Today's Life Lesson: Never Ever EVER Run A Tab In A Strip Joint

Because at the end of the night, when you're all liquored up and hormoned up, they can pretty much charge you whatever they want. And your options are limited:

Mitchell Blaser, who is the Chief Financial Officer of the Americas division of insurer Swiss Re, filed suit on Tuesday demanding that strip club Scores pay back the $28,000 because that does not accurately reflect his spending at the Manhattan nightspot.

But a Scores spokesman said that, during his December visit, Blaser ordered five magnums of the club's most expensive champagne, a 1990 Krug Clos du Mesnil, for $3,200 each. He also spent $7,000 for lap dances and the company of 12 girls who surrounded him for hours.

"Obviously, he's pouring the champagne for all the girls and playing superstar," Scores spokesman Lonnie Hanover said.

The guy's a CFO. He should really know better - particularly about when to use credit and when to pay cash on the barrelhead, so to speak. Unless, of course, he used to work for Enron, or maybe even Raytheon. As I've said before, men do strange things when motivated by pussy.

The most damning evidence, to me, is right here:

Hanover called the suit "frivolous" and said Scores has three signed receipts from Blaser over the course of the night. He said American Express investigated the matter and found the charges were valid and paid the $28,000. [emphasis added]

In my experience, American Express is the card most likely to take the cardholder's side in a dispute. That's one of the reasons I like them so much (and, incidentally, why a lot of small business owners don't take it). If they investigated and found no irregularities, then Mr. Blaser owes them 28 large.

OTOH, since it's a Manhattan strip club, it's probably Mob-owned. The Amex investigator could have come home from work one day and found a horse head in his bed...