(Also, Chicago blues sucks, and their pizza is awful. Detroit is full of ignorant grease monkeys, Boston is a bastion for drunken micks, and San Francisco is a big queer pig pile.)

Alright, cut the shit, Obama. Personages of my ilk (sexy, but relatively unimportant) have stood by waiting for you to get your reelection so you can do the things you promised us, like gay rights, retracting the retarded illegalization of pot, forced sodomy on Bush’s puppeteer staff. But another disparaging remark about Vegas? It is one thing for doucheyer world leaders to demonize Cuba, Russia, England, Romulus, and whatever for the sake of propaganda, but Vegas is a struggling city in your own country, and it isn’t like we’re Communists.* You can take your time with the good you said you’d do, it is a black stereotype to be lazy and you have to play to the blindly adoring constituents, but don’t start doing harm a mere three years before we have to vote for you instead of Sarah “Hostess Brand Fruitcake” Palin again.

“When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It’s time your government did the same.”

Oh, you cunt rocket. This is the second fucking time in less than a year, and the fact that it was an offhand remark instead of intentionally damaging one doesn’t matter this time, considering your history. You know what the illiterate smallfolk hear when you say things like that? “My president’s go-to evil, when he really wants to reference a real issue he has with the populace, is Las Vegas. Off the top of the leader of the free world’s head, Vegas is the closest existent allegory to Satan, and I would rather suck off a Klingon** than bring my legitimate business there.”

True, the literally ignorant verbal diarrhea you spouted last year concerning Vegas was exponentially worse and cost a hard won (in the election) state and the companies that call it home — no exaggeration — millions of dollars. Demonizing corporate conventions in a specific city from the podium, calling it a taxpayer drain when, honestly, Vegas is arguably the most cost effective place to hold any event, means people will intentionally avoid the city, if only because the President of the United fucking States said to (I am also wearing an American Flag as an anal tampon. Suck it). “Profligate” is still a word, and you’re not helping to distance yourself from inflammatory and decularizing  Republican tactics like you say you want to with these kinds of statements. Companies that would normally have come to Vegas for their essential mass meetings for the right price, with no intention of using taxpayer money to gamble and see some titties, went to more expensive cities like Miami and New York instead. If the attendees philandered and partied on their own dime, behind their wives’ backs, off the clock, it would only have benefited Nevada’s economy. So, not only did last year’s scorched-earth dumbfuckery show a lack of class and leadership, it was downright uninformed, like Perez Hilton showing up at a glass art All You Can Blow fair with bells on his cock ring.

“I hope you know that during my town hall today, I wasn’t saying anything negative about Las Vegas,” Obama wrote. “I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun. There is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country’s great destinations. I have always enjoyed my visits, look forward to visiting in a few weeks and hope folks will visit in record numbers this year.”

Too little, like the amount of midget reality shows (there will never be enough “midgets doing real people things” shows), way too fucking late. After this second statement, there is no doubt that the city that pulled its overly religious (surprised? Try living here), redneck head out of its ass to help elect you is compartmentalized in your subconscious with slavery and WW3. And by the way, what are you coming here “in a few weeks” for? Is waking up next to your monster first-old-lady getting to you (death threats on Chachi!), and you need hookers? Gonna hit up Fremont Street for the last remaining nickel slots and cheap pizza? Can’t resist the urge to see the club where Jessie Spano got naked?

Obama is expected in the city later this month to raise money for Nevada Democrats… “There’s nothing like a quick trip to Vegas in the middle of the week.”

Indeed! When you’ve got Air Force One and a staff to do all your work for you, and there’s no chance of your being violated before boarding a $600 plane flight, there’s nothing better than a lazy Wednesday in Sin City. I have no idea why the liberal parties are called elitists, it must have something to do with a decent education. And “Raising money for Nevada Democrats” is so asininely vague, my head is wrapping around it at the pace of growing ivy. How about raising the money that your wild statements have already cost Vegas, a city that 90% depends on the hospitality industry you so callously tore up like so much Randy Quaid personal check? I understand you were referring to allocation of bailout money, but that just makes you the most well-intentioned Tazmanian Devil we’ve had in office in a couple decades. Look before you leap, dude, else you’ll fuck up the whole suicide.

*I can say “we” because I’ve lived in Vegas for a year and half, which is more than enough to learn the ins, outs, and the holes that go both ways. Giggidy.
**My girlfriend and I have decided, after billions of Star Trek viewing hours, that Klingons have barbed penises like cats do, so the victim lucky recipient can’t get away without injuring their vag. I declare us correct, and Michael Dorn the man.

(To the uninitiated, I introduce Steel Panther, and this is what they think of your intelligence. I am not allowed to show the picture displaying what they think of your confusion concerning your sexuality.)

Scumbag Style recommends you stock your useless bomb shelter with as much Aqua Net as your local CVS carries, because there’s about to be a run on the hairspray banks. What we as Americans dig is dictated by heads of corporations, and they are running out of marketable material. Since they won’t be advocating free will any time soon, repackaging one of the most embarrassing eras of rock and roll seems to be the best option. Since the American consciousness has a weird combination of ADD and OCD that makes it fall romantically for anything it is told to, and the guido fascination has maybe a year left on it (Jersey Shore will still run for 7 seasons), look for big hair, leopard leggings, and Irocs to come back in a big way.

That’s right, Hair Metal is making the rounds again, and noone is safe. Especially Tawny Kitaen, whose death would take the phenomenon from mild ironic fascination to full blown Twilight. A couple of examples have hit the news in the past week, the temporal proximity of which guarantees that this thing will snowball out of control by the new year, and we’ll all spend 2010 in eyeliner and skinny scarves.

First of all, Def Leppard, which is to metal (even Hair Metal) what Jon Secada is to Oi! Punk. They’re looking to make their own comeback by shifting publishing rights to Primary Wave in order to unload useless video games and cell phone apps on consumers with enough cash leftover after buying B.U.M. sweatshirts and bicycle shorts to wear under their mini-skirts. But the best plan in the works is a cartoon television series based on the band. One can only pray it will a Hanna Barbera tour de force, and engender a sort of combination of Scooby Doo and The Monkees. “Hey hey, we’re Def Leppard, and people say we prance around like girls!” Only instead of playing doofus tag with fake ghosts, viewers will be treated to the resoundingly hilarious shame of the boys opening for Billy Squire, and the hysterical losing of a member to alcoholism. And just imagining the physics-defying chase scene comedy version of Rick getting his arm ripped off in a car accident makes me go an offensively huge rubbery one. Mayhap it will also have the hidden message for children of cynicism in the face of fear-mongering, assuring the kids that Def Leppard never really existed at all, and they’re all just ornery old farmers in white chick masks.

In related news, contemporary (?) Hair Metal and testical-strainingly awesomely named act Steel Panther are moving up in the world. And not a moment too soon. A glorified house band for years at the Key Club in Hollywood, their home venue has just been moved to the House of Blues on Sunset Strip. No word yet on what the news will mean for their regular appearances (well) off the Vegas strip at Green Valley Ranch, though their European tour (seriously?) has already seen several of those dates canceled. Reports are that they started out as a parody metal band (also as Danger Kitty, Metal Shop, and Metal Skool, successively), but all of that changed when girls and metal icons alike did not get point at all and started showing up at their shows. Now we have a bonified, younger generation “legitimate” Hair Metal act on our hands, and we all know that when you get one going, you can’t stop it til it blows its blue eyeshadowed load all over everyone’s denim jacket.

In the meantime, the man who brought Hair Metal to the college chicks who didn’t think it was gay enough, Mr. Jon Bonjovi, survives to fight off obscurity once more, at least metaphorically. Seems Satan came to claim his endof Bon Jovi’s inexplicably successful rock star deal and take the lead singer’s son. No dice, Satan! The kid was rushed to hospital for an undisclosed illness (soulrapevictimitis), but was released so quickly it was a wonder it even made the news. Just kidding. Everybody knows celebrity children are more important than war, famine, genocide, female circumcision (illegal today in Uganda, bitches!),  The press wouldn’t say which son, because if it was revealed that it was his first born, the less clinically retarded half of his fan base might have started to catch on.

One thing Hair Metal did right was try to put sex back into a genre (metal) that would eventually become the

The very obvious exception to the "hair metal sucks" rule of thumb.

avatar of the nerd. The high female attendance of Steel Panther’s concerts even today shows that femininity and uninventive riffs are libidinously preferable to the more legitimate metal (whatever that means) of Megadeth and Scar Symmetry. Mentioning to a chick at a party that your favorite band is Lamb of God will earn you more Posehn points than going on a half hour tirade about who shot first, but say you dig Motley Crue and for some reason the panties fly like Jello at the special school. Also, the big hair looks phenomenal on chicks, especially the dark haired ones. When we came down from all the coke binges and neon of the 80s and 86ed the entire culture of the decade, losing the big hair was like throwing away the baby with the Crystal Pepsi. Oh, and androgyny fetishists, prepare to spend the next few years of your life beating off to MTV 5, the one that actually shows music videos.

But in this new Hair Metal revival that’s sure to take this country by storm like Sarah Palin on speed, we’re sure to see far more of our past regrets than actual benefits. Prepare for your exxxxtreme rock station to adopt girlish wails on its promo bumps, and Hot Topic to continue “ironically” carrying what every little girl wants to wear anyway. Add to this the need for everyone to already cite Hair Metal apologists and genuine women Journey as ”one of their favorite bands” and Bon Jovi to simply not die, this brave new world of slap bracelets and head bands promises to be one confuddled mass of misunderstanding and annoyance. Though it may be the silver bullet that finally puts Nickelback out of its misery. If so, I can live through another decade of the post-apocalyptic, artless void that was the 80s.

(Hit up Steel Panther’s official site, if you have a steel sense of humor. The best part is that every vowel has an umlaut over it. This is some extreme. ass. umlauting. If you had any doubts that Steel Panther is not fucking around, this should comfort you.)

(The family trip to the Olive Garden took a nasty turn as soon as they walked through the door…)

There is a seriously intelligent discussion (literally, dude, there’s like, footnotes and stuff) concerning LED tattooing (and its theosophical implications) over at Worlds As Myth, a subject I treated with much less dignity last week. For the rest of you, let’s talk boobies.

Sunday afternoons at Bada Bing are a glorious thing. Enticed by a radio ad touting beer and food specials during all NFL games, my partner and I put in an appearance last weekend. I can honestly say that there is nowhere we would rather be watching the game than this establishment. The screens we observed were small but conveniently placed in the corners flanking the bar, but there is also a larger projection screen in an adjacent room. Refreshments were incredibly well priced, as advertised, and the bartenders are friendly, as early Sunday afternoon is not prime titty time (I hear some people go to church or whatever) and they are not overworked.

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(It was significantly more impressive, but not more adorable.)

When one witnesses an event that can be described as out of the ordinary, one can usually deduce the series of events that led these people to arrive at the given situation. This is a law for which Las Vegas often seems like a black hole. With cultures from around the globe centralized in a booze addled, no-rules party town, one can see a strange situation every day, if one looks hard enough. And the continually entertaining and baffling thing is, you cannot always figure out what happened. How can one be certain one knows their environment enough when there are things happening in the background that one is not only not aware of, but incapable of comprehending? Case in point: a traffic event my coworkers and I witnessed on our way to lunch this afternoon. You will want to sit down for this.

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10/24/09

This guy showed up to Las Vegas’ Second Annual Zombie Walk as a freshly exhumed Billy Mays, complete with a tub o’ Oxiclean and the trademark, lady devastating beard/blue shirt combo. It is just too soon to be making jokes about a recently deceased man whose whole life was spent making a joke of himself. For one thing, he can’t make money off it anymore. Another: there was no Jacko or Teddy Kennedy representation, and that just leaves an unforgiveable recently-dead-celebrity gap that I know none of us can live with.

Otherwise, the Zombie Walk went off without a hitch, with about a couple hundred splendidly made up people shuffling and groaning down the length of the Fremont Street Experience. A lot of attention was lavished on the group from surprised tourists, from delightful cooing to old timers demanding we not have organized official fun in the funnest city on the planet. Picture a couple hundred Zombies giving your grandpa the finger and you’ll see just how much fun this was.

There was even a Zombie in a wheelchair being pushed by another Zombie, which frankly seemed to me like cheating. She was already half dead, so she had a whole lot of practice on us. And as any apocalypse enthusiast will tell you, the whole scenario is inaccurate. Zombies will not team up for mutual benefit like genetically enhanced sharks will. It’s just not done.

Eventually, the street ended, and one whole end of the Fremont Street Experience was clogged with undead, most of which had decided it was time to stop acting and chain smoke. Those graced with a birth pre-1988 were invited upstairs to buy booze, listen to Halloween themed tunes, and… ride a mechanical bull? Oh, why not. Come for the mechanical bull, stay for all the chicks that showed up because it was the only way they were going to get laid at that special time of the month. Mazel tov!