WOW: Blue Man Group Heads To Monte Carlo

[UPDATE: MGM Resorts says BMG will play at Venetian until September 2012 before moving to Monte Carlo. Also, she says Jabbawockeez' contract is over in April and they'll decide then whether to renew it.]

Wow. No really. Wow.

I'm in awe right now. A press release just came over announcing that Blue Man Group will leave The Venetian and heading for Monte Carlo in fall 2012. That's 2012. Twelve.

It's astonishing news for a number of reasons. First, BMG started out at the Luxor in 2000, then moved up the street in 2005 to The Venetian. Now, after nearly six years there, they've found a third home and it happens to be back in the original fold, MGM Resorts. I'll have to go back and look, but I thought the Luxor gave them up to make room for Criss Angel, so that would have been a MGM decision and not some remainders of the pre-merger Mandalay regime.

So BMG appears to be one of the most indestructible brands in Vegas history and that's funny because nobody ever really talks about them. I can't think of another production of this scale that has hopscotched through three major Vegas resorts. Keep in mind, this is a show with a rotating cast that presently does two shows a night every single night.


Somehow, nonetheless, it keeps trucking along even as other productions cut and alter their schedules because of the economy.

Other questions follow:

* When does BMG depart Venetian? The release doesn't say and tickets remain on sale through this May.
* What becomes of Jabbawockeez? Does this imply it's not doing so great?
* Does this ascertain that the Cirque-Michael Jackson sitdown production will land at Mandalay Bay, as has been expected ever since The Lion King's departure at the end of 2011 was announced? There's really no place else left for it other than Excalibur or Circus Circus, right?

I suspect BMG will be much happier at Monte Carlo where, as was the case at Luxor, it can be the dominant, most visible attraction on the property. At Venetian, it was one of so many productions and the resort was only nominally involved in promoting it. MGM Resorts takes a much more hands-on approach to that and, really, there's not much else happening at the Monte Carlo.

I also predict that BMG will be heavily marketed as a sort of second-show for neighboring CityCenter, which has 6,000+ rooms across three hotel-ish buildings and just one theater option. At the same time, it gives those folks two bombastic (in a good way) options and nothing more mature or sedate.

Anyway, if MGM believes BMG still has some serious life in them, then boffo to them. Can't wait to hear the new tagline, too! BMG was once "Live From Luxor" and never really had an alliterative moniker for the Venetian. (We on The Strip had recommended Vivacious at Venetian, but nobody cared.)

So perhaps it'll be Madness At The Monte Carlo? Can't you see that on the inevitable building wrap?

The Desecration of Aria Has Begun!

So much for wishful thinking. Here the MGM Resorts geniuses go, defacing a beautiful building with a tacky wrap and proving to the world that Las Vegas does not deserve nor in any way appreciate the work of great architects.

Here's a close-up:


Any guesses what it's going to be? I would think "Viva Elvis" would be the most likely choice but the figures we can see so far don't look right for that.

Just a reminder, there's absolutely no evidence that wraps on the I-15 side of resorts do anything to drive business. MGM Resorts tried, in fact, to rent out the I-15 side of the Luxor a couple of years ago:


Nobody in the advertising world took that bait. That should tell them something about the actual value of the signs, and the trade-off in slapping bumper stickers all over their crown jewel. Sad.

[h/t for pix to Panoramy.]

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You're building this beautiful and stately structure with perhaps the best international reputation for elegance, service and grace, and then you...


Put a wrap on it?!?!?

Please, please, please, please, please, Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas peeps. Tell me that's just there right now to gin up some interest in advance of the opening at CityCenter in December. Tell me that when you open, you're not going to make your building look like...


...this. Just sayin'.

And while I was stuck in traffic looking at that terrible scaffolding, I turned the other way and noticed that...


...the Paris balloon needs a paint job, stat. Has it had one in the 10 years the place has been open?

I did think that the sign for the Louis Vuitton at The Crystals was kinda cool and refined:



Well, at least until those neat severe angles of this Daniel Libeskind design get cluttered with all the other logos. This one works because the LV also has similar severe angles and, also, there's a double-entendre in there. But think they'll leave well enough alone? Really?

Finally, I've been eager to see what the Mandarin Oriental interiors will look like. The website still has what appear to be renderings of the rooms. I mean, it's hard to tell since they're tiny thumbnail images that can't be enlarged. The executive suite one, in fact, is a photo of a flower on a table with the base of a lamp.

BUT! This splash-page image, presumably of a lounge or restaurant, is insightful:


Look out the window! It turns out that the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas is going to be...in some other city! With lots of glittery high-rises! How grand! I wonder if there'll be a shuttle of some sort!

Is it Criss Angel Luxor, too?

Not long ago, that beloved Strip headliner Criss Angel Tweeted this:


I have no idea what it means to relocate six choppers. But what perked my ears up was "the Criss Angel Liquidity Bar." Did they rename this belly-up bar? So far as I can tell from the website, no. I also called the number but nobody answered the bar's phone. When I called the hotel operator, it went like this:

Me: Hi, I have a question. Did they rename Liquidity for Criss Angel?

Lady: Did they what?

Me: Rename the bar as Criss Angel Liquidity Bar?

Lady: Well, I know we have the Criss Angel Believe show.

Me: Yeah, I know that. But what about the bar?

Lady: I can transfer you there, but they didn't tell us anything about that. Do you want to be transferred?

Me: They don't answer, but sure. Let's see what happens. Thanks.

Lady: Have a good evening.

That was followed by endless ringing until I hung up.

The funny thing is, I've been following Criss Angel's Tweeting carefully lately because he's doing something kind of interesting. He's got some sort of a treasure hunt for tickets going on. Apparently they're hiding some tickets in the retail shop for his show, Criss Angel Believe. He's revealing clues via Twitter. Not real sure how this works exactly -- is he asking the Loyals to come ransack the store or something? -- but it's intriguing nonetheless.

Anyhow, waiting on someone at MGM Mirage to let me know if they've rebranded the bar in his honor. Cuz, you know, the Criss Angel brand has done such wonders for Cirque du Soleil and all as you can see.

[UPDATE: MGM Mirage F&B publicity queen Andrea Brown wrote back to say: "They are NOT changing the name of Liquidity, but Criss will be making appearances every Friday and Saturday night beginning Friday, Aug. 7 at Liquidity." Oh, joy. How thrilling.]

Saturday Funnies...

This was today's Argyle Sweater. Wow. Harsh, huh? There's robust debate in the comments section over at GoComics.Com over whether this was fair, uh, game for a humor.

Strange, too, that in the Review-Journal, the tiger and Siegfried's jacket appeared as orange, not white. Plus, Siegfried's pants, the wall, the cop's gun and shoulder patch are all white. I'll scan in and add to this post later when I get home. (Miles is still recovering from strep and asked me to stay out of the house so the dogs don't go haywire and disturb his sleep.) Anyone have a clue why these color differences occurred? I find it hard to imagine the R-J would alter the comic over local sensitivities, but the fact that the tiger's not white in the newspaper version did have an effect on the joke.

Meanwhile, a couple of other toons I had clipped with Vegas-related relevancy. This March 8 Argyle Sweater is fun given where the new season of Top Chef is being filmed right now...


It's pretty amusing to see the folks on the GoComics.Com site debating who the lady on the right is in the comments section. Clearly, they don't watch the show.

And finally, this Danny Shanahan bit is only funny locally because the Luxor, thanks to desperate efforts by MGM Mirage to make money, does have colorful vinyl siding on it around here...

Your Ad Here!!!

No, not here. Well, yeah, you can buy space on this evidently quite popular Vegas blog.

But today I spotted something I hoped and prayed was not what I thought it was. But then it turned out to be exactly what I thought it was. Take a look:


The Luxor, which has already sold their Strip/McCarran-facing side to Absolut vodka for a while in addition to promoting its own entertainment attractions, is now turning the ENTIRE pyramid into billboard space. Here's a closer look at what's there right now:


It's a viewfinder with the Welcome to Las Vegas sign in the middle. In other words, a placeholder. The gigantic equivalent of "YOUR AD HERE." Why not just write that? What, too tacky?

I quizzed Alan Feldman, the MGM Mirage spokesman, about this today. He was probably overwhelmed with media calls about the company's troubling fourth quarter loss -- and here's hoping he schooled some local reporters on what a "going concern" is before they get it wrong again -- but he replied via text message that, indeed, "all four sides are available." He also took the time to email me an article from the most recent MGM Mirage employee newsletter.

The article addresses both what's going on here and why they've decided to be abstract in the least subtle advertising format ever invented. I thought it might be interesting, so here it is:

Hard To Miss
The  “buzz” on the new exterior graphic at Luxor

LUXOR – They seemed to appear overnight. Giant images of a camcorder viewfinder trained on the famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign materialized late last week on two sides of the Luxor hotel. Drivers on both the I-15 and Las Vegas Boulevard no doubt noticed them. But did they understand them? Probably not, said Brad Goldberg, Vice President of Marketing at Luxor. And that’s ok. “It’s really designed to generate interest to potential advertisers and hopefully do more promotions on the exterior of the building,” Mr. Goldberg said. “The idea was, ‘Let’s make it thought-provoking and see what kind of interest we can generate.’” The camcorder graphics are a new promotion and partnership between Luxor and Skytag, an outdoor advertising firm that specializes in exterior building advertising. It’s the same company that did the LOVE Cirque du Soleil ads atop The Mirage and the Criss Angel ad currently on the front of Luxor. Tentative plans call for the images to be up for at least a month, perhaps longer. Stretching more than 20 stories high, they cover the south and west sides of the pyramid, which is largely new territory for advertisements, Mr. Goldberg said. “We’ve had a few images on the south side of the building before. We’ve never done anything on the west side. I’m hoping it will generate some additional interest on that side of the building,” he said. “We received a few calls from ad agencies even as they were still installing this, so it’s already working.” Aside from the revenue gained by selling
exterior building space for ads, the images often generate a lot of media attention. An outdoor ad for the NBA All-Star game a few years ago landed Luxor on the front page of the New York Times, Mr. Goldberg said. The hope is that these new graphics will garner similar coverage. “Our hotel is truly an iconic building in Las Vegas. Putting these images on that icon should certainly
attract some attention,” Mr. Goldberg said. “We’ll see what kind of buzz it generates."

I expressed surprise that the company would sell ads for things unrelated to anything going on inside the resort. That is, almost all wraps in Vegas to date have at least pimped out the building for a show or event occurring there. Feldman reminded me that the Luxor had done this before, and I remembered that, yes, they'd taken Absolut's money for this:


Feldman also noted that the Rio does it, too. It's true that the Rio did this...


...a couple years ago. But after that, Harrah's Vice President for Marketing Michael Weaver told me the company had decided never to do it again. "The signature shape and look of the building is part of the Rio's brand," Weaver said. "We feel we lose something if we do it too often and for products that don't belong to us." Thus, I believe they've wrapped largely with Penn & Teller stuff ever since. Not the best decision, but at least it's a boundary.

I suppose it's all just business and those of us who think it defaces the iconic nature of the buildings ought to mind our own business. But I wonder if the reason this irks me isn't just that they've turned this fabulous structure into huge billboards but rather that they turned them into EMPTY billboards. They can't even find advertisers in private? They can't just get the word out there quietly in the Madison Avenue world that the space facing the highway can be rented? They have to actually point out that there's nothing there yet?

And what if they can't rent it? What if it goes months and months without something up there, just like billboards in blighted neighborhoods do? Then it's just another vacancy, another emblem of Las Vegas' ongoing, disastrous slump. Forget quiet casino floors, closing showrooms and unsold condos. Hell, every time you pass that building by and there's no ad up, it will scream failure in a way that those others can barely approach. It's telling the world on the largest available canvas just deep in the shitter this town has sunken.

Introducing The Luxor Hostel-Casino!

You've gotta be kidding. I understand that times are tough. But I'm just not sure that pushing $9-a-night sardine-packed rooms is exactly the right way to go.

The funny thing is, I remember Luxor President Felix Rappaport, in explaining to me the approach to adding all the cool new attractions to the hotel (LAX, Company, Criss Angel Believe, Cathouse, etc), saying that the historic problem with the property was that people stayed there but didn't use the place. The word he used to describe such an enterprise? Dormitory. And yet, five-to-a-room starts to sound a bit like a dorm, too, doesn't it?

That said, I'm not sure this offer is an honest one anyway. What they're saying is that you can book the cheapest rooms available and not pay the surcharge of $30 for having more than two guests in a room.

Yet I've been through the calendar and I've tried and tried to get the lowest rate available when putting in that I want to have 4 people in the room. (It doesn't allow you to put in more than 4, despite the special offer.) Every time I search for a room that sleeps 4, the rooms I'm told are available are the larger, more expensive ones. See?


I tried over and over throughout the offer period, which runs from February 25 to November 30. You give it a go. Not one single time did the system offer me the least expensive room if I said I wanted to house four people. I thought maybe that was because they wouldn't let me have four or five people in a room that doesn't have two queen beds and that all the 2-queen rooms are more expensive, but that's not the case, either. The cheapest rooms can come with two queens.

So this promotion fails on two fronts. First, it makes the Luxor sound like a youth hostel. And two, the offer being promoted doesn't actually exist the way its being promoted.

[Hat tip to Matt in Boca for this one.]

Criss Angel's Cirque Gala Delayed

[UPDATE: Late shows between 10/11-10/30 are not canceled, a Cirque spokeswoman said. Preview seats are 25 percent off, so presumably ticketholders in that span will get a partial refund.]

It's may not be as big a deal as the past several scheduling shifts, but the gala opening for "Criss Angel Believe" at Luxor has now been pushed back from Oct. 10 to Halloween night, Oct. 31.

The question I haven't gotten answered yet is: Does this mean the cancellation of the later shows from Oct. 11-Oct. 30? The previews that still will start on Sept. 26 don't have late shows.

No real explanation has been offered for the gala change other than the fact that, according to a spokeswoman, Halloween always seemed the most appropriate night to debut this show. If that's so, though, what kept them from setting it up that way in the first place?

Either way, it's looing more and more like the kids in my neighborhood will be getting no candy. And the only thing wilder and more dazzling than a Cirque du Soleil premiere party may just be a themed Cirque du Soleil premiere party.

Is There A 9/11 Room Rate Discount?

Here's this week's LVW column...

The price is … strange

Room rates take a curious plunge right around the anniversary of 9-11

By STEVE FRIESS

I am not one of those 9-11 conspiracy nuts. I have an eccentric British pal who does believe that George W. Bush, despite his incompetence at ordering in lunch, was behind the most horrific events of our time. This friend is constantly forwarding e-mails asserting that the Baltimore family behind Vegas casino implosions actually imploded the World Trade Center and made it look to the stupid people of the world as if some “hijacked” airplanes caused their fall.

I reject all this, so I’m sane, right?

Well, maybe. But I won’t hold it against you if you wonder about me after I tell you this:

I am a 9-11 Vegas-hotel-discount conspiracy nut.

Stay with me for a moment. Something weird is going on around here.

About a week ago, for reasons I can’t even recall, I took a look at room rates in September at the MGM Grand. I was surprised to notice that in the week of September 7, the resort’s rates fell to their lowest level of the entire month—$100 a night—on that Thursday. That Thursday is the seventh anniversary of the terror attacks. Every other Thursday that month, the rates were the highest of the Monday to Thursday rates. During that particular, auspicious week, the rates fall dramatically.

Odd, thought I. Could it really be that, lo these many years later, there’s still some residual impact on occupancy because people prefer not to travel or recreate on that date?

My brain said no, but my heart said yes, so the next thing I knew, I was obsessively scanning hotels.com to see if other resorts on the Strip saw similar dips on 9/11/08. Here is the list of resorts that see unusual room-rate drops on that Thursday: Luxor, Bally’s, Harrah’s, Bellagio, New York-New York, Treasure Island, Paris, The Mirage, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas Hilton, Golden Nugget, the Rio, Hard Rock, Wynn and Trump. There may be more.

The Mandalay Bay and Hard Rock were particularly startling. At Mandalay Bay, the room rate is $210 Sunday through Wednesday, then $120 on Thursday, a $90 drop. At the Hard Rock, the rates are $299 Monday through Wednesday and $109 on Thursday. That’s a $190 decrease! The Wynn is also kind of odd: The rate all that week and the week after is $499 per night except on September 11, when it’s $399.

Read the rest HERE

Show is UP: The Wayans To Leno

Enjoy this extra-long show! My L.A. Times profiles of Leno and Wayans can be found here and here respectively. Click on the date to hear it or right-click to download the show and listen whenever you want. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here:

July 3: The Wayans To Leno

Jay Leno has always been comfortably inside the lines of mainstream American comedy while Damon Wayans has built a family business out of going out on a limb. So what do these two comics have in common? For one, both are performing in Las Vegas this month. For another, they’re both on the show this week. Leno reacts to questions as about why he’s not more respected by the entertainment media while Wayans tries to explain the method to his mad career.

In Banter: Steve Wynn's cocktail, Steve Friess' drinking binge, Harrah's environmentalism, Penn v Angel and a George Carlin tribute.

Links:

Get tickets to Damon Wayans' Orleans show here
Get tickets to Jay Leno's Mirage performances here
Learn how to make Steve Wynn's favorite cocktail here
Check out the Downtown Cocktail Lounge here
Read Penn Jillette's diss Criss Angel here
Learn more about Noir Bar at the Luxor here
The site for Miles' would-be obsession, Clean House, is here
Steve's scoops on the blue tape and the Criss Angel delay is here and here
Read how the AIDS Rides turned out to be a scam here
Read Harrah's press release on their WSOP carbon-credit buy here
That 7/1 WSJ piece on Vegas casino debt is here
See the George Carlin clip we played on the show here
Watch the whole Wayans three-titties routine excerpted on the show here

Bye Bye Egypt!

We knew that the BODIES and Titanic exhibits at the Tropicana were moving to the Luxor, but I don't think I realized what they'd replace. Turns out, the IMAX theater there closes this Sunday and the King Tut tomb and museum goes away on June 22. The new attractions open this fall.

This begs a question. The idea behind moving away from the Egypt stuff was that they wanted to make the place hipper, right? The Cathouse, Company, LAX, etc., are all intended to show this Luxor isn't for the kiddies anymore.

So they replace two major kid attractions with...two other kid-friendly attractions? Huh?

Meanwhile, if you care, I did a piece for USAT a while back on a BODIES-like show in Chicago known as Body Worlds. It's controversial. Read that here. Personally, I think it's cool.

Why Frankie Left The Luxor

This week's Las Vegas Weekly column is now online, a look at Frankie Valli's surprise resurgence in Vegas and his explanation about why he left his Luxor contract unceremoniously in 2005.


The Strip Sense: Working his way back to you
Frankie Valli gets some Vegas vindication at the premiere of Jersey Boys

By Steve Friess

It is hard to believe now, especially after the weekend that just was, that only a few years ago Frankie Valli walked out during a three-week contract at the Luxor and was declared by at least one entertainment writer to have essentially ended his association with Las Vegas once and for all.

Hard, that is, because on Saturday the town stood up and cheered as the pipsqueak Italian from New Jersey with the priceless falsetto blew out candles at one of the city’s most elaborate and expensive birthday parties in recent memory.

Move over, Paris and Nicole. The nightclubs, for whatever bizarre reason, may pay you to stand and wave on the anniversaries of your unfortunate arrivals, but would anyone stage a multimillion-dollar Broadway musical based on your life story and then have a major resort-casino time the premiere of it on the Las Vegas Strip just to honor you?

For Valli, there was no question that the moment was immensely gratifying and somewhat unique for Las Vegas. Sinatra, Rickles and Bennett never fell out of favor in such a way as Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons seemed to and, thus, never had quite this sort of a spectacular comeback as is seen with the triumphant debut of Jersey Boys at the Palazzo.

Except don’t call it that. Valli’s not having any of this “comeback” nonsense. “Every once in a while when we had a resurgence, in the interviews people would ask, ‘How does it feel to be making a comeback?’ and I would say, ‘I had no idea we left!’” Valli said. “In all the ups and downs, there was never a shortage of work. There’s all the work I wanted.”

Perhaps, but the wonderful Jersey Boys not only returns The Four Seasons to the forefront of the pop-culture scene but also restores our faith in the future of musical theater in Las Vegas. If last week’s column pointed out how Steve Wynn must be driving convention-travel innovator Sheldon Adelson bananas by planning a huge new expo center, this week it must be noted that Wynn must be utterly depressed that his vision for great Broadway theater on the Strip has been realized not by his now-failed picks Avenue Q and Spamalot but by arch-nemesis Adelson’s knockout versions of Phantom and Jersey Boys.

Read the rest HERE

MGM Mirage On Fate of Fountain Coins

It seems the Wynn Las Vegas response that the coins are in some cases not cleanable is somewhat backed up by this response from Alan Feldman, the spokesman for MGM Mirage, who finally came back to me with a comprehensive response to the question asked by podcast listener Naomi in Israel weeks ago about what happens to the coins tossed in Vegas fountains:

Steve:

Well, as you may have surmised by now, this was not an easy question to answer.

While most of the coins end up with charity, they have to go through a major cleaning process. Some are simply too dirty or damaged to salvage and are destroyed.

TI discards everything they clean out of their Pirate Cove area as the coins are simply too dirty to recover. The same for Circus Circus Adventuredome from the water rides they have.

The Mirage has in the past given the coins from the water feature near the people mover along the Strip to Shriner’s and Red Cross. They did not have an amount; they simply gave away the coins. My contact there said it was difficult to find an agency to take the coins because they had to be cleaned first.

Bellagio gives coins from their front feature to Habitat for Humanity, however our contact at HFH is saying the company that cleans the coins charges them 50%. As I recall a past conversation Bellagio, the Red Cross asked us to stop giving them the coins about a year ago, because the company they were using to process the donations, was going to raise their fee.

In 2007 approximately $22,000 was given to Make-a-Wish of Southern Nevada from the water features at New York New York.

Mandalay Bay and Luxor give theirs back to Voice, our company’s Foundation, where the monies are disbursed to charities throughout southern Nevada under the direction of a board made up entirely of employees. Last year, we deposited more than $33,000 into the Voice account from the fountains at these properties.

I know this isn’t a detailed accounting, but it’s what I was able to pull together in between calls on the fire and economy slipping into recession.

Any thoughts, folks?

When sycophancy -- and spin -- becomes idiocity

That yutz Michael Politz evidently modified his silly Carrot Top post. He still says Mr. Top is "sold out for six months" but then indicates:

The Luxor on-line ticket office says tix are available so take advantage of it. We have just been notified that other writers in Las Vegas are blogging their opinions against my selection of this show.

Umm, no. I don't know that anyone with either high-brow or low-brow taste can believe that Carrot Top is the best show in Vegas, but I hold no grudge against him and enjoyed his show well enough.

No, Mr. Politz, it's the entire item, taken together, with its absurd notion that this show is sold out -- but now, lucky you, there ARE tickets which means it's NOT sold out -- that drives me bananas. That and that obvious effort to shill your opinion in order to appear on someone's advertisements and marquee. You know, I can see it now. "Best Show in Vegas! -- Michael 'Rent-a-quote' Politz"

I'm gonna try that! The only marquee I'm on that I know of is for Phantom, and I didn't really mean it but a phrase from my USA Today piece on the show made it. My name did not, sadly. So let's see if I can right that wrong here and now!

Here are my candidates:

Dixie Dooley is the biggest thrill you'll ever have in a Vegas theater!
Steve Wyrick is the new Harry Houdini!
Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Whachamacallit is the height of elegance and first-class service!

Any others, friends?

From the NYT Blog "The Lede"...

September 28, 2007, 7:07 pm

Refusing to Exploit O.J. Simpson Buzz
By Steve Friess

LAS VEGAS — As might have been expected, the previously little-known Palace Station Hotel-Casino is getting a lot of calls these days asking about renting Room 1203.

But the hotel is turning them all away, a surprising rejection of attention in the same town that has allowed the iconic Luxor pyramid to be obscured by a 20-story high advertisement for Absolut vodka.

Oh, the cops are done with the otherwise uninteresting hotel room where police say O.J. Simpson and an armed band of five men tried to strong-arm two sports memorabilia dealers into handing over a litany of material that the ex-football star believed to be his.

But contrary to published rumors, Room 1203 won’t be re-christened the O.J. Suite, said Lori Nelson, spokeswoman for the 31-year-old, 1,100-room property a mile east of the Strip that caters mostly to locals.

“We’re taking it off line for now because we don’t want it to become a thing,” Ms. Nelson said. “People think they’re clever asking for it, though.”

Read the rest here

MGM Mirage: Online Smut Purveyor?

I can't decide if this is brilliant or low-brow. This being Vegas, both is always an option.


MGM Mirage has launched two online games tied into the Cirque adult production "Zumanity" at New York-New York and the burlesque "Fantasy" show at Luxor. In the "Zumanity" case (above), players must follow a yellow ball with their cursor as it traces each letter of the title, a woman in the background doing some sort of hoop tricks. If you succeed in keeping up with the letter you're on, she removes an article of clothing until, ostensibly, she's nude. It's not as easy as it sounds; I lost on the "m" and it seems that the only people who have made it through all the way were beta testers, at least from what I can tell from the Hall of Fame rankings and the fact that their date-time stamp was before the site went live.


The "Fantasy" game is more straightforward. They give you 50 spins with 100 credits for a slot (slut?) machine and if you line up symbols, you win different amounts. There's a "peep show" and the number of credits you've earned relates to how much of the writhing woman you see.

The obvious question is, why only women in these strip teases? What about amusing the women and the gays, both markets these companies are constantly pursuing. Where's the "Thunder From Down Under?" Or, better yet, Carrot Top!!!

My Night With Liza and Liza

(UPDATE: THE ENTIRE PIECE IS NOW BELOW. DON'T KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM WAS WITH THAT LINK.)

What starts out on a lark ends up with another adoring recruit from the ranks of Minnelli's most fervent fan base
By Steve Friess
05/30/07 - NVToday.Com
Liza Minnelli grabbed my arm painfully tight. Her ecstasy was understandable, I guess. She just couldn’t believe this was happening to her. It was a dream come true! She was a mere six rows from her idol, Liza Minnelli, and she was having a really difficult time containing herself, of not leaping on stage to help belt out the numbers she’s performed countless times.

For me, of course, it was a gag. A journalistic stunt. Something I could joke about later and write about on my blog and possibly include in a piece I was writing for Tuesday’s New York Times about a celebrity impersonators convention at the Imperial Palace. I envisioned regaling people at cocktail parties for years to come with this tale. “There was this time that I took a Liza impersonator to a Liza Minnelli concert in Vegas,” I’d be able to say.

And so here we were — Liza dead-ringer and former "Legends in Concert" performer Suzanne Goulet and me — at the real Liza’s historic “gypsy” show, a free, intimate performance after midnight at the Luxor for hundreds of performers and show-related people on the Strip, just as the Rat Pack used to do back in the day.

Yet by the time the remarkable night was over, it no longer seemed quite so funny. Not only did spending those hours with my Liza humanize her and alter my mocking impressions of people who make a living dressing up as a famous icon, but I also finally understood for the very first time in my long gay life what it is about the real Liza that sets so many queer hearts aflutter.



You see, I’ve never been that kind of gay. You know the ones I mean, those who become flamboyantly flustered at the very notion of a certain legion of female musical legends: Judy, Madonna, Cher, Tina, Liza. True, I carry a torch for Bette Midler and yes, anyone who began her career performing in a gay bathhouse has earned their bona (boner?) fides in divadom. But oddly my intrigue began not over a cocktail at a gay bar but as a teenager watching a film nobody else seemed to like, “For The Boys,” which charmed me to death and received lousy reviews and box office. And I never obsessed about her or wanted to be her; no, my lifelong musical obsession has been over Simon & Garfunkel. Make of that what you will.

So it’s never been my thing. I’ve never seen “Liza With a ‘Z.’ ” I only saw “Cabaret” in the past year and only because I was about to interview director Hal Prince for USA Today. Liza herself (the real one) actually chastised me last summer when I interviewed her for “The Strip” podcast and clearly was out of my depth. “Honey, you haven’t seen my show, have you?” No, I sure hadn’t. And, while I’m generally familiar with the Garland-Minnelli family history, it just never held a lot of intrigue to me.

It does now. I walked into the Luxor showroom prepared for unrelenting camp such that I felt it funny to bring my own in the form of Suzanne. But Suzanne herself was no joke; she had the moves, the hair and the voice down pat, although she felt slightly embarrassed showing up in her Liza look and having so many real-Liza fans gawk at her. Some were amused, some behaved as though we were defiling the real-Liza experience.
Later I’d understand. Liza took to the stage at about 12:30 am Monday in a shimmery white outfit and endeared the audience to her instantly with her frank talk of her efforts to lose weight and then sings a silly ode to “the greatest American woman in history,” Sara Lee. She spoke lovingly of and to her audience, as though she was astonished they felt she was worthy of their attention, and she told story after story of her life as Judy Garland’s daughter.

There was an explanation for every song she sang, many of them pieces of music she came into contact with thanks to her godmother Kay Thompson, most of which few of us had heard and many numbers of which she insisted she was trying out in public or the first time. She went through three or four costume changes, never cut a single corner vocally and performed a litany of dance numbers that few would have believed her capable.

There was a sense in that showroom that we were witnessing something historic because Liza herself was speaking of people, places and times that few who were present knew of or could personally recall. I wasn’t planning to stay the whole two-plus hours, but it was difficult to turn away when this 61-year-old, who had battled all sorts of health, marital and addiction issues, was working that hard to entertain, to reminisce, to be adored.

More than that, there was a sense that this was as close as any of us would get to the nostalgic eras of Vegas. Suzanne Goulet and her kind earnestly try to recreate it, but when the real thing is on stage, you just stay where you are and watch.

And so I did, until Liza belted out “New York, New York” as a tribute to her “Uncle Frank” and then lavished the audience with gratitude. Which just made you love her even more, of course, since we had done nothing for her but cheer her on.

Perhaps that’s all she craved.

Steve Friess is a Vegas-based freelance writer and podcaster whose book "Gay Vegas" will be published in June from Huntington Press.

Chris Albrecht: Do You Know Who I Am?

It's not every day an act of violence in Vegas ruins someone's career. OK, it does happen aplenty -- Adam "Pacman" Jones can attest to that, too.

But here to your right is a copy -- click it to make it readable -- of the narrative of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police report from the domestic battery charge against HBO CEO Christopher Albrecht a few hours after the De La Hoya-Mayweather fight at MGM Grand. Took me all day at police records to get this thing on behalf of Newsweek (see our story here) but they didn't post the actual report so I figured I would.

Albrecht's girlfriend's name was redacted as was the officers involved. But according to this, not only did he grab her with BOTH hands around the neck and try to drag her toward the door from the valet area. The guy had to be very drunk but also full of hubris having just produced the most profitable fight in history to do something like this in plain view of probably hundreds of people.

What's even better is the quiet line in here that he told the officer he was the CEO of HBO. Does it EVER work to tell the cops you're someone important? Didn't he ever hear about Mel Gibson?

In the past week, the national press has tried to tar the local police as protectionist of Vegas' rich and powerful, inexplicably suggesting the Luxor bombing incident was being swept under the rug. (They have a person of interest as of last night.)

This seems to prove to me that these are just typical Vegas stereotypes. The guy was the top dog at the network that just staged one of the biggest events of the year. The girlfriend was busy insisting nothing had happened and that she wouldn't cooperate with an investigation. And STILL they arrest the guy.

Still think the cops are in bed with the casinos?

Luxor Bomb Question

Andy in St. Joseph, Mo., wrote:

Do the casinos fear that the story of the bombing murder on the Luxor Parking lot yesterday will be bad for business? In any other city in the U.S., the authorities would have media crawling all over them if someone set off a bomb in a parking lot. Are Las vegas media going to allow this to be suppressed? Have they really lost perspective and see it as a non-story? Have they been merely subdued?

Now, I'm no stranger to critiquing the media, so believe me when I say that the media was all over the Luxor, MGM Mirage and the Metropolitan Police yesterday. Newsweek, in fact, sent in a stringer to Vegas from L.A. because I was out of town. It was played large on the front page of the Review-Journal as it should have been. So I don't really understand the question.

I think what we have here is an unusual murder in an unusual location, but I don't think there's that much more to it. And interesting how if the media is careful not to sensationalize, they're accused of wimping out. A bomb went off, a man is dead, there's one witness, the cops are working on it. There's only so much the property can say -- it's not their fault or their investigation, it's the cops and ATF -- and from what I can tell, the MGM Mirage folks are painstakingly answering every phone call and email. In fact, one of my sources emailed me just to make sure the Newsweek stringer was legit and not someone pretending to take my place.

While you may think that the media would be more aggressive if it was, say, in the parking garage at the Hancock Building in Chicago at 4 a.m., I tend to doubt it. You do with what you have. The flip side of this is, if it had happened in a parking lot in Henderson, Nev., you all would probably never have heard a thing about it and Newsweek surely wouldn't have sent someone to fill in for me. Not to mention, if it was a shooting or a stabbing in the Luxor lot, it wouldn't have been much of a thing, either.

I could be wrong. But I can't see where anyone's acted inappropriately in all of this.

That said, looks like I'll be offline for most of the day.

What Does This Mean...And Other Denver Airport Mysteries!

The Luxor bomb disappointed the media in every way -- it wasn't terrorism OR a mob hit. Just an odd murder case, but not one of national importance. But I missed a solid payday by being away. By the time I reached my layover in Denver, I had messages from Newsweek and Reuters asking for coverage. Oh well.

Meanwhile, the Denver airport was full of mysteries that I need your help to unpack. First, take a good look at the image to your right. OK, it's really hard to see. But what it is is a phrase I found embedded in the floor. It says "TSE YE GO AN YEH DAA NYOT." I've Googled that and all I came up with is another traveler perplexed by it. So, anyone who can come up with something really enlightening here is welcome to any prize on the prize list at TheStripPodcast.com. Come on, folks.

Next up, what the heck is this to your left that I found in the middle of a series of interminable terminal hallways? Some sort of queer-meets-Chinese public art display? All around major Chinese cities you'll find rainbow strings of neon lights much like this. Why is this here? Is it supposed to be decorative?

And finally, not so much a puzzle as a fascination. The bathroom doubles as... a tornado shelter! I'm baffled by this because, as I suspected, there aren't many tornadoes in Denver County. Just 13 since 1966 and not a single one in 14 years. So why? And wouldn't that have to be just a monster of a tornado to blow clear into the middle of a building that, presumably, is fortified to withstand an awful lot of force.

I might have blogged this earlier but both DEN or MSP charge through the nose to get online. Another underappreciated reason to love McCarran: Free Wi-Fi. Gosh, I miss home.