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government. Too many of us think the best government is one that doesn’t govern. Denying the Legislature important powers. The Legislature is considering AB 150, which would set up “legislative review of governmental agencies to promote governmental oversight and accountability.” In other words, our legislators want to make government run better. So the Nevada System of Higher Education opposes being part of it on the grounds that they don’t need oversight. Oh, they do, they do. If you love or hate government, you should want it to run correctly, which means watching it more closely and protecting whistle-blowers. The failure, so far, to increase mining and margins taxes. The Legislature punted on a business tax that the state teachers’ organization supports, and Republican state Senator Michael Roberson caught Democrats swimming and stole their clothes by advocating a higher mining tax in return for dropping the teachers’ tax. Taxes, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, are “what we pay for civilized society.” Polls show Nevada voters support higher taxes on gaming before anything else because that way, they fgure, tourists pay our way. If we stopped to think about whether mining and other businesses really give back to the state, our legislators wouldn’t be so afraid of these issues. Don’t blame them. Blame us.
Every year in the April issue of the Las Vegas Advisor, we calculate the average cost of a ticket to see a Las Vegas production show. This year, we considered 93 shows. On rare occasions—four times in 22 years—the average goes down. But it usually goes up, and that’s what happened this time around. At $80.22 per ticket, it’s a $4.78 increase over last year. The reason for the increase is pretty much the same as always: Most returning shows raise prices a little each year, while new shows tend to price high so they can promote with discounts that look like deals. Take Cirque du Soleil: Compared with this time last year, the price of KÀ is up $16.96, O is up $8.69, Zarkana costs $6.84 more than its predecessor Viva Elvis! did, and The Beatles LOVE and Zumanity are up $2 each (Mystère is unchanged, and Criss Angel—Believe is down $15.77). Of the 71 shows that were here last year, 35 raised their ticket prices, 17 lowered them and 19 are unchanged. The important consideration for saving money is to take advantage of the discounting mentioned above. Anyone—local or out-ofstater—can do that by using the half-price ticket outlets on the Strip, websites like Goldstar.com and other sites with discount codes, and the freebie mags that regularly print ads with show deals. That’s a lot of outs; if you live here, however, you have access to even more deals via offers that aren’t available to visitors. Want to see Cirque? There’s an ongoing $99 locals offer for two tickets to The Beatles LOVE on Sundays, Zumanity on Mondays, Mystère on Tuesdays, KÀ on Wednesdays and Criss Angel on Fridays, plus a daily two-for-$150 offer on Zarkana (through March 31). MGM Resorts International has a website dedicated to locals discounts, which includes some of these Cirque deals, along with 30 percent off Blue Man Group and Terry Fator; 20 percent off Dancing Queen, Broadway Celebration and Shades of Temptation at New York-New York; and discounts on several other shows. Locating these deals can be difficult; they’re often buried deep within their respective sites. But here’s the trick: Google “Las Vegas locals deals,” check the top five or so entries, and you’ll find links. Vegas4Locals.com sometimes has deals you won’t find easily in other places, too, including a current offer for $25 off orchestra seats for Million Dollar Quartet at Harrah’s. Another ongoing play for residents is ShowTickets4Locals.com, which puts out a daily roster of free tix for locals if you use them the day-of-show. But when you’re standing in line at the showroom, don’t mention that you got them free. Trust me on this one.
Michael Green is a professor of history at the College of Southern Nevada.
Anthony Curtis is the publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor and LasVegasAdvisor.com.
March 28- April 3, 2013
The Fault, Dear Nevadans, Lies in Ourselves
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iT’S popuLar To blame the Legislature for Nevada’s problems, or— and here I’m comfortably onboard the bandwagon—to blame the dilettante, term-limited, everyother-year nature of our Legislature. But when you stop to think about it, most of what we dislike about the institution can be traced straight back to ourselves. Here’s a starter list: Term limits. The Legislature has its third speaker, majority leader and state Senate minority leader in as many sessions, and new party and committee leaders. Nevadans voted for term limits and continue to support them. But we complain the Legislature is in thrall to lobbyists. With all due respect to some fne lawmakers, the lobbyists have the most experience legislating of anyone up there—and several of them will tell you that the Legislature is a disaster. Unblissful ignorance. You can read and track bills and watch legislative hearings (Leg.State.NV.US). Reporters and lawmakers even tweet and post on Facebook. One component of lobbyists’ power is their knowledge of their subject. You can know a lot, too. Disengagement. Write a nice note to your legislators about what you want done, or don’t complain when they don’t do what you want done. Check out the legislative website and get their addresses; they read their email, and many of them are Twitter fends. Steven Brooks. Beyond his personal issues, voters electing him and his party having supported
him, wouldn’t it have been nice if the media paid a little more attention to legislation and a little less attention to his doings? Of course. But whenever we claim that the media ignore the “real” issues, we should remember that media outlets are businesses and need to concentrate on what sells. If you follow the clicks on websites, they go more often to crime stories and cute puppies, not to in-depth analyses. If we do some work, the media can do better work. The state’s reluctance to invest. As many a wise man has said, you’ve got to spend money to make money. But somehow we don’t apply the concept to state government. State Senator Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, has a couple of great bills. One continues and extends a fne measure from last session: intermediate correctional facilities for some offenders who shouldn’t be in the regular prison population. The idea is to help them avoid recidivism and become productive members of society. If so, they might get regular jobs, pay taxes and accomplish some good. Every-other-year-sessions. Legislators have also been reluctant to support Segerblom’s effort to hold annual sessions. They’re necessary, but because the proposal makes good government more feasible, it fies in the face of our opposition to
Illustration by Thomas Speak
STrip EnTErTainmEnT, LocaL pricES
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No Divorce Is the New Divorce
Moms and dads navigate messy breakups in marriage-less world By Rose Surnow The New York Observer
it only took flmmaker Jim Strouse three months in New York City to fall in love. He moved here from Indiana straight out of college, and for years after, he and his girlfriend had the perfect arty bohemian relationship. They made flms together, they made kids together—it was all happening. But then suddenly it wasn’t. Sometime around the birth of their second child, the relationship started to fray. They went to couples therapy, but then came the infdelity and
the screaming matches and the second apartment. When it came time to call it quits, there was only one problem: How could they get divorced when they had never gotten married in the frst place? “It’s really complicated,” said Strouse, 36. “We never got lawyers involved. It got close many times, but it was weird, it was strange. We were just winging it from day to day with the kids.” Marriage rates in the United States are at record lows. And when more than half of children born to women under the
Illustration by Victor Juhasz
March 28- April 3, 2013
the latest
national
The LaTesT
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At the Ballpark, Live for Today The beautiful uselessness of baseball in the present tense
March 28- April 3, 2013
By Greg Blake Miller
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To invoke The romance of baseball, in the fashion of George Will or Ken Burns, is hopelessly unfashionable. This I will not blame on sabermetrics—the applied science of baseball statistics that Michael Lewis’ 2004 book Moneyball cast as the brainy yin to the blockheaded yang of baseball traditionalism. As any baseball fan knows, the numbers are an indispensable part of the romance. That those numbers have become more arcane—with on-base percentage and something called WHIP replacing batting average and earned-run average as indicators of greatness—does not decrease the essential beauty of baseball’s measurability. Rather, I think the end of baseball romance is a symptom of a culture that has given up on looking at things for what they are and instead insists on looking at them for what they could be. Baseball journalism once was poetry, and then it was storytelling. Now it is sheer punditry: What can we expect next—next game, next month, next year—from our team, our front offce, our TV contract, our bottom line? By April of Year X, the discussion already turns to the free-agent market of Year X+1. This obsession with the future is oddly symbiotic with an unhealthy preoccupation with the immediately passed past. What I have in mind is not the customary—and, for nonfans of Billy Crystal and Bob Costas, sometimes off-putting—nostalgia about Willie, Mickey and the Duke. Rather, it’s the bizarre preoccupation with Five Seconds Ago, in which—to deploy a bit more math—Moment X is forever being replaced with Moment X-1. Turn on a game at any given moment and chances are you’ll be hearing a technical and highly
educational dissection of a missed call. The hallowed feld of baseball broadcasting, once the outpost of fne-grain describers, tellers of tall tales and moderately intelligible folk heroes (respectively, Vin Scully, Phil Rizzuto and Harry Caray) has willingly indentured itself to the same cult of analysis that brought us Fox News: Each play—and every pause between plays—must be parsed
by the color man, who explains to us exactly why what just happened happened, even if he doesn’t exactly know. The whole exercise reeks of a courtroom procedural. But in this case, we’ve just witnessed the murder; there’s no need to prove to us that Captain Jeter dunnit in the vestibule with a hardball. For our discussion here, what’s interesting is not Captain J’s motive, but the motivation of
the broadcasters for bringing the previous play to trial: Why do we care so deeply about Moment X-1 when, somewhere in the stadium, behind the broadcast veil of a five-angle instant replay, Moment X, in all its uncertain glory, is taking place? This is where the obsession with the recent past marries our obsession with the future: Each moment must be recast and rendered useful to us. The mo-
ment must not be appreciated simply for what we’ve seen with our own eyes, because in that case we will not have learned important lessons for our … for our what, exactly— for our futures as baseball fans? In accordance with the post-millennial zeitgeist, we must become better-informed consumers. Our selves must be improved. So, if my 12-year-old son— who, bless him, actually loves being educated by Joe Morgan—will join me, I’m going to limit my baseball media diet this spring. I’m going to shut off the TV, close the sports page and head out to Cashman Field. I am not going to worry about the doomy fog that has hung over the Las Vegas 51s franchise since the Dodgers broke off their affliation in 2008. I’m not going to worry that the Toronto Blue Jays bailed on Las Vegas last year and that the New York Mets are almost certain to do the same when their contract expires in two years. I am not going to fret about whether Cashman—30 years ago the gem of the Pacifc Coast League and today, so I’m told, a relic—will be improved or replaced or abandoned. I am not going to worry about the shabbiness of its locker rooms or its lack of a frst-rate training room. I am not going to obsess about the absence of instant replay or the fawed humanity of umpires. I am going to the ballpark not in order to “watch tomorrow’s stars today”—as the Minor League Baseball marketing pitch requests—but to watch today’s baseball today. I may even ignore an inning or two and look out at Frenchman Mountain beyond the right-feld fence. And, what the heck, if the kid and I leave early we’ll go ahead and fip on the radio, where Russ Langer still calls ’em the old-fashioned way.
Bryce Harper’s teammates on the 2010 CSN baseball squad knew that fame and fortune awaited him. But they had dreams, too ... Written and PhotograPhed By
He was regularly pelted with the same inquiries: Hey! Harper’s college is around here, right? Do you know him? Kirk would nod and tell them that he’d known Bryce Harper, the 20-year-old Nationals star, for most of his life, and that he’d played with him at the College of Southern Nevada in 2010, when the Coyotes nearly won a national title and Harper built himself into the top pick in that year’s Major League Baseball draft. “You could see them thinking, ‘OK, Joe Schmo. You know him?’” Kirk was making $9.25 an hour, and about a hundred bucks in tips per shift. Harper, as a rookie with a year of minor-league experience, was working three miles from
the White House and making $100,000 more than the President of the United States. Harper also received $1.25 million, the third of fve signingbonus installments, on July 1. (As Babe Ruth once said about a similar edge over Herbert Hoover, “I had a better year.”) When co-workers didn’t believe Kirk, he led them to the M employees’ entryway and pointed to a trophy case in the bowels of the resort. There he was, in a large framed photograph of that CSN team. (M founder Anthony Marnell III is an ardent supporter of former CSN manager and current UNLV coach Tim Chambers, for whom Marnell played shortstop at Bishop Gorman High School.) At the bottom, to the right,
is a baseball signed by every Coyote. Kirk would point to his signature on the side. Alongside that ball was another bearing a single autograph—Bryce Harper’s—in the sweet spot, the narrow corridor of stitches opposite the label. His teammates always left that precious fve centimeters of space for the then-17-year-old phenom. “It’s wild,” Kirk says. “Now he’s an All-Star, doing well at the highest level of the game. It’s really cool. Except, he [rarely] texts me. I’ll kick him in the dick next time I see him.” Kirk embodies the dichotomy of that CSN team. The Coyotes knew the baseball gods had long ago sprinkled stardust on one of them. The rest knew magnifcent odds were stacked against them ever stepping
onto a major league diamond. In 2010, The Other Guys were along for the ride. Late last April, legendary announcer Vin Scully narrated Bryce Harper’s major league debut at Dodger Stadium. As the season unfolded, the 19-year-old infused the Nationals with guts, guile, power and enthusiasm. He stole home. He populated SportsCenter with spectacular plays. He distracted the nation’s capital during a bitter election season. He batted .270 and smacked 22 home runs—two shy of Tony Conigliaro’s teenage record—and won the National League Rookie of the Year award. By the time Harper left Las Vegas for Florida in mid-February for his third spring training, many of his former CSN teammates were already out of organized baseball, grinding for paychecks by waiting tables, baling hay or parking cars. One had just dodged a lengthy prison term. Another had failed to revive a dead man. “I thought more of us would still be playing,” says former CSN second baseman Scott Dysinger, a parking valet at Red Rock Resort who just started another gig as a server’s assis-
tant at Encore Beach Club. “But it is what it is. Stuff happens. Now we’re all moving toward other things in life.” ••• Some of thoSe CoyoteS signed with major league franchises straight out of CSN and are chasing the dream in Harper’s wake. But they’re taking the usual slow route through the minors—unglamorous, uncertain and full of long trips on marginally reliable buses. Last season Aaron Kurcz, CSN’s former fame-throwing closer, was transferred from Chicago to Boston as fnal compensation for the Red Sox losing general manager Theo Epstein to the Chicago Cubs. At DoubleA Portland, Kurcz went 3-4 with a 3.04 ERA, six holds, four saves and four blown saves. Donnie Roach was the ace of that CSN staff, going 12-3 with a 2.67 ERA and seven complete games. In his frst three appearances for the San Diego Padres this spring, the crafty righty with a bowling-ball sinker allowed only one earned run over four innings. Smart money is on Roach becoming the frst of Harper’s former CSN teammates to join him in the majors. Will he be the only one?
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s Trevor Kirk parked cars at the M Resort last summer and into the fall, he was surprised by how many visitors came from Washington, D.C. And it seemed like every one of them was a Washington Nationals fan.
March 28- April 3, 2013
roB mieCh
March 28- April 3, 2013
Scott Dysinger and Bryce Harper at CSN’s Morse Stadium.
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Like Roach and Kurcz, left-handed pitcher Chasen Shreve fnished last season at the Double-A level. He’s in the Atlanta Braves system, a call or two away from The Show. Bryce’s older brother, Bryan, (11-1 with a 2.62 ERA at CSN) threw out of the bullpen during an NCAA-title run at South Carolina in 2011 and was selected by the Nationals in the 30th round of the 2011 draft. He had a double-digit ERA at Single-A Auburn in 2012, but his hopes remain high: “The itch to play has never been higher for me,” he tweeted before fying to minor league camp in Florida at the end of February. Pitchers Tyler Hanks, a 17thround draft pick by Washington in 2010, and Kenny McDowall, tabbed in the eighth round by the New York Mets, were out of the game by the end of 2011.
••• The dozen or so CoyoTes— including Kirk and Dysinger— who followed Chambers from CSN to UNLV found Division-I ball to be a grind as the Rebels went a combined 59-56 in 2011 and 2012. But there were small glories along the way: A kid chased down Kirk’s only home run as a junior and Trevor presented the ball to his father, Rich, who had played baseball at Rancho High with Ron Harper, Bryce and Bryan’s father. Kirk hit .400 much of last season, when he was an academic All-America selection. At one point, a Detroit Tigers scout expressed interest in Kirk—who had labored through two shoulder surgeries at UNLV—but his cellphone remained quiet on draft day. He takes the snub out on foes when he plays on the elite
Team Infamous softball squad. This is how most baseball careers end—quietly, with a lingering sense of what-if. Most of The Other Guys suffered their own version of what-if: • Dysinger fought a hand injury his entire senior season, hitting only .283 and committing eight errors. His dream now is to land on one of the area fre departments. • Hawaiian shortstop Danny Higa is fnishing his communications degree requirements at UNLV. Every so often, he plays on Team Infamous with Kirk. • CSN cleanup hitter Marvin Campbell’s relationship with Chambers disintegrated at UNLV. Citing insubordination, Chambers kicked Campbell off the Rebels midway through last season. Campbell had a season of eligibility left, though, and wound up at Division-II Hawaii Pacifc, where he went 9-for-17
with two homers to help the Sea Warriors win three of four games to start this season. • Pitcher Joe Robinson showed promise late last summer when he picked up a victory and a save in three outings for a Dodgers’ rookie team in Arizona. • Catcher Ryan Scott and pitcher Tyler Iodence, whose scraggly black beard mirrors Jim Morrison in his final days (he’s a fan of San Francisco’s hirsute closer Sergio Romo), are the only 2010 CSN players left at UNLV to experience this year’s resurgence. At press time, the Hustlin’ Rebels were 17-8. • Of those who transferred to schools other than UNLV, Montana native Gabe Weidenaar, a versatile felder and powerful switch-hitter who batted sixth at CSN, went to Oklahoma State and is fortunate to have
his freedom. In late April, with a top10 batting average in Big 12 Conference games, he was arrested on multiple felony drug charges in Stillwater. In January, a judge suspended a pair of 10-year prison terms in lieu of Weidenaar completing counseling, community service and two years of probation. ••• As hArper’s sToCk ConTinues to rise in baseball, Dysinger, Kirk and many of The Other Guys try to forge career paths wearing other uniforms. Dysinger pines to be a frefghter. In December, the Clark County Fire Department graduated 28 recruits; its application list contains thousands of names, including Dysinger’s. He has two more years to get picked for that academy. Long odds, indeed, but they aren’t as steep as pro ball.
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March 28- April 3, 2013
Tim Chambers’ Triple Crown
After building powerhouse programs at Bishop Gorman and CSN, UNLV’s third-year baseball coach sets his sights on the College World Series
By RoB Miech
You’ve said that when you were growing up in Southern California and Pleasant Grove, Utah, you got in more than 150 fights by the time you were 21. Are you still that guy? I’m way different. But when you grow up in a single-parent family in poverty, having gone to 13 grade schools by the time I was 12 … who do people mess with? The new kid. You’re always having to prove yourself. I still get feisty, but I won’t fight anymore. I’d get my butt kicked; I’m old. Are you still trying to prove yourself? Every single day, I’m trying to prove we’re on our way. Not that we deserve any respect from our first two years [a combined 59-56 record]. Before, I felt like [opponents] just had to come to the ballpark and they were gonna get a ‘W.’ Now, you better play to beat us.
We hear that Fred Dallimore, the successful longtime UNLV baseball coach, visited you during your first fall ball session here in 2010? I come back from lunch and he’s standing outside the stadium. He talked to the kids and said how excited he was that I got the job, and he wanted to support the program. He’d been away for about 10 years; he wasn’t really happy with the program, saying they had lost their pride and destroyed his facility. Freddie bleeds Rebels baseball. I think he’s pretty pumped about where we’re goin’. The Rebels haven’t been to the NCAA tournament since 2005. Is talk of the College World Series a bit lofty? No. Our goal is to get to Omaha. If you set yourself up for, “We got to get to a regional,” you’ll get to a regional, and lose. The mindset we need is getting to Omaha. I don’t know if it’s gonna happen now, but I don’t know if it’s not gonna happen now. If we can beat Stanford three times on its yard, I’m pretty sure we can compete with anybody. Can you imagine Rebels baseball getting to Omaha? This town would go crazy. Hell, I might not ever have to buy dinner again!
March 28- April 3, 2013
recent stellar stretch for UNLV baseball boss Tim Chambers included home victories on fve consecutive evenings, the announcement that his contract was extended through 2015 and a stunning three-game sweep at ninth-ranked Stanford, which put the Hustlin’ Rebels into the national rankings, at No. 21, for the frst time since 2003. It was a sign that the rebuilding phase of the Tim Chambers Project was over at UNLV, and that the real fun was about to begin. Chambers is determined to be successful at three different levels in the same city. He helped build Bishop Gorman High School into a national power, then won a junior college national championship at the College of Southern Nevada in 2003. At UNLV, largely through private donors, he has overseen about $400,000 worth of upgrades to Wilson Stadium. But Chambers knows his triplecrown Las Vegas legacy will only be cemented by guiding UNLV to Omaha, Nebraska, and the College World Series. He says this year’s squad has responded to a boost in his own energy. A three-hour lowerback operation in October left him with four pins, three rods, two cages and two fusions. Now his X-ray looks like a mousetrap has been inserted into his lower
Did we just see you skip up a concrete staircase three steps at a time, only four months after back surgery? For three years, it was tough. The previous year was unbearable. [New Mexico coach] Ray Birmingham sees me and says, “You feel really good, don’t you?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I can see it in your face. You look so much different than a year ago. You were in misery.” I felt like hell. It’s hard for your players to have energy if the coach is sittin’ on the bench. Being healthy right now is awesome.
What did the Stanford sweep do for the program? Four days later we locked up a [recruit] from California … I think because we were ranked. I said, “We got offers from other guys. You need to make a decision.” He called back 10 minutes later and committed.
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Photo by Bryan Hainer
spine. But, at 48, he says he feels like he’s 25 again.
nightlife
parties
bagatelle
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Teddy Fujimoto
March 28- April 3, 2013
The Tropicana
nightlife
parties
tao
The Venetian [ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Powers Imagery
March 28- April 3, 2013
March 28 Bunnies & Bowties with DJ Five March 29 Tao Fridays with Jessica Who March 30 Rita Ora host; sounds by DJ Five
nightlife
parties
Gold Aria
[ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Josh Metz
March 28- April 3, 2013
March 30 Kennedy Jones spins April 3 Local Love Wednesdays with DJ Greg Lopez April 4 House of Gold Thursdays with DJ Sam I Am
nightlife
parties
Xs
Encore [ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Danny Mahoney
March 28- April 3, 2013
March 29 Dirty South spins March 30 AN21 spins March 31 RL Grime spins
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A&E
Music
Louisiana rock, psyche-horror, ’50s pop
No Rote ‘Sessions’
Guitarist Jesse Cook lowers the fret-board heat to fnd a balance between discovery and familiarity
March 28- April 3, 2013
By Jarret Keene
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every artist navigates a tense question: Is it more important to please or challenge an audience? New-famenco shredder Jesse Cook confronted this issue when creating his latest album, The Blue Guitar Sessions. Expectations from his record label were clear: produce another instrumental album in his signature rumba style. But Cook hoped to achieve something different. Instead of the fery performances for which he’s known, he sought to assemble a mostly original collection of soft ballads and lush pop. “I thought of Picasso’s ‘The Old Guitarist,’ how it forged a new expressive approach,” Cook says. “It’s the role of the artist to try something new. As a musician, you’re not just making music for yourself. Of course, if you don’t consider an audience, you may not have one. But the best way to serve your audience is to push yourself, to be emotionally honest with the material and hope
they follow.” Fiercely technical as his playing is, Cook views himself as a combined talent—writer, producer, guitarist. Note that guitarist is third on the list, despite his formal training at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and his informal studies with Gipsy Kings’ Nicolas Reyes. “I’m trying to create a painting,” the Paris-born Canadian says. “My paint is the guitar. The actual playing takes the least amount of time; arrangements and production require the most. But the guitarplaying is easy.” Following the lead of an artist who both pleased and challenged fans, Cook found inspiration in moods set by jazz icon Miles Davis. “He was able to take incredibly complicated music and make it sound simple, organic, soulful—to the point you forget it’s actually quite diffcult.” In the same way Davis strips down his music in the 1959 landmark Kind
of Blue, so does Cook investigate the space between notes in The Blue Guitar Sessions. “Silence is just as important,” Cook says. “The more space you leave before you drop a note, the more beauty and tension can result. In contrast, if you play 100 notes in a measure, you’re exhausted by the next one. That’s what I take from Miles.” The Blue Guitar Sessions reveals other infuences. Kurt Weill’s hauntingly skewed sense of melody crops up in Cook’s own “Toybox.” But nothing is mannered or nostalgic. The music came, Cook says, effortlessly. “In some ways, it’s hard to make another rumba record, because I’ve done seven and explored so much of that terrain. Not to say I won’t return to it, but, as an artist, moving forward is necessary.” It’s not all blue. Sun-kissed joy shines in many new songs, such as “Ocean Blue,” with its soulful arpeggios, ebullient chord progression and skyward melody. Reviews have been positive, but Cook realizes you can’t please all the people all the time. Which is why he’ll play rumba-famenco material in Henderson this week with a fve-piece band. Jesse Cook at Henderson Pavilion, 200 S. Green Valley Pkwy., 8 p.m. March 29, $10-$20, 267-4849, HendersonLive.com.
Excuse me while I indulge in a college flashback with New Orleans Southern punk trio Dash Rip Rock. The band has gone through numerous lineup changes over the years, but founding frontman Bill Davis remains steadfast. Dash Rip Rock used to play riotous shows in the French Quarter—a place my wife and I haunted when we were “studying” at Tulane. The band is resurging thanks to a few albums (most recently, last year’s Black Liquor) out on ex-Dead Kennedy frontman Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label. Interestingly, Davis teamed with Biafra to form Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All-Stars for some shows in New Orleans. But Dash Rip Rock is where it’s at for musical wildness, so don’t miss ’em. Inducted into the 2012 Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, they tear up LVCS at 10 p.m. March 28 with Slim Jim Phantom, Jamie James, The Limit Club, Psyatics, Ditch Diggers and the Fink Bombs. New York psyche-horror band Occultation casts its doom-bringing shadow over Favorites bar at 9 p.m. March 30. The band released a crepuscular debut disc, Three & Seven, a year ago to positive reviews. Blending crawling King Crimson riffs with Joy Division’s industrial bleakness, Occultation also draws strength from its two female vocalists, who often intone like the apparition-conjuring witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Check out the band’s track “Shroud of Sorrows,” which grafts dreamy Nico-esque vocals onto cough-syruped Hawkwind riffs. Also on the bill: Borrowed Time, Demon Lung, Insecticide, Newtdick and Excretory Engorgement. So you’re wondering if anyone legendary is playing Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender. Well, what about instrumental surf-rock waverider Dick Dale? Mr. “Misirlou,” who gave Pulp Fiction so much sonic punch, plays the automotive component of the fest at 4 p.m. March 30. At age 75, Dale still knows how to dig deep into the strings of his Fender Stratocaster and produce earth-shattering tones, proving you don’t need to quiet down the older you get. Also at 4 p.m. March 30 in the Orleans’ main ballroom will be U.S. doo-wop legends the Cleftones. Their big 1961 singles were “Heart and Soul” and “For Sentimental Reasons,” and the group stands today as one of the few still-left-standing vocal-based rhythmand-blues acts whose New York origin goes back to the ’50s. If that doesn’t convince you to invest in a four-day pass, nothing will. Well, except for maybe the big-souled voice of Little Richard, the pioneering Prince of Early Rock ’n’ Roll himself. The piano-pounding screecher is slated to play the Saturday car show fest (after Dale) at 7 p.m. March 30. You can still buy passes to the whole event or just the car show at the Orleans box office. See the full schedule at VivaLasVegas.net. Your Vegas band releasing a CD soon? Email Jarret_Keene@Yahoo.com.
a&e
concerts
Def LepparD
The Joint at the Hard Rock, March 23 During its 30-plus years in the rock ’n’ roll game, Def Leppard has parked a handful of misses alongside their dozens of hits. Arguably the biggest blunder: introducing American audiences to their longawaited album Hysteria by releasing the disc’s initial track, “Women,” as the first single in the summer of 1987. While guitar-heavy and sexually implicit, “Women” lacked the one ingredient required to be a 1980s rock-radio hit—a catchy chorus. As a result, after an initial sales spike, Hysteria stalled on the charts, displaying absolutely zero signs that it eventually would sell an estimated 20 million copies. Flash ahead to Viva Hysteria!, the band’s 11-show Las Vegas residency during which the British quintet is performing its 12-song epic from start to finish. Which means opening with “Women.” Which means a second chance for Def Leppard to show their now middle-aged fan base what they missed more than 25 years ago. Sure enough, following a blistering seven-song, 45-minute set of classic and lesser-known material—the band is serving as its own opening act throughout the residency—Def Leppard returned to the stage and played the hell out of “Women.” It would turn out to be one of the stronger performances on this night, and the packed house … still didn’t buy it, standing mostly flat-footed for a good six minutes. In fact, the loud ovation at the song’s conclusion probably wasn’t an appreciation for the effort so much as it was an awareness that the hits were forthcoming. And they were, five of them in succession—“Rocket,”
“Animal,” “Love Bites,” “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “Armageddon It.” As one hit fed into the next and the men thrust their fists skyward and the women swayed their hips, it was clear why Hysteria managed to survive one strategic misstep
and go on to reach iconic status— and why Def Leppard has chosen to honor its legacy with this threeweek Vegas gig. The good news is the band still has the musical chops to do its entire catalog justice (only frontman Joe Elliott
required a little, shall we say, technical support on his vocals). And after the crowd erupted following the requisite encore of “Rock of Ages” and “Photograph”—“Some songs you have to do, or they won’t let you out of the building,”
Elliott quipped—there was little doubt that more than a few customers would be returning before the residency concludes April 13 … even if it means hearing “Women” one more time. ★★★★✩ – Matt Jacob
cLutch
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There’s absolutely nothing extravagant or pretentious about Clutch. For more than 20 years, the Germantown, Maryland-based band has grown a cult following by playing nofrills, blues-based hard rock. And while that meat-and-potatoes style has been largely ignored by the mainstream, it has earned them a loyal fan base. Drawing from 10 studio albums, including new release Earth Rocker, the foursome ripped through 18 songs, including pummeling classics such as “Pure Rock Fury” and “The Mob Goes Wild.” There was little stage banter from bearded frontman Neil Fallon, who saved his voice for powering through anthems such as “50,000 Unstoppable Watts,” with its high-octane chorus of “anthrax, ham radio and liquor.” Clutch played five tracks from Earth Rocker, and even though the album was just released on March 15, fans sang along to every word of crunching tunes, such as the title track and “The Wolf Man Kindly Requests …” complete with howls from Fallon. On new song “Crucial Velocity,” Fallon resembled a wild-eyed preacher, stomping around the stage, pointing to the sky and gesturing to the crowd, as if he were directing the congregation. The up-tempo blues of fan favorite “Electric Worry,” complete with Fallon on harmonica and its sing-along chorus of “bang, bang, bang, bang! vamanos, vamanos!” created a friendly frenzy in the crowd, before the band built on that momentum with “One Eye Dollar.” It created a synergy throughout the room, bridging the gap between Clutch and its fans, solidifying a relationship that only gets stronger with time. ★★★★✩ – Sean DeFrank
Def Leppard photo by Erik Kabik; Clutch photo by Glenn Brogan
March 28- April 3, 2013
Hard Rock Café on the Strip, March 23
A&E
art
Kleven in her gallery with Hansen’s tapestry, “The End and Shit,” which inspired the show.
Jennifer Kleven opens up about closing her gallery
March 28- April 3, 2013
By Jarret Keene
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For the past two years and four months, Kleven Contemporary hosted many of the best contemporary art exhibits in Las Vegas. The micro gallery, housed in Emergency Arts, drew emerging artists who worked in a diversity of media and styles, from Andrew Sea James’ photography of quirky Valley landscapes to a paper installation by Andreana Donahue to Kyla Hansen’s appropriately titled sculpture show The End and Shit, a post-apocalyptic reliquary of the Southwest. But Jennifer Kleven, 28, is shuttering her space to make time for her own work. The gallerist is a talented photographer in her own right, having earned degrees in studio art and art history from UNLV. She also recently teamed with Krystal Ramirez for Vestiges, a show at UNLV’s Richard Tam Alumni Center devoted to strangely decaying structures and places.
Kleven recently took a break from her job at the Neon Museum to chat with Vegas Seven. She was eager to discuss the Downtown art scene and how it could beneft from some serious love from the business community. What was your mission when you opened your gallery? I wanted to see a space in town that showed truly contemporary work. So the only way I knew that could happen was if I opened a gallery. With VAST Space Projects [formerly Pop Up Art House], that void has been flled, and now there’s very contemporary art being shown. That space is so big, and that’s the one thing I knew I could never achieve, because I don’t have the bankroll for it. The whole time, my gallery rarely made enough to pay for rent. I didn’t go in thinking: “Oh, Vegas is ready to buy contemporary art. There
will be so many collectors lining up outside my door.” I wanted to show contemporary art so that Vegas knows what that means. I think I accomplished what I set out to do. I had wanted to open a space for artists coming out of college. When you’re an emerging artist, doing a solo show on your own seems so daunting, especially in a large space. But in a small space, it seems achievable. My gallery ended up becoming a great space for installation art, which is something I’m really happy about. Have you seen a change in the Downtown arts scene in the last two years? I saw a big change in Emergency Arts, yes, and how there was a growing movement toward traditional galleries, where the owner of the gallery sells the work of others rather than his or her own. There are
even if I achieved what I set out to do. A lot of gallery owners in Emergency Arts feel the same way. ... People come in and give tours to out-of-state groups all the time, leading them down a hallway full of open galleries. But no one actually set foot inside the galleries.
Are you leaving the arts community in better shape than when you arrived? Totally. A lot of people now are engaged in art. But it’s important for businesses to be engaged in art as well. People forget that Will you come back? And businesses have rather large art will you return Downtown? collections. Especially for new I’m hopefully going to have businesses that are opening—in- another gallery within a year stead of buying something that or two after I have spent more your interior designer fnds, time on my work. But it will it might be nice to search out be in a different part of town. something locally produced at Downtown doesn’t need a gallery, or even just bought losomeone like me anymore. cally at a gallery. Very Downtown has often, price points plenty of champithe end and shit at Vegas galleries are ons. I live on the comparable to or less east side [of the Valby Kyla Hansen, than what they would ley], so it would be through March buy from an interior great to champion 30, Kleven designer. an old neighborContemporary in hood. There are so Emergency Arts, How can businesses many empty plazas 501-9093, Klevsupport the art there that I’m hopenContemporary. scene? ing a landlord will Tumblr.com. There’s a renaissay, “You know, let’s Closing reception sance going on now do a whole strip (for the show and for businesses, sure, mall of art galleries the gallery): 5:30but not for galleries, since I have nothing 8:30 p.m. March for people like me. there now anyway.” 30, free. My business didn’t Who knows? Maybe grow whatsoever, it’ll happen.
Photo by Anthony Mair
Art (Un)installation
really interesting spaces there now, really strong shows and great gallery owners.
stage
Jersey reps said they didn’t know if an invitation for either event was extended to group founder and Las Vegas resident Tommy DeVito, whose assistant didn’t respond to messages asking whether one was rejected or never offered. While DeVito was not involved in the development of the original Broadway show like Valli and Gaudio, his absence from the star ceremony was glaring—not only as the founder but as the only other original surviving member (fourth “Season” Nick Massi died in 2000). Excepting that discordant note, it was a who-loves-you-baby day for this superior jukebox musical. Striding onstage after the fnale, Valli at age 78 looked ft and robust, taking a mic to thank the crowd as a cake was rolled out. Walking with a cane, 70-yearold Gaudio did likewise. (How time fies—we had just seen his younger self, played by Rob Marnell, lose his virginity about an hour earlier.) Speaking to Vegas Seven last year, Valli summed up Jersey Boys: “Everybody knew what we did in the music business, but very few people knew what we went through, the turmoil. We were always worried that if people found out that any member of the Four Seasons had done time, the radio would stop playing us and record companies and the public would reject us. When we got to the point where we wanted to be a play, Bob and I looked at each other and said, ‘At this point, who cares?’” Who loves you, Jersey Boys? After fve years, Vegas still does. Who wants the Show in the Sky to return as the Topless Show in the Sky? Email your vote to Steve.Bornfeld@VegasSeven.com.
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say goodbye to one. Say thanks for staying to the other. Putting its ceiling-hugging feet of boogie boats in dry dock, the Rio’s Show in the Sky ends 16 years of freebie fun on March 30. Launched in 1997, the 20-minute, Carnival de Brazil-favored wingding— neon riverboats, gondolas and balloon foats, thumping music and writhing, wriggling performers in skimpy, feathery outfts tossing colored beads to onlookers from high above the casino foor— ends with no explanation from Caesars Entertainment. Yet gradual cutbacks in cast, crew and the frequency of performances seemed to presage its demise. Personally, I will miss it for sentimental reasons, as it is the attraction that welcomed me to town in 1997, opening just before I arrived. Nothing could have done it better. Show in the Sky was kind of a gateway drug (in a good way) to the addictive entertainment scene of Las Vegas, a way to see a show without having to, ya know, see “a show.” Interactive and with all the bling of spectacular Vegas entertainment, its rep as a must-see attraction grew over the years, with three distinct shows in the hourly evening rotation. Show in the Sky was an aerial gift that could lift your spirits. Too bad it’s been grounded. Meanwhile, Jersey Boys celebrated its ffth anniversary in town—counting its stay at the Palazzo and now Paris Las Vegas—with a performance March 21, capped by appearances by Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio of the original Four Seasons. Earlier in the day, The Seasons received a star on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars.
March 28- April 3, 2013
sky falls as Jersey marks a milestone
A&E
Movies
Gomez, Benson, Korine and Hudgens do exploitation film the smart way.
Neon Bikini Noir
The sexy, violent Spring Breakers is Girls Gone Wild with pretensions By Michael Phillips
March 28- April 3, 2013
Tribune Media Services
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No aNiMals were harmed during the making of Spring Breakers. But plenty of impressionable young and older minds will assuredly experience feelings of disorientation watching writer-director Harmony Korine’s candy-colored clown of a movie, which starts out like a salacious, rump-centric and blithely bare-breasted hip-hop video and ends up in the realm of scary and inspired trash. That’s not meant negatively. Korine is a resolute sleaze monger, whose nightmarish daydreams include Trash Humpers, along with the script
of Larry Clark’s specious Kids. He cares little for directorial impulse control. Half the time he doesn’t know if and when he’s kidding and when he’s serious. All this helps Spring Breakers, however, in which not-so-innocent debauchery turns sociopathic on a dime. It’s about four teenage Southern college girls, three nasty, one nice. The nice one, a good Christian believer, is played by Selena Gomez. The others, her spring break traveling companions, are played by Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens and Rachel Korine, the director’s wife. Determined
to have a memorable vacation, the girls lack hotel and booze money (also cocaine money and marijuana money), and in a beautiful glide-by tracking sequence, we’re shown how they obtain the needed cash. It’s a restaurant robbery, and from the camera’s exterior perspective, the girls’ fake-pistol-waving attacks on the customers look felonious but not vicious. Later, however, Spring Breakers returns to the same sequence, this time inside the diner with the customers. And it’s not the same story. Director Korine plays this entire lark right down the
middle. It’s the old story in Korine’s script: The girls tell themselves they’re acting as if they’re in a movie, and like natural-born killers they’re simply playing the roles of the hell-raisers on parade amid a Florida packed with gleaming fesh. Sprung from a night in jail for crimes unrelated to the robbery, Brit, Faith, Candy and Cotty owe their bailout to the predatory goodwill of a gangsta rappa named Alien. He is played by James Franco, currently on a very different set of movie screens in Oz the Great and Powerful. Those who write off Franco as a limited, one-note actor need to see Spring Breakers. He’s smooth, funny, sinister and alive every second in this strange riff on Where the Boys Are. The flm is worth seeing simply for the montage in which this self-made playa displays to his latest prey all the great stuff he owns, from nunchucks to pistols to cunning home furnishings.
As he has in past works, Korine pushes and pulls the episodes of his flms this way and that, repeating incidents, foreshadowing others. The character Alien appears to have been weaned on a steady viewing diet of Wild Things; he lives his tricked-out life like a perverted Gulf Coast version of Puck. Korine has become a very interesting flmmaker with Spring Breakers. He samples every sort of music-video trick and change-up, yet the referencing works. The Gomez character provides the necessary outsider’s shock and awe; most everything else about Korine’s inversion of an entire genre risks excess, and then a surfeit of excess, followed by an excessive surfeit of excess. It’s a beach-party movie that morphs into a Scarface remake, this time without Pacino. And with an even less reliable moral compass. Spring Breakers (R) ★★★✩✩
A&E
movies
application denied This college-admission comedy isn’t quite Ivy League material By Michael Phillips
Tribune Media Services A frAught romAntic comedy, shot through with anxiety about getting your child into an Ivy League school or else, Admission stars Tina Fey as a Princeton University admissions offcer with a secret. Her genial foil is Paul Rudd, who runs a rural New Hampshire high school that’s a progressive Eden of alternative educational grooviness. How these two nice, attractive, funny people fnd each other is up to source material, a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz. It’s directed with a calming glow by Paul Weitz, whose attention to relational detail was evident in About a Boy, In Good Company and Being Flynn. Besides talent and charisma, what’s so great about Fey and Rudd? Their appeal lies in comfort and precision. Fey, the spikier and more vinegar-based of the pair, boasts an improvisation ace’s acumen in timing a rejoinder and sealing a moment with just the right punctuation. Rudd brings a related skill set, but he’s a warmer presence, even when he’s going for broad strokes in something like Our Idiot Brother. The challenge for Fey and
Rudd in Admission is in fnding a looser, more sincere quality, suited to a seriocomic (and ultimately fawed) fable of privilege and the privileged few. The story begins with Portia Nathan, the Fey character, explaining in voice-over the heartbreak and satisfaction of each new admissions process. She lays out the platitudes she conveys to fretful parents and their high-achieving offspring taking the latest Princeton applicants tour. “If this is the right place for you,” she says, fully aware of the implicit lie, “this is the place you’ll end up.” Portia’s live-in boyfriend, a professor played by Michael Sheen, treats her like a dog—he literally pats her on the head and calls her loyal—and is about to leave their bed for that of a humorless Virginia Woolf scholar. On a recruiting road trip, Portia visits the New Quest alternative high school, run by John Pressman (Rudd), her college classmate. There’s an especially promising and quirky New Quest student (Nat Wolff) applying to Princeton. John has reason to believe this
A Princeton admissions officer (Fey) and a high school principal (Rudd) learn to “accept” each other.
may be the same boy Portia gave up for adoption. Does he tell her? If so, when? Admission nudges Portia and John together, as well as Portia and the Princeton hopeful, Jeremiah, as Fey’s increasingly reckless character wrestles with academic politics (she’s up for a promotion; Gloria Reuben is excellent as her undermining rival) and personal ethics (helping Jeremiah get into Princeton constitutes a whopping confict of interest). “I like stories of screwed-up people who think they don’t have anything to offer emotion-
ally but who cobble together an unconventional family,” Weitz wrote in the production notes for Admission. There’s a good movie in this story. The one that got made is roughly half-good. Fey and Rudd almost make too much sense together onscreen; they’re smooth to the point of frictionless. The flm tips between gentle satire and heartfelt pathos, and although the two aren’t incompatible on paper, onscreen it’s a tussle. It’s easy to watch because Fey and Rudd individually and, sometimes, together ensure a level of ease and confdence. But
March 28- April 3, 2013
short reviews
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The Croods (PG) ★★✩✩✩
It’s Ice Age with humans and less ice. The Croods are a brood of cavepeople; there’s Ugg (Nicolas Cage), Ugga (Catherine Keener), Eep (Emma Stone) and some others. Earthquaked out of their dwelling, the Crood brood embarks on a search for a new home. They come across Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a caveboy who knows about fire and has things called “ideas.” Guy leads the Croods toward a place he calls “Tomorrow” where survival lies. Not a whole lot here, and like most Dreamworks vehicles, it’s way too much.
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (PG) ★★✩✩✩
All of the skilled actors on display in this absurd comedy can’t save the film. Las Vegas magicians Burt (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) have a stale act, and Burt’s become a terrible person. They can’t stand each other. And there’s a dangerous new kid in town, a Jackass-y performer (Jim Carrey) who gives the bloodthirsty public what it wants. While Alan Arkin and Olivia Wilde manage ably in their scenes, the rest of the movie is poor and terribly written.
The Call (R) ★★✩✩✩
Jordan (Halle Berry) is a hotshot 911 operator in Los Angeles. On a call in which she tries to coach a teenage girl away from a home invasion, Jordan slips up, fails, and the girl is abducted and murdered. Dedicated to redeem herself, Jordan gets another emergency call in the form of Casey (Abigail Breslin), who has been drugged and kidnapped and wakes up in the trunk of a speeding car. Jordan has to coach the hysterical teen through a series of daunting situations. Berry is enough of a pro to handle this, but the film is kind of a dud.
Admission is the tale of a woman losing it, and then regaining it. Fey, despite her enormous talent, never seems to lose it in a way that would activate her character’s riskier, messier impulses. (You wonder what Lily Tomlin, who plays Fey’s mother in Admission, might’ve done with the role a generation ago.) And while the flm positions Portia as an island of relatable sanity amid poseurs and hypocrites, make no mistake: It comes down frmly on the side of doing whatever it takes to get into Princeton. Admission (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
[ by tribune media services ]
Oz: The Great and Powerful (PG) ★★★✩✩
Sam Raimi’s digital blockbuster prequel to the Hollywood classic is uneven but agreeably managed. Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco) is a carny magician who departs 1905 Kansas via tornado and lands in Oz. He runs into witches, including Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz) and Glinda (Michelle Williams), and has the company of a winged monkey (voiced by Zach Braff). Oz must lead the revolution to restore order to the land. There are big sights, electric shocks, lots of 3-D and those monkey minions.
movies
Jack the Giant Slayer (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
At least this rip-off of The Hangover was done by dudes who wrote The Hangover. In yet another crude comedy, this is the story of Jeff Chang (Justin Chon), who goes out on the town for his 21st birthday. His gonzo friend Miller (Miles Teller) and the more responsible Casey (Skylar Austin) get him blind drunk. Told in the usual flashback, there’s a sorority house, a pep rally, a progressive dorm drinking party, and then the campus police station and the infirmary. There are laughs here, but it’s a total rip-off.
This giant, straining blockbuster reinvents Jack and the Beanstalk as see Jack gape; see Jack run; see Jack slay giants. Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) directs, and the movie is a bit too much: too much yelling, too much running, too much flaming tree throwing. Jack (Nicholas Hoult) trades his horse for magic beans, and, you know, the beanstalk connects the human world and the world of giants. Mayhem ensues. It’s just too much fantasy action for its own good.
Phantom (R) ★★✩✩✩
Snitch (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
Safe Haven (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
Beautiful Creatures (PG-13)
The new Nicholas Sparks movie begins as a desperate young woman (Julianne Hough) flees the scene of a crime in Boston. Assuming a new haircut, Katie gets off the bus in Southport, North Carolina, gets a job at the diner and a cabin, and starts sharing smoldering looks with town widower dad (Josh Duhamel). Katie has something to hide; Duhamel has some grieving to do; and the filmmakers have some sunsets to film before things get violent and threatening. Which they do. It’s OK, but like most Sparks movies: meh.
Loosely based on true events, this movie follows a father (Dwayne Johnson) who goes undercover for the DEA to nab drug kingpins in an effort to free his harshly sentenced son (Rafi Gavron). Gritty and noirish, this flick works. Behind the former Rock is a solid supporting cast, including drug kingpin Mr. Big (Benjamin Bratt), conniving politician (Susan Sarandon), ex-con turned partner Daniel (Jon Bernthal) and the middleman Malik (Michael Kenneth Williams). The action and violence are well-balanced.
★★✩✩✩
Based on the young-adult novel, this film follows high school senior Ethan (Alden Ehrenreich) who is plagued by a recurring Civil War-era nightmare. The girl in his dreams resembles the new girl in town, Lena (Alice Englert), who is a “caster,” or a person with supernatural abilities. Love between a mortal and a caster comes with its risks, of course. Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons and Viola Davis support, but it’s not the strongest effort in the genre.
March 28- April 3, 2013
In March 1968, about 1,800 miles northwest of Oahu in the Pacific Ocean, the Soviet submarine K-129 exceeded its crush depth and imploded, for mysterious reasons. All crew members were lost, and the sub sank with three ballistic nuclear missiles and two nuclear torpedoes. Capt. Dmitri Zubov (Ed Harris) does his best to hold off the alternately motivated KGB agents on board. The movie is OK, but it’s remarkable that they could make a snoozer out of those reliably suspenseful subs.
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21 and Over (R) ★★✩✩✩
7 questions
How did you end up playing America’s pastime? I was 9 years old and a friend said, “Hey, come look at this crazy game over on that feld.” And I just loved it. I think I was born American. This is for sure. I remember perfectly when I was 7 years old. I took a bag and put some shoes and two shirts and a cap in it and started to walk out. My mom says, “Where are you going?” I said, “I go to America.” She said, “For what?” And I said, “To be an American.” It was just like that. All growing up, I told people I was going to America. They’d say, “It’s crazy there. The people are always wanting to do better, better, better. They don’t enjoy
If you could have faced any major-league pitcher, who would it be, and how would you have done? In my generation, Nolan Ryan. He was fast. Back then? I would have hit something very far. I was successful in baseball because I was a very good hitter. I always hit hard—doubles, triples and home runs. But my legs—I was a really [slow] runner. To get to frst base, I had to hit [what should be a] triple. Are your American clients much different from your clients in France? Hair is hair. The cuts are the same. But a French woman, people think she is always chic
“In the salon … I gIve that complIment lIke a coach. lIke, ‘good game!’ only I say, ‘BeautIful haIr!’”
Jean-Marc Levy
The French native on his careers in baseball and hairstyling, and the two major-league legends he’d love to get in his chair By Cate Weeks
March 28- April 3, 2013
Casino’s salon (where the average haircut for a
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It comes as no surprise to Jean Marc Levy’s clients local is $110). And while Levy, 43, has hung up
when the master stylist starts singing Edith Piaf songs—it’s so very French of him. But if he mentions his previous career—as catcher on the French national baseball team—eyebrows arch. France? Baseball? High-end salons? “These things, they do not go together,” he says as he swirls in a chair at The Salon at Red Rock. “But this is me.” For 16 years, Levy did hair during the week— like his older sister—and played baseball on the weekends, both for the national team and an amateur club squad. In 2007, he moved to the United States to work under celebrity stylist José Eber, then at Cristophe Salon at the MGM Grand. For the last two years he’s been the “creative master stylist” at Red Rock Resort &
his baseball spikes, the game remains a big part of his life thanks to his 16-year-old son, Ylan, a frst baseman who has been enrolled in an elite sports academy in France and who was recently accepted to Bishop Gorman High School. By playing ball at Gorman, the younger Levy will be exposed to Major League Baseball scouts, which is important as he pursues his goal of playing professionally—not that his father isn’t thinking about a fallback plan. “I just ask him, ‘Ylan, if it is not working in school, if it is not working in baseball, will you do the hair?’ He says, ‘If absolutely nothing else works, nothing at all, then I will do the hair.’” Jean-Marc then gestures to the salon. “This,” he says, “is not him.”
Baseball players are known for being superstitious. Were you as a player? And are you now as a stylist? Oh, yes, as a player, for sure. I was 13 years old when I got those [sweatbands] you wear around your wrist. Jose Canseco—he wore them, and so I wanted them, too. I played my whole career with them. My mom would wash them and keep them perfect. Now my son carries those in his bag. They’re 30 years old and still perfect. In the salon, not really. My dad passed away when I was 12. If I have a diffcult client or a very bad day, I just think about him when I need something to believe in. But this is more emotional than superstition. What from baseball do you bring into the salon? The catcher sees all the feld. In the salon I work like a catcher. I’m in charge of the whole feld. I watch everything. I see what [everyone] is doing and who needs help. I bring discipline. I give that compliment like a coach. Like, “Good game!” Only I say, “Beautiful hair!”
and skinny and stylish. But a French woman has shorter hair; she just washes her hair and goes. An American woman, she comes in to have the blow-dry. She puts on makeup to go anywhere. If you could get any baseball player in your chair, who would it be? Pete Rose. He had great hair. In Los Angeles, I did his [ex-] wife’s hair. One day he came into the salon and gave me a ball. He signed it, “To my frst French fan.” But he didn’t come in for a cut. But actually, you know those TV shows where there’s a big surprise guest and everybody but one person knows about it? When [that character] opens the door and their hero is standing there? That’s what I want to happen. I want to come in and see Jose Canseco in my chair. Who’s your pick to win this year’s World Series? I know the Angels have an amazing lineup, but I always dream for the Dodgers. In France, the only big team we know is the New York Yankees, but [they’re] not my favorite. When I was a teenager, I said my dream was to come do hair in Hollywood and see the Dodgers.
Photo by Anthony Mair
life.” This is how they think in France. But not me. I love the ambition. I love that you have more opportunity, more chance to be successful.