After a methodical — or at least slow-moving — investigation, FBI agents dropped the hammer on Tropicana Las Vegas‘ resident illusionist, Jan Rouven. The latter is accused of felony child pornography, having allegedly had myriad violent child-porn 
images and videos (3,235 of the latter) on his computers. Las Vegas Sun columnist John Katsilometes characterized the material in question as “simply disgusting to any civilized individual.” Rouven is being held without bail, having been deemed a flight risk. (A weird fact: Wherever Rouven goes, implosion follows: first the Clarion, then the Riviera.) Penn National Gaming went into temporary damage-control mode, canceling a week’s worth of Rouven’s New Illusions show, then meted out its own brand of justice, cutting all ties with Rouven and effacing his image from Trop signage by Thursday morning, as well as being careful to state that he was “an outside contractor.” Maintaing his client’s innocence, defense attorney Jess Marchese painted the show’s 12 employees as the real victims. “We feel for all these employees who have now lost their jobs because Jan was detained and unable to perform the show every night. These are just average ordinary Las Vegans,” he said.
Collateral damage may be inflicted on the other showroom tenant, Raiding the Rock Vault, which now has to absorb all expenses for the room — including union stagehands — rather than splitting them with Rouven. At least Penn can exculpate itself from blame for 
hiring Rouven: that was the decision of previous CEO Alex Yemenidjian (left). What may not be so easy is filling the gap in the showroom left by Rouven’s disappearing act. “Tropicana Theater is especially tricky, as it sits at a capacity — 1,100 — that is difficult to fill nightly even at a prominent hotel on the Strip. Rouven reportedly sold a respectable 200-250 tickets per show and did turn a profit … But such a crowd seems sparse in that theater, which is cut to about half its capacity for Raiding the Rock Vault,” wrote Katsilometes. However, SPI Entertainment CEO Adam Steck told him, “I have two productions right now that would work in there.”
Someone from Folies Bergere seems to have laid a hex on the Trop showroom ever since then-CEO Scott Butera mistakenly axed that long-running mainstay of the Strip. Nothing and no one who has followed — Wayne Newton, Gladys Knight, Mamma Mia! — has been able to keep the doors open for long. Good work, Scott.
* There was good news this week for fans of Liberace, whose legacy of conspicuous overconsumption has been kept largely under wraps — with rare exceptions — since the demise of the Liberace Museum. However, his car collection is about to come out of the closet, under the auspices of Sin City’s Hollywood Cars Museum, on Dean Martin Drive. It will have a 5,000-square-foot garage all to itself. While a Liberace resurgence in Las Vegas once seemed unlikely, if not impossible, this news and Martyn Ravenhill‘s ongoing restoration of the Liberace mansion near UNLV give the Lee-loving crowd hope for the future.
* Las Vegas homebuyers are the luckiest in the nation — if they bought during the Marianas Trench of the housing market that was 2012. Since then, the value of $114,600 valued house has appreciated by 75%. Who says there aren’t any bargains to be found in Sin City anymore?
* Seen Last Weekend: A fashion-clueless Las Vegan wearing an Ed Hardy sweatshirt. Doesn’t he know that Ed Hardy is so last decade? Hardy duds have long since quitted the Las Vegas Strip, taking Christian Audigier (and his vile wine label) with them.
