Rocket Boys and Las Vegas

I've been reading Rocket Boys by the marvellously named Homer H Hickam Jr. It's a memoir of a boy growing up in a coalmining town in West Virginia in the 1950s. (I think I chose it as a reaction to the Beaconsfield accident and rescue.) Homer, known as Sonny, is inspired by the missile launches at Cape Canaveral to get his mates together to make and launch their own rockets. They're all coal miners' sons when the mine is facing an uncertain future and, apart from the sheer joy of making things go bang, they see making rockets as a way to get them to college and away from coal mining where their daddies and grandaddies worked until roofs caved in or they died of black lung.

At that age, I might have had a fleeting idea that it might be fun to blow things up but I'd never have shifted myself to do anything about it, much less lobby the school to get a calculus class started so they could do the sums to work out rocket design. In fact, if they'd told me you could do fun stuff with calculus, I might have enjoyed it more.

Sonny's a pretty engaging character and the book is a good read so far.

When I started this blog, I just wanted it to be about books but I realise now that I've been ignoring the other great influence on my life: television. My Beloved and I were watching Las Vegas last night (where he's been recently). It's a terrible show but tremendous fun because it doesn't take itself seriously. All the hotel rooms are more glamorous than any room I've ever seen. Every time main characters walk past a row of poker machines, extras celebrate a jackpot. All of the women are beautiful unless their lack of glamour is a major plot point. No one gets drunk (unless ditto). Watching this show could give young women the impression that there is a rewarding career in wearing evening clothes all day encouraging extremely rich men to lose their money. In the event that casino security (who, in this show, are far far more powerful than the local, state and federal law enforcement - yes, even than those CSI folks) make a terrible mistake and infringe people's civil liberties, everyone is made happy again with a free suite at the mythical Montecito.

My Beloved said that the Vegas casinos are just like the ones here and full of really old and fat people playing poker machines. I guess most things look better on telly.