Monday, July 31, 2006

I haven't done anything incredibly stupid in a while...

...was Mike's reasoning for us going to Atlantic City on about 20 minutes notice on Saturday afternoon. It's not like we had anything better to do considering we were probably the only two in our group of friends in the immediate area not invited to one of the two weddings happening this weekend. Also the seed had already been planted since Brian was trying to get me to go for the last few days since the wedding he went to was in Ocean City, NJ, a short drive from AC. Mike pretty much some up the trip in his blog, so I won't rewrite the same story, but I did want to mention something. Bill Simmons has theories on the proper environment for winning at blackjack. I've always subscribed to these theories whole heartedly and Saturday couldn't have been a more perfect example of that.

We sit down at the first table and you immediately feel the bad vibes. Albert the dealer (aka the cooler) obviously hates his job, he is a large man and sweating an awful lot so I can understand why he's not in the best mood. A jovial dealer is important to winning, so Albert is strike one. Strike two would've been the two Asian kids who had no idea what they were doing in the first in the first and second positions. I know that blackjack is mostly luck, but when the players in the first to seats continually make the wrong play you get to directly see the cards that you would've gotten had they played there hand correctly, and that is frustrating because it is almost always the case that they hurt you. Strike three would be that no one seemed to be having any fun at all, I personally was afraid to talk because I didn't want to say the wrong thing that finally pushed Albert over the edge, I would've felt bad. The asian kids were stressing over every bet like it was life or death, that's no way to play, it gets me all worked up when other people are worked up. You're suppossed to get a little thrill from gambling but when you're so nervous over ever bet as if you're losing your life savings and won't be able to pay tuition in the fall or bail your dad out of jail or something you probably shouldn't be gambling that money. Consequently all this led to me losing $200 in less than 25 minutes. We comtemplated leaving at this point, which would've been epic. My worst trip ever was when me and Baha drove 3 hours, lost all of the money we were willing to lose in 45 minutes, then drove 3 hours back. So this would've been a dubious record. So we decided to give it another go at a different table.

This table was the antithesis of the first table. All the factors you need to be have a winning run were there. Xaio and Lissy were the rotating dealers and they loved us. They thought everyone one at the table was funny, they were joking around themselves, and they genuinely wanted everyone to win. This is the way a dealer should be because then everyones happy, and when everyone's happy everyone's tipping. Also the table mood was great. It didn't start out that way, at first it myself, mike, and bachelor party guy getting pissed at the country couple making horrible plays and daggering us. But then we realized that while they had no idea what they were doing they were very nice people and were more than willing to accept instruction. Once they started listening to us they were cleaning up, on a small scale, they started with probably $60 between them and had around $300 together when they decided to leave because they had left a baby in the room by herself for a while and thought it best that they go up and check on her (i agreed with this decision by the way.) That's when things really turned around for me and Mike. The rest of the bachelor party came down to play some cards before going out for the night and they were a great time (as stated in Mike's blog.) Everyone was ripping on each other, even to the point of getting us involved. Everyone was loud, having fun, and winning. The best part being there one friend that yelled "Fuck Yeah" really loudly everyone once in a while when something good happened. He wasn't even playing he was just excited for everyone else. All blackjack tables need a guy like this. Here was the best hand of the night;

Seat 1: Crazy guy from Brooklyn bets $500
Seat 2: Mike bets $15
Seat 3: I bet $15
Seat 4: Bachelor party guy 1 bets $150
Seat 5: Same guy same bet
Seat 6: Bachelor party guy 2 bets $100

Seat one has to stay on his 13 and was not happy about it. Me and Mike both had something in the range of 17 or 18 I don't really remembered. BP guy 1 doubles on both hands and does not get good cards. Seat 6 stays. The dealer is showing a 6, flips over a King, pulls a 10. The whole table including the 3 or 4 people watching goes bananas. It was awesome. So loud and fact that the people at the next table asked us to keep it down and we all laughed at them for being crotchety old farts. And I realize that relaying a specific hand is incredibly boring but the point is that that is what you live for when you're gambling. Me and Mike only won $15 each but were going nuts because everyone else was super pumped.

The moral of the story is that you casinos are there to have fun. When you're loud and boisterous, having as much fun as possible, things will go well (Me and Mike won back all the money we lost and then some) and even if they don't who cares because you'll end up having a great time anyway.

(In hindsight I realize that I did just tell the same story Mike did in his post just leaving out a lot of detail and a adding a little more detail, oh well.)

Friday, July 28, 2006

Still got it

I was right. That Floyd Landis is just all man. Is it his fault he has more testosterone than your average guy. Give him a break, in fact he's probably at even more of a disadvantage. Riding a bike is hard with huge balls, which I'm sure he possesses.

I work with children

Someone stole my hardhat. Are you kidding me? I mean it doesn't affect me at all really, I've been in the field a grand total of three times in the year + I've worked here, but it's the principle of the thing. Who waltz's in to someone's cubicle like they own the place and takes my stuff. Heads are going to roll around here, I mean it, I'm pissed. Did I mention my scissors and tape dispenser were taken a few weeks ago. Who are these people and do they know who they're messing with? Apparently not.

Stuff

-Did anyone ever consider Floyd Landis is just a whole lot manlier than other bike riders?

-A few days before the All-Star all the experts were totally certain the the Wild Card was coming out of the central division. What a difference a week makes.

-There's a new reality show. I mean this is getting ridiculous. When TV sees a trend they really jump on it. Here are just a few of the talent contest reality shows on in the next few days:

So You Think You Can Dance
America's Got Talent
Project Runway
Last Comic Standing
Rockstar: Supernova
Who Wants To Be A Superhero?
America's Next Top Model
The Contender
Hell's Kitchen

Honestly, how many variations of a talent show (aka American Idol) can you have? What makes me sad is that most them are hits. Read a book. I wonder how many of these shows has a British judge that berates people? Talk about sticking to a formula. It does not take much to please America. I could go on about this for days, because honestly it infuriates me. but the results show for So You Think You Can Dance is on in a few minutes so I have to run.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

The zoo

On Sunday we got up and went to the San Diego Zoo. It was definitely very nice. The exhibits were big, which made me feel good for the animals. Except for the black jaguar, his enclosure was kind of small, and he was badass so he needed something bigger. One cool thing was that a lot of the exhibits with water you could see under the water. And since it was so hot and most of the animals were in water if the could be you could see what's going on. There were some hippos humping underwater while fish ate algea off of their backs. It was gross. Also it felt like you were walking through the jungle half the time, I enjoyed that.

Did you know there were at least 8 different kinds of gazelle? That was shocking.

On the plaques outside each animal enclosure they listed some facts about it. What continent they are from, habitat, that sort of thing. They also listed the status of the animal. Be it threatened, endangered, or whatever. There was only one animal that wasn't at least threatened and that was the African Dik Dik. Which led to Hotmetal saying this, "well it's good to know there will always be diks around."

On the way out of the zoo we stopped at the gift shop because Hotmetal needed to buy something for his mothers birthday. We were looking around and I saw this glass martini shaker. I picked it up to see how much something like that cost. I found out that it was $50 while sifting through the shards of broken glass on the floor. I was pretty pissed, I couldn't believe i was going to have to waste $50 on some stained glass piece of crap that I wouldn't even get to keep because I have hands like feet. Showing contrition I helped the girl in the store pick up the glass then milled around until I had to go pay. Then she told me that it's not there policy for costumers to pay for damages. She told she just hope I learned my lesson. You have know idea how badly I wanted to say no and pick something else up and smash it on the ground. It was hard for me to pretend to be sorry anymore after I found out I wasn't on the hook for $50.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Hotmetal owns this....

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

It's the Deion Sanders Hotdog Express. I'm not making this up.

San Diego part 2

Saturday night we went to dinner then a concert (we being Pat, Hotmetal, Pat's "girlfriend", a friend of hers and myself). They wanted to go to some Mexican restuarant. Apparently it's very popular because when we got there the hostess informed us that it would be an hour and a half wait for a table. Which prompted Hotmetal to say, "I bet George Washington would have something different to say about that." That's sort of a lame joke and I sure shes heard it a million times but whats funny about it is that she shot Hotmetal probably the dirtiest look I've ever seen someone give another person. Needless to say we ate somewhere else.

After dinner we went to a concert featuring a couple of ska bands. Apparently the headliner, Buck O Nine, was Pat's favorite band in high school. I don't get ska music, in fact I don't think anyone outside of southern California does. It seems to my like you take a fairly catchy melody, add in a crappy singer to mess it up, then ruin it some more with a horn section. The most annoying thing is that the horn section thought they were awesome, total rockstars. It's like, guy, there is some dude playing guitar right next to you on stage, you cannot think you're cool, because you're not. So we're all hanging out in the crowd, having a few drinks enjoying the music, because even if I think ska is sort of cheesy I still enjoy live music. Then a mosh pit breaks out. This bothered me on for two reasons. One, moshing is so stupid, who ever thought, I really love this band and I'm going to show my appreciation by jumping into other people. Two, it's SKA, not rock or metal, ska, it's one step above reggae on the mellowness scale. You just can't think you're hardcore listening to a band with a trombone player.

It turned out that we were right on the perimeter of the mosh pit and getting jostled a little bit. Being chivalrous me and Hotmetal had to step in front of the girls so they stopped getting banged around. So I decided to have some fun with it. Any time someone in the pit came near me I nonchalantly shoved them as hard as I could and then they would look around all confused because they didn't know where it came from. This turned into a game where they would pick someone and I would work my way into the pit jump around like an idiot then push that person really hard then get out as quickly as possible.

The losers is the pit started get a little fired up after a while. Which was great. People would get in each others face like they were about to start fighting but it never escalated to that. Instead the would start dancing again, but they would still being giving each other stare downs. So it manifested into this quasi moss pit ska dance off thing. I loved this, who decides, I'm pissed at this guy, I want to fight him, but instead I'll out dance him. Awesome.

At the end of the night we're outside waiting for a cab and we pulled the same move on Hotmetal that was done to Jake in Ocean City a couple weeks before. We got in the cab and left without him without realizing. The difference being all Jake had to do was wait for a bus to take him the 100 or so blocks, or catch another cab that would've been maybe $10, or worst case scenario walk home, which would've been about 45 minutes. We on the other hand were in Del Mar, a whole other city. The cab back was $65. Luckily I think Hotmetal managed to get a ride home because he ran into some marine buddies that were there. So it all worked out in the end

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

I believe its German for "Whales Vagina"

San Diego is awesome. It is an incredibly beautiful place. Maybe I just got a really good impression because I was only in the sort of touristy places but I don't think so. The beach was great, very chill, lots of cool bars, stores, etc. The downtown area was super nice, and exceptionally clean compared to most of the major cities I've been to on the east coast. There were public parks everywhere, which was cool. Even the homeless guys were money (more on that later). The scenery was incredible, be it the bay, the beach, sunset cliffs, the cove in La Jolla. What I thought was cool was the landscaping (for lack of a better word) around the entire city. Growing up in Virginia Beach you could always tell when you were getting close to the beach because the plants and trees would change, palm trees would start showing up and that sort of thing. Well San Diego is like that everywhere and that was comforting to me for some reason. Basically what I'm saying is i spent a lot of time thinking of reasons why I don't live there, and I couldn't come up with any. So who wants to move to California with me?

On to the trip itself. It started off on a strange note. It turns out that my roommates girlfriends roommate was on my flight as well (that seems a little complicated, why didn't I just say a friends of mine, because we are friends, but then you would probably be thinking well if you're friends why didn't you know that you would be on the same flight, and the answer is I don't know, anyway). She was going to Fort Worth for a wedding and I had a layover in Dallas. I thought that was pretty random, but that wasn't the randomest part. She was traveling with a friends whom I have never met before. Except that when we were introduced I immediately remembered that she was a bartender at a bar I went to in Ocean City, MD the summer after graduating college. What's funny is that I have a notoriously bad memory so I found it interesting that I remembered the face of a girl who worked at a bar I attended one time, for maybe 2 hours, four years ago. I guess she made an impression, she was cute but not stunning enough that I would remember her four years later. Maybe it means we're soul mates or something. I doubt it though because we probably talked for an hour so while waiting for the plane and I wasn't particulary enthralled, in fact I was slightly bored.

So I arrived Friday around nine. Hotmetal and Pat picked me up and we went straight to the bar. No real stories of note here, nothing to out of the ordinary happened.

Saturday morning we went to Pacific Beach. My first foray into the Pacific Ocean. I wasn't terribly impressed. As I mentioned above I grew up in Virginia Beach, so having spent the first 20 or so years of my life never living more than 15 minutes from the beach I know the old Atlantic pretty well and was expecting big things from the Pacific. The water was clear, but not as clear as I thought it would be, that didn't really bother me that much. What was annoying is that it is full of seaweed and kelp. I hate that stuff, it is so disgusting, also when you hanging out with two jackasses they should not have access to things like this becuase it means you're going to spend a significant amount time getting pelted with seaweed. What i though was the most strange is that the waves were breaking about a 150 yards from the shore and they were super small. Thats really far compared to what I'm used to, we were like 100 feet out and the waves had already washed away before reaching us.

You can drink and grill on the beach, that is a new concept to me. It was actually very awesome to have a bbq on the beach, drinking I wasn't that into, it's to hot. The idea of roasting on the beach and then dehydrating yourself even more by having a few beers is gross. (Side note: the makers of Coors Light are absolute genius, with the can liners and the cooler pack, there were a lot of people drinking there and I honestly think every single person was drinking Coors Light) So we get to the beach and set up our little area, Hotmetal is about to crack open a beer when we notice the people in front of us, who are about our age are getting a citation from a cop for drinking. I was watching this happen and getting so bitter because it is just like Hotmetal to think you're allowed to drink on the beach when you're actually not and get us a ticket. So the cop finishes up with them and walks over to us, so i pretended to be asleep while Hotmetal dealt with him. Turns out the problem was they were drinking before twelve which is a no-no. He just want us to mention to us that the grill needs to be 12" off the ground before we light it. He said "sometimes the ground gets really hot and when you light grill the sand can get superheated then it'll stay that way for a while and people can burn there feet." This cracked us up for some reason. I think it's because the cop was wearing shorts. It's really hard for me to respect the authority of someone wearing shorts.

The homeless guys in SD are pretty cool. Unlike the crackheads in Baltimore that are hassling you all the time, they don't really bother you. In fact it's hard to tell who a homeless guy is, they just look like some beach bum surfer whos been on the beach for to long. Here's the impressive part though, instead of making people feel uncomfortable by asking them for money they use some ingenuity. They thought, hey there's thousands of people on the beach drinking from cans and plastic bottles. So they go around and collect everyones cans and bottles and recycle them for money. I loved this, it's a win-win, you don't have to worry about throwing away your trash and the homeless guys get dinner. We were so impressed in fact that we made a couple guys some sausages.

There were three extrememly hot girls laying out in front of us. We talked to them and found out that they were down for the weekend from Las Vegas. I immediately assumed they were strippers, then they said they worked at Wynn. I sort of felt like dick for thinking that, but then I got over it.

This post is getting exceptionally long so I'll save the rest for later. It gets better, you'll want to hear about the antics at the Ska concert and the zoo, its some funny stuff.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Tour de France

I was reading something about Floyd Landis this morning. It's a pretty cool story. The guy was pretty much left for dead, no one thought he had a chance and he came back and absolutely destroyed stage 17 to get back into contention. But then the person talking about it wrote this:

"Greatest. Comeback. Ever."

I hate that. First of all he hasn't won anything so relax buddy. That isn't the part that bothers me though. It really pisses me off when someone punctuates a sentence likely that. I just imagine them saying it and me hating them for talking like that. It makes me. Want to punch them. In the face.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Because why not

Having a blog makes me laugh. I get a kick out of talking about it. I can't really explain why, it just makes me chuckle a little bit.

Sometimes when I'm bored and not thinking about anything in particular I'll have little mock exchanges in my head. It sounds sort of weird I think but you should try it. It's a pretty solid way to entertain yourself when there's nothing else going on. So anyway, I was thinking about my blog and laughing, and then I had this imaginary exchange that made me laugh even more:

Me: Oh hey, you should check my blog.

Random Person who I want to check out my blog: Why?

Me: Um.....

And thats it, because really I have no good reason to have a blog and theres even less reason for anyone to want to "check it out."

Drink It In

I'm going to San Diego this weekend. Since I will be visiting Hotmetal and Pat and they are by far the two biggest idiots I know i imagine a veritable cornucopia of excellent posts coming from this trip. Stay tuned. And stay classy.

Who has a Blog?

I was having a discussion with myself as to whether I should create a blog or not. It's not like I have a lot of pent up emotions that needs to be released. There aren't any particular issues or topics I feel so passionate about that I just had to write. So why bother with a blog then? The basic reason for a blog is because I'm bored and it's something to do (which I certain is the reason for most blogs). There is another reason as well, maybe some people can relate. Do you ever get the feeling that you're slightly less intelligent since you graduated from school? You go from having constant mental stimulation through homework, papers, exams, etc. to watching 4 hours of reality t.v. a night and having your brain rot away. I'm getting dumber by the second. So I'm sure writing every once and a while can't hurt. At least it will slow down the process. The main reason though is the most obvious one if you knew me: I just want as many people as possible people to think I'm funny, it's pretty simple.

So that settles that question, I'll make a blog. Then I had another dilemna, what should it be about and what would I name it? Well like I said before, I don't have any issues that need hashing out or anything like that, so it can just be about my everyday life. Pretty original right? The title was easy. I spent the first few years out of college waiting tables at a bar in D.C. and anyone who has spent a significant amount of time doing that knows that you can develop a pretty solid hatred of lots of different people. It was a running joke with a few friends on the staff that I started the majority of my sentences while at work with: You know what I hate... So knowing myself as well as I do I assumed that the majority of my posts would eventually turn into rants about things that are annoying to me. I'll try to be as positive as possible but that can only last but so long.

There you go, I have a blog with a name. Now there are some downsides to this endeavor. My writing skills are nominal at best. That won't lead to a strong readership. Also, I lead a rather boring life as far as I know. So that may be a problem. But whatever, I like a challenge.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Isn't it funny how ones perception of something can change with time? A persons most recent experience tends to override past experience and we attach a superlative to the current event.

For example; I can say with relative certainty that yesterday was the hottest day in the history of the world. I'm not exaggerating, the hottest day ever. It was 100 degrees at 8 at night. Crazy. I mean I'm not a meteorologist and I don't work for Guinness, so I don't know exact records or anything, but that seems a bit extreme. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I only think that because I had to play three softball games last night and I'm still sweating (it will be days before the socks I was wearing dry out, which is unpleasant). But either way it was hot. I had to have lost 5 pounds, and I'm pretty skinny.

Someone should check the records or something, in the meantime I'll be inside in the air conditioning for the next few weeks.