Evans Above

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

I thought David Letterman’s tribute to Johnny Carson last night was fantastic. You could tell he really loved Carson and the opening monologue — comprised of jokes that Johnny had sent him — was a very nice touch. I also enjoyed Leno’s tribute and the genuine joy he had listening to Don Rickles and Bob Newhart tell their Carson stories.

It’s a shame these two Carson devotees couldn’t have their tribute episodes available on one DVD to raise money for emphysema research.

Our hearts go out to the victims of this weekend’s tsunami and their families around the world. A very informative blog has been set up at https://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/. The site has info on the events and relief efforts.

Witless party girl Paris Hilton has finally gotten the best of the New York Daily News’ gossip reporter Lloyd Grove. The Big Apple rumour journo vows that he won’t mention Paris until she wins the Nobel prize or cures cancer.

I wonder if Hilton shareholders hate having Paris and her family connected to their business?

Every time The Apprentice airs we get a spike in traffic. People searching for the latest news on The Apprentice? People searching for Apprentice results?

Nope. Each and every week we while it airs we get a ton of people searching for Melania Knauss. We took a picture of Melania Knauss and Donald Trump a few years back at the Academy Awards but why do people search on The Donald’s bride-to-be when she usually just makes one or two appearances on the shows sixteen week run? This week, Google users visiting us as result of Melania Knauss searches beat out Golden Globe nomination seekers by a 2 to 1 margin.

Crazy. Now if only we had Anna Kournikova swimsuit photos or a Lindsay Lohan lingerie shoot…

I had a real scare last night while browsing the magazine rack at Shoppers Drug Mart. The image before me was terrifying and I had to go to a “safe place” image to stop myself from losing it in the store.

What could have affected me like this? The Women of Apprentice 2 on the cover of Maxim.

Last year, you probably wouldn’t have been shunned by your peers for saying that Amy Henry was cute. But this year’s crop is “ terrifying. At least in a still photo you can’t see the crazy Maria’s psychotic blinking, but really, I could have lived quite happily without seeing Pamela in an open jacket.

It’s bizarre watching the CNN coverage of President Bush’s visit to Canada. The way they act, you think that he was visiting some unknown corner of the planet and not a neighbour who receives visits from millions of American tourists each year.

• The typos on CNN’s news scroll and chryrons are often funny. The chryon on Headline News had Dubya Ottowa Bound. Ottowa? Is that near Canada’s capital, Ottawa?
• For some reason, American journalists think the whole country speaks French and therefore all names must be pronounced with some “ooh la la” tossed in. Hence Lou Dobbs calling the Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin (like Dean Martin), Paul Martayne. At least John King got it right.
• This morning, CNN’s team were going on about poutine. Really? Have you seen some of the regional foods Americans eat?