Show is UP: Love, Exciting and Two

Here we are with 12-year-old Kyle Stokely in the LVRocks.Com studio on Tuesday for this week's program with his mom, Jess. Kyle talks about his life as an original "Love" performer and also about how stuck up Paris Hilton was and how nice Paul McCartney is. That's Engineer Mark behind the mike in the photo below.

Click on the date to hear it or right-click to download the show and listen whenever you want. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here:

June 26: "Love," Exciting and Two

Two years ago this week, the world experienced the Beatles music in a new way, the Cirque du Soleil way. The show “Love” arrived in the theater formerly occupied by Siegfried & Roy to rave reviews and its soundtrack of tracks remixed from the original tapes by the original producer, went on to win a Grammy. To honor the show, we’ll talk live in the studio tonight to Kyle Stokely, a 12-year-old actor who has been in the production from the beginning about what it’s like being a child actor on the Strip and about all the famous people he’s met on the job.

In Banter: The New Yorker's Adelson opus, Cosmo v Cosmo, Trump in the dumps, Cirque gossip and a "locals" Sahara?

Links:

See Love's Kyle Stokely in a YouTube juggling video here
Get tickets to see Love here
That 12,000-word New Yorker piece on Sheldon Adelson is here
Steve's take on that New Yorker piece is here
Information about Wizard, the show about Harold Arlen, is here
Read about Cosmo's lawsuit against the Cosmo here
Trump's woes and denials of same can be read about here
Read more about Sahara's odd locals efforts here

The Strip is LIVE tonight - w/ LOVE!

In honor of the second anniversary of Cirque du Soleil's "Love," we've got the very articulate and talented 12-year-old performer Kyle Stokely live in the studio to discuss his life as a would-be young Beatle. Plus, news from Vegas, a new trivia question, the poll, listener feedback and, as always, The Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week.

Join us at 7-8 pm PT in the chat and listen live at LVRocks.Com. Or wait until Thursday for the podcast version, which will likely include a chat with a second, as-yet-undetermined "Love" actor.

This Week's LVW Col: Cirque Has Class

So here's a piece I would never have known about except that a loyal listener and reader works at Cirque and mentioned it - Cirque has a special school at its HQ for its show kids.

On a related note, 12-year-old "Love" star Kyle Stokely will be in the LVRocks.Com studio on Tuesday night to be interviewed for next week's "The Strip," which honors the second anniversary of "Love." We're also getting the show's artistic director, I believe. Should be fun. Join us from 7-8 pm PT at LVRocks.Com.

Also, check out the photo with the piece on the Web. I did NOT realize that my name was on the whiteboard behind the photo of the boy.

Cirque Has Class
Why the famed troupe holds the answer to fixing public education

By STEVE FRIESS

Back when I first arrived in this city in 1996 to cover public education for the Review-Journal, the very notion of schools and Vegas elicited sardonic guffaws from people I knew in other cities.

They mocked the notion of children growing up in the shadow of Sin City and actually asked whether there were classrooms inside the casinos.

In the subsequent years, I’d learn that there are, in fact, very serious problems with the schools in Clark County. Beyond the abysmal test scores and high dropout rates, I’d discover trying to teach journalism at UNLV that a great number of students who earn Millennium Scholarships from the state for graduating with a B average are, nonetheless, functionally illiterate.

What I didn’t expect was to discover the ideal classroom—the answer to all these woes—on, of all places, the Las Vegas Strip.

Okay, technically, the ideal classroom is off the Strip, just south of McCarran Airport in a small, yellow-walled room overflowing with books and art projects and, most important of all, a sort of happiness and earnestness that accompanies real learning.

And the half-dozen boys who attend this school get to do so because they are full-time performers in Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles-scored production Love at the Mirage. In other words, they owe the very existence of the Strip a debt of gratitude.

Read the rest - and see that photo - HERE