What Happens in Vegas Could Keep You in Vegas

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

No, I'm not dead, although I am pretty tired. If it wasn't for the fact that if I don't finish this in the next 45 minutes, I'll only have one post in all of April, I'd probably be in bed. Between more work than is healthy (although I can't complain, because that's not usually the case), travel, and illness, it's been an interesting month. Actually, I'm fairly fortunate to have reached April 30th, given that I've had to stare down death a few times.

A few weeks ago we spent the weekend in Las Vegas. I'm a native of the Silver State (I still know most of the state song, if you need proof), so going to Vegas feels a little more like going home than going on vacation. I guess this was a combination of both, since we were staying at a hotel (Mandalay Bay, which I like partly because they don't have tacky carpet - rare for Vegas - but mostly because my wife usually gets to stay there for free) and spent some time with my family.

The last night we were there, my brother dropped his wife off at a birthday party and brought his two kids over to our room on the 29th floor (there's no place like a casino/hotel/resort for a bunch of toddlers). When he left, I decided to walk out with him to give him a hand with his kids. We joined three strangers on the elevator, and then the door closed behind us and didn't open for another 20 minutes or so.

I hadn't been stuck on an elevator before, but it turns out it's a bit like a very short version of the show Lost (of which I watch about every 4th episode - not a behavior I recommend). First of all, you are stuck for an indefinite amount of time with complete strangers who seem like nice people but likely have sordid pasts worthy of extensive flashbacks. Second, there are inexplicable noises (in our case, a constant buzzing), and it's hot and muggy. Third, there is some antiquated technology available on the island/elevator, and you're both afraid to push the wrong button and unsure of whether you're really communicating with the outside world.

In our case, we actually had to use that little crackly speaker (conveniently placed at knee level) to communicate (over the high buzzing sound) with an unidentified woman who tried to assure us by saying that they were "aware of the situation" and would "try" to get us out. Not to sound all Yoda here or anything, but in a case like this, there is no try, only do. The best part was that later when we called back, she answered with, "Can I help you?", which tells me that she either was a character from Finding Nemo or had gone home and not told her replacement about us (good thing we called back, I guess).

Despite the fact that we were dangling for 20 minutes in a hot metal box several hundred feet above ground, I'm pretty sure we were never in any real danger - at least I thought so until the crowbar guy came and busted us out and then the hotel hospitality guy started treating us like we had just been rescued from a POW camp (handing out water, making sure we were coherent, giving us a little debriefing). It turns out he was just getting some details so the hotel could send us a gift for our trouble. I wonder if the people in Lost will get fruit baskets when they finally get out.

The past few commutes home I've avoided a much deadlier situation involving a van on the side of the road about halfway home. Now, there are some things in life you don't buy out of the back of a van. For example, a few months back H.I. was outside Best Buy, and some guys in a van tried to sell him a stereo, claiming they had an extra one & just needed to sell it off (he offered a price far too low for their cheap, questionably legal product, though, and they drove away - classic). Now that I think about it, maybe the rule is that you never buy anything out of the back of a van.

I would say that is particularly true for seafood. Yet, there are people with a white van on the side of the road on the way home trying to sell me shrimp and lobster tails from Rocky Point (in Mexico). Even assuming they have those things on ice somehow, there's something inherently terrifying about pulling up to a rusty vehicle on the side of the road on a 90-plus degree day and buying a bag of raw crustaceans. Maybe the only thing scarier is that they probably have done this before and made enough money the last time to come back again. OK, maybe it's even scarier that you are sharing the road with people who obviously have some sort of death wish, since some of them must be stopping. Fortunately, I was able to steer well clear and have lived to blog another day.

Modern Heroes and Modern Advances

Friday, April 11, 2008

The term "hero" gets thrown around a lot. Sometimes it seems appropriate, and sometimes we maybe go a little too far (usually in sports). That said, I hope you didn't miss the story the other day of someone that was unequivocally a hero. If you did, I'll give you the quick version (although the full story should probably be required reading). A Navy SEAL in Iraq was in a sniper position on a rooftop with several other soldiers (American and Iraqi) when a grenade flew up and bounced off of him. Instead of jumping away, which he apparently could have done, he jumped onto the grenade to shield the rest from the blast. They all survived; he didn't. I'm not sure I need to say much more, except that I don't know if I've heard a story that has moved me more in a long time, particularly given that there could have been no hesitation. It's too bad that often the real heroes aren't around to accept their own medals, but I'm guessing that people like this aren't remotely motivated by that anyway.

I'm not saying that heroes are only found in war. For the most part, my heroes are people who deal with very difficult situations in ways that inspire me to hope that I would do the same. I think by that definition, you can find heroes in a lot of places - yes, even in something as relatively trivial as sports.

The other night I went to my first regular season baseball game this year. Pitching for the DBacks was Doug Davis, who two days later (yesterday) was to undergo surgery for thyroid cancer. Despite struggling quite a bit his last time out, he pitched a solid game and got the win. To top it off, a guy who had 4 hits in 58 at bats last year had two bit hits and a sacrifice bunt. OK, admittedly, none of that is remotely in the same galaxy as someone without hesitation giving up his life for someone else, but I do think there is something at least mildly heroic (according to my own definition) in staring down cancer like that, and I don't know that we should have to apologize for saying so.

If I can be a little less serious for a minute, the other memorable thing from the Diamondbacks game was a giant high-definition television. By giant, I don't mean a 59" or 60". I'm talking about a 46-foot-high, 136-foot-wide high-def screen they put it at Chase Field, which apparently cost $14 million dollars (but maybe they got one of those "no payments until 2010" deals). I have to say, I've never seen anything like it (although it is a little scary seeing random people from the crowd kissing in high-definition). We haven't taken the high-def plunge yet (I'm sure we will at some point), but for now we're living squarely in the fuzzy past.



The other day I watched Hoosiers for the first time in a while, and I was thinking about how nice it would be in some ways to live in a little simpler time before all of these inventions and advances starting making life so complicated. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't really want to give up the positives that go along with modern advances like the internet, giant TVs that are somehow sharper than real life, and slow-churned ice cream, but there are certainly some complications that come with all of this. Here are just a few examples:

• In 1950s Hickory, Indiana, if people had TVs, they probably only had about two fuzzy channels (incidentally, I think that's what we had in Beatty when I was really young). I now have literally hundreds, and I probably spend more time going through that dumb guide than I do actually watching TV (at first when I typed that, I thought I was exaggerating, but now I'm really not sure). It's like trying to order food at the Cheesecake Factory (complete with annoying advertising), except that there most of the stuff on the CF menu is worth your time and contains no Steven Seagal.
• In 1950s Hickory, they had soap. In my office, they installed (as I think I mentioned previously) touchless dispensers of hand sanitizer at the top of every staircase to encourage people to hold onto the handrails but not have to worry about disease. The other day, I accidentally stood too close to one of those things, and I got a heavy shot of alcohol all over my arm. It's hard to walk through a place like my office now without doors flying open, paper towels shooting out at you, and lights popping on. The good thing is that if I ever have to make my way through a booby-trapped jungle or a bank vault's laser security system, I'll be fairly well prepared.
• While we're on the subject of health, in 1950s Hickory they probably had aspirin and penicillin. Now we have a drug for everything, and most of those can apparently cause problems much worse than the symptom they are trying to address. My wife had something akin to Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) while she was pregnant with our son, so I can understand that this is annoying and makes it hard to sleep. That said, if you take something called Mirapex to cure it, you are risking (according to the commercial I saw and their website) "falling asleep while engaged in activities of daily living, including the operation of motor vehicles which sometimes [has] resulted in accidents," hallucinations, and "pathological gambling."

Speaking of hallucinations, I'm starting to have them now since it's so late as I try to finish this. Let me just say that as complicated and ridiculous as modern life in the developed free world can be, I'm profoundly grateful for people who completely selflessly offer their lives to preserve our right to live it.