Laughlin

For some reason I had it in my head that Laughlin, Nevada was a real city with, I don’t know, houses and grocery stores and outdoor swing sets. This was before I traveled there last weekend and found it to be a row of ten casinos in the Mojave (that’s Mohave, if you speak Arizonan) Desert. It’s the place where Don Laughlin showed up with his Minnesota farm work ethic, a bunch of slot machines, and a strong, ardent, and abiding desire for your money. Back in 1966 (this is according to the official Don Laughlin biography printed on almost every single disposable paper surface in the Riverside Resort; napkins, placemats, coasters… not the toilet paper, though) it was nothing more than a desolate stretch of Colorado River bank, baked and brown, in the middle of nowhere. My how it’s changed.
I have nothing new or original to report on the over-the-top Nevada gambling aesthetic with its seizure inducing lights and four dimensional carpet patterns. Nor can I reasonably complain about the astonishing amount of money raked in by these establishments, or ponder the surprising variety of people from whom the money is raked… none of this is breaking news, but holy smokes, have you seen these people? Have you seen these places?
So there I was in downtown Laughlin, NV (Don only named the city after himself after receiving inexorable pressure from the post office.… He is quite humble, you see. Did I mention that he enjoys piloting his helicopter and taking part in competitive ballroom dancing?) with 30 dollars (cash!) and a perfect system for the roulette table. One small problem. The system didn’t work, and my 30 dollars, which could have bought two goats for a farmer in Kenya or could have helped my alma mater meet its class of 1999 alumni fund raising participation goal, was gone faster than you can say, “Hey that old man is smoking a cigarette and pushing an oxygen tank at the same time.” I was at the roulette table just long enough to get one single free drink (if you are one of my students it was NOT a stinky Don Laughlin Special Riverside Brew Light Beer, it was a Dr. Pepper).
OK, so two words about losing money. It sucks. And losing at gambling, I realized, belongs in a whole separate category than losing at normal things like scrabble and street races in your tricked out Honda. See, they are not just using those pretty little chips to keep track of the score. It’s not hypothetical matchstick gambling with your dad. It’s real! They actually keep the money. It leaves your possession. You already knew this.
But, you feel way worse than you would if you just misplaced the 30 dollars. Strangely enough, it’s the score keeping aspect that is most painful, in a sort of cosmic way. Once you are down against the universe (or something), the only remedy is to put more money on the table to try to at least get even, reestablish balance, get your stinking 30 bucks back from Don Laughlin. I didn’t even try, though. I am just going to attempt to come to terms with the fact that I’ll be in the red against the universe (and Don Laughlin) for the rest of my life. I spent the rest of my time playing a change machine I found in the corner; five dollars in, 20 quarters out. At least I was breaking even. They stopped serving me the free drinks, though.

My Spleen

Right now I can’t really put any weight on my left leg, and my spleen (I think it’s my spleen… maybe a kidney?) feels achy, like I was punched or elbowed or something. I probably was. I can’t remember.
Before you jump to conclusions, let me assure you that I have not been taking part in the official San Gabriel Valley Fight Club. I did, though, drive to Rancho Cucamonga today, and when I got there, I played a game of soccer. The funny thing about playing a game of soccer is that while you are doing it, all kinds of crazy traumatic things happen to your body that in another context would be cause for serious concern, and even, legal action. Like today, I kicked a guy in the leg so hard (it was an accident, I promise) that he had to lie down on the grass and weep (or at least pretend to weep until the referee came over and showed me a fancy yellow card and wrote me down in his little book). What if I did that outside of a movie theater or waiting in line to buy a Boba drink? I’d probably be arrested. But on the fields of grass outside of the Quake’s Stadium such attacks are perfectly (or at least relatively) acceptable. And you don’t even really remember how any of it happens. You have to wait until you try to climb out of your car before you realize, ah, somebody elbowed me in my spleen/ kidney, or ooh, someone’s knee impacted my thigh with great velocity.
But, what concerns me more than the nice purple bruise on my leg, is the fact that I am unable to take a deep breath without coughing. And, that’s not even thanks to the jabs and blows of my fellow amateur athletes; it’s because of the fine (and I do mean fine) bits of particulate matter that help comprise the air we breathe here up against the San Gabriel Mountains.
I’ve stopped worrying about bird flu. Now I am staying awake at night thinking about this new EPA study that came out. You probably heard about it. It says that Californians are breathing some of the most toxic air in the US, and that people living in Los Angeles County are exposed to a cancer risk that is about twice the national average. So even after I soak in my bath tonight, I am still going to have all of these unpronounceable chemicals (benzene, butadiene, ethylene bromide, tetrachloroethylene, tetrachloroethane, acetaldehyde, naphthalene) in my body just because I went outside and breathed a lot (a lot!).
According to the EPA, one in every 15,000 Californians is at risk of contracting cancer from breathing our air over the course of his or her lifetime. But wait, good reader! According to my calculations, of the twelve people who read this column, only 0.00073 will go to their final rest because of air pollution. So spread the word; local weekly newspapers prevent cancer.