[Hear Wanda Sykes' whole interview
on "The Strip" by clicking here]
By Steve Friess
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?' "
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