{"id":3913,"date":"2010-06-30T10:15:28","date_gmt":"2010-06-30T18:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=3913"},"modified":"2021-02-16T06:46:41","modified_gmt":"2021-02-16T14:46:41","slug":"brad-garrett-enter-at-your-own-risk-bargains-magnanimity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/brad-garrett-enter-at-your-own-risk-bargains-magnanimity\/","title":{"rendered":"Brad Garrett: Enter at your own risk; Bargains & magnanimity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"First, the good news. After going null for two with Paul Rodriguez<\/strong> (PR nightmare) and Wayne Newton<\/strong> (artistic disaster<\/a>), the Tropicana Las Vegas<\/strong> appears to have swatted an 0-2 pitch into the bleachers. Brad Garrett<\/strong>‘s eponymous comedy club<\/a> is a hit, a palpable hit — as Shakespeare<\/strong>‘s Osric<\/strong> would say. Garrett works the room gregariously beforehand and the audience (at least last night’s) comes primed for a good time. Warm-up is provided by a singer\/pianist who does spirited Billy Joel<\/strong> covers and a better-than-average Frank Sinatra<\/strong> impersonation. (Matt Goss<\/strong> could take pointers from him.)<\/p>\n

You might say Garrett is doing turnaway business, save for the fact that nobody’s being turned away. Last night’s show was grossly oversold. There’s no point making a reservation. It won’t get you a better seat and you might as well buy your ticket on a walk-up basis. Seating is a disorganized scrum of chairs — far too many by any standpoint. God forbid the fire alarm goes off or carnage will ensue when they try to evacuate the former Comedy Stop<\/strong>. It’s a classy, old-school Vegas showroom: broad and low-ceilinged, and it’s so far escaped the “South Beach” retheming of the property.<\/p>\n

The latter’s increasingly prevalent cream-on-white color scheme is beginning to look very much like a Busby Berkeley<\/strong> musical in waiting. Also, the pale recladding of the Paradise Tower<\/strong>‘s north fa\u00e7ade is peeling … badly. Methinks they need to scrape that off and find something less susceptible to the elements.<\/p>\n

The evening’s saddest sight<\/strong> was the Trop’s puny excuse for a sports book, a holdover from the benign-neglect era of Aztar Corp<\/strong>. It had only three patrons, two of whom were asleep. Upstairs, I’m told Garrett “killed” with some scathing jests. I had to leave 35 minutes into the show when I took ill. It wasn’t the fault of stultifyingly unfunny opening act Rob Sherwood<\/strong> — but I’m blaming him anyway.<\/p>\n

You want bargains?<\/strong> We got bargains! Our intrepid research staff has turned up 57 hotels in the Vegas area with sub-$50 room rates. For the skinny, see the new edition of LVA<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Magnanimity Award<\/strong>: It’s a rare thing when a casino operator defers to a rival. However, after UNR<\/strong>‘s William Eadington<\/strong> nominated Navegante Group to run the rudderless Greektown Casino<\/strong>, Navegante CEO Larry Woolf<\/strong> did something unusual. When interviewed by a Detroit<\/strong> newspaper, he demurred<\/a>, saying the gig should go to a company already licensed in Michigan<\/strong>. That may or may not be Woolf’s subtle way of telling Greektown’s new hedge-fund owners that they should rehire Fine Point Group<\/strong> (which was doing a bang-up job of improving Greektown’s performance before it got the boot). Either way, such humility is both unusual and praiseworthy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, the good news. After going null for two with Paul Rodriguez (PR nightmare) and Wayne Newton (artistic disaster), the Tropicana Las Vegas appears to have swatted an 0-2 pitch into the bleachers. Brad Garrett‘s eponymous comedy club is a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[48,65,28,44,14,4,53,10,25,79,9,19,138],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3913"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29277,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions\/29277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}