The Strip is LIVE tonight w/ Charlie Palmer & Hal Sparks

We are live again tonight on this UStream channel, starting at 7:30 p.m. PT this time so we can play both interviews before Miles gets home for the proper portions of the show.

This week, we visit once more with Charlie Palmer, who used this program once upon a time to reveal a WORLD EXCLUSIVE about plans to build a Vegas hotel. Last week, it was announced he'll be inducted into the American Gaming Association's Hall of Fame, so we talked about that, why he never expanded beyond his two Vegas restaurants, what's next for him in New York now that his Grand Central Station eatery is closed and why the e-winebook idea he pioneered at Aureole hasn't really spread as far and wide as expected.

We also have an interview with the very funny comic and former "Talk Soup" and "Queer As Folk" star Hal Sparks, who talks about having his show interrupted by Motley Crue rocker Vince Neil's "assault" on ex-girlfriend and ex-TV reporter Alicia Jacobs at the Hilton in March. We'll play a Vince-related excerpt of the Hal Sparks chat during the main show, then issue the whole thing as a Strip Extra to keep the main episode from becoming too long.

So start by playing the Hal Sparks conversation at about 7:30 p.m., followed by the Charlie Palmer interview, followed by the proper show when Miles arrives from work to do the proper show parts.

Just a tip: As the weeks tick down, the live show gets weirder and weirder. Normally, I end up with about 1-3 minutes of outtakes, but it's been more like 10 over the past few weeks. Miles can't seem to help himself, and it's really funny stuff. So come on down for the live show while you can!

Or, of course, the podcast version will be out later this week. And soon I will pull together our final outtakes show, too. Sigh. A lot of "last" this and "final" thats going on around here. Yikes.

Finally, if you're unclear who Hal Sparks is, check out these excerpts of his 2010 Showtime special, "Charmageddon":

Rich Little's Unfunny Joke, Redux

A reader who attended Rich Little's stand-up performance at The Cannery in North Las Vegas on Saturday night reports that the impressionist did his little Barney Frank joke again in a slightly different configuration than the one that cracked up the Nevada Republican Party convention on Friday. An excerpt of the account:

"He introduced a woman in the audience who he said was the best female impersonator besides for Barney Frank. I almost yelled that this was the Cannery, not Green Valley Ranch where he entertained last night."

The reader also noted that Little's best impression was of Andy Rooney but that the jokes themselves were lifted verbatim from Steven Wright, whom the reader said he has seen twice at the Orleans in recent years. The act was laden with anti-Obama, Carter and Reid gags, which is fine if they had been funny. Evidently, not so much.

Rich Little is an interesting figure because he was called upon in 2007 to perform at the White House Correspondents Dinner the year after Steven Colbert's scorcher embarrassed President Bush. The reviews were brutal but he didn't do much current-event political humor then.

I'm not one to write off someone just because they're old or they've been out of the public eye for a while. In fact, some of the most interesting interviews come from talking to such people. But it seems like Little wants to make himself relevant again by stealing material, resorting to incredibly simplistic homophobic humor and polarizing audiences who aren't expecting to be polarized. If you go to Dennis Miller or Bill Maher, you know what you're getting. Go to Rich Little and you're probably looking for a little nostalgia.

Little evidently was aware his act wasn't doing well last night, quipping, "If you bomb at the Cannery, does that mean you've been canned?" Ba-dum-dum.

My reader said that Little again noted that he's become a U.S. citizen so he could vote Republican. CityLife Steve Sebelius' clever Twitter zinger on that topic could teach Little a thing or two about political humor: "Recently naturalized Little says he can vote GOP. He's got prejudice down."

Is Brad Garrett REALLY at the Trop?

That's a rhetorical question, of course. I know the "Everybody Loves Raymond" star is headlining his own comedy club at the Tropicana because there's a billboard in front of the property and not just the compliant media but even credible, discriminating entertainment observers have raved about it.

But tonight I'm heading over to check it out for myself, and I needed to know what time the shows start. So, because I'm just that kooky, I went to the Tropicana's website. And here's the front page as I found it:


Huh. No Robbie Barone here. Let's try the "Nightlife & Entertainment" tab, shall we?


Not there, neither. Hey! Let's try that "VIEW SHOWS" tab there.


Nada. I know! I'll try the "Calendar of Events" link on the Nightlife & Entertainment tab!


Sigh. Nope.

As it happens, a couple minutes after I posted this, for whatever reason, the site's splash page started to rotate four images. It wasn't doing that earlier, I swear. And the fourth splash page is this:


So for a moment I felt a little dumb for picking on them. Except then I tried to click on the image, to go somewhere -- anywhere! -- for more information. And there's no place to go. There's no place to buy tickets. The rest of this post remained what you would find if you tried what I tried.

A good tip for selling stuff is giving people a way to buy it.

That's embarrassing. As the kids say, OMFG, WTF? The last time I saw a property treat one of its marquee show offerings like thi, it was Planet Hollywood vis-a-vis the Steve Wyrick show and we all know how that turned out.

I did finally find the show times. It's 8 p.m. tonight. I Googled "Brad Garrett Tropicana" and the first link was to a three-week old Trop press release. It was in there somewhere. I'm looking forward to the show, truly. And I'm hoping the Trop's website isn't the only funny joke.