#3 "Charles Barkley"

First of all, a major "Thank You" to everyone who came out to the blog yesterday. We are around 210 views over the past couple of days, which is phenomenal. Thanks to all the people who left comments and voted to determine which song I would wake up to this morning. "Senorita" by Justin Timberlake provided a wonderful start to my day this morning.

No shout out from John Mayer's Twitter yesterday so, unfortunately, the blog is still a failure. Not completely, but close. Seriously though, someone has to know John Mayer. Maybe not directly, but like a close friend or something. I will blog until he Twitters about this blog, and that's a threat.

Also, a quick shout out is in order. If you haven't checked out Jamie's blog "Meet Mr. McFly" you need to. The black Kanye high-tops are ridiculous.

Now, back to Barkley.

Where do you start with someone like Charles. You could start with the fact that he was the NBA's Most Valuable Player in 1993, played for the Dream Team in 1992 and 1996 where they outscored opponents by an average of 44 points per game, was vote to 11 All-Star games, named the 1984 SEC Player of the Year, or many more things he accomplished over a long illustrious career.

I, personally, like to remember Charles by his famous Nike commercial. The one where he goes on and on about how he isn't really a role model. About how dunking doesn't have anything to do with raising children or something along those lines. Watch the commercial, you'll get it. Anyways, in my opinion, Charles has never spoken any truer words. He is absolutely not a role model. I'm not just saying this either. The man has, quite possibly, the most horrendous golf swing of all time. He recently spent some time in the slammer for drunk driving. And last but certainly not least, he has an outrageous gambling problem. Did I mention the golf swing?

Sorry for that little rant about Charles Barkley, I don't really dislike the guy, but he was a means to an end so I could talk about what I wanted to. Which is, of course, Las Vegas.

I'd like to take this opportunity to tell a little story. It's the story of three boys who went to Las Vegas for Spring Break. I won't bore you with the long drawn out story about how all but one of the boys came home with a little less money in their wallets, instead I'd like to tell the story of the night the boys spent in La Bayou.

Picture, if you will, a small quaint little casino. Nothing over the top, just good ol' Southern style gamblin'. This immediately peeked our interest, and we entered to try and turn a quick profit. As was the usual, Matt and I sat down and started losing money, rather quickly. Luke, on the other hand, picked a rather unusual slot machine. He had unintentionally sat down and inserted a rather large sum of money into a senior citizen bingo style machine. Feeling totally uncomfortable, and appropriately so, he went to cash out and move to a different machine. Something we had failed to notice upon entrance to the casino was the apparent lack of sophisticated, up-to-date technology. This became a quick reality when Luke cashed out of the machine. Most normal, newer, machines print out cash vouchers when someone is done playing. In La Bayou, however, the slot machines still paid out in nickels. This probably isn't a problem for most people, but due to the large amounts of money Luke was dealing with, it made for an absolutely hilarious moment when a tremendous amount of nickels came spewing out from the machine. After recovering from the insanity of that moment, we help Luke put his few hundred nickels into another machine. This is where things get interesting. Luke has apparently stumbled upon a one-of-a-kind slot machine, resembling the old Oregon Trail game most of you probably played on an old Apple 2E. This machine then proceeds to spin three eagle's heads in a row. For those of you who don't know what this means, it means lots of money. The machine starts going crazy and spinning on it's own and landing on all sorts of money making combinations. We are laughing and giggling like little children dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. After all is said and done, Luke cashes out, in nickels mind you, for somewhere upwards of a quarter million dollars, or so it seemed (number might be exaggerated). By far the best night in Vegas.

For all you doubters, here is some visual evidence of that night's happenings. It doesn't do any justice to the amount of nickels that actually came out of that machine.

That's all I have, now I want to hear your stories about Spring Break '09. Winning or losing large sums of money. Stories about skiing, swimming, working, etc. Maybe some feedback about old Oregon Trail or Apple 2E memories. If you are one of the rare Charles Barkley lovers you definitely need to leave a post.

*This blog does not, by any means, support gambling away you're life savings. Click this link if your gambling is no longer a game.

Love,

Paul