Tuesday, March 27, 2007 | 7:31 a.m.
Among Lamar Marchese's more pressing plans as he enters retirement is to see Luxor. Not our Luxor, which happens to be a replica, but the real Luxor in Egypt.
The outgoing president and general manager of Nevada Public Radio is packed and has all but signed off from his duties at the institution he helped launch in 1980. Flo Rogers takes over as station GM on Sunday (which staffers joke is appropriate, as it is April Fool's Day). Marchese and his wife, Pat, who has retired from her position as director of the Clark Country Parks and Recreation Department, plan to travel to Egypt as soon as they can organize the adventure. "Today is her first day of actual unemployment," Marchese said Monday afternoon with a chuckle. "The next destination is her call, and she suggested Egypt so that's where we're going."
To put Marchese's tenure at KNPR in perspective, there was no Southern Nevada National Public Radio affiliate until he conceived of the idea in the mid-1970s. The first KNPR broadcast was from a one-time janitor's closet in the bowels of the Silver Bowl (now Sam Boyd Stadium) on March 24, 1980. Since, Nevada Public Radio has grown to a network of six stations and has a state-of-the-art, $4.5 million broadcast facility on the Community College of Southern Nevada's West Charleston Boulevard campus.
At 63, Marchese says he has reached all of his goals at KNPR, but one issue lingers: The FCC has held up renewal of the station's license since August 2005, when it received a complaint from a listener who heard Harvey Pekar use a familiar profanity for the word "stuff" during National Public Radio's "Whad 'Ya Know?" The FCC has withheld the license as it reviews the case. KNPR is legally permitted to stay on the air while the FCC reviews the case. Stripping the station of its right to broadcast is hardly even a remote possibility, as Pekar's slip went across the country and it is highly unlikely the FCC would punish a single station simply because it received a complaint from one rabbit-eared listener. But the FCC has been busy dealing with other legal matters related to network television fines and has back-burnered the KNPR case.
"If there was one thing I could have settled, it would be that," Marchese said. "But it is totally out of my control."
NoteMart
To supplant the Big Shot at the Stratosphere as the city's scariest attraction: The Internet was abuzz with reports that Michael Jackson would build (or, rather, would have someone build) a 50-foot robotic visage of himself if he accepts one of the multitudes of offers he claims he has received to star in a show here. The original report was by Rush & Molloy's George Rush and Joanna Rush Molloy of the New York Daily News, who also said Paul McCartney is considering investing in this proposed spectacle (and if that is true, we can confidently conclude that Sir Paul has returned to smoking the herbal jazz cigarettes) ...
Now we know why the Killers were not among the early bookings at the Pearl Theater at the Palms. The Hard Rock announced Monday the band is playing June 1 at the Joint's Summer Stage, which is the temporary outdoor arena set up in the hotel's front parking lot (long story short: I once had a car towed from that lot to make room for bleachers). Tickets are cheap (cheap! I tell you), just $40, and go on sale at noon Saturday ...
On those occasions you feel particularly adventurous, or even when you don't, check out Origin India, which in April celebrates its one-year anniversary in the shopping center to the east of the Hard Rock Hotel on Paradise Road and Harmon Avenue. Businesses in this strip mall have recently suffered from road construction on Paradise and Harmon, which is one reason the Rainbow Bar & Grill is relocating and why Cold Stone Creamery is moving out, too. But word from Origin is that business is going "up and up." ...
Banner recovery: In the April issue of Vegas magazine, Roseanne Barr tells E.C. Gladstone her ill-fated national anthem rendition at a 1990 San Diego Padres game led to "thousands upon thousands upon thousands" of death threats. "It was a very devastating thing, and it kind of sent me on a whole spiritual journey." Tough way to tap into your spiritual being, but regardless Barr's show, "All You Can Eat Comedy," runs through April 30 at New York-New York (disclosure alert! Vegas magazine is owned by the Greenspun family, which also owns the Las Vegas Sun) ...
Get along, little doggy: Vanity plate CHAWAWA on a blue Honda Civic. The plate frame reads, "I Love My Chihuahua."
archive
