“Family friendly Vegas” is back; Putting the “gone” in Longoria; A mess in Mississippi

Actually, it never left, as any casual visit to the Strip will prove. But, strapped for a marketing position, Trump International is going for the wholesome niche with a vengeance. Stuck with a lemon, Trump marketing execs are making lemonade out of the hotel’s smoke-free environment and lack of gambling. The predictable sneering has begun but …

Can you blame them? With only 26% of Trump’s condo inventory having been sold, no casino and rooms priced to move, the property had to turn weakness into strength. The rooms are nice — if bland — and you needn’t worry about the douchebag/tramp-stamp crowd making the off-Strip pilgrimage to Trump.

You can’t say that about The Mirage, where the wife and I recently passed a half-conscious bikini-clad young woman, being escorted/carried off the property by a man and a dwarf. The lady had just blown chunks on the “out” escalator and appeared about to do so again, whilst the dwarf glared at passersby. I guess he was the “muscle.” It was very Fellini-meets-Jackass. Only in Vegas, folks.

She’s (somewhat) outta here. Wedged in at the back of Crystals, actress Eva Longoria‘s nightclub Eve was about as locationally challenged as it could be. Heck, there are “gentleman’s clubs” on side streets in grimy industrial districts that see more traffic. Trying to lure the bottle-service crowd into the pharaoh’s tomb that is Crystals is rather more difficult. Appropriately enough, Daily Fiasco broke the story that Eve is being placed in a bankruptcy-induced coma or worse. (Attached restaurant Beso remains open and modestly profitable, happy to report.) The official line is that the club is simply going through a makeover of indefinite duration and that — coulda fooled me — nightclubbers are in short supply during the summer months.

It’s difficult to imagine that a nightclub less than two years old could already been “passé,” per the official line. Also, the $2 million expenditure would have to get the assent of the bankruptcy court, which is still waiting for an Eve/Beso reorganization plan, due last month and still AWOL. And then there’s the small matter of the $2.3 million Beso owes Crystals. But in this last respect Longoria appears to have CityCenter by the balls. Given the choice of inadequate levels of business at Eve or another empty storefront, the mall has little choice but to be — as Vegas Inc. puts it — “supportive.”

There are limits to tribal sovereignty and the Mississippi Choctaws just ran into them. G-Men descended on tribal headquarters, ostensibly to sort out a disputed election. One of the issues roiling tribal leadership was its contract with Atlanta-based Mercury Gaming Management, a company with a respectable pedigree in tribal operations and overseer of the tribe’s Pearl River Resort. However, when the feds start examining those confiscated Choctaw hard drives, who knows where this could lead? There’s already a tangled and seamy skein connecting the tribe with convicted felon “Casino Jack” Abramoff and former Alabama Gov. Robert “Bingo Bob” Riley (R). The latter’s former congressional press secretary was none other than Abramoff’s dimwitted co-conspirator Michael Scanlon.

The extent to which Riley (left) was doing the bidding of his Choctaw benefactors when he tried to extirpate electronic bingo in Alabama remains a cloud hanging over his political future (if any). Had Riley gotten his way, his anti-bingo jihad would have climaxed with an armed invasion of the Poarch Creek Indian reservation. When word came down from the Obama administration that this would be uncool, Riley’s task force had to publicly back off, ending the Great Bingo Crusade with a whimper rather than a bang.