{"id":9460,"date":"2012-08-14T09:33:01","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T17:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=9460"},"modified":"2020-03-10T05:34:54","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T13:34:54","slug":"taylor-hicks-vegas-newest-star-adelson-hates-on-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/taylor-hicks-vegas-newest-star-adelson-hates-on-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Hicks: Vegas’ newest star?; Adelson hates on Vegas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last \u00a0night being my wonderful wife’s birthday, I took her out to dinner and thence to Taylor Hicks<\/strong> at Bally’s<\/strong>, now in the 10th week of an eight-week run (and, no, that’s not a typo). Big ups to Caesars Entertainment<\/strong>, incidentally, for supplying patrons with illuminated cocktail menus that can be read in the dark. Now that<\/em> — is what I call progress. Rather than the usual, self-laudatory video montage, Hicks opens just with this …<\/p>\n

Fortunately, his technical people show the video correctly, not reversed. Besides, having Stephen Colbert<\/strong> and Jimmy Fallon<\/strong> as your de facto<\/em> warm-up act isn’t a bad way to start. From then onward, it’s just Hicks and his band, flat-out jamming for 110 minutes (at insanely good prices<\/a>), including a marathon version of Elvis Presley<\/strong>‘s chart-topper “In the Ghetto,” penned by the unjustly forgotten Mac Davis<\/strong>. At the close quarters of the The Indigo Lounge<\/strong>, Hicks’ voice and his incredibly fluent combo really pack a wallop. It’s what “Vegas” used to signify: Seeing first-range entertainers in an intimate space. The Indigo’s lack of sound-deadening curtains means there’s a lot (a lot<\/em>) of bleed-through from the slot floor. There’s method to that seeming madness, because it sets up a visual coup de theatre<\/em> during Hicks’ closing number, the all-but-statutory “Viva Las Vegas.”<\/p>\n

Hicks was packing ’em in on a Monday night and the crowd had an exceptionally AARP-eligible skew — including the winner of the David S. Broder<\/strong> Lookalike Contest — but they ate him up. Come to think of it, this was the demographic that was supposed to be attending Surf the Musical<\/a><\/em>, in its death throes a few doors down the Strip. If the American Idol<\/em> winner is amendable to another extension — or to regular residences — Caesars would be crazy not to re-sign him. And if they don’t, he appears to be precisely the marquee attraction the Riviera<\/strong> needs but lacks<\/a>. Come to think of it, Boyd Gaming<\/strong> has a few near-Strip showrooms that would just about right. Let the bidding war commence!<\/p>\n

There’s no end of irony to Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> (the unnamed “boss at a Vegas casino”) bankrolling an ad that punches nearly every anti-Vegas\/anti-gambling hot button imaginable. These sort of hokey advertising tropes are what one expects in races where a candidate — say former Iowa<\/strong> governor Chet Culver<\/strong> (D) — appears to be on the take from wannabe casino developers, let’s say, or when Penn National Gaming<\/strong> was trying to ratfuck Cordish Gaming<\/strong> out of a license in Maryland<\/strong>. But the Gambling = Corruption metaphor is such ancient, cobwebbed trope in Nevada<\/strong>, it tells you how culturally out-of-touch the smarty-pants set on K Street<\/strong> really is. As for the manliness of hiding behind the skirts of a PAC to settle the hash of a former employee, that’s a matter for Sheldon’s conscience … assuming he didn’t sell it to the Red Chinese a good decade ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last \u00a0night being my wonderful wife’s birthday, I took her out to dinner and thence to Taylor Hicks at Bally’s, now in the 10th week of an eight-week run (and, no, that’s not a typo). Big ups to Caesars Entertainment, … 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":[60,70,28,26,4,7,86,53,72,69,6,55,12,9,19,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9460"}],"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=9460"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26326,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9460\/revisions\/26326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}