Ocean's four

So, Joe and I are walking from the elevator into the casino when a woman calls to me. "Excuse me, do you have eyes?"

I turn to find out what she wants and she clarifies. "I mean, can you read this?" she says, holding a business card and a drink in one hand and a house phone in the other.

I turn back and walk toward her, a bleached blonde a little older than I am, wearing clubbing clothes even though it's 11:00 am, but hey, it's Vegas. She proffers the card to me a little unsteadily and I can tell by the vapors that she's had more than just the one mixed drink she's now working on. I look at the card, for one Ami Barnheimer, a rep for the casino we are in, New York, New York. "Can you read the last name on this card?" she asks.

"Barnheimer," I say.

She repeats this information into the phone with the precise enunciation of the slightly tipsy. "Barnheimer. Ami's last name is Barnheimer... What?" She hands the phone to me. "She wants you to spell it for her."

I take the receiver and without preamble begin "B-A-R-N..." The voice on the other end, which sounds to my teacher's ear like a non-native English speaker's, repeats "B-A-R-M..." I correct her, and we go through our little pronunciation dance for a few moments. At one stage my partner has it B-A-R-M-H-V-I-N-B-R. We eventually get it straight and I give the phone back to the blonde who thanks me profusely and goes back to working whatever angle she's trying to make happen. Joe and I continue on.

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I have been in Vegas for over 22 hours now, have had about five hours sleep, and haven't gambled a dime.

But that's okay, because I'm not here to gamble. I'm here to have little adventures like the one described above, and to meet up with these guys.


Santi, Dolan, and Hopkins - not to be confused with Zeppo, Gummo, and Beppo

This is The Year We Turn Fifty, "we" being the gang from high school. We are met in here in Las Vegas, America's post-modern mecca, in a one-third-scale imitation of the city of our youth, to commemorate this inherently unimportant occasion and imbue it with some significance.

And while it comes as no surprise that we are no longer the same fresh-faced, callow youth out to take on the world, armed only with a fine Jesuit education and a strong sense of our own self-worth, I am pleased and proud to declare that these old pals are still men I would choose to associate myself with: a little tired, with a few more creaks, but with wit and humor and intelligence not only intact and undimmed, but rather improved by experience and perspective.

In some ways, we meet all the casting criteria for a TV movie of the week; from our common start in NYC, we have moved out to Chicago, Ohio, Los Angeles, and Seattle; we find in our group a high-powered lawyer, a PR man, a show business guy, and an English teacher. Three are family men, each with one, two, or three children, some at or nearing the age we were when we met and were together for the first time; the third followed a windier path. I am sure our religion and politics would provide the same sorts of spread; even our clothes could be used to shorthand our types to the audience.

But we are not in a TV movie and these are not players from central casting; these are old friends, and seeing them again has made me realize in a very particular way what things we give up and leave them behind when we embrace the new. The rich conversation that flowed and the threads of connection that were so easy to pick up after so many years are gratifying beyond just a sense of pleasure. I count my friends as my greatest treasures, and I feel like I have discovered a small cache of jewels, wrapped in a handkerchief and tucked in the back of a seldom-used drawer. I hope I can remember where it is and take it out more often in the future than I have done in the past.

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Thanks to J-Force for coming by Thursday night for a bon voyage dinner and walk to B&R for cones! What a swell send-off.
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Yesterday, I got up at 4:15 am, and at 5:45 am, I was sitting in the terminal, already having purchased a coffee and bagel. Ninety minutes from bed to gate isn't bad. The flight was fine and the Southwest chief flight attendant was exceptionally funny.
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We walked a bit of the strip after lunch yesterday, when it was about 109 degrees. It was a dry heat, but it was still frakking hot. We made it from NYNY to Paris before heading back into the casinos. Today it should only hit 104; maybe we'll go for a run. (A cabbie told us it's supposed to hit 120 next week.)
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We took "The Deuce," the bus that runs on the strip, up to the ballpark for the game last night. It crawls northbound into old downtown; it took us more than an hour to get to the terminal, and then there was about a mile hike to the stadium (including the huge parking lot). It was... fun.
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The game (Las Vegas 51s v. the Colorado Springs Sky Sox) was fun in the way that all minor league events are fun: the food, the gags, the home-town boosterism. As an athletic event, it was pretty lame: we left in the eighth with the score 10-3, Sox.
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After the game, we hung out in the faux neighborhood in the casino, shooting the breeze until we could go to bed without feeling too damn old.
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How odd is it that we had a conversation of some moment about Young Frankenstein during lunch, and that when we were in the rooms getting ready for the game, we found the movie was playing on TV?
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NYNY is not a non-smoking casino - I couldn't even sleep in my t-shirt last night, because the cigarette smell was so strong.
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Hi, Otis!