The Wynns make it official

It's official. The Wynns filed their divorce petition in Clark County District Court today. KLAS-TV says Steve Wynn filed it, but it's unclear how they could know if the case is sealed. Which it is, per Nevada law allowing either party in a divorce to seal the case. So there'll be no juicy details to share, much to the tabloid media's great disappointment. No matter, they'll probably just make it up anyway!

The Wynns were married in 1963, divorced in 1986 and remarried in 1991. Last month, Elaine Wynn told me she was "doing just great."

From The NOT-Only-In-Vegas Files

[UPDATE: I changed the headline on this item because evidently it's not unique to here after all. Sorry I don't watch local TV in Knoxville! -sf]


We're running a poll right now asking you for what nonexistent Vegas attraction you'd pay to do. And along comes something that easily could've been on the list had I imagined it. Dave McKee at LasVegasAdvisor.Com reports in his news column today that, for a few hundred bucks, you can get in the operator's seat of a Caterpillar excavator!

The front of the website PlayWithOurCats.Com says you can do a half-day for $249 but the booking section indicates a 90-minute experience costs $350 and a full day is $700. Either way, what a great idea!

Here's part of their sales pitch:

At the Big Dig! Adventure, you can operate an excavator or a bulldozer by yourself on our 10-acre playground. No experience or prior training is necessary, we’ll teach you everything you need to know, and we’ll be right there with radios to help you be a safe and successful operator on your first day. If you are bored with golf, sunburned from the pool, and tired of paying the one-armed bandits, get away for a few hours and make a childhood dream come true in our enormous, climate controlled Earth-moving Machines.

I love it. Brilliant. If only Boyd had thought of this! They could have had tourists PAYING to help them complete Echelon. The only thing I don't get is the air-conditioned cabs. That hardly seems like a realistic adventure.

Anyone ever heard of such an attraction elsewhere?

OMG! Great Economic News From Vegas!

Hahahaha....just funnin' ya. What, you think it's 2007 or something?

The January year-over-year data is out from the LVCVA and I'm not going to bother you with the depressing details. That, after all, is the Review-Journal's job. All I'll say is that I searched for a silver lining and the best I could come up with is that convention attendance in Laughlin was up a whopping 14.6 percent. God knows -- or cares -- why. If spending time with crappy economic stats is your idea of a thrill, then go read the LVCVA's report for yourself.

If you're delusional, you might take comfort in February real estate data, which showed a 108 percent rise in single-home sales in Las Vegas versus February 2008. Sounds great until you realize that the median value of those homes fell almost 37 percent in the same period.

All that said, the stock market was kind to Vegas today. Heck, MGM Mirage even hit $3 a share for a moment and closed up 23.18 percent at $2.87. Wynn Resorts did better, though, rising 25.4 percent, to $19.50. Woo hoo. Happy days are here again!

[Photo credit: Make Things Interesting]

Exclusive: Siegfried & Roy's Canceled Third Trick

The part of the Siegfried & Roy TV special on ABC on Friday that nagged at me most was anchor Elizabeth Vargas' repeated reference to multiple animals backstage at the Bellagio on Feb. 28. Both in person and on the televised version of the brief farewell performance, audiences saw just one tiger. We were later told that tiger was Montecore, the animal that attacked Roy Horn on stage and ended his career on Oct. 3, 2003.

I mentioned this in my late Friday post about the "20/20" show and the Review-Journal's Norm Clarke also baffled over this in his Sunday column when he wrote: "Vargas and Siegfried both mentioned that the rehearsals involved "tigers," not a tiger. I had mentioned on my Web site a few hours after the event that a spy said two tigers were involved in rehearsals. Did somebody decide a two-cat act was too risky? Why?"

Now it can be told. And the truth may be far less interesting than what we imagined.

There was, indeed, a planned third act, very reputable sources -- including a former S&R cast member who helped out -- tell me. And there were not just other tigers but also white lions backstage at the Bellagio. But the trick was called off on Saturday because of a mechanical problem that had nothing to do with Roy or his condition.

The original plan included three tricks. The first was the part where Siegfried emerges from the fiery cauldron, the second was when Siegfried and the white tiger switched places in glass boxes. After that part, Siegfried and Roy let out Montecore, took off their masks and soaked up the adulation of the audience.

Had all gone as planned, though, the duo was to have come down from the platform (where they stand in the photo above) and done a third trick involving the other animals. Then, at center stage closer to the audience, they would have revealed themselves and waved to the audience.

Unfortunately, the mechanical lift built into the platform where they stood after the second trick did not work during two auditions on Saturday. Rather than risk it failing during the show itself, they aborted it altogether.

See? That wasn't so bad. But, of course, S&R's folks won't talk about about it. I received a terse statement in response to an inquiry about this that reads: "There's nothing to add or comment on regarding their performance. They got to say goodbye on their terms and were overwhelmed by the response from those in the audience and the millions who watched the 20/20 Special on ABC."

Just another example, I suppose, of the mistrust bred by S&R's folks by the stonewalling and misinformation over the past five years. Is there some shame to having to cancel part of a performance? Does it sully what they actually did or their legacy? Of course not. Then why the bunker mentality? Like so much else involved in this , I guess we'll never know.

By the by, S&R proved ratings gold for ABC. The network tied for first on the 9 p.m. hour. I've asked whether the "20/20" special resulted in a surge in traffic and donations to KeepMemoryAlive.org, the web home of Cleveland Clinic Ruvo Center for Brain Health that was the beneficiary of the Bellagio fundraiser where S&R appeared. If I find out, I shall onpass.

New episode of "The Strip" coming...

...by tomorrow morning. And perhaps we'll play it on LVRocks.Com tomorrow night and have a live chat. But no live chat tonight. I do know, however, that the LVRocks.Com studio is coming together and phone lines are being put in, so we should be back in our normal routine very very very soon!!!

Exclusive: "A Bronx Tale" May Come To Vegas

In what would be a completely unprecedented -- and likely very risky -- move, the producers of the Broadway one-man play "A Bronx Tale" say they're in talks with a Strip hotel-casino for a run of the show starting this fall.

If it comes to pass, this would be the first time that I can think of that a non-musical production from the Great White Way (or anywhere else for that matter) migrated to Las Vegas.

"We are currently working out a deal with a major Strip property to come in for a limited run as the idea would be to return a number of times during the year for special engagements," wrote producer Trent Othick in an email to me. "We also are closing a deal with another major casino corporation to play in Atlantic City during the summer."

The Vegas-based Othick, whose Playbill bio is online, did not disclose which properties in either city because the deals aren't done yet but he did say they're looking at a showroom of fewer than 1,000 seats. I've got a hunch, then, that they're looking at the Las Vegas Hilton. Just a gut instinct based on the fact that the Hilton has been a friendly environs to such unlikely imports as "Menopause: The Musical" and they're always looking for something to fill in the gaps when Manilow's off.

"A Bronx Tale," a stage version of the 1993 film starring and directed by Robert DeNiro, has been on a national tour since it ended a four-month run at the Walter Kerr Theater in New York where it got largely rave reviews. The piece was originally a play written and performed in 1989 by Academy Award nominee Chazz Palminteri, who is again enacting his show. It revolves around a tug-of-war for a New York boy's soul between his honest parents and the Mafia in the 1960s. Palminteri was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for Woody Allen's "Bullets Over Broadway" and also appeared in "The Usual Suspects" and "Mulholland Falls." Also, he looks a lot like Richard Nixon.

As grim as that storyline sounds and as serious a drama as the film (which grossed only $17.3 million) was, Othick insisted that the stage production "moves fast, has a star, has a star title with a history and is very funny."

On its face, I find it hard to imagine this sort of business having much of a life in Vegas, where show-goers aren't known for taking an interest in intimate -- or even comedic -- theater. Othick insists that the show, which is able to sell out 1,000 seats a night in Tucson, can do at least as well in Vegas because of the gambling and mob themes. Plus, they're only going to commit to a limited run here, so "we are not going to bite off more than we can chew."

"You have to see the show first to see what I am talking about, which is what happened with the casino companies we are talking to," Othick wrote. "They said the same thing about Vegas and then saw the show and said 'This is different.' "

It will be interesting to see.

Some Sunday Media Musings

(UPDATE: It was brought to my attention that Jon Ralston actually broke the payments-to-witnesses story on the Feb. 13 episode of his LV1 program, Face To Face.)

There wasn't a whole lot of interest to out-of-towners in the Sunday newspapers, although the piece by the Review-Journal's Carri Geer Thevenot on prosecutors paying crack-addled defendants for their questionable testimony was so surprising that I may be able to build upon it for a piece of my own.

That is, after all, how my piece in today's New York Times on the national debate over shifting from a gas tax to a road-usage tax came about, because I'd caught a small piece in the Las Vegas Sun in January about a study planned for Reno. A little scratching into the matter made me realize that this was actually a massive potential story and, as luck would have it, President Obama even weighed in while I worked on it.

I really enjoyed Jennifer Robison's Nevadan At Work Q-and-A with the chief pilot of the M Resort blimp. Often these Q-and-As are dry, but this fellow, Terry Dillard, played along and provided some really fun insight into what it's like to fly one of these things. A good read. (Also a good read is Norm Clarke's excerpting of this blog regarding Montecore and the 20/20 special. Thanks!)

More puzzling from the same business page as Robison's piece was Howard Stutz's summary of what's happening at MGM Mirage. I don't pretend to be an expert on this, but this is the second or third time where I've wondered if he -- or I -- misunderstand the term "a going concern."

Stutz wrote today: "Last week, MGM Mirage told investors it might be labeled a 'going concern' by auditors and could default on $13.5 billion in debt."

My understanding of a "going concern" was that it was a phrase that is meant to say that a company is still perfectly functional. In fact, Stutz's boss, Sherm Frederick, used the phrase recently in an interview with the media trade publication Editor & Publisher. To wit, the passage went: Frederick, meanwhile, says that the R-J is doing fine financially even though he wouldn't put a number to it, citing that the company is private. "Let me put it this way, we are still a going concern," he laughs.

From what I can see from other clips in the financial press, MGM Mirage said it may have its auditors indicate that it might cease to be a going concern. That is, if it IS a going concern, it continues to operate normally. If not, the whole house of cards collapses. That's what's freaking out investors.

The website InvestorWords.Com seems to back that up with this definition for the term: "The idea that a company will continue to operate indefinitely, and will not go out of business and liquidate its assets. For this to happen, the company must be able to generate and/or raise enough resources to stay operational." Now, I'd love nothing more than to discover Frederick didn't know what the term meant and was actually admitting he'd run the business into the ground. But I doubt that.

One last thing I just noticed. Someone named Hunter (Hillegas from RateVegas.Com, perhaps?) tried to correct Stutz on this point in the comments section of a March 6th piece. Hunter wrote on 3/6 at about 9 a.m.:

The term 'going concern' means that they believe they will remain functioning as a normal business entity. The filing indicated there was a possibility they may *NOT* be a 'going concern', which means the auditors made them put in language indicating they might have to go bankrupt. The article gets it backwards above.

Anyone out there who knows more about these things care to weigh in?