I Thought This Weekend Was Supposed To Be Fun

This is Wes Louie again. Yes two posts in a row! We are saying good-bye to Jeff, Ruben, Katya, Hayley, Kara, Alain and the crew today. Although these people are some of my best friends, I couldn't be happier to see them go. Aside from a few fun experiences throughout the weekend, the weekend was full of misery. On the bright side, we did experience the MGM pool which was absolute madness and we finally dined at Carnevino. Although the pool and Carnevino were amazing, that still did not negate the misery which I encountered over these past few nights. I wish I could blame a prostitute for giving me a horrid STD, or an asian blackjack dealer for taking hundreds of dollars off me, or perhaps a disgusting stripper who forced cocaine upon me, but sadly none of that took place, all of my blame is able to be directed towards one person, and one person only. (side note Scott just made me breakfast in bed, no homo)

But who wants to be negative, lets stay positive for the time being. The Payton crew and the Alain's bachelor party crew gave Vegas quite a bit to be excited about. I saw Alain three straight nights, and can't say I ever hung out with him sober. Alain was drunk the entire weekend rambling off phrases such as "i'm too excited to sleep!" or "we're in Vegas baby!". He even attempted to get on stage at the comedy show we attended at Harrah's to tell a joke or two of us. Much to our disappointment, he never made it. The comedy show however was a great time because everyone from Seattle was able to make it out to enjoy the humor and good company.

The following morning Remmy (Ryan Martin) joined us in Vegas for his first time in the desert. We immediately made out way to MGM to join the Payton crew at the pool. At Vdara, we have a great pool, very exclusive, peaceful and elegant. The MGM scene however was a bit more, how do I say it, Cabo-esque. There were beautiful girls in bikinis everywhere you looked. They were Ronnie wanna-bes surrounding every beautiful girl you saw. And quite possibly the best thing I saw, were people buying $35 buckets of beers (6) pouring the beers over girls in the pool. Literally pouring money into the pool. It was like 500 people were on spring break and they all came to this pool to party. I even experienced my first flashing in Vegas thanks to the incredibly drunk girl who gave into the extreme encouragement from the gathering of bros who were poolside. We did however join the party, steal a few innertubes, and ride the river current for a lap or two. We also witnessed a couple girls try to start a dance party and oddly enough, it wasn't Hayley, Katya and Kara.

Staying positive, I'll move to the topic of the Carnevino meal. This was the highlight of the weekend for me not only because of the amazing food, but because of the fact that we had everyone together for a nice dinner of good company, great food, great service, and some wildly inappropriate conversation. I want to preface this meal description with Carnevino gave us the best service I have ever received. The restaurant is located in the Palazzo and if you ever have a chance to dine here, I strongly suggest you do not waste that opportunity. Our meal started with complimentary appetizers which were a lightly fried blend of cheeses. Followed by rosemary bread with our choice of spreads was incredible. The bread alone was delicious but when paired with the pork lard spread they offered, it was hands down the best bread/roll I've ever experienced. We also decided to split three of their pasta appetizers as more of a tasting due to the fact that we knew the portions would be small. We sampled black fettucine (crab, jalapenos, shallots), spago (spaghetti with lamb ragu), and ravioli di stracotto (duck livers and acero balsamico). All three dishes offered me flavors I had never experienced before. The black fettucine offered a rich flavor with a light after taste which I loved. However my personal favorite was the spago because of the surprisingly rich flavor. The highlight of the meal however was the bone-in ribeye. I'm sure some of you have heard me rave about this meal before but it couldn't hurt to reiterate just how much hype this steak has to it. Men's Health's food critic labeled this steak one of the best in the country if not the best. Carnevino has it's own dry aging facility 10 miles off the strip so the restaurant is caring for the meat they serve from the get go with no middle man. They server informs us that upon ordering this menu item, that it will take about 45 minutes to prepare. As most of you know, when I am hungry, I do not like to wait. Perhaps this is where you think my misery for the weekend will begin but you're wrong. This 45 minute wait for my bone-in ribeye was worth every second. The mouthwatering steak sprinkled with sea salt and drizzled with Carnevino's olive oil was even more beautiful than I had remembered. The medium rare thing of beauty placed in front of me brought my teammate near tears. The $65 steak must be ordered for two and with Jeff as my partner, I had hyped this steak up for the past 6 months. I had told him it would be the best steak he would ever had. I told him it was the best food hands down I have ever had. I told him it would blow his mind and change his view of steaks forever. Upon his first bite, the released a sigh of ecstasy that only a Carnevino steak can do. When I asked him if I had over hyped the steak, which i feared, he confirmed that all my statements were indeed accurate. With the wonderfully seasoned tender steak also came perfectly marbled fat. Jeff can tell you himself, the fat added amazing flavor to the meal. Kara even described it as "a taste of Heaven". With the amazing food, obviously great company, and wildly inappropriate conversation, it was a perfect way for Payton to say goodbye to Vegas. The wildly inappropriate conversation you may be curious about will be left to the imagination. Keep in mind it was Hayley, Kara, Katya, Wald, Scott, Remmy, Ruben and myself around a table for about 2.5 hours after being in Vegas for 3 days...oh the possibilities!

That concludes the enjoyable part of the weekend.

On to the misery that destroyed the weekend. As most of you are aware, there are 3 of us staying in the room and we have agreed to rotate sleeping arrangements. We have 2 people in the king and 1 person sleeping on the air mattress (adjacent to the bed) on any given night. However, for the past 3 nights, I haven't slept in either place once. For the past 3 nights, I haven't been able to return to my room until after 4am. As a result of such things, I was forced to do other things to entertain myself until I was able to go to sleep. Imagine paying a large chunk of change for a place to sleep and stay in the desert, and not being able to sleep there when you want. Sounds pretty awful right? Weeeeell I'm not quite finished. Because this gave me an extra couple hours a night to entertain myself, I found myself grinding the Aria 1/3 poker game. The quality of the average player is poor. So poor that they explain their logic outloud and attempt to spout off statistics to sound intelligent. In my haggard sleep deprived state, Im not able to exercise restraint and begin to combat all the statements made by these re-tards. To give you a better idea of how haggard I got on these bonus unwanted poker sessions, I believe it is Miley Cirus' song about the USA or something...I was so haggard from being around these bafoons, and losing to these bafoons mind you, I began to sing along. So picture this, here I am, 4 in the morning, I'm collapsed on a poker table, losing to people who I don't respect and am making fun of (but they're so dumb they don't realize I am), as I sing along to Miley Cirus. If that isn't misery I don't know what is. To add to the misery, by the time I am able to return to the room, I don't get to sleep in the bed or the air mattress, I am reduced to sleep on a queen size pull out bed with Scottie. I forgot to mention this but Scott did in fact share in all the misery I did because he wasn't able to return to the room either. So by the time we return to the room, we are forced to sleep in a queen size pull out bed where you can feel the individual springs beneath you. I have woken up the past 3 days in physical pain. Lucky for me this morning was only my back and jaw that hurt. Did I get punched in the face or run into something? No, that would make perfect sense though for my jaw hurting. But instead, the only answer I have for why my jaw hurts is because I slept on the damn sofa bed again! I am laying on the sofa bed as a write this and it angers me with every minute I continue to lay here. Aside from being sleep deprived, stuck at the poker game, and being haggard enough to sing that awful song in public, my misery continues into the morning where I woke up in pain.

I plan to stay away from alcohol for the rest of this trip unless it is to drink with Colin Perez or Jake Schweikl. Anything that happens with those 2 I am on board and will be pumped to create madness. However, with the weekend I just had, I don't want to drink anymore, I hate Vegas and I just want to sit on the magical couch.

Something I did miss, Jeff Ko put on a show at the Aria buffet. I managed to sneak in for free but for others it was $38. Jeff ate more crab than i knew a man could. Wald and myself, both Vegas buffet regs, declared Jeff's performance one of the most impressive we have ever seen. Props to my boy doing work and showing Vegas how Seattle rolls.

Until next time guys, remember, being a good wing man is one thing, biting the bullet is another, if you have to consistently bite bullets to be a good wing man, you may want to find yourself another wing to man

A Taste of Las Vegas Madness

Wes Louie here. I was supposed to have blogged late last night, but a night of drunken 1/3 at Aria turned into more drinking in our room. Once in the room all I could focus on was making Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, once that was devoured I passed out hence the day after post here. Lucky for me, I had quite the day to post about since we not only had our first batch of visitors arrive yesterday (Alain and his bachelor party crew), we also dealt with some people getting out of line at the poker table.

I will start with bringing you all up to speed as far as the poker debacle is concerned because that is what is freshest in my mind. I showed up to Aria where Wald and Scott were playing 1/3 side by side. They were both about 7 drinks deep by the time I showed up. I quickly had people at 3 different tables ordering me drinks so I could catch up (special thanks to George/Jake). Scott happened to be losing during this particular session and as we all know, when you start to lose, you get haggard, you stop caring about pretty much everything else except how awful the people at the table are, and how much they don't deserve your money. Scott was in the misery/haggard mode and as he mucked his two hole cards, he exposed them to the people at the other end of the table. Most people aren't too upset about this happening because it can be an accident; however, Aria poker players take things a bit more serious than the average. Upon Scott's muck that resulted in the exposed cards, one gentlemen began expressing his frustration that Scott exposed his cards, and almost simultaneously another guy at the table, lets call him Boston (he was wearing a Red Sox cap), literally lost his mind. He stood up, ripped out his headphones from his ears enraged at what just happened, exclaimed "I'm getting the floor!" and stormed off. For those of you who aren't familiar with poker rooms, the "floor" is the poker room manager or authority who oversees any and all disputes during a poker game. So Boston marches up to Jessica, the floor, and apparently struck her decently hard to get her attention so he could bring her attention to what was taking place at our table. As he is doing this, the 3 of us burst into laughter because of how ridiculous the scene he was creating was. After he sees the 3 of us laughing, he says to Scott (i assume it was directed towards Scott since he started all this) "yeah you think this is funny? keep laughing and i'll knock you out!". This actually made us laugh even harder because between Scott and this guy was both Wald and myself. And lets be honest, Wald is way too tall to let some goon get anywhere near the team Doctor. To give you an idea of the potential attacker, he was about 5'7, a little pudgy, and what I would describe as having stubby limbs. So if you can paint yourself a picture of how ridiculous it is for this man to threaten Scott with Wald and myself between them, you very well may be joining in on the laughter. After he finally got Jessica to the table, all Jessica said to us was "please don't expose any more cards, I don't want to get punched". Scott cooperated with Jessica's request and we all calmed down, shortly after that they rack up and we make our way to leave. Jessica asked us to remove ourselves from the poker room due to our groups volume...imagine that. So we haven't quite gotten kicked out of a poker room, simply asked to leave. However Scott has wanted to get kicked out of Paris for the past year and a half so perhaps sometime over the next 3 weeks we'll get drunk enough to really create some problems for Paris. That, or Scott offered me $75 to puke on the casino floor inside of Paris. Hello prop bet night...

Shortly after our incident with Boston, Alain and friends finally found their way to Aria after about a 30 minute search. Alain came over and greeted the 3 of us and within about 10 seconds of being table-side, he began to attack Boston verbally as only Alain can do. Our suspicion is that Boston was too dumb to realize Alain was talking about him, but nonetheless the Seattle crew still enjoyed Alain's unquestioned loyalty. If you are lucky enough, you may see me when I return to Seattle and you can watch/listen to the recordings I have from this night.

On another note, visiting group #2 just landed today. Welcome to Las Vegas Ruben, Katya, Kara, Hayley and Jeff! Prefunking for the evening is actually about to begin as soon as I post this and I believe we will be creating a bit of Payton madness anywhere and everywhere here in the desert. All we can hope for is that no one needs a wheelchair tonight. Thankfully we are within walking distance of everything so a 45 minute cab ride won't be necessary either. If that isn't something to get excited about party bus fans I don't know what is! We plan to aggressively drink the whole weekend with these guys in town, however one event which is mandatory is the return to Carnevino at Palazzo. This is where Wald and I tag-teamed a bone in ribeye back in January and I say this confidently, that was the best food of my life.

As far as future things to look forward to, our boy Schweik is coming to town July 8th. So if you are in the greater Las Vegas area and want to see a man go harder than anyone ever has before, you should come join us in Vegas. Schweik has sent each of us multiple texts since we left Seattle and they are all regarding just how hard he is going to go in Vegas. Hospitals standby.

With the 8 o'clock hour approaching I am running out of time to blog here, but just know that madness will be following this post. Whoever the next blogger may be, they will do their best to walk you through the night we are about to have, that is if they are able to remember it. To all of you back in Seattle and our loyal followers in any other of America's beautiful cities, remember the 3 guidelines to any great night out partying 1) Don't get arrested, 2) Don't get a STD, and 3) Don't go broke. You follow these 3 guidelines my friends, I ensure you, you will have a great night. Until next time...

Kevin's Grief

Kevin will be blogging today.

The topic of discussion will be my most recent poker session which I played with Scott. It comes as no surprise that it was in fact a losing session as I tried to overcome my two worst unlucky charms unsuccessfully. I will start with the first, who is Scott himself. I think it is most accurate to describe him as a leech. He sucks my luck from me and uses it for himself. Let me explain, when Scott is at a different table than me my cards are good and I have won nearly every time. Scott, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to make much money when not playing next to me and may be net losing.

The story changes drastically when he sits next to me. He is literally up on the trip because of the poker sessions which he has sat next to me (I am of course net down during these sessions). I have been nice about it up to this point, but in the future I am going to have to demand a cut of his winnings. I can't let him use my luck and not give me anything in return. Were still in the process of working out a deal, but I told him that he will make more money sitting next to me (using my luck) and giving my 20% of his winnings than he will playing by himself.

I mentioned earlier that Scott was not the only unlucky charm in play against me yesterday. Katie was the other. You may remember from a previous blog that Katie has a history of crushing me in the past. Yesterday was no different. Last night after I had been playing for several hours Katie sent me what was a random text message of "don't lose ;) ". Thank you Katie, I am glad we are keeping in touch...As you already know, her "lucky" presence was still felt from over a 1,000 miles away. I talked about racking up my chips and leaving upon the tater's text message, but I chose to try and fight through. Obviously, the "lucky" combination of Scott and Katie was far too much to overcome. I try not to be superstitious, but its starting to get ridiculous. Until next time, this has been Kevin from Vegas.

There's a First Time for Everything

The team woke up with the intension of playing our first session of basketball at UNLV. Unfortunately, Jamie was sick while George and Jake were not awake when we left (this is at noon mind you). So Me (Scott), Wes, Wald, Tom and Matty went off to the UNLV gym to play. When we arrived we parked in the covered structure, there were three options for paid parking: $1.00 for an hour, $2.00 for two hours and $3.00 for all day. We decided to go with the two hours because Wald was adamant that we wouldn't be there for more than two hours and didn't think parking enforment would be too strict during the summer. Tom meets us at the gym and makes sure we paid for the all day parking pass. When Tom finds out we only paid two dollars he responds with, "Really? You didn't want to pay a dollar for the extra 22 hours?" As we are signing up for our month long membership the lady over hears that we only paid for two hours instead of all day and advises us to pay for the all day pass. She told us the story of her boy friend's car who had unpaid parking tickets and was caught for not paying for parking at the UNLV lot. The car had two boots placed on it, then it was impounded and sold. On top of all that, he still had to pay $600 in fines. This can't be legal, but after hearing the story Wald was still willing to gamble and left it with only two hours.

After we were official members we journeyed up to the basketball courts to warm up and scout the "competition". Let's just say an early afternoon Monday at the UNLV gym was not prime time for basketball players. There was only one court running a game with about 14 people total on all four basketball courts. We had a huge size advantage, with most of the guys playing were as big as me or smaller. The one good player on the other team said it was "The Looney Tunes vs. The Monstars". When we got on we literally ran the other team off the court. The first game finished 15-5 and 13 of the points we're fast break lay-ups. The next game was a little closer at 15-12, but a lot of that had to do with the other team getting hot from three (At UNLV they play one's and two's so a three pointer counts as two. Much dufferent from UW rules of all one's). During the game we imposed our will physically against the smaller team as Wes and Tom were frequently scoring and putting people on the ground. We wanted to play a third game, but the good player left and four others followed. We decided to mix up the teams, obviously east vs. west (aka me, Wes and Wald and two randos vs. Tom, Matt and three randos). The west held it down and won but it was a very ugly game.

After we finished the third game an employee approaches Matt and asks if we go to school at UNLV. Matt lets her know that we just purchased passes for the month, but she still seemed concerned with us being there. She didn't really say anything else, but it was pretty awkward. We concluded that one of the guys told on us for ruining their game because there is no way an employee would walk up to the third floor (where the basketball courts are) and pick out five guys who probably don't go to school here. Nonetheless, it was great to play basketball for the first time in over a week.

We are heading back to Wald's truck and are a little worried because we had been at the gym for about two hours and ten minutes. On the way back we see another car that had two boots on both left tires. Luckily Wald's truck had no tickets or boots. We dodge a bullet there. Needless to say we will be spending the extra dollar from now on.

We came back to Vdara and ate the leftovers from last night's Maggiano's. We decided to meet Grue at the pool. While at the pool we meet a pro poker player from Norway who is in Vegas for three months (so we're not that ridiculous). Our first prop bet was designed and completed and another in the works. The first completed prop bet was who could hold their breath the longest under water. Wes, Tom and Matt competed and Wes won rather easily. The bet in the works is swimming the entire length of the pool under water. Jake was trying to put something together with Wes and Matt. Jake thought better than challenging Wes and decided to go after Matt. We'll keep you updated if that bet goes down.

We finally got to playing poker around 6 pm. It was not a good day for the team. Me, Wald and Jake went to the Venetain and all three of us lost. This was a monumental day as it was the first time Wald has lost on the trip. Wald is placing a little blame on me for not wanting to leave when he was up a little and most of the blame on Taters (Katie), who texted him and Wald instantly starting losing (There has been history of this). Almost everyone else played at the Bellagio (Wes, Jamie, Matt, Tom and Grue) and only Tom and Matt won. George was on his own at Aria and was winning pretty good when we left him around 2:00 am.

We are planning on playing basketball again today at UNLV and hope the games are better and people don't try to get us kicked out. Until next time.

and Were Back!

Kevin will be reporting the blog today.

For those of you who like poker, the 10k WSOP heads-up tournament was quite the tournament to observe with 256 entrants composed of many of the well known poker professionals, kids who look like they just turned 21 (the internet geniuses), and of course the Big Game himself (these were basically the best poker players in the world). An interesting first round matchup was Ivey verse the Grinder. Naturally, Ivey just shoves all in the first hand (this is a deep stack heads up match) and the Grinder tanks and finally calls with 99 only to have Ivey slam a river A with his AK and win the match (and cause me to lose a $5 bet).

As for the Big Game he squeezed out a first round win, in which he fell behind early, only to come powering back. Unfortunately, his luck ran out in the second match and his AQ couldn't outdraw an AK and so the Big Game would not be winning the 10k heads up tournament or coming in the money. You know you are at the WSOP when you look over at a guy nudging you to get a better view on the rail is Antonio Esfandiari. However, he was a normal sized human being and it took me moving out of the way before he made any progress.

In other news, yesterday marked the first day that everyone in the UW room booked a win. Good work team. A special shout out to Scott who did particularly well as we learned that people at the Venetian will get in their entire stacks whenever they have pocket Kings (naturally Scott would always have AA in these situations).

Scott and I made our first attempt to take advantage of the Vegas nightlife on Friday. We planned to meet up with Scott's friend Jesse and some others at the nightclub PURE. Things did not got well there as by the time Scott and I had finished pre-funking (thank you Aria for the free drink vouchers) and actually arrived at PURE they had already grown tired of the club and left. Not a good start for PURE.

But we did a most interesting cab ride home as the cab driver passed some of his infinite wisdom off to us. The topic was wasted girls (and yes there were plenty to be seen at 2 am on the strip). He classified them into two categories, Wasted-fat and Wasted-hot. He explained as a rather large wasted girl walked in front of the cab (certainly obese by BMI standards), how no one wanted to see that and it definitely wasn't hot. Then followed by this girl was a wasted skinny girl. He explained while this girl was also wasted it actually hot because she was skinny. Thank you for your wisdom cab driver.

Our mentality has quickly been changing here in Vegas. Things like doing our own dishes and making our bed seem like things of the past. The kind staff of Vdara seem all too pleased to take care of these obligations. Also, the idea of parking your own car anywhere seems like a thing of the past. No more parking and walking a whole block to your destination. We definitely don't have the time to be doing that during our month long stay at Vegas. I mean that could potentially cost us a whole five minutes of play at the poker tables. This is why there are Valets.

And in wrapping this post up, we got to give a shout out to Chetty Lembs who will finally be joining us Vegas after his 5 day hiatus in California. We look forward to everyone finally being here. The plan is to gather the team for a return to Maggiano's soon to celebrate the whole team finally being together again since MLK weekend.

As far as things to look forward to, Scott and myself will be playing in a Venetian Deep Stack this afternoon and we both plan on making some noise. First prize will be about $27,000. Wes will be sticking to the live games at the Bellagio for the time being. Stay tuned for all things poker, all things WSOP, and more importantly all things Vegas. We are eagarly awaiting the arrival of those who plan to visit us. Well, except for Schweik. We actually fear your arrival here in the desert. Until next time folks.

When you're here, you're family!

Wes Louie here. Today started off like the many others which involved rolling around in the amazingly comfortable beds here at Vdara followed by breakfast cooked in our kitchentte. Today was cheddar cheese covered scrambled eggs (tillamook cheddar cheese don't ya know). I am not sure if we have informed you all of our dining style here in Vdara 50020 but we do things Vegas family style here. And by Vegas family style, i mean we put all the food onto one plate and we all eat off of that same place. Although it seems a little ridiculous, we only have so many dishes and to be honest, it brings people together. Not enough to warrant frequent hugs between two of the suitemates which will not be named, but sharing a community plate daily is quite the experience. To welcome the entire team to Vegas we decided to head back to where it all started for dinner, Maggianos.

I am sure many of you are familiar with the restaurant especially since it isn't located too far from Seattle (Bellevue). This is a team tradition that every time we all meet in Vegas, we do a Maggiano's gathering. The Maggiano's dinner serves as a time where we all abandon our degenerate habits and our alcoholic ways to block out 2 hours out of the day where we can all be together finally. In the past the Maggiano's outing has been some of my favorite memories made here in Vegas, well, close anyway. And tonight was thankfuly nothing shy of expected. We had everyone including Matt, George and as Dave Button calls him "Baller" Tom from Boston, Jake and Jamie from LA, and last but not least Grue Wald Scott and myself. We enjoyed endless orders of calimari, bruschetta, chopped salad, caesar salad, chicken pesto linguini, veal ravioli, chicken parmeasan, pork medallions, tiramisu and caramel apple crustada. Everything was delicious as expected. My personal favorite was the veal ravioli in a white cream sauce which was topped with some garnish I couldn't pin point but it was still delicious.

Tomorrow will be our first day of basketball on the trip. We are all purchasig memberships at UNLV for the month and will be playing basketball quite often we hope. The Seattle squad is eagarly awaiting the match between us and Boston/LA. As of about 2:30pm tomorrow, bragging rights will undoubtedly be exercised for whoever reigns victorious.

As far as the party scene goes, I personally have been slacking. I have consumed one alcoholic beverage the entire time I've been here. However, with the visitors we have lined up, it may be for the better that I am saving my strength. Binge drinking will be the name of the game here soon enough. Special shout out to the latest potential visitor, Eliot David Olson! The good doctor and myself got word tonight that there is now a decent chance of this man making it out to the desert at some point over the next few weeks. Rest assured our fingers will be crossed and the alcohol chilled my man.

Other than these updates and my constant longing to be back on that oh so glorious couch in Seattle, that's about all I got. The next few days will involve a lot of poker but we do hope to mix in some drunken debauchery here soon. The suite here all recognize that we have been slacking and we plan to change that. If you have any ideas of madness we should get into or a crazy bucket list we should assemble for things to do before we leave the desert, your comments and suggestions would obviously be appreciated.

Until next time boys and girls, this is Wes Louie signing off and reminding all vulnerable young females everywhere, don't drink the punch, they put things in it.

Lakers Celebration

If you have no interest in NBA finals please skip to the next paragraph. The Lakers grind out a hard fought win! Pierce is softer than a pack of Pampers baby wipes, while Garnett seemed to be too pumped for his own good in the first quarter. For Laker fans, thankfully Allen shot like Jamarcus Russell aiming for anything and Big Baby disappeared like cake in front of a fat kid. Ron Artest was the real hero of game 7, locking down Pierce and surprisingly actually contributing offensively and even though Pau wasn't very efficient, his contribution can't be understated. We also had the privilege of watching the game with Baller Tom on the 48th floor of Vdara. Me and The Baller enjoyed the outcome of the game while George and Mr. Boucher had to pretend to be content with the outcome. On a side note, Wald absolutely put a hurt on a costco watermelon during the game and Wald maintains it was an "average performance". I guess when your 6'4 killing half of a watermelon after a full meal is standard, shore.

Me (Scott) and Kevin decided to celebrate the only we knew how, drunken poker. We filled up generous glasses of Makers Mark after the game and wandered over to Aria to play some "real" poker. Things didn't go so well for me, but Wald was too tall to be stopped, literally couldn't lose if he tried. The drink service at Aria cannot be understated as it was the best we've ever seen in Vegas and consequently we were destroyed very quickly. Wes decided to keep it classy and sober and play until the soccer game in morning at Bellagio (looking for those Eastern Europeans who are liable to do literally ANYTIHNG).

We are looking forward to Jamie's return to Vegas. He had a three day hiatus to go back to LA and witness games six and seven live from Staples. Jamie is playing in the WSOP heads-up tournament tomorrow at noon and is looking to make a deep run a la the Lakers; so feel free to wish him luck later today. We also are missing Jake ("CJ") Lemberger, who had to go back to the santa for his sister's graduation (Quick shout out to Thea, we wish her the best of luck at UCLA next year while dominating the Pac-10). Jake will be back Sunday and we will have the full crew in Vegas for the first time this summer.

I have a good friend of mine, Jesse Kass, coming in tomorrow and rest assured the madness will continue! Until next time.

The Beginning and Hopefully Not the End

Hello World, as many of you know Kevin Scott and myself (Wes) have set out for the desert to spend 4 weeks playing poker in Vegas. After the many days of debate, the three of us level headed people decided it would be best to drive to the desert versus flying like a real person. Our vehicle of choice was Wald's '97 Ford S10 truck. After this trip we can offically say it seats 2 people comfortably. You can ask Scott for verification but seeing as how he was in physical pain for hours after exiting the car, you can all imagine his haggard responses. Upon arrival in the desert, we were covered in sweat, tired from the drive, and so hungry we were at the point where hunger had subsided and nothing even sounded appetizing anymore. We haven't had a meal in 8 hours, we were in the unairconditioned car for 20 hours, we postponed out meal due to game 6, we opt to attack the Bellagio buffet. Shortly after the hurt the Lakers put on the Celtics in game 6, we made our way to the Bellagio buffet which closed in 90 minutes. We both double fisted plates our first round and we displayed a ravenous attack on anything and everything they offered. We left in pain and were asleep shortly after. As far as the room is concerned, Vdara is taking very good care of us. Personal servants are only a phone call away. We have even summoned a mini-bar technician. We have a kitchenette, a giant bathroom, king and queen size beds, two giant Philips LCD TVs and a gorgeous view of Las Vegas from the 50th floor of our luxurious condo (which is obviously better than anything on the 48th floor). The workout facility is pretty damn nice and the 3 of us are attempting to make that a staple of our daily routines in hope of not returning to Seattle in any worse shape than we left in. As far as the poker is concerned, the trip has not started off how I (Wes) would have liked. I am, as some would venture to call it, STUCK. There have sadly been no b****es stacked on my end. Wald however is amazingly enough still 6'4 here in Vegas so he obviously booked a nice win the first day out. The Doc is doing the standard acculation of chips but like we all know, only a matter of time until he starts owning poker rooms. On a side note, we literally just found a condom in someones suitcase from a prior trip! Needless to say, we're EXCITED!

On a side note, I no longer accept phone calls in the middle of the night. Out of respect for the other suitemates, the phone hits silent upon bed time, however, because we are in Vegas and there are no bed times, do feel free to call at any hour of the day, you have a very good chance that I will be awake but no calls will be accepted during GAME 7 ("this is the biggest game of our lives" -Scott).