Neil Winters News Archives 2004
See Also: Dru Winters  Olivia Winters  Lily Winters  Nick Newman  Devon Hamilton

It's Going to be a Very Bad Year

December 31, 2004
by Brent Kellogg

Poor, unemployed Neil Winters. It must have slipped his mind. The former CEO of Newman Enterprises must have forgot that he's had to beg at least two times in the past to get his job back. Now he's thinking again it's only a matter of time until Nick Newman will come crawling on his hands and knees pleading with him to help run the empire.

He must have forgot the time and energy members of his family and one friend spent finding a nice two weeks and you're clean rehab center for him to dry out in. He must have forgot that his drunkenness nearly cost him a relationship with his daughter.

Yes, Winters must have forgot.

He's a stinking alcoholic!

So why was he drinking champagne New Year's Eve?

Once a drunk, always a drunk. Ask any recovering alcoholic and they'll tell you. You cannot hop on and off the wagon at will if you've truly come to grips with reality. You cannot say, oh, that's in the past. You do not become a full-fledged alcoholic only to turn it on and off like a faucet. You cannot let your liver quiver and sacrifice what remaining brain cells haven't been burned to a crisp by booze on a whim.

Unless, all the slobbering Winters did over what a great year 2005 will be was a clue of things to come.

Let's see. His one year marriage is still in tact.

Hint #1: not for long and not when he finds out his brother thinks niece Lily is really daughter Lily.

His unemployment status will allow him to spend more time with the family.

Hint #2: not when his wife grows weary of being the breadwinner. Not when the little woman gets sick of his bumming around the house always underfoot. Not when they're on a budget and he's too lazy to haul his ass down to the unemployment office.

He's going to mend fences with his brother.

Hint #3: see hint #1

But the biggest clue of all that Winters could fall back into the bottle big time came from his own alkalized mouth.

"I promise I won't let anything interfere with our happiness."

Long time GCN readers will recognize the telltale signs. When people in this crazy city start sputtering about all the good things to come it can mean only one thing: the exact opposite will happen. It's going to be a very bad year for the Winters clan.

Oiling the Hate Machine

December 13, 2004
by Brent Kellogg

Did Neil Winters really say that? Did the recovering alcoholic who's brain is still apparently pickled tell his brother this week, "I know you two had something going on years ago" but that it's okay now because his marriage to Dru Winters is "solid"?

Yep. This is what the unemployed Stanford educated former Newman Enterprises COO told Malfunction Winters during another of his many begging sessions in which he pleaded with Malfunction not to leave town.

"I'm totally secure in my marriage," Winters went on as he searched for the real reason Malfunction keeps saying he's leaving town but, like when these people say they are "moving on" with their meaningless lives, hasn't gone anywhere.

Gosh, Malfunction. Could my wife have something to do with you wanting to get out of Dodge? Did you not think about that before you came back? So what if you two hit the sheets? Didn't I just say it's okay that my brother had sex with my wife? What are you looking for, my brother, that you can't find in Genoa City? Do we not have everything a man could want? Sex at the office, check. Incestuous sex, check. Why wouldn't you want to stay in a place where all the people you love have sex with each other?

What's that you say? I have no idea what you're giving up for me? What would that be, Malfunction? You mean to tell me that seventeen years later you've developed this guilt that Lily Winters is really your daughter and now you want a relationship with her? Is this why you told me Lily is "special"? You don't mean special like I think you mean special, do you? You sick bastard!

Very sorry. Didn't mean that. It's just, um, I don't understand why we keep begging you to stay and you keep saying your going but you're still here! Did you tell your employer last week when you were hired you'd only be working a week? Do coffee shop managers really hire short-term employees? Oh, that's right. The Newman Jitter Joint doesn't have a manager. Maybe that's why whomever hired you didn't mind filing out all those W4 forms. You are going to give a two-week notice aren't you?

So, you can't stay because things aren't that great between us and would only get worse if you stayed? Well, shucks my man. Isn't that what this is really all about? Is it not your purpose to disrupt our otherwise pointless lives at just the moment we'd reached the Cleaver level what with an unwanted boy in need of the perfect role models in our home? What will Devon Hamilton think if he finds out my daughter is really your daughter? What would that say about family values?

C'mon, Malfunction. Can't you see this is the time to be all shrugging and dismissive? Don't you want to sit back and watch the carnage as this family goes through another gut-wrenching crisis like the Newmans and the Carltons and the Abbotts? Has not the switch been thrown and the snarling hate machine churning in high gear and the mass herd mewling and subdued and misled and stupefied? Let's roll!

No! No! No! Did my ears deceive me? Did you just say your mind is made up? You're really leaving and relegating me to guzzle scotch and go numb and flip through the yellow pages in need of a good rehab center?

Have you checked with your former wife, the woman who was so hot for me at one time and would have cheated on you in a heartbeat just like my wife did when she claimed to be whacked out on cold medicine? If you hurry you should be able to catch Olivia at her cave. Why not tell her again that you're leaving so she too can beg you to stay and offer up the cave and her old bones as incentive?

Atta boy. While you're gone I'll oil the hate machine.

Filling a Void With a Void

December 9, 2004
by Brent Kellogg

Look out! The business world is about to lose the vital and perhaps irreplaceable Neil Winters. That was the nauseating word on the grapevine which was later confirmed on Thursday as the Newman Enterprises second in command - still smarting because the boss man axed his wife's noxious idea for a beauty pageant the city does not need or want - up and quit his job without having another lined up.

At first it wasn't sure which would come first. Would Winters quit the job he's begged for on at least two occasions before or after his scandalous wife sucked around the failing Jabot Cosmetics to see if her old job - the job Dru Winters walked away from without notice - might still be available.

Learning that Sharon Newman got the job and is at least attempting to work at being a spokesgeek, Mrs. Winters skinned crawled. She may have wondered: How could a woman with no experience or education get such a position when she, the high mucky-muck Dru Winters, is equally uneducated and inexperienced? And when Newman offered to speak with her husband about having the beauty pageant reinstated Winters turned up her nose and stormed off.

Let's go to the videotape. It's May 30, 2003, and there's Neil Winters on his knees before the great Victor Newman calling him "sir" and generally groveling and apologizing for having lost an important lab rat.

"Sir, he took a job at Jabot, sir," Winters said of the valuable yet worthless dime-a-dozen nobody cares who in the hell brews the chemicals sold to unsuspecting women, Damon Porter.

Confessing that his heavily shellacked helmet hair potty mouth former wife/fiancée had swiped Porter's business card off his desk and hired him overnight, Winters was near tears. Please master Newman, don't whip me because my freaky wife will stick me in the back with a knife. She was just paying me back for stealing Saltine Cosmetics.

Outraged that his best yes man had let his wife snatch Porter right out from under his big nose, Newman told Winters to make a choice. Dump the bitch or kiss his job at Newman Enterprises good-bye.

"I'm sorry you had to give me that ultimatum," Winters moaned, before telling Newman, "We really shouldn't be wasting our time moaning and groaning" and that he had a brilliant idea: Lab rats are a dime a dozen. They could hire any old rat to sniff toxic Safra skunk oil.

Newman thought for a moment about the sad sight licking at his boots before telling Winters he was right. They could and would win the cosmetics war and that Winters would be forgiven provided he made sure that his wife never, ever, be seen at the empire again.

Yes master! I want what you want. Your wish is my command, sir, Mr. Newman, sir, Winters kowtowed, but it never came to pass. Winters went on the hire his wife to work at the empire where she, um, "works" to this day albeit nobody knows for sure what she does.

So you gotta wonder, don't you? Why would a man once desperate to keep his job walk away from it so easily and for such a petty reason? Sure, Nick Newman is now running the company like a bad sheriff runs Dodge City, but why sacrifice those massive paychecks every two weeks for a token unemployment check? Oh wait!

The unemployed in Genoa City never collect unemployment. It's like an entitlement program. Way beneath their dignity. Besides, they have thousands stashed away for just such emergencies enabling them to live lives of tennis-playing gigolos.

Neil's self termination saved Nick from having to do what would have been the second good thing he would have done in as many weeks on at least one count. Had Neil not quit because Nick won't do things his way or at least listen to a more experienced businessman with a degree from Stanford, Nick could have fired both Neil and his helmet-headed wife. Doing so would have brought light where only darkness once reigned if only until Nick hires his own wife which, if that happens, will be like filling a void with a void.

Almighty Newman Goes On Search For Daughter, Opportune Time For Slaves to Revolt?

November 12, 2004
by Brent Kellogg

Here they go again getting all convoluted and depressing and messy and stupid and embarrassing themselves on every level.

Newman Enterprises executive Neil Winters has a right to bitch that he got demoted but his ranting Friday that Victor Newman resorted to nepotism is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Has Winters forgotten that he recently hired his own wife? No, he hasn't as he told Dru Winters that their little nepotistic game is still in play and to go on as though nothing had happened.

And lo and behold, but what Neil wasn't in need of a good stiff one. The one Newman had just run him through with wasn't apparently completely tortuous. He wanted a Scotch chaser! Oh yeah, baby. That's it. Fall back into the bottle, Neil. Once a drunk always a drunk. Victor anoints his ignorant, back-stabbing son King and you run off in search of your best pal, the bottle. You whine that all this time you thought you were getting ahead when really the Newmans were just using you as they've done time and time again. Yet you keep coming back for more. Why is that, Neil?

Could it be that deep down you know you are but a slave? Could you be pandering and sucking up to the white boys all the while knowing that at best they'd only throw you a bone and that if you didn't sit and stay and rollover on command they'd take the bone away? Well, they have, Neil.

But don't accentuate the positive. Don't see that you are still the #2 man and as you butter Nick's bagel know that in fact you are pulling his strings. Don't use this position as leverage to sink Nick's dream of power into the quicksand and laugh as he and his rocks for a brain wife drool over taking Newman Enterprises into the depths of the most corruption-filled and sperm-stained regime ever. Don't cover-up and well-document the stack of fumbles and flubs Nick will eventually get himself into.

Don't get mad, Neil. Get even! Because as God surely knows, Nick's swiping the job away from you will quickly lead to an unprecedented and incredibly violent mauling of the company, the rolling back of 30 years of progress and toxic Safra cosmetics, as the Almighty Victor goes in search of his oldest daughter.

It's true! Victoria Newman left town more than a year ago because she was fed up with the lies and the deceit and the constant bickering. She said she didn't want the family to come looking for her and hasn't written or called since apparently the only person to ever leave Genoa City and find that there is peace and harmony beyond the boundaries. She didn't appreciate that her brother had turned the family into a heartless warmongering wildly disrespected thug or that Nick got off on just thinking about sticking his long knife into her father's back.

So now, because he must find himself and relive the past, Victor is going away to a butterfly sanctuary - or something - without so much as a clue as to where Victoria might be. Maybe she's milking cows on a Kansas farm. Maybe she's selling peyote to New Mexico Indians. Wherever she is one thing is certain: Victor will return with Victoria so that the Newmans can once again endure more debilitating and soul-crushing years together.

The Final Insult

October 11, 2004
by Brent Kellogg 

It's so easy to get all caught up in the everyday spit and hiss and blank elitist smirks. Isn't it? It is, after all, incredibly easy to get stuck in all the screaming and hate and fears of the unknown, all merging with the mad melodrama of little boys who can't have the old women they want and the whipped, testicle-less men rehiring the manly women they've fired the day before.

This is what we see everyday in Genoa City so it becomes an apathy. Oh sure, that [fill in the blank] was really dumb, but we soon put the absurd out of our minds and go off again in the cloudy hope that something - anything - will happen that truly has a semblance of reality and so filled with drama we can't wait for the ending.

In the meantime we block, we dodge, we fill up on the poison and anger, and it all seems so immediate, so right now, so present and hateful and suffocating as if there has never been anything else but this, and my but wasn't Neil Winters' decision Monday to rehire his wife and Phyllis Summers take a lot of guts?

So again the question must be asked: what in hell is wrong with these people?

Acting as if nothing had happened; that they hadn't been fired and hadn't been asked to turn in their security codes or front door passes, Dru Winters and Phyllis Summers were right back inside Newman Enterprises checking e-mail and shuffling paper. Oh, they knew they weren't supposed to be there. They knew how fighting over the small office they shared was stupid and cost them their jobs. Summers at least had the good sense to know she had better git before someone spotted her, but as she was about to leave Winters said she wasn't taking her termination laying down and that if Summers knew what was good for her she too would stick around.

"It's hard to get my husband to do a 360," Winters oozed, when she knew damn well that her husband is like a massive lump in her colon. Grunt once or twice and Neil Winters comes rolling out like a big log.

It took awhile, but Summers finally caught the drift. "Are you saying your husband is a pussy? Are you saying that all you'd have to do to get him on his knees would be to threaten to cut him off?" Summers did not say in so many words, but did ask "What are you up to you sneaky bitch?"

Thinking she was being called a bad name when Summers was really paying her a compliment, Winters began violently reacting until her husband walked in to say the girls could pick up their fat severance checks from payroll. Brazen as always, Summers blurt out that they wanted their jobs back and was told flat out - no!

Then the bogus orange alert was flashed. Gosh, Mr. Winters. We've been working so hard on this beauty pageant nobody has any idea where or when or who will participate in and why is a major conglomerate like Newman Enterprises putting on pageants? Isn't the cosmetics war over? If you keep us on the payroll we'll kick start plans for the pageant again. Once the numbers have been crunched, why, Mr. Winters, you'll never know what hit you. The pageant will be a success and Mr. Newman will probably award you 100 brownie points. Really, Mr. Winters. Isn't brown-nosing what you really crave? C'mon now, be a good little hypocrite. Re-hire us.

As sure as bears crap in the woods Winters did just that swearing along the way that this would be the absolute last chance he was giving the girls.

No sooner had Summers been rehired but what she took off again on personal business without so much as asking the boss man if it would be okay.

It is not too much to ask. It is not wildly out of the question to expect Mr. Winters might just once accept responsibility and reject these women like J.T. Hellstrom denies his gay fantasies? Beyond the rehiring - not to mention the nepotism - Winters virtually slapped our collective faces.

Who, furthermore, could not help but let out a groan of pity as Winters, friendless and alone and looking weirdly, increasingly mechanical and limp and completely drained of all masculinity, dutifully rejected company policy and stood by his women?

This is the Genoa City way: To do the right thing is to show weakness. To say you might've made some mistakes whilst tromping blindly down the warpath, well, that sort of humility doesn't sit well with the hawks and the corporate profiteers. There is only the push toward bigger, toward stronger, toward nastier and angrier insults.

Maybe it is too much to ask. After all, we as observers have become jaded beyond words and have come to expect this level of appalling insults to our intelligence, but the return of Dru Winters and Phyllis Summers to jobs they are in no way qualified could very well be the final insult.

Fostering Hate
August 2, 2004

Whatever Daniel Romalotti's plan is to help Kevin Fisher out of the dilemma the Winters clan has placed on the much persecuted Fisher it is hoped by some to be massive and perhaps bloody after what Neil Winters did again to Fisher this week.

Yes, the Winters have returned with a nasty vengeance. Not satisfied that it was the so-called law in Genoa City which allows Fisher to walk the streets and did not prosecute him for the numerous times he jumped bail or attempted to kill Colleen Carlton or burned the RoadKill Cafe down, the Winters have turned on Fisher again like some pissant, defenseless country without weapons of mass destruction.

Let us watch as this all-encompassing mantra of get the evildoers, this absolutely invidious howling that Fisher should not be allowed to show his face in public. Let us watch how it mutates, in a twist of raging egomania, into the Winters' most bestest catchphrase du jour.

At the Newman Jitter Joint on Monday the clan - with their new puppy dog Devon Hamilton - had gathered to celebrate Devon's big day at the library. With sugar-laden ice creams sundaes flowing Dru Winters announced that she had received an invitation to the Open House to celebrate the official opening of the Victor Newman Memorial Recreation Center and how joyous she was that her daughter and Devon had done such a fantastic job of working off Mr. Newman's debt to society.

Eye-balling Kevin across the room ordering a large and expensive coffee, Neil walked over to ask how the therapy was going. Kevin said that he was making progress, but when asked the name of his therapist couldn't come up with an answer other than to say the name was hard to pronounce.

"You're not in therapy," Neil hissed, as Kevin backpedaled and promised that he will be soon.

"I told your brother I want to see you in extensive counseling and I mean now," Neil continued, his ooze turning into a full fledged threat. If Kevin doesn't get therapy - like now - he will stomp all over Kevin until Kevin either leaves town or slips up and damnit, Kevin will slip up because "guys like you always do."

Watching her daddy huff and puff, Lily Winters alerted her mother. "See that Mommy? Daddy is acting all big and bad like he's molesting the planet in the name of massaging the testicles of his corporate cronies," Lily did not say, but this was the message.

See people you don't like in public places who have just as much right to be there as you do? Attack them! Call them unpatriotic and hack away at them like so many trees in a disappearing forest. Screw every hunk of lingering logic and humanitarian reasoning and screw the notion that we need to justify our actions to anyone, least of all Kevin, who swallows every hate hurled at him like Sierra NoLastName swallows her one millionth Oreo.

Looking on, her black eyes glaring, Dru nearly shouted out, "Yay yay go team!" Instead, she hacked, "Why do they let Kevin Fisher out in public?"

Why, you creepy as Christine Blair bitch? Because this is America! There is still a little document, albeit it torn to shreds in recent years, called the Constitution. Fisher has a right to be out in public. At least he isn't going around urging his sister to sleep with a married man.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her mother Lily began spewing hatred too. Whenever she sees that "creep" whatever she's doing, be it dusting at the rec center or peeing, is ruined. She can't think straight after what Kevin did to her last year.

Picking up on the evil, the puppy began yelping too. Damn that Kevin Fisher. "One day I'll bust him in his jaw," said Devon only to be slapped down by Dru. No! Physical violence would only give Kevin more power, like the power he retains over Lily.

"He probably always will [have power over her] Lily confessed as Neil returned from his mini-terrorist attack and suggested they all leave because, well, their day had been ruined.

"I'm not going let him have power over me," Lily hurled, and as if testing her determination asked if she could stick around a little longer.

Perhaps fearing that left alone Lily would be slammed again with Kevin's relentless hammer of fear or that terrorist would burst into the Jitter Joint and eat their baby, Ma and Pa Winters seemed as if they were about to decline Lily's request when the puppy yelped again. He, Dynamite Devon, would protect Lily.

Why, sure darling, you can stay, Ma and Pa smiled. We only said all that scary stuff about Kevin because we wanted to wave the bloody flag. We only cared about the jingoistic spin and the hollow shrill. We wanted only for Kevin to kneel down and confess his sins. This is what we do. Kevin might be an al Qaeda operative - or something. Can't be too careful.

Instead of fostering hate the Winters clan should remember. It wasn't so long ago their parents and grandparents couldn't even walk into places like the Jitter Joint for all the WHITES ONLY signs.

No Time For Sex
July 22, 2004

Poor Neil Winters. He gave his utterly demonic wife, Dru, a whip and she hasn't stopped lashing him with it since. First there was the much opposed by their daughter second marriage, then came the stranglehold on Newman Enterprises in the form of a spanking brand-new entire cosmetics division of which not a single shareholder of the company approved, and now, glory be, Mr. Winters has given his okay to turning the wooden box in which they live into a sort of foster home for stray street kids.

Oh what a caring woman Dru is, Neil rails. What divine potency she has. How can he deny anything for what she begs when those big lips flap in the breeze and she regurgitates a longing to somehow pay back her sister's dead husband for having taken her off the street some fourteen years ago. Conveniently, for all Dru's righteousness, she forgets to mention how she tried to steal Nathan Hastings away from Dr. Olivia Winters.

But that's okay. In Genoa City the spinmeisters motto is to always stay on point. Avoid the whole truth. Tell a lie enough times and it's bound to become gospel. Lay the butter on thick. Tell those apt to question motives how lucky they are to have someone willing to put their own concerns aside for a sweetly uptight foster mother cross-bred with a bad fashion magazine.

How fortunate that Neil has, "So much respect for my passion," says Dru, as she licks the "I can accomplish something with this foster child" sucker she keeps shoving down Neil's throat until he gags on the street kid Devon Hamilton, of whom they know little or nothing about, "He's living with us for better or worse."

About as giddy as when she lies back and aims the shower massager just right, Dru had everything arranged within a matter of hours it seems. One day she was telling Devon to stay away from her daughter and the next she had a room of his own ready for him in her home complete with clean sheets.

"I love it when you get excited," Neil cooed before asking the question. In exchange for all he's done, would Dru give him just ten minutes in bed? A minute would do. And no, it didn't have to be on Devon's bed. He isn't into that much the way his half-brother was.

No sex came Dru's reply. Rejection. Just like that. See the color drain from Neil's empty head. See him give and give and give for nothing in return. Not so much as a wham, bam thank you sir for going out on a limb for Dru all the while having had to have known that allowing a strange kid just slightly older than his daughter to live under the same roof is about as smart at mixing pills with alcohol.

Obviously, the only thinking Neil did was with his penis. Maybe he was tempted by the thought some women in this city have that having sex with a young boy listening just down the hall would turn Dru on more. Maybe he thought it was somehow a good Christian thing he was doing and wanted to break down the barriers and make himself look cool in his daughter's eyes while striving to hook a new generation into a nice, safe, wholesome message that teen girls and boys can really live together in the same tiny apartment and not get caught up in the roiling sexual anxiety and poor condom awareness.

That Neil is whipped there is no doubt. Not just by his wife, but the adorable daughter, Lily. Oh sure, it wasn't always that way. Not when he was in detox. Like a child who had just been given a new puppy, Lily was elated on Thursday to find that her mother and father had come to Devon's rescue. Better yet, Devon was moving in!

Watching & Waiting
July 8, 2004

So I'm sitting here once again, watching. Waiting for the next batch of news from Genoa City to come in and wondering if there will be one, even a half of one, event that I can say something good about. Something that doesn't involve dweebs like Nick Newman hitting on young boys, wanting to take them back to the sprawling farm he squats on for a skinny dip in the pool.

I'm looking for something that doesn't involve friends and family chastising a poor old woman for being a drunk while making no mention of the pushers to which legal drugs she's addicted. Something that doesn't contain a helmet-haired hag spewing misery porn and then in an orgasmic glee declares the answer is a warehouse for the unwanted children who roam Genoa City like the black plague.

I want something that doesn't depict the self-righteous hurling that the truth is cruel and unusual punishment and should never, ever but told except for when it serves their best interests. Something that isn't made up as it goes along and which never could have happened like the heavily flawed Cameron Kirsten saga.

And what did I get Thursday for my waiting?

Neil Winters threatened Michael Baldwin with another law suit!

Oh yes, Winters has forgotten that the last time he and his evil wife asked a lawyer about suing Baldwin's brother they were told in no uncertain terms to forget it. Even if they won, the case would cost more money than they've got and they'd get nothing for their trouble. Kevin Fisher doesn't have a pot to pee in.

But this didn't stop Winters from going again to Baldwin's home to demand something be done. Kevin is on the loose again and poses a threat to his darling daughter just by being in the same city. Oh God, why can't we just lock up all the people we think are going to eat our babies?

And what of Kevin's past crimes? The sexual encounter with Lily Winters and the burning down of the RoadKill Cafe? Shouldn't Kevin bare some responsibility? How long has Neil lived in Genoa City? Why is it that he doesn't know? Criminals here are but a rancid stew of fearmongering. They give people like Winters an excuse to look like victims and yelp that such slugs are enemies, traitors, America-haters, liars and cheaters and sodomites and pedophiles and snobbish hypocritical pigs and goddammit how dare you let a man like Kevin be in our fine city?

Sighing and not bothering to tell Winters not ever to come to his home again Baldwin flipped the page. See? It says right here in Hank 'KGB' Weber's field manual. When possible, always discourage citizen requests for law enforcement. Tell complainants the darkside; how their daughters will be called into court to talk about icky underage sex. Tell them that going to court serves no purposed because the purps will be back on the street in about an hour waging their terror as never before.

As if he had any control over the matter Winters said he'd cut a deal. If Baldwin gets his brother mental help he'll consider the matter resolved. Better yet, Kevin could maybe get some divine intervention. There are groups out there that can break the circle of violence. Hell, it worked for Katherine Sterling.

Oh, and just in case Baldwin was maybe laughing at him on the inside and thinking to himself what a fool he is, Winters did a 180. If Baldwin doesn't do "the right thing" somebody else will.

Not only does Winters' empty threat make him appear even more of a bumbling, inarticulate dolt than usual, but it reveals him to be so appallingly disconnected, so completely and frighteningly lost, you can't help but realize who the real threat to Genoa City's safety really is.

After a truly annoying, mishmash stance that seems to support more hate and more aggression I am left wondering why Winters did not go to the police and ask why Fisher is free. Maybe when Neil learns of the deal the cops hatched with Fisher he could direct his anger at those who seriously need to be raked over the coals - and sued - for endangering his pristine world.

Until then I'll be waiting.

Musical Jobs
June 23, 2004

It's the economy, stupid! Is that what interim CEO Neil Winters was thinking this week when he rehired Phyllis Abbott? Is Newman Enterprises so hard up to maintain its presence on the world wide web that it must hire webmaster retreads like her? Was Winters feeling some pity for all the disgruntled Jabot employees whose futures are ruined now that the cosmetics war is hobbled and wobbly? That's how it looks.

What else can explain why Winters would allow Abbott to just walk into his office on Wednesday where she put on a dog and pony show? What is it about men like Winters that let themselves get entangled in the crap Abbott began spewing when she asked if Winters' daughter had met the new boy on the block and Lily Winters was maybe trying to get Daniel Romalotti's user name so that she could stay up late at night locked in a chatroom with him.

Sure, Mr. Winters caught onto the first part of Abbott's patronizing, but he missed the part when she told him how sharp he was to see through her facade and that's why Victor Newman put him in charge.

Winters should have kicked her ass out of the office right then and there. He should have told her not to beg for her job again because NE doesn't want people on the payroll who never show up for work. He should have told her that there are hundreds of job applications on file, that those applicants have degrees and won't try selling him a bill of goods or lie and cheat and steal or make bogus claims that hiring them would be a win-win.

And while he knew better than to hire Abbott without checking first with the Rolex-wearing silk suits, damn but what Winters did it anyway when Abbott said that not hiring her would be "reckless".

"I was made for this job," Abbott spewed, urging Winters to ignore all the bad things he's heard about her and knows first hand like, when she was last fired from NE for running her mouth to the competition about the 25-million-dollar Saltine Cosmetics acquisition. Like when she was asked previously by Winters if she would be willing to keep the secret that NE was planning to "sink" Jabot and whether she could stand by quietly watching her husband's company go down the tubes and Abbott said yes.

Is this the despicable type of women Winters wants at Newman Enterprises? Apparently.

It is simply the cutest and yet most colon-spasming thing to watch so-called business leaders instantly devolve and exhibit more grunting, sententious tendencies the instant the likes of Phyllis Abbott enter the room and slaps their barnacled butts and chuckle like heaping dry-humped death itself to the point where the enemy's spouse is allowed to work for the competition very much like Nikki Newman is allowed to work at Jabot.

Very much like what happened today when Dru Winters told her employer she was quitting without notice and was instantly pounced upon by a steroid-enraged Ashley Carlton who threatened to sue because Jabot was dumb enough to give Winters a contract without waiting to see how she worked out.

And of course, Winters didn't work out. Fact is, she never worked at all. Never spent a day performing the duties of a toxic cosmetics spokesmodel for which she was hired.

It took Winters slapping Carlton back to reality when she displayed her bald head. Did Jabot want baldy representing them? This made the skunk oil sniffer realize that she should have been thanking God. If Winters wants to leave, show her the damn door!

For all the in-fighting and bickering between Carlton and Winters why Carlton would want to keep Winters around boggles the mind. But it's not to be unexpected in a city where people are known for doing and saying the strangest things.

Don't even ask if Jabot will replace Winters. Yes, the company desperately needed a spokesmodel and constantly praised Winters, but don't bet on its hiring another to take Winters place.

You know all this and yet you're not the slightest bit shocked anymore, maybe because you realize this is how corporate politics has always worked in Genoa City. This is the capitalist system's most hypocritical slap to any notion of reality you may harbor. People hired and fired and rehired like musical chairs when they don't need jobs and serve no meaningful purpose.

Business News
Satisfaction Guaranteed
May 5, 2004

Promising not to let personal problems interfere with his new and massive responsibilities, Newman Enterprises' second in command, and right-hand man to the emperor, Neil Winters has accepted the interim Chief Executive Officer position at Newman Enterprises.

Winters' promotion represents a remarkable comeback for someone who just a year ago fell into a drunken stupor and walked out on his employer. Thanks to a remarkable 7-day detox program, Winters made a full recovery, was reinstated at Newman Enterprises with full benefits after a short probationary period.

Prior to offering Winters the position denied his back-stabbing son, CEO Victor Newman noticed that the Stanford graduate, and holder of many business degrees, seemed distracted. Was it something two old friends could talk about?

Aware that Newman has much on his plate these days Winters didn't want to bother the boss with trivial matters, but did so anyway.

"It involves my daughter. She's going through something very traumatic," Winters sniveled.

Because the news has been traveling around Genoa City like a bad Anthrax scare that teenager Lily Winters caught a sexually transmitted disease from an "internet predator", Newman's advice to concerned parents everywhere was to protect their children. Why, just look at Brad Carlton for example. Here's a man willing to do whatever it takes to protect his daughter even if it means taking off work and going to far-away cites to keep an eye on her.

When Winters hinted that he's going to help set the predator free, that doing so might cause Lily to sink deeper into self-pity and how could he live with himself much less an always whining how miserable her life is daughter, Newman caught on.

"This is really troubling you," he remarked, and then began feeling sorry for his own pitiful situation. Here he is. A great man. Rich and powerful and just look. He's got a daughter he doesn't know what has become of, hasn't bothered to search for, and a back-stabbing prick for a son. Life, it's a real bitch and then you die.

But enough of the personal problems. Newman wanted to get back to the one thing that really matters. Money.

Would Winters like to be interim CEO while the real one is serving out a sentence for commercial bribery?

Practically falling to his knee pads to lick Newman's boots, Winters caught himself long enough to patronize the great white chief. So long as Newman retains hope that Nick Newman will one day run the empire, he, Neil Winters, will play the token.

And massa Newman need not worry.

"I promise not to let personal problems get in the way of responsibility to this company," Winters said, projecting an air of loyalty that says he'd eat Lily if that's what it takes to keep the boss satisfied.

Winters Slams Stupid Newman Kid
April 20, 2004

You can see it in the fold of his chin, the beady black voids of his eyes, the way his horns twitch when he says something profound like, I'll never forget what my wife/daddy/mommy/sister did. You can see it in the way Nick Newman slumps in the chair looking like a deflated blow-up doll, stunned and slimy, wondering how he clings to his father's power and how he'll prevent it from getting away as his father and others tsk-tsk him and shake their heads and call him names.

Nick the prick, who stood up and raised his taloned fingers and swore before Satan again this week that they'll have to pry the power from his cold, dead hands. Nick the prick, who told Neil Winters that he's on the verge of making a decision to sell Newman Enterprises' recently acquired Safra division of fine toxic personal care products and maybe Rash & Sassy Cosmetics too.

"It's an anomaly," young Newman said, as everyone within earshot wondered if the fool had any idea what anomaly means or that he is one.

And Winters had to have thought, how sad that a spoiled brat loathed by those who know him with no back-scratching or toe-sucking skills was babbling on and on like a giant corporate elephant-dropping.

"I don't think your father will agree with you," said Winters, hinting that junior is so far in over his head it would be embarrassing and downright comical for Nick to negotiate the sale of anything with cigar-chompin' back-slapping tycoons that would spit him out like easy marks at a sidewalk shell-game.

So desperately trying to sound like a power-mongering CEO it made Winters wince, Newman spewed that daddy wouldn't sell an obviously successful division because "it would only make his bribery scheme to make Safra a go look more foolish."

As if to verify that he has no experience, no education, no common sense, no skill at all to sell refrigerator to Eskimos, Newman added that his father's conduct "tarnished our buyers perceptions."

A squad of flying monkeys passing overhead nearly burst out laughing. Did this dolt really say that? Did Nick Newman not see the final sales? Did the moron forget that Safra was so successful it brought the competition to its knees? And how, exactly, does one tarnish a perception?

Winters should have asked, "You want to talk about tarnish? What's this I've heard about the cops telling you and that skank not to leave town? Why is it that every time your wife comes around here she's so jumpy? What mess have you two gotten into this time? Did Sharon kill Cameron Kirsten? Is that why you stopped being so concerned about his whereabouts? What would the industry think if it knew you helped the bitch kill Kirsten?"

Winters was so freaked he had to ask. Was dufus serious? Was he so naive as to think all he might get is a spanking and forced viewings of Sierra NoLastName in a bikini when Daddy found out he'd sold so much as a paperclip without asking?

"I'm acting CEO," Newman spat. "I have to look at the big picture."

On the brink of hysteria, Winters could already see Victor Newman hanging the little twerp upside down by his shriveled raisin-like testicles. "Then why are you looking at a snapshot?" he asked.

Angered by such an egregious questioning of his ability, Nick took Winters' remark as a vote of no confidence.

"Who had to vote?" Winters did not say as Newman went on to ask if Daddy had sought him out to take over the empire and by his sneering demeanor implied that a black boy should know not to interfere in white family business.

Having heard and smelled enough bile pass over Newman's fat lips in one five-minute period to last a year, Winters blasted the little weasel.

"I'm more determined and better educated that you are," he said, reminding the bonehead that when sonny-boy was given the job he couldn't get anywhere else he was just a green behind the ears kid.

It's too bad Winters didn't point to his Stanford business degree hanging on the wall and say, "There's my degree. Show me yours." Of course, Newman wouldn't have been able to show more than the two-week certificate of completion he obtained from Genoa City University night school.

His back up against the lack of education wall Newman could only sputter that he'll fight to his dying day any attempt to oust him from the CEO position.

Nick Newman's Worst Nightmare
March 31, 2004

The warriors are marching in. The end is near. Sheer unadulterated evil and scary times are about to be unleashed anew upon Genoa City. Horror is nigh. Everyone into the bunker.

As if anyone needed to be reminded that Nick Newman is a deeply, colon-clenchingly humiliating wrongness shot forth from the sexual organ of his father, one that spews a truly jaw-dropping assortment of falsehoods and fabrications about the meaning of loyalty, his smug little smirky emptiness is about to come crashing down like a large, hungry lowlands gorilla in search of food.

Having refused repeated requests to vacate the CEO chair he plops his pimply butt into each day at Newman Enterprises when he isn't home on company time having sex with a woman he said he'd never forgive and wanted nothing more to do with when she was caught cheating, little Nick the Prick is about to meet the man most qualified to put him in his place.

Worried that his son has become borderline treasonous and might at any minute cause the empire built with his bare hands to go belly up, Victor Newman wants to avoid a long, hard slog. Growing older by the hour Newman must find someone younger, someone with gonads and the invigoration required to stay the course. Someone who can make life as a faux CEO so miserable the pesky, evil pip-squeak tyrant will wish he were back chasing babes at a Swiss boarding school or being taken to soccer games by the slime he claims is the only father he's ever known, Jack Abbott.

And the man who can savage young Newman like a rabid feral swine attacks a rutabaga? The man who can impeach him, loathe him, and his wife, too, with unprecedented levels of hatred and bile and vicious litigious action never before seen in this city?

Victor Newman's right-hand man, Neil Winters!

Sound too good to be true? Sound like another pointless onslaught, a toxic stew, reducing the participants to bitterness and hopelessness? Does the anticipation of watching Nick Newman go down stir up impossible questions? Like, why doesn't Pa Newman simply call together the board of directors and vote his son out?

Composed of Victoria, Nick and Victor Newman, the board is powerless. Like Diane Jenkins, Neil Winters and a bevy of the old man's supporters could be given seats on the board sans a vote, but invariably the prick would object that such arbitrary appointments go against the continuity grain. Thus, the entire question of how the corporate power structure works in this city would have to be thrown out.

The only alternative is to break out the popcorn, sit back and enjoy the bloodshed as Nick Newman gets what's coming to him starting with the hiring of cancer researcher Vanessa Lehner.

Said to have access to the very dead orchids now held by competitor Jabot Cosmetics, Lehner told Winters this week that should he give her a job she'll produce the much sought after orchids.

Concerned that Lehner has a contract with Jabot for services she doesn't render and heretofore had no real purpose for being in Genoa City, Winters showed that while he may be smarter than Nick Newman - all those weeks at the bottom of a bottle destroyed a good many brain cells. When has having a contract ever prevented anyone in this city from jumping ship? Shouldn't someone as savvy as Winters know everything there is to know about the enemy and have already known that Lehner is pretty much a bump on a log?

Despite his shortcomings, Winters' should be able to see that Lehner is ripe for the picking; that she is worth about 5,000 brownie points and that no snot-nosed kid will stand in his way of collecting.

Drunks, How Soon They Forget
February 16, 2004
by Vicki Johns

Well, well, well, looks like that Katherine Chancellor is much more of a trendsetter than anyone ever imagined. She falls off the wagon and takes the whole damned town with her.

It certainly looked like that when Neil Winters ponyied up to the Athletic Club's bar during the Valentine's Day dance and ordered a "dirty" martini with one olive for his wife – not of course that we'd ever expect the loud-mouthed and obnoxious Dru to drink anything that might be considered clean, proper, classy or discreet – and then followed-up with the order "martini for me, too."

Trainwreck, Neil is thy name.

What's up with this guy? Was it not approximately two years ago, after learning of the loss of his younger brother Malcolm, that this guy descended into a nearly unrecoverable dark and lonely abyss of alcoholism? And did that path not cost him, a highly educated black man with a Stanford education, the loss of one of the most peachy jobs on the planet as "right hand man" to a gazillionaire during one of the worst recessions of recent memory?

Yes, the guy who got up every morning and adorned himself in Hugo Boss suits and Cole Haan loafers and treated himself and his colleagues to $100 lunches was making seedy joints like the Olive Pit, where anyone in their right mind wanted to spray the bar seats with a can of Lysol before taking one, his home. If you could find anyone in their right mind that would even hang out at the joint.

And he found himself not only making love to his tonic and gin, but also real, high-class respectable barfly babes like Serena Slattern. Now that was a girl you wanted at a Newman Enterprises party. Not that she would have been invited in those days, anyway.

And Neil's love of the bottle was one of the primary reasons why his relationship with the daughter he barely saw before her 14th birthday, Lily, was so lousy. The frightening-looking Francophile was miserable enough about leaving her precious America-hating Paris for boring old Genoa City, Wisconsin. Let alone to have to leave it and spend time with a father she barely knew who continuously smelled like the odiferous mixture of vodka and vomit.

Came the time, of course, Neil cleaned himself up. Went and begged Victor Newman more than once for his old job back. And Victor took him back, and put him on probation for a period of what seemed to be 42 hours. His ex-wife Dru took him back to her bed and her heart, eventually remarrying him. Even Lily came around, after suffering the serious results of parental disobedience. Like the proverbial Job, Neil got everything back. But it wasn't easy. Obviously, he's forgotten that.

Geez, on the other side of town, they are proving that "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic." Old lovers are being summoned, life-long friends are threatening, and all the local liquor stores are being shut out to keep Katherine Chancellor from tumbling back into that same abyss that Neil just so recently dragged himself out of. It looks like Katherine ought to just trot herself down to the GC Athletic Club. Sounds like drinks there "don't count" for alcoholics.

Another blow to articulate thinking
January 27, 2004

His marriage to a shrilling, evil bitch named Dru Winters less than 30-days ago, Newman Enterprises right-hand man and as useless as teats on a bull, Neil Winters sniveled here this week that unless the former employee who stole the pretty much dead by now rare orchids and turns at least one of them over to him by sundown Wednesday it could be the end of his marriage.

Thankfully, much of Genoa City could only sigh and shrug as everyone pretty much understood that there is no real sadder and more miserable station in life than to wake up one day and realize your recycled marriage is held together by dried up orchids.

And because nobody knows why, exactly, she's been calling from a remote tropical island to tell Winters anything, Phyllis Abbott hung-up the phone when he mentioned that Nick Newman - that back-stabbing weasel pretending to be Newman Enterprises CEO and a total suckwad prickmonkey who's just a sad and miserable example of a human being - won't be pleased if the orchids aren't turned over posthaste.

What bilious and dank forces of neurosis must've attached themselves like rabid leeches to both Winters and Abbott and everyone involved in this mess. Their continued existence depends on what has to be two very dead orchids? Marriages are at risk? What a pathetic and morbid loss. What a sad blow to articulate thinking.

First it was the cosmetics war with opposing spouses working for the enemy. Two of the opposing spouses allowed their bizarre working relationship to drive a wedge between a marriage they said was rock solid. From there it was off to Japan to smuggle rare orchids that aren't really rare only to have a woman working for the enemy give them to a husband who had stopped loving her in hopes the love would be rekindled and when it wasn't stole them again before quitting her job.

The man she worked for confessed he hadn't obeyed the rules of war after his son turned him in out of some sick loyalty to the enemy and a man who had taken him once or twice as a kid to a Little League game. Facing a slap on the wrist, the man said to have won the cosmetics war thanked the woman who persecuted him for being so kind and on and on the mind-numbing events that began a year ago have gone.

Now Abbott wonders if she shouldn't return the orchids for fear of burning another bridge connecting her to the man foolish enough to have hired her as a webmaster and who had no objection when she promoted herself to war combatant at large.

At the same time, Abbott's decision will determine whether Winters' marriage built on custom vows of wedded bliss will continue - or not.

Are we not all impressed? Are we not all sitting on the edge of our seats saying, wow, that cosmetics war, those massive alleged corruption scandals, those studly business men and their insecure women sure do display prowess and skill. Can we stand the suspense? Do picked from the vine orchids really live forever?

It's a bloody target practice for aging overpampered white males and their black counterparts who have bad sex and bad marriages and have desperately zero outlet for all their pent-up misanthropic energies.

In short, the boredom will go on. This is the mindset we are up against. Another perfect example of the Genoa City agenda as set forth by the Newmans/Abbotts/Winters small circle of painful friends and enemies. No fairness. Zero respect. No reverence. And no actual talent required.

Newman Enterprises on verge of total meltdown?
January 21, 2004

What part of you don't work here anymore did Nick Newman not understand? Apparently, all of it. The inexperienced boy who would be King of the Newman business empire was told by his father two weeks ago to finish up a proposal he was working on and then get the hell out. Yet the back-stabbing dipstick continues playing CEO and this week unleashed his fury on the only man whom without Newman Enterprises would probably be belly up.

Told Wednesday that a deal may be in the offing to secure at least one of the two valued orchid plants stolen by former employee Phyllis Abbott, young Newman belittled right-hand man Neil Winters for making a deal without prior authorization.

What Winters should have done, but of course didn't, was to go straight to his employer and say something like, "Mr. Newman. That son of yours is a real pain in the ass. I may have a plan which will allow you to legally slap the competition silly and when I told Nick the Prick he berated me for making the deal without his permission. Didn't you say that creepy kid is no longer making decisions? Why don't you have security toss him out?"

Winters could have also let his boss know that members of the competition recently hijacked the Newman jet for a trip to Japan and that one of their former employees had sold his company down the river, but it would have been too much to expect from someone who went to a little boy in the first place seeking backup.

Seeing with his own eyes that Nick Newman is his father's son, Winters accused him of being no better than all the others willing to lie and steal for short-term profit. Shuck and jive corporate whores.

Winters' smart implication - that Victor Newman is the most blindly aggressive most corporate whore of them all and that Nick Newman is just like the great man - may be indicative of a weasel on the verge of selling out to the enemy too. What loyal employee who owes everything he has to, and was taken back into the fold after quitting his job in a drunken rage as Winters was, would cast such aspersions toward his boss?

It's got that reek. That stink so often found in the air over Genoa City. Newman Enterprises is in chaos and the longer Nick Newman is allowed to run the empire the shorter time it'll take to collapse around Victor Newman's neck.