blackjack!

the imperial palace is the oldest hotel on the las vegas strip, and it's my kind of casino. dark and smokey, it's full of comfortable red nawgahide chairs and dusty chandeliers and it feels like something you'd find on the UP in michigan or western wisconsin. it's small enough to find your way around (which is not the case in anything built after 1980 on las vegas boulevard), and they know how to char a steak and create a nasty-wonderful breakfast buffet. the cocktails are strong and cold, and there is a mai tai bar in one corner creating drinkable and drunakable works of art nightly. the bloodies at the video poker bar aren't bad either.

but the big draw at the imperial palace casino are the dealertainers.

"we bring the celebrities to YOU!"

the website goes on to tell us about their blackjack dealing celebrity impersonators - Marilyn, Gwen,the Blues Brothers, Stevie, Dolly, Barbra...we are further tickled at the anticipation of "your dealer stepping back from the table and breaking into song!" doesn't that sound fun? maybe it would be a movie moment - like when you find yourself in a situation that is more like a movie scene than real life, and all of the characters are playing their parts and it feels surreal for just a few minutes. roll tape!


i could just see it..babs stepping back from the blackjack table and belting out "people" and pretty soon she'd see me swaying and she'd grab my hand and swipe all the chips and cards off the table and she and i would climb up and we'd be holding hands and singing together...

"people...people who need people....!"


and soon everyone would be sweaty and teary with their arms around each other joining in on the final chorus...an orchestra magically playing above us...

"are the luckiest people...in........the..........world!"

turns out the dealertainers at the imperial palace aren't exactly what i expected. most of them seemed sincere, but bored and tired as they dealt cards wearing tangled wigs and cheap, crusty costumes. and instead of "stepping back from the table", they climbed up on a tiny raised platform in the middle of the champagne pit with a fake cordless mic to lipsink an old favorite or fake a new hit, and the ones who knew the words were almost kind of not bad.

this got me thinking about impersonations. i love a good impersonator - someone who can mirror the real thing so closely that you are amazed it isn't real. it is real and it isn't - like the infomercials used to say.."a genu-i-ne im-i-tation."

so if an impersonation is good, the character being personified seems real. right? but then i wonder if some of us for some reason at some point became impersonations of ourselves. does it become easier as we get older to be our true and authentic selves, or have we worn out our souls to the point that it is easier to pretend that we have become what we truly meant to be but didn't get quite there?

good question. for me, the real me is showing up in ways i never expected. she's making me think differently about lots of things, like which dreams came true and why, which ones still need to be sorted out, and how when you've got your health you've got just about everything is truer nearing 50 than it was at 35. she's punching me in the heart and she's poking me in the ribs saying "sing dammit, sing" and "write dammit, write" and also "this is the year you really out to plant that border of stella dora lillies out front. it would look so nice."


whatever it turns out we've become, seems to me that, if we still have sweet dreams at night and we still try to do good each day, if we breathe deep and feel blessed, than we have been dealt

blackjack.