Viva Las Vegas

Finally made it, Martian flu be damned. Easy four-hour drive, hitting 110 in the Prius on the long hills going down the Cajon Pass.

Dean Martin's house is comically, hilariously, exactly what I expected. The interview clip of him in one of the youtube vids below looks like it was shot downstairs. Very easy to picture him yakking Jim Bean into the bedroom's porcelain oracle my first time in there. Ghosts, and ghosts of ghosts.

I said,, "This house is really familiar" and they said, "Well, it's Dean Martin's house." They didn't say it was Coppola or Nic Cage's house; it was Dean Martin's house. And David Lynch said, "Yes, and he's gone and we're standing here now and just in a flash there'll be another group standing here and we'll be gone."

That's Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols decimating some time-worn classics. Sid did it his way for real. That ending of that video pretty much summed up his miserable life. On the whole, the early punkers were cool, but The Rat Pack, that was the high point of Western Civ, pretty much. If you were a white guy. Or Sammy.