LAS VEGAS - When O.J. Simpson arrives in town, a circus comes too.

A gaggle of publicity-seekers with signs - and one man dressed only in a barrel - showed up Thursday outside the Las Vegas courtroom where a judge was to determine if Simpson should be tried on charges including armed robbery and kidnapping in a sports memorabilia heist.

Inside a packed courtroom, nine lawyers pored over the evidence that could conceivably put Simpson in prison for the rest of his life. Outside it was a different story.

Real estate salesman Scot Savage, 43, showed up in a tie-dyed T-shirt and a sign advertising the Web site he set up, OJtalk.com, to host a debate on the former football star's guilt or innocence and to sell collectibles of its own.

"I'm like, hey, how can I make a buck off this happening four miles from my house?" he said.

Since appearing behind a dozen television reporters doing stand-ups, he said the site has sold "hundreds" of mugs, T-shirts and stress balls proclaiming either Simpson's guilt or innocence before the preliminary hearing had even begun.

About 60 percent to 70 percent bought "guilty" merchandise, he said. "People can purchase how they feel."

Still, the buzz of the first trial over the 1994 slayings of Simpson's wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, and even the second civil trial for their wrongful deaths, seemed missing.

Simpson is now a fallen figure, a matter of curiosity, but not the hero who had conquered football fields and airport lines in Hertz commercials.

Outside, two preachers with signs spouted competing sermons, but one was about the wildfires in California, not about O.J. at all.

It's a different city and the case against Simpson seems minor compared to the bloody events of 1994. This time he's accused of stealing trinkets and mementoes with men with guns. Then he was charged with murder.

More than a dozen TV camera crews perched on closed-off streets around the courthouse, a far cry from the wall-to-wall network coverage that surrounded the 1995 trial in Los Angeles.

There is nothing as massive as the "Camp O.J." encampment that set up in Los Angeles, though many of the veterans of the original press corps are present. One of the original prosecutors, Marcia Clark, appeared, but this time as a commentator for "Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider."

Joe Pepitone, a 67-year-old Las Vegas butcher, walked around outside half naked with only a barrel covering his loins and a sign pleading his case - that he won a $463,855 jackpot at a local casino but was never paid.

A female bystander walked by and peeked in the barrel to see if he was wearing underwear and giggled. He was.

"People are laughing, but I'm helping them," Pepitone said, showing his Nevada driver's license to prove he had not co-opted the name of the first baseman who starred for the New York Yankees in the 1960s. The slugger's his third cousin.

A man in a chicken suit walked around with the signs "OJ Guilty" and "If I Did It!!" with the "If" crossed out. He said he thought Simpson should have been convicted for the 1994 killings.

"Back in '94, I feel he got off without justice being served and I really want to make a statement," said the man, who identified himself only as Chicken George, a 45-year-old Las Vegan. "I guess this is truth in comedy."

Even Simpson seemed underwhelmed by the proceedings.

Wearing a light suit and looking older and heavier than he did a dozen years ago, he rolled his eyes at some testimony by memorabilia dealer Bruce Fromong, and nodded reflectively and mumbled to himself when auctioneer Thomas Riccio took the stand and described the sentimental value of some of Simpson's personal items in question.

Asked at a break how he felt about it all, he shrugged wearily and said, "It is what it is."