Criss Angel is a dick

We don't have anything against Criss Angel, the Las Vegas Strip magician and stunt performer Cris Angel, but the news media of Las Vegas-- you know, the guys and gals who don't think the untimely death of Strip superstar Danny Gans is worth investigating-- hate the guy. They hate his show, they hate that he called Perez Hilton a "douchebag asshole" from the stage at the Luxor-- and they don't like his billboards!

Tabloid Baby pal Richard Abowitz (who also can't be convinced that the Danny Gans story is not only his turf but his responsibility, but he's not really a journo) points out on his Gold Plated Door blog that the current outdoor advertising for Angel's Believe show at the Luxor is a "local's joke" because, in the words of local import Holly Madison, it was "artistically rendered to look like a penis or medical drawing of a vagina.”


And you know, as you take a closer look at that stage curtain, the image does seem to be about as close to that Mom's Apple Pie album cover as you can get away with on a highway roadsign:


Us? We're more impressed with an alternative version that's made its way among various ads and websites. Look closely at this one:


Look at it from far away:


Look at it again-- and you notice the subliminal phallic imagery, and realize that the artists have turned Angel into a human penis-- with his head as the "dickhead."

Now that's a trick!

Garth Brooks is the anti-Danny Gans

Danny Gans did a Garth Brooks impression as part of his act. Over the weekend, Garth Brooks put the Danny Gans era, which ended only seven and half months ago, deeper into Las Vegas history when he took over Gans' theatre at the Wynn Las Vegas with little more than a guitar and a willingness to take requests of other people's songs (he didn't even spring for a cowboy hat) and ushered in a new phase of the stripped-down, intimate hour with a superstar that takes little effort from the performer but leaves the audience feeling they've shared something very special.


Critics, including Richard Abowitz at Gold Plated Door ("something truly special... the sort of special entertainment that allows Vegas to sometimes live up to the billing of Entertainment Capitol of the World...") and Mike Weatherford of the Las Vegas Review-Journal ("audacious and revealingly pure") have hailed the show that opened this weekend as an anti-Vegas, anti-spectacle antidote to the entertainment offered by hardworking, crowd-pleasing performers like Gans who went out of their way to put on a show to remember.