Tao of Pauly

Keepin' Up with Smarty Jones

A quick glance at the wall calendar told me, "Hey dipshit, it's May already!"

"Wow, so soon?", I wondered, Where did the first quarter of the year go? I guess I was so bogged down in trying to improve my poker game and chasing down dreams and I spent too much time worrying about my latest screenplay that I forgot life goes on without my approval or disapproval. On the brink of insanity, the world spun furthur out of control this weekened. It was a bloody Sunday in Iraq with more soldiers dying and more US citizens reported missing. With the slew of celebrity trials and Friends ending and Donald Trump getting engaged, the gossip rags have been distracting the lot of us for the better. It's an awful world out there, so buy a Happy meal and a Hummer and spend $11 on some mindless Hollyweird piece of shit movie and you'll forgot all about the radical fundamentalists that want to see our imperialist blood spilled all over my newly paved streets.

Alas, I am well rested... after a brief weekeend getaway... and I'm ready to get a lot of work done the next few weeks, before I wander off again to follow The Dead and Phish on their summer tours.

Sure, on Saturday, it was wet and the weather was crappy in Kentucky, but don't tell that to Smarty Jones. He won the 130th Kentucky Derby, and as it's been the trend, as I did not win any of my wagers. It was a rough Saturday for sure. My horse Tapit didn't finish in the money. But at least we have more proof that God hates the Red Sox, and that He is... indeed... a Yankees fan. Mighty Boston, led by the Passion of Johnny Damon (as one drunken Red Sox fan from Las Vegas dubbed him while I watched the Yankees-Red Sox game from a few weekends ago at the sports book), were swept by the sizzling Texas "ARod-less" Rangers... and of course, the Yankees are hot, winning six straight. But itsn't there more to life than horse racing and baseball?

Of course there is... more gambling. Despite my self-imposed break from poker (anything to quell my losing streak), I managed to jump on Party Poker and play a few hands. Actually, I watched my brother attempt to win a seat in a satellite for the World Series of Poker... in addition to playing a few No Limit ring games. Of course, what's a weekend on Party Poker without getting recognized by a fan of the Tao of Poker? It's common now, and I'm used to having fans from all over the world watch me play and root me on, and say witty things in the chat after I take down a huge pot. And in a rare appearance, I got to sit and play with the infamous Poker Penguin all the way from New Zealand! It was an honor to sit at his table and I brought him bad luck. Sorry, Penguin. But he saw me school a few fish on a few hands, especially when I took down a huge pot with pocket aces... and everyone at the table thought I was playing.... the Hammer!

Ah, there's the TriBeCa film festival in NYC and I have tickets to a few screenings, that which Haley and I will take part in over the next few days. Speaking of which, I decided that I was going to work on two screenplay ideas this summer... the poker script, which Alex from Prom on Mars sugested I write... and another Untitled adventure... something that I seriously have been kicking around for two years... a modern day adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear... set in L.A. or in NYC.

And then there's the pages and pages of a sample scripts of my infamous Subway Stories... that Haley and friends of hers from acting class want to shoot pretty soon. Those meetings start out serious and end up with one actor getting irked and the rest of us getting drunk and making fun of the disgruntled actor. Maybe one day this Spring I'll finally shoot a few scenes and I'll get to show off my chops as a director.

And of course, I'm ready to write my best novel to date. As soon as I sit down to write it... the next novel project will be... (it has to be)... my masterpiece. Without sounding too cocky, but I'm going to pen a classic sometime at the end of this summer. And I have three serious ideas for novels. Whch one will be given the distinction of my "finest work to date"? Stay tuned. More to come...