I’m not a romantic guy, but every decade or so I’ll come up with a good idea. In this case that was tickets to see Van Halen at Mohegan Sun Arena. It’s a very pretty place.
We went early. I wanted to play poker. Helaine went exploring on her own.
The most popular poker game nowadays is $1/$2 no limit Hold’em. The $1/$2 represent bet floors, not ceilings! Sometimes people push in their whole stack of chips.
It’s not like the Wild West. You’re only liable for what you post on the table. I bought in and sat down.
The tables are an interesting cross section of humanity. It is the United Nations. It is the DMV.
Some make like they’re on TV with sunglasses. I think that ploy is vastly overrated.
Tables have personalities. A few are passive with lots of calls. Others are aggressive where few bets don’t get raised. The dealer makes a lot of difference. A good dealer makes the game flow smoothly. There’s lots of math going on and the dealer is doing it all in his head by following specific routines in how he moves money around the table.
I walked away up. I won’t say how much, but I was pleased. I played again in the evening and broke even then. Very good day.
We had dinner at Ballo. Though new it is in the older part of the casino. Think outdoor cafe, but it’s indoors. Our table had a view of the passing crowd. Good people watching.
Helaine ordered spaghetti and meatballs. I had a skirt steak. Everything was very tasty and the service attentive.
We headed to the show.
Mohegan Sun’s arena is modern multipurpose facility. There are seats on the floor and a few more levels up.
We sat down in Section 15. We were off to the side of the stage, a few feet forward and slightly above it. Excellent view. Pretty close.
Van Halen came on around twenty five minutes late. It was just the four on a mainly bare stage with an immense metallic mesh behind them which turned into the largest video screen I’ve ever seen!
They were loud! Does that make me sound old? So be it. You could feel every note via your internal organs.
Van Halen went through the hits and a few new songs. They were mostly good, though they looked older (except Wolfgang who is Eddie’s son), especially David Lee Roth. He’s in incredible shape, but you see age in his face.
David Lee Roth is is a showman. He is personable on stage. That’s important since he fronts every song.
At one point he played a solo acoustic guitar while narrating beautiful footage of his exceptionally well trained border collies. Unexpected and amazing.
It was interesting to see all the people with their cellphones recording video or still shots.
The smell of pot wafted by. If it was coming from nearby I didn’t see where.
We stood the entire show.
We played in the casino a little more after the encore and headed home well after midnight.
I passed two State Troopers stealthly parked perpendicular to the road. Probably running radar. Glad they were on the other side of the highway.
Long day. Lots of fun.