This week: A double edition of the Hammadown! Robin brings fancy-adjacent wines. We pretty actively don’t give a shit about the Super Bowl. Joe has a big night, begging the question, “Who are you and what have you done with Joe?” Cockman is offered a deal on cookies that he simply can’t pass up. Oh, and we play some poker. Almost forgot.
Dig it.
(Game Days: February 9 & April 7, 2025)
“TWO FOR THE PRICE OF NONE”
***
February 9
The February game was on Super Bowl Sunday. We didn’t know yet that the Eagles would give the Chiefs the whipping we were all hoping for, but we were all smiles anyway. Take that, Tay Tay. Hard to believe you’re shitty life got even shittier.
Robin was among the first to show up and she did so pulling what is commonly known in house party parlance as “a Billy Joel.” She brought a bottle of red and a bottle white.
We started with the white.
JR: Is this Sancerre?
Robin: No, but it’s from the next town over.
JR: That was the sales pitch? (Sips) Tastes a little like the next county over.
We didn’t let that stop us…
Not a single pinky raised. Have we no class?
As for the red, it was French… Guyanese, I believe.
The super high-end Happy Birthday banner was there for my son’s birthday (Jan. 4) and left up for my wife’s birthday (Jan. 23) and remained in place through my daughter’s birthday (Feb 17). And that, my friend, is how you save enough money to buy fancy wines “from the next town over.”
First ace goes to JR, and the fun begins.
We talked a lot about the recent, wild successes of Joe’s kid. Or more specifically, Joe talked a lot about the wild successes of Joe’s kid. It’s an undeniable fact, though. Brennan Lee Mulligan, who is best described as a young, red-headed Joe without a guitar, is knocking life out of the park. Read all about it!… somewhere else.
Joe—Sorry…”Brennan’s dad”—pointed out that nearly an hour had gone by without a note of music.
Unheard of!
Literally.
So, I hit everyone with a rockier-than-usual playlist including Makes No Difference by Pat Travers, Stranglehold by Ted Nugent, and Space Station #5 by Montrose. If you listen to just one, listen to Montrose for a truly “spacey” intro followed by what I promise is the rockiest guitar riff you’ve never heard before.
After a bit of that, we moved on to music that was slightly less focused on my years as an almost perpetually stoned middle school troublemaker.
***
Pot ‘o Tha Night
Game of criss cross. Cockman, who was battling a severe case of the “shoulda-wons,” started openly begging to the poker gods…
“I wanna win one. Please let me win one.”
And the poker gods must be crazy and/or Jewish, because they answered our friend by building a huge pot and than having four players go high leaving Cockman all alone in the low catbird seat. Heavy betting continued, since Hank thought he had it won with 8’s full of 9’s, but Robin delivered the bad news with her 8’s full of 10’s.
Ouch!… except for Cockman and Robin. So, I guess what I’m saying is, ouch for Hank.
***
FEB 9 SHOWDOWNS
(Small: 5 cards, all up. Big: 7 cards, all up)
SMALL: Joe wins with whatever shit hand he won with.
BIG: Brennan’s dad for the sweep! And in very dramatic fashion, with no less than five lead changes in a seven card game. The stinger was that I was in the lead until Brennan Senior defied the odds and pulled the winning hand with the last card.
Jewish poker gods be damned!
We stopped the game early to watch Super Bowl XXZDFB&U, or whichever fucking one this was, but since most of those in attendance either hate football, hate the Eagles, hate the Chiefs, or all three, so they split by halftime. But Cockman’s brother, Jacob, and cousin, Matt, stayed for the whole game and then helped me bring the table to it’s subterranean resting place. Kudos to both.
***
April 7
Two months minus two days to the day later, we reconvened around the felt. We had another fairly early start, this time not because of the Super Bowl, but simply because these days we all turn into drooling grandfathers at midnight.
In attendance were myself, Eddie, Hank, Matt, and Jacob. Cockman popped in 10 minutes late but with a dozen cookies. No, make that an even 14. Apparently, after he ordered a dozen, the woman serving him at Insomnia Cookies right down the street asked if he wanted 2 more, because…
Woman: If you buy 12, you get 2 for free.
Cockman: Does anyone turn that down?
Woman: No.
Joe continued his roll from the last game, going both (high and low) and winning both hands!
That made Matt sad.
And he wasn’t done. Soon after that, Hammerin’ Joe Mulligan gave me a whippin’ combined with a beat down by flashing his four 7’s right up in the face of my Jacks boat full of Kings.
“We got all dressed up for this?”
Eddie said he played in a gay poker room once where two queens beat a straight.
We all wondered whether or not we should laugh at that, but then decided “fuck it, it’s funny,” and we laughed.
Not to be out-sweeted by his cousin, Matt brought a box of what he freely and immediately admitted were day-old donuts from his daughter’s first birthday party. (His daughter is 23-years-old. This was just her first party. Sad.) Actually, she’s a spry little 1 year old, but according to proud papa Matt she’s already doing algebra, makes a mean seafood jambalya, and speaks very very fluent spanish. “Todo está bien chévere.”*
* From Stevie Wonder’s Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing. Translation, “Everything is really cool.”
P.S. – The donuts were awful.
P.S.S. – We ate all of them.
We smoked the weed that killed Punxsutawney Phil. But fuck him for predicting three more weeks of winter.
I can’t remember how it started (thanks, weed!) but we all had some input on what became a game called “Victorian Poker Tells” – things people did or said in Victorian times that unintentionally indicated they had a good poker hand.
Fanning your face with a lacy kerchief while stating, “be still my fluttering heart.”
Defensively saying, “Me?! A good hand?! Why, ballderdash!”
Looking at your cards and then immediately swooning onto a fainting couch.
I asked if anyone was hungry, but nobody responded. So, I said I was going to get a slice and I’d be right back. I had one foot out the door when Cockman said, “I’ll take a slice.”
“Fine.”
Now I had one-and-a-half feet out the door, when Eddie said, “I’ll take a slice too.”
“Fine.”
Then Hank chimed in. “I’ll take a coke.”
“Oh, will you now?”
Joe: “Can I get a coke Zero?”
Anyway, that’s how I got my new unpaid internship at Uber Eats.
APRIL 7 SHOWDOWNS
(Small: 5 cards, all up. Big: 7 cards, all up)
SMALL: Joe wins, making it his third showdown in a row if you count the last game, which we do.
BIG: Suffice to say, the winner was “Not Joe.”
***
The next game is… last night!
And it was a doozy. Read all about it in a few days.
Until next time, y’all.
Peace!
