This week: A longstanding rule is adamantly opposed by an infrequent player. Said player takes his frustration out on my screen door, which then leads up to a storybook happy ending. (But not the massage kind.) Joe orders pizza and makes sure we all know about it. Eddie cracks wise with some classics. And last game’s big winner is this game’s big loser. The cycle of poker-life continuous unabated.
Dig it
(Game Day: September 2, 2024)
“Welcome to Shuffle Fuckers”
NOTE: This is actually an old edition of the Hammadown (from September, 2024) presented way out of order because I didn’t realize I’d never actually posted it. Please do not let your presumed sense of panic spoil your enjoyment.
***
Steve started out right where he left off: winning every pot he was in. Unfortunately for him, this streak only lasted the first two pots. After that, it was rough waters for our new friend who, spoiler alert, left empty-handed before we even played the showdowns.
But before becoming the mayor of Emptywellington, we dubbed Steve a partner in the law firm of Sticksaround & Wins. So, let’s just accept that he’s at break-even, as, most likely, are the rest of us. But who’s counting?
Elvis’s “Suspicious Minds” is playing. Get’s to the line “caught in a trap,” and Eddie sings “caught in my crack.” I laugh hysterically because I’m an immature simpleton.
Hank was able to rack in a few big pots prompting a new slogan at the table…
“It’s not fun unless you’re Hank.”
As the title of this Hammadown suggests, somebody came up with the name Shuffle Fuckers which we couldn’t decide should be the name of late night poker-based prank show or a nationwide poker-based burger chain.
Either way, it’s fun to say… “Shuffle Fuckers.”
See what I mean?
Joe called to order a pizza. I gave everyone a choice: top-shelf thin crust brick oven style, or the standard style pizza you still find for 99 cents a slice at some shithole next to a low-performing public middle school. The vote was for the shithole pizza. Then Joe proceeds to do the whole damn ordering process on speaker phone like this was something the rest of us needed to hear. We didn’t.
He made up for it in the end though by telling the person on the other end to deliver to apartment 1-P, like in “pizza.” Any other P-word would simply have been wrong.
Angelo joined us for the first time in far more than a minute, and it showed when he went both in a hand not realizing the long-standing rule that you have to win both hands outright. That means if you tie on either hand, you lose both. Angelo objected way too much for way too long, particularly considering we all agreed to give him a pretty good chunk of his money back out of the pot since he was clearly mistaken and probably wouldn’t have bet the way he did if he knew the rule, which we all assume he will now never forget. (And yes, I realize that was a very long sentence, probably even a run-on, not unlike this one, which is also longer than it needs to be, but maybe you’re just being judgmental, so there.)
As if that wasn’t enough of a scene, our old friend followed it up by walking through my screen door that leads to the terrace. He almost tore the screen clean off of the thing and even bent the frame a little. It’s happened before but never quite that bad, so I was not particularly happy even though Angelo praised he was “very handy” and would be happy to try to fix it. Go for it, Chip Gaines! (HGTV reference probably lost on 90% of the people reading this.) Long story short, Mr. Fix-it actually figured out the problem. It was a fairly complicated tw0-man operation, so he and I handled it together and even hugged afterwards.
Then Eddie cried.
Then Cockman cried.
Then Hank farted.
It happens.
Anywho, the screen door actually now works better than it did before Angelo attacked it. So, props for that epic recovery.
Somebody dealt a game of Biddy Badda Bau. It had been a while for Angelo, so he asked for an explanation and Eddie was quick with perhaps the EBPG’s mist classic joke structure…
“What part of Biddy Badda Bau don’t you understand?”
This exchange happened out of nowhere…
Joe: “I like my Farina lumpy.”
Eddie: “My Farina’s lumpy right now.”
Cue laughter.
The aforementioned Steve, fresh off his last table appearance representing the law firm of Sticksaround & Wins, reversed his stay-and-sweep strategy pulling off a high-profile lose-and-leave maneuver. An epic Irish exit.
I actually had to text him the next day to make sure he wasn’t pissed at us or something. He wasn’t.
Another out-of-nowhere joke that landed smoother than Sully on the Hudson…
Worst thing for a game show host to hear on his first day in prison: “You can either have this ice pick in your neck or what’s behind my zipper.”
This prompted Eddie to dutifully recite anoter classic prison joke…
Guy ends up with a huge, frightening cellmate.
Cellmate: “You want to be the husband or the wife?”
Guy: “I guess I’ll be the husband.”
Cellmate: “Great. Now come over here and suck your wife’s dick.”
And that prompted Eddie to recite another classic…
Roommate #1: “Why do I have to do all the cookin’?”
Roommate #2: “You wanna do all the suckin’?”
Roommate #1: “Which way to the kitchen?”
And the sub-sophomoric crudeness didn’t stop there…
Angelo: “Do you have a Tums?”
JR: “Yes. But I keep it inside my dick. How bad does your tummy feel?”
Hank deals the final hand, a game of carousel. (If ya don’t know, don’t ask.) Suffice to say, Eddie won it with very heavy betting on his three 5’s, which beat Hank’s Aces and sixes after chasing out both Angelo and JR who each had low flushes that would have won.
Ugh.
***
THE SHOWDOWNS
(Small: 5 cards, all up. Big: 7 cards, all up)
SMALL: Hank with 3 tens, more uncommonly known as trip-ten-ite.
BIG: Hank again (making up for his loss in the final hand), this time with trip-7’s. The guy loves three of the same things at once.
After cashing everybody out, we somehow ended up $60 short, but it was a long night, so everyone just gave up 10 bucks and headed home.
Angelo helped get the table back in its hiding place in the basement, so kudos to him for that as well as fixing that troublesome screen door.
Until next time, y’all.
Peace!
