The Shows are UP: Charlie Palmer & Hal Sparks

Here we go, another two-fer week as we wind down the program. Enjoy. Click on the date below to play or right-click to save the show. Or you subscribe -- for free -- in iTunes or Zune. -sf

July 31: Charlie Palmer, Hall of Famer
EXTRA: Hal Sparks on Vince Neil, QaF and Minority Comedy

The last time we spoke to celebrity chef Charlie Palmer, he used this program to break a WORLD EXCLUSIVE about his plans to build a hotel in Las Vegas. This time around, he joins us as one of the three newest inductees into the American Gaming Association’s Hall of Fame. Palmer talks about that, about the aforementioned hotel he still intends to build some day and about a particularly wild birthday meal he had on an island in Fiji. That’s all coming up. Also, we excerpt our interview with comic Hal Sparks, the former “Talk Soup” host and “Queer As Folk” star who appears this weekend at the Las Vegas Hilton. It was Sparks’ show, you might recall, that Vince Neil interrupted in order to confront a former girlfriend, Alicia Jacobs.

In Banter: Drrrty pools, Wyrick delays, Vegas Top Cheffers, Bucket Lists and more.

Open & Banter: Start to 18ish
Charlie Palmer: 18-50ish
Trivia/Poll/Letters: 51ish-1:04ish
Hal Sparks Excerpt: 1:04-1:07ish
TSTToTW: 1:08-end

Links To Stuff Discussed:

The sites of Hal Sparks and Charlie Palmer
The Daily’s piece on pee in the pools
Bellagio’s rooms pictorial and report by VegasHappensHere.Com
WSOP betting at sports books are open and popular, says the Sun's Case Keefer
Top Chef Just Desserts contestants from Vegas
Charlie Palmer’s Fiji birthday extravaganza

The Strip is LIVE tonight w/ Charlie Palmer & Hal Sparks

We are live again tonight on this UStream channel, starting at 7:30 p.m. PT this time so we can play both interviews before Miles gets home for the proper portions of the show.

This week, we visit once more with Charlie Palmer, who used this program once upon a time to reveal a WORLD EXCLUSIVE about plans to build a Vegas hotel. Last week, it was announced he'll be inducted into the American Gaming Association's Hall of Fame, so we talked about that, why he never expanded beyond his two Vegas restaurants, what's next for him in New York now that his Grand Central Station eatery is closed and why the e-winebook idea he pioneered at Aureole hasn't really spread as far and wide as expected.

We also have an interview with the very funny comic and former "Talk Soup" and "Queer As Folk" star Hal Sparks, who talks about having his show interrupted by Motley Crue rocker Vince Neil's "assault" on ex-girlfriend and ex-TV reporter Alicia Jacobs at the Hilton in March. We'll play a Vince-related excerpt of the Hal Sparks chat during the main show, then issue the whole thing as a Strip Extra to keep the main episode from becoming too long.

So start by playing the Hal Sparks conversation at about 7:30 p.m., followed by the Charlie Palmer interview, followed by the proper show when Miles arrives from work to do the proper show parts.

Just a tip: As the weeks tick down, the live show gets weirder and weirder. Normally, I end up with about 1-3 minutes of outtakes, but it's been more like 10 over the past few weeks. Miles can't seem to help himself, and it's really funny stuff. So come on down for the live show while you can!

Or, of course, the podcast version will be out later this week. And soon I will pull together our final outtakes show, too. Sigh. A lot of "last" this and "final" thats going on around here. Yikes.

Finally, if you're unclear who Hal Sparks is, check out these excerpts of his 2010 Showtime special, "Charmageddon":

NY Post: LV Copies of NYC Eateries Suck. Sorta.

New York Post columnist Steve Cuozzo concludes that many of the Vegas versions of vaunted NYC eateries are pale facsimilies. His central conclusion:

"For the past few years, puff pieces about the Vegas dining revolution have clogged the pages of food and travel magazines that are, coincidentally, even more clogged with Vegas advertising. ... But unless the name is McDonald's, restaurants aren't portable. Even if the food is the same at distant locations - a dubious proposition - the atmosphere isn't close, and neither is the dining experience."

Along the way he mocks the decor of the Vegas version of 111-year-old Rao's (at Caesars Palace to your left, NYC to your right), as I have gotten great heat for as well, questions whether Fiamma (MGM Grand), Tao (Venetian), Il Mulino (Caesars) and Le Cirque (Bellagio) measure up to their Manhattan forebears, both culinarily (is that a word?) and experientially. He praises Daniel Boulud Bistro at Wynn, Restaurant RM and Mandalay Bay, both worthy exceptions to his thesis.

So here's the thing: He's sort of right. And not exactly right. If you've been to the original in New York, you have a preconceived notion of what you'll find and you can put not just the food on trial but also NY versus Vegas sensibilities. That cuts both ways.

I'm a big fan of Charlie Palmer's Aureole at Mandalay Bay, for instance. It's a terrific dining experience and brilliantly Las Vegas. We ate at the New York version last time we were in town and found it to be, well, stodgy. The food was good, but the "experience" was Old School. NYC devotees may never have seen a Vegas wine angel ascend a glass tower (right) on a winch and pulley to fetch a patron's vino -- and never wish to. Rao's was the same way. The only people who will even know how cheesy and false the decor is there are those of us who have had the privilege of experiencing the utterly charming original. The food's lovely at both, but that's not the only criterion for judgment.

Cuozzo kind of acknowledges just this at the end of the piece when he notes that one of the reasons Daniel Boulud Bistro triumphs is because of the Lake of Dreams show at Wynn that goes off every so often.

"I was halfway through a plate of pungent artisanal cheese when a giant, full-voiced frog popped out of a rainbow-lit waterfall and channeled Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World." Try ordering that on East 65th Street!"

Well put.