Steve Wynn's signing of Danny Gans seems to be eliciting a vast yawn from the blogosphere, possibly because Gans' act is widely regarded as hopelessly stale. Unlike Rich Little, Gans doesn't have the excuse of being either A) a living legend or B) old enough to be forgiven for having a show that's out of step with the times.

At any rate, it will be interesting to see how Wynn spins it (or finds a way to make up the difference) if Gans doesn't increase his four-shows-per-week quota. Gans is a cinch to put more fannies in the seats than does the newly evicted Spamalot, but will that be enough to justify keeping the Encore Theater dark three nights a week, if Gans doesn't want to increase his workload or share the space with other acts?

After feeling "punk'd" by Wynn, Steve Friess files a series of dispatches on the Gans soap opera. He also takes time out from serious business to administer a pair of well-deserved smackdowns to the publisher of a senescent local paper with the world's butt-ugliest Web site, or as Hugh Jackson calls it, "a rag-tag pile of URLs."

As for Gans, the Wynn spin is "I don't think anything takes the place of the single performance artist." Translation: "We've tried Avenue Q, Spamalot and Cirque Lite. We might as well try Gans."

I'm too sexy for my skirt. Or maybe it's the other way around at soon-to-be Caesars Windsor. Says one online commentator who bills herself as "Waitress,": "I'm one of the waitressess that are expected to wear the atrocity the casino is calling a uniform ... What I don't understand is how it is that we're expected to show off our 'assets' and yet the male servers are covered-up [sic] like they're going to work in an office. If you ask me, we're being expected to sell our bodies for the sake of 'living the Caesars brand' and there's nothing right about that."

As for the Rush Limbaugh clones who post things like "Shut Up [sic] or find another job," I propose that they spend a few days wearing some of the more-revealing waitress outfits in the industry (like the "butt floss" that got nixed at MGM Grand several years back) and see how they like it. What a lot of rude comments on the thread, too! So much for Canadian politesse.

Smokers lose another one. Count Illinois among the states that won't allow you to light up on the casino floor. The institution of Illinois' smoking ban coincided with a 17% in casino revenues in the Land of Lincoln (at a time when Iowa and Missouri revenues were essentially flat). Things aren't so hot in Colorado, either.

Lizzie Borden took an axe ... and robbed a bookie. This may be the most low-tech gambling heist ever.

What, another Nigerian scam? You'd think people would learn by now. Somewhere, P.T. Barnum is smiling.

Well, he's half right: "We're not perfect, but we're also not stupid." -- Las Vegas Review-Journal Publisher Sherman Frederick, congratulating himself on his paper's Web site. He also refers to Steve Friess as "an idiot," in yet another display of the dignity that characterizes the R-J's editorial page on a daily basis. Adds Frederick, "The Review-Journal is looking at a redesign, but won't do anything until we fully understand all the dynamics." In other words, you can expect that redesign somewhere around the close of the 23rd Century.

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