Social Convention

We landed around noon on Wednesday and headed straight to take a look at the house the Doc reserved for us for our 2011 WSOP trip.  The house is great.  The Doc out did himself.  This will be our third house and is far and away the best.   I videotaped the whole thing which was like a 5min vid.  I figured everyone wouldn't want to watch it all so I trimmed it down to about a min so I could show the main floor and outside area.  Please enjoy Wilt stumbling with the sliding glass back door.  :)  If anyone really wants to see the whole thing, let me know and I will post it.  

After that it was time for our first of many epic meals.  We went to Cheeburger Cheeburger to start.  I delicious burger with guacamole, jalapenos, sauteed mushrooms, BBQ sauce, and red peppers was joined by excellent fries and onion rings and followed by a shake with caramel, cheesecake, peanut butter cup, and cookie dough.  

We settled in at the newly 5 star rated Bally's Hotel.  No big deal.  After some lounging, we found our way to the poker room before dinner.  That adventure can be found in the previous entry.  We then had what may be one of the best meals of my life at:

 

This place is 1/2 Italian Market, 1/2 nice restaurant north of the strip off of 95 and Summerlin.  I found this place towards the end of our last trip this summer.  That meal will be remembered as the time that Doc and I split a ribeye because the 400lb man at the table next to us was finished with his and still had 16oz of meat left on his plate.  It was pretty effeminate of us to do so, but we still had plenty of food.  Needless to say, Aaron didn't want to share a plate with me so I was going to have to tackle an enormous, delicious steak on my own.  After only a few minutes of sitting down, Aaron and I discover that they our out of ribeyes.  Little did we know this would turn out to be awesome.  They had 1 filet left and a bunch of pork chops.  We ended up "sharing" the 2 plates. 

You might be asking yourself what is so great about this place or it's food.  Wiltontilt is the reincarnate of a very tough food critic.  He wasn't at our first meal here, and Doc and I have been telling him for months how awesome it was.  He remained skeptical.  I wish I would have videotaped him taking his first bite of pork chop covered in "El Chico" topping.  I know he just had a kid, but it was the happiest I'd ever seen him.  The El Chico style/spices/topping/whatever they put on their meats there is out of this world.  It's the perfect combination of spice and flavor.  Not to mention that the meat is soooooo juicy and tender.  You have to go there.  And to top it all off, we had a bottle of wine and these two plates for $84.  Might as well have been free.  Well I guess it was since we hit and ran the 1/2 game. 

Later that night we wandered around the video poker bars getting drunk when we discovered my Party Pit.  Even though I spell my name J-A-R-E-D, we felt it was a must for a photo op.

 

I think the goofy look on my face is a strong combination of Aaron taking the picture before I was ready and the 4-8 drinks I'd prob consumed by now.  You can be the judge of that.   That night also included some drunken 1/2 poker where we got into it with a dealer who ultimately called the floor on us.  But I can assure everyone that this clown named Brian at Bally's Poker Room at 3645 Las Vegas Blvd South, Las Vegas, NV is just a power tripping idiot who should not be working in a customer service job.  A text I sent to Aaron while we were playing said, "eat a $@%* Brain."  

It was a pretty good Day 1. (std overdoing it in vegas imo)

On Thursday we had some mediocre sushi for lunch and spent most of the day napping as we looked forward to our football sports betting and crab legs at the green valley ranch.  One of our favorite vegas meals is the buffet at Green Valley Ranch off of 215 East pass the airport.  The buffet is lame, but the old woman who grills crab legs with all sorts of herbs, spices, and southern love is a must have.

 Makes me hungry just looking at it. 

We had Chicago +2 against Miami and Air Force -19.5 against UNLV.  We went here to watch the games.

 

At the shit hole Bally's we were staying at, you get 1 drink ticket for $100 and 2 for $1000 bets.  At Bellagio, if you're sitting in the sportsbook and know how to tip a cocktail waitress it's like a college kegger imo.  As a note to all the sportsbooks that are stingy with drink tickets.  WTF ARE YOU DOING?  Bellagio doesn't even have drink tickets.  The customer service blunders are never ending.  

Chicago obv rolled Miami 16-0 and we got quite a sweat out of the Air Force Game.  Up 35-20 with 1 min left on UNLV's 12 they took a knee :( :( :(  Ah well, push is still ok.

A couple of lame ass married guys were in bed early on thursday.  Friday included a trip to the M Casino for their Buffet for lunch.  I'm convinced this is top 3 buffets in Vegas, esp for the price.  We saw a pretty decent movie in "The Next 3 Days" and got a plane home shortly after.  GG Vegas!

Some random woman in a 1/2 game at Bally's in Vegas says this to me as we're discussing my upcoming first born.  I tell her that our little girl's name is going to be Brooke and unlike every other person who's heard the name, she says, "hmmm" and kinda makes a face like she just ate something mediocre.  Obv standard etiquette is to always say "oh that name's cute" or whatever even if you hate it.  

Later on this woman doubles thru Aaron  with her $40 stack when JJ > 66.  She then gives some weird speech about how she wasn't afraid of Aaron and I couldn't help but say, "What is there to be afraid of when you have a $5 stack and JJ?"  She said, "Are you insulting me?"  Live poker ftw!!!

This same live session started early in the evening when Aaron and I were considering going to dinner.  We wanted a good steak but we weren't really sure we should spend the money so we decided that we would play poker and if we won $40 we would go have a nice dinner.  Well sure enough, after just a few orbits I was up 70 and Wilt was up 150 so we hit and ran the shit out of that game and had one of the best dinners ever at Chef Marc's Parma.  

These exact words were on a billboard I saw today.  It was advertising breakfast sandwiches at wendy's.  Imagine that at some point in the past a small group of executives looked at this proposal from their marketing dept. and gave it a green light.  Either they have a weird sense of humor or they are mentally challenged.  It's difficult for me to judge which is the case.  If they were going for penis humor, I'm not really sure that's the best way to sell breakfast sandwiches.  If they thought that the word natural would somehow be a huge selling point to the crowd of people that regularly eats fast food and didn't realize the unintentional humor, holy shit.  Given that the latter is most likely true, I would like to officially apply to their marketing dept or as their CEO.  For the Wendy's Execs who will inevitable read this, feel free to tweet me any relevant interview questions @jaredk72.

Aaron(wiltontilt) and I are headed to vegas on Wed. for a few days.  We're gonna check out our summer house for 2011 the Doc has already booked and probably get drunk and make bad decisions.  I'm sure I'll have some sort of semi-epic trip report.

My friend Zach went out the other night to celebrate finishing his college football season.  He's an O-line coach for a local college.  The bar they picked to go to was called funkytown (not kidding).  Supposedly they were having an 80s night where you got in free if you dressed up.  For some reason, that possessed Zach to shave his head as though he had lost his hair.  It turns out the 80s night was the night before so him and 10 other guys looked a little out of place but still had a lot of fun I heard.  The next day, he came over to watch the Chiefs get embarrassed by the Broncos but hadn't shaved his head completely yet. 

 

Not only does his fiancee have the sense of humor to appreciate this, but she did all the shaving, including the sweet ass Z in the side.

...or "I haven't had time for that" or "I've been meaning to get around to that" are all very polite yet obnoxious ways to let someone know that whatever topic you are discussing is not very important to them.  One of the greatest examples of this is when someone says they haven't had time lately to make that phone call.  We're probably all guilty of this at one time or another, but the obvious truth is that the no one is too busy to make a phone call.  

I recently took 2nd at the WSOP Circuit Main Event in Chicago.  I lost to a 26 year old kentucky-an who wore his sunglasses to the bathroom.  He decided to risk his tourney life, 30bb, and 95% of his stack by calling off a limp 3bet shove with QJ high and spiking a J on the river to suckout on my AQ.  While I feel very fortunate to run as well as I did to finish so high, I can't help but think.......Why the fuck are you pissing with sunglasses on?  It's as though he was fearful that someone may follow him to the urinal to get a read on his overall playing style by where his eyes look while holding his penis during urination. 

As a result of this tourney success, I've found my days filled with less poker and more time for golf, exercise, male nesting before my first born comes in two months, and a subtle desire to share my random thoughts with my internet posse.   Enjoy!