A close shave at The Majestic Hotel Kuala Lumpur

An historic Kuala Lumpur landmark is returned to former glory, reviving the romantic jazz era of the 1930s. Roderick Eime relives a little of this great hotel’s past.

I dare not move. My head rests reassuringly against the leather restraint while, out of the corner of my eye, I can see the blade being sharpened to a samurai keenness. Then, with a deft hand reserved for practiced executioners, the lethal instrument is applied to my throat and drawn upward in a slick motion that removes only the offending follicles.

New Las Vegas exhibition to bring Liberace back to life

LIBERACE TO DRAG 'EM IN AGAIN IN VEGAS

David Ellis

Over-the-top costumes, jewel-studded cars, sparkling candelabras, flamboyant jewellery and other outrageous belongings that once drew hundreds of thousands a year to a museum dedicated to the world's most flamboyant entertainer ever – the pianist Liberace – are set to go on display again in Las Vegas by the end of this year.

After being held in storage since the original Vegas Liberace Museum closed at the end of 2010, when visitations had dwindled from 450,000 annually to a mere 35,000, plans are to show these items off as a more down-sized collection occupying about half the space of the old.

And importantly to locate it in thriving Downtown Las Vegas, rather than outside the Main Strip as was the original, with the Liberace Foundation negotiating for space in Las Vegas' all-flashing, all-glittering Neonopolis.

This flamboyant shopping and entertainment complex is lit by an amazing 5km of multi-coloured fluorescent-tubes, and includes amongst its tenants several gay-friendly bars and entertainment spots. And whilst these would seem a natural for the Liberace Museum to sit amongst with the pianist himself seen as one of the most-famous gay entertainers ever, Liberace in fact never once referred to himself publicly as such.

"It's actually one of the things we have to confront when we open the new museum," a spokesman for the Liberace Foundation said. "In the original, our guides tended not to discuss with visitors that he was gay, and if asked would even deny both that, and the fact he died of AIDS. So that's the big question with the new museum – do we 'out' the dead, because Liberace never outed himself…?"

The new museum will be named the Liberace Entertainment Experience, carefully chosen so it can be shortened to the acronym Lee – as the pianist was known to his friends.

And it will be just 3000 square metres in size, with the Foundation hoping for a modest 35,000 visitors a year. "As not everything from the original will be able to fit in," the spokesman said, "it will need to be a selection of the best of the best, with an emphasis on Lee's costumes, and allowing fashion students to come in and study these in an educational environment."

At the same time, however, the Foundation wants to ensure that all visitors will rightfully recognise that Liberace was in fact one of the most-influential entertainers ever, both in Las Vegas' and America's entertainment history.

Although for most fans, a visit to the new Museum will be to ogle not just his often outrageous outfits, but the many seemingly bizarre items he amassed as the highest-paid performer in the world over 20 years – and which included a US$1m fee in 1955 to play just one night at the opening of Las Vegas' Riviera Hotel & Casino (equivalent to around US$8.8m today,) and $138,000 for another single performance at Madison Square Garden…

Amongst items being considered by the Liberace Foundation are several of his 30 cars that include a replica 1931 Model A Ford, a 1957 London cab, a few Rollers (one a 1962 retractable-top Landau covered with tiny jewel-like mirrors and dubbed "The Disco Ball on Wheels,") the famous custom-built Rhinestone Roadster plated with thousands of faux rhinestones, and his favourite 1954 Cadillac Eldorado that he was given by an appreciative sponsor of his-then TV show.

Clothing items are certain to include his famous US$300,000 virgin fox coat with a near-5m train and $100,000 worth of sequins and crystals, and which weighed 45kg. And also an over-the-top pink gabardine and silk suit covered with everything from satin appliques to pastel seeds and crystals would seem another certainty, as well as his sequined jumpsuits… and crystal-studded pink cowboy boots.

Hopefully there'll also be space for such items from his enormous piano collection as an 1885 Pleyel art-case grand, and a 1945 mirrored self-playing nickelodeon adorned with peacock feather engravings.

Liberace, who died in 1987 aged 67, once famously said "I don't give concerts, I put on a show," and this new museum to his memory – small as it will be compared to the original that drew 10 million-plus visitors over 30 years – is sure to drag in the faithful and the just plain curious when it opens at year's end in Downtown Las Vegas.



PHOTO CAPTIONS:

[] A FLAMBOYANT Liberace on stage… diamonds, sequins, crystals and rhinestone-plated piano were all part of the show.

[] HIS famous 1885 Pleyel art-case grand was another favourite, up there in the priceless category

[] THE famous Rhinestone Roadster – but just how far would you take it on the open road?

[] SOME of Liberace's thirty other cars that ranged from a 1957 London cab to a replica 1931 Model A Ford and a few Rollers…

[] LIBERACE amongst the opulence of his totally over-the-top sitting-room.

[] ON stage in that $300,000 virgin fox coat: with its near-5m train, it weighed 45kg.

(All Images courtesy of Liberace Foundation)

FOR WEEK BEGINNING 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

Struth! World's biggest airport [updated]

This terminal, just one of four at Dubai's existing airport, will be dwarfed in size by three at the city's new airport, which can handle 100 Airbus A380 double-deckers at the same time. (Middle East Aviation News)

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says if you have trouble navigating your way around international airports now, you'll be forgiven for thinking you'll maybe need a personal GPS and a cut-lunch to find your way around a new airport being planned for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE.)

Dublin's Kavanagh’s Pub - an Irish patriot's favourite watering hole

DANIEL O'Connell, Irish patriot extraordinaire,
by Sir George Hayter. (WikiMedia)

PATRIOT PUTS PUB ON ROAD TO FAME

David Ellis

JOHN Kavanagh Pub, Dublin – still pulling the pints 180 years
after being "saved" by patriotic Daniel O'Connell
from almost certain demise. (John Kavanagh Pub)

WHILE Irish patriot Daniel O'Connell is most remembered for his fight for Catholic emancipation, Catholics' rights to sit in the Westminster Parliament, and repeal of the Parliamentary Act that combined Great Britain with Ireland, drinkers at a pub in Dublin raise their pints to him today for a far more bizarre reason.

Three times an MP, and for two years Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1841-42, the philosophies of Daniel O'Connell have also been quoted as inspiring Mahatma Gandhi in his fight for Indian independence, civil rights leader Martin Luther King in his against racism in the United States, and even English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in his writings – in particular his famously satirical portrayal of English society, Vanity Fair.

But it is drinkers at Kavanagh's Pub on Prospect Square in Dublin who today salute O'Connell for more down-to-earth reasons: ensuring that their watering-hole stands 180 years after it's almost certain demise.

INTERIOR of the John Kavanagh Pub today. (John Kavanagh Pub)

Kavanagh's is certainly worthy of a visit if ever you are heading to the Irish capital, both for that history and the fact it's been run by six generations of the one family since 1835 after having being saved by the patriotic Daniel O'Connell.

A John O'Neill opened the pub on the-then outskirts of Dublin in 1833, hopeful that he could cash-in on the year old Glasnevin Cemetery next door by hosting wakes for the bereaved, and even stepping-in as an impromptu undertaker.

But although the gates to the cemetery were so close to his pub, the road linking city and cemetery – a toll road as was often the case with cemeteries at the time – ran in the opposite direction to the pub, so mourners would go straight back into town for their wakes.

GLASNEVIN Cemetery (now re-named Prospect Cemetery) has
an amazing 1.5 million graves, often almost head to toe and
shoulder to shoulder. (Glasnevin Cemetery Museum)

Enter O'Neill's friend O'Connell, who offered to help the publican attract customers from the thousands of Dubliners who would ultimately have loved-ones buried in the Glasnevin Cemetery.

And O'Connell did so in a most bizarre way: he lobbied the government to have a new road built from Dublin to the cemetery, with the lofty virtue of it being toll-free – and thus not a financial imposition on mourners in their time of pain.

And because it could not follow the existing toll-road, it had to approach the cemetery from the opposite direction… which meant passing right by the front door of Mr O'Neill's next-door pub.

THE ELABORATE tomb of Daniel O'Connell.
(Glasnevin Cemetery Museum)

So appreciative was the grateful publican that when that road was finally opened, he declared that the only beer served would be O'Connell's Ale… which just happened to be brewed by the son of Daniel O'Connell.

Funeral corteges soon began stopping at the pub, the coffins being off-loaded there while undertakers and mourners tool a quick drink or three before the solemn procession to the grave-site…

And inevitably there would be a stop-off on the return as well. O'Neill prospered, but after just two years handed over the business to his son-in-law John Kavanagh when the latter married O'Neill's daughter Suzanne.

The pub then took the younger man's name – and has been John Kavanagh's ever since, John and Suzanne's having an amazing 25 children to ensure there would be plenty of descendants to keep the pub in family hands. Current publican, Eugene Kavanagh is the sixth generation of the lineage.

MASSIVE tower over the tomb of patriot
Daniel O'Connell dominates the cemetery. (WikiMedia)

And while its officially John Kavanagh's Pub, to most locals it's more-generally known as "The Grave Diggers" – in deference, they'll recall to visitors, to the early days' cemetery workers who would bang on the back wall of the pub with their shovels for barmaids to pass beers through a special hole cut there to avoid them coming into the pub in generally muddied boots and coats.

A third and newer "main road" now leads to the Cemetery (now re-named Prospect Cemetery, with an amazing 1.5m graves of the deceased crammed, in some places, virtually head to toe and shoulder to shoulder.) If you're visiting Dublin and taking a few at Kavanagh's, drop into the cemetery as well to see the graves of the likes of one-time Ireland President Eamon de Valera, poet Brendan Behan, Home Rule advocate Charles Stewart Parnell – and Luke Kelly of the iconic folk group, The Dubliners.

And the extraordinarily elaborate tomb of Daniel O'Connell… under a massive tower that dominates the cemetery.



Originally for FOR WEEK BEGINNING 29 SEPTEMBER 2014

Winner of 2014 National Geographic Photo Contest

“A Node Glows in the Dark,” by Brian Yen of Hong Kong

Selected from more than 9,000 entries, a photo of a woman spotlighted by the glow of her phone on a crowded train was chosen as the grand-prize winner of the 2014 National Geographic Photo Contest. The photo, titled “A Node Glows in the Dark,” was shot by Brian Yen of Hong Kong. He has won $10,000 (USD) and a trip to National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., to participate in the annual National Geographic Photography Seminar in January 2015.

Star Wars comes to Frankfurt Airport. Preparations for arrival of Darth Vader?

#starwars



Holidaymakers dumbfounded as Frankfurt Airport taken over by Imperial Starfleet forces, the military arm of the Galactic Empire. Regular services are thrown into disarray as X-Wing fighters and ground units dominate operations at the busy European airport.

Seems one of the Tie Fighters suffered an engine malfunction on approach and ended up on the Autobahn

Struth! Men on the menu

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says a Christmas present for someone who likes a good read is Men on the Menu – a hilarious, yet poignant, account of how an Australian woman in search of love travelled to 22 countries in 81 days to go on 75 blind dates.

Melbourne-based author Bambi Smyth lined-up half her dates through friends, friends of friends and business associates, and the other half "hanging around bars and by asking concierges in hotels if they knew anyone suitable." She even had some of her dates introduce her to other potentials.

Confessing to a broken relationship and midlife crisis, Bambi's dates ranged from an Italian prince to a Russian billionaire, restaurant waiters, a TV presenter, rock musicians, a surgeon, students, a nightclub owner, film director – and for good measure a Spanish gigolo, a Scottish piper who toured with Madonna, and a trainee priest at the Vatican.

Her 300-odd page tome describes in amusing detail every encounter, and how she always offered to pay for her own half of meals – although some dates graciously shouted her, while some others tried leaving her holding the whole bill… and how she squeezed out of those not going quite to plan.

And ranging from 21 to 61 years of age and as distant as Scotland, Brazil, Germany, Monaco, the United Arab Emirates and Japan, she shares how they equally ranged from "sleazy" to "heart-stoppingly gorgeous."

We won't spoil it by telling you the final outcome of Bambi's search for love… get the book and find out for yourself. (The Five Mile Press $32.95.)

Struth! Pan Am Clippers the Dux of De Luxe

ALMOST restaurant-like, would you believe that this is the dining area of a
Pan Am 314 Clipper flying boat 75 years ago. (Pan Am Historical Foundation)

MASSIVELY sized for just 74 passengers, and luxurious
aboard by day or night. (Pan Am Historical Foundation)

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says next time you're jammed in the middle seat of the middle row of a 400-something passenger aircraft with 20-odd hours of flying before you, try daydreaming of the days of the Pan American Boeing 314 Clipper flying boats.

For between 1938 and 1941 Pan Am flew a dozen such luxury craft that carried just 74 passengers in spacious seats by day, lounges for socialising – and restaurant-like dining with 4-star hotel chefs offering-up multi- course silver-service meals.

At night passengers had their own bunks, with separate men's and women's dressing areas for passengers to prepare for bed; ten crew served on flights from America to Europe, Southampton, Honolulu, the Philippines, Hong Kong, South America and even New Zealand.

And because they flew so slowly – on average 250km/h but able to crank up to 312km/h if necessary – they could take days to island-hop to their eventual destinations (San Francisco-Honolulu took 19 hours; today it's under 5hrs direct.)

The planes were pressed into US Navy service when America entered WWII and stripped of luxuries to carry hundreds of troops, but still used Pan Am flight crews because the Navy didn't have anyone certificated to fly them.

By war's end flying boats had become pretty-much obsolete and Pan Am which had sold three Clippers earlier to BOAC (later British Airways) and lost three in accidents, sold its remaining six to New World Airways which ultimately scrapped them in 1951.