T.R. Witcher
Story Archive
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Encore
Encore: Let there be light
Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2008 There is, quite literally, no surface of this building, no wall, no ceiling, no floor, no pillar that has not been touched with woodwork or mosaic tile or glass or Kyoto-pleated wall coverings, or design touches like a 27-foot crystal-and-glass dragon, or hand-applied Swarovski crystal butterflies.
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Music
’Tis the season
Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 We’re talking Nat Cole singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire, or a symphony galloping through “Sleigh Ride.” And this week the place to get your fill of yuletide tunes is with the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s Christmas Pops show.
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Art
Reaching out
Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 It’s often two steps forward and one step back in the Vegas cultural community. It may seem that art has taken a step back, but UNLV’s Department of Art is trying to push forward with the announcement of plans to create an arts advisory board by next spring.
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2008 Presidential Election
The Revolution continues
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 Clearly, the Republicans got some kind of beat-down—losing the White House, seats in Congress and control of the Nevada Legislature—although the extent of the drubbing is still open for debate.
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Film
Battle in Seattle
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 In actor Townsend’s directorial debut, a team of well-coordinated, nonviolent protestors take the 1999 World Trade Organization summit in Seattle by storm, outfoxing the local police and spurring them to violent means to restore order.
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Fashion
To a T
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008 The key has something to do with obscurity—flaunting your command of segments of popular culture that only the hyper-clued-in know about or remember. But it’s not as simple as, say, showing off your rare 1970s-era repress of a Dirty Harry shirt.
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Education
The wages of Sin (City)
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008 A few weeks ago, Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons—who heretofore has opposed even a whiff of a tax increase, even when facing a tsunami of financial turmoil—floated the idea of taking a pay cut to help the state weather a $300 million deficit.
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Environment
The 1 percent solution
Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 Nevada is lucky enough to have a renewable energy standard that mandates that 20 percent of our energy must be met by renewables by 2015. Nevada is seeking only about 1 percent of its total energy from solar power. One percent. In a state where the sun shines so often a rainy day is cause for celebration.
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Entertainment
Literary Las Vegas
Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008 The Vegas Valley Book Festival, which wrapped up last week, can be understood as the community’s attempt to find a place for itself on the high-culture map.
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Development
What’s past is prologue
Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008 With a floundering economy and a post-election feeling that the country may be ready for a more sustainable society, the planning and design philosophy known as New Urbanism, which aims to combat the excesses of suburban sprawl, may be poised to enter the American mainstream.
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Water
Tapped out
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008 Water from Lake Mead turned up in a surprising place: several Walmart stores in the Bay Area.
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Film
Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008 It’s that smile, those lusty teeth, somehow coy and seductive, warm and haughty. It’s a lush “I don’t give a damn” smile.
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2008 Presidential Election
Okay, so now what?
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008 If 2000 felt vaguely hopeful—pre-9/11, budget surplus—and 2004 at least had the housing boom to take our minds off the unsettling feeling that Iraq might not go as easily as we’d hoped, the aftermath of 2008 is just chockablock with trouble.
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Music
Kind of Blu
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008 Trumpeter James Barela was looking for material that he could “play a thousand times, a million times, and it still feels as fresh as the first time I played it.”
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Effortlessly presidential in the Chicago night
Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008 The black family members came from stage left. The white family members came from stage right. …that a man who looks like Obama…a man who looks like me…is monumental. It’s so monumental that words like monumental are small and somehow petty.
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The roar of history too loud to ignore
Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008 It’s tough to be an English teacher on Election Night. What was I thinking? To lecture on writing arguments—to a class trying to argue me out of even having class?
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Budget
The Final Pieces
Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008 Adventurer Steve Fossett’s downed plane was found October 1, 2008, in the mountains west of Mammoth Lakes, California.
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Budget
More cops in ’09
Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008 Metro may be seeking as many as 400 officers a year over the next nine years. The question is not only whether we need all that protection, but also whether the money will be there to pay for it.
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CityCenter
Sign of the times
Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008 Vegas is all about signage, but something about the splashy new sign that went up on top of the Vdara condo tower at CityCenter doesn’t click.
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Film
The would-be ultimate edition Blu-ray vs. DVD smackdown
Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008 The TV was 52 inches. A big, bad-ass Sony flat-screen. This past weekend, the editorial staff of Las Vegas Weekly got together to compare DVDs to their upstart replacement, the super-high-resolution discs known as Blu-ray.
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Film
It’s the talking heads, stupid!
Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008 In the roughly 10 years that the DVD has been with us, one thing has become clear. What makes the DVD is the commentary.
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Mandalay Bay
Impressionist concrete
Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008 “How do you bring the desert into the casino?” asks architect Drew Gregory, of the firm assemblageSTUDIO, led by Eric Strain. The answer? One thin piece at a time.
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Film
Appaloosa
Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008 Virgil Cole (Harris) and Everett Hitch (Mortensen) are freelance lawmen, plying their trade—what they call “gun work”—to towns with no laws.
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television
High and dry
Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008 As if the high price of oil weren’t enough, next week PBS is airing a documentary on that other critical natural resource, water, and it focuses on the most water-starved region in America: ours.
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Reviews
I Served the King of England
Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008 In 1930s Czechoslovakia, short, penniless waiter Jan Díte (Barnev) dreams of becoming a millionaire and opening a hotel. He knows that the way to a woman’s heart is to decorate her body with flowers or fruit.
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Film
Yeah, we're lookin' at you—both of you
Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008 So let’s start with Heat. 1995. Michael Mann’s mammoth crime drama revolves around the meaty existential showdown between two men.
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Music
Tickling the ivories
Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008 We Las Vegans know that Liberace is still with us—his exuberant personality is writ large in the soul of the city. This Sunday it gets a bit bigger. . .
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Intersection
Lights, Camera ... Inaction
Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008 Film companies, when they decide to shoot on location, used to be guided by the quality of location. This has always been, it would seem, an advantage for Las Vegas and, to a lesser extent, Nevada. Sure, in a pinch you could find another desert state to fill in for Nevada, but there’s only one Vegas.
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Education
Taking a step up
Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008 To say that the architecture of the UNLV campus is frequently ugly. . . betrays the lack of care that appears to have gone into making a place to inspire young minds. But in recent years, the architecture at the university has been moving forward.
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2008 Presidential Election
The Road to Denver (and every place on the way)
Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008 With a fully loaded Mazda 6 and no guarantee of getting into the Democratic National Convention, John Katsilometes and T.R. Witcher drive toward a date with history, sampling the political landscape along the way.
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The Wright Stuff
Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008 When I think of Frank Lloyd Wright and religion, my first thought usually goes to the legendary architect’s legendary self-regard: Wright as a kind of god in his own head. But then I recall his arresting Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois—a starkly beautiful building that looks as ancient as the Great Pyramids—and I think, well, maybe he was a god.
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Spectacle
Friday, Aug. 29, 2008 -
Radio Woes
Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 -
Energy is King
Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 -
Site Feature
The man who would be king
Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 So let’s get this straight. After years of dreaming of making it big in the U.S., after coming to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, after trying to acquire some casinos—the Riviera in 2003, the Desert Inn in 2000, missing (narrowly, he says) both times—Fabrizio Boccardi’s new plan to join the rank of bigwig Vegas casino owners is to … um … write a novel?
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Mystic Valley
Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008 -
The Reddest of the Red
Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008 -
Almost Underway
Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008 -
Film
Roman de Gare
Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008 At a gas station one night, Pierre (Pinon), the slaving ghost writer to a famous trash novelist, watches Huguette (Dana) get stranded after her fiancé dumps her and drives off. Pierre offers to give her a lift, and before long Huguette pleads with the man to impersonate her fiancé as she takes him to meet the parents. Oh, did I mention that a serial killer’s on the loose—who may be the man who’s just picked her up?
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Art
The young and the restless
Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008 Dust Gallery, on the ground floor of Downtown’s Soho Lofts, is used to being on the edge of the next big thing. Next week, the gallery is trying something new, launching a series of exhibitions called Downtown Dust. The series is designed to create a dialogue between the youth culture in Las Vegas and the up-and-coming young artists on the international contemporary-art scene.
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Art
A journey of forgiveness
Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008 While the Atomic Testing Museum is thin on details about the human costs of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, the center does have the good sense to feature an exhibit of collage art from Takashi Tanemori, a Hiroshima survivor who came to the U.S. vowing revenge on the country that had wiped out his family and his town in one instant.
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Reviews
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008 With Star Wars, it appears more obvious than ever that you can’t go back again. The glory days of 1977-1980 are from a galaxy far, far away. But George Lucas can’t stop trying.
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Print
If Kinky called the shots
Thursday, July 31, 2008 Richard “Kinky” Friedman has certainly had a hell of a career: Peace Corps do-gooder in Borneo; singer-songwriter and leader of the band Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys; later a mystery novelist and columnist for Texas Monthly.
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Entertainment
Tenth time a charm?
Thursday, July 31, 2008 Dancers—long-legged, festooned in sequins and feathers or little at all—are a Vegas staple. But, quiet as it’s kept, there is an alternative dance tradition in Las Vegas, one that embraces modern and contemporary dance, one that believes dance can be art, not just acrobatics (or merely titliation)
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Film
The power principle
Thursday, July 31, 2008 Actors like playing the villain, the wisdom goes, because the villains get to be bad and the heroes must remain steadfast and dull. The villains enjoy their villainy; the heroes carry on like they’re wearing an uncomfortably itchy suit. Titanically crazed characters like Daniel Plainview and Anton Chigurh mesmerize audiences—and so it is not surprising that much of the focus on the new Batman film, The Dark Knight, centers on the late Heath Ledger’s bravura turn as the Joker.
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Water
In water, who matters?
Thursday, July 17, 2008 When it comes to water in the desert, a few local players have a whole lot of juice.
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Water
Water wise
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 The foreclosure crisis. The shaky national economy. The shaky local economy. The state budget crisis. The steady climb of gas above $4 a gallon—great in a town built for driving. Hot enough for you this year? Obviously, we’ve got a lot on our minds as is, but let’s not forget that the fate of Las Vegas is dependent on water. And water has made the news a lot in 2008.
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Music
Early start
Thursday, July 3, 2008 Nobody said being a jazz musician was easy, but local trumpeter Kevin Early is off to an auspicious start.
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Art
The Las Vegas archway
Thursday, July 3, 2008 Not as if Vegas didn’t have enough lights, but last week the Las Vegas City Council approved funding for a giant piece of public artwork designed to highlight the perpetually up-and-coming arts district between the Strip and Downtown.