It’s the Chairman of the Board. He’s back in town.
I’m thinking of stories from Good Old Vegas in the 50’s, when it was the entertainers’ town. You could get out of the Hollywood rat race, and go up to Vegas to relax and stretch out a little. Time was, the casinos would be packed with the glitterati mingling with a few Average Joes. It was a cool time, and if you met Dean Martin, you knew that if you were suave and cool, you might share a drink and a chat between runs at the baccarat table. When Americans knew how to be cool.
The slots on the Strip started a $20 a pull, minimum, in modern dollars. Silver dollars, and nothing was under a buck silver. If you wanted nickle slots, go up to Downtown, m’man. Quarter poker there, Texas hold ‘em, if you’re one of the regular old folk, the blue collar world, a Downtowner, a square.
The famous, the cool, the big-name singers at the lounges and clubs were just visitors who wanted to play a night or two for their friends, and pick up the performance charge in chips. Sing a night or two, hug Sammy Davis when he comes up on stage to see you - you’ll be doing the same thing for him tomorrow at the Sands. Comp some chips from a two-day run, tell your publicist and agent to put that in the paper, and roll onto the Strip with your friends.
In this cozy world, Frank Sinatra stood out as an asshole. Not at the table or in the casino, but he wasn’t cool with the style. Other entertainers, they were warm and cheerful just doing a set for their friends like in a big living room in California when the wine is flowing; and they loved it. The audience in the lounge could tell they were getting a special performance. The average Joe and Mimsy played it cool, and got to sit at the next table with the Rat Pack. Shh. Don’t even ask. They know you want their autograph - Dean will lean over after a while, and say, “M’man, you got something I can sign for you?” or hand you a Hollywood glossy with his autograph. Be cool about it.
Frank wasn’t cool. For some reason, when he faced an audience, he saw contemptible drunken corn-fed yokels of the lowest breeding, and he treated them that way in Vegas. Frank would show up 20 minutes late, a little sloshed, do two songs, and often close the set out, saying near the mike, “That’s all you’re gonna get, losers!” and wander off the stage. Who knows why Frank would do this, and his pals knew better than to go to HIS sets at the lounge. Great guy - but not cool all the time.
Frank’s long-lost persona has been snapped up by the New Chairman. Lots of people hate the new boss, same as the old boss, true, but Frank always had a packed house, even when he was notorious for giving a sh*tty performance. The Joe and Wendy crowd would wander out of Frank’s performances all mad after twenty minutes; but he always packed the place. He might not be cool, but Jesus was he popular. He was honest about refusing to recognize everyone on the Strip as a buddy. If you weren’t somebody, you were nobody, in Frank’s eyes, and he treated people, well, honestly. You would get your ten or twenty minute show, and you want more, put it on the gramophone, uncle Fester.
Don’t get me wrong. Frank was a showman, and he knew how to sweet-talk a crowd and get them lovin’. He just got sick of it. Donald is a quintessential front man who knows how to run a crowd. He’s got his own style, and it’s not the standard huckster fare. But he knows how to get them lovin’ pretty well.
For once I’m in awe of the Grifter-in-Chief. It’s like watching Horowitz at the piano, hearing Yo-yo Ma, diMaggio at the plate, Pavarotti. The best of the best, baby.
tfg just put on the kind of show that made Steve Bannon realize that he himself is but a phony second-rate wannabee. Bannon admitted as much. Even the coziest of the Trump Pack sold him out with his NFT offering. F*ck them. I honestly think I admire the man for the first time. When you see a wolf pack expertly take down a baby deer, you gotta say, they make show. They’re on game. And The Donald, he can take your breath away.
If Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorf were the real deal in Joliet, and not just characters played by Newman and Redford (and how!), they would have worshiped The Chairman of Grift. What a fix. Every chiseler and cheat’s gonna remember this as the Best Christmas Ever, when Santa came and filled their little hearts with joy. What a f’n show, tfg. Tchaikovsky can hang up his Nuts this Christmas, Handel can take a breather. The Chairman of the Board is back, baby.
His December jazz, a sincerest ‘pick the world up by the p*ssy’ tour, is breathtaking. Most of the (jealous) grifters got on it quick that he was selling nothing, and at a good price, too. A hundred bucks for sailboat fuel, a CD of crickets chirping (remember CD’s?) and fixed-price load of four and a half million, that was the work of a cheap con-man, they thought.
But the Donald Trump Digital Trading Card NFT Collection shows a master in his workshop, the Michelangelo of grift. Market size is not always your friend. If you’re scamming in a thin market - and 45,000 items is a pretty thin, illiquid market - unlike the Hunt Brothers’ disastrous foray into cornering the silver market (which proved to have a surprisingly bottomless well), rigging this market is easy-peasy. By the way, on each secondary sale of a Trump Digital Trading Card, there will be a 10% royalty on the sale price that will be paid back to the creator. Every. Single. Time. So if you clear a grand on your sale, Trump gets a hundred bucks. Sweeeet! The gift that keeps on giving - to the Chairman!
Sales go through Polygon, a subsidiary launched by Ethereum’s internet of blockchains. The average Trumpcard NFT is “priced” at $230 on average, up from $99 on the issue. Word has it that the Statue of Liberty card is going for $24,000 tonight. All these prices are theoretical - that doesn’t mean that there’s a dumber idiot who’s going to pay that much for the NFT. But follow the prices in real time here. The true price is in Etherium(s).
Now dig this crazy jive, cats. If you want to make a splash in the scene, it works great if you can sucker everyone else to pitch in. Don’t just sell something - make your groupies buy it. Example for you, noodle it out. Potboiler hack novelists, from Khrushchev to other dictators and cult leaders (one rhymes with E. Lon Cupboard) could stiff their followers / marks by insisting that they snap up their woeful new printing of this month’s schlock from the Boss; not just one copy, but thousands of dollars worth. 250 million copies of his works in circulation today, baby. It’s all about the Benjamins. Every ka-ching is a step up the best seller list, and it works with NFT’s too. So flog your MAGA mailing lists.
Just put a couple of million into a shell corporation, that’s all. Each one of your kids has twice that in the checking account. Give them love and money for Christmas, Santa. Then throw your product onto the market with the left hand, and snap up the chips with the right hand. Wow. Sold out in less than 24 hours. Actually, that’s a bit of a mistake. Should have let it percolate on the market at least over the weekend before selling it all out. THAT fast a score might turn the wrong heads
.
And if you’re selling dogsh*t in a Ziploc, some fool will pay for it. Especially if it’s already sold out in 24 hours. eBay is pricing these NFT’s for $300. You can already get $500 on-line for the favorite ones, because there’s often a bigger fool to sell to. But are you really buying a second-hand Trump Card? Nobody knows. Since the substance and ownership of NFT’s is so ethereal and hard to define, whatever they’re selling on eBay might not even be the NFT itself. And, since you can’t cheat an honest man (too much,) thousands of purported wise guys and insiders have flushed thousands of dollars into the scam, hoping to score big on the secondary market when the price soars. And at first, bonanza, baby. Make sure to sell the day before the market croaks.
The Kids are holding maybe 60% of the NFT’s, barely $400,000 each, price of a decent Caribbean party. They can bleed the NFT’s out onto the market at their pleasure. That’s right, baby, they set the price. This is like the Stock Market, if the Stock Market had a Grifter-in-Chief that allowed them to print money. Dump, and then pump. The New Millennium.
If the Kids put in a half-million each, and rake out ten million, well Merry Christmas. Like they need it anyway. Like it matters somehow. Like there’s not a grand jury where their name comes up a lot in deliberations. Bet the Kids have been blue this Christmas season, or Holidays at the Kirchner Household. Give ‘em a little Christmas Cheer.
And since the rubes in flyover land love nothing like a scam run like a Swiss Watch like only the Maestro can perform, this bubble will meander around the Red Circus, and then quietly pop when the Kids are bored with it. The MAGA crowd will find out, once more, just who the baby deer is in this killing.
And the audience? F'*ck ‘em, or rather f*ck you. Show’s over folks, go home. It takes a Chairman of the Board to say it to their face, and then put your boot out for a lickin’.
PS: The luster has dimmed a little for the Donald’s racket. Word on the street he’s heisted the images from WalMart and Amazon to put his bobblehead on. C’mon, dude. Can’t you find an artist in New York City to rotoscope your flabby butt? It’s not like you actually have to PAY them.