CHICKEN WIRE
AND
STUCCO


A Creative Commentary

By

David A. Archer
02/15/1968

09/10/2006

Legendary!

There aren’t many other words that could even be close to accurate in describing it.

It’s a freaking modern marvel when you really think about it!

It has rightfully been romanticized, legendary-a-sized, myth-a-sized…and just about every other “a-sized” in the book.

Every two bit hack job and gangster movie freak dreams of being a part of it, as do most two bit business failures I suppose.

It just kind of has that “appeal” built in. It has to be one of the biggest “hooks in the biz” as the elusive “they” might say. Let’s face it. It was built on losers.

Nothing seems to draw people like the opportunity to be associated with losers of one form or another.

Sure, that has been said and is well known… but it really has a truth to it when you actually have experienced it. It is a social, hierarchical structure of “losing” in one form or another.

I am here to tell you, that losers run it, as well.

About this time I am sure that because of all that hype so saturated within society, that many of you reading this are “aghast” at this point. Wondering if it is that I am just entirely stupid, crazy or both for “talking like that” about such a place with so many “big time” aspects surrounding the allure.

I guess my answer would be that perhaps I am a little of both, but no where in relation to this commentary. In fact, I feel rather entitled to lower the boom on some of the more recent silliness ebbing from such a place. Besides, my grandmother had been dealing with actual goons for decades. She was no slouch mind you… but she was a little old lady. A ferocious and cantankerous little old lady, but little old lady just the same.

I’ve had family being a part of the local economy there since before it was the “Great Pull My Finger” Mecca which it is today.

“Aren’t you worried about the guys what might say dat you should show some respect?” You may be thinking.

No, not really. The type of people that seem to be “running” Vegas today have been more prone to things like simply shutting off the electricity on sporting stadiums when a game goes awry, than they are in chasing people down to “recoup” their loses. Then acting as if they have pulled some great secret “job” in doing so. As well, they seem to be the sort that put Sinatra in the county fair for his farewell tour… and of course, as I have mentioned, target little old ladies for their monthly rental property “take.”

I don’t care who you are, or what your political leanings may be. Sinatra does not play the county fair next to the giant pumpkin! Especially for his farewell tour. Even if he does suck, and even if he is so old that he can’t keep from wetting his pants.

You are talking about Sinatra here.

Even if he were the biggest bastard on the planet, the people deserved more than a showing next to the record setting pumpkin and the prize heifer.

It is the truth, Vegas is built on losers. It is comprised mostly of chicken wire and stucco as well.

Hell, they probably would have used Paper Mache’ if they could have figured out how to weatherize it.

I know far too well the perspective from which you envision Las Vegas. I could even describe it to you in some poetic fashion which could sit right next to all of the other embellished depictions of “emerging silently from the dessert on the wing of a warm breeze, and being birthed from nothingness into the instant excitement of endless and eternal flashing bulbs and free booze. As if having just completed a journey in your spacecraft which strangely resembles a car (of some romantic, specific make), from one star in the sky, arriving at another.

My perspective, on the other hand is a bit different.

My oldest brother has spent most of his adult life there, sliding playing cards across cheap felt and looking at the same changing faces in multitudes. All of them asking the same stupid questions over and over again, I presume. That is simply the nature of large crowds.

I have to laugh at this, as he embodies the local stereotypical “bastard games dealer” persona… and he does so without even attempting it. He is just really an asshole, as most games dealers are said to be…without many of them knowing it.

My nearest sibling has spent most of his adult life schlepping luggage in just about every major hotel in the area as a profession. Then, getting tweaked out of his mind on one form of amphetamine or another while downing inhuman amounts of free booze at the local’s casino’s – more than likely having been “Slots-o-Fun” or “Ellis Island” for the most part… with a few others thrown in there on occasion.

I am sure that if he stopped and counted the amount of money that has passed through his hands alone, as having been “his” for however brief a time…he would probably fall directly into the type of depression that most “gamblers” having lost their life’s saving, do.

Their “ex-wives” are no better. They just seem to make better excuses. What’s more is that they think people believe them… and further, while sporting the most hideous form of finger nail décor ever invented….which is probably their saving throw being that it almost entirely signifies the presence of pure insanity. As if sitting in a small room every day and answering a telephone wouldn’t connote it just as well.

Further, there seems to be this over laying personality trait which develops, that tells any normal person, that anyone having lived in that town for any substantial amount of time should no longer be considered of the planet earth. It becomes like a coating of some sort. Like it creeps over a person and renders them a sort of “spam” like squishy material.

I think it is all of the resin from the chicken wire and stucco combined with the constant, flashing pretty lights. It cakes the brain somehow and hypnotizes them simultaneously.

Yeah, I am pretty sure that “Stardust” is a myth which began around justifying all of the stucco resin in the air. It sure saved on the lawsuits which would most likely have resulted if any lawyer in their right mind would have been there…and further, if it were that they could have found any doctor to give a forthright diagnosis beyond the aforementioned “stardust” theory, that is.

You probably think it is funny, but I am here to tell you that there is probably a physical diagnosis in the Las Vegas area similar to “stardust effect” meant to curb any huge lawsuits around existing (if any) hazardous materials.

Look what they did with radiation poisoning from the nuclear test sight all those years ago. Suddenly, it wasn’t people going mad from radiation poisoning, it was “being abducted by aliens” and the sort… which then has developed into some rather extravagant local legends.

When you think about it, it might have been the better route to go…it helped spawn an entire social movement. Granted, a social movement full of loose nuts and bolts so to speak, but a social movement all the same.

Of course “there is no danger of radiation poisoning anymore (see how easy that is),” or at least there wasn’t for awhile…until of course the local gubmint decided to accept the waste from nuclear power facilities totally outside of the State of Nevada (being that there aren’t any INSIDE of the state of Nevada). Privately owned nuclear facilities, at that.

Go figure? Right?

Then of course, is one of my personally favorite aspects surrounding the idea and community of modern celebrity. I know about it pretty much because of my long standing relations with the very highly specialized, local work force in Las Vegas, and it ties in directly with the “radiation” spin.

Most people don’t realize it, but the reason you never see fat, slob-by celebrities or even fat slob-by casino management people… is much because of reasons associated with what is known as “Area 51.”

One of the funny parts here, is that the more recent wave of casino management people, actually thought they were making a “step up” in “gaining” access to “celebrity status.” In fact, they very much took a step down on the food chain, quite literally.

You see, though it isn’t so widely known in the general populous outside of Las Vegas, it is very much standard knowledge within the elite members of that cities work force that “Area 51” has very specific purposes it serves. The biggest of which is housing the long rumored “Alien Martians,” then the next biggest task is housing their food supply.

In no complicated terms, that “food supply” is comprised much of the celebrity population and all of those people you see on the back of milk cartons.

It used to be thought that a person must “sell their soul” to become a rich and famous celebrity... but in recent, more liberal developments (that locals in Vegas have known for decades), it has been found that what a person must actually do is agree to become a very literal, meat food source for resident Alien Martians at “Area 51.”

The reason I find the newer development within the casino world there in Vegas so funny, is that most of them “moved in” on other people’s territory so to speak. From outside of the local circles. As you may be able to tell, the locals didn’t divulge the pre-requisite for celebrity status to these interlopers. I guess the locals do get the last laugh!

The fact is, the “new guys” had no clue that part of the job in being a casino mogul, was to keep away from celebrity status… in the effort to help maintain the “food production” for the little Alien Martian guys. But, their ego’s and lack of local information, lead them directly into volunteering themselves as that food source as well. They stepped down in the food chain just to look like they were at the top of it.

Something else that you will notice, is that the “health” craze, began in the L.A. and Las Vegas areas.

This as well, is directly related to providing a superior food source for the resident Alien Martians so they don’t become inclined to simply destroy the entire planet.

It is a rather big local joke in the Las Vegas area, that most people caught up in the want of celebrity and of course the health craze, are actually a part of what could be considered a cult without their own knowledge of it. Even further in the joke, is the fact that they make themselves a better food source in several ways, through no effort what so ever of the Alien Martian guys. They make themselves bigger, and meatier… and they even administer meat tenderizing chemicals themselves, in the form of medications and what is marketed as “health supplements.”

Have you seen any fat, sloppy movie stars or casino moguls lately?
I didn’t think so.

The kind of neat aspect to this, is that the Alien Martian guys actually use the extensive levels of radiation in and around Area 51 to keep the dead people brought to them to eat, alive in a way.

They somehow use it to maintain living brain tissue and to sustain the freshness of the food source to consume at their leisure. Without one single refrigerator!

Allot of people tend to speculate that this all somehow harkens back to ancient Egyptian methods for burial. It seems that they would feed the Alien Martians, too.

Many other cultures have done this in one way or another, including the little known fact that Mozart was not buried in an unmarked mass grave. He was fed to the Alien Martians.

As another grand aspect and compliment to the modern citadel called Las Vegas, Nevada.... it would seem that none have done it so efficiently.

This of course, is said to then spawn feuds and competitive rivalries between those different food sources. Each wanting to be seen as the most special food source for the Alien Martians… especially in regard to long standing points of pride, such as Mozart…which might just explain the severity in having presented Sinatra at the county fair on his farewell tour.

I guess they just get outright vicious about it at times.

I would use the term “when all is said and done” in closing this commentary, but I am quite sure that all will not be said, and no where near all will be done any time soon concerning the great Chicken Wire and Stucco, Mecca. Especially in regard to maintaining a flow of food stuffs for the Alien Martians.

So I guess the best thing to do is simply realize that it is quite truly a modern marvel. A marvel, above and beyond any marvel which has ever been marveled upon in human history.

For so many more reasons than could possibly meat the eye.