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THANKS FOR THE RIDE COACH Jerry Tarkanian UNLV
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CASTING CALL now hiring manager • hostess • food server busser • food runner • bartender ramen cook • line/prep cook • dish washer Interviews to be held on Monday, March 2nd at Commonwealth 525 E. Fremont St., Las Vegas, NV 89101
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downtown las vegas / april 2015
24
18 | THE LATEST
“A Modern Approach,” by Lissa Townsend Rodgers. In celebration of Black History Month, we remember trailblazing architect Paul Revere Williams and his iconic Las Vegas designs. Plus, the latest attack on online gaming, Three Questions on feng shui, Ask a Native and Tweets of the Week.
20 | Character Study
“Managing Expectations,” by Lissa Townsend Rodgers. While the spotlight shines on high-profile elected officials, Betsy Fretwell works behind the curtain to maintain the city’s momentum.
24 | COVER
“The First Chapters of the Book of Tark,” by Greg Blake Miller. How a city looked at a basketball coach and saw its reflection. Plus, a timeline of Jerry Tarkanian’s life, tributes from around the country, seven Tarkisms and excerpts of Vegas Seven’s coverage of the legendary coach through the years.
33 | NIGHTLIFE
“Youth Is Served,” by Camille Cannon. How one homegrown event-production crew is amping up the 18-and-over rave scene in Las Vegas … and beyond. Plus, a Q&A with Dyro, a peek at LAX’s remodel, anticipating Heart of Omnia, Seven Nights and photos from the week’s hottest parties.
57 | DINING
“Home Sweet Home-Away-From-Home,” by Al Mancini. Five local restaurants that are also important cultural hubs. Plus, Mancini on Violette’s Vegan and Dishing With Grace.
63 | A&E
“How to Host Oscar,” by Lissa Townsend Rodgers. Our guide to the best—or at least weirdest—awards party ever. Plus, a Q&A with SNL alum Ana Gasteyer, The Hit List, Tour Buzz and reviews of Marilyn Manson and the Growlers in concert.
69 | Showstopper
“Whip-Snark,” by Steve Bornfeld. 50 Shades! The Parody spanks the phenomenon and leaves marks.
70 | Movies
50 Shades of Grey and our weekly movie capsules.
86 | Seven Questions
Rascal Flatts’ Gary LeVox on working with the cognitively impaired, being labelmates with Taylor Swift and surviving a Cars movie.
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Dialogue Event Seven Days Gossip
ON THE COVER Photo by Greg Cava
February 19–25, 2015
PHOTO BY RYAN OLBRYSH
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VegasSeven.com
DEPARTMENTS
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LAS VEGAS’ WEEKLY CITY MAGAZINE
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FOUNDED FEBRUARY 2010
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EDITORIAL
Matt Jacob Paul Szydelko, Xania Woodman A&E EDITOR Cindi Reed SENIOR WRITERS Steve Bornfeld, Geoff Carter, Lissa Townsend Rodgers CALENDAR COORDINATOR Camille Cannon EDITOR
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DIALOGUE EDITOR’S NOTE Memories of Tark it was early 1992. Jerry Tarkanian was a soon-to-be unemployed college basketball coach, fnishing up a glorious 19-year run at UNLV. Meanwhile, San Diego State was a team in need of a coach, having just fred Jim Brandenburg in the midst of one of the worst seasons (2-26) in the history of major college basketball. Rumors were swirling: Tark owned a beach home in San Diego; his neighbor was good buddy and thenAztecs Athletic Director Fred Miller. Miller wanted Tark; all indications were Tark wanted the job. So as the sports editor of The Daily Aztec, SDSU’s student newspaper, I put in a what-the-hell call to Tarkanian, never in a million years thinking he’d call back. Less than 24 hours later, he did. I recall we spoke for a good 10 minutes. He was gracious and honest, telling me in that familiar gravelly voice that he indeed was very much interested in the job. I remember hanging up the phone and pounding out a column, begging SDSU President Thomas Day to hire the legend. My words fell on deaf ears; spooked by Tarkanian’s run-ins with the NCAA, Day never so much as gave him an interview. When news of Tarkanian’s death hit on the morning of February 11, my mind immediately rewound to that phone conversation (our only conversation, as it turns out). Of course, I thought about what might have been had Tark landed at SDSU; but more than anything, I thought about how I was still amazed that a coach of his iconic stature would take the time to call back a 21-year-old kid from the student newspaper. Then again, as I’ve come to learn in my 20 years in this city, Jerry Tarkanian never saw himself the way most everyone else did: larger than life. Rather, he was humble, he was kind, he was a class act—to the very end. RIP, coach. – Matt Jacob
➜
PHOTO COURTESY OF UNLV ATHLETICS
OUR SITES TO SEE
DTLV GETS A FACELIFT
NEWS TO DINE FOR
STREAM THIS
If you haven’t checked out DTLV.com in the last week, put this magazine down—after you’re finished reading it cover to cover, of course— and pull it up on your browser or smartphone. We completely rebuilt the site from the top down, and editor Geoff Carter runs through all the changes at DTLV.com/ Makeover.
Is É by José Andrés getting a new executive chef? What Downtown watering hole is hosting a pop-up brunch? Where can you get a taste of the Oscars? Dining critic Al Mancini dishes on all the rumors and news at VegasSeven.com/ AlACarte.
Instead of wasting hours trolling the Web for new releases from local musicians, scan our Hear Now column, where Zoneil Maharaj rounds up all the latest and legal videos, downloads and streams. In this edition, art-punk outfit Candy Warpop gives us the creeps, and rapper Reallionaire Jream returns from abroad. VegasSeven. com/HearNow.
FACEBOOK: /VegasSeven TWITTER: /7Vegas INSTAGRAM: /VegasSeven
EVENT
CUPID’S UNDIE RUN
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UPCOMING EVENTS • Feb. 28
Blacklight Run at Sam Boyd Stadium [BlacklightRun.com] • March. 1 Scale the Strat at the Stratosphere [ScaleTheStrat.com]
PHOTOS BY AMIT DADL ANEY, JOSH METZ, TEDDY FUJIMOTO AND TOBY ACUNA
February 19–25, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
What does it take to get 250 people to drop trou Downtown on Valentine’s Day? A little liquid courage from Deep Eddy Vodka and the noble ambition of running for charity. Cupid’s Undie Run made its Las Vegas debut Feb. 14 and raised $25,000 for the Children’s Tumor Foundation. The nearly one-mile course began and ended at Fremont and Sixth streets, winding through Clark Avenue and Fourth Street. Among the participants who stripped down to their skivvies were ladies from the Westgate’s topless revue Sexxy, as well as former Jersey Boys star Jeff Leibow. Leibow’s daughter, Emma, (who lives with neurofibromatosis) was the NF Hero guest of honor.
“Shouldn’t we at least hang on to one spot in which Dean Martin could have conceivably woke up through a savage hangover fog?”
GOSSIP {PAGE 22}
News, tweets, Ask a Native and introducing the city’s boss behind the scenes
A Modern Approach In celebration of Black History Month, we remember trailblazing architect Paul Revere Williams and his iconic Las Vegas designs By Lissa Townsend Rodgers
February 19–25, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
LAS VEGAS IS KNOWN FOR ITS CASTLES,
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circuses and canals—impressive, but not exactly elegant design. However, one of the most sophisticated American architects of the 20th century did ply his trade in Sin City: Paul Revere Williams’ work encompasses the soaring sparkle of the Guardian Angel Cathedral and the cozy mid-century homes of Berkley Square. Williams’ brilliance lay in his mastery of a variety of traditional architectural styles—Spanish colonial, French chateau, Western rustic, neoclassical—combined with a futuristic vision of monorails, dome houses and some of the wildest examples of Googie ever built. “He made the transition to modern design and developed
a very convincing, well-executed modern architecture,” architect and historian Alan Hess says of Williams. Williams also became the frst African-American member of the American Institute of Architects in 1923 and the frst African-American AIA Fellow in 1957. “He had an extremely successful career regardless of his race at a time when that made a big difference,” Hess says. “He was very dignifed, very self-assured, but he was also very aware of the limits that the culture imposed on African-Americans.” Williams learned to draw and write upside-down so white clients would not have to sit beside him; he kept his hands in his pockets until someone extended theirs frst. He designed the
Beverly Hills Hotel, Saks Fifth Avenue Beverly Hills and a number of residences for movie stars (including Cary Grant and Lon Chaney Sr.) back when that
neighborhood was whites-only. In Las Vegas, Williams took a different tack, building “Berkley Square and the reasonably priced ranch houses that he developed on the west side,” Hess says. “He worked with AfricanAmerican investors from Los Angeles to build that. It really shows his commitment to his community.” Berkley Square was declared a historic district in 2009, but perhaps Williams’ best-known and best-preserved Las Vegas building is the lobby of La Concha Motel, now the visitors’ center for the Neon Museum. Danielle Kelly, the museum’s executive director, says Williams’ design fts right in with the museum’s mission. “It celebrates roadside architecture and interprets the function of a sign as architecture, art and design,” she says. “[La Concha is] a beautifully perverse inversion, a building that … literally embodies the shape of its theme—a giant, undulating conch shell.” Of course, this being Vegas, not all of Williams’ creations are still standing. The glitzy Royal Nevada Casino and Carver Park (the housing development he designed for African-Americans in Henderson) are long gone, while El Morocco Motel once stood alongside La Concha, but didn’t survive the wrecking ball. Still, as Hess notes, Williams— who died in January 1980, less than a month shy of his 86th birthday—left a lasting imprint on this city. “[Las Vegas] can defnitely be proud that he worked [here] and created so many different, interesting monuments,” Hess says. “People like his buildings now as much as they did in the ’40s and ’50s.” The Neon Museum hosts “Pop-Up Architecture: Paul Revere Williams in Las Vegas,” a family art program, 12:30-2:30 p.m. Feb. 21. For more architectural photos of Williams’ work, visit VegasSeven.com/ PaulRevereWilliams.
PHOTOS BY JON ESTRADA
From the Guardian Angel Cathedral to La Concha Motel (below), Paul Revere Williams left an indelible mark on our city.
colors. Earth colors are grounding and relaxing. Keep decorative objects to a minimum, and do not hang photographs or pictures of people. How does one use feng shui to create balance in their love life?
★
CHINESE NEW YEAR
★
No matter when you start a new year, the goal is to invoke the good and discard the bad. So as Chinese New Year approached, we asked feng shui master consultant Lin Huang how to best increase balance and harmony. What’s your advice for someone looking to redecorate a home?
Keep the rooms dynamic. Follow an “out with the old, in with the new” policy, causing the chi energy to be symbolically replenished. Rejuvenate the rooms from year to year. Bright lights and pets generate yang energy, and plants will soften the fow of energy. Underplay the presence of yang energy when decorating bedrooms. Choose subtle lighting and soothing, neutral
Activate and energize the southwest corner of your bedroom with the placement of a natural crystal. This will enhance greater harmony and happiness in all your relationships. Can you use feng shui to boost your financial fortune?
Feng shui practices to enhance fnancial success are also intended to strengthen the attribute of gratitude. Place water features such as fountains and aquariums in the home and offce, knowing that it symbolizes prosperity fowing into your life in myriad forms. Also carry three Chinese coins with red thread in your purse and wallet to activate and symbolize a never-ending source of income. - Amber Sampson For more from our interview with Huang, visit VegasSeven.com/LinHuang.
FRIDAY, FEB. 20: The third annual Mesquite Off-Road Weekend happens today through Sunday, featuring some of the best endurocross and freestyle motocross action on two wheels. Whether you’re there to race, check out such endurocross stars as Cody Webb and Destry Abbott, or pull a sick backflip on the Thrill Seeker Mega Ramp, you’re guaranteed to be in moto heaven. MesquiteOffRoad.com.
SUNDAY, FEB. 22: Totally into the mellifluous tones of masterful choral singing? Duh, who isn’t? Good news: the USC Thornton Chamber Singers perform at 7 p.m. at the Las Vegas Academy of Performing Arts. The Thornton Chamber Singers are considered one of the nation’s best collegiate choral ensembles, and tonight they share the stage with local singers, including the UNLV Chamber Chorale. UNLV.edu.
Sheldon Adelson’s D.C. cronies take aim at online gaming JASON CHAFFETZ, R-UTAH, WITH THE
ILLUSTRATION BY CIERRA PEDRO
THURSDAY, FEB. 19: Local author S.P. Grogan will sign his new book, Atomic Dreams at the Red Tiki Lounge, at 6 p.m. at Writer’s Block, our new independent bookstore and “artificial bird sanctuary.” Grogan, you may recall, is the author of Vegas Die. 1020 Fremont St., 702-550-6399.
SATURDAY, FEB. 21: One drawback to living in the desert: very few opportunities to learn how to play ice hockey. The Las Vegas Junior Wranglers plan to address that problem with Try Hockey for Free. Lessons start at 4:15 p.m. at the Fiesta Rancho SoBe Ice Arena, and you get equipment, training and a goody bag. (No fighting, please.) JRWranglers.com.
HIGHWIRE ACT
entirely coincidental guidance of Sheldon Adelson’s lobbyist Darryl Nirenberg, reintroduced to the House of Representatives on February 4 the Restoration of America’s Wire Act. (As opposed to the Restoration of America’s The Wire Act, where our lobbyist is feverishly pitching McNulty and The Bunk fan fction to David Simon.) The legislation—to be presented to the Senate by Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who also received tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from Adelson—would close a loophole in the Federal Wire Act opened in 2011 when the Department of Justice let states decide for themselves whether they wanted to allow online gaming. Chaffetz, Graham and the other supporters of the legislation cite the usual what-about-thechildren moralizing, with Graham even committing to some halfhearted hand-waving about legal online gaming somehow aiding and abetting terrorists. Just garden-variety 21st-century politics in America, to be sure.
By Bob Whitby
MONDAY, FEB. 23: Totally into the harmonious blending Below the surface, though, it appears to be part of Adelson’s proxy war against MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment—two proponents of online wagering … and the two biggest competitors to Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. While it would ban online sports and poker betting, the Restoration of America’s Wire Act would allow carve-outs for online horse racing (a moot point in Nevada) and fantasy sports wagering. Which is like enacting a federal ban on Tom Petty songs, but still allowing the Sam Smith tune to get radio airplay. Let’s say you live in Nevada and play in daily real-money fantasy leagues such as those promoted by FanDuel.com or DraftKings. com. It’s late in the fourth and Johnny Manziel is leading the Cleveland Browns downfeld. Because you’re terrible at draft-
ing but still improbably lucky, you have Manziel on your team. If he scores, you’re in the catbird seat to win $100 in your league. This, in the eyes of the U.S. government, would be legal. If, however, you wagered that same $100 on the Browns plus the points from the comfort of your living-room couch, you’d have to do it through some questionable offshore account, because betting apps like the ones from Station Casinos and William Hill would be banned. Because, clearly, these are two wildly different types of gambling. On the bright side, if you’re someone who prefers physical as opposed to virtual betting, the legislation—as it stands now— would not restrict you to placing wagers only at Adelson’s Venetian and Palazzo sportsbooks. Then again, things can change in committee. – Jason Scavone
of form, function and context? Then head for the Historic Fifth Street School auditorium at 5:30 p.m., when Gregg Pasquarelli, founding principal of New York’s SHoP architecture firm, will be the guest speaker in the Klai Juba Wald Lecture Series. SHoP was recently named Fast Company magazine’s “Most Innovative Architecture Firm in the World,” so the man knows his business. UNLV.edu.
TUESDAY, FEB. 24: Head south to the Boulder City Art
Gallery to catch the last few days of Endangered Species, an exhibit of work by painter Jeffrey Oldham. It explores and catalogs the beauty of what’s being lost when animal species are threatened. Through Feb. 27 at Boulder Dam Hotel, 1305 Arizona St.; Arts4Nevada.org.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 25: Gershwin classics, gin fizzes, flappers— why it’s as if the Roaring ‘20s had never ended over at The Smith Center. Nice Work if You Can Get It is the Tony Awardwinning tale of the budding romance between a bootlegger and a playboy. The curtain rises at 7:30 p.m., with shows through March 1. TheSmithCenter.com.
Managing Expectations
While the spotlight shines on high-profle elected ofcials, Betsy Fretwell works behind the curtain to maintain the city’s momentum By Lissa Townsend Rodgers
THE RIVIERA REPLACED BY A CONVENTION CENTER? REALLY?!?
February 19–25, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
LAS VEGAS CITY MANAGER BETSY
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J A M E S P. R E Z A
Fretwell was a 17-year-old high school student in Greenville, South Carolina, when she unknowingly got a glimpse into her future career. Participating in “government for a day,” Fretwell— whether by coincidence or fate— drew the job of city manager. “I got to play city manager for a day in my hometown, learned a lot about that job and thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool,’” she recalls. Today, Fretwell is in her 15th year with the City of Las Vegas, serving as city manager for the last six. But the job wasn’t always “pretty cool.” She took over her current role in 2009, at the nadir of the Great Recession. “It was a really challenging time,” she says, but she wasn’t spooked. “I had been helping lead a lot of the effort to reengineer and reconfgure things at the beginning of the recession. So I felt like I was the right person, and it was the right time.” While the City Council gets headlines, city managers actually do most of the important work, with responsibilities beyond representing the city at national meetings and being Mayor Carolyn Goodman’s opening act at the State of the City address. “You’re responsible for all of the employees, you’re responsible for compiling the budget, “ Fretwell says. “You’re responsible for making sure the ordinances that are adopted and the resolutions that are approved by the mayor and council get implemented.” A crucial part of Fretwell’s job is focusing on the long term, as she did in 2009, when it was both diffcult to forecast the future and tempting to redistribute monies to keep operations afoat. “We continued to keep our capital plan moving to reshape our Downtown,” she says. “We actually made a signifcant play in building [the new] City Hall, the Mob Museum, two fre stations and [The Smith Center]. ... We didn’t want to lose sight of what we wanted to be when we got through all of that.” That investment was about more than a performing arts center or relocating city govern-
ment. “It kept a lot of people employed who [otherwise] would not have been,” she says. “I had engineering frms and construction companies come to me and say, ‘Thank God for the City of Las Vegas, because otherwise we might not have survived.’” And if they hadn’t, she says, the negative effect would have spread. “We were going to need those craftsmen, those workers, those companies to take us to the next level,” Fretwell explains. That next level is still a work in progress. “I think we all thought [Symphony Park] would be further along,” she says. “We were hoping that the performing arts center and the Ruvo Center would be enough of a strategic investment in those 61 acres to get those projects and the private market off the ground.” That said, there is some positive momentum. Citra has a development agreement for an assisted living facility near Symphony Park, and the city is re-examining and updating its Centennial
Plan “based on what’s happening organically here, so developers know where [they] can plug in,” along with seeking public input on Downtown’s future. What does Fretwell envision down the road? “You’re going to see a lot of better connections,” she explains. “More greenways and greenbelts. I think you’ll [also] see the beginnings of a mass transit system that will be iconic.” Fretwell is encouraged that both residents and visitors have shown an increased enthusiasm for Downtown. Her hope is that both factions feel “that this is their Downtown … where you can come to work, but you can also come to play, and it’s not necessarily the tourist playground that we’ve come to associate with a lot of the commercial activity here. There’s got to be a place for both.” Fretwell also sees herself in the Vegas of the future. “There’s plenty of work for me to do here, and I really love this job. I love being a part of this community. I’d like to stick around.”
Just late last summer, the Riviera, preparing to celebrate its 60th anniversary this year on April 20, announced plans for a long-overdue $100 million remodel. Though a legendary posh hangout during the Rat Pack era, the Riv’s last heyday would have been the early 1990s, when Jeff Kutash’s Splash ruled the Strip and An Evening at La Cage exemplified our city’s history of female impersonators. Sadly, the joint hasn’t aged well (in fact, it’s original Miami modern architecture by Roy France & Son is hardly detectable). The passing decades are a small piece of the problem; budgeting has proven a bigger one. Unlike, say, Caesars Palace, simply not enough cash has been spent to keep the Riviera updated, and it suffers from layers of lazy remodels that don’t translate well in today’s Las Vegas. So, while keeping the Riviera viable might be a wonderful dream, the paltry budget is hardly enough to realize it. According to recent reports, it seems others agree. The Las Vegas Advisor, a respected insider’s publication since 1983, recently reported that the Riv was headed toward a sale to (wait for it!) the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for (wait for it!) demolition and expansion of the Convention Center. At first glance, this may seem ridiculous. Why would prime Strip-front gambling real estate be repurposed for convention space? Then you stop and take note of the post-Great Recession fortunes of the north Strip, where the Riv resides: It’s been nearly eight years since the Stardust crumbled to the ground across the street; the nearby former Wet ’n’ Wild site remains undeveloped; the long-vacant El Rancho property at Sahara Avenue is being converted to a concert festival venue for Rock in Rio; SLS is still waiting to hit its stride (to put it kindly); and the Fontainebleau ... well, perhaps this isn’t so ridiculous after all. According to the LVCVA, the 2012 economic output of our convention business was estimated at $6.7 billion. For a prime example of the financial power of conventions, see Sheldon Adelson, who parlayed a fortune made in (wait for it!) the convention business into a fortune made in the gambling business. Further, recent Strip development has been strongly focused on retail and entertainment; see the Linq, Treasure Island’s retail expansion, the Grand Bazaar Shops at Bally’s and drug stores on nearly every corner. In short, the business of Las Vegas has always been the business of people; we want to capture their attention and keep them spending any way we can—yes, even if it means another Strip icon bites the dust. Questions? AskaNative@VegasSeven.com.
PHOTO BY JON ESTRADA
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@UNLVRebellion Heaven just gained one hell of a coach. Rest in peace, Coach Tark. We love you.
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Here comes the NHL? There goes the Riviera? And Chumlee is hitting the decks? (Of course he is …) By Jason Scavone
February 19–25, 2015
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IN TERMS OF LAS VEGAS
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landmarks, we seem to be at a crossroads. And not, uh, Paradise Road and Convention Center Drive, where the actual Landmark used to be. On the one hand, we’re on the verge of seeing the demise of the Riviera, the last of the great Rat Pack-era casinos. The Riv, which is set to turn 60 on April 20, is going to be sold to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which plans to level the property in order to extend the Convention Center out to the Strip. As tragedies go, this doesn’t sting quite as much as losing the Sahara name or its six-pound burrito to the sands of time. Still, shouldn’t we at least hang on to one spot in which Dean Martin could have conceivably woke up through a savage hangover fog? Will the new spot at least open up a corner of the new Convention Center for tables on loan from the Pinball Hall of Fame? Will there be a plaque commemorating where
the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling was flmed? Will the ghost of Harpo Marx, an original investor in the Riviera, haunt the new convention space? Hey, at least it would be a relatively quiet haunting. On the other hand, the $350 million, 20,000-seat arena going up behind New York-New York is looking like it has every chance in the world to be a major player on the Vegas landscape. Bill Foley’s season-ticket drive to convince the NHL to put a team in the arena is boasting that it already has at least 5,000 deposits in hand. That’s halfway to the magic number of 10,000 that Foley thinks will convince Commissioner Gary Bettman to become the frst major professional sports league to plant a fag in Las Vegas. Helping to push ticket sales as members of the Founding 50—essentially, the big-money fans who have committed to high-priced ticket packages—are DJ Max Vangeli and poker pro Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu is Canadian, which makes sense. Vangeli was born in Moldova, which could be
part of Canada. For all you know. Some poker players, though, aren’t as accommodating when it comes to things that go in incongruous places, like a hockey team in the desert … or a vagina on Bruce Jenner. Legendary poker champ Doyle Brunson tweeted, “Bruce’s transition to a woman was confrmed today. He may still be some people’s hero, but not me.” Naturally, this kicked off a mini furor, but the man is 81. And a Texan. Save the true outrage for when it’s surprising. Like when the Duck Dynasty guy came out against gay marriage. There’s still hope, though, for older dogs learning newish tricks. Ghostbar Dayclub announced that the DJ for its season fnale February 28 will be … Chumlee. Come on, like you wouldn’t shell out more money to watch Chumlee spin Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet tunes at Hakkasan than you would to see Tiësto play the same trance tracks for the millionth time. You can try to convince us otherwise, but we’ll be too busy getting pumped up for the “Saturday Night Special”/”Flirtin’ With Disaster” mash-up to care.
MAGIC = I silkscreen shit in my garage week.
@sirpearce You can change the muffler on a Miata, but you can’t change the fact that you’re still driving a Miata.
@Mitzula MLS says no to Vegas, all 5 people that cared about MLS soccer can now shift their focus to hockey.
@Misnomer An N.W.A.-themed video poker machine with a bonus for sequential hands called “Straights Outta Compton.”
@Norm_Clarke I say after we get this NHL franchise nailed down, we rally around getting a Cracker Barrel.
@AnnoyedCsnoDlr Guy comes back to table and tells me it looked like my pit boss and I shared a laugh over him losing. We hadn’t, but now we will.
@jimmykimmel We loved you Tark.
Share your Tweet! Add #V7.
ILLUSTRATION BY JON ESTRADA
From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
@brandonroque
VegasSeven.com
| February 19–25, 2015
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Jerry Tarkanian and the city of Las Vegas came of age together in the 1970s, when the Runnin’ Rebels lit up the scoreboard at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
J E R R Y
T A R K A N I A N
1 9 3 0 – 2 0 1 5
The First Chapters of
THE BOOK OF TARK would follow. In a 19-season Rebel tenure with 509 wins, 105 losses, 12 NCAA tournament appearances and four Final Fours, Tarkanian’s early years stood out like a rare work of art. For those who witness it, the genesis of greatness always has an emotional edge over its worldly apotheosis. The Beatles in Hamburg pack a different jolt than the mop-tops at Shea. For all the majesty of Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony, the Rebels never again felt the way they felt in 1977. That’s not a bad thing. The Book of Tark has many chapters, each told in a different register. The greatness of the man, remember, had to do with his extraordinary responsiveness to context. The muscular Rebels of 1989 to 1991, who won a national championship and followed it up with thirty-four thirty-ffths of the Greatest Season Ever Played, were not Copland’s Fanfare but Beethoven’s Fifth: They smacked you on the head with their virtuosity, then rinsed and repeated. The defense wasn’t sneaky quick; it was brutal. Let’s try a football metaphor: The Larry Johnson Rebels were Earl Campbell running through you; the Robert Smith-Eddie OwensGondo-Reggie Theus Rebels were Gale Sayers, who, as an opponent once put it, could divide himself in two and run around you on both sides at once. When Robert and Eddie and Gondo and Reggie left, NCAA probation arrived. Some of it had to do with the old investigation of the program under former coach John Bayer. Some of it probably had to do with articles Tarkanian had written in Long Beach calling the NCAA to task for double standards. Some of it had to do with “extra benefts” the Rebels were said to be receiving. The NCAA ordered UNLV to suspend Tarkanian. Tarkanian, however, secured an injunction against the school. Never has a university benefted so thoroughly from having its hands legally tied. The years of that frst probation (yes, there was that other one, amid the darkness and recriminations of 1991-92) were
formative for the Tarkanian myth. The end of the 1970s and the dawn of the ’80s—when the Rebels were absent from the NCAA tournament, their name tarnished and their fortunes seemingly in decline—forced Las Vegans to come to terms with the way the rest of the country looked at our team, our coach and our city. We had to decide how to greet the national media’s unrefective certainty—at once effete and buffoonish— that the Rebels’ gains were ill-gotten and that nothing but rot could possibly emanate from Sin City. Our response during those years—told, like an ancient epic updated for the disco era, at cocktail parties and middle-school lunchrooms—became an enduring part of Las Vegas’ civic identity. It was at once the Epic of Tark and of the Saga of Las Vegas, and it was hard to tell where the concerns of the man ended and those of the city began. The story that rose around Jerry Tarkanian in those years was novelistic and complex in the same way that the observations of Holden Caulfeld were novelistic and complex: The Shark, we said, was a trickster with a heart of gold, a good man who couldn’t resist ripping pages from the rule book when he found them stupid or selectively applied, an overgrown college kid who couldn’t resist un-stuffng stuffed shirts and shortsheeting the residence-hall prefect. He was the Dean of Second Chances. This much we knew—and all the years that followed, all of the darkness and all of the light, could not shake our certainty: Jerry Tarkanian made dreams come true that couldn’t have come true anywhere else. No other city could have been so elevated by the myth of the righteous misft. In no other place could this restless, relentless man have transformed a town into a hometown. But even as Tark reshaped our image, we shaped his. We saw in him an oddball, a Rebel, a Las Vegan. The man had his mysteries, but we were always happy to fll in the blanks. We saw ourselves in him, and wrote ourselves indelibly into the story of his life.
VegasSeven.com
Tarkanian’s Rebels went 20-6 in his frst season, 24-5 in his second, 29-2 in his third, 29-3 in his fourth. In the third year, his team averaged 110.5 points per game and scored 164 in a game at Hawaii Hilo. Both numbers were the best college basketball had ever seen. In the fourth year, his team scored more than 100 points in 12 consecutive games—another record— and went to their frst Final Four, where they lost by one point to North Carolina and a freshman named Mike O’Koren, who scored 31 that strange afternoon. Everything had gone wrong that day, of course: The elbow of Rebel hero Glen Gondrezick had broken the nose of UNLV center Larry Moffett. Rebel foor general Robert Smith, who pretty much never missed a free throw, was ill and missed one that day. Perhaps he would have missed even if he was not ill. But that’s not the way the story goes. Tony Smith had sunk a 40-footer as time expired. Except there was no 3-point goal back then. If there had been a 3-point goal, those Rebels would still be playing, advancing forever in some celestial tournament. Everything had gone wrong, but we were writing a story, and the story needed to go wrong in an early chapter. The bitter must precede the sweet. As we thought about that day, that year, we were already putting down the frst verses of the Book of Tark. It is diffcult to explain what it felt like to watch those early Tarkanian teams play. It was something like watching a dust devil lift fallen leaves and spin them down the street. If those games were music, they’d have sounded like Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” an unstoppable swirl of sound and momentum, one motion blending into the next with no discernible dividing line in time. If national commentators never realized that the Rebels’ defense keyed their offense, it was because defense turned into offense so quickly. Every team had to play fast against the Rebels, but no team could play that fast. It was a greatness different than the greatness of all of the great teams that
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➜ in the beginning, there was this city: Its gods had always operated in half-shadow, so for those of us who lived here, Las Vegas was never half as dark as the world made it out to be. We knew the darkness was painted into the light—or was it vice versa? In any case, we understood that our town was a complicated place, and we told stories about the complications, about ourselves, about the gods. Every community invents, or at least reinvents, its great men. We invented Ben Siegel, Moe Dalitz, Hank Greenspun, Howard Hughes. We invented Jerry Tarkanian. The notion, of course, is an affront to the cult of the self-made man. After all, these men sweated and suffered and dodged threats—except when they didn’t dodge the threats. And they built things. Tarkanian, who died February 11 at the age of 84, built a basketball powerhouse, a cultural phenomenon and, one could argue, a community. He took over a troubled UNLV basketball program in 1973—a team that had won just 13 games the year before and was already under NCAA scrutiny. Tarkanian had been coaching Long Beach State’s squad since 1968. His teams had won 122 games and lost just 20. They had played with precision and patience. The formula was successful. So Tarkanian arrived at UNLV and scrapped it. Yes, Tarkanian built things. He did it the way any good architect does: with attention to context. He did not carry unvaried blueprints from town to town. He came here, looked at his new city, measured the talents of the speedy players who arrived in his wake, and crafted something revolutionary. He kept the precision and dispensed with the patience. He built it for us. He built it in response to our peculiar presence, our excessive freedom, our rootlessness, our longing for this to be our home. He understood our civic exceptionalism, our sense that the nation’s rules disrespected its reality, and that there had to be a better way. He had come to the right place.
BY GREG BLAKE MILLER
February 19–25, 2015
PHOTO BY GREG CAVA
How a city looked at a basketball coach and saw its refection
25
‘All He Wanted Was a Basketball and a Hoop’
Tarkanian makes his way to the Thomas & Mack Center court for the final time, March 3, 1992.
An oral history of Jerry Tarkanian BY SEAN DEFRANK
➜ forty years ago, jerry tarkanian arrived in Las Vegas to become UNLV’s ffth head basketball coach. Over the next 19 years, he and his new city shared many characteristics: often misunderstood, regularly chastised, always willfully against-the-grain. Las Vegas loved the man known as “Tark the Shark,” and he loved it right back, bringing civic pride to a town primarily made up of transplants, delivering a winner to a city built on losers. Tarkanian led his Runnin’ Rebels to 509 victories, 12 berths in the NCAA tournament, four Final Fours and one national championship. He coached a style few others dared attempt, recruited many players others would not touch, battled the NCAA, butted heads with a university president and built teams bound by a sense that every game was the Rebels against the world. It was a risky emotional strategy, but—for a coach, a team and a city—it worked. SIG ROGICH (longtime Las Vegas public re-
lations consultant who helped lure Tarkanian to UNLV): I thought we had a chance to
build a basketball program at a much more rapid pace than anything we could do in football, and I had a lot of friends who were good friends with Jerry Tar-
kanian. I had followed him at Pasadena City College when he had great teams there, so I reached out to him. At frst he wasn’t interested, so I asked if I could fy down to see him. We had lunch together, and I said, “I think I can get support in the community.” And he said, “I don’t know. Do you think you could build a winning team in Vegas?” I said, “Of course. If you could do it at Long Beach, you could do it in Vegas by tenfold.” And that was the beginning. LOIS TARKANIAN (Jerry Tarkanian’s wife of 59 years and a current Las Vegas Councilwoman): I did not want to move, and
Jerry wasn’t sure what we should do. They offered the job to Jerry at UNLV about two years before he fnally took it, but they came back again, and this time they didn’t stop calling. Every fve minutes that phone was ringing. We started talking, and we talked four times a day, six times a day, 10 times a day—sometimes from 8 o’clock at night till 10:30 or 11. I talked to Lois, and I talked to [daughters] Pam and Jodie. I don’t know how much of my own money I spent [pursuing him]. I probably spent at least $20,000, $50,000, $100,000—who knows?—with
ROGICH:
all the long-distance phone calls, the trips to California, paying for him to come up here, taking him to dinners, wining and dining, shows—everything I could do to show him the town. ROBERT SMITH (former UNLV point guard and longtime Rebels color commentator):
We had a meeting before the 1975-76 season, and Tark said, “We’re going to be a run-and-gun team this season, and we want you as a point guard to push the ball up the foor every time you catch it.” And I thought, “OK, I can do that.” As we got started with conditioning and practice, I started to realize, “Man, this is tough.” If the other team scored, I had to get it up quick; if they didn’t score, I had to push it up quick; if we got a steal, it was fast break. Some of the other guys had ran a little bit in high school, but this was totally different, because they wanted us to run every time. Once we started doing it, a lot of teams would start off real tough with us, but then I’d see them kind of fall apart at the end, and I knew then that that was the way we were supposed to play.
DANNY TARKANIAN (former UNLV point guard and Jerry Tarkanian’s son): He had
the unique ability to understand people better than anybody I’ve ever been around. It was partly because he grew up during the Great Depression in a very poor family, with an ethnicity that was highly discriminated
against. My mom’s parents didn’t want her to marry him and refused to pay for the wedding because she was marrying an Armenian. And my dad was a poor student. He used to hang around with some crazy people in college and get in all kinds of trouble. It took him four years to get out of junior college. It would have taken him eight years to graduate [from Fresno State], but he met my mom and she got him through quicker. So when he talks about his players having poor educational backgrounds, he understood that. My mother got him on the right path, so he felt that if those players had the same positive guidance, they would do better. And most of them did. Some didn’t. JERRY KOLOSKIE (former UNLV associate athletic director and the basketball team’s head trainer during much of Tarkanian’s tenure with the Rebels): He had his supersti-
tions. No. 1, you couldn’t talk. When you went to pregame meal the day of a game, you couldn’t say a word. You’d have to just point for someone to pass the salt. And if somebody said something, Tark would yell, “Hey, knock that off!” And when you got on the bus, you couldn’t say a word. You also couldn’t have ketchup. Absolutely no ketchup. I asked him a couple of times, “Coach, why can’t they have ketchup?” And all he would say was, “No ketchup.” He never gave me an explanation. And if you asked for ketchup, he
February 19–25, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
TARK TIMELINE
26
● October 1969
THE LONG BEACH DAYS
Before Jerry Tarkanian becomes a household name at UNLV, he begins his Division I coaching career at Long Beach State. He wins more than 20 games in each of his four seasons at LBSU, and in 1972-73, the 49ers finish with the No. 3 ranking in the AP poll.
● March 28, 1973
A SHARK LANDS IN THE DESERT Tarkanian be-
comes UNLV’s new basketball coach, signing a contract that pays him $25,000 annually. In his first year, he guides a Rebels program that had never won more than 17 games in a season to a 20-6 record.
● March 18, 1976
THE REBELS START RUNNIN’ The 1975-76
season is UNLV’s best to date. The Rebels finish 29-2 while averaging 110.5 points per game, never scoring fewer than 86. The average margin of victory is 22 points.
● March 26, 1977
FIRST TASTE OF THE FINAL FOUR Advancing
to the Final Four for the first time, UNLV faces North Carolina. Dubbed the Hardway Eight, the Rebels build a 10-point second-half lead, but North Carolina storms back and wins, 84-83.
● August 26, 1977
FIRST TASTE OF CONTROVERSY The NCAA
orders UNLV to place Tarkanian on two years’ probation for multiple recruiting violations. UNLV President Donald Baepler suspends Tarkanian soon after, and the coach responds by suing the university. Although he receives an injunction that prohibits his suspension, UNLV goes five straight seasons without reaching the NCAA tournament.
● February 15, 1983
● January 2, 1985
In the year the Rebels make it back to the NCAA tournament, they rise to the top of the national rankings for the first time. UNLV stays atop the AP poll for two weeks, before falling to No. 9 after an 86-78 loss to Cal State Fullerton on Feb. 24.
Utah State 142-140 in triple overtime. Not only is it the highest-scoring college basketball game in Division I history—a record that would stand for four years—but it’s Tarkanian’s 600th career victory.
FIRST TASTE OF THE TOP
ONE GAME, TWO MILESTONES UNLV beats
PHOTOS BY GREG CAVA
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following are excerpts from “The Unsinkable Shark,” Vegas Seven’s oral history on Jerry Tarkanian’s years at UNLV. It was published April 4, 2013:
J E R R Y
Tark just kept telling us, “You need to stick together. They don’t want us to win a championship. They’re going to do anything they can to break us down and get us unfocused. The NCAA really wants me, but they’re trying to take it out on all of you.”
HUNT:
I can see why the university did what it did. I just wish they had been more honest and up-front about it. When they forced him out, they should have said, “Hey, the NCAA is not going to let up on this. They’ve been coming at us since ’74, they haven’t let up. Jerry, we can’t continue with this.” But they said his players were bad kids, and that hurt him more than anything, because those guys were great guys.
DANNY:
LOIS: If I had a good seat, I’d try to tip the maître d’—that’s what you did at the time—and they wouldn’t take anything. Nobody would take anything, any place they saw Jerry.
KOLOSKIE: Coach Tark never disparaged UNLV. He loved UNLV. I think he had a hard time believing that that was happening to his university. He wasn’t looking to go anywhere else. He probably could have taken other jobs many times during that time. And his disdain for the NCAA, he kept that as his battle. He really didn’t bring that upon UNLV that much. He fought [the NCAA] with his own attorneys. But I think it broke his heart to see UNLV go what it went through.
ANDERSON HUNT (former UNLV guard who
ROGICH:
DICK CALVERT (UNLV’s public-address an-
nouncer since 1971): I don’t think Jerry ever had to put his hand in his pocket the whole time he coached here. [Piero’s owner] Freddie Glusman probably made half his meals here.
was named Most Outstanding Player of the 1990 NCAA tournament): Tark was the
master motivator. Before every game, he’d say, “You know these guys think they’re better than you. They don’t think you deserve this.” Or if you were playing on CBS or something, he’d say, “You can fool me, you can fool the coaches, but
● March 7, 1987
NO. 1 WITH A BULLET
The 1986-87 Runnin’ Rebels close the regular season with a 10-week run as the nation’s top-ranked team. After crushing San Jose State 94-69, UNLV enters the NCAA tournament at 30-1. Four more victories send the Rebels to their second Final Four, where they fall 97-93 to Indiana in the national semifinals.
[UNLV President Robert] Maxson didn’t like the fact that the hero on campus was Jerry Tarkanian. And I can understand some of that as an academic, but I didn’t think it was enough to get rid of him. And it ruined our program. We would have had a dynasty. We could have won four or fve national championships, and the NCAA knew it.
● December 12, 1988
● March 25, 1989
● April 2, 1990
Tarkanian’s due-process rights—first brought to light in 1977—finally ends. In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court rules that the NCAA is a private entity that can only suggest that universities take action against and sanction its coaches.
On the verge of a third trip to the Final Four, the Runnin’ Rebels run into a buzz saw known as Seton Hall. The Pirates score 50 points in the second half and trounce UNLV 84-61 in the regional final, the worst loss under Tarkanian in the NCAA tournament.
Led by one of the most talented lineups in college basketball history, UNLV manhandles Duke 103-73 to claim the university’s first and only national championship. Anderson Hunt scores a game-high 29 points and is named the NCAA tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. The 30-point margin of victory remains the largest in a championship game.
SCORE ONE FOR THE NCAA The debate over
THE AGONY OF DEFEAT
THE THRILL OF VICTORY
‘Duke Was a Tough Team. We Just Caught Them on the Right Night.’ A conversation with Jerry Tarkanian
EDITOR’S NOTE:
On the eve of the 20th anniversary of UNLV’s historic 103-73 national championship game victory over Duke, we reminisced with coach Jerry Tarkanian at his Rancho Nevada Estates home. The following is an excerpt from that Seven Questions interview, published March 18, 2010.
Does it ever get old talking about the glory days? I enjoy it. The
year after we won it all was the best I ever had in coaching. I used to worry about every game, but we were so good that year. I’d ask Tim Grgurich, my assistant, “Can we be this good?” We were just blowing everybody out. Tim agreed. You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing UNLV shirts. There was a time when our shirts surpassed Notre Dame as the most popular shirt. Notre Dame! Can you believe that?
Did you ever envision beating Duke in the 1990 title game by 30 points?
I never thought we’d beat Duke like we did. I never expected that. If we played Duke the next day, it would have been a tough game. Duke was a tough team. We just caught them on the right night.
What has Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said to you about that game?
He talks to me about it all the time. Very few people realize how our two teams mirrored each other. We played almost the same exact type of defense, with pressure and denying the front posts. They played more our style than anyone else in the country. He talks about how dominant we were and how athletic we were. But I’ve never heard him lose a ballgame and afterward not praise the other team. Mike’s a great person.
BY ROB MIECH
Does the way your UNLV chapter ended still sting? No. I love
the university. Every time I go to games, students are fabulous. They stand and cheer, clap. People in the community have always been great. I just appreciate their support. What’s the best advice you ever got? Clark
Van Galder, who coached football at Fresno State, said never make an excuse after you lose a game. You’ll be a loser if you do. Never blame the offcials after you lose a game. Win a game, then you can tell the offcials what a lousy job they did. Lose a game, don’t say anything. … And he said don’t tell people your problems. Half of them don’t want to hear it, and the other half are glad you’re having those problems. That was so right.
VegasSeven.com
When I frst came here, we used to rent two vans and a car for Tark, so someone would drive Coach, and me and [assistant coach Tim Grgurich] would split the players up. And here’s me and Coach Grgurich driving to Logan, Utah, in the middle of the winter, snow coming down, with athletes in the car. And I remember Coach Gerg and I saying to Tark, “Coach, we’re the most successful program here; let’s take a bus.” And he said, “No, no, we don’t need a bus. That’s too expensive. That’s hard on the university.” He was very frugal with that kind of stuff. He didn’t want anything. All he wanted was a basketball and a hoop.
KOLOSKIE:
CALVERT: [The 1989-90] team personifed the loyalty to Jerry. It was defnitely “us against the world,” because then all these things came down; everything was coming to a head: the suspensions, the accusations of improprieties and rule-breaking and all this kind of stuff. They just basically came together and withdrew from everybody.
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Here’s the kind of tunnel vision Jerry had: They were having the impeachment proceedings with Watergate, and we were driving in the car and I said, “Jerry, it’s really sad what’s happening in the nation. They’re going to impeach the president.” And he said, “No. For what? What’d he do?” And I said, “You don’t know about Watergate?” He said, “No. What is that?” All he knew was basketball. ROGICH:
you can’t fool all the people back home watching in your neighborhood.”
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February 19–25, 2015
would go absolutely ballistic. It was little things like that that made him so much fun to be around.
T A R K A N I A N
27
‘No Matter Where You Went, Everyone Talked About the Rebels’
Jerry Tarkanian and the long road to glory EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt
from “The Rebel Alliance,” Vegas Seven’s cover story commemorating the 20th anniversary of UNLV’s 1990 national championship season. It was published March 18, 2010.
➜ in 1973, jerry tarkanian arrived in Las Vegas with a formidable assignment: put a 16-year-old university on the map. And while you’re at it, give a 68-year-old tourist town a tradition of its own. Tarkanian had taken less than fve years to turn Long Beach State into a national power, and Donald Baepler, UNLV’s president at the time, consciously sought him out so he could do the same thing in Las Vegas. “In the early ’70s, if I said that I was from UNLV at various meetings, people would always ask, ‘Where?’” Baepler told The New York Times in 1989. “We realized that we could use the athletic team to get the kind of attention that helps the academic side.” For Tarkanian, it was a chance for a fresh start. He had already bumped heads with the NCAA in Long Beach and had written editorials denouncing the organization’s tactics. Meanwhile, coaching at Long Beach meant being content to work in the shadow of both John Wooden’s legendary UCLA
squads and the powerhouse USC teams of the early 1970s. Tarkanian, who had come of age in the small-but-fastgrowing town of Fresno, had looked at Las Vegas and seen a place he could make his own. “He was so excited the frst night we drove in,” Lois Tarkanian told me in a 2007 interview. “We were in the car, and we were going down the Strip. It was a warm night and there was a little breeze, and we’d pass by and somebody would say, ‘Hey, Tark!,’ and he’d turn to me and say, ‘See, this is just like dragging the main in Fresno.’ When I didn’t want to come here I said, ‘It’s a gambling city.’ He said, ‘No. It’s a college city. It’s a college town, Lois.’” Six days after Tarkanian’s arrival, the NCAA launched an investigation of UNLV. It began with allegations dating back to 1969, when John Bayer was the coach. There is no way of knowing whether these old allegations would have brought such a determined posse to town if Tarkanian hadn’t come frst. The case would continue for four years
as the NCAA looked into new allegations ranging from gifts to players to free dental care to airplane fights for players’ family members. In August 1977, fve months after Tarkanian took the Rebels to their frst Final Four, the NCAA put the team on two years’ probation and ordered the school to suspend Tarkanian for two years. Tarkanian obtained an injunction barring the suspension and sued the NCAA, claiming the organization was a state actor and had violated his right to due process. In 1988, though, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA was a private entity and that Tarkanian had no such right. All through the 1989-90 season, it was unclear what the NCAA would do with its newfound ability to do as it pleased. It had been unable to suspend Tarkanian 12 years earlier; would it opt to do so now? Meanwhile, the Rebels spent the season in the long, slim shadow of a New York playground legend named Lloyd Daniels, who had never played for the Rebels but whose 1986 recruitment had occasioned another intensive round of NCAA investigations. In the nine months before the 1990 NCAA tournament, the NCAA visited UNLV 11 times. If there was a smoking gun connecting, say, Tarkanian, Daniels and the Bay of Pigs, it
proved elusive. But the investigation did turn up, according to Athletic Director Brad Rothermel’s assessment at the time, about $500 in unpaid hotel incidentals from the previous season. Nine Rebels had to pay their road-trip phone bills and serve one-game suspensions. Meanwhile, UNLV President Robert Maxson, who since 1984 had been on a quest to transform the university into an elite research institution, was celebrating the school’s October 1989 designation as an “up-and-coming” institution by U.S. News & World Report. He was also fghting a rearguard action against the peculiar PR generated by the basketball program. “Athletically we are not a bandit school, we are not an outlaw school,” he told The New York Times. “We’re good academically, that’s been documented. We’ve made mistakes, like other people. But we’re not outlaw, we’re not crooked.” Those words, that repetition, the drumbeat of synonyms—bandit, outlaw, crooked. The defense was too defensive. Almost as if he didn’t quite believe it himself.
••••• by the middle of the 1989-90 season, the curious malady called Runnin’ Rebel Fever, most notably diagnosed
TARK TIMELINE
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● July 21, 1990
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BOXED OUT BY THE NCAA
After 13 years of continuous contentious battles, the NCAA drops the hammer on UNLV. Citing rules violations, the governing body of intercollegiate athletics bans the Runnin’ Rebels from defending their national championship during the 1990-1991 season.
● November 30, 1990
In an unprecedented reversal, the NCAA rules that UNLV will be allowed to defend its championship, but the news comes with a price: Tarkanian and the Rebels are banned from the 1991-92 postseason and will not appear on national television that season. GAME BACK ON
● March 10, 1991
● March 30, 1991
victory over Fresno State in the Big West Championship, the defending champs enter the NCAA tournament at 30-0. How dominant are the Rebels heading into the tournament? UNLV won 13 games by 30 points or more, including a 131-81 rout of UNR on the road. A 112-105 win at Arkansas was the only victory by single digits.
Almost a year to the day that UNLV embarrassed Duke on the national stage, the Blue Devils end the Rebels’ dream of backto-back titles—and their 45-game winning streak— with a stunning 77-75 victory in the national semifinals. To this day, the 1990-91 Rebels are widely regarded as the greatest college basketball team that failed to win it all.
THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION After a 98-74
DUKE GETS ITS REVENGE
● May 26, 1991
● June 26, 1991
Journal publishes a photo on the front page featuring UNLV players Anderson Hunt, Moses Scurry and David Butler sitting in a hot tub with notorious sports fixer Richard Perry. Fallout from the photo, coupled with ongoing battles with thenPresident Robert Maxson, leads to Tarkanian’s resignation less than a month later, effective at the end of the ’91-’92 season.
month after one of the darkest days in his program’s history, Tarkanian flies to New York and watches four of his players get selected in the NBA Draft. Three Rebels go in the first round, including Larry Johnson, the top overall pick of the Charlotte Hornets.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END The Las Vegas Review-
TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL Exactly one
● March 3, 1992
Tarkanian ends his 19-year UNLV tenure with a 65-63 victory over Utah State. The Rebels finish the season 26-2 and are the (unofficial) regular-season Big West conference champions. Tarkanian departs UNLV with 509 wins, 14 postseason appearances, four trips to the Final Four and the 1990 national championship. THE FINALE
PHOTOS COURTESY UNLV ATHLETICS
BY GREG BLAKE MILLER
J E R R Y
● April 5, 1995
In the 1950s, Tarkanian was a rarely used guard at Fresno State. Nearly 40 years later, he returns to his alma mater, agreeing to become the Bulldogs’ head coach. It’s Tarkanian’s first college job since leaving UNLV, and he remains in Fresno for seven years, leading the Bulldogs to the NCAA tournament in 2000 and 2001. GOING HOME
● March 15, 2002
● November 26, 2005
At 71 years old, Tarkanian retires from coaching after an 81-75 loss to Temple in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament. He winds up with 761 victories (the NCAA recognizes 729, because Long Beach State wasn’t a Division I program in his first year). Tark’s .784 winning percentage is the seventh best all time.
For several years after being forced out of UNLV, Tarkanian had an estranged relationship with the school he made famous. Eventually, the two sides reconciled, and on this night, prior to hosting UNR at the Thomas & Mack Center, UNLV officially dedicates the court in their former coach’s honor.
CALLING IT QUITS
DOING THE RIGHT THING
One of the things that endeared Jerry Tarkanian to his many supporters— and aggravated his many detractors—was that he always spoke sans flter. Brutally honest almost to a fault, Tarkanian simply called ’em as he saw ’em. Among dozens of memorable “Tarkisms,” here are our seven favorites:
“A lot of coaches want guys to be loose for games. I never wanted them to be loose. I wanted their hands sweating, their knees shaking, their eyes bulging. I wanted them to act like we were going to war.”
“Nine out of 10 schools are cheating. The other one is in last place.” “The secret is to have eight great players and four others who will cheer like crazy.”
“The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky it’s going to give Cleveland State two more years’ probation.”
“They can never come close to paying me for the hurt they caused.” – On his $2.5 million settlement with the NCAA
“I always like to get transfers, especially from the Pac-10. They already have their cars paid for.”
“Won’t have to worry about that. None of them will be there.” – On if he was concerned about running into NCAA administrators in heaven
● April 8, 2013
THE HALL COMES CALLING After being
bypassed for more than a decade, Tarkanian is finally voted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in his first year as a finalist. Later in the year, to commemorate the honor, a bronze statue of Tarkanian is unveiled outside of the Thomas & Mack and Cox Pavilion.
● April 9, 2014
HEALTH PROBLEMS PERSIST Shortly af-
ter returning from a trip to the Final Four, Tarkanian—who has been in poor health for several years—suffers a heart attack and spends 10 days in the hospital.
● February 11, 2015
FAREWELL TO AN ICON
One day after being admitted to the hospital with breathing problems—and mere hours after UNLV defeats Fresno State at the Thomas & Mack—Tarkanian dies at Valley Hospital at the age of 84. – Danny Webster
VegasSeven.com
With no college programs willing to take a chance on the controversial coach, Tarkanian takes his talents to the NBA, becoming head coach of the San Antonio Spurs. He lasts less than two months, getting fired after a dispute with Spurs owner Red McCombs regarding the team’s lack of a true point guard. Tarkanian’s NBA career ends with a 9-11 record. GOING PRO
SHOOTING FROM THE LIP
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● April 15, 1992
Rebels: Where can I buy Rebel memorabilia? Do you attend the games? How good is Larry Johnson? Have you ever met Jerry Tarkanian?” The love affair had a lot to do with winning, but it also had something to do with the gap in perception between the way the nation saw the city and the way the city saw itself. When Curry Kirkpatrick of Sports Illustrated looked at UNLV, he saw “grinnin’ sons of gun and run, the progeny of Tark the Shark, the Rebels of the fashy cars and NCAA suspensions and bench-clearing brawls.” When Las Vegans looked at UNLV, they saw a refection of their city—a closeknit community, misunderstood, underestimated, uninhibited, uncompromising, allergic to hypocrisy and good-hearted to a fault. During those years, Tarkanian was often derided as a Father Flanagan fgure, giving refuge to misguided boys with impressive vertical leaping ability. In some ways, Las Vegans found the image offensive and demonstrably inaccurate; they often pointed to the 1987 Final Four squad’s six seniors, fve of whom graduated on schedule, as Exhibit No. 1 of Rebel virtue. But they were also gratifed by the notion of Las Vegas as a redemption-granting institution. “Tarkanian was an effective salesperson for giving people a second chance and supporting the underdog,” says UNLV psychology professor Russell Hurlburt, who has followed the Rebels since 1976. “Whether he did that for his own beneft I can’t say, but he was very good at convincing the community that it was worth it.” Tarkanian’s success on this front was not just a function of his persuasive skills but of the perfect confuence of a man and his community. The idealized ethic of the Las Vegan at the start of the 1990s might be summed up as We do what works, we give everyone a fair shot, we don’t tell you how to live, and we ask that you don’t tell us either.. For a city built on gambling, fair play was not an abstraction but a matter of honor and survival. Las Vegas didn’t cheat; it welcomed the brilliant and beleaguered who had been cheated everywhere else. It was America’s America.
1 9 3 0 – 2 0 1 5
February 19–25, 2015
in a 1983 song by George Dare—I don’t need to see a doctor/Or stay in bed all day/ All I need to do is just to watch those Rebels play—had progressed from dizzy infatuation to something like love. Ten times the 18,500-seat Thomas & Mack hosted more than 18,500 fans. The Jaws theme and the shark clap turned tip-offs into a sort of shamanic experience, at once terrifying and ecstatic. The well-heeled denizens of Gucci Row preened for national television cameras. Scalpers paid off mortgages. When the Rebels were on the road, swanky steak houses turned into sports bars. “The town was brimming with excitement,” remembers Cheryl Zellers, who has been a regular at Rebel games since 1988. “There were televisions everywhere. I went to a restaurant one evening, and the place had rolled three or four televisions into each of its rooms so everyone could watch the games. People cheered as they ate and watched.” It was an age of giants: Steve Wynn had become the Mozart of the casinobuilding set; Bill Bennett was watching the Excalibur battlements rise on Tropicana and the Strip; Hank Greenspun had died in the summer of 1989, but he’d lived to see his dream of Green Valley grow toward maturity; the corporate ghost of Howard Hughes had just broken ground for Summerlin. The city was embarking on a wonderful and cataclysmic growth spurt, but all anyone really wanted to talk about was the Rebels. It was a simple spiritual equation: When the body transforms, hold onto your soul. “The community owned that team, because it believed that the Rebels were the best thing since bottled soda pop,” says Dick Calvert, who has been UNLV’s public address announcer for 39 years. “It was just great. It galvanized the community.” Lois Tarkanian describes the civic feeling of those days as “electric togetherness.” “No matter where you went, from a 7-Eleven to Caesars Palace, everyone talked about the Rebels,” recalls longtime fan Larry Gabriel, whose work took him all across the country. “As soon as a person knew I was from Las Vegas they wanted to know about the
T A R K A N I A N
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Tarkanian’s crowning moment: Celebrating the 1990 national championship with his players, including future UNLV coach Dave Rice (30) .
Shark Tales Reactions to the death of Jerry Tarkanian
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– MIKE KRZYZEWSKI , Duke and
U.S. national team coach
“He was well-known and was able to recruit kids pretty much all over when he was at UNLV because of their success and the fact that they were sold out all the time. I was happy to see that they named the court after him, because there were two types of fans: People who didn’t like having him coach at UNLV and a lot more people who did like having him.” – LUTE OLSON , former Arizona coach
“He was one of the few coaches who were successful playing more than one style. At Long Beach he was low possession, walk it up the foor, zone defense, and at UNLV it was the Runnin’ Rebs. Not many coaches can change styles that dramatically.” – ROY WILLIAMS , North Carolina coach
Seton Hall coach whose team beat UNLV in the Elite Eight in 1989, then lost to the Rebels in the same round two years later
“Every time I saw Jerry Tarkanian, at the end he’d say, ‘You guys are unbelievable.’ His team was 32-2 and we were like 24-10. He would say, ‘I can’t believe you do that.’ He would do that almost every time I’d see him. People are different than their personas that the media cultivates. He’s one of the humblest, nicest guys and one of the best coaches ever. I don’t think people know that he was a great guy and he was a great basketball coach.” – JIM BOEHEIM , Syracuse coach
have been one of the most misunderstood coaches in the history of college basketball.” – SETH GREENBERG , former Long Beach State and Virginia Tech coach, and current ESPN analyst
“RIP Coach … You inspired many. You believed in kids that the world discarded. The hood will never forget you.”
– CHRIS WEBBER , former NBA and Univer-
sity of Michigan star, and current TNT analyst
“RIP Jerry Tarkanian. Great coach, really good man. A true Hall of Famer.” – JAY BILAS , former Duke player and
current ESPN analyst
“Heaven is felding an unbelievable coaching roster. RIP Coach Jerry Tarkanian, one of the best.”
– REGGIE MILLER , Hall of Fame basketball
“People forget that when he went to UNLV, no one knew who UNLV was. And he created that. I thought it was a shame how long they made him wait to get into the Hall of Fame. I never thought that was right or just. I had a problem with that, and I actually voiced it way back. He fought the NCAA when no one else would. He could have taken his fne, but he said: ‘No, I’m not. I’m going to fght you.’ And I just fnd it interesting now that the things he was fghting about are basically what we’ve all found out—he was right. So I hope he passed away knowing that he had a just cause for everyone. I’m a big fan.” – DOC RIVERS , Los Angeles Clippers coach
“Coach Tarkanian was one of the most charismatic and talented coaches of his era. He was a great defensive specialist whose teams were always well-prepared. But most importantly, he always cared about his studentathletes. Jerry will be sorely missed.”
– LOU CARNESECCA , former St. John’s coach
“We had this perception of him—this guy with droopy eyes and a bald head, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and sucking on a towel—but that was society’s perception of him. Not the great communicator, terrifc coach, kind person and coach’s coach who saw the best in people. RIP, Jerry Tarkanian. You might
player and current TNT analyst
“Tark was a blue-collar guy, who cared about blue-collar people in a sense. He’s famous for his accomplishments on the court, but I think what he’s done for so many off the court needs to be talked about, too. … He was much more than a coach in my life. And especially at times when I needed him most, he was always there.” – CHRIS HERREN , former player for Tarkanian at Fresno State and a recovering addict who often credits Tarkanian for helping to turn his life around
“Jerry Tarkanian was the ultimate lovable rogue. Unapologetic and self-
PHOTO COURTESY UNLV ATHLETICS
February 19–25, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
“He had an uncanny ability to take star players and mold them into cohesive and selfess teams. That is a testament to how well he related to his players. They adored him. As coaches, we admired him as well. His teams were a joy to watch, unless you were playing against one of them. He taught pressure man-to-man defense as well as anyone has ever done. … When I think of the great coaches, but also the great defensive coaches in the history of the game, I think of Jerry.”
“If you didn’t have it together offensively, and you didn’t have some really good guards, you wanted no part of playing those guys. He was a great teacher of the game.” – P.J. CARLESIMO , former
J E R R Y
effacing at the same time. RIP Tark the Shark. There will never be another like you.” – SETH DAVIS , longtime college bas-
ketball journalist and commentator
“Tark was a fghter. He challenged the establishment of college sports, sparing no expense to save his reputation and legacy.” – ANDY KATZ, ESPN college
basketball writer
“No one in Nevada history has been able to entertain crowds like Jerry Tarkanian and his legendary Runnin’ Rebels; this includes renowned Vegas entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Cher and Celine Dion. We know the stories of Jerry on the court; they are renowned. But his work off the court has been just as important. Jerry taught young college athletes to be better people.” – HARRY REID, U.S. senator, D-Nev.
“Although Coach Tarkanian hasn’t nervously chewed on a towel in the ‘Shark Tank’ for more than two decades, he will remain a beloved fgure in the Silver State and one the Nevada family will never forget. Undoubtedly, his infuence in the world of basketball will be felt for years to come.”
“Coach Tarkanian will be forever memorialized by sports fans across the nation as an iconic fgure who changed the sport. Nevadans will remember him as a man who brought fame to our young UNLV, and a wonderful husband, father and grandfather.” – BRIAN SANDOVAL, Nevada governor
former UNLV player and current Canyon Springs High School coach
“He is the father of basketball here in Southern Nevada. Had it not been for him and his creation of Runnin’ Rebels basketball, where would UNLV be today? It’s kind of mind-boggling, really. The things he believed in were hard work and loyalty, and that’s because of the way he grew up. He brought that to the basketball program here and really made something special.” – DICK CALVERT, longtime UNLV publicaddress announcer
“Coach Tarkanian lived his life in the pursuit of excellence on the basketball court. It was the central force in his life. He was totally committed to that, and his teams refected that commitment. The style he played had a lot to do with why he is so beloved in this city. He was a gambling coach, he played pressure on both ends of the foor, and his teams ran the foor. Coach was a blue-collar guy; he picked up his lunch pail and got to work, and his teams were committed to that. I think that’s why Las Vegas showed so much love for him.” – BRAD ROTHERMEL ,
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THE HALL COMES CALLING
For years, voters for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame routinely snubbed Jerry Tarkanian—much to the astonishment and dismay of the UNLV coaching legend’s legion of supporters. Finally, on September 8, 2013, Tarkanian got his due. Here’s the transcript from his induction speech, which a frail Tarkanian delivered with help from his wife, Lois:
➜ For me, this celebration we are having makes me feel very grateful to be an American. Here, the eldest son of an Armenian immigrant, whose mother fed her homeland on horseback with only the clothes on her back, after her father and eldest brother were beheaded by Turkish soldiers. It was my mother who gave me her unconditional love and many second chances. I was 13 when my father died. My stepfather said I would never amount to anything so much [in] sports … and that I should look into becoming a barber. But my mother never gave up on me. So to Mom, and all my Armenian family, especially my brother, Myron, and my sister Alice, thank you for your love and loyalty all these years. And to my wife of almost 60 years, who set aside her passion of books, ballet and theater to become my personal secretary and academic team tutor, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much. No one could have been as supportive as you have been. You joined me on the roller coaster ride of basketball, and you never tired and you never gave up. And my sons and daughters who shared that ride … I thank each of you for helping me to be here today. You’ve been a tough, tight family. Here I am, the immigrant son, being inducted into the Hall of Fame—the epitome of my profession. I have loved the game of basketball since my earliest memories. Basketball has been good to me. I have been able to be comrades with some of the fnest individuals in the coaching profession. Sure, we can be fery and competitive, and even argumentative, but we all loved the game—that special game of basketball. And deep down, most of us truly understand the other. Thank you for your friendship. And fnally, thank you all, the Hall of Fame, for giving me this special honor. It means so much to me, to our players, fans, coaches and staff. We are a part of you. That makes us very happy and very proud.
former UNLV athletic director
“He instilled in me a confdence and commitment to doing what I believe is right for all people I am around. He will always be a part of UNLV, and our university is a better institution because of that.” – DAVE RICE, former UNLV
player and current Rebels head coach
“As a player it’s one thing, but as I’ve gotten older and started coaching, the relationship changed. I remember sitting in a restaurant talking to him and going through a stack of 100 napkins, doing plays and showing me different things on the napkins.” – REGGIE THEUS,
former UNLV player and current Cal State Northridge coach
A Tough Act to Follow
Jerry Tarkanian coached his last game at UNLV on March 3, 1992, ending a 19-season run at the helm of the Rebels. In 23 seasons since Tarkanian’s forced exit, 10 other men (including interims) have served as UNLV’s head men’s basketball coach. Here’s a look at how those coaches fared vs. the legend they followed:
– LEON SYMANSKI , former UNLV player
“I hope people understand that Jerry Tarkanian gave young black males a chance to better themselves and the lives of their families when no one else would. The way Coach talked to me, he spoke my language. I needed that type of voice in my life. Let’s face it, we had guys like myself, Anderson Hunt and Moses Scurry who weren’t going to play at Duke. But we had the fortitude and tenacity to want to work and get better. And we had Tark putting his foot in our ass to set us straight. … You’ll hear guys talk all the time about coaches being a father fgure. Well, I’m 45 years old and I’ve never met my father. I consider Jerry Tarkanian my father.” – LARRY JOHNSON, former UNLV and NBA star
UNLV WITH TARK Record
509-105
UNLV SINCE TARK 461-259
.829 winning pct.
.640 winning pct.
12
8
31-12
3-8
Final Four appearances
4
0
30-win seasons
4
1
First-round NBA Draft picks
9
5
NCAA tournament appearances NCAA tournament record
VegasSeven.com
– STEVE SISOLAK, Clark County commissioner
“He was everything to this city. The fans here are fckle—they’re with you, win or tie—but he won them over. He brought in the players and made a winning team and sold out every game, to the point that it was the hardest ticket to get in this town. He was a genius when it came to basketball.”
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“Jerry’s passing is the end of an era. Those of us who lived through the heyday of the Runnin’ Rebels will always look back fondly on that time. He and his Runnin’ Rebels created such great excitement and sense of community here. He lifted our spirits and brought us together. … Las Vegas will always be grateful for the impact Jerry had on our lives.”
February 19–25, 2015
TARK ANIAN COURTESY UNLV ATHLETICS; HALL OF FAME INDUCTION VIDEO STILL COURTESY NAISMITH MEMORIAL BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME
– DEAN HELLER, U.S. senator, R-Nev.
“Coach Tarkanian meant a lot to me as a father, mentor and coach. He always gave a chance to inner-city kids, the so-called ‘bad kids.’ He gave a lot of folks a chance, and he stuck to that. He was loyal to his players, and he was always there for me. Now I’m using the same philosophy with my high school team; we run and gun, pressure defense, fast break. I learned all those things from him. I’m devastated that he’s gone.” – FREDDIE BANKS,
T A R K A N I A N
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NIGHTLIFE Your city after dark, photos from the week’s hottest parties and Dyro talks life as a label owner
How one homegrown event-production crew is amping up the 18-and-over rave scene in Las Vegas … and beyond By Camille Cannon
| February 19–25, 2015
PHOTO BY JOE FURY
Youth Is Served
OH—TO BE UNDER 21 AND LIVING IN LAS VEGAS. Casino foors, bars and nightclubs are all off limits (without a fake I.D., of course). And, seriously, how many times can you really enjoy the Adventuredome? Chris Kelley, Marcel Correa and Daniel Jones know the struggle well. The Las Vegas natives grew up entertaining their teenage friends with house parties and parking lot hangouts. Now in their mid-20s, they’re selling out 2,000-plus-capacity venues and booking festival-caliber talent with their 18-andover event production group, Ravealation. That’s not to say the journey to this point was easy.
VegasSeven.com
Bass N’ Trapment with Zomboy at Brooklyn Bowl in January.
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After attending Las Vegas’ Electric Daisy Carnival in 2011, the guys were inspired to create an immersive, smallerscale EDM experience for the underage set. But with no formal production experience, they struggled to get started. “Eighteen-and-over venues wanted to see a track record of hard-ticketed concerts,” says Correa, Ravealation’s co-owner. “We didn’t have [a track record] at that point, so we had to take what we were given.” That meant, against their original intention, approaching 21-and-over venues. Talent buyer and mentor Joe Stasis Borusiewicz helped the guys secure their frst show with Kennedy Jones at Aria’s Gold Lounge in March 2013. This led to more 21-and-over Ravealation events at UNLV’s Rebelpalooza and one-offs Downtown. Still, they were less than satisfed with their results. “The whole 21-and-over thing was frustrating,” says Jones, Ravealation’s marketing director. “They’re spoiled with the Aviciis and Tiëstos,” he says. In other words, the market is saturated with nightclub appearances and management who’ll shell out millions for production. But with a string of soft-ticketed successes, Ravealation fnally had something to show 18-and-over venues.
“WE WERE STRAPPING BACKPACKS TO OUR BACKS AND RUNNING AROUND IN THE FREEZING COLD, PUTTING FLIERS ON EVERY CAR WE COULD.” Hard Rock Live hopped on to host the frst 18-and-over Ravealation event on December 27, 2013, with “crunkstep” producer Crizzly as the headliner. It was the milestone the crew had hoped to reach since the beginning. Except: “We didn’t have a promotional plan,” Correa says. “We were just going from house party to house party. Hookah lounges. Theaters. We did it all ourselves.” Adds Kelley, Ravealation’s operations offcer: “We were strapping backpacks to our backs and running around in the freezing cold, putting fiers on every car we could.” That grassroots marketing style paid off, and the show sold out. Before the show, Correa says, “We said, ‘Yo, if we sell out, we’re gonna pop a bottle of Champagne. We’re gonna take a bunch of pictures. We’re not gonna sleep for two or three days. We might
even head to California and party.’’’ But instead, after the show, “We weren’t talking about anything except how we could do it again the next month.” And they have. All eight shows since that night have been 18-andover, and every one has sold out, even after the jump from Hard Rock Live to Brooklyn Bowl for Ravealation’s one-year anniversary with Bro Safari on December 28. [Full disclosure: SpyOnVegas.com, a sister site of Vegas Seven, is a presenting sponsor for Ravealation at Brooklyn Bowl.] “When I was touring [Brooklyn Bowl], it was hard for me to even imagine how that many people look in there,” Correa says. “I felt [the oneyear anniversary] was the most successful of any of our events.” They followed it with another sold-out Brook-
lyn Bowl show: Bass N’ Trapment with Zomboy on January 30. Ravealation now works with more than 50 street-team promoters, 20 resident DJs and “probably 100 more people who support us,” Jones says. “They’re just part of the family.” If all goes according to plan, the Ravealation family will soon be expanding. Kelley, Correa and Jones have plans to fll increased capacity venues in and outside of the Valley. “We checked ZIP codes on the tickets that were purchased for the Crizzly show, and we get a lot of people from Reno. Same with the Bro Safari. That’s what we’ve got our eyes on right now.” It’s certainly a long way to come from fiering parking lots. Catch the next Ravealation show, Apocalypto with the Pitcher, Lady Faith and Darksiderz at 8 p.m. Feb. 20 at Hard Rock Live (3771 Las Vegas Blvd. South; Ravealation.com).
BROOKLYN BOWL BY JOE FURY
February 19–25, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
NIGHTLIFE
Bass N’ Trapment with Zomboy at Brooklyn Bowl in January, and (left to right) Correa, Kelley and Jones.
By
NIGHTLIFE
Camille Cannon
Chromeo.
(And yes, we’re curious about those names, too.) (1675 Industrial Rd., 9 p.m., Facebook. com/HardHatBar.) Late-night party After has a new home at Body English. Swing by after your midnight cup of coffee for sounds by house/ techno mixer Harvard Bass. (In Hard Rock Hotel, 10:30 p.m., HardRockHotel.com.)
SUN 22 Taking inspiration from their address, Vanguard Lounge debuts its new monthly party, 516. Themes will change every Sunday, with this Never Never Land edition paying homage to Peter Pan. (516 Fremont St., 5:16 p.m., VanguardLV.com.) Dutch spinner Don Diablo drops into Hakkasan. Our fngers are crossed the gig is a test run for a residency. What we wouldn’t give to groove to “Anytime” on the regular … (In MGM Grand, 10:30 p.m., MGMGrand.com.)
MON 23
In case you missed it, Canadian funk lords Chromeo kicked off their residency at Drai’s last month. The pair—comprised of Dave 1 and P-Thugg— brought unparalleled swagger to the DJ booth, and we can’t wait for them to do it again. (In the Cromwell, 10:30 p.m., DraisNightlife.com.)
FRI 20
February 19–25, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
THU 19
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You know that sensation you feel after downing one Red Bull too many? That’s the kind of rush you’ll experience in the crowd at Apocalypto … in the best way possible. Local event production crew
Ravealation has assembled a spine-tingling lineup of hardstyle hitters—The Pitcher, Lady Faith and Darksiderz—to shake the walls of Hard Rock Live. Check out our interview with the Ravealation crew on Page 33. (3771 Las Vegas Blvd. South, 8 p.m., HardRock.com.) Longtime Wynn/Encore resident Morgan Page makes his frst appearance at Light. We’re excited to see what kind of trippy visuals Mr. 3-D will bring to his new home. (In Mandalay Bay, 10:30 p.m., TheLightVegas.com.) Boston boy Clinton Sparks mans the decks at 1 Oak. If you thought his T-Pain and Ty Dolla $ign collaboration “Geronimo” couldn’t get any better, give a listen to Gregor Salto’s house remix. We hope
to be hearing it everywhere soon. (In The Mirage, 10:30 p.m., 1OakLasVegas.com.)
SAT 21 It’s the third Saturday of the month, which means it’s time again for The Chicken Shack at Bunkhouse. Get your hands on the free fried poultry goodness and your feet on the dance foor for tunes by JuJu Man, Rex Dart and more. (124 11th St., 9:30 p.m., BunkhouseDowntown. com.) Local DJ collective Behind City Lights delivers another chill night of entertainment at Hard Hat Lounge. Beat makers on the bill include Textile, Diatone, Paloon, Night Rumors, Pill Tanks and Low Sodium.
Mondays can be slow, but Brooklyn Bowl picks up the slack with its stellar booking of electro-rock outft Phantogram. The New-York based duo’s concert will feel more like a dance party as they move from slow burners such as “When I’m Small” to the synth-heavy “Fall in Love.” Support comes from L.A.-based psych-rockers Talk in Tongues. (At the Linq, 7 p.m., Vegas.BrooklynBowl.com.)
Phantogram.
The Chicken Shack.
TUE 24 What do you expect from a Tuesday evening? Good music? Great drinks? Cymatic Sessions at Downtown Cocktail Room has you covered with both as resident DJs Laguerre and Roy Evans work the turntables. (111 Las Vegas Blvd. South, 10 p.m., TheDowntownLV.com.)
WED 25 Dave Garcia is a partner in Henderson’s hip new party restaurant, Lucky Foo’s. But you may recognize him better as DJ Stellar. Under that moniker he’s spun at Artisan, Rain, Haze and more. Catch him flling Light with sound. (In Encore, 10:30 p.m., SurrenderNightclub.com.)
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02 I 19 I 15 I
80‘S / 90‘S SOUNDS
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NEON PARTY
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NIGHTLIFE
Hungry Like a WOLV For DJ, producer and now record-label owner Dyro, the best is yet to come By Kat Boehrer
JORDY VAN EGMOND is known internationally as Dyro, the Dutch sensation heavily supported by DJ Mag’s No. 1 DJ for the past two years, Hardwell. When van Egmond isn’t making music or touring across America, he goes incognito at Skrillex shows in Holland. And when he has extra time outside of that, he works on his own record label. Catch the multitalented Dyro again in Las Vegas at Drai’s on March 19. What was a highlight of your recent U.S. tour with Bassjackers?
The cool thing with a bus tour is that you pass towns and places that you usually wouldn’t go, you know? Let’s say you do a show in New York or Chicago, and there are all these small towns in the middle that you normally wouldn’t see. So you get to play a lot of those smaller shows. You discover a lot of new fans you didn’t even know you had. What’s it like to live on a bus for so long?
It’s hard, but the Bassjackers are my friends. If you’re able to tour with somebody you know and you’re gonna have a good time with, it’s the most fun you can have. But after fve weeks on a bus, I couldn’t wait to go home. Do you think you’ll ever go on another bus tour?
It was really tough, and it was a lot of work. You take a lot of the responsibility of the promoter on yourself, because you’re taking care of transportation, production and everything. It’s a lot more work, and I’d probably think twice before doing it again. But you never know. Do you ever get to enjoy other DJs’ shows as a spectator?
Sometimes I like to meet a friend while they are touring. For instance, last weekend I had some time off and Bassjackers were playing near my town, so I went to see them. The last time I actually attended a show was, I think, a year ago in January when I went to a Skrillex show in Amsterdam.
February 19–25, 2015
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Were you in the crowd?
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Yeah, I was in the crowd. I’ve been a Skrillex fan [before I was] even a DJ, since he frst started. So it was cool to see him in my town.
was gonna be a success. I think it’s doing really well right now. The releases are doing really good. People know about it, and that’s important.
quality [tracks]. Then I get a couple of songs every month that are a “maybe,” and then I decide if I wanna release them.
Why did you decide to start your own label, WOLV?
Do you seek out artists and tracks to sign, or do you wait for submissions?
What is the best advice you’ve ever been given as an artist?
I’ve been attached to Revealed [Recordings] for a long time. I’ve been friends with all of those guys, especially with Robbert [van de Corput, a.k.a. DJ Hardwell], and with Dannic. At some point, I felt like my music was getting so different than the rest of the music on Revealed. I decided that we needed a special place for it. So I hired a friend who is my label manager now, and he set it up over a couple of weeks. It was a guess at frst. We didn’t really know what would happen or what to expect, if it
Over the years, a lot of [DJs will] hit you up and send you demos, and it’s kinda up to you whether to keep track of them or keep following them. So that’s what I did. I have a couple of guys that I know make good music, so I’m just waiting for them to make something [for the label]. And then there are obviously the demos that get sent to our label management. They check it before I check it. They do a quick look through to see if there are actually
I remember one time when I was playing a tour in Australia two years ago: It was me, Hardwell and Dannic. We had a couple of shows where we played early, so there weren’t a lot of people. And you’re like, “Oh, well this sucks.” Robbert [Hardwell] said to me, “Even if there’s not a lot of people, you should still give it your all. You should play even better. Because those few people are there for you.” It changed my perspective.
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TRYST Wynn
[ UPCOMING ]
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Feb. 19 DJ Ikon spins Feb. 20 Dave Fogg spins Feb. 21 DJ Skratchy spins
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONvegas.com
New look for a New Year: LAX has just undergone an expensive facelift. The Luxor club’s million-dollar update features not only physical renovations, but also implements new programming and operations to better suit its clientele. MGM Resorts International recently took over ownership and management of the space, which also marks MGM’s first independent nightlife venture since Studio 54 was still open where Hakkasan now stands. One of the most notable changes is the new system by which bottle-service patrons will check in. The bar formerly known as Savile Row, nestled below the club’s main entry stairs, now acts as a sort of upscale waiting area for table customers. Rather than making VIPs wait to be seated in stanchionedoff lines or holding pens outside of the club, patrons may now relax in the new lounge with access to a bar and comfy seating, away from the general admission crowds while their reservations are sorted out. The interior of the club sports more subtle updates. The décor, which formerly centered almost entirely on sultry red and black, has been replaced with a chic palette of silver, gold and bronze. Dark corners once enshrouded by curtains have been opened up to reveal the beautiful arches of the halls and show off the ample size of the venue. New lighting as well as interactive performers and dancers add to the polished-up feel of the space. Music-wise, commercial pop music will dominate the new sound system, replacing openformat, and on Thursday’s #TBT night, DJs will spin hits from the ’90s and 2000s—for you nostalgic types. – Kat Boehrer
PHOTOS BY DANNY MAHONEY
A PEEK INSIDE LAX’S MILLIONDOLLAR REMODEL
NIGHTLIFE
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STK
February 19–25, 2015
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The Cosmopolitan
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONvegas.com
Following in the footsteps of bygone giants such as Tabu and Blush, Heart of Omnia will be the first ultra lounge concept from a major Las Vegas nightlife company in recent years and the first ever from Hakkasan Group, best known for its global pantheon of mega nightclubs and restaurants. Occupying the space adjacent to Omnia’s main entrance (in its former life, Pure’s White Room), Heart of Omnia is also the city’s debut venue with an “influence” from Los Angeles nightlife company, The h.wood Group. Founded by John Terzian and Brian Toll, and acquired by Hakkasan Group in 2014, h.wood has been a rising star in the Southern California party market, and is best known for posh West Hollywood nightclub Hooray Henry’s and celebrity-charged theatrical hot spot Bootsy Bellows. “We wanted to ensure [Omnia] had an experience for every individual,” says Alex Cordova, Hakkasan Group’s executive vice president of marketing. “Not all of our guests have the desire to be within the main club for the duration of the evening; some may be looking for a more intimate setting.” Heart is branded as a VIP enclave with a “collection of iconic artists” dotting the open-format entertainment roster such as DJ Jazzy Jeff, Rev Run and Questlove—an obvious departure from the EDM-centric lineup inside Omnia. Its interior is described as “seductive,” with design elements that are both masculine and feminine, and it will also be connected to the main club. Heart of Omnia’s multi-level space has a capacity of 1,000, with 24 tables and a large technology element surrounding the perimeter. It promises wellcurated “special moments” and “elevated interaction.” Omnia Nightclub opens March 12 with a performance by Calvin Harris, who returns the following night. – Melinda Sheckells For an artist’s rendering, visit VegasSeven.com/ HeartOfOmnia.
PHOTOS BY TEDDY FUJIMOTO
RETURN OF THE ULTRA LOUNGE: HEART OF OMNIA DEBUTS MARCH 13
DINING
“While I appreciated the variety, the textures aren’t for everyone. And there’s no way you’re going to mistake these items for beef in the Hungry Man stew.” {PAGE 61}
Restaurant reviews, news and Nevada-exclusive whiskey for your glass
Five local restaurants that are also important cultural hubs By Al Mancini
VegasSeven.com
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Home Sweet HomeAway-From-Home
I’VE NEVER LIVED OVERSEAS. But it’s not diffcult to imagine that expatriates (or even visitors) get homesick for not only the food and beverages of their motherland, but also the entertainment and companionship of other natives. Fortunately, Las Vegas has its fair share of hangouts for foreigners longing for their homelands. Here are a few that do a good job of creating a home away from home—depending on where you’re from.
February 19–25, 2015
PHOTO BY JON ESTRADA
Roma Deli offers more than just a taste of Italy.
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ENGLAND Crown & Anchor, 1350 E. Tropicana Ave., 702-739-8676.
DINING
While Crown & Anchor has two locations, the original near UNLV is much more of an institution for Brits in Las Vegas—honestly, I often forget about its westside counterpart. So I was a little surprised by my bartender’s Polish accent on a recent visit. The vast majority of the customers, however, were clearly proud Englishmen and Englishwomen who enjoy traditional pub grub—Yorkshire pudding, bangers and mash, and assorted pies—not to mention the great beer selection. But the real draw for many is the ability to catch Premier League soccer live from 3-11 a.m. on a weekend morning. CROATIA/SERBIA Prince Café, 6795 W. Flamingo Rd., 702-220-8322.
This small, dark restaurant with a quaint outdoor patio is run by Serbians, and caters primarily to Serbians, Croatians, Bosnians, Bulgarians and other Eastern European nationals. (Manager Nebojsa Krkeljas estimates as much as 70 percent of his clientele was born in Eastern Europe.) So don’t be surprised if most of the conversation around you is in Serbo-Croat. They come for such national delicacies as karadordeva sincla (rolled stuffed schnitzel) and makedonska pljeskavica (stuffed hamburger), as well as their native beers: Jelen, Lav and Karlovacko. For entertainment, Krkeljas books Serbian-born musician Tale to play traditional songs on Fridays, while soccer and European basketball rule the TV screens.
ETHIOPIA Merkato Ethiopian Café, 855 E. Twain Ave., 702-796-1231.
While Las Vegas has several great Ethiopian restaurants, the one that seems to draw the most African-born customers is Merkato. Obviously, the main attraction is the great food, served family style on a matt of injera (spongy bread made from teff flour). Vegetarians can enjoy such dishes as yemisir wot (spicy lentils) or shiro wot (chickpeas in pepper sauce), while hardcore carnivores can opt for one of the raw beef dishes, such as kitfo. (There are also plenty of cooked meat options.) But also a draw is the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony, offered at your table or in the casual lounge. If you’re new to Ethiopian cuisine, be prepared to eat with your fingers.
IRELAND Rí Rá, in Mandalay Place, 702-632-7771.
There are few places in town you’ll hear more people speaking with a brogue than Rí Rá. That’s partially because a large percentage of the employees are from Ireland, with many coming to the U.S. to learn about the hospitality industry through a special State Department exchange visitor program. But plenty of the customers are also from the Emerald Isle, and they indulge in contemporary Irish cuisine, traditional Irish coffee or a proper pint, all served at antique bars imported from the homeland. Special events include soccer picking contests, live music, the recent early-morning live rugby viewings and three days of St. Patrick’s Day festivities. ITALY Roma Deli II and Wine Shop, 8524 W. Sahara Ave., 702-228-2264.
Las Vegas is packed with Italian restaurants. So why do so many people who truly know Italy come to Roma Deli? Maybe it’s because the casual, comfortable space is really three establishments in one. The lunch and dinner menus boast dozens of traditional Italian dishes, from spaghetti and meatballs and meat lasagna to chicken saltimbocca and rigatoni puttanesca. The deli counter is packed with gourmet meats and cheeses (not to mention traditional Italian desserts). There’s even an attached wine shop. And for Roma’s regular Italian natives, who treat the place as a sort of clubhouse, it has just about every comfort of the Old Country. Well, everything but the Mediterranean.
[ JUST A SIP]
February 19–25, 2015
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NEVADA SCORES SOME EXCLUSIVE WHISKEY
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Collectors of the Macallan’s single-malt Highland Scotches will have to come to Las Vegas to complete their 1824 Masters Series lineup; the two newest marques are only available in Nevada and are in limited quantity. ¶ Reflexion ($1,500) draws its blood-orange color and zesty citrus nose and palate from the first-fill Spanish and American oak hogshead casks used to mature the whisky; smaller casks means a greater wood-to-whisky ratio for an intricate and intense character. Nevada received 232 bottles. ¶ With a color fittingly described at “Spanish sunset,” No. 6 ($3,000) takes its natural hue and raisin/date/fig character from 100 percent first-fill Spanish sherry-seasoned oak casks. The six facets of the exquisite Lalique crystal decanter (of which Nevada has just 134) celebrate the six pillars of Macallan craftsmanship. ¶ Rare Cask and M bookend the collection, selling for $300 and $4,500, respectively. You can find the complete set at luxury properties around town, including Aria, The Mirage, Bellagio, MGM Grand and the Venetian. ¶ And if tasting the 1824 Masters Series doesn’t slake your thirst, you can find more Macallan—as well as Super Pours, world-class tasting and Master Classes—during the fifth annual Universal Whisky Experience, March 11-14 at Encore. Tickets start at $395 and are on sale at UniversalWhiskyExperience.com. – Xania Woodman
Get the latest on local restaurant openings and closings, interviews with top chefs, cocktail recipes, menu previews and more in our weekly “Sips and Bites” newsletter. Subscribe at VegasSeven.com/SipsAndBites.
PICK YOUR MEAL, STK’S SECRET AND 35 YEARS OF ANDRÉ ROCHAT The Grand Cafes at Station Casinos (SCLV.com) around the Valley have just made deciding what to eat in three courses even easier. Basically prix fixe for people who don’t care for French, the Pick-a-Meal menu starts at $10, depending on your entrée. Your choice of starters includes a cup of soup or house or Caesar salad, or more exciting appetizers such as deviled eggs and something called a cheddar bacon wedge that has piqued my interest. Your second course is as down-home as it comes, with selections such as Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes, Parmesan-crusted tilapia served with rice, or a hearty eight-ounce sirloin topped with blue cheese and fried onion straws. Tie it all up with a sweet slice of fruit pie or chocolate cake, among other home-style desserts. It’s still one of the liveliest steakhouses on the Strip, but STK (in the Cosmopolitan, 702-698-7990) likes to keep things fresh. On the first Tuesday of the month, chef Stephen Hopcraft reveals a new secret menu item that is only available the rest of the month for those in the know (a.k.a. those who pay attention to STK’s social media channels). Past covert dishes have included a baconwrapped filet and a 16-ounce sirloin over a bed of red and green onions dressed with ponzu sesame vinaigrette. For the remainder of February, you only need to ask for the off-menu bacon-wrapped shrimp to top your steak for an additional $12. And you don’t even need a secret handshake to get it. Before such names as Savoy, Robuchon and Gagnaire were ever butchered here in Las Vegas, there was the original French chef in this town: André Rochat. The first freestanding fine dining restaurant was Andre’s Downtown in 1980, when Rochat renovated a 1930s-era house to look like a French country inn, complete with dining rooms named after cities of his homeland. Thirty-five years later, his remaining restaurants, Alizé (in the Palms, 702-951-7000) and Andre’s (in Monte Carlo, 702-798-7151) still hold his high standards for both contemporary and classic French fare. Throughout the year, both restaurants will celebrate this milestone with ongoing specials, but the most spectacular takes place March 29 at the Andre’s Anniversary Celebration dinner, prepared by more than a dozen chefs who have all served under Rochat in Las Vegas. The dinner is at the intimate Andre’s, so space is limited, while proceeds benefit the James Beard Foundation. In a town that often feels so young that it has no history, here’s your chance to taste it for once. – Grace Bascos Grace Bascos eats, sleeps, raves and repeats. Read more from Grace at VegasSeven.com/ DishingWithGrace, as well as on her diningand-music blog, FoodPlusTechno.com.
PRINCE CAFE BY JON ESTRADA; MACALL AN’S BY ANTHONY MAIR
The Prince Platter from Prince Cafe.
PHOTO BY ANTHONY MAIR
Menu Picks
Going With the Faux Violette’s Vegan ofers numerous animal-free some of which are even delicious By Al Mancini
VIOLETTE’S VEGAN
8560 W. Desert Inn Rd., 702-685-0466. Open daily for lunch 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and dinner 5–10 p.m. Dinner for two, $15–$30.
VegasSeven.com
Al’s
pseudo-cheese product in the macaroni and cheese— it’s acceptable, but nothing like the real thing. My favorite meals at Violette’s have been void of such faux products. The Zucchini Zen Sticks, breaded with polenta and quinoa, for example, are wonderful as long as you stick to the marinara dipping sauce and avoid the cheddar “cheeze” version. The excellent pomodoro sauce that comes with stir-fried veggies and whole-grain linguine in the Garden of Paradise is suspiciously similar to that marinara, although I haven’t tasted them sideby-side. I was also very impressed by both the juices and the soy milk shakes. Despite those solid dishes and several decent ones that I probably would've liked more if I were accustomed to vegan dining, there were two items that I can’t imagine anyone enjoying. The frst was a bowl of tomato soup that had neither the color, consistency nor taste of tomatoes. In fact, even the owner seemed confused, taking it back to the kitchen before returning to tell me that it was, in fact, what we’d ordered. Even worse was a quesadilla completely overpowered by a rancidtasting tofu sour cream. While I admit that serious vegans might very well enjoy the food at Violette’s more than I did, I can’t imagine anyone tolerating the lousy service I received on one of my visits. Courses repeatedly arrived without silverware; the sweet tea my wife requested was never delivered; and, despite the small dining area, it was nearly impossible to get a server’s attention to address those issues. Hopefully that was just a bad night. Because while I’ll gladly endeavor to expand my palate, my service expectations are set in stone.
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WHEN IT COMES TO THE VEGAN
lifestyle, I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, I'm a confrmed carnivore. On the other, I frmly believe that reducing our consumption of animal proteins would make us healthier and be better for the planet. I also suspect that reducing demand for those products could help eliminate the horrifc conditions of our modern factory farms. A few years ago, my wife and I vowed to eat vegan one day a week for a year, and over that time we had some amazing meals, both in restaurants and at home. I have not, however, developed what you might call a “vegan palate.” To provide variety, and perhaps remind them of dishes they enjoyed before converting to veganism, many vegan chefs employ various “substitute” ingredients meant to imitate animal products. Some, like almond milk instead of dairy, are tasty. Others, like certain soy-based “cheeses” or “meats,” I just don’t enjoy. I have vegan friends who love these substitutes, and I’m sure that over time I could learn to appreciate them. But I prefer chefs who use them sparingly. Unfortunately, that’s not the philosophy at Violette’s Vegan—the new westside collaboration of poker pro Cyndy Violette and chef/ author Mark Rasmussen. Open for lunch and Zucchini Zen Sticks ($6), dinner, Garden of Paradise ($12), Violette’s is All Is Well juice ($5 and $8) painted in and Polar Bear shake ($8). bright colors and has a bit of a hippie vibe. A shelf is packed with books on healthy lifestyle options. Choices include sandwiches, quesadillas, salads, stews and stir fry. For meat substitutes, the chef occasionally uses tofu, but more frequently relies on seitan (wheat gluten) or tempeh (fermented soy), with which he creates everything from meatballs to kebabs. While I appreciated the variety, the textures options, aren't for everyone. And there’s no way you’re going to mistake these items for beef in the Hungry Man stew. The same goes for the
February 19–25, 2015
Garden of Paradise, one of the winning dishes at Violette's Vegan.
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“Sweet and saucer-eyed, Mac is a pixie-pie who brings a lovable cluelessness to discovering the darker sexual arts.”
SHOWSTOPPER {PAGE 69}
Our guide to the best—or at least weirdest—awards party ever By Lissa Townsend Rodgers
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How to Host Oscar
ONCE UPON A TIME, television was what you did when there was nothing else to do, when you wanted to be alone or at least only with people who’ve already seen your sweatpants and smelled your farts. But increasingly, the home screen is a focus for entertaining, whether it’s having folks over for fondue to celebrate the last season of Mad Men, play Walking Dead drinking games or, of course, chips & dip and the Super Bowl. ¶ But nothing tops the range of party opportunities offered by the Academy Awards. From the last-minute, “I got a pizza, wanna come over, sit on my couch and mock the rich and famous?” to full-on, Martha Stewart-best-backthe-fuck-up shindiggery with themes, costumes, elaborate menus and specialty cocktails.
February 19–25, 2015
ILLUSTRATION BY CIERRA PEDRO
Movies, music, books and your favorite crazy aunt
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party, advises those intending to use a cinematic theme to “take cues from the movies themselves: Know your audience and play to them,” adding that “One cue not to take from the movies is pandering. Choose something interesting and fun over something with wide appeal but no meaning.” Over the years, he has hosted a Sixteen Candles bash with birthday cake, liquor-cabinet trashcan punch and
tellini skewers, as well as house-made espresso-infused vodka; guests wore sunglasses and/or little black dresses. So go ahead and throw your own spaghetti and “take the cannoli” party to honor The Godfather or mix up a pitcher of The Big Lebowski White Russians. If it’s easier, you can always reverse-engineer an homage to Enter the Dragon to justify Chinese takeout or get some plastic vampire teeth to go with your tacos and
“YOU CAN EVEN OFFER YOUR GUESTS ROLLS OF SCOTCH TAPE FOR MAKEYOUR-OWN TEMPORARY FACELIFTS!” a halftime showing of girl’s panties; as well as a Picnic party that involved a slew of people in Kim Novak drag eating fried chicken on his living room foor. I myself have celebrated Bobcat Goldthwait’s ode to alcoholic party clowns, Shakes the Clown with Kahlua-frosted brownies, bourbonmarinated hot dogs and heavily spiked punch garnished with round red “noses.” Fellini’s La Dolce Vita inspired a classier spread of meatballs and tor-
have a festa From Dusk Till Dawn style. If snacks, sips and snark don’t provide enough amusement, you can augment the entertainment in a variety of ways. There are plenty of places online where you can fnd printable ballots, let guests pick the winners and give a golden statuette (or six-pack) to the one with the most accurate predictions. Vegas Seven has also created Oscar night bingo cards, which you can print out and, if you’re lucky, get
the chips to line up on “facelift male,” “presenter is drunk” and “Amal Clooney is over it.” (You can fnd them at VegasSeven.com/OscarBingo.) Of course, the favorite game at my own Oscar parties is something a bit more creative. We call it Who’s On What. This involves close scrutiny of the celebrity attendees and guessing what they used to pre-game. And, thanks to the miracle of tweets and texts, you can play with friends around the world as your phone blows up with observations such as “Seacrest: Inhaler, the Merlot from the gift basket” and “Han Solo: Irish whiskey, Coumadin.” There’s something magical about Liza Minnelli’s face fashing onscreen as a half-dozen people immediately and simultaneously scream, “PILLS!” But, like any celebration, an Academy Awards party is about gathering friends together to have a good time. If the idea of managing themes and menus and games seems daunting: Don’t. Keep it simple. Just leave off the Spanx (you know Reese Witherspoon wishes she could), stuff yourself with junk food (like Channing Tatum never gets to do) and say petty things about fabulous people 87TH (the smack Jen talks ACADEMY about Angelina AWARDS pales in compari5:30 p.m. son). And rememFeb. 22 ber: It’s an honor on ABC. just to be nominated—or invited.
ILLUSTRATION BY CIERRA PEDRO
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The best thing about Oscar parties is their inclusivity: You don’t have to be a fan of a specifc team or particular show—nope, even a passing acquaintance with popular culture is enough to keep you in the loop. If you’re a cinema afcionado, fashion maven, gossip blog fan or have a cousin who had a roommate who used to work for ______ , you will have plenty to talk about. And, unlike during your regular programming, no one will shush you because they want to hear whether the winner of the Best Sound Editing award thanked his mom. For those who want to go a step beyond fipping on the TV and pulling a handful of menus out of the drawer, you can always add a Hollywood theme to your event with a trip to the 99-Cent Store. Pick up a bunch of gold plates and napkins, some microwave popcorn and assorted condiments and treat guests to a make-your-own-popcorn bar. Invite people to trot out old prom or bridesmaid gowns or pick up a tuxedo jacket made of lurid and unnatural fabrics at the thrift shop. You can even offer your guests rolls of Scotch tape for make-your-own temporary facelifts! If you wish to do something a little more unusual, choose one specifc movie to theme your celebration—and it needn’t be a nominated flm, just one that lends itself event-planning. (Seriously, what would a party based on American Sniper be like and would you even want to go?) Eric Diesel, writer of the Urban Home blog and host of many a splendid Oscar
CONCERT
Manson Performance Pales House of Blues, Feb. 14
Catching shock-rocker Marilyn Manson at the end of his 17-date Hell Not Hallelujah tour in Las Vegas on Val-
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entine’s night seemed like the makings of a tornadograde blast. But Manson and his band were clearly sucking wind with a lazy stage show that did them no favors. Things started promising with a ferocious take on “Deep Six,” a single off the mostly well-reviewed new album The Pale Emperor. But then Manson’s nonsensical stage banter revealed his exhaustion, even if “Disposable Teens” rapped my middle-aged nerve endings with its pithy lyrics (I never hated the one true God/Just the god of the people I hated). From there things got goofy: Manson rolled on the floor, stabbed beer cans with his knife-handled microphone, and completed unimpressive and ultimately unnecessary costume changes (from black garb to … um, black garb). The set list lagged; “Sweet Dreams” should be retired. HOB is way too small for Manson, affording the sardined audience no chance to move. Prediction: He’ll be headlining The Gathering of the Juggalos in a few years. ★✩✩✩✩ – Jarret Keene
want it to feel like you’re coming to my party.
By Camille Cannon
Why not? It’s a good time. I would never sit there and go on some horrible monologue about my childhood. We’re there to have fun.
Whether she was impersonating Martha Stewart and Celine Dion or taking a bite out of “Schweddy Balls,” Saturday Night Live alum Ana Gasteyer built a career making millions laugh. Last year, she returned to her vocalist roots and released a jazz album, I’m Hip. She’ll be singing at The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz Room Feb. 20-21. But frst, we talked to Gasteyer about fanny packs, SNL’s legacy and becoming everyone’s favorite crazy aunt.
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Your album is a departure from how we’ve seen you on TV and film. Why ’60s throwback jazz?
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The ’60s were a moment in entertainment where you could sing, but you were also not completely without reason to be funny and to be entertaining and have the expectation of a glamorous evening out. There’s a big sound to it, vocally. That’s why I go back to it as source material over and over again. We call it “happy jazz” or “up-tempo jazz.”… The goal is for people to have a great time. I throw a lot of dinner parties, and I wanted the record to be like that. That’s what the evening is, too. I
How does your personality manifest when you sing?
I try to make it as fun-loving as possible. I would say it’s an entertaining musical show … with kazoos. Occasionally, I’ll do a fanny pack giveaway. Fanny packs?
women internally. This is going to sound ANA GASTEYER really stereotypical, 7p.m. Feb. 20-21, Cabaret but—as a womJazz in The Smith Center, an, I tend $39-59, 702-749-2000. to want to connect with people, and the fact that we were able to do that as a big group was really meaningful to me. We’re all good friends still. I feel super lucky.
SNL just marked its 40th anniversary. How does it feel to be a part of that legacy? Specifically, for all that it’s done for women in comedy?
I feel outrageously fortunate. For whatever reason, it’s a piece of history that clicked when we got there, that shift in perception about women in comedy started changing. There are a lot of people who are responsible for that shift. Part of that is just being among incredibly talented peers. Part of it is writers like Adam McKay, who was the head writer when I was there, who understood what women had to offer. Lorne [Michaels] had a willingness to go with what was trendy and cool and promote
IDOL WORSHIP Billy Idol has plenty of weapons in his arsenal. He’ll play old Generation X tunes! He’ll take off his shirt! If those fist-pumping solo hits (“Rebel Yell,” “White Wedding”) don’t put a smile on your face, his trademark sneer will. Idol plays the Chelsea on Feb. 21 ($50-$75).
HIDE & SEGER Bob Seger rarely performs, which makes this tour extra special. His set list is loaded with classics (“Night Moves,” “Mainstreet”) and songs from last year’s rootsy Ride Out. Seger and his Silver Bullet Band play Mandalay Bay Events Center on Feb. 21 ($75-$125).
What’s next for you?
I really would like to do a Christmas album. This kind of music lends itself so happily to that. Especially because Christmas can be the worst time of year! [Laughs.] It would be a dream come true if my album was played at Christmas parties in the happiest possible way. I actually feel freer the older I get because everyone’s got a crazy aunt. I look forward to going into my “crazy aunt” phase. I’m on the early side of that. Eventually, I’d like to fnd my inner Kathy Lee. Read the full interview at VegasSeven.com/AnaGasteyer.
ON SALE NOW Steely Dan was booked to play Coachella this year, which means Donald Fagen and Walter Becker will be playing those beautiful, meticulously recorded studio hits live. Can’t make it to Indio? Steely Dan plays the Pearl on April 11 ($115.50-$204.50).
MANSON BY CARLOS L ARIOS
ANA GASTEYER GETS HIP AT THE SMITH CENTER
CONCERT
The Growlers Serenade a Sold-Out Crowd of ‘Lovers’
The
HIT LIST TARGETING THIS WEEK'S MOST-WANTED EVENTS
The Bunkhouse Saloon, Feb. 13
The crowd surfers, showers of beer and sea of phone cam-
By Camille Cannon
eras didn’t faze the Growlers frontman Brooks Nielsen. He seized nearly every opportunity to crack a joke as he led the Orange County garagerockers through a boisterous 24-song set. “Do not hesitate to back that ass up, if you feel so inclined,” Nielsen told a sold-out crowd. Nielsen’s croon—think Jim Morrison with the raspiness of Bob Dylan—separates the band from its contemporaries. It’s most evident on “Naked Kids” and “One Million Lovers.” The guitar-driven up-
GOOD TIMING Manuel Gonzales earned high praise from Aimee Bender in her New York Times review of his debut book, The Miniature Wife. “His prose is never sloppy, and his rhythm is impeccable,” Bender writes. It’s no wonder Gonzales was chosen for Black Mountain Institute’s Emerging Writer Series. Meet the author Feb. 19 at UNLV’s Greenspun Hall. UNLV.edu.
the venue in a rowdy dance party that was the cause of countless spilled drinks and even a fight. Nielsen’s snarky nostalgic comments reflected the mood of the night. “As a band, we grew up visiting this city. It’s a shit show—still is, but we love it.” ★★★✩✩ – Ian Caramanzana
[ READING ]
America’s Homicide Epidemic Is Put on Trial in Ghettoside A blend of true-crime procedural and social critique, Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside (Spiegel & Grau, $28) is gripping and essential. Leovy, who is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, convincingly argues that the state—through laxity and investigative misapplication—has allowed homicide rates among THE GROWLERS BY ALEX ANDER ZAYAS
young black men to assume epidemic proportions. She focalizes her narrative around the murder of 18-year-old Bryant Tennelle, and a veteran detective’s tireless investigation into his son's killing. Leovy is a skilled storyteller, and while her prose is occasionally stock, she manages to marshal the events and the data into a satisfying package. With America’s criminal justice system undergoing new surges of scrutiny, Ghettoside arrives at the perfect moment and introduces new wrinkles into the dialogue. Recommended by Drew Cohen, buyer for The Writer’s Block bookstore, 1020 Fremont St., 10 a.m.–8 p.m. Mon-Sat, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sun.
WORK IT OUT Inspiration comes from everywhere, even the shittiest of situations. That’s the thought behind the Onyx Theatre’s new improv show: Don’t Quit Your Day Job. In the Feb. 19 edition, magician Murray SawChuck will regale us with tales of employment past as actors bring it to life. Read more on the Onyx Theatre’s plans to become a comedy hub at VegasSeven.com/ Onyx. OnyxTheatre.com. MUSICAL MASH UP Curious what Frankie Moreno’s been up to since he left his post at the Stratosphere? The singer will re-emerge at The Smith Center for the Nevada Ballet Theatre’s gala in honor of its co-chairwoman/co-founder Nancy Houssels on Feb. 21. Also on the bill is viral sensation and jookin’ dance pioneer Lil Buck, who starred in Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope” video. NevadaBallet.org. AS YOU WATCH Inspire Theatre will screen everyone’s favorite quotable fantasy film, The Princess Bride, at 7 p.m. Feb. 25. Entry is free with a cocktail purchase, and cocktails make the likelihood of the whole audience shouting, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die,” a little less inconceivable. InspireLasVegas.com.
VegasSeven.com
sessions, and the six-piece led
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Gets Tough” turned into jam
February 19–25, 2015
beats of “Dull Boy” and “Going
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MUSIC Cage plays Beauty Bar on Feb. 24.
[ SOUND PROOF ]
BACK FROM THE UNDERGROUND Indie rap veterans 2Mex and Cage return from obscurity
“UNDERGROUND” HIP-HOP AS A SUBCULTURE
is no more. Sure, the genre is still kicking with anti-mainstream iconoclasts, but it’s not something that needs to be sought out and prized any more. Like fnding the love of your life or the nearest burger joint, accessing it is as simple as a click (or swipe). Social media and online platforms have leveled the playing feld, while simultaneously opening up the foodgates for a million bedroom emcees and producers. It’s made relevancy a shitty swamp to wade through. It’s been even harder for many of the underground acts of the pre-Soundcloud/ Spotify era to stay afoat (El-P being the only exception). I mean, did you know Aesop Rock dropped another album with Rob Sonic a couple months ago? Probably not. Which is why it still baffes and delights me when I see some of my forgotten favorites play Las Vegas. Who would have thought the neon city would be a place where artists such as Sage Francis and Brother Ali can still pack venues? On that note, I hope there’s a good showing of support for 2Mex. The underrated underground veteran headlines Sunday Riots at Civilian Clothing’s outpost (6460 Windy Rd.) February 22. While his output’s been limited in recent years, he was inescapable in the early-to-mid “aughts.” A member of duo Of Mexican Descent and collective the Visionaries, he was featured on a ton of records coming out of Los Angeles. Some of his best work came in the form of Look Daggers, a collaborative project with the late Ikey Owens (keyboardist in Jack White’s touring band and former member of The Mars Volta). 2Mex wasn’t—and hopefully still
isn’t—afraid to experiment with different styles. And he certainly didn’t shy away from matters of the heart. He’s at his best when he’s anguished. Songs such as “I Didn’t Mean to Touch Your Hand” and “Before You Say No” are anthems for heartbroken, angsty teens. That said, he’s a bit of an acquired taste. If you like your hip-hop more straightforward (and without a thick Mexican accent), openers Noa James and Stevie Crooks are reason enough to come out. Another artist who’s kept it low key is violent rapper-turned-emotionally dark songwriter Cage who, along with the equally bleak Sadistik, makes his way to Beauty Bar on February 24. Cage has one hell of a story: His father was a heroin addict who made Cage help him shoot up; he was abused by his stepfathers; he did a ton of drugs himself and wound up in an insane asylum at 18. That translated into a lot of rhymes about sex, drugs and violence in his early career, and an accusation that Eminem stole his style. However, 2005’s Hell Winter stands as his magnum opus, where he came to grips with the dark reality of his past and transitioned into a deep storyteller. Although he was a key player in the Def Jux and Eastern Conference crews, he almost entirely disappeared from the scene after 2009’s Depart From Me. He didn’t re-emerge until 2013’s Kill the Architect, which saw a return of his horrorcore style. He announced last month that he’ll be retiring after his next two projects, so catch him while you still can. Got new music or upcoming shows? Holler at Zoneil.Maharaj@wendohmedia. com or @zoneil on Twitter.
CAGE PHOTO BY JASON CHRISTOPHER
By Zoneil Maharaj
STAGE
WHIP-SNARK 50 Shades! The Parody spanks the phenomenon and leaves marks
PHOTO BY GABE GINSBERG
SO THIS HIP-THRUSTING DUDE HIGH-FIVES
me in mid-grind, humping a woman doggy-style at … wait, was this at the classy showroom or a scuzzy bar toilet? Nope—classy showroom. Them, in the aisle. Me, in the aisle seat. Another patron goes nose to nose with the grind-ee. ... Relax, it’s actors only dryhumping—they’re not crude, after all. Then there’s fsting jokes. LOL-ing over BDSM is 50 Shades! The Parody at Bally’s, spoofng E.L. James’ trashy novel (and movie) Fifty Shades of Grey (its popularity suggesting the world is off its meds). If you come from Carolina, I’m gonna get into your vagina, goes one lyric. If you’re staying at Bally’s, I’m gonna fuck you in your back alley, goes another. When it’s dumb, it’s pretty dumb—that’s the smart point. Still, the creators owe a convenience fee for a target as fat as this pop-culture oil spill. Twin narratives play out: Bookclub gal pals giggle over the novel as scenes depict the “relationship” of virginal student Anastasia Steele and publishing tycoon Christian Grey, with his “particular” tastes and encyclopedia-thick “contract” to make her his submissive. Opening groaner jokes had me fearing another Pawn Shop Live! (Lord, no!), but 50 Shades! is clever about puncturing its source material. Rather than betray underlying affection for it, it amplifes its lameness as a porn-lite phenomenon. “If this were a book,” one character says, “it would be terrible.” When Tatiana Mac as Anastasia sings “There’s a Hole Inside of Me,” featuring every conceivable double entendre, you can take it as high school-level sex gags or an incisive swipe at the world’s adolescent swooning over
something largely considered a clumsily written masturbatory fantasy. Sweet and saucer-eyed, Mac is a pixie-pie who brings a lovable cluelessness to discovering the darker sexual arts. When she giggles through an explanation to her roommate that when Grey put his balls inside her, she meant Ben Wa balls, it’s downright adorable. In the big comic reveal, Greg Kata, playing Grey with entertaining pomposity, strips to expose a blobby, love-handled body not quite Greylike. Fearlessly faunting his fab in a onesie accentuating his ampleness, he hilariously steals the show with “I Don’t Make Love” as a Greek chorus shouts, He fucks! He fucks! He fucks! (Producers tried to withhold Kata’s identity as a “surprise,” as if knowing would trigger a stampede to Google Image. Producers: You’re over-anticipating people’s anticipation of this show.) Among supporting players, Zipporah Peddle as both the roommate and a book-club gal is a winning wiseass, and Ryan Flanigan’s overstimulated Latin lover is a goofy hoot. 50 Shades The Parody! is unafraid to crack the satirical whip on our social neuroses, as when Grey shows Anastasia his “red room’” of pain-aspleasure devices in a Gilbert and Sullivan-style song. Absurdly funny, it refects our societal immaturity: While sadomasochistic sex is a complex web of psychology and catharsis—adult stuff—the wider public embraces it mostly as a puerile pop-lit trend. In sexual matters, we’re often emotionally childish. We need a cultural spanking. Got an entertainment tip? Email Steve.Bornfeld@VegasSeven.com.
A&E
MOVIES
A BRIGHTER SHADE OF GREY Sometimes the movie is better than the Twilight fan fction By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services
ADAPTED AND DIRECTED BY WOMEN OF
considerably larger talent than novelist E.L. James, the flm version of Fifty Shades of Grey turns out to be an intriguing tussle—not in the sack, or in the Red Room of Pain, but in its internal war between the dubious erotica of James’ novel (the frst of three) and the far craftier trash offered by the movie. It’s poetic justice. James’ love story concerns an impossibly rich, sexually exotic, emotionally remote billionaire and the collegiate virgin who becomes the Submissive to his Dominant, in the parlance of the bondage/discipline/sado-masochism realm. The novel is very likely the worst-written international best-seller since the Twilight series. What has happened with Fifty Shades of Grey? As with the frst Twilight movie back in 2008, the one directed with canny, low-key commitment by Catherine Hardwicke, James’ book has been de-crudifed, its most operatic expressions of lust stricken from the record. That leaves the greasy, sexualized violence of the premise, but even that has been tilted ever so slightly to a more skeptical position. Director Sam Taylor-Johnson and her adapter, Kelly Marcel, remain true to the Etch-a-Sketch contours of the narrative, up to and including
the abrupt cliffhanger ending that really doesn’t work in a stand-alone movie. At a recent screening, yelps of frustration greeted the fnal exchange between Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey as they reached the impasse setting up books two and three. Rumors of James getting all whipsand-chainsy with her on-set demands during flming have been circulating ever since the frst photos appeared of Dakota Johnson, who plays Ana, and Jamie Dornan, a.k.a. His Abcellence, as Christian. Could James even recognize some of the screenplay’s exchanges, since they occasionally approximate human speech and, in the crucial case of Ana, create a female protagonist who isn’t entirely a doormat. The setup’s the same as it was in the book. Covering for her ailing college roommate (Eloise Mumford, very good), bookish but demurely smoldering Ana interviews the elusive Mr. Grey for a class assignment. Smolder, smolder, smolder and pretty soon, Ana and Christian are dating, sort of. His stalkerish behavior and insane control-freakery is mitigated by exquisite taste in wines and a penchant for shirtlessly interpreting melancholy sonatas at the keyboard with the lights of Seattle far below. Like the vampire and werewolf
Can an emotionally distant billionaire (Dornan) and a beguiling co-ed with low self-esteem (Johnson) find love?
hunks of the Twilight series, Christian is forbidden fruit, served hot. Ana is the retrograde heroine who yearns for adventure, and release, and a healthy way to explore her dawning sexuality and fnd a boyfriend who’ll open up a little. Is that so much? But it is. It is so much in this world. The bulk of Fifty Shades of Grey presents a world ruled by a helicopterfying gym rat raised on a steady diet of 9 1/2 Weeks, Zalman King’s soft-core cable fantasies and fashion spreads straight out of Muted Blues and Greys Monthly. The surprise, if there is a surprise here, is that the flm has found a slyly humorous tone for much of the running time. Johnson gets all the right kinds of laughs with Ana’s fustered or chops-
February 19–25, 2015
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SHORT REVIEWS
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Kingsman: The Secret Service (R) ★★✩✩✩
Silly, sadistic and finally a little galling, Kingsman answers the question: What would Colin Firth have been like if he’d played James Bond? Firth portrays one of the crack gentlemen-spies working for a secret agency out to save the world from a crackpot billionaire (Samuel L. Jackson). As Firth’s beautifully tailored colleagues, Michael Caine and Mark Strong offer unblinking gazes par excellence. In the leading role, Taron Egerton is engaging as the working-class miscreant “Eggsy.”
Jupiter Ascending (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩ Channing Tatum’s character is a “splice,” an intergalactic bounty hunter with a distaste for shirts. Mila Kunis’ character, Jupiter Jones, is the rightful heir to planet Earth because she is a genetic ringer for the late matriarch of a high-toned family of bores who rule most of the known universe. The script struggles to tell a dull story straight. Still, an image or two lingers. For one thing, Jupiter Ascending explains those endlessly debated crop circles without stopping in its tracks for a verbal explanation.
Seventh Son (PG-13) ★✩✩✩✩
Legend has it that the seventh son of a seventh son is born with special powers, which, in Joseph Delaney’s Wardstone Chronicles fantasy-lit series, include the ability to see supernatural beings and kill witches. But given the long gestation period for Universal’s film adaptation, Seventh Son, which opened nearly a year later than planned, one shouldn’t be surprised to discover some pretty significant birth defects, among them a tired plot, some very unspecial effects and a pair of grotesquely uneven performances from Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.
busting reactions to her Dominant’s latest exhibitions of A) hotness, or B) scariness. Dornan struggles to keep up with Johnson’s loose rhythms. He’s not terrible, but he has a way of hitting one note emotionally per scene and sticking with it, while trying not to blink. For an hour or so, director TaylorJohnson sidesteps the biggest land mines in her material, but as Christian’s possessive, obsessive, secretladen nature gathers the storm clouds overhead, and Ana goads her master into testing her limits, there’s only so much a director can do to pretend the material is something it isn’t. Fifty Shades of Grey(R) ★★✩✩✩
By Tribune Media Services
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (PG) ★✩✩✩✩
The new SpongeBob movie’s plot honors the series’ key themes. Plankton is still after Mr. Krabs’ secret formula for Krabby Patties. Antonio Banderas narrates the story to a flock of seagulls, and his pirate character has insidious food-truck ambitions. Sponge Out of Water doesn’t deliver SpongeBob and the gang to the “real,” non-animated world until quite late in the film, which runs a reasonable-sounding 93 minutes. Yet those 93 feel like more than enough.
Project Almanac (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
American Sniper (R) ★★✩✩✩
Black or White (PG-13) ★✩✩✩✩
Black Sea (R) ★★★✩✩
Mommy (R) ★★★✩✩
Cake (R) ★★★✩✩
A couple of ingenious wrinkles distinguish Project Almanac from other time-travel fantasies. It’s not the best film of the genre, but it’s an entertaining ride. Science-whiz high school senior David (Jonny Weston) and his younger sister (Virginia Gardner) stumble across a camcorder with video of David’s seventh birthday party. David, as he looks now, is glimpsed in a mirror in the background of a party that took place 10 years earlier. That sends him poking around Dad’s old workshop, where he and his pals uncover plans for a time-travel device.
Black or White patronizes its African-American characters up, down and sideways, and audiences of every ethnicity can find something to dislike. Kevin Costner plays an L.A. attorney, Elliot, who loses his wife in a fatal car accident. We learn that his daughter died in childbirth seven years earlier, leaving a biracial daughter (Jillian Estell) in the care of Elliot and his wife. A paternal grandmother (Octavia Spencer) proposes shared custody, and the film mixes up elements of courtroom drama, custody melodrama and, in a stupid third-act turnabout, home-invasion thriller.
The first half of Xavier Dolan’s Mommy feels like a modern classic, driven by galvanizing performances. The second half succumbs to emotional excess. But see it. This wild tragicomedy of irresistible forces juggles our sympathies with devilish ease. Anne Dorval plays a 46-year-old woman who’s single, struggling and about to become a full-time parent again. Her son (Olivier Pilon) has bounced from juvenile facility to facility and has a disrupted emotional makeup. Their savior is a new neighbor who has suffered a breakdown. In French, with English subtitles.
Director Clint Eastwood’s latest film is reverent and slippery. You don’t have to know much about the real Navy SEAL marksman Chris Kyle to wonder if it’s telling the whole truth about him. The film is one life-anddeath sequence after another, and the filmmaking is efficient, crisply delivered. But Eastwood honors his subject without really getting under his skin. Bradley Cooper plays Kyle as a “legend” whose vulnerabilities remain a secret, even to himself, until the breaking point. Cooper is very good, as is Sienna Miller as Kyle’s wife.
Nothing promises old-school pressure-cooking the way the sub thriller can, and while director Kevin Macdonald’s drama springs leaks in its second half, there are satisfactions along the way. Jude Law plays a recently laid-off marine salvage skipper who has given his life to the sea but destroyed his marriage in the process. Over a pint with a couple of other castoffs, he hatches a plan: There’s a Nazi U-boat at the bottom of the Black Sea rumored to be laden with gold. Black Sea is about hostile, desperate men in close quarters who want that money.
Why didn’t Jennifer Aniston get an Oscar nomination for Cake? With a best actress slot taken by Julianne Moore for Still Alice, there wasn’t room for another routine healthcrisis indie, salvaged by a strong, confident, unfussy turn from its female lead. Cake attempts to deal with a protagonist in chronic pain without becoming a chronic pain itself. Claire (Aniston) has scars on her face and body, and plenty she’s not yet acknowledging in her recent, tragic past. The film charts a progression from a dark place to a lighter place, from misanthropy to community.
MARKETPLACE
MARKETPLACE
MARKETPLACE
[Laughs.] Look, I’ve been so blessed. Sure, I do miss my old job at times, more often than you might suspect. But I know I’m where I’m supposed to be, and that’s right here with Rascal Flatts. I’m thankful for both jobs, and I’m deeply grateful to be able to touch so many lives and hearts by playing music. My kids were thrilled to learn that I’m interviewing the singer of the Cars soundtrack hit, “Life Is a Highway”—the original “Let It Go.” Do you still view the song as a boon, or is it double-edged at this point?
Man, I really do feel for you, and I apologize for that. [Laughs.] But I’m also glad to know your kids wore you out with it like mine did with me. If it makes you feel any better, for the longest time my kids only admired me for three things: the Cars song, the duet [2010’s “That Should Be Me”] I did with Justin Bieber, and my cameo in that [2009] Hannah Montana movie. Incidentally, I was just over at [Pixar chief creative offcer] John Lasseter’s house last spring, and we’re going to be working together again on Cars 3, which I’m looking forward to. So get ready for another “Highway”! Ever received a thank you from singer-songwriter Tom Cochrane, who wrote “Life Is a Highway,” for covering his song and upping his royalty checks?
The Rascal Flatts singer on working with the cognitively impaired, being labelmates with Taylor Swif and surviving a Cars movie By Jarret Keene
February 19–25, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
Gary LeVox
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You were a social worker assisting the developmentally disabled in Ohio for a decade before launching a music career. Do you look back fondly on your first job?
Man, that was an amazing 10 years of my life. I learned so much from that experience— how to be patient, how to be honest, how to embrace life and have a positive perspective.
It was just a wonderful time for me, and it really helped turn me into a man. The lessons I learned from working in that feld have helped me in so many other parts of my life.
Many times! You know, he calls his new vacation home the House of Flatts, in honor of our contribution to his lifestyle. Seriously, he’s a great songwriter and deserves every bit of credit. Does being labelmates [on Nashville-based Big Machine Records] with Taylor Swift come with any perks? For instance, do you get to hear each other’s new albums before the rest of America?
I don’t know yet if there are any perks, because I’m still waiting to hear back about that loan I asked from her more than fve years ago. No, Taylor is amazing, and I think it’s great that Rascal Flatts was the frst band to put her on tour. We’re so proud of her, watching her evolve as an artist with each
RASCAL FLATTS VEGAS RIOT!
(with Craig Wayne Boyd) 8 p.m. Feb. 25, 27, 28 and March 4, 6, 7, 11, 13 and 14, The Joint, HardRockHotel.com.
new release. But to answer your question: No, she keeps her new music all to herself. We’d have to have our people talk to her people, just like everyone else. Your most recent disc, Rewind, has earned raves even from tough critics. But I notice the praise is sometimes qualified with descriptors like “smooth, suburban country.” That bother you?
No, not at all. Critics have certainly said a lot worse about us! We’ll take it, and I’m glad people enjoy our music, because we put our heart and soul into it. As long as fans love what we do, we’ll keep doing it. God gave us a platform, and we want to take it as far as it will go. What were your thoughts upon first hearing and recording the single “I’m on Fire” from Rewind?
When I frst heard the demo Sean McConnell sent me, I immediately loved the tempo of it. But I thought the chorus was I’m burning the bed, which didn’t sound right. So, I had to call Sean and say, “I’m not sure where you’re going with that line, man.” And then he kindly corrected me, since it’s I’m burning up and …, with a break there. And we went on to have a blast recording it, mainly because of the cool way that song swings—after, you know, I fgured out the words. [Laughs.] With your upcoming residency at The Joint, Rascal Flatts appears to have a real affinity for Las Vegas—and vice-versa— don’t you think?
Well, if you remember, we actually shot what I think is probably our best music video there for our [2010] song “Why Wait,” which features everyone from Carrot Top to Penn & Teller to Wayne Newton. That was certainly the most fun we’ve ever had on a music-video shoot. Las Vegas always holds a special place in our hearts. There are just so many great talents there. We feel honored to stop in and play that city for a few nights.
PHOTO BY SHERYL NIELDS
SEVEN QUESTIONS
Does entertaining millions offer similar fulfillment? Any times you’d rather be attending, say, the Special Olympics instead of grappling with another entertainment lawyer?