Two months ago, I made a vow to this community that I’d post more frequently. I haven’t, and it haunts me. I could argue that managing a card room in this economy is all-consuming—it is—but I’d like to think that a veteran like me could balance my work demands like Hef juggles girlfriends. Alas, the old man handles broads far better than I handle a To Do list and as a result, my recent writing has been nothing but procedures, incident reports and ad copy. It’s dry stuff and not worthy of publication here.

That’s not to say that the past two months have been boring. Actually, just the opposite. In that time period, I’ve celebrated a birthday with an old drinking buddy, been carded at Target, been offered a senior citizen discount, hosted Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Laotian New Year parties and several big tournaments, had dinner with a Sarah Palin clone and her gay cousin, sponsored a bikini contest without girls, been on 2+2’s PokerCast as an expert on a topic I knew nothing about, feted the California Senate Majority leader, spent 25 grand on chairs, upgraded our food and beverage management and served enough alcohol to make Delta Tau Chi house check in to AA en masse. And that’s just the stuff I can save to the hard drive.

Deliverance II

So the other morning I was shaking off a sleep hangover at Starbucks skimming an article in the Fresno Bee (silly name for a paper, right?) which suggested that the area’s economic profile is more akin to Central Appalachia than that of the US or California generally. I already knew the Fresno economy was bleak with 17.5% unemployment (vs 9.5% in the US and 11.5% in California), 20% commercial vacancies, 40% declines in real estate values, three years without rain and Republicans still a political force, but the paper piled on the following fun facts:

Per capita income
US $21.5k
California $22.7k
San Joaquin Valley (home of Club One) $15.8k
Central Appalachia $13.9k

Poverty Rate
US 12.4%
CA 14.2%
San Joaquin Valley 20.5%
Appalachia 23.2%

Cool, I’ve signed up for the full ride down the river and now I’m hearing banjo music.



If I recall, the next scenes don’t work out well for the city boys...

An old friend resurfaces

As luck would have it, later that day I was at a barbecue hosted by our bar manager who did time back East as a barkeep at a Foxwoods hotel. Over charred food and drinks in plastic cups, we were reminiscing about things back East and out of nowhere she blurted out, “I miss scorpion bowls.” I reacted as if I’d been shot point blank in the forehead with a paintball. Of course! The scorpion bowl would be a perfect stimulant to the area’s economic funk and a sure hit with the crazies at Club One.

Regardless of the income data, the sheer size of our market suggested real potential. At roughly 495,000 residents, Fresno’s not quite as big as Atlanta (519k) or Albuquerque (518k) but it’s bigger than Kansas City (475k), Long Beach (466k), Cleveland (438k), Miami (425k), St. Louis (355k), Cincinnati (332k), Pittsburgh (311k) or Newark (280k). If you were given the only card room and a signature cocktail in any of those cities, would you take it? Of course, you would.

For those of you who haven’t experienced a scorpion bowl, it’s a hearty swill of vodka, gin, light rum, dark rum, 151, grenadine, pineapple juice, orange juice and lemon juice served in a handsome painted bowl with a volcano in the middle. You put a little 151 in the crater of the volcano, set it aflame, serve it communally, i.e. several drinkers each grab long straws, and put the concoction down. It’s a staple of the cheap Chinese and Polynesian food joints in New England and the catalyst of some of my finer collegiate performances. It looks something like...



Five parts alcohol, one part juice, ignite…

Heretofore, my experience with the scorp was as a consumer not a vendor, so my bar manager Googled for a proper recipe. We narrowed it down to a trio of candidates, and, enlisting our bar regulars as taste testers, honed in on a favorite that was, predictably, the most potent of the three. Unfortunately, the day after trial testing, our focus group reported brutal hangovers. The humanitarian in me argued for upgrading to better hooch, but the capitalist in me pressed to stick with the cheap stuff. When some of our regulars threatened to boycott the new drink, the capitalist finally agreed to take it under advisement. This was a relationship, not a one night stand. Besides, “No way. Never again.” isn’t much of a word-of-mouth sales pitch.

We did a few more days of prototype testing but hadn’t tried to move volume until a couple of weeks ago on what happened to be my birthday. I kept it low key throughout the afternoon and evening because we had a large charity event onsite and I didn’t want to upstage the event with a birthday parade of strippers and sycophants, but around 11p, the crowd thinned and I got called into the restaurant. A birthday cake appeared, two in fact, and shortly after blowing out the candles and making a silent wish, the bowls started appearing from everywhere.

I clearly remember the first two. Mmm, tasty. I also remember feeding $20 into the jukebox and firing up a slate of Motown classics. I remember singing along to some early Michael Jackson (“The way you make me feel!”) and dancing like no one was watching when, judging from the texts I’ve received all week, they all were. I remember at least two other employees insisting the bowl had no effect and then moments later breaking into what appeared to be some odd form of convulsions to the music. I remember a couple of our dealers making a compelling pitch that I should “invest” in their, uh, enhancements for the good of the casino and stabbing me with 20” straws to make the point. And I remember some old-timer named Doug whom I’d never met congratulating me on whatever it was I was celebrating.

Ten? Seriously?

The symptoms from a scorpion bowl sting are very similar to one from its namesake—numbness or tingling of extremities or face, blurry vision, muscle twitching and roving eye movements. Fortunately, scorpion stings, from the bowl or the critter, are rarely fatal and with treatment, the symptoms subside in several days, but this was now and I’d been stung…hard. Ok, this was a problem.

Instinctively, I knew if I collapsed on the floor for a nap like I’d done 25 years earlier at the Hong Kong in Harvard Square, my fellow celebrants would fall on me like rabid hyenas. I forced myself to my feet and stumbled back to my office. Once there, I gulped down a bottle of Evian, grabbed my suit coat and headed out. I felt myself moving down the hall from my office like an air hockey puck—gliding but drifting and careening off the walls. At the front door of the casino, I considered having security drive me the 50 yards or so to the hotel but figured if I leaned forward and kept my feet moving I could make it.

I cross the alley and once in the hotel lobby, I lurched toward the elevator and tried to maintain my balance and dignity. The night clerk would have none of it. “Did you have fun tonight, Mr. Kirkland?” “I did, Anthony. Thank you. Now quit spinning the lobby. It’s not funny.” The elevator door rung open and I fell in. Seriously, is the entire hotel spinning?

Aftermath

I don’t remember making it to my room, but I did and woke up the following morning feeling and smelling like a 47-year-old basket of fruit. So gross. I knew if I didn’t exorcise the beast, the day would be shot, so forced myself to Starbucks and then to a local park for a workout to sweat the demon out. As if I didn’t feel disgusting enough, the park attendant offered this little gem when I went to pay the entrance fee. “Are you over 62? If you are, you can park for free.” I tossed three bucks into his booth and imagined setting his little shack on fire. Burn, you cheeky prick!

As I staggered through a run in 90-degree pre-summer heat, I cursed each of my fellow revelers by name and wondered aloud how they were allowed to hold positions of responsibility or care for children. At least two pedestrians wretched violently when they caught wind of my fetid sweat and I’m certain that I looked more like a wino moving along the path than the disciplined athlete I am. After an hour or so of torture, I crawled back to the hotel, sent an abusive text to my staff and slumped in the shower for a good 30 minutes. Ok, so that’s the hangover they were talking about. Note to self: Absolut, Bombay and Bacardi…

I’m not going to say opting for top shelf liquor means my conscience is entirely clear. Brand names or not, the bowl has a mean bite to it and to introduce it without a warning label leaves me with the same second thoughts that that other Italian sailor may have experienced when set his crew ashore among West Indian hotties. “Pay that rash no mind, Senora. It’s a just a little something I picked up from the canvas sheets onboard the Pinta.” Whatever, we’re all adults and all’s fair in love and bowling.

Since we’re on topic, I should note for all germaphobes—backwash is a non-issue with the scorpion bowl. You could use this soup to scrub down a Civil War field hospital, polish off the leftovers and pass pretty much any CDC blood test. No germ, virus or other microbe can or would survive a swim in this stuff. Extend your straw with confidence. But drink carefully. And definitely don’t drive.

We’ll be introducing the scorpion bowl in the next few weeks, to much hoopla no doubt, but until the local populace stiffens its immune system, we’ll be restricting the drink to one per customer, perhaps two, but certainly no more the three in those special cases in which the patron surrenders his or her keys and signs a full release, in which cases the limit is ten for a party of four, and we’ll comp the Mike Jackson tunes and issue a nifty souvenir…

Edmond

God help me, I love an upset, and the 135th Kentucky Derby delivered. Now I'm not a ponies man, but at Club One Casino in Fresno, we have a satellite wagering facility and this year set up our Event Center for a Kentucky Derby party. When the favorite, I Want Revenge, was scratched early, I expected a yawner. Uh, no.

Stunning the crowd of 150,000+ and viewers worldwide, a 50 to 1 shot, Mine That Bird, dawdled through the first minute and a half of the race and then promptly and summarily CRUSHED the field. To give you a sense of just how unthinkable this was, consider this. Every "expert" had him out of contention with comments such as "Too slow to be a factor" and "Faces an extreme class hike." The field gave him a similar treatment.

Rudely bumped out of the gate, the gelding was dead last at the quarter mile point, almost 7 lengths behind the field. At the halfway point, he was still last and going nowhere. At the start of the back stretch, he wasn’t even in the WIDE ANGLE camera shot of the field. He then turned into a crazed equine dervish and made the other 18 horses look like trotters. It was AWESOME to watch.

If you watch the video below, at 34 seconds in, you’ll see a horse at the bottom of the frame well behind the last horse. That’s your eventual winner. At 56 seconds, he just comes into the picture still way behind. At 1:23 there’s a wide angle shot. Nope, he’s not in the picture. Then at 1:37, you’ll see a horse flying along the rail blowing through the field. The announcer doesn’t even mention Mine That Bird heading to the finish until he’s the obvious winner. You can almost tell he's got his hand over the mike, turning to the other guys in the press box mouthing "What the fuck?"



It was as improbable as if one of our Asian dealers wandered into the middle of a bar fight sipping a cocktail, got bumped by some brute and started picking guys up, spinning them overhead and tossing them into the park across the street. Awesome stuff.

Edmond