DAVID by Max Friedland

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Urban Canvases

From Marquee Signs to Murals, Las Vegas’ Iconic Public Art Shines Bright BAR MITZVAH STANDING UP NIGHT FEVER TO CANCER

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KRYPTON VIA KRAKOW

FASHION’S THREE C’S

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OCTOBER

22 42

pulse

live

think

grill

explore The month’s event listings to help plan your day or your stay devour Where to find some of the best eats, drinks and foodie happenings in the Valley

42 Fashion’s Three C’s Carrie Carter-Cooper and the Las Vegas Fashion Council support local designers.

58 Jodi Harris, Event Planner The month’s spotlight on someone to know.

26 speak Saturday Night Fever had nothing on this Bar Mitzvah. Dance on young Corey, today you became a mensch.

22 discover Places to go, cool things to do, hip people to see in the most exciting city in the World

32 sense Here’s to this ritual being less about the bar and more about the mitzvah.

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52 “Holy Bagels, Batman!” Exploring the Jewish DNA of Superman, Batman, Captain America, Spiderman and the rest of the gang.

Urban Canvases

on the cover Zio Ziegler’s 2014 mural, on the side of a building on 7th near Stewart.

From Marquee Signs to Murals, Las Vegas’ Iconic Public Art Shines Bright

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36 taste We revisit the Las Vegas bakery scene and discover a few recent arrivals that are guaranteed to please.

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30 know Stand up comedian Tig Notaro finds the laughs in her breast cancer.

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20 desire Sin City abounds in world-class shopping ... these are a few of our favorite things

46 An Urban Canvas Marquee neon, murals and graffiti, a new spin on the old term “Painting the town red.”

BAR MITZVAH STANDING UP NIGHT FEVER TO CANCER

KRYPTON VIA KRAKOW

FASHION’S THREE C’S

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Copyright 2015 by JewishINK LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. DAVID MAGAZINE is protected as a trademark in the United States. Subscribers: If the Postal Service alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we are under no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. The publisher accepts no responsibility for unsolicited or contributed manuscripts, photographs, artwork or advertisements. Submissions will not be returned unless arranged for in writing. DAVID MAGAZINE is a monthly publication. All information regarding editorial content or property for sale is deemed reliable. No representation is made as to the accuracy hereof and is printed subject to errors and omissions.

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UNITED FOR A FUTURE WITHOUT BREAST CANCER

Maura Bivens & Daughter Diagnosis: Breast Cancer

One out of eight women will face breast cancer in her lifetime. Which means one out of eight wives, sisters, aunts, daughters and mothers will be stricken. When breast cancer strikes one of us, whole families suffer. This is why all of the medical oncologists, radiation oncologists and breast surgery specialists at Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada are dedicated supporters of Susan G. Komen for the CureÂŽ, whose tireless efforts and groundbreaking research are making a future without breast cancer more of a possibility than ever before. In addition to supporting organizations like Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Comprehensive is also practicing healing edge medicine through our affiliations with the The US Oncology Network and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, which gives us access to the latest innovations in cancer treatment therapies as they are developed. These emerging treatments, along with our ever-increasing body of medical knowledge, benefits every breast cancer patient we treat â&#x20AC;&#x201D; more than 6,000 women every year. But to end breast cancer once and for all, it will take a united effort from all of us. Think of the eight women who matter most in your life. Imagine one of them with breast cancer, and you can begin to feel the urgency of this mission. Ask your doctor about Comprehensive. Visit cccnevada.com for more information or call 702.952.3350 to schedule an appointment today.

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Publisher/Editor Associate Publisher

Max Friedland

max@davidlv.com editor@davidlv.com

Joanne Friedland joanne@davidlv.com

EDITORIALllllllll

Calendar Editor

Brianna Soloski

brianna@davidlv.com

Copy Editor Pulse Editor Production Assistant

Pat Teague

Contributing Writers

Marisa Finetti

Marisa Finetti ZoĂŤ Friedland

Jaq Greenspon E.C.Gladstone Lynn Wexler

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY

Art Director/ Photographer

Steven Wilson

steve@davidlv.com

ADVERTISING & MARKETING

Advertising Director

Joanne Friedland joanne@davidlv.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS 702-254-2223 | subscribe@davidlv.com

Volume 06 Number 06 www.davidlv.com DAVID Magazine is published 12 times a year.

To advertise in DAVID Magazine, call 702-254-2223 or email ads@davidlv.com To subscribe to DAVID Magazine, call 702.254-2223 or email subscibe@davidlv.com

DAVID Magazine sets high standards to ensure forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable manner. This copy of DAVID Magazine was printed by American Web in Denver, Colo., on paper from well-managed forests which meet EPA guidelines that recommend use of recovered fibers for coated papers. Inks used contain a blend of soy base. Our printer meets or exceeds all federal Resource Conservation Recovery Act standards and is a certified member of both the Forest Stewardship Council and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. When you are done with this issue, please pass it on to a friend or recycle it.

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LAS VEGAS

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contributors

Marisa Finetti is a local writer, marketing professional and blogger. The Tokyoborn Finetti has called Las Vegas home since 2005. She has written for such publications as Spirit and Las Vegas and Nevada magazines and has a healthy-living blog at bestbewell. com. When she’s not writing, Finetti enjoys family time with her husband and two boys.

Adam Friedland

is a standup/ sketch comedian who recently relocated to Brooklyn, NY. He has performed at numerous theaters, comedy clubs and rock venues including The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, The Lincoln Theater, Gotham Comedy Club, UCBEast, The Fillmore, and the 9:30 Club. Prior to moving to New York in 2014 he was named best comedian in Washington City Paper’s annual best of DC list. He featured at the 2013 and 2014 Bentzen Ball Comedy Festival alongside Nick Kroll, Todd Barry, Moshe Kasher and Kyle Kinane.

Jaq Greenspon is a journalist, screenwriter and author with credits on The New Adventures of Robin Hood and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also is a literary and movie critic, has taught and written about fi lmmaking but is most proud of his role in the fi lm, Lotto Love. A Vegas resident for most of his life,he now resides in Eastern Europe.

E.C. Gladstone is a Las Vegas-based writer/photographer and social media consultant. Covering the ever-growing worlds of travel, food, wine & spirits, he has contributed recently to BonAppetit.com, About.com, Thrillist, Everyday With Rachael Ray and multiple local Vegas outlets. Previously, he helped launched JLiving magazine and has held editorial positions with many websites and magazines including AOL.com, US Weekly, and Alternative Press. His ideal day involves a busy kitchen, soul music, laughter and cask spirits. Currently he is compiling a book of his rock journalism from the ‘90s. Find more of his writing on food and beverages at nowimhungry.com and sipsavorswallow. com.

Corey Levitan is a regular contributor to Men’s Health magazine. He wrote the most popular newspaper humor column in Las Vegas history, “Fear and Loafing,” which ran 176 times in the ReviewJournal from 2006-2011. At home, however, he is referred to as “Mr. Poopyhead” by his four-year-old daughter, and something much less printable by his wife. Follow his latest adventures here and at coreylevitan.com.

Lynn Wexler has been a feature writer and contributor for magazines and newspapers, locally and nationally, for over 20 years. She writes a monthly online column entitled Manners in the News, which comments on the behavior of politicians, celebrities and others thrust in the public arena. She is the Founder and President of Perfectly Poised, a school of manners that teaches social, personal and business etiquette to young people. She is a former TV Reporter and News Anchor. Of her many accomplishments, she is most proud of her three outstanding teenaged children.

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INVE S T I N G I N NEVADA’ S MO S T PRECIO U S

RESOURCE Barrick believes every child should have what they need to succeed in school. That’s why we’ve donated millions to education initiatives throughout the state.

ab r i g h t e r n e v a d a . c o m

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from the publisher “Today, I am a fountain pen and my father is full of ink.” These were the opening comments of my bar mitzvah speech given at a luncheon at the Glen Country Club, Cape Town, South Africa. Beyond the miracle of my memory, (given the 50-plus years since,) I marvel at the degree to which things are immune to change. The only difference, as I see it, is that I now play the role of the old codger with the tall tale, the one my deceased uncle Hymie played with such gusto as he enthralled us with his clandestine activities. We never challenged the improbability of the CIA employing a South African used car salesman. He assured us he could kill, “so silent they would never hear me coming.” The Baron Munchausen had nothing on Uncle Hymie – but that’s a story for another time. In Lowering the Bar – Mitzvah, pages 26-29, Corey Levitan channels some serious nostalgia. Patent leather Italian loafers, bell-bottoms and wide lapels abound at his 1970s Long Island bar mitzvah soirée. The whole world was strut walking into an uncertain future, Saturday nights were feverish, while 13-year-old Jewish boys and girls were stuffing their pockets with bar/bat mitzvah gelt (money). This month a scion of DAVID contributes, the one who thankfully looks like his mother. Formerly from Vegas, Adam Friedland now resides in the borough of Brooklyn, New York, where he writes and performs comedy. In his profile piece, Standing Up, pages 30-31, he explores the intersection of pain and humor. Stand-up comedian Tig Notaro courageously confronted her own breast cancer diagnosis in an on-stage rant that has become epic. She continues to inspire legions of women (and, yes, men) who wrestle with the emotional impact of this disease. What could be better than buttery rich pâte feuilletée (flaky pastry) filled with crème anglaise (custard) as a companion to your morning double espresso? E.C. Gladstone and Dr. Michael Uzmann invite us along as they tour several new bakeries; we eavesdrop on their conversations with Valley pâtissiers. Their roundup, Rising Above, pages 36-40 is a must read for all Sin City carboholics. Fashion’s Three C’s, pages 42-45 reviews the efforts under way to make Las Vegas a global fashion center. The three C’s referred to in the story’s headline represent mover and shaker Carrie Carter-Cooper, founder of the Las Vegas Fashion Council and owner of BESTAgency. Her philanthropic spirit and community-oriented endeavors are well known. Created on a whim, following no recognized set of historical principles, Las Vegas continues to invent its own paradigm. This iconic city rewrites the cityscape rulebook, painting the torrid Mojave Desert in brilliant neon that blurs day and night. Last June, we ran a cover story on art in Las Vegas; it soon became evident that it was a big subject, resulting in the need to break off an element for future publication. This month we present An Urban Canvas, pages 46-51, which covers Las Vegas’ signature street art scene, encompassing sculpture, murals and graffiti. “Holy Bagels, Batman!” we revisit the subject of nerdy Jews and their comic book superhero creations. With their anglicized names, created to avoid an ever-present immigrant stigma, these writers and artists blazed a path. They had an impact on the very culture they hoped to disappear into, whilst proving that the goldene medina’s (golden country) streets were truly paved with gold. It’s been a pleasure, as always, working on this month’s issue. I’ll see you in the racks.

Max Friedland max@davidlv.com

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pulse explore @ 14 devour @ 19 desire @ 20 discover @ 22

FATHER JOHN MISTY 10.15

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eXplore L A S

MARTY FRIEDMAN: 8 p.m., $20-$25. Backstage Bar and Billiards, 601 Fremont Street, Las Vegas. 702-382-2227. backstagebarandbilliards.com RAY ROMANO: Through Oct. 3, 10 p.m., $49.99-$69.99. Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S,, Las Vegas. 702-791-7111. mirage.com

V E G A S

BIGBANG: Time and cost TBA. Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-6327777. mandalaybay.com ROUTE 91 HARVEST FESTIVAL WITH SPECIAL GUESTS FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE, KEITH URBAN AND TIM MCGRAW: Through Oct. 4, times vary, costs vary. MGM Grand, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-8911111. mgmgrand.com CELINE DION: Through Oct. 10, 7:30 p.m., $55-$250. Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-731-7110. caesars.com DISNEY LIVE THREE CLASSIC FAIRY TALES: Through Oct. 4, times vary, $20. Orleans, 4500 W. Tropicana Avenue, Las Vegas. 702365-7111. orleanscasino.com SLAUGHTER, VIXEN, AND STEELHEART: Time TBA, $25. Downtown Las Vegas Events Center, 200 S. 3rd Street, Las Vegas. 800-7453000. dlvec.com THE MUSIC OF MANILOW WITH MARK O'TOOLE: 7 p.m., $39. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-7492012. thesmithcenter.com HALFWAY TO ST. PATRICK'S DAY FEATURING FLOGGING MOLLY WITH SPECIAL GUESTS SEAN AND ZANDER: 9 p.m., $40. Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com

COUNTING CROWS - SOMEWHERE UNDER WONDERLAND TOUR WITH SPECIAL GUEST CITIZEN COPE: 8:30 p.m., $55. Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-6987000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com

OCTOBER 1

PICASSO - CREATURES AND CREATIVITY: Through Jan. 10, times vary, free-$19. Bellagio, 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 888-987-6667. bellagio.com JEFF DUNHAM: Through Oct. 4, times vary, $72. Planet Hollywood, 3667 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 877-333-9474. caesars.com/ planet-hollywood SHANTELL MARTIN - RECORD & PLAY: Through Oct. 11, times vary, free. Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-6987000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com MURS: 8 p.m., $16-$19. Backstage Bar and Billiards, 601 Fremont Street, Las Vegas. 702-

382-2227. backstagebarandbilliards.com ADAM TURL 13 BARISTAS: Through Oct. 31, free, times vary. Brett Wesley Gallery, 1025 S. First Street #150, Las Vegas. 702-433-4433. brettwesleygallery.com RVLTN AND ROCKSTAR ENERGY PRESENT SAFE IN SOUND FESTIVAL WITH BRO SAFARI, DATSIK, ZOMBOY & MORE: 8 p.m., $36. Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702-874-8719. hardrockhotel.com THE BOOK OF MORMON: Through Oct. 18, times vary, $36. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-7492012. thesmithcenter.com

ART IN THE PARK: Through Oct. 4, times vary, free. To learn more about Art in the Park, Boulder City Hospital or the Boulder City Hospital Foundation, please contact Wendy Adams at 702-293-0214 or wendy@ bouldercityhospital.org. caesars.com/planethollywood PAUL RODGERS: Time and cost TBA. Downtown Las Vegas Events Center, 200 S. 3rd Street, Las Vegas. 800-745-3000. dlvec.com GLOW BALL NIGHT GOLF: To benefit Three Square Food Bank. 4:30 p.m., $45. Eagle Crest Golf Course, 2203 Thomas W. Ryan Blvd., Las Vegas. 702-240-1320. golfsummerlin.com

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JIM JEFFERIES — THE FREEDUMB TOUR: 8 p.m., $45. Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702-874-8719. hardrockhotel.com

Cafe, 3771 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702733-7625. hardrock.com

ANN HAMPTON CALLAWAY — FROM SASSY TO DIVINE - THE SARAH VAUGHAN PROJECT: Times vary, $39. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702749-2012. thesmithcenter.com

THE JUDDS - GIRLS NIGHT OUT: Through Oct. 24, time TBA, $59.50. Venetian, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-414-1000. venetian.com

AFTER SCHOOL ALL STARS UN-GALA: For more information, visit asaslv.org or call 702770-7601. caesars.com/planet-hollywood LIPSHTICK - THE PERFECT SHADE OF STAND UP - JENNIFER COOLIDGE: Time and cost TBA. Venetian, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-414-1000. venetian.com

COUNTING CROWS - SOMEWHERE UNDER WONDERLAND TOUR WITH SPECIAL GUEST CITIZEN COPE: 8:30 p.m., $55. Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-6987000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com

PAWN STARS POKER RUN: 10 a.m., $20-$30. World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, 713 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. epilepsy.com/ nevada NEVADA CHAMBER SYMPHONY'S MUSIC MAESTRO!: 3 p.m., free. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-5073459. lvccld.org

THE TUESDAY BLEND FEATURING JAKE AND PAPA: 10 p.m., $10-$20. Hard Rock

SCORPIONS WITH SPECIAL GUEST QUEENSRŸCHE: 8 p.m., $59.95. Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702874-8719. hardrockhotel.com

CONFLICT: 7 p.m., $19-$20. Backstage Bar and Billiards, 601 Fremont Street, Las Vegas. 702-382-2227. backstagebarandbilliards.com LAS VEGAS BURLESQUE FESTIVAL: Through Oct. 10, costs vary, times vary. For more information, visit lvburlesquefestival.com caesars.com/planet-hollywood

MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT: 8 p.m., $15-$20. Backstage Bar and Billiards, 601 Fremont Street, Las Vegas. 702-3822227. backstagebarandbilliards.com JANET JACKSON: Through Oct. 10, time and cost TBA. Planet Hollywood, 3667 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 877-333-9474. caesars. com/planet-hollywood NICK SWARDSON: 10 p.m., $49.99-$59.99. Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-791-7111. mirage.com

Happy Halloween Pick up some treats at Bagel Cafe 301 N. Buffalo Drive

255-3444 www.thebagelcafelv.com

The Judds 10.7

WhereTheLocalsEat.com

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CHROMEO: Time and cost TBA. Drais, 3595 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-777-3800. draislv.com ROCK 'N' ROLL WINE: Through Oct. 10, times vary, $59-$249. MGM Grand, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-891-1111. mgmgrand.com FESTIVINO: 7 p.m., $95. The Venetian, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-414-1000. venetian.com AGE OF CHIVALRY RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL: Through Oct. 11, times vary, free$13. Sunset Park, 2601 E. Sunset Road, Las Vegas. 702-455-8200. lvrenfair.com MENUS 2015 GALA: Tickets, sponsorship opportunities and more information is available by visiting www.ecflv.org, or contacting Melissa Arias at melissa@ecflv. org or 702-932-5098. caesars.com/planethollywood IN ITS ENTIRETY CONCERT SERIES — FLEETWOOD MAC'S RUMOURS: 7:30 p.m., $15. Red Rock Hotel, 11011 W. Charleston Blvd., Las Vegas. 702-797-7777. redrock. sclv.com SUNSET SONGWRITING FESTIVAL: Through Oct. 11, times vary, costs vary. Sunset Station, 1301 W. Sunset Road, Henderson. 702-5477777. sunsetstation.sclv.com CLINT HOLMES: Through Oct. 11, times vary, $37. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-749-2012. thesmithcenter.com DAVE COULIER: Through Oct. 11, 7:30 p.m., $15. South Point, 9777 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-796-7111. southpointcasino.com GREGG ALLMAN: 8 p.m., $39. Palms, 4321 W. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-942-7777. palms.com

CAPITAL CITIES: Time TBA, free. Drai's Nightclub, 3595 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-777-3800. draislv.com RISE LANTERN FESTIVAL: Time TBA, $80$100. risefestival.com caesars.com/planethollywood

NEW VISTA COMMUNITY WINE WALK: 7 p.m., $25-$30. Town Square, 6605 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-269-5001. mytownsquarelasvegas.com TIM ALLEN: 10 p.m., $59.99. Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-791-7111. mirage.com

Gabage 10.10

WAR: 8 p.m., $20-$25. Craig Ranch Regional Park Amphitheater, 628 W. Craig Road, Las Vegas. 702-633-2418. craigranch.yapsody.com PARAGUAYAN HARPIST MARIANO GONZALEZ: 2 p.m., free. Centennial Hills Library, 6711 N. Buffalo Drive, Las Vegas. 702-507-6107. lvccld.org LIPSHTICK - THE PERFECT SHADE OF STAND UP - LONI LOVE: Time and cost TBA. Venetian, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-414-1000. venetian.com FOSTERING FUTURES OF LAS VEGAS 25TH ANNUAL GALA: 5 p.m., $200. Venetian, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-414-1000. fosteringfutureslv.org GARBAGE WITH SPECIAL GUEST TORRES: 9 p.m., $40. Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com JAMEY JOHNSON: Through Oct. 11, 8 p.m., $39.95. Orleans, 4500 W. Tropicana Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-284-7777. orleanscasino.com

TREMONTI: 7:30 p.m., $25-$30. Hard Rock Cafe, 3771 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702733-7625. hardrock.com KOL ISHA - 2ND ANNUAL WOMEN'S VOICES CONCERT AT KING DAVID: 2 p.m. King David Memorial Chapel, 2697 E. Eldorado Lane, Las Vegas. 702-464-8570 dignitymemorial.com NEVADA BALLET THEATRE - A CHOREOGRAPHER'S SHOWCASE: Encore

Oct. 18. 1 p.m., cost TBA. Treasure Island, 3300 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-8947111. treasureisland.com

MYLAN WORLD TEAM TENNIS SMASH HITS: 7 p.m., $45-$125. Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-731-7110. caesars.com

ELTON JOHN: Through Oct. 31, 7:30 p.m., $55-$250. Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-731-7110. caesars.com EXECUTIVE CHEF'S CLASSROOM OCTOBERFEST: 7 p.m., $135. Bellagio, 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 888-987-6667. bellagio.com

JIMMY BUFFETT: Time and cost TBA. MGM Grand, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-891-1111. mgmgrand.com BRITNEY SPEARS: Through Oct. 31, 9 p.m., $59-$229. Planet Hollywood, 3667 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 877-333-9474. caesars. com/planet-hollywood JESSE SMIGEL - WIN, LOSE OR HAVE FUN!: Through Nov. 8, times vary, free. Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com ART AND WINE - A PERFECT PAIRING: 5 p.m., $34-$42. Bellagio, 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 888-987-6667. bellagio.com

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IAC - IDAN RAICHEL CONCERT: 8:30 p.m. $50+, Cashman Center, 850 N. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas. teev.simpletix.com

LAS VEGAS VALLEY BOOK FESTIVAL: Through Oct. 17. Times, locations, and costs vary. vegasvalleybookfestival.org

AN EVENING WITH BRAD MELTZER: 7 p.m., free. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-507-3459. lvccld.org GOAPELE: Through Oct. 16, 7 p.m., $39. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-749-2012. thesmithcenter.com FATHER JOHN MISTY WITH SPECIAL GUEST MIKAL CRONIN: 9 p.m., $23. Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-6987000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com

STRAIGHT NO CHASER: Through October 17, times vary, $39.99-$59.99. MGM Grand, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd., S. Las Vegas. 702-891-7777. mgmgrand.com MARGARET CHO: Time and cost TBA. Treasure Island, 3300 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-894-7111. treasureisland.com SAFE NEST'S 32ND ANNUAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH (DVAM) LUNCHEON: 11:30 a.m., cost TBA. Rio Hotel, 3700 W. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. For more information, visit www.safenest.org or call 702-877-0133, ext. 242. caesars.com/planethollywood

Vegas, 6605 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-269-5001. mytownsquarelasvegas.com JCCSN VIVA OY VEGAS: Through Oct. 18, 8 p.m. & 2 p.m., $36. Baobab Stage Theatre,Town Square, 6587 South Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, 702-794-0090. jccsn.org DAUGHTRY: Time TBA, $35. Downtown Las Vegas Events Center, 200 S. 3rd Street, Las Vegas. 800-745-3000. dlvec.com JUDAS PRIEST: 8 p.m., $73. Palms, 4321 W. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-942-7777. palms.com LIPSHTICK - THE PERFECT SHADE OF STAND UP - ROSEANNE BARR: Time and cost TBA. Venetian, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-414-1000. venetian.com DON RICKLES: Through Oct. 18, 8 p.m., $79.95. Orleans, 4500 W. Tropicana Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-284-7777. orleanscasino.com

ROOM ON THE BROOM: 6:30 p.m., $14.95. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-749-2012. thesmithcenter.com

MISS MARGARIDA'S WAY: Through Oct. 25, times vary, $39. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-7492012. thesmithcenter.com SHINEDOWN AND BREAKING BENJAMIN: 7 p.m., $40. Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702-874-8719. hardrockhotel.com

RON WHITE: Through Oct. 24, 10 p.m., $59.99. 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-791-7111. mirage.com DANA CARVEY: Through Oct. 24, 8 p.m., $54.95. Orleans, 4500 W. Tropicana Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-284-7777. orleanscasino.com

SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN OPEN: Through Oct. 25, times vary, costs a , featuringCraig ballet$20-$25. SAMMY KERSHAW: ca8l p.m., si vary. TPC Summerlin, 1700 Village Center as cl d ne fi de hwin. who reRegional Park Amphitheater, masterRanch d George Gers628 Circle, Las Vegas. For more information, visit et an ll s ba er e dg th Ro m d o fr ar ky, RichRoad, Las Vegas. 702-633-2418. nic works ovsCraig shrinershospitalsopen.com/tickets. brant trio of ico g the timelcaesars. music of TchaikW. s vi es A craigranch.yapsody.com com/planet-hollywood performin

full orchestra

NEVADA BALLET THEATRE PRESENTS

UB40 FEATURING ALI CAMPBELL, ASTRO AND MICKEY VIRTUE: 9 p.m., $39.50. Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702-874-8719. hardrockhotel.com TOWER OF POWER: Through Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m., $45. South Point, 9777 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-796-7111. southpointcasino.com

THE CENTER LAS VEGAS 21ST ANNUAL HONORARIUM: Time and cost TBA. Tickets for Honorarium will go on sale soon and will be available for purchase at www.thecenterlv. org/Honorarium. caesars.com/planethollywood DANNY GANS MEMORIAL CHAMPIONS RUN FOR LIFE HOSTED BY DONNY OSMOND: 7:30 a.m., costs vary. Town Square Las Vegas, 6605 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-269-5001. mytownsquarelasvegas.com OKTOBERFEST LAS VEGAS 2015: Through Oct. 18, times vary, free. Town Square Las

WHO CARES? SLAUGHTER ON TE

NTH AVENUE

SERENADE

Tickets as low as $29

Saturday, November 7 at 7:30 | Sunday, November 8 at 2:00

(702) 749-2000

or visit NevadaBallet.org Groups of 10 or more call (702) 243-2623 to save up to 30%

Slaughter on Tenth Avenue is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Serenade, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, and Who Cares? choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Serenade photo by Virginia Trudeau. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue photo by Alexander Iziliaev, courtesy of Pennsylvania Ballet. Who Cares? photo by John Hanson. NBT-BALANCHINE — DAVID MAG AD — 5.25” X 4.8125”

www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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JANE MONHEIT, JIM CARUSO AND BILLY STRITCH — HOLLYWOODLAND - SONGS FROM THE SILVER SCREEN: Through Oct. 24, times vary, $39. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-7492012. thesmithcenter.com GWAR: 8 p.m., $20-$25. Fremont Country Club, 601 Fremont Street, Las Vegas. 702382-6601.

MOTLEY BREWS DOWNTOWN BREW FESTIVAL: 5 p.m., $30-$75. The Clark County Amphitheater, 500 S. Grand Central Parkway, Las Vegas. downtownbrewfestival.com

MADONNA: Time and cost TBA. MGM Grand, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-891-1111. mgmgrand.com BILL MAHER: 8 p.m., $49. Palms, 4321 W. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-942-7777. palms.com THE ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION WALK TO END ALZHEIMER'S®: 7 a.m., costs vary. Town Square, 6605 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-269-5001. mytownsquarelasvegas.com PAUL RODRIGUEZ: 8 p.m., $20-$25. Craig Ranch Regional Park Amphitheater, 628 W. Craig Road, Las Vegas. 702-633-2418. craigranch.yapsody.com TEMPLE SINAI'S ANNUAL GALA: 6-11pm. Red Rock Casino Resort Spa, 11011 W

Charleston Blvd, Las Vegas, 702-254-5110 templesinailv.org BACK TO THE FUTURE HEARTS TOUR: Featuring Neck Deep and All Time Low. Time TBA, $24.99. Downtown Las Vegas Events Center, 200 S. 3rd Street, Las Vegas. 800-7453000. dlvec.com J BALVIN WITH SPECIAL GUEST BECKY G — POWERED BY TOYOTA: 8 p.m., $59.50. Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702-874-8719. hardrockhotel.com LAS VEGAS PHILHARMONIC - PASSPORT TO THE WORLD: 7:30 p.m., $26. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-749-2012. thesmithcenter.com LIPSHTICK - THE PERFECT SHADE OF STAND UP - JEN KIRKMAN AND FORTUNE FEIMSTER: Time and cost TBA. Venetian, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-4141000. venetian.com

JCCSN BBQ COOKOFF & FESTIVAL: 12-4 p.m. $10 & $15. Temple Beth Sholom Parking Lot, 10700 Havenwood Ln., Las Vegas. 702794-0090 jccbbq.com RICK SPRINGFIELD WITH SPECIAL GUESTS LOVERBOY & AVALON LANDING: 8 p.m., $39.50. Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702-874-8719. hardrockhotel.com

LAS VEGAS GOLF AND TENNIS CLASSIC: To benefit Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America. 8 a.m., $200. Red Rock Country Club, 2250 Red Springs Drive, Las Vegas. 702-304-5600. http://online.ccfa. org/2015LVGolfandTennis

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN: Through Oct. 31, 7:30 p.m., $70-$150. Flamingo, 3555 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-733-3111. caesars.com/flamingo-las-vegas RAGTIME: Through Nov. 1, times vary, $29. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-749-2012. thesmithcenter.com

SKINNY PUPPY: 9 p.m., $28.50-$32.50. Hard Rock Cafe, 3771 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-733-7625. hardrock.com

Ragtime 10.27

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON AND JOHN PRINE: 8 p.m., $49. Palms, 4321 W. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-942-7777. palms.com

Kris Kristofferson 10.30

VIOLET: Through Nov. 1, times vary, $34. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-749-2012. thesmithcenter.com THE NEIGHBOURHOOD WITH SPECIAL GUESTS BAD SUNS AND HUNNY: 9 p.m., $25. Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com

TOWN SCARY HALLOWEEN: 4 p.m., free. Town Square Las Vegas, 6605 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-269-5001. mytownsquarelasvegas.com WANDA JACKSON: 9 p.m., $20-$25. Backstage Bar and Billiards, 601 Fremont Street, Las Vegas. 702-382-2227. backstagebarandbilliards.com FETISH & FANTASY HALLOWEEN BALL: 10 p.m., $65. Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702-874-8719. hardrockhotel.com LIPSHTICK - THE PERFECT SHADE OF STAND UP - LISA LAMPANELLI: Time and cost TBA. Venetian, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-414-1000. venetian.com

To submit your event information, email calendar@ davidlv.com by the 15th of the month prior to the month in which the event is being held.

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Evaan Kheraj

devour

CroqueMonsieur, S’il Vous Plait! Croque Monsieur, meaning “Crisp Mister,” is a cooked cheese sandwich. With an egg on top, it becomes a Croque Madame. Each is available during weekend brunch at db Brasserie. Featuring sliced meat, gruyere cheese and béchamel sauce, it’s the ultimate “brunch sandwich.” db Brasserie, The Venetian Las Vegas, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-430-1235 Peter Harasty

Island Shandy A smooth and refreshing lager, with splashes of passion fruit juice and St-Germain Elderflower makes a refreshingly aromatic fall season pacifier that takes you back to the summer island vacation. Available at Tommy Bahama Restaurant & Bar, Town Square Las Vegas, 6635 Las Vegas Blvd., S. Las Vegas. 702-948-8006. Recipe: • • • • •

Scallops & Ptitim Sweet, tender, mild and delectable, Scallops “East Coast” are perfectly seared and served with Israeli couscous (called Ptitim in Israel) tossed with fresh sautéed vegetables, golden raisins, toasted almonds and a citrus vinaigrette. Searsucker Las Vegas, Caesars, 3570 S. Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas. (702) 866-1800.

8-10 parts Kona Longboard ¾ parts passion fruit juice ¼ parts agave ¼ parts StGermain Elderflower 1 dash orange bitters

Instructions: Fill a hurricane glass with Kona Longboard lager, about 80 percent full. Add passion fruit juice, agave, and, stir slightly. Add ice to fill and a dash ofbitters; garnish with a pineapple wedge and serve. www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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Color Of The Year: Marsala

Handcrafted in France, Fay and Mae might be Morgenthal Frederics’ boldest offerings – a thick gauge block acetate makes this amazing sun piece speak to the eccentric styling of the fabulous 20s and 30s, and take their name from iconic starlets Fay Wray and Mae West. $465. Optica, inside ARIA, 3730 Las Vegas Blvd., S., Las Vegas.

Swing in style with this suede bag, which transforms from clutch to shoulder strap faster than you can zip it closed. $99. Apricot Lane Boutique, Town Square Las Vegas, 6543 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas, NV. 702-906-1723.

MAC Studio nail lacquer combines luscious color in three high-gloss finishes—cream, pearl and glitter. From trendy to timeless, “Sour Cherry” is a shade is of the season and promises deliver a perfectly smooth application. $12. M∙A∙C Cosmetics, Town Square, 6639 S. Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas. 702- 492-1173.

Rendered in luxe suede, this smart dress by Ann Taylor elevates the everyday. Flowy Suede Dress $398. Fashion Show, 3200 Las Vegas Blvd., S., Las Vegas, 702-734-8614, and Grand Canal Shoppes, 3377 Las Vegas Blvd., S., Las Vegas. 702-731-0655.

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Aveda introduced its limited edition Sublime Spirit Collection that includes the deep and elegant plum hues of the season to define pragmatic-chic looks. Lipstick in Blackberry. $17. Aveda, Town Square Las Vegas, 6639 Las Vegas Blvd., S., Las Vegas. 702-270-2860.

A wine colored shirt for the man with stylish flair is also versatile as it pairs equally well with jeans or a suit. $34.99. H&M, Town Square Las Vegas, 6605 Las Vegas Blvd., S., Las Vegas. 702-260-1481.

Red horn stretch bracelet by NEST Jewelry displays organic materials and juxtaposes them with sleek, modern metals. $95. Neiman Marcus, 3200 Las Vegas Blvd S, Fashion Show, Las Vegas. 702-731-3636. A cage lace up that is light on the feet, but bold in color and attitude. Gianvito Rossi Royale (wine) suede caged lace-up sandals. $1,295. Barneys New York, Grand Canal Shoppes, 3377 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-629-4200.

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Pumpkin Pickin’ Season Gilcrease Orchard is 60 acres of agricultural land in the Las Vegas Valley that offer a diverse choice of fresh fruits and vegetables you can select and pick yourself. Acclaimed restaurants source their local produce from Gilcrease. Families can now source locally grown pumpkins, too! Choose from a variety of types, shapes and sizes. Gilcrease Orchard, 7800 N. Tenaya Way, Las Vegas, NV 89131. 702.409.0655. Call for hours.

Walk for World Water Pay tribute to the 663 million people who don’t have access to water by walking Saturday, Oct. 17, at the fourth annual ONE DROP Walk for Water. Following a welcome by Mayor Carolyn Goodman and Cirque du Soleil® Senior Vice President Jerry Nadal, the 3-mile walk will begin at The Smith Center at 9:30 a.m. and end at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve. It should give participants a better understanding of the effort, determination and struggle that millions of women and children around the world must make in their daily quests for clean drinking water. At the end of the walk, there will be complimentary food, music, carnival games, face painting, raffles and more. Interested walkers and teams may register online at http://tinyurl. com/qe9pfcs. Entry fees are $25 for individual walkers and $20 for students and seniors.

Kick Off Your Heels Luncheon Ladies, set those heels aside and rock your favorite flats in honor of the fifth annual Women’s Day Kick Off Your Heels Luncheon on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. Kim Wagner from “Wake Up With the Wagners” will serve as mistress of ceremonies. The guest speaker is Elizabeth Blau, a local restaurateur whose impressive food service career spans nearly three decades. Throughout the luncheon, ladies will have the opportunity to bid on exciting silent auction items, such as a Flemings wine dinner for eight, a staycation at the South Point Hotel, Casino and Spa, as well as two orchestra tickets to Reba, Brooks & Dunn: Together In Vegas at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Guests will also be able to savor a delicious meal accompanied by the distinct tastes of Robert Mondavi wines, while enjoying the amazing views from The Hill, the tournament’s hospitality venue that overlooks the 16th, 17th and 18th holes at TPC Summerlin. Kick Off Your Heels Luncheon tables are available for purchase by calling 702.873.1010.

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mingle OPENING NIGHT AT THE LAS VEGAS PHILHARMONIC Venue Smith Center for the Performing Arts 1

Date Saturday, September 12

Event The Las Vegas Philharmonic raised the curtain on their 17th season with Beethoven & Brahms, led by Music Director Donato Cabrera and featuring guest pianist Andrew Tyson. Opening 3

night was celebrated with a special reception following the concert where patrons mingled with musicians and toasted the start to the season.

Photos 1.

Kevin and Joyce Klevins.

Las Vegas Philharmonic Music Director Donato Cabrera and pianist Andrew Tyson.

(left to right) Shakeh Ghoukasian, Taras Krysa and Mira Khomik.

(left to right) Craig Finetti, Marisa Finetti, Andrew Tyson and Michele Madole.

(left to right) C.J. Woolston, Art Woolston and Jeri Crawford.

(left to right) Tom Wright, Tony Codwell and Zachary Jackson.

Mike Falconer and Cathy Brooks.

(left to right) Dorothy Flagler, Jason Ceresa and Amanda Parrette.

(left to right) Charles Halka, Bill Bernatis, Janis McKay, Stephanie Weiss and Jennifer Bellor.

Photos courtesy Las Vegas Philharmonic www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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mingle AFAN’S 29TH ANNUAL BLACK & WHITE PARTY Venue The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino

Date Saturday, August 29

Event

Nearly 3,000 guests filled The Joint at Aid for AIDS of Nevada’s (AFAN) 29th Annual Black & White Party, raising more than $145,000 to benefit AFAN’s client service programs. Dressed in only black and white attire ranging from balloon dresses and pasties to top hats and tuxes, the electrifying atmosphere continued to build throughout the

night, resulting in one of the best Black & White parties to date. Top restaurants, including Culinary Dropout, Ferraro’s, FU, Pink Taco, 35 Steaks + Martinis, Hexx, Popcorn Girl, Jamba Juice and Brio, provided bites of their cuisine while Back Bar USA poured top shelf spirits all night.

Photos 1.

Fashion Icon winners.

Penn & Teller

Sound Collage.

TV personality and event host, Ross Mathews with guests on the red carpet.

Wedding ceremony at the Black & White Party.

The Balloons With A Twist crew with models wearing balloon gowns.

Steampunk was hot this year.

TV personality and event host, Ross Mathews with guests on the red carpet.

Photos courtesy Tonya Harvey & David Carter.

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E.C. Gladstone

live Lowering the Bar Mitzvah @ 26 Standing Up @ 30 Sons & Daughters of Commandment @ 32 Rising Above @ 36

RISING ABOVE pg 36

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Lowering the Bar Mitzvah Seeking Meaning in My Failed Transition to Manhood By Corey Levitan

f there was some significance to my bar mitzvah, it certainly wasn’t crossing any known borderline into manhood. I mean, maybe Jews grew up faster four millennia ago. (All that running with matzo from Egyptians and locusts couldn’t have made 13-year-olds any younger.) But on Long Island in the ’70s, when you stood 4-foot-1, your mom laid out your clothes and you were six entire years from your first

non-solitary sexual experience, you were just not a man. Here, scooch up beside me. Let’s open this yellowed photo album and search for meaning together. The year was 1978 and the U.S. government was freshly reeling from Abscam. Farrah Fawcett was the planet’s most desirable woman, and I wore a powder blue suit from the Pierre Cardin for Infants collection.

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Strictly speaking, my bar mitzvah marked both my 13th birthday and my graduation from Hebrew school. Here, in the classrooms adjacent to Oceanside’s Temple Avodah, I spent five years learning the Hebrew words for mother (ema), father (abba) and nothing else I can recall other than STFU (sheket bavakasha — the phrase shouted at me three or four times every Thursday evening by Mrs. Meroz. One day, I hope to visit Israel and lay this vast wonderland of language knowledge on the locals.) All other Hebrew was a blur of meaningless sounds I could not pronounce fast enough, at least in Rabbi Philmore Berger’s opinion, to master my assigned Haftorah reading. (This is the most important tradition of one’s entire bar mitzvah — after lifting Jews in chairs for no reason.) I clearly remember the day the rabbi made the shush! hand signal and inserted a pamphlet into my Haftorah book. It was the English transliteration, everything phonetically spelled out, for idiots and/or non-Jewish guest speakers. “OK, we gave it a shot with you,” he was basically saying with this move. “And now we are giving up.” (Rabbi Berger had a small role in Rocky III, by the way, as the rabbi who buried Burgess Meredith’s character. So, in the end, I guess the show was the thing for him.) The importance of one’s bar mitzvah — at least on Long Island in the ’70s – was a measure of the lavishness of the party thrown after it. And Leonard’s of Great Neck was the ritziest of all catering halls possible for those who didn’t mind plastic columns and other ridicu-

lously faux Roman decorations, 14 other simultaneous affairs at all times and security courtesy of huge graying men named Vito. The shooting location for the climactic wedding/mob-hit scene in 1999’s Mickey Blue Eyes,Leonard’s is second only to the Meadowlands Arena on my list of probable Jimmy Hoffa burial sites. Speaking of mob movies, I felt like the star of one myself, collecting dozens of cash-stuffed white envelopes and placing them in my inside pockets. Never again would I experience a greater single day’s pay. (I didn’t even have pubic hair yet and, sadly, I was at the peak of my earnings potential.) Jews prefer giving cash and checks at milestone celebrations, mostly in multiples of $18 (called “chai,” which is good luck). Where this tradition comes from, I have no idea, but it beats being asked by the lady at the Nordstrom’s return department why you don’t have a receipt. Then, just like that, it was all gone. I was racketeered at Leonard’s of Great Neck — not by anyone named Vito, but by Maishe and Roberta Levitan. My parents approached in the parking lot out back and fleeced me of every single envelope, using the proceeds to pay their Leonard’s bill. (Trust me, you always want to pay your Leonard’s bill.) Later, they bought me a 10-speed bicycle and pretended it cost $5,000. Had I invested that money — which did I mention was rightfully mine? — in the 1978 stock or real estate markets, it would be worth something like a gajillion dollars today. And that is why it is my parents’ fault that I am poor. www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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The undisputed entertainment highlight of my bar mitzvah was a dance painstakingly choreographed by Mark Kardonsky and me in our living rooms after school. The “Levidonsky” was a compendium of John Travolta’s best Saturday Night Fever moves. As the Glenn Burton Orchestra launched into a version of “Stayin’ Alive that somehow made it sound more Caucasian.” Mark and I commenced finger-pointing and knee-dropping. All 23 of our friends were dazzled. Either they were dazzled or overjoyed with the blackmail material they now had. I couldn’t tell, but I’m pretty sure it was dazzled. (Wow, am I grateful neither smartphone video nor YouTube existed back then.) Yet even the Levidonsky was powerless against one overriding bar-mitzvah truism. There was nothing more important about your bar mitzvah – at least to those of us having one at the time – than the legacy it achieved back at school for the remainder of the year. And your guest list simply could not consist of 100 percent of the nerds from the 7th grade without your actually being one of them. Although I don’t recall this, I apparently tried to bribe the cool kids into attending. According to Kenny Sohn, he and Jeff Rabiner were invited solely because I walked into shop class one day with a sign-up sheet, asking no one in particular: “Who wants to go to my bar mitzvah?” (Ultimately, my plan backfired, since Kenny and Jeff were also nerds.) In fact, my bar mitzvah was witnessed by only one female who wasn’t an obligated relative or friend of my parents. I mean, nogirls-allowed is an admirable rule when you’re 7 years old. But by the time you’re 13, to borrow from another religion, “Holy Christ!” What is there for me to say to the young woman who displayed both the sympathy and courage necessary to prevent

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my bar mitzvah from being 100 percent male? Thank you, Emily Friedberg, just thank you. Wait, 24 boys to one girl? Choreographed disco dancing? There

was significance, and it has just occurred to me. In fact, we’re probably talking historical significance here … I had the world’s first openly gay bar mitzvah service.

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• Concert hall quality sound and innovative LED lighting system • Proceeds support the cutting edge research at Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health

Visit kmaeventcenterlasvegas.com or call 702.263.9797 888 W. Bonneville Ave. Las Vegas, Nevada 89106 www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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Standing Up Comedian Tig Notaro Kills Cancer By Adam Friedland

nly Tig Notaro knew what she had in mind for the audience that night at the venerable Largo at The Coronet Theater club in the Fairfax District in Los Angeles. Sure, she’d start her comedy set with the tried and true: effusively complimenting her audience. But what followed on that Aug. 3, 2012, evening ventured far from the usual script. And it put her on the comedic map, with a bullet. “Good evening, how are you?” she began earnestly, surveying a crowd that included a famed colleague, Louis CK. “Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? “I have cancer. How are you? Ah, yes, it’s a good time, diagnosed with cancer. Feels good, just got diagnosed with cancer,” she said, as the audience realized that this professional joker was not joking about this. Recently, she’d learned that she had breast cancer, and her prognosis was dicey: It was likely to spread to her lymph nodes and beyond.

That news, and her matter-of-fact announcement of it to the audience, would have been enough to make many people cry. But 2012 — actually just over the span of four months that year — had already given her enough grief, literally and figuratively, for 10 people. After her startling beginning to the set, and for 31 breathless minutes that followed, this willowy woman from Jackson, Miss., would mention that she had battled an uncommon intestinal disease that caused her to lose weight at an alarming rate; had ended a long-term romantic relationship; had lost her mother in a horrific accident; and had been informed that she had breast cancer that was likely to spread unchecked to the rest of her body. “With humor, the equation is ‘tragedy + time = comedy,’” she schooled the audience that night. “I am just at tragedy right now. That’s just where I am in the equation.”

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As some in the audience squirmed uncomfortably — you can hear the unease if you listen to her popular “Tig Notaro Live” CD — she talked about the fear of death, the pain of loss and of trying to convert those universal, innate human fears into catharsis. It was weighty subject matter for a ninth grade dropout, who’d given up her various childhood aspirations of being an architect, a vet, a lawyer, a teacher and a cartoonist to stand before a crowd and tell jokes. As she soldiered on that night, using her trademark sardonic humor to enliven the crowd, Louis CK took notice. Later, he’d arrange to distribute the audio recording on his website, sending “Live” to the top of the iTunes comedy charts in no time. “I can’t really describe it,” the famed comedian and TV star would write of her performance. “But I was crying and laughing and listening like never in my life. Here was this small woman standing alone against death and simply reporting where her mind had been and what had happened, and employing her gorgeously acute standup voice to her own death.” Many comedians find their voice in the mundane, conventional aspects of human existence. Jerry Seinfeld is perhaps the greatest observational comic of the modern era. He has made us laugh about airline food, phone books and golf. In mining that territory, comedians tap into universal themes, describing ordinary events that people experience every day, and extracting the absurdity that attends the familiar. While the subject matter for Tig’s gig at the Largo strayed far from life’s boring aspects, it grabbed some people by the throat, spotlighting a universal fear embedded in the human experience. By bluntly essaying her own mortality, Notaro challenged her audience to examine its collective and individual fears. When certain people in the crowd cringed, Tig rose to confront their fears with her trademark wit. “Are you going to be OK?,” she asked a woman at one point. “I really don’t mean to bum you guys out. … What if I just transitioned right now into just silly jokes?” At the 28-minute mark of her performance, she asked the audience if that’s the way she should wrap up her set. “Tell the bee joke!” someone offered. So Tig did just that. She said she was sitting in 5 o’clock gridlock on the infamous 405 freeway in Los Angeles when she noticed a bee passing her. “What the hell is that bee doing taking the 405?” she wondered. The crowd lost it. The weight of the previous 28 minutes drifted away. Comic relief. “The show was an amazing example of what comedy can be,” Louis CK wrote. “A way to visit your worst fears and laugh at them. Tig took us to a scary place and made us laugh there. Not by distracting us from the terror, but by looking right at it and just turning to us and saying, ‘Wow, right?’” It’s been nearly two years since her double mastectomy and Tig Notaro isn’t going anywhere. In fact, she’s all over, in the TV sense. While 2012 may have been the worst year of her life, 2015 arguably has been her most successful — to date. Earlier this year, Showtime premiered the documentary, “Knock Knock, It’s Tig Notaro.” Netflix also recently released “Tig,” a documentary about her life before and after her cancer diagnosis. And she has been featured on the Amazon Prime series, “Transparent.” In late September, Amazon announced the poduction of One Mississippi, a dark comedy loosely inspired by Tig’s life, with Oscar winner Diablo and CK serving as executive producers. Her first hour special, “Boyish Girl, Interrupted,” recently began airing on HBO. During the second half of her show, she performs topless.

Where words leave off, music begins. THE 2015-2016 SEASON

Tickets available at The Smith Center Box Office at 702.749.2000 or at lvphil.org

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Sons & Daughters of Commandment

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Celebrating More at the Bar and Less on the Mitzvah? By Lynn Wexler

he elegantly appointed ballroom at the Bellagio Resort & Casino was now the site of an extravagant Cirque du Soleil production – and a bat mitzvah party. The room had been recarpeted just days prior in plush pale pink, to match the dark-pink sequined curtains covering the walls. Rainbow-colored theatrical lighting was focused precisely on several looped ropes dangling from the soaring ceiling — ready for the richly costumed contortionists who would use them for their breathtaking performances that evening. Towering centerpieces, dripping with bouquets of neon trinkets and white orchids and roses, perched perilously on the mirrorcovered tables. In the center of it all hung a colossal poster, suspended from above. It featured a beautiful young girl with shiny long black hair, sparkling green eyes and a bright smile. She was the evening’s 13-year-old guest of honor, the bat mitzvah who would make a show-stopping debut at her signature event. Dressed like Katy Perry, she was escorted by a troupe of dancers whose routine and gyrations could have challenged the entertainer’s. More than 600 guests burst into wild applause. The mother of the bat mitzvah shed prideful tears. The much anticipated celebratory occasion had begun. In the Jewish faith, a bar or bat mitzvah (Hebrew for son or daughter of the commandments) is a religious rite of passage for a Jewish boy or girl having reached the age of 13. The youth is now regarded as ready to observe religious precepts, eligible to take part in public worship and, as a young adult, capable of accepting responsibility for his or her choices and consequences. But, in certain Jewish circles in Las Vegas and elsewhere in the country, these parties are all too commonplace. They seem less like religious commemorations and more like coronations. Parents who ordinarily don’t go to such excessive lengths often don’t pinch pennies when it comes to their child’s coming-of-age ritual. “Unfortunately,” says Rabbi Malcolm Cohen of Temple Sinai Las Vegas, “some people get caught up in the party, and don’t remember the importance of providing a significant and meaningful Jewish education meant to be embraced by the bar/bat mitzvah and passed down to future generations, which is what the day is all about.” Jewish children spend a year or more leading up to their 13th birthday, learning Hebrew and prayers, customs and rituals and preparing to read from the Shabbat service. Event planners spend that same year organizing the elaborate bash, which must be different from the one the weekend before. Some children and their families attend three or four such parties a weekend. Rabbi Dani Locher is the director of youth programs for the Las Vegas Kollel; Camp Nageela West; and Nageelatte – a Jewish after school youth program that combines social with learning. He also works with preteens to prepare them for their bar or bat mitzvah. “Bar or bat mitzvah does not describe the celebration or the ceremony. It defines the age at which a child – usually 12 th birthday for girls and 13th for boys is considered to be mature

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enough to accept responsibility for his or her actions as a Jewish adult – even if they are never called to the Torah or have a party,” Locher says, “not unlike being able to vote as of your 18 th birthday. Whether you vote or not, you are considered eligible as of that age to undertake that responsibility.” That’s not to say the ceremony, or even the party, is unimportant. It’s all in the perspective. “Bar/bat mitzvah training involves the student in a purposeful project, as well as prepares him or her to undertake a leadership role when they stand for the first time before family and the congregation leading readings from the Torah; the Musaf service (additional prayers read on Shabbat and holidays); the Haftarah (passages from the prophets); Havdalah (prayers marking the end of Shabbat); and giving their speech reflecting the journey to that moment. This leaves an indelible mark on the bar/bat mitzvah for the rest of their lives. They may grumble through the training, but in the end there is pride in accomplishment — like a graduate student who finally appreciates their difficult course of study upon receiving their degree,” Locher says. As for the party, Locher believes we live in an increasingly materialistic society that takes Judaism for granted. With less focus on the Jewish component of the ceremony, the emphasis naturally shifts to the celebration. “As Jews invest less and less excitement in the importance of the mitzvah, they transfer that excitement to the party,” he says. “The conversation is not so much about the extravagant party but the reason for the extravagant party.” Rabbi Yehuda Maryles heads up three Las Vegas chapters of National Conference of Synagogue Youth, as well as Jewish Student Union at eight local public schools. Like Locher, he believes that as long as the mitzvah process is viewed as an end rather than a beginning, the priority will continue to be the party. “In too many instances the mitzvah has become about celebrating the end of Hebrew school. The end of having to go to Shabbat services. Surviving the ceremony hopefully with no embarrassing moments,” Maryles says. Both rabbis agree that such thinking, while perhaps unintentional, creates a void in our spiritual well being that we then fill with the physical – things money can buy. “The mitzvah is about celebrating the beginning of the child’s life as a responsible Jew. Many of our traditions celebrate beginnings – Passover celebrates the beginning of our freedom; Shavuot celebrates the beginning of the Torah; Rosh Hashana the beginning of a new year … and so on. If the party, extravagant or not, celebrates the child having arrived at this adult beginning as a Jew, then let the festivities flow.” The Talmud (a collection of doctrines and laws compiled and written by ancient Jewish scholars), says Locher, states that it is more relevant to perform a mitzvah out of obligation than to perform it voluntarily with no obligation. “It’s easier to do something we want to do than to do something we are commanded to do. The party is meaningful when it celebrates the child taking on the obligations of an adult Jewish life. If the celebration is apathetic to this, then the extravagant party is just that. It’s all a matter of perspective,” Locher says.

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taste

Rising Above

Our Favorite New Bakeries Story & Photographs by E.C. Gladstone and Michael Uzmann MD.

hen it comes to baked goods in Las Vegas, quantity — a very large quantity — and consistency have long been the biggest ambitions, rather than individual expression or supremacy over our challenging climate. That only makes sense in the large resorts of the Strip, where hundreds of tourists want their bagels and bran muffins to feel familiar, while pastries lean toward fantastic presentation over flavor. But even off-Strip, too many of our bakeries gravitate toward safety zones, focusing on tried and true American or French recipes,

often competent but rarely excellent. In recent years, however, with a growing number of talented Strip bakers opting to try independence, our Valley has finally started to see the kind of creativity and friendly competition others have enjoyed for some time. Pastry lovers, this is cause for celebration. The following five spots — nearly all borne of Strip-experienced bakers tired of the hours and lack of creativity — hardly form an exhaustive list. But they do make a forward flank of inspiration that’s worthy of attention. And a visit!

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Left: Rosallie’s Almond Croissant, Above: Peach Frenchy Toast at Lulu’s Bread & Breakfast, Below: The counter at PublicUs

Rosallie Le French Café While Vegas does not suffer for French restaurants in general, and patisserie specifically, both on- and off-Strip offerings tend to dwell within a small portion of the spectrum, focusing mostly on American expectations and archetypes that show little variation or personal expression. Rosallie, by contrast, is connected to a café back in France by the same name. And the connection is evident, although more in Jonathan Pluvinet’s products than in the somewhat awkward dining space. Having recently returned from an extensive itinerary in central France, Michael was particularly attuned to this, and found himself comparing the multigrain rolls with good French butter and housemade jams favorably to those pain au cereal served at Paris’ own Ledoyen. Likewise the croissant, one of the best in the Valley, the flaky arcs giving way to yawning caverns of lamination, shamelessly crumbing the vicinity, and bested only by the almond variation, which we can only call truly exemplary. A raisin-studded “snail” and the macarons here — vanilla and pistachio in particular — are equally rewarding.

Located on a nondescript stretch of South Rainbow Boulevard, between Spanish Trails and the south loop of 215, Rosallie’s savory menu is also attractively simple and unaffected, including a lot of vegetarian options, two croquettes and a duck confit sandwich we’ve earmarked for a return. • 6090 S. Rainbow Blvd. • www.rosallie.com www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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Some of Mothership Coffee Roasters’ enviable selection.

Peridot Sweets

Lulu’s Bread & Breakfast

Speaking of macarons, like cupcakes and fancy theme cakes they are never hard to find in Vegas, although quality often disappoints. On all three counts, however, Tiffany Sheree-Jones’ Peridot exceeds expectation. Macarons appear in shamelessly Americanized rotating flavors here like creamsicle and salty caramel, most appealing for their light buttercream fillings. Cupcake flavors may not color outside the lines too often — red velvet, maple bacon, chocolate peanut butter cup, banana cream caramel — but they rise above in density of flavor, balanced by light texture. And the cakes speak for themselves, just a bit more creatively elegant than much of the populist competition. But along with more homespun bars and cheesecakes, her awkwardly towering multilayer carrot and banana “brigade” (a baba au rhum variation) cakes are two of the more notable items offered. In the same neighborhood as Rosallie, Peridot would likely also have double or triple the attention in a more trafficked location (and perhaps with extended hours), particularly when charming owner/ baker Jones is behind the counter. While some items, and particularly the custom cakes, are more expensive, the level of quality is clear. • 6475 S. Rainbow Blvd. • www.peridotsweets.com

Lulu’s began as a food truck collaboration between two guys named Chris – one a self-taught pizza maker and the other, an accomplished Bouchon pastry chef. But after garnering quick attention from the likes of Food Network and Cooking Channel, the pastry chef decided to move away from Vegas just as Metro Pizza – Chris Decker’s other job – was opening up in a new space with room for a side business. Thus, Lulu’s found itself “grounded” in another unlikely locale – this one near the northern intersection of I-95 and route 215. Unbound by tradition (and limited to the limited equipment of two egg cookers and a pizza oven), Decker puts out clever cream-filled turns on the cronut, “Frenchy” toasts that are close to bread pudding (with a variety of fruit toppings), original twists on breakfast sandwiches and a semolina loaf, liberally coated in sesame seeds; it’s as satisfying to the nose as the palate. It’s easy to feel the infectious spirit of experimentation here, and the thought that Decker would try any peculiar challenge you could put to him. • 6720 Skypointe Drive •

www.lulusbreadandbreakfast.com

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PublicUs Located quite literally on the fringes of the new Fremont East corridor downtown, PublicUs — behind an austere exterior given away only by some roughhewn bench seating outside — is just the sort of modern, smartly designed spot Vegas has deserved to keep apace with other western U.S. cities. Filled with live plantings and eager servers, its café counter belies the fact that it’s essentially a full service restaurant, using as many locally sourced ingredients as possible (listed on a discreet chalkboard), alongside the talents of one of the country’s most awarded coffee baristas (who knew?). All of that is worthy, but we’re here for the dough. Baker Hemant Kishore is a native of southern India, where the pastry traditions are utterly distinct to European-American styles. He decided he wanted to do something entirely different to what he knew, though, and went to train at the CIA in Hyde Park, N.Y., emerging as a passionate pattissier. Kishore’s vanillaglazed croissant alone – lightly crusty and filled with the kind of flaky buttery layers that aficionados forever seek out – is enough to earn him praise, even alongside Pluvinet’s. But then there is his cardamom banana bread … his small, but densely rich black forest cake and even his rustic sourdough loaves, just perfectly textured and a physical rebuke to anyone who says good bread cannot be

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made in the desert. Surprisingly, pricing is perhaps closest to the Strip here, so it’s best to think of it as a dining destination rather than takeaway shop. • 1126 Fremont St. • www.publicuslv.com

Mothership Coffee Roasters If Sunrise Coffee wasn’t already one of the Valley’s best kept (and thankfully enduring) secrets, owners Juanny Romero and Joshua Walter doubled down this year and opened this second shop — mainly to focus on roasting a variety of sourced coffee beans for Sunrise and other local restaurants. But if coffee were Mothership’s only strong point, we wouldn’t be discussing the business here. Behind one of the most unassuming storefronts imaginable, in a far-from-hotspot strip mall (you’ll recognize it for one of the first Trader Joe’s in the Valley), Mothership offers the goods of two independent pastry chefs, Beth Ryan-Small and Sinead Kravetz — the latter doing a vegan side that’s every bit equal to the conventional. Both use as many organic ingredients as possible, and present unapologetically rustic pieces (at great prices) that are overstuffed with originality. Just some of our favorites: strawberry balsamic tart; Concord grape and almond gallette; coconut pineapple scone; plum hand pie; chocolate tostade with vanilla bean cream. Even their cinnamon roll adds a blueberry glaze or green tea flavor, depending on the chef’s fancy. Both sides do enticing savory items too, like a mushroom and potato pocket, and a Vermont cheddar chili scallion scone (the latter being the first of several treats devoured first at a meeting). Mothership’s pastries are so good, they are at least the equal of the brew, and every bit worth enduring the uncomfortable shop stools and overactive A/C. As with all the above, it’s an out-of-the-way spot (for most) that’s actually worth going out of your way for. Make the trip. • 2708 N. Green Valley Parkway, Henderson • www.mothershipcoffee.com

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Carrie Carter-Cooper, founder of the Las Vegas Fashion Council and owner of BESTAgency.

Jerry Metellus

think

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Fashion’s Three C’s Carrie Carter-Cooper & the Las Vegas Fashion Council By Marisa Finetti

rowing up with three older brothers, Carrie Carter-Cooper, founder of the Las Vegas Fashion Council, was hardly the fashion maven – at least not yet. The native Nevadan grew up in Las Vegas as “a tomboy … a scrawny little kid on the swim team.” Raised in a modest household, she became an entrepreneur at an early age. She had a paper route at the tender age of 12, and, just six months short of getting her driver’s license, she accumulated enough cash to buy her first car. As a teenager, Carter-Cooper shed her boyish image after discovering her natural talent and love for modeling, eventually blossoming into the woman that we know today - founder of BESTAgency, the city’s premier model and talent agency and event planning company. BEST provides the city with the most beautiful models and extraordinary talent, and with the memorable experiences seen by international audiences: the Fashion Show mall runway shows; the Venetian Gondola Experience; and strolling performers wearing elaborate costumes from the Agency’s fabrication department. Just as CarterCooper has done, her models have graced the covers of reputable publications and starred in commercials and international ad campaigns. The energizing spirit from her budding entrepreneur days now is matched by her passion for philanthropy and community-building. In leveraging her fashion and business industry savvy, she has her sights set now on putting Las Vegas on the international fashion map. The mission of the Las Vegas Fashion Council that she founded in 2013 is to make the desert’s entertainment capital a global fashion city. The nonprofit hopes to expand and diversify the economy by cultivating relationships between fashion professionals, students, community leaders and organizations. “One of the things we really enjoy doing with the Fashion Council,” she says, “is being able to present emerging artists, designers and students, and give them an opportunity or a platform to share their craft and have it also tie into a nonprofit event. It’s something that benefits multiple people, but it’s also a great audience.” Carter-Cooper has always immersed herself in the community by giving back. She is on the board for the Children’s Discovery Museum, as well as a founding member of Nevada Women’s Philanthropy. She is also an active member of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a global network for business owners. “All this has led me to opportunities to become aware of what’s going on in the city from a philanthropic and economic standpoint,” she says. She also realizes that elevating Las Vegas’ reputation in the fashion world is a lofty goal. Worldwide, cities have strived to be known as fashion meccas. London’s fashion bona fides date to the British monarchy; Milan marked its emergence during the Renaissance period when nobles such as Catherine de Medici were fashion icons. In New York, the textile and clothing production boom dates to the Industrial Revolution; the city saw a remarkable shift to uniform production after couture houses in Europe closed during World War II.

In Las Vegas, Carter-Cooper cites the city’s high-end fashion retail presence and trade shows, and its long history of costume design on the Strip, as its own references. As a businesswoman, she imagines huge fashion opportunities on the horizon, given the city’s international draw as a world-class shopping destination. “As far as shopping capabilities, we truly have the best shopping in the world,” she says. “Every designer is represented here, and their highest grossing sales are in some of the Las Vegas boutiques.” MAGIC is here, JCK and a variety of different fashion industry shows, but we’ve never been known as a fashion city.” She and her council member colleagues, all of them professionals sharing a common vision, hope to develop a true Fashion Week in Las Vegas. Such an event would allow local fashion designers and brands to display their latest collections in runway shows, while allowing buyers and media to look at the latest trends. “Fashion Weeks brings people in from all over – another opportunity to come to Las Vegas! We really want the entire community to embrace it, and not view it as a ticked event.” The Council also hopes to establish a nationally recognized education branch of the fashion industry. “Whether it’s a freestanding entity, such as a (Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising) or a Parson’s, or Otis, or if they’re incorporating something into an existing system, such as at UNLV, that’s certainly another area we really want to expand.” Besides creating events and programs that draw local and regional attention, the Council is working toward producing televised fashion awards programs to reach audiences worldwide. “Envison Billboards for fashion!” says Carter-Cooper. “We want to be the voice for Las Vegas in the fashion industry, not only on what is up-and-coming, but also the current trends and styles and giving people more insight as to what’s going on in the industry.” By the end of this school year, the Las Vegas Fashion Council hopes to award scholarships to help students and emerging artists reach their career and education goals. These funds are fueled, in part, by membership fees, and Carrie is always encouraging the community to join. “We want the city to embrace this.” If anyone can help Las Vegas evolve into a fashion city, it’s CarterCooper. Her motto, “If it’s to be me, it’s up to me” has led to personal successes over the years — ever since those salad days when she rolled up newspapers for her customers at 3 a.m. That same infectious spirit has inspired and attracted some of the most influencial leaders to join the Council and make it what it is today. Its momentum continues to steadily impact the community, with scheduled events set through January. (see side bar) As Coco Chanel once put it, “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” The movement toward making Las Vegas a fashion city is what’s happening at the moment. It started with one woman’s vision, and now she’s asking the community to embrace it. www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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ABOVE: On the runway at the inaugural artLIVE! event, January 2015. RIGHT: On the runway at Metamorphosis, an Eco-Fashion Event with Springs Preserve, April 2015. FAR RIGHT: On the runway at Metamorphosis, an Eco-Fashion Event with Springs Preserve, April 2015.

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ABOVE: Make-A-Wish Foundation event at Fashion Show mall - the Las Vegas Fashion Council helped grant Mileneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wish to be a fashion designer, August 2015. LEFT: On the runway at Metamorphosis, an Eco-Fashion Event with Springs Preserve, April 2015. FAR LEFT: On the runway at Metamorphosis, an Eco-Fashion Event with Springs Preserve, April 2015.

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An Urban Canvas From Marquee Signs to Murals, Las Vegas’ Iconic Public Art By Lissa Townsend Rodgers • Photography by Marc Frye and Steven Wilson

ver the past decade, Las Vegas has tried to reinvent itself. Much has been made of diversifying the economy, rebuilding infrastructure and re-imagining our vacation destination as a cosmopolitan metropolis. But as we focus on the practicalities of the 21st century, it’s important to keep the creativity that characterizes our city in sight — sometimes literally. “Public art is one of the most important things a city can to do become a leader,” says Marc Abelman, president of the 18b Arts District Association. “It creates place-making and identity. We are a city that’s really based on entertainment and the arts — Cirque shows, culinary arts, all of the visuals.” Nancy Deaner, director of the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs, agrees that art needs to be a part of the Las Vegas identity. “Artwork represents the people and the community,” she says. “It signifies the

community. Art, basically, addresses the verb of us. It tells people immediately who we are.” Whether it’s an officially commissioned installation, or an anonymous graffiti mural, restored vintage neon or a modern, media-ready sculpture, the streets of Las Vegas are full of works that provoke, engage and inspire. You can gaze on plenty of creativity in the Arts District without ever setting foot in a gallery, along with a variety of streetside art — some of it sanctioned, some of it “guerrilla,” some of it somewhere in between. It asserts the neighborhood’s identity. On the side of the Arts Factory, for instance, an enormous mural by local artist Juan Muniz depicts one of his signature rabbit characters with a giant brush and paint pouring through his heart. Even the wall alongside a vacant lot has been turned into an art history lesson, www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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with renditions of works ranging from the Mona Lisa to Andy Warhol’s self-portrait. “The importance of murals and street art is relevance,” Abelman says. “One day it will be there, and one day it will not.” Street art can also represent a reaction to or an interpretation of events: Abelman points out a piece on Colorado Street that honors the late UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian. It was up within days of his death. “There’s a piece that Ras One did that was an homage to Tark. That’s the thing about street art, the immediacy.” In the Arts District, even the storefronts take on an artistic bent, from the Wild Style font of the Astro Motors sign, to the painting on the side of Williams Costume that references the proprietor’s past as one of the El Rancho dice girls. On Casino Center Boulevard, a row of abandoned houses has become a constantly changing display of A-game graffiti art, while back alleys explode with murals that evoke everything from Art Nouveau to Marvel Comics. Another local artistic landmark is Jesse Smigel’s giant grinning cat sculpture, Snowball, star of a thousand Instagrams. “Snowball … it is an approachable piece of art that’s on the street,” says Abelman, noting that other public art is “gorgeous and relevant, but it’s not as approachable.” Accessibility and interaction are two of the chief tenets of contemporary street art. People may snap a cellphone photo of themselves pretending to be licked by the giant kitty, or (pose) in front of the painted version of the ‘Welcome to Las Vegas’ sign on First Street, or maybe they’ll sink some time and effort into

shooting the back-alley graffiti fonts or peeling paste-ups and create some art of their own. Moving farther Downtown, murals have become an omnipresent, yet changing part of the cityscape surrounding Fremont Street. Their large scale and vivid colors add visual interest and flair, especially to areas that haven’t been redeveloped. The blank expanse of Emergency Arts’ exterior has featured several murals over the years, while the El Cortez livens up an otherwise nondescript parking garage with giant portraits. Each year, the Life Is Beautiful festival adorns the grounds – several square blocks of Downtown – with a series of murals. It’s artwork that remains long after the music has faded and the crowds have dispersed. Pieces commissioned by the festival have included D*Face’s giant comic-style panels of skull-faced characters, rendered in pulppop style, and Zio Ziegler’s enormous panoramas, rendered in blocks of bright color and swaths of meticulous black-and-white linework. But Las Vegas’ iconic art form has not been neglected. As part of the Neon Museum’s mission, stewards have restored a number of signs to their illuminated glory. Most are on museum grounds, but others are visible in locations around the city. “Obviously, their placement in public spaces means that they will be experienced by larger numbers of people,” says Danielle Kelly, executive director of the Neon Museum. “The majority of our restored signs Downtown are placed in medians along Las Vegas Boulevard,” she adds. “They are experienced as they were originally intended: while cruising down the avenue framed by the windshield of a car, or held suspended

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by a rearview mirror.” There are nine signs around the city, with six more to come next year. More modern, site-specific pieces also are being placed around the city. One of the largest is the Main Street Signature project, which will be the centerpiece of a redesigned Main Street. Deaner explains that the city is in the process of narrowing a field of applicants, with one of them to create a piece that will be unveiled in December 2016. “Good public artists respond to the environment,” she says. “They will not just look at the physical environment but the environment of community. It’s very important to work with artists that really understand that.” City-sponsored projects that she feels have worked exceptionally well in that respect are the Aerial Gallery, a series of works by local artists printed as banners and hung along Las Vegas Boulevard. She also cites the Poet’s Bridge on Lewis Avenue, with its subtle etched words. “That one responded to the idea of the Vegas Valley Book Festival and the Lewis area corridor,” she says, “because there’s all of the courthouses, and they are all connected by words and ideas. It’s subtle, but it’s meaningful.” Another recurring motif in Las Vegas is putting an artistic spin on utilitarian items. In the Arts District, the bus stops have gotten an imaginative treatment, with works such as Evan Dent’s series of

sketchy, cartoonish cats and octopi, as well as Todd Von Bastiaans’ cool images of swimming pools viewed from above. A county-sponsored endeavor that has made the useful into the beautiful is the Zap box project. Throughout the valley, almost 100 electrical utility boxes have served as “canvases” for local artists. Some works take their inspiration from Las Vegas history, including Erin Stellmon’s tribute to neon designer Brian “Buzz” Leming. Others reference their site, such as Adolfo Gonzalez’s variations on kids, dogs and soccer balls at Desert Breeze Park. Some are witty visual jokes, as in Suzanne Hackett-Morgan’s transformation of boxes into television sets. Others draw on wilder inspirations, like Sush Machida’s explosion of koi fish and Japanese dragons in a field of stars “It’s very difficult in the town to do public art,” says Deaner, noting that Las Vegas is not a neutral backdrop as most cities are. “It’s such a visual town and there’s so much competition,” she explains. “It has to be really strong, not the brightest and the biggest, but it has to be strong in its message. It has to really be of the environment and it has to mean something. Otherwise, it’s just frosting.” However, when those art pieces work — however and wherever they work — they add even brighter colors to the already exotic landscape of Las Vegas. www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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“Holy Bagels, Batman!” Discovering Superman’s Jewish DNA By Jaq Greenspon

t all started in 1933. In a tucked away borough of New York City, a perennial entrepreneur named Max Ginsberg (who had changed his name to Maxwell Charles “Charlie” or “M.C.” Gaines) was having a hard time making a go of it. He’d gone through a succession of jobs, from educator to haberdasher, and “get rich quick” schemes, but never lasted in any one field for long. Eventually, he was forced to move his wife Jessie and their children, Elaine and William, back in with his mother in the Bronx, while he took a job with Eastern Color Printing. One day, while going through a stack of old newspapers, he found himself re-reading, and enjoying, the Sunday funnies. It struck him: If he enjoyed reading the comic strips a second time, wouldn’t other people? Furthermore, why couldn’t he repackage these into a magazine and sell the whole thing? He took the idea to a friend, Harry Wildenberg, who was also at Eastern Color. Wildenberg agreed, and, after initially trying their idea as a promotional tool, in 1934 they published the first issue of Famous Funnies, giving birth to the comic book industry. What started out as a reprint factory soon became a home for new and exceedingly creative word-and-picture storytelling, much of it from Jewish creators. “Many of these young artists were hungry, not only for industry experiences but also for money to feed their families,” author Arie Kaplan writes in From Krakow to Krypton. “Many of them lived in ethnic ghettos and were first-generation Americans. And many of them were Jewish.” Here’s a look at some of those Jewish artists and the icons they created. Famous Funnies did well enough to enable Gaines to form AllAmerican Publishing in 1938, with the intent of putting out original material. He partnered with Jack Liebowitz and was financed by Harry Donenfeld, who was already publishing National Allied Comics (which would later become DC). Gaines was instrumental in getting Donenfeld to publish a work by two young men from Ohio, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Siegel and Shuster had been around comics and publishing for a while and had created their own magazine Science Fiction. They had created a mystic figure (albeit under pseudonyms) called “Doctor Occult” back in 1936 for a comic called New Fun. But the work that Donenfeld published was a little character dressed in blue and red tights — the guys called him Superman — and suddenly things really took off. Aside from Doctor Occult, Siegel and Shuster had done other comic characters. But it was Superman who resonated the most. An argument can be made that this had quite a bit to do with these two kids, both born in 1914, being steeped in old world Jewish traditions. Both were first-generation North Americans (Shuster, born in Toronto moved to Ohio, where

he met Cleveland native Siegel), with parents who had emigrated from Eastern Europe. Superman reflects the good and bad of immigration, especially from a Jewish perspective. Think about it. He comes from a foreign place and he comes alone. Later on, he is given relatives, pets, a whole shrunken city of landsmen and even a monkey. But when he started, he was a solo act just trying to fit in with those around him. He looked like everyone else, but he knew he was different. The name his birth parents gave him, though, is Kal El, which could easily be interpreted as the Hebrew “Voice of God.” Superman chooses to go by his human name, Clark Kent, because a more WASP-ish name is less threatening to the mainstream populace he’s sworn to protect. Honestly, though, that’s old hat (even if, as we’ll see in a minute, it parallels the actions of other comic creators). Any take of “the Big Blue Boy Scout” in anything other than the most cursory terms mentions this allegorical connection. On a deeper level, though, as Kaplan points out, is the concept of tikkun olam, the idea that, as Jews, we are compelled to make the world a better place. There really is no better definition for the role Kal El has set for himself than that one. As Superman goes, so does the rest of the industry. It wasn’t long before other young, Jewish creators were throwing their hats into the ring. A couple of reasons can be proffered for this. One, creatively, was already mentioned: assimilation and commonality. If our heroes were foreigners who could be mistaken, in their “normal” guise, as just one of the crowd, then couldn’t Jews do the same? The other reason, which relates to the first, is slightly more economical. “Jewish artists, writers, editors and publishers entered the field because other professional fields – including more prominent areas of commercial illustration – were virtually closed to them,” Kaplan writes. In other words, to work in a lower form of art like comics didn’t require jumping an anti-Semitism hurdle. There could be one more reason, though, which brings it all together: Wish fulfillment. Look at the major creation of Bob Kane (nee Kahn) and Milton “Bill” Finger. That would be Batman, who first appeared in 1939. Here you have a millionaire playboy (What child of immigrant parents wouldn’t want a life of luxury?) who fights crime, protecting those who are weaker and less able (the savior complex). Both Superman and Batman were products of the company that eventually would become DC Comics. Over on the other side of the town, the other major comic book company (soon to be called Marvel) was receiving its own creative boost from an influx of Jewish creators. Jacob Kurtzberg and Hymie Simon (under the names Jack Kirby and Joe Simon) created Captain America, the other side of the Superman coin. www.davidlv.com | OCTOBER 2015

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While Superman was following the Moses mythos of being placed in a basket and sent down the metaphorical river, Steve Rogers (How much more of a mainstream name can you get?) is a small, weak kid who just wants to be able to defend himself and others from the evils of the world. It’s not a far stretch for two Jewish kids coming up with this representation of the American ideal. No one knows what it’s like to be the bullied better than a couple of Jewish kids from poor New York beginnings. No matter that Kirby was a street tough in his youth (a lot of his friends became mobsters), the institutionalized persecution that the two faced as part of their cultural upbringing overwhelmed any of their personal triumphs. When we add in the idea that in the first issue of the comic, released a full year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, Cap is shown punching Adolf Hitler, and we have a realization of the American Dream designed and fulfilled by the sons of Jewish immigrants. Interestingly, according to a popular story, Superman had also gotten into the Nazi-bashing game, prompting Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda, to hold up a copy of Superman and announce, in the middle of a meeting at the Reichstag, that Superman was a Jew. The last big name of the “Golden Age” of comics is Will Eisner, also the son of immigrant parents. He took a different path, though, starting his own company with friend and former editor Jerry Iger. They created work for sale and distribution, rather than going the “work for hire” route that his colleagues had taken with the comic companies. The Spirit, Eisner’s most lasting comic creation, was originally created as a Sunday newspaper supplement, a way for regional papers to compete with comics. Tellingly, Eisner was probably the least Jewish of the bunch while growing up, yet, according to Jules Feiffer, the multiple awardwinning writer and illustrator who got his start writing The Spirit for Eisner, The Spirit himself is Jewish. Feiffer backed up his assertions in his book The Great Comic Book Heroes, the first really critical look at the world of comic characters. According to Kaplan, though,

Eisner disagreed with this conclusion but acknowledged the validity of the observation. Later in life, Eisner would bring a specific Jewishness to his work in two pieces, A Contract With God (in which he coined the term “Graphic Novel”) and Fagin the Jew, where he tried to overcome stereotype and bring a new understanding to one of Dickens’ most famous characters. With the end of World War II came the close of the Golden Age of comic books. The Silver Age, which arrived in mid-century, saw the reinvention of a number of older heroes at the hands of Julius Schwartz (another child of Jewish immigrants), who had become editor-in-chief of DC comics. Schwartz had grown up in the same Bronx neighborhood as Kirby and had been friends, or at least pen pals, with a number of the earlier creators, including Siegel. But when he took over DC, he spun it in a whole new direction, creating a lot of the tropes and concepts that anyone reading comic books today would recognize. But it wasn’t until a few years later, across town at Marvel, that Kirby, now working with another neighborhood kid, Stanley Martin Lieber, would really change the way comic books operated, ushering in the “Marvel Age.” Like Kirby, Lieber also had changed his name to work in comics, but not for the same reason. “Comics in those days … everybody looked down their noses at them. They were at the bottom of the cultural totem pole,” Lieber told Kaplan. “And I figured ‘someday I’m going to be a great writer.’ I didn’t want to use the name Stanley Martin Lieber for these lousy comics.’” Enter Stan Lee. Lee worked with Kirby and others to create a stable of characters, leading off with the Fantastic Four, a superhero group the likes of which had never been seen. Instead of the all powerful or fantastically rich, Lee’s characters were real people who happened to be heroes, much akin to the folks he saw around him, from WWII and Korean vets to the police and firefighters. Even so, things never strayed too far from Lee’s Jewish roots. His most famous creation, Spider-Man, was another normal person who just happened to be imbued with superhuman abilities. Of

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course, as civilian Peter Parker, a beleaguered, bullied high school student, it’s not hard to make the allegorical leap to see Spider-Man as Jewish, and perpetual tormentor Flash Thompson as a stereotypical anti-Semite. By creating these characters, and allowing them to be imperfect representations of average people, Lee and Kirby (and the other creators) opened the door for comics to explore the topics of religion explicitly rather than implicitly. Chris Claremont (Jewish on his mother’s side), who wrote the Lee/Kirby created X-Men, gave us two iconic characters whose Judaism became integral to their stories. The first was Kitty Pryde, a Jewish teenager who could walk through walls, and Magneto, a mutant whose time in a Nazi concentration camp molded him into the villain he became. At the same time, underground artists in the ’70s brought personal stories of Jewish culture to the graphic format. Creators like Harvey Pekar, who decided in the early part of the decade to draw comics about his daily life, and Art Spiegelman, the first comic creator to win a Pulitzer. Spiegelman’s book, Maus, is a graphic (and Graphic) examination of the life of his father Vladek, a Jewish Pole and Auschwitz survivor, intermixed with Spiegelman’s own biography, in trying to understand and communicate with his father. As a comic, he represented the Jews in his story as mice, Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs and Americans as dogs, which caused marketing problems for the book (as well as the reception it received from all sides — partially chronicled in Meta Maus, Spiegelman’s look at the creation and reception of his work). Pekar, interestingly, is among the more outspoken opponents to Spielgelman’s use of cartoon animals to portray one of the darkest times in Jewish history. In the 77 years since Superman first leapt tall buildings, the influence that these few Jewish kids have had on pop culture, American identity and the international box office is immeasurable. It’ll be interesting to see what the new generation does with the legacy they’ve been handed.

For Your Bookshelf

f you’re interested in furthering your knowledge of the way Jews reflected, adapted, changed and influenced the comic book industry, here’s a sampling of books to get you started – all of which probably can be found at your local comic book store. From Krakow to Krypton – Arie Kaplan This comedian, comedy writer and comics’ historian tells the story of superhero comic books from the ’30s to the early ’00s. The book is designed for easy readability, copying the textual styles and bright colors of the medium it covers. Maus – Art Spiegelman This two volume graphic novel follows the journey of Vladek Spiegelman as he is captured by the Nazis and survives Auschwitz. It also looks at the problems both survivors and their children have in coming to terms with the horrors of the concentration camps. Maus was the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize (Special Citation: Letters) in 1992. Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero - Danny Fingeroth This former Marvel comics editor takes an in-depth, almost psychological approach to the creation of superheroes and what they mean through the lens of Jewish identity. The tone is a little more formal and assumes a general knowledge of characters. But it rewards the close reader with insightful observations. X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills – Chris Claremont & Brent Eric Anderson A standalone comic, X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, while not specifically Jewish, encapsulates the idea of bigotry, racism and the impotent rage against religious hatred. A spectacular storytelling experience that will speak to all ages, getting the point across without being especially violent or graphic.

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Jodi Harris

Event Planner, Ceo of Fun. Jodi Harris has been the quintessential queen of funtastic since she and husband Pat moved to Las Vegas 20 years ago to capitalize on the economic opportunities of the late ’90s – particularly in event entertainment. Known as the party mecca of the world, Vegas seemed the perfect environment for Harris to exploit her showbiz resume. Now celebrating 22 years of providing indelible memories for their clients, Sight & Sound Events was voted one of the “hottest DJ entertainers” in the nation by Modern Bride (now Brides) magazine and can be found on most preferred vendor lists of special event professionals in Las Vegas. Born and raised in Yonkers, Harris spent 10 years in New York City working at WABC-TV in public relations, and later in production for the station’s successful syndicated morning talk show, Live With Regis And Kathie Lee. She relocated to Los Angeles in the early ’90s to book talent for MTV, followed by a move to Universal Studio’s Paragon Television to produce community projects, which earned her three South Bay Producer Guild Awards. Since then she has added industry credentials and acknowledgements to her accomplishments. She is a member of the National Association of Catering Executives, which awarded her two of the association’s highest honors —2009 Las Vegas Event Professional of the Year and the 2006 NACE Event Professional/ Affiliate Member of the Year. The Wedding and Event Videographers Association International named her 2006 Ambassador of the Year, and her company earned a Creative Excellence Award from WEVA International. DAVID: What makes Sight & Sound Events so successful in a town inundated with entertainment options? HARRIS: We’re experienced, proven and the best at what we do. We’re full-service and our talent is in-house — DJ, director, event producer, video producer, photographer, event decor, dancers … and we’re marketing and hospitality experts. We’re a team. Our philosophy is Have it Your Way! The client is the star. We listen to our clients. Hours and hours of preparation go into the planning. Team members know their job the day of the event. We always have plan B should there be an unexpected glitch. I call our employees funatics! We love what we do! DAVID: What advice do you have for people looking to plan an event? HARRIS: Well … hire us, first of all. Hire people you trust, and don’t micromanage the night. The music list, DJ or dance floor stuck in a far corner of the room. Event timing — don’t do your rituals

all in a row. Boring for guests to watch. Think of your event soundtrack in three parts – especially for bar/bat mitzvahs and weddings. Part I is the cocktail hour; Part II is the dinner hour; and Part III is party time. I call the last hour the Power Hour! Everything’s done and it’s time to have fun! DAVID: What do you value most about your customer service? HARRIS: It’s important to me that each and every client and guest walk away from the event saying it was the best party they’ve ever been to. I’m always listening for new ideas; hiring fresh talent; keeping up with and learning about the industry latest. And I’m always accessible. Online I offer Mitzvah Mondays, Wedding Wednesdays and Funtastic Fridays, where I blog about the latest. DAVID: What are some of your favorite events? HARRIS: They are all, but I really love bar and bat mitzvahs. There’s real skill involved in knowing how to please kids and adults alike. Getting the themed party decorations just right. How to blend kid games with adult cocktail hour; kid music and dancing with adult music and dancing. Managing the noise level and the party flow; how to include the important rituals, while leaving time for food, entertainment and dancing. The best part is making everyone in the family happy and eventually doing the mitzvah for a sibling and then returning to do their weddings. It’s the best! DAVID: Can you name a few of the celebrities whose parties you’ve handled? HARRIS: My greatest thrill was DJ-ing at NASCAR bad boy Kevin Harvick’s wedding. That was amazing. It was also a thrill entertaining for Celine Dion, Bette Midler and Barry Manilow. DAVID: What’s the latest on your agenda? HARRIS: Caesars Entertainment is flying us to Atlantic City to DJ at the grand opening of the Convention Center at Harrah’s on the Marina. This business has provided a good life, to be sure, but it’s also provided opportunities to give back, which I strongly believe in. I frequently teach other professionals in my field how to become successful. And we donate services to charitable organizations such as the Las Vegas Valley Humane Society and Adopt A Pet Rescue. Got to pay it forward! DAVID: What do you love most about your business? HARRIS: I’m the girl who is invited to a party every weekend. Think about that! I love being with people on one of the happiest days of their lives! — Lynn Wexler

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