I Digress!

Feb 20, 2006
The sad thing about all this is that I had myself convinced that we’d be partaking of healthy eating and lots of exercise – and just maybe I’d lose a few pounds. Yeah sure! We do get lots of exercise but if you’ve been reading my journals you’ll know that we’ve done our share of unhealthy eating – casino buffets are a curse and I don’t even like buffets really but can’t say no to a bargain. And then we discovered Jose Cuervo ready-made margaritas and Smirnoff ready-made appletinis and Martis Autentico mohitos – sure to be loaded with calories. I guess I should just be happy I’m not an alcoholic.

Casinos have evolved into one-stop entertainment destinations. You are likely to find a bowling alley, multiple movie theatres, even an ice arena (the Orleans, LV) or an equestrian centre (South Coast in LV (see photo above)). The old are making way for the new in Las Vegas. While we were there, the Bourbon Street Casino was reduced to rubble; the Boardwalk is closed and fenced off waiting for the wrecking ball while construction has already started between the Bellagio and the Monte Carlo; the South Coast Casino at the far south end of the ‘strip’ with a Moroccan ‘come to the Casbah’ design just opened up in January; Donald Trump is in partnership with the Frontier and will be building a Trump Tower.

At the California border with Nevada, the Primm Resorts are more than an evolution, perhaps a ‘devolution’. It’s an example of where Disney meets Nevada. Three casino/hotels make up the group. Buffalo Bill’s unattractive hotel is a monstrous ‘prairie grain elevator’ surrounded by rocky mountains through and around which snakes a gigantic roller coaster. Families roll out of their cars to spend the President’s Day long weekend in this alternate reality funhouse. While kiddies go on the rides and play the arcade games, Mom and Dad throw money in the slots.

The movie theatre addition works well for a couple when one is a gambler and the other is not. In Laughlin at the Riverside, I went to a couple of matinees ($5) while Fernie joined the Texas Holdem poker tables. With the Academy Awards approaching, I was happy to catch a couple of nominated films.


Brokeback Mountain has been highly touted but I thought it over-rated. However, it was a gay breakout movie. It started in the 1960’s and depicted a couple of masculine young men who met when they took jobs in a stereotypical testosterone-filled environment, as sheepherders (shepherds?) in the Wyoming mountains. Supposedly heterosexual, they gradually engaged in a relationship over the summer and fell in love – though the word ‘love’ was never mentioned (is it a woman’s word?). They insisted that they weren’t “queer” and carried on with their lives, getting married, having children but met up for a fishing trip every year. We followed their lives and the resultant tragedies for the next twenty years. It showed us how our not-too-long-ago society forced gays into the closet, into heterosexual marriages causing such pain and heartbreak for all involved. It is therefore an important message film but not ‘best’ film.

‘Walk the Line’ is a biopic of Johnny Cash’s early life and his developing relationship and eventual marriage to June Carter. I knew very little about their lives other than I loved Johnny when I was a teenager and remembered his Folsom Prison concert and his problem with booze and drugs. Not a country music fan, I knew nothing at all about June Carter. Joaquin Phoenix played Cash and at first I was uncomfortable with his portrayal. He sang the songs himself which I thought strange but he performed so well that I forgot it wasn’t Cash’s voice. I hadn’t realized before that Phoenix had a cleft palate but the scar was so obvious in the many close-ups that it distracted me. Reese Witherspoon as June Carter was a dynamo and she also sang all her own songs and wonderfully. The Cash/Carter duets were spellbinding, almost making a fan out of me. Good acting by both but Reese is the standout – perhaps an Academy Award for her?

And as far as best actor goes, neither Heath Ledger for Brokeback Mountain nor Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line come anywhere near Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of Truman Capote in Capote. Of course, that’s just my humble opinion.