Road Trip 2011, Part 6: 'Los Angeles'

Pitching a Mojave Shit Fit

We're on our way to Los Angeles and, looking to roll into the City of Angels in style (well, truthfully, just so as not to have to sit on each other's lap, or strap my mom to the roof in a rocking chair, like the Clampetts), we've forsaken the close quarters and sometimes unsettlingly unidentifiable upholstery-bound odors of our unsexy Ford Taurus with the unmistakable Wisconsin plates for a fairly nice-looking Chevy Tahoe rental.

We're crossing the Mojave Desert in search of the Pacific Ocean. I am, anyway; it's far more interesting - alluring, even - than L.A. itself. Come on, it's the Pacific Ocean, the planet's largest body of water. Its vastness isn't readily comprehensible by looking at a map. I remember seeing the Atlantic for the first time as a child, feeling a little overwhelmed by its size and - in what was perhaps an attempt to wrap my head around that vastness - believing I could picture what was on the other side - just past the horizon, 'just' out of sight.

I'm eagerly anticipating the same sensation today, hopefully standing on the Santa Monica pier. Only instead of Europe or Africa or Scandinavia, I'll be imagining Japan, Korea, Vietnam, the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia, and of course (and this is what's really being anticipated), a far greater (as in mind-blowing) expanse separating me from all of it. The numbers really are pretty breathtaking. At its widest point, the Pacific Ocean is nearly three times wider than the United States. To put that in perspective, imagine the time and effort it would take to walk from New York City to L.A., then triple that distance in your mind. That's the Pacific, and it is but a hair's width of a hair's width of the distance separating us (wherever we may find ourselves) from all the other points on our globe, and from our moon, and other planets in the solar system, and other systems, and other galaxies.

It is unnerving to me, sometimes, to think how small and insignificant I really am. It's downright overwhelming to imagine how insignificant our species is.

We've stopped for gas at a small truck stop off Highway 40. We've only been on the road for an hour, but there are already the first hints of the ocean, something damp and saline about the air...or so I enjoy telling myself. I probably don't know what I'm talking about. The San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains lie before us to the west, and offer formidable resistance to any presence of sea. That's why this is a desert, after all. These ranges, along with the Sierra Nevada, create a rain shadow that results in less than 13 inches annually. And in fact, we are just south of what's roundly considered the hottest and driest spot in North America in the summer: Death Valley.

There's no sign of that now, though. It's dark gray, cool and breezy this January morning. That might be what's making it seem 'wet'. The clouds suggest it's about to rain, but it never comes. Peeks at the sun cause bands of washed-out light to rake across the hardscrabble landscape in a swift west-to-east glide, but they are occasional at best. The day looks determined to stay cloaked in an insurmountable, and still mounting, gloom.

As do I. Not sure what my problem is, exactly, but I woke up in a bitchy mood, and it's only gotten worse.

Maybe I'm having a nicotine fit. I'm trying to quit smoking (again)...er, quit the nicotine gum, actually. I haven't smoked a cigarette in several months, and the gum has done its job pretty well. But I've been on it far too long, so just prior to this trip I made the decision to wean myself off it, because replacing one dependency with another, well, that's just asinine. I brought the few remaining pieces I had along with me. They ran out back in Oklahoma, but it's been going okay since then. I've been drinking lots of water, taking deep breaths and chewing tons of regular gum, wads at a time in fact, switching them out every twenty minutes or so, and have managed not to rip anyone's head off.

But now, sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair held together by duct tape in this far-flung outpost, I'm starting to think trying to quit might not have been the smartest decision.

I'm starting to feel a little held together by duct tape.

Maybe it's not a nicotine craving, though, but something else. Maybe it's saddling up for another long drive, which, excited though I am, seems at this point as much an odious chore as a new adventure. After 1,800 miles in just two days, it's been nice to chill out a little, motionlessly, in and about Laughlin. Now it's back to the grind of pressing on - endless sitting spells watching empty miles peel away, making time and distance at an unholy pace like Chevy Chase and crew in National Lampoon's Vacation, having to relinquish control of the radio. The first hour seemed interminable, and we've still got a solid three and a half of drive time left, followed by another five hours home late tonight.

But we're headed to L.A. for God's sake! Los Angeles. And the Pacific! Two entities that deserve to be italicized in one day! What on Earth do I have to be in a pissy mood about?

It could be the toothache I've been enduring since Christmas. When I get home from this road trip, I'm going to have to take care of that and it's going to be painful and costly.

And painful.

And costly.

And painful.

It may very well just be the prospect of going home, of having to, a knee-jerk defiance, now that I've broken my tether for a little while. We've reached the halfway point of this trip; it slipped by unnoticed while I was plugging quarters into a slot machine at the Colorado Belle in Laughlin. In just two days we load up and head east again, back to Wisconsin, back to the proverbial 'reality' (my reality) of runny nose and cold toes. We plan to drive through the Rockies on the way back; that leg of the road trip will likely have its own psychological merit. Like Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean, the Rockies, too, deserve built-in italics for emphasis. And maybe a slight-whispered obscenity, come to think of it.

* The fucking Rockies...! *

But it will still mean we're headed home.

Or maybe, just maybe, my foul mood is due to the fact that everything is more expensive at this windswept oasis. The gas, the food, the drink, everything, marked up from what it would cost anywhere else. Petrified, shelf-stored sandwiches fit for the microwave are going for $6.99 in these parts, bags of chips, normally 99 cents back 'where I come from' (where anybody comes from), sell at this lone outpost for upwards of four dollars to hapless motorists (like ourselves) who didn't have the foresight to gas or food up before setting out across this wasteland. And it truly is a wasteland...there's nothing between here and Barstow, California, where we hop onto 15 south. A mostly ghost town called Ludlow, but that's it. If you need gas, if you are hungry, if you have to pee, this outpost would seem to be it.

Just be prepared to pay. (Well, the bathrooms are free...but you know what I mean...)

There's a sign on the wall that addresses this, a disclaimer of sorts, exculpating the owners and staff from any responsibility for their higher prices by explaining in a tone that is just this side of pious, that they have a business to run, that it's difficult to make ends meet, and their prices are necessary for them to stay afloat. The sign would seem to speak in not so many words to the many travelers who have come through here and complained, to the never-ending charges of price gouging they've doubtless had to endure over the years.

"At least it's honest," my brother shrugs.

He's right; logically, I know this. The straightforwardness is strangely refreshing, and speaks to the bottom line truth, which is I don't have to spend a dime here if I don't want to. I don't have to stop here if I don't want to.

Thing is, last chance oases like these usually cater to - and ultimately own - travelers who have to.

I seem to be the only one who gives a shit though. Everyone else bites the bullet and buys something to eat, availing themselves of some form of post-industrial confection that I suspect may have been sitting on these shelves since Bill Clinton was president, simply because they're hungry and because it's still a long way to L.A. I've abstained, and for reasons I can't quite explain, the situation has started fraying at my nerves. I'm gripped by a sense of indignation that is not normally part of my character.

It's not about the money. This is hardly the only highway travel center charging higher than normal prices, and I don't pinch pennies. I made a very conscious decision years ago NOT to live my life quibbling over small change. I don't care if I get stuck paying the few extra cents on a split bill, or if I pay the whole bill, for that matter (if I'm at all able to). I'm not the type of person who wastes time resenting things like ATM service fees. While I admit it's easy to argue that banks screw us over in myriad ways, come on, really? Two or three dollars for the convenience of being able to withdraw money at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning from anywhere in the country? Why the hell not? Before ATM's, you had to do your banking on Friday before 5 p.m. or you were SOL until Monday morning at 9. And when you traveled, you had to lug along cash or (if you had any brains) traveler's checks. Now all you need is your ATM card. Slips nicely into your wallet, good (just about) anywhere, and totally secure if you lose it, provided you haven't written your PIN number on the back (that too is an 'any brains' issue). Life is too complex, even in the best of times. I'm perfectly happy, eager even (for the most part), to pay a bit extra (what constitutes an acceptable level of 'bit extra' is perhaps a whole other blog post...) if it gets me hoofing down the path of least resistance.

But I digress.

A seven dollar microwaved sandwich is annoying, yes, but it's not the high prices themselves.

It's that sign. It's the attempt to explain away the higher prices, the wording of it - part affirmation, part sob story and part 'get over it'. I'd really rather it not be there.

This travel center is a family affair, a husband, wife and children operation. I have no doubt they really do struggle to make ends meet, to stay in business. And I'll be the first to acknowledge that there's nothing to not like about them on a personal level. They are friendly and helpful, take time out of their daily routine to give us detailed directions. We are considering a side trip to Palm Springs before going on to L.A. (a whimsical notion of following in the footsteps of some golden age entertainers...largely a side-sojourn for my parents), and these folks tell us how to get there, even going so far as to break out a map and help us plot the most efficient route. They are the antithesis of what is usually angering and annoying about the help in a convenience store: the dull-eyed, slack-jawed teenager behind the register who has never heard of Palm Springs, who could not give less of a crap if you ever get there, who sighs and glares at you when you walk in, merely for disturbing his texting.

In the end, we determine that Palm Springs is not really do-able; there is way too much of a time crunch at hand. (A thought to check out a bit of San Diego must be scrapped for the same reason.) But everyone listens contentedly, munching on their outrageously priced fare, as these salt-of-the-Earthers lay it all out on the table for us. I'm sitting with everyone, but I'm sulking, slinking down in my chair, tossing my feet out with angry defiance, being kind of an asshole. I want a cigarette, and my tooth is throbbing a little. And what's worse, by this time the aromas, such as they are, of everyone's plastic-wrapped lunch have come wafting up to me in maddeningly tantalizing plumes - the savory cheese of a slightly over-nuked double stack burger; the tangy gelatinous filling of someone's 'turnover' dripping down a chin onto the table with an indigestible rubbery splat; the crackle and fizz of a pop can being popped open; the tantalizing crinkle of a foil potato chip bag, salt and vinegar staining someone's fingers deliciously. Man, I'm hungry, and I'm starting to regret my decision, starting to think I want that seven dollar sandwich after all, maybe a 2 dollar Twinkie, and a 4 dollar bottle of water to wash it down with.

But I've abstained; I've made my point (I guess...). I can't go back now.

I know I'm being stupid, but my anger builds. I'm not aware of how angry I look until we leave, then it is made perfectly clear. As I'm sauntering toward the door the lady, the matriarch, sensing something about me, attempts to assuage my anger by handing me a religious pamphlet off a shelf near the exit, and saying, "God can help."

This throws me into a tizzy. Price gouging, smug rationalization, and now proselytizing! I refuse the pamphlet and push the doors open like a teenage brat, stand outside, shriek an obscenity, kick dirt at a fence post at the end of the parking lot. I am electrocuted by my own brightly lit rage. She's aware of how I'm acting, everyone is, and I feel ashamed.

The end result is my being shrunk down in my seat for the rest of the way to L.A., watching hungrily as the Mojave Desert flies by deliciously, everyone's digestion playing out in a maddening cacophony of quiet burps.

I've pitched similar shit fits periodically throughout my life. I don't know why. I don't know why. But as we get back on the highway, I realize I would like to. And for the first time in my life, it occurs to me that I probably should, for my own good, find out where that anger comes from.

I have no reason to have an anger problem. All things considered, I've led a charmed life. Not an easy life, always, but a charmed one.

We head west across the Mojave. Morning becomes afternoon. The sun disappears for good behind a slate gray sky, so there is little natural indication of the passage of time. The landscape becomes more mountainous as the San Gabriels come into view. In Barstow, we take Highway 15 South, approach the Cajon Pass, which separates the San Gabriel from the San Bernardino mountains.



In January, these short strings of mountains are the quintessential 'mountains in the distance', snow-capped and pristine looking. The snow on top is rippled, like water, white veins adding texture to the monoliths. By now, the Pacific Ocean is in the air. It's quite obviously damper and feels warmer, if still gloomy, than it had in the desert. The highway widens to three lanes, then four, the traffic thickens in both directions. We descend down and around an enormous circular stretch of highway like the minute hand on a giant clock. The sky darkens, but it gets warmer as our elevation drops.

L.A. is out there, like a woman from a dream.

Los Angeles

For decades, it's worn two faces - one of glitz and glamor, the other of violent crime and congestion - and worn them both convincingly. It's impossible not to consider these two blatant extremes driving into L.A. (especially for the first time), as the traffic snarls, the freeways become multi-level, palm trees become as regular a sight as gang graffiti.

When you think about it, Los Angeles and its metro area, more than any other American city, is the epicenter of nearly everything that informs the modern American state of mind, for better or worse. And for this, just as it's said that you're never more than 10 feet away from a spider at any given time in your life, it's strange to think about the slew of entertainers and power players that are, or could be, in my midst, within fifty miles of me in any direction this afternoon. I'm not a celebrity whore, but I'm not a snob either, certainly not 'above' appreciating that this is really where the vast majority of that stuff happens, and has happened, and will in the future. New York and Chicago have their own hustle and bustle, wield their own influence, but neither is quite as visible in what it contributes to the Zeitgeist of any given age, and both are rooted more in tradition. Los Angeles, in true 'California' style, seems to have no tradition, per se. It has only the pulse of the moment, in the rhythm of which one finds the presence of something that is just as wide and mysterious, awesome and fearsome as the Pacific Ocean, in whose embrace it lives out its days. 'Anything' can happen here, and everything has; we've all seen it somewhere.

That might be a painfully cliche thing for an outsider to think, but I stand by it as a perfectly understandable train of thought. For ordinary Americans, having grown up and grown old watching television, or watching movies, or listening to music, southern California is nothing less than the birthplace of (nearly) all of it.

DOWNTOWN L.A. - TOP: On an (ever) gloomy January afternoon, the beautiful and iconic city hall building is visible to the right. BELOW: Catching sight of this multi-deck freeway interchange leaves little question as to where we are. (It too is fairly iconic to the City of Angels.)

At the same time, sharing space with this very big vibe is an equally unavoidable (and influential, for better or worse) tableau of American life. Within ten miles of the 'beautiful people' we all want to believe really exist live the hopeless and hapless, the gangs and ghettos, the downtrodden and despondent, alienated and disenfranchised, an array of broken everything, from dreams, to homes to spirit. L.A. is both the paradigm of America's finest aspirations to live the good life, and a totem of its most frightening nightmares; a beautiful but hardened example of both the heights a free society can reach, and the mush it can dissolve into if left to its own devices.

By most accounts, the city has cleaned up its act, is not as dangerous as it was in, say, 1990. And it's surely true that every community on Earth, of any size, has its problems, its assortment of haves and have-nots. But Los Angeles is a city that brandishes how bright it can sparkle as its very calling card, and so the disparity is especially shocking. Case in point: we are on our way to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Highway 10 joins the famed Route 101, which, if we were to stay on it, would take us north right up the coast to Washington State (a drive I will take one day...I must take). We spot the Hollywood sign in the distance and all hoist up our phones and cameras, chatter excitedly as it comes into view, indulge in an impromptu (and thoroughly ridiculous, looking back...and pretty annoying, come to think of it) rendition of Hooray for Hollywood, just as we pass an exit sign for Normandie Avenue, at the intersection of Flourence and which the L.A. riots ignited nearly two decades ago. The riots were a catharsis for this city, to say the very least, but also for race relations in the country as a whole, and sometimes it's hard to know if things have gotten better between black and white since then, here or elsewhere.

DISPARITY - Cruising westbound on 101, almost simultaneously we spot the Hollywood sign off to our right (the little white blip in the distant hills) and pass under an exit for Normandie Avenue, at the corner of Florence and which the '92 riots began.

But we are here as visitors, and so do not dwell on the unpleasant for too long. We have a singular plan, really: catch a glimpse of the Hollwyood sign, then take my mom to lunch on Rodeo Drive, then whatever sightseeing we can get done within our time constraints (including, hopefully, the Santa Monica pier). To that end, we take advantage of my brother's (relative) familiarity with L.A. for a cruise down Hollywood and Sunset boulevards.

Sunset Strip and Hollywood Boulevard

Talk about a birthplace. Mad pop culture history abounds on Sunset Boulevard. Mere sighting of venues like the Rainbow Bar and Grill and Whiskey A-Go-Go automatically evoke a dossier of celebs-turned-legends who once called these places home in the late night hours of the 1960s and 70s. The Whiskey has hosted every major rock movement since its opening: acid rock in the 60s, punk movement in the 70s, hair metal of the 80s, grunge in the 90s. And The Rainbow was a famed hangout in each of these eras. Take any tavern or club you've hung out in, any Cheers-esque watering hole where you feel everybody knows your name...now sprinkle it with celebs, imagine they are the ones milling about, in and out of the bathrooms, off and on the dance floor, in and out the front doors, drinking too much, starting fights, puking on the floors, being shown to the door, the way you, your friends, or people you know might elsewhere.

Hollywood Boulevard is similarly interesting. In just a few short blocks, we catch a glimpse of the Pantages Theater, opened in 1930 and once owned by Howard Hughes, the Capital Records building just north of (the equally famed) Hollywood and Vine intersection, and of course Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Hollywood Boulevard seems to be the more touristy of the two - from this tourist's point of view, anyway. It seems to be capitalizing on its fame more heartily, and there is a much more visible corporate brand presence - billboards and stores you'd see anywhere - a clear-cut sign that a lot of visitors come here and do exactly what we are doing. The minute a place achieves any kind of recognition, it becomes the dreaded tourist trap.

FERTILE GROUND - L.A.’s parallel-running Hollywood
and Sunset boulevards (specifically West Hollywood’s
Sunset Strip) have over the decades served as the
veritable nexus from which nearly all of what informs
American life has come. Clubs like The Laugh Factory,
Whiskey a Go Go, Viper Room and Rainbow Bar and Grill have
launched a slew of major careers and/or hosted countless
celeb-filled nights.

But so what? It's pretty dazzling nevertheless; gets me feeling restless to be in the midst of it. Were my parents not with us, mobility not a consideration, my brother and I certainly would have parked somewhere and strolled along on foot, hung out somewhere. I'd have loved to do that, actually. By necessity, this is a quick nickel tour. But still an undeniably impactive visit.

WESTBOUND ON HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD - Glimpses of the Capitol Records building, just north of Hollywood and Vine, and the famous Pantages Theater, opened in 1930, the 2nd floor of which once housed the offices of Howard Hughes.

Rodeo Drive

So too along Beverly Hills' Rodeo Drive, you get a sense of it being the 'real deal' in terms of how the other half lives. The affluent shopping district most Americans hear tell of stretches just a few blocks, but it is where rich people go..the super rich. No knock-offs here. Palm trees and willowy, stunningly beautiful women (as opposed to merely attractive, or 'hot', which can be found anywhere) seem to walk hand in hand, and brighten the streets on this dark January afternoon. BMWs, Audis, Mercedes and Aston Martins are what glide up and down the streets. Once in a while some mass-produced American sedan or truck lumbers past, but those are the telling exception. It would seem easier to distinguish between tourist and local here than anywhere else on Earth. We're feeling strange and a little out of place in our Chevy Tahoe...man, the salt-crusted Ford Taurus really would have been Clampett Hour.

RODEO DRIVE, BABY - The upscale shopping district of Rodeo Drive is barely three blocks in length, but what it lacks in length, it makes up for affluence.

We have dinner at an Italian restaurant called Il Fornaio. I find it with the help of Yelp!, on my phone (thank you very much). It's perfect for us: not super exclusive nor too pricey, casual-elegant dress code, serious enough about its cuisine to propagate nuance but not intimidate potential clientele. It's something for the tourists, playing a bit to what the always-beyond brilliant Onion once described as the woman who 'will eat anything with the word Tuscan in it'. But the food is authentically good, and the staff authentically friendly.

But it doesn't really matter. It's the interaction of my family in that late afternoon hour that steals the show. We settle in and laugh and exclaim, solve the world's problems, discuss politics, trade memories of the past, make plans for the future, and not take any of it, or ourselves, too seriously. We are loud and raucous and opinionated but ultimately harmless, and it is clear we've remained so, through long stretches of time and the changing fortunes found therein. In that moment, time seems to stand still, and we are the same as we all were as far back as I can remenber - in 1995, or 1990, or 1980. In that moment, I feel lucky to have the family I've had.

This I can say in good faith, in spite of the fact that it wasn't all sunshine and roses between us that day. We are like any family, full of as much bickering and bullshit as peace and love, given to sibling rivalries, short tempers, quick indignations, long eye rolls and lingering snark in adverse conditions, beholden to competitions we're not even aware of until they've dashed out of the shadows and grabbed one of us around the neck. And there was plenty of that in and out of L.A.

But not at dinner. For that short period of time on Rodeo Drive, we were the stars of our own reality television show. At the risk of sounding maudlin, there are those who don't know familial connection on that level. There are those for whom dinner is a function of life, not a pastime. And it begs the question:

What the hell do I have to get angry about, to the level that I (sometimes) do?

We never get to see the Santa Monica Pier. There just isn't enough time. It might be California, but it's still January, and gets dark early. (This, on a day that never really sports much daylight.) After lunch, in the last of the twilight, we drive through Beverly Hills, snap some pictures of the other half living in and about their raised, gated homes. The ocean is in the air; it's a dark and lovely and very saline 67 degrees in Beverly Hills this evening. A rich blue tint falls from the darkening sky, settles across verdant lawns.

Exactly the type of women you'd expect to see in Beverly Hills are out walking exactly the type of dogs you'd expect them to be.

I imprint as much of it as I can in my mind, with a sense I might not be back this way, then we and the sun part ways. The sun makes its exit over the Pacific. We head east toward Nevada. We cruise one last time down Sunset Strip, and Hollywood Boulevard, then find ourselves ensnared in what's likely the most definitive L.A. story: the traffic jam. It takes us an hour and a half to inch our way back past downtown along Highway 10, and I do mean inch.

BLUE EVENING - A soft 67 degrees at a Beverly Hills intersection, as the sun disappears over the Pacific.

By the time we are again winding our way up through the Cajon Pass, it's well after 9 p.m. We don't arrive back in Laughlin until one in the morning. I take the wheel for the journey back. We glide through the dark desert night, stars above and stars below me, as I ascend over more basin and range mountains. Lights in the distance shift position through the darkness, first to the side, then below and then above.

Sometime late, I pass that same truck stop we stopped at early in the morning, and feel a little twinge of annoyance, which tells me, or reminds me, it wasn't really their higher prices, or their sign, or their proselytizing.

It was just me.

Something is nipping at me, always trying to draw out the blood of rage. I really need to figure it out. With any luck I've got another forty years of this mortal coil left, and I don't want to live any part of it angry. There's absolutely no good reason for it, and it's not as easy to be philosophical about it as it once was, for me or anyone exposed to it.

Reflections on 9/11 and "Dave Klein"

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was working at a 100,000-watt 'Hot Country' radio station in northern Wisconsin. I was the morning deejay, went by the on-air name Dave Klein, which was the name of someone my first love met one night long ago - a hook-up that was a source of as much inspiration as devastation my freshman year of high school. I was long over the girl by the time I got the radio gig, but I don't think I'll ever forget my freshman year, and the name surely seemed more country music-appropriate than 'Jared Glovsky'. ("You want I should play some Shania Twain...!?")

That morning, I came into work like any other, keyed myself into the station at seven a.m., bleary-eyed, running on auto-pilot and sure to stay that way until I could get the coffee maker fired up, though I was in no particular hurry to make that happen. I rarely had a reason to be alert at that job. Early mornings at 100,000 watts were easy for me...easy breezy. Nobody would be there and nothing much started happening before 8 or 8:30, which meant that first hour was golden. I could let the automation crank out song after song from Toby Keith or the Dixie Chicks, and speak only intermittently, usually in and out of commercial breaks, knowing (with a fair amount of satisfaction) that whatever I said, and however frequently, it would be heard by a lot of people. Our broadcast tower sat advantageously at 1,100 feet above sea level, and my voice spilled out over Lake Superior, unimpeded by that flat blue tabletop, reaching three states and parts of Canada at the speed of light.

"Good Tuesday morning to you! 54 degrees right now in the Chequamegon Bay area under crystal clear skies! Don't forget we've got casino slots coming up sometime next hour, your chance to score some great casino prizes, and all morning long remember to listen for the sound of the touchtone phones! They're your chance to get into the drawing for a trip for two to Florida!"

Thus was my morning spiel in the last days and weeks of the pre-9/11 world. I would expend the bulk of my pre-coffee energy cranking all that out in the best radio voice modulation I could muster, steeping a little bag of country twang (just a little, to affect as much of "Dave Klein" as possible) in an oversized mug of (truly) absurd enthusiasm that routinely sloshed over the rim and soaked my shirt. It was an auditory illusion, of course. When the 'live mic' light switched off and the music started playing again, "Dave Klein" would turn down the speakers and resume his previous posture: slumped down in his chair like a partially deflated dummy, feet thrown up on the console, hands clasped comfortably across his chest, watching TV, half asleep. There was a little television in the on-air booth and on the morning of September 11, I was watching Welcome Back Kotter...I'm pretty sure...on TV Land. Or maybe it was Three's Company. Possibly Sanford and Son, come to think of it. But it was something fun and silly, for sure. Something friendly. Something innocent, frightless and forever young.

"Dave Klein" was twenty-eight years old, shaggy haired, scruffy-faced, a terrible dresser with a face for radio. "Dave Klein" was nestled comfortably, for the moment, in a decent-paying and cushy, but entirely dead end gig, contentedly watching TV Land. Frightless and forever young.

At 7:52 a.m., I segued into a commercial break with the promise of a weather forecast on the other side. Halfway through that bank of commercials, one of the sales people, Janice, phoned into the studio line, asked if I was watching TV. I said yes, told her that frigging Horshack still cracked me up after all these years (It MUST have been Welcome Back, Kotter!). She said I better turn on CNN. I said, okay, why? She told me a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. She seemed tense (though not hysterical) about it, but did not have a chance to elaborate. The commercials ended and I had to get back on-air with the weather.

"Sunny skies so far through Saturday, highs near 60, lows in the upper 30s to lower 40s! Chance of frost in the outlying areas away from the lake! You know what that means! Cover those plants, folks!"

I launched into the station ident, followed that up with a song, and hastily turned the channel on the TV to CNN.

I expected to see something unfortunate but mostly innocuous, maybe even just this side of comical. A single engine plane, probably, its ass end jutting out of a window high up, the pilot hanging from the building's antenna by his parachute. My mind was only able to conjure up a mere mishap in those last seconds of pre-9/11 life - a minor tragedy, with minor injury and no fatality. If I'd bothered imagining ten years into the future (though that was not really possible; "Dave Klein" never thought about the future), I'd have pictured people saying (laughing), "Oh I remember when that happened!"

What I saw instead was a gigantic fiery hole ripped out of the side of the north tower, black smoke pouring out of it, steadily upwards. My eyes widened, I felt a little pinch in my gut. I was not thinking terrorist anything, had no grasp yet of how bad it was, or would get (or still feel, ten years later), but I was muttering, "What the fuck..." aloud, to myself. This was more than I expected. More than Janice had alluded to on the phone.

Then, not five minutes after I had turned on CNN, as (ironically enough) OUR top of the hour news (CNN Radio) was playing, the south tower suddenly exploded in a massive sideways-shooting fireball. I was looking straight at the screen when it happened, but did not see the second plane approach, only the resulting explosion, and like the CNN anchors, I was confused at first, thought it was the north tower that had exploded.

Hearing the confusion, the disquiet, in the voices of the CNN anchors as they tried to figure out not only what had just happened but, now, what the hell was going on, gave me my first inkling that something was up, that not only was this bigger than Janice had alluded to, but this was beyond any garden variety tragedy.

I didn't do much of a radio show that day. I stayed glued to that little TV, watching in disbelief as each new horror unfolded. Co-workers started arriving, aware of what was going on by then, and crowded into the on-air booth with me. Once in a while someone made an attempt to collect himself, go back out to his desk and 'try to get some work done...', but he always came back eventually. Nobody got any work done that day. There was a sense in those first couple of hours, I think, though nobody said it out loud, that this might be the end. That hell was breaking loose and there was no stopping it. All of a sudden, 'casino slots' and 'touchtone phones', and trips to Florida and weather forecasts didn't seem to matter much.

I wasn't totally disengaged, however. I continued to talk in and out of commercial breaks, thinking that anybody listening, even just having their radio droning in the background, might be unnerved for not hearing a live voice at all. And on the suggestion of management, I started playing whatever patriotic country music I could find: In America by Charlie Daniels, God Bless the U.S.A. by Lee Greenwood. And after the second tower collapsed and news came of an 'explosion' at the Pentagon and another plane down in Pennsylvania, I went on and announced that everyone should find their way to a television as soon as possible and monitor exactly what's going on in New York and Washington, because it's going to affect all Americans.

"Things are changing right before our eyes."

I mention this only because it prompted a call on the studio line. A woman who had been listening to the radio all morning as she worked in her garden. She apparently had not caught our top-of-the-hour news breaks, or not listened closely. She had no idea what was going on, asked me to elaborate on what I'd said on-air, fill her in.

I was not comfortable explaining it to her. If CNN couldn't provide me all the answers, what could I possibly say to this woman? How best could I handle it? I didn't want to agitate her unnecessarily, but lulling her into some false sense of security somehow seemed more detrimental. In the end, honesty served as the best policy, though I think I barfed it all over her. I told her there were terrorist attacks going on out East. Thousands presumed dead. The towers had collapsed. The Pentagon was attacked. A plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. All flights were grounded now. Nobody was sure where the President was.

Et cetera.

She was aghast.

"I've been outside gardening all morning!" she cried. "I had the TV off! I was out there with the radio on! I listen to your station all the time! It's such a beautiful day!"

She kept bleating on excitably. She could have gotten off the phone at any time, gone into her house, turned on her television and found out for herself, but I sensed she was a bit afraid to. I let her ramble for a good five minutes, but finally had to beg off, and felt weird doing so. Felt like I was abandoning her...

Can it be that was ten years ago, already?

Everyone who was an adult then has a 'where were you...' story to tell. But I've had a chance to talk to some teenagers in my midst, who were just little kids when it happened. They have a unique perspective through the nebulous lens of childhood we don't often wonder about, being so (understandably) distracted with remembering and honoring the fallen and the survivors.

One kid who just turned nineteen remembers a TV being brought into his fourth grade classroom, the entire class watching the events as they unfolded. He said the teacher did not spare their feelings by sugar-coating it, that he was made aware - at least as much as one can be aware of anything at age 9 - that this was a national tragedy.

Conversely, another kid about the same age remembers no mention being made of it at all in his classroom, just everyone in the school being corralled into the gymnasium to play games for the day, abruptly, without any reason given.

Denial. Got it.

Still another, this one only in kindergarten ten years ago (kindergarten!), has vague memories of being aware that something had happened, and being let out of school early. She says the teacher alluded only to a plane having crashed, but by the time they left school, she says, other kids were already throwing around the phrase, 'World War III'.

Someone had caught wind.

Others I've spoken to were not at all aware something had happened...not aware of anything, in fact, until years later, and then learning of 9/11 only in newly burgeoning historical context, as it related to the fact that we are a nation at war. And that is the most significant part, I believe. These kids, from 15 to 19 years old right now, are at the vanguard of the generation coming of age that knows only their nation at war.

Really? Ten years? A decade since all that happened?!

Am I really thirty-eight years old?

I don't feel any different, and yet I know that I am. I can see it in my face every time I look in the mirror: the lines of aging, my hair starting to thin, not quite so shaggy anymore. For this loss of youth and time, I want to say I'm unhappy, but I can't. I'm happier now than I was back then. Not necessarily with (all aspects of) my life (in other words, not totally where I want to be), but with myself. I'm okay with things, with my age, my personal affairs. Facing forty doesn't seem to be as difficult as facing thirty was, and nothing is as daunting as it used to be. Nothing's quite as hopeful either, I must say...but it's not as daunting.

Truth is, I'm not a huge fan of "Dave Klein", looking back, and I would not give back the last ten years, if it meant having to be that guy again.

"Dave Klein" smoked like a chimney, still had acne for God's sake, wasn't as good of a father as he thought he should be, too young and too dumb to get it right. "Dave Klein" was still saying stupid things with the bluster of youthful certainty. "Dave Klein" was self-righteous. High strung. Hell-bent. He was less cynical than I am now, perhaps...believed more readily that great things were possible, that anything was possible. But that's because he never did anything, never tried. He was mostly lazy, self-absorbed, quick with platitudes masked as advice or opinions, but removed from any real risk, perfectly happy whiling away the days at that radio job.

All that was about to change. Within six months of 9/11, the radio station was sold, fully automated, and we were all laid off. "Dave Klein" went forever silent on January 1, 2002, and it was a good thing. At the time, it was jarring to lose my job, be pushed out of the nest, so to speak, but it spurred me to try different things, make a go of something substantial before I turned thirty. I could have stayed nestled in that tiny (albeit comfortable) cocoon forever.

The same could be said about this nation. In a way, we were all pushed out of a proverbial nest on 9/11, where we had bedded down and become complacent about the state of the world and our status in it. I agree with President Obama that we are a stronger society today. Make no mistake, it should not have happened, but it did, and it was a wake-up call for all Americans - to vigilance, gratitude and reflection. I truly believe that in the end, whatever we are or aren't today as a society, we're still better now than we were before that awful day. The only thing 'better' back then was the times...and even that is an illusion, ultimately.

It was the the best of times, it was the worst of times, as Dickens said...

So far, I have stayed away from the wall-to-wall 'coverage' of this 10th anniversary, and plan to for the rest of the weekend. I find the extent of it mawkish, and more to the point, for me, completely unnecessary. When it comes to 9/11, all the coverage and reflection I need or can stand goes on in my head every year about this time. I see the planes and the fire and the smoke and the dropping bodies and the confetti of madness. 9/11 is, and will always, and should be, a private ceremony. Oh, don't you worry, my friend with the bumper sticker, I will never forget. I simply don't need Anderson Cooper putting his two cents in, or endless analysis from pundits or experts, presidents or politicians telling me what happened, or didn't happen. I don't need to hear a History Channel compilation of every recorded message left that day by strained, uneasy voices now relinquished to the ages, or have the physics of the towers falling explained to me. I only need to know that they fell. And that Flight 93 fell from the Pennsylvania sky. And that the walls of the Pentagon crumbled.

But we, as a people - 'We the People...' - did not.

Road Trip 2011, Part 5: 'Las Vegas'

The Bedazzled Forest

From the back seat, my father's voice, unmistakably nervous:

"Wow, this is...this is incredible. I can't believe it."

The light turns green. We lurch forward in our road salt-seasoned Ford Taurus, having just exited the 515. My brother's aggressive driving keeps pace with the race down South Las Vegas Boulevard.

"Look," I point with a snap of my fingers. My brother slaps my hand from in front of his face. "There's that pawn shop from TV!"

There is a long line on the sidewalk in front; people waiting to get in, sporting the double-edged dream that a) their 1987 Minnesota Twins World Champions Wheaties box might be worth a small fortune, b) somebody will tell them all about it on television.

"You've seen that show, right Dad?" I say.

"What show?"

"Pawn Stars," I reply, "on the History channel."

"Oh, yeah..." he mutters. I can hear the distraction in his voice. Not from disinterest, but for some unfathomable reason, unease.

As we pass, I scan the interior - a one second glimpse through the front door glass.

"I think I saw Chumlee!" I cry, with an exuberant pump of my fist.

I'm joking (er, for the most part), but my dad doesn't catch it. His mind is elsewhere.

"Wow, this is weird..." he repeats, "it's so built up from the last time we were here."

My brother and I exchange a quick glance, like Gannon and Friday on Dragnet. We've taken this detour to Vegas from Laughlin for him, mainly; given his penchant for all things gambling, thought this might be kind of like a trip to the oracle. But he doesn't seem to be enjoying himself all that much.

As we head further south on the Strip, the build-up that has him so mystified intensifies. Close-knit traffic jockeys for position in what has become a frenzy of lane-changes, hard brakes and fast accelerations, granting grudging right of way to a thickening swarm of pedestrians pooling up at every curbside precipice, waiting for the light to turn green and almost always starting to cross before it does. Beanstalk-worthy giants loom on either side in increasing numbers - The Stratosphere, the Sahara, Wynn, Caesar's Palace, Treasure Island, Venetian, Bellagio, New York-New York. They are the grand redwoods of this bedazzled forest. They drip brightly-colored candle wax down the side, on the dried flakes of which a thick parasitic underbrush of smaller bars, restaurants, casinos and attractions thrives. Together the components of this unnatural ecosystem conspire to create a visual short circuit, a flicker of color and constant movement so frenetic and intertwined, you suspect at any moment it could congeal into a single wall of white light.



"There's where they have that fountain show," I say, pointing toward the Bellagio.

"Oh my God...!"

My dad's voice billows from the back seat more forcefully. His exclamation is apropos of nothing, but anxious, like the puff of smoke from a condemned man's last cigarette.

My brother and I glance at each other again, grin a little. "Dad, you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replies. "This is just...just not what I remember."

"It's the Vegas Strip," I shrug. "Isn't this what it's supposed to be?"

"I guess..."

"Has it ever been any different?"

"Yes," he declares, determinedly if defensively. He's quiet a moment. We cross another intersection. "No, this is weird. I don't remember it ever being so..."

His voice drifts off.

"Sooo...??" I prompt.

"I don't know," he mutters, "so city-fied..."

It's a significant remark, considering the last time my dad was in Vegas was not 1960, or 1970, but 2001. I was not with him then, so I really don't have a frame of reference as to what he thinks is different between then and now. My first time in Vegas was '07, on the eve of this country's economic meltdown - the three decades of unprecedented economic growth (spurred by low taxation, minimal regulation, and the greatest surge of technological innovation the world has ever known) falling out of the sky and hitting the ground in a fantastic explosion that took out whole neighborhoods of our way of life, and continues burning to this day.

In the ten or fifteen years before that happened, a huge development boom came to Vegas, particularly the Strip and outlying residential areas. It's quite possible that what my dad sees now ten years later might be vastly different from what he saw then. Chronology and perspective are inextricably linked, though, because while he can't believe how it's grown, I can't believe, having been here just four years ago, right before the shit hit the fan, how completely that growth has ground to a halt.

Boom to Bust

Construction projects on the Strip that were just starting in '07 are in some cases still going on. Or, their long abandoned skeletal remains bear decaying witness to the real estate bubble burst, at the hands of which Vegas has suffered a truly medieval beat-down, especially in the residential sector. I remember driving out from the city in '07, gazing at the shag carpeting of condos that stretched out as far as the eye could see, the bright new paint not completely dry yet, and thinking, 'Man, how are they going to find enough people to fill all of them?'

The answer turned out to be: they couldn't. Today along the same route, those ant colonies are still there, but half-filled. Some look abandoned now, yards unkempt, streets unnervingly devoid of vehicles. I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet many of these dwellings were never occupied, neighborhoods hastily thrown together on the empty promise of some future demand that never materialized. And the projects whose developers were lucky, or bullish, enough to actually find buyers have long since been foreclosed on.

Las Vegas is a city left gagging on the smolder of an explosion and an implosion, both of which happened within the confines of a single moment in time. A universe beginning and ending in an instant.

It's not just my imagination, either. Much has been written about the Vegas bust, and the sheer absurdity of the development that preceded it, the way lenders preyed upon people's desire to see themselves living some kind of high life, belief that they should be, and willingness to take on ill-advised if not impossible debt to make it happen, to pursue the new American dream - which for a while had become living nakedly outside one's means. Information released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics just in the week I'm writing this places Nevada amongst the states with the highest unemployment rate (12.4%). People have been hit hard by this recession everywhere. They've lost jobs, lost homes, been unable to find work, watched their unemployment run out, received neither help nor hope from Washington. In places like Vegas, which by its very nature foments as hearty a distinction as it does symbiosis between those who come to visit and those who stick around and try to make a living, it's been especially hard.

Yet, cruising down Las Vegas Boulevard with my parents it seems to be business as usual. Vegas is as vibrant as ever here, in this narrow and securely cloistered fantasy land. The city was able to market itself to an increasingly younger set in recent years, early twenty-somethings not nearly as affected (or bothered) by the economic crunch, able to successively brand its cachet as the party, marriage and sin capital of the world, and capitalize on it.



It might be largely an illusion (Vegas would be foolish to trying selling itself as anything else, after all). People may not be coming in the numbers seen in 2005 or 2006, and they may not be staying, but they are coming. The constant movement, the flicker and flurry of traffic both behind the wheel and on foot on this 'any old weeknight in January' is evidence of this.

Er, Vegas baby...?

Though to be honest, it isn't just young twenty-somethings here. The Strip is really a people-watcher's dream, offering something for everyone...something of everyone. There are the cliches you'd expect to find - the middle-aged businessmen in blue suits, the kind who arrive on company retreats ready to party like rock stars like they did in 1991; the college frat boy crews, ready to party like they did last week. But there are also soft-spoken elderly couples strolling along with their drinks in hand (saw one lady with a 100-oz margarita, and why not, you can drink openly on the street here), sight-seeing, dreaming of the Rat Pack days, lamenting never getting to see Sinatra sing perhaps (or Elvis...does Wayne Newton still perform?). There are raucous bachelorette parties moving in and out of the bars and casinos everywhere, constantly, living some Bad Girls Club fantasy...(or maybe the Kardashians), that's par for the course in Sin City these days. But there are also equally loud-mouthed menopausal women, in their early to mid-fifties, whooping it up, women who back in their hometown - Ames, Iowa, say - might never get crazier than their Red Hat Society meetings every Sunday morning at Perkins, but are here enjoying a week-long girl's night out. There are old hippies and young hipsters and outcasts with tattoo sleeves. There are Goth princes and princesses with unnaturally black hair, their faces poked and prodded with all sorts of piercings like the top shelf of a tackle box, as well as normal-looking couples in various age groups, the kind you might be able to picture you and your wife going to Applebee's with on a Friday night. There are old toothless men who lost it all in '77 and never left, and the old toothless women who love them. There are bikers, bands of ballsy brothers in denim and rockers, swaggering along or making their way up or down the Strip on their hogs with an ear-splitting rumble. There are women who might be prostitutes, never openly propositioning anyone, but unusually attractive for how alone they seem, gazing at certain passers-by or certain cars with an unmistakably expectant gaze (I imagine if one is in the market, one knows for sure...), and ethno-centric groups of people from all over the world - Japanese, Chinese, Indian, African, Hispanic, German, Norwegian. And of course, there are the loners - the proverbial mysterious loners - striding purposefully amidst the crowd like Jackson Browne on the cover of The Pretender, or sometimes lingering in a single spot purposefully, soaking in the desert air, above the fray but happy to swim in it, writing poetry in their head. There are the hotties too, a beyond-requisite number of good looking women who know they're good looking, sure beyond a shadow of a doubt of their ability to get some visiting college kid tripping over his tongue because he's never seen anything like it back in Peoria, or La Crosse, or Flint. They usually come striding along in a celebrity-looking entourage, and always a comparably attractive man on their arm.

I've rarely seen a woman by herself in Vegas, come to think of it, other than the women I think might be prostitutes. (Yikes! What does that say about me!)

There are even some families with children picking their way through the pedestrian stream on the Strip. My impulse is to question this a little; and I can't possibly be the only one. But the kids I see always appear happy, never look like they're being dragged into some determinedly selfish adult's nightmare.

The truth is, for all its glitter this and glitter that and 'what happens in Vegas' posturing, Vegas is not a terribly sleazy place. It's actually pretty sanitized, the aforementioned 'cachet' now an artfully enhanced contrivance. It's like any other tourist trap; a caricature of something that it used to be, or was thought to be. Corporate-branded 'sin' is for sale, surely, and there are the day-workers who stand at each corner and offer porn pamphlets/guides, slapping their wares into their hands with a persistence designed to get your attention, but they're easily ignored. It's no more inappropriate to bring your kids here, really (for parents who keep it together anyway...act like parents) than New York City, or Miami, or DisneyWorld...or your average county fair for that matter, where scantily clad teenage girls, menacingly raucous teenage boys and the creepy carneys who eye them up might be more contrary to what you want or expect your young children to be exposed to than anything on the Strip.

And there are family options in Vegas. Quite a few of the casinos offer things for kids to do, notable among them Circus Circus and the Stratosphere. Thrill seekers with nerves of steel and/or a secret death wish might consider checking out, if not staying at, the Stratosphere, which features four truly bad ass amusement rides at the top of its famous tower, two of which send the rider shooting out over the edge, dangling one thousand feet above the Strip.

NO, I MEAN INSANE - This ride at the Stratosphere in Vegas shoots the rider a couple hundred feet up, from a platform...well, just watch...

There are attractions off the Strip, as well. Vegas has an impressive Chinatown (who knew...?), and there's always the old downtown, specifically Fremont Street, which was closed to traffic some time ago and turned into a pedestrian Mall. Today it's not quite where the action's at, but it's worth a look, historically speaking. Anyone over the age of 35 will recognize 'Glitter Gulch' as the face of Vegas in every movie and television show back in the day. A host of iconic casino locales line a four or five-block stretch - the Golden Goose, the Pioneer, the Golden Nugget, Binions....

City of Lights

I've always considered myself a small-towner, more or less, but I love cities, and despite my dad's misgivings, I like what Vegas is (or has become). I love being immersed to the point of not existing in a thick cross-section of people, love homing in on a three-second snippet of someone's conversation, snippets of lives passing me by in an instant; I love sitting somewhere unnoticed and watching what happens, just watching the high drama without words, taking in true candor while deeply rooted in the kind of sensual anonymity only a city can provide.

I guess of all the aforementioned stereotypes milling about on the Strip, I'd be the Jackson Browne guy.

Any city can provide this anonymity, some more than others, but in Vegas, you get it with an unmatched light show, and that's what I really love about this place: all the blinking lights. Sounds simple, even fatuous, but lights have been spellbinding, soothing and occasionally stupefying me since I was a kid. I loved them all then, and still do: Christmas lights, VCR lights (particularly the bright red one that appeared when something was being recorded), the mysterious white-blue bar of light beneath my feet as I stepped off an escalator, porch lights, street lights, stoplights, movie marquee lights, the purple glow of someone's bug zapper, lights across dark bodies of water that separate sky from shoreline, white garage lights across the alley or white farm lights on the other side of a valley, stars in the sky, our star in the sky...lights have informed my mood and state of mind, spurred my thoughts, inspired my writing, more than any other external visual.

The Las Vegas valley viewed at night, from the Stratosphere observation deck is something beyond imagination.

The weather continues to leave much to be desired on this trip. As the sun goes down, it starts to actually feel cold...the temperature is barely able to reach past 45 degrees. But still people are out, as though it's Saturday night and 78 degrees. As though it isn't winter. As though we aren't on the brink of a double-dip recession. As though there is a job for everyone. As though there are no wars. No worry for tomorrow. Fret over yesterday.

Vegas can make you forget all of it, whether you've come to 'sin' or not. It's one of those places I'd never go unless I'm on vacation, and so, when I'm here, whatever I'm doing, I feel insulated by that pleasant, uber-vacationey sensation I remember as a kid traveling with my parents. And now, I'm glad to be here with them. Not a recipe for partying like a rock star, perhaps, but I'm too old for that (or too upright, or something...) and my parents aren't getting any younger. Tempus fugit. I'm glad to be sharing the experience with them. I just wish my dad were having a better time.

"You don't regret coming, do you?" I ask as we pull into the parking garage of the Venetian (on the site where the Sands once stood).

"No, not at all," he says. He smiles and winks. "I could be home staring at the wall, like a lot of people my age."

There's a moment of silence, the significance of this absorbed. Then my mom cuts in from her spot next to my dad in the back seat.

"Sooo, wait, I don't get it. Who is Chumlee?"

Road Trip 2011, Part 4: "Laughlin, Nevada"

Neat and Tidy

Laughlin, Nevada is where luck goes to die.

In the last twenty years, Las Vegas, an hour to the north, has undergone multiple image makeovers, a string of attempts to reinvent itself that once included something so ill-considered as trying to become a family-friendly destination. Most recently it has settled on - and succeeded in - luring 20-somethings seeking out a hipper, sharper-edged party scene, and in doing so has managed to turn itself into the most vivid, and at the same time lame, caricature of itself imaginable. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, used to be a gloriously unspoken proposition, naturally occurring in the dark blood that gets pumped through human appetite. Then some corporate ad execs coined the phrase, forcing 'Sin City' to have to start living up, or down, to a suddenly obligatory reputation.

This would seem to have left Laughlin assigned a proxy to remain, a little bit anyway, what Vegas once was: a destination for the older, and therefore inadvertently lamer set; still flashy(ish) to be sure, but less hip, more kitsch. Second tier or washed-up celebrities seem to provide the entertainment in the casinos, and gambling (for the sake of gambling) is still the main attraction. Were he alive today, banging out his cape-suited kung fu moves, propelled across the stage by the force of his booming voice and flatulence, has-been Elvis (hands down the stamp I voted for) might have found his way to Laughlin before Vegas.

That isn't meant to disparage Laughlin, necessarily. In as much as I ever desire to find myself immersed in a casino scene, Laughlin's slower pace suits me, and probably would have when I was twenty-one and partied a lot more than I do now. I must confess, I sort of like Vegas too; its unrelenting energy is addictive at any age, and there just may be no better place on Earth to people watch. But there's something to be said for the way everything moves more slowly in Laughlin, arthritically even, on certain weekday afternoons; great drama is sometimes cultivated in comic pathos, after all. What happens here will stay here, but it might leak out through cracks in the sidewalk now and then, or forget where it is and evaporate under the desert sun.

We've driven 1,800 miles in two days and have finally arrived at our destination - the airport in nearby Bullhead City, Arizona - where we meet our parents' incoming flight. Racing through Kingman, still quite a distance away, we started getting anxious. Their flight was scheduled to land at 9 a.m. and it was already 9:15. Back in Flagstaff, we'd hoisted ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn in a determined effort to actually be on time for once, knowing time would be tight but confident it was nevertheless possible to screech in at the last minute. I don't think I've been on time for anything since a Cub Scout cake auction in 1982, so it should have come as no surprise (and didn't really) that we didn't get quite the early start we'd hoped and were now running behind, stuck watching this particular 'last minute' march past like a soldier on his way to an unwinnable war.

But just when I thought all was lost, just when I had begun picturing my parents sitting in a deserted airport terminal amidst a pile of luggage, my dad impatiently checking his watch and grumbling under his breath about no sense of urgency... (a cadence I have been well-acquainted with ever since that cake auction 29 years ago), my cell phone (all our cell phones) switched back one hour automatically - and just like that - like a reprieve from God - we found ourselves 45 minutes early, rather than 15 minutes late. We managed to capture that elusive 'last minute' after all (though still barely!), screeching into the airport parking moments after the plane touched down, at 9:00 Pacific time.

A neat and tidy conclusion to the first leg of a road trip that has been neat and tidy so far, all things considered.

Laughlin

Laughlin, Nevada is named after its founder, Don Laughlin, who purchased the southern tip of the Silver State (the needle point that wedges itself between Arizona and California) in the early 1960s. He had run a casino in Vegas for a number of years, and saw potential for a second Vegas on the Colorado River, closer to the then-still vibrant Route 66.

I think about this gambit as we enter town via the Laughlin bridge, which spans the Colorado, linking Arizona and Nevada. It would be interesting to read or watch a biography on Don Laughlin; what kind of reaction did he receive, I wonder, from his Vegas cronies at the time. Laughter, I'd bet, skepticism to say the least, if not outright resistance, to the notion of there being another Vegas so close to Vegas.

Nothing Laughlin couldn't handle in any case, seeing as success in establishing his resort community as a viable tourist destination barely an hour from Vegas did not take long. There were three casinos in town by the end of the 1960s, and a development boom in the '80s included a slew of new attractions and construction of the bridge we are now crossing over. Before then, boat shuttles were the only way across the river, and these still run, bringing many of the casino workforce across from the much larger Bullhead City. Today, with a census designated population of just over 7,000, Laughlin attracts some five million visitors a year.

That Laughlin is as vibrant as it is fifty years later would seem to be the realization of an impossible dream. Not only because Vegas is Vegas (or Reno is Reno for that matter), not only because the Nevada gaming market is flooded with mini-casinos (at every bar or convenience store, and countless other public places, you're likely to find at least one row of slot machines), but because every state surrounding Nevada with the exception of Utah has Indian gaming, a nationwide phenomenon of the last quarter century that has doubtless put a dent in Nevada's armored command of the industry (and just might have necessitated Vegas' image makeovers). For people who really like gambling, who do enjoy finding themselves immersed in a casino scene, the choice in tough economic times to stick around home and hit an Indian casino in lieu of spending the time and money to come to Nevada must be a no-brainer.

Creeping Jankiness

We are arriving in Laughlin fresh on the heels of the holiday season, and to be fair, this might have a lot to do with its current 'arthritis'. It is on account of this January lull that we have managed to book rooms at the Tropicana Express on South Casino Drive for under $15/night.

$15 per night! The last time I got a hotel room for $15 I was eighteen, renting a decrepit unit in an edge-of-town roach palace called the Rainbow Inn, for my friends and me to party in. All the Laughlin resort/casinos are running similarly dirt cheap room rates (we've only chosen the Tropicana because it's the most centrally located) and January specials are not unusual in any industry, but I'd wager there's more to '$15 a night' than just January doldrums. It would seem to suggest that even places like Laughlin are not out of reach of recession. Logically I always know this is true, obvious even. But it's easy to assume, or to want to, that glittering tourist traps are in some way impervious to economic downturn simply because they glitter, and this is dangerously fallacious thinking.

The Tropicana in Laughlin is a middle of the road hotel/casino - looking the part while looking its age. It opened in 1988 and you can tell; I could be wrong, but it doesn't look like it's ever been remodeled. Like many of the buildings along South Casino Drive, its two hotel towers light up nicely at night (the Laughlin skyline overall is fairly exciting to view at night from the Arizona side of the river). But outside of the view (the river to the east, mountains to the west; but only if you're reserved on a high enough floor), there's absolutely nothing special about the rooms, even the 'suite' that I splurged on for an extra $5 is not unlike a clean, comfortable unit I'd find at any Super 8 Motel on any retail strip in any town or city in America.

What do I expect for $15 a night, right? Fair enough, but little signs of creeping jankiness are everywhere, from water stains in the sink to busted knobs on the television. The carpeting in public areas is nothing less than the quintessential casino motif - a God-awful assemblage of kaleidoscope patterns marinated in dirty gold and blood red - but it's visibly treadworn in places. Most damningly, many of the promotional posters hanging about are for things that have already happened. Not too far in the past, to be sure, but distant enough to be depressing.

There's always something unsettling about events that took place in October, in January.

But that's okay, right? It's Laughlin, after all; it's good enough. Laughlin is just fine for people who aren't looking for off-the-hook swank, or the inherent sex appeal of immediacy, and in fact might just be there to avail themselves of activities other than gambling. To that end, Laughlin shrewdly carries the family-friendly banner at about waist level (and more convincingly than Vegas in any era). RV-ing is big in Laughlin and Bullhead City, as are golf holidays (one of these days, I will learn to play, and for some reason I like the thought of playing a round on a desert course) and of course, any number of recreational opportunities on the river. There's a big hot air balloon festival and an annual motorcycle run in April, and from this, the occasional biker gang riot - sure to add a bit of excitement to the experience.

(Yikes...)

Glittering tourist traps should be impervious to that too...(although, really, every spot on Earth should be...)

Like the casino where we are staying, Laughlin itself sports a certain creeping jankiness. South Casino Drive more or less IS Laughlin to visitors. Hidden from it, residential Laughlin (Laughlin Township) is a tired-looking aggregation of unassuming single family homes that appear to have little connection to the casinos. South Casino Drive is where the action is - so to speak, and such as it is.

It's nice enough, all things considered, but seems unfinished to me. There are barren stetches along South Casino Drive, whole blocks of empty, weed-strewn lots, where I get the sense something was there once (as opposed to something coming soon), spots where the presence of the desert wasteland surrounding the community - and its naturally on-going effort to creep back and reclaim its space - is more apparent.

One thing Laughlin does have going for it is its proximity to the Colorado River, but for someone like me, this just provides a fatal distraction; draws my attention completely away from what I'm supposed to care about here, the excitement I'm supposed to find - want to find - in the casinos.


Blah...I'd rather sit on a balcony or stand on Laughlin's (very nice) river walk and watch the Colorado River ramble than gamble. Or better yet, do what the river is doing, keep moving, keep moving, pass Laughlin right on by.

I'd rather drive around the desert all day. Maybe check out a ghost town.

And hey, Vegas is only an hour or so north...


The problem for me is that whether it's Vegas, Laughlin, Reno, or the Indian rez down the road from where I live, a preponderance of gambling has a way of making any place a depressing place

Luck Be a Lady, Tonight

In more than one of the numerous Indian casinos I've been surrounded by most of my life, I've been known to throw down a twenty or two. I mostly play slots, or keno (the game with the worst odds). I haven't ever found my way to a table game, partly because I don't know the games or their attendant etiquette well enough to not look ignorant, and partly becaue I simply don't enjoy gambling. The chance of winning something makes it worth the time occasionally, just occasionally....kind of like the lottery. I'll buy a lotto ticket now and then...usually when there's a huge jackpot, but sometimes just whenever I'm 'feeling lucky'. Sometimes.

But that's as far as it goes. I simply do not hold gambling of any kind - with machines, or cards or ping pong balls - in high esteem, nor derive any particular pleasure from doing it. It is way, way down the list of things I like to do that they tell me I'm not supposed to. I feel great when (and if) I win, certainly...but really, how often does that happen? 1 or 2 out of every 50 pulls on a slot machine results in a significant win. Most of the time, I win my bet back. Rah rah. As my dad has always said (occasionally to make himself feel better): walk past anyone sitting at a slot machine with 2500 credits banked on it, and you got to wonder before anything else how much they spent to get there.

The odds are always with the house; otherwise casinos would not bother to be in business - operative word being business. They're in the business of making money. I don't bedrudge them this, but I'm a sore loser, petty and sometimes crazy competitive (the one who might send the Monopoly board onto the floor with an angry sideways swipe of my hands if, nearing bankruptcy, I get stuck paying someone a houses/hotel rent...or any rent...). When I lose more than twenty dollars, even in what I know to be the almost entirely futile endeavor of gambling, I get pissed off, resentfully refuse to drop another dime. I start cussing and bitching and glowering, like an old man who is as frightened as he is offended by what the world has turned into.

I guess that's a good thing. Ensures I'll never get swept up in it, never start chasing wins, never wind up ambling through a casino playing penny slots (because I can't afford anything else) and telling myself I'm having a fun night out.

Hey, it happens. A real-life version of that very scenario played out for a friend of my dad's years ago. This gentleman did not set foot in a casino until he was 55 years old. By the time he turned sixty, he'd lost his house, his car and eventually his family to a virulent gambling addiction he didn't know he was capable of. In his final years, he was seen ambling fecklessly around the casino bumming nickles from people he knew.

A true story, neither invented nor exagerrated. I emphasize this fact because it's one thing to hear of such cases, be told such a story second-hand. It's quite another to know someone who has gone through it, to watch - as we did - the disintegration of someone's life.

And for what? At least with other vice, you get the desired results every time. If you drink, you'll get drunk. Do drugs, you'll get high. Smoke cigarettes...sex...whatever it is, you feel the rush right away. I guess if you're addicted to gambling you get that rush every time you place a bet, win or lose.

I've just never, ever felt that. Gambling, to me, is mostly boring, occasionally frustrating. And who needs more of that in their life?

A second true gambling horror story involves a trip I took down the Jersey shore with my parents when I was twelve. Our destination was Atlantic City (another gambling mecca affected by the proliferation of Indian gaming, but unable to capitalize on its cachet the way Vegas has), but we stopped somewhere along the way, some seaside town with a boardwalk. I seem to recall my older brother raving on about Bruce Springsteen, so it may well have been Asbury Park. But in any case, on this boardwalk was some kind of arcade with gaming devices, and I remember walking into this dingy, wood plank building, and my dad striking up a conversation with an elderly man who'd been sitting in the arcade all day, and was going on and on about about all the prizes he'd won, how 'luck' was with him that day.

Prizes. Not money, just prizes.

Many of the details of this encounter are admittedly sketchy. But it did happen, and there was something sad and grim about that old gent mucking around some otherwise deserted 'arcade' on a cloudy weekday afternoon in a seaside Jersey town already given wholly to the urban wasteland Springsteen made a name for himself singing about. Fifty feet away, the Atlantic Ocean doggedly worked over the shoreline; wave after wave approaching from the blue-gray horizon, past which Europe hid just out of view. That's what this man should have been preoccupied with. But he had sequestered himself in the arcade, spoke of 'winning prizes' (I'd like to think a stuffed animal, or a goldfish, at least; but for all I know, nothing but game tokens to play more games) as though it warranted the anticipatory smile on his face.

I remember that look on his face.

Even my dad weighed in on the pathos of this at the time (likely most of the reason I remember it). My dad himself is a gambler, a fan of lottery and always pleased as punch to find himself immersed in a casino scene. In fact, a Christmas gift getaway for him and my mom is the reason we are now in Laughlin. He's never let his gambling get out of hand, but he likes it a lot, draws more enjoyment from it than I can fathom.

Yet even he was disturbed by this old man.

To me, gambling is the sin you go to when there aren't any others left. When all the cigarettes have been smoked, all the beer drank, all the drugs done, and every woman on Earth has been made love to.

The weather is disappointgly cool when we arrive, even for January, and it stays that way for the entire week. The sun shines, but there is a stiff wind afoot, and temperatures that struggle to approach 50 degrees. The locals claim this is unusual...daytime highs are normally in the lower to middle 60s, they say. But January asserts itself while we are here, as though refusing to let me go.

Yet, we are finally here, and there's no snow to be found, which alone makes for a stellar set of circumstances. And as it's said, the worst day of vacation still beats the best day of work.

I've just got to find something to bide my time until its time to hit L.A., that doesn't involved wasting money in the casinos, but doesn't entail sitting in my hotel room watching a Full House marathon on TVLand.

Road Trip 2011, Part 3: 'Staying Whole and Hearty...'

I don't think any of us are prepared for the beauty of that drive through northern Arizona by dawn's early light.

As we climb, wind and dip our way west on Interstate 40 through high-walled canyons that seem in a continuous state of crumble (and are, come to think of it), we blink in and out of bright sunlight. It's rising behind us, shifting its angle and lending a continuously updated visual quality to the landscape. Every time we think we've seen it all, we cross another loping mountain peak, the sun inches a few degrees higher, and something spectacular is revealed on the other side, in a collection of hues I'd never before considered. I think of the Grand Canyon, how people say it's a completely different visual experience at different times of the day, and understand a bit more what they're talking about. The angle of sunlight affects how things look everywhere; Monet figured that out 100-plus years ago. But the effect would seem to be augmented in the desert, with its open spaces, clear, dry air and relative lack of flora.






As we rush for the Nevada border, we are descending off the Colorado Plateau into the Basin and Range province of North America. Here, the land rises and falls repeatedly as it alternates between flat valley floors and long strings of north-south running mountains that, from the air, look like ripples in the water. It is in many of these low-lying basins that communities were built, and in nearly all of them mountains are visible in every direction: a skyline feature - in places like Kingman, Laughlin/Bullhead City, and even Las Vegas - that I never grow tired of seeing.

I would think this land is gorgeous if I were on my way to visit an oncologist. Seeing it under these circumstances - free of (for the moment) worry and responsibility (as well as cancer...I can hope...), racing along at 85 miles per hour, giving even the truckers a run for their money (now it is I leaping into the left lane and racing around them) - evokes a truly kinetic manifestation of joy on this bright Sunday morning in January.

It's more than just enjoying travel, though. Lots of people like traveling, and I know full well I'm not the first to extol a) the psychological benefits of the road trip, or any trip, b) the beauty of this region. I'm not the first to gasp a little at the scenery, feel a sudden depletion of precious breath at the sight of, literally, 'purple mountain majesty', nor the first, in this age when nothing can be left to the imagination, to hoist up my phone and shoot video while driving.

"NOW WE GO BACK UP...DAMN!" - The Basin and Range province of North America is identified by land rising and falling frequently between low flat valleys and north-south running strings of mountains.

But there is something else going on, something creating an almost visceral sense of self-congratulatory satisfaction for being here, at this moment, doing what I'm doing, seeing what I'm seeing; something that transcends merely, ooh, isn't the landscape pretty.

I love being on the road. I love going places. It is a reliable inoculation from the inherent sorrow of everyday living, which has haunted me my entire life.
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From a very early age, I was at war with banality, sensitive to the emotional expression of the days, as they relate to the lives we lead, to what is ultimately the futility, and emptiness, of modern American life.

I didn't describe it that way when I was seven, of course, but I felt it, a potent despair on certain weeknights, a loudly ringing dissatisfaction for our family's daily routine. It usually hit me in the anxious moments just after dinner, when nothing exciting was happening, when my parents left the dishes until later and retired to the sofa to piddle away the evenning in front of the TV. The tinny drone of canned laughter or a commercial jingle emanating from the set was the only sound. The smell of dinner - of char, congealed fat and oily salad dressing - hung thick in the air, leaving a greasy film on hard surfaces. The dishes sat partially submerged in the sink, the water slowly dissolving smears of ketchup or clumps of mashed potato, remnants of the salad dressing floating to the top of the water, forming glinting pads of color.

To this day, Tuesday nights smell like dirty dish water to me.

Left to my own devices on these perfectly ordinary evenings, I would go to my bedroom, sit amidst a pile of toys for a while, then run back out into the living room, climb onto my mom's lap, sit there a moment or two. I'd take small sip of my mom's coffee (from a mug I still use), gag a little because it didn't taste like hot chocolate as I expected time and time again, maybe take in a small portion of whatever program they were watching (The Carol Burnett Show was a staple, that brassy horn section theme song still gives me the creeps; or a nighttime soap, or a game show...interspersed by glittering commercials for things like Colgate, or Prell, or Mitsubishi), then back to my room (by way of the kitchen, so I could walk past the dishes as one might drive past a car accident on the highway), going out of my tiny skull a little. What to do...? What to do until it's time to go to sleep...?

I've eaten.

I'm satiated.

Now what?

I've wrestled with that bottomed-out question my entire life. And I grew up in a middle class home with loving parents. I can't imagine having those kinds of feelings in a dysfunctional setting.

I became a parent myself at a young age, and that helped. I had a kid all of a sudden, I had responsibilities. I had no choice but try to embrace the everyday for his sake. I couldn't afford to be disaffected and despairing anymore; I had to engage in that proverbial fight to put food on the table, and had to do so by engaging everything. Staying sober. Staying focused. Staying on task. Striving to achieve. Setting an example.

I'm glad I had kids; I might be weird now (or even weirder) if I hadn't, embedded in some immovable 'me against the world' thinking, tilting at windmills, my indignation becoming more voracious with each passing year. Parenthood tempers angers and indignities, keeps you from taking yourself, or shit in general, too seriously.

But that old restlessness has always been there, and now there is a part of me, just that small reckless part - in a world that seems to consume empty calories, piddle evenings away in front of the TV, more than ever before - that doesn't want to take anything seriously anymore. With my kids grown and more or less on their own, I find myself once again vulnerable to those everyday blues.

I'm hardly alone. Despair is permeant factor of most modern lives, I'd be willing to wager. People feel it to different degrees, at different times, and more importantly, deal with it differently. Some succumb to self-destructive behavior, others to healthy pasttimes they can only hope do not turn into debilitating obsessions. Some just munch contentedly on what's served up to them: their television, their movies, their video games, their myriad opportunities to consume. They probably are the lucky ones. They don't look too far ahead (or worse, too far back), they don't wonder what's out there, they don't covet what they don't have or ever feel their consumption has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I can't do that.

There is a line from the much unappreciated (at least in light of the Disney movie) novel Bambi by Felix Salten that has stayed with me for a long time, spoken to the title character by the sedge hen:

"You have to keep moving," she cried happily, "you've got to keep moving if you want to keep whole and hearty."

Sacrosanct sentiment. Whatever else 'the road' is or isn't, it is a place to keep moving.

Some people dream of being a rock star or movie starlet, or king of the world so they may influence goings-on...I dream of not influencing anything, or not feeling I have to anymore, of drifting unseen through the little moments in people's lives, as Robert Pirsig wrote in the seminal Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Practical? *sigh*...Of course not. Just a little fantasy. But man, what a fantasy. We live in a world of tightly-sewn connectedness, don't we? Fuck that. I want to disconnect, with a blank smile propelling me above the fray.

I want to live nebulously. And I can't see this being done any better than on the road.

I can't say it enough: I really needed this trip.

What we're doing now is not drifting. We are merely traveling, keeping that damnable itinerary, meeting up with people at a pre-determined location. But it'll do. It's motion, it's somewhere new, and the scenery, after all, is very beautiful. Neither pictures nor movies, nor my words or videos, do this land justice.

We cruise past a green mileage sign. Los Angeles, some 300 miles away. Los Angeles! My heart races a little.

I've never been to Los Angeles.

First things first, however. We are just a few miles from the Nevada state line, a few miles from the Pacific time zone, a few miles (finally) from our destination:

Laughlin.

Where luck goes to die.