Headliner action at Axis; Flavor Flav lights up Carrot Top’s show at Luxor

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Christopher DeVargas

Luxor headliner comic Carrot Top.

Sat, Sep 5, 2015 (10:02 p.m.)

Flavor Flav Get Lit

This was Friday in a nutshell — a nutshell wrapped in neon — for The Kats Report Bureau:

A Q+A column about Naomi Judd. Afternoon rehearsal action with Criss Angel as he preps his “Supernaturalists” production for a U.S. tour starting Sept. 18 in New Brunswick, N.J. An on-the-fly visit to Carrot Top at Luxor, where seated square in the middle of the audience was an enthusiastic Flavor Flav.

Then, a pop-in to the Green Room on 215 and Buffalo, a rather new hang that was at once a casual restaurant, a slickly appointed tavern and a live-entertainment haunt.

Vocalist Vanessa LeGrand and guitar wiz Taos Pelt held fort as a stream of late-night creepers descended, among them Carrot Top, Zowie Bowie, Murray Sawchuck, Lydia Ansel, Jeff Molitz, singer Laura Suzanne Wright and comic Anthony Padilla.

All we were missing was Mike Hammer, Jeff Civillico and a red carpet leading to the opening of … something.

Let’s move this crew along, eh?

• We can expect some activity out of Axis at Planet Hollywood by the middle of this month. Some pieces are to be connected as the venue fills out its headliner lineup. I understand that this new resident performer is male, so it is not the oft-rumored Adele, and is a “legacy” artist with a multigenerational appeal.

Also, the apparent waffling by Britney Spears as she mulls a return to Axis has helped generate interest and ticket sales in her October dates, but I’m hearing that she has agreed not only to a return to Planet Hollywood next year, but also in 2017. None of this verified, mind you. Not yet.

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Chris Phillips of Zowie Bowie and Flavor Flav throw it down at Rocks Lounge.

• The connection between Carrot Top and Flavor Flav — we mentioned them earlier — was solidified years ago on a flight to Las Vegas from San Francisco. In a story the comic told from the stage, Flav (I believe that is the proper second reference for him) seemed to be a bit intoxicated as he walked through security.

He was stopped and questioned, and Topper (I believe that also is the proper second reference for him), who happened to be on the same flight, interceded with, “Are you kidding? This is Flavor Flav! Come on!”

Topper then led Flav to the plane, where the hip-hop superstar and timepiece fashion icon shook hands with every passenger. “It was like he was running for president!” Topper told the audience.

On Friday, the response to Topper’s introduction of Flav was met by a roar from the crowd, and some calls of, “Flavor Flaaaaaaaav!” and “Yeaaaah boooooy!” The audience’s response was so disruptive that Topper pointed to himself and reminded an already-hot crowd, “Hey! Attention! Up here!” Team Topper said afterward that it was the most manic reaction to a celeb ever at a Carrot Top show.

Yet another link between these camps: Topper is in the Flav/Wayne Martin video “Get Lit,” which would or should be the title of Flav’s biography. The video features a few other Las Vegas-based entertainers, among them: Sawchuck and his wife, Chloe Crawford; and Doug “Lefty” Leferovich from Sawchuck’s Sin City Theater show. It looks as if Coolio is in that limo of euphoria, too. If not, he should be.

• Fright Dome returns Oct. 2 for its 13th anniversary at Circus Circus. Attraction founder Jason Egan refuses to sit still; you cannot stop this man’s insistent march to the top of his field with even 100 chainsaws.

Added to this year’s Fright Dome lineup is the Insanitarium, which is said to be Egan’s “most intense, disturbing and visceral labyrinth yet.” Intense, visceral, labyrinth action is what we’re promised. Guests are required to check in at a nurse’s station (which would not be so scary if the nurse is Jennifer Romas), where they sign voluntary commitment papers before entering the haunted fortress. Visitors are locked inside, then chased by a crazed surgeon with no mapped means of exiting.

The temperatures will be kept at freezing, as this is a giant body locker, and the smell of rotting corpses will hang in the air.

All I can say is, dang, Jason. Really?

Can’t wait to see this in person …

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The marquee for longtime Las Vegas magician Steve Wyrick, now headlining an open-ended residency at RFD-TV the Theater in Branson, Mo.

• Steve Wyrick is still spinning his magic, on the stage and in business, with a residency titled “Ultra Magician” at RFD-TV the Theater in Branson, Mo. He is offstage until at least Oct. 16, mending from an undisclosed injury.

In Las Vegas, Wyrick was most recently the lord of the manor at Steve Wyrick Theater at Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood. You might recognize it today as Saxe Theater, where David Saxe stages his highly entertaining “Vegas! The Show” production.

Already proprietor of the collection of rooms at V Theater down the Miracle Mile walkway, Saxe snapped up Wyrick Theater after Wyrick bugged out of the venue in January 2010. There is a feeling that he might want to return to Las Vegas, and why not? What the city really needs is one more magic show. But for now, it’s $39 a pop for “Ultra Magician,” whenever he returns to the stage.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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