The latest attempt from Hollywood to portray Las Vegas from behind the tables is the brilliantly named TV show "LAS VEGAS" (Named so that nobody would see the Strip and mistake it for downtown Cleveland), in which only James Caan can pull off what amounts to serious situations amongst all those breasts. I thought you might like to know what the real head of surveillance at a strip casino thinks of it.

Monday Night Football is a mainstay for ABC Sports from the big kickoff in September until the last game in January. Nobody has been able to break the barrier the NFL holds on America since the premier of the tradition over twenty years ago until six weeks ago, when NBC decided to premier their newest shot at the Monday night tradition with an hour-long look from the Eye-In-The-Sky in the form of James Caan taking the reins of the new TV series about Las Vegas brilliantly called "Las Vegas".

This newest look at Las Vegas is really no different than many other similarly-named series that have come and gone. It's tits and ass marching past ringing slot machines and high limit tables. It's Wayne Newton's obligatory appearance on any television series shot in Vegas, as he still holds the title of "Mister Las Vegas", since Mayor Goodman's usually trashed on Beefeater after 6pm. Penn and Teller do their walk-on, as well as Segfreid and Roy. Then it's just the usual catching the card cheats and rail thieves or dealing with bitchy entertainers and obnoxious drunks with too much money. The one exception to this latest slice of life behind the tables in Vegas is that this one is not only winning the ratings wars among all of the recent shots at life behind the neon jungle of Las Vegas, but from 9 p.m. on they're stealing the remaining audience from Monday Night Football at the most critical time of the some of the games. Late in the fourth quarter millions of viewers are sacrificing the last minutes of the football games to watch Nikki Cox try to fit her 38-inch breasts into the 32-inch dresses and watch James Caan verbally kick the shit out of all the bad guys in an over-classed casino called the Monticito, which is filmed at the Mandalay Bay (with most of the scenes shot at the casino during the graveyard shift, utilizing small parts of the pit, the restaurants and pool area.) The scenes shot in the surveillance area are shot totally on a soundstage.

"Alex" is an old friend of mine. I've known him since I was in the jewelry business and I've seen this guy rise from a dealer at the Stardust in the '70s to a top-notch strip casino surveillance guy in the '80s who now heads up the surveillance team at a large strip property. In order to write this column, I've agreed not to reveal his true name or identity and definitely not reveal the casino where he's the boss of surveillance.

"Only my wife and family know where I work. I'm not allowed by contract to reveal the casino I work at or the nature of the business except in generalities. It's more a precaution than anything so nobody would think of blackmailing me or my family." (A little dramatic if you ask me but I'm copying this from my mini-cassette).

"Let's talk about the TV show 'Las Vegas' first," I begin. Tell me how accurate you see the show."

"First, I can tell you that any surveillance team would kill to have an office like that," he replied.

"My office is just a basic room, I have a desk and a bank of different size monitors. I have four large monitors for close-up, full-screen surveillance and several smaller monitors I can call up to the larger screens when necessary. I have full control of all the monitors as well as full control of tilt and zoom. We also employ a detective agency for outside monitoring. If I have people I need further information on, I can immediately send their picture via high-speed Internet to wherever the detectives are and within minutes have a detailed report from a facial recognition scan.

"We also have access to the National Crime Information Bureau where we can send pictures as well as fingerprints for any further information we might need should our detectives turn up any questionable nformation. So from the time you park your car and walk through the parking lot, we can begin a facial recognition scan and by the time you hit the nickel slots we can have you in handcuffs."

I had to stop him there. "You mean to tell me everyone is scanned, like Big Brother?"

"No, not at all. We only do facial recognition scans on a very limited basis."

"Explain 'limited basis.'"

"In the TV show, all the good guys are good and the bad guys are obnoxious, easy-to-spot jerks that would get caught stealing air in a wind tunnel. The James Caan character is overdone but fun to watch. He's supposed to be the head of surveillance, yet he gets involved in the individual players as well as the casino hosts, but in reality surveillance just does surveillance. They don't comp rooms or buy show tickets for the players or throw out bum players. Basically we just watch cameras and talk on the radio."

"What about the stories they portray on the show?" I asked.

"You're a columnist, you write about Las Vegas and stories behind the tables, what do you think?", he asked me in return.

But if you read my columns you'll read about the same stories, but the real stuff, not the Hollywood versions. You'll read about the cheats, but not the ones that dress like cowboys that rig the slot machines or con an Easterner out of his money You'll read about the guys that spend years practicing their cheating moves, the teams that move in and out of the casinos stealing from Crap tables and past-posting Roulette games, and how these guys get caught. Hollywood's idea of a cheat is Matt Damon palming an Ace off a Blackjack game. The real thing is an ordinary-looking guy handing cards off to an agent on the game while everyone watches and can't catch the move until the day when they drop one of the cards. That's reality; that's the real Las Vegas.

In my VCR library I've got most of the Las Vegas movies, including both "Ocean's Eleven" (the new one is trash) and the uncut version of "Casino" (the subject of my "Felt Top Table" column), which is the only way to see it. Don't bother watching it on USA or the other stations that cut out the swear words; it's like watching a Bogart movie where everyone chews gum instead of smoking cigarettes (aka. Speilberg-Cruise's "Minority Report"). The worst is Kostner's "3,000 miles to Graceland." The funniest for sure is "Vegas Vacation", which still cracks me up when they offer, as a casino game, "Guess the Number I'm Thinking Of" and when Randy Quaid throws the chicken on the rocks to cook in the summer next to his trailer house. Then there's the really depressing "Leaving Las Vegas" which I'd copy over but I removed the tag. And "Honeymoon in Vegas" that I kind of liked with the flying Elvises and James Caan that made his role that he's now re-doing as the head of surveillance in the new TV show.

Good or bad, Las Vegas is the only place you could make a television show by just setting up a little stage in front of the Venetian or the Mirage on a Saturday night, turning on a camera and watching the action. But we've all seen that stuff, just rent "Girls Gone Wild - Snoop Doggy Dog's Version" if you want a taste of a Saturday night in Vegas. The other TV shows filmed here, like the latest "Lucky", are pretty much miserable failures, if you ask me. That includes several Vegas detective shows like "Vegas" that have been filmed here, but the newest shot is a fresh and lively look BEHIND THE FELT TOP TABLES.

-Ken Pearlman