a bard's eye view of vegas: the scene & a dazzled poet

 

a bard's eye view of vegas: random shots of the strip

 

a bard's eye view of vegas: the laughing buddha of the strip

 

a bard's eye view of vegas: who's this lady?

 

a bard's eye view of vegas: i saw elvis & vampira

 

a bard's eye view of vegas: come & get high

 

a bard's eye view of vegas: the sphere

 

a bard's eye view of vegas: a prismatic transit

 

everyday is halloween

 

my favorite time of year.  spooky season!  it arrived with the speed of a bat out of hell.  even tho it got up to 100 f (37 c) today the light is changing to a smudgy, smoky, softer affair that i love.  now, if i could smell the smoke of burning rice fields i would be in heaven.  rice farmers are no longer allowed to wantonly burn their fields now.  & much of the rice fields of my youth have been developed into housing & commercial uses.  but if you grew up here in the 1970s & on back, then you probably know that smell, always associated with autumn, & thus for me halloween.  a rich, pungent, thick & acrid smell that can return me instantly to my childhood.  

halloween is still my favorite holiday.  i'll be doing the usual here too like reviewing horror movies, some good, some really bad, but i won't be doing reviewing as frequently as i've done in the past.  & when something halloween on the street or store or wherever i am catches my fancy i'll take pics & post them here.  but i suspect that i'll stick with movie reviewing.  do note that halloween is always in my heart & head.  i have a jack o'lantern tattoo as proof!  

i will also do my standard publishing of my poems & miscellany.  including recent pics of vegas & the punk rock museum.  

but remember everyday is halloween!

boo!

viva las vegas

where to fucking begin.  what can i say that hasn't been said, or thought, or done, since las vegas was built in the desert as the decadent city of sin.  but i'm not religious so there's really no sinning.  just adult human beings allowing themselves the kind of pleasures that they may deprive themselves at home.  sex, gaming, drugs, drinking, & a catchall of party bonhomie.  why the fuck not.  where else, at least in the u.s., will you need to dodge dudes & dudettes handing out cards of naked ladies advertising their 'services' as you walk The Strip.

that's right.  this was my first time in sin city.  i was told what to expect.  i even seen a few movies & read a few books based in vegas & about vegas.  i am approaching my 6th decade on this blue sphere spinning around the sun but i've not been to vegas until now.  vegas is a fever dream.  a hallucination of capitalism amok.  the city might be, at least on The Strip, the most manufactured place in all of our human civilization.  a bold claim, for sure.  but man!  this place dazzled, awed, & scared me.  i have seen some shit but i've never seen anything quite like vegas.  (there are poems in the streets of vegas!)

of course, las vegas is a real city with real people living in it.  for example, i left The Strip to visit the Punk Rock Museum, founded by fat mike of the punk band NOFX, in 2023.  situated four miles away from The Strip the museum is located right next door to a strip club in a light industrial section of town.  i'll post pics of the museum & a few thoughts later (i had a blast!).  but the museum, plus its location in the city, is a reminder that las vegas is a working town too.  

still, i walked miles on The Strip & had a ball  i'll post pics of vegas when my traveler's fatigue & ennui subsides.  today was one of travel & not eating very well.  or drinking enough agua.  that's entirely my fault.  but what the hell.  as i said, i had a blast.  i walked up & down the strip.  i saw showgirls on The Strip, trying to rope men, they worked in pairs & one always had a lai she would wrap around a dude, single &/or with their wives/girlfriends, but when it came to me these showgirls gave me a wide berth!  perhaps because i'm old!  who cares!  but i am a poet who notices things!  

will i return to vegas?  fuck no!  but is that a definitive fuck no?  uh um hmm...let's leave it there.  below is a pic taken by anna after we watched the famous Fountains of Bellagio.  it was raining too!  hot & wet, oh my!

spherical: selfie of the poet in vegas

 

quote unquote

could write of fucking

--robert creeley

fornicar es un acto literario

[fucking is a literary act]

--nicanor parra

first full day of fall haiku

 it's 91 in the shade!

          hot damn

my jeans burst into flame!

the poet as shade

i'm moving in stereo

--the cars

poetry is not a career

before AC

before TV & Radio

even before there was light!

my father would pay me & my brothers

10 cents each for every fly we could kill

on those hot Sacramento summer days

when we would have the windows & doors open

we would roll up the local daily

either the Sacramento Bee or Sacramento Union

[we had, like most towns then, two newspapers]

& begin our hunt

it never went as planned

those little fuckers knew how to hide

from our swats 

yet we persevered

developed techniques

strategies on how to trap the flies

& smack them into a grey pulp

& the old man 

would trust us with our count

reaching into his wallet 

for a couple of bills each

our rolled-up papers gooey with the result

& the house would be

at least for now

fly free

the unholy three [1925]

 

even before i dared to call myself a film buff, a lover of cinema, a rabid moviegoer, infatuated with horror/exploitation/drive-in movies, i'd read an essay that argued talkies killed the motion picture as an art form.  movies are visual medium & silent films are its best expression.  i was nearly persuaded by that argument.  i don't remember the author of the essay or where i read it.  but it always struck me because movies are a visual medium.  & to watch some of the greats of the silent era, harold lloyd & buster keaton, for example, you can understand why these great film artists are more in tune with a silent medium.

& yet, we are a storytelling animal.  & we have language for it.  even our memories are edited over time like an obsessive filmmaker who is trying to create the ultimate director's cut of a movie.  so it was with great delight i shared with anna when she suggested we see this movie, in the city cemetery.  lon chaney, another great artist of the early 20th C, directed by tod browning, who would later introduce the world to bela lugosi as the eponymous vampire in Dracula [1931], & the creepy black humor masterpiece Freaks [1932].  say no more.  i'm in!

now, i must confess that i lack the bona fides to argue this or that in re silent movies.  i've seen my share.  i think harold lloyd is a fucking genius.  but i've never studied silent movies or watched them in great abundance, like i have sound movies.  i've never seen this flick before tonight.  it goes like this.  chaney is a ventriloquist, dr. echo, in a sideshow.  he's great at his craft.  he can project his voice across a room full of people.  he works with tweedledie, a dwarf played by harry earles, & a strong man, hercules, played by victor mclaglen.  they are fed up with the crap they flung at them by their audience.  echo also has a moll, rosie, played by the lovely mae busch, who helps roll unsuspecting rubes from their cash & other valuables.  when tweedleedie loses his shit & kicks the teeth out of a child who was making fun of our erstwhile sport, echo decides to create an alliance, an unholy three, hercules, echo & tweedleedie, of criminals to starts a more elaborate scheme of thievery.  rosie is also in on the score too.  so why not the unholy four?  i dunno.  it's too late to ask tod browning.

thievery is good business until rose falls in love with the guy that helps run the trio's bird shop, hector, played by matt moore.  a bird shop?  makes no sense.  but let it ride.  otherwise, this movie would have no engine to run the plot.  rosie & hector's romance gets in the way of even more thievery.  tweedledee is a sadistic & conniving SOB.  hercules is a big dude but he is essentially a dumbshit.  & echo grows a conscious when confronted by rosie & her pure love of hector.  still, browning keeps all this shit together.  

chaney is a delight to watch.  what a mug.  hollywood a hundred years ago didn't give two shits about teeth or dental hygiene for everyone onscreen had some crooked, discolored, choppers.  the actors' makeup was also thru the roof & the style of acting was, of course, very influenced by stage acting.  oversized emotion & exaggerated expressions & movements.  the fashions was pretty cool.  nearly all the men wore straw hats.  & busch in her bob hairstyle & flapper wardrobe was, at least to this dude, more than sexy.  we think we've seen some wild technological changes.  but the changes a over a hundred years ago were just as profound.  the language of cinema was pretty early established.  it would be just four or five years when talkies became standard for movies.  & the style of acting became more intimate to the medium as film.  

all's well that ends well.  for this is a crime melodrama with a happy ending.  browning keeps our interest in nearly every frame of this film.  chaney is his usual marvelous self.  so are the supporting players.  so when we got to the last reel, & we could see where this ship would land, it was fairly chilly in the cemetery.  a strong breeze developed.  it was quite dark.  we gathered up our things & made our way to our car.  walking thru the graves, headstones & mausoleums.  the silence, in the middle of the city, was invigorating.  i felt my batteries charge.  whether it was because of the location, or the movie, or the fact that i was with my girl, anna, i can't say for sure.  what i can say is that it was a good night for a movie.