it was seventy years ago today

It is hard to imagine what John Lennon would have been like at age 70. He was born seventy years ago today and was murdered thirty years ago December 8, and we were all cheated out of watching him grow older.

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And in those forty years that he lived, what a difference he made. It's hard to imagine how our lives would have been different if there had been no Beatles, and, let's face it, John Lennon was the creative spark of the Beatles.

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And it's also hard to imagine how our lives might have been different if he had still been with us the past thirty years, not only for his musical new directions but also as a voice and influence for peace and sanity.

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Closer to home and on a more personal level, it was twenty-nine years ago today that my younger son Tom was born. I remember that day so well, and he has been a joy from Day One. We celebrated his birthday last night, had cake and ice cream up on the 21st-floor rooftop on a perfect evening, and in a few minutes I'm taking him out for a birthday breakfast. It's hard to imagine what life would have been without him the past almost-30 years!

wading ever deeper into shallowness

It should be obvious by now that anything I write from Las Vegas will never win a Nobel Prize for Literature. A person's perspective changes, the brain metabolizes, gets a bit loose and mushy. For instance, I caught Jerry and Tim, professional men in their fifties and sixties respectively, talking yesterday about how much they would like to go to a Lady Gaga concert. Can you picture that, us at a Lady Gaga concert? But Jerry is convinced that Lady Gaga and her boyfriend (with a mile-high Mohawk) were checking out next to us when we were here at the Mirage in April. Now I admit that I wouldn't know Lady Gaga if I tripped over her, but Jerry would (thanks to the National Enquirer), and the woman checking out certainly dressed and looked like a celebrity of some sort, and the hotel workers were falling all over themselves kissing her butt, so who knows?

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And on this particular visit I've noticed one -- well, maybe two -- things that I hadn't particularly paid attention to lately: cleavage is certainly very in right now, isn't it! Or maybe it's always been in and it's just more, well, out in the open these days. I'm so slow to catch on to some things.

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And if I were being my usual grammatical self, I would have titled this blog entry correctly -- "wading ever more deeply into shallowness" rather than "wading ever deeper into shallowness." Or is "deeper" acceptable? I don't know. It's the Vegas effect.

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Last night, we went to the big show here at the Mirage -- the Cirque du Soleil show Love. What an enjoyable show, certainly my new favorite of the Cirque shows that I've seen. I had sort of low expectations for this one, expecting it to be kind of light and silly. Instead it's spectacular and beautiful, and with all Beatles music how can you go wrong?

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I Should Have Known Better!