“No tie.”

I laugh. It’s the annual casino night at my college dorm. I’m dressed up more than usual - I’m wearing a blazer. Today it’s more function than form, though.

The ticket taker isn’t laughing, though.

“No tie.”

I glance around. The cafeteria lady is watching us intently. A police officer is also watching. I get a little bit nervous. After all, I have hundreds of raffle tickets hidden under my jacket. Each one is banded in 200 ticket bundles to make it easier to find the right ticket when I win a prize. Half a dozen friends are behind me with similar bundles. In my jacket pocket is a master list so that I know who has which tickets.

“There’s a dress code?”

“No, Tynan…”

Ooohh….

“… you can’t come in. We know you rigged casino night last year. Is there going to be a problem?”

Man. I get blamed for everything. Sometimes they’re right, though.

“No, I’ll go.”

My friends and I turn around, defeated. This isn’t how it ended last year.

…

One night we sit around on the twenty fourth floor of our high rise dorm on the UT campus. I had the good fortune of being put on a floor with a lot of like minded people - meaning that we all like finding trouble. We made fast friends and spent the spare hours of the day hanging out in the hallways and in our room.

“Let’s break into the RA lounge,” someone suggests.

We’d been everywhere else in the building - on the roof, in the communications room, the cafeteria after hours, the mail room (where we spent 4 hours sorting all of the spring break mail as a random act of kindness), the roofs of the elevators, and even the study lounge where we barricaded ourselves in and set up tents to go camping. We hadn’t yet been in the RA lounge.

We head to the eleventh floor to survey the challenge. Two deadbolted doors with small windows separate us from shelves full of office supplies and disciplinary reports. It looks like an impossible task, especially since my lockpicking gun was recently confiscated, but we notice that the windows on the doors are screwed in.

We go upstairs to get a drill, come back down, and go to work. Exploiting the poor design, we remove one of the windows, reach in and unlock the door, and then replace the window in case other residents walk by.

The snooping immediately begins. The most interesting thing we find is a file full of disciplinary reports. We spend a few minutes searching for people we know in the building, but nothing too scandalous surfaces. Nestled amongst the office supplies is a huge roll of purple raffle tickets. We take a huge chunk of them, thinking that maybe we’ll go to a fair someday that uses the same tickets. Not entirely satisfied with the contents of the RA lounge, we leave.

Months pass.

One day our RA, Hannah, is hanging out with us.

“Well guys, I have to go. I’m supposed to get the casino tickets from the RA lounge before we go to setup.”

My friends and I exchange glances. We have in our posession hundreds of these exact tickets. Could our luck be this good?

The way the system works is this :

1. You get $10,000 in fake money
2. You gamble it
3. At the end of the night you can trade $10,000 for a two piece ticket
4. One piece of the ticket goes into a bucket for the prize you want
5. They randomly pull one of the tickets out of the bucket, and if you have the other piece of the ticket then you win that prize.

With 700 people attending ticket night, we estimate that we will have about 25% of the tickets in circulation. Not bad odds. Right before heading to the casino night we stuff our pockets full of casino chips from our poker set. Maybe they’ll look similar to the ones at casino night.

At casino night people are eating appetizers and casually gambling. We spring into action.

I walk up to Heather, an attractive but not genius girl who lives on our floor.

“Hey, Heather. Look at this.”

I procure a chip from my pocket. It’s a green chip, which is worth $500,000.

“You already won that?”

“Yep, I have three of them. I’ll tell you what - I’ll give it to you, but if you win the vacation you have to take me.”

“Ok!”

There’s a vacation prize that isn’t tied to chips. Everyone gets entered once. Our chips don’t look exactly like theirs, so I figure it’s better to have an unsuspecting patsy try to pass them off.

I watch from a few feet away as she sits at a blackjack table. She puts the chip on the table and the dealer changes it without a second thought. Others at the table marvel at her assumed good fortune.

The five or six of us involved in the scheme congregate and distribute the chips. Between the tickets and chips we now have over half of the money supply. We decide that it’s better to pass them off at the tables, play for a bit, and then cash in legitimate chips later. We spring into action.

We each follow the same pattern for hours undetected. Hours pass and eventually it’s time to trade them for tickets. The problem is that we each have hundreds of thousands of dollars in chips, which could raise flags. We go to the different exchange stations in rounds, swapping only a few each time.

When the exchangers close down we still have unused chips, but most have been exchanged. We have a new issue - our pockets are so stuffed full of tickets that we have no way to know whether we’ve won or not. Going through all of the tickets looking for the correct number would take too long.

We relocate to the handicapped stall of the bathroom, which certainly looks strange to any unknowing lavatory patrons. All of our tickets are laid out on the floor and we begin to catalog all of the numbers and make slips of paper that tell each person which ranges of numbers they’re responsible for. My ears perk up when I hear the drawing starting in the ballroom.

I run back with my tickets and a couple of friends. Terry and Blake remain in the bathroom to finish cataloging the tickets.

“And the first prize is the $50 gift certificate to Serranos… the winning ticket is number 544432″

That’s my ticket. I find it, hand it to an uninvolved friend, and ask her to pick it up for me.

“The next prize is a $50 gift certificate to Bed, Bath, and Beyond…. the winning ticket is number 61234″

Al has that one. He goes up to get his ticket. We start laughing hysterically. The rest of the prizes are called out, with us winning half of them. No one is suspicious because different people pick them up each time.

The two final prizes are a $200 gift certificate to the local mall and a parking spot in the dorm garage. We win the parking spot.

“Now for the $200 gift certificate. The winning ticket is number 54416″

We all look at our slips. None of us have it.

“I KNOW I had that ticket,” I say.

I start to run to the bathroom to get Terry, but it’s too late. He runs out of the bathroom and yells, “I have it!”

The crowd turns and Terry sifts through a tangled mass of tickets. He finds the right one and claims his prize. We leave casino night having won about half of the prizes available. We used the gift certificates to buy things for the bus, and the restaurant gift certificates to eat meals during our breaks in bus work.

So how did we get found out the following year? It turns out that a friend of a friend of a friend was jealous that we won all the prizes. It’s too bad because we had thousands of every possible colored ticket preorganized inside our jackets. Our goal was to win 90% of the prizes and leave people wondering. The irony is that if that girl had come to us we would have just given her a prize.

I was in the hospital a couple weeks ago. Not because I was sick. Nay - I’m a vegan superhero. I had the privelege of observing an actual surgery!

I won’t go into details as to how this was arranged, but it’s one of those things that I’ve always wanted to see in person. Although I don’t want any of it done on me, I really think that modern doctoral wizardry is pretty incredible. As a side note - if anyone reading this can get me behind the scenes anywhere cool, send me an e-mail. I’ll write about it (or not, if you prefer).

My friend and I arrived at the hospital super early. It was an old person getting a knee replacement, and old people like doing things really early. I had only racked up a few hours of sleep, but the excitement kept me wide awake.

I parked the RV and went inside. We were a little bit late, so we were given scrubs, doctor’s masks, doctor hats, and ushered into the operating room with no warning.

I assumed we’d be in some sort of observation area, but we were standing just a few feet away from the patient’s knee, which was cut open with the bones exposed. I expected to be grossed out, but it was really incredible.

The doctor explained everything as he went along, which was an unexpected benefit.

“Now I’m going to drill into the bone to set up a guide. These procedures are much more successful with an exact angle.”

He picked up a drill with a huge bit and drilled 9″ into the femur. At least I think it was the femur - what do I know? He then jammed a large guide rod down the bone and used a bone saw to remove the surface of the knee.

It was intense.

Bone fragments were flying everywhere. The nurse turned her head to the side to avoid getting chunks of bone and blood on her face. She was somewhat successful. The doctor pulled out a chunk of fat with some pliers and said, “this is what fat looks like…”. He showed us the cartilage that prevents bones from rubbing on each other, and pointed out the area where it had worn down.

After half an hour they began fitting the prosthesis. It was a lull in the non stop action of bone sawing and tissue removing that we’d been enjoying.

My eyes wandered across the tables full of instruments. Some of them looked like dentist tools, others like carpentry tools, and some defied classification.

Suddenly my stomach began to grumble. All I’d eaten was a banana. Another grumble. This wasn’t hunger, this was something else. My mouth began to taste slightly of blood. I reflexively looked at the blood pooling in the knee and the comparison made my stomach worse.

I need to take some deep breaths, I thought.

No. I need to get out of here and get some fresh air. I began to walk to the door.

…

I tried to open my eyes. They felt open, but I couldn’t see anything. I strained them wider. It was mostly black, but there was something else there. I could hear voices trying to talk to me, but I wa so focused on seeing that I couldn’t comprehend them. Panic. Where am I? What’s the last thing I remember? How does it relate to this? Am I dead?

Slowly my vision came to me. I found myself on the floor of the operating room. I had passed out and hit my head on the linoleum floor. A nurse brought me back into the doctor’s lounge where I sat, disappointed.

It was strange - it never seemed gross to me. I hadn’t even considered that I would faint. I was disappointed that I couldn’t control it, and even more disappointed that I was missing the rest of the surgery. I thought about going back in, but didn’t want to become a nuisance.

After the surgery was over a 70 year old doctor sat down and told me, “This happens to a lot of people. I hope this doesn’t discourage you. It just takes some getting used to.”

That’s good. Hopefully I’ll have another chance to see a surgery.

We wanted to go to yard sales to furnish our new dorm. We were going to be freshman at UT and we were determined to have a cool dorm room. The problem is that, like other freshmen, we were prone to sleeping late. Getting up at 6am was nigh impossible.

The solution, of course, is to stay up all night, which we did. After our shopping expedition we woke up to see what we had purchased. An ice mold to make an fish shaped block of ice, a bowling ball, and a gumball machine. The gumball machine is the one purchase that warrants a story.

We parked at the bottom of the driveway, which started with a small hill and finished with a flat area in front of the garage. We looked through the unsellable trinkets until our eyes caught a glimpse of the gumball machine. This wasn’t one of those cheap plastic ones found at Wal Mart. It was cast iron, a commercial looking model that could be found at a hair salon or something.

We had to have it.

“Would you take 15?”

At yard sales you haggle because it’s expected, not because you aren’t happy with the price.

The person I asked turned to another person and signed to them. They were deaf. They received some sign language back, and in that deaf accent said, “yes”. Cool. It was listed for $25, so we felt like we had gotten a great value.

We paid and started to carry it down the driveway. It was heavier than expected. A slight shake revealed that there was money still in it. Wow - maybe we’d get a few dollars back and make it an even more compelling bargain.

When we got back down to the car we couldn’t resist any longer. A screwdriver removed the top of the gumball machine. We peered in to see a treasure trove of change. It was a score. We drove home to count the money and found that there was over $50 in quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies.

How in the world could they not have realized that there was so much money in it?

Oh yeah… They were deaf. They couldn’t hear the change.

Twenty Seven thousand fans are packed into Red Rock, one of the best music venues in the world. The arena is carved from a mountain of giant red rocks. The sold out crowd is watching Ben Folds rock out on the piano.

I emerge from a backstage hallway right next to the front of the stage. A security guard stops me, but lets me pass when I point to my badge. “Working”, it says. I’m not working.

In front of the whole crowd, I walk across the stage. Ben Folds lifts one of his hands from the piano, locks eyes, and waves at me. A little startled, I wave back.

This isn’t a significant event. He doesn’t know me - he was just curiously staring at my hat from the table next to mine during dinner. John Mayer was on the other side of my table.

Still, I think back to the only other time I’ve given Ben Folds a second thought. He did a stunt with a group called “Improv Everywhere”. I slumped in my couch and watched the video. It was amusing, and I thought it would be the last time I thought of Ben Folds.

It’s that connection that fascinates me. If I were to consider likely future events with this musician in the video, I’d never think that he’d wave to me in front of 27,000 fans. Why would I ever think that? Maybe I could fathom going to one of his shows, but eating at the neighboring table in the tour’s cafeteria? Being personally recognized

What about when I first read about pickup artists and dismissed it as “stupid”. How could I have ever predicted that I’d live with them and steal the best one’s girlfriend? In high school I heard about the tunnels under UT. Later I was on the news for breaking into them. In high school I played blackjack for the first time at project graduation. Years later I was a professional gambler. McDonalds used to be my daily haunt. Now I’m a vegan. The list goes on…

When situations like this come up, I always pause my brain and think about them. I try to consider other crazy things that might happen that I would never guess. That’s a game that can’t be won, of course, since the whole point is that these things can’t be predicted.

What I love about these amazing insignificant events are that they constantly illustrate the unpredictable and exciting nature of life. I get excited trying to imagine the possibilities that I can’t imagine. Although any given day may seem routine or ordinary, that’s no guarantee that tomorrow won’t be extraordinary.

First - let me get this out of the way : I fed a squirrel. I saw a bunch of squirrels so I went back to the RV and got some almonds. I put one in my hand and sat around forever, and finally a squirrel came and ate it. It was the cutest thing ever - he put his little front paws on my hand to eat it. Now I’m obsessed with feeding the squirrels, but I haven’t had any more success.

Ok, so let me share a few things with you that will keep you entertained for a while.

I read the book, “The Four Hour Workweek”

This book is probably the single best personal improvement book I’ve ever read. It talks about how to maximize your LIFE by working as efficiently as possible and using your free time well. As I read the book I alternated between thinking “wow! I do that too!” and “oh my god, I need to write that down!”

I’m not a huge fan of these sorts of books usually, but this one was great. It has very practical and specific advice, and you can tell that the guy is actually living the life he wants to live. I actually took notes (which I never even did in school) and have already implemented a few of his ideas.

Next up is what I consider to be the best blog on personal improvement out there today. I used to be a big Steve Pavlina fan, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s lost it. Don’t get me wrong - he’s an incredible person and has a lot to admire, but I find his newest advice to be 95% new age junk that isn’t actually going to produce results.

Tyler from Real Social Dynamics is one of the most, if not the most, talented pickup artists in the world. He has a lot of great ideas beyond just picking up women and has a very thorough approach to self improvement. His blog is the only blog that I read on a regular basis - I cut out all the ones that I felt were a waste of time, and his was the only one left.

Last, but not least, I just did a monster interview with the guys over at Pickup Podcast. It was so long that they split it into two parts. I talk about my book a lot and what it was like living in Hollywood. I think you guys will like it, so click here to listen to both episodes.

Time to go to the creek….

I bet you didn’t know that I was going to have video posts. I didn’t either. Todd and I made some funny videos on the way up to Houston this weekend, so I figured I’d smoosh them in with the PRK video and make a little episode out of it.

I plan on making more of these in the future because it was fun and probably more entertaining to watch than my posts are to read. Enjoy, and let me know what you want to see on video.

Oh, and the quality is crappy on two of the clips because we used my phone. It was an impromptu series of stunts.

Yesterday I spent all day putting my new solar panel on the RV. Two weeks ago I got the panel in the mail and I called Crestview RV (a local RV place in Austin) to get it installed. They said it would be about $200, but that they were backed up and it would have to be left there for two weeks. I told them I couldn’t go without it that long, so he made an appointment for two weeks later and said to come first thing in the morning.

Those of you who know me know that I hate waking up early.

Still, I want my solar power so I woke up early yesterday and my fantastic sister, Kelsey, drove me 15 miles to bring it in. When I got there they told me they were backed up and I would need to leave it there for two weeks. Forget it. I’ll do it myself.

I haven’t gotten the right cables yet (the wires have cool connectors that make it easy to add panels), but I did securely fasten it to the roof. I also got a little creative with the mounting and figured out how I can add 3-4 more panels.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. All I really should have said is - never go to Crestview RV. I wrote an article about Mercedes Benz of Austin being horrible, and a bunch of people see it now when they search for Mercedes Benz of Austin, which delights me.

After working in the sun all day (for your reference, I am built for loving, not for working all day in the sun), I drove back to my normal RV parking spot, got on the electric skateboard, and met Todd, Jeff, Tracy, and Melissa at Daily Juice, which is an awesome smoothie place I go to pretty much every day.

After drinking our smoothies we showed the girls how to ride the skateboards, which of course was far more fun than they expected, and we spent the next hour taking turns skating up and down Barton Springs Road. After a while we notice a little kid, maybe 6 years old, in a superman costume. It’s not halloween - he just likes superman. He’s with a guy we assume is his father.

“Can I have that?”

He points to the skateboard and asks Tracy.

“It’s his,” she says pointing at me, “You have to ask him.”

“Well, you can’t have it, but if your dad says it’s ok I can give you a ride.”

“Sure,” his dad chimes in.

He stands on the board and I use the remote to make it go really slow. He loves it.

“You want me to pick you up and give you a better ride?”

“Yeah!”

Next thing you know I have a kid dressed like superman in my arm as I fly down the sidewalk at 15mph. His cape trails behind in the air. We ride until we’re out of site of my friends and his father. I get off the board to turn it back around.

“No! Keep going!”

“I can’t, but we can keep riding back and forth”

For the next 10-15 minutes I gave the kid skateboard rides, and he probably had the best time of life. I return him to his father, who is totally unconcerned that a stranger in a sparkly hat is shuttling his child up and down the street.

We sit on the rickety chairs outside of Daily Juice and say hi to the employees as they go in and out of the tiny shop trying to close down for the night.

A rugged looking 40 something year old stops in front of the store. He knows the owner and starts chatting with us. The conversation turns to kayaking, and he tells us about an incredible deal on an inflatable kayak he got.

Inflatable kayak?

Yep. A few minutes later he’s gotten it from his car, and we’re timing him to see how fast he can inflate it on the sidewalk.

About a minute and a half.

He gets in and shows us how he sits, where he puts his shoes, how the paddle goes together, and where his varies girls and dogs have ridden as they were chauffeured down the creek. He’s not weird or creepy at all, just excited and friendly.

A thirty something year old guy notices the kayaker, who likes to be called Tarzan, and asks about the kayak. He gets the full pitch as well. By the end of it we all want one, and we later all go to ebay to see how much they cost.

I skate a couple hundred feet home to the RV and move it into a legal parking spot. A local restaurant called Chuy’s hosts free concerts of the top Austin bands every Thursday which makes parking difficult. People pack into the restaurant and sit on blankets in the lawn in front of it.

Todd tells me that he and some others are seeing a movie at midnight. Here in Austin there’s a theater called Alamo Drafthouse which serves pretty good food and beverages during the show. I only slept for four hours the previous night, but I’m in. I haven’t seen a movie in almost seven months and I want to see what it’s like with good vision. I don’t expect much from the movie, Knocked Up, but it was actually pretty great. My vision is even greater.

I ordered chips and salsa, which is slightly contraband on my diet (the stone ground corn is fine, but it’s probably fried in bad oil), but I’m easing up on the diet a bit for the sake of weight gain. If the choice is eating something almost good for you or nothing, I’ll take almost. I tried to order a black bean burger too, but they didn’t have wheat buns so I changed my mind.

I get home and sleep.

The next morning, and by that I mean 1pm, I wake up. I forgot to set the thermostat for the fan, so I’m burning up. After I take a shower and eat some breakfast, Todd and Melissa pick me up. We’re going to a place called Sculpture falls, which is a huge waterfall (not tall, just wide and long) on Barton Creek. There’s a closer one called Twin Falls, but this one is half an hour of hiking farther away, so there are less people there.

We’re joined by Tracy, Cova, Jonah, Tiffany, and Krystal. Most of them have jobs, but on a day like today the creek is more important. Five minutes after we get there we see a kayak coming towards us. It’s inflatable. It’s Tarzan. I was hoping he’d offer to let us try out the kayak, but he’s on a mission. He goes over the falls and continues down the creek.

We spend the day lounging on the rocks that stick out of the waterfall just high enough that our feet can still rest in the running water. We jump off a rope swing, swim against the current, and try to keep our balance as we hobble over the rocks. There are dozens of other people there. White pasty nerds who you wouldn’t expect to be away from their computers. Lots of “alternative” looking people with tattoos. Frat boys. Older people. It’s the kind of spot that makes everyone so happy that they all get along, returning the frisbee when it overshoots its target, and petting each other’s dogs. Everyone leaves their shoes, phones, keys, and shirts by the side and they never get stolen.

The falls are in a valley with trees lining both sides all the way up to the sky. Once in a while another set of kayakers or tubers goes over the falls. We laugh as we watch people try to wade across without getting their shirts and shoes wet. Half of them succeed.

Finally the sun passes over the side of the valley and we start out hike back. I go barefoot and walk through the mud and dirt because I only brought uncomfortable sandals. We make it back to the car and half of us leave for Casa De Luz, the Vegan restaurant I frequent. Friday night is Indian night, so I never miss it unless I’m going out of town. Even then I try to fit it in first.

It’s one of the best Indian nights in a while. There’s spiced basmati rice, a ginger vegetable soup, salad, spelt flatbread, green lentils, coconut curried vegetables, kale with poppyseed and sesame seed sauce, and coconut goji berry chutney. It’s amazing. As we get our second plates a flash of recognition crosses Todd’s face and he says hi to Tarzan, who also happened to be coming there for dinner.

We invite him to sit with us, and he does. He’s asked in a friendly way by Robert, one of the employees, to please wear shoes next time. We share stories. He tells us about the time a guy jumped in front of his car and he killed him. He’s a massage therapist at a popular spa called “Milk and Honey”. He works three days a week so that he can, “Live life for the other four.”

I like that attitude.

After dinner we all go back to Daily Juice to get some chocolate. They make the most delicious chocolate out of cacao nibs, agave nectar, and coconut butter. It’s healthy and better than any other chocolate I’ve had. I get two mint chocolates that they sell me for a dollar each because the mint didn’t set properly.

Now I’m sitting in my RV with my windows open. The little league game in the field behind me just finished, so people are piling into their cars.

This is why I like Austin so much.