Vegas, I Hate You or My Life in Rose (and Orange)

Yesterday evening, I got home from a weekend in Vegas. I went out there to attend a friend's wedding. It was the first time I've stayed in Sin City (or is that the nickname for LA?) for more than 24 hours. By hour 25, I felt a blood-boiling hatred for the whole sordid place. All the stupid blinking lights, the constant numb ringing, the old people smoking and waiting to die while pumping rigged machines full of filthy lucre. I even felt myself wishing the whole desert stain would go up in smoke--with everyone cleared out first, of course.

Right when I got home I checked my email and got a message from a good friend telling me that he wants to spend his birthday in Vegas and would Dylan and I come, yay? I felt like Jude Law in the scene in I Heart Huckabees where he barfs a little in his hand just thinking about telling that Shania Twain/tuna fish story once again (this makes sense if you've seen the movie).

But here's what I really want to talk about. The other night when I was at Footsies, the same night that the Old Crusty Mexican Prostitute visited our fair establishment, I got an idea... and now that I want to procrastinate my work, specifically transcribing a tape, I will write about said idea.

The idea started this way: I was getting a little drunk and staring at the lights on the liquor shelves. The light was hot pink, and it made the whiskey glow a hot-amber-pink, and I found myself feeling friendly towards this light, like it was a kindred spirit. Not because it was light, but because of its color. This got me thinking about my relationship to pink.

The other day I was shopping at a clothing store that my good friend Amanda works at. She showed me a stack of long-sleeved t-shirts and said, Why don't you try this one? It was this really delicate pale pink and at first glance I thought, no, too girly, but Amanda convinced me to try it. In the dressing room, I realized that the reason I didn't want to wear this shirt was because I had liked that specific shade of pink a lot in junior high and I considered myself "beyond" it now.

I ended up buying the shirt because I thought it looked good on me. And I realized how silly it is to think you're beyond a specific combination of UV rays or whatever color technically is (colorists, speak up!). The shirt gave me a nice little glow and it looks good with black eyeliner, makes it looks a little tougher, I think. Now it's my favorite shirt.

I dare everyone to buy something soon in a color that they "hate," or have parted ways with. See how it works out. You might be suprised.

I used to detest the color orange. I always associated it with drab 70s-era educational institutions, those awful scoop chairs with the metal brackets underneath for your books. It didn't help either that my high school's colors were orange and blue (same as this website, now that I've noticed), and every bozo frat fucker wore blue and orange every Friday for extra credit. (Quick aside: What the fuck is that anyway? Extra credit for wearing two colors??) Anyway, the person who changed my relationship to orange was my old friend and roomate Maggie. Seeing it through her eyes when we were about 18 or 19, I realized that orange is thrilling and unexpected, kitschy and spicy. We painted our mantle orange, and much of the trim in the living room; we stubbed out our cigarettes in an old orange ashtray shaped like a boomerang. There are many things that I would thank Maggie for showing me, but the special, secret qualities of orange would be close to the top of the list.