When I was first learning to play blackjack and hanging out at Casino Windsor paying 7$ for cans of Molson Canadian I picked up on something. The best people to sit next to at the Blackjack table are the old timers. The type of guys who know there way around the game and can shell out some advice that only 50 years of playing can earn. Although I haven't needed the advice on how to play my hands in quite some time, I still value the way generational gaps can disappear at the table.
A few months back I got talking with a man who looked to be in his mid eighties. He had that aura of a man who had lived quite the life. He had given his kids and grand-kids enough money to keep them at the slots long enough to leave him alone at the blackjack table. He started telling me about his life and I soon lost the count. But I found this guy to be more interesting than any 2% player edge. He told me of how he was stationed as a Marine at the base where I now work. About how during those times it was just an ammunition pier with 50 Marines and a few civilians. About how he met his wife at a dance at the gymnasium on a cold October night. About how he became the post master of a small town where everyone knew his name. Sure, it was like a poor man's Forrest Gump but I found it endlessly fascinating.
I was back at the casino this past Sunday night. As rounders so eloquently put it "Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy... the outstanding tough beats of his career."
I'm sitting at close to a 3.5 count index. I had been playing for 4 hours and that was the best count I had seen all night. I had spent all night waiting for moments to strike, only to get beat by dealer 21's and the guy next to me not splitting his 8's against a dealer 6. I would slowly grind back up on minimum bets only to drop an hours worth of work on the variance of the game. But it was getting late and I had work the next day. I had an opportunity to get back close to even including the $10 I had lost on the Chargers not covering the spread against the Bengals. The cards came out; Ace, Nine, King, Jack, and then to me a Three. Everyone easily got 20's and 19's, but my second card was an eight and the dealer had a five up. This deck is mostly face cards and I have a 11 against a dealer five. I reached into my wallet to pulled out the cash to double down and the dealer gives me a whopping 3. Leaving me with an astounding 14. But the dealer still has a bust card and with this count, anything but a bust would be rare. His under card is a 10 leaving him sitting at 15 just like he should. But his next card is another five. It was a kick in the balls. I drove home in the rain knowing that I played it perfectly but the cards didn't have the same intentions that I did.
But that's not what I wanted to blog about. I wanted to blog about the guy who I was sitting next to for about 40 minutes of the night. Guy looked to be about 65, white with a mop of dirty hair that sat under a well worn hat. He was quite the character. Everyone else at the table seemed put off by him, but I really enjoyed him. He was chain smoking cigarettes and kept ordering straight shots of tequila and whiskey. But the cocktail waitress couldn't understand him as he was nearly unintelligible so I tried to interpret. No matter what he would get he would declare "Whiskey smells funny" before pounding the shot. He didn't keep his chips in neat stacks like everyone else but rather in a big mixed-up pile. After a couple more shot he started rambling about how he was going to sleep in his van that was in the parking lot. Then he started prodding the dealer about it. "I'm gonna sleep in yours [sic] parking lot whadda think about that!" I asked him about it and he started angrily mumbling about the "best damn biscuts n' gravy". Everyone kept looking at me trying to get me to stop talking to him, but I found it too amusing. Eventually he got up and announced to no one in particular "IM GOING TO SLEEP IN MY VAN" and then stumbled out.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Creepy Steve
Creepy Steve was our neighbor for two years in college. At first he was just known as Steve but his nickname was well earned. We originally knew Steve trough our neighbor Chris Orr. Chris was a legend in his own right having once been threatened by basketball referee Jim Burr and also for having this quote appear in the Michigan Daily:
Anyways, over the course of two years our group of friends got to know Creepy Steve rather well. Steve was a big lovable oaf. He was one of the kindest and most unintentionally funny people I ever met at college. But Steve's biggest problem was with women.
As much as Steve would try, he was terrible at talking to girls. But what he lacked in charm and charisma he made up for double in effort. But as much as Steve loved trying to get girls, he also loved booze. (As a short side story, Steve once had his mom coming to visit on gameday around 10AM and he got so drunk that his mom showed up and he was passed out on a couch at the BOX house covered with sharpie). But that worked well because Steve was kind of shy, so he could really only talk to - as he called them - "hot chicks" after having a few drinks. This might have lead to Steve's other problem; he was a rather sloppy drunk. So we would be at parties at our friends houses and for the first hour or so Steve would be in the corner drinking beer. Eventually at a certain point in the night Steve would let everyone at the party know that it was time for him to start hitting on girls. And what was this magical signal? Steve would be so drunk that he would completely miss his mouth trying to drink a beer and pour it all down his shirt. To this day the "Creeper Steve" look is a short sleeved button down with beer poured down the front.
So Steve would go around with his beer covered shirt and start macking on the ladies. Steve was equal opportunity and it didn't matter if a girl was way out of his league or already taken by another guy. Usually the conversations wouldn't last long. This is probably because Steve didn't have a great mastery of pickup lines. Generally he would go up to girls and open with a compliment like "You have beautiful eyes" which isn't necessarily bad except when the girl is with a group of her friends and the guy is extrodinarily drunk. He once told our very attractive female friend that "She had beautiful arms". Steve also once told me how he was going to hit on that hot girl in the corner and then went over before I could tell him that she was my sister. This almost always lead to girls coming up to us and asking who the creepy guy with the beer all over his shirt was. And to that we would reply "Well, that's Creepy Steve"
But the story has a happy ending as Steve now has a girlfriend, so his days of chugging beer and wrestling Chris Orr in the front yard of the BOX house may be behind him.
Perhaps LSA senior Chris Orr has a better approach. Like Vinny, Orr started drinking early and took a few Nalgene bottles filled with Killian’s Irish Red to class just to “keep the buzz going.” Orr gets regularly bored in class on St. Patrick's Day.
Anyways, over the course of two years our group of friends got to know Creepy Steve rather well. Steve was a big lovable oaf. He was one of the kindest and most unintentionally funny people I ever met at college. But Steve's biggest problem was with women.
As much as Steve would try, he was terrible at talking to girls. But what he lacked in charm and charisma he made up for double in effort. But as much as Steve loved trying to get girls, he also loved booze. (As a short side story, Steve once had his mom coming to visit on gameday around 10AM and he got so drunk that his mom showed up and he was passed out on a couch at the BOX house covered with sharpie). But that worked well because Steve was kind of shy, so he could really only talk to - as he called them - "hot chicks" after having a few drinks. This might have lead to Steve's other problem; he was a rather sloppy drunk. So we would be at parties at our friends houses and for the first hour or so Steve would be in the corner drinking beer. Eventually at a certain point in the night Steve would let everyone at the party know that it was time for him to start hitting on girls. And what was this magical signal? Steve would be so drunk that he would completely miss his mouth trying to drink a beer and pour it all down his shirt. To this day the "Creeper Steve" look is a short sleeved button down with beer poured down the front.
So Steve would go around with his beer covered shirt and start macking on the ladies. Steve was equal opportunity and it didn't matter if a girl was way out of his league or already taken by another guy. Usually the conversations wouldn't last long. This is probably because Steve didn't have a great mastery of pickup lines. Generally he would go up to girls and open with a compliment like "You have beautiful eyes" which isn't necessarily bad except when the girl is with a group of her friends and the guy is extrodinarily drunk. He once told our very attractive female friend that "She had beautiful arms". Steve also once told me how he was going to hit on that hot girl in the corner and then went over before I could tell him that she was my sister. This almost always lead to girls coming up to us and asking who the creepy guy with the beer all over his shirt was. And to that we would reply "Well, that's Creepy Steve"
But the story has a happy ending as Steve now has a girlfriend, so his days of chugging beer and wrestling Chris Orr in the front yard of the BOX house may be behind him.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Routine
Everyday feels the same. Wake up / go to work / come home / pour myself a drink / eat / play video games. Life has gotten stale. But the cool thing is that every two weeks I get paid money, which is nice.
I'm still trying to live the dream on the weekends. Hitting the bars, staying out all night and crashing on couches. But to be honest, it's harder than it was in college. Tonight I was watching the Michigan game on ESPN 2 and they panned over Chris Orr. He was wearing his signature green hat and Neil Diamond vest. I could tell he was about 7 Molson XXX's deep. It made me recall last year when I could slam a bunch Tequila at the Cantina and then yell at Ed DeChellis to "SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN". It was then that I realized how much I miss college.
I'm still trying to live the dream on the weekends. Hitting the bars, staying out all night and crashing on couches. But to be honest, it's harder than it was in college. Tonight I was watching the Michigan game on ESPN 2 and they panned over Chris Orr. He was wearing his signature green hat and Neil Diamond vest. I could tell he was about 7 Molson XXX's deep. It made me recall last year when I could slam a bunch Tequila at the Cantina and then yell at Ed DeChellis to "SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN". It was then that I realized how much I miss college.
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