I should have remembered, from when the darkening clouds threatened rain in Pembroke Pines, Florida on the day that we set out to move cross-country to Valencia, California in 2003, which took five days with two dogs and two birds and therefore, sadly, no time for New Orleans, even though we did pass through Louisiana and were most likely close enough in our route.
I should have also remembered when we moved from Saugus, California, also in the Santa Clarita Valley, and that early morning, there were those same clouds, before we moved to Las Vegas.
When we do move from Las Vegas in the coming months, back to Southern California, I don't think those same clouds will be there, because we'll be reaching the extreme heat of summer by then, and there are generally no clouds in sight during that immense hell. Yet, the city we're moving from, and really any city or town we've moved from, seems to sense that we're on our way out, that our daily attention is on what we have to do in errands and eating and working, but in the back of our minds, we're already driving out of here, to where the weather's more reasonable, to where we hope our lives will be more reasonable.
Yesterday, we did go to Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage. Locals are also being charged for parking now. At the end, it was $10 for four hours, but that hardly mattered. This was for Meridith, who loves dolphins, and has loved all the times we've gone there, especially when she had the chance to paint with dolphins for her birthday and has never forgotten Maverick, the dolphin she painted with, even going so far on this likely final visit to ask where he was. While the trainer gamely tried to say that he was isolated for the time being, she and my mom could read between the lines that it was breeding time, and so Maverick would likely find it more fun than performing for the tourists.
This time, however, a little over 60 degrees of cold met us and despite not finding anything on the weather websites I visit, or hearing about it on the news, it did rain. It drizzled at first, and then later on, when Mom and Dad decided to go back inside the Mirage, it was raining steadily. I thought I could get away with my Jungle Book t-shirt and my heaviest blue jacket, but no luck. Even in the stands at one of those tables, the wind blew some of the rain in and it was impossible for me to finish out my tradition of reading Paper Towns by John Green while there. I only made it to page 68. A valiant effort in the cold, but still too cold to read.
I'm not disappointed that this likely final visit was shorter than the others. We began at the Mirage as tourists in 2007. It was the first casino we went to after we checked into America's Best Value Inn on Tropicana and headed out to the Strip. The Carnegie Deli there was the first time we ate on the Strip. After we moved to Las Vegas, trailers in the back of the Mirage was where we first voted in Nevada. When American Idol had a live broadcast in the Beatles Love theater at the Mirage, we were there. And the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat has always been there in between. So it's appropriate that the Mirage was the final casino we visited before we moved. We've come full circle at our home casino. I'm glad for that.
I'm also not disappointed that I didn't finish my tradition. I don't know if by the weather the city was objecting to our leaving, that, to Meridith, it was showing that the dolphins were sad that she's leaving, because the city doesn't really care like that. But maybe it was getting the rain aspect of our moving out of the way nonchalantly, dismissively. "Oh, here you go. Here's what you've been through every time. Now you can leave and someone else will replace you where you're living and we'll be none the wiser and it won't matter." It doesn't seem to anyway.
It appears, though, that MGM Resorts charging for parking is not a positive move for them. There were far less trainers there yesterday than there had been during past visits, and sure, it might have been because of the rain, but I shouldn't think that would matter. Even at Bellagio, before the corporation began charging for parking, people were aware of the plan to the extent that Bellagio cut down the budget for the gardens and conservatory that people walk through to see the Christmas decorations or the Chinese New Year decorations and the last time we went, before paid parking began, it was clear that they had to scale back that budget because the profits just weren't there like they had been before.
I think that if you charge for parking, people have heightened expectations of why they're there. They want to have a good time with what they're paying, and the casino had better deliver. I suspect they're not delivering like they once did because they don't have the profit to back it up now, and so people are probably leaving disappointed at having paid however much they did for parking and whatever else they paid for, and getting a ho-hum experience. So they've either gone to other casinos that do charge for parking but might hold up their end of the bargain (ironic word, I know), or they're avoiding Las Vegas entirely and traveling throughout other cities, like Orlando maybe. They want to be tourists in cities where those cities appreciate tourists, not try to drain them dry and leave them wondering just why the hell they came there in the first place. That's for the residents, like us, though in our defense, Santa Clarita was no longer feasible, and we couldn't go back to Florida, because of the hurricane insurance and the hurricanes, in that order. We were trying to make a home here, even putting to the side for a time what bothered us about the place, although those problems gradually came as the years went on, and then they hit full-force later on.
The one highlight of our visit, however, was being in the underground viewing area, and seeing the rain from underneath the surface of the water in the pools. After Mom and Dad went back to the Mirage, Meridith and I went down there, and spent a little while watching the dolphins, especially hoping to capture video of a dolphin leaping out of the water and diving back in, creating a vortex in the water so Mom could see it (we did). Only after we could see the rain subsiding by less drops on the surface did we go back up and back to the Mirage. I'm glad to have at least seen the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat one more time. To me, it was the most relaxing place in Las Vegas and I appreciate it for having done that every time. Not so much this time, I know, but it was worth it all the other times. It was a sanctuary, an escape from the difficulty of living here, and it sought to remind you of that at every moment. I appreciate that. And it sends me back to Southern California a little gentler than I have been here, but not by much. I'll leave it to Southern California to smooth out the rest.
Monday, May 8, 2017
Thursday, May 4, 2017
The End of a Tradition
This Sunday will likely mark our final visit to Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage, ahead of moving back to Southern California. It will also be the first and only time we'll pay for parking on the Strip, which I still maintain was a huge mistake, considering that that's where the majority of tourists in Las Vegas go, and it doesn't pay to be greedy about where or how long they park their cars.
This visit is once again courtesy of the Clark County School District, which has on its Teacher Appreciation Week page coupons for various activities, including free admission for a teacher and a guest at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. As with the last two times, the people at the ticket booths only care that you have a CCSD ID and my dad, a high school teacher, does, as well as me and Meridith. So we four will have no trouble getting in.
I think this is mainly for Meridith, who loves dolphins, but it's also for the rest of us because it's quite possibly the most relaxing spot in Las Vegas, the one place I've found here that is complete peace. I like seeing the dolphins, and even glancing at the tigers and other animals in the Secret Garden section in the back, but I love just sitting at a table in the shade, preferably near one of the dolphin pools, reading. And I've done that in all the times we've been there. In fact, this post follows a tradition I started in 2014, which you can read here.
Briefly, back then, I read The Fault in Our Stars, which got me hooked on reading John Green's other novels, and Paper Towns followed, on the day that we were celebrating Meridith's birthday at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, in which she got to paint with the dolphins. Of course, I was there to see that, but in the other blank times during the day, I was reading Paper Towns, sitting exactly where I wanted to sit, reading in one of my favorite places in Las Vegas.
The next time we went there, I brought Paper Towns with me again, and I think by that time, I had my own copy. That next time was before the movie was released in July 2015, and of course I saw that in theaters. And I like the movie as equally as the book.
So here we are again. As is my tradition, I will bring Paper Towns with me again. And just like those other times, I'll probably read it cover to cover yet again. Thinking back to those other times with Paper Towns at one of those tables near a dolphin pool in the shade, I realize that my experiences at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, with that near-spiritual peace, with Paper Towns, was rare stability in this valley. It wasn't just an hour, or an hour and a half, or two hours. It was the entire day. And in fact, it's why we plan to get there before 10 a.m. when they open. They're open from then until 5 p.m. and we're going to be there the entire time. It's one of the few places here that has meant so much to us, and certainly one of the flew consistently reliable places. I don't know yet how the rest of the Mirage might have changed (we considered it our home casino, what with all we had done there before we moved to Las Vegas and afterward, which can be found in that previous linked post), but I'm absolutely sure that the atmosphere of the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat has not changed. It'll be a proper farewell for us. And my copy of Paper Towns will always bear these many happy visits.
This visit is once again courtesy of the Clark County School District, which has on its Teacher Appreciation Week page coupons for various activities, including free admission for a teacher and a guest at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. As with the last two times, the people at the ticket booths only care that you have a CCSD ID and my dad, a high school teacher, does, as well as me and Meridith. So we four will have no trouble getting in.
I think this is mainly for Meridith, who loves dolphins, but it's also for the rest of us because it's quite possibly the most relaxing spot in Las Vegas, the one place I've found here that is complete peace. I like seeing the dolphins, and even glancing at the tigers and other animals in the Secret Garden section in the back, but I love just sitting at a table in the shade, preferably near one of the dolphin pools, reading. And I've done that in all the times we've been there. In fact, this post follows a tradition I started in 2014, which you can read here.
Briefly, back then, I read The Fault in Our Stars, which got me hooked on reading John Green's other novels, and Paper Towns followed, on the day that we were celebrating Meridith's birthday at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, in which she got to paint with the dolphins. Of course, I was there to see that, but in the other blank times during the day, I was reading Paper Towns, sitting exactly where I wanted to sit, reading in one of my favorite places in Las Vegas.
The next time we went there, I brought Paper Towns with me again, and I think by that time, I had my own copy. That next time was before the movie was released in July 2015, and of course I saw that in theaters. And I like the movie as equally as the book.
So here we are again. As is my tradition, I will bring Paper Towns with me again. And just like those other times, I'll probably read it cover to cover yet again. Thinking back to those other times with Paper Towns at one of those tables near a dolphin pool in the shade, I realize that my experiences at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, with that near-spiritual peace, with Paper Towns, was rare stability in this valley. It wasn't just an hour, or an hour and a half, or two hours. It was the entire day. And in fact, it's why we plan to get there before 10 a.m. when they open. They're open from then until 5 p.m. and we're going to be there the entire time. It's one of the few places here that has meant so much to us, and certainly one of the flew consistently reliable places. I don't know yet how the rest of the Mirage might have changed (we considered it our home casino, what with all we had done there before we moved to Las Vegas and afterward, which can be found in that previous linked post), but I'm absolutely sure that the atmosphere of the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat has not changed. It'll be a proper farewell for us. And my copy of Paper Towns will always bear these many happy visits.
Friday, April 28, 2017
My Sacramento Regret
It was early February 2006. I know this because Action!, the satirical, raunchy Hollywood comedy series starring Jay Mohr was being released on DVD by Sony late that month. I was still reviewing DVDs then, and while my dad and I were driving to Sacramento, Mom told me on the phone from Santa Clarita that it had arrived, amidst other talk, such as telling her about the open-air truck loaded down with carrots that had passed us in the right lane.
We were going to Sacramento because Dad was a member of the California Business Education Association (CBEA, which he's rejoined ahead of us moving back to California), and the organization was hosting a day for its members at the state capitol, to tour the building, and meet their representatives, to emphasize to them the importance of business education, especially in such a competitive economy as California has. This was the time of Governor Schwarzenegger, and in fact, as we walked past his offices, the door to the outer office was open and I saw straight through there to him in his office, briefly, before we moved on.
While it was impressive to me to see the state capitol, which I had never done in Tallahassee, in my native Florida, I was taken with Sacramento. We were staying at La Quinta Inn, part of Hotel Row near the skyline of downtown Sacramento. Across the way was Restaurant Row, convenient for the weary traveler who doesn't want to venture far on the first night.
Now, I don't remember if this was after what I'm about to tell you, but Dad decided to stay in that night at La Quinta Inn, flipping through the channels, and he had stopped at Crumbs, that Fred Savage sitcom on ABC that centered around the family restaurant, with Savage a Hollywood screenwriter who returns home. I decided to walk the grounds near our room and soon climbed up to the second floor landing, then the third floor landing.
When I reached the third floor landing, I was stopped short by complete peace, which I'd never known in Santa Clarita, and, to me, Los Angeles doesn't have it either.
My view was of the Sacramento skyline towards 10 p.m. And to this day, it's the only city I've been in at that hour that gently encouraged me to relax, to not worry about anything. It seemed to say that whatever you needed to do could wait until morning. Just have tonight all for yourself. I'm not sure I'd want to live in Sacramento, unless it has a strong, sturdy library system (and even then, it gets expensive in that region), but I do want to see it again, even though the Rusty Duck, the wood-paneled, fireplace-crackling restaurant where CBEA members met has long since closed. But I do wonder, idly, if the diner is still there.
So maybe it was the night before the capitol tour and the visit to our state representatives. Dad had learned from a fellow CBEA member about a barbecue joint on the outskirts of Sacramento that was worth it. He likes barbecue, I like barbecue. So let's go.
That night, we set out to find it. We drove over railroad tracks, past sprawling electrical substations, and to an area we circled, drove away from, and drove back to twice, as if we couldn't believe it, and weren't sure.
In an industrial cul-de-sac, past boat parts outside one business on the right, and what may have been a chop shop on the left, or at least a slightly illegitimate car repair business (not a euphemism. It looked somewhat ok), there was the barbecue joint.
Swinging by it and parking for a moment, we could see inside through the door. It was open, but empty, with wooden picnic tables running the length of the room. And there were the white, wide menu boards against the wall above the kitchen. Should we try it? Would it be ok even if no one was eating there?
Dad nixed the idea. And just like any brief Sacramento visitor staying at La Quinta or any other place in Hotel Row, we drove back to Restaurant Row, to what, in memory, has become a nondescript diner.
I had a cheeseburger, which has become lost in the sea of cheeseburgers I've had since then. I don't remember what Dad had. Maybe a salad? That would have been rare. But just like Casa de Fruta in Hollister, the tents of fruits and vegetables and pies and its own small restaurant that we stopped at to pick up a pie, and Hearst Castle, where we toured some of the legendary hilltop property on the way back to Santa Clarita, I still think about that missed-out-on barbecue.
We should have taken a chance. We should have tried it. With that joint being located in such an out-of-the-way place, perhaps the owners were freakishly devoted to barbecue, and that would have made it a religious experience. Or maybe not, but at least we would have tried it.
Maybe it's still there, maybe not. Many an idle moment at work, I've Googled "Sacramento" and "barbecue," hoping to find it, or at least a Yelp page. But that was 2006, before Yelp. Could that joint have even survived in such a location? CJ's Barbecue in Ventura does, because it's part of a cluster of shopping centers down Victoria Avenue. That's easy. It has the social infrastructure.
But this joint, this Sacramento or near-Sacramento joint, 11 years later? A part of me hopes so, so that I can have my chance in years to come.
But it's likely that I'll always be sitting in that car, looking in, and then we drive away again. Again and again. In my imagination, I could proclaim it the very best barbecue I never had. But it will always remain a possibility. What could have been. I wish we had.
We were going to Sacramento because Dad was a member of the California Business Education Association (CBEA, which he's rejoined ahead of us moving back to California), and the organization was hosting a day for its members at the state capitol, to tour the building, and meet their representatives, to emphasize to them the importance of business education, especially in such a competitive economy as California has. This was the time of Governor Schwarzenegger, and in fact, as we walked past his offices, the door to the outer office was open and I saw straight through there to him in his office, briefly, before we moved on.
While it was impressive to me to see the state capitol, which I had never done in Tallahassee, in my native Florida, I was taken with Sacramento. We were staying at La Quinta Inn, part of Hotel Row near the skyline of downtown Sacramento. Across the way was Restaurant Row, convenient for the weary traveler who doesn't want to venture far on the first night.
Now, I don't remember if this was after what I'm about to tell you, but Dad decided to stay in that night at La Quinta Inn, flipping through the channels, and he had stopped at Crumbs, that Fred Savage sitcom on ABC that centered around the family restaurant, with Savage a Hollywood screenwriter who returns home. I decided to walk the grounds near our room and soon climbed up to the second floor landing, then the third floor landing.
When I reached the third floor landing, I was stopped short by complete peace, which I'd never known in Santa Clarita, and, to me, Los Angeles doesn't have it either.
My view was of the Sacramento skyline towards 10 p.m. And to this day, it's the only city I've been in at that hour that gently encouraged me to relax, to not worry about anything. It seemed to say that whatever you needed to do could wait until morning. Just have tonight all for yourself. I'm not sure I'd want to live in Sacramento, unless it has a strong, sturdy library system (and even then, it gets expensive in that region), but I do want to see it again, even though the Rusty Duck, the wood-paneled, fireplace-crackling restaurant where CBEA members met has long since closed. But I do wonder, idly, if the diner is still there.
So maybe it was the night before the capitol tour and the visit to our state representatives. Dad had learned from a fellow CBEA member about a barbecue joint on the outskirts of Sacramento that was worth it. He likes barbecue, I like barbecue. So let's go.
That night, we set out to find it. We drove over railroad tracks, past sprawling electrical substations, and to an area we circled, drove away from, and drove back to twice, as if we couldn't believe it, and weren't sure.
In an industrial cul-de-sac, past boat parts outside one business on the right, and what may have been a chop shop on the left, or at least a slightly illegitimate car repair business (not a euphemism. It looked somewhat ok), there was the barbecue joint.
Swinging by it and parking for a moment, we could see inside through the door. It was open, but empty, with wooden picnic tables running the length of the room. And there were the white, wide menu boards against the wall above the kitchen. Should we try it? Would it be ok even if no one was eating there?
Dad nixed the idea. And just like any brief Sacramento visitor staying at La Quinta or any other place in Hotel Row, we drove back to Restaurant Row, to what, in memory, has become a nondescript diner.
I had a cheeseburger, which has become lost in the sea of cheeseburgers I've had since then. I don't remember what Dad had. Maybe a salad? That would have been rare. But just like Casa de Fruta in Hollister, the tents of fruits and vegetables and pies and its own small restaurant that we stopped at to pick up a pie, and Hearst Castle, where we toured some of the legendary hilltop property on the way back to Santa Clarita, I still think about that missed-out-on barbecue.
We should have taken a chance. We should have tried it. With that joint being located in such an out-of-the-way place, perhaps the owners were freakishly devoted to barbecue, and that would have made it a religious experience. Or maybe not, but at least we would have tried it.
Maybe it's still there, maybe not. Many an idle moment at work, I've Googled "Sacramento" and "barbecue," hoping to find it, or at least a Yelp page. But that was 2006, before Yelp. Could that joint have even survived in such a location? CJ's Barbecue in Ventura does, because it's part of a cluster of shopping centers down Victoria Avenue. That's easy. It has the social infrastructure.
But this joint, this Sacramento or near-Sacramento joint, 11 years later? A part of me hopes so, so that I can have my chance in years to come.
But it's likely that I'll always be sitting in that car, looking in, and then we drive away again. Again and again. In my imagination, I could proclaim it the very best barbecue I never had. But it will always remain a possibility. What could have been. I wish we had.
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Back to a Musical Hobby
Last Monday, the first day back after spring break for the Clark County School District, I looked at my pile of vacation days and, since I'm leaving at the end of the year, I decided to take the remaining Fridays of the school year off. That's 7 of them.
Then, in the middle of last week, I thought, "Well, why not Mondays, too?" That way, I'd have a four-day weekend. Therefore, with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday being the days I'd work, I'd have three days on, four days off. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday would therefore be "Saturday-Saturday-Saturday-Sunday" and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday would be "Monday-Thursday-Friday," likely the only time in my career that I'll be able to do this.
I thought about starting the Mondays off at the beginning of May, but then, you know what? It doesn't matter anyway. Teachers at my school are already counting down to the end of the school year, there's the hassle of the SBAC testing, and in submitting my letter of resignation about two months ago, I've already been replaced. My successor has been hired and is ready for next school year, so I'm old hat. And I can't be sure that these vacation days will transfer to my next job, being that there's a slim chance I'll be part of another public school district. That's way down on my list of jobs I want. I want to be a member of a staff this time, not just working with one person all day.
So taking off Mondays, too, begins tomorrow, the last week of the month. And tomorrow is also the end of my first four-day weekend. In this first weekend, I've finally been able to read a book again in one sitting, the first time in many months (The Calamity Cafe by Gayle Leeson, which was so-so). Then I did it again today with There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, & Many Others by William Daniels. Oh, I want to do this again and again and again with the weeks remaining in which I'll have these four-day weekends, but I can't do it all the time. I have another book to review for BookBrowse, I have to update my resume and scan my letters of recommendation from librarians and my former newspaper editor (This week, I'm also going to contact the first reporter I interned for at The Signal, what with all the tapes I transcribed for him, and ask for a letter of recommendation from him as well), and update my profile on EDJOIN, which educational institutions across the country look at, especially ones in California. Since we're going to be living in Ventura, those are the libraries that I want seeing my information and resume and recommendation letters.
There are also a few movies I want to catch up on, though I've grown restless with those in favor of reading. I have to dig through the many DVDs I've bought sight unseen and pull out what I want to watch this very moment. And it has to be something that really interests me, else I'll be restless again.
But one thing I finally have time for again is a hobby I started when I saw The Cosmopolitan on the Strip going downhill before Deutsche Bank sold it to the Blackstone Group, which has a reputation for buying up properties, revamping them, and selling them off again. That's what's happened to my beloved Cosmopolitan. The digital art, sculptures, paintings, murals, and music were all important in creating a unique, inspiring experience that made you want to explore more of what they had all over, wanting to see that intricate spaceship sculpture by Kris Kuksi on the 3rd floor, after the secret pizza place, down the hall, next to the piano, before those conference rooms, and wanting to go to the Art-O-Mat vending machines to see what different artists there were from across the country with different pieces of block art being sold.
I found out on a visit a few months ago that the art has become an afterthought, most of the flatscreen TVs used for the digital art are gone (save for the ones at the blackjack, roulette, and craps tables, which are used to show football and basketball games), and my dear playlist had changed over to what you hear on FM radio all the time.
So, I'm creating a playlist which, to me, represents the Old Cosmopolitan on the Strip. I listen to KUNV, the University of Nevada Las Vegas's radio station, which Mom has on during the day. Sometimes I hear a piece during the smooth jazz hours that I want to use.
But mainly, I get my titles from the Music Choice Channels on Cox Cable, particularly the Sounds of the Season channel which, when there isn't a holiday like St. Patrick's Day or Mardi Gras or Christmas, they play "The Pulse," which is all dance music, chillwave, dubstep, and other types of electronic music.
So far, I have 10 titles, six from Music Choice, two from M83 (one from their "Oblivion" soundtrack), "Roses" by The Chainsmokers, and my latest favorite, "Walk with Me" by Wamdue Project. I wish I could describe this kind of music better, but all of it recalls for me the Cosmopolitan I happily walked through, imagining owning it all, and keeping it exactly like this. In creating this playlist, I'm also imagining on what floors these songs would have fit, such as what would have worked on the casino floor, what would have worked in the hallway leading to the Wicked Spoon buffet, just before Rose. Rabbit. Lie., what would have sounded right on the shopping/restaurant floor, and what would have worked for the convention hall spaces.
Strangely enough, the last two times I went to Green Valley Ranch, which, to me, is Henderson's only palace, I walked through their vastly remodeled lobby. In the wide, semi-carpeted hallway with the doors looking out on the pool area, leading to the lobby, I heard exactly the playlist I heard at The Cosmopolitan, which makes me think, and even hope, that whoever programmed The Cosmopolitan now works at Green Valley Ranch, that my musical heart and soul lives on.
Even after I move back to Southern California, I'm keeping this playlist with me to also remember the parts of Las Vegas I need for the novel or two, and a play, that I want to write that are set here. Despite the hell many times over that I've been through here, none of these works will rant about Las Vegas nor rail against it. That doesn't fit my characters. There may be a gripe or two in the play, but as for the novels, my characters just exist here, and at the end of one, simply leave, never to return, which is what I'll be doing, too.
And here it is so far, with its working title: The Old Cosmopolitan Las Vegas fantasy playlist.
Then, in the middle of last week, I thought, "Well, why not Mondays, too?" That way, I'd have a four-day weekend. Therefore, with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday being the days I'd work, I'd have three days on, four days off. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday would therefore be "Saturday-Saturday-Saturday-Sunday" and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday would be "Monday-Thursday-Friday," likely the only time in my career that I'll be able to do this.
I thought about starting the Mondays off at the beginning of May, but then, you know what? It doesn't matter anyway. Teachers at my school are already counting down to the end of the school year, there's the hassle of the SBAC testing, and in submitting my letter of resignation about two months ago, I've already been replaced. My successor has been hired and is ready for next school year, so I'm old hat. And I can't be sure that these vacation days will transfer to my next job, being that there's a slim chance I'll be part of another public school district. That's way down on my list of jobs I want. I want to be a member of a staff this time, not just working with one person all day.
So taking off Mondays, too, begins tomorrow, the last week of the month. And tomorrow is also the end of my first four-day weekend. In this first weekend, I've finally been able to read a book again in one sitting, the first time in many months (The Calamity Cafe by Gayle Leeson, which was so-so). Then I did it again today with There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, & Many Others by William Daniels. Oh, I want to do this again and again and again with the weeks remaining in which I'll have these four-day weekends, but I can't do it all the time. I have another book to review for BookBrowse, I have to update my resume and scan my letters of recommendation from librarians and my former newspaper editor (This week, I'm also going to contact the first reporter I interned for at The Signal, what with all the tapes I transcribed for him, and ask for a letter of recommendation from him as well), and update my profile on EDJOIN, which educational institutions across the country look at, especially ones in California. Since we're going to be living in Ventura, those are the libraries that I want seeing my information and resume and recommendation letters.
There are also a few movies I want to catch up on, though I've grown restless with those in favor of reading. I have to dig through the many DVDs I've bought sight unseen and pull out what I want to watch this very moment. And it has to be something that really interests me, else I'll be restless again.
But one thing I finally have time for again is a hobby I started when I saw The Cosmopolitan on the Strip going downhill before Deutsche Bank sold it to the Blackstone Group, which has a reputation for buying up properties, revamping them, and selling them off again. That's what's happened to my beloved Cosmopolitan. The digital art, sculptures, paintings, murals, and music were all important in creating a unique, inspiring experience that made you want to explore more of what they had all over, wanting to see that intricate spaceship sculpture by Kris Kuksi on the 3rd floor, after the secret pizza place, down the hall, next to the piano, before those conference rooms, and wanting to go to the Art-O-Mat vending machines to see what different artists there were from across the country with different pieces of block art being sold.
I found out on a visit a few months ago that the art has become an afterthought, most of the flatscreen TVs used for the digital art are gone (save for the ones at the blackjack, roulette, and craps tables, which are used to show football and basketball games), and my dear playlist had changed over to what you hear on FM radio all the time.
So, I'm creating a playlist which, to me, represents the Old Cosmopolitan on the Strip. I listen to KUNV, the University of Nevada Las Vegas's radio station, which Mom has on during the day. Sometimes I hear a piece during the smooth jazz hours that I want to use.
But mainly, I get my titles from the Music Choice Channels on Cox Cable, particularly the Sounds of the Season channel which, when there isn't a holiday like St. Patrick's Day or Mardi Gras or Christmas, they play "The Pulse," which is all dance music, chillwave, dubstep, and other types of electronic music.
So far, I have 10 titles, six from Music Choice, two from M83 (one from their "Oblivion" soundtrack), "Roses" by The Chainsmokers, and my latest favorite, "Walk with Me" by Wamdue Project. I wish I could describe this kind of music better, but all of it recalls for me the Cosmopolitan I happily walked through, imagining owning it all, and keeping it exactly like this. In creating this playlist, I'm also imagining on what floors these songs would have fit, such as what would have worked on the casino floor, what would have worked in the hallway leading to the Wicked Spoon buffet, just before Rose. Rabbit. Lie., what would have sounded right on the shopping/restaurant floor, and what would have worked for the convention hall spaces.
Strangely enough, the last two times I went to Green Valley Ranch, which, to me, is Henderson's only palace, I walked through their vastly remodeled lobby. In the wide, semi-carpeted hallway with the doors looking out on the pool area, leading to the lobby, I heard exactly the playlist I heard at The Cosmopolitan, which makes me think, and even hope, that whoever programmed The Cosmopolitan now works at Green Valley Ranch, that my musical heart and soul lives on.
Even after I move back to Southern California, I'm keeping this playlist with me to also remember the parts of Las Vegas I need for the novel or two, and a play, that I want to write that are set here. Despite the hell many times over that I've been through here, none of these works will rant about Las Vegas nor rail against it. That doesn't fit my characters. There may be a gripe or two in the play, but as for the novels, my characters just exist here, and at the end of one, simply leave, never to return, which is what I'll be doing, too.
And here it is so far, with its working title: The Old Cosmopolitan Las Vegas fantasy playlist.
Monday, April 3, 2017
The Bridge to Southern California
In the next few months, my family and I will be moving back to Southern California, from Las Vegas, though not to Santa Clarita, where we lived for nine years before we moved to Las Vegas. This time, it's Ventura, where the beach life is less crowded than, say, San Diego, which works for my father, who wants to retire at or near the beach. Based on the prices we've seen for beach houses and even condos on the beach, it'll probably be near the beach, particularly one street my parents found near Ventura College, with beautiful gardens in the front yard so many of the houses, and a Little Free Library at one of them. One of the comforting things my parents found out in Ventura was that one of the employees at the Welcome Center in downtown said that she's a third-generation Venturan. Historical longevity. That's what I seek. Another thing is that the owners of the house with the Little Free Library, in a profile online about it said that they've lived in that house for 44 years, and no one has taken pictures of it. But with the Little Free Library, people stop by all the time to see it.
44 years. After living in an area where one of the biggest stories last year, broadcast live at 2 in the morning, was the implosion of the Riviera, I need to know that I'm following the many who have lived faithfully in one place. Perhaps I can find my place there, too. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm cautious. I have some minute hopes, but I'm leaving them to the side until I see more, until I learn more, until I experience more.
However, this doesn't count only for Ventura. It counts for the whole of Southern California, which I had for nine years, but didn't really think as fondly of it as I do now. First, I was in my 20s during those nine years, so I didn't know a whole hell of a lot back then. What was I to think when I was busy attending classes at College of the Canyons, interning (and then being an editor for a time) at the Signal newspaper, and at first being bored by the usual Friday errands of going to the Pavilions supermarket and then Sprouts, and on Sundays delivering empty bottles to the Target in Golden Valley for the CRV money back. It turns out, after four years in Las Vegas, that those were among the most stable times we had.
When we moved from South Florida to Southern California in 2003, we went sharply from one world to another. Different coasts, immensely different lives, overwhelming freeways. There was no bridge from one to the other, no transition to make it easier to know and get used to. Same with going from Southern California to Las Vegas. Each region keeps to itself.
There is, however, some small part of the Las Vegas valley that gives to those who are leaving. Maybe it's something that was meant to be eventually discovered, something that has always been in our subconscious. So yes, I know about coffee, as I am part of a coffee-drinking family. Not to an extreme degree, but me, I'm a hardcore tea drinker. French vanilla iced coffee from McDonald's, sure. Something every once in a while from Starbucks, yeah. But not a Starbucks devotee. Not a household with a constantly burbling coffee machine, or even a Keurig. I have at least 100 teabags in one of the kitchen cabinets, but nothing coffee-related. That would be my mom, who has Trader Joe's Instant Coffee Packets in the cabinet. I have a hint of coffee in my daily memories, but not total, undying devotion.
And yet, as is said, it's never too late. It wasn't Starbucks that did it, nor a certain variety that McDonald's introduced, nor what any other coffee place in Las Vegas has. It was an unassuming counter at the 99 Ranch Market on Maryland Parkway, an Asian market that caters to all different cultures there, and at that particular counter, they were offering Vietnamese iced coffee, which according to some hasty research, either a dark French roast is used, or a Vietnamese-grown French roast. Combined with sweetened condensed milk, it is my new promised land. Besides books, it's what I live for, although I don't pursue it often here because we don't live near 99 Ranch Market, and there's no other places like that vegetarian counter near me.
We went this past Saturday because we were thinking about where to eat out, and Seafood City, the Filipino supermarket across the street from 99 Ranch came to mind, especially its Jollibee fried chicken joint, which is far better than KFC can ever hope to be now. So we ate there, and then came a visit to Goodwill because my mom wanted to see if there were any tea light holders, as we're into those fake tea lights, battery-powered or otherwise. Turns out that Goodwill had a 50% off the entire store sale on April Fool's Day, so we took advantage of that for sure, even though we're moving in the coming months. Yet all that we got will fit nicely into our new household.
99 Ranch Market came after, and this was my second time having that Vietnamese iced coffee, second time in two weeks. I'm a slow learner, and it took my sister to introduce me to it. Some can meditate sitting cross-legged in total silence, but I can't. This coffee is my meditation, my calm, my zen. I've actually gone back on my diet faithfully so I can have the coffee a few more times before we go.
And yet, this is a strange city. At the same time it's kicking you in the stomach, making you double over in all kinds of pain, be it having to live in an apartment complex with more batshit crazy neighbors, or a school district that's hard to work in, it actually recognizes what you're going through, though not often enough. It only gives you a little bit of relief at an instance and then ignores you the rest of the time. I think in this case, perhaps knowing we're leaving, it threw up its hands and gave me something I can take with me to Southern California, a bridge to Southern California as it were. Because after my first time of having that Vietnamese iced coffee, I began doing research on where I could find Vietnamese iced coffee in Southern California, and found a few places, although I will not go to Rosemead. And someone told me that the Westminster area of Orange County has Vietnamese iced coffee on practically every corner. I'm there.
I just never expected this generally heartless valley to offer anything like that, to offer a bridge like this, to get me into learning at least a little more about my new area right away. Not as much as when I studied Henderson, because with all I read about Henderson, I thought it was going to be nice, going to be community-oriented, and it was nothing like that. Whatever I find about Ventura will be when I'm there, when I'm tooling around on my new bicycle. I know about CJ's Barbecue, I know about Andria's Seafood Restaurant at Ventura Harbor Village, I know about Ventura Harbor Village itself, and Salzer's music and video stores, and a few more things, but I'm only digging insofar as the job I want and where we're going to live. Everything else can come after.
I appreciate what the Las Vegas Valley has done in this, in making Vietnamese iced coffee my new heaven, in giving me something to look to in our next place. But once I cross that bridge to there, I'm burning it. I'm never coming back to Nevada for anything, nor do I want to. I hope Las Vegas understands at least that. I think it will.
44 years. After living in an area where one of the biggest stories last year, broadcast live at 2 in the morning, was the implosion of the Riviera, I need to know that I'm following the many who have lived faithfully in one place. Perhaps I can find my place there, too. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm cautious. I have some minute hopes, but I'm leaving them to the side until I see more, until I learn more, until I experience more.
However, this doesn't count only for Ventura. It counts for the whole of Southern California, which I had for nine years, but didn't really think as fondly of it as I do now. First, I was in my 20s during those nine years, so I didn't know a whole hell of a lot back then. What was I to think when I was busy attending classes at College of the Canyons, interning (and then being an editor for a time) at the Signal newspaper, and at first being bored by the usual Friday errands of going to the Pavilions supermarket and then Sprouts, and on Sundays delivering empty bottles to the Target in Golden Valley for the CRV money back. It turns out, after four years in Las Vegas, that those were among the most stable times we had.
When we moved from South Florida to Southern California in 2003, we went sharply from one world to another. Different coasts, immensely different lives, overwhelming freeways. There was no bridge from one to the other, no transition to make it easier to know and get used to. Same with going from Southern California to Las Vegas. Each region keeps to itself.
There is, however, some small part of the Las Vegas valley that gives to those who are leaving. Maybe it's something that was meant to be eventually discovered, something that has always been in our subconscious. So yes, I know about coffee, as I am part of a coffee-drinking family. Not to an extreme degree, but me, I'm a hardcore tea drinker. French vanilla iced coffee from McDonald's, sure. Something every once in a while from Starbucks, yeah. But not a Starbucks devotee. Not a household with a constantly burbling coffee machine, or even a Keurig. I have at least 100 teabags in one of the kitchen cabinets, but nothing coffee-related. That would be my mom, who has Trader Joe's Instant Coffee Packets in the cabinet. I have a hint of coffee in my daily memories, but not total, undying devotion.
And yet, as is said, it's never too late. It wasn't Starbucks that did it, nor a certain variety that McDonald's introduced, nor what any other coffee place in Las Vegas has. It was an unassuming counter at the 99 Ranch Market on Maryland Parkway, an Asian market that caters to all different cultures there, and at that particular counter, they were offering Vietnamese iced coffee, which according to some hasty research, either a dark French roast is used, or a Vietnamese-grown French roast. Combined with sweetened condensed milk, it is my new promised land. Besides books, it's what I live for, although I don't pursue it often here because we don't live near 99 Ranch Market, and there's no other places like that vegetarian counter near me.
We went this past Saturday because we were thinking about where to eat out, and Seafood City, the Filipino supermarket across the street from 99 Ranch came to mind, especially its Jollibee fried chicken joint, which is far better than KFC can ever hope to be now. So we ate there, and then came a visit to Goodwill because my mom wanted to see if there were any tea light holders, as we're into those fake tea lights, battery-powered or otherwise. Turns out that Goodwill had a 50% off the entire store sale on April Fool's Day, so we took advantage of that for sure, even though we're moving in the coming months. Yet all that we got will fit nicely into our new household.
99 Ranch Market came after, and this was my second time having that Vietnamese iced coffee, second time in two weeks. I'm a slow learner, and it took my sister to introduce me to it. Some can meditate sitting cross-legged in total silence, but I can't. This coffee is my meditation, my calm, my zen. I've actually gone back on my diet faithfully so I can have the coffee a few more times before we go.
And yet, this is a strange city. At the same time it's kicking you in the stomach, making you double over in all kinds of pain, be it having to live in an apartment complex with more batshit crazy neighbors, or a school district that's hard to work in, it actually recognizes what you're going through, though not often enough. It only gives you a little bit of relief at an instance and then ignores you the rest of the time. I think in this case, perhaps knowing we're leaving, it threw up its hands and gave me something I can take with me to Southern California, a bridge to Southern California as it were. Because after my first time of having that Vietnamese iced coffee, I began doing research on where I could find Vietnamese iced coffee in Southern California, and found a few places, although I will not go to Rosemead. And someone told me that the Westminster area of Orange County has Vietnamese iced coffee on practically every corner. I'm there.
I just never expected this generally heartless valley to offer anything like that, to offer a bridge like this, to get me into learning at least a little more about my new area right away. Not as much as when I studied Henderson, because with all I read about Henderson, I thought it was going to be nice, going to be community-oriented, and it was nothing like that. Whatever I find about Ventura will be when I'm there, when I'm tooling around on my new bicycle. I know about CJ's Barbecue, I know about Andria's Seafood Restaurant at Ventura Harbor Village, I know about Ventura Harbor Village itself, and Salzer's music and video stores, and a few more things, but I'm only digging insofar as the job I want and where we're going to live. Everything else can come after.
I appreciate what the Las Vegas Valley has done in this, in making Vietnamese iced coffee my new heaven, in giving me something to look to in our next place. But once I cross that bridge to there, I'm burning it. I'm never coming back to Nevada for anything, nor do I want to. I hope Las Vegas understands at least that. I think it will.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Word Search Reduction
Each word, one at a time. Anchovies. Basil. Chorizo. Mozzarella. Sausage.
These are some of the words thought of by this particular, nameless word search creator, for this puzzle titled "Pizza Toppings", in a little, squat, thick black book of 300 word search puzzles, bought at the developing ruins of the only closing Kmart thus far in Nevada, here in Henderson, across from the shopping center where we bring our dogs to be groomed, as we did this morning, and then went to Kmart while they were being groomed.
Just like boiling pork bones for broth for tonkotsu ramen, word search puzzles reduce a wide range of topics to their essence through single words that describe them. In a puzzle about classical music, it's "alto," "canon," "cadenza," "chorus," "clarinet," "rubato," "scale," "score," and so on. Of course, these words have been chosen for this word search puzzle, but a number of factors could factor into it. For example, a puzzle about dance mentions the bunny hop, the butterfly, the can-can, the jitterbug, the jive, and the pas de deux, among others. It could be that the puzzle creator came up with these words ahead of time, and either through quick research, or a love of dance, came up with these words. We never know who word puzzle creators are, or what their interests are, not like New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz, or the writers for Jeopardy!, whose biographies are on the official website and interviews with a few of them can always be found online. You get a sense of who Will Shortz is and what his interests run to. Same with the Jeopardy! writers.
I don't know if one person came up with all the puzzles for this book, titled "Amazing Wordsearch." I don't know where their loyalties lie in this topic. I don't know if in the drinks puzzle, they love egg nog or they love claret, or they love both equally. I do know that a word search puzzle isn't just about searching for the words. The puzzle about birds of California, apropos for me now, lists the smew, the merlin, the chukar, the dunlin, the gadwell. Obviously they're birds, but what kind of birds are they? Such spellings as smew would make me curious enough to find out exactly what they are, while being amused at such unique spellings.
There's even a puzzle about governors of Florida, my home state. There's Jeb Bush, and Charlie Crist, and Lawton Chiles, who was known as Walkin' Lawton for the walk-throughout-the-state campaigns that he undertook. I look at the names, and the few I recognize, where was I in Florida and who was I when they were in office? These puzzles, read slowly enough for names and places and activities and types of music trigger memories, too. It makes a word puzzle even more interesting, beyond wondering who's behind all of it. Whoever it is, or if it was a small staff, they know how to choose interesting topics 300 times over, and actually have the words relate to the topic, instead of how other word puzzle books include words that don't even relate to the topic.
This is also the sturdiest word search puzzle book I've come across. The covers are made of thicker paper and the pages are slightly thicker than your average word puzzle book as well. This is not the kind of word puzzle book to simply start and roll with all the way through. This is a word puzzle book for a road trip, even one or two or more coming up in the next few months to Ventura, California to see about jobs and where to live.
The last trip we took from Nevada to California, we stopped at the Grewal Travel Center rest stop in Baker, and I bought two Big Hero 6 word search puzzle books, one of which I finished about an hour and a half before we got to the Mission Valley Resort near-hovel in San Diego. Then, when we were in Ventura, I bought a hidden-word word puzzle book at a Walgreens there.
This time, I have this one. This is all I need for word search puzzles on the next trip and perhaps the ones after that, because I don't think I'll get all 300 done. I always have books with me too, after all. But it'll also be perfect for the room at La Quinta Inn, when the TV's on and there's nothing on TV, although that may not be entirely true, now that I rediscovered the Los Angeles PBS station on the last trip, and how vastly better that is than the Las Vegas PBS station I've had for four years. If a PBS station is reflective of its area, then Las Vegas sucks by that alone! Not to say that L.A. is ever-phenomenal, what with the freeway traffic and the vapid part of the population, but it's still more interesting.
For sure, I can go back to that rack at the Grewal Travel Center, look at the puzzle books they have, and then leave them alone. I have this now. I have wordy creativity. And nothing repeats.
These are some of the words thought of by this particular, nameless word search creator, for this puzzle titled "Pizza Toppings", in a little, squat, thick black book of 300 word search puzzles, bought at the developing ruins of the only closing Kmart thus far in Nevada, here in Henderson, across from the shopping center where we bring our dogs to be groomed, as we did this morning, and then went to Kmart while they were being groomed.
Just like boiling pork bones for broth for tonkotsu ramen, word search puzzles reduce a wide range of topics to their essence through single words that describe them. In a puzzle about classical music, it's "alto," "canon," "cadenza," "chorus," "clarinet," "rubato," "scale," "score," and so on. Of course, these words have been chosen for this word search puzzle, but a number of factors could factor into it. For example, a puzzle about dance mentions the bunny hop, the butterfly, the can-can, the jitterbug, the jive, and the pas de deux, among others. It could be that the puzzle creator came up with these words ahead of time, and either through quick research, or a love of dance, came up with these words. We never know who word puzzle creators are, or what their interests are, not like New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz, or the writers for Jeopardy!, whose biographies are on the official website and interviews with a few of them can always be found online. You get a sense of who Will Shortz is and what his interests run to. Same with the Jeopardy! writers.
I don't know if one person came up with all the puzzles for this book, titled "Amazing Wordsearch." I don't know where their loyalties lie in this topic. I don't know if in the drinks puzzle, they love egg nog or they love claret, or they love both equally. I do know that a word search puzzle isn't just about searching for the words. The puzzle about birds of California, apropos for me now, lists the smew, the merlin, the chukar, the dunlin, the gadwell. Obviously they're birds, but what kind of birds are they? Such spellings as smew would make me curious enough to find out exactly what they are, while being amused at such unique spellings.
There's even a puzzle about governors of Florida, my home state. There's Jeb Bush, and Charlie Crist, and Lawton Chiles, who was known as Walkin' Lawton for the walk-throughout-the-state campaigns that he undertook. I look at the names, and the few I recognize, where was I in Florida and who was I when they were in office? These puzzles, read slowly enough for names and places and activities and types of music trigger memories, too. It makes a word puzzle even more interesting, beyond wondering who's behind all of it. Whoever it is, or if it was a small staff, they know how to choose interesting topics 300 times over, and actually have the words relate to the topic, instead of how other word puzzle books include words that don't even relate to the topic.
This is also the sturdiest word search puzzle book I've come across. The covers are made of thicker paper and the pages are slightly thicker than your average word puzzle book as well. This is not the kind of word puzzle book to simply start and roll with all the way through. This is a word puzzle book for a road trip, even one or two or more coming up in the next few months to Ventura, California to see about jobs and where to live.
The last trip we took from Nevada to California, we stopped at the Grewal Travel Center rest stop in Baker, and I bought two Big Hero 6 word search puzzle books, one of which I finished about an hour and a half before we got to the Mission Valley Resort near-hovel in San Diego. Then, when we were in Ventura, I bought a hidden-word word puzzle book at a Walgreens there.
This time, I have this one. This is all I need for word search puzzles on the next trip and perhaps the ones after that, because I don't think I'll get all 300 done. I always have books with me too, after all. But it'll also be perfect for the room at La Quinta Inn, when the TV's on and there's nothing on TV, although that may not be entirely true, now that I rediscovered the Los Angeles PBS station on the last trip, and how vastly better that is than the Las Vegas PBS station I've had for four years. If a PBS station is reflective of its area, then Las Vegas sucks by that alone! Not to say that L.A. is ever-phenomenal, what with the freeway traffic and the vapid part of the population, but it's still more interesting.
For sure, I can go back to that rack at the Grewal Travel Center, look at the puzzle books they have, and then leave them alone. I have this now. I have wordy creativity. And nothing repeats.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Four Taxing Years for Roast Pork
Factor in the rush to get to a mobile home park set back from the heart of Las Vegas for a teaching job, my father's teaching job, beginning very soon, from a house-looking condo in Saugus, California, in the Santa Clarita Valley that went for $430,000 when purchased in 2004, and left behind for a little under $200,000 in 2012, just to leave.
Add in that frustrating struggle to apply to be a substitute anything in the Clark County School District, how many months and phone calls and resubmitting documents that were correct the first time, before finally being accepted in January of 2013.
There was that terrible first job at that elementary school closer to the gloomy heart of Las Vegas, that poorer heart than what the Strip lets on.
That vicious elementary school librarian who clearly hated her job and lashed out at anyone with even the slightest notion of being happy in a library, including students, not too different from the full-time job there is now, as an aide to the same kind of elementary school librarian.
Remember to pile on that first apartment in Henderson, a year after the mobile home park in Vegas. The neighbors upstairs who smoked inside, and the neighbors next door who smoked inside, and the smoke that came through the vents, and the front office that claimed they couldn't do anything about it, or wouldn't. People are free to do whatever they want inside their apartments, they said. Who cares about the health of those affected by it? It could have been one of the things that led to the cancer that Dad has now nearly fought off entirely.
Remember the second apartment, going south on Green Valley Parkway, billing itself a "country club" when it was obviously nothing of the sort. That first apartment there with the noisy kids from upstairs screaming around on the grass in front of our windows, who used our car as a scooter ramp and scratched it up. Another front office that wouldn't do anything about it except offer us another unit, a bungalow, almost directly across the street from that current apartment.
The bungalow. Drafty. Terrible that winter. Badly-installed, trash-quality carpet that got too dirty too fast. Leaks all over the place, including from the overhead air-conditioning unit next to the washer and dryer. 11 leaks. All the maintenance guys that trooped through denied that anything was wrong, even the 11th time. And then the air conditioning broke down the night before the hottest day of the year, and it took them hours to fix it enough the next morning, into the afternoon.
The apartment now. The same complex as that secondhand smoke apartment. The front of the complex now, although the back was better because you couldn't hear the Green Valley Parkway traffic at all, only see it from a distance.
It's not much better here now. The upstairs neighbors who stomp around, and we can hear them in surround sound down here. Maybe they're pissed that the apartment we took, the woman upstairs hoped that her granddaughter could move in below her with her great-grandson.
Oh, the great-grandson, the tyke, who the grandmother and others in the family have turned into a little asshole just like them. The most this complex did this time was replace their worn flooring so that less noise could be heard from down here. It only made all that noise much clearer.
The shitty jobs. That first full-time year for me at that elementary school near Tropicana and Boulder with the psychotic principal who would scream at the staff about anything, even the most innocent thing. The same principal who screwed with my dad's payroll after he, a resource room teacher, and I left that school and he moved on to teaching again in high school for the first time in 30 years. People in Las Vegas cause only headaches, strife, and much undue stress.
I was a resource room aide at that elementary school. I'm a library aide at this elementary school here in Henderson, which I always wanted to be. But I burned out of this job back in September, the beginning of my second year there. If I had been working with an infinitely better, vastly more dedicated, highly qualified elementary school librarian, I would have burned out a year or two later, and gracefully.
I can't see hawking Charlotte's Web for the rest of my career. I want to go higher the next time. I know now, completely, what kind of libraries are home.
After all this, with one foot out Nevada's door, pointing to California, were these four years worth it to reach the one thing that was as close to heaven as I will ever get here (The Cosmopolitan, formerly my favorite hotel-casino on the Strip, would have been that, if it had kept the open, welcoming, cool artistic vibe it fostered for five years before it was sold off)?
At #1 Hawaiian Barbecue on South Eastern Avenue, across from Walmart, all next to the back end of McCarran International Airport, I've always been a menu wanderer. BBQ mix one time, with beef, short ribs, and chicken; the Chicken Lover plate another time with chicken katsu, BBQ chicken and mochiko chicken. I did try the Hawaiian BBQ beef plate another time, and I think loco moco was what I had the first time we went there, not that I hadn't had enough of it already with L&L Hawaiian Barbecue near that mobile home park that first year.
I never felt as attached to anything as my mother and sister are to ahi poke, and seaweed salad for Mom. I always went with whatever struck me in the moment.
Yesterday, I zeroed in on roast pork. Compared to how hard they push chicken katsu and and the barbecue offerings, it seemed like an out-of-the-way menu item, and I always like walking quietly past the rush.
Loco moco has gravy all over it, which is fine. That's just one element and there's no element of it that rises above another. The hamburger steak, the eggs, the rice, they all work together.
In Hawaiian culture, it seems, brown gravy goes over roast pork, too. You can use the rice to soak it up, along with any juices from the roast pork. But, to me, not that much gravy is necessary. To me, it feels like an insult to Hawaii to insist that, in much the same way it would be to jump behind the grill at a Benihana and insist to the chefs that "I've got this." This is Hawaii. This is who they are. I respect that. But, I suppose, being in Las Vegas, and hours and thousands of miles by plane from Hawaii, it shouldn't be as much of a factor.
In other words, the roast pork at #1 Hawaiian Barbecue is a revelation. I've since learned that the crust of a roast pork is the crackling, but to me, this wasn't so much crackling. Perhaps because there was so much brown gravy all over it, it softened the crispness of the crackling. Even so, there is a romantic confluence of flavors in the crackling alone that is merely the introduction to beautiful, beautiful pork, beautifully colored, beautifully roasted in the oven, to the exact point where you just have to touch the meat with a fork and it separates into heavenly layers.
I know photos would do it more justice, but I wonder: Having bowed down to the revelatory temple that is this roast pork, was it worth these four years to get to the point where I had this roast pork? Does it make up for the Lundys, who were diagonal from us in the mobile home park, fighting all the time loudly enough for a block of the mobile homes around us to hear it? Does it lessen the sheer number of police that always showed up in the complex of the noisy-kid apartment and the bungalow? Does it make up for The Cosmopolitan truly becoming a shell of its former self? In other words, does it make all the crap that we went through bearable in hindsight, even forgivable?
It doesn't. Not by a mile, not by infinity. This is not a friendly city for anyone. This is where people who can't make it anywhere else go. This is where those who would be fired within a week at any other school district in the country can reign supreme here. This is where various services can be neglectful in their individual missions, and nothing of consequence will come of it. The neighbors you do know in passing you would not want to know any further because they're making so much goddamn noise upstairs, and it seems impossible that they actually sleep. It's where apartment complexes can also be neglectful, and unscrupulous, and lie to your face, and nothing will happen to them either. No real apologies from them. No consequences either.
If it hadn't been here in Las Vegas, I probably would have found this roast pork in another form somewhere else. But I wouldn't have found it like this. I might have eaten it somewhere else, found it good, and then moved on without giving it a second thought. But after four years of these hardships and so much neglect, being knocked around left and right by so much shit in a given week, to find this even after all of that is incredible. To even recognize something as phenomenal as this after four years of shit stew gives me hope that I can recover all of my true self after we leave Las Vegas. And, as Sheryl Crow sings, "And I won't be back. No, no. No I won't be back." I've listened to that song for years, since it's on my favorite album, "Tuesday Night Music Club," but only in the past year have I fully understood it. And related to it.
It's because of The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn that I've become more interested in architecture and interior design. I appreciate that. I loved seeing Jeff Bridges, one of my heroes, live at Santa Fe Station one year. I'll never forget that. I'll also never forget Lied Library at UNLV and the Boulder City Library, two libraries I would live in if I could. And especially not the Pinball Hall of Fame, with its extremely rare Pinball Circus prototype machine, one of only two in the world, the other residing overseas, which is partly an inspiration for a novel I want to write.
But whenever I got home from these experiences, back to the mobile home park, or the secondhand smoke apartment, or the bungalow, I'd think to myself, "This is all there is?" Walking around The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn, seeing such inspiring elegance, or walking amongst the stacks of Lied Library and the Boulder City Library, and knowing that that's where I belong for the rest of my life, it was hard to land back at home and feel nothing of any of it then. None of it carried over to my daily life. It was still a grind. The feeling like a balloon blowing up inside me when I was at The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn, and even at Green Valley Ranch (which I call Henderson's only palace), never was there at work, nor even at my local library, where I still volunteer after three years. Was it that I couldn't make it happen in those places like I could at The Cosmopolitan or Lied Library? Or is it that where I lived and worked each day could not possibly compare to those sights?
However, the roast pork from #1 Hawaiian Barbecue stays with me. It's been two days and it's still on my mind, and it will always be on my mind. Not always as big as it is now. There are other things to do in my life after all, including more writing, and definitely more reading, including poems, which I discovered are a tonic for when you're in between books and get frustrated at not every book working from the start after you've finished a really great one. I've discovered that I get cranky afterward.
I want to know all about the different ways of roast pork, how it tastes elsewhere, certainly what recipe would work for me if I decide to make it at home one day. Not here, but after we move. Perhaps the roast pork is a culmination of everything I've loved in Las Vegas, while still loathing the entire city and the entire valley. Maybe it has all led up to this. But what an awful path to get here. Nevertheless, this is what I'll take with me from Las Vegas. Like that slice of pumpkin pie I had at Six Flags Magic Mountain on the day of free admission for the Holiday Toy Drive many years ago that I'm still searching for elsewhere, this will be with me as strongly as that.
It's not all that I'm taking with me of Las Vegas. There's a book of short stories I want to write that's set in Las Vegas proper, and a novel that goes between Henderson and Las Vegas. I'm sketching out the preliminary emotions for all the stories here, as well as research I need, so I can still write it from where I go next, and still be able to recall those feelings, at least the good ones I had in the places I liked. I believe, though, that you can only write about the Las Vegas you lived, either as a tourist or a resident. I'm sick of those journalists who swoop into Las Vegas for two or three nights, make blanket statements and assumptions about the city that are supposed to stretch backwards and forwards, and then leave. Make statements and assumptions in your moments, and only your moments. Don't speak for everyone. Me, anything I write about Las Vegas in the future, all fiction, will be set between 2012 and wherever I stop in 2017. Well, maybe not, because I don't like what Las Vegas is becoming with the corporations on the Strip now charging residents for parking, and how the quality of many places on the Strip have precipitously fallen. So probably 2012 to about August 2016, before The Cosmopolitan as I knew it ended. But that's all. I won't write about Las Vegas in the 1950s, I won't write about Las Vegas a year or two before I got here. Only when I got here, only based on what I experienced, what I knew every day.
Perhaps the roast pork, in the final few times I'll inevitably have it again, and in memory, will be a conduit to all this. Back in California, I can think about that roast pork (which, if we don't go back to #1 Hawaiian Barbecue before my birthday, if we're still here by then, will be my birthday dinner) and immediately be reminded of all the good experiences I did have here, that I can use for my own work.
Over the next weeks, I may delve into those experiences, as it feels like the time for reflection before departure. Even though I'm definitely less happy than when my family and I moved here, I am grateful for the experience I've had at work and volunteering at my local library that has gotten me to the point where I do qualify for at least one library position where we're going next. But what else have I gotten out of these four years that has nothing to do with the continuous problems we deal with here? That's what I really want to examine closely. You know, before relying on masterful roast pork as a gateway to it.
Add in that frustrating struggle to apply to be a substitute anything in the Clark County School District, how many months and phone calls and resubmitting documents that were correct the first time, before finally being accepted in January of 2013.
There was that terrible first job at that elementary school closer to the gloomy heart of Las Vegas, that poorer heart than what the Strip lets on.
That vicious elementary school librarian who clearly hated her job and lashed out at anyone with even the slightest notion of being happy in a library, including students, not too different from the full-time job there is now, as an aide to the same kind of elementary school librarian.
Remember to pile on that first apartment in Henderson, a year after the mobile home park in Vegas. The neighbors upstairs who smoked inside, and the neighbors next door who smoked inside, and the smoke that came through the vents, and the front office that claimed they couldn't do anything about it, or wouldn't. People are free to do whatever they want inside their apartments, they said. Who cares about the health of those affected by it? It could have been one of the things that led to the cancer that Dad has now nearly fought off entirely.
Remember the second apartment, going south on Green Valley Parkway, billing itself a "country club" when it was obviously nothing of the sort. That first apartment there with the noisy kids from upstairs screaming around on the grass in front of our windows, who used our car as a scooter ramp and scratched it up. Another front office that wouldn't do anything about it except offer us another unit, a bungalow, almost directly across the street from that current apartment.
The bungalow. Drafty. Terrible that winter. Badly-installed, trash-quality carpet that got too dirty too fast. Leaks all over the place, including from the overhead air-conditioning unit next to the washer and dryer. 11 leaks. All the maintenance guys that trooped through denied that anything was wrong, even the 11th time. And then the air conditioning broke down the night before the hottest day of the year, and it took them hours to fix it enough the next morning, into the afternoon.
The apartment now. The same complex as that secondhand smoke apartment. The front of the complex now, although the back was better because you couldn't hear the Green Valley Parkway traffic at all, only see it from a distance.
It's not much better here now. The upstairs neighbors who stomp around, and we can hear them in surround sound down here. Maybe they're pissed that the apartment we took, the woman upstairs hoped that her granddaughter could move in below her with her great-grandson.
Oh, the great-grandson, the tyke, who the grandmother and others in the family have turned into a little asshole just like them. The most this complex did this time was replace their worn flooring so that less noise could be heard from down here. It only made all that noise much clearer.
The shitty jobs. That first full-time year for me at that elementary school near Tropicana and Boulder with the psychotic principal who would scream at the staff about anything, even the most innocent thing. The same principal who screwed with my dad's payroll after he, a resource room teacher, and I left that school and he moved on to teaching again in high school for the first time in 30 years. People in Las Vegas cause only headaches, strife, and much undue stress.
I was a resource room aide at that elementary school. I'm a library aide at this elementary school here in Henderson, which I always wanted to be. But I burned out of this job back in September, the beginning of my second year there. If I had been working with an infinitely better, vastly more dedicated, highly qualified elementary school librarian, I would have burned out a year or two later, and gracefully.
I can't see hawking Charlotte's Web for the rest of my career. I want to go higher the next time. I know now, completely, what kind of libraries are home.
After all this, with one foot out Nevada's door, pointing to California, were these four years worth it to reach the one thing that was as close to heaven as I will ever get here (The Cosmopolitan, formerly my favorite hotel-casino on the Strip, would have been that, if it had kept the open, welcoming, cool artistic vibe it fostered for five years before it was sold off)?
At #1 Hawaiian Barbecue on South Eastern Avenue, across from Walmart, all next to the back end of McCarran International Airport, I've always been a menu wanderer. BBQ mix one time, with beef, short ribs, and chicken; the Chicken Lover plate another time with chicken katsu, BBQ chicken and mochiko chicken. I did try the Hawaiian BBQ beef plate another time, and I think loco moco was what I had the first time we went there, not that I hadn't had enough of it already with L&L Hawaiian Barbecue near that mobile home park that first year.
I never felt as attached to anything as my mother and sister are to ahi poke, and seaweed salad for Mom. I always went with whatever struck me in the moment.
Yesterday, I zeroed in on roast pork. Compared to how hard they push chicken katsu and and the barbecue offerings, it seemed like an out-of-the-way menu item, and I always like walking quietly past the rush.
Loco moco has gravy all over it, which is fine. That's just one element and there's no element of it that rises above another. The hamburger steak, the eggs, the rice, they all work together.
In Hawaiian culture, it seems, brown gravy goes over roast pork, too. You can use the rice to soak it up, along with any juices from the roast pork. But, to me, not that much gravy is necessary. To me, it feels like an insult to Hawaii to insist that, in much the same way it would be to jump behind the grill at a Benihana and insist to the chefs that "I've got this." This is Hawaii. This is who they are. I respect that. But, I suppose, being in Las Vegas, and hours and thousands of miles by plane from Hawaii, it shouldn't be as much of a factor.
In other words, the roast pork at #1 Hawaiian Barbecue is a revelation. I've since learned that the crust of a roast pork is the crackling, but to me, this wasn't so much crackling. Perhaps because there was so much brown gravy all over it, it softened the crispness of the crackling. Even so, there is a romantic confluence of flavors in the crackling alone that is merely the introduction to beautiful, beautiful pork, beautifully colored, beautifully roasted in the oven, to the exact point where you just have to touch the meat with a fork and it separates into heavenly layers.
I know photos would do it more justice, but I wonder: Having bowed down to the revelatory temple that is this roast pork, was it worth these four years to get to the point where I had this roast pork? Does it make up for the Lundys, who were diagonal from us in the mobile home park, fighting all the time loudly enough for a block of the mobile homes around us to hear it? Does it lessen the sheer number of police that always showed up in the complex of the noisy-kid apartment and the bungalow? Does it make up for The Cosmopolitan truly becoming a shell of its former self? In other words, does it make all the crap that we went through bearable in hindsight, even forgivable?
It doesn't. Not by a mile, not by infinity. This is not a friendly city for anyone. This is where people who can't make it anywhere else go. This is where those who would be fired within a week at any other school district in the country can reign supreme here. This is where various services can be neglectful in their individual missions, and nothing of consequence will come of it. The neighbors you do know in passing you would not want to know any further because they're making so much goddamn noise upstairs, and it seems impossible that they actually sleep. It's where apartment complexes can also be neglectful, and unscrupulous, and lie to your face, and nothing will happen to them either. No real apologies from them. No consequences either.
If it hadn't been here in Las Vegas, I probably would have found this roast pork in another form somewhere else. But I wouldn't have found it like this. I might have eaten it somewhere else, found it good, and then moved on without giving it a second thought. But after four years of these hardships and so much neglect, being knocked around left and right by so much shit in a given week, to find this even after all of that is incredible. To even recognize something as phenomenal as this after four years of shit stew gives me hope that I can recover all of my true self after we leave Las Vegas. And, as Sheryl Crow sings, "And I won't be back. No, no. No I won't be back." I've listened to that song for years, since it's on my favorite album, "Tuesday Night Music Club," but only in the past year have I fully understood it. And related to it.
It's because of The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn that I've become more interested in architecture and interior design. I appreciate that. I loved seeing Jeff Bridges, one of my heroes, live at Santa Fe Station one year. I'll never forget that. I'll also never forget Lied Library at UNLV and the Boulder City Library, two libraries I would live in if I could. And especially not the Pinball Hall of Fame, with its extremely rare Pinball Circus prototype machine, one of only two in the world, the other residing overseas, which is partly an inspiration for a novel I want to write.
But whenever I got home from these experiences, back to the mobile home park, or the secondhand smoke apartment, or the bungalow, I'd think to myself, "This is all there is?" Walking around The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn, seeing such inspiring elegance, or walking amongst the stacks of Lied Library and the Boulder City Library, and knowing that that's where I belong for the rest of my life, it was hard to land back at home and feel nothing of any of it then. None of it carried over to my daily life. It was still a grind. The feeling like a balloon blowing up inside me when I was at The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn, and even at Green Valley Ranch (which I call Henderson's only palace), never was there at work, nor even at my local library, where I still volunteer after three years. Was it that I couldn't make it happen in those places like I could at The Cosmopolitan or Lied Library? Or is it that where I lived and worked each day could not possibly compare to those sights?
However, the roast pork from #1 Hawaiian Barbecue stays with me. It's been two days and it's still on my mind, and it will always be on my mind. Not always as big as it is now. There are other things to do in my life after all, including more writing, and definitely more reading, including poems, which I discovered are a tonic for when you're in between books and get frustrated at not every book working from the start after you've finished a really great one. I've discovered that I get cranky afterward.
I want to know all about the different ways of roast pork, how it tastes elsewhere, certainly what recipe would work for me if I decide to make it at home one day. Not here, but after we move. Perhaps the roast pork is a culmination of everything I've loved in Las Vegas, while still loathing the entire city and the entire valley. Maybe it has all led up to this. But what an awful path to get here. Nevertheless, this is what I'll take with me from Las Vegas. Like that slice of pumpkin pie I had at Six Flags Magic Mountain on the day of free admission for the Holiday Toy Drive many years ago that I'm still searching for elsewhere, this will be with me as strongly as that.
It's not all that I'm taking with me of Las Vegas. There's a book of short stories I want to write that's set in Las Vegas proper, and a novel that goes between Henderson and Las Vegas. I'm sketching out the preliminary emotions for all the stories here, as well as research I need, so I can still write it from where I go next, and still be able to recall those feelings, at least the good ones I had in the places I liked. I believe, though, that you can only write about the Las Vegas you lived, either as a tourist or a resident. I'm sick of those journalists who swoop into Las Vegas for two or three nights, make blanket statements and assumptions about the city that are supposed to stretch backwards and forwards, and then leave. Make statements and assumptions in your moments, and only your moments. Don't speak for everyone. Me, anything I write about Las Vegas in the future, all fiction, will be set between 2012 and wherever I stop in 2017. Well, maybe not, because I don't like what Las Vegas is becoming with the corporations on the Strip now charging residents for parking, and how the quality of many places on the Strip have precipitously fallen. So probably 2012 to about August 2016, before The Cosmopolitan as I knew it ended. But that's all. I won't write about Las Vegas in the 1950s, I won't write about Las Vegas a year or two before I got here. Only when I got here, only based on what I experienced, what I knew every day.
Perhaps the roast pork, in the final few times I'll inevitably have it again, and in memory, will be a conduit to all this. Back in California, I can think about that roast pork (which, if we don't go back to #1 Hawaiian Barbecue before my birthday, if we're still here by then, will be my birthday dinner) and immediately be reminded of all the good experiences I did have here, that I can use for my own work.
Over the next weeks, I may delve into those experiences, as it feels like the time for reflection before departure. Even though I'm definitely less happy than when my family and I moved here, I am grateful for the experience I've had at work and volunteering at my local library that has gotten me to the point where I do qualify for at least one library position where we're going next. But what else have I gotten out of these four years that has nothing to do with the continuous problems we deal with here? That's what I really want to examine closely. You know, before relying on masterful roast pork as a gateway to it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)