ML - Vegas Magazine

2014 - Issue 1 - Winter

Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.

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FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Publisher Joe Vann and I, along with Fox 5's Jason Feinberg, recognized the contributions of our eight Vegas Gives honorees at an incredible party at the Grand Canal Shoppes at Venetian and Palazzo. ABOVE: Shopping for a cause with Randy Char at J.Glenn in Boca Park, where a chunk of sales went right to After-School All-Stars. Susie Lee and Emily Goodman hosted. LEFT: With Mayor Carolyn Goodman at the costume competition I judged for Vegas's most important holiday—Repeal Day, celebrating its 80th anniversary— at the Mob Museum, in the actual courtroom where the Kefauver hearings were held. 18 As we were closing this issue, I had been entertaining bribes from friends near and far for my companion ticket to Britney Spears's opening night. (Free anytime babysitting won.) I will admit that I really only became curious about Brit's residency when I realized that she could draw more than 1,300 fans and reporters, traveling two hours by bus in the middle of the night, into the remote Nevada desert to catch a brief glimpse of her as she alighted from her helicopter, announced her new residency (at 4 AM), and flew away. British social anthropologist Jamie Tehrani recently offered an evolutionary explanation for celebrity worship, saying that it may be based in the unique human characteristic of prestige. "We still imitate what we can because our brains are programmed to associate prestige with adaptive behavior," he wrote. "And because fame is the primary cue of prestige, the more attention celebrities get, the more they attract." Last month (in a biting-the-hand-that-feeds moment), Alec Baldwin took to Twitter to predict US cultural destruction so long as our "celebrity scrutiny/diversion/obsession continues." Perhaps that's true, but in Las Vegas, celebrities also impact our economy in a very material way. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, in 2012 the average spending per visitor on Follow me on Twitter at shows was $42.89. That's $1.7 billion. @andreabennett1 and on The Las Vegas analytics firm Applied vegasmagazine.com. Analysis takes this a step further: Every 1 million people who visit per year directly support 5,600 jobs (we welcomed nearly 40 million last year). You have only to look at what was dubbed the "Celine effect"—UNLV's 2011 estimate (never revised) that Celine Dion's return would be worth at least $114 million a year and thousands of jobs in a then very troubled economy. I say we cut ourselves a break. Enjoy a celeb-packed first issue of 2014. After all, it's good for the economy, and you can't fight evolution. ANDREA BENNETT PHOTOGRAPHY BY AL POWERS (VEGAS GIVES, SMITH & WOLLENSKY) I was so thrilled to share the same air as some of my local idols at Smith & Wollensky's Green Carpet event, which honored the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 018_V_FOB_EdLetter_Winter14.indd 18 1/10/14 10:36 AM

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