Get Your Dose of Lunchtime Gossip

Norm discusses his new book this week during an appearance on “Lunchtime with Ira, Live from the Las Vegas Hilton.” The popular weekly television/radio/Internet show, hosted by Hilton executive Ira Sternberg, promotes the many sides of Las Vegas.
Watch your favorite columnist on-air this Thursday, November 13th at noon and 8pm on Cox Cable Channel 4, also to be aired the following Friday and Saturday, same times. The radio broadcast of the interview will air on KUNV-FM 91.5 at 6 pm on Thursday, as well as on KDWN AM 720 Talk Radio at 9 pm on Saturday. Or you can even catch the show via Internet here – look for the November 10, 2008 show and click to download or listen.

Forbes Footnote

Norm was quoted in the October 27, 2008 issue of Forbes Magazine headlined “Wages of Sin,” a feature about Eric Langan, chief executive of Rick’s Cabaret International. The article details a lunch at the Wynn between Langan and Norm, who is depicted as the “Sin City gossip columnist” as well as “the eye-patch-wearing columnist at the Las Vegas Review Journal”. During the lunch Langan confirmed to Norm that in 2000 Caesars Palace made a deal with Langan to open a Rick’s Cabaret at the casino – no gaming joint along the Strip had ever had a strip joint – but the deal fell through after Caesars’ owner, Arthur M. Goldberg, died two months later. Norm lead with the story in his column the next day, also announcing that Langan has indeed arrived in Vegas – not at Caesars Palace, but at the former Scores strip club, which Langan bought in September, paying $12 million in cash.

Read Norm’s article . . .
Read Forbes article . . .

“I’m Alive” claims legendary Tom Jones

Rumors of the death of Tom Jones, shown at MGM Grand with the violinist group Alizma, have been greatly exaggerated. Photo by Norm Clarke/Review-Journal

Superstar Tom Jones has incorporated a recent bogus Internet report about his death into his act.

He opens his show these days with “I’m Alive,” which is on his upcoming first U.S. album in 15 years.

Jones, playing the MGM Grand’s Hollywood Theatre, learned about the Internet report earlier this month when a friend asked him how he was feeling.

Then the friend showed him the Internet story.

“I read my own obituary,” he told the audience during Monday’s first show.

Backstage, he told me one of the first calls he received came from Las Vegas lounge legend Cook E. Jarr, his longtime late-night running mate.

When Jones checked his voicemail, a distressed Jarr had left a tell-me-it’s-not-true message. The stress in Jarr’s voice was the opposite of his usual high-energy, dog-barking persona.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to stay on this planet if something’s happened to you,’ ” said Jones, who was touched.

Jones co-wrote much of the new album, “24 Hours,” because “I wasn’t getting any good material coming my way,” he said.

His 2000 album, “Reload,” featuring the club hit “Sex Bomb,” wasn’t released in the United States.

The new album comes out Nov. 25 on S-Curve Records, and he has high hopes after a strong start in Europe. It features two covers, Bruce Springsteen’s “The Hitter” and “I’m Alive” by Tommy James and the Shondells. Bono and Edge of U2 join him for the song “Sugar Daddy.”