Doesn’t this remind you of Livingstone “The Pitbull” Bramble’s destruction of Tyrone “The Butterfly” Crawley?
Or is that Ras-I Alujah Bramble?
Anyways, Jim Cramer couldn’t offer up an type of dangerous offense. And no return fire, as John Stewart just walked through him.
“See I rip the mic if you put me to a test
Troop it gets so bad, I make you wanna wear a vest
Cause I’m too hot to handle
Knockin n#ggaz out like Livingston Bramble”
This was actually Ian Fleming’s first James Bond Novel released in 1953.
In the novel, Bond goes toe to toe with Le Chiffre, in Baccarat at the casino in Royale-les-Eaux, France (a fictional town in Northern France, a place I am not unfamiliar with…Northern France that is).
Bond, sharp dressed, smoking cigarettes, and with heaps of Game, many times I thought I was reading about myself.
The view from the floor-to-ceiling windows in our room at the new Wynn Encore provides a distressingly clear picture of what’s going on in Las Vegas these days. To the south, there’s a casino project that has ground to a halt, half built, its steel skeleton an outline of a multibillion-dollar dream gone hungry. Across the street, there’s a Modernist chapel, a lonely vigil of virtue on the Strip — people seek salvation elsewhere in this town. Look west toward the mountains and you can trace the Vegas real estate developers’ dash toward the horizon with building projects. Now as far as you can drive, there are foreclosed homes and empty new developments offering come-ons to prospective buyers.
The Encore, which opened officially in January, stands like a luxurious monument of defiance to the recession. It is not; it cannot. Wynn Resorts boss Steve Wynn has cut room rates to as little as $169 a night — the original projected rates were something on the order of $350 — but he won’t cut service. That act of defiance means the Encore is a pretty astonishing value for any visitors in the mood to treat themselves to a Las Vegas fling in these tough times. The $2 billion, 2,034-room project adjoins the Wynn — the hotels are connected by a retail alley — completing Steve Wynn’s most recent move to reposition the Las Vegas mind-set. The man who brought you exploding volcanoes (the Mirage), pirate ships (Treasure Island) and over-the-top light shows, not to mention a zillion dollars’ worth of fine art (the Bellagio) has now fully assembled his antidote to overstimulation, which began with the Wynn Las Vegas in 2005. Here is a different kind of sensibility — dare we say classy? — a resort with gaming, rather than a gaming resort.
At ground level, the Encore, like its older sibling, is still all business, though Wynn had his decorator, Roger P. Thomas, nod to the Las Vegas of the past. The casino floor is dominated by a color that the company says used to be standard in casinos in the bad old good old days — just call it whorehouse red. But it works here, with the brilliant red chandeliers, the whole effect muted a bit by judicious use of off-white fabric. The other delicate touches are cast, oddly enough, by natural light streaming in from either end of the casino floor. And not only through windows — the main entrance to the Encore casino takes you through a lush, plant-and-tree-filled atrium over three stories tall. There’s a certain amount of whimsy at play here too: for instance, the brightly colored butterflies inlaid into the mosaic floors. It makes the contemplation of losing at the tables almost pleasant.
In an interview with nightlife king Steve Lewis, Scott Osman Breaks it down:
Steve Lewis: What do you think of the club scene in New York City right now?
Scott Osman: I think it sucks. The whole bottle service thing ruined nightlife. After my experience at Marquee, I was dumbfounded. I’m sitting there running lights (and there’s no fog machine because of the new requirements for the fire protection system) and there are all these people who feel so entitled. We had 1,000 kids at N.A.S.A every week, and no one ever caused a fight—different people from different backgrounds getting together and nobody fought—and these people go out and they think they’re extra special because they’ve got a bottle. But aside from the bottle service problem, the other issue relating to why things are a little slower now is that you have these DJ agents, like Paul Morris from AM Only, and they literally would take these DJs out of our rave scene that were getting paid like $500 to $1,000, and they would add zeroes. Managers are obviously going to promote the artists as best as they can, but in doing so, they shot themselves in their own feet. It’s simple math. My friends, Scott Henry, all of them—they’re making a lot of money, they have nice houses, and that’s fine for them—but at the same time, they out price themselves out of the rave market. Plus, the raves are getting busted, and you have to move the DJs into the clubs, and the clubs could afford to pay the deposits, so the supply and the demand kept up, but it just changed the industry, and so it killed the rave scene in a way. If you’re a DJ, it all boils down to whether can you pull 100 people into a club, and then get paid. That’s just supply and demand … its like battle of the bands. You have to bring people.
Also:
Steve Lewis: So you started out as a tech person in the club and picked up information as you went along that eventually helped you to become an owner?
Scott Osman: Yeah, I was producing parties to help promote my light shows, and it was a symbiotic relationship. And then N.A.S.A. was obviously in the movie Kids—Chloe Sevigny was my coat-check door girl and Harmony Korine would come there and Harold Hunter, and all the other Kids.
Steve Lewis: Harold Hunter was an actor in Kids and he passed away a couple years ago.
Scott Osman: I actually saw Leonardo DiCaprio at the Inaugural Ball, and I brought it up. I asked him if he went to Harold’s funeral because he knew Harold from that whole little circle, but he was really busy looking for his cufflinks that he had dropped, so he couldn’t really talk to me.
Clothing designer Christian Audigier is being sued by tattoo artist Don Ed Hardy for allegedly distributing Hardy’s trademarked clothing line without permission.
Hardy filed a lawsuit Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, seeking $100 million in damages from Audigier’s company Nervous Tattoo and several other defendants.
Hardy claims he and Audigier signed a contract in September 2005 that allowed Audigier to promote and distribute Hardy’s work as part of a clothing line.
The lawsuit claims Hardy terminated the contract in August after discovering Audigier did not fully pay royalties to Hardy and underreported the sales and income from the clothing line. Hardy also claims Audigier launched a competing product—the Christian Audigier clothing line—using Hardy’s trademarks without permission.
This is the best thing I have seen all day (except maybe the Polish Model Girl that was in my Egyptian Cotton Sheets this morning), and I don’t wish lawsuit problems on anyone.
It’s no secret that I have complete disdain for Christian Audigier Clothing and Ed Hardy Clothing. I guess I just come from a world where guys aren’t supposed to wear Glitter on their shirts. (And a world where Girls are the ones who wear “designer Jeans”, but that’s neither Triple Beam nor Ecstasy Dream).
But even more than the clothing, I really hate the “Christian Audigier Type Guy” and the “Ed Hardy Type Guy” and I have waged a personal war on their destruction (which I am winning), like “Shinny Shirt Guy”, “Surf-Cowboy Shirt Guy” and “Striped Shirt Guy” before him.
After a little research, I found out that Christian Audigier is French.
Which makes no sense.
I thought that stupid Americans were supposed to hate everything French?
Well, I love everything French: Beautiful Topless Girls on La Côte Basque and the Med in Summer, Complex Bordeaux’s, Parisian Nightlife, Foie Gras three ways, and Hossegor Pipes in my early 20’s.
But I hate Christian Audigier. (And Ed Hardy.)
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
