The NYT Loves, Invents Stuff About Clint Holmes

Don't get me wrong here. I love Clint Holmes. He's an amazing performer and I wish he were still a Strip headliner. He's old-school and genuine and works so hard you feel lazy watching him.

So I'm thrilled that New York Times music critic Stephen Holden adored his performance at Feinstein's at Loews Regency in New York City. Among other superlatives, Holden wrote:

Vocally, Mr. Holmes is a solid belter who pays close attention to lyrics. He doesn’t simply recycle oldies with the blasé suavity of standard lounge singers. Rethinking them from the beginning, he turns them into personal dramatic monologues.

High praise. And, no doubt, well-deserved.

But Mr. Holden also shows an ignorance of Las Vegas entertainment that is truly boggling. Here's how he describes Clint:

But under the aegis of Steve Wynn, Mr. Holmes, now 64, has become a major Las Vegas attraction who might be described as the next generation’s Wayne Newton.

Uh, what? How many years has it been since Holmes was a Strip headliner? Almost five. He does the occasional show here and there at outlying locals venues, but is he, as of April 20, 2011 when Mr. Holden (left) published this, a Las Vegas attraction at all, let alone a "major" one?

And Steve Wynn? Huh? It took a little digging to realize that, yeah, Clint once toiled for The Steve at the Golden Nugget. It's hard to find; Holmes' own website bio doesn't mention that. But that was downtown; his big break was becoming the marquee star for Harrah in 2000. Wynn is responsible for a lot of major entertainment milestones in Vegas -- Siegfried & Roy, Cirque du Soleil, Danny Gans -- but Clint Holmes? WTF?

And what is this "next generation's Wayne Newton" crap? The Wayner is only four years older than Clint, and Wayne's honorific as Mr. Las Vegas was earned for an extremely long tenure that nobody else is ever likely to match. Also, Wayne was much more recently a Strip headliner (last year) than Clint (2006). With what wisdom, perspective or insight does Mr. Holden get to anoint Vegas stardom or historical relevance? None.

Then there's this:

Mr. Holmes, fortunately, has more talent than Mr. Newton.

Yes, Clint has far better pipes than Wayne these days. Fine. But I'm going out on a really short limb here when I suspect Mr. Holden has probably never actually seen Wayne perform either lately or in his prime. It's just an easy shot, and an unoriginal one at that.

I have no idea if Clint put these absurdities into his program or media material to entice The Times to cover his show, but anyone with a vague ability to use Google should be capable of separating hype from reality. Then again, accuracy rarely matters to the New York media when it comes to Vegas entertainment, so I'm sure Mr. Holden would shrug it all off anyway.

Naw, this is paint-by-numbers Vegas-As-Seen-From-2,500-Miles-Away scribble: (1) Sprinkle a dash of the only Vegas figure anyone in Manhattan knows/likes, Wynn; (2) Insult Wayne to bolster whomever has pleasantly surprised you; (3) Make a reference lounge lizards. Yep. Check this out conclusion:

If Mr. Holmes’s performance indicates a trend, the new lounge lizard has a trait not commonly found in the old: sincerity, or at least the appearance of it.

This is where even Clint ought to take umbrage. Holmes is not now and wasn't ever a lounge act in Vegas. He commanded -- and frequently filled -- a showroom of some 600 seats at Harrah's. Feinstein's in New York, too, is not a lounge but a nightclub/supper club. It's as though Mr. Holden seems to think that serious Vegas headliners still croon by casino bars rather than appear in lavish theaters. And, anyway, the Vegas lounge performers of old were among the most revered legends in the live music world specifically because of their dedication and sincerity. You know, folks like Louis Prima and Keely Smith, Sam Butera, Bobby Darin, Jackie Gleason and on and on. The "old" to which he refers is known for precisely the opposite of what he suggests.

Mr. Holden has no clue what he's writing about, so he goes for the cheap cracks. And that's too bad because I'm sure Clint deserved his plaudits free of insults and bizarre misunderstandings about his hometown.

Three Weird Tuesday Items

See that? Evidently, the Blogger Gods have removed a post on this site because someone -- they won't say who -- has determined that something in it violated someone's copyright under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The post in question is a May 2009 blog item announcing the release of that week's episode of The Strip Podcast featuring Carlos Santana. It was my usual drill - a short personal note, the link to the show, an image of the guest and a list of links to stuff we discussed in the show.

There's nothing in the post that could even vaguely be construed as being owned by anyone else except, maybe, the image of Santana, but that was a publicity shot provided by The Joint at the Hard Rock. So what gives?

How the hell would I know? The "takedown" email from Google, which owns Blogger, does not indicate what is being called into question. Instead, it directs me to a site called ChillingEffects.org, which anonymizes and posts complaints. Except that there's no complaint anywhere there.

What's more, the instructions for asking Google to dismiss or reverse the claim actually includes language in which you must acknowledge guilt and corrective measures. One of the steps requires your letter to them to include this statement:

"I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that each search result, message, or other item of content identified above was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled, or that the material identified by the complainant has been removed or disabled at the URL identified and will no longer be shown."

Huh? I don't even know what they think needs to be removed. Weird, right? I followed the instructions and faxed a letter to the number in the instructions. We'll see what happens.

And now something else weird. Today's R-J carries a piece from Carri Geer Thevenot about David Lockhart, a New Yorker who sued the Venetian for false imprisonment and a few other bad deeds. Lockhart alleged that in 2004 Venetian security accused him of being in a car involved in a hit-and-run, then forced him to retrieve his stuff and leave his room at the hotel. When he refused to pack up, they cuffed him, shackled him to the floor in a security room and later took him to the local jail where he was held for hours before charges were dismissed.

The case went to trial and found the hotel "committed assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract and breach of an inkeeper's duty.

The weird part: The jury awarded him $200,000 but no punitive damages.

That's weird, right? The jury bought his story. They agree all these awful things happened to him. But the Venetian should not be punished? The only thing I can think of is that maybe the car he was in was, in fact, involved in the hit-and-run. Thevenot's piece never says.

Finally, a third weird thing for today. I'm generally in love with New York Times columnist Gail Collins. She's far more clever and funnier than her colleague Maureen Dowd thinks she is and Collins -- gasp! actually has a point when she writes. But an April 9 column by Collins that appeared only today in the Las Vegas Sun about the problem of Sarah Palin sucking the oxygen out of the political debate included this random thought:

(If Sarah Palin was seriously planning a presidential run, do you think she’d have agreed to be speaker-for-hire at the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America Convention at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas this week?)

Those parentheses were in the original column. But any which way, this is a very weird notion. What part of that disqualifies Palin? That she's a paid speaker? That she appeared in front of the booze industry? Or that she did both in Vegas?

I can't figure it out. Is the wine and spirits industry somehow anathema to the Religious Right? Maybe to a microscopic segment of teetotalers, but most religious observers have some use for wine, right? Wasn't it doing shots at a Pennsylvania bar that was supposed to make Hillary Clinton seem more common, more in touch with the centrists and even conservatives of the heartland? And who's going to make an issue out of her speaking to such a group in Vegas, anyway? Obama's not so stupid, I hope, as to insult us a third time and I'm pretty sure every leading Republican has given paid speeches to trade groups in Vegas in recent years.

It would seem like a small point, but a New York Times columnist that I admire seems to think this is grounds to end speculation of Sarah Palin's national political potential.

Weird, right?

Maybe My Best Piece This Year

Earlier this year, I read a fascinating piece in the R-J by Keith Rogers about a North Las Vegas man whose father had perished in World War II. The man never knew his dad, having been born two weeks after his cargo plane crashed in the Himalayas somewhere. But Arizona adventurer Clayton Kuhles had found the plane -- and 14 others -- in an effort that picks up the serious slack in the US government's efforts to recover MIAs from World War II.

Keith's piece properly focused on the local family, but I wanted to know what the Arizona guy's deal was. Turns out, it is beyond fascinating. I had no idea, for instance, that there are 74,000+ MIAs from WWII, many times more than MIAs from more recent conflicts combined.

I'd been after the New York Times to let me do it but was repeatedly told the freelance budget was essentially empty. So, at long last, I did it for Sphere.Com, the AOL News outlet that I'm now writing for about a couple times a week. The money's good, the audience reach is potentially gargantuan and, best of all, I get to tell the stories I passionately want to.

So take a moment to go check this one out. It's a good way to acknowledge Veterans Day.

R.I.P. Dominick Dunne

[Note: Hear my lengthy interview with Dominick Dunne from Sept. 2008 while he was here covering the O.J. trial by clicking here or download it to your computer by right-clicking here. It's titled "Dominick Dunne's Last Sit."]

I am on my laptop on the floor of the Pearl at the Palms observing our rehearsals, dealing with other media -- about to tape a Today Show interview -- and putting out various fires related to the big Michael Jackson tribute benefit concert this Saturday.

And then, in this bizarre year of constant celebrity death, we lose another. And this time, it's personal: Dominick Dunne.

That's me with him above in the fake Palace Station hotel room built in the basement of the courthouse in Las Vegas. It was never used in the trial because the judge decided it wasn't an accurate representation -- she took the jury to the actual room a mile away -- but it amused Dunne and me to no end that the prosecution had built such a silly thing.

As faithful readers of this blog know, I had the great fortune of being assigned to sit next to Dunne during the O.J. Simpson armed robbery trial last fall. It was one of those serendipitous accidents of fate that have so wonderfully dotted my life. That first trial morning, as I got myself awake, I finished reading Dunne's column in Vanity Fair looking back on his 25 years as a columnist there. The last sentence: "What a swell party it's been. Next, it's off to Las Vegas for O.J. Simpson's trial for armed robbery and kidnapping." I put that down, got dressed, went to the courthouse and an hour later sat down next to...Dunne!

I was charmed instantly, as most people were. He was frail, certainly, and he collapsed during the trial at one point. But he was still totally into it and was back in court a few days later, working sources and enjoying being the most famous person, save for Simpson himself, in the room. He took his notes in notebooks that had a cartoon likeness on every page, which I just loved. I so wanted one; never got one.

What he wrote wasn't what you might expect. He didn't care about the day's news or even any quotes in the trial, as those of us covering for the next day or the night's news had to. He wrote names, descriptions, analogies. The rest of us were focused on the proceedings; he was fascinated that co-defendant C.J. Stewart's lawyer Brent Bryson had once killed a man in a bar fight. That was a Dunne twist.

We bonded instantly, had breakfast a few times during the trial, remained in touch via email and lunched when I was in New York in December. I think I earned his respect in part by my coverage in the Times of the proceedings but also for simple things like picking up that first breakfast at Tableau at Wynn. It puzzled and impressed him and I have a tremendous respect for people of his stature who don't expect freebies even though they probably reasonably can. He also took me to his favorite place in New York, Aretsky's Patroon, his treat this time. The next time I was in NYC, though, he was in Germany undergoing experimental stem cell treatment. He emailed with great optimism about what he was doing to stay alive.

What always struck me was that when you were with Dominick Dunne, it was hard to believe all the people this made you one degree of separation from. He knew everyone but he didn't really act like it. After my New York Times Sunday Styles profile of him came out documenting the fact that this was his last trial, he called me and wrote me repeatedly with updates on all the people who had called or written him to say they had seen it. It surprised him that he was prominent and relevant, that the audience of the New York Times would be interested in him. Oh, and it thrilled him, too, because he knew that it would drive Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter NUTS. He felt Carter had it in for him, that Carter resented having inherited Dunne from prior management. "He's jealous because I'm more famous than he is," Dunne told me once.

That said, he loved celebrity and said so openly, as you'll hear on the podcast interview linked at the top. Walking from his apartment to Aretsky's Patroon in New York, people kept saying hello and he was thrilled to greet them all back. It was never a bother, even when he was ill and in a lot of discomfort. Likewise, he didn't look down on the fascinating world of celebrity crime and, as I wrote in the Las Vegas Weekly, taught me to love my bite of the O.J. apple despite the sneers of journalists who thought they were better than all that.

Dunne took great interest in me and what I was writing about even when the OJ trial was over. I found this humbling and shocking; he had a lot of better things to do than care about me. But he liked the mentor role.

Dunne's broader fame came from a few important celebrity trials, most specifically O.J. The First and the Claus Von Bulow trial. So when Sunny Von Bulow, the incapacitated heiress, died the same weekend as Simpson was sentenced in December, Dunne seemed a little thrown by what the fates might be telling him.

"That they both happened this way the same weekend must mean something," he told me. We didn't specify what, but it was clear the unspoken thought was that it was a way of tying up some loose ends as Dunne's health deteriorated. I had lost my grandmother to bladder cancer in 2003; I suspected he couldn't have long regardless of how he spoke of future plans.

And that's one of the shames here. Although he was 83 and had lived a full, rich life, he didn't finish what he had hoped to. He had a novel in progress and planned to write his complete memoir. I'm hopeful there are journals from which it can be constructed. There were so many wonderful stories. That is one book most of New York wants to read.

I bet Carter would even print an excerpt in VF.

Inside The Mayor's Office

Yes, that cluttered mess in front of that ornate throne of a chair is the working desk of Mayor Oscar B. Goodman. I had a few minutes in his office today when Erich Bergen and I chatted him up about appearing to kick off the Jackson benefit concert this Saturday by reading the proclamation Erich and he are holding below. (He's planning on it if he's not out of town, he said.)



I didn't have quite the time to do as thorough a job excavating the mayor's room as the Las Vegas Sun's Sam Skolnik and Tiffany Brown did in May in this piece and this wonderful slideshow, but I did grab a few fun images. (The printed Sun actually had a diagram of the desk pointing to all sorts of items and explaining them, but I unfortunately can't seem to find it online.)

Here's the latest OBG bobblehead...


...and the rest of the collection.


Thought you'd like to see what movies and books he has down there, so...


That's Mob Law, the documentary about him, and the film Casino, in which he plays himself. Also, there's John L. Smith's biography of him, too.

There's a wall of photos with celebrities, a shelf of gifts from foreign dignitaries. Note whose photo is prominently displayed in the far right here...


Here's a closer look:


Yep, that's La Toya Jackson. And here's some representation of his love of Bombay Sapphire gin, even though he drank a different gin when I wrote the first national profile of him as a politician for US News & World Report 10 years ago.


Then Bombay paid him/his charities $100K and allegiances switched. Really. (See the very, very relevant new trivia question, by the by.)

Here's the closest thing I could find in the room to something you'd find in an average mayor's office, a zoning map of some sort:


But by far my favorite item in the room was this:


It's hard to see, but it's a New York Times piece on downtown redevelopment. Guess who wrote it?

The mayor will be term-limited out in 2011 and is contemplating a run for governor as an independent. He's also encouraging his wife, Meadows school founder Carolyn Goodman, to run. (See this blog post with pix of the school.) He noted that either way, Carolyn doesn't want him bringing all this stuff home with him when his time is up. He's talking about an auction. I wonder who the highest bidder might be on that framed and mounted newspaper clipping above?

Oh, P.S.: He gave me more of his poker chips to give away on "The Strip." The first one lasted in the prize pool all of a week. Details to come.

No LIVE Show Tonight Due To Jackson Frenzy

Sorry, boys and girls, but we gotta cancel the live show of "The Strip" tonight because I gotta make a living. And today, that means standing on a sidewalk baking in the heat staring at this:


Yep, that's all I've been staring at for the past several hours. Fun, huh? Y'see, Michael Jackson's personal doctor, Conrad Murray, is being probed in connection with Jackson's drug-related death. Dr. Murray is from Vegas. Has a fancy house and a medical practice. And today, the DEA, LAPD, LVMPD and God knows who else raided both places.

So I got called into action. Here's the top-of-Google-News glory-screen-shot:


I did have a terrific interview with Smokey Robinson today and I don't want to give him or Human Nature short shrift by rushing to write a show script. Besides, the raid at the medical office is actually still ongoing and I need to go back out into the heat shortly.

Lest anyone imagines such work is glamorous (does anyone?!?), take a look at how the press corps is sweltering:


I like this guy in orange in the "Thriller" jersey:


I wouldn't want to have to touch this:


Happily, I have some connections. The fine folks at Miles' TV station, KVBC, let me chill inside their news van. It's unclear how much better that really was, though. Take a look at the thermometer:


the time and date are wrong, but the 108.8 degree F temp is more or less correct. As I type, it's 111 out. It wasn't real clear to us if that was the temp inside or outside of the van.

The Nation's First "Racino" Is Bankrupt

I find it difficult to shut off my journalistic sensors while I travel. For one thing, these tough economic times require me to do as much work as I can generate. For another, from the start of my full-blown freelance life when I lived in China, there's always been a rush that came with finding a story where I'm not expected to do so and then selling it. And yes, Miles has a love-hate relationship with this; it helps provide for us and we end up meeting interesting people and seeing unusual things that ordinary tourists never do. But it also means less time to just bump around and power down.

But, anyhow, this explains how I came to write about the Swiss effort to outlaw cat fur in garments last year, why I witnessed the opening of Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem last month and why, over this weekend on our Boston-Rhode Island-Connecticut swing for a family wedding, I covered the turmoil related to the nation's first "racino," Twin River in Lincoln, R.I., for the New York Times.

Here's the lowdown: Twin River opened 61 years ago as a horse track in this bucolic town 15 miles north of Providence. By the 1980s, it was a greyhound track with betting available as well on simulcast races occurring elsewhere. And in 1992, the state and the then-owners, Wembly LLC, agreed to add slot machines. Thus, the advent of the "racino," a word Miles had never heard of before but now finds quite a bit of fun. (?)

The casino part looks like every other casino floor of this sort, see?


There is an itty bitty difference, though. Those 4,700 slot machines are actually known as "video lottery terminals" and are owned by the state. They're administered by the Rhode Island division of Lottery, which keeps 60.08 percent of the revenue and doles out the rest to the owners and other governmental entities.

As I understand it, a VLT is the same as a slot machine except that all of their outcomes are determined by one large central computer for the whole casino which generates random numbers to determine wins. Slot machines, by contrast, are individualized units with their own computerized chips; their outcomes are usually unrelated to other machines. The VLT thing was a way for Rhode Island to add slot machines and call them a form of the lottery without having to get approval of the town of Lincoln to "expand gambling," per state law. The VLT is seen as an addition of an existing gambling practice -- the lottery, y'see.

Oh, and the revenue from these slot-machines-by-another-name now amounts to the third largest source of revenue for Rhode Island behind income and sales taxes.

In 2005, BLB, an investment group that includes the Kerzner folks who own the gigantic Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, bought the joint for $465 million, renamed it Twin River and spent $225 million expanding it. Now it has a larger casino, much more parking, a range of restaurants, a comedy club and a concert venue.


Also, some cute design features:


Oh, yeah. And a greyhound track.


A word about the track before we continue: It's a very weird deal. Twin River is currently obligated by law to have 125 days of live races in order to also have the slot machines. They're also required to give $9 million to the Rhode Island Greyhound Owners Association to fund the entire dog-racing industry and spend about $2 million to operate the track even though it only generates about $1.5 million in revenue. Why? Because Rhode Island is a heavily unionized state and the General Assembly feels it's important to force the casino to keep the 225ish jobs associated with the dog races intact.

But Twin River has bigger trouble. BLB overspent on its upgrades and can't afford its debt, so last week they struck a voluntary bankruptcy deal with their lenders and the Rhode Island governor's office. The lenders will forgive nearly $300 million if the debt, BLB will find another operator for the facility and the state will let the casino stay open 24/7 and dump the dog racing.

This solution has made lots of folks mad. Folks like Hal Perry...


...who lives in this house directly across from Twin River:


He put up that sign himself, by the way. He and his other neighbors -- the Twin River property is bordered by residential homes on 1-acre lots -- are upset by the prospect of more noise, traffic and bright lights coming from the casino if it operates 24/7. As it is, it stays open 24 hours Friday-Monday and closes at 2 a.m. on other days.

And, of course, the greyhound folks are mad. They're also powerful; on Friday, the Democratic legislature voted to increase the number of required racing days to 200, a thumb-in-the-eye to the Republican governor and a move that could compromise the agreed-upon bankruptcy deal. Like I said, it's all a weird deal.

Oh! Oh! Oh! And here's the best part! Guess who wants to be the new Twin River operator?

I'll give ya a second and show some fun images of Twin River I shot. Here's the second-floor glassed-in no-smoking gaming area...


...and the carpeting for those casino-carpeting aficionados out there...


...and I'm not real sure why this sign, which reads "Area of Refuge" means...


...or what "sharps" are.

And imagine my surprise when I found Ed, the cover model for my book, "Gay Vegas..."


...dealing virtual blackjack in one of these creepy machines.


I also have a question here. I get the lottery-like aspect of the slot machines. But what about games that involve skill, like video blackjack or poker? How does the central computer control the outcome? How is that not different than the random numbers generated by a lottery?

But anyhow, so who wants to take over Twin River? Why, these folks do!


As it happens, Harrah's has been trying to get into the RI market for years. They wanted to build a $1 billion, full-fledged resort-casino in West Warwick, R.I., but they got rebuffed again and again until the effort finally went down for good in 2006 with a statewide referendum that rejected it.

Now they've got another shot, and Harrah's veep Jan Jones is all over it, confirming talks are ongoing. "We’re interested, very interested," she told me. "We like Rhode Island, we think we understand that market very well. We think Total Rewards would be a significant revenue driver to Twin River."

I wondered why she loves RI so much. It's half the size of Clark County and has just 800,000 residents. Ah, she said, but it's smushed between Massachusetts and Connecticut. And Harrah's nearest casino is in Atlantic City but they have hundreds of thousands of Total Rewards members in New England that they could bring to Lincoln.

What about the dogs?

"I know the dogs are very important to Rhode Islanders," the former politician said. "That’s a decision made by banks and legislatures, but I know Rhode Island feels strongly about their dog tracks."

So Harrah's would turn Twin River into a destination resort with a hotel and all that?

"Well, you couldn’t build a hotel right now, you couldn’t get the zoning," she said. "So all of this is a process. But it's the beginning of the process and the point is that it's an excellent opportunity."

I'm sure folks like Hal Perry are just thrilled to hear that.

An Extraordinary RI Statehouse Experience

Usually, these state capitol posts begin with an image like this:

...but the best photo taken at the statehouse in Providence yesterday was this one:


That's me up here...


...at the the spot where that chandelier is attached to the ceiling.

This time, I went to the Rhode Island statehouse as both a tourist and a journalist. The day before, I learned about a racino in Lincoln, R.I., called Twin River that is going bankrupt for a list of reasons that I'll get into in a later post. But I pitched a piece on it -- it was the nation's first racino and now they're trying to get rid of the racing part -- to the New York Times and the piece runs in Sunday's papers.

So when I went to the statehouse, I did so in part to check it out as is my thing but also to meet with the state officials and politicians. And when the governor's spokeswoman, Amy Kempe, agreed to take me on a private walk up a spiral staircase to the top of the dome, I could not possibly refuse.

This is what it looks like looking down:



Here's that staircase...


...and here's the first thing you see when you enter the secret door:


On the way up we were able to go outside and see the city:


That's the top of the dome of one of the two houses of the General Assembly. For some reason, I didn't take many photos of the Senate or House, but I did like these chairs in the Senate:


All in all, the Rhode Island capitol was among the most beautiful and impressive I've ever seen and I'm not just saying that because I got some nifty special access. Everything is sensational marble and design. Here's the entry landing and, yes, there was a tour group of Buddhist monks this time around. (At the Massachusetts statehouse, we ran into a gaggle of Chinese tourists!)



There was plenty of quirk. This was a nice sentiment... (click on image to enlarge)



...but why was it in the men's room?



This piece of artwork was from the people of Liberia...

...who thank Rhode Islanders in that little tag for their assistance during a civil war there. What did the Ocean Staters do, one wonders!

There were statues all over honoring the military, but this one honoring the Navy was one of the gayest looking things I've ever seen...


...and this one for the Air Force looks female even though it was gifted to the state years before women could be in the branch.


In one of the old meeting rooms, this sign was found:


One wonders if Dana gets a lot of calls from people unsure how to get out without opening the door!?!?!

And finally, I would agree with this book title, "Rhode Island: A Genial History,"...


...especially given that this is a state on the forefront of religious liberty and was the first place for Jews to live free in America as you can see...


...except that then I noticed that the Legislature is about to put a referendum on the state ballot to ask voters whether they ought to -- get this -- change the state's NAME. You see, the full official name of Rhode Island is...


"Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." Why? Because apparently Rhode Island is made up fo two former British colonies. One was called Providence Plantations because, uh, it was sort of a clearinghouse for the slavery trade.

Who knew, huh?