Monthly Archives: October 2010

Las Vegas – Saturday Morning

Well, Samba’s, the Brazilian Steak house was wonderful. This place is located int the Mirage. I drove there instead of taking a taxi to the strip. That was the right call. Evenat 7 opm the traffic was heavy and slow. A taxi would have been expensiive. The GPS system got me t0 The Mirage just fine, but it did not lead me directly to the parking structure. That took some doing as it was not plainly obvious which way to go for what I wanted. On the plus side parking was free.

Samba’s is located in the Casino itself, that was a it of a minus. Despite a fairly robust air flow system a hint of smoke still drifted into the dining area from the Casino floor. Also you simply could not escape the flashing light and bells. That said, I loved the dinner. I had a goodly amount of the free meats, and I found them all tasty. I nearly waddled when I departed.

Geek note: the hostesses that guide you to your table are decked out in red, long-sleeved one-piece miniskirts and I could think of was original series Star Trek. If you are in Vegas and love meat drop by this place.

Afterwards I drove back to my hotel Downtown — I did not cruise the strip and I saw No Elvi Fish — I called my sweetie-wife and let my massive dinner settle.

I had though I would stay in the rest of the night, but instead after I could walk comfortably again, I walked two blocks to the Fremont Street Experience. It was touristy trap kind of things, they even had a zip-line set-up that ran the length of tthe area so that every few minuets another groups of tourists passed overhead like special forces infiltrating a terrorist base. I was tempted but did not do it myself.

Instead I returned to my room, watched a bit of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl, then turned in for the night.

The Casinos, rather than floor of fun and exciement strike me as rather sad. Here at the El Cotrez it is mainly locals gambling. The Tables are cheaper an the strip. Lonely people mainly game alone. The Slot Machine players are the saddest. I see them just pressed the buttons mechanically. Lost in an electronic glammer, not evey reacting to wins or losses, just pressing the buttons over and over..

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arrived Las Vegas

I loved driving the Corolla. It handled like a dream, it purred making hardly any noise at all, and I had very good visibility. The trip went by fairly quickly with me singing to my music for the 5 hour plus drive. (It’s a good thing I traveled alone.)
The GPS navigator was a god-send. When I have a car of my own I want one.
After checking into my room, (The El Cortez is an old hotel and the rooms reflect this. That said they are clean, and perfectly nice.) I played craps in the Casino downstairs..
Now if you know me you know that dice often hate me. So you might wonder why I selected craps as my limited gambling option.. Easy, I wanted to give a middle finger salute to the fates. I know the dice hate me, so I was out to show them I was not cowed.
I started at the table with a $40 stake. Every time I won, I took the winnings and set them aside. Once the stake was gone, my gaming was finished.
I walked away from the table with $93. A net gain of $53. Do I feel tempted to increase to more? Nope. I’m going to dinner soon and as far as I consider it, the casino is picking up the table for my all-you-can-eat steak experience.
Tomorrow promises to be a busy day.

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Ready to depart

My sweetie-wife has left for work after dropping me off at the car rental location. I now have a white toyota Corolla to load-up and drive to vegas baby.

If I have access I will continue posting if not, see you Sunday or Monday.

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Not Much to Say

IT’s not that I haven’t much to say but I haven’t much time or energy. I’ve been caught up in preparations for my trip to Las vegas tomorrow. (yeah!) Plus my mind has been running at warp speed on the feedback I got for ‘Cawdor.’

I want to wait until I have all the feedback before committing myself, but idea are a popping.

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The Dinner Of Truth

Tomorrow night is my feedback dinner for the Beta Readers of ‘Cawdor.” Sadly, not all the beta readers could make the dinner. Work schedules and other commitments rarely allow me to have 100% turn out, still we should have 5 or so people there and that will be enough for me to have a sense of where common fault and virtues may lie in the piece.

We shall see.

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Sunday Night Movie:The Exorcist

When Chris MacNeil’ s daughter Regan begin behaving strangely, Chris does what any mother would do and takes Regan to the doctors. Despite advanced technology and level of medical examination that borders on medieval torture the doctors can find no cause for Regan’s increasing bizzare and violent acts.

When Chris’s director dies mysteriously after visiting Regan Chirs is pushed out of the light of reason and enlightenment and is forced to confront the growing possibility that Reagon is possessed.

With only the help of Father Karras  a priest whose own faith has shattered, Chris must find the one person who can save Regan’s soul, The Exorcist.

Continue reading →

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Movie Review:RED

Frank Moses’s life is dull and predictable. The closest thing he has to real human contact is his monthly calls to Sarah who works distributing retirement checks. Frank perpetually destroys his check and reports them as missing so he can continue to call Sarah.

After a team of Souther African assassins try to kill Frank, he is quickly on the run trying to stay one step ahead of the assassins and not ruin whatever chances he might have at a real relationship with the quirky Sarah.

As a retired CIA agent, franks knows a thing or two about killing people and quickly re contact members of his former team. The smooth talked and smooth-voiced analysis/intel man Joe, the mentally deranged but talented combatant Marvin, and finally but not least the Femme Fatale assassin Victoria.

With time running out and ruthless and uber-competent company after them can the retired agents get to the bottom of the conspiracy against them?

One on level RED is a predictable and fairly unoriginal piece of action mayhem. If you can’t figure out how this plot is going to end then you are asleep. However this film is fun and well worth watching because it is not trying to be serious. This is a comedy and by using a plot that is well know, they devoted more time to the characters and the off-center world that they live in. This is a movie that demands you turn off your higher functions and just have fun.

It is based on a comic book, which I have never read, and the action is very unrealistic. That said, I laugher out loud many times and this film was genuinely fun to watch. The time flew by and I would watch this again in a moment.

If you go, do not test this film against how the world really works. Things like g-forces do not exist here. What does exist here is sharp dialogue and some wonderful performances.

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Recurring Themes

Something I seemed to revisit in my writing is the subject of loyalty. Many, though not all, of my stories have conflict of loyalty as the a primary source of character tension.

I know that I have always been bored by stories where the issue is merely: how do I win? For a story to be compelling there must be something personal at stake and there must be a personal decision the character must make that can never be unmade. What struck me this week is how often for my own characters it is a question of loyalty.

When I started writing Cawdor I had originally thought I would explore the avarice of ambition as the overriding theme, but when I crawled down into the trenches and fought and grappled with the plot, it became something different. Most of the characters are faced with tests of loyalty.

What I liked best in the way it turned out is that there was no simple answer to the puzzle of loyalty. It is not always good to be loyal and it is not always wrong to betray. That’s because as in so many things there is a hierarchy  to loyalty and the test is understanding that incline of competing demands for loyalty.

For example, Von Stauffenberg had taken an oath to be loyal unto death to Adolf Hitler. For a man of his social class this is not something one tosses away lightly, but he did betray that oath with treason and an attempted assassination. We do not look upon his betrayal as a bad thing, we honor it and make movies about it. Here disloyalty is prized, because the greater cause of virtue demands it.

That of course is an easy case. We vilify Benedict Arnold  because of his betrayal and the reason for his betrayal is more complicated. It might be because he felt slighted and insulted, which would hardly be sufficient to justify his treason. On the other hand it may be he was motivated by pure and consuming love and that is harder for us to emotionally reject as a cause.

In Cawdor I have characters that I think act rightly by betraying their oaths and their people and I have character who I think acts right by not doing so. I have never been fully aware just how much loyalty means to my writing. Even in my horror shorts loyalty often expresses itself.

I wonder why?

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