Bleeding Neon

One of the cool things about writing for Vegas Seven (aside from the buffet of hookers and blow they offer freelancers) is getting to write about art for a weekly paper again. One of the primary reasons I started writing for Examiner.com was because while I was off running a magazine into the ground, other writers locked down the art beats for the other papers in Las Vegas. It allowed me to fulfill my love for preaching the arts and sort-of get paid still.

Of course, since Seven started up, I’ve self-removed myself from the local music beat for the Weekly and had to put Examiner stuff to the side (going from less than an article a month to none at all, sadly). But the result is talking to awesome artists such as Laurenn McCubbin and Gilbert Hernandez, and this week, spending a whole page discussing the differences between San Francisco and Vegas art scenes with Dray while exposing some outsider art at the Fallout Gallery.

I’ll probably be missing somewhat from Seven’s pages for the next few weeks as I prep for, and attend, Emerald City ComiCon in Seattle (more on this soon), but keep your eyes peeled for new articles in the near future.

Oh, and if you haven’t donated to sponsor my team in this year’s AIDS Walk Las Vegas, you have more than a month. So hop to it!

If you haven’t picked up an issue of Vegas Seven yet, you’re missing out on the latest and greatest hybrid newspaper-magazine Las Vegas has ever experienced, featuring dozens of pages of insightful reporting and commentary on urban affairs, arts and entertainment, society and …

ME.

Oh, yeah, so, my latest contribution is a nifty article about Love and Rockets co-creator Gilbert Hernandez, his USA Fellows award, what he’s working on right now, and other probing issues of our day. Did you know the beloved underground comics writer/artist has been a Las Vegas resident for 8 years? No? READ THE ARTICLE AND YOU SHALL. Or if you enjoy more visual displays, click on this link (requires registration).

In the meantime, I’m finishing up another art story for the March 4 edition of Seven. So please keep it down while I try to beat my deadline. Thanks.

It didn’t occur to me until just now that I haven’t written a story for HRH, the Hard Rock Hotel’s glossy on-property magazine, since the fall of 2008. I was actually assigned a story for last spring’s issue, but due to a bunch of nonsense you don’t really need to know about, but one day I will include in my tell-all memoir, “Screwing It Up,” I turned the story over to another writer and have been absent from HRH’s pages since then … until now.

As you may determine from that sexy, silvery cover you see to your right, the new issue’s cover story is about Muse, who rocked the Joint at the Hard Rock back in December. And this guy wrote it. “No Resistance” is 1776 words of pure gushing Pj prose exploring the bombastic rock band’s struggles to become king of the U.S. rock scene (which they haven’t yet, but SHOULD).

Photography for the article comes courtesy of Erik Kabik, a good dude and great shutterbug. When the digital version is put online, I’ll link to it. In the meantime, you’ll have to actually get off your couch and go to the Hard Rock to pick up an issue if you want to read it. Which I highly recommend.

So if it seems like it’s been quiet on the journalism front around here, it’s somewhat by design. Obviously, I’ve been pretty tied up with launching a new comic book publishing company, as well as churning out my own comics, but that’s not the only reason. I’ve been working on stories for publications that are done but not printed yet, one for an old favorite (HRH) and a few for a brand-new pub whose first issue hits the streets today: Vegas Seven.

Vegas Seven is a weekly city paper that’s an innovative hybrid of a glossy magazine and an alt-weekly. It’s being published by Wendoh Media, who long-time followers of my work may recall published the incredibly awesome, but ill-fated, Racket magazine, for which yours truly was its founding — and only — editor. Seven has some talented mofos on its staff, people with whom I’ve either worked with often in the past or have been waiting to work with, and if the the first issue, which I peeped last night at the mag’s launch party, is any indication, it’s off to a good start.

Of course, part of that goodness is a story I wrote about Laurenn McCubbin’s new art show, “Speaking to Las Vegas in the Language of Las Vegas.” I have a few more assignments in the coffer, so keep your eyes out. Right now, there is no electronic version that I know of, so you’ll have to be in the Vegas Valley to physically pick up a copy. And no, I have no idea where that would be, but I’m guessing a good start is downtown during First Friday, where I’ll be tomorrow night to immerse myself in the city’s arts and culture. And liquor.

Meanwhile, check back here soon, where I’ll be trying to sell you more comics again.

Update: The Seven website is now live, and my story on Laurenn is there for your reading enjoyment.

I know I neither am nor look that old, but sometimes, I’m made to feel like it. And an assignment I fulfilled for the Las Vegas Weekly a few weeks ago was one of those times.

I had to cover the CD release party for a young pop-punk-metal band, A Smile From the Trenches, at The Farm, one of Las Vegas’ only all-ages music venues. It was the Thursday before Nevada Day, the day our fine state celebrates its statehood — and it happens to be Oct. 31, so basically, state workers and students get off every year for Halloween. So The Farm saw a decent number of teens for a weeknight, a few hundred by my estimate. Good news for the local music scene, right? Yes. But …

Let me put this into perspective: I am 33 years old. I do not wear skinny jeans. I have significant gray in my beard. I don’t smoke. And I don’t care much for screamo bands whose names do not start and end with “Thursday.” So there I was, either stuck in a room surrounded by kids more than half my age listening to loud, screamy bands, or stuck outside surrounded by underage smokers, being very careful not to look even sideways toward a female patron for fear I’d look like a pedophile. Or more likely, feel like it. And this being an all-ages venue, there was NO LIQUOR IN SIGHT.

The article turned out all right, I think, and the guys from both A Smile From the Trenches and its record label, DC Hardcore, were very nice and accommodating. And the band was definitely far less terrible than its predecessors that night. But in all, it’s not a situation I’d like to repeat anytime soon. Fellow slightly-worn journalist Dave Surrat was there that night to write about the venue itself for the CityLife, and if not for his not-so-young presence and that of promoter pal John “Ducky” Slaughter, I’d likely have gone fully insane.

But I think this can all be summed up by my tweets from that night:

• The Farm has no signage but easy to find: Parking lot full of teens. Ugh.
• has never felt as old as I do at this all-ages venue right now. Oh the things I do for music journalism.
• is finishing my Corona and then heading back to the emo teen hell. Also, I lost $5 at video poker. Think @lasvegasweekly will cover that?
• Either this screamo band has six members or they just have a young girl who appears to play keyboards but really’s just there to look cute.
• Good news: The kids still mosh. Kind of.
• is standing next to the modern equivalent of rock hoes. The bands change but the hoes stay the same.
• Why yes, Virginia, I am watching a screamo band cover Katy Perry’s “Hot & Cold.” Why do you ask?