Somehow the old discussion thread got removed and I can't find it so here's another one in case anyone wants to talk about the episode this week. Again, you are absolutely allowed to post negative comments in these about the podcast. "Lady Luck roll those dice because we’re breaking down Casino Night written by Steve Carell! We start this JAM packed episode by explaining how Steve ended up writing this episode, we chat about Pam's wink to Jim, and Jenna shares some behind the scenes tidbits about the Scrantonicity video. Then we get some fan catches about Pam's casino night dress paired with her watch, and that Dwangela slap heard around the world. Finally, we call up the one and only, John Krasinski, to talk about his memories about this episode, the teapot, and that iconic episode ending. You can check out John Krasinski's, Some Good News on it's YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDjNX3nEfYo"
Here it is, the fact list for Casino Night! I really enjoyed hearing Jenna, Angela, and John just talking about being on the show together, it was awesome. It felt like we got to kind of see what they were like on set. Definitely the best episode yet in my opinion! Casino Night (with John Krasinski)
Episode written by Steve Carell and directed by Ken Kwapis.
Fast Fact: This is the first episode written by Steve Carell. He also wrote the season 4 episode “Survivor Man.”
Steve had a general idea for an episode where Michael would throw a casino night in the warehouse. He pitched the idea to Greg Daniels and he thought it would be perfect for the season 2 finale episode. When him and Steve had to fly to New York for the “Valentine’s Day” episode, they talked about it and made an outline for the episode on the plane. Greg suggested that Steve write the episode, but Steve didn’t want to do it at first because he had a lot going on. Greg talked him into it.
Fast Fact: This is a supersized episode. Greg did an interview for the Chicago Tribune, and he mentioned that he wished the finale for season 2 could be supersized. Fans of the show got together online and created petitions for a supersized episode until NBC gave in.
Fast Fact: Kent Zbornak hired a company that specialized in creating casinos for parties to make the casino night in the warehouse. He used all the employees from the company as extras in the episode.
Some of the cast members actually played the casino games in between takes. Jenna played Poker.
Rainn Wilson sometimes hosted Poker games in his garage on the weekends.
Pam winking at Jim in the cold open was scripted.
Jenna didn’t actually move the coat rack with an umbrella in the cold open. There was a crew member that had a clear string to pull on the coat rack.
The coat rack prank wasn’t originally supposed to be the cold open, it was supposed to go after the intro. The original cold open is in the deleted scenes.
At 4:14, all of the accountants are standing up. Most of the time when Michael came out into the bullpen to make announcements, the accounting department had to stand up for the scene in order to be in the shot.
Michael’s “why are you the way that you are?” bit is completely scripted word for word.
Jim saying “Guys, the Afghanistananis” was improvised by John Krasinski.
Mindy Kaling came up with Kevin’s band name Scrantonicity. In the original script, the name of his band was Jokers & Tokers. In the band video, Brain Baumgartner was actually playing a Steve Miller Band song. He wasn’t actually playing the drums, he was faking it, and he didn’t learn to play until the season 3 episode “Phyllis’ Wedding.” After they recorded Kevin’s band video, they couldn’t get permission to use the Steve Miller Band song, so they turned it into a The Police tribute band and Brian had to dub his voice singing “Don’t Stand So Close To Me.”
At 9:43, the shot of Jim putting the VHS tape labeled “Scrantonicity” into the VCR was recorded later on. At 22:05 in the warehouse Roy comes up to Kevin to talk about his band. Roy mentioning the band’s name was dubbed in later.
The idea behind Pam’s casino night dress was that it was a bridesmaid dress from a previous wedding she had been to. They had a whole rack of dresses for Jenna to try, but that was the first one she tried on and they loved it.
The watch Pam is wearing was always on her wrist in previous episodes, you just can’t usually see it because she mostly wears long sleeve shirts.
At 13:24, Angela breaks character in the background of the scene.
Dwight calling Jan by the code name Lan Jevinson was improvised. The original line was supposed to be “no sign of date number two.”
State Farm Real Deal: The scene where Dwight kisses Angela and then she slaps him and walks away smiling was not filmed in one take. Angela was nervous about slapping him so there were many takes where it was too timid. Rainn told her to just go for it, and it took them 13 takes of her actually slapping him until they got it. On one take she slapped him really hard on the ear, and another time she missed his face and hit his glasses.
Angela’s little look at the camera at 18:48 when she’s walking away from Dwight was an idea that was improvised on the day of shooting.
At 18:51, you can see how red the side of Rainn’s face is from Angela slapping him.
When Jim and Pam are looking at each other while playing Poker after Jim says “Wow. I think you’re bluffing,” the script reads “Pam makes a playful gesture, like “Who knows?” Jim stares at her intensely. She smiles her best enigmatic smile. Jim enjoys this woman so much, he finally has to break eye contact and shake it off.”
Nancy Carell was intimidated to work with Steve in this episode because he’s such a great actor and she hadn’t acted in a while.
Dwight asking Jan “Are you staying with Michael?” was improvised by Rainn.
Greg Daniels hosted a viewing party to watch this episode when it aired.
John Krasinski played a prank on Jenna during the shooting of the season 4 episode “Money.” John and Jenna had to drive up to Schrute Farms multiple times for the scene, and Jenna was sweating because they had to turn off the car's A/C so it wouldn’t interfere with the sound. But John was fine and about 15 minutes later Jenna realized that John turned on her seat warmer. John stole the prank from George Clooney, when he did it to John while they were filming the movie Leatherheads.
John was originally asked to audition for the role of Dwight, but he thought he would be better at playing Jim so he asked them to call him back when he could audition for that role instead.
John and Jenna both thought that the other person would be perfect for the role of Jim and Pam when they first met.
In the last episode of the show, John stole the Dunder Mifflin sign that everyone did talking heads in front of. At the wrap party, Greg told John he really wanted the sign but someone already took it. But John didn’t tell him.
Angela got to keep the painting of her that was hung up in the senator’s house.
Jenna asked if she could have Pam’s painting of Dunder Mifflin but they told her no because it was being catalogued and stored at NBC. But as she was leaving, Phil Shea secretly gave her the original painting and told her he made a copy of it for NBC.
Phil sent John a box of props including Jim’s satchel, name plate, and the teapot.
John was so nervous for the scene where Jim tells Pam he’s in love with her.
The kiss scene was filmed the night before the scene in the parking lot. The parking lot scene was the final thing they shot for the episode and it took longer than any other scene. They also played around with the dialogue a lot.
Jim and Pam’s kiss was John’s first onscreen kiss and Jenna’s second. Jenna’s first was in a movie called Born Champion.
John and Jenna were both very nervous about the kiss.
After Jenna rehearsed the kiss scene alone so she could see how it would play out, they told her to go back to her trailer until she was called, and she had to be alone. John and Jenna were not allowed to talk to each other or see each other until they filmed the scene.
All of the other cast members had to wait in their trailers for three hours during the shooting of the kiss scene.
They only used one camera for the kiss scene and it was set up in the kitchen. There were no cuts, they had to get it all in one shot. They did three takes, and Greg picked the last take to use for the show.
Randall Einhorn really wanted the episode to end with not being able to see Pam’s face so the viewers would have no idea what her reaction was.
When Pam is on the phone with her mom, no one was on the other line. Jenna wrote on her script what she thought Pam’s mom would be saying to her. When she says “Yeah, I think I am,” Jenna wrote in her script that Pam’s mom asked her if she was in love with Jim.
The cast didn’t know what would happen with the Jim and Pam story line in season 3.
A few weeks before they went back into production for season 3, Jenna got called in to do a bunch of chemistry read auditions with possible actresses for Karen.
In this episode, Melora Hardin and David Denman became series regulars.
The makers of office got so many little details right that it is pretty astounding to me. I was listening to the office ladies last night and Jenna and Angela were talking about Pam's dress in the Casino night episode. They said the dress looked like a bridesmaid dress because Pam could not afford a cocktail dress on her salary. Moreover, she wore a watch with the dress because she only has one watch. This really hit me because I can relate to that immensely. I have repeated several clothes in my life and almost wear the same watch with my outfits. No matter what the occasion is, I never change my watch. These little details really make the show unique and different from any other show. Other shows would have glammed up Pam and made her wear an expensive dress but not the office. I love this show so much ❤❤❤
Needing gambling options for a night coming up. We are about to dress up and sneak on to a casino boat to get some information but don’t know how to do gamboling well.
Lost in the Sauce: Trump, Cruz, and Gohmert team up to incite election-related violence
Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis. Housekeeping:
HOW TO SUPPORT: I know we are all facing unprecedented financial hardships right now. If you are in the position to support my work, I have a patreon, venmo, and a paypal set up. No pressure though, I will keep posting these pieces publicly no matter what - paywalls suck.
NOTIFICATIONS: You can signup to receive notifications when these posts are done.
Election shenanigans
I put the latest info on Trump's phone call to Raffensperger in this comment.
According to experts, Trump’s conduct has potential criminal exposure:
A federal statute makes it a crime when one “knowingly and willfully … attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by … the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.” A Georgia statute similarly provides that a “person commits the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree when, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony under this article, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.” …The hard part for prosecutors would be proving Trump’s state of mind, because the statutes require proof of knowledge and intent. Prosecutors would have to show that Trump knew that Biden fairly won the election, and Trump was asking for Georgia officials to commit election fraud. And it’s not clear prosecutors could make that case.
At least 12 Republican senators plan to challenge Biden’s Electoral College win on Jan. 6, when Congress is set to officially count the votes. The effort is being led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and includes Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), as well as new Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). Separately, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) is pursuing a similar plan.
"Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed," the senators said in a joint statement. “Accordingly, we intend to vote on Jan. 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed."
Their plan is not going to succeed in preventing Biden from taking office, as majorities in both the House and the Senate would need to support a challenge against a state’s electoral votes. For an objection to be made, at least one member of both the House and Senate would need to submit it in writing. Then, the House and Senate separately convene to consider the issue. Debate is limited to two hours for each objection. After debate concludes, the House and Senate vote to uphold the objection and throw out the state’s votes. If the majority of the House AND the majority of the Senate does not uphold the objection, the state’s electoral votes are counted as cast.
Vice President Mike Pence’s role is simply to preside over the joint session, opening and presenting the certifications from each state. In his absence, the Senate pro-tempore Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) will lead the session. At the end of the process, the presiding officer announces who has won the majority of votes for president and vice president.
The most immediate danger from Trump and Cruz’s doomed election gambit is rightwing terrorism and general violence: Trump, in particular, is inciting his supporters to swarm D.C. on Jan. 6. “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” Trump tweeted last week. Four rightwing rallies are scheduled, including one headlined by George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone. The Proud Boys and other extremists are planning to attend the rallies and may set up an “armed encampment” on the National Mall, according to the Washington Post. On social media platform Parler, the leader of the Proud Boys said that members will be there “incognito” and may “dress in all black” to impersonate leftwing protestors.
Enrique Tarrio: "The ProudBoys will turn out in record numbers on Jan 6th but this time with a twist...We will not be wearing our traditional Black and Yellow. We will be incognito and we will spread across downtown DC in smaller teams."
Rep. Louie Gohmert has more explicitly tried to incite violence, saying the failure of his legal challenge to the election means “you gotta go the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM.” (clip)
At the same time, pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood suggested that Pence could “face execution by firing squad” for “treason” if he doesn’t go along with the attempt to subvert the election.
Obstructing the transition
Biden’s transition director has accused the Office of Management and Budget of stonewalling the incoming administration’s team. OMB Director Russ Vought is not allowing key staff to meet with the transition team to help prepare the president-elect’s first annual spending plan, a move that could delay major proposals. Vought pushed back on the charges, saying that his agency needs to focus on finalizing the Trump administration’s regulations before the president leaves office.
“OMB leadership’s refusal to fully cooperate impairs our ability to identify opportunities to maximize the relief going out to Americans during the pandemic, and it leaves us in the dark as it relates to Covid-related expenditures and critical gaps,” [Biden transition Exec. Dir. Yohannes] Abraham said.
Earlier last week, Biden himself said Trump officials are not cooperating with his team, singling out the Defense Department for obstructing information on crucial national security issues. “Right now, we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas. It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility,” Biden said. The Defense Dept. finally scheduled meetings with the incoming team this week, after not briefing the transition for weeks.
The timing of the resumption in meetings is notable because it comes after the one year anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3. NATO officials are reportedly worried about the lack of coordination from the Trump administration: "We need the incoming Biden administration to be fully briefed and ready to deal with these very dangerous issues facing NATO's security."
Sabotaging the Biden Administration
U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack is taking steps to keep control of Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia during the Biden administration. As chairman of the boards of Radio Free Europe and Asia, Pack and his fellow members have added binding contractual agreements that will make it impossible to remove him or other pro-Trump allies from the board in the next two years.
In other words, although President-elect Joe Biden has already signaled he intends to replace Pack as CEO of the parent agency soon after taking office in January, Pack would maintain a significant degree of control over the networks.
The State Department is likely to designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism “as an 11th hour effort to create hurdles for the incoming Biden administration.” The label, which requires the approval of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, would undo a major accomplishment of the Obama administration. To take Cuba back off the list, the Biden team would need to conduct a formal review, a process that might take several months.
Such a designation would impose restrictions on US foreign assistance, a ban on defense exports and sales, certain controls over exports and various financial restrictions. It would also result in penalization against any persons and countries engaging in certain trade activities with Cuba.
The Trump administration has been rushing to finalize a myriad of rules before Biden’s inauguration. Since Election Day, the Trump administration has issued about three to four times as many new regulations as it did during other periods of Trump’s presidency. Rules that haven’t been finalized or taken effect can be suspended by an incoming president, which Biden has said he intends to do. By contrast, rules that are finalized can take months, or even years, to undo.
“As a general rule, it takes at least as much process to undo or modify a rule as it does to put the rule in place,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a professor and an administrative law expert at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. “The Trump administration is magnifying that challenge for the Biden administration.”
Trump loyalists are urging the president to stymie Biden’s efforts to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham are working to get the agreements submitted to the Senate for ratification, requiring a two-thirds vote, with the goal of failure. While such an outcome wouldn’t prevent Biden from rejoining the accords, Cruz and Graham hope it would make their resurrection more problematic.
A vote against them would signal GOP opposition to the world and, they hope, undermine any unilateral action by Biden to rejoin the agreements. One senior congressional aide told RCP that sending them to die in the Senate “would be the final nail in the coffin.”
Further reading: “Biden To Be Saddled With Trump’s Payroll Tax Deferral Mess,” Forbes. Further reading: Biden will inherit a backlog of tens of thousands of visa requests from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and a bureaucratic tangle that refugee advocates say President Trump ignored or made worse.
Trump money and properties
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is employing forensic accounting specialists to examine Trump’s finances and business operations. Vance is looking “for anomalies among a variety of property deals” and trying to determine “whether the president’s company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks”.
The analysts hired by Vance probably have already reviewed various bank and mortgage records obtained from Trump’s company as part of the ongoing grand jury investigation, and they could be called on to testify about their findings should the district attorney eventually bring criminal charges
In yet another shady business deal connected to Trump, the United States sold the ambassador’s residence in Israel for more than $67 million. The person who bought the residence is none other than Trump mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. The property only became available due to Trump's controversial decision to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to contested Jerusalem. Furthermore, State Dept. representatives reportedly lied to Congress about the sale, perhaps to hide that Adelson purposefully overbid.
For now, there is no alternative residence for the ambassador, David Friedman, Trump’s former lawyer, who currently uses a suite at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel or rooms at the former Jerusalem Consulate General when he spends nights in Jerusalem… As a result, the United States appears likely to end up leasing the residence it has owned since 1964 from the GOP-affiliated casino mogul. “It is very strange that we are now paying Sheldon Adelson,” a congressional aide told The Daily Beast. “It is not above board. We have a number of questions. Did they get two independent appraisals? Was it a sweetheart deal? Was Adelson the highest donor? Was there a reason to sell it now?”
Trump’s businesses have taken in $10.5 million of donor money over the course of his presidency. $8.5 million came from the Trump campaign and related entities that Trump controls directly; $2 million came from other Republican candidates and committees. The biggest beneficiary was Trump’s NYC hotel, taking in $3,039,979 over the four years of his presidency, with $891,003 of that in just the final four months of the campaign. Trump’s DC hotel is ramping up room prices and requiring a two-night minimum stay for two key events this month, as the president tries to squeeze more profit out of his office. On Jan. 6, when Congress is set to formally count the votes cast by the Electoral College, room rates are listed at over eight times the price of surrounding dates. Trump is encouraging his supporters to attend a protest of Biden’s win on the 6th. A room during the inauguration costs five times the normal rate, at $2,225 per night. Trump’s Turnberry Resort in Scotland posted a £2.3 million ($3.1 million) loss in 2019, marking the sixth year in a row it has failed to turn a profit under his ownership. Since Trump took over the historic property in 2014, its losses now total nearly £45 million ($61.5 million).
The fact Turnberry remains in the red comes in spite of significant tranches of payments it has received from the US government during Mr Trump’s single term in office… the US Secret Service spent nearly £25,000 to accommodate its agents at the resort during business trips by Mr Trump’s son, Eric, an executive vice-president of the family firm. Since Mr Trump’s election, the property has received close to £300,000 from the Secret Service, US State Department, and US Defence Department
A Florida state lawmaker is calling for Mar-a-Lago to be penalized - and possibly shut down - for flouting coronavirus restrictions during a New Years Eve party. While Trump and the first lady did not attend, son Don Jr., attorney Rudy Giuliani, Rep. Matt Gaetz, and Fox News personality Jeanine Piro were captured on video among the maskless crowd. Guests paid as much as $1,000 for access to the ballroom to be entertained by Vanilla Ice.
State Rep. Omari Hardy: “My constituents are not snowbirds like @DonaldJTrumpJr & @kimguilfoyle. My constituents live here. This is their home, and they're going to have to deal w/ the consequences of a potential super-spreader party at Mar-a-Lago long after Junior & wife leave here on their private jet.”
Are you ready for a Donald J. Trump Airport? According to the Daily Beast, Trump has been asking aides about the process of naming airports after former U.S. presidents. Further reading: “Jared Kushner’s family real estate business wants to raise at least $100 million in capital through Israel’s bond market… Kushner has helped spearhead a series of moves that have been applauded by the conservative pro-Israel community, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and recognizing Israeli sovereignty in disputed areas such as the Golan Heights. Kushner also has close ties to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Miscellaneous
The Census Bureau missed it’s end-of-year deadline to produce numbers that determine representation in Congress and the Electoral College for the next decade. The agency is working toward Jan. 9 as an internal target date for completing the current stage of processing records. "If we miss Jan. 9, it's hard to envision that we would get apportionment done before inauguration," a Census employee told NPR.
The final timing of the 2020 census results' release could undermine President Trump's efforts to make an unprecedented change to who is counted in key census numbers before leaving office… If the first census results are not ready until after Trump's term ends on Jan. 20, it would be President-elect Joe Biden, not Trump, who would get control of the numbers, which are ultimately handed off to Congress for certification.
I work at a crooked casino. You don't gamble with money here.
Hi, everybody. My name is Sid, and I’m an addict. It took me a long time to accept that. But when you take a job in a casino just so that you can be there all the time and try to gain an edge, you’re an addict. It’s obvious even to me. More so to my family and friends, who I barely see anymore. It’s not pills or coke, booze or heroin that I’m hooked on. I’m addicted to gambling. The casino that made me so obsessed is not an ordinary one, though. It’s far from ordinary. You don’t play for money at Fantasy Casino. You play for your dreams. I hear you laughing. But have you ever had a really, really great dream? One that got so good you snapped awake the second it started to get really excellent? Well, imagine that times a thousand. Times a million. A dream so real and so perfect that all of your fantasies become reality. Time stretches out. You feel like you are there forever. A lifetime passes before your return. Infinite wealth, the ability to fly like superman, you’re surrounded by sex and beautiful people all day as you relax in a palace built to your mind’s most exacting specifications of perfection. But then you wake up, and in an instant it is gone. The power, the wealth, the endless sex and supernatural powers. Everything is suddenly NORMAL again. And so you go back to the casino. I went back to the casino. But the problem with gambling is that you don’t always win. And when you lose, suddenly the winnings are gone as well, vanished without a trace. All I knew was that I had to have that feeling again. So I went inside the giant building and then followed the secret signs which led to a door that led to a staircase going downwards. I went down the stairs and knocked on the door marked “Private” and waited for an answer. “Password.” The voice on the other side of the black door waited for my response. “Seramth Gin.” I said the unnatural words carefully and deliberately, still not knowing their meaning. A friend had told me the password, a fellow gambler who I would later find dead in his apartment. His corpse white, bloated, and maggot-infested. His eyes were black and filled with blood which streamed from his eye sockets like tears. He had bit his tongue clean off and his fingernails were found lodged in various surfaces throughout his apartment. Like he had been trying to claw his way out of a steel box that only he could see. But I’m getting ahead of myself. That was later. At this point I was still hopeful for another wonderful dream. Still thankful for his advice to seek out the place. The door opened and I walked inside. It was the same as it had been the day before, only less busy at this time – still early afternoon. I approached the table I had been sitting at the night before. Poker – Texas Hold ‘em: Ten dream limit – the sign read. The rules were simple. You got a stack of chips. If you doubled them, you received a dream. If you lost them, you lost a dream. I wasn’t concerned about losing dreams yet, I still didn’t understand exactly what that meant. When I lost my first stack of chips, I quickly bought in again. And again. And again. Pretty soon I realized I had lost eight dreams with no winnings whatsoever. I was in a slump. A losing streak. I decided to go home and count my losses. Literally, since I had no idea what that even meant. As I got up to leave the table, the dealer looked at me. His eyes were remorseless and cold. “See the cashier on your way out,” he said, handing me eight black chips. I gulped and walked over to the glass window where the cashier sat waiting. Handing him the eight chips, he raised his eyebrows and clicked his tongue. “That’s a shame. Hold out your hand please.” Two men in black suits came up behind me suddenly and stood on either side of me, intimidating in their stature and demeanour. I did as he asked and held out my hand with the palm facing up. The cashier pulled out a strange-looking device from beneath the counter. It had a vial of vermillion-coloured liquid at the top that was attached to the rest of it which resembled a gun with a hypodermic needle at the end. I screamed and tried to pull away, but the two men grabbed me and held my arm through the window. Thrashing and elbowing them, I tried to get away but it was useless. The cashier injected the stuff into my veins quickly and it felt cold and slimy going through my system. I could feel it suddenly in my heart, turning it cold and then up into my mind and my lungs and all extremities causing me to shake and violently seize. I writhed on the floor, blood pouring from my ears and my eyes. Finally the feeling settled down into a numbness that prickled the insides of my blood vessels. It wasn’t until later, once I realized what the casino really was, that I found out what they had done. I went home with the certainty that they had injected me with something. If winning had resulted in the greatest dream I had ever had – essentially an almost never-ending fantasy – what would happen after a loss? Nightmares. That was what it would be. I was sure of it. I settled into bed that night and closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep quickly after such an emotionally exhausting afternoon. As soon as my eyes closed, they opened again and it was morning. It felt as if I had not slept at all. My mind was fuzzy and it was difficult to focus. My eyes wanted to close again but my alarm was telling me that it was time to get up for work, so I hit the “dismiss” button and hopped in the shower. I threw on my clothes and went out the door. At work I noticed a few people looking at me strangely, but I didn’t realize until someone pointed it out to me that my shirt was on inside-out. At this point I was still working in an office doing commodities trading and such lapses were frowned upon. If you couldn’t focus enough to put your shirt on properly in the morning, how could you focus enough to get the work done in such a demanding environment? Millions of dollars changing hands with each transaction meant that such trivial things were put under a magnifying glass and coupled with other subsequent mistakes each following day after that, I found myself in the boss’s office by the end of the week being handed my walking papers. Desperate for rest after days of not feeling any benefit from sleep, I went back to the casino. They knew just by looking at me how to dig their claws in further. After a couple hours I had managed to win myself a dream. They handed me the complimentary cocktail as they had the time before. I hadn’t realized the significance of it and still didn’t, despite the unusual vermillion colour of the drink. I swallowed it in one gulp and went out the door practically dancing and clicking my heels, ready to go home and feel rested again. My dream that night was wonderful. Everything I had hoped for in many ways. But not as good as the first time. I wanted that feeling back again. Knowing that it was a dream the whole time and realizing that it was going to end seemed to shorten the fantasy, made it seem hollow and manufactured. If I could win again maybe it would be like that first time, I thought. The casino drew me in again and again. I found myself a zombie most days, exhausted, at my wit’s end. Ready to call it quits for good and say goodbye. But then I would win again and it would all seem to be alright for a while. My debt kept growing and growing with nearly every trip. The hypodermic needle would be plunged into my skin and every time they had to hold me down. Every time I would feel a little more empty. A little more hollow. Waking up every day began to feel the same. Nothing had definition or purpose. “You’re here all the time,” one of the goons whispered to me as they shot the needle into my vein the time after that. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You should just get a job here and then at least you’ll be in on the secret.” I applied the next day and got an interview with the boss. I would find out later that if you got someone to apply there you got a one dream bonus. In his office, the well-dressed man was sitting behind a massive polished ebony desk. The room was adorned with paintings, sculptures, and other high-priced artwork. He had photos everywhere of himself shaking hands with world leaders, new and old, for hundreds of years. His face never changed. Never aged. “So, you want to work with us? Tired of dreamless nights without end? You want to have some relief, is that it?” “Yes. Please. Anything. I’ve been coming here for so long and it’s an endless cycle. I want back what I’ve lost but I keep finding myself more and more in debt with each visit.” “Ah, so do you understand it now, then? What the ‘injections’ are?” It finally dawned on me, sitting there. Not injections at all. They weren’t putting something in us. They were taking something out. The vermillion-coloured liquid in the vials – our dreams. “If I take a job with you, will the same rules apply? Will they still take my sleep, my rest, every time I lose?” “Yes. We can’t have the employees living by different rules than everyone else. But we will give you an alternative injection, so that you feel well-rested when you come in for your shift.” “I’ll do it. I need to rest. I need to get some meaningful sleep. My life has been miserable ever since coming here.” “Well, I can’t promise that this will help,” he said, getting up from his desk with a hypodermic gun in his hand. The vial of fluid sitting atop this one was jet-black and looked evil and poisonous. He rolled up his sleeves as he primed it and I watched a few beads of it drip oil-like out of the tip of the needle. “What the hell is that!? I don’t want that stuff in me!” “But you need to sleep, my dear worker. I can’t have you passing out at the blackjack table like a narcoleptic! You agreed to this, after all. You wanted to rest, and the only way for that to happen is for you to have SOME sort of dream. Not everyone is as lucky as you, you know. To have that wonderful vermillion fluid in your veins. Some people come to us begging to take it from them. Some of our employees for example, the ones who do the recruitment for us, are full of this black stuff.” “What?” I had gotten up from the chair and was backing away from him towards the door. But I found it was locked as he approached. “First you have to tell me the password, Sid.” “Seramth Gin.” I said the words that I had said every time to gain access to the casino, only this time I pictured the letters and rearranged them in my mind. “Nightmares.” He smiled as he injected me with the vial of black hate, and it went into my veins feeling hot and unpleasant. I began to sweat and the beads of it turned cold on my skin as I shivered. I’ll sleep tonight. I might even wake up feeling rested. But as long as I live and work at that casino, I’ll be afraid to dream again. Because now my unconscious hours are occupied by the most terrifying experiences imaginable. Nightmares beyond imagining in their awfulness. That is my fate. Unless… Just maybe, I can win one more time. JG TCC
Stokes's Bristol Nightclub incident in detail (From: The Comeback Summer by Geoff Lemon)
IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early. The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster. In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly. The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged. Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms. The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist. The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale. ‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing. It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment. Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge. That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted. The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions. Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge. Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it. Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales. Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others. This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse. Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away. These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk. If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced. If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober. The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs. The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them. This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame. Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier. There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language. What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand. That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough. If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses. As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial. The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt. Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame. This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’ So Stokes punches him. It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road. Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks. Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him. Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended. Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop. Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance. ‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’ The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’. The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back. After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed. If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence. Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued. ‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass. A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’. The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now. Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa. It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’. The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.
Working on a wild west setting complete with guns and trains. Looking for unique gangs/gang leaders who would have "dead or alive" bounties placed on them.
The Devil - a hobgoblin who is leading a band of outlaws who harass the nearby rail lines.
The Matador - A human who leads a band of minotaur who run a protection racket
The Bolts - A group of blue dragonborn who act on behalf of a blue dragon to rob banks and contribute to the dragons hoard.
Jiminy 'Slick Mick' McCraw - A gnome card shark who is a notorious haunt of riverboat casinos.
Old Hazel - A hag that sells snake-oil potions from her donkey-drawn carriage.
The Mohl Brothers - Three dwarven brothers known to rob banks by tunneling into their vaults.
The Nightwalker - A vampire bounty hunter that drains his marks. Outlawed in some territories, gainfully employed in others.
The Hide-Behind - A sasquatch-esque figure known to strangle lumberjacks and then mysteriously vanish behind trees. (This is an actual North American myth btw!)
Red Fangs - Orcs led by a War Chief Kagan Earcutter in the hinterlands
The Pack - Gnolls lead by a matriarch called The Bitch in the woods
Sulphur - a tiefling sorcerecult leader in the badlands
The Hirsch Boys - a family of hillbilly’s living in the woods. They have an almost mythical status for their depravity, and with this being DnD that is saying something
Old man Craghammer - an “intelligent” (8 INT) ogre in the mountains
Madame Smiles - A large, overweight gnoll matriarch followed by a hoard of smaller gnolls. They typically target food supplies rather than actual banks.
Lucky- A small, smiling fae/ leprechaun who makes corrupted wishes. Charming and dangerous.
Sir- A large, mechanical robot/warforged who is overly polite, but fails to notice ACTUAL social ques.
Arcane Fighter - A wizard charged with illegal discharge of a fireball.
Raw Venus - A sorcerer charged with transforming people into chickens.
Mr. Smith - A incubus who has been going around, charming those in the surrounding town.
The Alchemist's Bane: A group of homunculi who have rebelled against their creators. Some only a foot tall, while others are the size of trains.
The Golden Ducket: A group of ex-merchants who use their business know-how to scam and rob others. Lead by a large tabaxi named Splinter.
Quick Draw Beckall - A spell slinging sorcerer known for his quickened meta magic capabilities.
The Boogey Man - an oni that abducts children from the towns. Shapeshifts into a multitude of different personalities to lure children.
Shrapnel - A crazy artificer obsessed with creating weapons (and using them on unsuspecting targets)
The Wilter - A necromancer who keeps killing plants and farmlands. Legend has it the farmers that he kills turn to dust
Little Jimmy Tallfellow - Thief/card cheat that is actually 3 gnomes in a duster pretending to be a human. When locals figure out he’s a crook they switch which gnome is on top and turn the duster inside out(different color) and pretend to be a new arrival in town.
Johnny Walker - A ranger that actually protects the towns & farms in the area but because he’s usually there when there is trouble people think he’s trouble.
Charlie ‘The Archmage’ Higgins - A former theater star who travels with a group of ‘bandits’ who are also former actors and actresses. When he gets to town he claims he can drive off the ‘bandits’ for a fee, using their acting skills to fool the locals.
Gurr "Dragon's Breath" Zakk - Kobold outlaw and serial arsonist. Famed for entering fire fights with a wand of burning hand in one hand, and a wand of fire ball in the other. Also, true to name, famed for his criminally bad haliotosis.
"Lucky" Lacey Le Lewis - Human rogue. Infamous for entering any gambling establishment and immediately clearing house. Though never actually caught doing so, once accusations of cheating start getting heated, she will happily defend herself with her personal pack of razor sharp steel playing cards.
The Gargantuans - A trio of Half Giants, armed to the gills with fire arms and explosives, traveling with a massive oxdrawn carriage carrying their famous Big Bertha cannon. They sell their services at siege warfare and demolition work to any folk who can afford their massive fee. Taken from FelixLaVulpe's OfGunslingersAndGrenades
Pariah - The appearance of this Gnoll outlaw is often preceded by misfortune plaguing the area. Accidents increase in regularity and lethality. Battles end with more lost to friendly fire than regular fire. Any and all bets will immediately sour in ways were both parties end up unhappy. And Crit 1's rain like dndgreentexts.
Cappy O’doyle - World class hunter known for his marksmanship with a sniper. His family are famous for their hunting prowess but his has earned a bounty from some for peasant hunting.
Jed Flick - Former member of the military who created his own militia in search of more action. He had earned a bounty for establishing a separatist state called Fortress County.
David "Tinderbox" Black - A once-promising artificer and pyromancer who turned to a life of crime after an unfortunate head injury. His arsenal is packed with burning-shot revolvers, fiery explosives, and even a bottle of hot sauce.
The Mouse - A thieving druid who shapeshifts as a wild animal native to the area in order to sneak closer to make burglaries. Nobody knows her actual name, but she's been nicknamed "The Mouse".
Yarafaka - An orc barbarian with a giant two-handed morningstar. He's not bright, but he's strong, tough, and scary enough to make up for it. (A tried-and-true fantasy classic!)
Daughter - someone's daughter has been possessed on multiple occasions and are prone to hurting others or herself. Even when shes sober, shes mentally so broken that she can't function in society. After escaping their home despite their best efforts, the parents of this girl posts a bounty to get their daughter back
The Smiling Flamesinger - A lone (as far as known) mysterious well dressed man with clear magical ability (bard?). Wherever he goes, he robs banks, burns down important buildings, salts the earth of fields, sets horses and corrals free, and causes general chaos in his wake without a particular care in the world. Any testimony of him sees him smiling and laughing at the ruin he leaves behind: it's likely he isn't quite right in the head. He's particularly hard to pin down because of his apparent abilities as a powerful illusionist and proficient deceiver.
The Guardians - A classical group of anti-civilization druids that object to the unfair subjugation of nature in the area, destruction of various important druidic monuments, etc. After various other attempts, now they must resort to violence to the invading frontiersmen.
EED-3N "Eden" - An old warforged scout haunted by PTSD of the frontier wars. He went AWOL at some point. He shows up occasionally in towns for supplies, sometimes going rogue in a frenzy where he believes everyone in town is the enemy, here to kill him. Because of his lack of need to eat or sleep, experience with the wilderness, and general ability to stealth, he has yet to be tracked down.
Samuel "Yosemite Sam" Yosara - A dwarf gunslinger wanted for train robbery, claim-jumping, reckless discharge of firearms, square dance calling, and hunting rabbits out of season.
Jaqe "Black Jack" Shellak - A gnome gunslinger wanted for poaching, unlawful damming of rivers, claim-jumping, square dance calling, and hunting rabbits out of season.
Maak "Nasty Canasta" Noruk - A goliath gunslinger wanted for banditry, claim jumping, running an illegal casino, square dance calling, and hunting rabbits and ducks out of season.
Mark "the Hammer" Logus - human blacksmith using iron golems to trap caravans in the desert.
Jim "Chirpy" Conway - warlock with a small posse of succubi who go into towns and rob all of the men, killing any who resist
Ellie "Fangs" McCormick - Shephered Druid who leads a pack of dire wolves to raid caravans and towns
the Voice of Shadows - a squad of Shadow Monks who use their shadow jumping to get on moving trains and rob them from the inside.
the Pitts - family of Goblins who use illusions to cover their pit traps out in the desert.
Taylor Montgomery - Bard who uses Illusions to hide in crowds and do all sorts of awful things to women.
the Vice - barbarian vigilante whose victims are all found with crushed heads. Wanted bc he killed a governor (who may have deserved it).
Chooli "the cat" - native Druid cat burglar turned mass murderer after her tribe/circle was gunned down by the army.
Ted "Solo" Kazz - artificealchemist who uses bombs to derail, then raid trains.
the Earthen Wind - native Druid with a magic flute that turns people to stone. Likely angry with the white man for tainting his homeland.
Sam the Kid – A teenage boy who likes to pull pranks with a deadly twist, like instead of just placing a bucket of water on a door he place a bucket shaped mimic there instead. Also he asked for the Mayor’s daughter’s hand, and then snuck into her bedroom at night and amputated her right hand.
Tabitha "Trollsblood" Fenton - A goliath with a mean streak. Raids trading caravans and doesn't leave survivors with the rest of the Fenton gang. Tabitha has a reputation for being hard to kill, she heals so quick that rumour has spread that she's part troll.
Something Happened at Mardi Gras, and They’re Covering It Up
It’s taken me quite some time to decide whether to tell anyone about this. With Mardi Gras coming up again soon, I wanted to make sure people were warned, and know what happened. Something happened at Mardi Gras last year. And it’s being covered up. Every word of what follows is true. My friends and I decided to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I’ve always heard that the city was a non-stop, twenty-four hour, year round party. I’ve also heard that the days leading up to Mardi Gras take this to the extreme. There were three of us altogether. Myself, Chris, and Sam. We decided to arrive three days early and build up to the actual day of Mardi Gras. We drove down, taking turns at the wheel so we wouldn’t have to stop at any hotels along the way. ------------------------------ The First Night Saturday was our first night there. We’re from New Jersey, where it was about 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) when we left. But when we arrived in New Orleans, it was in the 80s, and very humid. Our hotel was right on the Mississippi River, and our room had a waterfront view. We settled in, cleaned up, and went out to walk around and check things out. We slowly aimed ourselves toward the French Quarter, checking out as much as we could along the way. I was a bit shocked that we could just buy beer from vendors right on the street and walk around, unbothered by police. We can’t do that in Jersey. All in all, we had a great time, great food and drink, and retired to the hotel around 4 am, while the city was still buzzing. As tired as I was, it took a while to fall asleep, due to the loud people partying in the hallway and surrounding rooms. ------------------------------ The Second Night Sunday, we went to check out Harrah’s (the casino), and then we made it back out to the streets for the atmosphere and alcohol once again. While walking around, we met a girl named Antoinette (Toni for short), who told us that she was a local, and that she was going to college there. Toni suggested we all go to a little restaurant just slightly out of the area, called Le Bon Temps (pronounced: Lay Baw Taw). That translates to “the good times” in English. We all headed down together, and it was a pretty cool little place. While we were there, I witnessed something that I had previously thought was only done in sitcoms. In the middle of our dinner, the door to the kitchen flew open, slamming against the wall. Out from the kitchen walked a large man, using one hand to carry a smaller employee by the back of his shirt collar. The guy being carried looked like there was something wrong with him. His eyes were half closed and bloodshot, while his face was almost pure white, completely void of expression. The larger man carried him by the back of his shirt all the way across the restaurant to the front door, where he pushed him outside and shut the door behind him. On his way back to the kitchen, the large man said “Sorry, folks, but you just can’t show up to work stoned out of your gourd like that.” There were some giggles from the patrons in reply. We all drank quite a bit that night and I ended up staying at Antoinette’s place, about a mile away. Chris and Sam said they were going to stay out for a while longer and then go back to the hotel. ------------------------------ The Third Night The next day, Monday, I texted my friends that I’d meet up with them later that evening. I spent the day with Antoinette, and we had a great time. I started wondering if this was too much for me to be getting into, allowing myself to get involved with a girl like this when I live so far away. She was definitely someone who I would want to pursue a relationship with, but I knew I’d be leaving town without her in just a few days. I decided to push these thoughts away, and let the proverbial chips fall where they may. We had two more days. Anything could happen. While Toni and I were walking back downtown later, I noticed there was a girl walking about a block behind us who seemed to be pretty out of it. I couldn’t tell if she was drunk, high, or what. Toni told me to just ignore her, as she hurried me along. Once we got to the corner where we were meeting up with Chris and Sam, things began to get strange. As we were crossing the street, I felt a hand on my back, almost like someone was pushing me, although rather weakly. I turned around, and realized that it was the girl who was walking a block behind us earlier. She wasn’t actually pushing me, though. It appeared that she needed to hold onto something to avoid falling over. We stopped and asked her if she was ok, and she just sort of grunted. At this point, I think we all became concerned. She started mumbling a bit, saying things like “My name is Emily,” “I was with friends, but now I’m here,” and “I live here, that way,” pointing in a direction that was blocked by a parade route. I asked her, “What happened? Did you lose your friends?,” to which she did not reply. We were standing right in front of a Burger King. I asked the crowd if someone could get a cup of water for her. Everyone who heard me just looked the other way and kept walking, some giving me the evil eye, as if I had done something wrong. A BK employee near the door said “You get her out of here, now!,” slamming the door shut. I noticed that Toni was staring at Emily with a very serious look on her face. Toni whispered into my ear, “She isn’t drunk. We should get out of here.” I replied, “But, shouldn’t we help her? She’s really messed up. We can’t leave her here to die.” Toni begrudgingly said “Alright, but let’s make this quick.” We each got on one side and carried Emily along with us down the block, where we came across a security guard standing in front of a parking structure. I stopped and asked the guard if they could help. I explained that we didn’t know what was wrong with her, but that she needed attention, and possibly a ride to the hospital. The guard looked at me like I was stupid. Toni gave her a shrug. The guard then re-focused on Emily. She reached into Emily’s backpack, rifled around a bit, and pulled out an ID card. The guard then said “I’ll take care of this and get her an ambulance. You can go on your way.” Toni started pulling me along, as I said “thank you” to the guard. As we were all walking, I asked Antoinette, “What did you mean when you said she wasn’t drunk? Is there something going on that we don’t know about?” Toni just said, “There’s a lot of strange things going on around here that you don’t want to know about. And neither do I.” My friends kind of laughed, and we moved along. We had some drinks and got back into the celebratory mood. Chris mentioned that he had been wanting to check out one of the New Orleans cemeteries that he had read about. Toni did not look enthused. But, Chris was already in motion. He walked over to one of the police officers who were standing guard, and asked “Hey, do you know where the closest cemetery is?” The officer looked him dead in the eye and stared for a few seconds. Then… And no, this is not a joke, even though it sounds like a bad slasher movie line… He said, “There’s one just a few blocks over that way, but you don’t want to be going down there.” Chris smirked. “Why not?” The officer replied, (And again, he really said this. It’s not just a cheesy line from a horror movie.) “They don’t really like your kind over there.” I have to be honest. I was kind of freaked out by this interaction. And Toni wasn’t looking happy. Chris said, “Come on, nothing’s going to happen. This isn’t a horror movie.” After a long sigh, I replied, “I guess it can’t hurt. I’ve heard that the cemeteries are a sight to see around here.” We embarked on Chris’ quest, much to the chagrin of the rest of the group. There was quite a change in the look of the city as we got closer to the cemetery. It went from historic New Orleans chic to… something much less visually appealing. As we drew closer, I started to see and feel eyes on all of us. As we walked the final stretch to the cemetery entrance, there were at least a dozen people standing on their front porches and in their front yards, looking at us like we were about to do something really stupid. “We shouldn’t be here,” Toni said quietly. “Well, we are here, so let’s just be quick about it.” I said. When we got to the front gate, it was locked. Apparently, visiting hours were over. “Oh no, I guess we have to leave! Too bad,” said Toni. Despite our misfortune, we could still see all of the large, creepy and wonderful burial structures through the wrought iron fencing. Because New Orleans is below sea level, bodies are buried above ground. The arrangement of the structures in the cemetery actually looked like a small city. A city of the dead. The eyes were now piercing the backs of our heads, and we knew something was going to happen if we didn’t get out soon. But, Chris started walking the perimeter of the fencing until he happened upon a crevice big enough for him to try and squeeze through. He told us to follow him. I was hesitant, and Toni was telling me that we need to leave, but I figured a quick adventure inside couldn’t hurt. We’d be gone in a few minutes, not even enough time for police to arrive and catch us. So, we all squeezed through, one by one. It was getting pretty dark now, and this was really starting to feel wrong. I was just waiting for the doors to start opening and the dead to come out and greet us. I decided I was done with this place, and said to Chris, “Alright, we’re going back. This is just disrespectful, and the locals obviously don’t want us here.” He shot back, “Scared, huh?” I ignored him. We all squeezed back out, one at a time. Toni went just before me, and I was the last one out. I had a feeling like someone else was behind me, even though I was the last one. Before going through, I looked behind me… And I could swear that in the darkness, the door on one of the structures looked like it was sliding open. I could even hear the faint sound of a cement block scraping across the ground. I’m sure it was just my imagination, but this made me decide to get the heck out of there with the quickness. We walked silently at a much quicker pace back to the more populated downtown area. The noise and lights in the French Quarter seemed to welcome us home. ------------------------------ Tuesday. Mardi Gras. Carne Vale. A Farewell… To The Flesh. Today, the streets were twice as crowded as they had been the night before. This was the big day. Tons of new tourists filled the streets, to the point that we literally couldn’t even walk on Bourbon Street. We attempted to, but got stuck in the crowd like someone had tried to fit 100 crayons into a box that was only meant for 50. If anything happened here, we simply wouldn’t be able to move or get out of the way. For the rest of the day, we stuck to the side streets. As the parades carried on, it became more and more difficult to even go anywhere else, as they were blocking the streets, and thus blocking any way for us to go in the direction that we wanted. At this point, we kind of gave up and decided “If we can’t beat ‘em, we join ‘em.” “Let’s just go watch one of the parades,” I said. The others were indifferent. We all grabbed drinks and walked toward one of the main streets of the city as nightfall was beginning to close in on us. On our walk, we came upon some sort of dance troupe in the street. There were probably a dozen people in the troupe, all dressed in dark red, tribal looking outfits. Along with their dance, a few played hand drums, and they were all singing in what may have been French. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, though. At some point, the woman in front who appeared to be the leader of the troupe caught my eye and stared with a look as if she was not happy to see me. I saw her look over at Antoinette, then avert her gaze as if she had been caught. “Let’s go,” said Toni. As we walked away, I looked back and saw that the woman was staring again, with the same unhappy look on her face. A few minutes later into our walk, we started to see ahead down the street where it was looking more and more congested with people, to the point of it looking like the main floor of a sold-out rock show. I wondered how these people could deal with being so compressed together. Toni spoke up. “We want to stay away from anything that crowded,” she said. The rest of us agreed. I said, “Well, let’s just get a little closer. We don’t have to get right in the pit, but I do want to see what’s so exciting over there.” We kept walking. As we got closer, something started to seem a bit more clear. Not all of the people were making noise because they were having fun. Some of the merry-making noises turned out to be screams. As we moved closer, despite Antoinette’s objections, I noticed a small huddle of people in the center. Someone was on the ground. I hurried up to the circle and pushed my way to the inside. What I saw there left me frozen in my tracks. There were two people. One was laying on their back, motionless. The other… was on their knees, hovering over the one on the ground, and it looked… like they were eating their face. Blood was spewing everywhere while gawkers screamed in terror. Toni grabbed my arm from behind and said “I told you, we have to go!” She pulled at my arm, but I couldn’t avert my gaze from what was happening. Eventually, she pulled hard enough that I lost balance, sort of fell over, then got back up and started retreating with her. When we got back outside of the circle, we saw that there was another of the exact same scene happening maybe 20 feet away from us in another direction. “What is happening?!” I screamed. Then, the first circle we saw was dispersing rapidly as the flesh eater abandoned their meal and started seeking dessert in the crowd. Just like that, another was incapacitated on the ground, becoming seconds. But there was something else that I noticed while the thing was rising to look for its next victim… It was Emily, the girl who followed us the previous night. Toni told us that we were going to need to get to her place. As we began running, there were more and more of these things attacking and eating others. Where were they all coming from? If this wasn’t horrifying enough, I then received the answer to my question. Some of the flesh eaters were missing faces themselves. Just bone, blood and remnants of skin where their faces used to be. And they were using these skeletal faces to eat those of others. They weren’t ‘coming from’ anywhere. They were being created by the other flesh eaters. As one walked away from their meal, I saw the body of their victim rise and begin chasing their own mark. I was transfixed on this horrific, spontaneous public meltdown of society happening right before our eyes, when I was suddenly thrust to the ground with great force. I never saw it coming. I had no idea what was happening. I eventually focused, and realized that I had one of these faceless flesh eaters hovering over me. Blood was dripping from their jowls onto my face. I knew it was all over for me. Before I could even scream, Antoinette suddenly appeared face to face with the creature hovering over me. Except, she looked different. Her eyes were blood red, and she appeared to have a large set of fang-like teeth protruding from her open mouth. She used one hand to pick up the creature, bringing it face to face with her. She stared directly into its eyes and let out a guttural, terrifying sound like I’ve ever heard. Whatever this was… The creature was afraid of Toni. She dropped it, and it scrambled off immediately. She looked at me with her new face and shouted, “Get up and follow me. They won’t touch you now.” We ran behind her the rest of the way, tears in my eyes as I tried to figure out what was happening. When we got to her place, Toni locked the doors, and then shook some sort of liquid out of a bottle onto the floor in front of each of the doorways and windows. “This won’t be over until morning,” she said. Her face was back to normal now. We all stayed together in the living room that night. I knew that Toni would keep us safe. When daylight broke, she alerted us that it should be safe now, but that we needed to leave the city and go home immediately. We piled into her car so that she could drive us back to ours at the hotel. As we drove, I noticed that the streets were now empty, save for what appeared to be clean-up crews picking up the aftermath. Some were power washing the ground where there appeared to be dark stains. There were no bodies, and no flesh eaters out seeking breakfast, from what I could see. We were all dead silent for the entire drive, focused on what was happening outside our windows. Toni turned on the radio to a news station, and they were reporting that several people had died in what they called “parade float accidents” the prior day. As Toni said goodbye to us, she hugged me and put a note in my pocket. I haven’t had the courage to read it yet. CHX
(37M) Just finalized divorce yesterday, and it feels great AMA
I wish I had found this sub years ago. Reading through these posts is really eye-opening and I see so many similarities to my own marriage. Long post ahead. I married at 18 for all the wrong reasons. She was 21. We were high school sweethearts. We were in love, but, in retrospect, neither of us were ready to get married. I kind of knew it at the time, but I went against my gut and did it anyway. We were married for 19 years. No kids. There were so many red flags over the years, but, in my eyes, none of them were worth ending the marriage. I never cheated. To my knowledge, neither did she. It just became a never-ending cycle of her treating me like a man-child which got progressively worse over the years. I even have a text message thread from several months ago where she claimed I wanted her to be "my mommy" (this couldn't be further from what I wanted) and that's why she treated me like this. She pushed me (not in a good way, but I'm glad she did) to advance my professional career. Any job I had was never good enough for her, and I never made enough money for her. Red flag. However, this caused me to rapidly climb the corporate ladder in my 20s. At 29 I was able to quit my FT 6-figure job and start my own business, doubling, then tripling, then quadrupling my income over the next couple of years. Certainly no regrets here. We have also been able to buy several houses, become landlords for 6 years, and pretty much live where we wanted. But she resented me for it. I was required to be at the office *a lot* and she hated that I wasn't home until 9 pm on any given weekday. Our last house was a solid 2-3 hour drive (depending on traffic) from the city center. So I often had to leave the house by 6:30 am and wasn't back until late in the evening. Yeah, she was lonely. She wanted me to watch TV with her every night (I became very disinterested in TV anyway) which just wasn't possible. I could have kept a somewhat cushy corporate job that wasn't demanding in terms of hours, making much less money, but that wasn't good enough for her. Rewind back to 2001. I put her through college and sacrificed my own college education for her. I worked 2 jobs, 7 days a week, for years to support us when I was 18-21. We were living in a crappy apartment and barely making ends meet. But she was going to make something of herself, then I was going to go to college and do the same. Like you are supposed to do. I tried to go to college while working 2 jobs for 60-70 hours per week, but it was way too much. My grades made it unable for me to advance, so I dropped out. She graduated in 2004... then never really tried to get a decent job. The 'best' job she ever had was a retail store manager for a small store (making like $15/hr) and she hated it. She was perfectly capable of making 6-figures at a corporate job, but she never even made an attempt. She hopped between entry-level and minimum wage jobs, never spending more than a couple of months at any of them. Don't take this to mean I ever really cared about how much money she made. What I cared about was the effort she put into being a responsible adult. We were still having trouble making ends meet. In 2006 (married for 5 years) I got my first big pay jump when I switched companies. I increased my income by 70% overnight and I was starting to see light at the end of the work-till-you-die tunnel. It was finally going to be good with my new income and hers, right? Wrong. A couple of months into my new job she brought up the idea of her quitting her job to be a 'full-time homemaker'. Remember, we didn't have kids and didn't want any, and she is the one with the degree and the college debt we would be paying down for the next 15 years. It started as an idea, then over a couple of weeks, it turned into her begging me to let her quit her job for good. I resisted, explaining to her that it made no financial sense. Besides, how was she going to keep herself occupied throughout the day? Laundry only needed to be done once a week, dishes only take a few minutes a day. So, against my wishes, she quit working for good and never looked back. She did take to cooking more, but she basically sat at home and watched TV. This went on for years. She knew I was against it. Without her income, we were in a worse financial situation than before I got my new job. But, (her words) because I was the man, "I was supposed to support the family" She was bored all the time. The free time gave her much more time to find things to get upset about and dwell on. For example, she would start a big fight if I left a single bowl in the sink for *me* to wash later. Or if I used the stove or microwave and she found a single spec of splattered food. Or if I turned a perfectly functional knob on the washing machine to wash my own laundry. She would absolutely blow up -- "I did [insert thing here] on purpose so I could get out of doing [the thing] in the future." Thank god we had our own bathrooms. She resented me for these things and I had no chance for retribution. She did do most of the housework for a few years, but I always did 100% of the yardwork. And almost 5 years ago we bought and lived on a farm -- got several dozen animals from horses to sheep to donkeys to ducks and geese. Just like in her professional 'career', she helped take care of them for a little while. Until she decided it was too much work. Then I was the one left by myself rounding up the animals, fixing broken fence, thawing out frozen water pipes, etc at 2 am on a weeknight when I had an 8 am meeting the next morning. As you would expect, the sex decreased significantly over the years. It was good when we were in our teens and early 20s. But she became less and less interested over the years. It went from several times per week, to several times per month, to every few months, to... almost never. She wanted sex to be very mundane. She didn't like it when I went down on her. She absolutely refused to go down on me, and never did. She didn't like it when I tried to use my hand to please her. She didn't like foreplay. She never wanted to do anything other than missionary. We talked about how to spice up our sex life for years. I brought all sorts of ideas from the table from roleplaying to toys to things on the kinkier side, but she never actually wanted to do anything about it. I had also been struggling with PE throughout my later 20s which made the situation worse. And the PE was "my fault" and "I needed to do something about it". I did see a urologist who diagnosed me as perfectly normal and sent me on my way. He suggested both of us see a sex therapist together, which she was not ok with -- because this was "my problem". Until we separated and I put myself out there, I hadn't had sex in about 4 years. Fast forward to 2018. I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer -- like fewer than 100 cases per year in the entire country. The physician knew very little about it -- the hospital hadn't seen a case of it in over 5 years -- and referred me to a specialist in a city a few hours away. It was a few months before I knew anything definitive or could get it treated. When I told my ex about the diagnosis, she preceded to inform me how I don't "have cancer" (but I did) and made it clear it was my own problem. I had an all-day surgery with the specialist to remove it -- I told her it was going to be an all-day surgery in advance. A couple-hour drive each way. Did she offer to drive me there or support me in any way? Nope. I got to drive myself there and back. Did she help me clean the huge surgical wound (it was like 10 inches in diameter) I had for the next 3 months? I even asked for her help cleaning and dressing it. She refused. So I had to figure out how to do it by myself. Did she express the slightest interest in talking to the specialist about it to get her own answers and put her mind at ease? Nope. She already knew better. This when it became painfully obvious she didn't care about me at all. And I still financially supported her 100%. At this point, she hadn't had a job for over 10 years and spent most of any given day watching TV. In 2017 she started an Etsy sewing shop -- which didn't take much of her time, but it gave her something to do. We were vendors at lots of local festivals together when those were still a thing. We were doing this almost every weekend from April through December. She didn't have more than 200 orders per year until 2020. When the lockdowns and mask shortages started in March she started sewing cloth masks. She did really well for a couple of months, doing 50-100 orders per day. I told her I was proud of her. I also tried to help her when she was having trouble keeping up. I spent a whole day helping her get caught up on orders. I can't sew, so I was helping her pack envelopes, print shipping labels, and iron decals onto the masks. She showed me how to do the iron-on transfers. It's so easy a 10-year-old could do it. I did a couple hundred of them that afternoon. She came to inspect them before they got shipped out. And she blew-the-fuck-up. I did it *exactly* how she showed me and they looked great. But she could still see a crease in the fabric where it was folded. It was "my fault" and, as usual, I had done it "on purpose" so I could get out of helping in the future. Sound familiar? I immediately stopped helping and left. I was done with her acting like a child. She is 40 years old and still acts like she is 12. Did she ever thank me for helping? No. Did she still ship the orders? Yep, so they weren't bad were they? Did she apologize for blowing up again? Nope. And I forgot to mention -- we have been basically separated for the better part of 4 years. Sleeping in different rooms in the house. I've been living in an 'apartment' in the basement of my own house. She kicked me out of the bedroom when she was throwing a fit about a short business trip I was going on. I needed to "tell them I wasn't going". She threw all of my stuff down the stairs and that was the end of that. I wasn't allowed to use the stove that I paid for. If I had food in the microwave and she wanted to use it, she would throw away whatever I had in there. She would throw away my dishes if I wasn't watching; I found them in the trash all the time. I spent the next several months thinking about all of this and much more. One thing I came to realize: in the 19 years we had been married I couldn't think of a single instance where she apologized for blowing up about something meaningless or admitted she was wrong. Not a single one. I even challenged her about it. Could she think of a single time she did either one of those? She couldn't come up with one concrete example. BTW, I apologized thousands of times. I never once blew up about anything in our entire relationship -- that's not the kind of person I am -- but I have apologized for things I said that made her feel bad and admitted I was wrong many, many times. At her insistence, I even admitted to doing lots of meaningless things that I didn't actually do just to put a fight to bed and keep the relationship in-tact. There is no point in fighting over BS. 2020 also brought on a lot of financial stress. At the beginning of the year, I had signed contracts that would make this the biggest year since I started the business. Clients were in sports, restaurants, casinos, and live entertainment. I lost all of them, and most of them are unlikely to survive 2021 without a bankruptcy. I laid off my entire staff. Our income took a nosedive. We burnt through most of our savings because she couldn't control her spending habits, and she had zero interest in financially contributing to the household. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. She made it abundantly clear she didn't care about me, and, at the same time, she expected me to financially support her do-whatever-she-wants consequences-be-damned lifestyle. I prepared the divorce papers and presented them to her on a whim when she was blowing up about dishes in the sink or something like that. I just couldn't deal with it anymore. I don't know why she acted surprised. She had told me she wanted a divorce plenty of times in recent years, and a couple of times in 2020. But she never had the balls to do it. This was something I had been thinking about for a few years, but I was likely to be on the hook for $10k/month in alimony for the rest of my life if it weren't for COVID. We live in a midwest state with divorce case-law which strongly favors women, and I have lots of male friends/colleagues who got screwed royally in a divorce -- even if their spouse cheated. So it was kind of the perfect storm. Depleted savings and drastically reduced income meant there was nothing for the court to grant. All we really had left was retirement savings and home equity. The house sale is closing in 10 days and we already liquidated the 401k, which she used to buy her own house. That was everything. Sorry for the long post, but I needed to rant to some strangers on the internet. There is obviously much more to tell over 19 years of marriage, but I'll leave it here for the sake of brevity. This post may sound very one-sided, but I really tried to keep it together. I tried to be a good husband. To give my wife what she wanted. To be there for her when she needed me. To make her happy, at the expense of my own happiness. Happy wife, happy life, right? As I put in the title, the court granted dissolution yesterday. It was very easy. No attorneys, we didn't fight about any remaining property. We each own our own vehicles free and clear and had no interest in the other's. She stole a few thousand more dollars from our joint account and sold some valuable things without my permission, but it wasn't worth fighting over. I just let it go. I'm finally free and I feel better than I have in years. Ask me anything.
Attention gamblers, Bright Lights Casino is scamming you!!!
I don't mean to brag when I say I've been to Vegas once or twice. That's why I was so appalled when I visited the latest gaming addition to our city. Friends and neighbors, be forewarned; while this casino may look fun, it is surely a scam:
Hot Potato, while a fun summertime activity, is not a recognized game by the National Casino Association (NCA). The casino tosser can literally just say you had the hot potato whenever they want, there's no way to win.
Similarly, Duck Duck Goose is not a National Casino Association game. It is possible to win this one, but you really have no control over it, you're basically paying $10 for each round ($20 if you're doing it on Friday nights). The house literally always wins.
While Capture the Flag was added to the NCA's list of official games in 2016, I suspect that the casino has been up to weird shenanigans by having its staff dress like they're tourists and compete for the opposing team. Notice how they always know when and where to get the flag.
It seems silly that I have to say this at all, but not only is fingerpainting not an NCA-approved game, it's not a game at all. It's just painting, it's just art. There's no way to "win" it.
Off that last point, the casino doesn't offer paper towels or anything to guests after they're done with fingerpainting. That's why the cards are all smudged at blackjack.
Off THAT last point, the cards they use for Blackjack aren't even your standard deck. Tulip is not a suit in playing cards. Neither is horseradish. And there should only be four suits, not seven!
Their sportsbook not only lets you bet just on sporting events happening at Eastern Kentucky University, but they aren't even the school's NCAA-affiliated sports, they're just the weird social ones like rec dodgeball and quidditch. (Maybe I shouldn't complain, I did win $150 here)
The casino doesn't have a "theme," but I noticed the staff was all dressed in a familiar way. Only until I got home did I realize that they were wearing the same uniforms (red shirt, khakis) that the kids wear to school in season 4 of "The Wire." That show has been off the air for like 15 years! WTF?
Strangely enough, none of the TVs in the guest rooms have HBO.
He works full time and is a pig. Won't lift a finger around the house. Leaves his literal garbage everywhere. If I bag up trash and set it outside, he'll walk around it and refuse to take it around the house to the cans on his many 20+ minute smoke breaks. Weekends are soul crushing because the house can be as nearly spotless as a house can be with a toddler and by Sunday it's completely trashed because I refuse to clean up after him and he refuses to grab a vacuum and suck up the food mess both HIM and the toddler left in the living room, kitchen, dining room, and even the bathroom sometimes. This man even refuses to wipe off his shit smears on the toilet bowl and regularly splatters shit up onto the underside of the seat. I haven't cleaned "his" toilet in months and there's a nasty brown ring in it cause he leaves his piss in there for days and only flushes if he shits but won't make sure it all went down so sometimes there's still shit floating in there. Unfortunately its the bathroom with the tub so I have to clean the tub for my kid and I to bathe. He had four days off for Christmas and again for New Years. God strike me dead if I'm lying that my socks were brown and crusted from the crumbs of food and mud he tracked in. There's a bench and a boot tray by the door. I watched him come in, step OVER the boot mat right in front of the door, walk through the living room, stop to scrape his boots on the living room rug his daughter lays on and plays on all day, and then trip down the hall to our room with light tan carpet. The mud stains on the rug are still there because I don't own a carpet cleaner and the rentals are out right now. I fully believe he does this om purpose as a way to blatantly disrespect me and tell me to go fuck myself. Over his four day Christmas vacation, he walked out the door and disappeared for 11 hours. When I asked him where he was, he told me he was two towns over (2 hours one way) with his mom shopping. He just walked out the door and decided for me that I wasn't going to get to enjoy any time for myself and that I was going to parent alone. He didn't even ask how our kid was doing. Over his four day New Years vacation, he pulled thr disappearing act TWICE. On New Years eve he decided he was going to go to the casino with his mom. Never mentioned this or asked how I felt about it. Just walked out the door and left the toddler with me. Never asked how she was doing. Came home at 3am. On New Years day, I woke him up at 8 am and he got mad because he had gotten in late. Not my problem. He then stormed around the house for a few hours until his mom called him to ask if he wanted lunch. He didn't talk about it with me. I overheard it (she was on speaker) and he just started getting dressed. When I asked where he was going with his mom, he said "No where." So he's lying. Okay. So I call her up and ask if she'd like to hang oit with her grand daughter and she says yes! Send her with him! (I told her I needed to get some work done without her up my ass). This pisses him off and he goes and sits in his car so that I am forced to get her ready and her bags packed with snacks and clothes and diapers and toys and I put her in the seat and kiss her goodbye. Not even 40 minutes later he bangs open the door and she's crying. He rants about how she was a BRAT the entire time and embarrassed him and blah blah blah. Shit I deal with daily because she's a toddler and that's what they do. He puts her down, dumps her bags down, and walks out the door. He's gone from 2pm to 1am. He just decided for me that he was going to force me to care for her instead of getting my work done because he didn't want to parent that day. So the next day, Saturday, I wake up before the two of them, set the monitor right next to him on full volume, and walk out the door. I got some work done, groomed my dog (takes an hour just to dry him after a bath and then I gave him a hair cut), sat in a parking lot with a hot lunch, browsed a Home Goods. I was gone 5 hours and I was dying to get back home. I never called to ask how she was and I desperately wanted to. I went back home to a fucking pig sty of a house. She was also filthy from feeding herself a messy lunch and not being cleaned up after. She was also over tired and sobbing when she saw me because of course he didn't put her down for a nap. How the hell am I supposed to enjoy being "off duty" and doing things I want to get done or just playing hooky from parenting? I thought about getting a hotel room just for me, but I'd be miserable sitting in a room all by myself constantly fighting the urge to video call to see her. And then I know I'd go home to even more work than would have happened if I had just stayed. How do I manage to act like a man who clearly wants to skip out on parenting every chance he can even just for one day/night???
I was asked to make a post about some stories within the Casino grounds so I thought I'd share. I have many so I'll do my best to pick the better ones. Some back information: I've been a Casino Dealer for 11 years, I've been a supervisor for five years, and I've been a Surveillance Operator for one year. I've worked at three properties, none of which are connected or owned by the same company. I've worked on : Government/Private/Native American owned casinos.
From Hero to Zero.
At my first Casino, I was one of the first group of people who were trained to deal Roulette . After 4 weeks of working 6PM-3AM then doing roulette training from 3AM-8AM (Not paid) , I actually really enjoyed the game and after about six months I became extremely quick at the number game and the pace of the action was steady with very low margin of errors. Young man walks in, cashes in for $500. He buys in for $2 chips and just loads the board. After a few spins and pretty decent hits, he then changes his chips from $2 to 5$ then to $10 and racks his winnings up to $10,000. It was then, five spins in a row, he loaded the board with some pretty gross bets, and every spin I would hit the ONE number with either NO CHIPS on it, or maybe 1 chip , He lost all $10,000 in a matter of minutes. He leaves , and I go on break. After my break I was going back to the same table and wouldn't you know it, the same young man walks in and cashes in another $500. He tells me he just sold his car outside and this is all that he had left. So we do the same deal, buys in for $2 chips, then slowly starts betting $5 chips, $10, $25...and he makes $10,000 AGAIN. Within the next 25 minutes it was straight agony. Every spin, same thing, he would bet $2500 in chips, and win only $250, $400, and after about a half hour he lost it all . Never saw the guy again. 2) Man down At this property, we are 24 hours for table games. It's currently 5AM , and I'm dealing some $25 Blackjack to this guy. He's probably early thirties , heavy guy. He's sober as can be, but right away I can tell he's been losing. We know how much you've bought in for, how much your down, or up, and I could see he was down $2000+. After about twenty minutes of pure losing, his temper starts to flare.At this point I now have two other guests at my table. Drinking coffee, not saying a word, just losing their money. After losing hand, after hand, this guy looks me straight in the eye, seized up, starts shaking, he can't move. He tries to punch towards me and smashes his stack of chips all over the place and falls backwards to the floor. I call for security, we cannot touch him due to liability . I can't move from my table because, well, liability / casino cash property, all I can do is try to talk to him. As I'm doing so, these other two woman who are sitting at my table just look at me and one says "OK, dealer, cmon lets go " as she taps the table telling me to start dealing and forget about the guy having a stroke on the floor. As security takes him to the ambulance out front, I had to stay behind for a couple minutes and give a statement. I go on break. I come back, and 45 minutes later, he comes right back in with a oxygen tank and keeps gambling for the remainder of the morning. 3) You get a dildo, and YOU get a dildo! On a late summer Saturday night, we had a large event for these massive muscle guys/strongman competition type thing. After their show, I'm at the roulette table , and five of these boys come over to play. They were absolutely hilarious. They were feeling pretty good, cashed in somewhat large amounts and I could tell this was going to be a fun time. After about a hour of dealing to these guys, it's almost midnight, everybody is pretty hammered , I spin the ball, and all five of these guys take out these god damn (what I can only tell was) two feet purple dildos from inside their pants, and wiping them around in the air. The ladies were just loving it, one of the dildos landed in the roulette wheel and we had to shut the table down to re-calibrate the wheel to make sure nothing had been changed. I just remember that night was so much damn fun, I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I would never forget it. 4) Full Moon On this day, I was actually training dealers / supervising them on small games like Three Card poker. We opened the table at 10AM, and this older man came and sat down . He played all day. The jackpot was $21,000 and that was pretty high for this table. He played, and played and played. He's one of the players where you know he's wearing a diaper because he's been drinking coffee/pop all day and hasn't moved in eight hours. As the day went on, this man never moved from his chair. Getting closer to midnight, he was aggravated and said "I need to go have a smoke, I'm getting killed in here". He left, and the very next hand, the lady beside him was dealt the jackpot . He didn't say much, but you could just tell he just hated life at that very moment because had he not gotten up, it would of been his hand. The man calmly took his cane , his hat, jacket, coffee, and left. The next morning I found out when he did leave he drove his car straight through his bank and was arrested. 5) Slick Robber I actually give props to people who can actually pull this off. This story may confuse you so I'll try and explain things as best as possible. A lot of casinos have machines as soon as you walk through the front doors. A man walks up to one of these machines and sticks in HIS $100 bill. He doesn't gamble it, instead he hits the cash out button and gets a $100 TITO ticket where he then takes the ticket to the ATM machine to get his $100. Now remember, his Original $100 is in the slot machine. He then takes the $100 from the ATM and goes back to the same machine, and repeats this process over a hundred times. Essentially he's taking money from the ATM, and loading up the Slot Machine . Now he knows he can't do it too much because if the slot machine gets full of money, the machine will shut down and the slow attendant will have to take all the cash out. So he deposits over $10,000 , then has a small crowbar, he cracks the machine open and makes a run out the front door. To my knowledge he was never caught . But damn, that was pretty smart . EDIT: 6) Mental Health is a thing. 10PM man walks in to play some high limit BlackJack. This guy knows the game and played well. Dressed nice, drank juice/tea , a little bit of a attitude, cashed in over $10,000. When this man was half way down his buy in, he said something a long the lines of "If I don't win here tonight, I'm going to go set myself on fire." I wasn't sure if he was serious because when people are down, they tend to say a lot of nonsense. I actually left early that night, and from a third party was told he did exactly that in the parking lot. The next day it was clear something terrible had gone wrong in the parking lot . EDIT: 7) Nothing good happens after midnight After a busy Saturday night, I was dealing a mix of games, and during this story I was in the middle of Blackjack. I had one young kid (probably 19) sitting in the middle, one older male probably in his later 40's sitting beside him on his right, and I had a really nice couple in their 20's sitting together at the other side. This young kid wasn't playing just sort of watching, and ever time the old man won he would give this young guy some of his winnings. The older man, was a wine drinker, and he had black between all of his teeth, I'll never forget. He's a little drunk but nothing terrible. As the night goes on, the older man goes and uses the washroom, at which point the couple asked the young guy "Oh was that your dad?" and the young guy says "Hah, no I wish!". The couple and I just looked at each other. This old guy, was in complete control over this kid. Absolutely disgusting. The night ends, and I find out the couple called a few of their friends, and they all waited outside by this old mans truck and beat the living hell out of him. 40 years old, sleeping with a 19 year old, completely brain washed . Very weird. 8) That one co-worker where you just wish they would quit. One of our co-workers, nice guy but had a very big ego and we as employees just sorta left him alone. One day he had enough of the atmosphere and quit. Now usually when you quit, you cannot come back until you paperwork is finalized. How ever, HR was in that day, and he was given the paperwork the very next day. He came in, cashed in $1000, and made $50,000 in about a hour at the Baccarat table. My manager, was extremely annoyed, because now this guy is just mocking the casino and having the time of his life (Thanks for the big tip by the way :) ) and so he decides to call it quits. He wants to ban himself and he wants $50,000 in cash. The casino says Nope, we are going to give you a cheque. Now here's the thing, most business people will take the cheque, how ever you CANT CASH the cheque until the following monday because it's on that day where the funds are available. The casino on the other hand will cash their own check in anytime , because they want you to play. So this guy pretty much said go to hell I want my cash, and he called the police. Police show up, and management promptly gave him the cash.I though it was absolutely hilarious . 9) No good deed goes un punished I was dealing Three Card Poker, and the jackpot was around $17,000. This old man (a regular) was sitting there all day grinding it out. Super nice guy, always a pleasure to deal to. Well, after hours of playing, he stands up and says "Hey john!, can you come here for a minute?" so his buddy John comes over. He says to John "I need to go take a piss real quick, can you play my card until I get back?" John agrees . John takes the chips and I stop him and explain he can't play his friends chips, he needs to cash in and play his own. And he does. Welp, second hand out and bam, doesn't he win it. The old man comes back and is so happy, he can't believe it. John, took his $17,000, didn't say a word to his "buddy" and walked away. I never felt so much hatred in all my life. Didn't give him a dollar, not a thank you, nothing. The old man sits back down again, the progressive resets to $2500, and he sat there grinding away again. 10) The Top Knot I had this player , young guy, who was born into a fortune. One of his relatives passed away and left him a pretty big sizable amount of money, so he played poker every single day for the rest of his days. I will add, he IS a good player. I did not enjoy his company just because of the "Know-it-All" attitude, but he was good. We'll call him John. John is 5'10, and well build, with muscle. John also decided today was the day to show off his Top Knot. (google top knot if you're not sure what I mean) So he sits down, and he's absolutely KILLING the table. Every hand, after hand, after hand. And because he's in such a good mood, he's playing any two cards, calling any $500 bet, and he's just dominating. This one guy at the table decided he had enough. He got up, without saying a word and left. A moment later, he comes back in, walks behind John, and takes a pair of scissors , and cuts off his Top Knot. I for one couldn't believe it, dying laughing inside, and it just turned into one big brawl. That was a good day. 11) That one bad seed One of my best friends who I haven't seen in YEARS ended up being part of the crew. Was kind of nice to catch up. We never really got along as we grew up because he has a very high picture of himself . He wanted that 10/10 woman. A mansion, and a new Corvette. So every month or so we would all go up to the other casino to play. I myself would bring no more than $500, but I couldn't understand how this guy (we'll call him Kyle) was spending THOUSANDS of dollars at the tables. So this wen on for a few months. Well, one day, as we're closing the casino, he and I are in the High Limit room and we're getting ready to close the tables. We are told to take the chips out, count them, put them back, sign this piece of paper and that's it. Well as the supervisor was locking the tray, the piece of paper fell to the floor, so she asked Kyle to grab the piece of paper. As he bends over, a great big $500 chip falls right out of his sock. Kyle was fired immediately , but it all made sense. They offered Kyle a deal where if he replaced all the stolen chips they would not make it public. Not sure how that turned out. 12) If I ever decide to write a book, this will be the last chapter: <3 After working at my first Casino for five years, I met a Indian woman who was visiting from another part of the country. During this time I was explaining a game to her, which honestly I don't think she even cared. She explained she was visiting and sight seeing , and that was that.Well, two years later I ended up moving to the other side of the country and transferred casinos, and low and behold she worked there as a Dealer. We got married , and it's been 5 years. 13) The Tip One of our tables that we've had for a couple years had a progressive jackpot that had reached $100,000. The dealer at the table was sitting pretty lonely. Nobody really played the game because people knew it was extremely difficult to win the jackpot. My memory is a tad foggy, but you somehow needed to flop the royal flush. This young guy sits down and says to the dealer, we'll call him John. "John, if you pay me that jackpot, I will tip you $10,000" Well John started dealing, and about a half hour into his shift, he F*cking did it. He dealt him the royal. And you know something?This young lad, kept his word, and he made sure there was a audience, and he tipped exactly $10,000. That was a moment right there. That pay cheque was real nice. I think we all got about $500 more than usual. The moment that jackpot was awarded they got rid of the table because the money it was making was not near what the casino wanted. I'm sure there have been bigger tips at other casinos, but that was something special . 14) The Lawsuit Now this story I'm going to have to beat around the bush a bit due to the nature of what happened. I can't won't answer any questions that you may have on this topic other than what I have to say because it had a lot of publicity . The waitresses at this casino had to wear very thin sexy clothes. Not borderline legal, but it was noticed. One day they called all the waitresses to come in and explained they were changing their outfit to something even more sexier. Now these new dresses were very very borderline legal . The staff said No way. We're not wearing that.So , friday night comes, and the staff work their whole shift, then at the end of their shift were called into a meeting and were all fired. Welp, one of those ladies father was a pretty big time lawyer. Brough the casino to court and won. They won big. Good for them. We had no waitresses for a couple days haha. Thanks for reading along, I have many more I can add as the day goes on, those were just some off the top of my head. Feel free to ask any questions of the Casino industry. I don't really have many stories about the surveillance department because that's the one area where I can't really say a whole lot due to its privacy and contracts I was and still am under.
There’s no dress code on the casino floor of the Bellagio, but if you want in to the casino’s exclusive nightclub, The Bank, you’ll need to dress the part. From the website: “… gentlemen should make sure to wear a collared shirt and / or sport coat to The Bank. Always be mindful of wearing nicer shoes and avoid anything that can be considered sportswear: track jackets, jerseys, sports shoes, hats, etc. Remember, if you are unsure if something will work or not, play it safe.” You ... Introduction. While attending any late night casino or game night session at your favourite venue such as 777spinslot.com, you are expected to know about the proper dress code.Appropriate dressing is not only to show honour and respect to the casino guidelines but also to show appreciation for other gamers and gamblers in the casino. A night at the casino is a great excuse to get your glad rags on and we all like to dress up for a special occasion. But, if you’re not a regular at the roulette wheel, the casino fashion code ... Great Fabrics for Casino Clothing. A big night out at a casino is the perfect excuse to really dress up and look your best. We’ve rounded up the top fabrics for those looking to really dazzle at the tables, or attract attention at the slots machines! Read more Great Fabrics for Casino Clothing Dress to Impress for Your Big Casino Night! Photo Credit: Shutterstock. Thinking about getting out and stretching your legs a bit after being locked indoors for so long? Maybe you are just thinking about hitting up a land-based casino for the first time. Whatever the situation is and the reasoning behind your visit, there is simply no denying that gambling is becoming more and more popular. A ... Suitable Attire for Casino Night Between working from home and the general trend of increasingly informal workwear, opportunities to dress up are perhaps a little fewer than they used to be. One of the advantages of visiting a real-world Canadian casino is that you can slip into your glad rags, as well as indulging your risky side and seeing if you end up in the money. Jan 26, 2014 - Explore Adrianna Parson's board "Casino night dresses" on Pinterest. See more ideas about casino night, night dress, casino.
Dress for Success San Antonio 2020 Casino Night virtual ...
We have a very exciting date night planned for our 4 year anniversary!! So we decided to go shopping for each other's outfits! With NO help! Want Honest Comp... Las Vegas Top Ten Nightclubs list. XS, Hakkasan, Jewel, TAO, Omnia, Marquee, Intrigue and more.. For more information about Vegas clubs please visit https://... This is the reason why Husbands go Crazy , become late to parties...Never Underestimate a Women's Dressing Time and selection Our 2020 Casino Night virtual gala appeal message, presented by our Gala Co-Chairs, Board Chair-Lindsey Hollin and Director of Development-Stephanie Shokrian... Ready for a fun evening. SUBSCRIBE TO MY CHANNEL HERE! https://www.youtube.com/user/irievibe10?sub_confirmation=1FOLLOW ME....INSTAGRAM http://instagram.com/naomiboyerSNAPCHAT bo... Regarded as Kuala Lumpur’s trendiest shopping and entertainment district, offering everything from sleek shopping centers and five-star hotels to all-day res... My Spiritual Awakening............. fooled ya huh Dress Code Primer For Men - What to Wear for Black Tie Optional, Business Casual, Cocktail Attire... - Duration: 16:00. Gentleman's Gazette Recommended for you "Casino" is a 1995 American epic crime drama film directed by "Martin Scorsese" and starring "Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci & Sharon Stone".Casino was released o...
