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26 Capital Corp (ADERU) is a new at-NAV SPAC with world-leading online gambling expertise - worth a bet

EDIT - one week after i posted this, Britain's most successful hedge fund manager Michael Platt has taken a 6.5% stake
tl;dr
At-NAV new SPAC with world-leading expertise in online gambling. Worth a bet on potential to be next DKNG on the hype train
   
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Hi all - have had a lot of great tips from this sub. Hopefully this pays some of you back. I have been watching and researching this since 23 December when it first filed S1, awaiting the units to be listed - they are available today trading as ADERU
Positions - 500 units @ 10.42 to start. Will be monitoring and building position below $15, especially if attention starts to build ahead of units and warrants splitting and shares coming available to Robinhood.
(My other SPAC positions are OPEN, IPO-E-F, PSTH, FUSE, PIPP, ACTC, CCIV and DMYD, 100 to 1000 shares each mostly around NAV and numerous warrants and options around these.)
As ever, this is not investment advice and do your own research
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26 Capital Acquisition Corp or ADER
is a 240m SPAC with usual terms - 10$ units, 1/2 warrants. Seeking a merger in "gaming and gaming technology, branded consumer, lodging and entertainment, and Internet commerce sectors".
I think this is highly worth a play on the online gambling hype if you can get in at near NAV, based entirely on the management which is unbeatable in its knowledge of the gambling industry
   
CEO Jason Ader
has held director level positions at Las Vegas Sands Corp. ($42bn one of biggest casino groups in world), IGT (£3.72bn multinational gambling firm specialised in software and slot machines) and Playtech (£1.4bn multinational gambling software firm)
Before starting his own fund in 2013 he was regularly ranked Wall Street's top analyst on the gambling and leisure sector
His fund, Spring Owl Capital, is a small activist fund focused on gambling and leisure. They are probably most famous for ousting the CEO of Viacom in 2016 and a crusade against Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer in 2015.
Ader knows the gambling - and online gambling - industry inside out. He drove bWin to a £1.1bn takeover by gambling giant GVC (now Entain) in 2016, and has been driving similar change and demands for improvement at board level at Playtech
The fund mostly manages money for a select group of wealthy families, which could be a positive sign for the SPAC (although I don't know how much skin in the SPAC the fund has, if any)
Here is a video of Ader from November talking about how he's excited about SPACs. He talks about how he has been advising certain States about legalising sports betting and how to maximise value and liquidity by linking up with European companies in the space (Playtech e.g.??).
Ader is extremely bullish on US legalising online casino and more sports betting options, accelerated by need for revenue because of pandemic
   
Rafi Ashkenazi
One of the most highly respected names in the online gambling world, including COO and CEO positions at major online gambling firms such as Playtech and Stars Group (a world leader in online poker and casino). At Stars he led the $4.7bn takeover of Sky Betting to create the world's largest publicly listed online betting firm in 2018. Most recently he led the £10bn merger between Flutter (biggest gambling company in world by revenue, market cap £26bn), and Stars Group (Ader also involved). Also has connections into the booming Israel tech space which is interesting
   
Joseph Kaminkow
Special Advisor to the Chief Product Officer at Aristocrat, a leading gambling software provider and games publisher, previously Vice President of Game Design at Zynga Inc. This guy is a former video game / pinball designer who is credited with revolutionising the slots industry after moving into gambling software from video games in 1999. Regarded as a "legend" and "hall of famer" in this niche. At Zynga he designed so-called 'social casino games' which don't involve real-money gambling but are otherwise basically gambling apps (revenue from microtransactions etc). 130 patents on gambling/gaming design inventions
   
Greg Lyss
This is a very interesting but extremely low profile person. He was Bill Ackman a.k.a SPACman's right hand man at Gotham Capital. Ackman respected him so much that when Ackman set up a personal hedge fund to invest the Ackman family's money, he put Lyss in charge of it. To repeat - Bill Ackman thinks this guy is such a good investor and trustworthy that he put him in charge of investing his family's money. Don't know anything more about him, but I like this association with Ackman, which suggests to me some integrity around management of this SPAC, especially as the gambling world can be very murky.
The other member of the team is the CFO of SpringOwl with 20+ years' hedge fund experience and not notable (although clearly competent)
   
Thesis / potential targets
Based on the above experience and many public comments by Ader over the past year, I would be very surprised if ADER is not looking to merge with an online gambling technology provider / existing online betting website / social casino app / possibly a supporting technology provider
They are activist inventors, and specifically say in the IPO prospectus that they could look for businesses that can benefit from turnaround or are not being run well. I speculate that their deep knowledge of the European / global online gambling industry means they have a target in mind that they think would benefit from their expertise and US liberalisation of gambling legislation.
   
1) Ader believes the listing of UK-listed gambling companies in US is immediately big in terms of market cap because of the premium on online gambling stocks in US. He has pitched DraftKings to takeover Playtech and called on Playtech to spin off non-core business. This makes me wonder if he would spin off some element of Playtech to list in US to cash in on gambling hype.
This might be Finalto.com / TradeTech which is an online financial platform owned by Playtech. Playtech has been trying to sell this for 200 - 240m since August so it fits. This company provides liquidity and trading to brokerages and runs markets.com a trading site. I wouldn't be that excited although apparently the business has been booming during COVID and there could be a decent pop just on fintech hype.
   
2) This could be a 'picks and shovel' type data/B2B betting software play a la DMYD, or something like e.g. Israel based CRM software Optimove which works with some of biggest online gambling cos and has links to Ashkenazi. This would be interesting but probably not a huge pop
   
3) Possibly - given Ader's links to Sands - an online gambling tie-up with one of the big Vegas casinos who are desperate to get into the online betting space (see MGM's attempt to buy Entain for $8bn last week). Interestingly, Sands' owner Sheldon Adelson, previously a major opponent of online betting, has just died. Ader predicted a few months ago that Sands would be moving in this direction.
“There’s no stopping online gaming,” Ader said [before Adelson's death]. “(Las Vegas Sands’) initiatives to stop online gaming, at this stage, are largely historic. There hasn’t been a lot of spending recently to do that, especially post-pandemic.”
“I think the company will see the value created by DraftKings and FanDuel and Penn (National) Gaming and others. They’re not foolish,” Ader added. source
   
4) Ader is very confident that Macau will legalise online gambling in next year or two. Sands is big in Macau, the biggest gambling market in the world. A SaaS-type product positioned to capitalise on Asian gambling would be MASSIVE - at present however, China's attitude to gambling and local regulations mean this is unlikely
   
5) I also wonder if they might try to take legitimate one of the offshore bookmakers with big customer databases and brand recognition but which have been grey-area/illegal under US gaming legislation. For example, Five Dimes recently announced a settlement with the FBI to attempt to transition into newly legalised US markets. This might have the most hype potential
   
Potential upside
This is entirely a play on management experience and the meme factor / hype around online gambling in the US. I think if they pick a good target - which given their experience and connections seems likely - and get the right publicity and attention from retail investors looking for the next DKNG this could easily 3x and maybe 5-6x if on DKNG-type hype levels.
There is currently little spotlight on this and it is a good time to get in at NAV
   
Potential Downside
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15 Most Famous Slot Machines and Most Popular Slot Games

1. Liberty Bell

Invented and designed by a San Francisco mechanic named Charles Fey in 1895, the Liberty Bell is the first slot machine. The main symbols here include horseshoes, stars, spades, diamonds, hearts, and Liberty Bells. Once three bells are aligned, the machine pays 50 cents.
Having a coin slot at the top, it features small reels in the middle and a paytable at the bottom. It works like this - players insert a Nickel and pull a lever on the right-hand side to spin the reels. Although the Operator Bell and Liberty Bell have been removed from casinos, the original Liberty Bell on display can be seen in the Liberty Belle saloon in Reno, Nevada.

2. Lion's Share

One of the most famous slot machines, Microgaming’s classic slot Lion's Share, gained a lot of success back in 2014, due to news channels that discussed the topic on how Lion's Share's progressive jackpot hasn’t been hit for two decades. Thousands of people have tried but no one was lucky enough to pull it off.
Although the machine only featured 3 reels and only 1 payline, Lion’s Share has managed to become one of the most popular releases in Vegas, so popular that people waited in line just to put a coin into it and try spinning those reels.
Eventually, a New Hampshire couple hit the $2.4 million progressive jackpot in MGM’s Grand’s Lion’s Share. Soon after, MGM Grand made a decision to retire the Lion's Share machine since it required a lot of maintenance. Still, the game became part of slot history with a jackpot that took 20 years to win.

3. Megabucks

Created by IGT, Megabucks has managed to become one of the world's best progressive slot machines. The game is also responsible for numerous big wins throughout the entire jackpots’ history. Also known as the biggest money jackpots of all time, Megabucks slot machines are described as simple games with a massive progressive jackpot. One of the biggest wins was when an anonymous engineer won a staggering $39.7 million at Las Vegas' Excalibur, back in 2003.
As for the other big wins hit on this machine, there was a cocktail waitress Cynthia Jay Brennan who snagged an incredible $34.9 million at Vegas' Desert Inn, as well as a retired flight attendant hitting $27.5 million at Vegas' Palace Statio­n. J­ohanna Huendl won $22.6 million whereas an Illinois businessman hit $21.3 million on the very first spin.
However, after winning the prize, one of the winner's family members had a tragic accident, which (as some believe) only supported the theory of a Megabucks curse. Other unfortunate stories are just believed to be urban legends, including anecdotes about underage players, as well as casino employees, being big winners but not being able to claim their jackpots because of specific state laws and regulation.

4. Wheel of Fortune

IGT’s Wheel of Fortune has proven to be the second most famous slot machine of all time. Featuring a bonus feature just like the real show, the slot machine is usually played by many slot fans and can be found in numerous casinos all over the globe. Although the game comes in more variations, probably the most popular one is still its 3-reel version, with a colourful wheel at the top.
The Wheel of Fortune multiplayer game features a bank of machines where every player gets their own screen. What makes the game even more exciting is the multiplayer edition where people can play the bonus round together, which really intensifies the game show aspect.
In a 5-reel Wheel of Fortune slot, however, Wild symbols will help players land winning combos and, if you’re lucky enough, you may get a Super Wild that will boost your win up to 5x! Last but not least, the Triple Action Bonus is activated by getting at least 3 Triple Action Bonus symbols anywhere on the reels. But still, none of the newer Wheel of Fortune slots measure up to the original one because of the large progressive jackpot involved.

5. Mega Fortune

Featuring 5 reels and 25 paylines, NetEnt’s Mega Fortune slot became very popular among players as it usually grows into a multimillion-euro amount before being hit. The main symbols here include luxury cars, yachts, and expensive jewellery, Mega Fortune is an online slot machine game which justifies its theme that comes with the largest ever online slot jackpots.
The game offers a few different features that make the entire gameplay more fascinating, however, by far the most interesting ones are the 3 different progressive jackpots: Mega Jackpot, Major Jackpot and Rapid Jackpot. There are counters for all 3 of these that are displayed above the reels. Champagne is the Scatter and if you land at least 3 of them simultaneously, you will trigger Free Spins bonus round. Likewise, Wheel of Luck is the Bonus symbol, and if you land 3 or more symbols in succession from left to right on an active payline, you will activate the Bonus game.
What’s interesting about this slot is the fact that a Finnish man won a huge jackpot worth €17.8 million while spinning the reels of Mega Fortune. This record from 2013, has been passed by Mega Moolah, but the game is still proof how rich players can get after playing Mega Fortune.

6. Mega Moolah

Powered by Microgaming and being among most popular slot games, Mega Moolah is a 25-payline progressive slot which has served as a competitor to Mega Fortune's big jackpots. Followed by African safari music, the game features antelopes, elephants, giraffes, lions, monkeys and zebras as the main symbols.
Landing at least 3 Scatters at the same time will trigger 15 Free Spins. What’s more, all wins hit during Free Spins are tripled, whereas Free Spins can also be retriggered. Players can win one of the 4 Progressive Jackpots within the randomly triggered Bonus round.
The game paid some of the largest slot machine jackpots that have ever been triggered. In 2015,for example, Mega Moolah gained international recognition when a British soldier Jon Heywood won a massive €17,879,645.

7. Cleopatra

Inspired by the famous Egyptian theme and Developed by IGT, Cleopatra is a 20-payline classic game that managed to stand out above similar releases. Featuring ancient Egyptian music, the main symbols here include Cleopatra, the Eye of Horus, scarabs, and pyramids. Landing at least 3 Sphinx symbols will trigger the Cleopatra Bonus, which awards 15 Free Spins. All prizes, except for the 5 Cleopatra symbols, are tripled in the Free Spins round.
The game has been so successful that it inspired its creators to make a sequel, Cleopatra II, with richer graphics and engaging sound effects. But even if you choose the original game, you'll be playing a classic that's still enjoyed by various players today. And, in case you land 5 Cleopatra symbols you’ll get a jackpot of 10,000 coins.

8. Book of Ra

Having a popular Ancient-Egypt theme, Book of Ra has always been one of the best choices to play in land based and online casinos. Powered by Novomatic, Book of Ra is a 9 payline video slot that offers plenty of bonus features and big payouts. With entertaining narrative and energising gameplay, there are numerous ways to win here.
In case you land 5 archaeologists simultaneously, you’ll get an impressive 5,000x your line bet. Earning big bucks, however, comes from the Free Spins feature. What players need to do is land at least 3 Scatter books to trigger the Free Spins feature. Pages of the book will flip and randomly determine which symbol will expand during the 10 Free Spins.
Although hitting the jackpot may not be easy, with only a few one in between, when big wins come, they can be big.

9. Starburst

There’s no denying NetEnt’s Starburst slot became kinda legendary in the iGaming universe. With its dark background and shiny space looking gemstones, Starburst slot features 5 reels and 10 paylines. The well-known futuristic music in this release is also easily noticeable, as is the game’s expanding Wild.
More precisely, the Wilds may only occur on the reels 2, 3 and 4, and, once 1 or more wilds appear on those reels, the Starburst Wild feature will be activated. During this feature, Starburst wilds expand to cover the entire reel and remain while the other reels re-spin. Should a new wild land during a re-spin, it expands and stays along with any previously expanded Starbursts for another re-spin.
Another cool feature is that Starburst pays both ways, instead of only paying you for landing at least 3 identical symbols on adjacent reels starting with the reel furthest to the left. The maximum single spin payout for a person (betting the $200 maximum) is $100,000. But, in order for that to happen, you must land five bars on consecutive reels on an active payline. Players love this slot, probably because it’s suitable for both newbies and experienced players.

10. Immortal Romance

Powered by Microgaming, Immortal Romance is based on sci-fi and the cult of Vampires which has become one of the popular casino slot machines in the last couple of years. Apart from superb graphics and great audio and visual effects, the slot features 5 reels and 243 paylines, and the theoretical RTP rate of 96.86%. The four main characters are Amber, Troy, Michael and Sarah.
When it comes to features and bonus games, Immortal Romance offers different variants. Wild Desire feature can occur randomly, and as soon as it does, it can turn 1 to 5 reels completely Wild. Likewise, landing 3 or more Scatters anywhere on the reels in this game, activates the Chamber of Spins feature which cannot be triggered during Wild Desire.
The game is still among the most popular slots, as many players still try their luck in this slot in the hope to get the highest multiplier possible.

11. Gonzo’s Quest

Beautifully designed video slot powered by NetEnt, Gonzo Quest features 5 reels and 20 paylines. The story is based on the famous conquistador Gonzalo Pizzaro who is on his way to the Peruvian ruins and just about to experience the unique quest.
Now, Gonzo’s Quest has become one of the most popular slot games of all time, probably because it comes with a few interesting features, Avalanche Multipliers feature being the most interesting one of all. In Essence, the reels in the slot move in a cascading manner which resemble an Avalanche. As you activate each new Avalanche, you will win a multiplier. Multipliers are displayed above the reels, and go up to 5x, that is if you land 4 or more avalanches simultaneously.

12. Age of the Gods

Being among famous slot machines and inspired by Ancient Greek mythology, Age of the Gods is a 5-reel, 20-payline progressive slot powered by Playtech. The main characters are Athena, Zeus, Hercules, and Poseidon power up 4 free game modes that offer extra wilds and win multipliers! Once you start spinning, you’ll come across a series of bonus features, such as Athena Free Games, Zeus Free Games, Poseidon Free Games and Hercules Free Games.
Wild logo is the game’s wild card and it substitutes for all symbols, with the exception of the Scatter. Landing at least 3 Scatters anywhere on the reels simultaneously triggers the Bonus game. Moreover, landing 5 God symbols in any order on an active payline will get you 200x your line bet!
During the main game, any spin can activate the Age of the Gods Mystery Jackpot. This mini game guarantees a win of up to 4 progressive jackpots. All you gotta do is click on the coins to reveal jackpot symbols, and if you match 3 identical ones, you will win that jackpot.

13. Money Honey

Having a cute theme, Money Honey is a 5-reel and a 243 payline slot themed around honey. With Wilds, Free Spins, Scatters and multipliers, it is a fast-paced exciting creation featuring vibrant colours. Likewise, it is a mobile-optimized slot which may be an excellent choice if you’re new to online gambling or if you’ve been playing for years.
Just like in other games, Wilds will help you win payouts as they are able to replicate most other symbols on the reels once a winning combination has been made. Another symbol you may want to keep your eyes on is a Money Wheel card. Once you manage to land at least 3 of them on your reels after a spin, the bonus game begins, and you spin a big wheel to choose a prize.

14. Quick Hit

And our selection wouldn’t be complete without Bally's Quick Hit slot. Featuring traditional Las Vegas symbols with sharp graphics and relaxed music, the video slot has 5 reels, 3 rows, and 30 paylines. Once you decide how many paylines you want to bet on, your gaming adventure can begin. There are Scatters symbols and three bonus games to benefit from.
The biggest payout here comes from landing the triple seven symbol. Should you land 5 of these lucky numbers on the reels at the same time, you will win 5,000 coins, whereas if you land five wild symbols, you’ll get 12,500 coins.
Those looking for hitting a jackpot should pay attention to Quick Hit Platinum symbols as 5 of these contribute to 5,000x players’ original bet amount – and even more, with the max bet activated. The second-highest jackpot can be hit by landing 9 Quick Hit Slot symbols. Both the Quick Hit Platinum and regular Quick Hit symbols must occur on or within one position of the first payline to be eligible for a jackpot win.

15. SlotZilla Zip Line

And now something completely different. We’re finishing our selection of famous slots in style, with the world’s largest slot machine - StotZilla Zip Line - 128 feet tall which has two take-off levels. This $12 million SlotZilla zip line took more than a year to build and opened its doors in 2014 and has already had more than 2 million riders so far.
The 11-story slot machine is decorated with over-sized dice, a glass of martini, a pink flamingo, video reels, coins, and two showgirls - Jennifer and Porsha. SlotZilla offers two different rider experiences - the upper Zoomline and a lower Zipline. This unique machine has a huge video screen with reels and a gigantic arm, replicating a true slot machine experience.
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1990年著名杂志专访特朗普中英全文

1990年著名杂志专访特朗普中英全文
原文载于1990年3月刊(点此可获取原刊PDF
转载请注明翻译者@hhgztom
图片源自网络
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: DONALD TRUMP
a candid conversation with the decade's most flamboyant billionaire
on deal making, self-promotion, world affairs and how much is enough
《花花公子》专访:唐纳德·特朗普
与十年来最引人注目的亿万富翁的一次坦诚对话
谈交易、自我推销、国际事务以及多少钱才够
Donald Trump sits alone. He hasn't slept in 48 hours.
At six A.M., perched high, in the bronze-coated jewel of his empire, Trump Tower; he is bent over a mammoth Brazilian-rosewood desk, scrutinizing spread sheets.
No insomnia, no growing worries.
"Pressure," lie surmises, sipping an iced Coke, "doesn't upset my sleep,'' a standard four hours nightly.
"I like throwing balls into the air— and I dream like a baby."
Three hours later, blond hair marshaled, he announces, with standard chutzpah, his seven-and-a-half billion dollar bid to gobble down the nation's premiere airline, American. On the strength of his $120-a-share bid, the stock vaults from $16 to $99.The 43-year-old billionaire, who owns huge blocks of American Airlines stock ,smiles broadly.
A week later, with the market lumbling190 points, he withdraws his offer, perhaps temporarily. Despite some reports that insinuated his American raid was only cardboard, a poly to rattle up his stock, Trump stares into space:
"Nope, I want it."
Yup, If it's the best, and it's for sale, Donald Trump's stomach begins to growl.
He captured troubled Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi's onyx-and-gold-plated yacht for a mere $29,000,000—now it's worth $100,000,000. Then he bought the Eastern shuttle for $365,000,000 and transformed it overnight into the Trump Shuttle, complete with comfortable cabins and stewardesses rustling in virgin wool and pearls.
唐纳德•特朗普独自坐着。他已经48小时没休息了。
早上6点,高耸的特朗普大厦,上面镶嵌着青铜涂层的宝石;他俯身在一张巨大的巴西木紫檀木办公桌前,仔细查看着那些表格。
没有失眠,没有烦恼。
“压力,”他一边喝着冰可乐一边揣测,“不会影响我的睡眠”,标准的每晚4小时。
“我喜欢把球扔到空中——我睡的像婴儿一样。”
三个小时后,整理了一下金发,用那标准的狂妄口吻,他宣布,以75亿美元的价格吞并美国航空公司。在他每股120美元的出价下,这家公司的股价从16美元升至99美元。这位43岁的亿万富翁拥有美国航空公司的大量股票,笑容满面。
一周后,当股市暴跌190点时,他撤回了自己的报价,或许是暂时的。尽管有报道暗示,特朗普的美式突袭只是一种叫“硬纸板”的保利,但他的目光却盯着天空:
“不,我想要它。”
是的,如果这是最好的,而且是待售的,唐纳德·特朗普的肚子开始咕咕叫了。
他仅以2900万美元的价格买下了陷入困境的沙特金融家阿德南·卡舒吉的镶有码瑙和镀金的游艇,现在这艘游艇价值1亿美元。然后,他以3.65亿美元买下了东方航天飞机,并在一夜之间将其改装为特朗普航天飞机,配备了舒适的机舱,空姐们穿着纯净的羊毛和珍珠沙沙作响。
A year earlier, he had bought the Plaza Hotel for $400,000,000 and is now lovingly restoring her without a name change. Her make-over will be surprised by the Czech mistress of Trump's kingdom, Ivana, a former Olympic skier and fashion model.
At home, Ivana presides over a 100-room Trump Tower triplex, recently expanded from 50 rooms ("Better closet space, "she jokes). Trump proud of the salmon-marbled atrium of Trump Tower, where no expense was spared, says, "I bought the whole damn mountain! You've never seen that color before. Ivana suggested it because it makes people look better."
The couple also has a 47-room country house on ten acres in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the well-publicized 118-room Mar-a-Lago Marjorie Merriweather Post estate in Palm Beach, their commute time shortened by the 727 jet and the French-made military Puma helicopter.
The Trump Princess, or the Khashoggi" boat", as Trump now calls it, has gotten cramped, so a Dutch shipyard is confecting not a Princess but a full-fledged Queen costing more than $175,000,000.
一年前,他以4亿美元的价格买下了广场酒店,现在,他很高兴在没有改名字的情况下恢复了它的光辉。它的装饰一定会让特朗普王国的女主人伊万娜大吃一惊的,她曾是捷克奥运会滑雪运动员和时装模特。
在家里,伊万娜管理着特朗普大厦一套有100个房间的三层公寓,该公寓是最近从50个房间扩建的(她开玩笑说,“壁橱空间更大了”)。特朗普对着大厦里鲑鱼似的大理石中庭感到自豪,他说,“我买下了整座山!你从来没见过那种颜色。伊凡娜建议这样做的,因为这样可以让人看起来更好看。”
这对夫妇还在康涅狄格州格林威治占地10英亩的乡间别墅中拥有47个房间,以及众所周知的位于棕榈滩的马拉歌庄园,拥有118个房间。727喷气式飞机和法国制造的军用“美洲狮”直升机缩短了他们的通勤时间。
“特朗普公主号”(特朗普此刻叫它卡舒吉的“小船“)已经变得破烂不堪,因此一个荷兰船厂现在要做的是要把这位公主打造成一位丰满成熟的价值超过1.75亿美元的女王。
Such ostentation, despite a catalog of charities and good deeds done for sick kids, has predictably yielded a rich crop of snipers. Spy magazine, the New York-based humor monthly, cheerfully carries a scabrous vendetta against the Trumps, comparing them to Dickension monsters. Time did s cover story on the decay of Atlantic City and chided Trump for helping create a crime-plagued urban blight divided between welfare cases and high rollers. On the upper West Side, Manhattanites attack him for his proclaimed desire to build an enormous complex, Trump City, complete with a 150-story skyscraper; Phil Donahue charges that Trump’s casinos pillage the gullible; an aide close to outgoing mayor Ed Koch calls Trump ”the most arrogant s.o.b who has ever stepped onto the earth.
Ah, well, To be young, blond and a billionaire.
It doesn’t seem to matter. The most daunting entrepreneur since the Astors, Vanderbilts and Whitneys, Donald John Trump has made his ”art of the deal” work—not just for making money but for crushing adversaries, too.
Case in point: Merv Griffin. Ten months after Griffin bought Trump’s Resorts International Inc for $365,000,000, for which Trump had paid $101,000,000 the year before, Griffin found himself holding a busted balloon. Not only had he inherited the hotel-casino’s $925,000,000 debt but he embarrassingly had to report first-half losses of $46,600,000. There’s now talk of a possible bankruptcy for Merv and a possible lawsuit against Trump.
Looking beyond his one-billion-dollar Taj Mahal opening in Atlantic City next month, Trump has plenty to consider. There are tumors of his building casinos in Nevada and his buying Tiffany’s, NBC, the New York Daily News or the Waldorf Hotel (“I’ve got to have the Waldorf,” he coos jokingly into the phone. ”I can’t sleep without it”).And the Presidency ?No, that takes an election, and it is clear that Trump is not that patient. Too much to do!
尽管为生病的孩子们做了一系列的慈善和好事,这样的炫耀还是不出所料地产生了大量的攻击者。总部位于纽约的幽默月刊《间谍杂志》兴高采烈地对特朗普家族进行了激烈的报复,将他们比作言辞恶毒的怪物。《时代》杂志做了一篇关于大西洋城衰败的封面报道,指责特朗普帮助打造了一个犯罪猖獗的城市颓势,这个颓势在福利案件和豪赌客之间一分为二。在上西城,曼哈顿人抨击他宣称要建造一个巨大的综合体——特朗普城,包括一座150层的摩天大楼;菲尔·多纳休指责特朗普的赌场掠夺易轻信的人;一位接近即将离任的市长埃德·科赫的助手称特朗普是“有史以来最傲慢的人。“
嗯,好吧,年轻的金发亿万富翁。
这似乎无关紧要。唐纳德·约翰·特朗普是继阿斯特尔家族、范德比尔特家族和惠特尼家族之后最令人畏惧的企业家,他的“交易的艺术”发挥了作用——不仅为了赚钱,也为了粉碎对手。
梅尔夫·格里芬就是一个很好的例子。格里芬以3.65亿美元的价格收购了特朗普的国际度假村公司,而特朗普在前年支付了1.01亿美元。10个月后,格里芬发现自己手里拿着一个破气球。他不仅继承了酒店赌场9.25亿美元的债务,而且还令人尴尬地报告了上半年4660万美元的亏损。现在有传言说梅尔夫可能会破产,特朗普可能会被起诉。
除了下个月在大西洋城开幕的泰姬陵酒店,特朗普还有很多事要做。他在内华达州建赌场,购买蒂芙尼(Tiffany)、NBC、纽约每日新闻或华尔道夫酒店,每件事都会有“麻烦”(“我一定要拥有华尔道夫酒店,”他对着电话开玩笑地说。“没有它我睡不着”)。那么总统职位呢?不,那需要一场选举,而特朗普显然没有那么耐心。要做的事情太多了!
“There has always been a display of wealth and always will be, until the depression comes, which it always does. And let me tell you, a display is a good thing. It shows people that you can be successful.”
“炫富一直存在,也总会出现,直到大萧条来临,大萧条也一直都有。”让我告诉你,炫富是件好事。它人们展示你可以成功。”
“We Americans are laughed at around the world for defending wealthy nations for nothing, nations that would be wiped out in about fifteen minutes if it weren’t for us. Our “allies” are making billions screwing us.”
“我们美国人因为毫无意义地保卫一些富裕的国家而被全世界嘲笑,如果不是我们,这些国家在15分钟内就会灭亡。我们的“盟友”正从我们身上赚取数十亿。
“I’ve always thought the ultimate job for me would have been running MGM in the Thirties and Forties. There was incredible glamour and style that’s gone now. And that’s when you could control situations.”
“我一直认为,对我来说,最佳的工作应该是在三四十年代经营米高梅。那些令人难以置信的魅力和风格现在已经逝去了。那个时候你可以控制整个局面。”
The billion-dollar baby was born in the exclusive Jamaica Estates in Queens, New York, on June 14,1946, to a mere millionaire, real-estate developer Fred Trump, who had racked up his $20,000,000 fortune building low-to-middle-priced homes and apartments in Brooklyn and Queens.
Among the five little Trumps, only Donald seemed to have a passion for mortar and bricks, riding around construction sites with his father—“who ruled all of us with a steel will”—and showing younger brother Robert, now a low-profile V.P. in the Trump organization, who was boss in their 23-room house.
At the age of eight, little Donald borrowed Robert’s cherished toy blocks, glued them together into one giant skyscraper and never returned them, thereafter exercising his fantasies about changing Manhattan’s skyline.
His father, who harped on the importance of ”knowing how to make a buck,” regarded mop-haired Donald as “rough and wild,” shipped him off to the New York Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson and, some say, forever instilled in him a gnawing sense of inadequacy that fueled the boy’s ambition. There followed two years at Fordham and two years at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance, then a few years diddling in middle-income housing until, at the age of 28, Trump delivered the punch that launched him. Taking a hard look at Manhattan’s troubled fortunes, he fastened onto the bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad as his ticket into the big time and nimbly plucked options on Penn’s Hudson River Railroad yards, now the site of New York’s Convention Center, and its 59-year-old Commodore Hotel, now the Grand Hyatt.
The coup was in his persuading bankers to lent him $80,000,000 and in talking politicians into awarding him a $120,000,000 tax abatement.
Persuasion, hype and chutzpah thereafter defined the Trump style, welded to a scrupulous management technique.
1946年6月14日,这个亿万富翁宝宝出生在纽约皇后区的牙买加豪宅里,他的父亲是房地产开发商弗雷德·特朗普,他在布鲁克林和皇后区建造中低价位的住宅和公寓,积累了2000万美元的财富。
在五个小特朗普中,只有唐纳德似乎对灰泥和砖块很有激情,他和“用钢铁般的意志统治着我们所有人”的父亲骑行玩耍在建筑工地周围,并向弟弟罗伯特炫耀。罗伯特现在是特朗普集团一名低调的副总裁,掌管着他们23个房间的房子。
八岁的时候,小唐纳德借走了罗伯特心爱的玩具积木,把它们粘在一起变成了一座巨大的摩天大楼,从此再也没有归还,从此实现了他改变曼哈顿天际线的梦想。
他的父亲曾反复强调“知道如何赚钱”的重要性,认为头发乱蓬乱的唐纳德“粗鲁而狂野”,把他送到了位于哈德逊的康沃尔的纽约军事学院。有人说,父亲永远给他灌输了一种痛苦的不足感,助长了他的抱负。接下来在福特汉姆大学待了两年,在宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿金融学院待了两年,然后又在中等收入家庭的住房上瞎忙了几年,直到28岁时,特朗普打出了让他成功的一击。他认真审视了曼哈顿陷入困境的命运,选择了宾夕法尼亚中央铁路公司的破产作为自己进入大时代的入场证,并灵活地选择了宾夕法尼亚哈德逊河铁路公司和拥有59年历史的康姆多酒店,即如今的君悦酒店。这里现在是纽约会议中心的所在地。
他的妙招在于说服银行家借给他8000万美元,并说服政客给予他1.2亿美元的减税。
此后,说服、炒作和厚颜无耻定义了特朗普的风格,并融入了一丝不苟的管理技巧。
In 1979,at the age of 33,he snapped up the Fifth Avenue site of the old Bonwit Teller for $20,000,000,won a $140,000,000 tax abatement and three years later finished Trump Tower, a 68-story dazzler that includes a six-story atrium and today draws 100,000 visitors daily, with residents such as Johnny Carson and Steven Spielberg.
Amassing a fortune his father never dreamed possible—a cash hoard of $900,000,000,a geyser of $50,000,000 a week from his hotel-casinos, assets thought to total 3.7 billion dollars—Trump soon became as captivated by mystique-making as by money-making.
As the snooty ads running around New York proclaimed,”Everything does seem to be very Trump these days.” There are his residential buildings, Trump Parc and Trump Plaza and the soon-to-be-finished Trump Palace; Trump Castle in Atlantic City and the soon-to-be-finished Taj Mahal; his book “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” written with Tony Schwartz, which held on to the number-one spot on the New York Times best-seller list longer than any business book since “Iocacca”;his high-rise board game named—you guessed it—Trump(reported to be flop);his upcoming TV game show—you guessed it again—“Trump Card”; and the bike race named Tour de Trump, which, as he points out, sure beats its old name—Tour de Jersey. And—well—you get the picture.
“Vision is my best asset,” he says without a shred of modesty, ”I know what sells and I know what people want.”
Along the way, Trump even found time to attend the 1976 Montreal Olympics, marry his match, Ivana Zelnicek (who has vowed never to look a day over 29),and produce his own little Trumps—Donald Jr,12,Ivanka,eight,and Eric, six.
Notwithstanding the good fortune that seems to have attended Trump’s business moves, he and his family have not escaped life’s darker side. While sisters Maryane, a Federal judge in New Jersey, and Elizabeth, an administrative assistant for Chase Manhattan, have found their niches, Trump’s older brother, Fred, hated the real-estate business, became an airline pilot, took to drink and died an alcoholic in 1981 at 43.
Trump was also recently shaken when, last October, three key executives died in a helicopter crash; the boss reportedly narrowly missed death, deciding at the last minute that he was too busy to travel. ”I never realized,” says Trump today, ”how deaths outside the family could have such a profound effect on me. It’s a tragic waste.” As for himself, he’s fatalistic: ”I work, I don’t worry and I protect myself as well as anybody can. But ultimately we all end up going to hopefully greener pastures.”
1979年,33岁的他以2千万美元的价格收购了第五大道的老旧的保罗·邦威特百货商店,赢得了一份价值1亿4千万美元的减税和三年后完成了特朗普大厦,一座68层的焦点,包括一座六层楼高的中庭和现在每天吸引10万名游客,名人如约翰尼·卡森和史蒂芬·斯皮尔伯格。
特朗普积累了一笔他父亲做梦也想不到的财富—9亿美元的现金储备,每周从酒店赌场中获得的5000万美元的进账,以及估计总计37亿美元的资产—很快,他就像对着迷赚钱一样着迷于创造神秘。
正如纽约四处流传的八卦广告所宣称的那样,“这些日子,似乎一切都很特朗普。”“到处都有他盖的住宅,特朗普公园,特朗普广场和即将完成的特朗普宫殿,大西洋城的特朗普城堡和即将完成的泰姬陵;他和托尼•施瓦茨合作的书《特朗普:交易的艺术》紧紧锁定《纽约时报》畅销书排行榜第一的位置,除了“艾科卡”的书以外,比任何商业书籍都要长;他的高层棋盘游戏,取名“你猜-王牌”(据说失败了);他即将到来的电视节目,“你再猜-王牌”;和以他的名字命名的自行车赛“环特朗普”,他说,肯定比原来的名字“环泽西”要好。嗯,好吧,你已经有画面了。
“远见是我最好的资产,”他毫不谦虚地说,“我知道什么能卖出去,也知道人们想要什么。”
即使如此,特朗普还是抽时间参加了1976年蒙特利尔奥运会,迎娶了他的另一半伊万娜·泽尔尼切克(她发誓永远不让自己看起来超过29岁),还生下了自己的小特朗普——12岁的小唐纳德、8岁的伊万卡和6岁的埃里克。
尽管特朗普的商业举动似乎好运连连,但他和他的家人并没有摆脱生活的阴暗面。特朗普的姐姐玛丽安是新泽西州的一名联邦法官,另一个姐姐伊丽莎白是大通曼哈顿银行的一名行政助理,她们都有自己的事业,而特朗普的哥哥弗雷德讨厌房地产生意,后来成为一名飞行员,开始酗酒,并于1981年因酗酒去世,享年43岁。
特朗普最近还受到了打击,去年10月,三名关键高管死于一场直升机坠毁事故;据报道,那位老板侥幸脱险,他是在最后一刻做的决定,因为太忙没时间旅行。“我从未意识到,”特朗普今天说,“家庭以外的死亡怎么会对我产生如此深远的影响。这是可悲的浪费生命。至于他自己,他听天由命:“我工作,我不担心,我像任何人一样保护自己。”希望我们最终都会去天堂。”
To check out his present-day pastures, we sent New York Daily News celebrity interviewer and syndicated columnist Glenn Plaskin to talk with him. This interview had long been in the works, including two earlier starts. But Plaskin finally got Trump to sit down with him over a period of nearly 16 weeks. His report:
“For our first session at Trump Tower, after being visually frisked by a troop of basketball-player-tall bodyguards, I entered the inner sanctum. There was Donald Trump, as he would be for most of our sessions, slumped behind the cinnamon-colored desk, slung comically low in his chair, clipping his fingernails.
“I think best this way,” he’d deadpan.
“As the weeks went by, I found I liked poking through the hooded dare-me eyes with rapid-fire changes of topic, watching for surprise. Often he parried with rehearsed answers, but we spent enough time together that we entered genuinely fresh territory. When I asked for his stand on abortion, he frowned, pouted and asked ne to turn the recorder off. He didn’t really have an option—what the hell was mine? It was a very human moment.
“Supervising his office like an exceedingly well-run vaudeville show, executive assistant Norma Foerderer would wander in with another gold-framed magazine cover to put up on his wall—or with a seven-pound cheesecake or a stuffed skunk. Trump would take calls during our interview—never for more than a few minutes—that invariably ended with, ”Ok, baby, you’re the greatest.” Then secretary Rhona Graff would walk in, bearing little yellow slips of paper announcing calls waiting: down-on-his-luck financier Adnan Khashoggi, asking to have lunch; a hotel executive, dickering to sell yet another big hotel……By the time Duchess Fergie called about borrowing his brand-new accident-proof helicopter, and Don Johnson to borrow his city-size yacht, I was dizzy.
“To get away from it all, we began our first session hovering above the East River in the cobalt Darth Vader helicopter. Donald Trump was strapped into taupe leather, good-naturedly hyping his empire below.”
为了了解他每天的生活,我们请了《纽约每日新闻》的著名记者和专栏作家格伦·普拉斯金来采访他。这次采访已经进行了很长时间,包括之前的两次。但是普拉斯金终于让特朗普和他坐下来谈了将近16个星期。他的采访报告:
“关于我们在特朗普大厦的第一次采访,在被一群篮球运动员般高的保镖“虎视眈眈”之后,我进入了内部密室。那就是特朗普,在我们的大多数采访中,他都是这样的,耷拉在肉桂色的桌子后面,滑稽地低靠在椅子上,剪着指甲。
“我觉得这样很好,”他面无表情地说。
几个星期过去了,我发现自己必须从裹着头巾的瞪着我的眼睛里,并在话题的快速变化中,观察有没有惊喜。他经常回避事先排练过的答案,但等到在一起的时间足够长,我们进入了真正新鲜的领域。当我问他对堕胎的立场时,他皱着眉头,撅着嘴,让我把录音机关掉。他真的没有选择——我这是到底在干嘛?多么人性化的瞬间啊。
行政助理诺玛福尔德勒把他的办公室管理得就像管理得非常出色的杂剧表演,她会拿着另一个镶金框的杂志封面走进办公室,把它挂在墙上——或者拿着一个7磅重的芝士蛋糕或一只塞满臭鼬的什么东西。特朗普会在我们的采访中接听电话——从来不会超过几分钟——最后总是说:“好吧,宝贝,你是最棒的。”“然后秘书罗娜格拉夫会走进来,晃着小黄色便笺告诉他有电话在线上:倒霉的金融家阿德南·卡舒吉约吃午饭;一个酒店高管嚷嚷着要再卖一个大型酒店……同时,菲姬公爵夫人打电话要借他全新的直升机,唐·约翰逊借他的城市大小的游艇。我有点头晕了。
为了摆脱这些,我们开始了第一次空中采访,乘坐深蓝色的天行者直升机在伊斯特河上空转了一圈。唐纳德·特朗普被灰褐色皮革紧紧裹着,善意地炒作着他的帝国。”
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Somewhat Successful First Day Day Trading. Turned 4k into $367

Somewhat Successful First Day Day Trading. Turned 4k into $367
Yes it's not huge, but I played it safe and got somewhat lucky. I bought the stocks in the last 30 minutes before closing, and sold them in the first 15 at opening. I put 2k in DSW which shot up almost 4 dollars, I sold immediatly at the highest price. I bought it at $23.33 and sold at $26.84.
I bought 80 shares of Skechers for $24.21 and sold them all at $25.11 (minor profit to supplement my winnings from DSW). I was lucky, DSW shot up 16% because their earnings report came out right before opening and was great. I didn't see the price shooting up much more, so I just sold it for a quick profit. My profit was $367. My total came to $4367.
I seriously think I could make a living doing this. I was going to play it safe with stable stocks like these that are volatile and sell when I make minor profit. I was only expecting $100-$200 a day to begin with so this was a great surprise. This has been really fun, so I'll be moving 4k more into my account so I have more to play with. My strategy to begin with will be to buy stable stocks that are volatile at close, and sell in the morning once I see some decent profit.
Thoughts/advice/feedback is appreciated. I don't have a finance or stock background, just a marketing background.
Edit: Since this thread has caused so much entertainment and interest, I will be posting daily updates for a while and we can use this thread to comment on my stock bets or which ones you think are better.
UPDATE 12/12/18: Today my profit was $78. I turned $4000 into $4078. I could have held longer because the stocks probably will rise, but I wanted my capital back so I can invest again tomorrow. I'm kind of annoyed because the stocks I sold already went up again (DSW & Urban). Both stocks went up less than $1 and I sold. I didn't see too much movement or spike in the morning, so I didn't expect them to raise much more. I sold 56 shares of Urban Outfitters for $35.24 each. I bought the Urban stocks at $34.64. I also sold 93 shares of DSW for $25.52. I bought the shares at $26.84. I bought both Urban & DSW at close last night. I sold them within 20 minutes of the market opening this morning. Not high profits, but I didn't lose. The goal is to build my capital so I can do higher volumes of safe stocks like these. This was my second day of day trading. I also went ALL IN on Stitch Fix today.
https://preview.redd.it/cz9neb17w2921.jpg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66805ccff614b0b4a4bd5ee68532e947348b9924
TOTAL PROFITS SO FAR FROM 2 DAYS OF DAY TRADING: $445
LOSSES SO FAR FROM 2 DAYS OF DAY TRADING: $0
UPDATE 12/13/18: I bought Stitch Fix yesterday for $22.15 and it tanked below 8% today. It's one of today's biggest losers. I have about 4k into it, and 176 shares. At this point I think since I have so may shares of it, I should wait until it goes up high and then sell it. I heard this stock does not do well during the holiday season, so I might wait until 2019 to sell it depending on how it looks the next few weeks. Since I have 176 shares it would be nice to make at least 3 dollars profit per share. I will be depositing some more cash into my account so I can continue day trading while Stitch Fix.

Update 12/18/18: Still have 4k in Stitch Fix and the stock is 11% down from what I bought it from. I'm waiting this out because I know it will get back up. I purchased Stitch Fix at $22.15. In the mean time, I will deposit more money soon to day trade with other stocks. If anyone has suggestions I would like to hear them.

Update 1/2/19: I obviously took a small break while the market was crashing.I'm back & ready to make money. Stitch Fix is making a slow but steady comeback, so I still have 4k parked there. I bought 130 shares of MGM (3k investment) before Christmas and sold it today for $75 profit. I could have made more but got greedy. Casinos did amazing today, so I just chose a good stock.
submitted by BellaBaby19 to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

After winning $1.3 Million at a Casino, Why does a man cover himself in Gasoline and drop a lit Match?

Myra Kindle is an independent investigative reporter.
Her other reports:

Boardwalk Attraction

What drives a person to cover themselves in gasoline and drop a match by their feet?
That was the question that ran through the minds of many in a crowd outside the Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey on March 23rd, 2019.
At approximately 7:45PM on that cold spring eve, a Mr. James Ferdini, age 47, covered himself in gasoline and was prepared to drop a match in the fuel.
As the crowd shouted for him to stop and several witnesses called the police, Mr. Ferdini reportedly stood unfazed, simply grinning and appearing to revel in the crowd’s shock.
“It was a suicidal action but it didn’t look like a suicidal person,” says Sam Kenset, an eyewitness to the incident. “I guess I don’t really know what a suicidal person looks like, but his movements and the way he was talking -- he just didn’t seem like a man down on his luck.”
Ms. Kenset is quite astute in her observation -- Mr. Feredini was certainly not down on his luck. In fact only moments before covering himself in gasoline, Mr. Ferdini had cashed out more than $1.3 million in winnings from the Borgata Hotel and Casino, making his suicidal action all the more puzzling.
However dangerous, Mr. Ferdini’s gasoline soaked stunt would not lead to his death on March 23rd, but his life was not long for this world either. Three days later on March 26th he would be found dead from an entirely different cause.
In Mr. Ferdini’s incredible winnings and suicidal tendencies leading up to his unusual and grizzly death on March 26th, many questions remain. Who was James Ferdini? What happened to his more than million dollars in winnings? And what was the lead up of events that caused his demise?
Based on interviews with management at the Borgata Hotel and Casino, local police and investigators, and corroborated with eyewitness accounts, independent investigative reporter Myra Kindle, for the first time, brings you a report on the man who nearly bankrupted a casino, and whose luck seemed to make him invincible until his highly improbable death.

What are the Odds?

As the match fell to James Ferdini’s feet outside the Borgata Hotel and Casino, the crowd stood agasp as they waited for the inevitable fire and horrible death of a gas soaked man. This moment would never come however, and the match reportedly landed in the puddle of gasoline meeting it as though it were water.
“The crowd started to look away the moment he dropped the match,” says Matthew Gershowitz, a witness to the event. “I couldn’t though -- I needed to see what would happen. I mean we all thought we were witnessing a suicide or something, but the guy was jovial, happy, making jokes with the crowd before he lit the match. And then when it hit the gas, it just burned out, and the man started laughing. We were all amazed. It was like a miracle -- we thought he’d die for sure.”
While it’s quite understandable that the crowd believed they had witnessed a miracle when James did not burst into flames, professor of organic chemistry at Villanova University, Marcy Li, says the odds of Mr. Ferdini’s death were far less than certain.
“Gasoline is certainly flammable, but not like in the way shown in movies and TV,” says professor Li. “It’s the layer of vapor above that gasoline that is most likely to combust. There could be a number of factors like wind, humidity and temperature that improved Mr. Ferdini’s chance of avoiding being burned alive. I would certainly say he’s lucky, but I wouldn’t say it’s a miracle he didn’t burst into flames.”
If Mr. Ferdini relied on luck that day to survive, it would appear to have been with him in spades for quite some time.
Having just come from the Borgata casino floor, James was reportedly on a ‘hot-streak’, winning tens of thousands of dollars an hour over the preceding two days.
“You have to imagine we were pretty happy when he left the casino,” says Richard Markelson, a floor manager at the Borgata. “Normally we want customers to stay as long as possible so the house can win our money back, but Mr. Ferdini never had a bad roll, spin, or lever pull the whole 40 consecutive hours he was gambling at the Borgata. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Mr. Markelson was able to confirm through cash-logs and casino surveillance that Mr. Ferdini had indeed won big at the Borgata, and records show his total winnings amounted to $1,348,427.
Mr. Markelson said of the winnings: “It was enough of a loss over a short period of time that the owners of the casino were worried our insurance premiums were gonna jump. A casino in Atlantic City simply doesn’t lose that much money in such a short time, at least not to a nobody, and Mr. Ferdini was certainly a nobody.”

A Career Loser

While management at the Borgata Hotel and Casino did not know Mr. Ferdini prior to his 40 hour lucrative gambling binge, many on Atlantic City’s boardwalk have been acutely aware of James for years.
For example after James’s stunt with the gasoline, he was arrested and taken to the Atlantic City jail and held on the possible charge of disorderly conduct, but was released after the charges were dropped. The reason? The police had a long record of interactions with Mr. Ferdini and thought of him only as a minor risk.
“We were more worried about the guy’s mental health than him causing a scene on the boardwalk,” says Atlantic City officer Paul Stevenson. “We’ve known James for years -- I mean he’s a loser. Is it a shock to me that he would try and commit suicide like that? Absolutely not.”
When asked why the police did not opt to commit Mr. Ferdini to a hospital on a psychological evaluation, officer Stevenson replied: “The plan was to have him committed, but some lawyer showed up and we didn’t want a legal fight, so we decided to release him instead. I felt a bit mixed about it. I mean the guy was clearly suicidal -- why else would you douse yourself in gasoline?”
When told that Mr. Ferdini was reportedly jovial and happy during the gasoline incident, and that he had in fact won more than a million dollars immediately prior to the event, officer Stevenson struggled with the narrative: “That doesn’t sound like the James Ferdini I know. He’s always been a depressed gambler, and never won a game in his life as far as I know. He couldn’t win a hundred bucks, let alone a million. I can’t even believe they let him into the Borgata in the first place, but I guess the cash winnings explains the lawyer.”
Officer Stevenson asked if I could confirm the details of the winnings and that Mr. Ferdini was in a jovial mood during the gasoline incident. When I showed documentation of Mr. Ferdini’s winnings provided by Mr. Markelson and relayed several eyewitness accounts as to his temperament, officer Stevenson replied: “I don’t get it. So, why’d he try to burn himself alive?”

The ‘Cooler’

Perhaps no individual has a better sense of who Mr. Ferdini is and what happened to him than the floor manager at the Borgata, Mr. Markelson.
For 40 hours prior to the gasoline incident, Mr. Ferdini bet heavily at the Borgata casino, and Mr. Markelson was in close proximity for much of his hot-streak.
“I was actually supposed to be on vacation that week,” says Mr. Markelson, “but I got called in because the other cooler was sick.”
A ‘cooler’ as Mr. Markelson explained, is a relic of old casinos that today is rarely used, however some establishments still invest in what could be called ‘charms’ to bring bad luck to high rollers.
“I got hired because I’m unlucky,” explains Mr. Markelson. “I can do the job of floor manager just fine -- don't get me wrong -- but it was my knack for bad luck that got me the job for sure.”
A cooler operates by simply being present around those that are on a run of good luck. In Mr. Markelson’s account, he says that being around him will bring such bad luck to any gambler that their cards will go cold, their lever pulls result in no winnings, and their wheel spins doomed to lose money.
“It’s a talent I’ve had since, well, forever,” says Mr. Markelson. “If I just stand near someone, they’ll start to have bad luck like me. I know it sounds crazy, and sometimes I don’t believe it myself, but it’s true. I mean, like I said, I think that’s why the casino hired me. They could count on me to go onto the casino floor and bring bad luck to anyone that’s winning a bit too much. Best part, since it’s based on superstition, it’s completely above board.”
With James Ferdini, Richard Markelson found that his power did not work however.
“I don’t know about before I showed up, but for when I was watching him, that man could not lose. The casino made me stay multiple shifts, I’m talking nearly 40 hours to watch him and were hoping I’d bring him bad luck, but it never happened. He just kept on winning no matter what game he played.”

An Escalation of Bets

In attempting to find James Ferdini’s state of mind prior to the gasoline incident, floor manager Richard Markelson provided unfettered access to video of the casino floor, even though he realized he could be breaking several state gambling commission laws by allowing a reporter to look at such surveillance. In fact, more than taking the risk, it was Mr. Markelson that called me and led me to this story in the first place.
“The police didn’t send him to the hospital after the gas thing I’ve been told. I figured the truth has to be somewhere and when police won’t do their job, I guess it’s reporters that have to step in,” says Mr. Markelson. “The most important thing to be me personally is finding out why he died just a few days later in that horrible freak accident -- the one on March 26th.”
When asked if Mr. Markelson had any interest in finding Mr. Ferdini’s still missing $1.3 million, he replied: “Of course, but that’s not my primary concern here. I just want to know what the fuck happened. How does a guy who should have felt on top of the world go to dousing himself in gasoline, and then ends up dead a few days later? I really want to know.”
In the video access provided by Mr. Markelson, I managed to find new clues that might be able to explain Mr. Ferdini’s downward spiral.
It could best be described as an escalation of bets that appeared to take place soon after Mr. Ferdini began his run of good luck. According to video of the casino floor, around the time manager Richard Markelson appeared, Mr. Ferdini started his miraculous winning streak.
The video shows Mr. Ferdini starting with craps, moving to baccarat, then slot machines, and followed by a long run at twenty-one. He continues to gamble for 40 straight hours, much of it with Mr. Markelson in close proximity.
“I was the only cooler around, so the higher ups at the Borgata made me stay the whole time. I got a lot of overtime that week,” says Mr. Markelson.
Curiously, the video shows that at around the 25 hour mark Mr. Ferdini attracts something of a crowd. While the video offers no sound, it appears as though Mr. Ferdini is making several wagers with his new found groupies.
At first a few in his new entourage gamble him directly in casino floor games like Texas Holdem, but it appears as though they make several bets outside of the casino games as well.
In one instance Mr. Ferdini appears to bet that he can drink boiling hot water. The video shows him drinking a scalding hot cup and immediately receiving a small payout from several people he was talking to before beginning the stunt.
It became clear to me after reviewing the video surveillance that for this story, I would need to speak to at least one of the people who witnessed Mr. Ferdini taking on these non-casino game bets. Thankfully, with Mr. Markelson’s help I was able to track down Maria Nowak, who in the video appears to spend several hours with Mr. Ferdini.
A resident of Atlantic City, Ms. Nowak was able to confirm that Mr. Ferdini was taking part in what she describes as “extreme behavior”, and that he was seemingly willing to bet on anything and everything. Even games that were clearly not of chance, like drinking boiling hot water.

”For $500, Right?”

Why did Mr. Ferdini cover himself in gasoline and drop a match? It’s a question essential to understanding his mindset, and one for which the answer appears to be quite simple.
After tracking down Ms. Nowak, a long time resident who often partakes in long gambling binges herself, she claims Mr. Ferdini covered himself in gasoline and dropped a match in the fuel simply because of a wager.
“We had been doing side bets for hours,” says Ms. Nowak, who agreed to meet me at Hayday Cafe, a local coffee shop. “I was with a group of friends and we noticed that this guy [Mr. Ferdini] had not been losing any bets for hours. The guy was pretty much throwing money around and that type of attitude attracts the crowd I was with. So, we started making small talk and then made a few bets, dumb, small ones to start.”
When asked what bets her group made with Mr. Ferdini, Ms. Nowak replies: “At first it was things like, how many casino chips he could fit into his mouth. But then it escalated pretty quickly, like soon we were betting on how much money he could win in an hour. Then a bit after that he did this really stupid boiling hot water challenge -- he simply bet he could drink boiling hot water without having to go to the hospital. The bet didn’t make any sense, but like everything else, he won.”
“The gasoline challenge was the craziest though,” she continues. “It was clearly a joke when my friend suggested it, but James took him up on it right away. The challenge was, like, ‘can you cover yourself in gasoline, drop a match, and survive?’ James said he would do it for $500, and we just assumed he was kidding, but sure enough he was dead serious.”
Ms. Nowak claims that she too was present in the crowd outside the Borgata when Mr. Ferdini made good on the gasoline bet, and that immediately prior to him dropping the match, he said to her and the rest of the gambling entourage, “This is for $500, right?”
“He said it but I’m not too sure how many people heard it,” Ms. Nowak says. “I mean the whole crowd was screaming for him to stop. They all thought the guy wanted to kill himself. I guess one of us nodded our heads to James’s question, and then he dropped the match. I’ll be damned, but he won that bet too. We gave him $500 alright, not that he needed it after making all that money at the Borgata.”
When asked if Ms. Nowak saw Mr. Ferdini after he was released from the police station, she responds: “Yea, we hung out for the next two or three days -- all of us -- the gambling group that had formed at the casino, James Ferdini, and then, oh yea, that guy Richard Makel-something. I think he worked at the Borgata but he hung around with us for a couple days while we partied at a different hotel. It was around the time Richard and the rest of us left that James was in that freak accident.”

Richard Markelson

The details of Ms. Nowak’s account have confirmed two things to this reporter.
One, Mr. Ferdini’s suicidal gesture to cover himself in gasoline was nothing more than a bet to earn more money. Feeling high from his good luck at the casino, it would appear Mr. Ferdini thought himself invincible and was willing to take on any challenge, even if it put his life on the line.
Two, Borgata floor manager and ‘cooler’ Richard Markelson has not been fully forthcoming in his account of what happened. For example, he never mentioned spending time with Mr. Ferdini after leaving the Borgata.
Confronting Mr. Markelson, I ask him for a more accurate account of what happened after Mr. Ferdini’s gasoline soaked stunt. Mr. Markelson is nervous in his reply, realizing he’s been caught withholding valuable information.
“You have to understand that James is not particularly good with money,” starts Mr. Markelson. “I know I’m saying that having really only met the guy at the Borgata casino, but you could just tell he was something of a loser. Maybe other people told you that too, I don’t know. My point is James was destined to spend that money on drugs and alcohol, and well, we all kind of just tagged along for the ride.”
Mr. Markelson goes on to describe a drug fueled binge that lasted from Saturday March 23rd until sometime before Mr. Ferdini’s death on Tuesday, March 26th.
“James and I had been awake for more than 40 hours when he left the casino, and I was going to go to bed, but somehow I got roped into his entourage he found at the Borgata when he was raking in cash. I would’ve gone home, but free cocaine is free cocaine. I’m not particularly proud of saying that, but it’s true -- I really like the drug.”
Richard Markelson says that in addition to drugs, Mr. Ferdini hired prostitutes and strippers for the group’s amusement.
“I’m not into all the seedy stuff, but we had been awake for a long long time and on so much shit. I mean we were taking meth rips and stuff. Yea, it’s weird now that I look back on it, but a binge can be like that sometimes.”
The most important question to this reporter is what happened in the final hours of Mr. Ferdini’s life. In this respect, Mr. Markelson claims to know nothing.
“I left before he died on Tuesday,” says Mr. Markelson. “It doesn’t surprise me that he died though. The gasoline bet was just the beginning of it. That girl, Maria Nowak, the one that told you I was hanging out with the impromptu entourage -- it was her boyfriend that really stepped things up in a pretty violent way in terms of betting.”
When asked what he means by “violent”, Mr. Markelson responds: “I mean they were actually gambling on Russian roulette in the hotel room when I left.”

That Other Roulette

Once again reaching out to Ms. Nowak, I ask her about Mr. Markelson’s description of partying and gambling in a hotel with Mr. Ferdini.
It was at this point that Ms. Nowak declined any further questions, only providing the statement: “I’ve said everything I’m going to say.”
While this seemed like a certain dead end to discovering what happened in the final hours of Mr. Ferdini’s life and also possibly to tracking down what happened to his $1.3 million in winnings, I by luck received a phone call shortly before I was ready to call it quits on this investigation.
The phone call was from one Mr. Samuel Howlser, boyfriend to Ms. Maria Nowak.
Mr. Howlser said he wished to speak with me to clarify a few details that Ms. Nowak had shared with me and to dispute any “lies” stated by Mr. Markelson.
“Me and Maria didn’t steal nobody’s money and we’re not gonna get in trouble for what Richard Markelson or anyone in that entourage might be telling you,” Mr. Howsler said to me in a phone interview.
When asked about details of the drug fueled gambling binge shared by Mr. Markelson and Ms. Nowak, Mr. Howsler mostly confirms their accounts, however his description of floor manager Makelson is less favorable than what Mr. Markelson told me himself.
“He was the craziest fucker of the bunch, definitely,” says Mr. Howlser. “He knew the hookups for the crystal and coke, got us ketamine too. But the nuttiest thing about him is what the fuck he’d bet on. Like if Ferdini thought he was invincible, doubly so for that manger from the Borgata. Markelson was the one that brought out a revolver for Russian roulette too, and they played like dozens of games.”
Russian roulette, a lethal game of chance that has the player hold a loaded pistol to their head and fire, is an extremely dangerous game that has been popularized in media and fiction for decades. The game requires a loaded revolver to have at least one bullet chambered before firing, with the odds of death usually being one in six.
“It was fucking crazy when Markelson said he’d play it, but the dude was having as good luck as Ferdini so he thought he could do it,” says Mr. Howlser. “So they load a pistol with a bullet and start playing each other cause they were the only two fuckers crazy enough to do it. They play one round, but no winner so they go again. Second round, no winner so a third. Eventually they play enough rounds where they figure they gotta up the odds. So instead of loading one bullet, they load two. They play round after round with two out of six chambers loaded with bullets, spinning the revolver cylinder each time before they pull the trigger. This goes on for a while right, and then they load another fucking bullet. Each round now these guys have a one-in-two chance of blowing their brains out, but they keep playing.”
In Mr. Howlser’s recounting over the phone, I hear he is deeply disturbed by this story and ask why him and everyone in the gambling entourage continued to sit in the hotel room. In response he says, “We had been up for days smoking crystal and doing other shit. We were fuckng zombies. It’s only looking back now, sober, that I can see how crazy it was.”
But the game of lethal roulette was not over yet. Mr. Howlser claims that Mr. Ferdini and Mr. Makelson continued to play round after round, occasionally loading another bullet until finally the revolver was fully loaded.
“With six out of six chambers loaded, the odds of them dying on the next trigger pull was 100%,” says Mr. Howsler. “And I’ll damned, but they both went, and they both fucking lived. Somehow, they both got dud cartridges. After that, they both just had huge laugh for a while. A little bit later, Richard Markelson leaves and James Ferdini and the rest of us stay doing drugs for a bit until the rest of us guests leave too.”
Before Mr. Howlser ends the phone call, he stresses again the reason for contacting me.
“What happened is a messed up story, I know, but the point is that me and Maria don’t know anything about James Ferdini’s death or where his money is. Once we were sober enough to leave that seedy hotel outside Atlantic City, we left along with the rest of the people that were following James. And when we left, he was alive, and he had his money.”

Bad Luck

While Mr. Markelson, Mr. Howlser, and Ms. Nowak all say they only know the most basic details of how James Ferdini died, his death has actually been well documented by investigators and the coroner's office for Atlantic City.
Prior to this report, it was the mindset of Mr. Ferdini that was previously unknown. Sill up in the air is the whereabouts of his $1.3 million. But from what I've found, the report on his death is fully accurate, and even clears any of the entourage that was following him from being involved in any possible wrongdoing related to James Ferdini’s death.
On Tuesday March 26th at approximately 4:30AM, it would appear Mr. Ferdini’s luck simply ran out.
In that early morning hour, someone on Mr. Ferdini’s floor had ordered room service. As the porter was delivering the food, he slipped and fell outside of Mr. Ferdini’s room.
The noise from the fall awoke Mr. Ferdini who opened his door to find the porter picking up a tray of food in the hallway.
Upset at the disruption and the clanging of silverware outside his room, Mr. Ferdini proceeded to yell at the porter, pushing him against the wall in the hallway.
The confrontation ended when Mr. Ferdini told the porter that he was so upset that he was going to go down to the lobby and speak to management about the disruption.
Heading to the elevator, the porter told Mr. Ferdini that it was out of service. Frustrated, he turned to the stairwell and began walking downstairs.
Mr. Ferdini would never make it to the lobby however.
What Mr. Ferdini didn’t know was that the porter had also used the stairs to walk up to his floor, and that along the way he had spilled a small dish of ketchup.
When Mr. Ferdini walked across the spot where the porter had dropped the ketchup, he slipped and fell, falling down the stairs and knocking himself unconscious on the ground floor.
While in bad shape, investigators say that Mr. Ferdini was still alive at this moment, but what came next would be the fatal blow, or series of blows.
With the elevator out, the stairwell was the only way up and down the hotel floors. While Mr. Ferdini was unconscious on the ground, he blocked the entryway to the stairwell from the ground floor. A guest a moment later would attempt to open the door to the stairwell, but found that it was blocked by some obstruction that he could not see. Bothered and wanting to get to his room, the guest then started slamming on the door, thrusting it open with all his energy. He did not realize it, but the door he was thrusting over and over was slamming into the left side of Mr. Ferdini’s temple. The heavy metal door banged away over and over again, causing Mr. Ferdini’s brain to hemorrhage, and eventually doing enough damage that it would kill him fully.
The guest only stopped thrusting as the porter came back down the stairs to see Mr. Ferdini with his head being repeatedly bashed in by the door.
The porter screamed and soon the guest was made aware that he had accidentally killed Mr. Ferdini.
In this unusual and grizzly death, a confluence of bad luck came together to end Mr. Ferdini’s life.
If the elevator had not been out. If a guest on Mr. Ferdini’s floor had not ordered room service. If the guest had not ordered a dish that came with ketchup. If the porter had not spilled ketchup in the stairwell or dropped plates outside Mr. Ferdini’s room. If Mr. Ferdini had not waken up. If he had not confronted the porter and decided to go down to the lobby. If he had not slipped in the stairwell. If a guest on the ground floor did not repeatedly try to enter the stairwell. If any of these things had gone slightly differently, Mr. Ferdini would still be alive.
It could be said that Mr. Ferdini had finally found a run of bad luck, and incredible bad luck at that.

Double Negative

I cannot speak to Mr. Ferdini. He died long before I came to Atlantic City. For this story I’ve had to rely on the video surveillance from the Borgata casino and several eyewitness accounts of the drug fueled binge at the seedy hotel outside Atlantic City.
In those accounts from Mr. Ferdini’s hotel room, I’m left with conflicting views and shattered narratives.
It is clear to me that Ms. Nowak, Mr. Howlser, and Mr. Markelson cannot be trusted to give a full accounting of what happened. In my mind, the clearest liar of them is Mr. Markelson, who both omitted his story of seeing James after the gasoline incident, and also whose story is in direct conflict with Mr. Howsler and Ms. Nowak. While Mr. Markelson claims it was Mr. Howlser that had a revolver to play roulette, Mr. Howlser and Ms. Nowak both say it was Mr. Markelson.
Embedded in these lies and less than full accounts is a still missing $1.3 million. Something I believe Mr. Markelson is desperate to try and find, and for which was his original impulse to contact this reporter.
Now with an understanding of James Ferdini’s mindset leading up to his death, I am left with the unanswered question of what happened to Mr. Ferdini’s missing money.
I head back to where this story started, the Borgata where the gambling binge took fold. I seek an interview with Bill Hornbuckle, President of MGM resorts and a majority stakeholder in the Borgata Hotel and Casino. He agrees to speak with me and provides a full record on floor manger Richard Markelson.
I start the interview by asking if he’s aware if Richard Markelson owns a handgun, and in particular a revolver. In response, he says: “Our records indicate Mr. Markelson has a concealed carry license from the state of New Jersey for a Ruger LCR Six-Shot revolver. We have this in our records because Mr. Markelson is authorized to carry the weapon on the premises.”
Mr. Hornbuckle asks if I believe Mr. Markelson was involved in Mr. Ferdini’s death, to which I tell him I do not believe he is. I give the accounts of Mr. Markelson, Mr. Howlser, and Ms. Nowak, and while Mr. Hornbuckle is disturbed by the story, he agrees that Mr. Markelson has done nothing strictly illegal outside of drug use. He does add however: “The story with Russian roulette, if true, would certainly make us reconsider allowing Mr. Markelson to carry a weapon in the casino.”
Confirming that Mr. Markelson was the owner of the revolver has led me to believe Mr. Howlser and Ms. Nowak’s account over Markelson’s. It seems likely now that like Mr. Markelson did indeed play a dangerous game of Russian roulette with Mr. Ferdini, and that it was he who provided the gun to use.
Before I leave the Borgata, I ask Mr. Hornbuckle about another detail Mr. Markelson told me that I am no longer sure is true. I ask if a ‘cooler’ is something casinos really use, and if specifically Mr. Markelson is designated as one at the Borgata.
His response is to laugh at first, but he goes on to say: “Yes, a cooler is a real term. I actually believe in them myself. Luck is real. It’s a tangible thing that follows people around -- good luck and bad luck. I believe coolers have saved my casinos a lot of money over the years, and Mr. Markelson certainly fits that role at the Borgata. He's terribly unlucky, couldn't win a game of cards if his life depended on it. Still, he's invaluable at cutting the luck high rollers short."
He pauses before continuing: “There is of course the problem of the double negative, or when two coolers are together. It happens when a cooler is around someone who has luck just as bad as him or her. Like two positive or negative charges on a magnet, they repel each other, and the cooler’s effect instead of bad luck is one of incredible good luck. I’ve never seen it myself, but I’ve heard that even the most unlikely people on earth can have incredible runs of good luck if someone as equally unlucky as them is near.”
I propose the idea that maybe Mr. Ferdini was as unlucky as Mr. Markelson, and that together they achieved this ‘double negative,’ bringing them good luck while they were together.
“Yes,” Mr. Hornbuckle says. “I suppose that’s possible. It’s a very dangerous situation though for an unlucky person to suddenly be met with non-stop good luck. It could make you think yourself invincible, unable to be defeated in any challenge. You might even start to take on bets on things that aren’t real games of chance, like harming yourself by drinking boiling water. There’s also the danger of what happens when the double negative effect is over. One cooler parts ways, then each would fall into their own run of terrible luck, not realizing that their hot-streak has ended.”
As the interview concludes and I leave the Borgata, I think about the good luck Mr. Ferdini and Mr. Markelson had. I consider the incredible odds that both survived firing a loaded gun to their temples only for each to find a dud cartridge. I ponder the unfortunate series of events that would kill Mr. Ferdini after Mr. Markelson left his hotel room.
Lastly, I think about Mr. Markelson’s own luck since March 26th. Maybe it hasn’t been as bad as Mr. Ferdini's, but I know he contacted a reporter and as a result management at his casino will be looking into his behavior. I consider and think, that is not too lucky.

Porter

What was meant to be a short report about an unusual death in Atlantic City has grown into something longer. This is now a meandering investigation with unreliable characters, newly discovered details, and a still missing $1.3 million.
Before I leave New Jersey and return to New York, I go to the seedy hotel where Mr. Ferdini and his entourage consumed drugs and played Russian roulette, and where he would eventually die. It is my hope that I can speak to the porter -- the last person to ever see Mr. Ferdini alive.
At the hotel I speak to the manager and ask her who was the porter in the early morning hours of March 26th. The manager tells me that the porter no longer works for the hotel, and that in fact he had quit the very same day Mr. Ferdini died.
“After the police left, he flipped us all off,” the manager says. “That son of a bitch quit in style, telling us he didn’t need to work here no more. He said he was set and that we can kiss his ass goodbye.”
I ask the manager if they knew where the porter could have gone, to which she replies: “No idea. After he was done talking to the police about the death in the stairwell, I think he was out of New Jersey for good. He used to live nearby so I saw him when he left. He was fully packed. Had all of his stuff with him and three really full duffel bags I’d never seen before. He really didn’t seem like he was coming back -- had everything with him.”
Like the porter, I load my bags and finally prepare to leave New Jersey. As I do a thought pops into my mind: Could the porter that night have discovered Mr. Ferdini’s $1.3 million in three duffel bags in his room? I consider and think, maybe, and if he did, maybe this porter is the luckiest man in Atlantic City.
Myra Kindle is an independent investigative reporter. She covers tech, law, politics, and other stories that would be impossible to write about in more traditional outlets.
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2019: After the Escape From New YorK [Predictive Programming about the destruction of NYC]

2019: After the Escape From New YorK [Predictive Programming about the destruction of NYC]

2019: After the Escape From New York


Searching for something else I stumbled upon this movie and of course the title caught my eye. Especially with 2019 in it.

Mankind will prevail if it can survive the year 2019

https://88-films.myshopify.com/products/2019-after-the-fall-of-new-york-dvd-the-italian-collection-26
After the bomb drops, the world is divided into two fractions; on the one side are the evil Euracs, and on the other, the Pan-American Confederacy. Parsifal (Michael Sopkiw, Blastfi ghter) is sent by the President of the Confederacy (Edmund Purdom, Absurd) into the wasteland that was once New York; in an effort to rescue the last fertile female on the planet, the beautiful Giara (Valentine Monnier, Monster Shark). Extracting the key to mankind’s survival will not be easy; as they battle mutants, treacherous Confederacy personnel and the lethal Euracs that infest the barren and brutal landscape.
Sergio Martino (Hands of Steel) delivers one of Italian exploitation cinema’s fi nest post-apocalyptic entries with 2019: After the Fall of New York. A gung-ho, blood-splattered tale of one man’s quest for humanity’s Holy Grail.

Notice the name of the website and its logo on the top left of its page? 88 Films. This Italian film maker also created a movie called Hands of Steel. This doesn't ring any specific bells except for the Holy Grail talk. Which I believe is currently Meghan Markle. MM. Today is Marathon Monday apparently. The Boston Marathon. Well this movie is said to be influenced by another movie that seems much more related to possible future events. A movie that was made in 1981 but takes place in 1997. 22 years ago.

Escape From New York


https://preview.redd.it/phl6ym3dnes21.jpg?width=580&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0efefff0b912cff46a91223d4e6f9554a91876fa

Escape from New York is a 1981 American post-apocalyptic science-fiction action film co-written, co-scored and directed by John Carpenter. The film is set in what was then the near-future year of 1997, in a crime-ridden United States that has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country's maximum security prison. When Air Force One is hijacked by terrorists and crashes into New York City, ex-soldier and federal prisoner Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is given 24 hours to rescue the President of the United States.
Carpenter wrote the film in the mid-1970s in reaction to the Watergate scandal. After the success of Halloween, he had enough influence to begin production and filmed it mainly in St. Louis, Missouri on an estimated budget of $6 million. Debra Hill and Larry J. Franco served as the producers. The film was co-written by Nick Castle, who had collaborated with Carpenter by portraying Michael Myers in Halloween.
Escape from New York was released in the United States on July 10, 1981. The film received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success, grossing over $25 million at the box office. The film was nominated for four Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. The film became a cult classic and was followed by a sequel, Escape from L.A. (1996), which was also directed and written by Carpenter and starred Russell but was much less favorably received.
Plot
In 1988, following a 400% increase in crime, the United States government has turned Manhattan into a giant maximum-security prison. A 50-foot (15 m) containment wall surrounds the island, and routes out of Manhattan have been dismantled or mined, while armed helicopters patrol the rivers, and all prisoners there are sentenced to life, with no means of leaving.
In 1997, NATO is engaged in an escalating war with the Soviet Union across much of Europe, which threatens to imminently become a global nuclear holocaust. While traveling to a peace summit between the United States, China and the Soviet Union, Air Force One is hijacked by a domestic terrorist posing as a stewardess. The President is given a tracking bracelet and his briefcase (containing an audiotape describing the secret to using nuclear fusion for power generation) handcuffed to his wrist — a move which could defuse hostilities and bring peace between the Superpowers. He makes it to an escape pod, and lands in Manhattan just before Air Force One crashes, killing everyone else aboard.
Police are dispatched to rescue the President. However, Romero, the right-hand man of the Duke of New York (the top crime boss in the prison) warns them that the Duke has taken the President hostage, and that he will be killed if any further rescue attempts are mounted. Commissioner Bob Hauk offers a deal to Snake Plissken, a former Special Forces soldier convicted of attempting to rob the Federal Reserve in Denver, Colorado: if Snake rescues the President and retrieves the cassette tape, Hauk will arrange a presidential pardon. To ensure his compliance, Hauk has Plissken injected with micro-explosives that will rupture Snake's carotid arteries within 22 hours; if Snake returns with the President and the tape in time, Hauk will have the explosives neutralized.
Snake is sent into Manhattan in a stealth glider, landing atop the World Trade Center. Snake tracks the President's life-monitor bracelet to a vaudeville theater, only to find it on the wrist of an insane old man. Convinced that the President has been killed, he radios Hauk, only to be told that he will be shot down if he tries to come back out empty-handed. Soon afterwards he meets "Cabbie," a long-serving New York taxi-driver who has been driving the streets of Manhattan for 30 years and somehow managed to remain in the city after its conversion to an open prison. Cabbie takes Snake in his armored taxi cab to Harold "Brain" Hellman, an adviser to the Duke and a former associate of Snake's, who is a brilliant engineer and has established a base in New York Central Library with an oil-pumping engine and a small refinery, which keeps the remainder of the city's cars and machinery running. Hellman betrayed Snake during a long-ago robbery plot and Snake is tempted to shoot him, but Brain tells Snake that the Duke plans to unify the gangs in a mass exodus across the heavily guarded Queensboro Bridge, using the President as a human shield and a map Brain has created to avoid the landmines. Snake backs off, but forces Brain and his girlfriend Maggie to lead him to the Duke's compound at Grand Central Terminal. He finds the President, but is captured by the Duke's men.
While Snake is forced to fight in a deathmatch with Slag, a prisoner, Brain and Maggie kill Romero and flee with the President. As Snake kills Slag, the Duke learns of Brain's treachery and rallies his gang to chase them. Snake, Brain, Maggie, and the President race to the World Trade Center in an attempt to use Snake's glider to escape from Manhattan. After a group of crazies destroy it, the group returns to the street and encounters Cabbie, who offers to take them across the bridge. When Cabbie reveals that he has the secret tape (having traded it to Romero earlier for his hat), the President demands it, but Snake keeps it.
The Duke pursues the group onto the bridge in his customized Cadillac, setting off mines as he tries to catch up. With Brain navigating through the minefield, Snake manages to avoid most of the explosives, but the cab hits a mine and is blown in half, killing Cabbie. As the group flees on foot, Brain is killed when he steps on another mine. Maggie refuses to leave him. She stands in the middle of the road, shooting at the Duke's car until he runs her down, killing her. Snake and the President reach the perimeter wall, and the guards raise the President on a rope. The Duke opens fire on the wall, killing the guards and forcing Snake to dive for cover, but the President shoots the Duke dead with one of the guard's machine guns. Snake is lifted to safety, and the micro-explosives in his neck are neutralized.
As the President prepares for a televised speech to the leaders at the summit meeting, he thanks Snake for saving him and tells him that he can have anything he wants. All Snake asks for is how he feels about the people who died saving him, but the President only offers half-hearted regret. As Snake walks away in disgust, Hauk offers Snake a job as his Deputy — Snake demurs, neither saying yes or no. The President's speech commences, and he offers the contents of the cassette; to his embarrassment, the tape is Cabbie's cassette of the song "Bandstand Boogie". As Snake walks away, he intentionally tears the magnetic tape out of the cassette reel, with the actual message that was intended to be delivered by the President.
Development
Carpenter originally wrote the screenplay for Escape from New York in 1976, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Carpenter said, "The whole feeling of the nation was one of real cynicism about the President. I wrote the screenplay and no studio wanted to make it "because, according to Carpenter, "it was too dark, too violent, too scary, and too weird."[5] He had been inspired by the film Death Wish, which was very popular at the time. He did not agree with this film's philosophy but liked how it conveyed "the sense of New York as a kind of jungle, and I wanted to make a science fiction film along these lines".
Casting
AVCO Embassy Pictures, the film's financial backer, preferred either Charles Bronson or Tommy Lee Jones to play the role of Snake Plissken to Carpenter's choice of Kurt Russell, who was trying to overcome the "lightweight" screen image conveyed by his roles in several Disney comedies. Carpenter refused to cast Bronson on the grounds that he was too old, and because he worried that he could lose directorial control over the picture with an experienced actor. At the time, Russell described his character as "a mercenary, and his style of fighting is a combination of Bruce Lee, The Exterminator, and Darth Vader, with Eastwood's vocal-ness." All that matters to Snake, according to the actor, is "the next 60 seconds. Living for exactly that next minute is all there is." Russell used a rigorous diet and exercise program in order to develop a lean and muscular build. He also endeavored to stay in character between takes and throughout the shooting, as he welcomed the opportunity to get away from the Disney comedies he had done previously. He did fin necessary to remove the eyepatch between takes, as wearing it constantly seriously affected his depth perception.[8]
Pre-production
Carpenter had just made Dark Star but no one wanted to hire him as a director, so he assumed he would make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter. The filmmaker went on to do other films with the intention of making Escape later. After the success of Halloween, Avco-Embassy signed him and producer Debra Hill to a two-picture deal. The first film from this contract was The Fog. Initially, the second film he was going to make to finish the contract was The Philadelphia Experiment, but because of script-writing problems, Carpenter rejected it in favor of this project. However, Carpenter felt something was missing and recalls, "This was basically a straight action film. And at one point, I realized it really doesn't have this kind of crazy humor that people from New York would expect to see."He brought in Nick Castle, a friend from his film school days at University of Southern California who played "The Shape" in Halloween. Castle invented the Cabbie character and came up with the film's ending.
The film's setting proved to be a potential problem for Carpenter, who needed to create a decaying, semi-destroyed version of New York City on a shoe-string budget. He and the film's production designer Joe Alves rejected shooting on location in New York City because it would be too hard to make it look like a destroyed city. Carpenter suggested shooting on a movie back lot but Alves nixed that idea "because the texture of real street is not like a back lot." They sent Barry Bernardi, their location manager (and associate producer), "on a sort of all-expense-paid trip across the country looking for the worst city in America," producer Debra Hill remembers.
Bernardi suggested East St. Louis, Illinois, because it was filled with old buildings "that exist in New York now, and [that] have that seedy run-down quality" that the team was looking for.[12] East St. Louis, sitting across the Mississippi River from the more prosperous St. Louis, Missouri, had entire neighborhoods burned out in 1976 during a massive urban fire. Hill said in an interview, "block after block was burnt-out rubble. In some places there was absolutely nothing, so that you could see three and four blocks away."[11] As well, Alves found an old bridge to double for the "69th St. Bridge". The filmmaker purchased the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge for one dollar from the government and then gave it back to them, for the same amount, once production was completed, "so that they wouldn't have any liability," Hill remembers. Locations across the river in St. Louis, Missouri were used, including Union Station and the Fox Theatre, both of which have since been renovated, as well as the building which would eventually become the Schlafly Tap Room microbrewery.
Filming
Carpenter and his crew persuaded the city to shut off the electricity to ten blocks at a time at night. The film was shot from August to November 1980. It was a tough and demanding shoot for the filmmaker as he recalls. "We'd finish shooting at about 6 am and I'd just be going to sleep at 7 when the sun would be coming up. I'd wake up around 5 or 6 pm, depending on whether or not we had dailies, and by the time I got going, the sun would be setting. So for about two and a half months I never saw daylight, which was really strange."[9] The gladiatorial fight to the death scene between Snake and Slag (played by professional wrestler Ox Baker) was filmed in the Grand Hall at St. Louis Union Station. Russell has stated, "That day was a nightmare. All I did was swing a [spiked] bat at that guy and get swung at in return. He threw a trash can in my face about five times ... I could have wound up in pretty bad shape."[14] In addition to shooting on location in St. Louis, Carpenter shot parts of the film in Los Angeles. Various interior scenes were shot on a sound stage; the final scenes were shot at the Sepulveda Dam, in Sherman Oaks. New York served as a location, as did Atlanta, to use their futuristic-looking rapid-transit system. In New York City, Carpenter persuaded federal officials to grant access to Liberty Island. "We were the first film company in history allowed to shoot on Liberty Island at the Statue of Liberty at night. They let us have the whole island to ourselves. We were lucky. It wasn't easy to get that initial permission. They'd had a bombing three months earlier and were worried about trouble".
The simulated wire-frame effect
Carpenter was interested in creating two distinct looks for the movie. "One is the police state, high tech, lots of neon, a United States dominated by underground computers. That was easy to shoot compared to the Manhattan Island prison sequences which had few lights, mainly torch lights, like feudal England". Certain matte paintings were rendered by James Cameron, who was at the time a special effects artist with Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Cameron was also one of the directors of photography on the film. As Snake pilots the glider into the city, there are three screens on his control panel displaying wireframe animations of the landing target on the World Trade Center and surrounding buildings. Carpenter wanted high-tech computer graphics, which were very expensive, even for such a simple animation. The effects crew filmed the miniature model set of New York City they used for other scenes under black light, with reflective tape placed along every edge of the model buildings. Only the tape is visible and appears to be a 3D wireframe animation.
Reception
Escape from New York opened in New York and Los Angeles July 10, 1981. The film grossed $25.2 million in American theaters in summer 1981. The film received generally positive reviews. As of March 3, 2019, it had a rating of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes from 60 reviews, with the critical consensus "Featuring an atmospherically grimy futuristic metropolis, Escape from New York is a strange, entertaining jumble of thrilling action and oddball weirdness". Newsweek magazine wrote of Carpenter "[He has a] deeply ingrained B-movie sensibility - which is both his strength and limitation. He does clean work, but settles for too little. He uses Russell well, however". In Time magazine, Richard Corliss wrote, "John Carpenter is offering this summer's moviegoers a rare opportunity: to escape from the air-conditioned torpor of ordinary entertainment into the hothouse humidity of their own paranoia. It's a trip worth taking".[20] Vincent Canby, in his review for The New York Times, wrote, "[The film] is not to be analyzed too solemnly, though. It's a toughly told, very tall tale, one of the best escape (and escapist) movies of the season."In his review for the Chicago Reader, Dave Kehr, wrote "it fails to satisfy–it gives us too little of too much".
Cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson credits the film as an influence on his novel Neuromancer. "I was intrigued by the exchange in one of the opening scenes where the Warden says to Snake 'You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?' It turns out to be just a throwaway line, but for a moment it worked like the best SF where a casual reference can imply a lot."[23] Popular videogame director Hideo Kojima has referred to the film frequently as an influence on his work, in particular the Metal Gear series. Solid Snake is partially influenced by Snake Plissken. In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Snake uses the alias "Pliskin" to hide his real identity during most of the game.[24] J. J. Abrams, producer of the 2008 film Cloverfield, mentioned that a scene in his film, which shows the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing into a New York street, was inspired by the poster for Escape from New York. Empire magazine ranked Snake Plissken #29 in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll.
DVD releases
Escape from New York was released on DVD twice by MGM (USA), and once by Momentum Pictures (UK). One MGM release is a barebones edition containing just the theatrical trailer. Another version is the Collector's Edition, a two-disc set featuring a High Definition remastered transfer with a 5.1 Stereo audio track, two commentaries (one by John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, another by producer Debra Hill and Joe Alves), a making-of featurette, the first issue of a comic book series titled John Carpenter's Snake Plissken Chronicles, and the ten-minute Colorado bank robbery deleted opening sequence.[29]
MGM's special edition of the 1981 film was not released until 2003 because the original negative had gone missing. The workprint containing deleted scenes finally turned up in the Hutchinson, Kansas salt mine film depository. The excised scenes feature Snake Plissken robbing a bank, introducing the character of Plissken and establishing a backstory. Director John Carpenter decided to add the original scenes into the special edition release as an extra only: "After we screened the rough cut, we realized that the movie didn't really start until Snake got to New York. It wasn't necessary to show what sent him there."[30] The film has been released on the UMD format for Sony's PlayStation Portable.[31]
Blu-ray release
On August 3, 2010, MGM Home Entertainment released Escape From New York as a bare-bones Blu-ray. Scream Factory, in association with Shout! Factory, released the film on a special edition Blu-ray on April 21, 2015.
Novelization
In 1981, Bantam Books published a movie tie-in novelization written by Mike McQuay that adopts a lean, humorous style reminiscent of the film. The novel is significant because it includes scenes that were cut out of the film, such as the Federal Reserve Depository robbery that results in Snake's incarceration. The novel provides motivation and backstory to Snake and Hauk — both disillusioned war veterans — deepening their relationship that was only hinted at it in the film. The novel explains how Snake lost his eye during the Battle for Leningrad in World War III, how Hauk became warden of New York, and Hauk's quest to find his crazy son who lives somewhere in the prison. The novel fleshes out the world that these characters exist in, at times presenting a future even bleaker than the one depicted in the film. The book explains that the West Coast is a no-man's land, and the country's population is gradually being driven crazy by nerve gas as a result of World War III.
Comic Books
Marvel Comics released the one-shot The Adventures of Snake Plissken in January 1997. The story takes place sometime between Escape from New York and before his famous Cleveland escape mentioned in Escape from L.A. Snake has robbed Atlanta's Center for Disease Control of some engineered metaviruses and is looking for buyers in Chicago. Finding himself in a deal that's really a set-up, he makes his getaway and exacts revenge on the buyer for ratting him out to the United States Police Force. In the meantime, a government lab has built a robot called A.T.A.C.S. (Autonomous Tracking And Combat System) that can catch criminals by imprinting their personalities upon its program in order to predict and anticipate a specific criminal's every move. The robot's first test subject is America's public enemy number one, Snake Plissken. After a brief battle, the tide turns when A.T.A.C.S. copies Snake to the point of fully becoming his personality. Now recognizing the government as the enemy, A.T.A.C.S. sides with Snake. Unamused, Snake sucker punches the machine and destroys it. As A.T.A.C.S. shuts down, it can only ask him, "Why?" Snake just walks off answering, "I don't need the competition".
In 2003, CrossGen published John Carpenter's Snake Plissken Chronicles, a four-part comic book miniseries.[35] The story takes place a day or so after the events of Escape from New York. Snake has been given a military Humvee after his presidential pardon and makes his way to Atlantic City. Although the director's cut of Escape from New York shows Snake was caught after a bank job, this story has Snake finishing up a second heist that was pre-planned before his capture. The job entails stealing the car in which John F. Kennedy was assassinated from a casino before delivering it to a buyer in the Gulf of Mexico. Snake partners with a man named Marrs who ends up double crossing him. Left for dead in a sinking crab cage, Snake escapes and is saved by a passing fisherman named Captain Ron (an in-joke referring to Kurt Russell's 1992 comedy, Captain Ron). When Ron denies Snake's request to use his boat in order to beat Marrs to the robbery, Snake decides to kill him. When Snake ends up saving Ron from the Russian mob who wants money, Ron changes his mind and helps Snake. Once at the casino, Snake comes face-to-face with Marrs and his men, who arrive at the same time, ending in a high-speed shootout. Snake gets away with the car and its actress portraying Jackie Kennedy, leaving Marrs to be caught by the casino owner, who cuts him a deal to bring his car back and live. After some trouble, Snake manages to finally get the car to the buyer's yacht, using Ron's boat, and is then attacked by Marrs. Following the firefight, the yacht and car are destroyed, Marrs and Captain Ron are dead, and Snake makes his escape in a helicopter with the 30 million credits owed to him for the job.
In 2014, BOOM! Studios began publishing an Escape From New York comic book by writer, Christopher Sebela. The first issue of the series was released on December 3, 2014 and the story picks up moments after the end of the film.
BOOM! released a crossover comics miniseries between Snake and Jack Burton titled Big Trouble in Little China / Escape from New York in October 2016.
Sequel
Main article: Escape from L.A.
A sequel, Escape from L.A., was released in 1996, with Carpenter returning along with Russell, now also acting as producer and co-writer.


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ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK REMAKE IN THE WORKS AT FOX FROM UPGRADE CREATOR LEIGH WHANNELL
ESCAPE FROM NY: More Than ONE THIRD of New Yorkers Plan on Fleeing De Blasio’s Big Apple
Not even death is an escape from New York’s expensive real estate
submitted by Oblique9043 to TheGreatDeception [link] [comments]

SHOT 2017/My tales of adventure in Las Vegas

So, you wanna go to SHOT show? You think it's all fun and games? Get to play with guns? See Jesse James and R. Lee Ermey? SHOT show is the annual pilgrimage of the unwashed masses to Las Vegas to rub elbows with youtube celebrities, bloggers and overseas businessmen copying US made equipment and share infectious disease.
If you love guns, gambling and gonorrhea - SHOT show is for you! It is not my typical idea of a good time. I am not a big fan of Las Vegas.
However: I do attend for a few reasons. First, I do enjoy travel and I'm platinum on AA so I can usually score an upgrade. Second, industry people are in there that I do hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars with business with so it's nice to put a face with the name and see what deals are out there. SHOT for me has been a bust for the past few years. Being a value guy, I want to buy at $1000 and sell at $3000 and as of recently the gun business is more like buy for $1 and sell for $1.10 if you get what I mean.
We used to do business at SHOT and now it's just checking in on foursquare, instagram and rubbing elbows with bloggers and the like. I want to make money, not spend money so this is very annoying to me.
Anyways, onto the play by play.
Monday, January 16th. One day before SHOT show.
http://imgur.com/a/HoFUm
Every time I've been rejected by a woman, I move $1 from checking into savings and I take the bankroll down to the Wynn for some play. Lets do this.
The TSA line is a shitshow thanks to, well TSA.
I slog my way to the lounge, as shitty as it is to wait for my winged chariot to DFW. I have gone from being in an abusive relationship with Delta to being in an abusive relationship with AA. Although if you really want to experience the battered spouse feeling, UA is a few gates over. This trip's light reading is trying to finish "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. Such a good book as well as "Outliers" if you want a good read.
I walk up to the podium to find out that my upgrades do not clear, even as an AA Plat thanks to the addition of a FOURTH elite tier. Goddamn fucking W. Doug Parker. Asshole. I gate check my bags to make life easier for me and the rest of the folks. The gate agent calls concierge key and executive platinum passengers. I look down and realize I'm wearing a suit and board with the executive platinum folks because I do not care and I look the part. If you walk with a purpose and are dressed reasonably well, you fit the profile. I settle into my window seat and try to finish outliers. I pass out before takeoff and I'm awoken by the dulcet tones of the flight attendants preparing for landing. We land at Dallas a few minutes early and I hightail it to the Centurion for a quick bite to eat. I grab a plate and help myself to some of the excellent brisket, pecan encrusted chicken and some roasted jumbo asparagus. Yes, my pee is going to smell funny. No, I do not care. The lounge is packed. The bar is full and I grab a quick single malt as I have my meal since American's not going to feed me. They begin boarding to Mccarran as I walk out of the lounge. No time for a stop in the spa on this trip. I make it to the gate just as the call group 2 boarding.
I bypass the main line and walk up through the priority line giving no heed to the people that have been waiting there before me as I hold up my paper boarding pass with PLATINUM to the gate agent. I board and take my usual seat - the exit row without the seat in front of it. I'm aghast to see this sight.
http://imgur.com/a/dygil
The savages. Literally. The savages.
I put my loathing away for a moment and look down at the exit row. I have the window. The aisle is a large middle aged man and in the middle is what I believe to be a formecurrent linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys wearing a 52 regular sports jacket. He's not a fat guy in a little coat, he's a big fucking hulk of a man stuffed in an exit row seat that is already an inch narrower due to the tray table. I grimace as I take my seat and give him the manly nod. He does not look happy about the fact that his knees are in the seat in front and I'm stretched out like a Cheshire cat in front of a fireplace on a cold January afternoon.
The boarding door closes for an on time departure and Stephanie the FA takes her seat. He leans over and asks if he can take the empty row across the aisle and she takes one look at the three of us and gives him the nod. I bail out to give him a path of egress and suddenly the trip to Las Vegas has just become way more comfortable. I finish The Tipping Point somewhere over west texas, so I pop a xanax and dr pepper and zone out for the rest of the ride. I awake to feel one of the FA's jostling me awake telling me to put my seat up. I do so and we have a ride so smooth that not even the Delta guy behind me can complain about light chop. We catch the TYSSN4 arrival and the next thing I know it the Messier Dowty landing gear of the A321 touch the paint at Mccarran for a smooth rollout down 25L.
My phone battery is approaching grim death since this seat has no power plugs and I find bartman383 has sent me a message. He has been enjoying LV with his wife and their due to bad weather they are in the city of sin for a few extra nights. He invites me to dinner. I'm still pretty full from DFW and I tell him I'll be over there once I get my bags and the car and I'll see him when I see him. He gives me the info for the hotel as we pull up to the gate.
First stop: Centurion lounge. AA's app tells me bags being unloaded. I grab a quick bite of fried chicken and brussels sprouts since they are good for you and a chocolate pudding. The brisket and pecan encrusted chicken from DFW still has me full but I'm well aware of the speed of a union baggage handlers nowadays and who doesn't like chocolate pudding? Terrorists. That's who. Want to know how to screen for terrorists TSA? Set up a table of free chocolate pudding at the airport. The people who don't take any are members of ISIS. It's just that simple.
I grab my bag and hoof it to Hertz. I'm an idiot and I am an hour late for my pickup. Oops. Will an Audi A3 suffice? I sigh and I accept my Teutonic quattro chariot. I do a burnout in the parking garage and hightail it to the exit. I flash my #1 card and my ID and the gatekeeper gives me the go ahead. I get onto the the strip and traffic is awful. I'm going to be late for dinner. I make a left onto Russell Road and hightail it up the 15. I manage to get the car up to 100 as I pass the Luxor. My phone is dead so I can't message Bart about being late. Fuck. The exit approaches quickly as I put the 4 wheel disk brakes to work and sling the car around and head south on Las Vegas Bl. I accidentally turn into the Bellagio and I'm now running even more late. Fuck. Eventually, I get the car into the garage at the Cosmopolitan and head upstairs. I cannot remember the name of the restaurant but I head up to the third floor where all the restaurants are and I see this sign that's reminiscent of my days in retail.
It says RESTAURANT - LOUNGE - PAWN SHOP.
I laugh. I walk in. It's literally a pawnshop. I look around puzzled.
FC: Is this a restaurant?
Bald Headed Guy: Yes, through that door.
He points towards a door. I walk in to find a bustling restaurant, lounge via the entrance of pawnshop. This is insane. I pass a mirror and check myself out. I adjust my tie, after all it is YSL and the ladies LOVE YSL. Remember that. I find the hostess and inform her I will be joining some friends for dinner. They probably do not have me on the reservation though but I turn on the charm and she smiles and says no problem at all. She asks if my tie is from Hermes. I say no, I'm a YSL guy. She looks impressed as I tell her I'll make a quick lap of the room to see if they're there and surprise them. She gives me a nod and tells me to go right ahead. Still got it.
I spot bart and his wife who I can only remember vaguely from gunnitlive after party video and I pull up a chair. Bart is surprised to see I made it and they are in the middle of dinner. They offer to ply me with food and beverage but I decline as I'm driving so no booze for me and no food since I am stuffed from Dallas. We chat about life and liberty over libations. Bart's wife thinks I am hysterical. She's had a few drinks and they are already into their main courses. The brussels sprouts are way too salty and we have to send it back. No bueno.
Bart invites me up to his suite on the top floor of the hotel where we are to meet Brogelicious later in the evening. I say, when in rome......we head to the top floor of the hotel tower where Bart shows me his view from the balcony and cracks open the mini bar for some more libations. He asks if I want a drink and I say I better not. I'm driving.
Not 30 seconds after arriving, brogel shows up. Bart's wife hugs brogel. She's infatuated with him. We start shooting the shit and bart opens up the minibar and tells us to take anything we want, it's on the hotel. I laugh and I look outside as bart opens his yeti 110 for some silver bullets. Apparently he is so baller the hotel will send up a yeti 110 filled with beer to make him happy. His wife is apparently such a baller. I ball on a budget. They just ball. Hahaha.
We shoot the shit some more about guns, gun stuff and people on the reddit for a while. I get a little thirsty and I crack open bart's cooler. I ask him how long the stuff in the cooler is supposed to last and he says until Wednesday.
I look down and I am agape at what I see.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
I mentally prepared my butthole and I decided to help myself to a coors light against my wishes but Bart, Bart's wife and Brogel are all drinking so I let peer pressure take hold as I cracked open a beer with them. We head out to the balcony to smoke some cuban cigars together as bart's wife takes a photo of all of us. We all look like hell. Haha.
As bart downs his second beer, he asks me a question.
Bart: ever go hunting?
Me: Ducks a little bit but not much
Bart: ever want to hunt some deadly game?
Me: Like on african safari?
Bart: No, I mean like.........man.
Me: Hahahahhahaaha you're just fucking with me. Hahahahahhaa. That's really funny.
Bart: No really, the concierge here at this hotel will set it up for us. It's amazing. I remember my first hunt......
Brogel starts laughing and I realize they've been doing a bit. I've been had.
We bullshit about SHOT and Barrett's shotguns and other things and next thing I know, it's late but bart hands me a mixed drink. I sip it a bit and I was in the middle of a tirade complaining about my customers. Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the city, and a voice was screaming: Holy Jesus. What are these goddamn animals? Nobody seems to understand what I'm talking about. It's cold on the balcony. Our cigars are done. We head indoors. No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastards will see them soon enough.
Back indoors I realize Brussels sprouts and coors light is a bad choice. Seriously no bueno. I excuse myself to the bathroom and drain the vein. The asparagus funny smelling pee and the side effects of beer and brussels sprouts is a noxious combination that a defense contractor should weaponize it. It's pretty bad and not even cuban tobbaco can mask the smell.
I sit back down and continue to talk about guns and stuff with bart and the gang and bart asks who ruined the bathroom. I apologize as he sprays a bunch of febreze around and opens the balcony. I apolgize to brogel. He is not accepting my apology. (sorry :( )
Nearly 11, it's about time to pull chocks and mosey on down the dusty trail. I don't want to prompt an evacuation of the hotel due to noxious odors so I decide to leave and bart seems to be kinda mad that I've ripped ass and polluted the sanctuary of his hotel. Half a coors light and brussels sprouts are no bueno in my book now. Bart decides to party hard with his wife and I offer brogel a ride home. He seems skeptical to share a confined space with me after I have just destroyed bart's hotel room. The car has 4 windows and the Uber will cost him a few bucks he can put towards ammo. He relents as we head down to the garage to find my car. Thankfully we find it quickly and I manage to contain the weapons of ass destruction for the 16 minute ride off strip to casa de brogel.
He says I'm not that bad a dude and I agree as I hightail it to my hotel. I cannot find my hotel reservations so I call my travel agent to see.
Apparently the Wynn was not in my travel budget this year. I have come to find out I have been booked at Circus Circus, much to my chagrin. How bad could it be? I've stayed at the Wynn. I've stayed at Encore. I've stayed at the hotel that Elisabeth Shue's character got raped in in Leaving Las Vegas - but Circus Circus? Did I mention that I HATE CLOWNS? I HATE CLOWNS. Fuck.
I pull into the parking garage and the check in line resembles something straight out of the TSA line at Mccarran. 45 minutes to check in. The clerk is friendly and says he's also from Louisiana which is neat. He asks if I've stayed there before and I, being a connoisseur of old vegas history I decide to make a joke and I tell him the last time I was there, Jay Sarno owned the place. He got a laugh. I head up to my room and unpack. The lobby is clean as an old vegas casino can be, the room is clean and there's no way to plug anything in since the hotel predates personal electronic devices. I plug my phone into my external battery and collapse on the bed. I message Bart and chugbleach instead of falling asleep about show tomorrow and I offer to pick bart up early since there is no shuttle from the cosmo.
Tuesday, November 16th SHOT Show Day One
I awoke several hours later in a daze......the clock said 10AM. The show opened at 8:30. Fuck me to tears. I hurry up and get dressed and down to the sands convention center. The parking lot is FULL. The entire complex is a mess. When my man Steve Wynn built his joint he didn't build enough parking. So people would park at the Venetian and now FUCKING NOBODY CAN GET A PARKING SPACE. Holy shit. I eventually say fuck it and park over at the Wynn and walk over to the Sands. I meet up with a few of my regular suppliers and I see nothing interesting at all. Bart went to bed at 6AM after spending all night partying with his wife over at the palazzo. I joke and say that he just should have stayed there. Bart is amazed at the size of the show and we have lunch at the most disgusting place in las vegas - the convention center bistro snack bar. Bart is a wise man as he grabs a powerade and a fruit cup. I decide to try an "italian beef" and a fruit cup instead of fries to stay semi health conscious. The "italian beef" is the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten. It is flat out depressing. They give me fries with it and I demand a fruit cup. The sassy black woman working the stand asks me "DID YOU ASK FOR FRUIT? CAUSE RIGHT HERE SAYS FRIES" and I channel my inner Louis CK from the "this is how I talk" bit from SNL as I shoot back "WHY YOU FRONTIN ON ME I ASKED FOR FRUIT AND YOUR ASS BETTER BACK UP AND GET ME SOME FRUIT" so she goes back and gets me some fruit.
The "italian beef", my fruit cup, bart's fruit cup and powerade comes to $81. My platinum amex comes out and I treat bart to "lunch". We bullshit about guns and stuff in the Springfield booth as we wait at the world's worst concession stand. We eat and Bart is so hungover that he thinks he is in need of physical therapy and a wheelchair. There is no way he is going to party tonight before his trip home. Or so I think. Haha.
I meander around the show a bit more and I find this, the most USELESS PRODUCT OF 2017. It's made by a company called radetec.
http://imgur.com/a/GOiCB
It's a shot counter. For your gun.
A digital odometer, for your gun.
The only person that would buy this is the guy like my dad that kept a spiral bound notebook in his car where he documented how many miles he traveled per tank, gallons dispensed, PRICE, service station and whether they had a different price for cash/charge, oil consumption, tire rotations, alignments, all services - scheduled or otherwise, and a running odometer. Does anyone know the gun owner who asks for a round count when they are looking at a used gun? The question I always shoot back is "do you want to be lied at a little or do you want to be lied at a lot?" because that's what you're asking for when you ask for round count.
UNLESS YOU BUY THIS PRODUCT!
I roll my eyes so far back into my head that I nearly lose my balance. This is idiotic. I cannot fathom anyone willing to buy this. What a waste of perfectly good exhibition space.
Bart heads back to his hotel after visiting SHOT show for a few hours, not getting any swag and to get an IV of fluids since he looked like he was rapidly approaching grim death.
I wrap up visiting prime vendors and checking out the new products, or lack thereof because I have something on the schedule. At 4:30 there's a suicide prevention for retailers seminar hosted by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. As many of you know this is an issue that is important to me and perhaps we as retailers should be doing more. The keynote was from their chief medical director talking about the accessibility of firearms and the mindset of the "typical" suicide. Mostly men. If you are a veteran you are at a significantly larger risk. The information was presented very not surprisingly and one of the things discussed was that we only spend around 21M a year on suicide prevention.
A few take away facts from the keynote:
When suicide barriers are put up on a bridge, suicide rates for the entire area drop. The key to preventing suicide is getting people to talk about their problems. Once you can get someone out of that mindset, they are statistically less likely to do it and live productive lives afterwards. There are certain terms that they are trying to get away from - for instance, they are not saying "committed suicide" they are now saying "died by suicide" in order to bring awareness and tell it like it is.
One thing that really was interesting to me was my reading on the flight in from Dallas. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell discusses how things stay the same and suddenly they all change. One of the things that he discusses is in micronesia - where teen suicide was practically unheard of became an outright epidemic. One teenager did it, for reasons passing understanding to me as an outsider and then all the other kids realized that they too could escape their pain by hanging themselves as well and suddenly the suicide rates in micronesia became so high to where it became a public health issue. I wish I could show you all the article I wrote on TTAG about my friend's death but it has been lost in the cloud and I am unable to find the last draft I sent to print, but it echoes some of the problems we have with suicide and mental health in the firearm industry.
After the keynote, the good doctor opened the floor up for questions. Her keynote posed a lot of statistics but not a lot of answers. I am a detail oriented granular data guy and I did not get a solid grasp of the AFSP solutions posed, if any.
Several firearm dealers discussed the lack of a cohesive solution and the takeaway was they're trying to develop awareness for the suicide problem. Their goal is to lower suicide rates but how they get there is yet to be determined. I didn't like hearing that and the comments from the crowd reflected the lack of a "here's what you can do TODAY to help this problem" part of the initiative.
Going around the room, one dealer who used NICS said that if a customer was just flat out acting funny - he'd lie to the customer and say there was a delay with NICS even though there was an approval just to get them to not be able to have a gun for a few days. The crowd applauded this initiative, however I'm not sure lying to customers is the best way to run a business and treat them with respect. Another dealer brought up an interesting point. When someone comes in looking to buy a gun and they don't know what kind of gun they want, what caliber, and are generally clueless - they're either buying a gun to kill themselves with, OR perhaps they are a very uneducated prospective customer - and there is no clear way of finding out which is which.
The problems presented by the AFSP are real. The solutions aren't there though. Yet. Ideally I'd like to see some change to that. However, there's some problems.
I hung around and asked the good doctor and her staff some questions and I am in no way denigrating her life's work and her dedication to preventing suicide since she has dedicated her life's work to the issue, but the conversation went something like this.
Did you do any research on the accessibility of firearms from a retailer from the legal standpoint?
"No, we haven't"
Do you know how the NICS or state POC background systems work in regard to mental health holds, etc?
"No"
One of the problems that I foresee right off the bat is that you talked about how you are fighting time, and if you can get someone out of that suicide mindset - even for a few hours, you can get them into that higher survival bracket. If we apply a one size fits all solution to it like California and put a 10 day wait on everything with the goal of protecting someone from their own life, how do we balance that with the needs of the woman who has been hiding from her abusive spouse and needs a gun right away?
"That's a good question that I don't have an answer for."
Their initiative, I admire - the lack of solutions is a little off putting however. I tell the doc about how my friend's suicide has impacted me and she seems to be sympathetic to the situation as does her colleagues. I am given her cards and told to call the next time I'm in New York so we can get together and discuss things within the industry. I'll give them a buzz in a few weeks when I'm up there on business. On my way out of the hall, I run into Massad Ayoob. Nice guy. I've admired his work over the years. Bart invites myself and chugbleach to dinner, I can't reach Chug and even though I am beat I decide to hang out with Bart and Mrs Bart
Bart: What do you want to eat?
FC: Let's find a nice seafood restaurant and eat some red salmon, I feel a powerful lust for red salmon.
I begin vomiting.
God damn mescaline. Why the fuck can't they make it a little less pure?
We eventually head downstairs and order too much food. We are tired and not very hungry. Bart is still hungover and barely able to process food. His wife is grazing on all sorts of meat products. I am in awe of how they are both still upright after six nonstop nights of partying. I've only been here one day and I feel like I am about to die.
Dinner concludes with an awkward hug with bart's wife - I don't know how other men feel about wife hugs so I have just avoided the prospect entirely. Like flying through Denver on Frontier. Or flying on Frontier. Ever.
I drive over to the Wynn to set up my markers and the poker room is full. I draw a $2500 marker at the craps table and watch the game a bit. I have never played craps before in my life but the three people there seem to be having fun.
I look down at my phone and I realize a plane has landed. fluffy_butternut has landed in Las Vegas on business. I had lost a bet and offered to pick him up from the airport. I cash back in my chips against my casino credit and head back to my car. I cannot find my car. Fuck. I wander the wynn garage which is covered in construction debris. I eventually find it and haul ass to the airport. Now, I didn't know this but fluffy has the WORST SENSE OF DIRECTION AT ALL. Seriously. I have no idea how he even made it to the correct city. He lands and has to get his bag and stuff and I circle the airport. He lets me know he's at door 77 wherever the fuck that was. I drive into the pickup portion and I see no sign. He then says he's coming up a level, and I tell him that I'll be there shortly. I park the car and Metro PD starts yelling.
Metro: You can't park your car here.
FC: Why not? Is this not a reasonable place to park?
Metro: Reasonable? You're on a sidewalk! This is the sidewalk!
I give the man a $20 and tell him to keep it running as I wander Mccarran screaming FLUFFY! HERE FLUFFY! I message fluffy to let him know I am the car parked on the sidewalk. I instantly figure out who he is having never seen a photo of him and I throw his bags into the car as we head for his hotel. I haul ass out of the airport and get the A3 on the highway.
Now this was a superior machine. Thirty nine grand worth of gimmicks and high-priced special effects. The rear windows lit up with a touch like frogs in a dynamite pond. The dashboard was full of esoteric lights and dials and meters that I would never understand.
We check in at the Rio where the desk clerk is friendly and flirty. I express amazement there is no line. Fluffy checks in and we take his bags upstairs and he offers to buy me food for driving him to the airport. I decline. We head to the bar anyways. He orders two beers and we decide to call chug. He's staying out in Summerlin or something because his company is apparently run by cheapskates. He asks if we want to hang out and shoot the shit. I say sure and ask if he wants us to pick up food or anything from CVS or something since I have the car and I'm able to do anything I want. He asks for some toothpaste. No problem. I may be an asshole on the internet but I have a heart of gold. We get some toothpaste get to the hotel.
Arriving at the lobby, we have no idea where he is. It turns out he gave us the address for the hotel across the street. We laugh and go to that lobby and shoot the shit till 3AM much to the chagrin of the hotel clerk. Fluffy has some beers and we plan on dinner the next day. I drive fluffy back and arrive at the hotel at 4. Fuck me to tears.
Wednesday, January 18th. Day 2 of SHOT show.
Alarm goes off at 7:30 AM. I wash up, eat and get breakfast. In the garage by 8:15. Nice. I get some dillo dust and check out the new Sig 220 DA/SA and SAO legions. Daddy likey. I go to a competing firm and I piss of my state sales manager by telling him his newer designed triggers suck ass. He says the company tested them and they're the same in every way. I ask him why the triggers have two different part numbers in the catalog and how come they're not interchangeable and if that's really the case, how come there's X changes in the supposedly identical pistol parts that he's holding side by side. He gets mad at me and says I'm not an expert on their product and perhaps I should take his job since I'm so smart. I agree that I'm smart and I hold firm that if he didn't want me to complain about the shitty trigger, they should stop selling guns with shitty triggers. I am nearly kicked out of the booth.
I meet up with some of my wholesale reps and I'm mid convo when I see Itsgoodsoup and his friend walking around the show. I yell SOUP but he does not hear me. So I grab his friend and find him and I tell him we should get together at dinner with fluffy and chug. He agrees.
The show winds down, I get some business done and nothing much else. We break for a shitty gunnit live lite and I take a few questions from the crowd in fluffy's suite at the Rio. Dinner is at 8 and we arrive at the restaurant late to find soup and his friend sitting at one table and chug and his girlfriend sitting at another. Perhaps we should have gotten here a little earlier. Hahaha. So, fluffy said the place is really good and I order a few of the specialties of the house. Apparently according to yelp they do a kickass peking duck. Soon to be mrs chug is a vegan. But we can eat meat in front of her. I wonder how it's served and Soup's vancouver raised asian friend tells me that they normally carve it tableside. Our vegan says as long as there's no head she's cool. We're not sure if they can fulfill that request. So we order and food starts coming out and we tell tall tales of shot show BS and other stuff. Sure enough, the duck comes out with the head. No bueno. Haha. But I decide to treat us to vegan donuts at the vegan bakery across the street later. Seven courses later we are full. Vegan bakery closed. I am committed to getting her some vegan donuts though. We head to Fremont street to gamble. Fluffy wanders about and we try craps and we're not impressed. We hit some slots and eventually I hit the craps table where chug explains the game to me. We start betting on dice. And somehow we start winning. I find that the house allows you to take 10X behind the line. No idea what this means so I plop $5 on the pass line and the point hits 6. I drop $50 behind it and it hits. We go a few rounds and leave ahead. It's 2:30 AM. Fuck. I drive everyone back to their hotel. I get to sleep around 4.
Thursday, January 19th. Day 3 of SHOT show.
Wake up at 10AM feeling like crap. Debate whether to head straight to show and wander about. Fuck it. Went to halal guys for some halal. Delicious. Got vegan donuts. Dead drop them at the Palazzo lobby for chug and his girl. Show is a bust. Literally nothing exciting. Fluffy offers to buy me dinner. One of my customers who lives in Summerlin offers to take me to dinner. I pass on fluffy and he destroys the seafood buffet at the rio. I head to Sinatra at the Wynn for dinner with my customer. All good in the hood. Chug has been invited to the Glock dinneafter party and I'm not so we all go our separate ways. I call foghorn5950 and due to some weather, he's flying home early and our plans to hangout are fucked up unless I go tonight. I grab fluffy and we head to Whiskey Down. He orders a makers and I give him a funny look. I tell the waitress make it a bulleit. Everyone laughs. I talk shop with Jeremy also from TTAG and we shoot the shit over cigars and talk about useless products. Next thing we know, chug is out of the dinner and wandering the strip. We decide to meet up at the Linq. It takes us nearly 30 minutes to get out of Whiskey Down at MGM because the waitress was awful and messed up everyone's tab. It was a fucking disaster. To boot, MGM is now charging for parking.
FC: What a bunch of fucking jews
Fluff: You should just tailgate that lady in front of you out and screw them out of the $7
FC: I should
We pull behind her and watch as she gets flustered at the awful parking machine. Her nevada license plate says VETERAN. As the gate goes up we haul ass and screw MGM out of $7. I shout "THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE" out the window as we blow right by her up to the Linq. Through fluffy's awful navigation, we wind up at the loading dock for the Linq. Eventually we find chug and gf hanging at the penny slots. They are holding vegan donuts, which she is very appreciative of. Least I could do after showing her the head. Fluffy plays the House of Cards slot machine.
He stuck $100 in, played for 6 minutes and then got really mad and hit the cash out button and $80 was left after 5 minutes.
ITS EXACTLY LIKE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!
Chug's gf asks to play a special slot machine called kitty glitter. We ask and the linq does not offer it but Harrahs next door does. So we head over there and the slot tech finds the kitty glitter machine. Fluffy sticks a C note in there and tells her to play and have a blast. So she's banging away at the one armed bandit WHEN SUDDENLY I HEAR THE SOUND.
It's PUTTIN ON THE RITZ in shitty .wav file internal speaker format. Hahah. She's just hit the progressive jackpot on the penny KITTY GLITTER machine. THIS PLACE IS AWESOME! We cash out after some play and a good time was had by all. I dump off fluffy at the rio since it was very close and drive everyone else back. It's late, I'm tired and the Palace Station oyster bar is open 24 hours......I head over there and there's a 45 minute wait.
So, I pull out my backup bankroll and using everything chug and fluffy have taught me about craps I belly up to the $3 min table where they let you take 10x behind the line. I'm still learning and the table is slow so one of the boxmen start explaining the game to me.
Box: So if you place the 6 or the 9 or individual numbers you can bet those but you gotta pay a little juice on it like a commission
Me: Like when you buy the hook?
short pause
Box: Yeah! Exactly like that! You got this!
So I played a little and went up a bit and down a bit. As you do. Plunked $5 down on the pass line and took full odds and the point hit. This game is pretty cool! So I hung around and watched for about an hour and finally decided to eat my winnings. I take $5 off my stack and, drop it on the pass line and announce dealer bet - $5 to pass. It hits. The dealers love me.
Maybe Vegas isn't so bad after all.
http://imgur.com/a/LGhDj
I have the pan roast at the oyster bar. No line. It is DELICIOUS. I get back to the hotel at 5AM. I don't care when I wake up.
Friday, January 20th. Day 4 of SHOT show.
Wake up around noon feeling like crap. Go to show. Debate destroying milk cart with wheels with an ax borrowed from fire station. Decide against it. Gas up car and find myself out by palace station again. Played some craps, hit the buffet and went for an early sleep.
It's midnight. The neighbors in my the hotel are having sex. A LOT OF SEX. I can hear everything. I gently knock on the door. No answer. I knock slightly harder. No answer. I head back to my room and close the door just as I hear their door open. I zoom back out to find a puzzled middle aged stocky and perhaps sticky Latino man looking both ways.
I get in his line of sight.
Me: Hey. I'm next door. It sounds like you're having a lot of fun. I get it. I really do. In fact I haven't had sex since the bush administration so I'm gunning for you man I really am. But it's midnight and I have a 6am flight and a rental car to return. So trust me when I say I'm really happy for you but if you don't mind I really need to get some sleep tonight okay?
The awkward silence is deafening. He nods without saying a word and mouths okay. I give him a manly nod and thumbs up.
Me: thanks. I'd shake your hand or fist bump but well you know.....
I give him a peace sign as he goes back into his little pleasure palace and I turn to realize that I have just locked myself out of my room. I am wearing boxers, a tshirt and barefoot. I head downstairs to the lobby. The check in at the front desk resembles the TSA line at Mccarran. Normally I would not be this rude but desperate times call for desperate measures.
The line is 50 people deep. I walk past every person. Fuck your queue. I approach the desk where someone is helping a guest and I raise my right hand as if I were in a deposition to get them to stop. The staff and guest looks puzzled as the angry barefoot man clad in nothing but boxers and a "uzi does it" tshirt approaches the desk.
Me: excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt. I have an emergency. I'm up on 8 and my neighbors are having a lot of sex. I mean a LOT of sex.
(This is the same front desk clerk who actually checked me in Monday night by coincidence looks back at me very awkwardly and puzzled.)
Me: this isn't your regular sex. I'm talking this is your (I begin air humping the front desk and slapping the granite counter with my palm and grunting loudly) sex. You could hear the plan B packaging open.
At this point - the ENTIRE FRONT DESK STAFF HAS STOPPED CHECKING IN GUESTS. The people in line and are watching the show. The clerk is stunned. Speechless. Shock and awed. Crapped out and busted. The women are covering their children's eyes and ears. The men are wondering if this show requires a 2 drink minimum.
Me: now I get this is Vegas. Everyone wants a good time. It's midnight. My flight leaves at 6 which means I have to be up by 4. And this just isn't working. So I asked them to keep it down and I locked myself out of my room. So if you can make me another key or move me I'd appreciate it.
The clerk nods.
Clerk: of course. may I see your ID?
Years of ballet have prepared me for this day. I step back to make sure my genitals are still ensconced in my boxers as I pirouette and gesticulate wildly.
Me: DO I LOOK LIKE I HAVE ID?
The floor manager steps over and asks me to head down to the end of the desk where she will make me a key. I give her the room number and thank her after she offers to have security sent up to shutdown the best little whorehouse in Vegas. I tell her it may not be necessary. As I take my keys and walk away the people in line break out in raucous applause.
I take a bow and miraculously my boxer shorts don't rip. These people are my subjects and I have been crowned the the king of the three ring circus that is the circus circus lobby. Im offered a $1 tip from a kind soul but I decline.
My walk back to the hotel elevator bank is uneventful. So much so that I realize it is going too well. The other shoe, if I were wearing one felt as if it was about to drop. Suddenly a dumbass in a rascal scooter is heading toward me at flank speed as his head is turned to look at everyone BEHIND HIM. There's no way this will end well.
For you gentle readers joining us mid conversation - it's midnight and I need to be at the airport in 4.5 hours. I can just see it now. (Cue the harp noises)
Scene: Emergency room
Nurse: Allergic to anything? Me: NKDA Nurse: cause of injury? Me: what's the IC10 code for "run down by drunken buffoon on motorized wheelchair?"
I saw my life and confirmed upgraded first class seats home being given away by the Mccarran gate agent flash before my eyes and my catlike reflexes kicked in and I jumped to my left into the wall, mid 1960's Las Vegas union construction being the path of least resistance. Think "The Bodyguard" with Kevin Costner.
The buffoon barely realizes what happens. Children are amazed. "HEY MOM! Look! That guy just ran into a wall!"
Me: it was that OR GET RUN DOWN BY SOME JACKASS ON A GODDAMN SCOOTER GOING FULL SPEED DRIVING LIKE A....
I look down and a midwestern nuclear family with two children of formative age are waiting for the elevator. I change my last word.
Me: LUNATIC!
I look over to the parents.
Me: I'm really sorry. This is a family joint and I shouldn't have cursed the drunken scooter driver like that. Sorry kids.
Parent: no big deal. They've heard fucking worse.
I crack a smile at her word choice. Fucking worse. Yeah. That sounds like my evening.
After jumping into a wall, I'm now wide awake and unable to go back to sleep. I make the plane and push on time. The 737 comes to a stop short of the runway and holds. Something is wrong. The pilots come on and say that they loaded more cargo and passengers than planned so they have to redo their numbers. We're waiting on the taxiway with both engines running as they do this and the waiting music comes on. What's the first song?
Whitney Houston - "I Will Always Love You"
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what time does mgm casino open today video

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