Tao of Pauly

My First Free Weekend in Vegas And a Productive Monday

After six tedious weeks of non-stop coverage of the World Series of Poker, I was happy to have some time to myself. I slept most of Saturday (after crashing at 10am) and got up to tape a interview for the Lord Admiral Card Club poker podcast. Afterwards, I met Otis, Grubby, Mike, and Jesus for a drink at the Mirage for Otis' last night in Vegas. We were joined by April, the Poker Prof, Mad and a slew of others including a few Brits who worked with Otis. I drank heavily at the bar and even dropped a few bucks shooting craps. After building up a nice stack of $5 and $25 chips thanks to kick ass rolls from Mike, Jesus, and James.... some hipster doofus came along and killed the vibe for the table. I dropped a ton of cash on his rolls. Fucktard. We all should have kicked him in the junk on principal.

Late night, Otis left for the airport and Grubby and I headed to a strip club. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing that happens when your shit faced at 4am. We were going to play poker and as drunk as I was I knew I'd be pissing away a few hundred out of my bankroll, so we decided on a strip club. We headed over to Crazy Horse II... and stay tuned for that write up... in a new installment of Existentialist Conversations with Strippers. I'll post that sometime soon. Sorry to tease ya...

I was hungover all of Sunday and exhausted too. I had to get up to play in a charity poker tournament for Charlie Tuttle and we raised almost $2900! Awesome. There are some good folks in the blogging community and a lot of readers who pitched in for a worthy cause. We all did a good deed... in Charlie's Name. I know we can do more too. After the tournamnet, I forced myself to complete two freelance pieces.

Grubby and I headed for dinner at a Chinese place off the strip. I ordered the Kung Pow chicken and he got chicken with curry sauce and a few egg rolls. He wasn't impressed with the place, but the food was good. The front of the store space in a tiny strip mall was shared by an old, dingy, poorly lit lounge, poplulated by fat slobs with serious B.O. issues, who were sucking down $1 bottles of Bud while pissing away their cash on video slots. It's the type of place where a lot of people must have been stabbed and/or beat up in their day... and that was done by the bartender if you complained about your drink order. In the back of the joint was the Chinese restaurant, which was better lit than the front, smelled better, and had a more appealing decor with dozens of imitation Ming vases along the walls.

After dinner, we grabbed dessert at Sonic. I got a choclate shake and Grubby opted for the starwberry smoothie. I think that I prefer In & Out shakes better. I was too tired to play poker so we hit up a late night showing of Star Wars 3 at the movie theatre in the Orleans Casino. It is a digital theatre and everything sounded amazing. The plot for Star Wars 3 is thin and there's plenty of bad acting. The fight scenes/space battles were kick ass and Darth Vader got fucked up big time at the end. Grubby fell asleep at one point. I'm fixing to see Batman next, only to catch a glimpse of Katie Holmes.

Today I slept in late, ate Wendy's for lunch, caught up on some writing, and did another phone interview. I hope to publish a link to that soon. I spent the remainder of the afternoon securing my flight home to NYC in mid-August via Jet Blue. I also swicthed my flight from Las Vegas to Denver so I can see Trey Anastasio Band at Red Rocks with the Joker. I'm pumped to spend time in Boulder with his crew. In addition, Derek and I booked a flight for G-Vegas, South Carolina to hang out with Otis and the rest of the G-Vegas crew for a wild weekend.

Tonight, I'm heading over to the Bellagio for some work covering a tournament there. I'm also having my victory dinner with Poker Prof and Flipchip after six weeks of a job well done. More details to follow.