Elton John is Vegas' Richest Celeb

Up on Forbes's web site is a ranking of the "Celebrity 100" calculating the earnings of the creative, athletic, beautiful and famous. After an absence from this list, the bitch is back, as Caesars headliner Elton John is the only Vegas local in the top ten (sitting pretty at #9) below Madonna but above Tom Cruise.

John's estimated pay last year: $44 Million. That may seem like all your dreams come true, but  $44 million is really just change between the couch cushions if you are a billionaire and Nevada has four of those, according to the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. Three will come as no surprise to locals. Number 235 is William Samuel Boyd whose Boyd Gaming last year swallowed Coast Casinos. Number 164 is Steve Wynn whose monstrously large vision is fairly credited with creating contemporary Las Vegas. And, at number 15, Wynn's rival Sheldon Adelson, the son of a cab driver, who owns the Venetian. The final Nevada billionaire may be less familiar to locals as he has managed to keep a remarkably low profile considering how good this town is at flushing out the ultra rich to come play with us. Pierre M Omidyar is number 18 (and, at 38, decades younger than every other billionaire here), and is the founder of E-Bay. Omidyar and I both live in Henderson; so, I'll keep a look out for him at the grocery store.