SWANK IT!

Polish that cocktail glass and pick out your finest olives: It’s time to swankify Club Madrid. America’s most beloved semi-ironic lounge act, Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine, are at the Sunset Station venue tonight (8 p.m., $29-$49). Let’s all celebrate by stopping to appreciate the sheer genius that is his cover of Bel Biv Devoe’s “Do Me.” Click for more words and pictures »

By Jason Scavone

Fatality, dale.

Everybody has hard choices to make about how they’re going to spend their weekend. Some choices are harder than others. This week’s showdown: Human cartoon Pitbull versus cartoonishly exaggerated standards of beauty at the Miss USA pageant. FIGHT!

By Jason Scavone

Couldn’t she add some rhinestones or something? (Photo by Toby Acuna | SPYONvegas.com)

It’s Friday. It’s the summer. So that means your chances of seeing oiled-up ladies poolisde has increased by roughly 478 percent. (That’s just math.) This is the final selection round of Hot 100 at Wet Republic today before the contest shifts into high gear, so if you have lifelong dreams of cash and prizes for looking fantastic in a string bikini, this would be the time to start chasing them.

By Jason Scavone

Who doesn’t want to spend $25,000 for primo parking? (Via LeavingLV.net)

The Huntridge is off and running on its $150,000 IndieGoGo campaign, with around $23,000 already raised in the span of a week.

Michael Cornthwaite, Rehab Choudhry and Joey Vanas are all jumping on the crowdfunding bandwagon to take the first step in what’s expected to be a $12-$15 million journey. So what will your money get you?

• $5: Digital show poster.
• $10: Participation in monthly Speak Up! events, where you can suggest what bands and performances take place in the venue.
• $25: Physical show poster.
• $30: Save The Huntridge T-shirt.
• $50: 11 x 17 artist’s print from a yet-to-be-announced local artist.
• $100: Early bird/special offers membership on all events.
• $200: Your name on a brick of the Gratitude Wall at The Huntridge.
• $500: Two tickets to the Opening Night show at The Huntridge in 2015, one-year early bird membership, T-shirt, digital poster and 10 Speak Up! votes.
• $1,000: Two tickets to the Opening Night show, one-year early bird membership, T-shirt, digital poster and 25 Speak Up! votes.
• $2,500: All that stuff, but with two VIP pre-opening party tickets, too.
• $5,000: Yadda yadda with 50 Speak Up! votes and one year of having a VIP parking spot, keycard access to the backstage lounge and use of VIP facilities.
• $25,000: We can’t imagine at this point you’re doing this all for a parking spot, but at $25k, you get a lifetime VIP parking spot, lifetime early bird and 250 Speak Up! votes, so you can finally shove it down everyone’s throat when you say you really want Tom Cochrane to come in and play “Life is a Highway” at The Huntridge. Zero of 10 claimed right now, so you’ve still got time.
  

  By Jason Scavone

It’s like if Sad Keanu were a musician.

It’s not 746 degrees out tonight, so take advantage by piling into the Boulevard Pool for singer-songwriter Ryan Bingham, who’s heading up Set Your Life to Music this evening. You can swing over to SPYONvegas for your free ticket as availability holds out. Click for more words and pictures »

By Jason Scavone

Aw, Pam made Penny Pibbets sad.

Even with Melody Sweets and Angel Porrino in the show, you just can’t make one tent nearly boobtacular enough. But Absinthe was trying last night when Pamela Anderson came in to check out the show. Good for her for staying committed to the barbed-wire tattoo, though. Most anyone else would have saved up for a lasering by now, but not Pam. She’s seeing this thing through, to stay ahead of the game for the inevitable rash of 2025 ironic hipster tribal and wire tats that’ll sweep through Space Brooklyn.

By Jason Scavone

Needs more Hot 100-style bikinis. (Photos by Erik Kabik)

We’re not exactly sure why pageants ever bother with any other part of the affairs other than the bikini and evening gown competitions. (And really, you could probably even pare that down, but we suppose it’s fine to take a nod to keeping things classy.)

Last night, the Miss USA girls did the heavy lifting at Planet Hollywood, where they did the prelims. That’s Miss Nevada Chelsea Caswell showing a Jolie-esque amount of leg. We know how to do it up in these parts.

By Jason Scavone

Bunk-hold.

The Bunkhouse, easily one of Downtown’s most underrated bars is going to have some down time as the Downtown Project takes over the space.

The venerable institution will shutter at the end of the month for renovations before reopening in September. The last two shows of the summer will be June 28 and 29, with lineups still to be announced.

Whatever they do with the remodel, they’d better not do away with the awesome curved bartop fronting the raised seating area. The questionable overstuffed chairs, on the other hand …

By Jason Scavone

Huh. We thought he was dead, as per Bruce Willis. (Photo by Roman Mendez | SPYONvegas.com)

It’s another edition of Eclipse at Daylight tonight, when they welcome Zedd to the pool. His real name is Anton Zaslavski, which means that to non-British, non-Canadians he should just be “Zee.” Stupid confuzzling British-English. We don’t care if they’re the ones who invented the language. They’re still doing it wrong. We dare you to pronounce “aluminum.” Click for more words and pictures »

By Jason Scavone

The panel is just going to be Aoki hosing down the crowd. (Photo by Al Powers)

EDMbiz, the EDC Week conference that focuses on–stop us if you’ve already figured this out–the business side of the EDM world is returning for the second year June 18-20 at The Cosmopolitan. A grip of DJs are going to be presenting at the thing, including Pete Tong, Afrojack, Steve Aoki, Dash Berlin and Dirty South.

Our favorite part of it, though is that Perry Farrell is going to be there. Even though it makes total sense in this context, just the idea of Farrell at a business conference is delightful. He’ll be talking with WME Head of Music Marc Geiger about the evolution of Lollapalooza.

Other luminaries include KCRW music director Jason Bentley as host, Beatport CEO Matt Adell, Worldwide Music chief Rob Light, Live Nation Electronic president James Barton, WME Head of Music Marc Geiger, SFX Vice Chairman Shelly Finkel, AMG’s Neil Moffit, Rick Stevens of Y Entertainment Group, Tao Group’s Jason Strauss and WME Global Head of Electronic Music Joel Zimmerman.

By Jason Scavone