December '09 Entertainment—Victoria Alexander's Viewpoint on Vegas Column

This Week: Moses Grave Known (but there’s 2 of them), Nicolas Cage’s Rumored Shrunken Heads Collection, NGC’s Explorer on Mengele and Brazilian Twins, Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau celebration at Paris, Tantric Tourists, and more…

Where is Moses’ Grave? I’m always thrilled to get emails from readers (hint, hint—join regulars Lewis and Dee with your weekly comments). Dear friend, renowned parapsychologist and world traveler, Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., commented on my item asking Moses (through a channel) where he’s buried.

Stan emailed me: “Another great newsletter, Victoria! By the way, the Muslims know exactly where Moses was buried. In fact, when I visited Israel and the West Bank, they showed me. His grave even has a marker! That was the one day I did not take my camera along. My error! Sorry!” Stan

Well, Stan’s international scholarly fame must have favored him—as usual—with special access. Visiting Moses grave wasn’t on my tour of Israel. But, next time…

Of course, I couldn’t leave it for the future, so I used Google Images for “Moses grave.” Is there anything not on Google? I even found a detailed description of a dream I had posted on Google.

Nabi Musa, or the Tomb of Prophet Moses (peace be upon him), lies 11 km south of Jericho and 20 km east of Jerusalem in the Judean wilderness. A side road to the right of the main Jerusalem-Jericho road, about 2 km beyond the sign indicating sea level, leads to the site venerated by Muslims as Maqam El-Nabi Musa. According to local tradition, the Maqam (tomb) of Nabi Musa is considered to be a holy site for Muslims because it houses the grave of Prophet Moses (pbuh), one of the great prophets of Islam.

However, an usurper tomb is located in Kashmir! Two photos (shown) and an article about the tomb of Jesus and Moses in India was published by CNN World News Edition on July 26, 1997.

Of course, I have a hardcover copy of, Jesus died in Kashmir: Jesus, Moses and the ten lost tribes of Israel by Andreas Faber Kaiser. I spent a few weeks in Kashmir in the early 1970s and hope to return one day and go on Grave Tourism. (Grave Tourism is the new Slum Tourism.)

NGC’s Explorer: Nazi Mystery: Twins from Brazil premieres Sunday,

November 29, 2009, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. National Geographic Channel’s Explorer Follows Trail of Fugitive “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele (pictured), having gained access to Mengele’s private journal. The program explores his effort to engineer an Aryan Master Race.

I have read Mengele: The Complete Story by Gerald Posner and Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz by Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel. Essentially, in one sentence, Posner firmly believes Mengele lived a miserable, lonely and poor life as a fugitive in South America.

However, Mengele traveled widely and his family visited him often. It is hard to believe he had to sell flowers on a street corner. He had a wealthy family, powerful allies, notoriety and held a few damning secrets.

As one the most evil men of the Holocaust, is the fact that, even though he escaped justice, he lived a poor man’s life until his death? It doesn’t satisfy me.

This program is fascinating and I have seen an advance copy.

Almost 50 sets of twins—many with blond hair and blue eyes—live in a tiny town of Cândido Godói, deep in the Brazilian outback. The rate of twins in the town is nearly a thousand percent above the global average. The theory that this phenomenon is the work of infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who took his obsession with engineering an Aryan master race to South America, made global headlines. Now, NGC’s Explorer, has undertaken the largest investigation to date to solve the mystery once and for all.

Known as “The Angel of Death,” Josef Mengele not only sent some 400,000 men, women and children to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, but collected some 3,000 pairs of twins (picture from Mengele’s private collection) and countless pregnant women for a set of bizarre medical experiments—experiments that experts believe aimed to fulfill Adolf Hitler’s fantasy of engineering a highly fertile Aryan master race. By some accounts Mengele became obsessed with finding a way to trigger twins so mothers could efficiently give birth to an endless procession of blond-haired, blue-eyed babies.

After WWII, Mengele escaped to South America, where the details of his life became a mystery. A journalist claimed that Mengele posed as a traveling veterinarian and physician who visited Cândido Godói and administered unknown pharmaceuticals that may have triggered twins in the town’s women and livestock. For more information visit natgeotv.com/explorer.

Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau celebration at Paris. Holly Madison, star of Peepshow, and who has really embraced life in Las Vegas, stomped grapes (with Lucy Ball impersonator) at the 2009 Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau celebration at Paris Las Vegas on Wednesday, Nov. 18. The media met at Paris Las Vegas Ah Sin patio, 3655 Las Vegas Blvd. S. honoring the long tradition, regulated by French law, in which Beaujolais Nouveau is released no sooner than the third Thursday of November! So, at one minute past midnight, huge celebrations are held all over the world to taste the latest wine of the harvest. More than 65 million bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau will be consumed in the months to follow.

The 2009 Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau celebration at Paris Las Vegas held a weekend of events from Thursday, Nov. 19 to Sunday, Nov. 22. On Thursday, samples of the 2009 Beaujolais Nouveau, along with commemorative glasses, were available. Then, from 7 to 9 p.m., was an event called Wine 101: PASSPORT to Wine.

Guests were invited to mix and mingle while sipping a selection of Georges Duboeuf (pictured) wines accompanied by an assortment of beautiful desserts.

Friday, Nov. 20 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. there was a Rock ’n’ Roll Wine event held inside Risqué, the nightclub at Paris Las Vegas.

On Saturday, Nov. 21, after seeing a 10 a.m. screening of “Old Dogs” with John Travolta and Robin Williams, lunch with my divine friend, healer Sylvia Brallier (sylviabrallier.com/), I went to Paris Hotel-Casino from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. I had the pleasure to attend Wine 101: Celebrate the Harvest, hosted the handsome Yann Bourigault, Export Director North America for Les Vin Georges Duboeuf (pictured).

It was an informative learning and taste experience that brought together novices and connoisseurs to sample the wines of Georges Duboeuf. We drank 5 different glorious wines including a Chardonnay, a Sauvignon Blanc, a Beaujolais and a Gamay. By the fifth wine, I stopped taking notes.

The wine tasting was accompanied by live music, a decadent assortment of art-worthy desserts, and artisan cheeses and breads and fresh fruits. This fabulous event was held in Les Artistes and tickets were $35. Put this event on your 2010 calendar!

After a quick pit-stop home, I went to the Rampart Hotel-Casino for a screening of Tantric Tourists. NYC Tantric guru, Laurie Handlers travels across India with ten US tourists each in search of spiritual enlightenment, tantric breathing, full-body orgasms, and maybe some “hooking up.”

The tour is challenging and often a hysterical road trip. But nothing fazes upbeat Laurie. To Laurie, any hardship is “transformational” and “positive.” I’ve been on the tourist path Laurie takes her group, but without the bad hotels, food poisoning, and 3rd class train ride. Laurie, who does 2 of these Tantric Tourists groups a year, should have, by now, better organized transportation, hotels, and meals for her students—who do not look like the adventurous backpacking sort. www.butterflyworkshops.com/index.php

However, when living in India long, long ago, I traveled around on the 3rd class trains and it was fabulous. And yes, I experienced the real India! www.lvfilmfest.com

Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau celebration at Paris finished out the weekend on Sunday with a Beaujolais Nouveau-themed brunch at the elegant and renowned Sterling Brunch inside the Bally’s Steakhouse.

A complete list of events is available at www.ParisLasVegas.com/wine. If you missed it, there’s always the next celebration of the 2010 Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau.

After my Georges Duboeuf Paris Las Vegas weekend, I feel I can order wine anywhere! And I learned and practiced the 5 rules of tasting a wine: See, Swirl, Smell, Sip/Savor and Swallow.

National Geographic Channel’s EXPEDITION WEEK (November 15–22, 2009). EXPEDITION WEEK: Search for the Amazon Head Shrinkers: Sunday, November 15 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/expedition-week/4380/Overview

When scheduling our ayahuasca retreat in Ecuador, we could have stayed with the Shuar—the infamous head hunters of the Amazon! After watching Amazon Head Shrunkers, I’m sorry I missed the opportunity to spend time with them.

However, there is always next year.

Terrifying legends from the Amazon tell of Indian headshrinkers who would shrink an enemy’s head to render the vengeful soul powerless. NGC has exclusive U.S. access to 45-year-old archive footage captured by explorer Edmundo Bielawski, purportedly the only known footage that shows the process of an actual—recently deceased—human head being shrunk. And rumors continue that head shrunking—quite profitable—still goes on today (see Nic Cage story below!) The NGC team deep into the Amazon jungle tracing Bielawski’s 1960s journey. They rediscover the exact location where this scene was filmed and reconnect with the tribe today in the village of Tukupi.

Have you heard that Nicolas Cage is in dire financial ruin due to excessive, out-of-control spending?

According to a US Weekly article, Cage bought two yachts, a jet, three castles he never lived in, over 50 cars, over a million dollars’ worth of comic books, multiple (a dozen or so, some supposedly haunted) mansions, two Bahamanian islands, and, famously, a $500k Lamborghini once owned by the Shah of Iran. Most amusingly, Cage spent $276,000 on a dinosaur skull in a “heated auction with Leonardo DiCaprio.” And although the article has details about Cage’s many pets—claiming that he kept antidote serum on his wall for the poison of his two King Cobras—it neglects to mention at least one: Cage’s pet octopus.

Folks in New Orleans aren’t surprised by Cage’s ruin. One of his foreclosed houses was once owned by “Interview with a Vampire” author Anne Rice, the other was the notorious LaLaurie House (pictured), built in 1832 for a doctor and his sadistic wife, Delphine, who was torturing slaves and keeping their mutilated bodies chained in the attic. A fire in 1834 led to the discovery of her torture chamber. Many people have lived there since, but every inhabitant moved out within months or suffered tragedy and death.

Cage’s Bel Air home, purchased in 1998, features a billiard room with a 1955 Jaguar parked inside plus a plethora of “shrunken heads,” apparently not aware “shrunken heads” are illegal.

Cage obviously has a hole inside him he can never fill. Nic, get some therapy.

After World War II, two shrunken heads were found at the Buchenwald concentration camp that were thought to have belonged to prisoners. It is much too terrifying to post here: Picture of a shrunken head from the Buchenwald concentration camp.