The show is UP: The Next Big Li'l Thing

I pulled rank as the producer of the MJ show to have the first serious interview with Elijah Johnson since he exploded on stage in the Pearl. Tomorrow I should have video to show those of you who weren't there what we all witnessed, but until then, here's this week's show with the revelation that Johnson leaves the cast of Lion King in October because he's outgrown the role. Seriously. His dad says the contract says he can't grow more than 2 inches. (!?!) Also, thanks MUCH to Dave McKee of Las Vegas Advisor for filling in for Miles at such short notice as co-host. So, anyhow, right-click on the date below and save it to your computer. Or you can subscribe (it's free!) via this iTunes link or via this Zune link.

Sept. 3: The Next Big Li'l Thing

If you were at the Palms on Saturday for the Michael Jackson tribute benefit, you might want to put your ticket stub in a safe place. Years from now, the concert may very well be remembered in the same light as Motown 25, a magical moment when the world witnessed the birth of a major talent. This time, it was Elijah Johnson, the 11-year-old star of the Lion King at Mandalay Bay, who flew onto the stage in a burst of energy and confidence and sang and danced with an exuberance that now has the Tonight Show calling. Johnson, who leaves the cast of Lion King in October, joined us this hour with his father in the studio to discuss that magical moment last weekend and what it could mean for his future.

In Banter: MJ benefit follow-up, Earl Turner's peeps are jerks, McKee's Carmen Electra infatuation, MGM Mirage's condo issues and more.

Links to stuff discussed:

Elijah "LilElijahJ" Johnson’s website
Dave McKee’s blog is Stiffs and Georges blog
Coverage by John Katsilometes and Norm Clarke of the Michael Jackson concert
Cinevegas’ podcast of the Moonwalker Q-and-A
VegasHappensHere.Com breaks the Viva Elvis title for Cirque’s new Aria show
McKee’s Carmen Electra infatuation
VegasHappensHere.Com on Bill Lerner’s Union Gaming Group report on MGM Mirage condo pricing
MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren’s CNBC interview
VegasHappensHere.Com on all the dirt behind the MJ event
The Myspace site and homepage of "Jersey Boys" star Travis Cloer, whose gorgeous cover of "The Music and Me" closes this episode

Titty Smackdown: Crazy Horse v Peepshow

It is true, this show was not for me. Literally. "Crazy Horse Paris" is a burlesque show at MGM Grand that, ostensibly, exists primarily to turn on heterosexual men. And there's nothing wrong with that, exactly. It's what this city was built on, right?

Except that I feel a little sorry for the heterosexual guys out there. You deserve better.

I was primed to like this show, which I finally got out to see last night because of the publicity stunt that is the blink-and-miss-her guest star gig by ex-"Baywatch" jiggler Carmen Electra. The posters look cool, the showroom was intimate and exotic and so much else about MGM Grand these days is all so classy. Plus, R-J columnist Doug Elfman said the other day when we were prepping to begin our semi-regular sparring match on KNPR that he considered CHP to be the best, most artistic stripper show in the city.

Sigh. I suppose that could be so if you ignore the awful choreography, simplistic tableaus, kaleidoscopic lighting, extremely poor lip-synching and comical costumes. There were some geniunely erotic and creative moments -- there's a scene where we see just the bottom half of a woman with a perfectly formed bottom and legs as she removes her stockings -- but more often it's a bunch of women bopping around in wigs, doing something repetitive until the music ran out. All yours for $60 a seat; what's it cost for a pole dance at Olympic Gardens these days?

And Carmen Electra? That was just...sad. Like a couple of years ago when we all got snookered into seeing the atrocious Hans Klok magic show at P-Ho because Pamela Anderson was in it, we all waited and waited and waited for the former Mrs. Rodman-Navarro to appear and she finally did about halfway through. She showed no boobies at that point, just shook her big hair about and rolled around on a lip-shaped couch. Yawn. She returned a good 20 minutes later to dance with some bendy poles, vulgarly grinding her g-stringed crack into one of them and sort of obliterating the patina of high-class CHP pretends to attain. Oh, and she showed one breast at the end of the misery, clad in a pasty which, I'm now told by every straight male reader of this blog, doesn't count.

Carmen, in the show through this weekend, does return in one final scene fully topless -- and her surgically created boobs are quite lovely with a cute flair to the nipples -- so I guess the vaginally inclined boys got what they wanted and seemed forgiving of how brief the satisfaction was. But I kept feeling sorry for Carmen that, at 37, she was reduced to such tawdriness to pay the mortgage. There could be no other explanation for why she's there other than the money; she sure didn't put a whole lot of pride in making the performance much.

There are dissenting opinions, to be sure. The R-J's Norm Clarke Tweeted during the show: "Carmen is writhing on the red velvet couch in the shape of Michelle Pfeifer's lips. Eat you hearts out Baker Boys." A few moments later, he Tweeted this: "Swinging door routine...they might be the 8 --ok who's counting -- most breathtaking performers on stage at one time in Vegas."

But even Norm seemed to lose interest; his next two Tweets, sent during the show, were about the Vegas location of the Travelocity Travel Gnome. I thought maybe someone else was Tweeting that stuff for him, but then he wrote: "But I digress....back to the Land of Merkin...and the Hot Legs routine."

OK, so you're thinking, "You're GAY. What do you know about shows about sexy women?" Fair enough. Except that I love "Peepshow" at Planet Hollywood. That is a show with high production value, a bit of a story, original music sung live and really creative ways of presenting gorgeous topless women. Also, at the moment, it has another It Girl, Holly Madison, who unlike Carmen is actually in her career prime. Holly's also required to do a little actual dancing and acting, however uncomfortable she may appear doing so.

The irony of all this is that Crazy Horse Paris is more akin to Crazy Girls, the struggling Riviera show whose operators insist remains a viable business despite a nightly audience of about 100 -- and God knows how few of those suckers paid full price -- and a cast larger than the now-gone "An Evening at La Cage." The most important difference between the two, besides the fact that CHP admittedly has more beautiful women, is that Crazy Girls doesn't pretend to be high art. CHP does, but it ain't.

Pam's New Trick @ Planet Ho

So our observation that Carmen Electra didn't seem to be "there" at the Planet Hollywood press event last week and rumors in Norm's column that she was being difficult proved prescient. She's out before the thing even starts.

Alas, Carmen always was the pretender "Baywatch" Babe, and so here comes the real thing, a much more jovial and upbeat Pamela Anderson, who popped out of a box today. She seemed very happy to be there and will serve as Klok's assistant in "The Beauty of Magic."

You can hear the raw audio -- it's about 8 mins -- of the big event here on a special edition of "The Strip", including a rare press-conference question asked by yours truly that revealed she'll start out on a three-month contract.

There were a couple of cringe-worthy moments on this audio:

* MAJOR WHHSH VIOLATION: "What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas," Robert Earl said. "Carmen is gone. She didn't stay in Vegas." Groan. Ick. Sigh.

* BROKEN GAYDAR?: Hans Klok has an extremely fey on-stage presence, not to mention he's the spitting image of Siegfried. But then he goes on about how he used to watch "Baywatch" and always thought Pam was "hot." So maybe it's not that he's gay; maybe he's just European.

* MALAPROP MAN - OR NOT: "Is that your first ever trick?" Earl asked Pam.

Finally, I know get no points for this because I didn't blog it, but last night I guessed the mystery star would be Pam both to the show's publicist, who wouldn't spill it, and to Miles. So there. But Norm tells me that they also tried to get Paris Hilton. I like this choice much better, don't you?

Want to SEE it instead of listening? Check out RawVegas.tv's footage!

Planet Aladdin's Odd Preview

Pete Sampras looked like hell. Sugar Ray Leonard doesn't go by "Sugar" anymore. Pepsi commercials were shown. Carmen Electra was somewhere on the Planet Mars, not Planet Hollywood.

And that wasn't the half of it. In one of the most truly odd press events I've ever attended, a man who looks like a cross between Dudley Moore and that short guy from L.A. Law stood on a stage in a mammoth theater once where Elvis was adored and Linda Ronstadt was booed (I was there!) and read from a script about all of the new restaurants, bars and amenities his "new" Vegas resort is going to have. (His image was also projected on two large, somewhat creepy oval screens floating in ginormous metal hands such as you see here.)

This was the much-hyped "preview" of the new Planet Hollywood, although the most significant thing to occur today is that we in the media are heretofore permitted to refer to it simply as Planet Hollywood and not the Aladdin or, even more awkwardly, the Aladdin/Planet Hollywood. Most of us are still enjoying referring to it as Planet Ho, as the marquee read for a day last week.

So they held a press conference today where nobody got to ask any questions -- not even Robin Leach! Instead, we were treated to an overly produced speech by Planet Hollywood CEO Robert Earl, who is hoping his Vegas property returns him to prominence after he admittedly overbuilt the Planet Hollywood brand into bankruptcy earlier this decade. He talked about things that Vegas CEOs don't normally discuss -- can you imagine Steve Wynn getting all hot about his deal to, say, exclusively serve Pepsi? (Apparently the soft-drink maker is putting promotional info about the hotel-casino on 12 million cans this summer. Oh, and a Coke cup was used in "Stomp Out Loud," by the way.)

There is certainly a lot of interesting stuff happening here, most notably a restaurant lineup that will include Strip House (which in Las Vegas joins Social House and StripSteak to add new confusion), Alfredos (by the folks who invented Fettucini Alfredo) and Earl of Sandwich (by an 8th-generation member of the guy who thought to put meat between bread).

Late in the proceedings, Earl announced he's having three "sports ambassadors" to the property, though what their jobs are is anyone's guess, and out pops Pete Sampras, Roger Clemens and (not-Sugar) Ray Leonard. Clemens looks bigger than I ever imagined him to be but oddly like Nick Lachey on steroids, Leonard looked about right and Sampras looked...barely ambulatory. His thinning hair was in disarray and he gripped the back of his hips the way Grandpa Joe Simpson would. The three of them actually bumped into one another as they were about to leave and Earl bellowed at them to stay where they were on stage!

Next we got a preview of the Faster Than Magic show by German illusionist Hans Klok and co-starring Carmen Electra. She did not participate in the preview, which had to do with making a woman in a box disappear and reconstituting an apparently torn up newspaper. You know, original stuff. I noted to a friend next to me that the flowing-blond German magician seemed like the second coming of Siegfried and some ass sitting ahead of me turned to crack: "Oh, I'm sure Siegfried's come twice many times." Ew.

The finale was Bruce Willis, a partner in the Planet Hollywood, appearing to announce the Grand Opening date of Sept. 28-29 and promising the best party Vegas has ever seen. Which is doubtful since that would have to be the premiere of "Zumanity," when they carpeted the top floor of the New York-New York parking lot and had a human mobile dangle from a mammoth crane for entertainment.

The hotel, by the way, looks sensational, vastly improved from the monstrosity that was Aladdin Deux. Here are shots of the lobby, an overview of the casino and a shot of a room, each of which is themed with a different movie's memorabilia. This one is the Pulp Fiction room, though you can't really see that from this.