Thursday, May 11, 2006
Meat
We're a little behind at the CantHang household, but we finally fired up the grill last night on a nice 80 degree sunny day in the Philly burbs. I threw down four big steaks (3 Delmonico cuts and one Porterhouse, still mooing of course) with some portabellos, zucchini, and corn on the cob. The Big Guy came over and we all eat like kings (and a queen) before virtually passing out in a grilled-meats induced coma.It's not often enough that my passing out comes from food instead of booze. By the way, that's not my picture over there on the left. My steaks always look much better than that. And bigger. That's right, my meat is always better looking and bigger. Take that one Bobby.
Tonight is booze night with ScubaSteve-style trivia and drunken IM and dial-a-shots.
~
From the news desk of those crazy Left Coasters...
Man denied bag says Angels discriminated
SANTA ANA, Calif. -- A man who was denied a red nylon tote bag during a Mother's Day promotion at an Angels baseball game has filed a sex and age discrimination lawsuit against the team.Show dogs? Seriously you funny Californians, please stay out of the sun. That's much good weather and sunshine surely must be having a negative effect.
...
"They claimed they didn't have any more bags, but my client said there was a mountain of bags stacked so high a show dog couldn't have jumped over them," said Alfred Rava, Cohn's San Diego-based attorney.
~
I'm currently auditioning drummers for A.C.H.E at the next Bash, here's the current front runner...
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Sky rockets in flight...
My motto's always been 'when it's right, it's right'Tuesday night. No longer Tuesday Boozeday, more like lil' bit booze followed by hours of poker. We started off with a couple shorties at the bar with Bobby and the always lovely Andrea. For those Andrea fans from the last Bash, I have some bad news. Her band is dead but that just leaves her more time for running around making bloggers drool.
Why wait until the middle of a cold dark night?
And a little test for Helixx... Your girl Bridget is back.
We fired down some shots, BigMike chasing each shot with some cherry flavored vodka and coke concoction, bacon-wrapped BBQ smothered shrimp, and some sorta weird tex mex spring roll that would make the Fat Guy weep in disgust. But we couldn't stick around to enjoy the drinks and company for too long. Waiting for us was a table full of fishies and sharks and all things the cold calling on a chilly night. They all wanted our money and even the oncall pager wasn't going to keep us apart.
We arrived in time to add more fat to our extended bellies. Who can turn down pizza no matter how full you are? Lewey was in fine spirits but we found out it was from sleep deprivation and not a half case of Heinekin. His wide-eyed-6-inches-of-vision would crush me in tourney but I later took advantage of his mushy head in the cash game.
BigMike was paged from work right as we rolled into the game and he spent the first hour of the tourney getting blinded off while he fixed another mouth-breathers idiotic problem. As it turned out, by the time he sat to play, he quickly got back his blinds, there were already 2 out, and he would go on to win the entire damned thing. He offered up a 50/50 chop when it got to heads up which was very generous considering he had her outchipped somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 to 1. He just wanted to get to the cash game.
How'd I do? Well I ran into The Lewey being The Lewey. My bad beat goes a little something like this....
/insert lame bad beat story
In honor of The Duggle Bogey Buggle Boy of Company C and this post, I'll bypass the bad beat story and give you the lyrics to Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band. Thanks to Duggle for the idea.
Gonna grab some afternoon delight
My motto's always been 'when it's right, it's right'
Why wait until the middle of a cold dark night?
When everything's a little clearer in the light of day
And we know the night is always gonna be there any way
Thinkin' of you's workin' up my appetite
Looking forward to a little afternoon delight
Rubbin' sticks and stones together makes the sparks ingite
And the thought of lovin' you is getting so exciting
Sky rockets in flight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Started out this morning feeling so polite
I always though a fish could not be caught who wouldn't bite
But you've got some bait a waitin' and I think I might try nibbling
A little afternoon delight
Sky rockets in flight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Please be waiting for me, baby, when I come around
We could make a lot of lovin' 'for the sun goes down
Thinkin' of you's workin' up my appetite
Looking forward to a little afternoon delight
Rubbin' sticks and stones together makes the sparks ingite
And the thought of lovin' you is getting so exciting
Sky rockets in flight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight!
Ah, don't you feel much better now? Nothing better than searching out completely irrelevant lyrics for yet another idiotic post.
Back to the game, we started a tiny NL 6 handed cash game. I saw a ton of middle pocket pairs the entire night and the only time they ever made me a set of the flop, the money was already in pre-flop and Lewey was on his way home with the rest of his money sitting in front of me. I think he just wanted to get home and he was donating the bartender/stripper college fund.
The kicker of the night was playing 4 handed with BigMike sitting at the end of the table working on a down system with the laptop sitting on the poker table and playing the entire time. By the end of the night, only 3 people had chips left. Only BigMike and I were up over our buy-ins. And I was up only 5 American dollars. The rest of the chips, including multiple rebuys by Lewey and Royce, were all sitting in front of BigMike who was only giving the table about 30% of his attention at best.
Karma's a bitch and BigMike is her best friend.
~
4 months til the Bash....
Monday, May 08, 2006
Phillies, McFadden's, and our Eulogy
Sometime around 8 Friday night, I started wondering how Brandon was making out at the Mets/Braves game. I don't know how much fun the drive up from Philly to NYC could have been, but I was just starting to feel back to normal. I definitely couldn't imagine making the drive and then sitting through a game. I really felt that way when I later found out the game finished after 1 in the morning. If he stayed for the entire game, he should earn extra respect from the drinkers out there.~
BigMike, Eva, and I bailed from work a little early to meet Brandon at McFadden's at the ballpark from some pre-game drinks. They got an early taste of odd Philly customs when he saw dozens of sites set up for tailgating. And this was just a game at the beginning of May on a Thursday night. Tailgating isn't just for football games.
We caught up with Brandon and his friend Nat (I blatantly stole the pic above from him) who beat us to McFadden's and were already killing their first round. I found out that not only is Nat a poker player and recent blogger, but also has a little site called The Poker DB that a bunch of bloggers and players have been using. We spent a couple hours relaxing, drinking, and talking about all manner of things. Drinking would become the common theme as usual.
The seats for the game were pretty sweet. Brandon has some pics from down low where we camped out. We were 5 rows off the field right next to the ball girl. After running a couple of practice lines to use on the ball girl, I tried to convince her to give us a foul ball during the game. We were in prime spot to get a couple our way. The line worked, unfortunately the only ball that came her way was when Abreu whiffed on throwing a ball into the stands between innings.
We were also close enough to give a ton of grief to rookie of the year wannabe Jeff Francoeur who was unfortunate enough to be within ear shot of us (FRAN-COEUR FRAN-COUER). Just enough booze and Brandon does a fine imitation of a Phillies fan. We can to witness a couple monster homeruns, Pat Burrell get brain lock a couple of times, and a solid Phillies win. Brandon and Nat kept the beer vendors on their toes and I can't recall exactly how many beers I actually drank.
I do know that I once again completely forgot to eat. Moron.
McFadden's was the perfect place to start and end the Phillies game. Just enough going on to have a good time, not so crowded that we were pressed. The bartenders were pouring huge shots and the beer-tenders were standing in front of frozen tubs of brew wearing very little above the navel or below the hoohah. Did I mention that we had fantastic timing with the Phillies promotions? College night at the ballpark. Or for Brandon, it was college girly night at the ballpark. With a good win at the game, good booze at the bar, things were going great.
Next thing you know, I'm standing on the corner of 2nd and Chestnut looking for Brandon and Nat. The time it took from one bar to the next was like hopping through a time machine. I do remember the ride, complete with a drunken Aussie dial-a-shot attempt, but it went quickly.
We had a choice between the way too stuck up Plough and Stars or the very laid back Eulogy. The name Eulogy seemed appropriate. We've been there a couple of times and never had a negative thing to say about them. The worst we could say this time was that the (topnotch) kitchen was already closed. But really, isn't that our fault? Brandon, Nat, and Eva would make up for that later by grabbing Gyro's from a street vendor sometime that evening. Notice I didn't list myself there. Why screw up the buzz with a silly thing like sustenance.
For a guy who had sworn off the hard stuff, Brandon was knocking back Soco's shot for shot with us. Eva was taking her time with Big Ho's. That's not nearly as interesting as it sounds, definitely not a Pauly short story. A Big Ho was Hoegaarden served in the world's biggest mug. At least it seemed that way too me. It took a couple of Big Ho's to satisfy my wife. She's a trooper.
We ended up with a table crowded with stacks of empty glasses and ashtrays full of dead smokes. The bartender would flirt with Brandon and whatever he was doing seemed to work because we had a constant supply of booze. At some point near the end of the night we found ourselves sitting at the bar cheering for Kobe Bryant to break a major bone or at least choke up this series. No broken bone, but he did end up choking. (1 point in the second half of game 7? bah)
Time warp again...
I found myself sitting in my lazy boy staring at my laptop. Somehow during Friday morning I managed to drag myself out of bed (no thanks to the electricity going out) and log into work. Don't ask me how my performance was. Don't even ask me if I made any sense. Just know that I kept thinking "if that mother effer makes it to NYC for the Mets game, he's my new hero".
