Las Vegas Weekly

I remember the Boy-Lesque ads very well from when I was a kid: three men in drag (one of them rather plump) sitting at a dressing table getting ready for the show. "What a way to make a living." "Don't feel bad; my family thinks I'm a cop in L.A." Near the end, a guy would poke his head in the door and say something like, "C'mon, girls, showtime." They would all jeer at him. As I recall, the guy then said, "Okay, but Frank Sinatra Jr. is in the audience." That would get all the performers out of their chairs and heading for the stage. I believe that legal action was threatened, so the name was later bleeped out.

This column shows why Jon Ralston is the best political columnist in Nevada. His criticism of Mayor Goodman is biting, yet ultimately constructive. He takes Goodman to task for his shortcomings, but holds out genuine hope for the future.

Reading a column like this, I don't think there's any doubt about it: Ralston has certainly been good for us.

It seems unworthy of Wynn to have closed his gallery in favor of a store. Why couldn't he have just moved the gallery? You can't tell me that there's no place in Wynncore where he could have put it.

Great, so now we'll have a bunch more drunken armchair quarterbacks pawing at our cocktail waitresses.

At least at the hotel I worked at, there was all the difference in the world between a hooker and a cocktail waitress. I was there for almost ten years, and one of the cocktail waitresses was one of my best friends. I never heard any stories about the waitresses fooling around with customers. I'm sure it happens, but it's the exception, not the rule.

Incidentally, I think it's perfectly reasonable to look at Tiger in this situation and think, "Man, what an idiot!" This is a case of monumental stupidity that makes Forrest Gump look like that guy ("Co-inventor of the USB") from the Intel commercials.

I suppose it might be worth it just to hear "How Soon Is Now" live, but still, why just 60 minutes when he has such a huge repertoire of great songs?

On the other hand, he's not as young as he used to be. I still can't get used to seeing Morrissey as a middle-aged man.

Now, to see Morrissey reunited with Johnny Marr, $55 for 60 minutes would be a bargain.

Hey, take it easy on that guy from Alaska. I'm sure the stripper needed the money to pay for her own college tuition. Just ask her.

I'm all for fighting cruelty to animals, and I'm convinced that people shouldn't wear fur. But PETA just lost me when they criticized Obama for slapping that fly. I'm afraid my love for animals doesn't extend to flies, mosquitoes, fleas, or ticks.

I've checked out CDs from the library before. Unfortunately, a high percentage of them are so badly damaged that they're impossible to enjoy. I've had this happen with new releases where I was literally the second person to check out the CD. It's frustrating to think of so much money being spent on items that are so quickly ruined.

Unfortunately, the best way for the library to provide music is probably illegal. Ideally, when the library purchases a CD, it would make a copy of it and make the copy available for patrons to check out. That way the copy, not the original, would get all scratched up. Once the copy was ruined, the library could destroy it and burn a new copy from the undamaged, original CD.

I think that a law should be passed to specifically allow this type of fair use. Libraries should be exempted from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as long as they only make one copy available at a time for each CD they purchase. Of course, patrons who didn't return the copies would have to be charged the same as if they had stolen the originals; otherwise, theft would go through the roof.

The alternative to this would be for the recording industry to provide replacements for damaged digital media for a nominal fee ($1.00 would be fair). Unfortunately, I doubt that the industry will cooperate; after all, they want people to buy their products, not rent them. Since industry would be unlikely to cooperate, I think that a new law would have to be passed.

Another alternative would be for the library to make the music available online, in the form of mp3s that would expire after two or three weeks.

Dang it, RHG, I thought I was done commenting on this story, and then you went and pulled me back in! (That's my Al Pacino impression.) But I just found a line on Jessica Gottlieb's blog (www.jessicagottlieb.com) that might apply to this story:

"Like virginity, you only get to lose your integrity once."

Actually, I felt bad about my last post because it sounds like I'm slamming everyone at channel 13, and I don't mean to. Nina made it clear in that taped conversation that no one else at the station knew what she was doing, so I don't think her colleagues deserve any blame (with the possible exception of her supervisor, who seemed to let Nina off the hook awfully easily). Unfortunately, as a practical matter, Nina is the most prominent anchor that station has, in my opinion. And I, for one, can't watch a newscast she's hosting without wanting to change the channel every time she appears. I'm sorry to say that; I used to have a lot of respect for her, especially because of her charitable work.

Despite Jessica Gottlieb's maxim, I'm not sure the damage to Nina is irrevocable. I'm just not convinced this was a shake-down; I think it's quite possible that she was genuinely trying to help out an old friend. (I don't understand why she would have wanted to help, but that's another story.) Nina is reportedly very well-paid, and I imagine Jack Finn was pulling down a nice salary as well at NV Energy. I doubt that the money Finn would have received from the Weightmans would have made that much difference to his and Nina's bottom line. I'm not excusing Nina for what she did, but unless someone else publicly comes forward with a credible claim that the same thing happened to them, I'm willing to give Nina the benefit of the doubt that this was a one-time "lapse of judgment". Still, I think it will be a long time before I watch "Action News" again.

You've got a point, RHG. Initially, I was most interested in the Nina angle. Maybe I'm just assuming that most people who have followed this story are no longer getting their news from channel 13, whereas they are still taking their cars somewhere to get serviced.

I definitely think that Nina blew it big-time. But the stories about Tire Works were produced by Darcy Spears, not Nina. I don't think that Ninagate takes anything away from the impact of the original stories.