Journalism

A few months ago, a new magazine rose out of the Las Vegas desert like … um … I’m not sure I actually have a simile here. Anyway, DAVID Magazine launched in May (or April? One of those.), bringing to Southern Nevada a new, monthly, glossy city magazine. The thing that makes this one distinctive? It’s kinda sorta slanted toward the Jewish community. But it does it in a sneaky way that wouldn’t have you even blink. The features and ads are diverse. The quality is top-notch. And the magazine hires sexy-ass writers like me.

I was asked to write a story about a local Jewish musician. Off the top of my head, one came to mind immediately: Hal Savar, who leads the cover band Acoustic Soul. I wrote about Savar before, for the Las Vegas Weekly, but this would be a much longer feature, and I actually had a lot of material unused from my first interview with Savar. He and I met up again at a Starbucks to talk more specifically about his Jewish upbringing, which I didn’t expect played into his music so much, but it does! Kinda interesting. You should read the story.

DAVID is available for free at a bunch of places in Vegas, including Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc. There’s no online version of the stories, but I did do a really poor scan of my story if you’re interested. Click below!

The summer issue of HRH, the Hard Rock Hotel’s boutique magazine, actually came out a few weeks ago, but I was waiting to post about it until after the digital edition was live. And so it is. And so here we are.

I don’t have too much to say about my cover story on Them Crooked Vultures. Like my Muse story for the spring issue, I didn’t have a chance to interview the band (Them Crooked Vultures isn’t really doing much press), so I had to make 1200 words about a year-old rock supergroup appear out of nowhere. Thankfully, I did get a chance to see the band when it performed at the Joint in the spring, so I at least had that. To fill in the gaps, I had to use a handy-dandy series of “behind the scenes” videos Them Crooked Vultures posted on its YouTube channel. Really, it wasn’t much different than doing a basic interview with the band or being provided B-roll from a publicist, so it kinda worked out fine … I think.

As usual, my words are enhanced and accompanied by live photos shot by my pal Erik Kabik, who always does amazing work. But even more than that: I share a contributors page with one of my heroes, Cameron Crowe. Crowe, who is a good friend of rock photographer Neal Preston, turned out for the HRH issue release party/Preston photo exhibit at the Hard Rock’s new SkyBar — an event I also attended. Sadly, though, I had to run off to catch Henry Rollins at Wasted Space and left the party before Crowe arrived. I don’t know what I would have had to say to him, but he’s one of the few people (Rollins being one of the other) whose work and career has really shaped my life and I’d be interested in meeting. Well, I’d actually be more interested in learning from him, but one must crawl before he can walk, right? Right.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook (and if you’re reading this, you probably are), you likely know I took a quick trip down to Los Angeles a few weeks ago. Aside from enjoying, um, endless traffic jams and the company of old and new friends, I was primarily there to chat with Stan Lee for this week’s Vegas Seven summer movie cover package. The resulting article, “Iron Stan,” is now available on the mean streets of Vegas, as well as online in both HTML and Flash versions.

A lot of people — including my editor — suggested that the meeting should have been exciting, especially for a guy such as me, who grew up reading comics Lee either wrote or created. But at this point, I’ve developed such a professional detachment from my assignments, that I merely did what needed to be done and got on my way. The situation itself was underwhelming anyway. As described in the article, Lee’s offices are smallish, his staff nearly nonexistent, and the interview was sort of rushed and subdued. But Lee was accommodating, gracious and funny, which is really the best you can ever hope for in these situations.

But you know I couldn’t leave without documenting the occasion, right?

Excelsior!

Photo by Erik Kabik/RETNA.com/erikkabik.com

Seriously, I was going to write a semi-review of last night’s opening night performance of Dita Von Teese’s limited run with the Crazy Horse Paris at MGM Grand, and I got about four paragraphs into it, and then I realized IT SUCKED BALLS, like everything else I’ve done today, so … I scrapped it.

Instead, I think you’d be much better off reading the article I wrote about Von Teese in this week’s Vegas Seven. It does not suck balls. I did the interview with the lovely burlesque icon via phone last Friday, but that’s not how it was supposed to be. My original plan was to do an in-person interview with her at the Crazy Horse this week, and to actually observe and report on the interaction between Von Teese and the insanely beautiful Crazy Horse dancers. It was all lined up for Monday, but as things go in the world of entertainment journalism, dates and times were shifted and crossed, and in order to meet the deadline for the paper, I had to switch to a phoner and realign the focus of the story.

The conversation with Von Teese was relatively brief but chock full of goodies. Unfortunately, a lot of the topics we discussed didn’t make it into the article, lest it run way over word count and lose all focus. But it’s a shame to see it go to waste, so I’m going to share with you an excerpt from the “outtakes” here. I asked Von Teese what differences she perceived between European and American approaches to sexuality. Here’s part of what she had to say:

I have to say in America in the 1940s, everyone knew who Gypsy Rose Lee was. She was a huge household name, and she did exactly what I do now. It’s hard to imagine why things have shifted so much. Josephine Baker received honors in France for what she did, and she was butt naked, there are streets named after these people. [In France] everyone knows what I do, children know what I do. People aren’t embarrassed of it or afraid of it. Showgirls are a part of Parisian culture. I don’t know why it’s so taboo in America. My life’s work is to change people’s mind about what a stripper is, and how strip tease can be artful, and how it can be an important part of America’s entertainment history.

There was more, but I’ll probably save that for the collection of unabridged interviews I’m assembling for future publication. A few people have indicated they’d be interested in reading such a thing. Would you? A book featuring full interviews with celebrities, politicians and other interesting people? Let a brother know.

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.