Brutal Hearts
Thunderbird Lounge. Crystal Connors. Sequins. Smoking indoors. Las Vegas and I go way back. I read a lot of Elmore Leonard as a kid. He contributed to anthologies that had some memorable desert dwellers. Showgirls came out and I was too young to realize the satire. I just thought Gina Gershon looked great walking around in a short sequin dress and heels. Crystal Connors was the epitome of Sin City for me. Before arriving in Las Vegas, it’s safe to say I had a preconceived notion of what the city was about.
I lived there for 6 years. I don’t think there’s a lounge bar in that town I hadn’t visited. Every night of the year you can go out and it’s always a different story, a different crowd because it’s a transient town. The only constants in the town are the people that work in the casino.
Do you know where UNLV students worked? At the casinos. I had a boring office job at the Monte Carlo and I would sometimes have the swing shift. During my hour lunch break, I would walk next store to the Coney Island casino, which has since been torn down. They had a lounge bar with a live band that played Motown classics. I would walk there and chain smoke while listening to live music and people-watching. If I ever had a shift with a schoolmate, we would grab food at work and head over there.
If I didn’t leave work during lunch? I would go to the smoker’s room and listen to the card dealers talk. I will never meet a demographic of people more unimpressed with humanity than card dealers. The lives they have seen fall to pieces every night at their tables. I heard one dealer simply say, “I hate people.” No story. No explanation. Just a simple statement before she put her cigarette out and went back to work.
Before you ask, yes, I do have an undeveloped Vegas screenplay. I think every film student that went to UNLV had their own version of Ocean’s Eleven living in draft form on their laptop. I have one with a lounge singer and I have one with a degenerate gambler. Nothing new, but both are Vegas staples on the level of religious iconography for the city. I think that’s why Diplo’s cover and music video resonated with me so much.
Bedouin Soundclash came out with this song around 2010. Great song. I think I heard it a few times and haven’t thought about it since. When I opened Spotify two days ago and went to Sturgill Simpson and saw that a Diplo song now held his top spot, I pressed play and was blown away.
The rattle opening is reminiscent of the opening to most Tarantino films. A snippet of the music video played as well. What do we see? Dove Cameron sitting in a lounge on her break smoking a cigarette while holding her drink. [I doubt Dove Cameron is old enough to remember smoking indoors, but wasn’t that a good time? I just mentioned this to someone the other day. When cigarettes weren’t that bad, we could smoke them inside while enjoying our beverage and food.] Diplo walks in on a mission and he’s the wild card in the story. The character throws a monkey wrench into everyone else’s plans. Then I hear Sturgill’s voice. When Sturgill starts singing, especially when you’re hearing him sing a song for the first time, you pay attention. We don’t see him though, we see Sean Penn.
Listen to the lyrics of this song. I’m just glad you want me at all. Hearts that break the night in two and arms that can’t hold you that’s true. Sturgill sings those words while Sean Penn acts them out on stage. This is a story. Someone needs to turn this into a movie. I love characters that have hit the bottom of the barrel and they’ve run out of options and there’s really nowhere left to go - that’s when the “fuck it” kicks in and we’re treated to a heck of a ride.
It was a multiverse moment for me when I heard this song. Las Vegas memories came flooding back into my mind. The only difference is that my Elmore Leonard main character now had a face. Someone I didn’t even know during the Vegas years, well, now their face was showing up in my visions of neon flamingos and lounge bars. Standing there as part of my story, as if they had always been there. Thank you, multiverse for that.
What does it all mean? It’s almost four in the morning, I can’t tell you and anything I can come up with wouldn’t serve anyone but my own visions. What I do know. Tapping into Las Vegas Sabrina has been great. This is definitely my summer song. Send me more visions of desert drives with the moonlight and ending up at a lounge bar that reveals more answers.