You know what’s Crazy? I’ll tell you what’s Crazy™
Eddie Van Halen losing a black jack table.
How do you lose a black jack table?
It’s 4 am. The Palazzo casino is remarkably empty for a Saturday night.
We walk around the tables looking for a black jack game for less than $25 a hand.
Remarkably, tables are empty.
The gambling level is that of carmelized goo.
The Asian dealers are yawning, trying to look interested. They wear little bow ties and neatly pressed shirts.
The women lean against the rail to keep from falling into a coma.
“There’s nobody here,” I say in an amazed tone.
Table after table; no action. It’s more empty than a wino’s wallet, I think to myself.
“Lower the minimum to $15 and we’ll play,” Godfather says to a dealer trying not to contract a case of narcolepsy.
“$25 minimum sir.”
“So rather than make some money you’d rather have an empty table with a $25 minimum. Stupid,” Godfather says walking away disgusted.
The female dealer looks at Godfather. Her face is twisted, perturbed. She looks at him angrily, the way Godzilla eyes a subway car.
We move through the vacuous casino with 50 foot ceilings and sparse table attendance.
We round the casino more times than Columbus looking for the West Indies.
Eventually, we stop at a Black Jack table with a $15 minimum. It’s unique, like finding a Frenchman who has bathed.
The table looks lonely. A man with disheveled hair is seated in the number 5 chair, at the far left.
He is smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, fingering his stack of chips.
“Look. A $15 dollar table,” Gonzo says sitting in seat two.
“Let’s do it,” I say.
Godfather sits in the first position, Gonzo in chair 2, I take seat 3, which is next to the man.
Gonzo is a quick study and elbows me in the ribs, leaning in.
“Looks like Eddie Van Halen,” he whispers.
Gonzo’s smile is infectious.
I look at the player to my left.
He does look like the iconic rock and roll guitar God.
We place our bets and the dealer begins laying down cards.
I suddenly feel like screaming out “eruption.”
We color up and the cards start flying.
I am amazingly alert.
It’s 4 am and we’ve been going harder than Kardashian sisters at an NBA baby daddy parade.
Just then the drink girl circles.
“Cocktail?” she says.
I feel my side above my Kidneys. It is tender like a baked potato microwaved for two straight days.
“I’m ok,” I reply in a hoarse voice torn apart by a weekend of screaming over techno babble and inhaling 101 degree arid air.
I watch the cards hit the green felt.
The numbers are adding up quickly in my brain.
I’m an alcoholic’s version of a beautifully drunk mind.
“8 to Godfather,” I say like a horse racing announcer. “A Jack to Gonzo. 3 to AC…”
The dealer tosses a 10 to the man on the end seat.
“And a ten to Eddie Van Halen.”
I say it aloud. Gonzo and Godfather laugh.
The dealer smiles.
The man on the end seat doesn’t seem to notice as he fidgets with his chips.
Eddie Van Halen becomes the running joke for the next 30 minutes.
Eddie V has a stack of black $100 dollar chips against the rail in front of him.
His chips indicate he is a man of prominence. Everything else about him screams trucker, or driving range instructor.
Where did he get all those black chips, I think.
He either sold his kidney outside the casino, or he knows how to play black jack.
At least that’s what I initially think.
Hand after hand, you get to know a little something about a man.
And after 30 minutes, I think that Eddie V is playing on borrowed time.
My philosophy of black jack is this: The house always has the advantage. But if you can hang in there long enough, weather a bad stretch of luck, you might just have a chance to cash in.
But you have to recognize the signs. The casinos are dark with no windows. The light of luck isn’t always visible to the naked eye. It’s a feeling, a moment, a chance to stab the dragon in the heart.
I look at Eddie V and wonder if he has just exited from his moment of luck.
You can look pretty damn smart when lady luck keeps dealing you the right cards.
But it’s when you have a 14 and the dealer’s showing a 9, that you have to know when to hit, stand or surrender.
I watch Eddie V’s cards.
He’s apple pie when the cards are good. He’s paprika and sour lemons when he has a 15.
Some plays are obvious as after market boob jobs at a Vegas pool.
Doubling on 11.
Splitting 8’s.
Just do it and shut the F up.
Not Eddie V.
He’s as conventional as a truck stop wedding.
And Eddie V. talks too much.
It’s one thing for a player to be supportive, helping others if they ask for it.
But the first thing Eddie V. says to me is; “you took my six. That was my six.”
I hate that. You tell another player you took his six? I want to give him a knuckle sandwich of 5.
It’s a myopic response. The reality is; what if I took a ten and busted. Are you gonna kiss me cause I took your bust card?
There are some rules of etiquette to the game. I’m not a great gambler, but I know how to play black jack.
I learned to play BJ under the careful guidance of Henry Fairbanks.
Whose Henry Fairbanks?
My math teacher, senior year.
Instead of calculus I took a year of statistics and probability.
Questions like; a jumbo jet has four engines. What’s the probability that 3 will fail?
That’s a nice text-book question, but it has little real life application.
How often will you ever look out your Southwest window and ponder the statistical probability of one engine of two engines failing?
Algebra has few, look out the window, real life scenarios.
But statistics?
Turn a classroom into a gambling casino, throw down some dice and cards and viola, you’ve got yourself a real life class.
What are the odds that the dice will roll a seven or an eleven?
What are the odds a ten will show up in a 52 card deck?
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
To answer those questions we had to be familiar with probability and mathematical rules.
Over the course of a million hands, the idea is, if you follow these tendencies you will win more than you lose.
But most of us don’t have a million hands of black jack to get comfortable. Most of us have a few hands to figure out if luck is smiling.
Sitting down at a BJ table where the hand costs $25 can be intimidating.
Like anything else, you need to get a feel for the moment.
Good Black Jack is a lot like good sex. There is a rhythm to it.
But if you sit down and the dealer runs you over like a subway car runs over a pop can, that can make for a short stay.
“I didn’t take your six,” I quickly remark to an agitated Eddie. “That was the right call.”
Eddie doesn’t make eye contact. He is a slithering serpent who oozes around the felt.
I feel a surge of anger. I think my blood type changes from type B to type A. That’s serious consternation, right?
I wait for Eddie to respond, to challenge the teachings of Henry Fairbanks.
Nothing.
I look at this mope next to me. His hair is a typhoon. It’s a mop of split ends and dandruff. His face is crusty like the bottom of a sailboat that never leaves the marina.
He is smoking a cigarette and he has a slight tremor.
If he were a Japanese nuclear reactor, a town would be evacuated.
I turn to the dealer who finds this all amusing.
“Hit on a 14 against a ten showing, right?”
The dealer nods affirmatively.
“You took my card,” he seeths stacking his all ready stacked chips.
“I needed that six.”
“I’ll take the 20, Eddie.”
And so it goes.
The old rocker look-a-like at the end seat, grimacing with every card we take or don’t take.
The guy is nervous, like he’s hooked up to a truck battery.
“Where you from Eddie?” Gonzo says right after I stop him from hitting on a 17.
“From Arizona,” he says.
“Where you boys from?” he says, cigarette smoke rising slowly across his face and into his mop of hair that was styled by a wind tunnel.
“Monterey,” Gonzo says pushing his winnings back to the pile.
“All you boys together?” He says.
“Life long buddies,” Godfather replies.
Eddie V. grows silent.
He is alone, in the cone of gambling silence at the end of the table.
Seat 5.
Take the cards that are left.
“Where’s the rest of your group?” Gonzo chuckles during a shuffle.
Eddie takes a drag on his cigarette. The ash turns volcanic red. I see a puff of smoke rise into his dangling mop. I imagine it igniting like a hirsute Hindenburg.
During the pause Eddie announces.
“I’m going to the bathroom. Watch my chips.”
And with that, he gets up and staggers into the gambling ether.
For a while, it’s just me, Godfather and Gonzo playing.
Just the boys from the old neighborhood.
Nobody asks why I took their 6.
It’s enjoyable.
After about 10 minutes Godfather looks up and says “hey there’s Eddie. He’s lost.”
We look up to see Eddie two rows of gaming tables away.
His head is on a swivel, his eyes darting into the gaming casino. There’s a nervous look on his face.
“I think he’s lost the table,” Godfather says.
God father’s right. Eddie is looking left and right wondering where he left his $1,000 worth of chips.
It’s 4 AM. Most of the tables are empty, yet he can’t find us
“What an idiot!” I proclaim.
I look to the dealer who is smiling like a Cheshire cat.
“Eddie! Eddie!” I scream.
Eddie continues on his frantic pace looking for a blackjack table that suddenly disappeared on the casino floor.
“What a dufus,” Gonzo says.
We begin waving our arms like the guy on the aircraft carrier signaling an approaching fighter jet.
“Eddie Van Halen! We’re over here!”
I watch as Eddie realizes someone in the casino is shouting.
He doesn’t know he’s Eddie Van Halen, but he senses something is going on somewhere.
I watch as he slows and begins tracking the shouts. Finally his gaze meets mine. A look of relief crosses his crusty face.
He heads to the table as we laugh out loud.
“How the hell did he get all those black chips?” I say to the dealer.
She shrugs
That’s when I realize, Eddie V. is just another loser that creeps up from the dirty places in the floor. But even a bathroom stain is not immune to lady luck.
This guy was sitting under a lucky golden rainbow, a drunken leprechaun on his shoulder, in a casino filled with snapping jackals. And fortuitous cards landed in his realm.
But he changed the game. He got up. He let a distraction, a random thought, a full bladder take his thoughts away from the business at hand.
How would that affect the cosmic order of things? Where will he reinsert himself into the million draws over time?
He arrives back at the Jack Table.
His shirt is wrinkled, his body a fidgety mess.
“Lost us?” I muse.
He sits down and immediately paws his black chips.
“I thought you guys…”
He pauses.
“What?” Gonzo pushes. “You thought we picked up the black jack table and your fortune and left?”
Eddie smiles. He doesn’t say anything. It’s obvious his brain is short circuited.
That’s when I sense a cosmic shift in the table’s fortune.
I feel the cloud of lady luck move a few seats over.
“He’s not worthy of this moment,” I hear the angry leprechaun say to the Casino Gods. “Move it!” the enchanted little luck mongrel shouts like a Vegas set director changing scenery between acts.
Over the course of the next 30 minutes. I will watch Eddie V double down when he shouldn’t, split cards that have never been split. He will yell and curse and blame everyone that he’s getting screwed.
I laugh.
Henry Fairbanks was right.
If only Eddie V. could last a million more hands, perhaps the fortuitous Gods of luck would prance above him once again.
Sadly; I look at the disheveled little creature that has slithered out of the sewer and think; this is perhaps the last time he will ever see a black chip again.
Life’s crazy™