The One Where David Arquette Crashes Our LES Rooftop Poker Game

From time to time in the summer months, a group of us gather on my rooftop on the Lower East Side to play poker. Last night was one of those nights – Ken, Jesse, Daryl, and Jordan all showed, as did another old vet of this game: Josh Rappport, in town from England. We’ve all been friends since college, so it’s a convivial affair.

The game had gotten underway, the sun had just set, and Jordan had finished relating the epic tale of losing out on a Park Slope apartment when we heard yelling from across the way. My building is just across the street from The Hotel on Rivington, and that’s where the sound was coming from. Some dude in his hotel room had spotted our poker game and was shouting, “CAN I JOIN YOUR POKER GAME?” over and over. And over and over. Eventually, the dude stopped shouting, and the game carried on.

Ten minutes later, a random guy appears on my roof. “Hey, I’m the dude that was shouting from across the street.” Awkward moment. Then Daryl says, “Hey, I recognize you.” Uh, it’s David Arquette. He wants to play poker.

Dude pulls up a chair, buys $20 in chips (we play .50/$1). Stays for more than two hours. Lots of hilarious loose talk that won’t be repeated here ensues. At one point, Arquette snaps a shot of himself with his cellphone and Twitters it – actually, sends it to his assistant to Twitter.

Why use an assistant to Twitter? Arquette: “She makes sure I don’t Twitter inappropriate things. Like on my train ride from Chicago to New York last night, I sent her a Twitpic of me taking a dump, but she didn’t Twitter that.”

Arquette plays solid poker until the end when he goes all-in blind before the deal and loses his stack to Daryl. Says goodnight like a gentleman, thanks us for letting him play, pulls up his shirt to show us the tattoo he just got at Lolapalooza in Chicago…

…then takes off in the direction of the Meatball Shop, where it appears he ordered the entire menu. Just another poker night on the Lower East Side.

Important/Amusing Postscript: Somewhere in the midst of the game, we found out Arquette was in town to appear on today’s Howard Stern Show. Now Daryl (who’s to the left of me in Arquette’s TwitPic) is one of the world’s biggest Howard fans, so he asked Arquette if he could get him on the show’s guest list. Sure, said Arquette, who emailed his assistant to set it up. Arquette was scheduled to go on at 8:30am, so Daryl’s plan was to show up at Stern’s studio in midtown at 8am and hope for the best.

For the conclusion of this potentially legendary tale, here’s the email our poker group just received from Daryl:

So I got there at 745 to meet him at 8 for his 830 spot. My name was not on the list so I hung out in the lobby of the McGraw Hill Building and waited. At 8am I called David and got his VM. Called his assistant, got his VM. At 815 I asked at the desk if they had David’s name and they said they did, but that he hadn’t checked in which was weird as he’s always early. At 845 I was about to leave but decided to see if I could weasel my way in. I asked if they could call Gary (Bababooey) and have him add me to the security list. They got Tracey Millman (office manager) on the phone who said she would get me up. Now you have to understand that I’ve been listening to this show since I was ten, so every insignificant person on the show is a major celebrity in my world. Even Tracey Millman. So I get a pass and I go upstairs. I check into Sirius and they direct me to the Stern Compound. Ronnie the Limo Driver meets me at the door and says, “So. Where the fuck is he?”. I tell Ronnie that I left him at 1230 last night at his hotel and he seemed fine and psyched to be coming in to the show. He sat me in the green room and immediately Gary comes in with a cameraman and asks me what happened with David. I went into the full story and Gary is laughing at me, stops the story and says incredulously, “So you met him last night??”. He confirmed what I thought of this morning which is that David doesn’t drink or do drugs. I told him I was a lifelong fan of the show, and he totally got what this experience was for me so he told me to hang out, help myself to cupcakes (Cupcake Wednesday!!!) and the interns kept offering me drinks. I sat in the green room while every office guy from the show walked past me and nodded politely. Then Lisa G. from Howard 100 News comes in with a microphone to interview me. In the middle of me telling my story my phone rings. It’s David. He wants to know if I’m Gary. I tell him it’s Daryl from poker, but I’m standing next to Gary’s office, and I’ll get Gary for him. This clearly made no sense whatsoever to him. He starts explaining to me that he overslept. I give my phone to Gary who is now listening to David’s story. All of this is being filmed and audiotaped for HTV. I think they rebooked him for tomorrow. So now the show is in commercial and I’m in the hall talking to George Takei and Richard, Sal and Fred. Gary pulls me into the green room and we just hang out for 10 minutes talking about David, then about me and what I do and so on. He told me I should hang out because there’s a chance Howard will want to talk to me about it on the air (which never happened). I’d been there for almost an hour at that point and didn’t want to feel like a shnurer, so I went to say good bye and thank you to Gary who gave me his card and said that if I don’t come back with David tomorrow I should email him and he would get me in to sit in on the wrap up show sometime which seemed very genuine. He kept saying what a nice guy I seemed like, and since I live in the city, would I be available to come down sometime for Superfan Trivia. Frankly, if David had shown up nobody would have noticed me. Listen for me on Howard 100 News. Awesome experience.

David Arquette is hereby invited to sit in on our poker game anytime he’s in NYC. Awesome dude, hilarious night.