By John Katsilometes
About a year ago my friend Michael Caprio, a publicist whose clients include Brent Barrett of “Phantom – Las Vegas Spectacular” at the Venetian, tipped me off to one of the hippest nights of entertainment in the city. The cabaret-style evening featuring a bouncy piano playing behind blow-it-out vocalists was known as the “Composers’ Showcase.” When Michael first mentioned the Showcase, it had just been launched at Suede Lounge and Restaurant in the loop of alternative-flavored clubs on Paradise Road just south of Harmon Avenue.
The Showcase performances have been going off monthly, except when they don’t, for about a year. The series has been loosely organized; rarely have I received official word about the next Showcase performance and usually learned about them in casual conversation, often days after they had been held. They were supposed to be scheduled for the third Sunday of each month, or the fourth, except when they were on Tuesday.
But we can definitively report that the Composers Showcase has moved, for now, to the Liberace Museum (if you sense a gay theme here, there is a reason) on the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Spencer Street. The next performance is at 10:30 p.m. on June 20 – “after theater,” as the announcement states – and the list of performers is strewn with Strip regulars. Expected to perform next week are Bill Nolte, Alet Taylor, Jim Abler, Pattrick Boyd and Steven Ted Beckler of “The Producers” at Paris Las Vegas; Benjamin Hale, Kristen Hertzenberg and Rebecca Spencer of “Phantom”; Randal Keith of “Monty Python’s Spamalot” at Wynn Las Vegas; and local stage performers Jon Halpur and Brandon and Kelli Albright. Taking the piano will be songwriters/composers Dana Allen, Michael Brennan, Thom Culcasi, Vita Corimbi, Wayne Green, Nick Santa Maria and Keith Thompson.
The first night I saw the Showcase at Suede was in July of last year, and the club was jammed with some of the city’s finest entertainers. Did I mention that there is no cover? No cover. In a city known for raising ticket prices to the stratosphere, it is an offer not to be missed.
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I’ll qualify this note by saying that there is no reason to be alarmed that I was hanging around the Holsum Lofts parking lot for about an hour on Saturday afternoon. But I was, from around noon to 1 p.m. While there I observed eight cars, at least, pulling in to try lunch at the Grill at Charleston. But the place was not open for lunch on Saturday and lost a lot of business. Eight cars’ worth, whatever that equates to. But I put a call in to the restaurant this afternoon and it is usually open for lunch on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. It is also open for dinner from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., which is important to note for anyone who wants the art galleries and Anne Kellogg’s great boutique, Las Vegas Paper Doll, to prosper at Holsum Lofts. Of the people in the eight cars that stopped by on Saturday only to see the closed sign at the Grill, none stuck around to check out the other businesses.
And I’ll just say that the reason I was at Holsum Lofts, at Paper Doll to be specific, had to do with Mary Kay cosmetics. Feel free to judge.
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I have to confess that at around 3:30 a.m. this morning I popped awake worrying about Paris Hilton.
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On Saturday morning I sat with my former Las Vegas Sun colleague Emily Richmond to co-host four installments of the pet-centric podcast “The Petcast.” Emily and local freelancer Steve Friess (who is also a blogger on this site) started the program about a year ago and have logged nearly 90 shows. I have been lobbying for a long time to co-host, and with Steve and regular fill-in host Molly Ball (of the Review-Journal, formerly of the Sun) unable to make Saturday’s session, Emily finally caved. It was a blast. Check out the resulting repartee at www.thepetcast.com.
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Vegas moment: While on an ice cream run at the Smith’s grocery store on Rancho Road just north of Charleston Boulevard, I overheard a woman on a cell phone saying something about a bathtub. As I walked from the store I asked the Lovely Kate (who is just about the best person to shop with, and also my partner in life) what was being said. It was, “I wish I was in the bathtub with you now. … you could scratch my back. … Oh, I’d like that.”
The express line, indeed.
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Variety magazine has listed its top 10 movies about Las Vegas (evidently it’s a list of films about Las Vegas, Nev.; no films from Las Vegas, N.M., are listed). No. 1 is “Casino,” followed by “Bugsy,” “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Melvin and Howard,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Rain Man,” “The Cooler,” “Honeymoon in Vegas” “Lost in America” and “Viva Las Vegas.” OK, class, what’s the glaring omission? Right! “Vegas Vacation,” which, unlike “Rain Man,” was a film actually about Las Vegas, not a film with a short segment set in Vegas. The casting of Wayne Newton (playing “himself”) was enough to merit a place on this list.
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Plate in my head: A fellow motorist driving a GMC Envoy at Green Valley Ranch has the plate IMXCTD. This person was on a cell phone, probably talking to a woman at Smith’s.
Fabulous Las Vegas appears daily (well, almost) at this Web site. John Katsilometes can be reached at 990-7720, 812-9812 or at [email protected]