Steve Wynn drinks his own bathwater

I’ll confess to having been sufficiently out of touch not to have heard about the “Wynncore” parody site on which blogger Chuck Monster was laboring. Anybody who’s used the sluggish Wynn Resorts Web site will appreciate the home page (“Loading 6%”). One who didn’t was a certain Steve Wynn. Or perhaps General Counsel Kenneth Tourek was the person with the dim grasp of a concept known for centuries as “satire.” (Then again, Wynn Resorts is a relative newcomer to “your internet” and all that other crazy kids’ stuff, too. How ’bout them newfangled horseless carriages?)

Anyway, having evidently nothing better to do with his time, Mr. Tourek, Esq. delivered himself of a pricelessly pompous letter, in which refers to his employer and its assets as “famous” no fewer than four times. (Defensive much?) Tourek even has the brass to demand that Chuck simply hand over the domain name he registered, sans compensation. Getting pretty full of themselves, those Wynn folks. First, they stop sharing room-rate data with J.P. Morgan, followed by Wynn’s “Grumpy Old Men” stint on Fox News, then the Garth Brooks ticket posturing and now this stunt.

As Mr. Monster explains to his readers: “Anyways, the Wynncore website is an unfinished parody website which was meant to be a part of this years Trippies awards for ‘Worst Casino Website’. Thank you Wynn Resorts for ruining the joke.” People who behave like Wynn Resorts is doing deserve to be made objects of fun. Chuck, since lawyers are expensive, I’ve got four letters for you: ACLU. As for Steve Wynn, if he really wants to jump the shark, he’s built up a good running start.

Sign of the Times: There may be no more telling indicator of the depth of the ditch into which the casino industry drove itself than the title of the leadoff panel in G2E‘s Finance Track … “Gaming Bankruptcy and Reorganization: Issues and Strategies.” Panelists include Tropicana Entertainment CFO Rich Baldwin, someone who’s in a position to write the book on Chapter 11.

Former Mirage Resorts exec Barry Shier pops up on a subsequent panel, now affiliated with something called The Partner House. Shier seemed on a path to big things at Mirage, particularly when he was charged with opening Beau Rivage, but he’s been off the radar screen quite a while now. Then again, who thought Alex Yemenidjian would re-emerge as a significant force on the Las Vegas Strip? There are plenty of second acts in casino-industry lives.