Tales From The Riviera Bank: The Ball

First hot day and tempers frayed in the Riviera poker room. Steve is breaking up with one of his girlfriends via text and seems by far the happiest at the table. I have just been reprimanded by the cocktail waitress for ordering my bottle of water too slowly and the new guy directly to my left is muttering to himself darkly. There is an unnerving undercurrent to this guy. Tension and displeasure radiate from him like the insistent heat from glowing hibachi coals. He is overweight, balding, a less attractive and possibly more violent version of Tony Soprano. Looking up from the table he glares at the pickets.

The poker room is a shallow flight of steps from the Las Vegas Boulevard doors, outside of which pickets with placards march at a commendable clip in the 108F temperatures. 

Senior VP Noah Acres wanders out and is met with cries of "shirt, shirt, shirt..." (isn't "suit" more standard?) and the assertion that something is unfair. Brief pangs of guilt since I am instinctively pro-union. Maybe if I played blackjack for a bit and counted cards it'd be showing solidarity with the strikers?

Then The Ball appears.

It is hard for The Ball to look anything other than cheerful thanks to the beautifully stylized fifties grin stretched from arm to arm, and on its arrival even the gloomiest of grinders at the table briefly look less miserable. The Ball ambles around the blackjack pit waving at the punters, then pulls up short at the bottom of the steps to the main doors, apparently transfixed by the striking casino employees.

It is about this time that the gentleman to my left slams his fist onto the felt. I had lost track of the hand, being more interested in The Ball, but based on the board it seems Tony Soprano just got outdrawn. As the cards for the next hand fly around the table a vein starts to pound in his neck. Everyone has become very quiet. I can hear his dental enamel delaminate and think of Scrabble. The future victim of a massive coronary folds flamboyantly out of turn and storms off.

I glance at Steve who is watching the receding broad back of the unhappy customer. Then he leans over the table to read his name from the Bravo system.

"Jeremy!? He can't be a Jeremy. Maybe a Butch."

"Or a Vinny," I suggest.

"Yeah, but not a Jeremy," says Steve. "'Raging Jeremy?' It just won't do."

"He seems to have issues."

As does The Ball.

It's not entirely clear how The Ball got outside because the doors are not wide and The Ball is, but get outside it did. And according to a player to my right who had responsibility for watching The Ball rather than Raging Jeremy, it seems The Ball said something out-of-line to the strikers. And this is why three or four of them are now taking shots at The Ball with their placards.

The Ball doesn't care! The Ball is bad ass! The Ball wanders outside in 108F ambient (135F track?) and starts opining on industrial relations with Local 495. And sticks and stones are having no affect on The Ball thanks to the considerable padding.

Then even from my vantage point directly above a pair of fives I notice that The Ball has realized its own weakness. And as the anti-Ball contingent concentrate their attack on its north side, it has dawned on The Ball that it is a 4.3 mile roll down Las Vegas Boulevard to the Luxor where the ground finally levels out.

"On you Kat!"

I apologize, realize the open-raise from Clem-the-Rock ranges him [QQ+, AKs, AKo?] on a loose day and that he's short-stacking. I pitch my fives.

"Where's The Ball?" I say, looking up and only seeing strikers marching with their placards.

"Just passing Peppermill," says Steve as he folds and picks up his phone.

Foreclosed Upon Pets, Inc. (FUPI)

Few cities were harder hit by the recession than my recently-adopted home of Las Vegas. The combination of an economy dependent on the disposable income of others and a housing market that went from boom to free-fall led to high rates of unemployment and home foreclosures. The resulting human suffering has been well documented, but perhaps less appreciated is the terrible toll the recession took on pets.

Many pet owners suddenly found themselves with insufficient means to provide for their pets, or were forced to move into rental housing where pets were not allowed. The responsible owners took their pets to shelters; others simply abandoned their pets or left them without food in their vacated homes.

Foreclosed Upon Pets, Inc. (FUPI) was formed to specifically address the rapid increase in abandoned and otherwise homeless pets. The FUPI website explains:

Foreclosed Upon Pets, Inc (FUPI) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the rescue of domesticated animals that have been abused and/or abandoned by their owners as a result of economic hardship, including home foreclosure, loss of employment, insufficient income, or death and illness.

FUPI is staffed by volunteers who work incredibly hard to look after the cats and dogs at the FUPI shelter and to find both short-term fostering and long-term adoption for the pets that come into their care. While donations to fund their operations are always welcome (and tax deductible), and volunteers are also sought, the most important help anyone can give FUPI is to help find forever homes for the animals.

FUPI has regular sessions at Petsmart where you can meet some of their pets. Dates and times are listed on their website or you can e-mail FUPI at forecloseduponpets@hotmail.com.

Alternatively you can go to their website for currently available cats and dogs. Their adoptable pets are also listed through the national Petfinder service. FUPI also has a page at Facebook.

Many of the animals FUPI adopts out have had difficult pasts; that is usually why they are at FUPI in the first place. These difficulties range from the trauma of losing their homes and families to neglect and abuse. As a result, adopting these animals can involve a little more work than picking up a kitten or puppy at the local pet store.

The extra work is worth it. The young man below is Looey (a.k.a. Ludo Louis IX). The details of his story are not known, but he was found abandoned and in pretty poor physical shape. He is mostly Maine Coon and his magnificent coat had become seriously matted. In addition to his painful physical condition, his response to humans made it clear he had suffered considerable trauma, somewhere on the spectrum from neglect to actual abuse.

Such animals do not show well to potential adopters and Looey was in temporary foster care for over a year. His foster Mom did a magnificent job of helping heal his psyche, but he was extremely frightened of unknown people.

For the first four or five days after joining my household, Looey lived under my bed. Concerned that he would dehydrate I fed him bits of wet food on a fork. As he began to trust me he ventured a few feet out from the bed and accepted his meals from a bowl.

He now runs my apartment. In fact based on the above picture it seems his only adversary is his shadow, and he's winning that battle.

Most of you reading this will not currently have room for a new pet. However, many of you know someone whose life would be enriched through adopting a pet from FUPI. The benefits of a forever home to the animal are beyond measure.

Please share this post with anyone you know in the Las Vegas area, and if you live in other parts of the country or the world, please consider adopting a pet or supporting shelters like FUPI in whatever way you can.