>> The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
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>> Gangster Squad
>> Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
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>> Zero Dark Thirty
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>> The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
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Opening 5.10.13
>> The Great Gatsby (PG-13) [trailer]
>> Peeples (PG-13) [trailer]
>> Aftershock (Limited) (R) [trailer]
>> And Now a Word From Our Sponsor (Limited) (NR) [trailer]
>> Erased (Limited) (R) [trailer]
>> Sightseers (Limited) (NR) [trailer]
>> Venus and Serena (Limited) (PG-13) [trailer]

Coming To DVD/Blu-Ray 5.7.13
>> Safe Haven (2013) [buy]
>> Fringe: The Complete Fifth Season [buy]
>> Jack Reacher [buy]
>> Mama [buy]
>> Superman: Unbound [buy]

Las Vegas: Satan Vacations Here
by Victoria Alexander
August 8, 2005

MGM Grand’s Frozen Fury 8, no flying lamas, Clint Holmes, Jesus vs. The DL, The Hypnotic Anthony Cools, and more...

MGM Grand Frozen Fury 8. I’m buying two front row seats right on the ice! The National Hockey League’s (NHL) Los Angeles Kings return to Las Vegas for “Frozen Fury 8” when they host an NHL pre-season game against the Colorado Avalanche Saturday, Sept. 24 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. Game time is 7:30 p.m. Tickets go on sale August 13 at 10 a.m., are priced at $175 (front row ice), $65, $50, $30 and $20, and are available at the MGM Grand Garden Arena box office (800) 929-1111. Tickets also are available for purchase at www.mgmgrand.com. “Frozen Fury 8” plans to feature a line-up of NHL all-star players from both rosters including Kings players Alexander Frolov, Luc Robitaille and Craig Conroy. Colorado Avalanche all-stars include Joe Sakic, Rob Blake and former Kings Forward Ian Laperriere.

Where have all the Flying Lamas gone? Since coming back from Tibet, I have re-read “Magic and Mystery in Tibet” and “My Journey to Lhasa” by Alexandra David-Neel and “Tibet’s Terrifying Deities: Sex and Aggression in Religious Acculturation” by F. Sierksma. We also rented the DVD “Tibet: Land of the Snow Lions” and watched hours of Michael Palin’s “Himalaya” which conveniently was shown in its entirety on The Travel Network on July 24th. Palin traveled for 125 days, from May 12, 2003 to April 7, 2004, through six countries and covered 3,000 miles. Palin trekked through Tibet to Everest Base Camp just like we did. Palin’s Himalaya trip finally ended in Bhutan. We will go to Bhutan this coming December.

In “Magic and Mystery in Tibet” David-Neel, who lived in Tibet for fourteen years, details her adventures studying esoteric practices among magicians and lamas. For David-Neel, Tibet was filled with demons, necromantic magic, and tulpas. (David-Neel conjured up a servant-tulpa of her own who, after several months, caused her and her staff a great deal of trouble.) I looked around and made inquiries. Sadly, all the lamas, sorcerers, and demons skipped out of Tibet when the Fourteenth Dalai Lama fled for his life. I was able to make a small donation to a Buddhist nunnery for prayers to be said on my behalf and I brought back some blessed trinkets for my altars. (Photo of Alexandra David-Neel.)

“My Journey to Lhasa” is about David-Neel’s 1923 trek to Tibet’s forbidden city of Lhasa. She disguised herself as a begging pilgrim and traveled only with her “adopted” son, the young lama Yongden. She was fifty-five years old at the time she undertook this secret trip. Since European women were not allowed to enter Lhasa, she wanted to be the first. David-Neel was an extraordinary and mysterious woman. (Charlize Theron should gain another 60 lbs and play her in a movie.) I know exactly what David-Neel went through, though she loved begging for food, sleeping in cow dung huts, and walking 17 hours every day at 18,000 feet above sea level. Tibet hasn’t changed much though the Chinese are now dragging it out of the 14th century.

My husband John’s recollections of the trek through Tibet differs dramatically from mine. Though we traveled together, John went with the program, while I changed the tour program to my will. His treks were route-less with guides getting lost, barely any food (he lost 17 lbs.), and nasty UK trekkers as companions. (Yes, it is quite true that Americans are hated.) John says: “Victoria had quite a pleasant experience. She had a car, driver, personal cook, and butler.”

Fourteenth continuous Dalai Lamas (absolute rulers known as God-Kings) and the country had no concept of bathing or sanitation. (Even today, these two are still relatively unknown even in the capital of Lhasa.) Tibet, under the Dalai Lamas, did have 6,500 monasteries. The powerful monasteries owned all the land in Tibet! Now that I have been to the Dalai Lama’s former summer palace, The Potala, I can assure everyone the Fourteenth Dalai Lama is not coming back. The Potala has no air-conditioning, no central heating, and no electricity. Where would Richard Gere and Goldie Hawn sleep?

There are roads now! The Dalai Lama’s people actually have a dirt path now that goes through their rock and pebble landscape. Everyone is at work, carving out access to villages and towns, and someday, they will be able to reach modern civilization. (Photo of our Tibet campsite above.)

Jesus vs. The Dalai Lama. Jesus wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. He knew the horrific, gruesome public death that awaited him. He must have been warned. Jerusalem was lined with crucified, naked men rotting on Roman crosses. But he couldn’t stop preaching and agitating the powerful religious and political establishments. Jesus was on a mission. The Fourteenth Dalai Lama skipped out on his deeply religious people and became an international, fawned over celebrity for over fifty years. The DL’s reason for fleeing his country and people? He was afraid the Chinese invaders would capture and kill him. Yet, what is death to a Buddhist monk?

Of all the people who ever lived, the present living, and the long dead, the Fourteenth DL is guaranteed to be reincarnated as the Fifteenth DL. Westerners do not put much stock in reincarnation (except Hindus and Buddhists, who makes plans for their next life?), but I know the DL is certain of it since he can even tell his monks where to find his reincarnated self. And by the way, doesn’t Buddhism preach not clinging to the illusions of the world? This material world is a place fragmented and constantly changing; this changing aspect of the universe is called samsara. Jesus vs. The Dalai Lama: Who talked the talk and walked the walk? The DL should have said: “Take me.”

I saw Clint Holmes’s show on Saturday night. If you live in Las Vegas, you know Clint Holmes. Though his show is in the Clint Holmes Theater at Harrah’s Las Vegas, Clint loves entertaining so much that he sings at benefits, charity events, and jumps on stage whenever there is a band playing near him. I also see Clint at the Las Vegas Athletic Club on West Sahara with his personal trainer. He’s approachable. He loves being a singer. Clint is a complete entertainer – with the exception of Country-Western music - there isn’t a style of music he has not mastered. His show is emotional, engaging, and filled with love for his deceased father, a jazz singer, and his mother, an opera singer. In fact, he has put his very capable sister, singer Gayle Steele, and 89 year-old mother to work in his show.

His band is, as Clint Holmes brags in his long-running commercial, the best in Las Vegas. Clint has a rich, powerful voice and throws his whole body and soul into his volcanic performance. I wish Clint would consider doing a once a week concert performance just singing R&B standards: Anything by Marvin Gaye, any classic from Barry White, and my personal favorite, “What You Won’t Do For Love” by Bobby Caldwell. I loved the show and so did the audience, yet I kept wondering what Clint could do with “When A Man Loves A Woman” with that gorgeous voice of his. Show time: 7:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Ticket price: $59.95 plus tax. Call Harrah’s at 1-800-392-9002 x 5222 and visit www.clintholmes.com. He said he answers every email himself. Pre-show he’s working out.

From the New York Post’s Page Six, a timely Blind Item on a story I have been following: “Which newly humiliated actress is not so innocent herself? We hear that while visiting her cheating man on a movie set, she hooked up with his married co-star during an all-night cocaine binge.” Let’s try to work this out. It can’t be Jennifer Aniston, since her cheating man was her husband and its old news already. I’m going with Sienna Miller and Law’s PR firm as the source of the item. The photo at right is of Miller in London just after ending her engagement with Jude, after having dinner with Sean Penn, Jude’s co-star in ALL THE KING’S MEN, and the long-suffering Robin Wright Penn.

Winning Hearts and Minds. Senior Pentagon Intelligence official Lt. Gen. William Boykin referred in 2003 to the struggle against Islamic extremists as a battle with Satan. In a speech, Boykin referred to a Muslim fighter in Somalia, and said, "Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

Anthony Cools, again. If you are coming to Las Vegas, I strongly recommend you see “The Uncensored Hypnotist” Anthony Cools at Paris Las Vegas. I’ve seen the show 3 times because I keep bringing vacationing friends who come to Las Vegas for extreme fun. Anthony Cools is the most fabulous, outrageous, sensational act on the Las Vegas Strip. I also have the Cools DVD. I’m a fan.

For my third visit I went to the Sunday show. Cools is very, very good at what he does. He is randy. He is brilliant. I never had so much naughty fun! I screamed with laughter. I shouted. I stood up and yelled at Cools. This “raw and uncensored” evening changes every night. On Saturday nights, some people go to both shows.

The night’s main highlight was Cools inducing the participants to believe they were naked. He told them they were porn stars and were auditioning for a part in a movie. They were to have sex with the most gorgeous person they ever saw; in reality, it was a metal chair. Cools ended his show, as he is now famous for doing, by holding hands with every participant and telling them they were going to have the most intense – 10 times normal – orgasm. Believe me, the look on these people’s faces afterwards, and their admissions that it was fantastic, says everything. This is not the show for prudes or those people who do not want to see audience members or friends having faux-sex in front of a screaming audience. Or having an intense orgasm. (A warning: If you have a sexual orientation or a fetish you are keeping from your friends, stay in your seat.) Anthony Cools “The Uncensored Hypnotist,” show time: 9 p.m. Sunday through Friday; 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Saturday. Ticket prices: $40 and $60 plus tax. Call Paris Las Vegas (888) 266-5687 or (702) 946-7000. (Photo, from left: Louis du Coppet, Pierre-Louis Lacas, Cools, and John Alexander after the July 31st show.)

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