LETTERS

Dear Bar Exam columnist Lissa Townsend Rodgers,

I was going through your mag today & I noticed the story about the sports bar ... Play Of The Day (October 20) ... Just newly retired & new member of Henderson ... Sun City Anthem ... My wife & I were shopping for a bar stool for the new house. We had been there before but had to come back cause bar stools were too high. I never noticed the sports bar until we came out the door facing Play of the Day. Wweeeelllllllll .... I got hungry real fast, so my wife & I went in. It had to be 5 o' clock somewhere so we had their cheeseburger special ... delicious. Along with an Iron City Beer, of course. The place was decked out in all its glory with Steeler stuff. I never felt more at home than there. I lived 26 miles southwest of THE BURGH, on the Ohio river, in the small steel town of Midland, Pennsylvania. There you watched the Steelers on Monday Night Football, in the bowling alley (Riveria Lanes), starting at 9 p.m. to midnight or later, even if you had to go to work the next morning ... didn't matter ... Steelers ... case closed. After landing in San Diego (Navy) was I able to watch the Steelers at 6 p.m. To make a short story long ... being a Steelers fan is a lifetime thing ... You just had to live there to know ... Youin's take it easy ... thanks for the article.

Dear Lissa T. Rodgers,

Thanks for the recent great piece on Big Bob (Mitchum, October 6), the fine writing, and most especially for the sweet words about my book (Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don't Care). Most kind.

Dear TV Critic Josh Bell,

Regarding Man Vs Vegas (reality show on CMT, October 20), I could not DISAGREE with you more. Me and several of my friends found this show VERY entertaining. I am sure a lot of people agree with you or disagree with you, such is the world of a critic. But the reason I am writing is to say your review of this show seems unecessarily bitter. As a local, I would think you would be more interested in seeing someone promote Vegas the way he does (as a city that will probably take all of your money) and someone who does good things for people. I am hoping that when my friends come out to visit, they experience such a thrill of someone giving them $3,000 just for the hell of it. Like the show or not, I think you were extra cruel for some reason, wonder why?

Josh Bell responds:
Although honesty in the depiction of Vegas is admirable, the show perpetuates the notion that it's possible to "beat" the town, which is misleading and dishonest. It also encourages an obvious compulsive gambler to indulge his addiction in a self-destructive manner. It's nice that he gives people money, but it might be nicer if he got some professional help for his problem.

I am writing you to point out an error you printed in your column about Coyote Ugly that appeared in the October 27 issue of Las Vegas Weekly ("Coyote Lovely," Nights on the Circuit). The movie WAS indeed based on a New York bar, however it is called Coyote Ugly Saloon, and it has been open in Manhattan since 1993—not Hogs and Heifers as you stated. The movie was optioned by Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer from an article that appeared in GQ magazine in 1996 called "The Muse of Coyote Ugly." If the movie was based on Hogs and Heifers, don't you think it would have been called that? You can find the original GQ article and more information about Coyote Ugly Saloon at www.coyoteuglysaloon.com.

I hope that you will print a correction about this fact.

A&E Editor Martin Stein responds:
The Hatfield-McCoy feud over the origin of the 2000 film that launched Piper Perabo on the road to obscurity is hotly contested, with New York's Coyote Ugly Saloon and Hogs and Heifers both claiming to be the inspiration. It makes sense that the film's title is from Coyote. It's also possible screenwriters used the rowdier Hogs as a muse but switched names. Or it might have been their predecessor, the highly successful Village Idiot, where girls danced on bars and the owner arm-wrestled patrons for drinks—in the '80s. No matter, the Weekly's simply happy to have women to look up to.