Just minutes ago, Las Vegas Sun reporter Rick Velotta posted the news that we’d been dreading for several years now. Former MGM Mirage CEO J. Terrence Lanni has died, presumably for the cancer from which he was revealed to be suffering two years ago. When Lanni’s career abruptly flamed out in late 2008, there was much speculation as to the cause — with health being one of the possible reasons cited. There will be plenty of time for rehashing whether it was that, one of a plethora of other issues or just a perfect storm of career-ending crises.
What’s undeniable is that Lanni presided over a 13-year period of expansion that saw MGM go from being the operator of an emerald-colored megaresort on the Las Vegas Strip to an international presence and one of the dominant forces in the gaming world. By the end of his tenure, the company had Continue reading
Thanks go out to reader Greg Askins for putting me onto this evocative TWA travel poster from 1965. Some of you might get a kick out of going back to a time when Yr. Humble Blogger was in short pants and a crew cut, and flying was actually 
Why would a man whose company shells out $2.5 million a year for a personal security detail balk at paying an extra hundred grand? (Las Vegas Sands 
Actually, it never left, as any casual visit to the Strip will prove. But, strapped for a marketing position, Trump International is 
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 
“Goldman is making a decent long-term investment in where the Strip is heading. The Stratosphere and the land could be more valuable imploded and built up with something else.” — gaming analyst Robert LaFleur, then with Susquehanna Financial Group, on Goldman Sachs‘ 
“Separating drivers from their cars would be like forcing Mickey and Minnie Mouse to divorce.” — New York Times reporter Eric Lipton, on the difficulties facing mass transit in the U.S.
[They] actually became a Health Department issue. They’re very expensive to maintain and the public had basically worn them out. There were lots of problems with the syrup and things falling down below the cabinets. And then the other problem was we had a lot of people coming in here with bags of empty containers, just filling them up with soda. It got to the point where gamblers could get a soda, so we just put it back on the floor. It was free anyway but we took the self-service. That’s the truth behind the self-service rumor because there’s a lot of them. [laughs]
I definitely knew we were going to get some backlash from taking them out. It was something that I really liked when we put it in. It just became, based on the Health Department in the state of Nevada … people may or may not know it’s probably the most strict health department in the country. That’s probably why you don’t see them here but you do see them in the other markets, and I am aware that 
“What does a Las Vegas resident do on the Fourth of July? I’ll tell you what a Vegas visitor does: He goes out on the Strip to look for imaginary fireworks.” — a visiting S&G reader, disappointed by the lack of Independence Day pyrotechnics from Strip casinos, a botched opportunity if not an outright epic fail. (Given the aforesaid fireworks drought, 
… when monsoon season arrived in Las Vegas on July 3, borne upon thunderstorms of exceptional. Caesars Palace had a fireworks display scheduled that evening and, at the appointed time, seemed to have nothing but a damp squib. However …
… the pyrotechnics went off slightly later than planned (roughly at 10 p.m.), to the delight of Independence Day revelers. Station Casinos 
ACH! No, seriously, in a decision so bad it must have suggested by an extremely expensive consultant, the casino will just be “the ACH.” Guess they’re trying to sound like those hipsters who reduce everything to an acronym, no matter how preposterous (like billing a recent boy band-reunion tour as “NKOTBSB“). To me, ACH sounds like a condition about which you should see your doctor but the bottom line is that