So the Beck and I, after a jaunt to the gym, trucked down to Boston for an afternoon / evening of stories, presents, pizza and gamesmanship. Beck, Meghan (the b-day girl pictured above), Meghan's hubby Greg, and iParents were in town. We started off with some chips, cheese, Bass / Guinness and presents for Beck (wedding), me (past birthday), Greg and Meghan (the b-day gal). Much fun - Beck got multiple wedding planning aids as well as the most perfect iF gift of all time, a pink "Citations" pad which will allow her to live out her dream - handing out written citation to public faux pas committers. So next time you let your kid cry out in public, she won't just give a dirty look to the back of his head, she will hand you a ticket. Viva Fe Fist! I got a nice gift certificate to iTunes and a couple of original Beck art pieces, both of the genre "ashtray," from beck's youth. I was informed that they are "On Loan," making me suspect that like at a new job, I am starting the marriage on probation. Greg and Meghan got the requisite psychiatrist gag gifts, Greg got some original print Yiddish 1930s newspapers to hang in his new Brookline office, and Meghan got a dearth of books and CDs and general happiness. Great gifts from the iRents.
And now, poker time! We all threw in ten (it turned out, imaginary) dollars and started with a rousing game of 357, with lots of people being very risk-happy and the pot / bet quickly jumping to 3 dollars. Lots of personality quirks showed up - Reckless Beck forgot how to pronounce the word "out" and threw in with anyone who would challenge her, often relying on other people (read: me) to figure out the hand that she actually had. Greg displayed an awesome tendency to have a full house going into the round of seven, only to get smashed by four kings or five aces - he really did have an unlucky night. Margie feigned ignorance the entire evening; I am still relatively sure that she is using some kind of mind meld to hustle us. iPJ was his usual shrewd self; he distracted us with stories of raising dead iPods (Margie's iPod is now nicknamed "Lazarus") while he turned his cards from water I mean twos into aces. He also got slightly rooked by his hands, and was probably the main victim of Beck's rope-a-dope strategy. I played my usual dodge & weave, close to the chest game; I don't know if anyone noticed, but I actually only went in on two hands the entire time (one 6 dollar win, one 6 dollar loss; I essentially ended up kissing my sister and out the antes for the game). And of course, in this completely unrigged game, Meghan the b-day girl came up on top - she used some gnarly, deceptive play and threw down some gigantic hands (she had the 5 aces and many a flush / full house on hands of seven) and not only won a bunch of hands but also took home a 12 dollar pot to end the contest. She ended up with $24+, which when combined with Greg's tragic -$4 performance, actually left them with $20 on a $20 investment. I think beck and I *maybe* collectively broke the $20 by a hair and Margie/Scott were a tad under; essentially the whole game was a wash, but fun.
So we played Texas Hold 'Em next, and this is where things got CRAZY! I took a couple of big bluffed hands early on and tried to lean on the crowd to no real avail. Meghan chipped away but dropped some money to me and couldn't hang with my insane all-in bets; she took advantage of her family members, though, and definitely left a stamp of a lesson on the night : "one should not mess with the neuropsychologist." Greg, Margie and Beck all battled and exchanged money to no one's big advantage - in the end, the game came down to a furious blow dealt to the Nyet by the iPJ. I started with an ace and an 8 suited, and bet high to remove people from the betting at the get go. A couple of people folded, but Scott re-raised; we all matched and went in for the kill. There was a bunch of garbage turned on the flop - something like 2, 4, J off suit - so I still liked my ace in hand chances and decided to puff ye old chest feather. I threw in a decent bet, but everybody hung in. On the turn: an ace! Boo-yeah! I didn't want to mess around with anyone getting a three of a kind on the river, so I threw big; everyone backed out except the iPJ. It was mano a mano; the big time. The next car drops and it's a 7; I'm a little worried but think that maybe I can fake that my pair of aces j-8 is better than whatever Scott has. So I bet $5 - and he calls! Argh. I have been bitten! But i pull out my pair of aces, hoping that maybe he was sticking with the pair of jacks. But he has - double argh - pocket aces! I lose. I try to explain how improbable it is that someone would have pocket aces when i had an ace and there was an ace on the table, but no one would listen; they just pointed at me and chanted "One of us! One of us!"
Through some more dubious bluffing against Meghan, I ended up with a relatively large stack, so Scott and i ended the game close. But I still had the scar, the veritable lightning bolt on my forehead from this evil experience. iPJ! You said it, man.
SO we ate some pizza somewhere in there, and played cranium to close the night out. Beck and I rolled some ridiculous "purples" and flew around the board, making the game exceedingly short. As usual, the highlights of the game came mainly in the charades / impressions / humdingers. The highlights include:
Nyet humming the James Bond Theme and Beck miraculously understanding it
Meghan's avant garde Elvis impersonation
Scott's Fonzie impersonation - that did not involve the use of thumbs?!?!?!
Scott's failed attempt at impersonating a volcano, aka "exploding laser fountain"
The iPs lack of knowledge that it takes a silver bullet to kill a werewolf
Don't worry; their Buffy License has been revoked, and their sentence is to watch all episodes of Buffy featuring Seth Green. We capped the evening with a chocolatey chocolate birthday cake and ice cream - fun times! We took Ma & pa back to the Coolidge Corner hotel and Beck bravely drove us hope through the yawning night. We're meeting in Westborough for brunch this morning - good times with the Searls!
Addendum - Something I forgot to mention yesterday, but tied into something from tonight - I talked about Alan (beck's grandfather) and how despite being a very well-informed baseball statsman would always tooth & nail defend Ted Williams as the best player of all time. Scott said "Well sometimes you can't tell things from statistics," and even though this is true, I was struck by how brainwashed I've become - having read BBTN and Moneyball lately, I cannot control my sympathetic spike of blood pressure when I hear this now. Thanks a lot, Bill James!
Speaking of Bill, and the real reason for this addendum, I wanted to point you to this quote from Moneyball, just because I though it was cool to hear these thoughts from a writer who is often first noted as a baseball guy. I'll end the post with this:
"Every form of strength is a form of weakness. Pretty girls tend to be insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealth paralyzes them. I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say."
-Bill James, Writer / Sabermetrician
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