The Show is UP: #Celine's Director and More!

Here we go again. It's sort of a two-fer, but instead of one gigantic show, we did two. Enjoy. Click on the date below to play or right-click to save the show. Or you subscribe -- for free -- in iTunes or Zune and you'll always get it first. -sf

June 22: He's Got Celine's Back

EXTRA: Celine's Back-Up (Violinist Philippe Dunnigan)

It was by far the most hyped – and to our minds the best – new show to hit the Vegas Strip this year. Celine Dion has returned to the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in a self-titled production that is radically different and vastly better than “…A New Day,” her groundbreaking first run in the vaunted showroom. Legendary TV producer Ken Ehrlich directed “Celine,” so we spoke to him at length about the intriguing decisions he, the singer and her husband made. Why didn’t they include the closing-number special effects when they opened in March? Was it weird to rehearse Celine’s duet with herself? What’s the story behind that French song that makes her cry every night? Why wasn’t the songstress at the United Center when Ehrlich produced two star-studded final-week shows for Oprah Winfrey last month?

In Banter: Anniversaries! Wynn Politics! TV Show Tapings! Maloofs! Monorail Bashing! and more.

Open & Banter: Start to 24ish
Ken Ehrlich Part I: 24-58ish
Trivia/Poll/Letters: 59-59ish
Ken Ehrlich Part II: 1:00-1:25ish
TSTToTW: 1:25-end

Links to Stuff Discussed:

Ken Ehrlich on IMDB
Philippe Dunnigan's website
Tickets for Celine Dion’s show at the Colosseum
VegasHappensHere.Com on the Electric Daisy Carnival drama
The Electric Daisy Carnival’s Vegas website
The audio of Steve Wynn’s I-Voted-Obama remark on Fox
The Street on Wynn in Singapore and Howard Stutz on Wynn and Adelson as BFFs
Wall Street Journal on Shania Twain coming to the Colosseum
It’s anniversary fever on the Strip: Jersey Boys, Phantom, Love, Jubilee!
Steve’s column about the Starkey Hearing Foundation event at the Hilton
Robin Leach’s EXCLUSIVE!!!!!! coverage of the Hell’s Kitchen taping and announcement of Gordon Ramsay restaurant at Paris
Garth Brooks is no longer sold out, according to Las Vegas Advisor
Business Week on the Maloof family now only owning 2% of the Palms
VegasInc on The Plaza’s new look is out as they plan to open by Sept. 1
Steve’s column about the Firefly not returning to Plaza
Adrienne Packer’s fun column about the 81-year-old codger who timed the monorail v walking
A picture from VegasTripping.Com about the wrap of St. Regis at the Venetian
Boyd bought stuff in the Gulf Coast
CityCenter Sales office is going to be a new Star Wars museum attraction thing

The Show is UP: Fator v Fator

Some weeks, I head into an interview expecting one thing and a whole, very different other thing happens. This is one of those. Enjoy. Click on the date below to play or right-click to save the show. Or you subscribe -- for free -- in iTunes or Zune and you'll always get it first. -sf

May 25: Fator vs Fator

Terry Fator makes a lot of money as the master behind a string of colorful, entertaining puppets who croon standards nightly at the Mirage. But was the singing ventriloquist himself nothing more than a dummy, controlled by his ex-wife and so-called “handlers” who hijacked his career following his triumph on “America’s Got Talent”? That’s pretty much what he tells us this week in a stunningly candid interview that paints his former wife of 18 years as a self-aggrandizing, hen-pecking shrew who alienated him from his family and refused to bear him children. Melinda Fator, not surprisingly, has a different version of the story, and she gets her say, too. Also, the performer outs Barry Manilow.

In Banter: Caesars wants to soak tourists for an arena, NV may nix its smoking ban, the FAA is silent about the Ferris Wheel, the hosts baffle over who the &*#@ attends pro soccer and more.

Open & Banter: Start to 18ish
Terry Fator interview: 19-58ish
Trivia/Poll/Letters: 59-1:06ish
Melinda Fator interview: 1:07-1:24ish
TSTToTW: 1:24-end

Links to stuff discussed

Terry Fator’s website
Steve’s LVW column on Fator’s Barry Fabulous character
VegasHappensHere.Com on Fator’s lousy break-up style
Steve’s column in the Weekly based on these interviews
VegasMavens.Com profile of Steve and the podcast
Smoking ban in danger in Nevada
The R-J on the non-groundbreaking for the Ferris Wheel
Elvis is leaving the bathroom
Caesars’ Jan Jones writes an op-ed supporting soaking tourists
The latest from Howard Stutz on Christopher Milam’s arena plans
See pictures of the new Plaza rooms via their Facebook page
Internet Mafia Family Picnic Planned by VegasTripping.Com
Yelp on The Henry at the Cosmopolitan
Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me from NPR
The YouTube video of Terry Fator at the Michael Jackson tribute benefit
Robin Leach on Terry Fator dumping his manager, John McEntee
J. Patrick Coolican’s turn-the-Sahara-into-the-state-capital column
Gladys Knight raises her ticket price

Vegas Media Shuffle: Wynn, Caesars & The R-J

The trouble with not trafficking in rumors is that when you get them right but you don't have official confirmation, you can often miss the boat. For instance, listeners of The Strip heard me mention as far back as early in the summer that Harrah's was going to finish its Caesars name switcheroo, long before anyone else in the press had it. But I didn't commit it to blog or print because I never could get the clear confirmation from sources over there. Then it happened.

Well, it happened again this week. On Tuesday, I learned that Michael Weaver, Caesars Entertainment's vice president for marketing, is leaving. Then I heard he would be following his old boss, Marilyn Winn Spiegel, who in November became Wynn Las Vegas president and promptly persuaded Steve Wynn to shut down the beloved Alex.

But if Weaver were heading to Wynn, where would that leave Jennifer Dunne, vice president for public relations and advertising? On Wednesday, I texted her, and we had this exchange:

Friess: Hey...Are you leaving Wynn?
Dunne: Where did that come from? Good lordy!!!
Friess: Well, Michael Weaver is leaving Harrah's and I'm hearing he's following Marilyn to Wynn. But he and you do similar things, so...
Dunne: I hear he is a great guy! Do you know him?
Friess: Yes. He's a very good egg. Interesting you haven't actually answered either question.
Dunne: You are so funny! I would look forward to working with him if he is coming to Wynn. :-)

Huh. Well, about a half-hour ago, Dunne sent out this email:

Wanted you to hear directly from me... I have resigned from my position
with Wynn Resorts, effective today. I do not have any firm plans but
intend to take some time off and visit family and friends. I will be in
touch once I settle in somewhere. I have really enjoyed working with you
on this exciting Wynn experience and look forward to crossing paths on
the next adventure!

This is really a toughie for me. Weaver and Dunne are two of the most consummate professionals I've dealt with as a Vegas journalist. After my initial surprise at Dunne's announcement, it dawned on me maybe she didn't know this earlier in the week. Of course, there's no official confirmation that Weaver's going to Wynn, but it does seem likely.

(UPDATE: Dunne tells me she left Wynn of her own volition and made the decision, which had been percolating in her mind, after our text exchange. Also, she confirmed Weaver starts at Wynn on Monday in a new VP position created for him.)

Also today we learned that Jacqueline Peterson, a top corporate spokeswoman for Caesars, also is leaving the company. So perhaps Jacqueline is taking Dunne's gig? Time will tell. Wynn's publicist in charge of food and beverage, Katie Conway, also left last month. She followed her husband, a chef who had gotten a big job in L.A. So there are openings.

This all may seem like inside baseball, except that it is interesting that there's this shift of executives from Caesars Entertainment to Wynn and what that could mean for how the company is actually managed on a day-to-day basis locally. Moving from the Pascal/Poster/Breitling/Dunne world to a Winn/Weaver world is a distinctive change. Weaver's biggest contribution to Caesars Entertainment was as the innovator who went aggressively after such niche markets as gays and Hispanics. I'm not sure Wynncore needs much help with the gays.

The big question is, does all of this imply Steve Wynn is emotionally detaching from Wynncore Vegas to the point that he just wants very highly skilled people who will maximize profits? If so, it's fair to ask at what cost to the property and its image this may come.

* * *

While I'm on the media kick for this Friday, I ought to take note that Michael Hiesiger, the longtime business editor of the Review-Journal, was let go yesterday. No immediate replacement has been named, but it's interesting because this is the first big staffing change under the new regime of publisher Bob Brown and new editor Mike Hengel.

It's also surprising because if I had to pick a department in need of an overhaul at the R-J, the business section isn't one that would instantly spring to mind. I'd make a beeline, as loyal readers know, to the online division, which is an inane operation run by clueless people as frequently noted here, and then to a features section desperate for new life and purpose.

The business coverage is fine and often exemplary, as is the local news division. The only way these sections could be made substantially better would be to hire more reporters, but the editors of each do pretty well with the small set of overworked scribes they're allotted.

One theory: Has the new publisher, formerly the advertising director, been getting earfuls from advertisers about how they're covered? That might explain why Hiesiger's the first head to roll. Other department heads are understandably nervous, but I just can't make a whole lot of sense of why Brown and Hengel would take aim at this area first if they're taking a full inventory of their strengths and weaknesses.

Meanwhile, I'm also hearing that Review-Journal subscriptions have surged in the past three months since Sherman Frederick and Thomas Mitchell were ousted from their publisher-editor jobs. I had heard they're up 8,000, and I asked Bob Brown about that in an email before the Hiesiger thing came to onto my radar. Brown wrote back:

Circulation is up, not 8,000. You'll have to wait for the March 11 audit report from ABC.

Honestly, any circulation increase is impressive in these tough times for print media. I am, indeed, looking forward to those new numbers.

Wynn, Caesars Tchotckes Sales This Weekend!

This weekend if you're in Vegas, you've got a chance at scoring some awesome swag at ridiculous prices:

* The Wynn is doing its Wynn Warehouse Fri-Sat 9 am - 6 pm and Sun 11 am - 5 pm in the LaTour Ballroom. You might recall I covered this last year. It's a massive expanse of Wynn-branded stuff of all sorts.

* Paris is hosting the Caesars Entertainment Holiday Retail Blowout Sale, which I also covered last time. This one (see graphic) is in the Concorde Ballroom on Friday and Saturday 8 am - 7 pm and Sunday from 8 am to 2 pm. Again, it's a fantastic opportunity to get Bette Midler ornaments, Harrah's Joliet shotglasses and other odds and ends.

Great opportunity, and how nice of them to do them the same weekend conveniently before Christmas. Somebody in our house is getting a Caesars Atlantic City track suit!

[h/t @BlogMike for the second item.]

Pictorial: Chinese New Year in #Vegas

You gotta hand it to the Harrah's peeps. Staging their lion dance for Chinese New Year on Sunday under the main porte-cochere was brilliant for ... Donny & Marie! I knew the minute I snapped this it would become THE shot that AOLNews.Com would used for my piece on the second-biggest gambling event of the Vegas year.

It's a fun time around Vegas, with lion dances galore and decorations that, frankly, are more impressive than what Vegas does for Christmas. I mean, what does the Venetian-Palazzo do quite like this:


There's something amusing to me about arraying a 16.5-foot-long tiger in front of a restaurant called Cut. Not sure about the feng shui of that. And, of course, I needed a closer shot of the girl in the huge Chinese-debutante-prom dress. Wow, huh?

Here's Caesars' main entrance and the Augustus Tower...



...and Wynn Las Vegas:


Chinese New Year is such a big deal, it's one of the five (or is it six?) seasonal decoration changes that Bellagio's Conservatory observes. I didn't make it over there, but reader Mike Dobranski (Follow him on Twitter) did and gave me permission to use these shots. The tiger's fur is dried botanicals.


It's no surprise, really, given the huge business Chinese players provide. I counted at least 15 resorts doing lion dances this year -- ARIA and the Orleans were the last, doing them tonight -- but I caught the ones at Caesars and Wynn on Sunday for my story.

Caesars deserved the love because it was their idea first. They did the first Chinese New Year celebration in 1975. The lions and dragons first set off firecrackers in the porte-cochere, then shimmy through the casino. They stopped at the threshold of Beijing Noodle No. 9 and the high-limit gaming parlors to fling lettuce -- a symbol of prosperity that hit me in the back -- and then went through both. Most folks were entertained...



...but the lady in the blue in that last shot maybe not so much.

At Wynn, the dance began in the south porte-cochere, where executives including Wynn President Andrew Pascal and high-roller special guests painted the eyes of the dragons, part of the ritual.


After this, about 2,000 special guests were treated to a banquet in a ballroom in which Wing Lei executive chef Richard Chen served up abalone that costs about $2,000 a pound and other delicacies.

Today, I went with a blog reader for Wing Lei's fabulous Chinese New Year's dim sum menu. If you're around, they're offering that until Thursday, Feb. 18, but it costs $58.88 a person.



Finally, my favorite. It may be the Year of the Tiger...


...but somehow this panda is making it ALL about her, huh?

Adelson's Details Man Walks, Too

Brad Stone, the man who took credit on my 2006 profile for VEGAS Magazine for convincing Sheldon Adelson to come up with a theme for what became The Venetian, quit today. He followed his boss, mentor and ex-president Bill Weidner out the door. In that VEGAS piece, Adelson called Stone "the world's most extraordinary and efficient operator." Now what would be cool would be for them to buy some of MGM's assets and go head-to-head with Sheldon Adelson.

With this news, I went back to find that story in my hard drive because VEGAS content isn't available online and I've never placed my stories for them in my SteveFriess.Com archive. But I thought there were some too-precious passages worth dredging up again for the occasion:

Weidner and Adelson were largely big-picture guys, the dealmakers, and while they’ve had their hands in on most everything along the way, these buildings -- the two Venetians, the Palazzo, the Sands Macau, which was the first American casino in Asia when it opened two years ago -- are dusted with Stone’s fingerprints from top to bottom.

“I walk down anywhere in this building,” says Stone as he sits in a four-bedroom high-roller suite at the Venetian, “and I can see every little decision that was made. I can stand anywhere in that lobby and point to 20 things that I had to make a decision on. Whether the thing is made out of marble, not out of marble, the color pattern, how the thing flows. One of my primary tasks in this job was getting this place built and designed and functional. There’s a lot of my guts in this place.”

[...snip...]

None other than current MGM Mirage CEO Terry Lanni, in his role at the time as head of Caesars World, hired the Weidner-Stone team to run Caesars Hotel-Casino in Atlantic City. After a couple of years, Stone was installed as the president of the Sands Hotel-Casino in Atlantic City, making him at 29 the youngest casino president.

“It was interesting sitting there in meetings with Donald Trump and Steve Wynn back then,” Stone recalls. “They were probably thinking, ‘Who’s this kid?’ "

[...snip...]

Stone climbed to executive vice president of that hotel’s parent company before being snatched in 1995 along with Weidner by Adelson to help him replace the Las Vegas Sands. (Adelson had purchased the Las Vegas property but never owned the Sands in Atlantic City, to which he continues today to lease the use of the name.)

Stone knew instantly that this wasn’t a typical Vegas redevelopment job; Adelson, who bought the Las Vegas Sands in 1989 and then built the Sands Convention Center and Expo, envisioned a Vegas resort catering to business travelers and conventioneers. Admits Stone: “When I first saw that, I thought he was nuts. At the time, everything here was about cheaper meals, the casino was the main revenue stream and the rooms were a marketing tool for the casino. But Sheldon knew there were a lot of ways to make money in this town besides slot machines.”

[...snip...]

While Stone regularly sings his boss’ praises, he also vociferously and legendarily squabbles with him in meetings. Adelson has a reputation for imperiousness, which is why “a lot of people are surprised at how aggressively we go at it with each other,” says Stone, who claims his most significant victory was when he and others convinced Adelson in the mid-1990s that the new casino needed a theme. “I’ve told him I appreciate the fact that I can be myself.”

Indeed, that no-wallflower style is precisely why Adelson calls Stone “one-of-a-kind” and “the world’s most extraordinary and efficient operator.”

“To say this guy is a yes man would provoke the most laughter,” Adelson said. “He has his opinions, and he doesn’t give up on them easily. There are times when we disagree quite strongly and, sometimes, I put my foot down because I have to make the decision. But he’s also spent billions of dollars.”

(For his part, Adelson insists he was always on board with having a theme. “Maybe he remembers one sentence I said at some point,” Adelson says.)

[...snip...]

“What I’m most proud of is what we’ve achieved as a group (at LVS). It’s really just a couple of guys. Sheldon, Bill, myself and (senior vice president) Rob Goldstein," Stone says. "We started from nothing 10 years ago and we now have the company that the markets value as the highest market cap of any gaming in the world. It’s really amazing.”

And so it was in the good ole days, three years ago. So the next question is, when's Goldstein going to give up on Adelson, too?

Venetian SHUT OUT on Michelin Stars

NOTE: MICHELIN GUIDE DIRECTOR JEAN-LUC NARET JOINS US LIVE ON TUESDAY@ 7:15 pm PT ON "THE STRIP" TO DISCUSS.

As I predicted, Michelin completely snubbed the Venetian in terms of handing out stars in its first-ever Las Vegas dining guide. The guide was supposed to hit today at noon, but the evidently leaked it on their website by accident and then went all the way with a press release.

The guide includes 127 restaurants in Vegas and just 16 of which received any stars. Still, that's a lot more than I thought they'd give out.

The big winner was not a surprise: Joel Robuchon (MGM Grand) got three stars, the highest rating. Alex (Wynn), Guy Savoy (Caesars) and Picasso (Bellagio) landed two stars, all excellent choices. You can go back and hear "The Strip" podcast's interview with Robuchon from earlier this year by clicking here or right-clicking here.

One-starrers were: Alize (Palms), Andre's (downtown), Aureole (Mandalay Bay), Bradley Ogden (Caesars), DB Brasserie (Wynn), L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon (MGM), Le Cirque (Bellagio), Mesa Grill (Caesars), Michael Mina (Bellagio), Mix (Mandalay Bay), Nobu (Hard Rock) and Wing Lei (Wynn.)

Steve Wynn, 4. Adelson, 0. (I'm giving Wynn credit for Picasso, too, since he created the place. Not giving Wynn credit for Le Cirque as it was an established NYC institution.)

Anyhow, Adelson's gotta feel the pain there. Adelson gets Thomas Keller, Wolfgang Puck and Mario Batali and can't buy a star. Painful. But equally painful for Wynn might be that Bartalotta di Mare got shut out. That's interesting because it was Paul Bartalotta and not Alessandra Stratta who was nominated for a James Beard Award the year the hotel opened.

A few thoughts:

* They were awful generous with the one-stars and yet left off some really amazing places including Craftsteak and Nob Hill (both MGM Grand), Charlie Palmer Steak (Four Seasons), Tableau (Wynn) and Hugo's Cellar (Four Queens).
* We've eaten at Alize at least three times and always found it below average for the price.
* Bradley Ogden and L'Atelier are in the "don't go" section of "Gay Vegas." Miles has famously referred to the decor of L'Atelier as having "the look of an upscale Chilis" and we were so disappointed we left it out of Conde Nast Traveler's Hot List that year.
* We're fans of Mix and Mesa Grill, but I can't say it meets the level of technical excellence I believed the Michelin stars required.

A couple of other interesting details: They only checked out 13 restaurants that would cost $25 or less per person. That gives quite a bit of insight. By contrast, for their first-ever Los Angeles guide, which also is out this week, they reviewed 263 restaurants and gave out just 18 star-ratings -- and not a single three-starrer.

Wow. Vegas food has really, really arrived.

Design Problems at CityCenter Shopping Center?

New York Magazine had a very long, largely pretty dull, piece on super-architect Daniel Libeskind. Among his upcoming projects is the shopping center at CityCenter. Before I get to the good stuff, here's an example of how obtuse the piece is:

"It’s harder to know what sort of philosophical underpinning Libeskind has in mind when he’s dealing with a luxury condominium or a Las Vegas shopping mall. “I don’t look at an apartment building and think, How can I subvert it?” Libeskind says. “With a shopping center, I can’t touch the machinery of shopping, but I do want to make it more successful.” His demonstrated ability to steer crowds through an awesome interior landscape can of course be very useful when the subject is shopping rather than the history of German Jews. But meaning is something else."

You know, because there must be MEANING to a mall. But I digress, because the actual interesting stuff buried in this hifalutin blather is that it seems there's been some design problems with the project. Read on:

Next up is Las Vegas, a retail center with public spaces that is the centerpiece of MGM Mirage CityCenter, a huge new development on the Strip involving half a dozen architectural teams. Swickerath has just come back from Nevada with photos of a full-scale mock-up of the entrance canopy, a scaly metal skin like a dragon’s hide. The diagonally pitched titanium panels aren’t behaving as they had on paper. Seams aren’t aligning properly, and one side has developed an unsightly crimp.

“Instead of trying to get them to build something they can’t build, let’s make a design change,” Swickerath suggests. Libeskind is willing to change the angle of the panels, but he wonders how visible the problem will be from 100 feet below. “This is a handmade object, like a woven basket. I’d almost be willing to accept it the way it is.”

“Don’t,” says Swickerath. “I won’t let you.”

In the late seventies and early eighties, Libeskind taught at the bucolic architecture school at Cranbrook Academy, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. There, he took his graduate students into the woods, gave them a hammer and some wood, and instructed them to build something wonderful with their hands. “We were trying to get away from just theoretical drawings and retrieve a sense of the wonder of construction using medieval methods, using simple means to get very complex results,” he says. “That was in another lifetime.”

When I press Libeskind on how he can reconcile the idealism of the Cranbrook days with the task of building a luxury Las Vegas mall, he says that the restrictions have changed, but the goal is still the same: to give a world of simulacra something original and real. Just down the street from his site is the Venetian, where visitors can cross fake canals to pseudo-piazzas beneath programmable sunset skies. Libeskind describes his own contribution as a “rich, urbane, cosmopolitan scheme, one you could find in New York or in Paris.” Rather than sit far back from the street in the manner of other local pleasure domes, such as the Bellagio, this mall hugs the sidewalk the way buildings do in Manhattan. His gallery is high and topped with glass, letting in natural light, which casino developers generally treat as if it were a poisonous substance.

To Libeskind, the project signals Las Vegas’s evolution from a desert encampment of vice into a modern metropolis. The old Vegas of gaudy billboards and cinder-block shacks was “just the beginning,” he says. “That’s how Rome looked when it was just a few settlers: a wall, some signs, and a couple of brothels.”

Whether Libeskind can help coax Las Vegas, or any city, into another Rome will depend in part on how many projects he takes on. An architect who wants to leave his mark needs developers just as much as they need him."

What a shame that, as profound as Libeskind wishes to be, the Forum Shops at Caesars already did an expansion that "hugs" the sidewalk of the Strip. But this insight did intrigue me and I wonder how they'll be fixing this problem.

Read the whole thing, if you must, here.

Brandon Flowers: Other Vegas Bands Are Jealous

The Brandon Flowers interview is up (along with the rest of the episode including a really great Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week). Click on that link above or right-click here to download it to your computer and listen at your leisure.

Here's the part that's bound to get some attention (Tramps is the gay bar the band first started out playing in):

"We want people to be proud of us, y'know? There's so much jealousy that goes on in Las Vegas about what we've done. And it's kind of a shame. We'll sell out the show but a lot of the people are going to be from L.A. It's pretty pathetic. It's a common thing for people in your hometown to kind of shy away. The people who filled Tramps up, those people aren't going to be in the front as they were before we sold any records. They're going to be bitching about it on blogs."

Flowers also talks about playing with U2, those gay rumors and what's next after they wrap up their second tour on Friday at the Hard Rock Hotel.

Also up is a BONUS edition featuring an animated interview with drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr., who tells of playing a Caesars Palace lounge at age 6 and responds to critics of the second album, "Sam's Town." Right-click here to download that.

CONFIRMED! BETTE MIDLER TO REPLACE CELINE

I just confirmed with a source deep within the Caesars-Colosseum empire that tomorrow it will be announced that Bette Midler will headline in Celine's theater after she departs at year's end.

This is a brilliant, brilliant move. She's a huge draw, a terrific entertainer and no doubt will earn many, many millions. Steve Wynn had told me two years ago he was in negotiations for her to come into a yet-unbuilt venue at Wynn Las Vegas but that never materialized.

There are only a few artists alive who can consistently sell out a venue as ginormous as that one.

Congrats to Caesars. I can't wait to interview the woman whose albums lifted me out of more than one miserable epoch of my life.

Bette will be on hand Thursday for a press event and starts rehearsals this fall. We will bring you the raw audio from that event tomorrow.

UPDATE: Some other journalists are grumbling because they were told this news but are under an embargo. I would have observed that embargo had I been invited to be in on it, but I was not and so here you are with this exclusive. That said, Robin Leach tells me he has a Bette interview going up tomorrow at 6 a.m. PT on his current blog site. (It's moved around a little.) Go check it out when it's available.

The Moron Strikes Again

There is a fellow in Las Vegas who fancies himself a journalist named Michael Politz who runs a trade magazine for the food and beverage industry, Las Vegas Food & Beverage. Yeah, that's him looking awful silly to your right. He traffics in rumor, occasionally getting one right, and he's has made a zillion enemies in Vegas not by being hard-hitting or overly fair but by playing favorites and frequently making an ass out of himself in public.

Each week, he publishes a column called The Vegas Eye in which he reports, re-reports and speculates on all manner of Vegas club and food scene happenings, sightings, etc. He desperately wanted to get onto the Party At The Palms With Perez symposium on celebrity journalism that we at the "The Strip" podcast organized at the Palms' ghostbar in January that included Perez Hilton, Norm Clarke, Robin Leach and Kate Bennett, but some of the other panelists refused to appear if he was going to be involved. Swell guy.

Today, Mr. Politz wrote a long paragraph about my coverage of Las Vegas in the current Conde Nast Traveler, which features the vaunted Hot List. That is, a worldwide listing and write-up of the best of the prior year's new restaurants, hotels, nightclubs and spas.

The operative word there is "new." Altogether now: New. We spotlighted out of Vegas in this year's edition Nove, Rao's and Guy Savoy for restaurants; the spas at Caesars and Red Rock; the Playboy Club/Moon bar for nightclubs; and the Red Rock Resort and Casino for hotels.

Politz's critique is the same as it was last year, based on a persistent inability to comprehend that this list is not a citywide verdict but only a commentary on this particular year's best of the newest:

"It's a seemingly odd bunch with some glaring omissions and somehow only touches three properties in the entire city. Oh well, perhaps the editorial and advertising departments are taking their lunch a little too closely together. ... While we appreciate the attention the magazine is bringing to Las Vegas, we just ask them to widen their scope next time around."

While I can -- and have -- argued for the inclusion of more new restaurants, the fact that Vegas got three when a town like Chicago only got two and the gastronomic Mecca of San Francisco got four out of the total of 95 worldwide is some evidence that my effort to represent this city's amazing food scene is starting to pay off. It was actually more of a challenge the year before because Wynn Las Vegas had just opened and I could have done four on their restaurants alone but had to be very selective in order to give Joel Robuchon at MGM Grand his props, too.

Anyhow, the point of this rant is that I explained that to Politz last year when he made similar snarks. So this year, there's no excuse. He's just willfully ignorant. And that drives me bananas.

By the way, if you want to hear the audio from the superb panel discussion that Politz was not involved with and therefore chose not to cover, click here or save it to your computer by right-clicking here.

More Baffling WHHSH Crapola!

Loyal reader/listener Lin in New Joisey spotted this shameful -- and completely inexplicable -- T-shirt from Key West. What the heck does that mean?!? Anybody?

Meanwhile, Gregory in San Francisco thought he found a violation while watching E! but it turns out, he found something much, much sinister. The ad he saw went: "What happens here, stays here? Not for the Vegas Visionary!" It turned out, it was for VegasVisionary.Com, a silly site where a guy who occasionally flashes a serious bald spot "answers" questions. But, Gregory, look closer -- it is actually a front for VisitLasVegas.Com, which is one of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's own website. So it's the LVCVA, which "owns" WHHSH.

Still, it's worth checking out just for the sheer weirdness factor. Ask him if he's gay and suddenly a woman with a boa lands in his lap. I asked "Who killed Ted Binion?" and he donned sunglasses, muttered something then claimed he was channeling Elton John. I asked, "Where's the volcano?" and he said, "The rollercoaster at New York-New York, the roulette wheel at Caesars, the poker room at Wynn. Trust me, it's more action than you can handle." Nice to see he's not playing favorites among the big boys, but huh?!?