Stuff I Found Cleaning Out My Vegas Office

As you may have read in my acclaimed love-letter essay to Las Vegas and my life there in Las Vegas Weekly, I spent my final days in Nevada packing up a house and office stuffed to the gills with historical and peculiar Vegas stuff. There was a shelf in my office closet with at least a six-foot pile of press materials that proved akin to an archeological survey, newest to oldest layered upon one another like a geological formation.

The stuff I unearthed was Vegas in its most optimistic, boosterish form, such as the above document outlining the expansion plans for the airport. I also found this promo for CityCenter...

...which is technically true because, uh, the future always begins now. Duh.

I loved this relic...

...and made sure to put this piece of Frontier glass in a safe place.

I found this magnet from the late, great Dive at the Fashion Show Mall, where I used to take my little brother all the time for fries and to peer through the periscope that offered a Strip view. It was just last month that a listener of the podcast asked me something about this place:

I found these artifacts of the earlier days of our podcast...

We used to send CDs and thank-you notes to all our guests, and once we got this back from the amazing Paula Poundstone:

Here was one of the table centerpieces from the final performance of Siegfried & Roy, a fundraiser for Keep Memory Alive, the foundation that funds the Lou Ruvo Cleveland Clinic for Brain Health in Vegas:

I found it rather unsettling that I did not and still don't remember that I had actually been a patient in 2002 of the most infamous endoscopy doctor in America:

At the same time, I find it awesome beyond words that I found this, which my old R-J friend Natalie Patton sent to me in 2000 when I was about to depart for China:

And I have no idea whatsoever how I came into possession of this rather invaluable bit of family history...

...but I'm so glad I have it.

Win Stuff At The Wynn Mall Kiosk

I don't usually expound too much on our weekly Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week for "The Strip" because it's content that rewards the listener who makes it all the way to the end of the show. This one, though, was worth both TSTTotW status and a blogger attention.

In an early December interview with Steve Wynn, I asked him about a rumor I'd heard that there were Wynn people at the Fashion Show Mall across the street giving away discounts on stuff. He said he knew nothing of it and I forgot all about it until last week when I went to do some Xmas shopping.

My first clue was this:


Butterflies! Wynn butterflies! On the floor, on railings, here and there in a particular section of the Fashion Show. Plus arrows leading somewhere no doubt wonderful! I took the bait, followed the arrows and eventually I found...



A full-fledged Wynn-Encore kiosk located, evidently permanently, directly outside the entrance to Needless Mark-Up!

So what, pray tell, does one find at a Wynn-Encore kiosk? That's the interesting part. The attendants I chatted with said they can book rooms, restaurant reservations and show tickets. In fact, by mid-January, I was told, Nevada residents can book "Le Reve" and Danny Gans seats at a 2-for-1 rate that they won't get at the Wynn box office or at any of the discount ticket sellers. The mall desk also boasts stacks of "VIP" passes to get in free pre-midnight at the ultralounge Blush and, if you've got a vagina, at Tryst. See?


But the most fascinating thing about the kiosk is the CHANCE TO WIN FABULOUS PRIZES! If you walk up and ask for a contest card, they give you one of these things:

You peel back one tab -- the missing one above says "Join" -- and stand the chance of winning $10K in slot play. You have to redeem it at the Red Card desk inside the Wynn or Encore casinos and, presumably, if you're not a Red Card member, you have to sign up. But, still, it's free.

I asked for, and received, two of these cards. It was unclear whether I could have taken both prize winners to the casino or what other "Terms & Conditions" apply, as it says, since there's nothing anywhere on the cards explaining the "Terms & Conditions."

Of course, I couldn't bear the suspense of not knowing what I didn't win on the second card, even though that is a clear no-no for this contest. (Invalid if more than one tab is pulled, it warns.) So I threw away the $10 at the ice cream shop Sugar & Ice that I initially won on the card below to see what else I might've received...


Not bad, really. $10 at the deli, free admission for the Ferrari place, $25 slot play... those are actually decent things to win, really.

While I'm on this subject, I think it's terrific that you can make dinner reservations at Wynn or Encore from the Fashion Show Mall, but how is it possible that you can't do so for any of the Encore restaurants on... EncoreLasVegas.Com?!?!? After Miles and I discussed our dinner at Switch at Encore on this week's forthcoming podcast, I wanted to provide a link to the restaurant on the Encore website. Shockingly, I discovered there's nothing on the Encore website about ANY of the restaurants there, which is strange because that is the aspect of Encore that is being most promoted to journalists at this point.

See for yourself:


There's no tab for restaurants. And there's no info about Encore restaurants -- Switch, Sinatra, Society, Botero and Wazzuzu -- on the WynnLasVegas.Com site, either. Isn't that strange? I mean, they've got Danny Gans up there and he doesn't open until February!

A Very Vegas Bar Mitzvah

Norm had a fantastic piece today about something really, really terrifying that is fated to become the next reality series, "My Super Bar Mitzvah."

Get this: Some Vegas JAP's parents rented out the entire Fashion Show Mall last Saturday night. They hired actors to pretend that they're paparazzi as the 100 tween guests entered on a purple (?) carpet. The guest of honor, Erica Jill Fieldman (that's her above), got to direct a fashion show with professional models, family and friends walking the mall runway. There were confetti cannons, more than 300 guests total and "prominent designers." The child got to direct the fashion show, playing "the bitch fashion designer."

Read all about it here and note the most pathetic part of all: It was Erica Jill's mommy, Amy Fieldman, who apparently told all to Norm, including being proud of her "bitch" daughter. She brags about this outlandish indulgence! Her daughter now knows that over-the-top conspicuous consumption to the tune of $500,000 is A-OK in a world of such poverty and loss, surely a lesson her rabbi would be proud of. Heck, throw a nice party for $50,000 and take the kid to Kansas to have her see what $450,000 can do to put back together the shattered lives of those folks flattened by thoe tornadoes this spring.

Full disclosure: My own Bar Mitzvah back in 1985 was a black-tie, lavish affair at a Long Island country club that featured a crew of actors dressed in bizarre costumes to dance with the 200 guests (only about 15 of whom were my friends) and lead me through a weird dance number for the crowd. that's me to your right. Like the Fieldmans, my folks were caught up in this uniquely Jewish race to throw the best BM party among their peers.

That doesn't make it right. What it does is raise spoiled brats with an outsized sense of entitlement and no concept of charity. It took me years to discover that there were poor and disadvantaged people in the world and that I can help if I live less extravagantly.

I'm off this weekend to my niece's Bat Mitzvah in the Philly suburbs. I can assure you it will be a pleasant but unspectacular affair, except that it will be spectacular because we'll all be proud of my niece.