Question of the Day - 21 March 2016

There's no shortage of stories of celebrities behaving badly in Las Vegas. In his autobiography, My Way, singer Paul Anka recalls the decline and fall of Frank Sinatra, whose increasingly heavy drinking led to all kinds of ugly public scenes and otherwise inappropriate behavior, including one night at the Sands when Ole Blue Eyes was so drunk, he stole a golf cart and drove it into the glass entryway, before proceeding to try, repeatedly, to set light to the curtains in the lobby (he failed, on account of being too intoxicated). In another incident, when the casino refused to grant him the free markers he was used to, Sinatra jumped on top of a blackjack table, then hurled a chair at a security guard, before spilling scalding coffee into the lap of casino manager, Carl Cohen. (The enraged but fading star then even attempted to order a hit on Cohen, but his plan was thwarted when his more-sober friends in the mob refused to sanction it.)

While even all this wasn't enough to get Sinatra 86'd, such "rock 'n roll" behavior certainly set a precedent for some more recent instances of celebrities behaving badly. Often really badly. Here are some examples:

• There was a time when Mötley Crüe front man Vince Neil couldn't seem to keep out of the local headlines. Planet Hollywood apparently chose to let it slide when, in 2012, an apparently intoxicated Neil unloaded a stream of expletives on the valet parker who refused to hand over the keys to Vince's car when the singer could not produce his valet ticket. Still, footage of the incident went viral after it was released by gossip site TMZ and did nothing to help Vince's reputation. The previous year, he'd been charged with battery domestic violence and disorderly conduct, stemming from an incident involving a former girlfriend, who was watching a show in the Shimmer Cabaret at the Las Vegas Hilton when Neil showed up and went crazy. Still, there was no report at the time of any ban being imposed (the singer still owned an on-site Mexican cantina at the time, which may have been a factor).

  Neil was less lucky with the Palms, however. Again in 2012 (not a good year for Vince in Vegas), he found himself involved in a contretemps in the former Little Buddha restaurant at the off-Strip resort. Following a bust-up over something or other, Neil then took to social media, unleashing a tirade on the Palms and publicly calling its executives "liars". Although the rocker was a long-term and valued customer of the property, this evidently proved too much, and his announced decision henceforth to boycott the Palms became unavoidable after the property issued him with a lifetime ban.

• That same year Brit. boy band One Direction also found themselves in some hot water with various Las Vegas casinos, including the Palms, when they attempted to hit the town after playing a gig at Planet Hollywood. The problem was, the city's security got wise to all the band members being underage, and they found themselves barred from multiple properties, evidently including the Palms, where they were staying.

• Paris Hilton has also had more than one run in with Las Vegas casinos. Unlike Whitney Houston's deceased daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, or Michael Jordan's son Marcus, both of whom were busted for gambling and partying underage in Las Vegas, Paris never got caught gambling when she shouldn't have been (although, in an interview with the current writer the night that Paris Las Vegas debuted, she bragged about how she liked to play blackjack and roulette in grandpa Barron's Las Vegas Hilton although Paris was only 18 at the time). She did, however, get barred from the property a few years later at the instigation of her parents when, in 2006, she lost her $175,000 Bentley GT in a high stakes poker game.

  In 2010, the heiress was then banned from both Wynn and Encore after she and her then boyfriend Cy Waits, who ran the nightlife at Wynn Resorts, were pulled over on suspicion of DUI and Metro officers reported their car as smelling strongly of marijuana. Paris was taken inside the Wynn property, whereupon she happened to drop a wrap of cocaine from her purse while searching for some essential lip balm and ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor drug charges. The company responded by banning her from its Las Vegas properties indefinitely, but that embargo was lifted after just one year and the socialite returned to Sin City to celebrate ... with a party hosted at Encore's Surrender nightclub.

• In 2010, Rapper Lil Wayne found himself issued with a preemptive ban by Wynn resorts, when he arrived at the hotel for an after party hosted by Drake. At the time, Lil Wayne was fresh off an eight-month sentence for attempted criminal possession of a weapon and had also been legally prohibited from ingesting alcohol for the next three years. Wynn Resorts evidently felt that he was just a whole heap of trouble waiting to happen and banned the rapper from the property; Wayne simply took his business to the Palms that night, where he was apparently still welcome.

• O.J. Simpson came close to a city-wide ban in 2007 following his arrest, at the Palms, for an incident that took place at Palace Station that saw the already heavily-tarnished NFL Hall of Famer charged with 10 felony charges, including kidnapping and armed robbery. Apparently, during the ensuing trial in Nevada, that culminated in Simpson earning a de facto ban from anywhere aside from inside the walls of the state prison in which he's serving out his 33-year sentence, multiple Las Vegas properties, including those owned by MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment, along with the Palms, made it clear that he would no longer be welcome at any of their properties.

• Former basketball star Alan Iverson found himself banned from multiple casinos nationwide -- notably in Detroit and Atlantic City, although we're not aware of any specific ban issued by any Vegas property -- for offenses ranging from throwing cards and chips at blackjack dealers, to berating casino employees and customers, to refusing to repay $10,000 on a bet he had actually lost and which the dealer had paid by mistake.

• In April 2014 actor Ben Affleck was famously barred from the Hard Rock Casino here (and subsequently also other properties, including Caesars Windsor), for allegedly counting cards. In Affleck's case, he's still welcome at the Hard Rock property, he's just banned for life from playing blackjack.

• In 2014, UFC President Dana White was banned from the Palms for winning too regularly at blackjack, but after Palms staff created a stink on account of White being especially "george" (it's reported he's been known to match a $10K tab at N9Ne with a $10K tip), he was allowed back to play, but for much-reduced stakes, only. White said no dice, and took his gambling custom elsewhere, at which point the Palms did something uncharacteristic of a casino, and caved: Conceding defeat, they also demonstrated a refreshing and equally rare sense of humor, by presenting White with with a custom-made "title belt" that reads "PALMS Undisputed Blackjack Champion" on the front and on the side has an image of White with 24-0 on his chest above the words, "Winner by TKO."

• A 19 year-old Justin Bieber was barred by Las Vegas' Indoor Skydiving attraction when he and his entourage showed up close to closing time, messed up the bathroom, and then skipped out without paying. When the Biebs failed to make good on a promise to post pictures of him and his party enjoying the attraction on Instagram, it proved to be the final straw and Indoor Skydiving informed him, via social media, that he was banned for life.

• Back in 2006, at the height of the so-called "gangsta rap" era, Las Vegas sheriff Bill Young, with the backing of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, attempted to have all hip hop artists and rappers blackballed from the city's nightlife venues in light of an increase in violence attributed to that scene, including a shooting at a strip club involving an NFL player. Outwardly, the casinos reacted in protest, with talk of constitutional rights and so on, but behind the scenes they quietly began canceling some upcoming performances and avoided scheduling future events of that ilk. However, you just need to take a look at any upcoming "daylife" and nightclub event calendars, or the roster of names who typically host the New Year's Eve parties at the city's top nightspots, and it's evident that sheriff Young's directive didn't get very far and the blanket-ban concept, which was seized on by media outlets as being both discriminatory and a case of censorship at work, never really took effect.