Have Gun, Will Travel

I knew that I eventually would be curious enough to attend a gun show at some point. I have all my life been anti-gun, the kind that the NRA (National Rifle Association) despises, and if I were a politician, the NRA would be able to raise millions in a heart beat to defeat my candidacy.

It started as a curiosity, a willingness to look at things from the perspective of the other side, and an evolution in my own perspective as I drove many times over interstate highway 15 on that stretch of highway in California's Death Valley.

Death Valley gives me the creeps. I saw the movie "The Hills Have Eyes." The movie tells of grotesque, disease-ridden inhabitants of hills overlooking a desert highway who prey on people who had car breakdowns. Instead of helping such people in their hour of need, the hill mutants and monsters harrass, torture and kill and/or rape the hapless motorists and their families.

Once in a while I would catch myself thinking of and fearing the possibility of a car breakdown and being stranded and helpless in the darkness and eerie isolation of highway 15's shoulders. The traffic that alternates between heavy and nearly non-existent on I-15 - the artery that links Los Angeles and Las Vegas - is the only deterrent against ill-intentioned motorists who might stop to seemingly help us, but whose true agenda is to rob us and perhaps even harm us, especially my wife and son, who would be the most vulnerable.

This is my biggest fear each time I hop on my car and drive my family to LA to see to our daughter's needs in downtown LA. Natasha is on the last leg of her course in Fashion and Merchandising Design at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in LA. So hopefully, our trips to LA will be much less frequent in the future.

But the thought that the creepy dangers of Death Valley will soon be in my rear-view mirror has not dissuaded me from becoming, for a first time in my life, a gun lover. This immediate past summer, I have been subjected to images of monsters of a different kind: right-wing lunatic fringe gun-toters who pack their sidearms and menacingly picket the health care reform rallies of Democrats and even those of President Obama's. I could see myself attending one of those health care rallies and being confronted by a wacko shoving a gun at my face.

It has become perfectly clear to me that U.S. politics have become risky business; the grim reality is that such events represent a clear and present danger to one's health, one's life.

It happened over a long period of time, but now, finally, I can see why the NRA is right in saying that if guns are outlawed, only the outlaws and the creeps will have guns. By all means, if conservatives feel the need to own and carry guns, liberals must feel that need more - because nearly all conservatives have guns.

And so, I have decided to own a gun, finally, and to attend training sessions that will teach me how to use a gun and how to keep it out of reach of my ten-year-old son. I wish I could buy a smart gun, one that can be fired only by me. This would assure that no one in my household will be able to use it and accidentally shoot someone, or maybe even harm themselves.

At the recent gun show in Las Vegas - Sept. 5-6 in Cashman Center - there spread out on rows upon rows of tables were a vast collection of firearms, enough to supply a small army. Las Vegas has the distinction of putting on the biggest gun shows in the U.S., and that show was huge.

What do hunting knives and military apparel have to do with guns? It is obvious that there is a segment of the population that believes, deep in their hearts, that there are enemies in the U.S. who must be repelled. Are these your neighbors? Are they the Mob? Are they the rogue elements in the local police? Or are they the ruthless conspirators in the U.S. government?

It really doesn't matter who those bogeymen (and women) are; as far as the gun-toting crowd is concerned, they're all out there, ready to create mayhem, and who are probably being prevented from moving in on the squeaky-clean NRA members only by those members' arsenals.

In the paranoid logic of the ultra-conservative mind, the main convincing argument against the adventurism of society's bad elements - allegedly including but not limited to the Federal government - is the ready availability of lethal weapons in the U.S., especially the still-wild west. I saw the Barrett-99 50 caliber sniper rifle that has a range of 1 mile. This is reputedly one of the favorite rifles of rooftop and hotel room snipers who presumably are being contracted to eliminate high value targets. Just like in the movies.

It is also presumably used by the military to decommission vehicles that may contain explosives and are heading for a military outpost in Iraq, Afghanistan or some hot spot around the world.

All sorts of rifles and handguns - new and used - were on display. In the middle of this vortex of potential violence sat Wyatt Earp III, the grandson of the famed lawman Wyatt Earp. He showed me his favorite six-shooter, a gleaming nickel-plated 38 caliber that he uses in competitions. He claims to be the fastest draw in the world.

Since I've never owned a gun, my friends and the salesmen at the Gun Show have recommended that I buy a starter gun. The gun that most enthusiasts consider as a "starter" is the 9 mm. There are good 9 mm Luger, Millennium and Smith and Wesson, all in the price range of $300 to $400 brand new. Used ones can be had for $150. I wouldn't recommend the used ones because one never knows if they will always fire properly, get jammed, or worse, explode in the user's face.

I like the Smith and Wesson best, because of the feel of that gun, and because it closely resembles the Glock 9 mm, whose design S & W reportedly copied, under license from Glock.

Did I actually buy a gun at the Gun Show? What do you think?

Lotsa Vegas

My wife just got back from a trip to Budapest, Vienna and finally Venice. Budapest was where she and her sister attended a trade show, Vienna was where they imbibed the European culture and Venice was where they fell in love with a city. I hope to write a blog about this trip and the t-shirts I got out of it in the future.

Meanwhile, I was stuck in Vegas. What does a guy do in Vegas when the wife is away for two weeks? I know what you're thinking. Perish the thought, my ten-year-0ld son Paul was with me. Plus, my grown-up daughter and her boyfriend were staying with us and from time to time I had to cook and clean the swimming pool for them. Mainly I cooked stuff that can be deep-fried, but I also managed to cook the world-famous Philippine adobo and bulalo.

I got my daughter and her beau tickets to the Andrew Dice Clay show and the Bobby Slayton show and Sin City Comedy. My Chinese-looking daughter had a swell time at the ADC show as she was pummeled, skewered, ridiculed by the comedian, who targets minorities and is especially fond of the Chinese. He is the contemporary Don Rickles. For the younger ones, the mainly retired Don Rickles has been ridiculing his audience for decades and gets paid handsomely for doing so. It is a badge of honor to be insulted by Don Rickles.

They wanted to see more shows but my wife was coming back and it was my turn to watch a few shows. I got tickets to the Blue Man Group, the Barry Manilow "Ultimate Manilow" show and Defending the Caveman.

The wife had seen the Blue Man Group, so I took ten-year-old Paul with me and the two of us were treated to a unique form of entertainment. The three-man group converted everything they touched to drums, threw food at each other and caught the food with their mouths, played pantomimic comedy skits with two people from the audience, played drummers to a rock band that appeared to be Guitar Hero figures. It was all Vegas, baby.

Barry Manilow sang his hits from the 70s to the 90s and sitting there in the audience, one couldn't help being amazed at how many hits Manilow has treated the world to over the years. It was one Manilow hit after another, literally a walk down the boulevard of memories. People I'm sure disagree with me, but I think he sings better now than he did when he was much younger. His voice is fuller (though his lungs are noticeably weaker) and he sings with more emotion.

He sang "Mandy" with a video of his Mandy performance in 1975 showing in the background. The 1975 Manilow was a kid singing with technical precision, a higher pitched voice and award-winning composure, but the Manilow on the Las Vegas Hilton stage displayed all the emotions of one who had known Mandy for many, many years. He sang with nostalgia - the Greeks define nostalgia literally as tweaking strings in one's heart - and with conviction that if he had to do it all over again, he would do it exactly as he had.

He ended with a Broadway-style production of Copa Cabana.

The biggest surprise was Defending the Caveman in the Excalibur Casino. I all along had thought that the actors were those who regularly appear in the Geico commercials. So I was somewhat disappointed when I saw that the main dude - the only dude - was a regular white guy with a shaved head. Not at all looking like the cool Cavemen who appear on those Geico commercials.

Also, the guy talked and talked and it became clear that this was going to be one of those long monologues.

As the guy - Chris Mayse - warmed up to the audience and the audience warmed up to him, he hit his stride and we the audience started eating out of his hands.

With devastating accuracy, he explained why men are different from women. I always wondered, for example, why I tire so easily whenever I'm in Macy's, Wal-Mart or any department store, or any shopping mall. Chris explained that because we men are hunters, we go to stores only to hunt for the things that we actually need. We can't spend any more time in a department store or a mall than we actually need to find what we are hunting for. Once we find it, then the hunt is over and we have to go on to the next hunt.

Women are gatherers, so they enjoy gathering things, just in case they might need them. This is why women love to go shopping.

Chris Mayse explains the many cultural differences between the sexes in a hilarious, hysterical way. It's laugh a minute with him.

Defending the Caveman is showing in the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, a huge cavernous gambling mecca where you could get lost if you did not ask an employee for directions. Excalibur was teeming with the usual Labor Day weekend crowd, though it was not as full as the Venetian, which was like Grand Central Terminal in rush hour.

I just have to mention the Gordie Brown show at the Golden Nugget, which is in the old downtown section of the city. This is truly a must-see. It's laugh-a-second with this guy. An impressionist first and a singer second, Brown constantly pivots from one character to another with surprising accuracy. His Sammy Davis, Jr. impression, laced with George W.Bush one-liners, got a lot of giggles and guffaws. No one was spared, least of all Bill Clinton.

Gordie Brown and his irreverent iconoclastic rampage is Vegas at its best.

After two years in Vegas, I'm finally appreciating why Vegas has become the number one tourist destination in the world. No one here is saddled with inhibitions. Everybody is wearing a costume. If you go to Wynn, or the Palms, people walk around like they are all going to a prom or an important business meeting.

I walk around in my cowboy hat, cowboy belt, cowboy boots and shades all the time. Nobody pays attention to me. Those who come to Vegas and wear walking shorts and t-shirts and drink beer and margaritas while herding the kids past craps and poker tables are so used to the plastic costumed people in Vegas so me and my cowboy costume do not get a second look.

The current trend, though, appears to be no costume at all - in the swimming pools at the Palms, Mandalay Bay and all over the Las Vegas strip where the beautiful people and the crowds they attract frolic and eye each other under the Las Vegas sun.