The Grit behind the Glitz ...
New Book Reveals Inside
Story on Las Vegas

          By Fred Delkin

     We just read "Under the Neon Sky"...a casino employees's treatise on 
his adventures as a Las Vegas doorman at the MGM Grand on Sin City's famed 
entertainment Strip.   We expected to be skeptical of this work, since we 
spent 2 «  years as a journalist in that environment.  However, author Jay 
Rankin accurately chronicles the destructive foibles of that fantasyland 
and its effect on the human psyche.  We recommend this read for anyone 
who's been to Vegas or contemplating a journey there.

You'll have a disconcerting look behind the facade that lures millions to 
this supposed paradise. Rankin describes Las Vegas as "not a city that's 
about making smart decisions, or knowing when to stop...it's not meant to 
be...the attractions of gambling, sex, drinking, getting high-are very 
slippery slopes...designed to make you prolong your stay or keep coming 
back."  Rankin writes from a background of six years of seeing the grit 
behind the glitz...and now, as a practicing clinical psychiatrist in Los 
Angeles, this Vegas escapee presents a view we wish we had crafted from our own time in purgatory.

Rankin accurately captures the spectacle and pageantry of Vegas that 
convinces visitors that the best of everything is at their fingertips 24 
hours a day, seven days a week,  year 'round.  "Las Vegas is alive with 
action and anticipation, and you can't help but want to be a part of 
it...the atmosphere tells the visitor they're part of the 'in crowd" and 
that you simply can't be bored here."  There are no boundaries, no rules 
that one is forced to observe wherever they reside in real life...."no 
clock, no last call, no line in the sand.  You can do what you want, 
whenever you want, with whom you want.  You can stay out all night and bet it all.  Your fantasies are right in front of you, and you find it 
impossible to say 'no'."  Yes, the forbidden makes Vegas unforgettable.

Rankin succumbed to this scene even while understanding it, losing his 
wife, his closest male friend and finally forcing himself to return to 
sanity...much as this writer did when he drove across Nevada's northern 
border and literally hugged the first accessible evergreen tree on the
roadside to reality.  

"Under the Neon Sky" introduces the panoply of characters who live and work in Las Vegas, and the reader gains insight into their individual motivations.  The book reads like a novel, but our own Vegas experience makes it a disturbingly true portrayal Just published under the auspices of Rankin's own enterprise, Rankin Publishing, the book is stocked by Amazon and available online or at Borders retail outlets.

© 2010 Oregon Magazine