SteakUp

Feeling sad from a break up? Steak up.

Don't know what to do when you wake up? Steak. Up.

Amount of time spent listening to Drake up? Steak up.

You might be asking yourself: why would he put a picture with vegetables in this clearly steak-biased piece? Doesn't he have the whole world of Google Images at his fingertips and the ability to hand-pick one of six billion pictures of steak available? If you noticed the vegetables, you definitely need to steak up. Brussels-sprout a pair, buddy.

            I found myself flummoxed recently. Broken hearted and moping around, I was weak, bereft of all of the power I once felt. My world lacked contrast and seemed to be a collection of grey hues and rain clouds. And then, as if delivered from the dream gods, I woke up and the solution was sizzling on the edge of my tongue. It's not every day that a man comes up with an idea that could change the world. Much less one that is delivered through whatever recent dream-god-technology is out there without any previous prayers or even acknowledging of the existence of said gods. But let us not make this all about them, for they are humble gods, and I'm from a generation of entitlement.

       I got in my car one morning, drove to the store and picked up a pair of Rib-eyes. I slapped them on the cutting board and as I applied the kosher salt and cracked black pepper, I felt a change in my demeanor. By the time the grill had been sufficiently heated I already felt my moribund day reviving.

Did you know that 93% of people aren't getting enough steak in their diets?¹ I could just point out with anecdotal evidence how awesome steak made me feel and offer up testimonial after testimonial of proud steak eaters, but that would just be too easy. And my friends are taking their sweet time writing fake testimonials. Lazy writers.

Protein. You may have heard of it. Protein is responsible for things like preserving muscle tissue, supporting brain function, providing energy, and boosting your immune system. Another interesting thing about high protein foods is that they increase satiety and decrease appetite. In short, they satisfy you. But if things like cell growth and repair aren't important enough to you, steak offers other benefits.

Steak is a great source of: phosphorus, selenium, vitamin B12, zinc, iron, niacin, vitamin B6(yes, that's ANOTHER B vitamin), and riboflavin. Steak is also a great source of saturated fat, which has a bad reputation but current science shows is actually good for you.

                                      Practical Application

 I know this is somewhat mind blowing due its simplicity and you’re wondering how to get started. Rather than bore you with a bunch of statistics I made up, I'm going to show you how to employ the philosophy in your own life. Don’t hold off, there’s time to make up. Steak up. Here’s some sample scenarios in which steaking-up can help you.

Problem 1: You’re attempting to get re-elected as the President of the United States. In your first political debate against your opponent, you come out looking soft. Your opponent uses half-truths and some solid tip-toeing around questions to win the debate in the eyes of the public. Your supporting group of democrats start losing faith, the country is at risk of handing the reins to a Mormon. Time to steak up.

Recommend dosage:

One steak chili sourdough bowl from Claim Jumper. Note the way the steak is overflowing from the edible bowl. When you're trying to figure out how much steak to eat, some key words are: overflowing, gluttonous, retarded, or Herculean amounts.

Problem 2: You’re watching Netflix with your boyfriend and he gets a text message. You want to look, but you don’t want to seem jealous. You ask who it is and he says, “oh just a friend.” He announces that he has to “use the restroom” because after two years together he still doesn’t feel comfortable telling you that he’s got to take a shit. You see his phone sitting on the night stand and don’t know what to do. There’s potentially a bitch out there trying to step on your territory.

Recommended Dosage:

5 oz. bacon wrapped filet. That’s right, ladies can steak up too. Jealousy doesn’t look good on anyone. Chances are you know whether your man is cheating on you or not. Imagine if Miles Davis was looking down from heaven on your every move and saw you looking like a sneak trying to check your boyfriend’s texts? You don’t want to disappoint Miles Davis, do you? Eat your filet and search your own heart for the answers. And if he’s cheating on you, use those protein filled muscles to punch him in the dick.

Problem 3: You’re heart broken. You’ve been left in the cold by a girl you thought was the one. You’ve begged and pleaded for her to take you back, promising you’ll conform to whatever would make her happy. You tell her you’ll even stop watching football with the boys and drinking so much. She doesn’t waver, so you go to the last resort, the mix tape. The first song you put on there is “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton. The next is “Hey there Delilah” by the Plain White T’s.

Recommended Dosage:

Prime rib. As much of it as you can eat. Listen buddy, she doesn’t want to be with you anymore. Chances are if you somehow manage to get her to stay with you for a couple more months, she’s going to be having sex with the guy she really wants to be having sex with anyways. It’s time to realign your steak chakras and get back out there. Do something amazing. Don’t even worry about getting a new girl, just work on your steak intake as well as time management and following your passion.

As evidenced here, there are many varieties of steak and various uses for them all. It doesn’t take an expert to diagnose and prescribe, it’s a trial and error process. But I am here for questions. This is merely an introduction into the philosophy that changed my life, and could change yours too.

                   Coming Soon: The Steak Scale.

1) lol

The Experience Pt.3

This is part of a fictional series of stories based on stuff that I've seen working on Fremont Street. Just think of it like that guy who wrote all those memoirs and got exposed and had to apologize on Oprah, except I'm telling you that it's bullshit at the beginning. I embellished

 “Climb with me to the highest conceivable pillars ladies and gentleman. It is time that we rise above this bureaucratic malarkey and embrace the human spirit for what it is. Kindness, passion, love, all subverted by the need for material possessions.” A man preached under the thousands of flashing bulbs outside of the Golden Nugget. The sweat trickled down his dark shiny skin and he lifted his tweed jacket to wipe it.

“It is time for the end of capitalism,” he said. The midget Elvis impersonator next to him strummed an air guitar and danced.

“It's time for the end of war... of nationalism... we must unite as one entity. We have the resources to ensure that nobody goes hungry, yet we horde them all to protect our own family and we ignore the fact that we are all brothers. We are all part of this super-organism that is the earth. Merely collections of cells built to work symbiotically for the greater good, but we have been distracted. Oh how we have been distracted.”

I stood against a pillar watching the old man attempt to save society one drunkard at a time, occasionally his sounds were outweighed by the screaming children passing by on the zip-line. This guy didn't have the normal motives of preachers on Fremont; religious promotion(and of course donations). His legitimacy intrigued me. Any minute now he was going to pull out a jingling cup of change.

“Quit your useless job today. Create something. Love somebody. Go somewhere. Love everybody,” he said with a smile, his rage calming into happiness.

“Can I get a picture with you?” a young girl wielding a three-foot long alcoholic beverage asked.

“A picture?”

“Yeah.” She put her arm around him. He faked a smile and she threw up a crooked peace sign. She pulled two dollars out of her bra and handed it to him.

“No, I don't want your,” he started to try to give the money back, but she had already found herself in the arms of Captain Jack Sparrow.

“Yo ho, yo ho!” they yelled together as the black man shook his head and stuffed the two dollars into his pocket.

“We are so transfixed with the idea of being comfortable that we have forgotten to strive for greatness,” he began. A horn blared as a car almost ran over a pedestrian text messaging as they crossed the street. The pedestrian didn't even look up. A chain reaction of horns ensued as the taxi drivers battled for position on the side of the street. The man watched the chaos and felt himself jarred when a security guard on a Segway bumped into him trying to get to the clueless jaywalking pedestrian. He composed himself.

“Stop giving your money to these casinos. We have become so attached to material possessions that we will risk the money we wasted our precious and limited time attaining for the small, unlikely chance that we might double up on Fremont street. Give your money to charity if you wish to unload it that bad. Donate to your child's school.” I wondered how long it would be before somebody stopped this guy, dragged him out by his arms as he preached freedom and peace.

“Who are you supposed to be?” a man with a “This Guy Needs a Beer” shirt on asked.

“Who am I supposed to be? I am you, and you are me. I am earth. I am part of one big cancerous organism and I know the cure.” he replied.

“Oh I get it, you're like...Tracy Morgan?”

“What the hell is a Tracy Morgan?” The man asked.

“That crazy actor from that show...the guy who said he would disown his kid if he were gay. Who are you then?”

“I am the man standing behind the boulder of change, pushing with all of my might and suggesting that you might help me push this boulder. Alone I can not budge it one inch, but together we could throw it through the window of our corrupt government. In a sense, yes, I am Tracy Morgan. Just like I am Alexander the Great. Genghis Khan. Their greatness is in my grasps, as well as it is in yours.”

“Well, you don't really look like Genghis Khan. Can I get a picture anyway?”

“Two dollars,” he said with a sigh.  

The Experience Pt.2

 This is part of a fictional series of stories based on stuff that I've seen working on Fremont Street. Just think of it like that guy who wrote all those memoirs and got exposed and had to apologize on Oprah, except I'm telling you that it's bullshit at the beginning. I embellished. 

     Two things that should not be combined: heartbreak and swing shift. Could there be any more impetus to make terrible decisions than to be getting off work on Fremont street at two-thirty in the morning with a fresh wound and be expected to make logical choices?

         But even I wouldn't resort to a Fremont street hooker. I was sitting at the bar after my shift the other night, collecting my thoughts and to be honest a little alcohol makes it easier to sleep when you have to unwind at three in the morning. The screen in front of me was desperate for my attention, pretending to show me straight flushes or four cards to the Royal. I decided quickly I wouldn't fall in to that trap. But the free drinks make everything somewhat copasetic. A girl near me started talking to me.

       “You look young, you just start here?” she asked me. Her tiny skirt did not fit with the winter weather. It never gets unbearably cold in Vegas, but she did everything short of having Bruce Buffer announce that she was a working girl. There's little room for discretion in these matters. Or need for it, for that matter. The security guards are in on it, they have to be.

“Yeah, it's my third week.” I told her. I got a good look at her, she had light brown eyes and a great smile.

“Ah, you spend that first paycheck yet?” she asked. So blunt and quick to dip into my financial situation. I don't know if her tactics are subtle to the average drunk idiot at the bar, but they seemed pretty blatant to me. But I was bored.

“Nope, I'm pretty good with my money. Direct deposited right into the old savings account. I just try to live off of my tips and save the paychecks.”

               “You make pretty good tips? Usually the cute ones make bank.” I think the biggest difference between hookers and interaction with normal girls is that hookers like to center the conversation on you, whereas normal girls like you to ask them questions about them. Or at least this is how I felt as I sat heartbroken at the bar. Her ploy was starting to work on me. For some reason I respected her blatant honesty. We could just cut through all of the pussyfooting and tact that happens in normal courting and get down to brass tax. And it was nice having someone who wanted to talk about me.

“I do alright. Had a really good night tonight,” I fibbed a bit. I tried to do the logistics of the deal in my head. Do I get an employee discount? Maybe a non-weirdo rebate that I get back a week later? Okay, don't go down that road. Let's end this now.

“Awesome. Hey this bar is kind of cold, would you want to go somewhere else?” she asked.

“Nah, I'd better get home. Gotta go to the DMV as soon as they open tomorrow.”

“Well, everybody thinks the DMV is empty first thing in the morning, but there's always a line. It's best to go around ten after that line goes away.”

“Thanks for the tip. Have a good night,” I said. I went home and slept well that night. I went back to the bar the next night, wondering if I'd see her spitting game at some other sucker. The bartender set a napkin down in front of me.

“So what did you have to do last night that was so important?” he asked.

“Huh? I went home and crashed, why?”

“I was thinking you might have had a better excuse for turning down that girl last night than the DMV, unless you're just a pussy, which is totally cool.”

“The working girl?”

“That wasn't a working girl you idiot. I work the graveyard shift every night here, I know the hookers, and that girl is not one of them. Notice how she didn't look like a meth head.”

“Vodka tonic, please.” I folded my arms and put my head down while he squeezed the lime into my drink until it was a ball of stringy remnants curled into the fetal position.

The Experience Pt.1

This is part of a fictional series of stories based on stuff that I've seen working on Fremont Street. Just think of it like that guy who wrote all those memoirs and got exposed and had to apologize on Oprah, except I'm telling you that it's bullshit at the beginning. I embellished.

I stood in the elevators with two other people cascading down the employee parking garage when one of them said, “sure is eerie riding this elevator knowing somebody jumped off the top of the garage yesterday.” The woman was in her early fifties, wearing a dealer's outfit of slacks and a vest over a button up. Her hair looked like it had been sprayed into the same mold for twenty years straight. It stood in perfect alignment like a Spartan Phalanx, or freshly mowed blades of uniform grass.

Personally, if I were to jump off a building, it would be double digits in floors. I'm just saying, seven stories sounds like if you landed the right way you might just end up disfigured for the rest of your life. I swear I've seen a television special where a girl was skydiving with a baby in her womb she didn't know about and crashed to the ground and the baby survived. I don't want to take my chances with anything less than fourteen, fifteen stories.

This was something like my second week working on Fremont. The Experience. A microcosm of tortured souls. Alcoholics, homeless, street performers, power hungry bosses, prostitutes, all lurking around every corner. Not to mention all of the inconsiderate tourists that don't look where they're walking.

As I exited the elevator I surveyed the area where the man committed suicide the day before. It didn't look clean, none of the pavement downtown looks clean. But it certainly didn't look how I expected it to look; ie blood stains, perhaps a dislodged finger that nobody bothered to pick up. The guy worked there for something like eighteen years. And that was it, even his blood stain was gone after one day. Forgotten. We can't have that kind of bloodshed on display so close to the entertainment.

I think the guy was a porter, which for those who aren't familiar with the casino terminology, is kind of like a janitor. Some tough guy has too many shots at the bar, pukes all over the floor, and who cleans it up? The bartender, right? Nope, the porter. Haven't you ever wondered what happened to all those cups you left on the floor or near a machine when you were drunk and didn't care? Some old guy making a decent wage who has been cleaning up after drunk idiots for eighteen years cleaned it up. Clearly we see where that can lead.

I had a long day at work. Dealing blackjack can be brutal. My table is near the craps tables where every five minutes or so some annoying group of girls yells, “WOOOOO!!!” Blackjack can be a very fast game where people lose a lot of money before they realize it. People are always getting angry, sometimes at each other because one guy doesn't know how to play right. And people are drunk. They think I miscount and they yell. The pit boss reviews the tape and they get a free meal even though I didn't miscount.

“Stay after for a drink?” Rick, the craps dealer asked me.

“No, I'm broke man.”

“The first one's free, you get a free post-shift drink,” he said.

That's a thing? No wonder these people get stuck here. I declined anyways, I had not adjusted to being up so late yet, and I just wanted to go to sleep. Two-thirty in the morning would eventually become the norm for me, but at this point it was foreign. At two-thirty in the morning there aren't many people left on the streets. The performers have retired their costumes for the night, and most people have either overdosed or passed out by that time. It caught me off guard when a guy asked me if I was driving home. As opposed to what? Walking?

“Yeah, I'm driving. Why?” I responded.

“Do you think I could get a ride man? I'm desperate. It's just down a few blocks, I lost my friends. I could really use some help man, please,” he said. He didn't look threatening. Smaller than me, and certainly less sober. Although I'm not sure what he was high on.

“Sure,” is what an idiot would say. And that's what I said. The guy seemed genuinely in need of help. We walked to my car and he thanked me a few times.

“Do any drugs?” he asked. Not the kind of question you normally get within the first five minutes of a conversation anywhere else.

“Not really, no. Weed sometimes. Why?”

“I think I got some at the crib I can give you for the ride. I just really appreciate it man,” he reiterated.

“I'm good man. Don't worry about it.”

He pointed me the direction to go and off we went. He looked paranoid. He grabbed his face.

“I think my jaw is broken,” he said.

“What? Seriously?”

“Me and my homie got into it with this dude over his girl. He hit me first, but we lit him up real good after that. Dude's face was messed up.”

Something I would have liked to had been informed of before I let the guy into my car. I think he was full of shit. I haven't been around too many broken jaws, but I'm pretty sure he would have been in severe pain and his speech would have been messed up. Either way, he was a dick.

“Shit. See the cop cars over by 7-11? We've got to keep driving a little bit. Go down the road a little further,” he said. Is this where I get lured into the middle of the ghetto and get robbed? I watched to make sure he wasn't itching towards some sort of weapon. I had to take control of this situation.

“Dude I'm going to throw my hat out the window,” he said.

“No, don't do that.”

“They might recognize the black hat,” he shivered out of frustration.

“It's going to look suspicious if you throw a hat out the window. You're being paranoid. Nobody's looking at my car. My shit is registered, my brake lights work, I have no warrants...just tell me where to let you out.”

“Over there I guess.”

Never again would I give somebody a ride anywhere near Fremont.

Experiencing the Animal Kingdom in Green Valley

Although we feel every malicious step the summer takes towards us, the heat has not yet arrived in full force, and the Samaritans of Las Vegas are stuck in between turning on the air conditioner, or opening windows and doors. In a household consisting of three young males, the door stays open.

There are a few things in our house that might be attractive to a stray dog; scattered Kibbles and/or Bits, a bottle of ketchup on the floor that nobody can explain, but namely my roommates’ dog Megan. Megan is a small Beagle mix with a cute face and personality. She tends to chew on shoes, but she doesn’t have the jaw strength to complete the destruction. It still seemed strange when we heard the non-threatening yelp of a miniature pinscher at our door late in the evening.

We looked at the dog as he filibustered at our door. By we I mean me, Scotty in one of his trademark pro-rap or pro-weed shirts, and Ken, probably dominating at a video game at the time. The unfortunate thing about a miniature pinscher, or a mini-pin as some lame people I have run into at the dog park refer to them as, is that they have the markings of the powerful Doberman, but none of the pinache. They’re like a little dog with a Napoleon complex, barking at things that tower over them.

We were intrigued by his brashness, although we didn’t like his manners. We stood up and he ran out into the street. We did what anybody else with nothing better to do would do, and followed him outside. Megan chased behind us to watch the scene unfold. It was clear to me that there was a connection. I suggested that the dog was here not for violence, but for reproductive purposes. The idea didn’t catch on quickly.

“I told you,” I shouted as we looked in the back yard and saw the mini-pin mounting our sweet little companion only a few minutes later. He had slipped his fragile little body through the gate and ran his game. Although the fairy tale of dog courtship is not that cut and dry. Megan was fending him off, she did not want nor need his services.

“Maybe they already finished, and she just thought it was just alright,” Scotty said, connecting the dots first. It was obvious at this point that we had to intervene. We approached it to eradicate it and the mini pin lunged at Scotty with a bark, but to no avail as he just leaned back, balling his hand into a fist in case of emergency.

We discussed what a terrible guest this little dog was. You don’t sneak into somebody’s back yard, have sex with their dog, and then threaten them. Then the dog did the unspeakable. He squatted and pooped. Things got out of hand after that. There were scuffles. Names were called. We chased him out and he retreated into the street. We went and watched television, ten minutes later we see him mounting Megan again in the back yard. We chased him back into the street. It took two or three cycles before we realized that Megan was just crawling out my bedroom window by jumping on my bed.

By this time we felt like disappointed fathers when their daughter brings home a guy who is way less than what they deserve, and despite what they tell her she just keeps seeing him because, “we’re meant to be together forever” at seventeen years old is really going to happen.

It was probably a good thing Megan had a little maturing experience, but it’s times like these that I wish my roommates had a Rottweiler for instances when mini-pins roll up trying to act like a boss so we can get some real nature in this house.