Vancouver

So I'm a little behind with my reporting, laziness has ensued again. Vancouver is hands down the best place that I've been to on tour in the last year and a half. The city itself is beautiful, kinda like a less crowded Manhattan at times. Lots to do, enthusiastic audiences, beautiful sights, and a casino 3 blocks away. Let's just skip to the poker.

They have morning tournaments every day for $30 so I played in the Wed. morning one and did quite terribly, something like 38th out of 66 or something. Played some side games for a little while made $300 or so, then went back to the hotel. Then I did some sightseeing around the riverwall downtown.
I wish the bottom translation was easier to read. It says "You Not Afraid Here". Which I thought was appropriate as Vancouver is full of Asians that moved here after it was given back to China I believe (maybe Hong Kong...)

Played a bunch more poker, including the next morning making the final table and busting 6th out of 40 ppl. No money, as I was the bubble boy. Was going to play in more side games, but got a txt message from Colin informing me that Lingerie Lunch was happening in our hotel. I had no idea what to expect...

When I got there, I met up with the other straight guys in the show and we made our way to the restaurant. Lingerie lunch is held the last Thursday of every month and it's a competition with 6 girls who walk around the restaurant in bikinis, and very loosely "evening wear". The men all applaud them as they come around and are then "judged" and whittled down to 3. It was kinda a great day, scantily clad women, poker, beer, and chicken fingers all before 1:30.

Will and Erin came on Friday and I met up with them after the show. They've already put up a nice report on their website www.willschwarz.com.

We left on Monday morning, extremely early, about 430am to make an early flight to Saskatoon. I played poker all night and then hopped on the bus to the airport, up for the week $870 winner (including tournament losses, yes tieds). A good couple of weeks in the poker front, could it continue into Saskatoon? Or would I have a losing week? Time will tell in the next blog report. And that will hopefully be soon.

Feeling Better

Ok, where to begin.

2 weeks ago, we were in lovely Edmonton, AB. I didn't think I'd believe it, but they did indeed have the largest mall in all of North America. Suck on that Minneapolis! It was around 8 blocks long I think and boasted a rollercoaster (more on that in a minute), sea lion show, water park, and Urban Outfitters. Well, the rollercoaster was quite impressive for being next to a food court. Our group went on and halfway through on a piece of flatland about 50 feet in the air, the ride suddenly stopped...Turns out Aaron, one of our trumpet players, had decided to film the ride with his digicam and security was on to us. They harnessed a woman onto the track, and she climbed up to remove the camera from the ride. In all fairness, they were very nice about the whole thing and didn't even delete the footage. I'll try and post the video if I can get my hands on it.


It was then onto lunch where I realized that Canadians are very confused about American cuisine. KFC does not include biscuits here in the Great White North! Scandalous! Also, they have a Boston Pizza (which I don't believe they're famous for) and New York Fries (which again, I've never heard of the triumphs of fries in NY). Bizzare.

They also have a casino in the mall too. Fairly nice as well. There were picketers outside of the entrance that were former casino workers who wanted more stuff. I didn't really listen as I just wanted to play poker. There was no game going on, so I just wandered around for a while and chilled out. Met up with some people by the Urban Outfitters and found a jacket for $180, marked down to $100, and then take 75% off. 25 CAD for the jacket! ($22.63 on my credit card receipt.)

Walked by the ice skating rink, oh yeah forgot to mention a full size ice skating rink in the mall too. The place is sick. Went to the water park, but 40% of the rides were closed, so only having 90 minutes left in the mall made that not the smartest move. Aaron almost went bungee jumping but that didn't pan out either. We then passed by Flamingo Bay, nothing happens, just flamingos hanging out inside a glass wall.

This was connected to a large tank of water with a Pirate theme.

The sea lion show was next to this and ran 2 shows a day. We watched the show and I was pretty impressed with what sea lions can do. I had videos, but somehow lost them. After that I got a haircut and went back to the casino, still no game. Met up with people and went home. Fun day all around.

Did I mention I played poker?

Been a long time since I've typed that. Admittedly, off my game the first session back in a 3 months, but the game was different!

In Edmonton, boy do they love to play Omaha. In fact the 1/2 NL game was not just NLHE. It was "dealer's choice" meaning you the button picks, and you can choose from HE, Omaha, Pineapple or Crazy Pineapple! 95% of the hands were Omaha, (NL Omaha, mind you...crazy), and I occasionally chose HE when I realized people saying, "How can you play with just 2 cards?" and just muck like crazy. In about 3 hours, I was stuck $800 playing 1/2 NL. Those are the swings of NL Omaha I guess. I came back and finished only $165 down after playing some big pots and having things go my way. My big hand was flopping the nut straight and getting check raised by a guy with top pair, no redraw whatsoever, just top pair. Thankfully he missed perfect perfect after we stuck it in on the flop.

The next night I went back and played more of the same, winning $185. Things got interesting the next 2 days when I went back to play inbetween our 2 show days. I ended up killing the game playing 1/2 NL on Saturday and 4/8 with a kill on Sunday. In the 4.5 hours I played, I ended up $1040 winner. It was sad to leave, but it was time to go to Vancouver! Most definitly the best place I've been on tour so far. More pictures and poker in the next blog entry.

Updates

Canada posts and pictures will be updated tomorrow. I'm not feeling well today. Time for 24, pizza and bed.

Brrrr

Canada is cold, and far away. I've realized it's just like America, but everyone's nicer on the whole. Even the plane was nicer aesthetically. Weird. I spent a nice couple days in NY with Karen, and left far too soon for me. But, it's back to work, the show must go on, whatever other cliches you can think of. Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go to the Edmonton Mall, supposedly the 2nd biggest mall in North America. I've heard rumors of a water park, sea lion show, rollercoaster, flamingos, and an Urban Outfitters. Should be fun. Pics as they become available...

Some quick pictures...

My nephew Colin, playing the drums in Akron, OH like his big uncle...

Me outside during our snow day in Springfield Il. Aaron (2nd Tpt player) got a new pocket trumpet with LSU colors. It should be noted that this was after 5 beers or so. It should also be noted that this was taken by my new LGenV cell phone.

Back in NY

Well, for a day. I'm in Queens in Karen's apartment for the day, let me explain. Our Sunday evening show was canceled and we don't have a show till Wednesday night in Edmonton, AB. (Canada) So I decided to come back and hang out for a day and then fly to Canada tomorrow night to get in just after 1am on Wed. morning. We had a good weekend in Aurora, didn't see Wayne and Garth though, sadly. I also found out that Will and Erin will be coming to see me in Vancouver next weekend which is pretty exciting. Maybe he can smuggle a copy of Windows Vista over the border for me.

Karen came and visited this weekend, which she had quite a terrible travel day. She usually travels standby on Delta but because of the weather delays it didn't look good to travel without a ticket. She ended up buying an expensive one way ticket that connected through DC, then Detroit before landing in Chicago. It turns out that she would have gotten 1st class on the standby flight, and EVERY one of her flights were delayed, resulting in her getting to Chicago at 2am. Oh, and they lost her luggage. It was a disaster of a day, but it didn't ruin our weekend.

Well, I'm off to run out and get some lunch with my brother, then get some pizza tonight and watch some 24. I won't be using my phone for 3 weeks after tomorrow, because of the Canada ripoff plan. So, see ya on MySpace!

Ok, This Is Ridiculous

So, I started this blog thing to keep people updated on my life, but now never update it. Granted, my worst trait is maybe my procrastination, but I'm about to make a change on blogging. We'll see if anyone still reads it, but it'll give me something to do when I'm bored.

The main inspiration for my resurgence to the blogosphere would be Jovan's blog about his new experience on the "Spamalot" tour. Im genuinely excited about reading about a bigger tour than mine and hearing other stories from the road. Definitely check it out if you like theater talk.

Ok, let's talk TV. Lost started again thank god, and 24 had a sweet 2 hour episode this past week. The Office is consistently the funniest show on TV, even though I wanted to hate it, loving the BBC original and all. But my new fix has been, oddly enough, a poker show.

Poker After Dark on NBC is right up there with High Stakes Poker as being the best show on television in that field. HSP lets you in to how a cash game is played, for the first time on TV, so now people can see how to play before they make that trip to their local casino. The problem with poker shows in the past is that a) they're all tournaments, and b) they don't give you a good sense of how the action is going, because they're editing down a 7+ hour tournament to 2 hours. High Stakes Poker is a great example of how cash games are different from tournaments, and should be played just as such.

With Poker After Dark, they take 5 days to show what is essentially a 6 handed deep stack sit-n-go. I find it very informative as they show 85% of the hands and you see the natural ebb and flow of the tournament. You see the setups for the hands that they would just show the result of on something else. Another key thing for me is that they turn the player mics all the way up, and there's one announcer who you never meet. His comments are 99% awful and stupid, but thankfully he doesn't talk all that much, they just let the players play.

They also skip back story stuff and just introduce the players for 15 seconds and play. They don't make a "story" of the tournament, they just play poker. It's a great show for people who have a knowledge of the game already and want to study the game more indepth. I can't recommend in enough, TIVO it or Bittorrent it, which i do.

As for the show, we're in Springfield, Il and we got snowed in last night, thanks to this beautiful midwest weather! We found out we were canceled around 3PM and decided to just lounge around all day. I spent the day watch aforementioned poker shows and The Apprentice alone in the hot tub, ate some dinner and drank a few beers watching more poker shows. I'm pretty addicted to these.

It's Valentine's day today and I'll be seeing Karen late tomorrow night in Aurora, Il, home of Wayne and Garth. There's a casino nearby too, I wonder if we'll go? It's about 12:30 right now, so I'm gonna hit the gym, hot tub, lunch and do a show I guess. I'm goin to Canada soon so I won't have my phone. In the words of Jack Bauer, "Dammit!"