Jersey Boys was well worth the drive to Las Vegas! The cast is excellent and the story well-told. However, for anyone in my generation, the music kicks ass and your hands just seem to clap in rhythm without any instruction or guidance! What amazed me was that the casting director could find (1) a male singer who fit the ethnicity profile and (2) who could sing the range required for the songs, as well as (3) was really, really short! Frankie Valli is only about 5 feet tall when he's on tippy-toes, and so was the actor who portrayed him in the musical.
The story is told from the perspective of the 4 male back-up singers, as well as Frankie, and the women in their lives. I thought the story of Bob Gaudio, who was rumored to be in the audience, was more interesting than Valli's story, and realized for the first time how crucial Gaudio's music was to Valli's career. There are no holds barred, so the audience sees the good, the bad, and the even worse.
No traffic to speak of, but the LV Strip was a teeming mass of humanity. The streets and sidewalks were jammed, and the average wait time for Mother's Day Brunch was about an hour. We ate at a "local" casino, one of the smaller ones that caters to the crowds on the outskirts of the LV metropolis: one trip to the Strip is usually enough for any given weekend. I deposited my $20 gambling budget into a slot machine and moved on to bigger and better things.
On the way back, my friend wanted to stop at the salt farm outside of Amboy, where there is also the remnant of a volcano that I climbed when I was 9 months' pregnant with my daughter. Imagine my surprise, after scaling the entire side of the blasted rock pile, to find that the other side has been worn away from erosion--and had we driven around, we could have walked into the heart of the volcano, rather than climbing it. At the time, I had thought to check out the visitor's center, but that became a family joke: the volcano is simply there, next to Route 66, and if you want to visit it, you drive across the rocky sand, park, get out, and walk. If you've ever been by Amboy, you know that there ain't nuttin' there!
During the salt mining process, the sand is flooded with water that then leeches the salt to the surface, where it is scooped up, processed, and sent to the marketplace. When there is an abundance of rain, the area can become quite a large lake as it's an old lake bed. I've known several times in the past when Amboy Road was closed--completely--due to flooding. One year, people enjoyed boating on the flats as the rain had created a lake at least 6-8 feet deep.
The water turns a brilliant turquoise, which is stunning, as the leeching process occurs. In the photos, one view shows that brilliance and the other shot shows what looks to me like a lunar landscape, with the salt, the mud, and a pile of debris from mining the salt that has been brought to the surface.
Years ago there were tours of the plant, but I don't know if the area is still open to that.
No comments:
Post a Comment