Weekend in Vegas
So my friend TommEE Pickles is a streaming media guru/whore, illusion enthusiast, sometimes ninja, UCB performer, magician in training, functional alcoholic, degenerate gambler, oh and a dirty haxor… you may have heard of him if not check out his blog. Well because of his many talents, he was invited out to Vegas to put on a nightly display of skills at the craps table. It’s mesmerizing. :) Tommee, was nice enough to see if I wanted to head out there an visit sin city, and since I had some money burning a hole in my pocket, I accepted. Tommee drives a spiffy Tiburon, with a very nice HUD. During the 5 hour trip, I ended up watching most of the reality tv series “Celebracadabra”, from Tommee’s ipod, as well as a documentary “Street of Cards”, so was a bit overloaded on magic by the time we arrived in Vegas, but still found it really entertaining. We arrive, got some drinks, gamble a bit, meet up with Nick, and Ryan (co-workers of Tommee), and proceed to walk around and gamble/goof off for the rest of the night. The tables are not so nice to us for most of the night, Nick and Ryan decide to call it in at about 4am, so Tommee, and I head back to the tables…. and I ended up hitting 3 points in a row, making back some of my losses for the night. There was some bad mojo on my side of the pit(jerks betting on the no pass line, without odds, yelling for a seven), so I moved over to where Tommee, and another gambler Craig were standing. During my move I decide to color up, and hang back for a bit. The bad mojo gamblers are 3 rolls and out… Tommee puts on a show hitting 4 points in a row, and during it I feel that me “not jinxing” the streak is a good thing, so I stay out. Kinda wish I had not stayed out, but can’t know that what happen next would not have been different. Craig winds up hitting 9 points in a row… it was sick. NINE TIMES… During the 9 point streak, some new rollers come to the table, and do pretty well. I ended up getting back into the action after Craig’s streak :( , but still ended up doing well. Funniest part was at about 6am, we decide to get some food. The bad mojo folks color out at $23, and combined T and I color out well over 2k.
FYI betting on “no pass”, the min bet and nothing else is lame. Learn to gamble please. Heck they offer craps lessons at 11am most places.
So some drunken conversations over food, and a really silly tip for the waitress, it’s time for sleep. Crash, fast forward to 4pm, time to wakey-wakey eggs and bakey. We had time to waste before a locals party, and so we ended up eating at an italian place in the NYNY. Blah… So insert a very surreal event here. We ended up going to a wunderground magicians party… lets just let that sink in… wunderground magician’s party. Including a cave match tournament featuring heads up trick against trick battles. It was a ton of fun. Met Jeff Mcbride ( an awesome magician, and also a judge on “Celebracadabra”), and AJ (producer for the “Street of Cards” Doc) . The party was at AJ’s house which was spectacular with a great view of the strip. Had some great conversations, and met some really interesting folks. Most of which were professional magicians. The cave matches were streamed live on S.O.C.tv( look under “the cave” on the media player), and were a great laugh. I think Bizzaro should have been in the finals, but Chris did have to perform like 5 different tricks during the matches. Ended up Chris and Scott (not me) in the final match and Scott won doing some rubber band magic. The party was a blast and I was stoked that I got to attend.
Back to the casinos, kinda fuzzy, I know Nick and Ryan hung out for a bit, but otherwise the night was pretty tame. Ended up crashing about 4am, and sleeping in late. Tried to be sneaky and leave later to avoid traffic, boy was that silly… It took over 10 hours from the time we started. We stopped 3 times to eat, and hang out at stateline for a bit to avoid more traffic (monopoly slot machine can be fun). Got back home about 3:30am and got to sleep about 4:30… crazy. Looking forward to resting this week.