This was originally going to be "Death Watch VI" but three of those in a week is positively ghoulish. So, on to the latest disheartening developments from Atlantic City, the casino market that just can't catch a break.

Cease the revels! Taking a page from the Harrah's Entertainment playbook, Revel is calling a halt to interior work and will concentrate on finishing the exterior of the $2 billion resort. It had weathered the loss of several key executives in a plane crash and an attempted shakedown by Unite-HERE, but now it's basically running out of money. The possibility of a joint venture has now been floated. (Hey, Penn National, here's your chance to get onto the Boardwalk without having to buy the land or even put up most of the construction cost.) Starting a multi-billion-dollar resort project without all of one's financing in place may be standard practice, but it's caused project after project to go begging as Wall Street's purses snap shut.

It seems disingenuous, though, for Pinnacle Entertainment to cite Pennsylvania casinos as a potential reason not to move forward in Atlantic City. True, Columbia Sussex CEO William J. Yung III completely "misunderestimated" the Pennsylvania threat, but he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer when it came to running casinos and evidently never familiarized himself with the A.C. market. Pinnacle, they're supposed to be the smart guys, so they had to know full well what they'd be up against when they took a wrecking ball to the Sands back in '07. One would expect no less of them.

The cruel irony to all of this is that, during a time when casino development in Philadelphia has been deadlocked and ineffectual, buying precious time for Atlantic City, the economic crunch has sent project after project either into paralysis or onto the slag heap.

The New Jersey Casino Control Commission in executive session.

Trop the madness! If such a thing were possible, the Tropicana Atlantic City has even fewer slot technicians now than during the slash-and-burn ColSux days. And the techs have voted to strike, which may trip a rolling series of walkouts. Table game dealers would be the next ones out the door.

There's a mixed message coming from Trop HQ. President Mark Giannantonio insists he's been bargaining in good faith. But his hands may be tied by slowpoke trustee Justice Gary Stein, whose public posture has been that it would be unfair to the next owner of the Trop to be saddled with a labor contract negotiated by state-appointed interim management.

I agree, in principle. But in practice that admirable restraint has resulted in Trop employees being strung along while Stein takes his own sweet time getting a sale into place. A picket line would be yet another unfunny act in the farce caused by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission's lack of testicular fortitude when dealing with its dawdling surrogate. It should have told Stein to get the most viable deal and get the hell on with it 10 months ago.

Which is one more argument for taking a chance on Tropicana Entertainment CEO Scott Butera (a dice-throw that seems like less and less of a gamble by the day). When ColSux brinksmanship seemed to have the Tropicana Las Vegas headed for a strike, Butera brought the crisis to a swift and statesmanlike conclusion. He'd probably do the same thing in Atlantic City. It's a situation that calls for decisiveness, a quality not greatly in evidence right now.