Buying a condo yesterday I had to sign my name on so many documents that at a certain point I retreated into a fantasy world in which it was copies of my debut novel I was signing for my worshipful readers. But then one piece of paper leapt out at me: Gaming Disclosure form. By Nevada statue the seller must warn me that there is gambling in Las Vegas. I signed. Then I was required to sign a map with the Strip marked to prove that I was duly warned where this gambling takes place. Finally, I signed yet another form acknowledging that I had got the original gaming disclosure form. Obviously, this is not Casablanca, and no one is allowed to be shocked, shocked that there is gambling taking place in Las Vegas. Oh, unless you rent.

Yesterday I got an emergency e-mail from a publicist: "Las Vegas Urgently Needs More Santas." You better believe it.

But in this case the call out was for a very specific purpose: a 5K Santa run. Apparently, Liverpool, England holds the record for the most running Santas at 3,991. Last year, Las Vegas attempted to best that total and came about 1,000 Santas short. This year, the head Santa will be Oscar Goodman (don't ask that Santa if the homeless have been naughty or nice). Fellow blogger Robin Leach will be the Santa emcee.

The Las Vegas Great Santa Run takes place Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Fremont Street Experience. The hope is that enough Santas will show up this time to beat Liverpool; the organizers would really like more Santas, so if you've got the suit and are up for a morning run, walk or even stroll....

If, for some reason, Vegas does not take out the town that birthed the Beatles this year, on the bright side then, Vegas will likely try again next year. Regardless, the entire event raises money for the wonderful local charity, Opportunity Village.

Review-Journal columnist Jane Ann Morrison has a good look at Vegas juice in action with a story today about County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates. Gates has a truly imperial personality. In fact, I got to watch her work her stuff once at a meeting of the Clark County Commission, and it amazes me she doesn't just refer to herself with the royal "we." Everyone knows not to get on the wrong side of the royal we.

Anyway, Gates is now building a custom palace, I mean home, and like some other builders in the neighborhood she had the same bureaucratic hassles with installing her electric box. But according to the Review-Journal, unlike some of the neighbors, Gates was able to get her complaint to the Nevada Power president, and the bureaucrats immediately backed off. Of course, the president of Nevada Power insists he gave Gates no special treatment; but he admits no one else could have reached him with such a ground-level issue. Nonetheless, according to Pat Shalmy, Nevada Power president, nothing untoward happened, because in a hypothetical situation, like if a miracle happened, and Joe Blow citizen had ever managed to actually reach him (which could never really happen), "But if Joe Blow had, I would have acted the same," Shalmy said.

That makes me feel better. Meanwhile, Gates apparently feels she was just Joe Blow, because while she didn't actually say that was her name, she defends herself by telling Morrison she only identified herself as Yvonne Gates to Nevada Power (a company regulated by County Commissioner Gates). "I don't go around telling everybody I am Commissioner Gates," she said.

Of course, she doesn't have to. As this example shows, her subjects already know her quite well. Long live Her Highness, Yvonne Atkinson Gates. But I don't blame her on this one; she is dealing with the reality on the ground. In Vegas, as this seriously shows, even for the stuff you are entitled to do, you often need to know someone to get it done.

Two updates on items from yesterday:

As if in answer to my question "Who Is Buying Vegas," from yesterday, arrives this in today's Las Vegas Sun "Casinos See Private Funds as a Way to Go."

The short answer according to reporter Liz Benston is that Wall Street's focus on quarterly profits no longer makes sense for Vegas:

"Gaming companies build expensive casinos every few years or substantially revamp existing ones to drive growth...By trading public shareholders for a smaller, more focused group of private owners, executives can make unpopular decisions that make sense longer term, experts say."

Meanwhile, there have been fresh developments in yesterday's item on the smoking ban: some tavern owners have gone to court to stop the new law that bans smoking in some establishments. According to a lawyer for the group, a lot of the problem the tavern owners have is that the law is too complicated for him to understand in order to tell them how to comply with it. Attorney Kirk Lenhard complains to the Review-Journal, "I've got seven years of college education and I'm not sure what it means."

Let me help: It means if your tavern has something called a restricted gaming license(you know, if you have one, there was an application, a hearing: the whole shebang) and you serve food then you are required to be a non-smoking establishment.

In defense of Mr. Lenhard's English skills my guess is he probably could have understood the new law after those first four years of college; his reading troubles probably come from those final three years presumably spent at law school. Messed up reading skills often can be attributed to law school graduation. For now, Lenhard is trying to get a restraining order to delay the law. But the experts interviewed in the story say that in the long term, Mr. Lenhard's legal arguments against the smoking ban are about as likely to prevail as a chain smoker trying to run a complete marathon.

I have spent the past two days in and out of the veterinarian hospital visiting with my beloved cat, Doodle, who is getting the equivalent of kitty dialysis. Her life is very precarious at the moment and this is the first time I have ever written the Buffet without her sitting with a purr on my lap as I type.

As I am thinking of nothing else right now, this gives me the occasion to comment on one area of Las Vegas few think about: Las Vegas residents are truly nutty about our pets. I am not alone. We have not one but two publications for dog owners in Vegas. There is also local freelance journalist Steve Friess' podcast dedicated to Vegas pets.

Some of you will remember that earlier this year Friess gave the Buffet an account of Steve Wynn taking his pooches to Macau with him.

When Rita Rudner (now at Harrah's) was headlining at an MGM-Mirage property, the resort had a no-pets-allowed policy. The comedian went to the trouble to work a bit into her act where her dog more or less just came out for a few moments onstage to act like a dog, thereby securing her pet a performer's exemption. Good doggy.

Then there's Roy Horn. True or not, the story goes that after Horn was mauled, his first words were an order that nothing happen to the giant cat who attacked him.

We have more than our share of private shelters for animals, including many exotic ones retired from Strip shows. Then there are people; there are many, many unheralded pet fanatics, too, in the Las Vegas valley.

There is a marketing director I know who works with a variety of Strip production shows and spends her free time (and more money than she can afford) arranging to adopt and care for abandoned giant dogs with medical issues. An adult star I've known for years offers as her primary reason for not dating that her cat has to sleep on her belly every night.

Off the top of my head, I don't think I know a single person in Las Vegas who does not have at least one pet. Drive around town and you will see more pet-oriented businesses (vet hospitals, very elite gourmet pet supply stores, pet grooming shops and pet supply chain stores) than there are churches or even casinos. Maybe it is because so many of us in Las Vegas are transplants with few family members in town, or maybe the straightforward relationship you can have with your pets lacks the pretension, flash and agendas of so much of the Las Vegas experience. But one way I feel very in sync with Las Vegas is that in a town that can be cynical to vicious about any show of sentimentality most of the time about most every single thing, when it comes to pets, no one smirks at dedication.

photo by Sarah Gerke

Ever so slowly the city of Las Vegas like some tribal area of Pakistan is being brought into compliance with a distant federal government that has so far been unable to extend its influence this far out into the hinterland.

Apparently, there is something called the Constitution that allows the odd practice of free speech in public forums. Obviously, Las Vegas was sure this distant government back East didn't mean to apply this strange custom to every public forum.

Take, for example, Fremont Street Experience, a gigantic pedestrian walk under a canopy that offers a multimillion dollar light show. Fremont Street Experience was created in 1995 out of closed-off public roads to attract tourists downtown. Las Vegas gets that tourists don't want to see booths with literature on God, or union protestors with leaflets on labor practice or, just imagine it, freaky lefties leading a protest against the war in Iraq. That would be too much like home and this is a vacation. So, always being concerned about our guests, the city of Las Vegas banned such things.

The city decided to simply not allow any of that stuff to go on at Fremont Street Experience. Las Vegas has been working for nearly a decade and spending truckloads of taxpayer money on lawyers to make sure the city can continue to ban free speech now and ban free speech forever (to paraphrase another pandering regional politician fighting the power of the feds). The city has done everything possible to avoid this crazy protection of free speech. It even covers panhandlers!

Perhaps the city was hoping the third time would be the charm; it wasn't. Las Vegas has once again lost a case before the very stubborn 9th District Court of Appeals that again is demanding the city follow the Constitution. This sets a scary precedent by applying federal law to Las Vegas. Where can all this end? What could be next? How far down the road can male cocktail servers be?