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Feb. 3 Daily HUT Content - What is new?
Hey guys, it’s Coooolin!! Does anyone know what day it is? Anyoneee? Anyone at alll!? I guess, I’m gonna guess the day... guess what day it is....guess what day it is.... HUUMMPP DAYYY! We’re halfway thru a brand new week of the brand new month! Can you believe it!? Wild! How’s everyone’s week so far!? Let me know, doownn belooww! Here’s the new cards for today, Thanks EA! :)
Team of The Week
February 3 - February 10 (Its filthy!)
Forwards
LW - C - RW Line 1 Connor McDavid - 94 OVR - EDM / C - GLA1 , WH1 Leon Draisaitl - 95 OVR - EDM / C - LTL1 , MAG1 Claude Giroux - 91 OVR - PHI / C - PP1 , WM1 Line 2 James Van Riemsdyk - 89 OVR - PHI / LW - HOW1 , T1 Joonas Donskoi - 83 OVR - COL / RW - LTL1 , WM1 David Perron - 86 OVR - STL / LW - SPE1 , MAG1 Line 3 Brandon Saad - 86 OVR - COL / LW - PP1 , T1 Carter Verhaeghe - 83 OVR - FLA / C - SH1 , WH1 Nathan Bastian - 78 OVR - NJD / C - SWA1 , SPE1 Line 4 Chris Didomenico - 80 OVR - FRI / RW - BAL1 , GLA1 Hannes Björninen - 80 OVR - PEL / C - BAR1 , HOW1 Per Åslund - 79 OVR - FAR / RW - SPA1 , MAG1
1D / 23H • Mega Players Pack - 50k C / 1k P 30 items , all Gold Players , with at least 5 80+ OVR Players • NHL Players Pack - 30k C / 600 P 10 items, all Gold NHL players with at least 4 80+ OVR Players • Jumbo Premium Pack - 15k C / 300 P 20 items , at least 9 players with at least 4 Gold Players
P.S.
• New TOTW - February 3 - February 10 • Squad Battles Resets - Today at 5pm EST • Rivals Rewards - Today at 5pm EST ... what did you get
• Squad Battles Rewards - Tomorrow at 5pm EST • New Game Modes HUT RUSH - Tomorrow at 5pm EST • Silver Upgrades for 3 - 86 OVR - Bronze Icons - Tomorrow at 5pm EST • MORE EVENT CARDS! - Friday at 5pm EST —————
Summary of the day
Quick Read Best Forward of the Day - TOTW - is LEEOONN DRAAIISAAITLL OVR 95 with the syn LIIGHTTT THE LAAMPP and MAGIICIAAN Best Defence of the Day - TOTW - is JOHHNN CARLSSON OVR 91 with the syn PAASSINN PLAAAYMAKERRR and SHUUTTT DOOWNN ///// Best Forward of the Day - PT - is JOOOEEE PAVELSSKII OVR 89 with the syn PASSINN PLAYYMAKERRR and WOORKKHORSEEE Best Defence of the Day - PT - is VIINCEE DUNNN OVR 87 with the syn HOOWWITZERR and WOOORKK HORSEEE • NEW TOTW! • Squad Battles Resets - Where did you place? I didn’t play any! Lol! ———— —— ———
Important Notice
Don’t be ashamed to be yourself. Don’t try and be someone else, don’t try and change yourself for someone... cos the right people? Will like you for you. No one will like you if you act happy all the time, you don’t have any problems, and life is 110% stress free. Be open. Have an open mindset, let down your walls, and let people know who you are. It’s scary - but its worth it. They’ll either love you, or hate you... but the thing that matters most is that you’re your true self. Be you. Be true....just be yourself, and I promise you!!! You will get SO far! Do not fake being someone else - you’ll feel like you always have to be that “person” all the time in order for people to like you... just be YOU! m Love you all. Take care. You matter, and remember to smile; even if you cant — it’ll make you happier!!
Interested in Stocks?
EA’s Stock Price, after hours - Feb 3 $ 140.82 (usd) —- Currency Converter we looked at the stock at $137.54 usd —— That is a difference of ( $3.28 / 2.38% ) — Ouch, quite a giant dip... either hold, or buy the dip if you believe in EA EA’s Q3 Earnings Disclaimer - I am not a financial advisor. It is your money, please do your own due diligence. I am not responsible for your money. This is *not** advice. Your capital is at risk. I added this section for an added educational purposes only. Thanks* —— —— —— —-
NEED A SOUNDTRACK TO LISTEN TO?
I made this for everyone. I’ll update it whenever I feel like it, but its been often!
WE’RE AT 1200+ SONGS! WOW! How are you not listening to this playlist already!? Comment songs to add, and please give feedback! It’s much appreciated!! I currently have “Sk8r Boi” by “Avril Lavigne” stuck in my head.... which you can play, recently added to the playlist! Sidenote - How do you guys like the playlist!? I have a friend who makes music...and I really want to surprise him with some new people listening to his music... if you wanna help me, please click Here!! it would mean a lot to me!! ———-
Sites To Bookmark!
If you click here you will be redirected to bilasport. Bilasport is the best Online Streaming site for your entertainment needs for all sports! (Not affiliated) A great streaming source recommended by NHLStreams is SurgeSport. Click on Hockey and you’ll be good to go! Want to make your dream team, and show others what you’ve been working on, and much more? I will redirect you HERE!. Here’s a helpful pack guide for you! Click! Want to know how the market is holding up? With a simple TAP! you will be on the newly fresh made website for the HUT market, made by one of the guys on the sub! .... what do the stats on a card mean? Is my card I want / pulled good? Click here to find out!! When is my favourite team playing? When do they play!? Here you can click on this link, and tap on your favourite team. From there, tap “Schedule” . You can add this to your homescreen on iPhone by clicking the square with the upwards arrow, scrolling down, and tapping “Add to Home Screen” ——- —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —- —— —-
Fighting a Gambling Addiction?
Don’t feel scared to click here. Winning is SO much louder than losing. Know that you are NEVER alone. We are all here for eachother, and it is never too late to get help. I am here for you. This is a VERY important thread, especially if you are new to HUT. Here!
Story Time!!!
Yes I know I haven’t posted one in awhile This will be a personal story time. I don’t really know who reads all this far orr nott, but! Lately I’ve been feelin pretty anxious and worried about my dad and his job... he’s off now (with pay, thankfully) until he finds a new place to help build... whether that be far away, or closeby, I just personally want him to be happy. He’s not used to being at home - and him being home with me is - lol - pretty weird... I think he’s going bored out of his mind already.. not too sure! I don’t really talk much to my dad, nor does he talk a lot to me... but like I know he obviously cares, and loves me. — is every dad like that? Not really talkative?! lol — Anywho! I just hope he’s proud of me, and that he gets a job closeby to where we live... Hah, thanks for reading this lil “story” ... I guess I should just put it as “Coolin’s Thoughts” for today ! I appreciate your time. ——- 34 / 365 —— —— —— —- —- ——- —- —— —— Thanks for reading. I appreciate your time. I’m always welcome to feedback, please let me know what I can improve on. If there’s anything missing, please let me know! Take care, happy gaming! TODAY IS NATIONAL MISSING PEOPLES DAY ... and NATIONAL CARROT CAKE DAY • Coolin Killin It (Life is like a puzzle, you just have to find the right piece.)
Yes, you are. I'm slowly gaining control of my life again and organizing all the beautiful mail you've sent me. I used to be in such a bad mental state back then, that I would stress out because of grammar, spelling and being the perfect brat I'm not, and made a lot of unfinished drafts that are all over the place. I am really, really sorry for that. u/HoneyGirlLZ Thanks for the Vancouver postcard. Ohhh, how I wish I could travel to Canada! My two sisters did an english course there but I got so good with English by myself and so bad at graduating at anything, I never got the “graduation gift” that was some sort of tradition. Wait... I haven't actually graduated yet.... u/ImOkReally Thank you so much for this wonderful piece of mail. Your envelopes are just so amazing, they feel like cards themselves. I wish I could decorate like that, but I am very insecure and never make up my mind with my designs. I love the colors youu use, I love your sensibility, your patters, the combinations, everything. They're just so amazing. I try to open them soooo carefully so not to tear them apart. Love it it love it love it. You're so talented, believe me. Inside you told me about yourself and some memories. I read it at my grandma's house and I felt so cozy reading it. I replied to it with what I found around. I sometimes stay at her house when I have to work. I'm gonna try some day doing those cool patters with those stickers and lovely stuff you sent me, hopefully when the festive season ends. I did something similar during october and I found it so relaxing, problem is that when I decorate postcards, I'm left with no space left to writem, haha. I'm planning on buying stamps online, but still can't make up my mind, there are so many and so pretty! I actually have to write a mail to the woman in charge of them at the office and indicate a lot of things manually. Your mails always make me smile and cheer me up Thank you so much. u/LeeElla Lol, thank you for the Raoc birthday postcard. There you told me about the kid that cried for not being able to blow the candles. Lol, some kids are like that. When I was little I hated that if kids did that, some poeple would light them up again and have them blow them too, and I was horrified because they were not the birthday boys... like stealing the birthday wishes! How dare them! Now I'd be annoyed to see blatant spoiliage of kids. Dunno if I'm using the correct verb, please someone correct me, haha. I'm amazed the wax seal made it safe and sound! it's so cool. I learnt that word finally: Hidrangea. They're one of my favorite flowers. They bring me sooo many childhood memories. So many houses grew them in the south and I loved seeing these flowers made of lots of tiny flowers. My grandma also loved putting some in the dinner table. I also used to like playing hide and seek behind them... until I got scared of spiders. Lol, grandma used to have an apt in a town that actually means "place of spiders" in native's language, hahaha, and I went there many summers. Now it's become so pupular, and badly regulated, they destroyed it. They covered it in buildings and apartments and casinos and entertainment, but the town's capacity was never improved, so now you need 3 hours just to get to the other nearest town, and it's a nightmare, when it used to be 20 -30 mins in this tiny curved road. Also, thanks for the washi and the pretty stamps, I love them so much! what is this one of ""Strawberry driving?"" lol. I wonder what that is supposed to mean, haha u/Lonelytwatwaffle Yoo!! got your Random-Random acts of cards-card for being random. Thank you so much! I still like doing it. I like thinking that randomizers are like destiny telling me who needs a smile and some love sent from here. I ADORE the dragon stamps you put, so adorable and pretty! Oh, right before quarantine we got a boiler (or heater) when we can set the temperature, so yay, that's how I discovered the wonders of green tea. I used to hate it, but that's because it was burnt! Wow. Quarantine discovery. I ended up liking tea so much, I use a french press to brew my tea, haha, so I get a full liter. So I'll be able to enjoy your tea now! Thank you so much! I also find it super funny all the labels and warnings and adjectives your American teas have, lol. ""Oh no! My tea has 14 mg of naturally occurring caffeine! But it's not coffee!!"". ""Oh no, I'm a pregnant breastfeeding woman, I need to consult my *healthcare practitioneer * (lol, what a long name) to drink tea, or I won't be legible for suing the traditional medicinals makers done by herbalists""."" I'm gonna OPEN this TAMPER EVIDENT-MOISTURE PROOF WRAPPED Tea Bag and POUR freshly boiled water in it. COVER it, STEEP it for 10 mins and SQUEEZE it to ENJOY 3-4 cups daily."" Is this bag telling me me how many I have to drink per day?? Wait... do I have to repeat this process 3-4 per day with this single bag??. ROFL. Oh gosh, I'm enjoying this too much. What the hell. So thanks for this HERBAL SUPPLEMENT, with *daily values not established for organic green tea"" and 0 calories!! Hahahahaa. Did you feel worn after scrutinizing all the offers to make this batch of cards? That was quite a nice thing you did. Also, thanks for the sticks and washi, I like the summer vibe they have, I'm going to take them to my vacations. Edit: The mail didn't lose it. It was me. It got burried in my depressive mess and finding it during this time I haven't got any mail was like getting mail again. Such a huge adrenaline rush, it was awesome. I think life holds these surprises for the moments we need them the most. u/ninajyangu/shadesoflanternhill Oh wow guys! I had forgotten you guys met! How was is? What did you do together? Oh wow, can't believe it was this same year. Such a weird year. I thought it was going to be the year of the meetups... so many were happening back then! And I was about to do some myself once in Australia and Asia xD. Well, I'm glad to know I have a spare bed in Japan waiting for me now, haha. And a bigger fridge to store a yummy cake I could bake, so you can try it, 'cause you must. Nina, have you set up your next destinations once all this is over? The only one I have for sure is Europe 2023 with friends... and if I can try and stay longer, the better. I actually wish I could go there next year, but who knows! u/talkingroses Thank you for your adorable little crab postcard with a review of Percy Jackson. I was thinking in seeing if I could find it in the library, but then I remembered my card got expired and I'm not a student anymore so.... I'll have to check other ways of getting my hands on it. (I dun wanna read it in spanish.... so many things get lost in translation sometimes). I can't wait to be able to send to Australia again. Man, who'd have thought? I'd be living there right now if nothing of this had happened. u/vickiiiie (x3) I'm happy to know my test postcard made it your way the other day, and that mail is working again, because I once promised to try to write the “Rat” Character once I got this cool year of the rat postcard, where you told me it was the hardest character of the zodiac. Challenge accepted! I hope I don't horrify you with all my aberrations xD It looks like a rat skiing. I also loved the cool red envelope with cute stickers and, no kidding, I spent like 5 minutes just staring at the envelope and its texture. Do they have a specific purpose there? The flowers are the same of the rat in the envelope (love it), do those flowers mean something too? Thank you so much for such nice mail! Also, thank you so much for the 29th of February postcard! You also added a cute cactus seal. So cool, I wanna try one day doing them. I actually wondered.... if you work in February, any February, if you get paid monthly, are they actually paying you more for that month every year? Or they adjust that? Hmmm.... Well, here February is the month were almost everyone, or at least the government, takes vacations, so nobody is worrying too much about that. Well... you might get a day or less of vacations. We didn't because we only took 2 weeks this February, and it got cut short because my cousin decided to get married the 1st, so pretty much everyone in the family had to start their vacations 2 days late, since you spend a whole day traveling. We usually try to travel the 31st. How long you were quarantined? Many people here are still working at home, and I just recently started working in the kitchens again. It's been fun, and I like cooking with a mask on. Feels more clean. And least but lot last, The first HK RAoC meetup card with u/vickiiiie and u/chikadatte !! I loved it so much when I got it! Oh, gosh, crazy times back then! Haha, I wonder why nobody guessed you were going to an American dinner for bacon and eggs. I sent some test cards both your ways, but it seems they haven't made it yet. I wanna give it another try. I need to know if you both are keeping your same addresses though, I have some unsent mail waiting for you guys. Oh, I was sooo looking forward to traveling to HK next year, but my trip to Australia and then Asia got.... cancelled until... who knows when and who knows if that's ever going to work out. Who knows? Maybe the future awaits me with some surprises I haven't imagined yet. Maybe it's better that what I was going to do. Who knows? We'll see.
Update notes: finished adding all the bridges, added a link to photos. I will try to format everything to be a bit nicer and/or make a copy at another location that allows for easienicer formatting. As requested by raleighspritely in the other bridges thread, this post is intended to help generally newer riders figure out specifically how to get onto each bridge in each direction, where all most of the exit options go and any other weirdnesses each bridge may have. I'll assume you know roughly where you are and roughly how to get to each bridge. Some are easy to find the entrances for (Burrard), some are weird (Cambie, southbound) and some have entrances a long way from where the cars access (Golden Ears) so if they're super weird I'll try and give you more specifics. Photos from the day showing most of the bridges: https://imgur.com/a/RvTUs0V (missing: 2nd Narrows, KSB, Canada Line, Arthur Liang) And now to talking about crossing bridges! Granville - follow the instructions for Burrard or Cambie If you insist on using the GSB (don't) SB access is easiest via Howe St and NB access at 5th & Granville Burrard Easiest to get onto IMO as the access is right at the ends of the bridge
South Bound: connection is at Pacific & Burrard, SW corner. From Beach Ave your options are up Thurlow from the east end of Sunset Beach or just along Pacific from the west end of Sunset beach
as you get to the south end of the bridge @ Cornwall you can:
go right to Cornwall & Cypress
go straight, across Cornwall
then right onto Yew
more straight to Burrard & First where you can go up Burrard St
left @ Burrard & First towards Granville Island
North Bound: connection is at Cornwall & Burrard. You can also hop on the bike lane easily at 1st & Burrard
as you get to the north end you can:
right to Hornby & Pacific
across Pacific then left onto Pacific towards English Bay
straight & up the hill along Burrard to Drake, Burnaby St, Davie St
Cambie Going southbound on Cambie is super weird to get to unless you're already on Nelson St
South Bound: access is on Nelson St @ Cambie St which downtown is running almost perpendicular to the bridge. If you're coming from the northeast you can connect via Beatty
the main exit will take you to Olympic Village Station
If you cut off early (through the flexibarriers) you can pop up Cambie to go left/right on 7th
If you stay till the station you can hang a hard left at 2nd to cut under the bridge and go to Olympic Village
or cross 2nd and take Heather St south
or continue along 2nd briefly to find yourself on Seaside Bypas
North Bound: access is at Cambie & 2nd by the VPD headquarters on 5th. It's that weird intersection of numbered streets you thought were parallel but also manage to intersect
veer left takes you onto what is technically a pedestrian only way that connects to Pacific Blvd EB, yield to pedestrians.
right takes you onto a hairpin
first right connects you to Cooperage Way/Marinaside and basically the Seawall
second right will take you up a short ramp and connect to the Smithe St bike "lane" which can be used to connect to Pacific WB, Richards or all the way up the hill past Burrard & Smithe
Lion's Gate North Bound:
climb the Causeway through Stanley Park, it's not too bad especially with the "new" fence
do a 1/2 Stanley Park loop and as you go around the right turn at what you'll think is the top of the hill you'll see a road to the left with a gate, take that and turn right when you hit the causeway
watch for the little chicane just before the bridge
descent down the north side of bridge can be a bit rough & bumpy
when you get to the north end stay right and go down the little road
if you go HARD right when it levels out you can connect to
the Spirit Trail east bound
Taylor Way which will take you to Parkgate, hang a left at the mall and you can connect to the trail over to Ambleside
if you go roughly straightl/left it'll connect onto Marine and along to Capilano
South Bound:
once you're back directly under the bridge, there's a ramp up the west side of the bridge going north, take that, it'll open up and hang a hard right to turn to face south
on exit at the pumphouse(?) you can
continue south
you'll come across a road to the right, taking it will get you to Park Dr just before Prospect Point
continuing straight takes you along the Causeway and connects onto Georgia ST
hang a 180deg right, then you can either:
cut under the bridge to go back north
go left up a fairly steep, narrow paved path to Prospect Pt
Second Narrows/IronworkersThis is one of the weirdest/awkwardest, particularly at the north end North Bound:
access is at Cambridge & Cassiar. You can connect up via Cassiar from Adanac or Bridgeway St & a small path if you're coming from Portside
as you turn right off Cassiar onto Cambridge take the small path to the left, follow the path down, along and up and it'll take you straight onto the bridge, yield to oncoming people
alternate access is a path off the left side of Fellowes st. It connects closer to the bridge deck but IMO isn't worth taking
Exits:
as you round the right turn of the ramp you can:
go left at the pedestrian controlled crosswalk and
cross Main to go west to Phibbs, A&W etc
hard left onto the bike path parallel to Main and connect to the WB bike path on Barrow st
go straight and connect to Dollarton, Old Dollarton
left on Old Dollarton then onto Riverside or Seymour River can be used for getting to Seymour Parkway, right goes up to Seymour, left can connect to Cap U
straight on Dollarton can be used for going out to Deep Cove
South Bound Access is here basically across from Phibbs. Many ways to get to it, but you've gotta get to that spot to go south. Exiting: takes you down through the trees, watch for the pair of switchbacks. You'll end up at the bottom of Skeena St.
right takes you onto the Portside bike route
left takes you up Skeena through the tunnel
turn right across the crosswalk as you exit the tunnel takes you onto the path you may have used for getting onto the bridge NB, go left to connect back to Cassiar
continue up the hill gets you to Skeena & Cambridge
it's 6 of One, Half a Dozen of the other if you're going south
Arthur Laing I regard this as an "experts only" type bridge that I wouldn't recommend to anyone not comfortable with riding in fairly close proximity to cars. There's no separated lane and just a narrow shoulder. That said, I don't feel unsafe on this bridge for some reason, but that might just be from riding it a bunch and being used to riding next to cars. Anyways, onto how to get on/off: Southbound: access is via the car ramp at where Marine & Granville all come together in a 6 lane clusterfuck that was meant to be the highway through Vancouver. Normally I access coming off NW Marine, onto the clusterfuck, pick up speed down the hill and (with a lot of shoulder checking) get across the right most lane onto the ramp. Go up the ramp and stick to the right. Exiting: things get dicey/exciting. You'll be crossing roads at speed so be shoulder checking.
Just before the car exit (and right before the overpass) you can dive right onto a pathway
going right, then right again is probably easiest for most connections here
this path can be used to go around McArthurGlen and connect to Grauer Rd and then onto Templeton to Iona
take it to connect to Airport Rd and the bit of mess of trails and eventuall down to Russ Baker Way
1st Car Right: Russ Baker Way, takes you around an off-ramp, will take you SB and connects to No2 Rd
cross Russ Baker exit (watch for cars exiting), keep going along, you can go right on Templeton and go out to Iona Beach
North Bound: you can either access off the paths off Airport Rd here or by riding north along Russ Baker Way and basically sticking right and following the signs to Vancouver. Exiting: again a bit dicey with some potential lane crossing
Sticking right takes you left and onto Marine WB/Granville
If it's not too busy and/or you brought your sprinter legs, you can hammer and cross lanes to go left at the first light and connect onto Marine
If not, carefully get to the right and make your way up to cross at the same light.
crossing over (carefully) to the left ramp will take you right and onto Marine EB. You can take your first right and go down Oak St, left on Kent Ave S and eventually connect to Cambie St. I don't know if I've taken this route more than once or twice so YMMV.
Pitt River This is one of the nicest crossings. All the recently built (or updated) bridges are really, really nice once you're on the deck (Pitt River, Port Mann, Golden Ears + Ironworkers post update). The cycle/pedestrian lane is on the north side of the span and is nice and wide. Access on the west end requires crossing Belfast Ave/Fremont Connector that loops under the bridge. Since access is all for the one side crossing my instructions are written for West->East travel but basically just do them in reverse for East->West. Coming from NW (Trabouley Poco Trail/Deboville Slough), you do a couple zigzags and hairpins and crossing Belfast St but you can see your target the whole time so this bridge is honestly one of the easiest to get onto. Coming from the SW, you go under the bridge parallel to the Fremont Connector then see the access to your left. If you were to keep going on the path instead you'd eventually end up at Deboville Slough. East end of the bridge drops you in Pitt Meadows. As you exit (eastbound) you can immediately do 180deg turn left to get onto the trails. Another left at the river to go south, north and you can make your way out to Pitt Lake on the trails. To access the trail parallel to, and on the south side of, Lougheed Highway take the left at the river then left again at Ferryslip Rd. If you go straight Old Dewdney Trunk Rd is a pretty nice ride towards Maple Ridge. Golden Ears Alright, this one is possibly the most difficult unless you know exactly where to go, partly because they're a long way along the bridge from where cars access. The Southbound Access is at 113B & Airport Way (Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows). The northbound access is at 100A Ave & 201St (Langley) Southbound
You can access the SB access either from Airport Way (coming from the west) or along Maple Meadows Way (coming from the north by Meadowcentre mall). If you're coming from the north or east you go west at the 113B roundabout, cross the road, then left at the second roundabout and hop into the bike lane. If you're coming from the east hang a right at the roundabout and hop into the bike lane.
The SB exit involves a rather fun ramp down and drops you in an industrial area. Unless you're going east, my recommendation is work your way west until you get to 98A & 192, cross to the far side then hop on the GoldenEars Greenway.
Northbound Access is at 100A Ave & 201St. You go up the multilevel round ramp. Your exit will basically be the aforementioned 113B roundabout, you can go straight through it to get onto Maple Meadows Way towards the mall, right will change into 203St as it turns north or go left and west towards the airport. Canada Line Bridge This one is on the side of the Canada Line bridge section between Marine & Cambie Station & Bridgeport Station. North connection is on Kent Ave S @ Cambie. However you have to go east from Kent Ave N & Cambie to turn south to get onto Kent Ave S and access the ramp. If you're coming down Cambie, hang a right on Kent Ave N. South Connection is at River Road and Van Horne Way. If you're going North then east, my recommendation is take Cambie north, then cut east at 59th. Kent Ave N between Cambie and Ontario sucks butt and cars are frequently impatient assholes on that section (it's also rough, needs a repave and has a lot of rail tracks). If you're going north then west you can go west on Kent Ave N and then right on Heather before climbing a bit and taking the westbound route of your choice. If you're just going north then Cambie, Ontario & Heather are all pretty good choices with Ontario & Heather being quieter. I can't remember how all of Heather's crossings are since I haven't ridden it past 59th in years. If you're going South, you can go:
west along River Rd towards the casino & Bridgeport Station
continue SW around the clusterfucks that are Bridgeport Rd, SeaIsland Way and you can return to River Rd and hop onto a gravel trail that you can take pretty much all the way to Steveston
south on Van Horne way to eventually connect onto Garden City Way. This route is about 95% bike lane but theres a one or two spots where taking the sidewalk is unfortunately the prudent choice (I think the south side of Sea Island Way for ~50m) before the bike lane reappears.
east on River Rd towards Shell Rd. If you take Shell Rd far enough south there's a gravel trail that you can use to get to Hammersmith Gate, Horseshoe Way and across to Rice Mill Rd where you can find the Massey Tunnel Shuttle (this is my quiet route to the ferry, my fast route is to hammer south on No5)
Formatting is becoming a pain because this is getting long. Sorry! Port Mann This one is like the Pitt River Bridge in that the pedestrian/bike path is only on the north/east side of the bridge deck. West access is where the Port Mann passes over United Boulevard and where Unite intersects the Mary Hill Bypass offramps. If you're coming off the bridge you can go south/west on United and eventually work your way over towards Braid Station. If you go east on the Mary Hill Bypass you can connect to the Traboulay PoCo trail, Argue St and work your way up to the Pitt River bridge. There's also a mess of trails in and around Colony Farm but you're on your own for that :) East access is a ways up a pretty decent hill at 152st/112Ave by Dogwood Campgrounds. If you're going north/west, the signage is good. Just don't take the overpass over the highway. How you get to 152/112...up to you. It's a big grid! Alex Fraser Ok, this one is another bit of a mess in terms of access. I don't think this one is technically unidirectional like the others, but I recommend riding the same way as cars are travelling and this guide will be based on that. Careful on the deck, there's a bunch of spots where you have to dodge the bases of signs and other spots where the path just shifts left/right. Southbound: You've made it over the Queensborough or come in from Richmond. You've made it onto the Annacis Channel bridge and are approaching Annacis island. You'll see a bus-stop on an island, you want to get there (if not busy, drop the curb & cut across, otherwise there's a crosswalk to use), take the crosswalk that goes parallel to the bus-only section of intersection, onto the sidewalk on the far-far side and then left and you'll see the path onto the bridge. You'll get dropped off with the choice of left or right. Left takes you towards HWY17, River Rd which are the two options for getting to the ferry (take River, it's quieter and only marginally slower). Right will take you under the bridge, and after you go past Planet Ice you can go left towards River Rd east, right-then-right to get onto Nordel north/east or just right for the Delta-South Surrey Greenway. If you're trying to get to South Surrey, go as if you're going up Nordel, get over the overpass, then take the trail that cuts back to the right. This is the North Delta Greenway and is superior to the DSS Greenway in basically every way including being WAY smoother (I ride it on my carbon road bike on 25mm tires). North Bound: Starting from Planet Ice, take the path up onto the bridge, ride across, question why you're out here and didn't just take the Massey Shuttle to get home faster... At the north end of the bridge, you'll end up next to the Annacis exit ramp. At the end of it, you want to take the small crosswalk onto the island with the bus stop, across Cliveden ave onto the island on the far side, then across another little crosswalk onto the path and hang a left. Stick to this path, you'll go back over the Annacis Channel and find yourself at a zig-zagging ramp. At the bottom of that you have the options of:hard right: path through to Hamilton Highway Park where you can take an overpass towards River Rd left then right: onto Boundary Rd then Dyke rd, you can use this to get over towards Westminster Highway via Fraserwood Way. left then left (generally recommended): take Boundary Rd north. At Boundary & Boyd you can go right to the Queensborough or left onto Westminster Hwy which you can use to get all the way to Richmond or to connect to River Rd Queensborough because New West is at a 45deg angle I'll be using "up/down and top/bottom" for this bridge because it's effectively a hill. Top is 22nd St station end, bottom is Queensborough Landing. The top connection is just below 22nd St Station. If you're coming from 22nd St station just take the bridge down, it'll drop you on Boyd St. Left takes you to QB Landing. Right takes you to...not a lot. It's narrow, you'll probably have to slow down a bunch as you pass people. If you're coming from Market Crossing area or New West (both via Marine Dr) I recommend taking the "up" side of the bridge down because it has about 1% of the traffic the "down" side does. To get to it, the access is the ramp on the "cars up" side of the bridge. Otherwise, you can use the ramp on the "cars down" side to connect to the "down" side. Either way as you're going down, watch for the hairpins at the bottom! If you're going up and heading to downtown New West take the "up" side. Head east along Marine/Stewardson. You can eventually head right down a side street to get to S&O because that's why you're in New West right? If not, you're at S&O now. Best way to get through to the rest of downtown is via the Quay. If you're going up and heading to anywhere else take the "down" side and go all the way to 22nd St Station. Right and past the station connects to 7th Ave across New West. Left you can use to get onto both Marine Dr or Marine Way to go west to Market Crossing, Big Bend, Glenlyon, River District. Straight turns into the BC Parkway and travels under the skytrain past Edmonds, Royal Oak, Metrotown stations. Knight St Recommendation: if you can, keep going west and take the Canada Line Bridge. This bridge was NOT intended for cyclists at all as you're about to learn and this section may get a little rant-y. Northbound:
Access is off Bridgeport. Technically you're not supposed to ride on the roadway, but the sign for that is so late onto the bridge you have to know this in advance unless you want to stop and lift your bike over the concrete barrier.
That said, assuming you knew to get onto the sidewalk somewhere at the start of the on-ramp before the barrier begins (it starts at a crosswalk and there's no curb cut), you'll be riding on a pretty narrow sidewalk with barriers both sides. It's rough.
You'll eventually get to an off-ramp, this is Mitchell Island. You'll need to take the crosswalk across to the left. The cut in the barrier is super narrow. Cross the island, drop the curb (again no curb cut) and cross to the next section of sidewalk. Continue north.
Next spot you'll get to gives the option of a crosswalk to the left, riding straight into a post in the middle of the path, or dodging the post and continuing straight/veering right. Go right, this takes you down to Marine Dr.
At Marine you'll find signs pointing to the Kent, Inverness & Borden bike routes
Kent involves following the path to the right and taking your first right
Inverness involves taking the couple crosswalks and getting across Marine, going under the KSB overpass, hop back on the sidewalk after the bridge and follow the signs up to Inverness
Borden I've never done, but I think involves getting across Marine, then taking the sidewalk east to the first street north
Ready for a rant? Vancouver concert people, what happened last Saturday is unacceptable. Let’s talk about it. The events are still on my mind evidently and I just want to get it off my chest. I’m still appalled by what happened. We went to a concert inside the old Casino, which is the old Plaza of Nations. They call this place Harbor Convention Center. King Gizzard was playing. A very popular Australian psych band. Doors were 8, show at 9. The lineup to get in even at 8:45 was over 500 feet long (actually) and remained that way for a long time. The opener came on before the time advertised (9pm), which is fine, but hundreds of people in line missed band(s) they were counting on seeing and paid for. Poor, poor organization. Inside at the merch booth, there was one card reader and over a hundred people were jammed in that line, which was right by the front door. Apparently, everyone was in good spirits there, however. The capacity for the venue is 2,452. It felt oversold and dangerous. There were almost no seats. The bathrooms were full of smoke.The barrier for the pit was barely hanging on when Gizzard took the stage, almost collapsing. I would say 90% of the audience were downstairs in front of the stage, packing the bottom floor. I’ve experienced all these things by themselves at shows, and they are not that out of the ordinary, but it just paints a picture of how terribly run this event was and really sets the stage for what happened next. King Gizzard were clearly nearing the end of their set. At most they had 2 songs left. The friend I was with lived in Langley. It was late. We wanted to beat the crowd, as we knew what awaited us with this crowd filing out through the tiny front entrance. We go to leave. At the exit, I am met by at least 8-10 security guards with arms crossed in front of the glass doors and a bunch of other concert goers, sort of milling about standing in front of them. I walk up and say to the large guard “Excuse me, I’m just leaving now” and try to get to the door. He physically blocks me and says, “No you can’t.” I said “What?” He says, “Nobody can leave until the band is done.” I said, “Okay, where is the second exit, so I can leave?” He says, “There isn’t one.” Well. It’s at this point I start to realize why all these other people are milling around this area. They have been told by this intimidating squad of security guards that they can’t leave. I tell the guard, “I’m leaving right now, and there’s nothing you are going to do about it.” I try to push through them. They physically restrain me and stop me from getting to the doors stating, “It is the bands request that they leave the stage first, so they do not get mobbed.” I say, “I don’t give a fuck what they requested, let me out of the fucking venue right fucking now.” I’m getting extremely heated at this point, realizing I am being held in a place, ANY PLACE, against my free will. All these security guards genuinely believed that they had this right to stop us from vacating a venue. The sheer ignorance and audacity of this is beyond my comprehension. So, voices started to raise, there is pushing and shoving, this goes on for many, many minutes. Lots of concert goers get involved. I am loud and want out. Some people are with me, some against me, which blows my mind even more. I’m clearly explaining how they are violating every single person here and I’m continually saying things to the effect of “Let Me the Fuck Out.” Long story short, they finally gave in and let ONLY ME out. The gate keepers finally saw fit to let me pass. I get to the door and it’s LOCKED. So, not only are they holding us there against our will, they had locked us all in. So, I’m fumbling with the lock, and get the door open, and I get out. The doors close and everyone else remained inside. Locked up it seems, until King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, The Security Team and Timbre Concerts agreed that it was time for all these paying customers be set free into the night. Can you imagine if there was a fire? Can you imagine if there were a stampede, panic and people pushed into locked glass doors and windows? If I needed to get to some medication in my car? If there was a family emergency? Didn’t matter. Couldn’t leave. Not happening. I feel great and proud about standing up for such an important matter. It went way beyond specific rules at a concert. It went into the realm of quasi authority figures taking an Orwellian stance and imposing rules on a free society. King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard can request things all they want. I don’t hold anything against them for the request. It is the job of Timbre Concerts and their hired security to, above all, provide a safe environment for their paying guests. Even if that means telling one of the most popular bands on the planet “tough shit.” Figure it out. Come up with a plan that doesn’t involve stripping the public of their FREE WILL for ANY amount of time. I don’t want an apology. I want an admission of guilt from Timbre Concerts and the Security Team. I want them to say they were wrong and that it will never happen again. I’d love to hear your comments, questions and, if you were there, share your experience. I’d love to know what Security company it was too. Trust me, if my phone hadn’t died, I’d have all these guys on camera looking smug, telling me and about 100+ others, that we couldn’t leave. Thanks for reading this far. Had to be said.
Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Jeffrey Mora of Food Fleet, a brand that makes mobile food service solutions. Some stats:
Product: Mobile food service solutions.
Revenue/mo: $1,500,000
Started: February 2012
Location: Los Angeles
Founders: 2
Employees: 6
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
I started my career at the world-famous Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles Apprenticing under Certified Master Chef Raimund Hofmeister. Since then I have worked in more than 22 countries around the world working for some of the world’s finest chefs from Cas Spijkers, 2 Michelin star Restaurant De Swann Hotel in Oisterwijk, to Paul Prudhomme's K-Paul's Louisiana kitchen. I was on the 92 and 96 US Culinary Olympic Teams. I have been involved in all aspects of the foodservice industry. My main focus has always been on healthy sustainable foods; working in every aspect of the business from fine dining to airport foodservice and food manufacturing. I personally took care of the Los Angeles Lakers Foodservice providing all meal periods for the team in the season for 8 years including the 3-year title run with two world titles receiving two championship rings for my efforts. My passion is volunteering for Environmental and other health-related causes. I helped coordinate one of the first sustainable dinners in 1998 with the Earth Pledge Foundation in NY, I served on the boards of American Ocean Campaign, Oceana, National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and currently serves on the Boards of Jean Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society ,The Green Sports Alliance Food advisory board the Pioneers of Sustainability and the Carbon Underground. My partner and I started Food Fleet in 2012 to help mom and pop mobile food vendors work within a corporate environment. Since then Food Fleet has secured a National Contract with Sodexo, has multiple contracts with Levy Restaurants, Guckenheimer and others, providing services for Convention Centers, NASCAR, PGA, Concerts, Colleges and Universities, Hospitals, MLB All-Star Week and more. We also provide design and build services as well as food manufacturing and consulting for a number of large scale companies. Food Fleet’s growth Year after year has been at an at over 30 %. From 2017-2018 we had an unprecedented 160% growth spurt. With a team of 6, including my partner and I, we managed over 20 million in sales for our clients. As an example. We took over a convention center 3 years ago managing their food truck business. For their largest event of the year, we were up 53% over the previous year. I honestly would have to equate some of that success to the under-reporting of sales by the previous operator. But the following year we were up 19% from that figure and again close to that this year. That is due in large part to our understanding of transaction times, menu mix, the equipment in each truck or pop up and other factors.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
We started the food truck business in 2012. We kept finding it very difficult to find locations to operate. We had a booker that we used to find our locations but fell short and we let her go. I took over our booking and found that most people did not want to book just one truck, not only that they were upset that most of the time the trucks didn’t show up or were late. After a few calls, I started saying I was with the Food Truck Alliance and had as many trucks as they wanted. I knew I could because my partner Rudy was working most events every night and establishing a relationship with the owners of a large number of trucks. I did this to ensure we would be part of the mix, as well as make a little extra money booking the other trucks. What I learned is that most truck owners while passionate at what they did, had little to no experience working in a structured corporate environment. What we also did differently then most lots/events and companies booking trucks at the time was, if they didn't make money we didn't collect a commission. I then put my 35 years of Food Service experience to work helping them with everything from food safety to insurance. We learned the real need was not only helping the trucks but providing a turnkey service for the corporations. This was a game-changer for us, we were really struggling financially. Developing this service helped keep us afloat. At a certain point the services we provided far outweighed the need to continue to operate the truck financially. My partner and I decided to seek out contracts for locations to operate at. We secured with a lot of time, effort and energy, our first contract with the Navy to put trucks on bases. This was the launching point for us. We then used that to leverage other types of accounts from Universities to B&I, hospitals, and casinos.
Take us through the process of designing and launching the business.
My partner and I were fortunate enough to bring back a former employee that worked for us when we were pretty much-doing catering and events with the truck. She was well organized and very detail-oriented. This enabled us to help further develop the systems we started using into a more formal approach… We also decided there and then we would not be charging a membership fee to the trucks to belong to Food Fleet. We felt it was a conflict of interest to have the trucks pay us to belong. We would be beholden to them and not our clients. From there we then developed a vetting system that covered all the essentials of what we required for them to meet our client's needs. The principles included first and foremost food safety, then transaction times. Those two were key factors. We did not want it to take long for people to get their food. We then added over 50 more. The other major key was the insurance piece. Most trucks only carry the min required. And little to no one carried workman's comp. Most of our clients required a 5 million umbrella and WC. We were lucky once again to find Burnie Tappel the President of Cobbs Allen Insurance Burnie is a third-generation Lloyds of London insurer that only dealt with risk management. They were experts in Oil and Gas and risk Management. He liked the challenge of trying to insurance us nationally for what we were trying to do. He was able to help us find a policy that met our client's needs. We were then able to offer the clients a larger pool in which to choose. Having them to help us understand liability and indemnity issues along with a lot of other contractual obligations that would need to be met was critical. They have been a key part of our growth and a partner we couldn't do without. Once we had the basics secured, all three of us set out to accomplish different tasks. Carly worked on the website and booking platform we were going to use. Rudy worked on Logistics as well as local regulatory compliance issues operating in multiple states. I worked on the vetting systems, insurance piece and securing the contracts. I will tell you were ran more than we walked and had to clean up and fix more things along the way. We still are. Our financial model was a simple one, don't spend money we don't have or will have. We didn't take out a loan or even credit cards, We only used debit cards. Only 2 years ago did we get Credit cards and within the last 6 months got a second one. I understand the term other people's money but we didn't look to borrow or bring in investors. Not that we were not sure of what we had or what we were doing, we needed to understand better what we had and what we were doing. The model that we started with has changed and evolved many times over the years. Honestly, we didn't want to be beholden to anyone.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
While there were others doing what we were doing, I noticed early on what the key difference was. Others were in the booking / Broker business, and the tech business. Most if not all of them were not in the hospitality business. This is the key factor. Being in the business for 35 years I understood what our customers and clients really wanted and needed. I knew how to come up with solutions for their problems. We were in the hospitality business, were in customer service. It's what this business really is. Working on trucks and understanding how to operate then for many years really helped us. Understanding how to use my experience, and being able to relate that to our clients made the difference. I came to find out more than anything that even to this day no one really understands the business and more importantly they don’t want to. Our first real call for consulting along with design and build came from my old Olympic team manager. He was the Sr VP of food and beverage for Pinnacle entertainment at that time. They operated 19 casinos. He also had been the Corporate chef for Disney, opened Epcot, Sr VP at Darden for Red Lobster, CEO of the California Culinary Academy, worked in a leadership role at Levy Restaurants. He called me because he had no understanding at all of the food truck business and needed help. He is one of the most brilliant talented people in the hospitality business and he called me for help. I realized more and more that this was the norm. Most thought in the traditional manner of Brick and Mortar, when it came to start-up costs, daily costs P&L. it is not the same at all and that where most go wrong. For lack of a better word, I was able to crack the code and translate it into language they could understand. More importantly, they did not want to have to deal with the trucks or the owners. They were happy to have someone else do it for them that they knew understood what they wanted and needed. We provide world-class customer service. The highest quality mobile food solutions for events and catering were professional and respond to all inquiries by the end of the day no matter what. We pick up the phone and talk to people to connect with them, as well as better understand their needs. Our employees are not allowed to text or email clients or vendors until they have spoken to them and established a relationship with them. All our staff comes from the hospitality business they aren't salespeople or tech people, they all have worked in restaurants, B&I, hotels, etc. How can we truly help our clients when we don't understand their business. We fully understand their financial models and requirements. We then expanded into Design and Build food Manufacturing and consulting. Due to my background, network and expertise we were able to grow our business exponentially. When we got on the phone with clients they not only understood that we knew what we were talking about. They had trust in us to take care of their needs no matter what. Of course a lot of things we had some limited experience in the beginning. But I knew if we said, we could deliver we would. More often than not, my team has to hold me back from bringing in more business.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
I have to assume everyone exaggerates and embellishes here a bit. But the truth is the future looks bright. We are tightening up all our standard operating procedures and our quality assurance specs along with our policies. Since every client is different this is a constantly changing and evolving area that we work on weekly. Implementing new policies and procedures goes along with that. Things come up all the time that we address and add into our policies and procedures We have been preparing for a large expansion for the past year and are working toward taking that next step. We are not the same as any other business. We have a number of different models and services based strictly on each client and location account. No two of our client's contracts are alike, so we have to be able to adapt to their individual needs. This makes having the same margins a bit more difficult. Our model is scalable and can be done globally and we are working toward that goal.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Start with a partner that has your back, this is step one. My partner is the most loyal honest person I have ever met. I am lucky to call him my friend and partner. We both have struggled financially and emotionally through this whole process. We both have ebbed and followed when one of us was going through a rough patch the other picked up the slack no questions asked. Then bring in a team of caring and passionate people that love this business and understand what it means to be in it. This will help you avoid a lot of mistakes. When you find the right person to vest them in with benchmarks and goals. It was the best decision my partner and I made. Now we have a core team where each of us has finally developed into our roles and each complement the others skill set. That doesn't happen too often. While we have made a few mistakes they were all short term ones. For example, taking an account that we felt was going to do well financially and it failed miserably and quickly. That comes back to one of the lessons. We do learn by our mistakes. At this point, we have pretty much seen it all. We can tell our clients what the pitfalls are as well as the pinch points. Lost money made money hired the wrong web developer, hired the right one small little things. Dumb luck, being at the right place at the right time. That honestly has been one of our biggest assets.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We have tried a number of them and currently, our VP of Ops found us a platform that we use. She has been able to make it work for us till now. We will have our own tech platform within 60 days. This will be a game-changer. Our business is so unique we have tried to find third party solutions but nothing that has worked for our needs. We have spent 2 years searching for a solution and finally decided to do it ourselves. This is once again where dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time comes into play. I found our builder, Freshin Up while having a bowl of Ramen in the Tokyo airport. We were at the counter eating and talking to the guy next to us, and it came out what he did. We continued to talk until my flight was leaving. He was heading to Thailand and I just came from there. We connected when we got home. I sent him the specs of what we needed, and they were the only company that truly understood our needs. They got what we were trying to accomplish and had a team that we're able to think the way we did.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Both my partner and I were fortunate to be around the great Phil Jackson on a daily basis. He was more than me. That being said, Phil was an inspiration, along with countless other mentors and friends. They have been way more influential to me than any book or podcast. Chefs and Coaches are in many ways exactly alike. They both lead a team of people. They both have to train, coach, mentor, listen, care, and teach. They are only as good as their weakest link. Chefs also say we are only as good as our last meal. They succeed and fail daily, learn from it and move on. Chefs, coaches, and players all have good and bad days, when you go home at the end of the shift or game it's over. Tomorrow is another day you get to prove yourself again. It’s great. When I was an apprentice there was a banquet chef named Jimmy Wong. Jimmy was the finest banquet chef I have ever known. The Century Plaza where I trained served on average 3,000 meals a day in banquets. It was the flagship of the Westin hotel. The Corporate chef brought Jimmy to the hotel when it opened as one of his anchors. Jimmy was from Hong Kong by way of Vancouver Jimmy was a legend, to say the least. Every Chef that wanted to be an executive chef for Westin had to come through Jimmy's station, if he did not give them the thumbs up they never were promoted. Were talking about some of the most iconic chefs of the day. All thinking they knew more than him and wondering why they had to have his approval. Most learned quickly that they were not in his league and couldn't keep up. The corporate chef knew the real money in every hotel came from banquets without that they would fail and lose money. Banqueting supported most of the specialty and fine dining restaurants in the hotel. If the chef didn't get that then they were out. Jimmy was fearless doing 1000 breakfast and 1000 lunches or more by himself almost every day. When I first started at the hotel they had me in one of the restaurants. Every day when I came to work I would clock in and go and say hello to Jimmy, then go to work. The others always said Jimmy is a hard ass, he won't show you anything, he is old school send you to go get something, then make the sauce while you were gone. I was not going to let that happen to me, I realized it was more often times the lack of respect they paid him. I found out Jimmy's routine every morning like clockwork he would show up at 5:50 am set up his station, then clock in at 6 am and go get a cup of coffee and sit for 10 minutes to figure out his day. At 10 am he would take lunch no matter how busy. I would come in and watch how he set up, draw diagrams of where the pots and pans went and what he would do to get ready. On my first day working at Jimmy's station, I came in at 5 am and set up the station. When he walked in at 5:50 it was ready to go. He smiled from ear to ear, he checked it and then clocked and invited me to go have coffee with him. Needless to say, he taught me everything I know about large events. This comes back to another lesson I learned from him. If he didn't respect someone or thought they were a shitty cook, he would call them a shoemaker. One day I asked Jimmy why. He said because they stopped learning and caring about being a good cook or chef. If you stopped caring and learning about cooking you were done with that, then you might as well become a shoemaker since your not going to be a cook anymore. Lesson don't rest on your laurels or past always be willing to keep learning. You will never know it all. The real joy is learning something new. I have been going to MIT for the last year to recruit as well as learn. Nothing has made me happier than to have the ability to be around such brilliant creative minds. The future of everything is there. I am lucky to have the opportunity to take advantage of it.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Do what you say you’re going to do. Never apologize unless you have a solution to the issue. Otherwise, it's just an empty apology. No one wants to hear that unless you can follow that up with what you're going to do to fix the reason you're apologizing for. My father taught me two important lessons that I live my life by. “Be nice to everybody, give them the shirt off your back, but if they fuck you, hang them by their balls.” That is simple direct and to the point. “Pick the hill you want to die on.” That means is that battle worth going down for, or do you let it go and move on. There are a great number of them that you will say that's the hill, but make sure it is for something your willing to lose it all for. Only care what your friends and family think the rest doesn't matter. Never let others drag you down. Try and lead whenever possible, following leads to mediocrity, and zero creativity. Always look at the whole chessboard and think 5 years ahead, Certain things you need narrow focus on, but someone has to think long term and strategy. If you cant you will get passed by very quickly. There is always someone that is going to try and copy you or take it to the next level. It's the nature of all things, stay ahead of them by being an innovator and not a follower. Be willing to go all in, and not worry about failing. I throw 100 things at the wall, and from that, I really do get a few amazing ideas. Just because it didn't work at that time doesn't mean it wasn’t a good idea. Be willing to hear everyone out on any crazy idea they have. That what changes the world. If you can figure out how to make money and do the right thing, there is nothing better. You will be a lot happier and create a more sustainable business. If you work and care about what you do, the money will come, it always does. Always hire people that are smarter than you, and you won't have to work as hard. Always bring a gift with you to give to whoever your meeting, and make it personal from you. Not something generic. If you make something special, then make it for them, it shows you care. Lastly, “have fun, laugh a lot, enjoy what you do” otherwise why bother. If I can't have a good time doing it the chances are others won't as well.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Were always looking to hire when the right person comes along. We want talent creative innovative people that want to have fun enjoy life be a part of the greatest industry in the world. I tend to go to MIT and try and talk kids out of going to work for investment bankers, private equity, etc. Bringing food always helps at the job fair.
Where can we go to learn more?
Your local post office wall, or the Cook county correctional facility
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. For more interviews, check out starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM
A few months ago I completed a read through of all ~400 TLJ reviews on RT(now up to ~415). It was painfully boring at times, but that's salt mining for you. I wanted to get a handle on the critical reception which is commonly cited as universal praise. While it's generally true that critics loved TLJ, they also had some criticisms that would be right at home here at STC, and these come from super experienced and intellectual film critics, so they have to be valid, right? After all, these people know so much more about film than a layperson. They can fully evaluate a film on countless criteria that average fans don't comprehend. /s, but you see where I'm going here: many TLJ fans have put critics on a pedestal, as if their opinion is somehow more valuable as a baseline for TLJ's quality. So what about when critics are echoing our own criticisms of TLJ? Almost every criticism we have lobbed at this movie was shared by at least a few critics, but there were three main criticisms that stood out as the most common. I'll start this series with humor in TLJ. Peter Debruge, Variety -Fresh
Luke is funnier than we’ve ever seen him — a personality change that betrays how “Star Wars” has been influenced by industry trends. Though the series has always been self-aware enough to crack jokes, it now gives in to the same winking self-parody that is poisoning other franchises of late, from the Marvel movies to “Pirates of the Caribbean.” But it begs the question: If movies can’t take themselves seriously, why should audiences? Harrison Ford was a good enough actor, and Han Solo an aloof enough character, that he could get away with it, but here, the laughs feel forced — as does the appearance of cuddly critters on each new planet.
Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter -Fresh
General Hux, who's goofily played by Domhnall Gleeson as if he were acting in a Monty Pythonesque parody
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger -Fresh
humor is not only prevalent but often turned, mockingly, on the self-serious mythology of the whole saga. Sometimes there are too many jokes; certainly there's an overabundance of cutesy aliens.
Niall Browne, Movies in Focus -Fresh
It’s Finn’s mission which takes the film off on a diversion where it didn’t really need to go. There’s a lot of comedic hijinks involved in all of this which George Lucas would have excised from the first draft of anything he ever wrote. There’s more humour in The Last Jedi than previous Star Wars movies; some of it hits, some of it doesn’t. The much publicised Porgs work for a moment or two, but they outstay their welcome. The film drew to a halt too many times to show-odd cute creatures. I didn’t care for the crystal wolves during the climatic battle and the aforementioned space Llamas feel like they belong in a Disney movie (wait, this is a Disney movie!)
Rendy Jones, Rendy Reviews -Fresh
"The Last Jedi" is a movie that follows elements of other Star Wars movies that works on its own but feels so similar to a Marvel film because the first half of this movie is a comedy. Seriously a lot of the first half of the movie has a silly vibe amongst all the death and destruction that surrounds it. It desperately tries to be a parody of itself by making serious situations comedic.
Ruben Rosario, MiamiArtZine -Fresh
Much has also been made of “Jedi's” jarring tonal shifts. Johnson inserts broad humor, then abruptly makes things serious, then back again to goofy content.
Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Film Festival Today -Fresh
[Kylo's] partner in evil, Domnhall Gleeson, as General Hux, is less fine, though much of the problem stems not so much from the actor as from the tonally strange, abusively co-dependent relationship between the two men; their jokey rapport feels like it belongs in a very different movie.
Alex Doenau, Trespass -Fresh
However, from the beginning there’s a discordant sense of humour that’s somewhat counter to the series’ ethos to date: rather than funny situations rising organically in the script, many of the characters openly seem to be making jokes. It’s how we introduce Poe this go-round, and it feels slightly off.
Owen Richards, The Arts Desk -Fresh
There’s a surprising amount of comedy in the film, quite a bit at the expense of beloved characters or series law; it’s funny, but not respectful.
Tim Brayton , Alternate Ending -Rotten
The Last Jedi has an impressively poor batting average for its jokes: it opens with a vengefully dumb "I have a bad phone connection" bit that put me on the movie's bad side basically as soon as it had a side to be on, and it's not exactly all uphill from there.
James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk -Fresh
Sometimes, however, his proclivities come at the film’s expense, such as his penchant for inserting quippy humor, sarcasm, and sight gags at odd times, which often undercuts the drama or simply smacks of too much effort.
Craig Takeuchi, Georgia Straight -Fresh
Weak points come with awkward humour that lacks comedic rhythm and an unnecessary casino escapade, where a disposable underworld character DJ (Benicio del Toro) is introduced, that subsequently soft lens into what is essentially a children's adventure tale about animals.
Rob Dean, Bullz-Eye.com -Fresh
Further pushing the disconnect is that the script is far too self-aware, constantly making the sort of jokes that nerds have been making about “Star Wars” for decades, as if it’s too cool to purely accept itself on its own merits. The comedy works about half the time, but there are a ton of jokes in this film that underscore all of the overly serious talk of hope that populates the movie.
Sonny Bunch, Washington Free Beacon - Rotten
Johnson tries too hard on the humor front. Just one, brief, example: The whole opening sequences involves Poe doing conference call shtick while trolling Admiral Hux (Domhnall Gleeson). It's weirdly un-Star-Wars in the sense that it feels like something you could see on any dreadful sitcom here on planet Earth; this sequence is more fit for The Big Bang Theory than a supposedly dark entry in the Star Wars canon. The Star Wars movies have always been funny, of course, and there are moments when Johnson makes it work in a Star-Wars-sort-of-way. On the whole, though, it feels desperate and forced.
Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru - Rotten
Johnson's screenplay awkwardly blend action and drama with comedy and little bit of tacked-on romance. One particular scene involving an image that's not what it initially appears to be comes out of nowhere and feels like it belongs in a parody of Star Wars even though it does generate laughter.
Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground -Fresh
With more gags, one-liners and quirky moments than all the other Star Wars films combined, The Last Jedi introduces a levity to the staid franchise in the vein of Roger Moore's turn as post-Connery Bond. At times it works, even to the point of guffaws, but ultimately the humour feels misplaced. In a story where loss abounds and crushing defeat looms large at every turn, the repeated cutaways to doe-eyed porgs purring like extras from a Pixar film distract more than they entertain. So, too, does Domhnall Gleeson, whose character General Hux plays more like a parody of a Star Wars villain. As a result, both the New Order and the film itself are robbed of their most enduring menace: the Empire.
Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com -Fresh
In “The Last Jedi,” we watch Poe poke at Hux, who’s been turned into a buffoon for the new film, teasing him by faking communication issues and sharing an opinion about his mother. It’s the first of many awkward attempts at humor from Johnson, who isn’t known for funny business
Kevin McCarthy, WTTG-TV -Fresh
The first act of the film features major pacing issues combined with unnecessary comedic moments that ultimately hurt the tone of the film. Unfortunately, a lot of this comes from Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker character.
Jonathan W. Hickman, Daily Film Fix -Fresh
I found myself frustrated that the tone was comedy and sometimes almost veered into parody. Everything else is jokes and comedic references with a side of cheese. I found myself shaking my head more than laughing along.
Ray Greene, CineGods.com - Rotten
But it also doesn’t feel quite right — the language, the iconography, the weirdly campy humor at the beginning — it doesn’t feel a part of the Star Wars universe.
Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly -Fresh
The less said about the awkward attempts at comic relief, the better.
Matt Looker, TheShiznit.co.uk -Fresh
the comedy - and there is plenty of it - is spread out more evenly across the whole cast. In the case of Domhnall Gleeson's Hux, this becomes a good opportunity to poke fun at the horribly hammy performance he gave in The Force Awakens. But when he is playing those laughs off against his only foil - Kylo Ren - Johnson threatens to undermine their status as epic villains.
Christian Toto, HollywoodInToto.com - Rotten
Johnson drops plenty of cutesy comic moments into the mix, some of which would make even George Lucas blush. What was passable in 1977 no longer flies as easily today. And a franchise as esteemed as this one deserves richer comic relief.
Mark Hughes, Forbes -Fresh
The first act's humor is the shakiest, with some gags seeming more like something out of a Star Wars satire. The tone and irreverence of it was out of place, and a couple of bits went on one or two beats too long.
Scott Menzel, We Live Entertainment -Fresh
Speaking of laughs, the jokes and humor just fall flat. The jokes seemed out of place or were just so “on the nose” that I couldn’t help but be annoyed by them. I feel like the modern day humor didn’t feel the tone of the story and yet Johnson kept trying to lighten the mood by adding in cheesy jokes that weren’t even remotely amusing but instead were rather cringe-worthy.
Kevin Jagernauth The Playlist -Fresh
In the pursuit of providing some buoyancy to the picture, Johnson wields comedy like a sword, but it’s unfortunately the weakest element of the film. “Star Wars” has always been home to plenty of cornball one liners, and comedic passages, but there’s a delicacy to how they’re employed and delivered that allows them to land….or simply fall flat. Far too often, it’s the latter outcome in this picture, with some of the laughs feeling underwritten or simply shoehorned in. There’s a distinct lack of cleverness to the wit employed here — think something as seemingly spontaneous as BB-8’s “thumbs up” in ‘The Force Awakens’ — and while the gags don’t grind the picture to a halt, there are certainly some awkward patches where the expected laughs don’t materialize.
Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects -Fresh
The film is a series of points both high and low, and it’s nowhere more clear than in the humor. Several beats work well to bring a smile, but others fall tone deaf to the carnage and pain surrounding them. From the very beginning Hux’s scenes are made to feel like lost reels from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs, and poor Boyega can’t catch a break as Finn is saddled with lame one-liners at every turn.
Alex Godfrey, GQ Magazine [UK] -Fresh
It’s funny, though not always when you want it to be – perhaps fearing too much gravitas, Johnson undermines it a little too often.
Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth -Fresh
Rian Johnson has crafted an installment that largely defies saga standard narrative structure and tone. There is a quick comedic dialogue exchange in the beginning between Oscar Isaac’s fighter pilot Poe Dameron and Domhnall Gleeson’s First Order General Hux that falls in line with the brand of humor Disney and Marvel inject into that particular cinematic universe.
John Serba, MLive.com -Fresh
Some stabs at comedy feel overwrought and clunky, including a stint on a ritzy planet of war profiteers, an extended sequence of skillfully directed silliness destined to be beloved fodder for apologists only.
This is the continuation of my series highlighting specific critic's criticisms of TLJ. Part I on Humor is here, which also details my reasoning for this mining operation. Here we are covering Canto Bight, and we have everything from run of the mill iodized stuff to hail-sized rock salt on display, so adjust your goggles accordingly.
Johnson overplays his hand occasionally — most notably an unnecessary sequence at the casino city of Canto Bight that goes straight from a political sermon into a plot hole
Ethan Sacks, New York Daily News - Fresh
The bad news is, this involves an unnecessary trip to a kind of casino planet that doesn’t really advance the story.
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic - Fresh
A scene in an opulent casino is easily the most painful yet in this new generation of Star Wars flicks, eliciting images of the green screen busy set pieces of the early-2000 franchise additions, enticing to the youngest members of the audience who need their stories overly padded with shiny spectacle.
Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot - Fresh
Boyega is a loveable hero, and his new compadre Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) is a nice addition. However, as much as it isn’t overbearing, their entire sub-plot is when the adventure loses steam. This moves the film away from where all the interest is – Luke. At this point, it becomes a little disjointed and unnecessary, never reaching a point of excitement required for a chunk of plot of this degree.
Cameron Frew, FrewFilm - Fresh
an extended digression with Finn and Rose that doesn’t end up counting for much plotwise
Bob Chipman, Moviebob Central - Fresh
Sadly, Boyega's Finn -- still an appealing character -- is saddled with a go-nowhere plot-line that has him and Resistance mechanic Rose show up at a space casino and cross paths with a rogue with a heart of a gold (or maybe just rogue?) played by Benicio Del Toro. There's the kernel of interesting idea there as we glimpse the socioeconomic underpinnings of this galaxy far, far away in a way we've never seen before, but it's a digression whose payoff doesn't warrant the build-up. And when you're already the longest Star Wars ever made (two and a half hours!), some snipping here and there might not have been a bad idea.
Zaki Hasan, Zaki's Corner - Fresh
I’m not a big fan of Finn and Rose’s side adventure, which has the air of a spinoff story being tacked onto the main narrative (probably to give Finn a purpose, since Rey is doing her own thing with Luke). Apart from showcasing the power of hope on a younger generation, it’s not as well integrated into the seams of the larger story as it could’ve been.
Tomas Trussow, The Lonely Film Critic - Fresh
It’s Finn’s mission which takes the film off on a diversion where it didn’t really need to go. There’s a lot of comedic hijinks involved in all of this which George Lucas would have excised from the first draft of anything he ever wrote.
Niall Browne, Movies in Focus - Fresh
Much of the Canto Bight sequence feels unnecessary
Molly Templeton, Eugene Weekly - Fresh
First, both prominent new characters Rose and DJ seemed shoe-horned in, and Rose especially doesn't seem to have a real place in this film nor does she add anything to be hopeful about in the future. And while both Rey and Poe fans will probably be pleased with where their characters go, Finn sort of takes a step back, as he is sent off on a side adventure that seems like second-tier Star Wars. It's a diversion that takes up a good portion of the film and really serves no purpose to the overall story...worse yet, it seems to contain some heavy-handed political messages not commonly found, at least not this blatantly, in the Star Wars universe. These are more than just quibbles too: Most fans will not be used to the slow, lumbering pace or the general unevenness of this film...especially coming on the heels of the action-packed pacing that JJ Abrams brought in Episode VII.
Tom Santilli, AXS.com - Fresh
There’s some stuff that feels extraneous (the whole Canto Bight sequence, which seems to exist to set up a new Lando-like character played by Benicio del Toro), and the cycle of attack and retreat — mostly retreat — gets a bit monotonous.
Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com - Fresh
Muchas de las situaciones se sienten forzadas e innecesarias (por ejemplo, la aventura de Finn y Rose, me parece innecesaria).
Ruben Peralta Rigaud, Cocalecas - Fresh
Their jaunt to the casino planet of Canto Bight serves little purpose besides introducing Del Toro, updating the cantina scene, and offering up a tired CGI chase scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Attack of the Clones. Kudos (maybe) to Johnson for introducing income inequality to the Star Wars universe, but the entire sequence feels rushed and shoehorned into an already long movie.
Pete Vonder Haar Houston Press - Fresh
The weakest of these is Finn's. It's briskly paced and full of action yes, but let's just say a casino is no cantina... Worse, it also sees him interacting with Prequel Trilogy levels of CGI critters.
Karl Puschmann, New Zealand Herald - Fresh
But the worst distraction “The Last Jedi” has to offer involves erstwhile Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and a Resistance maintenance worker named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a subplot every bit as visually and narratively inept as Lucas’ prequels were taken as.
J. Olson, Cinemixtape - Rotten
Finn’s entire storyline could be cut and the film would be better off. As Finn was one of the driving-force leads of The Force Awakens and also a charming character, this is a disappointing development. His adventure is such a low point that it would not seem out of place in one of George Lucas’ efforts from between 1999 and 2005, and it serves little purpose to the film’s overall plot.
Alex Doenau, Trespass - Fresh
there’s too much going on in The Last Jedi, and a lot of it feels like filler. Besides the aforementioned, stalled-out space battle, there’s a clunky sequence in a casino that goes on far too long, a lot of distracting cameos, and new characters inhabited by Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro, who bring close to nothing to the proceedings.
Bob Grimm, Reno News and Review - Fresh
Finn and Rose (a new addition to the principal cast) distract the audience with an overlong and ultimately unnecessary side plot.
Richard Dove, International Business Times - Rotten
And this plotline feeds right into the absolutely unforgivably terrible subplot, which is the adventures of Finn (John Boyega) the cowardly ex-storm trooper, and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), the class-conscious engineer, who go on a fetch quest that is every bit as pointless as the whole matter of the military nonsense, only even worse, because it hinges on terrible comedy, bad CGI, and a spectacularly horrible moment when Johnson stops the film in its tracks to provide a ruthlessly on-the-nose lesson about economic inequality and the military-industrial complex.
Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending - Rotten
Some of what happens on the casino planet — called Canto Bight, and sure to figure in the next film — is goofy on a level as cringe-inducing as things we saw in the prequel trilogy; like, Jar-Jar Binks–awful.
MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher - Fresh
Johnson does his best to hustle from one location to the next, but the narrative has a tendency from time to time to drag. The biggest example of this are the scenes on Canto Bight. Which is a shame, because a huge chunk of the film’s message is established on these scenes. But the very nature of the story, with its many moving parts, inadvertently makes this section of the film feel like a diversion.
Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm - Fresh
The humour is kind of sour in other places, too, such as the silly neo-cantina scene as Finn and Rose track the whereabouts of a mysterious encrypter, who might be the rebellion’s last hope, into a sort of galactic Monte Carlo. The abundance of slapstick there and in other parts of the film doesn’t click and feels forced.
Diva Velez, TheDivaReview.com - Fresh
In an unnecessary and quite frankly preposterous third subplot, Finn (John Boyega) and a new character, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), race against the clock to locate an underworld figure who can help them neutralise the First Order’s tracking device, thus allowing the diminished rebel fleet to escape.
Vicky Roach, Daily Telegraph (Australia) - Rotten
Weak points come with awkward humour that lacks comedic rhythm and an unnecessary casino escapade, where a disposable underworld character DJ (Benicio del Toro) is introduced, that subsequently soft lens into what is essentially a children's adventure tale about animals
Craig Takeuchi, Georgia Straight - Fresh
Unfortunately, we keep getting dragged away from the only emotionally resonant portion of the film to watch Finn and Rose engage in sub-prequel hijinks on the casino planet. Everything here is forced and awful, visually uninteresting and often dark to the point of unwatchability, lousy with mawkish little kids making bug eyes at the camera as we marvel at the horror of economic inequality, and drowned in an atrocious patina of truly terrible CGI. It calls to mind the droid factory in Attack of the Clones and the pre-podrace sequence in The Phantom Menace. Most offensively, the whole Finn/Rose diversion has absolutely no importance to the forward momentum of the plot—it's utterly irrelevant, even nonsensical.
Sonny Bunch, Washington Free Beacon - Rotten
Not everything in the film works: a few of the goofier comic moments fail to land and true to the legacy of Lucas there’s a fair amount of eye-wincing dialogue. More importantly, the second act bows under the weight of too many narrative strands; Finn’s away mission comes off as a bit superfluous, as does Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo, and both Rose and the beloved Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) are sadly underwritten. In a trade-off that brings scope and complexity, Johnson has sacrificed narrative efficiency.
Christopher Machell, CineVue - Fresh
I didn't like the sequence in a casino--a callback to the Star Wars Cantina, of course, but also a chance to discuss the evils of war profiteers and the 1%. There are creatures there, there's slapstick, there's a heist of sorts, and it all harks back to my favourite of Johnson's films, The Brothers Bloom, in the interplay between the characters, in the lightness and clarity of the scheme. But it's tonally disruptive, and it introduces a trio of children who seem like part of a different film.
Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central - Fresh
Finn and Rose’s trip to a gambling planet – basically a space Monaco – flits between light fun and on-the-nose political narrative.
Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle - Fresh
It also begs the question why the space casino sequence, arguably the least relevant to the core story, wasn’t dramatically trimmed back. Aside from a throwaway final shot, this section of the film is the weakest – designed to depict profiteering space-capitalism run rampant (ironically, also depicting a stable of space-horses also running rampant).
Patrick Kolan, Shotgun Cinema - Fresh
But as ingenious as this setup may be, it also gives rise to the film's most pointless subplot. After waking from his coma, Finn (John Boyega) contrives a means by which he can disable the New Order's tracking device, albeit one that requires him to sneak off the fleeing vessel, travel to a Monaco-styled casino planet, track down a master codebreaker and infiltrate the enemy's warship undetected. This enormous MacGuffin sees Boyega partnered with the charming Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, a Resistance engineer low in status but high in pluck. The problem is that their side adventure does absolutely nothing to advance the actual story.
Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground - Fresh
Unfortunately, John Boyega’s Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe and Kelly Marie Tran—as Finn’s new partner-in-rebellion Rose—are given the equivalent of busywork while the rest of the cast moves the plot along.
Simon Miraudo, Student Edge - Fresh
A detour to a casino planet where Finn and a resistance mechanic named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) search for a codebreaker to help them disrupt the First Order's tracking of the retreating resistance ships feels like a trip into another movie. The stakes here seem far lower than the live-or-die scenario facing Poe, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) and the others trying to make their getaway.
Greg Maki Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) Fresh
The only characters not doing a huge amount of growing are Finn (John Boyega) and mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), and not for nothing, their subplot opens up a momentum drain that is the only weakness in The Last Jedi. Boyega and Tran are perfectly enjoyable, and their subplot isn’t a complete waste of time, but you start to feel the length of The Last Jedi when it veers off with them, and Finn’s arc is a pale echo of Poe’s so it’s not like much is being accomplished.
Sarah Marrs Lainey Gossip Fresh
Rey’s journey toward learning the ways of the Jedi is far more entertaining than Finn’s convoluted (and ultimately pointless) storyline
Josh Bell Las Vegas Weekly Fresh
Rose’s character is front and center in the film’s weakest sequences. We’re diverted to a city where the worst of the worst frolic. No, not the usual hives of scum and villainy. It’s a casino where the very, very rich cavort. The evil One Percenters! If you’re not immediately yanked out of the story here you deserve a prize. The accompanying dialogue is equally clunky, as is the reason all these vapid souls gained their fortunes.
Christian Toto, HollywoodInToto.com - Rotten
Far less successful is the time spent with the rebels on the run from Hux and the First Order. Not only is it centered on the slowest space chase in sci-fi history, but subplots featuring Poe, Finn (John Boyega), and Rose (newcomer Kelly Marie Tran) go absolutely nowhere. Sure we get introduced to DJ (Benicio Del Toro) and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), but it’s with actions that fail to connect either through sheer stupidity or the simple truth that their absence wouldn’t change the story in the slightest. They’re obvious filler, and as is the Disney way (witness their Marvel films) the studio’s never met a character that couldn’t be jammed into a movie for no reason other than the misguided belief that more is better. Finn and Rose’s adventure in particular offers some additional action beats and a visit to a casino — think the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from Star Wars, but for the 1% — but it is meaningless noise.
Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects - Fresh
Meanwhile, what feels too much like the “B plot” side adventure has Finn and Rose on a mission that takes them into another film entirely, a sort of intergalactic James Bond-meets-Free Willy. It’s hard not to feel that their entire subplot could be axed in order to make The Last Jedi stronger and tighter, which is unfortunate.
Kaila Hale-Stern, The Mary Sue - Fresh
There is a whole section that feels out of kilter and harks back to the CGI naffness of the prequels — and is also virtually pointless to the plot.
Jamie East, The Sun (UK) - Fresh
The film’s epic 150-minute runtime allows plenty of room for Johnson’s inventiveness, but there’s also a tiny bit of fat in the middle of the movie, specifically in the Canto Bight scenes with Finn and Rose. The casino city itself is gorgeous and has some crazy-cool characters, plus Finn and Rose’s presence there shines a light on some new, worthwhile themes for the Star Wars franchise. However, in terms of the overall story, the whole escapade feels a little pointless and small. It doesn’t help that Benicio del Toro’s new character, DJ, who is part of the same storyline, is largely insignificant.
Germain Lussier, io9.com - Fresh
Star Wars: The Last Jedi does have a clear weak spot -- specifically the side plot that develops between Finn (John Boyega) and newly-introduced Resistance member Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran). Following a genuinely funny meet-up between the two characters, they are given their own special mission searching for a codebreaker who can assist in the battle against the First Order. But this storyline never feels particularly inspired or impactful as everything else going down in the movie. While it is constructed to fit with the larger themes of the film, features its own interesting expectation-flipping turns, and does eventually have a key impact on the macro scale, it's also the only part of the feature that ever feels expendable, and not helping anything is that it features the weakest visual effects of the blockbuster (especially during a second-act chase sequence).
Eric Eisenberg, CinemaBlend - Fresh
Finn and Rose’s mission takes them to Canto Bight, a kind of Monte Carlo peopled by extras from Babylon 5, and feels like it is just ticking the Weird Alien Bar box started by the Cantina. A ride on space horses also feels like a needless diversion, as does Benicio Del Toro’s space rogue, whose strange, laconic presence never really makes its mark.
Ian Freer, Empire Magazine - Fresh
It’s a shame, then, that the righteousness of Finn and Rose’s place in the film is undermined slightly by the limpness of their mission. Perhaps feeling there had to be some kind of Mos Eisley–esque sequence in the film, Johnson sends the pair to a casino city full of all kinds of creatures. It’s fun, sure, but the whole operation ultimately turns out to be a red herring. At least there’s some nice musing on liberation during this stretch, reminding us of the real stakes of this long story—freedom is, after all, what the Empire denies and the Rebel Alliance promises. And in a gorgeous third-act sequence—which includes the film’s true Empire Strikes Back homage—Finn and Rose finally get the emboldened moments they deserve. I just wish they fit more integrally into the central thesis of the film, that they were just as special, in their way, as Rey is, glinting with messianic power as she ascends.
Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair - Fresh
Of the three simultaneous plots, it’s Finn’s that sometimes drags down the energy, particularly with an introduction of a shady thief played by Benicio del Toro, the only new addition to the cast that doesn’t quite work; he seems to be acting in his own private movie, and it’s not as good as this one.
Will Leitch Paste Magazine - Fresh
Where the film struggles the most is on Canto Bight. Taken on her own, Rose isn’t a bad addition to the Star Wars mythos, and the movie definitely needs someone to play against Finn. Unfortunately, they lack the electric chemistry we saw between Finn and Rey in The Force Awakens, and their secret mission in a casino feels like it should be far more entertaining than it actually is.
Matt Goldberg, Collider - Fresh
Some action sequences are superfluous and unengaging. Benicio del Toro all but cameos as a sort of hobo hustler, while John Boyega’s Finn is sidelined, relegated to relatively inconsequential hi-jinx.
Alex Godfrey, GQ Magazine [UK] - Fresh
Finn (John Boyega) and newcomer Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) attempt an espionage mission that takes them to what is the Star Wars equivalent of the French Riviera. It’s a casino city named Canto Bight, and their adventures here push the Rick’s Café sensibilities from the original Star Wars’ cantina sequence to their limit. Nevertheless, this entire subplot amounts to a whole lot of padding while the real tough and revelatory decisions are made on Ahch-To.
David Crow, Den of Geek - Fresh
Plot-wise, I felt the entire side story at the casino world of Canto Bight was unnecessary. If you cut the entire sequence out of the film, it would have little impact on the core narrative.
Scott Chitwood ComingSoon.net - Fresh
Finn (John Boyega) wakes up, meets a admiring fan down in maintenance named Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and they head off on their own adventure, a detour that somehow combines the louche slickness of Cloud City and moralizing at its most Disney.
Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman - Fresh
But The Last Jedi’s two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn (John Boyega) and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).
Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine - Rotten
There are a couple of big names that fail to deliver much aside from, perhaps, realizing their childhood dreams of being in a “Star Wars” movie. A trip to a city that might as well be called Space Macau also fails to pay many dividends.
Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal - Fresh
Case in point is the plot involving Finn (John Boyega) and new hero Rose's (Kelly Marie Tran) McGuffinesque mission to Canto Bight, which is of the ashtray-on-a-speederbike variety, and takes away from the tension cranked up elsewhere.
Harry Guerin, RTÉ (Ireland) - Fresh
The remaining 20% is made up of two different locales, one of which is entirely superfluous to the story. Essentially, there is a subplot that introduces Benicio del Toro’s mysterious work of eccentricity, except it doesn’t really do much of interest with him. Admittedly, it feels as if the character could be destined for bigger things in the final chapter, but I can only go off of what I watched, and well, the middle portion of The Last Jedi is stuck in the furthest setting from lightspeed. The journey expands to a space-Vegas full of various alien life forms and inhabitants, but it’s not as visually striking as previously explored planets. Additionally, by design, there seems to be filler injected simply because the other characters need things to do while Rey accomplishes what she needs to with Luke.
Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth - Fresh
The scenes on Canto Bight seemed like an unnecessary divert for Rose (a new character I actually really like) and Finn. This “casino planet” was like a scene right out of a low-budget Sy-Fy channel movie shot in Vancouver. It felt too familiar and earthbound to be a scene in an other-worldly scene in a Star Wars movie. The Rose/Finn alien horse race through the casino that ruined the galactic one-percenters good time and did some property damage was just ridiculous and should have been cut. Rose and Finn flopping around on the alien horse just looked like a bad theme park ride.
Chris Gore, Film Threat - Fresh
There’s a lengthy diversion to the casino planet of Canto Bight that feels pointless and tacked on just for the sake of giving us a cool new corner of the galaxy to feast our eyes on.
Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly - Fresh And that's it for Part II. Happy Holidays to all my fellow fans and miners! Next week I will conclude with Part III, which will cover- well, let's just say it's the longest of this series by far. Heh.
My Experience with Stephen Paddock the Las Vegas Shooter and a very strong case of the motive being Revenge
The two people addressed briefly at the beginning of this Email are a Paralegal at the Connecticut law firm of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder https://www.koskoff.com/ who are suing gun manufacturers as part of their overall lawsuit strategy and doing the same in relation to Sandy Hook and independent journalist Mike Turber, one of the producers of the upcoming documentary Vegas Wrong, along with Ramsey Denison https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1774444/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1 , producer of the award winning documentary What Happened in Vegas https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6615426/?ref_=nm_knf_i2 Hi Lorena, The following is a very good overview of what I know of what happened in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017 - and I venture to say I know way more valid information than 99% plus of the population about this subject. It was originally sent to Mike Turber months ago. I have added comments where needed, but for the most part it was already very complete and well documented. Please let me know you received this, there are many links and a few images so not all email systems will treat this as serious correspondence. Thanks, Rodney Peterson Hi Mike, A week before you posted the videos with Eric (Paddock, Stephen Paddock's brother), I posted roughly 120 to 130 posts on Twitter in succession with links to back up everything I say. These are the original writings I culled those posts from. Eric Paddock interviews for Vegas Wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPEmD5KKvb0 (Long) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diofrf4nwaE&t=9s (Short) On his last day on Earth, just hours before committing the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shootings in which he killed 59 people, including himself, Stephen Paddock won $860,000 playing video poker. Independent Journalist and Investigator Mike Turber has seen the official records. (while this is true, he LOST even more than that. This gives you an idea of just how fast paced and pressure filled becoming an addicted gambler playing video poker for up to 14 hours a day year-round can be). There is more about that specifically and about Mike Turber later in this email. Rodney Peterson You can also find an extended interview with the shooters brother Eric Paddock, who is speaking through Mike Turber on this video, and myself on the You Tube page of Weg Oag, who has posted many videos about the Las Vegas shootings here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zR1rBjtwHI&t=5s All of that is true. If you read my comments beneath, and there are many of them, you'll see that I've answered all the inconsistencies and reasonable objections anyone brought up. All of the interview and all of my writing is first and foremost based on the following. Without this, it's very unlikely I would have remembered meeting Stephen Paddock, let alone what he said with regards to wishing to extract revenge on the casinos through extreme violence. I did not remember it right away, it took several days after I read the comment below and it was not very clear at first. It took probably right around a week to actually remember everything accurately. Here it is copied and pasted from the Los Angeles Times website at which it was published on October 17, 2017 - two and a half weeks after the shootings where it was posted after an article about Jesus Campos appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres Show: robert.roberts0361 1 year (s) ago Quite a while back talked to that guy in an Edmonton casino about how the casinos cheat their patrons. Not a Muslim terrorist thing at all. Same guy Filipino girlfriend. Lived in a hotel in Vegas. Asked him why he came to an out of the way place like Edmonton. He said just to gamble. He mentioned he was a retired accountant. Talked about nothing you can do about the casinos cheating if you tried to sue they would bury you with their lawyers. He said he tried that once. He said he was going to do something about it. He mentioned something about a AR 15. I said I didn't know what that was (at the time) I'm retired military what would that be in military talk? He said M16. When I left I thought that guy is an American so he can't get guns in Canada. Can anyone figure out the dates he was up here. I recall he said he drove in from British Columbia and was on a 2 day stopover from a 19 day cruise when I met him. Maybe 30th September 2016??? Compare that with my conversation with him, which started as just being at the same Blackjack table where he and Marilou Danley were in the Excalibur, staring at me for half an hour or so while I played, Then complimenting me on winning money as he noticed the mathematical progressions of my betting patterns, then his bizarre rant about the casinos cheating, and finally this exchange when talk of cheating became talk of revenge: "How? How are you going to get revenge on the casinos? They'll have you before you get ten feet on the floor!" "LOOK ALL AROUND YOU! WHADDAYA SEE?! WINDOWS!" Couple that with having nearly the same set of mental issues as Paddock. The major difference is I became obsessed with music and movies, not guns and not gambling 14 hours a day. I'm sure there are other differences as well, my contact with him was limited, but in retrospect, there was a ton of common ground. The types of personalities he and I have are not in the slightest bit desirable or advantageous. Especially when every effort is made to deny a problem even exists, as is the case with him. Anyone with these same issues and real introspection abilities would never have carried this out, they would look inside themselves first. He couldn't even blame himself for his own gambling issues, let alone anything else. How he even thought for a minute he would survive such a heinous act uncaught, unpunished and with impunity is probably pretty good proof he couldn't ever accept the reality of his predicament and mental disabilities. The reality is from what I know of him he didn't attempt to deal with problems in any constructive way and just let the anger keep building, it's toxic. Lots of people with these same issues snap violently and always will. Largely because of the introspection he apparently lacked, I know I would never get away with such an act, even if I wanted to, even on a much smaller scale, no matter how much I tried or wanted to. I knew immediately that comment was very important, it literally checked many of the boxes of what I instinctively believed, as well as had been originally reported, and urged the writer to contact the FBI. I had no idea when I read it I would have a similar story to tell, to say that was shocking when I began to remember my own encounter with Stephen Paddock is a huge understatement. You can find it at the comments posted underneath the linked Los Angeles Times article here. To find it click where it says Be the first to comment (I don't know why it's set up like that, but it is) when you do comments will open. Keep clicking until the comment above appears. Here is the link to the article: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-jesus-campos-20171017-story.html It's extremely detailed as you can see, plus EVERYTHING FITS. A couple of important points - a retired military person would not have to know what an AR15 is, maybe they didn't have a huge interest in guns. And maybe they knew what it was but didn't know what it was called exactly. And the part about the two day stopover from Vancouver is irrelevant. ALL 19 day cruises to Alaska end with a two day stopover in Vancouver. That means Stephen Paddock had already disembarked, and did not have to go back to the ship at all. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT AND SOMETHING THE FBI COULD EASILY DO IF THEY WANTED TO GET TO THE TRUTH OF THE MOTIVE >>>>This would be easy to prove by checking passenger manifests for 19 day Alaska cruises that began in early to mid-September 2016 from the port of Vancouver. My experience with Stephen Paddock was very similar and is written in detail, particularly at Instagram. Telephone, text or Twitter are the best ways to contact me directly. I suspect he has aspergers as I do. That explains his obsession with numbers and math. That was why he wanted to talk to me - he saw I was using a mathematical system to win money. No one, before or since, has ever wanted to speak to me about using progressive math to win money, and that’s counting hundreds and hundreds of Casino Blackjack games. Very few people ever even notice it. Being obsessed with activities and collecting stuff is part of the aspbergers, I believe, another part is the math. He collected guns and gambled 14 hours a day at times. My obsession is not about those things, it’s about collecting music, movies and television series, on every conceivable format at one time or another. But it’s part of the same pattern of aspbegers. He’s unfriendly, he was annoyed I sat down at the same table he was playing at. He stared at me for a good half hour while we played, hardly saying a word. So he was both annoyed and studying the math I was using to place bets, which I didn’t know until after the game had ended for me, and he started talking about how I using math to win money. He thought that was smart. He is incapable of blaming himself for his problems. He lacks introspection. Losing money at gambling is not his fault, the casinos are cheating him. That’s what he told me and I disagreed. The casinos don’t need to cheat. He flies off the handle quickly. Disagreeing with him sent him into more of a rant about the casinos cheating, getting revenge, and finally when I asked how he was going to do that, yelling about shooting out of windows onto the Las Vegas Strip. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and even though he mentioned he lived at Mandalay Bay, which sounded like bullshit and I pretty much didn’t believe him, we were at The Excalibur which I’ve never thought of as a place with large windows, so it sounded even more ridiculous. All in all, it sounded like a fantasy of revenge that would never happen. Yet, clearly, 15 months before he did it, he already had a clear plan of how to proceed. I believe that over the next 15 months it gelled from an insane idea to a workable plan. But he still made a ton of mistakes. Otherwise, if he knew what he was doing when he shot at the jet fuel tanks, it could have been way, way worse. Just as an example of how inefficient the entire plan was. It is extremely frustrating not to get real traction on this part of the story being reported, and it seems to be a deliberate decision possibly made by people in power at various institutions that have an interest in not divulging these details. These include MGM Resorts and other casinos, for certain, which in turn have a large degree of influence over the FBI and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, as well as media outlets, especially the Las Vegas Review Journal which is owned by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. There are new stories being investigated and confirmed that concern other angles of this story that are not being disclosed by MGM Resorts. This includes MGM gifting security guard Jesus Campos with Real Estate in the form of Las Vegas condos to sign an NDA and not talk about the events, including that management knew there was a huge quantity of guns in the room but chose to ignore them because of Stephen Paddock's High Roller Status. See this article, one of many written by Doug Poppa. It’s important to note his background is in casino security, while my story revolves around my experience with Stephen Paddock, and examines both psychology and a very strong case of explaining the motive as revenge against the casinos, which is what he told me in person. http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/exclusive-mgm-resorts-international-buys-mandalay-bay-security-officer-jesus-campos-silence-with-all-expenses-paid-trips-condos-in-exchange-for-nda/2018/12/09 Here are a couple of newer posts I’ve written at You Tube with relevant information about what Stephen Paddock told me: Regarding what Paddock shouted “LOOK ALL AROUND YOU! WHADDAYA SEE?! WINDOWS!!” and Doug Poppa saying he’s never seen windows in the Excalibur, he wasn’t talking about that casino. He was talking about the entire strip. It was pretty obvious. In fact, when he said it the image that came to mind was that he would shoot out of the windows of a central location, like Aria, not Mandalay Bay and certainly not Excalibur. Although he did tell me he lived at Mandalay Bay, which just added to how nuts I thought he was. People do not live at Mandalay Bay, and yet, he actually was very close to that, but I didn’t believe him. Naturally, when I remembered all this I felt horribly guilty I never reported it. But now I know thanks to the efforts of Doug Poppa interviewing Luis Castro it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. Mandalay Bay knew about the guns in the room and ignored them. They weren’t about to take my word over his no matter what I told them on July 6, 2016. He was a high roller, I was not. I didn’t know he was a high roller, of course, I just thought he was a disheveled angry nut. The interview also includes comments by Eric Paddock, who tries to negate my testimony in two ways. First, he claims Stephen Paddock didn’t play table games. Second, he tries to negate my memory of Stephen Paddock with a beard and mustache by saying he’s clean shaven. In both cases in the comments section I link to articles and photos that prove he did play Blackjack - for up to $2500 a hand. Photos of Stephen Paddock with a beard and mustache are easily found searching Google for images. All reasonable objections and any time I misspoke during the interview are addressed in my comments - there are a lot of them. A lot of people asked questions, but some were redundant and others just will not accept that this tragedy was not a conspiracy, or that it didn’t happen. Of course, it happened. And it wasn’t a conspiracy. Here is an early article from October 7, 2017 printed in the Las Vegas Sun confirming Stephen Paddock did indeed play Blackjack: https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/oct/07/dealers-lv-gunman-paddock-would-spend-long-hours-p/ Excerpts from that article specifically about Blackjack: When one blackjack table dealer at the D Las Vegas first saw Stephen Paddock’s picture on television last week, she thought it was Paddock that had been shot — not the other way around. Upon later finding out Paddock was responsible for the deaths of 58 attendees and the injuries of nearly 500 more at last Sunday’s Route 91 Harvest Festival on the Las Vegas Strip, the dealer said she was surprised that a man she knew to be calm yet reclusive was responsible for the largest mass shooting in modern United States history. “He wasn’t the nicest guy, but he never came across as threatening,” said the dealer, who asked not to be identified. “Unpleasant in general, but he didn’t go out of his way to be rude or go after other people.” “I never would have thought he was capable of something like this, not him,” she added. The dealer was one of several to speak with the Sun about Paddock, who owned homes in Mesquite and Reno but spent his retirement years and the final weeks of life frequenting the tables and machines of downtown and Strip casinos. An avid blackjack player, Paddock also played video poker, interviewed dealers said. His girlfriend, Marilou Danley, enjoyed playing video slots when the two came to the casino together. Another female dealer at the D Las Vegas, who requested anonymity, said Paddock had been a regular at the casino for “many years,” gambling as many as four days a week and sometimes spending an entire afternoon shift between gaming tables and the upstairs video poker room. Despite betting up to $2,500 per hand on high-limit blackjack tables, Paddock was a poor tipper at first, she said. But he eventually came around when she gave him a hard time for “being cheap.” “I told him, ‘Steve, it would be nice if you started tipping me,’” she said. “From there on, he always left a fair tip.” Three other dealers at the D Las Vegas said they last remembered Paddock at the casino on Sept. 26, just five days before he opened fire from his 32nd floor hotel room onto the 22,000 attendees of the country music festival. SOME OF THE FOLLOWING IS REPEATED. THERE ARE OTHER AS YET NEW TO THIS EMAIL ANGLES OF THE STORY FOLLOWING THE REPEATED BACKGROUND INFORMATION. Independent Investigator and Journalist Mike Turber has seen official records confirming Stephen Paddock won $860,000 on September 30, 2017, just hours before he committed the Las Vegas shootings. However, that figure doesn’t include losses for the day, which are right around $890,000. Mike Turber, along with Ramsey Denison, who produced the documentary What Happened In Vegas, have interviewed me extensively on camera and in person. Mike Turber has stated that he observed my body language and other factors as a sort of lie detector test to determine if I was telling the truth without my knowledge which he states in that You Tube video. His conclusion is that either I am telling the truth or I believe I’m telling the truth. Mike Turber can be contacted here: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) I believe, based on behavior, both Stephen Paddock and I have similar mental illnesses and Asperger’s syndrome. I believe that’s why he instinctively talked to me and noticed I was using the same type of mathematical formulas he did and was familiar with. (It works too 98% of the time the problem is it doesn’t work 100% of the time and that’s what you need). So was he crazy? Of course he was crazy! So am I. But instead of guns, my obsessions are artistic – movies, music, media production, and the like. There’s nothing I can do about the Asperger’s or High Functioning Autism that’s part of this. Like him I’ve had it all my life. You cannot fake this. I would never have even remembered meeting Stephen Paddock, let alone what he said to me about wanting revenge against the casinos if I hadn’t come across this post written after an article about Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos appearing on the Ellen show. Everything here fits: robert.roberts0361 1 year(s) ago Quite a while back talked to that guy in an Edmonton casino about how the casinos cheat their patrons. Not a Muslim terrorist thing at all. Same guy Filipino girlfriend. Lived in a hotel in Vegas. Asked him why he came to an out of the way place like Edmonton. He said just to gamble. He mentioned he was a retired accountant. Talked about nothing you can do about the casinos cheating if you tried to sue they would bury you with their lawyers. He said he tried that once. He said he was going to do something about it. He mentioned something about a AR 15. I said I didn't know what that was (at the time) I'm retired military what would that be in military talk? He said M16. When I left I thought that guy is an American so he can't get guns in Canada. Can anyone figure out the dates he was up here. I recall he said he drove in from British Columbia and was on a 2 day stopover from a 19 day cruise when I met him. Maybe 30th September 2016??? You can find the original at the comments posted underneath the linked Los Angeles Times article here. To find it click where it says Be the first to comment (I don't know why it's set up like that, but it is) when you do the comments will open. Keep clicking until the comment above appears. Here is the link to the article: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-jesus-campos-20171017-story.html It's extremely detailed as you can see, plus EVERYTHING FITS. A couple of important points - a retired military person would not have to know what an AR15 is, maybe they didn't have a huge interest in guns. Or maybe he knew what it was but didn't know what it was called exactly. And the part about the two day stopover from Vancouver is irrelevant. ALL 19 day cruises to Alaska end with a two day stopover in Vancouver. That means Stephen Paddock and Marilou Danley had already disembarked, and did not have to go back to the cruise ship at all. AND HOW TO PROVE THE EDMONTON STORY IS TRUE: Any FBI investigator or private investigator could prove if what Stephen Paddock told that commenter is true by checking passenger manifests for 19 day Alaska cruises that began in early to mid-September 2016. Unless Stephen Paddock and Marilou Danley were on that cruise, this person couldn’t have possibly known about it unless he was directly told by Stephen Paddock, as he says. THE FOLLOWING IS ALSO VERY IMPORTANT TO MOTIVE. THIS IS WHAT STEPHEN PADDOCK MEANT WITH REGARDS TO THE CASINOS CHEATING, NOT TRADITIONAL CHEATING. I don’t play Video Poker, so I had no idea what he meant by his talking about the casinos cheating that morning unless he had explained it to me, which he didn’t do. Here is another recent You Tube post I’ve written which details more about Stephen Paddock and Video Poker with links to yet more relevant information. There are several posts by myself near the bottom of the thread. Just like on my Instagram page, Rodney4K, you can see how the details of the memory of meeting Stephen Paddock was not at that time completely clear and changed as I remembered more and more of what happened. There are very rare video poker machines known as 9 over 6 Jacks or Better. If played perfectly they give the player 100.8% payout. But that's no guarantee. Someone figured out that in order to have a 90% chance of winning $140,000 you need at least a six million dollar bankroll. There is a whole thread about this and Paddock in one of Anthony Curtis columns on the Las Vegas Advisor website. Of course, beating the house long term is close to impossible. Even the Sheriffs department admits Paddock had lost a considerable amount of wealth prior to the shootings. There's also a report that he won $860,000 on the day of the shootings. But that figure doesn't include losses, which are reported to be some $890,000. Mike Turber knows the details of this. I have several comments in that article. Just like on my Instagram page, if you read them, you'll see how they change more and more as I start to remember meeting Stephen Paddock and what he said about getting revenge on the casinos. It was a very bizarre few days as that memory returned: https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/gambling-with-an-edge/the-shooter-gambler-steven-paddock/ Because that blog is about gambling, many of the posts are about how much Stephen Paddock did gamble, his odds of winning and related subjects. It is this post from the above thread that appears to be the most accurate about the level of Video Poker Stephen Paddock played nearly every day: What everyone is forgetting is what kind of bankroll is required when playing 9/6 Jacks or Better at $125 a hand. According to Video Poker for Winners if you bet $125 a hand and you get 0.5% slot club return, which I think is generous for a strip club casino in 2015, you need over $6 million bankroll. And that is for a chance of going broke 10% of the time! If the average gambler can make this calculation so can a casino. There’s no way a casino is going to give you free rooms, food, shows, etc and at the same time let you win $5 million over the year! You can see how complicated it gets. Did he win the $5 million? Sure, probably several times. But at a cost that probably was more in the neighborhood of after 6 million dollars of losses. Another insightful commenter provided this information about changes in tax law under Donald Trump which would be something that could very much upset Stephen Paddock to the point of taking these drastic actions: I am surprised nobody has commented on an obvious angle to the Shooter’s profile. He had millions in Royal Fushes each year. At Tax Time those wins were undoubtedly counter balanced by his losses. Anthony Curtis related in the latest issue of LVA that the last 2 books purchased were about Taxes and Gambling Law. Under the Trump tax plan guess how much will be allowed to be written off as losses?? ZERO!!!!! That deduction dies and so with it will any AP (Advantage Play) play on VP. The Shooter was an accountant, he had to have knowledge of that reality. Anyone who plays VP, at any level above a $1200 Royal, would have to be an idiot to be in action under those conditions. The winning sum of $5.000,000 has been used in previous posts, Can you imagine having won $5.000.000 and subsequently losing that back plus an additional $500,000? You would not only be stuck the $500,000 but also owe the IRS another $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 in taxes on your non deductible winnings. How come nobody in the casinos is screaming about this? It will kill destroy $1 and up Slot and VP play. According to Mike Turber, who says he has seen the records, Stephen Paddock won $860,000 on September 30, 2017, just before the shootings. But, he also very likely lost $890,000 that very same day, according to the full accounting. This is also very important, in that besides my testimony of what happened when I met Stephen Paddock and when Robert Roberts met Stephen Paddock, here is a CNN article quoting his Caesars Palace host that says that when they switched out the high payoff machines, he stopped coming altogether. This helps give credence to the motive of being angry at the casinos, wanting revenge, and his belief the casinos were cheating. They don't cheat in the traditional sense - they don't have to, and that's why I disagreed with him and why he became angry. But, in his mind, switching out the higher payoff Video Poker machines for the ones that gave the house a better edge after years and years of playing them-I can see how he would equate that with cheating: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/us/las-vegas-shooting-documents/index.html This is an excerpt from that CNN article: A man who worked for Caesars Entertainment who had known Paddock for years said Paddock was a regular guest for several years but Caesars took out his favorite video poker machines. Paddock was a skilled gambler, the casino host said, and he stopped coming once those games were taken out. The host said Paddock was an odd guy who either came to one of the Caesars properties alone or with his girlfriend, Marilou Danley. Danley was in the Philippines at the time of the shooting, and police said they don't think she was involved. Paddock, who killed himself, acted alone, police have said. The host said there was one incident years ago in which Paddock yelled at him over late luggage, something the host thought peculiar. When asked to specify why he thought Paddock was odd, the host said: "He was just weird." I'm also on Instagram where you can find more information. The Instagram account is not active, I can’t respond to it or anything anyone else chooses to write there, or edit or remove comments from others, but there are several posts there that are relevant. The top of the page explains which posts to look for by date that are relevant. www.Instagram.com/Rodney4K/ I also have a Twitter page, which is active, with brief tweets and through which I can be contacted for communication or chat: www.twitter.com/Rodney4KBluRay Rodney Peterson 📷
[LONG] My Experience with Las Vegas Shooter Stephen Paddock - His Brother Says Revenge was the Motive and So Do I (includes links to news articles, credible web sites and blogs, and video interviews that back up every element of the story]
This is an email recently sent to journalists, attorneys and others. The two people addressed briefly at the beginning of this Email are a Paralegal at the Connecticut law firm of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder https://www.koskoff.com who are suing gun manufacturers as part of their overall lawsuit strategy and doing the same in relation to Sandy Hook and independent journalist Mike Turber, one of the producers of the upcoming documentary Vegas Wrong, along with Ramsey Denison https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1774444/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1 , producer of the award winning documentary What Happened in Vegas https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6615426/?ref_=nm_knf_i2 Hi Lorena, The following is a very good overview of what I know of what happened in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017 - and I venture to say I know way more valid information than 99% plus of the population about this subject. It was originally sent to Mike Turber months ago. I have added comments where needed, but for the most part it was already very complete and well documented. Please let me know you received this, there are many links and a few images so not all email systems will treat this as serious correspondence. Thanks, Rodney Peterson Hi Mike, A week before you posted the videos with Eric (Paddock, Stephen Paddock's brother), I posted roughly 120 to 130 posts on Twitter in succession with links to back up everything I say. These are the original writings I culled those posts from. Eric Paddock interviews for Vegas Wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPEmD5KKvb0 (Long) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diofrf4nwaE&t=9s (Short) On his last day on Earth, just hours before committing the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shootings in which he killed 59 people, including himself, Stephen Paddock won $860,000 playing video poker. Independent Journalist and Investigator Mike Turber has seen the official records. (while this is true, he LOST even more than that. This gives you an idea of just how fast paced and pressure filled becoming an addicted gambler playing video poker for up to 14 hours a day year-round can be). There is more about that specifically and about Mike Turber later in this email. Rodney Peterson You can also find an extended interview with the shooters brother Eric Paddock, who is speaking through Mike Turber on this video, and myself on the You Tube page of Weg Oag, who has posted many videos about the Las Vegas shootings here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zR1rBjtwHI&t=5s All of that is true. If you read my comments beneath, and there are many of them, you'll see that I've answered all the inconsistencies and reasonable objections anyone brought up. All of the interview and all of my writing is first and foremost based on the following. Without this, it's very unlikely I would have remembered meeting Stephen Paddock, let alone what he said with regards to wishing to extract revenge on the casinos through extreme violence. I did not remember it right away, it took several days after I read the comment below and it was not very clear at first. It took probably right around a week to actually remember everything accurately. Here it is copied and pasted from the Los Angeles Times website at which it was published on October 17, 2017 - two and a half weeks after the shootings where it was posted after an article about Jesus Campos appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres Show: robert.roberts0361 1 year (s) ago Quite a while back talked to that guy in an Edmonton casino about how the casinos cheat their patrons. Not a Muslim terrorist thing at all. Same guy Filipino girlfriend. Lived in a hotel in Vegas. Asked him why he came to an out of the way place like Edmonton. He said just to gamble. He mentioned he was a retired accountant. Talked about nothing you can do about the casinos cheating if you tried to sue they would bury you with their lawyers. He said he tried that once. He said he was going to do something about it. He mentioned something about a AR 15. I said I didn't know what that was (at the time) I'm retired military what would that be in military talk? He said M16. When I left I thought that guy is an American so he can't get guns in Canada. Can anyone figure out the dates he was up here. I recall he said he drove in from British Columbia and was on a 2 day stopover from a 19 day cruise when I met him. Maybe 30th September 2016??? Compare that with my conversation with him, which started as just being at the same Blackjack table where he and Marilou Danley were in the Excalibur, staring at me for half an hour or so while I played, then complimenting me on winning money as he noticed the mathematical progressions of my betting patterns, then his bizarre rant about the casinos cheating, and finally this exchange when talk of cheating became talk of revenge: "How? How are you going to get revenge on the casinos? They'll have you before you get ten feet on the floor!" "LOOK ALL AROUND YOU! WHADDAYA SEE?! WINDOWS!" Couple that with having nearly the same set of mental issues as Paddock. The major difference is I became obsessed with music and movies, not guns and not gambling 14 hours a day. I'm sure there are other differences as well, my contact with him was limited, but in retrospect, there was a ton of common ground. The types of personalities he and I have are not in the slightest bit desirable or advantageous. Especially when every effort is made to deny a problem even exists, as is the case with him. Anyone with these same issues and real introspection abilities would never have carried this out, they would look inside themselves first. He couldn't even blame himself for his own gambling issues, let alone anything else. How he even thought for a minute he would survive such a heinous act uncaught, unpunished and with impunity is probably pretty good proof he couldn't ever accept the reality of his predicament and mental disabilities. The reality is from what I know of him he didn't attempt to deal with problems in any constructive way and just let the anger keep building, it's toxic. Lots of people with these same issues snap violently and always will. Largely because of the introspection he apparently lacked, I know I would never get away with such an act, even if I wanted to, even on a much smaller scale, no matter how much I tried or wanted to. I knew immediately that comment was very important, it literally checked many of the boxes of what I instinctively believed, as well as had been originally reported, and urged the writer to contact the FBI. I had no idea when I read it I would have a similar story to tell, to say that was shocking when I began to remember my own encounter with Stephen Paddock is a huge understatement. You can find it at the comments posted underneath the linked Los Angeles Times article here. To find it click where it says Be the first to comment (I don't know why it's set up like that, but it is) when you do comments will open. Keep clicking until the comment above appears. Here is the link to the article: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-jesus-campos-20171017-story.html It's extremely detailed as you can see, plus EVERYTHING FITS. A couple of important points - a retired military person would not have to know what an AR15 is, maybe they didn't have a huge interest in guns. And maybe they knew what it was but didn't know what it was called exactly. And the part about the two day stopover from Vancouver is irrelevant. ALL 19 day cruises to Alaska end with a two day stopover in Vancouver. That means Stephen Paddock had already disembarked, and did not have to go back to the ship at all. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT AND SOMETHING THE FBI COULD EASILY DO IF THEY WANTED TO GET TO THE TRUTH OF THE MOTIVE >>>>This would be easy to prove by checking passenger manifests for 19 day Alaska cruises that began in early to mid-September 2016 from the port of Vancouver. My experience with Stephen Paddock was very similar and is written in detail, particularly at Instagram. Telephone, text or Twitter are the best ways to contact me directly. I suspect he has aspergers as I do. That explains his obsession with numbers and math. That was why he wanted to talk to me - he saw I was using a mathematical system to win money. No one, before or since, has ever wanted to speak to me about using progressive math to win money, and that’s counting hundreds and hundreds of Casino Blackjack games. Very few people ever even notice it. Being obsessed with activities and collecting stuff is part of the aspbergers, I believe, another part is the math. He collected guns and gambled 14 hours a day at times. My obsession is not about those things, it’s about collecting music, movies and television series, on every conceivable format at one time or another. But it’s part of the same pattern of aspbegers. He’s unfriendly, he was annoyed I sat down at the same table he was playing at. He stared at me for a good half hour while we played, hardly saying a word. So he was both annoyed and studying the math I was using to place bets, which I didn’t know until after the game had ended for me, and he started talking about how I using math to win money. He thought that was smart. He is incapable of blaming himself for his problems. He lacks introspection. Losing money at gambling is not his fault, the casinos are cheating him. That’s what he told me and I disagreed. The casinos don’t need to cheat. He flies off the handle quickly. Disagreeing with him sent him into more of a rant about the casinos cheating, getting revenge, and finally when I asked how he was going to do that, yelling about shooting out of windows onto the Las Vegas Strip. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and even though he mentioned he lived at Mandalay Bay, which sounded like bullshit and I pretty much didn’t believe him, we were at The Excalibur which I’ve never thought of as a place with large windows, so it sounded even more ridiculous. All in all, it sounded like a fantasy of revenge that would never happen. Yet, clearly, 15 months before he did it, he already had a clear plan of how to proceed. I believe that over the next 15 months it gelled from an insane idea to a workable plan. But he still made a ton of mistakes. Otherwise, if he knew what he was doing when he shot at the jet fuel tanks, it could have been way, way worse. Just as an example of how inefficient the entire plan was. It is extremely frustrating not to get real traction on this part of the story being reported, and it seems to be a deliberate decision possibly made by people in power at various institutions that have an interest in not divulging these details. These include MGM Resorts and other casinos, for certain, which in turn have a large degree of influence over the FBI and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, as well as media outlets, especially the Las Vegas Review Journal which is owned by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. There are new stories being investigated and confirmed that concern other angles of this story that are not being disclosed by MGM Resorts. This includes MGM gifting security guard Jesus Campos with Real Estate in the form of Las Vegas condos to sign an NDA and not talk about the events, including that management knew there was a huge quantity of guns in the room but chose to ignore them because of Stephen Paddock's High Roller Status. This is according to his former brother-in-law, Luis Castro, and is partially documented in the article mentioned below. See this article, one of many written by Doug Poppa. It’s important to note his background is in casino security, while my story revolves around my experience with Stephen Paddock, and examines both psychology and a very strong case of explaining the motive as revenge against the casinos, which is what he told me in person. http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/exclusive-mgm-resorts-international-buys-mandalay-bay-security-officer-jesus-campos-silence-with-all-expenses-paid-trips-condos-in-exchange-for-nda/2018/12/09 Here are a couple of newer posts I’ve written at You Tube with relevant information about what Stephen Paddock told me: Regarding what Paddock shouted “LOOK ALL AROUND YOU! WHADDAYA SEE?! WINDOWS!!” and Doug Poppa saying he’s never seen windows in the Excalibur, he wasn’t talking about that casino. He was talking about the entire strip. It was pretty obvious. In fact, when he said it the image that came to mind was that he would shoot out of the windows of a central location, like Aria, not Mandalay Bay and certainly not Excalibur. Although he did tell me he lived at Mandalay Bay, which just added to how nuts I thought he was. People do not live at Mandalay Bay, and yet, he actually was very close to that, but I didn’t believe him. Naturally, when I remembered all this I felt horribly guilty I never reported it. But now I know thanks to the efforts of Doug Poppa interviewing Luis Castro it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. Mandalay Bay knew about the guns in the room and ignored them. They weren’t about to take my word over his no matter what I told them on July 6, 2016. He was a high roller, I was not. I didn’t know he was a high roller, of course, I just thought he was a disheveled angry nut. The interview also includes comments by Eric Paddock, who tries to negate my testimony in two ways. First, he claims Stephen Paddock didn’t play table games. Second, he tries to negate my memory of Stephen Paddock with a beard and mustache by saying he’s clean shaven. In both cases in the comments section I link to articles and photos that prove he did play Blackjack - for up to $2500 a hand. Photos of Stephen Paddock with a beard and mustache are easily found searching Google for images. All reasonable objections and any time I misspoke during the interview are addressed in my comments - there are a lot of them. A lot of people asked questions, but some were redundant and others just will not accept that this tragedy was not a conspiracy, or that it didn’t happen. Of course, it happened. And it wasn’t a conspiracy. Here is an early article from October 7, 2017 printed in the Las Vegas Sun confirming Stephen Paddock did indeed play Blackjack: https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/oct/07/dealers-lv-gunman-paddock-would-spend-long-hours-p/ Excerpts from that article specifically about Blackjack: When one blackjack table dealer at the D Las Vegas first saw Stephen Paddock’s picture on television last week, she thought it was Paddock that had been shot — not the other way around. Upon later finding out Paddock was responsible for the deaths of 58 attendees and the injuries of nearly 500 more at last Sunday’s Route 91 Harvest Festival on the Las Vegas Strip, the dealer said she was surprised that a man she knew to be calm yet reclusive was responsible for the largest mass shooting in modern United States history. “He wasn’t the nicest guy, but he never came across as threatening,” said the dealer, who asked not to be identified. “Unpleasant in general, but he didn’t go out of his way to be rude or go after other people.” “I never would have thought he was capable of something like this, not him,” she added. The dealer was one of several to speak with the Sun about Paddock, who owned homes in Mesquite and Reno but spent his retirement years and the final weeks of life frequenting the tables and machines of downtown and Strip casinos. An avid blackjack player, Paddock also played video poker, interviewed dealers said. His girlfriend, Marilou Danley, enjoyed playing video slots when the two came to the casino together. Another female dealer at the D Las Vegas, who requested anonymity, said Paddock had been a regular at the casino for “many years,” gambling as many as four days a week and sometimes spending an entire afternoon shift between gaming tables and the upstairs video poker room. Despite betting up to $2,500 per hand on high-limit blackjack tables, Paddock was a poor tipper at first, she said. But he eventually came around when she gave him a hard time for “being cheap.” “I told him, ‘Steve, it would be nice if you started tipping me,’” she said. “From there on, he always left a fair tip.” Three other dealers at the D Las Vegas said they last remembered Paddock at the casino on Sept. 26, just five days before he opened fire from his 32nd floor hotel room onto the 22,000 attendees of the country music festival. SOME OF THE FOLLOWING IS REPEATED. THERE ARE OTHER AS YET NEW TO THIS EMAIL ANGLES OF THE STORY FOLLOWING THE REPEATED BACKGROUND INFORMATION. Independent Investigator and Journalist Mike Turber has seen official records confirming Stephen Paddock won $860,000 on September 30, 2017, just hours before he committed the Las Vegas shootings. However, that figure doesn’t include losses for the day, which are right around $890,000. Mike Turber, along with Ramsey Denison, who produced the documentary What Happened In Vegas, have interviewed me extensively on camera and in person. Mike Turber has stated that he observed my body language and other factors as a sort of lie detector test to determine if I was telling the truth without my knowledge which he states in that You Tube video. His conclusion is that either I am telling the truth or I believe I’m telling the truth. Mike Turber can be contacted here: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) I believe, based on behavior, both Stephen Paddock and I have similar mental illnesses and Asperger’s syndrome. I believe that’s why he instinctively talked to me and noticed I was using the same type of mathematical formulas he did and was familiar with. (It works too 98% of the time the problem is it doesn’t work 100% of the time and that’s what you need). So was he crazy? Of course he was crazy! So am I. But instead of guns, my obsessions are artistic – movies, music, media production, and the like. There’s nothing I can do about the Asperger’s or High Functioning Autism that’s part of this. Like him I’ve had it all my life. You cannot fake this. I would never have even remembered meeting Stephen Paddock, let alone what he said to me about wanting revenge against the casinos if I hadn’t come across this post written after an article about Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos appearing on the Ellen show. Everything here fits: robert.roberts0361 1 year(s) ago Quite a while back talked to that guy in an Edmonton casino about how the casinos cheat their patrons. Not a Muslim terrorist thing at all. Same guy Filipino girlfriend. Lived in a hotel in Vegas. Asked him why he came to an out of the way place like Edmonton. He said just to gamble. He mentioned he was a retired accountant. Talked about nothing you can do about the casinos cheating if you tried to sue they would bury you with their lawyers. He said he tried that once. He said he was going to do something about it. He mentioned something about a AR 15. I said I didn't know what that was (at the time) I'm retired military what would that be in military talk? He said M16. When I left I thought that guy is an American so he can't get guns in Canada. Can anyone figure out the dates he was up here. I recall he said he drove in from British Columbia and was on a 2 day stopover from a 19 day cruise when I met him. Maybe 30th September 2016??? You can find the original at the comments posted underneath the linked Los Angeles Times article here. To find it click where it says Be the first to comment (I don't know why it's set up like that, but it is) when you do the comments will open. Keep clicking until the comment above appears. Here is the link to the article: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-jesus-campos-20171017-story.html It's extremely detailed as you can see, plus EVERYTHING FITS. A couple of important points - a retired military person would not have to know what an AR15 is, maybe they didn't have a huge interest in guns. Or maybe he knew what it was but didn't know what it was called exactly. And the part about the two day stopover from Vancouver is irrelevant. ALL 19 day cruises to Alaska end with a two day stopover in Vancouver. That means Stephen Paddock and Marilou Danley had already disembarked, and did not have to go back to the cruise ship at all. AND HOW TO PROVE THE EDMONTON STORY IS TRUE: Any FBI investigator or private investigator could prove if what Stephen Paddock told that commenter is true by checking passenger manifests for 19 day Alaska cruises that began in early to mid-September 2016. Unless Stephen Paddock and Marilou Danley were on that cruise, this person couldn’t have possibly known about it unless he was directly told by Stephen Paddock, as he says. THE FOLLOWING IS ALSO VERY IMPORTANT TO MOTIVE. THIS IS WHAT STEPHEN PADDOCK MEANT WITH REGARDS TO THE CASINOS CHEATING, NOT TRADITIONAL CHEATING. I don’t play Video Poker, so I had no idea what he meant by his talking about the casinos cheating that morning unless he had explained it to me, which he didn’t do. Here is another recent You Tube post I’ve written which details more about Stephen Paddock and Video Poker with links to yet more relevant information. There are several posts by myself near the bottom of the thread. Just like on my Instagram page, Rodney4K, you can see how the details of the memory of meeting Stephen Paddock was not at that time completely clear and changed as I remembered more and more of what happened. There are very rare video poker machines known as 9 over 6 Jacks or Better. If played perfectly they give the player 100.8% payout. But that's no guarantee. Someone figured out that in order to have a 90% chance of winning $140,000 you need at least a six million dollar bankroll. There is a whole thread about this and Paddock in one of Anthony Curtis columns on the Las Vegas Advisor website. Of course, beating the house long term is close to impossible. Even the Sheriffs department admits Paddock had lost a considerable amount of wealth prior to the shootings. There's also a report that he won $860,000 on the day of the shootings. But that figure doesn't include losses, which are reported to be some $890,000. Mike Turber knows the details of this. I have several comments in that article. Just like on my Instagram page, if you read them, you'll see how they change more and more as I start to remember meeting Stephen Paddock and what he said about getting revenge on the casinos. It was a very bizarre few days as that memory returned: https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/gambling-with-an-edge/the-shooter-gambler-steven-paddock/ Because that blog is about gambling, many of the posts are about how much Stephen Paddock did gamble, his odds of winning and related subjects. It is this post from the above thread that appears to be the most accurate about the level of Video Poker Stephen Paddock played nearly every day: What everyone is forgetting is what kind of bankroll is required when playing 9/6 Jacks or Better at $125 a hand. According to Video Poker for Winners if you bet $125 a hand and you get 0.5% slot club return, which I think is generous for a strip club casino in 2015, you need over $6 million bankroll. And that is for a chance of going broke 10% of the time! If the average gambler can make this calculation so can a casino. There’s no way a casino is going to give you free rooms, food, shows, etc and at the same time let you win $5 million over the year! You can see how complicated it gets. Did he win the $5 million? Sure, probably several times. But at a cost that probably was more in the neighborhood of after 6 million dollars of losses. Another insightful commenter provided this information about changes in tax law under Donald Trump which would be something that could very much upset Stephen Paddock to the point of taking these drastic actions: I am surprised nobody has commented on an obvious angle to the Shooter’s profile. He had millions in Royal Fushes each year. At Tax Time those wins were undoubtedly counter balanced by his losses. Anthony Curtis related in the latest issue of LVA that the last 2 books purchased were about Taxes and Gambling Law. Under the Trump tax plan guess how much will be allowed to be written off as losses?? ZERO!!!!! That deduction dies and so with it will any AP (Advantage Play) play on VP. The Shooter was an accountant, he had to have knowledge of that reality. Anyone who plays VP, at any level above a $1200 Royal, would have to be an idiot to be in action under those conditions. The winning sum of $5,000,000 has been used in previous posts, Can you imagine having won $5,000,000 and subsequently losing that back plus an additional $500,000? You would not only be stuck the $500,000 but also owe the IRS another $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 in taxes on your non deductible winnings. How come nobody in the casinos is screaming about this? It will kill destroy $1 and up Slot and VP play. According to Mike Turber, who says he has seen the records, Stephen Paddock won $860,000 on September 30, 2017, just before the shootings. But, he also very likely lost $890,000 that very same day, according to the full accounting. This is also very important, in that besides my testimony of what happened when I met Stephen Paddock and when Robert Roberts met Stephen Paddock, here is a CNN article quoting his Caesars Palace host that says that when they switched out the high payoff machines, he stopped coming altogether. This helps give credence to the motive of being angry at the casinos, wanting revenge, and his belief the casinos were cheating. They don't cheat in the traditional sense - they don't have to, and that's why I disagreed with him and why he became angry. But, in his mind, switching out the higher payoff Video Poker machines for the ones that gave the house a better edge after years and years of playing them-I can see how he would equate that with cheating: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/us/las-vegas-shooting-documents/index.html This is an excerpt from that CNN article: A man who worked for Caesars Entertainment who had known Paddock for years said Paddock was a regular guest for several years but Caesars took out his favorite video poker machines. Paddock was a skilled gambler, the casino host said, and he stopped coming once those games were taken out. The host said Paddock was an odd guy who either came to one of the Caesars properties alone or with his girlfriend, Marilou Danley. Danley was in the Philippines at the time of the shooting, and police said they don't think she was involved. Paddock, who killed himself, acted alone, police have said. The host said there was one incident years ago in which Paddock yelled at him over late luggage, something the host thought peculiar. When asked to specify why he thought Paddock was odd, the host said: "He was just weird." I'm also on Instagram where you can find more information. The Instagram account is not active, I can’t respond to it or anything anyone else chooses to write there, or edit or remove comments from others, but there are several posts there that are relevant. The top of the page explains which posts to look for by date that are relevant. www.Instagram.com/Rodney4K/ I also have a Twitter page, which is active, with brief tweets and through which I can be contacted for communication or chat: www.twitter.com/Rodney4KBluRay Rodney Peterson
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