Las Vegas Weekly

December 19, 2008 · 9:33 AM

Snowman isn’t actually a “man,” as it turns out

By Justice

Illustration: Justice

There was a bizarre and beautiful snowstorm this week, as most Las Vegans witnessed. I was in bed most of the day and kept getting calls about the snow, but I never bothered to look outside until late that night. I figured there were a few flakes sticking to the plants so I wasn’t in any rush to get out of a warm bed. In the winter I even blog from bed. Yes, I’m writing this very blog from under the blankets. It takes a lot to get me out of bed in the cold weather. So when I finally got around to getting up, I decided to take a look outside by the advice of all my voicemails. I was in awe when I opened my blinds and saw the entire neighborhood covered in glittering ice.

There was no way I was going to work. Strippers often take the day off in bad weather. Business, I think, tends to be slow. I wouldn’t know though. I never go in when it’s raining and certainly not when it’s snowing.

So on a free night, I went to visit a friend. I’ve never driven in the snow, so it was a bit scary but kind of exciting. I lost control in a turn once. Luckily I wasn’t going very fast. Growing up in the tropics and then moving to Las Vegas, I’ve seen snow on few occasions and I haven’t really interacted with it. It’s cold, naturally, and it hurts your fingers.

When I got to my friend’s house, he suggested we make a snowman. My friend, a native New Yorker, has plenty of snow experience. I sat in the living room thinking he was crazy. I was clean, warm and dry and drinking a glass of wine. I took a few sips. “Yeah. Let’s do this,” I said, because no one tops my craziness and because I’ve never made a snow person.

I’ve heard of the proverbial snowball effect, but I never really understood it until I began rolling a snowball. I didn’t understand the properties of snow. It sticks to its self and acts as cement when packed tightly. Rolling a large snowball on the front lawn, it picks up the snow on the ground and it is much like pulling up a carpet. I made an enormous snowball. It came up to my knees.

After rolling a second large snowball, my friend stacked it on the other one. With a big snowball head stacked on top, it was a standard snow person. Standard wasn’t good enough, so I gave it tits. I packed mounds of snow onto its giant snowball torso and sculpted a pair of large breasts on it. The black caps of old whiskey bottles were used to give her a permanently horrified expression. Meatballs for nipples, a wine bottle penis and soggy palm frond scraggly hair completed the snow transsexual person. It was an obscenity in ice. Luckily for the neighbors, the top-heavy nature of this creature made it collapse in just a few hours and it never made it ’til morning. She is survived by her creators and will live forever in our fondest memories. I hope I see more snow in Vegas.

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