Friday, February 20, 2009

RED ALERT

Daddy and AlCantHang have just arrived on my doorstep.

If you don't hear from me again, please tell my parents I love them.

Friday, February 13, 2009

The Most Bad-Ass Thing You Will See All Day

Via Will Leitch's blog:

“On an August morning in 1978, the story goes, French director Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris.

The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes. The driver barrel-assed all the way from Porte Dauphine (on the city’s western edge, adjacent to the Bois de Bologne) to the Basilica Sacre Coeur in Montmartre.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit. The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 mph in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up several one-way streets.

Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago.” (via)

Best to watch the entire clip through."




Thursday, February 05, 2009

Phil Ivey is not a fan of the pick six

Via Deadspin is another entry in the "Phil Ivey is degenerate gambler" file, not to mention the "hey, maybe sports betting isn't your thing" file. According to Deadspin, Ivey had $800k on the Cardinals +3.5 at half-time of the Superbowl. One interception return for a touchdown later, and he was able to snatch gambling defeat from the jaws of victory.

Yeah. And you thought Kurt Warner felt bad.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Dispatches from Sin City, Vol IV aka Pure! aka IT Party! aka Fuck you, Flamingo!

Ah, blessed work and life and apathy... but onto the (delayed) dispatches!

  • Dateline, Wednesday morning: I wake up, feeling pretty ill, the Vegas ebola virus hitting me full force. I drag myself out of bed, and stumble down the strip to the Wynn, grabbing a bagel and coffee before plonking myself down for the conference's first session.

  • Dateline, Wednesday afternoon: I finish the last session of the day, and tell my co-workers that I'm going to go back to my hotel to check my email and call a friend of mine, which is code for "go to bed and pass out for a few hours." There is a designated activity for the evening: a party at Pure, the swanky nightclub at Caesar's Palace, for all the conference attendees. Thankfully that is just across the road from the IP, so I am able to go back to my room and pass out for a couple of hours before I head to Caesar's.

  • Before I head to the club I decide I should probably grab something to eat. I end up having dinner at Beijing 9, and get talked into some hot and sour soup and kung pao chicken. That does the job before I race off to Pure and meet my co-workers. The place is packed, but being an IT-related conference, most people are nerdy white guys. Awesome! Some of the cocktail waitresses are pretty hot, including this one blonde who must be 5'2" and weigh not much more than 80 pounds - 60 pounds of that being tits and ass.

    I hang around for a couple of hours, carefully drinking a couple of whiskey sours, but finally I can't take it anymore and let my co-workers know that I'm bailing. They understand (since it's a freaking IT party, and since they are now convinced I am a complete gambling degenerate), and I head out.

    I flirt with the idea of going home to bed, but who am I kidding? I wander back across to the IP side of the road, and eventually find myself at a $5 craps table at the Flamingo - a casino I have not frequented before. I am the very next roller, and a boisterous fellow at the other end of the table demands I throw at least three points. It turns out that the table has been ice cold, and they need someone to break it out of its funk. I do my best, but end up crashing and burning on the precipice of a good run - there was a lot of money on the table, but we hadn't quite cleaned up yet. The good news is that this kicks off a mini-run by the table.

    During this sequence, we were joined by one of the drunker people I have ever had the pleasure of gambling with (and yes this includes AlCantHang). This gentleman was over 50, and really, really, really hammered. At roughly sixty second intervals (no exaggeration) he would begin interrogating the croupier.

    "Where am I? What bets do I have going?"

    The croupier would point out the bets he would have going, and periodically the guy would snort and say something like: 'What? I don't have a 5 going? $10 on the 5!" He would usually follow that up with a line I heard roughly thirty times from him: "You look after me, and I'll look after you. You look after me, and I'll look after you."

    So, that was something. The best part was when he went to the bathroom, came back and decided to introduce himself to the dealer, shaking hands.

    "Uh, sir?" The dealer asked. "Did you wash your hands?"

    "No. Why?" The drunk old dude said immediately, with no idea of why that may have been a bad answer.

    Good times!

    Eventually the table got on a good run, and we were able to hoot and holler in earnest, with the obligatory "where am I? " and "you look after me, and I'll look after you" statements punctuating the general celebrating. Eventually the pit boss came over, switching out the placard stating the table stakes, bumping the table up to $10.

    "Heh, they're trying to cool down the table," another older-but-not-quite-as-drunk gentleman said to me slyly.

    Oh, but they weren't mucking around. We were told that the new table stakes were for everyone, not just new players to the table.

    "What? We're not grandfathered in?" one of the players asked incredulously. The pit boss just shook his head in response. That pretty much encouraged everyone to say "fuck this" and leave the table. I cunningly waited until my next roll, where I was able to dump a bunch of money when my 8 point didn't come in. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and cashed out, swearing never to gamble at the fucking Flamingo ever again.

    A couple of folks from my table were in the line, and tried to encourage me to come with them to the MGM to get another table hot, but I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and took my monies and headed back to the Imperial Palace to crash, hoping I'd feel better the next day.

  • Dateline Thursday: Will Garthmeister J. shake off the ebola virus? Will there be an Iron Chef Throwdown? Is anyone reading this? Stay tuned!