Pictureland

But no hookers with a heart of gold.  Not enough time for the male protagonist to drink himself to death.  A soundtrack bereft of thick slaps of cheese courtesy of Don Henley and Der Stingel.  Not a sign of - and I can't stress this enough - Julian Sands as a Latvian pimp. Only a couple of days in Las Vegas.  A third season of the week.  I walked through a late breath of winter on the streets of Butte Sunday night.  Experienced giddy spring in Brigham City and amid the staggering beauty of Capitol Reef National Park on Wednesday.  And then summer in Las Vegas.  100 degrees Friday.  Only in the 90s while many lucky motorists, like myself, were parked on I-15 in the Valley of Fire, 30 miles north of the city, waiting for an accident to clear Thursday afternoon.  Then back to the mod interior of my cabana suite at the El Corrtez.    About 36 hours after my second arrival at the El Cortez, it was time to leave.  Of...

Still a strange thing, I find, waking up in one city - say, Chicago - and proceed bleary-eyed to the airport, there to warily board a pressurized tube and be propelled to 35,000 feet in the sky, only to be dropped in another part of the country, another part of the world.  All the more strange if that pressurized tube touches down in Las Vegas.   But there I landed.  And very comfortably ensconced in my black Chevy Impala with all the mod cons. - satellite radio, rearview camera, blind spot warning lights, etc. - I proceeded north from McCarran Airport up Las Vegas Boulevard, essentially experiencing the history of the city in reverse.  It says something about where my Las Vegas interest lies, my temporal bias exists, that my first stop - having an hour to kill before checking into my hotel - took me to the Neon Museum.  I may well walk right into my death some day, gaping at a neon sign, walking into the middle of some busy street.  At least...