The rumor reported on the Buffet is now official: Barry Manilow's headlining gig at the Hilton is ending. Manilow opened at the Las Vegas Hilton back in 2005. His final dates: October 8-10, Nov. 27-29, and Dec. 28-30. If you are a Fanilow and want to be sure to see him in Vegas, this is your final definite chance. But probably not your final, final chance. As to the rumors that Manilow is in negotiations with Paris casino, journalist Steve Friess on his blog updates on what is currently known. Manilow, according to the Hilton, by the end of residency will have performed for about 450,000 customers.

Photo: Sarah Gerke

Norm Clarke reported in a straightforward way the news that Charo was suspending her show at the Riviera due to an ankle injury suffered after the MDA telethon. Clarke notes: "the legendary flamenco guitarist is out until her doctor 'gives her the OK to dance on that ankle again,' according to a spokesman." Modern medicine does not have an ETA on a sprained ankle?

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the doctor ever gives her that OK to perform after the sprained ankle ended the show-must-go-on practice of the veteran performer and old-school entertainer, who could still sing and play guitar without dancing. We will see if the show ever resumes.

I am going to be out on the Strip reporting most of today.

First I will be at Madame Tussauds Las Vegas for the unveiling of the Criss Angel wax figure. This will be my first face-to-face encounter with the real Criss Angel since our many public disagreements covered on this blog. But don't expect some confrontational climax. Of course, I am curious whether wax Criss Angel has a shorter wick than the real Criss Angel's fuse. But I will only have enough time for a couple of questions because Angel will be with a bunch of Make-A-Wish kids as well as doing other interviews at this event. 

Also, Angel and I both have somewhere else to be: the Danny Gans memorial at Encore. So I expect that I will only get time to ask about his new wax statue and to try to get a quote from Angel on Gans' legacy for my Weekly (where I am on staff) story before rushing to the Encore assignment. The auto-de-fe between Angel and I (and, who is the heretic?) will therefore likely be deferred.

As for Gans, I have been amazed at the number of attention-seekers and conspiracy theorists who have come out in public to discuss and speculate about the death of the impressionist. I have tried to write as little as possible about Gans' passing. Right now the death investigation is awaiting  a toxicology report and then we will know better if we are discussing a John Ritter or a Heath Ledger death or something else. Whatever the cause, the facts are that the father of three is dead and the show is closed. Those are the two facts that matter most in Vegas, and no future information will alter them. Still, the entertainment business machinery never ceases working, even when the wheels now spin pointlessly. For example, requests for volunteers to be seat fillers at the memorial service were sent out via e-mails yesterday. I assume trying to cajole volunteers to come to the memorial at Encore is being done to create a full house for the cameras and media covering this tribute to Gans. "Free Comp tickets are currently available for Danny Gans Memorial Thursday afternoon at Wynn," the e-mails read. Has anyone ever heard of being comped to a memorial service before?

But of all the nutty things said in the aftermath of Danny Gans' death, Mirage headliner Terry Fator wins with this request to Gans' spirit quoted in the New York Times: “I don’t know how long he’s going to be hanging around the earth. But if he wants to come and see my show, I’d love to have him, and I’ll do him proud.” Is this opportunistic or just sick?

Breaking: Danny Gans, longtime Mirage headliner and current headliner at Wynn's Encore, died early this morning. I have confirmed with Wynn/Encore that Gans died in his sleep. No more information is available at this time. Gans was 52. Steve Wynn has issued the following statement moments ago:

Elaine and I and all of us in the Company are devastated at the loss of our brilliant, talented and loving friend. One of the most unique human beings and entertainers in the world has been taken from us in an unexpected moment. A profoundly tragic event that leaves us all sad and speechless. The loss of Danny to his wife, Julie and his children, Amy, Andrew & Emily, is at this moment impossible to comprehend. We will all try to go on with our lives without our dear friend.  At this moment, it seems almost impossible.

I had to wait a few minutes to interview Terry Fator, before seeing his show earlier this week. That isn't unusual. Publicists line up interviews with headliners and if one interview runs over, you wait.  But  Fator was not talking with the media. This was the first time I was waiting outside a Vegas showroom while members of a church group were doing the interviewing. Fator was sharing his story of overcoming adversity with the church folks and, I guess, he gives God some credit for getting him a headliner gig in a casino where he can help people enjoy their gambling and drinking. I did not discuss religion much with Fator. His beliefs are his business. But he told me he both gambles and drinks in moderation and has no problem with people doing those activities.

Anyway, waiting for Fator just gave me more time to work up my sense of dread: that this show was going to be as horrible as the last impressionist I saw at Mirage, Danny Gans.  I have not yet seen Gans' new show at Encore. But Gans was in the same room at the Mirage that now hosts Fator. So flashbacks were inevitable. Despite what you may think, "Believe" is not even close to the worst show I have seen in Vegas. That show was called "Storm" and existed very briefly at Mandalay Bay. But Gans wins in terms of a negative response that was almost visceral. I felt insulted by the show's shameless demands for audience applause not for the material but for his life: how long he was married, or his dad's age, or how important his kids are to him. The degree to which Gans planted cheap applause lines like that into his show sickened me. As for the material, Gans had a show so dated and miserable that I will never finish complaining about how horrible his Mirage show was to experience for those not in need of extended Gracie Allen impersonations. I still haven't sucked it up and gone to Gans' new show at Encore for that reason. But when I am ready, seeing the new Gans show should be easy to do; there seem to be plenty of opportunities for free tickets already to Gans at Encore through a local seat-filler online service.

On the other hand, giving away tickets to Fator's show is not necessary, and he filled the room on the night I was there this week: Wednesday! In this economy packing a showroom on a slow weeknight deserves that exclamation point. I had heard that Fator was doing gangbusters business from his exposure winning "America's Got Talent." But I really was surprised that there were virtually no empty seats. And, in addition to filling the room, hundreds of people lined up for Fator's autograph after the show. There were two lines. The first had VIPs who had paid extra to get a souvenir photo and meet Fator; and the other line, just as long, was just regular audience members who wanted to meet him. Fator routinely stays for over an hour after each show talking to each person in both lines.

Still, as I have written, I was not expecting the show to be to my personal taste. There seemed a drawback inherent to expanding a novelty act to a full-length show. A singing impersonator ventriloquist using puppets: My suspicion was that is a hard act to make entertaining for 90 minutes. And throwing your voice to the puppet on your lap, a distance of about one foot, would be the sort of subtlety hard to pick up from even a couple rows back. So, I went in to Fator with low expectations and came out a fan.

Fator is solid, an entertainer of the old school. He has one goal in his show: Entertain the audience for 90 minutes. His show is not grandly ambitious like a Cirque show or worthy of a MacArthur award like "Penn & Teller." Nor does he attempt to make drama out of life like "Jersey Boys." In part you judge a show by what it sets out to accomplish. "Believe" set out to transform entertainment and magic on the Strip by claiming to be creating something that no one had ever seen before. Judged that way, it failed. Fator has no more ambition than to make his audience forget their problems for 90 minutes, and so to judge it,  I must say, my issues were out of my head for at least 80 of those minutes. So, thumbs up to Fator.

I missed his grand opening show.  Some of the earlier viewers and reviewers had complained about a specific joke about President Obama that they felt was too partisan and ruined the fun in the show. Fator says he has not read the reviews, but even before I could ask about the joke, he brought the topic up to tell me he had removed that specific joke from the show. Some audience members had told him they did not like the joke. Fator weighed the laughs the line got against his sense that it might cross a line he does not want to cross and decided to take the joke out. "I just thought it was a neutral joke that could apply to any politician. But when people were telling me they did not like the Obama joke, I took it out. I don't want to upset anybody. My show is about making people feel joy and feel entertained." And entertain people is what Fator does well. The audience gave him a real standing ovation and not the kind that means you are standing up and leaving the showroom while still clapping.

The show opens with a turtle singing "At Last" as Etta James and Fator also does amazing imitations of Roy Orbison and so many others. His live band is great and, if you are a music fan, the show has quality on that score. But then when you add jokes, the puppets and the ventriloquism the result is a pure vaudeville-inspired Vegas production show that, granted, stars a man with an eccentric mix of talents for a headliner. Still, all those novelty genres have a long history in this town. Fator's show works. Vegas is one of the few cities where a show like this could work. That is a good thing for Fator,  who says he has dreamed of headlining in Vegas since he was a teenager. Of course, as a traditional Vegas entertainer, Fator is aiming for the vast middle, so you get a very comfortable show that has no rough edges.

Not that the show is perfect. A couple of the impersonations were not spot-on; Axl Rose does not sing like that to my ears. Also, Fator's Michael Jackson routine is too long and too obvious. And sometimes I guessed wrong, as when Fator was challenged to do a newer artist and he performed Willie Nelson's "Crazy," and I was amazed that he was doing it in the voice of Antony. But in fact the new part was the joke and he was actually impersonating Patsy Cline.

Fator also incorporates rotating guest acts into the show. On the night I was there Mickey Thomas (pictured with Fator) of Starship came out for a medley including "Sara" and "We Built This City." I have to say I enjoyed hearing Fator impersonate good songs better than the original voice belting out bad songs.

One funny Vegas moment: Backstage I met Fator's assistant who helps him with the puppets. He is a nice and somewhat nerdy looking, mild-mannered man with a friendly handshake. But when Fator called his puppet assistant to the stage, it was not that guy I had met who came out, but a gorgeous Vegas showgirl acting his job on stage. Based on the hoots, I think the audience was OK with that oh-so-Vegas show business move.

Anyway, I will be doing my print Buffet column on Fator. So look for our wide-ranging interview in Sunday Calendar on  April 5.

Photo: Sarah Gerke

I should have written about George Carlin yesterday, but each time I tried, I was too sad to keep going.

So, history will record that George Carlin's last public performance turned out to be in Las Vegas on June 15, 2008, at the off-Strip casino Orleans. Vegas was a town he told me he hated, filled with audiences he loathed: "It is the most dispiriting, soul-deadening city on earth."  We agreed to disagree. After all, to Carlin, Vegas was the town that fired him again and again, whereas to me Vegas is the town that gave me the chance to speak to him at length and see him perform.

I had hoped to transcribe my interview with Carlin for you here, but that turned out to be impossible, totally impossible, because of his great gift for colorful language. In writing up the conversation, I realized that because there are so many more than seven words you can't write for the L.A. Times I would be doing the recently departed a huge disservice to obliterate and edit out his constant use of what we call obscenities. And Carlin was very exact about his words. He is the only comedian I have ever seen perform in Vegas using written notes. As he had told me and other interviewers, he had come to see himself as a writer who performed his own material rather than as a comic.

When I saw him do stand-up in 2007, his first run at the Orleans (pictured above), he was still able to offend some audience members enough that they walked out early in the show. Carlin expected, accepted and encouraged that in Vegas. He started off with hard material (I think a joke about kiddie porn when I saw him) to train his audiences here:

“Las Vegas provides something for me. In other places like Pittsburgh you can sell out two nights in nice-sized halls and you get the hard-core George Carlin fans, but then, to be crass, you need to give the market a rest for a couple of years. The same is true of Dallas and Portland and Seattle or wherever. But for a person who develops the material out there on the stage into these more-permanent forms like DVD, it is necessary for me to get the exercise on stage. So, Las Vegas provides an easy place to go to where the audience keeps changing. You don't tap it out. But the price I pay for that is the audiences are not the best in Vegas. In Pittsburgh, I get the hard-core fans who know what I am about. In Las Vegas often I get people who saw me on 'Leno' or got a coupon. It doesn't work easily. Each night [in Vegas] I have to find out how they are going to be and I have to train them."

I love the idea of training an audience. Vegas, of course, works better at pandering and fulfilling the needs of audiences. As a result, Carlin was fired in Vegas a lot over the decades: for using unacceptable language back in the day at the Frontier to getting dismissed a few years ago from the MGM Grand for being, in his words, "too dark." He thought that was very funny and typical of Vegas.

But the other side of Vegas is that Carlin never lacked for work here: There was always another resort willing to hire him. Of course, it was being fired in Vegas that really fueled Carlin's creativity. In fact, he had the epiphany of his career on a Vegas stage when he went from being a suit-wearing mainstream comic to the George Carlin that could still offend decades later: "The critical crossroads was being fired by Vegas. It was like getting the signal, 'Go ahead, George, take a leap.' "

And leap he did into a territory of comedy where he found a unique voice that will continue to entertain, challenge and stimulate generations of new fans. So, to all the entertainment directors in town, present and past, who fired George Carlin, thank you. You helped create one of the great comic talents of all time. I would thank each of you jerks (sorry, George, the best I could do!) by name, but unlike with George Carlin, history hasn't bothered to remember your names.

(Photo by Sarah Gerke)