It’s a hair-raising time at Hard Rock Hotel as DJ Pauly D arrives on the scene

By John Katsilometes

Tuesday, March 13, 2012 | 7:56 p.m.

There is an undeniable, hypnotic quality to the hair of DJ Pauly D.

Similar to a raging fire or a babbling brook, you really can’t stop gazing at it. It ascends in robust grooves, mocking gravity, and seems sturdy enough to support a row of encyclopedias, or even the dozen dancers from Nevada Ballet Theatre who posed at the entrance of Reynolds Hall at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday night.

You want to take a chisel to this hair. Not to enact damage. But, rather, to see if you could carve a path to an unseen destination, maybe Oz, Nirvana or Vanity nightclub.

Not since Don King began sporting his heaven-reaching mane has a celebrity made such effective use of a hairstyle. Only in America! Or in this case, only in New Jersey! And Las Vegas!

“Your hair,” I say to Paul DelVecchio, “could have its own agent.”

And DJ Pauly D, whose real name is Paul DelVecchio, laughs.

“It’s crazy,” he says, accurately.

“What do you put in it?” I press, in the interview-as-interrogation style favored by Mike Wallace.

“It’s called Spiker. It’s almost like Elmer’s Glue,” he says. “When you put it on your hands, it’s like (energetically slaps hands as if attempting to remove a coating of Spiker/Elmer’s glue) … so it doesn’t move. I could be on a bike, on the street, with no helmet on, and it still doesn’t move.”

It takes 25 minutes, or more than half of an episode of “Jersey Shore,” for Pauly D to enact this high-rising, petrified hairstyle.

“It wasn’t always this elaborate or this crazy,” says the 31-year-old reality TV show favorite and turntable practitioner. “I started with little spikes in the front and wearing it really short. Back then I worked at a (car) dealership and had to wear a suit every day, and I used to call it the Gentleman’s Blowout. But now, I like it at this length, and I’m letting it go wild and crazy.”

Formerly a club performer at the Palms, Pauly D is moving his uniquely appealing DJ performances from the Palms to the Hard Rock Hotel, where he began spinning at Vanity in February and takes over Rehab on April 22. To promote this new residency, Pauly D sat for a conveyor belt of interviewers during a cocktail reception in an HRH Paradise Tower suite.

He moved from the Palms to Hard Rock because, he says, “My residency at the Palms went for a year and a half and was up, and I started getting offers from all these other casinos. I really had to evaluate what the next step was for Pauly D. Hard Rock is a legendary place, and Rehab is the most legendary pool in Las Vegas. That settled it for me.”

Often boiled to a caricature on his reality TV show, Pauly D comes across as a warm individual, fast to laugh and flash teeth as white as the wedding gown that might be worn by his co-star, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, who has been the subject of some life-changing developments this month. Announced this week is her engagement to Jionni LaValle and pregnancy, which, naturally, will have an impact on the various plot lines of the upcoming season of “Jersey Shore.”

“It affects the show majorly,” Pauly D says. “Now (Snooki) can’t drink or party or anything like that.”

This baby will be a communal addition to the “Jersey Shore” family.

“We feel like it’s our baby, it’s a ‘Jersey Shore’ baby,” he says. “Now we have a baby in the family, but we don’t know what we’re going to name the baby. It’ll be a democratic process.”

Reliably bronzed in a deep brownish shade rivaled only in Las Vegas by Zowie Bowie, Pauly D owns a tanning bed and hits that apparatus once a week to keep his shade intact. He was drawn here for its illuminated energy, its party atmosphere and the unrivaled ebullience among its young tourism culture.

“When I first saw Vegas, it was just on TV -- all the lights, everything that you see, is real,” he says. “The second I saw it, I knew this is where I wanted to be. This is where I wanted to DJ because the people here are in the mood to party, they are in party mode, and where else to party but the party Mecca, Las Vegas?”

Inspired by the late DJ AM, among others, Pauly D was once described by Palms founder George Maloof as a “very good” DJ who had earned his way into the clubs.

“I have been doing this since I was 16 years old, and when you’re DJ'ing every single night of your life, you start honing your skills,” he says. “It’s practice, practice, practice. You can’t just start doing this and call yourself a DJ, or you’ll sink. What makes you unique in this business is coming up with tricks on your own and how you do that depends on how many times you DJ.”

DJ Pauly D is unique, no question. And genuine. It would be fun to hang with him, just one night -- even if it means spending 25 minutes sculpting with a certain water-resistant styling glue.

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