The Show is UP: Marie Osmond, Part I

Off to the tax lady now. Enjoy the show! Click on the date below to listen or right-click and save to your computer. Or subscribe (it's free!) via the iTunes link or via the Zune link. Enjoy.

April 2: Marie Osmond, Part I

She’s a little bit country and a little bit, well, you know the rest. But she’s also now a big bit of a Strip headliner. Marie Osmond, she of the gigantic gleaming smile stretched across the Flamingo, joins us this hour to talk about show business nepotism, performing with everyone from Groucho Marx to Snoop Dogg and the night she and Donny performed their Vegas show in the dark.

In Banter: Freaks at O'Sheas, MGM drama, Follies bye- bye, Vegas impersonator jailed in Suriname.

Links to stuff mentioned:

Tickets for the Donny and Marie show
The 2009 results of the R-J’s Best of Las Vegas survey
The VegasHappensHere.Com post on the mayoral chips for Airmen
The website for SeaWorld’s Military Program
Sites for Minskoff and Mandalay theaters, both of which now house The Lion King
KNPR, the Las Vegas NPR member station
A Las Vegas Sun piece on Freaks, a gross new show at O’Sheas
VegasHappensHere.Com on MGM making their payment
MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren’s letter to employees
News on Hooters, Riviera and Bally’s closing its sportsbook until September
Mike Weatherford’s coverage of the closure of Folies Bergere at the Tropicana
Gaming Today’s Monti Rock III on Bobby Slayton’s Trop deal
Norm Clarke’s coverage of the Toni Braxton impersonator jailed in Suriname

From The Bad Idea Files...

Evidently not learning from the failed Hooters Hotel experiment, the folks at Hustler are looking to get into the Vegas hotel-casino game. Richard Abowitz has this breaking item on his blog today.

(I actually reported on "The Strip" podcast in Jan 2007 -- and Norm wrote it up -- that Flynt was seeking a liquor license for the former Chez Moi strip club, but I don't know what ever came of that.)

Sounds like a wretched, wretched idea. There's a reason there are no strip clubs in Vegas casinos, because there's something about them that offends the gaming-license dudes. And what the heck would be the point of a Hustler hotel without some hard-core nudity to uphold the branding?

Not to mention, if wives wouldn't book at Hooters, which is campy-sexy with redeeming chicken wings, how likely are they to book at Hustler, which is porno-sexy with unredeeming chicken hawks?

Starbucks + Hooters = Sexxpresso

I would say this is such an only-in-Vegas moment except that this concept started not in the world's sex capital but instead in the world's coffee capital, Seattle.

Still, it's a good chuckle. A pair of businessmen here are about to open -- the debut is supposed to be Wednesday -- Sexxpresso, a drive-thru coffee stand where their baristas wear lingerie at work and flirt with customers. The owners, Massimo Catinella and Dennis Morrison, got the idea when Morrison's 70-year-old mom came across the following newsclip about the same concept in Seattle. They found this coffee-cup-shaped building a mile east of the Strip on Flamingo Road and rewrapped it with the above decor.



So far as I can tell, other than Seattle, this is the second national example. Could make a fun story and certainly will grab some local headlines.