Phriday phone pics

It’s no secret that the iPhone camera is just about the the only bad thing about the current generation of the device. As it is, the iPhone is like Marilyn Monroe with a goiter–almost perfect, but noticeably messed up.

Nonetheless, I whip the phone out on a regular basis. As Tom from Random Connections put it to me, his weapons cache consists of a DSLR machine gun and point and shoot pistol. His cell phone camera is his knife. That’s pretty much how I view my iPhone camera and I whip out my knife on a fairly regular basis.

I would never print any photo I take with my iPhone. Most of the pictures I take go directly to my Twitter feed and then never again see the light of day.

I looked back through the photo file today. While the pictures roundly suck, they have recorded the past several months of my life in a way that I might not have otherwise, now I can see why people may feel the need to find iPhone data recovery options if their phone suddenly breaks, it could be a view into their life that may mean a lot. So, I thought it might be fun to throw of a few of the pics out there today. You can see larger versions of the photos by clicking on them.

G-Rob and I were out this week for a game of disc golf at Century Park in Greer. It’s snake season in these parts and G-Rob stumbled up on one as we navigated the creekside Hole #14.

There were, in fact, two of them, but I scared one off as I got a little closer for a pic. While often confused for a copperhead, this little guy is apparently a Northern Water Snake.

G-Rob likes him some snakes and spent half his morning researching our new little friend. For my part, I have recently started to believe that my death will likely result from a Timber Rattlesnake bite. When is it going to happen? Well, that’s up to the snake.

When I got to Mar del Plata, Argentina, I was exhausted and starting to catch the Argentinian Steak Flu. I was barely paying attention to anything as I checked into my hotel.

I ran into one of the guys I knew from 441, the production company that produces ESPN’s poker content.

“Welcome to The Shining,” he said with a bemused look.

I had no idea what he was talking about until I got off the elevator and looked down the hallway. I half expected two twin girls with hollow eyes to be waiting for me at the end of the hall. Fortunately, Pauly keeps a Big Wheel with him at all times, so we were able to stave off the fear and boredom with a few rides through the hallways.

That’s Pauly in the glass. This is how we ended a lot of our nights on the road–hotel bar, finishing up undone work on our laptops, drinking whatever the local brew was.

In Argentina, where this photo was taken, the local beer was Quilmes. It came in three varieties. All of them were reasonably good.

Funny thing about local beers, though. On more than one occasion on the road in Latin America, I ended up at bars where the local beer was either exhausted or just simply not stocked. “Budweiser? Heineken?” the bartenders would ask.

I guess it’s like going to some place in America that think it’s très gauche to stock the local beer. That’s how I ended up drinking a Bud in Uruguay.

Cristal, left, was the local beer in Chile. Man, it sucked. Unless it was ice-damned-cold, it was almost undrinkable. Its name spawned many a joke about the champagne with which it shared a name.

On our last night in Chile, we went to a place called “Hollywood” at 3am. We blitzed the bar and within 30 minutes, the place was out of Cristal.

“Heineken?” the bartender asked.

Even though the beer was horrible, we couldn’t help but be pissed off that we had to drink Heineken in South America…again.

It’s all about the branding.

There is a certain amount of branding my team and I must endure while on the road. In the old days, this meant wearing some ill-fitting polo shirt or uncomfortable cap. These days, branded folks can wear about anything they want as long as they plaster themselves with faux-embroidery stickers.

The stickers come in all shapes and sizes and, if the photo to the left is any indication, will stick to just about anything.

That’s the guy I call Chip Monkey. He counts chips for me when we’re at a tournament. We’re in the middle of a mild practical joke war. I may write about it someday soon. Here he’s drinking Kalik, the local Bahamas brew, at the first stop on our wrap party there.

Several years ago in Las Vegas, my friends began calling Red Bull, “Cocaine in a can, baby!” It wasn’t a slogan I expected the energy drink maker to adopt, but it was funny to hear the folks yell it across the poker room to each other.

I try to avoid Red Bull. It makes my head and heart do funny things when I forget to moderate. Sometimes though, especially when on the road, I need a pick-me-up.

During one South America stop–and I honestly forget which one–Change came to our work station and said, “Dennis Phillips is buying something called ‘Speed’ for everybody at his table.”

Change further reported that Phillips et al had drank so much of the stuff, the casino had sent someone to the store to buy more.

When I caught the Steak Flu in Argentina, I was dragging ass pretty bad by Day 2. I needed something to push me through the night. Sure enough, the bar carried Speed in a can. It was horrible.

I drank it anyway.