Here it is Thursday. I'm back in the game. I deposited a couple hundred last night and banged West Virginia. Easy winner. I've got it all on Michigan catchin' 7 against Indiana. I put the bet in last night so I didn't lose everything on horses today before the game started. I'm gonna make some eggs here, sunny side up (I like to dip the toast), and go for a fucking jog. I feel like shit -- and it's all Annie's fault. The bullshit that broad pulls. The nagging, the endless flirting in front of my eyes, the selfish acts of cruelty. Yesterday these reflections left me alone. Today is my day to obsess over them. What the hell am I gonna do? I have to have a clear head to throw down this blog. This jog better work. If it doesn't I'm gonna have to go to a yoga class, and I'm not down with yoga. If the yoga doesn't work I'm gonna have to hop on a plane to Berlin. Fucking Berlin!
an hour or so later....
What's the deal with these headphones you put straight into your ear? Particularly these white Apple ones. They won't stay in my goddamn ear. I look around and every broad I pass seems to have no problem at all, while I spend most of my jog putting these fucking things back into my ear. I'm gonna have to go buy a headband. I hate any form of headband, and the people that wear them. Fuck.
The good thing is I got this blog figured out by mile three. Once I get into this blog it's over. I can chill with the obsessive thoughts for a bit until it's done. So I'm firing up The Joy Formidable, strapping on a real pair of headphones, fucking sunnheiser, and doin this shit. Let's go. Fucking Saints!
Somewhere in Pasadena...Early 2008
a little after 4pm...
I'm sitting at the bar in Barney's Beanery, somewhere in Pasadena. I'm drinking a Stella and watching the first halves of a few shitty college and NBA games. I'm sitting at the right corner of the bar. I always sit here because they have three small T.V.'s, as well as a couple larger HD ones. I usually try to get here at least ten minutes before 4pm so I can have the bartender set me up with all my games. That way if someone sits down next to me and wants to watch another game he can't.... he simply can't.
I have my charger plugged into an outlet in the back, behind an old Donkey Kong machine. There's a neon Bud sign back there that's the only thing in the bar I can unplug without anyone noticing. I drop a few quarters into that fucking machine every now and then but. King of Kong...Great fucking movie.
Annie will be here, as she always is, a little after five to pick me up. This is routine. This is the thing. She works for a newspaper here in Pasadena, her first job straight out of college. She gets up around 8:15 and leaves the apartment at 8:45 to go to work. I'm living with her, and have to get up with her, because I'm not allowed to be in the apartment (she has two roomates) when she's not there. This is not her rule, it's Lisa's, this big Asian broad who owns the apartment. You see a couple months ago, a week before Christmas, I flooded the fucking apartment. And when I say flooded, I mean the bottom floor was like a giant kiddie pool. You put a little slide in the middle of that thing and you'd never have to see your kids again.
It goes like this. I'm doing laundry in the early afternoon....
I call Annie. She's pretty calm, but then again she doesn't see me standing in the middle of her bedroom with water up to my ankles. She gives me the big Asians number. Fuck. I really don't want to talk to this big Asian broad. I call her, and as I'm telling her that her apartment's under water, I hear the sirens. She tells me she's on her way and hangs up the phone. I wade downstairs and open the door for these assholes. At this point water is rolling down from the ceiling and the water level is beginning to climb. I feel like actually have a pretty good grasp of the situation and think that the only way to save us all is to find the fail-safe switch in the apartment complex. I mean there's got to be a fucking fail-safe doesn't there? Anyway, the lead fireguy leads a small crew upstairs to the water park. The bastard is carrying a piece a wood in his right hand. Isn't there a fail-safe man? He tells me a couple of his guys are trying to locate it as we speak. When we get upstairs, this guy, all done up like Baldwin in Backdraft, goes out onto the balcony with this piece of wood and tries to stop this shit. He's out there for about five minutes getting blasted, having no success. Finally, he taps out and hands the piece of wood to one of his guys. His guy's out there for less than a minute before he runs back inside. I try to be a hero and ask them to give me the fucking piece of wood so I can have a go at it, but they don't even acknowledge me. Then, the lead bastard gets on the walkie talkie and says something in fireman code I guess, since I couldn't understand a word of it. A couple minutes later this guy comes up the stairs wearing an all black fire suit with a pair of black ski goggles on. The lead bastard hands him the piece of wood. This fire sniper guy walks out onto the patio and within thirty seconds he stops the flood with that fucking piece of wood. He immediately leaves the room, never to be seen again.
It turns out the sprinkler system is so old that there's no fail-safe, at least not one that works. The fireman had to turn off the water supply for the entire street (or something like that...no idea how that works.) My goal at this point is to get the hell away from that apartment complex as soon as possible without having to talk to Lisa. But the only entrance is through this courtyard on the side of the building, and there's no away around that big Asian. As I walk by, her whole body shifts, almost jumps around and she squares right up, seemingly ready to come at me like she's Bruce Lee. Fuck I hope she doesn't know karate. I'm speechless. I feel like if I try to speak she'll smack me in the face. So I just shrug my shoulders, turn, and walk out just like I would if I was stealing a coffee from Whole Foods.
Annie oh Annie. It's amazing she didn't dump me right then and there. She's either a saint, or just really desperate for a boyfriend. At this point it could go either way I think. A couple weeks earlier, I spilled a tall glass of water on her laptop while she was at work. The thing went to sleep. I called my friend T. (because I'm an idiot who knows nothing and couldn't fix anything if I did), who tells me, god love her, to get a blow dryer and blow dry the fucker. So I take her advice, and after a couple minutes of waving this thing on top of the laptop, I notice the S key is melting. I call the Apple store. They tell me it'll probably cost around $800 to repair. I laugh for a few minutes then crawl under the covers. When Annie gets home I show her the laptop and she says, "well it was getting old and I'm going to need a new one for law school anyway." As she did then, she does now with this flood. "Accidents happen," she says. "Seems like it was the buildings fault. I think Lisa has a pretty good insurance plan." I get off with a $1000 deductible - which Annie pays and which I've yet to pay her back for -- and banishment from the apartment during daytime hours. Not such a bad deal considering.
Loitering and more Asians...
So this is my life. I get woken up at 7:30 every morning hating it. I want to throw Annie out the window for hitting snooze 80 times, but I feel so terrible about the flood I deal with it... all the while silently hating Annie for being selfish and thoughtless, when in reality she's really great and most likely the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Annie drops me off at this coffee shop on Colorado Blvd., the main strip in Pasadena. The coffee shop's centrally located. I can walk to a nice independent bookstore and my favorite independent movie theater in town. Most importantly, when the time comes, I can saunter over to Barney's Beanery.
The coffee shop is owned by a nice little Asian family. There's the Mother, Son, and Daughter that are there all day long. The Father dips in every now and then, but never for long. I like to imagine he's off playing Mah Jongg all day, while his family slaves to support his gambling habit. Seems plausible.
I'm always the first one here... always. I set up shop on the same table every day. This is my desk and this coffee shop is my office. If I come in at some other time of the day and someone is sitting at my table, I politely ask them if they can find another desk and tell them that I have a severe case of OCD and if I can't sit at my desk I may get extremely agitated. This always works... always.
When I walk in the door, the whole family smiles and says "good morning". I do the same. I love this little family. The Mother has that classic, all-around game that all great mothers possess. She seems loving and nurturing enough, but it's also clear that she's dealing with a couple teenage kids (the daughter is 19 and the son is 16) all day long and that they know better than to fuck with her. She doesn't seem to have much of a problem with them though. They both are good kids. The son seems solid. He works hard and isn't at all the angsty type. But he does spend all day playing video games with his headphones in his ear, and if his mother catches him neglecting a customer, he gets slapped in the head. Other than that he seems to get by fine.
The daughter is kinda amazing... and cute as hell. She's always in a good mood, she's clearly intelligent, and most importantly, she gets my jokes. Everyday I think about asking her if she'd like to get a drink after work. She's only nineteen I know, but I'm sure I could sneak her into Barney's. I think she'd go for it, but there's that slight chance she wouldn't, and I don't want to risk getting kicked out of my office. I've tried all the other coffee shops in town and I just don't feel comfortable in any of them. Besides, even though Annie and I just started dating, and I don't see any problem with exploring other options, throwing a sly seduction on top of the laptop and flood would most likely make for a guilt sandwich I wouldn't be able to get down. But like I said I don't want to get kicked out of my fucking office.
I get my coffee and muffin and pay my rent for the day: I usually throw 10 bucks or so in the tip jar, depending on how I'm doing with the games. Now I'm ready to set up shop and get to it. My job these days is to set up a few phony gambling accounts a day and try to run them up playing poker and betting these games. This is a full-time job with lots of overtime involved. Honestly, it's like working in a sweatshop in Cambodia.
This is how it works.....
NOTE: This breakdown can be skipped, as the bottom line is I figured out a way to deposit funds, that did not exist, into various online gambling sites. I then found a way to convert those funds into real cash in my pocket and the pockets of a few partners.
To open the accounts I need two things...
1. I need a checking account that I can receive two small verification deposits into and be able to find out what those amounts are.
2. I need a different phone number each time to register the accounts with (I'll discover later on that there was another way to do this without running all over Pasadena.)
The checking accounts I get from a pre-paid debit card company, that I'll refer to as CHECKME to protect anonymity. I'm able to open four of these at a time with my identity. As soon as I open an account I receive a checking account #. Now it's time to open the EwalletXpress accts. I register an account online and make up a phony name (Harry Potter, Sam Malone, Tony Soprano... names like this) and use a phone number of a nearby business where it'd be possible to use their phone. For example today, for the first account, I'm going to use this bookstore across the street: I scoped the place out and a young girl is working who should give me no trouble. I look up a phone number, then register the acct. and get an eight digit verification code to enter in when I call. I have ten minutes to do this or the account is erased. I run across the street and after picking up a book or two, I pull out my cell and act like I'm checking my voicemail. Then I go up to the girl and ask if she could be so kind as to let me use the phone for a second. I tell her my cellphone died and I'm expecting an important call and need to check my messages: This really isn't necessary... she doesn't give a shit. So I call EwalletXpress and get an automated system instructing me to enter in my verification code. I enter in the 8 digit number and if it's correct I hear a "goodbye". That means my registration is successful. Now I just have to wait two days for the two verification deposits to show up in my CHECKME account. The genius thing about this is that they tell me of any activity in my account, whether or not I received my card and activated it. For example, a couple of days later, some lady in India tells me there are two deposits, one for say $.23 and one for $.78. I log on to my EwalletXpress account and enter in these verification amounts. Done. Now I can write an echeck for $750 and deposit it into one of these gambling sites such as Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker. Another beautiful thing is that I can immediately cancel the CHECKME account and apply for a new one in 24 hours. So I can do four CHECKME accounts a few times a week... say 12 accounts... $9K a week. The problem is finding the damn phones to use. It's all about the damn phones.
A Quick Interlude
This goes on in one form or another for close to two years. Throughout these two years I discover methods to make it easier, while my rivals find ways to make it more difficult for me. I end up bringing a few friends on board and we create an intricate network operating all over the continental United States. We end up working this thing for all it's worth before it eventually dies. I spend most my time trying to figure out how to get money into the accounts and how to get money out of them. It gets more and more complicated, but I'm always able to figure something out. It becomes my all consuming obsession. I'm like that guy in a Beautiful Mind with this shit. I guess I'll get more into it along the way but for now let's get back to Pasadena and Annie...and yours truly, running around all over Los Angeles trying to get myself out of this mess I made with Big Yates.
Part 2...
The other day a got a phone call from a friend, and when it was over, I had an account with a 10k limit to bet the games. A stroke of genius luck. Like I said, just when it seems like I've got no more outs, I find a way to get things going again. 10k that I can take a shot at this guy with and try to win enough to pay of BOOKIE and get that bastard out of my life... and Big Yates with him.
Annie is inside Barney's eating a chicken sandwich. Just plain chicken... no condiments. She has no use for them. The girl is really amazing. She'll eat anything, anywhere. I myself find Barney's disgusting, and only eat there when I'm watching the games and can't leave the place. Annie actually suggested we eat there. If you missed it in week 6: Annie's the Honey Badger of dining... She doesn't give a shit.
The more I think about it, the more I think it's time to turn back the clock a bit. This Annie deal needs to be given a little context. Let's take it back to somewhere near the beginning. Yeah somewhere near The Well, the place where it all started.
Somewhere Near The Well - Late 2006...
Walking down Sunset Blvd., a little past midnight, I'm thinking to myself that I may be approaching the low point of my existence here on planet earth. I walk by this bar, The Well, and turn to my left to take a look at another handful of the terrible people here in Los Angeles that have nearly emptied my soul. In the middle of these vampires I see a girl who's no so bad looking....
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