Lavo Nightclub Opens at Palazzo, Jeff McBride and his Magic & Mystery School Master Class, The Arlington Institute forecasts a Disaster, Movies This Week, Large Hadron Collider Debuts, The 10th Annual Bay Area UFO Expo, and more…

 

Lavo Opens at Palazzo.

 

On Tuesday evening, September 9th, I went to the VIP/ Media opening of Lavo Nightclub, Bathhouse and Lounge at The Palazzo Resort Hotel Casino. The official grand opening was Saturday, Sept. 13. The space derives inspiration from the bathhouses of ancient Mediterranean cultures. The décor is nouveau Turkish and it is extravagantly impressive.

 

The VIP Media event showcased the Lavo Nightclub and The Lounge. The menu for the Lavo Restaurant is designed to encourage sampling and sharing among friends. The 300 seat restaurant includes a 180 seat dining room, a 20 seat private dining room and 100 seats on the outdoor terrace overlooking the Las Vegas Strip. The outdoor terrace is set up with hookahs for smoking. The bridge to the 4,500 square foot Nightclub on the second floor has Turkish water basins and, for voyeurs, you pass models stimulating bathing. http://www.palazzolasvegas.com/lavo.aspx

 

 

Magician Jeff McBride and his Magic & Mystery School Master Class.

 

This was Jeff McBride Weekend in Las Vegas. Have you longed to learn magic directly from a famous magician? Jeff McBride, innovative magician and performer, hosted a three-day master class at his Magic & Mystery School on Friday, Sept. 12 through Sunday, Sept. 14.  The master class was open to magicians of all levels. The class was limited to a small group of students creating an intimate environment for learning and performing.

 

Thanks to Brandy Bell of PR Plus Las Vegas, I sent a reporter to cover the event on Saturday. The reporter is familiar with magic and the paranormal aspects that magicians may be unconsciously tuning into. The reporter’s in-depth report will be in next week’s column.

 

This was an incredibly intensive Master Class with the sessions running on Friday from 1:00 p.m. until 10:30 p.m., Saturday, 1:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and Sunday, 1:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. “Breaks” were a mere ten minutes! For the Master Class weekend the tuition was $695.00.

 

This Master Class was not for beginners. All the “students” attending were performing magicians, which gives you a clear idea about McBride’s reputation. On Saturday, students brought in CDs of their performances and McBride skillfully gave valuable advice on how to enhance their presentations.

 

Students were able to perform magic and receive feedback from McBride and his other faculty members, Eugene Burger and Tobias Beckwith. Students also were given the terrific opportunity to perform at McBride’s Wonderground, a magical and interactive club experience directly following his “Magic at the Edge” show at Palace Station. The aim of McBride’s Master Class Weekends is to provide quality education through personal instruction. Go to McBride’s website www.magicalwisdom.com if you are interested in attending a master class. Focus on Magic and the Martial Arts is scheduled on Sept 16-18 and Focus on Stage Magic & Manipulation - Jeff McBride on Sept 22-23.

 

Jeff McBride also hosted a 2-day birthday bash at Wonderground following his shows on Friday and Saturday evening. Special guests this week included magician Scott Hitchcock, mind reader Paul Draper and the Mystery School Magicians.

 

Wonderground features interactive close-up magic, uncommon variety acts, performance art, a psychic sideshow and DJ Leo Diaz. Guest magicians are different every week. Wonderground is held in the Sound Trax Showroom at Palace Station. For more information, go to www.vegaswonderground.com.

 

The Arlington Institute.

 

My good friend John Petersen runs The Arlington Institute, a think tank. As President and Founder, John is considered by many to be one of the most informed futurists in the world. He is best-known for writing and thinking about high impact surprises—wild cards—and the process of surprise anticipation. His current professional involvements include the development of sophisticated tools for anticipatory analysis and surprise anticipation, long-range strategic planning and helping leadership design new approaches for dealing with the future.

 

I got this fascinating email on September 9th from John. Right to the point, John warns that just maybe, something “disruptive is going to happen to the U.S. within the

next 60 days or so.” No surprise to me! As I have been reporting, the Large Hadron Collider was turned on September 10th and the first collisions are expected within

the next 60 days! Of course, the LHC is going to “suck life” from not only the U.S., but all life on Earth into a black hole. Coincidence? You decide. Here is John’s email:

 

“Here at the Arlington Institute, we have worked with real precognizant dreamers who have had experience with intelligence services and we have subsequently learned about the hundreds of case studies of individuals who had explicit dreams about the 9/11 affair (people jumping out of burning high rise buildings, etc.), beginning some six months before the event.  We have been intrigued with the notion that the human collective unconscious somehow anticipates large impending perturbations. 

 

“Our WHETHEReport project, for which we are looking for funding, is in fact based upon this dynamic.  In telling people about this project I have received strong confirmations of the efficacy of the underlying logic from many individuals around the world. Well, in the last two days I have received four independent, explicit indications from far removed friends suggesting that something very substantial and disruptive is going to happen to the U.S. within the next 60 days or so.  If these warnings manifest themselves in an event of the significance of something like 9/11 then people all over the world should begin to experience dreams and other intuitions suggesting that something extraordinary is about to happen.

 

“So I’m asking you to participate in an experiment with us.  If you, or someone you know, experiences any kind of significant suggestion (dream, intuition, etc.) that something big and disruptive is about to happen in the coming weeks, send us a note and tell us about it.  We’ll compile them all and see if we can find any patterns or pointers toward an actual future event.  Just cut and paste the form below into an email and fill it out and send it in.  I’ll let you know what happens.  If you have multiple experiences, please send them along too.

 

“You don’t need to include any identification and we’ll certainly keep all of this information confidential. Thanks.” Send your dream predictions to dreams2008@arlingtoninstitute.org. The Arlington Institute is located at 192 Fairfax Street, Berkeley Springs, WV  25411. John’s most recent book is “Vision for 2012: Planning for Extraordinary Change”. (Photo of John taken in 2004 in Las Vegas)

 

 

Movies This Week.

A home run week for movies!

 

Lakeview Terrace (YES)

 

 

 

 

Righteous Kill (YES)

 

 

 

 

Burn After Reading (YES)

 

 

 

Here is a summary of my review of “Burn After Reading”. The full review is posted on rottentomatoes.com.

 

“Burn After Reading” brings the audience into the simmering second-tier fantasy we all have (the first is we have superpowers) – what if you were a bystander and Jason Bourne needed you to help him get out of the country?

 

What if you were walking on 37th and R Street NW in Washington, DC and saw Aldrich Ames putting chalk marks on a mail box? You know he’s making a “dead drop”. You’ve read David Morrell. You know all about tradecraft. Think it’s highly improbable? The number of marks on the Ames mail box prompted some local residents to later admit that they did speculate that it was used by spies.

 

Do you intercept the drop? Do you take it to the Russians? The Chinese? They’ll pay big time, right? Do you hold it ransom in exchange for world peace? How about in exchange for plastic surgery?

 

But the CIA didn’t have a clue, even though Ames was driving a new Jaguar to work that cost more than his annual salary. When he told them he was selling his grandmother’s junk on eBay, they believed him!

 

The Coen Brothers know exactly what Americans will sell out their country for! Plastic surgery! It makes sense to me. It is the harbinger of what every American wants and will get no matter what it takes. The hell with the mortgage. So what if you have to declare bankruptcy? You are entitled to a full body makeover. It’s being proposed as an amendment to our Constitution.

 

At least that is what Linda (Frances McDormand) wants. She is going to get a complete plastic surgery re-do. It doesn’t phrase her that her meager salary as an athletic club employee at Hardbodies will barely pay for the doctor’s consultation.

 

Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich, pictured with Richard Jenkins) is a CIA analyst who has out-lived his usefulness and he’s a mean drunk. Quitting instead of getting fired, he decides he’ll write his memoirs. His take-no-prisoners wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton), is not amused. She is having an affair with federal marshall Harry (George Clooney). He’s a philanderer who trolls internet dating sites for afternoon assignations while his wife is busy on her book tour and Katie is at work. Ball-buster Katie plans on divorcing Osbourne and marrying Harry. It is what she wants.

 

As the comedy of errors take off, Osbourne’s memoir-in-progress CD is found on the floor of the woman’s dressing room at Hardbodies. Linda’s buddy, trainer Chad (Brad Pitt), has a plan. Blackmail the CIA agent for the return of the sensitive material they think is on the CD.

 

Living in D.C. must give everyone the hopeful chance of spotting the distinctively colored towel sometimes hanging from a balcony, or the sudden appearance of a potted plant on a window sill. Every spy wannabe knows the dead drop should be obvious yet totally ordinary. 

 

Large Hadron Collider Debuts!

 

LHC, the world's largest and energy particle accelerator complex, which took 20 years to build, was turned on September 10. The LHC sent the first proton beam zipping through its 17-mile tunnel at roughly the speed of light. After crushing the particles together, the process imitates what had happened mere nanoseconds after the first big bang. The process will reportedly take four to eight weeks to adjust the beams to produce particle collisions. The first collisions are expected between October 8 and November 5.

 

However, according to a UK newspaper, some scientists went to the European Court for Human Rights to put a halt in turning on the collider. It said that some scientists sought “a restraining order for fear that it may create a black hole that will suck life and could swallow the Earth”. Suck life and could swallow the Earth? If these no-nothing naysayers are right, it’s going to ruin Christmas. 

 

Renowned British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has chimed in, betting $100 that the first mega-experiment will not find the elusive particle seen as a holy grail of cosmic science, the Higgs particle, known as the "God Particle" since it is everywhere but remains elusive.

 

The 10th Annual Bay Area UFO Expo will be held September 27-28, 2008 at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, California. I’m going to attend! Among the speakers scheduled are John Alexander, Whitley Strieber, Roger Leir, Featured Guest George Noury, David Icke, George Knapp and others to be announced later. That’s some line-up! (Photo is of a past attendee)