The Show is UP: Keeping Up With Joan

Somehow even with all the MJ tribute craziness, we managed to pull off a pretty good show with the irrepressible Joan Rivers. She's spunky, that one. No time for an AAC edition, though, and I've been advised NOT to split the feed in two, so I may abandon the AAC format so as to not annoy the non-iTunes peeps out there with burdensome extra download material. People really hate that, so I've learned. Anywho, right-click on the date below and save it to your computer. Or you can subscribe (it's free!) via this iTunes link or via this Zune link.

Aug. 27: Joan Rivers

She’s been mocked mercilessly for her voice, her red carpet antics and, of course, her plastic surgery. And yet at 76 years old, Joan Rivers is somehow still relevant, with a new show on TV Land called How’d You Get So Rich and stand-up shows this weekend and next at the Venetian. Rivers returns to our version of The Strip, too, to gab about her recent slam on all poker players on The Celebrity Apprentice, about how she’s more famous today than her late nemesis Johnny Carson and about which stars she thinks have – get this – had bad plastic surgery.

In Banter: A Strip zip but no Dinner in the Sky?, Hotel 32 thoughts, Top Chef Vegas and more.

Links to stuff discussed:

Joan Rivers’ website
Get tickets for Joan Rivers’ Venetian shows
Hear Steve and Erich on KNPR this week on the MJ show
The site for Vegas Podcast-a-Palooza II
Norm on Holly Madison on Hef’s ex
YouTube of Joan with Gwar
YouTube of Joan and Annie Duke
VegasHappensHere.Com on the 24/7 ABC stakeout of Conrad Murray’s home
See the video of the Bootleg Canyon Flightlines zipline where Steve gets stuck
Read about the prospect of an Excalibur zipline?
The site for Top Chef Vegas
The R-J’s story about the nixing of a Strip launch for the Dinner in the Sky
Steve’s column on Hotel 32 at Monte Carlo
Joan’s new TVLand show
Is Daniel Negreanu a racist? One blogger thinks so
VegasHappensHere.Com on the $2 lobster machine

People On Line At Box Office!!!

Erich and I told one another yesterday not to over-expect on the first day of ticket sales for "Las Vegas Celebrates The Music of Michael Jackson." All week, we kept telling ourselves we needed to make it to Saturday and we'd be on our way, onto the next phase of this crazy project that's only about three weeks old.

Well, tickets go on sale in 8 minutes. And even though they could have stayed home and bought their seats for our Aug. 29 benefit online, there is a line at the Palms box office as I type. (Buy yours here.) The box office manager Tweeted us this image:


That was about an hour before ticket sales began! And we're not even done yet firming up the total lineup! I mean, we added a cameo by Holly Madison this week, but these don't look like Holly fans, do they?

What's also funny is that we learned earlier today that Channel 13 was sending a camera crew to the Palms to film the start of ticket sales. This actually made us nervous. We assumed most people would buy their tickets online and there wouldn't be anything for Channel 13 to see and this might prove embarrassing for us.

All I can say is, Wow. This was an extremely stressful week and this response makes it all worth it.

Thanks to Dayna Roselli at Channel 8 for this report:



Alicia Jacobs broke the news on Thursday night with this:



And this is just gratuitous -- my co-producer singing Britney Spears at the Liberace Museum:



Memo to Erich: If something awful happens to Britney Spears and you decide to do one of these things, you're on your own. :-)