Settle for a Slowdown

Peninsula State Park

After an extremely busy holiday-and-January things have slowed down a bit (which is just fine by me.)  February was marked by a hectic work schedule, and even that’s starting to subside so let’s have some fun!

First on the docket: WIZP!  Lately I’ve really gotten back into Street Fighter IV.  What with Super Street Fighter IV coming out in April and the new MvC Fight Stick that Jay procured last week, I’ve been laying down a shitload of hadokens and shoryukens.

So shoot, what else. Whatelsewhatelsewhatelse.  Tattoos! We will all get tattoos of our rad name.  What is our rad name? SuperAwesomeCalsForever? That’s MY idea.

I’m looking forward to two things at this point:

1. Iowa trip (with additional guest appearance by my brother)
2. Vegas trip (because we haven’t been in a long time)

…and you can take that to the bank, Shakesman.

Spacebee’s birthday is this weekend. Wish her a happy birthday, Cal.  Or else.

Downhill From Here

Zach & Stacy at Big Powderhorn

Well, we got back safe and sound from Da Up North, Eh?  Had a ball in Bessemer with spacebee and the family.  As I mentioned earlier, we were afforded the unique opportunity to watch The Super Bowl at bucketheads in uptown Rhinelander.  They had $1.50 Miller Lites and free Hores Durves set out in back.  I drank three buckets of Jameson and then Stacy drove us ‘home’ to the Quality Inn.

I goddamned hate Super Bowl commercials.  “Here’s a talking (noun), buy our shit!”  “Here’s a wacky man-child (verbing) a (noun), buy our shit!”  “Here’s Tim Tebow, don’t get an abortion or prenatal care!”   Eat shit, Tim Tebow.

I skied for three days and fell down three times; that’s a shitload better than last year and I consider it a resounding success.  Let the mountains ring with God’s graciousness and ma-jest-fucking-ty!  We also returned to the infamous Pub N’ Grub for Thursday night karaoke.  All the old pals from last year were there and, again, by the end of the evening I was Marcus-n-Mcteague’n it with all of them.  Six dollar pitchers of Miller Lite and Jameson shots will do that, son. On the way back home I desperately wanted to go to (in order) the Watersmeet casino, the Lake of the Torches casino, and Ho-Chunk.  By the time we got south enough to consider Ho-Chunk, however, I just wanted to sleep on the couch the rest of the day. So… no Ho-Chunk.  I still owe wwhazz a night at the Canfield for his birthday, though, so anyone that wants in on that is welcome.

Wwhazz, thanks for doing our cat for a week.

There’s not a lot of upcoming events here at Whazzmaster Central– spacebee’s birthday is at the end of the month and at the same time (coincidentally) as my Yearly Start of Daily Wishing It Would Warm Up Already, Dammit.  I got her a birthday gift: The Big Minnie. Black. Clean. Tight Curl. Turquoise bead wrap.  Now that I look at the description that way I can’t decide whether I bought her a hat or a dildo. Say lah vee.

I really, really gotta get TNG on the Tivo.  We’ll make a space for it amid Spacebee’s ten thousand episodes of Criminal Minds.  There must be some room in all that serial killing for Data’s quest for humanity or Troi in a skin-tight leotard.  I assume that somewhere in history someone has already made a joke about a leotard being a retarded leopard, but the word still looks weird when I type it.

Pickles and grapes!

The Can-do Hotel

Our stay at the Canfield Hotel

Last night we bombed down to the Tri-State area (or is it the Quad Cities?) to have a fine old time at the Canfield Hotel and Diamond Jo’s casino (formerly a riverboat, now a Bellagio-esque resort).

Bottom line: it was the most fun of my goddamned life and I want to go again.

I wrote a review on Google Maps for the Canfield Hotel:

Great place! Affordable rates and it’s real close to the downtown area and the Diamond Jo casino. The native american mannequins in the lobby create a verisimilitude that can’t be matched, and the room was great– clean, with interesting furnishings displaying a love of cats, big and small. After waking from a night of casino action, however, I found out that the weird coffee cups near the coffeemaker had no bottoms and any liquids poured in ended up on the floor. The Rainbow Lounge in the lobby had good folks singing karaoke, too. Long story short, I will definitely stay at the Canfield again.

I gave the place 4 stars; truthfully I wanted to go 4 1/2 stars but Google’s reviews do not afford the reviewer the luxury of half-stars.  Lawman got some pictures of the Native American mannequins so maybe I’ll get those up here at some point; they’re very realistic, inexplicable, and terrifying when you first walk in.

The night was extremely fun and exciting.  It involved roulette, a fun craps session where I had two pretty good rolls, a Blackjack Buttraping, a profitable two rounds of bowling at the Cherry Lanes (apparently the bowling location of choice for recording artist Jewel according the website), some teams of douchebags at the poker tables, and much much more.

The night ended with wwhazz running many blocks to get to an ATM and back before the Rainbow Lounge bar (located in the hotel) closed for the evening.  He almost made it, too!  He also used magic and made pizzas appear right before we passed out.  There was somewhat of a row in the lobby when several gentlemen tried to apparently sneak with us up to our room to get at our pizzas and beer?  I didn’t get it; they weren’t staying in the hotel and we sure as shit didn’t invite them to accompany us.  The last thing I remember is timmer picking up his whole mattress like the incredible hulk and throwing it at me.  Then: poof, I was out like a light.

Short story long: the Canfield Hotel, Diamond Jo’s, and Cherry Lanes get my highest recommendation!  Fun fun fun!

Happy Birthday, Whazzmaster

Can’t wait for the end of today– we’ll be Eye-oh-way bound and wwhazz told me about the hotel we’ll be staying in tonight.  I’ll titilate you with a patented TripAdvisor™ customer review:

Scary Place. Good location. My wife and I were here for our anniversary and the “Americas River” music festival. We were immediately taken back by the outside, old, like something out of “Taxi Driver”. The inside was the same way, not dirty, just Scary ? Like walking into 1972. Strange odor in the lobby like one of the older Vegas hotels…Baby Powder smell ? ? and these two native american manequins on the couch ? ? ? and a couple of “transient” residents hanging out in the small lobby area. Just very wierd. We checked in, and took the rickety elevator to our room. It was like walking into my grandmas house when I was a kid. The decor and furniture was very old, a carpeted bar ? The couch was like something I would have had as a hand me down in my 1st apartment (in 1981) it was really that old ! I really felt like I was in a scary movie Everything gave us an uneasy feeling. We never even disrupted the bed, we went downstairs to tell them we weren’t staying. The owner was in the lobby (also kinda strange) he told the clerk to refund the charge on our Visa. That never happened and we disputed the charge with the credit card co. The hotel is claiming a 48 hour cancellation policy. Don’t stay here unless you have no choice.

I repeat: I cannot wait to stay overnight in this establishment.  Here’s a rough draft of how I see the night proceeding:

1. Check-in
2. Inspect the “two native american manequins” for authenticity and traces of magic
3. Take off my hoodie, put on long-sleeve shirt.
4. Walk to the casino
5. <– edited –>
6. Dinner, preferably involving shrimp
7. <– edited –>
8. Return to the hotel dripping in bling (including one piece shaped inexplicably like the St. Louis Arch,) sporting a tattoo of Frank Norris and Annixter standing back-to-back buddy movie style and waving a .38 I got from a pawn shop.
9. Take “two native american manequins” hostage
10. Sleep
11. Check-out, tipping my hat to the owner and asking him to please refund the charge on our Visa.

We’ll make revisions as necessary (can Scientist still fly in to Dubuque International Airport in time?) but I see no reason why we won’t leave as millionaires, nay, skrillionaires.  Ball small?! That’s how you get a herpe on your foot.  BALL and you’ll be sportin’ a skrillion dollar grill in no time.

Goldy Goldersen Tecmo Pics

It’s not that I was ignoring you, Cal.  I’ve just been extremely busy the last two weeks with work and all.  I have your Goldy Goldersen pics safe and sound and they’re uploading to Flickr while I type this.

So yeah, Cal took wwhazz’s beard in an 8-bit dick fight.   It was all very dramatic as it was happening– Cal had beat the shit out of me in Tecmo Bowl minutes before, but since I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to play no one took that as an indicator that he was a Field General, like Fran Tarkenton before him.

Here’s the play-by-play repost from yours truly…

Wwhazz should tell his beard story– the way Cal hustled his beard off ‘im is one for the ages. Cal was all “I don’t think I’m really good at this game.” Wwhazz was all “I’ll bet you anything I can beat you, you turd.” Cal was like “oh me oh my, how about we bet that patchy beard of yours.” Wwhazz was all “hell yeah” then he lost and everyone went “whoa!” Cal was very satisfied with himself, and didn’t even complain (much) when dinner was delayed until 11:30 at night.

Cal’s last play makes the entire game– down by 1, he takes the kickoff and starts around his 30-40 yd line with not much time left on the clock. Wwhazz drops back into prevent defense and Cal throws a bomb up the middle. With 6 seconds left and Cal’s receiver running upfield wwhazz smirks that his beard is safe as his defenders close in. Then, the field general’s hand is revealed: he runs out of bounds at the 30, kicks the field goal as time expires, and wwhazz is shocked into beardlessness.

So here’s all the pictures I have– also, here’s a link to the set of pictures that bellygirl took as well.  We’ll highlight a few delicioso ones below…

My Busted-Ass Website

I see that the few dedicated hobo-lovers that still post here are up in arms over the lack of updates.  Sorry holmes, but a melancholia has set in as my world crumbles around me.  Everything’s right-as-rain on the home front– I couldn’t love my little peanut any more than I do– but aside from that the world is falling to dust.

Brewers: ousted. Badger football: balls.  Packers: meh. My parlay cards: BAD!  My weight: high.  My bank account: low.  My ebay feedback rating: so-so.  My craigslist want ad: unanswered. My gainful employment: perhaps running out.  My stock options: worthless.

Which is not to say that I had a bad 30th birthday.  Spacebee did a wonderful job of tricking the living shit out of me.  I am so stupid, I was on the Booze Cruise and still not eating anything because I didn’t want to spoil my appetite for the non-forthcoming dinner at the Tornado Room.  The birthday tailgate was besieged by legions and legions of bees but we made the best of it.  Thirty people: one stung, which is pretty good, but the one was a small child which wasn’t so great.  He rubbed some metaphorical dirt on it and was on his way, though.  Someday I’ll actually have all the pictures I took up on Flickr, and when that happens I’ll post a link in comments.  Thanks to all who came (not you, CAL).  Props and slops.

I’m thinking of buying a years supply of food. Can’t be too careful, seeing as America’s GDP now hovers somewhere around $12.50 + gratuity.  Am I a paranoid sonuvabitch? Yes, most assuredly.  But I also worried about a housing bust a-way back in 2005, and worried about the stock market a-way back in January 2008.   Sometimes a paranoid motherfucker is right about shit.  Sometimes.

I know you all come here solely for my wit and motherfucking wisdom, so I’ll try to post more.  That is, if the mole men haven’t taken over the country yet of course.

Raffle-Man

I was entered in the following raffles at Elburn Days this weekend:

• Three entries into the $20,000 or 2008 Chevy Malibu LTZ
• Two entries into the $3,000 vacation package (or cash) Firemen’s Raffle
• Upwards of a dozen entries into the Elburn Basketball 30″ JVC Flat Screen raffle

As of press time I have not heard that I won any of them.  A man can dream.

Tim and I played bingo for about an hour today and I BINGO’d one time, butso did another guy and I only won $25.  One lady won after 4 numbers were drawn (horizontal across the middle).

We ran the Elburn Days 5K on Saturday morning (after staying in the beer tent late on Friday night).  I limped in with an embarassing 33:30, which I suppose isn’t bad considering that my ‘training’ was to run 1.5 miles on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of last week.  Say lah vee.

No segue: if you have an XBox 360 I highly reccommend the games Braid and Geometry Wars 2.  Also: Too Human comes out this week.  I got the demo last week and that game is damn awesome; I’m definitely picking it up.

No segue again: Wednesday is the semi’s and finals for our summer volleyball league.  We’re seeded second and our first game starts at 7pm (champeenship at 9pm).  We played kinda like garbage last week, so it’ll be interesting to see if we can finish off what was a pretty good season.

RAHHR!

What was I talking about? Bluegill? Fuck that– s’all about TROUT now, holmes.  Two weeks ago Lawman and I went out to Salmo Pond and I hooked some bass while he brought in three nice trout.  He even gave me one to take home and cook and it was delicious.  I can’t wait to go out there again.

This weekend wasn’t it, though, as Spacebee and I went on another World Tour from Madison down to Aurora, IL and then back up to Racine for a Memorial Day Cookout & Beer Pong Spectacular.  That was fun games day/brat patty fest.  And speaking of brats, we also hit Brat Fest over at the Alliant Energy Center on Saturday.  Every year that thing gets a little more extravagent– this year they had carnival rides, two music stages, a gigantic condiment tent, and KAYAK RIDES.  Dollar fifty brats ain’t bad neither.

On the way home from Racine we stopped at Potowatami so Spacebee could turn in her silver key for a “chance to win” $100,000.  I’m quoting it because it’s stretching things like plastic man with his dick stuck in his zipper to say that that fucking travesty is even a contest.  In this “contest” they will announce a $1,000 winner every day at 8am and 8pm from now until June 19th.  The catch: you not only have to present to win the $1000, but you have to check in within SEVEN MINUTES or they will pick a new name.  Now, let’s just say you manage to sprint from wherever you are in the casino to where you have to check in.  You get your 1K, and then you get to pick from 3 magical fucking treasure chests.  One of them has a golden ticket, which gets you an entrance to the Grand Prize drawing.  Of course, you also must be present to win the $100,000 grand prize.  I don’t know, but presume, that you must claim it within 13 seconds if you are announced as the winner.  Of course, this is the same brand of Not-A-Contest Contest that we have seen so much from the Milwaukee Brewers (often in league with the very same sham casino).  Example: “If Dave Bush throws a no-hitter and the runs add up to 21 and JJ Hardy hits for the cycle in the 10th inning one lucky fan wins a $100 gift certificate to Dream Dance!”  Fuck you, Potowatami Bingo & Casino.

So, the Brewers suck this year.  I’m really, really leaning on the fact that they play 5 out of every 4 games on the goddamned road so far this year while the Cubs whup on Pitssburgh at home seemingly every other game, but who knows at this point.  The pitching rotation is a certified mess, the pen is already shitty, and up and down the lineup dudes can’t buy a hit.  That’s not a winning formula.  And now Melvin is picking up any old broke-dick dog free agent with a 102.7 ERA which should be a terrific solution to the woes.  I say someone coat a tack with roids and put it on Gagne’s clubhouse chair.  Or something.  I’m not even sure at this point.

Next week we’re camping up in Door County so I’ll be indisposed.  Either it will be a fun trip or I’ll be buried alive in a terrifying avalanche of spiders.  The former brings untold riches of stories and anecdotes; the latter brings horrific death and this story holding the front page in perpetuity.  Seeya, cowboy.

Bluegill Schmooblill

I’ve been busy the past week or so as work heats up and the weather turns milder. I hadn’t even seen wwhazz in a while, so last night lawman, he, and I had a bluegill feast to lighten up lawman’s possession limit. We mixed in some ramps/spinach/pasta fry and a nice big salad that changed wwhazz’s outlook on salads. Then we went to Joe’s Casino.

I got a new bike this week, and I’m getting it outfitted soon for some saddlebags and other storage stuff. Being without a car, it would be nice to be able to ride to the market and have a way to get a reasonable amount of groceries home with me. Plus it would be nice to be able to carry food and stuff when we go for trail rides without taking a bulky backpack along. Maybe I’ll post some pictures when I get the thing fully outfitted.

This is amusing.

The Brewers have been on a roller coaster of late. Two straight sweeps on the road, followed by a good 3 -out-of-4 from the then-division leading Cardinals at home, and they were on the verge of taking the series from the Dodgers when Guillermo Mota unloaded a big, stinky blown save on the mound in the top of the ninth. I wonder if he got a swirly in the clubhouse for that performance. Now the Brewers head to Boston in what will certainly be a horrific beatdown (though I do wish otherwise) by the Red Sox. The pitching just Isn’t There, and no matter how much Melvin and Attanasio talk up the rotation and the pen there just isn’t enough pitching on the team for them to go the distance in the fucking division let alone contend IN the playoffs. It would be nice to be a fan of a team where you don’t cringe in every single ninth inning where your team is winning.

Vegas 2008

So much news and junk to get to– let’s get right in to it (har).

The best parts of Vegas this trip were surely non-gambling related.  The Beatles LOVE show at the Mirage was entertaining, Spacebee and I rented out a cabana at the Mandalay pool for a day, and our 2nd Anniversary dinner at STRIPSTEAK in the Mandalay may just have been the best service (and food) that I have ever had in a restaurant.  We also followed my former boss’ advice and had lunch a tiny, blink-and-you’d-miss-it cafe in the Venetian.  The result: an incredible meal.  Back to STRIPSTEAK for a moment; I really can’t say enough about how well we were treated and how great our waitress was.  We arrived 30 minutes before our reservation and expected to wait at the bar, but they wished us a happy anniversary and whisked us right to our table.  They accommodated my request for one finger of scotch to go with my salad course, and the waitress suggested I try a cut called a Ribeye Cap which turned out to be quite good.  Finally, our dessert had ‘Happy Anniversary’ written the plate in chocolate.  Little pricey, but a great place.  I would definitely go again.

The worst parts of Vegas were gambling-related.  Every time I touched the dice (or bet on others who touched the dice) I got assraped, but it was nothing compared to the utter shitstorm that awaited me at the blackjack tables.  The runs were just horrendous, with dealers actually expressing their condolences to the degree that I was pounded.  11? Double down. Get a 3. Dealer 5? 6 underneath. 21.  It just wouldn’t stop, so I did.  As a matter of fact, the most FUN I had gambling in Vegas, even if I didn’t win, was playing roulette with spacebee down on Fremont Street at the Golden Nugget.  We also had a great time playing $3 craps at the Golden Gate, even though we didn’t win there.  I have to say, the dealers down on Fremont are more fun by a mile than the dour sons-of-bitches on the Strip.

Spacebee got me a rod and reel for an anniversary gift and I’m eager to go try it out on some unsuspecting fish.

The Sausage Race this year is on July 26th.  It just so happens that that is the day that I’ll be attending Spacebee’s cousin’s bachelor party.  The good news: it’s at the Brewer Game, so I’ll be there anyways.  Everyone else, though, click here to sign up.

Speaking of the Brewers, I saw first thing this morning that they jettisoned Turnbow.  Probably for the best; when dude gives up 6 runs in a game like Wednesday’s he’s probably not the one we want.  However, now that Gallardo’s injured again we’ve got Dave Bush back into the rotation. Hurrah (sarcasm).  I’m not sure what to think at this point in the season.  The Crew has yet to put together a good run or a big slide– it’s just kind of flat.  Maybe the bats just haven’t come alive yet, and if they’re above .500 with the way they’ve been hitting so far, they could be in for a quite a little run.  I’ll just leave it at that.

Thanks again to Maddddddddddddd for letting me crash at his place last week.  Sadly it will be the last time I get to see the Little Tycoons playset from his window as he will be packing up his rucksack and hopping the next boxcar to Seattle.  Happy trails you silly little hobo.  Last Friday me and scientist did have a boatload of fun playing Whazz Classic at the Nob Hill Tavern.  I was even on my way to -20 before a stroke limit bottled my potential and threw it in the sea.  Fuckin’ whazz. whizz.

So.  I’ve cross-crossed the United States the last two weeks on Midwest Airlines and I’m ready to settle in for a long summer’s nap.  We planned a camping trip up north in June, but other than that we’ll be rooted in Madison for the remainder, cap’n.  Stop by and sit for a spell; it’s right nice.