Manamana...

For New Year's, we were invited to a friend's house party. I find this preferable to spending it in a bar, or paying insane amounts of money for "ambience" at some overpriced restaurant atop a skyscraper. I also find the people who go to Times Square or into Boston for First Night to be absolutely insane, as I am averse to frostbite and the outdoors in general, so a house party sounded pretty damned good.

We dropped the kids at my father in law's house and were on our way. The poor fool and his girlfriend actually offered to watch them for the night. We kissed them goodbye, told them to "be good", and chuckled maniacally as we sped away, knowing that he was in for a reaaaaaal treat spending a night with our little demons. We so rarely get away from them that we really couldn't be bothered to care about the father in law's suffering, and I'm fairly confident that this will not only be the first time that he offered up New Year's Eve childcare, but also the last.

Entertainment abounded; a rousing game of Scene It in the living room, Beer Pong in another, along with one of those hoop-shooting basketball things you find in an arcade. There was even a trapeze bar bolted to one of the ceiling rafters. Since I didn't feel like screaming at a TV with a bunch of chicks I didn't know very well, suck at basketball, don't drink beer and don't feel comfortable hanging upside down, poker and obscene amounts of liquor were my entertainment for the evening.

Poker turned out to be a good choice. We played 5 rounds, starting out with anywhere from 8-16 players, $10 buy-ins, and I won and/or made it to the final hand three times. As I heard 200 pounds of drunken man crash to the floor from the trapeze in the other room, it proved to be an even better choice. I generally suck at poker, but the more I drank, the better I seemed to get.

This is when I attempted to get all artsy and
take a photo from the vantage point of a poker chip.

Our host had his iPod hooked up to the stereo, set to shuffle. His music taste runs the gamut from "normal" to "alternative" to "uh, ok..." to "what the fuck is THIS???", so our soundtrack for the evening was varied to say the least. During the third round, we were all completely fucked-in-half drunk to the point where it was tough to read our own cards, when a particularly odd song came on the stereo.

It was a familiar beat...so familiar that we all looked at each other sideways...some of us knew it right away, others took a moment to catch on, but when the chorus started, we all instinctively sang along:

"Mana mana..."

"Doo doo doo doo dooooo..."

K: "Check."

"Mana mana..."

H: "Raise 10."

"Doo doo doo dooooo..."

Other guy: "In."
Guy #2: "Fuck, I just love Animal. Classic."

"Mana mana..."

Other girl: "Fold."

"Doo doo doo doo doo, doodoodoo, doodoodoo, doodoodoo doo doo doo dooooo..."

[river card...husband has 2 pair]

Guy #2: "Motherfucker!"

"Mana mana..."



[click the image to watch Animal in all his glory]

This went on for the full 2 minutes and 29 seconds of the song. It would never have been funny if we'd been sober.

The drunker we got, the freer the jokes got. My brother in law was probably the worst offender. At one point, he noticed that he'd gotten a substantial amount of black chips.

B: "This is gonna be the affirmative action hand." [pushes in all black chips]
K: [slurring] "Hey, I got lotsa blacks too..." [pushes in all her black chips]


As you can see from this vantage point, I was the dealer, and with the King and Queen I had in my hand, I had dealt myself a full house. I relieved brother in law of all of his black chips shortly thereafter. [notice that hands in the background with the stack of white chips. I offered him a white hood and a torch, but he declined]

B: "S'ok, I didn't want 'em ANYWAY."
K: "Fuckin' racist."

The colored chip slurs kept up into the next hand.

K: "I see you have lots of red chips over there..."
B: "I fuckin' hate Indians. Take 'em." [shoves all red chips in]
K: "I see your Indians, and I raise you 10 honkies." [pushes in 10 white chips]
B: "This set doesn't have any yellow chips. That's bullshit."
K: "Asians can't play poker for shit anyway." [note: brother in law is Asian]

I ended up winning that game, and chortled as I raked in my chips.

K: "Equal opportunity up in this hiz-zay, bitches!"

We stayed up until 4am playing, and ended up collapsing on a floor for 3 hours of sleep before having to face the children. The father in law was practically shoving them out the door. As I predicted, he has shown no interest in seeing any of them since.

It was a fairly tame night with a few laughs, not nearly as colorful as my usual drinking experiences, but a good time overall. Actually, it may have been more entertaining, but I can't remember half of what happened, so I am unable to report.

Next time, I'll try to get some pictures of tits or something to liven it up, but for now, here you have it. At least I finally got it done, right?