This morning, Perez Hilton's blog became the first place that I know of  to post the full video of Katy Perry's "Waking Up in Vegas," which was shot in the city (of course). The video is a better commercial for Vegas than any advertising I have seen for this town in recent memory.

If the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority did not pay Perry for this video, they owe her since they are sure to take credit for all the attention the video generates for Vegas. "Waking Up in Vegas" presents the resort corridor as fun and reminds people that there is still plenty of joy to be found in this town despite the creaky finances of resort companies and the many incomplete resort projects being built.

There are glimpses of high-roller suites at the Palms and the Fremont Street Experience as well as cameos by headliners including Penn & Teller. Enjoy.

No, you don't. Everyone seems to agree on that point. But that does not mean you should pretend to have an MBA either.

There was a story in the Review-Journal on Sunday that I have been letting irritate me for a few days while deciding if I should mention it here. My reason for leaving it off the Buffet is that the executives of Las Vegas casinos, although local celebrities, do not usually rise to notice in Los Angeles. That certainly is the case with Terry Lanni, who for years was the guiding light at MGM-Mirage -- the company with the largest number of employees in the state.

On Nov. 13, Terry Lanni announced his retirement in the wake of a Wall Street Journal story that day accusing him of having an MBA on his résumè that he did not earn. After an initial defense that this was an honorary degree was shot down by the school there was a vague sense propagated by MGM-Mirage PR that this small detail was the result of a misunderstanding and had no relationship to his stepping down. This is how MGM-Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman explained it to the Review-Journal: "While the Journal's inquiry has made us aware that his official bio was unclear, it had no bearing whatsoever on his decision to retire." It was not unclear, it was flat out wrong, inaccurate, and really, to put it out there, not honest.

MGM-Mirage is now hiring 12,000 positions for CityCenter, and my guess is that if a single one of the applicants lists an MBA the person has not received, that applicant will not be getting a job offer. Still, within Las Vegas, local cognoscenti offered  much hand wringing and felt Lanni had gotten a raw deal and received an unworthy exit after years of service to Vegas. The Sunday Review-Journal article presented this view months after his departure, arguing that Lanni had retired on his terms. Actually, that was the title of the article: "Lanni Leaves on His Terms."

Here are a few quotes from the article to give you an idea of how the elephant in the room was treated:

"Others, outside of the company, jumped to his defense, saying Lanni wasn't forced out because of the discovery after 30 years that he didn't have an MBA."

"Others didn't really care if Lanni had an MBA."

In fact, no one interviewed in the story mentions that the MBA was an issue. It wasn't. I agree; no one cares what degrees Lanni had after all he accomplished in Vegas. So let us all agree: if Lanni had an MBA was not an issue. But that and this story asks the wrong question, and that is why it has irritated me so much. Here is the proper question, the question that the story never asks:  "How serious is it that the head of a company with an unrestricted Nevada Gaming license presents a degree he does not have inaccurately as his background on his official resume?"  And, the answer to that question, of course, the one never asked by the Review-Journal, could be the link between the MBA story and Lanni's same day departure announcement.

There is a second aspect to this puff piece that Steve Friess, on his blog, calls the writer out on. We are told, of Lanni's "30-year record of success" as if no one has read a newspaper for the past few months. MGM-Mirage stock has tanked. The company sold Treasure Island, for what most agreed is a bargain price. And now there is talk that the Mirage (one of the casinos in the corporate name) is on the sale block if not actually finding a buyer. All of this will help with the cash-flow problems caused by the decision to build CityCenter. The completion of City Center, a project whose construction has already resulted in a significant body count of construction workers killed, and had one of its hotels cut back last week because of a mixture of changing credit markets and construction errors, has put MGM-Mirage in a precarious position. In short, Lanni left a very big mess in his wake for his successor; that mess is also not mentioned in the story.

Yes, Terry Lanni did do a great deal for this community and MGM-Mirage. But would someone who really had an MBA have entered into the more than $9-billion CityCenter project at a time that now clearly seems to have been at the very top of the construction and real estate bubble? Just a thought.

The more important thought is that, with casino executives, integrity has to come first. Lanni probably would have had real problems staying in his position after the inaccurate résumè was exposed. Through error or by design, for decades, Lanni's official résumè included a degree he neither possessed nor earned. That is a very serious matter and, yes, vastly more important than if he had an MBA or not.

No, you don't need an MBA to run a casino. But how important unimpeachable honesty and integrity is to running a casino is incalculable. Did Lanni lose his credibility in Vegas over the MBA flap? It is a pity that was a question not put to any of the people interviewed in this story.

Photo: Sarah Gerke

Here is an excerpt from the Movable Buffet print column that came out Sunday on the Review-Journal's Norm Clarke:

Because of his popularity as a man-about-town and his distinctive look -- especially his black eye patch, a result of having lost an eye to disease years ago -- Clarke, 66, has become something of a local celebrity himself.

Frequently, he must encounter those displeased by something he has written. ... His most recent feud with magician Criss Angel. ... Angel, the headliner of Luxor's Cirque show "Believe," earlier this year was unhappy about a mention in a column. Clarke said Angel accosted him backstage at an event with the words, "Don't ever write another word about me, or you'll need an eye patch over your other eye." Clarke uses the quote as a blurb on the back of the book, and at the party, guests were given copies of the book wrapped in an eye patch. Nothing is subtle about Vegas.

But even here, Clarke sees more than the story of a temperamental star.

"Criss Angel is a celebrity that is getting a lot of publicity, where part of it is personality and part of it is the new show doesn't seem to be working," he said. "But there are so many layers to that. The Luxor brand is now in question. ... You know Cirque has to be asking questions. What if they have to pull the plug on that? It isn't just a celebrity issue."

(photo by Sarah Gerke)

I just discovered the blog by local journalist Steve Friess who, among much else, does many of Newsweek's Las Vegas articles.  I am hooked. On Friday, Friess focused a paragraph of intelligence on what should be a simple question about City Center, the MGM project that is being called the world's most expensive privately funded construction effort. How big is it? According to all of the information I originally got from MGM (and reported in the press) the construction project was 66 acres. But Friess points out The New York Times in an April 24 article referred to City Center as 67 acres. Finally, a spokesperson for the company tells Friess  this masterpiece of confusion (and, yet a third number) from MGM: "Please use 76. There is some technical debate internally, but 76 is in use far and wide and it's not inaccurate." This is now the official "not inaccurate" number on the City Center site, too.