Betty4Ever! and the Great Cal Blackout

Day 8, Tuesday May 23, 2017

Remember the old, slow elevators at the Cal west tower that always broke down? Now they have new, shiny, swanky elevators at the Cal west tower that always break down. And particularly still the left-most one. That sucker is never levitating!

The renovations are pretty much complete at the California Hotel and Casino and they have done a wonderful job - except for the lighting over the pit. To me, a casino should be a little sexy, a little mysterious, a little smoky, a little sultry - like your first slow dance in the Hillcrest gym. The chandelier thingies they've put up, which are huge, are loaded up with eye-bruising white light LEDs, blinding, just like when the lights went up in the Hillcrest gym after Stairway to Heaven just as you were about to try to cop a feel. BZZZZZZT! HANDS IN THE AIR!

So, a little design flaw there, which I doubt they will fix. Anyway, I'm sure the security cameras love it.

I woke up feeling great, and I felt like I'd shaken whatever was ailing me. And maybe some bad luck from yesterday too. Yeah, maybe I'd shaken that too.

My pal Blonde4Ever, head mistress of the LasVegas4Ever forum, and writer for Vegas Bright, happened to be in town at the same time as me, and I got a text from her suggesting breakfast at Main Street - she had a comp for two. NICE! We planned to meet around 10:30.

Betty4Ever

There was a lot on tap today, including my first of two video poker tournament sessions, plus eating, gambling, drinking, and walking around.



The craps experience has been very interesting with the new strategy. A lot of different things have to go right for it to work. For example, the night before, I played some craps and at one point had $150 in my rack and $40 on the felt from a $100 buy-in. But in the end, an hour later, I walked with $19 profit or something.

I'd had my biggest losing day of the trip but I'd also managed $5,000 coin in, much more than I thought I would be able to do on such a limited budget. And add on blackjack and craps action on top of that.

First things first, I'd set up yet another fancy way no way ticket at Keno and went to check it. And by the jeez I had another winner - about $50 profit. It's great to win $50 but with a multi-way ticket I am always just a number off of a score 10 times as big. I always consider all the alternatives, and winning a lot of money is usually my first choice.

Somewhere in there I had coffee and punishment cheese in the room, enough to keep me going, but not enough to ruin a coveted free buffet at one of Las Vegas' finest, Main Street Station!

The tournament was fun and as usual, I delighted in using various strategies to throw some of the combatants off their game, such as making 'herky jerky' motions, coughing randomly as loud as I could, and occasionally yelling out, "YOU BASTARRRD!!!!!" in a fake German voice. Let's be serious, some of these Hawaiians are as old as Mount Kilhuaeaheauea. I think Pele herself was seated to my right and I managed to shake that bitch off of of a dealt deuces kicker hand by starting to sing the "Chicken Dance" music.

Don't ask me why the previous player held the lucky 6 of diamonds on their last hand. You can see how well that worked out.

It was all for nought though, I didn't hit a single quad and my score was shite. It did not look good. The way I figure it, to get in the top 5 money, you have to hit a Royal Flush (which I've done, good for 4th place and $1500), or you have to hit Aces Kicker twice. Aces Kicker with a ridiculously lucky three sets of 2s,3s,4s kicker would suffice as well. I was headed for the equivalent of the Timmy's Roll Up the Rim to Win "Congratulations!!! You've won Play Again!!!"

Over at Main Street, I met up with Blonde. We've got a long history in Vegas, much of which involves me abandoning a machine just in time for her to hit four Deuces on. Sometimes when I'm sitting at the next machine over.

We'd miscalculated a little bit and the buffet peeps were changing over to lunch in about 20 minutes. So we opted to hang around, play a little, and wait for the lunch goodies to come out. Poor Blonde was having a really tough time and wasn't quite her bubbly self - more like 92% of her bubbly self.

The Loose Doose called and we gave that a shot for a while. The last time we'd done this she'd hit them, and I think she hit them again later that trip. So actually, I gave the Loose Doose a shot while she looked on, wisely saving bullets for later. It was fine, we had a few beverages and had a nice chance to get caught up on things.

The buffet was great. I took my time and ate like a pig, finding lots of good things to eat. Blonde even shared the forbidden secret of the forbidden secret pecan pie! Thank you for that!!!

I've already said too much. If I don't show up in Cairo in the morning, look for the fat man in the Fez with pecans on his breath.

I know how to finich cause I eats me Spinach, said Flushie the Gambling Man (toot toot).

Welcome to Mount Wingmore!

Manny the eggertainer who flings omelettes, insults, and bon mots was on duty and was on a roll. It's always fun to listen to him take the piss out of everyone. And the guy can flip an omelette.

I'd been telling Blonde about the cool Flintstone's machine on the mezzanine floor of the Cal and how Wilma would randomly call Dino out of his bed and he'd go RAOW RAOW RAOW RAOW RAOW and throw a bone and you'd get a bonus and how it handed out bonuses like those cards the slappers hand out on the strip and how you could get a bonus inside a bonus!

"Let's Yabbadabba do it!" I'd like to think she yelled.

She didn't though, it was more like, "Can we go try your Flintstones machine?"

Betty's typical win.

Flusher's typical win.

We went over there and each took a machine. There's two of 'em side by each. Well Betty4Ever did great, hitting bonii right, left and center, while I was losing. I was happy for her though, she'd had a rough time. Just when we were really starting to have fun, Betty4Ever broke the California.

Some of the lights went out, and the machines locked up. What the hell?

It wasn't just our 'Stones machines, it was all the progressive machines around. Some were dark, some were working... I finally went and flagged down a floor person and she was able to do some Jimmy Poon black magic techno shit and get the machines to spit out tickets.

Little did we know how much of the Cal's infrastructure Betty4Ever had taken down!

We both had plans to do stuff so we said so long for now, and went our separate ways. The thing I planned to do was to go somewhere where the air conditioning was working (yes, Betty had broken that too) and that place was the Fremont.

Sometimes words with a picture are worth 1000 words.

Here are my recorded notes from the infamous Gunther incident.