Victoria is going to Peru. Victoria’s column returns to VCO August 15th!

 

Christian Audigier The Nightclub at T.I., The End of the World Coming in August, Mirror Neuron Revolution, Historical Kill Tally, Send Yourself Roses by Kathleen Turner, and more…

 

Christian Audigier: The Nightclub at T.I.

 

L.A. based designer Christian Audigier, partnered with the Pure Management Group, has moved into the nightlife world by opening “Christian Audigier The Nightclub” at Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. I went to its pre-VIP Opening on Thursday, July 3rd. The Grand Opening was on Friday, the Fourth of July, with Nick Cannon, who just married Mariah Carey, doing a live DJ set.

 

Audigier was walking around all night and quite assessable to the media and guests. By 9 PM The Nightclub was mobbed. But the most pleasurable thing at The Nightclub was the sensational music. Unfortunately, the DJ did not have a business card to give me. The music was terrific! I wanted to dance!

Incorporating some of Audigier's trademark design elements of roses, skulls and gleaming crystals, The Nightclub has a black pebble stone bar with a red mirror bar top that features a one-of-a-kind fire effect. The Nightclub has vibrant red velvet tufted walls, black glass chandeliers, skull-and-rose encrusted mirrors and black faux- crocodile leather banquettes. The crown jewel of The Nightclub will be a pair of massive jellyfish tanks, which will illuminate the space creating constant art in motion. Christian Audigier The Nightclub also has a gorgeous outside patio element offering patrons a front row view of The Strip and the incredible close-up view of T.I’s pirate ship and The Sirens of TI outdoor show. (Photos: The T.I. pirate ship, journalist Pete Allman and Audigier (peteonthescene@yahoo.com), the Nightclub’s waitresses, and the shoes the girls happily wear!)  

 

It’s On the Way!

 

The End of the World Coming in August. Sometime in August – the exact date is currently unavailable – just might spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth. Its time to use up those sick days! The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on. But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

 

Through fear that the LHC is going to unleash death and destruction on the world, Walter Wagner from Hawaii has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy, the Fermilab particle-accelerator near Chicago, CERN and the National Science Foundation. Not only could the LHC generate enough energy to create particles that exist in other dimensions, it may also produce "unparticles", a possible source for dark matter.

 

Now, the energy may be so focused that even the fabric of space-time may be pulled apart to create a wormhole, not to a different place, but a different time.

 

What I’m Reading.

 

I just finished God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now by John Dominic Crossan. I have read several books by Crossan, including The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant and Excavating Jesus: The Key Discoveries for Understanding Jesus in His World.

 

After each Crossan book, I attempted to find his email address. I am furious every time I see Crossan on TV. I have given up on Crossan, but read his books because he is a scholar, and reading Crossan confirms for me his negative obsession with Jesus. Two thousand years of Christianity and Crossan still can’t understand the “why”.

 

If Crossan doesn’t have an answer, he just skips over it. If Jesus did not resurrect from the dead, what happened to his body? Why was the Jesus Movement immediately kept alive by his brother James and the other apostles? Why did Paul aggressively demand to be called an apostle of a crucified peasant whose body was unceremoniously dumped in a ditch? Amazon.com: God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now: John Dominic Crossan: Books

 

Send Yourself Roses:

 

Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles by Kathleen Turner (Author), Gloria Feldt (Collaborator). Hardcover: 272 pages, Publisher: Springboard Press.

 

Kathleen Turner’s first book – in my opinion Turner is saving  the sensational stuff for her final book – is the story of a movie star’s successful career after turning 40. Turner believed she was an actress, but her role in Body Heat (1981) changed all that. It was her first film and made her a sex siren. Her Matty was a sexually voracious female who used men. Matty’s character is summed up in her iconic statement to her victim Ned:

 

“You’re not too smart, are you. I like that in a man.”

 

Turner is surprisingly frank about her own shortcomings, the unfair criticisms she endured as she battled rheumatoid arthritis (RA), getting fat, and the truly unforgivable, getting old in Hollywood. Then there is her abuse of alcohol and the collapse of her twenty year marriage. I would have preferred more about what it was like being married to her – even if it was her side of it. Turner doesn’t confess to any dalliances, evil Hollywood moguls, or lousy contract negotiations. She never compromised. She never sold her soul for the good script.

 

I thought there would have been more treachery and bitterness. 

 

So, the fact that much has been either forgotten or forgiven means her singling out co-stars Nicholas Cage (Peggy Sue Got Married) and Burt Reynolds (Switching Channels) can only indicate that regardless of what she says about them, they must have behaved far worse.

 

No matter what Turner had to apologize for regarding Nicholas Cage (he’s still a viable Hollywood commodity, while Reynolds’s career is behind him) – that ridiculous voice he used in Peggy Sue was horrific. Why did Francis Ford Coppola let him do it? Didn’t anyone watch the dailies? 

 

Turner pulled herself out of alcoholism, accepted the limitations of her RA, and got slim. Because, American men who still “fantasize” about Matty did not want to see Turner as she was when she went to the premiere of Monster, Inc. (pictured)

 

Turner’s career makes you wonder what will Angelina Jolie do when she turns 50? There’s no early theater training Jolie can fall back on. Turner brags all through Send Yourself Roses about her successes in the theater. She is truly proud of her triumphs. Though not praised by the critics, Turner’s starring role as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate was a sold-out success. (It was the script that was bad.) On the other hand, her engagement as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was a critical success. Turner got sensational reviews.

 

You come away from Send Yourself Roses knowing that Turner will continue to have a long and productive career in the theater where there are no close-ups and no one can tell your cup size from the back of the balcony. Amazon.com: Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles: Kathleen Turner, Gloria Feldt: Books

 

The Mirror Neuron Revolution.

 

Neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni is known for his work on mirror neurons, a small circuit of cells in the premotor cortex and inferior parietal cortex. Iacoboni has shown that mirror neurons may be an important element of social cognition and that defects in the mirror neuron system may underlie a variety of mental disorders, such as autism. His new book, Mirroring People: The Science of How We Connect to Others, Iacoboni believes we should be more careful about what we watch even if it infringes of free will and free speech!  Amazon.com: Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others: Marco Iacoboni: Books

 

Iacobini said: “There is convincing behavioral evidence linking media violence with imitative violence. Mirror neurons provide a plausible neurobiological mechanism that explains why being exposed to media violence leads to imitative violence. What should we do about it? Although it is obviously hard to have a clear and definitive answer, it is important to openly discuss this issue and hopefully reach some kind of “societal agreement” on how to limit media violence without limiting (too much) free speech.”

 

Dr. Iacoboni, I strongly disagree.

 

So let’s review:

 

3,000 Israelites were killed by Moses for worshipping the golden calf; in 1258, Halaku Khangh massacred 1.1 million people in Baghdad; and at the Battle of Nishapur, 1,747,000 were slaughtered by Genghis Khan’s Mongol army. This surpasses the 1,600,000 listed as killed by Khan’s men in the city of Herat. Historical scholars place the number of dead from Genghis Khan's invasion of central Asia at 15 million within 5 years.

 

Very conservative figures suggest that in the space of just eight years Alexander the Great had slain well over 200,000 men in pitched battle alone. His kill tally in the Battle of Granicus was 20,000 Persians and 15-18,000 Greeks; in the Battle of Issus 110,000 Persians were killed; in the Battle of Gaugamela, 50,000 Persians and a few thousand Greek; and 24,000 Indians at Hydaspes.

 

A conservative estimate of a quarter million urban residents were massacred by Alexander’s army between 334-324 BCE. In Tyre, 7-8,000 were killed plus 2,000 crucified. In 326 BC, after a fierce victory with Indian hill clans, Alexander enslaved 40,000 of them.

 

I know Genghis Khan was addicted to violent videogames, Moses listened to Black Sabbath music, and Idi Amin, whose kill tally is anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000, loved internet porn, but what was Alexander the Great renting at Blockbuster that fueled a desire to kill and enslave?

 

As an aside, while I was doing google-research on big historical kill tallies, I came upon this interesting fact: Genghis Khan, ruler the largest land empire in the world, may have helped populate it as well. An international group of geneticists studying Y-chromosome data have found that nearly 8 percent of the men living in the region of the former Mongol empire carry y-chromosomes that are nearly identical. That translates to 0.5 percent of the male population in the world, or roughly 16 million descendants living today.