Goddamn Poker Night

So we play cards for a few hours and I'm up. Not up big, just ahead enough to gloat. I then have the great idea to play a game that I learned in high school while hopped up on Mountain Dew during a baseball spring trip in some garage in suburban Detroit during a rain storm with WLLZ in the background playing classic rock. That sounds like some northern Michigan Springsteen song. Something about how the rain was our dreams and 'Nam was around the corner yet all we knew at that moment was baseball and cards and the girls we hadn't yet had and how a milk crate with a piece of plywood on it makes a great card table and my car needs a new battery and we never did win the state championship and how when I see those guys our best memory isn't the games we won or lost but that evening in a cold wet garage and that is what living is all about, not winning or losing but being alive with good friends even though two of them never came back from the 'Nam but I made it back and the family farm ain't what it once was and I had to sell the land and move back to Vietnam and become a photographer but I never made as a photographer and had to move back to Michigan and work in a gas station and end up coaching my old high school baseball team and under my guidance we do win the state championsip but then I get called back to 'Nam and have to stand trial for those kiddie porn pictures I took when I needed money during my photography days and after ten years in prison I come back to Michigan and you know what's still there for me? Rock and roll is there. You see, it never left. It'll always be there for you and that's what I am here for tonight. I found it out and now I am going to show you...1! 2! 3! 4!...hit it!!

The game I suggested we play last night is called by different names in different parts of the country. Just like vagina and book. Simply put you get two cards laid down and front of you and you bet against the pot as to whether or not the next card is 'in between' those two cards. If the value of the next card is outside the first two then you have to place your bet in the pot and if it matches one of the two cards you have to double your bet. Since there were six people there with various degrees of bad luck we managed to raise the pot up to $21. My favorite moment was when new guy, Robin lost twice in row big and The Nation went into hysterics after the second big lost. We decided to quit and play a game of five car stud and the winner takes all. James took all, the bastard. He got dealt a full house. The odds of being dealt a full house are equal to that of a yankee surviving ten years in a Vietnamese prison.



We even learnt a new game last night. Some version of hold 'em, I think it's called. Whatever you call the game where the table shares two cards laid in the midde of the table. Michael liked it because it required less dealing. A valid reason from someone who won't learn to shuffle or at least fake it like his first two or four girlfriends.

Speaking of the Loch Ness Monster...

I had no idea he could walk on land. Amazing.