By Steve Fey

Whether or not we weather the weather depends on whether there’s weather or not; but whether we weather the weather or not, we’re all stuck together with weather we’ve got.

Speaking of poems that should never have been published, have you heard that John Mayer thing about daughters? Not only meaningless, but painful to listen to. If you actually think it’s good music, you aren’t reading this anyway. If you’re reading this, try not to listen to that thing. Of course, as is my wont, I have digressed.

As you may have noticed, I recently moved to the Las Vegas area. We are more or less in three deserts here: Mojave, mainly, but also Great Basin and Sonora. Three deserts. No water. Right. We’ve had half a year’s rain so far this year. Last month, last year, we had most of a year’s worth of rain. Which leaves me wondering whether I made a wrong turn and moved to Portland instead.

Hey, you tell me. Are there cactus in Portland? Lots of flashy hotels, maybe?

Okay, I know this isn’t Portland. But it’s wet. Very, very wet. Desert sands, by the way, when introduced to enough water, become desert muds. The Las Vegas Wash, a normally dry river, is a raging torrent. It has snowed so much in the Spring Mountains just outside of town that some poor kid got swept off a ski lift by an avalanche. Forsberg must be bitter about the lockout. No, really, I mean it snowed a whole heck of a lot.

Amongst all this surreal weather life continues as usual. Millions of people show up every month, spend lots and lots of money, then go away and tell their friends about how great it is here. And no wonder. Did you know, for example, that you can actually have sex in Las Vegas, and nobody thinks anything of it. Try that in Toledo. I know I was an immaculate conception, weren’t you? Just last week the annual Consumer Electronics Show let everybody see all the latest toys you’ll be spending your kid’s inheritance on next year. The people attending got to test our new monorail, a device that all but proves that Vegas is every bit as strange as Disneyland. (It works fine, if you’re wondering. The monorail, I mean.) Ten bucks a day for a train pass. Please use it when you’re in town, because the traffic on the Strip is bad enough for us here as it is.

I found out why McCarran (airport) is McCarran. McCarran is the man who pushed gambling (he said he didn’t like it but it had to be done.) Then when Estes Kefauver was after the local businesses, he made sure Estes couldn’t do a thing about our local businessmen. For that, of course the man deserves something important named after him.

I heard about one of those businessmen, who started his career as a bootlegger. When asked about that he’d say, "Yes, I sold liquor. Didn’t your grandfather drink some?" If you’ve been to downtown Vegas, you’ve seen that man’s casino.

Like I said, surreal and normal.