Summer Simmers

July 1-7, 2010

Summer Simmers

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Contents

This Week in Your CiTY 13

seven DaYs

The highlights of this week.

By Bob Whitby

14

37

local newsroom

The long, dry saga of America’s first water park, and a charity on the brink.

Plus: David G. Schwartz’s Green Felt Journal and Michael Green on Politics.

69

93

Why Gen. McChrystal wasn’t the issue in Afghanistan, and the sad state of fiction. Plus: The New York Observer’s crossword puzzle and the weekly column by personal finance guru Kathy Kristof.

our food critic (successfully) scours the city for good barbecue.

By Max Jacobson Plus: Max’s Diner’s notebook and the sinatra Family estates vineyard celebrates Frank.

national newsroom

the latest

100

The Fuku truck rolls and poker for a cause. Plus: trends, Tweets, tech and gossip.

By Melissa Arseniuk

health & fitness

some excellent exotic veggies are now in season, so it’s time to do some adventerous shopping and eating.

By Max Jacobson

20 societY

102

snapshots from the nhL Awards ViP party and neal Preston’s show at skyBar.

sports & leisure

25

remember playing kickball when you were in middle school? Well, the Las Vegas chapter of WAkA is kind of like that, with Jello shots.

By Sean DeFrank Plus: Why you should make it your mission to bet on the Padres in Going for Broke

By Matt Jacob

stYle

This week’s Look, a few choice enviables and designer kay Lang.

45

110

niGhtlife

seven nights ahead, fabulous parties past and a talk with DJ Paul van Dyk.

77

arts & entertainment

Wonderground turns Vegas into a performance art haven, and SNL alums take a vacation in Grown Ups.

DininG

seven Questions

On the cover and above: Photographer TOMO; Assistant Kris Mayeshiro; Styling CC and Jules; Makeup Artist Jessica Woo; Hair Stylist Staci Linklater of Globe Salon; Post Production Steve Krall of Digital Spinach; Location Artisan Hotel Boutique; Models Hannah Haehn and Hollie Jagen (cover model) of Photo Genics.

have you ever done something you’re not proud of? nik richie sure hopes so, because the man behind TheDirty.com wants to put your foibles on the internet.

By Elizabeth Sewell

Features 30

Girls Just want to have fun

And what better way to do it than in shimmering summer fashion?

Photos by TOMO July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 9

Vegas seVen Publishers

Ryan T. Doherty | Justin Weniger AssociAte Publisher, Michael Skenandore

Editorial editoriAl director, Phil Hagen MAnAging editor, Bob Whitby AssociAte editor, Melissa Arseniuk news editor, Sean DeFrank A&e editor, Cindi Reed coPY editor, Paul Szydelko contributing editors,

MJ Elstein, style; Michael Green, politics; Matt Jacob, betting; Max Jacobson, food; Jarret Keene, music; David G. Schwartz, gaming/hospitality; Xania Woodman, nightlife contributing writers

Eric Benderoff, Sean Dunn, Brooke Edwards, Dan Ewen, Jeanne Goodrich, Jaq Greenspon, Andreas Hale, Jessica Prois, Christopher Rosen, Jason Scavone, Elizabeth Sewell, Kate Silver, Ida Siverio, Cole Smithey, T.R. Witcher interns

Mark Adams, Charlotte Bates, Kelly Corcoran, Jazmin Gelista, Natalie Holbrook, Sharon Kehoe, Patrick Moulin

art Art director, Lauren Stewart senior grAPhic designer, Marvin Lucas grAPhic designer, Thomas Speak stAff PhotogrAPher, Anthony Mair contributing PhotogrAPhers

Chad Carl, Brenton Ho, Tomas Muscionico, Beverly Oanes, Ryan Reason, Tony Tran contributing illustrAtor, Mike Blatt

Production/distribution director of Production/distribution, Marc Barrington Advertising coordinAtor, Jimmy Bearse

salEs sAles MAnAger, Sarah Goitz Account eXecutives, Christy Corda and Robyn Weiss

Comments or story ideas: comments@weeklyseven.com Advertising: sales@weeklyseven.com Distribution: distribution@weeklyseven.com Vegas Seven is distributed each thursday throughout southern nevada.

WenDOH MeDIa COMpanIes Ryan T. Doherty | Justin Weniger vice President, PUBLISHING, Michael Skenandore director, MARKETING, Jason Hancock entertAinMent director, Keith White creAtive director, Sherwin Yumul

FinancE director of finAnce, Gregg Hardin Accounts receivAble MAnAger, Rebecca Lahr generAl Accounting MAnAger, Erica Carpino credit MAnAger, Erin Tolen

PublisHEd in association WitH tHE obsErVEr MEdia GrouP Copyright 2010 Vegas Seven, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part without the permission of Vegas Seven, LLC is prohibited.

Vegas Seven, 888-792-5877, 3070 West Post Road, Las Vegas, NV 89118 10

Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

COntributOrs

Michael Blatt Illustration, “The Latest Thought,” page 16 “I’ve never been anything other than a painter,” says Blatt, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native now residing in Las Vegas. The world of sports has always been an inspiration for him, and he stood out from other artists by creating bold, textured works that contrasted with simpler paintings of sports heroes by other artists. He is also widely recognized in the world of advertising, having won awards for his work for STP Motor Oil, Westinghouse and Phillip Morris. These days, he concentrates on contemporary art and painting. “I’ve worked my whole life in sports and entertainment,” he says, “and I’m finally in a city where it’s all in one place.”

Brooke Edwards “All Dried Up,” page 37, “Accentuating the Positive,” page 39 Journalism found Edwards when she was teaching high school English and was “asked” to advise the school paper. Soon she was getting her master’s degree at New York University, but still educating through stories that have appeared in the Villager, The Atlanta Voice and Scholastic magazines. As a reporter for the Daily Press in Victorville, Calif., Edwards jumped at the chance to uncover the story behind the abandoned water park she’s passed dozens of times en route to Vegas.

Cristina Cohen and Julie Medeiros Stylists, cover and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” page 30 Cohen and Medeiros are the stylish duo behind CC & Jules.

Los Angeles natives, they met while attending the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. Cohen and Medeiros are both endowed with fabulous taste, but it is their individuality and diverse styles that come together to create the combination of CC & Jules.

Their playful approach to fashion is often seen when you run into them in Hollywood, Calif., where they both live.

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Seven DayS The highlights of this week in your city.

By Bob Whitby

Thur. 1 Welcome to July, the hottest month of the year in our Valley. But you don’t know hot. To learn, head to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, (644-4444), for the Night of Fire at the Bullring, which is a ton of racing capped off by a fireworks show and a “ jet car burn”—a junk car incinerated in the exhaust of a jet-powered dragster. Beavis put it best: “Fire!”

Gates are at 4 p.m., fireworks and jet car go off at 10:15 p.m. If that’s too acultural for you, author Beth Raymer is at the Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 7 p.m., to talk about her new book Lay the Favorite, a Memoir of Gambling (Spiegal & Grau, 2010, $25). It’s a tale of Raymer’s crash-course in sports betting after landing, jobless, in Vegas in 2001. Good stuff.

Lake Mead photo courtesy Las Vegas News Bureau; Library photo by Robert Casey

Fri. 2 The Bureau of Land Management is drafting a new plan for managing the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, and today is deadline for public input. If you have an opinion about things like removing rock-climbing bolts from the park, or adding trails in some areas and closing roads in others, go to parkplanning.nps.gov, search for Lake Mead NRA and then click on the Wilderness Management Plan. Civic duty taken care of, it’s free outside movie night at The District at Green Valley Ranch in Henderson, 8 p.m. near the Whole Foods Market. Tonight’s offering: Monsters vs. Aliens.

Sat. 3 Why wait until tomorrow to get your patriotic on? Summerlin is hosting its Patriotic Parade, from Hills Center Drive to Trailwood Drive, starting at 9 a.m. North Las Vegas is also getting it done early with its 11th annual Independence Day Jubilee, starting at 6 p.m. at Seastrand Park, 6330 Camino Eldorado. The party features music, food and activities for the tots. Fireworks are at 9:30 p.m. Call 633-2650. Boulder City is throwing its 62nd annual Damboree, with a parade starting at 9 a.m. on Colorado Street and festivities throughout the day at Broadbent Memorial Park, 1301 5th St.

Sun. 4 Fireworks today at: Boulder City, 9 p.m. at Veterans’ Memorial Park, activities start at 6 p.m., 1650 Buchanan Blvd.; Henderson, 9 p.m. at Heritage Park, with viewing and party starting at 6 p.m. at the Basic High School football field, 400 N. Palo Verde Dr.; Lake Las Vegas, 9 p.m., barbecue and activities throughout the day, 1600 Lake Las Vegas Parkway; Station Casinos (Red Rock Resort, Green Valley Ranch, Aliante Station, Boulder Station, Fiesta Henderson, Texas Station, Sunset Station and Santa Fe Station), 8:45 p.m.; Mandalay Bay and Caesars Palace, 9 p.m.; Las Vegas Hilton, 9:20 p.m.

Mon. 5 OK, straight up: the pickings are slim today. It’s a holiday, everyone is hung over from drinking to freedom all weekend and/or on their way home from the beach. So why not learn to dance like a stripper?

There’s nothing else to do. Stripper 101 has daily classes at the V Theater in the Miracle Mile Shops.

Classes are at 3 and 4:30 p.m. and tickets start at $49.50. Call 260-7200 for info.

Tues. 6 Does your cooking suck? Do people turn down your dinner party invitations claiming sudden illness or surprise visits from relatives? If so, the city of Henderson has just the thing for you: a series of cooking workshops beginning today, 5:30-8:30 p.m. at the Multigenerational Center, 250 S. Green Valley Parkway. First up: Thai basics, at which you will learn how to make tom yum soup, egg rolls, fried rice and chicken in green curry sauce. The cost is $35 per person, plus $10 for supplies. Sign up online at cityofhenderson.com.

Wed. 7 As of today, Henderson’s main library is back: The James I. Gibson Library is opening the doors to its new digs. The old building, at the corner of Water Street and Basic Road, closed May 15. The new, bigger and better version, at 100 W. Lake Mead Parkway, opens today with a ceremony at 8:30 a.m. It features more parking, more space and a drive-through window to pick up reserved materials. Best of all, the cost of the new building was covered by selling the old one to the city of Henderson for $4 million.

July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 13

The LaTesT

What’s hip, what’s happening, what’s going on—and what you need to know right now.

Compiled by Melissa Arseniuk

Charity

Good Bets

The city’s newest mobile gourmet outlet offers late-night umami to the masses.

Be Careful How You Pronounce It Fuku truck rolls, bringing exotic burgers and fries across town Las Vegas is getting another gourmet kitchen on wheels: Fukuburger’s “Fuku truck” hits the pavement July 4.

The truck purveying Japanese-inspired burgers comes to us from two former Tao servers, Robert “Mags” Magsalin and Colin Fukunaga.

“My passion is burgers and my ancestry is Japanese, so I wanted to do something to put them together,” Fukunaga says. The deal was done after work, over rounds of Maker’s Mark and Bud Light, and the pair will soon rove the city in hopes of finding (and feeding) hungry party people and service industry workers.

“We’re trying to really touch people in our industry, especially before and after the nightclub,” Magsalin says. “There’s probably nothing better when you’re pretty much hung over—or still drunk—than a really tasty burger and fries.”

The Fuku truck offers six Asian-inspired burgers (five beef and one chicken, $5-$6), plus furikake macaroni salad and garlic fries seasoned with

togarashi (a blend of seven Japanese spices), served with banana ketchup or sweet chili aioli ($2).

Kakigori—the Japanese equivalent of a snow cone—is also on the menu. “For $3, you get this thing that looks like a volcano—this big, icy volcano,” Magsalin says.

Fukuburger marinates its beef patties in sake, mirin and yuzu, then sears them on the grill and brushes them with a special glaze before serving. Although laborious, the process delivers true umami, says Magsalin—who attended the California Culinary Academy and, at 19, became the youngest-ever sous chef at the Rio. Las Vegas got on the mobile gourmet food wagon earlier this year with the Slidin’ Thru slider truck. Unlike its counterpart, The Fuku truck serves up full-size burgers, and debuts July 4 at the Red Handed Tattoo Gallery (8665 W. Flamingo Road, near Desert Breeze Park), at 6 p.m. After that, customers can track its location on Twitter (@fukuburger) or on fukuburger.com.

All in for Africa: Ante Up returns to the Rio July 3.

14

Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Fukuburger photo by Anthony Mair

Eat

Stars of screen and felt put their money where their mouths are July 3 at the fourth annual Ante Up for Africa poker tournament.

The event takes place at the Rio, two days before the World Series of Poker main events kick off July 5.

The buy-in for the accelerated, five-hour, no-limit hold’em tournament is $5,000. Last year, 138 players competed for $670,680, and Aleksandr Bolotin walked away with the $177,730 grand prize.

Gaming laws ban organizations from requiring that prize money go to charity, but money winners are strongly “encouraged” to voluntarily donate half their winnings. (Bolotin followed form, donating $88,865 last year.)

Returning to the tables this year are event co-founders actor Don Cheadle and poker pro Annie Duke, as well as actors Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Ray Romano and Brad Garrett.

Professional poker players are also expected, including Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, Phil Gordon, Andy Bloch, Chris Ferguson and Phil Hellmuth.

As a nonprofit foundation, Ante Up for Africa strives to “make a tangible impact on the ground in Africa, through humanitarian assistance and policy work toward lasting solutions to Africa’s worst conflicts,” and has raised nearly $3 million since its inception in 2007. Recent beneficiaries include Ben Affleck’s charity, the Eastern Congo Initiative, and Matt Damon’s cause, Water.org, both of which received grants for $50,000. anteupforafrica.org

This week in your ciTy Tech Art

new Droid

It’s a Sign Two aspects of Las Vegas’ aesthetic— bright lights and cold concrete—are the focus of a new exhibit at the Historic Fifth Street School.

Concrete & Sparkle: Influences Of Las Vegas Signs and Architecture opens July 1, showcasing contrasting sides of the city through paintings and photographs.

“The programming of the space is really about the people who are around the space,” says city of Las Vegas gallery coordinator Jeannne Voltura, who curated the exhibit. The collection was originally intended to showcase architecture, but Voltura thought it best to alter her approach. “I didn’t want an architecture display, because they can be a little bit boring,” she says.

Realizing this, she compiled about two-dozen works from nine local artists that depict our architecture in atypical

Sparkling concrete: “El Cortez” by Atsuko Parker

ways. Notable contributors include Darius Kuzmickas, Jerry Misko, Randa Bishop, Linda Alterwitz and Atsuko Parker. “[Bishop is] mostly a travel photographer, but her work has an edge to it, too, that goes into the artistic realm,” Voltura says. Look for her shot of one of Aureole’s Wine Angels, as well as a candid shot captured by Alterwitz using a fisheye lens in the valet area at Caesars Palace, and Parker’s manipulated, multilayered photos of vintage Vegas signage.

Following its July 1 opening night reception, the exhibit will be open through Oct. 24 by appointment only (2291012), and on select dates, including July 15 and 22 from 2-7 p.m. artslasvegas.org

Fashion Connect

JWoww photo by Eugene Gologursky / Retna Ltd.

Coffee and Downloads Starbucks sweetens its offerings July 1 and introduces free Wi-Fi at all company-owned locations.

Fifty-four Starbucks stores in and around Las Vegas now offer free Internet access, but the 107 privately owned, non-franchise outlets, including mall kiosks and locations in casinos and Target stores, are exempt from the change.

The coffee giant previously included up to two hours of Internet time with a $5 card, but it had to be registered online. When your time was up, Starbucks charged a $4 reconnecting fee.

Southern Highlands Starbucks supervisor Erica Duheaney likes the new policy.

Her location shares a parking lot with a McDonald’s, which has been offering free Wi-Fi (and presumably wooing Internethungry, coffee-loving customers) since January. “We have at least one customer a day come in and ask about the Wi-Fi,” she says. “I think making it free will be great for business.”

Jersey Store

Jersey Shore is hardly a pinnacle of cuttingedge fashion. From Jenni Farley’s revealing halter-tops, to Mike Sorrentino’s affliction for Affliction, the look isn’t haute couture.

Still, JWoww has a clothing line, and will celebrate during a private event at Ghostbar July 3.

Farley, 23, calls her collection Filthy Couture.“I kept it low-cut and short,” she says. “That’s my style.”

She debuted her designs at the MTV Movie Awards, and opened her online store (filthycouture. com) on June 30.

Most pieces range from $40$120, with made-to-order dresses costing up to $3,000. “Dresses like the one that I wore to the Grown Ups premiere and the [Hard Times of] RJ Burger premiere will be the more affordable ones, anywhere from $100-$300,” she says.

Meanwhile, Sorrentino is developing a clothing line, too— and his collection of men’s shirts, sweatshirts and accessories has a similarly foul mouth: It’s called Dilligaf, an acronym for his signature phrase, “Do I look like I give a fuck?”

In the wake of the iPhone 4 frenzy, you may have missed a pretty significant smartphone launch from Motorola and Verizon Wireless: The Droid X. The two companies recently introduced the second in what appears to be a series of Droids. The first Droid, released last year, helped Motorola get its groove back and indicated Verizon’s desire to offer phones that compete with the iPhone, which is available exclusively through AT&T. Unlike the first version, the Droid X does not include a slide-out keyboard.

Instead, you chose two methods of touch-typing your messages: by tapping the touch-screen keys on the display, or using a function called “Swype” and sliding your fingers across the keyboard to connect letters.

Swype seems bizarre at first, but I got the hang of it after about five minutes.

In fact, I think it’s a breakthrough that could greatly improve the speed of phone-based messaging.

The other key difference on the Droid X is its wonderful 4.3-inch screen. It’s huge, compared to the 3.5-inch screen on the iPhone 4. The phone also features a camera that shoots 720p HD video, and software for corporate e-mail and mobile security, which means a lost or stolen phone can be remotely wiped to remove (and retrieve) sensitive information, as well as your contact list.

The Droid X is the latest in a string of Android-based smartphones designed to rival the iPhone. If you have iPhone envy but don’t want to use AT&T, you may want to consider it— or Sprint’s HTC Evo (the nation’s first 4G phone) or Verizon’s other Android offering, the HTC Incredible. The Droid X goes on sale July 15 for about $200. – Eric Benderoff

The Droid X

Jenni “JWoww” Farley in one of her designs at the premiere of Grown Ups. July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 15

We Don’t Need New, We Need Next What some of the world’s oldest cities can teach one of its youngest

By T.R. Witcher

16 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

When you’re in a city famous for its simulacra of other cities, it’s reassuring when you actually check in on some of those other cities. The Luxor may be able to beam a light into outer space, but the pyramids—you know, the real ones—have been standing for more than 4,000 years.

It might have been the sheer newness of Las Vegas that recently drove me to visit Athens, Cairo and Istanbul—three of the longest-running shows on earth.

And the cities did not disappoint, with their intoxicating blends of people, culture and history.

You think Vegas has a lock on hustle and bustle?

Try crossing the streets of Cairo around the Egyptian Museum. Think the Stratosphere or the Foundation Room is the last word in sparkling city panoramas?

Try a rooftop hotel bar in the Sultanahmet in Istanbul, watching the moon glide across the Bosporus. Think CityCenter is the epitome of cutting-edge architecture?

Try the stunning New Acropolis Museum at the base of the Acropolis in Athens.

Excitement in Vegas is a production—for us it’s stagecraft, with sets and performers and props. For the great cites of the western Mediterranean, it’s the real thing. These cities are restlessly alive from snout to tail.

Vegas looks more than a little sleepy by comparison.

As a place, as an icon, Las Vegas punches well above its weight class. And it’s no surprise that people abroad

knew about Sin City, even if all they could do to communicate it was to intone “cha-ching” or to throw a pair of imaginary dice. But as a real city, ours fades exponentially from the world’s top rank every mile you walk away from the Strip. Ours is the great one-hit wonder. We are masters of everything that’s new, and not much else.

But new is no longer enough. We don’t need new. New is just another casino. Just another Cirque show. Just another master-planned housing development at the edge of the desert, or some anonymous super lounge boasting 14-carat design and this week’s hot new DJ. In a state with depleted funds, in a town where the best economic news is the possibility of a weak recovery sometime in 2011, we don’t need new. What we need is next.

Great cities have layers, and while it’s unfair to ask the brashest young upstart to match the history of cities that go back a thousand years or more, now is a time for a reinvention of Las Vegas. If the recession has taught us anything, it’s that Las Vegas doesn’t exist in an impenetrable bubble. It’s time to grow up and move forward. So where do we go? What’s next?

First is to re-imagine our core strength. We should no longer think of ourselves only as place that manufactures tourists. We should think of the city as a place that manufactures connection. National connection.

Global connection. We should be innovating different kinds of places and spaces people can connect, as well as different kinds of technology.

Next, we should consider design. The city has the DNA to transform itself into an international center for designers of all stripes—from theatrical sets to interior spaces to skyscrapers, even computer software.

We make neon here; let’s start designing or fabricating high-end displays. And given our attempt to hijack the furniture industry from High Point, N.C., we should be thinking of how to get the next generation of furniture designers or fabricators here, as well. While we’re at it, there’s no reason that a city as image-conscious as ours can’t emerge as a new center for advertising.

And we should be investing in the green economy.

But the word “green,” and its sister “sustainability,” are vague words. Every city is trying to cash in on green.

In the desert, however, it can’t just be lip service. Solar energy and energy-transmission lines are obvious places on which we can build. And since we’re already about tapped out when it comes to water, Vegas should become a leader in water conservation research and technology. Mastering that, we could extend our reach to the research and manufacture of desalinization facilities and hydroponic agriculture.

Finally, instead of waiting for the construction industry to return with the same products they’ve been building for years, let’s jump-start companies that can assemble prefabricated housing that is cheaper, more attractive and more resource-efficient than our endless swaths of tract homes.

The great cities of the world are constantly reinventing themselves. They have to, lest they fade into history, or be pushed aside by new rivals. We can’t go back.

And we can’t simply rehash what has worked in the past. Right now people go to Las Vegas mostly to get away from the troubles of the world. But now that those troubles have landed here, can the city become a place where people come to remake the world?

Illustration by Mike Blatt

THE LaTEsT THougHT

Star-studded parties, celebrity sightings, juicy rumors and other glitter.

Got a juicy tip? gossip@weeklyseven.com

Vince Neil Gets another DUi, But This Time No one Dies

Neil was all smiles at his charity poker tournament at the Hard Rock Hotel last year (above), but he wasn’t a happy camper when police booked him for DUI on June 27 (right).

Vince Neil spent the night of June 27 in jail after Metro pulled him over on suspicion of DUI. His wife was reportedly out of town when it happened and had to fly back to Las Vegas to bail him out. The 49-year-old Mötley Crüe frontman was driving his 2009 Lamborghini Gallardo on Desert Inn Road near Las Vegas Boulevard when police pulled him over. Apparently he had too many post-Daytime Emmy wobbly pops at his new watering hole at the Hilton, Tres Rios Cantina, before hopping behind the wheel. Bail was set at $2,000.

Perhaps Neil should consider this: The MSRP on a base model Gallardo is $205,000. Even at $50 a fare, the purchase price is equivalent to 4,100 cab rides—a solid five years of taxis to and from the bar.

This DUI charge is bad enough on its own, but it isn’t on its own—it’s the same (OK, similar) old situation. In 1984, Neil crashed his sports car into another car, killing his passenger, Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle Dingley.

Neil pled guilty to manslaughter and drunken driving, and had to pay $2.5 million in restitution to the victims and do community service. He also served just 20 days of a 30-day jail sentence. Meanwhile, former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress got two years for shooting himself in the leg. But we digress.

Despite his recent booze-fueled scandal, and ever the role model and one to learn from his mistakes, Neil remains on the bill to play the Cruzan Campfire Concert Series at the Palms.

Here’s hoping George Maloof makes sure Neil gets home safely after the rum-fueled July 1 show, and sends him on his way in one of the casino’s chauffeured, lime green SUVs. While others might cancel an appearance following a DUI (to, you know, seek professional help or something), Neil is eager to promote the solo album he released just five days before his mostrecent arrest. The name of the record? Tattoos & Tequila. We’d like to see Neil explain that one to the judge. We’d also like to propose a title for the follow-up to his solo release: Handcuffs & Conjugal Visits.

DiCaprio and Hilton Party On Leonardo DiCaprio was back in town for an encore at Encore on June 27, when he made it two weekends in a row of partying at Surrender. The first time, the 35-year-old was in the pleasant company of super-hot swimsuit model Bar Refaeli, but when he returned for round two, he joined a party-loving pair of heiresses.

Paris and Nicky Hilton were also back in town, apparently determined to give Holly Madison a run for her money as Vegas’ No. 1 party favor.

Of course, the Hiltons’ recent omnipresence at Wynn and Encore could be attributed to the fact that the blonder of the sisterhood is rumored to be dating a Las Vegas nightclub mogul who has strong ties to the property.

Regardless, the Hiltons joined DiCaprio at Surrender’s owner’s table on June 27. We’re not sure if it was DiCaprio’s sparking conversation, or something that DJ Steve Aoki did (or didn’t do), but something kept Paris from invading the DJ booth that night. (She has been known to play DJ from time to time. Meanwhile, audiences have been known to love actual DJs such as Aoki more.) Still, DiCaprio couldn’t have been all that captivating: After about an hour, the Hiltons, ahem, departed, and moved their party to a private bungalow.

When Regis Philbin wanted to make a grand entrance at the 37th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on June 27, David Copperfield came to the rescue. The illusionist made the revered host suddenly appear behind a collection of screens, prompting Reeg to demand, “How did you do it? I can’t believe it!”

The real question, however, was how 78-yearold Philbin did it: His lips weren’t moving while his voice boomed over the sound system.

Dumbledore would be so disappointed.

DiCaprio, the ever-dapper Don Juan.

18 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Real [Bad] Magic

Tweets of the Week Compiled by @marseniuk

@chandlermassey Whew! It’s not a good workout until I throw up a little.

@gregg_sulkin I just got into my car valet. I think the valet let one off!!! Not happy.

@AliciaJacobs Best line of the night at the Emmy after-party: Drunk woman says 2 me, “I was so pissed when they killed u off the Guilding Light!”

@ghostbusteryan Gothic kids look silly enough in the winter as it is. But it’s way too hot for gloves, chains, long black clothes and boots. #giveitarest.

@lushbeat I don’t wake up and ask what’s for breakfast. I ask what’s for LIFE!

@megroxthevox After the buuuusy day I had in the heat, you could probably crack an egg on my abs, and then fry it on my head. @Architechnology Landon Donovan got some girl pregnant in England—looks like the English let another American shot slip through.

He shoots, he scores!

@JohnnyEricksen So, it goes our cabana, Leo DiCaprios’s, Derek Fisher’s and some super model. Next to that?

Paris Hilton. Thank you, Vegas. @hypnocools My pool is 100 degrees. Guess the solar cells work!

Hmmm, hot tub is at 98... @WorldNewsVine It has to be a joke right? $20K for portrait of Governor Jim Gibbons, in a state with the highest unemployment rate. @HouserInc To everyone going to #EDC, you’re still expected to finish your algebra 2 homework and read chapter 3 of “Catcher in the Rye” by Monday.

@MittySapin I swear this guy from Disaster Date was my classmate in one of my KIN classes @ UNLV.

Main Vince Neil photo by Erik Kabik/Retna; Leonardo DiCaprio photo by Hitoshi Yamada / interTOPICS / Retna Ltd.

THE LaTEsT Gossip

Society

For more photos from society events in and around Las Vegas, visit weeklyseven.com/society.

Power Play The NHL Awards returned to Las Vegas on June 23, and hosted a VIP reception at Simon at Palms Place the night before the annual gala. The exclusive event provided the opportunity to mix and mingle with hockey royalty, including nominees such as Pavel Datsyuk (top left, third from left), as well as retired All-Star Eddie Olczyk and legendary Hockey Night in Canada co-host Ron MacLean (right).

Photography by Brenton Ho

20  Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Society

For more photos from society events in and around Las Vegas, visit weeklyseven.com/society.

Preston, close Up Iconic rock ’n roll photographer Neal Preston (above) put four decades of work on display on June 18 during an intimate photo exhibit at SkyBar. Highlights of the showcase included a never-beforeseen contact sheet of Led Zeppelin photographs, and an appearance by award-winning screenwriter Cameron Crowe (below, far left). The summer issue of the Hard Rock Hotel’s in-house magazine, HRH, features a 12-page spread of Preston’s photos and an introduction penned by Crowe.

Photography by Erik Kabik/Retna

22 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

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ENVIABLES

Style

the Ford Face

He’s done it all and now, the final frontier: lipstick. Tom Ford’s Private Blend Lip Color Collection presents 12 classic colors from bare nude to fire red to deep brown. In true Tom Ford style, the packaging is spectacular. The lipstick is stamped with the TF logo on the bullet and comes in a gold-accented ivory case. $45, Neiman Marcus, Fashion Show.

The Look

Photographed by Tomas Muscionico

StAcy MBIthI, 34

Property manager, Harsch Investment Properties Style icons: Princess Diana, Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Beyoncé

Plastic Passion

Kartell has been making innovative home decor in bright vibrant colors for years. But in 2010, the Italian design house decided to switch it up and go black, offering pieces in the simplest color of all. The Deco-style, Tatì table lamp is available in opaline and black methacrylate or pleated fabric. $698.

Unica home, 702-616-9280, unicahome.com

Modern WoMan

Susan & Veronica introduces an apron that is actually sexy.

It’s designed for today’s modern woman who works, entertains, manages the home and looks great while doing it all. Susan and Veronica are two former MTV execs who gave it all up to pursue their love of fashion. Our favorite: the almost too-cute-to-cook in strapless apron. $53, susanandveronica.com.

What she’s wearing now: Michael Kors glasses, Bebe earrings, dress from Hottie World, Marciano shoes, Dior watch, BCBG jacket, Make Up Forever #206 lipstick and Mac eye shadow.

An avid traveler, Mbithi will be hitting the road frequently this summer and has packing down to a science. “I bundle wrap all my casual clothes to avoid wrinkling and dressy clothes are hung in a dry cleaning bag. I normally take three or four pairs of shoes, which include low heels tennis/running shoes and two pairs of dressy, strappy high heels in a neutral color.” What’s her most favorite organizing tool? “A transparent DKNY travel bag so I can easily see all make-up and other personal items.”

July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 25

Style

The kitchen exemplifies the warm, contemporary design.

Life Above the Clouds Interior designer Kay Lang shares her insights on crafting one of the most exclusive residential opportunities in Las Vegas, The Residences of the Mandarin Oriental

By MJ Elstein How long did The Residences of Mandarin Oriental take to build?

We spent four and a half years of our lives working on this. You get intimately involved with projects of this magnitude, and it was so fast-tracked. It was just an amazing project, like being on a giant roller coaster.

What was your major design influence for the interiors?

I think it was the view. Plus, the building was an odd shape. We had to fit a lot of different types of floor plans within the shape. It was challenging.

What were some of the concessions that you had to make because of the shape?

When you’re offering tenants a product, and it’s a luxury product, you have to make sure that all of the components are pretty much equal, even though it might be arranged differently, i.e., your bathroom finishes, basic sizes have to run the same; your kitchens might expand or contract, but the same type of system has to be made available for each tenant, so they feel that they’re buying a piece of that dream they saw at the showroom. And that’s a little bit of a challenge. It’s like fitting a lot of things into a very unusual box. It was so exciting, because it was the first nongaming property on the Strip of that caliber, and it has a distinctly modern, urban atmosphere with kind of a Zen feeling.

There is a overwhelming sense of calm when you walk in the hotel and the residential space …

26 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

That’s exactly the first thing I wanted was a haute couture meets Zen. I wanted to be able to provide the sensuality and the special kind of services that the Mandarin Oriental offers, but in the residential component, and I think that we accomplished that by designing a peaceful kind of oasis, a departure from everything else that’s in Vegas. I think we did it by using the natural palette, even though you have this bright red painting when you walk in, it still fits. Most contemporary design can sometimes be cold, hard-edged, and we avoided those obvious touchstones by surrounding it with softer textures and warm wood tones. The palette expresses a general quiet mood.

What are your favorite design nuances?

I love the little valet door at each entryway. A lot of people don’t even notice it, which is a good thing. For me, that’s the best thing. You could just order some groceries, or your dry cleaning, or have your suit pressed, or call the pharmacy, whatever, and it’s delivered there and you never have to talk to anybody. If you want to be in your pajamas, you wouldn’t have to get dressed to go to the door. Not like a traditional hotel or condo hotel. I love that about it.

Have you designed a residential component within a hotel before?

Yes, we have. The Fairmont in Vancouver, British Columbia, was a similar kind of contemporary, urban destination, right across from the convention center.

And then, kind of on the polar opposite, with the same kind of complex issues, we worked on the Ritz-Carlton.

That’s a different kind of property because the hotel maintains the condos. These are private residences, but they have the same services as a hotel.

What are some of the options available to owners?

We offer three packages, the Majestic Pearl, the Sovereign Jade and the Imperial Orchid. Those are the basic three packages. I have these pearl earrings, and they broke and they’re different shapes, and I

Kay Lang designed the common areas and 227 residences of the Mandarin Oriental.

thought, oh my God, those are the perfect palette: Majestic Pearl. Then the Sovereign Jade, I actually had gone to China for another project, but we saw some wonderful raw jade. Raw jade is so beautiful. There’s all different shades of jade—people probably don’t know that it comes in oyster, and amber and brown and greens.

The idea of Sovereign Jade was a great name, and that was the inspiration. And orchids, you can find an orchid in my office every day of the

week. That’s my favorite flower. I have them in my home, I have them in my office as you first come in, and I have them in my private office.

And then in the penthouses, which are the upgraded packages, they have three different plans. They have Splendid Sunrise, Celestial Clouds and Royal Sunset, and how we came up with the names for those was basically we thought, here you are inside this incredible building, and you’re just up in the clouds.

What are you currently working on?

Right now we’re working on a brand new project in Tucson, Ariz. It’s a 525-room Sheraton with a convention center. We’re very happy to be involved in it because not a lot of new projects are being built. So that’s kind of exciting, and it’s exciting to bring to the city of Tucson. We also have a five-star resort in Abu Dhabi and some private high-end residential projects for clients.

July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 27

Style

Fashion RX

Sense of Sensibility Adopt a British friend and learn how to dress better

In the military, a lot of cross-training takes place with other units that have different specialties or unique talents.

Sometimes these other units are from different services, and sometimes they are from other countries. Similar to the World Cup, it is quite the event: Revelry and hooliganism frequently ensue, and ambassadors may have to get involved in international incidents over seemingly trivial matters. Who knew the Japanese envoy’s daughter was only 16!?

My point? Occasionally bringing in an outside influence for expertise is another way of expanding your skill set. So as much as I have preached about lifestyle being a mindset and more about the person than the actual clothes, I feel it’s necessary to provide some substantive context to the thought with some real-life examples.

Having some spent some serious drinking time as well as off-the-clock chill time with a dapper British crooner (Matt Goss) who frequents this fair town of ours every Friday and Saturday evening, it’s apparent that some guys have a real sense of who they are and what they are trying to portray. Amid our talks, the same points are touched on again and again—style, class, manners, realness and having some good mates to support to you.

Leave it to a charmingly accented Brit to drive home and articulate some of the finer points of being a man with style. “Civility costs nothing,” he notes, and looking sharp shows respect for not only others in your presence but yourself as well.

Another UKer who has a penchant for tasteful hats and cheeky insight continually reminds some of the most-stylish and best-dressed in town that we don’t stand a chance comparatively, since most of us didn’t have a sense of style ingrained in us from a young age, nor did we have a tailor as a confidante from the ripe ol’ age of 7.

If anyone remembers (Palms executive) Jon Gray’s wedding and the ensemble (Vegas Seven contributor) Ben Conmy was sporting, the point is clear. So get your World Cup on and find a UKer from whom to gain some style insight. Who knows, you might channel your inner Team US, win your group and gain a sense of sensibility.

Fashion expert Sean Dunn delivers style-starved Las Vegas men their marching orders.

Crooner Matt Goss is one of the best-dressed men in Las Vegas.

28 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Photo by Jana Cruder

By Sean Dunn

Summer Shopping Spectacular Try it on, take it home, taste a sample, or quench your thirst ALL AT SPECIAL MIDSUMMER DISCOUNTS UP TO 40%!

12:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

July 10

Easy access from I-15, I-215 and Las Vegas Boulevard to our complimentary 24-hour valet.

(This Page) Diesel dress, Forum Shops at Caesars, $200. Bebe shoes, $159. Juicy Couture hat, Forum Shops at Caesars, $79. RGB earrings and bracelet from Scoop NYC, $50 and $40.

(Across) On Hollie, left: Missoni bikini top from Scoop NYC, Forum Shops at Caesars, $390. Brette Sandler swimwear top from Scoop NYC, $218.

Bebe shorts from Bebe, Forum Shops at Caesars, $69. Sequin necklace from Intermix, Forum Shops at Caesars, $145. Emilio Pucci sunglasses, Forum Shops at Caesars.

On Hannah, right: Torn by Ronny Kobo dress from Intermix, $115.

Emilio Pucci sunglasses, $380.

Girls Just Want to Have Fun Two is better than one when it comes to making a summer splash

Photographer TOMO Assistant Kris Mayeshiro Styling CC and Jules Makeup Artist Jessica Woo Hair Stylist Staci Linklater of Globe Salon Post Production Steve Krall of Digital Spinach Location Artisan Hotel Boutique Models Hannah Haehn and Hollie Jagen of Photo Genics

July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven  31

Myne belted romper from Intermix, $220. Sam Edelman espadrilles from Intermix, $155. Bebe necklace, $34. Juicy Couture bracelet and rings, price upon request.

32 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

On Hollie: Le Doux bikini top and bottom from ledouxswimwear.com, $95 and $90.

Kenneth Jay Lane bracelet from Intermix, $135. Sergio Rossi shoes from Intermix, $690.

Scoop NYC hat, $95. Diesel sunglasses, $135.

On Hannah: Le Doux monokini, $165. Bebe earrings, $29.

American Apparel vintage sunglasses, Forum Shops at Caesars, $35. Stuart Weitzman for Scoop NYC shoes, $375.

Parker dress from Intermix, Forum Shops at Caesars, $195.

Bebe earrings, Forum Shops at Caesars, $29. Multi-strand bracelet from Scoop NYC, Forum Shops at Caesars, $95.

THe LocaL Newsroom all Dried Up Taking a look at the long, uneven history of America’s first water park

By Brooke Edwards Halfway between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, off a desolate stretch of Interstate 15, rows of palm trees, peach stucco buildings and ’50s-themed billboards rise from the Mojave Desert. On the hill behind them are scattered staircases that lead to nowhere and a water tower painted like a Coca-Cola can, to attract a sponsor that never came.

With three names and four owners over the last 50 years, this water park in the middle of nowhere has been plagued by bankruptcies, allegations of embezzlement and a tragedy that left a former employee paralyzed.

But Lake Dolores, as it was originally named, also holds fond memories for countless people now meeting up on Facebook to reminisce about the fun they had at what was arguably the first water park in America.

“Mr. Byers was way ahead of his time,” says Rue Blackwood, who grew up going to the park as a close friend of John “Bob” Byers’ granddaughter Penny.

“Without him creating Lake Dolores … Raging Waters [the largest water park in California] would have never been what it is today—or any water-slide park for that matter.”

Byers and his wife, Dolores, started adding slides and a rope swing to the lake on their Newberry Springs, Calif., ranch just east of Barstow in the ’50s, opening a public campground on the property in 1962.

“I don’t think you can compare it with the water parks of today,” says Rick Jaeger, a Big Bear, Calif., resident who took his children camping at Lake Dolores some 25 years ago after passing the resort a dozen times on the way to Las Vegas.

With a stand-up steel slide few could master and a zip line that carried riders high above the desert before finally reaching the water, Jaeger says he surprisingly never saw anyone get hurt.

“My kids loved it,” he says. “They had a ball.”

But, as family-friendly Vegas flourished and Wet ’n Wild opened on the Strip in 1985, business declined and the Byers family shut down Lake Dolores in 1988. Then,

Lake Dolores reopened as Rock-A-Hoola in 1998, but the water park, which originally opened in the ’60s, closed for good in 2004.

in 1990, along came Terry Christensen, a former Marine and general contractor who’d built four water parks for other people and decided it was time for his own.

“He wanted to develop it into a more modern water park,” says Spike Lynch, who helped Christensen reinvent the park and has become its unofficial caretaker.

After eight years of planning and struggling to put together funding, Christensen opened Rock-A-Hoola in the summer of 1998, with a commercial touting “the refreshing oasis that is the all-new Lake Dolores resort and Rock-A-Hoola water park.”

In June 1999 the park hosted the Electric Daisy Carnival, which was expected to attract 5,000 people but ended up welcoming an estimated 10,000.

A month later, promoters hoped to follow in EDC’s footsteps and hold the Nocturnal Wonderland concert at Rock-A-Hoola. Organizers were counting on 20,000 people when San Bernardino County’s Board of Supervisors denied their permit.

That same year tragedy struck Rock-A-Hoola when 23-year-old employee Jimmy Mason was paralyzed after riding a slide during off-hours without letting enough water flow to the pool below. Christensen also lost a high-profile lawsuit in 1999, charging a former local news anchor with fraud in an investment deal. But after being open for just two fairly busy seasons, Christensen, who died in January 2009, was forced to close the park.

Crossing a bridge that spanned his friend’s lazy river— now littered with broken plastic chairs and decaying palm fronds—Lynch remembers how Christensen would let local seniors get some free exercise walking in the river before the park opened.

“The problem is that the park was never designed to be a stand-alone water park,” he says.

Christensen’s vision was a 1,000-space RV park adjacent to Rock-A-Hoola with a motocross track, tennis courts and driving range. But Christensen, having accumulated a reported $3 million in debt trying to make that vision

Photo by Tomas Muscionico

Continued on page 40

ALS of Nevada: ‘We’re Just Going Week by Week’ Nonprofit organization struggles to find money to remain open

By Kate Silver

ALS of Nevada helped make a trying time easier for Renee Flood. In 2008, the 48-year-old’s mother, Kathy, 66, was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Renee, who lost her job around the same time as the diagnosis, had no money, no resources and didn’t know where to turn.

She learned about ALS of Nevada through her mother’s neurologist. The nonprofit organization helped the women get the medical care and support they

needed. But now, because of funding shortages, ALS of Nevada risks closing.

“Without ALS of Nevada, I don’t know what I would do,” Renee says. “I wouldn’t know where to begin getting the stuff that I need when I need it.”

She’s not alone. The nonprofit organization, the only one in Nevada that helps ALS patients and their families, is a one-stop shop for support, educational resources, donated medical supplies and a monthly health-care clinic. The organi-

zation, which has an annual budget of $385,000, helps pay for the medical care of patients who have the degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system. And that’s no small feat, considering medication alone can cost nearly $1,000 per month for a patient.

Kathy, who died on June 29, received a variety of products from ALS of Nevada, including an electric scooter and items to help make her bathroom more accessible.

But unless the clinic begins seeing an Continued on page 39 July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven

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Green Felt Journal

Analyzing MGM’s old new name

By David G. Schwartz

Two weeks ago, company shareholders approved a name change: MGM Mirage became MGM Resorts International.

It was a major change, but was it good business? According to two corporate branding experts, it was.

MGM CEO Jim Murren outlined the change as an “evolution” that “honors our heritage, better represents the growing global presence our company has today and positions us to move forward under a unified brand strategy.”

Laura Ries, president of marketing strategy firm Ries and Ries, and co-author of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding (HarperCollins Publishers, 1998), thinks this was a good move.

“It can be confusing to have a two-part name,” Ries says, citing the example of AOL/Time Warner, whose 2000 merger was a case study in how not to combine two formerly successful companies.

“Often, when you have a merger, you want to keep both company names to keep everyone happy,” she says. “But in the long run, it’s a mouthful. In this situation, the two names clash. They are two separate resorts, and The Mirage is tied to Steve Wynn.”

Although Wynn sold Mirage Resorts to MGM a decade ago, and has since put his name on a newer Strip hotelcasino, Ries makes the point that many potential customers, particularly those in the international market into which MGM is hoping to expand, still associate The Mirage with Wynn.

“It’s smart to focus on one name,” Ries says. “The only downside is that they are just initials. In general, initials tend to be weaker than a ‘name’ name, but MGM has the benefit of initials that have a long history. When people hear ‘MGM’ they think of the lion,” a reference to MetroGoldwyn-Mayer’s mascot, a stylized version of which remains in the MGM corporate logo. “Internationally, MGM is better known than the Mirage name.”

The other components of the name fare just as well. “Resorts” reflects the reality that the company has moved into nongaming hospitality, while “International” is a rather literal reminder of MGM’s aspirations to become a global brand.

“Clearly the overall company is MGM,” Ries says. “From a corporate perspective, having Mirage in the name just didn’t make sense anymore. It’s

easy to remember a single overall name, under which the company owns many different resorts and brands.”

Brand consultant Alina Wheeler, author of Designing Brand Identity (Wiley, 2006), a leading guide for branding teams around the world, agrees. “The right name is timeless, tireless, easy to say and remember,” she says. “It stands for something. It is aligned with strategy.

A well-chosen name is an essential brand asset, as well as a 24/7 workhorse.”

Names can have a real impact on the bottom line. Iconic American motorcycle builder Harley-Davidson learned that when it changed its ticker symbol from HDI to HOG. “Their shares gained nearly 16 percent, compared to about a 4 percent increase over the same period of the Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index,” Wheeler says.

She agrees that the name change for MGM was overdue.

“As much as I admire what Mirage accomplished,” Wheeler says, “I hate those names where people can’t commit to a master brand. Example: PricewaterhouseCoopers or ExxonMobil.”

But isn’t MGM Resorts International a little on the long side? It’s 10 syllables, a real mouthful compared to fellow gamers Boyd Gaming and Wynn Resorts (three syllables each), Las Vegas Sands (four) and even Harrah’s Entertainment (six).

“Their URL is MGM Resorts, and I think of that as the primary communicative name that will be used in conversations,” Wheeler says. “Their full legal name will be in the mice type at the bottom of their asset’s websites next to the copyright symbol.”

All in all, the experts agree that MGM has done well with their old new name.

Overall, Ries scores the new name “about a nine,” on a scale of one to 10.

“MGM is a great brand name—recognizable and memorable,” Wheeler says. “It’s the primary brand name.

And they own the ticker symbol. How great is that?”

So, according to the experts, there’s plenty in a name, and MGM Resorts has chosen a good one. Hopefully shareholders and investors, to say nothing of visitors to its properties, share that assessment.

David G. Schwartz is the director of UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research.

38 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

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accentuating the Positive Despite some negative indicators, Nevada among top states in which to do business

Schwarzenegger photo by BAC Pictures / Retna Ltd.

By Brooke Edwards There may be a silver lining to the Silver State’s nation-high unemployment rate and plummeting property values.

Call it instead an available workforce and affordable real-estate market, and these conditions recently helped Las Vegas land a production plant for wind turbines that will employ more than 1,000 people.

“Add to that Nevada’s businessfriendly climate,” Ed Cunningham, managing partner of U.S. Renewable Energy Group, said in a statement. “We felt that Nevada would be the ideal place to invest in this manufacturing hub.”

These conditions also helped Nevada reclaim its rank among the top five states in the nation to do business, according to 651 CEOs surveyed in an annual ranking by Chief Executive magazine. Nevada ranked second in the survey behind Texas for four straight years, fell to No. 6 in 2009 and climbed back up to No. 5 for 2010.

Texas held onto its title as the nation’s best state to do business this year, while California kept the spot it has held at the bottom (No. 51, with the District of Columbia included) since Chief Executive started the survey in 2005.

“California has a good living environment but is unfavorable to business, and the state taxes are not survivable,” says Bill Dormandy, CEO of San Francisco-based medical device maker ITC. “Nevada and Virginia are encouraging business to move to their states with lower tax rates and less regulatory demands.”

With no corporate or personal income tax, Nevada was one of only four states in the country to earn an “A” from CEOs on its taxes and regulation.

Other surveyors agree. Nevada was ranked No. 4 in a study on business tax climate from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation in the fall. And it was deemed the No. 3 state with the best tax system in an April study from the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.

Meanwhile, costly regulations such as Assembly Bill 32, with its call to reduce greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020, are driving business away from California. CalPortland, a building materials company, reportedly canceled its plans to expand in the Golden State because of the legislation, turning its eyes instead to Nevada.

Californians have responded by recently qualifying a ballot measure that

would suspend AB 32 until the state’s unemployment rate, at 12.4 percent for May, stays below 5.5 percent for a year. But as far as the state’s perception in the business world is concerned, the damage may be done.

“The leadership of California has done everything in its power to kill manufacturing jobs in this state,” says

Schwarzenegger

one CEO who was surveyed. “As I stated at our annual meeting, if we could grow our crops in Reno, we’d move our plants tomorrow.”

Chief Executive also asked CEOs in January to rank states on their government’s attitude toward business.

“One thing that clients react to when we deal with them is access,” says Mike Skaggs, executive director of the Nevada Commission on Economic Development. “Here the lieutenant governor, the leadership, will meet with a client anytime I ask them to. And [businesses] are just not used to that. They’re coming out of a state where if you want to meet your governor, you get in line.”

Nevada also has the lowest ratio of state and local government to every 10,000 residents, according to the study.

“There’s a healthy respect for county and city government, and so that keeps the state from being too big,” Skaggs says. “It’s a ‘closer to the people’ form of government.”

CEOs also cast their votes on the quality of workforce offered in each state and the living environment, taking into consideration issues such as real-estate costs and health statistics.

Where could Nevada stand to improve? According to the survey, it needs more hospitals and schools, a more educated workforce and safer streets.

Nevada snagged the worst ranking in the nation when it comes to crime and unemployment rates. And it was second from the bottom above Alaska for higher education.

That’s one area in which California ranked high, tying for first when it comes to the number of people completing bachelor’s degrees. Hence the “brain drain” fears of some California officials, as the Golden State educates future leaders and risks sending them elsewhere for jobs.

There’s always been healthy competition between Nevada and California when it comes to recruiting business.

Things heated up in 2004, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously drove an 18-wheel moving van down the Strip to launch his “California wants your business” campaign. Nevada struck back that fall with signs in Los Angeles and San Francisco asking, “Will your business be terminated?”

Then last year, the nonprofit Nevada Development Authority funded a cheeky series of print, TV and radio ads aimed at luring companies. One featured a talking chimp fresh out of a legislative session in Sacramento, and invited business owners to “get the monkey off your back” and “kiss California red tape and taxes goodbye.”

Cord Blood America Inc. is among the success stories, crediting NDA for influencing its decision to move one of the largest umbilical cord blood stem cell preservation companies from Santa Monica, Calif., to Las Vegas. NDA used the company as its poster child during a recent business expo.

“I do believe this is a good place to do business,” says Tom Delio, president of Las Vegas-based Manufacturing Laboratories Inc. “The business climate here is not what is deterring my company’s expansion.”

ALS of Nevada Continued from page 37

infusion of donations, it could all end.

The state’s funding for the organization has been eliminated, resulting in the loss of $121,000 that has gone to providing in-home care, and donations are down drastically because of the economy. Executive Director Megan Testa says the clinic is barely getting by.

“To tell you the truth, we’re just going week by week right now,” she says.

Still, Testa is determined to keep the clinic open and is doing whatever is necessary to make that happen. In mid-June, ALS of Nevada laid off two employees—a nurse and a social worker—leaving only Testa to run every aspect of the organization.

The Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health has been an enormous help, providing a rent-free office in the facility for ALS of Nevada since October. Maureen Peckman, chief emerging business officer with Cleveland Clinic Nevada, says the medical center is fortunate that it’s able to help out.

“We are pleased to be working with ALS of Nevada in assisting the patients and their families dealing with this devastating disorder,” Peckman says. “During these difficult economic times, we are proud to be a model of how Nevada organizations with shared interests work together for the common interests of patients in need to enable more effective management of their conditions.”

Still, Testa says that even with rent-free space it costs nearly $12,000 a month to keep the doors open. She’s worried because ALS of Nevada’s annual fundraiser—the Walk ’n Roll for ALS, which usually brings in about $65,000—isn’t until Sept. 25.

There have been shows of support throughout the community, however.

David Saxe, who operates the V Theater and sits on ALS of Nevada’s board, is offering two free show tickets to “V—The Ultimate Variety Show” to anyone who makes a donation of $50 or greater. Testa is keeping her fingers crossed that others in the state will also reach out.

For more information about ALS of Nevada or to make a donation, go to alsofnevada.org or call 777-0500.

Kathy (left) and Renee Flood in happier times.

July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven

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happen, filed bankruptcy and the property went back to Dolores Byers in 2001.

A few months later, Byers sold the property to a City of Industry couple, with Christensen staying on as manager.

The park reopened in 2002 as Discovery Water Park, closing for good in 2004.

There’s been no shortage of grandiose plans to revive Lake Dolores, with one investor plotting indoor ski slopes, and former Olympic gold medalist and Los Angeles Rams receiver Ron Brown once hoping to build a camp for foster youth.

A Nevada LLC and two Los Angeles developers purchased the property in January 2008, but the group filed bankruptcy in February 2009. Then in October, the group received a desist and refrain order from the state of California for illegally selling investment contracts for Newberry Springs Estates, a 1,400lot senior housing community that was Christensen’s last vision for the park.

The park’s new owners had already sealed a deal to sell its slides and stave off foreclosure long before MTV’s Rob and Big stopped by. The story line for the reality show had skateboarder Rob Dyrdek

40

and his pals sneaking into the park on their way to Vegas, but Lynch says the show’s team called ahead and verified insurance coverage before Dyrdek slid his board along the ridge of the Big Bopper slide.

“They got lucky, because two weeks later the slides came out,” Lynch says.

“We took half of that water park,” says Paul Larson, manager of Cultus Lake Waterpark in British Columbia.

The park’s appearance does make it a prime backdrop for apocalyptic-loving Hollywood. In early June, film students shot a zombie flick there. And when producers wanted a “spooky” theme for an upcoming episode of Holly’s World, they “crashed” the park on their way to a haunted Vegas hotel. Lynch played his part, telling star Holly Madison a tale about the park being built on a cursed Indian burial ground.

It was curiosity that drew Los Angelesbased filmmaker Dawn Fields to investigate Lake Dolores, but it was people such as the Byers and Christensen who made it the subject of her next documentary, Slippin’ and Slidin’: A Water Park’s Tale, which is tentatively scheduled for release later this year.

A hillside once filled with water slides now sits abandoned at the former site of Lake Dolores.

“There are people who put blood, sweat, heart and soul into this property,” Fields says. “People who’ve told me about losing their virginity there, growing up there, getting banged up there. …”

Fields aims to have her project finished in the next few months, but is looking

for fans to share memories of the park at waterparkmovie.com.

“To me it’s just tragic that the property didn’t work,” Fields says, “because I think that the intention was good to give people a place to stay cool, get wet, get some relief from the heat and have some fun.”

Photo by Tomas Muscionico

Water park Continued from page 37

Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

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The Local Newsroom

Politics

The rise of the zombie governor

By Michael Green

Jim Gibbons, the first Nevada governor up for re-election who was voted out in a primary, has to amuse himself for the next few months. So, his staff has been busy preparing the Gibbons Open Government Initiative to require unions and local governments to conduct their contract talks in public. That way, evil unions won’t be able to put anything over on evil government employees.

A few questions arise in relation to this matter: • Should public employees spend state time or resources on a ballot initiative?

Yes, according to Gibbons’ staff, for a couple of reasons. One, they say judicial decisions permit it, and also permit unions to negotiate, supposedly without intimidation.

Two, this is a policy the governor has long advocated, so it’s related to his and their jobs. It would be a first for Gibbons to advocate a policy. He has no policy, or, more accurately, he has a “no” policy. If Gibbons had to limit his speech and textmessaging to one word, it would be “no.”

• Why does the governor need an initiative to pursue a policy? He’s the governor.

Actually, he’s Jim Gibbons. On one hand, the Democrats who have a solid legislative majority tend to think employees should have the right to unionize, and requiring negotiations to be conducted in the open is a threat to that. Democrats also tend to be as pro-union as possible in a right-to-work state, so his chances of winning legislative passage were limited.

On the other hand, Gibbons has been unusually inept at working with the Legislature. He got a lot of what he wanted by just opposing anything lawmakers proposed that might improve the state.

During the last special session, a couple of legislative leaders marveled at how involved he was in the process because he stayed for some meetings. If that is a new height of involvement, standards obviously have dropped. Perhaps if Gibbons engaged the Legislature earlier, or used the governor’s powers and bully pulpit as he should have, his “policy” might have gotten somewhere.

• Is this initiative bad policy, or is the problem that it’s the work of Jim Gibbons?

Yes—on both counts. When former Vice President Dick Cheney had an energy task force meet secretly in 2001, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., joined a Gov-

ernment Accountability Office lawsuit demanding that information about it be made public. Gibbons, then a member of the House of Representatives, didn’t exactly make it a priority to demand openness and accountability, so whether he is really interested in open government is a valid question. Since he dislikes unions and government employees, openness has little to do with it or he wouldn’t have spent so much effort in court to hide his text messages or divorce details.

Also, Gibbons has traveled the initiative path before. In 1994, he came up with requiring two-thirds of the Legislature to approve any tax hike, as opposed to a simple majority. Nevadans approved it since all taxes are bad and elected officials scared of an angry electorate would impose taxes nobody wanted (that’s called sarcasm).

Then, in 2003, Gov. Kenny Guinn sued the Legislature when it couldn’t muster a two-thirds vote for his tax hike—the tally was 27-15, meaning the overwhelming majority of our elected representatives favored it, but a minority could block it (the law should be unconstitutional for violating the “one man, one vote” principle and giving a minority’s votes more weight than a majority’s). The attorney general who won Guinn’s case, Brian Sandoval, just spent the recent GOP primary for governor trying to make believe it never happened.

Thus one irony: Sandoval fudged over his role in winning a case against a law that was the brainchild of his primary opponent, and because he fudged, his general election opponent may find ways to use it against him.

And another irony: The early 20th-century progressives created the initiative for citizens to use when legislatures refused to do their duty. Whether the governor should use it may be debated, since governors can’t make legislators act—at least some governors can’t. Maybe Gibbons could wait. Thanks to Nevada Republicans, he’ll soon be a private citizen again.

In the meantime, as this initiative shows, he can do damage in either role. What did Shakespeare say about the evil that men do living after them?

Michael Green is a professor of history at the College of Southern Nevada and author of several books and articles on Nevada history and politics.

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Nightlife

Entertaining options for a week of nonstop fun and excitement.

Compiled by Melissa Arseniuk

Thur. 1 There are several ways to start the long weekend early, but only one involves a massive pillow fight. The city’s biggest feather-filled feud goes down at Tao, after an hour-long open bar at 10 p.m. gets things going for ladies dressed in lingerie.

Every guy’s dream come true—a big, sweaty pillow fight—starts at 1 a.m. At the Venetian, doors at 10 p.m., $20 for guys, $10 for girls, free for all locals.

Fri. 2 The party continues at Tao on Friday, but moves to the rooftop, as Tao Beach hosts an All-American BBQ. The Balinese-inspired sun spot salutes all that is red, white and blue with beer pong, a Hula-hoop contest and a barbecue. If beer and barbecue aren’t bikini-friendly in your books, check the place out on Saturday, when Taolovers Redfoo and Skyblu of LMFAO spin a special shots, shots, shots-filled set. At the Venetian, doors at 10:30 a.m., free for ladies and local guys, $20 for men from out of town.

Sat. 3 Pauly D seems to have left the Jersey shore for the Vegas desert—or, more specifically, the Palms. The reality TV sensation throws himself a birthday party while DJing at Palms Pool and Bungalows. Red, White and Pauly begins at noon and he’ll most certainly be sporting his signature blow-out hairstyle. The only real question: How many candles does Sir D have to blow out this year? (Doors at noon, $20 cover, local ladies free.) Later, Busta Rhymes will be at Eve, where the rapper will serve as host and entertainment for the night. Doors open at 10:30 p.m., but Busta won’t perform until about midnight. (At Crystals, $30 for men, $20 for women.) And over at Blush, poker legend Doyle Brunson kicks off the WSOP final table by hosting at Wynn’s ultralounge. Despite the poker royalty, ladies don’t need to be (or find) a high-rolling bracelet winner to drink free champagne, thanks to an open bar from 11 p.m.-midnight. Doors at 9 p.m., $30 cover.

Sun. 4 If you didn’t get your fill of Jersey Shore on Saturday, head to Rehab, where Mike “the Situation” Sorrentino hosts a day of similarly over-the-top antics. (At the Hard Rock Hotel, doors at 11 a.m., $50 for men, $20 for ladies.) After the sun goes down, S.K.A.M. Artist DJs take over The Bank during the Bellagio’s most patriotic party. DJs Crooked, OB-One, Cheapshot, Gusto and Fashen join resident DJ Karma to do joint-DJ duty. Doors at 10:30 p.m., $40 cover, free for locals.

SeveN NIghtS Mon. 5 Fourth of July weekend continues at The Mirage with the All American Girls Pageant at Bare, where the lady of Las Vegas nightlife who collects the most votes wins the coveted title. As the voting continues, so does a backyard-style barbecue, featuring free draft beer for all locals.

(Doors at 11 a.m., $20 for men, free for women.)

Once the sun goes down, the pageantry continues inside the casino, as Jet hosts the All American Girls afterparty. What’s more, it’s also locals night, so everyone with a local ID gets in free before the clock strikes 12. Doors at 10:30 p.m., $30 for non-locals, and everyone after midnight.

Tues. 6 Head to the Palms, where everyone’s favorite land-locked DJ, and Vegas Seven contributor, Graham Funke plays Moon’s weekly Tuesday night party, Bang!

The Captain of Industry takes to the tables for another set of sarcasm-dripping shout-outs at 11 p.m. While you’re there, ask him to open the retractable roof for you—he really likes it when you do that. At the Palms, doors at 11 p.m., $20 cover, free for local ladies.

Wed. 7 Banana Republic is synonymous with classy, classic style, yet the well-reputed brand ventures into sequins and bedazzled territory and presents a fashion show at mini dress ground zero—Lavo. Khaki and simple prints are hardly considered club wear, but that isn’t stopping the fashionable hot spot from welcoming the lovely ladies of BH for a understated take on its weekly Label Junkie party. At the Palazzo, doors at 10:30 p.m., $20 for guys, $10 for girls, free for locals.

July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 45

Nightlife

Blue Martini | town Square

Photography by Beverly Oanes

Upcoming July 1 | latin night July 4 | Red, White and Blue BBQ featuRing ashley Red July 5 | live at Blue Comedy July 6 | i’m With the Band and KaRaoKe With venus Rising July 7 | ladies night

46 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Nightlife

Blush | Wynn

Photography by Tony Tran

Upcoming July 3 | final table kick-off party hosted by 10-time Wsop legend doyle brunson July 7 | house Wednesday With Justin baule and Jordan stevens

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Nightlife

Haze | aria

Upcoming July 8 | industry night featuring a Performance by gabe saPorta of cobra starshiP

50 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Photography by Brenton Ho

Nightlife

Wet Republic | MGM GRand

Photography by Chad Carl

Upcoming July 2 | Hot 100 Voting Party witH SPecial Performance by naugHty by nature July 4 | Holly madiSon HoStS

July 11 | Performance by ferry corSten & Sander Kleinenberg July 17 | Kelan lutz HoStS annalynne mccord’S 23rd birtHday Party

54 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

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Nightlife

DJ Profile

Electronic Democracy Paul van Dyk talks politics, Pandora and the state of techno

By Melissa Arseniuk

music. I was a kid in East Berlin, sitting in front of the radio. I was far away from any drugs, and it obviously wouldn’t appeal to me to sit in front of a really small radio and be high on something. I’m not a better person than someone else; it’s just actually never really appealed to me.

Speaking of T-shirts, you sell some that say “Fuck It, We’re Famous, Too”—a play off of David Guetta’s notorious party, Fuck Me I’m Famous. Explain that one.

Our scene was never about individuals putting themselves on a podium, or crowning themselves as this and that.

It was always about the music, it was always about the scene. So, basically, this T-shirt is for everybody. Every single person in the club enjoying electronic music is fucking famous.

You obviously know Guetta.

What does he think about it?

I don’t really know, and I never really thought about it, either. I don’t think it’s offending at all; it’s just a little, fun thing. … It was just a fun idea [that came up] in the office … and we all just laughed our asses off.

60 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

“The Fourth of July weekend is a big sort of celebration of patriotism of the Americans, but also it’s a big celebration of democracy, of liberation—and I think this is something that’s absolutely worth celebrating, especially since I grew up in East Germany. For me, democracy is a very valuable thing.”

The DJ talked international politics, among other things, during a trans-Atlantic phone conversation with Vegas Seven.

You host a radio show, Vonyc Sessions, out of Berlin, and were raised on two underground stations in East Germany. What does the future hold for radio?

These days, there are a hundred radio channels that play just electronic music, or just rock music, or just talk radio.

That has the benefit that I always get what I want, but … if I only listen to the electronic channel I will never discover the cool and new rock bands. The other day, I was listening to this sort of indie rock station in Berlin and they played this track and I was like, “Holy shit!

Who was that?” So I stopped, actually wrote down the name, and it’s a fantastic album. The name of the guy is Fyfe Dangerfield. If I would have stuck to just my electronic dance station, I would have never ever heard of that person. You miss out on that stuff if you only listen to your electronic station. I think maybe 95 percent of the music I’ve made has never

been played outside of specialized shows, because it’s kind of too undergroundy, too hard, too rocking, too banging, too edgy, too whatever, for Top 40 radio.

Internet radio stations—Blip.fm, Slacker Radio, Pandora, etc.— generate playlists for you using what they consider to be similar artists. Your Pandora station plays 4 Strings, Armin van Buuren, Tiesto and ATB. Do you think this is accurate?

Um, not necessarily (laughs). To be really honest, I think that stuff like this is really difficult to judge. People that enjoy someone’s particular style may not necessarily enjoy [another artist’s] style, just because they use the same instruments.

Just because Linkin Park is using the same instruments as Limp Bizkit doesn’t really mean that I’ll like both. I’m a big fan of Linkin Park, couldn’t really say that about Limp Bizkit.

OK, so who would you put on your Pandora playlist?

Arty, Giuseppe Armani, Armin van Buuren, Sasha and BT. You’ve taken an anti-drug stance, prompting T-shirts with slogans such as “No E, Pure PvD.” Is this still the case?

Absolutely. ... It probably has to do with how I got in contact with electronic

What’s the difference is between European DJs and American DJs? They have a different passport.

Is that the only thing?

I’m pretty sure it is, because if you do what we do you have to be a complete lunatic, and you have to actually be a complete freak and geek when it comes down to music—regardless of if you’re American or European.

What has been the most significant change for your genre—whatever you want to call it—in recent years?

There is music that has its roots directly in the clubs, in the electronic music scene, and has pop elements to it. This is something that I actually like … What I don’t really like is the other way around, when cheesy pop music is using the elements from our genre, [or] cool hip-hop acts becoming third-class dance acts.

Photo by Hans Brexendorff

Paul van Dyk is a German DJ, but is no stranger to American politics. As he prepares for a pair of Independence Day performances at Tao, he doesn’t hold back his views about U.S. foreign policy.

“They put themselves into the position of being the world police,” he asserts.

“Of course the European Union and all of us have an opinion. We have troops in Afghanistan, too.”

He defends the troops with passion and compassion.

“If they had the choice, they wouldn’t be there; they would be home with their families,” he says of the thousands of international soldiers currently stationed in Afghanistan. “They’re there because they’re on duty for all of us, and they’re on duty because the government that we voted for made a big mistake.”

While he doesn’t agree with the war, he supports the soldiers fighting it.

“I disagree on the political agenda why [soldiers are in Afghanistan], but since our troops are there, we have to support them,” he says.

Although he laughs off a “Bono of electronic music” comparison—“I’d rather be the Paul of electronic music,” he says—van Dyk is one of few DJs actively involved in international politics.

“My aim is to make people aware of how important democracy is,” he says.

And despite his distaste for the war, he looks forward to celebrating Independence Day on American soil.

Electronic music can be hard to categorize. What do you consider your music to be—house, techno or something else altogether?

To be honest, I don’t really know!

Where exactly is the borderline between trance and techno? And where exactly is the borderline between minimal techno and minimal? Where is electro versus trance? It’s not really clear. It’s always a very subjective point of view—what you call techno I might call minimal, what you call trance I maybe call pop music.

For me, it’s electronic music.

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Nightlife

Cocktail Culture

By Xania Woodman

Hot Apple Pie As created by Wynn-Encore property mixologist Patricia Richards and served at the Encore Lobby Bar, $12 No American Pie jokes, please: This sweet-heat treat is all about patriotism, independence and the ol’ red, white and blue—with an emphasis on the red.

“Nothing is more American than apple pie,” says Richards, who created the cocktail for a fall menu two years ago. Back by popular demand and just in time for the Fourth of July, Richards says the Tabasco and apple pie flavors combine to provide “a yummy [and drinkable] twist” on an all-American favorite.

“The spices of the Captain Morgan rum meld nicely with the cinnamon on the rim and the spices in the mixer, which complements the apple beautifully,” she says. The experience finishes “with a slight kick of spice to keep you guessing, contemplating and coming back for more.” And so we did.

1½ ounces Captain Morgan spiced rum ½ ounce Granny’s sour apple schnapps 2 ounces Stirrings spiced apple mixer ½ ounce sweet and sour mix 2 drops Tabasco sauce Cinnamon sugar for rim (¾ sugar, ¼ ground cinnamon) Maraschino cherry and fresh apple slices for garnish Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, and shake hard. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass rimmed with cinnamon sugar, garnish with a maraschino cherry and apple slices and serve.

Stirrings of Summer When faced with a long weekend of entertaining, ambitious hosts and hostesses can breathe a collective sigh of relief, thanks to the innovators at Stirrings Mixers. The brand’s ever-evolving line of delicious, sophisticated cocktail mixers makes short work of the classics, nouveau specialties and signature cocktails. From peach bellinis to pomegranate martinis, a range of popular drinks get a leg-up from the seasonally inspired mixers. Meanwhile, there’s no need to feel guilty about not making your own, since Stirrings uses only natural ingredients—real fruit juice and cane sugar—and no preservatives, high fructose corn syrup or artificial colors, flavors or sweeteners. The Simple Spiced Apple mixer is made from real apples, cinnamon, nutmeg and cane sugar, and every bottle of Stirrings’ cosmo mix contains the juice of more than 340 ripe cranberries. Each $9, 32-ounce bottle makes about 11 cocktails, which helps stretch that Fourth of July party budget even further. stirrings.com.

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Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

For ÜberBar’s Michael Silvers, bar tool innovation is a way of life. The selfproclaimed “Über-dude” is constantly working to wow the industry with his next generation bar tools, which have included the StrainRay (a sleek, ergonomic, spade-like upgrade to the standard cocktail strainer that sells for $30), which some bartenders have been known to wear in lieu of a pocket square at fancy functions, and the coveted ProJig multi-measure jigger with quarter-, half-, threequarter- and full-ounce compartments ($12).

Silvers’ latest creation has bartenders both professional and amateur thinking they’ve died and gone to gadget heaven. Like a chef’s roll-up of knifes, the ProBoston Roll ($145) aggregates ÜberBar’s 15 most essential tools—including the StrainRay and ProJig, as well as the SiliStick muddler, C-Press citrus press and a set of bar tweezers for hygienic garnish handling. And they are all gathered up into one easy-to-store and carry roll—proving you really can take it with you when you go. uberbartools.com

Hot Apple Pie photo by Anthony Mair

Über Cool Tools

The NaTioNal Newsroom Behind the mcChrystal Uproar

where have all the mailers Gone?

Change in leadership won’t fix problems

Amid all the hubbub provoked by The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” list, one huge fact has been hidden in plain view. Fiction has become culturally irrelevant.

A great novel, one that is for the ages, can still be written. Memorable stories, long and short, continue to be created. Without a doubt, the next male or female Hemingway, Faulkner or Fitzgerald is out there somewhere, hard at work. But with the exception of a few ambitious—and obsessively competitive—fiction writers and their agents and editors, no one goes to a current novel or story for the ineffable private and public clarity fiction once provided.

Exhibit A in the argument that fiction is now a marginal enterprise: Everybody complains that The New Yorker list is inbred, house-approved, a mere PR ploy for the magazine, but no one does anything about it. If fiction were really alive, if it were still the vibrant experience it used to be, then an artistic affront like the “20 Under 40” junior pantheon would be something against which literary people would deploy all their creative energies. About 150 years ago, the established taste represented by the French Academy’s annual Salon inspired the gorgeous, seminal mischief of the Salon des Refuses, a counterstatement suffused with every liberating, original quality that the Salon’s official productions lacked. Where are the counterlists to The New Yorker’s 20? Where is the mischief in the little literary magazines, the fiction-publishing monthlies such as Harper’s and The Atlantic, the countless online sites devoted to contemporary fiction? Isn’t such sharp dissent what the Web was supposed to empower?

Alas: The practice of fiction is no longer a vocation. It has become a profession, and professions are not characterized by creative mischief. Artistic vocations are about embracing more and more of the world with your will; professions are insular affairs that are all about the profession. The carefulness, the cautiousness, the professionalism that keeps contemporary fiction from being meaningful to the most intellectually

The New Yorker’s ‘20 Under 40’ list demonstrates the irrelevance of current fiction in intellectual America

By Lee Siegel

Photo by Michael Reynolds/epa/Corbis

By Normon Solomon When the wheels are coming off, it doesn’t do much good to change the driver.

Despite replacing Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus as the commanding general in Afghanistan, the U.S. war effort will continue its carnage and futility.

Between the lines, some news accounts are implying as much. Hours before Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s meeting with President Obama on June 23, The New York Times reported that “the firestorm was fueled by increasing doubts—even in the military—that Afghanistan can be won and by crumbling public support for the nine-year war as American casualties rise.”

It now does McChrystal little good that news media have trumpeted everything from his Spartan personal habits (scarcely eats or sleeps) to his physical stamina (runs a lot) to his steel-trap alloy of military smarts and scholarship (reads history). Any individual is expendable.

For months, the McChrystal star had been slipping. A few days before the Rolling Stone piece caused a sudden plunge from war-making grace, Time’s conventional-wisdom weather vane Joe Klein was notably down on McChrystal’s results: “Six months after Barack Obama announced his new Afghan strategy in a speech at West Point, the policy seems stymied.”

Now, words such as “stymied” and “stalemate” are often applied to the Afghanistan war. But that hardly means the U.S. military is anywhere near withdrawal.

Walter Cronkite used the word “stalemate” in his famous February 1968 declaration to CBS viewers that the Vietnam War couldn’t be won. “We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders both in Vietnam and Washington to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds,” he said. And: “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.”

Yet the U.S. war on Vietnam continued for another five years, inflicting more unspeakable horrors on a vast scale.

Like thousands of other U.S. activists, I’ve been warning against escalation of the Afghanistan war for a long time. Opposition has grown, but today the situation isn’t much different than what I described in an article on Dec. 9, 2008: “Bedrock faith in the Pentagon’s massive capacity for inflicting violence is implicit in the nostrums from anointed foreign-policy experts.

The echo chamber is echoing: the Afghanistan war is worth the cost that others will pay.”

The latest events reflect unwritten rules for top military commanders: Escalating a terrible war is fine. Just don’t say anything mean about your boss.

But the most profound aspects of Rolling Stone’s article “The Runaway General” have little to do with the general. The takeaway is—or should be—that the U.S. war in Afghanistan

Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s criticism of President Obama was his undoing.

is an insoluble disaster, while the military rationales that propel it are insatiable. “Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further,” the article points out. And “counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war.”

There was something plaintive and grimly pathetic about the last words of The New York Times editorial that arrived on desks just hours before the general’s White House meeting with the commander in chief: “Whatever President Obama decides to do about General McChrystal, he needs to get hold of his Afghanistan policy right now.”

Like their counterparts at media outlets across the United States, members of the Times editorial board are clinging to the counterinsurgency dream. But none of such pro-war handwringing makes as much sense as a simple red-white-and-blue bumper sticker that says: “These colors don’t run . . . the world.”

A USA Today/Gallup Poll shows most Americans agree with the decision to replace McChrystal, 53 percent to 30 percent, but 58 percent also support the White House plan to start pulling out U.S. troops in July 2011, with 38 percent opposing it.

Fierce controversy has focused on terminating a runaway general. But the crying need is to terminate a runaway war.

Norman Solomon is the author of the book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (Wiley, 2005).

Continued on page 71 July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven

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The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Beach Fossils have received a significant career boost from positive reviews on indie rock website Pitchfork.

The Pitchfork Frankenstein Effect Indie powerhouse now spawns bands in its own image

By Leon Neyfakh Ryan Schreiber, the founder of Pitchfork, thinks indie rock is getting younger. The 34-year-old, who launched his highly influential website from his parents’ basement 15 years ago, was sitting on the steps outside of the Pitchfork office in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint.

He was wearing an unbuttoned plaid shirt and smoking a cigarette while an assortment of staffers, friends and musicians were inside, chatting in the afterglow of a brief live set by the Brooklyn, N.Y., band Beach Fossils.

“There’s definitely a subculture of blogger music that’s, like, super youthful,” Schreiber said, sounding more like a surfer from Southern California than the Midwesterner he is. “It just seems like almost everybody who’s starting a band now and coming out and sort of establishing themselves—it definitely seems like a whole bunch of, like, really young kids.”

The four young men of Beach Fossils, a delicate indie pop group who sound like Joy Division covering early R.E.M., are all either 24 or 25. Here’s how young they are: During their set, one of them wore a Zwan shirt, which if you don’t remember was Billy Corgan’s band for about five minutes after the Smashing Pumpkins broke up. They’re so young that the night before the Pitchfork show, when they played at Death by Audio in Williamsburg, a section of Brooklyn, the boyish bass player John Pena finished the set by smashing his instrument through the floor tom and breaking all of his tuning pegs. They are so young that Pena has been reading Pitchfork and listening to the records Schreiber and his cohort have been recommending since he was just 15.

That’s true of many of the youngsters whose music Pitchfork is championing lately. And while Beach Fossils frontman Dustin Payseur says he never read the site until they started writing about him, and Pena insists he just likes what he likes, it would seem that much of the music getting written about on the site today—Beach Fossils included—has Pitchfork built into its DNA. Drinks were provided by Tito’s, the vodka manufacturer sponsoring the show at the high-ceilinged, windowless space near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that serves as Pitchfork HQ. The arrangement, brokered by the site’s advertising department, was that the Beach Fossils set would be taped for Pitchfork.tv, and then promoted on the site’s front page alongside ads for Tito’s.

The ad guy spearheading the campaign asked the editors to find a band to play the show. They chose Beach Fossils because they were “available,” Schreiber said, and because their music had been praised on the site.

Beach Fossils have been playing together for a little over a year. Pitchfork first wrote about them last December, when one of the MP3s the band had posted on MySpace caught the critics’ attention. At that point, Payseur didn’t even have a full band together, let alone a record out. He doesn’t know how Pitchfork heard about him, but one day there was an e-mail in his in-box saying the site wanted to review one of his songs.

“It kind of made me nervous,” Payseur said. “I feel like a lot of people are impressionable, and a lot of people don’t know how to make up their own minds so they look to somebody who, you know, has a lot of

power.” He went on: “A lot of blogs will say a lot of good things about a band and then the band might get a bad review on Pitchfork and all the blogs start saying bad things about the band.”

He offered an example of Pitchfork’s power in Wild Nothing, the band Beach Fossils shared a bill with the night before at Death by Audio.

“That’s a guy out of Virginia that nobody knew a few months ago—he just got ‘Best New Music,’ and now everybody’s listening to him. I think that’s awesome.”

Payseur was referring to a coveted designation that Pitchfork bestows upon albums beloved not just by one writer at the site but by a whole bunch of them. Getting “BNM” can launch a band from zero, generating interest not just among music fans and retailers but assigning editors at other publications who use Pitchfork as a guide for what to cover. Whether or not an album gets “BNM” depends on whether a critic who’s really behind it can rally enough support on the internal Pitchfork staff board, the password-protected forum where most of the interaction between the site’s writers takes place.

Pitchfork has famously brought a number of previously unknown bands to prominence, such as Broken Social Scene and the Arcade Fire, whose success in 2003 and 2004, respectively, served as two of the earliest unqualified demonstrations of the site’s muscle. That mechanism is still very much at work, as one look at the lineup for last week’s Northside Festival—full of bands championed early by Pitchfork—would tell you.

Beach Fossils have so far received consistently favorable coverage from the site, getting several of their songs written about over the course of the past six months and most recently earning a respectable 7.8 out of 10 for their first LP, out now from the small Brooklyn label Captured Tracks. The album did not make Best New Music, but the momentum the band has achieved has been stoked largely by Pitchfork’s sustained interest in them.

Schreiber at this point has very little to do with the reviews posted on Pitchfork, though he has been attending about five shows a week ever since his recent move from Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill to Williamsburg. Most of his focus is on the site’s video component and “other projects” he would not discuss; editorial is still run almost entirely out of Chicago.

Ryan Dombal, 28, is the only Pitchfork writer in New York who actually comes into the office every day. At the Beach Fossils show, he spoke appreciatively to a guy who recently graduated from college and has been writing an anonymous blog about Pitchfork in which he excitedly scrutinizes every review published on the site.

In a recent post, the 21-year-old compared his five favorite writers on the Pitchfork staff to the starting lineup of the Los Angeles Lakers. Evidently, some of the writers wanted to meet the blogger in person, and Dombal e-mailed him an invitation to the party.

“If you’re following Pitchfork since you’re 19 or whatever, it’s very—it’s beyond the moat,” Dombal said. “It’s this thing that’s castled up. And then you go to something like this and you’re like, these are regular guys, and they work in an office that’s kind of shitty, and they’re kind of approachable and awkward.”

“You guys are less awkward than I’d imagined,” said the blogger, who was standing nearby.

Awkward though they may be, Pitchfork writers are aware of their power—many of them because they themselves are longtime readers of the site, and are conscious of the profound effect it had on their taste growing up.

The consequence, Dombal reasoned, is that musicians who were in their 20s or younger when they started reading the site are making records directly inspired by

Photo by Adam Schneider / Retna Ltd.

The National Newsroom

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Fiction Continued from page 69

engaged people is also what is stifling any kind of response to The New Yorker. After all, kick against The New Yorker’s conventional taste and you might tread on some powerful person’s overlapping interest.

Literary triumph in Manhattan is now defined by publishing one or two pieces in The New Yorker each year. That is too narrow a definition of literary triumph.

Exhibit B: James Wood. May the gods bless my former New Republic colleague, and may he keep reviewing novels for another hundred years, but the very emergence of Wood signals the decline of fiction, his driving passion. Hegel was right: The owl of Minerva spreads her wings at dusk. It is only when an artistic genre becomes small and static enough to scrutinize that a compensating abundance of commentary on that genre springs into existence. Imagine a critic during the Golden Age— yes the Golden Age—of American fiction after World War II writing with Wood’s exquisite self-consciousness about the rules and regulations of fiction, rather than about questions of life and society that a particular novel evoked. If fiction were still urgently alive, it would not allow itself to be so easily formulated, evaluated and assigned a grade.

Exhibit C: The ascendancy of nonfiction. The most interesting, perceptive and provocative writers of our moment write narrative nonfiction. A couple of months ago, a story appeared in the pages of The New Yorker that had people talking with an intensity I had not encountered in a long time. The story was called “Iphigenia in Forest Hills,”

by Janet Malcolm, and it was about a Bukharan-Jewish woman named Mazoltuv Borukhova who was accused, and eventually convicted, of hiring a hit man to murder her husband. Malcolm was frankly—defiantly, even—sympathetic to Borukhova and contemptuous of the justice system that put her away.

She also constructed a riveting subplot about Borukhova’s little girl, who had been shoveled into the unforgiving bureaucratic machine of New York State’s child-guardian system. People were swept up into the complex tale Malcolm had woven as if into a richly layered novel. Did Borukhova deserve the author’s sympathy? Had justice been served? If so, was justice enough? What will happen to the little girl?

Such existential urgency and intensity were the feelings with which people used to respond to novels by Bellow, Updike,

Mailer, Roth, Cheever, Malamud—the list goes on and on. Mary McCarthy’s The Group (Signet, 1964) was a best-seller, and a critical success, and a scandal, and a book read by “civilians”—i.e., not just aspiring fiction writers who read other fiction writers the way doctors read professional journals and lawyers keep up with the law reviews. But, then, in those postwar decades, there was another sign of how central fiction was to people’s lives.

So-called commercial fiction was just as relevant to people’s lives as so-called literary fiction. Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War (Little, Brown & Co., 1971), James Jones’ From Here to Eternity (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), Chaim Potok’s The Chosen (Simon & Schuster, 1967), Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird ( J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1960), Marjorie Kellogg’s Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (Farrar, 1968)—these novels were all what was called commercial fiction as opposed to literary fiction, but they mattered to people.

They illumined the ordinary events of ordinary lives, and they were as primal as the bard singing around the pre-Homeric fire. Now everything literary is also furtively commercial, but nothing is popular, except for the explicitly commercial fiction that the literary crowd refuses to write.

In the end, the best argument against The New Yorker’s list is the editor of The New Yorker himself. You want to read a great story about American politics today, overflowing with sharp character portraits, keen evocations of American places and a ripping narrative? Read David Remnick’s book on Obama, because you won’t find it in American fiction. Looking to immerse yourself in a fascinating tale of contemporary finance?

Forget fiction. Pick up Michael Lewis’ latest book—not to mention his earlier ones. Yearning for a saga of American money and class? Well, Dreiser is dead, and there sure isn’t anyone to take his place, so go out and get T.J. Stiles’ The First Tycoon (Knopf, 2009), an epic telling of the life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Fiction has now become a museumpiece genre most of whose practitioners are more like cripplingly self-conscious curators or theoreticians than writers. For better or for worse, the greatest storytellers of our time are the nonfiction writers.

The proof? No one would dare rank them, presume to categorize them by age or exploit them as a marketing tool. Their writing is too relevant and alive.

The most interesting ... writers of our moment write narrative nonfiction.

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The National Newsroom

Three-Fourths of July 1

2

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7

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33 39

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40 49

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ACROSS 1 Ty’s outhitter 5 Charles of cosmetics 11 Max. 14 Jiang Qing married him 17 European monarch, 1948-80 19 Some engines 21 “Thaïs” composer 22 Broadcast picker-upper 23 Pan-Amer.

Union successor 24 Geithner et al.

25 Sultry singer who wed Jack Webb 27 Decorative hole 29 Easily bruised spots?

31 He’s Jim in “The Doors” 32 Frost’s “Fire and ___” 33 Pastoral poems 35 Samovars and sampans 38 Lady of the knight 41 Boy who cries wolf, e.g.

44 Type of plane engine 48 Showed plainly 51 Si, to Simone 52 Babysitter’s handful 53 Tanning parlor letters 54 Miniature tree 55 “What’s in a name?” utterer 59 Explosive stuff 60 News item 63 La-la intro 64 Nothing more than 65 With 67 Across, Mrs. Bruce Springsteen, 1985-89 Answers found on page 74

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111 116

93 97

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By Merl Reagle

105 106 107

112 113

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67 See 65 Across 70 Rub followup 72 Classic cigar brand, ___-Tan 73 Water bead 74 Part of 59 Across 77 Madrid-born vocalist 81 “Just a little longer” 83 Dian Fossey subject 84 “Indeed ___!”

85 Foundation stone abbr.

86 Classic TV western 87 Sleep 89 Like some volcanoes 93 Duck or color 94 Multiple Listings VIP 96 “___ Falling Star” 99 “A clue!”

101 Pluralized y 102 Primary 104 Badger 108 Chef salad ingredient 112 Spilled salt, to some 114 Nectar inspector 115 Be behind schedule 116 “Battle Hymn” penner 119 Reader of “Cart and Driver”?

120 Official drink of the 1964 World’s Fair (now sold at Dairy Queen) 121 Ant. antonym 122 Green and Yankovic 123 Ex-“What’s My Line” host Larry 124 Top Ten list adjective

118

124

DOWN 1 Interior beat 2 Oxford size 3 Run through the lab 4 Ill will 5 Nobelist Bertrand 6 Chicago trains 7 Old, in Spanish 8 Sound of body, in Latin 9 Scott Turow book about his first year in law school 10 Restless folk?

11 Mo and Stew of Arizona 12 Star car 13 Sea bird 14 Variety of French red wine 15 “Drop me ___” 16 Barcelona bear 17 Place to dock 18 Reverse of 113 Down 20 Cruel credo 21 Average guy 26 Way to go?

28 Property claims 30 Fed. property overseer 34 Young’un 35 Notorious Henry 36 “Cope Book” aunt 37 Reindeer raiser 38 Bankruptcy cause 39 Bard’s river 40 Southern comforter?

42 Wake up 43 Drug smuggler 45 “The Party’s Over” tunesmith

46 “As long as you both shall live” —and beyond 47 London’s ___ galleries 49 Composer Orff 50 Letters before O, in a refrain 52 Poker challenge 55 Girl with a gun in an Aerosmith hit 56 Community standards 57 Junket, e.g.

58 Fair judge?

61 Slow and stately, in music 62 Carbon compound 66 ___ supra (where mentioned above) 67 Boris Karloff ’s real name, William ___ 68 O’Brien displacer 69 Pour ___ (accelerate) 70 Not shut all the way 71 Fool 73 Tiddlywink 75 A shah’s name 76 Leaning type: abbr.

78 Seine feeder 79 First step to innovation 80 Cauterize 82 Golden Horde member 86 Play favorites?

88 How to take Sabin’s vaccine 89 Fwy. across the southern U.S. 90 Rhinoplasty 91 At this localité 92 Susan Dey’s role on “L.A. Law,” Grace ___ 95 Closet pile 97 Tyke in Madonna art 98 Deal with 99 ___ of one’s peers 100 Chinese province of spicy food fame 102 SE Asia’s ___ Peninsula 103 Has ___ of its own 105 Re 106 Emulates a material girl?

107 “Get my point?”

109 “___ fine musician ...”

110 Catchall abbr.

111 Throw 113 Mil. rank 115 Hwys. and byways 117 ID checker’s info 118 That jerk’s

!!! VOLUME 16 IS HERE !!!

To order Merl’s crossword books, visit www.sunday crosswords.com.

Top 10 green parenting tips

By Brita Belli Parents can take steps to curb consumption and go easy on the earth. As a bonus, by choosing to go green as parents, we are able to save money, something every parent needs. We’re also teaching our kids important lessons about protecting the earth and being conscious.

1. Serve organic and locally grown food at home and try to limit processed food. Food grown with pesticides can impact a child’s development, and locally grown food will be fresher and in season and will help give your child a taste for fresh fruits and vegetables.

2. Cut down on lunch packaging. Use refillable drink containers instead of juice boxes, and fill your own containers with applesauce and yogurt. And limit the amount of plastic bags and packaging by filling your own snack containers with crackers, pretzels and other snacks instead of buying “snack sizes.”

3. Buy nontoxic toys. Choose toys from local U.S. companies, check on recalls and choose wood or hard-plastic toys over the soft-plastic toys (like rubber ducks) that contain PVC, which is known to impact hormone development.

4. Turn waste into art. Have the kids reuse materials that would otherwise be wasted: Turn old socks into puppets, plastic jugs into watering cans and paper towel rolls into shakers. Using old materials is a great way to get creative and learn about protecting the planet.

5. Get outside! Kids are suffering from “nature deficit disorder.” On average, kids spend just 30 minutes of unstructured time outdoors each week—but they spend 40 minutes a day in front of the TV. Whether hiking and camping as a family, or simply running around the backyard, regular outdoor activity can have huge positive health benefits.

6. Use nontoxic cleaners. Read the labels on cleaners and make sure that they disclose the ingredients, and buy from companies whose products you can trust.

Cleaners should not contain ammonia or bleach or even artificial fragrances that can cause reactions in kids, particularly those with asthma. You can also make your own safe household cleaner from distilled white vinegar and water (it’s great for mirrors!).

7. Carpool. Kids are going to so many different lessons and events, but that’s no reason to make tons of separate car trips. New online services such as dividetheride.com are making it possible for parents to use less gas, save on stress and help conserve energy.

8. Plant a garden. Even a few tomato plants grown outside in pots can help teach kids about the process of growing; the importance of soil, water and sunshine; and the reward of caring for plants that then produce flowers and food.

9. Cut down on consumption. Instead of always buying the latest gadgets, get involved in swapping toys with other parents as kids outgrow them, purchasing used toys, or making alternative toys, such as playhouses, out of cardboard boxes.

10. Get active! Encourage your local school to serve healthier lunch options in the cafeteria, campaign to get soda companies out of the schools and to use nontoxic cleaners in the classrooms and organic lawn products on the playing fields. See sustainabletable.org for ideas.

7/1/2010 © M. Reagle

This first appeared in E/The Environmental Magazine.

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The National Newsroom

Personal Finance Pitchfork Continued from page 70

Pitchfork itself. “It’s a perfect storm, you know?” he said.

Maybe not perfect: The truth is that Dombal is not Beach Fossils’ biggest fan in the world. Not that he dislikes them or anything. It’s just—“The people that I really love are these kind of larger-than-life figures— somebody like Lil’ Wayne, who’s, like, the same age as me,” Dombal said. “For me, loving somebody involves an element of unapproachability.”

The Beach Fossils guys, in other words, are nice and everything, but it’s almost as if they fit the profile of a Pitchfork band too perfectly.

“They look like how I look,” Dombal said. “They went to similar schools as me. Similar backgrounds, similar references. It’s like talking to one of my friends. Which is OK, but ... that’s not what I want to really grab on to as far as music goes.”

Outside, Schreiber was talking about an earlier conversation with one of the boys in Beach Fossils.

“He was asking me questions about Pitchfork, which was interesting,” Schreiber said. “He was asking about old writers—he was asking about Jason Josephes, who wrote the Flaming Lips Zaireeka 0.0, and he was like, ‘I always really liked that review!’”

That review, one of only a handful of 0.0s that Pitchfork has ever bestowed, was published more than eight years ago, when Pitchfork was a very different website, and appears to have since been taken down.

“At that point, we were just like a zine—no one was fucking reading us,” Schreiber said. “We didn’t give a shit what we said, so we would just do shit like that.”

The Beach Fossils kid remembered the review in detail.

“It was cool,” Schreiber said.

Did he think the guys in the band felt any kind of funny about playing in this particular office, in front of these particular people?

“I don’t know, man,” Schreiber said. “I try not to think about things too much from a band’s perspective, you know what I mean? You try to remain critical and distant, for sure. But I guess I would imagine that it’s pretty surreal more than anything. Like, just a weird thing, you know?”

Three-Fourths of July

by Merl Reagle

Q J U OA E Y

P U L S E

D E B T

A V O N

A J A R

D U P E

M I N T J U L E P

A J RU DR S Y

H U N A N

E T E E E N J E SMA T I M L E T I D Y L E A NC E D S A I R E L U L I A B R I O I G I DO OS E R E A L A I L I E N L A T E YMA N A L S

R U S S E L L

E N O L I T E N

E V SO L I A N S E N E J U L GOS S V A RM I OU I J U L I A S E N E P I DR E S I A E S T N A C T OR S MA E H AM J U L I OR A N B L Y D

N A T I V E S E T H O S

U D A E L A L S S T I T C R A I L P L

L I M O E R M A

L E N BO I V E C A T C I N H OME AWA R GE J U E N B

T MAO E S E L S R A D I O NDON I C E L S AM J E T P U V A P U L E T ME R E I P S T T R I O T Y E T N A N Z A T E A L H A A R A S S N B E E D H OWE L I U S E S T

Protecting seniors from financial abuse

By Kathy Kristof, Tribune Media Services

Despite the headlines about con artists such as Bernie Madoff, your chance of getting swindled out of your life savings is relatively slim. But the possibility grows as you get older.

One senior in five has been taken in some form of financial con, according to a survey released last week.

And half the seniors surveyed reported experiencing some degree of attempted economic exploitation, such as being pressured to buy foreign lottery tickets or being pitched with incomprehensible investments. Some said they believed that someone had gained access to their bank accounts and had siphoned away their money.

“Con artists see seniors as a golden opportunity,” said Kathleen Quinn, executive director of the National Adult Protective Services Association, a nonprofit agency charged with improving services to prevent abuse, neglect and exploitation of elderly and disabled adults.

Why? Like career bank robber Willie Sutton, con artists go where the money is, and seniors often have built up small fortunes from a lifetime of thrift.

But, more important, a surprising number of seniors suffer from ailments that make them prime targets for con artists and parasitic family members, according to Dr. Robert E. Roush, associate professor of medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine.

In response, a rare coalition of financial and medical professionals joined together last week to form the Elder Investment Fraud and Financial Exploitation project. Their goal is to stem what they believe is a rising tide of economic exploitation of the elderly.

The new effort is an outgrowth of a pilot project in Texas that seeks to team medical professionals with state securities regulators and social services agencies. The goal is to train social workers and doctors to detect and head off financial fraud before it leaves seniors destitute.

Texas Securities Commissioner Denise Voigt Crawford said that pilot project started when securities regulators began to realize that a disproportionate number of elderly fraud victims were suffering from some level of dementia. She wanted to know if there were medical red flags that could help securities regulators find these vulnerable seniors before they were fleeced.

Meanwhile, medical personnel at Baylor were realizing that stress from financial woes could cause physical ailments in their patients and had started looking for ways to identify the warning signs of financial trouble.

They teamed up and came up with a series of questions that doctors could ask their patients to detect signs of a condition known as mild cognitive impairment.

Roush described the condition as a subtle detonation of the mind. Seniors can be active and able to handle all the traditional activities of daily living, he said, but start to exhibit confusion when dealing with numbers. Roughly one-third of those over 71 experience this, he added.

What are the warning signs for seniors?

—Trouble paying bills because they seem confusing.

—A lack of confidence about making financial decisions alone.

—An inability to understand financial decisions that someone else is making on the senior’s behalf.

—Making loans or gifts that the senior cannot afford.

—Assertions that someone is accessing the senior’s accounts because money seems to be disappearing.

Over the term of the Texas pilot project, roughly 55 percent of doctors saw signs of cognitive impairment and financial abuse, and reported it, Roush said.

Once reported, these tips led to investigations that landed several con artists in jail, Crawford said. In fact, one financial planner who had scammed hundreds of seniors out of their life savings was recently sentenced to 99 years in prison, she said.

“We have been extremely happy with the program here in Texas,” Crawford said. “The success of this pilot program has encouraged us to form more partnerships to expand this on a nationwide basis.”

The new partnership is financed by the Investor Protection Trust, a nonprofit education group that was formed with money from a 1993 settlement with Wall Street firms over past wrongdoing. (Some things never change.) It will provide “pocket reference guides” to doctors with questions to ask their aging patients and a list of social service and financial service agencies to contact if they detect signs of trouble.

The program is voluntary, but the coalition partners believe doctors will be willing to add these questions to their examination routine because they’ll help keep seniors healthy. Financial stresses often lead to depression and other ailments.

In the meantime, Quinn said consumers can help by being vigilant about signs of trouble with their older relatives—even if one member of the family appears to be watching over the senior and isn’t asking for help. It’s not uncommon for financial abuse to be perpetrated by a relative, she noted.

If one member of the family seems to be isolating an aging parent or grandparent, look more closely, she suggested. Also consider it a warning sign if the older relative has a change in appearance, particularly if they stop paying attention to hygiene or if they appear overly suspicious or fearful.

If you suspect abuse—financial, emotional or physical—and don’t know what to do about it, call your local Adult Protective Services office. In Southern Nevada, you can call 486-3545 or go to nvaging.net/protective_svc.htm for more information. To report suspected elder abuse, neglect or exploitation, call 486-6930.

Kathy Kristof’s column is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. She welcomes comments and suggestions but regrets that she cannot respond to each one. E-mail her at kathykristof24@gmail.com.

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Arts & Entertainment

Better than Hogwarts: Jeff McBride and a few of the Wonderground Players.

stage

Man of Many Masks

Magician and pied piper, Jeff McBride turns Vegas into a wonderland of performance and art

Photo by Anthony Mair

By Jaq Greenspon

Walking into The Olive, a Mediterranean-style lounge on East Sunset Road, is like stepping through Alice’s mirror, and the Wonderground on the other side is more magical than Lewis Carroll’s rabbit hole and equally overwhelming. On stage, a pair of belly dancers moves rhythmically, mimicking the twirling smoke of sweet flavored tobacco rising from dozens of hookah pipes. Against a wall, illuminated by a single bulb, an artist paints a half-naked woman into a colorful bird. At a nearby table, a man donning an evil grin and a fedora slides a razorblade into a card box and, with a few

shakes of his wrist, surgically removes the pips from a four of diamonds—his spectators’ selected card. An experimental film is projected on a blank wall; green fairy lights are scattered across the floor, and at the center of it all is the man of many masks himself, Jeff McBride.

McBride is part White Rabbit, part Mad Hatter and part Alice. He’s your guide, your host and part of the audience. Not to mention he’s an accomplished performer in his own right—McBride has won multiple awards and is famous for combining magic with the Japanese theater style of Kabuki. An

hour before showtime, McBride is making decisions about video screens, greeting early guests and ensuring that his creative team wants for nothing.

A monthly performance art spectacular consisting of magic, variety, dance and more, Wonderground got its start more than 10 years ago when McBride and company built the Wonderdome, a private venue that also housed monthly events for McBride’s Magic & Mystery School. It took about eight years for the “dome” to be supplanted by the “ground,” first at Palace Station two years ago and now Continued on page 78 July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 77

Arts & Entertainment

Stage Wonderground Continued from page 77

in its permanent home at The Olive.

But the school was the first place McBride began to see his true purpose materialize. “My profession is empowering people and the more I do it the better I get at it,” he says. “As a consultant, as a career coach, as a mentor, as a magic teacher, as a motivational speaker, my job is to help other people achieve their dreams. … For many people, I’m giving them their first Las Vegas stage.”

As night’s first show nears, McBride is once again in motion. He won’t be performing until the final show, but since he’s just as much a fan as he is anything else, he makes his way around the room, shaking hands and sharing stories.

For Joseph Stanley and Ted Leon, longtime members of the Vegas magic scene, this camaraderie is part of the appeal. “It reminds me of an old-time magic club,” says Stanley, who practices magic as a hobby but was taught by the legendary Michael Skinner, house magician for Steve Wynn at the Golden Nugget.

“You know, where we can all get together and talk and do stuff for each other.”

Leon, who traveled the world doing a mindreading act as “The Great Leondo,” agrees.

“I love what’s going on here. It’s a beautiful venue to have these conversations.”

There is a palpable energy here, a fostering of talent. A professional magician finishes a trick at one table then walks over to another where he becomes a student. For the uninitiated, these sessions become a chance to see some of the greats performing in a setting where they are free to have fun.

In May, the featured performer was Jimmy Fingers, a comedy magician from Texas. June was different, featuring Paul Vigil (who also performs weekends at King Ink at The Mirage) and July will be different yet again. Every month sees new performers coming in to work alongside the core group of “Wonderground Players.” And everyone brings their best game.

“We don’t want someone who’s working on an act,” says Jordan Wright, the Wonderground manager, who is always looking for something fresh.

Fortunately, originality is not a concern. A lot of the big names in magic are starting to plan their trips to Vegas around the third Thursday of the month—and asking if they can perform.

“It’s a place where people want to come and share, regardless that it doesn’t pay; regardless that it’s a lot of other magicians,” Wright says. “It’s the fact you can be part of this experience.”

Indeed, the underlying foundation of Wonderground isn’t a business plan; it’s the experience. “We believe the riches of life are not just financially based,” McBride says. “We’re cultural creatives; we make things happen. If we waited for the casinos to do it, it would never happen.”

And it’s not just magicians who are drawing inspiration from this creative energy. In May, a contortionist and a balloon artist primed the crowd before local slam poet champion Sean Critchfield rocked the room. But this is all planned, it’s part of the Wonderground manifesto: “We want to cultivate imagination and creativity.” Whatever form that takes doesn’t matter as long as things are moving forward.

And they are. “The first few months it was just magicians,” says Wright, who also books the acts, with McBride’s approval.

“We don’t want it to just be about magic, we want it to be about performance art. We can have tarot card readers, live painters—we had black light statues back in February—we can get different types of entertainment here.”

McBride himself borrows heavily from dynamic group concepts—from modernday gatherings such as Burning Man to ancient shamanistic rituals—in his approach to making Wonderground a magical experience. The whole presentation is organic, evolving throughout the evening.

There’s no pressure to ever move from your spot. If you don’t want to go into the anteroom for the parlor show, not to worry, soon enough the experience will find you, from the taste and smells of Mediterranean cuisine to the sounds of DJ Leo Diaz.

Wonderground offers top-notch entertainers for less than the price of a Friday night 3-D film. It’s also streamed live on StreetofCards.tv, a magic-themed website with archived performances and live chat. “We have fans all over the world who come to the nightclub every month,” McBride says.

“It’s a personal experience because you get to interact with the entertainers.”

We’re cultural “creatives; we make things happen. If we waited for the casinos to do it, it would never happen.”

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Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

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Arts & Entertainment

Music

Believe the hype: Chuck D (front left) and Flavor Flav.

On the Road Again Nation of millions still can’t hold Public Enemy back

Hip-hop is a landscape littered with one-hit wonders, second albums destined for the bargain bin and artists cut down in their prime. In the rap game, staying power hasn’t enjoyed much staying power. This is what makes Public Enemy all the more remarkable. When Chuck D, Flava Flav and the crew dropped their first album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Who’s the Boss? was just edging out Night Court in the Nielsen ratings. Yet somehow, 23 years later, PE is still bringing the noise.

“Connecting with fans, performing, is a one-on-one situation,” frontman Chuck D explains in a phone call from their bus en route from a show at Cleveland’s House of Blues to Green Bay, Wisc. “Touring is how you make someone really want to take the music home with them.”

From the moment PE hit the scene, they’ve made it a mission to build a following show by show. “From the very beginning, we used the hell out of our passports,” Chuck D explains. They’ve performed more than 1,300 shows in 53 countries to date. PE pays regular visits to Europe and beyond, and they are recognized as one of hip-hop’s premier worldwide ambassadors.

PE has bumped speakers across the world with a furious sound and a socially conscious message that remains a cornerstone to this day. From black-onblack crime, to Hollywood stereotyping, to the current immigration chaos in 80 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Arizona, PE has never shied away from the issues, regardless of what was selling.

“You have to be satisfied with your own creative process,” Chuck says. “You can’t wait for some A&R person to tell you what to do.” PE stayed true to their message from day one, and became one of the best-selling rap artists in history.

They logged three platinum and three gold albums. But as booty shaking and bling began to rule corporate rap, PE forged their own path to get their music heard and their message out.

Cutting ties with record execs, PE dived into Internet distribution. The innovators released an album on MP3 before iTunes was even a twinkle in Apple’s eye. PE’s distribution is now done on their own online label, Slamjamz.com.

“If we made selling records the goal, it would wipe away the reasons we did this in the first place,” Chuck says.

So PE jumped off the grid; well, made their own grid really, designed to share their uncompromising music and message with as many people as possible.

Their legacy is etched in stone. Rolling Stone recently named PE one of the 50 greatest artists of all time. But they show no signs of stopping.

Chuck, who turns 50 this year, sums it up perfectly. “The passion and energy has always got to be there.” PE has never lacked either.

Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Flava Flav will appear at Jet nightclub at The Mirage on Saturday, July 3. For more info, call 792-7900.

Photo by Robert Downs

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Arts & Entertainment

Music Soundscraper

Korean Girls and projectile produce

By Jarret Keene It’s weird and kind of cool: Whenever I sit down to work on this column, I always worry there’ll be nothing to write about, that the Vegas music scene will suddenly reveal itself to be a stale puff of machine-generated fog. As soon as I examine the calendar, however, intriguing shows abound. Here are a few.

After a nine-month hiatus due to a lengthy search for a new guitarist, the Vegas alt-rock band that almost broke through, As Yet Unbroken, returns to the stage—or at least the local dive-bar circuit. Comprising four artists in the realms of tattoo, fine-art and comics, As Yet Unbroken had been tearing up the scene with a number of well-received shows before momentum stalled. Now the band has recruited six-stringer Peter Stauber, who debuted at Boomers earlier this week along with a batch of new songs.

Catch these guys for free at 9 p.m. July 2 at Aruba Hotel. Alert: The band includes drummer/Vegas Seven contributor Pj Perez, so if he ever wrote a negative review of your art show or band gig, now’s your chance to pelt him with fruit. Heck, I’ll even bring the produce!

Detox from all that testosterone on July 3, when South Korean girl group Wonder Girls will wow House of Blues. For me the guiltiest of pleasures, these five beautiful singers delivered the sweet 2009 single “Nobody,” the first song by a K-pop group to ever enter the Billboard Hot 100. They’ve opened for the Jonas Brothers (and are managed by the Jonas family), and are immensely popular in Asia. The goal seems obvious: to break Wonder Girls in the States, which will become a whole lot easier once their still-delayed full-length Englishlanguage album is released.

(Setback being the departure and replacement of a member back in February.) Until then, they’re touring on the sugary power of “Nobody” and two other great tunes, “Tell Me” and “So Hot,” as well as a new track called “2 Different Tears” and a cover of Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha.” This all-ages show 82 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

begins at 6 p.m. with doors opening at 5.

Admission is $35.

Lastly, awesome and as-yet-unappreciated alt-country artist Kasey Anderson plays the Double Down Saloon on the Fourth of July. This Portland kid strikes me as a young Steve Earle with a similarly huge talent for urgent, whiskey-scarred melodies and compelling narratives. His new album, Nowhere Nights, is rife with haunted characters and voices, many of them wounded by events outside of their control (the never-ending Iraq War in “I Was a Photograph”) and others squarely within (the bleak kiss-off of “Bellingham Blues”). Don’t miss this one, people.

Your iPod loaded with patriotic tunes? Here’s part of my playlist: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” Don McLean’s “American Pie,” Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” and Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

Fire up the grill!

Know the coolest Vegas band to catch during hot July nights? Tell jarret_keene@yahoo.com.

As Yet Unbroken

CD Reviews

By Jarret Keene

GOTH-ROCK

Danzig Deth Red Sabaoth (Evilive) Danzig stands among the giants of loud, heavy rock—Lemmy, Ozzy and the late Dio. The last six years, however, the Misfits mastermind has remained mostly quiet, choosing instead to revisit his earlier symphonic mode (2006’s Black Aria II) and collect unreleased material (2007’s The Lost Tracks of Danzig). With his legacy-building stalled, he needed a strong statement, and he makes it look easy with Death Red Sabaoth, his ninth studio effort under the Danzig name. First, the production: He used vintage instruments and gear, and the warm, organic approach stands in contrast to his previous emphasis on industrial beats. This is muscle-car music, and “On a Wicked Night,” which opens with country-ish acoustic guitar chords, delivers the skull-pounding goods. “The Revengeful,” meanwhile, will sever your eardrums with a lacerating metal riff. Don’t write off Deth as just another Danzig disc. ★★★★✩

COUNTRY-POP

Bret Michaels Custom Built (Poor Boy) Successfully blocking out the reality-TV shenanigans and near-death tabloid tale of the ex-Poison frontman, I picked up his third solo offering with the only baggage in my head being the glam-metal masterpiece Look What the Cat Dragged In. Twenty years later, Custom Built confirms his talent as a pop-songsmith par excellence. There are first-rate country-pop songs here that, in the hands of the opposite gender (say, Taylor Swift), could become massive hits. “Riding Against the Wind,” for instance, possesses a crisp, commercial structure, and when Michaels sings the line “yesterday’s gone/I’m living for today”—presumably recorded before his hemorrhage—you can hear grit in his voice that will only grow grittier.

“Nothing to Lose,” a duet with Miley Cyrus, is a surprisingly gorgeous ballad, and when he digs into a full-on country version of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” it strikes me that, hey, this Michaels guy ain’t bad, even when he [shudder] covers a Sublime song. ★★★✩✩

INDIE-ROCK

Wolf Parade Expo 86 (Sub Pop) Canadian indie-rock champions Wolf Parade return with their third album, a more polished and uptempo pop assortment than what we might have expected from this typically moody quartet. Named after the World’s Fair event in Vancouver, when Parade members were just little kids, Expo 86 excels as an off-kilter power-pop record meant to conjure the heady, forwardlooking, Epcot-like atmosphere of the ’80s. The perky synth lines and rough bass textures of “Ghost Pressure” are alluring, as are the sleepy-headed lyrics to another track, “What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had to Go This Way)”: “I don’t think I should be sorry/for things I do in dreams,” sings co-frontman Spencer Krug. Still, as compelling as this studio album is (it was mostly recorded live to tape), the band’s flesh-and-blood performances are even better. Somebody book them to play Crown Theater, please! ★★★★✩ July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 83

Arts & Entertainment

Art

Growing by Fractals The beloved Trifecta Gallery moves to a bigger and better space

By T.R. Witcher

Marty Walsh and gallery mascot Spud E. Walsh, her long-haired Jack Russell Terrier.

a great place to cut his teeth. “[I] appreciate the lack of history here,” he says. “Every day you wake up is a new day. It’s an amazing place to make the work.”

As for Walsh, beaming with excitement about the newly expanded Trifecta, she hopes the gallery’s frontage on Charleston will signal to pedestrians and motorists that the arts district downtown is alive and well. “I can set an example that might entice other people to open good galleries here,” she says. “The more the merrier. I don’t want to be a lone island here.”

A Different Kind of Summer Camp Downtown is not yet the vibrant hub toward which its boosters have worked for years, but the Arts Factory is injecting crucial life into the neighborhood. Following the closing of Paymon’s Mediterranean restaurant at the wedge corner of East Charleston Boulevard and South Casino Center Boulevard in March, Arts Factory owner Wes Myles teamed with restaurateur Franco Spinelli to open Bar+ Bistro in April.

Now the restaurant’s spacious outdoor patio is hosting a movie night—er, an “urban social experience”—on Fridays called Camp 107. The eight-film lineup, projected on the side-wall of the Arts Factory, is a mix of cult films (Blazing Saddles, Auntie Mame) and classics (Gentleman Prefer Blondes, To Have and Have Not). Camp 107 runs through the end of July; after that, it’s likely the movie nights will continue until the weather turns.

84

Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

The debut film, Barbarella, drew a few dozen people and had the relaxed, nostalgic vibe of a drive-in flick. Myles hopes that Camp 107 won’t be a place where film nerds just watch the movie, but an event where Vegas creatives can get to know each other. The large patio has a bocce ball court, the restaurant will be serving different specialty drinks for each movie and the seats—including a few dozen rescued from the city’s first Jewish temple—are more than comfortable.

Last Saturday, the Arts Factory folks launched yet another event in the same space. Painters on the Patio features live music as well as six local painters at work on their canvasses.

“The idea is to build the energy and give people a reason to come down here,” Myles says. “Anytime you get people doing something it’s a social event.” – T.R.W.

Trifecta Gallery photo by Anthony Mair; Movie night photo by Ryan Reason.

During the last five-plus years, gallerist Marty Walsh has had chances to move out of her tiny 256-square-foot gallery, Trifecta, tucked into the rear of the Arts Factory downtown. She always refused.

The former painter had built a thriving gallery over the years, but earlier this year it finally hit her: “I just didn’t have enough space to get all the work done that I’ve been taking in, and all the work we’ve been trying to do.” She had no room for working on artists’ files, or to layout slides. “I could stay small for the rest of my life or do it better with a little more space.”

The old Trifecta looked like an oversize closet. At 1,200 square feet, the new Trifecta—which is just a few doors down from the old and still in the Arts Factory—looks like a proper art gallery. It has separate rooms for displaying small- and medium-size works. It even has an office and a reception area.

Transforming the space formerly occupied by the low-lit Valentino’s zoot suit shop, the new Trifecta is open and bright, its large windows fronting Charleston Boulevard. And a door that was once blocked off will now open directly onto the street. Behind the windows, three swiveling wall pieces are mounted on floor-to-ceiling columns; the walls can close to face the street or open up like louvers.

“It’s gonna give her the opportunity to spread her wings and fly,” Arts Factory owner Wes Myles says. “She never could have done this show in her old space. It’s gonna take the most successful gallery to a whole new level.”

The show to which he refers is called Compound Fracture, opening July 1, by rising young artist (and winner of a Joan Mitchell Foundation award) Brian Porray. Describing Porray’s work is tricky—even for Porray.

Drawing inspiration from a “fictitious supernova event,” or “chemically exotic volcanoes” on distant planets, or on subatomic proton collisions, his complex work is at heart concerned with the nature of scale.

“When you try to get your head around a particle collision, it just folds,” he says. “The brain can’t intuit that scale. The same when you look at images from the Spitzer Space Telescope [a NASA satellite launched in 2003 that captures infrared light].” He’s interested in the way radically divergent scales “affect the way we image things.”

Still confused? Let’s just say his intense, colorful paintings are both geometrically rigorous and on the verge of exploding off the canvas.

A Las Vegas native, Porray, who earlier this year was named Outstanding MFA Student by UNLV’s Department of Art, is packing his bags for Los Angeles. But that’s no knock on his hometown, which he says has been

Reading

Dorks Anonymous Descend into gaming addiction with this compelling first-person book

By Jarret Keene I’ve never bought an Xbox or played online role-playing games for the same reason I’ve never done heroin: I don’t want to get hooked and destroy my life. I know enough about video game habits, having wasted my pre-teen life joy-sticking my way to the conclusion of Atari 2600 adventure games. Luckily, at 14, I discovered music and comic books, and diverted my obsessive behavior toward playing guitar, writing graphic novels— and, you know, trying to get laid.

Ryan G. Van Cleave’s excellent, new memoir, Unplugged: My Journey Into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction (HCI, $15), makes me think I did the right thing. We all have dependencies, of course—some worse than others—but because of our

increasingly computer-centric existences the problem of video game addiction still receives scant attention. Other Internetsaturated countries such as China and South Korea have declared video game addiction to be a No. 1 public health crisis. Van Cleave insists the U.S. should, at minimum, consider adopting a more common-sense approach toward the epidemic.

It’s a problem Van Cleave details intimately, harrowingly. Like many addicts, he was functional, a university professor and writer of more than a dozen books. Gradually, though, his participation in World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with 11.5 million subscribers, overshadowed everything— his wife, his kids and his university job.

Relationships shattered and tenure denied due to an inability to interact with his academic peers, Van Cleave found himself standing on the Arlington Memorial Bridge. He almost jumped.

Getting into a MMORPG is easy; getting out is tougher than defeating an Obsidian Destroyer. WoW cancels sub-

scriptions, never accounts, thereby ensuring players’ online characters are always available. On the phone in an effort to cancel his account, Van Cleave hears the game maker’s billing rep tell him: “Sir, it’s our policy not to try to police people’s playtime or accounts in that way.” Even more insidious: the built-in pursuits, like gold farming—when in-game currency is sold as real-world cash outside the game—that go with WoW. Throughout, Van Cleave supports his story—and the stories of others—with the latest research in game addiction studies. The resource guide looks helpful.

As with any addiction, there’s no magic bullet. Van Cleave struggles daily to check his desire for reactivating his level-70 Gnome Mage, loading WoW patch updates onto his PC, and assembling a PUG (online pickup group) to launch an assault on Black Morass courtesy of an expansion download. Not a simple path, denying compulsion. Which explains why Van Cleave ends his book with the last stanza of a Robert Frost poem: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.” Hopefully, Unplugged will make a difference, too.

The LIbrarIan Loves ...

Selected by Jeanne Goodrich, executive director for the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District.

Young Rose Edelstein discovers—as she eats the lemon cake her mother has prepared for her ninth birthday—that she can discern the emotions of the people who have prepared her food just by tasting it. Aimee Bender’s second novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Doubleday, 2010), takes this fantastical premise and uses it to examine Aimee and her family. We watch her grow into an uneasy acceptance of this odd gift and struggle with what she can know and what she can barely understand about those she is closest to. The result, at least for this reader, is a haunting melancholy.

July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 85

Arts & Entertainment

Movies

Stunted growth: Rob Schneider, Chris Rock, Kevin James, Adam Sandler and David Spade.

More Giggles Than Guffaws SNL alums provide forgettable good times this summer

By Sharon Kehoe Watching Grown Ups is like being the new kid in school: You see a group of friends retelling stories while laughing at inside jokes and you desperately want to be a part of that camaraderie, or at least understand what the hell they’re laughing about.

Similarly, the plot behind Grown Ups is rather sporadic, as if Adam Sandler and the cool kids—in this case, Saturday Night Live alums Kevin James, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock and David Spade— were hanging out off-set and would suddenly think of scenes to do. They’d laugh while filming them, but never seem to put much thought into how they would contribute to the rest of the picture.

And as contagious as it is to watch the famous fivesome crack jokes and pull pranks on each other, many times this out-of-place, jerky storytelling ends up killing the flow of the movie. And that, in turn, kills some of the laughs that writers Sandler and Fred Wolf tried to target. In fact, the whole point of this flick seems like a fantastic, paid vacation for our starting lineup.

86 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Not all the jokes exchanged among the guys are incomprehensible, and when they hit them, they score. Yet there were too many times when it felt like a bad standup act: they’d constantly try to one-up each other, as guys do, but they would try too hard and end up leaving the audience out to dry. And Rock seemed a bit left out, too. He really wasn’t needed in this movie—not to mention he wasn’t funny—and Schneider was a little too serious for his wacky role. There’s an oxymoron for you. With all the powerhouse comedians enlisted for this movie, you’d think there’d be more belly laughs than enjoyable giggles.

The story follows bigwig Hollywood agent Lenny Feder (Sandler), his curvaceous fashion designer wife (Salma Hayek) and their spoiled-rotten kids.

An unfortunate event brings our Saturday Night Live BFFs back together, with their families, to rehash some old memories and start some new ones. It’s basically a movie full of summertime festivities, including Fourth of July celebrations and an envi-

ous trip to a nearby water park.

However, the major highlight of the movie is its statement about kids and their environment.

Sandler’s Feder manages to tear his kiddies away from the television and their handheld video games long enough to show them what dirt looks like. In one scene, his wife Roxanne (Hayek) teaches the kids how to skip a rock, which includes a surprisingly funny gag. The kids transform from texting on a cell phone to playing with a string phone. All the parents’ determination for their kids to discover the richness of the outdoors was entirely welcoming.

So admittedly, there are some touching moments in Grown Ups, and Sandler, James and Spade whip up some decent material to make sure moviegoers have a good time this summer. It’s nothing you’ll remember next week, but it’s enough to brighten your day and inspire you to fire up the grill, invite some good friends over and enjoy being grown ups.

Grown Ups (R)

★★★✩✩

Arts & Entertainment

Movies

Desert Pulp Hackford’s Nevada brothel biopic doesn’t know where to begin

By Cole Smithey Love Ranch holds the seedy promise of a ’70s period piece bubbling over with all the nudity, camp humor and tantalizing danger of a Russ Meyer cult movie.

Unfortunately, Taylor Hackford, the director who gained widespread kudos for his 2004 Ray Charles biopic, proves incapable of fitfully exploiting more pulpy subject matter.

The film is based on the real-life exploits of Joe and Sally Conforte, the husband-and-wife team who opened and operated the first legal brothel in the country, Nevada’s Mustang Ranch. Despite the titillating promise of the storyline, the film plays it so safe that the only thing holding it together is Helen Mirren’s flawless performance as Grace Bontempo, the elegant brothel madam with a showboating husband named Charlie (played by a miscast Joe Pesci).

Pesci repurposes the mobster characters he played in movies such as Goodfellas for a middle-aged playboy with a Napoleon complex. But substituting cowboy boots for Italian suits doesn’t go far enough to resettle Pesci into a part that’s too suggestive of his former Mafioso roles.

Narrative rubber hits the road when macho entrepreneur Charlie insists on underwriting a washed-up Argentine boxer named Armando Bruza (well played

by Sergio Peris-Mencheta). Here again, names of the actual persons have been inexplicably changed. Oscar Bonavena was the real-life boxer whose life was cut short in 1976 due to his bumpy relationship with the co-owners of the Mustang Ranch.

Armando is a crass lug of a guy. His ringside introduction to Charlie’s dignified wife carries a loaded weight of adulterous potential. There’s more than a little Postman Always Rings Twice-themed drama brewing. At first repulsed by Armando’s sweaty, overbearing presence, Grace uncomfortably warms to the boxer after Charlie

insists on boarding him in a nearby trailer park the couple owns. Charlie makes a timeless mistake when he assigns Grace to be Armando’s manager, responsible for overseeing the fighter’s work-out regime in preparation for a big fight that Charlie believes will lead to great fortunes for all concerned.

Screenwriter Mark Jacobson’s stilted script leans hard on the budding relationship between Armando and Grace, who has recently discovered that she has terminal cancer. However, the movie never taps into the bed-banging rhythms of the brothel’s milieu as it might inform the lustful desires of the star-crossed lovers. Grace’s and Charlie’s problematic business relationship is clearly spelled out. And yet a subplot about local political pressures against the brothel confuses the story rather than building suspense toward the competing climax situations of Armando’s upcoming boxing match and his romantic fate with Grace.

Mirren, Hackford’s real-life wife, hasn’t worked with the director since they met on the set of his 1985 film White Nights. Love Ranch is very much Mirren’s movie, up until an obligatory violent ending that’s handled

Helen Mirren and her band of merry whores.

with such predictability that it deflates the dramatic suspense and leaves Mirren’s character holding the bag.

Plot points take over with such a mechanical force that Grace’s voice-over narration that closes the cinematic ceremonies seems like a cop out.

Love Ranch is an off-key biopic that doesn’t know where to begin or end. What comes between might have moments of emotional truth, but the reality is submerged where it should be heightened and made bland where it should sting. Nothing looks cheap or expensive enough to capture anyone’s imagination, not even the poor souls stuck in such a dusty fly trap in the middle of the desert.

Love Ranch (R)

★★✩✩✩

By Cole Smithey and Sharon Kehoe

ShoRT REviEwS

MoviE TiMES

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩

The latest film in the Twilight franchise is the best so far, but still has meandering subplots, miscalculated segues and inexcusable flashbacks. Fickle Bella (Kristen Stewart) is caught between vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and wolfboy Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).

Director David Slade (Hard Candy) elevates Melissa Rosenberg’s unwieldy script, but can’t mask a bare-bones story.

88 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Toy Story 3 (G)

★★★★✩

Feels like no time has gone by when Woody, Buzz and the gang are on screen in this third installment of the Toy Story franchise. But turns out their beloved owner Andy is college-bound, leaving them panicked over their fate.

With a mix of creepy and cute new characters, and a day care center from hell, the toys are certainly back in town and still at their best.

Knight and Day (PG-13)

★★✩✩✩

This is a spastic piece of celebrity eye-candy action drivel. Cameron Diaz plays mechanic June Havens and Tom Cruise is CIA counterspy Roy Miller.

Roy and June adopt each other as vaguely romantic counterparts on a tail-chasing mission around the world.

Closer in tone to the recent Mr. and Mrs. Smith knock-off Killers than the suave Bourne Identity, Knight and Day is a shell of a movie.

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Dining

Dining Right-on ’Cue Memphis regains its crown as the best barbecue in town, with T.C.’s and B.B.’s both worthy contenders

Photo by Anthony Mair

By Max Jacobson Fourth of July is around the corner, and that means barbecue. I prefer the classic definition: slow cooking foods over a hot, smoky fire. (Grilling, done quickly, is the opposite.) By that standard, Vegas is not quite a great ’cue town.

Many places use smokers, such as the J&R smoker box at The Mirage buffet, Cravings. These are boxes in which you can place the hardwood of your choice, or get away with using wood chips. Still others, especially chains such as Tony Roma’s, bake their ribs in the oven, before basting them with house barbecue sauce, usually a jazzed-up ketchup.

But there is some top-notch barbecue in town. Top honors go to the Memphis Championship Barbecue restaurants, where pit master Mike Mills—he’s from Murphysboro, Ill., and also did the menu at Blue Smoke in New York City—has yet to give up his crown.

I stopped going for a while because I felt quality had slipped. But I went back recently and had a terrific meal—perhaps because the boss had just spent two weeks in town. I started with a three-rib sampler: beef, St. Louis-style pork ribs and baby backs. All three had the classic smoke ring, and they were flavorful and fall-off-the-bone tender.

Then there was the burnt-end brisket sandwich, which is not on the menu but I asked and they made it. It didn’t come up to the greatness of the one you get at Arthur Bryant’s in Kansas City, Mo., and the meat wasn’t as flavorful as you’ll find at Lucille’s Smokehouse in The District at Green Valley Ranch, but it was crunchy, beefy and smoky, with black char on every piece. The flavor of hickory permeated every bite.

The house barbecue sauce is complex here, so I like to get the meats dry and then mix the sauce with Magic Dust,

Memphis-bound: Lip Smackin’ Ribs from B.B. King’s.

Continued on page 94

July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 93

Dining

The brisket sandwich at Lucille’s Smokehouse.

spices in a shaker bottle and a few drops of Tabasco. Then you have the best sauce in the city.

There are three locations: 2250 E. Warm Springs Road, 1401 S. Rainbow Blvd. and 4379 N. Las Vegas Blvd.

Later, I was at The Mirage to taste the ’cue at the Cravings buffet and noticed B.B. King’s Restaurant and Blues Club. Soon I was face to face with his Lip Smackin’ Ribs.

I’ve been to the original B.B. King’s in Memphis, Tenn., a city famous for dryrubbed baby backs at a place called the Rendezvous. They’re the best ribs I’ve ever tasted. In Las Vegas, chef Oscar Pena uses a similar taste profile when preparing these ribs. They come crusted with spice after being finished over an open flame. At $18.95 for a half rack, and $29.95 for a full rack, they aren’t cheap, but they are worth it.

(FYI: He makes a mean gumbo, too.)

I’m also a fan of local favorite T.C.’s Rib Crib, 8470 W. Desert Inn Road, despite the fact that he uses mesquite chips, as opposed to hardwood, in his smoker. Still, these meats are slow-cooked and they taste like it. The chicken, a meat that often turns rubbery in a smoker, is wonderfully moist and tender. The beef hot links are excellent, and the ribs firm, meaty and smoke-flavored to the bone.

T.C.’s also has an array of good side dishes and desserts. The greens with turkey is delicious. Better Than Sex, an upside-down pineapple cake, is a matter of opinion.

The Grape Nut

Let’s be Frank The Sinatra Family Estates wines celebrate Sinatra in every sip

By Xania Woodman Encore’s Sinatra dining room rang with praise for Frank Sinatra’s daughter Tina and granddaughter Amanda at the Sinatra Family Estates dinner on June 18, where the evening’s guests of honor—two limited-edition Sinatra family wines—were thoughtfully paired with complementary dishes by chef Theo Schoenegger.

Guests found the inaugural 2007 vintage of “Come Fly With Me” to be a supple, food-adoring Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon blend with currant, black cherry and marzipan notes on the nose; rich, concentrated cherry flavors; and hints of leather and spice. Just 500 cases were released six months ago.

Savvy diners swooned over the even more rare 2008 “La Voce,” a Tuscan blend (90 percent Sangiovese, 10 percent Colorino) offering hints of blackberry liqueur, dried flowers and cassis, elegant tannins and a luxuriant finish. Of the just 250 cases soon to be in existence, three were bottled early especially for this event, and hand-labeled by Wynn-Encore executive director of wine, Danielle Price, a partner in Sinatra Family Estates and an accomplished winemaker herself.

These two wines represent Frank’s own taste in wine,” Tina says.

“There was no one like him in the world,” she says, a sentiment we all too happily drank to.

94

Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Sinatra Family Estates “Come Fly with Me” 2007, available at Sinatra Restaurant, Encore, $180 (750 ml); $360 (magnum), sinatra familyestates.com.

Diner’s Notebook

A hot food truck and a smart do-over for Puck

By Max Jacobson There was a time when a hot food trend took up to a year to cross the United States.

Today, thanks to Twitter and other online tools, that journey can happen in a matter of weeks.

Not long ago, Kogi, a Los Angeles taco truck with a Korean twist, started an avalanche of national imitators.

Now there is a food truck called Slidin’ Thru doing fancy burgers and sandwiches in Vegas that changes locations daily—all you do is follow its schedule on slidinthru.com.

On a recent Friday, I stopped by the parking lot at Shuffle Master, on Palms Airport Drive, at noon, and an overflow crowd was lined up at a food truck, prepared to wait for an hour. I can’t imagine waiting that long for any burger, but these folks did.

The people I spoke to gave high marks to the Yaya, a Greek-style burger with feta cheese and tzatziki sauce, and the Barbie, which is glommed up with cheddar, bacon, fried onions, jalapeño and barbecue sauce. Is it worth the wait? You call it.

Over at Crystals mall at CityCenter, the Puck team, led by chef David Robins and General Manager Matt Dickerson, decided to pull the plug on their new concept, Brasserie Puck, and replace it with Wolfgang Puck Pizzeria & Cucina (238-1000). It was a wise decision. Business has doubled in no time flat.

So goodbye to onion soup and charcuterie, and hello fried calamari and pizza with Italian sausage. “We got tired of watching people read the menu and walk,” says the restaurant’s executive chef, Dustin Lewandowski.

For the record, the boy can cook. His osso buco, chicken piccata and penne carbonara with English peas, are excellent examples of popular Italian dishes.

More good Italian eating, meanwhile, awaits you at Valentino Las Vegas, which has just opened Vin Bar & Lounge at the Venetian (11:30 a.m. until past midnight daily, happy hour 2:30-5:30 p.m., 414-3000), the latest addition to the award-winning restaurant.

“The addition offers guests another option for an extraordinary dining and wine experiences at Valentino Las Vegas,” executive chef Luciano Pellegrini says.

“For guests that don’t have time to sit for a full meal at our grill or fine dining room, they can still enjoy the hospitality and cuisine that defines us.”

The area, in the front of the restaurant next to the casino floor, is furnished with designer sofas and flatscreen TVs. The small-bites menu features salumi such as prosciutto, speck and sopressata, plus an international cheese selection.

Small plates are priced competitively at three for $12, six for $24 or a la carte, and can be anything from blood orange lobster tail with peppery baby arugula, to green apple scallop with apple tartare.

Hungry, yet?

Follow Max Jacobson’s latest epicurean observations, reviews and tips at foodwinekitchen.com.

Lucille’s photo by Anthony Mair

Barbecue Continued from page 93

Dining

Dishing Got a favorite dish? Tell us at comments@weeklyseven.com.

Mini Kobe Sliders at Cut

Part of the Summer Stimulus happyhour menu, from 5-7 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, special cocktails and appetizers are just $7. A stick is needed to hold all of the ingredients in these mini hamburgers. A homemade brioche bun contains Kobe beef, sweet pickles, and a shallot-jalapeno marmalade. $7, in the Palazzo, 607-6300.

96 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Sausage and Peppers at Chef Marc’s Pastavina

Marc Ritz makes almost everything from scratch. His grainy sausage, spiced with fennel he crushes in a coffee grinder, is a religious experience when accompanied by the red and green peppers stewed with them. $18, 7591 W. Washington St., 233-6272.

Sweet Corn Tamales at Border Grill

A true tamale is masa rolled up in a corn husk. Fillings are optional. At Border Grill, Too Hot Tamales’ Vegas outpost, the tamales are served three to an order with tomatillo salsa, steaming hot. Bet you can’t eat just one. $10, in Mandalay Bay, 632-7403.

King Crab at Hot and Juicy Crawfish

This restaurant, featuring Cajun-style seafood, is worth getting your hands dirty. There are no utensils, no plates and no fancy napkins—only a bib.

The house’s specialty is the boiled crawfish that comes with a choice of seasoning. Hot N’ Juicy Special is the signature seasoning, and you can choose the level of spiciness. $9.99/pound, 4810 Spring Mountain Road, Suites C and D, 891-8889.

Dining

Profile Tk photo caption

Presidents among the celebrities who seek Barry Dakake’s creations

By Melissa Arseniuk It all started with a phone call.

“George [Maloof ] called me and said, ‘Barry, sounds like the big dog is coming in tonight.’ I thought he was talking in third person,” chef Barry Dakake recalls. “I said, ‘What time are you coming in?’”

“Oh no, no, no—not me,” Maloof said. “Former President Clinton is coming in.” And with that, his instructions for Dakake were simple: “Do what you do best,” and “make it all happen.’”

As executive chef of N9NE Steakhouse, Dakake had prepared hundreds of meals for A-list celebrities. Still, this one was special.

“When he walked in, you could hear a pin drop,” Dakake says. “Everyone was just in awe.”

The former president arrived in the dining room with a considerable entourage, including political heavyweights, members of the Maloof family and “a massive amount of Secret Service people,” says Dakake.

Once the food was out, Dakake asked Secret Service agents how he could meet Clinton. They replied with a question of their own: “How can we meet Vince Neil?” (The Mötley Crüe frontman is a N9NE regular, and was there for dinner that night.)

The deal was done on the spot, “They were more excited meeting Vince Neil than I was meeting the president,” Dakake says.

While it was his first, it wasn’t his last encounter with the former president.

“I’ve cooked for him the past four years, all the time when he comes into town,” Dakake says. “He always gets creamed corn, and the baked apple pie—the pres loves the baked apple pie.”

Clinton isn’t the only man who has sat in the Oval Office for whom Dakake has cooked: He has prepared meals for Barack Obama, too.

“He was president-elect when I met him,” Dakake says, recalling his first encounter with Obama.

He and N9NE Group’s director of community relations, Jenna Morton, met the then-president-elect and the future first lady during a brief stopover in Las Vegas in 2008.

“The Secret Service had everything planned to a T,” Dakake says. “His plane landed, and I was up there, waiting with the food. I can remember exactly what he ate: It was a Dover sole, a Kobe cheeseburger with crispy bacon, a couple of salads and some pastry.”

He cooked for Obama again, in February 2010, at a $30,000-per-plate Democratic National Committee fundraiser in George Maloof’s sprawling home.

The 40-person dinner demanded meticulous planning, from table linens and china to the meal itself. “It wasn’t something where you could just say, ‘We’re going to cook,’ and then it’s over; we had to strategically plan this out,” Dakake says.

He put together a three-course meal that included Maine lobster, Alaskan king crab, American sturgeon caviar and filet mignon, followed by chocolate cheesecake for dessert.

Dakake has come a long way from his beginnings, serving up 99-cent breakfasts in his uncle’s diner in Rhode Island.

“My uncle started [by] making me wash the bottoms of the booths with a toothbrush,” he says.

Dakake worked his way up and went to culinary school at the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduation, he moved to New York, where he got a job with Charlie Palmer. It was here, during his four-year tenure, that he got his first taste of celebrity clientele.

“We would hear about Danny DeVito, Mickey Mantle … a lot of Yankees would come in for dinner. But we could never go out to see them, because you’re just a cook,” he says.

Dakake left New York in the ’90s, when he battled non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but once he beat cancer, he was back in the kitchen. Again, it all started with a phone call—but this time, it was from his best friend, chef Joe Romano.

“He said, ‘Look, Charlie is opening an Aureole restaurant at Mandalay Bay. Why don’t you come and be a sous chef with me?’” Dakake says.

He accepted the offer, and moved across the country to work at Aureole and Palmer’s eponymous steakhouse at the Four Seasons.

“I met more celebrities when I started at Charlie Palmer’s steakhouse than I did anywhere else,” Dakake says. “That’s where it all started.”

But after two years, Dakake says “the Maloof

brothers … scooped me up,” and he soon found himself in the kitchen at the Palms. (Romano also moved on, and is now the executive chef for PT’s Pubs.)

“I came [to N9NE] as a regular old line cook,” he says. “I wasn’t the chef here, Brian Massie was.” Six months later, Massie left N9NE (he is now executive chef for the Light Group) and Dakake took over. That was nine years ago.

The restaurant has been a magnet for celebrities since day one.

“You never know who’s going to be walking through that door,” Dakake says. “I’ve cooked for everybody from Michael Jordan to [Muhammad] Ali.” But he likes cooking for his friends and family the most. And unless you’re one of them (or one of his contacts in the Secret Service), you won’t get an invite to his annual Independence Day party.

“I became friends with them after that night,” Dakake says of the agents who first introduced him to Clinton in 2005.

His Fourth of July barbecue is an epic food fest. “The shrimp and lobster tails look like U-boats,” he says, “But the kicker, the biggest thing, every year, is from Buffalo, N.Y.: chicken wings and pizza flown in from La Nova.

“My mouth is watering just thinking about it!” he says. “I’m thinking of calling them right now and having a couple of pies sent over.”

Seven Things Barry Dakake Can’t Live Without Computer/Blackberry: He can’t function without his “links to the outside world.”

The Bible: Without his daily word, he doesn’t feel nourished.

Magazine subscriptions: From Saveur, Food Arts and Bon Appétit, to Sports Illustrated, WWE Entertainment, Tuff Stuff—or even National Geographic and Architectural Digest—chef Barry loves to read, and expand his horizons.

Cooking breakfast for his wife, Denise, and his dogs, Boomer and Brandy. “They love strawberry pancakes,” he says. “All three of them.”

Eating at different restaurants with friends, and seeing what other restaurants are doing. He loves Nove Italiano, but ventures off-property, too—to Lotus of Siam, Cut and In-N-Out, especially.

BerryBlast from Starbucks.

He says his go-to smoothie is “LCT,” which is an inside joke, but he assures, “it’s unbelievable.”

Sunday gravy at his parents’ house. Sundays at the Dakakes’ involve five things: Fresh pasta, meatballs, sausage, ricotta cheese and quality time.

You’ve come a long way, Barry: Dakake starting by scrubbing booths with a toothbrush.

98 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Photo by Anthony Mair

POTUS-Pleasing Chef

“Top 10 Sports Bar in the U.S.” as featured on MSN.com

HEALTH & FiTnEss

Fresh ingredients Many exotic fruits and veggies have great nutritional qualities — you just have to be willing to try them

By Max Jacobson Summer is the best season for enjoying nature’s bounty; exotic fruits and vegetables are not only delicious, but also colorful and healthful. You just need to know where to look, and have a little courage to be adventurous.

Most vegetables and many fruits at Whole Foods Markets are certified organic, but the exotic inventory is limited. Ashley Hoff, one of the produce managers at the Green Valley branch, says customer demand for unusual produce is sporadic at best.

“We can get anything the customer wants,” says Hoff, slicing a champagne mango, named for the bubbly sensation it gives in the mouth.

The mango is sweet, without the bitterness sometimes found in a conventional mango, and has five times the vitamin C content.

Hoff loves orange cauliflower, too, and recommends giving Romanesco broccoli a try in late July or early August when it comes in. It’s a hybrid of broccoli and cauliflower that’s high in vitamins C and K, as well as dietary fiber.

Over at Mariana’s Supermarket (4151 S. Eastern Ave.), chilies and tropical fruits in the produce department have great prices. Chilies are one of nature’s best sources of vitamin C. Mamey, a sweet cactus fruit that the store sells whole at $4.99 a pound, is often used for licuados, a sort of milk shake. One serving, about 4 ounces, contains nearly twice the daily requirement of vitamin C, and is high in B vitamins as well.

Pasilla chilies, high in vitamin C, are 79 cents a pound. Coconuts, nutritionally a complete

food, are $1.69. And for something really exotic, try some nopal, or cactus, which is 99 cents for two pounds.

Trader Joe’s is another good market from which to source exotica. The chain sells delicious, sweet Hami melons for only $2.99 each, and a variety of leafy organic greens in packages. The Hami melon is from northwest China, and is a type of muskmelon, high in phosphorus and iron, and good for blood functions.

How can Trader Joe’s offer competitive pricing? “We buy in bulk for the entire chain, and our volume is enormous,” one of the store managers at the Green Valley branch says.

Finally, at 168 Market, a Chinese grocery at 3459 S. Jones Blvd., the selection of exotic fruits and vegetables is enormous as well. Giant jackfruit go for 99 cents a pound, and fresh lychee is only $1.99 a pound. If you’ve never tasted fresh lychee, or litchi, as we often spell it, you’re in for a treat. They are delicious, and are high in potassium and copper as well as B vitamins, good for regulating body fluids and lowering the blood pressure.

Two popular Chinese vegetables are valuepriced here as well: Snow pea shoots are $3.59 a pound, and ong choy (a.k.a. water spinach) a reedy green vegetable with a nut-like flavor, is a bargain at $1.65 a pound. Both are high in vitamins A, C and E. Chef Yu of Beijing Noodle No. 9 likes to sauté either vegetable lightly in a garlic and oil bath. He says both are delicious and stand on their own.

Now available: Coconut (top), jackfruit, mamey, snow peas and lychee.

One Way to Eat an Exotic Veggie

Here’s a terrific recipe for either orange cauliflower or Romanesco broccoli from chef Jean-David Groff-Daudet of Garfield’s Restaurant at Desert Shores. He calls it “cauliflower a la Grand-mère” (Grandmother’s Way).

Make a béchamel sauce by mixing flour, eggs and milk in a saucepan with clove and nutmeg, until firm.

(Béchamel recipes are found online.)

Cut (detach) the cauliflower into “big heads,” then blanch in boiling salted water for five minutes.

Butter a baking dish, dip the “heads” of the cauliflower in the warm béchamel and line them up in the dish, heads up. Sprinkle liberally with toasted breadcrumbs.

Cool water by plunging ice cubes into it. Drain and dry.

Bake 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

100 Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Not ordinary: orange cauliflower and Romanseco broccoli.

July 3rd

Beer Pong tournament in oVation 12Pm-3Pm Register at Quinns, now through July 3rd, at 11am 1st Place: $500 ameX gift card 2nd Place: weBer grill and Beer Pong taBle 3rd Place: 4 tickets to ufc Viewing Party First 64 teams to sign up get to play $25 per 2-man team — Includes beer while playing

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SportS & LeiSure Kicking it up a Notch For local adult kickball players, the game is only part of the fun The popular childhood game of kickball has reached adulthood, but don’t expect it to exhibit much maturity.

Instead, it’s quite the opposite, as an increasing number of Valley residents are discovering. About 350 players covering 16 teams show up at Desert Breeze Park nearly each Wednesday throughout the year as part of the World Adult Kickball Association, and the games are just part of the festivities.

Teams sometimes dress in themed costumes, music can be heard blaring across the fields and cold beverages are rarely more than an arm’s length away. Warmer weather brings out the Slip ’n Slide and wet T-shirt contests, and you’re more likely to see participants, all of whom must be at least 21, refueling with Jello shots rather than Gatorade.

“It’s basically the same game you’ve played,” says local WAKA league organizer Lindsay Hool. “We’ve just taken it up a notch.”

Indeed, the game is essentially the same as most people remember. There are four balls and three strikes, and the pitcher is allowed to deliver the ball in whatever fashion—bouncing or rolling, underhand or overhand— as long as it bounces at least twice before reaching the plate and crosses the plate no more than a foot or so off the ground. Veteran players officiate the games.

Since most pitchers deliver the ball at high velocity

and some utilize different types of spin, the long ball is usually not an effective offensive strategy. Instead, bunting is the preferred weapon usually employed to generate baserunners, making the catcher an important defensive position.

Team rosters consist of 18-26 players, and 11 defenders play the field, including at least four players of each gender, with five players normally patrolling the outfield. And when it comes to talent, don’t League organizer Lindsay Hool first learned about WAKA in January 2009. worry about it; none is required. later, WAKA has more than 300 leagues and 3,000 “It’s a nonthreatening arena in which to play a team teams across the country, with teams in nearly every sport,” says Hool, 32, who first learned about WAKA state. The Las Vegas chapter, which started three years from her real-estate agent when she moved to Las ago, has grown so much that leagues now take place Vegas in January 2009 “It’s not like soccer or softball throughout the year. The spring and summer leagues where you have to have some skills or your teammates both sold out, and now Hool, who is in her fourth get mad at you.” season with WAKA, is organizing a second fall division Players can sign up as individuals, in small groups on Thursday nights at Paradise Park, giving eastside or with entire teams. Each player pays a $65 entry residents a league closer to them. fee, which is good for a WAKA team T-shirt, and two Not only is Las Vegas host to local WAKA leagues, parties during the season. The league also contributes a but the city has also become the kickball capital of the portion of its funding to charitable causes, and last fall world. The Founders Cup, the world’s largest kickball helped send two children with cancer to camp. tournament with 72 teams, will be held at Desert Breeze The concept for WAKA originated between friends in October for the third straight year. Teams that have over beers in Washington, D.C., in 1998. Now 12 years won their league are invited, but spots are limited, and the event sold out in three minutes last year.

The party atmosphere surrounding the league is reflected in team names, demonstrated in such monikers as 99 Problems But a Pitch Ain’t One, Ready to Score and Balls of Steal.

“The people who are attracted to kickball are the real creative types, you know—funny, goofy,” Hool says.

When the games end each Wednesday night, the party usually just shifts to Shuck’s Tavern II, which sponsors the league. There, the good times continue and people who often start out as strangers leave as friends. It is that camaraderie that has attracted 33-year-old Melissa Stern to the sport.

“It’s definitely a social thing,” she says. “I used to work out three to four times a week, and I’ve gained about 10 pounds since I started playing in September, but it’s worth it. It’s way more fulfilling to have friends and meet new people than to be a Barbie-looking girl.”

Stern works two jobs, so she was having a difficult time meeting people outside of work. She discovered kickball while searching craigslist.com one day, and decided to give it a shot. Now Stern, who is playing in her third season, assists Hool in organizing the league.

“It’s probably one of the better things I’ve done for myself personally, making a lot of friends and meeting new people,” she says. “I help [Hool] because I want everybody else to have fun; I want everybody else to continue having fun.”

For more information about WAKA, go to kickball.com.

About 350 players from 16 teams play kickball at Desert Breeze Park on Wednesday evenings.

102

Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

Photos by Anthony Mair

By Sean DeFrank

Going for Broke

Don’t bet on Padres to wilt in summer heat

By Matt Jacob Three things you can bet on every baseball season around this time: 1) The Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates will go shopping for a telescope so they can actually see first place. The Orioles and Pirates entered the final week of June a combined 48-102 and 40½ games out of first. Look at it another way: The Yankees had one fewer win (47) through their first 75 games than Baltimore and Pittsburgh had combined through 150 games!

2) Cubs pitcher/hothead Carlos Zambrano will become a YouTube sensation after another one of his spectacular in-game meltdowns. The latest occurred June 25 against the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field and landed Zambrano on the restricted list. His annual outbursts not only signify that summer is here, but they also alert the Cubs’ depressed fan base that—for the 102nd consecutive year—this will not be their year.

3) Finally, at least one surprise team that got off to a hot start will still be going strong as the season reaches its midway point. Thus, all the experts who wrote off the hot start as a “Viagra moment”—you know, eventually it’ll wear off—will backpedal faster than an All-Pro cornerback.

Without question, the team that fits the latter category this year is the San Diego Padres. Despite a lineup that features just one feared slugger (first baseman Adrian Gonzalez) and a pitching staff whose ace (Mat Latos) was in Triple A at this time last season, the Padres sat at 45-30 through 75 games. Not only did San Diego enter July with one of the best records in the majors, but the Padres also had made bettors more money (by far) than any team in baseball.

In fact, if you bet the same amount on each of San Diego’s first 75 games, you made a nearly 200 percent profit (largely because the Padres have cashed numerous times as a sizeable underdog).

Entering the last week of June, only two other teams—the Rangers (nearly 130 percent) and Mets (117 percent)—yielded a return of more than 90 percent.

Can the Padres keep it up for another three months? I don’t see why not.

They play in a very winnable division (National League West), and they’re

succeeding the old-fashioned way—with pitching and defense. San Diego, which plays home games in the best pitcher’s park in baseball, leads the majors in team ERA (2.99) and bullpen ERA (2.57), and no other squad is really close in either category. The Padres also had the fifth-fewest errors in baseball.

Keep this in mind, too: The best may be yet to come for the Padres. That’s because going back to 1999, at least one team each year has finished up more than 20 “units” of profit (i.e. better than 200 percent profitable). Also, San Diego’s schedule from July 1 through the All-Star break (which begins July 12) is incredibly favorable, with three-game series against the Astros, Nationals and Rockies.

MORE MONEY MATTERS: Back in mid-May when I discussed the best “money” teams in baseball, the Padres were in the top five along with the Nationals (first) and Blue Jays (third). Six weeks later, Toronto has dropped a spot to No. 4, while Washington—despite all the hype surrounding rookie pitcher Stephen Strasburg—has plummeted to No. 15 and was no longer even profitable (the only thing in D.C. that’s fallen further than the Nats in recent weeks is President Obama’s approval ratings).

Additionally, a 12-19 slump sent Tampa Bay tumbling from the best record in baseball and a top-five money team to third place in the American League East and 19th on the money list. The Rays are one of five teams—the Dodgers, Cardinals, Rockies and Phillies are the others—that entered the final week of June with a winning record but had lost more money than it had won.

At the same time, the Angels and Red Sox have seen their profits soar since the second week of May. Los Angeles has gone from 23rd to seventh, while Boston jumped from 22nd to eighth.

(Note: I had no plays last week, so my bankroll remains at $5,345.)

Matt Jacob is a former local sports writer who has been in the sports handicapping business for more than four years. For his weekly column, Vegas Seven has granted Matt a “$7,000” bankroll. If he blows it all, we’ll fire him and replace him with a monkey.

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July 1-7, 2010 Vegas Seven 103

Day One •

Friday 2nd, Tito Ortiz Signing @ The Punishment MMa Store 12pm - 3pm

•

Party with Tito @ HOOTeRS Casino Pool 5pm - 7pm

Day TWO •

Saturday 3rd, MMa Heavyweights Cain Velasquez and efrain escudero Signing @ HOOTeRS Casino Pool noon - 2pm

Day THRee •

Sunday 4th, Skin Industries and Krysztof Soszynski Will Host The 4th of July Pool Party noon - 5pm and will be Signing noon - 2pm

www.hooterscasinohotel.com • 866-LVHoots 115 East Tropicana Ave. Las Vegas, NV 89109 Across from the MGM Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Seven QueStionS nik Richie

Done something you’re not proud of? Nik Ritchie, the blogger behind The Dirty, sure hopes so. Ritchie talks about his site, his boundaries and topping yourself in Vegas.

By Elizabeth Sewell

Why do you think the site became so popular?

Tabloids are so addicting and this is the same kind of format, but this is real people. This is someone you actually know, and to see that person become an Internet celebrity or to see them get in trouble, maybe you kind of feel better about yourself in a sick way.

Do you ever feel guilty about postings?

I really don’t have feelings. It’s tough for me because I put it all out there. If I have personal friends that get in trouble … I don’t play favorites. I even put myself on the site when I do something wrong or if I get a DUI or something bad happens because I’m no different from everyone else. I feel like what we’re doing is somewhat revolutionary and it’s changing the way Internet laws are being 110

Vegas Seven July 1-7, 2010

made. To be honest, I haven’t gotten to that point where I feel bad for anyone.

What if your wife ended up on the site?

The rule going into the marriage was we keep it totally separate. She’s actually never even seen the Web site, and she’s going to keep it that way. She doesn’t want to have a bad taste in her mouth about what I do, so our marriage rule is that I keep her away from it and keep the whole Nik Richie thing separate from what she does, and she does her own career and we go from there. There is immunity for family, obviously.

Is there a larger goal for The Dirty?

For some people it is a huge wake-up call. If you’re trying to be a moral person, then be that moral person. Don’t say you are and then go out that night and do a bunch of drugs and sleep with everyone in town. I have no personal vendettas. If people can learn a lesson from the site, great. There’s no ill will toward anyone in the process of doing this, but yes there is a greater purpose. The smartest people can see that. The site is for humor, it’s to kill time, it’s for the cubical warriors. But at the same time, if you’re going out to the clubs and your life is spiraling out of control and you can’t catch it, bad things are going to happen.

I think the site actually opens up people’s eyes to that.

Has the job affected your personal life?

My personal life is pretty much shot.

The friends that I had before either become the moochers or they become very distant because they have normal jobs … they can’t be associated with me.

Going through this thing, it’s making me

make friends who aren’t real people and are just along for the ride and the free bottle service.

What would cross the line for you?

I try to keep it PG-13. I don’t have nudity on the site, I cover up things with hearts or whatever. When people are sending their girlfriend’s sex texts, I star out all the bad words and we do moderate the comments. Every comment is read, and only about 25 percent of the submissions that come into The Dirty actually make the site. I’m pretty picky and selective as to what goes on the site.

What’s your best Vegas story?

I was hosting Pure Nightclub, I got really tipsy and I was going crazy demanding all this stuff and as I was leaving the nightclub something happened in the hotel and the fire trucks came and they were rushing into Caesars Palace. I decided it would be smart idea for me to steal a fire truck, so I decided to get into the first truck— there’s video of it—and I was just drunk trying to steal a fire truck. I couldn’t get it started, and I locked myself in there and it became a big mess. I got fined by the county. Every time I go to Vegas, I try to top myself.

Photo by Kevin Kelsch

TheDirty.com is one tabloid blog among many, but the salacious stories and alcohol-fueled escapades you’ll find on the site feature your co-workers, best friends or that girl down the street. It came to fruition as DirtyScottsdale.com in 2007, the brainchild of Hooman Karamian, known to his fans as Nik Richie. Richie launched his site as a blog where anyone could submit pictures of their roommate, boss or sister being naughty. Within a year, TheDirty.com as we know it was born. Richie has expanded his citizen journalism into 150 markets, including Las Vegas, which gets the most submissions per month at about 1,000.

Richie kept his own identity a secret until his arrest and subsequent charge with a DUI in 2008 landed his mug shot on his own site and blew his cover. Nonetheless, the site has grown in popularity and Richie is focused on expanding into Canada and Australia with non-English language sites to follow. Should you find yourself posted on TheDirty.com, he does have a 72-hour removal process where each case is analyzed and, hopefully, the posts vanish, along with the embarrassment.