R.I.P. John Joseph Houghtaling

For those of us who have memories of cross country road trips with our families in the 1960's and 1970's, this man was a giant.

John Joseph Houghtaling, inventor of the "Magic Fingers" vibrating bed, died Wednesday at the age of 92.

Suspicious Minds

It's one of those days. I can't get this out of my head.

From the 1970 documentary Elvis: That's the Way It Is, an August 1970 performance of Suspicious Minds at the fabulous International Hotel in Las Vegas

New Year Random Ten , looking back at 2007

Let's start with my first random ten of the new year. One of my resolutions this year is to learn some mad computer skillz so I can actually post music samples and not just these crappy song titles. But for now, crappy song titles is all you're getting:

Why Can't You Be Nicer To Me?--The White Stripes

Sal's Got a Sugarlip—Johnny Horton

Break On Through—The Doors

Terror Couple Kill Colonel—Bauhaus

No Time To Cry—The Sisters of Mercy

One Way Ticket—Bobby Lumpkin & the Kapers

The Pontiac—Tom Waits

You're Gone But I'm Left—Tyrone Schmidling

My Love is a Flower—Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers

Cypress Grove—Tav Falco

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Now on to other matters.

I tried this out last year after stealing the idea from my sister-in-law Kate.

Here’s how it works:

You take the first couple of lines from the first and last post for each month. You can edit as much as you want. Or you can just invent stuff that you never posted in the first place. And then you have it, your blog year in review.

2007

The Year in Review

January: Experts say all signs point to a massive attack by man-eating sharks some time in the new year.

Ever get stuck next to someone on a train, bus or airplane, and that person just really bugs you? Thanks to the wonders of forwarded email, here's a way of dealing with them.

February: Lulu recently posted a YouTube clip that purports to be the worst video ever. I won't dispute that claim.

Pissed off or depressed? I haven't decided which just yet.

March: DHL Import Express: One Invoice, One Currency, One Company, One Liver and Part of a Human Head.

I was looking through my clown collection for something disturbing to kick off the weekend. This is what I came up with:

April: I've been tagged by both Katie Schwartz and Johnny Yen, and if it's rude to ignore a tag, how rude would it be to ignore two? I had no choice but to comply:

Ask any of my close friends or family and they will tell you I am a model of rectitude and decorum, and would not normally even say the proper term for the female pudenda. But now that's changed.

May: Be proud, fellow midwesterners: it all started here in Chicago on May 1, 1886. The start of the 8-hour day movement...

There are three freaks this week. Let's have a little contest, shall we?

June: Here's a few tips if you're thinking about committing a robbery:

1) Don't get drunk before you commit your robbery

That's the nice thing about the Random Ten--it requires nothing but the push of the "shuffle" button and a little copying and pasting.

July: I had a bright idea the other day (at least I thought it was bright at the time, we'll see how it works out) of starting a blog to post pictures and descriptions of stuff I want to get rid of.

Sometimes I think about how my job has changed me. We all change over time, no doubt about it. After almost 19 years of doing the same job it gets hard to tell if the changes you see in yourself are a result of time, or a result of how you’ve been living your life.

August: Yes indeedy, it's Weenie-Waver Wednesday!

Today's story works on so many levels. It's got:

-Drugs
-Booze
-Driving while (partly) naked
-Christian radio personalities

I know you're all expecting to see another sex fiend for Weenie Waver Wednesday.

September: This man was, without a doubt, the best of all of us. There were no signs of depression that we could see, and he was literally the last person any of us would have thought to be at risk.

Beckeye and Coaster Punchman have sent me off on an 80's nostalgia trip. There are worse things.

October: Can't afford that Standing Rib Roast for the holidays? Here's an entree with all the panache, at a fraction of the price! Yes, it's a Wiener Tiara Bake

My friend Dena sent this, and I think it's a swell last minute costume idea: Make your own Christopher Walken mask.

November: It's hard to say goodbye to Halloween. Once again I'm having that post-Halloween letdown.

I just finished my last training run, a quick 3 miler. The starting temperature was 29, and what kind of Chicagoan would I be if I didn't throw in the wind chill factor, huh? That made it feel like 19.

December: A journey of 13.1 miles starts with a single step.

"I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it. Unless I'm thirsty."

All is quiet on New Years Day

What a day. I couldn't really tell you a single thing I did today, other than cook, but I mean that in a good way. The day just passed by in a pleasant, slow moving blur. Everyone relaxed, hanging around, talking. A perfect day for me to be the big shiftless hillbilly I am.

Today was a food day. I took a pound of sausage out of the freezer last night to thaw, and rinsed and put a pound of black eyed peas in a bowl to soak before we went out. The last couple of years I've gone running on New Years Day, but the snow and ice kept me from doing that this year. So I cooked, and I ate. I woke up before anyone else, drank some coffee and caught up on some reading. And then I started cooking. Breakfast was biscuits and sausage gravy--delicious and filling, and a nice lazy way to start the year.

Once we were sufficiently coffee'd up, and had some food in our bellies, the champagne came out. Today's drink was the Bellini; we cheated and used peach nectar instead of pureed peaches, and we used champagne instead of sparkling Italian wine.

Later in the afternoon it was time to start cooking again. Usually on New Years day I like to make hoppin' John. I was excited because this year I had a new recipe that promised to be more flavorful than the one I'd used in the past. Also on the menu were southern greens. I started the greens first.

Like all good southern vegetable dishes, you start with some bacon.

You chop a half pound of bacon, and fry it in a big pot until it starts to get crispy. Then you add a couple cups of sliced onions, and fry them with the bacon till they turn golden. Then throw in a tablespoon of minced garlic, fry it a little more, then pour in a bottle of beer, a quarter cup of vinegar and a couple tablespoons of molasses. Mix it all up, and then start adding your greens.

Lately we've been using the greens from Glory Foods, a mix of mustard, collard and turnip greens that come pre-washed and chopped. It saves a lot of trouble, I'll tell you, especially in January when the garden is snowed under and there's no farmers market. You add 3 pounds of greens to the bacon/onion/liquid mix described above and then you cook the whole thing on a low heat for about an hour and a half.

While the greens are cooking you can start on your hoppin' John. The first thing you got to do is rinse and soak your black eyed peas overnight

The recipe calls for a ham hock, but I cheated and used a big hunk of smoked ham, cut into chunks. You start by searing some ham in a big pot; after a few minutes you add a half cup of chopped celery, a half cup of chopped red pepper, a tablespoon or two of garlic, and a cup of chopped onion. Boy, does it smell good.

After a while you add a bay leaf, a teaspoon of thyme, salt, pepper, cayenne and a quart of stock. You bring it to a boil, and then reduce the heat and let it simmer for a little over an hour. I had to add about another cup of stock during the cooking. When it's all done you serve it over some steamed white rice:

We were going to make cornbread, but after a few Bellinis we just didn't have the energy. Which is kind of a shame, because MizBubs makes some damned fine cornbread.

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So the day went by in a pleasant haze of eating, lounging and drinking. Our youngest left for a sleepover, our eldest's boyfriend came by and had dinner with us, then they went out for ice cream with some friends. We popped in Kairo, the original Japanese version of Pulse. It was a cool movie, moody and dark, but I started to fall asleep and got up to go to bed. And then the phone rang.

It was an old friend of mine, technically an ex-girlfriend although I don't really think of her that way since I only dated her for a few months in my junior year in high school. She's one of a small number of people I've managed to stay in touch with since high school. From her I found out that one of my best friends in high school, someone I'd lost track of about 20 years ago, had died of brain cancer.

I cracked open a bottle of Knob Creek that my partner gave me as a Christmas present, poured a quadruple, and spent the next half hour on the phone catching up. I found out another girl I knew--my ex-girlfriend's best friend--also had cancer and was quite sick. We spent some time talking about our kids, talking about loss, about reaching middle age, and about the tendency of some folks in our age bracket to spend more time looking back than looking forward.

My friend Warren Stewart was one of the coolest people I ever met. He was one of those kids in high school who just had style and tastes that were developed far beyond that of any of his peers. He was wicked smart, and funny, and he loved good food and paid attention to good cooking years before I ever did. He was the first of my friends who knew how to mix a cocktail.

The last time I saw him was in 1984, when he visited me and MizBubs in Chicago, and I have vague memories of him and MizBubs dragging me home from a punk rock bar in the classic drunken sailor/crucifixion manner. I can't even remember how I lost track of him, and I feel kind of shitty about that.

It turns out Warren was living in Brooklyn when he died, and was loved, and will be missed by many many people. There's a memorial blog set up for him, and I spent some time reading the various entries. I didn't recognize the names of any of the posters; the lack of names from our high school years made the passage of time seem somehow more intense. I don't know why, but the idea that I had at one time been so close to Warren, and knew nothing of how he'd spent the past 20 + years, was at once disorienting and sad.

After a while I got off the phone with my friend, and went upstairs to tuck in MizBubs. She was curled up in bed reading, and asked how my call went. She had only met Warren twice, but they got along famously. I like to think he'd be pleased to see how we turned out. At one point I said that we've now officially hit middle age--we're at the point when we're starting to hear about friends getting sick and dying, and there's sure to be more of it coming in the next 10 or 20 years. Somehow, though, that thought's not depressing to me. It's just kind of curious, just part of the journey. Time marches on, and we all go on doing whatever it is that we do, and so does everyone else.

Tired and weary, or not, we must go alone. Hopefully we'll all find peace in the new year.

R.I.P. New Frontier Las Vegas

The second oldest hotel casino on the strip just bit the dust.

The New Frontier was imploded early Tuesday morning.

The New Frontier originally opened as the Last Frontier in 1942. It was owned at one time by Howard Hughes, and also, partially, by Steve Wynn.

It's demolition makes way for the development of even more high-end properties on the northern strip. Now only Circus Circus, Slots-A-Fun, the Riviera, The Stratosphere and The Sahara remain north of the Wynn.

You can check out Vegas Today and Tomorrow for some excellent information on all the changes.

I just realized something

See those nacho chips? These are nacho chips from El Famous Burrito. I just noticed something about them.

If you get your nose really close to them, and take a good whiff, these nacho chips smell just like the food court at the Shelby County Flea Market in Simpsonville, Kentucky. Specifically, they smell just like the area around the booth bearing a sign saying, simply, "DEEP FRY".

I found that very comforting and nostalgic.

My children's childhood memories

Thank you, Sinverguenza, whoever you are...

I used to love watching Animaniacs with my kids when they were little, and it hadn't occurred to me to look for them online until Sinverguenza mentioned it in yesterday's comments. Here's a clip that figured prominently in our home school lesson plan:

R.I.P. Stardust

Another piece of old Las Vegas disappeared this morning with the implosion of the fabulous Stardust Resort & Casino.

Back in the day the Stardust was BIG, baby: biggest hotel in Las Vegas, biggest pool, a huge drive in movie screen...no fancy lawns or sweeping circular drives like other casino hotels at the time--no. Just a big-ass parking lot full of cars with tail fins. In 1960 the Aku Aku Polynesian restaurant and tiki bar opened, and the space-age Stardust was graced by a big stone tiki head out front.

Siegfried and Roy started at the Dust. Wayne Newton played the showroom in the declining years but bailed and let George Carlin take over toward the end.

The Stardust was a famously mobbed-up casino, run by Frank Rosenthal and Tony "The Ant" Spilotro. While it was referred to in the movie Casino as "The Tangiers", the Stardust appeared in all its glory, as itself, in the classic "Showgirls". It also appears in "Swingers".

MizBubs and I have only one Stardust story. On our last trip, in August 2006, we stopped in one afternoon after visiting Elvisarama, and had a drink while a karaoke competition was going in the lounge. There we saw one of the coolest old men we'd ever seen doing the most hep version of Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." This guy wore a sky blue baseball cap and some high-waisted jeans, and when he was done he sat down at a table with a couple of boozed-up young pretties. What a guy.

Two months later, in October 2006, the place was closed. And now I'm sad, even though I never stayed there or gambled a dime in the casino. I just liked knowing it was there, a bit of old-school class, surrounded by vacant lots, porn slappers and tacky souvenir shops, in what my brothers referred to as the "bitch end" of the Strip. It was a good place to catch a cab after leaving the Peppermill Fireside Lounge (which is perhaps the swankiest place in all of America.)

I've only been going to Las Vegas since 1998, and I'm amazed at how many places have been torn down and replaced in 9 short years:

The Aladdin was torn down and replaced by...The Aladdin. Which is now Planet Hollywood.

The Desert Inn (the first place I ever stayed in LV, and the best-smelling hotel lobby ever) is now the site of the Wynn.

The Boardwalk, formerly home of Purple Reign, and one of the most horrible clown facades in history, is gone.

The Westward Ho, where I was frequently mistaken for security, is about to become luxury condos for rich assholes from California.

Mandalay Bay, The Aladdin, Bellagio, Paris, The Venetian, and Wynn have all come online since my first visit. The San Remo is now Hooters. The Treasure Island, which used to have the coolest sign in the world, is now "TI", with the pirate show replaced by some buccaneering showgirl atrocity. I know I'm forgetting stuff, but you get the picture. Imagine how this all looks to someone who pulled up at the Stardust back in 1959, eager to check in to his $6 room.



You can read about the final days of the Stardust, with some really cool pictures, here. You can find a good chronology of Las Vegas implosions here at Vegas Today and Tomorrow.

Movie of the Week

Roll out the orange shag carpet, throw up the wood-grain panelling, melt some cheese cubes in your avocado green fondue pot and enjoy the entertainment masterpiece that was ABC's Movie of the Week.

Here's some cool trivia, according to TV Party:

In 1971-72, 18 of the 23 top-rated films broadcast on television were ABC MOTWs, thanks in no small part to the fast-paced, 30-second promotional teasers that forever redefined motion picture advertising.

Jump The Shark has a nice page dedicated to the ABC MOTW. For what it's worth, 28 votes to 1 say that MOTW never jumped the shark. One voter says it did -- with Killdozer.

I just remembered one more MOTW favorite of mine: James Brolin in Trapped. That's the one where the guy gets knocked out by juvenile delinquents and wakes up in a department store after closing time, only to find himself...TRAPPED! By 6 doberman pinschers.

Speaking of 30-second promotional spots, check this out: the original promo for The Night Stalker.

Oh, yeah. There's also an over-the-top promo featuring Connie Stevens as...The Sex Symbol.

Enjoy!