It’s official: “Pit Bull of Comedy” Bobby Slayton has snarled his last at the Tropicana Las Vegas. Thus endeth a brief, inauspicious reign by Anthony Cools over the Trop’s upstairs showroom. A well-placed source advises LVA that Beatles tribute show Penny Lane was pulled after EMI hit it with a cease-and-desist letter. In any event, it left as invisibly as it arrived.
Trop CEO Alex Yemenidjian still has three shows he inherited from predecessor Scott Butera but it’s pretty clear that he’s going to put his own stamp on the property. As for Cools, well, he’ll always have O’Shea’s.
Movement at Cosmo. Buried in the Review-Journal (six items deep) is the news that the Cosmopolitan has landed former Station Casinos executive Marshall Andrew asits CIO. Deutsche Bank looks serious about making that September ’10 opening date. Will the economy have improved sufficiently to have absorbed most of the CityCenter rooms and the Planet Hollywood Westgate ones by then (and maybe, but not very likely, Fontainebleau)? Boyd Gaming is betting otherwise. The Echelon cranes have been seen coming down, marking an additional hiatus in the project, which reportedly will not be resumed until 2012.
There’s quite a debate going on at the Las Vegas Sun on the rise and fall of themed resorts on the Strip. Surf over, check it out, maybe weigh in, if the spirit moves you.
