Friday, May 21, 2004 | 4:23 a.m.
VegasBeat appears Sunday through Friday in the Las Vegas Sun. Timothy McDarrah can be reached at [email protected] or at (702) 259-4096.
WEEKEND EDITION
May 22 - 23, 2004
First Britney Spears, now Martha Stewart -- another celeb in need of legal help has turned to prominent Las Vegas attorney David Chesnoff.
Seems the high-profile barrister has become an unofficial advisor to the Domestic Diva.
Stewart could be facing prison time when she is sentenced June 17, unless she and her lead attorney Robert Morvillo -- and now Chesnoff -- can come up with something more lenient.
In March, Stewart was convicted of lying to investigators about the circumstances of a stock sale.
Three weeks ago a federal judge in Manhattan refused to grant Stewart a new trial, rejecting arguments that a juror was biased and lied about his background. But her hopes for a successful appeal took an upturn last week when perjury charges were filed against a forensics expert involved in her case.
Where does the Stewart/Chesnoff connection originate? Seems his brother, New York Daily News columnist Richard Chesnoff, is an acquaintance of Stewart. We reported in February on Richard Chesnoff coming to Vegas for a speaking engagement at the home of Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman.
Goodman and David Chesnoff are longtime law partners and close friends. Chesnoff was Spears' attorney for the annulment of her quickie marriage to a childhood friend at a Las Vegas wedding chapel in January.
The party at Rain Nightclub (Palms) to mark the debut of VEGAS Magazine in June delivered on the promised hype.
It was a wondrous event that found guests bumping into celeb attendees from Paris Hilton to Siegfried Fischbacher to Pamela Anderson.
And the scheduled June 11 party to mark the glossy's first anniversary is shaping up as an even more extravagant affair.
The party will be at Caesars Palace and feature fireworks shooting from the roof of the hotel, VEGAS Magazine Publisher Michael Carr said during an appearance (along with a couple of local gossip columnists) Friday morning on KNPR 88.9-FM's "State of Nevada" program.
The party will also mark the opening of the CineVegas Film Festival.
"About 2,000 of my nearest and dearest will be there," Carr said. Among the likely guests: Jerry Seinfeld, who plays at The Colosseum that same evening, and a few of the stars who have been featured in the mag over the last year, such as cover girls Jennifer Love Hewitt, Denise Richards, Jaime Pressly, Heidi Klum, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and the cast of "Las Vegas," including James Caan, Josh Duhamel, Molly Sims and Nikki Cox.
Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine, which does hilarious lounge-ified versions of pop and other songs, plays at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel on June 6.
The group just wrapped up a weeklong engagement as the house band for "Last Call With Carson Daly," which was taping at the Hard Rock.
We don't read Playboy -- even for the articles.
But some friends of ours who do thumb through the men's mag report that Charisma Carpenter, the June 2004 Playmate, was a Las Vegas resident years ago before going on to fame on the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" TV series.
Steve Wynn's next door neighbor in Sun Valley, Idaho, is John Kerry. However, despite Wynn's long-standing and close friendship with the Democratic presidential candidate and his wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, he is going to vote for George Bush's re-election, Wynn told our Las Vegas Sun colleague Jeff Simpson.
However ...
"I spent the last four Christmas Eves with the Kerrys," Wynn told Simpson.
But on Tuesday first lady Laura Bush bunked down with Elaine and Steve Wynn at their home after a fund-raising dinner, which raised more than $700,000.
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