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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Gunther at the Plate


Day 7, Monday May 22, 2017 - continued


I swear, there was something weird afoot at the Cal. It's like everyone was super friendly, super familiar with me. Some CWs I know well, and know them by name even. Some I just recognize, but they were all calling me Sweetie and treating me oh so nice. Same at the restaurants.

Don't get me wrong - I loved it!! But I just had the feeling that maybe my name was on a poster in the break room with the caption "LOSER - HERE ALONE - BE NICE TO THIS POINDEXTER".

Example - usually, the drinks on the floor at the Cal (and Main Street and Fremont) are served like this:

Boyd Slot Floor Drink Recipe

Ingredients
One (1) tiny shattery plastic cup
A huge amount of ice cold ice
A fifth of alcohol (actually, that's 5/8th of an ounce)

Method

Scoop a huge amount of ice cold ice into a tiny fucking plastic cup that will explode into aorta-severing shards if you so much as look at it funny.
(Optional) Add a 5/8 ounce of well liquor

Serves no-one.

Well my girl took my order and came back smiling with a Sweetie and a Dear and left me this:

Holy shit, that is a brain cell bunker buster.
I was so pleased, I made sure to take good care of her next time by. I played and drank and played and drank and nothing else much happened except for a general, enjoyable buzz.

My Korean Short Rib Jones was officially running my body and soul by this time, pulling on my appetites like a puppeteer, yanking my strings, and forcing me to walk like a Thunderbirds zombie straight to the coffee shop, where the Precious awaited.



The coffee shop was pretty busy, and there was a decent line-up.

Remember I said I have a moral compass like a roulette wheel? It was about to be tested.

For  a few years there, when we were playing quite heavily at Boyd, I was Emerald. Emerald, above Sapphire, above Ruby (but below the secret exalted and mysterious Onyx level).

I've been to the coffee shop many, many times, and one of the attractions of the Cal is that the staff know me and greet me warmly like an old friend with a shitload of cash to dump into their video poker games.

It got to be habit. The peon line would be as long as a TSA clusterscan, and the Emerald line would be empty. We'd stroll along the little laneway to the front, I'd slip my card out of my shirt pocket enough to show its color, and the hostess would nod and seat us first. So that we could get back to losing that much sooner.

After a few trips, they all knew us and it was just routine. I didn't even have to show the card much anymore.

I'm sapphire.

A peon.

One of them.

I looked at the 15 minute long line. I looked at the empty Emerald lane. I smiled at the hostess, who I knew well.

I figured she would not question me, that if I took up a spot at the end of the Emerald line and looked like a smug self-important loser, it would be business as usual, and I would be scarfing down Korean Short Ribs in about 7 minutes.

Should I try it? Shouldn't I? I knew that it would be jumping the queue under circumstances that the rules say I didn't deserve. And there was always the chance that the 60,000 watt spotlight would blind me and the sirens would go off and the bells would ring and there would be calls for security for a "CODE GREEN, MARKET STREET. CODE. GREEN." and they would march me roughly down some cold, damp cement stairs to the basement and into a small windowless room, where they would strap me down on a rickety bamboo chair and force me to listen to a number of Mantovani selections at reasonable volume.

And then I spied it. The Counter. With a number of empty seats. Put this moral dilemma on double zero and get outta my way, I've got a hankerin' for SHORT RIBS.


Flushiepants meets the most interesting people. Where 'interesting' often means 'bat-shit crazy unpredictable and possibly randomly violent'.

I sat down at the counter beside a nondescript rumply-woman, just as her dinner came. I thought maybe she had been a soldier in a Napoleanic war and after a battle had cut a steak from a slain horse's haunch and fried it over an open fire in an overturned shield liberally coated with cart axle grease, whilst listening to the moans of the wounded which occasionally shattered the still-smoky post-battle evening air.

But, fuck me, I thought wrong. I had to ask, and the answer was that she ordered the prime rib extra well done, so they took a slice and cut it in half, making two horse-thigh disks of meat which they proceeded to cook the ever-loving crap out of. (In axle grease.)

I wanted to say to her, "You're fucked up like your brain is trying to ride a goddamned two-wheeled tricycle across the freeway" but instead I said, "Looks like it's perfect for you - enjoy!".

Forthwith, I ordered the Precious. And when it arrived... oh my God, so tastebuddy, hot, smoky and slightly burned, salty, soyey, gingery and oniony... a veritable roman candle mouthgasm.
The Precious. With the Cal's patented Spackle Mac Salad, and a side of salad bar 'real' salad.
After five long months, after thousands of miles, after a thousand drooling tears, after having to eat a hoof - the Korean Short Rib appetizers were mine, all mine.

I made some kind of harsh love to those ribs, with my knife, and my fork... splitting them, nay taking them, doing what I wished, making them scream with fright and scream with ecstasy, and then throwing away the bones to be found in the gutter in the cold morning light when it was all over.

I was on my last rib and still loving every moment of my short rib carnal indulgence.

And that's when Gunther, the Overly Friendly German sat down beside me at the counter, bumping my shoulder just as I was raising a delectable bite to my greedy mouth.

"Ah!" said Gunther. "How arr you? Ah, you are having ze ribs, ya?"

I always give new Gunther's a chance. One chance.

"Yes I am, the Korean Short Ribs"

"Oh ya, ya, they arr good, ya?"

"Yes, very good."

And there we were at the breaking point. Either I'd get to go back to my meal in peace and we would co-exist in our own little worlds again, having dispensed with the fake civilities -or- Gunther would keep talking and annoy the shit out of me.

Gunther was presented with a menu and thankfully did not keep up the conversation.

After a little while, the waiter came by with, "Whaddaya gonna have?"

"Vat is ze plate today?" demanded Gunther.

"Sir?"

"Vat is ze plate today, you know? Vat plate?"

The waiter clued in.

"Barbecued brisket."

"Is any good? Zat any good?"

"It's... pretty good," said the waiter.

"Ya, that's good, okay I'm gonna haff that."

"OK, what do you want with it?"

"Vat do you got?"

"Potato, brown rice, mashed, fries..."

"OK, ya, I haff po-tay-to and brown rice."

"You can't have both, sir. You can only have one."

"Ya okay I haff... um... brown rice then... or maybe... ya mashed po-tay-to. Ya mashed po-tay-to. Okay, that's what I haff."

By this point I was almost done and I wanted to get out of there without engaging Gunther any further. I managed to finish extracting the last bits of rib off the rib bones. Done.

I like to tidy up before leaving the counter, because they are busy, and I have nothing better to do while waiting for my check, if it hasn't come already. I put my salad plate on the dinner plate, and the macarani salad plate on the dinner plate, and the straw paper on the dinner plate, and my fork on the dinner plate, and my knife on the dinner plate, and my other knife on my dinner plate.

And as I put the other knife on, I noticed that it had been used to spread butter.

Only I hadn't had any butter.

Shit.

Gunther's.

"Excuse me, I'm sorry, I think I took your knife - here, let me get you a new one."

I reached over to the place setting on the other side of me from Gunther (horse steak lady having long gone) and grabbed a knife from there.

Gunther looked at me.

"Oh, issn't that so nice, you arr lookink out for me, ya?"

"Well, yeah," I said, "I actually stole from you before getting you a replacement -"

"YOU BASTARRD!!!" yelled Gunther.

I looked at him, jaw dropping.

"YOU STOLE FROM ME, YOU BASTARRD!!!"

"Yes, I guess I am a bastarrd. And now you are a bastarrd with a new knife."

Gunther smiled.

"Ya, okay."

I picked up my check, dropped a tip, and hauled my sapphire ass out of there.


The rest of the night wasn't too eventful (but could have been, but for 'one more card'). I played this and that, lost a bunch, won some back on Beeffalooo, bought a keno ticket for the night.
Worst. Bonus. Ever. $1.30


This lasted about 34 minutes.

Yes? Yes????

No. No.

One of the best things was discovering a new Flintstones machine up on the mezzanine level. It's a machine with spinning reels and a see through screen that overlays them. My first spin, I hit a bonus round. Then I hit another. And later another. And during that bonus, I hit another bonus. A bonus within a bonus. I had no idea what the hell was going on, but damn it was fun.

A losing day, but fun.

The Poon-o-matic Gauges tell no lies. I was still up on the trip!

Hey, did you chuckle? Or smile? How about a like on Facebook? If I hit 1000 likes, I get a Kim Kardashian tea pot.












    6 comments:

    1. Loving this report, but remember the girl I got pregnant while reading its intro post? She had the baby two weeks ago. Let's pick up the pace, flushie!!!

      ReplyDelete
    2. RF- Love your stories!! "The Precious" really has me enticed (should I bring some type of
      birth control?) Sorry the Beefalooo was so cruel...they can be nasty creatures.

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. Not sure about the potency of "The Precious" but maybe bring a smoke for after?

        Delete
    3. Is the 1958 track from Mantovani foreshadowing a post on "interactions" with some lovely ISG's on the trip?

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. I haven't had many ISG encounters lately, have I! Must fix that... and thank you for remembering those heady days when the purse-slinging ISG kept me ducking.

        Delete
    4. don't listen to King Tut....keep this going until your next trip so that we never have a dull day!

      ReplyDelete

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