EPISODE 26

There is sometimes a moment when you first regain consciousness when you can feel that you don’t know where you are.  It lasts maybe a second or two, but the uneasiness of the experience tends to elasticize time, making it feel as though you are going through several stages.  First, the darkness obscures what may actually be the familiar surroundings of your own bedroom.  You might look at a bedside lamp and be unable to interpret what you are seeing.  Once that mystery has been solved and you come to understand that the lamp is indeed not the forehead of a large dog, you scan the room, looking for familiar outlines, your mind groping to recall what your room looks like and comparing it to the objects that come into view.  Eventually, you are able to determine that you  (a) are safe at home or (b) that have no idea where the hell you are.  On that morning, my experience fell solidly in the latter category.

I vaguely remembered arriving at the MGM only a few hours earlier and was able to judge that I might well be in said establishment, somewhere.  I got out of bed and wandered through a partly opened door into the bathroom, which was enormous.  It featured a stand-up shower, whirlpool bath, twin sinks and an obscene amount of marble tiling.  Once I finished my business there, I groggily worked my way to what looked like a second doorway, at the far side of the bathroom.  I was in no way prepared for what I saw next.

The room on the other side of the door was enormous.  The entire far wall was glass and it offered a panoramic view of the desert and the edge of the airport.  Off to the right, the twin towers of New York, New York and Excalibur loomed.  There was an opulent living room setup that featured a sectional sofa, 5 easy chairs and a dining room set that seated 6 people.  There was a full wet bar along the interior wall, opposite the windows.  A massive flat screen television adorned the wall across from the sectional.  I staggered across the carpet and noticed another door at the end of the room.  I opened it and found a mirror image bedroom/bathroom suite to the one I had just exited.  I turned back to survey my domain.

“You could play football in here,” I mumbled as I took in the enormity of the space.  Obviously the management of the hotel had either been more than just a little bit sorry for the incident at the blackjack table or they had confused me for the last of the Great White Whales.  Either way, this looked to be a more than suitable place to spend the rest of my trip. The fact that I was now not going to have to share a room at the Monte Carlo with another SlipNot salesman was a huge relief.  SlipNot, in their never-ending quest to make a dime stretch like a dollar believed strongly that bunking up improved the bottom line.  I couldn’t argue with that, but if your “roomie” was into staying up late or getting up early, this could really cramp your style.  My problem was that I usually did both, which tended to piss off the various salespeople with whom I’d traveled.  Allan was the sole exception to this rule, as he tended to need less sleep than any other human I’d ever met.  He could, however, fall asleep on an airplane during takeoff; something I eventually learned how to do myself.  That is a useful trick that all experienced business travelers must master, if they expect to avoid cracking up.

But on this trip, I had the biggest and baddest single room in town. It was still too early to do anything, so I went to the bar, prepared a glass of ice water and turned on that monstrous TV screen, looking for the scores to the previous day’s baseball playoff games.  The Cardinals had lost Game 3 of their series against the Astros 5-2, cutting St. Louis’ lead to 2 games to 1.  I listened as the announcer recapped what had been a well-pitched game by former Red Sox ace, Roger Clemens and then waited in dread for the American League score.

People from outside of New England sometimes have a hard time understanding just how painful the many, many years that the Boston Red Sox traditionally fought their way up the standings in the American League, only to (a) get into the World Series and have it all slip away or, (b) have the New York Yankees thump them before the Series was due to begin.  I suppose Chicago Cubs fans get it to some degree, but then they never had to cope with the same sinister force snatching victory from them at the last minute, seemingly every damned season.  Arguably they could claim though that the entire Universe was in on the plot to deny them a championship and they might have a good point at that.  Still, the awful domination by the Yankees has colored the distress that Red Sox fans have traditionally suffered like few other life experiences.

It was then with a very familiar sense of pain that I listened as ESPN ran through the highlights of the disastrous 19-8 loss that had been inflicted on the Sox during the previous afternoon at Fenway Park.  I lay down on the couch and stared at the screen as it showed me the Yankee rally in the 4^th inning that began with Gary Sheffield hitting a 3-run homer and that was later capped by Ruben Sierra’s 2-run triple.  That had made the score 11-6 and things went rapidly downhill from there.  Sometime during the replay of the seemingly endless 7^th inning, I dozed off, thereby saving me from having to endure further details of the massacre.

The next installment will be posted on March 4.

If you'd like to read the book today, GO HERE.

EPISODE 25

For those who may not be aware of it, Blackjack is perhaps the one game in the casino where the player has almost even odds against the House.  Assuming you may have read “Bringing Down the House”, or seen the movie “21” that was based on it, then you know that by keeping track of the number of face cards and aces that have been played, you can reasonably figure out the odds of getting those cards dealt to you.  Given that there are 16 cards in each deck that equal 10 and only 4 aces, then the trick is calculating whether you can get one of those 20 cards to drop into your hand when you need it.  It also means that there are cards in the deck that can do you harm and the 5 card is one of them.

The reason for this is simple.  If I have a 5 showing, the odds (given a single, freshly shuffled deck) are almost exactly 30% that I’ll have a 10, jack, queen or king underneath it.  That underneath card is face down, although it really doesn’t make any difference whether anyone else can see it or not.  What’s important for me is to realize that I probably have a 15 there.  I checked my second card and sure as hell, there was a jack.  The odds that I can get another card that will allow me to sneak under 21 are actually about the same as drawing a 10 or a face card.  The ace does me very little good and only a 3, 4, 5, or a 6 can help me out.  My best move is to check what the dealer has.  If he’s in a similar situation, then I can relax and do nothing.  Let him sweat it.  After all, under the rules, the dealer must take a card if he has 16 or less and he must stick with what he’s got with a 17 or better.

Pretty simple?  It is.  Well, that is provided you actually check to see what the dealer has first before making your play.  But I’d let the big lout sitting next to me get on my nerves.  He was “offering” advice to another player now, very loudly.  The poor guy he was lecturing at that moment kept smiling weakly while he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.   I looked at my cards and tapped my right hand on the table next to them.  I heard someone let out a sigh and in a flash I realized that I’d screwed up.  The card snapped out of the shoe and into the dealer’s hand.  He held it for a fraction of a second as he swept from his left to the right and laid the card down in front of me, face up.  It was a freaking queen.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”  I swear that the voice from my right sounded like one of those little compressed air foghorns.  The big guy was near hysterical.  His face was twisted up into a bizarre grimace, his eyes bulging and his face a shade darker than pink.  Enraged would one way you might have put it – but in fact, I think he was way beyond that.  The guy over to my left who’d been his previous target only a few moments before literally jerked out of his chair.  I looked over at the behemoth as he launched into an explosive attack on my poor play.

“You idiot! You ever play this game before?  It sure don’t look like it!  What kind of moron hits on a dealer’s 5?”

As the onslaught continued, I glanced over at the dealer’s hand and sure enough, he had a 5 showing as well.  By taking a card, a face card at that, I had buried that card and raised the odds for the dealer to escape going over 21.  The two players to my left refused new cards and we all watched as the dealer flipped over his exposed card, a 9 and then take a 4 to give him an 18.  He successfully avoided a busted hand and only had to pay out to one of the players at our table, given that everyone had declined to take a third card.  And the truth of the matter was that my misplay had been largely responsible for this outcome, which my tormentor was only too glad to remind me of.

“I can’t freaking believe it!” he bellowed as the dealer swept up the chips.  “Why don’t you do everybody a favor and leave?  It’s clear you don’t know shit about this game and you’re just screwing it up for the rest of us!”

I too had finally lost it.  I turned to my right and said quite evenly, “Would you please shut the fuck up?”  I then turned back to face the dealer and looked up to him.

“You can’t say that to me,” the big guy screamed.  “Who the fuck do you think you are?  Hey!  Look at me when I’m talking to you!  Don’t you fucking dare act like that!  You little shit!  You’re the one that screwed it up!  Not me!  Just get the hell out of here now…”

But his tirade was cut short as two very large, well-muscled gentlemen in matching black sport coats slipped in on either side of the behemoth and yanked him out of his seat.  Despite his continuing philippic, now directed at the management of the hotel, the city of Las Vegas and anyone else that popped into his mind, the big guy was dragged off while the pit boss came over to attend to the table with the dealer.  A well-dressed man with a clipboard in his hand appeared at my left and asked me if I was okay.

“Sure,” I replied shakily.  “Everything’s cool.”

“We don’t think so, sir,” the man replied.  “The management at the MGM Grande does not tolerate this kind of behavior and I apologize to you for this.  The gentlemen won’t bother you anymore.”

I began to wonder what was gong to happen to the behemoth and then realized that I didn’t give much of a damn.  I was trying to think of some graceful way of getting out of the place myself when the man with the clipboard pointed at the table in front of me.

“Are those your chips, sir?”

I looked carefully at the man with clipboard and noticed that he had small metal tag on his lapel that indicated that his mother had named him “Louis”.

“Louis,” I replied.  “They’re mine, but I really don’t see…”

“Sorry to interrupt you sir,” Louis interrupted.  “But I must ask you if you are a guest at the hotel.”

“No, I’m not.”

“And where is that you’re staying, sir?”

With some embarrassment, I told him.

“Nonsense!” Louis exclaimed.  “You’re staying with us!’

Louis scribbled on a form on his clipboard, signed the sheet and then handed it to me.

“At your convenience, please go back to your hotel, get your things and present this at the check-in desk.  The MGM Grande would very much like to have you as our guest for the next 3 nights.  There’s no rush though.  Please keep playing, if you would like.”

I’d had all of the blackjack I could stand for one night, so I thanked Louis, tipped the dealer with a $10 chip and shuffled away from my seat at the table.  Louis continued to be very nice about it, offering to buy me a couple of beers at the bar as I left the table.  There, I spent about an hour shooting the shit with two bored bartenders about striped bass fishing on Lake Meade.  It seems that the freshwater version of one of my favorite game fish thrived there and these two guys apparently had great success chasing blitzing schools of stripers by motorboat.  Besides the small incidental that they often did so in temperatures of 105 degrees or better, it sounded an awful lot like the fishing that Les and I had done on Long Island.  A few more fishing stories, followed by another beer and another hour had passed.  I realized that it must be later than hell, so I excused myself from the bar and headed out the front door of the hotel to look for a taxi.

I arrived back at my hotel at around 3AM and found that there was a good sized, sloppy drunk crowd in the hotel bar.  All eyes were on a small stage located on the right side of the room where a young lady wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt was struggling through a country western tune I didn’t recognize, accompanied by a very loud karaoke machine.  In spite of the fact that the screen to her left displayed the lyrics, she was having a very tough time of it.  Her pitch was off and she couldn’t read the words.  But every time she came back to the chorus, she’d positive roar.

The patrons at the bar hooted, raised their glasses and tipped their beer bottles to her.  She graced them with a big grin and then blushed, eliciting more approval from the bar.  By then, she’d missed the next line and she hurriedly tried to catch up with the tune.  It was losing battle though.  This in no way inhibited our heroine.  She gamely plowed on, reinforced by her ability to make a big splash with the refrain that marked the return to the song’s chorus.

When she finally finished, the place went berserk.  A dozen or so people rushed up to the woman, hugging her and offering to buy her drinks.  One of the two bartenders ran up to her and slipped a fresh bottle of beer into her hand.  I swear that they all might have tried to carry their new hero around the bar on their shoulders, had they all not been so out of it.

Clearly, it was time for me to pack my bags and bid farewell.



The next installment of SlipNot will be published here on February 23.

If you’d like to read the whole book today, go to amazon.com.

EPISODE 24

Les was ecstatic about the upcoming trip.  He loved traveling for business.  When we went to New Orleans, Les took some vacation time he had coming to him so that he could drive down.  He’d rented a car and taken the most roundabout route you could imagine, via the Florida panhandle.  He’d gotten into town a full day before everyone else, spent a night eating at Antoine’s and then listening to blues at one of the clubs on Bourbon Street – so he was properly hung-over on the morning that the rest of us flew in.   Of course, since things hadn’t really gotten ramped up until the early afternoon, he’d had plenty time to nurse his wounds with a couple Bloody Marys and some shrimp gumbo by the time he had to interact with anyone.  I still don’t know how he did it.  I’m not referring to the pre-conference self-abuse.  I was often guilty of the same behavior.  However, SlipNot kept us all on such a short leash when it came to expenses that I had to wonder what kind of bottomless trust fund Les had discovered to finance his road lifestyle.  The house out in the Hamptons should have been a clue.

“Mikey!” he said with a big smile, “I’m definitely flying in early.  I figure I can drop in on a couple clients, get a little business done and still have the evenings to do fuck-all.  You wanna come along?”

It was funny.  I had also planned on heading out to Vegas early, but not to do any business.

And so it was that I found myself slugging down yet another bottle of Budweiser at the bar at one of the city’s lesser-known hotels.  It is one of the oddest places I’ve ever spent time, but given that it’s located well off the Strip in Las Vegas, what the hell did I expect?  My younger brother though had been very excited when I told him where I’d booked, mistaking it for another establishment with a similar name but his tone changed rapidly, once I told him how little I had paid in advance for my room.

“Are you sure about that?” he’d asked. 

“Pretty sure.”

“Wow!  That’s one of the best places off the Strip.  You scored, man!”

“Scoring” is all in the eye of the beholder, apparently.  It turned out that where I was and where my brother thought I might be were far from one and the same.  When I’d stepped into the cab at the airport and announced to the driver of my destination, he’d made a sour face.

“It’s a toilet!” he declared emphatically.  He was probably correct I thought ruefully, but at $39.95 a night, it was going to be home.  The poor man was so concerned for my welfare that he offered to make a few calls on his cell phone to find me a room someplace else.  I told him that I’d prepaid for my room and that I was only going to be there for one night before changing quarters to the Monte Carlo on Sunday afternoon.  Although clearly unhappy with my thought process, the driver relented and he drove me to the hotel without uttering another word.

When we pulled up, I wondered how far away from the Strip this place could be and still be considered part of Las Vegas proper.  I had planned on walking a good deal while I was in town as this has always been my favorite way of exploring a city.  The problem is that everything in Las Vegas is a hell of a lot further away than it looks.  But my most immediate concern was the condition of my room in what outwardly appeared to be a moderately rundown hotel.  This consternation on my part wasn’t without warrant.  As I closed the door to my room after me and reached to switch on the lights, a piece of the wall, wallpaper, sheetrock and all fell to the floor.  The dust from the shattered sheetrock rose in a plume and I was soon sneezing and coughing.  I dropped my bag, quickly exited the room, and began my hike over to the Strip.

One feature that the Las Vegas mega-hotel casino lacks is the presence of windows except at the entrance.  In this way, the tourist or business traveler is kept blissfully unaware of the time of day outside.  It is therefore very easy for someone to kill an inordinate amount of time inside said gambling establishment without having even a clue that there is a world outside and that somewhere a clock may be ticking.  I’d spent quite a while playing blackjack at the $10 tables and had admirably beaten back the house to the point where I was only down about 200 bucks.  This, of course, was when all hell broke loose.  A very large gentleman sat down to my right and snagged two open places at the table.  He set his chips in the two circles near him and smiled at everyone around the table.  Dutifully, everyone smiled back.

“How’s everybody doing?” he boomed.  His voice was louder than anything else in the casino and that’s really quite an achievement.  With the cacophony of slot machines ringing and the constant rumble, punctuated by lusty cheering at the craps table, it would seem impossible for any other sound to break through.  But this man’s voice did.  The other problem was that he never stopped talking.

“Look!  Dealer’s got a 3!  This is gonna be tough, huh?  I don’t think so!  Look at that Jack you got!  And you got a 9!  Ah man, we’re gonna make money tonight!  I’m doubling down twice on this puppy!  Let’s have those cards, baby!  No way I’m losing this one!”

He offered advice.  He provided a running play-by-play, with color commentary.  He called out to passing waitresses for drinks, for himself and for the rest of us – so I guess he wasn’t completely useless.  But the constant patter at such high volume was unmerciful.  It got so bad that I had to sit out a few hands so I could concentrate on my beer.  At least drinking was something I could still focus on.  I ordered another beer from a passing waitress and slid a $10 chip into the betting circle in front of me.

“Jeez!  Glad you came back!” the big guy shouted.  “You’ve completely screwed up the deal.”

“I what?”

“Aw, man!” the guy complained.  “You should have eaten some of these shit cards I’ve been getting while you were nursing that old beer of yours.  Now, if you’re in – stay in, okay?”

I was beginning to lose it.  I opened my mouth to answer the asshole when I noticed the dealer slowly shaking his head.  I looked up into the dealer’s face, but he was now carefully following the cards as he dealt them out.  I looked down at the one exposed card in front of me.

It was a five.

The next installment of SlipNot will be published here on February 17.

If you’d like to read the whole book today, go to amazon.com.

EPISODE 23

A couple of weeks after my fishing trip with Les, I got a call from Keith. 

“Michael!” he boomed, from wherever in the hell he was calling from, Taiwan – I seem to recall.  “Has Bosco talked you yet about the conference in Vegas?”

Well, of course he hadn’t.  But this didn’t exactly come out of left field either.  Since the telephone call we’d had about giving the product away, Bosco had been in full flurry mode, calling up Web developers, graphic artists, copywriters and just about anyone else he could corral into this new project.  It was clear that he was working feverishly to launch this new sales program in a hurry.  SlipNot had been experiencing a slow but undeniable decline in sales over the previous two years and the growing fashion that single men had adopted in the early years of the 21^st century of shaving their heads wasn’t helping matters.  Bosco felt strongly that even though his new plot would lead to a return of that market share, he also realized it was going to take a good six months to a year before SlipNot’s customers would (a) buy into the plan and (b) make it work for them, thereby (c) increasing the number of orders they placed to SlipNot for new product.

This task was made even trickier because we were going to be asking studio owners to buy into this new scheme without providing them with any new creative material.  Normally when SlipNot asked its customers to jump off the cliff with them with a new marketing plan, they provided TV ads, radio spots, newspaper/magazine slicks and comprehensive training for making the whole package work.  This time around, there would be no advertising campaign roll out to back the effort up.  Bosco and Keith both felt that no one would ever respond to a “something for nothing” ad campaign.  Consumers were too sophisticated, Bosco argued.  I pointed out that plenty of people still clicked on the links in emails sent from the descendants of colonial era African royalty who offered to share in their $60 million estates.  My objection had been met with stony silence.

“Yeah, “ Keith continued before I could respond, “This is going to be a lotta work, Michael.  I’m going to need you and Allan to call all of our big clients. Richard is working on a list.  Get them to commit for a Sunday through Tuesday meeting in Las Vegas, starting on October 17^th.  We’ll get a block of rooms at the MonteCarlo.  Promise them reduced rates if they book by the end of August.  Richard’s got a list of places for receptions and parties, but the key thing is to build up some buzz about the new marketing plan.”

“Should I let them know what it is?” I asked.

“Shit, no! They’ll never come if they think it means giving product away.  That’s where you’re going to have to be careful.  Both of you!  You can tell them that we’re unveiling a new plan, but you can’t let them know what we’re going to do.”

I’ve always marveled at the fact the people will spend money to learn something that isn’t adequately explained before they have to commit.  You don’t think they will?  Just think about all of those infomercials in the early years of the 21^st century that promised the viewer the ability to build a financial empire on no-money-down real estate purchases.  The success of that scam essentially led to the devastation of the entire economy just a few years later.  People will spend cash anytime they think there’s a shortcut to the big time.  And that was the rationale for the whole scheme.  In ’04, the economy was booming.  People were making money on Wall Street, buying and flipping real estate and betting on commodity futures.  Hell, even new restaurants were showing profits!  It was that good.  Start with a semi-credible get-rich scheme and throw in a Las Vegas mini-vacation with all of the low-level debauchery that it promises and you have the basic ingredients for a successful business conference.  Keith knew this.  He and Bosco had been doing this for 20 years together and in 2004, everybody was making money.  Everybody except for SlipNot’s clients.  Keith was very worried about it.  There was an enormous supply of fresh capital in the streets and it appeared to be passing him by. 

“Hey!” Keith yelled in my ear.  I hadn’t been paying attention, but my Fearless Leader had been trying to tell me to do something for him.

“Sorry, Keith,” I stammered.  “It’s noisy here.  I couldn’t quite hear you.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Well listen up good now, okay?  Sit down with Les and Richard today and see if you can brief the rest of the sales team.  I want everybody in on this.”

“You want Les and his group making calls?” I asked, hoping like all hell that Keith didn’t.

“No.  This is for you, Bosco and Allan.  I want you guys and Richard to make up the list and then I want Richard out of this, so that he can get on with his other work.  He spends too much damn time on these projects as it is.  You follow?”

“Got it.  Do you want anyone on the sales team involved at all?”

“No, Michael, not yet.  I want them aware of what happening but I don’t want you to get them making phone calls.  At least not officially.”

I started to laugh.  Keith was absolutely right.  If we told the sales team that there was a conference coming up, they’d been so damned excited that they’d never be able to contain themselves.  Sometimes the best way to spread the word about something is to tell people that it’s a secret and that’s exactly what Keith had planned.  Within a week, the sales staff at SlipNot will have gossiped this conference into near legendary status.  It will spread among the customer base at fantastic speed.  Clients will be calling us, demanding to be let in on the secret for fear that they were going to miss something. 

“Sure, sure!” Keith said.  “It’s like a take-away close.  You tell people about something, then tell them can’t have it right then and BAM!  It’s the only thing on Earth that they want.  Just make sure than Les and his crew knows that their clients have to call you or Allan to get in.  This’ll be the easiest conference you’ll ever sell.”

            After another 15 minutes, Keith had given me a rough sketch of how this was supposed to pan out, but he also mentioned that the final planning would be left to Bosco.  I made a mental note to set up some time with him later that day.

The next installment will be posted on February 10.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.