Jan. 3, 2008

New Year's Wishes: May old frenemies be remembered

By STEVE FRIESS

It's the beginning of the year, and at times like this, columnists feel obliged to look backward and forward in fairly predictable ways. I got married this year, had my first book published, started a blog and wrote for a few new magazines I'd always wanted to write for, but that’s all dullsville stuff to most people.

So I got to thinking about a curious text message I received in late November. It read: "You’re an asshole, and so is your boyfriend."

I do not know who sent this nastygram because it came from AT&T Wireless' web-based text-message service. It seems anyone can send anyone an anonymous text message from there, and it can’t be traced. Worse yet is that the receiver gets to pay for his insult!

I was baffled. I called my friend Trevor to confer. Who could hate me? I’m so nice!

"Do I really have that many enemies?" I asked.

“Uhh, yeah," Trevor replied.

“I do?"

“Uhh, yeah. You piss off a lot of people."

Wow, I thought. That’s pretty cool.

So, I figured, what fun it would be to review my top enemies of 2007. I realized that this is the unusual year-in-review I wanted to contemplate: my top enemies of 2007. In other words, the most likely suspects for sending me such a text message.

No. 5: Steve Wyrick. The magician probably remains angry that we questioned on our podcast the veracity of his tacky claim that he bedded the late Anna Nicole Smith. (He wasn’t asserting paternity of her child, just wanting to use her death to get into Norm Clarke’s column. Classy.) Wyrick also wasn’t pleased when I surprised him by noting that his show at the Miracle Mile Mall isn’t linked to from the Planet Hollywood site. He had just spent a few minutes talking about what a great relationship he has with the hotel. (There’s still no link, by the by.)

No. 4: Hans Klok. This may be unrequited hate, as I have no idea whether Hans ever was aware of me. Even before I saw his lousy, copycat magic show, I knew something was off when I couldn’t get his momentary assistant Pamela Anderson to do an interview with me for a major national magazine. She did only the safe, fluff media, and my ire was raised. Then came the show full of seen-elsewhere tricks and precious little Pam for the hype, followed by the fictitious tryst between obviously gay Hans and marriage-addicted Pam. By the time Klok departed, I felt saddened at how badly he was produced and handled but happy that someone more qualified may soon take his place in that gorgeous showroom.

No. 3: Michael Politz. The editor of the Las Vegas Food & Beverage Magazine started out 2007 trying to muscle his way onto a celeb-journalists panel I assembled featuring Perez Hilton. But Robin Leach and Norm Clarke wouldn’t appear if Politz was involved, so I dumped him. That made him sad. Then, in the spring, he ranted about how incomplete my coverage of Vegas was in Conde Nast Traveler's annual Hot List, a compilation of the best of new hotels, restaurants, nightclubs and spas that had opened in 2006. When Politz wrote, “It’s a seemingly odd bunch with some glaring omissions and somehow only touches three properties in the entire city," I went nuts on my blog because I had explained to him after similar criticism the year before that this is not a citywide guide but simply an assessment of the best new stuff worldwide from the prior year. Politz tripped my switch once more in November, when he wrote on his blog that Carrot Top was the Strip’s best show. That’s odd, but he also wrote that Mr. Top was sold out six months in advance, and that’s not true.

No. 2: Robert Earl. The Planet Hollywood founder proved to have a thin skin and poor understanding of the media. On the weekend of the grand opening of his Vegas resort, I penned a piece in London’s Sunday Telegraph in which I quoted a Vegas-watcher who has doubts about the property’s future. That’s called balancing a story and does not reflect my own personal views. The paper also insulted Earl in the headline, but he knows I don’t write that stuff. Nonetheless, he called me up livid over all of that, told me what a horrible journalist I am and how he’ll never speak to me again. Because, as a reporter with a zillion possible sources on the Strip, I’m really likely to call him anyway.

No. 1: Jerry Lewis’ publicist. I asked to speak with Lewis for a national magazine. A rep wrote back claiming Lewis would do such an interview “for a sizeable fee." How much? Twenty thousand dollars, he replied. I posted these e-mails on my blog, the story ended up on the Huffington Post, and the rep was canned. I got my interview, wrote about it here, went on with my life. But months later, the rep went all Ahab on me, harassing my editors at that magazine and writing really mean lies about my ethics on his website. Lawyers from the magazine stepped in, and he took down almost all the horrible things. Now all that’s left on the website is a notice with several misspellings claiming the whole controversy was contrived. And I’m letting it go at that because the guy is clearly a mess.

Which is why I have not named Enemy No. 1. He may be a little more upset than necessary and, I fear, he may be the sort to try something a little bit odder than, say, an anonymous hateful text message. I just don’t need that kind of excitement. Or maybe I do?

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