My introduction to gambling can be attributed to my cousin Ryan Walter and his delicious friend Stuart Slaven. In reality, it was probably a poor decision to go with them to that casino in Vancouver, I’ve been hooked ever since. However, several wonderful stories have stemmed from this minor addiction of mine: I’ve been screamed at in some Asian language by an eighty-five year old woman, I’ve been spat on by a woman hooked up to oxygen, and I’ve literally watched full blown miracles occur at the poker and blackjack tables. This particular story involves Stuart Slaven, a former blackjack dealer himself who balanced his gaming addiction with an almost sexual relationship with cigarettes. To appropriately convey how wonderful this story is, a quick biography of this immortal descendant of Zeus is necessary. Stuart once quit smoking… and lasted four minutes, four fucking minutes. He would call the Church of Scientology for numbers to bet on at the roulette table, he’s beauty defined, but is always inches away from perishing in some pit of excitement. He once got the hiccups for two months and drank himself into a coma in order to rid his diaphragm of the bastards… he was successful.

Stuart fucking with the Church of Scientology

The story for today comes from the Boulevard Casino located in the Greater Vancouver Area, Stuart was still a blackjack dealer at this point and I would sit down and keep him company. I was often a breath of fresh air from the regulars who would squander yet another mortgage payment in the name of temporary glory. About 5-10 hands in, an already pale Stuart turned a ghost white, he stared directly at me and then motioned for me to look at the person to my right. It was Chuck Norris, that’s right, Walker Texas Ranger, and he was playing a game that can incite extreme anger at any moment. I shifted my chair a little to the left so as to at least escape the bulk of his fury. I was betting the table minimum, five dollars, the Texas Ranger was betting the table maximum, 500 dollars. Early on Norris could do no wrong, he was hitting shit that was almost mathematically impossible… he doubled down on a hard 17 against an ace and hit a four, ACTUALLY! It was almost mythical and I actually started to believe all those fucking awful jokes about him, I giggled as I thought one up in my head, “Chuck Norris will hit with a hard 17 and in the process cause everyone else to bust.” This carried on for probably another 150 hands, dude was up to 15-20 grand, I was actually starting to think he was counting cards… this assumption quickly changed as he went on a monster losing streak. He basically lost his massive stack of chips over the span of half an hour, and he was not happy. Stuart was starting to sweat and looked at me with those, “run you fool, run for your life,” eyes. Stuart knew he needed to do something quickly or the Texas Ranger might kill all in his path. Nervously, he looked around and saw a rather hefty African-American woman dancing as she made a killing on the Pai Gow Poker table, with a quick swallow and a wipe from his brow Stuart said, “hey Chuck, get a load of that cow,” Chuck stared at him and looked down at the table. No more than thirty seconds later that same woman waltzed over to Norris and gave him a kiss along with a few thousand in chips. I look at the odd couple and then up at Stuart, who was shaking so badly I thought he was gonna snap in two. At that moment I say to Stuart, “you’re on your own,” and run out of the casino at a Seabiscuit pace. Stuart would never deal another hand of blackjack again after that day.

Actually…

I’ve mentioned on the various blogs I’ve contributed to that I have a dark past, one that I keep locked up and only reveal to people I trust… I was once a hardcore kid. It started with the song “405″ by Death Cab for Cutie, moved quickly to Taking Back Sunday, then Funeral for a Friend, then Underoath. Underoath is a bit of a gateway drug for the scenestar, it is at this point a kid decides to remain content with this degree of hardcore-ness, or take it up a notch into the realm of Converge, Comeback Kid, and Dillinger Escape Plan, I took the latter. I was a pilgrim in an unholy land at most of these shows throughout my high school years, learning the ropes of something I barely understood. By the time I went to university in Montreal, I felt I had the moves, the anger, and the agility to outwit, outlast, and outplay anyone at a show. I would roll with hardcore crews, spin-kick kids in the face, and was once credited with accidentally shattering a girl’s nose with my fist. That was until Comeback Kid rolled through with Bane. Comeback Kid brings out an entirely different breed of people in Montreal: thirty year old skin heads who are so furious with life that they are willing to kill people if it makes them feel slightly better. I met their wrath in October of 2005, full-force. Mom and Dad, if you’re reading this, you might want to stop NOW:

Throwing Down to The Number Twelve Looks Like You

The openers for the night were The Reason, now this was before The Reason began sucking like a hooker on dollar night, they got the  crowd at least a little pumped, and few kids were even moshing. I stuck to the side and quietly surveyed the situation and what I saw was quite terrifying: jacked assholes assembling - beer in hand and shit eating grin glued to their face. I felt safe though, the kids I rolled with at these shows were beginning to show up in great numbers, so at the very least they had my back. The Reason’s set ended and Comeback Kid began setting up, one Quebecois guy in my crew, Marc, noted the rather odd crowd forming and said, “I think I’m going to sit this one out.” This was by far the smartest thing said the entire evening, and in reality, I should have followed his lead, I was young and arrogant though, and I wanted to dance… my fuck, I wanted to dance.

Lights dim, the boys from Comeback Kid come on stage, and the pit instantly is opened by spin kicks and windmills. These guys were not fucking around, my nose was bloody before the first note was played, the entirety of my crew backs off, with the exception of me and one psycho motherfucker who was the meanest dancer I’ve ever met. Three songs in I’m covered in blood and bruised to shit… but I’m still moving, driven by more adrenaline than I could possibly imagine. It got so violent that it wasn’t dancing anymore, it was just a bunch of guys aiming to seriously injure people, and I was the tiniest person still left in the pit, all of their attention was directed at me. “Loreli” comes on and within four seconds I’m kicked in the head so hard I actually never felt it… I was knocked unconscious THAT quickly. I’m dragged out of the pit and I come to, I’m told by everyone around me I should sit out the rest of the set, I refuse, and jump right back into the pit. I’m quite confused however and begin vomiting all over the place, this just infuriates the shit-fucks in the pit. Final song comes on, Wake the Dead, seriously… one of the most bad ass songs I’ve ever heard. I’m dancing, I’ve lost a lot of blood, I’m easily concussed, but I’m loving it. With maybe thirty seconds left in the song, I’m crushed by a guy twice my size. I felt this one, but was knocked out cold. It wasn’t the initial hit that knocked me out, it was my head hitting the ground at a lightning pace. The set ends, I’m pulled out, and eventually come to. I was told that  I was out for at least two minutes. I skip the Bane set and walk to the hospital. I suffered not one, but two concussions on the same night, at the same show, during the same band, ten minutes from each other.

I’m FUCKING HARDCORE.

My brother and I had so many adventures as lil ones in the bathtub. It would generally involve us beating the shit out of each other, with the occasonial floater emerging. My story for the day comes all the way from the state of Tennessee, my father had been transfered there and our little Canadian family was thrust into the d-d-durty south. The year was probably 1990, and very well could have been my earliest memory. When a Boston Bruins (dad’s fave team) game was on my dad would often put us in the tub and then watch the game from across the hall. To appropriately describe this story a good background knowledge on how my dad watches hockey is necessary. My dad has unconscious quirks, the most obvious of which is whenever a defender blasts a shot from the blueline, he screams “boom!” The is amplified when the Bruins are on the powerplay and actually becomes an non-sensical grunt of satisfaction. Anyway, the Bruins were playing this night and so my brother (who was like 20 months old) and I (a snot-nosed 3 year old) were left to frolic in the waters of our upstairs bathroom alone. My brother in a fit of excitement smashed his head on the faucet and really hurt himself, he was bleeding and visibly confused and disoriented. I grabbed him to see if he was alright and he clearly wasn’t, he wasn’t responding, wasn’t crying, just sinking lower and lower into the water. I screamed for my dad, “Dad, Ben hurt himself pretty bad!” To which he replied, “just a second.” I tried my best to hold him above the water, but my efforts were proving futile. I yelled again, “Dad, he’s bleedng everywhere, I’m struggling to hold his head up, he’s sinking! he’s sinking!” My dad then responded with a phrase that well forever live in Walker family infamy, “Quiet! The Bruins are on the powerplay… BOOM!” If Bourque hadn’t netted one at that moment, my brother very well could have drowned. My dad, as soon as he realized what was going on, obviously was very concerned and addressed the situation. But seriously, Bourque doesn’t score… brother is dead.

October 31st 1988

I can only describe the events that occured on Halloween in the year 1988 based on my parents recollection, but I can assure you that this is no lie. It was a bitterly cold night in Calgary, and as usual I was parading my eighteen month old booty around the house, extra large bottle of milk in hand and bare ass naked. My parents had given up trying to put diapers on me because I would just toss them off instantly, I was a walking, talking, little rascal with a chip on his shoulder and the mouth of a four year old. Anyway, it was peak hours for the trick-or-treating and people were rolling through in some of the sickest costumes I could fathom. This was too much for my eighteen month old brain to handle, and when four girls showed up at the door dressed up as hippies I lost my shit, literally. I let out the littlest of poos, a nugget, this was the first time I had ever realized poo came out of my body and I had no idea what this substance was. I let out a little scream, and another little poo came out. I began to run thinking I was being chased by some ghostly presence… more poo… more terror. I bolted out of the house between the legs of one of the hippies, bottle of milk still in hand, right out onto the lawn, flailing and screaming. By the end of the tsunami of shit I was rolling around naked on the lawn screaming, “monster, monster”.

My high school was a quaint institution located in between two corn fields and a golf course. Being a private school kid caused me to learn a few things about the privileged in our society: that every child in the upper-middle class is a spoiled little shit. I would go to chapel every single day and recite the Lord’s Prayer, be heckled when I told my teachers that the Earth revolved around the sun, and feel very awkward when a teacher would say, “that’s so gay”. There were two distinct groups of people at my school, those who felt they were entitled to something, and those who at least to some degree appreciated the fact that their parents fed them with a silver spoon covered in caviar and the tears of starving children in Africa. I like to think I was part of the latter, and I probably was, but in reality I straddled that line like a drunk cowboy at a bull riding competition.

There was one thing about my school which put a smile on my face, which caused me to get out of bed in the morning and actually be excited about going to school, and that was basketball. Drawing from an eligible pool of maybe 18 male students, we were always able to field a relatively good team. This was partly due to the fact that the same core group of players was together since grade eight, but mostly due to the fact we had a coach (Mr. Katsube) who cared about winning more than we did. Our starting line-up was a mish-mash of kids who worked their asses off just to get a spot on the team (myself, our point guard) and individuals who were blessed with athleticism. It was our center, an individual by the name of Brian Schmidt who took us to the promise land, and inches away from Ontario Private School titles in grade eleven and twelve. Schmidty (a pseudo-nickname he has carried with him since before his birth) was a bit of an enigma, although clearly a monster compared to other players on the court, he also carried with him an ability to run the point and pull up for the three. He could play at 60%, while eating a sandwich during the game (known to have happened) and still drop 30 points and pull down 20 rebounds. That being said, everything about him was hilarious, he was a coaches nightmare, because he could do absolutely nothing, put in no effort, and still be the best player on the floor. There are stories about this kid that will forever live in infamy, he once strangled an anemic Asian kid during an intramural game, he was once ejected for mouthing off to every player and fan who didn’t respect his authority, and he had to be held back from outright killing an opponent on numerous occasions. Schmidty wasn’t the fittest person by any stretch of the imagination and in the name of acceptance actually embraced this role. He lives his life much like he plays basketball, an orgy of grunting, panting, and violence that only a mother could love.

Schmidty (far back) seconds before doing something violent.

I could talk about this kid for weeks. To be honest I’m not sure if I love his existence or absolutely despise it, but that’s what makes hanging out with Schmidty so wonderful. He keeps you on your toes and deep down he has a good heart, it’s just covered in a thick glaze of testosterone.

So with that introduction, here’s the story. We were warming up for a game against St. Andrews College, a team we were slated to massacre, but ended up having to go on a disgusting 18 point run at the end of the game to win. Schmidty was dating a girl by the name of Oregano Blacky (name changed to protect the innocent) and it was common practice to make fun of each players girlfriends. Schmidty would always make quasi-clever jabs towards my girlfriend, but it rolled off my back because the insults were generally ill-informed and lacked any concept of proper grammar. Anyway, my brother Ben (who will be making dozens of appearances in this countdown) started to mouth off at the sea monster that is Schmidty, claiming that should he produce child with Oregano that the children would have hooves. Being the loving brother I am, I started to get in on the fun, recounting some of Brian’s hilarious adventures with Oregano. I don’t know if was the adrenaline he had bathed in before the game or the fact that his nipples were chaffing like mad under his basketball jersey, but Schmidty lost it. And I mean fucking lost it. He threw a punch directed at my brother, that if he had made contact, would have killed my brother. I screamed “Schmidty go back to the zoo you fucking gorilla,” not wise. He turned and ran towards me, and if it hadn’t been for the fact I was insanely quick, he would have swallowed me whole. Before we knew it, Schmidty was chasing me and my brother around the gym, to the laughter of the opposing team and the complete frustration of our coach. If Mr. Katsube hadn’t calmed Brian down, we would have been killed that day. Schmidty, obviously exhausted from chasing two little pipsqueaks around the gym, said in a huff, “Schmidty needs a squirt.” The players looked at each other and quietly recognized that it was the funniest thing he had ever said, not only was it Schmidty referring to himself in the third person, but also the fact he referred to a drink of water as a squirt. From then on anytime someone on the team needed a quick break during practice; it was proudly proclaimed that Schmidty needed a squirt.

It should be noted that I absolutely respect Brian Schmidt now; I think he’s a wonderful little scamp, and I can only imagine he’ll look back on this story and appreciate his hilarity back when he was seventeen.

Love ya, boo.

Welcome to the 8th Reich.

I am absolutely obsessed with the Westboro Baptist Church and its fantastic fuckery. I was in grade twelve when I was first introduced to their cyclone of hate. For those of you unaware of the douchebaggerish shit these fundamentalist assholes produce, let me give you a brief explanation. The Westboro Baptist Church is run by the Rev. Fred Phelps, a graduate of the notoriously fascist Bob Jones University. Rev. Phelps acts as the Patriarchal watchman of the congregation of a little more than 100. Instead of preaching about the main facet of Christianity, love, Phelps has decided to take a few verses out of the Hebrew Scriptures that rip on homosexuals and essentially use them as his thesis for the destruction of happiness worldwide. What has come out of his years of hating the world are the websites godhatesfags.com, godhatesamerica.com, and yes, even godhatessweden.com. I mean I can understand the Sweden one, those Scandanaviens are nothing but treacherous traitors to the cross, with their socially progressive policies that allow for one of the highest HDI ratings in the world. Phelps very elegantly takes his hate one step further, if God hates “fags”, then he must hate any nation that allows homosexuality to exist in anyway. These people have been coined the pretty term “fag enablers”. But wait, there’s more… so if America (the fag enablers) allow homosexuals to exist, then anything bad that happens to America is God punishing them for creating this sanctuary of sodomy. That is why they picket the funerals of American soldiers in Iraq, holding up bright signs of Uncle Sam being fucked in the ass with the slogan “God loves I.E.Ds”. Remember, this all stems from archaic verses from the OLD TESTAMENT that say a man shouldn’t “lay” with another man.

My frustration with these assclowns reached a pinnacle in the summer of 2006, when in a fit of complete and utter rage I decided to send them a gift. I’ll give you a hint as to what the gift was: it was soft, long, and smelled like roses and kittens. Ya guys, I mailed my own shit to Westboro Baptist Church with a flowery Hallmark card that read “Eat my fag enabling shit you fucks!” Whether or not the poo ever got there will always be a mystery, I imagine that somewhere on its trip to Topeka, Kansas there was a snag and the poo was lost. But I have this deleriously sexy image of Fred Phelps opening a box of fresh poo and giving it just a little whiff to confirm that it is, in actuality, poo. Fuck thinking about that makes my nipples so hard.

Ya, you’d like to sniff my poo wouldn’t you? Ya, you would, you dirty, dirty, girl.

Join me tomorrow for number 99: Schmidty Needs A Squirt

Alright dOOds, I’ve decided to do it… over the next one hundred days I’m going to countdown the one hundred best stories that have ever happened to me. We’ll start at the 100th best story and countdown to number one. One a day for 100 days. I apologize in advance…

May God have mercy on my soul.

It starts tomorrow with a cute little story called “Westboro Baptist Church vs. My Fecal Matter”.

The first internet search I ever made was in 1995, our family was fast to get the Internet because my mom was quick on her hooves learning the shit, being a library technician and all. “The Internet” she called it, “Luke, you’re not going to believe this shit, you type in altavista.com and then type in what you want to read about, and it takes you there.” I was stunned, and a little skeptical, “Fuck that, where does the information come from?” I inquired. “Luke, it comes from the Internet,” I imagined some crazed lunatic in my computer typing bogus answers to my legitimate questions. She left me alone with this intimidating technological advance, I sat there, absolutely perplexed as to how this worked. I subconsciously knew that this was an important act in my life, that my first search would dictate how I used the Internet, and whether it would be for good or evil. This is what I typed, “playboy girls having sex”, that’s right playboy girls having sex was my first search, I was eight years old. Since then my adventures on the Internet have become similar to that of a Stephen King novel, I’ve sent pedophiles halfway across the world to rural Romania in search of love, only to find that the address was that of a police station. I’ve fallen in love on the Internet, I’ve spilt my deepest secrets to complete strangers, and thanks to that little shit-fuck Mark Zuckerberg there are countless pictures of me on the Internet doing very ungodly things.

I’ve become addicted, I’m so addicted to the Internet it hurts, I’d shut this fucking atrocity of an invention off, but every time I think about that I sigh and say… “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Also the porn, I have no idea how I could possibly stop watching women fart on cakes.

Nothing makes me more wet than a well timed, relatively obscure, pop-culture reference. Not only does it display one’s wit, but also shows an individual’s ability to sift through thousands of hours of television to deliver the perfect comment. Seriously ladies (or guys if your name is Ethan Kath) if you want the key to my cheeseburger riddled heart, a quick Simpson’s reference at the perfect time will get you an “I love you”.

My whole life is one big pop-culture fuckfest, literally just a God damned orgy of one-liners and “did I do that?s.” So out of the millions of references I’ve experienced, I will pick the greatest pop-culture reference up to this point in my life.

Star Wars vs. Ben Walker

My brother and I were off the coast of Belize on the Spirit of the Seas, a cruise ship that seemed to lure the entire population of Mississippi into it’s bowels. We would often venture to the top deck to get away from the sloths at the casino. I should also mention that we were about as far away from sober you can be without your name being Robert Downey Jr. With whiskeys in hand and the stars above us, I mumbled to my brother in a drunken slur, “take a look at that moon,” he replied in almost a non-coherent jumble, “that’s no moon, its a space station.” In reality it was probably the funniest thing I’ve ever been a part of, not only was the timing incredible, but the choice of words was impeccable. Add on to that the fact my brother was lethally drunk, and it will go down in my personal history as the proudest I’ve ever been of the lil one.

Start Watching at 9:20.

watch?v=bo56R-Oqx4E&feature=PlayList&p=52051D01F27DA049&index=5

There are few outlets that allow people to so freely express the fact they are complete tools better than Facebook. With the exception of maybe Youtube where it appears 99% of the world’s homophobes lurk – typing with one hand as they quietly jack off to Chris Crocker videos – nothing, in the history of modern communication has produced such devastating assclowns as Facebook. I hope, nay, I pray that this is some elaborate episode of Punk’d and Michael Kelso is going to jump out and punch me in my testicles as cameras surround me. I mean, seriously? Is it possible the vast majority of my Facebook “friends” (I put friends in quotations because really it is just a stew of hot girls I watch from afar in my religious studies classes) are developmentally delayed? I’ll let you the reader decide, the following are the seven most recently updated status’ in my friend list, enjoy…

Person A - is in Quebec.
So am I champ. It is easy to fathom that the entire world doesn’t give a shit that you are in Quebec. Next time I drive to Cornwall to buy industrial sized cans of Mongoose beer I’ll be sure to let the world know I’m in Ontario. But why stop there you narcissistic fuck? Next time you go to the kitchen, you might as well tell the internetz, I mean when I go outside to grab a sandwich I always make sure to update my status… as I look at myself in the mirror and rub my nipples with cocoa butter.

Person B - likes juice.
So do I. So does the majority of Western Civilization. I like air too, but I’ve only told my psychiatrist about that, I tell you what though, I fucking love water… that’s pretty original. I can only imagine the people scanning the updated friend list and coming across your BOLD statement and saying to themselves, “ho-ho-holy fuck! Person B likes juice!? Man I better click on her profile because she seems so interesting based on her status that what lies further must be groin-grabbling good.

Person C - al menos aun respiro.
This appears to be Spanish, funny, this person is not Spanish, nor are most of his friends. You honestly don’t impress me with your Latin tongue you dirty turd, I don’t understand what you’re saying, and I would never, EVER, put in the effort to figure it out. You are merely trying to point out you have at least a limited understanding of a Romance language, brav-fucking-o, I’ll be sure to add your pics to my spank bank now, because you are so fucking sexy with your bilingualism. Unless “al menos aun respiro” means, “help me, I’m trapped in a Peruvian jail and need access to a translator quick,” you will never be forgiven for this act of douchebaggery. Never.

Person D – feels like giving up.
Then do it.

Person E - …if u owe me money, pay up!
This is a legitimate statement if the context is right. For example, if this individual has leant the thousands of friends he has on Facebook a sizeable sum of cash, then it is only fair that the individuals who accepted his money on the grounds that they return it, actually return it. However, I would bet my grandmother’s life savings that he made a bet on a sporting event with like two of his bedwetting friends and they owe him between two and ten dollars. Now if every person on his friend list were to read this statement, the sum total of money owed to him would be lost in the time it took each individual to read his goofball status. I mean I’m getting paid right now, I could be organizing papers or something, the time it took me to write this probably negates the pennies his “bros” owe him.

Person F - Props to Hillary Clinton, New Secretary of State…Ciaooo Rice!!!
Besides the fact this statement is a grammatical nightmare, few really give a damn that Hillary Clinton was sworn in as Secretary of State today. She was nominated by Obama months ago, she took the oath in what appears to be Bill Clinton’s cigar room, by some assistant judge who was giving Billy the sexy eyes. The senate vote, which is mainly a formality, was like 94-2. Clinton was going to be Secretary of State, having a status like this is like writing, “Props to food, I just ate today… byeeee poo!!!” Treat your status like a breaking news bulletin, unless it’s a ridiculous opinion or you have insider information on the whereabouts of Bin Laden… nobody gives a fuck.

Person G - bye bye Guantanamo!!!
This kid is notorious for using Facebook as his own fucking house of doom. He literally is destroying it with his oh so clever status’, his invites to parties that make no sense, and an arsenal of pictures where he’s featured making the same God damned vapid pose. Just to give you a taste of how dangerous this guy is… take a look at his past four status updates:

• would like to curse whatever god is in charge of Montreal’s weather…eff u…please die.
• misses the African sun!!!!!!!!!!!
• needs to check into Betty Ford ASAP (ps-still waiting to hear how I got home last night…)
• would like to know if anyone knows how he got home last night…

What we can learn about this little guy is that he clearly has a relationship with the bottle, is not fond of the weather Montreal is producing (which is fascinating, because I thought everyone loved -30 degrees and being ass deep in snow), and he also appears to miss the African sun, at least enough to go hog wild on the exclamation points.

Facebook status’… my balls are officially broken.