Las Vegas — April 2026

 

Link to more photos. (As always, view the photos individually to see the captions.)

We took a quick group tour to Las Vegas, mainly to see The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere. It was a bus trip, only two nights and one full day in Las Vegas.

It was raining as we left Los Angeles, but it stayed dry in Las Vegas and when we returned. We stayed at Paris Hotel and Casino, and had good views of the Eiffel Tower and, across the street, the Fountains of Bellagio.

In our short free time, we walked two blocks to view some of the art at Aria's Shops at Crystals. It was easy to see the Turrell work and the Treehouse Restaurant (see the photos) and a few others, but the Halo water feature I was looking forward to was not operating. Here's someone else's 40-second video of that.

Getting the bus parked and getting to our seats at the Sphere was a minor ordeal, but I did enjoy the re-mastered, AI-enhanced film on the 160,000 sq. ft. screen, complete with immersive multisensory effects like tornado wind, scents, moving seats, flying monkeys, and falling "leaves" and "apples". An apple fell right in my lap (see the photos).

Scammers

 

Although I've used craigslist before with no problems, I've now had two bad experiences, one as a buyer and one as a seller.

I previously wrote about the seller who was a fraud and cost me a large amount of money in 2024.

Now, a buyer has tried to cheat me. It was close, but I avoided this one:

Someone replied to a craigslist ad I posted, sent a large check so I could pay $2190 to the person who was going to pick up my item and transport it to another state. 

The buyer kept pushing to speed this all up, but fortunately, I waited long enough to see my bank reporting that the check was bad!

Poetry Analysis

Early in my freshman English class at Rice, we were asked to write a brief analysis of a specific poem. Mine received a mediocre grade, and the grad student Teaching Assistant explained that I had completely ignored the obvious Christian religious symbolism.

Well, duh. Not being a Christian, it wasn't obvious to me. 

But that convinced me: for the rest of the semester, I adapted Cliffs Notes analyses and got better grades. 

And I took no further English courses.

Gay Club Matchbooks and Pins

 

Back in the day, I had this modest collection of matchbooks from gay bars and discos.

At the Los Angeles Central Library in 2018, I saw a display of similar matchbooks from ONE Archives. I wrote and asked if they wanted mine. They did, and I donated these.

I also gave them these gay pins and buttons:

Flowers — April 2024

 [I don't know why I didn't write this up at the time.]

Link to many more photos. Definitely worth viewing.

In April 2024, we went on a one-day tour to see flowers in northern San Diego County, specifically, at the Self-Realization Fellowship Meditation Gardens in Encinitas and the Flower Fields in Carlsbad.

The tour, Petals and Peace, from Good Times Travel, is no longer offered.

Click this photo to read the caption:

Autographs — John Sayles

 

John Sayles spoke at Vromans Bookstore this evening.

(index to autographs)

Too many bowl games

I wrote this on Facebook recently:

My alma mater Rice lost a bowl game today. It's crazy stupid that a team WITH A LOSING RECORD even gets into a bowl game! That degrades all bowl games. Rice's season record was 5-7! After today's loss, 5-8! Clearly, there are WAY too many bowl games.

Later that day, I thought, "I should have sent it to the newspaper." So I sent it to the LATimes sports section. They did not print it.