Are you kidding me? I feel obligated to respond to Maske’s (pronounced Mask-EE, by the way) lamentable endeavor at interesting/humorous prose. If you have not read his NextRound Backstory do not squander the ten minutes, they will be lost to you forever.After reading his deplorable sentence structure and indigestible grammar, I found myself reminiscing about that one scene from the end of Billy Madison (you know the one I am talking about). The scene where Adam Sandler is participating in a debate competition, and when Sandler completes his incomprehensible ramblings the debate moderator says, “We are all now dumber for having listened to that.” That is how I feel about Maske’s gibberish.

I must concede that Maske did conceive the idea that eventually I molded into NextRound.net. But, before we venture any further, I think the readers deserve a backstory that is at least slightly grounded in reality, instead of the phantasmal ramblings of a person who believes that there is something even slightly impressive about being the CEO of a two person company.

Sidenote: Did anyone else notice that Maske writes like he is trying to win a Pulitzer Prize? The way he throws around verbs & adjectives that nobody ever uses in normal conversation? In the last couple paragraphs I tried to write like Maske to prove how lame it is to try to sound like a middle aged 12th grade English teacher. I mean who wants to read that crap? Anyway, the guys go to Vegas every March for the second weekend of the NCAA tournament. We started the tradition our senior year of college and have gone every March since 2002. In the past our trip has been like most guys’ trips to Vegas: everyone flies in from all over the country and the weekend is over in a blink of the eye. (You know, the typical M.O. where we all leave our dignity and two months rent in Vegas).

After the trip is over, most of the guys hardly remember even seeing each other. Most outsiders would attribute this to the constant drinking, but in reality, it’s due to our friends’ different gambling tastes. We inevitably splinter into three divisions: Poker, Craps, & Blackjack.

After six short years (I know, we are not the quickest group to remedy a problem), we decided that we needed to set aside some time where all the guys would hang out together. After considering the usual options (i.e. Crazy Horse II, Scores,
Paradise, etc.), we decided to try something different. We rented out a private room at Joe’s in the Caesar’s Forum Shops on our last night of the 2006 trip. The logic seemed perfect: before we all left Vegas in a hungover blur, we’d have at least a couple hours where everybody is committed to putting the dice down and hanging out together.

The dinner happened. But not without incident.

First, if you have ever been to Vegas for a long weekend with your buddies, you understand that trying to do anything on the last night of your trip is damn near impossible. If you have never been to Vegas with your buddies (A) what the hell is wrong with you? and (B) I can’t even use Maske’s vocabulary to describe to you how you feel by the end of the trip.

Case in point, our buddy JK looked exactly like Johnny Depp from the hospital scene in “Blow” on the last night. You know, the scene where Depp’s standing in the delivery room, shaking and sweating, while his daughter is born. Seriously, JK didn’t even make it to the boardroom dinner that night because he was too feeble to get out of bed. And JK is the guy who coined the phrase, “Don’t ask dangerous questions unless you want dangerous answers” when asked about where he went after the bars closed in college.

I vividly remember looking down at JK struggling in a pathetic state somewhere between consciousness and barely breathing and him saying, “I have no business being in public like this.” I agreed, so I left him there.

Team Cool & Tough finally sat down for dinner in the boardroom, none of us taking into account that our friends are only marginally successful and that in a few hours we would have to pay for the experience.

Sidenote: Throwing numbers around is about the lamest thing a guy can do. I refuse to touch on money even in the context of our dinner bill.

I will tell you however that our tab was not that over the top. But for a guy who was still in law school at the time, any meal over ten bucks I considered expensive. And then it happened, that moment that changes the whole course of your evening, that moment that only happens about once a year, maybe not at all.

One of the members of Team C&T–Blackjack Division–put the entire check on his credit card and took everyone else’s cash with the intention of taking all the cash to the blackjack table. I know that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Anybody can drop some money at a blackjack table, so who cares, right? The interesting part was his declaration that he was, “Going to triple this and then we are all going to Scores.”

Needless to say, everyone thought this was a great idea.

So, Team CT headed to the blackjack pit, Me and Maske hanging towards the back. Our conversation went something like this

Me: “No effing way he pulls this off.”
Maske: “Yeah, no effing way.”
Me: “But I’ve seen crazier s#!t happen.”
Maske: “Yeah, me too. I mean, it’s not completely improbable.”
Me: “It does kind of feel like one of those nights.”
Maske: “Our luck has been above average this week. I really wouldn’t be at all surprised if we’re walking into Scores in an hour.”
Me: “I call dibs on the first Russian stripper we see in the joint.”

To spare you the boredom of reading about another man’s swings at the blackjack table, I will cut to the chase. An hour and a half after the infamous proclamation, Team Cool & Tough exited a limo and entered the VIP lounge of Scores.

While I’m sure the rest of you dudes out there have stories that kick this one’s ass, this one has been an inspiration to me. It’s killer nights like this that have driven me to throw my hapless, lackluster, absent-minded CEO on my back and make a mediocre idea work.

OOOH and by the way, I am a phenomenal belly flopper, who are you kidding?

Email This