The WSJ wins "What The Hey! Story of the Day" today for its rundown of Watanabe's gambling odyssey: He ran his dad's import business for decades till he was good and bored and rich, then went on an incredible degenerate gambling run that culminated in him (a clear gambling addict and probably alcoholic) blowing up to $5 million a day at Caesar's and bankrolling a good part of Harrah's Vegas revenue for the year. But oh, the tips!

According to court documents, Mr. Watanabe says he regularly handed out to Caesars employees bundles of $100 bills that could total as much as $20,000.

Al Deleon and Kristian Kunder, two of Mr. Watanabe's personal handlers at Caesars, say he had thousands of Tiffany gift boxes filled with $50 gift cards or $100 gift coins that he would hand out to bartenders, nightclub operators, security guards and others. They say he once told a security guard to go to a supermarket and buy every cut of steak, and then proceeded to hand them out to employees.

[Read it all at the WSJ. Pic: AP]

Unfortunately, the show's new destination, Napa Valley, probably has its own icky things lurking—such as douche-tastic chef Michael Chiarello, who I'm guessing will show up at some point. After all, you can't swing a dead cat in Napa Valley, it seems, without hitting that guy and his BuyMyNapaCrap.com site. But that's OK, because I can bravely face any icky thing in the entertaining company of the Gawker live-blogging crew. Why not join us? The live blog happens in the comments section below, and the episode starts at 10 pm on Bravo.

It's been two weeks since the last one, because Bravo's programming wizards chose not to air an original episode last Wednesday. Which is only natural, because Thanksgiving Season is no time to be scheduling food-themed programming. That would be crazy! So we'll have to think back a whole 14 days to recall the many highlights of our last live blog, including these:

• We devoted a 20-plus-comment thread to the subject of "our favorite cheeses." Apparently, many of us are bigger cheese fans than Wallace & Grommit. (I must admit that I was alarmed by Terrafractal's favorite—"chihuahua cheese"—until I did a little googling and learned that it isn't actually made out of chihuahuahs.)
• We saw a few blurry scenes from the Bocuse d'Or, which appears to be the most crappily filmed "elite competition" of all time.
• Smirky Jen smirkily told us that she would "make Turducken." But just a lie … a smirky, smirky lie.
• During the elimination challenge, BxgrlJeri accurately observed: "Eli is cooked, unlike his lamb."

Ah yes, what a time it was, that Wednesday evening of a fortnight past! As is my wont, I've compiled a selection of my favorite comments from it in a post that's linked right here. I've also watched couple of preview clips of the upcoming episode, and having done so, I suggest we watch for following things to happen tonight:

• Kevin will sport more of that new "Sienfeld low-flow showerhead" hairstyle we caught a few glimpses of last week.
• The chefs will all cook aboard a train bound for a vineyard, because … ah, who the hell knows?
• One chef will be eliminated at the end, just like in any other episode. Because these "finale, part 1" episodes are always just a regular episodes in disguise. But that's OK. At least it got us the hell out of Vegas.

So as Sheryl Crow once sang, let's pour a drink, pull the blind and wonder what we'll find. In my case, I hope what I find will be the TV remote. I've been looking everywhere for that damn thing.

Last Wednesday, we wrote about the controversy surrounding the converted U-Haul truck, which had been cruising the Las Vegas Strip as an advertisement for Deja Vu Showgirls Nightclub. Well, on Friday, the Associated Press reported that the stripper-mobile has been pulled from the streets. Concerned citizens and city council members of Las Vegas, rejoice!

A Las Vegas strip club has agreed to stop an advertising promotion that involved hauling bikini-clad exotic dancers around in a truck with clear plastic sides.

Larry Beard, marketing director of Deja Vu Showgirls, said Friday that he's taking his lawyer's advice and parking the truck.

"We're going to respect the opinion of the folks that are against it," Beard told The Associated Press. "We're going to be good citizens and take it off the street."

Please note that the strip club owner's marketing director's name is "Beard."

Now that we've gotten that out of our system, it is interesting to compare and contrast Beard's ideas with more widely held notions of what it means to be a "good citizen." For the majority of Americans, being a good citizen consists of keeping up with the news, paying your taxes, voting, and raising children who aren't racist. Beard, however, adds a fourth and crucial component to good citizenship: Not sponsoring a highly dangerous and stupid gleaming sexy dancing lady wagon, no matter how much press it could get you. So if you are not doing this, reader, give yourself a pat on the back.

Amazingly, the conclusion of the stripper-mobile saga leaves everyone looking good: Beard is a "good citizen," the city of Las Vegas retains its title as "world's classiest city"—even city politicians get an image boost. Writes one commenter on the Las Vegas Sun website:

This shows that we have a higher class of County Commissioner these days. In the old days, the only objection some Commissioners would have had was that the girls weren't available for lap dances while they were out in the truck!

Progress!

Rest in Peace, Stripper-mobile. You will not be missed as much as the many people who would have been run over by drivers ogling you.

The article (which is incomprehensibly only the second most-read article on the Las Vegas Sun's website) focuses on the "safety" and "decency" concerns raised by locals re: the mobile sin platform, which was devised as an advertisement for Deja Vu Showgirls and is described thusly:

It's akin to a small U-Haul truck but with Plexiglas surrounding the brightly lit cargo area instead of walls. In the middle is a gleaming stripper pole. Swinging around the pole is a scantily clad young woman. Two of her fellow strippers are in the back of the truck too, awaiting their turns.

Puttering up and down Las Vegas Boulevard on Monday night, it was photographed by nearly everyone it pulled alongside, from CityCenter construction workers to an SUV-load of 20-somethings from Colorado.

Yes, that sounds pretty distracting. In fact, I would say if a driver making his way down the Strip was watching a DVD of Wall-E on a television screen that covered his entire windshield while simultaneously breaking up with his girlfriend via text message and solving a complex math problem on an abacus he would be only 76% as distracted as if he was watching the stripper-mobile wend its way through Sin City. Imagine seeing the Pope-mobile driving down the road, only the Pope was stripping in it. That's the level of distraction we're dealing with it.

Concerned citizens have been complaining to city officials about the stripper-mobile. But it turns out, unsurprisingly, that Las Vegas does not have any laws precluding women from stripping in a truck:

Nothing about the women or the truck is illegal, a Metro Police spokesman said. "As long as it's not impeding traffic, it's fine," Officer Jacinto Rivera explained.

Yes, everything is kosher so long as people continue driving their cars while they photograph the stripper-mobile, like in this CNN report:

And if the mere existence of the stripper-mobile does not prove to you that Las Vegas is a gloriously wasted blight upon America from which our eventual destruction will spring, consider the hilarious way councilwoman Chris Giunchigliani went about expressing her concerns about it:

I don't care about the content or that they're female dancers. I'm sick of the women, in fact - let's get some men up there for once. But this is just illegal.

Viva Las Vegas!

UPDATE: A blog calling itself the "Nevada Progressive" is defending the Stripper-mobile as an example of "free speech." Now the stripper-mobile has confirmed my preconceived notions of progressives, too!

(photo via Roadsidepictures' Flickr)

According to The Wall Street Journal, after Hughes' 1976 death his estate was divided among a handful of "cousins, aunts, uncles and other relatives." Now, thanks to the powers vested in hobby genealogy and weird property laws, their ranks have expanded to more than 1,000, only 200 of which are actually relatives. Some of the rando heirs are even plebeians, including schoolteachers, laborers, and people who need money for health care! They're all angling for one last Howard Hughes kickback when the estate sells off the 7000 acres in Las Vegas that Hughes used as an aeronautics base in the 1940s.

Once valued at $2 billion, the land is now tied up in crappy mortgages with a bankrupt shopping mall developer, which means the Hughes Clan Plus 800 will get very little money out of the sale, and what they do get, they'll be forced to divide 1000+ ways, which, alas, means no more Hughes billionaires. And that is the way dynasties end: Not with a bang, but an over-mortgaged whimper.

When Earl Shelton, the associate publisher of local gay magazine QVegas, wanted to celebrate his union with his partner at the Erotic Heritage Museum in a ceremony officiated by an Elvis impersonator and lorded over by drag charity group the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a bunch of the assimilationist gays got their boxers in a bunch. They knew that the media would have a field day with a gay marriage in a sex museum with a bunch of drag queens.

They're right, they would. So fucking what? The people that are going to be upset about this already hate gay marriage or domestic partnerships or whatever rights the states deign to give our people, so it's not like one ceremony is going to ruin the gay marriage equality movement. And, to all the beige gays out there with their tasteful ceremonies, I have to break the news to you, but we're different. No matter how much we want to convince the straights that we can have the same sort of staid unions that they have been celebrating for centuries, part of being a part of the gay culture means being different. Yes, that means that gay people are going to want drag queen weddings and leather weddings and Melissa Ethridge-and-Birkenstock-only weddings and very tasteful affairs where the grooms wear matching tuxes and everything goes just like Emily Post says it should. If you want the world to get their nose out of relationships, why don't we start by taking our noses out of each others' wedding ceremonies.

So, here are some even gayer ways the radical queers in Vegas can have the rainbow nuptuals of thier dreams. Gay it up, queens! You have our blessing:

1. On stage in the Bette Midler/Cher/Celine Dion theater at Caesar's Palace with Kathy Griffin officiating and introducing each diva as they come out to do a number. The grooms will enter to "Vogue" but they will not walk down the aisle, they will vogue. The tuxes will be by Christian Siriano. As the grooms leave, Neil Patrick Harris makes a surprise entrance and does the closing number from this year's Tonys—shirtless.

2. During the annual Adult Video News conference, a leather fetish wedding held at the Las Vegas Eagle. Grooms to wear only harnesses and chaps with matching hats and will be carried into the bar on litters carried by naked pornstars. All guests will be required to wear fetish gear. During the reception, dancers will do the world's longest dance to "YMCA" getting the ceremony in the Guinness Book of World Records.

3. All naked wedding in the pool of Entourage. Yes, it's a bath house.

4. A take-over of Krave, the big gay dance club will feature Offer Nissim spinning from 2am until noon the next day. Instead of rings, the grooms exchange matching tribal tattoos and dance to the best dance remix of CeCe Peniston's "Finally" the world has ever heard.

5. Siegfried and Roy theme.

Easily caricatured Nevada Sen. Harry Reid is in a "flap" because he got mad at the hometown Las Vegas Review Journal and then he went to some luncheon and saw the paper's advertising director—"a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers"—and Harry Reid told the guy he hopes his paper goes out of business because it totally sucks, and also does not like Harry Reid. This prompted an indignant editorial, which is about the extent of the "flap" at this point, due to the rapidly waning influence of newspapers. "Flaps" aren't what they used to be.


Some joker sent a fake bomb to the Naples Daily News, but when bomb techs finally opened it all it did was play "Call Me" by Blondie. That's kind of a good one, let's get real.


Cami McCormick, a CBS News correspondent, was injured by an IED while on assignment with a US Army unit in Afghanistan. She's now being treated, but no specifics are available on her condition. Get well soon Cami.


Magazine circulation news! Of the bad sort. Overall newsstand sales were down about 12% in the first half. And women's magazines did the worst—Ladies Home Journal, for example, fell 46%. No extra pennies in the supermarket checkout line, MYSTERY SOLVED.

See here: only two years ago, if you had wanted to procure yourself some office space in Midtown Manhattan, the only way would be to burst into office space already occupied by some massive white-shoe law firm, simultaneously shooting and throwing money at everyone in your path, until they had all been killed or paid handsomely, at which time you could drag out the bodies, clean off the blood, give a real estate agent 15%, and open your own office there, until you yourself fell victim to the same fate a few weeks later.

This was the Manhattan real estate "game." But now things are different; everyone's broke, offices are empty, and even the Hobo New York Times can afford office space right there, in Midtown, with rent paid every month in the form of Gray's Papaya coupons.

Not to say that it's sunny times for everyone. Las Vegas has gone from a town where waiters could make $150K to a place where celebrity chefs—restaurant projects canceled—are wandering the Strip, knives in hand, offering to stab tourists and autograph the wound for spare change. Involuntary part-time workers make up a huge chunk of our national economy. Our last hope is the backyard chicken coop—and the government is trying to take that away. Not even our neighbors support us: "Get a farm," they say, flippantly, luxuriating in their own ability to afford fancy eggs from the store.

Yea. We'll get a farm. Your farm, fuckers. Eggs are the new office space.

New York: Wall Street. Fashion. The media capital of the world. Billionaires. Criminals. Mafiosos. Immigrants. Everything's grand!

Los Angeles: Hollywood. Movie stars. Celebrities. Parties. Drugs. Bloods. Crips. Speidi. Beaches. Hippies. Weed. Glamor!

Las Vegas: Casinos. The Mob. The Rich. The strung out. Hookers. Pimps. Steve Wynn. Luck!

Washington, DC: Politics. Presidents. Senators. Crack. Marion Barry. The Supreme Court. Museums. Landmarks. Legislation. Sex scandals. Obama!

San Francisco: The Castro. Barry Bonds. Gavin Newsom. Tech. Silicon Valley. The Gays!

Boston: Patriots. Celtics. Red Sox. Championships. Tradition. Massholes. Ivy League. M.I.T. Kennedys!

Chicago: Machine politics. Daley. Throwback Obama. Projects. Vice Lords. Second City. Jordanesque!

Detroit: GM. Eminem. Unemployment. Poverty. Decay. The perfect crumbling urban hellhole for an enterprising metro reporter to use as a canvas. Charlie LeDuff!

New Orleans: Katrina. Destruction. Resurrection. Cafe Du Monde. Mardi Gras. Hurricanes, alcoholic and otherwise. Brangelina. Master P. Ninth Ward!

Miami: Vice. Cocaine cowboys. South Beach. Cubans. Jamaicans. Retirees. Cigarette boats. Money. Mosquitoes. Storms. Carl Hiaasen. Dave Barry. America's landing strip!

Possibly the most worthless, airtime-eating tactic in the history of television news, the "man on the street" interview typically involves some fresh out of college pretty face quizzing some slob with a room temperature IQ and a complete ignorance of current events about issues they have no business giving public opinions on, yet the tradition lives on at local news outlets across America. Occasionally, the person being interviewed will say or do something incredibly stupid, which then leads to a minor comedic moment. It is on these occasions that the "man on the street" interview actually holds some shred of value for the viewer, though it's still utterly worthless as a tangible journalistic tool.

It is with this in mind that we genuflect at the altar of Steve Ryan for refusing to take it anymore and physically assaulting an unruly street person. This, and the resulting looks of horror on the faces of the in-studio anchors at the desk when the director cuts back to them, may be the best moment in the history of television news.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

via Wonkette

Via Web Of Deception, the documents show Conrad Murray owing a state tax lien of $2,544 to Arizona, $1,578 to California, and defaulting on housing loans worth a few million dollars, including one in the tax-sheltered, foreclosure-plagued city of Las Vegas, Nevada at the Red Rock Country Club, where reporters attempting to see Dr. Murray's house were turned away by the guard gate. The associated press filed a great report on the guy who's about to be under some intense scrutiny by the LAPD and medical boards in the three states where he's licensed to practice medicine (Texas, Nevada, California). His practice was in Vegas. What to know:

- Murray was supposed to accompany Jackson on his upcoming comeback tour, per Jackson's very specific request.

- Murray was with Jackson when he passed a physical that showed no evidence of drug use.

- Murray's practice was hit with $400K in court judgments for defaulting on payments. He also owes $940 for driving with expired plates and no proof of insurance in 2000. [Don't you just have to show up to court to get those erased? Eh?]

- Murray's still dealing with two other pending cases regarding his lack of fiscal solvency.

The portrait of this guy that's about to emerge is guaranteed to be pretty interesting. How did he end up in Jackson's life? Why was Jackson so attached to him? It won't be as notable as the picture of Jackson that's surely going to start showing up in weeks to come, but as far as the end of his life went, Murray's own story is definitely going to be key to understanding Jackson's.

Michael Jackson: His Doctor [Web of Deception]

LA police want to talk to Jackson's cardiologist [AP]

The former president of South Korea, Roh Moo-Hyun, jumped off of a hill behind his house last night. Roh had been accused of taking $6 million from a South Korean businessman in bribes; his wife was being questioned, and he was to go through a second round of questioning this week. Roh - the first South Korean president to cross the demilitarized zone - left behind a despondent note on his computer before going for a walk with his aide; in it, he wrote: "Don't be too sad. Aren't life and death both a piece of nature?..It is fate."The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

In China, a guy contemplating suicide was actually pushed over a bridge by someone else. Chen Fuchao, piled under massive debt, was standing on a bridge when Lai Jiansheng, 66, decided he was sick of what he considered to be a "selfish activity." Fuchao's standing on the bridge had police quartering off the area, and traffic got backed up. Jiansheng shook Fuchao's hand, and shoved him off the bridge, saluting him on the way down. Yeah. Luckily, Chinese authorities had already partially inflated an emergency cushioning, and Fuchao is in the hospital with spinal injuries; it looks like he's going to survive.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.A British man used Google Earth to figure out the exact location - 200 miles from where he lived - to decide where he was going to end his life, it was recently discovered. British actress Lucy Gordon - who had a small role in Spider Man 3, and played Jane Birkin in the upcoming French biopic based on Serge Gainsbourg's life - killed herself in Paris two days ago (the New York Post chose a typically mongrel-esque headline for their treatment of the AP story: '"SPIDEY' ACTRESS SUICIDE.").

Closer to home, a particularly sick story: a 32 year-old Las Vegas local, Jeff Ostfeld, was arrested for smuggling animal tranquilizers back from Mexico. He claimed they were to help with assisted suicides. Mexican authorities had tipped off American law enforcement that he'd been seen leaving the hotel of an American woman who'd overdosed on said drugs. She had books about anxiety and depression littered about the room. According to his mother, who had no idea what was going on until she read about it, Ostfeld suffers from severe anxiety and depression as well. Elsewhere, a 66 year-old woman became the first in the state of Washington's history to use their assisted suicide law: she was suffering from stage-4 pancreatic cancer, and the pain had become unbearable.

And finally, apropos of Memorial Day, the Washington Post ran this incredibly sad, teary piece detailing the new statistics on suicide in the military.

In 2008, 140 soldiers on active duty took their own lives, continuing a trend in which the number of suicides has increased more than 60 percent since 2003, surpassing the rate for the general U.S. population.

Sure, this is an unlikely roundup for us to take on over the weekend. It's a downer in every sense of the word, and the rate of occurrences of this nature happening at any given moment is probably more significant than an RSS feed full of them over one stretch could ever indicate. But times are tough, people are scared, and it looks like a lot of them aren't seeking help. Even if they did, right now, the 2009 National Alliance on Mental Illness study gave our country a "D" on our mental health care nationally due in no small part to dwindling government resources (though New York, where Gawker lives, gets a "B," the highest grade a state got this year).

Anyway: no punchline here. Just a bad, tragic news cycle. Online, the Suicide Prevention Resource Center has help to offer for anyone you know in trouble. Believe me: I'd much rather spend my Saturday's writing about Shia LaBeouf's cock. Sometimes, too many news items in one week are too much to ignore. And on a three-day weekend, we can probably afford to deal with something serious for a moment that doesn't have to do with the New York Times explaining the fourth dimension of Hamptons Recession Chic. On that note: back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Former S. Korean President Roh commits suicide [CNN]
Passer-By Pushes Suicide Jumper In China [CBS News]
Man Uses Google Earth To Pick Suicide Location [Fox News]
'Spidey' Actress Suicide [New York Post]
Las Vegas man allegedly brought assisted suicide drugs into U.S. [Las Vegas Sun]
Cancer patient first to use Washington's assisted suicide law [CNN]
Generals Find Suicide a Frustrating Enemy [Washington Post]

Memorial Day weekend's typically the first opportunity of the summer for New Yorkers of all stripes-shit, anyone, of any stripe-to reasonably make a good faith effort to book it out of dodge. I did! And yet, here we are. Gabriel told me to run a short shift, and I essentially told him, fuck that, man, no trip home to see the family and relax is complete without nine hours of SLOW NEWS WEEKEND ANXIETY, and you torch-wielding, Parliament chain-smoking, muumuu-wearing alcoholic bi-polar maniacs need something to hold you over while you avoid the sun (Related: Gawker overlord Nick Denton just "bought" a "vampire blog").

So here we are: my third weekend on the job, and this go around, we'll be bringing you extra-special coverage of all things hedonistic in lieu of our excursion home in addition to the usual skeeze. Sex! Drugs! Rock and Roll! Addictions! An unsupervised PST-oriented blogger going wild on the Gawker expense account!

Last week, T.A.N. brought ruckus with Susan Orlean's Hot 97-esque trip in the studio to cook up some Remnick-grade beef. Who's hotter and more scandalous-er for a weekend in Vegas besides Susan Orlean? Well, he got that person.

And on that note: Gawker Weekend Management has also heard your complaints regarding the lack of ladyparts up in this hizzy. We rounded up some Better Halves to get in here and talk some shit (coming tomorrow). What now?

So: buy some chips, gird your loins, avoid the free drinks, wear a watch, and hang tight. We'll be here all week(end).

Not in so many words, but:

Though the city's marketers say those [value-oriented] campaigns were successful, they say new research showed them that even in a painful recession, consumers still liked the idea of going to Las Vegas to sample pleasures unavailable at home.

"Pleasures" like doing blow off hookers, QED.
[WSJ]

Oh look, there's video! Always seems to be, huh? The Sun, chronicler of the ages, tells us that Casey Affleck, Joaquin's brother-in-law and potential partner in hoaxery, was also in the crowd, filming away for this alleged documentary. The whole thing looks pretty staged—from Phoenix bragging about his millions of dollars in the bank, to the completely unsurprised and calm look on his face as he sets his mic down on the stage and heads into the audience for a bout of fisticuffs.

The audience was eating it up, chanting "Beat him up! Beat him up!", so that must have felt nice for Phoenix. No matter how out-to-lunch on various handfuls of drugs he may be, which Phoenix undoubtedly is, a performer still enjoys, nay requires!, the love of a sweaty, heaving audience. So even if it's a tiresome, indulgent meta joke, we're all at fault for perpetuating what has become an all too real and sad personal history.

Cole was taken Wednesday when three men claiming to be cops showed up at his mother's house and demanded cash from his mother and her fiance. When they said they didn't have any, the men ransacked the place and made off with the boy. An Amber Alert was issued—the first in Nevada history—but it was called off yesterday even though Cole was still missing. Police said the alert had run its course.

Meanwhile, Federal Marshalls arrested Cole's grandfather, Clemens Tinnemeyer, 51, in California early Saturday, hoping he would lead them to the child's kidnappers—Mexican drug dealers from whom he'd stolen money.

Police remain on the hunt for the kidnappers and are looking for Jesus Gastelum, a Mexican national in his mid-30s, as a “person of interest,” Captain Cannito said.

“The investigation now moves on to the drug dealing and the potential extortion issues,” hesaid.

Captain Cannito offered few details about the boy’s condition or the status of the rest of the case early Sunday and did not take questions from reporters. Mr. Puffinburger had not yet seen his son when he spoke to the media, but was effusive in praise for the police and the community that rallied behind his family.

“They called me and they said, ‘We got him!’ and I said, ‘You got who?’ and then I realized and was like, ‘Oh my God!,” the father said.

[NYT]

The judge refused bail for O.J. while his lawyer files an appeal, and Simpson's sister, Carmelita fainted as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

The charges stem from a misadventure last September when Simpson and some gun-toting goons executed a bumbling raid on a room at the Palace Station casino to try to recover some old sports junk Simpson claimed had been stolen from his trophy room.

"He's extremely upset, extremely emotional, but it is something that was expected," O.J.'s lawyer, Yale Galanter said. He says Simpson's fame is what did him in. "Definitely someone like OJ Simpson, everyone has a fixed opinion of him and it's troubling. I wasn't surprised."

Simpson will be sentenced in December. [ABC.net.au]