Las Vegas Weekly

An Oscar party for everyone

When Mayor Goodman says of the big street party in his honor this Friday, “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate my birthday than to share it with the citizens of fabulous Las Vegas!” you know you can substitute nearly anything for “my birthday” and it still works.

Illustration: Rick Sealock

We like to say of outsize populists that they contain multitudes, as if the secret of their common touch is that they have a little bit of us in them. But Oscar Goodman reverses that polarity—he’s more like an excess of one; he’s all Oscar, and then some. There always seems to be extra, like batter when you make a cake. I mean, when he says of the big street party in his honor this Friday, “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate my birthday than to share it with the citizens of fabulous Las Vegas!” you know you can substitute nearly anything for “my birthday” and it still works. (Complete with exclamation point.) Anger toward vandals? Exaggerated dismay at Obama’s Las Vegas remarks? His drinking habits? He shares it all. It’s his way—to extend the cake-baking metaphor—of letting us lick the spoon. And we do: He got 84 percent of the vote in his last election. We’ll let you decide whether that’s good or bad. We’ll simply note that $20 will get you into his birthday party at the Fremont Street Experience (three charities benefit: the Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Opportunity Village and Three Square), plus a T-shirt, a button and, if you want it, a special gin cocktail: the “Good-Man Martini,” of course.