had a quasi sick day / working from home day today. This is sorta what the day has looked like.

Dawn Summers has posted her last hilarious report of trip so here’s my final synopsis.

Melbourne - yay! Civilization!

Lots of walking - Mad secretly torturing DS

Crown Casino - Pauly and Change100, lots of pros: Phil Laak - cute, Shannon Elizabeth - who cares?

Hotel keys - slippery in DS’s fingers

Mad’s birthday: Australian Open - Tsongas - lots of cute tennis guys (and of course I don’t mean those little boys behind us) - need I say more?

City Circle Tram - DS lifesaver

Poker - winning lots. Yay!

Restaurants - no ice for DS. More “bacon” for Mad

Touristy stuff: Melbourne Museum - fun and sad, Old Melbourne Gaol - no go

Poker - Mad - (not in DS’s post since she was playing Scrabble) I did pretty good that night, up $725. As I proudly took my $1K + to the cashier I noticed a guy in front of me cashing out racks and racks of black chips for over $50K. I felt really small when I saw all those racks. After cashing out, the guy turned around and I saw it was David Grey. Okay, back to the regularly scheduled synopsis.

Scrabble - DS - Kiwi Chris inducing giggles

Touristy stuff: Old Melbourne Gaol, The State Library

Poker - what else were you expecting?

St. Kilda’s Beach - rain rain go away. Restaurant - ice? service? escargot? Last bacon for Mad.

Touristy stuff: National Gallery of Victoria, Queen Victoria Market - who closes their market at 4 on a Saturday? , Chinatown

Poker - broken record now?

Last full day in Melbourne: DS - Scrabble tournament. Mad - stepping outside DS’s post again…I wandered around the city for the day, visited the Fitzroy and Collingwood neighborhoods and Melbourne’s 423 Smith Street (a shoe outlet). Took lots of photos of graffiti and visited Nick at the Lightning Ridge Opal Mines.

Poker* - um, problem with that?

Aussie Millions After Party with Pauly and Change100. Met Jeciimd as well.

Back to the synopsis…

Cab to airport - DS fascinated by roll down windows. Will slowly introduce her to lp records and rotary phones.

Melbourne to LAX to NYC - hot to warm to cold. Freezing to be exact.

Back home in time for work the next day.

* Number of times I got mistaken for Annie Duke - 2 1/2. Howard Lederer did a double-take when passing by my table, a drunken guy at the Aussie Millions After Party insisted on taking a photo with me, and even Ms. Duke gave me a bit of a look when I passed by her on the jet. Too funny!

Check out the indepth comparison over at KFR.

Another synopsis of Dawn Summer’s hilarious posts about our trip:

Breakfast - DS - insane price, ate a bite of everything on the menu. Mad - my first serving of Australian bacon. My breakfast view:

On to Mansfield. You call this a resort? View from our cabin’s back porch:

Restaurants - order at cashiers, drinks from the bar, food served at table. Flies.

Second Australian bacon serving - lamb noisettes wrapped in bacon:

Internet access? Bugger off…

Bus Stop Cafe - DS ice cream lick, Mad look of horror. My third serving of Australian bacon:

Mt. Buller Beerfest - little beer, little elves and not so little arm wrestling.

Grocery Shopping - why the name change? Burger King = Hungry Jacks. Isn’t Hungry Jacks a pancake mix here?

Birds - SQUAWK!

Wine - good! Ian - nice!

Ceilidgh the Wine dog - cute to Mad, scary to DS

Mansfield Zoo - kangaroos and wallabies too!

Mansfield Country Resort - all the amenities you expect from a resort. Swimming pool, mini golf…

Bingo - no way!

Cemetery visit - beware of zombies!

Bus to Melbourne - yay!

Goodbye Mansfield

I cooked the second package of bacon from the Bacon of the Month Club this weekend at Alceste’s Superbowl gathering. Unfortunately there was no poker but there was Rockband - I played groupie.

January’s selection was hickory smoked bacon from Jim Oliver’s Smokehouse:

This meaty, salty country bacon was a good companion with some of the sweets:

Cooking and cooked:

Cooking it up in Alceste’s kitchen:

Thanks Al!

by way of veronica

So Mary, who is up on these things, just sent me a link to the flickr Sleeveface pool of images. Pretty nifty. Anyway, i am certainly going to search through our albums tonight and see what we can come up with.

Just a few examples:

See the full gallery here.

Sent in from David by way of Sarah.

I interrupt the irregularly scheduled Aussie Millions cliff notes of Dawn Summers to bring you this PSA.

Most male poker players in Australia are hot. Looking around the room at the Star City Casino in Sydney I realized I was not surrounded by the overweight, smelly, obnoxious slobs I sometimes encounter in AC. These guys were fit and hot. Even the drinks were served by good looking men. And all that eye candy had accents to boot.

At the Crown Casino in Melbourne it was more of a mixed bag probably due to the Aussie Millions draw - but still lots of cute guys. In fact, a cute guy sat down next to me at a $2/$3 table - I looked at him from the corner of my eye and ohmigod it was Paul Wasicka. Slumming at my table!

He was really nice and I wanted to tell him that I’m a big fan but thought it was inappropriate at the table. I did, however, tell him while waiting for luggage at LAX. He blushed.

So, with the addition of Paul Wasicka, I have a “five” list similar to Dr. Pauly - no, I have not peed next to these pros, but here’s the five pros that I’ve played live poker with:

1. Paul Wasicka
2. Michael Mizrachi
3. Evelyn Ng
4. Phil Hellmuth
5. Antonio Esfandiari

Thanks Full Tilt!

I figure there is no need to rehash everything about this trip when Dawn Summers is doing a fantastic job. So for the rest of my AM trip reports I will be providing the Dawn cliff notes (apologies to Bayne for appropriating his creativity).

_______________

Flights - sleepytime for DS, hell for Mad. Stinky for both.

Sydney :

Luna Park - screaming

Harbor - pretty

Breakfast - spilled coffee

Loose animals terrify DS

The Rocks - has rocks but not as many rocks as DS expected.

Not The Rocks but some rocks in Sydney Harbor

Poker

________________

Dawn forgot to mention - while we were waiting to reboard the plane in Auckland, there was a grey-haired, balding bearded guy with a little girl playing with her barbie carryon. I told Dawn that it was David Sklansky with his latest girlfriend/protege. Here’s the proof:

Looking back at the photo I realize it can’t be his latest protege, she doesn’t look anything like a stripper.

I promised AlCantHang that I would provide bacon photos from the trip. Here’s my first full brekkie that I enjoyed at the Blackbird Cafe in the Cockle Bay Wharf.

Dawn Summers and I spent my birthday (thanks Dawn!) at the Australian Open. The first match we saw that day was between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (FRA) and Sam Warburg (USA). Tsonga won that day - it was a mediocre match and I didn’t notice anything extraordinary about Tsonga except for his powerful first serve. However, he then stormed his way to the finals, taking out #2 seed Rafael Nadal (ESP) in the semi finals.

It seems like my internal clock hasn’t adjusted yet to being back in NY so I was up to watch the men’s final at 3:30am (EST). It was a good match with crowd-favorite Tsonga taking the first set. Djokovic (SRB) took the next two sets and then won the match in a tiebreaker in the fourth set. Congratulations to Djokovic for his first Grand Slam title.

Now if only my sleep schedule could get back on track.

December
I was in Maryland for the holidays when I got the email from AlCantHang about the available seats on the Full Tilt jet to Australia. I immediately wrote to him - “hell yeah, I want to go” or something like that. I sent an email to Miami Don telling him “let’s go crazy and run off to Australia.” We had been chatting sporadically since the Winter Gathering and I thought it might be fun to run away with an almost complete stranger. He said he already had beach plans with the Asshat Frat Crew - Buddy Dank, ScottMc, Hoy and cracknaces. I asked him to take lots of photos - you’ve seen this one, but boy oh boy, you should see the rest!

I didn’t hear back from Al so I figured the seats were already taken.

January
In the middle of the week before the flight to Australia Al asked me if I still wanted to go. I had pretty much pushed the thought of going out of my mind, instead thinking of a February trip to Vegas. I mentioned the offer to Tammy and she insisted I had to go. Thus started a frenzy of activity - booking a flight to LA, hotel accommodations in Sydney, info on things to do, places to see, digging warm weather clothes out of boxes. I rushed home knowing that my passport expired in 08 and thinking it may be January. Luckily it expires JUN 08 and not JAN 08. All was good. Until I realized the Al and Riggstad weren’t going, that Dawn Summers and I were taking their seats. Damn! I was so looking forward to drinking with Al down under.

Up next - NY to LA, LA to Auckland, Auckland to Melbourne, Melbourne to Sydney. In other words, hell at 35,000 ft.

No time to write up anything about my Australia trip - but check out these two blogs for more details (besides, anything Dawn Summers writes will be a million (an Aussie Million to be exact) times better than what I’ll eventually write):

Clareified
I Had Outs

I have put my photos up on flickr so you can look at them for now.

Damn it is so cold in Brooklyn!

I’m dreaming of the warm, sunny weather left behind in Australia…

Thanks again to Al and Full Tilt Poker for making this trip possible. More to follow…and yes, there are bacon photos!

Frauke is going on a tour, and then coming back home to see all your smiling faces. The band is excited to play the Mercury Lounge for the first time and would be pleased as punch if you joined them. Plus, they are playing with the Jones Street Boys (9pm) which is always an extra special treat.

Frauke @ The Mercury Lounge
217 E. Houston St. (corner of Ave. A & Houston)
8pm
$8

http://www.mercuryloungenyc.com/
http://www.fraukehatesyou.com/
http://www.thejonesstreetboys.com/