Lightning and Thunder

It’s been kinda busy this week. Darryl, Guy, and Honey went to Hoover Dam to see the completed arch. For those not familiar with the area, there is a massive arch bridge under construction to connect Nevada to Arizona, bypassing the dam which was never meant to carry as much traffic as it currently does, called the Colorado River Bridge. See details on their website here. The roadway that will be on top isn’t finished yet, but the keystone of the arch was placed not long ago and I’m told it’s pretty impressive. It was stormy on the day the guys went and Darryl Ginwright caught this amazing lightning shot.

We got free tickets to the Brittney Spears concert the end of this month. My job has some perks after all, besides being ridiculously laid back, easy money, and stress free. Her new album is good; there’s only one song I don’t care for. It should be a T&A festival of epic proportions. We’ll let you know.

Last night we went downtown for the last night of “Summer of ‘69”. For the last two months free concerts have been held every weekend, the bill being footed by the casinos on Fremont Street, who I’m sure are easily making back their money in beer sales. Got to see a guy win a ’69 Camaro. There was a really bad Fleetwood Mac tribute band.

It became a mob. A stationary mob with people trying to pass thru spaces that weren’t actually spaces to get to the other side. Some people made multiple trips in both directions. We got very friendly with lots of people we didn’t know, to say the least. The band was Three Dog Night and was very good. I was surprised how many songs I knew, having not been born yet during their peak years. After awhile, the crowd was starting to feel suffocating, so we headed for open space away from the stage. Honey is very effective at getting thru a crowd; he basically squares up and walks – people just move. There were a few who didn’t and were nearly bowled off their feet – we didn’t feel bad about this since it’d been happening to us for the last hour. There’s no such thing as crowd courtesy.

We witnessed a fight, sorta. A big Hawaiian guy was walking towards us; he stopped and looked at another guy, punched him in the face, and kept walking. The guy doing the punching was former heavy weight boxer, James Thunder. Once ranked 12th in the world by the WBA, he’s now homeless by choice on the streets of Las Vegas. He holds the record for the fastest knockout ever. See it here. The guy being punched was an off-duty police officer from Arizona, who thankfully wasn’t carrying a gun because he was drinking that night. Having witnessed an assault on an officer, we stuck around to write statements. We’ve seen James many times before; he hangs out downtown, always shirtless and shadow boxing (it’s like boxing the invisible man – you’re going thru all the moves but no one is there). He looks exactly the same now as he does in the video I linked – in top shape and ready for a match. The marshal who arrived on the scene knows James from a previous incident, where he put another marshal in the hospital with a broken nose and ax-handle to the head. He said drugs and a criminal record are keeping James out of the ring. I guess he can’t get a license to box. Every time I’ve seen him though, boxing appears to be all he thinks about. It’s a shame.