Winning Hamburger Losing Craps Saving Stanley

Back in the room, I decided to fire up the Video Poker WinSimulator 3000 featuring WinPoker (which also does email) and check in to see how bad that Ding Dong stealer Marti was fucking up my size 7 Grommet line. I cursed Mr. Azryder as I fought to poach a signal from somewhere. The Flusher does not pay for internet just so he can stay in touch with The Man. Every millisecond I worked on the task was another millisecond away from gambling, drinking or eating and one way or the other it will come back to me like a bottle of Crisco (except one tablespoon).

Well wouldn’t you know it, one of my favorite nephews was stoned. And it was bad.

No, really, he was in trouble with what they thought was kidney stones and was at the hospital.

All thoughts of mirthful trip reports to be written sometime in the future disappeared from my thoughts. There was no way I would get over the trauma of imagining my dear sweet nephew S. laboring to give birth to a couple of golf ball sized rocks through his peepee and be able to jot down anything about it later.

“Mrs. Flusher, I have some bad news. Our beloved nephew Stanley has to pass a couple of cantaloupe sized stones through his Harry Potter.”

“WTF? OMG!” she emoticonned back at me from across the room.

“Yes. He’s been taken to emergency in great pain. So, please, you know – say a prayer or something for him.”

I kind of bowed my head like I know what I’m doing and thought some kind thoughts for my nephew Stan.

After what seemed like a pious interval, I raised my noggin’ again.

“Well? Did you… say something?”

And this is what she uttered.

“DEAR GOD. PLEASE SAVE STAN. THANK YOU, MRS. FLUSHER…

ALOHA!”

I shook my head. She’d obviously been eating too many of those ABC store macadamia thingies.
It turned out there wasn’t anything that needed my attention at North American Veeblefetzer, so we were on our way again… to Binions… to lunch… where we discovered…

The Cheeseburger.

Oh my oh my the Binions snack bar cheeseburger. They say they grind the meat and make the patties daily from fresh, not frozen, and I believe it.

Its just a good, honest hamburger, made real, made the old fashioned way. The price is low to begin with but we had almost enough comp dollars on our Binions cards to cover two of 'em.

I had my burger with grilled onions. It came garnished up, lettuce, tomato, pickle, hot freshly made wide-cut fries, or hash browns in my case, on the side. Once I picked this thing up and started in on it I was in some kind of heaven. Warm juices of onion and beef grease filled my mouth and literally started in a trickle down my wrist.

It’s the kind of burger where you just don’t care and you don’t dare put that thing down because it’ll fall apart in a cheese, gooey, rapturous mess and you’ll have to resort to knife and fork.

I haven’t enjoyed a burger like that in years.

Mrs. Flusher says, "It has everything you want in a burger. You want to come away messy."

After lunch we headed over to the Fremont for $3 craps (me) and Pick ‘em (she). My craps carma seemed to have deserted me – for the third straight session I lost my buy-in rather quickly. $40 just isn’t enough bankroll. I resolved to buy in for more next session.

The Fitz saw more of our VP action. We never seem to get decent offers there though, even though they get a lot of our play. There were quads, and some more quads… I hit the $100 Aces and on we played and on we drank and on. Damn I love it.

Later on, after a rest and a flaying in the shower, we took a crack at $1 69 Jacks or Better again. We played away for a while and it was not going well for me. I got down to my last couple of hands worth and switched to 50 cents. This got me enough wins to get going a bit and I hit a straight flush for $125. There were sure a lot of straights flush this trip – 4 if you include the Royal.

In the end you could say it was a successful session – I finished up $35 when we cashed out and Mrs. F was up $100. Nice.

Back over to Binions to play some Deuces and Double Double. No big quads today but lots of play on the Deuces.

Dinner saw us enjoying our other downtown favorite – the fried chicken upstairs at Fitzgeralds. You want degenerate? It takes 25 minutes to make the chicken, yeah?

We struck a deal with the hostess. She put the order in on the chicken and we prepaid. Then we hit the casino for exactly 25 minutes to gamble more.

Twenty two minutes are up, we go grab some Keno tickets from the Keno lounge (so we can gamble while we eat), we sit down, the ‘steaming hot crispy outside, juicy inside, cooked to perfection, the Colonel can go fuck himself this is the best chicken I’ve ever tasted’ Fried Chicken arrives just at that second. Another moment of sweet culinary perfection.

I say an Aloha and dig in.

After dinner we each popped another couple of quads, and the Quad Queen hit another straight flush!

Strangely, she hit four queens four times today. Huhn. With all those quads, how did she lose 250 bucks??? Tons and tons of tons of play.

RF has: $1100 up +800 on day +100 on the trip
QQ has: $180 down -255 on day -170 on the trip