The Show is UP: Heavy Metal's Sweetest Star

Here's the terrific conversation with Dee Snider. Plus, there's some good news nuggets in Banter you won't hear anywhere else...yet! Click on the date below to listen or right-click and save to your computer. Or subscribe (it's free!) via the iTunes link or via the Zune link.

April 16: Hard Rock's Sweetest Star

In retrospect, Dee Snider was born to play Vegas. And finally, thanks to Monster Circus at the Las Vegas Hilton, that time has come for the long-haired, gravel-throated, lingerie-wearing front man for the heavy metal band Twisted Sister. The former choir boy from Long Island speaks this hour to Steve about the show, about just how subversive all that hard-rocking crossdressing was back in the day and about Barry Manilow’s reaction to sharing his showroom with this bunch. Plus, is Gene Simmons of Kiss really is as big a jerk as he seems? Snider has some interesting thoughts on that, too.

In Banter: Le Reve's new ending, the Venetian's umbrella act, Wynn on TV, Hellmuth via chariot, bye-bye whore tax and a great new Vegas pay-per-view idea.

Links to stuff we discuss:

Dee Snider’s website
Monster Circus tickets
Snider’s radio shows Fangoria and House of Hair
A Monster Circus review by Joe Brown of the Las Vegas Sun
Shecky Greene’s website
The Washington Post on NPR’s record ratings in 2008
American Anonymous by Benoit Denizet-Lewis
Vanity Fair piece on Bernie Madoff
The “60 Minutes”, uh, loving portrait with Steve Wynn
Jon Ralston’s interviews with Steve Wynn, Day One and Day Two
Steve’s Las Vegas Weekly column about the death of the whore tax
VegasHappensHere.Com photos of The Joint
The logo of Loves Park, Illinois

The Strip is LIVE tonight w/Dee Snider

Here we go again! I was quite nervous about interviewing Dee Snider, frontman of Twisted Sister and now of Monster Circus at, of all places, the Las Vegas Hilton, but holy crap it was a great conversation. Snider talks about his youth as a choir boy, about shopping for makeup and lingerie and about whether Kiss' Gene Simmons really is the jerk he shows himself to be. I guess when you can't bear heavy metal music, you come up with unusual questions to ask one of its pioneers.

Join us at 6:45-8 p.m. PT in the chat room at LVRocks.Com for the live version of "The Strip," complete with news from Vegas, the tourist tip and all the rest of the fun. We'll only be playing one half of the Snider conversation, so you'll have to pick up the podcast version on Thursday for the rest. Subscribe via iTunes.

Planet Ho's Big Night, The Review

Streisand only lasted about 20 minutes and the escalator kept breaking -- with people on it. There. I'm done being catty and snarky.

Other than that, the P-Ho Grand Opening was really a much better time than I had anticipated, primarily because I brought as my date Amy from Grits to Glitz and she got molested. But I'll get to that in just a sec.

The festivities were actually pretty straightforward: A red carpet with loads of stars, which I skipped because I don't do red carpets unless Elizabeth Taylor might be rolling down it. Instead, I met up with Amy, whose new duds bought for the occasion were sensational. (see left)

Then a concert at the Theater For The Performing Arts featuring comic/actor Kevin Pollak, whom I could hardly hear because the hearing-assistive device didn't work real well, but at least they had one. The main entertainment, Streisand, gave us about eight songs - "Memories," "Evergreen," "Smile," "Don't Rain On My Parade," "Rain or Shine," "Happy Days Are Here Again" and one or two others - that she read off a TelePrompTer. I thought she sounded great, and I loved how she was all business and didn't even bother to congratulate P-Ho on its "opening." Also, no political jabbering, either.

From there it was on to the big, star-studded party. Well, we all tried, but there was this escalator problem. Which is funny because two years ago when this place was still Aladdin and they were hosting Miss America, the exact same thing happened - the thing stopped moving. This is the main escalator from the casino up to the conference area. Bad.

The path to the party went through this long, winding hallway of white and pink where Amy took this pic of me with one of the babes showing us all the way.






Once we got there, this is what the room looked like:

There was an open bar, of course, and lots of yummy food...


The first celeb we saw was Criss Angel, who happened to follow me into the bathroom...


Amy and I were both tired and her feet were hurting, so we were going to call it a night but we sat down at a table right next to a velvet rope where, shortly thereafter, Danny Glover was chit-chatting with the common folk. I wonder the conversation between the two commoners in the foreground...

Next thing we know, though, a woman I know is inviting us to tag along into the roped-off area, where we got to spot such people as Tom Arnold, Frank Marino, Tom Jones and Sugar Ray Leonard...



But the classic moment of the night was when Amy spotted Gene Simmons of Kiss. You know, the misogynist who said all kinds of creepy things to Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" a few years back. And Amy, emboldened by wine and adrenaline, simply had to have her photo taken with him. So she went right up to him and he, uh, grabbed her by the hair...



So that was the deal. If you want to hear Amy's version on the Grits To Glitz podcast, click here or right-click here to download it and hear it whenever you wish. Especially hilarious is hearing Bay hearing about the Gene Simmons thing for the first time.