Bettie: Christmas in Vegas

[Bettie]

For anyone new in town, or visitors who are looking for some holiday spirit in this town (harder to find than a lazy front-loading dealer), I thought I'd let you know about a few attractions around town.

One really cool holiday attraction is at the Ethel M. Chocolate Factory in Henderson. They have a cactus garden that is nearly smothered in lights. This is a free thing - just park and walk around the garden. This would probably be especially cool for small kids, since the lights are all at their level instead of above their heads. The garden is at the corner of Sunset Ave and Sunset Way.

Near there, at the corner of Sunset Ave and Eastern Ave (SE corner of the airport), is the Festival of Lights, or something like that. It's a drive-through light exhibit. Pack the car - it's $10 during the week and $12 on the weekends, though some gently used items for Goodwill will get you $2 off of the admission. This is only it's third year, but it seems to be getting bigger every year. 5 million lights and two light tunnels this year - it looks nice enough. (I'd probably be more enthusiastic if I didn't come from a city that hosts an absolutely massive light festival that takes over the entire town every year.)

There's also a light festival sponsored by Opportunity Village, but I don't have any information on that simply because it's on the opposite side of town from where I live so I won't be headed there.

If anyone else has any other attractions, I'd love to hear about it. Just post it here for everybody to read!

Happy Holidays!
Bettie

[miss brown]

> For anyone new in town, or visitors who are
> looking for some holiday spirit in this town
> (harder to find than a lazy front-loading
> dealer), I thought I'd let you know about a
> few attractions around town.

Funny.

[Battery]

> For anyone new in town, or visitors who are
> looking for some holiday spirit in this town
> (harder to find than a lazy front-loading
> dealer), I thought I'd let you know about a
> few attractions around town.

Bettie,

I'm just back home after spending Monday through this morning in your town.

What holiday spirit did I see? Well, I like to get some exercise by walking up and down Fremont Street, probably a couple miles worth each day.

Sort of like we have to be politically correct and say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", the powers that pick the music playing on Fremont Street seem to play almost no Christmas Carols. They go with songs like "Frosty the Snowman", "Here Comes Santa Claus", "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer", and everyones favorite: "Jingle Bell Rock". They and a few others like "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" are played over, and over, and over. Call me Scrooge if you want, but that monotony took me right out of any Christmas spirit I had.

What may be the world's largest artificial tree did look pretty nice though.

[Bettie]

> What may be the world's largest artificial
> tree did look pretty nice though.

You know, I have never been downtown during Christmas, but I would like to get down and see the tree one of these days. I guess the rush of the holidays keeps me from getting there.

I haven't heard a lot of Christmas music anywhere, really. Montelago was playing music a week or so ago, but not the other day (maybe they tired of the motonony, too). I did see a really fun Christmas concert last night at the Hard Rock, though.

The Brian Setzer Orchestra (Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats) did a 1 1/2 hour holiday show at the Joint, doing songs in his trademark rockabilly style. There were a few plain rock songs, but it was mostly holiday music. They also did a kick-ass rockabilly version of "The Nutcracker Suite" that was their grand finale. I believe they'll play it at the Grammys, if anyone wants to check it out.

Cheers!
Bettie