in the mood for love

All you need`s a strong heart and a nerve of steel. Viva Las Vegas, Viva Las Vegas - Elvis Presley

On the evening of Oct. 4, 1982, Lefty Rosenthal, the talented professional gambler and gangster-when-necessary who had brought sports betting to casinos in Las Vegas and illicitly run an empire of four hotel casinos, walked out of Tony Roma’s on East Sahara Avenue with an order of takeout ribs. He had just finished dinner with some fellow handicappers, and he was bringing the food home for his two children. When he got into his car, it blew up.

Mr. Rosenthal survived the explosion — later he could not remember whether he had turned the ignition key — but the attempt on his life, for which no one was ever prosecuted, ended his career as one of the most powerful men in Las Vegas. He left the city early the next year and on Monday, at home in Miami Beach, he died. He was 79 and had lived in Florida since the late 1980s.

By most accounts he was a cheat, an egomaniac, a friend of the mob, and he most brilliant man ever to have ruled the Las Vegas casinos—before he was finally blacklisted by the Nevada gaming authorities in the 1980s.

The influence of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal over Sin City was such that his life became the subject of a 1995 Martin Scorsese movie, Casino, in which he was played by Robert De Niro. Even after his exile to Florida, it was widely believed that Rosenthal—nicknamed ‘Lefty’ for the notorious instance when he plead the Fifth Amendment no less than 38 times, refusing even to confirm that he was left-handed—was indestructible. After all, he had survived a direct hit by a car bomb in 1982 outside Tony Roma’s steakhouse—a fluke probably attributable to the steel plate fitted to his Cadillac Eldorado to correct a balancing problem. Locals claim they can still point to the scorch marks in the restaurant’s car park on East Sahara Avenue.

After moving to Las Vegas at the age of 39 from Chicago, because he was denied a gambling license, he ended up running the Stardust, Hacienda, Fremont and Marina casinos on behalf of Allen Glick, regarded by the FBI as a frontman for the Chicago mob. Rosenthal was known for keeping his casinos free of professional cheaters—through techniques depicted in the film. Caught cheating at a table game? You would be taken in the back and have your hand crushed with a rubber mallet. Dare to put your feet on a gaming table? You would be thrown head first out of a window, not a door. Make the mistake of insulting Rosenthal or threatening him? You would be beaten to near death, all while Rosenthal looked down at you, calmly smoking his cigarette and sipping his favorite drink, sparkling water.

Rosenthal also hosted his own weekly Stardust-sponsored TV show—The Frank Rosenthal Show—on which his first guest was Frank Sinatra. All the while, the authorities suspected Rosenthal’s casinos of engaging in ‘skimming’—where cash from a legal business is shipped off to crime syndicates before it’s ever counted. Rosenthal’s ‘enforcer’ in this activity was said to be his boyhood friend Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro . Indeed, it has been noted that there was a 70 per cent spike in the Las Vegas murder rate after Spilotro’s arrival. By the late 1970s, however, Rosenthal and Spilotro had fallen out over Spilotro’s affair with Rosenthal’s estranged wife, Ginger McGee, a Vegas showgirl and known hustler.

Ginger McGee



Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro"


Meanwhile, Spilotro had formed a jewel-thieving ring known as the Hole in the Wall Gang and had been blacklisted by the gaming authorities thanks to the testimony of Aladena “Jimmy The Weasel” Fratianno, which saw him indicted for skimming. Some believe that Spilotro might have conspired to kill Rosenthal with the bungled 1982 car bomb attack. Whatever the case, Spilotro ultimately became a liability for the mob and it is said that his execution was ordered in 1986 by captains in Chicago. According to popular folklore, Spilotro was beaten and then buried alive in a cornfield, along with his brother, Michael. The autopsies supported the theory.

It was Rosenthal’s association with Spilotro that ultimately drove him out of Sin City. “In retrospect, reputation and the fact that we were boyhood friends—there was no way for me to overcome it,” he admitted to Florida’s Sun-Sentinel.

As one anonymous former federal prosecutor told the Review Journal yesterday: “It’s been said you should never speak ill of the dead. There are exceptions to the rule. Frank Rosenthal is one of those exceptions. He was an awful human being.”

Wild in the Streets

1968 cult classic. When Congress gives 15-year-olds the right to vote the youngsters promptly elect a rock-star president. But after the new president decrees mandatory retirement at 30 and LSD therapy at 35 Americans begin to suspect that democracy has hit a minor snag. Anarchy goes airborne in this insane often uproarious farce about vaporizing the generation gap. When a deadly gas kills everyone over 25 the world devolved into a chaotic and zany struggle for power. And as a band of peace-loving hippies goes cross-country seeking utopia only to find football fascists and demented dictators they soon discover that even the American dream has a touch of gas.

I tried to kill myself once but apparently I have a hight tolerance to pills, so now I just take them recreationally

Lock your doors

Economists have finally admitted that this country is in a recession. They said it won't be like the Great Depression of the 30's but more like the general malaise that occurred in the 1970s following that energy crisis. Uh deja vu anyone? Oh but here's the rub. During this period in the 1970s also saw the rise of dictatorships and the fall into chaos of many "third-world" countries. The crime rate surged to all-time highs, and lasted for the better part of a decade well into the 1980s, culminating what some historians call the "Century of Murder." Sorry for the gloom and doom but my dad was robbed the other day at gunpoint, it was his birthday. The cops told him "people are desperate."

He sang as if he knew me in all my dark despair. And then he looked right through me as if I wasn't there.

Kamikaze Taxi

Quite possibly the greatest movie of all time.