"I remember sitting in front of a mirror and being disgusted with myself ... When you hit morbid obesity, you're dying." So says Star Jones Reynolds about the turning point that prompted a smorgasbord of personal changes—mondo weight loss under the care of "every doctor known to man," marriage to a guy the tabloids insist is gay, a spiritual overhaul, a financial haul, and ... a book! Shine: A Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Journey to Finding Love.
The book's not all about bacon—although she admits her pre-enlightenment breakfast was eight strips of bacon, three eggs, and a bowl of grits—her point is larger: "I changed my life, not just my diet."
She's signing her book on February 20 at Caesars Forum at 10 a.m. and West Charleston's Barnes & Noble at 7 p.m. "I'm a shopaholic—and I'll be between Prada and Gucci in Caesars. That seems cruel and inhuman!"
It's A Miracle, A True Blue Spectacle ... That Makes Him Wanna Jump, Shout and Boogie ... Though He Didn't Write the Songs That Make the Record Charts Sing
In a victory of graying nostalgia, last week's No. 1 album, for the first time in almost three decades, belonged to ... Barry Manilow.
That Barry Manilow.
Our Barry Manilow.
The Greatest Songs Of the Fifties—the Las Vegas Hilton headliner's paean to a gentler musical time with covers of such tunes as "Unchained Melody" and "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing"—was released to dovetail with Valentine's Day and shot an arrow through record-buyers' hearts, giving him the hottest disc north of Havana, according to Billboard. Manilow's only other album chart-topper, Live, came in 1977, and his last album, 2004's Scores: Songs From Copacabana and Harmony, only reached No. 47.
Try heavy metal next time, Barry. Hey, it worked for Pat Boone.
One-Minute Gehry Alzheimer's Center Review
The genius was cranky. Perhaps the highlight of last weekend's press conference unveiling Frank Gehry's design for the Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Center—an affair complete with a mumbling governor, a happy mayor, a roomful of power-brokers and enough platitudes about Gehry's genius to fill one of his buildings—were the small instances the architect's tetchiness came through. He spent several unnecessary moments defending his Disney Hall in LA against charges of excessive glare (attributing the flap to "one pissed-off lady"); he sighed that his Ruvo center wouldn't "scare Alzheimer's patients," as at least one commentator has worried; and he was overheard being short with reporters.
But if the designer was gruff, the design itself is a stunner. Love it or hate it—and its fate will be to receive extremes of both—it will, when done, be the structure that serious architecture in this town will have to contend with. Its undulating metal trellis, especially, are sure to become as much a signature image of Vegas as the Stratosphere. As a keynote building for the New Downtown that Oscar Goodman is trying to dream into reality, you couldn't ask for more.
However, If You're Looking for a Convicted Junk-Bond Manipulator and Leading Figure in the Savings and Loan Scandal that Cost Taxpayers Billions—Which Is to Say, Michael Milken ... Well, Then, Okay
"If you're looking for a rapper, don't check out the Wynn. You'll be disappointed."
Requiem
Before he went down, down, down, from the Stratosphere Hotel's observation deck to his death, Neil Roberts had been having such a good vacation in Las Vegas that he sent his parents back home in Bristol, England a heartlifting e-mail:
'Had a really good day." he wrote on Thursday, February 2, just two days before his unforeseen suicide. "Won 1,100 dollars. I'll try to get a big win now to pay for the holiday."
It was the last time his parents heard from him. And thus when authorities and journalists came to them with questions as to why a man with just 27 years of life beneath his feet would climb 109 floors to the observation deck of the tallest building west of the Mississippi, and then scale a 5-foot fence, traverse a 10-foot protective barrier, and jump down, down, down—1,149 feet—to the merciless ground, they couldn't provide any answers. To them Neil had always appeared to be a content son who just so happened to like the adrenaline that a roulette wheel churned in him with every spin.
"We are mystified why this happened," his mother, Avril Jones, told the Bristol Evening Post. "I have no idea why my son killed himself."
It appears that nobody else does either, save for Neil, who became the fourth person to jump from the Stratosphere's celestial deck to his own irreversible doom.