What Would Robert Urich Do?

There are two great mysteries regarding the city of Las Vegas. The first, and perhaps most perplexing, is figuring out what exactly the allure is associated with drinking a souvenir football filled with beer. For example:

I don't know these two gentlemen, but what I do know is that they are standing in the middle of downtown Las Vegas holding footballs filled with beer and that they seem genuinely pleased by the experience. Who could blame them? Beer is tasty and football is a fine American sport, and I don't mind the two things existing together, I'm just not sure if they need to exist inside each other. But on the Fremont Street Experience of downtown, the beer filled football is the great class equalizer. Where else in America can one find teen-aged hookers, cereal box gangsters, mullet-festooned men and the women who love their Camaros, good old boys, good old girls, misguided Asian tourists, and these guys all enjoying the same beverage and good cheer? (And by good cheer, I mean, you know, the sense that you're about 5 minutes away, at all times, from a massive gang brawl.) But still. I simply don't get it. I further do not understand the allure of the football filled with a daiquiri.

The second great mystery about Las Vegas is whether or not there exists any culture in America's piss filled petrie dish. Having lived there for two years in the late 90s, I can tell you: eh, not so much. A little. As much as any other suburb, but with the added addition of Air Supply for five nights at the Orleans. Enter then the annual Vegas Valley Book Festival. I've gone every year of the festival's existence and every year there's a great line-up of authors and every year the people of the city opt for the proverbial beer in a football instead. I always have a great time, even when, like this year, the authors were housed in downtown Las Vegas...this year we slept at the 4 Queens, notable for the large amount of fecal matter on the bed spreads and the fantastic service provided by my server Mao at the 4 Queens coffee shop:

Me: Do you have milkshakes?

Mao: No.

Me: Ice cream?

Mao: No.

Me: Rootbeer floats?

Mao: No.

Me: Do you know what a rootbeer float is?

Mao: No.

The festival itself was held at the Las Vegas Library, which is located Billy Goat Gruff style just under a freeway overpass. It's a nice library, actually, and there seemed to be lots of people hanging around the place. Unfortunately, a great many of the people milling about were there for the box of free Top Ramen left out front and the handsome corners and nooks where, if you're a junkie, you're allowed to fix without incident. What the homeless folks could have been doing instead was hearing a bunch of notable authors talking about books. Aside from your favorite frumpy Jew, the festival also included Rob Roberge, Steve Almond, Jeremy Schaap, Neil Pollack, Chris Epting, Glenn Gaslin, Steve Erickson, Francois Camoin, another guy named Francois whose name escapes me, Joe Queenan, James McManus, Geoff Schumacher and many, many others (including poets!). Alas. It was poorly attended...and, as usual, many of those who did attend were seemingly placed there to piss me off. When a panel I was moderating on books to film with Jeremy Schaap, John Shirley and Michael Reeves was combined with a panel on, uh, well, I'm not sure what the other panel was on, but the writers were the incredible H. Lee Barnes, Brian Rouff and Jay McClarty, the audience doubled from ten people to 20 and the festivities began with, for no apparent reason, since I was moderating and thus asking the questions, a loud and angry question from a woman of about 80 sitting in the front row and taking fastidious notes. We'll pick up the show as it happened...to my right is the dulcet toned ESPN anchor and reporter turned author Jeremy Schaap...to my left is Brian Rouff...and let us begin...

Me: ...and I'm your moderator, Tod Goldberg, the author of the books...

Old Woman: Excuse me, excuse me...

Me: Please, go right ahead, I wasn't doing anything here on the stage...

Old Woman: Why is there so much profanity on TV? You can't change the channel without seeing depravity! It's awful!

Me: Well, I have no fucking clue. But what the fuck. Let's just talk about that shit.

OW: {glares at me]

Panelists begin discussing this...and by panelists, I mean Michael Reeves and John Shirley. Schaap get busy on his blackberry. I'm interjecting obscenities at every opportunity. H. Lee Barnes, perhaps the scariest motherfucker you'd ever want to meet, and the nicest guy to boot, finally smacks the Old Woman down by telling her, essentially, to take her conservatism and shove it up her ass. He says this with the veins in his neck exposed.

Me: Okay, let's move on and actually discuss books...

Other Panelist: Actually, this is a fascinating subject that we really should continue discussing...

Me: Well, when you get to moderate your own panel, you can, but we're moving on.

A discussion where I mostly talk to Jeremy Schaap ensues because, well, I'm a big fan of his work on ESPN and quite liked his book Cinderella Man, and he says my name as if he's me on TV ("I'm Tahhhd Goldburrg, ES...P...N") and it's awesome and the day is coming to a close and I'm hungry and a little angry about the turnout and I'm trying to figure out how to make Rob Roberge giggle, since he's sitting in the audience. Finally, I open the floor to questions:

OW: How do you get an agent? I heard from my neighbor that you don't need an agent for your first novel, you just need one for the next ones.

Followed by:

OW: How do you do research?

I make a joke about how one acquires that handy copyright symbol and OW says:

OW: Yes, can we talk about copyright?

Later, Jay McClarty talks about the difficulty in writing series fiction, which is followed by the question:

OW: Why would you want to write books like that awful Danielle Steele? A series just seems terrible to me. And all that sex. It's just smut.

Me: Then don't read it.

OW: I don't.

Me: Then how do you know it's filled with smut?

The shame, really, is that there were so many really interesting writers at the festival and I know there are people in Las Vegas who'd probably enjoy hearing them speak -- I just can't fathom why they don't come, unless it's strictly a location issue. Amid all of this, however, I did have time to compile the ever popular list-o-things I witnessed/experienced/said

***There exists several pictures of Jews Eating Pork and, possibly, one receipt showing another Jew Eating Pork that may or may not end up on this blog, or, in their own pornographic forum. All I can say is that it will turn the literary world upside down. And some stomachs, too.

*** "So," I said,  "I was talking to my friend NAME REDACTED and he said..."

"You're friends with that asshole?" Rob said.

"Yeah, he's nice. I like him. He's a cool guy."

"He's a dick. Are you crazy? He's a total dick."

"Maybe he's changed. I mean, when was the last time you saw him?"

"Two years ago, maybe. God, he was a dick. It's impossible that he's changed."

***"I didn't call him a moron," a person said.

"No, you said he parroted morons," the other replied. "You implied that he wasn't smart enough to be a moron."

***On two occasions, I caught myself looking down the top of a cocktail waitress at the 4 Queens and then realized I was looking down the top of a cocktail waitress who was possibly 70 years old.

***Getting to meet people you admire and then finding out that they are cool and decent people...and then meeting people you've never heard of in your life and, to your horror, learning that they are, for no apparent reason, enormous dicks. And meeting people who you think will be a dick and then you spend the rest of the day trying to figure out if they really are dicks, or if you're a dick, and then deciding that you love you and that the other person, who apparently does not love you as much as the person loves loving him/herself and loving those who love him/herself is, well, a dick. (In a depressing side note, I drove by some places where I spent a bunch of time with my late dog Sassy and found myself irreparably depressed to the point of needing to call Wendy near tears to say how much I missed my dearly departed dog. How can anyone who still cries for their dead dog be a dick? I'm Mr. Fucking Bojangles over here.)

***Between this trip and my trip to San Francisco, in the last month I've spent more nights sleeping with Rob Roberge than I have with my wife.

***I did a reading at the Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas which was actually well attended (and included a free lunch) and then was given a tour by the man the building is named for, Lloyd D. George, a federal judge.

"How do you get a Federal Courthouse named for you?" I asked.

"Luck," Lloyd said.

"I'm a very lucky guy," I said, "and my sense is that if I'm ever in a Federal Courthouse with my name on it, I'll be out of luck."

"Well, I've also lived a very long time."

We walk for a time, encountering various judges, attorneys and scary looking men of justice. "I'm getting the impression," I said, "that if I were to be in your courtroom that it wouldn't be a particularly lucky turn in my life."

Comments

[Dean]

Getting to meet people you admire and then finding out that they are cool and decent people...and then meeting people you've never heard of in your life and, to your horror, learning that they are, for no apparent reason, enormous dicks. And meeting people who you think will be a dick and then you spend the rest of the day trying to figure out if they really are dicks, or if you're a dick, and then deciding that you love you and that the other person, who apparently does not love you as much as the person loves loving him/herself and loving those who love him/herself is, well, a dick.

Congratulations. You have summed up the human condition. This, right here, contains the reason that Rome sacked Carthage, the motivation for Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and it explains the existence of Paris Hilton.

It also contains the reason that I can't write at the moment, and is therefore also an excuse for the godawful structure of the previous sentence.

[rob roberge]

hey...you must post pics of jews eating pork!

and what is there so much toilet humor these days, good sir?

my bedspread looked like a final exam for a forensics tests...yucky...but at least i got to break down 30 miles out of bastow...

you always make me giggle, T-Money. G-Dawn. The Write Stuff...Mr. G.

But don't play blue, that's my vegas advice...

and i suppose i'll out myself as the guy who said the other panelist was a moron...or parroted morons. as for the other guy...maybe he has changed :)

clean it up, will ya? and what ABOUT copyright?

[Tanya]

(In a depressing side note, I drove by some places where I spent a bunch of time with my late dog Sassy and found myself irreparably depressed to the point of needing to call Wendy near tears to say how much I missed my dearly departed dog. How can anyone who still cries for their dead dog be a dick? I'm Mr. Fucking Bojangles over here.) - Take it from me, T-money, you are not a dick. Well, not a huge one anyway.

"Between this trip and my trip to San Francisco, in the last month I've spent more nights sleeping with Rob Roberge than I have with my wife." - There is something oddly surreal about this factoid.

[Bill Peschel]

"and then meeting people you've never heard of in your life and, to your horror, learning that they are, for no apparent reason, enormous dicks."

If you meant that literally, it was surreal.

Sure someone didn't drop a tab of brown LSD into your coffee?

[Tanya]

Bill,

I can just imagine a bunch of huge dicks walking around the world. Talk about an "alternate universe." :)

Tanya

[Stephanie]

The one time you're in town and it has to be at the same time when my class is going on. I would have ditch but noooo...I had to go because of a stupid exam. I knew I should have said fuck the test, I'm going to get my books sign by T-Money. Any idea when you'll be back to our culture deprieve city???

[Jimmy Beck]

even the nights are better/now that we're here together/even the nights are better/since i found you

air. fucking. supply. rox.