Steve Wynn – big head or not – ELV salutes you!

Is it just me or does Steve Wynn’s head seem to be growing to Mt. Rushmore-size proportions? I’m not talking about his ego – something that’s always had trouble fitting in the Grand Canyon – but the size of his Yosemite Sam-sized noggin.

ELV isn’t exactly known for having a down-sized cranium himself. In fact, if traumatic childhood memories serve, “buffalo-head” was a common nickname throughout our formative years. So in this regard, the Wynn-meister and ELV have something in common.

Yosemite Sam, according to Friz Freleng his creator, was a dynamic, loud, short-tempered guy (kinda like someone we all know, hey Steverino?), and his head was built on a three to one scale to his body (sound familiar Elaine?). But Sam, who impersonated everyone from an Arab sheik to an English Lord, to a shifty small town mayor, never had the cojones to open a super-luxurious, mega-resort in the middle of the worst recession since 1977.

To such things did our thoughts turn as we read today’s piece in the New York Times on Wynn’s opening of Encore later this year. The $2.3 billon resort looks like a bookend to the existing Wynn tower to us, but all we care about are what good grub will be available on the premises. If Wynn’s track record is any indication, the offerings will be spectacular and expensive.

But there is one, amazing, groundbreaking thing that Wynn did, that no one ever mentions in any article praising him for his prescience and visionary contributions to Las Vegas. And it is the single thing for which we will always be grateful to the substantially-skulled one. Yes, it was he, the Wynn-ster himself, who first put bathrooms inside the restaurants in a hotel/casino.

Before the Bellagio opened in 1998, every single hotel in Vegas made you snake through the casino before you could drain the snake. In fact, ELV remembers when he first squeezed his over-sized noodle* into the stall at Le Cirque and realized that no longer would he have to wander among the nickel slots to find a urinal. Yes, ELV silently wept as he…well, you get the point.

For this does ELV believe that a gargantuan-noodle-like-likeness of Steve Wynn’s giant noodle should be proudly displayed in every bathroom inside every restaurant in every casino in Las Vegas as an everlasting tribute to a large man who did a big thing for small bladders everywhere.

Steve Wynn – our bladders and bowels salute you!

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* double entendre intentional