Another one of those people...

...whose pain I do not share is Terrance Watanabe. For literary comedy, you need to read The New York Daily News' account of how he lost $127 million in Vegas. However, for self-pitying bathos, the ABC version is much, much, better.

In a world whose hypocritical piety sometimes exceeds anything the first Puritans could ever have dreamt up, I suppose I should say that I have never in my life been drunk. Heh: in the sixties and seventies I don't think we kept up with the consumption of earlier generations, but we were known to take a drink. We still are.

I can say that I have never in my life been that drunk; which is to say drunk enough to lose track of the equivalent of the gross national product of any of several Third World countries.
And I've never been in a position, or been inclined, to gamble more than about two bucks a week.

The amount of liquor Mr. Watanabe claims was forced upon him (together with mysterious painkillers) was not, let me say, excessive: it was toxic; it was fatal. And yet here he is, arisen from the dead evidently, reanimated by colossal self-pity and a stupefying inability to take responsibility for his own actions.

One can see the lawyers sharpening their long knives over this farce. Whatever Mr. Watanabe had left after he dumped nine figures at the tables will indemnify a whole rising generation of tort attorneys. Remind me not to drop a quarter in his tin cup when they're done.