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LAS VEGAS’ WEEKLY CITY MAGAZINE
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EVENT
NEW VISTA WINE WALK
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UPCOMING EVENTS • June 11 Las Vegas 51s vs. Reno Aces Three Square Night [ThreeSquare.org] • June 21
June 11–17, 2015
PHOTOS BY AMIT DADL ANEY
Families, wine lovers and dogs came together June 6 at Town Square to shop, drink and walk for a good cause at the New Vista Community Wine Walk. It was the fourth in a series of eight wine walks, all of which raise money to support Las Vegas residents facing intellectual challenges, such as Down syndrome and autism. The 700 attendees indulged in various wines from 20 sampling stations and enjoyed live music in Town Square’s central. After a summer hiatus, the series will resume Sept. 5.
Brides Against Breast Cancer charity wedding gown sale [BridesAgainstBreastCancer.org]
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THE LATEST
Could sportsbooks like this one at the Westgate be coming to a state near you?
widely adopted sports betting have the same meteoric rise? That seems more than likely, which explains Christie’s continuing efforts at undoing the federal ban. Everyone likes money, governments most of all, and there may be quite a bit of it if other states are allowed to accept wagers on the Giants-Cowboys game. For Nevada operators, the increased focus on sports betting has both present and future implications. For now, legal sports betting remains one of the few monopolies that the state still enjoys. This hasn’t led to a tremendous windfall for operators, but it may be the deciding factor that settles some sports fans on a trip to Las Vegas instead of a drive to the nearest casino. The more diverse offerings—and the larger pools of potential bettors—the better. And yet, the economics of governance being what they are, the monopoly won’t last forever. So, just as they did when casino gambling expanded beyond our borders, Nevada companies are positioning themselves to take the lead, so that they can open up shop in new jurisdictions, armed with proven track records of business competence and regulatory compliance. So while the numbers suggest that sports betting is a trivial part of Nevada gaming, the reality is it’s a small but growing segment of an industry that is, at best, fat. When you add the potential revenue streams that could come from national expansion, the growing focus on sports is a brilliant game plan.
Where do you go to watch sports? The gold standard in this town is a sportsbook, where you can catch several games simultaneously on big screens, with giant odds boards providing the betting lines and the schedule for the day’s lineup. The problem is, going to a sportsbook means traveling to, and dealing with, a casino. The alternative is hitting a sports bar, where there might only be two or three games showing. While you may not mind trading high-tech and a bigger selection for convenience, you don’t really have to. There’s one bar in town where you can have both. The Sporting Life Bar (7770 S. Jones Blvd.) is a sports bar like no other. For starters, it’s the only one in Vegas—and possibly anywhere, for that matter—with a full-size and up-to-date digital odds board, which displays betting lines and results just as you’d see in a casino. It’s supported by TVs everywhere (26 of ’em!), tuned to as many different sports as there are viewing packages for sale: football, basketball, hockey, golf, tennis, boxing, MMA, soccer, darts, even curling. Want to monitor all the baseball action this summer? This is your place. On Tuesdays and Saturdays there’s a pub quiz. It’s free to play, and the winner gets a $50 bar tab. That’s called an “overlay.” On Wednesdays there’s a blind-draw steel-tipped dart tournament with a $5 entry fee, and the bar matches the prize pool (another overlay). On Thursdays there’s a video poker tournament for anyone hitting a four-of-a-kind during the week, with $300 in prize money (possible overlay). All these events begin at 7 p.m. And just to put a bow on it, join the players club and get $20 in free play (if you earn at least 100 points on your first day). Food is another point of focus at Sporting Life. The menu was created by a former sous chef at Palazzo’s Bouchon, and you’ll know it the first time you see the likes of broiled crab cakes with cous cous and wilted kale on the menu. This ain’t no Hooters. But that doesn’t mean you can’t also grab some darn-good pub grub, including burgers, sandwiches, wings, pickle chips and deviled eggs for 50 cents per half (get two eggs for two bucks). Almost everything on the menu is less than $20, but the real dining deal is the three-course “Lunch on the Fly,” served 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mon.-Fri. For $7.99-$9.99, you get a choice of five entrées, such as a Reuben sandwich or a BLT, plus an appetizer of two deviled eggs and a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie for dessert. Of course, there’s a giant beer selection from crafts to drafts, including Czechvar (the original Budweiser) and pints priced as low as $1.75 during weekday happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m. Cheap drinks, gourmet lunch, trivia overlays and that big odds board—the only thing missing is a betting window.
David G. Schwartz is the director of UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research.
Anthony Curtis is the publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor and LasVegasAdvisor.com.
Getting in the Game Despite being a modest revenue producer, sports betting has become a big hit with the casino industry
June 11–17, 2015
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WHY DID NEVADA GOVERNOR BRIAN
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Sandoval, on the eve of the close to the legislative session, sign bills that will expand the reach of sportsbooks? Why is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie suing the federal government to allow Garden State casinos and racetracks to offer sports wagering? The answers can’t be found in the bottom-line numbers Nevada sportsbooks have posted, but rather in the trajectory of sports wagering. Last year, Nevada’s books won a combined $227 million—certainly not peanuts, but only about 2 percent of the $11 billion the state’s casinos took in. And yet sports betting has been in the news much more than multidenominational slot machines ($2.9 billion last year) or blackjack ($1 billion and change). If public interest was based merely on dollar amounts, there would be a national clamor about roulette ($345 million) long before anyone got worked up about which team is favored to win the NBA Finals. But that’s not the case; New Jersey is spending taxpayer dollars trying to overturn the federal ban, despite offering all the games that brought Nevada 98 percent of its casino income last year. The reason New Jersey wants in? Sports betting is growing faster than any other Nevada gaming sector. Scratch that: Sports betting is growing while every other piece of the gaming pie seems to be shrinking. Since 2007, state gaming revenues as a whole have fallen by about 14 percent—it’s the nongaming boom that has industry watchers proclaiming the end of the recession, not the results from the casino. In that same period, the
amount won by sportsbooks has risen by almost 35 percent. This growth isn’t just a recent phenomenon. Since 1984, sports betting here has increased about four times as much as gambling as a whole. True, it’s still a small fraction of the total win, but the trend arrow is pointing upward, which explains the attention—out of proportion to its present revenue state—that sports gambling enjoys. The bills that Sandoval signed into law do two things. The frst authorizes “entity wagering,” which sounds like something out of the Q Continuum but actually just allows groups of people to pool their resources and place bets at Nevada race and sportsbooks. The second allows Nevada companies to run legal sports-betting facilities in other jurisdictions (as long as the back-offce operations remain in-state). Both bills are predicated on the hunch—which the numbers seem to amply support—that public interest in sports betting is on the rise. There is a sense that this may be gambling’s last frontier. And while Nevada is the only state where single-game sports wagering is lawful, daily fantasy sports leagues—really just a thinly disguised variant of traditional sports betting—have exploded in the past two years. Would legal,
PHOTO BY JON ESTRADA
SPORTING LIFE NOT YOUR TYPICAL SPORTS BAR
A new “cell” at the Apex Landfill is lined with plastic and filter fabric (top), and a moveable fence captures stray plastic grocery bags.
“Nobody wants to be behind us on Nellis Boulevard. Or anywhere,” Clinker says. “Our drivers get the half-a-peace-sign a lot of times.”
Pungent though it is, the biowaste method is admirable. Republic’s permits allow them only so much space to stack the trash—basically, it’s about 500 feet from the lowest point of excavation to the highest point of waste flling—so the more they can cram in there, the better. A trash “cell” (or dumping area) continues long after it’s topped off
that’s only slightly derailed, annoyingly, by one thing: plastic grocery bags. Even the slightest breeze lifts them off the ground and carries them away, necessitating the use of movable fences whose entire purpose is to catch fyaways. “They’re like balloons,” Clinker says, shaking his head. “We tell people to take them back to the grocery store
and re-use them, or to use them to pick up after your dogs.” (Curiously, while many of those grocery bags are now fnding their way to Republic’s recycling centers rather than the dump, the amount of trash the Valley produces has stayed constant— about 2.3 million tons annually. Clinker surmises that the Valley’s steadily growing embrace of recycling practices is being matched by a population increase.) As we roll around the grounds, Clinker delivers a nonstop volley of facts and fgures, never once repeating himself: The landfll has been operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, since opening in October 1993; many of the roads within the landfll complex are made from recycled asphalt; and our city, perhaps unsurprisingly, throws away a lot of mattresses, which aren’t cost-effective to recycle. What happens to them? They just get buried, along with everything else. Still, as fascinating as this information is, I’m kind of startled when Clinker nonchalantly mentions that there’s a strain of active bacteria working on Republic’s behalf. See, those landfll gas wells are producing methane at a rate of nearly 2,700 cubic feet per minute, but it’s impure methane; one unfortunate byproduct is hydrogen sulfde, a poisonous and fammable gas that primarily comes from the deteriorating gypsum of drywall board. To remove it and render it nonhazardous, Republic built a special plant at a cost of $7 million that operates using the thiobacillus bacteria, a microorganism that happily eats hydrogen sulfde and metabolizes it into elemental sulfur. (It’s a 15-year-old innovation by Shell Oil and Dutch frm Paques Bio Systems BV, which discovered the bacteria in volcanic ocean rifts.) Clinker calls the bacteria “the bugs,” and describes in almost-too-exacting detail how they do their jobs: “As they digest the sulfur, they get microscopic pustules on them. Sometimes they drop off, but if the bugs retain them, we’ll send them through a centrifuge and push the elemental sulfur out; that’s basically the stuff you fnd at the end of a matchstick. Then they go back to work.” In other words, these “bugs” are getting free room and board, an all-you-caneat buffet and a daily Gravitron ride. Even without the secret life of bacteria included, the tour is utterly fascinating. I arrived at the landfll expecting to be depressed, disgusted—Oh, man, look at all the stuff we throw out. And it’s true: We really should step up our recycling efforts, maybe give Clinker and his 24/7/365 crew a day off. But there’s renewal happening out there, too. Which is why Clinker doesn’t talk about the next 10 years; he talks about the next hundred, the next thousand. He looks forward to the day when all our junk literally becomes part of the landscape again. And he’s nothing if not sanguine about his job and his workplace. As we part, I promise to double my own recycling efforts, and he laughs. “Don’t do too much of that,” Clinker says. “I got people I need to keep working here.”
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and covered with dirt; the gas wells pull methane from the decomposing waste, and the liquids that are produced by this decomposition drain to the bottom of the landfll. There the liquids are captured by a leachate collection system comprised of flter fabric, special rock and a piping network, where they are collected in specially designed sumps, leached away and evaporated. It’s a remarkably effcient operation
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comparison: The density of the trash you drag out to the curb is about 200 pounds to the cubic yard.) I roll down the window to snap some photos, and for the frst time, I feel like I’m at a dump. “That’s biosolids; you’re going to smell that,” says Clinker, chuckling. “Nobody wants to be behind us on Nellis Boulevard, either. Or anywhere. Our drivers get the halfa-peace-sign a lot of times.”
June 11–17, 2015
ate to say this, but wall-e is not true. Seriously, I was driven all over the Republic Servicesrun Apex Regional Landfll— about 25 minutes north of Las Vegas—and I didn’t see even one robot, lovelorn or otherwise, handling your trash and biowaste. I did, however, see lots of people-driven machinery, and a lot more smiling faces on the people working that machinery than I’d expected to see. And I witnessed all of this from the cab of a truck whose passenger-side window I kept rolled up for nearly the entire tour. Some things I learned (and you probably didn’t know): At 2,220 acres, the Apex Landfll is one of the largest in the world, bordered on three sides by government land and on its west side by Interstate 15. Republic has permits to fll in 1,900 of those acres, a process that is expected to take hundreds of years. Believe it or not, this massive trash heap is easy to miss: Steep hills conceal it from the freeway, and if you punch its street address into Google Maps, it’ll take you 20 minutes out of your way into Lincoln County. (Republic is trying to get Google to fx the error.) You can stand outside the landfll’s gates and not see so much as a stray napkin on the ground. If it seems like the landfll is trying to disappear into the landscape, that’s because it is. “We’re pretty proud of our aesthetics,” says Mark Clinker, general manager of the landfll and my guide. “You cannot fnd the landfll by following the litter, which is not the case everywhere.” In fact, we don’t encounter any litter for the frst 20 minutes of our 90-minute tour. The landfll is home to several different, symbiotic operations, all of which we encounter before the actual trash. There’s a facility that treats the methane gas coming from pipes burrowed deep into the refuse; it sends the purifed methane to a DCO Energy-run power plant that will eventually produce enough electricity to power 9,000 homes. Las Vegas Paving Corporation runs a mining operation from the landfll, extracting sand and gravel for concrete and other construction uses; they literally move mountains, and in the process create more room for trash. And KRD Trucking brings the trash from the transfer stations; Clinker points out a gauntlet of orange cones, where the drivers are expected to practice backing into spaces several times a week. Every inch of the operation has been carefully designed to maximize use of both the land and the stuff we’re dumping onto it. When we fnally do see the trash, it almost feels like an afterthought. A succession of identical trailers tip out their garbage, and an array of earthmovers— each one with a mercifully enclosed cab and fltered air—spread it around. Another truck dumps out the aforementioned pre-treated biowaste, and more movers distribute it fnely atop the trash. This layer further enables the trash to settle down and become more compact; Clinker estimates that he’s getting about 2,400 pounds of garbage into every cubic yard. (For the basis of
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it had been no secret to the denizens of Las Vegas. But in early April, Strip headliner Penn Jillette revealed to the world via an article in People that he’d lost 105 pounds. In photos, he appeared gaunt and happy. The illusionist who was once all face was now suddenly all features (with some extra neck skin). He had the serene yet frenetic look of a castaway recently rescued from a desert island. Of course, the People story went viral, for one simple reason: Americans love a weight-loss transformation, especially when a celebrity is involved. There’s something about a stark “before and after” photo that appeals to our can-do, frontier spirit. Having long ago achieved Manifest Destiny, all that’s left to conquer is ourselves—to map and tame our vociferous (and equally American) appetites. While we might not have cowboys or pioneers anymore, we do have Penn Jillette. The outspoken atheist libertarian who achieved fame and fortune in the unlikely felds of comedy/magic/juggling keeps the American mythos going. At 6-foot-7 and topping out at 330 pounds, Jillette had always been a giant, a modern-day Paul Bunyan. So when he turned his famous discipline and drive to the problem that plagues us all, his solution was equally mythic. It was also cloaked in some of the same showman’s secrecy that protects magic tricks. During the course of his dramatic weight loss, which began December 9 and ended March 5 (his 60th birthday), Jillette was tight-lipped. If a fan or even a friend noticed—and many did—he’d reply, to their embarrassment, “I have a touch of Ebola.” Las Vegas improv comedian Matt Donnelly was among those out of the loop, even though he co-stars on Jillette’s podcast Penn’s Sunday School, along with juggler Michael Goudeau, who joined Jillette in the body transformation experience. At 6-foot-1 and 303 pounds, Donnelly was trying to lose weight because of dangerously high blood pressure. But the going was slow—after 18 months, he had dropped just 26 pounds. Meanwhile, the fat was just melting off his colleagues. Having heard one too many Ebola quips, Donnelly dared not ask for an explanation. “Penn Jillette and Michael Goudeau started shrinking before my very eyes,” Donnelly explains on his own podcast, Matt & Mattingly’s Ice Cream Social. “I quickly became the heaviest
By C I N D I M O O N R E E D
This page: A thinned-out Matt Donnelly, Penn Jillette and Michael Goudeau strike an angelic pose. Opposite: The trio in their heavier days.
PHOTO BY JIM K. DECKER
June 11–17, 2015
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Nothing to Lose
Faced with serious health issues, Penn Jillette and his hefty friends stealthily win the battle of the bulge— with the help of a scientist nicknamed Cray Ray
Yeah, Fight Night was insane. The club made a lot of money, so everyone was really happy. Sunday, the next day, I was free. Calvin [Harris] was playing Hakkasan. So I thought, “I’m going to Hakkasan to have a drink with Calvin.” I was with some friends from Holland who actually few over just randomly and some friends from Vegas, some friends from L.A. DJ Vice was there. Apl from Black Eyed Peas was there. Everyone from the Hakkasan Group was there, so we were celebrating. How do you like to celebrate?
I wanted to have the Vegas “big cool guy” table experience. I went to a person in charge and I said, “Yo, we’re having an awesome weekend right now. Can I get some [bottles]?” He said, “Yeah, sure, what do you want?” I [said], “Fuck it—15 bottles of Goose and 15 bottles of Dom.” They were down?
They actually said, “OK, no problem.” People brought out the bottles with the freworks and everything. It was like, “Oh, my God, this so cool!” We had a really good night. We had lots and lots to drink. Did you share it?
Of course! No one can drink a bottle of vodka by themselves, let alone 15. I remember, I brought [drinks] to Calvin maybe 10 times while he was DJing like, “Yo, man, are you having fun? Do you want a shot?” [He said], “No, I’m OK.” He doesn’t drink when he’s DJing. [I’d say] “Are you sure?” [I did] that 10 times. After that, I think we all went to Spearmint Rhino.
June 11–17, 2015
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What’s something really special you’ve done in Vegas?
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This city really feels like home to me. For my birthday, I played here and I brought my entire family on a jet. I flew with my family on a bigass [private jet]. I brought my grandma, I brought some friends, and we stayed here for a week. My grandma loved it, and my mom, too. The whole family was super happy
and just having all kinds of fun. Had your family been to Las Vegas before?
No. My grandmother really loved it here. It was the frst time she was on a private jet in her life. We also stopped by New York and took a helicopter to Manhattan. Do you often do things like that?
I like to share my experiences with my family and friends. This [hotel room] is like my house where we’re staying right now. When you think about it objectively, this is a big-ass hotel room with chandeliers and TVs—it’s ridiculous. After a while … I don’t really care where I am, but I remember the frst couple of times I was here, I was, like, [in awe]. I wanted to give that experience to my friends and my family. I think I’m going to try to do it with fans sometimes. That would be awesome. How would that work?
Just pick two lucky fans and just take them on tour for a week. I did it with a couple of fans already, had them fy with me to certain gigs. Really? When was that?
Last New Year in Chicago. [And the Amsterdam Dance Event] two years ago. I’m working on building a system behind the website where fans can basically sign up and be part of a separate community. On Twitter, everything’s out in the open, like people changing their names and then sending thousands of tweets like, “Please follow me. I’ve been following you for so long. I’m a big fan.” Then I pick the user like, “OK, maybe you are,” and I see they sent the same tweets to just anyone who is famous just so they can get more followers. I’m like, “Really?” To protect my fans from that kind of bullshit, I’m trying to set up a closed community so I can actually give away stuff, free trips and what not, to actual fans, so it doesn’t happen that some random person’s just trying to get followers wins a fucking trip to Vegas or something.
PHOTO BY FOTOFLOOR
NIGHTLIFE
You played Omnia during the Mayweather vs. Paquiao fight weekend. What was it like?
June 11–17, 2015
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NIGHTLIFE
An artist’s rendering of Studio City resort in Macau.
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Megaclub Invades the Vegas of the East
➜ The recent announcement that Pacha, famous for its nightclubs in Ibiza and New York, will open in September at Studio City resort in Macau signifes the frst time a brand-name megaclub will occupy a major space on the Cotai Strip. Studio City is the brainchild of 38-year-old Melco Crown Entertainment CEO
Lawrence Ho, who along with John Raczka, MCE’s vice president of entertainment development and operations, contracted Las Vegas hospitality consultant Rick Bacchus to explore Ibiza-based nightclub operators as a possible ft for Studio City. Aptly named, Studio City is an entertainment-themed casino-resort, boasting Asia’s tallest ferris wheel—the only one in the world shaped like a fgure eight. A promotional short flm starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Robert De Niro, directed by Martin Scorsese, will debut in tandem with the grand opening. In addition to projects in Asia, Bacchus is also developing a large resort between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as nightlife and entertainment venues in Malaysia and Las Vegas, including managing Azure Luxury Pool at the Palazzo. Bacchus shares an inside
look at the logic behind Pacha Macau, which he says will ultimately impact the global “nightlife economy,” opening the foodgates for more megaclubs to populate the “Vegas of the East”—as well as make Macau a destination that’s just as appealing for entertainment as it is gaming. Why does Pacha signify a shift in entertainment marketing in Macau?
This nightclub is going to make a tremendous difference in the Macau landscape. It is a game changer. Traditionally, Asian clientele favors gambling much more than entertainment. However, there has been a noticeable shift in the demographics, with lots of wealthy and sophisticated younger people coming quite frequently to Macau. They enjoy gaming as much as they enjoy nightlife and entertainment. They
know the DJs and they are familiar with the music, so this will be a great venue and destination for them. How does Macau look at nightlife now?
Lawrence Ho in his City of Dreams casino also owns the largest nightclub in Macau, Club Cubic. It is always packed. If anyone in Macau had opened a major nightclub as recent as two years ago, timing would have been terrible. This is the perfect time for a dramatic shift as all of the [major casino-resorts] are in construction on their second and third phases of development [and that will create more rooms for guests]. After construction is complete, their marketing is going to attract [an even larger] demographic from China and the neighboring countries. This will hopefully be the start of offering true entertainment and night-
life features to the already successful gaming mecca. Why a brand like Pacha and not an already-established nightclub brand from Las Vegas?
There’s a lot of difference between Las Vegas and Macau where nightlife and entertainment are concerned. It is not a secret that Las Vegas gaming operators are today making more of their proft margins on entertainment and nightlife features within their properties, whereas Macau is currently doing [more than] Las Vegas in gaming revenues. Nightlife and entertainment brands are created in Las Vegas. A perfect example is the mega successful XS at Encore, which is the only one of its kind. In Macau, the idea to bring a brand like Pacha was simply because they needed a product with more of a global name recognition. – Melinda Sheckells
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONvegas.com
PHOTOS BY TONY TRAN
June 11–17, 2015
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June 12 DJ Konflikt spins June 13 DJ Spider spins June 16 Lost Angels Industry Party with DJ Five
DINING
“We often forsake dessert in a fne restaurant in favor of a fnal cheese course. And a good cheese shop turns us into the proverbial kids in a candy store.” {PAGE 52}
Restaurant reviews, news and bartenders tell you which bottles they reach for frst
Power Plants Downtown gets a new vegan spot where even the rest of us can eat By Al Mancini
Save the Tuna is a roll without regrets.
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| June 11–17, 2015
PHOTO BY ANTHONY MAIR
“WHERE CAN I GET GOOD VEGAN FOOD?” IT’S
probably one of the most frustrating questions I’ve encountered during my dozen or so years writing about food in Las Vegas. As anyone who’s tried to reduce their intake of animal products can tell you, the pickings around here have been pretty slim. Purely vegan restaurants are rare. And many vegan menus rely heavily on meat substitutes, none of which vaguely resemble the meat they’re supposed to replace, and some of which are highly processed and less healthy than meat. That’s why I’m so excited about Vegenation, which (for the most part) treats plants like plants, and does it creatively and skillfully enough that even hardcore carnivores won’t miss the animals. In addition to its 100 percent plant-based menu, Vegenation is committed to other progressive ideals, such as locally sourcing products, composting and additional sustainable practices. The front dining room feels like a welcoming greenhouse: Plants line one wall and sit perched on a shelf above a central communal table. And there’s a cozy patio in the back. The politically charged artwork on the walls, however, looks like it came from PETA’s permanent collection, and can be a bit overbearing—particularly the photo of cute stuffed animals packed into a cattle car, apparently en route to a cartoon slaughter. But don’t let those things scare you away if you aren’t part of the “meat is murder” crowd. The owners and staff are open and welcoming to those who haven’t yet drunk the vegan Kool-Aid, but simply want an alternative meal. Vegenation describes its menu as “global street food.” That means vegan spins on bao, tamales, sushi, chili, pizza and tacos, among other things. Only a handful contain faux animal products, and for the most part, if you’re not already accustomed to them, I’d recommend you steer clear. Sure, the “meatballs,” made with soy and wheat gluten, are tasty. But their spongy texture isn’t going to
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MUSIC
[ OLD LADY IN A MOSH PIT ]
HEAVEN’S JUKEBOX When the trumpet sounds, here’s what we’d like to hear By Lissa Townsend Rodgers SOMETIMES I LIKE TO PRETEND THERE IS AN
afterlife. A place with all the people I knew and wanted to know. Good food, good times and, of course, a good band. I also like to imagine what comes on between sets at the Elysian Fields Lounge, hence Heaven’s Jukebox, which is stocked with the songs I wish someone had recorded: Patsy Cline, “Do Right Woman”/“Tell Mama.” Country music’s greatest voice (What? You got a problem with that?) also carried a lot of soul. Like Aretha, Patsy could convey vulnerability and demand respect in the same note. And imagine that big, warm Cline voice wrapping around Etta James’ upbeat, sexy/maternal classic. Yowsa. Marlene Dietrich: “Walk on the Wild Side”/“Chelsea Hotel.” Whaddya mean, crazy? It’s perfect for the queen of decadent ’30s Berlin, where everyone and everything was for sale. Dietrich could make shaved her legs and then he was a she both more jaded and more droll than Lou Reed ever could. Same goes for Leonard Cohen’s unsentimental love song: Who could put more weltschmerz into I don’t even think of you that often? Frank Sinatra Sings Tom Waits. The Chairman and the Waits songbook are a natural match. Not bombastic Republican Frank, but the suffering soul of “Angel Eyes” and “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” Tracks will include “Ruby’s Arms,” “Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis,” “Ol’ 55,” and he’ll do “Please Call Me, Baby” in one tear-and-bourbon-soaked take while thinking of Ava Gardner and it. Will. Kill. You.
Janis Joplin Sings Led Zeppelin With Everyone in Led Zeppelin Except Robert Plant. Little known fact: Joplin was reportedly Jimmy Page’s frst choice for the Zep lead singer slot. Such a lineup might’ve killed such Zep legends as the mud shark incident (Janis was a freak, but I dunno if she’d be down with that.) but would have benefted the band’s sound. Imagine the roaring ass she’d kick with “Black Dog” and “Rock and Roll” or the genuine mysoul-is-in-peril menace of her “When the Levee Breaks” and “Gallows Pole.” Superstars of the Alternative ’80s Cover Elton John. ... including the Pixies’ “Rocket Man,” the Smiths’ “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” the Afghan Whigs’ “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” Camper Van Beethoven’s “Crocodile Rock,” and the Cure’s “Tiny Dancer.” Because the Pixies love a space tune and can’t you just hear Kim Deal’s I think it’s gonna be a long, long time? Envision Morrissey owning that disillusioned rentboy pose and the unholy six-string screech Johnny Marr would lay out for the “ah ah ah”s. Or Robert Smith singing about his seamstress ballerina in that weirdly sweet Cure way. Ray Charles and Johnny Cash: Together. A meeting of giants swapping and sharing songs: Ray brings the blues to “Folsom Prison Blues,” while Johnny does a stripped-down “Drown in my Own Tears.” Mr. Charles goes gospel on “Ring of Fire” and Mr. Cash makes “Hit the Road Jack” part-joke, part-threat. And of course, the two will duet on “Busted”—maybe they can get Patsy Cline to join in.
MOVIES
A&E
CLOAK AND LAUGHTER
Cat and mouse game: McCarthy goes undercover.
Melissa McCarthy and Paul Feig team up again for this great spy comedy By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services
LAST YEAR, IN THE BILL MURRAY VEHICLE St. Vincent, Melissa McCarthy did something she’d never done before in the movies. She did less. Her role, neither a wallfower nor the raunchy life of the party, required an easier, lower-key brand of comic truth than the material for which she’d become rich and famous, on TV in Mike and Molly, and in the movies. She came through. Like many highly skilled actors, McCarthy is consistently a little better than her material, and when the material’s strong, as in the case of Bridesmaids, she’s a ringer. Contrivances such as Identity Thief, not so much. Good news, then, that McCarthy’s latest, Spy, reunites her with Bridesmaids director Paul Feig for their third collaboration. (The middle one was The Heat, co-starring Sandra Bullock.) Coming off St. Vincent, McCarthy exhibits a newfound subtlety in the best scenes in Spy, which is a strange thing to say about a flm with a full quotient of R-rated trash talk, along with a barrage of violence played more or less straight, to mixed results. I prefer my comedies a little less bone-crunchy. But the cast, led by McCarthy as a behind-the-scenes CIA analyst who fnally gets a taste of the James Bond action, drives this vehicle with supreme confdence. The laughs are there, small bits and large. Feig has made
three viable commercial comedies in a row, a minor miracle in itself. The fun of Spy comes in watching the right actors mess with their own images, blithely. Susan Cooper (McCarthy) works as the earpiece and remotely connected intel expert for superspy Bradley Fine, played by spot-on Jude Law. When Fine runs afoul of Bulgarian arms dealers and disappears, presumed dead, Cooper gets her chance to enter the feld, even if her mission is designed as a “track and report,” not a maim and kill. Where Spy goes from there, to various European capitals played mostly by Budapest, is predictable in many ways but fresh in a few others. Jason Statham rolls in as a hilariously belligerent spy seething with resentment regarding Cooper’s newbie status. Miranda Hart of the BBC-TV series Call the Midwife plays Cooper’s best pal and fellow analyst, and the rapport between her and McCarthy helps make the movie, just as Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph’s friendship made Bridesmaids. Law’s consistently funny, simply by bringing Bondian smugness (think Pierce Brosnan but smugged up to 11) into fruitful new territory. His character is introduced with an outlandishly effective sight gag involving an illtimed sneeze. It might be the grandest laugh in the flm. As the snooty arms dealer’s daughter, Rose Byrne provides
the needed contrast to our heroine; she’s a Bond girl whose hair appears to be its own country. The more paranoid and surveillanceprone we become as a culture, the more spy movies we’ll see, and the more spy comedies we’ll see in response. Feig the director is required by Feig the screenwriter to chase after a wearying amount
SHORT REVIEWS
June 11–17, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
Entourage (R) ★★✩✩✩
60
Fans of the HBO series (2004-2011) will find the film passable. It picks up where the show left off. Movie star Vince Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his crew from Queens are eager for more of what Hollywood success has in store. Entourage brings Vince into the auteurist big leagues. Jeremy Piven’s superagent Ari Gold is elevated to studio head and wants Vince to star in a contemporary remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Vince agrees, upon the condition that he directs himself. The money’s coming from a Texas billionaire (Billy Bob Thornton).
Aloha (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
Despite a blue-chip cast, Aloha can barely tell its story straight. Private military contractor Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) returns to Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu. He works for a billionaire (Bill Murray) partnering with the U.S. military to send up his own personal rocket for reasons the film gradually reveals. There’s a triangular romance afoot. Gilcrest’s ex (Rachel McAdams) is now married to a taciturn Air Force pilot (John Krasinski). Emma Stone plays Gilcrest’s tightly wound handler, a fighter pilot who retains the idealism Gilcrest once had.
San Andreas (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
Dwayne Johnson plays Ray, the L.A. Fire Department rescue honcho who’s on the phone up in his helicopter, talking to his ex, Emma (Carla Gugino), when one of a series of Big Ones unleashes its digital fury. The film concerns Ray and Emma’s attempts to rescue daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario). Blake’s in soon-to-be-leveled San Francisco with her mother’s sniveling boyfriend (Ioan Gruffudd). San Andreas imagines the insanely destructive possibilities inherent in a 9.6 quake, plus the inevitable tsunami. The effects are quite good.
of plot, sometimes entertainingly, sometimes less so. But McCarthy’s latest works. It’s a showcase for its star that takes care to spread the jokes around. And it fnds straight-faced aces such as Allison Janney (as a CIA director) to show how less can be more. Spy (R) ★★★✩✩
By Tribune Media Services
Poltergeist (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
Director Gil Kenan has made efforts to contemporize the story’s framework. Paterfamilias Eric (Sam Rockwell) has been laid off from his job; his wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) is an unsuccessful writer. Faced with financial pressures, the two have moved their three children to the suburbs. Cherubic 6-year-old Madison (Kennedi Clements), magnetically drawn to a malfunctioning TV set, is quickly abducted by the house’s malevolent spirits. Less an escalating thriller than a guided tour through a county fair-style haunted house, Poltergeist offers some quality jump scares.
Slow West (R) ★★★✩✩
Tomorrowland (PG) ★★★✩✩
I’ll See You in My Dreams (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
Mad Max: Fury Road (R) ★★★✩✩
Blythe Danner plays Carol, a retired and widowed schoolteacher who lives in L.A. Her pals, portrayed by June Squibb, Rhea Perlman and Mary Kay Place, urge her to get back in the game. Right on cue, the game begins when a sly, cigar-chomping fellow (played by Sam Elliott) asks her out. This is one of those scripts that might have been more interesting a couple of drafts ago, before the detours were closed. Yet, when Danner’s Carol shares scenes with Elliott’s calmly determined suitor, there’s considerable charm.
George Miller’s remake stars Tom Hardy in the old Mel Gibson role of the postapocalyptic road warrior. Here the character’s bacon is saved, over and over, by Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). High above a rock formation sits the Citadel, where the brutish overlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) rules a society built on slave labor, water rations and cruelty. Max and Furiosa flee the Citadel and the bad men pursue in many loud, street-illegal chariots. And there you have it. More plot than the movie actually contains.
Pitch Perfect 2 (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
Hot Pursuit (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
This is a Western about a romantic tenderfoot provided safe passage to the frontier by a grizzled, unsentimental gunman. Young Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) dared to love Rose (Caren Pistorius) back in Ireland, but a misunderstanding forced her and her father to flee to America and Jay has resolved to find her. Rose and her father (Rory McCann) carry on at their Western homestead, unaware of the fate that is coming to them. Building your movie on archetypes and a time-worn initiation/quest plot means that there are no real surprises here.
Anna Kendrick’s Beca faces a dilemma: How long can she keep her recording studio internship a secret from the Barden Bellas a capella group? What’s worse is the Bellas are banned from their national tour when Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) accidentally exposes herself during a concert. Heading to Copenhagen for the world a capella competition, the Bellas must regroup and settle their romantic hash. In her first feature as director, Elizabeth Banks does well enough with spotty material. Hailee Steinfeld as the idealistic newbie is a breath of fresh air.
Built for Disneyland in 1955, Tomorrowland was a gleaming vision of a future. And, whatever its faults, the new Brad Bird movie Tomorrowland is never less than on-message, a buoyant old-school, Disney-certified imagineering of hopefulness. George Clooney is gruff and grizzle, predictably warming up to a young dreamer (Britt Robertson) of cheer and vision. Yet—aside from the film’s goofy last moments, a hilariously odd misstep that appears to rework It’s a Small World as a doomsday cult—there’s nothing cheap or particularly ironic about Tomorrowland.
Cheap, short and slow, this comedy never lets you forget that pairing up Sofia Vergara with Reese Witherspoon should’ve worked better than this. Witherspoon is Officer Cooper, who’s been reassigned to clerk duties until she’s summoned to help a federal marshal (Richard T. Jones) escort a witness and his wife to Dallas. Vergara is that wife, a shrill caricature of the angry loud Latina. The job goes wrong when assassins show up, and Cooper and Mrs. Riva flee in Riva’s vintage Cadillac. This never was going to be a smart comedy, but it could’ve worked.
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That age is just plain undeniable, and it takes its toll. It’s harder for me to get up for a performance when it is two consecutive nights. It’s very, very diffcult to do. Las Vegas played such a large role in your father’s legend. Did you spend much time with him here?
I most certainly did when I was his music director. The work was a wonderful situation, which I miss very much. As it happens, I have outlived my usefulness in Las Vegas. Las Vegas today, many of the places don’t even run entertainment anymore. They’d rather have their karaoke and all the crap that’s around. When I go [to Vegas] nowadays, it is ostensibly a one-nighter. HBO recently aired the documentary, Sinatra: All or Nothing at All; Martin Scorsese has had a biopic in the works for years; new books about your father seem to come out quarterly. What stories about him are not being told?
Frank Sinatra Jr.
The singer on staying true to the classics, his father’s impact on Vegas and why he’s not worried about the family legacy
June 11–17, 2015
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VegasSeven.com
By Jason Scavone
70
Do you feel a sense of obligation in performing your father’s music? Would it be less of a tightrope to walk if you were just out there doing standards?
We are trying as hard as we can to appeal to those people who loved his music, and in dealing with those people the fact is they have had those songs, those record albums not for years, but for decades. The best thing we can do right now is reproduce those songs exactly as they sound on the records. If we deviate from the way they originally sounded, people in the audience may not know specifcally what is different, but they will sense something is not the same.
Was there ever a time when you took it in another direction onstage?
Of course, it’s impossible for one person to not have some of his own personality come through. Before the [newly added] audio-visual show began, when I used to do Sinatra Sings Sinatra, I began each show with a certain number of selections that were not [my dad’s], so I could, in fact, display my own personality. [The audience is] anticipatory. They’re looking for certain things. In my case, they’re looking for more of an exact picture, because I’m the only one making a show like this at this moment who was actually an eyeball witness to all of this.
I would say what’s really missing, what nobody wants to seem to get into because aesthetically it’s pretty intangible, is the dignity he had and the integrity he had. He believed what he believed in. He stood for something, and he practiced those beliefs devoutly. In many instances they cost him some hungry nights. But he did believe in standing for something. He was never a 51 percenter. Probably the most appropriate to Las Vegas is that he came from a childhood of severe racial and ethnic intolerance. He got very annoyed in the early days when he started [in Vegas] in 1950, ‘51, that performers like Lena Horne, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine could play in the showrooms of the famous Las Vegas hotels, but they couldn’t be caught there anywhere at any other time. He was the one who pushed the bureaucracy of Las Vegas, which was pretty diffcult to deal with in those days; he was the one
FRANK SINATRA JR.
Sinatra Sings Sinatra— The Centennial Celebration, June 20, 7:30 p.m., Reynolds Hall, $29-$115, TheSmithCenter.com.
who instructed them about integration. You know very well what kind of element was running Las Vegas 60 years ago. The fact was those people were not missionaries. He went toe to toe with them and said, “I think maybe it’s time you fellas recognized some people have white skin, some people have black skin, but the money they spend is the same delightful green.” He fnally got that across to them. How do you address your dad’s character qualities— some laudable and some controversial—in the show?
In England when they asked me what the show was going to be like, I said to them, imagine looking at a photograph of two beautifully sculpted man’s hands with tapering long, graceful fngers. And as you get up closer to those fngers, you notice there’s a little bit of dirt under the fngernails. There’s a word for this, and it’s life. If we go one way that everything is so positive, we now have press agentry. If we go the other way, it’s yellow journalism and everything is negative. The fact of the matter is life is more of a mixture of both things. This is what our show displays. We are talking about one common denominator here, and that denominator is truth. Your son, Michael, is a teacher. Do you ever worry that there might not be someone in the family to carry on the musical legacy?
Not at all. I just never have thought about it. Sinatra will forever be Sinatra. I have pretty good faith that his music will live on indefnitely just on his own rendering of it.
What does Sinatra think of the Strip’s latest Ol’ Blue Eyes impersonator? Read the full interview at VegasSeven.com/Sinatra.
PHOTO BY L ARRY MARANO/GET TY
SEVEN QUESTIONS
When you took over as music director for your father in the ‘80s, he was about the age you are now, 71. What can you appreciate about his later performances that you couldn’t appreciate then?
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