Giant Praying Mantis Firing Flames…

While a Giant Light-Covered Mushroom Changes Colors…

Friday night in Las Vegas…

The twenty-five foot metal praying mantis shoots long streams of flames from both nostrils without warning, scaring the wits out of tourists. Not sure praying mamtis have nostrils, but I won’t go there. And oldies music plays, sometimes to the beat of the fire.

The mantis is in front of the container park on Fremont and we can see the flames clearly from out place.

Now, just tonight, someone at the historical school park between our place and the praying mantis installed a forty-foot massive mushroom covered in lights that change color. I walked down to stand near it and was stunned at the size. Looks permanent. But from above out of the windows of our place, looking down on it, it is just weird.

Actually everything is weird from our place overlooking downtown Vegas.

In one direction there is a mental health building that looks from the outside that it has melted. (A Gehry design for the Cleveland Clinic, I guess to mess with people’s minds whose minds are already having issues.) A 12 story government building with lights on the side that make it look like a waterfall all night long. The thirty-story Circa Casino with bright blue moving lights over the entire side, the Fremont Street Experience with is always changing colors and flashing, another building with colors flashing and changing from left to right all night long, the fire-breathing praying mantis, and now a psychedelic giant mushroom.

And this is just the downtown area. Damn I love Vegas.