WEEK IN REVIEW: The best of Week in Review

Ask anyone who has ever covered the news in Las Vegas and then has gone to work someplace else: The rest of the world is boring.

There's a reason everyone - from wanted criminals to crown princes - eventually winds up here. It's a great place to play while you wait to get caught.

This isn't just where crazy lives. This is where crazy comes to get a regrettable tattoo and drunk-marry an acrobat. (Hell, if you want, you can do all that at the new Denny's downtown.)

Take it from the Week in Review staff: If you can't find interesting stories here, you can't find interesting stories.

Please enjoy our annual list of some of the most bizarre local headlines of 2012:

■ Great Britain's Prince Harry gave a whole new meaning to "the royal we" in August when he was photographed playing naked billiards and other, um, games in a suite at Wynn Las Vegas.

The scandal quickly spawned a new Las Vegas tourism campaign and a menu item called "The Exposed Prince" at I Burgers at the Palazzo: a Kobe beef patty served open-faced with aged cheddar and a fried egg on top.

■ It was also a rough summer for Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins, who made headlines in early July when police said he had some drinks and shot up a tree at his North Las Vegas home.

Then, a few weeks later, he had to round up a cow and a bull that escaped from his property, prompting several more misdemeanor charges.

All the publicity drew a decisive response from voters in November. They re-elected the self-described "cowboy commissioner" by a landslide.

■ It could have happened anywhere, so of course it happened here: Man goes to restaurant with gun. Gun winds up in deep fryer. Gun goes off. Hacks everywhere frantically write jokes about the dangers of fried foods.

■ There's nothing humorous about domestic violence. But it's kind of hilarious to hear a champion boxer try to get out of jail 12 days into his 90-day sentence because the food is no good and his cell is too small to work out in.

An attorney for Floyd Mayweather Jr. argued in June that if the boxer wasn't allowed to serve his time on house arrest at his valley mansion, his health could deteriorate and he might never fight again.

Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melissa Saragosa thought it was pretty funny, too.

■ A JetBlue pilot began jabbering incoherently and pacing the aisle midflight, so the co-pilot locked him out of the cockpit and passengers wrestled him to the ground; then the plane made an emergency landing in Texas. You'll never guess where the flight was headed.

■ Here's something officials in Topeka probably don't have to worry about: Clark County commissioners spent much of 2012 trying to clean up the crowded sidewalks on the Strip. This, of course, meant enacting new rules to rein in cats in sunglasses, people waiving pornographic pamphlets and costumed characters juggling chain saws.

■ In separate incidents, Las Vegas police shot and killed an escaped chimpanzee and a wild coyote, while a second chimp broke out of her cage in the northwest valley twice in a month, prompting her to be shipped off to an animal sanctuary in Oregon.

Meanwhile, animal activists were rallying around a 120-pound dog that fatally mauled a 1-year-old boy. A New York-based rescue group seeking to keep Onion the dog from being euthanized filed a lawsuit in May that is still pending before the Nevada Supreme Court.

■ In other animal news, two University of California, Berkeley students were arrested after they were seen tearing the head off a helmeted guinea fowl in the Flamingo resort's wildlife habitat and tossing the exotic bird around like a Frisbee. To the surprise of no one, the men turned out to be law students.

■ His arrest on drug charges landed him on 2011's list of crazy stories, but former Clark County prosecutor David Schubert outdid himself in 2012 when he went to Mexico instead of starting his jail sentence. Then he posted a picture of his vacation from justice on Facebook.

Schubert, who often handled celebrity drug cases, was arrested about a week later while trying to cross back into the U.S. to face the music.

■ In August, a masked robber armed with a samurai sword attacked a cash register and was shot dead by a store clerk. At a Dairy Queen.

■ Amid all the election lunacy and battleground bullocks came this small measure of presidential poetic justice: First he ticked off local tourism boosters by telling people not to blow their money in Las Vegas. Then he sort of did it again. Then Barack Obama came here 10 times in one year, including a three-day stay during which he paid too much for pizza and showed up for his first debate looking, quite frankly, a little hung over.

■ Speaking of which: Two Las Vegas institutions sprouted wheels this year with the launch of the Hangover Heaven bus for people seeking post-revelry treatment and the Wedding Wagon mobile marriage service for people who probably are a little drunk.

No word on when the two companies plan to combine their operations into a single tractor-trailer rig with a chapel up front, a place to sober up in back and camper in tow to carry a divorce lawyer.

There's always 2013.