I can play!

Date: Fri, Jun 8, 2007

Thanks to the quiet diplomacy of WSOP commissioner Jeffrey Pollack and to many of my fellow poker players vouching for my character, Harrah’s has decided to allow me to play in the remainder of the WSOP and lifted the ban on my entering their properties. I’m still learning the details of why this was handled this way but it’s looking more and more like a big mistake. As usual everyone at Harrah’s was friendly and professional. I will post more details as they become available but I can now eat at the buffet without fear of arrest.

I want to thank everyone who supported me from the bottom of my heart. It is very gratifying to know how much my friends care.

I guess I won’t be needing the “Free Quiet Lion!” hats and t-shirts after all.

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Fall of the Roman Empire

Date: Sat, Jun 2, 2007

In an overreaction of thermonuclear proportions to my recent good luck, Harrah’s has barred me from playing in the World Series of Poker, and in fact from even setting foot in any of their hotels.

When Harrah’s Entertainment bought Caesars Palace, many industry pundits predicted they would have trouble managing the high-roller business. Harrah’s was built on the high-margin, low-volume player. They produce a predictable win, cost little in comps, and there are many, many of them. High rollers demand games with a slim house advantage, generous comps, and the possibility of actually walking away with a win once in a while.

Harrah’s doesn’t like that.

For 40 years, Caesars Palace had a reputation for welcoming big action. At one point they were the biggest place in town. They loved big players and didn’t sweat if somebody won. They wanted to keep him coming back. Eventually the house edge would kick in, but for now they’d let the player enjoy his good fortune.

That reputation is gone.

On May 10, Harrah’s sent certified letters to several high rollers informing them that their business was no longer wanted at Caesars Palace or any of the other Harrah’s properties in Nevada, California, and Arizona. I was one of them. I called the office of Tom Jenkins, regional vice president, and got a call back from Terry Byrnes, the VP of customer service. He told me I was being 86ed because they couldn't figure out how to make a profit off me.

Now understand, the only games I play are poker and video poker. In poker, the house makes a 100% guaranteed profit straight off the top. In video poker, the house controls every aspect of the game: the paytables, the amount of the house edge, and the promotions and incentives they offer. There is no way to use skill – or even cheat – to beat video poker. You can’t count cards. You can’t peek at the dealer’s hole card. It’s a machine. The best you could possibly hope for is to play computer-perfect, which I don’t, and even if that were possible the machine still has a maximum theoretical payout chosen by the casino. The only thing the casino can’t control is luck. One reason I like video poker is because you can get lucky and win. You hit a royal flush every 40,000 hands or so. If you’re lucky enough to hit two, you’re ahead! If you hit three, you’re ahead for a long time!

Boy, have I been lucky at Harrah’s.

I hit four huge royal flushes in the last year at three of the Las Vegas Harrah’s properties. Not surprisingly, I’m ahead, although I’ve put 80% of it back. This seems to rub them the wrong way. But I have trouble imagining the thought process that would cause someone to decide that kicking out one of your most loyal customers is an appropriate solution to the problem of him having extremely good luck. If they think the machines are too loose, make them tighter. If they think they are giving me too much in comps, give less. They control every aspect of the game. Except luck. And kicking out players who have been lucky makes about as much sense as banning people from playing the lottery because they win it.

Reactions to lucky streaks in video poker are not unique to Harrah's, but the usual response is to cut down on the promotional offers to players who aren't losing as much as they hoped. Even that is potentially unsound business: lucky players get unlucky and you want them to be at your place when that happens.

If it weren’t for the WSOP, I’d laugh about this rather than cry. I don’t think they’re trying to punish me, I just think they don’t understand their business and are compounding one costly mistake – offering way too much in comps and incentives to video-poker players – with another. My friends, if you can’t figure out how to make money from people who only play games with a built-in house edge, you may as well give up on the casino business and close your doors.

In the meantime, know that the winner of the main event this year cannot be considered a true world champion.

Not when the Quiet Lion isn’t allowed to play.

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Lucky Me

Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2007

It sounded like the start of a letter to Penthouse Forum. My girlfriend Jenni’s 18-year-old twin sisters were coming to Vegas for the weekend. Eighteen isn’t old enough to drink or gamble, so I had to find something for them to do. Adam Ant was running through my head but instead I got them Ricky Martin tickets. For Jenni and her roommate I got VIP seats to the opening of the new Palms theater with Gwen Stefani. Me, I’d rather smoke a Cohiba out on the North Show Terrace at the Wynn or get in between the 400-thread-count Egyptian sheets with Jenni and watch Rounders for the 37^th time. Or just watch Jenni. But the girls weren’t in town yet so I went over to Caesars Palace to play a little video poker.

I had been asking the bosses at Caesars to put in one or two of my favorite machines: $100 video poker where you only needed to bet $300 to get the maximum payout on the Royal Flush rather than the usual $500. I strolled into the high-limit room and saw them right in the front, where a trio of Red, White, and Blue slot machines used to be. I drew a marker and had them set the machine for credit play, so it wouldn’t stop every time I hit a payout of $1200 or more. Instead a watcher would watch me and write down all the information to report to the IRS.

The marker lasted about as long as a lap dance from a 20-year-old stripper, and a second marker vanished just as quick. I texted Jenni to meet the limo driver when she arrived at McCarran, then stuck the Nokia back in the cell-phone pocket of my Lucky Brands. Jeans have had that pocket as long as I can recall, back even before cell phones were invented let alone small enough to fit there. What the hell was it originally for? I took out another marker.

It was one of those gambling sessions you always remember, and not in a good way. I got stuck fast. Then I dug the hole deeper and deeper. I wanted to get unstuck before Jenni arrived. But by the time her plane landed all I had to show for my gambling was a stack of markers big enough to plug up the toilet if you tried to flush them. I licked my wounds and took Jenni over to the Wynn where we ate at the only gourmet restaurant that was still open, Corsa. She had an eggplant parmesan that would make Julia Child swear off red meat. During dinner and after, we remembered all the things we enjoyed about each other.

I came back in the morning and played the same machine some more. I couldn’t hit anything so I went over to the Palms to play in the Ultimate Blackjack Tour tournament. I advanced all the way to the semifinals, where I got seated at top pro Anthony Curtis’s left. I decided my strategy would be to get one chip ahead of him and then copy him. Of course, we both busted.

I went back and played some more and kept losing. I thought I had to bottom out eventually but I finally gave up stuck a whopping $150k. I took Jenni to Okada for some Divine Droplets. Good sake drowns all sorrows.

The next day my parachute finally opened. I played and played on the same money and then held the queen and ten of clubs and in popped a royal flush for $240,000. Unstuck! I had been hammering on these $100 machines all over town for a couple years now and this was my first royal flush. I snapped a pic with my Nokia and sent it to Jenni. Then I hit the ducks, twice, for $60k a pop. It was the kind of day that makes you feel like you can walk on water in your black Bruno Maglis. The girls all went off to their concerts and we went for a smoke afterwards overlooking the Lake of Dreams.

I came back Sunday morning and started feeding the ducks again. At first, I wanted to get unstuck and stubbornly played the same machine till it hit. Now I was on a roll and wanted to play it while it was hot. There was something vaguely wrong with that logic but I couldn’t quite figure out what. I was stuck about $60k on the morning when it dealt me the ten through ace of diamonds.

A dealt royal flush, my first ever, and it was another $240k. Now I was playing on the house’s money, big time, and I decided to just keep riding my streak. I had clubs and diamonds; now I was going for hearts and spades. Royal for the cycle, yeah.

I had to wrap up at eight because the girls had spent the afternoon shopping for me at Nordstrom and wanted me to do a fashion show for them before they went home that night. They were the kind of clothes that would make Paris Hilton drop her cell phone. The girls went home and I had dinner at the Country Club with my friend Barry and the 2004 Justin Isosceles.

Monday morning I got up but my machine was being played by one of the local high-limit players. Bastard. He told me he’d be wrapping up around 9:30 if I wanted to play it then. Oh yeah, I did. I got coffee and came back around 9:30 and started playing. Around ten, a supervisor approached and asked me if the technicians could check something. I wasn’t surprised. When machines pay out like that they always check to make sure the chips are sealed and so on. I cashed out and watched as they opened up the machine. To my great surprise, though, they found something they didn’t like and told me they were going to have to shut it down and change the chip. Apparently it had been set looser than they had intended. They were going to tighten it up, which would take them about an hour. Since I was scheduled to fly out to Reno in the afternoon that seemed like a good place to stop for the weekend with a very, very nice win. The kind that dreams are made of.

Lucky me.

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Watch Identity on NBC March 23, 2007

Date: Tue, Mar 20, 2007

It is scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, right before the Miss USA pageant. Quiet Lion fans will not be disappointed.

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Fireside chat

Date: Mon, Mar 5, 2007

I had snapped a photo of her on the job running cocktails at Sapphire, the lounge at Harrah’s Reno. Her uniform top looked like it came from Victoria’s Secret and the way she filled it out it wasn’t going to stay secret for long. So when Gabe said he had plans with Sarah tonight but did I want to come along I didn’t think too hard before inviting them both to join me at the White Orchid, the gourmet restaurant at the Peppermill.

“I like those uniform tops you wear at Sapphire,” I said to the 22-year-old over a trio of tuna tartare and a bottle of 2005 Rombauer Chardonnay.

“Those aren’t a uniform,” she said. “They like us to dress edgy.” I imagined her fishing through her lingerie drawer looking for something to wear to work. I took a gulp of the Chardonnay. Edgy worked for me. We decanted the 2002 Darioush Cabernet to drink with dinner. Sarah had peppercorn New York steak and Gabe and I had the elk, medium rare.

“Is elk some Reno thing?” asked Sarah. She had grown up in Las Vegas and moved to Reno to go to college. People ended up in Reno for some reason or another. Sarah was half-Jewish, half-Lutheran and straightened her hair every other day to keep it from becoming a cascading mass of dark curls. I would have liked to see the curls. There was a lull in the conversation so I asked her if she had ever worked as a stripper. She smiled and shook her head.

“I did do a pole dance once on amateur night,” she said. “But I was flipping my head around and crashed it into the pole.” I could see how that might bring an end to a stripping career. “I have some friends who are strippers,” she said. “You know the worst thing about the job isn’t the customers – it’s the other girls.” Apparently it was a very competitive business and some of them played dirty.

It was 9:15 Sunday night in Reno and we closed the place down. It’s not that there wasn’t a lot of action in the Biggest Little City in the World – it’s that gourmet restaurants weren’t where it was at. But Sarah knew about a little lounge tucked away in the back of the Peppermill called the Fireside Room. She led. We followed.

Like the rest of the Peppermill, the Fireside Room was decorated in lights and colors that were trendy in 1980, either a tribute to the death of disco or what actually killed it. We sat at the large circular booth surrounding the gas fireplace and ordered a 60-ounce scorpion with three straws. The waitress was Brazilian. There was some kind of nutty hotel exchange program going on and Reno was full of Brazilian waitresses for two weeks. She asked if we wanted the scorpion blended or on the rocks. I said rocks and she brought it blended with a quart of whipped cream on top. It tasted like a strawberry daiquiri. I wondered how the Reno girls were faring in Rio de Janeiro.

I had brought a couple of Dunhills so Gabe and I lit up and enjoyed them by the fire. We ordered another scorpion, on the rocks this time. By the time we finished the cigars, Sarah was too warm and wanted to move to a booth away from the fire. There was a thin man sitting alone there so we asked if we could share and he said fine. His name was Chris.

I asked Chris if he lived in Reno and he said no, Nevada City. I pretended I knew where that was. Sarah actually knew. I asked what he did.

“Actually, I’m having some health issues right now and I’m not working.” I looked him over and offered that he looked healthy. “They’re not visible,” he said. “I have about a year to live.” Chris had aneurisms in a couple places on major blood vessels. They could go at any time.

Sarah hailed the Brazilian and asked for a cocktail menu. Without needing to ask what any of us wanted, she ordered two huge drinks that looked like they came from an ice cream parlor for Gabe and Chris, a pomegranate margarita for herself and a pomtini for me. I guess when you run cocktails for a living you get to know what people drink.

Chris said, “I’m trying to decide right now if I want to have an operation. There’s only a 20% survival rate, but if it works—” He motioned like a plane taking off. “I’m good indefinitely.”

I asked if he had found the very best doctor in the world for his condition.

“There’s a guy in Texas,” he said. “He’s done 300 of these. My doctor’s only done two. I would be his third.” He looked down. “And his second survival.”

“Doctors are like auto mechanics,” I said. “For this, you don’t just want someone competent. You want the best in the world.”

Chris nodded. “Funny,” he said. “I used to be an auto mechanic. I worked on Ferraris my whole life.”

“Then you understand,” I said. He nodded.

Sarah asked if Chris would take a picture of the three of us. He did.

“Ferrari will take me back at any time,” he said. “If I get this health problem handled I’d like to go back to work. There’s an opening in Seattle.”

The Brazilian came to tell us she was leaving and had to close out the check. It was late anyway.

“I live in Seattle,” I told Chris, and gave him my name.

“When you get there,” I said, “look me up.”

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Interview with a vampire

Date: Tue, Feb 27, 2007

He wasn’t sporting a three-day growth of beard because it was trendy, even for thirty-something guys in Reno. He just hadn’t shaved.

He was sitting at the video-poker machine at the end of the row at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, formerly the Reno Hilton, formerly the MGM Grand. He was waiting to be paid for a jackpot when I hit one myself. His face fell. He looked at the five figures flashing on my screen like the captain of the high-school chess team looks at the head cheerleader: it was something he wanted but something he would never get. “You come here a lot?” he asked. Sometimes, I said. I asked his name and, casting his eyes quickly around the room like a kid about to steal a Snickers bar from the candy rack at the drug store, he hesitated and told me.

I asked him if he lived in Reno. “Near here,” he said. “How about you?” I told him Seattle. “My girlfriend – wife, actually – is from Oregon,” he said. “You must get a lot of tax forms playing that big.” I told him yeah, I did. He said, “I do this for a living. I keep all my money in silver. I haven’t filed a tax return for 10 years. You don’t have to file a return. As long as you don’t, they can’t do anything to you.” I said I expected they could throw you in prison. He looked like I’d just dinged the door on his newly restored 1960 Chevy. “No, the income tax is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled that.”

I nodded. “Good luck to you, sir,” I said. Then I asked him if he showed an ID when they gave him one of these tax forms. He said yes. “Does it have your address on it?” It’s a mailbox, he said. “Then the mailbox company has your real address,” I said. “Well, they did at one time,” he said. He had moved around a lot. “Aren’t you worried they’ll show up at your mailbox one day and cart you off to prison?”

“What are they gonna do?” he said. “Stake it out for two weeks?

“Maybe,” I said. “If they want you bad enough.” They came with the money and the tax form, which I signed hurriedly like you signed your monthly rent check. He asked if I was married. “Used to be,” I said.

“I have an 18-year-old wife,” he said. “Well, it’s not a legal marriage.”

“Eighteen,” I said. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-five.”

I told him I was going to have to put this in my seamy underblog but given the circumstances I wouldn’t use his real name. “I’ll call you Marty,” I said.

“Why Marty?” I shrugged. “Can you call me Scooter? I’ve always wanted to be called Scooter. Wait, on second thought you’d better not. Everybody knows I want to be called Scooter.”

“I’ll call you Marty.” I started playing again and he showed no signs of leaving. “So how’d you meet this 18-year-old, Marty? On the Internet?” He said yeah. “Chat room? ‘Middle-aged guys seek teenage girls who like daddy types’?” His eyes widened like I’d given him a good lead he hadn’t thought of.

“It was actually on a site called VampireFreaks.com,” Marty said. I whipped out my notepad and started scribbling. I wanted to remember this nightmare when I woke up.

“Is that a good place to meet 18-year-old girls?” I asked. He shrugged.

“She was 16 when we met. We chatted online for a couple weeks and then met in person. On her 18^th birthday I drove to Oregon to pick her up and get married.”

“Eugene, Oregon?” I asked.

Marty’s eyes narrowed. “How’d you know?”

I shrugged. “Eugene is where girls like that live,” I said. I looked at him. “Did you consider the possibility that when you got to Eugene you’d find an FBI agent waiting for you?”

“Yeah,” said Marty. I played a few hands of video poker but he was quiet like anything he said could be used against him.

“Why marry an 18-year-old?” I asked.

“We have a lot in common,” Marty said. “We like food, and wine. And sex.”

“Wine?” I said. “But she’s not old enough to drink.”

“Oh, anyone can drink wine,” Marty said. “It’s a religious exemption. The Supreme Court ruled.”

I blinked, but decided not to pursue it. “So what does she do all day when you’re out gambling?”

“Hangs out at home,” he said. “She’s not old enough to come into the casino.” He brightened. “Pretty soon I’m going to buy a sailboat and sail to Hawaii.”

“There’s no gambling in Hawaii,” I said. “What are you going to do for a living?” He shrugged.

“Say,” said Marty, “How’d you like to meet my wife? We could have dinner!” I was in too far to stop now so I said I’d love to. I told him to meet me at the steakhouse at seven. I cashed out and went up to the suite to start writing.

At seven I came down to the steakhouse. I half-assumed they wouldn’t show but Marty was right on time. The vampire girl I expected to be all decked out in Goth but she surprised me by showing up in Gap instead. She was cute with shoulder-length blonde hair and a pink sweater that covered the kind of territory Lewis and Clark would have abandoned their expedition to explore. I’ll call her Natasha. I sat opposite her with Marty in the middle. I ordered 2002 B.V. George Latour. Natasha didn’t get carded although, to be fair, she was almost 19 and looked it.

I told Natasha I expected her to be all Goth and she said she didn’t do that any more. She didn’t like being around all the negative attitudes. She just had the one piercing now, on her belly button. Did I want to see? Of course I did. She lifted her top to show a cute teenage navel with a stickpin through it. I don’t remember much about the stickpin.

“So, do you like vampires?” I asked.

“I am a vampire,” said Natasha.

“I thought you had to kill someone and suck their blood to be a vampire,” I said.

She scrunched her face. “No,” she said sweetly, “you just have to have a fantasy of sucking blood – or wanting your blood to be sucked.” She glanced knowingly at Marty.

“So you had ads posted on VampireFreaks that you wanted to suck each other’s blood?”

“Actually,” said Natasha, “he wanted to deflower a virgin and I wanted to be deflowered.” I ordered a bunch of appetizers to share and, true to Marty’s word, they both enjoyed the food and wine. “I still have my lesbian virginity,” she said. “I keep trying to meet someone online but the ones who want to meet me always turn out to be guys.” I nodded sympathetically.

Natasha suggested we go up to my suite after dinner so Marty could sober up. I figured the worst that could happen was they would kill me, suck my blood, and steal my PIN number, so I led them up. Marty asked for some water and I pointed to the $6 liter of Voss on the counter. He poured himself a glass. Natasha asked for one and he poured one for her too.

We sat on the sofa awhile. Marty was pretty quiet, probably thinking about his sailboat. Natasha took off her shoes and put her bare feet up on the coffee table. With the toenails painted red, I figured if she dangled those feet out a car window they were good for six or seven blocks of gridlock. I snapped a photo and her cheeks turned red to match her toenails but she didn’t move.

Natasha said it was close to her 19^th birthday. Marty piped up. “Yeah, you’re gonna be too old for me.”

“You keep saying that,” said Natasha.

“It’s just a joke,” Marty said.

Natasha turned to me. “There ought to be some limit on how many times you can say something and have it still be a joke.” Marty was silent. I figured she still had a good six and a half years till she was half my age.

Marty excused himself to the T-room and I asked Natasha if she had career plans. “I want to be a wildlife photographer,” she said. “I’m worried about going to Hawaii. There’s not much of the kind of wildlife I want to photograph there.” I didn’t get the whole Hawaii thing. No gambling, no wildlife. It seemed like a pipe dream to me but maybe a pipe dream was better than the reality of this hell-hole called Reno. “He said he was going to get me a camera for my birthday,” she said, “but I think he changed his mind.”

Marty returned and drank the last of the Voss water. At about the same time we all decided it was time to call it a night.

Before they left, Natasha gave me her Myspace address. I gave it 10-1 it wasn’t fake. “You know,” whispered Natasha, pausing at the door, “I don’t let just anyone take pictures of my feet.”

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Harrah’s Reno Blues

Date: Mon, Feb 19, 2007

She was a dancer, a redhead. She went by Veronica, but last month it was Victoria. Who knows what it will be next month.

Gabe is my man in Reno. He’s an executive host at Harrah’s, where if you look me up in the computer tiny showgirls wearing pink feathers pop out of the USB ports and do fan dances on the monitor. In Vegas I’m a big player but in Reno, I’m a true whale. When I walk into a casino they quake with fear and drool with greed. This time they got the best of me, to the tune of a year or two’s Ivy League tuition. But Gabe was my man. He made sure I loved coming back to this dilapidated town, the alcoholism capital of the universe, Reno Nevada, the biggest shitty little city in the world. We caught up in the steakhouse over two bottles of 1997 Stag’s Leap SLV Cabernet. The big news was about the redhead. She was getting married.

I remembered very well the night last month we all went to the Keystone Cue and Cushion to shoot some pool and hang out with Kenny, the dying bartender. Kenny was best friends with Brian, the male dancer, who was dating Veronica, whom we kept calling Victoria but never got corrected. Veronica was very friendly and pleasant as I beat her at pool and when I called it a night, leaving the rest of the crew at the bar, she walked me to the door and lingered. I looked her up and down and then looked back inside at Brian and Kyle’s curious eyes. She had the kind of body that made you want to buy a trapeze just to see if you still had any acrobatics left in you. But redheads are bad luck, I thought, and decided to give it a pass as I turned and walked out the door alone. Besides, as tired as I was and as much as I had to drink, it would have taken an hour or more for the Cialis to kick in.

When I had woken the next morning, Kyle heard me making coffee and tiptoed out of his bedroom wrapped in a white towel. “Shh,” he said with a bashful grin. “Victoria’s still here.” Redheads are bad luck, I thought to myself. Kyle told me when I had left it got tense and awkward at the bar. Veronica wanted to play charades to break the tension. Something had to break, because she ended up in my suite with the kid.

I roused myself from my reverie and blinked at Gabe. “She’s getting married?” I said. “To Brian?”

“No,” said Gabe, “to Kenny.” The redhead had dumped Brian and was marrying his dying best friend. That made less sense to me than most nonsense in this crazy town. Why would a dame dump a guy and then marry his dying best friend two weeks later? I texted Kyle with the news but my subconscious was working overtime. Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller, had told me it only took seven seconds from the moment of the Challenger disaster to the time the first sick joke was posted on the Internet. I felt horrible but it jumped into my throat like a rabid bullfrog and banged on my vocal chords from the inside until I choked it out. “Gabe—” I slapped my hand over my mouth, trying not to say it, but Satan grabbed my arm with his clammy claw and pulled my hand away.

“I married a man in Reno, just…to…watch…him…die…”

Gabe recoiled in horror. I recoiled in horror. I blamed Jenni. She was a comedy writer and had warped my brain.

Gabe and I finished off the SLV and called it an early night.

I forgot all about the redhead the next night when Gabe and I went back to the FQ Men’s Club and partied with a hot 38-year-old Ukrainian named Elena who chain-sipped $10 Pinot Noirs while saying over and over again, “I am bad girl.” Gabe and I drank $7 waters and sat back and enjoyed the show while I smoked a Macanudo. “She’s getting married tomorrow,” Gabe said. “Veronica.” I took a deep puff on the Macanudo and let it out slowly.

The next evening I was ready to see the redhead. Gabe had told me the early, non-topless show “Let the Good Times Roll” was way better than the topless show (if only by virtue of not having a puppet) so we got a comp and went in. The house manager gave me a warm greeting but then sat us way in the back, at a booth where we had to look through people’s heads to see the stage. Gabe went to talk to him and we got moved to the front. I wasn’t sure if Veronica would be there but sure enough she came out smiling and dancing, a real pro. I texted back and forth with Kyle, who still wasn’t sure if I was making the whole thing up. You can’t make this stuff up.

The show was hot – hot enough to make a fat man drop a plate of nachos piled high with guacamole and jack. The girls, including the redhead, changed clothes on stage until you thought the lace on their white underwear would wear off. They started in pajamas, then stripped down to basics, then modeled a wardrobe that would have been on the cover of the catalog if Victoria’s Secret made cheerleading outfits.

Halfway through the show the manager came down and leaned into me. The points on his lapels were sharp enough to spear a boiled shrimp and dip it in cocktail sauce. “Have you been taking pictures?” he yelled through “I can cook too” from Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town. “One of the dancers saw you taking pictures with your cell phone,” he yelled. I had finished texting with the kid and had put my cell phone back in my pocket so I just showed him my empty palms, thinking that would end the kafuffle. It didn’t. The guy persisted, now yelling at another big player we were sharing the table with. That guy was on the verge of tears. He wasn’t a small guy.

The manager turned to Gabe and yelled, “Make sure all photos are deleted.” We were all very confused. My cell-phone camera barely had the horsepower to snap Jimmy Durante’s nose from six inches and I was pretty sure the other guy didn’t even have a camera. They sure were afraid of someone taking grainy pictures of the kind of show you usually see for free on a cruise ship. It didn’t add up, but then not much did in this batty burg.

After the show the redhead didn’t make an appearance in the lobby with the other performers. I guess she was in a hurry to get to her wedding night. Gabe and I had dinner at the Italian restaurant. We tried the 1999 B.V. George Latour. I thought about taking a picture of the label but who knows, they might have called the cops. I thought I could hear the whistle blowing…

As nutty as all this seemed to me, Kyle, stuck back in Georgia going to classes, must have been even more confused. He had called Victoria/Veronica a few times after that magic night a month ago but lately the redhead hadn’t been answering his calls. I was back in my room writing when Kyle messaged me that she was on the phone with him. The hotel wanted her to fill out a security statement about the photo incident and she wanted to know if I had sent him any photos. He told her no and waited for her to bring up her marriage but she didn’t. Finally he asked about it but he didn’t get much of an answer. I guess that was to be expected.

I figure it all came down to the boyfriend, Brian. He was close to the redhead. Maybe even in love with her, who knows. And when you lose the one you love, you look for someone to blame. You can’t blame your best friend, dying of cancer. Maybe you blame the guy with glasses in the front row, the guy enjoying your performance and texting his buddy in Georgia to share the fun.

Or maybe you just hang your head and cry.

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Steakhouses are for vegetarians

Date: Sun, Feb 18, 2007

I tore myself away from Caesars Palace without getting up the nerve to try the new high-tech ubertoilet they had in my Augustus Tower suite (but only in the powder room). Rather than hop back to Seattle in between trips to Vegas and Reno, I jetted over to LA to spend a couple days with my uberhot new sweetie Jenni. I forgot it was the Grammy awards but I found a room at Le Meridien.

Jenni had sent me some old photos, including one I really liked of her taken some years ago in a plaid dress sipping a cosmopolitan. That inspired me to take her to Mastro’s steakhouse in Beverly Hills, one of my favorite restaurants and, to my surprise, one of hers since she has been a vegetarian her whole adult life. “Mmm…sides!” she said, and made the reservations. She surprised me by wearing the same plaid dress and looking fantastic. Well, that didn't surprise me.

We left the $30/day valet parking at Le Meridien and arrived at the $7 valet parking at Mastro's. I asked for the super-double VIP presidential table and they escorted us upstairs to a nice large table far away from the piano player, which is a good location. I got the Chilean sea bass, which I go in and out on loving but I seem to be in a loving phase. We shared a cornucopia of sides including the wasabi mashed potatoes and sugar snap peas.

The cocktails at Mastro’s are huge – I’m guessing about 10 oz. once you refill your glass with the extra they always bring. Jenni tried a “flirt,” a trendy new drink made with vodka, Chambord, pineapple juice, and Champagne. I got a Tanqueray 10 martini with blue-cheese-stuffed olives. The live music is a bit too loud upstairs and the tables are too close together downstairs, but other than that I love the place.

The next evening Jenni suggested we hit Sushi Roku with her roommate Christine, friend Diana, and one of her beautiful 18-year-old twin sisters, Alejandra. No, I’m not making that up. Diana picked us up at Le Meridien and drove us to the restaurant, but when I got there I realized it was only two blocks from the hotel. Welcome to LA! Ale and Jenni ordered veggie and the other girls let me order for them so I selected a bountiful fish feast and a bottle of cold Harushika sake since they didn’t have the Divine Droplets. Harushika used to be my favorite but D.D. ruins you for all other sakes.

Later, we smoked on the comfy sofa out front of Le Meriden and felt the cool Southern California air on our skin. Tomorrow I would fly into the heart of my favorite soap opera: Reno.

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Bullshit

Date: Fri, Feb 16, 2007

I’ve been a Penn & Teller fan as long as I can remember. I’ve seen their show a dozen times, bought their books, shook hands with them after the show, and recently become friends with Penn (the big one who talks) and his beautiful wife Emily. I watched the first season of Bullshit on Showtime religiously (which may not be the best word to describe the work of a rabid atheist) until I canceled my Showtime subscription because that was the only thing I was watching on it. So when Emily invited me to go to the set where they were taping season five, I jumped at the chance.

Bullshit is taped in Las Vegas, in a modest studio located just off the Strip in a small industrial park. I knew I was in the right place when I saw Penn’s fuschia Mini-Cooper (one of three) with license plate “ATHEIST.” There was a gold Lexus SUV with license plate “MOFO” that clearly also belonged to someone with the show (Mofo the gorilla appears in their stage act). Emily pulled up and escorted me in.

I had wondered how they created their signature white-background effect on the show and discovered the straightforward answer: the set had a white background. This caused dirt problems (Penn said never again would he do a show with a white set) and Penn had a pair of magnetic metal over-soles he snapped on to keep his shoes clean while he walked around the rest of the studio. Teller covered a beautiful pair of burgundy Oxfords with more pedestrian surgical booties.

The stars of the show made efficient use of their time, sitting side by side working on laptops during the numerous breaks for scene changes. When we broke for lunch Penn and I discussed movies while he ate a huge plate of rice and vegetables. He was a big fan of ‘60s horror movies which, he said, were the only way for directors to make films with serious social commentary. “A horror film with breasts was an automatic green light,” he said. Lots of guys who wanted to make socially relevant films but had no particular interest in horror discovered that if they wanted to make a movie about, say, feminism, all they had to do was work it into a horror movie with boobs and they got an automatic check.” I was going to have to watch all George Romero’s movies again from that perspective.

As lunch was about over Penn’s friend Otto, of the ventriloquist act Otto and George, arrived to do a bit in the show they were taping in the afternoon. Penn & Teller were calling bullshit on the practice of exorcism, dressed as priests and casting evil spirits out of George the dummy. I stayed to see Otto and George do their bit before excusing myself to go think about making horror movies with boobs.

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Heads up

Date: Thu, Feb 15, 2007

Having been inexplicably passed over yet again for the NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship I decided to play the $200+30 rebuy satellite Saturday at Caesars Palace for one seat in the exclusive field. Only 71 people entered so I had a decent chance of getting into what’s becoming one of the premier events in poker.

My buddy Chad Layne was at my table but was busted early by the charming Alex Vuong, who trapped him with top pair and a better kicker.

Terry Fleischer showed up at the table with 25,000 chips but his wild style didn’t work out so well at this table as people kept showing down big hands against him. He doubled me up playing four-deuce suited but I lost most of my chips when my Presto couldn’t hold up against eight-six flopping two pair.

I put my last few chips in with a raggy queen and got called by the same guy who busted me in one of the season two UPCs by calling with Ace-Ten. Once again, he had Ace-Ten and once again I lost the race and busted 25^th.

It wasn’t so bad to bust at 5:59 p.m. since I had a 6 p.m. dinner invite from Benjie and Mark at Bradley Ogden, conveniently located steps from the poker room at Caesars Palace. I had a steak tartare and Chilean sea bass, both excellent as is pretty much anything I’ve ever had at Ogden. Benjie always lets me pick the wine and I saw no reason to get anything but the 2002 Casa Dalla Valle Cabernet.

After dinner we went to The Producers, the new abridged version that had just opened at Paris. We walked across the street and enjoyed David Hasselhoff’s performance as the flaming director-actor. I was not a big fan of the show when I saw it on Broadway, not loving Mel Brooks’ score, and it’s fair to say that it in my eyes it benefited by being shorter. The acting and production were terrific and I’m sure it will be popular with tourists.

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The Ballad of Billy G.

Date: Fri, Feb 9, 2007

I’d met Billy G., a rumpled, weathered, fiftyish gambler, up at Lake Tahoe last year. He was playing video poker next to me and bragging about the three porn actresses he had been lounging by the pool with all last week in Vegas. “What business are you in?” I had asked Billy.

“Porn,” he said. He had one of those gravelly, whispery voices that made it seem like everything he was saying was at the very least confidential and quite possibly a state secret.

Billy owned a bunch of web sites where people paid to watch videos of porn actresses. He explained the business to me: “There are about 15,000 porn actresses,” Billy said. “There are another 15,000 wannabes. But there are only 15 bona fide porn stars.” One of these, who went by the name Memphis Monroe, was Billy’s crown jewel. She was one of the top girls at Hustler and Billy had some kind of ancillary rights deal with her that seemed to keep him in gambling money.

Billy wore a Caesars Palace baseball cap, jeans, and a denim jacket with a small sewn-on patch of an eagle that wasn’t quite the Post Office bird or the one on the dollar bill. “What’s that eagle?” I asked. “It’s designer,” he said. “It’s from Guess.”

Billy had flown in from New Orleans, where a friend of his had just been murdered, possibly by the psycho woman he had been shacking up with. Billy went down to the precinct to give them the lead but the detective, Billy said, wanted $5000 to move the case up towards the top of the list. “We got a lot of homicides here,” he said, “and only a few detectives.”

I told Billy I had just been playing at the Rio with no luck and I was taking the evening off from gambling. “I don’t play at the Rio any more,” Billy said. “I got robbed there.” He had a half-empty Corona sitting in front of him but he hadn’t taken a sip the whole time and he didn’t now.

“In your room?” I asked.

Yeah, said Billy. “I had tickets to the big fight. I was driving my daughter back to college in Kansas. Damn car broke down and by the time I got her back and got to the airport I missed my flight. Took the next flight, got into Vegas, cabbed over to Thomas and Mack and got to my seat just in time to see them lift the winner up on their shoulders. I didn’t see one punch.” He looked at me for sympathy, which I gave him.

“So I took a cab to the Rio, where I was staying, checked in, and had one drink at the bar.” He repeated, “One drink! Then I went to the men’s room. I left my drink on the bar.” He shook his head. “Well, you know how these pimps and hos work. They wait back there by the bar where you can’t see them. Then when you go to the bathroom they slip something in your drink. They wait 10 minutes, then they come up to you.” He lightly grabbed my left arm. “ ‘Come with me,’ they say. Richard, I don’t remember one thing. Not one single thing.”

“I slept for a full day. When I woke up, they had taken $4000 in cash and about $8000 in jewelry. But Richard, this drug—” Billy closed his eyes and opened them again. “When I woke up I saw a piece of paper on the floor with four numbers written on it. This drug—” He smiled and shook his head like you do when you wake up and find the team you had that hunch on won in a blowout but you never put down your bet.

“Of course, it was my PIN number. This drug makes you tell them anything and you don’t remember one thing. Not one thing.”

I tried to think of something to say but not one thing came.

Billy leaned back and smiled. “Anyway,” he said. “That’s why I don’t play at the Rio. Hey, give me your cell number so we can hang out when we’re in town.”

I thought quick. “So did they charge anything before you canceled your cards?”

He smiled and nodded slowly. “Gas,” said Billy. “The fuckers charged eight tanks of gas, one right after the other, at the same gas station. Here, give me your phone, I’ll call mine and then we’ll both have each other’s numbers.” I didn’t see any way out of it.

“So,” I said, “Tell me again about those porn stars you lie out with by the pool.” He consummated the mating of our cell phones.

“Not porn stars,” he corrected. “Porn actresses. There are only about 15 porn stars.” He smiled and winked. “And one of them is my girl.”

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Long trip

Date: Tue, Jan 30, 2007

The last day Mike and I went to the Chiang Mai night safari, a zoo that has tram tours at night of animals in their natural habitats. During the day it’s a self-guided walking tour through a pretty nice little zoo. We were the only ones there and had a leisurely stroll past monkeys, big cats, and capybaras. Of course we did the final cocktail hour and repeated the hotel restaurant, paying for it this time. Once again the Indian food was the star of the show.

In the morning Mike came by for breakfast and we said our goodbyes as the hotel’s Mercedes gave me a complimentary trip to the airport. I enjoyed the wifi in the Royal Silk lounge before my business-class flight to Bangkok, which cost less than drinks with Kitty, and in an hour I was at the new airport meeting another Mercedes to take me to the Westin Sukhumvit, which I had booked using Starpoints for the night. The Mercedes was a bad value, costing 2100 baht when a perfectly good Toyota available through AOT in baggage claim was only 900 baht.

At the Westin they treated me like a king because of my Platinum status, whisking me up to the executive lounge to check me in. They had a fabulous cocktail-hour spread and free wifi in the lounge so I camped out and played a little poker while I chowed down on chicken tikka and sipped Cabernet. I wanted to try out the new subway so I took a ride to Rachadaphisek to check out the entertainment district there with its super-high-end massage parlors. Unfortunately it wasn’t at the Rachidaphisek stop on the train – pretty much nothing was there. I asked a taxi driver and he said they were all closed already so I took the train back. Bangkok is full of incredibly expensive stuff that I can never figure out how anyone can afford. This subway was absolutely world class, with high-tech RFID tokens, sliding glass doors, and trains running smooth as silk.

In the morning I took the 900-baht Toyota (they insisted on my choosing between a Toyota and a Nissan) to the new airport and discovered my Cathay Pacific flight was delayed and they had put me on a Thai Airways flight so I wouldn’t miss my connection. The Thai flight actually had a first-class cabin and I tried to talk them into putting me there since I had a first-class ticket but it was not possible. Upstairs in the business-class cabin of the 747 was just fine for the short flight. It was all for naught anyway because when I got to Bangkok my onward flight was also delayed. I never minded hanging out in The Wing, though, and munched some sushi and sipped Champagne while I waited.

Finally I got on the 747 to LAX. First class was half full and I had two orders of caviar and a bowl of soup. The food on Cathay is so good I don’t feel the need to eat seven courses like most airlines serve you in first class. I just pick and choose what I want and enjoy it. Everyone in F slept most of the 11.5-hour flight, including me. I awoke two hours before landing, had two more orders of caviar and black coffee, and prepared to deal with missing my onward connection on US Airways, I wasn’t too worried since the worst possible case was having to buy a new $99 ticket on one of the 14 airlines that flew between LAX and LAS every 20 minutes or so.

We landed a bit over an hour late and I breezed through customs. I walked in the cool Southern California air to terminal one, seamlessly got put on the next flight to Vegas, and even scored a last-minute upgrade. I arrived at Caesars Palace almost exactly 24 hours after I had woken up in Bangkok.

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“A geek girl who came to Chiang Mai…”

Date: Mon, Jan 29, 2007

She wasn’t an uberbabe. Oh, she was hot all right. But she was a bad girl. She liked to break the rules.

My brother Mike wasn’t feeling well so he went home to get some rest while I hit the cigar store and walked around the Night Bazaar smoking a Romeo y Julieta. I was on a small street with beer bars when a very cute American girl came up to me and asked if I knew where she could get a cigar. She had long strawberry blonde hair and wore a white peasant skirt and a black tank top with a few beads of sweat on her bare shoulders. “I’ll take you,” I said.

She told me her name was Kitty and she was from California. She had come to Thailand, she said, to try to cure her addictions to smoking, drinking, and sex.

"How old are you?" I asked. "Twenty-three," she said. “Well,” I said, “you’ve definitely come to the right place.” The cigar store didn’t have her brand so she asked if I knew anyplace else. I said my hotel had a cigar bar. She didn’t say anything so I said, “Follow me.”

At the hotel the lobby was full of uniformed guards and a long red carpet was laid out to the porte-cochere. I told Kitty the guards were probably there in preparation for the princess checking in. She was very excited about the princess and wanted to see her so even though the cigar bar didn’t have her brand, she ordered a pack of cigarettes and a glass of Champagne and tipped the bartender 100 baht to tell her when the princess arrived. I wanted a clear head to remember this story. I just drank water.

Kitty, she told me, was working as a computer technician in Silicon Valley until they caught her and a coworker naked in the network operation center. After that, she said, she decided she liked having sex with strangers so much she might as well get paid for it so she hung out a shingle on the Internet and had been whoring for about a year. And here I thought if you wanted to find skanky geek girls you had to go to Reno. “I was porting a Unix app to a milspec-secure system,” Kitty said. I told her I used to be a computer programmer. “What language did you program in?” I told her C. “Good,” she said. “If you had said Java I would have no respect for you. Although I barely qualified for Mensa myself.”

At this point I was frantically making mental notes. I didn’t want to forget anything. I was making up limericks in my head and grinning uncontrollably, which she probably misconstrued:

A geek girl who came to Chiang Mai
Must be nuts to compete with the Thai.
“Well, I like to get laid,”
She said, “and to get paid--
“And you never do know till you try.”

Just then the bartender bowed in: “Scuse me! Princess coming!” Kitty leapt up and I followed her to the railing where we saw several people enter the hotel and turn toward the elevators. She wanted a better look so we ran down the stairs but by the time we got there they were rolling up the red carpet. There were several other farangs loitering about the lobby princess-watching so Kitty chatted them up and verified she was part of that initial group. She asked one of the hotel staff, who said the princess had arrived but had gone to the fitness center. “She’s in her 50s, right?” Kitty said. “I bet she’s had a lot of work done.” Then she realized you can get locked in a dungeon for speaking ill of the royal family, and quickly added, “I mean she works out a lot, right? In the fitness center.” I sidled away from her until I was sure the soldiers showed no interest.

We went back to the bar and she chain-smoked L&Ms while downing three glasses of Champagne I figured I was going to get stuck for, but it was worth the story. “Are you hungry?” she asked, and ordered several tapas. Then she noticed I wasn’t drinking alcohol and said I was being ungentlemanly so I ordered a glass of Bordeaux. Finally the bar closed. I signed the bill and watched as they put the bottles away, one by one. She showed no signs of leaving. “Well,” I said, “it looks like they’re closing the bar down.” She didn’t move.

“I was drinking and smoking with a guy three days ago,” she said. “But I was still being celibate.”

“How’s that working for you?” I said.

“I haven’t decided,” she said. “But it was what I wanted three days ago. I’m not sure what I want today.”

“Why did you come to Thailand?” I asked.

“I was too into the orgy scene in LA and it was getting hairy,” she said. “And California is tough when you don’t drive. I can’t get a driver’s license. I have blackouts.” I stared. “But I’d love to take flying lessons.” She looked at me with big brown eyes. “Maybe you could help me out with flying lessons.”

“How can you fly if you have blackouts?” I asked.

“Oh, I’d always have an instructor with me,” she said. One of the bartenders had left. The other, a Thai girl about Kitty’s age, stood waiting. “I lost my virginity when I was 13,” Kitty said. “A friend of my brother’s gave me a back rub while we were watching TV. He asked me if I wanted to try having sex. I said OK.”

“How old was he?” I asked.

“Twenty. I liked it so much he couldn’t believe it was my first time.”

“Did the guy go to prison?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she said. “I didn’t turn him in. I could have, but I didn’t want to.” She finished her Champagne and then held the empty glass out in the direction of my remaining Bordeaux. I poured half of what I had left into her glass. I signed the bill for 4400 baht ($125). We drained the last of the wine. “I really get off on guys who have moral issues with me,” she said. “It was a lot easier to find them when I was underage.” She looked down at her empty glass. “Is there somewhere else we can keep drinking?”

Oh, dear reader. I want you to know that it is only for your sake – the sake of the story -- that I swallowed hard and suggested we go back to my room to partake of my complimentary minibar, sadly underutilized except for a few glasses of Ballantine 12 year Scotch by my brother. Without a word, she rose and followed me.

Kitty headed right for the outdoor daybed and lit up an L&M. “Do you have a laptop?” she asked? “I’ll show you some pictures.” Now this was 21^st-Century geek girl ho marketing. She showed me some legit modeling she had done and then a tasteful nude spread. The idea of this pretty Jewish California girl plying her trade in Chiang Mai was jaw-droppingly fascinating to me. She came from a place where men gladly pay $500 for an hour of her time to a land where guys pay $30 to mate with a girl who wouldn’t give them a dirty look in the USA.

“My feet are cold,” she said. “Do you have an extra pair of socks?” I went inside, taking my laptop with me so the Mensa nymphomaniac couldn’t surreptitiously install a Trojan on it while I wasn’t looking, and returned with a pair of black Jhane Barnes dress socks. I expected never to see them again. Maybe she collected men’s socks like some guys collect women’s panties. Maybe she nailed them up on her wall.

Kitty put on the socks. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s very gentlemanly of you.” She sipped Semillon Blanc. I lit her second-to-last L&M for her and gazed out over the pool, the reflecting lights, and the Ping river. I refilled her glass. She opened her purse and took out a roll-on of citronella mosquito repellent, applying it to herself and then offering it to me. “No thanks,” I said, “I’m taken care of.” She nodded and was quiet awhile. I lit her last L&M for her.

“I really like anal sex,” she said. “Do you?”

Somehow I managed to get her down to the porte-cochere. I planned to call a taxi for her but she said she wanted a tuk-tuk instead, essentially a motorized tricycle with a back seat and canopy. The doorman was aghast but she insisted. “That way I can smoke in the back,” she said. She climbed into the tuk-tuk, still wearing my Jhane Barnes black socks, and looked back hopefully at me as the driver pulled out. I waved at her to stop but the driver pulled away. She kept looking and I waved again. She told the driver to come back. I sprinted down the driveway.

“How much is the fare?” I asked. 300 baht. I pulled it out and gave it to her. It was worth $8.

“That’s very gentlemanly of you,” said Kitty as the tuk-tuk pulled away, “very gentlemanly.” Her wide eyes looked back at me till she was out of sight.

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Rocky road

Date: Sat, Jan 27, 2007

Tapas in the bar at Chedi came with the package so we segued from cocktails in the club lounge to a complimentary bottle of house wine with a goat cheese salad and some local sausages. The upstairs bar was stunning, all done in dark wood with stone wall carvings dribbling water. The use of light and water in the Chedi would impress Steve Wynn. The most important things to me in a hotel are sleep comfort and Internet access so when I find myself repeatedly noticing the serene beauty of a place it’s remarkable.

We visited a local tourist attraction, a hot springs where people liked to bathe and cook eggs. Mike and I hit the main pool and soaked awhile. Amazingly, even Thailand has non-smoking laws and this place had signs saying you couldn’t even smoke outside! We had dinner at an uncrowded local Thai restaurant on the outskirts of town. We were the only farangs there.

The next day Mike asked if I’d like to drive up into the mountains and I said sure! We took a pleasant winding road up Doi Suthep past the Phuping Palace and a commercial hill tribe. Most people were turning around but Mike followed a dirt road to a place where Chiang Mai university was doing research into coffee growing. “You can have a cup of coffee and a delicious cookie,” Mike said. As a rule I don’t eat dessert but I had coffee and looked out over the field where they were growing it.

We continued down the road and the terrain got more and more rugged. We were bouncing around in all directions as the truck managed the rutted unimproved trail. The pick-up had no trouble with it but we did. Mike had to pull over every few minutes due to motion sickness and I was feeling a little queasy myself. It seemed like it took forever to get down but finally we found asphalt. “I have a new respect for paved roads,” I told Mike as we pulled out by a large lake with fishing and swimming areas. “Let’s take this drive again, say, when we’re fleeing an imminent nuclear explosion and this is the only road out of town.” We made it back to the Chedi and relaxed till cocktail hour. I couldn’t think of a much nicer place to come home to.

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