But *Didn't* CityCenter Open All At Once?

In a Sunday piece for the Los Angeles Times that shills for MGM Resorts as the company launches a new Southern California marketing effort because said Southern Californians remain disturbingly unaware of Aria, we find this gem:

CityCenter, a nearly $9-billion project, opened in phases, which wasn't conducive to highlighting its electric ambience. "It's hard to display that imagery when you're not open," [MGM Resorts CEO Jim] Murren said. "You can't show a commercial of a construction site and say, 'This is exciting. Come see us.' "

Huh? CityCenter did NOT open in phases, unless you define "phases" as the distance betweee Dec. 1 and Dec. 16, 2009. By mid December last year, all the public spaces -- that is, Vdara, Crystals, Aria and Mandarin Oriental -- were operational. There is nothing major that has opened at Aria unless you count the "grand" opening of Viva Elvis.

True, Harmon wasn't open and likely never will be, so Murren can give up on whatever hope he has for that "imagery" helping to create excitement. And Veer was externally finished and lit up. It's a condo tower, so it's not supposed to contribute to the tourist's experience, remember? Tourists are only ever expected to see it from the outside.

Maybe he thinks the fact that a few yet-to-open shops at Crystals will provide that jumpstart for the enterprise? Really? That long-overdue Harry Winston, which was to open a week ago but didn't, is so exciting! Yes! That's it! That's what's been missing!

What's more, Murren went on and on to anyone who would listen last year -- except for L.A. Times contributor Jay Jones, I guess -- about how CityCenter was different BECAUSE IT WASN'T OPENING IN PHASES. He specifically talked about how that's what made this something other and better and greater than how Wynn, Venetian and even Bellagio added towers after their debuts.

How nice of Jones to hold the CEO accountable for literally uttering the precisely opposite thing he said last year. Nicely played, Mr. Murren.

Then there's this:

"We could have, of course, filled up Aria right from the beginning if we had discounted [rooms] to a point where we could stimulate demand that way," Murren said. "But that would have been unfair to the brand."

Alas, you sure did discount the rooms to a point that devalued the brand -- and gave away all sorts of nifty deals. You said Aria would compete with Wynncore, Bellagio and Venazzo. It does not. Had you tried to price Aria at those levels, your occupancy would not have creeped into the 80% range in the third quarter.

These are bizarre statements. What a shame nobody at an esteemed newspaper like the L.A. Times would bother to point out the contradictions.

CSI's Vegas Attraction Off To Slow Start

OK, so here's something I want to see succeed. I really do. I just don't know if it will. And the data I've been shown is telling me that the MGM and others have a climb ahead of them.

The hit "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" is the most successful TV show ever set in Las Vegas. It remains atop the ratings -- a phenomenal 19 million American viewers watched an average episode last year in its ninth season, a rather modest erosion from the years of 23-26 million per episode earlier in the decade. And this doesn't even account for international viewership or additional viewers who watch the Miami or New York editions.

So this is as big and durable a brand as the fragmented TV landscape has these days. And now MGM Grand is home to a $5 million, 12,000-square-foot subterranean interactive attraction in which visitors pay $30 to take notes on one of three crime scenes and then pop into a series of forensic-lab cubicles where they compare fingerprints, test substances, read the victim's old text messages and so forth. In the end, visitors input their findings into a computer and Gil Grissom, the former CSI supervisor played by departed star William Peterson, and he tells you if you're right and what probably happened to the victim.

So it's got the ingredients that you would think CSI fans would dig. But is it too brainy, too light on pizzazz for Vegas entertainment?

I keep being told this attraction was a huge draw when it toured around the nation, and certainly Vegas is the logical permanent space for it given the CSI setting and all. I'm surprised, though, they didn't come up with new mysteries for the Vegas version, though, what with these already having roamed and, presumably, many die-hard fans have tried them out. And the 12,000-square-feet don't really drip with CSI memorabilia and fan-fave displays and information the way the displays outside Star Trek: The Experience did at the Las Vegas Hilton. Maybe more is coming.

On Sunday, its first day open, I went to see how it actually works. (I had attended the ribbon/crimetape cutting, hence the photo above, but fell ill Saturday and couldn't stay to explore then.) While there, an official (surprisingly) showed me the attendance figures for the day, broken down by the hour. The first hour was the best -- 98 paying customers from 10 am to 11 am. By 5 p.m., when I was there, they'd had exactly 400 paying guests. The fellow told me they are aiming for 1,000. So not so good for opening weekend and no evidence that CSI fans were dying, har har, to get in in any real numbers.

Granted, they're just starting up and a significant PR push, I have no doubt, is yet to come. The 10th season hasn't started, either, and there's no doubt there will be an intense push to raise awareness of the attraction in that forum which should pay off.

Even so, I sense a struggle to break through the clutter of Vegas attractions here without some strong word-of-mouth, and the folks we were with found it interesting but not necessarily thrilling in the way that gets Vegas juices flowing. It's hard to imagine people rushing home and saying, 'Oh, wow, you gotta see this!' the way they do for, say, the Vegas version of "Phantom."

There were also some opening-weekend kinks to work out. The first thing that happens is that you are ushered into a room where you're supposed to watch a video overview of the whole idea of forensic science and Gil Grissom explains what you're supposed to do but not terribly specifically. You knew this because after you exit and go to look at the crime scene to which you are assigned, you're unclear as to where to go next once you're done. The group we were with just congregated, jotting down clues and waiting for a guide to tell us what to do.

Also, that video room was huge with no seats, so people were sitting on the floor, which was odd, and the air conditioner was enormously loud to the point where many people -- not just me with my hearing problem -- had trouble understanding what was being said on the video. I didn't ask, but I'm doubting they had any form of hearing-assistive technology whatsoever. I wondered why the thing wasn't captioned or why people weren't offered any of the information in other languages than Spanish or English throughout the attractions. I recall from my time living in China that Asians love CSI, but what would a Chinese tourist do here? Strange that they wouldn't have that sort of thing worked out well in advance since that's the point of housing such a thing in Vegas, right?

Like I said, it's a creative idea. You don't need to be a CSI fan to have some fun with this and, in fact, I'm not and had a good time. The L.A. Times' Jen Leo oddly wrote -- I suspect copying right off a press release -- that each crime scene takes you 60-90 minutes, which is an absurd overestimation. That they charge another $26 to "re-enter" and check out one of the other two crime scenes seems a bit steep, too, on top of the $30. Once you "get" what you're doing, there's no reason why this should take more than about 20-30 minutes.

Time will tell on this one. It's not the easiest thing to find in the behemoth that is MGM Grand, so I suspect there will be plenty of two-for-one tickets available mighty soon at least to get some buzz going.

This week's LVW Col: Danny Gans Understood

Here's this week's Weekly column. Off to lunch with my mom in Florida. -sf

Danny Gans: 1956-2009
Apart from Vegas, most of the country had no idea who Gans was -- and odds are he ws just fine with that
By STEVE FRIESS

Miles shook me awake last Friday at about 7:30 a.m.

“I need you to wake up,” he said. “You need to get up. Now.”

I was confused. I’d told him I didn’t need to be up until 8. But he looked grave.

“Danny Gans died in his sleep this morning,” he said.

My bleary look gave way to a puzzled one. It was the only reaction to such strange and awful news. How does a 52-year-old health nut die in his sleep?

Here are my first and second comments, in this order: “Oh, that’s so sad.” Then, after a long pause: “But I wonder who’s going to care.”

Yes, that sounds cold. But I meant—and Miles got it immediately—who in the national media will recognize this passing as a significant story? That’s my job and to some extent my function in this community, to determine what of the local news rises to the level of broader significance and interest, and which publication is going to want me to document it.

And so it was that I was brought immediately back around to the central conundrum that was always the most baffling part of the Danny Gans story: How does someone become such a mammoth, wealthy star, entertain untold millions and grin for years from the largest billboard along the most-traveled American tourist thoroughfare and still remain largely anonymous in the broader popular culture? Just seven years ago, a Los Angeles Times profile of the impressionist was topped by a headline that summed it up perfectly: “Las Vegas Loves Who?” Heck, the Wall Street Journal scribe Christina Binkley, writing an exhaustive book on recent Vegas history last year, misspelled Gans’ name!

Indeed, none of the East Coast-based papers or magazines I regularly write for took an interest in this startling passing as a news event. The New York Times, which furnishes a large part of my meal ticket, shunted the matter to a staff obit writer who aptly referred to Gans as “a show business anomaly, virtually unknown outside Las Vegas but a superstar on the Strip.” The Agence France-Presse, a Paris-based wire service read largely in Europe and Asia, let me write just 200 words because, “I’m afraid if he’s not that well-known outside Las Vegas, it’s not going to make waves,” my LA-based editor wrote me. And a CNN anchor actually said—on the air—something to the effect of, “You ever hear of Danny Gans, the Vegas headliner? He died today.”

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I wasn’t surprised, per my mental calculation, upon hearing the news. The coastal media don’t take much interest in Vegas entertainment unless Hollywood somehow infiltrates it—see Hilton, Paris or Lohan, Lindsay—or unless there’s something that fits a wacky Vegas stereotype. The onstage tiger attack on illusionist Roy Horn was sensational news because there was blood and animals and traumatized fans and bizarre costumes. Even then, though, I had to remind photo editors repeatedly which one was Siegfried and which one was Roy.

Danny Gans wasn’t Vegas in that sense. When I saw Gov. Jim Gibbons on the news referring to Gans as another “Mr. Las Vegas” it sounded really odd. He wasn’t ostentatious or outlandish like Liberace, dramatic and tragic and campy like Elvis, schlocky like Wayne Newton. Gans just got on stage night after night, did a bunch of impressions that Middle America loved to see and went home.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com.

Sunday Readings

Miles and I took a road trip to California for the wedding of our friends David and Jeff, and I've got some fun stuff to share about that later. But because Desperate Housewives is starting shortly and then Mad Men's season ends, I wanted to do this post first about the stuff worth noting and/or remarking about in the Sunday papers...

* God Bless You, Howard Stutz. Two days after that ridiculous report by Sharyl Attikisson of CBS News on gaming-industry political donations to John McCain, the Review-Journal's gaming-industry writer Howard Stutz did the same story, only he did it right. He forewarned me on Friday via e-mail that his was coming and I crossed my fingers that I wouldn't have any serious complaints about it. I really don't. If you go back to my critique of Attkisson's painful four minutes of ineptly-researched garbage, what did I wish she had done? Provide context. Analyze both presidential candidates' records on gaming issues, such as they are, and also what sorts of gaming matters come before a president or Congress. Discuss the intra-Wynn political schism. Realize that there are players in Vegas other than Adelson and Wynn. Speak to credible experts. Consider that these people may give for many reasons, including personal political philosophy, and not merely their jobs running casino companies. Howard did all of that.

I would've liked it if Stutz had compared this year's giving to past presidential-year cycles. But unlike Attkisson, Stutz never claimed there were any records being broken. CBS breathlessly trumpeted this as some sort of new trend. That may be true, it's still not been shown in numbers. But I imagine Stutz didn't look at the story this way because he doesn't approach the subject of Las Vegas or gambling as an exotic, shady, predatory oddity of an industry. It's just the business he covers and at some point prior to an election as big as this one, he needed to examine this angle. So he did. Without judgment. You know, like journalists are supposed to.

* Paris is For...Shopping? The L.A. Times Travel section normally covers Vegas really well. That's why the Las Vegas angle of a chart on recession-era alternatives various expensive international excursions was surprising in its weirdness. The feature suggests, for instance, that instead of going to Hong Kong, you might go to Chinatown in San Francisco. And the last item suggests coming to Paris Las Vegas instead of Paris, France. Predictable enough, sure. But get a load of their reasoning:

"This hotel-casino's central Strip location and link to the monorail make it a shopper's delight, whether you're looking to browse the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian or the Forum Shops at Caesars."

Huh. That's funny, because neither the Venetian nor Caesars are on the monorail line. And, in fact, if the appeal of Paris LV is a nexus between the monorail and shopping, it's worth noting that there isn't a single resort on the monorail line that has a decent mall of any repute. A very, very strange thing for anyone to write, no?

* Married ... with the Rev. Presley! Sean Whaley did a really interesting piece in the R-J about an odd quirk in Nevada law that requires that anyone striving for a license to administer weddings in the state declare a religious affiliation. In other words, you can't be an atheist and perform legal weddings unless you happen to be a judge, too. That's a good story. I might follow up on that one.

* Downsizing By, Uh, Farming It Out. In recent months, the R-J has taken a number of moves to save money in these troubled times, including reducing the number of pages of features coverage they provide and folding the section into others at least twice a week. As a result, they've got some terrific reporters being underused. Sonya Padgett and Corey Levitan come to mind.

So why on Earth would they be wasting the money to commission someone named Stephen Michael Shearer for an occasional series of profiles of Old Vegas entertainment figures? And not only did they hire this fellow, but they had another writer, John Przybys, profile the special contributor, Shearer! So I'm thinking, "Wow, this guy must be really something special to shove aside staffers perfectly capable of producing these stories!" Except from Przybys' piece, all I learn is that Shearer wrote a 2006 book on actress Patricia Neal. That's it. He's not even some Vegas old-timer himself with some valuable access and perspective other writers might not have. The piece indicates that Shearer has been an actor much of his life, but there's no mention of anything he's done that anyone would be familiar with.

Far be it from me to suggest that freelancers not get work. But something's a bit off when a one-time author who appears to have a rather slim resume is being treated as a celebrated writer that the paper's readers are being told should feel honored has graced it with his brilliant prose. Why the heck doesn't The New York Times profile me every time I write for them? I need to renegotiate that deal!

Shearer also goes on in his piece about how he plans to profile pre-1970s Vegas performers who, Przybys writes, "can't already be found in books or on the Internet." Except that his first piece, which ran today, is about actress Rose Marie, and most of the interesting stuff in here has been reported before and is easy to find online.

Others Shearer plans to profile include Phyllis Diller and Dick Smothers, the Przybys piece says. Boy oh boy! Don't know about you, but I can hardly wait! I'm so grateful the paper warned me in advance so when those fine Sundays come, I can handle my overwhelming glee!

Travel Mag Ed Who Hates Vegas Quits

I'm pleased to report that Erik Torkells, editor-in-chief of Budget Travel for the past several years, is quitting. The New York Post says he was essentially being pushed out by a "corporate restructuring." Jossip has some interesting recent history.

Why should you care? Torkells was the genius who, as editor of perhaps the nation's most important bargain travel publication, went on the mag's blog three months ago to bravely declare of his own readers' favorite city: "I hate Las Vegas. There -- I said it."

It seems Torkells had seen ads for the Wynn in Bon Appetit and thought the "newish" -- 3 years old is new? -- resort looked tacky. Had he ever set foot in the place? Eaten at its Michelin-rated restaurants operated by James Beard-winning chefs? Why, no, of course not.

But, nevertheless, he wrote: At this point, it’s old hat to complain about Vegas being fake, but I looked at the photos in the ad, and I just thought, They look like they’re from a computer game—maybe Grand Theft Auto: Country Club. I don’t want to be anywhere near these places. And I realized that if I never went to Vegas again, I’d be just fine.

Well, that's really an intelligent way for a major magazine editor to draw conclusions, based entirely on photos in an advertisement -- maybe Wynn doesn't advertise in BT? -- and some stereotypes that he admits are "old hat." (Who says "old hat" anymore?)

And, no, as most readers of this blog know, I'm no Vegas or Wynn apologist. In fact, early in Torkells' management, in Nov. 2004, I was not permitted to include anything negative about Las Vegas in my BT piece on the search for Old Las Vegas. I had included a couple of passages about things that folks should NOT do and was told that if it's that bad, just leave it out. That stifling was precisely what gave rise to my piece for the Los Angeles Times on Vegas' Seven Deadliest Sins, my sense that telling people what not to do is at least as valuable in a place of infinite choices like Las Vegas. And I took the Wynn to task for several deficiencies in my punishing Chicago Tribune assessment of the joint when the "newish" resort opened in 2005.

Maybe next Torkells will turn up at The New Yorker and bravely declare, "I'm bored with Iraq. There -- I said it." Or he can find himself at US Weekly and bravely declare, "I don't care about Angelina Jolie. There -- I said it."

Either way, hopefully this demarcates a new era for Budget Travel, which was once piloted by the venerable Arthur Frommer. Frommer, by the way, loved Las Vegas. Too bad he was a bit daft by the end of his tenure. But that's not Vegas' fault. Or is it?

Perez Hilton On The Plaigarism Charge

Three days later, Perez Hilton has responded to my initial, polite e-mail asking for proper credit.

Here's how he explained the fact that a unique, distinctive phrase created by me ended up in one of his blog posts as if it had been uttered by Sophia Loren. Which, incidentally, it was not. Unclear on whether I was ripped off? Here's my post and here's the screen cap of his.

This was his e-mail:

Hey.
Just as an FYI:
A reader sent me that item as their own.
I will send you their email (but I will block their address out because it's none of your business who my sources are).
But, it is so desperate and pathetic of you to contact the Los Angeles Times and try and get them to write an article about my "plagiarism."
Be careful what you say, making false accusations.
xoxo
P

So a few things here. Perez did pass along the e-mail he received and -- oops! -- he left in source's name. It's a fellow named Drew Mullins who, so far as I can tell, lives nowhere near Las Vegas. His e-mail address, in fact, ends with a dot-ca, as in Canada. He's an aspiring actor who has appeared in one thing, a Nickelback video, two years ago.

So, taking Perez at his word, he has blindly quoted a "source" who lifted a phrase from someone else. No checking it out, nothing. Just up it goes, virtually verbatim -- from someone who HAS NO REASON TO KNOW ANYWAY. Think of that next time he posts something his "sources" are telling him.

Further, it's especially odd that, having been informed of where the information actually came from and how it had been mishandled, he did not correct the error. Thus, he becomes culpable.

Finally, it is neither pathetic nor desperate to seek proper credit for one's work. I'm a widely respected journalist with regular credits in most of this nation's major publications. Walking all over people and stealing from their work may be accepted practice in Perez's world, but there's no shame whatsoever in attempting to show people that this is how he operates.

Bitch and Moan, Bitch and Moan

In a piece I wrote for the Agence France Presse about Steve Wynn that went out on the wire this weekend, Las Vegas Advisor publisher Anthony Curtis boasted of the strong showing of Vegas in the inaugural Michelin food guide: "For Vegas in general, this means the international snobbery regarding things like great culinary offerings here almost has to be swept completely out."

Would that it be so. Now comes the Esquire food critic John Mariani, whining in his weekly online newsletter that Vegas got the Michelin treatment before Chicago or Washington and intimating that the star-ratings for Vegas must be based largely on spectacle rather than culinary achievement. And he quotes a particularly sore loser in L.A. Times food editor Leslie Brenner, whose city got just one or two more star-rated restaurants even though Michelin checked out at least double the number of eateries there as in Vegas. "What shocked me wasn't who did and did not get stars; rather, it was that the book that purports to be the bible of fine dining is so poorly researched and lamely written that the ratings have no credibility."

Mariani, whom I fall in and out of love with routinely and often within his articles, follows up with this brilliant line: "Brenner should know about errors: The L.A. Times prints an embarrassing number of egregious corrections of its own food articles." Yowza!

Why did Michelin come to Vegas now? Maybe because they want to sell books and far more Vegas-goers buy guidebooks than those who go to, uh, Chicago? But that doesn't make their assessments invalid. Clearly, though, Curtis' dream of widespread respectability will take at least a few more rounds.

My Awesome Little Bro

I'd been meaning to post these and this holiday-weekend lull seems just the time.

As many of you know, I have a Little Brother (from Big Brothers Big Sisters), Jamie. I "got" him when he was just 6 and this August he turns 17. He's graduating from high school next month (a year early) and he's always been really into dance in addition to the more typical teen-boy pursuits of skateboarding, video games, odd hairstyles and girls.

This is a unique, amazingly self-possessed and easy-going kid and I'm incredibly proud to have been a part of his upbringing. He has also, over the years, been a fixture in my writing, whether it's when we snuck into 21 pools on the Strip and graded them for the L.A. Times or when we went backstage at the Boom Boom Huck Jam for the Boston Globe so he could meet his motocross and skateboarding idols. He and his family were also incredibly supportive of my need to speak out when some religious right nutjobs attacked Big Brothers Big Sisters for allowing gay adults to be mentors, which I did in an op-ed piece that ran in several papers around the nation and led to a CNN appearance.

Last weekend, I joined his family at the historic Boulder Theatre (owned by Desi Arnaz Jr.!) in quaint Boulder City for his recital. Here are a few pictures of him doing his moves. I wish I had a program so I could tell you what's what in here:

Unbelievable courage

I spend a lot of time in this space snarking about bad writing and journalism and I'll have more of that later today after an early-morning dental appointment puts me in that mood.

No snark here. This piece stands on its own. Read it. Now.

You want to see what real courage is, read this Los Angeles Times piece by Mike Penner, a sports writer who is taking leave to transition to become Christine Daniels. A sportswriter. That's balls, regardless of his anatomical specifics.