Last Night at the Casino #4

52 pages, 5.5" x 4", $3.00, trades OK, Billy Roberts, iknowbilly [at] gmail [dot] com + bunnyears.bandcamp.com [Note: Billy is in the middle of moving right now so asked me to sit tight and not send anything to his old Bernalillo NM address] This was one of those zines that I'd read reviews of, it sounded really great, so I had it on my list to write/trade for. Well, I procrastinated until, what do you know, one day a couple of weeks ago I got one of Billy's Last Night at the Casino zines in the mail! The Cosmic Forces meant for us to trade zines. These are powerful forces indeed that the evils of procrastination don't stand a chance against. Anyway, the title gives a pretty big hint what you're getting here - Billy works at a casino and this zine is full of stories about his experiences with punters and fellow casino workers, and the different games he has worked at (craps, roulette, blackjack, etc). I think that if I had to come up with a list of ten work zines I'd wanna read, a casino zine would definitely be in there. Billy includes so many great anecdotes and inside stories about this mysterious world, this is the kind of zine I just plow through and I'm at the end before I know it. One of my favourite pieces in here is 'A Broad Generalization of Standard Casino Personality Types'. There's The Neurotic Number Cruncher, The Super Cute Girl Who is Super Addicted to Gambling, The Big Titty Floozies, The Lucky Drunk-Ass, The Gentle Elderly Man, and The Tourist on Vacation. The Number Cruncher is the funniest to me - "Each time he loses and his system fails, he curses under his breath, writes down what happened, and then realizes that the cycle of the "system" must be larger than he thought." Last Night at the Casino isn't just a great work zine, it's a great zine zine. Get get.