There’s a fair chance that Atlantic City’s first casino hotel, Resorts International, will close. The casino lost $18 million last year — almost $11 million of it in the fourth quarter alone. Here’s the story.
I hope that Resorts, which opened in 1978 when I was in high school, survives. Its closing would sadden me for a couple of reasons. I have at least one good friend who works there, and this is not a job market I hope to see friends entering. Also, my father was one of the people who built Resorts. (He was a crane operator.) He was proud to have worked on all of the first 11 casinos built in Atlantic City.
On another personal note, the newspaper article I’m linking to above is from the Press of Atlantic City (which old-timers still call “The Atlantic City Press”), where I was an editor from 1987-1988. The casinos are still there (for now), but newspapers are vanishing all over the land. (Denver, for example, no longer has a daily print newspaper.) I’m glad to see that the paper is still there — and it reminds me of another job market — or industry — I wouldn’t want to see friends entering right now.
On Saturday night, after seeing a friend’s play (which we thoroughly enjoyed), my compatriot Trey Nichols and I headed to the Apple Store down the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica to check out the new iPad, which debuted that day.
Some photos documenting that historic occasion:
That’s me, considering all the cool things I’ll be able to do with it when I get one (second — or third — generation). By the way, these photos are taken with my iPhone (third generation; see the pattern?) by iMyself or iFriend. The only thing not i in these images is the clutch of i-worshipers in the background, and they’re pretty i-dolatrous themselves. Side note to good friends Terence Anthony and Steve Lozier: Please note which site I’m checking out. No, the image wasn’t blurry — that was Trey’s hands shaking in anticipation of getting to touch the iPad.
And here’s Trey, actual iPad in hand. But now he looks, well, somewhat… skeptical.
This is before we visited a cigar shop around the corner where the UCLA student working the counter rhapsodized about the iPad and how eagerly he was awaiting his own. While we didn’t plunk down the 600 bucks for the latest buzzy techno device, we did each plunk down six bucks for a Punch cigar.
Even though both of us are still sentimentally attached to paper and the things that come on it (books, magazines, newspapers, comic books), we were also drawn to the novelty of the unit and enjoyed its sleek interface. We also noted its limitations — no camera, no 3G/4G. In the meantime, Amazon, in an attempt at a marketing pushback, sent out an email today to various and sundry announcing that Kindle books are readable on — the iPhone. So I downloaded the Kindle app and am now reading three books on the iPhone (starting with a short story collection by the ever-reliably good Mr. Anton Chekhov, and Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir, and a compendium of 19th century American fiction) — all of them free, just as the app was. One sort of calculus would have it that I just got the e-reader and saved $600.
But here’s one question Trey and I didn’t think to wonder about the iPad:
Some things just put a spring in your step. It thrills me the way these high school kids responded to a protest of their school by an intolerant extremist group. (And it’s a refutation of today’s generation as either slackers or thugs.)
It’s Stephanie Germanotta — before she became Lady Gaga.
What I like about this:
It shows that this very talented young woman can sing and play piano and write songs. Yes, she has come up with an act, one that has propelled her to celebrity and fortune. But it’s not just an act. It’s an act centered around talent.
Now that I’ve ended my day of internet silence — and thank you again to everyone here who joined me in helping to make the internet more available to everyone, especially those struggling with slow connections — I thought I’d share this great news. The previously lost Beckett play, “Attack the Day Gently,” has been found! Here are the details.
In which David Byrne talks about his love for music, and his opinion that lyrics are overrated.
As someone who has been listening to Byrne’s lyrics for more than 30 years, I agree with him that it’s often the sound of lyrics (his lyrics, anyway), that’s more important than the meaning. That’s because the songs he’s done both with and without Talking Heads have been largely connotational rather than denotional — they connote a certain mood or situation, most often: a rootless anxiety. (Or, sometimes, a quirky sort of hope.) This displacement from his surroundings puts him squarely in the tradition of postmodern artists where, of course, meaning is less important than immediate impact. Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf and William Burroughs and Donald Barthelme were usually more interested in transmitting a feeling than telling a story. And that sounds like a close approximation of what David Byrne does in his songs.
Thanks to Paul Crist for alerting me to this video.
Much as I love the current delivery system — books, magazines — I couldn’t help noting in my most recent travels last week that I was lugging around three books and five magazines with me and that, perhaps, an electronic replacement would be more efficient….
Most notable comment in this piece, from the editor of Wired magazine: “You could do many things right with the Web, but not magazines. Tablets will allow us to do digital magazines that are intelligently designed, flow correctly and have the artistic intent preserved.” What he’s saying is that there won’t be just a portability advantage, and an advantage thanks to linking, but also an artistic advantage. That interests me. Of course, it’s also being said by the editor of what was notoriously the hardest-to-read magazine of last decade. The screaming fonts and colors and the incomprehensible layouts were guaranteed to give you a migraine.
I can’t think of any single cause more worth supporting tomorrow than Blank Screen Day. It asks very little of us — just that we turn off the internet for one hour during business hours — and in exchange it helps potentially billions of people around the world get online and get back to the important work of rebuilding the world economy.
Please join me.
Here’s a link to the site. There’s more information on the G.I.V.E. Initiative, the organization behind this, there and on the Blank Screen Day Facebook page. I’m proud to be involved in this very important cause.
Dan 2025-11-13 00:06:34 Your whole experience sounds like "Welcome to America: Trump2.0"
Uncle Rich 2025-11-10 12:38:15 During my recent short story binge, I read Lahiri's excellent INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. It is included in an anthology titled CHILDREN PLAYING BEFORE A STATUE OF HERCULES, edited by David Sedaris.
Lee Wochner 2025-11-10 10:23:41 You are correct! Reading that play over and over and over to learn it (with mixed success), but also books and comic books, naturally.
I especially enjoyed the novel "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. Beautifully written and moving.
Uncle Rich 2025-11-09 15:11:11 And of course, you've been reading.
