Taking a pic

It’s been a wonderful couple of weeks and still have a few more to go. The Hypnosis shows have been so much fun and my volunteers have been hilarious!

Some of the places we have traveled are Venice, Corfu, Gibraltar, Malta, Croatia, Casablanca, Barcelona, Athens and the home of my new favorite boutique for fabulous clothes…Katakolon!

Julie and Kellie's night in Venice

George Orange and Kellie having espresso in Venice

Billy Hufsey and The Cleveland Boys

I had a great weekend in Cleveland! I went to my friend Billy Hufsey’s CD release party and wow! What a success! More than 900 people showed up to help this “Confessions of a Teen Idol” star celebrate his latest greatest project and I encourage everyone to check it out. It it truly fantastic.

I will be doing my Comedy Hypnosis Show again tonight at The Riviera Casino in Las Vegas, so if anyone happens to be in the area, come on by! Show starts at 9 p.m.

Come see Kellie Karl hypnotize Las Vegas!

KELLIE KARL plays SHARON RICHFIELD the Lead Actress in REAR VIEW ( Formerly DISTORTION ) She is very talented in many different ways, as an Actress, Comedian, and Hypnotist. Here is Kellie’s BIO, this is one Lady that fits any role perfectly, take a look…

Favorite Movies: Anything Spielberg anything Meryl Streep, suspense dramas, comedy…it varies depending on my mood!

Favorite Line from a Film: [Describing a "reaction" to an encounter with the bullies] Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] “Randy lay there like a slug! It was his only defense!” THE funniest line in a movie…EVER!!

BACKGROUND: Actress/Singer/Dancer/Comedy Hypnotist

GOAL: To entertain audiences by providing interesting, moving and thought provoking experiences that leave them feeling great!

Article Originally Posted by:

Behind The Mind – The Making of REAR VIEW
Welcome to the behind the scenes WEBUMENTARY of the making of REAR VIEW.. The 1st Project from the collaboration of Baked Mind Films & Farrland Films
http://bakedmind.blogspot.com/2008/06/spotlight-on-kellie-karl.html

LAS VEGAS, May 21 — Madame Meg’s Find Your Sexy in Las Vegas and Take it Home with You premieres at Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce at Mandalay Bay on Friday, June 13th. Exciting encores are scheduled July 11 and August 8. Showtime is 8:30 p.m. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Come early and enjoy the FREE burlesque workshop presented by Emily Lauren!

Madame Meg’s Find Your Sexy is a burlesque (no nudity) variety show that makes you feel GREAT about yourself! Enjoy a night of laughs, music, magic, and sexy surprises! The show is MC’d by Steve Dacri, the King of Close-Up Magic. $60 VIP seating, $45 general admission plus tax. Both also include
general admission to Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce burlesque show and nightclub.

For reservations visit http://www.madamemeg.com or call 702.953.9705 or 866.704.0138.

The show features Madame Meg’s positive and inspirational comedy and playful burlesque routine. Kellie Karl, the beautiful and talented hypnotist, who plays Tony Soprano’s sexy psychiatrist in the Soprano’s Last Supper, will perform her entertaining act. Emily Lauren will delight the audience with her hysterically funny burlesque showgirl routine, Steve Dacri will dazzle and amaze the attendees with his mystifying close-up magical feats, and Amanda Kaiser will awe the room with her beautiful voice.

Madame Meg (Meg Bertini) headlines and co-produces Madame Meg’s Find Your Sexy. Meg is the creator of Dream Time Publishing, Inc. A former attorney who never quite fit into the traditional legal environment, Meg found her sexy through challenging personal choices and relationships.

“Finding your sexy isn’t about physical appearance,” maintains Madame Meg.

“Sexy is all about your inner glow and confidence.” Through light entertainment, her goal is to help people embrace happier, fuller lives. She is confident that the best thing about the show is that people will take a positive feeling home that will last long past this enchanting evening.

Article Originally Posted by:
Reuters.com
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS127038+21-May-2008+PRN20080521

Kellie Karl may be one of the most versatile entertainers on the Las Vegas Strip and presently can be seen nightly in “The Sopranos Last Supper” at the Harmon Theater at the Aladdin’s Desert Passage.

She said, “I play Tony’s psychiatrist in the musical at the Harmon Theater. I’m from New Orleans, the city that used to be and is no longer. My entire family is from there and came here during the storm. Her house survived but my other relatives lost everything. My mother could not wait to get back home.”

Kellie said, “I played Stevie Nicks in a show called `Hail Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll’ at Whiskey Pete’s. That was my first impersonation. My first professional show was in `Can Can’ at the Royal Sonespa Hotel.”

She quipped, “I’m the most networking girl in Las Vegas and saw that `The Sopranos’ had an audition. They thought I looked the most like the mob psychiatrist and they hired me. It’s a lot of fun. I’ve been playing this character since April. I love doing Dr. Melfri. Her cousins came in to see me perform a couple of times. They said you are just like my cousin Lorraine Bracco. One of them was more reserved but the other was saying `You really remind me of my cousin. You really did a good job. One came and then the sister told the other to see the show.”

Kellie said, “I was a cheerleader growing up in New Orleans. I loved to dance but my parents think I was rebellious. I was a good kid. I had a stay at home mom and my dad was a chemical engineer. I always knew I would be a dancer. I trained for singing, dancing and acting. My father used to love watching `The Sopranos’ but he has passed away. I’m not Italian but rather of French and Irish descent. The late Christopher Reeves movies are my favorite. I like the late River Phoenix too.”

She said, “I love taking all my friends to Terrible Herbst’s late night specials from midnight to 6 a.m. There are all kinds of entertainers that hang out there. The last book I read was a self-help book `Path to Recovery.’ I’d rather be Oprah if I could be any star. I love her philanthropy efforts. I worked in `Creole Heat’ on Bourbon Street before I came to Las Vegas. Then I came here about four years ago. I don’t like living on the west side because of the traffic on US 95. I have an addiction to Doritos. I love instrumental music. I am a DJ and try to keep up on all that kind of stuff. I love the Moody Blues. My favorite song is `Nights in White Satin.’”

Kellie said, “I would love to live in Hawaii. I worked as a novelty act on a cruise ship It was so wonderful. I sang and did some comedy in a show. This show has everything and the food is great. Uncle Junior is my favorite character. He makes me laugh. My favorite restaurant is MIXX at the top of The HOTEL.”

For tickets or information call (702) SEE TONY and come on down. A&E recently bought the episodes at $2.5 million per show after a six season run on HBO. “The Sopranos” begins airing this fall.

Article Originally Posted by:
Steve’s Everything Las Vegas
http://www.everythinglv.com/2006/11/03/everything-las-vegas-issue-598/
(About half way down the page)

Lynton V. Harris, front center, poses with his students around a wax Elvis at Madame Tussauds. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

It’d be a transformation worthy of that achieved by the imaginative Dr. Frankenstein when he assembled his monster from all those creepy odds and ends.

To wit: Taking about a dozen-and-a-half normal, friendly, attractive, funny people and turning them, in the space of one week’s time, into creatures that’ll frighten the bejabbers out of anybody who visits the latest attraction at Madame Tussauds Las Vegas.

So, it’s probably fitting that the venerable wax museum enlisted for the project its own Dr. Frankenstein of sorts, Lynton V. Harris, chairman, chief executive officer and creative director of The Sudden Impact! Entertainment Company.

Harris — an amiable, casually dressed, casual-mannered man with a quick, sometimes earthy sense of humor — has produced fright-based live shows and interactive attractions all over the globe, including horror-themed exhibits for Madame Tussauds attractions in London, Amsterdam and New York.

Most recently, he helped to design the latest addition to Madame Tussauds Las Vegas: Chamber of Horrors Presents Monsters Alive! an interactive attraction based on classic Universal Studios monsters.

Last week, as a final tune-up before the attraction’s Memorial Day weekend opening, Harris put the actors he hired to staff the attraction through what he calls “Scare School,” a sort of five-day crash course in the nuts and bolts of scaring people senseless.

First things first: If you’re thinking Monsters Alive is anything like the haunted houses that sprout up in strip mall parking lots every Halloween — the ones populated by high school kids in bad makeup who jump out and say “Boo!” a lot — think again.

In fact, even mention the phrase “haunted house” to Harris and he responds with the pained sort of expression that’d normally be elicited only by slapping someone in the face with a dead rat.

“We don’t ever use (that phrase) in reference to our product,” he says, quite seriously.

Visitors to Monsters Alive enter a sort of old-time movie theater set. Then, as they walk through the darkened hallways, they encounter a mix of live actors and Madame Tussauds signature figures.

So, Harris notes, casting the right actors is essential. After two rounds of auditions, he assembled a cast of performers, most of whom have acting experience, but many of whom come from backgrounds in singing, dance or other types of performance.

“It’s definitely a mixture of personalities and backgrounds,” Harris says. “Then you bring them together, and people feed off each other. So what skills they lack someone else brings out of them and vice versa. You need a mixture, I think, to make it really dynamic.”

With his cast assembled, Harris last week set about teaching them the basics of the fright biz.

“Scare School is a series of in-class lectures and interacting with each other,” according to Harris — essentially, a sort of intensive acting class during which students learn about the psychology of suspense and horror and audience dynamics, participate in acting and movement exercises, and practice performance skills they’ll use in their new jobs.

“It’s an involved process,” Harris adds.

“Actors always turn up on day one and scratch their heads. And, by the end of the week, if it’s worked, we’ve molded them into an elite team of actors that go from thinking this might be a fill-in job to being one they’re proud of.”

The first day of Scare School also included a trip to Madame Tussauds so, Harris says, students would gain an understanding and an appreciation of their place in the Madame Tussauds tradition.

It was Dave Sharrow’s first visit to Madame Tussauds. What’d he think?

“It scared me,” he admits as his cast mates laugh.

But cast member Kelly Kimbrough understood.

“It seemed like (the figures) were breathing,” she says.

The classmates didn’t know it yet, but Harris had a few other surprises planned for Scare School, too, including a trip to the Stratosphere Tower where students were to board the tower’s thrill rides. Harris notes that he wouldn’t be surprised if a few of his cast members decided that they’d prefer to be on the giving, rather than the receiving, end of this whole scare thing.

That’s OK, too, he adds, because “some of our best actors are scaredy cats.” A primary focus of the Scare School curriculum revolves around not, as Harris puts it, “falling into cliches.” To Harris, eliciting a quick, superficial scare is easy, but leaving patrons with a lasting, deeper entertainment experience takes work.

“I can take eight people and put them in (the attraction) and turn out the lights and it’ll work,” he explains. “But you get a great cast in there and the audience goes, ‘That was awesome.’ Big difference.”

While cast members have diverse backgrounds, they share an enthusiasm for what they’re sure will be a fun gig and, in at least a few cases, a longtime love of Halloween and other entertainingly scary stuff.

Terese Kelly’s resume includes a variety of acting jobs, a few of which even revolved around horror-type themes. But, she says, “I’ve never done anything on this level. This is so fun to do.”

Kellie Karl calls herself the person who, at Halloween, will decorate the picture windows, the front door, the lawn, and even, she says, “the dog.”

“I love this kind of stuff,” she says.

Kurt Mayne even has a familial reason for being so happy that he landed the Madame Tussauds job.

“I’m a single dad, and my daughter is so behind this,” says Mayne, who, after learning he’d gotten the job, even settled in for a horrorthon of Universal Studios films featuring Frankenstein, Wolfman and Dracula.

For Harris, cast members’ success will be measured by how well they can entertain patrons, whether it’s by making them scream, laugh or cry or, even, just giving them the opportunity to laugh at others who scream, laugh or cry.

“The coolest thing is to stand in a corner in black clothes and watch people,” he explains. “It’s cheaper than therapy, watching the audience go through.”

Article Originally Posted by:
By John Przybys with ReviewJournal.com
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/May-30-Mon-2005/living/1852555.html

"Let's face it," Earl Turner says, "Las Vegas is the only place that makes stars out of people you've never heard of before."

Earl Turner likes to say that he’s the first singer since Wayne Newton to graduate from the Las Vegas lounges to headliner status. And not 50 yards from the Earl Turner Theatre is a reminder of Turner’s past: the Jazz Court, Harrah’s lounge.

The Jazz Court sits in the center of the casino, bordered by wrought iron trellises. The stage is perhaps a foot off the ground, with fake ivy winding behind it. Unlike the Earl Turner Theatre, no lobby separates the Jazz Court from the casino action. In fact, there are even slot machines in the lounge. A bar with inlaid poker machines faces the stage, so players sit with their backs to the performer. To the right of the stage, a big-screen television airs major sporting events. When an important game is on, the lounge performer waits until it’s over before starting up.

Among the most famous Las Vegas lounge performers was New Orleanian Louis Prima, whose career enjoyed a renaissance when Bill Miller invited him to play the lounge at the Sahara in 1954. “The ceiling was so low, the performers could easily touch it,” writes Billy Vera in his liner notes to the Bear Family’s Louis Prima, Keely Smith and Sam Butera: The Complete Recordings. “To top it off, at the edge of the stage, the bartender was ringing up change and operating the blender.”

It’s hard to imagine Jazz Court performers Loren Pickford, Mark Braud or Topsy Chapman touching the ceiling — it’s two stories high, domed and painted to look like the night sky. But the casino’s sound distractions are all there. “It’s awfully noisy, but they don’t care,” says Chapman, a New Orleans jazz and blues singer who appeared in the original off-Broadway hit One Mo’ Time. “We’re there to give somebody something to do when they’re not gambling.”

A lounge singer is primarily a distraction, not a destination. That wasn’t always the case. “Back in the day, with the Louis Primas and Wayne Newtons, the lounges are where you saw the up-and-coming stars, the Shecky Greenes, the Don Rickles,” says Earl Turner. “They were like mini-showrooms. They played to the open casino. The difference by the time I went to the lounges was that the word Œlounge’ had a different connotation. The corporate structure had come into Las Vegas real strong instead of the family-run business. They didn’t pay as well, and you were there to draw a crowd and more or less entertain a crowd, but you’re not there to disturb the casino. You were an adjunct to the casino and the machines.”

Kellie Karl appeared in Harrah’s nightly second-line parade when the casino opened; now, she’s a lounge entertainer in Las Vegas.

“A typical lounge act can go anywhere from four-part Motown harmony guys who can sing and dance with a band, or two people with tracks,” she says. “I work in a lounge. I go by myself with my computer, turn everything on and boom, here I am, the lounge act. Just me by myself, but they won’t pay — certain places — enough for a band. Some places do pay enough and you have a five-piece band with a couple of singers up front. Sometimes it’s dance music, sometimes it’s karaoke.”

Whatever the case, Turner says, lounge performers are in a difficult spot. They’re expected to be entertaining enough to draw a crowd, but not so entertaining that they hold it too long. “If you’re too loud, the pit boss will come up and either tell you to turn it off, fire you on the spot or unplug you,” he says, speaking about casinos in general. “And if you happened to be in a lounge across from the poker room, God bless you.” Once, when Turner was asked to turn down his sound, he almost quit. It’s hard to imagine Chapman and her trio being loud enough to disturb anybody at Harrah’s over the ambient noise. “It’s difficult, but it’s a job,” she says. — Rawls

It was pretty hot in the new downtown lounge Ice House at its opening bash Thursday night. There were way more guests than the air conditioning system could keep cool.

Jay Thomas (Eddie LeBeck on “Cheers” and Jerry Gold on “Murphy Brown”) spent most of the evening sipping bottled water with Rita and Dr. Frank Herbert, whose son Martin W. Herbert is the new club’s director of operations.

Fred “The Hammer” Williamson quizzically raised his eyebrows when Allen Fawcett, the host of the old lip-sync show “Puttin’ on the Hits,” passed by. Williamson seemed to recognize Fawcett, but wasn’t entirely sure why.

Also keeping cool: Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who nursed a single martini for more than an hour, Sheriff Bill Young, television personalities Jim Snyder, Dana Wagner and Darren Emory, Gavin Maloof, power lawyer couple Gianna and James “Bucky” Buchanan, VEGAS Magazine Publisher Michael Carr, architect Deborah Bergin, city councilmen Lawrence Weekly and Michael Mack and about 1,000 other guests.

Vice President Dick Cheney will be in Las Vegas on Monday. He’ll be at the Spanish Trail home of Southern Nevada Wine & Spirits boss Larry Ruvo for a fund-raiser.

About 200 local pols and the politically active, including Sig Rogich, Sen. John Ensign and state attorney general Brian Sandoval, are expected at the $2,000 per-person event.

Cheney has no scheduled public appearances during his visit.

Old punks never die: Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook turns 47 today.

Tickets for the fabled punk group’s Sept. 5 show at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel went on sale Saturday.

According to the Detroit News, Chrysler might be done with Celine Dion as its TV pitch woman.

As VegasBeat reported last week, some dealers and analysts have criticized the campaign for not boosting sales enough. The car maker paid $14 million to co-sponsor her Caesars Palace show and for her to serve as a corporate spokeswoman.

“The question is whether Celine Dion is the right vehicle for building longer-term aspirations for the Chrysler brand or not,” DaimlerChrysler spokesman Joe Eberhardt told the News. “It’s probably one of the biggest subjective issues and taste issues out there.”

Asked by the paper if Dion would appear in future Chrysler TV ads, Eberhardt said: “I don’t know yet.”

Penn & Teller’s Showtime series “Bull—-” received two Emmy nominations this week, for theme music and title design.

Heidi von Beltz was a 24-year-old stuntwoman who was paralyzed from the neck down after a 1980 car crash just outside of Las Vegas on the set of “Cannonball Run.”

The initial prognosis was she would not live for more than five years. But she left Sunrise Hospital after a year and has continued to defy the odds along with medical science.

Last week, breathing on her own and now walking haltingly, she and her sister Christie von Beltz took a phone call from “Superman” Christopher Reeve. They discussed Heidi von Beltz’s treatment plan and recovery.

Christie von Beltz said Reeve had reached out to them after his own health began to suffer. One source reports his liver shut down earlier this month.

Von Beltz, whose primary residence is now Los Angeles, has been treated with success by Swiss Dr. Richard Versendaal, who has an office in L.A. and whose Contact Reflex program includes large doses of nutrients.

The two accident victims — von Beltz and Reeve — were brought together by Robin Leach, of all people, who met Reeve at a benefit for the disabled in New York City.

Von Beltz has written her autobiography, “My Soul Purpose,” which was published in 1996.

The life of a Las Vegas entertainer can be challenging sometimes. Look at actress/singer Kellie Karl.

She plays Kaye, the big sister, in “The Taffetas” at Las Vegas Little Theatre. The performance is a musical revue set in 1956 and features big wigs, pastel colors and medleys of 1950s tunes.

“The Taffetas” plays at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Karl also appears as Sadista, in the show “Shock!” at Bourbon Street. For that performance, she vamps around in ripped fishnets, leather shorts and a sneer.

“I have about a half hour to make the transition from one part to the other,” Karl said. “Needless to say, it isn’t easy. But it is an awful lot of fun.”

Article Originally Posted by:
The Las Vegas Sun
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2003/jul/18/vegasbeat—-timothy-mcdarrah-las-vegas-dignitarie/