushing buttons to lift its hands and feet while the Jetsons theme song plays (only a quarter to play it), I got two tiny monkey figurines and an alien figurine from the toy vending machines that only cost a quarter just like the popcorn and the candy vending machines there, and I may be missing one or two machines, but that's what happens when you're in heaven.
As I was finishing my third Tron: Legacy game, I noticed that the guy next to me was having trouble with the Transformers pinball machine, the ball getting stuck or it cycling too quickly, and he left it. Little did he know that he left it on Ball 3, and so I played the remaining two balls. I'm not into Transformers, but I never pass up free pinball. Then, after Meridith called to say that she, Mom, and Dad were on their way to pick me up, I played the Ripleys Believe It or Not pinball machine for Meridith, then walked around once more. I found a pinball machine called Diner (not based on the Barry Levinson movie) in the far-right aisle, but thought about playing Tron: Legacy once more. As I got to the end of the second-to-last aisle, past the Pinball Circus machine again, upon which I hit the "Start Game" button and saw again that it said "Pinball Missing," I saw that the Austin Powers machine, one of a row against the darkened windows at the front of the building, said "Press Start." I did, and found that my old Don Carter skills came in handy because I got a free game. Someone had left quarters in there! Out of all the pinball machines I played, I scored the most points on the Austin Powers machine, possibly because the written sign for it boasted of powerful flippers, and that was true. The replay for the game, the score you have to hit in order to get a free second game, was a little over 100,000,000, and I was at 76,000,000 before my game ended. There's also the chance of getting a free game if the last two digits of your score match the two digits given by the machine after your game is over, but of all the machines I played and all the times I played Tron: Legacy, I didn't win a free game from any of them.
Next time I go, I want to try the diner pinball machine. That will be my first one when I get there. The second will be Tron: Legacy of course, and then I'll ask Meridith to take photos of those text cards above Pinball Circus that I need for my writing. I'm sure that with Meridith there with me next time, there will be air hockey. She loves air hockey, I like playing it, and they have a table tucked into the far upper left corner of the building. The row where the air hockey machine is is home to what seems like a game graveyard, with a semi-organized jumble of pinball machines and two Star Wars arcade machines, one of Episode I. It's a little haunting, but maybe they'll be turned on again, replacing a pinball machine or another game that's not making so much money lately. I don't think the Star Wars machines will find life again because there's not enough room for them anyway. And who would dare replace the '90s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade machine with one of those? You never shut down a classic.
The Pinball Hall of Fame is actually one of two personal temples. The other is the Boulder City Library, which I haven't been back to yet, but I consider it that because they're not afraid of old books (I love that somewhat musty, well-cared-for smell, and the mustiness is not from neglect. They really do take care of their books, but books do age), and they've kept their card catalog for the public to use if they want. They're not skittish about history there. But for a weekly temple, as in the library I go to every week, that would be the Whitney Library.
I still have quarters in my plastic baggie from the $20 I put into the change machine. I didn't have to use the other $20 I had, though I'm sure I will use it the next time I go. However, there won't be a two-year gap ever again as there was between this time and the last time. This is where I belong. This is where I feel most at home. And the best part, besides finally seeing Pinball Circus of course, was that my old instincts kicked in. I knew (mostly) how to keep a ball from falling into the gutter when it seems like it's going to fall in the space between both flippers. I don't have the courage yet to nudge like other players do, but I will soon, and yet I did ok with the strategies I used. I knew how to knock a ball back into the right or left inlane next to the flippers before hitting it again with the flippers. So that's a start.
Now that I'm familiar again with the layout of the Pinball Hall of Fame, I know exactly where to go the next time, but I'm not going to rush to where I want to be. At times, it's enough for me to just walk through the aisles, admiring all these wonderful examples of pinball history. There's even pinball machines from the 1950s, an entire aisle full of them. This is where I can fully embrace my love of pinball and sometimes watch those who share the same love. There's a lot of us, and this is truly a temple, where pinball will never die.
The Pinball Hall of Fame isn't a monastery by dint of all the brightly-lit, sometimes noisy pinball machines on display. But it is my monastery. It's where I go for spiritual pinball fulfillment. I have played lots of pinball machines before, at Don Carter Lanes in Tamarac, Florida when I was in a Saturday morning kiddie bowling league, and other places, but never like this, never with pinball machines of different eras and arcade machines in rows for you to walk up and down, to find that one machine that is exactly you, to gape at the history of pinball right in front of you, carefully and lovingly restored and well-maintained. Any pinball machine that comes here has a new life, a new home, a way to always be remembered, to always be active.
The first time I went there, I was stunned by all that was available to me. I wanted to play everything. I laughed out loud when I saw The Addams Family and Twilight Zone pinball machines, because those had been the ones I played at Don Carter Lanes, the ones I could always rely on for a few free games because some kid had put quarters in them, but had to rush back to play their frame of bowling, and forgot about it. I always knew when to look, especially when there was a crowd around Mortal Kombat, because someone was bound to leave quarters in those pinball machines.
This time, at the Pinball Hall of Fame yesterday afternoon, I walked in and I didn't feel that rippling excitement that I did that first time, or even that second time. But that second time, I was just exhausted from all the rushing around, which took a major toll on me. I didn't have as much fun as I usually do there because I wasn't sure what was going on inside my body, though it was likely a combination of too much caffeine, too much junk food, too little sleep. Because I don't do caffeine anymore, because I eat better, because sleep comes easily with the previous two, I was better prepared for what I was looking for: The Tron: Legacy pinball machine, Galaga, and The Pinball Circus, the rarest pinball machine in the world, with only two prototypes in existence, one at the Pinball Hall of Fame.
Before we left the house for Mom and Meridith to go to their pedicure appointment at a shopping center on Tropicana Avenue that used to have Albertsons as its anchor and for me to go to the Pinball Hall of Fame, I also added the Wheel of Fortune pinball machine to my list, to play it for Mom, and the Superman pinball machine, to play it for Meridith.
Now, here I was, inside, looking around, looking down the ends of the rows from my vantage point. And the first thing I did? Popcorn. 25 cents. Drop a quarter in, making sure one of the free white paper bags is under it, and the popcorn comes out. I ate as I walked past the rows, first spotting the Tron: Legacy pinball machine and grinning. Next, my search for Galaga in the row on the far right side of the building, where all the arcade machines were. One Ms. Pac-Man machine had other games running on it including the war game, 1942, but it didn't look like Galaga was on it. The other Ms. Pac-Man machine that actually had Ms. Pac-Man on it was all that it had. No Galaga. Disappointed? No. It just means that during the two weeks of vacation that Dad and Meridith have, starting after work today, if we go back to the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas in Primm, I'm rushing right back to that Galaga machine in the food court, eager to try to get past Stage 17. That's all.
My first game was the Wheel of Fortune pinball machine for Mom. On Ball 3, the ball got stuck at the top, and I looked for where the ball was at the top, also looking for a volunteer who usually cleans the glass of each pinball machine, or the main guy who runs the place, to try to get my ball back. But it was time for me to try a skill I had previously only watched at Don Carter Lanes and other arcades with pinball, because the previous two times I was at the Pinball Hall of Fame, I didn't need to do this: I bumped the cabinet of the machine to try to put the ball back into play.
During this attempt, I discovered that some machines are more sensitive than others. If you bump the cabinet too hard, the machine displays "TILT," and your game ends immediately. I bumped the cabinet just enough to make it noticeably jiggle and the screen said "Danger," but the ball went back into play. The game ended pretty quickly after that. As you hit the barrier under each contestant in the machine, they guess a letter of the puzzle, which of course is "POWER BONUS." Pretty easy. But I didn't get further than the "P" and the "O" in "BONUS."
The Pinball Hall of Fame also has a drink vending machine, with varying prices for cans, plastic bottles, and glass bottles. It's $1.50 for Yoo-Hoo. That's what I bought, and I made the mistake of chugging it down faster than I've ever done with any other drink, just to get back to playing. I had an annoying headache later last night from that.
After chucking the glass bottle into the trash can next to the vending machine, I went searching for The Pinball Circus and found in the second-to-last row to the right. Sitting before me was $1.5 million dollars of pinball machine. Two prototypes were made, and according to the written text cards taped above the machine, one was tested in a Chicago location, and it was found to have made just as much money as Indiana Jones and Star Trek, the two most popular pinball games at the time of its testing. Both Indiana Jones and Star Trek were table-top pinball machines, whereas Pinball Circus is a vertical machine. Plus, another partner in the cost of this machine was not to pay an extra $1,000 related to something with the machine, so both prototypes were ditched in a back room at Williams Gaming (this was years before they ended pinball production and focused squarely on slot machines), until years later when two former WMS employees came together to give the Pinball Hall of Fame one of the prototypes, because of its rightly perceived standing as a museum for pinball machines as well. This is only one of two in the entire world.
The photos I took of the text cards on my cell phone (I couldn't take any of the actual machine itself because it remains mostly dark when it's not in play, only lighting up when you're playing it) are inconveniently blurry, and I can't quite read clearly the bit that says pinball fans kept searching for "The Holy Grail of Pinball," as this machine was billed, but never got to play it. That's exactly what I'm going for in one of the novels I want to write, albeit with a fictional rare pinball machine. It was hugely inspiring to me to read that part. The next time we go, which may well be during this two-week vacation of Dad's and Meridith's, I'm going to have Meridith take photos of these two text cards with the digital camera we have, hoping it'll come out clearer because I need this information.
During my only shot at Pinball Circus, I loved that when you shoot the pinball up the ramp that leads to the mechanized elephant, it lands on the elephant's snout and the elephant tips its head back to put it on the metal coiled ramp that runs right back down. I loved that! I think I saw the acrobat attached to the ceiling of the machine spin a couple times, but I'm not sure. I was so occupied with watching the elephant.
During Ball 2, the ball lodged somewhere in the left side of the machine and all I could do was hit the flipper buttons as well the "Launch Ball" button and the "Extra Ball" button in a vain attempt to put the ball back into play. I was not going to push the cabinet of a $1.5 million dollar machine, and especially not this one, the rarest pinball machine in the world. This is a shrine, a valuable part of the history of pinball. I was thinking of asking the main guy to see about it, but he's not the kind you approach about that, since he was doing something else at the counter in the back. They get to it when they get to it, and I'm sure they noticed it long after I left, when they shut down the machines for the night. Chances are it'll have been fixed before I go there again. I wasn't disappointed because I got to see the machine in person and study it. Some websites have photos of the inner workings of the machine, and there is YouTube video of the machine in action as well, but to actually be able to play it briefly was an enormous honor and is solely responsible for putting me back on my research for this one novel.
Tron: Legacy came next, and I wish I could own this machine. It's one of my favorite movies, and of course has Castor/Zuse (Michael Sheen) in audio clips on it, and it's so much fun to see the thin neon tubes line up along two of the paths the ball can take, to simulate light cycle racing. It's $0.75 for one game, or $2.00 for three, and later on, I put in $2.00. When I put a $20 bill in the change machine after I had had my popcorn and before I started anything else, I was amazed at how many quarters had come out. After we'd gotten home and I expressed my surprise over this, Meridith told me that $20 is 80 quarters. Well, it seemed like a hell of a lot more, and I'm glad I had the foresight to bring a plastic baggie with me in which to put those quarters.
The rest of the time was part walkaround, part being a vulture on other people's pinball games. I played the Superman pinball machine for Meridith, I played the Elton John Capt. Fantastic pinball machine, I played the Popeye pinball machine, I played the Space Jam pinball machine (I didn't even know they made one of those!), I played the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine, which has a nice variation on the theme music, I played with the Peppy the Clown marionette, which you operate to music, pushing buttons to lift its hands and feet while the Jetsons theme song plays (only a quarter to play it), I got two tiny monkey figurines and an alien figurine from the toy vending machines that only cost a quarter just like the popcorn and the candy vending machines there, and I may be missing one or two machines, but that's what happens when you're in heaven.
As I was finishing my third Tron: Legacy game, I noticed that the guy next to me was having trouble with the Transformers pinball machine, the ball getting stuck or it cycling too quickly, and he left it. Little did he know that he left it on Ball 3, and so I played the remaining two balls. I'm not into Transformers, but I never pass up free pinball. Then, after Meridith called to say that she, Mom, and Dad were on their way to pick me up, I played the Ripleys Believe It or Not pinball machine for Meridith, then walked around once more. I found a pinball machine called Diner (not based on the Barry Levinson movie) in the far-right aisle, but thought about playing Tron: Legacy once more. As I got to the end of the second-to-last aisle, past the Pinball Circus machine again, upon which I hit the "Start Game" button and saw again that it said "Pinball Missing," I saw that the Austin Powers machine, one of a row against the darkened windows at the front of the building, said "Press Start." I did, and found that my old Don Carter skills came in handy because I got a free game. Someone had left quarters in there! Out of all the pinball machines I played, I scored the most points on the Austin Powers machine, possibly because the written sign for it boasted of powerful flippers, and that was true. The replay for the game, the score you have to hit in order to get a free second game, was a little over 100,000,000, and I was at 76,000,000 before my game ended. There's also the chance of getting a free game if the last two digits of your score match the two digits given by the machine after your game is over, but of all the machines I played and all the times I played Tron: Legacy, I didn't win a free game from any of them.
Next time I go, I want to try the diner pinball machine. That will be my first one when I get there. The second will be Tron: Legacy of course, and then I'll ask Meridith to take photos of those text cards above Pinball Circus that I need for my writing. I'm sure that with Meridith there with me next time, there will be air hockey. She loves air hockey, I like playing it, and they have a table tucked into the far upper left corner of the building. The row where the air hockey machine is is home to what seems like a game graveyard, with a semi-organized jumble of pinball machines and two Star Wars arcade machines, one of Episode I. It's a little haunting, but maybe they'll be turned on again, replacing a pinball machine or another game that's not making so much money lately. I don't think the Star Wars machines will find life again because there's not enough room for them anyway. And who would dare replace the '90s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade machine with one of those? You never shut down a classic.
The Pinball Hall of Fame is actually one of two personal temples. The other is the Boulder City Library, which I haven't been back to yet, but I consider it that because they're not afraid of old books (I love that somewhat musty, well-cared-for smell, and the mustiness is not from neglect. They really do take care of their books, but books do age), and they've kept their card catalog for the public to use if they want. They're not skittish about history there. But for a weekly temple, as in the library I go to every week, that would be the Whitney Library.
I still have quarters in my plastic baggie from the $20 I put into the change machine. I didn't have to use the other $20 I had, though I'm sure I will use it the next time I go. However, there won't be a two-year gap ever again as there was between this time and the last time. This is where I belong. This is where I feel most at home. And the best part, besides finally seeing Pinball Circus of course, was that my old instincts kicked in. I knew (mostly) how to keep a ball from falling into the gutter when it seems like it's going to fall in the space between both flippers. I don't have the courage yet to nudge like other players do, but I will soon, and yet I did ok with the strategies I used. I knew how to knock a ball back into the right or left inlane next to the flippers before hitting it again with the flippers. So that's a start.
Now that I'm familiar again with the layout of the Pinball Hall of Fame, I know exactly where to go the next time, but I'm not going to rush to where I want to be. At times, it's enough for me to just walk through the aisles, admiring all these wonderful examples of pinball history. There's even pinball machines from the 1950s, an entire aisle full of them. This is where I can fully embrace my love of pinball and sometimes watch those who share the same love. There's a lot of us, and this is truly a temple, where pinball will never die.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
My Galaga Breakthrough
Saturday was Dad's birthday. We spent most of it on the California/Nevada state line, in Primm, on the Nevada side, at the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas. This is where you find your outlet stores, arranged in the round. Start at one entrance/exit and you'll end at that same point. Getting back to where you started from becomes the furthest thing from your mind once you see what's offered.
We were there because we couldn't be there on the day we moved to Las Vegas on that Friday in September, being that we had Tigger and Kitty, and our two finches in the car with us, and we were late to our new home. We had hoped to get there before the manager of the mobile home park left for the weekend, so Meridith and I could finally meet her. We were getting close to the time that she'd be leaving, 3 p.m. every day even though she lives on the same property, but why stay longer than you have to?
So we bypassed it. We didn't get to the Williams-Sonoma Marketplace. I didn't get to see the car that Bonnie and Clyde were killed in, countless bullet holes delivered by angry law enforcement. At that time, I had thought that it had been placed between one section of the mall and the indoor entrance to the Primm Valley Resort and Casino. Having written that, I now think back to when we were last at Whiskey Pete's in 2010, and didn't I see the car then? Hadn't we walked around enough that I spotted it somewhere in that casino? Or has it always been moved between properties, depending on how many visitors each casino and the Fashion Outlets get? I don't know. Looking through the photos in the Whiskey Pete's listing on yelp.com, I find that someone took a photo of the Bonnie and Clyde car, which is dated August 21. So had we stopped at Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas that day, I still wouldn't have seen the car, which was one of the reasons I wanted to stop there.
At the start of this visit, which makes up incredibly for having to drive past on the first day, I still think I'll see the car. But first, we stop at the Nevada Welcome Center, where I have a long conversation with a native Nevadan about the UNLV Rebels, about Jeremy Renner's character in The Bourne Legacy hailing from Reno, about his experiences all his life in Nevada, about his travels throughout, a conversation that lasts long enough for Mom, Dad and Meridith to head into the outlets, leaving me behind to chat some more. When the opportunity's there, I take it. My fascination with Nevada never ends.
I walk into the outlets after reaffirming my hope to the Nevadan that the Rebels at least grab onto the Sweet 16 this season, if not make it all the way to the top. I hang a right, and find Mom and Dad walking from Williams-Sonoma Marketplace to Viva Vegas, the souvenir store with everything Las Vegas. Mugs, t-shirts, cigarette lighters, shot glasses, magnets, everything but bookmarks. I still can't find Las Vegas bookmarks. Yes, I know Las Vegas isn't thought of as a literary or even literate city, but we do have libraries, and they haven't let me down yet. I don't expect them to. Plus, we have the Vegas Valley Book Festival every year. However, Viva Vegas isn't geared to residents. I know. It's for the tourists either driving into, or out of, the state. Even so, some tourists read, too. My search for bookmarks continues.
After still not finding bookmarks at Viva Vegas, I decide to go where Mom and Dad have left Meridith: Inside Williams-Sonoma Marketplace. I want to see what kind of mustard they have, mustard that has to be better than the whole-grain French mustard I picked up on our way back to Southern California back in January. I first find smoky chipotle mustard in "collectible European glassware," as it's touted, and it's $8.95, though 30 percent off. Honey pops into my head. I must find honey. I hate walking through the aisle in the supermarket and finding the same kinds of honey I always see, with the same high prices. I know honey costs a lot to make, but the brands aren't all that interesting in Smith's. Here, I find Florida orange blossom honey, manufactured by the Savannah Bee Company in Savannah, Georgia. It's Florida, so I have to get. Never mind that it's $11 and change. When am I ever going to find this in Smith's?
I'm happy in my city. I've so much still to explore, still to read about, still to experience. But those instances of deep satisfaction, when you're absolutely certain of what makes you endlessly happy and you vow to pursue it, don't happen every day. It's not that satisfaction doesn't happen here; it's just that awesome, lasting feeling of knowing what you want and going for it that takes time to find. I want to keep reading, as I always do, I want to write more books, but I need something else, and I think that comes either in career or community involvement. I'm not sure which, yet. It's going to take some time to find.
The overall picture of one's life is, of course, a challenge. Naturally, it's the little things that emerge more quickly. And I found that after we had rounded the corner near Williams-Sonoma Marketplace, walked a little bit longer, and came upon the food court, which I had previously only seen in photos on yelp.com. When we came here as tourists, we thought the side of the mall with Williams-Sonoma and Viva Vegas was all there is. We hadn't realized that there was another side to the mall. And inside this food court was an arcade, which had driving games, and a hoops game, shooting baskets in 60 or 90 seconds (whatever it was, since I didn't look), and comparably higher-tech claw machines. There was nothing there for me, until, as Meridith and Mom were walking to the restroom, they spotted a Galaga arcade machine, actually one of those Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga hybrids, but to me, only Galaga matters.
In late October, at The Orleans, I got tickets for Meridith and I to see John Pinette, one of our favorite stand-up comedians. And in our family tour of The Orleans after I bought the tickets, we went upstairs to the movie theater and found a considerably larger arcade than what Sam's Town offers. Nothing else there mattered once I discovered the Galaga machine, and Mom and Dad and Meridith gamely hung around for a little bit while I played. I don't even remember what my score was, but I do know that I played badly.
Every time I've played, in Nevada, in Southern California, I never could get past Stage 10. As the stages build, the alien bugs get bolder, firing their bombs as they spin upward to join the formation. I always fire at them as they join that formation because I want to destroy them quickly so it's less work when the formation is complete. I don't know whether they won't fire their bombs if I hold my fire while they're getting in formation. But I do know they go at it faster with each subsequent stage, and my bad habit of wedging myself in one of the corners on the left or right side of the screen when the bugs break from the formation and fly downward, their bombs drifting toward me, but not hitting me, becomes more dominant.
When I play Galaga, you can hear me. I furiously bang on that fire button and I jam the joystick to the left or the right to avoid those bombs. I duck and I weave and I jump, as if I was playing Dance Dance Revolution instead of Galaga, like the bugs are firing at me and not my starfighter. I love this game because it invites my imagination to tag along. I wonder why my starfighter is so intent on eliminating these alien bugs, and I make up little stories about who these aliens are and who pissed who off enough to start this war. I remember the movie The Last Starfighter and I fondly think about Robert Preston, that consummate showman actor whose Centauri was his final role in that movie, and who made Harold Hill in The Music Man and Carole Todd in Victor/Victoria so memorable.
This time, however, I'm not thinking about Robert Preston nor the origins of those bugs. I want to finally get past Stage 10. I have four quarters, which means two quarters for one game, and two more to continue that game after my lives run out. I put in all four and start, and by the time the bugs are usually in formation in Stage 1, I have only one more bug to eliminate. That's the fastest Stage 1 I've ever played.
The game goes on, and I duck, and I weave, and I jump, and I bang on that fire button, and I jam that joystick to the left and to the right, instinctively avoiding those bombs, even as they become more numerous. Instinctively. That's never happened before. I remember how I've played past games, but before this game in this arcade in the food court at the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, it's never been as laser-etched in my memory of how to play as it is now. My strategy suddenly clicks. I'm still in the bad habit of wedging myself, but I've never avoided those bombs so successfully before. Experience, yes, but I never expected it to click like this. And I feel it in my head, too, that it's there now, it's part of me now, and I can use it and improve my game even more.
When it's all over, when I've used the other two quarters and finally lose against the alien bugs, I find that I've reached Stage 17! 107,650 points! I've never gone that high before! It's far below the lowest score on this machine, at 240-something thousand, but it's good enough for me.
I take what turns out to be a break to have a banana slushie that Mom and Meridith got for me from Tea Zone, which makes the best slushies, the best Thai tea in Southern Nevada. Unfortunately, this is the only location. The proprietor tells us that he did have other locations a few years ago, but he closed them all and remained with this one because it's so far out of the way of Las Vegas, despite being only 20 minutes away. He couldn't make it against the competition that Chinatown poses in this market. The next time we go to the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, which is guaranteed, we're going back to him. He told Mom that she should look for the sealing machine they have for the cups in order to determine whether an establishment has the slushies or teas, but as Mom said to us at the table, she's had so many different Thai teas already and they're nothing like what she had from this guy. Nobody can make it like he can.
The quarters that Mom gets in change from the slushies and the teas (I don't remember what Dad had) go to me, four of them for another game of Galaga. Same excitement, same movements in the second game. This time, it ends for me at Stage 16, with 101,050 points. More Galaga games will come in which I don't make it past Stage 10 again. I expect that. But now I know that I can get past Stage 10. I know how. I know what I have to do.
I was saving this for another entry, but I'll tell it here since it relates to Galaga: We got a Nintendo Wii, the first Nintendo system we've had since the original, spurred on by Meridith wanting ABBA: You Can Dance and wanting a Wii just because of it.
I can't play ABBA: You Can Dance, because I don't. I don't feel it like Meridith does. But I have tried the bicycling in Wii Sports Resort and the bowling in Wii Sports, and I like it, especially the 100-pin bowling, in which the number of pins builds in each single frame. There are no spares to try to get. You just knock down as many pins as you can.
I thought that I wouldn't spend as many hours playing the Wii as Meridith would. What reason would I have? I have books to read, my books to write, and sometimes a movie, such as it is with our recent library visit, in which I checked out Albert Nobbs, since it was directed by Rodrigo Garcia, one of my favorite filmmakers, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition. I want to finally have watched more than just Star Trek: Generations, and I want to do it chronologically.
Why would I need the Wii? But it turns out I do need the Wii, for the best reason I can think of. In fact, I thought of it while I was playing Galaga in that small arcade: I should see if there's any Namco Wii titles with Galaga in them. I've tried Galaga on Nintendo DS, and it's not the same. I need a joystick, or at least something that resembles a joystick.
And I've found it in Namco Museum Megamix, which has an odd variation on Galaga, having to protect Pac-Man rolling down various slides from the same kind of alien bugs in the original game, flitting all about these slides. However, the original arcade version is included in this! Plus, there's a Wii Nunchuck that came with the system that I can use. It has a miniscule joystick that I have to be very careful with, since this obviously isn't an arcade joystick, but now I can strategize at home! I can break my habit of wedging myself in the corner of the screen whenever those bombs get near me. When I played Galaga in that arcade, I discovered that in stages such as 13, 14, and so on, those bombs go right to where I am instead of simply next to me. I was blown up three times by them in those two games.
So I'll be spending more time than I ever expected to on the Wii because when I go back to that Galaga arcade machine, most likely at the Pinball Hall of Fame next, if it's still there, I want to be ready and able to dodge those bombs better than I do now. I want to destroy those bugs as they climb into formation and have lots more stages like Stage 1 in my first game in which there was only one bug left in the full formation. However, in one of the challenge stages in between stages, after Stage 10, I discovered a new bug that, when in a group, separates in a circle when you fire at it. I've got so much more to learn.
After that experience at that arcade at the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, I can say without any doubt that besides reading, Galaga makes me endlessly happy. That's two. I know there's more and I'll either discover them or rediscover them in time.
We were there because we couldn't be there on the day we moved to Las Vegas on that Friday in September, being that we had Tigger and Kitty, and our two finches in the car with us, and we were late to our new home. We had hoped to get there before the manager of the mobile home park left for the weekend, so Meridith and I could finally meet her. We were getting close to the time that she'd be leaving, 3 p.m. every day even though she lives on the same property, but why stay longer than you have to?
So we bypassed it. We didn't get to the Williams-Sonoma Marketplace. I didn't get to see the car that Bonnie and Clyde were killed in, countless bullet holes delivered by angry law enforcement. At that time, I had thought that it had been placed between one section of the mall and the indoor entrance to the Primm Valley Resort and Casino. Having written that, I now think back to when we were last at Whiskey Pete's in 2010, and didn't I see the car then? Hadn't we walked around enough that I spotted it somewhere in that casino? Or has it always been moved between properties, depending on how many visitors each casino and the Fashion Outlets get? I don't know. Looking through the photos in the Whiskey Pete's listing on yelp.com, I find that someone took a photo of the Bonnie and Clyde car, which is dated August 21. So had we stopped at Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas that day, I still wouldn't have seen the car, which was one of the reasons I wanted to stop there.
At the start of this visit, which makes up incredibly for having to drive past on the first day, I still think I'll see the car. But first, we stop at the Nevada Welcome Center, where I have a long conversation with a native Nevadan about the UNLV Rebels, about Jeremy Renner's character in The Bourne Legacy hailing from Reno, about his experiences all his life in Nevada, about his travels throughout, a conversation that lasts long enough for Mom, Dad and Meridith to head into the outlets, leaving me behind to chat some more. When the opportunity's there, I take it. My fascination with Nevada never ends.
I walk into the outlets after reaffirming my hope to the Nevadan that the Rebels at least grab onto the Sweet 16 this season, if not make it all the way to the top. I hang a right, and find Mom and Dad walking from Williams-Sonoma Marketplace to Viva Vegas, the souvenir store with everything Las Vegas. Mugs, t-shirts, cigarette lighters, shot glasses, magnets, everything but bookmarks. I still can't find Las Vegas bookmarks. Yes, I know Las Vegas isn't thought of as a literary or even literate city, but we do have libraries, and they haven't let me down yet. I don't expect them to. Plus, we have the Vegas Valley Book Festival every year. However, Viva Vegas isn't geared to residents. I know. It's for the tourists either driving into, or out of, the state. Even so, some tourists read, too. My search for bookmarks continues.
After still not finding bookmarks at Viva Vegas, I decide to go where Mom and Dad have left Meridith: Inside Williams-Sonoma Marketplace. I want to see what kind of mustard they have, mustard that has to be better than the whole-grain French mustard I picked up on our way back to Southern California back in January. I first find smoky chipotle mustard in "collectible European glassware," as it's touted, and it's $8.95, though 30 percent off. Honey pops into my head. I must find honey. I hate walking through the aisle in the supermarket and finding the same kinds of honey I always see, with the same high prices. I know honey costs a lot to make, but the brands aren't all that interesting in Smith's. Here, I find Florida orange blossom honey, manufactured by the Savannah Bee Company in Savannah, Georgia. It's Florida, so I have to get. Never mind that it's $11 and change. When am I ever going to find this in Smith's?
I'm happy in my city. I've so much still to explore, still to read about, still to experience. But those instances of deep satisfaction, when you're absolutely certain of what makes you endlessly happy and you vow to pursue it, don't happen every day. It's not that satisfaction doesn't happen here; it's just that awesome, lasting feeling of knowing what you want and going for it that takes time to find. I want to keep reading, as I always do, I want to write more books, but I need something else, and I think that comes either in career or community involvement. I'm not sure which, yet. It's going to take some time to find.
The overall picture of one's life is, of course, a challenge. Naturally, it's the little things that emerge more quickly. And I found that after we had rounded the corner near Williams-Sonoma Marketplace, walked a little bit longer, and came upon the food court, which I had previously only seen in photos on yelp.com. When we came here as tourists, we thought the side of the mall with Williams-Sonoma and Viva Vegas was all there is. We hadn't realized that there was another side to the mall. And inside this food court was an arcade, which had driving games, and a hoops game, shooting baskets in 60 or 90 seconds (whatever it was, since I didn't look), and comparably higher-tech claw machines. There was nothing there for me, until, as Meridith and Mom were walking to the restroom, they spotted a Galaga arcade machine, actually one of those Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga hybrids, but to me, only Galaga matters.
In late October, at The Orleans, I got tickets for Meridith and I to see John Pinette, one of our favorite stand-up comedians. And in our family tour of The Orleans after I bought the tickets, we went upstairs to the movie theater and found a considerably larger arcade than what Sam's Town offers. Nothing else there mattered once I discovered the Galaga machine, and Mom and Dad and Meridith gamely hung around for a little bit while I played. I don't even remember what my score was, but I do know that I played badly.
Every time I've played, in Nevada, in Southern California, I never could get past Stage 10. As the stages build, the alien bugs get bolder, firing their bombs as they spin upward to join the formation. I always fire at them as they join that formation because I want to destroy them quickly so it's less work when the formation is complete. I don't know whether they won't fire their bombs if I hold my fire while they're getting in formation. But I do know they go at it faster with each subsequent stage, and my bad habit of wedging myself in one of the corners on the left or right side of the screen when the bugs break from the formation and fly downward, their bombs drifting toward me, but not hitting me, becomes more dominant.
When I play Galaga, you can hear me. I furiously bang on that fire button and I jam the joystick to the left or the right to avoid those bombs. I duck and I weave and I jump, as if I was playing Dance Dance Revolution instead of Galaga, like the bugs are firing at me and not my starfighter. I love this game because it invites my imagination to tag along. I wonder why my starfighter is so intent on eliminating these alien bugs, and I make up little stories about who these aliens are and who pissed who off enough to start this war. I remember the movie The Last Starfighter and I fondly think about Robert Preston, that consummate showman actor whose Centauri was his final role in that movie, and who made Harold Hill in The Music Man and Carole Todd in Victor/Victoria so memorable.
This time, however, I'm not thinking about Robert Preston nor the origins of those bugs. I want to finally get past Stage 10. I have four quarters, which means two quarters for one game, and two more to continue that game after my lives run out. I put in all four and start, and by the time the bugs are usually in formation in Stage 1, I have only one more bug to eliminate. That's the fastest Stage 1 I've ever played.
The game goes on, and I duck, and I weave, and I jump, and I bang on that fire button, and I jam that joystick to the left and to the right, instinctively avoiding those bombs, even as they become more numerous. Instinctively. That's never happened before. I remember how I've played past games, but before this game in this arcade in the food court at the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, it's never been as laser-etched in my memory of how to play as it is now. My strategy suddenly clicks. I'm still in the bad habit of wedging myself, but I've never avoided those bombs so successfully before. Experience, yes, but I never expected it to click like this. And I feel it in my head, too, that it's there now, it's part of me now, and I can use it and improve my game even more.
When it's all over, when I've used the other two quarters and finally lose against the alien bugs, I find that I've reached Stage 17! 107,650 points! I've never gone that high before! It's far below the lowest score on this machine, at 240-something thousand, but it's good enough for me.
I take what turns out to be a break to have a banana slushie that Mom and Meridith got for me from Tea Zone, which makes the best slushies, the best Thai tea in Southern Nevada. Unfortunately, this is the only location. The proprietor tells us that he did have other locations a few years ago, but he closed them all and remained with this one because it's so far out of the way of Las Vegas, despite being only 20 minutes away. He couldn't make it against the competition that Chinatown poses in this market. The next time we go to the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, which is guaranteed, we're going back to him. He told Mom that she should look for the sealing machine they have for the cups in order to determine whether an establishment has the slushies or teas, but as Mom said to us at the table, she's had so many different Thai teas already and they're nothing like what she had from this guy. Nobody can make it like he can.
The quarters that Mom gets in change from the slushies and the teas (I don't remember what Dad had) go to me, four of them for another game of Galaga. Same excitement, same movements in the second game. This time, it ends for me at Stage 16, with 101,050 points. More Galaga games will come in which I don't make it past Stage 10 again. I expect that. But now I know that I can get past Stage 10. I know how. I know what I have to do.
I was saving this for another entry, but I'll tell it here since it relates to Galaga: We got a Nintendo Wii, the first Nintendo system we've had since the original, spurred on by Meridith wanting ABBA: You Can Dance and wanting a Wii just because of it.
I can't play ABBA: You Can Dance, because I don't. I don't feel it like Meridith does. But I have tried the bicycling in Wii Sports Resort and the bowling in Wii Sports, and I like it, especially the 100-pin bowling, in which the number of pins builds in each single frame. There are no spares to try to get. You just knock down as many pins as you can.
I thought that I wouldn't spend as many hours playing the Wii as Meridith would. What reason would I have? I have books to read, my books to write, and sometimes a movie, such as it is with our recent library visit, in which I checked out Albert Nobbs, since it was directed by Rodrigo Garcia, one of my favorite filmmakers, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition. I want to finally have watched more than just Star Trek: Generations, and I want to do it chronologically.
Why would I need the Wii? But it turns out I do need the Wii, for the best reason I can think of. In fact, I thought of it while I was playing Galaga in that small arcade: I should see if there's any Namco Wii titles with Galaga in them. I've tried Galaga on Nintendo DS, and it's not the same. I need a joystick, or at least something that resembles a joystick.
And I've found it in Namco Museum Megamix, which has an odd variation on Galaga, having to protect Pac-Man rolling down various slides from the same kind of alien bugs in the original game, flitting all about these slides. However, the original arcade version is included in this! Plus, there's a Wii Nunchuck that came with the system that I can use. It has a miniscule joystick that I have to be very careful with, since this obviously isn't an arcade joystick, but now I can strategize at home! I can break my habit of wedging myself in the corner of the screen whenever those bombs get near me. When I played Galaga in that arcade, I discovered that in stages such as 13, 14, and so on, those bombs go right to where I am instead of simply next to me. I was blown up three times by them in those two games.
So I'll be spending more time than I ever expected to on the Wii because when I go back to that Galaga arcade machine, most likely at the Pinball Hall of Fame next, if it's still there, I want to be ready and able to dodge those bombs better than I do now. I want to destroy those bugs as they climb into formation and have lots more stages like Stage 1 in my first game in which there was only one bug left in the full formation. However, in one of the challenge stages in between stages, after Stage 10, I discovered a new bug that, when in a group, separates in a circle when you fire at it. I've got so much more to learn.
After that experience at that arcade at the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, I can say without any doubt that besides reading, Galaga makes me endlessly happy. That's two. I know there's more and I'll either discover them or rediscover them in time.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
I'm Free!
Before I get to the main event, here are my latest DVD reviews. I'm saving the most important one for last:
The Woodmans
Treasure Houses of Britain
Diana Ross: Live in Central Park
Designing Women: 20 Timeless Episodes
Dirty Old Town
After I posted the Star Trek-related entry last night, I wrote the title for my next one, which was going to be "You Can't Feel the Ghosts Until Night Comes." I was going to explain how even though Santa Clarita has no desire for history, there's the feeling of ghosts at dusk and especially when it's completely dark, past figures that seem to want their history to be told, but don't come out during the day because no one busy enough then cares to know. I don't know who these past figures are, but before today, I sensed them. Maybe they only emerge at night because they know that the rare good writers and artists in Santa Clarita, though I haven't met any, are paying attention at night, are thinking and writing and painting, and maybe take inspiration from sensing the ghosts.
I was going to go into more detail than that, but I don't need to now, or ever. Early this morning, I finished watching the first season of Episodes, starring Matt LeBlanc, on DVD for a review, and it gave me my freedom from this region! I've gone from being continually frustrated here to being fully in transition to my new home in Las Vegas. Tonight, walking around inside the Walmart Supercenter on Carl Boyer Drive, I felt like a tourist for the first time since we first came to Southern California in April 2003. I feel nothing, just like most of the residents in Santa Clarita, I'm sure. When it's time to move (coming very soon), I'll carry nothing with me from here, save for King of California on DVD, since it's a good movie. As the Genie exclaims in Aladdin, I'm free-eeeeee!!!:
Thank you, Episodes!
The Woodmans
Treasure Houses of Britain
Diana Ross: Live in Central Park
Designing Women: 20 Timeless Episodes
Dirty Old Town
After I posted the Star Trek-related entry last night, I wrote the title for my next one, which was going to be "You Can't Feel the Ghosts Until Night Comes." I was going to explain how even though Santa Clarita has no desire for history, there's the feeling of ghosts at dusk and especially when it's completely dark, past figures that seem to want their history to be told, but don't come out during the day because no one busy enough then cares to know. I don't know who these past figures are, but before today, I sensed them. Maybe they only emerge at night because they know that the rare good writers and artists in Santa Clarita, though I haven't met any, are paying attention at night, are thinking and writing and painting, and maybe take inspiration from sensing the ghosts.
I was going to go into more detail than that, but I don't need to now, or ever. Early this morning, I finished watching the first season of Episodes, starring Matt LeBlanc, on DVD for a review, and it gave me my freedom from this region! I've gone from being continually frustrated here to being fully in transition to my new home in Las Vegas. Tonight, walking around inside the Walmart Supercenter on Carl Boyer Drive, I felt like a tourist for the first time since we first came to Southern California in April 2003. I feel nothing, just like most of the residents in Santa Clarita, I'm sure. When it's time to move (coming very soon), I'll carry nothing with me from here, save for King of California on DVD, since it's a good movie. As the Genie exclaims in Aladdin, I'm free-eeeeee!!!:
Thank you, Episodes!
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Space Mountain Leads to the Universe
I know that my passion in movies began in 1992 when I was 7 years old, and copied by hand onto a sheet of white posterboard a review of the animated movie Bebe's Kids. I saw my first movies when I was 5: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Jetsons: The Movie, which must have also had a part in it. When we had Jetsons: The Movie on VHS, I watched it over and over again, rewinding just before the main title sequence to hear those suddenly-orchestral notes of the theme song, and rewatching that artsy sequence while Judy Jetson (voice of Tiffany) sang. My then-interest exploded into a passion in middle school, when I spent summers watching as many movies as I could check out from the library, going back every week for more, and reading every movie history book I could find. Though my passion is muted now, and I'm much more choosy about what I watch, I still love movies.
I know that my passion for aviation stems from my parents taking me to Orlando International when I was toddler, to watch the planes take off and land. The passion remains, though no longer with a career trajectory.
I don't know where my passion for the presidents comes from, nor my passion for the Supreme Court, though I think the latter partially stems from my maternal great-grandfather, a good lawyer. It must have been somewhere in the genetic structure, though I will never go as far as him. I merely have an interest in legal proceedings, especially those of the Supreme Court and lower courts. That's all. I willingly read opinions of the Court, learning what I can from them and trying not to get fouled up by some of the terminology and legal references. It's more for me to learn, which I always like.
Over the past five days, my lifetime goal to read all the Star Trek novels ever published has gone ahead full force. I've read Star Trek 2 by James Blish, an adaptation of a selection of Original Series episodes; Star Trek Vanguard: Harbinger by David Mack (which has, according to Mack himself who answered my e-mail, an oblique tribute to Gilmore Girls by way of the residential area of the Vanguard space station being named Stars Landing (the town in Gilmore Girls being Stars Hollow). This after I e-mailed him, wondering if the names of the security guards of the landing party on Ravanar IV, Luke Patterson and Scott Danes, were a playful reversal of the names of Scott Patterson and his character Luke Danes. Mack told me that at the time he wrote Harbinger, he and his wife were watching old episodes on DVD, and new episodes on TV, and it remains one of his favorite series); and Star Trek Titan: Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels, which I excitedly ordered as soon as I read about it because in this series, First Officer William T. Riker of the U.S.S. Enterprise is now Captain Riker of the U.S.S. Titan. I haven't seen all the episodes of "The Next Generation" yet, but Riker is quite possibly my favorite character of the series. So this suited me perfectly.
And then Meridith recently brought home from the school library Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Emissary by J.M. Dillard, which she found on one of the "Discard" shelves in a cabinet under the magazine display. She asked if I was going to read this particular series and I told her, "I'm going to read everything."
In those same five days, I ordered from abebooks.com Best Destiny by Diane Carey (about a soon-to-retire James T. Kirk thrust back into his past when he goes to a distant world called Faramond); Star Trek Starzgazer: Gauntlet by Michael Jan Friedman (28-year-old Jean-Luc Picard as captain of the Federation starship Stargazer, before he took command of the Enterprise); Star Trek 3 by James Blish (more episode adaptations); Star Trek Vanguard: Summon the Thunder by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore (the second of that series); Star Trek: Vulcan's Soul: Exodus by Joseph Sherman and Susan Shwartz (Romulan Star Empire attacked by a new enemy called the Watraii, bringing together the Federation, Romulans, Klingons to try to fight it); Encounter at Farpoint by David Gerrold (adaptation of the pilot episode of "The Next Generation," and I should start reading that series of novels already); Star Trek Titan: The Red King by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels (the second of that series); and Articles of the Federation by Keith R.A. DeCandido (inside the Federation government).
Besides all this, I also want to watch every episode of every Star Trek series. I could do that now, what with "The Next Generation" regularly on BBC America and one or two other channels, and I'm sure I could find the Original Series somewhere on TV, but for now, it's one or the other, since I'm also shrinking my Las Vegas book stack ahead of getting a library card in the Clark County Library system. I'd rather get deep into many of these book series right now.
The cause of all this is Space Mountain at Walt Disney World, those star maps seen upon entering that building, the space music compositions heard while walking quickly through part of the empty line (I have all three as mp3s and listen to them often), looking up at the ceiling of Space Mountain and seeing those projections of asteroids and space rocks and shooting stars, and the ride itself, in seeing Mission Control on the way up, and seeing the model of that rocket ship when riding the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, which passes under the rising part of that track. I was entranced by all this and have never forgotten it. I know that this is what led to my curiosity about Star Trek and my desire to read all the novels. The outer space of Space Mountain can only go so far. Star Trek in all its variations goes much farther. And while I drive throughout Las Vegas and explore absolutely all that the Las Vegas Valley offers, I want to explore the entire Star Trek universe.
It's appropriate that my deep love of Space Mountain led to seeking out adventures in the Star Trek universe, being that my undying love for Walt Disney World made me who I am today, open-minded, always in pursuit of fun, taking pleasure in so many things each day, and led to my love of Las Vegas, which embodies all three.
One of these days I'll figure out why I'm passionate about the presidents. There has to be answer, but I'll think about it as I read more of those books, and write my presidential history books, and visit those presidential libraries. The answer might spring from any of that.
I know that my passion for aviation stems from my parents taking me to Orlando International when I was toddler, to watch the planes take off and land. The passion remains, though no longer with a career trajectory.
I don't know where my passion for the presidents comes from, nor my passion for the Supreme Court, though I think the latter partially stems from my maternal great-grandfather, a good lawyer. It must have been somewhere in the genetic structure, though I will never go as far as him. I merely have an interest in legal proceedings, especially those of the Supreme Court and lower courts. That's all. I willingly read opinions of the Court, learning what I can from them and trying not to get fouled up by some of the terminology and legal references. It's more for me to learn, which I always like.
Over the past five days, my lifetime goal to read all the Star Trek novels ever published has gone ahead full force. I've read Star Trek 2 by James Blish, an adaptation of a selection of Original Series episodes; Star Trek Vanguard: Harbinger by David Mack (which has, according to Mack himself who answered my e-mail, an oblique tribute to Gilmore Girls by way of the residential area of the Vanguard space station being named Stars Landing (the town in Gilmore Girls being Stars Hollow). This after I e-mailed him, wondering if the names of the security guards of the landing party on Ravanar IV, Luke Patterson and Scott Danes, were a playful reversal of the names of Scott Patterson and his character Luke Danes. Mack told me that at the time he wrote Harbinger, he and his wife were watching old episodes on DVD, and new episodes on TV, and it remains one of his favorite series); and Star Trek Titan: Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels, which I excitedly ordered as soon as I read about it because in this series, First Officer William T. Riker of the U.S.S. Enterprise is now Captain Riker of the U.S.S. Titan. I haven't seen all the episodes of "The Next Generation" yet, but Riker is quite possibly my favorite character of the series. So this suited me perfectly.
And then Meridith recently brought home from the school library Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Emissary by J.M. Dillard, which she found on one of the "Discard" shelves in a cabinet under the magazine display. She asked if I was going to read this particular series and I told her, "I'm going to read everything."
In those same five days, I ordered from abebooks.com Best Destiny by Diane Carey (about a soon-to-retire James T. Kirk thrust back into his past when he goes to a distant world called Faramond); Star Trek Starzgazer: Gauntlet by Michael Jan Friedman (28-year-old Jean-Luc Picard as captain of the Federation starship Stargazer, before he took command of the Enterprise); Star Trek 3 by James Blish (more episode adaptations); Star Trek Vanguard: Summon the Thunder by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore (the second of that series); Star Trek: Vulcan's Soul: Exodus by Joseph Sherman and Susan Shwartz (Romulan Star Empire attacked by a new enemy called the Watraii, bringing together the Federation, Romulans, Klingons to try to fight it); Encounter at Farpoint by David Gerrold (adaptation of the pilot episode of "The Next Generation," and I should start reading that series of novels already); Star Trek Titan: The Red King by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels (the second of that series); and Articles of the Federation by Keith R.A. DeCandido (inside the Federation government).
Besides all this, I also want to watch every episode of every Star Trek series. I could do that now, what with "The Next Generation" regularly on BBC America and one or two other channels, and I'm sure I could find the Original Series somewhere on TV, but for now, it's one or the other, since I'm also shrinking my Las Vegas book stack ahead of getting a library card in the Clark County Library system. I'd rather get deep into many of these book series right now.
The cause of all this is Space Mountain at Walt Disney World, those star maps seen upon entering that building, the space music compositions heard while walking quickly through part of the empty line (I have all three as mp3s and listen to them often), looking up at the ceiling of Space Mountain and seeing those projections of asteroids and space rocks and shooting stars, and the ride itself, in seeing Mission Control on the way up, and seeing the model of that rocket ship when riding the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, which passes under the rising part of that track. I was entranced by all this and have never forgotten it. I know that this is what led to my curiosity about Star Trek and my desire to read all the novels. The outer space of Space Mountain can only go so far. Star Trek in all its variations goes much farther. And while I drive throughout Las Vegas and explore absolutely all that the Las Vegas Valley offers, I want to explore the entire Star Trek universe.
It's appropriate that my deep love of Space Mountain led to seeking out adventures in the Star Trek universe, being that my undying love for Walt Disney World made me who I am today, open-minded, always in pursuit of fun, taking pleasure in so many things each day, and led to my love of Las Vegas, which embodies all three.
One of these days I'll figure out why I'm passionate about the presidents. There has to be answer, but I'll think about it as I read more of those books, and write my presidential history books, and visit those presidential libraries. The answer might spring from any of that.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
An Instead-Of Birthday
Yesterday, I had an instead-of birthday.
Instead of continuing to be frustrated with my finicky mp3 player that only ever plays half the songs I put in it, my parents and sister got me a new mp3 player, the same model, with 8 gigabytes instead of 4. You'd think it would be the space issue that prevents me from hearing all the songs I put on that player, but when I did sync songs from the computer onto the mp3 player, I'd have to give it at least an hour to put half of the songs on the mp3 player. Before our trip to Henderson in mid-January, I deleted every song from my mp3 player and started again. It took two and a half hours for over 200 songs.
This time, I have a better-made version of this mp3 player. When I transferred 204 songs from the computer, it only took 20 minutes. Much, much faster. Plus, all of them are there because after it turns on, it shows "204" under the # song that I'm on. If I'm on the 43rd song on this mp3 player, it shows "043" above "204."
My only quibble is that after I speed past 40 songs while it's paused, it doesn't skip as fast. I have to push the tiny lever to the side once, then wait a few seconds while it goes to the next song. I was annoyed with this at first, but in a way, it reminds me to appreciate the unfolding of music. I don't have to rush from song to song, even if I don't want to listen to a certain one at that very moment. Just cruise along to the next one in good time. It'll be perfect for when we go back to Las Vegas and Henderson so I can get back into the habit of just letting life flow by, as it is when we're there, and surely as it will be when we're residents.
Instead of Chronic Tacos in Saugus, I decided on Athena's in Canyon Country for two reasons. First, I looooooove feta cheese. Can't have it often because of how fattening it is, but there was the opportunity to have it in spanakopita and in pastichio. Second, Athena's has been in business for all eight years that we've lived here and probably earlier than that. No matter the state of the economy, it has lasted. And I wanted to do something different as a transition into the life we'll live in Henderson and Las Vegas.
The restaurant itself is large enough to hold a good-sized crowd, depending on how many tables are pushed together for some parties, but it fortunately doesn't have that feeling of being too crowded, too overextended. Everything there is made fresh. Mom and I ordered chicken noodle soup with our entrees, as is given, and then Meridith got the dinner salad she ordered with her quarter dark meat rotisserie chicken, and still my spanakopita had not come out. I first thought the waitress forgot about it, and then I realized that everything here is truly fresh, a rarity in the Santa Clarita Valley where factory-line creation seems common.
And oh, was it worth the wait! I'd been thinking about this ever since I first read the menu last Friday, lingering over the words "spinach cheese pie" in the appetizers section, fantasizing about spinach and feta cheese in phyllo dough. It was a triangle of pure heaven. I first reveled in such a heavenly taste, and then wondered why we hadn't tried Athena's in the eight years we've lived here. And it made sense yet again: We only discover the good places in an area just as we're about to move, which means we'll be moving soon. That's always how it happens and fortunately, we'll always have good places in Henderson and Las Vegas, without moving again.
The pastichio was layers of pasta with ground beef and cheese in between. To me, this pasta tasted lighter than what I usually experience in Italian dishes, which makes me like Greek food even more. I would like to find something like this in Las Vegas as well.
Instead of letting this only be a day of celebrating my 28th year, I still thought about my writing projects, especially my novel. While waiting for the soup, I looked out into the parking lot (we were seated next to the window that looks out on a few lanes of traffic, and from where I was sitting, I got a pretty good view of the parking lot), and saw two guys talking, one smoking, and thought about the two main characters in my novel. I watched these two guys because they seemed to have the rapport I was looking for, even though I had no idea what they were saying.
Then they came into the restaurant, took a table at the back, and a few minutes later, more family and friends belonging to a birthday party in the restaurant arrived, and so did other patrons. I liked the setting right then as I surreptitiously listened to the conversations around me without turning my head. Here was this birthday party with a lot of excited chatter, and there were those two guys at a back table, eating. One of the things I want to show in this novel is that these guys are part of society as anyone is, but they exist more on the edges of it. Where birthday parties go on, where crowds are, they stay to the side, mainly because of one's obsessed mission. At the same time I glanced at these two in the back, I also looked out at the traffic on the street next to us. I've been thinking about a truck for the road trip that these two will take, and intend to research miles per gallon on these trucks. It's not so much overkill as wanting to figure out where these two will go and how in their search.
Instead of a standard birthday cake, I went for an Oreo ice cream roll that I found at Walmart Supercenter back in late February. We got home and relaxed for a bit, letting the food settle before we had it, and it was perfect. Whenever Dad gets a frozen Claim Jumper chocolate silk pie, I usually grab the bulk of it because I love the sturdy chocolate crust and in fact, I only eat the pie for that. So to have Oreo crumbs all around and inside a roll of ice cream was definitely for me.
This was the perfect final birthday in Santa Clarita for me. It felt looser than past birthdays, I think because we know we're moving on, whereas past birthdays just signified another year here. That everything was perfect was a terrific farewell. It was the best birthday I've had here.
Instead of continuing to be frustrated with my finicky mp3 player that only ever plays half the songs I put in it, my parents and sister got me a new mp3 player, the same model, with 8 gigabytes instead of 4. You'd think it would be the space issue that prevents me from hearing all the songs I put on that player, but when I did sync songs from the computer onto the mp3 player, I'd have to give it at least an hour to put half of the songs on the mp3 player. Before our trip to Henderson in mid-January, I deleted every song from my mp3 player and started again. It took two and a half hours for over 200 songs.
This time, I have a better-made version of this mp3 player. When I transferred 204 songs from the computer, it only took 20 minutes. Much, much faster. Plus, all of them are there because after it turns on, it shows "204" under the # song that I'm on. If I'm on the 43rd song on this mp3 player, it shows "043" above "204."
My only quibble is that after I speed past 40 songs while it's paused, it doesn't skip as fast. I have to push the tiny lever to the side once, then wait a few seconds while it goes to the next song. I was annoyed with this at first, but in a way, it reminds me to appreciate the unfolding of music. I don't have to rush from song to song, even if I don't want to listen to a certain one at that very moment. Just cruise along to the next one in good time. It'll be perfect for when we go back to Las Vegas and Henderson so I can get back into the habit of just letting life flow by, as it is when we're there, and surely as it will be when we're residents.
Instead of Chronic Tacos in Saugus, I decided on Athena's in Canyon Country for two reasons. First, I looooooove feta cheese. Can't have it often because of how fattening it is, but there was the opportunity to have it in spanakopita and in pastichio. Second, Athena's has been in business for all eight years that we've lived here and probably earlier than that. No matter the state of the economy, it has lasted. And I wanted to do something different as a transition into the life we'll live in Henderson and Las Vegas.
The restaurant itself is large enough to hold a good-sized crowd, depending on how many tables are pushed together for some parties, but it fortunately doesn't have that feeling of being too crowded, too overextended. Everything there is made fresh. Mom and I ordered chicken noodle soup with our entrees, as is given, and then Meridith got the dinner salad she ordered with her quarter dark meat rotisserie chicken, and still my spanakopita had not come out. I first thought the waitress forgot about it, and then I realized that everything here is truly fresh, a rarity in the Santa Clarita Valley where factory-line creation seems common.
And oh, was it worth the wait! I'd been thinking about this ever since I first read the menu last Friday, lingering over the words "spinach cheese pie" in the appetizers section, fantasizing about spinach and feta cheese in phyllo dough. It was a triangle of pure heaven. I first reveled in such a heavenly taste, and then wondered why we hadn't tried Athena's in the eight years we've lived here. And it made sense yet again: We only discover the good places in an area just as we're about to move, which means we'll be moving soon. That's always how it happens and fortunately, we'll always have good places in Henderson and Las Vegas, without moving again.
The pastichio was layers of pasta with ground beef and cheese in between. To me, this pasta tasted lighter than what I usually experience in Italian dishes, which makes me like Greek food even more. I would like to find something like this in Las Vegas as well.
Instead of letting this only be a day of celebrating my 28th year, I still thought about my writing projects, especially my novel. While waiting for the soup, I looked out into the parking lot (we were seated next to the window that looks out on a few lanes of traffic, and from where I was sitting, I got a pretty good view of the parking lot), and saw two guys talking, one smoking, and thought about the two main characters in my novel. I watched these two guys because they seemed to have the rapport I was looking for, even though I had no idea what they were saying.
Then they came into the restaurant, took a table at the back, and a few minutes later, more family and friends belonging to a birthday party in the restaurant arrived, and so did other patrons. I liked the setting right then as I surreptitiously listened to the conversations around me without turning my head. Here was this birthday party with a lot of excited chatter, and there were those two guys at a back table, eating. One of the things I want to show in this novel is that these guys are part of society as anyone is, but they exist more on the edges of it. Where birthday parties go on, where crowds are, they stay to the side, mainly because of one's obsessed mission. At the same time I glanced at these two in the back, I also looked out at the traffic on the street next to us. I've been thinking about a truck for the road trip that these two will take, and intend to research miles per gallon on these trucks. It's not so much overkill as wanting to figure out where these two will go and how in their search.
Instead of a standard birthday cake, I went for an Oreo ice cream roll that I found at Walmart Supercenter back in late February. We got home and relaxed for a bit, letting the food settle before we had it, and it was perfect. Whenever Dad gets a frozen Claim Jumper chocolate silk pie, I usually grab the bulk of it because I love the sturdy chocolate crust and in fact, I only eat the pie for that. So to have Oreo crumbs all around and inside a roll of ice cream was definitely for me.
This was the perfect final birthday in Santa Clarita for me. It felt looser than past birthdays, I think because we know we're moving on, whereas past birthdays just signified another year here. That everything was perfect was a terrific farewell. It was the best birthday I've had here.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
My Lights at Night
I've been thinking a lot about the novel I want to write, to the extent that I paced the dark living room at 2 this morning, talking to myself, trying to figure out why one of my two main characters wants so badly what he wants. In that half a chapter I didn't even know I wrote, I have what he was like in high school with his passion. The other main character, the narrator of this novel, saw him in action in high school, watching in awe how he didn't seem to be there. It's like he was one with what he loved. It may be the reason why the narrator decides to join him on this vast road trip. It's something he can't see himself, but he wants to understand it. In idle moments, the narrator has occasionally thought about this guy, and here is this chance to see firsthand perhaps why he is what he is.
Vague, I know, but I'm still working out countless details. Last night, before the pacing, before talking myself through different scenarios, I looked up the website of a mall here in Southern California that I want to use for my novel. Before a certain restaurant closed in the town where this mall is located, we used to go to that restaurant and then to the mall. That mall retained the heavy historical feeling of that area, like the ghosts of the past were always there, and I loved that because the mall was honest. There are few frills to it. There were no outlandish decorations to try to attract people (perhaps during Christmas, but I've not been there then, and from what I know of this mall, I think they'd do a few things for the holiday, but not everything), no gigantic signs pointing to this side of the mall and that side of the mall, no enticements beyond what the stores sometimes offer in sales. There's also a pizza place/arcade/amusement center in that mall that replaced the whole downstairs area, which included a uniform store. Strange as it is for these two men to be going there without any kids with them, the obsessed main character has his reason and he thinks it might be in the arcade there.
Whenever Mom, Dad, Meridith and I went to that mall, it was always either in the late afternoon or in the evening, after it got dark. That's when I want these two to be there. The restaurant I mentioned has been closed for a while now, but I'm thinking of setting this novel in a time when it's still open, or keeping it open anyway, which reminds me that I should get its old address from Yelp.
Before thinking more about this novel that's been in mind for two years, I never realized how much an author puts him or herself into a novel. Obsessions, curiosities, past pain, favorite things, it can all be there unless the author decides to write a different novel entirely. But even then, even in another genre, you still find pieces of the author because what they've written has obviously interested them enough to spend a few years with it alone.
It also got me thinking about why nighttime is my favorite part of the day. I don't need a lot of night. I just need enough before I go to bed. But in thinking about that restaurant and that mall, I thought about them at night, seeing the streetlights, the lights in the parking lot of that mall, the lights inside the restaurant seen from the outside, how brighter they are at night.
I don't think I could have my characters living entirely at night, but I do want those moments where they're looking at the lights around them at night, thinking about something, thinking about this search that they're on.
When we lived in the apartment in Valencia, when I walked Tigger at night, I always took him to the edge of sidewalk next to one of the apartment buildings that faced the closed and locked maintenance shed, where the golf cart was kept in the garage there, the one that the women in the sales office would use to take prospective renters around the property to empty apartments. I stared at this maintenance shed, with the same mindset I have whenever walking through a Walmart or Target or strip mall or outlet mall or outdoor shopping center: I wondered who the electrician was who installed the light above the maintenance shed's office door. I wonder who installed the hoses that allow people to wash their cars inside two separate stalls next to the maintenance office. I thought about how amazing it was to me that this maintenance shed, and those two car wash stalls just sit here, totally still, while the rest of Santa Clarita and Los Angeles rush about, doing whatever they must because this seems to be the only time to do it. I think I went to that particular spot at night because it felt like the calmest place in the universe, the zen-like center of the whirlwind.
My lights at night do include the Las Vegas Strip, but to a lesser degree. It's only part of my life in Vegas and Henderson. On our most recent trip to Henderson in January, I remember us driving through Victorville at night, and at the far end of one side of the road, where you could see buildings lit up, there were trees in front of all that and it seemed like fairies were flitting about, or just a deluge of fireflies. To me, there's a kind of magic in the night because during the day, everything is exposed. You can see the roads, you can see the houses, you can see where you put your garbage and recycling bins for pickup. But at night, you can imagine that the roads lead to new lands hitherto undiscovered in your state, perhaps those of a different dimension that's only accessible by making a specific wrong turn.
It's why I only keep the light on in the kitchen that's above the sink when it's my night to wash the dinner dishes, and I keep the blinds open. When it's dark enough that you can see all the house lights on the mountainside above us, I look below that, past the rail top iron fence that's at the back end of the pool, down to a neighborhood below us where there's one bright white light on, attached to a garage. I of course think about the electrician who installed it, where their job has taken them now, if they're even still an electrician. But I also think about the darkness in that neighborhood, of the trees so still, of the flowers sitting there, of there being some adventure out there in the darkness, something to see that you can't know in the daytime. It's there.
I don't think I'd have my characters roaming the darkness all the time, but I do want to put in there those memories of nighttime being so fascinating to me. It's that mall, and also that motel we stayed at in Alabama when we moved from South Florida to Southern California in August 2003. It's that maintenance shed in Valencia, and it's those late Friday afternoons at College of the Canyons after my once-a-week cinema class ended. It's so much I'd want to include in whatever night scenes I produce for this novel, and what I can't, lest it be overkill. But it's all about seeing what I can use, what would be good for the story I want to tell. That's why I talk to myself at 2 in the morning, and why I sometimes act out my characters, getting to know them and understanding what they want. It's my adult playground.
Vague, I know, but I'm still working out countless details. Last night, before the pacing, before talking myself through different scenarios, I looked up the website of a mall here in Southern California that I want to use for my novel. Before a certain restaurant closed in the town where this mall is located, we used to go to that restaurant and then to the mall. That mall retained the heavy historical feeling of that area, like the ghosts of the past were always there, and I loved that because the mall was honest. There are few frills to it. There were no outlandish decorations to try to attract people (perhaps during Christmas, but I've not been there then, and from what I know of this mall, I think they'd do a few things for the holiday, but not everything), no gigantic signs pointing to this side of the mall and that side of the mall, no enticements beyond what the stores sometimes offer in sales. There's also a pizza place/arcade/amusement center in that mall that replaced the whole downstairs area, which included a uniform store. Strange as it is for these two men to be going there without any kids with them, the obsessed main character has his reason and he thinks it might be in the arcade there.
Whenever Mom, Dad, Meridith and I went to that mall, it was always either in the late afternoon or in the evening, after it got dark. That's when I want these two to be there. The restaurant I mentioned has been closed for a while now, but I'm thinking of setting this novel in a time when it's still open, or keeping it open anyway, which reminds me that I should get its old address from Yelp.
Before thinking more about this novel that's been in mind for two years, I never realized how much an author puts him or herself into a novel. Obsessions, curiosities, past pain, favorite things, it can all be there unless the author decides to write a different novel entirely. But even then, even in another genre, you still find pieces of the author because what they've written has obviously interested them enough to spend a few years with it alone.
It also got me thinking about why nighttime is my favorite part of the day. I don't need a lot of night. I just need enough before I go to bed. But in thinking about that restaurant and that mall, I thought about them at night, seeing the streetlights, the lights in the parking lot of that mall, the lights inside the restaurant seen from the outside, how brighter they are at night.
I don't think I could have my characters living entirely at night, but I do want those moments where they're looking at the lights around them at night, thinking about something, thinking about this search that they're on.
When we lived in the apartment in Valencia, when I walked Tigger at night, I always took him to the edge of sidewalk next to one of the apartment buildings that faced the closed and locked maintenance shed, where the golf cart was kept in the garage there, the one that the women in the sales office would use to take prospective renters around the property to empty apartments. I stared at this maintenance shed, with the same mindset I have whenever walking through a Walmart or Target or strip mall or outlet mall or outdoor shopping center: I wondered who the electrician was who installed the light above the maintenance shed's office door. I wonder who installed the hoses that allow people to wash their cars inside two separate stalls next to the maintenance office. I thought about how amazing it was to me that this maintenance shed, and those two car wash stalls just sit here, totally still, while the rest of Santa Clarita and Los Angeles rush about, doing whatever they must because this seems to be the only time to do it. I think I went to that particular spot at night because it felt like the calmest place in the universe, the zen-like center of the whirlwind.
My lights at night do include the Las Vegas Strip, but to a lesser degree. It's only part of my life in Vegas and Henderson. On our most recent trip to Henderson in January, I remember us driving through Victorville at night, and at the far end of one side of the road, where you could see buildings lit up, there were trees in front of all that and it seemed like fairies were flitting about, or just a deluge of fireflies. To me, there's a kind of magic in the night because during the day, everything is exposed. You can see the roads, you can see the houses, you can see where you put your garbage and recycling bins for pickup. But at night, you can imagine that the roads lead to new lands hitherto undiscovered in your state, perhaps those of a different dimension that's only accessible by making a specific wrong turn.
It's why I only keep the light on in the kitchen that's above the sink when it's my night to wash the dinner dishes, and I keep the blinds open. When it's dark enough that you can see all the house lights on the mountainside above us, I look below that, past the rail top iron fence that's at the back end of the pool, down to a neighborhood below us where there's one bright white light on, attached to a garage. I of course think about the electrician who installed it, where their job has taken them now, if they're even still an electrician. But I also think about the darkness in that neighborhood, of the trees so still, of the flowers sitting there, of there being some adventure out there in the darkness, something to see that you can't know in the daytime. It's there.
I don't think I'd have my characters roaming the darkness all the time, but I do want to put in there those memories of nighttime being so fascinating to me. It's that mall, and also that motel we stayed at in Alabama when we moved from South Florida to Southern California in August 2003. It's that maintenance shed in Valencia, and it's those late Friday afternoons at College of the Canyons after my once-a-week cinema class ended. It's so much I'd want to include in whatever night scenes I produce for this novel, and what I can't, lest it be overkill. But it's all about seeing what I can use, what would be good for the story I want to tell. That's why I talk to myself at 2 in the morning, and why I sometimes act out my characters, getting to know them and understanding what they want. It's my adult playground.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
More of the Same of My Southern California Dream Home
More pictures of the same spot, looking up at my dream home at Ventura Harbor Village.
Two things came to mind today as I thought about this location: First, I'm not even sure if there's a shower in the square footage behind these windows. A bathroom there must surely be, but are these units also for living? If so, then there should be a small kitchen too. I'll probably never find out, but that's how I'd like it if I became a resident.
All I'd need in that apartment is a bed, a couch, a coffee table, a TV, a DVD player, and basic cable (for Jeopardy! and The Big Bang Theory on CBS), and I'd devote the rest of my space to bookshelves. Inspiration for my own writing would come from what I have on those shelves, what I get every week from a hopefully nearby library, and just by walking the grounds of Ventura Harbor Village. Tourists wander, the line grows long at Coastal Cone, and I can always watch boats sail the harbor, as well as gawk at the mammoth ones that are docked at various slips.
The price for a bowl of New England clam chowder at Andria's Seafood Restaurant is $6.09. If I hit the lottery or had a job there that pays well enough to maintain such a harborside lifestyle, then yes, I could have it every day for lunch if I wanted, but I wouldn't want to get tired of it. So once in a while for lunch, on an idle Tuesday or Wednesday that just feels right for it.
My preferred space is the third window on the right. In yesterday's entry, I linked to the hardcover edition of The Ha Ha by Dave King. Where the foot of the bed is in that photo is where I'd place my bed under that window on the right. It feels right. For me, it would also feel like every day is the weekend. Every day should feel like the weekend anyway, but being that my dad is a teacher, and I'm a substitute campus supervisor, Monday through Friday feels like Monday through Friday. Not so much in dreading Mondays because any day you get paid is a good day, but just that schedule of the week with weekends off that makes a Friday feel like the universe has aligned itself, and Saturdays and Sundays entirely up to you. Or maybe it's just where we live right now. Once in Henderson, I'm sure I can make every day feel like the weekend. There's more to see and do there than there is here.
Ventura Harbor Village has a Greek restaurant called The Greek at the Harbor. I'd be set. They've got feta cheese, and moussaka, and baklava. They've also got window seating where you can look out at some of the boats. Feta cheese and that view would suit me fine.
Lately in my head, I've been hanging out at Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas in Primm, right near the Nevada/California border, and the Buena Park Mall in Buena Park, where Po Folks used to be, and where Knott's Berry Farm is. For a long time, I've been fascinated by that mall's utter straightforwardness. Nothing to try to entice shoppers to go there. It's just there, and people do go there, and they shop there, which I know is the purpose of every mall, but this is also a rare mall where you can feel history hanging heavily over the area. It's not just perhaps the ghosts of Buena Park's founding fathers, but also past citizens themselves. It's the one city I know of in Southern California that keeps its history alive, and even if it didn't, you could still feel it like you do when you're walking around wherever you are in Buena Park.
I've also thought about Ventura Harbor Village beyond these entries. Because of it and San Juan Capistrano, I've always been amazed that peace can be found in Southern California. It's not a frantic rush to wherever you need to go, wherever you have to go, and whatever you have to do. Life can exist without that silent pressure. I don't have it anymore since I know I'll be going home to Nevada soon enough, but I hope there are people in Southern California who do call that part of Ventura, and San Juan Capistrano, home, for the reasons that I believe it can be home. They must appreciate it every day. It seems like it would be a good life, but maybe even more if the state wasn't so overtaxed. Plus I don't drive freeways, and once I'm out of California, I'm never coming back. It'll be home in my imagination until I arrive home and then it'll be in the back of my mind. I won't have to fantasize anymore. But I will always appreciate what Ventura Harbor Village has done for me and my imagination, because I felt relaxed and I was shown that life exists outside that franticness, and it set me on a course to find better for myself, which I've found in Las Vegas and Henderson. You can't ever forget a locale that does something like that.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
My Southern California Dream Home
If I was a different Rory L. Aronsky, content to live in Southern California for the rest of my life, and making enough money to move wherever I want without concern, or hitting the lottery to the same effect, I know exactly where I would want to live.
At Ventura Harbor Village, in Ventura, above the arcade containing my beloved Galaga machine, above Coastal Cone where a butter pecan malt tastes oh so sweet and oh so wonderful, there is square footage up there, separated by walls, that could conceivably be used as offices. A psychiatrist could hang a sign there if they wanted, or a real estate agent, or some business that requires an office in place.
Outside the back exit of the arcade, next to a pair of restrooms, I stand north, looking up at windows that make up my favorite spot, above a carved-in sign that says "More Shops and Restaurants":
This is my Southern California dream home. I'm not sure what the square footage is behind any of those windows, but I would set up an apartment there. I would want to live at the harbor, looking out at all the boats, sitting on a bench having a butter pecan malt, and playing Galaga whenever the arcade is open. All I would need to know is how close I am to the nearest library.
In fact, there's a novel called The Ha Ha by Dave King that I bought last month, 30% for the novel itself, and 70% for the cover, because it reminded me of standing on that very spot where that picture was taken, imagining the window open just a bit, the blinds up just a bit, the foot of my bed right under that window, and me laying on it, reading. I could make a peaceful life for myself there because I feel so at ease every time I go there. Sure, there may be problems in Ventura itself, issues that have festered, but unlike the Santa Clarita Valley, where I feel like I'm crushed under so much bullshit disguised as passivity (though I've sadly gotten used to it over the years, and will be well over it by the time we move), being at Ventura Harbor Village makes you feel like no matter if there are problems, there is a time for them and that's not this time. Not so much ignoring for the sake of relief, but a more easygoing nature toward solving issues.
This is where I would be, happily, if I was a different me.
At Ventura Harbor Village, in Ventura, above the arcade containing my beloved Galaga machine, above Coastal Cone where a butter pecan malt tastes oh so sweet and oh so wonderful, there is square footage up there, separated by walls, that could conceivably be used as offices. A psychiatrist could hang a sign there if they wanted, or a real estate agent, or some business that requires an office in place.
Outside the back exit of the arcade, next to a pair of restrooms, I stand north, looking up at windows that make up my favorite spot, above a carved-in sign that says "More Shops and Restaurants":
This is my Southern California dream home. I'm not sure what the square footage is behind any of those windows, but I would set up an apartment there. I would want to live at the harbor, looking out at all the boats, sitting on a bench having a butter pecan malt, and playing Galaga whenever the arcade is open. All I would need to know is how close I am to the nearest library.
In fact, there's a novel called The Ha Ha by Dave King that I bought last month, 30% for the novel itself, and 70% for the cover, because it reminded me of standing on that very spot where that picture was taken, imagining the window open just a bit, the blinds up just a bit, the foot of my bed right under that window, and me laying on it, reading. I could make a peaceful life for myself there because I feel so at ease every time I go there. Sure, there may be problems in Ventura itself, issues that have festered, but unlike the Santa Clarita Valley, where I feel like I'm crushed under so much bullshit disguised as passivity (though I've sadly gotten used to it over the years, and will be well over it by the time we move), being at Ventura Harbor Village makes you feel like no matter if there are problems, there is a time for them and that's not this time. Not so much ignoring for the sake of relief, but a more easygoing nature toward solving issues.
This is where I would be, happily, if I was a different me.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Lazy Dog Cafe vs. Chronic Tacos
Next Wednesday is my birthday, marking 28 years in this world, and the final time I'll have it in the Santa Clarita Valley. Meridith's birthday is the following Friday. She was born on March 23, 1989, and so our birthdays are separated by a day.
Last week, Mom reminded us to think about where we want to eat out on our birthdays. There's not a lot of reliable options for eating out in Santa Clarita. If you find a place you really like, such as the only decent Jersey Mike's in Santa Clarita located in Canyon Country, you stick with it forever and always. There's not much risk-taking here because there's not a lot of restaurants here to start with. If you really want to explore food of all kinds, you go to Los Angeles itself. But to go there involves navigating the usual freeway system that for years has looked like it was designed by a committee of cokeheads, and it takes time to get anywhere while feeling like you're getting nowhere. I don't mind taking time to get somewhere if I was in, say, New Mexico, but when you're trying to live day-to-day, you want convenience. We have it here, just not enough of it. Here, we have only two movie theaters in the entire valley, and Barnes & Noble is the only major bookstore left. The Signal, the exclusive newspaper of the Santa Clarita Valley, complains about the lack of everything when there's nothing to legitimately complain about in the opinion section, but nothing will get done. No businesses that would be useful here will come here because despite its growth, Santa Clarita still has a limited population and not a lot of tourists, whereas Los Angeles sees to everybody, tourists included. If you're going to deal with the same California taxes wherever you go, Los Angeles is your best bet to park your business. It's why this valley is what it has been for all these years, devoid of anything that could distinguish it interesting to visit or even live in, where the only truly interesting part is Six Flags Magic Mountain, and that's its own property, surrounded by nothing else of this valley.
So with all this, food choices aren't promising enough for exploration. That's why for my birthday, I'm sticking to standards. And I'm not sure which standard yet. I've narrowed my choices down to Lazy Dog Cafe or Chronic Tacos. At Lazy Dog Cafe, they allow dogs in the outside seating, yet the inside feels like you're not important enough to be there. No velvet rope, but just an air of superiority, where successful real estate agents go to laugh wildly and get hammered at the wide bar in the back and watch sports. It's a fake rustic setting, but it doesn't matter much because the food is why it's on my list. They've got a grilled cheese there made up of cheddar, gouda and jack cheeses, all melted together on parmesan sourdough toast. One bite of that and you wonder why we have diets. Yet the last time I had the sandwich, I was deep into my mental prison in late summer 2010 after that anxiety attack in Las Vegas brought on by being overweight and ingesting way too much caffeine, so I didn't enjoy it as much. I wasn't sure what was wrong with me, knew there was something was wrong with me, but too freaked out by what was wrong with me to do anything about it. It's one summer I'm glad to forget, but am also a tiny bit grateful for, because I figured out what my priorities were, that I had to take care of myself again and did it. And I became stronger from it.
Going back to Lazy Dog Cafe wouldn't trigger any of those memories. I'm never disturbed by thinking about the past. But I'm not sure if that's where I want to spend my birthday. The grilled cheese is incredible, but that should not be the only reason I go. I want to go where I feel like I can be me. Then I think about Chronic Tacos in Saugus, close to our house.
We've been there so many times and it has been my lifeline for quesadillas, first for chicken-and-cheese quesadillas, then just cheese after I lost 60 pounds and wanted to keep it that way. They have flatscreen TVs on that show some extreme sports channel that doesn't interest me regularly, but it's still amazing to watch surfers ride those waves and off-roaders going fast enough to flip any mere mortal over and over down a mountainside.
Most important to me at Chronic Tacos is that the people behind the counter know not only how to make the quesadillas and burritos and tortas and other items very well, but they also care enough to do it right. It doesn't matter who you are; they take your money equally. There's a digital-screen Coke machine in the back where you tap the screen to indicate what you want to drink (heck of a lot of choices, including Vanilla Coke), and then press the large silver button in the middle of the machine, and your drink comes out of the spigot.
That quesadilla. Oh that beautiful, beautiful quesadilla. Cheese goes on the tortilla, the guy behind the counter closes it up, puts it on the large industrial-looking grill, and closes the lid, moving on to the next order and then taking out the quesadilla about two minutes later. It's brown on all sides, the cheese always melted perfectly. I've known a lot of quesadillas, since it's one of my favorite foods, and Chronic Tacos has always produced ones that rank consistently at the top of my list of great quesadillas.
Then it got even better in early January when we went to Chronic Tacos yet again and I found out that they were offering breakfast burritos, quesadillas, and tacos. The quesadillas had eggs and potatoes in them, with a choice of bacon, chorizo, veggie, or machaca, which is shredded beef, grilled onions, and tomatoes. I chose chorizo, since I love its slight spiciness.
We sat down at a table near the door, and I remember that an episode of The Simpsons was on, and the family had gotten sick from a new environmentally-friendly burger at Krustyburger. I laughed out loud, right there at the table, when Homer puked in Lisa's saxophone. There was no sound from the TV, but you could tell pretty well what was going on. I think one or two people looked up when I laughed, but it didn't matter. I had a breakfast quesadilla in front of me (they serve it all day), and it was incredible. It was grease done right. It was so satisfying and went down so easily. Normally, what you eat in Santa Clarita doesn't matter a great deal. You only do it in order to live, as is expected with eating. But this was the one time I remember truly enjoying something I was eating. That's what food should be as much as possible. This is the rare place where it happens. Plus, that episode of The Simpsons was a bonus.
Chronic Tacos has always exuded that feeling that you can come right in, order what you want, and be guaranteed a pleasing experience. It doesn't matter who you are; everyone's welcome. I think it's where I want to go for my birthday, but it just amazes me that there aren't more eateries in this valley like this one. It's like everything else, though. If you want to do anything interesting, eat out at anywhere interesting, shop at anywhere interesting, you have to leave this valley. Always. But at least Chronic Tacos stands for always doing interesting things with Mexican fast food in a valley that could use more interesting things. I'll use it as my transition from here to Henderson, because what Chronic Tacos has in its food, in its way of doing business, is multiplied thousands of times over there, and most of the time even more creatively. It helps remind me of what I can look forward to over there.
Last week, Mom reminded us to think about where we want to eat out on our birthdays. There's not a lot of reliable options for eating out in Santa Clarita. If you find a place you really like, such as the only decent Jersey Mike's in Santa Clarita located in Canyon Country, you stick with it forever and always. There's not much risk-taking here because there's not a lot of restaurants here to start with. If you really want to explore food of all kinds, you go to Los Angeles itself. But to go there involves navigating the usual freeway system that for years has looked like it was designed by a committee of cokeheads, and it takes time to get anywhere while feeling like you're getting nowhere. I don't mind taking time to get somewhere if I was in, say, New Mexico, but when you're trying to live day-to-day, you want convenience. We have it here, just not enough of it. Here, we have only two movie theaters in the entire valley, and Barnes & Noble is the only major bookstore left. The Signal, the exclusive newspaper of the Santa Clarita Valley, complains about the lack of everything when there's nothing to legitimately complain about in the opinion section, but nothing will get done. No businesses that would be useful here will come here because despite its growth, Santa Clarita still has a limited population and not a lot of tourists, whereas Los Angeles sees to everybody, tourists included. If you're going to deal with the same California taxes wherever you go, Los Angeles is your best bet to park your business. It's why this valley is what it has been for all these years, devoid of anything that could distinguish it interesting to visit or even live in, where the only truly interesting part is Six Flags Magic Mountain, and that's its own property, surrounded by nothing else of this valley.
So with all this, food choices aren't promising enough for exploration. That's why for my birthday, I'm sticking to standards. And I'm not sure which standard yet. I've narrowed my choices down to Lazy Dog Cafe or Chronic Tacos. At Lazy Dog Cafe, they allow dogs in the outside seating, yet the inside feels like you're not important enough to be there. No velvet rope, but just an air of superiority, where successful real estate agents go to laugh wildly and get hammered at the wide bar in the back and watch sports. It's a fake rustic setting, but it doesn't matter much because the food is why it's on my list. They've got a grilled cheese there made up of cheddar, gouda and jack cheeses, all melted together on parmesan sourdough toast. One bite of that and you wonder why we have diets. Yet the last time I had the sandwich, I was deep into my mental prison in late summer 2010 after that anxiety attack in Las Vegas brought on by being overweight and ingesting way too much caffeine, so I didn't enjoy it as much. I wasn't sure what was wrong with me, knew there was something was wrong with me, but too freaked out by what was wrong with me to do anything about it. It's one summer I'm glad to forget, but am also a tiny bit grateful for, because I figured out what my priorities were, that I had to take care of myself again and did it. And I became stronger from it.
Going back to Lazy Dog Cafe wouldn't trigger any of those memories. I'm never disturbed by thinking about the past. But I'm not sure if that's where I want to spend my birthday. The grilled cheese is incredible, but that should not be the only reason I go. I want to go where I feel like I can be me. Then I think about Chronic Tacos in Saugus, close to our house.
We've been there so many times and it has been my lifeline for quesadillas, first for chicken-and-cheese quesadillas, then just cheese after I lost 60 pounds and wanted to keep it that way. They have flatscreen TVs on that show some extreme sports channel that doesn't interest me regularly, but it's still amazing to watch surfers ride those waves and off-roaders going fast enough to flip any mere mortal over and over down a mountainside.
Most important to me at Chronic Tacos is that the people behind the counter know not only how to make the quesadillas and burritos and tortas and other items very well, but they also care enough to do it right. It doesn't matter who you are; they take your money equally. There's a digital-screen Coke machine in the back where you tap the screen to indicate what you want to drink (heck of a lot of choices, including Vanilla Coke), and then press the large silver button in the middle of the machine, and your drink comes out of the spigot.
That quesadilla. Oh that beautiful, beautiful quesadilla. Cheese goes on the tortilla, the guy behind the counter closes it up, puts it on the large industrial-looking grill, and closes the lid, moving on to the next order and then taking out the quesadilla about two minutes later. It's brown on all sides, the cheese always melted perfectly. I've known a lot of quesadillas, since it's one of my favorite foods, and Chronic Tacos has always produced ones that rank consistently at the top of my list of great quesadillas.
Then it got even better in early January when we went to Chronic Tacos yet again and I found out that they were offering breakfast burritos, quesadillas, and tacos. The quesadillas had eggs and potatoes in them, with a choice of bacon, chorizo, veggie, or machaca, which is shredded beef, grilled onions, and tomatoes. I chose chorizo, since I love its slight spiciness.
We sat down at a table near the door, and I remember that an episode of The Simpsons was on, and the family had gotten sick from a new environmentally-friendly burger at Krustyburger. I laughed out loud, right there at the table, when Homer puked in Lisa's saxophone. There was no sound from the TV, but you could tell pretty well what was going on. I think one or two people looked up when I laughed, but it didn't matter. I had a breakfast quesadilla in front of me (they serve it all day), and it was incredible. It was grease done right. It was so satisfying and went down so easily. Normally, what you eat in Santa Clarita doesn't matter a great deal. You only do it in order to live, as is expected with eating. But this was the one time I remember truly enjoying something I was eating. That's what food should be as much as possible. This is the rare place where it happens. Plus, that episode of The Simpsons was a bonus.
Chronic Tacos has always exuded that feeling that you can come right in, order what you want, and be guaranteed a pleasing experience. It doesn't matter who you are; everyone's welcome. I think it's where I want to go for my birthday, but it just amazes me that there aren't more eateries in this valley like this one. It's like everything else, though. If you want to do anything interesting, eat out at anywhere interesting, shop at anywhere interesting, you have to leave this valley. Always. But at least Chronic Tacos stands for always doing interesting things with Mexican fast food in a valley that could use more interesting things. I'll use it as my transition from here to Henderson, because what Chronic Tacos has in its food, in its way of doing business, is multiplied thousands of times over there, and most of the time even more creatively. It helps remind me of what I can look forward to over there.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Home in Henderson
We got to Fiesta Henderson and checked in a little after midnight. It's now 3:16 and 10 minutes ago, I came up to the 8th floor, to our room, from the casino floor after playing three penny slot machines. Not playing to win. I slip a dollar in, play one line at a time, and zone out into my kind of meditation, but this time, instead of thinking about my writing or various other things in my life, I just deeply appreciated that I'm home. I feel good here. We bypassed the Strip completely and drove to Henderson and I felt like I could drive those roads easily. They're manageable and navigable. It's impossible to get lost on the way to wherever you're going, and since I want to explore every inch of Las Vegas and Henderson and Summerlin (The latter merely out of curiosity), there's no way I'll ever get lost here. Besides, if I take a wrong turn occasionally (doubtful that it'll be before work, wherever that will be), there's always something to see, something to explore.
We found out that the entrance and box office of Regal Fiesta Henderson 12 is right next to the food court, barely touching a Starbucks right next to us, and across from one of the casino floors, this particular one wall to wall with slot machines from penny to $1. Very convenient for tonight when Meridith and I go to see "Beauty and the Beast 3D," either at 7:15 or 9:30 since we'll be busy during the day.
Oh! And speaking of things to do today, Dad drove us around our future apartment complex and I love it! The Review-Journal rack near the mailboxes looks a lot better than The Signal's in Santa Clarita, and the mailboxes are not only pleasantly close together, but there's a bulletin board above the middle section of mailboxes where residents can post various notices. There was one I noticed promoting a book called Confessions of a Pool Hustler by Robert LeBlanc. He lives in Las Vegas, maybe in that apartment complex which is the only way I can think that a postcard about his book would be pinned to that bulletin board, unless he knew someone who knows the bulletin boards around Henderson and posted it there. Nevertheless, I love that no matter what angles people play here, at least they seem honest in their intentions. LeBlanc wants to sell more copies of his book. Others want to win the World Series of Poker. Others just want to win at bingo or make a good life for themselves, as I do.
We also ate at Fatburger in the Fiesta Henderson food court a little after 1 a.m. I had a sausage and egg sandwich which was two sausage patties, fried egg and cheese. And I also had onion rings and a strawberry shake. I was hungry since Wienerschnitzel before we left the Santa Clarita Valley came hours before that, so it worked out. Not exactly what I would have wanted to eat (I would have preferred something healthier), but at that hour, you take what you can get and that sausage and egg sandwich was worth it. It's a fine start to the food to look forward to again here for the next two days. It tasted good and that's what mattered to me, plus the strawberry shake was terrific, and it was real ice cream since it began to melt toward the bottom.
While we were driving to Henderson, I never read any of the books we brought with me. Whenever we drive somewhere outside the Santa Clarita Valley, I spend a lot of time staring out the window, looking at all the sights, including what seemed like a crowded fairyland from afar before Victorville. It was just lights in the distance, industrial lights, streetlights, whatever, but there's a kind of magic to it at all at night.
The car Dad rented, a Nissan Cube, is like a refrigerator box on wheels, but it's sturdy, everything works, and that's what matters. The windows in the back are a combination of a hacksaw on its side on the left, then a strong rubber divider in between, and then a capital "D" with way too much junk in the trunk. It's a D that spent a lot of time in line at McDonald's, KFC, Taco Bell, etc., etc. That's the part of the window that opens, and when closed, it seems like a window on an old Greyhound bus; it seems like you can pull that "D" side of the window back a bit without having to push the button to lower the window.
It's 3:33 now and I'm lucky there've been nights in the past week when I've gone to bed past 3. Not ideal when I'll probably be up by 8 or 9, but I'll take the chance. Tomorrow we meet the new manager of our future apartment complex and that'll be an honor considering the peace of mind I feel there. I intend to be a model resident there, treating that apartment complex with the same respect it has given me in what it offers. I can't wait to see it in daylight.
More tomorrow night. Maybe a little bit after I get up soon, but I can't guarantee that, even though there's still more I want to write about yesterday.
Mom asked me how I felt about being here as we were driving toward the Strip before bypassing it completely. I didn't have an "Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!!!" feeling. It just felt so good, because I know I belong here and even with this being the first time in nearly two years that I've been here, it's still the same as I remember. It's everything I want in a home and it still delivers.
We found out that the entrance and box office of Regal Fiesta Henderson 12 is right next to the food court, barely touching a Starbucks right next to us, and across from one of the casino floors, this particular one wall to wall with slot machines from penny to $1. Very convenient for tonight when Meridith and I go to see "Beauty and the Beast 3D," either at 7:15 or 9:30 since we'll be busy during the day.
Oh! And speaking of things to do today, Dad drove us around our future apartment complex and I love it! The Review-Journal rack near the mailboxes looks a lot better than The Signal's in Santa Clarita, and the mailboxes are not only pleasantly close together, but there's a bulletin board above the middle section of mailboxes where residents can post various notices. There was one I noticed promoting a book called Confessions of a Pool Hustler by Robert LeBlanc. He lives in Las Vegas, maybe in that apartment complex which is the only way I can think that a postcard about his book would be pinned to that bulletin board, unless he knew someone who knows the bulletin boards around Henderson and posted it there. Nevertheless, I love that no matter what angles people play here, at least they seem honest in their intentions. LeBlanc wants to sell more copies of his book. Others want to win the World Series of Poker. Others just want to win at bingo or make a good life for themselves, as I do.
We also ate at Fatburger in the Fiesta Henderson food court a little after 1 a.m. I had a sausage and egg sandwich which was two sausage patties, fried egg and cheese. And I also had onion rings and a strawberry shake. I was hungry since Wienerschnitzel before we left the Santa Clarita Valley came hours before that, so it worked out. Not exactly what I would have wanted to eat (I would have preferred something healthier), but at that hour, you take what you can get and that sausage and egg sandwich was worth it. It's a fine start to the food to look forward to again here for the next two days. It tasted good and that's what mattered to me, plus the strawberry shake was terrific, and it was real ice cream since it began to melt toward the bottom.
While we were driving to Henderson, I never read any of the books we brought with me. Whenever we drive somewhere outside the Santa Clarita Valley, I spend a lot of time staring out the window, looking at all the sights, including what seemed like a crowded fairyland from afar before Victorville. It was just lights in the distance, industrial lights, streetlights, whatever, but there's a kind of magic to it at all at night.
The car Dad rented, a Nissan Cube, is like a refrigerator box on wheels, but it's sturdy, everything works, and that's what matters. The windows in the back are a combination of a hacksaw on its side on the left, then a strong rubber divider in between, and then a capital "D" with way too much junk in the trunk. It's a D that spent a lot of time in line at McDonald's, KFC, Taco Bell, etc., etc. That's the part of the window that opens, and when closed, it seems like a window on an old Greyhound bus; it seems like you can pull that "D" side of the window back a bit without having to push the button to lower the window.
It's 3:33 now and I'm lucky there've been nights in the past week when I've gone to bed past 3. Not ideal when I'll probably be up by 8 or 9, but I'll take the chance. Tomorrow we meet the new manager of our future apartment complex and that'll be an honor considering the peace of mind I feel there. I intend to be a model resident there, treating that apartment complex with the same respect it has given me in what it offers. I can't wait to see it in daylight.
More tomorrow night. Maybe a little bit after I get up soon, but I can't guarantee that, even though there's still more I want to write about yesterday.
Mom asked me how I felt about being here as we were driving toward the Strip before bypassing it completely. I didn't have an "Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!!!" feeling. It just felt so good, because I know I belong here and even with this being the first time in nearly two years that I've been here, it's still the same as I remember. It's everything I want in a home and it still delivers.
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