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26

16 | The LaTesT

A sentimental journey to the Boulevard Mall, once the epicenter of Vegas holiday shopping; Three Questions about Santa; and a crackdown on long hauling. Plus, Media, Politics by Michael Green, Tweets of the Week and Anthony Curtis’ The Deal.

18 | About Town

A Character Study of entrepreneur, Ayn Rand devotee and devout philanthropist Justin Anderson; and Ask a Native explains why there is no “West Fremont.”

24 | National

The New York Observer on the growing legal battle against revenge porn.

26 | Style

“The Last Human.”

A fashionable journey to the end of the world.

30 | man of The year

For our annual profile of the Valley’s most fascinating person, Steve Bornfeld examines the life and unfolding legacy of Myron Martin, the salesman-performer-promoter-prankster who helped turn an unlikely dream into The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

37 | nIGhTLIfe

Seven Nights, Gossip, a Q&A with Photek, and photos from the week’s hottest parties.

69 | DInInG

Max Jacobson on Bagatelle Restaurant & Supper Club. Plus, Chada Thai & Wine’s Bank Atcharawan shares his recipe for Thai shrimp cakes, and Cocktail Culture.

77 | a&e

“Come On, Feel the Noise,” by Una LaMarche.

Broadway’s Rock of Ages, undaunted by its eponymous Hollywood flop, gets ready to melt faces at the Venetian.

80 | Music

Jarret Keene’s Soundscraper, CD reviews and our concert pages.

84 | Art

“If Crass Sells, Who’s Buying?” by Danny Axelrod.

No one needs to tell Brent Holmes that his art has currency.

88 | Movies

Playing for Keeps and our weekly movie capsules.

Departments 11 | Dialogue 12 | Vegas Moment

December 13-19, 2012

14 | Event

Photo by Danielle Debruno

By Steve

on the cover

Myron Martin, photographed at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts by Bryan Hainer.

Styling by Staci Michelle Virga.

Hair by Amanda Bevilacqua from Globe Salon.

96 | Going for Broke 102 | Seven Questions

9 VEGAS SEVEN

, Martin Myron nter king of Smith Ce The ma de The who ma the man Bornfeld

December 13-19, 2012

17 | Seven Days

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December 13-19, 2012

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dialogUe editor’s Note Fascinating People

When we launched our annual Most Fascinating Person feature, our mission was multiple: We wanted not only to tell stories of individuals who helped shape the cultural terrain of our city during a given year, but also of those whose journeys captured something about the mercurial nature of our city—about our anxieties and our dreams and our determination to push onward, often in the face of logic and long odds. Myron Martin (Page 30), who took a wild ride of his own as he helped Las Vegas achieve the improbable dream of The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, certainly fills the bill. So did our previous Most Fascinating People: In 2010, we told the story of Henry Chanin, the erstwhile financial wizard and airport official who dropped everything to teach at—and later run—the Meadows School. It was already a story worth telling, but then Chanin was infected with Hepatitis C at a Las Vegas endoscopy clinic and became the standard-bearer in a legal fight that made national headlines when the jury awarded him more than $500 million—the largest tort award in Nevada history. In 2011, we looked behind the curtain at the intellectual and spiritual world of Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO who was on the cusp of transforming downtown Las Vegas. As a reminder of the still-recent journeys taken by Chanin, Hsieh and our city—journeys both civic and deeply personal—below are brief excerpts from those stories. – G.B.M.

December 26 & 27

From “The Education of Henry Chanin,” by Greg Blake Miller, VegasSeven.com/MFP/ HenryChanin: The Chanins are ill at ease in a culture of heedless self-revelation; they regret that one cannot browse the produce aisle without initiation into the private details of the next shopper’s very public cellphone conversation.

The trial, though, put their personal lives at the center of bruising public debate. Suddenly a strong man had to speak openly about the ways in which he’d been weakened; Chanin had to testify about the impact of the disease on his sex life, about his fear that he could pass the virus to Lorraine. People deeply ignorant of the nature of Hepatitis C wondered whether Chanin should be in contact with students. A man who had turned away from a lucrative career in finance to devote himself to literature and education was publicly ridiculed as a money-grubber and a symbol of all that was wrong with the American tort system.

From “Crown Prince of the City,” by Stacy J. Willis, VegasSeven.com/MFP/TonyHsieh: I ask Hsieh about his spiritual beliefs. He says he was not raised in a particular faith, and does not subscribe to an organized religion—but that he does have some beliefs that bear on his life’s work: “It’s a complicated question in that I don’t believe in how each religion has its own definition of God, so I don’t believe in [spirituality] from a religious perspective. But I believe that things have emergent properties, and so, for example, the individual cells in your body have no idea of your consciousness, and yet you assemble enough of them together and there’s the consciousness that forms. But any one of your cells is incapable of comprehending that there’s actually a consciousness that is the combination of everything.

“So, for all we know, all humans together, maybe there’s some global consciousness that we’re unaware of and aren’t capable of detecting, just like a cell can’t detect a single person. And that can just go up however many levels, so maybe there’s some emergent property of consciousness in the universe that I wouldn’t call God, but some might call it spirituality. And spirituality, one way you look at it, from a psychology perspective, is it’s basically about being part of something that’s larger than yourself. ...

“This evolved over the years. But it’s like a flock of birds; there’s no leader bird. The whole flock looks like its own organism.” a R nd of em the LaDowak s V n ing eg tow as n

W ill

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December 13-19, 2012

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December 15-21, 2011

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December 6-12, 2012

vegas moment

One less PaPer milk bOttle tO wOrry abOut

as Mayor carolyn goodMan will tell you, she’s a straight-shooter—and she proved it at the Dec. 6 opening of the Strip Gun Club. It’s the seventh shooting range licensed in the Valley this year, but the trend hasn’t sparked much concern among local officials. Apparently, they’ll ask questions later.

 Elizabeth Wolynski

Have you taken a photo that captures the spirit of Las Vegas this week? Share it with us at VegasSeven.com/Moment.

EvEnt

Hurricane Sandy FundraiSer

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[ upcoming ]

Jan. 4 Evil Dead: The Musical kicks off National Blood Donor Month at MaximuM Comics (BloodHero.com) Jan. 10 Distinguished Women and Men gala at MGM Grand (DistinguishedWomenandMen.com)

Photos by Josh Metz

December 13-19, 2012

New York-New York and Southern Wine & Spirits welcomed 700 guests who dined and drank in the name of Hurricane Sandy relief efforts on Dec. 9. Staged on the resort’s Brooklyn Bridge, the culinary event featured cuisine from 22 restaurants, while bar stations provided cocktails that paid homage to New York City.

Everyone in attendance—including Mayor Carolyn Goodman and husband/former Mayor Oscar Goodman, as well as Southern Wine & Spirits boss Larry Ruvo, and celebrity chefs Scott Conant (D.O.C.G. & Scarpetta) and Francois Payard (Payard Pâtisserie & Bistro)—offered well-wishes to the East Coast by signing a giant “LV Loves NY” poker chip. The event raised $100,000, which will be given to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.

ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT RODRIGUEZ

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“As Fremont begins at Main, and heads one direction only, technically all of Fremont is east.” ask a native {page 18}

Ghosts of the Boulevard

By Sean DeFrank

One recent midweek afternOOn

I got the crazy idea to visit a place I once loved: the Boulevard Mall. It had easily been a decade since I’d last walked down those polished gray lanes, so redolent with childhood memories of family shopping trips. I remember drifting down the decorated holiday walkway, the joyful

bustle of people carrying bags bearing presents, exhausted husbands resting on benches and puffing on cigarettes, as I searched for the perfect gifts for my family—with perhaps enough cash left over to buy myself some candy. In recent years, I kept hearing from people—people, it must be said, who also hadn’t visited

in years—that the place had irrevocably lost its old charm.

I decided to see for myself if this was just the usual grumbling of people in a city where “new” is sometimes taken to mean “better.”

The first signs were promising: As I walked through the main entrance, I was greeted with warm reminders of long-

ago Decembers: the towering Christmas tree reaching up toward the mall’s domed skylight; parents in line with their children waiting their turn for Santa; the familiar façade of J.C. Penney framing the whole scene. Thirty years ago, my entire sixth-grade class took a Christmas-shopping field trip, the culmination of a weekslong lesson on saving money. It was the mall in Las Vegas; even our celebrities shopped there.

And now, contrary to what I’d been hearing, maybe there was still a bit of the old magic left.

But my hopes gave way to an upsetting reality as I turned down the main corridor. It wasn’t the mall’s condition that saddened me; it was its prevailing lifelessness. The Toys R Us Express was eerily vacant other than a bored employee wandering back and forth; the woman at the Luxury Perfumes counter unsuccessfully fought back a yawn as I walked by; the guy behind the counter in the collectibles store occupied his time on his smartphone; three different Foot Locker stores didn’t even have three total customers; and Victoria’s Secret seemed to be just that, with a lone customer inside.

There was activity at one far end of the mall, where about 15 girls were participating in a dance class inside the Mexico

Vivo Cultural Arts Center— one of the tenants catering primarily to Hispanics, who now make up nearly half of the Boulevard’s customer base. The demographic shift hints at the possibility of a new, diverse vibrancy for the Boulevard. But even a store selling quinceañera dresses and the Hispanic Museum of Nevada remained deserted.

I wondered if the desolation was simply a sign of the changing way in which we conduct our holiday commerce, venturing out only for the price-slashing frenzy of Black Friday before completing the rest of our shopping online. This has led to the disappearance of media stores such as B. Dalton Bookseller and the Wherehouse, places where I spent hours during my childhood and which made visits to the Boulevard especially worthwhile.

As I made my way toward the mall exit, disheartened at the present state of my Christmas Past, I passed the only other reminder of the Boulevard of my youth: a row of four pay phones sitting unused next to The Body Shop. Nearby, a group of teens sat intently focused on their smartphones, seemingly unaware of their holiday-themed surroundings. Perhaps they were too busy doing their Christmas shopping to notice.

December 13-19, 2012

[Medicine]

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in Las Vegas, You neVer grow oLd Greater Las Vegas has bought its first property on the game board of medical tourism: Vanity Street. The Southern Nevada Medical Industry Coalition—the main player in boosting the Valley’s reputation as a medical-tourism destination—has forged a strategic alliance with the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, which holds its world congress at the Sands Convention Center from Dec. 12-15.

The A4M, as it calls itself, represents medical practitioners who specialize in areas ranging from skin-cancer treatment to microdermabrasion. Many of its Las Vegas members operate “medical spas” with a focus on cosmetic procedures. Next up on the coalition’s calendar: the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery.

This comes as no surprise, since gastric-bypass surgery, dental implants and plastic surgery are among the specialties advertised in the city’s medical tourism guide,

which was coproduced by the coalition, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the Medical Tourism Association. The whole what-happens-here ethic may prove appealing for patients looking for a discreet place to shed their skin.

The most dismaying medical news of the season has been the collapse of UC San Diego’s plan to revive the Nevada Cancer Institute—and the subsequent dashed hopes that Comprehensive Cancer Centers could ride to the rescue. But with the alliance of medical tourism and the beauty business, highprofile medicine may find its Vegas mojo closer to the surface.

– Heidi Kyser

Fremont illustration by Adam Holcomb; Mall photo courtesy of Las Vegas News Bureau

News, politics, media, essays and people

Would the real Father Christmas please stand up? St. Nicholas, a real guy who died in 342 A.D., was the patron saint of children. “Santa Claus”— St. Nick’s nickname—became associated with various traditions of giving gifts to kids (in shoes, stockings, etc.), eventually centering around the German Christmas tree in the mid 1800s. UNLV history professor Elizabeth White Nelson gives the skinny on the jolly man in red.

How did Santa Claus get tied to the Christian part of Christmas?

Christmas was not widely celebrated before the 19th century as an important Christian holiday; it was a mixture of the Feast of the Nativity, the Roman holiday Saturnalia, the Feast of 12 Nights and Winter Solstice. The Santa Claus celebration of Christmas doesn’t replace the Christ Child celebration—if anything, the popularity of gift-giving and Santa Claus in the first half of the 19th century seems to have increased the visibility of the feast

of the nativity, at least in the United States.

What’s with the red outfit?

Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly magazine, invented the red furtrimmed suit for Santa Claus and the classic Santa look.

He began drawing Santa Claus in 1866 for Harper’s in an image called “Santa Claus and His Works.” His images fueled children’s imaginations.

What’s your favorite Santa trivia?

In Nast’s vision he is so short, he has to stand on a chair to reach the mantle. Clement Moore’s elf is small, too. Santa Claus doesn’t become a big man until the 20th century. … I think Santa deserves more credit for keeping the “Christ in Christmas” (as proponents say) than he gets. In Puritan New England, Christmas was outlawed, and in many countries, New Year’s Day was much more important. Without Santa Claus, we probably wouldn’t celebrate Christmas in any major way.

– Heidi Kyser

[ HigHer MatH ]

1989

Nevada Legislature passes its own law, saying, “No, screw you.”

70-75%

Nevadans consistently opposing the Yucca Mountain project in polls.

42

Number of states nuclear waste would cross en route to Yucca Mountain.

31

States with nuclear power reactors.

0

Nuclear reactors in Nevada.

Friday, dec. 14: But let’s not forget

Las Vegas, which also knows how to get its Christmas on. The fourth annual Ward 5 tree-lighting party is at 6 p.m. in Lorenzi Park, 3333 W. Washington Ave. Make an ornament to hang on the tree and come on down for complimentary cookies and hot chocolate.

saTurday, dec. 15: The Amazing Johnathan is a magician, yes, but he’s also a dedicated car nut, as documented in these pages (VegasSeven.com/Cars/Johnathan). Today, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., he’s opening up his warehouse at 6290 Harrison Drive for his first car show and sale. Come for the classic rides, stay for the food trucks and entertainment.

[ transportation ]

Cabbie CraCkdown My wife and I were recently pulled over in a cab on our way home from the airport. The driver was just veering toward the connector tunnel when Nevada Taxicab Authority enforcement flagged him down and asked him where he was headed. The stop was part of an NTA crackdown on long hauling, the old pocket-lining trick of taking passengers the long way home.

Valley taxi companies took an estimated 27 million trips last year, and Taxicab Authority administrator Charles Harvey realizes that he can’t eliminate long hauling. But he is using a variety of more aggressive methods to fight it, including posing as a passenger himself as part of undercover operations and recently implementing a bike patrol so investigators can monitor areas they couldn’t previously.

“I noticed that we have the same problems now that we’ve had since [the NTA] started in 1969,” Harvey says.

“And so I decided because we are understaffed and kind of outmanned, we have to look at this creatively and do things differently. And I didn’t want to put Band-Aids on problems anymore.”

The NTA also has gotten tougher on drivers caught long hauling, seeking the maximum penalty for violations, which Harvey says was not the norm when he took over.

Penalties are $100 for the first offense, and subsequent violations bring a mandatory administrative court appearance, a three-day suspension and a $200 fine. If problems persist, a driver’s permit is revoked. Harvey keeps the checks as random as possible so cabbies don’t see them coming, especially with smartphones making it easy to warn peers of any potential stings. And he believes taxi drivers are starting to get the message.

As for my cabbie? He was headed in the right direction. I had already made sure of that.

– Sean DeFrank

tradition for your calendar: The Princess and the Golden Skates, an annual holiday ice-skating show featuring local skaters telling the tale of a young girl who has lost her ice wheels. Shows 6 p.m.

Saturday and 1 p.m. today, Fiesta Rancho SoBe Ice Arena.

Monday, dec. 17: Your art appreciation activity for this week takes place over at the Henderson Multigen, 250 S. Green Valley Parkway, where you’ll find the work of local photographer Wendy Rountree hanging through Dec. 28. Rountree’s collection of travel photography, Beauty Near & Far, is all the more impressive when you understand that much of it predates digital photography and was developed in her bathroom/ darkroom.

Tuesday, dec. 18: Here it is one

week before Christmas and we haven’t yet pointed you in the direction of Opportunity Village’s Magical Forest. This annual event is part light show, part amusement park, and wholly beneficial to the titular nonprofit that runs it. $11, $9 children; 5:30-9 p.m. Sun-Thu, 5:30-10 p.m.

Fri-Sat; 6300 W. Oakey Blvd., OpportunityVillage.org.

Wednesday, dec. 19: Your kids are going to eat a lot of junk and do some serious sitting around in the next few weeks. Take a preemptive strike for good health and get them over to the Las Vegas NBA Legends free basketball clinic at 4 p.m. at the John C. Kish Boys & Girls Club in Henderson. They’ll meet some former NBA players, get some tips and get off the couch. LegendsofBasketball.com.

For our complete calendar, see Seven Days & Nights at VegasSeven.com.

December 13-19, 2012

Congress tells the Department of Energy, “Screw Nevada.”

Henderson during the holidays? Not around these parts.

To prove it, the city is once again holding Winterfest, a three-day celebration of all things merry. This year’s theme: holidays past. The event opens this evening with a free concert by the Henderson Symphony Orchestra and runs through Sunday. HendersonLive.com.

17 VEGAS SEVEN

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Thursday, dec. 13: Is there any place more festive than

sunday, dec. 16: Yet another local

Turn of The Screw It’s been 25 years since the U.S. Congress passed legislation singling out Nevada as the lone candidate for development of a national nuclear waste repository. Known as the “Screw Nevada Bill,” it was the first shot fired in a complicated, protracted battle over nuke junk, environmental protection and states’ rights—one that’s not over yet.

By Bob Whitby

The LaTesT

About town

Capitalist Conscience

December 13-19, 2012

By Chantal Corcoran

VEGAS SEVEN

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HArd-driving 31-yeAr-old entrepreneur Justin Anderson makes no apologies for unfettered capitalism—after all, this is a man who named his contracting firm, Galt Development, for the hero of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

But he also understands that people get left behind— and he’s devoted a big part of his life to helping them.

Anderson’s contracting expertise has made him an ideal partner for Habitat for Humanity: He’s become one of the charity’s go-to guys for everything from construction equipment to traffic control (one of his enterprises, The Barricade Co., provides those ubiquitous orange cones for road projects).

He’s also the president of Los Vaqueros, a nonprofit organization of 46 local businessmen that helps children in need. The Spanish term means “cowboys”— gentlemen cowboys, says Anderson. Among the group’s recent good deeds was the purchase of shoes for 360 kids at Lowman Elementary. Los Vaqueros adopted Lowman in 2009. That year, Anderson oversaw the creation of a self-irrigating fruit and vegetable garden in the school’s courtyard. Today cultivating the garden is part of the students’ curriculum.

They’ve even begun to grow bugs there—and, in a twist that would appeal to Anderson, selling the extra bugs to other schools.

When I ask Anderson how it is that a disciple of Rand—known for touting “rational selfishness”—is so generous, he sends me her lengthy 1964 Playboy interview in which the novelist admits, “There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them.”

“I have the time. I have the energy,” says Anderson, although the bachelor admits that he’s particular about his causes and how his money is spent. He

prefers projects that provide for the recipients to provide for themselves, like the school garden. Then he points to his favorite cause—kids: “They become our governing bodies,” he says. “If we aren’t making sure they receive what they need, then what’s it all for?”

Meanwhile, Anderson keeps building his business portfolio. In addition to Galt and the Barricade Company, he leads Terra Contracting, a “horizontal construction company” that does the tough work of

“Kids become our governing bodies. if we aren’t maKing sure they recieve what they need, then what’s it all for?” grading, paving and utilities. His most recent venture is a change of pace: Confess Media is the event-photography business that put up the replica Las Vegas sign with which tourists pose at McCarran International Airport’s Terminal 1 baggage claim. His partners in the project are former friends from Durango High School.

In high school, Anderson worked construction with his parents’ company during the summer months.

After graduating from Durango in 1999, he did a semester at the University of San Diego, then another stint at UNLV. Then he quit.

“I found I’d just as soon be working,” he says.

Whatever happened to the Algiers Motel?

One of a handful of holdovers from the days when the Strip was populated with mid-century motor courts, the Algiers was a low-slung weeping mortar motel with a central pool and 110 drive-up rooms. Built in 1953 as overflow to the neighboring Thunderbird, and wedged on the corner of the Strip and Riviera Boulevard, the exotic sounding Algiers housed a steak house and a small cocktail lounge that, at various times during the 1990s and early 2000s, served as an under-the-radar respite for the kind of folks who now drink at the Royal.

It closed after Labor Day weekend 2004, but you can see small bits of the Algiers (light fixtures and such) at the Beauty Bar, on East Fremont. As to where the Algiers went, blame its disappearance on what happens when dreams of the Vegas Future move faster than the money it takes to manifest it. The land on which the Algiers sat (also home to the 1966 Candlelight Wedding Chapel, since relocated to the Clark County Museum), was sold in 2003 to become the Krystle Sands condo tower. That plan didn’t last, and the land was later cleared and sold to Turnberry, who added it to their parcel at 2777 Las Vegas Blvd. South and transferred the whole shebang to ...

Fontainebleau Las Vegas. So, rephrased in 2012 Vegas vernacular, your question now reads, “Whatever happened to the Fontainebleau?” Oddly, you can see pieces of that place on Fremont Street as well; the Plaza’s rooms were fully remodeled using materials and goods intended for the Fontainebleau.

Questions? AskaNative@VegasSeven.com.

Photo by Anthony Mair

Why is there no “West Fremont”?

Let’s start with controversy: There is no “East Fremont” either. Yes, there is a “Fremont East Entertainment District” (the official name of the redeveloping portion of Fremont Street east of Las Vegas Boulevard), and yes, some businesses there may use “East Fremont” on their business cards. But official records, including U.S. Postal Service addresses and Clark County Assessor records, do not designate any portion of Fremont Street as “east” or “west.” Why? Because Main Street (and its imaginary extension north and south) is the line dividing east from west. As Fremont begins at Main, and heads one direction only, technically all of Fremont is east.

Mickey Gilley Bill Engvall December 14

9 P M // T R E A S U R E I S L A N D T H E A T R E // T I C K E T S 8 9 4 . 7 7 2 2

the latest

media [ VEgAs TECh ]

Ayloo Wants You to Get Together

@justkramer

FACT: Twitter was created in part, just so you could tell the world when you’re waiting impatiently at the DMV. P.S. I’m at the DMV you guys.

By Roger Erik Tinch

Community and Culture. For the last year and a half, we’ve heard the continual drumbeat of downtown’s resurgence—a beat that has quickly echoed into other parts of the city.

But how do you maintain any sense of connectivity in a continuously growing community of entrepreneurs, technologists, artists and cultural enthusiasts?

With an app, of course.

Local startup Ayloo recently launched an iPhone app designed to make it easier to foster this wide spectrum of communities. And, no, it’s not another social network like Meetup.com. It’s an events tool or— in Ayloo parlance—a gatherings tool.

It easily allows you to use your mobile device to find local gatherings happening right now, track events that are coming soon or create your own get-together.

The app uses the increasingly familiar virtual meet space to encourage real face-to-face interaction.

As Ayloo co-founder Mark Johnson put it: “We’re hoping the app makes real physical communities and the people who are part of them much more accessible.” This idea also works in reverse, making it easier

@DJRotaryRachel

Santa has a belted suit, young girls on his knee and a weight problem. He’s basically Elvis.

@Misnoper

Within 90 seconds of telling us she enjoys only the finest things Vegas has to offer, a Sin City Rules character orders a plate of sliders.

@JonRothstein

There may be players as good, but nobody in the country looks better than Anthony Bennett right now.

Straight man-child for UNLV.

for established groups to grow using digital means. “Physical methods of fostering community are pretty effective, but require a ton of work,” says Johnson, a 2006 graduate of Advanced Technologies Academy.

“Plus, it costs money to manage something you’re usually doing for free because it’s a passion.”

For Las Vegas, this is an ideal time for Ayloo to come along. As this

explosion in mini-communities and subcultures continues, we need to make sure it’s harnessed not only across interests but also distance.

Says Johnson: “I think Vegas is a good test bed because of its structure as a city. We’re so spread out that … we all become less accessible.

We’re hoping that we can leverage technology to make our city and others like it more connected.”

[ siTE To sEE ]

Broken Chains

December 13-19, 2012

(GhostBikes.org)

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20

I would rather that Ghost Bikes the website didn’t exist. It’s not that I have anything against the page; it’s well-written and comprehensive. But it wouldn’t be here if not for the existence of ghost bikes, white-painted bicycles placed on city streets near where cyclists have been struck and killed. The Ghost Bikes site provides a global map of these memorials (including one in Las Vegas), a listing of cyclist-safety events (most of them appear to be in New York City) and, sadly, a necessary how-to guide for preparing and placing a ghost bike for a fallen rider.

It’s not often that I use this space to stump for anything besides wasting time, but seriously: Please give bicycles 3 feet of space the next time you zip past a rider on the street. There are already too many goddamn ghost bikes haunting our peripheral vision. – Geoff Carter Follow Carter on Twitter @Geoff_Carter.

@LaurenCheekMMA

Quickest way to get over being homesick for Texas?!

Work rodeo in Vegas. I’ve had enough drunk cowboys in my life.

@EtheLetter

If this keeps up, Las Vegas and I are about to have the “it’s not you, it’s me” conversation.

@NormanChad fouND MATERiAL

Arrested Development Perhaps nowhere in Southern Nevada signifies the boom-to-bust of the last 20 years better than Lake Las Vegas. The luxury development was literally carved out of the desert, leaving a jarring disconnect between the man-made oasis and the barren terrain surrounding it. Photographer Michael Light beautifully captures this dichotomy on DesignObserver.com, showing half-developed hillsides juxtaposed with million-dollar homes and stark desert. Design Observer photography editor Aaron Rothman writes, “The razed hillsides still stand as material reminders of a period of hubris and folly that ended in catastrophic failure. But the fantasy embodied in the opulent developments adjacent to those hillsides ... has proven hard to shake.”

Find the link at VegasSeven.com/found.

Sin City Rules on TLC: I fastforwarded the show and it didn’t go by fast enough.

@Mitzula

At the dentist for the third time in six months. If this was a Vegas nightclub I’d be considered a resident.

@jbarro

The best part of Vegas is when strip-club promoters realize you’re gay and adjust their pitches accordingly.

@LVCabChronicles

No you’re wrong. I will convert the world to my way of thinking, and I will achieve this is through the cunning use of bumper stickers.

Share your Tweet. Add #V7.

This season, the greatest gift is ours to give.

Join us through January 6 for an exclusive holiday Festival only at The VenetianŽ. Enjoy skating on the Las Vegas Strip, festive food, musical performances by Mannheim Steamroller, sensational shopping and spectacular sights throughout Winter in Venice – where new traditions begin.

Visit Venetian.com for special suite packages.

Take a peek at our gifts to you.

the latest

Sen. Dean Heller, shown here visiting Sunrise Hospital, gave a thumbs-down to the U.N. treaty on disabled rights.

December 13-19, 2012

Three Stories and the Soul of Nevada

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if yoU wokE up on Tuesday, Dec. 4, and opened the Las Vegas ReviewJournal, you saw two pieces sideby-side. One was a news story: “Strip club mogul Jack Galardi dies at 81: Entrepreneur built empire, survived scrapes with law.” Beside it was an obituary—the kind for which families have to pay—for Shannon West-Redwine.

Later that day, the U.S. Senate rejected the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, already approved by more than 125 countries, by six votes. All Democrats present voted for it. Eight Republicans joined them, not including Nevada’s newly elected U.S. senator, Dean Heller.

The three stories speak volumes about politics and priorities in Nevada.

Galardi owned 30 topless clubs, including some in Las Vegas. He donated to both parties and to charities. The “scrapes” he survived aren’t too clear from the report, but something is: His adopted son, Michael Galardi, was involved in bribing Clark County commissioners a decade ago. For their role in the “G-Sting” scandal, four of the commissioners went to prison.

The elder Galardi wasn’t involved and didn’t get along with his son; his formal obituary didn’t list Michael Galardi as a survivor. Jack Galardi’s obituaries mentioned his military service, his rise as “a self-made entrepreneur” and his popularity among politicians.

Shannon West-Redwine’s life was substantially shorter. She was only 45, having battled cancer for years.

She served as Clark County’s regional homeless services coordinator, trying to help those on society’s margins. She helped start a gang task force, the county’s neighborhood services unit and various programs designed to help young and old get off the streets, to safety and into jobs. She devoted time to bringing together politicians and staffers who bickered over their responsibilities and budgets, and to spending hours among the homeless, trying to persuade them to seek help.

When she retired in 2010 for health reasons, the shelter became the HELP of Southern Nevada Shannon West Homeless Youth Center. She fought cancer with as much determination and spirit as she fought for the homeless, and even found love, marrying an old friend who stood by her.

On the day these obituaries appeared, the Senate considered the treaty on disabilities, which is based on the Americans With Disabilities Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush. Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole arrived in a wheelchair to advocate approval. Whether he helped convince anybody is unclear.

Rick Santorum, once a possible Republican presidential nominee

before the party chose the far more lovable Mitt Romney, helped lead the opposition to the treaty. Its supporters, like Dole, who lost the use of his right arm fighting in World War II, hoped it would improve access around the world. Santorum and his allies claimed it might lead to a ban on home-schooling or be used in lawsuits to help, as he put it, “deny parents the right to raise their children in conformity with what they believe”—although the Senate already barred the treaty from being used in that way.

Heller voted against the treaty and with Santorum. You may remember Heller’s campaign ad and post-election pronouncements about being “bipartisan.” So much for that.

Hubert Humphrey, who will be remembered for his contributions to the Senate and American society while Heller will remain a footnote, once said, “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

Galardi’s life apparently brought enjoyment and benefits to some, and good for him. It’s too bad WestRedwine’s death didn’t receive quite the same media attention, but she passed that test and any other you could name. As for Heller, he’ll have a chance to think about the meaning of his vote: The treaty may come up again.

The 2013 edition of Eating Las Vegas—The 50 Essential Restaurants (Huntington Press) has just come back from the printer. This is the third year for this book, which brings together our city’s top three food critics—John Curtas, Al Mancini and Vegas Seven’s Max Jacobson—and each year there’s a fair amount of anticipation of its release by the city’s top restaurateurs and chefs, who want to know if they made the cut. I publish ELV, but I don’t do the choosing, so the choices are interesting to me, too. What I really look forward to, though, is checking out the low end. By that I mean I like to see which of the city’s best restaurants are also the most affordable.

Each restaurant in the Essential 50 has one of four price designations: “$125 and up,” “$75 to $125,” “$25 to $75” or “$25 or less,” which reflects the per-person price of an appetizer, an entrée, a side or dessert, and one or two lowerpriced cocktails. Last year seven choices were in the $25 or less classification. This year there are eight.

Returning from last year are China MaMa (3420 S. Jones), China Poblano at the Cosmopolitan, Monta (5030 Spring Mountain), Ping Pang Pong at the Gold Coast, and Soyo (7775 S. Rainbow).

New to the list are Bread & Butter (10940 S. Eastern), Le Thai (523 Fremont) and Mint Indian Bistro (730 E. Flamingo). Needless to say, the food at all of these places is top-notch, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the book. So rather than give you menu details, I’ll take a look at just how affordable each of them really is.

Three of the eight—Monta, Bread & Butter and Le Thai—absolutely qualify for this price category, as you pretty much couldn’t spend $25 at one of them no matter how hard you tried. Monta has a sparse menu of mostly ramen soups, and Bread & Butter serves sandwiches and bakery goods.

Three more—China MaMa, Ping Pang Pong and Mint Indian Bistro—are also solid favorites to come in below $25. These places have extensive menus, and there are some more expensive choices mixed in, but you’ll usually come out under the wire.

The last two aren’t locks for the under: Soyo, serving Korean fusion, bumps up close to the limit. In fact, the last time I ate there, the bill came to $71.50 before tax for a party of three, or about $24 per person. China Poblano? That’s gonna be close. This is an awesome restaurant with small plates that are priced low, but the portions are often tiny and ordering several adds up. If you’re looking for a great meal on the cheap, this one still qualifies—but make sure you bring a little extra pin money, just in case.

Anthony Curtis is the founder of Huntington Press and publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor and LasVegasAdvisor.com, a monthly newsletter and website dedicated to finding the best deals in town.

Photo by Win McNamee

Eating Las VEgas for UndEr $25

the latest

national

The Battle Over Revenge Porn Can Hunter Moore, the Web’s vilest entrepreneur, be stopped?

By Jessica Roy

December 13-19, 2012

The New York Observer

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the king of revenge porn had just slept with a girl on her 18th birthday at an inconspicuous hotel in Chinatown, and he had the cellphone snap of her license to prove it. Although he lives in San Francisco, the notorious Hunter Moore was in New York to serve a community-service sentence for an incident in which he’d head-butted a go-go dancer.

“I was so coked out,” Moore told The Observer, as we made our way to a Broome Street bar called Lolita. Tall and thin with inkcolored hair and eyes to match, wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head, Moore sipped a rum and Coke as we slid into a booth toward the back. Black tattoos reached like spiders across his arms.

Moore is the proprietor of Is Anyone Up, which until last spring was the Web’s most prominent revenge-porn hub, a site where spurned exes post embarrassing images of former lovers. Deemed “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” by Rolling Stone, Moore revels in his position as a professional antagonist, gleefully flinging his favored retort—“I really don’t give a fuck.” He doesn’t sleep well at night, but not because his day job haunts him: He’s an insomniac. As for guilt, he absolves himself by reasoning that it’s not him submitting the photos. He’s simply providing a platform for others to do so.

“Why should I care?” Moore said. “It’s not my life. It’s literally just a business. It’s stupid not to monetize it.”

Moore has built a lucrative career off of other people’s naked pictures, and he’s amassed a veritable army of fans in the process. He boasts close to 105,000 Twitter followers, primarily young women who Tweet him nude photos and starstruck bros who wish they too could get paid to see girls naked, all eager to angrily and passionately

defend Moore should anyone challenge his activities.

Last spring, following a Village Voice cover story on his empire, it appeared for a moment that Moore had had a change of heart. He sold Is Anyone Up to James McGibney, the owner of Bullyville, an anti-bullying site, and wrote a letter claiming that he was a changed man, no longer interested in facilitating the proliferation of revenge porn. It may have been his slyest provocation yet.

“I literally had a half-pound of cocaine on a fucking table with like 16 of my friends, and we were busting up laughing taking turns writing this stupid letter,” Moore said of the incident. “I think bullying is bullshit, and it’s just a soccer-mom fad.”

Now, Moore is launching a new project: a revenge-porn site called HunterMoore.tv that will include all of the old content from Is Anyone Up, in addition to new material. Perhaps most astoundingly, he told us that the site will now allow contributors to post the address of a target along with the scandalous photos. HunterMoore.tv will then display the nudes on a map, showing exactly where the subjects of the pictures live.

“I know—it’s scary as shit,” Moore admitted, noting that the site’s new feature will go live in the coming month.

He checked his iPhone, which had been lighting up with text messages all night.

His “friend/drug supplier” was calling, and Moore asked if he could bring him “a little somethin’.” The Observer took this to mean cocaine, which he told us on multiple occasions was his current drug of choice.

After he hung up, we swung back to the topic of the victims of his site and whether or not he feels bad for them. At the word “victim,” Moore made a motion with his hand to signify masturbation and rolled his eyes.

“In a perfect world, there would be no bullying and there would be no people like me and there would be no sites like mine,” he explained. “But we don’t live in a perfect world.”

On an unremarkable Tuesday afternoon, while eating lunch alone at a restaurant, Sarah, a consultant then in her mid20s (she asked to use a pseudonym), received an e-mail that would fundamentally alter the course of her life. Sent by an

anonymous tipster, the e-mail included a link to a website she’d never heard of, along with the message, “Someone is trying to make life very difficult for you.”

When she clicked the link, Sarah was horrified to find nude pictures of herself filling the screen, alongside personal information including her full name and a link to her Facebook profile.

“My stomach just dropped,” Sarah told The Observer. “I froze, immediately asked for the check,

and then everything that happened after that is just a blur.”

Throughout the harrowing weeks that followed, Sarah learned that a scorned ex-boyfriend had uploaded intimate pictures that she had sent to him in confidence to a slew of websites. For months afterward, she continued to receive harassing e-mails from revenge-porn aficionados who had seen her pictures online.

Sarah’s photos were typical

ing law, as well as her state’s stalking law. The key problem is that it’s not enforced. So often, cops say, ‘Oh, just turn off your computer, you’ll clean up your online search, boys will be boys, they’ll just forget about you.’”

“Cops are fucking useless,” Randazza said.

Meanwhile, proprietors of revenge-porn sites such as Moore are currently protected

by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that websites are not liable for content submitted by users. “No one can do shit, and

“I never walk alone at nIght, and I get chIlls when I catch someone starIng at me. I always wonder to myself, ‘are they starIng because they recognIze me from what’s on the Internet?’”

I don’t give a fuck,” Moore said.

“I have a legal team, and we’ve never even heard of these fucking people [suing us].”

Because courts have never dealt with revenge-porn sites before, there isn’t a clear legal precedent. But Randazza, who specializes in copyright law, is so determined to destroy sites like Is Anybody Up that he’s waiving legal fees for any victims who have appeared on the site.

“The fact that guys will do this makes it less likely that any woman will send you a naked picture of herself,” Randazza said. “Just from the perspective of not being a douche, any guy who meets anybody who runs one of these sites should punch

them in the face.”

“And if you do, I’ll represent you for free,” he added.

A few days after meeting with The Observer, Moore told a reporter at Salon that he had been so coked out and drunk that he didn’t even remember giving the interview. He claimed that HunterMoore.tv would not include an address-submission field, and that only he would be posting the addresses of people who had burned him. But his backpedaling may have been for naught: Moore had riled the Internet’s most notorious sleeping giant, the hacker collective Anonymous, which immediately launched an operation to destroy his revenge-porn empire.

Along with a foreboding video and a call to arms for all members to take Moore to task for his behavior, Anonymous published extensive personal information about Moore, including his home address and the names of his family members.

It seemed strange that Anonymous, which has been known to publish the personal information of its targets—much like the vengeful lovers who flock to Moore’s site—would go after someone who is effectively guilty of the same crime. However, the group has been known to go after bullies, helping to track down the ring of pedophiles who blackmailed 15-year-old Amanda Todd, who had committed suicide following the cyber-harassment. And KY Anonymous, the Anonymous operative who launched the campaign, reasoned that Moore’s willingness to harm the blameless makes him a worthy target. “We won’t stand by while someone uses the Internet to victimize and capitalize off the misery of others,” said KY Anonymous. “We are all about free enterprise, but we are not about the things that Hunter Moore and other revenge-porn sites are guilty of.”

The collective’s move raised some thorny questions: Is it possible to protect people from revenge porn while also supporting an open Internet, free from censorship and unnecessary government interference?

Charlotte Laws, an NBC commentator and former California politician, believes it’s possible to create legal protections for revenge-porn victims while also valuing a free Web. She’s working to put tougher laws in place, a campaign she began after her daughter was the victim of a hack that led to her private photos being uploaded

to revenge-porn sites.

“Like a traditional rape victim, my daughter just balled up and didn’t want to face it or talk to anyone,” Laws recalled.

“I don’t think a minor legislative change regarding revenge porn would hamper that ‘freeness and openness’ of the Internet in any serious way,” she added. “My goal is only to limit speech when it comes to nonconsensual graphic sexual photographs and videos. Nothing more.”

Laws pointed to 18 USC 2257, a law created for the pornography industry that requires commercial porn websites to index anyone who appears nude alongside a copy of their driver’s license proving that they’re 18. She argues that if a website operator like Moore had to produce a 2257 form and driver’s license for every person submitted to his site, “he would basically be limited to publishing ‘self-submits’ or photos approved by the ‘actor’ or ‘actress.’”

Citron suggested that more states adopt video voyeurism laws like the one currently on the books in New Jersey that criminalizes publishing “pictures that are sexual in nature and naked pictures of sex acts without the person’s consent.”

Despite Moore’s flagrantly defiant attitude, HunterMoore.tv’s potential new mapping feature could be the fatal blow to his legal defense. Citron argues that by encouraging users to include addresses with their submissions, he could be facilitating stalking. “If he is putting up fields with someone’s address and a field ensuring that there’s a map to facilitate stalking, I think there’s an argument to be made that he is engaging in cyberstalking under federal criminal law,” Citron told The Observer. “Section 230 explicitly does not immunize federal criminal-law violations.”

Sarah, the revenge-porn victim, is also working with Laws to pass new laws. Along with a number of friends, she started End Revenge Porn, an online hub for victims to congregate, share their stories and take action. The group is collecting signatures for a petition that seeks to halt revenge porn.

“People call it cyber-rape, and it absolutely is,” Sarah said.

“That’s why we’re pushing to have the law make it a felony. It equates to just how much damage this does to someone’s life.

“Once those pictures go up,” she added, “they never come down.”

December 13-19, 2012

in copyright infringement and battled with foreign webmasters, who knew that, because their servers were hosted elsewhere, they were beyond U.S. jurisdiction. None of her efforts worked: To this day, her photos are online. She even had to change her name because of it.

“It’s just horrible,” she added, the pain in her voice palpable.

“I don’t think that society really realizes how rampant it is. And right now, there’s not a lot that victims can do about it.”

There are several ways your risqué snaps could end up on a revenge-porn site without your consent like Sarah’s did. The most common is that they could be submitted, along with links to your social-media profiles, by a spiteful ex whom you once trusted with such intimate material. Some posters are men who feel rejected and get together to punish one another’s exes out of a twisted sense of duty and brotherhood. Unlike spray-tanned, airbrushed porn manufactured by suburban L.A. studios, revenge porn offers a rare, voyeuristic window into the private lives of couples.

It’s amateur porn in its purest sense, which is likely a generous part of its appeal. But revenge porn doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and even barring issues of consent, there’s also an unshakable subtext that perhaps women deserve to be punished for trusting their male partners.

To date, hosting and disseminating revenge porn is a legal gray area, although victims have sued on a host of legal grounds.

Las Vegas-based copyright lawyer Marc Randazza is currently representing a client who is suing Moore on copyright grounds, after her photos appeared on Is Anyone Up and Moore declined to honor her take-down request.

He’s also representing McGibney, the Bullyville founder, in a defamation case against Moore after he publicly accused McGibney of being a pedophile.

There are some federal cyberstalking laws created to protect victims such as Sarah from retaliatory exes. “Under criminal law, state and federal law, there exist cyberstalking laws that cover the very activity that [Sarah’s] perpetrator is engaged in, which is repeated online behavior designed with the intent to cause substantial emotional distress,” said University of Maryland law professor and cyberstalking expert Danielle Citron. “That kind of behavior is covered by federal cyberstalk-

25 VEGAS SEVEN

revenge-porn fodder. She was in a long-distance relationship at the time, and she had taken some nude photos at her thenboyfriend’s request; others had been taken by him while the two were engaged in sexual acts.

In addition to uploading the photos to hundreds of revengeporn sites, Sarah’s ex also sent them to everyone she worked with, from an e-mail address he had rigged to appear to come from her. “In the end, I decided to leave my job there, because the pictures were all up in association with my position and the company,” she said. “I continued to receive harassing e-mails at my e-mail address there and honestly feared that sooner or later I would be physically stalked at work. There were some nights that I was working late and alone at the office, and would jump at every little sound.” Sarah says that despite the fact she never considered herself a weaponstoting kind of gal, she bought a stun gun and never left the house without it; she also anticipates that “Santa will leave a gun under the tree for me this Christmas.”

Because her photos are on hundreds of revenge-porn sites, Sarah also said that she’s constantly worried that people recognize her on the street. “I just feel like I’m now a prime target for actual rape,” she said.

“I never walk alone at night, and I get chills when I catch someone staring at me. I always wonder to myself, ‘Are they staring because they recognize me from what’s on the Internet?’”

One of the fundamental truths of the Internet is that once an image is uploaded, it’s almost impossible to permanently scrape it from the Web. When Sarah Googled her name, the first 10 pages of results were all links to her naked photos. She tried for months afterward to expunge her photos from the hundreds of revenge-porn, regular porn and torrent sites that had picked them up. The police were of no help: They told her that because she was over 18 when the photos were taken, what her ex was doing was technically legal. Furthermore, because they were in his possession, the photos were technically his property.

Unable to afford expensive legal fees that would allow her to file a civil suit, Sarah researched other options that could rid the Web of the photos that haunted her. She filed Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down requests claiming that her ex was engaging

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style

The LasT human

December 13-19, 2012

The Mayan calendar predicts the world will end on Dec. 21, so Vegas Seven craãs a fashionable journey to the apocalypse

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Photographer: Danielle Debruno Photography assistant: Max Bangora Stylist: Jimi Uriquiaga Stylist Assistant: Omar Nevarez Hair: Molly Deimeke Makeup: Natasha Chamberlin Nail artistry: Maria Garay Model: Nicole/Wilhelmina

December 13-19, 2012

27 VEGAS SEVEN

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December 13-19, 2012 VEGAS SEVEN

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Sacrifice Helmut Lang dress, available at Neiman Marcus in Fashion Show; Gypsy Den headpiece, available at Gypsy Den, 213 E. Colorado Ave.; Eddie Borgo cuff and necklace available at Neiman Marcus in Fashion Show.

December 13-19, 2012

29 VEGAS SEVEN

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Photo by TK

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December 13-19, 2012

31 VEGAS SEVEN

Photo by Bryan Hainer

December 13-19, 2012

How Myron Martin— the man behind The Smith Center— became Myron Martin.

An inside look at the salesman-performer-promoter-prankster who helped turn an unlikely dream into a smash hit.

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You want to one day operate a palace of culture in a globally renowned city? You need some training-wheel deals.

“I was a marketer from 5 years old,” says Myron Martin, his memory rewinding 49 years to the backyards of Houston. “Around the holidays I went around picking up pinecones that had fallen off the pine trees in people’s yards. I’d put a little glitter on them and sell the pinecones that came out of their own trees as holiday décor.”

Writ large, that’s moxie of the sort that, decades hence, helped get a landmark performing arts center built, lending this neon kingdom what it long lacked: artistic glitter.

No project in recent memory has wielded the power to shift the world’s perception of Las Vegas—and the city’s perception of itself—more than The Smith Center for the Performing Arts. Leveling the previously gross imbalance between the razzle-dazzle of the Strip and Vegas’ once-modest cultural profile, it puts the lie to that snide attitude of outsid-

ers that the phrase “Las Vegas culture” is an oxymoron.

Constructed at a cost of nearly half-a-billion bucks raised through a partnership of public and private money— as America was enduring its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, with

Nevada particularly hard-hit— its completion in March was also something of a financial miracle and testament to determination.

Keeping it aloft day in and day out is Martin, a president and CEO with a rare combination of skills—as businessman,

persuasive salesman, savvy marketer, confidant to stars and a performer himself.

“He’s a unique guy in the business,” says his wife, Dana Martin. “He has so much expertise in most every field that comes under that performing arts center umbrella.”

Take in almost any show passing through downtown’s gleaming Smith Center—from the cozy Troesch Studio Theater to the warm, snazzy Cabaret Jazz room to the cavernous elegance of Reynolds Hall—and you’ll spot the relentlessly cheery Martin.

Photo by Bryan Hainer

December 13-19, 2012

Big dreamers can start out as little schemers.

Nestled in a leafy cul-desac—reachable after driving through two sets of gates in a Henderson development—is his other home, a plush but airy 6,000-plus-square-foot house the 54-year-old shares

split second it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m the piano man!’ That was 30 years ago. If I ran into Billy on the street today, he’d say, ‘Hi, Myron,’ but Christie wouldn’t remember me.”

Elsewhere on the walls are photos of famous musical folk, including Bruce Hornsby, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, Paul Shaffer, Michael Feinstein and a sax player named Bill Clinton, the common figure being Martin, popping up like a show-biz Zelig.

“That is my childhood best friend, Sandy Knox, who is an incredibly successful songwriter,” he says, pointing

in trouble or laughing? That was me and My,” Knox says.

Bonded by love of the arts, they performed together in a children’s theater called Studio Seven, as well as in the school choir, which, when they were in the eighth grade, was selected to tour Romania.

“But we were very silly, and Myron was a class clown,” she says. “When Mrs. McClendon, our teacher, got irritated with him, she’d say, ‘I’m gonna smack you bald-headed!’ And he was a practical joker.”

Do tell.

“We’d pull up to a McDonald’s, and I would come out with all the food and he would have driven off and left me. But he’d just gone across the street to a parking lot, watching me wondering where he went. And his first car was an orange Volkswagen bug. I’d be drinking my cranberry juice, and he would wait till I was about to take a sip—this was before you had covers on your drinks—and he’d gun the car so the drink would go all over my face.

He’s a prankster.”

Prankster on a harmless Beaver Cleaver level, which, Martin says, is appropriate to his upbringing, especially when remembering his mother, Vera, a Louisiana-born homemaker. “I had a Leave It to Beaver childhood,” he says. “Every afternoon when I got home from school she was there to greet me, sometimes she’d bake cookies, have a snack ready. My dad would drive from downtown to the suburbs, and we’d have dinner at 6 like clockwork, every night.”

Dad was Monty Martin, a petroleum geologist and vice president for Texas Gas, “the go-to guy when it came to finding oil and gas and understanding the business of gas reserves,” his son says.

“He was the guy called on to testify in Washington, D.C., about oil and gas. Probably the most likable guy I ever knew, and I learned a lot of

“I see the busIness sIde of hIm at those functIons, the very serIous sIde of hIm, and I say, ‘If they only knew what a goofhead he Is,’” she says. “I know the other guy wIth a towel wrapped around hIs head doIng ImpressIons.” proudly to another snapshot. “That was the year Reba McEntire won the Country Music Award for one of Sandy’s songs.”

Trace that friendship back to a pair of giggly 12-year-olds in a Houston classroom.

Born and raised in Houston with two older brothers, Martin found his BFF in a fellow six-grader at Memorial Junior High School who grew up to create Nashville’s Wrinkled Records, and whose memories of the pal she calls “My” are punctuated by raucous laughter.

“You know that kid you always end up meeting that the teacher wants to separate you from because you were always

lessons from him.”

Humility was one of the biggest, his son struck by how, even with his imposing corner office and elevated position, his dad wouldn’t allow subordinates to call him “mister,” insisting they use his first name. Years later, when Martin became a rising young Baldwin executive in charge of nine Houston dealerships, he remembered that.

“I was proud of where I was at that stage of my life, and a lot of people called me Mr. Martin at 25,” he says. “I had lunch with my dad and very quickly changed that. If my dad, who has all this experience and credibility and influence and education, isn’t Mr. Martin, I’m certainly not going to have people call me that.”

Neither parent was steeped in the arts, but when Martin was around 8, his father purchased an organ and began taking lessons as a way to decompress after work. Soon, his son was mimicking his dad’s movements on the instrument, playing by ear, discovering a talent for tinkering on the keyboard, and taking his own lessons. Talent-show wins followed.

“Then a funny thing happened,” he says. “Because I had this musical ability, it was much easier to meet girls.

There’s a reason to keep going with the lessons.”

Another was the first stirrings of a professional association that would eventually launch him into the path of world-famous musicians and help define his career. At age 13, Martin was hired by the Baldwin Piano dealer in Houston to play organ demonstrations. Two years later, when Baldwin test-marketed “the fun machine,” an organ with automatic accompaniment, he was promised $100 for each one he could sell. In the first month, he peddled 16 of them.

“I loved telling people about it and showing them how it worked and getting them excited about it,” he says.

“At that age, to have $1,600, I thought, ‘This is the business for me.’”

Lucrative, yes, but he needed a stage to fulfill his cool quota.

“I had a garage band in high school. I’m sure we were terrible but we got hired for high school dances, and each of us would get $40. Our guitarist

December 13-19, 2012

with the ladies in his life.

Dana, his second wife, former Miss Texas and onetime Jubilee! lead singer, is not at home this afternoon, a consequence of having traded feather boas for fractions as a math teacher at Helen C. Cannon Junior High School. Nor is their 9-year-old daughter, Molly, or their college-age children, William and Amelia, from Dana’s previous marriage.

Only the pool guy, with whom Martin confers about a pesky leak, is on premises, plus the writer he takes on a memorabilia tour through the memento-strewn foyer. Past the Steve Jobs bio on the coffee table, past the wallmounted Texas license plate, past the framed poster carrying words that could define his career—“Fear No Art”—to the photos surrounding the Baldwin piano and Hammond B3 organ, the latter holding a lifetime of memories.

“It’s what I grew up with,” he says. “I won all the school talent shows on that organ and went on tour with bands and hauled it around the country. It’s part of the family.”

Above it hangs the surreal portrait of Billy Joel from his River of Dreams album cover, signed by the artist, Joel’s then-wife, Christie Brinkley. “He was one of my heroes growing up, someone I really enjoyed getting to know,” says Martin, who, as chief of Baldwin Piano’s concert and artist division in the ’80s and ’90s, came into the orbit of many superstars, persuading them to endorse the instrument.

“The first time I went to their home in East Hampton (Long Island), their daughter, Alexa, was 6. Billy and I were in their big living room, and that’s where he had a Baldwin SD-10, a big 9-foot concert grand. Alexa walks in, and Billy says, ‘Come in, honey—this is Myron, he’s the piano man.’ I was just the guy selling the piano, but for a

33 VEGAS SEVEN

Glad-handing and kibitzing.

Modestly accepting praise, sometimes politely deflecting it. Repeating his oft-told tale of being a gob-smacked Houston fourth-grader when he first eyed Jones Hall, that city’s performing arts center, his goose bumps rising with the curtain.

Reveling in the creation of a complex that, since its opening in March, has made him one of the most high-profile people in a high-profile city.

“I love my role in what I think will be a transformative period in our community,” Martin says. When he says, “love,” he clearly means it, but it is one of those handy media blurbs you sense he’s said countless times, retrievable at any quote-ready moment.

Beyond that, though, is a person of seeming contradictions who defies easy categorization, as most interesting people do: genteel, articulate, arts-loving— he’s even a voting member of Broadway’s Tony Awards—but, as his wife says, “a true Texan at heart—a guy’s guy.”

Childhood buddy Sandy Knox, a Nashville songwriter and record-label owner, has seen several sides of the man who occasionally accompanied her to the Grammys and Country Music Awards, schmoozing with industry heavyweights. “I see the business side of him at those functions, the very serious side of him, and I say, ‘If they only knew what a goofhead he is,’” she says. “I know the other guy with a towel wrapped around his head doing impressions.”

One whose résumé could read this way: Musician and administrator. Prankster and promoter.

Leader and ladies man. Native Texan-turned-New York sophisticate-turned-Las Vegas cultural force. A guy whose repertoire on the organ stretched from the classics to rock to plunking out da-dada-daaa-da-daaaaa, so 50,000 baseball fans could yell, “C-HA-A-A-RGE!” Just north of the corner of Bonneville Avenue and Grand Central Parkway sits Myron Martin’s career grand slam.

Top: Myron Martin with Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Chairman Fred Smith and Smith Center Chairman Don Snyder at The Smith Center’s opening gala on March 10. Center: The Carillon Tower was an immediate sign of The Smith Center’s monumental ambitions. Bottom: Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard bring a blue-collar ethic to the black-tie gala.

them clapping.”

Occasionally, his non-baseball repertoire came in handy, as when members of the Monkees were in the crowd one day. “There was no such thing as finding it on your iPod; it’s either in your head or it isn’t,” Martin says. “I played ‘Hey, Hey, We’re the Monkees’ and I saw Micky Dolenz look up to

the organ booth and wave.”

While the job lasted only half a season—the hourlong round-trip between Denton and the stadium in Arlington grew tiresome—Martin hit the keyboards for the Braves for a couple of seasons several years later after moving to Atlanta.

There, he became known for welcoming pitcher Steve Bed-

rosian to the mound with the theme to The Flintstones—you know, the Stone Age couple from a town called Bedrock.

Awarded a music degree from the University of North Texas in 1980, and with a brief, yearlong marriage to a college sweetheart behind him, Martin had a decision to make. Credit

his subconscious for making it after too many gigs playing cocktail piano at Holiday Inn lounges throughout college.

“I had a recurring nightmare that I was 50, playing to people who weren’t there to listen to me, eating and drinking and picking up girls.

If I was smart about anything, it was knowing that as good as I was as a musician, there were thousands of people who were better than me. It might have been a passion, but translating passion into a career doesn’t always work out so well.”

And yet, Knox adds, “Myron always had a very clear vision that he was going to be in the entertainment industry.”

Answer? Managing and marketing music, rather than making it. Re-enter Baldwin.

Building on a relationship dating to his junior-high years, Martin dropped bait to the company’s marketing chief in Cincinnati and was invited to the company conference in Chicago to discuss possibilities. “I don’t think I ever filled out an application,” says Martin, who embarked, officially, on a 15-year Baldwin career, rising from retail salesman to overseeing the retail division.

Personable and diligent, he impressed co-workers and bosses alike. One was John Tolleson, Baldwin’s divisional vice president for Western sales, when Martin was assigned to Northern California. “He really could communicate with people,” Tolleson says. “They liked him and he was very persuasive when he needed to be.”

Gradually, Martin reached what would be his crowning Baldwin achievement, running the concert and artist division, coaxing major stars to perform on Baldwin pianos. That’s when the gig went glam, as he relocated to New York and scored an office at the renowned Hit Factory, a world-famous recording studio on 54th Street in Manhattan. There he would ride the elevator with the likes of Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey and Madonna.

Rub shoulders with Broadway stars recording cast albums.

Shuffle over to tapings of David Letterman’s Late Show and hang backstage thanks to a friendship with Shaffer, Letterman’s bandleader.

“I learned so much about

Opening night photos by Ethan Miller/Getty Images; Carillon Tower photo by Gerri Kodey

December 13-19, 2012 VEGAS SEVEN

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was a big Jimi Hendrix fan, so we did some of that. A lot of Santana, [and keyboarddriven] songs from Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.”

While using the keyboard to gain an income, high school rock cred and girls, Martin was simultaneously sowing the other seeds that would serve him as an arts impresario—that of a leader and mediator—as he advanced to the University of North Texas, one of the country’s most prestigious music schools, in 1975.

Among his status positions were heading up the NT40, an assemblage of the top 40 student leaders, and being president of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, as well as leading the campus’ interfraternity council. “Traditionally, fraternities compete—for members, for dates with the sorority girls,” he says. “Finding common ground is what I brought to the fraternity council. At the end of the day, we were all there together.”

Certainly Martin was qualified to discuss campus dating, as the prankster-musician who would later wed a beauty queen developed yet another reputation. “Myron was an incorrigible flirt,” says Knox, who was up on his romantic escapades, having also joined him at college where they both bunked at the coed dorm. “He always had a girlfriend somewhere, they were always very pretty and sometimes they were a little older than him.”

Impressing the ladies might have had something to do with his baseball career—well, sorta.

Searching for an organist, the Texas Rangers phoned the university’s organ department during Martin’s sophomore year, seeking a recommendation, and he nailed the gig. While other organists could, he says, “play rings around me,” they leaned more toward liturgical music, whereas Martin was looseygoosier, with a rep for playing jazz and pop.

“My friends would say, ‘Our buddy plays for the Texas Rangers,’ and the girls would say, ‘Really?’ Thank God they never asked what position,” he jokes. “It was fun because I love baseball. You could change the 50,000 people in the stands by the music you played. I had to know the timing of when to play ’charge!’ or those musical motifs to get

know,” Martin says. “Like many Broadway shows, it opened in Las Vegas, it had a successful [four-month] run, then it closed. I’m OK with that.”

Broadway musicals flop as often as they succeed in Vegas, but the fast fadeout of Hairspray nixed him getting a foothold as a Strip presence. While he praises the

Yet rather than leaping to the fore of the developing project, his involvement grew in stages, dating to 1999 and an affiliation with the Las Vegas Performing Arts Center Foundation. “We had already established the structure for the performing arts center foundation,” says Dr. Keith Boman, who was its vice chairman under board chairman Don Snyder.

“He wasn’t available until he left the university, so he did some volunteer work and some research for us.

Then we paid him as a consultant for a number of years until we established the full-time position. … He shared the same passion for the idea we were already promoting,” Becoming foundation president in 2003, Martin was the proverbial soldier on the ground: cajoling, wheedling and persuading public officials and potential donors, spearheading the fundraising, negotiating with designers and architects, co-writing the business plan and guiding the cultural programming. Spanning the artistic spectrum, it included touring Broadway musicals, iconic pop, jazz and rock performers, specialty acts, the Nevada Ballet and Las Vegas Philharmonic, artist lectures and educational initiatives, including a partnership between the Clark County School District and the Kennedy Center.

“He communicates thoughtfully,” Boman says. “He really thinks through a process, sometimes overthinks it, before he makes a decision. I wouldn’t call him compulsive; I would call him careful. During the first few years that we worked on this project, we may have had some difference of opinion, but it never got in the

“I had a recurrIng nIghtmare that I was 50, playIng to people who weren’t there to lIsten to me, eatIng and drInkIng and pIckIng up gIrls.

If I was smart about anythIng, It was knowIng that as good as I was as a musIcIan, there were thousands of people who were better than me. It mIght have been a passIon, but translatIng passIon Into a career doesn’t always work out so well.” people he worked with on the musical, one of them—co-producer and Broadway veteran Michael Gill—declined to comment on the show or his relationship with Martin.

However, by that point, Martin was well into what would become his most celebrated accomplishment to date, helping to create The Smith Center. Every talent he nurtured in himself—as artist, marketer, salesman and businessman—coalesced at this career crossroad.

way of my respect for him.”

While accepting all the accolades that have poured over him like champagne since the center’s debut, Martin characteristically hands over kudos to others. Among several he credits is Fred W. Smith, the center’s namesake along with his late wife, Mary, and chairman of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, the largest private donor, kicking in $150 million. Another is Snyder, the former gaming exec and foundation chairman—now chairman of The Smith Center’s board of directors—whom he calls “the hero, the most extraordinary community leader I’ve known my entire life.”

Yet it was Martin who, along the journey, picked up the “Keeper of the Vision” moniker. “That meant that I would apply The Smith Center’s vision to be recognized as a leading performing arts center in America, and I would use that vision in every decision we made,” Martin says.

“Sometimes it made me the bad guy. I had many arguments with design team members and spent a lot of time at City Hall saying why something had to be a certain way. It wasn’t an easy ride all along the way. It took standing up for what’s right for our community, even if it’s different than you might do in Nashville or Fort Worth.”

Combining compromise and backbone turned out to be the successful formula. “It’s not about your ego,” he says. “When you look back, you know every heated discussion you had, every decision you had, was for a reason. It’s better to be effective than to be right. That’s the biggest lesson I learned.”

Ultimately, what “the Keeper of the Vision” envisioned was a place where Las Vegas could banish the notion of a cultural wasteland and refashion it as a cultural wonderland.

Finally, with Myron Martin at the helm, Las Vegans see the vision realized. So, now, does the world.

Thanks, My. When Martin was putting the finishing touches on The Smith Center in January, we spoke to him for Seven Questions. Read more about those pivotal days at VegasSeven. com/7Questions/MyronMartin.

December 13-19, 2012

Cool career so far. Living in New York, America’s cultural hotbed. Hobnobbing with top popsters of the ’80s and ’90s.

Holding aisle seats at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.

And he would abandon it for the cultural nirvana of … Las Vegas? Improbably, yes, after a plea from the Vegas-based Liberace Foundation—the late pianist had been a Martin client at Baldwin—to mosey west and take control. Several times they asked. Several times they were rejected, until he relented in 1995.

“Somebody quoted me back then saying I thought I had moved to a cultural wasteland,” Martin says, shaking his head ruefully. “I do remember saying it and having it repeated back to me. That’s how I felt. To move here and not have everything I had in New York, it was a real void for me.”

So he took the job … why?

“The marketer in me enjoyed it. I liked moving it beyond its comfort zone. I negotiated a deal with QVC to do a whole Liberace show, we sold T-shirts and DVDs and Liberace bears.”

Martin moved on to UNLV in 1999 in essentially a warmup for The Smith Center, as director of the university’s performing arts center. Booking artists including violinist Itzhak Perlman and the Moscow State Radio Symphony, he raised the level of the Charles Vanda Master Series. Bringing a taste of his Big Apple cultural life to Las Vegas, Martin also created the Best of the New York Stage series that has attracted Broadway lights including Mandy Patinkin, Gregory Hines, Kristin Chenoweth and Betty Buckley.

Professionally, his jets were

firing. Personally, they were about to. While he dismisses any notion he could be considered—how should we say it?—a player, Martin does admit that his Vegas social life included dating showgirls.

Clearly he had gotten into the Vegas swing of things.

After all, Martin, owing to his contacts in the talent business, had judged numerous beauty pageants, including Miss America.

One assignment in 1999 brought him home to Texas for that state’s contest, where he met fellow judge Dana Rogers, a former Miss Texas herself who was also living in Vegas.

“The judges were sequestered for the week,” Dana Martin recalls. “Being with each other all week long—I mean every meal, all day and all night long— he was so personable, so funny. He could be the life of the party.”

Quickly she tumbled for the fellow Texan, as he remembers: “By Wednesday night, she said to the group of judges, ‘Myron and I are going to get married.’ We hadn’t talked about it, we’d been seeing each other for four days. But we hit it off immediately.”

Having joined Jubilee! in 1993, she remained with the production show until 2002, while he continued raising his profile, putting the choirs together for Barbra Streisand’s millennium concert at the MGM Grand and producing a 9/11 benefit concert for the USO. Success wasn’t a constant, though, evidenced by the failure of the Vegas version of Hairspray that he co-produced at Luxor, which flamed out in 2006, burning a lot of cash along the way.

“I spent some time right afterward looking back and attaching blame and saying if this or that happened, you

35 VEGAS SEVEN

dealing with people,” Martin says. “Had I only been a musician, I would have never been prepared for that. Had I only been a campus leader and president of all that stuff, I wouldn’t have been able to understand what goes on with the star stuff, the egos and personalities and challenges of the music business.”

Yet one crucial credential was missing from his professional résumé, and he knew it. On Baldwin’s dime, Martin enrolled at San Francisco’s Golden Gate University in 1987, earning a master’s degree in business administration in 1989. (Guess who was elected class president. … Yup.)

[ By Deanna Rilling ] “We need something to motivate the nation to get back on track and go to war musically.” ‘ModuS operandi’ {page 40}

Your city after dark, hot gossip, party pics and the creator of intelligent drum and bass

Fri 14 If you’re perplexed by the baby face in the DJ booth at Marquee, that’s Danny Avila, the 17-year-old Spaniard spinner taking the world by storm. (In the Cosmopolitan, 10 p.m. MarqueeLasVegas.com.) Over at Vanity, the Movement presents FMA: Fashion+Music+Ambiance “For Mature Adults” with music by SoHype and resident DJ Presto One. (In the Hard Rock Hotel, 10 p.m., VanityFMA.eventbrite.com.) Remember that advice about a hideous holiday sweater? Bust it out again for the Fugly Sweater Party & Toy Drive for Sunrise Children’s Hospital, featuring music by DJ Matt Lindsey at the Royal House. (99 Convention Center Drive, 9 p.m., RoyalHouseLV.com.)

SaT 15 Jack N Cake returns to GBDC with free Jack Daniel’s shots and Pick Your Poison cupcakes 1-2 p.m., Kidrobot (1) plush toy giveaways and sounds by Vegas Banger. (In the Palms, Palms.com.) Yee-haw! With NFR in town you may be out looking for some hot cowboys or girls. Ninetime All-Around World Champion Cowboy Trevor Brazile (2) hosts an after-party in the Gold Buckle Zone (Centrifuge) at 9 p.m., with country musician Lee Brice taking the stage at 11 p.m. (In the MGM Grand, MGMGrand.com.) The U.K.’s Kayper (3), called the best female DJ that Jazzy Jeff has seen in his life, brings her considerable turntablist skills to Lavo. Read more at VegasSeven.com/Kayper. (In the Palazzo, 10 p.m., LavoLV.com.) In the spirit of the holidays, Caesars Palace, the Cosmopolitan, Hard Rock Hotel, the Palms, and the Rio are opening the doors to their ultra-exclusive suites (4) for the second annual Suite Holidays event. For $100 guests are given tours, hors d’oeuvres and wine at each location, as well as transportation, to benefit the local chapter of Junior Achievement of Southern Nevada.

(2 p.m. to 10 p.m., JALasVegas.org.)

You’ve still got that ugly holiday sweater, right? Throw it on again—well, maybe wash it first—and stop by Hyde for XIV-Mas, the holiday version of XIV Vegas Sessions, as the venue is transformed into the North Pole. Only this time, the workshop is full of scantily clad Santa’s helpers as the EC Twins, fresh from hijacking each other’s Facebook accounts, spin atop a stocking-lined fireplace. Festive attire encouraged! (In Bellagio, 5 p.m., HydeBellagio.com.) A Burners Without Borders project is under way in the form of a Winter Urbanland toy drive at the Amanda Harris Gallery & the Lady Silvia. Bring a toy and enjoy a free Stella Artois and happy-hour specials all night.

(900 Las Vegas Blvd. South, 6 p.m., Nytronix.com.) Join your favorite LGBT stars during the OUTmusic Awards Official After-Party at the Sin City Theatre Monster Jam, hosted by Sky Dee Miles featuring Skye5 and celebrity guests. (In Planet Hollywood, 11 p.m. OutMusicAwards.com.) On the other end of the spectrum, join your favorite strippers for the Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club Party at The Bank. (In Bellagio, 10 p.m., LightGroup.com.)

Mon 17 Have you shown the world how you’d like to #ExpressYourself yet? Now’s your chance to get the attention of Diplo and his Twitter account by getting up nice and close to the DJ booth for Mad Decent Mondays at XS, then getting just the right leverage for the perfect froggy-style handstand—quick! Have your friend snap the photo before security has time to figure out what’s going on! (In Encore, 11 p.m. XSLasVegas.com.)

Tue 18 Who’s got a holiday sweater? You do!

Ugly Sweater Party with DJs Benny Black and Kid Conrad at Moon tonight. (In the Palms, 10 p.m., Palms.com.)

Wed 19 They never let poor Rudolph play in any reindeer games, but you can at the Reindeer Games Party at Ghostbar with M!keAttack (5) and Kid Conrad … we’re guessing it has something to do with holiday sweaters? (In the Palms, 10 p.m., Palms.com.)

December 13-19, 2012

Amid all the sexy Santa’s helpers and naughty elves, let’s not forget our Jewish friends. Hyde welcomes the Jewish Federation for the annual Vodka Latka party with hors d’oeuvres, unlimited vodka cocktails and wine. Complete reservation details can be found at JewishLasVegas.com/VodkaLatka2012. (In Bellagio, 7 p.m., HydeBellagio.com.) The eighth annual Bad Santa Party at Tao is looking for Santa’s naughtiest helper to take home $5,000, plus the club is also giving away a cool grand for the ugliest holiday sweater. (Ya know what? Just invest in a truly ugly sweater now. You’re gonna need it for a few more parties this month.)

Nightlifers Al Powers, Kris Brown and Jack Colton are on Bad Santa duty. (In the Venetian, 10 p.m., TaoLasVegas. com.) Charity is in effect at Beauty Bar. Bring a new, unwrapped toy for donation to the fourth annual Music Klaus Concert Series. (517 E. Fremont. St., Suite 150, TheBeautyBar.com.)

Sun 16

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Thu 13

nightlife

Clockwise from left: Tim McGraw and Faith Hill bare their souls; Snooki and Patrick Hyland; Coco and Ice-T.

December 13-19, 2012

Before his fight against Juan Manuel Marquez on Dec. 8 at MGM Grand Garden Arena, Manny Pacquiao reportedly met with a recently unemployed gentleman who told him, “Hi, Manny. I’m Mitt Romney. I ran for president. I lost.”

You can see how well that worked for PacMan. But you guys! Romney is the real-life William H. Macy from The Cooler! Is he available to rent out to send to one’s enemies

VEGAS SEVEN

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before they have important functions to attend? If so, he may finally be able to make some real money.

Romney and wife Ann weren’t the only ringside celebs checking out Marquez’s sixth-round knockout. Also there for the upset were Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, Metta World Peace, Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, chef Gordon Ramsay, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi and, rappel-

ling into the ring to perform “My Life” before the Yuriorkis Gamboa fight, 50 Cent. Gamboa is, of course, one of the fighters Fiddy still promotes with whom he didn’t have a public Twitter squabble (yet).

After everyone suffered through the disappointment of not getting to see another controversial decision slide to Pacquiao, Snooki took to Tabu to host her after-fight party, where she hung out for the night with her father, Andy, and undercard fighter Patrick Hyland—who also lost, but as far as we know wasn’t visited

by Romney at any point. But we wouldn’t be surprised if he was.

Drai’s HeaDeD to Bally’s Fret not, people who hate to go home after the club closes even though that’s probably a good idea because what are you doing after 4 a.m. that isn’t likely a terrible idea? After-hours staple Drai’s isn’t going to be going on a nearly two-year hiatus once Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall serves up its final night Feb. 4. Instead, Victor Drai will be moving his eponymous operation to a temporary home in one of the most unlikely spots imaginable: Bally’s. The club will stay there at least through the end of 2014, when the new Drai’s will take over the rooftop spot at the renovated and rebranded Bill’s. … Coco Austin hasn’t been in town long, but that didn’t stop her from already getting into a public spat with husband Ice-T. She posted some photos on Instagram posing with rapper AP.9 that showed him nuzzling the new Peepshow star. Ice didn’t take kindly and lashed out on Twitter, but has since deleted the messages. Coco apologized, but it seems like we’re eight days away from a drunken Ice standing up in the middle of a Peepshow performance, bottle of Jack in hand, ranting at Coco from the audience. This whole thing is gonna be awesome.

McGraw, Hill Draw MeGastars And as if to one-up “presidential candidate” on the audience luminary scale, when Tim McGraw and Faith Hill got to their opening weekend for Soul2Soul at the Venetian, they got a multiple-Oscar winner and beloved star of Bachelor Party Tom Hanks, plus favorite-musician-of-everyone-over-45 Bruce Springsteen.

Although we imagine the lack of 28-minute, half-talked storysongs in the Soul2Soul set must’ve come as something of a disappointment to the Boss.

On Dec. 8, Hanks, along with wife Rita Wilson and Springsteen with wife Patti Scialfa all had dinner together at Cut in the Palazzo, Hanks going for the dry-aged New York strip, Wilson with the petit filet, and Springsteen opting for Kobe. Meanwhile, Peter Scolari somewhere ate a cold roast beef sandwich and quietly contemplated what went wrong after Bosom Buddies.

Jason Scavone is editor of DailyFiasco.com. Follow him on the Las Vegas gossip trail at VegasSeven.com/blogs.

Photos by Erik Kabik

Romney Gives Pacquiao Bad Pep Talk

nightlife

‘Modus Operandi’

Photek, the creator of intelligent drum and bass, headlines NYE

By Deanna Rilling

December 13-19, 2012

In-home “F—k the Strip” parties have become a popular local response to high admission prices at megaclubs, holiday weekend traffic and frustration over the same superstar DJs rotating through. But we’re stoked for the Shelter New Year’s Eve party at Beauty Bar, featuring two areas of sound and headliner Photek.

Vegas Seven caught up with L.A.-based Brit Rupert Parkes—a recent Grammy nominee who’s considered the creator of intelligent drum and bass—to chat about the evolution of bass music and who is possibly electronic music’s No. 1 terrorist.

VEGAS SEVEN

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You revisited your groundbreaking 1997 album Modus Operandi this year with a special throwback set. Do you have some of that in store for Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve? It depends on what the crowd wants, and on New Year’s it’s only fair to make it a party. You could take it really art-y and ruin everyone’s night, so I owe it to the crowd to read the landscape when I get there and act accordingly. You’re still going to hear some interesting music. If you’re sick of the same-old same-old LMFAO—I won’t be playing that. It’s not going to be a routine raiseyour-glass-in-the-air, pouryour-brand-name-vodkaand-spray-it-around-a-bit and do-all-the-stuff-you-saw-in-acommercial-on-TV [event]. You don’t want to be those people.

If you don’t want to be participating in the real-life version

of Ralph’s supermarket shelves, then come to the Beauty Bar. With some electronic music being dumbed-down for mass consumption in the U.S. over the past couple of years, many reviews from newer writers/bloggers praise commercial EDM, but didn’t like—or didn’t understand—your recently released KU:PALM, which we gave four out of five stars [CD Reviews, Nov. 29].

It is a bit weird, isn’t it? It’s really contrived. I read a terrible review on ResidentAdvisor[.net] and I was like, “Wow, I don’t ever remember having one that bad!” I remember thinking, “Where do you fit, Resident Advisor? I don’t know what you’re about in that case.” It’s always presenting itself as this really highbrow tastemaker, and I’m like, “Really?” I can be quite objective about my music,

but I can put my ego aside and go, “OK, let’s really look at this album. Let’s go through what could be the flaws in this record—and I know what they are—and I’m pretty realistic about what I’ve done in music, so that was a really funny one to read like, “Wow, I feel like I’m getting a battering here like something poor Skrillex would be getting from Resident Advisor. That was harsh.”

Producers including Junkie XL, Daft Punk and you have delved into scoring films.

Is that the next logical progression for producers when the club thing gets to be monotonous?

I think so. I’m definitely inspired by a lot of movie scores, and I moved to L.A. in 20012002 to work on a score for Paramount Pictures. I’ve spent off-and-on over the mid 2000s working on film and TV stuff. I always need to do something different. You do film scores for too long and think, “I wish I could just make whatever I felt like making for a bit.” So the grass is always greener, but I’ll probably wish I was making a Michael Mann movie next week and not an album; I’m always changing what I want to work on.

Jazz influences are evident in your career. If Miles Davis or John Coltrane made electronic, what style do you think they’d lean toward?

Probably some weird, gangster luvstep. A four-to-the-floor, 130 BPM frame would be way too restrictive. Maybe they’d do something with Gold Panda.

Are the current EDM trends disheartening or frustrating to you? What could be done to reinvigorate creativity in the industry?

There’s hope. If you have a mature or seasoned ear in electronic music, you’re probably feeling pretty bad about the situation right now.

We’ve seen this a few times around the world, and once all the cheeseballs get bored of it or move on then something always comes out of it.

Actually, the one good thing is you always need a bad guy, so maybe Avicii is our Osama Bin Ladin. [Laughs.] Let’s rally against the axis of evil; we need something to motivate the nation to get back on track

and go to war musically. … I’ve not been playing in Vegas that much, maybe that’s just the nature of my music, but I just get the impression that it’s one holocaust of the same song again and again at every club.

The people who want to bring some cool music through need to help draw in some of that wider crowd to help neutralize it. You can go more and more extreme because you’re angry about the situation, but the people with a bit of juice like the Richie Hawtins and the Carl Craigs can draw people in, but push it a little bit toward the center to at least open the door for new people. That’s important, too. You’ve gotta help fix the situation. There are plenty of people out there who are difficult and unlistenable, and really going the other way, that’s not helping either.

Maybe some of the solution will come from bands a little outside of what’s called EDM now. Some of the more edgy, crossover electronic bands like Justice are able to pull a crowd into more interesting music.

Read Photek’s thoughts on the American fake art wave at VegasSeven.com/Photek.

nightlife

parties

HYDe Bellagio

[ Upcoming ]

VEGAS SEVEN

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Roman Mendez

December 13-19, 2012

Dec. 14 Konflikt and Jace One spin Dec. 15 DJ Five and Jace One spin Dec. 16 XIVMas Sessions with the EC Twins

nightlife

parties

bagatelle The Tropicana [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Amit Dadlaney and Teddy Fujimoto

December 13-19, 2012

Dec. 15 Bronco Brunch Dec. 23 Festivus for the Rest of Us Brunch Dec. 31 NYE with Robin Thicke, DJ Stan Courtois

nightlife

parties

the ice riNK The Cosmopolitan [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Josh Metz and Tony Tran

December 13-19, 2012

Dec. 13 Throwback Thursdays Dec. 17 Date Skate Dec. 19 Industry Wednesdays

nightlife

parties

repeal day Happy Hour witH MoĂŤt Hennessy

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Amit Dadlaney

December 13-19, 2012

RM Seafood in Mandalay Bay

dining

“That ‘Ooh la la!’ factor can really cost you. But you should drink what you like, not what the sommelier wants you to like.” The Grape NuT ... {paGe 73}

Reviews, Diner's Notebook, simple Thai to try on your own and the perfect Perfect Manhattan

A Savory Soiree

The supper club inàux continues apace with Bagatelle, the OneGroup’s latest vibe-dining eÞort

December 13-19, 2012

Truffles in paradise: Bagatelle’s truffle gnocchi a la Parisienne.

[ Continued on Page 70 ]

VEGAS SEVEN

Photo by Checko Salgado

By Max Jacobson

We are iN Bagatelle Restaurant & Supper Club, the luxurious new supper club/ nightclub/destination brunch hot spot opened last month in the Tropicana by the OneGroup, and there isn’t a single other table occupied at the start of dinner service on a Wednesday evening.

The club is a major investment for the group that brought us STK at the Cosmo—$6 million, rumor has it—and it certainly looks the part. But no one looks worried. I’m told the club, which has to be a good 200 feet across, was jam-packed on a recent Saturday night.

Looking around this sprawling and extremely white space, you’re bound to be impressed. A giant crystal chandelier, the room’s centerpiece, must have cost a fortune, and there are well over a dozen other chandeliers scattered throughout the three-tiered dining room. The entrance is rather grand as well: You approach the restaurant by walking down a long corridor fronted by a podium where you’ll be welcomed by a pair of comely hostesses. The first thing you see is a giant screen, awash in ever-changing videos. Then you turn a corner into the BaGaTelle club area, which made me resTauraNT & gasp at the sheer vastness. supper CluB Tables are draped in elegant white cloths; framed head In the Tropicana, shots of movie stars such as 739-3639. Open 6 p.m.-midnight Paul Newman, Audrey HepMon-Fri, 11:30 burn and Marilyn Monroe a.m.-midnight grace the walls; and largeSat, noon-6 p.m. format bottles of boutique Sun. Dinner for wines and champagnes sit two, $75-$119. fetchingly, if not suggestively, on the sideboards. Beyond the rear doors is an even larger space outside, Bagatelle Beach. A mere trifle—which is roughly what the word bagatelle means—this place ain’t.

My two meals here had very different vibes. The first experience was a dinner at 6:30 p.m., early by Strip standards, granted, but still shocking, when one considers that this place seats nearly 300 guests. We were ensconced in a booth on the upper dining level, gazing down at the empty lower dining tiers to the central dance floor, and felt like survivors after a natural disaster.

When we returned for the vaunted 69 brunch—Bagatelle’s signature event—the room was alive, thanks in part to a dozen “snow bunnies,” cocktail servers prancing about the room. On that occasion, at least

DINING

Steak au poivre, served with herbed frites, and Bagatelle’s tuna tartare (inset).

A DelI DIlemmA, West sAhArA’s thAI-WAy, AND INtroDucING BIscuIts 2 BurGers

a dozen tables were occupied, while a DJ spun music—the sort you’d hear at a Cirque de Soleil performance— that was bizarre to these ears.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise. This club started in a French-speaking country, St. Barth, before spreading to New York, São Paulo and, soon, Miami.

So the food is slightly French, as well, prepared by chef John Zamarchi, who has plenty of talent.

I thoroughly enjoyed my meals here. At dinner, I was fond of Salade Bagatelle, a glass bowl filled with butter lettuce (which I much prefer to iceberg), dressed with a très French mustard-lacedvinaigrette sprinkled with herbs and cheese. A workmanlike tuna tartare came in the form of a tian, i.e., in a molded circle, on top of some chopped avocado.

As a mid-course, we had the truffle gnocchi a la Parisienne— soft, melty pasta pillows in a black-truffle sauce that for once didn’t reek of artificial truffle oil.

Truffled chicken has to be the star entrée: a whole roasted organic chicken for two in a wonderfully rich sauce, plated with countrystyle potatoes and mushrooms. We

also tried grilled wild salmon with a perfectly acceptable hollandaise.

The menu is looser at brunch, although the entrées are available.

I had the house sangria, and was surprised to discover blueberries in it. If raspberry Nutella French toast sounds extravagant, that’s because it is. I defy anyone to eat it all. My wife had a classic steak au poivre, served with herbed frites.

Neither of us was in a mood for the vaunted Bagatelle Sundae, made with six scoops of Häagen-Dazs and an array of syrups and fruit.

I don’t know how they plan to fill this massive room, but the staff is

mAx’s meNu pIcks Salade Bagatelle, $13.

Truffle gnocchi, $16 (appetizer), $24 (entrée).

Truffle chicken for two, $52.

Steak au poivre, $42.

optimistic. General manager Roy Saunders is something of a Vegas fixture, and the servers are enthusiastic, if overly aggressive about upselling at times. And watch out for those snow bunnies.

December 13-19, 2012

[ a SmaLL Bite ]

VEGAS SEVEN

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Pairing indian Food and Wine? More is More Do you play it safe when Indian is what’s for dinner, defaulting to a standby riesling, sparkling wine or beer, even if the list looks interesting? You’re not alone. Most people still find Indian cuisine intimidating because of how it combines spices such as curry, turmeric and cumin, says Mike Ryan, vice president of sales and marketing for frozen Indian cuisine brand Tandoor Chef. However, he assures, there are “fun ways” to explore Indian cuisine’s wine pairings possibilities. In Las Vegas, the place to experiment is Origin India (OriginIndiaRestaurant.com). Partner/wine director Devinder Saini takes pride in his wine list and is always happy to suggest what goes with what. His advice? Go bold, since subtle wines cancel deep flavors, and deep flavors smother light wines. At Origin, pair the Arroba pinot noir with dishes such as lamb shish kebab, stuffed portabella mushrooms or vegetable samosas. If you prefer dishes heavier on seasoning and substance, Saini suggests a full-bodied cabernet sauvignon with a high alcohol content, which he says helps cleanse the palate. Pair that cab with Bhindi Massala—crispy, garlicky, spicy okra that could vastly improve your opinion of okra. Any dessert (but especially the Indian “doughnuts”) works with the sweet Lulu B. moscato or Saini’s new sparkler with mango puree, MoscaMango. At the Indian table, like really does seek like. – Jen Chase

My apologies to Bagel Café and Weiss Deli on Green Valley Parkway, two places that do an acceptable job at Jewish deli fare, but Las Vegas simply isn’t the deli town of my dreams.

The Carnegie Deli at The Mirage pales before the original in the Big Apple, and now comes word that Canter’s Deli at Treasure Island is being shuttered and, by the time you read this, replaced by … a hot dog stand. Where, oh where, is a person to get hot corned beef or pastrami worth its salt on the Strip?

It is cold comfort the hot dog stand will be called Little Richie’s Chicago Style Beef & Dogs. The menu will have that gut bomb known as the Italian beef sandwich, a treat for Windy City natives that rises and falls on the quality of the giardiniere—pickled vegetable relish that is a must for an authentic Italian beef. I like a Chicago dog as well as the next guy, but hey, I like my pastrami even more.

West Sahara Avenue is getting to be a real Thai Restaurant Row. It already has the very good Weera Thai, and now there’s Mega Ramen & Thai Noodle (4251 W. Sahara Ave. 754-4999), a Thai-Japanese fusion joint decorated with Japanese cloth banners and Thai art. Food is prepared by a trio of Thai women chefs, one of whom lived in Japan.

I especially liked the pork larb, rad na noodles and stew pork noodle soup on the Thai menu.

And from their Japanese menu, you can’t go wrong with the yakisoba or shoyu ramen. Be sure to order some steamed buns as well, called pao pao in Thai. They are filled with your choice of pork, custard or sweet red bean paste.

Over on West Tropicana Avenue, amiable New Jersey native Joseph Giancaspro, a.k.a. the Custom Cook, has finally committed himself to a brick-and-mortar restaurant from which he can continue his catering business, and also serve a la carte breakfast, lunch and specialty meals.

It’s called Biscuits 2 Burgers (9700 W. Tropicana Ave., 570-6877), and it’s open daily, 8 a.m.-3 p.m.

Chef Joe makes everything from scratch, including challah French toast served with pure maple syrup, piping-hot biscuits that he’ll fill with a variety of breakfast foods, and various and sundry burgers, all 8-ounce Angus beef patties. Make sure to get some of his fresh OJ, squeezed to order in a high-tech contraption next to the front podium.

Finally, Grand Lux Cafe (414-3888) at the Venetian has rolled out its fall menu, arguably the largest in town (outside some of our Chinese restaurants). A few new dishes to try are eggplant Parmesan fritters, gnocchi with asparagus and mushrooms, and homemade pierogies with a number of tasty fillings.

Hungry, yet?

Follow Max Jacobson’s latest epicurean observations, reviews and tips at VegasSeven.com/blogs.

Photos by Checko Salgado

Dining

[ Continued from Page 69 ]

Dining

cooking with ...

Bank Atcharawan

Chada Thai & Wine's owner oÞers up a tasty dish you actually can duplicate at home

By Max Jacobson

➧i first Met Bank Atcharawan at Lotus of Siam, when he

December 13-19, 2012

wine Pairing

VEGAS SEVEN

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Any given lunchtime at Lotus of Siam, you were sure to ĉnd Bank Atcharawan holding court, tasting the latest oĈerings from wine reps hoping to see their labels among that restaurant’s august menu. This is not likely to change now that Atcharawan has his own place.

With these fried shrimp cakes, he recommends the 2010 Hans Wirsching Scheurebe Iphöfer Kronsberg Kabinett Trocken. The highly aromatic scheurebe grape is a cross between riesling and a wild German vine. “This wine has very zippy acidity that tones down the richness of the pork fat in the shrimp cake,” he says. It also oĈers an exotic nose of red grapefruit, gardenia and black currant leaf, and a palate lively with lime, tangerine zest and rose petals. “The ĉnish is light and clean to complement the light Ċavor of the dish.” $35 bottle at Chada Thai & Wine, $26 at Khoury’s Fine Wine & Spirits.

tod Mun goong (thai shriMP cakes) Yields 10 cakes 2 1 1 1

pounds fresh shrimp tablespoon sesame oil tablespoon salt tablespoon light soy sauce 1 teaspoon white pepper 3K ounces lard 1 egg white 1 cup tapioca starch Approximately ½ cup panko or unseasoned bread crumbs Vegetable oil of your choice for deep-frying Blend the shrimp, sesame oil, salt, soy sauce, white pepper and lard in a food processor until the mixture is a smooth paste. Remove the mixture, and knead in the egg white and tapioca starch by hand, forming little round cakes approximately ½-inch in thickness.

Coat the cakes lightly with breadcrumbs and then deep-fry till they are a robust golden brown. The frying temperature should be at least 350 degrees.

Drain on absorbent paper and serve with plum sauce such as Lee Kum Kee. (Note: All of these ingredients are available in any Chinese market, such as 168 or 99 Ranch, and in most American supermarkets.)

Photos by Anthony Mair

served me the latest Riesling he had acquired for that restaurant’s impressive list. With his distinctive eyewear and casual demeanor, he looked almost as professorial then as he does now.

Atcharawan came to the U.S. from his native Thailand when he was 11 and spent three years in Hollywood, Calif., before settling in Las Vegas. Eventually, he attended UNLV, and became completely versed in Western culture, while remaining true to his native roots. He was an integral part of the Lotus team, but was biding his time. Soon, he’d realize a lifelong ambition: to have his own restaurant.

Lotus of Siam taught Atcharawan the ropes, and recently, he broke away to open his newest venture, Chada Thai & Wine, the hip small-plates Thai joint he runs as wine director and partner with his brother, Bon. The food at Chada Thai is somewhat of a surprise; many dishes are from southern Thailand, in marked contrast to the northern Thai cooking he served customers at Lotus of Siam.

Here is a recipe from Atcharawan’s menu that is easy, fun to prepare and delicious, sure to impress company if you’re making dinner, and great for a casual midafternoon snack as well. I don’t always cook the recipes I report, but this one was easy, so my wife and I prepared it at home, and it turned out swimmingly.

the gRape nUt

All ThAT GliTTers

Five alternative New Year’s Eve sparklers from cava to sake to … beer?!

By Xania Woodman

• Ca’ del Bosco Franciacorta Cuvée Prestige, Lombardy, Italy “Vino spumante metodo classico” is a mouthful to explain that this is an effervescent wine made in the traditional method, but the Italians prefer to call sparkling wine bollicine, or “small bubbles.” Italy’s Franciacorta region has a winemaking history that goes back millennia. However, since the 1960s, Franciacorta’s producers have been turning out worldclass sparklers, which received DOCG status in 1995. Established in 1968, Ca’ del Bosco champions quality, excellence and cutting-edge technology. The flagship brut blend (pictured) is a delicious fusion of elegant yeastiness, tropical fruits and a hint of citrus. $33 at Marché Bacchus Wine Shop, CaDelBosco.com.

• 2008 Agustí Torelló Mata Brut Reserva Cava, Penedès, Spain All Agustí Torelló Mata’s cavas are estate-vinified in the traditional method from estate-grown, indige-

• Okunomatsu Sparkling Junmai Daiginjo Sake, Fukushima, Japan Affectionately called “Japagne” in some circles, sparkling sake makes a chic statement as your final sip of 2012 (or, if you prefer, the first sip of 2013). Master sake sommelier (kikzake-shi) Tiffany Soto of Sake2You.com suggests this sparkling junmai daiginjo by Okunomatsu Brewery, founded in 1716. Gently effervescent, this sake is fruity, yet dry. 290 milliliters, $15 at various Lee’s Discount Liquors locations.

• Die Hochland Imker Honigbier, Austria If you didn’t pass out when I suggested a sake, then kudos for having an open mind! And it’s about to be blown: This is beer.

Actually, it’s an extra-dry sparkling mead, and Public House cicerone (beer sommelier) Russell Gardner thinks it’s perfect for toasting the New Year. If you’ve never attended a Renaissance Festival, mead is simply fermented honey and water— honey beer. Therefore, “the beverage is dry, refreshing and totally gluten free,” Gardner points out, and coming soon to local liquor stores. $72 at Public House in the Venetian, DieHochlandImker.at.

• Taittinger Cuvée Prestige Brut Champagne, Reims, France There is, however, something to be said for tradition. This summer, I was fortunate to get a private tour and tasting at Maison Taittinger in Reims.

When one sees firsthand the care that goes into the makings of a truly iconic Champagne, it’s easy to understand why such care comes at a cost. Fortunately, Taittinger offers a range of price points. Taittinger Cuvée Prestige brut is widely available, as is the brut rosé, but a worthy splurge—if you can find it—is the 2000 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs. $40 Brut, and $60 Rosé at Khoury’s Fine Wine & Spirits, Taittinger.fr.

December 13-19, 2012

• Domaine Chandon Étoile Brut, California Established in 1973, Napa, Calif.’s Domaine Chandon was the first French-owned sparkling wine venture in the U.S., making great méthode champenoise American sparkling wine using California-grown grapes.

Chandon also produces the topof-the-line Étoile label. I recently worked my way through a bottle each of the Étoile brut, Étoile rosé and the 2003 Étoile Tête de Cuvée, a winery exclusive. If sparkling wine is still the order of the day, and you’re proud to be ’Merican, but (shhh …) you still want bubbly with some oldword characteristics, here’s the ticket. $20 Brut, $25 Rosé at BevMo.com; Chandon.com.

nous varietals hailing from the Penedès region of Spain. The youngest vines are 60 years old, imparting concentrated flavors and aromas. The flagship brut is an elegant, versatile sparkler. Like all of this producer’s cavas, it has an appreciable dryness and acidity. $26 at Valley Cheese & Wine, AgustiTorelloMata.com.

73 VEGAS SEVEN

I hate to BURSt your bubble, Snooty Sommelier Guy, but expensive French Champagne isn’t the only acceptable bubbly with which to ring in the New Year. That “Ooh la la!” factor can really cost you. But you should drink what you like, not what the sommelier wants you to like. So if the traditional stuff just isn’t your bag, I say bag it and move on to something that is, beginning with these alterna-bubbles.

Dining

drinking

[ Scene StirS ]

beer on aT gordo’s, bubba’s new brew, and The gifT of whiskey or Tequila ... in a box

Perfectly Reserved The ManhaTTan cockTail has been enjoying something of a hay day the last few years. Mixologists have taken her to Italy, France and beyond with imported vermouths and exotic bitters; to breakfast thanks to the bacon craze; and even into the molecular gastronomy kitchen.

(Manhattan “caviar” anyone?) But lately, that sophisticated icon has been straying alarmingly far from the stirred—Mon Dieu, never shaken!—cocktail of whiskey (rye or bourbon, please) aromatic bitters and vermouth.

The recent 2012 Woodford Reserve Manhattan Experience competition asked bartenders to craft recipes that restore honor and integrity to the Manhattan. Aria bartender Tim Weigel’s Perfectly Reserved did just that in the style of a “perfect” Manhattan on the rocks (equal parts sweet and dry vermouth), and took first place in the city for its balance of simplicity, innovation and inspiration.

Weigel’s thoughtfully chosen ingredients reflect the changes Woodford Reserve bourbon undergoes as it is made. Standing in for sweet vermouth, crème de mure imparts an underlying fruity note like that found during the fermentation of grain mash. As the celery bittersinfused ice sphere melts, it slowly releases a vegetal note like that present during distillation. And finally, the dry amontillado sherry (employed here as an answer to dry vermouth) brings out a walnut character associated with the maturation process.

Honor and integrity restored, I’d say.

• Speaking of beer (and aren’t I, always?), Barley’s Casino & Brewery brew master Bubba is rolling out his new seasonal creation, a strong nut brown ale, for winter. Coming in at 7.7-percent alcohol by volume, the beer is brewed with chocolate, Munich and crystal malts, pure Vermont maple syrup and a good amount of Willamette hops.

• If you’re looking for a great gift for your office holiday party, the Liquor Library—the first and only packaged liquor store located within the baggage claim area of any airport in the country, which opened last month at McCarran International Airport—has you covered. Here I found not only all the usual suspects of vodka, gin, rum, tequila, whiskey, wine, bubbly and beer at prices comparable to the rest of the city, but also a few things that just scream gift exchange. From the intentionally grungy lifestyle brand Wicked Tango comes Wicked Agave Tequila in a box ($36) and Wicked 87 American Light Whiskey in a box ($34). Given the name and packaging, I assume the recipient’s hangover will be wicked. Just remember, there is such a thing as gift karma. LiquorLibraryLV.com.

Tim Weigel prepares his Perfectly Reserved at VegasSeven.com/Videos. Get the recipe at VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.

• On the wine front, the Venetian and the Palazzo will kick off the third annual Festivino, a celebration the wines of Bordeaux, on Dec. 15 with a wine-tasting event with hors d’oeuvres in the Palazzo’s Atrium, 7-9 p.m. ($40). Prix fixe wine-pairing menus will also be available for $75 all month at Morels French Steakhouse & Bistro and at Pinot Brasserie. PalazzoLasVegas.com.

For more scene stirrings and shake-ups, visit VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.

Photo by Kin Lui

December 13-19, 2012

• Formerly operated by China Grill Management, Red Square in Mandalay Bay is now managed by Light Group and open as of Dec. 10 with a fresh menu, a caviar program and a cocktail list with nine new drinks by Light Group mixologist Mike Monrreal. True, gone is the beloved Chernobyl (think Russian Long Island Iced Tea), but here to stay are the revamped vodka flights and Monrreal’s Sputnik Spritz. And the vodka vault is intact, but now with new (faux) fur coats. RedSquareLasVegas.com.

74 VEGAS SEVEN

• Gordon Ramsay continues his British invasion with the Dec. 18 opening of Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill at Caesars Palace and the Dec. 22 opening of Gordon Ramsay BurGR at Planet Hollywood. The 290-seat pub promises 36 beers on tap plus 24 bottled beers; here’s hoping for some anomalies that will make it a destination spot for beer-lovers to pair with Ramsay’s fried-egg sandwiches and fish and chips. The 200-seat burger/ fries/shake joint (well, pudding shake—the bloke’s British, after all) will also have a robust beer program: 30 beers, including large-format American craft brews, plus classic cocktails. Thanks, but I’ll pass on the pudding shake, mate.

A&E

“Taken on the whole, Crass Doesn’t Sell looks like an American Express ad campaign from Bizarro World.”

Art {PAGE 84}

Broadway’s Rock of Ages, undaunted by its eponymous Hollywood àop, gets ready to melt faces at the Venetian

By Una LaMarche

[ Continued on Page 78 ]

December 13-19, 2012

Come On, Feel the Noise

thE hElEn hAyEs, nestled deep in the marquee maze of midtown Manhattan, is Broadway’s smallest theater. With just less than 600 seats, delicate 1920s molding and blood-red walls that seem to close in like velvet drapes, it looks like the perfect setting for a ragtime revue, or maybe a children’s puppet show. It certainly does not look like the kind of place where you might see actors in leather pants and mullet wigs gyrating to Def Leppard, or unleashing guttural wails at decibels that could shatter plate-glass windows. And yet Rock of Ages, the ebullient musical homage to ’80s hair-band jams that features all that and more, has made the quaint stage of the Helen Hayes feel like an arena show. On Dec. 18, when it arrives at the Venetian’s 1,166-capacity Sands Theatre, Rock of Ages will get the chance to really go full throttle—which, according to producers, was always the plan.

“When Rock of Ages was first dreamed up in Los Angeles in 2006, well before Broadway ever opened, the creators wanted the Vegas market,” says Scott Zeiger, co-CEO of Base Entertainment, one of the show’s producers. “And we knew it would someday come.”

Not that winning over the Strip will be easy. Even popular shows have trouble breaking even—take Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular (one of the previous resident shows at the Venetian), which survived more than 2,500 performances before shutting down in September, having never recouped its production costs over the course of six years. But then, that was opera. This is Whitesnake.

“We think it’s a natural fit of a guiltypleasure show with a guilty-pleasure city,” says Jonathan Linden of S2BN, the show’s lead global producer. Adds Zeiger: “We want to become a fixture on the Strip. Cirque du Soleil, Celine Dion and Rock of Ages!!!” (Incidentally, Zeiger’s responses to my e-mailed questions are written entirely in all caps and punctuated with multiple exclamation points—as if his laptop were hooked up to an amplifier—which suggests that he is uniquely suited to produce this show.)

Of course, I can’t fairly review the Venetian production, which features an entirely new cast and staging/set changes to take full advantage of the venue, but having seen the New York show I can say that Rock of Ages seems tailor-made for a Las Vegas audience.

From the opening voice-over, in which

77 VEGAS SEVEN

Illustration by Jesse Sutherland

Music, movies, art, concerts and Deana Martin’s Christmas past

[ Continued from Page 77]

A&E

stage

Nostalgia: The Musical!

These peans to pop culture— some already onstage, and some just twinkles in the eyes of savvy producers—would kill in Vegas.

Just sayin.’

December 13-19, 2012

Rock of Ages has a healthy appreciation for its shameless absurdity and lowbrow appeal.

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viewers are encouraged to “enjoy having [their] faces melted,” to the last note of the show’s closing number, a supercharged rendition of Journey’s overexposed but still irresistible “Don’t Stop Believin’,” Rock of Ages is aggressively, endearingly tongue in cheek and over the top, working its beloved soundtrack for all it’s worth.

Historically, that’s proven to be a smart move for Broadway-to-Vegas transplants—Mamma Mia!, which played at Mandalay Bay for six years, and Jersey Boys, which is still going strong at Paris Las Vegas, both benefited from the popularity of their respective song lists.

On that front Rock of Ages, which appeals to the coveted 18-to-49 demographic of Gleeks and aging metalheads alike, is holding a royal flush. The show is unabashed about its efforts to create a hedonistic party vibe; actors dance in the aisles, and drinking is not only allowed but encouraged. On Broadway, to be honest, as fun as it was, Rock of Ages came off as a bit louche and touristy—the theater equivalent of the Hard Rock Café.

But on the Strip it should fit right in.

And please, if you had the misfortune of seeing the Rock of Ages movie

adaptation, which fizzled at the box office earlier this year, don’t let the trauma of watching Alec Baldwin, in a fright wig, belt out REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” keep you from the show at the Venetian. The ham-fisted big-screen version robbed its source material of most of its considerable charm.

A quick primer for those who care about the thin, fun, harmless plot that serves as banter between the show’s 30 Billboard chart-toppers: Drew, a wannabe rock god, works as a busboy on L.A.’s Sunset Strip, at the past-itsprime club the Bourbon Room (not so coincidentally, also the name of the Venetian’s new watering hole, which might best be described as a Disneyland version of a dive bar) circa 1987. Sherrie, a small-town girl (living in a lonely world, obviously), arrives from Oklahoma with Hollywood dreams, but takes a job as a waitress. While those two meet cute, the scraggly, hard-living club owner and manager, Dennis and Lonny, struggle to save the Bourbon Room from being razed by the mayor of Los Angeles and a German real estate developer, who want

to cleanse the city of sin. And they try to convince a famous rock star, Stacee Jaxx, to return to the club where he made his bones for one last sold-out show. The stage show’s plot doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the songs and vice versa, but it really doesn’t matter. Rock of Ages has a healthy appreciation for its shameless absurdity and lowbrow appeal, which elevates it from a trumped-up karaoke showcase to a surprisingly deft and endearing comedy. In other words, come for the amps, stay for the camp.

Almost nothing is being cut from Rock of Ages for the Venetian run, which speaks to the creative team’s confidence in the appeal of their nostalgia-heavy production. “We’re not cutting a single number,” says Len Gill, a partner in twenty6two, the marketing firm helping Rock of Ages make its transition to Las Vegas. Zeiger puts it more bluntly, in his signature style, “YOU WON’T MISS A BEAT!!!!!” The biggest trim will actually be the length of intermission, which will shrink from 20 minutes to less than 10 to accommodate the tight, two-showa-night schedule. Which, you have to admit, is pretty rock ’n’ roll.

Rock of Ages at the Venetian, $45-$115, previews start on Dec. 18, opening night is Jan. 5, times vary, 414-9000, Venetian.com.

Anna Nicole: The Opera Never have high and low culture mixed so oddly and wonderfully as in Anna Nicole, which premiered in February 2011 at the Royal Opera House in London and drew raves from The New York Times. For the Vegas interpretation, we see Howard Stern playing Smith’s longtime personal attorney Howard K. Stern in a bit of cheeky stunt casting.

Live! Nude! Hef! OK, I made that up. But Oliver Stone once hinted that he was working on a musical based on the famous playboy’s life.

Hefner has said he’s on board.

And, hey, Holly Madison could play herself!

Tom Jones: The Musical The fact that this show exists and is not already in Vegas is almost insulting. Oh... wait, it’s about the Henry Fielding character Tom Jones, not everyone’s favorite “Sex Bomb” singer. But seriously, how much would that kill in Vegas? It’s, ahem, not unusual to fantasize about these things. – U.L.

Visit VegasSeven.com/RockOfAges to read our interview with Rock of Ages director Kristin Hanggi and our random show nuggets.

Photos by Tom Donoghue

The Las Vegas cast rehearses.

For the Record: John Hughes What ’80s movie aficionado worth his or her Save Ferris T-shirt could resist a live, 360-degree theatrical performance of the angsty, synthheavy hits from the Hughes oeuvre, including “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” “If You Leave,” “True,” “Rebel Yell,” “Twist and Shout,” “Try a Little Tenderness,” and more? It’s playing at L.A.’s Rockwell: Table and Stage.

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MUSIC

Mining Her Christmas Legacy

Horror pUnkS, blUeS CHeatS, loUnge leaderS

Deana Martin brings her holiday show, and memories of her Rat Pack dad, to The Smith Center

By Danny Axelrod

December 13-19, 2012

For deana MartIn, Christmas hasn’t arrived until she hears her father, Dean, singing, “It’s a Marshmallow World.” “You can just hear him smiling while he sings it,” she says.

The fourth of Dean’s seven children, Deana has the type of Christmas memories that could be the stuff of TV specials.

Indeed they were— on NBC’s The Dean Martin Show from 1965-74.

Those memories include times when “Uncle Frank” and “Uncle Sammy” would come to the house on Christmas Eve, and the time when the entire Sinatra and Martin broods united for the Dean Martin Christmas Special.

Deana has drawn from this past in creating a 2011 Christmas album, Deana Martin’s White Christmas, and the Deana Martin Christmas Show, which comes to The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz Dec. 14-16. The CD and the show blend classic Christmas tunes with fresh arrangements and Deana’s capable vocals. The album features holiday favorites sung by her father and his Rat Pack “pallies,” as well as a titletrack duet with “Mr. Christmas” himself, the late Andy Williams.

From the CD came the idea for the show, which gives audiences an

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intimate recounting of growing up in Hollywood’s Golden Era. Deana’s favorite holiday memory of her father: “We would go buy a huge Christmas tree, the tallest and fattest one we could find. My dad would get a very tall ladder and string all of the lights on it. Then we’d get out the decorations, and all the kids would decorate the tree.”

Midnight Mass with the Martins: “After Mass, we would come home and each of us was allowed to open one gift.”

Dean’s Favorite Songs: “He loved ‘Let it Snow,’ because it was written by his dear friend, Sammy Cahn. He also loved Mel Tormé’s ‘The Christmas Song.’”

On being joined by Williams on “White Christmas,” his last vocal recording: “It’s been almost a year [since recording the song]. We perform that song now, and at the end when we wish each other a Merry Christmas.

It just gets to me.”

Something Old, Something New: “Part of the reason I did the album and am doing this show is

to keep those memories alive. We had so much fun singing Christmas carols. And just to be with my Uncle Frank and dad, everybody together, it was very heart-warming and wonderful.”

Deana Martin’s Christmas Show at Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, 7 p.m. Dec. 14-15 and 2 p.m. Dec. 16, $37-$59, TheSmithCenter.com.

[ videography ]

ExtErminating angEls and Christmas KillErs Local bands are tearing up YouTube. Candy Warpop uploaded a live performance of “The Exterminating Angel,” shot at the Royal House in August by Shoot to Kill Media’s Andrea Walter and Rob Sholty. “The Exterminating Angel” is among many new songs the band has written since scoring a new singer, Amy Pate. The band is busy prepping a full-length album. … The aforementioned (in Soundscraper, right) 3d6 have a dynamically animated video for “Glamazon” that I didn’t get around to seeing until now. Directed

by David Michael Thomas, it visually supports the lyrical message of loving a tough woman. … Finally, the Killers have unveiled a video for Christmas jingle “I Feel It in My Bones.” The video is on YouTube and the single available for purchase on iTunes ($1.29).

All proceeds go to Red Campaign, a group “fighting for an AIDS-free generation.” – Jarret Keene

Cool Vegas bands I rarely get to see live are emerging from their practice spaces this week. I look forward to having them rip my ears clean off.

Vegas nerd-punk trio 3d6 casts its geek ’n’ roll bones at Double Down Saloon at 10 p.m. Dec. 14. They’re joined by a new find—horror-thrashpunk group Xomby. This undead-obsessed three-piece has been kicking around for a couple of years, and I’m told the band’s debut CD is almost finished, having been recorded at ex-Cult drummer Lez Warner’s U.S.-U.K. studio. Xomby plagues listeners with tunes such as “End of Days,” in which an insane street preacher rambles a vision of a black future, and “All Your Flesh Belongs to Me,” a twisted love song told from a stalker’s point of view. If you’re a fan of TV show The Walking Dead, you should run to see these wretches.

Crazy Chief (pictured) dons the war bonnet at 11 p.m. Dec. 15 at the Lounge in the Palms for what will likely be the loudest rock band to ever play that cozy casino nook. The Chief took some scalps back in September during their debut performance at Neon Reverb, and I’m a huge fan of a recent song the band posted on its Facebook page—“Strange Lovers.” It has a hypnotic Sex Pistols-whipping riff (thanks to guitarist Jesse Amoroso) and a soulful Jim Morrison vocal (courtesy of front man Drew Johnson), and I can’t play it enough. The Chief wields another wicked riff-monster, “Crystal Eyes,” that’ll keep you awake. Hard, heavy rock with a singershaman edge.

The Lucky Cheats deal an ace-sweetened musical hand when they open for retro-rock legends the Blasters at Vinyl at Hard Rock Hotel at 9:30 p.m.

Dec. 16. The Cheats are a Vegas-based full-service blues-party ensemble led by singer/bassist Luke Metz and powered by harp-blower Jeffrey Koenig. They’re a guaranteed good time. Original songs such as the Chicago-style “Light That Blinds” and the Southern-fried, riff-driven “Hellfire Healing” are difficult for dancing feet to resist. Metz remains an underrated songwriter and a real admirer of vintage American pop and R&B. I’m confident anyone who likes to simultaneously drink and shake his or her ass will crave this crackling quartet.

Your Vegas band set to release a music video or Christmas single? E-mail jarret_keene@yahoo.com.

music

cD reVieWs

By Jarret Keene Power PoP

The Kickstand Band,

Puppy Love (Suburban Sprawl Music) This Detroit trio deserves props for an adorably roaring debut. Each of the 10 songs licks the listener’s face with boy-girl harmonies, lovelorn lyrics and a ramshackle guitar attack.

Puppy plays like a British Invasion translated through Weezer’s Blue Album-era garage.

Highlights include Gary Lewis & the Playboys nod “Still Thinking of You Tonight” and Green Day-meets-Everly Brothers rocker “Purgatory.” The surf-punk vibe of “Let’s Get Bored” make this disc ideal for Best Coast and Yuck fans. ★★★✩✩ electro torch

2. Led Zeppelin, Celebration Day 3. Mumford & Sons, Babel 4. Ke$ha, Warrior 5. Rihanna, Unapologetic 6. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d city 7. Deftones, Koi No Yokan 8. Fun., Some Nights 9. Alicia Keys, Girl on Fire 10. Soundgarden, King Animal According to sales at Zia Record Exchange on 4503 W. Sahara Ave., Dec. 3-9.

EP (Columbia)

Another agonizingly short yet still immensely satisfying disc by Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor and Mrs. Reznor, singer Mariqueen Maandig. This is Angels’ second release and, like the first, it’s a synth-masked torch-song collection. Everything simmers and slow-burns, from moody glitch-tempo “Keep It Together” to seven-minute, acousticplucked, Tom Waits-worthy ballad “Ice Age” to the shattered disco-spasms of “On the Wing.” “The Loop Closes” drives it all home: The beginning is the end/ Keeps coming round again. Reznor returns with what sounds like a second fresh start. ★★★✩✩ hard rock

Soundgarden, King Animal (Universal Republic)

The beast is back.

Talkin’ ’bout Chris Cornell and his Seattle chums who, in the ’90s, churned out heavy hits by the megaton—“Fell on Black Days,” “Rusty Cage,” etc. To this critic’s ears, it’s like the ’Gardeners never ceased tending 16 years ago. “Been Away Too Long” lunges courtesy of guitarist Kim Thayil’s breakneck riffs. “Non-State Actor” scenery-chews thanks to drummer Matt Cameron’s hammer-grooves. Over the top of all, Cornell’s paint-stripping pipes soar. Louder than love, indeed. ★★★✩✩

Disc scan

Upcoming albums on Jarret’s radar …

JaN. 29: Real Estate guitarist Matthew Mondanile continues to release shabby-yetsunny pop albums under his Ducktails moniker, this time the result being the properly recorded-in-real-studio effort, The Flower Lane. FeB. 19: Sun Kil Moon-er/Red House Painter and all-around badass Mark Kozelek unveils two new CDs simultaneously under his given name—studio cover-song assemblage Like Rats (in which the Misfits’ “Green Hell” sits comfortably beside Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe”) and a live set of timespanning Kozelek originals, Live at Phoenix Public House Melbourne.

December 13-19, 2012

1. Wiz Khalifa, O.N.I.F.C.

How to Destroy Angels, An Omen

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What We’re Buying

MegadetH

House of Blues, Dec. 6 Megadeth rocked. Period. They commemorated the release of their 1992 best-selling album, Countdown to Extinction, with a 20th anniversary tour bearing the same name. Megadeth performed

Countdown in the exact track order sprinkled with a few of their classic hits such as “Hangar 18” and “Holy Wars … The Punishment Due.” The band’s musicianship and performance was second to none. They pummeled their way through a high-energy 90-minute set accompanied by lots of head

banging. Completing the experience, three large digital backdrops flashed images of Marshall stacks and band pictures spanning their career.

Lead vocalist and guitarist Dave Mustaine, 51, still has what it takes to pull off his form of thrash metal. From his signature vocal snarls and growls to trading

off lightning-fast guitar solos with Chris Broderick in a dual ax-attack shred fest, the appreciative Mustaine showed no sign of slowing down. The audience took over vocal duties, as they sang the entire first verse to “Sweating Bullets,” a song about schizophrenia, which starts with the line, Hello me … meet the real me.

The skeletal Megadeth mascot, Vic Rattlehead, walked onstage during the encore song “Peace Sells,” sending the audience into testosterone-filled frenzy.

Megadeth’s thrashing metal madness is still alive and well.

For them, there really is no such thing as a countdown to extinction. ★★★★✩ – Jack Hallows

Youngblood Hawke December 13-19, 2012

The Joint, Dec. 6

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The L.A. indie-pop band rocked a standing-room crowd of spirited kids for X107.5 FM’s Holiday Havoc show. Opening for the Shins, Passion Pit and AWOLNATION, Youngblood had the distinction of being the newest band on the bill. The musicians stood out with their up-tempo pop/rock fusion of sound and instrumentation.

Dressed in a whimsically clashing outfit (stripes and polkadots), lead singer Sam Martin gracefully danced across the stage while harmonizing with vocalist Alice Katz, who played a multitude of instruments throughout the 20-minute, threesong set. The songs came from their September self-titled debut, and included these standout moments: Martin sang “Forever,” which he dedicated to his ex-girlfriend as well as “Stars (Hold On)” as he hopped around

and harmonized with Katz. He then played a keyboard solo during the song’s lyrical intermission, which was met with the enthusiastic approval of the hipsters, who also hopped around.

While performing “We Come Running,” the band raised their energy to match Martin’s by adding an assortment of instrument changes and configurations. Katz switched from tambourine to drums and back to tambourine again while her husband/lead guitarist, Simon, lead the audience in a synchronized “clap-along.” Martin and Katz joined in on percussion as the bass from all three drummers dominated the room, concluding a passionate and promising beginning for this youngblooded band. ★★★✩✩ – Brjden Crewe

Megadeth photo by Spencer Burton; Youngblood Hawke photo by Linda Evans

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concerts

Cash’d Out

Diablo’s Cantina at Monte Carlo, Dec. 8 The upstairs open-air venue was buzzing with boxing fans left over from a PacquiaoMarquez fight viewing party as the Johnny Cash cover band took the stage. Front man Doug Benson re-enacted the opening of Live at San Quentin, announcing “Hello, we’re Cash’d Out” before launching into “Folsom Prison Blues.”

From there, things fell right in line, as the San Diego band played for nearly three hours, taking out and polishing off almost every nugget of the early Cash repertoire.

Benson didn’t impersonate so much as embody the music legend, and his spot-on vocal inflection seemed to be his natural speaking voice. Guitarist Kevin Manuel channeled the nuanced twang of guitarist Luther Perkins. Stand-up bassist Ryan Thomas and drummer George Bernardo kept the classics thumping along with a rockabilly backbeat that had more than a few couples dancing (as well as one blissfully inebriated guy cutting a rug with a chair). At one point Manuel climbed up on Thomas’ bass while playing a guitar solo.

Cash’d Out ran through hits, from “Cocaine Blues” to “A Boy Named Sue” to “I’ve Been Everywhere.” They engaged the audience with banter, made eerie coming from Benson’s deep baritone voice. When a couple requested Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” Benson humbly replied, “Sure, we can fuck that one up for you, too.” ★★★★✩ – Danny Axelrod

RIMES REASONS: I’m generally not a fan of any country music artist that Us Weekly has heard of. But even I have to cop to my appreciation of LeAnn Rimes, who plays the LVH Dec. 13-15 ($54-$77). Regardless of how I feel about her material—fair to middling, at least what I’ve heard of it—there’s no denying that she’s got magnificent pipes.

You can draw a line directly from Rimes’ sweet, gently quavering soprano to Patsy Cline’s unique singing voice.

(Yes, the Patsy thing is sort of Rimes’ gimmick—but it’s a damned fine gimmick to have.) Her live show is awshucks-you-like-me earnest and just plain fun. And if for nothing else, you could admire Rimes for her work ethic: She’s sold 37 million albums, won two Grammy Awards and written four books … and she only turned 30 this year. She’s probably accomplished more in the past week than I ever will. Come to think of it, I don’t like her anymore, because she makes us all look like a bunch of lazy fucks who can’t sing like Patsy Cline.

ZZ tOp

Cash’d Out photo by Wayne Posner; ZZ Top photo by Bryan Schnitzer

House of Blues, Dec. 5 Those sharp dressed men—bassist Dusty Hill and guitarist Billy Gibbons—entered the stage with their signature look. A still-beardless Frank Beard pounded the drums.

The trio powered through an 80-minute set without any breaks. The show, which also promoted their new album, La Futura, was a warm and fuzzy look back at four decades of ZZ Top’s bluesy music and rockin’ hits. Video clips, live shots of the band and other visuals enhanced the songs. Classic MTV videos played alongside “Gimme All Your Lovin’” and “Legs.” Movie clips of Vincent Price accompanied “Vincent Price Blues.”

Folks kicked up their heels to “Tube Snake Boogie.” For their last few songs, including “La Grange” and “Tush,” Gibbons and Hill switched out their guitars for those crazy white and fuzzy ones that spin. The only thing that would have completed the experience was if they actually spun those guitars live just once. Well, at least the guitars spun in the video clip. Overall, a solid performance. ZZ Top has legs. ★★★★✩ – Ross H. Martin

THE MEN FROM CALIFORNIA: The Blasters are playing at Vinyl at the Hard Rock on Dec. 16 ($25), and you ought to go, because it’s a perfect case of the right band in the right place. The Blasters are the penultimate saloon band of the 1980s (second, I think, to Los Lobos, though it’s a close race), and to watch them in a club as intimate as Vinyl—with Rolling Rock in hand, nodding along with “Marie Marie” and “Colored Lights”—is to enjoy a rare kind of contentment. You feel like you’re in a locals-only roadhouse, and you’ve just discovered something rare and good.

NOW ON SALE: It’s been 12 long years since Ben Folds Five—scheduled to play the Pearl on Jan. 25 ($44)—gave us a new batch of what its namesake once called “punk rock for sissies.” But time heals all folds, and now Darren Jessee, Robert Sledge and Ben Folds have reunited for a new record, The Sound of the Life of the Mind—only their fourth studio record since 1993, remarkably—and a tour that will probably induce the creation of some very well-mannered mosh pits.

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ART

Two More Can’T-Miss shows in DeCeMber Year in Review Through Dec. 31, Brett Wesley Gallery.

So much beautiful and thoughtprovoking art has hung on the walls of Brett Wesley Gallery throughout 2012 that a yearend retrospective could take several equal-size galleries to represent it. For practical reasons, the gallery is making do with one space, packing it with works by Danny Roberts (pictured), Luke Chueh, Sam Morris and Luis Varela-Rico.

1112 S. Casino Center Blvd., 4334433, BrettWesleyGallery.com.

No one needs to tell Brent Holmes that his art has currency

December 13-19, 2012

By Danny Axelrod

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You cAn sAY this about Brent Holmes’ third solo exhibit, Crass Doesn’t Sell: The collaged multimedia images sure catch your attention. Each piece focuses on a particular currency, combining sexualized photos with polemic phrases and socioeconomic aspects of the currency’s culture.

In “Riyal,” a scrawny model is featured in a soiled robe and dirty underwear, surrounded by imagery of Saudi Arabia’s currency.

In “Peso,” a blockhead of a man stands proudly, barechested and bursting out of his shorts, determined to saw off his wooden masculinity with a chainsaw. “The image of self-castration is how I view the unequal relationship between Mexico and the United States fiscally,” Holmes says. “People risk their lives to come to this country for the couple of bucks more that they can make.” Fittingly, the wording on the piece reads, “It

all seems so paltry and pitiful on the whole, Crass looks like upon further examination.” an American Express ad camIn “Piso,” a topless temptress paign from Bizarro World. shakes her moneymaker in a Holmes, a 33-year old fantastical Champagne room, graphic designer for Desert overlapped by the phrase, Companion magazine, says “Trickle me down, the concept for baby.” It’s a referthe exhibit came cRAss Doesn’T sell ence to the stamp out of a disagreeof a micro-loan ment with an 303 North Studio in program that artist friend about Joseph Watson’s CollecHolmes found on whether sexualtive at the Arts Factory, some bills from ized artwork sells 107 E. Charleston Blvd., the Philippines. “I in the high-end Suite 115, through Dec. thought it was a art market. At 23, 742-6241, Facebook. good example of a that level, the com/303NorthStudio. trickle-down ideal, commercial value as opposed to typiof art appears to cal trickle-down trump everyexamples,” Holmes says. thing else, which got Holmes Clearly, all is not right in Hol- thinking about art as money. mes’ imagined universe. The He was soon incorporating a photographs themselves look commerce-based visual eleslickly alluring, if somewhat ment into his images. That led disturbing (what’s with all the him to researching various masks?). But the phrases layworld currencies, including ered over them and the images the origins of their symbols from various world currencies and iconography. Holmes even rip the viewer from the fantasy visited a currency exchange. that the images create. Taken He then penciled, inked and

photoshopped phrases and expressions into his work, pitching in his two cents, if you will, regarding art and money.

In viewing Crass, you get the idea that he’s commenting on how money is evil and can lead you to soiled slothfulness or, even worse, exploitation or self-castration.

All things said, you may have mixed feelings trading your money for the chance to bring home Holmes’ work. Not to worry, he has set up his own currency exchange on premises. You trade your dollars for his invented bills, called Kotlacs, and then you may purchase whatever you like with those. And purchase you can. His 24-by-36-inch prints go for $700 and 18-by-24-inch copies are $300. You can buy postcards for $10 a piece or six for $30 (when you buy all six, they flip over to compose a seventh, surprise work).

We don’t know how much that is in Kotlacs.

There are fearless street artists, and then there’s Benjamin Alejandro, a.k.a. “Bamp,” who actually wheat-pastes his own Los Angeles Police Department mug shot up and down Hollywood’s streets.

Alejandro’s Success show makes a provocative comment on the current nature of celebrity … meaning that his isn’t the only mug shot that is featured in his art. (Seriously, Lindsay Lohan: What gives?) 900 Las Vegas Blvd.

South, Suite 150, 769-6036, AmandaHarrisGallery.com.

– Geoff Carter

Holmes photo by Kin Lui

If Crass Sells, Who’s Buying?

Benjamin Alejandro: Success Through Jan. 18, Amanda Harris Gallery.

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stage

Odd how a show titled Soul2Soul pours heart into the music but leaves a hole where the soul should be.

Launching their 40-show residency at the Venetian Theatre (formerly the Phantom Theatre) on Dec. 7-8, cutie-pie country couple Faith Hill and Tim McGraw attempt to refashion their Soul2Soul touring brand into a bigbang Vegas show.

Mission: Unaccomplished—though not for lack of bang. Fans will lap up every note and twang, expecting little more. Speaking for the casual showgoer …

Strictly as a concert, Soul2Soul is aces, a slick, greatest-hits compendium, stylishly pulled off by two pros.

Can’t quibble with the heat of their performances or the completeness of their repertoire, as they rotate solo sets and pair-ups. Want Hill’s “This Kiss,” “Piece of My Heart,” “Let Me Let Go,” “Cry” and “Breathe”? Check.

Want McGraw’s “Real Good Man,” “Cowboy in Me,” “One of Those Nights” and “Live Like You Were Dying”? Check. Want duets on “It’s Your Love,” “Like We Never Loved at All” and “I Need You”? Check-a-rooney.

Reads like a checklist? Plays that way.

Ergo, the problem: Hill and McGraw play to the crowd, but rarely with the crowd. They perform for us, but don’t connect to us. Strangely, the disappointment is more acute given the personal engagement promised, as they enter from the audience, greeting whipped-up fans en route to the stage. After reaching it, though—belting “Let’s Go to Vegas”— the setlist unspools dutifully, the pair accepting applause and moving on.

Finally at mid-show, they settle into chairs for some chitchat. After some sexual innuendo (“Wow, that dress looks great,” McGraw tells his

wife, “and it will look great on the floor later”), they tick off musical influences, the segment resembling a clichéd E! interview. Classy and sexy, Hill’s nonetheless a rather static stage presence, while her husband’s body language at least conveys enjoyment, svelte frame swiveling throughout. Only once does the emotional veil lift, when he kneels toward a young fan, handing her an autographed guitar, provoking an audience “awww.”

Visually, Soul2Soul is likewise accomplished but distancing. Glowing, horseshoe-shaped lights encircle the stage and the 10-piece band but feel blocky, choking off an airy atmosphere, while innocuous video patterns—swirls, bubbles, stars, fireflies—shift behind them. Crossbeams of white light goose the look a little.

Concluding quietly, Hill and McGraw, seated opposite each other and sharing an old-style radio microphone, trade lyrics to “I Need You,” the show’s most poignant moment.

Naggingly, as they exit through the audience, it feels like we’ve eavesdropped on a personal moment, rather than shared it, a result of a show on emotional autopilot.

Soul2Soul flows smoothly. So does running water. That doesn’t make it interesting to watch.

STRIP POSTSCRIPT: Opening later this month: Stripped the Play. Imported from off-Broadway to the Saxe Theater, it’s the story of an ex-cop male stripper who finds that quitting isn’t as easy as just leaving your trousers zipped. Sex-centric show with an actual plot? We’re tempted to call it a show with meat in it … almost.

Who should be the next superstar to sign up for a Vegas residency? E-mail your pick to steve.bornfeld@vegasseven.com.

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Photo by Erik Kabik

Passionate and … antiseptic?

December 13-19, 2012

Hill and Mcgraw offer a slick concert but keeP us at a distance in soul2soul

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movies

Love is a soccer fieLd

A fallen sports star makes a play for his ex in this weak romantic comedy

By Michael Phillips

Tribune Media Services some movies are 100 percent polyester, yet the right actors can make the material breathe a little so that the audience wears the experience comfortably for a couple of hours.

Opening this month, the Barbra Streisand/Seth Rogen vehicle The Guilt Trip belongs to that poly-genre.

And then there’s Playing for Keeps, which is more of a manure-poly blend. The romantic comedy stars Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Uma Thurman, a bizarrely twitchy Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Judy Greer. Only Biel and Greer lift it above the level of bleh.

Per Robbie Fox’s script: Onetime Scottish soccer star George Dryer, played by Butler, finds himself down and nearly out and dreaming of a career as a sports broadcaster.

He has moved to suburban Virginia (the movie was shot in Shreveport, La., where the tax breaks roam freely) to be close to the preteen son (Noah Lomax) he barely knows. In

various keys of Doormat, Biel does what she can to suggest a real person in the role of George’s ex, who’s engaged to be remarried. But you never know! Maybe she won’t marry that other guy. Maybe she’ll get back with the vaguely unsympathetic protagonist.

The second we see George at his son’s soccer game, coached by some loser who won’t get off his cellphone during practice, we know the score. George will replace him as coach. George will oblige a sexually aggressive and/ or insecure soccer mom or two. Eventually George will wise up, put his horndoggery behind him and pursue his ex in earnest in order to make his life whole again.

The women in the film exist to prop up Butler’s fabulousness. Playing for Keeps was originally titled Playing the Field, but it may as well be called Plowing the Same Old Ground.

The director is Gabriele Muccino, who brought an effective brand of gloss to The

Can this family (played by Biel, Lomax and Butler) team back up?

Pursuit of Happyness but who re-teamed with Will Smith on the risible Seven Pounds. Playing for Keeps is closer to the latter than the former.

Greer, a sparkling presence, offers two amusing throwaway bits involving her sad-sack sin-

gle-mother character breaking into tears at inopportune moments. Biel’s character waits around for her ex to become slightly less of a deadbeat. The film sets a very low bar for its hero’s redemption. Butler isn’t without talent, but his smar-

December 13-19, 2012

short reviews

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Killing Them Softly (R) ★★★✩✩

This stimulating black comedy from Kiwi director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) is a good one. Brad Pitt stars as hit man Jackie Cogan. The story takes place in 2008, and much of the dialogue in the film concerns the financial difficulties experienced by contract killers. It begins with the robbery of a highstakes poker game, which sets off a flurry of violent events. While much of the story is familiar, it’s a taut, beautifully shot, pungent film that’s worth the time.

Life of Pi (PG) ★★★✩✩

Based on Yann Martel’s beautiful little book about a young man and the sea and a tiger, this film transforms into a big, imposing and often lovely 3-D experience. Ang Lee directs and while not all of it works, there is a lot to admire. Pi sets sail with his family on a freighter, accompanying a slew of zoo creatures. Terrible weather. The ship sinks.

All die except for Pi, a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. The adventures and astonishments keep on coming.

Red Dawn (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩

In the not-too-distant future, North Korea has invaded American soil. Our only hope is a gaggle of high school kids who form a guerilla army calling itself the Wolverines, after the local football mascot. Chris Hemsworth takes on the old Patrick Swayze role, and there’s enough to like about him and the general reworkings of the 1984 cult-classic.

There’s plenty of righteous kills, explosions, patriotic speeches and righteous kills. It’s not a disaster. Just drab.

miness is considerable, and to date his most sympathetic screen performance remains the voice of the father in How to Train Your Dragon.

Playing for Keeps (PG-13) ★✩✩✩✩

[ by tribune media services ]

Rise of the Guardians (PG) ★✩✩✩✩

This, unfortunately, is the worst animated movie to ever wear the DreamWorks logo.

Based on a children’s book series, it’s about a team that includes Bunny (Easter variety, voiced by Hugh Jackman), North (a.k.a. Santa, Alec Baldwin), Tooth (Fairy, Isla Fisher) and the silent Sandman. They need the help of newcomer Jack Frost (Chris Pine) to defeat Pitch, short for Pitch Black, the night-terror voiced by Jude Law threatening to rid the children of the world of the belief in magical figures. It’s harmless enough, but not good.

movies

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (PG-13) ★✩✩✩✩ Please let this be the last. The final installment of the Twilight franchise, hopefully, is strictly for the fans. Newly vampired Bella (Kristen Stewart) is adjusting to her new powers, new life, new child and the uneasy truce with the werewolves led by Jacob (Taylor Lautner). There’s some Edward (Robert Pattinson) of course, and a bright-spot turn by Michael Sheen as Aro, head of the undead Volturi, but largely this comes off as a particularly smug fashion shoot.

Lincoln (PG-13) ★★★★✩

Skyfall (PG-13) ★★★★✩

Flight (R) ★★★★✩

Wreck-It Ralph (PG) ★★★✩✩

Steven Spielberg returns with this impressive biopic about our 16th president, complete in almost every way. Based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, the film focuses tightly on the final four months of Lincoln’s life and his political maneuvering in support of the 13th Amendment’s abolition of slavery. It’s a fascinating backroom movie, hushed and intimate. Daniel Day-Lewis is magnificently human as Lincoln, and the supporting cast almost as impressive. It is a fascinating and careful examination of an incredible figure and time.

Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is a pilot who, after a night of drinking and snorting cocaine, crash-lands a routine flight to Atlanta, rescuing most of his passengers and crew. An instant hero, Whitaker knows that other people know what was in his system, and the dynamic dance plays out from there. It’s sophisticated storytelling, with the audience unsure of how to feel about such a conflicted protagonist, but Washington is marvelous, as usual, and it’s a highly entertaining flight.

Bond is back for his 23rd installment, and this is more like it. Daniel Craig returns as 007, charged with rescuing the world from a computer savvy adversary (Javier Bardem), perhaps the most memorable Bond villain in a decade. Sam Mendes directs stunning action sequences, and the return of Dame Judi Dench and various other recastings works well. While Quantum of Solace largely failed, this installment returns Bond to its rightful, highly entertaining place, while also exploring new territory.

The latest from Disney Animation is an exploration of a video-game fantasy, i.e., what happens to our favorite game characters when we’re not playing them? Ralph (voiced

by John C. Reilly) is weary of his prescribed lot in life: He’s not a bad guy, so why does he have to play one in the game Fix-It Felix Jr.? Ralph goes on the run, teaming up with Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) to traverse the video-game world and grapple with the modern-era game soldiers led by Sgt. Calhoun (Jane Lynch). It’s fun, but hectic.

December 13-19, 2012

This heavily theatrical take on the old Russian classic is only a half-success.

Directed by Joe Wright, it’s mostly staged inside a lavishly constructed playhouse, except when it’s not. And we watch the drama unfold between Anna (Keira Knightley), her pill of a husband (Jude Law) and her cavalry officer lover (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Its well-written script leaps between high comedy and piercing drama, and the film has its moments, but it’s a bit too frantic at times.

89 VEGAS SEVEN

Anna Karenina (R) ★★★✩✩

Promotion

TRIPS /TRENDS /ADVICE

GIRL TALK

Beetle Drops the Top Set against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, Volkswagen recently introduced the stunning and bold 2013 Beetle Convertible at the beautiful Shore Hotel in Santa Monica.

Since the launch of the original Beetle in 1949, the vehicle has become an icon in automotive history, spawning a television show, a movie and endless giggles from children—and adults, we’re sure—shouting, “Punch buggy blue!” followed by playful punches when the cars were spotted on the roadways.

Drawing on the history of this icon, Volkswagen now presents three distinct models of the new 2013Beetle, which are reminiscent of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s designs.

While the variations are slight, they’re all fun and flirty with a modern-day twist.

The exterior, based on the popular redesigned Beetle that launched last year, offers a more elongated, sporty body

with a flatter roof line that stays true to the spirit of the Beetle. The star of the show, however, is the retractable soft-top roof; it takes a mere 9.5 seconds to lower and can be done cruising at an impressive 31 mph. And, no need to worry about sacrificing trunk space, either, because it remains the same whether the top is up or down.

Once inside the Beetle, drivers will find a tachometer, speedometer and fuel gauge on the dash and a classic, clean finish. Although simply laid out, the upscale cabin doesn’t feel overwhelming by having multiple buttons to navigate—in this case, less is definitely more.

diesel engine. The engine gets an impressive 41 miles per gallon from the TDI, or Turbocharged Direct Injection, model with a manual transmission. This is sure to have a positive impact on future sales of the Beetle and give competitors, such as Mini by BMW, a run for their money.

-Sarah Kahi

Facts

The base model, which starts at an impressive $24,995, comes standard with 17-inch alloy wheels, a leatherwrapped steering wheel, an eight-speaker sound system and Bluetooth technology. One upgrade that is worth taking a look at is the award-winning Fender Premium Audi system; it packs one heck of a punch and will be sure to enhance your Beetle driving experience.

41 Miles to the Gallon Starts at $24,995

Drop the top in 9.5 Seconds

The Beetle also has three engine options available and is the only convertible currently on themarket that offers a

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Marketplace

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Betting

it’s loWly lions’ turn to have their Way With collapsing cardinals Where to point the (middle) fin-

December 13-19, 2012

ger of blame after my five-week winning streak disappeared faster than the Twinkie? Any number of directions, as I suffered a quartet of brutal beats on the Bengals (who blew a nine-point lead to Dallas with 6½ minutes remaining, losing 20-19); the Colts (who beat the Titans 27-23, but failed to cover as a 5½-point favorite—because a wide receiver dropped a sure spread-covering TD pass prior to Indy’s final field goal); the Lions (who sprinted out to a 14-0 lead at Green Bay but lost 27-20 as a 6½-point underdog); and the Panthers-Falcons “under” 47½ (a not-so-meaningless Atlanta TD with 53 seconds remaining changed the final score from 30-13 to 30-20).

Had any of those games gone my way, my winning streak would still be alive. Then again, the streak also would be alive had I not backed two teams (Saints and Cardinals) that lost by the combined score of 110-27. Yep, to quote the guy who gets divorced and remarries the same woman, I’ve got nobody to blame but myself.

And with college football’s 35game bowl schedule kicking off next week, the pressure is on to get back in the win column, and pronto—which is perfect, seeing as I handle pressure

VEGAS SEVEN

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about as well as Gary Bettman handles labor negotiations.

On to this week’s selections (Note: all point spreads are as of Dec. 11) … $330 on Lions -6 at Cardinals: The Lions are 4-9, having lost five in a row. They’ve given up 23 points or more in 10 of their 13 contests. Of their four wins, only one (31-14 at Jacksonville) was convincing; the other three were by a total of 11 points. And here they are laying nearly a touchdown, on the road, a week after blowing a 14-0 lead at division rival Green Bay? Did I mention we’re talking about the Detroit Lions?!?

And that about sums up the 2012 Cardinals, whose losing skid reached nine games after their 58-0 debacle at Seattle.

How awful have the Cardinals been? This awful: The Arizona Diamondbacks have won a game more recently (Oct. 2) than the Arizona Cardinals (Sept. 30, when they beat the Dolphins in overtime to move to 4-0). I’m wholly convinced that if you wagered on the Cardinals—who have covered just twice in their last 10 games— and tried to give the betting slip to charity, it would be rejected. $330 on Texans -7½ vs. Colts: It’s difficult to justify laying more than a touchdown with a team that just wet the bed in its biggest

bankroll: $1,964 Last week: 4-6 (-$45) NFL seasoN: 40-36-1 (-$2,920) CoLLege FootbaLL seasoN: 48-35 (+$1,118) In February 2010, we gave Matt “$7,000” to wager. When he loses it all, we’re going to replace him with a monkey.

game of the season (Houston lost 42-14 at New England).

It’s even more difficult when that team is facing a divisional rival that’s right on its heels in the standings—a rival that’s 7-1 straight-up and against the spread in its last eight games. So here’s my defense, your honor: The last time the Texans lost a game—42-24 at home to Green Bay—they bounced back with a 43-13 beat-down of Baltimore, one of Houston’s six double-digit victories this year.

More importantly, the Colts might be the most fraudulent 9-4 team in NFL history. I say that because Indy has actually scored 37 fewer points than its opponents. By comparison, the Lions have the reverse record and have been outscored by 22 points. What about the Texans?

They’re plus-102 in point differential—and that includes two losses by a combined 46 points.

i’m wholly convinced that if you wagered on the cardinals and tried to give the betting slip to charity, it would be rejected. $110 on Panthers +3 at Chargers: Did the Chargers spring arguably the biggest upset of Week 14, shocking the Steelers 34-24 as a 7½-point underdog—San Diego’s first victory against a team not named the Chiefs since Week 2? Yes. But here’s what else is true about the Bolts: They haven’t won consecutive games since starting 2-0. They’ve lost four of their last five at home (the only exception being Kansas City). They’re 2-7 ATS in their last nine games when ranging from a 3½-point underdog to a 3-point favorite. And Norv Turner is still—remarkably, inexplicably—their head coach (which is why the Panthers will feel right at home in half-empty

Qualcomm Stadium). $110 on Patriots -5½ vs. 49ers: The Patriots are 23-1 in their last 24 regular-season home games after Dec. 1. They’re also 21-0 in regular-season games (home and away) after Nov. 10 the past three seasons (going 14-7 ATS). And now they’re hosting the 49ers, who have already lost to QBs Sam Bradford and Christian Ponder on the road … who got pummeled by the one opponent on their schedule that most mirrors New England (the Giants, who rolled 26-3 in San Francisco) … and who are starting a firstyear quarterback—the kind of player Bill Belichick devours (see Andrew Luck, who threw three picks during a 59-24 loss in Foxborough last month).

For the rest of this week’s picks, as well as Matt’s “Best Bet” Monday-Friday, visit VegasSeven.com/GoingForBroke.

Is the city planning for the next burst of growth?

We are. One area we’re planning for that is in medical infrastructure. We hope, by the end of this year, to have an agreement announced for Union Village [a $1.5 billion project near U.S. 95 and Galleria Drive hailed as the world’s first integrated health village]. We think that will allow Southern Nevada to become a premier destination for medical services in the Southwest.

Jacob Snow

Henderson’s city manager on why parks are important, dealing with the gridlock on South Eastern Avenue and how a high-speed train could fuel economic development

December 13-19, 2012

By Heidi Kyser

VEGAS SEVEN

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➧ Jacob Snow is not big on small talk. In fact, everything about his top-floor office at Henderson City Hall—from the painstakingly placed décor to his well-polished cuff links—screams, “Let’s get down to business.” Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why the City of Henderson hired Snow as city manager in March, plucking him from the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, the organization he helmed for 13 years.

And that no-nonsense demeanor may be just what Henderson needs, because it’s Snow’s job to tackle the tough issues haunting a town still hung over from lightning-speed population growth that lasted for more than a decade before the Great Recession hit.

Among his first tasks was hiring a new police chief—Patrick Moers replaced Jutta Chambers, who retired in the wake of a scandal.

But that was child’s play compared with Snow’s ongoing responsibility to balance a vastly depleted budget while opening new revenue streams (think: medical tourism).

What’s been the toughest challenge so far in your new job?

Trying to portray myself as an interesting person for the media! My wife already knows I’m dull as dirt, so trying to convince you [otherwise] is going to be impossible.

Actually, there are a number of [challenges]. We have more of our revenue going out to provide services than we have coming in. We have cut $130 million annually from our budget. We’ve had to lay people off, for the first time in anyone’s memory here, going from 2,000 employees to 1,700. We will continue to work with our union partners and with all the employees here to make it so that we solve that fundamental problem.

Henderson’s park system has consistently ranked among the nation’s best. Why are parks so important?

That was made a high priority by the mayor and [City] Council. ... When you look at it as a Maslow hierarchy of needs, you need the government to provide those bottom levels: clean drinking water, sanitary conditions. The next level is a feeling of comfort, safety and security. … Above and beyond that, in the developed world, there are things that are important to us, that contribute to our quality of life and well-being. Parks and recreation centers do that. They give people a chance to get out of their homes and interact with others in a meaningful way, to appreciate the beauty of their natural surroundings.

We have a dozen or so parks that are still in the planning and design phase and will be built over the next two to three years.

The council is [also] putting together a bicycle advisory committee. We’ve got some great parks out there, [and] we have a maturing and developing trail system, and we want to connect those two elements.

Much has been made in recent years about the redevelopment of downtown Las Vegas. What advantages does downtown Henderson have as it tries to revitalize?

[Water Street] is a completely

Traffic on Eastern Avenue from Interstate 215 to Anthem remains a nightmare.

What can the city do to alleviate the congestion?

When I was at the RTC, we poured a lot of money and

resources to improve that problem. We’re building connections around it. There’s not a lot else that can be done, unless you want to acquire a bunch of right of ways from a bunch of businesses.

It’s not so much a transportation problem as a land-use problem. When you have that many businesses in that kind of corridor and connect it with a freeway on one end and a massive planned community on the other—with one way in and one way out—you’re going to have problems. … We’re adding new routes into and out of Anthem so they can bypass that corridor.

What’s the path going forward for the RTC and for Southern Nevada transportation in general, and what’s your prediction for XPressWest, the proposed highspeed train between Las Vegas and Southern California?

The RTC has been fortunate to get Interstate 11 [a proposed direct interstate between Las Vegas and Phoenix] designated from a federal level, and they need to follow that through, get it designed, get it planned, get it permitted and get it funded.

The federal government is not going to pay for 90 percent of the cost, like they did for the rest of the interstate system.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with [XPressWest, because] I don’t know what’s going to happen with the high-speed train system for intrastate transportation within California. But it would be very, very valuable for Nevada to make a connection to that system in some way.

For Henderson, it would create a whole new genre of tourismrelated support and infrastructure. We are quickly establishing ourselves as the health corridor—look at what’s happening with the Siena campus for St. Rose [hospital] and what will happen, I think, with Union Village. The entire state is focused on medical tourism as a strategy for economic development. I see [high-speed rail] as a great opportunity for us to capitalize on.

In a thumb-wrestling match between you and Las Vegas City Manager Betsy Fretwell, who would win?

I have double-jointed thumbs. So, most everything else I would go head-to-head with Betsy Fretwell in, I would lose. But I would win a thumbwrestling match.

Photo by Bryan Hainer

7 questions

different environment with a completely different feel, and that’s by design. It’s much more like a Main Street of a smaller town. There are a lot of people who like the slower speed limit and pace [of Water Street], and the fact it’s pedestrian-friendly.

It just doesn’t seem to be as congested as other places. Let me give you a specific: Downtown Henderson was designed for people; others are designed for cars. That’s the key distinction.

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