Welcome to snowy Las Vegas. Sorry to have been gone for a couple days from blogging; we were having computer and Web problems that I hope are now fixed. And while I write items to catch you up on the last few days in Vegas (a casino was sold; a magician's assistant was hurt on stage at the MGM; and a certain show, if you can Believe it, has begun massive discounting on the quiet, among other events), I thought I would first share a little with you about what happened when it snowed here.

Sadly, Buffet photographer Sarah Gerke is out of state for the holidays and was therefore not around to take the photo I wanted of the Luxor covered in snow (let's see Criss Angel try that trick!).

But because I grew up in the East and was educated mostly in the Midwest, what amazed me was how Las Vegas is truly a fake place when it comes to the outdoors. And for tourists, when it comes to that spot between the valet and the resort entrance that we call the outdoors, Vegas tries to keep you totally separated from the thing. How many windows do you see in a casino? Standing on the Strip on a clear night and looking up into the sky, good luck trying to spot a star among all the man-made lighting around you. The Strip lights blot out the heavens.

In short, in a lot of ways, Vegas has always been at war with nature. Without air conditioning, nothing like Vegas in its current form would exist. This town has brutal desert winds that tourists almost never feel on the Strip. Also, the construction and landscaping is remarkably fragile considering how harsh the climate can be. The very weekend I moved here (Fourth of July weekend in 1999), Vegas had enough rain that the media called the event "the 100-year storm." For this new Vegas resident, the rain came through the roof of my apartment and rained on my floor. When a repair crew arrived with the landlord, I was told that buildings simply weren't meant to handle that much rain at once. No buildings could, I was told. Incredulous, I asked him what happens when they build in Seattle. And then I got that Vegas shrug people give when caught in a transparent fib but simply don't care enough to tell another one. Auto mechanics do the shrug best here.

Anyway, so this was the first really sustained snow since I moved here, I was curious to see how the buildings would hold up. At least at my condominium complex, all went well. I live in Green Valley, which of course is not at all green by nature and I don't think is technically a valley. But there is man-made green. So, many of what we call trees are little sprouts with sticks holding them up and a timed sprinkler keeping the roots from drying out. But even the full-grown trees are feeble affairs not really meant to exist outdoors in a desert. And if you can imagine a hurricane hitting a desert, that is what it looked like here Thursday and this morning. The snow froze on the trees, and many of the trees simply collapsed, with their trunks splitting. One resident told me her entrance was blocked for a day by the many tree branches that had fallen in front of her door.

This should obviously be a wake-up call when considering replacing all these trees, as they clearly can not survive the swings in Nevada's climate, even with a stick to hold them up and a sprinkler to keep them growing. Snow and rain force Vegas to face nature: one of the many forms of reality, like the economy, this town would prefer to avoid and now must face.

Photo credit: Richard Abowitz

This is the time of year when Vegas turns inward and events created by locals gain prominence. That in part is because things are slow historically leading up to July 4 weekend.  For locals, it's now easy to buy two-for-one tickets to production shows or to get a local's rate for a staycation room on the Strip. In fact, I am thinking of checking into a resort on the Strip on Sunday night to report on the condition of the place for the Buffet. Obviously, all the promotions geared at locals require a Nevada identification. 

But some events created by locals that are happening now are also great fun for outsiders. I have been covering the CineVegas film festival, which is owned by Danny and Robin Greenspun. This is the same family that owns Las Vegas Weekly, where I am on staff.  In fact, today one of the films showing at the festival is a documentary on family patriarch Hank Greenspun, whose life, when not creating a media and real estate empire in Vegas, found him constantly in the midst of the national zeitgeist, including important cameos in the Zionist movement, fighting McCarthyism and even Watergate.

Anyway, CineVegas has achieved a lot of success because the Greenspun family has doggedly backed a high-end ambitious film festival in this town, where no one thought a film festival could break through the din of live entertainment in Vegas. Now, after a decade of support, CineVegas artistic advisory board chair Dennis Hopper told me Sunday, the status of CineVegas is finally reaching parity with the ambition the festival has always shown. "The great thing right now is that we are finally getting sponsors and it is beginning to pay for itself and the theaters are packed," Hopper said. "But, really, it took Danny and Robin Greenspun to really believe in this and support this and work hard on this for years to get us to this level."

Another special event in a very different sense also took place this weekend: the Golden Rainbow's 22nd Annual Ribbon of Life benefit variety performance. This year the rotating benefit was hosted at a Harrah's property, Paris. Entertainers make far less than most people realize, and Golden Rainbow was started by Strip performers in the '80s to help peers living with HIV/AIDS.

From the beginning, Golden Rainbow worked at being an intensely local charity. The mission statement printed on each Ribbon of Life ticket: "Golden Rainbow provides housing and direct financial assistance to men and women and children living with HIV/AIDS in Southern Nevada."

This year, along with the show and the silent auction, organizers told me Golden Rainbow raised a record $300,000.

Next year, if you are in Vegas around Father's Day, do not miss the Ribbon of Life show. Though it is now a tradition that has outlasted most casinos on the Strip, it is a show I hadn't gone to until now. I will never miss this event again.

The Ribbon of Life production offers a rare collaboration between performers, choreographers and costume designers from almost every major show on the Strip. And the performance is special because of all the creative working together for this annual benefit of a mere two performances (Saturday and Sunday). One quirk of the benefit is that the shows take place in the afternoon so that everyone can be at their evening  performances later. And because the show took place during the day, the audience had the sort of family component you rarely see in a Vegas showroom, with lots of kids.

The show was all pleasure. Performers in Vegas shows often have more talent than a successful production in this town allows them to display. So Ribbon of Life's variety skits are a sort of creative liberation for a lot of performers to go all out. As a result, these skits, while containing many elements familiar to Strip entertainment, were far different from what these performers usually do. Some material, like a skit debating the Iraq war, offered dialog too raw in its politics for tourists.  Another routine choreographed to "Eleanor Rigby"  captured the song's loneliness and darkness in ways different from the way, say, Cirque's Love treats the same song.

Yet, Ribbon of Live was not artsy and envelope-pushing in the extreme. This was mostly family entertainment. In fact, there were cute touches that no Strip production would offer, such as a Muppet number that featured children in Muppet costumes being guided and/or carried by professional dancers (probably mom or dad). Nothing that innocent and adorable would be in an official Strip show. There were also performers of different ages, sizes and shapes than you normally see on the Strip. But even the elderly showgirls were still capable hoofers. Imagine an amateur variety show put together for charity by world-class entertainers and you get the unique vibe of Ribbon of Life.

My favorite moment was provided by the present and former cast members of "Mamma Mia," called "You Gotta Get a Cirque Show." In the skit (pictured above), the cast members ponder their future in the face of plans to close "Mamma Mia." They realize this means adapting to a Strip gone Cirque. The Canadian circus troupe currently has five permanent shows on the Strip, and Criss Angel is set to open at Luxor in September, Cirque's next show on the Strip. So, there were plenty of Cirque performers among the 300 onstage volunteer entertainers who participated in Ribbon of Life this year. The Cirque performers actually seemed to be laughing harder than anyone as the skit mocked their supremacy and the envy that generates on the Strip. While the number is funny, there is nothing mean-spirited about this act, more rueful.

Ribbon of Life's longevity has made this performance a beloved Vegas tradition. But as one of the organizers of the benefit, Thomas Bruny (who by day is director of marketing at Fremont Street Experience) reminded me, "I love doing this show. But when we started doing this, I would have been crushed to know 22 years later, we would still be doing it. There is an entire new generation at risk. So, while I love this show, each year I think about more people who aren't here anymore."

(Photo by Sarah Gerke)

In many ways Saturday night's Helldorado Days Parade in Las Vegas could have been any small town. It was hosted by the Las Vegas Elks. An honor guard of firefighters took the lead in dress uniforms with flags. There were high school marching bands, chanting Girl Scouts groups, the Shriners in their little buggies and community groups that I never heard of, such as the Nevada Gay Rodeo Assn.

The Helldorado Days Parade claims to be the oldest tradition in Las Vegas, boasting a 103-year-old legacy. Of course, like most truths about Vegas, there is some fudging around the edges. For example, the parade was discontinued for a while in the '90s, has been moved (the Fremont Street Experience stands on part of one old parade route) and shrunk and, finally, perhaps to attract more people, moved into the evening (avoiding the necessary heat-braving attitude implied in the Helldorado Days name).

And, like everything about Vegas, Helldorado was a tradition originally created to bring tourists to Las Vegas. Helldorado Days was started in 1935 after the completion of the Hoover Dam (and the departure of thousands of workers who built the project) caused the city fathers to feel that the nascent city of Las Vegas was threatening to become a ghost town.

But nowadays Helldorado is the rare Vegas event definitely geared to locals. Fans given out on wooden sticks urged support for local judicial candidates. "I like to see the politicians," Monica Patalong told me as she monitored a group of four children watching the parade. She added: "I like that they moved it to the evening instead of during the day. The history is important, and in Las Vegas it is always good to have something you can bring kids to."

In fact, families and seniors lined much of the parade route, making up the majority of spectators. Carol Layland, 70, told me she has come to more Helldorado Days Parades than she can recall. "This brings back many memories," Layland said while awaiting the start of the parade. "It used to have a much longer parade route. But I still enjoy it every time."

Perhaps the most recognizable presence in the parade this year was Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, bearing a supersized version of his trademark martini. After waving to every person he could find, Goodman explained his take on the Helldorado Days Parade to me:  "This is what Las Vegas is all about, a sense of community. It is absolutely a locals' thing."

(Photo by Sarah Gerke)

Usually Las Vegas keeps nature under control for tourists. You can't look into the sky on the Strip and see the stars; only resort lights are visible. About all of the real world you need to face is the walk from the valet to the resort door, and even that limited engagement with outdoors is transformed by heat lamps in the winter and misters in the summer.

Las Vegas is all about defying nature.

We offer faux lakes and water shows in the midst of a barren desert. The possibility of Las Vegas actually running out of water won't change the illusion of plentiful resorts.

Within resorts there are all sorts of microclimates. There are shark tanks at Mandalay Bay and the Golden Nugget. The Bellagio has a plush greenhouse. Lion and tiger habitats are at the MGM Grand and Mirage. Anyway, the point is that nature is used as a harnessed and controlled attraction in Las Vegas; except for pools in the summer and walking the Strip, tourists rarely face the actual forces of nature here.

But yesterday was an exception. In a one-hour period, just after rush hour, the temperature dropped 20 degrees -- from a comfy 70 to 54 degrees. But it was the desert wind that made for a night I will not soon forget.