I went to Vegas and all you get is this lousy blog post.

I went to Fabulous Las Vegas for the first time and liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Actually I expected to like it: It's a big party, what's not to like? I was armed with a paycheck, and spent all of it.

The Vegas strip is like the most extravagant strip mall there is. They have other towns in miniature there. It feels like a city as an amusement park. Vegas is full of fake boobs. I've never seen so many fake boobs before. (I've never been to LA.) But they weren't all fake, and I tried to chat up the cute hostess without fake boobs at Stripburger and she let me take a (sadly blurry) picture of her.

I went back to Stripburger another day to try to find her but failed.

In Rome, I was amused by a headless angel:

and though I haven't been back to New York in awhile, I did get to New York, New York:


I dislike gambling in theory because it is designed so that you will always lose in the end (how is that legal?!). But in practice I enjoy it. And how brilliant casinos are to change all your money into these colored chips. I'd have a hundred dollars on the craps table at any given time and think nothing of it at all. I'd toss five dollar tips to the dealers, ten dollar throw-away bets here and there, and it felt like nothing until I took stock at the end and realized I was really quite a bit in the hole. After realizing how much I was wasting, I decided to just go ahead and not worry about it. Like spending money on food, or Cirque Du Soleil shows or whatever else. I didn't feel rich, but money seemed really trivial. Those people there are geniuses. At the buffets, I parked myself and ate massive amounts of food. I figured that this was my one chance to beat the house: the odds weren't quite in my small-stomached favor, but if I persevered, I thought I might have control of the outcome and win. I believe I did.

Funnily enough, my favorite hotel/casino was Hooters. It is somehow the most family-friendly place there. I don't know why but it is. Families would roam around. Kids ate at the restaurant. (great wings!) There's something nice and warm about it. And when the scantily clad dealers took all your money, they were somehow warm and apologetic about it. Not cold and clinical like everywhere else. Ah Hooters! I give a hoot...

When I was finished with Vegas with time left before my flight, I walked to the airport to prove that it could be done. It can. I was starting to think there was an airport admission fee because airports all seem blocked by a big maze of highway and appear only accessible by vehicle. But if you follow a very narrow sidewalk, cross some large streets that have no intersections, disregard the fact that there is no one else walking, and have an hour or so to spare, the airport is indeed pedestrian-accessible if not quite pedestrian-friendly. This test should be done at every airport. Maybe I'll give JFK a shot next time.

This weekend I ...

Hiked up a mountain with Kate and Andres:
Made Gnocchi with Ragu Bolognese:


I forgot to take a picture of the finished dish, but please note that I am the only person you know that owns a gnocchi board. That is because I am a True Italian. (As is clearly shown in the photo at top. Also, I am getting fat.)

Platonic solids

Why isn't the food pyramid called the food triangle? Is there a hidden backside of cellulite, transfats, and monosodium glutamate?

Tricks of the mind.

Sometimes you hear about people for whom it was love at first sight, or that they knew right away he/she was "the one." I wonder if anyone has ever said this about someone ugly. This love at first sight thing, I think for me, really just means I saw a pretty girl. It's all a trick. But if I one day think this about an ugly person, then I would be sure it were really true.

My inner hunger.

I have an inner hunger. It speaks to me in a hushed but stern tone: French Fries.

I am mute.

Here is my phone bill from last month:


I averaged six minutes of phone usage a day!

Four Star Hotness!

Ordering (substandard) food here in Seattle entails a new system that I was hitherto unfamiliar with: Waittress: "How spicy you want? One to five stars." Sometimes the scale only goes up to four stars, but it always seems to be in stars, even though stars have absolutely nothing to do with spiciness (why not just one to five?), and if it does, it would have more to do with the quality of the spiciness than the quantity. Anyway. I am used to the east coast method of answering "How spicy?" with "A little."

The whole system is messed up because there is no frame of reference. Even when you get accustomed to the scale of one restaurant, it's all lost at another place. One place's five stars is another's three. And maybe they adjust for the customer. If a white person walks into a Mexican place and asks for five stars, the chef might snicker and make it pretty spicy, but not too spicy. But if a Mexican walks into a Mexican place and asks for five stars, he might get the whole enchilada. (Sorry.) And if a woman walks in, the rating might automatically be halved.

Anyway. If I really wanted to be an asshole, I should answer in Scoville Heat Units. I think I prefer about a thousand. In the mean time, I'm sticking with non-spicy foods.