The Juicification of Palace Station

Just a few days after O.J. Simpson fled Las Vegas on bail, comic Mike Saccone greeted the audience at L.A. Comedy Club with this: “Welcome to the Palace Station, the most famous hotel in Las Vegas.”

Just a short time ago this joke may have worked, because this musty locals’ casino is utterly unlike the famous spectacle of the Las Vegas Strip. But now the humor lies in the fact that despite the countless advertising dollars spent to promote Las Vegas Boulevard, Simpson’s arrest for allegedly robbing sports memorabilia from a Palace Station room has genuinely, albeit briefly, made this casino -- which is a short hop from the Strip, yet a world away -- the most famous property in Las Vegas.

“Don’t worry,” Saccone went on to reassure the audience and underscore his point, “the building has been cleared of all burglars and murderers.”

Booking agent Matt Chavez expected his audience to be about 75% locals last month when he opened L.A. Comedy Club (which offers two shows a night, seven nights a week) at Palace Station. But when comic Saccone asks for applause this night from all the locals in attendance, the packed room turns out to be mostly out-of-towners. Call it the O.J. bounce. “It has definitely brought us a lot of attention,” Chavez says.

More than a lot, actually. Lori Nelson, director of corporate communications for parent company Station Casinos, tracked over 4,000 television appearances of the Palace Station logo used in stories related to Simpson during a one-week period (a total that excludes radio, newspapers, magazines and the Internet). With the possibility of an O.J. Simpson trial in town, the Palace Station will likely be a primary beneficiary, thanks to the law of unintended consequences.

But for the L.A. Comedy Club, an additional payoff is the material. According to Chavez, “The comics we had [the night the O.J. story broke] were using it. It was brought up immediately at this club. The audience loves it. This is the place it happened.”

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You could get lost within the Mirage

I would not advise ever letting your credit card out of sight in Las Vegas for every obvious reason. But last week I lost mine at the Mirage. After much panicked searching of my home and car, I faced facts and called the Mirage looking for my plastic needle-in-a-haystack. I got lucky -- my credit card was in the casino’s lost and found.

This was my first trip to a resort’s L&F; Dept. The Mirage’s is back with the security offices, and to get there you must be escorted by a casino employee through the cavernous “backstage” that surrounds a resort’s shiny public areas. The contrast between the main floor of a Strip resort -- with its gaudy decorations, pinging slots, hideous carpet -- and the utilitarian nature of the Mirage’s employee areas is stark indeed. The only decoration suggesting we were still in a massive resort is a signed Siegfried and Roy poster dedicated to the security staff.

While I sat waiting for my card to be brought out, I saw the burden of warehousing items lost by a casino with more than 3,000 rooms. There was a plastic box full of sunglasses being supported by another full box of spectacles labeled as reading glasses.

Vegas resorts are reluctant to talk about anything related to guests, and this even extends to the lost and found. But MGM-Mirage’s spokeswoman Yvette Monet was willing to offer that the Mirage L&F; holds thousands of items on any given day. The one item that stands out in everyone’s memory, according to Monet, was a diamond ring found by housekeeping. “We were very happy to be able to return it to the guest because it was obviously such a valuable item.” As for the most frequently lost item at the Strip resort: cellphones. Of course.

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Tinkering pays off in ‘LOVE’ show

MY reason for being at the Mirage was not to lose my credit card, but to check out the fine-tuning Cirque du Soleil has done to “LOVE,” the Beatles tribute extravaganza.

The most significant change is the removal of the unpopular “Blackbird” segment. The new segment has the Beatles performing “Blackbird” instead of an actor simply reciting the words. It is a definite improvement. . . .

In other show news, though the premiere date has yet to be announced, tickets are already on sale online for “Jersey Boys,” which opens at the Venetian’s Palazzo expansion. Prices range from balcony seats at $65 to VIP tickets for $250. . . . And the erotic show “The Fashionistas,” which earlier this year left the Aladdin’s Krave for Empire Ballroom, a noncasino club on the Strip, returns to Krave on Oct. 10. One factor that’s bringing the show back is the positive attention being generated by Aladdin’s transformation into Planet Hollywood. This includes a redesign of the resort as well as attention-grabbing entertainment offerings such as the addition of a magic show starring Pamela Anderson and, most recently, a movie premiere for “Resident Evil.”

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For more of what’s happening on and off the Strip, see latimes.com/movablebuffet.