Life & Style | Indictment handed up in ‘Real Housewives’ home invasion

A man has been indicted in the home invasion of a former “Real Housewives of New Jersey” cast member.

James Mainello also faces robbery, aggravated assault and other charges in the indictment handed up Monday by a Monmouth County grand jury.

Prosecutors say the 51-year-old Bayonne resident and another man were waiting when Dina Manzo and her then-fiancé David Cantin entered their Holmdel home in May 2017.

Cantin was beaten with a baseball bat, and Manzo was repeatedly kicked. They were bound with zip ties before the intruders made off with Manzo’s engagement ring and cash.

Prosecutors say DNA on a zip tie matched Mainello’s. Mainello’s lawyer says he denies the charges.

Manzo and Cantin have since married.

Woodstock 50 again denied permit with festival weeks away

Woodstock 50 organizers, headed by Michael Lang (pictured, right) have again been denied a permit to hold a three-day festival at an upstate New York horse track.

Town of Vernon officials say yesterday the permit application for a festival Aug. 16-18 at the Vernon Downs racetrack and casino was filed too late and was rife with problems.

Vernon became a possible alternative site for Woodstock 50 after the original venue, Watkins Glen International, pulled out.

But local officials have repeatedly denied permit applications amid concerns about planning for up to 65,000 people coming to this largely rural area on short notice.

A spokeswoman for Woodstock 50 said they had no comment.

The festival has faced a series of setbacks, including the losses of a financial partner and a production company.

A Book Today: ‘Elvis in Vegas’ is a gem of pop culture history

For the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the 1960s was a slow-moving abdication.

Elvis Presley spent the better part of that decade appearing in one silly movie after another instead of performing live, a career strategy that tested the patience of his fans and cost him his edge in the music world. Meanwhile, The Beatles and the rest of the British invasion bands were redefining popular music just as he had done years earlier.

In 1969 Elvis decided he wanted to regain his throne. “Elvis in Vegas” is author Richard Zoglin’s fascinating tale of how the king got his groove back and Las Vegas refreshed its own image, together supersizing live entertainment in America’s adult playground. Blending new interviews with top-drawer research focusing on how Las Vegas evolved as the pleasure capital, Zoglin produces a gem of pop culture history.

The 1950s and ‘60s were golden years for the city in the desert. Besides hearing songs from Rosemary Clooney, Vic Damone, Dinah Shore and others, visitors could see first-rate comedians (Shecky Greene, Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett, Bob Newhart), film and TV favorites (Danny Kaye, Milton Berle, Red Skelton, Ginger Rogers, Betty Hutton, Van Johnson), and musical reviews featuring barely dressed if not topless showgirls. A future president had a Vegas gig at one time: actor Ronald Reagan, whose opening act was a group of performing chimps.

Eventually, even the stars who came to define Vegas cool — chief among them Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and the rest of the Rat Pack — faced in the early 1960s the same problem that would confront Elvis at the decade’s end: a creaky act and increasingly creaky fans as tastes in music and comedy changed.

Elvis was no stranger to Vegas. He had been a fish out of water when he first performed there, in 1956, and with just one hit, “Heartbreak Hotel,” to his credit. Rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t what the typical Vegas patron sought at the time and the gig fizzled. But Elvis the man loved the all-day, all-night quality of the city and would frequently visit between movies.

Thirteen years and millions of records later, Elvis chose Las Vegas for his return to live performing. He pulled out all the stops at the International Hotel and, in Zoglin’s words, “established a new template for the Las Vegas show: no longer an intimate, sophisticated, Sinatra-style nightclub act, but a big rock concert-like spectacle.”

Vegas revitalized Elvis’ career — he returned twice a year to repeat his initial success — and he showed the town the way forward for continuing to attract people with money in their pockets. It all came crashing down for Elvis in 1977 when the drugs that kept him going finally overpowered him.

The king is dead, but Vegas lives on, making itself over again and again.