When I moved here I considered smoking in casinos anachronistic and have advanced to viewing it as a necessary evil. I remember an interview with the late Joe Strummer (of Clash fame) who told me that allowing smoking inside casinos was his favorite part of Las Vegas.

Viewing smokers in a casino now reads to me as a visible sign that the rules that apply elsewhere do not apply in Las Vegas. Of course, for casinos there are practical reasons beyond the symbolic, like all of the people you can see at any resort who enjoy spending their days smoking and playing slots, a match of bad habits that seems as common and beloved as peanut butter and jelly here.

The resort companies are not oblivious to how nonsmokers and former smokers feel about the odor of cigarettes. Even an older resort like the downtown El Cortez pumps scent into the air to combat the smell. There are plenty of resorts like the Riviera where the smell of cigarettes feels like part of the decor. Meanwhile the newer resorts have gone at the problem with incredibly sophisticated filtration systems to prevent you from experiencing the smell of the cigarettes people are free to smoke. This is certainly true of Wynn, where in all of my visits I recall the odor of a cigar only once, never a cigarette. But I don't work at Wynn like dealer Kanie Kastroll does. Kastroll is suing Wynn saying that the casino is an unsafe workplace because of the dangers posed by second-hand smoke. This is the second recent lawsuit to make such a claim against a Strip resort. Caesars Palace is also being sued by a former employee.

I do not have an opinion here. I don't mean that as a cop-out. I simply do not know nearly enough about the science and health risks of second-hand smoke.  I am a nonsmoker. Yet there is a part of me that feels Las Vegas would lose yet one more bit of our unique formula of freedoms and permissiveness that allows people  to do things profoundly unhealthy for them during their Vegas vacation. I have always--without evidence, I admit--- thought that many of the smokers I see in resorts are really Vegas smokers, who don't actually have a cigarette habit back home but indulge themselves in all ways while visiting Sin City.

I guess, I really wish Joe Strummer, the bitter denouncer of proletarian exploitation and a chain smoker, were still alive to get his opinion on the topic.

Photo: Sarah Gerke

I had a brief phone interview for the print column of the Buffet with director John Waters. Waters is coming to Vegas for the Fangoria Trinity of Terrors festival at the Palms over Halloween weekend. Here are three Vegas/Halloween-related quotes from Waters that did not make the story, because they were off topic, but all are pure Waters:

1) I hate to wear costumes because I am dressed as me all the time. I have actually seen people dressed as me for Halloween. What really shocked me is when I see children dressed as me. That was weird.

2) Vegas is perfect for me, because I don't want to be home in Baltimore. If I am in Baltimore, I don't like it, because people finally feel like they can knock on my door without being uptight. It is the one night that they are allowed to knock on my door. I see some really well-meaning parents craning their necks trying to see the electric chair they've read I have.

3) I am the best person for Las Vegas casinos, because I think it is embarrassing to win: All the bells, go off, the lights flash, and you have to collect grubby coins in a paper cup. Then people look at you. I like to lose and get it over with and then go look at hookers and drink like you are supposed to do in Las Vegas.

Courtesy Photo

This concludes my too long excursion into the life and mind of Aubrey O’Day.

This is the part of interviewing Aubrey O’Day that surprised me: her obsession with blogger Perez Hilton.  The one time I “met” Hilton was at a Vegas red carpet where he and a publicist tried to push past me like I did not exist. The publicist was groveling at his feet with sycophantic words while Hilton was striding forward like a conquering warlord off to rape and pillage. At the time, I had never heard the name Perez Hilton, and so I used all of my skills acquired at general-admission, all-ages, hard-core punk shows in the '80s to prevent easy passage, sliding my body into inconvenient places. It slowed them for less than a moment, and it got me a dirty look from the publicist. Hilton did not even glance down at me.

When they passed, Buffet photographer Sarah Gerke ran over to tell me with total excitement that the man was Hilton. My blank stare brought an explanation. Since then, Hilton’s fame has expanded so tremendously that he is well known enough in Vegas to host at nightclubs. This year, in one Vegas weekend, he managed to easily unhinge Criss Angel with a tweet at Luxor and then make national news by upending the Miss USA contest over at Planet Hollywood.

I also get that some people hate Perez Hilton. My Vegas colleague (USA Today and New York Times reporter) Steve Friess, I think, falls close to this category, though hate may be too strong a word. Friess at one point believed Hilton had plagiarized him. Friess sent me the evidence, and Hilton replied to me with a copy of his source e-mail for the story. I was totally convinced that Hilton did not plagiarize that story and never wrote an item. But Friess was convinced he had been wronged by Hilton and has referred to Hilton as “vermin” ever since in writing, as if “vermin” was Hilton’s epic simile.

This is Part 2 of the Aubrey O’Day interview dealing with her controversial Hitler comments.

 
“Oh, I read what you wrote and I would summarize that as a strong distaste [for me].”
 
“I had distaste for your comments on Hitler,” I replied.
 
This exchange was just seven minutes into my 40-minute interview with O’Day. It was the key to why the interview had been so hard to get. And she knew from her public relations team that I intended to ask her about her Hitler comments and her previous explanation of them. In fact, I had entered the room with a gift I had bought for her, "Explaining Hitler" by Ron Rosenbaum.
 
So if I had asked a question, she would have been expecting it and been ready with her response. As it was, I did not get a question in at the start before she offered her answer for 23 continuous minutes of her talking interrupted occasionally by me attempting to get her to focus or clarify something to which she responded repeatedly. “Can I finish?” or “Just let me finish.” And so I was silent until she finished.
 
On her end, O’Day says her PR team told her that I would take parts of what she said and use them out of context to make her look bad or stupid. In my head my plan was to run her unabridged answers on the topic here to allow her to explain things anyway she chose. But given the speech-like length and the tangled syntax that occasionally placed her words (a couple of times I had to ask if “him” referred to Hitler or, say as in one case, Perez Hilton, who had been weaving in and out of her monologue), that is not practical. So I will do my best accurately background the behind the scenes and place her answer in that context as well as offer substantial quotes to summarize it fairly.
 
Just before moving to Las Vegas for her role in "Peepshow," Aubrey O’Day appeared on Fox News, where she called Hitler “brilliant.”  I called that comment praise, which was part of her objection: “I did not praise Hitler as an intelligent person. 'Praise' is a strong word. I would never praise Hitler. Now, unfortunately the word was used in a clip as regards to Castro. I don’t watch [Fox News host Sean] Hannity, and so I was unaware that he enjoys abusing certain guests in the sense that he will wrap you up real quick and spit you out. I wasn’t scared of that, just like I wasn’t scared of doing this interview with you. I got your threats. And I am not scared of my mind. I’ve worked hard at being a smart person regardless of how I am portrayed in the media.”
 
Her view of the Hannity situation is that the subtlety of her answer was lost in the sound-bite world of television.
 
After the Hannity interview she released this statement to TMZ:
 
“Murderers and dictators generally are some of the smartest people out there -- they just use their brain power for evil purposes. I don't condone any of their evil behavior, but I was asked about their intellectual firepower ... and in my opinion you can't have a low IQ and wreck [sic] that much havoc on the world.”
 
It was this considered response offered as an after-the-fact explanation that I found appalling. The reason why is that I considered her statement factually wrong (hence the Rosenbaum book), and then wondered why she was stretching for a dishonest way to praise Hitler.
 
To make my point on the Buffet, I interviewed a leading scholar of Hitler’s Germany, Berel Lang, about the evidence for the brilliant intelligence of Adolf Hiter. And as I suspected, that evidence does not exist.
 
But rather than grasp that her explanation was exactly what I wanted to question, O’Day’s PR people noted that she had already explained the Hannity comment.  In an e-mail, I was told by her PR people that they considered the matter closed. Well, good for them. I did not agree. She was unavailable for interviews, until she suddenly started doing them with other press. And so as O’Day made her rounds interviewing to support “Peepshow,” I noted, she was not making time to speak to me. So I did ask why this woman who likes to boast of her intelligence would not face my questions.
 
Finally, her main PR representative in Los Angeles agreed to an interview by phone so that the PR rep could be on the line. But I live 15 minutes from Planet Hollywood, where O’Day stays, and that seemed absurd. Otherwise, her publicist decided, I would have to wait until the rep's next trip to Vegas to sit in on the interview. Again, I questioned why O’Day would need the interview monitored that closely if anyone around her had any confidence in her ability to answer questions. Finally, the interview was arranged even without her PR rep being present; instead a PR rep for the company that handles “Peepshow” sat in and kept out of the interview. So kudos to O’Day again for facing the Hitler question despite the desire of the people around her to declare it old news.
 
It turns out, as with most things I learned talking to her, O’Day and I simply have totally different ways of seeing the world. First, as to her going on Hannity, it seemed to me that she was woefully unprepared, whereas to her this was a challenge showing her courage and openness to any question: “All I knew going on that show was Fox News: hate. Republican: ehh. And you are going to be the only one of your kind: good. This is a challenge, love it. In my career I take all the challenges, and I am not scared.”
 
Of course, it never occurred to me a TV personality would be scared to go on television. The issue to me was judgment: Going on news television to discuss real issues means you should be totally well versed in those issues first. O’Day does not share that perspective on what happened:
 
“The Hitler comment was a hard thing for me to go through. I represented a very liberal side of the sphere [on Fox News]. I stood on my own up until that Hitler comment. Hannity tossed Hitler in. Now what I understand is that I am 25.  I have had the life experience that I have had, and I have opinions about everything until now. Could my opinions change after reading a book [she points at "Explaining Hitler"]? Absolutely. I don’t claim to be the world’s top understander of Hitler out there. I just know some, a little bit.
 
“The only statement I was trying to make is knowing what I know at this point in life is that I don’t think you can do as many atrocious things as any dictator has done without having a high intellect.  I don’t believe you can take control of that many people without being smart.  I don’t make it my job to offend people.  I don’t condone anything horrible he or any other mass murderer or dictator did. I don’t use smart in the same parallel as having a moral compass. I did not just have to answer for that interview to the entire world but to my own family, who matter more to me. Half my family was telling me he wasn’t smart at all, and half were saying kudos for having the courage to say what I thought. I was sick over all of it. It really hurt me a lot. I just wanted to make a correlation between being able to make that much havoc and being smart.”
 
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Charles Manson or insert name of favorite butcher. In other words, O’Day did not mean Hitler was individually brilliant, but in fact has an epistemological view where for some reason she thinks it requires intelligence to control people through murder, fear and intimidation.
 
The problem of course is that connection can not be made, not only at the top level of evil but in everyday life. If someone points a gun at you and gives you orders, do you consider them smart while obeying? Have you ever seen an idiot rise to the top of an office environment where you work? Idiots can do most anything if they are willing to lie, cheat, steal and -- not that this happens so much at the office -- murder.
 
The ability to destroy does not necessarily require intelligence. I hope “Explaining Hitler” will help O’Day see that, because the “evil genius” myth is just that -- a myth, and one that ultimately glamorizes serial killers, Hitler and, I guess, the Dear Leader using his intelligence to starve and torture the people of North Korea, a job inherited from his dad.
 
Huge and horrible destruction can be caused by the brilliant and the idiotic. O’Day would say she is 25 and will one day learn that as true, if she decides it is true. Of course, at that age Einstein was working on his Theory of Special Relativity, one of many works that Hitler, who was threatened by anyone smarter than him, would later have burned. 
 
But on a deeper level, there is a big difference between informed opinion and what O’Day admits were comments derived from little familiarity with the facts and details of what she was speaking about. This is a terrible deficit for someone who repeated over and over how people underestimate her intelligence.
 
Perhaps, one reason she finds herself in media storms (and she told me Hitler was not the first) is her failure to know the difference between letting your mind play freely with ideas among friends versus appearing on news programs to pontificate.  It does take courage to have an unpopular opinion, no argument, but there is strength in admitting to not knowing enough about a situation to have an answer. That is the trap Hannity set for her. She was unwilling to say that she did not know enough to answer, and so he was able to get her to agree Hitler was “brilliant.” It is my hope that Ron Rosenbaum’s book will help her grasp the details of how Hitler did what he did without being an evil genius but by brutality, appealing to hate, and murdering anyone who stood in his way. Then after seizing power he was a dictator ruling by gun. Again, it takes no intelligence on an individual or a mass level to murder your enemies. This is evil that can be practiced by the smart and dumb alike. And so I hope the book teaches this one example of that to O’Day.
 
O’Day got herself into this situation because she desperately wants to be taken seriously. She complained six times in her more than 20 minute talk that people saw her a certain way because she appeared in Playboy (a fact I did not know until she told me). But by having no filter between her passing thoughts and expression, where she is able to consider the meaning of her words, the level of her knowledge and the context she is speaking, there will continue to be questions about her intelligence.
 

As for myself, after listening to her long lecture, I agree O’Day is not dumb, and she is certainly not a lover of Hitler. The reality is that from the moment she made that comment about Hitler on Fox until I spoke to her, she demonstrated no judgment about how much she should know about a topic before expressing a public opinion. A choice to praise the brain power of murderers and dictators in a news format is a poor one unless she has plenty of evidence to back that opinion up. Yet when I met with her more than a month later, she still admitted to knowing little about the topic of brain research into dictators and killers yet has not altered her opinion one bit. That is poor judgment in the extreme.

Photo: Ethan Miller/Courtesy Peepshow

I am blogging this much anticipated interview with Aubrey O’Day, which took place Friday afternoon, in three items. This first one (below) deals with the interview itself and “Peepshow,” the show O'day is starring in at Planet Hollywood. I will also cover our detailed conversation about her controversial comments on Adolf Hitler, and in a final item offer her strong thoughts on blogger Perez Hilton and their reciprocal and dysfunctional relationship. -- Richard

 
Shortly after I left her hotel room, Aubrey O’Day sent out a tweet to her more than 150,000 followers: “just did an interview w/an avid Aubrey hater, he was nice.. aubrey haters come in all shapes & sizes! Hopefully he understands me better!” I wonder if I was shorter or fatter than she expected. No matter.
 
I guess, in some ways I did understand her better. She is a very heart-on-sleeve person. But in other ways our worlds do not have much overlap for communication. Last night she sent out a tweet about her favorite DK song. A group of my friends and I immediately thought she meant San Francisco punk legends Dead Kennedys. Obviously, she was referring to her former band Danity Kane, a group I never heard documented on a reality show ("Making the Band") I never watched. What baffled me was her actual conviction (and she has no doubt) that I hate her.  To her it was not possible that I was unaware of her existence before her arrival in Vegas to star in "Peepshow" or that she was a catalyst who inevitably provoked strong reactions from all who come in contact with her.
 
Actually, what really helped me understand O’Day better, and her peculiar sense of celebrity as well as her sense of persecution by bloggers and the media, was an article she directed me to read. It's a profile of her from the Los Angels Times earlier this year; O’Day is very happy with the story. In it, she is quoted in an observation about how people viewed her on that reality television show. This thinking, heroes and villains, was in line with how she expressed herself in our interview: “ 'I was loved the first season,’ O'Day said with a sigh. ‘The second season, the haters came.’ ” As in our interview, there does not seem to be a lot of gray area for O’Day, only those who hate her or love her. “I read what you wrote about me. And, I would say you have a strong distaste for me.”
 
O’Day does not seem to allow for the possibility (or perhaps it is hard for her to accept) that someone can find her a middling singer who can stay in key, and that opinion does not come from hate, but from years of listening to great singers and holding all to those standards. And, yet even here our tastes are so different we may be talking about different things. She spoke admiringly of Janet Jackson. That was an interesting choice as I felt no different about Jackson’s singing when I reviewed the Velvet Rope tour for Rolling Stone than I do about O’Day’s voice in "Peepshow." They both stay in key and can dance pretty well. But O’Day will never be able to pump her songs with the emotion Patti Smith gives her vatic pronouncement, blow out a microphone with the pure power of her voice like Etta James, own a lyric like Billie Holiday, handle the subtleties of a harmony vocal with the peerless ease of Emmylou Harris or scream with the conviction of the ladies from Sleater-Kinney. That is the singing that interests me.
 
But even if none of that were true, O’Day knows the night I saw her, she had issues that could have affected her voice. “The beginning was a little rocky. I was battling a cold,” she told me. Nonetheless, she was clear my opinion of her singing was spawned not by her singing but by personal malice. “To me you are very negative. You strong armed my PR people. My PR people told me I should not bother talking to you. But I think it is important to talk to the people who don’t like me.” I will tell the PR story in the second installment of this entry. But let me thank O’Day for interviewing with me against what she says is the advice of her handlers.
 
In fact, I went back on a another night when I found out she was sick the night I saw her and checked out the show again just to hear her voice, and she is a better singer than I saw opening night. She can, for what it is worth, stand proudly in the footsteps of Mel B.
 
We settled for an interview on the sofa in her spacious Planet Hollywood suite; her dog, with some hair dyed pink, sat between us and rolled over to nap. We both absently petted the dog while speaking. O’Day says she has been enjoying Vegas and appearing in the show. She plays the deeply sexually experienced ringleader of the cast, but behind the scenes, she notes, that at 25, she is among the casts’ youngest members, and that the experiences many cast members share with her make her feel very sexually innocent. That said, she gets that for a tourist in Las Vegas, "Peepshow" has adult elements that can be a bit overwhelming. She likes that:
 
“It is kind of a shocking thing if you are from out of town to go to a show where there is open, blatant nudity right out in the first five minutes of the show. I think that some people don’t know how to handle that and some people are uncomfortable and some people are like ‘O yeah, this is where I was meant to be my whole life.’ This show is different because you can holler, hoop and be drunk. The more the merrier.”
 
As for going topless herself, O’Day had no problem making the decision. “I am pretty comfortable with my body. I think they look better without the pasties. It is a rebellious show and people like to rebel. I love to curse on stage.”
 
When I interviewed Holly Madison she was clear that she wanted her three-month contract in "Peepshow" extended. That is a goal she achieved. O’Day’s answer to that same questions was more conflicted, and she surprised me by saying something I have never heard by a celebrity in an interview: “I am not a happy person,” she said. She then added “The only place I want to be is happy. Am I happy right now? No. The only thing I see for my future is I just want to be happy. I want to figure out what that means for me.  I don’t know yet.”
 
This truly surprised me. I pointed out her job, her friends in the room with us and her dog resting comfortably between us, and I asked her why she was not happy?
 
“My job is good. But I have not gotten those answers yet. I am only 25. It will probably be years more therapy before I get there  I am content. There have been periods in my life when I have been happy. This is not one of them. But I am OK with that. Life is filled with struggle. I am still struggling as a human being.  I have found out what doesn’t work, and so that is good.”
 
How can you not like a person offering up such honest answers?
 
Perhaps, this style of personal revelation offered for the masses is what makes O’Day such a hit on the personality driven Web. And, it also makes her a very sympathetic interview. And, so while I don’t really know her, I would have to say, that she is totally wrong, I like Aubrey O’Day.

Photo: Peepshow 

Gay marriage isn't legal in Nevada, although domestic partnerships were recently approved. But divas make their own law.

Plus, there's nothing to stop you from proposing while in Vegas.

In this really charming video from Saturday night at the Pearl at the Palms, Mariah Carey's views on gay marriage are apparent -- and they're nothing like those expressed by Miss California Carrie Prejean at Planet Hollywood during the Miss USA contest earlier this year.

UPDATE: I just spoke by phone to Maurie Sherman, 31, of Toronto who proposes in this video to his now-fiance, Mathew Almeida. Gay marriage is legal where they live, and so they will in fact be married. "I wish we could have married in Las Vegas. I think Las Vegas would make a lot of money from allowing [gay] marriage," Sherman said. Many locals and casino companies would agree with that assessment. But Nevada has a "Defense of Marriage Act" passed by voters from the entire state, not just Las Vegas.

 

Anyway, I asked Sherman what his hook-up was to arrange his on stage proposal at Saturday night's Mariah Carey concert at the Palms. He did not have one. According to Sherman, he spent six months working to arrange what you see in the clip, and he bombarded everyone from the Palms to Perez Hilton, until he finally got the ear of Mariah Carey's management company. And, even then, nothing was for sure:

 

"I worked as hard as I can to make it happen. Everyone loved the idea. But no one made promises. I did not find out until five minutes before the concert started. Her security came over and talked to me. 'I think we are going to do this. And, I think it will be during the show on stage.'  I did not know before that moment. But I came prepared. I dressed nicely and brought the candy ring in my pocket and made sure it didn't break. Mathew had no idea. Please let me add thanks to Mariah for doing it."

Does it say anything that the Miss USA pageant picks Perez Hilton as a celebrity judge and Miss America goes another way?

This press release today from the Miss America organization:

"The Miss America Organization (MAO) announced today that Rush Limbaugh has been named as one of the national judges for the 2010 Miss America Pageant, which will be held at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on Saturday, January 30 and broadcast live on TLC."

I admit Rush Limbaugh is not my image of a beauty judge. On the other hand Perez Hilton single-handedly made the Miss USA pageant at Planet Hollywood back in April a national news story. I don't think Limbaugh has that kind of cheek. But we will see.

Photo: Sarah Gerke

 

The rumor reported on the Buffet is now official: Barry Manilow's headlining gig at the Hilton is ending. Manilow opened at the Las Vegas Hilton back in 2005. His final dates: October 8-10, Nov. 27-29, and Dec. 28-30. If you are a Fanilow and want to be sure to see him in Vegas, this is your final definite chance. But probably not your final, final chance. As to the rumors that Manilow is in negotiations with Paris casino, journalist Steve Friess on his blog updates on what is currently known. Manilow, according to the Hilton, by the end of residency will have performed for about 450,000 customers.

Photo: Sarah Gerke