Irony -- and parody -- may be dead in Vegas.
The fine folks at VegasTripping.Com were working on a funny little parody website, WynnCore.Com. This is all that there is right now...
...but that's also pretty funny -- and deliberately so -- because the WynnLasVegas.Com site is notorious for being inexplicably slow to load.
Well, the Wynn peeps aren't amused and they sent this nastygram (click to enlarge if necessary) to Chuck at VegasTripping.Com:
Basically, they're telling Chuck of VegasTripping: We own it, take it down, give us the keys, thanks a ton, love ya.
Except there is this thing known as parody, it's why Sarah Palin can't sue Tina Fey and it has legal standards. Chuck was the one who coined the merged term "Wynncore" for the Siamese-sister "world famous resort, hotel, casino complexes." That shorn term is now in wide use across the Vegas-centric Web. (Speaking of which, we never hear much of MEGACENTER(tm) anymore, do we, LVS?)
That said, Wynn's lawyers -- taking a much-deserved break from their effort to make it impossible for Grandma to stuff Garth Brooks tickets into Junior's stocking this Christmas -- have deep pockets. Chuck was surprised by the letter and is considering his options.
"The whole thing is just preposterous," he told me tonight. "The artist in me says that we should defend ourselves but the banker in me says we can't afford to. Spending a lot of money to defend a half-baked gag for something with limited appeal that was intended to amuse about 15 people doesn't make any sense, but it is a parody website. What we're doing here is not all that different than what Andy Warhol did with Campbell's soup can."
I think he underestimates the humor potential. The Wynn site, like the man himself, is eccentric and unique, forcing users to wait and having Wynn's dulcetto narrating things as though he's cooing to a lover. The possibilities are endless.
Chuck said he's likely to remove the content but that he isn't planning to just fork over the domain name.
Meanwhile, this incident brought out an absolutely charming bit of Vegasacana from Hunter Hillegas of RateVegas.Com. Back in 2003, he received this gem:
Is that not the greatest thing since Ted Stevens' Series of Tubes? Oddly, there's no secretarial notation, so is it really possible Wynn himself typed this? And how is it Hunter didn't remember this back when Robert Earl was making it his life's work to bring him down?
Hunter said on his Twitter (get it?): "I wrote back saying, thanks for your concern but 'sorry, no dice'. Asking for no coverage was a non-starter."
P.S. to Hunter: How about scanning in the whole letterhead? I'm dying to see what the logo looked like back then. That's just FUG. I'm sure Roger Thomas would disavow.
[Full disclosure/Gratuitous Brag: I was VegasTripping.Com's Person of the Year for 2007, the very apex of my career.]
