Viva Las Vegas

Kathleen and I got home yesterday from three nights and four days in Las Vegas. Here is my evaluation of the trip.

Rating the various parts of my Las Vegas adventure on a scale of 1 to 10

A. San Francisco International Airport. Easy parking, fun conveyor belt rides. Really neat museum quality exhibit on the history of flight attendant uniforms. Loses points for the Harvey Milk exhibit. SCORE: 6

B. Southwest Airlines. On time. No fee for luggage!!!! SCORE: 10

C. Uber. Always there when you need them. One driver was on crank. All the others were great. I think one lady is converting to Orthodoxy. SCORE: 9.5

D. Staying at a Blue-Green Vacations resort for 3 nights for free. No daily maid service because of covid wasn't as big a bummer as I thought it would be. Comfortable beds, full kitchen including place settings and cookware. All the C-Span channels and the Weather Channel!!! Upgraded to the deluxe sweet because of my job. They would score higher if they had a better pool. SCORE: 9

E. Church of St. Paul the Apostle. They had a fill in priest because their regular priest was on vacation and there was a medical emergency during the service (a teenage girl passed out at the start of the Gospel reading) but the subdeacon was on the ball! Even paramedics coming into the church to help the girl didn't throw him off his stride. I don't know his name is but every parish should have a subdeacon or deacon like him. He was managing the acolytes, relying instructions to the choir director, and anticipating the needs of the priest so that the priest and people could do their jobs smoothly. It is always enjoyable to watch someone working who is really good at his job. This church gets bonus points because every word chanted, spoken, or sung was annunciated clearly, loudly, and at a speed a normal person can interpret as human language. I am no fan of the speed reading style of liturgizing so I loved this service. (I can't assign a number rating to The Orthodox Church)

F. The Casinos at Caesar's Palace and the Bellagio. What is up with all the loud pop music? I wouldn't listen to that dreck at sensible volume but when it is so loud you have to speak at an unusual decibel level to be heard by the person standing beside you it is too loud. Even if I had wanted to gamble I wouldn't have because of the noise level. At least, they were clean and didn't smell like smoke. SCORE: 3

G. The staff members at Caesar's Palace and the Bellagio. Very helpful. Very friendly. Very efficient. If I were doing a case study for a degree in hospitality management I would use these people as examples of what to do right. SCORE 10

H. Fremont Street (aka The Old Strip). Clouds of Marijuana smoke and crowds of drunk people. Street performers with carefully placed electrical tape engaged in simulated sex acts. Again, overly loud music. On the plus side, there are zip lines and a street long over-head electronic art thing. SCORE: 2

I. The Miracle Mile. It's just a shopping mall but the interior architecture fools you into thinking you are outside in old Algiers or Casablanca It is very convincing. Score: 7

J. Oscar's in the dome of the Plaza Hotel. WOW WHAT A STEAK!!!! I thought I had had food before but I was wrong. I'm going to say something I never thought I would say, but the steaks here are better than the steaks at Harris's Restaurant in San Francisco. SCORE: 10

K. Leather Throwers exhibit at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art. The quality of the exhibit was very good. Works by Andy Warhol, Louis Vuitton, and Jeffry Gibson shown together with promotional posters, boxing gloves, and other items from Las Vegas' history with boxing shine light and love on the Sweet Science. The only complaint: It was excellent quality that made me wish for more quantity. The exhibit was too small. You can see the whole thing in an hour. Score: 7

L. Montecristo cigar bar at Caesar's Palace. Wide selection. Knowledgeable staff. Comfortable chairs. Quiet. They didn't have Punch Robustos but they found a cigar for me with a similar flavor profile. SCORE: 9

M. The Cabanas at the Bellagio Pools. Absolutely marvelous. Water. Sun. Quiet. Pleasant people. Friendly helpful staff. Excellent food. Very good place to spend a day and take a nap. We got our cabana away from the big main pools but near one of the side pools that more resembbles a Roman fountain. Beautiful and peaceful. SCORE: 10

N. The Absinthe show at Caesar's Palace. The acrobatic and arial acts were amazing, and I say that without an ounce of hyperbole. I had never seen people so physically strong before. Sadly, their performances were undermined by less than salubrious adolescent humour that wasn't funny and left me feeling polluted. Score: 5

O. The Rat Pack is Back show at the Tuscany Casino. Singers impersonating Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. doing their act from the Sands in the 1960. The guy doing Sinatra was very good. The guy doing Martin was spot on when it came to voice but engaged in some vulgarisms Dean Martin wouldn't have. During That's Amore he stopped singing and let the audience sing. We all knew the words. It was a fun moment. Sadly, the singer who impersonated Sammy Davis Jr was all personality but had very little of Davis' singing ability. Or, maybe, he was over-acting. It is as though he let Davis' cool cat persona overtake and distort Davis' very great musicianship. The orchestra was very good. Score: 8

P. McCarran Airport. I liked the exhibits on the history of the Airport (Who remembers Bonanza Airline?) The gift shops had a wide variety of merchandise to choose from. The seating at the gate could have been better. Getting though security was a breeze. The biggest drawback was the quality of the food at the PGA cafe in the terminal. Starbuck's on the other side of the hall would have been better. Score: 8

Independence Day

The first Independence Day I remember is 1973. I was four years old. We were in Yellowstone National Park and it snowed. I remember everyone talking about how unusual it was that snow was falling in July. That's all I remember.

The next Independence Day I remember is the Bicentennial in 1976. All the fire hydrants hand been painted red, white and blue. There were banners and flags everywhere. The money was changed. I gathered a small collection of bicentennial quarters, half-dollars, and even a dollar with the big Liberty Bell on the reverse side. (That was back when dollars were a lot of money, when a dollar was worth about 1/150 oz of gold. Now a dollar is only worth 1/1785 oz of gold.) I'm sure it was no more than a dozen coins. I kept them in a sock. I remember my mother and brother talking about his cnaces of living to see our countries 300th birthday. That was the first time I heard anyone say that God had limited our lifespans to 120 years.

The next Independence Day I remember was when I was 9 years old. My Mom, my Dad, my Uncle Harry and Aunt Carolyn, and my cousin Bryan were at Sonora. We went to see the fireworks at the Motherload Fair Grounds. I remember eating water mellon, too.

The next Independence Day I remember is 1986, when I was a seventeen year old private at Ft Dix, New Jersey. Our comapny commander gave us the afternoon off so we could attend an orchestra concert on the parade field (It was called Doughboy Field. It was the same parade field my grandfather marched across during the First World War.) Our company was kind or rowdy and the conductor of the orchestra, a chief warrant officer, stopped the concert, walked over to us and, gently for a Chief Warrant Officer, ordered us to be silent for the duration of the concert.

The next Independence Day I remember is 1989 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. It was the biggest fireworks show I have ever seen. I will never forget it. We were sitting on the hood of our car, a Dodge 600 ES, in a big gras field.

The next Independence Day I remember is 1990. THere were no fireworks but my mother and her six sisters organized a family renunion near Yosemite. It was fun to be with all my uncles and aunts, my cousins, and siblings, and nephews and nieces.

The next Independence Day I remember is 1993. My two oldest sons, my parents, and my Uncle Fred and Aunt Nettie all met at Pismo Beach. We had a picnic on the beach and watched people setting of fire works next to the ocean late into the night. The next Independence Day I remember has already been written about on this blog.

The next Indepencence Day I remember is 1997. I, my two oldest sons, my friend Jeff and a few other friends, went to visit my parents and Uncle Fred and Aunt Nettie where they were living in Visalia. We spent a few days there but on the 3rd of July we went to a minor league baseball game. On 4th of July we went out to the little town of Exeter to see the Lions Club's fireworks show. I remember my friend Zack being amazed at the tri-tip my Uncle Fred cooked. Zack was from Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations so he had never tasted tri-tip.

The next Independence Day I remember is 2002. Son #3 had just been born in March and his mother and I took him to see the fireworks over San Francisco Bay. We were on the hill behind the Officer's Club at Ft Mason but there was so much fog on the Bay that the fireworks show was just clouds changing colors. Then we took the bus back to out neighborhood in the Mission District. It took almost an hour and was super crowded with other people trying to get home after the fireworks show.

There were four Independence Days at Fort Ross. I don't remember the exact years. Bisop Tikhon was there for the first one. I remember it because of a thing that happened regarding confession and a young boy. I thought I wrote about it on this blog but I guess not. The next time Cyndi did not go and I rode with the former Treasuerer of the diocese and Anselm's godfather. I learned that God confounded the tasteful by making a postcard icon of the Theotokos weep. The next one was Bishop Benjamin's first time to go. He was the bisop of Berkely then when the park ranger asked him to fire the canon he said, "WOW! NEAT!" The last time I was with Kathleen. I barely remember it because I was a drunk then. I remember there were not many people there that year and we were able to squeeze into the little chapel.

The next Independence Day I remember is 2003. My two oldest sons were with me. We watched the fireworks over the Bay from the top of the hill at Doloros Park whil Cyndi stayed home with son #3.

The next Independence Day I remember is 2004. That was the year we saw the fire works in Cupertino and the little boy got so excited.

The Next Independence Day I remember is in 2008 but I already wrote about it on theis blog.

The next Independence Day I remember is 2014. The boys and I parked outside the the baseball park and watched the fireworks.

The next Independence Day I remember is 2015. I was living in my truck. Anselm was at summer camp. I was working at the YMCA but the YMCA was closed that day. So I picked up Basil and we had BBQ under a redwood tree on the YMCA grounds. We used the little sportmans grill I bought from Williams Sonoma back in 1993 or 1994. All my kids have eaten meat cooked on that grill. To this day, Basil says it was the best Independence Day ever.

The next Independence Day I remeember is 2016. Kathleen and the boys and I went and stayed at the Marriot Hotel in Santa Clara. We were on the side of the hotel facing the Great America park. We watched the fireworks from the balcony.

And now is today. Kathleen, Basil and I are going to the Marriot again. We'll swim in the pool, watch the fireworks from our balcony, and play board games all night long.