Coming, going, gone …

This just in … One weekend of performances of Peepshow was all that Mrs. Ice-T managed to do before fleeing back to New York City, at least temporarily, according to an S&G source. So if you’ve got Peepshow tickets this week, I’m afraid you’re screwed.

Prepare to stick a fork in Eli Roth‘s Goretorium, which is said to have fallen on evil times (only six customers on a recent day of business, reportedly) and is cutting back some of its ad buys. If true, it would be good riddance to Roth and prove that some things are too depraved even for Las Vegas. Besides, simulated scalping and dismemberment are hardly the sort of stuff to put tourists in the holiday spirit, are they?

This was the week that Imperial Palace officially became the The Quad, spawning a flood 0f less-than-fond memories on the latter’s new Facebook page. (No, I refuse to “like” that hideous nomenclature, another legacy of the Gary Q. Loveman administration.) Mike Weatherford tartly described the Palace’s new market niche as “to pull in a younger, beer-pong crowd,” a repositioning that helped spur the exit of Human Nature, which has defected to The Venetian. In a cool move, Las Vegas Sands brass have taken the “Venetian” name off the showroom, which will hereafter be the Sands Showroom, a nicely retro touch. While Human Nature will have less stage space upon which to bust their moves, their spectators will be infinitely more comfortable than they were in the painfully cramped Imperial Palace showroom, into which Caesars Entertainment greedily crammed far too many chairs. This also means we can write finis to any resurrection of the godawful Surf The Musical. Smokey Robinson bought roughly a third of Surf‘s 140-cube video wall and will install it at the Sands. (That just sounds right, doesn’t it?) Human Nature, an Australian ex-boy band does Motown proud and gets Venelazzo back into the nostalgia niche it vacated when Jersey Boys took a hike down to Paris-Las Vegas … which I keep hearing that it regrets having done.

Another former Imperial Quad tenant, indestructible Legends in Concert will pull up stakes yet again. Legends will leave Harrah’s Las Vegas (for which its set had to be totally reconstructed, post-IP) and take over Nathan Burton‘s vacated 4 p.m. slot at the Flamingo. Legends may also be used to fill prime-time spots when the showroom would otherwise be dark. Since Legends has no star(s) and you never know which impersonators you’re going to see on any given night, it’s the kind of vehicle that can plugged into the schedule willy-nilly. Producer Andrew Brigner may indeed have entertained offers from Tamares Group‘s Plaza Hotel and from the Golden Nugget, although I doubt he took the former too seriously. The Plaza makes Imperial Quad look high class and its stage seems smaller than a phone booth. Besides when you have nine, Total Rewards-powered casinos feeding you customers, it’s a no-brainer to stick with Caesars. Say, is that a Matt Goss impersonator in the left-hand picture? How does imitate nullity?

While the reinvention of Downtown’s Lady Luck into the Downtown Grand is proceeding at a stately pace, owner Andrew B. Donner (right) hasn’t been idle. He just inked a deal to buy Ferguson’s Motel at 1028 E. Fremont Street. Technically, the buyer is a nondescript LLC, but if you peel back several layers of holding corporations, you find yourself upon Donner’s doorstep. Well to the east of Fremont Street Experience, this could be a one-off real estate play with no gambling ramifications but since the paper trail ends at Donner’s Resort Gaming Group, it’s worth a passing mention.

We finally went and saw Shania Twain‘s Camp-fire wingding at Caesars Palace last night … but you probably don’t want to read about that, do you? It’s the first time during National Finals Rodeo that I’ve actually heard anyone holler, “Yeeee-haaaw!

This entry was posted in Current, Downtown, Economy, Entertainment, Harrah's, Marketing, Sheldon Adelson, Tamares Group, The Strip, Tilman Fertitta, Tourism. Bookmark the permalink.