Office Wars, the Terrorist Strikes Back, and the Return of the Gambler (The 2001 Betonsports.com football season)
The summer of 2001 was not one that I want to recall much of considering it took a brutal toll on my personal life and for all of my sacrifices I was shortchanged on the money end by BOS, Big Time! Even worse that summer Odinga, the girlfriend left me along with her son. Even after we broke up I had a great talk with her son telling him I would always be there for him as I played a fatherly role with him. Hopefully the proceeds from this book will pay for his soon to be college education.
Towards the end of the summer I was working from sun-up to sun-down and when the sun went down on the weekends, the play time was starting to begin. With the girlfriend gone now, I was living alone in Torrance with Sparky and I was hurting. I tried not to show it either, so masking it with multiple sex partners was an excellent remedy for the pain.
When Shaun found out I broke up with the girlfriend he thought it was great so I could have a single focus on work. He really was an asshole when it came to dealing with people.
When my mother found out about the break up with Odinga whom she liked, she sent my younger brother, James to California to make sure I was ok, and I sent Jim home with a terrible hangover. Jim showed up in California asking me what had happened and I really wasn’t worried too much and told him apathetically, “Sooner or later they all come around”. Wow was I wrong!
Jim recently married and I was not the greatest of influences on him at this time. Within hours of getting off the plane we were down at Shooters Beach Bar in Redondo Beach baking in the sun while knocking down drinks with my best buddy in SOCAL, Rosie and a few friends all full of ecstasy. It was a blur of an afternoon where my head didn’t quite clear up until we got back to my apartment to blast off a few mini-sticks of dynamite that I had imported from the island of Curacao. It wasn’t dynamite but they were big red sticks with fuses on them that would knock out a chunk of sand or turf wherever they landed. I figured since I was leaving the neighborhood soon I didn’t mind leaving a little present to some of the racist neighbors I had in Torrance.
The second day Jim came out to check up on me kind of flowed straight from the first night with more drinking and partying as we ventured off to Orange County for a Booze Cruise in the Newport Beach Harbor. The cruise was a blast. Plenty of women mostly taken or not my type as I prefer a serious tan but the booze was flowing and there were plenty of old friends to hang out with and enjoy the evening on a big floating 60 foot yacht. By the time the cruise was over I convinced Jim that we should return to LA County considering we didn’t want to be drinking and driving and still had to cover the 40 mile ride back up north. After grabbing a bite to eat and downing some water we drove back to my apartment then grabbed a cab down to the Lighthouse Bar on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach, CA. Jim was having a blast reflecting back on his single days but appeared to be a bit nervous in having to go out with me. Meanwhile, I was trying to work out my game with women that had not seen much practice in the past three years while devoted to my recently walked out love. At the Lighthouse I hit on a few girls with less rejection than I had gotten the day prior which was a good sign. I was striking out but seeing the ball better and that helped me get ready for upcoming weekends in Costa Rica.
Just prior to the flight to Costa Rica I met up with an old college bed buddy from Ohio State and than a couple of fat cousins out of TGI Fridays in Torrance for a three way blowout before heading back to Central America all primed and ready for enjoying 100% of the culture this time around. When a guy has been off the market for long enough he can’t expect to get back into the game and lead off with Beyonce. Need to get in a few warm up tosses with old steadies and have to lower the standards too, so I won’t sicken you with details.
Upon my return to Central America I was ready physically, mentally, and playfully. My previous two trips I refrained from indulging in some of the nicest female natural assets and I was ready to enjoy!
This time I was picked up by the Chief Operations Officer, JR, a Dutchman who I had met in the spring and kept in contact with. This time to Costa Rica was the first time I started to feel a bit different and it started with meeting JR at the airport. I felt something strange that I have never felt before at BOS. I think it was respect. Heck! I earned it!
I was immediately brought to a nice Condominium which I was to share with JR. JR was an average sized, soft spoken guy with big legs from playing soccer for years. He had also held a gaming license in Europe for over 25 years. He was at BOS to expand on his bookmaking talents that he brought from Holland to take them to the next level of online gaming. We had a nice condominium just a short walk from the Mall San Pablo and between us and work was the All-Star café along with a handful of other bars that ranged from punk, reggae to nightclubs blasting Ricky Martin’s La Vida Loca. I am only too happy that I never was in Costa Rica during the mid-90’s and the “Macarena”. We also had a very strange roommate by the name of Michael who was certainly a budget tech guy that worked on the phone systems. Michael was a tall skinny character. He was a strange cat that was overly friendly and would sit in the living room with all the lights out snorting cocaine when you came home at night. He didn’t last long and for that matter I was only to spend 3 weeks in Costa Rica before heading back to Southern California to get my little canine girl Sparky back from friends.
I went over to the Mall San Pablo this time unaccompanied and walked straight into the reception area where this time I was met by Peter Wilson who welcomed me with open arms while he kept repeating “thank you, I thought you would never get here”. He was getting worked hard and getting paid little. For the past couple of months Claude and Shaun put Peter into the marketing department to assist me with anything I needed since I was now the head of electronic media and a large chunk of the BOS budget. Pete was thrown into the wolves, he had no clue to the world of advertising and more often than not Pete was abused like a red headed step child by the Ripners to take care of the communications because Shaun was probably too busy hiding in his office and really couldn’t comprehend the trade talk of electronic media. Claude and Shaun understood print and with the football season coming soon they needed to tend to print rather than learn the intricacies of electronic media.
After a brief hug and hello, an excited Pete took me on a tour of the renovations done at BOS since my last visit. They erected a state of the art 10th floor playground with a full bar, casino tables, restaurants, gym, VIP guest rooms, covered pool and sun deck on the top floor. None of this was for employees and I chose to work out in the public gym on the 4th floor of the mall which had superior equipment. I am not sure but this might have been an innovative move by Claude. (It was.) The pool, bar, and casino were beautiful. The VIP rooms were unfinished and so were the restaurants. Originally this elaborate facility was meant for big bettors but eventually the brain trust started thinking and realized that media giants such as The Jim Rome Show, which was bringing in more new customers than any single source of media was the type of people they needed to schmooze in Costa Rica.
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