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2616 | THE LATEST“Green Road Map,” by Nora Burba Trulsson.Can a UNLV professor’s proposed “sustainability atlas” show Las Vegas a pathway to the future?Plus, extra digits to dial, a fashion show for Three Square, Comrade Grumpy on his disdain for LinkedIn and Tweets of the Week.

18 | Next Exit“Cat Fights,” by Stacy J. Willis.Can cat cafes raise awareness of pet overpopulation?

22 | Sports“And Away They Go … ,” by Jason Scavone.Hoppertunity for a big payday looms in this year’s Kentucky Derby.

24 | Politics“Getting the Government We Pay For,” by Michael Green.From Cliven Bundy to bungled websites, we’ve created a monster by starving it.

26 | COVER“Without Compromise,” by David G. Schwartz.How Steve Wynn and his team of upstarts created The Mirage and jump-started Las Vegas.

33 | NIGHTLIFE“Fabled Tables,” by Camille Cannon.Snag a seat at a nightclub alongside your favorite celebrity.Plus, Seven Nights, a Q&A with Joey Mazzola, a roundup of Cinco de Mayo events and photos from the week’s hottest parties.

57 | DINING“Bowl’d Over,” by Al Mancini.Brooklyn Bowl’s cuisine lives up to its cool culture.Plus, learning the kitchen hierarchy, Cocktail Culture and Dishing With Grace.

63 | A&E“Alec Monopoly Passes Go,” by Una LaMarche.The graffiti artist brings his spray cans to Vegas’ hottest nightspots.Plus, a Q&A with karaoke jockey Danny G, CD Reviews, Tour Buzz, The Hit List and a review of the Ghost B.C. concert.

70 | MoviesThe Other Woman and our weekly movie capsules.

86 | Seven QuestionsAndrew Dice Clay on the appeal of performing in a small venue, the two sides of his persona and the one clean comedian he respects.

ON THE COVER

Illustration by Ryan Olbrysh

DEPARTMENTS

15 | Dialogue

17 | Seven Days

20 | Gossip

69 | Showstopper

Join us for the 19th Annual

SUSAN G. KOMEN SOUTHERN NEVADARACE FOR THE CURE®

SATURDAY, MAY 3, 2014 | FREMONT STREET EXPERIENCE

Register TODAY at www.komensouthernnevada.org

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We started the breast cancer movement.

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@Marmel Oh my God, the #Bun-

dyRanch Facebook

page. It’s like the Onion,

without irony.

@ElizaBayne While promoting his new

tequila in Vegas, George

Clooney got in a fight

with Steve Wynn about

Obama. Yep. That sounds

like tequila.

@TheOnion Top Story: Casinos get-

ting people to play longer

by telling them rest of

civilization destroyed.

@AmyJoMartin There should be a

reality show based on

inbound flights to Vegas.

Passengers assume an

interesting behavior (&

wardrobe).

@billyeichner Just heard that George

Clooney got engaged to a

superstar lawyer. I hope

it’s Alan Dershowitz.

@EddyAlmaguer The hard part about

replacing Bryce Harper

in my keeper league is

finding someone who

can get me 1 RBI, 1 run

and .300 OBP a week.

@YahooNoise Bryce Harper, now out

two months due to thumb

surgery, quickly becom-

ing the Darren McFadden

of baseball—talented yet

flower-delicate.

@Birbigs This week a replica of my

apartment is being built for

my show in Las Vegas. It’s

called “Birbigs Birbigs.”

@MeltzVegas The only reason I want to

see Godzilla is to find out

how a sea monster gets

to Vegas.

@VegasDegenerate Panicked because he

thought it was an inter-

vention so he flew to Ve-

gas. When he landed he

had a text invitation from

his neighbor for a bbq.

Celebrating the Power of Love, Skittles and Tour Buses

That Go MIASPRING IS USUALLY KIND OF LOUSY when

it comes to celebrations. You’re about as far away as you can get from the start of the Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas Holiday-Industrial Complex, and you still have to bide your time before the Holy Trinity of Summer Three-Day Weekends. Sure, there’s Eas-ter, but, secularly speaking, unless you’re the kind of person who gets excited to collect the black jelly beans that everyone else passes on, there’s not a lot to it.

Still, this past week offered a fairly strong selection of celebrations, starting with Hakkasan’s one-year anniversary April 26 as celebrated by Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale.

The No Doubt and Bush singers, respectively, started out with dinner at the restaurant, joined by Stefani’s brother, Todd. Stefani and Rossdale were already in a celebratory mood following the birth of their son Apollo Bowie Flynn in February. Which is a marginally less goofy name than their middle child, Zuma Nesta Rock. So good on them for trending in the right direction.

After dinner, they relocated to the club in time to see Hakkasan CEO Neil Mofftt bring out a cake to Tiësto to mark the evening. Semi-regular Ling Ling Room DJ

Questlove was manning his post—without sporting his Afro. Which is disturbing and wrong somehow, and we’re going to pretend like it never happened.

The 18th annual Power of Love gala on April 26 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena feted Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s involvement in the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. Gloria did a duet of “Natural Woman” with Carole King, as Estefan’s daughter, Emily, played guitar for a crowd that included Quincy Jones, Andy Garcia, Dermot Mulroney, Christopher Meloni, Queen Latifah and Ricky Martin (with the latter two also among the performers).

On the one hand, that’s huge pressure to suddenly jump on guitar while playing for one of the greatest record producers of all time. On the other, you’re also playing guitar in front of the guy who did “Livin’ la Vida Loca.” Seems like a push.

Also on April 26, Seattle

Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch was celebrating his birthday at Chateau, and instead of letting nature take its course, he unleashed Beast Mode on the Strip. Lynch was out there with Chateau’s street team handing out fliers to try to get people to come to the party. For his trouble, he was rewarded with a cake decorated with Skittles. At this point, Wrigley needs to straight-up give him a stake in the company. Or else he’s secretly so sick of everyone giving him Skittles-related stuff, he reflexively kicks down a door every time someone uses “taste” and “rainbow” in the same sentence.

The Great Vegas Festival of Beer was a celebration of hops, barley and the magical antidote to the tragedy of sobriety Downtown on April 26. But it either didn’t turn out great, or else turned out extra great for Puddle of Mudd singer Wes Scantlin. The band did a surprise show at Triple B the night before. The next day, Scantlin was wandering the site, asking festival workers if they’d seen his tour bus anywhere. Which is a thing that’s easy to lose. Can he still call Fred Durst to give him a ride?

Share your Tweet! Add #V7.

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FOOD AND DRINK AT THE LINQOne of the big questions regarding the

viability of the Linq was whether or not

locals would go. We all know how it is: As

a rule, locals don’t do the Strip. But could

the Linq be different? Are there deals to be

had? Yes, there are.

For starters, it’s kind of a cool place to hang

out, given what they’ve done with a former al-

leyway between two casinos. The walk from

the Strip to the High Roller is a quick one if

you go straight through, but if you window-

shop just a little, it will take the better part of

an hour to go up and back. Unlike some of

the off-Strip shopping districts that are hit

and miss for traffic, every time I’ve been to

the Linq it’s been heaving, which makes for a

fun vibe. Check out the free photo kiosk near

the front, where you can snap a picture, then

email it out to friends or post it to Facebook.

Some of the shops are interesting, such

as the Polaroid Fotobar and Museum or the

Goorin Bros. Hat Shop, but the main attrac-

tions are the bars and restaurants. One thing

the Linq definitely did right is keep drink

prices in check, with most set about $2-$3

below going rates for the center-Strip area.

At the Yard House, a draft Peroni is $7.84, a

Blue Moon is $7.53 and a PBR is $5.41. The

Brooklyn Bowl works the tax into the price,

and drafts (it’s draft beer only here) are $6,

$7 and $8. At BLVD Cocktail a Coors Light

is $7. Or hit any of the three bars at O’Sheas

for $3 draft Miller Lite, Coors Light, Blue

Moon and Redd’s Apple Cider, or $6 Jager

and Fireball shots. You can fashion a decent

pub crawl now, and it will only get better

with the additions of Tilted Kilt and F.A.M.E.

Finding a food bargain is a little more

challenging. Most dining options are sit-

down, with the Blue Ribbon restaurant at

Brooklyn Bowl (see review, Page 57), Cha-

yo’s Mexican and the Yard House leading the

way. You may have heard about the vaunted

Blue Ribbon fried chicken. It’s pretty good,

but it’s $18 to $22 for a plate. More economi-

cal is a bite on the run at Haute Doggery or

the Flour & Barley pizzeria. Haute is a chain

that tries to reproduce hot dog classics from

different cities (Chicago, New York, Detroit,

etc.). It’s a good idea that doesn’t quite hit

the mark yet—plus $5.50 to $8.50 for a hot

dog of any kind is still a bit steep. The better

option is the pizza, where for $4 you can get

a huge slice of cheese from a take-out win-

dow that’s open till midnight.

What about the wheel? I’ll cover that next

week, along with some of the other enter-

tainment plays that set the Linq apart.

Anthony Curtis is the publisher of the

Las Vegas Advisor and LasVegasAdvisor.com,

a newsletter and website dedicated to finding

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Getting the Government We Pay For

From Cliven Bundy to bungled websites, we’ve

created a monster by starving it

ACCORDING TO A PROCLAMATION FROM Governor Brian Sandoval’s offce, May 4-10 will be Nevada State Employee Recognition Week, to praise their good work, including how they “conserve and preserve our natural and clitoral resources.”

It presumably should have been “cultural resources,” unless it was a bow to the state allowing legal pros-titution. Actually, though, it says a lot about both Obamacare and Cliven Bundy—not what’s wrong with them, but what’s wrong with us.

How did you react to the obvious typographical error? You may have laughed, or thought it referred to how state employees are treated. More likely, you saw it as typical of our in-competent government—whatever level it is—to make such a silly mistake.

Government makes bigger mis-takes. Set aside what the Bureau of Land Management has done right or wrong lately, not to mention Bundy’s grasp of race relations. He quit pay-ing his grazing fees 20 years ago. Where has the BLM been?

Some ranchers have acted simi-larly, but it’s worth pondering that Bundy’s freeloading offcially commenced as the Clinton presidency began. Perhaps paying grazing fees to a Re-publican-led government was more acceptable to him.

At that point, Republicans had controlled the White House for 12 years, starting with Ron-ald Reagan’s claim that government was the problem, not the solution. A lot of factors had contributed to the poor reputation of government that Reagan capitalized on, from Vietnam and Watergate nationally to the dis-honesty associated with atomic testing in Nevada. Rea-gan supporters such as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform advocated “starving the beast”—cutting taxes to force the government to cut spending.

The problem was, and remains, their related goal: to render government incapable of functioning. Rea-gan’s popularity led Democrats away from arguing that government needs to be able to do what it needs to do. Consider that the IRS has found it can’t collect about $300 billion in unpaid taxes because it lacks the staff and the ability to keep up with scams that allow funds to be hidden offshore.

Meanwhile, some commentators call any recent gov-ernment failure “Obama’s Katrina.” Does anybody re-member that the head of the Federal Emergency Man-agement Administration during Katrina had trained for the job by judging horse shows?

This problem of contempt for government didn’t develop overnight or only during Republican adminis-trations. Good luck fnding a robust defense of govern-ment from Bill Clinton when he was president. Still,

Clinton did try to pass health care reform. Obama succeed-ed where Clinton had failed, but the subsequent rollout of

HealthCare.gov was a disaster—as was Nevada’s version.The websites had something in common besides

health care: Both were outsourced to government contractors, and not just because the size of the federal workforce has shrunk under Obama. The Defense De-partment essentially invented the Internet, but in this case federal and state governments lacked either the means or the desire to run these sites themselves.

That right-wingers showed up to support Bundy is no surprise. Nor should it be surprising that a number of people who criticized Bundy’s actions said they saw his point about the intrusive federal government, especially the BLM. If the government should be criticized, it should be mainly for letting him disobey the law for two decades.

But that’s unfair. This is the government that we pay for—or, more accurately, that we don’t pay for. When we demonize and downsize it enough to make it im-possible for it to do its job, government isn’t going to attract as many good people to work for it as we need, and it will fail to address our necessities, from collect-ing taxes to maintaining our clitoral resources … and our cultural resources.

Michael Green is a professor of history at the College of Southern Nevada.

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“I built a lot of rooms just like the Fla-mingo’s—a three-star room, with a tub/shower combination in a 60-square-foot bathroom. But I built fve foors of suites on the top. If you look at The Mirage you can see the break in the building. The top is gold and the bot-tom is striped. And then I built some lanais and villas in the back. And what I did was I combined the Hilton, Cae-sars and Flamingo programs, with lots of convention space.”

A few other elements—such as the soaring atrium—evolved from earlier designs for a project in Atlantic City’s marina district that the company abandoned in February 1985. But the basic design had already been seen in Las Vegas: a low-rise component, housing the casino, dining, entertain-ment and retail; and a high-rise tower with hotel rooms. The tri-form hotel tower had been frst demonstrated in Las Vegas by Martin Stern Jr.—with as-sistance from Joel Bergman—at Kirk Kerkorian’s International, which had since become the Hilton.

The scale of The Mirage, though—at more than 3,000 rooms—was unprec-edented, as was the focus on nongam-ing amenities. How could you expect a return on your investment in an indoor tropical rain forest? This ambition verg-ing on hubris, the Strip establishment believed, would be Wynn’s downfall.

“Risk and being new was not on any-body’s radar,” recalls Bobby Baldwin, whom Wynn transferred from his role as president of the Golden Nugget to helm development and ultimately op-erations on the Strip. “The Mirage was as foreign to that environment in the mid-1980s as was Jay Sarno in the early 1960s with his concept for Caesars Palace. Ev-erybody was fat and happy on the Las Vegas Strip. There was no invitation for anyone else to join the game. And cer-tainly, they didn’t think that anyone like Steve Wynn was up to the challenge.”

Wynn had one advantage over his detractors: While many of them dis-dained the nuts and bolts of casino design, Wynn lived and breathed it. He was intimately involved with the de-sign process—not to micromanage the team, but to provoke and inspire them.

“He created creativity,” Bergman re-calls. “I can’t put it any other way. He has an insatiable work ethic. We had a ton of talent, and he brought it out in everyone. It was a fun project. There were moments, of course, where we struggled with the look of the building. The tower, for instance—we weren’t sure what we were going to have there. We built 50 different study models, then it fell into place.”

All along, Wynn was there, asking questions and sometimes offering an-swers. His own forte was space plan-ning: What did the guest see when he arrived? How long could it take to get him where he wanted to go? Most im-portant, how could he get there with-out getting frustrated?

The creative process was casual, with few set rules, but everyone knew that their boss wouldn’t tolerate anything

less than excellence. Bergman is today philosophical about working so closely with the notoriously hard-driving Wynn on a project with such high stakes.

“Some days I was Michelangelo,” he says with a shrug. “Some days I was the worst excuse for a draftsman that ever lived.”

Wynn had them systematically work out each idea. That meant a lot of false starts, but allowed plenty of room for discovery.

“Designing The Mirage took one year of R & D and three years of further de-velopment,” Wynn says. “Nothing was conceived in one brilliant stroke. It was done an inch at a time, step by step. If every idea we explored was reduced to paper, it would fll a warehouse.”

In the meantime, Bergman was bal-ancing Wynn’s ideas with feedback from Baldwin, who let the team know what customers would demand when opera-tions began: essential details such as how many four-seat and two-seat tables a 400-seat restaurant needed to run opti-mally; how many double-double rooms and king rooms the hotel needed—all the little details that can frustrate a guest and require costly renovations after the fact.

“The architect needs me to tell him these things,” Baldwin says. “Because

he’s not operating the hotel, I am. So we all had to make sure that what they were doing ft the needs of the customer.”

“Everybody contributed,” Wynn says. “As the quarterback, you call the plays, but you have wide receivers and run-ning backs. I’d come up with the con-cept and do a basic drawing with Joel and DeRuyter, put the idea in front of the posse, and think about it, manipu-late it and understand it better. Discus-sion is about ideas frst, never material. If you’ve got an idea, you’ve got your feet on the ground. With a good idea, you’re already 70 percent successful.”

In early 1987, Wynn sold the Golden Nugget Atlantic City to Bally Manufac-turing, plowing the proceeds of the sale into buying land on the Strip for his de-veloping idea and a stock repurchase. Although he still had 14 acres of Atlan-tic City land mothballed for potential development, he was making the bet of his life on Las Vegas Boulevard.

* * * * *

on may 27, 1987, wynn formally announced that he was going to build the world’s largest private hotel. He al-

ready had a theme (South Seas) and en-tertainment (Siegfried & Roy, who had been inked to a fve-year, $57 million contract).

But he didn’t have a name. At the time, it was simply the “Golden Nug-get Strip Hotel,” and the color scheme jibed with the company’s established white-and-gold palette.

“We cannot make up our mind about the damn name,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and this was true. There were plenty of names kicked around, some of them good, but none of them distinctive. Even “Wynn” was foated as the name, but as Bergman recalls, “Steve wasn’t ready for that yet.” So it remained, for the time being, a half-billion-dollar development without a name.

Construction started that November. The Castaways, which occupied part of the 86-acre plot that Golden Nugget had bought from Summa Corp., had closed in the summer.

It wasn’t the best time to borrow money for an expensive project. On Black Monday, October 19, stock ex-changes around the world had crashed; the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than one-ffth of its value. Some economists predicted the start of an-

“Nothing was conceived in one brilliant stroke. It was done an inch at a time, step by step.”

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other depression and, with investor confdence shaken, many companies, including Golden Nugget, saw their stock prices wiped out. With its un-precedented scale, The Mirage sudden-ly seemed dangerously risky.

“This was the frst time 3,000 rooms had been done at once. The bill, right out of the chute, was $600 million,” Wynn says. “This was a $200 million town. So we’re talking orders of mag-nitude more than had ever been in-vested. The biggest challenge was to get credibility on this issue.”

“When we started building,” Baldwin recalls, “we got up to the eighth foor and we were out of money. We brought two touring buses full of investors. Steve took one bus, and I took the other.”

With the construction site as the backdrop, Wynn and Baldwin walked the investors through every detail of the resort’s design and operation.

“If we hadn’t gotten that money, con-struction would have stopped,” Bald-win says fatly. “But Drexel Burnham Lambert and Mike Milken and Steve pulled it off. We got $515 million in fve different bond structures, with differ-ent terms and maturity dates.”

The fnancial challenges, though, had a healthy effect on the resort’s design.

“We wanted to be the most effcient

place on the Strip,” Baldwin says, “be-cause we were getting a lot of heat from the rest of the world. I forecast our daily expenses as $1.1 million, and no one was close to that. We had to be effcient to keep the confdence of the bond holders.”

So the team designed one large cen-tral kitchen so that dishwashing and other functions could be shared. And it made sure that everything clicked. Uniform control and the staff dining room were positioned so that em-ployees could get to and from their jobs as quickly as possible. The drive for effciency dovetailed with Wynn’s obsession with designing an easy-to-navigate casino foor: A guest who can quickly get to his dining reservation or the blackjack table is more lucra-tive than one who is lost in a labyrin-thine resort.

Meanwhile, there was a degree of improvisation during the construc-tion process. Wynn and his team re-sponded to the design as it evolved, making changes that felt necessary—or that simply felt right. The casino floor, for example, was originally 80,000 square feet. In the fall of 1988, Wynn and Baldwin decided to enlarge it to 100,000 square feet. With so much on the line, “less” was no lon-ger an option.

* * * * *

by that time, the hotel finally had a name. They all agreed that they needed something that evoked an ex-otic locale, but wasn’t too specifc or too hard to pronounce. As a South Seas oasis in the middle of a desert, “Mirage” seemed just about perfect. There was one problem: the La Mirage motel, on the south end of Las Vegas Boulevard. After some haggling, Wynn came to terms with the owners: The Rosoff fam-ily renamed its property the Glass Pool Inn, and Golden Nugget got the rights to The Mirage, free and clear.

Many of the elements that are consid-ered essential to The Mirage—the things that we believe made it so different—came relatively late in the process. Un-der a less fexible chief designer, they might never have seen the light of day. But Wynn kept the questions fowing—and was ready to hear fresh answers.

The lobby aquarium, for example, was the inspiration of Henry Conversa-no, who thought a 60-foot tank behind the reception desk would both soothe and distract guests while they waited in line to check in, addressing an abiding problem on the Strip.

“After 32 years in the business, I still

can’t eliminate that front-desk line,” Baldwin says. “I can make the line go quicker, make it a softer experience, but I can’t eliminate it.”

Wynn tasked Baldwin with learning how to actually build the tank. At the time, polymer in the required seven-inch thick-ness couldn’t be produced in sections lon-ger than 20 feet. Baldwin bought two 20-foot pieces and joined them with a seam, then tacked two 10-footers with walls on each side. That tank tells a little bit of the story of The Mirage’s charmed life.

“They would warranty that seam for eight years,” Baldwin says. “That tank’s been there for 25 years now, and it’s never going to fall apart.”

Chris Hemmeter, a developer with ex-tensive work in Hawaii, introduced Wynn to the possibility of dolphins as an attrac-tion; thus was born the dolphin habitat. Containing 1.5 million gallons of water and six bottlenose dolphins, the habitat was intended to both entertain and edu-cate. By opening day, a complete marine-biology curriculum had been created and distributed to Clark County schools.

* * * * *

a resort with aspirations to be like no other has to have a spectacular

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street presence, an invitation that says, “If you think this is amazing, wait until you’re inside.” Jay Sarno had understood this in the mid-1960s, when he adorned the driveway to Caesars Palace with fountains that rivaled those at Versailles.

The Mirage’s initial invitation on the Strip was 4 acres of lagoons and lush landscaping surrounding a 40-foot wa-terfall. It seemed like enough: Driving by, travelers would see the green-and-blue hues of a tropical oasis; walking by, they would hear the falling water and be transported to a cool paradise. There were no complications with the water-fall’s concept or the execution. Wynn was happy with it, the hotel was less than a year away from opening, and there were plenty of other essential design and construction issues to worry about, with the budget always looming large.

Most CEOs under that kind of pres-sure, when asked to tinker with some-thing so non-problematic would reply with something unprintable. But David Hersey, the Tony Award-winning light-ing designer whom Wynn had hired to light his hotel’s exterior, had an idea. And Wynn listened.

Hersey: What about a volcano? Erupt-ing on cue, right there on the Strip? Wouldn’t that turn heads?

That Hersey, who had not previously lit a hotel, was even working on The Mirage was an indication of Wynn’s eye for talent. “He’d done Andrew Lloyd Webber’s shows,” Wynn says, “and I knew I wanted it to be theatrical.”

So Wynn ordered Hersey to build a quarter-scale replica—which was still more than 10 feet high—on the extreme south end of the property at a cost of no more than $100,000. Hersey ultimately spent $1 million, but the volcano was amazing; this, Wynn knew, would be an

invitation that no one could ignore. The full-size version went into immediate construction in the center of the lagoon.

Wynn kept the scale model where it was, placed a few dolphin statues in front and built a people mover next to it. Next time you are coming in from the sidewalk next to Caesars Palace, look to your left; the waterfall that tourists are posing for the camera in front of is that scale model, 25 years on.

* * * * *

even as the mirage inched toward completion in the summer of 1989, the rest of the Strip remained skepti-cal about the property’s chances. Even if they open, the conventional thinking went, they’ll be bankrupt in weeks. No one could cover a daily overhead of $1 million. The skepticism, in turn, bred a certain amount of complacency, which Wynn and his upstarts swiftly exploited.

“In one 10-week period, I stole from Caesars the head of Latin marketing, the head of Asian marketing, the head of convention sales, the baccarat boss, the chief fnancial offcer—who knew how to collect in Asia—the head of all special events, and the head of domes-tic marketing,” Wynn says.

“One of them told me that when our building was topped out, his boss looked out a window toward The Mi-rage and said, ‘They’ll never open.’”

As everyone knew from the start, building the resort wasn’t the hardest part: staffng was. Wynn reached out to Arte Nathan, who’d been in charge of personnel in Atlantic City since 1982, to handle this crucial task. Nathan, along with Baldwin and Doug Pool, vice pres-ident of fnance, was one of the frst

three operations staff for the new proj-ect. Together, they had to actually open the massive resort Wynn had proposed.

Baldwin, Pool and Nathan spent nearly a year visiting 250 companies in hospitality, dining, manufacturing and other felds who’d recently opened something—anything. “We asked them three things,” Nathan remembers. “Tell us what you did that was such a good idea you’d do it again. Tell us what you did that was such a terrible idea you’d never do it again. Tell us what you didn’t do that in hindsight you wish you had.”

They ended up with more than 3,000 pages of notes, which they distilled into a presentation for the board that passed muster and informed all of their subsequent work.

Nathan, Baldwin and Pool then put together a timeline, with more than 800 essential tasks running down the left-hand column and 365 days across the top. The timeline took up an entire hallway at the Golden Nugget, but it gave them a plan.

Baldwin was responsible for all as-pects of the project: construction, human resources, fnancing and op-erations all reported to him. Pool was charged with monitoring their prog-ress, making sure that everything was reduced to numbers and checked against the plan, as well as making sure that all the right questions were being asked. Nathan had the small job of hir-ing and training the 5,000 employees The Mirage would need.

“We had 134 departments and 650 job titles,” Nathan says. “And we needed consistency across all of them: Front desk, bellman, housekeeper, food ser-vice, books, valet parkers. They all are choreographed. They have to not just do their own jobs, but intersect with

other departments. Try standing in the middle of the casino for a few minutes watching the employees, and you’ll get a sense of how complicated it is.”

Nathan’s new headquarters, a reno-vated building on Industrial Road, was confgured to accommodate 500 job-seekers at a time. When Nathan ar-rived the frst morning, he saw 5,000 applicants waiting in line. Ultimately, he would accept 55,000 applications, raising yet another challenge—how to screen them all.

“There’s one immutable skill that no one can ever teach you: Everyone in the hospitality business is interrupted in-numerable times during the day. You need the people,” Nathan says, “who are happy with the interruption. You can’t teach that.”

So Nathan devised the handshake test.Walking through the room, he’d offer

a hand. Those who stopped what they were doing to respond, quickly, passed. “You can’t fake it—you do it even before you think about it. Those are the peo-ple we wanted,” Nathan says.

The hotel was getting close to open-ing, good workers were coming on board, and everything was falling into place—almost.

“For some reason,” Baldwin says, “I missed the fact that Caesars had some good high-limit areas, so at the 11th hour we tore out some offces and made a high-limit room.” Located be-hind the casino’s central cage, this was one of the project’s few misfres.

“The baccarat room,” Baldwin con-tinues, “was beautiful. It had the most beautiful giant orchids in a blue carpet you’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, when we put the baccarat tables in they cov-ered the orchids. And we discovered that these gamblers don’t like to be spectacles. We had circulation on both sides of that room. They really need to be in a place all by themselves, where they are enclosed on at least three sides. So we had to fx that right away.”

Now all Wynn had to do was fnd the right way to tell the public about his soon-to-be-unveiled masterpiece. But that required another late fx.

Wynn and his wife, Elaine, had hired a well-known Los Angeles-based frm to manage public relations, but by late September they’d realized that it wasn’t working out—the group just didn’t “get” the Wynns’ vision. So they invited a team from the Los Angeles offce of communications giant Hill & Knowlton to the Golden Nugget for an interview. That team included Alan Feldman, a Southern California native who had no affection for Las Vegas. Flying up that morning, Feldman planned to return early that afternoon.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Feld-man recalls, “but here was this guy in an impeccably tailored blue suit, next to Elaine, who was that day and still is in-credibly beautiful and elegant. And we ended up spending six hours together as Steve described, in very specifc ways, a Las Vegas that I didn’t know ex-isted, and which in fact didn’t exist yet.”

When they returned to Los Angeles

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that night, the Hill & Knowlton team, un-der the direction of Los Angeles general manager Ron Hartwig, started writing up the plan for an opening that would take place in less than eight weeks.

That Friday, September 29, Feldman joined Wynn’s daughter Kevyn for his frst tour of the property and learned that his new client had big news to share with the world: The Mirage had fnally received approval to keep dolphins in the planned habitat—the result of months of administrative and regulato-ry wrangling. Wynn wanted a press con-ference. Now. Working without a press list, Feldman assembled representatives of the three local television stations, two daily newspapers and two wire services.

“This was when I learned about Steve’s ability to talk to the public,” Feldman recalls. “He walked in with no notes and spoke for 15 minutes about the historical context of the decision, why it mattered, and thanked those responsible by name before taking questions.”

Feldman was wowed by his new cli-ent from the start. “The moment I

walked into The Mirage, I could see it was different,” he says. “And you have to remember, I didn’t like Las Vegas, so I was a proxy for all the haters out there. Even incomplete, it was some-thing special. I knew he had some-thing there.”

It was hard to communicate just what Wynn had, because he insisted—above the vociferous objections of seasoned public relations hands at Hill & Knowl-ton—that no media tours or images be released until the opening. His reason-ing was that impressions of an unfn-ished property would defate the ex-pectations. With the media clamoring for proof that the resort really would deliver, it was a gamble.

At The Mirage’s October licensing hearing before the Gaming Commis-sion, the commissioners didn’t ask many questions; they simply let Wynn talk. His 15-minute monologue ranged from the current state of Las Vegas (“more high-rollers than ever before”) to the unprecedented size and scale of The Mirage’s construction. This was more than a business development for Wynn—it was the work of his lifetime.

“How many people,” he asked his audience, “get the chance to do their dream at the perfect time, in the per-fect place, and without compromise?”

A few minutes later, the Commission

unanimously voted to license The Mirage.In less than four weeks, the resort

would be open.

* * * * *

now came crunch time. nathan put into practice what he describes as “an educator’s dream—probably the larg-est company-training program at that time.” He was committed to thoroughly training all employees to not just do their specifc tasks—dealing cards or washing dishes—but train them to do it to precise Mirage standards. The number of employees they’d need bal-looned to 6,200, as it became clear just how hard they would have to work to maintain the promised level of service.

Three weeks out, the longest-lead employees—those working with com-puters—started training. About a week later, the bulk of the nongaming em-ployees started. Nathan and his team had to teach them how to do their jobs, as well as how to navigate the massive property. About three days before play

dates, the dealers, who already knew their jobs, reported.

Then came opening day, November 22: No time now for nerves or second-guessing.

“By that point, everything is set, everybody is trained, has their uni-forms, knows where to park, and we know how to feed them in the dining room,” says Baldwin, who subsequently opened Treasure Island, Bellagio and CityCenter. “You’re not frightened be-cause you’ve done all the work. It’s just the anticipation of opening the door.”

Still, that morning, Wynn was ex-pressing some doubts: What if no one showed up?

Two hours after the doors opened, more than 50,000 visitors had passed through, putting those doubts to rest. Still, they weren’t out of the woods.

“We had $17 million in the bank on opening day,” Baldwin recalls. “And it cost us $1.3 million a day to stay open, so we could run it for about two weeks if no one beat us. We were a little ner-vous about that.”

Within hours of the frst cards being dealt, though, Baldwin was facing an unexpected issue.

“We ran out of change,” he recalls. “We had all the change booths we needed, but everybody was so ex-cited they forgot to fll the carousels.

That brought the slot department to a screeching halt. Steve wasn’t very hap-py with me about that, but we got them reloaded pretty quickly, even though we had to make a special run to the bank because the volume was so much bigger than we’d expected.”

For Baldwin and the operations crew, November 22 was just the start. But the design team kept busy, too. The Mirage was proftable from Day One, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be improved. Because the casino was so successful, in fact, Wynn and Baldwin had no trouble borrowing an additional $100 million a few months after opening. An ad-ditional dolphin pond ($8 million), a parking garage ($20 million) and eight additional villas ($32 million) soaked up some of that capital; other assorted improvements (such as a new baccarat room) quickly exhausted the rest.

But that wasn’t all. Wynn had already given Bergman and his team another challenge. “The day after The Mirage opened,” Bergman says, “we started working on what became Treasure Is-land. We never stopped.”

* * * * *

indeed, no one rested after the Mirage. Wynn went on to build Trea-sure Island and Bellagio on the Strip before selling Mirage Resorts to Kirk Kerkorian. He now helms Wynn Resorts and is currently designing a new Macau resort, among other projects. Bergman is chairman, CEO and design principal of Bergman Walls & Associates, where he continues to design casinos, includ-ing several expansions to Caesars Pal-ace and ground-up projects across the country. Baldwin is chief design and construction offcer for MGM Resorts International and president of City-Center. Feldman is executive vice presi-dent of global government and indus-try affairs for MGM Resorts. And Arte Nathan, after a long career with Wynn, started teaching at UNLV last year, pass-ing on his invaluable expertise to the next generation of hospitality leaders.

But they all acknowledge The Mirage was special.

“We did everything right,” Bergman says. “It was that simple. Everything came together, and it was a perfect mo-ment in time. And if we made a mis-take, we fxed it.”

For Baldwin, there was a measure of

vindication in the property’s success.“Our competitors never even came

to look at us until two years after it was open,” he says. “People who we hired from other properties said that the sub-ject of The Mirage came up in meetings: ‘Don’t worry about The Mirage. Bobby’s a poker player. Steve’s a whatever, and neither of them have any money.’ They never considered us a threat until they read their proft-and-loss statement at the end of the year. We had taken most of their business.”

“The legacy of The Mirage,” says Feld-man, who moved to the Valley and raised his family here, “was opening the public’s mind to a different defnition of Las Ve-gas. Steve said that if the concept is right, others will follow—and they did.”

That concept—that you could build something in Las Vegas that went be-yond gaming—was far beyond anything even Jay Sarno had conceived. It wasn’t just big, and it wasn’t just luxurious. “Everyone will recognize The Mirage as a special place: a resort-hotel which includes a casino, not a casino which includes a hotel,” Wynn said then. To-day, after 16 new resorts ranging from Excalibur to the Cosmopolitan, that concept is the rule rather than the ex-ception. Might Las Vegas have grown in the 1990s without Steve Wynn? It’s likely it would have, but it would prob-ably have been along the lines of tower additions to the Dunes and Sands rath-er than new properties on the scale of Bellagio and the Venetian. The Mirage was responsible for shifting the bound-aries of what was possible in Las Vegas; that opened the foodgates of capital that made possible the next decade of unprecedented growth throughout the Valley. It was important to Steve Wynn that gamblers and vacationers like his new joint; it was vital to Las Vegas that investment bankers like it.

“The revelation was,” Wynn says, “that you could spend a half-billion in Vegas and get return on your invest-ment. No one had ever thought of the town in that scale. That was the impor-tance of The Mirage.”

And yet for all of the casino’s public importance, the opening remains an undeniably personal moment for those who brought it to life.

“There are things that happen in any of our lives that remain current in our thinking,” says Nathan, slipping into the role of teacher. “The opening of The Mirage 25 years ago seems like it was just yesterday. It was such a big thing—and it made us.”

Wynn has changed the casino world’s direction more than once since, but he isn’t content. Just after a long interview about his frst Strip triumph, he’s im-mediately back at it with his chief ar-chitect, DeRuyter Butler. With felt-tip pens, tracing paper and Wite-Out, they resume sketching a new resort in Macau, one they hope will distill all the lessons learned over the last three decades of tri-al and error into the perfect experience.

“I always want to do one more,” Wynn says, eyeing a blank sheet of paper. “Maybe this is the time I get it right.”

“How many people get the chance to do their dream at the perfect time, in the

perfect place, and without compromise?”

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NIGHTLIFEYour city after dark, photos from the week’s hottest parties and Pure’s longest-running resident DJ moves on

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Fabled TablesSnag a seat alongside your

favorite celebrity

By Camille Cannon

“LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.” You’re probably familiar with the three most important tenets of real estate. Las Vegas nightclubs are no exception. While every inch of these clubs possess that magical combination of liquor and luxury, some seats reign supreme over others. Here’s where the rich and famous like to sit and sip.

1 OAK

The infamous 50s are top-notch real estate within the walls of 1 Oak. A seat within this run of eight large tables could place you in the company of Jay-Z, Robin Thicke, Kanye or other A-list luminaries. Plus it grants you close proximity to the evening’s DJ talent and the most extravagant bottle-service presentations that the club has to offer—customized for each big spender’s personality and truly, as the club’s name implies, one of a kind. In The Mirage, 702-693-8300, 1OakLasVegas.com.

HAKKASAN

Enter Hakkasan’s fourth-level main room, fnd the DJ booth and look to the left—that’s where you’ll see the famous faces gracing this mega club. One weekend in February, actors Chace Crawford and Theo James were spotted celebrating friend Miles Teller’s birthday, one table over from Pitch Perfect co-stars Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow. That’s a whole lot of young, twinkling star power in one spot. In MGM Grand, 702-891-3838, HakkasanLV.com.

HYDE

While Hyde’s Bellagio fountain-side table is famous for its location, perks (including control of the water show at the touch of a button and a 30-liter

Picture yourself in the catbird seats at 1 Oak.

bottle of Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” Champagne) and its price tag ($250,000), celebrities prefer the DJ booth-adjacent table 53. Hilary Duff, Joanna Krupa and Marilyn Manson have all been spotted here. In Bellagio, 702-693-8700, HydeBellagio.com.

LIGHT

At Light, the most coveted tables are those closest to the action—both on the dance foor and above it. As Cirque du Soleil acrobats scale the walls behind the DJ booth, you can take in their performance from a frst-tier table, where celebrities such as Adam Levine, Nick Cannon and Dancing With the Stars’ Cheryl Burke have done the same. Booths are 14 feet by 8 feet and are 3 feet above the foor, so you can observe all without being disturbed. Situated on the dance foor, tables 63 and 64 offer closer access to the action as well as additional seating for large groups. In Mandalay Bay, 702-693-8300, TheLightVegas.com.

MARQUEE

In the main room, Marquee’s table 50

is most popular. It’s where the confetti showers rain most heavy and the view of the club’s go-go dancers and DJ booth are uncompromised—just ask Bruno Mars, Seattle Seahawks’ Richard Sherman or the L.A. Lakers’ Kobe Bryant. In the quieter Library room, guests such as Dave Chappelle and Be-yoncé have chosen to kick back at table 200, where billiards, a freplace and a balcony are just feet away. Breaking Bad actor Aaron Paul selected the cozy venue for his joint bachelor/bachelor-ette party with then fancée Lauren Parsekian in 2013. In the Cosmopolitan, 702-333-9000, MarqueeLasVegas.com.

SURRENDER

The top spot at Surrender is known simply as “the DJ table.” That’s because it’s actually behind the booth. As other clubgoers rub elbows with their eyes on you, you get to eye the equipment and get a sneak peek of what songs the DJ will drop next. It’s where Paris Hilton hung around while dating Afrojack, and where swimmer Michael Phelps celebrated his Olympic retirement in 2012. In Encore, 702-770-7300, SurrenderNightclub.com.

TAO

You’ve seen the bottle fairy fying above the dance foor at Tao. And if you watched her long enough, you know that she was en route to the elite (perhaps past visitors Kim Kardashian, Kanye West or Jay-Z) seated at tables 50 and 55. If you can take your eyes off the fairy, you can also appreciate a prime view of the recently installed LED screens on the ceiling. In the Venetian, 702-388-8588, TaoLasVegas.com.

TRYST

The crème de la crème at Tryst is table 540, better known as “the owner’s table.” The privilege to park it there is

limited to a few—Justin Timberlake, Holly Madison and Ryan Seacrest among them. In Wynn, 702-770-3375, TrystLasVegas.com.

XS

XS celebrated a milestone ffth birthday earlier this year and in that time, a parade of “It” girls and boys have passed through the doors. Here, table 30 is reserved for DJs, including well-known residents such as Avicii, Diplo and Skrillex. Nearby, celebrities such as Mario Lopez, Julianne Hough and the Jonas brothers saddle up at stage tables 10, 20 (the most popular), 30, 40 or 50. In Encore, 702-770-0097, XSLasVegas.com. V

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Hakkasan’s main room before the madness, and Hyde’s fountain-adjacent patio setup.

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JOEY IS GETTING BACK TO BEING JOEY. That is, DJ/producer Joey Mazzola is stepping out from the booth and returning to his roots in the studio: making music. With his new “fun” house label Monkeybars launching, and his time spinning on the terrace at Pure drawing to a close (along with the club itself, which is all but offcially confrmed to close after May 25), we learn about the next chapter in Mazzola’s career.

What will the Monkeybars record label be all about?

What [partner Doug Ansell and I are] trying to do is make music fun again and remind people that it’s dance music. I’m talking to all the West Coast producers whom I came

into the business with, all the people whom I was putting records out with in the ’90s and in the 2000s. When I say “fun” I just mean I don’t want a label where I corner myself into one sound. Our first release is going to be a Monkeybars music sampler. We’re going to have Ron Reeser, David Garcia, Scotty Boy and myself with Jay Walker.

What specifcally comprises “fun” house music?

Not so serious, not like back in the day when you had to be nerdy and geeky to like techno and house music. It’s a whole different world right now, and that’s what I’m trying to get out there. I’ve made up my mind, and that’s how I’m going to

evolve and that’s how I’m going to stay afoat and that’s how I’m going to reach the next level.

I am not going to be focusing on the Las Vegas DJ market; I’m going to be focusing on what this next brand of music is going to be and what these kids are going to be playing in these clubs, because for all you and I know it’s going to be so drastically different fve years from now. I want to be ahead of that game. I think the only place for dance music to go is just back to being fun again. … I want to be the West Coast Subliminal, if you will. I want to do what Eric Morillo did with his whole Subliminal crew.

What type of house music though? Tech, deep, progressive, festival?

When I say “house music,” I don’t believe in subgenre-ing. I don’t even use those terms, because they automatically turn people off, sadly. Or the term “EDM”? That’s pop music. Everybody knows when they use the word “EDM” they’re defning pop music. That automatically turns off the house heads.

How would you sum up your time playing house for the past fve years on Pure’s terrace?

Being at Pure for so many years, they helped me in tremendous ways to make a life for my son, and I was

grateful to have run Pure’s terrace for fve years—that’s a big deal to me. What people don’t realize is we get so many people from all over the world who love house, they only understand house and I’ve been giving it to them for fve years, three days a week. That’s a lot, and I’ll be grateful for that the rest of my life.

Are you gonna have a celebration for your last night?

I can tell you my last big locals Tuesday night at Pure is May 20, the fnal Tuesday night for locals to catch me on the terrace. We fgured it out: I’ve played at Pure more than 800 times! It’s gonna be pretty emotional. I’m the longest-running DJ that Pure ever had. Now I feel like it’s time to release Joey Mazzola again, and do what my longtime friends and fans expect of me.

For those not familiar with your background—which includes playing legendary Las Vegas spots such as Empire Ballroom, Ice, Drai’s and more—when can they hear what’s always been in your heart?

If anyone wants to check out Joey being Joey, Memorial Day Weekend I’ll be doing a fve-hour set at the Artisan on May 24, which will be big, and I’ll be demoing our new music. Free for locals! Everyone’s welcome.

A House Music PlaygroundVeteran Pure Terrace DJ Joey Mazzola

moves on with Monkeybars

By Deanna Rilling

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CHEAT SHEET: CINCO DE DRINK-O 2014 The Fifth of May: When we honor Mexico’s victory over France in the Battle of Puebla … by attacking our liver with flowing alcohol. Read on and rage on! (Festivities occur May 5 unless otherwise noted.)

Wanna hear mariachi mixed with house? Head to Hyde where DJ Skratchy is on deck. TV personality Mario Lopez (and by default, his abs) host a fiesta May 3. (In Bellagio, 10 p.m., HydeBellagio.com.) May 1-5, Diablo’s Cantina has a cast of rotating DJs and bands, plus $25 all-you-can-drink draft beer. May 5 is extra-special, offering a performance from everyone’s favorite metal-mariachi fusion act, Metalachi. (In Monte Carlo, 9 p.m., DiablosLasVegas.com.) Tivoli Village’s Cantina Laredo presents two parties on the patio, both promising piñatas. May 4 (11 a.m.-6 p.m.) is more family-friendly while May 3 (6 p.m.-midnight) is focused on the boozin’. (430 S. Rampart Blvd., CantinaLaredo.com.) Beauty Bar’s Sonidero bash boasts no cover, $3 Coronas, $4 shots of Jose Cuervo and tunes by DJs Bad Beat, St. JP and Dolores Flores. (517 Fremont St., 9 p.m., TheBeautyBar.com/Home-Las-Vegas.) Dive into the holiday beer-first with $18 buckets of Coors Light at Rhumbar. Additional specials include $5rum punch cocktails and $8 cigar selections from 4-6 p.m.; $5 Dos Equis and $7 Jose Cuervo margaritas are served all-day. (In The Mirage, RhumbarLV.com.) Cabo Wabo Cantina doles out drink deals May 2-5 during their “Tres, Cuatro, Cinco: Let’s Drinko!” party. Slam $5 shots of Fireball, $21 buckets of Dos Equis or the 24-ounce daiquiri, La Bandera, for $19, which looks festive in red, white and green like the Mexican flag. (In the Miracle Mile Shops in Planet Hollywood, CaboWaboCantina.com/Vegas.) If you love the taste of tequila, stop by the Salted Lime at Aliante for tastings and giveaways from Sauza Hornitos on May 3, and Tequila Cazadores on May 4. (7300 Aliante Pkwy., AlianteGaming.com.) —Camille Cannon

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TAO BEACHThe Venetian

[ UPCOMING ]

May 1 Kay and Kelley spin

May 2 Javier Alba spins

May 3 Eric D-Lux spins

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May 3 David Guetta spins

May 5 Lil Jon spins

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May 2 Hot 100

May 3 Afrojack spins

May 4 Hardwell spins

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At Brooklyn Bowl, the Brombergs’ menu leans toward gourmet com-fort food—admittedly not an origi-nal concept. There are a few nods to Brooklyn, but southern cuisine is far more prevalent. Appetizers include adobo corn, Cajun shrimp cocktail and pork rinds. There’s a line of perfectly prepared French bread pizzas that come off like Stouffer’s on steroids. Sandwiches include catfsh, chicken muffaletta, barbecue pork sliders and an oyster po’ boy. And the entrée section features mac and cheese, blackened salmon and pulled pork. There’s also a brunch menu on weekends from noon-4 p.m.

Then, of course, there’s the fried chicken. It’s a staple of Blue Ribbon restaurants, and will undoubtedly emerge as Brooklyn Bowl’s signature dish. But those who

know it from the Cosmopolitan should be forewarned: This is not the same recipe. Given the Sushi Bar & Grill’s Asian component, the brothers Bromberg tweaked the recipe for Las Vegas, adding the Japanese spice mix togarashi to the batter and serving it with wasabi honey. What you get at Brooklyn Bowl is the original recipe. Which you prefer is a matter of taste, because they’re both among the best fried chicken in town. But it’s worth sampling both to appreciate the subtleties of each.

Another standout item here is the pulled pork, which I enjoyed with pickled peppers on one of those tremendous pizzas. The barbecue is smoked in-house and infused with a rich favor. And the knish appe-tizer is brilliant! It’s a deconstructed tribute to the Brooklyn classic: two miniature knishes served “open face” so the dough isn’t overpow-ering, topped with a delicious mixture of potatoes and caramel-ized onions, and accompanied by sour cream and spicy deli mustard. Speaking of potatoes, don’t miss the mashed potato side dish, topped with one of the best gravies in the city. Hell, even the humble chicken

burger is good here, thanks to the chef’s decision to use only dark meat to give it more fat and more favor.

There is still room for improve-ment, however. The smoked fsh spread is too mild for my taste, and a little too thick to spread easily. The catfsh, which I had on a sandwich, is perfectly cooked but incredibly bland (making it a great candidate for the excellent house-made hot sauce you’ll fnd on every table). Finally, while I’m told the smoked barbecue wings are a house favorite, they play into a pet peeve of mine: drowning out a barbecue dish’s smoky favor by slathering it in sauce.

Those minor complaints aside, Brooklyn Bowl’s food is head and shoulders above what you’ll fnd at any restaurant or bar that’s even half this cool. Did I mention I love this place?

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UNCORK’D UNWRAPP’D: PRO TIPS FOR NAVIGATING THE GRAND TASTINGAlthough Vegas Uncork’d takes place May 8-11,

the Grand Tasting ($225-$300, VegasUn-

corked.com)—which I affectionately refer to as

the Food Nerd Prom—is the biggest party of

the weekend, and where you’ll find everyone

who’s anyone in the Las Vegas culinary scene.

But trying to battle more than 2,500 other

hungry food lovers around the Garden of the

Gods Pool Oasis at Caesars Palace can be

trying, especially as you’re attempting to juggle

a plastic wine glass and small plate, and still

look suave while eating a molten-hot morsel in

90-degree heat. So here are a few tips to help

you eat and drink your way through the eighth

annual Grand Tasting on May 9:

Set your priorities. Determine whose

food and drinks you need to try, whose

you’d like to try, and whose you are OK

with skipping. There are more than 70

chefs represented here, and while at the

beginning you are positive you can eat your

way through all 70 restaurants, 35 bars and

30 wine stations, well, I don’t mean to doubt

your abilities, but it’s not going to happen.

Seek out new chefs and restaurants.

That is, those that are both new to the

Grand Tasting and new to you. Exciting

additions this year include the effervescent

Giada de Laurentiis and Cake Boss Buddy

Valastro. When they’re at their booths,

expect even longer wait times.

Get there super early. If you really want

to meet your favorite chefs, be one of the

first through the gate at 7:30 p.m., or buck

up the extra $75 that gives you a 30-minute

head start on the general-admission crowd.

For the first hour or so of the festival, if

they’re not doing interviews, chefs are most

likely at their booths and happy to meet you.

After that, they tend to Houdini. And remem-

ber: Play it cool. It might be really exciting to

meet chefs you’ve watched on TV, but don’t

get grabby with Mario Batali, and don’t offer

Gordon Ramsay an absurd amount of money

for him to call you a donkey (he won’t).

Eat a little later than everyone else.

My plan of attack for 2014 is to wait until

around 8:30 or possibly 9 to make my

rounds (I may or may not just be hanging

out drinking until then). I may miss the

chefs at their booths, but by this time,

everyone else has made at least one lap,

and the lines die down considerably. I’ve

also now had a chance to poll others as to

their favorite bites. This is when I swoop in,

grab a plate and eat at my leisure.

Don’t fall in the pool. I’ve never seen it

myself, but I’m sure it’s happened.

Grace Bascos eats, sleeps, raves and repeats.

Read more from Grace at VegasSeven.com/

DishingWithGrace, as well as on her dining-

and-music blog, FoodPlusTechno.com

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Get the latest on local restaurant openings and closings, interviews with top chefs, cocktail recipes, menu previews and more in our weekly “Sips and Bites” newsletter. Subscribe at VegasSeven.com/SipsandBites.

Brooklyn Bowl serves the Brombergs’ original-recipe

fried chicken.

Al’s Menu Picks

Potato and onion knish ($9),

Beach Pizza (pulled pork and

pickled peppers, $15),

Fried chicken ($18 and up)

Mashed potatoes ($6).

BROOKLYN BOWL

In the Linq, 862-2695.

Open for lunch and dinner 11 a.m.–2

a.m. Sun–Thu; 11 a.m.–4 a.m. Fri-Sat.

Dinner for two, $30-$75.

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”WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE between a cook and a chef?” That’s a question those in the culinary world hear frequently. Most people understand that not all cooks deserve the title of chef. (The term technically means “chief.”) But you may not realize that most high-level chefs actually do very little cook-ing. While top chefs have to know how to cook, they spend most of their time managing (something aspiring chefs may want to keep in mind).

The designations and responsibilities within a kitchen aren’t exact, and can vary from place to place. But in any restaurant, the person in absolute charge of the kitchen is the executive chef. In many cases, this is the man or woman who oversees the kitchen from day to day. But in the case of most celebrity chefs, that’s not true. When chefs have numerous restaurants and responsibilities, it’s simply impossible.

Rick Moonen is executive chef of two Las Vegas restaurants in Mandalay Bay, but frequently travels to educate on sus-tainable seafood, and collaborate with other chefs and seafood experts. He sees the role of an executive chef as “hiring, maintaining, embracing and creating

a culture that coincides with your style of cuisine and running a business.” And Moonen says you’d be hard-pressed to fnd him cooking in his restaurants, because he’s experimenting with favors and ingredients elsewhere. “I don’t cook as often in my restaurants as I do at home,” he explains.

Some globetrotting chefs, such as Michael Mina, opt to designate the day-to-day head chef in each of their restaurants as the executive chef. Says Mina’s corporate executive chef Gary LaMorte, “We choose to call our [lo-cal] executive chefs ‘executive chefs’ because, in reality, they are.” Other chefs, including Moonen and Thomas Keller, follow a more traditional French system and designate those chefs as chef de cuisine.

“My job is: food cost, quality and labor,” says Moonen’s chef de cuisine, John Church, somewhat oversimplifying his many daily tasks.

Josh Crain, chef de cuisine at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in the Venetian, describes his job similarly: “Looking at costs and numbers, scheduling, the direction of the kitchen and staffng.” All of these managerial responsibilities

don’t leave a lot of time for cooking. While Church says he makes sure to touch a stove daily (“I’ll lose my mind if I’m not cooking something every day”), Crain says he rarely cooks in his kitchen. “The times [that I cook] are very few and far between,” Crain admits. “This defnitely is more of an orchestrating position.”

The next step down the chef hierar-chy is the sous chef. Most restaurants have several, including an executive sous chef. But guess what? These guys aren’t doing a lot of cooking either.

Matt Alba, executive sous chef at Bouchon, says his duties include “the majority of produce ordering, fsh ordering, meat ordering. [Chef Crain and I] write the schedule together. Occasionally I expedite at dinner. And then I expedite in the morning.” The sous chefs below him are charged with inspecting the pre-meal prep, creating daily or weekly specials, orchestrating the preparation of meals and mentor-ing up-and-coming chefs.

So who’s actually cooking? That task falls to one of the lower levels of the chef hierarchy: the chef de partie. Otherwise known as line cooks, these

are the guys and gals responsible for making most of your meal, assisted by entry-level cooks known as com-mises. Each chef de partie is assigned to a particular station to handle a specifc task, with a sous chef coordi-nating their efforts to make sure all of the parts come together to create the perfect meal.

The Guy Behind the Guy Behind the GuyExamining the hierarchy of a restaurant kitchen

By Al Mancini

SCENE

WHO COOKS WHATHere are a few of the line cooks

actually preparing your food and

what each does. (Many restaurants

will combine certain positions.)

Saucier – Sauces and sautéed items.

Poissonnier – Fish and seafood.

Friturier – Fried foods.

Rotisseur – Roasted/braised meats.

Grillardin – Grilled foods.

Garde Manger – Cold food, including

salads and charcuterie.

Entremetier – Vegetables and soups.

Patissier – Pastries and desserts.

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365 TOKYO—a members-only Japanese-inspired bar Downtown on the second foor

of Inspire—soft-opened April 26 to Inspire members and lucky invited individuals.

“It doesn’t exist; it’s like Area 51,” says Future Restaurant Group owner Michael

Cornthwaite, only somewhat kidding. His new bar does exist, but it seats just eight

members in a tiny room walled in on three sides by limo-tinted glass that hangs over

Fremont Street. Lead barman Seong Ha Lee hales from Seoul, South Korea, but he

spent much of his career in Japan, so guests are greeted with a bow from Lee and his

assistant, then offered a warm, scented towel and a glass of cucumber water before

being presented with the cocktail menu in English, Japanese or Korean. In fact, much

On Tokyo Time of the 365 Tokyo experience is up to the guest: your choice of ice (handchipped sphere,

block or Kold-Draft), base spirit and even mixing technique (layered by density; frozen

into a quick sorbet with liquid nitrogen; smoked a la minute with your choice of wood;

or siphon-infused with your choice of botanicals. Or trust Lee—again, your choice.

Like its skilled mixologist, much of 365 Tokyo’s barware—from the one-of-a-kind

shakers to the mismatched mixing beakers—was imported from Japan. Cornthwaite

says he and his wife, Jennifer, were inspired by the intense degree of “precision,

attention to detail, humility and professionalism” they observed in Japanese bars. But

when Cornthwaite couldn’t fnd in Las Vegas what he experienced overseas, he built

it for himself. Don’t worry if you weren’t tapped for the opening days; memberships

are still available, affording preferential access to Inspire Theater performances,

newsstand discounts and, of course, your ticket to 365 Tokyo. FRGLV.com/365-Tokyo.

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A&E

To that end, in January, Monopoly entered into a yearlong residency at Wynn Las Vegas, in which he’ll appear at Encore Beach Club, Surrender, Tryst and XS on select dates to create pieces live amid the revelers. Unlike traditional DJ residencies, Alec’s ongoing collaboration with the nightlife properties is much more artistic and freewheeling. He works with the Wynn team to choose meaningful dates for him to attend and participate on the fy, to keep an open-ended feeling of creativity. And while it might not seem like painting in a nightclub packed to capacity and thumping with high-decibel beats would be anything like silently tagging an abandoned building in the middle of the night, Monopoly sees the experiences as strikingly similar.

“On the streets, I’m stressed,” he explains. “I’m really on edge: I’m worried about the police; I know I have to be fast. In a club, I’m nervous because I’m worried that I’ll mess up, or that I’ll trip and fall.” (Monopoly works on a platform next to the DJ booth.) He draws off that panic to feed his creative energy—and the vibe doesn’t hurt, either. “I’ve been going to XS for years,” he adds. “It’s my favorite club in the world.” All works Monopoly does live are either pre-sold, destroyed or put at auction for charity.

“The audience is in total awe while watching him work,” says Wynn nightlife impresario Jesse Waits, who frst met Monopoly at Sundance when they collaborated on a pop-up event, and was immediately blown away by his talent. “We were lucky to develop a relationship with him at such an early point in his career. He is a true component of pop culture, and I’m

convinced this is just the beginning of a hugely successful career and overall infuence in the scene itself.”

A decade ago, Monopoly could never have foreseen being up on these kinds of literal and fgurative pedestals. Back then he was just another teen in New York City, trying to emulate idols such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Har-ing, tagging walls and dodging cops. But when the 2008 economic crisis hit, he found inspiration in the Wall Street bigwigs falling from grace in the public eye. “I started painting Bernie Madoff, surrounded by Monopoly money,” he says. “And then I realized that Madoff was just like the Monopoly Man. So I started painting him instead, putting him everywhere around the city.” The combination of Monopoly’s studied skill (he learned photorealistic paint-ing techniques under the tutelage of his artist mother), ubiquitous tagging of “Uncle Pennybags” and smart social commentary made him stand out from New York’s hordes of street artists.

Since then, he’s had a meteoric rise, with two acclaimed gallery shows, an exhibition at Art Basel Miami Beach and high-profle collaborations with Paramount Pictures, Madonna, Diplo and Avicii. Monopoly could easily afford to spend the rest of his life painting canvasses in sunny studios, but that wouldn’t make him happy. “My true passion,” he says, more than once, “is graffti.” By which he means real graffti: the illegal kind.

Monopoly still hits the streets whenever he can, and is often given walls to paint by cities eager to be marked by his unique, geometric signature (the “E” in Alec is made up of three stacked lines, a nod to Basquiat; the “C” is topped with Haring-esque

movement marks), but the thrill of unsanctioned street art that hooked him as a kid is what he seeks out most.

Monopoly only does illegal work in what he calls “positive places”—aban-doned structures or sites that have al-ready been tagged by other artists—and rarely in “clean” cities such as Las Vegas that tend to scrub public graffti before it dries. But he still worries constantly about the police, which is just one of the reasons he’s always photographed with a bandana tied just below his eyes like a dapper Old West bandit. He was arrested a lot when he was young, and doesn’t think he’ll get special treat-ment just because he’s famous now. “If anything,” he says, “they probably want to make an example out of me.”

Although Uncle Pennybags has somewhat ironically made him very wealthy, Monopoly imagines that there will come a day when he lays his namesake character to rest. Many other pop icons, from Twiggy to Robert De Niro to Jack Nicholson, show up repeatedly in his work, and since his fount of inspiration is American culture itself, the possibilities seem endless. “Honestly, I started Mr. Monopoly in response to what was going on [in the economy],” he says. “I never thought it would still be relevant six years later.” His own snowballing relevance, too, is a subject that continues to surprise him. “In my mind,” he laughs, “I’m a nobody just doing my thing.”

ART FOR A CAUSEIn addition to rubbing elbows

with A-list celebrities and

commandeering five-deck yachts for

Art Basel blowouts, Alec Monopoly

lives up to the “sensitive artist”

cliché by partnering with charities

—remember that Fabergé egg?—

every chance his schedule allows.

On May 2, Monopoly will create a live

piece at Hi: Healthy Indulgence, a

collaborative event between Wynn’s

Jesse Waits and Sean Christie, and

Larry Ruvo of Keep Memory Alive

and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo

Center for Brain Health. – U.L.

Art-upy Wall Street: Monopoly became famous by critiquing

economic inequality.

IN 2008, MIKE BIRBIGLIA did something that few modern comics try anymore: He went long. His off-Broadway show Sleepwalk With Me saw him tease out his usual awkwardness-based stand-up into a one-man performance that would eventually be developed into a 2012 movie of the same name.

Birbiglia followed that up with 2013’s My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, another long-form piece, which amped up his baseline awkward to showing-up-naked-for-class-on-test-day-while-your-crush-points-and-laughs levels.

Now, he’s taking a step back with Thank God for Jokes at The Mirage’s Aces of Comedy on May 3. It’s a more traditional stand-up set whose name harkens back to when he wanted to be a priest “for ridiculous reasons.” Nothing about the call of religion, or spreading the word: It’s just that old Father Patterson used to get cheap laughs from a captive audience. Like being a cruise-ship act, but with a terrible buffet.

Sleepwalk evolved from Birbiglia’s background as a playwright. A friend convinced him it was the best way to get onstage both as an actor and a writer. It helped usher along his penchant for fnding theme and arc in stand-up, which set the stage for Girlfriend. Now those genre-stretching efforts are second nature. The new material in Thank God evolved a loose theme about the way jokes can both bind and alienate—painfully familiar territory to anyone who’s had everyday banter take a turn into a deadly social minefeld.

“It’s the ultimate feeling of being misunderstood,” Birbiglia says. “I was at this restaurant, and this hostess said, ‘I wanted to come to your show, but I’m in college and broke.’ I felt bad for her and said, ‘This conversation is funnier than anything you’ll see onstage tonight.’ She said, ‘I have a boyfriend.’”

If you don’t die a little bit inside reading that, then you were probably one of the popular kids in high school.

Which is an elusive quality, popularity. Birbiglia has built his slowly over the years, but he’s poised to play in a couple of upcoming movies—aside from the planned adaptation of Girlfriend—that will goose his screen exposure. He has

a small part in the Jamie Foxx version of Annie, and he’s in The Fault in Our Stars, the forthcoming June movie adaptation of the young-adult bestseller.

The Mirage stop is Birbiglia’s frst time in town. He might be

a little nervous. “Concerned that I don’t have Vegas-y fans,” he tweeted. “But join me. It’ll be weird. Together.”

“I’m apprehensive no one shows up. It’s a place that has so many entertainment options. If they don’t show up, it means they were open to being entertained, but just not by me,” he says. “Last week I played New Orleans; this week I play Las Vegas. It’s the quintessential non-Mike Birbiglia town. It’s all about partying and celebration and excitement. I’m very excited about Vegas. The more I learn about the various replica cities, the more excited I am. Plus, I like playing blackjack.”

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STAND-UP WITH METhe comic king of awkward will play The Mirage ...

and he’s worried you won’t show

By Jason Scavone

MIKE BIRBIGLIA 8 p.m. May 3,

Terry Fator Theatre

at The Mirage, $44,

702-792-7777.

HOLLYWOOD YEARS ARE LIKE DOG YEARS, which means 17 years is a long time. Seventeen years ago Cameron Diaz played the chipper second banana, the other woman, in the Julia Roberts vehicle My Best Friend’s Wedding. While that movie really belonged to Rupert Everett, the sunny goodwill fying out of every single one of Diaz’s pores cast a nice warm glow over the Chicago-flmed diversion.

Diaz has long since proven she can tackle various leading roles, and in the unsteady revenge comedy The Other Woman Diaz fnds herself running the show in a Sarah Jessica Parker Sex and the City sort of way. It lies at the mid-point between the black-comic nasti-ness of a Bad Teacher (which she was in) and the raunchy but sweet realm of a good, blessedly female-driven ensemble project such as Bridesmaids (which she was not). Written by new-comer Melissa K. Stack, The Other Woman offers roughly equal parts wit and witlessness, casual smarts and jokes, lingering and detailed, regard-ing explosive bowel movements. Based on that ratio, I’d say the screenwriter’s future in Hollywood looks pretty good.

Re-rated PG-13, down from an R on appeal, the flm stars Diaz (the blonde one) along with Leslie Mann (the blonde one) and Kate Upton (the blonde one). Carly Whitten, the Diaz character, is a high-fying Manhattan attorney two months into a romance with a new man (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, a Game of Thrones regular and graduate of the Ewan McGregor School of Charismatic Smarm). His money, suspicious in its origins, comes from something to do with startup companies and websites. Visiting Mark’s Connecticut home one night dressed as a stripper-plumber, Carly learns her beau is married, though Mark remains unaware that the women in his life are getting hep to his hectic step. Mark’s wife, Kate (Mann), and Carly form an alliance once they realize the weasel is weaseling with a

third, younger, va-voomier specimen (Upton), whom they also recruit.

Where does it go from there? All over the place. As these three become one and hatch their revenge schemes, half-heartedly, the movie—directed by Nick Cassavetes in an ever-shifting variety of tones and styles—attempts to deliver a little something for everyone. Pathos: Mann in wrenching close-up, in bed, as she realizes her marriage is shot. Fashion: Sex and the City costume designer Patricia Field throws every thread she can at her photogenic triad, breaking just short of drag-queen ter-ritory. Alcohol: There is a lot of drink-ing in this movie, in the neighbor-hood of Leaving Las Vegas intake levels, though without the fatal side effects.

A 20th Century Fox promotional Twitter account recently encouraged the flm’s target audience: “grab the

girls, book ur tickets & let us know what you think!” Many flms come to mind watching this one, among them Working Girl (Nicki Minaj, the rapper/singer, glides through the role of Carly’s assistant) and The First Wives Club. The repartee ranges from leisurely discussions of personal landscaping to faintly hypocritical soul-searching regarding love and fulfllment. Primarily the movie is selling teeth and clothing. Still, line to line, it’s fresher than any number of guy-centric Hangover-spawned affairs, despite director Cassavetes’ lack of fair for slapstick. Diaz remains a game physical comic even when her two-headed flm’s asking no more of her than to dance, or stumble into some bushes.

The Other Woman (PG-13) ★★★✩✩

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SHORT REVIEWS By Tribune Media Services

REVENGE À TROIS

Diaz, Mann and Upton

unite against a cheater

By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services

A&E

Brick Mansions (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩ For this remake of the French parkour thriller

District 13, editor-turned-director Camille

Delamarre (Taken 2, Transporter 3) drops

frames and jump-cuts his way through the

fights, chases and parkour stunts of this

picture, giving the action a jagged, nervy edge.

Paul Walker’s best moments have him doing a

deadpan double take at some impossible stunt

David Belle’s Lino has just pulled off. And

moments like that, even in a dumb movie, add

a little sting to the loss of Walker’s amiable,

sincere screen presence—a nice guy who

always made a convincingly righteous dude.

The Railway Man (R) ★★★✩✩ Eric Lomax’s memoir gave this half-good,

half-fraudulent film adaptation its title. It’s

more of a homefront war story, focusing

on the strain Lomax’s marriage underwent

because of everything in his wartime past.

The Railway Man is about the rehabilitation of

a broken man (played by Colin Firth), largely

through the persistence and the efforts of his

wife, intent on unlocking the anguished riddle

before her. As Lomax, Firth is marvelous

throughout. And in the wartime sequences,

Lomax in his 20s is played well and truly by a

shrewdly matched Jeremy Irvine.

Transcendence (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩

Transcendence—a.k.a. The Computer Wore

Johnny Depp’s Tennis Shoes—offers the

same excitement as listening to hold

music on a call to tech support. Like much

speculative fiction, Transcendence is in thrall

to technology even as it warns of unleashed

AI. Depp, who Skypes in his performance,

plays Dr. Will Caster. He and his researcher

wife (Rebecca Hall) have pioneered AI

experiments, bringing the human race to

“transcendence,” the ability to imbue a

computer with the personality of a human.

Oculus (R) ★★★✩✩ Longer on chills than entrails, this crafty

horror film is about a haunted mirror.

Certainly writer-director Mike Flanagan has

learned the virtues of a simple idea, fruitfully

elaborated. The script takes the time to make

us care about a brother and a sister we

meet in flashback, then 11 years later. In the

prologue, young Kaylie (Annalise Basso) and

Tim (Garrett Ryan) are beset in their home

by ... we’re not sure, exactly. The mirror

did it! Referencing The Shining and The

Stepfather, Oculus lacks a big finish. It does

not, however, lack for sequel possibilities.

MOVIES

Three blondes (Mann, Diaz and Upton), one comedy.

Noah (PG-13) ★★★✩✩

Darren Aronofsky’s strange and often rich

Noah deserves better handling than a plainly

nervous Paramount Pictures has given it. This

Noah, played with steely purpose by Russell

Crowe, is a flawed, angry and murderously

conflicted man just trying to do his job: listen

to the Creator; prepare for the cleansing, an-

nihilating flood; fulfill his mission and then live

with the emotional consequences. The movie

is unpredictable, which is saying something,

and it argues rather sweetly that if we had

just listened to Noah, we’d all be more careful

stewards of the only planet we’ve got.

Frankie & Alice (R) ★★✩✩✩ True cases of people suffering from

multiple-personality disorders are

harrowing. So it’s a shame that the movies

have rendered such rarities humdrum and

routine. But actors just love the idea of

slinging several accents during the course

of a film. Halle Berry certainly did. That

goes a long way in explaining Frankie &

Alice, a long-shelved 2010 melodrama

“based on true events.” And Berry, winner

of an Oscar for Monster’s Ball, treats this

showcase for what it is—an acting exercise,

and a fairly broad one.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (PG-13) ★★★✩✩

This is a better-than-average Marvel

superhero bash, intriguingly plotted and

clever in its speculations about 21st-

century life for Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain

America, as he contends with contemporary

geopolitics. There is no “just enough” in

today’s computer-generated Marvel marvels;

there is only “too much.” And there’s an

element of hypocrisy in this film, which

bemoans America’s bloodthirsty, weapons-

mad impulses even as it offers an obscene

body count for fun and profit.

Dom Hemingway (R) ★★ ✩✩ In this facile, Guy Ritchie-esque crime

jape, Jude Law plays a London safecracker

of insatiable appetites and Olympian self-

regard. Writer-director Richard Shepard

(The Matador) introduces Dom in prison,

near the end of a 12-year sentence. Once

out of prison—he took the fall for his

underworld employer, a Russian assassin

played by Demian Bichir—Dom is hellbent

on settling old scores. Visually, the film

is as loud as Law’s performance. The

material: limited payoff; the performer at

the center: never less than arresting.

Rio 2 (G) ★★✩✩✩ The 2011 hit Rio was a baby sitter. And

so is Rio 2, a routine sequel following the

perilous adventures of the blue macaws

Blu (clever character name), Jewel and

their offspring as they leave urban Rio life

for a chaotic trip to Amazon rain-forest

country. The movie is heavy machinery

of a different kind. Directed by Carlos

Saldanha, Rio 2 offers the same approach

to story and to story clutter as did the first

movie. Sergio Mendes returns to oversee

the music, which is pretty tasty. The

movie’s an acceptable, if tiring, baby sitter.

Draft Day (PG-13) ★★★✩✩ Draft Day feels like a play, in the same

way J.C. Chandor’s 2011 Margin Call felt

that way. Set mostly in a series of offices

across 13 hours in a pressure-cooked

day, the film lives and dies on the low-key,

take-it-easy spectacle of Kevin Costner

maneuvering through an administrative

obstacle course, crises intermingling with

draft-pick opportunities. Costner plays

the (fictional) general manager of the

Cleveland Browns. Costner’s range as an

actor remains an open question, but he

carries the movie easily and well.

You reached the pinnacle in the stand-up business more than two decades ago. What motivates you to continue to go onstage?

I love what I do. A long time ago, Spike Lee said, “The greatest thing is to fnd what you love and do it every day.” And I found what I love, whether it’s onstage at Vinyl or in concert in [bigger] theaters or doing a movie like Blue Jasmine. It’s what I do—it’s what I was meant to do as a human being.

Your book, titled The Filthy Truth, is due out later this year. Why was now the right time to write a memoir?

When my career took off, I was offered every kind of deal, including book deals. And back then, I was like, “What am I going to write a book about? I just made it six months ago.” You know, Hollywood’s a crazy place, I gotta tell ya. So the management would say, “Do the book. Put out the book.” And I was never money-hungry like that. Obviously, anybody likes having a lot of money—to say I don’t like having money is stupid. But it was never the goal. The goal was accomplishment, and at that time, I had just made it and I felt, “Well, there is no story yet.” So now, 35 years into a career, there’s something to write about.

What will your fans learn in the book that they don’t already know?

A lot of things—a lot of personal things. A lot of what I went through emotionally on- and off-stage. It’s been an emotional roller coaster. But what I’m happy about is how I’ve kept it all together. I never gave up on romance just because a couple of marriages didn’t work out. A lot of people get married one time, and if it doesn’t work out, they’re like, “Fuck this. I’m never getting married again.”

You know, there are two sides to me: You’ve got a very moralistic guy who loves family, wife, children—grounded, from Brooklyn. But then there’s the leather-jacket-wearing, cigarette-smoking, foulmouthed, womanizing animal, which is the other side of me. I even do jokes onstage—I say [to the audience], “My wife can’t trust me; why would she trust me? I’m not trustable. I walk through the casino, I see five girls, I

want to stick out my dick like shish kabob.” It’s just who I am as a human. Now, I don’t go and do it—that is a side of me that I try not to unleash. But I have in the past. I know me that well.

What’s your best piece of advice for an aspiring comedian?

Be original. Don’t worry what other comics are doing. Because it’s a very tough business, and most of them fail. Like my son, Max, he does stand-up … but he doesn’t walk in my shadow at all. He has his own persona. It’s nothing like what I do. But the one thing I always talk to him about is, “You owe it to yourself to do the kind of material you want to do, but be original in how you do it. Because if you fail, at least you know you did it the way you wanted to.” … You don’t want to fail and go, “Fuck, maybe if I was myself rather than sort of impersonating another performer, I would’ve got there.”

You’re obviously known for your blue humor. Are there any clean comics you admire?

Jerry Seinfeld. He’s the one clean comic I can sit and watch, because he’s meticulous—every word is perfect. He’s a genius with that. And he knows it; I’ve told him. There’s nobody who can touch him. He really is phenomenal.

I’ve actually heard him slip a few four-letter words into his act recently.

You know what? He should. He’s got to loosen up. I love Jerry. See, that would be interesting to me, to have the cleanest guy in the world and the dirtiest, and we do a little tour called something like, “Clean vs. Dirty.”

Who opens that show?We’d have an opener. But I

guarantee you Seinfeld would not—there’s not a comic on earth who could follow what I do. But he could certainly come out and do an hour before me and kill a crowd. P

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Andrew Dice ClayThe foulmouthed comic on the appeal of performing

in a small venue, the two sides of his persona and

the one clean comedian he respects

By Matt Jacob

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You’re in the midst of your second year with a periodic residency in Vinyl at the Hard Rock Hotel. Why was this a good career move for you?

After you do 12 million people as a live performer, there’s really nothing to prove as far as big rooms. And today my career is a lot different. I made what they say is a great comeback, all the way from [appearing regularly on] Entourage through my Showtime special, Indestructible, through [appearing in] Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, which is basically

Woody’s biggest movie ever. So I’m very comfortable with the new career. It’s sort of the kind of career I always wanted, because I always loved the acting stuff. But I love the live performing, too, because I have millions of fans, and playing a place like Vinyl is great. It’s a smaller room, it’s an intimate room, but it’s very rock ’n’ roll.

The way I feel, I put out the same energy wherever I am. But to do it in front of 300 or 400 people gives me more satisfaction. I get to really play with the crowds.

ANDREW DICE CLAY

performs in Vinyl at the Hard

Rock Hotel at 9 p.m. May

1, 2 and 4. For tickets and

additional show dates, visit

HardRockHotel.com/Vinyl.

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