The plane home seems like good time to reassess. This was such a good trip. So much so, that even when I did something stupid, it turned out good.

After my debacle of a tournament on Saturday, the best wife ever suggested that I try again on Sunday in the Bellagio. I implore you to go find a fucking wife like that. I wish you luck and Godspeed.

Her salient points were that I have been having a very profitable year in poker (both in live tournaments and on-line) – which is true. She further went on to say that my experience in the tournament on Saturday hadn’t in any way taken away from her enjoyment, and in fact, my brief absence had probably enhanced it. She went shopping at The Fashion Mall (not the comparably less posh outlet mall we usually go to). This is the one with her friends a Mr. Nieman, a Mr. Marcus, a Mr. Bloomingdale, some guy named Steve Madden (John’s brother?) and another named Helmut Lange. I’ve never heard of these people but apparently she loves these friends, so it was like some kind of divine reunion. And then she came back to the hotel and had a facial which to hear her describe it was like dying and going to that special wing of heaven where little Pilipino ladies cater to your every whim. By the time I crapped out in the poker room she was just getting back to our hotel room so we still had loads of time to hang out together, go out for seriously one of the best Italian meals either have ever experienced, and spent a whole night of gambling, meeting terrific people, getting completely sozzled, laughing a lot, and charming the pants off everyone we met. (Ruth is in charge of charming, I’m in charge of getting their pants off.) We had an excellent night.

The next morning as I pushed the button that automatically draws back the sheers and drapes on out floor-to-ceiling windows to allow the morning light to burst into our beautifully appointed deluxe king room, she also pointed out that I had held my own at the blackjack tables so far, and had actually done quite well both nights in the cash games in the poker room after she’d gone to bed. She made the argument that it made financial sense to go in another tournament. So against my better judgement, I agreed. It was a little $335 entry tournament with unlimited re-entries. It started at 2:00 PM but they allowed late entry right up to 5:30. So I told Ruth the only way I would play is if we showed up right at 5:30. That way we could have a full day together, go to the enormous pool and do our laps, lie in the sun, go the spa, work out, take a steam, a schvitz, a whirpool, and something called a deluge shower (which I will come back to in a moment) and even go back to the Fashion Mall and do a little shopping (I couldn’t stop buying shit, she never made a purchase – go figure). Only after we’d done all that – and done it in a leisurely fashion – would I agree to take the short cab ride over to the Bellagio where I could join the tourney at the very last minute and she could go play some three-card poker.

I have to interject at this juncture to ask you a question. Have you ever been in a “deluge shower”? I’m going to assume the answer is no, because if you had ever been in a deluge shower, you would probably be in it right now and not reading this idiotic blog. It’s in the room where they keep the hot tub. It’s a clear circular vertical tube that looks like a cross between R2D2 and an MRI machine. It looks like a time-saving Jetson-like contraption where maybe George Jetson would walk in right after waking up in the morning and in seconds come out fully showered, shaved and dressed for work and having been fed a healthy breakfast! So I walked around it a bit, I touched the side of it, I looked for knobs or buttons to push but there were none. Nobody was using it. Probably they didn’t want to look stupid asking questions about it. Looking stupid is like my middle name so I asked the guy, and he showed me and now my life will never be the same. You get in it, you sit on this beautiful marble shelf (I brought in a towel with me to sit on having never been comfortable putting my unprotected bare ass, directly on anything where other male bare asses have been) and the guy pushes a button and water that is exactly 95 (not 94 or 96) degrees cascades down on you with a scientifically designed pressure by which every one of your problems immediately disappears. And there is a challenge involved as well. The challenge is trying to come up with a reason to ever leave. Yes there’s family, friends, career, sustenance, but in that particular moment none of those seem like compelling enough motivation. I had this mental image of my skeletal cadaver being found there months later with that perfect cascade of 95 degree water pounding down on my now skinless skull. Honestly, it didn’t seem like a horrible plan.

Anyway I got out eventually but I still can’t positively tell you why.

We get down to the Bellagio to find out that the tournament only got 19 entries. (They were expecting between 50-80 but I guess with the WSOP going on, things were pretty slow). By the time I arrived they were down to 9 players, so I’d be joining the tournament at the final table! You get 10000 chips and the blinds were already 300/600 and were about to change to 400/800 any minute. To join a tournament at this stage, you have to make a decision to play hyper aggressive. You need to double up quickly to have any chance at all. To accomplish that you have to be prepared to go out within minutes of sitting down, seconds maybe. And everyone at the table knows exactly how desperate you are and will act accordingly. You’ve put yourself at a huge disadvantage. It’s very unwise. So I paid my 335 clams and I sat down. 4 hands later I was out. I won’t go into the gritty details. I did exactly what I had to do and it didn’t work out.

So I went to find Ruth at 3 card poker. She’d already hit a flush and two straights and was about $250 bucks ahead when I found her laughing and entertaining the Mormon couples which made up her table with Jewish folklore. And while I watched, she hit three of a kind! We said goodbye to The newly-reformed Latter Day Saints, got up and walked away. So in 15 minutes at the Bellagio I lost $335 and she won $700 and converted some polygamists. We caught a cab back to the Wynn. As my kids would say, it was so sick.

So that’s it really.

Trip Highlights: My new denim shirt from Zara. Best wife ever. Deluge shower. Lemon Drops – our Vegas drink. The Duck Bi Bim Bap from the Asian restaurant Mizumi – if you ever find yourself in front of a firing squad and they want to know what you want for your last meal, you now know what to order. Oh, and woman we saw at the airport on the way home. She was definitely a highlight. What a miserable piece of work this fascinating lady was. She seemingly hated everything indiscriminately. In rapid-fire succession she criticized all things living and dead. We promptly dubbed her the “Hate A.D.D. Lady”. Ruth and I fell head-over-heels in love with her of course. Crapped on everything. It was a whine-fest with seemingly no ending. She hated Rob Ford, Dalton McGinty, Kathleen Wynn, Nelson Mandela, Dr. Seuss, LeBron James, welfare, Shakespeare, the “disgusting smell” at the airport, airport security, the lack of airport security, the color of the walls, ladybugs. Nothing and no one was safe. She so fascinated me that I quickly crossed that threshold that separates eavesdropping from brazen, outright observation. Hank does that all the time, in a restaurant he’ll just candidly and shamelessly study a person like he’s watching a documentary on television in a way that only a twelve year-old can get away with. That was me with this woman, I was so curious as to when it would end. Honestly she was the Niagara Falls of verbal streams of negative consciousness, I don’t know where she got the energy to complain about so many things so vigorously and so well, but I do admire it and I could have listened to her forever. In fact, put me and her in a deluge shower together and you would never hear from either one of us ever again, I promise you. We got off the plane and waited for our bags at the turnstile, and there she was ragging on that the baggage handler had scraped her Samsonite giving the illusion that the tirade had continued throughout the entire flight. Or was it an illusion? Ruth and I had a really good laugh. It was a fitting ending for an awesome trip.

Michael Redhill wants me to do that road-trip to “Turning Stone” we did a couple of summers ago. They have a beauty of a $1500 tourny and it’s only 5 hours by car. I’ll have to check my calendar. It’s got distinct possibilities though. I’ll let you know.