Margaret Cho is handing out beauty tips lately. Her blog has contained multiple entries on body image, and her latest tour, coming to a close in Reno this Saturday night at the Silver Legacy, is called "Beautiful."

"My best tip is simple – to keep telling people you're really beautiful. It works and is pretty exciting, actually. You just spread the word about yourself that you're beautiful and people start thinking you are. And you are."

Cho likes to talk about many things – dogs, dance, gay and lesbian issues, current events, music, sensuousness, tattoos – not just topics that all comedians concern themselves with but topics she feels are important. Of course, any topic given the Cho twist can become outrageous. The Korean American who began by charming people in "All-American Girl" now shocks them in "The Cho Show."

Speaking by phone of the latter series on VH1, Cho says, "We've had great success with the first season and we're waiting to see if we're to be renewed for a second. We've had a wonderful time on that network. We're the second Asian American show on television. I was also the first, so that's some record of some kind – the first and second Asian American series on television."

"All-American Girl," which ran on ABC one season, in 1994-95, mostly concerned Cho's character of Margaret Kim in battle with her mother, who wanted her to be a nice Korean girl dating nice Korean boys. Kim wanted to be an American girl and leaned toward boys in leather. There were the seeds of the later Cho, but they weren't allowed to bloom.

"TV is different now than it was then. It was hard to create something. That was the studio system time of television with few networks. Now, we've got cable and we can go places we never could have back then. Take 'The Cho Show.' It's unlike anything around back then. We scripted everything, but we gave it the look of reality. I've never been comfortable with the idea of actual reality television."

Cho has also been working on what she calls "a really great show" for Lifetime called "Drop Dead Diva." She hopes to begin it next year. It's built around a black, skinny, beautiful woman who dies and is "reincarnated into the body of a fat woman. It's all about body image, which is an important issue."

She also has "Two Sisters," a short film for ABC Family, which should air sometime next year. It involves dancing, which is "another passion of mine, a beautiful art form I've been doing for some time now."

Meanwhile, Cho is putting together an album of comedy songs and concluding this tour, performing a show that she says is "very raunchy, very dirty, very wild, very crazy, and people should come."

Around the Silver Circle

The Eldorado has closed "Aphelion" and will open its annual holiday show Friday. This year is a departure, however. Instead of bringing in the customary production, the showroom will feature "The Holiday Ice Spectacular." Ice shows used to be brought to the area fairly frequently, mainly to the Harrah's showrooms, where they featured the likes of Scott Hamilton, Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill.

There are no such names included here, but the cast will feature "world-class figure skaters" performing holiday numbers and a contemporary "Nutcracker." The show is produced by Jeb K. Rand, a former skating competitor who was featured in "Ice Capades," "Disney on Ice" and the Radio City Music Hall Christmas spectacular.

• Recent storms have provided the snow. The resorts are ready. And two big opening days are scheduled this Saturday in North Tahoe: Northstar-at-Tahoe (northstarattahoe.com) and Squaw Valley USA (squaw.com).

• The Garza brothers – JoJo, Henry, and Ringo – subscribe to what JoJo calls "the burrito theory" of music, wrapping up a variety of styles into a tortilla and feeding it to the public, hoping listeners will come back for seconds. They've been doing so for eight years now, drawn by the mix, lots of ingredients in a heavily Texican base, concocted by these siblings who call themselves Los Lonely Boys. They arrive at Harrah's Tahoe on Saturday.

• One of the Bay Area's hottest emerging bands joins one of Lake Tahoe's favorites Friday for a free show at 10 p.m. at the Crystal Bay. LoCura is a group that brings flamenco, salsa, reggae and even a little North American folk to their sound (debut album: "Animas"), and Sol Jibe is one of the most popular festival bands in northern Nevada, putting out a little flamenco of their own. Another freebie, this one with the Saddle Tramps (complete with gun-slinging go-go dancer Suzy Switchblade), is at 10 p.m. Saturday. (crystalbaycasino.com)