Showing posts with label mac king. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mac king. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Tuesday Foto Funnies


It has been brought to my attention by my luncheon date today that I've been a blogging slacker of late. When the Las Vegas Weekly comes out this week, you'll find out why my mind has been otherwise engaged, but nonetheless I decided I ought to feed the masses, such as they are, with some of those entertaining images I love to collect.

WTF is that atop? Well, in early March, I was hired by a trade publication to cover the Fun Expo, a big confab for the amusement park and family entertainment center -- "FEC" in the lingo -- industry. And one of the seminars I covered was all about throwing better birthday parties. One idea was a game where two teams stuff balloons inside the oversized shirts of the competitors. Here's the other lady:


And here's the whole room learning the importance of mascots and gettin' jiggy wit it:


Not your typical convention, huh? That's where, by the way, I learned of the automated cotton candy machine that made it into this March 26 version of this blog feature.

I had to get directions for David McKee of LVA's Stiffs & Georges blog to come subsitute host for Miles on The Strip a few weeks back. When I went to Google Maps for the LVRocks.Com studio, I saw this:


That little jog that re-aligns Maryland Parkway is called South Rue 13. Ooh la la, huh? How fancy for a run-down area with a truly gross 7 Eleven! I was sure that it was some sort of misprint, but there's also a Rue 13 street sign, too.

Near Rue 13, by the by, I spotted this inventive deployment of Strip junk:


Speaking of Blogger McKee, he's been busy noting that Harrah's Buffet of Buffets deal, at first $29.99, is now $39.99. Some believe Harrah's always planned to jack up the price, but this...


...proves otherwise. You may recall from magician Nathan Burton's appearance on The Strip, a wrap like that costs $25,000 or more. So for the foreseeable future, it seems, Harrah's will have a knowingly out-of-date or misleading billboard on Bally's. Or maybe someone can get out there with a bucket of red paint and fix that "2"? I mean, yeah, it'd ruin the view from a couple of rooms, but they're not selling out anyway, right?

Here's a Google alert I really wish my parents hadn't received:


I stopped in on Harrah's comic-magician Mac King's 10th anniversary-on-the-Strip party on Sunday, as I Tweeted. He's the homespun guy with Coke-bottle glasses who wears plaid suits, so I guess it makes sense that this appears in his living room:

Mac king's house would have to have this:  on Twitpic

 Chatted w mac king for a bit about his synd comic. Rj droppe... on Twitpic

That's Mac. He's funny. He has a syndicated Sunday comic, but the R-J cut their Sunday comics pages to four pages recently and decided the only Vegas-originating cartoon of the lot had to go. Way to support the hometown hero, Shermy!

It was a nice shindig with all the usual. You know, a little person dudded up like Col. Sanders passing out KFC...

This is not your average party....  on Twitpic

...and the likes of Penn Jillette, Rita Rudner, Vinnie Favorito and other fellow Harrahite stars chilling by the blow-up flume:

Mac kings backyard flume!!! (also, there's @pennjillette)  on Twitpic

It's tricky business letting hoards of people into your home, but this works:

How mac king keeps u out of a room:   on Twitpic

On another note, given all my fascination with the taxi life lately, I spotted this and realized that cabbies clearly don't view the Las Vegas Monofail as competition anymore:

Clearly the cabs here don't regard the lv #monofail as compet... on Twitpic

Remember how I dropped in on Turnberry Towers a couple weeks ago for a blog post? Well, this is what the lobby looks like...


...and this is what the inside of the elevator I took looked like:


Ain't that fancy?

My two favorite license plates lately:


Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

And finally, when I'm done with big projects or long blog posts, I play a little Scrabble on ISC.ro. And look at what bingo (Scrabble lingo for using all your letters) I got last week:


That enough for ya, Amy? Well, is it? Huh? OK. Time to get get some real bylines now!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Brother, Can You Spare A Ticket?

The economic downturn is not funny. People who lose their homes, their savings and their jobs are not amusing. Even overly ambitious multinational corporations having trouble making multimillion-dollar debt payments on massive construction projects they should've thought twice about commencing isn't really the stuff of humor.

But. I got this one press release today that cracked me UP. In fact, I'm just bummed I didn't read it before we recorded tonight's episode of "The Strip." Then again, maybe "bummed" isn't such a good word here.


The subject line was "Mac King Passes Entertainment Stimulus Plan." Really, I wonder. How so?

Turns out, comic-magician Mac King is giving away free tickets to "local families that have fallen on rough economic times. ... During the month of May, any Las Vegas resident experiencing financial hardship can present their Nevada ID to the Harrah’s box office to receive complimentary admission for two to the Mac King Comedy Magic Show."

Now I love Mac King. His show is awesome. His cartoons in the Sunday papers are always fun. He gave a great interview on "The Strip," too, in October 2007. He even triumphed in a Stripper Poll one time about the funniest regular act in Vegas. I encourage everyone to go see his show. By far, it's the best daytime show in Vegas.

That said, I'm trying to figure out how this works. Do you go to the Harrah's box office and say, "Hi, I'm poor, gimme some tickets"?

Maybe you need to show up in garb like this:


I mean, the star's in a plaid suit, so they might just think you're a Mac King groupie or something. Would they let the guy below in?


And what happens if the family picks up their freebies and then sells 'em? Do they get in trouble? I mean, these are tough times.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Isn't This Illegal?


I'm a fan of magician Mac King, who performs at Harrah's daily. He's been a guest on "The Strip" and we're grateful because he's a very interesting, humble guy.

I'm just wondering about this. Mac does a weekly comic strip called Magic In A Minute. In it, he walks kids through the steps for doing simple magic tricks. It's well-illustrated and often quite clever.

But Sunday's strip, I suspect, is illegal. I had to scan it in from the R-J because there doesn't appear to be any place online to show you his most recent entries. In honor of Presidents Day, he, uh, teaches kids how to cut holes in $1 bills and feed it a peanut. Really. Click on the image above to see it more closely.

I found this appropriate site -- LawforKids.Org -- that answers the question of whether it's illegal to deface U.S. currency. It sure seems that way, although the definition on that site of what "fraudulent" is makes it murky. (Click on that link; I especially like the protest from Katie in Colorado who wants to make "buttens" out of "mony." Sigh.)

Intriguingly, the commenters on that site are discussing another money-altering trick of sorts, something called "Fraud" by Daniel Garcia. Here he is doing it on YouTube:



But, regardless, it is certainly questionable judgment to be teaching children in the comics pages to go to get a dollar bill and cut a piece out of it, no?

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The Strip is LIVE at 7:05 pm PT Tonight!


Join us in two hours for this week's live show, featuring interviews with daytime performers Ronn Lucas and Mac King! Lucas offers some really terrific clues as to how ventriloquism really works and talks about Bill Clinton seducing his wife, sort of. And Mac King explains why he's not green with envy over the success of childhood friend and fellow magician Lance Burton.

Plus, the trivia question, the poll, news from Vegas, your letters and the Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week.

See you later at LVROCKS.COM. Or be that way and wait till Thursday to download the podcast!