All good things

must come to an end. Our unbeaten streak is over thanks to "Bank On It" but we sure as hell went down fighting. The evening started with a Gregg Hunt special, where the "cash cow"
that is a private party had taken up too many tables & some of the 8:00pm matches were only getting one table. Not us, fortunately otherwise there would've been some whining. From those on the team who are known for that kind of thing. Not mentioning any names. There was little space though & 3 of us sat on stools on the party side of the room watching Slipper play his match while Matt went off as a splinter faction sitting by Liz's match. Within moments though, the 3 of us were told to move out of our spots by Obergruppenfuhrer Lynch as our presence on the party side was apparently illegal.

Not wanting to be shot, we shifted. Slipper didn't seem to be too happy with the speed (or lack) of the table & lost his first match of the season. Liz manhandled her opponent but Lap lost his match closely leaving Swell in a situation where he had to win his match AND by 3 racks. At that point he needed to win 4 racks in a row, just so we could tie. He won 3 & a tie seemed likely before his opponent missed a seven ball side pocket bank by so much that it doubled banked into a corner pocket. The 8 & 9 were glued together as a dead combo & he made it. Mike was not happy. You could tell. He did win though but we lost the match by one measly rack. Bollox.

The Mets lose

in heartbreaking fashion but we won. Just. We beat the Cs without actually smashing them. JJ won 9-5, Button lost 7-6, Swell lost 7-5 (nice 9 ball mate) & BTR won 9-8 after taking a break in the hill-hill rack to suffer through the bottom of the 9th.

That's it for this week cuz I'm still in mourning & my creativity is non-existant.

If Only - we had a song

The team managed to grind out another W despite Mr Jessen not performing to his own high expectations in one of the opening matches & digging a bit of a hole for us. Not that Steve saw too much of this cuz he didn't realise we were playing at 6:30, despite the fact the captain had published an email to such effect earlier in the week. Shoulda sent it out on match day too I guess. Can't assume that intelligent people can remember stuff like that. My bad.

Weasler got off the shnide this week, which was nice to see. 'Bout firking time. It looked like he played quite well to, surprisingly enough. Well done my son.

Liz won too & looked a little beat after. She didn't understand the word "knackered" & the definition offered, involving old horses, didn't come across quite right either. A google search for "knackered" images produced the following:


which captures the meaning rather well.

Skipper won too.

Slipper suggested we needed a team song & we decided to pick the next one that we knew that Amsterdam played. As is normal with such ideas, the next song we didn't know & the whole idea was quickly fogotten until "You're Beautiful" came out over the airwaves & Swell & I looked at each other & said "Yes. This is it". And each time Liz came near us during her match we tunefully serenaded her with "You're beautiful" as she eyed us quizically. Lap & Steve don't like the song so it may not catch on as our anthem....

Slipper & Lap undertook a challenge to arrange a set of pool balls in a tray such that (with the cue ball having a value of zero):

- every row added up to 30
- every column added up to 30
- the two diagonals each added up to 30
- the 4 groups of 4 balls in each corner each added up to 30
- the center square of 4 balls also added up to 30

and I was amazed to see they came up with an answer. I metioned this puzzle to the wife on Friday & she spent the evening trying to come up with an answer, which she eventually did. Thankfully. Myself, I decided that a computer program could be written to get all the possible answers. The first attempt would have taken about 2 years of processing time on my desktop to cover all the possible combinations (20,922,789,888,000). A later approach proved better BUT I DID WASTE A TON OF THE WEEKEND DOING THIS C**P. Obsessive? Perhaps....

BTW there are 3,456 different ways of setting up the pool balls for the numbers to work. Unbelievable!

Update 17th Oct 18:00 - make that 3,456 / 4 = 864

Winning while absent

Not being around to witness any gory details, I had to rely on information provided by others. Not on the blog (the obvious way of dissipating info) but by email. Oh well. It would seem that we won, according to the somewhat self-deprecating emails below:

Weasly speaks....

"We won no thanks to me. I played a truly pathetic specimen who proceeded to combo on 4 nine balls for the victory. Lovely slice of heaven that was."



Button adds....

"4 my part, I couldn't see when I started playing my match -- opponent was kind 'nuff to leave me several 9-balls ( albeit not all "hangers" ) over the early course of the match, affording me the opportunity to slight gather myself and limp home with the narrow win..."



The alert reader may notice that there was zero detail about who played the other two matches. It was all about "me, me, me, me, me". No details of any heroism displayed by others. Not really a complete picture at all, eh? Somewhat self-centred perhaps? Pretty pathetic. The truly alert reader will notice that Weasly appears in both photographs above.

Bulldog sighting

An anonymous contact forwarded some news about our missing team-mate, the Bulldog. A successful hair growth program together with some facial work (tucking/botox) have led him in a musical direction


And we thought it was all about poker....

Zod off

The image below really says everything:


However, for those requiring a little more detail things unfolded as follows. Liz called around 6:00pm excusing herself from the evening's events. I guess some people would rather watch ER than come in & support their team-mates in battle. Each to their own. Shortly after Matty B called with some nonsense about running late & having to read a 40 page document. I dunno about everyone else but when I have to study an important doc, I've never found that consuming a bottle of tequila at the same time helped that much.

Anyway, the four remaining people would just have to be enough to deal with Zod. Weasly lost the toss, which was rather important against a loaded team like this. As punishment, he was put up against John "The Professor" Cernes. Lap went up against Tom Drapeau. That match went to the hill with Lap coming up on the short side. Cuz Weasler had lost the toss, that put us in a tough spot putting up 3rd but we went with the Slipper. Take that Zod, we were saying. Stick that in your pipe & smoke it, Zod. For some unknown reason the new captain of Zod, Dan Boersma put himself up. As Steve went about dismantling Dan, filleting him like a nice piece of Dover sole, Mike "The gift that keeps on giving" Wenzler was disposed of by the Professor, 7-4, leaving us in a 0-2 hole in matches.

Zod put up Jude & all that was left was the Skipper. The two of us, Slipper & Skipper (Mantle & Maris?) had been given the task of pulling the team back from the brink. Two superb performances by the valiant duo accomplished this task, leaving lingering memories of Boersma almost in tears & Rosenstock smacking a clump of balls in anger, jumping most of them off the table, in order to avoid a potential 3 foul situation.

This team is becoming an unstoppable locomotive.