Whereever, Whenever

You're welcome and please tip your servers on the way out.

(If you watch nothing else, just watch the first ten seconds of the second clip for me. Please. Tell me that talent shouldn't be enough to keep her comfortably wealthy in record sales or NEA grants or something. It gets better too.)

There's something about that girl that makes my pee pee tingle. Actually, there's nothing about that girl that doesn't, even her weird-ass Colombian-pigeon-English inflection when she sings.

I can't wait until television production becomes such that you can watch an entire football game from the coaches' tape camera, an entire NASCAR race from inside of some Alabama-bred daredevil's stock car, and an entire Shakira performance from a camera trained only on her hips and ass.

I'm not about to rush out and buy her album or anything. Really. But unlike that crowd shot in the first video with the unwashed and disaffected Parisian hipster youth, I can watch a Shakira performance and not give a shit that she's not Jet or The Killers or whoever the fuck the youth of today digs without irony.

She is sexy as all fuck.

If women are rated on the one-to-ten scale, she's a twelve-point-three. And further aggravating me, I'm totally incapable of landing a woman within five points of her.

Women can't get over that hangup they face when men acknowledge a women's patent hotness in their presence. Should all women strive to be just like Shakira? In my world, yes. But you know what we want more than anything?

And this is really an easy one.

We want a woman we find attractive, sure. We also love big tits and a smile. Should the Mars/Venus divide ever widen, it's going to be a rack of double-Ds that keeps our species from dying out. We love us a sexy girl, blonde and luscious who can shake that motherfuckingass.

That's all nice and shit, but all we really want, more than anything in the world, is for things to be easy.

If you're reading this and thinking, "He's saying I should be easy, should just give it up and whatever whenever," I'd tell you that's one way to land a man. Chicks just have to want it.

I'm actually telling you, without reading between the lines for subtext, that we aren't equipped to play coy. We aren't hardwired to interpret fucking semaphore flags being subtly waved from miles away. We don't want to play your games, we got tired of those in eleventh grade. We want you to be up front with us for once in your life and tell us what you want, make sure we understand what you need.

I don't want to buy a fucking decoder ring and Fodor's travel guide to understand where I stand with you. If you think you're sending the signals, and we're seemingly not picking them up, we're probably not picking them up. Douse yourself in gasoline, light a match, grab a megaphone, and run circles around us til we do.

Don't try that at home.

Grab a sandwich board, hang over your shoulders (but don't obscure your tits). Write I LIKE YOU, WE SHOULD GO OUT in block letters. We can't read your flowery handwriting, put the symbols together like Grover and Big Bird taught you. Dance a jig, wave and point until we notice what's going on.

We're blank, we're vacant. We don't hear the word "girlfriend" buried thirteen sentences into our casual conversation with you and immediately radiate some sort of poker tell from which you can divine our interest in you. We're probably thinking about your ass and trying real hard not to look again to make sure it's still there and still looking good. It takes a fucking whole hell of a lot of concentration not to look at your ass again. I'm supposed to be dissecting subjects, predicates, dangling participles, and context from our conversation in order to take your obtuse construction and rebuild your buried intent from the ground up? All while I'm wondering what color panties you're wearing and whether or not you might be interested in me?

Knock it off. Really.

We want a woman who wants to be with us. That's top of the heap, point one, everything else can trickle down from there. We just usually can't figure out who those girls are.

No, you're not Shakira. Who is? Seriously. "Hot" girls don't go for the guys you're usually going for. Unless, that is, you like the swarthy Lebanese type in the shiny shirt with the platinum neck chain. Or the rugged Marlboro man type, fresh off a recent cattle drive. You're probably reading this from the suburbs, and you've probably never dated anyone in that top 2% anyway. The fat part of the bell curve is where you and I are, what do you give a fuck who your pot-bellied balding cubicle monkey boyfriend thinks is hot anyway? Think he's got the game to chase and land her? Think he'd even put forth the effort to try? Hell, as long as you're keeping his confidence high by telling him how great he is to you - assuming he is - your man's not going anywhere. Here's the mantra you need to carry with you when your man remarks in casual conversation that Carmen Electra is "hot:"

He's got good taste. He picked me.

Women really need to get over themselves, I swear to god. This isn't the fucking Donna Reed show where Donna's daughter gets a nervous boy calling on her, shuffling his feet with hands buried deep in his letterman's sweater pockets and barely managing to stammer out an invitation to share a fucking malted or something. Most of us guys at this age aren't really even trying. Rather than complaining about it, stop with the goddamn smoke signals and say what it is you really mean.

You'd be surprised what idiots we really are. Make it easy. At least you'll know where you stand for chrissakes.

You Know Who You Are

If you're clicking refresh every 45 seconds or so to see if I've posted today, oh visitor of mine from S&P in the Lone Star State, you're going to be sadly disappointed. I'm not posting today. As a matter of fact, I...

What now? Shit.

Okay, hit refresh enough times, you'll see something new I suppose.

Just a Quick Announcement

Do you approve now Bill Rini?

Do You Speak Asian?

It's just like me to make a profit playing poker and spend the money almost immediately. Well, actually I had spent a little bit on Friday at Amazon on a set of sheets for my bed ($20, thank you Friday Sale!) and Sarah Vowell's Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World. I had recently finished the audiobook of her wonderful The Partly Cloudy Patriot, and am really looking forward to reading some more of her stuff.

Yesterday I ordered "Let The Buyer Beware," a six CD Lenny Bruce compilation. I'm really looking forward to this one. I've got a Bruce concert on LP, and between the way he captures rhythm in the spoken word and the absurdist world view he so effortlessly communicated to his audience, I've developed quite a deep respect for his talent. Between Bruce and Bill Hicks, I intend to be as much of a completist in my collection as record labels will offer.

So went out to a party last night, and spent a few minutes talking to this ridiculously attractive and successful friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who came out. We talked red wine, I dropped the "freelance writer" thing (naturally) out there, and I looked for another chance to talk to her a little later on. I thought I had found it when I overheard my friend Justin ask her if she spoke another language. She's of Asian descent, so he was looking for her to say anything but "Spanish," I'm sure. When she said that, I asked her if speaking the language increased or decreased her enjoyment of Univision and Telemundo. I thought it was a legitimate question, but apparently the cross-eyed look she gave me as she excused herself immediately from the conversation said otherwise.

Seriously, I've got to assume that unless you're Hispanic, the absurdly bad comedy and over-emotive soap operas on the Spanish-language television stations have got to be less enjoyable when you know what they're saying. I mean, I remember watching CBC-TV, which was carried on the Detroit-area cable networks, and their programming was only marginally enjoyable on "mute," so I'm assuming that theory applies here too.

I even tried talking to her friend for a bit, who was a girl much closer to my league than the ridiculously attractive one. You know, I'm pretty sure that I was the only single guy at that party who wouldn't ask what that extra fork was for at a nice restaurant, and still I can't get the girl's attention. I was in the middle of a conversation with her and a few others, and she wouldn't even give me eye contact. Horribly fucking irritating. It's that whole "Let me make this clear that you're not going to get anywhere with me" brush-off before I can get three words out of my mouth. Yes, I get it - thank you. But at least be fucking polite and realize that instead of sitting there with a sullen look while your hotter friend gets all the attention (for over an hour), you could be having a conversation with someone who can hold down his own end in such.

No big loss, she said she was a cosmopolitan drinker, and pronounced "college" like "kyawl-ledge." Nice tits, though for now I'm going to concentrate on the negatives if you don't mind. Loosen the fuck up and try to have some fun, would you?

You know, I should look at that as a positive, right? I mean, should I not be looked at by a girl as a threat to hit on her, I wouldn't be getting that blow-off in the first place, right? And I'll just assume that she was protecting herself because she was dating some other dude who didn't come along to the party. It's not me, it's her I'm sure. Still, she can suck my balls. Nice attitude.

Happy Fourth y'all.

Trump This

The flop was 235 rainbow, so I had to feel pretty good about my pocket Kings. I knew I had been playing too tight when only the table check-caller in the ten seat followed my raise to $6 into the pot.

235. I forgot he was the SB and not the button and popped it for $3 on the flop. The dealer tsk-tsk'd my chips back and the ten seat said, "Nice tell" and checked. I pushed the chips back out there and he called. Turn was a 4. He checked, and although I knew I was likely dead to his wheel, I bet it anyway. $6. He didn't raise me, just called me again. River was an inconsequential Queen, and again he checks.

"Show me your Ace," I muttered as I flipped over my Kings. He did (seven offsuit kicker), and I got my Kings cracked.

A little while later? Aces. I popped the pot again preflop, and had five players chase me to the flop. K84 with two clubs. The sad sack to my right who had played entirely too many pots while lamenting that his "good cards" weren't getting anywhere made it $3 to go. I bumped it to $6, and we only brought one other along to the turn. An offsuit 3, and his bet/my raise ran the other out. River was another blank, and I simply called his $6 bet.

"Show me your two pair," I muttered as I flipped over my unimproved Aces. He did (K8o), and I got my Aces cracked too.

Welcome to low limit poker at Trump Casino in Gary, IN.

Gary is a dead and dying steel town on Lake Michigan, about 25 miles from the center of Chicago. Unless you're the guy scrubbing out the smelter at one of the mammoth Inland plants, you've got no business crossing into city limits. It's dirty, the air stinks, and if this town ever had "a day," this most certainly isn't it.

They got gamblin' though. Trump and the neighboring Majestic Star are riverboat casinos sans paddlewheels that are moored in Buffington Harbor, eight less-than-clearly marked turns off of I-90. It was surprisingly uncrowded for a Saturday afternoon, and THG and I found a place to park right near the casino doors.

Now, I don't care what any of you say about cruise ships and how you "don't feel" the ocean and "you couldn't possibly" get seasick on a boat that big. The second I set foot on the boat, I could feel it. I could feel my head clogging up and nausea trying to crawl up my throat. It took no small amount of effort to fight that feeling back all day long either. So, in this addled mental state, THG and I made our way to the third floor poker room where Maigrey was holding court at a big buy-in NL table. She had gotten us on "the list" prior to our arrival, and we were seated less than 30 seconds after walking in.

It was your typical fucking donkey fest of a low limit Hold 'Em game. The 1s was an able and game veteran who spent the better part of the afternoon gobbling up pots with solid showdowns. I figured out quick to stay out of his way. The 2s was the sad sack outdoorsman who cracked my Aces. He couldn't quit bitching all day long, but he couldn't stop calling preflop either. I was in the 3s, and on my left was Wade. Wade was a local, and amused that the floorman kept calling his name for a $3/$6 table for a solid three hours after he was seated at one. "Ya think I oughta tell 'em I'm already here?" he said about a dozen times. THG made it to the 5s after a young Polynesian dude ran through the whole $25 he sat down with (thank you and good night). The 6s was another moron, Maigrey took the 7s after some jackass kept "getting sucked out on" when his low kickers and third pairs weren't holding up all the way to the river.

The 8s was my favorite. He came in a black and red baseball jersey, a PokerStars hat, and sunglasses. I waited for the first time he played a pot without the glasses, and as I folded my junk hand I said, "I'm only folding because without those glasses I can stare right into your soul." I love these guys.

The 9s rotated between calling stations, and the 10s was the guy who insisted on playing every pot all the way down to the river. He ruled.

I couldn't get a hand for the first couple hours. I straddled in the first orbit, played it blind through the flop, and found an unimproved T4o when I finally looked $24 later. Oops. I had bought in for $200 and after the first two hours I was down to about $118.

Time to make a run.

We played for another two and a half to three hours, and I just tore it up from there. A8o flops top pair and third pair calls me all the way down. 22 flops a set and robs Maigrey of a big chunk. And then the hand...

ATs, five of us see a raised pot on the flop. AJQ on the board. I'm not feeling great about my hand, but know these guys could be playing Q8 or J5 into these boards too. The pot is so big I can't get away from it. A Ten hits on the turn, and I feel sick. Sure, I've got two pair, but all of a sudden any King who stuck around for a closed-ended draw has me dead to a few outs. I actually call the raised pot with three others.

Another Ace hits the river. Two bet in front of me, and I think I'm likely dead to AQ or AJ here. Fuck. "If I'm paying someone off, I'm paying someone off," I say, turning over my AT.

They both had Kx.

Maigrey is beside herself. She tells me had I been up against AQ or AJ there, we would have taken down the Bad Beat Jackpot, and my cut would have been $13k.

I rake a $80+ pot and silently shake my fist at them for thinking they were going to outdraw me with those hands in the first place. Assholes.

After that hand I found that I had almost doubled up and was up $193 for the session. I did manage to piss away $60ish over the next hour, but still cashed out up $125 for my efforts. Maigrey was up almost $70, and THG up $100. We took $300 off that table, and damned if it didn't feel good.

Now, Maigrey is a very frequent player at the casino, and is (obviously) rated by the floor for her play. Since they all seem to know and love her there, she got us hooked up with a $150 comp to the Koko Taylor Blues Cafe downstairs. I got to say five of my favorite words ("Rack of Lamb" and "Pecan Pie") at various points of the meal, and we had a real good meal and good time on the house.

So, the final tally... +$125 for poker, -$6 for a drink, -$26 in tipping (not at the table), and I end up +$93 for the night. Totally and utterly life-affirming, I kid you not.