DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Nine days ago, I spent 36 hours in Las Vegas — my first time there. Here are some impressions from the perspective of a first-timer.

It’s loud, disorienting, and runs 24x7. If you go there, bring earplugs and comfortable shoes, and leave all your cash and credit cards at home.

If you don’t leave your money at home, you’ll leave it in the casinos, which appear to be entertainment complexes but in actuality comprise a unique filtering system designed to allow humans to pass through, while removing the entire contents of their wallets. The best odds in the room are the change machines. Casinos are like financial black holes, where the gravity is so strong that your money cannot escape.

Here’s a challenge worthy of a Mensa test: walk straight through a gaming room. This is like one of those “draw a single line that connects all the dots” puzzles, except that it can’t be solved. There are no straight paths through the casinos. The floorplans were designed to maximize any pedestrian’s exposure to opportunities for spending: slots, craps, cards, sports, etc. Also, the signage is a disaster (to promote wandering), and several of the things you might be looking for (restrooms, attractions, and in some cases the exits) are located in the center of the room. If you ask anyone for directions, the response invariably begins “well, go back into the casino…”

But if you are comfortable with your resistance to get-rich-quick schemes, Las Vegas presents unparalleled opportunities for distraction. The architecture is absurd, of course — there’s a miniature New York skyline with wrap-around roller coaster, a 50-story Eiffel Tower replica, a fairy castle, a Sphynx and what appears to be an obsidian pyramid with a 40-billion candlepower light shooting out the top — a spectacular sight after dark.

Most of the casinos are festooned with JumboTron projectors advertising the shows, shopping, and attractions inside. Outside the Treasure Island, I saw a funny juxtaposition: a double-size billboard advertising Danny Gans, the Entertainer of the Year, just below a video screen advertising Sigfried & Roy, the Magicians of the Century. Las Vegas is all about one-upmanship.

Years ago we moved into a house. An enormous tree shaded the patio, but nobody knew what sort of tree it was. Then one day, ducking under a low-hanging branch, I knocked my head on an avocado hiding in the thick foliage. “Who put this avocado in my tree?” I wondered briefly. Then I saw: it was attached!

With practice, I developed the skill of spotting avocadoes on the tree. They’re quite well hidden actually, especially when the spotter is legally blind. I also created a picking tool — a plastic cup lashed to a 10' pole, low-tech but effective — to assist in harvesting fruit that would otherwise be out of reach.

That first year, we felt rich beyond any measure… fresh avocados weekly for months! It was our first taste of country living.

But that was three years ago. With every Spring we searched for the new crop, sometimes finding tiny squirrel-chewed avocado buds but little else. We tried watering the tree. We tried fertilizing. We postponed trimming in fear of shocking an apparently fragile specimen.

And then we gave up. We stopped the fertilizer, ignored the watering schedule, and hacked the low limbs off the tree so we don’t have to duck down to walk past. And today we craned our necks and found about 100 avocadoes on the tree, glowing in the sun and screaming to be made into guacamole.

There’s something miraculous about having food appear in one’s yard like this.

Avocado fans will be entertained by the California Avocado Commission website — FAQs, trivia, recipes, and the accidental gardener’s friend, the Avocado Variety Chart.

Hiaasen’s latest is classic: familiar (and fondly remembered) characters, deeply satirical and wickedly funny situations.

Palmer Stoat is a political fixer, a grotesque (but oddly sympathetic) sort of guy who sets up the deal to develop Toad Island yet another bit of Floridian wilderness scheduled to be razed, paved, and golf-coursed. Twilly Spree is an anger-management-school dropout who decides to stop Stoat, and a cast of lunatic developers (including an ex-smuggler with a Barbie fetish and a hit man who wears a snakeskin corset).

Sick Puppy is a joy to read and a must-have for any Hiaasen fan, as well as anyone who has a Labrador Retriever.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (paperback)
• Amazon (hardback)

A sequel that can stand alone, Catch Me is a thriller about an ex-FBI agent, Jay Fletcher, who went rogue (in the first book) and executed 4 serial killers. In this book, the heroine matches wits with the most dangerous character from the previous story, Billy Bones, who had been imprisoned.

Bones escapes and immediately begins taunting Fletcher… “Catch me before I kill again.”

The story is gripping, and as enjoyable as the first. If you like thrillers, you’ll like this (and you should also read Watch Me).

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (paperback)
• Amazon (hardback)

Yesterday, Cisco laid off 8000 workers.

In a move as predictable as, I don’t know, Clinton denying wrongdoing, Cisco’s PR machine has created a new term for layoff that is not only free of evil connotations, but also free of meaning: “normal involuntary attrition.”

We’ll give Cisco spokesman Tom Galvin the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t craft that senseless phrase in advance, but merely blurted it out in the panic of the bright lights and microphones during a regrettable announcement.

But for an entertaining and enlightened analysis, read Steve Rubenstein’s deconstruction of Cisco’s ridiculous new coinage.

(Casting doubt on my benefit, Cisco’s own press release contains a related contradiction in terms, “involuntary attrition.” Gad, why can’t they just say LAYOFF? Who are they trying to fool?)