“Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.”
-Werner Herzog-
What is memorabilia?
To think that you live a life of seconds becoming minutes over hours that make up days and months of meaning over years of existence and all of that might just become a jumpsuit stuck on a pole behind a glass window at a casino in the middle of a wheat field? I took a trip into a dragon’s memorabilic den recently. I braved a 3 hour drive past the cow fields and hop houses of western Sacramento and ventured to a place they called the fire mountain. Specifically the Hard Rock Casino and Resort at Fire Mountain. I knew I had reached the top of this mountain as I opened the golden guitar shaped doors and felt the dry stale flumes of cigarette smoke inhabit my lungs.
Fire Mountain has no mountains, and no fires as far as I could see but plenty of smoke. It is notable mainly for the endless brown sheaths of injured farmland that surround this suburban oasis for gambling, debauchery, and soggy onion rings. I had come for revelry and reverie and reverb soaked remedy for a week spent avoiding joy at all costs [aka job].
Most hotels and casinos operate with some sort of multiple purpose. They are resting centers, pitstops, and in the case of this Hard Rock, a museum of old clothes. It was also a venue to catch live music, and a gambling den giving away free black and decker rainfall shower heads. According to the Fore Mountain casino’s logic, day drunk gamblers need new bathroom accessories. Knowing this was an important part of my journey, I grabbed the rainfall shower head, named it CleaniCuss, and brought it up to my room to prepare for my expedition into the hotel’s aged and dehydrated halls.
Had I come any other week I might have received a digital scale, a step stool, a soft close pedal trash bin or a toilet paper holder set. The casino’s free giveaways signaled to me that they were clearly concerned with our cleanliness, weight and bowels. My mind briefly panged to memories of potato chip addicted youth avoiding exercise at all costs. I remembered briefly a two month stint in college where I didn’t shower and immediately felt bad about both of these eras of lazyery. If I had only started gambling sooner I might be a much cleaner fitter man now.
The dinging and dinging and dingdingdingdinging of the slot machines sounded throughout my initial exploration of the mountain. I walked the sticky carpeted floors of games soaking in the hair amongst my midst. A ponytail here, a bald head there, and when my eyes were truly lucky a swoopy stead of hair sprayed upright, poodled just enough to let light sparkle off of its sheen. In my mind the casino style is rat pack. Nice shoes, sharp suits, sunglasses and fur coats. In fire mountain the shoe of choice is a camouflage croc and most men were wearing undershirts over shirts and damp spotted swim trunks.
I moved from looking to listening. A hissing din of spinning heart and joker adorned columns seductively prodded me to lose money I shouldn’t. I moved lit machine to lit machine to see where my journey began.
A duo of fireball wielding Monkeys who live on a tree made of gold coins was my first slotty sitdown. I rubbed my pockets for quarters and instead landed on a crisp $20 bill ready to be burnt by the chimpanzee magic. The key to a good gambling adventure is to ascertain within yourself where you think the luck is. Is it your gut, your chest, your foot or your breast? Does anything intrinsically call to you as you clamber the casino floor? If so follow it and embrace the unreality of this faux opportunity. I spun the machine’s wheels hoping the simians would howl and explode for me but all I got was an out-of-order sound effect of a speaker flarshing and four spinning icons wheels. My purpose had to be elsewhere. I grabbed CleaniCuss and moved on
My next stop was at the world of Cash Wizards. This world promised me that everybody wins. I thought about my life, my living, and the fact I was here at this moment doing this thing and agreed. Everyone is indeed a winner, if only for the opportunity to lose cash inside this mountainless mountain smoke box delivering free toilet accessories. Everyone is a winner but not everyone is a cash wizard. $40 magically disappeared into the spellbinding slot boxes sorcery. My conquest for cash would not be wielded by a currency warlock. I wiggled my fingers and mumbled “Kay-kal-a-magoo” at the machine but alas my spells did not work in this world either. I was a winner. I had won the wizard’s greedy scorn. “Kay-kal-a-magoo-gagoo” I mumbled.
“You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.”
-Zig Ziglar-
As I ventured further into the mountain gut, I passed many machines made to catch my eye very literally. The tech in casinos has grown through the years, and where once slots required the heavy pull of a knob to spin the mechanical wheels within, they now have eye tracking cameras that made a furry neon buffalo and a confused magic panda eyeballed me as I walked by them.
I stopped and stared deep into the buffalo’s eyes and pondered to him. What am I doing here? The buffalo snorted fake smoke and his machine sang “Ding Ding Ding Ding-Ding”. I walked away silently. To commune even with this faux beast was a powerful moment.
The buffalo and I were both trapped in the mountain. Able to walk away I was at least free from the clutches of the machine. But he could never have that freedom. His people were always inside these slots, always watching, always hoping to be fed change they wouldn’t return. I nodded at his painted fur snout and I thought about how buffalos have enormous bowel movements. Stuck in this machine he would never have to show me that. I looked down at CleaniCuss and we agreed that further into the mountain we should traverse.
The textures of casino carpet are abstract and tantalizing. Each step brings with it a brief moment of appreciation for the way lines look. Lines look awesome when they attack, crack, smish, smash and smoosh with each other. I wanted to sleep in this carpet and drink dirt in its art. Art is a big portion of the casino. In the walls of most gambling gazebos you are surrounded by artifact after artifact of assumed decadence and remembrance. Within the walls of this mountain this reality was no different.
The Hard Rock Casino and Resort at Fire Mountain identity is built around art by way the way of musical memorabilia. I passed three of James Brown’s show cloaks, a bowler cap that Slash maybe owned, and a suit that John Lennon wore one time. There were waning iconographic successes amongst these objects. A signed Eddie Van Halen motorcycle, Steven Tyler’s pajamas, and a Jerry Garcia Hawaiian shirt all hung next to dresses, more dresses, and even more dresses.
I slowly searched each item for some sort of nostalgia I could process and remember. Surely amongst this art lay something I had could recognize as meaningful to these performers. The artists were represented here only as grey faceless mannequins wearing things they may or may not have worn that one time. I stared at the band in the box and enjoyed their faceless silent moans. This was my favorite song of their set.
But when the music doesn’t move you, you can always move yourself. And I did. Slowly I ambled down to the hall of high stakes. The concept of memorabilia had me mindful of what I might be remembered for. As these musicians made their way through time did they understand that everything they touched might have some sort of reverent museum-like meaning as well? I clutched the straw and napkin in my pocket. Some day these items might be enshrined at some mountainless mountain. I looked at my shoelace untied and imagined it laced around some blue yellow lit goblet at Teddy’s No Shame Hall of Fame Museum of Curiosities for the Desperate and Confused. I should start saving my face shavings just in case someone wants to see them some day. I should keep all of my used toothpicks.
As I passed sunglasses supposedly worn by Frank Zappa I was struck by this curation’s lack of curiosity. I wanted ceramic molds of ZZTop’s beards, the seat from Elvis’s favorite toilet, or the black and decker rainfall shower head that Cyndi Lauper washed her hair beneath on the set of the Goonies “R” Good Enough music video.
Instead I got a shirt Jennifer Lopez wore to dinner some Tuesday a few years ago.
What is it about celebrity that makes us fetishize fur coats and fedoras? I might have been asking too much of the memorabilia. In my mind I wanted it all to be novelties of my nostalgia, but these objects provided pleasure to many people. I watched a man soak in a David Cassidy jumpsuit next to a Britney Spears brassiere and knew, while not for me, his day had been made. I wondered what the slot buffalo’s favorite famous bathing suit was.
I moved further into the mountain. The smoke had fully enveloped me. Covered in a day’s cigarette silt, I had made all these memories of others into my own. I suppose that is the purpose of memorabilia, to thread a soul’s line between simple man and the stars through things they touched at some point.
I patted my companion CleaniCuss on his shower head and then I pulled through my dry tangled hair and made a ball of my combings. I remembered, if I wasn’t touched by the mementos of this mountain I could always just touch myself. I settled into the smoke, sat down in front of the slot machine, and pulled the lever.