My Favorite Henderson Press Article

I've read 25 issues of The Henderson Press thus far, and have liked many articles, but none have struck me as a favorite until now. Vol. 2, No. 20, dated Thursday, July 14, 2011, has an article on page 14 about 25-year Master Floral Designer Jill Ann Ferrero, who makes all the floral entrance displays at the Casino MonteLago in Lake Las Vegas. She also makes new arrangements in front of an audience every Thursday morning at the casino in the "Cerimonia dei Fiore" (Flower Ceremony). Ferrero is the kind of creative person I love to read about, and I'm relieved that writer Don Logay isn't as breathless in this article as he usually is about everything else in Lake Las Vegas. This was a terrific article with beautiful photos of two types of arrangements. It's going to be hard for any future article to top this.

Spiced Wine Avenue? Come On.

Ever since The Henderson Press became a weekly newspaper in Volume 2, No. 8, they've added a few things to fill more pages besides longer articles, including a City of Henderson Crime Map, pointing out where in Henderson burglaries, robberies, assaults, sex assaults, vehicle thefts, family disturbances, and narcotics happened. I read it just to learn street names. Crime will happen anywhere, and I'll just be careful and alert enough, keeping myself safe.

But now I've got research to do. I want to know who came up with these street names and why, if it was one person per area or many people. I like some of these names, such as Blueberry Lane, Warm Springs Road, Tullio Way, Coralino Drive, West Horizon Ridge Parkway, Zinnia Circle, and Bugle Bluff Drive. On the crime map in the Thursday, June 9, 2011 issue, Volume 2, No. 15, a vehicle theft happened on the 1500 block of Spiced Wine Avenue.

Spiced Wine Avenue? I thought some effort was made to give streets names that correlate to that particular area, either historically, or in observation of what a particular area faces, or something totally random but which makes sense in the context of the city. Some don't make sense, like Windmill Parkway, but it gives off a bit of imagination. Where the hell did Spiced Wine Avenue come from? Some wine-drinking contingent from Southern California that was assigned to name these streets? I want to know its origin, not necessarily to mock, but just to be able to shake my head knowledgeably. I can't accept that one.

It's Time

For the past few days, I've been feeling it acutely: It's time to go. It's time to pack it up here after nine too-long years, taking only what we really need, and head on out to Las Vegas and start a new life that we've needed for all those nine years. I did some good here in Santa Clarita, writing a while for the Canyon Call at College of the Canyons, being the interim editor of the Escape section of The Signal for five weeks in early 2008, and I gained a few then-new favorite writers (now they're reliable favorites), but that's not enough. I've never felt close to any part of these lands, the people, the buildings. What I want, what Mom wants, what Meridith wants, what I hope Dad wants, is in Las Vegas.

I'm able-bodied. I can work. I want to be a full-time middle school campus supervisor. I've studied campuses closely since kindergarten, and known them intimately since 6th grade, when Dad resumed his teaching career first as a substitute teacher after 19 years at Southern Bell (which became BellSouth in the process). I followed him to Silver Trail Middle in 7th grade, in which the first half of that school year was spent at a cluster of portables near our condo in Grand Palms Golf & Country Club in Pembroke Pines (nothing fancy; we lived way in the back end), and then during that winter break, teachers and administration moved into the new school site that had just finished construction. I walked around that school many, many times, before any of my classmates and other students occupied it. I also spent 8th grade at Silver Trail, and then in 9th grade, at Flanagan High School, I went back to that former Silver Trail campus of portables, which became Flanagan's, because the main campus was so overcrowded that they had to place us 9th graders somewhere else. Mom was working on the main campus in their copy machine center, making copies for all the teachers, and then I joined her on that campus for 10th grade. In 11th grade, she moved to Hollywood Hills High School as a library assistant, and I went to school there for my final two years.

Attending College of the Canyons here, I loved late Friday afternoons when my cinema class let out (always an easy "A"), when the campus was empty and I walked around, looking at those hallways, feeling that utter peace that spread throughout those enormous three floors. And then being a substitute campus supervisor at Dad's school, La Mesa Junior High, I was very happy in that job. I love studying the architecture of these campuses, even if most of it is the same in this valley, as what's at La Mesa is the same at Valencia High. I didn't mind it. There was one building, across from the office, that felt like adobe architecture. I'd look at that and imagine that I was in New Mexico, where I want to be in the years to come, to travel throughout it.

I can be comfortable at any middle school campus in Las Vegas. I look forward to getting to know those kids, to making sure they behave while outside, to keep the school in good standing. I'm excited about this chance because I will finally be in an area whose history I can feel, whose history I want to explore. Not only is there one book I want to write about a certain aspect of Las Vegas history that has interested me for the few years I've known about Las Vegas, but I had an idea for a novel set in Las Vegas that I want to pursue. I won't be looking to prove anything about Las Vegas as other novels tend to do. It is a hedonistic paradise, and that's where I want to be. That's how I want to live. It'll be set in 1950s Las Vegas, because the historical figure involved lived during that time and visited Las Vegas during that time. There's a lot of research to do not only about 1950s Las Vegas, but about this figure himself, and the famous gambler who it's claimed escorted him around town, but apparently cannot be confirmed.

This will be my home. This is where I belong. This is where I can place roots and have a home base, and travel to the presidential libraries and smaller presidential museums I still want to visit, and travel throughout New Mexico, and know that I have a home to come back to. It's a comforting thought that I haven't had all that often because of how many times we moved throughout Florida and then here to Southern California, to Valencia, and then to Saugus a year after we arrived. It's there. It's all there. I told Meridith today that I'm going to be so relieved to have a library card, because more than that driver's license to come at the Nevada DMV, it means I have somewhere I belong. A home. A library. A home library. Home in all its forms. Streets and businesses and casinos and amusements to explore every single day. If you can't write in Las Vegas, you might as well give up writing. I can write there for sure. And I can live there for sure. I know it.

More DVD Reviews

I've figured out how to write my main character in my somewhat art-driven novel, why he's so devoted to his art, what he hopes to continue to accomplish by it. I'm not sure yet why he's going to do what's presented to him, but I'll map it out soon. When I'm not working on this novel or my other books, I'm still keeping myself limber by writing DVD reviews, and I see that I haven't posted links to new DVD reviews since April 29. There have been a lot since Car 54, Where Are You?: The Complete Second Season. Out of this new batch, I'm most proud of my review of Raw Faith. 95 Miles to Go comes in second:

Carlos Mencia: New Territory

The Big C: The Complete Second Season

Tom and Jerry: Around the World

Raw Faith

Happiness Is... Peanuts: Team Snoopy

Young Goethe in Love

95 Miles to Go

Hazel: The Complete Third Season

Barney Vinson's Got It

I'm nearing the end of The Vegas Kid by Barney Vinson, and though the plot doesn't move much (I'm sure there's a climax coming along soon, though), Vinson mirrors the atmosphere of Las Vegas perfectly, especially this line at the beginning of chapter 17 on page 137:

"Sam was happy, though. He didn't mind being Sammy Duran or dealing crap at Blackie's. In fact, he liked living in the desert and being himself for a change instead of some chrome-plated cowboy."

Exactly. Las Vegas is all about being yourself, doing what you want to do, tapping into your deepest passions and bring them swiftly to the surface. I'm going to dive into so much after we move there, inside and outside of Southern Nevada.

I also love Vinson's "About the Author" paragraph on the very last page:

Barney Vinson was born in the U.S.A., raised in Texas, and moved to Las Vegas a long time ago. He worked as a dice dealer at the old Dunes Hotel, then went to Caesars Palace where he was the casino gaming instructor for another long time. He lives in a small house by the side of the road with the Vegas skyline in the distance and writes full-time, while his wife Debbie works and pays the bills; they take in stray cats by appointment only. Vinson is the author of 23 books (six of which have been published). The Vegas Kid is his first novel.

I want to be Barney Vinson, but not working in any casinos. I want to earn enough money to write often, and I want to live as he writes. He and I have the same sense of humor.

One of My All-Time Favorite Lines about Las Vegas

As I read more and more about Las Vegas, I'm sure other all-time favorite lines will emerge, but it'll take a lot to top this one, from Las Vegas: Behind the Tables! Part 2 by Barney Vinson, when he's arrived at the Sands for the 35th Anniversary Celebration:

"I went through the door of the Sands and caught the blast of a thousand slot machines having dinner."

Wisdom from Benny Binion

In my attempt to shrink my Las Vegas book stack ahead of a transition to the Clark County libraries once I become a resident of Las Vegas, I just finished reading Las Vegas: Behind the Tables! Part 2 by Barney Vinson, one of the few truly great Las Vegas writers, since he worked in casinos there for well over 20 years and lived so many of the massive changes, and knows it so well. I've begun reading his novel, The Vegas Kid, and though Sam Durango is still in Los Angeles, I know that Vinson will get the feel of 1970s Las Vegas right.

Toward the end of Las Vegas: Behind the Tables! Part 2, he interviews Benny Binion, the giant of downtown Las Vegas, with a story that could very well have become a TV show if CBS' new series about legendary Las Vegas sheriff Ralph Lamb hadn't worked out. His Binion's Horseshoe Hotel and Casino, at least in his time, believed in treating the gambler with respect. However much money they walked in with was how much they could play. There was no limit, unlike the Strip casinos. I'm not sure yet if it's the same way today, but I agree with Binion's wisdom, which is actually his modus operandi:

I asked him to describe the Horseshoe Club in his own words, and he took his time answering.

"Well, it's got to be a friendly place. Treat people with courtesy, feed 'em good. Cheap. Good whiskey cheap. And give 'em a good gamble. That's all there is to it, son."

All of it applies to living life as well.

Then a Binion saying that is valid no matter who you are:

It was a wild and wooly time in the nation's existence. Prohibition was starting, a Depression was coming. Like Binion himself was fond of saying, though: "Tough times make tough people."

Amen, Mr. Binion.