Watch the Stick

Day 5 part 1 and I woke at 4:15 am. Got back to sleep till 7:00 am. It's tough going to bed on Vegas time and getting up on Eastern time.

Eyes closed, I remembered the $700 beat-down I'd taken the day before, and how I'd almost literally lost my heart in Resorts World over my missing phone. And then I remembered the $400 keno ticket win. And the games remaining.

Time to fire up the Little Giant and foil Encore's $8.99 coffee scam with a 9 cent coffee made right in my room.

I sipped coffee and looked at Twitter, Facebook and whatnot, did the Wordle, checked on the Keno ticket. Games weren't running yet.

After 8:00 am, I checked again and as I watched the numbers come in on the current game, I was shocked and delighted to see I'd won a second time.

Another $400! OH MAN!!! I was back! I was so, so back!!!

The tickets had cost $200 and were going to pay $800 at minimum. There were bound to be bits and pieces of other 4 out of 5s and what not. That pretty much eradicated the huge loss from yesterday.

I got busy writing my blog posts for the previous day, and had an in-room banana, which I'd secretly procured from a nearby tropical fruit outlet. OK Walgreen's.

The work of the day pretty much done, I took a long luxurious shower and had a short close shave. Fresh clothing and my pineapple shirt, and I was ready to rumble.

McGoo checked in and I let him know I was heading downtown. A quick Lyft ride, and I was at the D.

I was nervous about the Keno tickets because the website I watch the numbers on is not an official source of the degenerate details. It was possible there was an error, or I was reading things incorrectly in the payback brochure. The only way to really know was to cash them in.

The boom boom D was only on half boom boom this early in the day, so just boom, I guess. I took the long escalator up and forked over my crumpled, folded tickets to the attendant in the Keno lounge.

She scanned the first one, and it had $31 on it. Not a success. Next, the big one.

It came in at $811, for a total of $841 between the two tickets. Subtracting the $200 cost, that was a win of $641 to start off my day.

What a fantastic feeling! It's interesting that I'm struggling with video keno this trip, but killing it on live keno. Interesting in the sense that I expect to win on everything all the time and when I don't, for some reason, I'm surprised.

Magnolia's was an obvious choice for breakfast, because comp points. Somehow I still have $57 in food even after having eaten there twice already this trip.

Better than it looks in this photo, omelette with swiss, sausage, onion.

McGoo was staked out at the Ground Zero Flusher seat at the Palace Bar, and had been for some time, so after breakfast I joined him there and fired up some Double Double Bonus video McPoker.

We had a great session, both of us staying roughly even for quite a while. A couple of quads kept me in it, and I took the opportunity to refresh the sticker on the Throne seat at Ground Zero.

It was just a great time. A beautiful day, with perfect temperatures outside, nice breeze blowing in, and no bucket drummers.

After an hour of play or so, the relative calm was pierced by the horrible screech of feedback from a cheap, overdriven, portable PA system. It was the kind of feedback you hear in a movie when a character is made to look awkward and inept while preparing to address a crowd.

This was thoroughly appropriate, because we were about to witness what has to be the world's worst magician.

After another five minutes or so of intermittent howling, he began with great enthusiasm.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, prepare to be astonished and amazed! I'm the greatest magician in the world, my mother says so!"

At least, he had our attention, but nobody else's.

"Now... WATCH THE STICK!!!"

He had some sort of stick in his hand and tapped it loudly on the ground. Nobody watched. He waved it and made it disappear.

Great, dude, you conquered a stick. Then he made it re-appear.

McGoo and I started to giggle watching this guy try to get things going.

After about a minute, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, prepare to be astonished and amazed! I'm the greatest magician in the world, my mother says so! Now, WATCH THE STICK."

Crickets.

Someone walked by as he made the stick disappear and we looked at each other in delighted astonishment.

"Did he just?..."

"He dropped...!"

The Surly Magician at his peak.

Yup, the surly magician had muttered over his live mic for everyone to hear, "Well, YOU couldn't fucking do it."

This was followed by a smoke break.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, prepare to be astonished and amazed..."

We saw the stick two or three more times, and then came out a playing card that magically floated here and there.

"IT'S ON A STRING!" I yelled, unhelpfully. I don't think he heard me. Neither did anyone else, because there was no audience.

The best part was when the playing card ended up fluttering down to the Fremont Street pavement.

"Is that part of the act... or did he just drop it?" I asked McGoo.

"Uh... he dropped it!" 

By this point we are killing ourselves watching this 'show' and a highlight was when the card fell off its string onto Fremont. We agreed that he should focus on being surly and dismissive and snarky, and use the terrible magic as a prop. He wasn't going to be a magician, he might as well be a stand-up comic.

I'd managed one additional quad but after a two hour session, my $100 buy-in was gone.

Probably the highest my credits got.

I said so long to McGoo, and walked out onto Fremont. I actually stood in front of the Surly Magician along with another guy, waiting for him to do something. He just ignored us and stood and smoked.

"Is he going to do something?" I said.

"I dunno, I think he's gonna do something," said the other guy.

Nothing. He had an audience of two and ignored us. I was amazed and astonished!