EvEnt
ShowcaSing TalenT
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[ upcoming ]
Aug. 23-30 Restaurant Week, benefiting Three Square food bank (HelpOutDineOutLV.org) Sept. 1 Hometown Heroes BMX Exhibition, benefiting the Downtown Boys & Girls Club (InsertCoinsLV.com)
Photos by bobby Jameidar
August 22–28, 2013
Where do local musicians go when they want to entertain—and/or be entertained—by other local musicians? They take their talents to The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz for the monthly Composers Showcase, an open-to-the-public platform where artists ranging from budding vocalists to Strip headliners present original music. During the most recent show on Aug. 14, spectators filled the 240-seat venue to near capacity, enjoying compositions from theater writer and Ká conductor Richard Oberacker, actor Martin Kaye of Million Dollar Quartet and singer Frankie Moreno, among others. None of the artists who participate in the showcase—which is hosted by Keith Thompson, the conductor for Jersey Boys— get paid, and any profits from ticket sales go into a scholarship fund maintained by Thompson, who plans to eventually align with a nonprofit charity. The next showcase is scheduled for Sept. 11.
the latest
to get the Legislature to act? If he’s as all-powerful as he seems to be, yes: he could have induced some Republicans to support changes that would have gone toward solving these problems. And that’s the point: He couldn’t, which means he’s overrated, or he wouldn’t, which also means he’s overrated. Anjeanette Damon, the Las Vegas Sun’s fne political editor, recently laid out fve reasons why Sandoval will be re-elected. Her ffth reason may be the most important: “Personal ambition (or lack thereof) trumps party pressure.” The key is in that parenthetical—Sandoval is beatable, but nobody feels like trying. A campaign is a hard slog, and the winner gets to deal with all of those problems. So, perhaps the real issue isn’t that Sandoval is so successful that he’s unbeatable. Maybe it’s that there is a peculiar social fatalism in the hearts of Nevadans: Things are the way they are, and if they’re not getting worse, what more can we ask? Too many of us are willing to overrate our state’s virtues—and to underrate our own ability to fx its vices.
Last week I wrote about the free video-poker tournaments on Saturday nights at Money Plays (4755 W. Flamingo Rd., just west of the Palms), and set a value of $13.33 for playing it. That number is derived by what’s known as an “equity assessment,” which takes into consideration how much money is given away and how many players are competing for it. In the case of the Money Plays tourney, $200 was split between 15 players. Hence, it’s fair to say that it’s worth $13.33 on average for you to play it. But that’s not the way it really works. Just as with any game, you can outperform the “average” if you play better than your opponents. Naturally, being a better video-poker player is the key, right? Sometimes, but not this time. In timed tournaments, like the one at Money Plays, perfect play ranks behind two other considerations. The most important element in a tourney in which everyone plays for a set amount of time is playing fast—very fast! In fact, many regular video-poker-tournament winners play significantly below the expert level, but they have fire in their fingers. Money Plays runs a timed tournament, with rounds of three minutes each, and whatever you can fire off in each session increases your score. Think about it: If you play 35 hands in that time, and I play 45, who’s the favorite to score higher? So, faster is definitely better, but don’t just push buttons at random. Make reasonable plays. But don’t ponder over decisions, either. Many tournament experts advocate not even pausing briefly to consider tough choices. The second key element is using available information. In video-poker tournaments, it’s important to gather as much data as you can, then adjust play accordingly. If you know that someone’s hit a royal flush, then you must also hit a royal to have a chance to win. At this point, you don’t keep any hand that doesn’t have royal flush potential—not even a dealt four-of-a-kind! When you play this way you’ll usually just fall further behind, but it’s the proper strategy. They don’t announce the scores between rounds at Money Plays, but everyone’s watching and talking, so you’ll know if you’re in the running or not. Since prize money in most tournaments is top-heavy, going for the win is paramount. Unless you’re near the top (in which case you stay the course and continue to fire as fast as you can), your scores should go down each round as you take bigger and bigger chances to get to the lead. When I played, my rounds scored 240, 200 and 165. Perfect! It’s not easy to play this way. But if you can, you’ll be a dangerous tournament player. Go get that money!
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.
Yes, Governor Sandoval, We Can Do Better
August 22–28, 2013
Overrating our public ofcials, underrating ourselves
VEGAS SEVEN
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Pauline Maier, who died recently after a distinguished career of writing about the founding fathers, once called Thomas Jefferson “the most overrated man in American history.” Coverage and non-coverage of Brian Sandoval suggest Nevada’s governor could give the Sage of Monticello a run for his money. He gets or takes credit for blocking tax hikes, improving public schools and protecting gun rights—credit which is debatable, perhaps even ridiculous. By overrating him, we underrate ourselves. Sandoval shouldn’t be blamed for all of Nevada’s problems, but he has contributed to them. He didn’t buy bus tickets for mental patients, but he could have tried to restore funding cuts. He has trumpeted declines in unemployment, but the state still lags behind the country, and if he wants credit for current successes, he also bears responsibility for current failures. The state just increased funding for English-language learners, but in every imaginable educational category, from dropouts to reading levels, our rank remains rank. Sandoval has talked reform, but done little to make it happen. One of his solutions was to seek more power
over the state board of education, and he just replaced a superintendent he ignored with Dale Erquiaga, his close friend and former top adviser. Erquiaga’s one-stepremoved background in education (working in CCSD government affairs and public policy and planning isn’t exactly classroom experience) and his real-world work as a political and advertising consultant may make him an outstanding superintendent, but his appointment inevitably raises questions about Nevada’s real state bird, the Crony. It’s easy enough to criticize the Legislature for its failures in these areas. Does the Legislature deserve criticism? Yes. But we also can thank term limits, meeting too rarely and too briefy, and the required two-thirds approval of any tax hike, none of which is the current body’s fault. We can criticize Southern Nevadans for not voting by county, but that’s an old problem, too. The next question is tougher: Could Sandoval have done more
Photo illustration by thomas sPeak
The arT of winning Video-Poker Tourneys
VEGAS SEVEN
28
Downtown in Flames
Tony Hsieh wants to bring fre art to Las Vegas. How should Las Vegas feel about that? By Geoff Carter
Sometime laSt Spring, Tony Hsieh quit surprising me. That’s not to say that I lost respect for him. I only mean that I believed there was nothing that he could do that would shock me. Build a retail park from portables and shipping containers? Sure, makes sense. Launch a massive music festival with less than a year’s preparation time? Godspeed, you Zapponian emperor. But that was before last week, when Hsieh stood in front of a crowd at the SXSW V2V tech conference at the Cosmopolitan and said that he wanted to make Las Vegas into a living gallery of fre-based art. “One of the things we’re excited about is bringing a lot of fre-burning elements Downtown,” he said. “There’s no city that really owns the concept of fre yet.” Well, after I double-checked to make sure I wasn’t reading The Onion, I had a few initial reactions, and I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t share all of them with you. I thought, “Wrong. Detroit owns the concept of fre, much to its chagrin.” Then, “Wait, does he want to make Downtown look like the frst fve minutes of Blade Runner? Because I might be OK with that.” Then I thought, “What was wrong with our foolish, decades-old dream to make this the neon-art capital of the world?” And fnally, “Why didn’t we think of introducing propane tanks and live fre elements to the oldest part of the city years ago?” But then I thought of The Mantis. A piece of Burning Man fre art created by Kirk Jellum and Kristen Ulmer, this giant-insect-about-town has been a regular fxture at First Friday and at many other Downtown Project-sponsored events, and is now a permanent resident of the underconstruction Container Park. She is 40 feet long, 30 feet wide and stands 55 feet tall at the very tip of her feelers, which are the bits that shoot fre into the air. The Mantis, in action, is a breathtaking sight, and
the frst dozen times I saw it, I photographed it as if it were the last time I’d ever lay eyes on it. I shot The Mantis like it was going extinct. But then, you know, it didn’t. The Mantis began showing up everywhere, even places it had no reason to be. The last straw for me was when it was deposited in front of La Comida for that restaurant’s grand-
opening party. Every time I tried to have a conversation with someone, it was punctuated by loud pops as someone triggered the fame mechanism. And it wasn’t a continuous burst every 30 seconds or so; it was a staccato series of bursts—pop-pop-pop-poppop—repeated ad infnitum. At one point, I could swear the operator was using The Mantis
to play “Jingle Bells.” At that point, The Mantis moved from my dreams to my nightmares. As recently as last night I had to fght the thing garbed only in my underwear, armed with a turnip. Once I thought of the La Comida incident, I fashed back to the Blade Runner scenario. Why should Las Vegas be a hell only in Stephen King’s
The Stand and the Resident Evil movies? If Tony Hsieh wants to make Fremont East a place where shit is constantly and annoyingly blowing up, I should embrace that, right? Fortunately, I spoke with artist Robert Beckmann, whose acclaimed series of paintings The Body of a House pays stunningly beautiful homage to our state’s original fre-art installation, the Nevada Test Site. His initial reaction to Hsieh’s announcement echoed mine. “I thought, ‘Why do we need more heat here?’” he said, chuckling. “And I thought, we have all kinds of problems with water … isn’t that a more appropriate elemental art focus?” But then he gave some thought to what “fre art” could mean in a Las Vegas context: “On further refection, I realized that fre is appropriate. It’s always been a symbol of purifying, of regeneration,” he said, adding that fre has signifcance in alchemy (“The alchemist forges his or her transformation in the fre of the furnace, or in the inner crucible located in the solar plexus”), in Buddhism and in Christianity. “Transformation is an entirely appropriate symbol for the desert. So many people travel to Las Vegas to start anew, just as mystics used to travel to the deserts to burn off the dregs—the fog of illusions, if you will.” I like that. In the space of fve minutes, Beckmann turned my apprehension into anticipation, and even though I don’t know what shape this fre-art gallery will take (the Downtown Project did not respond to my request by press time), I’ll be keen to see the coming of the fre, provided it’s not too close to where I’m trying to eat dinner. And if Tony Hsieh really wants to engender the goodwill of the neighborhood, here’s my suggestion: Set Slotzilla on fre—safely, with all the proper permits; we bet he can get them—and let Fremont Street rise again, freed from the fog of illusion.
Photo by Jim L aurie
August 22–28, 2013
the latest
thought
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New York City crackdown hits supply of ‘twinkies,’ but demand rages on By Mélanie Berliet The New York Observer
IllustratIon by VIctor Juhasz
The War on Percocet
VEGAS SEVEN
August 22–28, 2013
The LaTesT
NatioNal
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PHOTO BY TK
VEGAS SEVEN
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***** THERE’S A COMMON THREAD
in most music criticism that
director of programming for Wynn Nightclubs. He’s also the founding editor of Source magazine, one of the frst publications focused solely on hip-hop. He’d just gotten the magazine off the ground a few months after Millions made its bow. “When the frst Public Enemy album came out [Yo! Bum Rush the Show, 1987], it came out of nowhere. No one knew who they were. It was on Def Jam, so it had credibility, but we didn’t know who it was or what it was. I listened to it, and I remember liking two or three songs on the frst album. It wasn’t a huge hit. People didn’t understand it,” he says. “The turning point came in the form of ‘Rebel Without a Pause,’ which is a pivotal 12inch single in hip-hop history for a lot of reasons. No. 1, it put Public Enemy on the map. It sounded so radically different from everything that had come before it. It was this kind of abrasive sound, but it was so dense and complex and interesting and powerful. Chuck D, that’s the record where he came into his own as an emcee. I remember how important that piece of vinyl was. The whole hip-hop world went insane for that song.” The year Millions dropped,
brethren, it went from “Why is Anthrax recording with this rap group?” to “What’s the original sound like?” to “What’s the rest of the album sound like?” to “I need to go out and buy every tape from these guys immediately” (or, more accurately, “Whose tape can we copy?”) in the span of, roughly, an hour and a half. It was different than those early Run-D.M.C. and Beastie Boys records we all liked but never adopted as our own. It was another album pointed at kids like us by Def Jam secret weapon Rick Rubin, but this time it stuck. In an era where every other dopey 14-year-old was wearing Africa necklaces and Malcolm X baseball hats, Chuck D’s African nationalism sounded like the real deal in a sea of fashionista tourists. Even if we couldn’t relate to the direct message, the implication wasn’t lost on us. When you’re casting
authentic?) that now makes it seem like an artifact from another civilization. What happened to all that strident social consciousness? Did it just fzzle out, or was it subsumed into the hiphop landscape? Rage Against the Machine seems like the spiritual heir to everything Millions was about, but they haven’t really been around in 13 years. It’s Kanye who moves records. P.O.S. throws a 99-percenter haymaker on “Fuck Your Stuff,” but Jay-Z is still making his bones on Picassos in his casa. We’re more cynical now, so bombarded with authenticity ploys that it’s hard to ever see them as anything but bait on the hook. You listen to Millions in 2013, and you have to fght your modern ear. We’re preoccupied with the virtue of authenticity, but we’re too hip to the game to believe anything is ever truly
Flavor Flav acted as a steam valve for all of Public Enemy’s other military-grade working parts. horror; Chuck D’s wallshaking, throaty bass and politically incisive polemics; and Flavor Flav, the band’s special sauce, acting as a steam valve for all the other military-grade working parts. No one’s ever tried to duplicate that sound. Not the way The Chronic spawned a legion of G-funk, or the way the Neptunes’ eerie minimalism dominated mid-2000s rap. Hell, even the seemingly inimitable Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band found an imitator when the Stones, in their worst moment of desperation, tried to replicate it with Their Satanic Majesties Request. But all of that ignores another angle: Millions also mattered because it got a whole bunch of suburban white kids—including me— into hip-hop with the second cut on the album, “Bring the Noise,” which in ’91 was rerecorded with thrash-metal pioneers Anthrax. For me and my metalhead
around for your signposts of youthful rebellion, they don’t come much clearer than “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”: I got a letter from the government the other day/I opened and read it, it said they were suckers/They wanted me for the Army or whatever/Picture me giving a damn, I said “never.” That’s Chuck D just doing mild contempt. ***** MILLIONS, FOR ALL OF ITS
musical innovation, was straightforward, unforgiving, righteously authentic. And it struck home in an era when many of us were obsessed with the idea of authenticity. (In my crowd, we endlessly fretted over whether Metallica was selling out by putting the “One” video on MTV—if we had any idea what was coming we’d have burned our copies of Ride the Lightning.) But it’s precisely the album’s unapologetic, ambitious stab at authenticity (can you try to be authentic and still be
real: The White Stripes brought back dirty blues rock! Oh, but Jack White sold “Ball and a Biscuit” to Captain Morgan. The Roots are a collection of stone-cold geniuses, fusing genres into something entirely their own! Oh, but The Roots signed on as Jimmy Fallon’s house band. Meanwhile, Flavor Flav, the craziest guy in a band bursting at the seams with whitehot political lava, does the Comedy Central Roast and an increasingly depressing string of reality shows. That moment of Millions happened, though. There was art that we experienced as real, without the sidelong stares and second-guessing that have become second nature. Dig it out of those old milk crates where you store your CDs. If there isn’t a tiny part of you that wants to get on board with the (non-televised) revolution, I’ll start wearing a lime green track suit and Viking helmet everywhere. (Actually, that’s not a terrible idea, regardless.)
August 22–28, 2013
***** JONATHAN SHECTER IS THE
1988, wasn’t just good for Public Enemy—it was a good year for the genre in general. Often considered the most pivotal year in hip-hop, it saw Straight Outta Compton by N.W.A., Follow the Leader from Eric B. & Rakim, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, Boogie Down Productions’ By All Means Necessary, EPMD’s Strictly Business and, uh, to a much lesser extent, Kid ‘n’ Play’s 2 Hype. (Whatever, like you weren’t jealous of the hair.) But Millions is so far beyond even the nascent gangster rap of Compton it could’ve come from another dimension—one where Malcolm X had led a coup against LBJ—instead of just from another coast. Those reasons have been covered ad nauseam in the years since: the anarchic Bomb Squad cut-and-paste production that welded funk and soul samples to a Tim Burton-esque mechanical
33 VEGAS SEVEN
PHOTO BY KEVIN CUMMINS/GETTY IMAGES
AN AIR-RAID SIREN WAILS
and the crowd loses its collective mind. Like, teenagegirls-during-The Beatles-onSullivan kind of shrieking. The siren doesn’t stop. Bass. If the siren were a car engine, it’d be shaking out of the hood. Armageddon has been in effect. Go get a late pass. Step. This time around, the revolution will not be televised. Step. London, England, consider yourselves … Dramatic pause. Warned. The track fades, the venue explodes. Cut. Flavor Flav is not messing around, you guys. For those who don’t recognize this particular gem of musical theater, it’s “Countdown to Armageddon,” the lead track to Public Enemy’s 1988 record It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. It’s been 25 years since Chuck D, The Bomb Squad and Las Vegan Flavor Flav released this musical equivalent of a pack of wolves with, presumably, the undeniable glee normally reserved for an 8-year-old with a box of bottle rockets and an M-80 cribbed from their older brother. When you see Flav around town, clowning at UNLV basketball games or popping up at clubs, it can be hard to remember that he was with a band that was downright dangerous. He was the sneering counterpart to Chuck D, making the frontman’s pure, quivering rage barely cool enough to touch for the rest of us humans. Public Enemy was the only band that claimed to have its own paramilitary unit. At least until the Beliebers came along, anyway. Millions, though, was that dangerous, and that perfect. It was 57 minutes and 51 seconds of great white shark captured on 120 millimeters of polycarbonate.
suggests that angry, loud music is the province of dumb young men, and by the time you’re into your 30s, you should be on to more mature, thoughtful fare. Grow up and listen to some Bon Iver, some Of Montreal. If you want to be smart, you have to be oblique and amorphous. You have to be Radiohead, or, God help me, the Mars Volta. Even comedian Anthony Jeselnik, in a recent interview with The A.V. Club, bantered with a reporter over how bad Soundgarden was. And it was just an accepted fact. Of course Soundgarden is terrible. It was a surreal “We have always been at war with Eastasia” moment at the expense of a band that had been, I thought, routinely considered one of the fnest examples of ‘90s grunge. Was I wrong? Did I fall hopelessly out of touch? Did I wake up one day on the wrong side of old? Actually, that last one stings. But that’s cool, because I know the truth. I know that high-volume shit will forever have its rightful place. Because I know It Takes a Nation of Millions.
SCENE STEALER As the fall cultural season begins, it’s time to hit the theater in high style The scorching summer is soon to fade—at least the calendar says so—and it’s almost safe to toss the fip-fops, add some layers and get dressed up again. And there’s no better destination for the elegantly attired than The Smith Center, which hosts dozens of concerts and productions this season, including the Tony Award-winning War Horse and Michael Feinstein (see our Fall Arts Preview on Page 89). So join us and model Betta for a tour of the theater—and the subtler, more elegant styles of fall.
P HO T O GR A P H Y Beverly Poppe HAIR STYLIST
Cassie Alvord MAKEUP Natasha Chamberlin using Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics
StaciMichelle STYLING ASSISTANT Carla Ferreira Model Betta/Hollywood Model Management
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August 22–28, 2013
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August 22–28, 2013
Nightlife
What Otto Knows
Vegas Seven gets acquainted with the DJ/ producer and Light resident before his next gig By David Morris
Having grown up with Avicii and been subsequently mentored by Swedish House Mafa’s Sebastian Ingrosso, DJ/producer Otto Jettman certainly seems to know all the right people. We recently got the lowdown on his production process, tour-managing for his mentor, Ingrosso, and what it was like to be a part of SHM’s fnal tour. Otto next plays Light on September 6.
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You eventually came to know Sebastian Ingrosso, as well. Yes! I’ve known Sebastian for a long time, and he always pushes me in the right direction and fgures out the cool things to do. How did you guys meet? I met Seb through his cousin. He knew I was really interested in the music, and that I was producing and DJing, and he helped me get a job with Seb. I helped take care of all the music coming into his label to start with, and then I got the keys to his studio, and he said, “Come here when-
ever you want, as much as you can when I’m not here.” After that, I actually started to tourmanage for him, but after six months he said, “Now that you know what it is like to tour, you should really spend all your time in the studio, because you’re going to miss too much studio time otherwise.” So I started to seriously make my music. What was the process of making your hit Million Voices? I was in the studio just next to Seb and Alesso, who were making Pressure, so I was really inspired at the time, and I was just working away. Is there’s added “pressure” now that Alesso has really blown up? On me, no. I never compare myself either to Avicci or to Alesso. That would be so ridiculous. We’re three different people, and we have different songs even if our sounds are kind of similar. We have different thoughts behind the music, even though we’re all really good friends. The only pressure I have is from me, knowing that I can do better. Now that you’re on the road so much, do you produce on the go? I try to. When I produce, I ideally want a couple of hours where I really can sit down and focus, because if all I’ve got is two hours here and
there, I can’t really get into it. It’s really hard to get the right feeling in headphones, so I try to rent studios wherever I am and do as much work as I can when I’m home. You were part of Swedish House Mafa’s One Last Tour—what was that like? Obviously, Swedish House Mafa is the reason why I started doing this. So to be able to go on tour with them, on their last tour, was just something I might have dreamed about a couple of years ago. It was crazy, and I got a great response everywhere we went. I also got to know Steve
and Axwell very well, so I felt a part of the whole thing. All the shows were amazing, but especially Mexico City—that one was so huge. It was at this big monster truck kind of stadium, and when I started playing they turned off the lights, so it got completely dark and everyone was screaming. Ax and Seb were in the green room backstage, which was 300 meters away, and when I put on my intro and it kicked in,
the ground stared shaking. They were like, “What the fuck is this? Is there an earthquake going on?” They ran up to the stage and tried to fgure out what was going on, and it was 60,000 people yelling. The whole stage was really cool. What’s next? I have a remix called “Starlight” coming out on Axwell’s label, Axtone, and then an original with Mr. Thomas Gold coming out as well.
Connect with Otto at @OttoKnows, Facebook.com/ OttoKnows and Soundcloud.com/Otto-Knows.
Photo illustration by thomas sPeak
August 22–28, 2013
You have some history with another famous Swede, Tim Bergling, better known as Avicii, right? We actually went to the same school and were in the same class until we were 10, and then we moved on to the next school together. He started making music really seriously, and I was just doing it for fun at the time. I got a lot of tips from him. His development was really inspiring for me to watch and see how he could really do something big. He did something that I didn’t really think any of us could do. We had Sebastian Ingrosso and Axwell, who were big deals in our eyes back then, but it was really cool to see Tim do something so huge. We still keep in touch.
nightlife
parties
daylight Mandalay Bay [ Upcoming ]
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PHOTOS BY DEREK DEGNER AND JOSH METZ
August 22–28, 2013
Aug. 24 Bassjackers spin Aug. 25 Feenixpawl spin Aug. 31 Zedd spins
nightlife
parties
palms pool The palms
[ Upcoming ]
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PHOTOS BY JOSH METZ
August 22–28, 2013
Aug. 23 Lupe Fiasco performs Aug. 24 Taboo spins Aug. 30 Kendrick Lamar performs
nightlife
parties
tao Beach The Venetian [ Upcoming ]
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PHOTOS BY AL POWERS
August 22–28, 2013
Aug. 23 Jeffrey Tonnesen spins Aug. 24 Fourth Annual Luau Aug. 30 DJ Five spins
nightlife
parties
Geisha house steak & sushi Grand openinG
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PHOTOS BY AMIT DADLANEY
August 22–28, 2013
9179 W. Flamingo Rd.
Gastro Fare. Nurtured Ales. Jukebox Gold.
DRINKING [ SCENE STIRS ]
Tales of the Pousse Café
August 22–28, 2013
THREE YEARS AFTER setting a world record for the largest kopstootje (that is, a shot of Dutch genever served so overfowing that it must be slurped), Las Vegas’ Anthony Pullen made his next record attempt on the streets of New Orleans during the 11th annual Tales of the Cocktail last month. The Lucas Bols USA brand development and education manager set up shop outside the cocktail festival’s headquarters at the historic Hotel Monteleone and began constructing the world’s largest Pousse Café. The multilayer “coffee-pusher” tipple of mid-19th Century New Orleans origin was originally meant to be sipped alongside afternoon java. But that afternoon, Pullen carefully layered a 5-foot Champagne fute with 15 liters of grenadine, anisette, banana liqueur, Bols yogurt liqueur, pomegranate liqueur, Galliano L’Autentico and Bols genever. Tales of the Cocktail founder Ann “Mrs. Cocktail” Tuennerman gently poured in the fnal layer, making it indeed the world’s largest. Which begs the question: Who got to drink it? The Pousse Café at the Fireside Lounge in the Peppermill ($12) is a much more manageable size, and a favorite among cocktailians in the know: grenadine, blue curaçao, white crème de cacao, green Chartreuse and brandy. “Personally, I shoot mine in one go and skip the coffee part,” says Pullen, who spends much of his time resurrecting history’s forgotten cocktails. Now that’s Dutch courage!
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For the Fireside Pousse Café recipe, go to VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.
I’m fortunate in that I get to travel for work. I’m even more fortunate that when I get wherever it is that I’m going, I’m usually greeted with a beverage. And I’m the most fortunate in that I get to write about the things I see and learn and drink. So Tales of the Cocktail, the world’s premier cocktail festival, held over five days in New Orleans, is for me like a Viking catching his first glimpse of Valhala. Only, you know, without having to sail off the edge of the earth. The parties, the seminars, the shwag, the events ... Did I mention the parties? Tales is the place for bartenders, mixologists, consultants and ambassadors to exchange ideas, impart knowledge and forge bonds. And me, I just soak it up like a sponge. But the highlight for me each year is the Spirited Awards, which is something like the Oscars of the beverage world. In these awards, Las Vegas rarely gets any consideration outside of the Tony Abou-Ganim and Francesco Lafranconi ilk, but I don’t think it will be long before Vesper bar and Herbs & Rye get some love along with New York’s The Dead Rabbit (World’s Best New Cocktail Bar) and Seattle’s Canon Whiskey & Bitters Emporium (World’s Best Drink Selection). We also haven’t had—at least in the years I’ve attended—a single Las Vegas bartender in the Cocktail Apprentice Program, the 40-some-odd passionate bartenders who come from around the world to squeeze lemons, batch cocktails and prep garnishes for the weeklong festival’s 230 events. That is, until this year, when I ran into Las Vegas’ own Michael Doyle (the Cosmopolitan/ Rx Boiler Room) in the Hotel Monteleone’s famous Carousel Bar. Our first apprentice! On Day 1, Doyle and his team were assigned to the seminar Gin & Tonic: Only the Beginning, their responsibility being to pull product (booze, mixers, tools) and prep garnishes for 23 variations of gin and tonics for a room of 300 attendees, totaling nearly 7,000 individual servings. “Luckily, the CAP teams help out one another in their downtime, “ Doyle says. “Otherwise, our gin and tonics wouldn’t have been garnished with anything other a lime wheel and a smile.” And during the Spirited Awards is where the new apprentices, CAP managers, assistant managers and leaders take their bow, this year via a hilarious video. “The cocktail apprentice team is by far the most passionate group of bar professionals I have ever had the privilege of working with,” Doyle says. “The whole experience served as an affirmation: What I do for a living does matter. And, when done well, it can be a source of pride.” Bartenders interested in the Cocktail Apprentice Program should keep an eye on TalesOfTheCocktail.com for the start of the next application process. – X.W. For the complete list of 2013 Spirited Awards, visit VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.
PHOTO BY LUCKY WENZEL
DINING
WE CAME, WE SAW, WE DRANK: THE TALES THAT WAS
A&E
Movies
As Seen From Downstairs Playing a White House butler, Forest Whitaker takes the Forrest Gump approach to witnessing history
August 22–28, 2013
By Michael Phillips
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The besT scenes in Lee Daniels’ The Butler—a family farewell at a bus station; a few drinks and a few dangerous glances among friends in an ordinary Washington, D.C., living room—steer clear of the White House and keep a comfortable and freeing distance from the fotilla of celebrity impersonations sailing by. The supporting cast of The Butler is being described by the Weinstein Company promotional materials as “incredible,” and that’s accurate, in the primary-defnition sense of the word. The casting, by and large, is not credible. Robin Williams may have it in him to play Ike Eisenhower under different circumstances, and Jane Fonda
could likely peel off a pretty good Nancy Reagan with fuller material, but here the excellent actors playing the power fgures—including Alan Rickman’s Ronald Reagan—come off like a Rich Little convention. I do, however, like the scene in The Butler where John Cusack’s Richard Nixon pays a belowstairs visit to the White House kitchen help. You don’t believe he’s Nixon, not for a second. Yet the scene is tense, amusingly awkward, well-written and honestly acted by, among others, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz. It’s up to the steady and astute performance by Forest Whitaker to keep The Butler from caving in under its own Forrest Gump
sponge-of-history tendencies. This being a Daniels picture, shot every which way and going for the throat every second, grandiosity is inevitable discussing anything made by the man behind Precious (extremely effective) and The Paperboy (hilarious in its excess). So let’s put it this way: Like America itself, the movie’s a stimulating tangle. The director gives us a story that is a little bit true but mostly true-ish or true-esque, about a White House staffer who served several presidents before, during and after the Civil Rights movement. Whitaker portrays the fctional creation, Cecil Gaines, based very loosely on Eugene Allen, the subject of a 2008 Washington Post feature. In
Whitaker deserves a cleaner script than this sprawling story.
the introductory 1926 scenes The Butler illustrates what drives a quiet, watchful character deeper into himself. On this particular Macon, Georgia, plantation, Vanessa Redgrave plays the matriarch, eager to train another “house slave” (although she puts it far more harshly) but just enough of a human being to be appalled by her offspring’s rape of Cecil’s mother, and the point-blank murder of his father. Cast out on his own, Cecil soon fnds himself up north and schooling himself in the ways of the hospitality industries. He is blessed and cursed with the ability to seem “invisible” while in the service of white folks. Meantime, in the scenes away from the White House, Oprah Winfrey hoards all the attention-getting material (drunken, rageful monologues, guilty philandering) as Cecil’s wife, who raises two boys while her husband spends too much time at work. Cecil has that Gumpian knack for just being there and, with a few utterances, re-routing the river of history. A word or two in Eisenhower’s ear about segregation—bam, two steps forward. A sentence or three
spoken in the presence of JFK (James Marsden), and boom—a great man acquires the courage to be even greater. With LBJ, here depicted by Liev Schreiber, an equivocating heart and mind is forever changed. (This script really is a bit silly, for all its realworld anguish.) Meantime, Cecil’s oldest, the frebrand Louis (David Oyelowo), becomes a disciple of Dr. King and then Malcolm X and, no less than his father, a witness to massive historical events. Cecil himself fnally becomes a stealth agitator, nudging his employers in the direction of better pay and an occasional shot at advancement. Whitaker is such a forceful presence, you wonder initially if he’ll convince in such a recessive role. But he’s frst-rate in the part. It’s too bad The Butler doesn’t afford Whitaker the spacious acting opportunity that, say, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman handed Cicely Tyson 39 years ago. On the other hand, his on-screen cohorts are no doubt happy The Butler tells a lot of different stories, some more effectively than others. The Butler PG-13 ★★★✩✩
A&E
movies
bad apple A bland performance and awkward writing make this biopic as clunky as a ’70s-era Macintosh By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services
here’s what we know from Jobs, the frst and, with luck, the lamer of the two biopics (Aaron Sorkin is working on his own screenplay) about the late Apple computer guru Steve Jobs, played here by Ashton Kutcher. Genius, according to Kutcher’s bland performance, is a matter of pursing your lips, pausing, speaking deliberately and arrogantly and reading every line as if you already know the retort, because you are Steve Jobs and therefore an omniscient god. Kutcher has the circular eyewear and the dreamy gait down pat. Each time he serves up a conspicuous, dismissive hand gesture, you think: Yes, I seem to remember seeing the real Jobs doing something like that on camera. But Kutcher is everything except interesting. And the script by Matt Whiteley, done no favors by Joshua Michael Stern’s plodding direction, offers sketchy insight into the man
whose accomplishments are treated by Jobs as somewhere north of the invention of the wheel and somewhere south, barely, of the birth of human consciousness. (Composer John Debney accompanies every new business development with the mushy strings associated with a mid-’60s Bible epic.) On the other hand, the Jobs we meet here was a greedy, conniving man of capitalism, throwing his early colleagues under the bus without any stock options. He took a few too many years to even acknowledge the existence of his daughter. He lived for work, and not for life, or other people. He was, in other words, like the Frank Loesser lyric from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the one about resigning others to “bask in the glow of his perfectly understandable neglect.” That’s about 10 minutes’ worth out of the 122 in Jobs, most of which is honorifc pap
Kutcher does a lot of staring and speechifying as Steve Jobs in Jobs.
prone to cliché. We’re shown the origin story, the start in the Jobs family garage (John Getz and Lesley Ann Warren play Dad and Mom; Josh Gad, very good, is the key early collaborator Steve Wozniak); the early, clunky Apple computers in the ’70s, paving the way for sleek multizillion-dollar design perfection courtesy of the Macs, the iPads, the iPhones, the iThis and the iThat.
The dialogue comes straight out of The Benny Goodman Story. That look, someone says to a staring, pausing Kutcher, “tells me you’re on to something big.” Nobody talks in this movie; everyone speechifes or takes turns sloganing one another to death. “We gotta risk everything!” “We gotta make Apple cool again!” We know Jobs said a lot of these things. But what would he have
August 22–28, 2013
short reviews
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Paranoia (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
In this film, we get Harrison Ford playing a Steve Jobs-type tech powerhouse who’s about to launch a “game changer” of a smartphone. Gary Oldman plays his protégé turned murderous business rival. The minnow swimming among the sharks is Adam (Liam Hemsworth), who loses his job after blowing a product pitch. Oldman’s character blackmails Adam, sending him undercover to purloin a few trade secrets from Ford’s company. It’s too bad—the basics are there, but the end result is pretty bland.
Kick-Ass 2 (R) ★★✩✩✩
The gang is back in this sequel to the cultfavorite Kick-Ass, and the result is no worse and essentially no different than the original. Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) are back as the homegrown, limb-lopping superheroes and high school classmates. Jim Carrey, who came out against the violence in the movie after Sandy Hook, plays Col. Stars and Stripes. The movie sets up one round of heinousness after another, and the audience waits for the money shots.
Elysium (R) ★★★✩✩
From the South African writer-director who brought us District 9, this new allegorical scifi film is worthwhile. In the 22nd century, the ozone layer’s caput, the Earth is a mess and the one percent swan around in endless sunshine on an immense space station known as Elysium. Max (Matt Damon) is an ex-con factory worker who gets exposed to crazy radiation in an accident. He joins forces with a rebel (Wagner Moura) intent on kidnapping Elysium’s CEO, and so Max can cure what ails him. It’s an exciting and interesting effort.
made of this cautious movie? He probably would’ve liked looking like the smartest, most driven, most divinely inspired visionary on the planet. But he probably would’ve preferred being vital—a techno-maniacal personality imagined with a dash of skepticism, a la The Social Network. Jobs (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
[ by tribune media services ]
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (PG) ★★✩✩✩
This sequel still doesn’t propel this franchise anywhere near Harry Potter-ness, but it’s OK. The prologue remembers the death of a brave demigod who lives on as a magical tree that guards Camp Half-Blood. But someone has now poisoned the tree. Percy (Logan Lerman), Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) sneak off to see if they’re the ones destined to save Olympus. Again. A great turn by Stanley Tucci isn’t enough to save this. The stakes just aren’t high enough.
movies
We’re the Millers (R) ★ ✩✩✩
Well. It’s Cars. And Cars 2. But with Planes. No, like it’s the exact same movie and character-types and animation-stylings. Just with planes. There is basically nothing new to see here, but the movie execs are banking on kids not caring and buying all of the toys anyway. Which will probably happen. There’ll be a sequel. It’s not exactly a surprise, but Pixar set the bar so high that nothing compares anymore even though we expect it to. If you have kids, you’ll probably see it. But it should have been better.
David (Jason Sudeikis) is an easygoing marijuana dealer, the envy of all his married friends. He lives in the same apartment building as Rose (Jennifer Aniston), a stripper. David’s big client, played by Ed Helms, strong-arms him into becoming a drug mule. Not wanting to work alone, he hires Rose and two teenagers: wised-up runaway Casey (Emma Roberts), and wide-eyed naïf Kenny (Will Poulter). Naturally, the Mexican cartels get involved. There’s bickering; there’s ill-placed violence; there’s crude jokes. But what there is not is laughter.
2 Guns (R) ★★★✩✩
The Smurfs 2 (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
The To-Do List (R) ★★★✩✩
The Wolverine (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
Writer-director Maggie Carey delivers a more feminine-centric teen comedy. Brandy (Aubrey Plaza) is a high school grad who’s super smart and a social zero. Brandy makes a list to help with acquiring some sexual experience prior to college. Along for the ride are her pals, played by Alia Shawkat and Sarah Steele, as well as some dudes, played by Johnny Simmons and Scott Porter. While over the top, Carey’s a crafty writer, and Plaza’s delivery keeps things fresh.
Not much to see here, but at least it’s wholesome. Gargamel (Hank Azaria) the Smurf-hater is now a magician. But he’s running out of Smurf Essence. So, a couple of his Naughties (voiced by Christina Ricci and J.B. Smoove) Smurf-nap Smurfette, and they intend to get the magic formula from her. Unless Papa (Jonathan Winters) and his “B-team” (voiced by George Lopez, Anton Yelchin and John Oliver) can stop them, with the help of their human friends (Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays).
Hugh Jackman’s back as Logan/Wolverine, and the results aren’t too shabby. Way back when, Logan survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, while saving the life of a Japanese soldier. The soldier went on to become a powerful and corrupt industrialist. He has a dying wish for Logan, who winds up having to protect Yashida’s daughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), from the yakuza. It’s the strongest solo Wolverine flick yet.
August 22–28, 2013
This action comedy is based on the graphic novels, and the story shows it. Denzel Washington (Bobby Beans) plays a garden-variety bank robber, who’s actually an undercover DEA op, trying to bring down the Mexican drug cartel ruled by Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos). He doesn’t realize that his partner, Stig Stigman (Mark Wahlberg), is also undercover and after the same thing. Then things get twisty. While it’s a bit shallow and violent, it’s actually pretty entertaining.
103 VEGAS SEVEN
Planes (PG) ★★✩✩✩
Marketplace
Sally Steele
The local rock ’n’ roll queen on her love of the genre, her connection to rock stars and the limo trip to Pahrump that saved her magazine
August 22–28, 2013
By Sean DeFrank
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Sally Steele had absolutely no professional journalism experience when she published the frst issue of Las Vegas Rock City News in August 2004. Soon rechristened Vegas Rocks!, Steele nearly single-handedly has produced every issue of the free monthly publication, doing everything from writing stories and taking photos to selling ads and flling news racks around town. The once-aspiring singer had her frst brush with fame in the late 1980s, getting one of her videos played on MTV (you can fnd it on YouTube), before moving from Los Angeles to Nashville in the ’90s, and eventually landing in Las Vegas 13 years ago. On August 25, Steele will host the fourth annual Vegas Rocks! Magazine Awards at The Joint in the Hard Rock, where she will honor musicians such as longtime Yes vocalist Jon Anderson, drumming legend Carl Palmer and former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde (fans can purchase tickets to attend the show or to view it via live-stream on StageIt.com). Never one to worry about what’s in style, Steele remains passionate about the music she loves. How did you get so involved in rock ’n’ roll? I was one of those outcast-type kids who just sat in their room and listened to records all day; I had no friends. Rock ’n’ roll was all I had as a kid. I grew up in In-
dianapolis, and when I was 14, I would show up early to concerts and take pictures of Black Sabbath and Aerosmith and Kiss, a lot of bands that were just starting out. And a lot of people said, “Oh, you’re a groupie,” but I just
wanted pictures. And the stars were always upset that that’s all I wanted, that I wasn’t going to put out. I looked a lot older than I was. … I should have kept taking pictures instead of singing in bands for over 20 years.
You moved to Las Vegas in 2000, and eventually ended up driving a limousine. How do you go from that to launching your own magazine? I met a guy, fell totally in love with him and we got engaged within two weeks. Soon after we were together, he said, “I’m going to start my own local rock magazine.” I said, “That’s a great idea; I’ve been taking pictures and interviewing celebrities all my life, and I can write stories for it.” Long story short, he split a couple of days before the wedding, and I was suicidal. I went on my “honeymoon” alone with my daughter, who was 9 at the time, and I was crying at the Stratosphere buffet, saying, “I would have been good at that.” And my daughter said, “Forget him; start your own magazine.” And so I went to the Vans Warped Tour in 2004, and they wouldn’t give me a [media] pass, but I got backstage and talked to everybody and put out a paper. How have you been able to sustain the magazine for nearly a decade now? Hard work and divine intervention. In December 2006, I needed two more ads to get the magazine out, and I went out on Christmas Eve and sold two more ads. There have been so many instances like that; it’s almost like it was meant to be. The day I was to pick up the frst magazine, August 1, 2004, I was $600 short. I was working my job as a limo driver, and I said, “Well, I’m not going to make $600 today; I don’t know where I’m going to get it unless I rob a bank.” And I got some people in the car, and they wanted to go to Pahrump. I took them to
Sherry’s Ranch, and sometimes [brothel owners] tip the drivers for bringing clients up, and they handed me an envelope that had exactly $600. So as soon as we drove back and I dropped them off, I went and picked up the magazines. And since then, just when it looks like it’s going to be over, something comes through. It’s the same thing with the awards show. Speaking of that, you’ve been able to attract some big-name rockers to the show, such as Sammy Hagar, Lemmy Kilmister and Vince Neil. How have you done it? I’ve built relationships with a lot of these people over the years. If I had to sum it all up, I’m kinda like the awards show that gets the people in between the cracks, the ones that other awards shows just completely overlook. I’m 100 percent rock ’n’ roll, and that’s the only game I do and the only one I support. Come here, and I’m going to make you look good. Basically, if you can get past all the red tape, from the artist’s management to the PR people, and just somehow go directly to the source, that person will tell their management, “Yeah, I want to do that,” and that’s what happened with [Whitesnake vocalist] David Coverdale [last year]. Basically, I just asked them, with a little bit of persuasion and begging thrown in, but sometimes I don’t even have to do that. They know I’m legitimate; they know I’ve been around. Who tops the list of musicians you have yet to interview? Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney—I’m always trying to stalk them when they come to town, but I just can’t quite seem to get there. But I’m working on it. If I can keep these awards shows up, I’m slowly getting into the English rock royalty world, so who knows? What is it about rock music that does it for you? Just the way it makes me feel; no other type of music does that. It’s my heart and my soul. … I gotta be honest: I hate rap, I hate country, I hate blues and jazz. I just put everything into rock ’n’ roll. That’s generally all I care about, and I think that’s why the magazine has stayed around, because I feel so strongly about the music that I cover.
Photo by andrew james
7 questions
When did you start to pursue your own music career? I was always backstage, and I got tired of that. I thought, “I need to be onstage singing,” so I was in bands for years and years. I actually went to Japan with a cover band that I was in, and I was going to stay there, but I got tired of Japanese people. And that’s when I went to Hollywood, and I was there from 1980 till ’92, trying to be a famous singer or actress, whatever came along. It was always basically about the music; I was trying to get exposure as an actress to further my music career. After that I went to Nashville, which I think all the rockers did in the ’90s, but it did not work out for me.