Stupid Thing of the Week

So, this weekend, I went out of town with my siblings (two sisters and a brother), as well as brother-in-law, cousin, and . . . friend of my cousin to a hotel and casino, like we did for New Year's. My sister had her birthday on Saturday, and that was the present she wanted.

It was a lot of fun, and we didn't stay very long (the whole trip lasted about twenty-four hours), so it didn't wear out its welcome, although my allergies went absolutely crazy on me, and I have yet to recover.

My sister took us to the Craps tables and we played that for a while, trying to figure it out (I'd never played before), and she ended up winning the most money out of us all (my brother lost the most money, which is sad since he's usually the lucky one and can't lose it all even if he wants to*), but I played Roulette for a while last night, and won back all the money I'd blown on Blackjack and Draw Poker, and then some.

Unfortunately, I hit a curb driving back this afternoon and blew out my two passenger side tires, which ate up all my winnings plus a great deal more. Sigh.

So, that's probably the best candidate for Stupid Thing of the Week, that I would win a little, but lose a lot with my lousy driving, but instead, I wanted to bring up an amusing experience we had at the Blackjack table. There were three or four different dealers, and though we didn't play long, they kept switching out/getting relieved by the next one. And each of these dealers was a little more uptight about rules or casino etiquette than the other. I'm not really experienced (or at least out of practice), so I didn't know you couldn't touch your cards with both hands, or put your drink on the table, or let your girlfriend touch your cards. But really minor things like placing your bet right on the word "Nugget" rather than above it or next to it, or scraping your cards to signal you'd like another instead of saying "Gimmee another" or "I'll take one more" were absolutely hammered into us with various levels of rigidity.

The worst of the dealers in this regard was a middle-aged Asian woman, who ran the table until I lost all my money, and sourly said things like "I no tell you how to play" when I'd ask, "Should I stay on a fifteen?" Math is not my strong suit, and she had little patience with me trying to figure out what Four plus Ace plus Three plus Seven was. Watching her try to explain how insurance worked confused me much worse than never hearing the term would have, and all of us evidently infuriated her when we laid our cards next to our chips instead of under them, or put them face up instead of face down (which didn't matter anyway since our turn was over).

At one point, a trio (perhaps quartet) of drunken twenty-somethings sat down at the table next to us, and they drew her ire more than we ever had. A loud, inebriated dude kept breaking her rules or not understanding her broken English, and she berated him and all of us for his behavior. "You no hate me, you hate game! If you hate game, you go and play other game!"

I thought he was a bit of a tool, especially when my brother told him how the side bet for a suited pair worked, and he snarled, "Are you trying to tell me what to do with my money?" But there was nothing he could do that didn't upset the dealer. She didn't want to pay him for having the matched pair because he didn't show her immediately, he was wasting time by not announcing he had busted the second it happened, and there's apparently a law against raising your cards a foot off the table to show your buddies.

"I no making the rules. All Blackjack like this," she said when he got frustrated.
She told him to watch his language, when he was disappointed she'd gotten a goddamn twenty, and when she got 21 and took all our money, he used that most ubiquitous of English words.
"No F-word!" she said loud enough for the other tables to hear. "You get mad if you want, you no say F-word at my table!"

The dude's blonde girlfriend looked at the dealer and said, "What about the C-word?"

The dealer said, "I no know bout that one."

To which, the dude said, "As in, you are a c**t."

I thought that was dang funny, but the little group of inebriates all got up and took off then, leaving just me and my brother playing.

In the end, since I lost every single one of my chips, I realize, they were the smart ones.

Rish "No Q-Word" Outfield

*That's no exaggeration. The last time we went to Vegas, my brother didn't want to have to stand in line at the Cashier, so he kept putting all of his winnings on Black or Red (or Odd or Even) on the Roulette table, just hoping to double it or lose it all . . . and the crazy bastard just kept winning. He'd do it again, and win again. Finally, my sister grabbed him and said, "I'LL stand in the Cashier's line, just don't throw away all that money!"