Cursed With Ambition

Ojo's Bachelor Party

***I started writing a bunch of posts and left them in draft status either because I was too distracted to make them right or because I was too busy to finish them.  I'm going to touch a few of them up and post them now, but they are way after the fact.***

I can't not post about my bachelor party, so here goes.

We went to Vegas.  Looking back on the entire weekend, there wasn't a whole lot that was notable.  In other words, this isn't going to make for one of my better stories.  That's sort of surprising given that the odds greatly favored a bunch of crazy shit happening.  Maybe this means I'm old.  I'll still write about what happened, though.

We decided to do Vegas because three of us in my close circle of friends were getting married within about a year of one another.  No one else in that circle is even close to getting married, so we figured that at least one of us needed to do the Vegas bachelor party while we still have all of our teeth and organs.

There have been two other bachelor parties, now; both pretty typical.  And by typical I mean there was lots of alcohol and strippers.  Unfortunately, we live in a time when being male is unfashionable.  So things like strippers and porn have gone the way of cigarettes - way uncool.  We also live in a time (unfortunately) when women are free to express their opinions and have them actually count for something.  What all of this means is that we all got in a shitload of trouble for having strippers at these bachelor parties.  The irony is that none of us are really into strippers.  Most strippers aren't even attractive.  What they are is naked and that tends to make up for a lot.  But more importantly than that, strippers are a very thin illusion.  The truth is that strippers and strip clubs are very depressing.  Most strippers are maladjusted or broken.  The ignorant perception is that they make a ton of money and get to hang out and drink and have fun all of the time; just a step below a movie star's lifestyle, really.  The reality is that the money isn't all that great and the only way most of them can even stand to rub themselves on the fat and disgusting scumbags who patronize the clubs is to get drunk or take pills.  Anyway, I digress.  The point is that I, we, see and understand all of this.  So we don't even like strippers or strip clubs.  But, traditions being what they are, strippers are part and parcel to certain occasions - like bachelor parties.  I'm going to get a lot of groans from the female readership for that last sentence, but it would be like having Christmas without Santa or Easter without the Easter Bunny.  Except in this case Santa and the Easter Bunny wear thongs and six inch heels and pay ten grand for their boobs and wear too much CK1 perfume.

Well, rather than deal with the arguments and heartaches the other bachelor parties caused (and there were lots of arguments and heartaches) I put a "No Strippers" tag on my bachelor party and I meant it.  At the time, I felt like Han Solo right after he got a dose of sass from Princess Leia:  "No reward is worth this."  Except in my case it was, "No titties are worth this."  I added a "No Hookers" tag also when it was decided we were going to Vegas.

We were all supposed to arrive in Vegas around 9pm local time after leaving from different cities where we live and go from there to the hotel.  My flight was supposed to leave around 7 Houston time.  Well, my plane had something wrong with it and was stuck in New Orleans and they were going to get us another, larger plane that had just come in from Paris, but they needed to clean it up to get it ready.  They kept pushing back the projected flight time and we didn't lift off until after ten.  That put me touching down in Vegas around 11.  My phone does this cool thing where, when it can't get a signal, it burns a shitload of battery power.  I don't understand that correlation at all.  If you can't get a signal for a certain period of time it should shut down and try again later or something.  Anyway, by the time I arrived my phone was dead (this is foreshadowing).  I had to rely on the other guys to figure out on their own what gate I was at or what luggage carousel was for my flight.  They're smart guys, even after several beers in the airport lounge waiting for me, so we found each other no problem.  They had hired a limo to take us to the hotel and the poor driver had waited there with them for two hours.  We piled into the limo and headed to the hotel.  We immediately fell into some pretty vile conversation.  Being a bachelor party and all, we felt obligated.  Either that, or we were trying to make the driver laugh.  I think we compared the "flesh tube" similarities of the vagina and the esophagus, if I remember right.

We were staying at a place called "Bill's Gamblin' Hall" on the strip.  It doesn't sound that great and it's not famous at all so no one has ever heard of it.  In truth, it's probably the best hotel value on the strip.  The rooms were large, clean and fairly nice.  There are a couple of mediocre restaurants and an average casino on the first floor.  The biggest benefit is that it's located on the strip within walking distance of just about anywhere you want to go.  Our plan was to get a late dinner and then gamble a little bit and get to bed at a reasonable hour to conserve ourselves for Saturday night.  We ate in one of the restaurants in Bill's and then walked down to Casino Royale, which had the lowest craps minimums and the highest odds on the strip.

I enjoy gambling.  It's fun.  Fortunately, I am able to see it for what it is and I don't get carried away with it.  Gambling is very much like the stripper thing - it's not at all what it appears.  The ignorant view is that you can win a bunch of money gambling and that it's glamorous.  That's not it at all.  Gambling is entertainment, pure and simple.  You will not win a bunch of money.  In fact, in the long run, you will lose very near to exactly what the odds say you will lose.  There is no skill involved and only minimal knowledge of the game is required.  All you can do is to make the best bet available to maximize your entertainment time before running out of money.

I had a gambling budget going in to the weekend and I intended to play with 1/5 of it on Friday night.  Two of us stepped up to the craps table and started playing.  I like craps because it was the first table game that I was taught - during our long drive to Nevada from Texas on the way to the gold mine in '97 (whole other story).  For those who don't know, the game is basically just the odds of rolling anything versus a seven.  I'm not going to give a complete rundown of all the rules or scenarios, but it is the game that has the most favorable odds in all of gambling (as long as you only make one type of bet).  We had a few drinks, only two of us were really gambling, and I lost $58 in a couple of hours of playing craps.  I actually got kind of bored with it.  I'd win a little, lose a little and mostly wait on the croupiers to exchange everyone's chips.  The table was crowded so it seemed to take forever between rolls.  Eventually we decided to head back to the hotel and turn in.

We got up mid-morning on Saturday and decided to get brunch at a restaurant in the Orleans hotel called "Courtyard Cafe."  Again, we'd researched it and found that brunch there was the best value on or near the strip.  We started off trying to walk there because the map I'd studied showed that it was only a couple of blocks down from our hotel.  Wrong.  We walked basically all the way to the south end of the strip, to New York, New York hotel before realizing that the Orleans was actually not on the strip at all and way more than a block off of it.  At least we'd taken a bit of a walk and seen some of the sites.  We walked a little through the Bellagio and saw the fountain area (it wasn't running during the day).  We saw a bunch of the other hotels and casinos on the strip and generally just got a feel of the place and the crowd.  We hailed a cab at New York, New York to go the rest of the way.

Brunch was good, nothing spectacular, but good.  Then we headed back to the hotel.  Snake and I wanted to lay some money down on the Michigan State/UConn basketball game (the Final Four was going on).  He had gotten the line sheet and we studied it and tried to figure out how everything worked.  I've never bet on sports before, so I was pretty ignorant.  The spread was 4-1/2 points in favor of UConn.  A straight line bet for Michigan State paid 170, meaning that you'd win $170 on a bet of $100 by picking Michigan State to win, no points.  I put $50 on it.  If Michigan State won, I'd get $135 - my original $50 plus $85 (half of $170).  Snake put $20 on UConn and another $20 on the over, meaning that if the total number of points scored in the game was over 135 he'd win $20.  We went up to the rooms to play Settlers of Catan and watch the game (we're nerds to play a board game in Vegas, I know).  Snake and I walked down the street to the most depressing convenient store/bar/casino in the world to buy some beer and soda.  We got back to the hotel and played the game and watched basketball.  I cheered my ass off for Michigan State.  They won by a wide margin so I got $135.  Snake lost half his bet, but won the other half so he came out even.  My friend James won the Settlers of Catan game by a wide margin, mostly because he was the only one not engrossed in the basketball game.  We had been drinking pretty steadily during the games, starting with beer and mixing in some good single malt over ice.  I don't think any of us were tanked, but we were definitely laughing pretty loudly at shitty jokes.

We had dinner reservations at a nice steakhouse on the outskirts of Vegas.  We all got cleaned up and dressed for the night and got a cab to take us out to the restaurant.  We did dinner right - cocktails, nice cuts of meat, good red wine, the whole deal.  We even did desserts and port wine.  Our bill was extravagant, but what the fuck, how many bachelor parties am I going to have?

By the time we left the restaurant I could have easily passed for drunk.  By this point I'd been drinking for several hours and the drunker I get my drinking pace tends to get faster (this is a bad trait).  I wasn't incapacitated or anything and it was still at the fun/not dangerous stage.  We got another cab to take us back into town.

We didn't have a good plan for where we wanted to gamble and spend most of our biggest night in Vegas.  We'd seen a bit of the strip already.  More importantly, though, is that we were looking for value.  We're not high rollers and there were some low rollers in our group, so we weren't interested in gambling at expensive places.  We started out going downtown instead of the strip.  In 1997, when I was last in Vegas, downtown was the location of the older casinos; less glamorous, more old school.  In 2009, that's all changed.  Many of the downtown casinos have been remodeled - I didn't even recognize the Horshshoe.  And they've built this video screen covering over an entire street for at least 200 yards.  There was a concert going on by some Nashville singer and the streets around the concert were packed with people.  We walked into a casino only to find throngs of shitty looking people and high minimums.  It was anything but relaxed and cheap - in essence what we were looking for.  So we decided to head back to the strip. 

We hailed another cab, which looked like a limo.  The driver was dressed in a suit and he was some type of foreigner.  Turned out he was from Eithiopia, though he wasn't black; at least not all the way.  We were in some pretty heavy traffic so the ride took a while.  The driver started asking us if we like strip clubs and if we'd prefer it if he took us to some place called Trophies or Treasures or some strip club sounding shit.  I said, "No" as at least one other person in the party said "Yes."  We were all drunk enough now to start going back on promises that we'd made to ourselves and the females in our lives, but I was still incredulous since this had been such a major issue and I'd been so firm and so clear about it going in.  Of course, the driver, who got some kind of kickback from the club for each carload of drunk dudes he was able to drop off at the club, seized upon our apparent indecision to start selling the attributes of Trophies, or whatever it was called.  He actually pulled out a binder that was filled with pictures of the strippers, complete with all of their stripper names - Kandi, Athena, Ebony, Trista.  This served factionalize our group.  There was me who was still firmly in the "No Strippers; Fuck No." category.  Then there was someone, who I won't out, who was in the "Yeah, strippers! Fuck yeah!" category.  The other guys were going to go along with whoever won out.  So of course, that starts this raging-ass debate about male independence and the tradition of the bachelor party and the bachelor's last stab at freedom (his points) versus how times are changing and male independence isn't lost in marriage (my points).  My now-wife would be proud because I never wavered, telling them - "You guys can go on ahead.  I made a promise and I'm not fucking going to a strip club."  Since it was my bachelor party I won and we kept heading toward the strip.  I did have to admit that I was a pussywhipped poltroon though.  The cabbie was pretty disappointed.

So we get to the Strip, still without any idea where we wanted to be.  We ended up at the same casino that we went to the night before - this low end place with the low minimums called Casino Royale.  A couple of us started playing craps and the others started playing roulette.  It was cool because the roulette table was right next to the craps table so we could high five and bullshit with each other even though we were playing different games.

Mind you, we're all pretty drunk and things were starting to get pretty boisterous.  I would hear my brother say "Give me my money!" in this weird loud voice every time he won on the roulette table.  It was pretty funny.  I was drinking rum and cokes one after the other after the other after the other.  Fortunately, they were pretty weak drinks.  But I must have drank a gallon of coke that night.  I ordered a new one every time the waitress came around.  And she came around every 15 minutes or so.  We were there for around four hours.  You do the math. 

The craps was pretty slow.  I didn't lose a lot, but I did lose and it was slow and getting boring.  We lost a couple of guys as it got later and later.  Eventually I joined my brother and cousin at the roulette table.  I won pretty big early and was able to play with house money for a long time.  The early win caused me to think, "Hey, I'm pretty good at this," which is the absolute WORST thought you can have while gambling in Vegas.  There's no such thing as being GOOD at gambling.

The roulette went on for a couple more hours and we were so drunk that we knew we were so drunk.  That's when it gets dangerous.  I ran out of cigarettes and told them to wait for me while I went to get some more.  Well, that turned out to be an epic fucking quest that took way longer than it should have.  By the time I got back, they were tired and ready to leave and annoyed with me for taking so long.  They had all of the chips that I'd just left at the table.  I cashed them out (I think - the memory is a little fuzzy here) and we headed back to our hotel.  When we got there we relaxed a little bit because we had made it back to home base.  At least if we passed out on the floor of the casino here they could cart us up to our room.  We decided that we wanted to gamble a little more so the three of us sat down at a roulette table.

I won big on one of the early spins again so I was playing with house money and thinking I was really, really good at roulette.  In my drunkenness I got pretty careless and spilled my full drink all over the felt of the table twice.  They even got me one of these metal drink holder things so it would happen again.

We were sitting next to these British kids who looked to be in their mid-20's.  We tried to be friendly and strike up a conversation but they blew us off.  I thought they were rude and conceited, but we were probably visibly fucking wasted, obnoxious and annoying.  After I spilled my drink on the table for the third time they decided to shut that table down, I think hoping that I'd go away.  Instead, we went to the last roulette table that was open.  I don't know how long we sat there, but I won enough to keep my stacks about the same or a little bigger.  I was still drinking at my ever increasing pace and by now I had lost most of my motor skills.  At some point, this old Japanese guy was at the table.  His hands shook pretty badly - looked like pre-Parkinson's or something.  Plus, he just looked grey.  I formulated a story in my mind about how he was single and lonely (I imagined him being divorced or a widower), who just learned he had less than a year to live and here he was in Las Vegas, trying to live it up, when in reality he was pissing away his money in a depressing casino.  This man's strategy was to blanket the entire roulette board with chips, which if you know anything about the game is a really, really stupid way to play.  I'm not sure if the guy was drunk or what, but at one point he started throwing chips at some poor schlep who was emptying out the trash cans at the nearby restaurant counter.  Predictably, the guy lost all of his fucking chips because he was playing so stupidly and literally throwing the rest of them away.  He left and then it was just my cousin and I.

The dealer during this entire time was this Ukranian guy.  I know he was Ukranian because I asked.  He spoke with what sounded like a Russian accent.  At one point he was speaking along with the voice coming over the loudspeaker every hour or so.  "Welcome to Bills!  The rootinest, tootinest casino in the West!  Here you'll find the best minimums and the best payouts on the strip.  And check out our Wild West package specials.  Ask your server for information..."  To say that was annoying would be putting it mildly.  He would also say "No more bets" in his accent and wave his hand over the wheel during every spin once the wheel started slowing down.

At one point I leaned over to my cousin and said, "I don't even know what's happening anymore."  That should have been the cue to leave, but we stayed for at least another half hour.  When we finally got up from the table, and I don't know how I could even walk, I looked toward the door to the street and saw daylight.  And not just daylight, but what looked to be burning fucking noonday sun.  "Fuck me" I thought.  Even in that state I knew that my flight was going to come sooner that I'd like and we had to check out of the hotel at a certain time and I was going to be hungover as fuck.  We went up the elevator and to our respective rooms.

When I opened the door to my room, the door hit my brother, who was asleep on the floor, fully clothed.  When I woke him up and asked him what the fuck he was doing, he said that he wanted to make sure I was okay so he wanted to know when I came in.  I thought that was pretty cool of him to look out for me like that.  Anyway, as I was getting ready to crawl into bed, I noticed that I didn't have my jacket with me.  Now this was a nice jacket that I really liked.  It's a staple of my wardrobe in fact.  Plus, it had my expensive ass phone in the pocket.  I figured I had left it at the last roulette table downstairs.

I know what you all are thinking:  "Don't do it, man.  Don't go back downstairs."  But I did.  Somehow, and I really don't know how I managed it, I made it down the elevator and to the roulette table where we'd been ten minutes before.  When the dealer saw me walk up her face fell.  I knew she'd been relieved when we had finally left and that nothing bad had happened, as drunk as we were.  But I somehow managed to say, "Did I leave my jacket here?"  She looked around and so did I, but it wasn't there.  I had a pretty good idea of my limitations at that point and there was really nothing more that I was physically able to do at that point, so I went up to my room and passed out.

The next thing that I remember is one of the guys waking me up telling me we had to fucking go.  Now.  I told him to call for a late check out.  He said, "I already did."  "Fuck me," I thought.  Just like I knew it was going to be.  It was like 1pm.  My flight wasn't until 6, but we still had to get out of the room.  I took a quick shower and still felt like a Holocaust victim.  I manged to pack my stuff without puking and hauled it downstairs and left it with the bellman.  Two of the guys had to split right then to catch their flights, so the remaining three of us set out looking for some type of hangover cure food.

We found a hamburger place, which was as good of an option as any, but it was the most depressing hamburger joint in the world.  It was wedged in between a couple of casinos, up a set of stairs.  It was weird.  It had outdated sports themed murals painted on the walls.  You know, the basketball players had short shorts on and they vaguely resembled Larry Bird.  The guy in the hockey scene resembled Gretzky.  The burger and fries reminded me a lot of the food the cafeteria at my elementary school served.  Soy "meat" patties and cold soggy uncooked fries.  Fucking yum.  Needless to say, it didn't do a lot for my hangover or my mood.

We went to the casino where we'd been the night before to see if my phone had been turned in to lost and found.  I was almost embarrassed by the futility of asking about it.  It goes without saying, but they didn't have it.  We went back to our hotel to sit in the bar area and watch sports to kill a couple of hours before we had to head to the airport.  As soon as we walked through the door of the casino and into the gambling area, Snake drew out the $35 worth of chips from the casino in his pocket that he wanted to get rid of and without missing a stride walked up to the roulette table, while the spin was already happening, quickly asked the dealer if he could still place a bet.  The dealer hesitated just a beat but said yes, Snake plunked the chips on black ten and the dealer called "No more bets."  The ball bounced around and landed on black ten!!!  Snake won $200 just like that.  Despite my mood and lack of energy I cheered.  It was awesome.  A Kenny Brown moment if there ever was one. 

We found a table while Snake cashed in his chips.  I had a bloody mary, which helped.  I asked to use my brother's phone to call my fiancee' to let her know what had happened and that everything was okay, sort of.

When I heard her voice on the other end of the phone I was so happy; uplifted.  It sounded like such a refuge from the thieves, liars and cutthroats everywhere in the Vegas scene.  It made me forget about the way I felt at that moment and that I'd lost my phone.  At that moment I just wanted to be home and to be close to the person who was connected to that voice.  If it hadn't happened before that point (it had), I was really, really certain at that moment that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

We talked for a while and then I went back in.  We sat around for another hour or so then got a cab to the airport. The bloody mary started wearing off and I started feeling like shit again.  I drank a bottle of water, but it wasn't helping.  Finally, it was time to board the plane.  I sat in my seat and immediately started getting cold sweats.  I felt fucking horrible.  I was thirsty.  Really thirsty.  The plane took off and it took FOREVER for the stewardesses to come around with the drink cart.  I had been lusting for a Sprite and I asked for the whole can.  I drank the whole thing before they even got to the next row.  But I still felt like I was going to hurl at any moment.  I also was freaking out a little bit - I felt claustrophobic and nervous.  I tried to relax, but to make matters worse the movie they were playing was Marley and Me, which is just about the most depressing movie ever.  And not because the dog dies in the end (sorry to spoil it if you haven't seen it).  No, it was depressing to me because Owen Wilson's character is this newspaper writer and the movie tracks his life and career ascension (or lack of), his marriage, the birth of his kids, and of course, his life with this dog.  His whole life unfolds in less than two hours and the most noteworthy thing this guy has done is write about his fucking dog.  Another layer of the movie that was depressing was that I'm sure Owen Wilson read the script and learned that it was based on the book by this writer who started out as a columnist for a newspaper and he knew what the movie was and he fucking took it anyway because that's what happens to you in Hollywood.  I figured it was shit like that that was why he tried to kill himself.

Anyway, I got another can of Sprite from the stewardess (I could tell I was not the first hungover guy she'd seen coming back on a flight from Vegas) and I started to feel a little better.  We landed and my fiancee' picked me up and I'm not sure I've ever been happier to see her.

So that's it; that's the bachelor party story.  Not as crazy as you would expect, right?  The phone thing only cost me $50 because I had insurance, but they sent me some refurb or second or something because it's a big piece of shit and a source of endless frustration.  Turns out I had my jacket on when I got back to the room, so it wasn't lost; just the phone.

I Finally Had My Abraham Lincoln Dream

Isn't it written somewhere that every real American has to have an Abraham Lincoln dream before they die?  Well, last night I had mine.  I normally think that people talking about their dreams is hokey drivel and people always want to read things into dreams and make them more important indicators of a person and their psyche than reality.  I know that's more fun, but it's also bullshit.  Dreams are no mystery.  They are tied to something experienced or thought about or noticed or some faint memory, but they are not mystical.  For example, for some reason there have been a lot of TV shows about Abraman Lincoln on lately.  I thought it had to do with President's Day on in February, but they've persisted through March.  Then I thought maybe it was the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's death or something, but he was assasinated in 1865 and it's 2009...what's 2009 minus 1865...like 144?  Well anyway, it's not a round number.  So all of the shows are why I had the dream.  There was one recently that talked about the circumstances of Lincoln's burial.  I missed the first part of the show, but apparently grave robbers actually stole Lincoln's body from the original gravesite, or nearly did.  They were caught and the body was recovered, supposedly, but after that there were rumors and legends born that cast doubt on whether Lincoln's body was ever found.  Fearing another attempt to steal the body, his son arranged to have Lincoln buried in a secure underground concrete crypt.  Some of Lincoln's original honor guard members were still alive (this was taking place 30-40 years after his death) and oversaw the moving of the body and placing it in the new crypt.  Well, because of the rumors that the body wasn't actually recovered or that the grave robbers had put someone else's body in the coffin, the honor guard decided to actually open the casket to verify that it was, in fact, Lincoln's body.  It was.  So they sealed it back up and buried it under yards of concrete and that was the end of the story.

In my dream I had travelled back in time and I had become a friend and advisor of Lincoln.  It was still during the civil war, although apparently I was able to change the course of history by foiling the assassination attempt because I knew it was going to happen, even though it occurred after the Civil War ended.  Small detail.  Anyway, so Lincoln was living on borrowed time that I had given him.  Like I said, the Civil War was still going on and Lincoln was actually in the field for some reason, as was I.  We were riding around on horses and I started getting a feeling that something was going to happen.  We were in a partially forested area and we were riding far enough apart that I would lose sight of him from time to time.  I came upon a treeless knoll where I could look down on the surrounding land and that's where I saw Lincoln get assassinated in a clearing below me.  I rushed there and saw that he was dead.  The assassins never appeared, but other men and soldiers who were in our area heard the shots and the shouting and pretty soon there were quite a few Civil War-looking dudes running around.  There was a lot of shock and confusion and grief, but I was trying to keep it together because I knew it was important to preserve the site and what happened for posterity.  So I found a huge roll of aluminum screen wire and covered the whole area, cutting out holes for the trees to fit through.  That's pretty much where the dream ended and I woke up, probably because even in my dream state the level of ridiculousness had gone too far and tripped some sort of "Wait...Wait a minute..." response.

The Decline of American Business and Culture - and - The Extended List of Ojo's Million-Dollar Ideas

These two things actually happened:

1. I recently bought a mountain bike off of Craigslist.  It's a 2002 Trek 8000, which is a really, really good bike.  It retailed for $1,100 brand new.  The owner listed it for $475.  When I showed up to look at it there were two things - it was in nearly mint condition and the pneumatic shocks on the front forks did not hold any air.  I knew from doing some research beforehand that the air can go out of the shocks if the seals dry out, which happens if they sit up for a while without being used.  The owner told me that the bike had been sitting in storage for a couple of years.  I also knew that the problem could also be with the mechanism of the shocks themselves and to replace them could cost 4-500 bucks.  I gambled that it was the simple fix and I offered $350 for the bike because of the issue with the forks.  I was up-front an honest about the problem.  I told the owner, who didn't know much about bikes, that the problem could be a 30-second free fix of just adding some air or it could be a serious problem that would cost several hundred dollars to fix.  The $350 was accepted.  I took the bike to a bike shop near my house.  This is a for-real bike shop.  I went to the service counter and told them that I wanted them to look at the forks to see if they just needed air or if there was a more extensive problem.  I also told them that I wanted to pay for a tuneup, a service they offered for $70.  I thought the check of the forks would be as simple as pumping them with air and putting a gauge on the valve stem to monitor the pressure.  If the pressure goes down then the seals or the fork itself is bad.  I don't think they ever did that test, but I was okay with that because I'd tried to fill them up myself and they didn't hold air.  The guy at the service counter told me that they'd have to order the seal kit, which would take a few days for it to come in.  He didn't offer the price and I didn't ask because I knew he wouldn't know if he had to order it.  Besides, at that point I was in for a penny, in for a pound.  Two weeks pass.  I call the bike shop to inquire about my bike.  The same guy I dealt with told me it would be ready by the weekend.  That was last weekend.  Now it's been three weeks and  I'm getting anxious about it because I've got an off-road triathlon that I'm doing on March 22nd and I'd like to ride the bike a few times to train and get used to it.  I called again earlier in the week.  I've been totally nice about it, even though the guy told me wrong - by a lot - how soon it would be ready.  I also explained why I need it back really soon.  I don't think he believed me that I had a race.  Anyway, I called earlier this week and the guy knew who I was, that I'd been calling and the history of what he'd told me.  He said it would be ready "tomorrow."  "Great," I said.  "See you tomorrow when I get off work."  So I go into the bike shop, this is Tuesday, and go back to the service counter and tell the guy I'm there to pick up my bike.  You can guess what happened next.  He told me that it wasn't ready yet.  I'm pretty pissed, but I know that it is important to stay nice because the asshole route doesn't ever pay dividends.  The guy tells me that he is going to come in early the next morning so he can do my bike and then he goes into a litany of excuses, "short-handed," "customers interrupting," blah, blah, blah.  I really want to tell him - "I don't give a fuck about any of that shit.  That's not my fucking problem.  I need my bike back.  Find a way to get it done!"  Instead, I told the guy that I understood and that I'd be back the next day to pick it up.  So I go in during my lunch hour on Wednesday and I go back to the service counter.  The guy is there and he says that my bike is ready.  He goes to the back and gets it and wheels it out.  I can see that the forks are fully extended so I know they are fixed.  I try to look the bike over a bit, but it's kind of awkward because there are other customers waiting for the service guy and trying to get his attention.  Plus, the guy is uncomfortable because he knows that I'm a borderline dissatisfied customer and he's distracted by the other customers.  I can't really take a hard look to make sure everything has been done.  I ask, almost in passing, if they did the tuneup too and the guy tells me they did.  I notice that there are black smudges on the frame, which were there when I dropped it off, that they didn't clean off.  Cleaning was supposed to be part of the tuneup package but I figured that if that was the only thing they didn't get to then I was alright with it.  Most of the reason has to do with the fact that I'm instinctively nice - I don't want to impose on anyone or make them feel bad.  The other reason is that as an American consumer I am getting sensitized to take what the fuck I get and like it.  Plus, what was I going to do, tell the guy to take the bike back and clean the smudges off the frame?  Am I going to be that guy?  It wasn't a mechanical issue, which is what was most important.  I was done with this place anyway and I just wanted to get out of there.  I would clean the frame myself.  I took my invoice up the cash register to pay.  It was over $200 - $30 for two sets of new seals for the fork, $80 for labor to replace the seals and the $70 for the tuneup.  It was more that I would have liked to have paid, but it was too late to dispute it or anything now.  When I got home I took a harder look at the bike.  As part of the tuneup package they were supposed to adjust the brakes and the derailleurs, clean the grease off of moving parts and lube everything.  I rubbed my fingers on the chain, which was black with old grease, and it was dry as a bone.  They didn't even put any oil on the fucking chain!  They didn't do the tuneup at all!  Fuckers!!!  After all this shit - waiting over three weeks, being lied to multiple times about when it would be ready, making a futile trip over there to pick it up and paying out the ass - they didn't even do the fucking tuneup that I'd paid $70 for!!  Man I was pissed.  The next morning I called the bike shop and talked to the service guy - it's been the same guy from the beginning.  He's supposedly the manager of the service department.  I told the guy who I was and I heard the slightest little reaction come through the receiver.  Either he knew that he'd fucked me and that he was about to pay the piper or he just hated dealing with my overly demanding ass.  And by overly demanding I mean "expects to get what he paid for."  I decided, even after all the shit, to give the guy a chance to save face.  I asked him if I was supposed to bring my bike back in for the tuneup or what because I'd inspected the bike and it hadn't been cleaned and there was no sign of any lubrication anywhere.  Then I asked him point blank if they had done the tuneup.  His response was that he'd sent my bike to the back to where the actual service techs work on the bikes and he'd "hoped" that they were going to do the tuneup in addition to the work on the forks.  Hoping they'd get it done and getting it done are two different things.  So they hadn't done it and the guy was hoping to skate by on the fact that he had plausible deniability and the fact that I probably wouldn't notice.  He told me to bring it back in and they'd turn it around the same day.  I have since taken it back in and picked it back up.  I inspected it again.  I saw oil on the chain, but that's all I could really tell had been done.

2. I went into Home Depot last night to buy some PVC pipe to build a bike stand for my new bike.  I also needed to ask a question of the garden department regarding some palm trees that I'm thinking of buying to use at our wedding reception.  I go over to the garden center and look around for someone wearing an orange apron.  There was no one to be found.  I went back in the store and I saw this tall acne-pocked kid wearing an orange apron standing at a computer terminal.  Having worked at a Home Depot before I knew that there were two departments in the garden area - Inside Garden and Outside Garden.  I also knew that this kid probably worked in Inside Garden and wouldn't be able to answer my question.  (Hell, even if he worked in Outside Garden he probably wouldn't have been able to answer my question.)  I decided to approach him anyway - it was my only option.  So I go up to him and say, "Excuse me, do you work in the garden center?"  He doesn't even turn to look at me and says, "Yeah, hold on a minute."  And then immediately raises a store phone to his face and yells "Famisha!" into it.  I should be used to this kind of treatment by now, but it is still shocking to be treated like shit in any setting.  I think about it for a second and then I tell the kid, "Nevermind," and I start walking off.  I hear him do this "pffft" thing, which, translated, means "you are an overly demanding asshole and I don't respect you."  So I turn to the kid and say, "You know, you don't have to be a rude asshole about it."  To which he responds, "You're the asshole."  So I turn fully around and start walking back toward him and ask, "What did you say? What did you call me?"  He says, "I said that you are one."  I tell him, "We'll see about that."  Then I marched over to the customer service desk to demand to speak to a manager.  That's where I waited while the only employee stayed on the phone, apparently on hold, refusing to look at me, while pretending to help this slack-jawed old ignorant bitch on some inane issue.  As I'm standing there I try to calculate whether it's worth it to pursue.  The longer I stood there the less worth it the pursuit was.  And besides, what was going to happen?  Some tired manager who is totally burned out is going to come out and pretend to care about my problem or some snotty employee?  Is it really going to change anything?  Is this kid going to learn a lesson?  I decided to just go get my shit and get the hell out of there.  At the very least I probably should have gone down the street to Lowe's, but it's the same there.

These two situations lead me to the first of my million-dollar ideas:  The Executive Shopper's Club.  This would be a retail store and service center for a huge array of products.  Outdoor and recreational, appliances, computers and electronics, just about anything, but it would focus on bigger ticket items and things that require at least a little bit of expertise.  This would essentially be the big box retailer of big box retailers.  The customers would have to pay a membership fee, which would be pretty steep - like $1000.  The employees in each section would have to have knowledge and experience with the products.  Our training programs on these products would be extensive.  Even though the stores would be big and industrial-looking, we would have comfortable chairs and free espresso drinks and bottled water.  The customers would be treated like long-lost friends and guests.  I would personally see to it that a culture of customer appreciation was the foundation of the business.  That, and superior knowledge and advice when it came to the products we sold.  These two things, along with literature that we would produce with product information and comparisons, would essentially take all of the risk out of making any large purchase.  We would have an open return policy - no hassle, no bullshit, but there would be a standard restocking fee on items that were resaleable - no exceptions.  We would have an in-store ombudsman to handle customer disputes or problems and a large dedicated staff to deal with these issues.  Customer service in my company wouldn't be a means to an end - profit - it would be a company philosophy built around the idea that if you do the right thing good things will happen and money will come.  Inevitably, you are going to get customers who try to fuck you, and we would let them.  Once.  If a customer didn't agree with the ombudsman's decision (and believe me, the ombudsman is going to be doing what is fair) then we would still give them what they wanted, but they would have to forfeit their membership and would never be allowed to get another one.  Not only would the Executive Shopper's Club become a very prestigious place to buy just about everything - it would be a status symbol to be a member - but it would also represent the all-time best value and shopping experience ever available in the history of the world.  Imagine being able to go into a place and buy something knowing that you are making the best possible purchasing decision that you can make withough question.  That's my vision.

The other million dollar idea I had was related to my bike stand project.  People always use PVC pipe to build things, but that is a purpose for which that product was not meant.  So my idea is to create a product that is meant for that purpose.  It would be like tinker toys for adults.  A few sizes of tubes or rods and the fittings to put them together and maybe even colors.  UV resistant, durable, attractive and extremely versatile.  How has this product not been created already?

Pwned

Living in the World

I don't post about my job very often; that's by design.  I also don't post about my relationship with my future wife very much either.  Both for a lot of the same reasons.  Probably the biggest is that it could be dangerous.  I don't want to lose my job, or more importantly, my license to practice law.  And I really, really don't want to lose Audra.  So even though there are a lot of interesting and funny stories I could tell about these two very big parts of my life, I steer clear of those topics on this public forum.  This is somewhat surprising given my lack of discipline when it comes to most things, at least my my standards.

I've found myself in a lot of complicated and difficult situations in my job.  Situations where I can't trust, or don't believe, the people I have access to who are supposed to be the ones I can trust and believe.  At those times I'm left totally to myself, where I have to make the call and I know that I'll have to live with it.  For most young attorneys - at least I think this the way it works - they are insulated from a lot of front-line decisions by a more senior lead attorney who calls all the shots and bears the ultimate responsibility for anything that happens.  Not so with me.  For better or worse, I'm in a firm where the overhead numbers won't allow for that kind of insulation and security.  Either that, or everyone's just lazy.  So I've been on the front lines a lot in my young career.  I'm a cherry who's only been in country a few days and sent to lead deadly missions in the bush.

It's no accident that I'm in this situation.  In a way, I wanted it.  I've never accepted the leadership (or guidance or advice) of others very well.  My way is to throw myself in headlong and mostly get it right because of the tools I've got.  The parts I get wrong are usually only scratches and even then I am pretty resourceful at field dressing wounds.

A couple of days ago I was in a firefight and I was severely outgunned.  That's a bad feeling and hard for me to admit.  Opposing counsel, there were two of them, each had twenty years in the practice on me.  And one of them was a specialist in the area that the case revolved around.  My clients had the most to lose and they had been painted as the bad guys from day one.  To make matters worse, one of my clients, the most important one, had not shown up as he was supposed to.  I had promised everyone that he'd be there and it put me in a very bad position.

This was a mediation, which to a lot of people, and even a lot of lawyers, is a benign proceeding.  Not so, in my experience.  A mediation is like the committee work of Congress.  It's where the real shit gets done.  It's where the how much gets decided, and that's what it's all about.  Parties and lawyers alike are allowed to spew their bile and use their dirty tactics without the Rules and without a referee.  If a trial is a boxing match, mediation is a street fight.  Perhaps the worst part about it is the mediator, the neutral third.  The party line is that mediation is a fantastic development in the world of litigation.  It has proven very effective at settling cases, which, in theory, means that litigation costs for consumers of legal services should go down.  It means that there is less pressure on a taxed court system.  And it means that parties are allowed to control their own fates.  What is lost, I think, is the forces at play that cause cases to settle at mediation are fear and intimidation; mostly on the part of the mediator himself.  "Good" mediators are masters at subtle fear mongering and manipulation.  When they are in a room with a party and the party's attorney what they mostly talk about is how bad the case is for them and why they are likely to lose and what will happen to them if they do.  There is a euphamistic acronym for this:  BATNA - Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement.  Put in real terms:  what's going to happen to you if you don't whip out the checkbook today?  And, oh by the way - it's going to be real bad.

Experienced lawyers will sit back and allow the mediator to scare the hell out of their clients.  That makes it more likely that their client will pay enough to settle the case, which is good for the lawyer because it means, at the very least, if they are overworked like most lawyers, that they'll be able to get one more file off their desk.  And besides, by that point they've earned enough in fees on the case.  It's also good because the lawyer gets to look like he's done a good job when the final number comes in lower than the really scary number that the mediator has been throwing around.  Everyone wins, except for the client.

I can't play it that way.  At least not now, and hopefully not ever.  I spar with the mediator fiercely over why my client's case isn't as bad as they say and why the facts and the law of the case actually point to a much more favorable result.  Some mediators have given me some strange looks like, "Boy, don't you know how this game is played?"  I like to think that after we all leave and they break out the scotch that they laugh about me and quote from Platoon, "What we got here is a cru-sader!"  Maybe so, misguided and hopeless as it is.

What really sucks is to learn, after you've gone to bat for them, that your client is a lying thief.  It's one thing when they lie to the the other side, but when you find out (and you always do) that they've been withholding things from you, or worse, outright lying to your face, it's a real kick in the gut.  No one wants to believe me when I tell them to tell me everything, even if they think it's bad.  I guess no one believes that anyone is capable of representing someone who they think ill of.  When I think of that I think of a speech my first-year torts professor gave to my class.  He read a letter written by a Japanese prisoner of war during WWII who had been accused of heinous war crimes against American soldiers in the Pacific.  The letter was written to the American soldier who was legally trained and appointed in the field to represent the Japanese soldier at the military trial.  The letter was written to thank the American lawer and described how he had done his best to represent him and that even though he'd been found guilty and was sentenced to be executed, that he respected the effort and the impartial ability of the American lawyer to vigorously represent him despite the fact that the American knew that his buddies had been tortured and killed by this man, or others like him.  I still get goosebumps when I think about that story.

Someone once told me that I was a person of high integrity.  I don't know if it's true or not, but since then I've made integrity my ultimate fallback position. I've told clients many times when they've asked me to do something untoward that I just won't do it.  And I hope I never do.  I know every time I tell a client that I refuse to do something that I could lose the client, but secretly I hope that it builds respect in them for me, for their sake.  I always get a kick out of the puzzled looks I get that say, "But you are a lawyer.  I thought you were supposed to be a fucking scumbag."  I haven't had a client leave yet.

Anyway, I've had a rough week and I suppose this little piece is just my therapeutic venting.

Thanks for readin'.