Authors: Sterling Archer
How to Archer (7 page)
But the truth is, it’s much more likely because the type of person who is attracted to a career in the clandestine services to begin with—slightly arrogant, somewhat shallow, hypersexual high-functioning alcoholics with incredibly addictive personalities
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—is really just there for the glamorous ambience, the top-shelf booze, and the world-class hookers.
Because we’re not talking Biloxi or Tunica here, guys. We’re not even talking Vegas. We’re talking Monaco.
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And I don’t know what Prince Rainier was thinking about, because those Monegasque hookers
(of which he had his pick!)
make Grace Kelly look like Alex Karras.
But, as with many things, there is a price to be paid for such beauty. And the last time I was there, that price was hovering right around $12,000 USD. And while that’s for an overnight outcall, and both GFE and Greek are usually understood—by both parties—to be included in that price, and also these hookers are in fact the most beautiful women in the world, that’s still pretty steep. Because while I have (obviously) paid for it, I sure as hell haven’t ever overpaid.
I’ll get to how I avoid being overcharged for sex in a moment, but first let me clarify one thing about the gaming industry for you: Look around. See that opulent casino you’re standing in? Feel how thick that carpet is? See that inlaid Brazilian rosewood on the roulette wheel? Remember the perfect weave on the doorman’s gabardine topcoat? See those hot-ass hookers?
Now guess how the casino paid for all that. If your answer was “by floating a tax-exempt municipal bond,” you would be incorrect. A private corporation can’t even do that. Which is why the casino paid for all that stuff with money from idiots like you, who walk in there and turn out their pockets every minute of their dumb lives.
“But Archer,” you say, stupidly, “the whole time I’m in there, I’m getting free drinks!”
Well, actually you just drank nine watery, orange-juice-concentrate screwdrivers and paid a couple hundred bucks for the privilege. And guess what, genius: for less than a Jackson you could buy so much grain alcohol that, if you drank it all at once, you would literally
die.
“But Archer,” you say, stupidlier, “I gamble for the excitement, for the thrill of it all!”
Congratulations: you’re stupid. Because there’s nothing thrilling about a predetermined outcome. And the outcome of any game in any casino in any country in the world has already been predetermined (by Harvard computer geniuses using complex computer algorithms, who, having completed their task, were then murdered and dissolved in drums of acid by the Mafia). Check out the odds on any casino game. Are they one to one? No, they’re not. Which means that if you play long enough, you’re going to lose all your money. After which you will then probably end up blowing that well-dressed doorman for a five-dollar chip. Which you will immediately go gamble away. Like the pathetic, dick-breathed, nickel-slots junky you have become.
Which is why I don’t gamble.
Because it’s not gambling if you have a foolproof system!
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Which I do! And which I can’t believe I’m sharing with you people, but it kills me to think of you dopes stuffing your hard-earned Hamiltons into the pockets of some mobster’s silk-lined Brioni suit.
And so here, for the first time ever, is a step-by-step guide to the Sterling Archer Triple-A Power Play
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:
1. Get $100,000 from somewhere.
2. Deposit it with the casino.
3. Have a drink with the charming personal concierge the casino will assign to you. Let him know you’re interested in some female companionship after you have dinner and take in a show. (Note: If your personal concierge is a woman, this is a good time to bang her. And then let her know you’re interested in some
different
female companionship after you have dinner and take in a show, Regardless of the gender of your personal concierge, this is also a good time to mention any food allergies you may have: he or she will be sure to let the chef know.)
4. Invite your personal concierge up to your comped suite, which is so mind-blowingly awesome that Frank fucking Sinatra would be nervous about walking around in there with his shoes on. The reason for doing this is so your personal concierge can use his own money to tip the bellhop. Just pat your pockets and look momentarily horrified, and the concierge will leap at the chance to do you this small kindness, as he is expecting a
huge
tip on the back end. (Oh, and if your personal concierge is a woman, this is a good opportunity to bang her again.)
5. Dismiss everyone and walk over to the bar by your suite’s floor-to-ceiling windows and, as you watch the setting sun bathe the desert in hues of cinnamon and gold, start pounding the shit out of that free high-end liquor. Go nuts: Make a Long Island Iced Tea with sixty-year-old Armagnac. Then throw it on the floor; it’s gross. Then call housekeeping. Then strip naked.
6. When the maid knocks, just yell for her to come on in, She may be startled by your nudity, but just offer her a drink while reassuring her that everything is, in fact, totally cool.
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Then ask her if she’d like to have sex. If you look like I do naked, then yes, yes she would.
7. Have sex with the maid. Then, as you head to the bathroom, politely remind her about all that sticky broken glass over by the bar. (Note: It is
not
acceptable to offer her money. This will make her feel like a whore, and she’s probably incredibly Catholic. It
is
acceptable to offer her five or six bottles of the casino’s high-end liquor. This avoids any appearance of impropriety, plus she’ll be able to trade it for tortilla flour, cooking oil, and safety matches.)
8. Shower, take a short nap, and get dressed for the evening.
9. Have an amazing, and totally comped, dinner in the casino’s VIP restaurant. Then order an entirely
separate
meal, which you will instruct your waiter to have delivered to that cinnamon-skinned maid, down in whatever steamy sub-basement laundry room she’s currently toiling. The waiter will recognize this for the totally class move it is, and comp this second dinner as well.
10. Take in a show. I prefer magicians, but I’m also pretty crazy about endangered species. Luckily this is Vegas (oh, yeah, I forgot: this is Vegas), and you can’t swing a dead hooker without hitting some magic act built almost entirely around the majestic white Bengal Tiger.
11. Head back to the casino. At this point, your personal concierge will inquire, very politely, if you’re ready to try your luck at the tables. Tell him that you’re dying to gamble, but that you don’t think you could concentrate until you blow a few hot, salty loads all over at least two top-tier prostitutes. Definitely comped, preferably while tearing through the desert in the back of a comped stretch limousine with the stereo blasting Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.”
12. Go do that.
13. Now comes the tricky part, because you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of a corner here. Your personal concierge has satisfied his part of the implied oral agreement: at this very minute, two sexy hookers have one foot up on a sink in the lobby bathroom and are using lemon-scented moist towelettes to wipe your seed from their various female nooks and/or crannies. He is—and rightfully so, I might add—expecting you to walk over to the cage, withdraw a stack of those cool, black, rectangle-y chips, and then go sit down at a table and gamble them away. And while
he’s
being incredibly polite about it, his Mafia colleagues probably won’t be. So:
14. Go get your chips, bitch: it’s time to gamble. Now, I’m personally attracted to the games with the most paraphernalia: roulette, pachinko, or anything with a light-up tote-board. If I gambled, and if a casino would let me, I could probably spend hours happily betting on the board game Mouse
Trap.
But since I don’t, and they won’t, and I’m just trying to get the hell out of here with my money and my thumbs, I head for the pai gow tables, These are usually pretty easy to spot: just look for the cloud of cigarette smoke that doesn’t speak English, You will be the only white person at the table, and you may get a few dirty looks when you sit down, but that’s just because Asians can be kinda racist sometimes. Wave to (or snap your fingers at) a waitress and tell her to bring a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black
for the table.
Hey, look who just made a bunch of new friends! Gesture toward the tabletop and shrug, like you don’t understand how the game is played. Then start pouring shots of scotch for all those guys—and a woman you wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn is Madame Chiang Kai-Shek—as they try to explain the rules by jabbering nonsense at you, waving their cigarettes around, and quickly getting bombed on scotch (remember: they’re
tiny).
Just keep playing dumb, order another bottle, and don’t be alarmed if everybody’s face turns bright red: they’re not mad at you. This condition is called Oriental Flush, and it happens to some Asian people when they drink. Off-putting, but harmless. Okay, once everybody is totally shitfaced (which should probably take about eight minutes), throw your hands up like you’re just too dumb to ever learn the subtle nuances of pai gow (which you probably are). Then indicate, with lots of pointing and tummy-rubbing, that you’d like to take them all out to dinner. (Note: getting Asian people to voluntarily walk away from any type of gambling is obviously going to be a tough sell, but don’t take no for an answer: this next bit is the crucial part of The Sterling Archer Triple-A Power Play.) Shepherd the whole drunken, red-faced, smoking, shouting lot of them over to the cage and tell the cashier you wish to cash out your chips. Your personal concierge will come
sprinting
over to the cage at this point—trying to catch the eye of a few Mafia goons as he does so—and ask how he may be of assistance. You’ll both have to shout over your drunken little herd of Asians because now they’re arguing about where to eat and are thus louder and angrier sounding than normal. Tell him you’re taking your new friends out to dinner, and that you don’t feel comfortable leaving a hundred thousand dollars in the casino vault. He knows—hell, even Madame Chiang Kai-Shek knows—that this is complete bullshit, because it was sitting there the whole time you were out scarfing down Lobster Thermidor and pressure-washing hookers and watching tigers magically disappear, But the shouting, arm-waving, beet-faced Asians (who appear to have agreed on barbecue) will have him so flummoxed that you’ll be able to withdraw your hundred grand, go eat a bunch of short ribs with the gang, and be in a cab to McCarran before he realizes what the hell just happened.
15. Rinse.
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16. Repeat.
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And there you have it: the Sterling Archer Triple-A Power Play.
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ARCHER FUN FACT: ROULETTE Here’s a fun fact: Add up all the numbers on a roulette wheel, one through thirty-six. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Are you adding the last number right now? What did you get? Creepy, right? |
ARCHER BY THE NUMBERS: CASINO ODDS • Odds against being dealt a royal flush in poker: 649,740:1 • Odds against making a “Hard Eight” in craps: 10:1 • Odds against getting a 00 in roulette: 35:1 • Odds for seeing some Asian people there: 1:1 • Odds for those Asians smoking: 1:1 • Toll-free gambling addiction hotline: 800-522-4700 |
Wow. I kinda shot my wad with the Sterling Archer Triple-A Power Play. Not sure if I’m in the mood to get into a whole big thing about how binoculars work.
In today’s political climate, “interrogation” has been become a very sensitive issue. And I put it in quotation marks because, by now, even tiny little kids know that “interrogation” is just grown-up talk for torture. But in my opinion, we’re doing our children a grave disservice by refusing to engage in an open dialogue about torture. Which is the same thing we do with sex. And then the next thing those kids know, they’re of barely legal age and someone is trying to put his penis in them, and they’re all like, “What the
fuck,
dude?! Jesus, hang
on
a second! What? No, I’m not
mad,
I just wasn’t expecting that, because my parents never engaged in an open dialogue with me about it. But let’s do a bong hit, and you can maybe walk me through it.”