Saturday, January 31, 2009
Le Reve
Saw Le Reve at Wynn Las Vegas Thursday evening. It is a beautiful show, with lavish production values, and excellent performances from the entire cast. I used to work graveyard at Wynn, so it was interesting to see those oddly dressed people actually at work, instead of just eating in the same lunchroom. However, it has absolutely no discernible plot, which for me is a deal breaker. Good spectacle, so if you're into that, by all means go. If you want a story, meh!
Labels: Reviews
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Does Anybody Know?
Does anybody know where to buy Mary Janes candies in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Labels: Info
Sunday, January 25, 2009
My Evening as a Gentleman
It's my wife's fault that I was at Sapphire, the World's Largest Gentleman's Club. She represented the owner is an involved case a while back, and he wanted to show his appreciation. So, free admission and a bottle of vodka. Six of us from Living Las Vegas attended. There is, or shortly will be, a composite review of the club on that site. Please check it out. Meanwhile, here is a more complete version of my take on the venue.
First off, it isn't a seedy place like I was expecting. My only experience with a place of this nature had been in Saint Paul, where the dancers are behind glass for the protection of, well, the glass I guess because I really don't know. It makes it seem much more seedy, smarmy and shameful when they do it that way. The Saint Paul girls did get completely naked, which you can't do in Nevada if you serve alcohol, but somehow that didn't make it any more enjoyable. Rather than seedy old bar decor, the main entrance hallway at Sapphire is decorated in tasteful artwork and the main room is spacious.
We didn't buy the bottle, thanks to the owner, but we did pay a service fee to have the mixers kept up at our table. We also spent a bunch on tips for the limo driver who delivered us to and took us away from the club. We were there for about three hours, long enough to get a good feel for what the place is like.
There are nubile young women everywhere, not just on the stages. The club features two stages downstairs plus a VIP stage upstairs, as well as a separate room where male dancers perform for the ladies. Speaking of whom, there were a lot of women customers in the club, including three of our party. The nubile young women were, for the most part, just as friendly toward the ladies as they were toward the gentlemen.
The friendliness is all aimed at getting a customer to buy a table dance, of course. They were exactly the sort of dances you'd expect from a gentleman's club, particularly if you watch HBO. You're not allowed to touch the girls, but they can do whatever they want with your hands. It was an interesting experience. On the stages the dancers didn't exactly do striptease. What they did was come out with some sort of top on, which they removed half way through their routine. There was a great variation in how good the dancers were, both from an artistic and from a teasing perspective. For what it's worth I once saw an HBO special about strippers, which featured re-enactments of acts from famous women. The best, so far as arousing male interest went, was a woman who recreated the routine of Little Egypt, a famous stripper of about a century ago. At the end, she was street legal. There is more to sexual attraction than nudity, is what I'm saying. The most conventionally "sexy" dancers were not necessarily the best ones to watch. Again, an interesting experience as well as a curiosity to observe.
Another entertaining aspect of the evening was watching the outrageous table dances going on around us. A couple of customers apparently were, as they say, made out of money. The girl would stop every five minutes to stuff some more money in her purse, then remove her top again and go back at it. It got to be plain old funny for me after a while.
I can't speak about the male revue, although all three women in our party took it in. Their reviews were mixed.
If you're from out of town and want to see the biggest Gentleman's Club in the world, then you need to check out Sapphire. If you're local and want a different sort of an evening out, ditto. If you're prudish, I'd say check out Cirque du Soliel.
For more information, check out the club's website. Remember, this is an adult entertainment venue and the site reflects that. If that's okay with you, then click here.
Later,
Steve
First off, it isn't a seedy place like I was expecting. My only experience with a place of this nature had been in Saint Paul, where the dancers are behind glass for the protection of, well, the glass I guess because I really don't know. It makes it seem much more seedy, smarmy and shameful when they do it that way. The Saint Paul girls did get completely naked, which you can't do in Nevada if you serve alcohol, but somehow that didn't make it any more enjoyable. Rather than seedy old bar decor, the main entrance hallway at Sapphire is decorated in tasteful artwork and the main room is spacious.
We didn't buy the bottle, thanks to the owner, but we did pay a service fee to have the mixers kept up at our table. We also spent a bunch on tips for the limo driver who delivered us to and took us away from the club. We were there for about three hours, long enough to get a good feel for what the place is like.
There are nubile young women everywhere, not just on the stages. The club features two stages downstairs plus a VIP stage upstairs, as well as a separate room where male dancers perform for the ladies. Speaking of whom, there were a lot of women customers in the club, including three of our party. The nubile young women were, for the most part, just as friendly toward the ladies as they were toward the gentlemen.
The friendliness is all aimed at getting a customer to buy a table dance, of course. They were exactly the sort of dances you'd expect from a gentleman's club, particularly if you watch HBO. You're not allowed to touch the girls, but they can do whatever they want with your hands. It was an interesting experience. On the stages the dancers didn't exactly do striptease. What they did was come out with some sort of top on, which they removed half way through their routine. There was a great variation in how good the dancers were, both from an artistic and from a teasing perspective. For what it's worth I once saw an HBO special about strippers, which featured re-enactments of acts from famous women. The best, so far as arousing male interest went, was a woman who recreated the routine of Little Egypt, a famous stripper of about a century ago. At the end, she was street legal. There is more to sexual attraction than nudity, is what I'm saying. The most conventionally "sexy" dancers were not necessarily the best ones to watch. Again, an interesting experience as well as a curiosity to observe.
Another entertaining aspect of the evening was watching the outrageous table dances going on around us. A couple of customers apparently were, as they say, made out of money. The girl would stop every five minutes to stuff some more money in her purse, then remove her top again and go back at it. It got to be plain old funny for me after a while.
I can't speak about the male revue, although all three women in our party took it in. Their reviews were mixed.
If you're from out of town and want to see the biggest Gentleman's Club in the world, then you need to check out Sapphire. If you're local and want a different sort of an evening out, ditto. If you're prudish, I'd say check out Cirque du Soliel.
For more information, check out the club's website. Remember, this is an adult entertainment venue and the site reflects that. If that's okay with you, then click here.
Later,
Steve
Labels: Reviews, Social Commentary
Friday, January 23, 2009
What Happened Here?
To begin with, you can blame George W. Bush on Lyndon B. Johnson. They’re both from Texas, so maybe there’s some connection from that direction. I doubt it, though. Still, odder things have happened. George W. Bush, for instance, is a descendant of Franklin Pierce, who got to be president due to the efforts of an old college buddy. Go figure.
It isn’t that LBJ worked on W’s behalf, of course. He’s too dead to do such a thing. But LBJ is the guy who so pissed off the Southern wing of the Democratic party, then known as “Dixiecrats” for lack of a better term (and there probably is no better term.) The Dixiecrats were represented by people such as George Wallace (not the Vegas comedian, the other one) who blocked the schoolhouse door and shouted “Segregation Forever!” Wallace changed his mind before he died, but a lot of people stayed true to their segregationist principles for all of their lives. And those folks felt betrayed beyond belief by the Southerner who pushed through the Voting Rights Act and other bits of law they found dangerous to their way of life.
Well, if the Democrats were through with them, and at that time nobody wanted to actually admit that they were racist enough to support the good-old Dixiecrat constituency, then they knew that they had to get sneaky. You remember the “Moral Majority” back in the day? Well, they may or may not have been either moral or in the majority, but they presented the old segregation forever crowd with an opportunity. By linking with religious conservatives who were bothered by what they saw as the moral decay of American society, the folks who brought you back of the bus segregation could hide their anger, and their true agenda, while getting influence back in Washington. It worked, as can be seen by the political scene since Reagan.
Reagan was a great speaker who was recruited because, well darn it, people liked him. He certainly wasn’t one to support overt racism, but he did like to talk about smaller government (which was, in fact, not what he gave us.) Smaller government meant a government that would allow a public school to open the day with a prayer, or so hoped the religious Reagan backers. To the Dixiecrats it might mean a chance to get back to keeping some people in their place. Particularly Washington people, who had no business telling honest, hard-working Southern people how to run their state.
Reagan begat George HW Bush, a far better President than I gave him credit for at the time. George HW got elected by promising famously not to raise taxes. Finding the government broke, however, meant that he had to propose, and sign, a tax increase. So in came the man from Hope, William Jefferson Clinton.
Clinton angered people in a way that no other president I’ve lived with ever has. Something about the story of the poor trailer boy from Hope who made it all the way to the White House really frosts some people’s shorts. I think it might have been due to his refusal to cater to the good-old-Dixiecrat crowd that started the rumors that led him to be so publicly reviled. To bad for them, all they could catch him at was cheating on his wife with one of his employees. A sad and sordid tale, but hardly criminal. They did, however, manage to get him impeached.
That is because the alliance of religious conservatives and old-time Southerners united in using morality as an issue. Plenty of Presidents have done worse things to their marriage than Clinton, but the Moral Majority wasn’t backing the opposition at the time. The Republican Party found itself, maybe not for the first time, proclaiming itself as the protector of public morality in the United States. That is questionable, but not as questionable as the supposed history of the Republican party as a champion of smaller government and states’ rights. Egads, has no one ever heard of Lincoln, the poster boy if there ever was one for large, central government at the expense of the states? Six percent of the men of military age in the country died in a war to ensure that the big-government party, the Republicans, prevailed in their effort to save the union.
The states’ rights plank was tacked on by the old Southern contingent, with the backing of the religious conservatives, for the reasons listed above. Less government meant less interference, right? Well, not to hear the complaints about W. Bush that have been sounding out in the past couple of years. The amusing part, for someone who knows some history, is that the complainers are actually surprised that the Republican party has expanded, not shrunk, the Federal government. Folks, I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s what Republicans have always done. It’s not bad, it’s debatable, but it’s Republican and that’s all there is to it.
So how did all this misinformation get spread around? By faith, of course. Faith is, so they say, a wonderful thing. It can move mountains. Well, horse hockey I say, but that’s just about the moving mountains part. The trouble with true belief is that the believer’s view of the world is distorted by the belief until the poor sod doesn’t know reality any more. In the mind of a true believer, a fundamental Christian world view is the majority view, and no amount of objective statistics will convince the true believer otherwise. Former President W. Bush has returned to Texas with his “values intact.” Great. So long as you’re not deciding the fate of the world, you go. But when belief rather than objective reality influences national policy both foreign and domestic, you end up with some very stupid things getting done. Like invading a country at a time when we really needed to be catching a terrorist, or like abstinence-only sex education, which results in more, not less, promiscuous and unprotected sex amongst teenagers. Faith may be wonderful, but not as the basis for national policy.
So that’s what happened: LBJ pissed off some segregationists who then used some religious folks in a successful effort to temporarily hijack the government. This resulted in record debt, economic doldrums, and thousands of dead soldiers. Somebody may like that, but not I. All the faith in the world doesn’t change reality one little bit. And lying to another constituency in order to sneak your way back into power is about as low as American politics gets. I feel sorry for the religious conservatives, I feel sorry for George HW Bush. I feel sorry for the Republican party, and I feel sorry for Ronald Reagan, even. And most of all, I feel sorry for the country I love so much.
Please, old Dixiecrat guys, just dry up, okay?
Steve
It isn’t that LBJ worked on W’s behalf, of course. He’s too dead to do such a thing. But LBJ is the guy who so pissed off the Southern wing of the Democratic party, then known as “Dixiecrats” for lack of a better term (and there probably is no better term.) The Dixiecrats were represented by people such as George Wallace (not the Vegas comedian, the other one) who blocked the schoolhouse door and shouted “Segregation Forever!” Wallace changed his mind before he died, but a lot of people stayed true to their segregationist principles for all of their lives. And those folks felt betrayed beyond belief by the Southerner who pushed through the Voting Rights Act and other bits of law they found dangerous to their way of life.
Well, if the Democrats were through with them, and at that time nobody wanted to actually admit that they were racist enough to support the good-old Dixiecrat constituency, then they knew that they had to get sneaky. You remember the “Moral Majority” back in the day? Well, they may or may not have been either moral or in the majority, but they presented the old segregation forever crowd with an opportunity. By linking with religious conservatives who were bothered by what they saw as the moral decay of American society, the folks who brought you back of the bus segregation could hide their anger, and their true agenda, while getting influence back in Washington. It worked, as can be seen by the political scene since Reagan.
Reagan was a great speaker who was recruited because, well darn it, people liked him. He certainly wasn’t one to support overt racism, but he did like to talk about smaller government (which was, in fact, not what he gave us.) Smaller government meant a government that would allow a public school to open the day with a prayer, or so hoped the religious Reagan backers. To the Dixiecrats it might mean a chance to get back to keeping some people in their place. Particularly Washington people, who had no business telling honest, hard-working Southern people how to run their state.
Reagan begat George HW Bush, a far better President than I gave him credit for at the time. George HW got elected by promising famously not to raise taxes. Finding the government broke, however, meant that he had to propose, and sign, a tax increase. So in came the man from Hope, William Jefferson Clinton.
Clinton angered people in a way that no other president I’ve lived with ever has. Something about the story of the poor trailer boy from Hope who made it all the way to the White House really frosts some people’s shorts. I think it might have been due to his refusal to cater to the good-old-Dixiecrat crowd that started the rumors that led him to be so publicly reviled. To bad for them, all they could catch him at was cheating on his wife with one of his employees. A sad and sordid tale, but hardly criminal. They did, however, manage to get him impeached.
That is because the alliance of religious conservatives and old-time Southerners united in using morality as an issue. Plenty of Presidents have done worse things to their marriage than Clinton, but the Moral Majority wasn’t backing the opposition at the time. The Republican Party found itself, maybe not for the first time, proclaiming itself as the protector of public morality in the United States. That is questionable, but not as questionable as the supposed history of the Republican party as a champion of smaller government and states’ rights. Egads, has no one ever heard of Lincoln, the poster boy if there ever was one for large, central government at the expense of the states? Six percent of the men of military age in the country died in a war to ensure that the big-government party, the Republicans, prevailed in their effort to save the union.
The states’ rights plank was tacked on by the old Southern contingent, with the backing of the religious conservatives, for the reasons listed above. Less government meant less interference, right? Well, not to hear the complaints about W. Bush that have been sounding out in the past couple of years. The amusing part, for someone who knows some history, is that the complainers are actually surprised that the Republican party has expanded, not shrunk, the Federal government. Folks, I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s what Republicans have always done. It’s not bad, it’s debatable, but it’s Republican and that’s all there is to it.
So how did all this misinformation get spread around? By faith, of course. Faith is, so they say, a wonderful thing. It can move mountains. Well, horse hockey I say, but that’s just about the moving mountains part. The trouble with true belief is that the believer’s view of the world is distorted by the belief until the poor sod doesn’t know reality any more. In the mind of a true believer, a fundamental Christian world view is the majority view, and no amount of objective statistics will convince the true believer otherwise. Former President W. Bush has returned to Texas with his “values intact.” Great. So long as you’re not deciding the fate of the world, you go. But when belief rather than objective reality influences national policy both foreign and domestic, you end up with some very stupid things getting done. Like invading a country at a time when we really needed to be catching a terrorist, or like abstinence-only sex education, which results in more, not less, promiscuous and unprotected sex amongst teenagers. Faith may be wonderful, but not as the basis for national policy.
So that’s what happened: LBJ pissed off some segregationists who then used some religious folks in a successful effort to temporarily hijack the government. This resulted in record debt, economic doldrums, and thousands of dead soldiers. Somebody may like that, but not I. All the faith in the world doesn’t change reality one little bit. And lying to another constituency in order to sneak your way back into power is about as low as American politics gets. I feel sorry for the religious conservatives, I feel sorry for George HW Bush. I feel sorry for the Republican party, and I feel sorry for Ronald Reagan, even. And most of all, I feel sorry for the country I love so much.
Please, old Dixiecrat guys, just dry up, okay?
Steve
Labels: Politics, Religion, Social Commentary
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The New President
Long time readers will recall that I rate Presidents by speaking ability. That means that, for instance, Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton count as good ones in my ratings, while Nixon, Ford, and (gasp) W. Bush count as bad ones. Oh, there are other criteria of course, but right now I'm talking about speaking ability.
I was working at my job teaching the youth of Las Vegas when Barak was sworn in, so I read his speech during a break and thought it was a pretty good one. Then I came home and took advantage of my DVR to watch the proceedings in living high-definition. Well, I think we may actually have a new all-time winner for good Presidential speaker. Holy cats, the man has a way with words. 'Course, I never heard FDR live, nor TR, nor Lincoln, all of whom were reputedly excellent behind the podium. But of the ones I've heard, Obama wins the cup, hands down. I hope that this is an auspicious thing, I really do.
Steve
I was working at my job teaching the youth of Las Vegas when Barak was sworn in, so I read his speech during a break and thought it was a pretty good one. Then I came home and took advantage of my DVR to watch the proceedings in living high-definition. Well, I think we may actually have a new all-time winner for good Presidential speaker. Holy cats, the man has a way with words. 'Course, I never heard FDR live, nor TR, nor Lincoln, all of whom were reputedly excellent behind the podium. But of the ones I've heard, Obama wins the cup, hands down. I hope that this is an auspicious thing, I really do.
Steve
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Marquis Las Vegas
Being a famous local writer (nudge nudge, wink wink) I attended the Las Vegas Business Press premier of their 2009 Book of Lists last evening. (As of this writing, the link took me to a page about the 2008 book, but I can't imagine that will be true for long.) It was a fun time, partially because it was held in the show home for Marquis Las Vegas, which is as they say an Estate Development. An Estate Development is a place where the neighborhood is crammed full of top-of-the-line housing. At Marquis they start at $1.2 million and go up to the tune of $235 per square foot. That sounds expensive, but if you've got that sort of money to spend on a house, this would be one I'd definitely recommend.
For one thing it is a totally green house. The demo model, at (I believe) 10,000 square feet, produces more power than it consumes. The entire roof is solar electric panels. Also, as you might expect, it is a very nice place to hang out, with amenities to spare. I personally saw two laundry rooms, for instance. There are spaces to socialize in, wonderfully designed bedroom and bath suites, and a couple of garages for the Bentley. Great kitchens, too, and a pool that, frankly, is larger than the house we're going to be moving out of. This isn't the kind of house you buy to sell later, it's the kind of house you live in and enjoy for as long as you can. My wife and I just made a deal on a new (to us) house, and we're thrilled with it, but it seems a small and chintzy thing next to the model at Marquis. It also costs a bit less, but so do I, apparently. For those who can afford the very best, I can honestly say that I've never seen a nicer dwelling place than the one I was in last night for the Book of Lists release party.
Got money? Need a house? I say go for it!
Steve
For one thing it is a totally green house. The demo model, at (I believe) 10,000 square feet, produces more power than it consumes. The entire roof is solar electric panels. Also, as you might expect, it is a very nice place to hang out, with amenities to spare. I personally saw two laundry rooms, for instance. There are spaces to socialize in, wonderfully designed bedroom and bath suites, and a couple of garages for the Bentley. Great kitchens, too, and a pool that, frankly, is larger than the house we're going to be moving out of. This isn't the kind of house you buy to sell later, it's the kind of house you live in and enjoy for as long as you can. My wife and I just made a deal on a new (to us) house, and we're thrilled with it, but it seems a small and chintzy thing next to the model at Marquis. It also costs a bit less, but so do I, apparently. For those who can afford the very best, I can honestly say that I've never seen a nicer dwelling place than the one I was in last night for the Book of Lists release party.
Got money? Need a house? I say go for it!
Steve
Labels: Reviews
Friday, January 16, 2009
Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime for an Old State?
Nevada is faced with a nasty budget crisis. The governor’s proposals don’t include any obvious tax increases to deal with the situation, except the one voters in Clark County approved recently. He said no new taxes and he meant it. Probably he’s remembering Bush the First’s change of mind and the consequences that had for the presidency. Not to mention Monica Lewinsky. But really, when he says he wants to knock 38 percent off of the budget for higher education in Nevada, while also saying that he wants us to be a leader in alternative energy, he apparently found an old stash of Maui Wowie from his college days.
Without any college graduates in the state, who does he think is going to develop alternative energy sources? Why does he think any company would relocate to a state full of ignorant fools? Low taxes are fine up to a point, but there are about a gazillion high tech companies in California, in spite of what the rightie-tighties like to call California’s “tax and spend” mentality. Some of what the people of California spend on, of course, is facilities to train people to do things like design high tech equipment and software. The state is very friendly to people with more brains than an artichoke. Not that California artichokes aren’t perfectly fine as well, of course. Maybe it’s the seventy-year history of getting money simply by vacuuming it out of visitors’ pockets that makes it impossible for some people in Nevada to see an obvious point. That is, you get what you pay for.
What the governor wants to pay for is, well, nothing. And that’s just what he’ll get. If you cut salaries to save money, then those workers will spend less. Money is worthless if it isn’t spent, after all, so by simply cutting government expenditures all we’d be doing is choking off the economy even more. There are some things that government really can do better than private enterprise, whether or not the R-J’s chief pundit likes it. One of those things is education. UCLA has been the source of great amounts of talent for California business over the years. It’s publicly funded. Same with the entire University of California system, for that matter. We could use the higher education system of Nevada to produce people who can build the infrastructure, diversify the economy, and revitalize the state’s economy. Or we can do what the governor wants and just lock the door behind us as we leave.
Come to think of it, we don’t even have enough roads, and the Gov wants to ensure that there’s nobody around that knows how to build one. Yep, great idea, Governor. You’re the man!
Without any college graduates in the state, who does he think is going to develop alternative energy sources? Why does he think any company would relocate to a state full of ignorant fools? Low taxes are fine up to a point, but there are about a gazillion high tech companies in California, in spite of what the rightie-tighties like to call California’s “tax and spend” mentality. Some of what the people of California spend on, of course, is facilities to train people to do things like design high tech equipment and software. The state is very friendly to people with more brains than an artichoke. Not that California artichokes aren’t perfectly fine as well, of course. Maybe it’s the seventy-year history of getting money simply by vacuuming it out of visitors’ pockets that makes it impossible for some people in Nevada to see an obvious point. That is, you get what you pay for.
What the governor wants to pay for is, well, nothing. And that’s just what he’ll get. If you cut salaries to save money, then those workers will spend less. Money is worthless if it isn’t spent, after all, so by simply cutting government expenditures all we’d be doing is choking off the economy even more. There are some things that government really can do better than private enterprise, whether or not the R-J’s chief pundit likes it. One of those things is education. UCLA has been the source of great amounts of talent for California business over the years. It’s publicly funded. Same with the entire University of California system, for that matter. We could use the higher education system of Nevada to produce people who can build the infrastructure, diversify the economy, and revitalize the state’s economy. Or we can do what the governor wants and just lock the door behind us as we leave.
Come to think of it, we don’t even have enough roads, and the Gov wants to ensure that there’s nobody around that knows how to build one. Yep, great idea, Governor. You’re the man!
Labels: Politics, Social Commentary
Thursday, January 15, 2009
New Name
Same old stuff so far. Still, change is good, right?
Labels: Info
Monday, January 12, 2009
Me & Sarah, You Betcha!
There are two things about Sarah Palin complaining that Caroline Kennedy is being treated better than her in the media. First is, that's an example of why Sarah Palin hurt McCain more than she helped him. As I said in an earlier post, most of us actually are urbanites and have an urban perspective on life, so insulting urbanites is probably not the way to win elections. It just makes her sound like a whiner, which was a funny skit on SNL a long time ago, but not much else.
The second thing is that she's right. Just as I don't think it's fair for rural people to bad mouth urbanites, I also don't think that being an urbanite makes you necessarily better. In fact, it only puts you in the majority, and I have trouble with the majority often enough. The fact is, Kennedy ought to be fair game for some jokes about her effort to replace Clinton. How about, "Why, her husband's never even been caught cheating on her!" for starters? Or, "Kennedy? I thought he was dead!" Nothing untrue, just a few things that might be considered unkind. But, Kennedy is an urbanite, and that means that most of the country, including most reporting media, won't be as eager to make jokes about her. Sorry, Sarah, that's just the way it is. Even when you win, you lose.
But, to be fair to the media, running for national office and questioning the other side's patriotism when your husband's been advocating secession is, well, a bit over the top, don't you think?
Looking forward to 2012, I remain,
Steve
The second thing is that she's right. Just as I don't think it's fair for rural people to bad mouth urbanites, I also don't think that being an urbanite makes you necessarily better. In fact, it only puts you in the majority, and I have trouble with the majority often enough. The fact is, Kennedy ought to be fair game for some jokes about her effort to replace Clinton. How about, "Why, her husband's never even been caught cheating on her!" for starters? Or, "Kennedy? I thought he was dead!" Nothing untrue, just a few things that might be considered unkind. But, Kennedy is an urbanite, and that means that most of the country, including most reporting media, won't be as eager to make jokes about her. Sorry, Sarah, that's just the way it is. Even when you win, you lose.
But, to be fair to the media, running for national office and questioning the other side's patriotism when your husband's been advocating secession is, well, a bit over the top, don't you think?
Looking forward to 2012, I remain,
Steve
Labels: Politics, Social Commentary
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Darkly Dreaming Dexter
I'd like to review all three Dexter books by Jeff Lindsay, but I've only read one of them so far. I'm a big fan of the Showtime series Dexter, so when I got the first book for Christmas I was happy. If you're a fan of the show, you'll love this book a lot. If you've never seen it, I still recommend it to you.
Dexter Morgan is a serial killer who obeys a code he received from his foster father. He only kills people who deserve it. A priest who murders little children, for example. Other serial killers, certainly. But never an innocent person. He would never harm someone he didn't know for certain deserved to die. That's what he learned from his foster father, and that's how he operates.
The first book of the series was covered in the first two seasons of the Showtime production. And the first season pretty much followed the first half of the book, except for a couple of characters that were portrayed a bit differently. That didn't mean much to me, and I confess that I almost didn't finish the book because it looked to be the same thing I'd already seen. After all, the main mystery of "Who is the bad guy?" was solved with the same basic information on television as in the book. I knew who the bad guy was and how he related to the hero. But, I've got to tell you, from the middle on, the series, great as it is, trails the book a great deal in suspense, action and creepiness.
Dexter gets a girlfriend in the book and on television. He works with the same people, doing the same job. But the climax of the book is way, way more exciting and suspenseful, Dexter is himself much more interesting (but just as sympathetic) and other characters take on quite different roles. This book, which I finished while donating blood platelets when there wasn't much else to occupy my time, is as satisfying as any I've read in years. Oh, dear reader, do read this one. You can go to the Amazon sales link by simply clicking the title to this post.
I can't tell you more or you'll be mad at me for spoiling things. Just read it, okay? You'll be glad you did. So, for that matter, will Mister Lindsay.
Steve
Dexter Morgan is a serial killer who obeys a code he received from his foster father. He only kills people who deserve it. A priest who murders little children, for example. Other serial killers, certainly. But never an innocent person. He would never harm someone he didn't know for certain deserved to die. That's what he learned from his foster father, and that's how he operates.
The first book of the series was covered in the first two seasons of the Showtime production. And the first season pretty much followed the first half of the book, except for a couple of characters that were portrayed a bit differently. That didn't mean much to me, and I confess that I almost didn't finish the book because it looked to be the same thing I'd already seen. After all, the main mystery of "Who is the bad guy?" was solved with the same basic information on television as in the book. I knew who the bad guy was and how he related to the hero. But, I've got to tell you, from the middle on, the series, great as it is, trails the book a great deal in suspense, action and creepiness.
Dexter gets a girlfriend in the book and on television. He works with the same people, doing the same job. But the climax of the book is way, way more exciting and suspenseful, Dexter is himself much more interesting (but just as sympathetic) and other characters take on quite different roles. This book, which I finished while donating blood platelets when there wasn't much else to occupy my time, is as satisfying as any I've read in years. Oh, dear reader, do read this one. You can go to the Amazon sales link by simply clicking the title to this post.
I can't tell you more or you'll be mad at me for spoiling things. Just read it, okay? You'll be glad you did. So, for that matter, will Mister Lindsay.
Steve
Labels: Reviews
