Ah, Vegas

It seems like whenever you turn the TV on these days there is some show about Las Vegas. Most of them can be found on the History Channel and Court TV. We have Las Vegas (no points for originality), Pawn Stars, American Restoration, Jailhouse, CSI, Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock, and seventy four different poker tournaments. You might think that after digesting hours and hours  of quality programming you’d have a firm grasp on what Vegas is really like. You would be so freaking wrong.

That's Lefty Rosenthal played by Robert De Niro
and Anthony Spilotro (name changed to Nicky Santoro)
played by Joe Pesci in the movie Casino.
Yeah, my mayor defended these guys.

Las Vegas is the last Wild West town. You can do things here you can’t do anywhere else. Here, when you leave a casino with a gallon of booze in a glass jug they give you a to-go cup on your way out to the parking structure. You know, because they wouldn’t want you to break the glass and cut yourself as your running old ladies over in a rented Ford Focus during your drunken joyride.  Low on cash? Head over to the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop of Pawn Stars fame. You give them your one of a kind Faberge egg that your grandfather kept safe while serving a fifty year sentence in a gulag by hiding it in his rectum and they’ll give you fifty bucks. Of course they’ll turn around and sell it for one hundred fifty grand, but you have to consider the price of their overhead, storage, and the hit they’ll take when they put it up for auction. Really, they’re the ones getting screwed, not you. Las Vegas is the only place where the American dream is still alive. Here you can become anything you want. For example, the man who represented Meyer Lansky,  Nicky Scarfo, Phil Leonetti, Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal, and Anthony Spilotro on charges of larceny, racketeering, and murder grew up to become mayor of Glitter Gulch for twelve years. The mobs attorney actual turned out to be a good mayor. I really liked his suggestion when asked what should be done to the punks who tag freeways and buildings. He said, “I’m saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb.” I don’t know about you, but I’d vote for him.

Yes, Las Vegas is a town where dreams can come true. But more often than not, it’s the town where you can lose your life savings, the deed to your house, your car, and several valuable appendages with one roll of the dice. The media portrays this town to be an adult Disneyland. It may be, but Disneyland never got me arrested for throttling the life out of a Pai Gow dealer because he just “stole” my last fifty cents.