• Chapters Bookstore is in trouble and the Happy Booker (and several authors) are on the case.
• There’s apparently another book named White Teeth.
• Harry Potter? Notable Book of the Year? No Brownie for You, Tanenhaus!
• Looks like someone is fucked existentially. Somehow, this makes perfect sense to me right now.
• Wrong on multiple levels. Stop encouraging the woman’s ego! Please.

• I am a bit thrown back by the question: “Smoking or nonsmoking.”
• The Cal-Neva casino has the following message on its marquee: “Dog and draft: $1.50.” I am a bit bemused by the fact that there are no articles whatsoever before these two nouns. However, another sign did in fact refer to “A Bud.” What this suggests to me is that if a beer has a brand name, it is worth referring to by an indefinite article.
• My notes are all packed away, but I believe the historical shrine in front of the County Courthouse reads: “Before the white man came,” as if to suggest that it is the white man who, above all, matters here. The only other memorial is one devoted to World War II.
• I highly suggest that you order a chicken Caesar salad in a steakhouse. It throws the staff off a bit. In fact, the steakhouse menus are devoid of vegetables altogether — outside of potatos.
• And speaking of restaurants, I attempted to dine at the Circus Circus steakhouse without success. Despite the fact that there was no customers there to speak of, the maitre’d said that I couldn’t dine at his establishment. Because there was a very strict dress code and I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. He intimated to me that all shirts must have sleeves. I pointed out that mine did, but that they were in fact shorter. But they were sleeves nonetheless. I then pointed out to him the steakhouse’s barren environs and asked him if anyone would really care if I, a short-sleeved shirt man, dined at his establishment. The maitre’d in turn said that if he made an exception for me, he’d have to make an exception for everyone. I pointed out again that, at the present time, there were hardly great throngs of people trying to barge their way through the doors. He still refused. So I ended up supping at the adjacent Americana Cafe, which was similarly barren and had a staff-to-customer ratio of 19 to 1.
• A Circus Circus security guard called me “a highly disturbed man” because I wore my Cabinet of Dr. Caligari tee-shirt. I pointed out to him that it was a high watermark in German Expressionist cinema and a good flick to boot. The guard says he’s seen the film, but insinuates that it is not an experience he wants to repeat again.
• There is a theatre in the Downtown Reno area! Just south of the Truckee River on Virginia Street. Recent offerings included Mamet and Albee. So don’t diss Reno for being without culture.
• The one phenomenon that I am unfamiliar with is the large boorish man with the not unattractive, skinny and dutiful wife/significant other. I saw about six such couples in various restaurants and I wondered what the women were doing with such louts. (Louts being defined not as anything stereotypical, but we’re talking men who publicly disparage their wives/SOs, burp audibly, stuff a napkin underneath their necks (instead of placing it in their laps), and force their wives/SOs to do all their work, such as paying the bill and flagging down the waiter, while they sit burping and stuffing their faces without abatement.) I call a few friends about this and they remind me (Mr. Boho) that some people marry for money rather than love, and willingly hope to coast by on their looks. Sometimes my optimism gets in the way of reality.
• When an artist records a mainstream pop hit, I wonder whether he’s really proud of the fact that it’s being played at a casino while people are losing money.
• So many sad people.
• I’m the only person who dances on the Circus Circus shuttle while the cheesy music plays up. Some kids join in with me and we all start laughing. One asks to buy her an ice cream cone. Since I’m essentially killing time and it’s better than supporting the Casino Development Fund with another terrible, money-losing round of blackjack, I oblige.
• Why are so many kids unsupervised at 2 AM?
• Who was the person who decided that the pawn shops on Virginia Street belong on the east side (with the exception of Harrah’s) and the big casinos belong on the west? Perhaps the idea here is that “going west” involves hope. If the zoning people intended this as a joke, they are truly sick-hearted people.
• I can’t even fling the Circus Circus chickens right. Meanwhile, ace parabolic calculators, who are half my age, wander off with large stuffed animals.
• There is very little concern for pedestrians in this town. I wonder if the pedestrian has the right of way in Nevada. I am nearly run over three times — two times by large sports utility vehicles.
• Nothing beats cruising down Virginia Street in a Mustang. Then again, living in an urban center and not owning a car, driving is very much a novelty to me. Although if you play my kind of music, cowboys will look over at you as if they are ready to kill you. Apparently, it’s a provincial offense to blast LCD Soundsystem along their turf. Fortunately, I was able to talk myself out of a potential Duel situation by flashing them a smile and the thumbs-up sign.
• Gotta go. My laptop battery’s just about shot. Happy Turkey Day, one and all.

I put a Jackson on the blackjack table. It is a $3 table, but I play $5 hands so as not to be completely declasse. There’s only one other player at the table – a guy to my right. He’s polishing down Corona Number 12 and he is quick to announce this to me, although his speech is very slurred. His large meaty hands paw a tower of $25 coins. He wears a baseball cap and the brim covers the top third of his head. It appears that the cap has been set at the tightest possible notch in the back. And since his eyebrows are very dark and bushy, and since he is very inebriated and he seems to be undulating, the man looks like an extreme closeup of Robin Williams wearing a pith helmet.

The dealer is letting loose terrible coughs – like some archetype out of a Doestoevsky novel. She’s about 40, with shoulder length dirty blonde hair. Her name tag indicates that she’s from California. She’s clearly in some serious kind of pain. Her hands shake as she deals the cards (or, rather, as she throws them to some close proximity, which is often dangerously close to the cards firing off over the table’s edge). Her eyes grow quite large when she talks with ardor and when she gets the sense that someone is actively listening to her. But otherwise, from what I can tell, between the coughs and the people who’ve treated her like dirt, she’s in a difficult spot. Every hand, there’s at least several hard hacks of phlegm from the dealer. It sounds as if no amount of internal bellowing can loosen these suckers.

The other player takes no notice of this. But he does check out a cocktail waitress’s ass.

“That’s some cough you have there,” I say. “Is it because you’re subjected to all the second-hand smoke?”

“I don’t know what it is exactly. Every time I come in, there’s something hot, dry. Don’t know what it is.”

The other player fires up a Winston. I catch the dealer’s face momentarily drop. I wonder why they haven’t put her on a nonsmoking table. But then pit bosses are hardly the world’s most sympathetic figures.

“It’s also the desert air,” she says. “This is the second major thing I’ve had since I moved up here.”

“How many hours do you work?”

“Forty, fifty this week.”

“Eight hour shifts?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you ever see the outside during an eight hour shift?”

“No. But maybe I’ll go into the spa room. That might help.”

“Maybe you should try resting. Breathing oxygen instead of taking in this contained atmosphere. If it’s bothering you. Don’t they pump in oxygen into casinos?”

“That’s only in the movies. If they pumped oxygen into the casino, then you’d have the cabin effect.”

The other player asks where the restroom is. The dealer tells him. He leaves the table and never returns, leaving about $500 in chips. I wonder if the casino will confiscate this.

The dealer at the adjacent table, who has no immediate customers (it’s a $10 table and the clientele right now is thin and ass-poor) and who has been listening to this conversation, asks, “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m following you.”

“I don’t know how,” she giggles. And it’s the kind of giggle you hear from someone when they are not in the greatest of existential spots. The kind of giggle that is a person’s last attempt at joy, an effort to play down a miserable situation of colossal proportions. I hear many of the vagrants in my neighborhood giggle like this.

“Everybody would be too happy,” she says. “You’d have dealers laughing.”

“But if everyone were happy, they’d be more inclined to gamble. And this would be good for the casino and good for the dealers.”

“One lady said that I shouldn’t show up.” Giggle. “But of course that was a joke.”

I’m amazed that the $20 has lasted this long. I know that I’ll eventually lose it. But for the moment, I score a blackjack and tip the dealer my winnings.

“You know, I used to live in Sacramento. And during the summer, the pollen in the air sometimes made it difficult for me to breathe. But when I moved to San Francisco, the ocean air really helped me. And I breathe a lot better.”

The dealer tells me that she grew up in coastal California towns too. But she says that she spent most of the time partying.

“My friend tells me that you can die of this. Coughing and breathing.”

The pit boss, resembling a former football player in an ill-designed suit during a halftime show, approaches with a martinet-eyed woman with a clipboard. The dealer coughs and coughs. And when the hacking has abated, she then apologizes to the pit boss for not placing a silver dollar between a certain increment of chips. They don’t say anything or look at the dealer. Their eyes are fixed only upon the casino’s booty. They leave. But a beefy security guard in a short-sleeved white shirt crosses his arms and looks at me. I wonder if any of the surveillance has picked up our conversation. It doesn’t help that I’ve won the last five hands.

I don’t want to get the dealer in trouble. So I stop talking with her and deliberately blow a hand where the two cards add up only to 12 and the dealer’s face card is a King.

The guard leaves, satisfied after the dealer has confiscated my $5 chip.

She coughs again. It sounds very close to bronchitis.

“Have you seen a doctor?” I ask.

“Oh yeah. Just the other day. And he said that there are these great yellow goo trapped in my lungs.”

“Can you feel the phlegm when you breathe?”

“Oh yeah. And it just won’t come out.”

I’m wondering if she even did see a doctor. Surely, he would have prescribed an inhaler or suggested that the harmful casino environment should be avoided until the phlegm clears up. Or perhaps she’s overlooking telling me a detail like this because she really needs the cash.

“I’ve been thinking about a plan,” says the dealer in a quieter voice. “Saving up cash, getting away from this town.”

My last five dollar chip is swallowed up.

“Well, that’s it for me, I’m afraid. Please take care of yourself.”

Just as I’m about to get up from my chair, she puts her arm down on the table to get my eye contact.

“Thank you for being a nice person.”