Las Vegas: Wanda Sykes at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino

By Steve Friess, Special to the Los Angeles Times
01:34 PM PDT, July 16, 2008

Wanda Sykes is sucking up to Vegas-goers. A lot.

The stand-up comic and actress is stoked about becoming something of a regular at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. But then she's confronted with the fact she told Ellen DeGeneres earlier this year the audiences she plays to at casinos tend to be, uh, fat.

Now she's explaining she didn't mean casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.

"Oh, it's totally different in Vegas," the 44-year-old comic insists. "It's like this. In Vegas casinos, you'll have the Rolling Stones playing. Out in Minnesota or somewhere, you might have some reunion band. It's a whole other level. People look good, they're well-dressed."

Well-dressed? On the Strip? How so?

"They're not wearing the stretchy pants, what I call the all-you-can-eat pants, the pants that have no zippers or buttons, just the elastic waistband," she says. "People aren't walking around with stains on their clothes. It's just a classier group."

Just because she's perhaps the first person in history to suggest Vegas tourists as a model of class and fashion doesn't mean she won't mock them. She's cracked up by the openness of prostitution here and the able-bodied folks who rent scooters intended for the infirm.

Indeed, nobody escapes the comic barbs of the costar of "The New Adventures of Old Christine," who earlier this year was included in a Vanity Fair photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz for a spread on the top women in comedy.

Even that provides fodder; rather than Leibovitz coaxing her into suggestive poses a la Miley Cyrus, the photographer "was trying to get me to put on more clothes," Sykes quips. " 'Can't we get, like, a big coat for Wanda?' "

Steve Friess co-hosts the podcast "The Strip" at The StripPodcast.com.

WANDA SYKES

WHERE: Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, 3667 Las Vegas Blvd. S.

WHEN: 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., Aug. 8-9; 18 and older only permitted.

PRICE: $66

INFO: (702) 785-5000; www.planethollywoodresort.com

Where am I?

Should we take offense, order a drink, or what? That depends, of course, on where you think these words turned up.

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