#8.1 - Dude B and the A-hole Patrol - Bonus Material

Speaking of A-holes...

In trying to get money for the Covenant Coffee, the TV show I’m helping produce, I visited the card room at the Majestic Casino, a fine boat of questionable repute wherein patrons engage in games of chance. Craps, Blackjack, Roulette, Slots, to name but a few, and also, on the top floor in a huge card room, Texas Hold ‘em. The Majestic is docked amid the flotsam and jetsam that make up the industrial wasteland of Gary or Hammond, Indiana (I’m not sure anyone really knows which is which). Allow me to paint a picture…

The landscape is checkered with gigantic, old-wooden-barn-looking warehouses, most of which find themselves in one state or other of dilapidation, and also bland, squat, fat fuel silos in immaculate condition, protected by bleached-white walls and chain link fences. Cutting between them are a maze of single destination roads which twist around each other there, making it impossible to get where you’re going or home from where you’ve gone, or even down to the corner to get gas.

By the way, it’s damn near impossible to find a corner, any corner, let alone one that could be of some use. It’s all exit ramps and turn-arounds and access roads and drive ways. And, you have to have lived there for twenty years to know where the one gas station is - it’s in refinery land for god’s sake – they should gasoline spigots every twenty feet.

As close as I can figure it, Gary-slash-Hammond is Hell, or maybe just A-hole Nation. If that’s true, the card room at the Majestic is its penthouse suite. It’s kind of like a red velvet sweat shop equipped with blinking lights, cup holders and hair-sprayed, half-pretty dealers who don’t judge. It’s a haven for degenerate gamblers, who all speak sparingly with scratchy voices and hide behind a gray, grimy film, as if they’d stepped out of a shadow but couldn’t quite shake it all off. Half of them wear cheap sunglasses and smirks, most couldn’t make eye contact if their lives depended on it. More than a few resemble giant, flaccid penises, as if to remind humanity that their existence is, at best, the result some glitch, or, at worst, the cosmic sarcasm of natural selection. They all need a shave, a clean set of clothes, and a rap on the knuckles from a nun or personality coach.

The card room at the Majestic, for me, was like a return to the blissful ignorance of Plato’s cave, where mastery of two dimensions makes you a god. The windows look out on the industry lined harbor, reminding you that nothing but toil and strife happen outside the cave. So you sit, content to while away the hours playing 1-2, $200 limit; that is to say, the blinds are one and two dollars and the maximum buy-in is $200. If you don’t understand that, consider yourself better off for it.

What I’m getting at and hopefully I’ve lost readers like my mother and my landlord by this time in my garbled prose, but, um, ahem, I lost (murmur-murmur-murmur) dollars, which is a fair amount of money for me presently. Um, I blew all the birthday money from my mom as well as a small chunk of my rent on eight hours of Texas Hold ‘em. I was so CLOSE to winning big! Errrrrg. I know, I know, it’s as irritating to me as it is to you. It wouldn’t be so bad if I were lucky in love or something. Oh, well. I’m never going to gamble again. Really. Truly.

So now, I just need somebody loan me money to cover the remaining development costs for the brilliant new TV show, Covenant Coffee! Somebody. Anybody?

Not you again, you damn crickets…