The irony was just too much last Thursday.
In the morning, I had a conversation with a friend in Reno. He was excited about the opening of the Krispy Kreme donut shop at Kietzke Lane and McCarran Boulevard. It was all he could talk about. I must admit giving him a few neener-neeners because I now live in Las Vegas, where there have been Krispy Kremes for a while (even though I have not visited one since I've been down here, a fact which I am sure my waistline appreciates).
Later that morning, I attended Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's press conference. He has Thursday press conferences every week, but this one was different: He, along with Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt and a Clark County Commissioner, was declaring Dec. 12 to be Frank Sinatra Day. He shared the stage with the late legend's daughter, Tina, and a Sinatra-themed slot machine that plays snippets of one of his hits every time a player spins a reel.
Of course, the conference was crawling with media. The Associated Press even did a news brief on the declarations, which made The New York Times Web site.
The press conference had more than one ridiculous eye-rolling moment. After it was over, I grabbed some lunch and headed back to the office. As I munched on my sandwich, I checked CNN.com, which had the two following headlines:
"Pirates Kill America's Cup Skipper"
"Uzbek warlord rejects Afghan accord"
Warlords? Pirates?
Goodness. This sounded like something out of the Middle Ages, not the world circa 2001. Given a little more detail, the stories under these headlines take on a little more of a modern feel (the modern pirates were criminals patrolling the Amazon River in Brazil; the warlord was a local leader who felt the newly negotiated Afghanistan coalition government slighted his interests). The old-world flair could have been lessened had the headline writers chosen different, yet just as accurate words.
It was only later that the irony hit me in the head like a air-dropped Western aid package -- here in Nevada, we're running around talking about Sinatra slots and donuts, while in other parts of the world, warlords and pirates are still wreaking havoc. What in the heck does this mean?
Well, for one, it means Americans can be shallow dorks sometimes. It's true that some of us get wrapped up a little bit too much in the materialistic things of life. Heck, all of us have gotten a bit wrapped up in stupid things before. I get all worked up every week about writing a column that serves the express purpose of, I hope, briefly amusing someone, for pete's sake. (And, occasionally, the purpose pissing off the overly uptight, but that's a story for another time.)
And that's why most of us should stop and thank our lucky stars for where we are, and for what we have. Our lives are not perfect, sure -- some of us have horrible problems that are almost too much to bear. But for most of us, most of the time, our lives are pretty damned good compared to the lives of those in more impoverished parts of the world.
It's excusable for us to shallow sometimes. What is inexcusable is for us to take our good fortune for granted. Those of us who let our success lead ourselves to some sort of elitism, those of us who don't make a conscious effort to give a helping hand every once in a while, those of us who don't feel the need to be involved in our society -- well, those of us deserve a hot cattle prod insertion.
Enjoy the stupid high-calorie, cream-filled pastries. Play that stupid Sinatra slot machine (if you can tolerate the random snippets of music that bellow during every spin -- random snippets that do a great disservice to the great talent of The Chairman of the Board). But also grab a tag off of that tree to get a present for an unfortunate child, treat everyone with respect and do whatever you can to support the candidate of your choice in the next election.
And thank God -- or your lucky stars or karma or whatever -- that pirates and warlords are not part of our lives.
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who thinks Las Vegas drivers are idiots compared to Truckee Meadows motorists. His column appears here Tuesdays, and he can be reached via e-mail at jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org.