Today I chat with the editor of the LA Times Las Vegas Blog: The Movable Buffet.

What was the career path that led you to your current position?
I had no real path. I was burning years and student loans in graduate school when I got the opportunity to do some reviews for Rolling Stone. I found the writing, the subject matter, really everything about writing for RS more exciting than the essays I had been doing on contemporary poetry for places like The Kenyon Review. I wound up dropping out of graduate school and moving to Charlottesville, VA with plans to write a novel and freelance features. It was an idiot move and should have ended disastrously. I was about to apply for waiter jobs when out of the sky came an offer to work editing and writing at a new arts and culture magazine called Gadfly. At Gadfly I wrote about everything from Frank Zappa to Gore Vidal. In 1999 I relocated to Las Vegas to cover entertainment for Las Vegas Weekly. And, now, six years later, suddenly I am 38 and have a career. The hardest thing about starting the work for the LA Times was giving up the occasional reviewing I was doing for Rolling Stone. Though they were not sending me a lot of reviews to write anymore, I have a tremendous emotional commitment to that magazine and to the staff there. So, it was hard to give up the ghost. But with a the blog and the LA print column both on top of my regular job, well, I wanted the Weekly to know they were still going to have a full time employee.

It seems like it would be hard to write about Las Vegas without using a lot of cliche. How do you keep it new and interesting?
In large thematic and metaphoric ways it is hard, perhaps. But in Las Vegas, more than most places, the particulars are always changing from the landscape to the characters. I find the stories and details and people varied and fascinating: the range of things that can be written about almost unlimited.

On a slow news day in Vegas, how do you generate content for the blog?
We don't get a lot of slow periods. Las Vegas is less seasonal than any other vacation destination. But, that said, this period between Thanksgiving and New Years does get slow but even now clubs and casinos and restaurants are opening, new shows are being planned and odd and interesting conventions coming through. Last week I went to a convention of jugglers at the Riviera and tonight South Coast (a new $600 Million casino) opens. So, slow is one of the few things I rarely have to worry about.

What have you learned about what differentiates a good blog from a boring one?
I am fairly new to blogs both as a writer and a reader. For The Movable Buffet I suspect I am going to appeal to people who already have an interest in Las Vegas. Beyond that I think for Las Vegas coverage in particular the most important thing is be hopelessly, desperately and solely loyal to your readers. In Las Vegas relationships are so crucial that often people here will take something I write in very personal ways. My peculiar style of crazy works for me in that I am so concerned with the process of writing an item I do not realize the impact it will have locally until after I have sent it to the editor in LA. It is during rereading what I sent in that I usually hit my head when I realize who is going to be upset by what I wrote back here in Las Vegas. I hope things stay that way. Also, for The Movable Buffet, I think it is very important for me to try to get people to share my fascination with Las Vegas. I really think Las Vegas is among the most interesting and important spots on earth. It offers so much to those who really want to understand everything from human nature to corporate culture. The tourist’s vacation may be shallow but the process of creating that experience is very deep and oddly profound.

What was the hardest part about the article your wrote about living in the Chicken Ranch?
Honestly, living in a doublewide filled with cigarette smoke and the septic tank.

Anything else you have to say on writing?
One of the things that I have really been lucky about in my career are my editors. I know a lot of writers who complain about editors, and I have one horror story, too. But my experiences have mostly been ridiculously positive and that has helped a lot in terms of me being able to be adventurous in my writing, because I trust them to know when I go too far. At Gadfly, Las Vegas Weekly and for The Moveable Buffet I had and have editors who have given me almost unlimited freedom in terms of topics. If I feel strongly enough about exploring a story I have never heard the word "no" from an editor. That doesn't mean they will always publish the result, but they never begrudge letting me spend some time trying something a little different (like, for example, when Weekly paid for me---and entertainment reporter and critic---to go to the Arizona/Utah border to hang with a polygamous cult). And, I have to single out one of my editors by name to taunt all other writers who don't get the benefit of his skill. Scott Dickensheets, at Las Vegas Weekly, I am simply a slave to his talents. He improves everything of mine he touches. I think the best stories I have ever written have all been for Las Vegas Weekly and his editing was clearly a factor in nearly every one. A couple years ago he was offered a job at Esquire and I was so selfishly giddy with joy when his three kids meant he could not offered to accept it and move to New York. All my editors have been important, and I can't imagine anything worse in life as a writer than dealing with an editor who is not supportive. But in my career I have been especially lucky that Dickensheets' talent is being invested in stories that end up having only my by-line.