More than candles blown out at Slash-A-Palooza

*** Taken from www.lasvegassun.com***
By John Katsilometes · July 24, 2008 · 9:47 AM

Slash's Birthday Bash

Maybe this all didn't happen Wednesday night. Maybe, on my walk through the parking garage leading to The Mirage, someone flung a brick at my head and knocked me cold, and the whole tableau played out in my concussed consciousness.

Perhaps the great ventriloquist and soon-to-be Mirage headliner, Terry Fator, was not joined onstage on a pool deck usually reserved for seminude sunbathers by the famously long-bearded Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. Maybe it was a dream that Jason Bonham, the shaved-headed percussionist son of the late John Bonham, didn't crash through a piercing version of "Whole Lotta Love" as onetime Jane's Addiction and Porno For Pyros frontman Perry Farrell crawled across the stage wailing that we needed to keep the party going because, "We don't wanna die, do we?!" It could be that former Spacehog vocalist and deposed husband of Liv Tyler, Royston Langdon, didn't blithely scream the lyrics of "Stone Free" and "Jean Genie" into a temporarily dead microphone to a throbbing audience that didn't seem to notice, because Slash and his searing Gibson guitar were hoarding the spotlight.

Yep, it could be that Stacy Ferguson, or just "Fergie," didn't really sashay onstage in skin-tight black Spandex pants and a grey T-shirt emblazoned with a gold L.A. Dodger logo for a hair-raising version of "Sweet Child O' Mine," fairly dry-humping the former Guns 'N Roses lead guitarist as he nimbly unleashed his signature solos. And it might be my imagination that Fergie, in the midst of covering Heart's "Barracuda," might have fallen short of Ann Wilson's vocal dexterity but executed a move Wilson could never pull off – a trio of one-handed summersaults. And maybe the entire surreal experience didn't close with Slash cutting into a very tall birthday cake shaped like his trusty Gibson, topped by a quite-familiar black top hat, and a wildly diverse mix-and-match group of celebs singing, "Paradise City," – with Fator, Farrell, comic actor Tommy Davidson and Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains providing a glistening-with-sweat Fergie with backing harmonies.

But it all did happen. As proof, I still wear a white wristband reading "Bare pool lounge," and am suffering what might be a pair of perforated eardrums.

Oh, and happy birthday to Slash, who turned 43 (and should know better) yesterday and last night. Forgive those of us who did not bring gift baskets to Slash-A-Palooza. But the 600 or so revelers who paid $100 a pop surely couldn't have anticipated the sample plate of rockers (and the odd ventriloquist) who thundered through a 2 ½-hour spectacle at The Mirage's finest water feature. Others who ambled on and off the stage included bassist Mike Inez (also once of Alice In Chains); Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello; Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas, Senen "Sen-Dog" Reyes of Cypress Hill; Emma Taylor, Winston the Turtle, soul singer Julius and Dougie Scott Taylor (Fator's handy puppets); and Perla Hudson, the mistress of ceremonies and also Mrs. Slash. That's discounting a video montage assembled by Perla – who seems so at home with the mic that she could emcee her own variety show -- that featured Rainn Wilson, Ellen DeGeneres, Dave Navarro, Tommy Lee, Sammy Hagar, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (playing trumpet to great effect) and Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen.

There was a tepid rumor early that the night that the event might feature a Guns 'N Roses reunion of sorts, but it never happened. It's just as well. Who had the time?

Songs covered by some or all of this band of misfits included the G'N R classic "It's So Easy," assaulted by a heaving, wild-eyed Langdon; "Superstition" and "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," by Farrell, a man who seems born to wear the bright-red pants and matching red-and-black satin jacket; "Wish You Were Here," by Cantrell and Inez; and "To Kill a Man," by Davidson, Sen-Dog, Will.i.am and pretty much everyone else on or near the stage.

No wonder the man of the moment could only mutter, "I am completely f-ing overwhelmed." That statement pretty much captures Slash, a man of few words but many chords who has managed to fill the guitar hero roll as well as anyone for the past 20-plus years. At one point, during "It's So Easy," the cat in the hat ripped into a solo, casually tossed a spent cigarette butt into the photographer's pit at the front of the stage, then spun around without missing a note. Niiiice.

The crew made it to the Beatles Revolution Lounge for extended play, and much of the amped-up crowd met them there. I lasted maybe an hour before the corner man in my brain threw in the towel. On my way out of the hotel a woman dressed like Sweet Loretta Modern of "Get Back" strutted toward me and asked, "Wanna have some fun?"

I just laughed. She had no idea.

Labels: tom

SIGNATURE UPDATE FROM CINDY FOR CONGRESS

Dear Friends,

In one week, we have collected 2836 signatures and we need 2821 more to qualify to get on the ballot for November.

We averaged about 405 per day last week. We had more volunteers out on the streets and neighborhoods and we were able
to raise enough money to hire some paid gatherers, too.

If we keep up this rate, we will have the required amount by next Sunday...the earlier we turn in our required signatures, the earlier
we will know our invalid rate and we will have until August 8th to make those signatures up. When we turned in our 3000 filing signatures, our invalid rate was 22%, I expect this time it will be lower, because we won't make the same errors we did last time.

Thanks for your support and for spreading the word!

I am supremely confident that we will be on the ballot and that is 2/3rds of the way to victory in November!

Love and Peace
Cindy
www.CindyforCongress.org

Labels: tom

Cindy Sheehan & Mary Morello Blog from 7/10/08

Cindy: I want to talk about the FISA modernization Act that house of representatives passed about 10 days or so ago.
The foreign intelligence surveillance act was passed in 1978 and it was passed because Richard Nixon took great liberties with his position as president to spy on enemies in America they called him and so that was in direct violation of the 4th amendment right against the legal search and seizure. So congress passed the foreign intelligence surveillance act, which is ironic because back in 1978 all of the civil liberty lawyers and constitutional experts were fighting against it because it wasn't necessary because we already have the fourth amendment. Well now the FISA act provided for a FISA court so if the president or anybody wanted to spy on somebody's telephone calls or their papers or whatever they just had to go to the FISA court and the FISA court would approve a warrant for this tapping this wire tapping

Mary: where is the FISA court located?

Cindy: The FISA court is, the FISA court I don't think so much was a location, is as an entity. So since 1978 the administrations have routinely asked the FISA court for warrants and they've only been turned down 4 times since 1978 and presidents can even do it retroactively this isn't even a sense of national security the President or one of the President's agents knows or feels like it's a national security emergency then they can do the spying and they can ask for a retroactive warrant and that's never been turned down either . So then we get George Bush and George Bush just does all of this warrant less wire tapping, spies on peoples phone calls their emails and their other communication and the telecom companies, not all of them but most of them, just willingly gave the records over and I'm sure this telephone call right now is being listened to. But now congress has so called "modernized" the act and given telecom companies immunity because many people were suing them for billions of dollars for an invasion of privacy. That says to me that just means the death of our fourth amendment. They've already killed the eighth amendment against cruel and unusual punishment, they've already killed our rights to habeas corpus and the first amendment is basically a joke anymore: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, separation of church and state. This country in increasingly becoming a Christian country and Barack Obama even has to prove that he's some kind of super Christian to win the presidency and I think that is unconscionable because in a free society like we use to have that there is this clear separation of church and state. We shouldn't even talk about religion in the political realm and I'm running here for congress and I refuse to talk about my religious beliefs or my lack of religious beliefs are nobody's business in this era. I am just so worried about the condition of this country.

Mary: Everybody I meet is worried.

Cindy: Were becoming a police state and people in America are so sound asleep as they don't even care that we're rapidly becoming a fascist police state.

Mary: They should be asleep instead all they talk about movie stars and singers. The news is horrible. I look in the front page of the Chicago papers to see if there is anything about Iraq and it's never on the first page, never.