August 17, 2009

The last time I was at Brantford, we had an interesting character at our table. This guy was wearing a St. Louis Cardinals ballcap and looked like one of the animated players from the classic RBI Baseball game for Nintendo (see pic below) I was seated next to him at first, and it was clear from the first few minutes at the table that this guy was never going to shut up. Now, if I’m at a poker table, and I’m not the one talking the most, something is seriously wrong. But this guy was annoying for so many reasons. The first thing that jumped out to me was that, despite the fact that he appeared to be approximately thirty years old, his voice was constantly cracking as if he was in a suspended state of puberty. Within 5 minutes, I had my hood up trying to block his Rosie Perez-ish grating voice, and I immediately took the first seat that opened up at the other end of the table.
Down at the other end, my friend Dwayne was sitting there as well, along with another friend named Rob, who I play with regularly at Brantford. We quickly realized that this guy had something to say about everything, so when my gutshot straight on the turn cracked his set of Kings, he was very critical. I tongue-in-cheek exaggerated that I was getting 21-1 to call his raise, so it made sense, and he went on and on about how I didn’t know math, when it was evident to everyone else that I was being sarcastic (and for the record, it was 16.5-1, so I still should have called). After a while, I pointed out to Rob and Dwayne that this little troll was a Conversation Hijacker, who would interject something into anything that anyone was talking about at the table. For instance, I mentioned something to Dwayne about Shane Victorino getting ejected last week, and he jumped in to finish the story from the other end of the table before I could even get it all out. Someone was talking about UFC, and he jumped in to talk about Brock Lesnar’s amateur career.

So I say to Rob and Dwayne, “Watch this, I’m going to start talking about anything at random, and he’s going to jump in every time.” And they both said that they knew it would happen, but it was going to be fun to watch. I waited a few minutes, and then I said to Tyler, our dealer. “Hey Tyler, (I addressed him by name so that the Conversation Hijacker knew I wasn’t talking to him) have you seen Zack and Miri Make a Porno?”

Before Tyler can answer me, and about a nanosecond after it’s out of my mouth, of course the CH jumps in, “Oh, I saw it. It was awesome. I loved it.”

A minute or two later, I say to Tyler, “I also watched I Love You, Man, and it was…”

“Oh, that one was great too! Really, really funny. And I have a thing about Paul Rudd, too. Can’t stand him, so I was really surprised.” he interjects.

I look over and Rob and Dwayne are both looking down at the table trying not to burst out laughing. Tyler knows what I’m doing, but this moron has absolutely no idea.

Later on, our table busts up, and we move to another table, and Dwayne gets stuck sitting beside him, so he got an earful of whatever was on this guy’s mind. I made a joke at one point based on the loose play at our table that I was raising with a strong hand and sure to lose to something spectacular like deuce-4. Sure enough, I lose to deuce-4, and the CH proceeds to tell me that I said it would happen…as if I’ve forgotten that I said it 90 seconds earlier. I say “I know”, and for some reason, he just repeated it again, to which I responded again, “Yes, I know.” But when he decided to say the same thing again for a third time, I snapped back at him “Yes, I get it. You can stop talking now!”

I watched Dwayne and Rob stifle their laughter as the Conversation Hijacker shut up and finally stopped. He didn’t say a peep from that point on until we left.