So I tried to come up with some other Vegas tie-in to coincide with the big Nevada caucus taking place later this morning.
I came up with something that tickled my fancy...Vegas legend Wayne Newton, performing If I Can Dream, in a tribute to the King, a few weeks after Elvis' death.
Hot Damn Tamale, Baby! You got them cotton panties on, Hillary?
Showing posts with label las vegas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label las vegas. Show all posts
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Back When Vegas was Respectable
There was another casino shooting in Las Vegas overnight. Two people were injured when a gunfight broket out in Caesar's around 4AM.
Sam Rothstein and the boys knew how to solve these problems. Maybe it's time to bring the old guard back.
Sam Rothstein and the boys knew how to solve these problems. Maybe it's time to bring the old guard back.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
I'll Recommend This Before Finishing It
I've been enjoying parts of the last two wonderful-weather weekends in Cleveland (insert oxymoron joke here) reading John L. Smith's Of Rats and Men, a biography of Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman.
What an enormously-entertaining read.
While I knew that Goodman was known as a mob lawyer before entering politics, and that parts of the movie, Casino, were reputed to be true, I never knew just how much until I started getting into this.
Without recounting the whole story, Oscar grew up in Philadelphia and ended up in Vegas sort of by accident, if you believe him. Among many others, he defended Tony "The Ant" Spilotro (the Joe Pesci character in Casino) and Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal (the DeNiro character in the same flick). Both of them were at least as colorful in real life as they were in the movie.
The amazing thing to me is Goodman's ability (at this point, I'm up to the early 1990s, while he was still a practicing attorney) to fool us, himself, or both, in maintaining that 'there is no mob.'
I can't wait to read more of this highly entertaining book. It would probably appeal to anyone who's visited Vegas (it's been a few years for me, but now I find myself getting a bit of a hankering), gets off on mob books and movies, or enjoys legal drama.
A little side trivia...in the court scene in Casino when Ace Rothstein is fighthing for his work permit from the Gaming Commission, Goodman plays himself in the fight against real-life butthead, Senator Harry Reid. The Mormon was the former head of the Commission.
What an enormously-entertaining read.
While I knew that Goodman was known as a mob lawyer before entering politics, and that parts of the movie, Casino, were reputed to be true, I never knew just how much until I started getting into this.
Without recounting the whole story, Oscar grew up in Philadelphia and ended up in Vegas sort of by accident, if you believe him. Among many others, he defended Tony "The Ant" Spilotro (the Joe Pesci character in Casino) and Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal (the DeNiro character in the same flick). Both of them were at least as colorful in real life as they were in the movie.
The amazing thing to me is Goodman's ability (at this point, I'm up to the early 1990s, while he was still a practicing attorney) to fool us, himself, or both, in maintaining that 'there is no mob.'
I can't wait to read more of this highly entertaining book. It would probably appeal to anyone who's visited Vegas (it's been a few years for me, but now I find myself getting a bit of a hankering), gets off on mob books and movies, or enjoys legal drama.
A little side trivia...in the court scene in Casino when Ace Rothstein is fighthing for his work permit from the Gaming Commission, Goodman plays himself in the fight against real-life butthead, Senator Harry Reid. The Mormon was the former head of the Commission.
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