Columbia Sussex‘s Westin Casuarina, the place where shows go to be ignored, is trying again with one-two punch of bodaciousness. Our research staff is doing its best to uncover details on Burlesque: The Show, for which we have nothing more than a half-page ad to serve as guidance. LVA knows a bit more about Vegas’ newest illusionist, Ariann Black, here to fill the void left by Scarlett, Princess of (Allegedly) Felonious Assault. She seems to have charm, even if it’s not auspicious to headline your Web page with the proclamation that you have “the cache [sic] of being a Las Vegas Star.” (How often does she have to delete cookies from her browser?)
Good news for those who can still get a kick out of MGM Grand‘s pretentious Crazy Horse Paris show. No, Carmen Electra isn’t coming back, nor has Holly Madison made good on her promise/threat to join the cast. However, Playboy‘s Miss October, Claire Sinclair, will be going “on the line” for three numbers, Oct. 21-28. In addition to being the youngest (age 19) guest star in the show’s history, Sinclair’s never played to a live audience before. It must be odd to headline a show you’re barely old enough to attend.
Disaster! There’s no other word for the closing of the Liberace Museum. Even for those of us who don’t “get” the whole Liberace mystique, it’s an amazing exhibit and certainly unique (as befits the inimitable “King of Bling”). The Tropicana Avenue location has been a problem as has the — let’s be honest — dying off of the core Liberace demographic: visitation is one-ninth of what it was in peak years. The museum’s closure also marks the end of a slew of highly creative cabaret acts, including pianist Philip Fortenberry and singer Ali Spuck, that aren’t likely to be picked up anywhere else. The flameout of the museum chars not one but several holes in the fabric of Vegas.
The collection may soon be coming to a museum near you, much in the fashion of (Ewwwwww!) Bodies. CityCenter is being mooted as a potential landlord, although that may be wishful thinking. One hopes not: The metaresort needs more attractions for jes’ plain folks and a revived Liberace Museum would not only extravagantly apt for Crystals, it would also fill a great deal of the unleased retail space there. How ’bout it Jim Murren? You want to create a mini-city and cities need museums. Fifty-thousand additional visitors per year wouldn’t hurt, either.
Between this and the recent foreclosure auction at the former Liberace mansion (two doors from my house, BTW), it’s been a bad month for Mr. Showmanship.
Mad(e) Men. The missus and I just finished season 3 of Mad Men last night (Joan Holloway returns!) If and when — hopefully not for several years yet — the brilliant Matthew Weiner decides to move onto different subject matter, might I request Las Vegas in the years of Mob rule (prior to the events depicted so definitively in Martin Scorcese‘s masterpiece, Casino)? It’s a period steeped in drama and overdue for an unsentimentalized portrayal — unless one counts a handful of scathing scenes in Francis Ford Coppola‘s Godfather trilogy — and Weiner is just the writer to capture the double-dyed nature of Sin City’s mid-century various movers and shakers; even the ostensibly virtuous people in town had made some Faustian pact or other. Possible drawback: Potential exposure to Seventies fashion (an oxymoron if ever one existed).
Seriously, somebody at MGM should buy out the Liberace Museum and move it into one of the empty and souless canyons of space at Crystals. City Center needs a draw and something to spark the fun factor. Those bejeweled hot pants of Liberace or the mirror-mosaic car would bring a smile even to visitors who have no idea who he was.
Second, I gotta believe that the Liberace Museum could make it for a decade or two in the low rent quarters of Fremont East or somewhere else Downtown where tourists without a car could find and access.
The Arian Black video might be only an “interlude” but the sorta girl-on-girl action might attract enough guys to keep the show afloat.
Closing of the Liberace Museum: Still another attraction that might have worked in Neonopolis, if not for the venue’s ongoing mismanagement.
At CityCenter? No chance. They don’t want any of the great (sequined) unwashed to tarnish the ambiance of the place, spittin ‘ terbacky on the art, etc.
“MobVegas’ the series: Great idea! I’d like it to cover the Vegas evolution from the 50’s -> 70’s, with the cars, fashions, etc. in the background.
(I just watched a rerun of a ‘Perry Mason’ show from the 1950’s. Perry in his car, pulled over and parked. I saw him hanging his left arm out the car window, and I thought he was driving with only one hand on the steering wheel – out of character for Perry Mason. Then I realized: he was giving the signal to other drivers that he was going to STOP, a holdover from the time when autos didn’t all have turn signals or brake lights, and state traffic laws said all drivers had to use hand signals.)
As for 70’s fashions, David, you should start checking the ad inserts in the Sunday papers: pictures of young men in colored jeans and pants, with elaborate embroidery on the back pockets – and “skinny jeans” are back! Will moptop haircuts follow? (Too late… see Justin Bieber.)
Bring back Boylesque! I miss the Silver Slipper and Kenny Kerr alot. The man was way ahead of his time, and a lousy seven card stud poker player. Mr. Kerr used to play with us degenerates in his full bloom costumes before his famous show. The Slipper had the best New York Steak dinner special on this planet. Used to order two of them in my younger days.
While I have nothing against the Liberace museum, I can’t say I hope it opens at Crystals or anywhere on the strip for that matter, unleast until the Elvis o Rama museum is brought back. I haven’t visited the Lib museum, but if it is half the museum the Elvis one was then I could be persuaded to keep it somewhere.