Pouring a Forty For This Blog's Homie, Paris Hilton

First off, as has been this blog's recent trend, Pun City is going to regurgitate another website's recommendation and give this link to an extremely hilarious video clip:

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Paris%20Hilton%20Jake/video/x27niv_paris-hilton-jake-byrd?from=rss

Now that the link-o-the-week is out of the way, this blog can move back to the trip recap.

Previously, on Pun City....

...and Scene.

Trip Recap #9 - March 9th, 8th day of the trip. The night before, this blog had gotten back to the hotel and inserted the room's keycard into the door. (Yes, the room had keycards, this blog was as stunned as anyone, but hold that thought...). Inconveniently enough though, for the second night in a row, the keycard didn't work. Also, the backup keycard did not work.

After last night's card not working, and several minutes of being accused of rubbing the magnetic strip against my credit card's magnetic strip, the hotel had courteously provided two non-working keycards as a sign of good faith. This time, armed with both keycards as proof of the recurring, inexcuseable problem, this blog marched into the nice moron's, er, hotel manager's office. The following is an approximate transcript of the conversation:

Pun City: "Hey, the keycard didn't work again. Actually, neither of them did."

Moron: "Did you rub them against each other?"

PC: (Shaking head, lifting hands skyward, and using 'Goddammit, we've been through this before, and why would anyone do that anyway?' face) - "No."

M: "Did you have them next to a credit card?"

PC: (Visibly incensed): "Ugh! No!"

M: "Oh, well, it's too cold for them to work, here's a new one."

AAAAAAHHHHH! Why would you even accuse the customer of doing something ridiculous like that if you were just going to use the cold excuse anyway? You had the cold excuse built in, this blog probably would have just let it go! Fricking Jaghole!

Customer's always right, eh?

Not at Absecon's Rodeway Inn. This blog would like to clarify so that Pun City is not involuntarily libeling the other Rodeway Inn in Absecon, which this blog briefly stopped at thinking it was this blog's lodging. The one at 200 E White Horse Pike, which is technically in Galloway, is the problem one. There are a couple others on E White Horse Pike that this blog can't vouch for. The one this blog briefly stopped at gave good directions to the lousy one.

This blog does seem to recall the wake-up call actually happening at the requested time this day, so that was a surprisingly good start. That gave Pun City some time to head over to Hamilton Mall. This was a solid mall. Lots of sports offerings in the mall, this blog was pleasantly surprised by a store called "Fadz" in the mall. This blog is equally surprised by how little information there is about the retail outlet online. If you can find something, let Pun City know, because this blog came up empty.

In a final non-basketball note, this blog inadvertantly used a full-service gas station. This blog didn't even know it was full-service until some dude came out of a booth and asked how much this site wanted in the tank. Since this blog would have preferred to pump its own gas, and the guy didn't speak too much English or do anything notable, this blog didn't dole out a tip.

The games of the day were Xavier vs. Rhode Island; and Saint Louis vs. George Washington. GWU slashed SLU, and Rhode Island beat the #1-seeded Musketeers. During the Xavier game, this blog struck up a conversation with a guy sitting in a nearby group. He was wearing an Illinois shirt and somewhat rooting for Xavier. He was there with Xavier fans but not really a Xavier fan himself. He asked what Pun City was doing there after this blog told him that it was a Wisconsin fan. This blog told him that it was just travelling alone and that every year Pun City just packs up and heads to a bunch of conference tournaments. After digesting that for a minute, the Illini fan smiled and said, "That's every guy's dream!" He then proceeded to tell everyone in his group what Pun City was there for, and it was some pretty good vindication for this blog's odyssey.

Some band notes:

Xavier's band played Jet's "Cold Hard Bitch," Europe's "Final Countdown," Smashmouth's "I'm A Believer," the theme from Blues Brothers, and Low Rider.

GWU's band played Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," Journey's "More Than A Feeling," and a medley of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Smoke On The Water".

The SLU-GWU game ended up being Brad Soderberg's last game as coach of the Billikens. This blog sort of wishes it had seen Rick Majerus coach them, but this blog imagines it will probably get to see him coach live sometime soon given Majerus's affinity for the Milwaukee area and the number of teams in the area.

Next Trip Recap should be a good one. The Rodeway Inn manager's piece-de-resistance, the Atlantic 10 final of Rhode Island vs. George Washington, a drive back to Richmond to catch a flight, a stop at Maryland's Comcast Center, Selection Sunday madness, two flights and 3 airports. Two days, one game, and a whole lot of other stuff going on. Don't miss it, this blog plans on Next Tuesday. Hopefully a post in between there on other stuff.