WE VISIT CITY CENTER This complex of hotel/condo/casino/shopping/destination resorts has been taking shape longer than I can remember, and is now complete. The buildings are jaw dropping. I'll bet CSI is already planning a clever murder for the shopping area that's right out of Logan's Run. The complex is so huge, it requires a monorail to go from building to building. We got the chance to stop by New Years weekend, which anyone will tell you, is the worst time to go as the crowds are nuts, so another, more lucid trip is in the works. Ride the monorail here. AVATAR - a Few Unworthy Observations Brenden Palms / 3D IMAX / THX. Packed house Christmas Day at the 1:15pm show. Stunningly lavish film where the incredible $400 million budget is evident in every frame. If I were to gripe, it would be confined to the storyline which is a pastiche of everything Cameron likes and every western you've already seen. I won't go into the Unobtainium (found on the periodic table next to Adamantium) but my favorite character was Stephen Lang as Colonel Quidditch who seemed stamped from the Small Warriors mold. My main, rather selfish concern is twofold; being how high they've raised the CGI bar and between Avatar and the Star Wars saga plundering the Edgar Rice Burroughs creations, how this will affect the production of John Carter of Mars to be released in 2012. I NEVER DRINK. . . BLOOD No, I don't oblige panhandlers or those who will work for food. Nor do I propitiate the buckets of sidewalk Santas or feed the starving children of anywhere. But, what I've been doing since 1974 is giving blood. It's one of the few donations where nobody takes a percentage off the top. Plus it's something you can give away but you still have it. How can you argue with that? It hasn't been a consecutive 29 years however. When I moved to Vegas, records started all over again. There was a year I was on hiatus for my cancer problem, another year when my veins collapsed, but I'm back in action and have just received my 6 gallon pin. THE NOSTALGIA PROJECT I look like crap, and chances are, if you're in any of these pictures I took 30 years ago and you're still alive, you probably look like crap too. If you're not still alive, you probably look worse! I'm in the process of taking 15 albums containing photos of fandom from 1960 to the present, scanning the bastards plus loads of associated printed material and putting on this very website for your amusement and edification! Yep, Boomers Lament, a sordid tale of my 50 years in fandom is now online from 1947 through 1975 at the moment and prepared to receive your admiration and scorn. Me in Calais, 1975> Oh yes, I realize those who would remotely find this material of interest are already dropping like flies; not from reading this, I assure you, but time is of the essence! Click ME and head for the Boomers Lament contents page while you still can! I GO TO THE GYM So here I am, just hit 63, retired and can't pull away from the computer; a sure-fire cause of "Gut Bloat" and certainly, blaring evidence of a life gone to squalor.  My mother lived to a wacky 93 and proved the axiom: "It's not the years in your life, but the life in your years" .  And thus, I'm now on a personal crusade to clean up the act, put a little pep in the step and kill myself quickly or live to a ripe old age and croak in the sack.  Both have a certain appeal.  So I'm off to the gym several days a week. Fortunately I've found a gym catering to the average Joe and not those hulking, god-like adonises: intimidating to a flabatetic such as myself.  That's not to say Goddesses don't inhabit the same space time continuum, with their ponytails and perfect asses, galloping on treadmills and assaulting Stairmasters for hours on end without breaking a sweat; a feat for me, much like the women themselves, the stuff of daydreams; never to be attained. I am convinced my days of revamping "coolness" are far behind and must be content to make the best of what's left.  "Get real fatty, those gals wouldn't give you the time of day".  How true (sigh).  There was a time, to be sure; but that ship not only sailed, it's been torpedoed.  For proof, I have only to gaze upon my locker room companions.  Old guys one and all and I suspect I am the youngest.  Now looking more like Hobbit/Yoda hybrids, a few suggest having been quite humpy in say, mmmm, the '50s; muscular, preening on the beach, slaying the gals.  Now they appear as burlap sacks full of coconuts (sigh).  Dylan Thomas said: "Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day."  So while I have the capacity to think it and the energy to say it, maybe that's good enough for me.