The Nevada Democratic Party has put out a news release announcing that state “…Sen. Dina Titus will join friends, family and supporters tomorrow for a major announcement regarding Congressional District 3.”

We are so excited! What could this be about, we wonder? Let’s read more of the announcement to see if we can get a clue.

“Titus has been considering a run for Congressional District 3, which now has 22,500 more registered Democrats than Republicans and is one of the top targets in the West for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has put the district in its top-tier ‘Red to Blue’ program,” the release says.

Oh, wow! What a coincidence: Former prosecutor Robert Daskas just this week dropped out of the race for Congress! That’s so funny that Titus had been considering a run, and then Daskas drops out! It’s like, serendipity or something!

Let’s see, what else does the state party say?

“Titus will formally announce her intentions regarding Congressional District 3.”

Really? She’s going to announce her intentions! You know, we don’t want to get too excited or anything, but we think she might actually be announcing a run for Congress! Yes, that’s right: With the field wide open, we think it’s actually possible that Titus is going to tell her supporters that she’s leaving the state Legislature to make a run for Washington, D.C.

We are so excited! We can’t wait until 5:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Henderson Amphitheater Stairs, between City Hall and the Henderson Convention Center, right there at 200 S. Water St. If we’re right, well, let’s just say this will be one hell of a race!

Hey, you know what? It would be totally easy for Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson to come out and endorse Titus for office. He works at Henderson City Hall. And he’s a Democrat. Right? We’ve got to make a note to ourselves to see if he shows up. Oh, c’mon! How could he not?! He’s probably as excited as we are about this whole thing.

We’ll just bet that Congressman Jon Porter is sitting on pins and needles, too. We wonder what he’ll say tomorrow on this subject if Titus does announce? If we had to bet, we’d guess that he’d probably say something, and then totally make a fake Freudian slip and say “Taxes” instead of “Titus” when he’s pronouncing her name! That would be so funny. That’s just a guess mind you. Sometimes, we’re really bad at predicting what’s going to happen in the future.

Can’t wait for tomorrow! Where’s our good tie…?

We set to work today calculating the massive  windfall we were set to receive, assuming the Hillary Clinton-John McCain plan to eliminate the federal gasoline tax for the summer becomes a reality.

Let’s see, the tax is 18.4 cents per gallon currently, times our fuel tank capacity of 17.1 gallons, equals $3.14 per fill-up (assuming we’re “bingo fuel,” as the Navy pilots say), times 12 fill-ups (assuming we fill-up once a week for all three months of summer) totals … $37.76.

Well, holy shit. Call the Four Seasons, we want the best suite in the house, because we just hit the jackpot! And Barack Obama calls the idea a “gimmick.” Sheesh.

Look, we’re not just against this idea because it’s a bad joke in a time when gasoline is approaching (or surpassing) $4 per gallon. (It was $1.46 when President George W. Bush was awarded the presidency in 2000, according to this one bumper sticker we saw.)  We’re not against the idea because neither Clinton nor McCain is saying where we’d make up the gap in the road-building highway fund that would result from their risky scheme. We’re against it because it sends entirely the wrong message.

That message? That taxes – as opposed to oil company price gouging and market manipulations, for example — are responsible for our woes at the pump.

Clearly, they’re not. In fact, taxes are what allow those nice people with the orange cones and heavy equipment to build the roads that we get to drive on for an average price of $3.60 per gallon nationwide. (And, while we’re on the subject, a big thank you to those nice people in Congress who voted to provide the money to widen Interstate 15 on the way into Las Vegas, starting in Primm. We just got back from making a drive to L.A., and that extra lane made the trip home much smoother.)

What Clinton should be talking about are the record profits earned by oil companies, stretching into the billions-with-a-b. How about a “tax holiday” in which the hard-earned cash taxed from people who are bleeding at the pump isn’t simply turned over to oil companies that are raking in record-setting profits? (We assume McCain, as a Republican, favors that under the broad rubric of “free enterprise.” We expect more from Clinton, who finds new ways to disappoint us every single day.)

Meanwhile, Bush is back talking about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and splitting more atoms for energy. ANWR? Really? That’s like the guy who’s almost out of Coke and is desperately plunging his straw beneath the ice cubes so he can suck up the last little bit of delicious brown liquid instead of realizing his short-lived romance with high fructose corn syrup has come to an end. Time to toss the cup and move on, Mr. President.

In the meantime, isn’t it curious how much Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain seem to agree? On the gas tax, on Obama’s ex-pastor, on the record of foreign affairs necessary to attain the White House, on answering 3 a.m. phone calls….

Curious. Very curious indeed.

So, we hear (via ABC News e-mail news alert) that U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton went on Bill O’Reilly’s show on the Fox News Channel to say that “I think it’s offensive and outrageous,” about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, her opponent Barack Obama’s former pastor.

Just to see if we have this right…

A Democratic candidate for president conducts an “exclusive” interview with a bona fide member of what she once called “the vast right-wing conspiracy,” to say that a pastor who has nothing to do with the race for president made comments outside the presence of her primary opponent that were  “offensive and outrageous,” in the hopes of bloodying up aforementioned primary opponent, against whom she has no possible mathematical chance of winning, one day after that same primary opponent already denounced those remarks? Do we have that right?

This is just getting sad.

When we were researching our recent piece that concludes Gov. Jim Gibbons is unsuited to be the state’s chief executive, we reached out to MGM Mirage Chairman J. Terrence Lanni for comment. Lanni, you’ll recall, was and is a big supporter of the governor, even though his industry is getting royally screwed in part as a result of Gibbons’s “no tax” philosophy.

Alas, Lanni never called us back.

But that doesn’t mean he’s shy. He did an interview with our colleague Jon Ralston on Tuesday’s Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE, and answered some of the same questions that we would have posed to him, had he bothered to return our call. They include:

1. Why did you choose to support only Gibbons during the 2006 governor’s race, and encourage your vendors to support Gibbons as well?
2. Although you clearly disagree with Gibbons’s central “no tax” pledge, you supported him anyway. Why?
3. Since the election, Gibbons has shown himself in myriad ways to be unsuited to the job of governor. Yet, you have said you continue to support him. Why?

Lanni answered some of those questions for Ralston, who has posted a partial transcript of the interview here. It’s mostly focused on Lanni’s critique of the Nevada State Education Association’s initiative petition to amend the state constitution to raise the top tier of the gambling tax from 6.75 percent to 9.75 percent. Let’s take a look at some of Lanni’s answers and analyze them, shall we?

I supported Jim Gibbons. I continue to support him. I don’t agree with everything Jim believes in. I think a pledge of no new taxes is a major mistake. We saw a former president do that, and it certainly had an effect on his re-election campaign.

I don’t agree with the governor on this particular pledge. I’m hopeful that through the processes, that he will actually find a way to change that.

Actually, the former president’s problem wasn’t making the pledge; it was going back on the pledge. And if you think Gibbons doesn’t fear the same fate as George H.W. Bush, you’re not properly appreciating the governor’s fragile psyche. And that’s why, in our humble opinion, Lanni isn’t being “hopeful” when he says Gibbons might change “through the processes,” he’s being delusional.

I think it’s very easy when you take a poll and you ask people, ‘Who should we tax?’ It’s always going to be tax someone else, just don’t tax me. Generally, there’s a view in this state and it has been, and will continue for a long period of time. I think we’re very proud of the fact there’s no personal income tax. Many businesses are very proud of the fact there’s no business tax.

Others have to participate. Last time I looked, bankers, automobile dealers, have sent kids to school. Shouldn’t they be paying for part of this process? Part of education is everyone’s responsibility.

We couldn’t agree with Lanni more here. Sadly, however, Gibbons — the man Lanni exclusively supported for governor — does not agree. He’s against taxes, against broadening the tax base, against imposing a business tax and against getting “others” to participate. You know who might have favored that? Dina Titus, the woman who ran against Gibbons, who Lanni totally shut out in terms of fundraising. Short sighted? Inexplicable? Indeed.

What does this do to help education? I see the test scores. You see them. 79 percent of kids in the eighth grade in pre-algebra failed in Clark County. It gets worse when they get into high school. 90 percent of them failed Algebra 1. What are they doing? More money does not get more education.

Perhaps not, but how does cutting education budgets help? You know what happens when you have to do more with less? You do less with less. And while we’re not blaming Lanni (after all, he wants to increase budgets via a business tax) he still bears some responsibility, since he helped put Gibbons in office.

I’m not governor, so I can’t particularly change that. I’ve said before. I’ve said on this show, in an earlier segment right now, is that the view is I believe (in) working with the governor and the governor may see this as a reasonable alternative.

I believe he is a decent human being. I think he does care about where Nevada stands. He ran on a no-taxes pledge. I was sorry that he did that. He has many supporters who believe in it. I’m sure some of his polls show the best way to be re-elected is to stay with that, because there is a very strong prevalence in this state for no taxes.

I wouldn’t write off the possibility in the legislative session where a veto could be overwritten. I can see that happening. I’ve seen comments by Senator Raggio that he believes there needs to be other things on the table to talk about. I’m just not a negative thinker. I think the glass is always half full.

Well, if you’re sorry that he ran on a no-tax pledge, why in the hell did you support him?! No matter what else Gibbons believes, this one thing should have been a neon warning sign to Lanni and other Strip executives that trouble lay ahead. Doesn’t the chairman realize that the teachers union, frustrated by years of inaction in the legislature on salaries, saw they would get nowhere during the Gibbons years? That his election as governor may have represented the final straw that triggered the union’s initiative?

So why support him? The only possible answer is this: The industry wanted to buy some insurance that a sympathetic ear would inhabit the Governor’s Mansion (whoops!) and figured Titus was not that person.

As for Gibbons being a decent human being, well, let’s just say we could produce some contrary witnesses and leave it at that, shall we?

…

Suffice to say we agree with Lanni 100 percent that the tax base needs to be broadened, that businesses other than casinos need to be asked to contribute their fair share to the state’s tax needs and that taxation-by-initiative is a bad thing that can produce all manner of unintended consequences. And props to him for saying all that publicly, even to unfriendly audiences like the slippery weasels of the Nevada Development Authority.

But we also think Lanni miscalculated big time when it came to the politics of 2006, and that if the teachers gambling tax ballot question passes, he’ll have himself to blame, in large part. We’ve said it before and it bears repeating: If we were MGM Mirage shareholders in the wake of a newly passed gambling tax, we would not be happy with management’s political calls.

Need further proof that the Mainstream Media would rather you ignore all that business about how they knowingly used paid shills to bang the drums for Gulf War II? Just ask Miley Cyrus, the flowering 15-year-old star of Disney’s puerile, massively overrated super-smash Hannah Montana. Instead of learning more about hidden Pentagon hands manipulating public perception on Iraq, this “Tween television goddess” cans have exploded across our living rooms as the new weapons of mass destruction.

Nearly 10 days have passed since The New York Times revealed that the nation’s largest news networks have used retired generals and military analysts with hidden financial ties to major defense contractors to talk up the need for war with Iraq. But how often have you seen CNN’s Anderson Cooper wringing his lily-white hands over the news, or CBS’ Katie Couric delivering a long overdue “media mea culpa”?

Not once, according to today’s study from Media Matters for America, a nonprofit that analyzes the media. In fact, says the report, which has analyzed the nation’s news coverage since the Times story broke on April 20, the major networks have ignored revelations of the secret Pentagon program that used retired military brass to stir up support for further war in the Middle East.

Instead, TV execs have elected to spend an inordinate amount of time teasing Cyrus’ tits - soon to be at least partially revealed in the pages of Vanity Fair. We have just one question, though: If this future Z-Lister can cause such a commotion by flashing even a little skin, how quickly do you think her naked, writhing form could single-handedly dismantle a theocratic tribal society that’s still based on Bronze-Age superstitions? Now that’s a surge we can get behind.

Well, Vegoose, it was fun while it lasted. There are a few things I wanted to tell you before you go. I don’t know quite how to say this, Vegoose, so I wrote down a list of what I’ll miss most about you.

1. Being offered a joint by a frat gorilla who, simultaneously with offering said joint, also steps on my foot, creating this weird sadomasochistic moment of associating getting high with crushed phalanges, a troubling association that persists to this day.

2. That overpowering scent of hundreds of shirtless bodies baking in a tent, creating a smell I can only describe as chili cooked in an old wig.

3. Okay, last year’s closing set by Daft Punk was incredible. It was like an intergalactic wind-up jukebox had crash-landed in a field and was stuck on “play.”

4. A winged faerie eating a turkey drumstick the size of a whiffle ball bat.

5. However, five-dollar funnel cakes is a fucking vicious sacrilege I won’t stand for.

6. Buckethead is one of those rare artists who’s both great as an idea and as realized. It’s hard to explain.

6a. No, I’m not a “Buckethead person.”

7. One too many Maker’s rocks oh wait maybe that’s sunstroke why is there grass all over my face help

We at Various Things & Stuff have no problem giving poor Gov. Jim Gibbons his privacy as he tries to work out the future of his marriage to first lady Dawn Gibbons. As far as we’re concerned, there are plenty of other reasons Gibbons should be held up for public contempt, mockery and ridicule than the fact that he’s apparently been kicked out of the governor’s mansion in Carson City.

But props to blog readers, who were apparently the first to note that Gibbons may be breaking state law by not living somewhere within the confines of the capital city.

According to NRS 223.040, “The governor shall keep his office and reside at the seat of government.”

That word “reside” caught our eye, because it’s the same word that the NRS uses in describing candidates. Another law mandates candidates for public office must actually, and not just constructively, reside within the district, county, township, etc. to which the office they are seeking pertains.

And there have been plenty of cases in recent years that have turned on that phrase, not least of which is the ongoing saga involving former Clark County Commissioner Lynette Boggs, who was indicted after swearing she lived at a home inside her district but was videotaped residing elsewhere. That case is pending.

Other cases, however, have been decided. And you know what one of the deciding factors is? Wheresoever a candidate sleeps, there shall his residence be. That was the case when District Court Judge Lee Gates ruled in 2004 that would-be regent Mark DeStafano didn’t really live in the 13th District, to which he aspired. (He had two homes, one of which was in the district, at which he lived part-time.) It was a decisive factor when District Judge Valorie Vega threw would-be assemblywoman Anne DiMartini off the ballot, also in 2004, because she’d only spent a couple nights in a house she was purchasing in the 29th District. (The day before, then-District Judge Nancy Saitta concluded that would-be assemblyman Todd Allen couldn’t have been living in the 11th District because power to his apartment wasn’t turned on in time.) And who could forget “David Parks,” a loser candidate recruited to run against the real Assemblyman David Parks in 2002, who was disqualified after District Court Judge Mark Gibbons ruled the challenger couldn’t prove he really lived at a home in the 41st District.

So, what have we learned?

1. If a candidate doesn’t sleep in the district, he’s not a resident of that district. Ergo, if the governor doesn’t sleep “at the seat of government,” he does not reside there, and thus is in violation of state law.
2. If a candidate does not reside in the district to which his or her officer pertains for at least 30 days before filing for that office, he or she is ineligible to run for that office, and can be removed from the ballot as a result. It should be noted here that NRS 223.040 contains no specific penalties for violations.
3. A part-time resident (such as DeStefano) or a short-time resident (such as DiMartini) does not qualify as “residing” within the meaning of the NRS. And thus the governor’s explanation — offered via spokesman Ben Kieckhefer — that “This is a temporary situation. The governor has spent the majority of his nights since taking office in the Governor’s Mansion and plans to do so in the future,” simply does not fly. 

But does that mean the governor can continue to violate the law without consequences? Or could this matter form the basis of an article of impeachment? The state constitution specifies that “The Governor and other state and judicial officers, except justices of the peace shall be liable to impeachment for misdemeanor or malfeasance in office.” Does failing to follow NRS 223.040 qualify? Perhaps somebody could ask the fine folks at the Legislative Counsel Bureau or the attorney general’s office?

As we said before, there are plenty of other misdemeanors and malfeasances in office that should qualify Gibbons for impeachment before the question of where he’s really living. We don’t need video of him in a pink bathrobe picking up the newspaper or taking out the trash for that. But they got Al Capone on tax evasion, as we recall…

Now, as to the money in the Friends of the Nevada Mansion fund, started by Dawn Gibbons. Has anybody checked into a proper accounting of that?

“Rebate checks already spent” honks a headline on Page 1 of the Review-Journal. Along with offering the saddest words I expect to read today (”Tony and Gerri Roberto, a Guam couple who spent $600 Monday shopping at Wal-Mart in Las Vegas …”), the story details how locals plan to spend their stimulus checks (mostly: bills; also: some new threads). “That’s the purpose of it … spending,” one woman tells the paper.
As the owner of a house, two cars and three teenage sons, I’m pretty adept at deficit spending — I’d be a natural in Washington, D.C., if I could pass the dress code — but I’m not so sure about this check. The government giving us money it doesn’t really have to make up for money we don’t have so we can buy flat screens to improve the dividends for the shareholding suckfish of Big Biz? Sounds dicey.

“You know what we should do with that check?” I said to my wife. “What?” she asked. She was hoping I’d say flat screen, I think. “Bank it,” I said, “until the war is over. As, you know, a protest. In the spirit of sticking it to Bush and so forth.” Not a bad idea, she allowed.

Maybe we will. Maybe not — three kids, house, etc. It adds up, faster than simple addition can account for. Our household is like an early train: Someone’s gotta frantically shovel cash into the furnace to budge it even an inch. But it would be nice to hold on to the cash for at least a while before giving it back to Bush’s business pals.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave and missed the early advance publicity that’s been all over Las Vegas, you know U.S. Sen. Harry Reid has written a book.  The Good Fight is the story of Reid’s political life interspersed with his youth in Searchlight, Henderson and beyond.

We won’t recount the content at length (follow the links if you’re interested) but we will say this: It’s a good book, one that we really enjoyed. Not only did we learn a few things about the Senate’s majority leader that we didn’t know previously, but Reid says his children did, too.

“I wanted this to be a story about who I am,” Reid said, explaining why he didn’t write about his legislative record or a specific issue, like Social Security. “I read some of those [polemical books] and they’re so boring,” Reid said.

Reid was actually laboring on The Good Fight for about a year before he realized he’d need help from a co-author, in this case Mark Warren of Esquire. But Warren keeps his fingerprints almost invisible; on almost every page, you can hear Reid’s quiet voice telling the story.

Of all the politicians who come in for criticism in Reid’s book, none take a bigger beating than President George W. Bush, who comes across as a dolt, a liar or an incompetent. Reid may have been a defense lawyer in private practice before politics, but he sure as hell has built a powerful case for censure (at least) or impeachment (even better) of Bush and his henchman, Vice President Dick Cheney. But the senator from Searchlight has done neither with his lofty position.

“I am as frustrated as the American people,” Reid says. “You can flex your muscles, but if you don’t have anything to back it up with, you’re in trouble.”

A lesson learned from Reid’s youth: He picked a fight and lost, something he’s completely unwilling to do in the Senate where he rules by a razor-thin majority, at least until the next election. No votes equals no justice, at least until the fallout from Bush’s agenda swamps the Republican yacht in November.

One thing readers will notice about the book is how personal it is: Reid talks about sensitive topics like his father’s propensity for domestic violence and ultimate suicide, his own fisticuffs with his future father-in-law and his hard-fought journey through law school against the indifference of a cruel dean. And the senator’s martini-dry sense of humor comes through as well.

“It was, frankly, hard for me to write some of the things that I did,” Reid said.

Perhaps most vivid is Reid’s portrait of former Gov. Mike O’Callaghan, who was the senator’s mentor and longtime friend. It was O’Callaghan who encouraged Reid to seek office, guided his career and offered (unsolicited) commentary thereon. “What the fuck are you doing?” O’Callaghan would call and say. Anybody who’s been on the receiving end of one of those phone calls (and we have) knows Reid is calling it true. And what any of us would give to be able to hear that booming voice on the phone again.

The book will be on shelves soon, and Reid will be everywhere, from Reno and Las Vegas to San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, with some signings combined with fundraising trips. (Profits from the book will go to charity, Reid says.) Oh, and he’ll be on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart next Monday. And that’s not to be missed.

Back in the days when the Las Vegas Sun was a struggling afternoon newspaper, the larger morning Review-Journal could afford to be arrogant. The Sun’s circulation was tiny compared to the R-J, and the smaller paper could break a story that only about 40,000 people in town would see. Later, the much larger R-J could write the same piece, and still have it considered to be “breaking news.”

(Trust us, we know: We were employed at the Sun as a reporter from 1993-1997, and at the R-J as a columnist from 2000 to 2005. Oh, and for full disclosure purposes, Stephens Media LLC publishes the R-J, CityLife and this blog.)

Anyway, those days are gone. Since September 2005, the Sun has been delivered inside the morning Review-Journal, thanks to a modification of the longstanding, federally approved joint-operating agreement between the two newspapers.

That means the R-J has the exact same circulation as the Sun.

The same readers who get the R-J get the Sun.

So it becomes fairly easy to see when the Sun kicks the R-J’s ass on a story, and the R-J gamely tries to run the exact same story a few days later as if nothing’s happened.

And that should be embarrassing to the editors of the R-J, given that it bills itself as the paper of record.

Now, we at Various Things & Stuff read both newspapers religiously every day, and we happen to know the story linked above is hardly the only example of the “it’s not news until we print it” mentality. Perhaps the reality of the need for daily competition hasn’t yet sunk in? It’s only been about 2-1/2 years, after all, and newspapers are well known to change at a glacial pace.

Also, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out something the Sun omitted: It’s owners — the Greenspun family — are partners with Station Casinos, a likely possible explanation for the Sun’s exclusive. (This time.) It’s the kind of thing that should be disclosed in the story, to alert the reader to conflicts.

But that can’t explain all the Sun’s scoops. Or the lack of red faces down on Bonanza Road.

There may be some out there who are wondering, in the interests of fairness, whether we’re going to lambaste the Nevada Republican Party the way we did the Clark County Democratic Party when the latter screwed up its convention so badly, it needed to have an entirely new “do-over” to make up for it.

In a word, no.

It’s not that we’re biased in favor of the Republicans, even if they did select a way better-looking chairman for their convention in state Sen. Bob Beers than did the Democrats. It’s that the two situations are not at all the same.

In the Democrats’s case, the Feb. 23 county convention was ruined by incompetence. The party simply booked a room that was far too small to accommodate the expected turnout, much less the actual turnout. It took the state party essentially taking over the convention to get it right, with a second convention at the Thomas & Mack.

In the Republican’s case, the convention was thwarted because of the extreme competence of the supporters of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul. Our friend Chuck Muth — who knows about these things — describes at length how the Paul supporters out-organized the backers of U.S. Sen. John McCain on his blog. (For some blow-by-blow coverage, see our colleague Anjeanette Damon’s blog, and there’s some good info in the Las Vegas Sun’s story, too.)

Got it? Democrats screwed themselves by incompetence; Republicans screwed themselves by underestimating the passion and organizing skill of the Ron Paul Revolution.

And, as a side note, we couldn’t be more delighted. First, we love to see Republicans in disarray. Second, we think Paul is obviously the superior choice to McCain. (Paul is right on ending the drug war, ending the Iraq War and preventing future wars, as well as civil liberties, although we don’t endorse his entire agenda). Third, we love it when the people stand up and tell the powers-that-be what’s what.

So, go Ron Paul! Go revolution!

You’ve probably heard by now the Guggenheim Hermitage is closing, the victim of, well, the fact that tourists don’t exactly come to Vegas in order to ponder how post-Impressionists’ bold experiments with multiple perspectives paved the way for the Cubists; rather, tourists come to drink slime-a-rita out of glass footballs and play Sopranos-themed slot machines.

Is anyone really surprised at the closure? That’s what happens when you toss a nonprofit museum in the ol’ free market croc pit and tell it to dance. I still contend to this day, though, that if Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson really wanted to do Western Civ a favor, instead of pouring money into his wargasmatron hater machine Freedom’s Watch, he should have given the Gugg free rent, and in turn admission to the Gugg should have been free all the time. But no. Now we’ve got the messy death of an interesting cultural experiment — a contemplative space amid the sight-and-sound riot of the Strip — on our hands.

But the painful part is this: Oh, now they listen. Until it closes May 11, admission to the Gugg is free. Amazingly, a spot-check on Saturday revealed What Could Have Been — brisk biz as tourists and locals ranging from crisp to crusty filtered through the tidy “Modern Masters” exhibit, which is quite excellently put together. It’s basically about how the modernists took those serious, all-important genres codified by the stuffy French — historical paintings, portraits, still lifes, landscapes and domestic scenes — and just ran wild with them.

Curious Sub-Event That, If I Were a Bigger Person, I Would Decline to Take as a Metaphor of the Creeping Myopic Cupidity that Rules the Strip: So, we’re standing there whisper-talking in the museum … and all of a sudden this big fat stink beetle just casually trundles across the floor.

I’ll warehouse that in my soul as a piece of found performance art.

… in a collective mind-screw, pranky performance-art kind of way, anyhow. A local group is looking for fellow surreal-minded folks — or just people who like to stand still for long periods of time — for a session of STOPPING TIME 1 p.m. Sunday at the Fashion Show Mall food court.

After meeting up at 1, they plan to freeze in situ promptly at 1:30, revel in the freakout among what the e-mail calls the “hapless normals,” and then do it again at 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.

For an idea of what to expect, here’s a vid of time-stopping in Grand Central Station:

No word yet on whether you emerge magically younger on the other side.

Inviting prominent Jewish and Arab scholars to debate peace in the Middle East is a lot like inviting that hopelessly dysfunctional couple over for a chat you hope will save their relationship. Sure, your efforts will be paid off by hours of free entertainment, but at some point, you’re gonna have to knuckle down and roll out that so badly needed intervention. And so, you hide all you guns and knives and hope for the best.

And so it went last night at UNLV as the Black Mountain Institute hosted a tête à tête between celebrated Lebanese novelist and thinker Elias Khoury and A. B. Yehoshua, considered by many to be the greatest living writer in Hebrew.

Hopes for substantively, dispassionately dismantling the plethora of obstacles hampering a lasting peace in the Levant were quickly dashed, however, as both mens’ egos (predictably camouflaged as historical outrage over past atrocities) flared, and the whole fiasco crumbled into a sustained shouting match (with plenty of catcalls coming from the slightly inebriated neo-Zionists writhing mere inches from my seat). Predictably, both sides left the stage — yawn — agreeing to disagree.

El ta-da!