For the past three months I’ve been dieting the old fashioned way — eating right, and exercising. But what if there were an easier way to shed a few unwanted pounds? What if, through the power of a miracle, you were able to magically shed up to ten pounds in two days? That’s what the Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet promises purchasers. Normally one would think miracles would be limited to healing lepers, but no — for around $20, you can get your own liquid miracle. Please note that we were unable to test the Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet on lepers. But how does the juice work when it comes to weight loss? Read on and find out!

A jug of the magical Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet elixer contains 32 ounces of juice which is to be diluted with another 32 ounces of water for a total of 64 ounces of drink. Those 64 ounces are to be consumed over 48 hours in four eight-ounce servings each day. Each glass of juice is 100 calories each — that’s 400 calories per day. You are not allowed to eat or drink anything else during the 48 hour period except water (of which they recommend an additional 32 ounces of each day).

Looking over the bottle’s ingredients doesn’t reveal any miracles. The juice contains a lot of fruit juice — apple juice, orange juice, grapefruit juice, pineapple juice, prune juice, and so on. I suspect there are also some appetite suppressants in the mix as well to keep you from clawing at your refrigerator all weekend long.

So, the “miracle” here is that by drinking only 400 calories of fruit juice per day for two days, you’ll lose weight. This is starting to sound a lot less like a miracle and a lot more like simple science.

So does it work? I suppose that depends on the answer you’re looking for. Is it possible to lose 5-10 pounds using the Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet? You bet. Is it real weight loss? No, not really. It’s bodily fluids. This diet will make you lose 5-10 pounds through your poo poo and pee pee. I suppose if your weight problems are a result of the fact that you retain too much of those things, then this may be the long term diet approach for you. For the rest of us, the weight will be back a couple of days (and glasses of water) later.

My Personal Experience

I decided to try the Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet over a weekend. I was nervous about the experience. I was afraid I would be hungry — no, STARVING — and I had read other reviews of the diet that described explosive bowel movements, stomach cramping, vomiting, and other non-desirable effects.

I had the first glass of miracle juice around breakfast time. The diluted juice was much less tangy than I had expected, due to the watering down effect I suppose. I sipped the juice slowly, hanging on to each sip knowing that with the end of this drink came the end of my breakfast.

For the first day, the worst part was not the hunger, but the fear of hunger! I kept thinking that surely the previous day’s food would run out and the hunger pains would begin. Surprisingly, I felt fairly content at the end of the first day. If day two is anything like day one, this should be a piece of cake. Mmmmm. Cake.

Sunday morning, I began feeling a bit light headed. I thought my vision might be blurring, but it was hard to tell. After my my morning drink I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t feel very good. By noon I was starting to get cranky and irritable. This diet is a bad idea for those with small children. My headache did not go away after my lunch drink, and my wife began to worry about my blood sugar levels. We decided it might be a good idea to eat something with some protein in it, and so I scrambled an egg and ate that on a piece of toast. That did the trick for several hours — the headache and blurry vision went away, but returned later in the evening. With the evening drink I had another egg along with a spoonful of peanut butter. Each additional snack I had was 100 additional calories, bringing my weekend total to 1,000 instead of 800.

In 48 hours I lost a total of 6 pounds. By noon the following day I had put one of the two pounds back on, and by the following morning I had gained an additional two back.

Summary

The Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet does what it says it will do — cause you to lose 6-10 pounds over a 48 hour period. The catch is, they don’t say how long the weight will stay gone (not long) and what you will have to go through (a liquid fast). I suppose if you make a bet with someone over whether or not you could lose five pounds over a weekend then this product might be useful to you, but those of us who are overweight should know by now that there is no such thing as a miracle when it comes to weight loss.

Notes

The diet suggests that you do not exercise or do anything too strenuous while drinking the juice. I agree with this. While on day one you may feel fine, on day two you could get into trouble real quick by over exerting yourself. I’ve also read several websites that suggest creating your own fruit juice instead of buying the official Hollywood juice. I can’t suggest that. I suspect that the official juice contains vitamins as well as some sort of appetite suppressant, things you wouldn’t get if you made your own. I was tempted too, but I went with the official stuff. If you make your own and try this, I’d love to know how it works out for you.

What were you doing on December 3rd, 1998?

On the evening of December 3rd, 1998, my wife and I went out for dinner. It was both cold and rainy that night, which made it a particularly bad night to run out of gas. Which, of course, is exactly what happened. The lights in the dash of my Chevy Astro had burned out so I never saw the fuel guage pointing to E.

My van coasted to a stop on the side of I-40 near Sara Road. There’s no exit off the interstate there, so we had to walk either a mile east to Mustang Road, or a mile west to Morgan road. We picked Mustang road, and headed out.

At this point, it was dark, raining and cold. I told my wife Susan to stay in the car, but she insisted on coming with me. It’s a good thing she did, she probably saved my life. I was wearing the absolute worst clothes possible — a long sleeve black t-shirt, complete with black shoes, and a black baseball cap.

We began walking down the side of the interstate together, holding hands. We were walking in the emergency lane at first, but Susan felt that was too close to traffic. We then moved to the outside shoulder, but again Susan felt like that was too close to traffic. Eventually, we began walking on the outside of the metal guard rail, which was really beginning to piss me off because the grass was wet and slippery.

We came to the bridge at Sara Road, and came up with the idea that we could probably climb the embankment and take a shortcut to my dad’s house, who lives near Sara Road. We were standing there, holding hands and assessing the situation, when I saw Susan turn around and say, “oh my God.”

When truly awesome things happen in your life, your eyes can deceive you. When I turned and looked I couldn’t see anything, but I did hear the sound of tires screeching. My reflexes caused me to turn and begin to jump, but it was too late.

A pickup truck travelling 75mph had just hit me in the back.

I can remember everything before, during, and after the impact. The pickup had hydroplaned and blown out its rear tire, which caused the truck to begin sliding sideways. The rear of the truck came up over the metal guardrail, and struck me in the back, launching me about 30 feet down the embankment and into a muddy ditch.

Slowly, the world began spinning. I could see my wife and realized she was screaming and crying. She began to run down the hillside but I told her to go for help. She ran down the road, waving her arms wildly, and this is when I realized I could not breath.

I tried to breath in, but I couldn’t. I’ve never been a very religious person, but at that moment I closed my eyes and said to myself, “this is it.” Suddenly, I felt myself gasp. Then again. I was breathing, that was a good start. I slowly looked at my body to see what damage was done. I could feel everything and move everything. My arm was stinging like hell and I could see it was bleeding, even in the heavy rain.

Another motorist had stopped to check on the people in the pickup. My wife ran up to them screaming, “you just kiled my husband!” The people standing there were confused; they hadn’t even seen us on the side of the road. Susan grabbed the cellphone out of one of their hands and dialed 911. She told the people on the phone that a truck had run off the road and hit me. She also called my dad.

“Denny,” she said. “We were on I-40, and we ran out of gas …”

“Ok, I’m on my way,” my dad replied.

“Wait, there’s more,” Susan said. She told him what had happened, he muttered an expletive or two, and hung up.

About this time, my wife came down the hillside to check on me, with the motorist who had stopped. “I don’t think you should move,” the guy told me. “If I’m going to die, it’s not going to be here in this muddy ditch,” I responded, and with both of their help, I walked back up the hill to the underpass.

When I got to the underpass, the passenger in the car (a kid, probably 13 or 14) came over to me and said, “man, how ya feeling?”

“Like I just got hit by a truck,” I responded, and lied down. He said something else to me, and I said, “look kid, I’m a pretty easy going person but your mother just hit me with her car so I’m not in a great mood at the moment.” He walked away.

About five minutes later (it seems instantly to me), the ambulance pulled up.

“Where’s the body?” they asked.

“I’m the body,” I replied.

The paramedic looked at me and said we needed to go to the emergency room. “Let’s go,” I said, and started to get up. They all freaked out and said, “no, you need to go on this stretcher.” They pulled out the stretcher and I laid down on it. Then they put a neck brace on me. Right about this time is when my father pulled up.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” my wife told him. The main thing I remember about that moment is my dad was smoking heavily, and I was covered in gasoline from the pickup truck (hitting the guardrail had caused the gas tank to rupture) and I was really worried he was going to set me on fire — that would have really topped the night off.

My other concern was that the two paramedics were going to be able to lift me into the ambulance. I’m 6’0 and 300+ pounds. The guy at my feet was a big guy, about my size. The other guy was about 70 years old and 100lbs maybe — and that’s the guy that insisted on picking up my head! I just knew they were going to drop me, but they didn’t.

The ambulance ride seemed to take forever. When we arrived, my mother was on her way there as well, and showed up moments later. I immediately went for x-rays, so they could see the amount of damage I had taken. And the answer was … none. Then it was back to the operating room, where I received stitches for the laceration on my arm. Then, it was back down to x-ray, because no one could believe there wouldn’t be any damage. They all came back negative (haha, get it?). No damage, whatsoever.

After a four hour stay in the emergency room, I was dismissed. As I went to leave, I hopped off the bed and immediately realized that I could neither walk nor stand up. I remained standing and bent over at the waist until they arrived with a wheel chair. I was rolled out to my dad’s truck, and needed help getting up into that too. My back had already begun to swell and bruise.

In the end, I walked away with 14 stitches and a bruise on my back the size of a medium pizza. It was a great bruise too, it turned every color you could imagine. Not just blue and purple, but yellow, green, and all other kinds of funky colors. I also experienced some burning in my leg that week from pressure on my psiotic nerve. That too was temporary.

I was off work for one complete week, and returned to work with one hell of a story.

The legal and financial aftermath of this event was fairly minimal. We ended up having to sue the driver’s insurance company because there was some question whether they had hydroplaned, which blew out the tire, or whether the tire had blown out, which caused them to hydroplane. Their stance was, if the blow out caused the drive to lose control, then that was “an act of God” and therefore not covered. In the end my lawyer convinced them that God had not purposefully run over me in a truck, and they agreed to pay my medical bills (more importantly, the ambulance ride) as well as give me about $3000 bucks.

I can’t say that my back is 100% anymore. It hurts sometimes if I sit in the same position too long or if I try to move something a little to heavy (or even stand around too long sometimes), but it’s really a small price to pay. Things could have ended up a lot, lot worse. Had I been standing 6 inches to the left, the truck would have broken my back. Had I been standing two or three feet to the left, the truck would have went over the top of me, killing me instantly. A little back pain isn’t so bad.

I can’t honestly say that I think about the accident every day, but I can say that when things get a little rough or I find myself getting mad or frustrated over the little things, I do think back to that day and try to remember that every day since then has been a gift.

These are pictures my dad took the following morning.

This is where the truck lost control. Note the skid marks that lead off the road.

The path of the truck, sliding down the ditch.

More tire tracks.

The guard rail.

Notice how the metal stakes that go into the ground are bent.

The guard rail, the truck tracks, and my van (with no gas).

More bent guard rails.

Me, with some bandages, flowers, candy, and pain-pills.

Coulda been worse.

After seeing my MAME cabinet, my friend The Stranger decided he wanted one as well. Several hundred dollars and months later, here is his the story of his cabinet.

The Stranger’s MAME cabinet began life as a 1976 Atari LeMans cabinet. As far as MAME cabinets go, this is one of the worst you could choose. For starters, it has a steering wheel and gas pedal on the front. It also has a sloped control panel area, for the steering wheel. This particular cabinet had mouse crap and bird’s nests all through it. It was also free.

The first thing we did was completely gut the cabinet. This meant removing the bezel, the marquee, the speaker … basically anything we could unscrew and remove, we did.

Here’s what we ended up with — an empty cabinet. We peeled the artwork off of one side and eventually gave up. Since the goal of this project was to finish it in a weekend, we decided to spray paint the cabinet black. By the way, the cabinet took about three months to finish, due to my busy schedule.

Here’s me, stuck in the cabinet. Aren’t I funny.

And more of me, posing by the cabinet. You can start to see why it took three months.

OK DEAR GOD WE GET IT. Actually, the reason I posted this picture is so you could see one of the problems we would later face. Not only is there no conventional control panel, there’s really not even a good place to build one.

The inside of the cabinet was exactly two feet wide, so starting with a 2’x1′ piece of wood and a goofy grin, we started drawing. Then, we started drilling.

If you don’t already know, button holes are 1 1/8″ holes. This drill bit was less than 5 bucks at Lowes, and made the entire process really easy. Basically we just pretended we were playing video games, and then kind of guessed where we wanted the buttons. A couple of pencil marks and a few measurements later, we were drilling away.

When we got done with the control panel, we went to Wal-Mart (at around 1am) and picked up a roll of marble-print shelf paper. We wrapped the control panel in it, but it didn’t stick so great, so on the underside we duct taped it into place.

Since the original control panel was sloped, we had to make a piece of wood to cover that too. We just cut another piece of wood, also wrapped it in the same contact paper, and stuck it into place. Here I am, pointing to it. Whee!

No cabinet would be complete without side art and a bezel. Here is the side art that the Stranger found via eBay. Expensive, but completely worth it. It immediately changed the look of the cabinet. Here’s me pointing at it.

Here’s the underside of the control panel. We used an iPac to wire everything up (SO easy … God I would not build one any other way). Every button has one wire running to the iPac, and one common ground wire. Wiring the whole thing up would have taken less than an hour but of course we learned everything the hard way on this one. I bought the wrong kind of wire, so one night we ran up to Radio Shack and got the right kind.

Half of building a MAME cabinet is the MAME half — that is, getting your computer configured and running just right. Trust me on this one folks, it’s a HECK of a lot easier to get everything working while it still looks like a computer instead of working on it when you’ve got it already installed into a cabinet.

Since we were building a cabinet mainly to play old school games, we had to run through everything and make sure MAME was rotating the games to the left. I used LemonMAME front end, which is very easy to configure for a vertical monitor as well.

Here’s another shot of the MAME guts. There’s the monitor, the motherboard (which unfortunately did not have an onboard sound card), the keyboard/mouse, hard drive, CD-Rom, and power supply.

Here’s us installing the monitor. We maintained the original slope of the original monitor. We bought a few metal L brackets, and I cut some 2×4’s 2′ long. Then, The Stranger held the monitor in place while I frantically screwed in the 2×4’s to support the weight. In the end I think we used 4 2×4’s. 2 probably would have held it, but we wanted to be super sure that this thing wouldn’t move.

Not only does he drill, he looks good doing it. What can I say, folks. :) Once we had the monitor secured, we measured the distance from the sides of the cabinet, centered it, cut little blocks of wood to hold it in the middle and screwed those into place as well. Then we shook the cabinet violently and nothing moved. Then, we danced.

The original marquee light was shot so we went to Wal-Mart and bought an 18″ desk light. Then I cut a piece of wood to fit and we screwed it into place. Simple. To make the bezel we went to Wal-Mart (again) and bought some black poster board. We laid the original plexiglass sheet in place, and then market on the posterboard where the monitor screen would be. Then we went into the living room and cut out the square with an exacto-knife. This MAME Cabinet is has more Wal-Mart parts and duct tape than any other one on the planet.

I always like MAME cabinets to look like real arcade cabinets on the inside, so were we are mounting the motherboard to the side of the cabinet.

The hard drive, CD-Rom drive, and iPac board are all duct taped into place. Mu-ha-ha-ha …

I wasn’t kidding. BTW, we cut the wires that went to the motherboard for the CPU’s power button, and ran them to a spare arcade button which we hid on the top of the cabinet. Works great, and looks cool

Final results — here’s the machine, up and running. The picture on the screen is a custom background I made out of The Stranger’s favorite arcade bezels (we used the artwork from MAME). The red/blue joysticks from Happs were a nice touch. The Stranger got the marquee from the same guy he got the side art from. Lit up from the back, it looks awesome, just like the real thing!

Here’s a link to the 600×800 Background, if you want to check it out or use it:

Here I am, covered in saw dust, playing a little Ms. Pac-Man.

—

The last thing we need to do is finish up closing up the control panel, but everything works so well at the moment we hate to mess with it.

Tunica Trip – April 22nd, 2005.

Ever since my wife Susan took me to Vegas last year for my birthday, I’ve wanted to go back to Tunica again for a weekend of gambling. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Vegas, but Tunica is just a cleaner, friendlier place.

Last Wednesday I finished by bachelor’s degree at Southern Nazarene University. Also last week, my good friend Andy filed for divorce (our weekend introduction was, “I just finished college and he just finished his marriage …”). We decided that both of those accomplishments deserved a weekend road trip, and it just so happened that we both had a three day off this past weekend. Early Friday morning, we piled into the mini-van and set out for Tunica, Mississippi.

Friday

It’s a complete coincidence that Andy is standing next to a sign that says “Quick N EZ”. Honest. Here we are, filling up the gas tank for the first of three times. Tunica is almost exactly 500 miles and due east of Oklahoma City in the northwest corner of Mississippi, about 20 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. It’s about an eight hour drive.

Several years ago Oklahoma City used to have KFC Buffets but for some reason they all disappeared. 200 miles into our trip, we came across this one in the middle of Arkansas. As Andy said, “just put clouds around it and it would look like Heaven.”

There’s a blurry shot of Andy (he’s on the right). Even though we were only about 200 miles from home, we already noticed that things were different. That’s Arkansas for you, I suppose. People were staring at us the entire time we were there eating. Maybe it’s because we were already wearing our obligatory cool poker-playing sunglasses.

A few hundred miles later, we crossed over the mighty Mississippi River. You can see three important things in this picture. One of course is the river. The second is Lucky Larry the Wonder Chicken, my lucky antenna topper. The third is all the print outs I brought which supposedly told us all the gambling secrets we would need to know for beating the odds and breaking Tunica. (Note: Neither one helped us win a dime.)

Yet another lovely photo taken through a dirty windshield while driving. I wish I could say it was for artistic reasons and that I was commenting on the state of Americans and their cars or something, but in reality it’s just because I don’t want to hold my camera out the window while driving down the Interstate.

We arrived in Memphis around 4:30pm. One of the tips in my printed out guide to Tunica said to be sure and take local supplies like snacks and drinks with you, since the casinos are located 20 miles from a town and the only place you’ll be able to shop is in one of the gift shops (home of the $2 Coke). We heeded the guide and stopped at Walgreens to pick up some chips, drinks, and Little Debbies. About a block down the road we made another pit stop at a gas station for a quick bathroom break. At that convenient store we also found six-packs of bottled water for $2. We bought two, which rang up at $8. When we told the cashier they were marked $2 each, she said “musta went up” and stood there staring at us. After a minute or so, she voided the transaction and rang them up again at $2/each. I jokingly said. “dang water inflation!” and got nothing in return. Eventually we got our water and slowly backed out of the store. At first we thought it might be some sort of racial tension, but as the weekend went on we realized it’s more of just a common hatred of tourists. It is nice to know that such abhorrence transcends any racial barriers.

Finally, at around 5:30pm, we arrived in Hollywood.

Hollywood Casino, that is! Once we got up to our hotel room, Andy broke open the ice chest and we each had a Coors Lite to kick the weekend off. Then, we hit the casino floor running. The first thing we did was get our players cards. These are cards that keep track of how much you gamble. Spend big and you’ll get treated like the high roller you are. Act like a little fish and there will be no VIP Lounge for you. (Note: Lose big and apparently you get nothing either).

Our big master plan for the weekend was to bring enough money so that we could gamble all weekend and drink for free. We initiated this plan by picking slot machines next to the bar. To simplify things, whenever one of us ordered a drink the other would get the same thing, so Friday night we began drinking Seven and Sevens. The waitress brought one pair by and then a second a few minutes later. I made some comment about them being mostly 7up and so the third pair she brought by were strong enough that hair began to grow on my chest instantly.

The drinks were getting better but the floor action wasn’t so hot and we were getting hungry, so we decided to relinquish our barside presence and go find something to eat. Hollywood didn’t have a buffet (if they did, we couldn’t find it) so we walked next door to Harrah’s. By this point we were already getting giggly and I demanded that the security guard strip search Andy (he declined). Unfortunately Harrah’s doesn’t have a buffet either. They did have signs up for some sort of steak and seafood night, but neither Andy nor I care much for seafood, so we hung around for a few minutes, had a couple more drinks and left.

On the way out we asked the security guard who had the best buffet in town. He mentioned some casino 10 miles away. We hopped in the van, but while we were pulling out we saw a big sign which read “Corky’s BBQ Buffet: $9.99 Fri-Sun) in front of Sam’s Town Casino. It was close and it sounded affordable, so we went there instead.

Well, almost. We got in line to pay and asked to pay separately. Andy’s bill was $20.80. When he said it was supposed to be separate, the lady said “that is!” We then said we had just seen a sign that said “$9.99″ and she said “on a Friday night? No way.” Of course we had already started drinking so we thought maybe it was our mistake, so we paid the $20 for Sam’s Town’s Grand Buffet and moved on.

Now one thing I will say is, The Sam’s Town Grand Buffet is worth $20. Similar to the Rio in Vegas, there are different food stations (Asian Station, Down-Home Cooking, etc). The whole center of the buffet was a pile of shrimp and crab legs, about eight feet wide and two or three feet tall. Andy grabbed not one but two steaks for his plate, while I loaded up on Chinese cuisine and Tex-Mex specialties. When the waiter came by and asked me what I wanted to drink, I said “Diet Coke.” When they asked Andy, he said Coors Lite. “Why are you going to go and pay for a drink when we can get them free in the casino?” I asked him. Andy then pointed to a sign on the table which read, “beer and wine included in the buffet.” We then decided that this buffet was actually closer to Heaven than the KFC buffet. For the next hour or so we ate, drank, and stumbled around the buffet.

After we got done gorging ourselves, we headed into Sam’s Town. We played a few slot machines and started playing video poker. After losing money for a while I hit four of a kind and won $40. The machine I was playing let you do a double or nothing by playing a hi/low card with the computer. I did it, and doubled my winnings to $80. I took the money and ran.

After cashing out there we went to Fitzgerald’s. Fitzgerald’s was very busy, very bustling, and very Vegas-like. Now one thing you have to know is Andy’s favorite musician is Elvis. The last time we went to Tunica we found these Elvis slot machines that paid great and had little screens in them that played Elvis videos and whatnot. After searching the casinos and asking employees, we finally found some at Fitzgerald’s.

Fitzgerald’s has an Irish theme so I thought we would do well here using the Luck ‘o the Irish, but it just wasn’t in the cards (note: worst cliché ever). Even Elvis wasn’t good to us. “Damn the King!” we shouted after each loss on the slots. Eventually we got bored of losing money to Elvis so we made our way to the stage at the bar (imagine that) where we sat for a few minutes, drinking Rum and Cokes (my turn to order) and listening to the band. At one point Andy changed it up and ordered us a pair of Strawberry Daiquiris but pretty much we stuck to the basics.

After our bad luck at Fitzgerald’s we decided to head back to the Hollywood and call it a night. It was midnight.

Goodnight, Rob.

Goodnight, Andy.

Saturday

We stumbled out of bed around 7am and had Little Debbie’s Honey Buns and flat Diet Pepsi for breakfast. One of the first things I wanted to do was check out all of the memorabilia at the Hollywood Casino and take some pictures, so we started that around 8am.

Next to the elevator were several props from the Adams Family movies. That’s Uncle Fester’s electric chair, Gomez’s boots, Lidia’s wig, and Cousin It.

Andy stands next to the train used in Under Seige 2, starring Steven Seagal.

These are the costumes from Jurassic Park. That’s a raptor’s head.

Here’s a helicopter model used in Rambo. It’s hard to tell the scale in this picture but I would guess that the model was about four feet in length.

Next to Rambo’s helicopter was a miniature of the jet from True Lies. Those are 12″ dolls hanging off of the plane, so you can kind of tell the scale (again, about four feet in length). It’s too bad they didn’t have the full sized plane there though.

OH WAIT THEY DID. Yup, hanging over the casino floor was the full sized plane used in True Lies.

This mermaid wasn’t from a movie or anything, but “have my picture made with a mermaid” was on my list of “things to do before I die”, so I guess I can mark that one off.

I’m Batman. Or at least his car.

Here’s me with Batman. Or at least his car.

Andy the Elvis Fan got a kick out of Elvis’ car from Spinout. Each of these car displays also had small monitors running video loops of each of these movies. I can now say I’ve seen 20 seconds of the movie “Spinout” starring Elvis.

The centerpiece of the room is this mamma-jamma Titanic display. It weighs 6,000 lbs according to the informative placard and I’m guessing it stuck out of the water somewhere between 30-40 feet. Surrounding the display were several props used in the Titanic movie and (I believe) a few vintage Titanic items.

My favorite item was the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Here I am blocking most of it.

Here it is, without me blocking it. We decided that if worst came to worst and we lost all of our money, we could hop in the car, hit 88mph and go back in time to before we got to Tunica and try all over again.

Mr. Fusion.

Here are the controls. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be that hard to set it back two days.

Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World. I don’t think this was from any particular movie. Still, it was pretty cool to sit under both him and a helicopter and drink.

Once our little sight-seeing adventure was over we decided to walk next door to Harrah’s and try our luck at a little table action. It was 9am.

After scouting out the action (and trying to figure out the rules), Andy and I plopped down at a Blackjack table. The cheapest we found was $5/hand, so that seemed like the best place to learn the ropes. Now despite anything I’ve ever said about being a lucky Irish boy, Andy is lucky at cards. Before long he had turned his $40 worth of chips into a $100 stack. He made it look so easy that I decided to have a sit and try it out. In ten minutes I managed to lose my $40 allowance. Andy was pretty much staying even around $100 at this point. After the cocktail waitress came by, I headed over to the Elvis slots while Andy stayed at the table. I’m not sure what happened, but within another fifteen minutes both of us were broke, so we decided to say “screw Harrah’s” and see what other casinos Tunica had to offer.

First we hit Sam’s Town. Not much luck there, so it was back to Fitzgerald’s. No luck there either.

Next we hit the Horseshoe and the Sheridan. No exciting action at either one.

Finally, we hit Bally’s.

When we got to Bally’s we were thinking about eating lunch but we ended up finding Video Blackjack at the bar. We found that with our new found Blackjack knowledge, we were actually doing pretty good. The bartender at Bally’s name was Brian, but he had a nametag on that read “Chachi” (said he had lost a bet). Brian kept the Coors flowing (I think at one point we each had six bottle caps) and then asked us what we were doing later. When we told him we didn’t have any plans, we got our first comp of the trip.

For about ten seconds we actually considered driving over to Cabaret Tunica for lunch, until we realized that those places actually charge for beer, so we scrapped the idea. By that point in time we had knocked back another five or so Rum and Cokes (plus we had learned the secret of ordering “double-shots”) and were getting a little tired of just sitting and drinking all morning, so we decided to head into the town of Tunica itself and see what they had to offer for lunch (note: don’t bother).

After a 20 minute drive to Tunica, we found: McDonald’s, Sonic, Church’s Chicken, and Subway. The actual town of Tunica is about three blocks long, one block wide, and crawling with cops. We counted eight different cop cars as we sat and ate our Sonic burgers. Bored and full, we headed back to the casinos.

Over the next couple of hours we tried our luck at the Goldstrike, the Horseshoe, and the Sheridan. What we eventually realized was that we weren’t having nearly as much fun as we had been having back at Bally’s, so back to Bally’s we went.

Once back at Bally’s we went straight back to the bar again and started playing video Blackjack once again. After about two hours there, we told the new bartender (a cool guy named Randy) that we were thinking about leaving to go find some dinner. Randy would have no part of that! Before we knew it, the floor manager was standing between Andy and I, giving us free buffet passes. The staff informed us that a band would be hitting the stage soon and that they would save our places for us, so off to the buffet we went.

Now by this time I have to say that the two of us were pretty smashed. Since we had been back at Bally’s we had had seven or eight drinks, on top of the six beers and five or six double shots we had downed before we left the first time, so we went to the buffet and ate and basically wound back down a little. After a few minutes of chilling out, we headed back to our poker machines.

Back at the bar these two girls and their husbands sat down. They were all in town for a big blackjack tournament. We had a good time talking to them and took turns ordering drinks for one another (all drinks are free at the bar). So I would order four and shout, “drinks on me!” and everyone would laugh, and then they would do it the next time around.

I lost track of how much we drank while the band was playing but the little note I wrote down read “5 BN” (five Buttery Nipples), “2 CL” (two Coors Lites), “1 WA” (one Washington Apple that tasted just like a Jolly Rancher!), “5 RC” (five double rum and Cokes), and “2 ?”. The “2 ?” drinks are what did me in. While Andy was in the restroom I told the bartender to make us two really strong drinks to surprise Andy with when he got back. Randy gave me two drinks and I drank mine and instantly my chest started burning and my face got all hot. But then I thought “hey, wouldn’t it be funny if I downed them both?” so I drank Andy’s too and then I instantly thought, “boy I shouldn’t have done that.” I sat back down and the girls next to us and the bartender were all staring at me and all I could say is, “I shouldn’t have done that.” Then Andy came back from the bathroom and I told him the good news and the bad news (that I had ordered a drink for him and that I drank it). Then Randy came back and said that we was going to start “slowing down the party” for all of us and he was going to go on a 30 minute break and that we couldn’t have anything to drink until he got back.

So we went driving instead.

Whee! I’m really not as bad off as this picture makes it look. Something about taking your own picture always makes you look like an idiot.

I don’t know what Andy’s doing on his phone in this picture, or why his door is open. Fortunately the air bags never deployed so nothing too major must’ve went wrong.

We made it back to our room at the Hollywood. It was 10:30pm. Andy said we were going to go upstairs, regroup ourselves, and hit the casino floor. Two minutes later, he was snoring in his bed, lying the wrong way.

Sometime shortly after, he took this picture of me.

I’m not sure which one of us took this picture but I think it accurately depicts how we both felt at the time.

Sunday

Believe it or not, we got up and around at 8am. The Hollywood desk clerk told us to go check with the VIP lounge to see if they would comp part of our room price off, but the problem ended up being we spent all our money at Bally’s, so no deal for us.

Andy and I took one last stroll through the casino, looking for a place to spend all his left over nickels and dimes. We couldn’t find any machines to take them and the cashiers wouldn’t take our small change, so we decided it was a sign to leave with what little money we (he) had left and call it a trip.

After loading up the van, we headed west. We made it about two hours and I told Andy I really needed a break from driving. We pulled over at a rest stop, and while Andy went to go use the restroom, I went to sleep.

The entire side of that hill was covered in stickers and I couldn’t have cared less.

It seemed comfy at the time.

Then I made Andy give me the camera and while I took his picture I remember thinking, “wow he’s really tall.” Finally I got up and Andy picked all the stickers out of my shirt. We drove for a couple more hours until we found a good place to stop and eat.

This is by far the most ghetto Western Sizzler either of us have ever seen. Their buffet consisted of about eight items: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, and okra were the four I had. I think they also had beets and maybe liver. The salad bar was slightly better (but not much). Believe it or not, Andy ran into some people he knew there who were also from Mustang, so we talked to them for a few minutes.

We didn’t ask.

Our final fill up of the trip.

Although we walked away from Tunica with empty wallets, we also brought home with us some great memories of a fun weekend. Our new goal is to learn all the strategies of Blackjack so that next year when we come back we can break the bank.

Yeah, right. ;)

Approximately an hour southwest of Oklahoma City lies Fort Cobb Lake, a 4,000 acre lake with another 2,000 acres of park area surrounding it. It’s a really quiet place, great for getting away and relaxing a weekend at a time. My buddy Andy and his family just put a brand new mobile home a lake lot down by the lake. His brother-in-law and I joined Andy on this weekend’s mission: his farewell to a piece of jewelry.

That’s Andy. During the week, Andy is a firefighter in Mustang, OK. He is also, after ten years of marriage, now single. Without going into too many details, Andy took the “nice guy” approach (because he is one) throughout the divorce and it bit him in the ass. His name was drug through the mud both in and out of court, and things began to get nasty. Throughout it all Andy took the high road, because he’s just that kind of guy. Besides, this weekend, I think he had the last laugh.

Andy is very talented with woodworking, although this particular piece of work might not show it. This is a small piece of wood with holes drilled in it, designed to hold golf tees.

Here are several practice golf balls Andy brought along on the adventure. Andy is also a certified scuba diver, and retreived these balls from a pond near a local golf course.

This one, however, is the most important one. That’s Andy’s wedding ring, attached to the side of it. The whole ring was covered in epoxy. Ain’t no way that thing’s coming off. Ever.

Andy’s brother-in-law Kenny videotaped the event as it unfolded.

Here’s Andy, on the edge of the Fort Cobb dock, explaining to Kenny and I what he is about to do.

Andy tees up one of the practice golf balls …

… begins to swing …

… CRACK! That baby’s out of there!

Andy prepares another practice swing.

This shot was snapped seconds before I began running for my life. Andy whacked this ball hard. REALLY hard. Unfortunately, the ball hit the metal railing and shot back at us, whizzing right past Kenny and I and both of our cameras. We decided we might want to seek higher ground before anyone got injured.

I’m not saying Andy has any pent up aggression over the divorce, but here Andy points to the chunks of wood he’s taken out so far.

After relocating to the boat loading dock, Andy re-set up his tee holding contraption.

POW. Andy lets another one fly.

Here, Kenny interviews Andy before the final shot. Andy explained to us that he had thought about pawning or selling the ring, but felt that it might be cursed and he didn’t want to hurt anyone else with it.

Andy also explained that he didn’t donate it to anyone because he didn’t want any good to come of it either. It had to be destroyed. Andy even used the worst, oldest, nastiest golf ball he could find to attach the ring to.

Unfortunately, all of Andy’s practice shots had also launched all the golf tees out into the lake as well! There’s no tee for the final shot!

Kenny and Andy search for a tee, using the light from Kenny’s camcorder.

Andy, always thinking, decides the ring itself will also work as a tee. The ball with the ring attached is placed on the board, ring down.

This is the last known shot of Andy’s wedding ring. If you would like to see it again, it’s about 200 yards out in the middle of Lake Fort Cobb.

After the impressive drive, Andy is interviewed by Kenny.

“I’ll drink to that!” says Andy.

Andy and I celebrate with Mr. Bud Lite on the Fort Cobb dock.

Andy and his brother-in-law, Kenny.

The rest of the night was filled with tons of festivites. Here, Andy tells me about the one that got away (yeah, right). A few minutes later, some old man wandered by and asked us if we had caught any fish. I told him I had caught a marlin but threw it back. He didn’t believe us.

Here Kenny shows what a wimp he is by not baiting his own hook.

Here, Andy baits both Kenny and my hooks. Hey, I never said I wasn’t a wimp too.

This was pretty much the fishing technique used all night. Leaning the poles up against the railing left both hands available for beer drinking.

Me, self-portrait.

Andy proudly displays the only fish caught that night. Amazingly, he caught it with no bait on his hook.

Woo, that’s a keeper baby.

Close inspection shows that somehow, Andy managed to hook the fish IN THE EYE. Andy threw the one-eyed swimmer back to the lake.

After a couple of hours of fishing, Kenny drove Andy and I (riding on the tailgate) back to the cabin.

On the way back we stopped by the Crow’s Roost. It was closed.

Firefighters are really strong. That’s what I always tell Andy when there are heavy things around to lift, like beer coolers.

Inside the cabin, Andy breaks out two of his favorite snacks. Pepperonis, and marshmellows. Mmmmm!

My eyes were really sticky after this picture.

Kenny thought he would take advantage of two drunks by getting us to play poker with him. $20 buy in, winner takes all. You might want to look closely, because this is the last known shot of Kenny’s money. To see it today, you’ll have to look in MY WALLET! Boo ya!

Andy decides that mashmellows go better with beer than lime. After the game had ended (did I mention I took everyone’s money?) we decided to watch a movie around four in the morning. Andy was snoring during the opening credits and my eyelids were drooping as well, so we called it a night.

Here are a few pictures I took on the drive back home Sunday morning, just to give you an idea of how far out there Fort Cobb really is.

Yeah, it looks like this for about an hour.

Out one window …

…and out the other.

Mission Accomplished.