{"id":7300,"date":"2011-08-10T13:58:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T21:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=7300"},"modified":"2018-09-19T12:15:57","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T20:15:57","slug":"elvis-and-eva-have-left-the-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/elvis-and-eva-have-left-the-building\/","title":{"rendered":"Elvis & Eva have left the building"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Two axes fell upon CityCenter<\/strong> in one day. It’s tough to decide which is more newsworthy. I’ll go with the Beso<\/strong> story because it has a not-so-hidden upside. Golden Nugget<\/strong> CEO Tilman Fertitta<\/strong> is feeling sufficiently bullish to plant his flag on the Strip. Since Tilman will be buying Beso out of bankruptcy<\/a>, he’ll get it for cheap ($1 million) and he owns so many restaurant brands (with 300-plus manifestations) that he’s got millions of customers to whom he can market Beso<\/a> … or whatever he’ll call it. The alliance of convenience between two Texas<\/strong> celebrities is already big news in the Lone Star State.<\/p>\n

Longoria’s peeps can suppsedly shop Beso around<\/a> but the likelihood of better offers appears slim and PR Newswire<\/strong> reports it’s a done deal<\/a>. Since the restaurant’s cashbox is empty, management’s previous declarations of optimism have become “inoperative,” as Ron Ziegler<\/strong> would have put it. Since Fertitta is prepared to advance operational expenses to keep Beso open, manager William Braden<\/strong> would be wise to take Tilman’s money and run to the bank.<\/p>\n

\"\"Soon-to-be-minority owner Eva Longoria<\/strong> will still be the face of Beso but, make no mistake, Fertitta (right<\/em>) will call the shots. Inside the Nugget empire, it’s Tilman’s way or the highway. Creditors will be badly out of pocket and Crystals<\/strong> looks certain to take a mammoth writedown on Longoria’s back rent. At least it’s trading an insolvent tenant for a flush one, sparing it potential grief from other renters about Beso continuing to receive special indulgence. The Sun<\/em>‘s Steve Green<\/strong> puts it none too delicately when he concludes by observing that Beso (and its Eve<\/strong> nightclub) now has real money at its back.<\/p>\n

Unlike Longoria, Tilman’s more than just a pretty face. His vote of confidence in CityCenter is the most important such statement since Phil Ruffin<\/strong> decided to get back into the game.<\/p>\n

\"\"Viva WHO<\/em>?<\/strong> Las Vegans may have wondered why MGM Resorts International<\/strong> was scraping the butt-ugly Viva Elvis<\/em> ad from the western face of Aria<\/strong> this week. Or maybe they were just relieved to be rid of that excrescence and figured it was better not to ask the reason why. Today, the Review-Journal<\/em>‘s Norm (!) Clarke<\/strong> broke the news that Cirque du Soleil<\/strong> will be shutting down the much-panned<\/a>, financially disappointing spectacle during 1Q12. It will return in an ill-defined incarnation that will be “less of a biographical representation.” Unfortunately, the most widely praised numbers in Viva Elvis<\/em><\/a> tended to be those that had representational overtones (“Love Me Tender,” “Return to Sender,” etc.) and the relatively abstract numbers — like the interminable trampoline sequence — were mostly crap.<\/p>\n

\"\"In its place there will be more standard-issue “Cirquetry” (\u2122 Joe Brown<\/strong>). Since Cirque’s Zed<\/em> troupe, over in Japan<\/strong>, has been forcibly idled in the wake of recent disasters<\/a>, the gang in Montreal<\/strong> has decided to fold Zed<\/em> into remnants of Viva Elvis<\/em>. The reverse equation might be preferable, since subtracting The Pelvis from an Elvis-based show can hardly be construed as an improvement. (Trust me, Cirque is going to run into similar problems when it tries to build a show around the songbook of Michael Jackson<\/strong>, with its clear-cut narratives and concrete imagery.) While they’re at it, maybe Cirque can ditch the K-Tel<\/strong> LP jacket that passes for a logo.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, too many pratfalls have given Cirque brass thick noggins, which they’re going to continue pounding against the wall. Rather than just admit they laid an egg and replacing Viva Elvis<\/em>, they’re going to keep attempting “fixations” of something that was fatally flawed from the conceptual stage. MGM CEO Jim Murren<\/strong> had the opportunity to smother this grotesque afterbirth in its cradle a year ago. However, the company’s inability to think outside its own box gives Cirque free rein to keep screwing around until, as with Criss Angel<\/strong> vanity vehicle Believe<\/em>, they come up with something people don’t actively hate.<\/p>\n

However you slice it<\/strong>, CityCenter is turning out far, far differently than envisioned. Tilman Fertitta’s middle-class customer base is hardly the chi-chi clientele Murren had in mind but, at this point, CityCenter literally can no longer afford to be persnickety.<\/p>\n

Columbia Sussex has<\/strong> crashed and burned another hotel<\/a>, this one in Massachusetts<\/strong>. ColSux’s Hilton Boston Woburn<\/strong> is running at sub-50% occupancy, considerably underperforming the market. If they operate it anything like they way they’ve mismanaged the Westin Casuarina<\/strong>, one can only paraphrase Marvin Hamlisch<\/strong> and say nobody does it worse. And to think people actually used to take ColSux seriously as a casino operator.<\/p>\n

Seen on the Strip<\/strong>: We were having cocktails at tony Japonais<\/strong><\/a> (for research purposes, you understand) and saw a customer dressed in — I kid you not — a wife-beater, clamdiggers and flip-flops. You’d have to be Harry Belafonte<\/strong> to make that getup work and even he might have difficulty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two axes fell upon CityCenter in one day. It’s tough to decide which is more newsworthy. I’ll go with the Beso story because it has a not-so-hidden upside. Golden Nugget CEO Tilman Fertitta is feeling sufficiently bullish to plant his … 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":[80,56,15,28,18,14,4,22,53,112,114,9,129,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300"}],"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=7300"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22490,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300\/revisions\/22490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}