NYE '10: The Great, Godly & Claire Nolastname

What a classic Vegas night! Happy New Year, everyone!

My 18-year-old niece, Courtney, is in from ASU for a few days, so she tagged along with me as I covered my perennial Vegas New Year's Eve feature, the street-preachers-on-the-Strip piece. In years past, I've done versions of this for Las Vegas Weekly, The New York Times, the podcast and this blog, so it stood to reason I'd do it once more for my favorite new client, the AOL news site Sphere.Com. I also was supposed to contribute to AFP's coverage but that was ruined by Claire Nolastname, but we'll get to that shortly.

This go-around, Miles was at the KVBC Mother Ship directing the coverage, so Courtney and I were left to our own devices. We saw Mystere earlier in the day (4:30 p.m. show) in preparation for a big Cirque du Soleil piece I've got planned for later this month, and I was glad I saw it again because I was reminded just how wonderfully the Hershey Bar of Cirque shows holds up. It's classic and beautiful and has one of Cirque's two best scores ever -- Alegria has great music, too -- and was created at a time before the comedy aspects of Cirque shows started to feel forced and contrived.

We made some goodies for Miles and his peeps...

...and brought it by the KVBC ranch after "Mystere" and after dinner at the critically raved Chinese restaurant China Mama. It was a good ride because I hadn't yet seen the restored neon signs on the islands on Las Vegas Boulevard north of downtown and U.S. 95. Check that out:


Then we headed to Panorama Towers, where my father and I have an investment condo, and parked there to walk the Harmon overpass to Vdara, then Bellagio and then out to the Strip. Vdara seemed like an utter ghost town at 10 pm on New Year's Eve. Here's Silk Road's bar:


Our destination was the KVBC set in front of Caesars Palace where Jim Snyder and Sophia Choi were anchoring the sprawling coverage that included folks at Town Square and on Fremont Street. It was nice to have a sane retreat. Here they are on the couch with reporter Dan Ball and doing stand-ups.


Alas, I was on assignment, so Courtney and I made our way north to the lineup of itinerant preachers for whom New Year's is prime time. Between Vegas on New Year's Eve and Pasadena's Rose Bowl Parade on New Year's Day, these are the two largest scheduled public gatherings within a few hours of one another and within a 12-hour period in America.

Some people tried to reason and debate the fire-and-brimstone set, which in this image includes Petar Keseljevic (black jacket, from Oslo, Norway) and Ruben Israel (sandwich board, is proprietor of OfficialStreetPreachers.com).


But it is hard to reason with folks carrying signs like these...


...so most mocked them and took posed like this:


In years past, the preachers have spread out around the Strip but this time they stuck together near the barricades where the cops were. For my Sphere piece, Israel said: "We've been told tonight that if it were not for the police, they would punch us, beat us and stab us. We've been beat up more times than I can remember." Regardless of your beliefs, it's simply shameful they should deal with such abuse.

I turned the camera over to Courtney while I did interviews and she shot something that I rarely see, pictures of me doing my work:


When the clock came close to striking midnight, we raced back to the KVBC pen, shooting some colorful photos along the way:



And finally, Vegas made up for the pathetic fireworks show that ushered in 2009 -- fitting, really, given what a crappy year it was -- with a fantastic display off the top of the Stratosphere, TI, Venetian, Aria, MGM Grand, Planet Hollywood and...


Caesars Palace! Here's some YouTube video of the fireworks I just found:

The amount of fireworks smoke was something I did not recall from years past but it reminded me of the Strip after an implosion, less the hazardous flying gunk:


I also was unfamiliar with the utterly failed people-moving efforts of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department after the fireworks ended. When Miles worked on the Strip in years past, we had a special media parking spot at Caesars that made the getaway easy. This time, I was in a rush to file my Sphere piece as well as some "color" for an Agence France-Presse piece but cell service on the Strip was completely nonexistent. So I tried to get back to my car at Panorama.

We tried walking up the Strip to CityCenter so we could take the Harmon overpass but the cops had barricades up in all sorts of inexplicable places, leading to stampede conditions because nobody could move and folks became increasingly angry and upset. I saw many people fall down, get knocked around and desperately try to climb over barricades to get out. It was actually impossible to walk south from Caesars Palace past Flamingo Road, let alone to Bellagio. Not because there wasn't any room but because there were barricades that penned people in for no apparent reason.

So we leaped a barricade along with everyone else -- I actually didn't have a choice because we were shoved by the crowd until we were pressed up against it -- and went west on Flamingo Road. My hope was to go through Bellagio from the North Entrance, then to Vdara, out to the Harmon overpass and back to Panorama.

Yet the hotel was not allowing non-guests in. I begged the self-proclaimed "head of security" Claire Nolastname -- that's what she said! -- to let me get through, explaining I was not a partier but a working reporter on a tight deadline trying to get to my vehicle to file a story I could not file there because of the cell signal failure. She could not have been more dismissive. I showed her my press badge, even the CityCenter notebook I was using. Rules were rules. Screw me.

Instead, Courtney and I had to walk over I-15 on Flamingo then south on Hotel Rio Drive to Dean Martin to Panorama Towers. It was a circuitous and rather dangerous extra three miles of walking that cost me more than an hour and my AFP gig. My AFP editor, you see, ultimately decided to move the national story on the wire without any Vegas input because he couldn't reach me. Shame, too, because I had a ton of stuff in my notebook from my walk-through the Bellagio earlier, in fact. But beyond the loss of income for me, I also could not have been more furious or dumbfounded. In all my years in Vegas, folks like valet car-parkers and security officers have always had great respect for other people who were trying to do their jobs. But not Claire Nolastname!

It was an ugly ending to an otherwise wonderful, very fun night. And I'd rather not conclude this post on this kind of note or else the terrorists, or at least Claire Nolastname, will have won!

So here's my favorite image from the night gussied up by Courtney on some photo editing site called Picnik.

How We Spent the Michael Jackson Benefit $$$

That 2.5-minute report was KVBC's Hetty Chang breaking news of some of what we're doing with the money we raised from "Las Vegas Celebrates The Music of Michael Jackson" at the Palms. Now I'm going to provide a fuller explanation.

First, I'm a wee bit bummed to say that after expenses were factored in, Erich Bergen and I actually did not hit the $100,000 mark I had hoped, believed and said we had. We're still waiting for the check from the concession sellers, but when it's all done we'll have raised a little bit more than $96,000. There were a couple of expenses that I wasn't aware of when I made the previous estimate, but that's just a function of we show-producing newbies having so much to do pulling this off that we didn't always remember to tell one another about some costs.

There's still the potential for more proceeds once we edit and package the DVD version sometime early next year and small donations come in every so often via our site VegasLovesMJ.Com. And, as previously stated, any credible journalist who wishes to review our records, including receipts, is more than welcome to contact me.

To answer one question that had been asked, though, nobody from the Jackson family received a dime for anything. Per union rules we did have to pay the members of our band, but every other performer on the Pearl stage appeared for free. Also, neither Erich nor I received a thin cent of compensation unless you count the box of leftover T-shirts in my garage, and the records we submitted for reimbursement held by the Clark County Public Education Foundation prove this. The money from our various revenue sources -- concessions, tickets, the Paypal donation account and the Moonwalker screening -- goes directly to them and then has been disbursed when we provided receipts and two members of the CCPEF board review them.

All that said, we DID raise $96,000! And here, after some meetings, is what we decided to do with it:

* 30 percent goes to the Artists 4 Kidz program, a partnership between the CCPEF and entertainer Clint Holmes that pairs aspiring student performers to be mentored by professional singers, dancers, musicians and actors of which there are so many in Las Vegas. That's about $28,000.

* $5,000 goes to pay to bring the Canadian group Barrage to perform at Sierra Vista High on April 7 for a concert for which several schools will be selling tickets. The schools keep the proceeds from the tickets and, since past years' shows of similar type have raised as much as $8,000, this arrangement allows our funds to grow. All proceeds of that ticket sales must go to music education programs, per our original edict.

* Eleven schools will receive $2,500 grants for their music departments to use buying instruments, risers, sheet music and whatever else they need. If the principals commit a matching $2,500, then we will give them another $2,500. It's a way to give principals, who have so many demands for discretionary funds, an incentive to push some of it this way. Those schools are Robison Middle School, Monaco Middle School, Findlay Middle School, Cashman Middle School, Swainston Middle School, Knudson Middle School, Cram Middle School, Lyon Middle School, Brown Middle School, Bonanza High and Desert Oasis High. That's $60,000 and, so far as I've heard, all principals are meeting the challenge.

We held back a small bit of the money just in case there are further expenses. In a few months, we'll give that to a 12th school if there's enough. Rick McEnaney, the director of secondary fine arts for the CCSD, chose those schools based on need and provided us with lengthy explanations for each pick.

As Hetty's KVBC report shows, the needs in this district are dire. It is so gratifying to be able to put on a show that Norm Clarke declared the best in Vegas this year and to do actual, tangible good at the same time.

The Erich Bergen Drama

As you all might expect, I'm getting quite a few emails and texts asking me what's up with Erich Bergen, my co-producer of the Michael Jackson tribute show last month and now one of my best friends.

Yes, the reports are true: Erich was fired by Dodger Theatrical Productions last week after nearly three years of performing the role of Bob Gaudio in "Jersey Boys" on tour and then since May 2008 in Las Vegas. His final performance in the role, strangely, was on Sept. 9, when the four Vegas leads appeared on "America's Got Talent." He was placed on vacation the next day -- his first in his three years, although there were absences due to injury and sickness -- and then let go while he was visiting his folks in New York. His last official on-stage utterance as a member of that cast, then, was beckoning millions of people to come to the Palazzo and see the show. Contrary to my friend and colleague John Katsilometes' blog post at LasVegasSun.Com, this turn of events was, indeed, a surprise to Erich and to many in the cast.

Because Erich and I are obviously close, I am not at liberty to discuss publicly more than the bare facts as I've recited them. Erich has, however, allowed me to be the first to publish the statement he is releasing to the press:

"While I am no longer involved with Jersey Boys, I wish nothing but the best for the show. It's been my home and family for the past 3 years, and I'm proud all of the accomplishments we achieved together. It saddens me to think that I won't get the chance to perform in the show anymore, but all I can do is look forward. I love Las Vegas with all my heart and am proud of my work there. I won't be gone for long."

All that being said, I have a little bone to pick with my friend and Las Vegas Weekly colleague Richard Abowitz. Richard wrote a very peculiar item for his Los Angeles Times blog about Erich's departure in which he puzzled over why this particular casting change was newsworthy and called it a "media kerfluffle."

You would have thought that the matter was garnering massive headlines or something when, in fact, evidently what amounts these days to a "kerfluffle" was a few exercised Tweets from KVBC's Alicia Jacobs and the aforementioned blog post by Kats. That's it. That is all that has been written or said in anything vaguely related to the mainstream press. In fact, Richard is personally responsible for the biggest and most extensive discussion of the matter to date!

And then there was his explanation for why this isn't really news, that cast changes are routine. Except that departures of leads of major Vegas shows generally don't go unnoticed, even when they're not as sudden and unusual as this. The exits of Tina Walsh from "Mamma Mia!", Sierra Boggess and Brent Barrett from "Phantom" and Elijah Johnson from "Lion King" all received ink, and those are only a few.

Plus, it's odd to me that Abowitz overlooks the fact that Erich's name has been in the papers for most of the time he's been in Vegas, an unusual feat for even the stars of shows with more singular performers. He's been pivotal in turning the Liberace Museum's showroom into a hip place for young Strip talent to jam, he raised $103,000+ less than a month ago for Las Vegas schoolkids in a show that drew massive amounts of international news coverage and he was the mouthpiece for "Jersey Boys" only a fortnight ago on one of the most-watched TV shows of the summer.

When someone makes a name for themselves, we call them celebrities. And when celebrities are summarily dismissed from the jobs that made them celebrities, the public is understandably curious. Fame + Controversy = Newsworthiness. Is it really that baffling?

Of course, I have a personal bias because another close friend is probably leaving Vegas and that bums me out. But I think my news judgment sensor is still intact and some scuttlebutt in the entertainment press seems about right to me for this situation.

I'm also bummed that the closing note of this Las Vegas Weekly column -- written when I barely knew him personally -- is coming to pass far sooner than I could have known. In that piece, I warned the public that they ought to get out and see him when he was small Vegas fry so "you can say you knew him when."

I hope some of you heeded that.

How Does This Woman Still Have A Job?

[UPDATE: Prather says Nina stays. Amazing.]

That, to your right, is Nina Radetich. She's a local TV anchor for the ABC affiliate here, KTNV, Channel 13, and she has been one of the best-paid media personalities in the city for a few years now. In fact, she was seen as such a "get" that when she was lured away from KVBC (where my partner is executive producer but was not when Nina was still there), KTNV actually paid her a salary for a year not to work because she had a one-year non-compete clause. Little good it did their ratings (they've fallen since her arrival, in fact) as anyone with half a brain could have told them, but hey, ya roll the dice.

On Saturday, the Las Vegas Sun blew the lid off a fairly shocking -- even for Vegas -- scandal in which, according to audio recordings of phone conversations, she not only told the owner of an auto repair chain that a damaging undercover report was coming soon but that her own boyfriend could help do public-relations damage control! Her boyfriend is Jack Finn, formerly a spokesman for Sen. John Ensign and former Gov. Kenny Guinn and presently a special projects manager at NV Energy. Now he's doing damage-control spin for Nina in the story by defending her journalism which is cool for him since Nina is heard on the tape saying how much Jack loves that kinda work!

Abigail Goldman of the Las Vegas Sun broke this story in a banner across the top of the paper on Saturday. Read it; it's brutal and damning. Goldman had heard audio recordings and provided a transcript to Radetich's boss, KTNV veep and GM Jim Prather. Goldman paraphrased Prather as regarding the matter a "lapse of judgment" and assured the public that their probes into Tire Works, the auto chain, would be unimpeded. Somehow I'm thinking Darcy Spears, the investigative reporter whose work was leaked, doesn't feel that way.

As of right now, Radetich remains in the employ of Channel 13, although she did not come into work today and her scheduled anchor duties tonight will be performed by Tiffani Sargent. Tomorrow's have been reassigned, too, to Jessica Lovell. And then she's on a previously planned vacation from Wednesday to Friday anyhow.

That's so nice and deliberative of her bosses. They weren't nearly as pleasant or patient or reasonable when 25-year veteran Ron Futrell got a hit-and-run citation last year. He was canned before the sun set the next day even though he hurt nobody, impacted nothing in the way of coverage and -- even better! -- the charges were ultimately dropped. That's loyalty to a guy who gave them the best years of his life, huh?

Or how about poor Rob Blair, who lost his job at KTNV as a weatherman in 2005 after he stumbled the word "Martin Luther King Jr" in a way that some thought sounded like "Martin Luther Coon Jr." (I still don't think he did this, but I couldn't find a YouTube clip for you to judge for yourself.) Blair's remarks weren't even live; several people in the newsroom saw them before they aired but only Blair lost his job. He even went on the air to apologize and still, he was auf'd so fast Nina Radetich wouldn't even have been able to leak it to anyone!

Blair hightailed outta town after that, but Futtrell stuck around, having spent his adult life here and all. He's now one of us New Media folk. But getting a raw deal from a boss like Prather, who clearly plays favorites at the expense of news judgment, makes Futtrell a bit of a hero at the station and he's got lots of friends over there still.

He says his former colleagues are understandably nervous about what it does to their news-gathering abilities and reputations if Nina remains in place. None would speak publicly today but Ron's views are undoubtedly shared by many there.

"If she walks in the building, there's going to be an attitude of, 'We better not tell Nina,' " Futtrell said. "The first thing to think of is keep it from Nina if you have an expose. And what if you're somebody from the outside and you want to give Channel 13 a big investigative story. You trust the reporter, but are they going to be able to keep it from one of their anchors? It throws everything out of kilter."

What's so weird here is how greedy or vain Radetich had to be to throw her career away like this. She's unmarried, has no kids and makes well over $200,000. Her boyfriend is surely well compensated at the power utility. What possible motive could she have for betraying her newsroom brethren? To paraphrase Peggy Olson's remark to Don Draper last night on Madmen, she had everything her colleagues want -- and so much of it.

There is no way she can continue to work at that station or in this business at all, at least not without a period of time away. It would make no sense. Even if she apologized now, you have to figure the staff there is checking with their sources to see if this is an isolated case. Could it possibly be? Really? Does that seem likely?

And even if/when Radetich is fired, how does Prather look his employees in the eye and tell them that he treats them all with the same fairness and respect? How does he explain that Radetich got more than four days -- Prather obviously knew about this on Friday for him to give his ridiculous response to Goldman and keep Nina on the payroll -- but Futrell is fired within mere hours for something so much less germane to the actual job?

The longer this carries on, the harder it gets to explain not only how Radetich remains employed over there but how Prather does, too.

No LIVE Show Tonight Due To Jackson Frenzy

Sorry, boys and girls, but we gotta cancel the live show of "The Strip" tonight because I gotta make a living. And today, that means standing on a sidewalk baking in the heat staring at this:


Yep, that's all I've been staring at for the past several hours. Fun, huh? Y'see, Michael Jackson's personal doctor, Conrad Murray, is being probed in connection with Jackson's drug-related death. Dr. Murray is from Vegas. Has a fancy house and a medical practice. And today, the DEA, LAPD, LVMPD and God knows who else raided both places.

So I got called into action. Here's the top-of-Google-News glory-screen-shot:


I did have a terrific interview with Smokey Robinson today and I don't want to give him or Human Nature short shrift by rushing to write a show script. Besides, the raid at the medical office is actually still ongoing and I need to go back out into the heat shortly.

Lest anyone imagines such work is glamorous (does anyone?!?), take a look at how the press corps is sweltering:


I like this guy in orange in the "Thriller" jersey:


I wouldn't want to have to touch this:


Happily, I have some connections. The fine folks at Miles' TV station, KVBC, let me chill inside their news van. It's unclear how much better that really was, though. Take a look at the thermometer:


the time and date are wrong, but the 108.8 degree F temp is more or less correct. As I type, it's 111 out. It wasn't real clear to us if that was the temp inside or outside of the van.

The Show is UP: Danny Gans' Muse

I've got a few interviews in the can right now for upcoming shows, including Carlos Santana, but with Danny Gans' passing it seemed most appropriate to run our conversation with Jeff Foxworthy, whose comedy clearly inspired a substantial portion of Gans' act. Foxworthy is at the Orleans Arena on May 16. This chat took place before Danny's death, so it's bittersweet. Anyhow, you know the drill: click on the date below to listen or right-click and save to your computer. Or subscribe (it's free!) via this iTunes link or via this Zune link. -sf

May 7: Danny Gans' Muse

Las Vegas is in stunned mourning this week following the shocking death Friday of impressionist Danny Gans. We’ll talk about that at the top of the show, but it’s also fitting that our guest this week is comic Jeff Foxworthy because Gans spent at least 10 minutes in every show doing Foxworthy and his trademark redneck jokes. Foxworthy talks about Gans, about performing for presidents Clinton and Bush and about hosting dimwit adults on the hit TV game show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?"

In banter: Danny Gans’ death, Jim Murren’s defense, China’s wacky swine flu response, Peepshow’s surprisingly great, Peppermill’s surprisingly classy and Vegas stocks are inexplicably way up.

Links to topics discussed:

Jeff Foxworthy’s website
Tickets to Jeff Foxworthy’s May 16 tickets at The Orleans
LasVegasSun.Com’s piece following Dave Navarro in Vegas via Twitter
VegasHappensHere.Com coverage of the death of Danny Gans
The press release for Beyonce ticket prices at Encore
MGM’s earnings as covered by Howard Stutz of the Review-Journal
VegasHappensHere.Com on swine flu in Macau
The YouTube clip of Carrie Prejean and Pat Robertson
The YouTube clip of Kelly Pickler and Jeff Foxworthy
The Peppermill Coffee Shop’s website
Ex-Milwaukeean chef Paul Bartolotta’s hometown blog on his 2nd James Beard Award
Carol Cling’s “Shooting Stars” column on Top Chef gossip
The Twitter feed for Miles’ station, KVBC
The Reno News & Review on gay-rights legislation pending in Nevada

Vermin Perez Hilton v Miss California

[UPDATE: Norm Clarke quizzed the vermin PH about this post and the vermin PH responded: "I am praying for Steve Friess." That's pretty funny.]

[UPDATE #2: Perez apparently also says he wishes he had called Ms. Prejean a cunt, too. That'll surely win the gays some friends, huh?]

I've avoided commenting on the flap over Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who answered the vermin Perez Hilton's question at the Miss USA contest in Las Vegas last weekend about gay marriage with an inarticulate response that rambled about alleged free choice -- no gay Americans can choose fully recognized marriage -- before revealing her personal view that marriage is between a man and a woman. (There she is to the right, looking awfully wholesome.)

The whole thing was disconcerting because while I obviously don't agree with Prejean, I'm not sure that political opinions are how we ought to choose beauty queens. And the vermin Perez Hilton, who heretofore has done nothing whatsoever for gay rights and didn't donate a dime to fight against Proposition 8 last year, decided this was a great time to exploit the issue by recording a video blog in which he cackles about all the attention he's gettin over this and then calls Prejean a "dumb bitch." Next thing you know, he's on Larry King Live as though he's been in the thick of this issue all along when he actually represents the worst, the grossest, the least productive and most unpleasant side of what gay America has to offer.

Worse, though, is that using that kind of nasty language is the surest way to shut down any serious debate or discourse. It's not the verbage of a thinking person, one who cares about something greater than his own fame. Once the vermin Perez Hilton attacked this young woman, she became a right-wing hero and handed the Hannitys and Limbaughs of the world a clear-cut case of politically correct aggression with which to paint all gays who argue for marriage equality. She may be wrong on marriage equality, but that doesn't (necessarily) make her dumb or a bitch. Conversely, the vermin Perez Hilton may be right but that doesn't (even remotely) make him smart or honorable.

It really, really bothered me that Prejean may actually have lost her crown on this answer. (She came in second to Miss North Carolina, whose name nobody knows or cares thanks to the vermin Perez Hilton.) That's why I'm delighted that my friend and Miles' colleague Alicia Jacobs, an entertainment reporter for KVBC and one of the vermin Perez Hilton's co-judges, explained to Advocate.Com better why the way Prejean answered cost her in the competition.



I don't know if I totally buy what she says there, but it's a better-reasoned answer than what the vermin Perez Hilton has had to say. See? You can be smart and pretty. Or you can be hideous and stupid. (And, yes, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder over this creep. Click here to see why.)

Alicia, who talks in that video about attending gay weddings, was also at ours, as you can see:


Mostly, I wish this thing would go away. The vermin Perez Hilton did more to firm up the resolve of straight-only-marriage proponents and provide them with a widely sympathetic figure around which to rally than anything in recent memory. Nicely done!

Nicely done, Mr. Knapp!

I don't ordinarily wade into commentary about the local TV news because my partner, Miles, is the executive producer at KVBC, the NBC affiliate here. That makes it difficult and awkward and, happily, the Review-Journal's Steve Bornfeld has his "Mediaology" column analyzing the topic so I don't have to.

But it's a pretty big deal that George Knapp of KLAS, the local CBS affiliate, has won a George Foster Peabody Award this week for their special, "Crossfire: Water, Power and Politics," a hard-hitting analysis of the impact of growth on the southwestern U.S. You can view all seven parts via this LasVegasNow.Com link. Also honored was Knapp's photojournalist, Matt Adams.

To get an idea of what a huge deal this is -- it's the equal to the R-J winning a Pulitzer -- consider who else got Peabody honors this year: ABC for "Lost," HBO for "The Gates" and "John Adams," NBC for its Beijing Olympics coverage, PBS for "Washington Week With Gwen Ifill" and CNN for its coverage of the presidential primaries.

Congrats, Mr. Knapp. Let's hope your station can continue to spend this kind of money on this kind of journalism in these, you know, tough economic times.

Sunday Readings...

I finally caught up on the week's worth of newspapers, plus some from earlier in July that just sat there forever, last night. A few thoughts:

* Two Studies in One, Or Something. Read these two pieces side by side, Howard Stutz's from the Review-Journal and Liz Benston's from the Las Vegas Sun, both from the July 23 papers. You're forgiven if you thought for a moment they were writing about different studies on Internet gambling coming out of UNLV. I truly did for a minute. Benston focuses entirely on findings that people in online poker rooms are ruder and meaner than gamblers at live casinos and this makes some people feel bad though not bad enough to stop playing and get a life. The "potential to be more addictive than gambling in a casino" is one that this study "largely side-steps," she writes. Stutz, on the other hand, writes that "the results of the study show that online gamblers wager more frequently and more aggressively." The author is quoted as telling Stutz that "online gamblers are much more prone to suffer from all the negative aspects. The activity lacks social interaction, which can increase the risk of addiction." Very strange.

* Trump Is A Silly Dilly. Or A Fabulist. Speaking of Stutz, he had a follow-up to the KVBC report on the Trump layoffs that started with the, uh, company line: "Don't call them layoffs." Trump is totally unconvincing, as he is when he called KVBC's Steve Crupi to cuss him out over the piece. Crupi and KVBC stood their ground. When you relieve a fifth of your workforce of their jobs, it's not really a reassurance that they'll get them back whenever you're ready to have them. Those people are out of work. They had jobs, then they didn't. Those are layoffs. It's also not credible, when that happens, to pretend you've got an "incredible success" on your hands.

* Mike Weatherford's Good Week. First, he broke an interesting piece about a live poker show at the Venetian featuring amateurs going up against well-known pros. And then he offered some terrific insight I hadn't thought about as to why the soon-to-close Second City didn't do as well as it should/could've at the Flamingo. The bottom line seems to be that the SC folks failed to deliver on the promise of guest appearances by its famous alums.

* I Didn't Know This. Did You? F. Andrew Taylor of the View, the weekly freebie section of the R-J, had a really fun, revealing piece in honor of National Drive-Thru Day, which was last Thursday. (Aside: Isn't it always drive-thru day?!?) All the basics were in there -- the drive-thru chapel, pawn and smoke shops, sexy cafe -- but did you know that they have a drive-thru sportsbook at the Fiesta Rancho casino? I sure did not. God forbid you find yourself behind ditherers like those folks who stand in front of the $1 movie rental machines at the supermarket forever, though.

* Monday Sadness. Remember how gangbusters great the R-J was doing, per its publisher Sherm Frederick, who claimed a circulation gain that didn't exist? Then why, as of today, does the paper no longer have a Living section on Mondays? Mondays were one of that department's best, most original days with Carol Cling's Shooting Stars column and Corey Levitan's sometimes-funny, sometimes-grating stooge-in-odd-jobs "Fear and Loafing" columns. Levitan sent an email out last week that a friend forwarded my way indicating that he'll be doing one of those a month from now on instead. So, Mr. Modesty noted, "the silver lining is that, with only 12 columns a year, all of them will be astonishingly great." Uh, OK. Levitan was mysterious about the switch -- "I am not permitted to tell you any more" -- but it's clear what's going on here. I just got through praising Cling's long-running weekly Shooting Stars column, in which she took note of various TV, movie, commercial and other crews filming around the city, as her "very best, most Vegas-relevant material." So, of course, they had to dismantle the entire page. Sorry, Carol.

Carol's final print SS column indicated that she'd be blogging her Shooting Stars material on the R-J's website here. So far, though, she has not done so, but here's hoping.

Told Ya So: 73 Fired At Trump

KVBC-TV's Steve Crupi reported last night a terrific scoop -- the Review-Journal doesn't even have it today -- that the Trump International Hotel & Tower is in such doldrums they're firing 73 employees. That's a fifth of the workforce. Me thinks this is more proof that they'll never build the second tower in the image used below behind the anchors.


Gee, what's that I wrote in the Weekly just last week? Oh! That's right: "We in the media will also be writing many stories in coming years about the struggle of this property. It is the best-executed version of the worst-considered idea in Vegas today."

Crupi reports that the layoffs are due to the lack of closings caused by the mortgage meltdown. But didn't Mr. Trump tell Howard Stutz in the Review-Journal a month ago: "Some of my buyers are richer than the banks! We're working with people and I think we're doing pretty well!"

And, of course, there's this little gem of a bald-faced lie from The Apprentice champ Stefanie Schaeffer, marketing veep for Trump’s Vegas project, on "The Strip" in March when asked about the impact of the credit crunch:

“We’re in the process of closing right now, and thus far we haven’t really had a problem. Everything’s been going pretty smoothly. Then again, when you talk about Cosmo and you talk about some of these other projects that stopped mid-construction or even pre-construction, you’re not talking about the Trump product, and the Trump brand carries again the Trump name, which pretty much says it all. People know they’re getting a level of excellence that is not only unsurpassed anywhere in the world but is something that speaks for itself. So even in a poor market, we’ve really been relatively unaffected.”

Ya don't say. If it wasn't for her hubris in talking smack about another project when she had to have known they were facing a rough road themselves, I might not rerun this quote so often.

(Disclosure: My partner, Miles, is executive producer at KVBC. He's also away tending to a family matter, so he was uninvolved in this post.)

Show is UP: The Two Seasons

Hey all, this week's show, featuring interviews with Four Seasons songwriter Bob Gaudio (right) and "Jersey Boys" actor Erich Bergen (left) is now online! Click here to hear it or right-click here to download it and listen to it later. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here.

Also, if you're in town, check out KVBC Channel 3 tomorrow morning at 5 and 6 (or set a DVR!) to catch me commenting on the new Cher show. I'll also be on Nevada Week in Review on Channel 10 at 7:30 p.m. discussing the week's news. They replay that throughout the weekend.

Next week: Frankie Valli. And a new trivia question and poll. So you've got another four days to answer the trivia quiz after all.

Live From, Uh, New York?

ABC News' billboard in Times Square, 1/25/08

How does one cover a fire in a city 2,000 miles away? Well, if the fire turns out to be less than a holocaust (look it up - a "holocaust" originally meant a devastating fire), it's not that hard. Also, if you're able to tap into a huge network of Vegas people from the blogs and list-servs, it's also doable. Not ideal, but doable.

Here's what I ended up with. I got quite a ribbing from my family for the idea that I could write a piece in this manner. As I said, it's not how I'd normally do it. But in a pinch -- evidently the Times simply could not find another reporter in Vegas -- it'll do.

My Las Vegas Weekly column will discuss this further, but there was something else about this experience. Since I wasn't there, I was glued to the TV. And, while I was thrilled to see that KVBC logo in the corner indicating that CNN was using Miles' TV station's footage, it was just sickening to realize that even in its hour of trauma, Vegas just isn't taken seriously.

There I was, near tears watching the apparent destruction of a major structure and worrying about the pandemonium of thousands of guests and employees having to get out. I assumed that there were tourists in the upper floors who were trapped and possibly dead. That it all worked out OK does not minimize what it looked and felt like in the beginning of the crisis.

But the folks on cable news? They thought the fire was entertaining. One CNN reporter actually wondered jokingly in the earliest stages whether the Monte Carlo buffet comp he’d recently received in the mail was still valid. FOX News Channel, which carried every O.J. Simpson press conference live, didn’t bother to pick up its local affiliate’s feed from the briefing by Las Vegas Fire Chief Steven Smith. And, yes, some bozoette on one of those stations – can’t recall which – really thought she was clever muttering, “Like Paris Hilton would say, that’s hot!” Can you imagine such irreverence if this had been the Sears Tower?

Just as amazing was how quickly the story died the minute it turned out that no humans had. Were I not on vacation, I would be pushing editors to let me do the obvious follow-up: A 32-story building containing 5,000 or so people caught major fire and everyone got out calmly. And alive. Imagine that.

NY Eve Away From The Strip

So this is how normal people do New Year's Eve, even in Fabulous Las Vegas:

Rather than go to the Strip and work from the Caesars Palace perch where KVBC's main anchors stand and where Miles and I ushered in 05, 06 and 07, this time out we stayed home and comforted our dogs as idiot neighbors set off firecrackers in the streets. Miles brought in Chinese food, we spent the witching hour watching the video of the most important event of 2007 to us, our wedding, pausing to see the big fireworks display on the TV.

Oh, and I made doughnuts. Huh? I had been online chatting with my niece, Courtney, in Arizona earlier in the evening and she said she was making them. So I thought, "That could be fun." I've been becoming more and more ambitious in the kitchen -- made an amazing pumpkin cheesecake from scratch for Xmas using a real pumpkin that I puree'd myself and a crust with ground pumpkin seeds! -- so this is what we did.

I did not have an icing bag or donut cutter, per Courtney's recipe instructions, so I rolled the doughnuts by hand. At first, I thought they needed to be bigger, but they expand in the pan and my first few were grotequely large and doughy. So I ended up doing them small, like this:

And here's the results! Yum! The ones to the left are the ugly huge ones. The ones to the right are the good ones.


I glazed them and sprinkled powdered sugar and sent most of them to work with Miles today. Yes, he had to work today. The (news) shows must go on! So we were in bed by 1.

Here's the recipe, courtesy of Courtney:

1 cup granulated sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups all-purpose flour (about)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons melted butter
Canola oil

Sift together sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and flour. Beat eggs thoroughly, then stir into dry ingredients. Add the milk and melted butter. Roll about 1/2 inch thick on a floured board and cut with a doughnut cutter. Fry several at a time in 375 degrees F fat until nicely browned.

Glaze: Boil 1 cup water, add half cup of powdered sugar at a time until it thickens. Paint on hot donuts, let dry and it should look clear. Make sure the glaze is thick enough before putting on doughnuts, or else you will make the donuts soggy.

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Red Carpet: 40/40 Club Fun

The 40/40 Club is a new sports-themed nightclub with "an eclectic menu" that includes fried deviled eggs and southern-fried chicken sticks owned by hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, boyfriend of Beyonce. I did not have the stamina to stick around until they arrived, probably at about 2 a.m. I did get a bunch of fun pix, though.

The first recognizable star I saw was, uh, the Rev. Al Sharpton. It surprised others, but this was the third time I've seen Rev. Al on the Vegas scene -- he was in the audience of a Gladys Knight concert a few years ago. I don't remember the other time but it was, as this, a black-related event.

For a while, it was the predictable I'd-attend-the-opening-of-a-can-of-tuna crowd: Frank Marino, Nathan Burton and then Carrot Top...

We were getting sort of restless, having been assembled 8 p.m. along this area and having nobody of note show up for more than three hours. I was particularly fascinated by the Nicole Richie-lookalike in the blue dress and sprocket-silver boots from the local Fox affiliate in the middle shot. I'm always fascinated by "journalists" who hug and kiss all the stars and fancy themselves one of them.




Anyhow, eventually, we started getting a parade of major sports stars, including (in order) Charles Barkley, LeBron James and Alex Rodriguez:

I gave up on this red carpet when Mary J. Blige showed up. A PR woman, knowing I wanted to chat with her, nonetheless said to the singer, "Would you speak to the local Fox reporter?" And then, when done, the same PR lady said leadingly to Blige, "You don't want to talk to anyone else, do you?" Later, this woman would claim it was Mary's ideas who she spoke with, but as someone with a severe hearing disability, I can SEE exactly everything that's said. But, anyhow, here's Mary J -- and her very, very severe shoes...

I did get a very nice shot of one of Miles' reporters at KVBC, Hetty Chang, chatting up LeBron, who is 6-8. The disparity reminded me of my 2001 snapshot with Yao Ming in a Changchun, China hotel room. See it here. God, wasn't I young and my hair so short!

Evidently, I wasn't the only one who gave up; Richard Abowitz of the L.A. Times blog the Moveable Buffet checked out even sooner than I did. He will be live-blogging New Year's Eve tonight from the Strip, for those of you who feels sad you're not there. Read it all here.

I have not seen yet whether Jay-Z and Beyonce made it or, if they did, whether they made the wait worth anything to the print reporters who waited. Others who were on the "tip sheet," a press release advertising who would walk the carpet, included Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Jackson and Barry Bonds. Dunno if they were there, but I gave up when I realized while chatting with LeBron that my questions were too deep for this setting anyhow. Oh well.

But before I finish this, though, I wanted to mention that there was this huge hoard of people being escorted into the club, mostly very pretty women. I asked one how she got her invite and she mentioned, elusively, that she was from some "agency." Hmmm.

That does NOT explain how this reincarnated Robert Goulet got in, though...