Calvin's Weblog

Another Alice concert, and another poker tourney win

Wednesday night, Carole and I went to the Alice Cooper concert at the Orpheum. It was one of the best concerts I've been to in a long time - probably since the last Alice concert! That guy never ceases to amaze me... he'll be 59 in 3 months, and he's still got more energy than most guys half his age. And the crazy thing is, he looks and sounds exactly like he did 20 years ago too... he's absolutely ageless.
This show was really cool in that he concentrated almost entirely on his classic songs and, with the exception of Feed my Frankenstein and Poison, stayed far away from the 80's and 90's stuff - which was a relief... but even Frankenstein came off super heavy, and sounded surprisingly modern. For over 90 minutes, Alice belted out everything from Department of Youth, to Steven, to Black Widdow, to Dwight Fry, to Under My Wheels - and of course all the staples like School's Out, Welcome to my Nightmare, Only Women Bleed, and no More Mr. Nice Guy were all there too. I was so pumped up after the show, I can't even explain - I just love seeing legends like Alice so much - who knows how long he'll be doing this, but I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if 10 years from now (nearing age 70) he's still not slowing down.

Last night Carole and I hosted a poker tourney at our place - it was really last minute, and we were only able to muster up 8 people, but it was still a load of fun, and I ended up winning the main event. The games lasted from 8PM until midnight, and as people got knocked out of the main tourney, they started up a 2nd table and a quick 'turbo' tourney side game with mutliple rebuys was going strong in no time. I ended up with an extra $140 in my pocket at the end of the night, and the guy that came in 2nd was up $20. Carole was down $35. (I think the average that people were down was about $30) and the guy that won the side game took $80, but after the $50 he had invested to get that far, he was only up $30 - still better than a kick in the pants! At the end of the night, lots of beer had been consumed and spirits were high, even amongst the unlucky players. I'm hoping we can get another one of these things going really soon - I think I'm starting to catch the poker bug again!