Rob Belushi, who has an extensive career in sketch comedy, is John Belushi's nephew and his dad is actor Jim Belushi. Michael Lehrer and Robyn Norris are veterans of The Second City Touring Company and have come to Las Vegas to write and perform in their first original revue. Katie Neff is now in her second show at the Flamingo. Paul Mattingly is a graduate of The Second City Training Center in Las Vegas.

As always, the show features a variety of fast-paced scenes, songs and improvisation. Shows are nightly except Wednesday at 8 p.m. with additional 10 p.m. shows on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday 10 p.m. performance is an all-improvised revue called The Second City Scriptless and is performed by a separate cast of five improvisers.

Wolfgang Puck's critically acclaimed, award-winning restaurant CUT is now open at The Palazzo. CUT marks the sixth fine dining restaurant in Las Vegas from the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group.

The critically acclaimed award-winning, Richard Meier-designed CUT in Beverly Hills at the Beverly Wilshire, a Four Seasons Hotel, has been widely acknowledged as one of the most popular spots in the United States. The new CUT menu offers a contemporary twist on the classic steakhouse and a large selection of house-made sauces, including CUT's signature Argentinean Chimichurri. To complement the menu, Beverage Director Tim Wilson has carefully crafted an extensive international wine list of more than 500 selections.

For the design of the 160-seat eatery and 60-seat bar and lounge design, Las Vegas-based firm Avery Brooks & Associates (ABA) created an environment with rich textures such as a basket woven felt wall that provides a soft white architectural envelope high above bronzed mirror walls and acid-etched glass. The flooring is comprised of honed, white limestone, walnut wood tiles and rich, custom-designed carpeting. Old lamp-lit dining is accomplished through custom-designed lighting fixtures. There's leather seating, leather table tops framed in brushed metal, and English Windsor wood-slab tables in the center of the space. The walls are adorned with a group of 12 paintings by Los Angeles-based artist John Millei titled the Maritime Paintings.

A portion of the dining room can be utilized for private dining space, seating up to 50 guests, featuring a fully retractable bronze glass wall that opens to a contemporary wine wall located just outside the kitchen.

MGM Mirage has unveiled initial plans for CityCenter's $40 million Fine Art Program. Opening in late 2009, CityCenter will feature works by acclaimed artists including Maya Lin, Jenny Holzer, Nancy Rubins, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Frank Stella, Henry Moore and Richard Long, among others.

Validating CityCenter's status as a cultural destination of worldwide significance, the CityCenter Fine Art Program will feature numerous sculptures and fine art installations in both interior and exterior locations. The program is designed to become a benchmark for enlightened corporate involvement with the arts on a global level and will be one of the world's largest and most ambitious corporate art programs. Additional pieces will be announced at a later date.

The CityCenter Fine Art Program will encompass a multitude of styles and media - ranging from sculptures and paintings to large-scale installations. Some will be existing pieces, carefully chosen for their artistic value and cultural significance; others will be site-specific installations for which the artist has been invited to command their vision over the space. The contemporary masterpieces will transform CityCenter into a museum of iconic works of art throughout CityCenter's public spaces.

New York-based Maya Lin is creating her first work of art in Las Vegas: an approximately 120-foot silver cast of the Colorado River that will be suspended high above the reception area of CityCenter's gaming resort.

At CityCenter, Jerry Holzer's work will be seen as visitors approach the porte cochere at The Harmon Hotel, Spa & Residences. They will be welcomed by one of the artist's LED signs spanning 387 feet wide.

Sculptor and artisan Nancy Rubins, famous for her grandiose works created from salvaged and industrial consumer goods, will create a larger scale version of her famous installation: Big Pleasure Point. Measuring 40 feet tall, 50 feet wide and 70 feet long, Rubins' work of art at CityCenter will be a colorful composition of numerous small river and ocean vessels that are finessed into a gravity-defying form that will be located on the exterior of Vdara Condo Hotel and will be one of Rubins' few works with a permanent home.

Veer Towers will feature two large-scale commissioned works by Richard Long. Entitled Circle of Life and Earth, Long's two mud wall drawings will measure 80 feet high x 50 feet wide each and be displayed on Veer's west and east tower walls, respectively. An English sculptor, photographer and painter, Long is one of the best-known British land and conceptual artists.

Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas will feature Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, 1998-1999, an iconic piece by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Designed with the pair's classic approach to creating large-scale outdoor sculptures of popular commercial objects, the five-ton, 19-foot stainless steel and fiberglass sculpture depicts a giant blue and red typewriter eraser with the bristles of the brush turned upward in a graceful, dynamic gesture. Oldenburg and van Bruggen have collaborated on more than 40 monumental projects throughout Europe, Asia and the United States.

For the reception desk at CityCenter's Vdara Condo Hotel, MGM Mirage has purchased one of artist Frank Stella's most prominent works. Damascus Gate I, originally created in 1969, features a design of interlaced semicircles made of fluorescent and alkyd resin on a 96 x 384 inch canvas affixed to a horizontal base.

Henry Moore's Reclining Connected Forms, 1969-1974, is his sculpture inspired by the fundamentals of the human experience, which is the primary theme of his life's work. Measuring 10.17 x 17 x 7.70 feet, the abstract work of art displays a baby wrapped in its mother's embrace.

After touring for 15 years, international award-winning illusionist Brett Daniels is setting up a new afternoon show at the Sahara: The Brett Daniels Show: Wohscigam (you need to spell it backwards) that will debut on April 1 for an indefinite run. Six years in development, the multi-million dollar production (pronounced wo-shee-gahm) offers a brand-new concept in magical entertainment; a historical murder-mystery plot, world class sleight-of-hand, and an original whodunit - all wrapped up in a Broadway-style production. The revolutionary theatrical encounter will utilize historical magician Lester Tiband's 1912 manuscript. Wohscigam will be performed at 3 p.m. daily except Sunday. Tickets are $39.95 and $49.95. Tickets for children under 13 are $25.95 and are $29.95 for seniors over 65.

The Academy of Country Music Awards will take place on May 18 at the MGM Grand Garden and will be carried live on CBS. This year for the first time, fans will choose the winner of the entertainer of the year category, with voting beginning on May 5.

Singing impressionist Gordie Brown, who recently closed his show at The Venetian, will move into a 10 p.m. time slot on March 21 at the V Theater at the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood.

Ventriloquist Ronn Lucas is moving his afternoon show from the Luxor to the Excalibur on April 1.

Singing impressionist Larry G. Jones recently closed his show at Fitzgeralds downtown.

http://www.lasvegas-nv.com/brett/index.htm

Longtime Elvis Presley impersonator Steve Connolly is eagerly awaiting the King's possible return to the Strip.

He may not have to wait too much longer. New York-based FX Real Estate and Entertainment is planning an Elvis-themed hotel-casino development for nearly 18 acres on the Strip across from CityCenter, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week.

Connolly, who has done tribute shows to the entertainer at the Aladdin, Riviera, Bally's, MGM Grand and Fitzgeralds, says the interest in Elvis is still high enough to make the resort a success.

"I think there is enough of a draw," said Connolly, who moved to Las Vegas from Boston 12 years ago. "He's sold billions of records and still made $50 million last year."

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Well, almost new. In one of the more bizarre coincidences of Las Vegas show business history, the Desert Inn lounge already hosted a topless spoof of the "Tom Jones" movie with Albert Finney that still was popular in 1968.

"The movie was so big that (people) thought I was going to act in a play," the Tom Jones more familiar to Las Vegas once recalled. And Flamingo Las Vegas executives hedged their bet for his March 21 debut by co-billing the Welsh singer with "America's Favorite Mother-in-Law," Kaye Ballard.

But that was before his TV show hit big in the United States. "They thought I was a pop singer, trying to be a nightclub entertainer," Jones noted.

He has done a pretty good job of both along the way. If Jones opens an MGM Grand stint as scheduled today, it will mark 40 consecutive years on the Strip, to the best recollection of local experts who run an unofficial fan Web site, Tom Jones International.

Don't be surprised to see the occasion marked at today's show, though the Web site managers wanted to retain the element of surprise in terms of specifics.

Over the years, the 67-year-old Jones recorded two live albums on the Strip, inspired Elvis Presley to reinvent himself as a showroom act and defended the city from flying saucers in "Mars Attacks!"
ReviewJournal.com - Living - MIKE WEATHERFORD: Tom Jones to mark milestone

By SONYA PADGETT/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

With her long, platinum hair and hot pink satin jacket, Yvonne Manriquez serves as a striking landmark to disoriented visitors in Boulder Station.

She's there daily and, though she insists she's lucky anywhere, you'll find her in the same spot, playing her favorite video poker machine in the southeast section of the casino. If it's not available when she arrives at her usual time, around 3 p.m., she leaves.

"This is like my living room," the former Miss Wheelchair Nevada 2004 says, gesturing to her special machine and the aisle where it's located.

Back in the early days of Las Vegas, it was thought that Boulder Highway would be similar to the Las Vegas Strip, offering a variety of hotel-casinos and catching gamblers who came in from Arizona, says Michael Green, local historian and history professor at the College of Southern Nevada. The Showboat opened in 1954; Sam's Town came along in 1979, followed by Boulder Station in 1994 and a smattering of tiny casinos, some of which still blaze their neon signs into the Vegas desert nights.

Pretty soon, Fergie's derriere is going to start demanding its own tour bus.

It'll require a separate dressing room, a five-figure appearance fee and equal billing at her concerts.

It'll develop a huge ego, threaten to go solo and totally raise hell if any brown M&Ms are found in the backstage candy bowl.

As well it should: Fergie's backside is a sizable part of her show, in every sense of the word.

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