bombastic tavener vegan jaunt?

Holy crap, it's going to be good to get away to Las Vegas with Holly this weekend - things are still hectic, as per normal, so a little (very amateurish) gambling and air-conditioned splendor is in order - they do have air conditioning at the Westward Ho!, right? [The Mandalay Bay is our favorite hotel choice, but cheap package deals rawk our sawks awff.]

In the meantime, our awful cable provider has gone out of business, and our new provider gets two more obscure digital channels I've wanted for ages, Trio and Ovation. Trio is a great, cultish network which has been running 'Flops' month, including such craziness as My Mother The Car and Pink Lady And Jeff, and also has some great, offbeat programming such as vintage David Letterman shows. Ovation is a music-specific channel that runs some neat live concerts, and some great UK-imported documentaries on fascinating classical composer John Tavener, Blondie, Dusty Springfield, and others - much better than those VH-1 talking heads.

Other than that, bits and pieces float to the surface - the playing of Bombastic (those devilish dice!), and the reading of Cryptonomicon (has anyone compared this to Clive Cussler before? Do I get in trouble for doing so?) and The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency (any African detective novel series with jacket kudos from Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is good with me.) Enough already.