When you blink your eyes...

I spent last week visiting Las Vegas for the first time. I stayed at the Paris hotel which was pretty nice. Since it was for work my expenses were all paid for which was a big bonus. All I had to pay for was gambling and alcoholic beverages. The good thing is when you are gambling the alcoholic beverages are free so that is another plus.

The first day I was really tired and I didn't like Las Vegas on my first impression because everything seemed very fake. As the week went on and I experienced what it was really about I grew to like it there. On Thursday I took a nap from 6pm-midnight, when I woke up I decided to get my camera out and walk the strip. I ended up walking all the way from Paris to Binion's in the old downtown casino district. I left 12:30AM and got to Binion's at about 3:30AM. I just looked it up on yahoo maps and its over 6 miles. It was an exciting journey passed many new and old casinos, drug dealers, prostitutes, miniature wedding chapels, and drunken pedestrians. I saw the world championship of poker going on inside Binion's when I got there for a few minutes which was cool. I took a taxi back because I was exhausted and already felt lucky to not have been stabbed.

I went with some friends to a bar I hadn't been to before called "Cock O' the Walk". I kept asking them if it was a gay bar and said it 'was not'. This was an interesting little place near NW 36th and Western in OKC. The large beers are served in a huge ass schooner glass. When full you feel like you need to pick it up with 2 hands but all the guys use one hand to make sure they look cool. We played pool and darts for several hours. I had to describe to my friend Justin the SNL with Christopher Walken as Bruce Dickinson in the "VH1 Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult" sketch. Where he uses the phrase "I'm the Cock of the Walk, Baby".

That reminds me of the time my friend Jeff and I at work had a "Cowbell Friday" where we traded off playing songs featuring the cowbell. This was of course inspired by the aforementioned sketch. It turned out to be a lot of fun. If you have not seen the sketch you can at least read the transcript here until you get a chance to see it.

I watched the original Night of the Living Dead for the first time in its entirety last night. I really enjoyed it. The lighting was excellent, I am big into high contrast black and white images. Some of the acting was of course a bit cheesy, but it is a classic. According to imdb.com it was made for only $114,000 which is amazing considering how it turned out. I really appreciate Romero's attention to detail and great work on the editing. As with the other Romero film I've seen, Martin, the cuts really keep your keep your attention and your eyes on the screen. Also, the ending to the film was perfect. That says a lot because I think ending a film properly is often one of the hardest areas to get right. I'm anxious to see the rest of the George Romero films.

I've been listening to Velvet Ungeround - Loaded a lot recently. I've been able to get into it a lot quicker than the other 2 VU albums I have, Velvet Ungeround and Nico and White Light/White Heat. Those are excellent albums, it just took me several listens to get into them.

I've also been listening to Joy Division's - Closer quite often. It was something that also took me awhile to absorb but once I finally did I really appreciate it. For the last week or 2 I've been listening to the track "Colony" frequently. Its just a great sound of beautiful pain, sadness and agony. Listening to Joy Division all the time for me is not good, however, it can tend to make me feel depressed. That's why I need to offset it with something like Hall and Oates to cleanse the pallette if you will.

I went to my usual music spot, Guest Room Records in Norman, yesterday and picked up 3 new albums. The Cure - The Head on the Door; Pretty Girls Make Graves - The New Romance; and Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose.

So far I've listened to the Loretta Lynn album a couple times all the way through and I think it definitely lives up to the hype. At times I can hear the White Stripes sound coming through with Jack White's influence. But its true country with some noticeable tinges of rock on a few tracks.

I've got an exciting trip to England to the Reading music festival planned for late August. My friend said today he's getting plane tickets for only $300 a piece round trip, but they are stand by. I think it will be worth the hassle for that price. I am really looking forward to it.

I've put up the rest of the Las Vegas photos. I think they turned out pretty well. As always, I wish I'd gotten more of the things I'd seen but you can't get everything.

I spent last week visiting Las Vegas for the first time. I stayed at the Paris hotel which was pretty nice. Since it was for work my expenses were all paid for which was a big bonus. All I had to pay for was gambling and alcoholic beverages. The good thing is when you are gambling the alcoholic beverages are free so that is another plus.

The first day I was really tired and I didn't like Las Vegas on my first impression because everything seemed very fake. As the week went on and I experienced what it was really about I grew to like it there. On Thursday I took a nap from 6pm-midnight, when I woke up I decided to get my camera out and walk the strip. I ended up walking all the way from Paris to Binion's in the old downtown casino district. I left 12:30AM and got to Binion's at about 3:30AM. I just looked it up on yahoo maps and its over 6 miles. It was an exciting journey passed many new and old casinos, drug dealers, prostitutes, miniature wedding chapels, and drunken pedestrians. I saw the world championship of poker going on inside Binion's when I got there for a few minutes which was cool. I took a taxi back because I was exhausted and already felt lucky to not have been stabbed.

I'm trying out setting up my own blog. I've been doing some work to try to integrate the blog template into the current interface of my site as close as possible. So far it seems to be working pretty well, still have a bit of tweaking to go until I'm satisfied. I thought about writing my own blog application in php but I decided I didn't have the time to spend on it right now so I'm using the one by 'blogger'.

I plan on using this as a spot to talk about music and movies as well as complain about everything.