…or quad sevens for that matter.

In the midst of playing out my Party Poker bonus, I decided to play a $15 NL multi-table tournament. I’ve been having trouble cashing in these gigantor tournaments. Usually I just end up blowing a couple hours and losing somewhere shy of the bubble, but I keep playing them because I really need the practice. The $15 NL tourney had 1880 players. It paid out all the way to 220th place. Under usual circumstances, this would mean I would place somewhere around 380th place. Not so close to the money that I could really beat myself up about a particular play, but far enough that I had already blown a couple hours playing. Tonight, everything seemed to be working out perfectly. If I made a hand, someone with a draw would call me and miss (and sometimes they’d still call the rivier. I only had one heads up all-in where I was behind and I pulled out two pair to crush an overpair. But as well as things were going, I still didn’t make it to the real money. Instead, I took 120th place. Which sounds pretty lousy on the surface, but it’s not terrible to outlast more than 90% of the field. But the way I lost was the interesting part. Check it out:

#Game No : 2091211965
***** Hand History for Game 2091211965 *****
NL Hold’em Trny:12442080 Level:12 Blinds (500/1000) – Sunday, May 22, 23:48:00 EDT 2005
Table Multi-Table(342119) Table #6 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 9
Seat 1: JerryPie9 ( $8650 )
Seat 3: MAXIMUS07 ( $15564 )
Seat 4: EIGHTS_WILD ( $6695 )
Seat 5: DAVDOG ( $6937 )
Seat 6: gus ( $7390 )
Seat 7: todgrif ( $35039 )
Seat 8: rebelfolk ( $27852 )
Seat 9: DAYTONKID ( $36585 )
Seat 10: PureButter ( $19964 )
Trny:12442080 Level:12
Blinds (500/1000)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to gus [ Ad 6d ]
gus raises [2000].
todgrif folds.
rebelfolk folds.
DAYTONKID calls [2000].
There will be a break in 1 minute(s)
PureButter folds.
JerryPie9 folds.
MAXIMUS07 folds.
EIGHTS_WILD folds.
DAVDOG folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Td, 7d, 3c ]
gus is all-In [5390]
DAYTONKID calls [5390].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9d ]
** Dealing River ** [ 7s ]
gus shows [ Ad, 6d ] a flush, ace high.
DAYTONKID shows [ 7h, 7c ] four of a kind, sevens.
DAYTONKID wins 16280 chips from the main pot with four of a kind, sevens.
Player gus finished in 120 place and received $28.2
gus has left the table.

Quad sevens. Jesus. A few hands before this I had been severly crippled. I can’t find the log, but someone slowplayed and pushed at just the right time for me to feel confident enough to call a hand where I was behind. I don’t know why I was so interested in this A6 (especially in early position), but I was really married to the idea of sealing those blinds. And when two of my suit showed up, pushing was definitely the only option. Unfortunately those damn sevens. Arrrggg. They’re driving me nuts!

Oh yeah, and yes, I do feel dirty for having used a Monty Python reference in my title.

And I’m not just talking about Cuba Gooding Jr. Austin is the “Live Music Capital of the World”. A lot of it is shitty music, but if you can filter through it all you can still find a good amount of high quality music. But if you want to listen to the radio, that’s a whole other story. The vast majority of it really does suck. It sucks on the level of Dallas radio or even worse, Oklahoma City radio (RAWK 100.5 THE K-A-T-T). But SXSW introduced me to one thing keeps me from killing myself at work – WOXY. WOXY is an internet radio station out of Ohio. OHIO. Everyone should listen to it. (on a side note, I’m having this weird deja vu about mentioning WOXY – if I have in fact already mentioned it, remember that I’m really tired and it’s past beer-thirty).

In other “Live Music Capital” news, I want to buy a new bass guitar. Not that I have a lot of time to play it, but I want one anyway. But I want it cheap. And I want it to have a story. That way, I can use it as my famous musician gimmick. I’m not talking a good story like it was handed down from generation to generation, something with a little more bite. I want the bass guitar that a struggling musician who moved here from Borger, TX bought when he first moved to Austin to follow his dream to be a successful musician. But since he had no skills he couldn’t get a job or a gig. He tried busking on the streets to make ends meet, but it just wouldn’t work. He borrowed money from his parents, who bought him an apartment and gave him some money to get him started on his music career. But instead of actually becoming a performer, he partied with a bunch of musicians, developed a nasty crack habit and was slowly deteriorating into a shell of his former self. His parents cut him off, he was evicted from his apartment and now he he’s back on the streets trying to find his next crack fix. That’s when I step in and buy his mint condition Fender P-Bass from him for $25. If you happen to run into this guy, give him my name, I’ve got $25 (in cash!) just waiting for such an occasion. Make sure the P Bass is mint condition though, I don’t want any crack residue on my new bass guitar, that’s just nasty.

So my only niece has been introduced to AIM, which is kinda cool because I don’t get to see her much, but it’s also kinda frustrating and makes me realized how incapable I am of dealing with children (she’s 11). I mean, she can talk; she can use the internet; when is she going to be able to hold intelligent conversation where we make scarcastic remarks about her dad together? Instead our IM sessions are generally lacking in the content area.

Multiple times she’s IMed me during the day and asked me what I was up to. I guess that’s not really telling of her age, since my parents often do the same thing when they call me during the day. “I don’t know mom, it’s 3pm on a weekday, what do you think I’m doing?” Anyway back to the subject at hand. My niece is a superbig (apparently) fan of Green Day. She luuuuuuuuvvvvvsss American Idiot, which is the her favoritest CD. So the other day, my niece IMs me and says, “hey, I’m going to send you a URL”. I go to this website, and it’s a yahoo music site that has a bunch of Green Day videos. She says, “watch the Basketcase video, it’s a really good song.” Whhhahahaaaaatttttt??????? Are you kidding me? In case you aren’t familiar with Green Day, the song Basketcase was on the Dookie album, which came out in 1994. 1994 is also the year that my niece was born. I’ve been listening to Basketcase since the year my niece was born, and she was “introducing” me to Green Day! Absolutely appalling. Not that Green Day is bad at all, in fact, I’m happy that she’s listening to Green Day and not the other bullshit that’s being fed down our throats these days.

One other thing to note on the IMing thing. My niece has horrendous grammar. Kids, stop using all the fucking cutesy 133t speak. It’s lame-o. Seriously. And learn how to spell! (I’m preparing for my future role in the remake of Grumpy Old Presidents)

Sumo wrestling is coming to Las Vegas! If I go see this, I can put off flying all the way across the globe to visit Japan. And I can gamble at the same time! I know it’s ridiculously expensive, but I have this odd fascination with Sumo and need to take advantage of the opportunity to see it. Who’s with me?

On an unrelated note, I saw pinback at Emo’s. They were really fucking good. Everyone should buy their albums and go to their shows. And the opener “Pit Er Pat” was pretty good too, though I only caught a couple songs. I’ll have to check them out later.

In case you don’t know who Akebono is, check out the link.

Last month, Josh and I went to see the Mars Volta. Seeing the Mars Volta was definitely an experience. It didn’t “require flash player” in person, but some earplugs would have been nice. This was the third loudest show I’ve ever been to in my life and while that may not seem very loud in the grand scheme of things, you have to understand that I’ve been to a lot of concerts in my time, so getting into the top ten is an accomplishment.

I’m really torn as to how to rate the concert. I constantly had two thoughts running through my head: “This is the coolest thing ever!” and “Are we at a fucking jazz club? Because there are six guys playing different songs on that stage.” Not to mention the fact that their songs were around 20 minutes long each. According to the review of the show that I read, they played 8 songs over the course of 2.5 hours. Go ahead and do the math.

But what does this have to do with Akebono?
As a concert snob, I get really annoyed with people getting in my way and doing other stupid stuff. So when an Akebon-looking guy pushed his way directly in front of me during the show and started rocking out (keeping in mind that this is a sold-out show so there isn’t a lot of space between people) I was irate. He was unbelievably into the show, singing along with every song, throwing his sweaty body all over everyone. I turned to Josh and said “don’t worry, a guy this big, he can’t possibly keep up this pace for more than fifteen minutes.” Sure enough, fifteen minutes later he was tired and on his way somewhere that wasn’t in front of me. Thank you, McDonald’s, I’m loving it.

All in all, I’d have to say if you enjoy the Mars Volta albums, you should go see them live, but make sure you listen to the newest album (Frances the mute) because it’s much different than deloused in the comatorium.

North Beach, SanFran
So I took my first trip out to Cali to visit kat in San Jose. As wtih all Katstavo extravaganzas, we hit a good number of stops for a relatively short time. After hanging out and helping Kat move into a new place we headed down to North Beach in downtown San Fransisco to eat dinner and hang out with Malcolm and Julianna, who happened to be SanFran for the weekend at the same time as us. We ate at the Stinking Rose, which is apparently known for their generous use of garlic. The food was incredibly tasty and they did not disappoint with their promise on the garlic. After dinner we headed to a bar called the Bamboo Hut (very similar to headhunters in Austin), where Kat and I had been before dinner having some happy hour drinks.

Screaming Bachelorettes with Penis Hats
The next day we made the two hour drive out to Napa Valley to check out some wineries. First stop was Freemark Abbey, which has some damn tasty wines. I’d recommend anything they’ve got. We ended up buying a few of their Voingier white and a dessert wine that tasted like pineapple upside-down cake. Delicious. Next stop was Charlies Krug. Their stuff was alright, but still not on the level of Freemark Abbey. Last stop of the day was Francis Ford Coppola. Ann had warned me that Coppola was a mediocre wine and that the winery was a tourist trap and damn could she not have been any more right. Ann had related a terrible story about a packed winery full of screaming bachelorettes with penis hats, fighting her way to the wine tasting, only to be disappointed by the wines. I unfortunately, did not heed her advice and while there were no penis hats, the place was packed with a bunch of obnoxious people and the wine was mediocre. Arg.

Poker?
No trip would be complete without poker and with a casino less than 10 minutes from my hotel, it’s no surprise that Kat and I payed a visit to Bay 101. Bay 101 has a fairly large poker room, probably the biggest poker room I’ve ever been to. After waiting on the list for an hour or so, we finally got seated at different 3-6 tables. My table had it’s share of maniacs, mostly Asian guys who raised, reraised, and capped pots often. They were seated between seats 1-4. Seat 5 was a whitey mcgee, who was hitting like crazy when I first sat down and then ended up dumping his money back to everyone else with a lot of second best hands. Seat 8 was a mexican guy who was the spitting image of my uncle Albert, only a foot shorter, complete with his shirt buttoned to his navel showing off his chest hair and the top of his beer belly while he cursed every hand in spanish with his buddy sitting behind him. “Joooo wants to raise me? Dees guy keeps eh rasiing me!” Seat 9 was a guy who had just terrible luck. Every time he had a good hand (which wasn’t often) he ran into bigger hands, generally by me. In the two hours that I played poker that night, I had pocket aces 4 times. And I had a number of other pocket pairs that held up as well. It was insane. After a couple hours Kat and I were both up over $100 and decided it was time to cash outta there and get some rest.

The next day I was heading out, so we didn’t have a whole lot to do and headed back to the poker room for some final action before I flew back to Austin. This time we went straight to the 6-12 table because there was no wait and we were both curious to see how we’d hold up. Interesting thing about 6-12 at Bay 101, it runs exactly like the 3-6 game. I mean, all the betting/raising/etc. I’m not sure if this is common or not, but it seemed to me that it had something to do with the fact that Bay 101 uses $2 chips for 6-12, so it really is like 3-6. I continually screwed up when calling raises “I’m going to raise to $18. I mean, $36.” Once again we had a couple maniacs at the table. My side of the table was all players that played well. They didn’t stay with junk and most of the itme when they were taking control of the pot, you were probably behind. I had one really notable hand. There were a couple maniacs across the table that were betting and hitting with anything. One of them in particular had somewhere around $700 sitting in front of him and I was determined to get it from him. I personally enjoy turning the tables on people and killing them with their own hands. Now I understand that it’s generally a stupid idea to play junk and it can get really costly, but something struck me when I picked up 6-4 offsuit and I was determined to ride it out. When the preflop betting got capped with 5 players, I was really starting to think I had made a bad decision. When the flop came out 10-6-4, I knew this was going to be the hand. Flop betting got capped with four players. The turn was a 3, betting narrows it down to me and the maniac. The river hits another 6, maniac bets, I raise and he gets really pissed off, asking people at his table what I could possibly have to back up my betting history. He angrily flips over pocket kings and dares me to show my hand. I non-chanantly call out “G-Ride, the 64 impala” as I flip my cards over where he can see them. Maniac was livid. He proceeded to dump the rest of his money trying to win with another junk hand. And it wasn’t just me he was out to get, it was anyone who played good cards. In the end, he did dump all of his money to someone on my side of the table and rebought. It’s nice to see maniacs get taken.