Richard Abowitz is not wasting any time getting back into the game after having the distinction in recent weeks of losing both his blog on the Los Angeles Times website due to cost cuts and his print column in the Las Vegas Weekly due to the impending death of the newspaper industry.
The Dean of Las Vegas pop culture writers has started up a new site called Gold Plated Door (see Sin City) which he describes as "an honest broker reporting on all things Vegas," and which will include his unique take on Vegas news, show business, media, and hopefully, anything else he wants to write about.
The site's first "test post," which gives an idea of his style and what's ahead, focuses on Tiger Woods:
"...the most boring celebrity I ever interviewed. I should not be surprised, the connection between a VIP host and a louche celebrity, remains typically Vegas, even if for Woods, Vegas turns out to be only one geographic stop of globetrotting infidelity.
"I interviewed Woods for Tiger Jam, his annual charity concert at Mandalay Bay, a few years ago, and I was given 5 minutes with the golf legend. I have turned down a couple interview offers since. We were done at 3 minutes. He was nice and all, but the money was not worth the time. Woods is boring. When I had no golf questions he was without anything to say. He mentioned that he had little to do with the acts that were playing his concert. He could not name a single song he liked by any of the bands that were performing unless you count 'All of them' as an honest answer and not an expression of total ignorance... Woods did offer to me that his favorite song of all time was 'Eye of the Tiger' and then he explained the pun with his name in case that could be missed. The most memorable thing about the interview was that it is the single time a publicist has asked to search me before I entered an interview room. Did he think I was dangerous? No, he wanted to make sure that I had no golf memorabilia on my person for Woods to sign..."
He refused to be searched.
Abowitz is known not only as the most knowledgeable journo in town, but for his taste for classic literature, self-revelatory writing about his fascinating life and obsessions and an ability to be totally immersed in Vegas culture while remaining somehow above it. He was one of many axed from The Las Vegas Weekly, a fake alt-weekly filled with leftover and expanded articles from Las Vegas Sun columnists like Jon Katsilometes and recycled blogwork from local hacks like New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author, comp queen and concert promoter Steve Friess.
It's the LA Times cut that's the head-scratcher. The national paper with the most confusing, behind-the-times website must know that the Internet is where operations must move, and Abowitz' The Movable Buffet blog was not only one of the first LA Times blogs but among the most distinctive and informative in the entire business. Idiots.
We first corresponded with Abowitz after he commented on our initial coverage of the Danny Gans death mystery (he suggested that we were insane), and after a series of collegial and thoughtful exchanges (unlike the hysterical attacks from Friess), we count Abowitz as a Tabloid Baby pal.
Now that he's gone solo, we're glad to see the compromised Friess has a competitor in the Las Vegas blog arena-- and only urge that Abowitz get on that Danny Gans story!
Click here for Gold Plated Door.
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