Queen for a day

Interesting piece in the LA Times today about yet another one-day casino:

Las Vegas casino openings typically demand red carpets, cocktail parties, celebrity guest lists and fireworks. But not so at the Queen of Hearts — it's a one-day casino.

This spartan, eight-hour event is everything the Strip is not: small, unpretentious and quiet, with no crowds or drunks, no cocktail waitresses or high-rolling "whales," and no Midwestern tourists. It's common, and perfectly OK, for no gamblers to show up.

One-day casinos — mandated by law for a handful of places that are closed but want to hang onto their gaming rights — are governed by the same rules as high-end resorts with thousands of machines. They're the gambling industry's equivalent of a solar eclipse. They unfold a few times each year. They typically get some press, and people who stumble upon them are often befuddled but intrigued.

Casino stays in the game for a day - Los Angeles Times.

The first thing I noticed about the article was the very unflattering picture of the patron in the orange shirt–I mean, come on, photog: you could have waited until she closed her mouth to snap away. But no one said they had to run that photo on the main page. The next two in the slide show are much better.

This was a good story, but the one-day deals are getting to the point where they aren’t newsworthy anymore.

A follow-up to yesterday’s post: as promised, this site now yields the lone Google search result for the phrase “bacteria free Monday.”

I think I’ll start using the phrase in the same sense that Stringer Bell used forty degree day (link is not at all work-safe, unless your workplace likes profanity). So when things aren’t going great, but aren’t going too badly, I’ll say that it’s just another bacteria free Monday.

Even if it’s Tuesday.

At some point, I’ve got to use that title for a book.