you can do magic, trumpy!

Anne is out of town visiting relatives, and the kids are at their dad's, so this has been 48 hours of pretty much non-stop movies, video games, and bacheloresque goofing off, the likes of which haven't been seen in ages.

Friday night, I started with Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, and logically followed it up with the MST3K version of Pod People.

Yesterday, I met up with my friend Ryan and saw 300 at the Chinese. Man, I'd forgotten what a complete freak show that whole area is on a weekend; I really need to do some sort of audio diary + photo essay + travelogue on the area between Fairfax and Wilcox one day.

300 was one of the greatest comic book adaptations I've ever seen. The only other movie that comes to mind as such a faithful live action version of the book is Sin City. It's flawed, but still a lot of fun, I thought.

After the movie, we met Ryan's wife for dinner at a fantastic Japanese restaurant on Highland and Franklin called Shintaro. Ryan and I ate our respective weights in sushi, and it was awesome. If you're ever in the area, and you are into this sort of thing, their dragon roll and spicy tuna hand rolls were fantastic, but the thing that totally blew my mind was this thing they call the Hamapeno, which is yellowtail sashimi with jalapenos in an oh-my-god sauce. If you've never eaten food in your life that makes you want to hug yourself, this could be a perfect place to start.

After dinner, I took the subway home (yes, I am as shocked as anyone that the subway in Los Angeles got me close enough to my final destination to be the preferred method of travel, rather than a novelty. It also meant that I could enjoy some Nigori sake with dinner. Awesome.) and after apologizing to my dogs for being out all afternoon and much of the evening, played some poker at PokerStars.

I did a few heads up matches, a couple of sit-n-goes, and then the night got interesting when I decided, against all better judgment, to play a huge MTT that started at midnight.

I'll spare you the hand histories, and I'm really too wiped out to recap the whole thing anyway . . . because I was up until 3:30 in the morning, navigating my way through 770 entrants to finish 25th!

Check it out:

PokerStars Tournament #45992475, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $10.00/$1.00
770 players
Total Prize Pool: $7700.00 
Tournament started - 2007/04/01 - 03:01:00 (ET)

Dear Wil Wheaton, 

You finished the tournament in 25th place.
A $38.50 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

The 38.50 is lousy money for over three hours of time investment, and not even half of what I won playing the sit-n-goes, but that's totally not the point. Making it so deep in such a huge field was a much greater reward. In fact, if my QQ had held up against 44 (he rivered a straight against me), I probably could have made the final table, where the real money was.

And now I get to sip some coffee before I clean up the house a little bit and -- oh, who am I kidding? It's all about the couch and the DVD player today.

Comments

[longklaw]

I love those movie/video game weekends. It's amazing just how much stuff you can do in just one weekend.

[Larry Bank]

I can relate to the moment of "escape to bachelor land" when the wife and kids are away. Unfortunately those are the moments when I need to work, but the bad boy in me wants to watch a movie and kick back.

[LinksMonkey Brian]

Hope you met your deadline and enjoyed your downtime. I plan some downtime after Easter when the resume is updated and the clutter is organized - working on the New Years Revolution.

And I'm a traitor to my gender, but you can still clean between DVDs so A/N/R can return to a clean home.

And in true bacheloresque style, it was 48 hours w/no pants? On second thought, I don't need to know.

[Garthmeister J.]

Nice work!

Anyhoo, I just had to jump on here and inform you that I blame you and your last.fm stream for having me discover Ladytron and "Destroy Everything You Touch", which I have listened to roughly 50 times in the last 3 days.

So if you excuse me, I have to just queue something up on my iPod...

[love2all]

There is NOTHING like sushi so good that you feel your life is complete after eating it. In Ohio, you don't get this so much but I visited San Francisco recently and oh... I think I need to move there solely for the sushi. Yes, the sushi in California it's so good, I'd consider moving.

In other news, you MUST MUST see these RPG motivational posters. I spent about an hour laughing.. pardon if you've seen these already http://www.cruisegazing.com/RPG_Motivational/

[Carol]

Thanks for the word on Shintaro, Wil. I've always wondered about strip restaurant with the neon chopsticks. Now I may actually have to go in there and try their veggie rolls.

[SarahLP]

I've been a fan of your blog for quite some time. When I found out you were into poker, I bookmarked it at work, and it's now my daily "guilty-pleasure" reading at work because sometimes you throw out little bits of poker talk, like this one, that I can use as proof that your blog is relevant to my work. (I'm a writer for a poker news/ poker affiliante site) Little do they know, all I really come for is the guaranteed chuckle that I need to break up my day.

Thanks for the laughs.