Las Vegas Road Trip

This post is a long time coming. I apologize in advance if it is TLDR. It has already been a month since I took the road trip and it was about damn time that I blogged about it. A little bit of history first, the idea to go on a road trip to Vegas originated from watching a day long marathon of History Channel's Pawn Stars. It was during this marathon that my brother jokingly reminded me that I had yet to sell the Country Legends autographed guitar that I had purchased at a charity auction earlier the previous year. I jokingly responded by saying that I should drive to Las Vegas and attempt to get on the Pawn Stars show and sell my guitar there. For some reason, we both got really serious about the idea and just sort of ran with it since 1) my brother has never been to vegas and 2) I really wanted to go to vegas again.

So we set out. I drove from Houston to San Antonio to pick my brother up from his school on a Friday after work. The next morning we woke up around 6:00am and proceeded to drive to Albuquerque, NM, some 800 miles away. That first day was rather uneventful. Getting stopped at the border control stations along the way always makes me nervous for some reason. I mean, I am a legal citizen who is also not a drug mule but nevertheless I always think in the back of my head that I am one of those drug mules who doesn't even know it and I would end up going to prison like in that awful Claire Danes movie Brokedown Palace. I was also pleasantly surprised at how nice of a city Las Cruces was. I guess I really never had a reason to think it would be a dump other than the fact that it is in the middle of the freaking desert and I just figured it would have more of a The Hills Have Eyes kind of vibe. I couldn't have been more wrong; Las Cruces had a Jack in the Box and Super Target and everything else you would expect to find in a civilization. Albuquerque was nice too.

Ok so the next morning we got up early again and hit the road bound for the Grand Canyon. This segment of the journey really struck me at just how empty the parts of northern New Mexico and Arizona really are. At best we would see a truck stop every 80 or so miles but pretty much everything else was just flat plains with the occasional mountain range. Oh, and the 4 for $20 Indian t-shirt deals that were advertised every 4 miles or so. That day's trip was relatively short compared to the epic 13 hour drive the day before. We arrived in Williams, AZ around 1:00 local time and attempted to check into our hotel. The story about this hotel is so long and ridiculous that I will spare you it right now for another blog post. Anyway, check in time was 3:00 so we decided just to grab some food real fast and do all of the Grand Canyon stuff that day before checking in to the hotel later at night. The Grand Canyon was awesome as usual.

I was pretty surprised at the amount of foreign visitors that were there. I would say that maybe 30-40% of the folks there were French and maybe another 20% of the people were from Asian countries. I didn't remember it being so culturally diverse the last time I was there.

Quick tangent: On the way to the Grand Canyon, my brother and I got the opportunity to go to Meteor Crater. Set aghast by the $15 dollar admission fee, I began plotting my revenge. While exploring the crater, I picked up a small rock on the outer rim and put it in my pocket. I sure showed those guys! Now fast forward to being at the Grand Canyon. I decided that it would be in mine and all future generation's best interest if I hurled the rock from Meteor Crater into the Grand Canyon. And I did exactly that. Think about it, in 8 brazillion years (that's 4.7 years in metric), alien archaeologists are going to be poking around in the Grand Canyon, find my rock and say "By golly, Grog, this rock shouldn't be here, this throws my whole view of ancient Earth in a New Light I tell ya". Grog is the name of an alien, in case you couldn't pick that up through context clues. Also, the aliens are from the southern region of whatever alien world they come from.

Moving along, the next day was the day we would be driving into Las Vegas! Having driven this route before, I remembered that we would be passing over Hoover Dam. This was an unexpected bonus from my brother who had never been there before. The water beneath the dam looked even lower than the last time I was there when it was already pretty damn low. According to Wikipedia, the entire basin is expected to be dried up in the next 20 years. Scary thought for folks like me who like Las Vegas having electricity and running water. But that is a problem for future people to figure out…it was time to do some gambling! We stayed at Bally's since I had complimentary nights there. I like staying at Bally's because it is right in the middle of the strip and you don't have to walk too far in either direction to get where you want to go. So we did some gambling and my brother won quite a bit of money right off the bat with his bullshit beginner's luck while I had a pretty heavy dose of veteran gambler's luck. I managed to win a poker tournament at Mandalay Bay the second day we were there, the very same Mandalay Bay which began a series of unfortunate events that led to me being kicked out of the Luxor Hotel and Casino last time I was in town.

So we stayed in Las Vegas for 2 nights. There was a plan to stay for 3 but we were both pretty vacationed out by this point. I laid some money on my Super Bowl picks and we headed out to the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop that was the main reason for this whole trip anyway.

The pawn shop is a lot smaller than it looks on TV. None of the people you see on the show were working the day we went there. This was a disappointment to my brother who really wanted to meet Chumlee. They had some of the stuff from the TV show in the show room and a merchandise area that I have never seen on the show. My brother and I both picked up a Chumlee t-shirt and we went back to the car to bring the guitar inside and do some dealing. After standing in line behind a guy who was pawning his Xbox 360 for what I could only assume was drug money, we stepped up to and placed the guitar on the counter. The counter where we were at was the place where you usually see them paying people on the show for the items that have been brought in. It was really cool seeing the desk behind the counter where the old man sits. Long story short, the guy pretty much offered me the same amount of money for the guitar that I had bought it for. "I can't even get near the 2k you are looking for", he said. Discouraged, I took my guitar with me back home where it will no doubt lay in anguish for a while until it appreciates a little more in value. Fail.

So we left Las Vegas, headed back over the Hoover Dam and proceeded to drive to Tucson, AZ. The original plan was to stay in Tucson for a night, explore some of the things around there the next day and then drive back to Las Cruces for one final night. It turns out that we were so sick of driving that we decided to forgo the final night of our trip and just drive straight back to San Antonio from Tucson. This was hardly the scenic route that we took on the first half of our trip. Driving through the empty desert is certainly not as nice as driving through forested mountain ranges and plains. Luckily with these new fangled phones and cars, we were able to listen to hours and hours of uninterrupted music which definitely cut down on the mundanity (not sure if that is a word…) of driving 867 miles. We made it back into San Antonio around 8pm, only 13.5 hours after we departed Tucson. 80mph speed limit zones really help out on long stretches of road like that.

All in all it was a fantastic trip. Getting back out to the Grand Canyon and finally getting to see Meteor Crater were definitely highlights of the trip. My brother had a great time in Vegas. Don't get me wrong, I had a good time in Vegas as well, I just would have had a better time if I had got the $2000 I was hoping for at the pawn shop. At just over 3300 miles, it was a little bit less than driving from coast to coast. As much fun as it was retelling this story, you must absolutely stay tuned for my post about the adventure we experienced at the hotel in Williams, Arizona. It was nothing short of a debacle.

Ok, I am just under 3 full pages in Microsoft Word right now, better stop typing. This is by far my longest post on this blog yet and should make up for the utter lack of updates recently. If you actually read through this whole post then I applaud you for being able to fight through my incoherent rambling. Be sure to leave a note in the comments on if this post even made sense. Hopefully I will be able to get back to updating this thing with some kind of regularity.

And now for some keyword selection...

Writers Block

It's official, I have the dreaded writers block. Not that I ever had anything of particular interest to write about before, mind you. With that in mind, let's do a little bit of brainstorming for future blog posts, shall we?

The mathematics of quantum neutrino fields.

The mathematics of wonton burrito meals.

How good or bad an endangered animal might taste.

Hurling various items into the sun and their order of said hurling.

Cartography: A Love Story.

Real life Gold Farming.

A discussion about the various items on my desk.

Possibility of consuming 10 McDouble cheeseburgers in 10 minutes.

Mosquitoes: An Apocalypse.

Electricity: Is it magic?

The freakin Energizer Bunny: A tale of Horror.

Writers block: A smorgasbord of bad brainstorming.

See? See what I mean? These ideas are all terrible. I mean MAYBE the one about mosquitoes, but seriously!

Anyway, I’m on Foursquare now. Go there and stalk me, you stalkers.

Pawn Super Star

Lately I've been watching a lot of the show "Pawn Stars" on the History channel. In case you aren't familiar with the show, it basically chronicles the day to day operations of a pawn shop in Las Vegas. And in case you really don't know, pawn shops are places where people bring in stuff to either sell outright or take a loan out against that stuff in order to buy drugs and/or pay off their loan shark. The show is interesting in the fact that people bring in some really weird and unique items that are sometimes worth a lot of money.

Now, why is this relevant to anything? Well, if you recall, I purchased a Country Legends autographed guitar about one and a half years ago. This guitar was autographed by country legends such as George Strait, BB King, Kenny Rogers, Charlie Daniels, Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn. The idea at the time was to flip the guitar and make insane amounts of money. In fact, that is still the idea, one of my best.

You see, I plan on taking this guitar to that very pawn shop on the History channel. The reasons for this are three fold. 1.) Taking a trip to Vegas. 2.) Selling this guitar for lots of money. 3.) Did I mention Vegas? Not too mention the fun I am going to have haggling with the guy and potentially being on tv. I’m thinking about walking into the place with my newly purchased Captain's Hat that I got in Port Aransas over the weekend so they know I mean business when I walk through the door.

The current plan is to drive out to Vegas with my brother who has never been there before as an adult. I will then sell the guitar for a large amount of money and then I will make it rain in the club. Well, at least in the hotel room.

As to the decrepit state of this blog, yes, I have been neglecting it pretty bad recently. Hopefully that will all change on this road trip where I plan on blogging through out the entirety of the drive out there and back. If I am not too lazy, maybe I will upload a few pictures of the voyage as well. I am taking a much needed whole week off work to accomplish this. So stay tuned for more updates!

Christine and I again both recently passed the $100 mark in Google monies and are currently planning the party where it will all be wasted, ie: more riot punch! You can check out her blog here to keep the monies flowing into our accounts. You do want the monies flowing, right? Of course you do.

Painting and Alcohol

*stock photo, mine was a billion times better*

So this past weekend, I went with a couple friends to this thing called "Painting with a Twist”. The idea is that you show up, and these people will walk you through the step by step process of creating a masterpiece on canvas. Oh and there is also booze involved, hence the “twist” in the title. Now if you know me at all, you know I have the artistic skills of a rabid badger that has been drinking too much. However, it turns out that I am able to follow directions pretty well and needless to say my painting turned out to be one hell of a masterpiece. I’m talking Renaissance level art here.

Going into it, I figured that my painting would be, at best, abysmal. But they actually did a pretty good job of showing us how to blend the colors and create tree branches to hide any and all of the screw ups. The whole thing took about 2 hours from start to finish. And while the painting we chose to do was really effeminate (the girls chose this one), I still had a good time painting it while listening to Heather (shout out*) talking about how shitty her’s was turning out. Also, blending colors is a real bitch.

Christine (shout out*) and I each killed a bottle of smooth, delicious champagne that morning. Needless to say I was impressed with my ability to draw well while under the influence of alcohol and orange juice. All of our paintings turned out pretty well in the end. I found that the best strategy to not messing up your art was to just stop painting. The more I tried to fix problems, the more terrible it got. It’s like I always say, sometimes you just gotta put the paintbrush down and take another sip of your mimosa, you know what I mean?

So who knows, maybe I am in the wrong profession. Perhaps it was my destiny to paint the walls of the Sixteen Chapels in the Vatican or something. I would most definitely go do this again although I wouldn’t mind doing a more gender independent work. I always see people buying lame, non-masterpiece art for ridiculous prices at like Bed Bath and Beyond so I figure I could make quite a bit of monies selling my work on the side. Or, better yet, I’ll just start up my own art teaching class. With blackjack…and hookers! In fact, forget the art class...

*Shout outs were demanded by the viewing audience.

Link: Painting with a Twist

Understanding the World Cup

It is no secret that I am not a big soccer fan. In fact, it might be safe to say that I am more disinterested in soccer than anyone else on the planet. I have a lot of reasons for this and I will get into them a little later in this post. Before I do that though, I want to make it perfectly clear that I tried to like it. With the World Cup starting up last week, I decided that I was going to give the sport an honest effort to understand why it is the world’s "Most Popular Sport".

First things first, a little background. I have never been able to participate in or watch soccer in any form. I am also very unaware of the rules and traditions that soccer adheres to save for the kicking the ball into the net without using your hands aspect. So I did a little bit of basic Wikipedia research on the sport before watching the opening game of the World Cup. After getting mildly educated on the sport, I felt good about the rules and the yellow cards and red cards etc. To say the least, I was pumped about the prospect of finally understanding why everyone else in the world found this game so fascinating.

I sat down to watch the first game and I was immediately annoyed. You know how when you watch regular sports and all you can hear is the occasional insight of washed up former player doing the play by play and you don't even notice the crowd at all? Well apparently, in soccer, the tradition of the fans is to be as annoying as possible by playing, and I'm going to use that word lightly, a sort of loud obnoxious horn called a vuvuzela for the whole game. I literally had to turn down the volume on my tv before I blew a hole in the back of my head. And yes, I used the word literally correctly there. Ok so, whatever, no big deal, I eventually understood that this was only a South African tradition and wasn't necessarily inherent to the actual sport itself. See, I was even getting educated about other cultures and stuff by watching.

Ok so once I got over the BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZing sound, I finally got acclimated to the pace of the game. That was until I witnessed the dreaded "offsides" penalty. Having read about this on Wikipedia, I figured that it must only happen once in a blue moon especially since the article I read praised the rule quite a bit. I found it to be the exact opposite. It is, in fact, the dumbest rule in sports ever. From what I understand, the rule is in place to prevent offensive players from just hanging around the opposing teams goal while waiting for the ball to be passed to him. This would, of course, be a "cheap shot" and I can sort of see the need for the rule to exist.

What I didn't seem to understand, however, was that this rule is applied even in the thick of the action. Take for example the game today between the USA and Slovenia. With 5 minutes left (although if you aren’t a soccer fan you would have no idea how much time is left because the dumb clock counts upward), the USA had a penalty kick which resulted in a GOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!! However, the goal was called back because the US player who scored the goal was called offsides. The play in question can be seen here. Now if you get done watching that and say "yup, offsides, clear as day" then I will punch you in the baby maker.

Anyway, offsides as implemented is a dumb rule. But what about the flopping? Is that Manu Ginobli and the rest of the San Antonio spurs out there on the soccer field? Nope, just like in the NBA, soccer players feign injury in attempt to draw a yellow card for the opposing team. I will never understand the logic behind this. If soccer is such a "pure" sport, why does cheating play such a big role in it?

Do you enjoy arbitrary and unilateral officiating? I sure as hell don't, but maybe that's because I live in America where bad decisions can be overturned and rules are clearly laid out. The referee in soccer has sole authority over the game. He can eject players, reverse goals, kill your family in their sleep and decide how much "extra time" will be played at the end of each half. That's right, soccer doesn’t have a "set" amount of time. After the game clock has expired (although, once again, you'd really have no idea it had if you didn't know the rules of soccer), the referee can then add an arbitrary and secret amount of time to each half. I'm told that this is because the clock never stops during play (dumb) and it is to compensate for the time wasting activities that occur during regular play. The referee then at some point just decides that the game is over. I'm guessing that countries that live under dictatorships are the reason for this rule. After all, you know who else liked to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide stuff, don't you? That's right, HITLER.

Ok, only one more bullet point to go. Soccer fans often tell me how exciting the games are and how there is constant action on the field. While the latter may be true, the former is most certainly not. As of this posting, 6 of 12 games have ended in a tie. That's right, a tie, in the biggest tournament in the world. A couple games even ended in a 0-0 tie. How very exciting indeed. The ties wouldn't be so bad for me if I had known what happens in the unlikely event of all teams in a group tying with same amount of goals. Should that happen, the advancing teams will be decided by, wait for it…..a LOTTERY. Are you kidding me!??! Drawing names out of a hat to decide who advances in the biggest tournament in the world!?!? WHAT?!

Ok end rant. 1 billion people in the world are watching the World Cup at any given moment, and that’s gotta stand for something about soccer, right? Right? No. In fact, I am convinced that those folks only think soccer is the greatest game in the world because it is all they have. For instance, I greatly doubt that Slovenia has a riveting college football season where they get to discuss the pros and cons of Slovenia U joining the Big Asia Conference. Anyway, I will most likely continue to watch this world cup. Hopefully after watching a few more games I will be able to understand why this sport is so damn popular.

As a side note, I’d like to point out that this was my 100th post on this blog! Where’s my celebratory cake and ice cream?

Which Korea is Best Korea?

There has been a great deal of news coverage lately with the talking heads discussing which Korea is best Korea. If you haven’t heard, relations between North and South Korea have reached a boiling point. A couple weeks ago, A South Korean naval ship was sunk off the coast of North Korea. After looking at all the evidence, the South Koreans determined that it was a North Korean torpedo that sunk the ship, claiming some 60 lives in the process. Also, if you haven’t already heard, the North and South Koreans are not exactly BFF. They have been involved in a war that never really ended for the past 40 or so years. Now, since I have a Masters in Pan-Asian Studies, I feel qualified to give you a brief description of how the North and South got to where they are today.

After the sinking, South Korea unfriended North Korea on facebook. They also set their relationship status to “complicated”, a common way for tweens to indicate that their relationship's are on the rocks. The North responded to this by hacking the South’s yahoo email address and forwarding a message of hate to all of the South’s contacts. The reports of this message are still fuzzy, but initial reports say it was along the lines of calling the South a bunch of “doody-heads” and insinuating promiscuity about their mothers.

The South responded to this act of aggression by tweeting about the North’s leader’s propensity to be “ronery, so very, very ronery”. North Korea was reportedly too busy following Justin Bieber updates to see the message, however. Kim Jong Il, aka the Illa of Manilla, threatened to use his WWI era technology to level Seoul, South Korea, if it sees any aggression on from the South. This is where we stand right now. The situation appears to be long past name calling and fart jokes. The UN reportedly was on the verge of writing up a strongly worded letter to the North. The letter apparently included the words "or else" and "we're really serious this time".

It is unlikely that the South would execute an attack any time in the near future, however, as Star Craft 2 is only weeks away from being released. As the entire economy of the South plunges to do lack of productivity, the North may have an ideal time to execute an attack plan of its own. North Koreans, as you know, have very little electricity and therefore are unable to play silly RPG games for hours on end. The release of Starcraft may very well prevent an all out war between the Koreas.

Tensions remain at an all time high as the world waits to see how this conflict will be resolved. One thing is for sure, this business will get out of hand. It will get out of hand and we will be lucky to live through it. (Lets play guess the quote). At any rate, officials urge everyone who had vacation plans in North Korea to seriously rethink how they got to that point in their lives with one official even saying “I didn’t think North Korea was even a real country”. Stay with me here for updates on this developing situation. I will pass along any and all trivial news about what we are now calling “The Great Saber Rattling Event of 2010 that happens to involved two countries that hate each other.” The world watches and waits.

Astros update

Ok, since not much else is going on right now, I felt like this would be a great opportunity to talk about the Astros as we near the end of the first quarter of the season. As it stands today, the Astros currently have a 13-24 record fresh off being swept by the Giants (A team who had just come off a large losing streak of its own). Sadly, many, if not all, of the predictions I made at the beginning of the season have come true.

The Astros currently hold the 2nd worst record in baseball, trailing the historically miserable Baltimore Orioles by only 1 game. The team batting average is hovering around .230. The usual offensive power of Berkman and Lee is nowhere to be found as both of them are hitting near .200. Kaz Matsui, one of the worst signings of the organization in the past 2 decades, is struggling to keep his batting average above .100. The offense simply isn’t here this year. And this isn’t like years past where the offense was bad. The ‘stros are literally losing games 2-1 and 1-0.

And that brings up the sole prediction I made this year that turned out to be wrong. The pitching has been nothing short of phenomenal. Roy Oswalt has an ERA of 2.62 and a 2-5 record to show for it. It has got to be demoralizing as a pitching knowing that if you give up 2 runs there is a really good chance of you losing the game. Knowing that you have to be nothing short of perfect every single time you trot out there cannot be healthy for your state of mind. And it isn’t just Oswalt, Myers and Wandy are also having good, solid outings with little to show in the win column for their efforts.

Sadly, I believe this kind of performance is necessary for management to wake up and make some hard decisions. As much as I hate to say it, we need to start looking into gutting the team. And I mean REALLY gutting. Oswalt said he would be willing to relinquish his no trade clause in exchange for going to a contender, and I cant really blame him. Berkman too says he would be willing to part ways with the club if it meant going with a team that looks like it is headed in the right direction. Along with Lee and Matsui, those 4 guys comprise the majority of the Astros budget.

I would really like to see the Astros building a team around the young talent on the club. I think they need to lock up Pence and Bourn long term now while they are still young. After that, they need to get back to the way they build the World Series team, by getting young talent from the draft and farm clubs. They need to stop signing overpaid, overweight (cheap shot), old players that are past their prime. Sadly, we gave up so much of our farm clubs to acquire big name hot shots like Carlos Beltran back in 2004. Since then they have just been going through the motions it seems, trying to buy championships instead of developing them.

Watching the team score 0-2 runs a game is getting old fast. I’ve been noticing fewer and fewer people at the home games. I can only hope that the team doesn’t descend into darkness for the next 16 years like the Pirates who haven’t had a winning season in nearly 20 years. Hopefully this “rebuilding year” will actually be a year with rebuilding. I’m not holding my breath…