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| Rob's Soapbox | ||
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Congratulations!
You have finally landed on the one page on this entire site (and on the entire internet for that matter) that is purely without bullshit... my soapbox page. There are a lot of times during our show that, whether it's because of time constraints and other obligations, I don't always get to address some issues that I feel don't get the attention they deserve. There are even more times when I just don't feel like waiting until the show the next day to get some things off my chest. Thus, I have started the "Rob's Soapbox" page. If you have clicked on this page looking for someone to coddle your fragile sense of self-esteem, or tell you what you want to hear or to reinforce your outdated world view, then exit this page right now and go somewhere else. If you are in search of the last forum for reason and common sense left in the world, then sit back, relax, and enjoy. I make only one promise with this soapbox page... if you read long enough and often enough, you will eventually be offended. So here's my latest soapbox. Listen up, 'cause you just might learn something... |
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September 4, 2007 A POWER TRIP IN LAS VEGAS Understanding that many of you have the attention span of my sidekick Arnie, I must warn you; this is a long column. It’s worth it, though, not just for the entertainment value of it, but rather, more importantly, for the invaluable lessons that are provided by reading the entire story. You will learn why it’s vital to know your rights and when to exercise them and even how to do so. Confidence and intelligence are tools of power meant to be used only in moderation and at the right times in the right moments. This story recounts all of these coming to fruition. A fascinating chain of events occurred this past week while my wife and I were visiting Las Vegas. In less than five minutes, acute lessons on knowing your civil rights, demonstrating personal confidence, ignoring intimidation, and clichés involving power hungry people were all on display. It was Wednesday night, August 29th at the Bellagio and my wife and I had decided to attend the Cirque De Soleil show, “O.” These Cirque shows are a dime a dozen now on the strip and feature, for the most part, music, choreography, dancing, trapeze stunts and a little humor. The ”O” show is the Cirque performance done primarily in water, which drew us to it for a fun evening out. Upon arriving at the show, we got our tickets from the will call line, and began to enter the venue. As we walked through the main door, the usher very politely asked me to pour my glass of Heineken into a plastic cup, as no glass was allowed inside (this may prove interesting to you as the story develops; take note that they stop bottles they can see from entering the venue but perform no other security checks or courtesy interviews at all). I obliged her by simply downing the beer, placing the drinking glass on a counter and entering the show pleasantly. We sat, prepared for the show and listened intently to the pre-show announcement including the clarification that flash photography was not allowed. We took special notice of this provision because they made a point to mention that flashes can blind the performers, which can be very dangerous when performing high flying stunts. Additionally, this stood out to us because just a few weeks earlier, when we saw Seinfeld at Caesar’s, every guest went through a metal detector, then security personnel searched and questioned every patron at the door and did not allow any cameras or cell phone cameras inside the venue at all. If you were found to have one, you had to check it in at the box office and retrieve it after the show (which we did). If you chose not to have your camera checked, you were not allowed in, a perfectly reasonable policy. My wife and I found it odd that the security compared to a stand up comedy show, was so lax at the Cirque show, particularly in light of the fact that a flash would, in fact, be dangerous to the Cirque performers. We also, however, deduced that non-flash photography would be ok since the announcement centered only on flash pictures. Quite honestly, we didn’t give a flying pig about pictures we just thought taking a few for the RAD.COM website would be a nice addition to our vacation photos. The show went along without a hitch for about an hour at which point I began to lose interest. As with most of these types of performances, my reaction was as follows: Amazement at the acrobatics, stunning admiration at the physical ability of the performers, respect for the hard work, choreography and special effects and ultimately, boredom. These shows lose their luster for me at about 60 minutes because to my eye, while the stunts and choreography are amazing, they are also all things I have seen before…usually in the previous hour. How many times can you watch a person contort their body while flying through the air? For me, apparently, the answer is “not many.” The recurring theme that did keep my attention was the two clowns who opened the show and were, at the 75 minute mark, about to make their third appearance. They were actually fairly funny and I kept referring to them as the “Rob & Arnie of Cirque de Soleil,” for their goofy comedy relief that kept the show going. We decided to snap a few non-flash photos, preparing to leave the show early after the clowns came out again since we had both seen enough. What happened next took less than five minutes to transpire, but will long linger as one of my most favorite and memorable moments of my wife and I working together as a team. After snapping a few non-flash pictures a goofy looking usher with an absurd Cat-In-The-Hat type piece of headwear leaned into us and actually reached for our camera, which I was holding. I pulled it away and he informed us that all photography was forbidden. My wife politely told him that we were not aware of that and we would offer to delete the photos (something we didn’t have to offer to do) but that he was not going to take our camera. At this point, it’s about principle. Having allowed us into the venue, making a lame at best attempt to inform people of their policies, the Cirque show is helping to create situations like these. At the very least all this guy had to do was tell us to cease and desist and we would have happily put the camera away and taken no more photos. Reaching for our property is a very easy way to set the both of us off, as it is both wholly inappropriate and completely illegal. In particular, the law is very clear that photography is protected under any circumstance once the picture has been taken, even by the way, if you are trespassing (http://www.kantor.com/blog/Legal-Rights-of-Photographers.pdf). My wife, by being polite and offering to delete the three photos we had taken, was trying to basically negotiate a peaceful settlement in the blink of an eye with this usher, knowing full well that he had no right at this point in the show to take our camera from us. (The law is confusing but clear; a business has every right to try to stop you from entering their facilities based on their reasonable, non-discriminatory policies. However, if the business fails to do that, the pictures become personal property and can even be published without repercussions). This is where the fascinating chain of events begins. There is a long standing cliché about security personnel of all walks, ranging from mall security guards to club bouncers to ushers with funny hats. While, of course, clichés do not apply to all people in any individual profession, the truth is that clichés are clichés for a reason; because they’re usually true as a canvas. The rub on security personnel is that they are wanna-be cops who crave power and control, have none in their own lives and also lack the ability and commitment it takes to become actual authority figures. Thus, at the very hint of an opportunity to exert their alleged power over another human being, they pounce. The look in the Dr Seuss security guard’s face when my wife informed him he wasn’t getting our camera was priceless. He was frozen and infuriated at the same time, trying to run through his mental rolodex of what to do about someone who refused to succumb to his baseless attempts to intimidate us. I knew that the situation (and law) was clear in this situation. The casino (and its agents) has every right to ask us to leave their property at this point for (apparently) violating a policy. They do not have any right to confiscate our property. As the character from the Grinch masquerading as an usher was still fumbling and grunting I looked at my wife and said “Do you want to just leave?” and we got up and began walking out. Perhaps we were mistaken for the king and queen of Morocco because the parade we received as we walked out was almost flattering. The initial usher, AKA the mayor of Who-Ville, immediately began talking into his lapel and following us as my wife and I headed for the exit to the sounds of me saying out loud “are you kidding me with this,” to which the security guard, whose inability to exert any of his fake authority was so clearly destroying him actually said “this is no kidding matter, sir,” as if we had committed a form of high treason or espionage. I wanted to turn to him and explain his lack of prominence on life’s ladder, but thought it better to simply put my head up, shoulders back and walk at a steady pace for the exit (camera in hand), where we had decided we were ready to go less than 3 minutes earlier anyways. As we walked towards the doors, now surrounded by 4, yes 4, people dressed like they’re looking for Green eggs and ham, the initial doofus, clearly out of control in his own mind and completely caught off guard by our total disregard of his existence and alleged authority, decided to break the silence by saying “you’re going to need to delete those pictures before leaving,” which actually caused me to laugh out loud (actually I think it was a “hah!”) and say “I don’t think so.” Knowing your rights and knowing when to use them is a powerful thing. Now, fully flustered, the “guard” had a choice to make. The truth is that these people are very well trained and taught how far they can push their limits (not only have I known more than few heads of security at Nevada casinos, I also have a sister who worked at one as well so I am not just spouting off hyperbole here based on the TV show “Las Vegas”). The idea behind any level of casino security is to intimidate and exert authority, hoping the subject will demure in the face of such. If all else fails, the casino can always extricate you from their property. Thus in lies the rub. By voluntarily removing ourselves from the venue we had already undercut the security team’s full range of power and authority. They no longer held any control over us, because we had already offered to leave of our own volition. The initial guard, who has had no opportunity as yet to exert his power over us has now tried to exert his will on us yet again by giving us an order (delete your photos) and has failed again. Thus, his choice is upon him. He knows, because of his training, that he can’t detain us, can’t touch us and can’t touch our property or the Bellagio will soon be called the Robaggio. At the worst, he could attempt to call the real, actual casino security guards to escort us off of the property but the truth is, at this moment in time of the story, he doesn’t know enough about us to risk it. He has to weigh whether or not we are casino guests, high rollers, big spenders and the like, and taking note of our clothing, jewelry and accessories has to assume that we may at least be one of the aforementioned. Thus, he knows that he shouldn’t take it to that level either. Still, though, this poor little man, who has no control over life itself and has just, yet again, been beaten down by someone more intelligent and confident than he, must find a way to make himself feel better. No doubt that later on he will recount this story to all of his nerdy friends for weeks, allowing him to puff up his chest and courageously recount the tale of how he escorted out the pompous rich man and his wife as only he could do. Still, though, that will be later when he can comfortable lie to his friends. At the moment, he must do something to show he is a “big man.” As we make our way to the exit, via a door held open by a 5th security guard, the original usher exerted his version of “oh yeah,” by saying to the guard (but really he was trying to get our goats) “let ‘em go…they just wasted their money.” Cute…but lame and untrue; yet for a brief, shallow moment it allowed him to feel like a “big man.” In his sad little world, anyone who leaves a $170 per ticket show before the actual end must be “wasting their money,” because he doesn’t have that kind of cash to blow and knows that he never will because he is a pathetic loser. Upon his final, lame attempt at making us feel small, I again laughed out loud and my wife, who admits that she can, at times, get petty in moments like this, weighed her options. Up until now she had confidently and beautifully followed my lead and made this jerk feel 2 feet tall by ignoring him and working in tandem with her husband who was clearly driving this guy nuts. As we walked out of the showroom in an almost “Columbo” like presentation my wife responded to his “wasting our money” claim by holding up her $3000 Prada purse and saying, “That’s ok, we’ve got plenty to waste.” The door shut and we walked to a bar. At first, I thought my wife had stooped too low, and she did as well. She wondered aloud if she had let the “guard” finally get to her after we had so beautifully exercised our will and rights over him. Upon further review though, I can’t not laugh at the way she did it. She didn’t break stride, she didn’t look back and what she said, while admittedly small and petty and unnecessary no doubt did hurt such a loser as that guard. Plus, she got the last word, leaving this dork standing in the middle of an entry lobby, fellow guards surrounding him, with no more recourse. It was over. He had no more fake power to exercise, no more insults to hurl and was left with the realization that he had exerted absolutely none of his will over us at all. We went to a nearby Bellagio bar, had a drink and more than a few laughs and left for the evening, fully fulfilled. It wasn’t until the next day that my wife thought this whole story would make for a great soapbox. The idea here, of course, is not to puff up my feathers and appear great because I somehow mentally outwitted an un-armed opponent; hardly. Unlike the guard, I don’t need stupid, over exaggerated stories or moments to define myself falsely. There is, however, no way to truly relate the point to you without giving you the painfully intricate details above. In the end, the moral of the story is a simple and clear one; Do your research, know your rights and exercise them appropriately. I have preached for years about the gullibility of the public to accept things just because a sign says you have to. There is no such thing as “you break it, you buy it,” shopping bag searches at the exits of non-club retail stores are totally illegal and cameras cannot be confiscated! If you are absolutely correct in steps one and two of doing your research and knowing your rights, you will find that step three, the act of exercising your authority, comes naturally through the confidence of knowing your position, and the rewards are fruitful. Nothing breeds confidence like success and nothing breeds success like confidence.
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