Crazy looking pseudo press person who I saw snag a pass off somebody else:Can you move your mike a bit? I can’t get a shot of him.”
Me: “No bloody way. We got here early and I’ve got a job to do, too!”
I was pissed off. I’d been standing in the none-too-large, velvet-rope-dissected foyer at the front of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino for an hour and a half with a throng of equally disgruntled and sweaty journos. (Note to journalism majors: This is your future…and it IS NOT glamorous). Not to mention our film guy Aldo, who has to wear a backpack with so much battery gear and assorted film gadgetry in it that it weighs as much as a Volkswagen.
But … That’s alright, that’s okay, Steven Tyler was 65 minutes late anyway. It was a long 65, too. Gave me plenty of time to think about how I’d loved Aerosmith since they started back in the ’70s and how, when it all comes down to it, this guy is just another ego on a stick.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. Here I am, a middle-aged journeyman journo, innocently trying to cop some audio of the unveiling of some of Tyler’s holy robes in a glass case in the Hard Rock’s entrance, when I start getting squeezed back by a mix of security and, well, insecurity.
As I went from front row to not-front row, I felt the mike get snatched from my hand. Aldo -- who’s a youngster by my measure but doesn’t have a shy bone in his body -- had grabbed it and started calling Tyler over. And, to his minimal credit, the scrawny rocker did come over. But Aldo is a camera guy, not an interviewer. He couldn’t think what to ask.
So I grabbed the sheet of shout outs (or “drops” as they’re apparently called by TV types) I’d been using all over town for LasVegasWeekly.com launch footage and Aldo tried to get his ass-holiness to say “Welcome to LasVegasWeekly.com!” Granted, this was a bit of a long shot, a tad brazen, and just a smidgen presumptuous, but Tyler was equal to the task of making it seem sillier than it really was: “Get outta here!”
Fair enough. If that’s the playing field we’re on, okay. Our feelings don’t get hurt that easily. We’ve been pee’d on better’n that. BUT (and there’s always a “but,” right?), did we really have to wait over an hour past the scheduled kick-off time to hear a borderline midget, aging Narcissus tell us? On-time rejections are much easier to swallow.
In fact, if I hadn’t been on official duty for LasVegasWeekly.com, I would have told Tyler-san to take his new exhibit and go f*** it on a vacation. Why so hostile? Because when you meet “stars” in the flesh, you realize so clearly that they really are just other people who eat, excrete and fondle their treat, and annoy you just like everybody else. They’ve simply parlayed one marketable talent that has got them out of the rat race. Or out of one rat race and into another that has better looking chicks. So why should they get a free pass from a working stiff?
“I couldn’t think of a question,” Aldo said in his thick Latino accent as we headed back to the car afterwards.
“Who cares?” I said. “The guy’s a p***k. I followed his f***ing band for 30 years and I felt like booing him.”
“Yeah, it was pretty lame that he kept us waiting.”
Yeah, pretty lame. So bloody lame that I came straight back to the office and summoned up the Friday night dedication to write this blog.
So Steven, screw you and your AARPosmith late arse. Go home and play with your great-grandchildren. I’ll bet they don’t wait an hour for you.
FOOTNOTE: Kudos to the Hard Rock staff who did a fine job of a difficult situation.
Check out the Steven Tyler exhibit at the Hard Rock Café -- it’s actually not half bad. And send your vitriolic responses to this article to LasVegasWeekly.com Web Content Editor Adrian Zupp at [email protected]