Most of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But because I try to learn from my mistakes, and the mistakes of my friends (life is too short to make all the good mistakes yourself) I thought this information would prove useful.
1) Be careful when girls are dancing on the bar. If you lean in real close (like Greenspan did) it will look to her as if you are trying to see what kind of panties she is wearing. She will then grab your head and scream at you, and her bartender friend will do the same.
2) Mrs. Freedo loves to read the Poop. When we ran into the Freeds at the Hard Rock, she at first had no idea why I was giving her a kiss hello. When Freedo subsequently referred to me as Paul, she warmed up, gave me a big hug and declared herself to be a daily reader.
3) Mike/Nails has exacting standards for craps shooters. Though my Friday night roll at the Hard Rock made everyone a considerable amount of money (two points, made the hardway -- the second resulted in $81 for Fox and $90 for Reiss) and the fact that 6 members of our group were rocking the table, he classified my turn with the dice as "excellent," falling one point short of "legendary."
4) Greenspan's ADHD is contagious, and Reissberg caught it. Jeremy's impatience manifested itself towards the craps dealers ("you forgot to pay me on my hardway"), the cocktail waitresses ("where is she with my drink?") and the Arizona Cardinals ("let's go play blackjack.") In the final circumstance, he was so addled while waiting for the game to end, I had to beg him to sit still until the clock read 0:00. He even admitted the problem "I want to do every thing at every moment."
5) Zach Morris scored a 1502 on his SAT. Not 1509.
6) Self-hating Jews are better or luckier gamblers than those with pride in Israel.
7) Don't leave the sportsbook until the game is over. I did a couple of things wrong, that aren't quite rules to live by yet. First of all, I bet against my alma mater Syracuse. Secondly, I bet it the night before the game so when Iowa's starting QB went down, I didn't get the benefit of the line changing 3 points, not that it mattered. Turns out Iowa's backup is worse than Perry Patterson and he threw 4 INTs. Thing is, Iowa was still winning with the ball and less than 2 minutes to play. I said to an Iowa fan "Congratulations, you just beat the worst team in the nation by 3 points." But they hadn't. SU got the ball back, tied it, sent it to OT, and then double OT. It was there that the Orange couldn't get the ball into endzone on 8 plays from inside the 5-yard line and lost by 7. But I didn't find any of that out until much later.
For the curious I split my college games, losing SU and Michigan winning Ohio State and Cal.
8) Take the redeye home...the day before everyone else leaves, not the day after. The redeye is a great way to sleep through a flight, and not lose a day to travel/sleep. I seemed to be the only one who was not dead tired. But don't hang out in the casino all day waiting for your flight. You are just asking to lose money.
9) Do not spill coffee on the roulette table. Ton tried this. It resulted in several very angry dealers who had to clean the felt, and towel off each chip individually. The funniest part was, not a drop got on Ton, but the poor woman at the table got coffee on her pants, and on all her chips.
10) When you see TallSkott making the Triple Threat, and Sobel wearing his Kool-Aid smile, you know they are having a good time.
11) If someone you know gets up from the poker table at 4am and says he's going to meet a friend, he's going to a strip club to see a girl he saw last night. If you see him the next morning and he says he just had breakfast with a friend, he didn't get laid.
12) It's usually gay when two guys share food, but not always. Jerry and Ray split a 40 ribeye, and it looked pretty good.
13) 9 Steakhouse in the best restaurant in the world. So many beautiful women. So many beautiful women with so many guys who don't look like they deserve them. At one table, in the middle of their meal, two gorgeous black women sat down next to two fat white dudes. Paid escorts?
14) Jerry has never seen those Keith Hernandez and Walt Frazier commercials.
15) Simpler is better when it comes to marketing. We stayed at
THE Hotel. We opened
THE door with
THE Key. We shopped at
THE Store. What a catchy gimmick. I even bought THE Shirt and THE hat.
16) If you read in the newspaper that a strip club was closed down for serving alcohol despite the suspension of its liquor licence, you can bet The Concierge was there drinking the night before.
17) An unlucky weekend at the tables can lead a man to change his life. Dylan has given up gambling, smoking, drinking, eating, cursing and hating Reiss.
18) Don't antagonize your friends. My luck took a serious turn for the worse when I showed up to watch the Giants-Colts game in a Dwight Freeney jersey. In fact, the number 93 on my jersey would haunt me later when I had aces cracked by 9-3.
