Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: Siegfried and Roy revealed in pages of Vanity Fair

Friday, July 16, 1999 | 9:55 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books/magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him at 259-4022 or dickens@vegas.com.

If I seem a little tetchy today, forgive me; I'm suffering from a severe bookache. I never thought this would happen, but I'm booked out, booked up, book-lashed -- can't read another word. A book a week is a killer regimen for a slow reader and busy guy like me. I'm lucky I have time to read a book jacket. What this means to you, the reader: No book review this week.

I'll go to my short game instead. Let's survey the newsstands, magazine racks and third-class periodical mailings for gleanings of interest, starting with ...

Lions and tigers and bare Siegfried, oh ... my ... gosh: The August Vanity Fair devotes an impressive number of column inches and some expensive photography to those top cats of Vegas, Siegfried and Roy.

After touring their compound and talking extensively with the magical duo, writer Matthew Tyrnauer portrays them as exotic creatures, trapped in their own plush zoo with all those big kitties. Like George Bush puzzled by a common grocery scanner, Siegfried and Roy are time zones away from real life as lived by the less fabulous among us. Manager Bernie Yuman is their cocoon master: "They think it all just falls into place for them," he tells writer Matthew Tyrnauer. "But that's the job of Bernie Yuman -- to make it all look easy."

It's easy to mock Siegfried and Roy -- believe me, I've done it, it's simple -- but you can't make fun of their success; 700,000 viewers a year, at 90 bucks a seat, can't be all wrong.

Tyrnauer gathers his boccis for a couple $64,000 questions: 1.) Is it true that the real Roy died of AIDS some time ago and was replaced by a surgically altered brother? 2.) Are you guys gay?

"Do you think I'd go through with a new one what I went through with this one?" Siegfried snorts in response to question No. 1. We'll take that as a No.

As for No. 2: "Their reaction is one of shock." Tyrnauer had just asked about a rumor that the two had been married aboard a cruise ship early in their career. After a few not-very-convincing denials, Roy gets metaphysical. "We are married to our profession. We are married to what we believe, and we are married to the whole substance of our beings ..." We'll take that as a Huh?

It's none of our business, of course, but, of course, it's what we most want to know -- or at least what modern journalism has conditioned us to believe we most want to know. "They used to be lovers a long time ago, yeah?" says their old pal Shirley MacLaine. "In this day and age, who cares?"

Hey, not me! Anyway, I'm still reeling from the photos. In some close-ups, their facial skin looks tight enough to bounce quarters on. Surgery? Then there's the photo of a languid Siegfried naked in bed, tiger murals looming overhead. It hits you without warning -- oh, the Vanity unFairness of it all!

At least the magazine didn't burden us with ...

Women we are largely indifferent to: I don't object to Esquire's annual Women We Love package for any neofeminist, gender-sensitivity or even good taste reasons. I like the chickiepoos as much as the next mouth-breather. It's just that the current crop of premillennial hotties is so dull.

A few upcoming actresses, some models -- the world is full of upcoming actresses and models. You're gonna have to do better than that, Esky.

Much better were the days when the magazine let a gang of its favorite writers hyperventilate over women of their choice. The selections were more surprising, more revealing. Not all actresses and models. At a time when Esquire is running thin -- the August issue is an anorexic 144 pages -- surely these pages could be put to better use.

That said, there's still some good stuff inside. The cover profile of Nicole Kidman is a cut above the usual celebrity puffery, and Charles Bowden's piece on Max Cleland, a legless, one-armed senator from Georgia, is worth the cover price.

It does, however, lead to a ...

Photo flinch: Between Vanity Fair and Esquire, you have two photos of men -- Siegfried and Cleland -- sprawled naked in bed. Question: How is it that a man with three stumps makes your skin crawl less than that of a lean, healthy man?

The picture of Cleland, grimacing as he begins his grueling morning ritual of simply getting ready for work, says a thousand words about determination, despair and human adaptability. The picture of Siegfried, all glossy titillation, says precisely one word: Ick! Stretched on his opulent bed blowing smoke, he looks like a degenerate of Caligula's Rome waiting for the orgy to begin.

To reboot my brain, let's discuss a man ...

Blinded by anger at science: Science journalism sounds so, well, science-y -- daunting, obscure, boring. The July Discover proves that impression wrong.

Best story: A profile of physicist Ralph Alpher. As a grad student in 1948 he first theorized the Big Bang, then devised its mathematical proofs, only to see other scientists get the credit -- and Nobel Prizes -- for the theory.

Whatever your feelings on the Big Bang, it's a compelling portrait of a man who wages a bitter, lifelong campaign for his due recognition. Anyone ever wrongly passed over for promotion -- which, by the way, happens all the time here at Shelf Life -- can relate.

Second best story: A piece that asks the vital question, would you descend two miles into a South African gold mine to pick up a few subterranean organisms? The geologists in this issue's cover story do. The magazine follows them into the mine's hot, gassy tunnels, far below the depth microbes were thought to exist, where they're seeking organisms that eat and, in essence, breathe rock. They're the most bizarre and alien creatures this side of Siegfried and Roy.

At least everyone keeps their clothes on.

Footnote

* Signing 'History': Barbara Land will sign copies of "A Short History of Las Vegas" at 7 p.m. July 27 in the Barnes and Noble Booksellers at 2191 N. Rainbow Blvd (631-1775), and at 7 p.m. July 28 in the Borders Books and Music at 1445 W. Sunset Road (433-6222).