A (Drunken) Night's Tale

So I know that you all have barely been able to contain your excitement awaiting my next post to see what incredibly inspirational and life-changing story I had for you. OK, so probably not, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

So exactly two weeks ago we had our corporate summer outing, which took place on one of those lunch-time cruises that leave from Navy Pier. They're fun, but the only thing that's relevant about that to this story is that it meant that I started drinking while on board at about 1:00 and then got to leave work immediately after we docked at 2:00. I met some of my friends that I used to work with at HSBC for a happy hour over at Sidebar on Lasalle. Well, Christy was on her way to St. Louis for the weekend so I knew I had nowhere to be and as a consequence happy hour turned into about happy 6-hours. As I stumbled my way out of the bar and into a cab at around 8:30, I was feeling pretty good and decided that it was time to place some drunken phone calls.

Earlier in the week, my brother and I had kicked around the idea of him coming up and us going to see Superbad together so I decided to give him a call and see what the plan was. Turns out that his flight back from Charlotte Thursday night had been cancelled and he had spent the night on the floor and waited through 3 flights before finally getting home at around 6, so he wasn't in much of a mood to head right out to the city. This all seemed very logical to me, but I was in no mood for logic so I calmly presented him with his options. He could either come down to the city, or he could opt to stay home. However, if he opted to stay home I vowed to call him twice per hour to tell him 1) what I was doing at the time 2) how drunk I was; and 3) how much he sucked for not coming down and seeing Superbad with me. He carefully weighed his options and wisely chose the route that avoided future drunken phone calls (I suppose the idea that he could have simply turned off his phone did not occur to him). Anyway, he gets down to our place at around 10:30 and of course he is completely sober so naturally we need to have a few beers together before leaving to see the movie. I'm not sure what exactly it is (most likely alcoholism), but somehow when you're drunk and someone sober shows up and starts drinking you instantly feel like you're sober too and need to drink at their pace. Of course, in actuality that's the last thing you need to do, but again we're not dealing in the realm of logic at this point.

In any case, we head out to see an 11:30 showing of Superbad. The lights go down in the theatre and suddenly, now that alcohol has been removed from the equation, my body is finally able to get a message through to my brain that due to the 10 hours of non-stop drinking it is actually quite tired and now that it is dark it will be assuming that it is bedtime and act accordingly. An epic, but ultimately fruitless struggle to stay awake plays out over approximately the next 25-40 minutes (that's the best I can estimate) and the next thing I know my brother is waking me up to tell me the movie's over. Disappointed, but refreshed from my nap, we head back to my place where I begin drinking again (naturally) while playing him excerpts from The Muppet Show (Season 2) on DVD (which are kind of funny all the time, but really funny when it's 2:00 A.M. and you've been drinking for the better part of 13 hours). Finally, at around 2:45 my bro takes off to go home since he stopped drinking at 11:15 before the movie.

At this point, any sane, logical, rational being would have simply called it a night and gone to bed. So of course I did the only thing that made sense to me at the time: started gambling online. Now, this is hardly the first time that in an inebbriated state it has seemed like a good idea to me to gamble online. And pretty much uniformily the story is the same: played for a while, was up briefly, then lost it all. I had set aside $500 to load up my betting account for football season at bodog and decided I might as well get started on losing it. Of course, the problem is that there tends to not be a lot of professional sporting events being played at 3:00 A.M. (I am hoping to organize a professional curling league in Zaire to correct this problem, but I digress). Fortunately (or unfortunately) bodog has prepared for that contingency by offering online casino games 24 hours a day. Well, I have had some bad experiences playing blackjack and pai-gow poker, so those didn't really interest me. But I had only played craps a little before, to mixed results. I went through the first $100 in about 10 minutes and then loaded up with another $150. I went back and forth for about the next 45 minutes and after an hour I found myself up about $100. What occurred over the next 20 minutes pretty much defies description (mainly because I can't remember it all that clearly). The upshot of it was that during that time I did not roll a single 7 (in case you haven't played craps before, that's a very, very good thing). After a few minutes I had every number covered and was slowly but steadily increasing my bet. During the last 5 minutes, I do remember that I had over $1000 total on the board (I know because that was the table limit and it wouldn't let me bet any more) and was winning around $200 every time I rolled the dice. When I finally did roll the 7 I had to instantly double and triple-check that I was actually playing on a "real money" table because I was up over $5000. It was indeed amd I really was. I think I sat there in disbelief for about 5 minutes waiting for it all to sink in. Then, of course, I decided to push my luck. Over the next hour I gave about a grand back but still quit with my account at just over $4250 and a night's profit of over $4000. The next day I cashed out $3000 and am now using the rest for football betting. Of course, I haven't physically received my check yet so nothing's real until that happens but from every indication I've gotten (from other gamblers) bodog is legitimate. The check takes a month to a month and a half to come, but you will get paid.

In any case, I guess the moral of the story is: just because you're too drunk to stay awake during Superbad doesn't mean you're too drunk to luck your way into $4000.

And yes, I'm available to speak at children's parties.