What ever happened to good old-fashioned, get-your-hands-dirty work?

This canned American life
What ever happened to good old-fashioned, get-your-hands-dirty work?

By Garrison Keillor

Sept. 28, 2005 | People tell me I work too hard, but I don’t work nearly so hard as my mother did, raising six children, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes and hanging them out on the line, and then there was the late-summer orgy of canning. We scoured the garden for every last tomato, string bean, ear of corn, cucumber. The kitchen was a boiler room. Billows of steam from the pressure cooker, teakettles boiling — hot water to skin the tomatoes! Boiling water to sterilize the glass jars! Children chopping and slicing! Mother slaving away, her hair damp as if she’d swum the Channel, sterilizing, steaming, aware that one little mistake could mean a jar full of botulism — “Clostridium botulinum,” which is Latin for “pushing up daisies.” One jar of stewed tomatoes gone bad could wipe out our whole family.

But she plowed forward and fulfilled her quotas, 100 jars of tomatoes, 50 of beans, 20 of corn, plus beets and corn relish, in elegant Ball jars with the name “Ball” in cursive writing on the side, all lined up on deep shelves in the basement, and then she cleared the kitchen so she could start fixing supper.

Today, home canning has gone the way of the typewriter, the vacuum tube and the TV variety show. The Ball company sold off its jar division and now makes satellite sensors or something, and groceries stock fresh tomatoes all winter, imported from Mexico, which cost a buck apiece and taste more like tennis balls than tomatoes. But at least you don’t have to stand in a steamy kitchen and ruin your hairdo.

Mother canned vegetables to please my father, who tucked into his stewed tomatoes satisfied that we had outsmarted the supermarket cartels scheming to sell us inferior stuff at exorbitant prices. He was a resistant consumer who instinctively distrusted all advertising, believing the world was full of con men, and you had to outsmart them by growing your own food, slaughtering your own chickens, shopping around for cheap clothes, reading the Bible and paying no attention to theologians, and sticking to Ford automobiles.

I think of him and his brothers and cousins, taciturn country men who were good with their hands and loved to get under the hood of a ’53 Ford, their big rumps in the air, heads and shoulders down next to the engine block. They were proud of their good carpentry, their gardens and orchards, the concrete steps and sidewalks they had mixed and poured and smoothed with a two-by-four. I set myself apart from them as a boy, thinking their work dull, preferring the swashbuckling life of a writer — Brilliance! Wit! Triumph! And gradually it dawns on me these fall days when I get to go into the woods and put on work gloves and cut my own firewood, that in search of brilliance I also found a great deal of B.S. as I went careering around and flaunting my great intellect in long meetings at which we may as well have been dropping clothespins into bottles for all the good we did, compared to which cutting firewood is useful work.

Ambition can take you far, but who are you when you get there?

I know plenty of people who could work up an expensive marketing plan to persuade you that having a doohickey is crucial to your well-being, and I know nobody personally who could build a stone wall or mill timber or drill a well. It’s odd, but that’s the world we live in. Here’s Northwest Airlines, a good Minnesota company hijacked by corporate buccaneers in the go-go ’80s and now stiffing its mechanics, hard-working people who actually know how to do something right.

We’re not so different from the English gentry who settled on the Minnesota prairie in the 1870s and expended their capital to build a hunt club, a boating club, an Anglican church, and a brewery to produce ale and porter. Unfortunately, they didn’t know how to plant wheat. They didn’t scatter the seed; they knelt down and pressed it into the ground, one at a time. The grasshoppers wiped them out clean. Their land was bought cheap by peasant Swedes from Småland who did much better. They baked the grasshoppers in a crust and called it pecan pie. They put their shoulders to the wheel and hammered and cut and made a life with their own hands.

Beware of losing basic skills. Hang on to that pressure cooker.

(Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)

© 2005 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc

HIGH COURT TAKES ANNA NICOLE

HIGH COURT TAKES ANNA NICOLE

MRS. Smith is going to Washington. The decade-long legal battle by boobalicious blonde Anna Nicole Smith over the estate of her late billionaire husband has made its way to the nation’s highest court.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the one-time Playboy pinup’s appeal over her share of the estate of J. Howard Marshall II sometime early next year, reports The Post’s Lukas I. Alpert.

The 1993 Playmate of the Year-turned-reality-TV star has been engaged in a brass-knuckled fight with Marshall’s son, E. Pierce Marshall, since the Texas oil tycoon died in 1995 at the age of 90.

The pair met in 1991 when Anna Nicole — then Vickie Lynn Hogan — was working as a topless dancer in Texas.

She became a favorite of the wheelchair-bound baron 63 years her senior who gave her millions in jewelry, paid for her cosmetic augmentations and repeatedly asked her to marry him. She agreed in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89.

At stake is an eye-popping $474 million, which a federal bankruptcy judge awarded the sex-obsessed siren in 2000. The figure was dropped in 2002 to $88.6 million on appeal.

But the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco threw it out altogether in 2004, saying federal courts have no jurisdiction over the rulings of a state probate court — in this case, one in Texas that had found in Pierce Marshall’s favor.

Anna Nicole accuses Pierce of destroying key documents before his father died, illegally taking control of the estate and writing her out of the will. He paints her as a drug-addled bimbo who took advantage of his father’s poor health to get at his money. They have even battled over what to do with the elder Marshall’s ashes.

Smith insists her husband intended to provide for her throughout her life. Her lawyer, Ken Richland, accuses the younger Marshall of a vindictive smear campaign, saying that he “devotes nearly half his brief to manipulating the record to cast [Anna Nicole] in a bad light.”

Marshall vows to fight the case tooth and nail. “This is one small step in a process and we intend to prevail so my father’s wishes can be honored,” he says.

Copyright. N.Y. Post All Rights Reserved

“The Hammer.”

Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, talks to reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday after resigning as House majority leader.

By Michael Scherer

Sept. 29, 2005 | At its height, the first great political machine of the 21st century worked like this: In Congress, Texas Rep. Tom DeLay controlled the votes like a modern-day Boss Tweed. He called himself “the Hammer.” His domain included a vast network of former aides and foot soldiers he installed in key positions at law firms and trade groups, a network that came to be called the “K Street Project.” He gathered tithes in the form of campaign cash, hard and soft, and spread it out among the loyal. He legislated for favored donors. He punished those who disobeyed, and bought off those who could be paid.

Conservative activists, who had grown up in the heady days of Reagan’s America, patrolled the badlands of American politics for new opportunities. None did it better than Jack Abramoff, a former president of the College Republicans, who had a taste for expensive suits. Abramoff opened a restaurant, Signatures, where the powerful came to be seen and, in many cases, treated to free meals from a menu that included $74 steaks. He pulled in tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes and the Northern Marianas Islands to help fund other operations — skyboxes at the MCI Center where DeLay could hold his fundraisers and all-expense trips to Scotland where DeLay and friends could play golf.

Others were drawn into the web as well. Abramoff kicked down money to his old college buddy Grover Norquist, an anti-tax crusader whose role was to keep the right-wing ideologues in line. He hired Ralph Reed, a former advisor to the Christian Coalition, who helped keep the religious right on good terms with the Republican leadership. He hired Michael Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay, as his assistant. He leaned on former lobbying colleagues, like David Safavian, who was working in the Bush administration and could do favors for his clients. Susan Ralston, Abramoff’s former gatekeeper and executive assistant, went to work for Karl Rove in the White House.

For a while, the whole operation seemed unstoppable. DeLay, Abramoff, Norquist, Reed and Rove vanquished their Democratic opponents, winning election after election. The loyalty that ensued allowed for a historic cohesion in Congress. Tax breaks passed like clockwork, as did subsidies for favored industries and cuts to long-standing Democratic initiatives. The Democratic Party, which had ruled Capitol Hill for half a century, imploded in confusion.

But the machine may now be coming to an end. The prosecutors have arrived, and they are handing out indictments at a blistering rate. “It’s a house of cards,” says Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Jack Abramoff has been the ace of spades, but Tom DeLay has been linked arm in arm with him.” Now the house is on the brink of collapse, he added. “Everything that surrounded the K Street Project and what flowed from it … all of that is under intense pressure.”

On Wednesday, DeLay was indicted with two aides by a Texas grand jury, accused of flouting campaign finance laws by illegally sending corporate funds to GOP candidates in the state. Two months ago, Abramoff was arrested and charged with fraud in connection with a casino deal in Florida. On Tuesday, two employees of a company owned by Abramoff were charged with murdering the casino’s former owner. Last week, the feds arrested David Safavian, who has been working in the White House, on charges of lying to investigators about a trip to Scotland with DeLay and Abramoff. Scanlon, the former DeLay aide who worked with Abramoff, is said to be cooperating with investigators, who are likely to file even more charges.

For those who have followed the machine from its inception, these developments are striking. “It represents the beginning of the end of an era,” said Vic Fazio, a Democratic lobbyist at the law firm Akin, Gump and a former California congressman. “A powerful group of people who had consolidated their power in the mid- to late 1990s is now vulnerable to legal attack.”

Even some conservatives have begun to distance themselves. “The Tom DeLay machine that he built, there were corruptive elements to it,” said Stephen Moore, a longtime conservative activist who sat at the head table at a recent dinner celebrating DeLay’s career. Moore, who founded the Free Enterprise Fund, still describes himself as a “Tom DeLay fan,” who considers the congressman a “conservative hero.” But he has misgivings as well. “All of these guys getting rich off this process rubs some conservatives the wrong way,” Moore said. “It’s going to be difficult for Tom to recover from this no matter what happens.”

Though DeLay may not recover, his machine has not yet collapsed entirely. Late Wednesday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert appointed Rep. Roy Blunt, the Republican whip from Missouri and a disciple of DeLay, as the new majority leader. Republicans, meanwhile, began working to portray the torrent of indictments as politically motivated charges against one individual. “Tom DeLay is a tremendous public servant,” said Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, in a statement. “It is our sincere hope that justice will remain blind to politics.” DeLay also lashed out, as is his fashion, saying he was a victim of “one of the most baseless indictments in American history.”

Perhaps the best news for Republicans is the relative disorganization of the Democratic Party, which remains weakened after the 2004 elections and lacking a unified message. Democratic politicians, like Rep. William Jefferson, of Louisiana, and Rep. Maxine Waters, of California, also face their own ethical scandals. As one congressional Republican, Arizona’s Rep. Jeff Flake, boasted in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, “endemic Democratic ineptitude makes Republicans more attractive when graded on a curve.”

But even if the collapse of Abramoff and the weakening of DeLay does not end the Republican reign, it will at least expose its workings. For years now, Republicans across Washington have been scratching each other’s backs as they march in lockstep with a unified message. With each release of a subpoenaed e-mail, and every new indictment, more information about the workings of the machine — and the money that was its lifeblood — comes to light.

In recent weeks, for instance, Timothy Flanigan, a former attorney in the Bush White House, has been answering questions from Congress about his relationship to Abramoff. Flanigan, who has been nominated as deputy attorney general, went to work for the Bermuda-based corporation Tyco after he left the White House. Once there, he hired Abramoff as a lobbyist to reach out to Karl Rove on a tax issue. According to a report in the Washington Post, Abramoff boasted to Flanigan that “he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove” and that Rove could help fight a legislative proposal that would penalize U.S. companies that had moved offshore. Flanigan oversaw a $2 million payment to Abramoff for a related letter-writing campaign that never materialized. Flanigan says the money was diverted into other “entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff.”

The charges surrounding DeLay also concern the misuse of money. The former majority leader is charged with raising $190,000 in 2002 from several major corporations, including Sears Roebuck, the Williams Companies and Bacardi USA. The indictment alleges that DeLay conspired to funnel that money through the Republican National Committee into seven Texas state campaign accounts, where he was helping Republican candidates as part of his effort to redraw Texas voting districts. If the charge is proven, DeLay and his associates would have violated a Texas campaign finance law that prohibits corporate donations to local races.

The ability of DeLay and Abramoff to collect and distribute enormous sums of money was always a key to their success. They used the money to buy friends and crush enemies. They used the money to fund the Republican revolution. As Abramoff told the New York Times in March, “Eventually, money wins in politics.”

Those words form a perfect epitaph for a political machine gone awry.

“The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio”

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio”
Julianne Moore’s ’50s-era housewife digs beneath the stereotypes and reminds us that before feminism was a movement, it was a vibe of self-determination.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Sept. 28, 2005 | In a world where so many moms juggle jobs and babies, working out impossible pie charts for how much of their time, energy or soul they need to devote to each in a given day, the ’50s housewife often seems like a faded image from some long-ago cave painting. Because we can hardly imagine what her life must have been like, it’s often difficult to make out her distinguishing characteristics: We see her as a pitiable creature who never realized her intellectual potential, an idealized superhero who kept a spotless house and put a good meal on the table every night, or an enviable, coddled airhead who didn’t know how good she had it. And sometimes we see her as a jumble of all three.

“The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” is based on the true story of ’50s-era housewife Evelyn Ryan (played by Julianne Moore), a mother of 10 who kept her family fed, clothed and housed on the money and prizes she won in advertising-jingle contests. (The script was adapted from the memoir of the same name, written by Evelyn’s daughter Terry.) Evelyn’s husband, Kelly (Woody Harrelson), loves his wife and kids — this is established early on, as we see him stop by his infant son’s highchair to give him a swig from his baby bottle. But he is, for reasons that are explained in the movie and yet are still not fully explicable, a crushed man.

Kelly is employed as a machine worker, but he drinks much of his income away, and spends his evenings throwing noisy, sometimes violent tantrums that alarm Evelyn and scare the kids: These outbursts represent his thinly disguised resentment at the fact that his wife brings in more money than he does, and is obviously smarter, too. “You know what your problem is?” he says to her at one point, from within his bubble of bleary-eyed rage. “You’re too damn happy.” The whole family looks at him blankly, at first unable to process his peculiar logic and then realizing how howlingly funny it is. They all laugh, and he does, too: He at least has a sense of humor about his own misery.

Evelyn, on the other hand, is persistently cheerful and capable, running her household efficiently on pennies a day while managing to dole out acceptable proportions of attention and affection to each of her kids. The doorbell rings (it’s the milkman, whom she doesn’t have the money to pay), and she scoops up the infant whose diaper she’s just changed and rushes to the door, followed by two little girls who have just washed their hands — they follow her mindlessly and cheerfully, like barnyard chicks, drying their mitts on the back of her dress as if that were its intended purpose.

Terry Ryan’s book was clearly intended as a daughter’s tribute to a remarkable mother. But the writer and director of “Prize Winner,” Jane Anderson (who wrote the hugely entertaining and surprisingly multilayered HBO-movie “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom”), is going for something more than mere beatification. The picture is occasionally, and intentionally, cartoonish: At several points, we see two Evelyns on-screen, one tending to the hustle and bustle of her family, the other addressing the camera directly, explaining the whats and wherefores of “contesting” and how she uses her wit with words to keep her family supplied with things they need. Just as one of the kids announces that the toaster is broken, a sparkling new one (enhanced by a CGI twinkle) appears in the hands of Evelyn the narrator. She hands it briskly to the back of the frame, where Evelyn the character accepts it with businesslike gratitude.

I laughed at that little bit of whimsy, but I worried that the rest of the picture might have too much of that self-conscious gleam. And it is self-conscious in places, particularly when Anderson has to wrap up the movie’s big “You can do anything you set your mind to do!” message.

And yet even though “Prize Winner” ultimately asks us to swallow that golfball-size happy pill, Anderson and her not-so-secret weapon Moore are actually clawing their way toward something deeper and far more complex than a cheerful, embroidered slogan. The ’50s housewife in that cave painting in our heads is an unenlightened mouse who didn’t dare, or have the means, to take charge of her own life. And yet Anderson, without being in any way revisionist, suggests the laziness of that kind of thinking. Before feminism was a movement, it was a vibe of self-determination, a way of taking care of the business around you — a home, a husband, children, or all of those things — with efficiency and confidence.

Of course, martyrdom and self-sacrifice come with that package, too, and no matter how much Evelyn does for her family, at every turn she has to give up something she really wants just because little Johnny needs her for something or other. But even though Evelyn earns our sympathy immediately, Anderson has clearly written her with the intent that we should never condescend to her. And as Moore plays her, we never feel the need to. In one scene, we see Kelly being subdued by the police, who have been called after he’s made a ruckus in the kitchen, bashing in the top of the large freezer Evelyn has just won. The cops yak with him, manly-like, chatting about baseball scores, and everything seems to be OK. But Evelyn, as a good Catholic, wants to confer with her parish priest about the incident.

So she sits down with him and explains some of her frustrations: Kelly works hard, but he doesn’t bring home enough of the money; he’s emotionally — and, the suggestion is made more than once, physically — abusive when he’s drunk.

The priest listens patiently, and then suggests how hard it must be for Kelly to carry the responsibility for supporting all those kids. “Try to make him a good home,” the priest urges, adding what he surely believes is a comforting footnote: “No one ever said that life is easy.”

Moore’s Evelyn listens to him as he speaks, taking it all in with openhearted earnestness. But when he gets to that line, the camera captures the change that shades her face. Her eyes, which just an instant ago were alert, intelligent, and sparkling from somewhere deep inside her, take on a cold, flat blackness. Something inside her has shut off: Suddenly, we realize that she long ago saw through the lie of the happy housewife, and now here’s a man of the cloth, sitting at her own table, trying to feed her a line of baloney. That’s a lot for an actress to pack into one look, but it’s all there.

Evelyn doesn’t challenge him, but she doesn’t need to. She sees the underlying menace in his cluelessness about the way real people — real women — live. Her skill at jingle writing is the sort of thing we might laugh at, a silly talent that she happens to have cultivated. But the whole phenomenon of jingle-writing contests suggests that those old-time advertising men knew that housewives had something invaluable: These women could speak for, and to, their peers. Why not harness them as cheap labor, for the price of a new toaster or coffee pot or all-expenses-paid trip for two to New York City?

But for Evelyn, and for the clever coterie of fellow jingle contestants she eventually meets (a ring of housewives led by the breezily sharp Laura Dern), the joke is on the menfolk. Who’s more gullible: housewives who might be potentially swayed by a catchy advertising slogan, or men who need to believe in the stupidity and inferiority of those women? And so when Evelyn faces that priest, his genial hypocrisy hits her like the insult it is. She refuses to countenance it, instead maintaining her polite, cheerful facade. Meanwhile, he walks away believing he’s done a service to humanity — he’s just been sold a line of goods by an unassuming housewife, and he doesn’t even have the brains to see it. Of the two of them, he’s the one who probably really believes that Dash makes his washer 10 feet tall.

Keith Richards Destroys His Knighthood Chances

Keith Richards Destroys His Knighthood Chances

Keith Richards has ended his chances of receiving a knighthood like band mate Sir Mick Jagger after declaring he “could kill” British royal Prince Phillip. The Rolling Stones guitarist was unimpressed when frontman Jagger was knighted in December 2003, saying at the time, “I told Mick it’s a paltry honour … It’s not what the Stones is about, is it?” Nearly two years later, Richards is adamant he doesn’t want a knighthood, declaring the honour “b**locks”. Richards says, “Ah, the Queen I like her. God bless her. The old man (Prince Phillip), I could kill! “But no, f**k off. They didn’t offer it to me because they knew I’d turn it down. It’s b**locks. You have to kneel and I’m not going to kneel for anyone. “Anyway the Queen didn’t do Mick – Charlie (Prince Charles) did. “Mick came to me and said, ‘Tony Blair insists I accept this.’ And I said, ‘Well, you can always turn it down.’ You know, Mick wanted one, so he got one. They’re not going to f**k with me. They’re not my sort.” (wenn

The Fix

The Fix
Laura Bush, Anna Nicole Smith prepare for their close-ups. Affleck for senator? Plus: Indie royalty wed.

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Sept. 28, 2005  |  Morning Briefing:
Two desperate housewives, one current, one former: In what seems kind of like a desperate gambit to restore some of her husband’s lost approval-rating numbers, Laura Bush has agreed to appear on a special Katrina-themed episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” The home makeover show is heading to Biloxi, Miss., to stage a delivery of relief materials like mattresses and pants, and the first lady will be on hand, though no one seems quite sure what she’ll do. “I think we say, ‘Mrs. Bush, the stuff is over here, the people are over there, could you grab the other end of that mattress?’” said the show’s executive producer, Tom Forman. Bush press secretary Susan Whitson had in mind something more like handing out clothing and hugs. But the White House isn’t the only branch of government looking to polish its image a bit: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Anna Nicole Smith’s ongoing case claiming up to $474 million from the estate of J. Howard Marshall II, the oil tycoon she married in 1994 (when he was 89 and she was 26). Since Marshall died in 1995, his son has been fighting to keep the family money out of Smith’s hands. The case has wandered through several courts already, and now the Playboy bunny turned reality TV fixture will be appearing before the high court. “She’s very excited. She will be attending arguments, there’s no question about that,” said Smith’s lawyer, Howard K. Stern. (Seattle Times via Drudge, Yahoo! News)

And many “Benator” jokes were made: Ben Affleck insists, or at least his people do, that there is nothing to the rumors that Virginia Democrats are pushing him to run against Republican Sen. George Allen in next year’s elections. As the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, “Why, who should happen to be pondering a move to Thomas Jefferson country but a certain square-jawed media magnet with a taste for liberal politics and millions to spend on it … Ben Affleck!” Affleck and his wife, Jennifer Garner, were seen driving around rural Virginia looking at houses. But what some thought was a potential house-hunting trip was just a fun weekend for the couple, nothing more, according to Affleck’s spokesman, Ken Sunshine. And while Sunshine denies the Senate rumors, he still thinks his client “would be a superb candidate for public office in the future. Right now, he’s very busy directing his first feature movie for Disney, ‘Gone, Baby, Gone.’” (Washington Post)

Down, but not out: Kate Moss may have turned into the most publicly shamed model of all time, but she’s not giving in yet. An online gambling site, in a clear bid for publicity, offered the recently unpopular model a $5 million contract to do a campaign for it, but Moss thinks she hasn’t sunk that low. “This story is absolute rubbish … Kate will not be working with this company,” her publicist told the New York Daily News. And a friend of the model’s told Page Six she’s defiant in private, too: “She just told her agent three days ago that she doesn’t give a [bleep] what people think, she will not change her lifestyle because of a tabloid or public opinion.” The one job Moss might hold on to, oddly, is with the cosmetics company Rimmel, for which she just finished shooting a campaign for a product called Recover. And then there are the reports that she has been talking to director Ron Howard about starring in a movie about the fashion industry. Meanwhile, U.K. TV channel Sky One says it’s going to be showing the famous snorting footage that started it all as a part of its upcoming documentary “Kate Moss: Fashion Victim?” (N.Y. Daily News, Page Six, WWD)

Also:
She doesn’t care what Tom Cruise thinks: Brooke Shields wants another baby, telling Oprah on Tuesday, “I’ve always wanted more than one child.” She appeared to have moved past Cruise’s weird attack on her use of antidepressants for postpartum depression, saying, “It’s what he believes, I guess” … The perfect indie film couple marries: Jennifer Jason Leigh (“Single White Female,” “The Anniversary Party”) and director Noah Baumbach (“Kicking and Screaming,” co-writer of “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou”) were married over Labor Day … The perfect mainstream TV couple splits: Chad Michael Murray and Sophia Bush, both of the WB’s drama “One Tree Hill,” have announced they’re getting divorced after five months of marriage … Hollywood is making good on its promise to hunt down movie pirates: On Wednesday, a man in St. Louis became the first person ever convicted of illegally videotaping in a movie theater — he may end up doing time for filming “Bewitched” and “A Perfect Man” and then uploading them to the Internet. And in California, eight people were charged for their part in leaking “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” online the day before it opened in theaters. Albert Valente, who took a copy of the movie from the post-production company where he worked, pleaded guilty and may also face jail time … A new Gallup poll has good news for the media: The public’s trust in the news is way up from last year — which means that now only 49 percent of people say they have either not very much trust in the news or none at all … The inevitable process that will someday end in the total conglomeration of the media has been slowed for the moment: The potential purchase of DreamWorks by NBC Universal has fallen apart because of issues around both price and creative control. DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen seems to lay some of the issues at his partner Steven Spielberg’s door, saying the director was used to “having his own company and doing things exactly the way he’d want and not consulting with others.”

Money Quote:
Tara Reid, finally speaking out nearly a year after she famously popped out of her dress at Diddy’s 35th birthday party, on the reaction she got: “People act like it was the worst crime in the world. It was a mistake, you know. But you would think my boob had popped out and shot Gandhi!” (Ananova)

Turn On:
The fall new-season rollout continues with the premiere of “Veronica Mars” (UPN, 9 p.m. EDT). At 7:30 p.m. EDT, Cinemax presents “The Children of Leningradsky,” a documentary on the children who live in the Moscow subway.

A ‘Main Event’ in Old New York

New-York Historical Society

A miniature of Pierre Toussaint, a free immigrant from Haiti

September 27, 2005
A ‘Main Event’ in Old New York
By GLENN COLLINS

It is called a trading book. In meticulous, spidery notations, it reveals just how the sloop Rhode Island, owned by Philip Livingston & Sons, New York merchants, traded rum, tobacco and cheese for guns, cloth and ivory in 1749.

Then, along the African coast, it traded those goods for 124 slaves.

The ledger is but one of more than 400 artifacts, documents, paintings and maps in a forthcoming exhibition on slavery at the New-York Historical Society that detail the vital connections between New York and the system of slavery that was an economic engine of the Americas for more than three centuries.

“We all grew up with images of ‘Gone With the Wind’ and we thought slavery was a Southern institution, but for 200 years slavery was a dominant force in New York,” said Richard Rabinowitz, the show’s curator.

The $5 million exhibition, “Slavery in New York,” will open to the public on Oct. 7. Its story begins in the 1620′s and ends on July 5, 1827, when black New Yorkers celebrated emancipation in their state. Late next year, a sequel exhibition, “Commerce and Conscience,” will extend the chronicle past the Civil War.

The show is a potentially controversial one for the society, a 201-year-old institution that has stirred debate since it was re-energized by two wealthy, conservative businessmen, Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, the forces behind an Alexander Hamilton exhibition that earned mixed reviews from historians last year.

“Many people, blacks as well as whites, have some trouble having the story of slavery told in a major public venue,” said James Oliver Horton, the Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University, who is the exhibition’s chief historian. “But we do not have the right not to tell the story.”

Spanning 9,000 square feet in 10 galleries, “Slavery” will be half again as large as the Hamilton show. Since the topic “is difficult and sensitive, we must be impeccable historically,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, the society’s president.

And so in Gallery 2 there is an original letter from the Dutch West India Company to Peter Stuyvesant authorizing him to sell slaves; he hoped New Amsterdam could be the busiest slave market in North America.

New York’s busy economy of importing, shipbuilding, borrowing, lending and insuring was based on a far-flung slave-labor force. Slave ships were good investments, Dr. Horton said, and slaves were owners’ annuities – property that could be rented out as a source of income for years. Even newspapers were complicit, making money from ads about auctions and runaways. “Slavery was not a sideshow,” Dr. Horton said. “It was the main event.”

But the exhibition also highlights overt and covert slave resistance, including coroner records of a 1712 revolt in which 9 whites were killed by 38 slaves.

A key curatorial challenge was that much of the historical evidence speaks solely in the voice of the enslavers, said Dr. Rabinowitz, president of American History Workshop in Brooklyn, an exhibition planning firm. But slaveholders revealed much unintentionally, as in “runaway ads saying such things as ‘there are whip marks on his back, but he loves me,’ ” Dr. Rabinowitz said.

In addition to offering interactive visual presentations about slavery, the exhibition tries to portray the experience of being enslaved – through, for example, the saga of the 20-year-old Deborah Squash, who escaped the employ of George Washington, fleeing to freedom behind British lines.

Last fall’s Hamilton show, though trumpeted as a blockbuster, drew smaller crowds than expected and was derided by some historians as a glorification of Hamilton revealing a new conservative bent at the society.

No specific attendance predictions are being offered for “Slavery,” except that “we will be mobbed,” as Dr. Mirrer put it. The society has already kicked off an $800,000 advertising campaign and plans a robust school-outreach effort, a Web site and a companion book.

The show has been a magnet for money, including a New York City Council grant of $500,000 this year (and $625,000 for next year’s installment), as well as $803,000 from the federal Department of Education. The lead sponsor is J. P. Morgan Chase.

Although the society’s literature portrays the exhibition as an untold story, “historians have, for decades now, been exploring the impact of slavery on the economic, cultural and racial foundations of the city,” said Dr. Mike Wallace, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1999 for “Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898,” written with Dr. Edwin G. Burrows. Dr. Wallace wrote a scathing critique of the Hamilton show in The New York Review of Books, faulting the exhibition for amateurish museumcraft and charging that “the show opts for one-sided, hagiographic boosterism.”

The new exhibition is likely to be scrutinized by New York historians as well. “It would be hard not to, given the unfortunate Hamilton show,” Dr. Wallace said. “But given who’s worked on the slavery exhibition, I’m assuming it is going to be a worthy, and hopefully exciting, enterprise.”

The exhibition’s potential to enlighten, as well as to offend, is multiracial, said Dr. Howard Dodson, chief of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which presented a 2000 exhibition on slavery. “With blacks it has been a subject of embarrassment,” he explained. “I know that was true with me when I was growing up. And with whites, it’s fear of being charged with being guilty because of the sins of the fathers.”

Steven H. Jaffe, a former senior projects historian at the society who worked on plans for a show on slavery beginning in 2001 but was dismissed with other staff members after Dr. Mirrer took over, said the society had “gotten really fine scholars on this subject as advisers.”

He added: “But the question is how the black communities in and around New York are going to respond when an institution that is perceived as white and patrician starts preening about ‘what we’re going to tell you about slavery because you don’t know it’ – when a lot of people in the black community have known this for a long time.”

Dr. Horton, a much-praised historian who was the adviser to “Slavery and the Making of America,” the recent PBS documentary series, disagreed. “I do not believe that many blacks know this story,” he said, adding: “This is not a case of having an elite institution set up an exhibit on slavery without guidance. This exhibit is based on exhaustive research.”

His ambitions for the show are large. “This will help to provide historical context for the conversation we need to have about race in this country,” he said, adding that it could be a corrective to historical hypocrisy. “The patriots used antislavery rhetoric in reference to America’s freedom,” he said, “but they were slaveholders – Washington, Jefferson, John Jay, Ben Franklin.”

And indeed, Philip Livingston, the owner of the slave-trading sloop whose ledger is part of the exhibition, had a son in the business, also named Philip Livingston, who signed the Declaration of Independence. For New York.

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Inside the club that influences Vegas’ music scene more than you may know

House Work By Richard Abowitz

On a recent Friday night, hours before doors open, the kids are starting to line up to see Crossfade and Seether co-headline an all-ages show at the House of Blues. Max McAndrew, the club’s talent buyer who booked the show, was pleased —if not entirely surprised—that the concert sold out (which means 1,800 tickets): “I had a good hunch it would do really well. It was a very strong package. Last time Crossfade was here on their own was a Monday night and we did over 1,000 people. So I knew putting the two together, it would be a really strong show.” Not every show, of course, delivers the numbers. The night before the post-grunge metal bill of Crossfade/Seether sell out, alternative country heroine Lucinda Williams made her second appearance at the Las Vegas House of Blues. I happened to have been one of the few and the proud who saw her first concert at House of Blues and let’s be generous and say there was plenty of elbowroom and good sight lines to the stage. In fact, the crowd was so small that you could, as I did, simply walk up to the front of the stage and see the show. Anyway, that was in 2004. As for attendance the previous night, according to McAndrew: “Actually, we had a little less this time than last time.” McAndrew is quick to note that there could be many reasons for this drop: “I don’t know if any of that was fallout from the hurricane, the gas prices or the day of the week—last time she was here was a Friday night and this was Thursday.” Long term, however, McAndrew remains unshaken in his commitment to keep bringing Lucinda Williams to the House of Blues in Las Vegas: “She is just a very talented artist and somebody we look to invest our time in.” And despite the drop in attendance from her last concert here, McAndrew is optimistic about Lucinda Williams’ future in Las Vegas: “I think at one point she will probably get to a point in this market where she will develop a fan base where each time we bring her we’ll get a couple hundred more people in here.” Sad to say, even this modest hope seems a stretch. Williams is a classic critic’s darling: She has never made a video, isn’t played much on commercial radio and has certainly never had anything close to a hit. I honestly think odds are she is far more likely to gain another couple Grammy Awards than sell 200 more tickets in Las Vegas. Being a huge fan of Lucinda Williams I would love to be wrong. Of course, even if McAndrew is correct, in a market as competitive and expensive as Las Vegas, no promoter outside a casino could ever afford to keep booking Lucinda Williams shows while awaiting the fulfillment of the prophecy that she will one day have an audience as large as her talent. And, no casino would care enough about breaking Lucinda Williams to bother trying. At heart, this commitment to music is what makes the House of Blues in Las Vegas somewhat different. Yes, it is a company that wants to earn a profit, but it is also one that incorporates into its mission statement goals like: “To celebrate the diversity and brotherhood of world culture. To promote racial and spiritual harmony through love, peace, truth, righteousness and nonviolence.” And outside of that, while many companies sponsor nonprofit organizations, few are as closely identified with their public service as HOB is with the House of Blues International Foundation, which sponsors, among other outreach programs, “Blues Schoolhouse” that brings music education to public schools. Or more accurately, public-school students are brought to the House of Blues to see a live band offer up an introduction to the blues and to explore the folk art that makes the House of Blues the only concert halls in the nation that also are legitimate museums. But for most Las Vegas music fans, the House of Blues is the only place on the Strip that regularly offers the hipster acts music geeks love, like Lucinda Williams or Ben Kweller (I think I see McAndrew actually wince when I ask about the numbers on the Kweller/Camper Van Beethoven show) or to see a national act do a show at a reasonable price: Crossfade and Seether was only $18 in advance (most shows are under $30 and many under $15 a ticket). Crossfade and Seether is also an all-ages show and for young music fans the House of Blues offers more all-ages shows than any other venue on the Strip. (The Hard Rock offers all-ages shows, too, but the House of Blues is alone in terms of volume of concerts and range of music. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that in a busy month, the Joint at the Hard Rock is likely to have as many shows as the House of Blues has on tap on a typical week.) Things change so quickly in Las Vegas that unless you lived here before Mandalay Bay was built, it’s hard to recall what entertainment was like on the Strip before House of Blues opened to the public with a Bob Dylan concert on March 2, 1999. Russell Jones, general manager of House of Blues Las Vegas, recalls the period: “For a long time Vegas had that stigma that people only ended their careers in Vegas. A lot of people avoided it for years. Going back seven years ago the perception was finally starting to change. I would like to think House of Blues helped change that perception. We do so many of the younger, up-and-coming and just-breaking acts.” It seems a fair statement. To imagine Las Vegas without a House of Blues, look at the club’s schedule for any given month and realize that at least 75 percent of those bands probably could not find another booking in this town. These are shows from the jazz of Pat Metheny to the spoken word of Henry Rollins that are a boon to locals but that still require a few tourists’ warm bodies to justify the guarantee required for a Vegas concert. Journalist Doug Elfman covered live music in Las Vegas for the Review-Journal from 1999 to earlier this year, and he asserts the importance of the club to the Las Vegas community’s music scene: “Without the House of Blues you don’t have scores of concerts in Las Vegas. They probably have nearly 200 concerts a year. The House of Blues brings in all of the up-and-coming acts and all of the cool acts. Over the years they brought in the Strokes before they were huge, Liz Phair and all kind of alternative bands. If there were no House of Blues the city of Las Vegas would lose most of its national touring base and that is not even close to an exaggeration. The sound is the best in town in terms of indoor venues.” So while the Hard Rock and the Palms compete for the event concerts from Kanye West to the Rolling Stones, the House of Blues’ bread and butter comes from offering regular concerts that cover as diverse a range of genres as possible. Yet, at the same time the good karma generated by the venue brings in more than its fair share of serious event concerts along the way, too. In 2001, Axl Rose debuted the new addition of Guns N’ Roses lineup with the band’s first show in seven years here. (Well, it seemed a big deal at the time.) In 2003, the Beastie Boys played their first U.S. show in years as a benefit for Jam Master Jay’s family at the House of Blues, and the show sold out in 24 seconds. Last year Aretha Franklin chose to make her return to Las Vegas, after decades away, at the House of Blues. These acts could all have played bigger rooms. This year Franklin came back to the MGM Grand Garden Arena. Photo by Iris Dumuk These big shows just scratch the surface. In addition to the sold-out Seether and Crossfade show, in the days following the Lucinda Williams concert, there are sold-out concerts from John Mayer and Oasis—and both those acts could easily pack far larger rooms. These shows come about in a variety of ways. Mayer was hoping to do a more intimate show with a trio. In the case of Oasis, McAndrew in part credits a good relationship with the band’s agent. But it’s also true that touring bands have a well-known fondness for the House of Blues clubs. From sound systems to catering to personnel, quality control is hard to come by on the road. And after years trying to build a fan base, by the time a band can pack stadiums they can easily get so obsessed with show conditions that we get to read all those fun riders that get posted on websites. (Remember the famous parody in Spinal Tap when Nigel could not make the meat and the bread fit together in a sandwich?) But from the moment the tour buses hit any House of Blues, a band knows what to expect. And more importantly, so does the tour manager. Setting the Stage Drums and amplifiers are labeled with band names and cluttered about the area leading from the bus dock to the stage. An occasional blast of air-conditioning mixes with late-afternoon heat as Thomas Cassara, a stagehand at the House of Blues, directs people and moves equipment. Cassara has been greeting those tour buses and helping set things up for shows at the House of Blues for over six years. When Seether arrived, he already knew Ivan, the group’s tour manager, from forays to Vegas with Sum 41 and The Disturbed (in that sense the rock world can be amazingly tiny as booking agents endlessly reuse a good tour manager). “He’s with a lot of the metal bands and the rock guys,” Cassara says. The tour manager and Cassara get together at once, and according to Cassara: “I re-familiarize him with the backstage area, the dressing rooms, the stage. We immediately get into talking about the guest list, passes and credentials. What they’re bringing in as equipment: Do they have a backdrop, are they bringing in a soundboard and the lighting rig? These are things that are advanced before the day of the show but sometimes change.” Photo by Iris Dumuk This should all be seamless. Indeed, that’s the experience of Seether’s front man Shaun Morgan: “I love the House of Blues venues. The environment is really cool. But it is also the people who work there, the sound, the lighting. Every single one of them is awesome.” Morgan is in Seether’s dressing room kicking back with his band mates. The room is thick with Marlboro smoke and there are some random girls floating about who all have barbed-wire tattoos. It is clearly a comfortable change from the tour bus. “And the catering is the best at House of Blues,” Morgan says. “I love the catering.” Indeed, the platters of fruit and cheese around the room do seem to have been pretty well cleaned off by the band. Of course, there is more going on than what the band sees backstage. The next night, Brian Stovall, director of music operations, is on hand to oversee about 50 House of Blues staffers required to work for the sold-out John Mayer show. According to Stovall: “I make sure everybody is here and that everything—the bars, the stage, the front, everything—is clean and tidy. After that, 45 minutes before the doors open to the show we will have a pre-shift meeting with all the operational staff to let them know any of the nuances of the shift. Tonight we have an all-ages show so we have to get everybody off the casino floor in an orderly fashion. And tonight it is a no-smoking show per the artist’s request, so I let them know that.” Special Requests The House of Blues accommodates artists in other ways, too. According to Stovall, “A month ago we had a request that the air conditioner be turned off in the building. So we do that kind of stuff.” A month ago would have been in August and that must have been a hot show for staff and audience alike! “Still, something will come up. You go into these shows expecting about 15 unexpecteds. That’s why we need to be so operationally tight. A band will want to do a later sound check and that will affect our door. Everyday without fail, something will come up that has to be addressed at that moment even if it is people who come up expecting to be on the list and are not on this list.” Take, for example, the Holy Ghost who has come down from the mountain and arrived at the House of Blues box office on this night for his tickets to the concert and a pass to John Mayer’s dressing room. The problem is he is not on the list. According to the box office worker, Fish: “This guy came to the window and he goes ‘I am the Holy Ghost. I am the Son of God. I’ve been living up on Mt. Charleston for two months without any human contact and I have come down because I really want to go backstage and meet John Mayer, because it would really mean a lot to me.’” Fish double-checked the list and the Son of God was still not listed by Mayer. “I said, ‘Well, it’s not going to happen.’” This sort of thing may be one reason why Stovall told me that John Mayer requested an extra security guard to stand outside his dressing room. Though far less lofty than the Holy Ghost, slightly more credible is the woman who was not on the list, yet explained at the box office that she should be thanks to a complicated connection that somehow involves Fender guitars. Kim Garcia, the box-office supervisor on duty, sends Fish with a note backstage. Garcia has been a well-known member of the local scene for over a decade. Among the clubs she has worked at: the Castle, the Sanctuary, the Huntridge Theatre and Tremors. Of course, all of those clubs tried to live off of locals alone and no longer exist. For the past three years she has found a stable employer with The House of Blues. (The House of Blues in Las Vegas employs almost 500 people.) And in today’s music environment, a good job with benefits is a beautiful thing. And while Garcia brings a lot of local credibility with her, she also brings a lot of practical experience in the concert business. And for a show like tonight that includes dealing with the name- droppers: “Listening to all the stories, people wanting to try and meet the band, people knowing everyone. It is amazing how people can’t just go to a show, watch the band and enjoy the band.” It turns out Garcia’s instincts about the woman with the Fender story were good. The call comes from backstage to add her to the list. Garcia scrambles to get her tickets somehow to the sold-out show. “This happens every show, people walk up to the window and their tickets aren’t there and we have to figure it out. And sometimes it takes making a call or sending a note.” Finally, a VIP host for Mandalay Bay appears with a look of desperation in his eye, begging for two tickets to the sold-out Mayer concert for one of his players. Though not part of the casino, House of Blues goes out of the way to cultivate good relations with Mandalay Bay. And though Garcia has to do some serious digging about and the situation looks dire for a few moments, she somehow scrounges up two unclaimed comps to accommodate the VIP host. Greedily and gratefully the host asks: “How much do you want?” “They are comps,” Garcia says. Without waiting for a further explanation, the Mandalay Bay host seizes the tickets and is gone by the time Garcia finishes with: “They are already through the system. I can’t charge for them.” But the guest list isn’t the only thing Garcia and the box-office workers have to contend with while distributing what she estimates to be about 75 percent of the tickets—through will-call—to the sold-out Mayer show. The Internet begat at least one fresh problem: “There are things where people buy tickets on e-Bay and it is under the original seller’s name. You have problems like that on high-profile shows like tonight. We get to hear people’s sob stories that end with, ‘I bought that on e-Bay.’ It doesn’t happen a lot. But I tell people, ‘Always buy your tickets from the venue directly.’” Another problem is cameras. Cameras have never been allowed in concert halls and most tickets make the point in the small print on the back. But this is Las Vegas and many guests are also tourists who arrive at House of Blues concerts with a camera in tow, anyway. Patrons are required by security to check their cameras at the box office. At John Mayer, dozens of cameras fill every available space on the desk around Garcia. “We’ve had as many as 150 cameras,” Garcia says. So many cameras are checked at each show, in fact, that Garcia says House of Blues had to hire an employee to check them (hence the $2 charge to check a camera). For John Mayer, however, there is a glitch in the system. The camera-check employee has a shift that starts at 6:30 (this worked great at Lucinda Williams when the doors opened at 8:30 and even for Oasis when doors opened at 7). But the sold-out Mayer show opened its doors at 6 and for the next 30 minutes Garcia and her staff add checking the dozens of cameras to their duties. Joyful Noise By the next morning, Sunday, September 11, you would never know there had been a sold-out rock concert in the House of Blues the night before. In fact, the vibe of the place has been transformed—long communal tables with food everywhere, a Delta-inspired buffet, featuring actual gospel performers making a joyful noise. The Gospel Brunch in some ways defies common sense: This is church music that mixes freely with an audience that can be very secular just off a casino floor that many would see as a temple of the profane. Yet in many other ways it is a perfect fit. Gospel, of course, is an authentic American music nurtured alongside the blues, jazz, country and folk music that the House of Blues celebrates. According to Sylvia St. James, national director of Gospel Brunch for House Of Blues: “We had Gospel Brunch in all the venues that had opened previously. So it was natural that we would try it here in Las Vegas.” Still, St. James admits the ironies of bringing the gospel to Vegas weren’t lost on her: “This had its challenges. Even though people may not come to Las Vegas looking for a gospel experience, they most definitely enjoy it. They may see it as a party-ready thing. But it continues long after they leave. People may find gospel music entertaining but it has that touch of eternity in it. It touches our spirit where it is eternal and it goes with them when they leave. I hope they take that joy that we experience in the music with them.” St. James is not just an executive of the Gospel Brunch; she is a talented gospel singer who shares her reflections between performances with the gospel family band, The Gastons. Dressed head to toe in white, her street clothes and make-up are spread out across the same dressing room that Seether occupied just days ago with their mix of girls and beer and the air thick with cigarette smoke. Not even a cigarette butt remains from that night now. And because of the date and the events in New Orleans (where St. James has many friends from the House of Blues who were in that city), St. James seems particularly aware of the spiritual side of the Gospel Brunch: “It is September 11 and walking on stage I feel touched by the tragedy that did happen and the tragedy that is happening now. But at the same time, because of my faith, my prayer is that those fallen in life are now risen in Christ. My prayer is that God has mercy on those souls. Though I have despair, I have hope for all the families that they will see, touch and embrace their loved ones again. That is the hope of my faith.” St. James had an eventful week, herself; a few days earlier she organized and led the gospel choir that backed Kanye West on “Jesus Walks” at the Katrina benefit that aired on every major network. The weight of that experience would be enough for most people to need a little time to recuperate, and it speaks volumes about her dedication to the Gospel Brunch that after singing for an audience of millions across the entire country she is still so gung-ho and enthusiastic to spend her Sunday doing two shows for a few hundred people in Las Vegas. In fact, she says the experience refreshes her and this week she needed it. “It is horrible what did happen and has happened. But it is an opportunity for all of us to find the heart of God in our own hearts. We have never seen anything like this in our own country. After September 11, it was tragic, painful and horrible. But then I saw the heart of America revealed. Americans came together like never before and it made me so proud. And now we have New Orleans. And we are going to find our compassion, and we are going to find our hearts and love. We will not forget those who have been lost in the tragedy. But it is my prayer that through the tragedy that we find a greater love within ourselves and a greater ability to give and care beyond ourselves.” Pulling Together It is a hope that is fair to have not only for individuals but also for companies. Or at least that is the view of Matthew Waggoner, who has only been with House of Blues for a few months since he moved to Las Vegas from Austin after accepting a position as music-hall manager here. There were almost 300 employees at the House of Blues in New Orleans before Katrina. Waggoner says he’s pleased to see how House of Blues has tried to respond to them: “You hear about House of Blues as a company, and there is all this lip service about caring, and I think it is good to get here and at a moment like this see that the words and deeds match.” Another House of Blues employee says there has been a continuous stream of e-mails containing corporate plans to benefit those New Orleans employees. General Manager Russell Jones says: “One of the challenges has been communication, just trying to track everyone down. As of last week, of the 295 employees we were about to get information on, 170 to 180 of the employees were from there. We set up our own company website and hotline number where employees can call in or other people can dial in and leave a message. We also set up the outreach number for the people in New Orleans so that in addition to them filtering their information to us, we could filter back to them information on assistance.” One reason employees from New Orleans should phone in to the House of Blues is salary: “The company is continuing to pay everybody’s salary for, I think it’s three weeks for whoever we can find.” And remember: The House of Blues, unlike the casinos in the region, does not have gaming to boost revenues. Mandalay Bay is only a landlord. And so, cash is perhaps a bit harder to come by and concerts that raise it are ones that don’t produce rent for the clubs. Still, the Chicago House of Blues just had a fundraiser for the New Orleans employees that raised $60,000. “Each venue is reaching out, trying to put something together. I know we’ve made calls to bands trying to put something together here,” says Jones. Already at the House of Blues retail store in Las Vegas there is a special section set up to raise money for employees who lost everything in Katrina. “I would hope we would have something pinned down soon,” Jones says. “I know if we can get a big-name act in here we can raise significant dollars.” Not only that, but each House of Blues is offering jobs to any New Orleans employee who wants to stay with the company. Jones says: “The venues around the country are picking up whoever is interested in going. We are finding ways to find work for those employees. A lot of people right now want to get back and see the status of their homes. So, probably in the next few weeks we’ll have a lot more people who will start to come to the venues.” House of Blues in Las Vegas already has picked up employees from the New Orleans sister club. According to Jones, “We have more coming each day. We have a few of the managers. We have a handful of the hourly employees already coming out. We partnered up across the street with The Residence Inn. They have been great to us. They are helping us put employees up with temporary housing to help get them re-established. We are assisting people with the relocation finances to get people out here. We are taking these people under our wing and adopting them. We are doing fundraisers for them within our own staff. And we are going out to collect the things they need from socks to shirts. Most of them are coming out here with almost nothing.” There are over 700 pieces of American Folk art displayed around the Las Vegas House of Blues restaurant, concert venue and offices. One theme that reoccurs in many of the works is images of water flowing out of control, bursting through bonds. Much of this art transplanted to Las Vegas originated from the Mississippi Delta region, and was made by artists who survived the floods of 1927 when 13 levees broke and more than a million people were displaced. It is a favorite subject, as well of many of the classic blues songs, including Charley Patton’s “High Water.” Expanding the Offerings There is no concert on Monday, September 12, and so you’d think it would be an easy day for Tanya Tumminia, marketing and publicity manager for the House of Blues. But by the opening kickoff for Monday Night Football, she has been working 10 hours straight without time for even a bite to eat. This is the first time the House of Blues in Las Vegas has sponsored a Monday Night Football event and nothing about it is being left to chance: Photo by Iris Dumuk “There are so many logistical things that go on that you don’t see. We have been planning Monday Night Football for three months now. This year we really wanted to dedicate ourselves to putting together an awesome Monday Night Football schedule for 16 weeks. We want it to be a great experience for all our guests coming through. We are really trying to market to the locals to come down here.” Xtreme Radio is on hand giving away prizes, as well as a variety of other corporate sponsors including Red Bull and Bacardi. There is also a dancing troupe of girls, the Sin City Dolls, who put on a halftime show that includes audience-participation games like the titillating “pass the zucchini.” Tumminia also wants to reach out to the tourists in Mandalay Bay. “Since this is the first time doing Monday Night Football, we need to really find ways to promote it. What better people to grab than the ones who are the biggest fans who are the people at the Sports and Race Book?” Mandalay Bay’s sports book is right near the House of Blues entrance, “So I had to find a way to get flyers over there and let those people know what is going on.” Of course, the sort of guerilla marketing that dumps flyers without permission is not how a company operates within a casino. So after Tumminia tried to reach someone by phone to get permission and failed to hear back, at the last minute she got inspired and walked over to the sports book to ask permission and it was granted. “He was a really great guy. And he said yes, that Mandalay Bay would love to help and now we have the opportunity to get in there the right way and to start promoting.” Photo by Dash T. Himakes Though the concert venue gets most of the attention, the inaugural Monday Night Football takes place upstairs in the restaurant where there is a smaller stage. In fact, as soon as the game is over the room is transformed for the second event of the night: Rock Star Karaoke. An actual band with a set list of about 100 songs performs while anyone who wants can get up and act the star. Watching a guy in a polo shirt spazzing through “Born to Be Wild,” it is clear that this is a perfect Las Vegas fantasy experience. Unlike the Gospel Brunch, this event was created specifically for the Las Vegas House of Blues. Rockstar Karaoke is free (though if you are planning to sit through a lot of performances you are going to want to drink heavily). “You just pick a song from on the list and boom, you are up on stage singing your heart out,” says Tumminia. By the time Rockstar Karaoke is going, Tummina is passing a dozen hours on duty and though her enthusiasm remains endless, her weariness is beginning to show. Still, she is holding up better than her cell phone, which split at the top earlier in the evening and is now dead. “It is just going to be one of those really long nights,” she says. Photo by Dash T. Himake Tumminia is then on her way across the casino to take the elevator up to the 43rd floor Foundation Room to meet a film crew shooting a promotional video for her. The House of Blues Foundation Room is usually and famously only open to members. But for the past three years this has changed on Monday nights for Godspeed. According to Tumminia, “Godspeed was created by Mike Fuller, who is a well- known local DJ and promoter. It is the only time the Foundation Room is ever open to the public.” After the filming, Tumminia must wait until 2:30 a.m. to head from Godspeed to Godspeed after-hours in OBA (the VIP lounge atop the music hall) for her last task: “I am going there so I can be with a film crew who is going to capture what OBA is all about. It is actually going to air in LA, and I need to be there then because I want them to shoot when bodies are in the room. I expect to leave tonight at around 3:30 and then I am back at 9:30 in the morning for a meeting.” The next day Tumminia is not only in on time, she has a new cell phone by the end of the morning. Calling me on it, she goes over some of the things that have happened during the past few days that I may have missed. The list she reels off includes a corporate party that rented House of Blues for a private function, VIP parties of all sorts, various dance nights and, lest I forget, a restaurant that seats 600. “People have no idea how much happens here.” And so it goes, behind the scenes, of some typical days at the House of Blues.

Implant Program for Heart Device Was a Sales Spur

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