Evans Above

It’s time to sell your TV.

First season Apprentice loser Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth will be trying to extend her fifteen minutes again as she has joined the cast of VH1’s The Surreal Life 5. Fellow Z-listers include Carey Hart, Sandi Denton, Caprice, Janice Dickinson, José Canseco and Bronson Pinchot.

If you’re into nightmares, take a look at Apprentice 3 “wiseguy” Erin Elmore’s site.

She’s one of those reality contestants who keeps going on about her beauty…let’s buy her a new mirror that works..

I also like how she kept saying she was a high-powered corporate attorney, yet now she’s the host of some local “what’s on” show in Philly. I can almost hear the 15 minutes ticking down.

Our hotel is just up the street from the Kodak Theater. There’s always a weird post-partum feel as they take the whole Oscar glitz down.

Our last day in Las Vegas and our entertainment will come from one showroom in one hotel: The Shimmer Cabaret at the Las Vegas Hilton.

The Vegas Hilton is an off-Strip convention hotel with a lot of business clients. Though it boasts the Star Trek Experience attraction and a busy casino, it still comes across as a slightly less hectic place to hang out, which can be a welcome relief after pushing through hordes of tourists on the Strip.

The Shimmer Cabaret is an intimate 300-seat room that plays host to the two acts we were seeing tonight, David Brenner and Aussie Angels. The two shows played in the same room, but they couldn’t have been further apart.

David Brenner has long been a favourite of mine. He’s the comedian they coined the term “observational humour” for and his ability to zoom in on life’s foibles has not diminished. Though the observational elements are still there, Brenner said that he needed to challenge himself in order to stay interested in stand-up. He decided to focus on current events and now read dozens of papers and magazines while watching news shows. He cuts things out or jots them down on index cards and brings his clippings with him on stage, so he can look for new material each and every day. From the war in Iraq, to weight loss, to prosthetic testicles for dogs, Brenner skewers a wide range of targets. His informal nature and the intimate setting made me feel like we were in on the thinking process of this comic icon.

Date: Nightly, Dark Thursdays Time: 8:00 PM

The only thinking an hour after Brenner’s show probably occurred below the belt, if at all. The Aussie Angels are part of the raunchier “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” marketing tack that many hotels are now using. In a city where the British Navy was replaced by the Sirens of TI, it only makes sense to toss eight sexy Aussie girls into a room full of people who’d be willing to go Down Under with them.

Many Las Vegas show have a hierarchy that features dancers and showgirls. The dancers are the shorter gals who can move quickly from hip-hop to ballet and jazz while the showgirls are the tall, leggy ones who can move gracefully with large feather headdresses and heels while strolling around topless.

In Aussie Angels, the hierarchy appears to be a little different. Apparently, some of the girls were cast in the show only to discover the topless requirements when they arrived in Vegas. Some stuck by the letter of their contact, while others had no problem with the skin. Some say that’s just a rumour, but it would go some way in explaining why, in a show with such a small cast, four go topless and the others don’t. All of the girls strut their stuff in solos, but the two most statuesque girls literally leave the audience wanting more while the emcee coos, “Isn’t she a tease!”

Because of the room’s small size and the lack of elaborate sets or costumes, the show does come across as an attempt at a musical production in a strip club. Though the stage is minus a pole, the girls do writhe about, strut through the audience, and pop their tops midway through songs. There’s some awful audience participation moments and the emcees are stuck with awful lines like “Where’s the best place to root in Melbourne? Right, my house!”

Unlike shows like Zumanity and La Femme that mix art with their eroticism, Aussie Angels coms off as a strip show with better choreography. Of course, you can’t hold them to the same critical standards you’d use reviewing a Kubrick flick. If you’re looking for hot, sexy Aussie lasses prancing in their undies, then Aussie Angels will fill the bill. If you’re looking for slightly higher production values considering the price is higher than a strip club cover charge, keep looking.

The Angels left Vegas on April 30th, taking their G-strings to Atlantic City.

Our trip to Las Vegas is beginning to wind down. The timing of the trip was dictated by the fact that we are heading to Los Angeles for our annual Academy Awards coverage. Mid-February is a cool time in Vegas and we also hit one of the few times in the year when it can rain for days in a row.

Our Day 6 evening would have us heading over to the Rio to watch Penn & Teller. I love their act when I’ve seen them on TV, so seeing them live on stage was going to be a real treat. We continued to zip around the Strip for most of the day, checking out the MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Excalibur and Luxor. So much to see in this city. There are still many shows that we haven’t seen and fine restaurants to check out. Next time…

We took the shuttle bus from Harrah’s to Rio. We were there in no time flat. The Rio is off the Strip but they’ve packed the place with so many entertainment, shopping, and dining options that you could probably spend a few days here and never leave this one location.

When we arrived at the theatre we were greeted by the sight of a pianist being accompanied by Penn Jillette on double bass. Penn eventually left, while he pianist kept asking the audience to come up and inspect the two boxes on the stage. They’d be part of the opening trick and the pair wanted the audience to be able to know every nook and cranny of those boxes before they did the box escape challenge.

When the show started, Penn promised the audience a magic experience unlike any other in Las Vegas. He showed disdain for a few of the other magic acts in town and the pair even showed the audience how a few of the standard illusions popular in other magic shows are done. Penn is able to keep a dizzying amount of patter going; his words are his version of the beautiful assistant that distracts you from some of the magician’s actions. Teller, also known as “the shorter, quieter one”, performs his segments in silence. Penn is the guy who is able to weave socio-economic comments into a juggling routine while the diminutive Teller handles a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to physical stunts. Even Penn admits this helps create a tension for the audience as no one wants “the cute one to get hurt.” Teller’s schtick with a rabbit and a wood chipper effectively trashes the “cute one” label.

The show’s pace never seemed to lag and I could’ve stayed there for a few more hours. Your mind is effectively played with. You leave the show knowing how some illusions are performed and completely clueless about others.

Daily (Dark Tue) 9:00pm

Two shows lined up for today. We contrast last night’s half-empty new show with a sold out ten-year-old Vegas veteran, Cirque du Soleil’s Mystère. Mystère, which runs in a 1,600 seat theatre at Treasure Island designed especially for them, features a cast of 70+ acrobats, clowns, comedians, actors, singers and musicians. Like most Cirque du Soleil shows, Mystère comes from a mystical place. Director Franco Dragone says that “Mystère is a voyage to the very heart of life where past, present and future merge, and all of our emotions converge. Mystère is the enigma of time, the bearer of hopes and dreams but also of tragedy.”

If you’re the sort of theatregoer who is willing to surround yourself in a sensory experience that defies the norm and pulls references from a variety of theatre styles, then Mystère is for you. If you’re the type of theatregoer who doesn’t get what the heck the director was talking about, Mystère is still for you if you focus solely on the talent of the performers and their work on aerial cubes, Chinese poles, hand-to-hand acrobatics, bungees, trapezes and Korean planks. I think only the dead wouldn’t get any enjoyment from this show. Even if your idea of art is Elvis on black velvet, you can’t help but have some part of your heart and soul touched by this performance.

Showtimes: Wednesday – Saturday 7:30pm & 10:30pm Sundays 4:30pm & 7:30pm

After Mystère, we rushed to Harrah’s to catch the monorail to the Tropicana Hotel where we were going to see Folies Bergere.

Folies is now in its 46th year at the Tropicana. Like Jubilee, Folies Bergere is the traditional Vegas show with dancers, singers, topless showgirls, and specialty acts. It doesn’t have all the stage mechanics of Jubilee, which gives the audience time to actually focus on the flow of the show. The shows lead singers, Traci Ault and Dan O’Brien, display much more personality in their performances than the lead singers in Jubilee, the proof being that I actually took the time to learn their names. O’Brien, who reminded me of American Idol’s ill-fated co-host Brian Dunkleman, is given the task of introducing Folies Bergere’s clunky segues. The theme of the show is women through the ages. After a dance from the Twenties, O’Brien must intone that “Yes they had the vote now, but the women of the Twenties were also sexy!” and lo behold we get a topless number. “Today’s woman runs companies, but she’s still sexy!” Clothed-topless-clothed-topless-specialty act.

Specialty act? I guess I should investigate the history of Vegas more, but the showgirl shows, from Splash to Jubilee to Folies Bergere, all stop the dancing at one point and bring out a juggler, acrobat or comedian. Obviously it gives the showgirls a chance to take off the feathered headdresses and relax for a few minutes, but topless girl/zany juggler is the dictionary definition of juxtaposition. In the case of Folies Bergere, that task is handled by amazing comic juggler Wally Eastwood. His juggling style and self-deprecating humour are so well done that the audience doesn’t realize that he probably makes the same “errors” and comments each and every performance.

Apart from the clunky segues, Folies Bergere is still populated by talented dancers, good singers and beautiful showgirls. As a 46-year-old show, it’s a grand throwback to the original Vegas shows. In a city that literally blows up their landmarks, catching this show is a must.

7:30 p.m. & 10 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday. 8:30 p.m. Tuesday & Friday Dark Sundays

After tooling around Vegas for a few days, we decided to take a side trip to Paris. Paris Las Vegas that is. We had headed to the Franco-themed casino to catch the first theatrical performance of our trip, the Queen musical We Will Rock You.

The show sucks. I’d stop there if I was just doing a three word review but I guess I should expand upon it.

The show really sucks.

I like Queen, but this show really sells out the legacy of the band. The thin story is set in the not-so-distant future, a time when instruments have been banned and teens listen to corporate pop controlled by Global Soft and its crazed leader, the Killer Queen. A group of misfits, including a guy named Britney Spears, follow Galileo Figaro and his girlfriend, Scaramouche…man, I can’t believe I’m typing this. The story is, of course, just a thin piece of paper to staple the Queen catalogue of music to while the cast tries to recreate the magic of Freddie Mercury and the boys. Alas, they fall terribly short. Though most of the singing isn’t that bad, some of the young cast can’t perform their way out of a paper bag. The exceedingly corny jokes fall down with a thud and the lines are delivered in a manner that would shame even the worst actor failing a high school drama class. The show’s terrible pop culture references and clunky storyline make an episode of Full House read like a Noel Coward play.

In a musical where the songs are written for the show, the lyrics are obviously designed to advance the plot. When a song is forced to fit on a story it wasn’t created for, it fits the show like a square peg in a round hole.

Will this show run long in Vegas? We saw it on a Friday night and the house was half-empty. The half that was there seemed more interested in their drinks than in the show. Perhaps this sort of tepid response was a part of co-producer Clear Channel’s decision to cancel the planned North American tour and Broadway opening. Dying in the desert seems appropriate for this show.

We Will Rock You is dark on Thursdays.

Day three was going to be a busy one for us. We had received an email on day two asking if we could squeeze in a performance by Clint Holmes. We were scheduled to see Rick Thomas at the Tropicana in the afternoon, Clint Holmes at Harrah’s at 7:30 and George Wallace at the Flamingo at 10pm. Since Vegas is all “go, go, go” that schedule didn’t seem like a stretch.

We decided we’d grab breakfast at the Tropicana and headed there by taking the monorail from the station at Harrah’s. This was actually a test run for our upcoming Saturday night in which we have to make it from Mystère at Treasure Island to Folies Bergere at the Tropicana with little time to spare and no desire to sit in busy weekend Strip traffic. The monorail is fast and quiet and not too expensive. It runs from the Sahara at one end of the Strip to the MGM Grand at the other.

We arrived at the Tropicana quickly and grabbed our comps for The Magic of Rick Thomas and Saturday’s Folies Bergere. We then headed off to Calypsos for brunch. The food was good and the service fast.

The Magic of Rick Thomas is a family-friendly afternoon show and as such there were quite a few kids in the audience. Thomas is an athletic, six foot four magician who moves with a grace that comes from his years of competitive ballroom dancing with his sister. The show has a fast tempo and moves quickly from sleight of hand tricks to bigger illusions involving tigers and motorcycles. Thomas frames many of his segments with stories about growing up and his audience participation moments never seem patronizing. For a while, Vegas went after families with its rollercoasters and other attractions, but in recent years has made the move back to catering to the free-spending singles crowd with more erotic shows and a party atmosphere. Thomas’ show is an oasis for the Vegas visitor that still brings the children with them. His jokes aren’t off-colour, his lovely assistants are sexy in the girl-next-door fashion, and his illusions will have the young magicians in your family begging for a magic kit. Throughout his show, Rick Thomas stresses the importance of following your dreams. It’s a positive message that we don’t hear often enough. (Update: Thomas moved his show from the Tropicana to the Stardust. The Tropicana’s afternoon magic slot is now filled with Xtreme Magic starring Dirk Arthur.)

Rick is now at the Stardust: Thursday through Tuesday, 2 p.m. & 4 p.m.

After a quick bite it was time to head off to Harrah’s to see the Clint Holmes performance we had been invited to the day before.

The word “best” gets tossed around Clint a lot. He’s been named “Best Kept Secret” by Las Vegas Life Magazine, and “Best Singer” (two years in a row), “Best All-Around Las Vegas Performer” and “Favorite Male Las Vegan” by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. When we sat down for the show, we weren’t greeted by topless showgirls or massive sets, but rather by a singer and an 11-piece band that genuinely love working together. Holmes jokingly introduced a “medley of my hit”, his one Top 10 recording “Playground In My Mind (My Name Is Michael).” He says having one hit used to bug him until he realized that he had one more hit than most of the audience.

Holmes’ voice is amazing and he moves from genre to genre with ease. The son of a British opera singer and an African-American jazz musician, Holmes says, “My mom taught me how to sing correctly, and my dad taught me how to enjoy it.” While talking about his family, Clint introduces a song that touches upon the problems of an interracial marriage in the Fifties. He also showed a short video of his mother singing “Summertime” from Porgy & Bess. Suddenly, he leapt into the audience and ran to the booth in front of us. His mother, now in her eighties, was in the audience that night. She stood up and sang a bit more of the song. Holmes beamed as she performed.

The band, led by his college buddy, Bill Fayne, features R&B legend Ronnie Foster on the Hammond B3 organ and Jerry Lopez on lead guitar. The band jammed on a wide range of material from older classics to modern pop and the mood was loose. Many Las Vegas shows dazzle with the money spent on sets and costumes. Clint Holmes’ show shines with the pure talent and love for music everyone on the stage shares.

(Clint plays Harrah’s Mon-Sat: 7:30pm Dark Sunday)

Following Clint Holmes, we hightailed it to the Flamingo in time to get our seats for George Wallace’s comedy act. Wallace effortlessly glides from setup to setup. Just when it appeared that the show was winding down, Wallace launched into a rapid fire set of premises that had the audience rolling in the aisles. His wit hit his targets dead on, whether he was going after the local supermarket or the President of the United States. He even skewers his casino hosts by saying that when he arrives in Vegas, he gives all of his money to the hotel’s front desk so he doesn’t need to waste time gambling. Wallace is an a big room, but his expansive personality brings it down to a comfortable size.

George plays the Flamingo Tuesday-Saturday 10:00PM. Dark Sunday & Monday

We decided to start Day Two by getting a look at the Strip and the neighbouring properties. Across from the New Frontier, the Wynn Las Vegas is nearing completion. The massive $2.7 billion casino/resort is the brainchild of Steve Wynn, the developer behind Las Vegas landmarks like Treasure Island, Mirage and Bellagio.

Our walk down the Strip took us past Treasure Island, the Mirage, the Venetian, Harrah’s and Caesars Palace before we ended up at Bally’s. We were there to pick up our tickets for that night’s show, Donn Arden’s Jubilee. After getting our Row A seats, we hit the casino and I managed to win $16 playing a Rocky slot machine. Of course, I was merely borrowing that money — Las Vegas was sure to get it back.

After dinner, we headed back to Bally’s to take in Jubilee in the 1040 seat showroom. The long-running show features roughly a hundred singers and dancers and is everything you’d expect in a no-expenses spared Vegas showgirls extravaganza. As theatre nuts, the two of us were just as impressed by the mechanics behind the show as we were by the dazzling performers. The show requires about 70 stagehands to run things behind the scenes and that’s no mean feat. The show features 100 different sets and backdrops, approximately 40,000 light bulbs, and over 125 miles of wiring. The stage is 190 feet in length, 73 feet deep and 15 stories tall from the bottom of the orchestra pit to the roof. Three main double-decker elevators, each with 100,000-pound lift capacity, work alongside six small elevators and two revolving elevators that are used in various scenes to lift dancers and sets.

All that technical wizardry would mean nothing if the show wasn’t stunning. After opening with a 16 minute $3 million number that features most of the shows fantastic dancers and statuesque showgirls, we go through six more acts that include numbers that end with events as diverse as Sampson’s destruction of a temple and the sinking of the Titanic. The show is a feast for the eyes and ears.

Jubilee Show Times: Saturday – Thursday 7:30 pm & 10:30 pm Call 1-800-237-SHOW for tickets and more information.

Our Las Vegas trip would entail seeing eleven shows in seven days, so taking a brief rest in our hotel room before heading out for our first show was a welcome part of our plans. Alas, it was not to be.

We had booked, or so we thought, a seven night stay at the Riviera Hotel using Vegas.com, which bills itself as “The Official Vegas Travel Site.” When we arrived at the Riviera, an older Vegas landmark that appeared in the original Ocean’s 11 and Martin Scorsese’s Casino, we were shocked to discover our prepaid reservation did not exist in their system. I felt like I was in the Seinfeld episode where he complained that they could take the reservation, but couldn’t hold it. I called Vegas.com and after a long, long time on hold spoke to a customer service representative. He said they’d send the booking info back to the Riviera. After a long wait at the Riviera’s main desk, one of their staff flashed me a piece of paper saying it was the original “regret” notice that they had faxed over to Vegas.com two weeks earlier. According to them, I never had a booking.

More time on hold with Vegas.com. The CSR said they never received a “Regret” notice from the Riviera and then went on to hint that perhaps the Riviera had oversold since his supervisor was telling him that they were not honouring several of their reservations. It was turning into a game of he said/she said and I was the pawn. I explained that they had a very tired, unhappy journalist on the phone and that their value in my eyes was dropping rapidly. He said that he would do his best to relocate us. Between the Chinese New Year crowd and the MAGIC clothing convention, the city was packed. More time, a lot of time, was spent on hold and finally the CSR came back. They had been able to find us seven consecutive nights at the New Frontier, a country’n‘western-themed casino across the street from the Fashion Show Mall. We had arrived in Las Vegas two and a half hours before and now we were finally going to check in…only to be back at the Riviera less than three hours later for our first show, Splash.

The name Splash came from the water acts and 20,000 gallon tank that used to be the centerpiece of this 20-year-old variety show. The tank is gone — replaced by a 35’ × 15’ ice rink — but the show is the very definition of a variety show. A couple of the dancers seemed to have gone for the quantity discount at the breast augmentation clinic and with our front row seats we felt like we could have been protected from the elements by them. Besides the singers and dancers, who whip through a variety of decades and genres like an A.D.D. sufferer with an itchy remote finger, the show also features the comedy and skill of the Los Latin Cowboys, a pair of gaucho-clad wisecrackers whose comedy does not hide their amazing skill with the bolos. The comedy and skill also extends to the Richard brothers, whose juggling and camaraderie kept the audience in stitches. The audience was equally impressed by the three skaters who put on a performance made all the more amazing by the relatively small space that they had to skate in. After a tribute to America, the show once again featured a jarring juxtaposition as a 14’ metal sphere was rolled out and the showroom reverberated to the thunderous sounds of Guinness World Record Holders Bela Tabak’s “Riders of the Thunderdome”, a group of motorcyclists who speed around the sphere narrowly avoiding collision. The show plans to unveil a new anniversary edition in May. I have no idea what other acts they could toss into the show to surprise us.

Splash plays at the Riviera Hotel. Two shows/night at 7:00 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays & Saturdays. 8:00 p.m. Fridays & Sundays Dark Mondays For ticket information call (702) 794-9433