Ramblings from a writer, traveler, and insomniac

 
The Return to Las Vegas

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

I have a love/hate relationship with Las Vegas. I wrote a bit about it today on Tao of Poker in a post titled Conceptual Alienation. It's a worthy read and have very little to do with poker.

I'm in Las Vegas for work and covering the conclusion of the World Series of Poker Main Event. The halted the final table until November in an attempt to boost ratings on ESPN. The final table will air on Tuesday night and the taping will take place in two segments; Saturday and Monday. The final table begins on Saturday at Noon local time. When action is down to two players, the tournament will be paused and the heads-up action will resume on Monday night at 10pm.

You can get updates on the WSOP from me via two ways: Tao of Poker and Twitter.

I'll be providing updates on the final table via my Twitter feed (@taopauly). If you loathe poker and follow me on Twitter, here is your warning... it's gonna be heavy poker content starting Saturday and ending on Tuesday sometime.

And of course, since 2005, the Tao of Poker has been the place to get the straight dope and behind the scenes action of the final table of the Main Event. I'll be in position starting at noon on Saturday.

This is my last huge work assignment for 2010 then I'm taking the rest of the year off. No more traveling for work. And yet, I'll be on the road for the majority of 2009. I'm heading to Costa Rica in a few weeks for a vacation and more of a working/holiday but I'm not specifically going to cover a tournament. I'm thrilled that there will be no more work travel for the rest of 2009. Every place that I go will be for my own personal amusement (e.g. the Holidays in NYC and Phish fall tour & New Year's Run).

That's it for now. Back to work.
posted by Pauly at 11/06/2009 04:06:00 PM | Permalink |

 
27

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA


I did not write much about the Yankees in the playoffs this year because I'm a jinx when I write about them. In previous years, I wasted thousands of words per game only to come up short since the Tao of Pauly was birthed in 2002. Compared to the domination in the 1990s, the 2000s were the lean years with one World Series appearance and a string of disappointing finishes.

But this year was different. You had a sense that the old Yankees magic was back. It was a combination of three things; the new Stadium, the addition of top shelf talent, and the veterans of championship teams digging deep and looking to reclaim the top spot for one last time.

Oh, and let's not forget that Kate Hudson is regularly chugging A-Rod's cock. That's gotta count for something.

Derek caught a few games in the new stadium this year before I had a chance. I returned to NYC at the end of the summer to see a couple of Phish shows on the East Coast and to specifically visit the new stadium. As we walked around, we were both amazed at the structure but both were worried about the infamous ghosts of Yankees past. If you know anything about the other world, you know that ghosts tend to be territorial. Would they walk across the street? Could they walk across the street?

I'm a sucker for historical moments when it comes to sports that's why I was worried about the new stadium. I would have sacrificed comfort and shorter lines to the pisser if it meant a couple more championships. But those matters are out of my hands. The House that Ruth built is now just a skeletal shadow of its former glory, but that's still scared land.

The playoffs were a major distraction. I was in the middle of going a little mental with a ton of work and Lost Vegas going over deadline. Yankees games killed any sort of momentum that I had during the day. Plus the West Coast games meant that the Yanks were on around 5pm. Sometimes, games were aired earlier during the first round. That killed an entire day. It was nearly impossible to get work done after a game. Those bouts are mentally and physically draining. My mind is mush after 4-5 hours of baseball and pacing around the apartment cursing at Girardi's micro-managing and turning down the sound in order to not have to listen to those dipshit announcers.

During the playoffs, Nicky and I made up a game.... everytime Kate Hudson was shown during a Yankees game, we would have to rip a bong hit. Nice little added element to four-hour long baseball games. But by the times the games ended, I was wasted and unable to do any quality work.

But I couldn't miss a pitch. The Yankees were on the verge of something big. I had not been feeling this confident about the Yankees since 2001. I really thought they were going to win the World Series that year in wake of the 9/11 tragedies. The Yankees really pulled the entire city at the time and gave a lot of confused and grieving souls a welcomed distraction.

In the late 1990s, the Yankees were money. You could count on them coming from behind to win any game no matter how grave the deficit. Plus their bullpen was lights out and rarely lost a lead. No matter what the score was, you knew that the Yankees were going to rally to win late in the game or shut the door in the 7th inning if they had a lead.

The biggest regret was not being able to watch the games with my brother. The only solace I had this season was an email thread that I started in early 2009. It's been going on since then, which is amazing to think considering only four of us are on the distribution list; myself, my brother Derek, the Rooster, and my good buddy Jerry. The email thread was also a NYC Sports thread with the main focus on the Yankees. Since Jerry lived in Miami, we occasionally riffed on Florida sports, but for the most part we discussed the Yankees via email for the entire year.

Since Jerry was in Florida and I was holed up on the West Coast while I worked on the book, I thought the thread could keep us in the loop. The Rooster actually moved out of NYC mid-way which only left Derek behind as the true New Yorker in our crew. That's what made the email thread even more special. Sometimes after being on the road for a day or so, I'll log in and see over a dozen emails from Derek and the Rooster as they argued the benefits of Latina women and why they thought Joe Girardi was ruining Joba Chamberlin's mojo.

There were a few moments when we discussed inviting others to join in on the thread. We actually had a vote for one person --but he lost 2-2 -- and did not get a nod. We even considered giving another friend a 24-hour guess pass, but decided against it. I thought about opening it up to other friends who were Yankees fans, but they might go insane due to the high volume of email that gets sent out during afternoons when my brother has nothing to do at work, and we all know how much free time the Rooster has on his hands when he's not smuggling in illegals from Tijuana to keep his pimp business flowing.

A couple of the World Series games came at the worst possible time -- during the Phish Halloween festival. I watched the first two games in L.A., but I was distracted with guests who flew in for the festival. Games 3 and 4 were scheduled while I camped out in Indio, CA. Luckily, Phish set up a jumboscreen TV near the concert grounds to show the game. I only caught a few innings of Game 3 with a couple of Yankees fans in my crew and skipped Game 4 because of the show. Luckily Derek texted me updates.

I was hoping to catch Game 5 back on my couch in LA, but that never happened due to a huge headache in Palm Springs. Nicky got pulled over by CHIPS for expired tags. It was a snafu with the DMV and she never got her tags mailed to her. They were expired for over 6 months which meant that the car had to be impounded. We were stranded in Palm Springs for the day and didn't get back to L.A. until it was too late.

But finally... for Game 6.... I was able to watch the Yankees without a single distraction. I was kinda nervous once the games reached the middle innings and Pettite was pulled. I started to pack for Vegas in order to calm myself down.

Once Enter Sandman was played on the PA at the stadium, I knew that we were in good shape. Mo Rivera trotted out to the mound and the end was near. And like clockwork, Mo took care of business. The Yankees won the World Series on their home turf in the Bronx, and more importantly, they won it all during the inaugural year in the new stadium which is an indication that some of those ghosts make the trek across the street from the old Stadium.
posted by Pauly at 11/05/2009 11:20:00 AM | Permalink |

 
8

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

Two types of Phish shows stick out; Halloween and Festivals.

Festivals are among the most insane parties in America because Phish usually takes over a spot in the middle of nowhere and a small city springs up as fans camp out for several days after an arduous journey from all corners of U.S., not to mention sojourns from extraterrestrials from couple of nearby solar systems. Phish festivals feature an "anything goes" policy and it's a complete throwdown of music, art, partying, and other spiritual awakening experiences. Friends for life are made at festivals, while fragile relationships are torn apart. Festivals are more difficult that you imagine and only the strong survive without ODing or going to jail.

Halloween shows are equally important in a historic sense because Phish performs a musical costume set and cover an an entire album from their idols; Beatles (1995), The Who (1995), Talking Heads (1996), and Velvet Underground (1998). This year's choice was Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones. A few months ago, the band released 99 albums that they might perform on Halloween -- each a significant influence on one or more of the members of the band. The heavy favorites for the Halloween musical costume were Exile and Michael Jackson's Thriller. I had bets in on both and was a pig in shit when I hit Exile at 14-1 odds.

Some of the most inebriated moments of my life occurred during Phish Halloween and at summer-ending festivals. Phish made a crafty decision and decided to combine a multi-day festival with a Halloween performance. We got the best of both worlds without having to criss-cross the country and drive deep into the Everglades of Florida or up to the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont to soak up a festival.

This year choice of venue, the Polo Fields in Indio, CA, is most known in music scenes as the location for the Coachella festival showcasing plenty of indie bands and mainstream acts. Talk about a contrast of crowds. Hipsters vs. hippies. The grounds were around 2+ hours from our place in the slums of Beverly Hills so we offered up our digs as a launching pad for an invasion. Friends flew in from Colorado, Wyoming, North Carolina, Florida, and even Benjo flew in from London to see his very first Phish show.

We left L.A. on Friday morning before sunrise and skipped traffic. Our plans to link up with an RV went awry, but the Joker and I are professionals and resorted to our backup plan. We made on last stop at K-Mart in town to pick up a sun shelter (the most clutch move of the trip).

Entering the campgrounds at the Coachella festival was notoriously a hassle because of the tight security procedures. Phish acquiesced to the local security instead of providing their own crew -- something they had always done at previous festivals. The result? Heads were hit pretty hard. The folks who arrived early on Thursday sent out the word to be vigilant with stashing your shit and to avoid bringing glass in at all costs. However, even with the repeated warnings via word of mouth, Facebook, and Twitter, the campers were no match to four guys tearing apart your car faster than the DEA could break down a van at the Juarez/El Paso border smuggling a couple of kilos of Peruvian snowflake

We anxiously waited for over an hour as we watched the Draconian tactics unfold in front of us. When it was our turn to be violated, I quickly grew infuriated with the scope of the search. I understood that security is seeking illegal items (especially booze and bottles of beer), but did one security guard have to open up my check book and riffle through my tiny Moleskin notebooks? The check book really pissed me off because he wasn't going to find a bottle of vodka there. So why did he look? I hid extra cash stashed in my checkbook and I let out a "Yo dude, watch my cash!" when I caught him in the middle of eying my poker bankroll. He glared at me and looked like he wanted to deck me. "Please put that back as you found it."

One of the SS guards found my girlfriend's medicinal marijuana stash. She quickly whipped out her medical card but that didn't help. I knew what was up and pulled a Benjamin out of my pocket very slowly to let him know my intentions. I looked the SS in his shifty eye and offered him $100. He took a deep breath and declined. The value of the bud was over $200 and I was not about to overpay to get my girlfriend's medicine back. Those fucking Nazis took one whiff at the pungent aroma of her OG Kush and drool rushed down the sides of their mouths. No way they were about to give up the motherload, even for a cash bribe. I had to write the confiscation off as a loss, considering the rest of the contents that they missed due to my Han Solo skills. We were still well stocked, yet my girlfriend was in tears and rightly so. I was trying to get her focus on the positives -- that we finally made it to Festival 8 and we're with our friends.

It took us about an hour to set up camp or what we'd call home for the next three days. Our crew had four cars in total with two sun shades and almost ten tents. The campground that we stayed in was named Kid A after one of the Radiohead albums that the band suggested they might cover. Six campgrounds in all were named after various albums including Exile on Main Street and we were about a 15 minute walk from the concert field.

Kid A had food vendors something that the other campgrounds lacked. We also had a section for "family camping" where heads brought their kids, who scampered around in their costumes. A couple of wookie kids were wandering around naked. There wasn't much vending going around Kid A with the exception of a few narcotic entrepreneurs wandering through the maze of tents. Since we were in California, there was an abundance of bud for sale which drove prices down to $40 1/8 of Kush.

We played a quick poker tournament while I waited for the DJ Ocean and his wife to arrive. I busted Benjo on the second hand. I flopped two pair from the big blind and turned a boat. He walked right into it and I won the hand. I ended up beating BTreotch heads up for the win. Suckout city.

The Oceans got a bit lost in day parking and I had to trek out to the middle of the sprawling complex to find them. Along the way, I familiarized myself with the massive layout dispersed between polo fields and stables. I found the farmer's market and the general store. I also bumped into the Joker sitting underneath a parasol and hawking LOST lot t-shirts.

Our crew wore Dharma Initiative jumpsuits, and I had mine leftover from Bonnaroo. More people thought we were Ghostbusters instead of characters from Lost, yet the ones who loved the show stopped us for photo requests.

The key to a successful festival is to pick a specific meeting place to use for the duration just in case cell phone batteries run dry. For us, it was the sculpture in front of The Coil. We picked meeting times so everyone could rendezvous 30 minutes before the set and we could all go in together.

The Joker found The Wookie and he was in rare form. I even heard a rumor that he peed in a bottle so he wouldn't miss any of the opening set. We stood to the left of the soundboard on Page side, but had an obstructed view because of the camera jib. Chris Kuroda back lit the palm trees with green lights and there was no backing to the stage so you could see a series of palm trees hovering over the band behind the stage.

I handled duties at the local bookie and I took action all weekend on Phish-related wagers. Most of them involved set openers and closers. One wasted/coked up hipster wanted to bet me that the would open with Walfredo. I knew that was 1,300 to 1 shot, but I offered him 13-1 odds and he jumped at the line. Sucker.

Phish kicked off the festival with a newer Fishman tune Party Time that I happened to dig the most out of the newer material, but the boys were not sharp and still shaking off the rust after a ten week hiatus from touring. The early highlights were the funkified Moma Dance and the uppity NICU. I had higher expectations for Stash but the Fishman vacuum cleaner hijinks made up it. Fat guys playing household instruments is fuckin' genius.

A group of girls were dressed as slutty ocelots. Tight clothes. Lots of furry things. They grooved and swayed in front of us and unleashed a frenzied exotic dance when Phish played Ocelot. They were getting down and dirty as the band finally hit their stride, but abruptly let all the air out with Time Turns Elastic. The first 85% of the composed song is a snoozer but the last three minutes is a rager. I used the downtime to smoke copious amounts of ganja while the Joker and I introduced to Benjo his first "Pauly Takes a Piss Break Song."

I figured that would be the next-to-last song but I was wrong. The result? A two-hour setbreak. No more hot ocelots grinding up against each other. I wrote a message for Trey in my notes...

Trey, you're a boner destroyer. There were six lesbians groping each other and you sent them running to the bathrooms to snort more molly during TTE. Thanks for killing my erection.

Phish made up for their subpar first set with a tighter second set that featured several heavy hitters (Down with Disease, Wolfman's David Bowie, Harry Hood) and crowd pleasers (PYITE, Piper and Golgi). Even DiscoSis #1 recovered after a poor individual performance in the first set. She puked, then rallied. She gets a gold star in my book. Most amatuers would have crawled back into their tent and skipped the second set, but Disco Sis toughed it out.

During Harry Hood a weird balloon-like object appeared off to the side of the concert grounds. Originally red, the object looked like the shape of a pill, but it was actually made up of hundreds of smaller balloons with some sort of lighting rigged up inside. The band jammed Hood while the balloon slowly made its way through the crowd to the back near the Coil. Along the way, the colors changed from red to green to blue to purple then a vast array of multi-colors. Someone in my crew noted that the Hood jam "was kinda weak because the were distracted by watching the balloon and not playing." Who knows the reason, but I barely noticed and didn't mind. I've seen Hood so many times that the balloon was a welcomed distraction.

Everyone in our crew was exhausted and drained after a late night of partying at my place on Thursday and an early drive to Indio on Friday morning. Everyone crashed somewhat early and took advantage of the cold desert air to cool them down. We knew that once day break hit, sleeping inside tents would become unbearable once the scorching sun baked everything in its path. I couldn't fall sleep and wandered around Kid A. I heard the first nitrous tank of the festival. It was coming a SUV in the family camping section. I love irony.

I was up before the dawn with a couple of wook kids dancing outside my lawn. I ordered breakfast from one of the vending trucks by the showers. They ran out of breakfast burritos by 9am, so we opted for sandwiches: sausage, egg, and cheese. Benjo found croissants at a bakery in the farmer's market and he felt like he was back home in France.

While we waited in the shade for the afternoon set, we played poker a second time. I finished in second place and lost to my girlfriend who won the tournament. While we played poker, Strawberry Shortcake had picked up a Playbill with the official announcement that Phish was scheduled to play Exile on Main Street. The rumors were confirmed and I won my bet.

On Day 2 I wore a doctor's costume (recycled from Vegoose I & II). My girlfriend and Benjo joined me. The Joker made up faux-prescription pads which would come in handy when random druggies wandered over asking for prescriptions to various pharmacopoeia.

On our way inside the concert grounds, a guy with sinister pig's mask on his head wandered by. He had a white shirt that read "H1N1" on it and he wore a protective mask over his mouth. Alas, he was one of many variations of the "Swine Flu" that was represented at Phish. I took his heartbeat with a real stethoscope that I used to add authenticity to my costume. I wrote him a prescription for flu remedies and Viagra he shuffled off.

During the afternoon set, a wasted guy wandered over to us and hung out for several songs. He was dancing all over the place and super chatty and spun out. He was glad that we were there with out friends, especially Benjo who was experiencing his second show.

"You gotta spread this shit!" he insisted. "We have to tell everyone how great this is."

I told him that was the molly speaking for him. He did not disagree.

On Halloween, the Joker dressed up as the UPS man reprising his costume from Vegoose many moons ago. I followed him around a bit as he delivered packages to heads dressed up as Phish songs such as Slave to the Traffic Light, Ghost, and Antelope.

Some of my favorite costumes... Mexican Cousin, Don Mattingly (even with his stash), Michael Vick (a Spreadhead wore a #7 Falcons jersey and two bloody stuffed poodles dragging behind him on rope), Buckethead, Randy "Macho Man" Savage, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, all of the Mexican wrestlers including a Nacho Libre, and of course my favorites... the slutty ocelots.

In between sets, I watched the Yankees game with Wildo and Daryl on the big screen near the ferris wheel. The game was delayed because of rain and the anxious crowd was split between Yankees and Phillies fans. We left by the third inning to catch the rest of Phish, but my brother kept me updated with scores via text messages.

The second set of Halloween was what everyone was waiting for. The musical costume. I previously heard Phish perform two of the 18 songs on Exile on Main Street including Loving Cup, a main staple in Phish's repertoire which they usually played to end a set or as the encore. Phish performed Sweet Virginia once in New Orleans (to open up a show in 1999 and I rushed into Lakefront Arena just as they started the tune) but the rest of Exile was virgin territory. They added a horn section and backup singers to assist with Mick Jagger's higher vocal range. Sharon Jones was rumored to appear for a few weeks and she made her first appearance during Tumbling Dice, a song that has a bit of sentimental value for me as a former resident of Las Vegas. I wrote the last chapter of my upcoming book Lost Vegas with the Stones Tumbling Dice on repeat.

I was in a very happy mind-altering head during the first part of that set until I made a command decision to double-up on the party favors and I sunk deeper into the depths of fuckedupness. By the last three or four songs of the musical costume, I was faced. My notes indicated (with stars and check marks) that I preferred several songs on the B-side of Exile. I wondered if the drugs had kicked in, or if the band and their guests hit a groove. I listened to the set again and my gut reaction was spot on. Stop Breaking Down and Shine A Light floored me and might have been the musical apex of the entire weekend.

The third set featured five songs and a sizzling one-song encore. The boys brought out the big guns including Fluffhead, Ghost, and YEM. The glowsticks were multiplying as the set progressed. They kept coming and coming and Benjo became enamored with the raining glowsticks. It's one of those things that doesn't really translate on video and you're not going to have the visual stimulation of the lights and floating glowsticks while listening to an audio recording.

A spun out chick wandered over to us and asked if we were real doctors. She asked Nicky for a medicinal marijuana prescription. Nicky took out her pad that the Joker made for her and scribbled down a few things. She ripped the sheet off her pad and handed it to the girl, who squinted to see what Nicky had prescribed her. She gave Nicky and hug and wandered off. Poor girl is probably going to walk into a dispensary and try to get a bag of dope with a fake scrip.

Suzy had several key moments because the horns and Sharon Jones returned. She unleashed a vocal/scat jam at one point before the boys ripped back into the funky Suzy.

Since we were all more inebriated the second night, Kid A and our actually site was hopping with people who were still raging and took advantage of that extra hour to get shitty. Once we turned our clocks back, we embarked on Wook Patrol through the surrounding area. The Joker made Wook Patrol vests -- bright fluorescent green with a cool logo. When we wore them, we kinda looked like official security personnel, enough that it would make people do a double-take. The actual security patrol the campgrounds wore yellow polo shirts but in the vacillating state of consciousness that some people were in, they were unable to distinguish the two.

We stood around and caught the strangest encounter of the evening... two guys holding hands. The first was dressed in a lion's costume except he had half the costume zipped up and exposed his chest. He held hands with a guy in a dress made out of a Twister board. They seemed a bit embarrassed when they noticed us standing in the shadows.

On Sunday, the last day of the festival, Benjo woke up early and bought croissants for everyone in our camp. He showed up with a huge bag as our crew rose early in order to catch the noon set that featured an acoustic version of Phish. The Joker was already deep into a booze bender while vending in one of the other lots. By the time we met up, he was thirteen sheets to the wind.

Disco Sis and I wore the Wook Patrol vests for the afternoon since it was too friggin hot to wear the track suits. A couple of people mistakenly identified Disco Sis as a festival worker. One guy even asked her for trash bags. Another kid asked me for a map.

Along the way inside, I issued a citation to a puppy puller. How the hell did they get dogs inside anyway? I know that sometimes nitrous dealers bury tanks in the ground week before the festival to retrieve at a later time during the event, but do wooks bury their puppies in order to conceal them?

I ran into a couple of "Hey Bubs" who are friends with Daddy. I booked a couple of Brett Favre-related prop bets.

We got a close up spot for the acoustic set on what we thought would be Fishman's side... little did we know that the band switched up the stage set up. From left to right, it was Fishman, Mike, Trey, then Page. They reversed the order. Highlights included The Curtain With and McGrupp.

Everyone stood for the first threes songs until Trey politely asked everyone in the crowd to sit down for the remainder of the acoustic set. Little did we sheeple know that Trey had a discussion with a friend on whether or not he could get everyone to sit. Behold the powers of a rock stardom. Maybe that's why Trey played Secret Smile to end the set? Just to fuck with everyone. That song was a pimple on my ass in the 2.0 era. But hey, they played McGrupp, right?

Of course, Mike weighed in on the situation and posed a question to the audience, "Are you sitting because you want to or because you have to?"

Leave it to Mike to stir shit sit up.


During the acoustic set, a wook with an inflatable cactus was bouncing off the walls and running around waving his cactus. The Joker wrote him a wook ticket for operating a cactus without a permit, despite his pleas where he insisted that he was not a wookie.

We headed back to camp to rest up before one last push and two more sets. That's where Benjo inquired if there was an age requirement for wookies.

"The majority of hardcore hippies in Europe are wookies... except with less teeth," he said.

The final set featured a couple of head hitters in an overall sloppy set. They nailed some sections and horrendously flubbed a few others such as that ugly abortion version of Reba. Not very impressive. Trey was pissing in my ears.

Rocked to the tits, I shot a porn in the middle of the concert field during the second and third set. Disc Sis' pink unicorn stumbled into a tryst with an alien. Unicorn on alien action. Interspecies porn. They have an entire section on You Porn for those freaks with eclectic tastes.

I also decided to pick out the loud and obnoxious hipsters and L.A. Douchebags in my section who talk loudly. During a glowstick war, they become my targets as I sought out revenge for ruining key moments in songs. I took the loud yappers out with an amped up toss as I harnessed my inner Goose Gossage and let 'er rip. My hushing-tactic worked once or twice.

The third set featured a sizzling beginning (Tweezer > Reprise > Free) before that momentum came to an awful halt with a mediocre performance in the middle of the set that soured my good mood for the day. The middle of the set was dead weight until Mike's Song minus the Weekapaug Grove - one of those rare moments that those two songs were not performed together. 2001 and Light were both squeezed in there good and tight. I almost missed my favorite song, Slave to the Traffic Light, during a trip to the pisser. I couldn't hold it any longer and ran to the bathrooms. I made my way back through the crowd just as they started playing the opening notes.

And just like that, it was over.
posted by Pauly at 11/04/2009 06:42:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Festy 8 Video

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

I shot video for almost three days during Festival 8. I spliced that down to under 6 minutes...


posted by Pauly at 11/03/2009 07:03:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Festival 8 Halloween Pic Dump

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

You can find a full gallery of Halloween photos here.

And here's some of my favorites...



























Click here to view more pics from Festival 8.
posted by Pauly at 11/03/2009 03:06:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Before the Invasion

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

There's a ski bum from Wyoming snoring on my couch. Two other people are passed out on the floor. A Frenchman is sleeping on my office. Of course, I can't sleep. Anxious. I'm a kid who can't sleep on Christmas Eve.

Our apartment was the staging area for a desert invasion. We have a caravan of three vehicles that will sneak out of L.A. before sun up and make our trek towards Palm Springs. It's not quite the U.S. Marines marching towards Mesopotamia, but we have 10 individuals who have made many sacrifices to block off tree days and nights to let loose for Halloween.

In the last nine hours, I made two trips to LAX and one visit to In & Out Burger.

I bought six bags of ice and three lighters from 7/11.

I also made so many margaritas that my lapop keys smell like limes. Strawberry Shortcake likes hers with cherries in them.

The Joker carved a pumpkin. Nicky whipped up a batch of chili. Brospeh went to buy a bottle of Jameson in the Hood. We are cupcakes from Sprinkles in Beverly Hills.

DiscoSis1 bought over $100 worth of groceries for 3 days of camping. BTreotch only got 3 bottles of Gatorade and a bag of beef jerky.

I had two different friends give me full bottles of Vicodin. Generic, of course. One bottle I will stash here, the other I'll take and try to trade up or down, depending on how you look at it. I haven't even left for Festival 8 and I already scored some Aderrall.

The Yankees won. The Rooster and his lady friend stopped by to watch 4 innings. As soon as the Rooster left, Matsui hit a home run. The Yankees eventually won and I dunno if I'll be able to see the next two games because I'll be camping out.

Sleep. That's where I'm a Viking.
posted by Pauly at 10/30/2009 04:51:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Finally Vacation... Almost

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

It's been a wild 30 hours.

I finally have a chance to sit down and write. The first thing on my mind? Miserly bastards.

I have one client that I agreed to do work at a deep discount. Essentially I saved them $2,000 for two months of work. I didn't do it for the money either -- it was a favor. Now they are refusing to pay a simple $30 bank wire fee. Why would I want to give Citibank any more money than they deserve? Plus all of my other clients pay the wire fee as a courtesy. For some reason this client is nickel and diming me. Why am I pissed? Let's see... I save them $2,000 and how do they pay me back? By refusing to pay me $30. A simple thank you would have sufficed, but that never happened. Instead I got an email complaining that I added $30 on my invoice.

Greedy bastards. This is the primary reason why I work for myself and work with a few select clients that appreciate the value of my work.

I felt bad that a buddy of mine was caught up in the crossfire. But I have to stand up for myself or these corporations will run right over me. This is money that can afford to pay it -- they just choose not to -- that's why I stood up to them.

Anyway, that was the only unpleasant moment in the last 30 hours. It's been a fun time otherwise.

I got a call late on Tuesday night from the Joker. There was a huge storm about to hit Colorado. He was worried that his Thursday morning flight would be cancelled, so he decided to fly out on Wednesday morning before the huge storm hit Denver. He arrived 30 hours earlier which threw a huge monkey wrench into our plans. Nicky and I were going to use Wednesday to clean the apartment, which would be a launching base for about 10 Phisheads heading out to their three-day Halloween concert called Festival 8. We had two major groups coming in from Colorado and Florida, not to mention a certain malcontent-chain-smoking Frenchman living in London and how could I forget about Disco Sister #1 from North Carolina.

So the Joker and two friends arrived on Wednesday morning while we still had deadlines to work on and a half-cleaned apartment. We scrambled to make things work. The Colorado boys rented their own car which saved us from a dreaded LAX trip.

I took the Colorado boys to my local coffeeshop. The Joker reads about it here (just like you do) and he wanted to see it with his own eyes. At the end of our breakfast four LAPD officers strolled in to add a dramatic effect to the meal.

Nicky sent them to Venice Beach while we finish up deadlines. We also drove to Whole Foods in Beverly Hills to buy supplies for the weekend and for a Thursday night chili feast that Nicky would serve during the Yankees game. While wandering around Whole Foods, I saw Kate Bosworth. At least, I think that was her.

We watched the Yankees game. One of the Joker's friends, Home Fry, is from Wyoming and he's a Yankees fan. We bonged out on the couch and watched Cliff Lee make mince meat of the Yankees lineup, while the Yanks bullpen blew it in the clutch. The Joker left at the 5th inning to get In & Out Burger. The culinary highlight of the day.

After a long day, everyone passed out after the game. I was so tired that I fell asleep while playing online poker. I woke up to watch Top Chef with Nicky and I kicked her ass in this week's episode for Fantasy Top Chef.

Anyway, we woke up early and I took the Colorado crew to breakfast at O'Groats. Then we loaded up on supplies at Ralphs running around while Michael Jackson's Thriller played on the PA system.

Now, it's the quite before the storm. The Florida crew will be wheels down within the hour and Benjo arrives just before the first pitch of Game 2 is tossed out. We'll have around 12 hours before we have to get ready for a three-vehicle caravan to Palm Spring where we link up with a friends from San Diego driving an RV to Festival 8.

Stay tuned for more info on Festival 8 and Phishy Halloween. Definitely check out Coventry Music Blog for updates. You also should follow me on Twitter along with our Coventry feed.
posted by Pauly at 10/29/2009 04:12:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Amazing Race Recaps

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

Trisha Lynn was cool enough to write recaps of this season's Amazing Race. I don't watch reality TV shows, especially the Amazing Race, but I happen to know two of the contestants via poker so I welcomed Trisha Lynn as a guest poster to the Tao of Poker. Ins case you missed her recaps of the first five weeks, check out...

Week 1: Letters to Pauly: The Amazing Race, Vol. 1 - Suckout
Week 2: Letters to Pauly: The Amazing Race, Vol. 2 - Vietnam VCRs
Week 3: Letters to Pauly: The Amazing Race, Vol. 3 - Cambodian Monkey
Week 4: Letters to Pauly: The Amazing Race, Vol. 4 - Digging Through Sand & Snow in Dubai
Week 5: Letters to Pauly: The Amazing Race, Vol. 5 - Rowboats, Hookahs, and Water Slides in Dubai; Tiff-Ho Move into Second Place

posted by Pauly at 10/28/2009 04:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Restaurant Wars

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA


Padma the co-host of Top Chef
When I started dating Nicky a few years ago, she and her roommate Showcase religiously watched a reality show where 12 or so of the best chefs battled it out in the kitchen for the honor of being crowned... Top Chef. I loathe reality programming as a general philosophy because for every reality show, at least five writers don't have a job... or some WGA-inflated statistic like that. Most of that reality fodder is junkfood and I only stumble up on a few compelling shows. But I caught one episode of Top Chef... and I was hooked.

In the middle of a crazy travel season, I pieced together viewings of Top Chef Chicago (the year that Stephanie beat out the freaky guy with the hair and the lesbo with an attitude problem) via the intertubes and TiVo. I quickly became a convert and religiously watched last season of Top Chef New York when Hosea (the bald dude from Colorado) came from behind to upset Stefan (the bald Fin raised in Germany) who the supreme chef among a gaggle of fry cooks. Stephan is the best of the best that I had seen on the show in the last three seasons -- but he choked in crunch time when it counted the most.

I recently discovered that friends of mine are also Top Chef freaks including a few who are gambling on the outcome of this season of Top Chef Las Vegas. Garth created a Fantasy Top Chef league and Daddy is a part of that contest in DC. Wow. What an ingenious concept! Nicky was impressed and inspired by Garth and Daddy, we engaged in a heads-up Fantasy Top Chef Pool. With 10 chefs to go in this season, Nicky and I drafted a team of 4 chefs a piece. She had first pick.

Nicky's Team Volt: Bryan V., Michael V., Ashley, Mike
Pauly's Team Chorizo: Kevin, Jen, Eli, Laurine
Undrafted: Ash (the gay guy) and Robin (the cancer survivor who won;t shut the fuck up)

Nicky scooped up both Voltaggio brothers while I anchored my team with Kevin and Jen. The oldest Voltaggio brother, Bryan, is the best chef of the crop. Let's be blunt... Top Chef is his to lose. Older Voltaggio's problem is that he's too technical and too perfect that his food and approach is almost too boring. He lacks the imagination and fearlessness that drives his younger brother. Michael is clearly not as skilled in all areas of the kitchen as his old brother, but he has a wider vision and a compulsion to take those risks to meet his vision. If Michael can nail one of those attempts... then little bro will finish ahead of old bro.

I liked my first pick.... Kevin knows how to bring flavor to a meal and put a high brow twist to traditional Southern cooking. It's hard to beat a fat guy who loves pork because his food is consistently bursting with flavors. Jen was a solid second pick because she's the most classically trained and has a firm grasp of old world cooking. Plus, she paid her dues in Eric Ripert's kitchen which means knows how to "wow" the British and Euro-trash chefs who are guest judges. She also has tremendous mood swings and I'm convinced that she's a cokehead, while Kevin and Eli are the two potheads in the group.

On the first week that we kept score, I beat out Nicky 11-2 when Jen won the Elimination Challenge (EC) to take an early lead. I scored a huge break when Ashley got booted (crappy prawns and salty gnocchi) and my Team Chorizo gained an advantage. Nicky's Team Volt was playing 3-handed and I continued my run during the second week when Kevin won the EC and I opened up a 20.5 to 7 lead.

Coming into the Final 8, Nicky was desperate for a big week from the Voltaggio Brothers especially since we reached the exhilarating Restaurant Wars where the contestants pair off into two teams and open their own restaurant within 24 hours featuring a menu with three courses. Disaster or success ensues. The crews who work the best together usually win while the teams screaming, whining, and moaning fizzle out.

But before Restaurant Wars began, the episode kicked off with a twist where the Quickfire Challenge divided the eight chefs into two teams for a blind-folded tag-team cook off with Rick Moonen (has a fish joint at Mandalay Bay) as the guest judge. Tag-team. Difficult challenge for a chef walk into a kitchen with ingredients on a stove and not know what's going on. Chefs drew knives and Jen won the chef lottery and secured the first pick for the Blue team. Jen immediately picked Kevin, followed by Mike, and Laurine. Michael was the captain for the Red team; his brother, Eli, and Robin. Interesting to see who was picked to close for both teams... Kevin (Blue) and Bryan (Red). The two top dogs to anchor the challenge.

Jen kicked off the the first leg and returned from the pantry with Alaskan black cod and scallops. Mike and Laurine kept it moving along and Kevin finished strong with a butter-fried fish dish instead of a poached fish dish as original conceived by Jen. Eli (aka the fat kid with glasses who lives with his parents) went with beef dish. Robin seemed clueless as per usual, but everyone seemed a bit clueless going in blind so she wasn't really at a disadvantage. If anything, I expected the Voltaggio Brothers to push aside her work and go with their instincts. They final product? Asian beef dish.

Moonen is a fish guy and naturally preferred the fish dish. Ergo, the Blue team won. Three of my fantasy chefs were on that team and I picked up a few points. As a bonus, those chefs won a $10,000 M Casino chip with a choice of letting it ride... if they won the Restaurant Wars, then they'd get $40,000. 4 to 1 gamble on a coin flip? Fuck yeah! I loved that added element to this season in Las Vegas. In previous years, Quickfire winners were awarded lame prizes like a new set of knives or day trips to Sonoma. Cold hard cash is way better for chefs who don't make much money anyway and the ones who own restaurants are probably leveraged to the hilt. Letting them gamble on themselves for money is more exciting.

With $40,000 on the line, the Blue team made two crucial mistakes before they even stepped into the kitchen.... Laurine in charge of front of the house and omitting a dessert on the menu. Mike, the most talkative of the bunch, would have a perfect candidate for schmoozing guests. When designing the menu, Jen opted for a conservative route and didn't want to fuck up a dish that ended up the demise of teams in the past. They picked Mission as their name, but it seemed as though they were on a mission towards failure. During the prep, they fell behind schedule and it seemed evident that they did not have enough time to handle the rush. Little did we know that Jen would be steaming clams to order... instead of cooking up batches before they seated anyone.

Red team went with a modern American food twist but picked a horrible name... Revolt, a play on their names (Robin - Eli - Voltaggio brothers). That sounds chic enough for a lounge in the East Village or in Silver Lake, but not a kitschy name for a hip eatery. During their prep... Eli took on front of the house duties, Bryan was in his own world, while Michael was bossing Robin around who didn't take too kindly to his barrage of insults and micro-managing of her dessert dish. I understood his intentions -- he doesn't want to loose on Robin fucking up a peach cobbler, so he's keeping an eye on the weakest link, but his desire to win unleashed his inner asshole.

During service, Padma was quick to bust on Revolt's menu and the name of their restaurant and that would be the only bad thing they had to say about them The first course... Arctic Char with beets & crispy potatoes was average, but Michael gave the judges a hearty boner and promptly gave Padma a wet deck with his chicken and squid concoction. "Lovely" was how Padma described the dish as she couldn't contain her food orgasm. Colicchio dug the chicken so much, he hogged Padma's.

"What the fuck, Tom? Why you stealing my chicken?"

"Models don't need big portions. Fat guys need to eat more."

The second course included the beef dish (NY Strip and short rib) and a fish dish (cod with zucchini and a croquette). Moonen jizzed all over Michael's "brilliant" cod that melted in the mouths of the diners, while his brother Bryan's beef tandem was tasty but served cold.

Michael and Robin feuded during dessert service over the portion sizes. Bryan didn't have time for that petty bullshit and wanted both teammates to take a more professional approach -- shit up and get the dish out and bitch about their issues after service is complete. Despite the spat in the back, Robin's Pear Pithivier impressed the judges, even the hard-to-please Toby. Bryan hit a home run with chocolate ganache with spearmint ice cream even though his brother thought it was a shitty dish when they were tossing around menu ideas the night before. As the judges gushed about the desserts, you pretty much knew that the gang at Revolt locked up the victory despite their shitty name and the bickering in the kitchen.

On the other side... Mission was fucked. They had to pull off a perfect evening if they wanted to have a chance at winning. Laurine seems like a sweet lady, but she looks stoned the entire time. That's cool when you're working the line, but I dunno if she was perky or sociable enough to run front of the house of Mission. It really looks like she just took a Valium or too to cope with the added pressure of Restaurant Wars. hit with $40,000 on the line for her team, you figured that she would have stepped it up. Instead, she wilted under the pressure.

Before the even sat down, the judges moaned about a lack of dessert at Mission. They were more than doomed. Laurine's crappy hostess duties didn't help the cause and she didn't even explain the dishes until Padma had to beat it out of her.

Mike's dishes in the first course looked kinda weak. Come on, an egg and asparagus for Top Chef? Plus the Arctic char was under seasoned that Padma actually asked for salt. Yet, compared to the ensuing dishes from his teammates, Mike's food was more than satisfactory.

Misson was slammed with back orders and the second courses did not arrive in a timely fashion for the judges. Those orders should pushed to the top of the list. Shit, as soon as they complained, I would have tackled other waiters and grabbed four dishes ASAP to send over to the table.

The two fish dishes had to be masterpieces in order to impress the judges when the food finally arrived. You don't make Colicchio and company wait on mediocre food. Alas, the Trout was so-so and the Halibut with clams severely disappointed the judges who had lofty aspirations of Jen's dishes. Even Colicchio took a dig at Jen and said that her mentor would not have been pleased with her piss poor performance.

To complicate matters, the third course also failed to impress. Since they didn't present a dessert, they needed to blow them away instead the undercooked lamb was the nail in their coffin. The Pork Belly was the only highlight for Mission as Kevin hit solo home run but he also fumbled the lamb (conceived by Laurine).

Revolt easily won Restaurant Wars with better service and better food. Michael's dishes were the highlight of the event and the youngest Voltaggio easily won the Elimination Challenge. Michael picked up a book as his prize and $10,000, but gained some karma points by splitting the winner's booty with his teammates.

Mission chefs got their asses reamed by judges. They were shocked that Jen admitted that she steamed the mussels and clams to order. Which would have saved her valuable time and gave her more time to properly cook the other dishes. Jen was mortified when she found out her sauce broke on the halibut. Yeah, she fucked up big time and all the talent in the world was not going to save her. She was on the verge of being sent home to Philly for a couple of crappy seafood dishes.

It came down to this... would the judges have mercy on her or kill off Laurine since she was the weakest chef on that team? Well, it seemed that Laurine took one for the team. She was booted due to her lackluster performance running the front of the house. She really took the bullet for Jen, who gets to redeem herself after faltering under pressure.

Nicky had two players on the winning team and racked up the most points during Restaurant Wars. She finally posted a winning week 11-8 and negated the four-to-three chef advantage. She picked up some ground but I'm ahead 28.5 to 18. With 7 chefs to go... the Voltaggio brothers are surging and Jen is a little rattled.
posted by Pauly at 10/27/2009 04:20:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Dispatches from the Weekend: Boxers, Making Margaritas, and the Pop Overs

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

I have 21 pairs of boxers. I should clarify. I have 21 pairs of good boxers with a six-pack of "less than good" buried in the bottom of a drawer somewhere in LA. They "missed the cut" and I only wear those when I'm desperate and too lazy to do laundry.

I counted 20 when I did laundry on Sunday morning. I counted 20 as I folded. The pair on my body were #21. That made sense. The last time I did laundry was about three weeks ago. I can go three solid weeks (and push it to a fourth) if I want to wear fresh underwear everyday.

As a frequent traveler, underwear is the one thing that I cherish the most on the road. I also learned four different ways to extend a pair of unwashed underwear. An Aussie colleague (who travels more than anyone I know) gave me the tip. He once had his luggage and money stolen while on holiday in Bali and had to make due with a mere pair of skivvies. Front. Back. Inside-out front. Inside-out back. You learn valuable information from travelers that come in handy when you're totally fucked... like using your belt as a weapon if you get cornered by a bunch of drunken Brits at a night bus stop at 3am.

21 pairs. I have at least 14 in a drawer in New York City. I'm a wealthy man not because of my net worth. I'm a wealthy man because I can live for 5 weeks on both coasts without having to do laundry. And If I employ the methods of the Aussie 4-ways to wear underwear without washing, then I can go almost a half a year without doing laundry.

* * * * *
We have a few bottles of tequila in the apartment that were collecting dust. I'm not a boozer anymore. Despite the thick cloud of smoke constantly hovering in the apartment, the last five or six weeks have been a model for clean living. I drank one beer at the Thom Yorke show a few weeks back and aside from that overpriced Stella, I consumed the same amount of booze as a devout Mormon.

CherrieBomb gifted me a bottle of Patron at the WSOP this summer that has been calling my name. Nicky had a bottle of pricey tequila that her mentor in Hollywood gave her. The bottle was a "I'm sorry for fucking you in the ass" gift that Hollywood exec types send each other after they stab them in the back. It's there way of saying, "Nothing personal. Business is business. Here's an expensive bottle of booze to numb the pain."

I have some friends coming into town from Colorado and Florida next weekend for Phish's Halloween festival so I wanted to put the tequila to good use. I shook off the cobwebs from my old bartending days and had a goal to make the perfect Margarita. We had plenty of tequila, but there was one problem... the mix.

All the Margaritas I had previously concocted behind the bar utilized a special bulk Margarita mix or some sort of sour mix. It was cheaper and faster instead of using fresh lime juice. Most of those pre-fab mixes are loaded with high fructose corn syrup which gives the cocktail a sweet taste, yet over the long term it's bad for you. I'm a purist of sorts and went the natural route to generate the mix. After all, my friends are neo-hippies. They dig that sort of shit.

Limes. I went to the store and bought a shit load of limes. The locally grown organic limes were pricey compared to the ominous gigantic pyramid of limes (from Mexico) that intimidated the rest of the fruits and vegetables.

I wanted to use freshly squeeze lime juice as a major ingredient. My next step was to acquire the right liquor. In the bars, they used triple sec. High end joints use Cointreau. That stuff isn't cheap which is why bars use triple sec in bulk.

With the Cointreau and locally grown limes in hand, I was ready. Nicky was my test subject. I whipped up four batches using different variations in the ingredients. I'm a 3-2-1 Margarita guy.

3 parts tequila
2 parts Cointreau
1 part lime juice
Dash of sugar

Pretty simple. You chuck all the ingredients into a mixing cup with ice. A half of a lime is good per one drink. Squeeze out the juice without straining so you get little bits of pulp involved during the mixing process. If you don't like pulp, the bigger pieces get strained during the pour. I also add a dash of sugar for sweetness. Organic sugar to please the hippies. If you like Margaritas very sweet, then add more sugar to the mixing cup. The Cointreau is a much sweeter liqueur that generic triple sec so you don't need as much sugar.

Salting the glass is important. I only salt half the glass unless otherwise instructed by customers. Old trick I learned... first, rub a lime wedge over half the rim and turn the glass upside down. Use a spoon sprinkle the sides of the glass with salt. When you shove a glass into salt dish, you'll get too much salt on the inside of the glass. The spoon trick keeps the salt on the outside.

Shake. Shake. Shake. Add ice to the glass if it's on the rocks. Then pour. Add lime wedge to the side and serve.

I had never made a Margarita from scratch before (not using the pre-fab mixes). I whipped up four (two on the rocks) varying the ratio of ingredients. Nicky mentioned that the first one I made was the most tasty and that's because I stuck to the recipe.

Nicky got sloppy and saucy. She started singing Glee songs. The Margaritas obviously worked. Nicky nicknamed my cocktail... The McGarita.

You can see the video below in yesterday's post...

* * * * *
We don't have many guests at our place in the Slums of Beverly Hills. I have wanted to hosted a poker night for almost three years but there's simply no parking in the area which puts a damper on things and killed any notion of a regular game.

For the most part, our home is both of our offices so it's more of a place of business than anything else which is why we rarely entertain guests. It's not as exciting at our digs as you think. I'm usually locked in my office and when I'm not, we're ripping bingers on the couch.

When I heard the Rooster was going to be in L.A. I was skeptical. The Rooster is a cagey mofo and a bit mysterious. No one really knows what is going on. My friends and I have theories which we joke about but no one has figured out his murky past for sure. So when he said he was going to be in town, I was excited. When he and JoeSpeaker said they were heading to Commerce to play poker, I was less than thrilled.

Poker is my day job and I spend a significant amount of time during the week immersed in poker. When I'm not writing about poker, I'm playing online poker. When I'm not doing that, I'm discussing poker politics, industry news, and gossip among my peers. Poker. Poker. Poker. Sundays is my non-poker day when I shut out that world and watch football. A trip to Commerce would have put a damper on my day of rest. Luckily, the Yankees game was on after 5pm. I invited them to pop on over to watch the game as they closed out the ALCS and continued their march towards the World Series.


After playing poker for a few hours where Speaker got tilted by an old guy with a hearing aid, they showed up on time and brought beer. The Rooster also brought a date. Yep, he brought a lovely woman to his "pop over" and she was very cute and very cool. She didn't mind the fact that I consume copious amounts of ganja while watching baseball, nor was she freaked out that I pace a lot and blurt out disparaging remarks directed at the umpires, opposing team, the Yankees coach, and of course the announcers.

The gang hung out for a few hours. Nicky ordered food from the deli and we all caught up on the latest musings in our lives. Even though Joe Speaker lives in Southern California, he might as well live in Montana since the Inland Empire is not a place we hang out much. He convinced us to embark on a dive bar pub crawl in the Valley, which mortified Nicky. She loathes he Valley. She only drives over the lush hills of Hollywood in order to pick my ass up Burbank Airport or to pick up "medicine" in bulk quantities. I'm going to have to convince her to check out the local pubs in Speaker's neck of the woods.

The Rooster said he'll be in SoCal for a few weeks. So who knows if we'll cross paths again...
posted by Pauly at 10/26/2009 12:22:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Sunday Morning Margaritas

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

I uploaded a new video... How to Make a 90 Second Margarita.


If my writing career goes to shot, I can always return to being a bartender.
posted by Pauly at 10/25/2009 04:20:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Dusting Off the Charge Card

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

After being holed up for the last few weeks, I finally ran a slew of errands on yesterday morning.

5 Things I Bought on Saturday...
1. Vinyl gloves
2. Cointreau
3. Sunflowers
4. Limes
5. Bleeding heart Jesus candle

posted by Pauly at 10/25/2009 11:11:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Saturday Morning Thought Farts

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

I'm in one of those moods where my brain is scattered into one thousand different fractals and I'm trying to juggle too much information at the same time. The result is sensory overload.

I'm gonna pull a page out of my brother's style of blogging. He's a true Hemmingway disciple. Less is more. Short powerful sentences.

I scored tickets to all three Phish concerts at Madison Square Garden the week after Turkey Day. I'm pumped to take the subway to the show instead of having to travel lengthy distances to see my favorite touring band. One night, Nicky and I will be sitting behind the stage.

I woke up with sun shining on a happy sunny Saturday. The weather in NYC is not as peachy keen at the present moment. The weatherheads expect rain today which might affect tonight's ALCS match up between the Yankees and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of California of USA of North America of Earth. Game 6. If the Yanks win, then they return to the Word Series. If not, it's Game 7 with CC on the mound.

My buddy Chicago Bob came over to watch the football games last weekend. We watched the highlights on a snow-covered field in New England, while sitting in shorts and a t-shirt, Chicago Bob remarked, "This is the time of the year that I'm glad I moved to SoCal."

My latest addiction is apple fritters. I buy them in Little Ethiopia. A shooting went down yesterday only a few block from the spot where I shop. The suspect was on the loose and running through the streets of the slums of Beverley Hills. LAPD copters hovered in the chem-trail free sky above our hood.

I started using a mouse with my laptop. I have never done that before and thought it was lame. Man, was I wrong. So many benefits. However, a mouse becomes unusable in tight situations (like firing up my laptop while sitting in a row of seats at Gate 4a at Long Beach Airport) or when I sit on the crapper and sift through my email.

I trimmed some fat on Twitter. Malcolm Gladwell says that 150 is the tipping point for groups. I current follow 228 people/entities on Twitter after making a huge cut over the last few days. I also added a couple of folks. 228? That's about 78 too many. I discovered that there were people who stopped following me so that made the decision easier for me to cut them because I only followed them initially because they started following me.

I don't care if someone follows me or not. But that's not the case on the other side of the fence. Sometimes those high school antics of social media is one of the reasons why I loathe the entire concept. I feel trapped and unable to unfollow them. I guess that I have feelings after all?

Wait. That's bullshit. I should unfollow those people that don't mesh with my personal tastes. It just clogs up my feed and makes it harder to sift through the static. I might be doing them a favor. "Why don't you follow me anymore?" The responses are so many. Too many tweets. Too much whining. Some of my favorite tweets (@SnailTrax for example) are like delicious and nutritious meals. While others are junk food. I need to go on the Slimfast Twitter Diet.

We have less than one week to Halloween. I have less than 72 hours to get all my work done. Otherwise, I'm fucked.
posted by Pauly at 10/24/2009 01:07:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Enter Kramer

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

Cool shit. Every Kramer entrance.


posted by Pauly at 10/23/2009 07:41:00 AM | Permalink |

 
Selective Voices of Reason

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

I'm a news junkie. Well, I should say that I'm a recovering news addict and spent the last few years in rehab. I've been a news hound since I was a wee one. I loved newspapers during their golden era. My father bought two papers every day and the NY Times on the weekend. I saw TV news as "breaking news" and news being reported upon as it is happening instead of reading large pages of black and grey ink that sometimes made my hands dirty.

CNN's coming out party was the first Gulf War. I watched it on TV while drinking cans of beer during my freshman year in college. From that moment on, CNN became one of the primary places to get your news. Ted Turner's former claim to fame was airing episodes of The Andy Griffith Show at 5 minutes past the hour on his "superstation" and trying to colorize classic movies that were shot in black and white. But no one remembers that anymore, at least I don't when I think about Ted Turner, who these days is trying to wrangle control of his old media empire. Old Ted got bored with trying to own 96% of all non-government property in New Mexico and wants to get back into the news business. So much has changed in the last two years let alone the last twenty.

As the alphabet news programs grew -- so did the static and the underlying angle shooters in the government or big business who were manipulating the media outlets to get slanted coverage in their favor (or at the best slanted coverage against their mortal enemies). Over the last twenty years, cable news has morphed into a lucrative business and tremendous tool of spreading propaganda and brainwashing the masses.

If it's on CNN, then it must be true. Right? Those bullets and tracers whizzing through the Baghdad sky in 1991 were real. But Balloon Boy? It can't be a hoax? Weapons of mass destruction? Nah, our government wouldn't lie or mislead the world? Neither would journalists since they have a sense of morality, integrity, and adhere to a code of honor -- that is the ones who are willing to do work for no pay.

Otis strongly argues that Balloon Boy is your fault. I never left a comment on his post. I wanted to say, "I shouted out, 'Who killed the Kennedys?' But after all, it was you and me."

At this point, I really don't care about cable news because it's all static. The media was supposed to keep an eye on the government. As the Latin saying goes, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" That is loosely translated into... "Who will watch the watchers?"

When I turn on CNN in a foreign country, I always say, "This is the shit that America wants you to believe as the truth." I say a similar thing in a British accent when I watch BBC overseas, "This is the shit the Brits want you to believe is the truth." Except there's a little more truth and a significant amount of un-biased reporting -- but it's still the major propaganda wing of the British Empire.

If I can't trust the boob tube or the internet, then what? It's simple. I have to seek out the news on my own through my own personal filter. Thankfully, I programmed Google Reader and Bloglines are able to pick up news blurbs from outlets and journalists who I trust will paint me a better picture of the world we live in. Plenty of business writers (who knew how to read a balance sheer) were in hot pursuit of the Master of the Universes who gambled heavily on credit default swaps, while others were fleecing millions of hard working Americans out of their pension money with different ponzi schemes. But none of the majors wanted to touch that story. The complicated schemes were too difficult to understand -- even for career business newsmen. Plus, they felt that the criminal entities involved were "too big to fail" yet we know how all those dominoes began to fall. And let's not forget, some were paid off or part of the conspiracy.

By the way, hat tip to Human Head for the link to Jesse's Cafe Americain who summed up tour financial ruin the best...

The US financial crisis is always and everywhere caused by the triumph of short term greed in support of Ponzi schemes and frauds, perpetrated by a handful of Wall Street bankers and their accomplices in the political process and the media, facilitated by the wholesale weakening of the American mind and character and European and Asian greed and gullibility.

That's why America stopped for two hours last week and dropped everything they did to watch balloon boy, while career criminals were bailed out by our Government and the masses buried their collective heads in the sand.

Before I go, check out something that the Shrink wrote titled Wandering the Interwebs. Fascinating.
posted by Pauly at 10/22/2009 12:39:00 PM | Permalink |

 
Sluggish

By Pauly
Los Angeles,

Once I'm up... I'm up.

It's hard to fall back asleep. I crawled into bed around 4:30am late last night/early this morning. I had just won a few bucks playing online poker and I finally caught up on reading a shitload of articles that friends recommended. I was up by 6am and tossed and turned for the ensuing 60 minutes before I gave up and shuffled off into my office.

The laptop was running slower than usual so I decided to run an entire system check -- which rendered the laptop unusable for a couple of hours. I kinda wished that I did that maintenance before I went to bed. Without a specific task on my agenda, I was a bit lost and tried to take a nap in my office but that attempt failed.

My office is the darkest room in the apartment whereas the bedroom attracts the most sunlight (even with blinds). It's brutal in mid-morning for a few hours. If we can sleep through that batch of sunlight, then we're fine. If not, then trying to sleep with the glare is impossible.

I opted for a big breakfast. I was sluggish as I walked to/from the coffeeshop, sort of like a British zombie in a partial daze. I'm used to stumbling in at odd hours while I'm jacked up on pharmies, but I don't do that anymore, although I had a similar buzz that came from natural causes. Sleep deprivation.

I have a shitload of work that I'm not 100% prepared to delve into. I tend to lose all attention to detail when I'm fatigued. The screen makes my eyes even heavier and it becomes a chore to even read the screen. I end up with my head down and focused on my fingers striking the keys. The result? More misspellings and syntax errors than usual. Hence the notion of the cat nap to recharge my senses.

When the nap failed, I tried to find ways to perk myself up. A fresh batch of iced tea. Soul anf funk selections on my iPod. I played a little poker to keep my mind sharp and then wrote a bit here in order to keep my fingers moving and the words flowing. I'm doing what I can to jump start my brain so I can blaze through the lengthy list of assignments. As we used to say on Wall Street, "We're burning daylight."

The alternative is to gut it out, which I'll end up doing, but then the quality of copy suffers a bit as I reach the fourth or fifth hour into the writing session. Catch-22. I could always knock myself out with the help of Mr. Xanax and sleep all day, which is another enticing option where I can stay up all night to catch up on work, emails, and the daily grind.
posted by Pauly at 10/21/2009 02:13:00 PM | Permalink |