Bachelor Party: Lake Tahoe

I just got back from my bachelor party in Lake Tahoe this past weekend. It was pretty crazy, not The Hangover crazy, but wilder than any partying Uncle Jesse ever did while visiting Tahoe. Of course that is just an assumption, we’ll never know if, off camera, the Tanner boys and possibly the Beach Boys went in on an 8-ball and accidentily knocked off a prostitute or two in some kind of epic bender that went horribly awry. One can only wonder.

Gambling trips are all about creating a good omen off the bat. If you go into Nevada with a negative attitude, you’re going to leave Nevada with negative dollars in your wallet. When we got off the plane in Reno, we found out Ryan Braun was exonerated for steroid use and would no longer serve a 50 game suspension. That is a good omen and got the trip off to a hot start. Then, when signing up for a Players Card in the casino, I won a free trip to the buffet which was one of the top sign-up bonuses available. It was going to be a great trip. Buffets are awesome.

Two hours later and I’m down $200. I couldn’t win a bet to save my life. No one could. Well, except Cody who is the luckiest son of a bitch alive, not kidding. By the end of the trip, the pit bosses were just handing cash over to him in order to save the casino time and grief. The remaining four of us went to bed Thursday night discouraged.

Friday was ski day. This picture below sums up ski day.


Friday night we went down to the local Irish bar for happy hour, then decided to get food before, whoops! hey guys let’s all play in this $100 buy-in no-limit Texas Hold em poker tournament! So much for dinner.

After dominating for several hours, I ended up taking 2nd place out of 32 dudes. I would like to say I played well, but I could tell I was just getting really lucky based on all disgusted looks I was getting from knocking out players with only marginal hands and big river cards. One guy harassed me for a good hour or so during the breaks based on a call I made that took him out of the tournament. I wish I could remember the hand but like I was saying before, I just came from an Irish happy hour.

That night we partied our asses off. We went to Your My Boy Blue! Montbleu casino down the street, took turns ordering rounds of shots at the bar, then decided to head back to Vex nightclub at Harrah’s. I remember being at the club and dancing like an asshole, having a great time, then I time-travelled and just all of a sudden woke up in bed. With Finally Miley.



I have no recollection of how I got home or how I ended up in a lover’s embrace with Finally Miley. Based on reports from Joe, Ding and I ended up jumping on stage at the club where the go-go dancers were dancing. Apparently security allowed it, they probably let it slide because it was my bachelor party. They probably knew it was my bachelor party, because all that night, I was constantly screaming, this is my bachelor party!

A further report revealed that Ding disappeared for awhile, then reemerged in the hotel room like an hour later where he fixed himself a drink and then proceeded to stand creepily in the middle of the room with the lights off, totally zoned out. In the morning, we found him sleeping in the shower with the water running. Good job, Ding.

We were all moving a little slower on Saturday. It was very subdued. I mean, I still stayed up and gambled all night, but the energy was lacking. We tried repeating the steps we made on Fri night but it wasn’t quite the same. We really captured lightning in a bottle that Friday night.

I lost a bunch of money sat night but still came out ahead overall on the trip. Joe had to drag me from the poker table to our awaiting bus to take us to the airport Sunday morning. Then I bothered everyone on the way back home with my offensive smells. It was hilarious. What a great trip.

Point-Counterpoint: Doomsday Preppers

I just started watching this reality television program Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic channel. It’s about people that are preparing for a cataclysmic event. These people then get graded by a team of survival specialists on their likelihood of surviving said event.

I’ve got a lot to say on the subject of Doomsday prepping.

In the two episodes I’ve seen, most of the fears are based on natural disasters, disease outbreaks, massive oil shortages, etc. I have to be honest, part of the reason I like the show is the suspense before each vignette, because eventually someone is going to just straight up say, zombie apocalypse. I’m preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

When that happens, I’m going to do a Tiger Woods’ fist pump, then call Joe Daniels and talk to him about it.

Point: Doomsday Preppers are on to something…

These people are nuts, but not THAT nuts. Yes, it seems mostly silly to live your life planning for the end of days as a full time endeavor, but I don’t think it hurts anyone to have a contingency plan in place.

1. The first segment was about a retired couple that created a self-sustaining compound out of shipping containers. They had a mini farm, built backup solar powered generators, ran evacuation drills, and shot a bunch of guns for target practice. Unusual, yes, but when my Grandpa retired, he sat around and watched bowling all day. At least these people found a hobby.

2. Experts don’t know shit. The show always ends a segment with the likelihood of the event happening. They’ll say something like, this blah blah blah event has 1.3% chance of occurring. Bullshit. No one knows when the next super volcano is going to erupt or the next asteroid is going to hit the earth. Some egghead is just pulling numbers out of his ass. I know, we can smell our own.

And I don’t care if the probability of an event is .0000013%, it could still happen. The odds of winning the powerball are like 1 in a billion but eventually someone always wins.


Counterpoint: Nope, Doomsday Preppers really are Looney Tunes.

1. The show gets weird when they show the outwardly-normal suburban families preparing for disaster. These people have basements and bedrooms packed with food and supplies and seem to spend most of their free time stockpiling even more rations. I bet the camera people double dip and recycle the footage for the next episode of Hoarders. Winning, said the Nat Geo TV Executive.

2. I think it is really funny when these people claim that they hope their event will never happen, they just want to be ready for it. Again, bullshit. Nothing would make these people happier than to be vindicated from all the dirty looks of their neighbors. If said event never happens, then they are delusional and possibly have OCD. If said event does happen, BINGO.

3. Methinks that some of these Doomsday Preppers are making too many pre-emptive raids on their food pantries. The majority of the people seemed to be terribly out of shape. Perhaps they should worry more about heart failure and less about the Earths north and south poles reversing.

Conclusion

The moral of this blog is to not judge these characters so harshly. Maybe keeping a couple cases of water and a few weeks of canned goods in the basement is a good idea. And it never hurts to challenge yourself with hypothetical scenarios and mental exercises for an armageddon event. What would you do, where would you hide, who would you save, what would be your reason to keep on living?

Not to get too sentimental, but with that special time in mid-February fast approaching, I don’t need to tell you what I’d be fighting for...