This Week: Grind Burger Bar & Lounge Opens, Actors Expo, Moses Answers My Questions, Movie This Week: 2012, A Real Relic Hunter, NGC’s The Lost JFK Tapes: The Assassination, and more…
Grind Burger Bar & Lounge. On Wednesday we went to the VIP opening of Grind Burger Bar & Lounge at 360 E. Tropicana Ave. The event went smoothly and there were no protestors outside! The Grind has been advertising using what some people think is offensive to women. The protest is being led by The Rebel Yell, UNLV’s newspaper. Anthony Guy Patricia’s article headline said it all: “The Burger Grind Bar ad in The Rebel Yell is offensive.”
Mr. Patricia would have had a seizure if he saw the huge blow-up outside the restaurant welcoming guests at the VIP Opening.
One of the restaurant’s trademarks is a woman seated Japanese-style in what is called the seiza position (legs folded, rump on the heels). The figure is divided into cuts of meat like a cow in a butcher shop.
Mr. Patricia was outraged that The Rebel Yell ran the ad for several weeks. He wrote in part: “One of the reasons women are victimized by men so often is because of ads like that for The Burger Grind Bar & Lounge, which treat women as no more than cartoons and pieces of meat, undeserving of respect. While Las Vegas may well be a city in which women are exploited in all sorts of ways for the amusement, titillation and the kicks of men in our patriarchal and misogynistic society, the university is no place for such demeaning, degrading and disgusting portrayals of human beings as featured in the ad for The Burger Grind Bar & Lounge.” Read full story.
Grind Burger Bar & Lounge is restaurant entrepreneur Mark DiMartino’s concept—a build-it-yourself burger joint. We tried all 4 sliders: the sensational premium ground chuck, fresh ground turkey, a patty-shaped chicken breast and the meatless version. With build-it-yourself burgers you have a choice of four buns and a selection of imaginative toppings, sauces or cheese. Grind Burger Bar & Lounge
Actors Expo. On Sunday, November 15, 2009, at the Rave Motion Pictures, Las Vegans’ interested in pursuing or continuing a career in acting/hosting learned first-hand what it takes to succeed at the second Actors Expo.
Actors Expo provides a forum for aspiring actors and actresses interested in a career in entertainment. Actors Expo provides the key elements needed to succeed. The event included a discussion with Mario Lopez (actor/host “Extra,” “America’s Best Dance Crew,” “Nip/Tuck,” and “Dancing with the Stars”). The audience also had the opportunity to ask questions.
I’ve been watching Mario in “Nip/Tuck.”
Actors Expo was created by Paolo Sadri and debuted in Florida in 2006. The Expo is the only one of its kind to provide the tools and resources necessary to reach individual goals in the acting profession. The Expo features guest’s panelists speaking candidly regarding pursuing a career in acting. The open panel presentations include a question and answer period, as well as discussions regarding obtaining an agent/manager, what producers and directors are looking for and more. For more information on the next Actors Expo, go to www.actorsexpo.net or contact 702.258.4222.
Paranormal Goat. Overture Films spoofs PARANORMAL ACTIVITY with new, very clever ad for THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS.
www.collider.com/2009/11/03/paranormal-goat-overture-films-
spoofs-paranormal-activity-with-new-ad-for-the-men-
who-stare-at-goats
A Real Relic Hunter. Gordon Kuhne hunts relics, notably rare Tibetan and Nepalese ancient healing objects. The Folklore of Tibetan thogchags or Thokcha is filled with legends and mysteries and steeped in myths.
The Tibetans believe that thogchags have magical powers and are able to dispel evils, prevent natural disasters, thunderbolts, and protect one from evil forces and to bring good luck. Thogchags have been worn as talismans and worshipped as sacred objects.
Thogchags were believed to have healing properties and were often prescribed by shamans and practitioners in accordance with Tibetan medicine. The antique 
thogchags offered by Gordon are guaranteed authentic and are beautiful examples of this sacred art form.
For serious collectors of singing bowls, Gordon is known for his first-class ancient bowls. The bowl shown here is a rare relic bowl selling for $1,350. www.sacredsingingbowls.com
Moses Answers My Questions. Last week I wrote that channel Kevin 
Blackwell agreed to ask Moses a few questions for me. My first question to Moses was:
“Where is Mount Sinai?”
Kevin responded by email: “The spirit communication process is kind of like jumping into water—it takes time for one’s eyes to adjust and to understand exactly what is being said. So, for example, Moses response about the location of Mount Sinai was meaningless to me because of my ignorance of geography. So what he said sounded to me like the “Yellow Mountains.” But it took a bit of time to realize that what sounded like “Yellow” was really “Yelleq.” So Mount Sinai is a mountain within the Yelleq mountain range on the Sinai Peninsula.”
Where is his body buried? “And like Elijah, Enoch, Jesus and a few others, Moses’ death was a unique and unusual affair that was kept secret for good reason—no one at the time (except perhaps Joshua) and very few today would be able to process what really occurred. So you won’t find a burial place, ornate tomb or anything like that. Moses simply just left the building.”
What happened to the Ark of the Covenant? “This is tricky. First because Moses doesn’t care about its location and his attitude is—why should we? Second: others were made after the original and even in the very beginning there were two—a plain one and an ornate one. Neither one of these two “originals” survives. Duplicates exist in Africa and Jerusalem.”
My good friend Jacques Vallee responded to last week’s column with his own question for Moses, which, you will agree, makes a rather fine point. Jacques wrote: Dear Victoria, If you do get to talk to Moses, ask him why he turned LEFT like an idiot when he got out of Egypt. If God had really been guiding him He would have told him to go RIGHT where all the oil was. www.jacquesvallee.com.
I forwarded Jacques email to Kevin, who was just as amused as I was.
Kevin does one-on-one work as well as workshops and seminars. Kevin welcomes interested queries. You can contact Kevin directly at kgblackwell@gmail.com. Next week, we hunt for Jack the Ripper. However, ripperologists at the definitive JTR website, Casebook: Jack the Ripper, www.casebook.org were downright nasty when I asked for questions.
The Lost JFK Tapes: The Assassination. I just finished reading Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination by Lamar Waldron. I watch every program on the JFK assassination.
Luckily, I was sent an advance copy of the National Geographic Channel’s program, marking the anniversary of JFK’s assassination on November 22, 1963, that will premiere on Monday, November 23, 2009, at 9 p.m.
NGC combed through hundreds of hours of news footage, radio reports, audio recordings and home movies not widely seen that captured history as it was chaotically unfolding and has assembled them together to retell the events of that day. NGC did a superb job of gathering rare footage. Rarely seen archival footage has been digitally captured, electronically restored and assembled into a detailed timeline in the two-hour documentary special The Lost JFK Tapes: The Assassination.
The documentary reveals the tense drama of Lee Harvey Oswald beyond the infamous shooting scene—how Oswald was paraded in front of reporters for a press conference held at Dallas police headquarters; how Jack Ruby was able to get close to him without difficulty; how the chaos continued after his shooting as his body was placed in an ambulance—all caught on camera.
I believe Oswald when he said: “I’m just a patsy.”
Has a voice stress analysis been done on Oswald’s statements after his arrest? Why did Oswald leave his job at the Texas School Book Depository in the middle of the afternoon? What was he doing at a movie theater? The murky details of the shooting of Officer Tippit still remains a mystery.
Some of the events the film portrays in minute-by-minute detail. For more information, visit www.natgeotv.com.
Movie This Week. “2012,” from disaster maven Roland Emmerich, is terrible. There is no story but clumsy pieces of other movies—even lonely grandpa on a cruise—draped around Earth crumbling.
“2012” centers on ordinary guy Jackson Curtis (John Cusack). He is an author but makes his living as a limo driver. He has 2 kids and an ex-wife, Kate (Amanda Peet). The kids really like Kate’s live-in boyfriend, Gordon (Thomas McCarthy). There is usually a good reason why people divorce and bust up the family. But we are not given a clue what happened between Jackson and Kate. Was Jackson a raving alcoholic? Was he cheating on Kate? Or was Kate a mean meth addict?
Taking the kids camping on his alternate weekend, Jackson stumbles into a restricted area where the military is staging some kind of top secret procedure. Jackson meets Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), the resident forest nut with glazed eyes, wild hair, and bad teeth. He does have a map of the secret safe havens from Doomsday.
How is the president handling this disaster? Wimpy President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) is being advised by moral-minded geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Everyone is upstaged by advisor Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) who plans to save himself and VIPs only. He plans to re-populate Earth with rich people.
Even though Emmerich takes directing credit, the actors look like they are on their own. Cusack and Peet, two of the most non-charismatic stars working today, have absolutely no chemistry. They nullify each other.
As usual, Platt chews up the scenery. Thankfully, Emmerich, who wrote this mess, kept Platt away from fellow scene-stealer Zlatko Buric, who plays a brutish Russian oligarch. George Segal stops the movie cold and Thandie Newton wanders around doing next to nothing.
Add to the lousy characters is the cringe-worthy dialogue. To top it off, I learned nothing about how to survive 2012.
