With the Oscars approaching and my hair receding, I reminisce. The Oscars are a must see event for me annually. It can be a special night with friends and food and comfy chairs, hoping to win the office Oscar pool. When you live in Los Angeles, as I did for years, you are “right there.” People watch this awards show all over the world and in Los Angeles we know we are only a vintage Armani’s full length away from the event. I always liked feeling as if I was part of it. I was a seat-filler at the Emmys once, but never hit the heights of becoming a seat-filler at the Oscars. Many years ago as an undergrad at UCLA, I hosted an Oscar viewing party in my apartment in West LA. After the show was over I said to my guests “Hey we are minutes from the Beverly Hilton where the Oscar party is!” There was a collective “So?” “Well let’s go and watch the stars come in. It will be a great memory, trust me.” Though I was entirely directionless personally and professionally in college, I knew it was important to rack up memories. I got my friend Laurette on my side by promising that she would see Jack Nicholson walk in. The others just followed. East on Wilshire Boulevard we went, got parked and stood behind the velvet cord to watch the stars make their way into the Grand Ballroom. It was exhilarating seeing major stars like Ginger Rogers and Daryl Hannah walk by all smiles and dyed feathers. Then the whole thing turned on me. I hated being behind that velvet cord. I wanted to be one of the people at the party. I was so talented at something;...

Too hungry to get up from that exciting blackjack game? Can’t stop for even a moment to get a bite to eat during that hot slot session?  The El Cortez Hotel and Casino, one of the nations oldest, has the answer – The Gambling Gourmet. Could this be the next trend in food? I had to give it a try! The El Cortez Hotel and Casino is located at 6th & Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, just one block east of the Fremont Street Experience.  The El Cortez was established before the glittering lights of the Las Vegas Strip. It was opened in 1941 as Vegas’ first casino resort.  The few other gambling halls that had opened downtown in the previous decade featured bare bones games, small restaurants, sawdust floors, and very small (or none at all) hotels, while the El Cortez had 59 rooms to offer. Within a few years of opening, mobsters Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Gus Greenbaum, and Moe Segway would purchase and run the property. A few years after, the previous owner J. Kel Houssels would buy it back, so the mobsters could go on to finance the construction of The Flamingo on the Vegas Strip.  (The money pit of The Flamingo would become cost Siegel his life, as he was gunned down in a mob hit a few years later.) Jackie Gaughan, a rising legend in the gaming world, would purchase the resort a few years later and it stayed in the family until 2009.  To this day, Gaughan still walks the casino floor and talks with visitors about “old Vegas”. The player’s club bears his name. When compared to other casinos in the area, the El Cortez is quite old and a bit run down, but...