Casino Connection Nevada

Strip Teast

Each month, Casino Connection presents a column of news, opinions and rumors heard on the Strip by award-winning journalist Steve Friess, co-host of the celebrity podcast, The Strip, and daily blog, TheStripPodcast.Blogspot.Com. Friess’ irreverent guidebook, Gay Vegas, is out in July from Huntington Press.

by Steve Friess

Clint Holmes versus the Critics
I adore Clint Holmes. He’s a terrific entertainer and a nice guy. I’ve even recommended his old Harrah’s Las Vegas show in a big L.A. Times piece I did a couple years ago. But when he confronted one of the few truly honest theater critics in a city full of bought-and-paid-for hacks over a scathing assessment of Clint’s autobiographical musical, Just Another Man, he really screwed up. The show had a three-week run at UNLV in June in an effort to see how it works on stage before, perhaps, moving it on to London or Broadway.

Critic Anthony Del Valle of the Review-Journal gave it a D+ under the headline “Holmes’ ‘Just Another Man’ not legitimate theater.” Clint was understandably bummed, but then he angrily stomped up to Del Valle a few weeks later and said, “Do you have any idea what it’s like to work hard for years with people you love and then be told by a critic that all your effort is only worth a D+?”

Del Valle, struck silent by the weirdness of it all, said Clint continued: “We need encouragement. And you know we get standing ovations every night.”

Now, standing ovations are a dime a dozen in undiscriminating Vegas. And it’s not a critic’s job to either take into account audience reaction or to provide encouragement for playwrights. His job is to render his honest view to his readers, who have paid for just that. And so few do so in Vegas, it clearly confused Clint.

Still, a seasoned pro like Clint had such a thin-skinned reaction. I shudder to wonder how he may respond if his show does make it to London or New York or another entertainment capital where Clint hasn’t built up all the goodwill he’s earned in Las Vegas. How will he deal when dozens of Del Valles render honest assessments of it, uninterested in how earnest or kind a person he may be?

More WHHSH Shame
Through my blog, I still keep getting interesting misuses and abuses of the more tired phrase in Vegas history, “What Happens Here Stays Here.” But I was stunned to find this headline out front on the Las Vegas Review Journal, a paper that should know better, on June 2: “What Happens In Vegas Is Now On Google.” Not only is it a lousy, clichéd headline that could probably apply to anything that’s on the Internet about Las Vegas (or any other place, frankly), but it’s hardly even germane to the story, which once you read it you’ll agree was taken in a very weird direction anyway.

The writer, the normally excellent transportation columnist Omar Sofradzija, did a piece on the fact that Google now offers a street-level photo tour of much of the Las Vegas Strip, one of five cities they’ve used to roll out their Street View thing. Omar’s sin here was approaching the story as though it had anything at all to do with privacy. The Google folks took snapshots of public places at some point in time. Sofradzija aptly notes some of these shots must be at least eight months old because they show the still-standing Stardust marquee. Even though it’s not like they’ve got cameras trained on the public spaces of Vegas on an ongoing basis, the story’s premise is largely (hence the ill-advised headline, which probably was not written by Sofradzija) an examination of whether the site is a violation of people’s expectations of privacy to put these pictures online. Further down, it’s noted as well that license plates and most faces are largely blurry and unreadable anyhow.

One way you know you don’t have such a story is when you can’t even get the ACLU excited about it. Their lawyer is quoted saying it’s fine by them. So we have a technology story that the always paranoid R-J opted to approach as an Oh-my-God-Big-Brother-is-watching-and-here’s-more-proof! screed. And we have a ridiculous, hack-written headline that, I suppose, plays up that notion.

The Bastard Children of Harrah’s
Recently I asked Harrah’s Vice President Jan Jones why the Imperial Palace and Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall and Saloon (nee Barbary Coast) are not present on the Harrah’s website or integrated into the Total Rewards program, the company’s groundbreaking frequent-players club. Jones was surprisingly frank: “If you owned Imperial Palace, would you want it in your rewards club?” Ouch.

She told me that they bought both properties for their land—no surprise there—and that the two hotels will limp along in their purgatory status for at least another year before, more likely than not, perishing from this earth.

For one thing, she said, the cost of integrating those properties into the system would be too much to bother. And the company is likely to announce whatever its Big Idea is for all of that property from Bill’s to Harrah’s next summer, after the LBO is completed. One challenge, she said, is how to do something ambitious while taking properties—the IP, Bill’s and probably Harrah’s—off-line. It sounds like Flamingo Las Vegas is less likely to meet an implosion rig.

She said the IP and Bill’s do produce modest profits for the company. But I suspect that it’s shutting down Harrah’s that would be the bigger cash-flow problem. Should be interesting since, despite their enormous status in Vegas, Harrah’s has never built a single building in Las Vegas. Everything they have has been acquired.

Bits and Pieces……
In my July 12 chat with Donny Osmond, he professed a hope that within the next five years he might star in a permanent headliner gig on the Strip in Las Vegas…… I accidentally stumbled upon the Marriott Grand Chateau website to discover this very odd announcement: “The resort will be under construction with an estimated completion date of 2016. Construction of the second tower has begun. Construction hours will range from 4:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Although noise, dust, debris and views of construction will be prevalent and somewhat severe at times, the amenities and facilities of our completed tower will be fully operational. Features and amenities are subject to change.” That’s gotta suck.