… if you’re Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson? Naturally, you throw yourself 
a birthday party atop The Cromwell, with seemingly half the NBA in attendance. Then you file bankruptcy on Monday, before you’ve even had a chance to sober up. (Geez, better book a few more Vegas dates to pay those Chapter 11 lawyers.) How fitting that the insolvent Jackson chose to ring in another year at a Caesars Entertainment property.
* While we’re on the subject of Caesars, I haven’t been back to Jubilee! since it was turned into a hybrid of new and old acts, in an attempt to lure millennials. I’ve heard the result was a disaster but have not been able to ascertain for myself. Rest assured the campy Samson and Delilah segment (the funniest thing on the Strip) remains intact. Even after a revamp, the show’s infrastructure is forbiddingly large. We should be thankful that Caesars hasn’t sacrificed the show on the altar of cost-cutting.
* It looks like SLS Las Vegas is giving up on its hipster-magnet marketing position and pivoting toward the Las Vegas Convention 
Center as a source of bodies in hotel beds. SLS President Scott Kreeger is talking about doubling meeting and banquet space, although it’s not immediately clear how this would be accomplished within the old Sahara footprint, but Kreeger is sanguine. He concedes that the SLS brand equity (such as it was) “was a little bit more exclusionary than it was approachable” and will be modified for greater mass-market appeal. He concedes that the buffet was a conceptual botch and SLS was too nightlife-oriented … although that doesn’t leave 
it anywhere to diversify but in the casino. (Psssst! Ever hear of 3:2 blackjack? Institute it, market it and players will beatify you. After all, you’re taking about giving gamblers a “good value.”) Kreeger concludes by saying SLS is “set up to be a great locals casino.” That’s a long way from Sam Nazarian and his Beverly Hills posturing, but at least someone at SLS seems to recognize that the situation there is a very, very serious.
* The New York Times has belatedly discovered the Las Vegas pool party scene and the “blatant sex discrimination” that comes with the territory. Casinos skirt this problem with semantic gymnastics that wouldn’t fool a child but keep them out of the EEOC’s reach. 
Considering how lucrative a gig it is to dance attendance upon the affluent at a Vegas beach club, nobody seems much inclined to protest the beauty-contest method by which these jobs are doled out.
And, surprise surprise, it’s still a man’s world, with male bar staff working in shirts and knee-length shorts, while bikini-clad female workers aren’t just on display, they’re also subject to the indignity of period weigh-ins. (Attitudes haven’t changed much since Steve Wynn allegedly told a group of cocktail waitresses that “none of your fat asses” were going over to Bellagio.) However, the Times seems to be engaging in wishful thinking when it asserts that pool-party revenue outgrosses gambling. Ha!
So, if casinos are applying a double standard for men and women, what’s their shield? Something called “bona fide occupational qualification,” by which they can contend that the skimpily clad female servers are “representing the essence of a brand.” So far that’s suited the courts just fine, so casinos can breath easily.
