Boston has canceled its St. Patrick’s Day parade. Think about that. A limitless array of Sullys and Murphs and Sullys and Murphs and Sullys and Sullys and Sullys, and they canceled the parade anyway.
Prudent? Sure. Necessary? Hopefully not. A shocking development that seems to fly in the face of civic character? Well now. That’s not for me to say, and crises force us all into strange positions. Unless, by the good fortune of birth or the excellent decision-making of adulthood, you live here.
Amid the empty toilet paper shelves and general free-floating dread come the Las Vegas-iest of chortles in the face of high-fever Armageddon.
Poker pros are happy to anoint themselves experts in any number of subjects — as anyone who’s spent time sitting around a poker table will tell you — but unlike most know-it-alls, they’ll at least put their dough where their dough-hole is.
Doug Polk, a recently retired poker pro who runs a popular YouTube channel, as early as Feb. 27 announced he was looking for action at 20-1 that all events at this year’s World Series of Poker would be canceled.
Gambler Mike McDonald came back the same day, undercutting Polk at 12-1 against, on any live event happening in the World Series of Poker in 2020. That is, he’d bet $1,000 to win your $12,000 if Caesars Entertainment shut the whole thing down. Pro Dan O’Brien quickly offered action at the same price. (In early March, WSOP spokesman Seth Palansky said the event has no intention of canceling the May 26-July 15 extravaganza. Though by May 26, first prize might be a hazmat suit and a gas mask.)
Those prop bets were the buzz for a solid week, until player Matt Glantz one-upped everyone with an offer to deliberately contract the virus for $250,000.When one follower asked the perfectly reasonable question why anyone would pay that much money for that specific prop, Glantz countered, “In the interest of science. Maybe they want me dead. Prove me wrong. Etc. Who knows? I don't judge.” Save the common sense and basic ethics for the squares who don’t have cabbage on the line.
Gambling is just one sin, though, and we have so many more to choose from. On the lust side of the ledger, Little Darlings found something even more enticing than naked ladies: free hand sanitizer. The Las Vegas strip club is offering a free bottle of hand sanitizer to paying customers while supplies last. Which means the women will end their shifts in remarkably sanitary fashion, unless they’re required to keep a socially distant six feet away during all lap dances.
And you know what? There’s something that should make your heart sing at that. It’s the purest expression of Las Vegas you could possibly muster. Why whistle past the graveyard when you can lay -110 that the death date on the first headstone you stroll past ends odd?
Scared? Hah! Name us another city whose signature song name-checks nerves of steel. How many of you have sat tight at your video poker station while casino alarms blared because that dirty so-and-so dealt you four to a royal twice in the last half hour and it was so due you could taste it?
You can take sensible precautions, or you can stash enough bottled water to float a Fiji executive’s yacht, but you can’t stop the action. That doesn’t stop for me, it doesn’t stop for you, and it doesn’t stop for SARS-CoV-2. If we all have to circle our hospital beds to form a makeshift craps pit, we’ll by-God do it.
When the end times come, if this city is still sitting above the sands and the zombies come lumbering down from Mt. Charleston, you can rest assured that two sickos will be holed up at an eastside bar as a be-thonged stripper shakes it in the corner, taking action on who’s the last to turn after they all get bit. And if you don’t believe me, I’ll take 6 to 5 against.