Britney: It sucks, bitch

A ways back, when Gary Loveman was all Q-crazy, I pointed out that the letter ‘X’ also carries a high Scrabble value. Little did I suspect that the Aladdin Theater for the Performing Arts would become “the AXIS.” Programming will be done by Live Nation, giving the vendor simultaneous control of MGM Grand Arena and Mandalay Bay Event Center. Ironically, Caesars Entertainments‘ new Britney Spears headliner show would fare better in those steeply raked venues. Unless you’re planning to spend the whole of the Spears spectacle on your feet, being a dancing fool, you’re unlikely to see the damned thing, which the New York Times termed “listless,” among other endearments.

Ms. Spears’ vocals were so heavily reprocessed that she might as well have lip-synched the whole show. And what passed for songs were machine-tooled reiteration. The digital (or LED) graphics being splayed across the Axis walls were the only enlivening element of a thoroughly regrettable event.

We couldn’t get into Bruno Mars‘ show at The Cosmpolitan but God forbid somebody had pulled the fire alarm. The narrow queue snaked far, far, far, far back, down a hallway clearly not intended as ingress to a concert hall. Cosmo brass may say they planned it that way all along … and if you buy that cartload of crap lemme sell you this bridge in Brooklyn. Also, the 9 p.m. curtain time had come and gone without people being seated, from what I could tell, which is certainly keeping with the Cosmopolitan tradition of being a major-league property that’s run in minor-league fashion.