Tonight I am interviewing Marie Osmond for the Buffet. As always, I invite readers to e-mail questions to me or leave questions for me to ask her in the comment section. I can't say that I enjoyed their show at Flamingo. But I doubt anyone who believes the Ramones made the greatest sound ever heard by mankind is the target audience for Donny and Marie.

Their success at the Flamingo is undeniable if at first a little perplexing. Why is a squeaky-clean show done by an openly religious brother and sister variety act packing them in on the Strip in Sin City? And, even in this economy,  if anything, Donny and Marie are becoming an even bigger draw. Earlier in their run I would occasionally see free-ticket giveaways from one of the e-mail services that makes seat-filler offers available to locals. I have not seen those in a while. By contrast, Danny Gans, whose show opened very recently at Encore, already this month has resorted to a free-ticket offer through one such service.

In part, I think the success of Donny and Marie comes from the innocence they offer, especially as it is tinged with '70s-era nostalgia. That formula seems a good fit for Vegas at this time. Big-name headliners also do well here, such as Barry Manilow, Celine Dion, Elton John and Cher -- all of whom (except Dion) have authentic claims to '70s nostalgia as well. Of course, Donny and Marie have fewer tickets to sell than those acts, but they benefit, like them, from  that broad and longstanding brand-name recognition a headliner brings to the stage.

It helps that from their singing to their physical condition to their comic timing, the two have kept their chops. People know what they are going to get when they see Donny and Marie, and the veterans serve it up every night they perform with perkiness and a true desire to entertain the audience. They want to perform and they want to take your mind off your problems; they want you, for the length of their performance, to be lulled back to when they graced lunch boxes and "Puppy Love" was a hit. And that is exactly the sort of distraction audiences in Vegas seem keen for now.

Photo: Sarah Gerke

It is still hard for me to fathom how unadventurous and mediocre Las Vegas entertainment is becoming. I did a story for Las Vegas Weekly recently on The Golden Blip, which I defined as the period between late 2005 and early 2006 when it seemed Vegas truly was going to evolve into offering vastly more variety and quality entertainment: from Broadway West to the modern-dance Fashionistas.

To be too simplistic (every show has its own story), instead of a renaissance for production shows and headliners, the nightclub revolution happened, and places like LAX, Pure and Tao managed to draw away both media attention and tourists from the showrooms. Vegas shows have been enduring hard times ever since. Even Second City at the Flamingo, a quality show and very audience-friendly in the Vegas incarnation, recently closed. Opening next at the Flamingo is "Donny & Marie" on Sept. 25. They are taking over a room where for years Gladys Knight headlined with a show that was hardly daring yet still was very musically rewarding show. Then came Toni Braxton's critically dismissed show that closed early, officially out of concern for Braxton's health.

To be fair, there are still many great and good shows in Vegas. Penn & Teller remain phenomenal. And checking out at least one Cirque show makes sense. In addition to Donny and Marie, the Flamingo has the very funny and, by Vegas standards, spontaneous comedian George Wallace. There is even a quality variety show offered by Wayne Brady. But shows like these are increasingly becoming the exception in the tourist corridor.

Anyway, I  am writing this because I have been pondering my invitation to the Donny and Marie show opening since it arrived. There is a very odd sentence that seems to be the marketing tag. You open the invitation and written in pink letters over a dark silhouette of Donny and Marie is written: "There's a New Kind of VARIETY coming to Vegas..."

What do you think: Is that meant with some sort of irony or sincere?

I am guessing that the Donny and Marie show will be top-to-bottom reassuringly familiar. That is why they are at the Flamingo at this present moment, when all the Vegas resorts seem only to want the totally tested and safe names.

Photo by Richard Abowitz

I went to the one-year anniversary of  X, the topless show at the Flamingo.

(It was actually not the one-year anniversary of the show, only of the show being at the Flamingo for a year.)

The X show originally opened inside Aladdin in 2002. The show has also been at the V Theatre at Aladdin as well as being a touring show outside Vegas. But a year ago X burlesque returned to Vegas and came to the Flamingo to share space with Second City.

The show has shown a surprising resiliency.