Get Cynical

(via Clusterflock)

Meh. It looks like any other high end mall just with more angles jutting out from the ceiling.

Adding a slew of high-end retailers to the Las Vegas Strip, CityCenter’s Crystals retail and entertainment district opened on Thursday, marking the unveiling of the massive project’s second building.

Crystals opened at noon for a charity shopping event and at 5 p.m. to the public. The 500,000-square-foot retail and dining district has direct access from Las Vegas Boulevard and houses some of the most high-end brands in fashion.

The retail selection at Crystals includes names such as Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., Christian Dior, Hermes and Prada. A total of 23 shops and restaurants opened on Thursday.

More stores will open Dec. 16 in conjunction with the opening of Aria, with additional retailers added throughout 2010.

Vegas Rex has more pictures of the opening.

I wonder what this viral marketing vid is trying to sell. (Wrecking balls? Deodorant? Mentos?)

Thanks to Tanya from Jamaica for sending in a picture of her adorable cat Thelonious Monk.

Anyone else having a bad week?

Conservatives pontificate on the dreaded T-word.

From Torontoist:

The way Bell told the story, both to us over the phone and on his blog, he’d just received the Lego gun kit in the mail on Wednesday and had brought it to work. It sat in its box until the end of the day, at which point he opened it up.

“I decided to put it together,” he wrote on his blog earlier today. “I literally assembled it, handed it to a co-worker (who promptly broke it), and then put it back in the box.”

Then, he went to go unwind with some colleagues over a game of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

“So we’re sitting there just playing some games,” he said, “and probably like an hour or two later, around seven o’clock or so, I could hear screaming in the elevator.” He took off his headphones and went to investigate.

“I’m thinking it’s some kind of domestic dispute outside, until I heard my own name. And then it’s like: oh shit, that’s not good.”

Bell describes what happened next on his blog:

“I sheepishly opened the door to see what was going on, only to discover a SWAT member crouched in the stairwell yelling at me and another directing a small mirror into the hall. The guy in the door had a weapon with a flashlight pointed at me, so I couldn’t really see what was going on, but I was instructed to put my hands on my head and turn around. With my hands up, I had to lift my shirt and slowly spin around. Once they confirmed I wasn’t packing any Lego heat, I walked backwards towards them, was then cuffed, pulled into the stairwell and thrown against the wall.”

Here is Jeremy’s blog post about the raid.

And from Reddit comes this photo of the raid.