Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Second Deal

Watched the return of Deal or No Deal (out of synch) last night. For reasons I can't explain — it may just be the expertise of Howie Mandel at hitting all the right notes — I liked the show during its brief run a few weeks ago. This time though, I could already feel myself losing interest in the game, especially in the first half hour where you know the contestant ain't gonna take no deal.

The producers seem to have solved one problem. During the first week, it was way too obvious that much of Mandel's dialogue was dubbed in after the fact. I think they did it a few times last night but it was a lot less noticeable. Still, the show still had some awkward edits, especially during the entrance of their pointless cameo guest, Donald Trump. The Donald came on to "advise" the contestant about whether or not to take the deals being offered him...but of course, Trump really couldn't add anything. It's the contestant's bank account on the line, not his, and there's no decision involved of the kind about which Donald Trump might be considered an expert. I wish Trump had just said, "I have no clue what you should do. I'm just here to plug The Apprentice and let everyone stare at my hair."

It was also kind of funny to see television's two biggest germophobes — Mandel and Trump — on the same stage, grudgingly hugging the contestant.

Two other points: The player last night walked away with $359,000. If you were paying attention, you might have expected he'd get to that amount because it was flashed during the opening montage of scenes from the show. Also, it struck me as odd that they seem to have replaced several of the models on the show. Just what is it that a beautiful woman could do that would cause the producers to say, "We've got to get rid of her. She doesn't know how to stand there and open a briefcase"?

A friend on the inside tells me the producers are well aware that the show can get repetitive and that they have a lot of plans on how to add new elements and surprises, so I'm not giving up on it yet. I just may be carressing the Fast Forward button while watching.

• Posted at 2:22 PM · LINK

Drop the Trop?

As far as I know, there's been no official announcement but a lot of folks in Las Vegas are assuming the Tropicana Hotel is a goner. The place has stopped accepting advance reservations beyond April 15 and there's a news story out in which one of the companies that implodes Vegas hotels is openly discussing the challenge of razing the Trop's twin towers at the same time. The rumor is that two separate but connected hotels would be built on the land.

If this is all true, it's one of those good news/bad news things. I haven't stayed at the Tropicana in well over ten years...since I had the second-worst hotel room and some of the worst meals I've ever had in that city. I have yet to hear a report from anyone that suggested my experience was atypical or no longer the norm. But I always enjoyed walking around the place, especially the pool area, which was one of the most pleasant places you could stroll or sit and escape the relentless sound of the slot machines. I remember sitting there for most of one afternoon once with a note pad, jotting down ideas for a script, watching a colorful array of tourists, bathing beauties and even some tropical birds pass by. And the long-running entertainment at the Tropicana, the Folies Bergere, was and is probably the best "classic Vegas" production show in town. (You can see a few seconds of it over on this page.)

I guess the sad thing, if there is a sad thing, is that an entire era is going away. I don't think I'll miss any of those places on an individual basis but something's being lost in that city beyond gambling money. The Tropicana opened in April of 1957. Only four standing hotels in Las Vegas — The Frontier, the Flamingo, the Sahara and the Riviera — are older and I don't think anyone expects the Frontier to be there much longer. I might not stay in any of those establishments (the Flamingo, once in a while) but their existence provided a nice connect to the heritage of the city. Everyone loves stories of Old Vegas. They may not want to stay in the hotels that represent it but they love the stories.

If I had the bucks to open a small hotel-casino in that town, I'd buy the rights to one of the defunct names — the Sands or the Thunderbird or one of those. And then I'd deck the place out like it was 1958, with pit bosses and dealers in tuxedos, and piped-in music from that period. You probably couldn't stock the place with older slot machines but I would have a showroom with the best impersonators I could get of Frank and Dean and Sammy and even Liberace. And whenever I could, I'd book the real Tony Bennett. There'd be a guy at the door named Vinnie and I'd price the tickets so you could afford to tip him twenty bucks to seat you at a good table. I'd have a kid who sang like Wayne Newton playing the lounge there...although if I waited long enough, I might be able to get Wayne. I'd also pay Shecky Greene to walk around the casino, shake hands and tell everyone stories about mobsters, hookers and people getting beaten up in the back room.

I think people would flock to it. The Palms is about to open the first Playboy Club since the last one closed in 1986. They were irrelevant and silly then but irrelevant and silly have a way of becoming retro and hip, and I bet you won't be able to get into that Playboy Club for months after it begins welcoming patrons. Old Vegas is due for a comeback soon, too. It'll start just as soon as they get rid of the last of it.

• Posted at 1:31 PM · LINK

Mopping Up...

Quite a few of you have written to inform me of the origin of Pancake Day. This e-mail from Brent McKee seems to provide a good summary...

Pancake Day is actually Shrove or Fat Tuesday, the last Tuesday before the commencement of Lent. It's the last day for eating an assortment of tasty treats. In England — from which Canada and most of the United States derives its traditions — this meant pancakes. In Newfoundland, the tradition is to put trinkets like coins and rings into the pancake. The person who finds a particular trinket has good luck in a particular area — the one who finds the coin will get rich, the one who finds the ring will get married in the next year, and so on. In some areas of the United States, the tradition varies. In Detroit, for example, you never hear of "Pancake Day", it's "Paczki Day" (pronounced "punchky") where they eat "paczkis" which are sort of a Polish fruit pastry which seems to resemble a jelly donut. In New Orleans, the tradition is (besides getting women to show off their breasts for beads) to eat "King Cake." As in the Newfoundland tradition, a trinket of some sort is found in the cake, with the person who finds it becoming "king" of the party.

Yeah, but what do you get in the free pancakes at IHOP? Or don't I want to know? I don't want to know.

I've also received a number of e-mails from folks telling me their horror tales of shopping at Radio Shack...and from two different folks, their unhappy experiences working in those establishments. Almost everyone mentioned the policy Radio Shack once had (I remember this, too) of demanding your address and phone number any time you made a purchase, no matter how tiny. I once bought a 10-cent battery there and had to give them that info, despite the fact that I was already receiving six or seven copies of every Radio Shack catalog. It took me a while to figure out, as I'm sure others realized, that the thing to do was to give them a bogus address and phone number.

Two people within the confines of KNBC wrote to me, separately, that they know their hi-def signal is occasionally out of synch and that they can't understand either why no one there is concerned about it. I'm not so much concerned about it as amazed. At every station, there's a department called something like Master Control that is responsible for monitoring the outgoing broadcast 24/7 and making sure it's as close to perfect as possible. The folks in those divisions are usually fiercely diligent...although once, I was in the NBC network Master Control in New York and the guys in there were watching The Price is Right on CBS because they'd been tipped off that there were major bikinis in the Showcases at the end. And once, I was in Master Control at ABC and the guys there were watching porn, which struck me as just plain dangerous. They were one wrong button-push away from replacing Grace Under Fire with Grace Under Fred. But that kind of behavior is not typical. Usually, they catch transmission problems and do everything necessary to correct them, long before any viewers phone in.

Lastly, many have written to tell me of other "Who's on First?" variations that have been done in recent years besides the one by the Credibility Gap. This Wikipedia page lists a lot of them, including one I wrote. I still think it's an incredibly stupid routine that works in spite of itself.

• Posted at 12:23 PM · LINK