STRIP SCRIBBLES
*Presidential politics are a big-bucks business, and if you’re running to get the key to the front door of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue you have to be well-funded passing through Nevada. I love the tid-bits that our parent Las Vegas Sun newspaper unearthed from the Hillary and Obama camps about their Vegas tabs while campaigning here. The Clinton team paid $45,387 for their Planet Hollywood rooms and an additional $9,963 for “Internet service,” while Bill and Hill stayed across the street at the swankier Bellagio for $25,479!
Obama’s financials disclosed his nearly $40,000 was spent on big bills from Wynn and the Monte Carlo!
*Hometown star-singer songwriter Ne-Yo is in trouble with the Cobb County Sheriff’s department in Georgia. He got booked for driving recklessly without a license at over 100 mph in a Range Rover at 2 a.m.
The arrest report states his real name is Shaffer Chimene Smith and he has a Japanese symbol on the right side of his neck!
*Dining in Iron Chef Kerry Simon’s chic new celebrity spot, Cathouse at the Luxor, was hotel-mogul Elaine Wynn and UFC head honchos Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta, our Station Casino’s tycoon chief. In the adjoining Cathouse loungerie club were Kym Johnson, in a sexy sequined dress, who showed her Dancing with the Stars skills atop a cocktail table. UFC champ Randy Couture was so taken with the Cathouse Coquettes dancers’ erotic lingerie—he purchased some for the Mrs.!
*After her two sold-out shows at the Joint in the Hard Rock, sassy comedienne Sarah Silverman went to the Mr. Lucky’s 24-hour coffee shop for a midnight meal with four friends and happily signed autographs for her fans there.
*The rain-delayed NASCAR runs at the weekend in Southern California’s Auto Club Speedway have proved a benefit for fans now heading today into Vegas for next weekend’s NASCAR events. Our Motor Speedway here will only charge $25 for any NASCAR enthusiast showing the rain-soaked stubs from there. Over 100,000 fans have already purchased tickets for next weekend! I’ll be out there on Sunday for the driver introductions, the USAF Thunderbirds flyover, the national anthem and “start your engines” festivities on Fox-TV.
*New York and Florida developer Bruce Eichner arrived in Vegas with big plans to build his 3,000-room Cosmopolitan condo-hotel and try to purchase the Riviera resort casino on the Strip. It proved a rocky road, and while under construction, The Cosmo almost went into foreclosure and he was forced to hunt down an additional $400-million in equity. Instead, the Hyatt hotel group has partnered with a global hedge fund headquartered in New York to buy him out in order to have the project completed and opened by December of next year!
*Members of our Boys and Girls Clubs are in pre-production today and tomorrow readying for a 48-hour deadline assignment on Wednesday and Thursday. For the fourth consecutive year they will write, direct, produce and star in their own short film. The winner of “The Movie Team Project” will get a red-carpet premiere at the 10th annual CineVegas film festival in June hosted by actor-director Dennis Hopper, who laughed along at a series of semi-barbed jokes that Oscar host Jon Stewart threw at him last night.
*There were no masks or surgical gowns in sight when the cast of the General Hospital hit soap opera wrote their own prescription for fun at The Beatles Revolution ultra lounge at The Mirage. Kimberly McCullough, Bradford Anderson, Kirsten Storms, Jason Thompson and Greg Vaughan partied and danced all night long there with Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Clark Haggans in the group.
*Vegas has its own hometown brewed beer appropriately called Sin City Beer—and to show their love and pride in the brew, the hard-hat workers at MGM’s massive CityCenter project painted the name of their favorite after-work drink on a steel-beam which was then hoisted to the top of the construction crane and set in place permanently.
