JeffVrabel.com

Island Packet — The recession is ruining everything now, including real estate transactions, Salsarita’s on U.S. 278, much of the construction in Bluffton that will not result in a new Wendy’s, Michael Jackson, that $14 million house on Brams Point and positive accounting integers for everyone who bought a second home around here. Yet still, with everything falling to pieces, banks going sploof in the night, the regular discovery of middle-aged sweater-vested men sobbing in gutters and, of course, dogs and cats living together, one would think that things would be reasonably secure on Park Place.

Not so. The recession has yet to come anywhere near Monopoly (or its filthy rich monocled mayor), as the game has recently been “reinvented” for the 4,219th time, ranking it on the list of things that have been regularly reinvented somewhere between Batman, Duran Duran and Blackwater.

Now for you youngsters reading the paper (ha!), this “Monopoly” is a Precambrian “board game” that was once played by children before the invention of the guitar-shaped video game controller and makes lively, family-friendly sport out of basic economics, which is why fewer people are playing it now, because these days parents can’t hand over even fictional cash to theoretical utilities without bursting into tears.

But whatever. Monopoly is still great, and I’m not just saying that because I am an UNEQUIVOCAL MONOPOLY KINGPIN. I am the Michael Phelps of Monopoly, but my board doesn’t appear to move by itself. I am to monopoly what the Slumdog Millionaire is to slums (and dogs); I am what God would be like playing Monopoly, had He more time for family game nights.

I was once, in fact, close to losing several friends and one fiancee over Monopoly, thanks to a game many years ago in which I KILLED. Cash was pouring at me like I was a Bank of America executive bathroom. The orange properties? Mine, and slathered in houses. The yellow properties? Mine, and a thriving hotel market. Boardwalk? Park Place? In my pocket. And I guess I might have possibly got a little smug and possibly beered up about it, because by the end of the night three people had left my living room without a word, and later I learned that someone had written something like “Vrabel is the biggest punk I’ve ever sat next to. All conniving. That dude would sell out his own flesh for a railroad,” which is a lie, because of course I would never do that for anything south of the yellows.)

Anyway, back to Monopoly, which is evidently operating under the idea that the recession is not happening, making it basically Phil Gramm in board game form. The new take, dubbed “Here & Now: The World Edition,” first and foremost uses debit cards and is, as such, cash-free, which robs players of the dark, despotic joy of having secret $500s stashed underneath the game board to crack out when someone gets all sticky with the rent bill. “Gosh, Dad, I don’t know how I could possibly pay for three houses on Pennsylvania Avenue unless it’s with THIS HOT FRESH FIVER BLAM WHAT’S UP NOW, OLD MAN?” Or, you know, however you played it in your house.

The figures, you’ll notice, are also different. For instance, when you pass “GO,” you get $2 million, which should be enough money to bulldoze whatever substandard whiskey-soaked flophouses are sinking Baltic and Mediterranean and put up several hundred casinos made of German chocolate and seat cushions made out of seal hides. But it’s not, because everything costs more. Community Chest gets you a $250,000 profit from a Paris boutique; travel companies bank millions in sales.

Whatever, I’ll keep the cheap, grubby game I’ve had for 30 years. Monopoly doesn’t need a bailout. Everything else does, apparently: car companies, Wendy’s, fancy bathrooms. But not Monopoly.