Smink! Droke!

A few years ago in Ann Arbor, I had some friends that liked to get very, very bad. Epicly bad. "I don't care about nothin'" bad. I had some friends that liked to get the worst. One of them- we'll call him Michael (because I don't think I knew any Michaels)- was particularly good at getting bad, and was usually in a horse race by the end of the night as the answer to next morning's inevitable query, "So. Who got the worst last night?"

I was just reminded of some of the things he did/said, so I figured he'd make a good blog topic. I'm worried I won't write it later, when I'm no longer inspired, and don't have time to write it now. So this is like a little wikipedia stub I'll have to finish off later.

TBC... (<---- that's pretty gay, no?)

My New Hero

Okay, so I was getting a little stir crazy and decided to make a little casino trip yesterday. I heard through the grapevine that the bad beat jackpot was up around 70k at Greektown, so I figured I'd hang out, play in a typical loose-passive hold'em game, and try to catch lightning in a bottle. As usual, my trip did nothing to disappoint.

I left at like 330 in an effort to beat the 5pm rush, but that plan went down the drain when I got to 9mile. For the next two hours, I moved at an average speed of 1 MPH, +/- .05MPH. It was miserable. When I finally got to the bottleneck, I saw that they had the freeway shut down between 7 mile and 6 mile, and were forcing people off. So I get off at 7 mile, drive next to the expressway, and get back on a mile later.

As I get on, I notice that there's a LOT of traffic for an expressway that's shut down... Well, it turns out that mine was one of the last cars rerouted. In the few minutes I was off the expressway, the Department of Transportation trucks that were blocking off the road (you know the ones that have those arrows that light up in the back?) just up and left, reopening the road.

So what this boils down to is, if I'd left my house 2 hours and fifteen minutes later, I likely would have arrived at the casino about fifteen minuts after I actually did. Wonderful. Now I'm incredibly angry.

So when I show up to the casino, I'm in a pretty crappy mood. I just spent 2 of the last 3 hours sitting in my car listening to idiots talk about sports on AM radio, powerless to make it stop. So I walk upstairs and up to the security guard that checks IDs and shit.

Wang: "Howdy." (slips ID out of wallet, hands it to guard)

Guard: (eyes Wang, eyes ID, eyes Wang, raises eyebrows) "This ain't you, man."

Wang: "What? Yeah it is." (points at own face) "That's me." (points at face harder) "This is me."

Guard: "Naw, man, that ain't even look like you."

Wang: (still pointing at face) "I have a beard."

Guard: (points at ID) "Man, you ain't got a beard."

Wang: "No, now. Now I have a beard. So does he." (points at ID)


Anyway, after a few minutes I convinced him it was me by giving him like 10 other pieces of ID that I had in my wallet, none of which had a picture of me with a beard, but apparently stealing another man's entire wallet impressed the guard much more than just his license.

After a few minutes I sat at a 3/6 table and was shocked- SHOCKED- at the quality of play. One of the first few hands I played was against a complete unknown. He was 100 lbs overweight, had a few teeth sticking out, yellowed and hillbilly style, and was an otherwise nice guy.

A few limps to me in MP somehwere. I raise with KQo. Hillbilly calls in the BB and we see a flop 5 handed (I think).

Flop (10sb) Q 7 3 rainbow

Checked to me, I bet, Hillbilly and some other crappy players call.

Turn (7ish? BB?) 3 (putting a flush draw up that I have no piece of)

Checked to me, I bet, Hillbilly calls, and we're headsup

River (9BB) A (no draw gets there)

Hillbilly checks, I bet, Hillbilly raises...


What the fuck? I hadn't really seen this guy play a hand after the flop yet. I'm really really fucking confused. Against a decent player I call instantly, and against some players I 3-bet. A super predictable/bad player would probably lead the river if he somehow took the lead, and I would have heard from him before now if he had a 3...

So, unable to figure out what the FUCK is going on, I call. To my surprise Hillbilly nods, and tables Q9s, and we chop. "Thought I'd take a shot you could lay it down. Don't figure I get 3-bet there all that often." Wow. That's a relatively sophisticated play for a live 3/6 game. He figures the river A counterfeited my kicker, so he's either raising for value if I'm betting a hand like JJ/TT the entire way, or taking a free shot at picking up the rest of the pot if I lay it down. Then he offered me a Basic Light 100. Soft pack.

I declined.

The entire session was surreal. I don't know how many times people put in raises on the turn with decent hands + small draws for a free showdown. I got check/raised with air. I saw two players, both of whom looked like Mike Ditka with Down's Syndrome, get 3 bets each in on a double paired river with A-hi. I got called down with Ace hi twice, and got lucky to win one when my busted draw caught a small piece on the river. It was crazy.

Then I moved to another table...

If anyone's ever played at Greektown with an regularity, he should be familiar with an Albanian man named George. George is probably 50ish, with a paunch and a mustache, and the funniest/meanest man I've ever met. George does whatever he wants, and says whatever he wants. I moved to his table when mine broke, and George was off wandering somewhere else. It was his BB, and he obviously wanted to play, so somebody put his BB in for him as he was walking back...

George: "Who fucking touch my chips!" (points to guy next to him, who did not touch his chips) "You fucking touch my chips?!"

Without waiting for an answer, George just knocks the man's stack of ~200 chips over. Just hammers them to the felt.

George: "You touch my chips! I touch your chips, you fuck!"

And everybody laughs. A few orbits later, George is on the phone UTG, and isn't acting on his hand. Sleepy- a 3/6 bad beat regular, so named for his Tracy McGrady-like droopy-eyedness- gets frustrated when George won't respond to the dealer's call to act on his hand, reaches across, and mucks George's cards. George finishes his phone call in a few seconds, then...

George: "Oh fuck you dick sucker! You touch my cards, I touch you cards. Dealer can do it, but not you, Sleepy fuck!" During this mini-rant, George reaches across the table, grabs Sleepy's cards, and throws them into the muck. And everybody laughs.

Throughout the course of the night, George said the following things:

To me: "Oh, you fucking fat Jewish fuck. Your ass is mine, you faggot Jewfuck."

To overweight dealer: "Oh, shut the fuck up you fatfucker. Get off your ass, lose some fucking weight, fuck."

To Sleepy: "Mumble Mumble? Get that dick out you mouth, mumble!"

To another player, who drew out on the river and gloated: "Oh, you try that again! You say something else. You think I can't have you fucking killed? Why do you think I can do whatever I want? Say it twice, you don't say it 3 times."


This man was just a maniac. And he insulted everybody all night. And, for some reason, everyone just laughed (except Sleepy, who got a little pissed). The dealers put up with it, the floor didn't give a fuck; nobody cared. It's really hard to explain, because this man was NOT good natured about it. He'd insult you to your face all night, but somehow it wasn't that offensive. Maybe it was because he was a cartoon character, but it was tough to get mad at him for more than like 10 seconds.

Anyway, George is my new hero.

Two Little Conversations I Would Love to Have

Girl: "Why? What IS it? What did I do?"

Wang: "Honey, please... stop. Don't cry."

Girl: "Didn't I try hard enough? Didn't I love you enough?"

Wang: "No, no. Please. It's not you; it's me."

Girl: "Like I haven't heard THA-"

Wang: (increases volume, talks right over girl) "I'm just too shallow for a girl that looks like you."

Girl: "...?"

Wang: "Welcome to Dumpsville. Population: You."





Friend: (points to group of amazingly hot sluts) "Hey. Hey, Wang. Which one of those girls did you sleep with, again?"

Wang: (pause a beat)

then,

Wang: (deadly serious) "All of 'em."

Wang: (pause a beat)

then,

Wang: "Yeah..."

Bingo

Dutch said...

I think the love of lists is pretty common amongst people like us who need to figure out ways to fill space, even though our "creativity" almost only exists reactionarily; it allows us to list stupid shit, then sort of "respond" to it with after-thoughts and whatnot. At least for me, anyway.

That's pretty much it. Also- in the "lists as reactionary humor" vein- I generally find myself making lists in response to someone or something. Like, "Reasons I, Shimmering Wang, hate you, the kid in front of me at Rite Aid" or "Ten Things I hate about the premise for Michael Bay's new movie, and, furthermore, Ten Things more likely than Shimmering Wang seeing it in the theater." Stuff like that. Instead of being uniquely creative (or humorously funny), I just take whatever most recently happened to me that I remember thinking about, and list whatever pops into my head. Or, failing that, whatever reusable joke I feel I haven't leaned on too heavily in the past weeks.

And that's it. No genuine creativity necessary. Just pop in a few hypothetical situations, maybe add some dialogue and hokey stage direction (masquerading as "imagery"), and (pantomines brushing dirt from hands) that's all he wrote.

Tomorrow: Things I wish I'd accomplished, so my mom would get off my back. (<--- Fake dialogue, here I come)

My Favorite Thing. Ever.

Also, this is a picture of my brother and some of his friends. It's easily the tallest group of people ever to go to a highschool formal in the same group. I are serious cat. Two of these kids hoop for Michigan now. My brother is closer to 6'6" than 6'5". If you've seen pictures of me, you can probably pick him out.

I start on my OWN terms, Mr. New Year!

What the fuck's up, fat bitches? I planned on reblogifying my life come the New Year, but figured an entry on the first would be too cliche. Ergo, I'm blogging it up on the SECOND day of the New Year. There has to be a metaphor for my life in there somewhere. Oh well. I'll probably figure it out in a few days...

This is mostly just an entry in order to inform the clamoring-public (Joey, my younger brother... I don't know, I think one of his friends?) that I'm going to pick up right where I left off, with a few minor changes:

1) I no longer drink. The result of this will be relatively less funny. The absolute change may be immeasurable, however, as a 40% change applied to 1.5 joules of funny is probably invisible to the naked eye.

2) More lists. When I was younger, that was my bread and butter. My AIM profile was constantly being updated with a new list, usually in the form of "Reasons I Have Decided to Stab My Eyes Out of My Head," or "Porn Stars I Can No Longer Watch." Etc.

3) I'm going to start including a little poker, I think.

4) I'm going to post more pictures. Especially the picture of SeriousCat. I'll track that down tomorrow and post it

With the exception of #3, expect all of the above changes starting tomorrow.

Wamp Wamp,

The Trillest

A first

Raise your hand if you've been on a date during which your partner discussed, at length, how troublesome the yeast infections were when she lost her virginity.

(Wang raises hand)

In her defense, she probably won't remember in the morning, because she'd blacked out about an hour earlier. Actually, I'm not really sure if the phrase "in her defense..." really works there.

Only me. Only. Me.

#2

I like this idea. I'm just not sure what to do with it. It took me about 20 minutes to write, and I like the early parts (the humor, not the writing), but I tossed a boldification in around where I think it starts losing traction. I just hammered a few lines out and stopped writing. I think there are a few ideas in there worth pursuing, but I thought most everything after the bold-line (as well as a few lines before, actually) is weak.

So:

Untitled Superman Conversation


Superman: “Hello?”

Superman: “Hey Doug. What’s up?”

Superman: “No, actually. I didn’t see.”

Superman: “Wait, what? You’re joking, right?”

Superman: “How the fuck could the line be that low?”

Superman: “It… wait, what? It moved DOWN to -500? So you’re telling me that the book thinks I’m going to lose one out of six times, and most of the money is coming on fucking BATMAN?”

Superman: “What the fuck does Batman DO anyway? I mean, what the hell are HIS superpowers? He has a grappling hook, a nice car, and an offshore bank account. I’m… I’m motherfucking SUPERMAN for Christ’s sake.”

Superman: “Yeah, I know I sound like Jerry Seinfeld, but that doesn’t make it-“

Superman: “No, Doug, I think you’re mis-…”

Superman: “I don’t give a fuck how ‘neat’ his costume looks you mo-“

Superman: “Okay, okay, I HAVE always been partial to black, but that’s really neither here nor- GODDAMMIT, Doug, shut up about the costume for a second, okay? How can I lose? That’s the question. I. Am. MOTHERFUCKINGINVINCIBLE!!!”

Superman: “No, no! No, he agreed to the ‘No Kryptonite’ rule, man. You see what I’m saying, here? Do you see what I’m SAYING here Doug?”

Superman: “Doug. Tell me you’re kidding.”

Superman: “I can’t believe you. I can NOT believe you!”

Superman: “Well, apart from the fact that we’re friends? I don’t want you to just piss your money away, because I’m, like, uh, goddamned invincible.”

Superman: “Oh, come on. Are you really throwing that in my face?”

Superman: “That was YEARS ago. And that is so different.”

Superman: “Okay, yeah. I said that Rams team was invincible, but if the game had been called like it should’ve been, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

Superman: “I am NOT making an excuse, Doug. It isn’t like I didn’t lose some money on that game, too, you know.”

Superman: “Did I tell you to do that? Did I tell you to bet that money? Did I ever suggest that you should start gambling with your ki-”

Superman: “Yeah, but I just assumed you understood the realities of ga- GODDAMMIT DOUG! This is different, okay?”

Superman: “Because. Because it’s different.”

Superman: “Fine, then.”

Superman: “Whatever, Doug.”

Superman: “Okay.”

Superman: “Whatever. Okay.”

Superman: “See if I care. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”