Thursday, August 27, 2015

Storytelling

Sure, opinions often begin with an introduction. But how many opinions begin with a "prologue"? Well, this one does... (Bravo Beds.)

I. PROLOGUE
This case has the makings of a classic film noir story, though thankfully,
despite animosity so thick between two of the parties the trial judge made a specific
finding on it, no one has been murdered. The plaintiff is an actor. The actor has a
fiancée. The fiancée has a younger sister. The younger sister has a bad gambling habit.
She used to have a domestic partner who enabled that habit. In better days the two were
high rollers. They would get free rides on private jets. They owned a fabled black credit
card. They drove a Range Rover. The partner owned a Bentley. They lived in a house in
Huntington Beach.
But those were better days. To raise $40,000 for a Las Vegas poker
tournament the domestic partner hocked her 2006 silver Bentley to the actor. The partner
expected the younger sister would win big and they would be able to repay the money
and redeem the Bentley. It didn’t happen. The forty grand was lost in Vegas. Nine
months later, the partner sold off the Bentley to the actor in return for another $51,880
cash infusion for, as it turned out, yet more unsuccessful gambling.
Well, at least the actor thought the deal was a sale. The partner thought
they had a lease agreement. That is, the partner thought the actor or his fiancée would
pay the partner a monthly payment equal to the payments the partner had to make to the
finance company. Then what was the $51,880 for? And since, in January 2011, the actor
had the car and wasn’t making “lease” payments to the partner, she decided to get the car
back from him. She first employed an unlicensed repossession agent, but his attempts
were aborted when the actor confronted him late at night. A few months later she
contacted a licensed repossession agent – the “repo man” in this nascent drama. He
eventually succeeded. The day after the repo man seized the car it was returned to the
partner. She then met her mother at a local BMW dealer, where she gave the Bentley to
the dealer, and the mother received credit from the Bentley toward a Porsche. We had
descended from film noir to reality TV.
Image result for repo man