Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Las Vegas will blow a kiss goodbye — literally — to the Tropicana with a flashy casino implosion
LAS VEGAS | Sin City will quite literally blow a kiss goodbye to the Tropicana before first light Wednesday in an elaborate implosion that will reduce to rubble the last true mob building on the Las Vegas Strip.
The Tropicana’s hotel towers are expected to tumble in 22 seconds at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. The celebration will include a fireworks display and drone show.
It will be the first implosion in nearly a decade for a city that loves fresh starts and that has made casino implosions as much a part of its identity as gambling itself.
“What Las Vegas has done, in classic Las Vegas style, they’ve turned many of these implosions into spectacles,” said Geoff Schumacher, historian and vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum.
Former casino mogul Steve Wynn changed the way Las Vegas blows up casinos in 1993 with the implosion of the Dunes to make room for the Bellagio. Wynn thought not only to televise the event but created a fantastical story for the implosion that made it look like pirate ships at his other casino across the street were firing at the Dunes.
From then on, Schumacher said, there was a sense in Las Vegas that destruction at that magnitude was worth witnessing.
The city hasn’t blown up a Strip casino since 2016, when the final tower of the Riviera was leveled for a convention center expansion.
This time, the implosion will clear land for a $1.5 billion baseball stadium for the relocating Oakland Athletics, part of the city’s latest rebrand into a sports hub.
That will leave only the Flamingo from the city’s mob era on the Strip. But, Schumacher said, the Flamingo’s original structures are long gone. The casino was completely rebuilt in the 1990s.
The Tropicana, the third-oldest casino on the Strip, closed in April after welcoming guests for 67 years.
Once known as the “Tiffany of the Strip” for its opulence, it was a frequent haunt of the legendary Rat Pack, while its past under the mob has long cemented its place in Las Vegas lore.
It opened in 1957 with three stories and 300 hotel rooms split into two wings.
As Las Vegas rapidly evolved in the following decades, including a building boom of Strip megaresorts in the 1990s, the Tropicana also underwent major changes. Two hotel towers were added in later years. In 1979, the casino’s beloved $1 million green-and-amber stained glass ceiling was installed above the casino floor.
The Tropicana’s original low-rise hotel wings survived the many renovations, however, making it the last true mob structure on the Strip.
Behind the scenes of the casino’s grand opening, the Tropicana had ties to organized crime, largely through reputed mobster Frank Costello.
Costello was shot in the head in New York weeks after the Tropicana’s debut. He survived, but the investigation led police to a piece of paper in his coat pocket with the Tropicana’s exact earnings figure, revealing the mob’s stake in the casino.
By the 1970s, federal authorities investigating mobsters in Kansas City charged more than a dozen operatives with conspiring to skim $2 million in gambling revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. Charges connected to the Tropicana alone resulted in five convictions.
Its implosion on Wednesday will be streamed live and televised by local news stations.
There will be no public viewing areas for the event, but fans of the Tropicana did have a chance in April to bid farewell to the vintage Vegas relic.
“Old Vegas, it’s going,” Joe Zappulla, a teary-eyed New Jersey resident, said at the time as he exited the casino, shortly before the locks went on the doors.
Qantas Airways apologizes after R-rated film reportedly airs on every screen during flight
NEW YORK | Qantas Airways has drawn up a stir after broadcasting a slightly-racy movie across an entire flight. And the Australian carrier now is apologizing to customers.
There were technical issues with the in-flight entertainment for a trip from Sydney to Haneda last week, Qantas confirmed to The Associated Press — making individual movie selection unavailable. As a result, the crew chose one movie to play across all screens “based on the request from a number of passengers,” the company said.
Qantas did not identify the movie by name, but several media outlets have reported that it was “Daddio,” an R-rated film that hit theaters earlier this year.
“Daddio” follows a woman (Dakota Johnson) who takes a cab from JFK airport and strikes up an extended conversation with her driver (Sean Penn) on her way back home to Manhattan — as the two discuss anything from what it takes to be a New Yorker to relationships and infidelity, notably her current affair with a married man. The film carries an R rating for “language throughout, sexual material and brief graphic nudity.”
Social media posts from users who claim they were on the Qantas flight said they were uncomfortable by nudity and sexting featured in the film — particularly for families and children who were on board. Two users on Reddit said that it was also impossible for individual passengers to turn off the movie.
After determining that the movie was not appropriate for all ages, the Qantas crew attempted to fix screens for travelers who did not want to watch it — but later found that this was not possible and changed course.
“The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight and we sincerely apologise to customers for this experience,” a Qantas spokesperson said in a statement. “All screens were changed to a family friendly movie for the rest of the flight, which is our standard practice for the rare cases where individual movie selection isn’t possible.”
The spokesperson added that Qantas is “reviewing how the (inital) movie was selected.”
In the days following the incident, the airline has taken some flack online — including from travel rivals.
“Plot twist: We let you choose your movies,” Air New Zealand wrote in a reply to the news on social media platform X.
Woman accusing McMahon of sexual abuse asks WWE to waive confidentiality agreements
A former WWE employee who filed a lawsuit against the company and ex-leader Vince McMahon, accusing him of sexual battery and trafficking, is asking them to not enforce nondisclosure agreements with other former and current employees and contractors so they can potentially come forward with similar accusations.
A lawyer for Janel Grant emailed a letter making the request late Monday to attorneys representing WWE, McMahon and John Laurinaitis, a former WWE executive and wrestler, in Grant’s lawsuit against them.
A spokesperson for McMahon, Curtis Vogel, declined to comment. Lawyers for WWE and Laurinaitis did not immediately return emails seeking comment late Monday. Emails to the WWE and its parent companies, Endeavor Group Holdings and its subsidiary, TKO Group Holdings, also were not returned immediately.
McMahon, former CEO and chairman of WWE, has denied Grant’s allegations.
Grant, who worked in WWE’s legal and talent departments from 2019 to 2022, sued the company, McMahon and Laurinaitis in January, making graphic allegations of sexual assault, harassment, trafficking and other physical and emotional abuse.
McMahon stepped down as WWE’s CEO in 2022 amid a company investigation into allegations that match those in Grant’s lawsuit. He also resigned as executive chairman of the board of directors TKO Group Holdings in January, a day after Grant filed her lawsuit.
“If WWE and its parent company Endeavor are serious about parting ways with Vince McMahon and the toxic workplace culture he created, their executives should have no problem with releasing former WWE employees from their NDAs,” Ann Callis, Grant’s attorney, said in a statement. “This is the first step to rehabilitating a company that covered up decades of sexual assault and human trafficking.”
McMahon previously responded to Grant’s lawsuit with a statement calling it “replete with lies, obscene made-up instances that never occurred, and is a vindictive distortion of the truth. I intend to vigorously defend myself against these baseless accusations, and look forward to clearing my name.” His lawyers said in court documents that he had a consensual relationship with Grant and never mistreated her.
Laurinaitis’ lawyer has denied the allegations, and said Laurinaitis was also a victim in the case.
Grant says she was pressured into leaving her job with the WWE and signing a $3 million nondisclosure agreement. The lawsuit also seeks to have the agreement declared invalid, saying McMahon breached the deal by giving her $1 million and failing to pay the rest.
Four other women — all formerly affiliated with WWE — signed agreements with McMahon that bar them from discussing their relationships with him, the Wall Street Journal reported in July 2022, citing people familiar with the deals and documents it reviewed. Grant was not among those women, her representatives say.
In December 2022, McMahon agreed to pay a female former wrestling referee millions of dollars to settle her allegations that he raped her in 1986, the Journal also reported. McMahon said the alleged sexual assault never happened, and his lawyer said he settled the suit to avoid costly litigation.
Grant’s request for the Stamford, Connecticut-based WWE to waive enforcement of the NDAs is similar to ones made to other companies when sexual misconduct allegations arose.
In 2018 and 2019, respectively, the Weinstein Co. and NBC Universal released employees, former employees and others from NDAs made in connection with sexual misconduct claims against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and “Today” host Matt Lauer.
Victims’ lawyers call NDAs instruments to silence accusers while allowing alleged abusers to avoid accountability. A federal law approved in 2022 and similar laws in more than a dozen states curb the use of NDAs that block victims of sexual harassment from speaking publicly about their allegations.
The Associated Press does not normally name people who make sexual assault allegations unless they come forward publicly, which Grant did.
She alleges McMahon forced her into a sexual relationship with him in order for her to get and keep a job, and later directed her to have sexual relations with others including Laurinaitis. She also accuses McMahon and Laurinaitis of sexually assaulting her at WWE headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.
The lawsuit further claims McMahon recruited other people for sexual relations with Grant, shared pornographic photos and videos of her with other men including WWE employees despite saying he wouldn’t and subjected her to cruel and humiliating acts.
McMahon bought what was then the World Wrestling Federation in 1982 and transformed it from a regional wrestling company into a worldwide phenomenon. Besides running the company with his wife, Linda, he also performed at WWE events as himself.
—From AP reports
