The Week in Review

By Andrew Kiraly

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21: Geez. Just when you thought Vegas had enough vermin--Sun City dust-farters, homeowners associations, Humvee Nazis and those cute indie-rockish girls at Starbucks who seem robotically programmed to deflect your flirtations when you're ordering your $10 coffee--now we got rats. Following up on complaints of "roof rats" scurrying along the gilded minarets of the tony Scotch 80s and McNeil Estates neighborhoods, the Clark County Health District convinced the City Council to join in an aggressive two-month rat control program that will hopefully drive the rodents out! out! out!...to a neighborhood not so heavily peopled with the rich and powerful.

THURSDAY, APRIL 22: Humans are unlike most animals on the planet: We have opposable thumbs, the ability to reason and, most notably, we tend to shit where we eat. Bad human, no SUV! To make ourselves feel better, we invented Earth Day in 1970, an advertising vehicle for Exxon and McDonald's. Oh, and let's not forget it makes a great prop for election-year soapboxing. This year was no different. Bush: Choose me! I'll make 3 million acres of wetlands! Kerry: Choose me! Bush graded 'F' by League of Conservation Voters! Nader: Choose Bush! I'm the true alternative! Earth: Cough! Cough! Sputter!

FRIDAY, APRIL 23: The River Run mookfest marks that one day a year that we pause, reflect and acknowledge that Laughlin exists. Done? Good. Two years ago, the annual meeting of motorheads was marred by Mongols-Hell's Angels thugfare that took the lives of three bikers. This year's kicked off in subdued fashion--the kind of subdued that can only be achieved by stationing cops with assault rifles every four feet. See, we can all get along! Attendance was projected at 100,000; flappy biker-mama boobs projected at about knee-length.

SATURDAY, APRIL 24: Estee Lauder, cosmetics mogul and very old person, died in her Manhattan home at age 97--but geez, you know, you'd think she wasn't a day over 94. Fun fact: She got started in the business blending face cream in her kitchen in the 1930s. Not-so-fun fact: She was actually trying to make her husband some pancakes. Oh well, off to heaven the makeup maven goes, most likely to spar with Kabuki alien warrior Mary Kay and her army of undead housewives.

SUNDAY, APRIL 25: As part of women's rallies worldwide, an estimated 1 million-plus marchers, um, marched on the National Mall to rally for abortion rights and decry what they characterized as Bush's "war on women," exemplified by funding cuts for sex ed, withholding $34 million from the U.N. Population Fund, and the sketchy 5-4 majority that abortion rights enjoys in the Duck-Hunting Friends of Cheney Club. A few token pro-lifers showed up, but Week in Review suspects the onrush of pro-choicers flattened them into cardboard cutouts with surprised expressions frozen on their faces like Capt. Harris in the exciting climax of Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.

MONDAY, APRIL 26: Ah, a leaky-roofed trailer home, wobbly and rust-eaten, surrounded by puddles of butt-sewage and crackling power lines--not bad compared to HAVING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. But, citing health and safety codes, the city began the eviction process for the remaining residents of about 40 trailers at the Sky-Vue Mobile Park on Owens Avenue, giving them 72 hours to wrap their minds around HAVING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Hmm ... can't decide ... Rwanda Simulator ... NOTHING ... Deliverance theme park ... NOTHING...

TUESDAY, APRIL 27: A 15-year-old boy on a wilderness trip for troubled youth near Anchorage, Alaska, woke up to find a 400-pound bear sitting at his feet, the Associated Press reported. Being a "troubled youth," he did what any juvenile thug would do: He kicked the bear's ass, punching it more than a dozen times and blasting it with an air horn before it finally ran off. Thank God the kid wasn't a normal, well-adjusted teen, who would've pussed out and gotten all eaten up and shit.--Andrew Kiraly