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his week: Viewpoint on Vegas Goes On Vacation Returning August 9, Just Imagine: A Musical Tribute to John Lennon, Movies This Week, Ayahuasca Is Good for Creativity, Tibetans and High-Altitude, The Baron of Rachane, and more…
Viewpoint on Vegas Goes On Vacation Returning August 13. I’m off for another ayahuasca retreat in Pucallpa, Peru. I intend to ask Mother Ayahuasca for a spirit guide to inhabit my body—without my being a barrier—and then I’m off to Lily Dale, New York to become a full-fledged, possessed spirit-communicator. I plan on shaking up Lily Dale by being the only skinny medium under the age of 80.
About 60 miles south of Buffalo, New York sits the 130-year-old community of Lily Dale, the self-described World’s Largest Center for the Religion of Spiritualism. It is a town of mediums and healers and attracts thousands of seekers each year who spend a lot of money contacting dead loved ones.
So far, no one who is dead has a Twitter account.
HBO is running a documentary on Lily Dale called “No One Dies in Lily Dale.” [www.hbo.com/documentaries/no-one-dies-in-lily-dale/]
Mediumship is a very lucrative business. Michelle Whitedove (I’ll need a mediumship name!*), featured in the HBO documentary, took the opportunity to publicize her search for a boyfriend. Men are afraid of her awesome talent to read their minds.
A 30-minute telephone session with Michelle cost $300! Michelle’s Web site instructs:
“Your thirty minute telephone reading is to address current issues. During these trying times you may have urgent questions about: your relationships, business ventures, career, finances, health mysteries etc. On the day of your reading you should have a written list of important questions ready. This reading will specifically address the answers to your questions within a strict 30-minute time frame.
NOTE: This special offer DOES NOT include channeling Departed Loved Ones.” *
Talking to Departed Love Ones is extra!
*The first ever Viewpoint on Vegas Bragging Rights Contest: Find Victoria a mediumship name!
Just Imagine. A Musical Tribute to John Lennon. Wednesday evening was a very special Media Night at the Chi Showroom at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino.
‘Just Imagine’—A Musical Tribute to John Lennon recreates through this concert event, a masterful rendition of one of popular music’s most beloved icons performing a mythical concert.
Tim Piper can sing just like John Lennon, and his incredibly talented band, ‘Working Class Hero,’ pay tribute to John Lennon—striping away the Lennon-McCarthy songs showcasing the ones Lennon wrote. Piper’s journey through the life of Lennon—aided by the songs he wrote—present Lennon as a very angry (as Piper admits in Lennon’s voice), troubled man. Why was Lennon so bitter? What kept gnawing at that giant hole in his soul? What the hell happened to him before his mother died at age 17?
This is truly a psychological musical tribute.
I can’t wait for the Jim Morrison full orchestra tribute!
Piper—as Lennon—admits to being a lousy husband and an even worse, not-there father (poor neglected, left-behind Julian Lennon!)
The show was sensational, but the capacity crowd was DOA. Except for me, no one sang along. There was no jumping up and singing with Tim! Perhaps they never heard the songs before? There were the early Beatles favorites (Help!) as Piper takes us through Lennon’s long and rocky career. Thanks to Piper’s (and the Working Class Hero band) I’m going to put all these Lennon songs on my iPod: Norwegian Wood, A Day in the Life, Mother, Come Together, Nowhere Man, Girl, I Want You, Dear Prudence, Woman, Imagine, and of course, All You Need is Love.
(Pictured from left: Don Poncher, Don Butler, Tim Piper, Morley Bartnoff, Greg Piper)
As the old hippy saying goes: If you remember the ’60s—then you weren’t there. However, if you loved the Beatles and John Lennon’s songs, this is the concert to see. The show starts at 7 p.m. at the CHI Showroom. Tickets begin at $53. [www.planethollywoodresort.com/]
Tibetans and High-Altitude. I hate trekking—okay, I hate walking except indoors—but I am obsessed with high-altitude mountain climbing. I am reading Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering’s Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters
by James M. Tabor.
To paraphrase (and mangle) Quint’s famous speech on the Orca in Jaws: “So, twelve men went up the mountain, 5 men come down and the mountain took the rest, July the 27th, 1967. [Anyway, we delivered the bomb.]”
Tabor’s book is an exhaustive look at the 1967 expedition to scale Alaska’s Mt. McKinley in an account of the infamous climb that remains controversial. Only five of the 12-man team survived the ascent to the 20,320-foot summit, making it one of the deadliest mountaineering disasters in North America. The National Park Service required a group of nine men, led by 24-year-old Joe Wilcox, to merge with a three-member party of Coloradoans, led by Howard Snyder. Wilcox and Snyder clashed almost immediately. Both men survived and went on to retell the trip—and cast blame—in books.
The Tibetan people have evolved to suit their high-altitude home with astonishing speed, say researchers. Biologists who compared the genomes of Tibetans living in villages up to 3 miles above sea level with Han Chinese found that 30 genes had undergone adaptive mutations in the 3,000 years since lowland Chinese first settled what is now Tibet, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Photo: On our camping trek through Tibet, on our way to Everest Base Camp, we spent a few nights at a monastery dormitory. There was a 90+-year-old woman living on the charity of the monks, who fed her once a day.
Her family had abandoned her! Ignoring the complaints of my fellow trekkers, I would give her most of my allotment of food. Yes, food was sparse and if you were at the end of the line, there wasn’t much left, but I felt so sorry for her and she needed the food more than me. She cried when I gave her food.
One gene found in almost 90% of Tibetans affects the production of red blood cells, allowing them to thrive in high-altitude, low-oxygen environments without the mountain sickness and lowered fertility that affects lowlanders. The changes are the fastest-known example of human evolution, the researchers say, although some archeologists argue that the Tibetan-Chinese split happened much earlier than 3,000 years ago. (Photo: at Everest Base Camp with a local Tibetan [I brought one of those hats—if there ever is a blizzard in Las Vegas I’m prepared!])
The Free Tibet people say the Han Chinese are driving out native Tibetans. Beijing has launched a “great western development program” in its underdeveloped western provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang by pouring money into these two regions for local development and encouraging Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnic group, to settle there.
However, even with all the economic incentives, tax breaks, and the relaxing of the one-child rule, life is not easy for the Han Chinese settlers. They are homesick and suffer greatly from altitude sickness. It’s one thing to climb Mount Everest with sherpas carrying all your gear and breaking oxygen, it’s another thing to live 24/7 in thin air.
Life is not easy in Tibet for non-Tibetans—as the New York Times article indicates.
Movies This Week.
I AM LOVE. Luca Guadagnino’s “I Am Love” is a showcase for Tilda 
Swinton. (Swinton is Guadagnino’s muse and he rewards her dedication to him with a role tailored to her physicality and angular strength. Swinton is not a delicate-featured actress—she is a perfect, ball-busting foil for George Clooney in MICHAEL CLAYTON and BURN AFTER READING). Read my full review here: reelrave.com/review/777.
PREDATORS. Keeps the Predator tradition alive. Adrien Brody found his true calling as an actor. He’s got that face you can’t trust but want to.
You know, once the studio builds those monster-models, the sequels keep coming. Thank goodness we have Robert Rodriguez and his ex-wife Elizabeth Avellan as producers. If my husband dumped me—with five children—for Rose McGowan (they now call it a “dalliance” with an engagement ring and wedding date attached) and planned to make her a femme fatale sex goddess in the remake of BARBARELLA, I’d be the only one owning Troublemaker Studios. And I’d have Adam Levine as my boy-toy lover. I’d promise Adam I’d make him a movie star. But that’s just me.
Rodriguez had a hand in casting, since his most-favored actor and emotional stand-in, Danny Trejo, is one of the killers parachuted in to play the predator’s game as human prey.
I tried to say hello to Trejo at the last CineVegas International Film Festival, but he blew me off. I was embarrassed. Damn, I had no intention to hang out and tell him a tale of woe and misfortune, I just wanted to say, “I love your movies.” He was tiny in person and in cordiality. I don’t like him anymore. Read my full review here: reelrave.com/review/779.
THE LAST AIRBENDER. Slavishly amateurish with no heart. Cold, not engaging, and dull. Bad writing and film-school-level directing. What happened to an exciting story?
THE LAST AIRBENDER is the film adaptation of the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender that aired for three seasons on Nickelodeon and the Nicktoons Network.
Written, produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, it is a bore. It has no soul and it’s cold. The story is terrible. Where was Shyamalan during filming? The scenery is so cheesy, I am wondering if Shyamalan stayed at his Pennsylvania family compound—dubbed Creighton Farm—and directed by remote viewing the production on his iPad.
Shyamalan’s run of bombs continues, but at least he stayed out of acting in THE LAST AIRBENDER. Or was he one of the Air Nomads flaying his arms in exaggerated neo-ballet/karate chops dance moves?
Don’t feel bad for Shyamalan—his career still rests on 1999’s phenomenal success, THE SIXTH SENSE. He can continue directing commercials, music videos and Hindu billionaire’s daughter’s weddings. Read my full review here: reelrave.com/review/740.
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE. Cage gets paid and kisses Monica Bellucci. I burned off 2 hours in Hell. This movie is not for kids, it’s for toddlers.
Yes, I believe in Hell. A forbidden, initiatory secret of The Eleusinian Mysteries states—in prison jargon—that you can either do “hard time or good time” in Hell. Sitting through THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE earned me “good time” credits toward my eternal damnation sentence.
I’m working toward a weekend pass to Purgatory.
Nicolas Cage has given up acting. THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE confirms it. After decades of being an actor, some movie stars—Marlon Brando, anyone—refuse to act or memorize lines. So they play characters that do not require acting, memorizing, or in the case of animation roles—even turning up.
Since when is voiceover work acting? Who are the geniuses behind this PR ploy we have been forced to accept?
In a muddled, fast-paced opening, the silly back-story is presented in high-kabuki melodrama fashion. It’s about centuries-old wizards and the final death of legendary magician Merlin. Merlin’s arch-enemies are defeated and placed in nesting dolls! His student, Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage), never dies and goes through centuries of fashionable get-ups, finally settling in New York City in a Western-wear, couture leather coat. Cage loves that messy hair, crazy hat look.
Cage’s wardrobe does his acting for him. His role in KICK-ASS was not a fluke!
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE is one big loud noise of poorly executed CGI effects. Read my full review here: reelrave.com/review/771.
Ayahuasca Is Good for Creativity. The Atlantic ran an article called: “Give Scientists Performance-Enhancing Drugs” (Jun 30 2010) by Chris Good. Good writes: “In our culture, performance-enhancing drugs are seen as a vehicle for cheating. For example, athletes who use steroids or human growth hormone are weeded out through testing policies, punished, and publicly shamed. But these drugs are more common than one might think, and their use extends beyond sports—military pilots have been given amphetamines for missions, and some of the most competitive college campuses are rife with illicit use of ADD medication.
“Performance-enhancers are increasingly part of our modern existence, despite our instinct to ban them. So why don’t we use them for good? Let scientists and researchers use drugs that boost productivity and innovation. Allow them controlled access to prescription medication like Ritalin and Adderall and, with more caveats and limitations, hallucinogens like LSD and Ayahuasca that have been linked to creativity.”
The Baron of Rachane. The Argyll, Scotland Barony of Rachane was chartered under 
the Great Seal in 1708 in favour of Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll. It remained a personal title of the Dukes of Argyll until the mid-20th century.
Following the 2004 Abolition of Feudalism in Scotland, the Barony has continued as a personal title of the 13th Baron Michael and Baroness Lilith, who are developing it toward the charitable support of animal conservation, rescue, protection, and welfare worldwide. www.rachane.com/.
Baron Michael writes: “It’s been a hectic year for us so far, and our only trip has been to our wolf sanctuary in Colorado for its annual fundraiser. But we are going to try a shot at Vegas this fall, and will let you guys know in case you’re say—helloable at the time.
“Every time I see your name, I am reminded of Barnabas Collins’ first appearance at Collinwood in the original Dark Shadows.
Victoria Winters was introduced to him as “Vicky,” and after kissing her hand, he said, English-accented of course, “Why do you let them call you ‘Vicky’? ‘Victoria’ is such an elegant name that I couldn’t possibly surrender a single syllable of it.”
Which I guess is one more reason why all the girls in America were delirious about Barnabas back then. ;-) All the best, Michael”
