Tuesday, Nov. 25, 1997 | 10:14 a.m.
THERE WAS serious stuff happening in the Frank Room, or so we heard, but we were too busy watching the ad guy get folded into the Murphy bed to check it out.
That's the kind of nutty, lampshades-on-the-head night it was at the final wingding for the Aladdin, a memorial bash in a 26th floor suite on the last Saturday the doomed hotel was open (it closes for good tonight). There was booze in the bathtub, a Frank Sinatra shrine in the back room, and, over by the big windows, Party Animal and me were hogging the spinach dip, taking in the view of the south Strip.
The night was already heavy with portents of endings: Not only was the casino going to come down soon, it was also the anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination; rock star Michael Hutchence of INXS had hung himself that day; everyone was waiting for Sinatra to die. And, of course, Wendy's had announced that week it was doing away with its salad bars, the last fast-food chain to do so. This party should be the perfect capper, we thought -- as you know, nothing says "the end" like a bunch of media elite imploded on martinis.
The Aladdin will be the fifth major property to succumb to Vegas' demolition bender, and as I stood there, cracker going soggy under a load of dip, I looked around the room and wondered, Why haven't they blown this dump already?
The suite wasn't too sweet; the flocked ceiling hung low and the carpet was a long-dead shade of blue. "The curtains smell like dirt," someone added. For all I know, the Aladdin set the standard for swank back in JFK's day, but, like the Wendy's salad bar, it had long since outlived its usefulness.
Party Animal could read my thoughts. "This is great dip," he enthused.
The Aladdin's sorry fate was presumably supposed to lend a fin de siecle sparkle to the evening, but mostly it was a bunch of PR guys talking shop and listening to the boombox stylings of Steve and Eydie singing Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun." One guy gamely permitted himself to be folded into the pull-down bed -- that he didn't get as big a hand as he deserved is perhaps a testament to the pall that news of salad-bar closings can throw over a gathering.
I probably should have felt some remorse at the imminent tumble of another Vegas icon, some chagrin about a town that bulldozes its history instead of preserves it, but Vegas warps your perspective. Just as a $600 million black-glass pyramid strikes me as perfectly normal -- every town ought to have one! -- the notion of plowing the thing under in 20 years no longer seems that weird.
Anyway, not all passings are worth mourning -- will anyone but me remember where they were when they heard about Wendy's? Nor does every relic necessarily lose ground to new times. From the window we could see the MGM Grand, where the Rolling Stones were, at that moment, thrashing in geriatric vigor, able -- unlike the Aladdin -- to convince people they were still worth paying to see.
Party Animal and me never did make it to the Frank Room, and there's only so long a guy can stick around a party for the dip. So midnight found us at a power table in the Sahara Denny's, where we contemplated endings and beginnings and finally reached a carefully considered conclusion: Party Animal would have Moons Over My Hammy, while I ordered a breakfast skillet, eggs over medium. They came scrambled instead. It sure seemed like the end of something to me.
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