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Scott Doctor
Criss Angel
Published Tuesday, April 21, 2009 | 6:10 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, April 22, 2009 | 1:37 a.m.
After a wild weekend in which I seemed to live at The Joint (if you can call what I do “living”), I need to catch up on some notes. So let’s do that now:
The Criss among us
I am so infrequently ahead of the curve on anything that I need to point out the instances when I am, in fact, ahead of the curve. I “Believe” (heh) I was the first to call for the removal of Criss Angel from his grueling production partnership with Cirque du Soleil at the Luxor. This weekend's feud with Perez Hilton (here’s a version of the dustup from Richard Abowitz’s Moveable Buffet blog on the L.A. Times Web site) escalated to the point of idiocy. Of course this is entirely Angel’s doing, which is why Cirque officials have issued an apology for the incident. Angel is chronically prone to such ready-shoot-aim public misadventures, but this is virgin terrain even for him: On one of the busiest weekends I’ve seen in Las Vegas in recent years (including New Year’s Eves), a torrid three-day stretch that featured the opening of the new Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel with The Killers and Paul McCartney playing a pair of wholly entertaining sold-out shows, the gala opening of “Peepshow” starring Mel B and Kelly Monaco and the Miss USA 2009 Pageant at Planet Hollywood, the ever self-absorbed Angel managed to shine the light on himself by taking on Perez Hilton during a performance at the Luxor. Brilliant! Angel’s conduct on and off the stage has achieved little more than tarnish the otherwise sterling Cirque du Soleil brand. He’s a bad actor in every way that matters and a lousy ambassador for our city. I’m with anyone who says that it’s time for Cirque to do some downsizing of its own.
Macca tickets revisited
On Sunday afternoon, about five hours before the doors at The Joint were to open for the McCartney concert, the hotel announced that tickets were being released for a show that had been long listed as a sellout (though not in seven seconds, as was preposterously claimed by McCartney’s PR team). How is that possible? During Sunday’s show, Hard Rock Hotel exec Paul Davis explained that the tickets were made available for two reasons: the McCartney camp didn’t use its full allotment of tickets for its own purposes, and some of the areas on the floor that were set aside for production crews went unused. “It’s fairly common for that to happen,” Davis said.
Also on Sunday, the Hard Rock was as jammed as I’ve ever seen it, with valet and self-parking filling by about 5 p.m. The new hotel parking garage is not yet open, but will be within a month or so. As it was, Sunday's cab line stretched off the hotel property was backed up nearly to the corner of Paradise Road and Harmon Avenue.
Random pluggage …
Let us talk under-the-radar bakeries for a moment: For a good ham and Swiss croissant, cup of coffee and a chance to hang with at least one barista who speaks French or something akin to French, hit Bonjour Euro Bakers on the northeast corner of Flamingo and Rainbow. I was there today and even ran into some out-of-Spandex Cirque performers. Weird spot for a hip spot, but it’s a pretty cool hangout.
Advantage: “Peepshow”
Donald Trump, Robert Earl, Chris “Mr. Big” Noth, and of course Mel B and Kelly Monaco were among those in attendance at the opening of “Peepshow” on Saturday, but one VIP was particularly impressive: tennis legend Boris Becker. He’s spiked the hair, but he looks about the same as he did in his playing career. What else? Oh, I met Susan Anton, who remains very pretty and very tall. She loved the show, especially the opening video clip, which was produced by her husband Jeff Lester’s video production company, Big Picture Studios.
Shecky!
Shecky Greene will be at the Suncoast Showroom from May 15-17. Greene is among the last true lounge legends around and, at age 83, is unconcerned with burning any bridges, professionally or otherwise. If the interview I’ve banked is any indication, he’s just going to let it fly from the stage and damn the collateral damage. Greene hasn’t even formally constructed an “act.” It should be interesting, sort of like watching a kooky uncle vent for 90 minutes.
hello Katz. I understood your comment, but come on, PEREZ HILTON? Who is he? A "journalist" who uses sources to share gossip? Or uses news from other sources and does not give credit to them? (ask to your friend Steve Friess if he likes Perez Hilton).
Perez Hilton is one of the most awful things that exist on internet. He is an example of how you can use rage and unpolite words to be famous and (sort of) rich. Because some people has afraid of him, they invite him to tv programs, or even because he has a talent to disturb any place that he is in, he is like a "Jerry Springer" show in just one person.
If do i read his blog? Sometimes. When he has not something personal with someone, he is a regular blogger. Some comments are fun, and that's it. When he tries to say that someone is gay, that is rude, but also entertaining.
But at the episode of Criss Angel, i understand that Criss was angry, because why someone that destroyed the show before see it, finally went to see the show just because he had free tickets, and during the show uses cell phone to say the show is bad?
Well, both of them (Criss and Perez) were wrong.
Perez because he was at Criss show, and so he was invited. If he wants to say something bad, say outside the theater. And Criss because the audience has no obligation to hear the discuss between Criss and Perez.
But Criss said what he wanted to say for months since the premiere. He has the rights, as Perez has the rights to say anything even not seeing the show before.
Next time, i suggest one thing to Criss and his staff: if someone famous or someone that dislike the show or the artist wants to go to Believe, the show could not give the tickets. If they want to see the show, pay for it.
And no, i hope that Believe still goes on, and being improved. It has some qualities. Just has to be fixed or change the plot. That's all.
I haven't seen it..and perhaps that clown perez crossed the line...but its time Angel got his and 86'd from this apparently gawdawful show
Looks like Criss Angel's "15 minutes of Fame" are up, it is not easy to stay in the lime light and keep your cool when people in the audience want to out shine you.
It is like being the "Fastest Gun in the West" there is always some snot nose who wants to out gun you. But then that is the way it is and if Criss don't know that he needs to rethink how he got his start. He was all over the "Strip" shooting off his talent, which in my opinon where his best performances.
Criss needs to regroup and show some graditude for his celebrity, easyer said than done when no one around him wants to say, "the King has no cloths on", slow down and drink a glass of water.
I hope Criss can survive this epesode and continue to entertain his fans, and serve the greater public with perfomances so they can release their stress in thses hard time in Las Vegas. Then again that would be a fantastic act, if he could make this bad econnomy disappear.
Criss Angel is the WORST high priced show on the Las Vegas strip and you can hardly call it a Cirque show with one very small reference to the meaning of the word. He's crude, rude and even worse, a bad excuse for a magician. Throw him out and get something that entertains because soon, the word will be all over and he won't be able to give tickets away.
why do people worship this person with a reprobate mind called perez hilton?this is a free country and he thinks his opionion is law. if he wants to talk trash then he should expect to be treated like trash. is this the kind of person we want to look up to?not! remember perez,a gentle answer turns away wrath. ya think?
The fact that Perez Hilton is awful is irrelevant. A professional entertainer should not be airing beefs during a show in front of paying customers. YOU DON'T DO THAT.
I haven't seen the Criss Angel show, but it sounds like it really sucks. In 1989 I coughed up $100 to see the new Siegfried and Roy show at the Mirage and I HATED it! The whole thing was like some kind of medieval rock musical and the magic acts in the show were completely buried by the large scale props, such as the huge mechanical dragon. I like to see magic shows that feature beautiful assistants in fancy costumes, so I'll stick with cheaper shows like "Scarlett Princess of Magic".
Every publicist in LA must be paying Perez Hilton a fee, either in real money or celebrity and event access. He is part of the machine, and a loose, increasing agitating and thus irrelevant one, at that.
Perez's diatribe which made national media, somehow, about Miss California in the recent Miss USA contest, are front and center testament. She is a young woman, probably a nice young woman, but also a veritable nobody as a "national story". Leave her alone.