Nut Loaf

During my first year of college, a couple friends of mine spent WAY too long putting together this 5 second gem! It's what you get when you combine Dr. Dre with Meatloaf!

ANYNUTS2.WAV

David Gilmour - Fat Old Sun

Can 62 year-old fogies still rock? You bet they can!!!

While out shopping yesterday, I stopped by Best Buy and picked up the Remember That Night DVD, David Gilmour's concert from the Royal Albert Hall at some point in 2006. So I was watching it last night in the living room in 5.1 goodness when Mikey came home early, so he was "forced" to watch it as well. Now usually when I'm watching anything Pink Floyd, it takes all of his willpower to keep from mentioning hippies or the fact that he can't believe I don't smoke weed.

However, because Mikey has a background with playing guitar, he obviously knows a good thing when he sees/hears it. In my biased opinion, David Gilmour HAS to be one of the top 10 greatest guitarists in rock history. After the Fat Old Sun was over, Mikey mentioned how the guitar solo was one of the best that he's ever seen, which is insanely high praise for someone who really isn't into the Floyd that much. So please enjoy this clip of a song that was written and first performed live in 1970 (four years before I was born) and has completely stood the test of time! The guitar solo that Mikey liked so much begins around the 3:24 mark, but I encourage you to check out the entire clip if you have the time.



If you liked this, there's PLENTY more on the DVD! It's available on regular dvd and also blu-ray.

Amazon Link

Monkies, Ants, Aliens, Russians....what's not to love?

Danielle and I saw the Indiana Jones movie last night down at Green Valley Ranch. I won't pretend to know how to write a complete movie review like the experts (such as Roger Ebert and Javier), but I wanted to give you my initial reaction to the movie before you go out to see it yourself. Both Danielle and I had heard about the mixed reviews for the movie before seeing it, so I figured it would probably be decent entertainment for 90 minutes, which is exactly what it was and nothing more. I really doubt if I'll go out of my way to rent it on DVD or try to see it anytime down the road, but I'm not completely unhappy with it.

I haven't seen any of the first three Indy movies in years, so I might be way off-base in saying that I don't remember any of the first three being completely unbelievable and over-the-top like what I saw last night. Yes, I do recall some of the crazy crap in the first three (like some dude watching his own heart beat after it getting ripped out of him), but I also remember that stuff working within the movie. Last night just seemed to be one insane scene after another just for the sake of jamming them all down the viewer's throats.

At many points throughout the movie I just expected the screen to pause just as Indy and his clan were about to crest a waterfall the size of Niagra, and then Waylon Jennings' voice comes on with a "Now can you believe the Duke Boys done got themselves into this crazy predicament? I don't know how they're gonna get outa this bucket of syrup!"

The first time I quietly uttered "this is Big Brown horse crap" to myself was when, somehow, a dude was swinging from jungle rope vines and actually keeping up with a car chase that was probably pushing 70mph! What?!?! I also did not care one bit for John Hurts' character, who was supposed to be a decrepit old crazy man, but somehow kept up with all of the characters during the chase scenes and aforementioned waterfall recoveries!

Oh well, like I said, it was good entertainment. But if you're a devoted fan of the first three movies and expect the same from this, you might be a bit disappointed.

Much To-Do About Nothin'

Well, I just wrapped up my 8th day in the casino out of the last 9. For some reason they broke apart my days off this week so that I had Saturday and Thursday off (which is today). But what's a little weirder is that the work-week starts on Fridays, and I have Friday off as well, so I actually have a 2-day weekend now......just the tail end of one week and the beginning of the next. Does that make sense?

So what does a guy do in Las Vegas with two days off? How about going on a 24 hour gambling bender at the craps table? Painting the town red with copious amounts of showgirl? Hittin' a microbrew for happy hour and then struttin' my stuff at a club or "gentleman's establishment"?

Nope. Nope. Nope.

I got off work at 5am, and here's my to-do list before I will allow myself to go home and go to sleep:
- car appointment for oil change and tire rotation
- haircut
- go to Wal*Mart and buy a mini-filing cabinet and a belt
- go to the mall for a new pair of jeans, shorts and possibly a new pair of shoes (doubtful on the shoes)
- do 2 loads of laundry and clean my damn computer desk and nightstand off!

Real exciting stuff, eh?

As far as work goes, my last two nights were spent on the dice table. I will just mention one thing about working dice on the Strip (as compared to the off-strip flea circuses)......if a table EVER has a 45 minute roll......PRESS YOUR F*****G BETS!!!!! I kid you not, there have been rolls of at least 45 minutes in each of the past two nights, and at the end of those monster rolls, I still had nothing but $5 and $6 place bets on my end. Tourists seem very happy to color-up after winning $300 when they could have actually won 5 grand if they knew what they were doing.

Not pressing during those rolls does two things that are a detriment to the dealers. First off, winners tip. If you win more, you'll tip more. So we WANT you to win! Secondly, after about 20 minutes, it becomes a freakin' pain in my royal ass to try to keep 8 tourists on my side from completely taking away all of the red and blue ($5 and $1) chips in the bankroll (when they should be working on taking all of my green)! So I'm working my ass off, yelling over the loud music and screaming players to drop me $18 every single time their $6 place bet on the six or eight hits so I can give them 1 green chip instead of 1 red chip and 2 blue chips. For the love of god, at the very least press your bets up to $25 and $30 on the place bets so we don't need to worry about those pesky blue chips getting in the way!

Oh, and one other thing happened last night that about made me go bonkers. Some dude in spot one on my side happened to hit a prop bet that paid him $1,250! I'll give you exactly ONE guess as to how much he dropped the dealers. I'm sure you know he didn't give us a dime! But here's the absolute worst kick in the groin that he could have done. Because he was too busy high-fiving his buddies and carrying on about winning the loot, he forgot to make a pass-line bet during the next come-out roll. The roll happened to be a seven, he got back to his spot right after the roll, and then proceeded to chew me out (by name and everything) for not getting his attention and reminding him to make a bet! HOLY S**T I was livid, as was the guy on stick when he heard this. The exact words out of my mouth were a very stern "You just won $1200 and now you're blaming me for losing out on another five bucks!? I'm not your babysitter dude, and trust me, I'm not losing any sleep tonight over your five bucks!". From that moment on, he became public enemy #1 for the rest of the night as he played. Any drunkin' profanity out of his mouth drew the wrath of myself and the supervisor. Any bet that was even close to hitting the felt as the dice moved was no-bet. After a while, he seemed to get somewhat of a clue and started making whopping $1 hard-eight bets for us, but by then it was way too late.

Well, at least I have two days to unwind at this point. Actually, it might be three days since I'm on-call for Saturday night. I'm assuming they'll call me since its a holiday weekend, but as 0f yet, I've never actually been called in on my on-call days.

Let There Be Light

One thing that I've noticed now that I've worked the late swing shift for a few weeks now is how early the sun starts to make an appearance in the morning. I worked the 8pm-4am shift last night and as I was driving home, I began to see the very first lightening in the eastern sky over the mountains. The time was 4:30am. I don't know what the official sunrise time is these days, but I do know its pretty damn light out around 5:30am. It makes sense though, since Vegas is on the very eastern edge of the Pacific time zone (I think the cutoff is the Arizona border, which is basically the Hoover Dam). Since Vegas is on the eastern edge of the time zone, it sees the sun early than the coast, and thus, the sunset is always a little before the California cities.

The other oddity of this shift is trying to figure out exactly when I can "get stuff done." There have been numerous times that I've gotten home from work, waited around until 9am for the bank to open, do my business, and then go to bed. I've been needing to do a little shopping for weeks now (new jeans, belt, maybe some shoes), but of course the stores/malls are open at the exact same times that I'm either in bed, or going to work at night. If anyone knows of a 24 hour JC Penney around here, let me know.

The new sleep schedule has also bitten a couple times, even during my "weekend". On Mother's Day, I met up with Danielle's parents for a brunch, which was around noon. Noon might as well be midnight as far as I'm concerned. The brunch occurred right in the middle of when I'd normally be asleep, so I spent the rest of the day FORCING myself to stay awake so that I wouldn't mess up the sleep for the next night's shift. It wasn't a very fun weekend (except for Rush, which kicked ass).

I know I'm preaching to the choir for some folks who work nights and weird shifts (I'm looking in your general direction ER doc!), but it can get really annoying when you're trying to set up an appointment to have your car worked on and you have to explain to them that 1pm won't work because I'll be in bed! It also sucks when a hockey game comes on at 5pm, and you miss most of it because you hit the snooze button one too many times!

Oh well, I've come to the definite conclusion that all three shifts here in Vegas have their pros and cons. Swing shift fits me because I'm naturally a night owl anyway, and the traffic on my commute isn't bad, especially at 5am! Day shift is nice, but with the 3 hour time difference, most of the major sporting events on TV are a forgone conclusion by the time I get off work. Graveyard actually gave me the most flexibility. I'd get out of work at 11am and be able to run any chores that I needed. I'd also get a nightlife if I wanted before going to work at 3am. The downside, of course, is that most of the time I'd be going to bed at 5pm in the early evening, which just never felt right.

I did put in a transfer request for day shift, but I'm not sure how long I'd have to wait for it. I'd write more, but its already 10:30am and MUCH past my bedtime. Have a great night everyone!

No News

Nothing much going on around here, so please just enjoy this video of a guy playing the theme song to Mario Brothers while blindfolded!

Comfortably Numb on a Saturday Morning

I got home from work around 4:45am and planned on going to bed right away in hopes of catching the Wings game at 10:30, Vegas time. Before I went to bed, I wanted to check my email and approve any blog comments. For some unknown reason, I decided to check out what wikipedia had to say about Alex Lifeson of Rush (with the concert still ringing in my head from last week). At that point......it was on! No beddy bye time for me. After checking out Alex's info, for yet another unknown reason, I decided to read up on just about anything Syd Barrett related. Then it was on to youtube for some Syd (Roger) Barrett stuff, and then about 3 hours of browsing through some more Floyd stuff. My link off to the side named "the great time waster" is a youtube link, for obvious reasons.

Well, in case anyone is in a lethargic mood on a lazy Saturday/Sunday and wants to chill out with some pretty rare Floyd tunes that I found on youtube, here are a couple. The first is an amazing live video version of Carefull With That Axe, Eugene circa 1972. The second is an acoustic version of the final part of Echoes, the video being an easter egg on David Gilmour's live DVD from 2007 (which I have inexplicably not purchased yet).

Enjoy!

O-H-I-O

My girlfriend seems mildly annoyed when I open a bottle of beer and the opener treats us to the tune of the Buckeye Battle Cry. My roommate seems annoyed that amongst all of his books, booze bottles and cigar boxes in the common area, a couple tastefully framed pictures of two of college football's great coaches should appear.

Well, I'd just like to point out that my fanaticism doesn't even come close to that of my friend, Tony, back in Ohio. Here are some pics of his computer room that I took when I was back in Sandusky a few weeks ago. Ebay must LOVE him!!!

Yet another game under the belt

It seems the new job has provided a little blog fodder lately, mostly because I've had to learn so many new games/procedures within the past 2 weeks its made my head spin! The place is just completely full of weird carnival games, blackjack variations, automatic card shufflers, etc. etc. And if you want sucker side bets, we've got 'em!! When I look at the road map and see my string, I never feel completely comfortable yet even if it says blackjack, because it could be one of many different variations. Let me try to name off the blackjacks only:

-single deck with lucky lady side bet
-double deck with lucky lady side bet
-6 deck shoe with lucky lady side bet
-8 deck shoe with lucky lady side bet
-8 deck shoe with dealer's option (where the player bets on the dealer's hand)
-any deck(s) with the winner's option (where the player can choose to win half their bet if their first two cards equal 20 and the dealer shows a ten value card up (after checking for blackjack)

The shoe games may or may not have an automatic card shuffler (which ALWAYS breaks) and the shuffle procedures between single, double, 6-deck, 8-deck, no machine, machine, etc. are ALL different! In other words, I just can't look at the dealer road map before the shift and know what type of blackjack game I'm getting. Oh, and you can split cards on all blackjack games, but for some reason you can not double down after splitting on the double-deck games, but you CAN double after splitting on the single deck and shoe games. Also, did you notice that there are a bunch of tables with the lucky lady side bets up there. Guess what, there are two different payout tables associated with the lucky ladies floating around, so I always have to look at the payout schedule whenever I step into a table (and usually promptly forget it once the first damn hand is dealt).

Now let's try to real off ALL of the games in the joint, not including blackjack:

-craps
-roulette
-let it die
-3-card poker
-bonus hold'em
-3-5-7 poker
-big six wheel
-casino war

I think that's it. My place used to have pai gow poker and mini-pai gow about 5 or 6 weeks ago, but both games were taken out. I believe they were axed due to the lack of dealers that knew how to deal them. It's too bad because I was just starting to get proficient in pai gow when I was laid off at the old place in Henderson and I kind of enjoyed dealing that game! For the record, the only game that I do NOT deal is roulette, but I'm sure they'll expect me to learn that as well down the road.

The last one on that list was casino war, which I dealt for the first time 2 nights ago. When I stepped in, I had the preconception of it being brutal, much along the same lines as Let it Ride and the Big Six Wheel. However, it really wasn't that bad. It seems the people that play War are pretty fun and spirited most of the time, and can actually grasp the simple concept of the game. And of course they should! It's basically the same damn game you played as a kid growing up. I deal you a card and I deal myself a card. If your card is bigger, I pay you even money. If my card is bigger, I take your money. If we tie, THEN IT IS WAR!!!!! That's where the big house edge comes into play. When there's a tie, I'll put out an amount equal to your bet (kind of like pre-paying) and you'll take that money if you win the battle. However, to go to war, you must also put out an amount equal to your original bet. So if you're keeping track, you now have 2 bets out there in the circle and I've only put one out for you to take if you win. 2 bets to win 1 bet. If you think that creates a hefty house edge, you're right.

One caveat is that if we tie AGAIN during the war, you win that bet I've pre-paid you plus a bonus bet, also equal to the original. One nice thing about this game is that, like the Big Six Wheel, the War table is off on its own like a little island within the casino. So there are never any floor sups roaming around. That kind of gives me free reign to be a little more edgy or weirder than normal, which I've tended to be since I escaped the vengeful grasp of Boulder Highway! The other nice thing about the game is that I can kind of pick the speed that the table goes at. As you can probably guess, the potential speed of the game can make Speedy Gonzales look like a mere Regular Gonzalez. It's just one card to each player and boom, one card to me. Take the losers and pay the winners, bada bing! I could literally deal one hand every 10 seconds if the players were quick enough to make their bets.

If the table is cool and we're having fun, I'll tend to slow down a little and chat it up with everyone. If a couple chain-smokers sit down and start acting like the douchebags over on LIR, then I'll shut up and deal at Ludicrous Speed (and probably go plaid).



All-in-all, War wasn't as bad as I expected. One aspect of it was that there tended to be way more "hit and runs" than on the other games. This is where some random dude will just come up to the table and plop down like a hundred bucks on one hand of war! The couple times it happened the other night, I won both times. And both times, the dude would put yet another hundy out there, and lose that one as well. War has the only continuous shuffle machine in the entire place, so I do not have to shuffle or anything. I just change the hundy into 4 green, he places them into the circle, we do battle and I take his money. There you have it, $200 gone in the blink of an eye (less than 30 seconds). I can just see him getting back to his buddies in the hotel room. "Yea man, I lost $200 at the craps table man! The table just went cold and I couldn't hit anything." "Oh yea man, well I lost $200 at the War table in less than 30 seconds! I can't believe my jack got beat by his queen both times! It sucked man!" Which story sounds a little more dignified?

Watch Out Nick!!

This is just a picture that I took through the window of Madame Toussaud's wax museum at the Venetian the other morning around 6am. It appears that Nicholas Cage only has seconds to live!

Why was I snooping around the Strip at 6am? That's one thing that SUCKS about working swing shift. I needed a replacement swipe-in badge and I could only get a new one from the human resources department. I worked until 5am, the office didn't open 'till 8am. So I was stuck roaming the Strip for a couple of hours, gawking at wax statues and watching the joggers go by.