Admitting Mistakes

I wonder. Yesterday, billionaire Sam Zell, who bought the Tribune Company in 2007 and has since gutted the Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times into near-oblivion while still not solving their problems, admitted he shouldn't have bought the company. Zell told Bloomberg TV:

"By definition, if you bought something and it's now worth a great deal less, you made a mistake and I'm more than willing to say I made a mistake. I was too optimistic in terms of the newspaper's ability to preserve its position."

The same could be said for virtually every major deal in Vegas and Vegas' "ability to preserve its position" in the past few years: Las Vegas Sands' bizarrely aggressive approach to Macau, Station Casinos and Harrah's going private, the major mid-decade mergers, MGM Mirage building CityCenter and so on.

Who in Vegas, I wonder, will be first to stand up and admit that they made an error in judgment? Who will be first to acknowledge that the misery visited upon this city and these companies right now is not merely the helpless result of an unexpected economic disaster? Who will say, "We screwed up, we should have had a contingency plan because these are uncertain times and anything could have happened?"

Just asking.

Will Fossett Search Find This Man?

Continuing to mine the intrigue surrounding the Steve Fossett search, today I have a piece on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle and inside the Chicago Tribune about one family that hopes one of those many other previously unknown wrecks found during this hunt will turn out to belong to Charles Ogle, who vanished FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO. The charming photo above is Ogle with his now-47-year-old son, William Ogle, who is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida at Gainesvile. I especially love the car in the driveway.

It's a truly fascinating story, exclusively mine, and you can read about it here.

Chips Ahoy!

(Note: Click on all pix to make them bigger.)

I wrote this piece for Sunday's Chicago Tribune on the big chip collectors confab in Vegas, which was terrific fun to cover. I went in thinking, "These people are gonna be nuts" and I left totally getting it. In fact, I'm going to edit down a charming interview I did with a couple of these folks and put it out on "The Strip" podcast feed as an extra. Here are some pix of the intriguing non-chip stuff people brought to show, trade and sell.



I also, of course, bought a little something. OK, two things. The first is this fantastic music box (pictured below) from the 1991 opening of the Stardust tower. It even plays "Stardust."

I grabbed it for my mom, who collects music boxes, but I think I may keep it. The amazing part was that the seller had wanted to sell it for $25 and started a silent auction with bidding beginning at $5. It was too silent. When I came along his deadline had passed and he let me have it for $5!!!


My other treasure was a June 1955 Life Magazine that is constantly referenced whenever people ask if Vegas is hitting its outer limits of growth. The main art is of a Moulin Rouge showgirl but in the upper right corner of the cover was the headline "Las Vegas - Is Boom Overextended?" That was 52 years ago. The guy had five of them, each going for $25. I bought three, including one for the LVRocks.Com studio and one for an as-yet-determined friend or professional contact. I'll sit down to read the stories later and let you know what I uncover.

Sunday Newspaper Musings

Sigh. Review-Journal publisher Sherm Frederick opted to lay off the masturbation stories this week, so there's only a couple of things to point out from today's newspapers:

* Omar Sofradzija in the R-J has a terrific column looking back at the 2000 predictions by a transportation expert on the Las Vegas Monofail. The expert had every aspect of the miserable future nailed down pat and Las Vegas' Mormon Mafia rolled right over them and built the thing anyhow. Oh well.

* It's kind of funny to see a front-page "think piece" by the Las Vegas Sun's J. Patrick Coolican pondering whether Hillary Clinton's negatives may doom her presidential bid on the same day that the no fewer than THREE rock-ribbed conservative columnists (Charles Krauthammer, Rick Lowry and David Brooks) are published in the combined R-J and Sun all begrudgingly praising the senator's preparedness for the presidency in one form or another. When she's even winning over the right-wing chattering classes, it does seem that speculation about the hatred she stirs in people who would never vote Democratic anyway is last year's story.

* I got my first mainstream review for "Gay Vegas" today. It's from the Chicago Tribune. See it here.

Good Readin's

A few good reads I've been meaning to mention...

* Ryan Nakashima of the Associated Press is mostly confined to writing in the staid, APish way. But they let him off the reservation in a big way last month to do a first-person account of bouncing around with Buzz Aldrin on a new attraction from Zero Gravity Corp that flies Vegas tourists over the Pacific and somehow makes them weightless in the process. Fun stuff.

* Kim Barker, who was editor-in-chief of the Daily Northwestern when I was a sophomore in college, is now a Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent in the Middle East. Most of her work is just god-awful depressing because, well, that's the news over there. But this genius story about -- get this! -- a transvestite TV presenter in Pakistan. Rarely does news from this region make you smile, so take it when you can get it. And Kim is as terrific a writer as I remember.

* Sonya Padgett of the Las Vegas Review-Journal nailed another excellent piece this Sunday, this time a profile of the surprisingly mundane lives of a couple who each make their living stripping. Padgett's been doing some really good stuff lately, which is why it's all the more puzzling that she's stuck writing these silly "Strip Tips" boxes every Sunday, blurbs about tourist attractions that everyone already knows about.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Wow!

I have two stories out today on this weekend's Rock, Paper Scissors national championships here in Vegas this weekend -- one for the Boston Globe and one for the Chicago Tribune -- and I'm leaving the house now to go cover the event for Monday's The New York Times.

Yes, Rock, Paper, Scissors is getting its close-up. There's $50,000 and a free car at stake at the thing at Mandalay Bay. Will probably use some audio on next week's "The Strip," too. These people take this stuff very, very seriously. Well, some do. Others are just here to enjoy their free Vegas weekend.

Gotta run. After that, I'll stop in at the Gay Pride festival at the Clark County Government Center today. Miles hates that stuff, won't go with. Will report back later with impressions.