Thursday, May 14, 2009

Recommended Reading

Fred Kaplan on what's up with our military budget. Years ago, I had a long, nasty debate with a right-wing friend who insisted we had to spend as much money as possible on every possible weapons system...and it didn't seem to matter a lot if the systems worked or if they worked as well as other systems we might buy. You were "soft on defense" (his term) and perhaps praying for America to be conquered (his insinuation) if you, say, wanted to stop funding System A and instead put all that money into System B.

I've never understood that. I seem to remember a time when John McCain said something about how he could slice many billions from the defense budget by trimming fat and eliminating ineffective programs. He hadn't even said what he'd cut but he was attacked by his fellow party members as if he'd said, "Let's replace all our guns with big sticks!" It struck me as an odd line of attack from people who think every other aspect of the government is filled with pork, inefficiency and waste.

Anyway, go read Fred.

• Posted at 11:37 PM · LINK

All I Can Eat

More hotels in Las Vegas are trying out that new kind of meal deal where you pay one flat fee per day and get unlimited access to the buffet. The Luxor charges $35, The MGM Grand charges $30 on weekdays and $40 on weekends, the Stratosphere charges $20 ($25 at certain times) and the Excalibur, which started this idea, charges $25. That's for as many visits per day as you like, as much as you can eat. The Luxor deal even includes beer and wine.

I'm curious about the math on these offers. When buffets started in Vegas, they were priced so low the house would rarely break even on anyone's gorging...but they were good investments. They brought in the gamblers. So what if the hotel lost four bucks per person with the buffet when the average guest who walked in the door was leaving five pounds heavier but $20-$40 lighter? At some point, however, prices were adjusted upwards and now most hotels make a profit on their buffets...though maybe not if you consider how many slot machines might be situated in the same floor space. In that sense, there's still a bit of "loss leader" in some buffets.

So I wonder if these all-day dining passes are in that vein. If you did purchase one at the MGM Grand, let's say, I don't think you'd be straying far from the place. Might that not discourage you from wandering across the street to New York, New York for a little gaming? Are you going to eat breakfast at the MGM Grand, then go downtown for a while, then catch a cab back to the MGM Grand for lunch? Seems to me you'd have to eat at least three meals a day at the same buffet to have a chance at getting your money's worth.

That's possible (even easy) for Max, the cat I feed at my back door...but I'm not sure most human beings could do it. In 50-some-odd trips to Las Vegas and other Nevada towns that have buffets, I can't recall ever visiting more than one buffet within a span of 24 hours...and that was back before I had a doctor-type person reduce the size of my stomach. Matter of fact, buffets don't really work for me at all now, not so much because of quantity but timing. Instead of eating three normal-size meals a day, I function better if I eat six or seven small ones which collectively equal about two normal-size meals.

Where the all-day dining option might work for me is if I could take in my laptop and sit there all day working on it...and then every time I felt like a snack, I could wander over to the steam tables and get a cup of soup or a lamb chop or a handful of mashed potatoes (I detest serving spoons) or a slice of that weird roasted animal they pass off as Prime Rib. That would be ideal but somehow, I don't think they'll let me do this.

• Posted at 12:17 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Our chum Bob Elisberg has a lovely little story about an obscure song by two non-obscure songwriters.

• Posted at 12:11 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

This runs almost an hour and it may be interrupted by the occasional commercial announcement. It's a wonderful documentary on Paul Conrad...to my mind, the best political cartoonist this country has ever seen. Though nominally a Liberal, he's pretty much savaged every president since L.B.J. took office and every prominent politician...and not unfairly, I think. He certainly was never afraid to piss off anyone, including the editorial board of the L.A. Times. His cartoons often appeared as devastating rebuttals to the paper's own editorials on the facing page.

By the way: Throughout this film, you'll see excerpts from an interview that Conrad did at a radio station in Iowa. The guy sitting next to him in those shots is Max Allan Collins, a fine writer of novels and comics, mainly in the mystery genre. Here's the documentary...

• Posted at 3:15 AM · LINK

Early Thursday Morning

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a while but I've pretty much spent the last twenty-four hours on one of those scripts that's gotta be in when it's gotta be in. It is now in. Life was dull around here today, which suits me fine. In fact, a dull life is kind of exciting. My big achievement, apart from getting that script in, was faking out a cat.

The cat in question is Max the Bulimic Cat, a feral feline who shows up at my back door incessantly to howl as if he's starving. Often, there is already food in the bowl out there but since it's a good ten minutes old, it won't do. He demands fresh.

So what I've learned to do — and you probably already knew this trick but I just figured it out — is that I take the half-filled bowl in, putter around, slam the cabinet door in which the cans of fresh food are stored...and then I just put the exact same bowl back out there. And Max eats it. You have no idea how proud this makes me.

I'm going to post a great video link and then hit the sack. Good night, Internet!

• Posted at 3:14 AM · LINK