A Palm Tree and a Desperate Boy

So yesterday I had to cover the 7-card stud championship with Don, Eric, Joe and some of the other reporters. With a very strong field, it was a pro-heavy field that finished the day with a long way until they would reach the money.

As the day wound up, computers were bagged and pens were capped, Garry headed over and invited us all out to this place for some drinks. With only the Venetian on the cards for me and Joe we decided to join everyone else to steam off a little and neck a few cold ones along with Christian, Chris and Donald.

As we approached Tommy Rocker's we found out that it wasn't just a bar, but it was 'Tommy Rocker's Mojave Beach - a rock 'n' roll topless bar'! Once through the doors and past the 11 people crowding the bar we all took a booth for ourselves. As the first round of drinks came out, out came the deck of cards and we were all doing omaha flips.

Once Eric was stuck $200 to Garry doing $50 double flop omaha flips, I taught everyone how me and Shane do the 9-card omaha flips - discard 2 preflop, 2 on the flop and 1 on the turn. With everyone loving the idea that got going until the real action started to occur.

With a strip pole in front of us, and a reporter desperate for some extra cash we dared Joe 'Alf' Schepis to get up on stage, dance for 2 songs with his feet leaving the ground every 10 seconds for longer then 2 seconds or so; and if he could get a girl up there with him we would chuck in an extra $20 on top of the $85 he was already getting. However the boss didn't like the idea of a guy 'stripping' for the crowd as it might scare his 11 customers off. So we came up with another idea.

In the corner near the stripper stage there was a palm tree; for 80 bucks all Joe had to do was pretend to hump the tree for 2 songs and he would get paid. As he humped and grinded the tree for a the first 20 seconds of the next song a shout of, "WHAT THE HELL!!" came from the bar and Joe immediately deserted the tree. "You know I was thinking. I gotta do that for like 8 more minutes. Fuck that!! That ain't worth 80 bucks" said Joe as he sat back down to finish off his Budd light.

With Garry being up a billion in prop bets and flips for the night he shouted a lap dance for Joe with the 'stripper' - thats if you can call her that - no idea how to dance, pregnancy marks that represented 3 kids and not the best looking shiela either! With everything said and done, we were out of there after 3 rounds of drinks, some food, enough laughs to last us the rest of the trip and all it cost was $96 - and thanks to Garry; on him.