Pick of the Week...

Powerful double feature of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Conan the Barbarian" at the Milford New Hampshire Drive In.
haven't been up there in a while, too bad a hurricane in stalking us....

Strangers in the West or Fear and Roving in Las Vegas...

It is counterintuitive to visit Las Vegas on vacation in high summer, but it is off season there and the room rate is markedly below what I'd be charged for the same stay in the Berkshires.

Everyone is trying desperately to have fun in Las Vegas, happiness amidst such baroque temptation seems impossible so the broad mass of tourists aim for mere fun, and in many cases they fall short even of that.

Its an ancient cliche' but men like to dress down on vacation, women like to dress up, in Vegas therefore one sees elegantly dressed women sipping diet coke thru a straw at a Sbarro's seated across from some unshaved mook in bermuda shorts both busted out like forty niners.

Otherwise, Las Vegas is what happens when career criminals control the zoning board of appeal, the whole city revolves around a five mile stretch of roadway encrusted with casinos.

Aldous Huxley's worst nightmare?
Las Vegas...he anticipated the whole metropolis in "Brave New World".

The Atomic Energy Commission blew so many craters in Nevada with it's above ground nuclear testing that NASA could dual use them to train the moon bound astronauts.

The slot machines in Vegas are unfathomable.

NEVER buy bottled water in the hotels, the mark up is atrocious and suggestive of armed robbery, but your Aquafina from the enterprising homeless on the streets who retail it out of ice filled coolers for $1 a bottle.

Las Vegas, where double entendres go to die.

Only in Las Vegas could the construction of the world's largest Walgreen's be considered a source of community pride.

10 years of this "Classic Las Vegas" horshit and they will be erecting statues to the saint memories of Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. They already have a memorial to Bugsy Siegel in the courtyard of the Flamingo that artfully avoids any mention of his gangsterism. So there is hope yet for Whitey Bulger. Hell in fifty years they'll be putting up statues to Suge Knight.

In sum you can have a good time in Las Vegas without gambling, but it is also a place you'll never have any pressing need to revisit, unless of course you develop a serious gaming addiction. And of course, here in Massachusetts everyone is burning the midnight oil to harness that impulse and keep it here at home.