By John Katsilometes
Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to win Nevada. The Democratic caucus in Nevada, anyway. The other candidates for the party’s presidential nomination can pack up and take off for South Carolina and New Hampshire and Iowa. The table here is already cold.
This is no far-flung prediction. I have it on good authority that Clinton will win because Peggy Maze Johnson told me so.
I bumped into Peggy Thursday night, at a haunt we share from time to time, and I asked how she was doing. I knew she had joined Clinton’s campaign staff in Nevada, a position she made clear by pulling back her long, light brown hair to reveal a “Hillary 2008” button. I smiled and said, “Obama,” and Peggy countered by saying, “Forty, 16 and 16.”
That’s the latest poll of likely Democratic voters. Clinton is at 40 percent, Barack Obama and John Edwards at 16 apiece. As executive director of Citizen Alert, Peggy has long been fighting against the proposed nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain – a battle the group seems to be winning. I know Peggy through that affiliation, but more as a personal friend for the past five years or so. Similar to PR director Hilarie Grey, in Peggy the Clinton campaign has plucked a highly educated and capable member of the state’s political infrastructure.
Peggy also promised another big Clinton endorsement, “It’s coming soon, and it’s a biggie.”
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One of the more curious organizations in town is the Las Vegas Walk of Stars. This group awards stars to those entertainers, sports stars, military members, business achievers and philanthropists who have made a mark – even the faintest mark, in some cases – in Las Vegas culture. A $15,000 donation is required to be honored as a Las Vegas Star recipient, and some who have been close to the organization’s board have complained that the process is too driven by money instead of merit. The nomination process is a bit vague. Example: “Honorees must have worked or lived in the Greater County of Clark, for periods of considerable regularity. Honorees must have, by their presence in this area, contributed to the charm, worldwide prominence and name recognition of Las Vegas, Clark County.”
Considerable regularity. Got it.
Thus, the list of stars is all over the map; Sammy Davis Jr. is, of course, a recipient, but so is K-Paz De La Sierra. According to the Walk of Stars official website, K-Paz De La Sierra is “the No. 1 Durango music band.” It doesn’t say where they are No. 1. Maybe on Durango Drive.
I have lived in Las Vegas for a little more than a decade (a lot of that time on Durango Drive, as it turns out) and never heard of K-Paz De La Sierra until it was announced last month the group would receive a star at New York-New York. And I am fairly plugged in, in the sense that if a band has been headlining in the city and just killing every night, I feel I would know about it. But not with K-Paz De La Sierra, or K-Pez De La Dispenser, or whoever they are.
The good news is the Star crew has finally installed the star awarded to the late Chester Simms, longtime casino manager at Flamingo Las Vegas. Simms’ son, Doug, was presented the star in May 2006 at Steakhouse 46 at the Flamingo. Finally, there is a star honoring Chester Simms near the front of the hotel on the Strip. Several months ago we have been told there would be a map of the Las Vegas Walk of Stars posted on the organization’s Web site, but so far, nothing. Maybe next year, honoring K-Pez. I mean, K-Paz.
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Johnny Carson impression time: “The Las Vegas Gladiators football team is so bad …” (audience) “How bad is it?” “They are so bad that the box office at their own arena is pushing a hockey team!”
True. Call the Orleans Arena box office and the outgoing message is pumping the Las Vegas Wranglers, the city’s ECHL hockey team that won its division last season. Forget that the Wranglers’ season ended nearly three months ago. There is nothing on the message about the football team that also inhabits the arena. A team that is still playing, as it turns out, and selling tickets. Or trying to.
The Gladiators (2-13), Las Vegas’ entry in the Arena Football League, is winding down a star-crossed season during which they fired coach Danton Barto in May but allowed him to finish the schedule anyway. Their season finale at the Orleans Arena is being played on an odd day – Monday – because the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is in town.
It might be the first time in the history of ticketed performances that a circus is replacing a circus. Maybe the animal-rights activists protesting Ringling Bros. can stick around and fill seats at Monday’s game. Send in the clowns, indeed.
OK. I’ll stop now.
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Representatives for Real Estate Interests Group (REI), the developer of the proposed 85-acre, $9.5 billion project that would cut into a two-block section of the downtown Arts District, keep talking of all the muffler shops on the segment of the district that would be overtaken by the development. As in, “Most of the businesses in that area are muffler shops and the like.” They need to take a spin around that neighborhood. There are no actual muffler shops on the section of Commerce Street that would be devoured by the development. There are a few auto repair garages and tire shops (and a few art galleries, as it turns out) but no business identified as “Muffler Shop.” Yet they keep talking about all those muffler shops.
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I have been informed that KidFuel, the vitamin-enriched beverage for kids that I noted a couple of weeks ago, is a great cure for hangovers. All the B vitamins, is the reason.
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Release me: A news release from attorney Jeff Isaac, dubbed the “Lawyer in Blue Jeans,” reports that, “In Akron, Ohio, it is illegal to sell or display for sale rabbits and baby poultry that have been dyed or otherwise colored.” I have read this carefully, and it says nothing about racing them.
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Plate in my head: DSTORTD, off in the distance, kind of blurry and indistinct, on a charcoal-colored Mitsubishi Spider.
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]