Another feel good story about gambling

So it turned out to be a lousy day today, although not as lousy as the poor girl who got axed from the opening ceremony for being a minger, a reminder of my own modelling experience when I was moved from the front of the phone book cover photo to the back because my hair was too blonde. I wasn't feeling much local pride for Tasmanians after a day of copping continuous abuse and swearing from the locals where I work today, and it was snowing, and raining, and I really didn't feel like do anything. On days like this, you have to work hard to appreciate the joy and beauty of Tasmania, when the bogans are in charge. That beauty might come from the eyes of a shopgirl smiling at you as she asks you if you need help, from the view as the sun finally comes out in the afternoon and lights up the sky, or from thinking of idiots getting smacked by a bus. However, the one thing that did cheer me up, apart from the presenting efforts of Sandy Roberts, was that I was actually able to do something nice for a friend of mine, and also from the fact that I saw some particularly obnoxious Gen Yers getting arrested in the mall for being slack and awkward and probably stealing some shoes. I put myself above and beyond the call of friendship duty by agreeing to, gulp, spend Sunday drinking in the casino. There's nothing particularly wrong with the casino - it is after all, Australias oldest casino with the decor to match - but obviously it's not Las Vegas, and the despair of seeing people wasting their savings at 2 in the morning has stayed with me for years. I'm not someone who is likely to join an (ugh) family group and get moralistic, but at 2 in the morning, if you are in Sandy Bay to begin with and you aren't at Mykonos or trying to pash a drunk uni student, you are just wasting your time and your money - never mind heading inside the casino and losing an evening cashing in chips. In fact, if you must gamble, a sentence you don't hear often enough these days, why not go to Customs on the wharf? There's hotter barmaids, and cheaper drinks, and more chance of getting a taxi without getting a dickhead and his what the hell does she in him girlfriend stealing your cab...actually, that last ones just as likely to happen anywhere in Hobart...

For any tourists out there going to the casino, you'll be pleased to find not only Australias finest gambling addicts and petty thieves, but also The Birdcage bar is probably the most well known part of the casino that doesn't involve gambling. Obviously, it's a bar, and it's not that much different for any other bar in Hobart, except it's in a casino. The selling points to the casual observer are the cheap cocktails and smooth jazz of Coltrane...er...is that right? I don't know much at all about jazz. Is Tom Ze jazz? However, don't be fooled. The Birdcage is pretty much the one and only place for picking up slightly lecherous but still attractive even if you have to put up with a lot of stories about their husband not being able to understand them and isn't it like funny how kids grow up so fast and could you buy me another cocktail because we totally have a connection and god I said just vibrator aren't I outrageous oh I'm so wasted and that bastard said I'm fat and he has a teeny tiny...you know what I mean, batteries give me more pleasure, and God don't you find me attractive and now I can't drive home so can I stay at your place soon to be single mothers of a certain age. To my eternal credit or discredit depending on your point of view, I've only witnessed (witnessed only because I've never picked up at the Birdcage, my only Birdcage story is really boring and involves trying to mix 28 spirits in one glass while people took bets) the epic meeting of hot jazz, pink cocktails with umbrellas in them, wide eyed uni students from the country in their first week in the big city, with a pencilled in moustache to make them look older, and a bored blonde housewife in a spangly black dress and blue eye shadow (yes, my favourite thing, and she was back at work today, bless) trying to be Mrs Robinson. In the morning, there will be regrets, awkwardness, and vodka poured into cereal (we've all been there) but tonight, there is Miles Davis, something that is allegedly a chocolate mudslide, and awkward slurpy kissing. Tonight though it sounds like love...

The casino also hosts major events, like stand up comedy nights. I've seen Dylan Moran bag the place out at the casino, and I've also seen Greg Fleet go way too far. However, I've also seen our resident DJing doofus Dave "no foreign accent too racist!" Noonan do some stand up comedy under the guise of introducing proper comedians - you haven't lived until you've seen a man drown to that extent. I've seen specially hosted football games with cheap drinks, such as the 2002 Port Adelaide vs Collingwood final, where I got far too excited and some lovely Lebanese chaps wanted to beat me up. I've seen Carlton footballer Justin Murphy be the most inarticulate breakfast guest in the history of ever - and I've seen one the most epic, epic rock and roll concert spews that I've ever seen. A girl in the corner of a gig just throwing up rivers, having had way too many mudslides. Of course, I'm not one to take the moral high ground on public displays of vomiting, but this was far beyond anything I've ever managed - made worse by the fact this display of rock and roll living was happening at a Pete Murray concert. Now, if you are a furrener, Pete Murray concerts aren't very rock and roll, in fact, it's like going to a Coldplay gig if you took all the tunes and sense of excitement out. Pete is a perfectly nice man, but really, he's not someone you would associate with partying on down to the extent that even your bushpig mates are trying to back away from you as you spew in the corner. The best spew I ever saw though was at my Grade 12 leavers dinner where a girl spewed a pink trail out of the corner of her mouth that went down the path and round the corner, all the while kicking her leg like she was starting a motorbike. Made me feel much better about defiling the front of Bunnings...

Of course, you can dress up the casino with gigs and concerts and Grand Final Superboxes with girls in AFL tops and hotels and fancy end of year netball dinners and revolving restaurants and Pete Murray and bars where Mummys and Students love each other long time, but ultimately, the place turns a profit through gambling, which yes yes is a misery and terrible thing, but which is obviously something that goes on and is going on right now, with elderly men and women sitting there right now putting their pension into slot machines in the hope of hitting the jackpot. There's definitely not a lot of good feel good pokie stories out there, but the Hobart casino, if it's any consolation tourists, isn't Crown Casino in Melbourne, the high rollers room is just a blackjack table with some bogan footballers spending 50 bucks instead of 10, and as far as I know, no one has been busted for leaving their children in the car while they gamble (just while they pick up a new Daddy at the Birdcage). Oddly enough, I'm one of the few winners in the history of the casino - once upon a Cooksley, I won big at the casino. I even had my picture taken for some promotional material, selling out all my principles in one go. Yes, I won a big block of Dairy Milk chocolate on a wheel where the main prize was a Ford Fiesta. Frankly, I think I won the better prize. What was weird about winning the big block of chocolate was that in that moment, they made me feel like I had accomplished something - the cameras, the girls who were hot when you put a lot of make up on them, the smooth guy in the suit talking me up, the over selling of the relatively minor prize, the flashing lights, it was all so hypnotic. I could see how a casino could lure in the gullible and the misguided by making someone feel special when they were vulnerable. And I'd love to say it gave me a profound feeling of loss and hatred and that I became a better person, but later that night, I gobbled up that Dairy Milk, and was incredibly proud and guileless. In fact, I got one of the models phone numb...

No, that's an absolute lie, she went off with a student from the Birdcage...