Almost as soon as my friend Mitch rolled out of town, Eli, an even older friend, rolled in.  Eli is a very successful manager and producer in Hollywood, but I first met her when she was a 16 year-old undergraduate at Yale.  She was, in those days, a hellcat — a wild woman sowing her oats before settling down to marriage, motherhood and a rather spectacular career in movies.

She took me to dinner last Saturday night at Mix, the restaurant on top of The Hotel at Mandalay Bay, with its stunning view of Las Vegas and its equally stunning food.  (I apologize for the fuzziness of the picture above, but when I tried to use my flash inside Mix the background was totally blacked out — and the image does give a good sense of how Eli and I were seeing the world halfway through a superb bottle of wine, preceded by a couple of Martinis and beers.)

My Western box-back frock coat was the coolest item of male attire anywhere in sight.  Let's face it, folks, I've seen better days, but at least I can still make an effort.  On the other hand, Eli's cool clubbin' shoes mirrored the sense of style shown by almost all the women out cruising the town.

What is our world coming to?  Has the matriarchy arrived?  Have young men just given up?

When I dropped Eli off at her hotel, The Mirage, I was pretty drunk, and I knew I should head straight home on a route that did not include a detour through the Mirage's card room.  On the other hand, I was a little too drunk to heed my own advice.

I sat down at a no-limit Hold-'em game, which broke up around three in the morning, but even this was not enough to bring me to my senses.  I headed across the street to the card room at the Venetian, and played for twelve more hours.

It was a shameful episode.  However, there were two mitigating factors.  One, I had a blast, and, two, I staggered home at three in the afternoon having made a clear profit of over three hundred dollars.  I was clearly inspired to daring acts of card play by my earlier dash about town with a hot babe in cool shoes.

My friend Mitch was in town for a few days recently.  Mitch is a wonderful fellow, but a bit eccentric.  He has an imaginary friend, “Michaela” — actually a cut-out paper doll — who shares all his adventures.  He talks to her and even insists on ordering extra food for her when we're out at a restaurant.

Mitch and I played some poker — we both had some good runs and some bad runs.  It was great fun but far from profitable.  The photograph of Mitch above, putting a brave face on things, is fuzzy because I couldn't use my flash, since taking pictures in a card room is forbidden.

The real problem was Michaela, who kept sneaking off to play the slots while we puzzled over the cards.  She lost a small fortune in quarters during the times it took us to track her down.

To the shock of some and the delight of many others, President Obama has called for public executions of the Wall Street CEOs whose “extreme avarice and irresponsibility have taken to the world to the brink of economic disaster”.

“These people have gone beyond moral depravity, beyond criminality, into the realm of treason against their own country and the community of nations,” the President said.  “We have a death penalty in place for traditional forms of treason — it ought to be applied equally to those whose selfishness and greed have led them to place the security of the whole world in jeopardy.”

Obama has proposed setting up special tribunals to try the accused under military law, with a greatly abbreviated appeals procedure.  “Justice in these cases needs to be swift, untempered with mercy, and pursued publicly,” the President said, “with nationally televised executions, so that all Americans, young and old, can contemplate the consequences of sociopathic behavior by those entrusted with the financial well-being of the nation.”

Obama has directed the Attorney General to study the feasibility of conducting the executions on Wall Street, in front of the New York Stock Exchange building, so that they will become part of the history of that fabled center of American and world finance.

“Let them die,” Mr. Obama said, “staring at piles of cash representing their executive bonuses for the years in which they were conducting their transgressions — taking one last look at the money for which they sold their honor and integrity as human beings and as citizens of a great republic.”

The ACLU, which initially expressed skepticism about the Constitutionality of Obama's proposal, has formally withdrawn its objections.  “Some actions,” said an ACLU spokesman, “transcend the issue of civil liberties.”

Meanwhile, the National Council Of Churches, an ecumenical organization representing a wide range of Christian denominations in America, issued the following statement on behalf of all its members: