Columnist Susan Snyder: Blockbuster news catches our attention

Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2001 | 8:20 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

I am not making this up.

Blockbuster Video announced last week that its rental outlet employees will place disclaimers on VHS tapes, DVDs and video games that contain "scenes that may be considered disturbing to some viewers."

No, this doesn't mean they are going to place warning labels on copies of "Yentl," although seeing Barbra Streisand dressed as a man warranted some kind of annotation.

Viewers are being warned that some movies and games may contain content that could offend those still sensitive about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. (Gee, that's a pretty small group.) The warnings will be placed only on new material. Previous terrorist flicks, such as "The Siege" and "Die Hard," will not have the labels.

See, those made before the attacks don't contain material that would offend sensitive people. That's why sensitive people have been snapping them off shelves like crazy since the attacks.

Less than two weeks after terrorists flew hijacked jets into New York's World Trade Center towers, Las Vegas city officials say the construction of high-rise buildings taller than anything we already have should be encouraged.

Yes, let's build something that's even more conspicuous and more ridiculous than anything we've already built. Right now we only have a gleaming black pyramid that shoots a beam of light into the night sky that, according to local lore, astronauts can see from the space shuttle.

We need to be more visible and more aggressive in showing how much money we have to fritter away.

"The taller the better," Mayor Oscar Goodman told the Sun last week. "We can't live in fear."

He's right, of course. We can't let those barbarians win, whoever they are.

Las Vegas still is ready, some city officials said, for a structure such as the 2,220-foot Millennium Tower proposed earlier this year.

Hey, you with the plot and the attitude problem! Heeere we are.

We spent more than two weeks re-routing Hoover Dam traffic through Laughlin.

And yet, we could not postpone a ceremony last Thursday by the American Society of Civil Engineers that drew national attention to the dam and named it one of the most amazing engineering feats of the 20th century.

They made sure to include all the dimensions and emphasized its importance in the delivery of electricity to the southwest.

For anyone who still didn't get it, one of the engineering society's officers was good enough to put it in proper perspective by saying, "The generating systems that supply electricity to Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Los Angeles and Phoenix could be taken out and must be protected."

Good thing Black Canyon is frightfully narrow and laced with power lines.

A person would have to be nuts to fly a plane through there.

A U.S. Christian outreach group was among buyers interested in the failing Regent Las Vegas, which sold at auction last week to a Canadian company that paid $80 million. Under the Christian group, there would have been no gambling, no booze sales and a lot of prayers.

Odd. That plan hasn't worked up until now.