B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, and CMEpalooza Bingo!! is it’s Name-O.

Just a reminder to everyone to make sure to carve out some time this week to participate in our sponsor event and give yourself a pretty darn good chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card. If you need it, that is. If you have billions and billions of dollars of disposable income, you might want to put someone else’s name on your entry form to give them a chance. Just sayin’.

All the forms you need to play can be accessed by clicking on this link. You can get all the details on how to play by looking at Monday’s blog post. Entries are due this Sunday evening in the third quarter of whatever NFL game is on, or thereabouts.

There isn’t much out in the public forum these days that doesn’t raise your blood pressure.

Your team sucks! Your party sucks! You cheated! You lied! Lock her up! Impeach him! I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids!

Perhaps that is why Derek and I try so hard to bring some levity and joy into your lives with this blog and CMEpalooza in general. I’ll give you an example. Last week during a conversation with one of the panel moderators for CMEpalooza Fall, she started telling me that, “We’re thinking of doing something a little quirky with our introductions, but we’re not sure if it’ll be OK. What we’d like to do is…”

I interrupted her before she got any further.

“Yes, yes, a million times yes. Do whatever quirky or unusual or odd thing you want. That’s what we do.”

I mean, really people, how many other otherwise serious events have panelists dress up like Star Wars characters?

You know what else we do at CMEpalooza that should both make you happy and is never replicated at another event, especially a free event? That’s right, we give away money. This fall, we’re actually giving away money twice, as you may have seen in last week’s post about our 4 pm ET session.

Today, though, marks the launch of our more traditional financial free-for-all. In the fall, we call this CMEpalooza Bingo!! The second exclamation point is just because it’s extra awesome.

The distribution of prize money will be a little bit different this year because, well, we just feel like it. There will be 5 winners, each getting $100 Amazon gift cards. That’s $500 in total for all of you math majors. Last fall, our giant hopper wasn’t big enough to hold all of the successful entries we got for CMEpalooza Bingo!! so we ordered a new one shipped all the way from Camden, NJ. Let’s put it to good use, people.

Here be the rules to CMEpalooza Bingo!!:

STEP 1: Download all of the necessary Bingo forms by clicking on this link. That will give you the Bingo board, the Bingo questions, and the Bingo answer sheet. You should also queue up our Sponsor page, which will give you direct links to all of the websites you will need to visit.

STEP 2: A successful entry involves completing a Bingo – it can be horizontal (that’s straight across), vertical (that’s up and down), or diagonal (that’s, um, diagonal).

Special note: For the second straight year, we have too many sponsors to fit onto a bingo board, so a successful entry also involves completing the clue for one of our two Gold sponsors – Med Learning Group or Academic CME. So a total of six (6) answers are necessary this year for a successful entry. That’s more time you can spend playing CMEpalooza Bingo!! and less time you need to spend doing your “real job.” You are welcome.

STEP 3: Email your completed form to me at scott@medcasewriter.com along with a witty subject line (witty subject line is optional). Entry deadline is 9:23 p.m. ET on Sunday, October 6. Yes, 9:23 p.m. ET. Why? No reason. It just is.

Go to it everyone.

I am compelled to point out to everyone that at 3 pm ET on the day of CMEpalooza Fall (October 16), there is going to be a session that is essentially a dramatization featuring a CME detective named Jake Powers. I am not making this up. This is an actual session that you will be able to watch live, as it happens. Here is a sample scene:

Eddie Malone looks up from forging signatures on an LOA for a CME program that occurred 2 months ago and glares at his partner-in-crime, Frank Falco, who is pacing a hole in the already threadbare burnt orange rug in their fifth-floor walk-up.

“Sit down, you friggin’ lunatic,” Eddie growls around his unlit Cuban. “You’re makin’ me seasick with all the back and forth. You want me to yack all over these papers?”

Frank glaces at Eddie with the uneasiness of a terrier after two bowls of water and throws himself into a ratty yellow Lay-Z-Boy, dirty stuffing trickling out of the split seams.

“We shouldn’t a dunnit, Eddie! We shouldn’t a dunnit! It was too risky, and they’re on to us. I know it! We shoulda just gave ’em the buffet dinner like we said we was!”

“Shut your yap, you dang fool. It’s the perfect crime. We say we’re havin’ dinner, get grant moneys for it, don’t have the dinner, pocket the moolah, and no one’s the wiser!”

Frank shakes his head and takes a slug straight from the half-empty bottle of Jim Beam he’s been cradling like a baby.

“Somebody’s gonna snitch.”

“Yeah, well, snitches get sti-“

A pounding on the front door causes Frank to drop the bottle, amber liquid gurgling between cracks in the decrepit floorboards. He looks wildly at Eddie, eyes wide with fear. Eddie holds up a finger to shush him and reaches for the top drawer of his desk.

“Who is it?” he barks out, slowly removing his cellphone from the desk drawer.

The gravely voice that answers sends a tremor from the top of Eddie’s greasy head to the base of his scoliosic spine.

“It’s Powers. Jake Powers. I’m a CME detective, and you two rats are coming with me.”

Eddie begins thumbing a number into his phone while Frank babbles incoherently into his hands.

“Powers,” Eddie mutters. “Why did it have to be Powers?”

OK, I totally made that up. I have no idea what they’re actually doing, but it’s still intriguing, right? I mean, c’mon, a CME detective? What could be better than that? (Don’t answer that.)

The point is – and the point Scott made with yesterday’s post – you should definitely try to tune in for the afternoon sessions during CMEpalooza Fall. All the sessions are going to to be great, but the last two of the day, I think, are particularly creative and fun. You won’t want to miss them.

As a side note, for anyone wondering where the heck the idea of a CME detective came from, I am somewhat chagrined to admit it comes from an unfinished story I wrote on my old blog back in 2011. A period of time when I clearly had too much time on my hands. But if you are a sucker for original source material, feel free to give it a read.