the WU reborn

march shmarch

Last week, Graham came up from Portland for some snowboarding, poker, and loafing.  We got around to two out of three of those, but his back was injured recently, so no mountain for us.  We did a hell of a lot of DVD shopping, as it seems every store in my neighborhood has them cheap now, especially the rental places that are selling them as low as 4.99 previously viewed.  Most of them end up being 3 for 24 or 10 each. 

Recently, I got: Sin City, Unleashed, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the Score, Once Upon a Time in China, Constantine, Cobra, Charlie, The Hole, and Saw to name a few.  Graham got Murderball, Inside Deep Throat, Lords of Dogtown, Pet Sematary, and Ronin.  All in all, good times.

I also saw V for Vendetta, Inside Man, and Seven Samurai in the theater recently.  I enjoyed all of them, especially Seven Samurai, which I haven’t seen in a theater since I was a kid.  It was playing at the Oriental, and I remember Dad took all of us.

We went out to Samba Brazilian Steak House for dinner one night, which reminded me a bit of Carnivore, in Nairobi.  There is a salad bar with tapas, veggies, pasta, rice, beans, etc.  After you load up, guys with big skewers of meat and a sword walk around and cut pieces onto your plate: several types of beef, pork sausage, veal, lamb, ostrich, prawns.  Top it off with a martini and dessert and you’re pretty much in a food coma.  It’s very tasty stuff, and I’m going to add it to the list of places to bring people when they are in town.

My friend James has moved to Calgary temporarily, and my other friend Mike has been busy job-hunting, so that’s left me to brave the poker tables alone.  I’ve been pretty up and down since Vegas, so I’ve been taking it easy.  Next month I’ll put in a lot of hours.  I also made a new affiliation with a new online poker site complete with 25% lifetime rakeback.  If you are not getting rakeback right now, or want to play online poker, shoot me an email at [email protected]

Other than that, there’s not a hell of a lot going on. 

hasselhoff

one of my childhood heros, the ever macho david hasselhoff (aka michael knight in knight rider) shows his more sensitive side and sings a little ditty to cheer all of you up. 

one word: amazing.  and i don't mean it in the context of "awe and wonder".  i mean it in the context of "jesus christ that's david hasselhoff!"  it's almost on par with shatner's version of "lucy in the sky with diamonds."

discuss amongst yourselves...

party in back

hair this amazing demands attention, so i captured the moment for your viewing pleasure.  note the sweet spiral perm.

it just goes to show the mullet is not limited to the southern u.s. or eurotrash.  it's alive and well in beautiful british columbia!

ultraviolet

welcome to the crappiest movie i've seen this millenium.  yeah it even beat out planet of the apes.  generally speaking, i can take a movie like this with a grain of salt and say "hey, it's not going ot win an oscar, but it sure has some great special effects and cgi."  not so in the case of ultraviolet.  the cgi was horrible, and half of the time it looked like an unfinished screen shot out of a comic book.  the acting was horrible.  the plot was horrible.  the segues were horrible.  nearly everything about this movie was absolutely horrible.  here are the exceptions:

milla jovovich is ridiculously hot.  that's not going to change no matter how bad the acting is.  it seems she's chosen action films now, as her third resident evil film is in pre-production.  i still like her best in fifth element.

some of the combat scenes were pretty cool, although there was a distinct lack of blood, especially during sequences where everyone was wearing all white.  this seemed strange, considering that the movie is supposedly about a "blood war".

there are more cool sunglasses in this movie than a runway in milan when the summer collection comes out.

the best thing about the movie is that i didn't drag anyone else along to see it.  i wouldn't have wanted to be responsible for wasting two hours of someone's life.

trivia:

ultraviolent (which the movie was), is one letter off from ultraviolet. 

ultratoilet (which the movie was), is one letter off from ultraviolet as well.

in closing, if you go see this movie, you are a greater fool than i.  however, i'm going to use the excuse that i wanted to save seeing v is for vendetta for when my buddy graham gets here on wednesday.  well, that and milla jovovich is hot too.

March in Vegas

New photos in the March in Vegas album!

Thursday, I got back from an eight-day trip to Vegas.  This time there were six of us: Mike L from Vancouver, Cory, Dan, and Jeff from Milwaukee, and Mike H from Madison.

We stayed for a few nights at the Mandalay Bay, then shifted over to the Excalibur on Saturday.  The move was because it happened to be Nascar weekend, and all the hillbillies were in town for the race, jacking up the hotel rates at the Mandalay to $500/night on that Saturday.  Sunday, we moved to the MGM where we stayed for the rest of the time there.

We definitely played a lot of poker; well everyone but Jeff did.  Dan, the Serbian Sensation, who plays very little live poker did amazingly well on Friday night at the Mandalay.  He even made an amazing call down with a hand that he had raised with pre-flop (J-3 off suit) to a board of AAJ62 and caught a guy in a stone-cold bluff.  So, we’ve named J-3 off the “lucky Dan”. 

I ran quite well most of the time I was there and was pleased with my play.  I only had two losing sessions out of twelve, and turned a nice profit even though I ran into some horrible situations: 

• I had KK 7 times on the trip and won with them only twice.  Twice the KK ran into AA for a total loss of $1200.

• I flopped top set with 99 to a board of 972 and the preflop raiser moved all in for 600, which I called and he turned over QQ.  The turn was Q river A and he won.

• I flopped top set with AA to a board of AJT and moved all in to be called by a guy with QT who turn a K for his straight

• I flopped a set of 5’s to a board of 5KA.  A local guy moved all in for 250 into a 20-dollar pot and I called him.  He showed JT and spiked a Q on the river.

Monday night, we played at the Bellagio and were seated right outside Bobby’s Room.  That’s the famous room inside the Bellagio poker room where the “big game” is played.  Johnny “f**kin” Chan, Eli Elezra, Chau Giang, Gus Hansen, and a few other randoms gathered to play some 3000-6000 limit.  We also saw Michael the Grinder there.  Chau Giang walked by me and casually asked the brush for 100K in yellow (thousand dollar chips) as he was on his way outside for his 5th cigarette in 30 minutes.

The Mandalay Bay continues to be amazing action as it is connected to a convention center.  The Excalibur 1-3 game was easy but I was card dead.  I still eked out a win.  The players there are the nut low…absolutely horrible.  The MGM room is high tech and looks great, although it’s a bit smoky, and loud as there is a bar with very loud music that blares every half hour.  Caesar’s I found to be a tough room, but comfortable.  Overall, my favorite rooms action-wise are Mandalay and Bellagio.

A lot of the poker rooms have masseuses in them.  They charge $2/minute or $25/15 minutes which is great when you're all stressed about getting sucked out by some idiot or if you've just donked off the rest of your buy-in with top pair.  Those girls are strong!  I saw one rub a guy's shoulder so hard that his hand hit his stack of chips and they spilled all over the table.

I ate a bunch of pastrami sandwiches at the Mandalay.  I guess it’s the main staple for me when I am out there because they are comped and good and close by.  We made it out for one nice steak dinner at Craftsteak, in the MGM.  It was a nice meal, although I like the steakhouse at Binion’s and Circus Circus better.  Next time I’ll definitely be hitting Nobu for sushi.

Other than that, there’s not much else to report.  Some of us slept more than others, some of us stayed up for 40 hours at a time.  Some of us fell asleep by the pool and got sunburned.  Some of us missed our flights.  Everyone got home safe.  Until next time, ciao! 

Moo's visit

New photos in the 2006 February album!

My friend Jenny (Moo) Mumau came to visit at the end of February.  At first she was only going to come for a few days, but as there is so much to do in Vancouver, I encouraged her to extend it for a week.  Eventually, she decided on that.

She arrived last week Wednesday, and just left this last Wednesday.  It was a fun, relaxing visit that included mostly loafing, eating sushi and cupcakes, lots of movies, cooking, a bit of shopping, and some snowboarding.  We went two days to Cypress, which is about 20 minutes from my pad. 

Sunday we went to John and Jeanette's place, where we were treated to steak pie, which I'd never had before.  Moo made a chocolate cake-pudding trifle, which went over very well.

All in all, a fun, relaxing visit.  Sometimes people come expecting to do everything and cram it all in a short timeframe, which frankly, I find to be quite harrowing.  It was nice to just sit around and chat and watch movies. 

I leave on Wednesday for Vegas for a little over a week.  At the end of the month, my friend Graham is coming up from Portland for a few days.  He's a poker player, so I'm sure there will be a lot of casino action.

I might head back to Milwaukee in May.  We'll see.  My April is wide open at the moment, so if you'd like to come visit, let me know.