Charmed I'm sure 

Day of the Dead at the beach 

Hat Lady 

Palms and Concrete 

Lurid Hollywood 

John Belushi was here 

Venice Black and White 2 

LAPD they looking for a G 

Say goodbye to Hollywood 

Venice Tattoo 

Venice Color

 
 

Venice black and white

 
 

i think -8400 

las vegas plams b+w 

wynn 

las vegas palms 

mirror mirror 

on strike 

lean 

night clubbing 

These guys just released a Scotch that costs $14000.00 a bottle. I must be missing something. 

Drink me and rule the world 

If I have to smile once more today I think I'll crack my teeth 

Sorry man, no spare change. 

Here eat this, bite sized animals and nude models.

I woke up this morning at 6 am local time to tell yet another person that AJ doesn’t have this number anymore. I’ve had my cell number for about 2 years now and at least once a month I get a call for AJ, they say he’s a handyman and judging by the call volume he’s pretty fucking handy, where ever AJ is he has a loyal following.
I dozed a bit more once I’d explained to AJ’s would be customer that he had the wrong number and in my fleeting early morning sub dreams I told him that AJ was in jail for carnal knowledge of aquatic mammals and that I was in Las Vegas. No wait that wasn’t a dream, I can be surly at 6am. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I ordered coffee and scanned the headlines on my laptop, one from Livescience.com caught my eye. It was about the evolution of venom. Apparently it started about 200 million years ago when and I quote:
"The small, bite-sized animals were starting to exist. Any time there's a new food source you see the emergence of a new predatory trick," Fry told LiveScience. "In this case, venom was the new trick." Odd the scientists name was “Fry” and he’s talking about “bite sized animals” dont you think?
Here eat this. I have consumed 2.25 hotdogs, 1 cheeseburger, 6 chocolate coated ice cream bites, 8 chipotle flavored cashew nuts, 4 jalapeño corn nuts, 2 Slim Jims, endless bite sized pieces of beef jerky, a soy milkshake, enough popcorn to decorate a Christmas tree, 3 liters of Diet Coke and a Crunk. What is a Crunk? It’s Lil John’s new energy drink, what undisclosed location slash beaver dam have you been living in? I can still taste it 4 hours later it tastes like cherry cough syrup. No bloody wonder I can’t lose weight, apparently I’ll eat anything. I’ve also seen 1 Barry Sanders, 2 Penthouse Pets, 2 Playboy Bunnies, 2 porno actresses, a female top fuel drag race champion, a Chinese contortionist and one of the cast of the Sopranos. Colin Powell is around here somewhere, yes for real, the Colin Powell former Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State he’s giving a speech. I’m hoping not to run in to him because the urge to put him in a headlock and give him noogies until he admits he lied his balls off knowingly to the UN would be overwhelming and with the kind of security he’s probably packing that would not be a good idea. I have no desire to visit Guantanamo. Colin Powell is so hard up he’s schilling for the National Association of Convenience Stores now. I sort of feel bad for him I can’t imagine Madeleine Albright here. Maybe it’s his way of apologizing directly to the Moslem world as he sees it, or maybe he’s looking for Osama who latest CIA intel indicates is hiding in your local 711, who the fuck knows anything is possible, either way it’s just fucking sad, whatever happened to dignity? Oh that’s right we started torturing people for fun and lying about it.
Sex sells, it’s an old adage and not going away anytime soon, there’s enough tits and ass on this show floor to fill the pages of every smut mag and internet porn site for a decade. The one thing that strikes me every time I’m here is just how much the porn industry owes to Adobe Systems for Photoshop. There ought to be some kind of royalty deal for Adobe because believe me ladies and gentlemen there is a HUGE difference between the birds going at it on the page in hand and the bird in the booth. These girls are rode hard and put up wet, if they didn’t have the Healing Brush there wouldn’t be a Penthouse or a Playboy. There would still be Hustler they just don’t give a damn. Let me tell you about Pets and Bunnies the acne is visible beneath a kilo of concealer from 30 paces. The fake tans produce a skin color that could only be considered normal if Earl Scheib was God and they are all much shorter than you would imagine. Next time you see huge boobs and pouty lips think Kai’s Power Goo. I should be enjoying this by the logic of corporate America but I’m not, I just feel numb. I feel like I need to wash my hands every 5 minutes. If you can’t come up with a way to sell things that doesn’t include breast augmentation surgery then just fucking quit now. I’m not a prude and no I’m not gay, I just don’t think this predatory trick works anymore, didn’t we just make a big deal about women’s rights in Afghanistan and the dreaded Bhurka? Is this what we have to offer in exchange? Suicide blonde boob job spray tans? Actually I thought I had seen every excess possible on the show floor until I saw a Chinese girl doing a contortionist routine on top of a Hummer. The booth was selling coffee that has extra caffeine. I’m not sure if they were trying to suggest that drinking this coffee made you speed your balls off so bad it made you tie yourself in knots on the roof of your car or if the guy and believe me it was a guy, who dreamed this stunt up had drunk way too much of the stuff. Either way it saved me a trip to Circus Circus.
So what does the future hold for your convenience store shopping experience? Well here it is; there will be more food that cooks on those rolly things that used to be the sole province of hot dogs, there will be more energy drinks, about 50 by my count, so wake up America because you’ll need the extra energy for that second job at the quickie mart if your kid is ever going to get an education. For those of you that like fruit but don’t want to actually eat the stuff there will be fruit flavored rolling papers, tobacco flavored gum and cigars lots of fruity cigars. Also fruit flavored gum that hides the smell of tobacco. For race fans there will be sun screen that comes in a tube with your favorite Nascar driver’s number on the label just in case all the stickers on your car, posters on your wall, T shirts, towels and beer cozies weren’t enough to demonstrate your loyalty to a guy who’s sole job is to turn left at high speed in a super charged billboard. All the while being paid more per year than you could possibly hope to earn in a lifetime. Lastly the future holds this, Pepto for kids. Yes that’s right a fruit flavored antacid for children. Now I’m not criticizing the fine people at Procter and Gamble for coming up with this stuff, I’m pretty sure they spent a whole lot of money researching whether there was a market for it. But acid indigestion has always been the domain of fat sweaty blue collar guys who eat only red meat and drink only beer. At least that’s what I recall from the ads. I can’t remember once ever having it as a child. I didn’t start eating only red meat and drinking beer until I got my first job and I was at least 14. So if I may make a suggestion, STOP FEEDING YOUR KIDS LIKE PLUMBERS and give them some real damn fruit now and again.

Back again

Welcome to Las Vegas. Now give us your money and fuck off.
I am sitting in a comfortable Business class aisle seat. I’m reading the Economist and listening to Eminem on my new studio quality headphones and wondering just how far above the earth the my ass is, give or take a few inches of airplane and just how long I’d be conscious if the metal skin ruptured like an over stuffed aluminum people burrito. I’m on my way to Lost Wages.
If God lets this place stand he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology. So I’m also wondering if we’ll actually make it there. Big plane, big seat, big Baptist next to me I’m thinking we’ll make it.
Hoover Dam on the left can’t see it, Grand Canyon on the right can’t miss it but from 10,000 feet it doesn’t pack the same wallop, sort of like looking at the surface of the moon in a newspaper photograph.
Now lots of little boxes laid out in grids. Brown and grey, sand and rock. Artificial green spots, the comparisons to hell go well beyond the heat and absence of water; you just can’t see the pitchforks from up here.
Coming in bumpy as always, it must be the mountains. Wobbly touchdown and off to the train. The great thing about McCarran is you can gamble as soon as you get off the plane. There are slot machines on every concourse. Talk about flogging a dead horse. Get off the train and you’re in baggage pickup. It‘s always dusk here and everywhere you look there are ghastly billboards for the local entertainment, all of whom seem to be preternaturally photo shopped except the Blue Man Group who manage to look more human than Clint Holmes or the Scintas. I’m waiting for my bag watching the carousel with studied indifference, like James Bond playing baccarat I like to think but probably more like Austin Powers playing tiddly winks. Every time I come here I construct this bubble around my soul. They blare music and noise at me so I block it out with my own noise, they blast lights I wear sunglasses.I'm just not interested in what las Vegas has to offer.
Now I’m in the taxi, it says “Whittlesea Cab” on the side which I always find a bit disturbing. Whittlesea being in Cambridgeshire and Las Vegas being rather famously in a giant North American nuclear pock marked extraterrestrial infested desert. Morrissey is singing “America your belly’s too big” on my i pod and in the confines of the back seat I’m agreeing.
Check in, a twenty to the driver, a buck to the guy who fishes my luggage from the trunk, a corporate Amex to the front desk a five for the guy who brings my bags to the room, then fifty bucks to room service for a bottle of wine, trickledown economics.
Nice room, smoking king size view of nothing but the monorail and a parking lot.
After dinner with my friend Zoran I Google Whittlesea and find it’s famous for Straw Bears. It seems it was once the custom to dress some poor bastard in straw and parade him around town at the end of a chain and make him dance on the Tuesday following “Plough Monday” which is the first Monday after Twelfth Night. As if I gave a damn or even know when the fuck that is and all this pretty much just to cadge a few drinks, seems like a lot of work to me and I have to wonder if anyone here would actually notice, I mean they have live fucking tigers here, so some guy dressed in straw is probably not going to draw a crowd. In fact I’m willing to bet that no one would notice if you wrapped yourself in straw set yourself on fire and ran down the strip.
Back to dinner, given that I didn’t eat my dinner from a table constructed of naked Brazilian Supermodels and the fact that it didn’t include anything wrapped in 24 carat gold foil or included on the endangered species list it was ever so fucking expensive and I never even got my fries cooked in truffle oil even though I asked nicely. We had Kobe Carpaccio which consisted of four pieces of dodgy beef that I had to cook myself on a hot rock. Each piece was the size of a stamp, they reminded me of the mystery meat in Krystals. A quick calculation and I realized that this beef must have come from a 10 million dollar cow and what the fuck is up with the hot rock? I don’t like to complain but if your going to charge me twenty real American dollars for less than a quarter ounce of beef at least fucking cook it or give me some fire to get the job done. I mean a hot rock? What is this the beginning of 2001 and I’m a fucking monkey? These people seem to have heard that story about frying an egg on the sidewalk and let it go completely to their heads.
When the Mob realized it was cheaper not to kill people and hired lawyers the Vegas buffet disappeared in a cloud of adding machine tape. It’s not enough anymore to soak them at the tables as soon as they cleaned up the place and families started coming it was game over and now you pay.

wobbly window