Tag: gambling

The expansions of Erris Irand wounds my soul

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Look, I know and understand that the point of any business is to grow, improve, and make money.  And I genuinely am happy for ellis island • casino • hotel • brewery for continuing to grow, presumably making more money and gaining success and foothold in the crowded Las Vegas ecosphere, but this is definitely one of those old man, it’s straying away from the charming little shithole I once knew and loved things going on, and every time I check in with what I endearingly have always referred to Erris Irand, things continue to change and stray further and further away from Erris Irand and becoming a more, miniaturized little posh typical Vegas casino with less and less character and personality with each change.

It recently came to my attention that Erris Irand is embarking on another round of upgrades, and although I’m amused that they along with other businesses I remember fondly like Battista’s are suing the shit out of F1 for wrecking shop in the city I used to once really really love, and went to at least 2-3 times a year, it adds to the melancholy mood of things changing yet again, furthering it from the specific place that I would say that nobody loved more than my big orange brother and I did.

The photos they used was deceptive in making it look like there was the possibility of upward expansion, as in building a tower on top of the existing structure, but that’s just a silhouette of the hotel behind them that I frankly don’t remember what it was called or is called now.  But that’s the only real relief I get is knowing that they’re not going to (yet) turn into some posh, metrosexual named joint, much like Imperiar Parace and Bill’s and O’Shea have all done over the last decade or so.

And although the proposed upgrades are all purposeful, and will undoubtedly help boost business, revenue and general success for the business as a whole, it’s just so, so far gone past the little locals shithole that I first really discovered back in like 2006, that it wounds me in the soul to see just how much things have changed throughout the passage of time.

Like, when I first stepped into the place, the floors were hard oiled concrete, decades of cigarette ash, spilled booze and the dreams of degenerate gamblers ground into them by the footsteps of ornery locals, adventurous travelers and, degenerate gamblers.  The sirloin special was $6.99 and came with a $5 match play coupon for table games.  Metro Pizza was buy one get one on Sundays, applicable to a single slice or an entire pie.  Their excellent house beer was a dollar a pint, if you weren’t actively gambling, and that’s if the cougar-ey bartender even bothered to take it.  There were only a handful of table games, roulette was almost never going, and they barely had enough room for a half craps table, where there’s nowhere in the city where I fared better at, earning so much in one session that I was able to get a brand new replica wrestling blet.

For years, there wasn’t a single trip to Vegas without at least one trip to Erris Irand, where I ate well, gambled well, drank well, and spent many great hours with my brother and whichever of my friends could lower their noses to realize the charm of what Erris Irand was and represented.

Frankly, I’m the only person I know that has actually stayed in the attached Sleazy Super 8 motel, twice in fact, and I have no regrets in doing such.  From what I understand, it’s now not even a Super 8 brand, and is actually branded to the casino itself.

But as is the case, no good things truly last forever, and perception is the eye of the beholder, and as much as good is what the business perceived, the change was not good to me, but like I said, I understand the business aspect, and growth and expansion and change is inevitable in successful operations, and such was the case with Erris Irand.

The BBQ restaurant grew and blew up, the sportsbook turned into a respectable setup that wasn’t just a bunch of 19” screens inside of basically cubicles.  The brewery was opened up to the public, and more tables and more slots entered the establishment.  The floors were eventually cleaned and refinished and tiled, and the dim smoky ceiling lights were replaced with actual bright and welcoming lighting.

My last time at Erris Irand wasn’t that long ago, and after a few trips where mythical wife and my friends had no interest in going, I was by myself on this trip, and I literally took an Uber directly from McCarran to Erris Irand, because nothing was going to stop me from visiting my old friend on this trip.

And it was a surreal experience walking into the side entrance, where everything was different, the air didn’t reek as much of smoke.  The bathrooms were all posh and even had branded wallpaper and backdrops, inviting people to take selfies and be shitty millennials and shitty Gen-Z’ers.  The restaurant was without all the framed artwork of warships and pirate ships and infernos, and I had to wait an inconvenient amount of time for a shift change to occur despite the restaurant being kind of empty.

The sirloin special was still unlisted and available, but it was apparent that the kitchen isn’t used to making these as they once did, as my steak came out overcooked, but not inedible, but the magic wasn’t really there this time around.  The table limits were still fortunately lower than the rest of the Strip, but I didn’t have the time on this trip to come back despite the fact that I really wanted to, with my friend who had just gotten hitched by Elvis.

But now we’re deviating even further from that, with the next wave of expansions to implement rooftop access, so people can presumably look at the Total Rewards Group’s parking lot and training facility, unless there’s plans for something to take up the giant concrete lot between Koval and Audrie, for Erris Irand visitors to stare at being constructed over the next few years alternatively.

Like I said, a lot of old man things changing rambling going on here, so I’m going to stop here before I continue to write in circles like I tend to do sometimes about the things I’m passionate about.  I won’t not go to Erris Irand the next time my travels actually take me out to Vegas again, but honestly I’m kind of over the city as a whole lately, and I just don’t have the disposable funds available to finance the gambling I’d like to do, so it might be a while, but I imagine it’ll be yet another surreal experience of seeing just how much the place has changed. 

Here’s hoping they’ll still have the sirloin special and the best hefeweizen when that time comes, and that I don’t go broke in an hour like the rest of the Strip’s casinos had done to me my last time out there.

I don’t think Tony Kemp’s wife understand how all this works

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know why it was fed to me, but from the standpoint of it triggering enough reaction to where I felt like writing about it, I guess our AI overlords sure know how to get to each and every one of us.  But I read this story about how baseball player Tony Kemp’s wife gave him an ultimatum after he was drafted, to make it to the big leagues in three years, and I’m just really annoyed by it.

Personally, I don’t like the idea of ultimatums in the first place, and feel that ultimatums in general are usually employed in lost cause situations, and I’m of the personality to where I most certainly don’t like the heavy pressures that usually are associated with ultimatums, to where they’re automatically detrimental to whatever cause for ultimatum there was in the first place.

So I feel for Tony Kemp despite not really knowing much about him at all, seeing as how I’m basically a casual baseball fan these days and I don’t know every 25-man roster of every team like I used to, because having to play under such an unreasonable and incredibly selfish clock to begin with probably wasn’t the most ideal of conditions to be starting a professional career with.

When a player is drafted, there’s still a gargantuan amount of luck and moving parts that all need to shift and move and fall into place perfectly for them to actually make it to the major leagues, and there are countless examples of baseball players throughout history who have performed well, and never made it to the big leagues.  Even this year, was a story about a guy on the Pirates who had toiled in the minor leagues for 13 years before getting his first-ever opportunity to play in the major leagues.  And even still, he only made it up on account of an injury, and was jettisoned back to the minor leagues as soon as the player returned.

The typical timeline for a player, and that’s if they play well, have the front office behind them, and have already been invested in, is usually like five years.  They might get a September call-up before then, or a cup of coffee if someone is injured, but if everything goes well, players that are part of a team’s plan, usually still make it up in five for good.  And that’s only if the parent ballclub isn’t trying to manipulate service time and playing chess with a player’s career in order to exploit loopholes in roster construction.

So for Tony Kemp’s wife to basically demand that Tony Kemp make it to the big leagues in three years, to me, comes off as extremely reckless, unreasonable, and because the underlying message was, because her career would have to go on hold, pretty selfish.  Good on her for having her own career hopes and ambitions, but maybe don’t marry a ballplayer, much less slap a ridiculous ultimatum on him, because the pressure of such alone, could very well have blown up in their faces.

The only reason why this is a non-issue today is the fact that Tony Kemp miraculously did succeed at making it to the bigs in three years.  And thankfully there wasn’t any intricate stipulations in his ultimatum with the wife about needing to actually stick in the major leagues, because after he came up in 2016, the Astros ping-ponged him back and forth to the minors multiple times over the next few years, but if I had to guess, since he was a part (at least on the 40-man roster) of the 2017 cheating champions squad, wifey probably got swept up in just how big of a deal it can be, even for a shuttle-bus player like Kemp was then.

Here’s what irks me though; Kemp’s wife was in broadcasting in some capacity up in Toronto, and her career was supposedly trending in a direction she wanted.  Even if she stayed in broadcasting, what kind of ceiling would she capable of reaching?  Probably not to the heights that even a baseball player of marginal talent could achieve, just by being the last guy on a 25-man roster.  Money is not everything in life, but seeing as how the MLB minimum when Kemp was a rookie was still $475K, I’m willing to bet that ol’ Tony was going to be the primary breadwinner.

But the thing is that wifey basically gambled with his career, all because she was concerned about putting her career on hold.  Like, there are ways to go about chasing dreams independently, without having to put unreasonable pressure on your partner, but that’s basically what happened with the Kemps, and that’s kind of why I got fired up over this topic in the first place.

Like I’m sure Kemp’s wife isn’t so torn up about giving up her career, seeing as how hubby has made over $8 million throughout his career, which is kind of surprising considering how mediocre of a talent he kind of is.  He had one okay season in 2021, but he’s still a career .239 hitter with an OPS of .679, and has a career bWAR of 3.6 which is heavily weighted by his performance in 2021.  And the way he’s playing in 2023, his major league career probably isn’t going to last much longer, but like I said, he’s made $8M in his career, and smart people have parlayed less into retirement and the good life.

If I’m a betting man though, a partner who rains on the parade of him getting drafted in the first place with ultimatums, is probably a partner that’s going to be crawling up his asshole once his major league career starts to fizzle, and he’s stashed in the minors of whomever is willing to keep him employed.  Sucks because there are now kids involved, but that’s life in America, and everyone needs to take care of themselves so they can take care of the others that matter; with or without the unnecessary pressures of ultimatums.

I think I’m done gambling for a while

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I took a whirlwind, 24-hour trip to Las Vegas this past weekend, primarily to bear witness to one of my closest friends getting married.  I deliberately made the trip short, because I’m stingy with my PTO at work, mythical wife couldn’t come with me, and frankly there’s nothing good to come out of me having too much time in Las Vegas.  I’m already uncomfortable in my financial life these days, and trips like Vegas can be colossal hazards to anyone’s personal finances.

Still, short as the trip was, I made sure to tackle some of the things that I missed out on during my last trip during Labor Day, like hitting up Ellis Island, and visiting Sayulita’s, where I needed to try for myself one of the monster big ass burritos that I’d seen from their social media presence. 

And let me tell you something about this burrito pictured here, it was without question the largest burrito I’ve ever encountered in my life, and this wasn’t the biggest one on their menu too.  I waffled on the idea of going there, since I was still full from the post-wedding dinner that I got to indulge in, but I knew that if I didn’t go there, I’d be left with no real other food options except the one Shake Shack in McCarron Harry Reid which would be slammed packed from other travelers left with no other option, plus I would just simply regret not going when I was already in the city.  So I went, and even thought it was $20 after tax and tip, it definitely is more than $20 worth of food.

I wasn’t hungry at the time, but I ate a quarter of it before my flight, because I didn’t want to get hungry mid-redeye flight, and be that asshole unwrapping a monster burrito on an airplane and letting its aroma get all over the place.  After I got home and took a little bit of a recovery nap, I ate 3/4 of what was left before I felt like I was going to burst, and later in the day, I finished it off, and then I literally didn’t have to eat again for the rest of the day.

And it was fantastic, and every bit worth the trip off the beaten tourist path to go try them out.  Would definitely drop them a five-star rating on Yelp if I weren’t low-key salty about them not making me Elite status again for 2023.

But anyway, to get to the point of the title of this post, I think I’m done gambling for a while.  Not solely because I didn’t have a particularly good gambling trip in the small opportunities I had to gamble (I got pretty decimated, so much for wedding luck), it’s just that I frankly don’t have the bankrolls or the means to build the bankrolls I’d need in order to gamble as I’d like to in Las Vegas anymore.

I used to be able to stretch $500 to last a whole weekend in the past, but that amount barely kept me in the game for a single day this past trip.  Table minimums have risen across the entire Strip, and pretty much at no point does a table drop beneath a $15 minimum at any casino I’ve been to, from Harrah’s to Bally’s Horseshoe to Cosmopolitan to the Venetian.  And after like, noon, those “low” limits vanish and it’s basically $25 minimums anywhere and everywhere from there on.

Nice, manageable $10 minimums are an extinct relic on the Strip now, and that means a $100 buy in here or there just doesn’t last as long as they used to, not to mention that even at a $15 minimum, they’re harder to manage and round off to nice increments of hundos, and obviously such is done deliberately to more expediently part money away from us gambling schmucks in the first place.

Lower, more appealing to my broke ass limits are still available, off-Strip and places like Ellis Island, but other than my brother, it’s hard to convince anyone at all to go to Ellis Island with me.  I think I’ve talked about the place so much it’s to the point where people want to deliberately shun it just to troll me, that and the fact that for whatever reason, people just can’t seem to want to ever wander off the Strip in the first place.

The bottom line is that it’s gotten to the point where I can’t really afford to gamble in Las Vegas anymore.  At least at this juncture of my life, where nearly all of my earnings goes towards my kids and bills and there’s practically nothing left for me to do anything.  But it’s still a little demoralizing, because I really do enjoy gambling and being in Las Vegas, but aside from rising minimums and my cash flow not rising commensurate to keep up, the place has changed a lot since the days in which I’d make 3-4 trips a year, and after this past trip, I think I can safely say that my itch to Vegas it up in all applicable ways, is kind of gone.

But never say never, who knows how things will change in the passage of time.  Maybe I’ll make more money one day, and not all of it is hoovered up by responsibilities, or maybe but not likely Vegas will drop their minimums and bank on getting more action.  Or maybe I’ll come across some more gambling videos with supposed unbeatable, low-risk grind methods in roulette or craps that will reignite the itch.  Until then, we’ll see how long it takes for me to get back out there next.

Yeah, not going to change my mind on this one

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Spoiler alert: Trinity Fatu confirmed to have signed deal with Impact Wrestling, will debut soon

As much as I appreciate and find enjoyment in the post-TNA era of Impact Wrestling, there’s no denying the overall perception of the promotion is that they’re very much no higher than third-tier.  WWE and AEW are the easy #1 and 2 promotions in America, and Impact is basically where anyone who is unable to land a job in the big two end up.  The roster is full of quality talents and strong workers, but there’s no denying the fact that nearly all of them have experience with  WWE and/or AEW and have landed in Impact mostly out of lack of better options.

It’s still a means to remain on camera, and in lots of cases, it’s a good low-pressure environment for workers to reinvent their characters and put in work, while still getting paid and keeping a foot jammed in the doors to bigger opportunities.  But there’s no denying that the overall perception of Impact still has the stink of Dixie Carter’s and Jerry Jarrett’s TNA all over it, and such alone is one of the highest hurdles for the brand to overcome on a daily basis.

The bottom line is, professional wrestlers don’t perform in their careers with the dream and intention to land in Impact Wrestling.  They all dream of getting to the top of the industry, or doing their best to make themselves into the top of the industry; love them or hate them, but that really means, making it to the WWE or joining the hopes and dreams hype train of AEW.

So all that being said, I can’t imagine that the hopes of Naomi, when she walked out of the WWE along with Sasha Banks, was that she was going to land in Impact Wrestling.  I imagine she hoped that the impact of her and Sasha walking out would cause a movement in the WWE creative machine to where they would be welcomed back with open arms, and some more legitimate respect would be put onto the women’s division, the women’s tag division, and maybe some more money would be thrown in their direction too.

However, what they failed to realize was that Vince McMahon was still the head dick in charge at that time, and he doesn’t even care about the Intercontinental championship much less the women’s division, and not only was their bluff called, the situation was even brought up on the air, just to punctuate their general unimpressed nature of what they had done.  Sasha would go on to Japan, become Mercedes Mone, immediately win the IWGP Women’s Championship, and is supposedly making six-figures per appearance, while Naomi has been on her ass since. 

Personally, this was not surprising to me; as much as I like Trinity Fatu and think she’s a strong performer, she was no real loss to the WWE.  Sasha Banks however, was a game changer, a franchise player, and a woman whom the division could be built around; but her conduct and general perception of her attitude put them both into a position where an old unapologetic fuck like Vince McMahon had no choice but to call their bluff and let them walk, because doing anything else is an L in his book, putting two performers above the business that nobody is bigger than.

The thing is, from the moment it happened, beyond thinking it was just a work, when it was confirmed that it wasn’t, the first thing I thought was that this was entirely Sasha’s idea, and Naomi went along with it.  Sasha has already demonstrated her willingness to walk out like a spoiled brat when things weren’t necessarily favorable for her, but when she decided to do it again, it’s clear she felt that she had to bring Naomi with her in order to feel like she was strengthening her leverage, even it if meant potentially harming another person’s career.

When the bluff was called, Sasha knew she still had demand and options, and cashed those in.  But unfortunately Naomi wasn’t as fortunate; this isn’t to say that she doesn’t have the capability of being a franchise player, but over the last decade, she’s been portrayed as nothing more than a good team player and a transitional champion at best, and no promotion is going to offer premium dollar for such perception.

And now, Naomi is now in Impact Wrestling.  The third-tier promotion that most wrestling fans don’t even know what channel to tune into in order to watch.  Even if she is shot to the top of the card to go up against the likes of Deonna Purrazzo and Jordynne Grace, she’ll still be making a fraction of the money that she would’ve been making as a WWE mid-carder.  Now I doubt her and her husband Jimmy Uso are ever going to sweat on the financial front, but there’s no denying the trajectory of her personal career has been seriously derailed, by a decision that wasn’t necessarily her own.  And as much as I like Impact now, the detour through Impact usually takes a good bit of time to reroute through.

Which brings us back to the image above, I most definitely believe that Sasha Banks screwed Naomi, and I don’t really think that I’m going to change my stance on that opinion.  The intentions of their actions weren’t bad, but the execution of it was something that you just don’t do in any line of work and expect positive results, and there’s not a single part of me that doesn’t think this wasn’t solely Sasha’s idea from the start.  I feel that she used Naomi like a pawn to try and strengthen her objective, but when it failed, she basically poisoned Naomi’s career, while she went onto to find a lucrative alternative.

Even before she married into the ultra-loyal Anoa’i family, Naomi was the consummate pro who got the business and seemed to understand that at some point, everyone in history eats shit sandwiches from time to time.  She may have been a former Smackdown women’s champion before, but she’s also done her share of jobs to the IIconics, Lana, Mandy Rose and other weak workers she could wrestle into knots if she wanted to.  There’s no part of me that believes she would ever think to walk out of the company on her own accord.

Of course, nobody will ever admit to any finger pointing or sour grapes, at least not while careers are still active.  But inevitably, both Sasha and Naomi will be back in the WWE, because on a long enough timeline, everyone comes home eventually.  They better pray that Vince McMahon is entirely out when that day comes, because that man holds a grudge like no other, and he would 100% resume whatever he had in mind for them prior to their walkout, just to prove a point, before he jobs them around for a minute, as a receipt for their past transgressions.

Speaking of receipts, to me, the real telling point would be the inevitability that Sasha Banks steps in the ring for a match against Naomi.  I would be ohhhhhh like I were watching a dunk contest if Naomi absolutely potatoes the fuck out of Sasha with like a kick to her head that’s a little too snug, as retribution for the likely 2+ years of her prime that were squandered on a really foolish idea.  Because again, nobody will ever say what they really feel, but the actions will definitely speak for them, and I’m sure Naomi is smart enough to have realized, Sasha screwed her.

So the A’s are finally moving, it seems

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

😔 : The Oakland Athletics reach a land deal in Las Vegas; all signs pointing towards officially moving the franchise after years of failing to secure any sort of stadium deal to remain in Oakland

It’s funny, the speculation that the Oakland A’s were moving has been going on for so long, it got to a point where people just stopped believing it was going to happen.  But much like the Washington Redskins finally changing their name after eons of dodging it, it appears that the Oakland A’s are officially going to be departing Oakland, and heading into the desert.

The sports fan in me reacts because it’s change and a lot of sports fans don’t like change.  But it also elicits a little bit of sadness for me as a baseball fan, because I’m a low-key fan of the A’s, in the sense that I love Moneyball, underdogs, and teams that operate like they’re small-market and have to rely on brains and guile to survive in a league where the Mets are literally spending $300 million more than they are.

Plus, in spite of all the flack and criticism the Oakland Coliseum or whatever corporate-sponsor-of-the-month-Stadium gets for being on the wrong side of the tracks, adorned with barbed wire, and dated like an original mid-century modern home, I actually really liked my experience visiting the place, and have fond memories of the ballpark as a whole.

So I’m sad to hear that the A’s are finally getting the nails lined up on their coffin, with the hammering supposedly to be finished by the start of the 2027 season.  There’s still time for those out in Oakland to soak up a few more years of Athletics baseball, but it’ll be with the underlining sadness that there are still a finite number of games left before the team packs their shit and heads to Las Vegas.

It’s actually rich that of all the parties to come out and express sadness and condolences for the eventual demise of baseball in Oakland, the fucking San Francisco Giants emerged to make their comments.  Because on at least one instance, it was the Giants themselves that pitched a fit and effectively blocked the A’s from getting a new ballpark in San Jose, because they felt it encroached on their geographic territory, despite the fact that the city is kind of equidistant from both cities.  I’ve said it once, and I’ll say again, fuck the Giants.

Speaking of rich, of all the dirty laundry to start hitting the waves in light of the news of the team’s eventual departure, one thing I was unaware of is the fact that the owner of the Athletics is basically the richest singular owner in all of MLB, which is extra sad since the A’s have basically been bottom-3 payrolls in the league since pretty much, the existence of time.  MLB as a whole declared jihad on the Marlins’ former owner Jeffrey Loria until he sold the franchise, and even in “being forced out,” he still made a gargantuan profit in the process.  It makes me wonder if anything of the sort has been remotely considered for John Fisher?

All the same, I just wanted to write some words to express my general disappointment over the impending death of baseball in Oakland.  Not because it’s a layup of a topic for me to write about, on the contrary, I drug my feet because I didn’t want to phone in something phony, but because I really did care about the Oakland A’s.  Even though my fandom has wavered throughout the years, I always took enjoyment of seeing whenever the A’s defeated any of the rich blue bloods of baseball, and remained a low-key fan of a team that embodied success almost as an act of defiance.

I’m sure baseball in Las Vegas will be enjoyable, but inevitably when I visit whatever stadium will be there, it’ll be a hard time not comparing it to the dated charm and the place that made the most out of the nothing they had, of the Oakland Mausoleum.

Thoughts from a much-needed weekend off

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Paris – my #2 favorite place in Las Vegas

As mentioned in the fanny pack post, I was actually in Las Vegas over the Labor Day weekend.  This was effectively the first real, multi-day, kids-free breather that mythical wife and I have had since, before the arrival of #1 back in March of 2020, right before the pandemic shut the world down.  Since then, we’ve literally never had longer than a single day where we were both not without children.  We obviously love our kids and our budding famiry very much, but we’d also be kidding ourselves that having gone through such a stretch has been difficult at times, and it’s amazing we’ve gone this long without a true break and not ended up going insane in the process.

Needless to say, the highlight of the trip was without question, simply getting to sleep in for two straight nights.  As in, turn off all alarms, pin the blinds shut, and go to sleep, only to wake up naturally, once our bodies deemed it no longer necessary to remain asleep.  I know we were in Las Vegas, the city that never truly sleeps and we’re supposed to be out gambling, drinking and being total shitheads all night every night, but damn if it wasn’t so refreshing to wind down the evenings knowing that we could sleep as long as we wanted.

To any of my zero readers who might be under the age of 32, I can imagine just how depressing of a paragraph the preceding one was, as a glimpse of what life after the age of 40 and with multiple kids can await but I really do love my famiry I really do.

As for Las Vegas itself, it was a good weekend to get away from the grind of daily living, but I have to say I had a lot of thoughts about not just Las Vegas, but the experience of traveling, and the state of the world itself.  And not to shit on what was a very welcome weekend to relax some, but me being who I am, of course these aforementioned thoughts are quite critical.

If I could get right to the point, I would have to say that I feel like there is a pretty wide disconnect when it comes to the world of business and the people of the world, and where they stand on how “re-opened” everything really is versus how re-opened everyone thinks it is, or should be.

Case in point: travel to Las Vegas is expensive as fuck, due to supposed demand and inflation.  What should be no more than really a $350 RT give or take anywhere in the continental United States was like an $800 RT per person, resulting in mythical wife and I settling with Greyhound Spirit Air in order to not get to the casinos already broke.  Except when you get to Las Vegas, casinos and restaurants all over the city are operating at less than pre-pandemic capacities, almost all of the buffets are either shut down or completely impossible to get in on account of them being the only ones left, table minimum bets are way higher than they used to be, and it’s basically impossible to be spontaneous or do anything substantial on short notice anymore.

Aside from sleeping the fuck in, two things that I wanted to do at my first time in Vegas in like 5-6 years was to eat at a buffet, and visit Ellis Island.  Neither of which happened because pretty much every buffet in Las Vegas was either closed or required a massively advance reservation, and nobody in my party wanted to go to Ellis Island and even if we did go, there’s no doubt that their restaurant would’ve had a massive wait and been impossible to get in at.

Not that they were that bad by any means, but we had several meals at places I probably wouldn’t have gone to if there were buffets available, not to mention that they were all way more expensive than good Vegas buffets were.

But due to the general feeling of restrictions and handcuffs here and there, I found myself breaking a couple of my own neurotic rules in Las Vegas, out of a feeling that I didn’t have any choice.  Two of them, at the same time, which was no playing where you stay, and no playing at tables with robotic female Asian dealers, because to me, both are omens of horrible luck.  But I did both anyway, and found myself down a good bit in short order, and going to bed feeling agitated and dejected.

Fortunately, a positive gambling session at Paris the following day helped salvage my gambling exploits, but I still left the city an overall net negative in the process, not that such isn’t always the case when it comes to going to Las Vegas, but the point is, there’s a noticeable disconnect between how much the city wants to operate versus the demand of things from the people who are visiting, leading to a lot of obnoxious waits, crowds, rushes and rejections.

Such sentiments weren’t limited to Vegas itself, just the traveling experience in general, is very similar in the sense that airports want to operate in these pandemic-era manners with skeleton crews, early closures and basically taking away all seating from travelers, but not taking into consideration every single flight is basically oversold, because of the reduced number of flights is making every ticket a hot one, and all these people are stacked on top of each other, sitting wherever there’s floor space and an outlet on the wall.

Either way, I don’t regret the trip, and I’m grateful to have gotten away from ordinary life for just a few days, and could sleep in and feel like a self-absorbed adult for that time.  By the time it was time to pick the kids up from grandma’s, I couldn’t wait to see my girls, and give them big hugs and kisses again.  But obviously me being the headcase that I notoriously am, nothing goes by without me overthinking about it, even good shit like small vacations.  But I would wager that I’m not the only one who feels that it’s kind of obnoxious that the commercial world is trying to have their cake and eat it too when they try and use the pandemic as an excuse to operate at 75% when the consumer world is ready and itching for things to be operating at 110%.

Being a man of my word

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A wise man; the Ultimate Warrior to be specific; once said: blah blah blah skeletons, blah blah blah, sacrifice.  Rooooarrrrrrrr snarrllllll

Chris Jericho said it best about the Ultimate Warrior: I don’t know what he said but it sounded cool yaaaayyyyy

Anyway, this isn’t a post about the Ultimate Warrior, Chris Jericho, or professional wrestling, for once.  Those were referenced just to zone in on a single concept, that’s kind of stuck with me, especially when it comes to trying to tempt fate and potentially get the things that I hope to get: sacrifice.

I have this belief that seldom do good things occur without some degree of sacrifice involved.  It’s basically like when kids behave and act good because they want something.  And when I’ve wanted things like, the Braves winning the World Series, I most definitely think that there should be some sacrifice made by all Braves fans, if they really wanted to see a World Series win.

A few weeks ago, I dogged on Dugout Mugs, and basically how I thought they were the most useless products on the planet.  And how in an era of pandemic, wealth inequity, teetering on the precipice of financial ruin everywhere, the absolute last fucking thing anyone needed was a cup made out of a baseball bat.

One of the last things I blathered about how was that I should probably make a sacrificial bet that if the Braves won the World Series that I should get a Dugout Mug, in spite of just how abhorrent I think they are, because if I really wanted to see the Braves win, I should make a sacrifice, after all.

I wasn’t at all writing all that, in an attempt to superstitiously manipulate fate, and put on a show.  Believe me, I have done it before, and naturally it doesn’t work, but my disdain for Dugout Mugs is very much legitimate.  They’re useless products, AND they have a ridiculously ludicrous $70 price point for a fucking hollowed out bat head.  The Braves winning the World Series would definitely cost me something, that I would never purchase in any other circumstance.

And despite the fact that I made this bet with myself, and probably zero people even read or knew about it, when the Braves finished the Astros, I went ahead and bit the bullet and purchased a fucking Dugout Mug.  Thankfully, there was some sort of promotional deal for early purchasers, and I was able to get my mug for not-$70, but it was still basically the cost of a brand new video game once taxes and shipping were applied.

I didn’t have to do it.  I could’ve denied everything and just said eating my words should be enough.  But when it comes to fates and superstition, I am that gullible, so I believe that it’s probably for the best that I remain a man of my word and fulfill the obligation I made for myself if the Braves were to win.  

Considering how long I’d been hoping to see this, $57 is a paltry price to pay, and even if I think this mug and all other Dugout Mugs are bullshit, at least everything will taste something like victory for a little while from it.  Even gross-ass IPAs.