Leave it to the Japanese

Most of the time, the international auto show circuit is pretty mundane. Sure, every once in a while there's an iconic debut, and certainly everybody (who doesn't live in Rear-Wheel-Drive Land) needs to see a Lamborghini in person at least once, but otherwise there's just not that much going on. Not so, however, at the Tokyo International Auto Show, where auto manufacturers go nuts delivering concepts that can only be appreciated by the Japanese.

Submitted for your consideration is this photo gallery of the MINI Tokyo Concept. The theme is picnic -- which is crazy enough for a concept car -- but it's all the weird touches that MINI have added that really make this thing something that only the Japanese can dig on. The wheels... the stripey side-mirror caps... the coordinating set of freaking china.... Anyway, click and enjoy. Japan is truly the home of culturally-enshrined bizarreness.

A Message to Las Vegas Teenagers

Dude, your circa-1986 Corolla is not a hot ride. The sound that comes out of your exhaust when you hit the gas is not "race inspired" and could not be considered a "sporty exhaust note." The sound means you need a new muffler. Also: the fact that you destroyed your shocks by driving over a speed-bump at 73 miles per hour resulting in a very low appearance does not mean that your car has been lowered, and it certainly does not mean that you can "corner as though on rails." Your Corolla does not hearken back to the legendary designs of Enzo Ferrari. The rust you have mysteriously accumulated in a desert climate is not "edgy" or "urban." You yourself are not "edgy" or "urban."

Dude, you just need a new car.

Fireside Magic

The Madame and I have only just returned from a fabulous evening sampling the delights available to the knowing scenester at the northern end of The Strip. Back when I first started working at the music store, a guy came in looking for a new mic for his stage act. Since everybody in town is in show business -- and since they aren't any truly well-stocked music stores in Las Vegas yet -- this wasn't and isn't a terribly unusual occurrence, but this guy had a friend in common with Ed the Lounge Lizard and they got to talking. The guy turned out to be one of the features magicians in The World's Greatest Magic Show over at the Greek Isles Hotel & Casino, and he hooked Ed up with four comps to the show. And Ed, who is truly a man among men, passed two of these comps on to me, saying, "Hey, man, show your wife a good time."

So tonight, we finally got around to cashing in those two comps, and we saw the show. The magic was excellent (dudes who can make birds appear out of nowhere really blow my mind... as do guys who can turn a napkin into a snowstorm), and the seats were very fine. The best part, though, was that we somehow wound up being some of the only people in the crowd who were not on a tour of Las Vegas from Norway. Yes, that's right: no matter how far you get from Minnesota, the Norwegians will find you. Good fun indeed.

After the show, we headed over to the grooviest bar in which I have ever had the pleasure of quaffing my thirst: the Peppermill's Fireside Lounge. For a guy like me who always called his dorm room the Ultra Lounge, having a drink at the Peppermill is like going on the Hajj. I'm talking about a room with a flaming water feature; where all the seating is pink, plush couches; where the only light comes from pink and blue neon and there are fake cherry blossom trees surrounding everything; and where every little nook has its own plasma TV showing the most eclectic selection of music videos you've ever seen. My drink this evening was the aptly-named Chocolate Chip Cookie (a mix of vanilla vodka, Godiva dark chocolate liqueur, and ice cream... yum), and The Madame took down a "Rosatini". There is nothing cooler in the world that enjoying strong drink in a groovy Heffed-out grotto with somebody like The Madame. An excellent evening out in our new home town.

Guard-Gated Tears

Once you get above a certain dollar amount, all the new-construction neighborhoods in Las Vegas have gates. And it's not like Minnesota, where that dollar amount is a median home value of somewhere over $1.5 million; around here, it's somewhere around $315,000. At first, this really put me off, since the idea of a "gated community" is not very well-thought-out. Doesn't everyone know that the gates don't work? You can just follow somebody in, or just wave to the guard... or, I guess, you can just climb over the wall. But the longer I spend living in this city, the more I find myself buying in to the idea of a gated neighborhood. It's stupid, I know, but so many of the developments around here have gates -- including our apartment complex -- that the ones without gates start to stand out a little bit. You start to wonder why there's no gate and how cheap the houses are.

There are four levels of developments here in the Valley: no gate, single-gated, guard-gated, and double-guard-gated. The developments without gates are just surrounded by a wall and are just like anywhere else. The single-gated developments have one gate at the entrance to the development, but you gain entry with just a security card or a security code (our apartment complex is one of these). The guard-gated developments usually have an elaborately manicured entryway, all of which have two ways in: one for residents and one for guests. Both of these entries are supervised by a self-important guard in a silly uniform who separates the sheep from the goats and chooses who can go in. Apparently, the function of the double-guard-gated communities is to protect those who are very rich from those who are only somewhat rich.

Since I have yet to go inside a guard-gated community here in Las Vegas, I can only guess at what the scene must be like by the second gate in the double-guard-gated developments, but I imagine that it's something like this: thousands of middle-management executives and casino pit-bosses are lined up against the wall surrounding the inner community, many of them weeping freely. They clutch large, bulbous suitcases to their chests, and their wives and children are carrying lamps and framed photographs; to wit, they carry all their worldly possessions with them. Some of them are bruised and covered with scabs from the frequent beatings by the guards at the second gate. None of them can understand why they are being denied the opportunity to have an audience with the princes inside the inner wall. One man, a kindly junior VP at International Gaming Technologies, kneels down to brush tears away from his young daughter's cheeks. "We'll be inside soon, pumpkin. Daddy's going to take care of it." He wants to say more, but he is silenced as his face becomes a mass of mangled bone; Julio the Head Guard demands silence from those waiting, and enforces this rule with a thirty-eight inch lead pipe.

Down the line a ways from the now-sobbing IGT executive, a family huddles together under the shade of a torrey pine. The mother is the head of marketing at Wynn Las Vegas and the father runs the VIP at OPM; their children, Mordechai and Ari, attend the Las Vegas Day School. They have brought their personal rabbi with them, and he is pouring out shabbas wine. As they drink, the rabbi intones, "Next year in--"

"In Jerusalem, rabbi?" suggests Ari, who, after all, is only six.

"No, my child. Next year inside the second gate at Queensridge."

The mother and father nod gravely and drink their wine. Perhaps, if they are lucky, God will hear their prayers.

CLARIFICATION: A double-guard-gated community is a gated development within another gated development. To enter, you go first through the gate that leads from the street to the private drive... and then you pass through another gate with another set of guards into the Holiest of Holies. Just so we're clear on that.

An Evening at the Aztec

Last night, I had my first appearance onstage on the Las Vegas Strip. It took my co-worker up on his standing offer to sit in with his lounge act, which, this week, is playing over at the Aztec Inn (which has neither a website nor any decent online pictures for me to link to). The Aztec, for those who don't follow Vegas hotel news, is a small hotel and slot casino directly south of the Stratosphere way up at the north end of the Strip. There was a fire there last summer which shut the whole thing down for a while, but it has definitely re-opened and now features a medium-ish stage entirely surrounded by pink-tinted mirrors and glass. Come to think of it, the mirrors may not have originally been tinted pink, but they certainly are now; smoke does curious things to glass.

So The Madame and I went down there and linked up with Ed the Lounge Lizard (he of the Sunspots from a previous post), who was playing video keno at the bar and drinking vodka shots. We ordered some drinks of our own from Mo the east-African bartender and admired his recently added Halloween decorations. "Hey, man," said Mo, grinning and winking, "every day is Halloween at the Aztec."

The set break wound down and I took the stage with the Sunspots. It was sort of a baptism by fire, since I'd never actually played any of the songs they called before, much less busted a phatty-boombatty solo over their not-necessarily-familiar changes. I was left to rely on my wits, my education (which, after all, is considerable), and my ears... and I discovered that my high-priced music education actually is worth something after all.

I had a really good time, and even managed to blow a reasonably hip solo over "Fly Me to the Moon." I won't lie, though: I was nervous. Aside from it being my first Vegas gig (which is a pretty big deal, since appearing live in a lounge act of the Strip is miles away from any performance goal I ever set for myself), and it being my first time playing a show by ear only, it was also the first time I've ever played with people who didn't know me from before. If I played the changes in F# when the song was in C, the Sunspots wouldn't think to themselves well, he's solid and he's cool; maybe he's just trying something new and hip. But I guess I didn't have to worry, since they loved my approach and both they and the crowd dug my playing in a serious way.

On our way out, one of the Sunspots' groupies -- a woman that couldn't possibly have been under 80 and who Ed referred to as "one of the biddies" -- stopped me to say that she really enjoyed my playing and that she hoped to see me again sometime. I figure that anybody who's seen as many lounge acts as that particular biddie must have seen has a pretty good handle on how things went. Either that, or she was hitting on me. Either way, I come out ahead.