You bet

The only thing that interests me about the gaming parlors that now dot Maryland is the buffet.  I love a good buffet, where you can have a nice salad and then some meat and veggies and maybe a teeny sliver of pie if no one is looking.

They have this Hollywood Casino up in Perryville, off I-95, and we were up that way once and stopped in to tie on the feedbag.  That part was good.  The rest of the time  we were there, we wandered around a little bit and heard a lot of noise and saw a bewildering ballet of people playing slot machines and other devices.  I really have no idea how any of this stuff works, but boy oh boy did the people who played the games know how!  They were having a great time.

I have to tell you this.  The TV ads for the state casinos show a crowd of glammed-up happy young people, dressed in the latest styles with the shimmering tops and the high heels and the tight skinny pants with just a touch of dangling bling.

And the women are dressed nicely too.

Point is, when you see the casino-goers on the TV, it looks like Taylor Swift and that Tatum Channing guy plunking money into the games. 

When you get there, the people who are there in real life tend to look a little more like Andy Taylor and Carol Channing. 

And maybe that's better.

Another thing.  Apparently, some people want to build more casinos in this state.  They want to do this at some place called National Harbor.  Now, I've lived my life in the state of Maryland, with the exception of the two months I spent in the south of France as Mick Jagger's man Friday. (We parted ways over a schedule disagreement: I wanted Fridays off.)  But I have never heard of National Harbor, and here all of a sudden they want to build a casino there! 

And then someone will say, let's go to National Harbor and gamble, and no one will know how to get there!

There are radio and TV ads being presented by both sides of this debate.  One side says, "If even one slot machine is brought into our sacred National Harbor, the entire state of Maryland will be swallowed whole by a fiery serpent and regurgigated all over Wyoming."

This is countered by the pro-slot forces, who say that another derecho will come along and drag you, your spouse, your children and most of your pets and your aged Aunt Mildred off to play slots for free, and you will go home with no less than $590 in your pants pocket every time you set foot in the place.

Surely the truth lies in the middle someplace.  But as long as there's no law that says we have to gamble, I'll be right here on the sidelines.  Me and my pie.