Rex's Las Vegas Lists
Yesterday, I attended the taping of the Oprah show at Caesar’s Palace, and it was an all-day affair.
I had an extra ticket, and decided to invite a friend.
We walked into Caesar’s at about 11am, only to be greeted by a casino full of post-menopausal women milling about in herds, interspersed with a bevy of cross dressers … either dressed as Tina Turner or Cher.
I really stuck out like a sore thumb. There weren’t that many white dudes under 50, and excluding myself, there was exactly zero heterosexual white males under 50.
The wait in various lines was about an hour and a half in and of itself, and they made us go through metal detectors.
METAL DETECTORS!
What the bloody hell was that all about?
It was like airport security, even though Oprah had been spotted moments earlier wandering through the casino. If you are going to be walking around Caesar’s, don’t make me submit to an anal cavity search to see you in a different room.
I started making friends immediately.
At one point I pulled out my two tickets, and exclaimed, “You do realize that with these two tickets that I have here in my hand, I can get any 50 year old woman on the planet to fuck me.”
I heard one slight gasp, and turned around to find something like … ten people looking at me with utter disgust … and five people trying to suppress a laugh because the person they were with was looking at me in utter disgust.
We stood in line for what seemed like forever, and I began getting extremely annoyed. I hate waiting in lines. I began to express this to some degree. I shouted that Oprah better “Big Give” me some cocaine to make this hellish boredom tolerable. Several people laughed, several people shot me dirty looks (the alternating laughs and dirty looks are a recurrent theme). People were either laughing at me, or shooting daggers at me from their eyes throughout the entire day.
Oprah was a deity to this herd. She’s the Jesus of women. Women love Oprah. You don’t joke about Oprah. That’s tantamount to telling Texans that the Iraq war isn’t going well. It’s sacrilegious.
I then tried to amuse myself with Harpo staff.
I told one female usher that I was the illegitimate child of Oprah, and demanded to be seated immediately. We then got into a debate with some other line-standers about whether at 39, I could conceivably be a bastard child of Oprah’s. It was eventually decided that it was indeed chronologically possible, but unlikely due to our slightly dissimilar appearances.
One of the staff members was walking around with a big sign held above her head that said “Pollack Family”.
Apparently these people were VIP’s.
I loudly proclaimed to be a member of the Pollack family, and actually had the lady convinced for a few moments. However, after she figured out that I was not a “Pollack”, I began chastising her for running around with a sign promoting racial slurs. “Oh real nice, you can’t call these people by name, you have to resort to slurs. What do you have against Polish people? What’s next, are you going to run around with a sign that says ‘Jewish Family’ on it?”
Like a sore … fucking … thumb … poking out of a dead squirrel’s ass.
That’s me at an Oprah show.
Anyway, we finally got seated, and the seats were actually very good. First row of the second floor section. Maybe 10-15 rows from the stage.
Most of you have probably been to TV show tapings before, and are familiar with the “hype man” (or woman as this case was). They come out before the show, and try to build up audience enthusiasm. More often than not, the hype man is a comedian.
I found Oprah’s “hype woman” to be a little insulting. She coached the audience on how to cheer and when to cheer. She coached the women on how to say “awwww” when something sweet happened, how to “booooo” when something negative happened, how to say “oooooooh” when something unexpected happened, etc, etc.
I’m 39 fucking years old. I know how to goddamn react. But here was this heard of ewes (female sheep) compliantly “oooh’ing” and “ahhhh’ing” in unison like a bunch of trained seals.
We just looked at each other in disbelief as in “Is this shit really happening?”
Thank god she wasn’t buying this shit any more than I was. We were the only people in the whole Colosseum who weren’t participating in this degrading clusterfuck of being told how to react. We decided that we would just go ahead and wing it with our gut reactions … confident that our decades on the planet would serve us well to react properly at the appropriate time.
Eventually Oprah unceremoniously emerged, and the crowd got excited. She talked to the large audience for a minute or two, then started the show taping.
I had never before watched Oprah’s show, and did not know what to expect. I was kind of assuming that it would be a Leno type show taping, and that the whole thing would just run in a linear manner. The Tonight show takes an hour to tape, what you see in the studio is exactly what you will see on TV the next night, and all mistakes and flops are left in.
I was actually in the audience during this taping:
Chronologically correct filming is not the case with Oprah.
The show doesn’t just flow from start to finish like the Tonight Show. There are a lot of re-takes, chops, and out-of-sequence filming.
It is produced and put together later.
If Oprah doesn’t like something, she tells the audience that it will be edited out of the show. They had to re-film parts of the interviews because someone said something they weren’t supposed to say, or because it wasn’t said or performed correctly.
I prefer Leno’s way, but whatever. It wasn’t that bad. Just different.
Tina Turner and Cher both did multiple renditions of their performances. I didn’t mind this at all, because the Tina/Cher duet of “Proud Mary” completely kicked ass each and every time. I didn’t see a flaw in any of the performances, but am glad they re-shot them.
Tina also did a searing rendition of “Nutbush City Limits”, which tore the place up.
Tina Turner really did make this whole thing worthwhile. At 68 years old, she still rocks the mic like a demon. It’s fucking unreal. I actually want to see a full Tina show if she ever rolls through Vegas.
Cher also performed a solo song. It wasn’t quite as raw and kicking as Tina’s set, but she sounded very good.
Her song was more “Vegas-y” with more “show-like” choreography and dancing.
The music was the overwhelming highlight of the show. I don’t know how it will look on TV since they are going to chop it and edit it, but it was just incredible to see live.
Unfortunately, there was one thing that I really did not like about the show … and it will probably prevent me from ever becoming an Oprah fan.
Man-bashing. Oprah really eggs on the “Women Good, Men Bad” thing, and I find it terribly annoying and disingenuous. Unfortunately the ewes in the audience, desperately looking for a shepherd, knew full well to “boo” on cue every time Ike Turner’s name was mentioned, and even Sonny Bono to a lessor degree.
I very rarely see male celebrities go on talk shows and publicly declare what a bitch-ass whore, piece of shit shrew their former wives are/were (and let’s face it, many of their wives are) … but women really love to shit on their husbands in public. I’m not sure why. It’s a woman thing, and I would never understand it. I don’t dig it, and part of the show was devoted to the predictable “I was a poor helpless waif until I broke free from my controlling asshole husband” routine.
The female audience eats that shit up, and they could not care less how much of it is true or false. They just like to scream “You go girlfriend!” Women feel good when they shit on men, and love it even more when female celebrities shit on men.
Say what you want about Ike Turner. Maybe he was flawed (Aren’t we all?), maybe terribly so … but he was an incredibly gifted musician, and remains well-respected in the music community to this day. He was one of the greatest guitarists of his time, and without Ike, there would be no Tina. Ike Turner was a musical genius. Yet not even a shred of posthumous props were given to Ike.
I found it especially tasteless given his very recent passing. Talking badly about someone when they can’t defend themselves because they are dead disturbed me a little.
And I still find it nearly impossible to believe that these two ladies were perfect angels. They wanted something out of the men who brought them stardom, and when they got what they wanted, they all of a sudden stopped “wanting to be controlled”, and booked out of there. There are two sides to every story, but women only care about one side. The woman’s side. I’m sorry, but that shows a lack of intellect and reason.
The audience boo’ed when Cher revealed that she had to pay $2 million to Sonny Bono after breaking her contractual obligations.
Well, welcome to the real world, moo-bitches. If you have a contract, you have to fulfill it or buy it out like the rest of us. As much as you think women should get a free pass to break them because “they want to be free” (Cher’s rationale) … I just don’t think contract law should be altered to give chicks a “free out” because they “changed their mind”. What if Sonny had broken a contract and was ordered to pay Cher $2 million? Would they have boo’ed Cher? I guarantee you that they would not have.
This is why the business world doesn’t take you seriously.
So, the male-bashing and knee-jerk reactions from the audience did annoy me.
It was a relatively brief portion of the show though, so I didn’t have to listen to it for too long.
Oprah joked with the audience about the toilets in her Caesar’s Suite, regaled us with tales about how she had been snowmobiling with Tom Cruise in Colorado the night before, and she borrowed some eyelash glue from an audience member during a break. She called the audience member “Sisterfriend”. I shit you not. I saw a sketch on Saturday Night Live making fun of Oprah and that phrase, and thought it was an exaggeration.
It’s not.
It scared me.
Anyway, they made an “announcement” at the taping, and we were asked not to discuss it before the show airs. When telling us about the secrecy, the hype woman said “What happens in Vegas!” … then she pointed the microphone toward the audience, and the ewes immediately shrieked “Stays in Vegas!”. My “Is treated with Penicillin!” was drowned out.
I should reveal the secret in big, bold, screaming print across the front page of this site, complete with dates, times and locations … simply because they used that tired, horrible, completely inaccurate slogan. Since they punished me by making me listen to a thousand harpies scream that shitty slogan in unison, I should punish them back.
But as usual, I will take the high road.
Given the couple thousand or so people in the audience, there is zero chance that it will stay silent. I’m sure everyone in the audience has an Internet connection to tediously research the various ways in which men are evil, and they will email the secret to every sisterfriend they know.
I don’t really think they can keep this “secret” under their hat for long.
Hell, I had already heard the rumor before attending the show. And it’s not that big of a deal. I don’t understand why it is a “secret” in the first place.
Oh the drama.
I’ll just say that Tina Turner fans will be happy to hear the news verified on Oprah’s show , and leave it at that (no, unfortunately Turner is not doing a Vegas residency).
Anyway, all things considered, it was a mostly enjoyable experience. I try to be honest, and include the bad as well as the good, and overall it was good.
Oprah seems very nice.
I talked to one of the cameramen for a few minutes, and he told me some tales of working on the show (they tape two shows daily and only work four days a week), and told me that he loves his job because Oprah treats him well. I later offended this same cameraman by telling him that the Tina impersonator onstage probably had a larger penis than I did.
He didn’t find it funny, but I wasn’t joking.
Anyway … her people do love her, and it probably is because she really is a genuinely great person.
Harpo staff treated us well, and Caesar’s treated us well.
Oprah does a fine, entertaining show … I am simply not part of the demographic. That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with it.
People are different.
Oprah has an audience, and she obviously serves them well. Her audience loves her and they are very loyal to her. She is successful and deserves all the accolades she gets. She has earned them.
Again, the “Oprah, Tina, and Cher – Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas Special” airs nationally on May 8th on CBS. If you are into any of the above, it will probably be worth an hour of your time to watch it.
