The jig is up, folks. We've been discovered. Time magazine, renowned for its crack investigative journalism, has outed our secret city. Its cover this week: "It's Vegas, Baby!" The story, by resident wit-meister Joel Stein, declares that "in a return to its Rat Pack roots, Vegas booms with a profitable mix of sin and sensation. An inside look at how the party got so hot." His lead sentence: "My stomach hurts."
OK. We're hooked. Tell us more, you scintillating scribe, you.
"This New Vegas, this stomach-churning Vegas, was built from a scrap heap of roller coasters. ... Vegas has reinvented itself again, returning to vice but sanitizing it by creating the biggest, nicest place to sin ever imagined, a Sodom and Gomorrah without the guilt. People come to Vegas not to do what they can't do at home, but to do it bigger and brassier. The town's logo, 'What happens here, stays here,' is complete camp. What happens in Vegas, in fact, is bragged about at home for months afterward."
Finally, an incisive, revolutionary story about Las Vegas that looks beyond the merely obvious to rip the lid off the readily apparent.
It probably won't discourage hotties from loitering at the Palms, ruin the casino's 50-50 local/tourist mix or affect its owner's game with the ladies, but George Maloof inches perilously close to smiting the hands that feed him, telling Time that if you want to find love in Vegas, look elsewhere: "You can't have a real relationship here. Not just romantically. The only people I trust are my brothers."
We know him as Bill Thompson, the UNLV public-administration professor/casino oracle ritualistically consulted by reporters on even the minutest fluctuation in the gaming biz—in terms of quote-meistering, he's probably neck-and-neck with UNLV history professor Hal Rothman. Everyone else knows him as a hired gun, used by gaming-greedy lawmakers who hear "slots" and see money, as well as Tom Grey-type zealots who want to cast gamblers into the Lake of Fire.
In a Washington Post editorial about a plan for slots in Washington D.C., Thompson tells of recently playing both sides of the fence—producing a report for Pennsylvania government estimating its 60,000 slots will generate $2 billion, along with a study for a citizens' group showing that locals will power the industry, thus draining disposable income. Half of the $100,000 produced by each slot will leave the regional economy, Thompson notes, some of it flowing to slot manufacturing titans IGT, out of Reno, and Bally's of Las Vegas. "Given that a basic $18-an-hour job requires about $50,000 a year in wages and fringe benefits, that's like losing one job from the local economy per machine," writes Thompson, ending the piece with a parting shot across D.C.'s bow.
"It occurs to me that one side benefit of renewed gambling in the District might accrue to my current hometown, Las Vegas. If a casino opened right there in Washington where the politicians make their decisions, the Democratic and Republican parties could quit sending their bagmen—sorry, fund-raisers—to Las Vegas, wasting airplane fuel and other nonrenewable resources as they entertain potential campaign contributors in the back rooms of our casinos. We can manage quite well without them, and our legitimate, revenue-producing visitors could use the hotel rooms, thank you."
A short list of sponsors for the Nevada Youth Alliance's 6th Annual Community Back to School Health & Education Fair includes ... Krispy Kreme and Starbucks!
Now that the grandpappy of TV's Vegas glut, the original CSI, has booted original supporting players George Eads (Nick Stokes) and Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle) after a salary dispute with CBS—they demanded a bump from their hundred-grand-per-episode payday, and net pooh-bah Les Moonves refused to dip into the vault—what series can the displaced duo glom onto next? NBC's Las Vegas is a natural, except there isn't enough money in the hair-gel budget to accommodate both Eads and Josh Duhamel, and Fox isn't quite the cleavage commando that Nikki Cox, Vanessa Marcil and Molly Sims are. They could join Rob Lowe on the new dr. Vegas, though Lowe's physician character saves lives, and these two do their best work around people who are, well, somewhat sick. There's no room in the two fully-stocked CSI spinoffs in Miami and New York, so in the finest tradition of franchise television, we suggest the creation of Law & Order: CSI The Next Generation. Think of the guest stars—Jerry Orbach! William Shatner! The Suffocated Corpse from Lady Heather's S&M Lair! Sight unseen and script unwritten, it seems more promising than The Father of the Pride.
LDS readers explain their feelings about Oscar and complete misunderstanding of alcohol:
Beehive: Do you feel Mayor Goodman is a good role model for children?
Reader: "... seeing how he promotes alcohol with Jack Daniels commercials keeps me from seeing him as someone they can look up to."
Spotted at a local antiques store: two hand-painted wood figures, each tagged with the following description: "White man standing, with cigar."
The figures: George Burns and Groucho Marx.