A little something different today. Before we dive in, I will have some more 'NHL Blocks' picks up once the playoffs start. It's been pretty slow for me betting wise lately. I've been using Draft Kings almost exclusively, really betting only when I have some sort of bonus or free bet. I sort of ran out of steam with Blocks, to be honest. It's a weird market where I price something like 50 guys each time I look at it but only end up with a handful of bets. They're profitable but I don't love the hourly rate on it. {By the way, if anyone wants this model I'd let it go for less than a grand. I like building models more than betting these days so if anyone wants some ready made models, hit me up on X @poogsBLOG} All my NHL models ended up like that. Lots of data, lots of ice time to look at (5 on 5, PP, penalty kill). I don't love capping props at the ends of seasons either. Too many weird incentives with coaches benching guys and some teams not really trying. (When I was doing this full time though it was the opposite. Ends of seasons would often give me decent edges, similar to pre-season. The difference is that I was super plugged into the leagues and the news. I just don't really have the time nor the will for that anymore but if you're an aspiring sharp, the very starts and very ends of seasons should be a busy time for you). I always tend to do better with props in the playoffs for all sports, so be on the lookout once they start. I sprayed big time on the Masters, somewhat regrettably. It was a great tournament to watch and DK made sure to pump out all kinds of live hole bonuses on which I ran pretty bad. At least I know I'll have this account for the upcoming NFL season though which is good.
Today's post is going to be somewhat two-fold; part trip report, part post about currency.
I mentioned it very briefly on here before, but I went to Mardi-Gras during the year I was in Las Vegas, which was early 2011. I know it's quite a long time ago and the details might be fuzzy but surprisingly, I feel like I do remember a lot about that trip. Some of it was so surreal and different from anything I was remotely used to, so a lot of it was seared into my mind.
I departed Las Vegas by myself and met my best friend there at the time (the same kid who lived in Detroit and whose place we stopped at for a couple days on our trip out to Las Vegas). He was with a friend from grad school and we stayed at his friends house which was right in the middle of everything. So it was mostly three of us, me, Joe and Zack. Joe and I had been friends for decades and Zack fit in immediately.
The main thing of Mardi Gras is the parades. All kinds of people, mostly women, would be on these huge floats and they'd toss out beads to the people in the crowd. This is where the beads mostly come from (kind of like the mining rewards for bitcoin). You could bring your own beads but if I remember correctly, that was sort of looked down on. You were expected to EARN your beads. Work for 'em.
Since it was so long ago, I can't really go through each night and what happened and where we went, so I'll go through the highlights, the overall theme and feelings I had and tie it into the currency thing. You'll see.
-The general vibe of Mardi Gras was dirty, cramped, alcohol soaked fun. It was nasty and real but there wasn't a feeling of violence or trouble in the air that you sometimes get at big events. It really was just one gigantic, sexed up outdoor party. Tons of outdoor music. All of a sudden out of nowhere a full marching band would just appear and do its thing down the street, which was pretty cool. You could walk right out of a bar with a drink in your hands down there too which added to the outdoor party feel.
-I had my first encounter with 'shot girls' on this trip. A big thing at Mardi Gras is these bright neon shots in test tubes. All the bars had them, you could get flights of them and you'd see people walking around all over the place with them. I was walking through a bar and suddenly feel a test tube going INTO the front of my pants. Next thing I know, these two girls were on top of me, feeding me test tube shots before I even knew what was going on. It's naive, I know, but I had no idea these girls were working. I'm doing shots, they're doing shots, they're being poured into my mouth, I don't even know where they were coming from. I think I'm flirting with these girls! It all happened so fast and as I sort of go to walk away, they start grabbing me and are like 'you owe us $100!' (I have no idea what the amount was but something like that.) I'm genuinely perplexed for a second before it hits me; 'oh they work for the bar. They're working lol'. I honestly had no idea. We start arguing a little bit, my friends emerge and a little bit of a crowd starts to gather. This is not good. I remember they held my hat hostage for a minute. I cut my losses and gave them some cash, I don't remember exactly what happened but they kept wanting more and more. I think I refused to pay for the drinks they had. I don't remember the details exactly but I remember walking away feeling like I got hustled bad and that it could have been a lot worse. They must have made a killing doing that. The shots probably didn't even have any alcohol in them. It was a good lesson for a young, somewhat still naive kid.
-One clear memory I have was standing in a crowd and suddenly a STUNNING women emerges from above on a balcony, all by herself. She starts doing this little dance/strip tease thing and people start going wild, yelling for her to take off her top. So she takes off her top, and then her bra. Everyone down below is firing beads at her and practically frothing at the mouth. This woman was beautiful. She turns around and starts taking off her pants! Just as she's about to get fully naked on this balcony, the balcony door opens, a mans arm comes out of it and yanks her back inside to the chorus of many disappointed boos.
-One day we were out and about and we decided we wanted to check out the city while the sun was actually out. We were walking around, in and out of different places, and the biggest thing I remember from it was how unbearably slow everything was down there. And I do mean everything. The service, the way people talked, the way they moved. I feel like even the dogs moved slow. It was like watching a video on .75 speed. I'm from Boston and everyone says we're all sped up here so the contrast was shocking. And I've been all over, I know most places are slow compared to the Northeast but this was on a different level. It's funny at first but eventually it gets old. It's one of the main reasons I don't think I'll ever live outside of the Northeast.
One of their big specialties down there was alligator so I decided to try an alligator sub. I'm not kidding when I tell you that it took an hour and a half to get this sub. And certainly it was busy but not THAT busy. And the sub was god-awful. It was super chewy and tasted like fried rubber. I didn't even finish it. That same day, it rained hard for a couple hours and the whole entire block was completely flooded. This was only a few years removed from Hurricane Katrina and I could not believe how unprepared they were for a couple inches of rain.
-The main thing that I remembered though, the single biggest takeaway I had from this trip, was the complete and utter transformation of peoples relation to beads. Now keep in mind, we're talking about cheap, plastic beads that you could probably buy a thousand of for fifty bucks. For these few days on these specific couple streets, these things may as well been gold. I'm not even exaggerating. When they would get thrown from parades, people would POUNCE on them. Think of a home run ball going into a crowded bleacher section. I can still remember grabbing a string of them at the same time as someone else and the string breaking and them flying all over the place. Men would fight tooth and nail for them in hopes of exchanging them for a quick look at some random boobs later on.
But if you thought the men went feral for beads, wait till you hear about the women. The beads became a sort of barometer for how hot the women were. You'd see really good looking women in skimpy clothes almost literally drowning in beads by the end of the night. And they loved it. It was some weird form of peacocking for them. Another image I have burned into my mind is walking down the street really late at night and seeing this really short, downright stunning woman walking towards us, all by herself. She was tiny, absolutely gorgeous, and covered in beads. I mean she could barely walk. She was more bead than woman. And I'll never forget the look of confidence and satisfaction on her face and the STRUT with which she walked, and deservedly so! People got out her way. This little 5 foot nothing woman, all alone just peacocking down Bourbon street, drowning in beads like some sort of God. There was smoke all around her and a chorus of cherubs playing trumpets in her wake (not really but you get the point). It may be the single defining image of that trip for me.
-Another interesting thing was where the 'line' sort of officially got drawn by the police. There were obviously cops all over the place but they mostly just hung back and watched. Sometimes the girls would get a little crazy and try to flip the script by offering beads to guys to whip out their dicks. A group of them asked Zack, and right as he started unzipping his fly, a cop came out of NOWHERE and grabbed him and told him he'd get arrested if he did. So the rules were clear; naked women were fine, if not heavily encouraged. Naked men; absolutely not. Everyone seemed to be just fine with this arrangement.
But the beads turning into real currency thing always fascinated me. You'd get these hilarious interactions where a woman would flash you out of nowhere, expecting beads. Usually you'd comply but not always. You'd be surprised at how many women have boobs that you don't want to see. It really was an interesting case study in supply and demand. The beads were in such demand, to the point where it outweighed even the demand for boobs in some instances! I'm telling you, for a 48 hour window on a couple blocks, the beads were priceless. You'd get women asking for beads for free and you'd have this sort of jokey, weird negotiation. "One boob, really quick!" I know it sounds gross now but it was like being on a different planet. Everyone knew the score, especially the women. No one was hurt or exploited. It was like a weird, bizarro little economy of boobs and beads. Everyone would be looking for them on the ground like they were gold bars. You had to manage your supply very carefully, too. You might be tempted to give em all out early but then you'll regret it later. Conversely, if you held on to them too long, you completely miss out and you're left with worthless pieces of plastic at the end of the night. It was hilarious at the end of the trip when we still had a bunch of them leftover and realized obviously we had to throw them out. It's funny when that switch gets flipped and you snap out of it, like 'oh yea, these are shitty little nothing pieces of plastic on a string. Last night I was ripping these out of someone else's hand and this morning I'm calmly placing them in the trash'.
I think it shows how currency, really, at the end of the day, is not real. It's not really a thing, it's a substitute for something else. It's a way for a need to be met. It also showed me the real meaning of subjective value. An object can be almost worthless one day, very valuable the next day, and back to worthless a day later. And different things are worth different amounts to different people. I don't know, I'm not explaining it great but you get it.
Besides the bead thing, the main thing I would say about Mardi Gras is that it was a blast and absolutely worth doing once for a young single guy or girl, but exactly once. I would never go back again. I distinctly remember the flight home, tired and hungover with a layover in Houston. On the flight from Houston to Boston, I was sat next to the single fattest woman I have ever seen on a plane in my life. I was in the window seat with the middle seat next to me empty. The plane seemed to be full so I was really happy thinking I had lucked out with a nice spacious peaceful flight home. And the very last person to get on was a woman so fat that she was being pushed in one of those fatso scooter things. The second I saw her I knew I was fucked. She wedged herself into the seat, put her gigantic bag of Swedish Fish into the pocket in front of her, and I was smushed against her and the plane for the next 4 hours. It was literally like a comedy movie. You could barely see me. I remember having the thought that if the plane went down I would be okay with it, lol. I was spent.
That's about it for today. Not my best post, I know, but they can't all be home runs. I will definitely have some sports betting stuff up soon, some picks at some point, another book review, some stocks and bitcoin stuff, and a big post about aliens. I have a few things swirling around in the noggin.
Bye for now, thanks for reading!
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