Fake Mayor Slay: In Brito Conversation

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Had a chance to sit down with the new King of Beers, Carlos Brito. I was going to open up by singing "Here Comes the King, Here Comes the King, Here Comes the Big Number One!" in Belgian when he walked into the room. I have no idea how big Belgium is, but it must not be very important because there is no option for "English to Belgian" in Babelfish to translate.

Then J-Ray tells me right before Carlos walks in that he is Brazilian, not Belgian. What!?! I dash back to the computer, and find there is no "English to Brazilian" option either! What kind of podunk countries are these? They might as well be from Sanscrita (which I assume is where they speak Sanscrit).

Then Rainford tells me that Brito went to Stanford, and speaks English. Phew! Wait, if he went to Stanford, he's a Cardinal! What could be more St. Louis than that? I immediately was put at ease.

So when he walked into the board room down on Pestalozzi, I greeted him with a hearty "Chuck! What's shakin' my Cardinal brother?" Apparently his English isn't all that polished, because he didn't reply, just looked at me quizzically. So I showed him that I respected his limited language skills by saying slowly and loudly, "HELLO. CARLOS! NICE. TO. MEET. YOU!"

He snapped off some rejoinder about being "foreign, not retarded." This guy is funny! That Rosetta Stone stuff must really work I guess. I introduced J-Ray to his right-hand man so the toadies could go play while the real men got down to business.

First thing I told him was, "Charlie, I don't want to tell you how to run your business, but if you had only waited to purchase A-B until this weekend's State Tax Holiday, you would have saved about $2.2 Billion in taxes alone! That's a 'Big B,' Chuckles! I won't tell your investors if you won't, as a show of good faith between the City and you. That's how I roll."

The discussions from there were cordial and productive. Since we no longer have Strassenfest, I offered him that slot to have either a Belgian-palooza or a Brazilian Festival.  He said he'd think about it. His toadie had J-Ray helping him with a tape measure to get dimensions of the place, and was asking interesting questions like, "How much could you sublet this space for? Oh? What's that in Euros?"

I finished our discussion by saying, "I know your company is Belgian, so I don't want you to waffle on your commitment!" He said he had never heard that one before. Excellent! That is sure to make a good impression!