good talk

In 732 Charlemagne's grandfather, also Charles, defeated the Moslems at the Battle of Tours in northern France driving the Moslems back into Spain and saving the rest of Christian Europe from the Moslem Conquest, this gained him the sobriquet of Charles Martel, Charles the Hammer. Like most people I've always enjoyed the Superbowl, I've watched them all. For the past 2 or 3 years there have been no Superbowl Parties in Las Vegas where you pay an admission and you get all kinds of food and beverage and can win prizes, the NFL (killjoys) put a stop to this. Previously every casino had a Superbowl Party but the only one that I ever went to was the one at the casino on Flamingo and Paradise which has had a number of names, most recently the "Key Largo." And their Superbowl Party was free and they gave out better prizes than at a lot of the ones that charged $20 to get in. Unfortunately the Key Largo became defunct 4 years ago last month, it was a great townies casino where you could get a mixed drink for a dollar and beer for less than that, it was a real friendly layed-back place that did a high volume of business. Why it went out of business is beyond me, the building with the casino and the hotel hasn't been torn down, the huge parking lot is unused, so? By making a little money off a large number of people they made a good profit so why close it down. Probably somebody had the idea that they were going to raze the site and build something great there and the idea fell through. The Key Largo's party could have continued on as they didn't charge anything to attend. I used to go their restaurant all the time as they had good specials for a cheap cost. They had a special of a half-pound hamburger with lots of fries for $2, ha, ha, I used to get two of these after I worked out, it'd cost me $4.30 plus a $2 tip for a total of $6.30 and it was high-quality food, how bad is that? And they'd have DJ's in there giving away prizes constantly throughout the Superbowl. I remember once the big prizes were 3 colored plaques autographed by big name NFL players and these things looked really great. I remember one of the players was Randy Moss. This one guy who had won one was walking away with his prize when some other guy leapt up and said, "Can I see that?" The winner snarled, "You can look at it but you can't touch it!" Ha, ha, I couldn't help but think that this guy was being rather piggy, he had only owned it for 10 seconds and he had gotten all possessive. Another time I was there for the Superbowl and I was sitting at this table with a big, heavy guy originally from Cleveland who a lot of people seemed to know, they called him "Big John." Unfortunately by the end of the game John had lost $10,000. At halftime John brought me a large orange drink and we had just met so that was quite nice. During the second half John was talking to some Familiar who was so drunk that he spilled his drink on John's bare arm, John let loose with a stream of invective which included "...You big dummie..." while this guy ran off to get a bar rag which he used to wipe off John's arm. The Key Largo had a certain ambience which made you glad you were there and I miss it.