Aria Wrap Coming Apart At The Seams?

How long has this thing been up? A week? LOOK AT IT!


These were shot by Amy from Panorama Towers tonight. She didn't notice it this morning, so she thinks it might be intentional or that they're working on fixing something. But I just can't figure out how that could be; if they were peeling some of it off, would they send a crew out there to just pull at corners and leave them hanging?


What's interesting is that when I was at the Panorama condo on Monday, there was a chunk of the H that was missing. That's been fixed. So my hunch is that they've had trouble applying this wrap because the building surface isn't smooth. Part of the reason they got LEED Gold Certification for Aria was that the windows are designed with a small overhang above it that reduced the amount of sunlight gets into the rooms and, thus, reduced the A/C usage.

Here's another theory: Aria is uncomfortable with this desecration and humiliation as our dogs are when Miles tries to put a sweaters on them. The soul of the building is protesting, Mr. Murren. Set it free!

By the way, it occurs to me that MGM Resorts would've been wiser to wrap Vdara instead. It's not as prestigious a property, it actually faces south so as to face to California-to-Vegas-bound cars and -- added bonus! -- it could mitigate the sun glare from the Death Ray. And now there's another reason: The wrap would probably stick better.

The Show is UP: Pete Rose

Alrighty, people. The latest show is up. Actually, it's been up since late Saturday, as iTunes or Zune subscribers knew. Click on the date below to get it to play or right-click on it to download it to listen at your leisure. Enjoy. -sf

Oct. 3: A Sweeter, Thorn-Free Rose
SPECIAL REISSUE: Pete Rose's bitter 2007 appearance

Three years ago, Pete Rose was still pretty bitter when he spoke to Steve about his banishment from baseball and the inequity that he’s still not eligible for the Hall of Fame while the villains of baseball’s steroid era are. But these days Rose has mellowed and, as you hear, is humble and contrite about his past misdeeds as well as patient for the day when he might be reinstated. This interview was recorded in early September before Rose was honored for the 25th anniversary of breaking the all-time hit record, and he is clearly excited about that moment. He continues to sign autographs for pay 15 days a month at the Field of Dreams at the Forum Shops.

In Banter: Vdara death ray mania, F-bleau's fire sale, Rod Stewart, Wicked and EXPOSE!!! are coming, Miles hearts CityCenter, RIP the spunky Tony Curtis and more.

Links to stuff discussed:

Pete Rose’s site and schedule at Field of Dreams
The initial RJ, AOL, Today and ABC stories on the Vdara Death Ray story
The R-J and Sun’s follow-ups on Vdara Death Ray
The Vdara Death Ray in Bluff The Listener on “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”
A picture of the Bellagio’s boring Conservatory for the fall
Stiffs & Georges on whether the death ray will sink Bobby Baldwin at MGM
Steve’s Las Vegas Weekly column on how much Miles’ family liked CityCenter
Tony Curtis Central, including links to our old shows and Steve's 2008 LVW column
Steve's AOL News obit about Tony Curtis
Hear the spunky part from Tony Curtis once again [NSFW]
Yelp! On Julian Serrano and Todd English PUB
Rod Stewart is at the Colosseum, years after his Harrah’s lawsuit
Expose is playing the Henderson Pavilion for $10 a person
The R-J’s report on the Wicked preview event, plus a Twitpic that Steve took
The Smith Center For the Performing Arts’ site
VegasTripping.Com on the F’bleau fire sale
Angel Management Group takes over Pure
Soon-to-open Cosmopolitan names its nightclub and is hiring 5,000 people
The VegasQuiz app from the fine folks at RateVegas

Dear Righthaven...

Quit suing small chump. The Vdara Death Ray story has provided you a chance to go after HUGE fish. The list of publications that have ripped off Mike Johnson's sci-fi-esque graphic of the sun hitting the hotel and refracting onto the pool deck grows every day, and most of those offenders have much, much deeper pockets than the hapless schmucks you've been going after.

Here, I'll start a list for ya!

• The Daily Mail
• RawVegas.TV
• Gizmodo.Com
• JustMeans.Com
• Switched
• i09.com
• The Atlantic Wire
• Gawker
• HospitalityNet.Org

Now, I'm sure Righthaven CEO Steven Gibson's super-secret, proprietary method of finding offenders (translation: Google searches) have carried this process this far, but I'm highly doubting that it'll pick up on reuses of copyrighted artwork. So I'm here to help.

P.S. Congrats, R-J, for proving just how seriously you take copyright theft. Copyrighting is so important that, as your top lawyer Mark Hinueber told a Society of Professional Journalists gathering, it is nearly fundamental to the very foundation of the American way of life. But, on the other hand, someone who steals from you? She ought to be a United States senator! Cognitive dissonance much?

(Hat tip re: Daily Mail to Mark Wike)

Vdara Death Ray in CHINESE anime!

[Update: Oops. It's not Japanese, it's Chinese. Wasn't paying attention. Shame. Now stop writing to correct me. -sf]

OK, it's been a pretty heady week for lil ole Vdara and its DEATH RAY. And now this:

Something tells me the geniuses who make these funny vids aren't planning to cover, uh, the Reid-Angle race any time soon. Although I'd give a lot to see Sharron Angle animated as she allegedly hates on the autistic or whatever and Harry Reid telling Kirsten Gillibrand she's so hot in Japanese. It is ripe, but I suspect Christine O'D0nnell's witching past might be even better.

Meanwhile, also in DEATH RAY news, as I predicted, "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" used the item on this week's show. Hat tip to Dave Lifton for pointing it out first, and you can hear just that six-minute segment by right-clicking here. Funny stuff, although the joke's been told so many times this week it actually feels stale. Had Mo Rocca been on the show this week, he might have pulled off a line like this classic from the Twitter feed of @Misadventurer:


I love how some competitors are taking advantage:


Oh, and right after I wondered on this blog (a) why the R-J hadn't followed up on their own scoop, (b) why the Sun hadn't done anything at all and (c) why nobody else locally had written anything on the absurd amount of press coverage devoted to this, the R-J and the Sun both chimed in with...pieces on the absurd amount of press coverage devoted to this. Of course, neither of them referenced the AOL News piece that was the first national follow-up and which actually advanced the story beyond Joan Whitely's original, but that's to be expected from the insecure souls who run our version of the MSM.

That's OK. We sorta got the Sun back over at AOL with this possibly misleading headline:

Today Show, Etc., on Vdara Death Ray

Is this an important story? No. Is it fascinating and amusing and bizarre? You betcha.

Enough so, in fact, that Today had me at Miles' station late yesterday filming this bit. As I understand it, they were moving quickly so NBC could have its version done and out before CNN. Yes, folks, CNN. God I hope that means Jeanne Moos. That would be killer.

ABC posted a death ray story today, too, following up on my AOL News piece that showed the documentation that MGM Resorts knew about the solar convergence problem in 2008:

By the way, the Today Show's graphic was much more accurate, if not nearly as sensational, as the R-J's.


But I do have some hot questions:

* Why hasn't the R-J's Joan Whitely followed up yet on what is clearly the biggest, most widely disseminated story of her career? Why hasn't she done more of the MGM-knew-in-2008 story? You'd think if nothing else they'd do a media story about how much play this thing has gotten, no?

* Why haven't the local TV stations or the Las Vegas Sun followed, given the enormous national interest?

* Will this be a "bluff the listener" question or a "lightning fill-in-the-blanks" question on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me?"

* Would this have taken off in the pop culture and mainstream media without the term "death ray"? And where can go to tip the pool attendants who dubbed it such?