Category: Gobblepalooza oh-ten

I am at the poker table at the Venetian in Las Vegas. I’ve spent a lot of time here over the last few days. I really enjoy playing poker.

Poker is the only game in the casino where it’s you versus other players. The house makes its money by taking a small piece of every pot.

Of course there’s luck involved but skillful players can make a living playing this game. I want to play against them the way a good amateur hitter wants to stand in against major league pitching!

I’ve played this trip nearly even. Maybe I’m up a little–no more than $100 since Thursday. There have been no tournament cashes, but I’ve won most of my live cash sessions.

It’s impossible to say who you’ll find at the tables. It used to be all older men with a few older women. No more. TV has changed the game.

I’ll bet the average age of players is twenty years younger than when I used to play 7-card stud at the Mirage! Stud itself is nonexistent. This busy room is nearly 100% No mit Hold’em.

I’ve heard more mediocre players offer up how poker is their livelihood. That’s a lot of people eating Ramen noodles and making do! If you’re playing at the stakes I play at there’s not that much to be made… And hopefully none of it from me.

Our plane to Connecticut leaves at 9:30 AM. That’s really early considering my ‘enhanced’ nocturnal hours here in The PST.

I’ll try not to be too grumpy.

Addendum: Oops. After writing this I played one hand too many and had Aces cracked by Kings. I won’t go home a winner after all. Oh well. Still had fun.

Note: this entry composed entirely on my iPhone. Not pleasant.

While walking through the Venetian poker room I saw this fabulous chip castle. I assume he won most of it since each table has a minimum and maximum buy-in.

After dinner Max, Michael and I hopped into the car and headed out into the cold November air. Las Vegas was clear with the temperature sliding into the mid-20&#176s! We were looking for dark and scenic.

Scenic’s easy. We found dark much more difficult.

Past Red Rock Canyon we kept driving west through scrub wilderness. This is government land. It is mostly unused. More on that later.

We stopped near Blue Diamond. That’s a tiny place off the highway that’s off the highway way out in the boonies.

I set my tripod and pointed toward what looked like rugged buttes. It was very dark. The sky was moonless. Las Vegas was behind a ridge.

There will be more later, but here’s what the camera saw. That is significantly more than the eye saw! This is a long exposure with more to come.

Oh… almost forgot. While I was standing with Max near the camera we were startled by a loud, troubled wail. It was a nearby animal. The sound was every distinctive.

“What’s that?” Max asked.

It was a burro! This government land is loaded with burros.

Our room is on the 39th floor. This isn’t the classic Las Vegas view, but looking west the valley floor is spread out before us… and believe me spread is the right word. Western cities are built more out than up!

If you’ve never been to Las Vegas it’s easy to think there is only gambling. Nothing could be further from the truth. Las Vegas is a resort town. Yes, gambling pays lots of bills, but there are beautiful hotels, great dining and first class shows too. There are also strippers, hookers, places to shoot guns and even drive construction equipment!

If you want it and it can be sold you’ll find it here.

We saw a show last night. Kathy Griffin performed at the Colosseum at Caesars. It is a massive venue built originally for Celine Deon’s extravaganza. It seats four thousand in luxurious comfort.

If you’re a fan of Kathy Griffin you got to see lots of what she does… basically dish on other entertainers.

A few people on Facebook asked if she was dirty? Dirty words–yes. Profane subjects–no.

Everyone enjoyed the show a lot, but me less than the others. If you don’t follow contemporary culture closely (Oprah, Real of Housewives of…, anything on Bravo) you were left with some stories being meaningless. Alas, that’s me.

In many ways it reminded me of Catskill comedians in the 60s. Sometimes the joke was totally in English until the punchline. That’s where the joke switched to Yiddish. Bad for non-Yiddish speakers like me.

Today Helaine, me and the three OC Foxes went to Aria in City Center. This is a new part of Vegas started before the economy tanked! It’s breathtaking.

We had leisurely brunch-ish meal at Todd English P.U.B while the Eagles lost to the Bears in Chicago.

Let me get back to Aria and City Center for a moment. Massive. Daring architecture. Understated opulence inside.

Everything in Las Vegas is immense though they try and hide it. Cousin Michael pointed out the largest hotels frame their windows from the outside so what looks like a single window vertically covers two floors! They’d rather you don’t know how large the hotel really is nor how far it is from the road (much farther than t looks).

Las Vegas provides a level of service to a mass of people in proportions that never before existed. It’s just mind boggling how many people are being served in this city this long weekend.

The recession might hit the Strip hard Monday to Thursday, but the weekend is the weekend and the world has poured in.

Saturday afternoon seven of the eight of us piled into the OC Foxes SUV and headed down Tropicana to the Gun Store. We’ve been before. If you’ve got the cash you can fire nearly any handheld or table mounted weapon!

It’s an interesting place where all the employees wear sidearms and lots of the customers are holding a gun for the first time.

I wanted to depend on my cellphone for Internet connectivity. AT&T is awful here. All the bad things you hear about New York and L.A. That’s kept the blog content light.

Friday night we dinner at Mon Ami Gabi at the Paris Hotel up the Strip. With gas heaters blazing we were able to sit comfortably on the patio with the fountains just across the street and the Eiffel Tower above our heads!

Dinner was great. I had hanger steak.

We went to Fremont Street with my cousins and Stef’s friend Jenna. It was there Jenna ran into faux Gene Simmons.

This might be the best portrait I’ve ever taken. I love this shot.

I’ve found my way to the Venetian poker room. With an iv drip I could stay here all day.

Last night pro boxer Layla McCarter was at my table. She looked too small to fight, but I’ve since seen photos. Yikes!

The poker room is like the UN. Players are from everywhere. This table is all grownups, but most are heavily young and often wildly aggressive.

Oh my God! There’s WiFi on this flight. As much as I love Southwest they had been Luddites for the longest time. Yet today I am sitting in my seat typing as the plane flies through the gray.

Flightaware shows us over Albany heading toward Syracuse and Buffalo. Our assigned altitude is 38,000 or about 7 miles up! We’re fighting a strong headwind–there’s 80 knots or more pushing against our nose.

Southwest is charging $5 for the WiFi access. That seems fair. Based on their magazine the pricing varies flght-to-flight as they try and figure out the sweet spot for revenue.

There are no power ports on the plane so when this battery runs down I’m done. I have done everything to push that time back. The screen is dimmer than usual. This laptop’s CPU has been throttled back. I won’t be doing any ‘heavy lifting’ so a slower processor is a fair tradeoff for longer battery life.

The battery indicator currently shows 4:12 of power. I suspect that’s a lie.