Your Sunday Reading Assignments

I've finally caught up on weeks of reading and found some stuff of Vegas relevance to recommend. Most is from today's paper, actually, but some is kind of old, but if you haven't seen it, it's new to you:

* Margo Bartlett Pesek's Trip of the Week column. In an otherwise worthless R-J travel section, Margo does a really nice job of offering some intriguing day-trip suggestions. This week's piece on wineries -- yes, wineries -- near Vegas was clip-and-save caliber.

* Henry Brean's really well-written piece today on the new critters they're finding in Snake Valley and how it intersects with Las Vegas' plan to suck water from northeastern Nevada via a really, really long pipe. Really cool, beautiful video, too, by John Locher.


Too bad the R-J's crack Web staff still hasn't figured out how to let people embed it.

* This piece by Adrienne Packer of the R-J about Clark County goons who busted and left carless a desolate 51-year-old woman for trying to make ends by picking people up at the airport. She had an ad on Craigslist offering to do all manner of chores and errands, including providing rides, and the Transportation Authority actually executed a sting. It's understandable that they need to make sure drivers picking up people at McCarran are licensed and not evil-doers, but when they realized this wasn't some big fake-cabbie ring but a nice, desperate lady, maybe they could've applied some common sense?

* Brendan Buhler, whose work I always have enjoyed but who handled the desperate publicity circus surrounding the Pink's Hot Dogs hilariously and then turned around and wrote sensitively and tastefully about how the new domestic partnership law would benefit a lesbian couple and their family.

* My Las Vegas Weekly colleague Rick Lax's really funny cover piece recently about trying to "live" at Town Center. Also, Dave McKee's profile of the classic French restaurant Le Pamplemousse for CityLife. Rick's was an idea I wish I'd thought of, McKee's was one I'd considered many times and never gotten around to doing.


* LVW food critic Max Jacobson has a piece in Gourmet this month listing seven places in Vegas worth their prices. I agree with many of his choices -- Raku, Simon and Lotus -- but am baffled by his praise of Beijing Noodle No. 9 at Caesars Palace. Having lived in China for two years, I'm here to tell you that food was bland. Also, the dining room is a little too kaladascopic for me.


Makes ya dizzy, no? Food's not that great, either.

Friday Foto Fun: Inside the M With The Olds

As promised, here are some of the more interesting photos shot during my walk-about of the M Resort with the Olds, as documented in my Las Vegas Weekly column this week. That's them in that overly sunny shot at breakfast at the Red Cup Cafe.

First off, let's officially kick off a Blue Tape Watch on the M. Just as Palazzo left that piece of tape on a dome window for many months much to the delight of we bloggers, there's still lots of it all over the M. See?


I have to believe that will be gone soon enough since those were doors to the pool area and are fairly obvious. But we shall see!

Evidently, a week on there were still some problems with various fixtures...


...and I can't even begin to imagine how the room number was torn off here but wow.


I won't bother you with interior shots of the main areas because both Dave McKee at Stiffs & Georges and Hunter Hillegas at RateVegas.Com provided lots of that.

However, as documented in the column, Terry and I went to the 15th floor and managed to talk our way into checking out one of the end-unit "flat" suites, of which this is the floor plan (click on image to enlarge to readable size):


So here's the bed...


...and living room space...


...and my personal favorite, the tub-with-a-view...


That speck you see in the offing is the Strip, which is really sort of hard to see and not nearly as impressive in terms of vistas as the M has advertised. It reminds me of the time I took my mom to see Bette Midler at the MGM Grand Garden and we sat in the nosebleed seats. We knew we could see little Bette, but barely and it was quite unsatisfying. Here's a zoomed-in-view of the Strip or, perhaps, what you'd see if you brought binoculars:

The housekeeping lady who let us in to look at the flat suite insisted to me that the pool, too, is in an M shape. Do you see it? Because I don't, unless we're talking in cursive writing.


The southerly view is even more bleak than the Strip view...


...but I was fascinated by this pyramid tent thing across the street from M that Terry says is somebody's home. Paging the Sun's Brendan Buhler. Find out who this guy is! Stat! (And apologies if someone already has in the media; I've not seen it but would love to read about it.)



Speaking of media, it was nice to see SOMEONE still offers the local newspaper to hotel guests in this town.


Terry insightfully wondered to me why the M didn't tile the top of its southerly-facing porte-cochere with solar panels, and it's a good question, right?


And, finally, someone's bill was sticking out from under their door so I couldn't help myself. That (below) says $50 plus tax for a stay on the first Friday night the place was open. That's a pretty good deal.


Oh, don't look at me like that. You know you would've, too. Or that you're glad I did.

This N That

I've been a neglectful blogger lately, mostly because I've been immersing myself in studying up for a few larger projects. But there were a few very random things I've been meaning to say. So here goes:

1. Brendan Buhler rocks. I've been meaning to say this for quite a long time now. Buhler is a staffer at the Las Vegas Sun and he almost always, consistently makes me at least smile, if not laugh out loud. In a newspaper largely devoted to a diet of in-depth pieces on politics, health, education and science, it is a relief sometimes when Buhler does one of his trademark pieces about battling with his swamp cooler, beard-trimming mania or resale graves. Sometimes he does odd topics that I also notice but would have no place to write about, such as his effort to debunk a recent ad campaign claiming to cool a house on a hair dryer's power usage. There's substance and an engaging point of view behind his writing and reporting, which is why it's not just clowning around stuff. And no, I'm NOT just saying this because this week I got to be the target of his shaming for my incorrect O.J. predictions on the Papa Joe Chevalier show. I've been tearing out a stack of Buhler pieces to mention here for months now. But, yes, it is an honor to be embarrassed by a pro.

2. A few more good things. Check out Benjamin Spillman's R-J piece on the conflict at Forum Shops over where patrons of the Poetry nightclub should be lined up. Also from Sunday, Corey Levitan did a terrific job going through the history and current circumstances of nine Old Vegas structures that somehow have averted wrecking balls. Liz Benston at the Sun had a really interesting report about how South Point has avoided laying off workers that I found refreshing amid the sea of economic-news misery we're all drowning in.

3. A few less good things. I really, really wish the R-J would stop John Przybys from doing his Entertainment Weekly knockoff feature on Sundays because, as you can see, it's unoriginal AND usually not terribly funny. (I probably shouldn't say that today because, as I recall from my days at the R-J, Przybys and I share today as our birthday, but that's how I feel. Happy birthday, though, John.) And I'm really sorry to hear that Jane Ann Morrison broke her inlay on a caramel that she says brings her, uh, "soulful satisfaction," (?!?) but wasn't she just last month moralizing about not wasting precious time and space on meaningless stories of little importance? Just sayin'. Now, Brendan Buhler might've turned that costly misfortune into something funny and socially relevant.

4. And Now, A Total Non-Sequitur. I was catching up on newspaper reading the other day and came across this question by a Dick Case of Petroleum, W. Va., asking if there are other kinds of ketchup besides the red tomato-based variety. I had no idea. Could make a good column for Jane, actually.