Introducing The Luxor Hostel-Casino!

You've gotta be kidding. I understand that times are tough. But I'm just not sure that pushing $9-a-night sardine-packed rooms is exactly the right way to go.

The funny thing is, I remember Luxor President Felix Rappaport, in explaining to me the approach to adding all the cool new attractions to the hotel (LAX, Company, Criss Angel Believe, Cathouse, etc), saying that the historic problem with the property was that people stayed there but didn't use the place. The word he used to describe such an enterprise? Dormitory. And yet, five-to-a-room starts to sound a bit like a dorm, too, doesn't it?

That said, I'm not sure this offer is an honest one anyway. What they're saying is that you can book the cheapest rooms available and not pay the surcharge of $30 for having more than two guests in a room.

Yet I've been through the calendar and I've tried and tried to get the lowest rate available when putting in that I want to have 4 people in the room. (It doesn't allow you to put in more than 4, despite the special offer.) Every time I search for a room that sleeps 4, the rooms I'm told are available are the larger, more expensive ones. See?


I tried over and over throughout the offer period, which runs from February 25 to November 30. You give it a go. Not one single time did the system offer me the least expensive room if I said I wanted to house four people. I thought maybe that was because they wouldn't let me have four or five people in a room that doesn't have two queen beds and that all the 2-queen rooms are more expensive, but that's not the case, either. The cheapest rooms can come with two queens.

So this promotion fails on two fronts. First, it makes the Luxor sound like a youth hostel. And two, the offer being promoted doesn't actually exist the way its being promoted.

[Hat tip to Matt in Boca for this one.]

New Episode Is UP

While we're waiting for the LVRocks.Com studio to return to functioning -- soon, we're promised! -- we're using this hiatus to post some interviews and conversations that never made it onto the show for whatever reason. This is with Ricci Martin, for instance, fell victim to the fact that I just had too many good interviews in the can at the time and so I didn't get this onto the show before Martin's concert in Vegas last year. I kept waiting for him to be back in town, but it hasn't happened yet.

Either way, Dino's kid offers up some great anecdotes about Sinatra and Old Vegas and some thoughts on the children of celebrities.

Download it by right-clicking here or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here.

Transgender Regret

Here's my latest from USA Today, a look in today's paper at the struggles of transgender people who, for various reasons, change their minds about their transitions. I'm astonished -- but not surprised -- by the cruel comments (not aimed at me) in the reaction section. It's a very tricky and complicated subject, and I've never quite understood why so many people must have such simplistic, compassionless views of complex matters.

Will You NOT Come To Vegas...

...if it costs you 3 percent more per room night?

The Nevada Assembly today by a 35-7 passed a room-tax increase of 3 percent for Washoe and Clark counties. The move is supposed to raise $233 million for the cash-strapped state.

Lots of Republicans voted in support and even Gov. Jim Gibbons, a read-my-lips kinda guy himself, has included the money in his budget. But some of the seven who voted against it think this will further doom the tourism industry. To wit, the AP reported:

"Our tourism-based economy here in Nevada is hemorrhaging jobs," said one of the GOP opponents, Assemblyman Ty Cobb of Reno. "I think it's going to hurt rather than help."

Look for the R-J editorial board tomorrow to praise the seven dissenters and predict doom. But I ask you, since so many of you readers here are tourists: Would you really not come here if your $100 room cost $3 more?

Just wondering. The State Senate still has to vote on this.

Amateur Three Minutes Runs Amok!

I swear I was going to leave this be for now, I really was. I'd had my fun and now it was time give the fine folks at RJTV a fighting chance to refine their product. But then I got a note from a prominent journalist urging me to take a look at today's edition of the daily news program.

So I did. And I'll say right now that it's difficult to know what part of this mess someone might find bizarre and blogworthy.

As I started watching, I wondered if my attention was being drawn to the fact that on RJTV, over-the-shoulder graphics get placed ON Nate Tannenbaum's shoulder by people unclear on the concept. You know, like this:


Not great, but hardly the worst sin. I mean, it's not like anyone's ever done this sort of programming before anywhere ever, right? Give them a break! They're inventing a wheel here. It takes practice!

So I kept watching. A few moments later, I was sure I had unearthed the priceless nugget to which I had been led when accused child rapist Chester Stiles, uh, ate Nate. Here's a digital flipbook, if you will:


Poor Nate! And poor Dude Who Didn't Know How Stupid That Looked And Published It On The Website Of A Professional Newspaper. Well, not poor DWDKHSTLaPIotWoaPN. He's got a job, as baffling as that may seem.

But ultimately, I really don't think that's why I was pointed to this thing today. I'm fairly certain my friend wanted me to see the R-J's publisher, Sherm Frederick, popping into the studio direct from the golf course and perhaps in need of a stronger SPF product.


Sherm was there to offer up a profound little life lesson: Capitalism = Good. The segment is not labeled as opinion, but that's probably DWDKHSTLaPIotWoaPN's fault anyway. The publisher, whom I assume has given more than a few public speeches in his time, nonetheless delivers his lines like that Boom Goes The Dynamite kid, leading us into a lengthy 30-year-old clip of economist Milton Friedman telling Phil Donahue that greed is good. Then it's back to Sherm to conclude -- and this is all he says before it's time for Yesterday's Weather Forecast Today -- "Well, here we are pondering these same issues in 2009." Sure we are if you're the R-J's editorial board and you believe any advocacy whatsoever on behalf of government intervention in a devastated economy is the equivalent of giving up altogether on capitalism. To the rational people, though, these matters are a little less black and white.

Mostly, though, I'm horrified by what this actually shows us. RJTV is not intended to inform, it is intended to become a soap box for a vainglorious newspaper publisher! Next week, maybe he'll condescend to explain why murder is bad, no matter what that growing legion of pro-murder activists say!

Evidently there just isn't enough news to smear all over ol' Nate's face.

Boyd Buying Station?!?

I don't understand. Boyd's stock is at $3.40 a share. They've halted construction on Echelon. And now they've sent a "non-binding preliminary indication of interest" indicating they want to buy a whole bunch of Station Casinos properties for $950 million in cash? The letter says Boyd has $2 billion in liquidity.

It's times like these I'm glad I'm not on the Vegas Gang podcast. I'm not qualified.

Vdara, Aria Start Taking Reservations

And so it begins. MGM Mirage today unleashed fully operational websites for Vdara, which opens Oct. 1, and Aria, which opens Dec. 16, two of the hotel-related components of CityCenter. Next to come online should be the Mandarin Oriental, which is supposed to also open in December.

At the hotel-condo Vdara, the smallest suites -- and they're all called "suites" even though it appears there's only one room, borrowing from the fraud that the Venetian started -- are 582 square feet, have "fully equipped gourmet kitchens" and start at $214 pre-taxed on that opening evening. For $40 more, they offer "pool view" "lake view" rooms, which makes me wonder (a) what kind of views you get from the other basic suites are ("interstate view" doesn't have a ring to it?) and (b) whether there'll be a TV channel where you can pipe in the Bellagio Fountains music when the show's on. Right now, there's no price difference between a lake view and non-lake view room. Either way, this is what you get:


Here's what they show for a rendering of the Vdara suite, which goes for $315 on opening night and boasts 809 square feet:


It's an odd image inasmuch as there's some sort of red MGM Mirage sign in the window reflection. I'm at a loss to figure out what the artist was trying to say there. Subliminal marketing?

I'm also trying to figure out what's going on in this bathroom shot from the 1,316-square-foot Two-Bedroom Penthouse. (Prices not online, booking not permitted via web.) It looks like those are windows behind the sinks, so what's a shower doing out there suspended in mid-air?



See? There it is again in this photo for the $400, 836-square-foot Panoramic Suite -- windows over the sink. Where do I look when I'm shaving if there's no mirror there? Odd, right?


Here's what the two-story, one-bedroom 948-square-foot Penthouse Suite will look like. If it's two stories and less than 1,000 square feet, that actually strikes me as sort of cramped. But I like look.


The real steal seems to me to be the $149 rates currently available for the night of Dec. 16. If the rest of CityCenter really does open that night, that's going to be an incredible rate to be at the center of all the action.

Also, you can't book at Aria for Dec. 16, at least not yet. The hotel-casino's site only allows you to start booking for Dec. 17. At that point, this is what the basic 520-square-foot room, now priced at $299, looks like:


I am most curious about the Sky Suites and SkyVillas, clearly Aria's version of the SkyLofts at MGM Grand. Here's the image they've got available now...


...and the description:

An alternative-fuel limousine whisks you from the airport to an exclusive arrival under a private porte cochere. Immediately, you are escorted into a separate lobby for your private check-in. Then, after enjoying a drink and hors d'oeuvres in the exclusive ARIA Sky Suites lounge, a private elevator takes you to one-of-a-kind accommodations with custom furnishings, unparalleled amenities, and soaring floor-to-ceiling windows providing dramatic views of the world's most famous skyline.

Nice. Now, let's just hope there's someone with some money to spend on this stuff by the time these places are scheduled to open.