Lady Gaga Slouching Towards Gomorrah

As if there weren’t enough reasons to visit Las Vegas, seafood buffets in the landlocked desert, reasonable sex worker HIV tests, and the relative strength of the yen, add to that list the semi-permanent arrival of Lady Gaga.

The awkward looking victim’s victim and her flaming piano will take up residence at the MGM Grand where she will perform twice on Tuesdays and Fridays and every other Thursdays for what the MGM must be hoping is a tidal wave of disenfranchised gender neutral cutters. Thank God Sinatra is both dead and fully rotted before he had to see this.

Traditionally, the Vegas residency was a sure sign that you were being lauded out to pasture from your union work on the coasts. A nicely paid ice floe for the elder statesmen, performing for women named “Pearl” from Missouri who came to see the men and women she used to watch on TV put on shows with stales jokes, dancing girls and two drink minimums. At some point Branson stole all the Show-Me Staters. And while Vegas is still offering up old entertainers in hair pieces like Marie Osmond and Wayne Newton, they’re trying to nail down bigger draw entertainers with the allure of not having to tour the world to make tens of millions.

Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, and Britney Spears all raked in the fat cash this past year with signature shows conveniently betwixt the casinos. Gaga wants some of that. Her music is self-described as meaningful, honest, and real, or everything Las Vegas isn’t. When you’ve got 75 million Twitter followers and another 25 million on Instagram, you can fill seats in any Southwest hub city. It’s easy to second guess Vegas casinos, it’s less easy to count how many billions of dollars they make each year. Half of Gaga’s fanbase are suicidal at any given time. Those people gamble like there’s no tomorrow.

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