ON THE TOWN

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Shopping for the Thanksgiving feast completed, Jae and I headed to The Strip.

Dinner first on the terrace at Mon Ami Gabi.

Yes, that is a bottle of Tavel on the table in front of me, to go with our oysters, mussels and sea scallops.

Then it was off to Bill’s Casino for a poker tournament.  Note the hopeful gleam in my eye in the picture above, as we waited for the tournament to begin.  Jae got knocked out early, holding two pair and getting his massive bets called by a guy on a flush draw, who put Jae all-in on the turn.  He made his flush on the river.

I reached the final table and got knocked out in fourth place.  Only the top three places paid, making me, officially, the saddest man in Las Vegas.

You can see in the picture above that I’m holding up manfully after the devastating loss — I got knocked out by a woman from Kansas who only plays in a home game with her lady friends.  On my last hand, down to just a few chips, I went all-in with a pair of fives.  She called me with a pair of queens, which held up.  Oh, those ladies!

Jae meanwhile had wandered around the casino playing recklessly at various table games — and winning.  He left $70 up for the night — I left $30 down.  That’s Las Vegas, brother.

Click on the images to enlarge.

LLOYD’S MODERN LIFE: OMELETTE

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My friend Jae took off his suit coat but not his tie to make some omelettes for dinner last night. He takes omelettes very seriously and is an expert at preparing them.

In this thrilling video footage he rejects a first effort because the eggs weren’t setting right. He went on to produce two sublime examples of the dish, with chives, shallots, spinach and cheese.

ZOMBIE WATCH

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The Church Of England voted this week not to allow women to serve as bishops. This is the church’s way of saying, “We are a rotting ambulatory zombie corpse — someone please put us out of our misery.”

Kindle pricing by the publishing industry is the industry’s way of saying, “We are a rotting ambulatory zombie corpse — someone please put us out of our misery.”  (With thanks to Ray Sawhill . . .)

I just paid a premium price of $17 to see a moderately entertaining movie on a modestly-sized IMAX screen.  This is Hollywood’s way of saying, “We are a rotting ambulatory zombie corpse — someone please put us out of our misery.”

200,000

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Just passed 200,000 visits to the blog since it rebooted on 3 April of this year. Thanks to all who’ve come by to have a look.

Click on the image to enlarge.

SUITS

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My friend Jae arrived last night from New York for Thanksgiving. He said he had decided to wear a suit the whole time he was in Las Vegas and got off the plane wearing one. This is probably the weirdest outfit you can wear in Las Vegas, unless you’re a card room manager. Naturally I will be wearing a suit while he’s here, too.

We headed straight from the airport to my local, McMullen’s Irish Pub (above), for some food and some Newcastle Brown Ale on draft (eat your heart out, PZ.)

Just got a message this morning that Jae was out at EagleRider, renting a motorcycle for his stay. This marks the official start of his traditional Thanksgiving dream vacation in Las Vegas.

VIEW FROM THE REAR WINDOW

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Fellow blogger Tristan Forward sent this amazing time-lapse conflation of all the shots in Rear Window taken from the protagonist’s rear window.  It reminds us that Hitchcock didn’t just go to great lengths to make his protagonist’s apartment an interesting space to inhabit, cinematically — he went to equally great lengths to vary and enliven the POV shots looking out from that space.