#182: Big Bessie's Cabernet Reserve

Arthur Trope Presents: The Inscrutables

No. 182

“Big Bessie’s Cabernet Reserve”

It’s Ed time. Sunday morning in the office, dark roast in my favorite mug, the Stones going on Pandora & it’s not raining on Seattle. The focus group scores came back on this one & they were decent, and its the least controversial panel in the pipeline at the moment, so I’ll take the liberty of posting it, even though it’s not quite 100% approved by the Committee yet. It comes from a trip Artie took with Syd to Walla Walla a few weekends ago. (Walla Walla is Washington wine country.) They stayed in a B&B and toured wineries and brought back a bunch of bottles for everyone. The bottles were all pretty good, especially the Cab blends, so we’re trying to get Jenny from ad sales to land a Walla Walla account so we have a regular supply. Artie expensed the whole thing on the corporate Amex as a “research trip”. He submitted a panel, so I guess that counts. He sort of let slip that he expensed a bunch of the Mexico trip too. And the Spring Training game in Arizona. There’s an unofficial three-strike policy on violating the SynrSys corporate card policy, and Artie still doesn’t have any strikes, so it’s good to be the “talent” I guess. On that note, Artie’s been invited to Mumbai to discuss the Bollywood deal in person with the production company there, so he & Stan are going to head over there this week. It’s a good thing we have a backlog. The Bollywood thing is entirely personal since ‘Miss Fourth of July’ is a side-project. But if he bundles in an animation deal for Gus the Cat, it’s going to get complicated with SynrSys, bc they have a claim on some % of those rights. If you’re in the neighborhood next week and you want to say hello to Artie, he’ll be at the Taj Mumbai. I hear that’s a pretty swanky hotel & I don’t think the Bollywood production company is paying for it. So we may be looking at strike one here shortly. -Ed.