Tao of Pauly |
|
 Contact About Follow Me:   
  Past: Hollyweird Present: Las Vegas Future: Colorado: 90 Days San Francisco: 95 Days Featured Projects May Truckin' Phish Blog My Videos Food Pics Current Projects June Truckin'  Old Projects April Truckin' Tao of Bacon My Sites: Truckin' Tao of Poker My Photos Tao of Bacon Las Vegas Blog Phish Blog Fantasy Sports Live Pauly's Pub E-Story Mr. Dickhead Pauly Paintings My Published Articles  Sponsors:  Download PokerStars  Bonus Code: Pauly ArchivesMay 02 * Jun 02Jul 02 * Aug 02 Sep 02 * Oct 02 Nov 02 * Dec 02 Jan 03 * Feb 03 Mar 03 * Apr 03 May 03 * Jun 03 Jul 03 * Aug 03 Sep 03 * Oct 03 Nov 03 * Dec 03 Jan 04 * Feb 04 Mar 04 * Apr 04 May 04 * Jun 04 Jul 04 * Aug 04 Sep 04 * Oct 04 Nov 04 * Dec 04 Jan 05 * Feb 05 Mar 05 * Apr 05 May 05 * Jun 05 Jul 05 * Aug 05 Sep 05 * Oct 05 Nov 05 * Dec 05 Jan 06 * Feb 06 Mar 06 * Apr 06 May 06 * Jun 06 Jul 06 * Aug 06 Sep 06 * Oct 06 Nov 06 * Dec 06 Jan 07 * Feb 07 Mar 07 * Apr 07 May 07 * Jun 07 Jul 07 * Aug 07 Sep 07 * Oct 07 Nov 07 * Dec 07 Jan 08 * Feb 08 Mar 08 * Apr 08 May 08 * Jun 08 Jul 08 * Aug 08 Sep 08 * Oct 08 Nov 08 *Dec 08 Jan 09 - Feb 09 Mar 09 - Apr 09 FriendsDerekThe Daily Dave Sigge S. Amdal Schanzer's Garage Al Can't Hang April Bad Blood Benjo Betty Underground BG Bobby Bracelet Brandon CC Chad Change100 (a.k.a Nicky) Daddy Dawn DJ Ocean Dr. Chako Eial Girtz Emi The Fat Guy Falstaff Gracie Grubby Chris Hanel HDouble Human Head Iggy Instant Tragedy Jaxia Jen Leo Justin Mad Maudie Mella Mean Gene Jeff Middleton Sean Lovelace Las Vegas Blog Lil Bitchmore Me & Ophelia Michalski MoMA Dance Otis Mrs. Otis Jeff Pulver Prom on Mars Pokerati Rachel Hall Kirk facty Riding the F Train The Rooster Gil Shapir Shane Nickerson Spaceman Mrs. Spaceman Joe Speaker Don't Forget to Flush Charles Star Tony Pierce StB Wil Wheaton Mike Wise WSOP Blog Aaron Gleeman Alarming News Alternet.org BIG Charts Bloomberg Noam Chomsky Deal Breaker Deadspin Drudge Drunken Stepfather ESPNFantasyGames Fark Fleshbot io9 Jam Base L.A. Weekly McSweeny's MMAJunkie James Nachtwey Nerve NaNoWriMo Stay Free The Stranger Hunter Thompson Village Voice Verbosities 
Dumbocracy by Marty Beckerman Garcia: A Signpost to New Space by Charles Reich & Jann Wenner Heat by Bill Buford "Tao is the thing that accompanies all other things. Its name is Tranquility amid all Disturbances." - Chuang Tzu   
Atom Site Feed   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Download PokerStars Friday, December 31, 2004
WPBT Video Bill Rini spliced together a short video clip of the poker bloggers tourney... the infamous Holiday Classic at Sam's Town Casino in Las Vegas. Take a peek. Good job, Bill. | Permalink | Thursday, December 30, 2004
Sick Pauly I've been fighting the flu for almost a week now. I bled away $250 of my bankroll making questionable plays while under the weather on Christmas Eve and I stopped playing online poker until my health improves. Just when I thought I was getting better on Monday, I got worse. On Tuesday I was hit with a bout of Montezuma's Revenge and I puked up everything else in my system. I cannot recall the last time I threw up without a three day long drinking or narcotic binge as the main culprit. Seriously. I went a couple of days without eating anything aside from dry toast and Gatorade. I lost ten pounds and a fistful of hair. That was followed up by a two days of the chills and shakes. Fever dreams are the worst. It's like tripping on bad acid without all the fun colors. I had a few moments of sheer terror when I was seeing the faces of tsunami victims haunting me in the middle of the night. I almost went stir crazy and started barking at the shadows. And yeah, I don't have health insurance, so a trip to the doctor or hospital was ruled out right away. It had gotten so bad that I had to move back home with my mom... and that might have been a mistake. She greeted me with a look like "the prodigal junkie returns" and insisted that I was ill because I don't wear a winter hat and a sweater when I go out to play. By the way, she has no cable TV and her apartment is freezing. What has happened to me? A year ago I was in balmy Miami soaking up the sun, following Phish, and chasing around half naked teenaged girls in the hallway of a South Beach hotel with a chunk of hashish the size of Herve Villechaize in my pocket... and this year I am bed ridden dodging the saracstic quips from my unsympathetic mother, who I am now convinced has some percentage of Eskimo blood in her. I got super depressed the other day because I haven't been well enough to physically write. I am way behind in updating my sites, personal writing, answering emails, and a few freelance assignments. Anyway, Vegas trip reports will have to be postponed until next week or this weekend at the earliest. I have a deadline on my blogzine which takes prioirty. I apologize for the delay. Anyway, congrats to Otis and EvaCanHang on some big tournament wins this week. You guys rock. And, if you are looking for WPBT pictures then send AlCantHang an email. Please Vote for Elisha Yes, I am groveling once again. Plase vote for Elisha Cuthbert. A simple wish for a sick blogger. Thanks. Voting is supposed to end on New Years. | Permalink | Monday, December 27, 2004
Blog Facelifts I spent some this weekend tweaking my template on the Tao of Poker. I updated old features like Who am I? and add a new one called FAQs. I also cleaned up my poker blog roll and that inspired me to do a little cleaning on this site... which I will be undertaking at different times this week. I haven't cleaned up my blogroll for over a year. I've been adding links steadily but only removed a few broken links and a links to boring blogs. Check back soon. | Permalink | Thank You Otis Last week on my poker blog, I blogged My Christmas Wish. I didn't get much of a response via comments or emails... but I knew that people took my entry to heart. I didn't think anything about it until I read Otis' blog Rapid Eye Reality. Here's what he wrote yesterday in an entry called Pauly's wish, a community's reality. Here's a bit: I met this guy a few weeks ago. Actually, I knew who Pauly was already. I'd been reading his blog for quite a while. But, I met him face to face a few weeks ago. When I finally shook his hand, slapped his back, and shared a few hours with him, I realized his was as real as his blog might have you believe. That was refreshing. I don't know how many people are just as cool in person as they might seem on their blog.I'm humbled that my words affected you and more importantly people in your community. Otis, you are a true gentleman. Thanks for inspiring me. | Permalink | 9.0! 
Tidal wave hits Phuket. Sad news about a 9.0 Earthquake on Sunday which caused destructive tidal waves that killed at least 15,000 people in the South Pacific. Here's a link to some pictures of the intense damage that the largest quake in 40 years left behind. Here's a link to a slide show. | Permalink | Sunday, December 26, 2004
Pauly's Pub 
Week 15 Standings It coming down to the last two weeks for the fourth annual Pauly's Pub Football Pool. The Top 4 places payout. We had 25 participants this season. Jerry has a slim lead over Brad and Coach. The biggest shocker of the pool has been the late season run by Haley and Jenna's team Twinkle & Turquoise. Visit Pauly's Pub for complete updates. Total Prize Pool ($250) 1st Place: $125 2nd Place: $65 3rd Place: $40 4th Place: $20 | Permalink | Saturday, December 25, 2004
Merry Christmas and Happy Festivus! 
30 years ago today... God bless the early 1970s! What a long strange trip it's been, indeed. By the way, Auggie Wren's Christmas Story written by Paul Auster is something I link to every Christmas. Please take a peek at one of my favorite short stories of all time. | Permalink | Friday, December 24, 2004
Christmas Flu I have never been sick on Christmas and here I am completely zapped and my body invaded by the flu or some wicked virus. I thought I slept for twelve hours after I passed out for a nap earlier. I awoke to discover it was barely three hours. Woozy head, achy limps, and my throat burning up was what I had to wake up to. Today was completely shot. I didn't have the energy to do last minute Christmas shopping. No writing at all... which also means I won't be able to finish my Vegas trip reports by this weekend. Oh and I have a Truckin' deadline on Monday which I know is already going to be missed. I tried to play a little poker online and I was just too weak and impatient to play more then forty minutes. Alas, tonight is Briana's big Christmas Eve party and I have to skip out on all the fun, festivities and debauchery. I'm going to crash around seven or eight and see if I feel better around Midnight or 1am. If I do, I'll do my best to make a token appearance. Santa, I could use a handful of Vicodin and Valium. I hope you hook me up this year. | Permalink | Thursday, December 23, 2004
Times Sqaure Subway Photo One photo from my fotblog was selected and highlighted for a group gallery (Times Square) on Buzz.net. Never realized they selected it until just now! Pretty cool. | Permalink | Phish's Undermind Gets Recognition Undermind was named to Rolling Stones' Top 50 albums of 2004. 
The last Phish album | Permalink | Run to Foxwoods "Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish... don't overdo it." - Lao Tzu"Do you feel lucky today?" I had just walked into the elevator by the parking garage and a very short, round Asian woman in her 40s followed me in. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't think so," I muttered adding a smile. When the elevator reached the casino level I wished her luck. I ran over to the food court, used my Wampum Card to get a free lunch, and wolfed it down while multitasking at the same time making three phone calls and answering two. I sprinted to the poker room and put my name on the new computerized list. "Dr. Pauly... $4/8 hold'em." I waited for a half hour for my name to be called. I considered sitting at a $2/4 table until my name was called but opted to read the newspaper. When I finally sat down it was 2:30pm. Over the next 3 hours, I was brutalized and beated down harder than a Russian dissident. Yep, the table I was playing at seemed like a fishy $2/4 table. Preflop raises were not enough to deter people from playing crap. At some point I was about to sign up for the $5/10 out of frustration in an attempt to escape the loose fucktards who will play any two cards. I stopped playing $2/4 at Foxwoods because the swings were too high. $4/8 had a sold mixture of solid players who played by the book and a few fishy guys to keep things interesting. In the last few months, the $4/8 tables had changed completely. 3:31pm EST... For the first hour, I played tight (as HDouble would describe my B&M playing style) and folding crap hand after crap hand and attempting to get a feel for the guys at my table. I knew right away who were the loose players (Seats 8 & 9), who were the drunk players (Seat 2 and 5), and who were the online players (Seat 1 and 6). That's one of the advantages of B&M play... you can observe how other players act at the table. I read people very well which is why I feel that one of the better aspects of my game is taken away from me when I play online. Next up on the agenda during my fold-a-thon, I size up the players at the table as quickly as I can... are they a beginner player? Do they watch too much WPT? Are they a well-informed student of the game? Are they there to have a fun time? Are they a degenerate gambler and come here five days a week? My third stage of observation involves looking for tells. How do they pick up their chips? How do they react when the flop comes out? All that routine stuff... which I won't discuss any further. Some days I'm really good at picking up little things. There were two guys at the other end of my table who played any two cards. Both clown-fish saw every single flop and the one guy chased everything to the river, even if he had nothing. I dubbed him the king of bottom pair. He dropped $500 for the entire duration I sat at his table. He went through two racks of yellow $2 chips and did a $100 rebuy. And the tough part was that I did not win single pot from him. I know against guys like that you have to be patient and wait for solid hands. I tried that... and they all got cracked. KK, QQ, AKs, AKo, JJ, AQs... all losers. One guy next to me got KK cracked twice (J9 and J7s) by those crazy guys. My QQ were cracked by 10-3o. 3:54pm EST... The only hand I won in three hours at that table was Qd6d... I raised on the button and got five callers! When an Ad and another diamond hit the flop, I made the decision to chase all the way to the river. I raised on the flop and even on the turn, getting two callers and hit my flush on the river. That was a $120 pot and my only highlight of the $4/8 session. Luckily Senor and his brother came in the middle of my horrid run. And that eased the pain a little. They were seated at different tables and I would take frequent breaks to chat. 5:01pm EST... Hank987 showed up. It was cool to finally meet one of my loyal readers! Here's how the story goes about how we first crossed paths... several months ago, I was playing a ring game on Party Poker (under my old screen name PaulyMcGrupp) and Hank987 was seated at my table. He asked me if I was the guy from the Tao of Poker. We started chatting and I found out he goes to Foxwoods too. That was the week when I was recognized like five different times by random readers. Anyway, since then I've played with Hank987 a bunch of times online. He's sat at the blogger tables on more than one occasion. And he happens to live an hour from Foxwoods which is why I told him I was making a run. 5:34pm EST... Hank987 sat at a $2/4 table and I had to wait a while to switch my seat. When I finally got there, I was down $160 after three hours of play. Not very impressive. I decided to relax, have a beer, and shoot the shit with Hank. Lucky for me, we had a fun table, and I ended up coming out on top. The players:Yep, Grubby and the Poker Geek would have been psyched to sit at my table. The cute girl sat directly across from me. It was nice to have something pretty to stare at all night. She and her boyfriend were playing a casino for the first time. They both seemed a little nervous at first and played fairly tight. Anyway, the guy in Seat 2 announced to the table that the 9 was his favorite card and he would play any hand with a 9 in it... 9-2, 9-3, 9-A... you get the drift. Whenever he saw a flop and a nine hit, everyone put him on a pair. After a while I began to limp into any pot that he decided to limp in with. I got him a few times. Once I put a bad beat on him. He had AKo and I had A7s. 6:43pm EST... Anyway, the guy to my left complained about every bad beat. I nicknamed him Negative Ned. I hated clients like that guy, who used to call me up at 4:01pm (the minute after the trading day ending) and he'd bitch me out that his stocks were not performing well. I had clients who were down $750K for the day, and that jerkoff was moaning about a 1/4 point downslide. Unreal. That's part of the reason I retired in the first place. I betcha that guys like Negative Ned weren't hugged enough as a child. Anyway, he had some valid points, because he was river'd a lot... and it was almost too comical everytime it happened. But it's a $2/4 table... what did he expect? I also had a shot at him and river'd him too... when I had ATs and flopped two spades. I caught my flush on the river to throw more salt into his bad beat wounds. That was awesome because he bitched about that hand for forty minutes before he finally left. Nothing is cooler than rivering Red Sox fans in their backyard. "Everyone is catching cahhhhh-zs, but me!" he yelled. One aspect of limit poker which is different from NL (which I play all the time online)... is that I find myself chasing nut flush draws more often. I had a nice chat with Iggy in Vegas about pounding your draws in limit. So there I was in Foxwoods, pounding away with my betting, in pots where 7 or 8 people were seeing a flop and 3 or 4 going all the way to the river. I found myself making moves that I'd read about in so many poker books out there. One example was getting the free card on the turn, by check raising on the flop from early position. I did that twice and got two free cards... both time missing my draw. But I saved a half a BB each time by checkraising on the flop. Another move I made a few times was straight out of Izmet's Bits of Wisdom... regarding jamming pots with flush draws when you expect three or more callers. Anyway, I would read about those scenarios in poker books and online, but rarely had those opportunities to follow through on their advice. Felt cool to see it happen in a real life application. 7:14pm EST... I also began playing cards I would never play... like two gapped suited cards and any small ace. I felt embarrassed when I flopped two pair with 53s. When I turned it over, Nat Portman who had been playing super tight, made some comment, "You played those cards?" I told her I got reamed on the $4/8 table playing nothing but good hands... and that once in a while you need to see a flop with any two cards... to either cure your boredom or mix up your play a little to let your opponents know that sometimes you might play any two cards. Iggy is the master of that at the NL blogger tables. Hank987 suffered two pretty tough beats. Nat Portman slowplayed a fullboat with 88 and she surprised everyone at the table including Hank. I would have lost my stack in NL on that hand. I dunno if she made a brilliant move or was too timid to bet out with the nuts. The other hand was one of the worst bad beats of the night. Mr. Nines caught runner runner for a flush even after he completely missed his flop with J2s. Hank987 had trips and he never really recovered from that vicious beat. 9:01pm EST... I lost track of time and pretty soon four hours had flown by. Hank987 and I chatted about random stuff, mostly poker and those wacky blogger tables. By the way, I thought Hank987 looked a lot like Fish... the drummer from Phish. Anyway, Senor lost his buy in at a $4/8 table and came back from the craps table pretty sloshed. Jay had turned $100 into $350 at the NL table beating KK with his AA. They were both starving. I said goodbye to Hank and I was shocked to see that I had won over $120 at the $2/4 table. Yep, I was down only $40 after a great run. I can't recall the last time I won money at a $2/4 table at Foxwoods. 9:45pm est... Jay bought us dinner with his NL winnings at the Carnegie Deli, one of the newly added food places at Foxwoods, which always seems to be growing and adding new stuff. I ate a yummy pastrami on a Kaiser roll and it hit the spot. We partied a little in our room before heading back to the poker room around 11ish. I had to wait a while for a $4/8 table so I sat down at a $2/4 table. Senor headed for the $1-5 stud tables and Jay hit the bar. This $2/4 table was the softest table in the world. Right away I knew I was the best player there. Most of the players were beginners and played pretty tight for a $2/4 table. If there was a single raise preflop, maybe you'd get 3 callers max with no reraises. On my $4/8 table, you could cap out the betting preflop and have six players seeing the flop! 11:06pm EST... Anyway, the decked smacked me in the face. A monkey riding a dog could have played my cards and won. First hand... AK and I flopped a king. Second hand... JJ... and I flop a set. Third hand... AQs and I flopped a queen with a nut flush draw. A few hands later I lost with QQ (to 47s), then won with AJs, and bluffed with 22. By the third orbit and while waiting for my second drink... I flopped sets with 44 and 55. I flopped a flush with A9s and flopped a Broadway straight with KQs. 11:46pm EST... I was easily up $150 at the table and wiped out my earlier loses at $4/8. I was going to walk away, but it was last call on alcohol in the poker room, so I ordered another drink (well, two actually) and made a lot of loose calls in late position. That's when I saw the Hilton Sisters in the LB. They had been 0-2 for the night for me. I was due. With four limpers in the pot, I decided to just call and not raise. I realized that the guys in the hand would have called regardless if I raised or not. Why give them a bigger pot to steal from me with A-x? The flop: 5-Q-5. I was shocked to see another flop hit for me. Not only did I hit my queen, I flopped a full house. Since I was first to act, I came out betting. I got four callers. The turn was a blank and I bet out. The big blind called and everyone folded. The river was another five!! I bet, the big blind raised and that's when I knew he had a five. I called and said something like, "Show me the case five, Johnny Damon." Sure enough he flipped over A-5. He flopped trips and only called on the flop and turn. I had a bad feeling about that 5 on the river and that's why I slowed down in betting. Everyone was shocked I didn't reraise and end up in a back and forth heads up raise-off. At that point I decided to play a few more hands, then quit to find Senor and Jay. A bad bad like that is enough to set you on tilt, but I had enough sense to call it a night. I doubled up my buy-in at that table and found myself up for the trip. Final Tally:I found Senor and we had some cheesecake. That's an old custom of mine... my victory slice of cheesecake whenever I have a winning session at Foxwoods. It's been a while since I had one of those. I had to get up at 7am to drive back to the city. The ride was not fun, but I had a brand new rental car... only 23 miles when I got in. I put exactly 305 miles on it... which is about right. NYC is only 150 miles from Foxwoods. That Toyota Camry gets amazing gas mileage... only $19 for a full tank of gas and I only had to buy gas once. In the past I've spent anywhere from $25-30 on gas for a NYC to Foxwoods roundtrip. Added note: Jay and Senor played in the 10am NL tourney. Senor only lasted the first hour, but Jay made the money and took 19th out of 160th! Congrats Jay! He ended up winning over $400 for his trip. I wish I could have stayed, but I had a lot of writing to do and plenty of Christmas shopping still left on my agenda. Can I really get away giving a Foxwoods coffee mug for a gift? | Permalink | Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Run to Foxwoods Senor called me while I was sleeping the other day and said he was getting a room at Foxwoods Casino on Wednesday. It was bad timing for me. I'm coming down with a cold. I have tons of Christmas shopping to do. I need some much needed sleep that I have yet to catch up on from Vegas. I'm also in the middle of writing up to six or seven hours a day working on various projects including Vegas trip reports, the new issue of Truckin', tweaking the third draft of Gumbo, and negotiating a freelance deal with an online site where I will be writing some gambling related material in 2005. The pay is peanuts but I could use the money. And when was the last time I actually got paid to write something? I also came up with this grandioise idea to write a novel in a random European city (Oslo, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Copenhagen?) next summer. That's going to take seed money. Not to mention the numerous of places and events I would like to attend in 2005. I'm starting to go through the motions of booking trips to LA, Miami, and Las Vegas for the first five months of 2005. New Orleans is out... for now. I was going to go for Jazz Fest this year... but that looks like it won't happen this year. I'm already spending paycheck I haven't even cashed yet! Plus I still owe my brother over $1000 in various credit card charges from this past year. Phish's final tour really killed my poker bankroll. It's time to reload... and hence the trip to Foxwoods. I'm going to try to win a few bucks to pay for Christmas presents and of course, to hang out with Senor and his brother, while trying to rebuild my bankroll. The Vegas trip helped put me back on track. I had two huge losing months and my slide is officially over. I used to go to Foxwoods like twice a month at one point last year before I started playing online and in NYC. I miss those trips. I may be meeting a fellow poker blogger up there... and I will definitely meet one of my loyal readers of the Tao of Poker, a guy named Hank who I play with online at Party Poker quite frequently. I've had a lot of luck meeting people through my poker blog. Seriously, these are some of the most solid people I have ever come across.. from all different walks of life. I guess I'm still coming off the high about hanging out with 30 bloggers... 2/3 of which I never met before, yet we were hanging out and partying like we were all old high school friends. I really got ultra lucky landing myself in the center of a thriving community. I have been meeting some new bloggers and readers online at Party Poker. Here's an actual chat from the other night. He had no idea I was me... because I play under an assumed name: ME: What is your blog?Wow that was pretty cool. Usually, I have a fair number of bloggers who seek me out when I play online. They want to watch me play or play with me. A new blogger was shocked I was sitting at the same table with him this past weekend. I actually made him speechless. Am I that famous? Unreal. Here's how one blogger describes those infamous tables: Sitting at a table with a bunch of bloggers is kinda like playing a game of chess, in a comedy club, while getting interviewed by a reporter, with the soundtrack to Oceans 11's being played by a Mariachi coverband. Oh yeah it's for your hard earned cash too.Then of course I forgot that I have to get a Christmas present for this girl I sorta like. What do you get someone who already has everything? Lotto tickets or this. That's what. | Permalink | Recent Writing Music... 1. Johnny Cash 2. The Velvet Underground 3. Phish with BB King 4. Widespread Panic 5. Larry | Permalink | Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Chapter 6.... Day 3, Part I: Sports Book Sunday "Then I start to empty my pockets. When I find two $5 Luxor chips, I start to think maybe I have been to the Luxor. The ATM receipt confirms it. Apparently around 1am I was in the Luxor playing.... something. To do this day, I have no idea. I kind of remember thinking midnight was noon and I was late for football. But that could all just be a drunken dream." - AlCantHangThe phone was ringing. I sheepishly answered another wake up call minutes after I finally fell asleep. I could have sworn that the maids were popping into the room for a "bed check" and were stealing $100 out of my pants pocket while I was passed out. Or maybe that was just a dream? I was greeted by a minor migraine headache, the kind that you get the morning of day three of a week long a bender, the type that never goes away no matter how many painkillers you pop or no matter how many drinks you consume to drown it out. You just have to gut it out and pray that it doesn't get any worse. Derek was much slower to get up and moving. Me too for that matter. I had an extra few minutes to write before my shower. Short on time, we skipped a sitdown breakfast and grabbed something quick from the food court. I remembered that Iggy wanted me to put $100 on the Bengals for him at the sports book. Since we were cutting it close on time with kickoff a few minutes away, I made the bet at Excalibur then took the tram to Mandalay Bay. When we arrived at MB's sports book, the spread was an extra point in Iggy's favor. Ouch. For bettors that's a huge difference. I ran up and put another bet on the Bengals for myself and got it in just a few second before kickoff I had them at 10.5 and 11.5 and was praying that they would not get blown out. Let's be honest. It's not that I had faith in the Bengals. On the contrary, I had been picking New England consistently all season and that was the first and only time I bet against them in 2004. And why? Because Iggy did it. Yep, I'll adapt that old expression my Mom used to scream at me as a small child... because if Iggy jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, I would too. The lowly Bengals were my Brooklyn Bridge. And I took the leap of faith with Iggy. The weekend football games were pretty big for me. My fantasy football team, Uncle Jodd's Band, were in the playoffs. We were without Priest Holmes, so I was hoping for a miracle game from Drew Brees and Kevin Jones. The entire purpose of the trip was for Derek and I to gamble on the NFL games at Mandalay Bay. We do this every December. That was the specific reason for our jaunt to Sin City. I pretty much organized the poker event around our original intent of a Sunday at the sports book. Yeah, I am fond of the Mandalay Bay. I used to love the Mirage, but in the last few years I have gravitated to Mandalay Bay sports book to place bets on March Madness and NFL games. It's one of the few casino's in Las Vegas where I can boast about having career earnings reaching five digits... all on sports betting. When Derek and I arrived at the Mandalay Bay sports book, both BG, Daddy, and Bob had already snagged a table! They have these really cool marble tables with comfy chairs twenty feet from the bar. We sat down and I scanned the Daily Racing Form. BG and Bob had been placing bets all morning. BG suggested a horse with the name Briana in it... a long shot at 30-1. I wandered up to the window to place my bet, and sure enough, the horse was scratched. Not a good sign. I called up Briana to tell her that she was already jinxing my day. Within a few minutes, we had a full crew soon after AlCantHang arrived and we were cracking jokes with our scantly clad waitress. She was cute as a Georgia peach and had the slow drawl to match. My notes have me knocking back shots of SoCo with ACH at the bar around 10:08am PCT. Gotta love being on the west coast for football season. Games start at 10am! I was giddy by 11am, drunk by noon, and shitfaced by 1pm. I can thank ACH for that. Derek was wicked wasted. He was visibly slurring his speech and speaking with a three second delay. I picked up some chicken fingers from the cafe to help sober him up. Otis and Bad Blood arrived and hit up the poker room (steps away). Soon after Iggy wandered over with EvaCanHang. She had been up all night playing slots with Grubby. Iggy found a small piece of paper in his pocket that I had given him the night before at the poker room. It said: Mandalay Bay sports book - Sun. @ 10am. As soon as he discovered the note, he rushed over. I gave him his ticket for the Bengals and we just sat back and waited. The game wasn't close in the first quarter. NE got off to a quick start and the Bengals fought to hang in there. At some point they lost their starting QB to an injury and I quickly accepted defeat. Out of nowhere, they faked a punt and scored a TD. That made the game closer than anyone imagined. The Pats ended up winning, but they didn't cover. A slew of us had bet on the Bengals, and we were all winners. AlCantHang's buddy Phil is from San Diego and he's a huge Chargers fan. He was hanging out with us rooting for his favorite team. I also had some money on San Diego so I got as excited as Phil did when they scored or made a big play. ACH and Phil began singing the San Diego fight song. You've seen it on a few blogs already so I won't post the actual lyrics. They are quite catchy and easy to memorize, even for a bunch of drunk hooligans like ourselves. By the fourth quarter, we had the cheer down perfectly, and everyone's attention in the sports book was focused on our group when we would burst into a rowdy rendition of the Chargers' fight song. An old guy in front of us would stand up and direct the chorus of poker bloggers as if we were members of a local church choir. I watched Bad Blood drop the hammer on his poker table. He flopped a pair and river'd two pair. He proudly displayed his Hammer for the table and scooped up a big pot. I also saw him take a vicious bad beat at a NL table with Big Slick against ATo. BB flopped an ace, and some nimrod river'd him when he hit a 10 on the river. Ouch. The Jets lost to the Steelers and Chad Pennington played like shit. I won 3 out of four games on one of my parlay cards... the Jets the only team not covering. At some point, Julie, CJ, and G-Rob were hanging out and I was too sloshed to recall when they arrived. Ferrari was in the poker room with Otis and BB. EvaCanHang was at the tail end of a 36 hour bender and she quietly passed out in one of the chairs. I made up a "Do Not Disturb" sign and gently placed it on her. She slept through all the loud drunken chatter, even through the San Diego fight song. I had a great conversation with CJ about his breakfast meeting with Edna, the poker room manager at Aladdin. She wants to host a future blogger event. Pretty cool, huh? I also had a great conversation with Iggy over several ideas regarding the future of our blogs and about the community in general. We also came up with an idea for a blogger tournament around March. Stay tuned for those details. I hope Iggy still has the notes from our "meeting" which I scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin. EvaCanHang decided it was time for her to crash. She got up said her good-byes. Before she left she mentioned, "Don't buy any more shots Al. They're too expensive." As soon as she walked away, AlCantHang stood up and announced to the entire sports book, "Who wants a shot?" I went with him to the bar to help carry the multiple SoCo shots back over to the table, including a Lemon Drop for Julie. The bartender mentioned that his tab was somewhere near $177. "Only $177? Holy shit!" screamed AlCantHang, "I thought it was $300!" When we all had our drinks I offered up a toast for AlCantHang. He quickly interrupted and said that we should all toast for me. "To Pauly!" he said as our entire group hoisted their drinks and shots. At the same time, there was a huge play on the big screen, an interception, and the entire sports book cheered in jubilation just as the bloggers were toasting me. That was an awesome feeling, to hear "To Pauly!" followed by a thunderous applause from the entire sports book. I realized that the majority of my drinking with AlCantHang all happened within the hours of 9am and 5pm. I wonder if that qualifies as a full time job? At the least, it gets a mentioning on my resume. ... to be continued.  Here's the timetable of the rest of my trip reports:As you can tell the timetable for my trip reports have been constantly changing. I have too much to write!! Stay tuned for more wild and wacky Vegas stories. | Permalink | Monday, December 20, 2004
Last 5 Books I Saw People Reading on the Subway... 1. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth 2. The Holy Bible 3. Skeleton Man by Tony Hillerman 4. The Hidden Messages in Water by Masaru Emoto 5. The Ticket That Exploded by William S. Burroughs | Permalink | Chapter 5... Day 2, Part III: Saturday Night Live "Certain moments in your life define your existence. That was one of them... a monkey in a cowboy outfit riding a dog." - Tao of PaulyI can tell what sort I night had during my travels by the condition of my notes. There are only a two scribbled sentences in my notebook for entries dated after 6pm Saturday and before 10am on Sunday... just a few words to remind me of the events of a stretch of sixteen harmless hours in Las Vegas. I have only few clues and my ambivalent memory to help with this part of the trip report. Here are my notes: 11:43pm... dropped the hammer... fucktards in seats 8,9,10 analyzing hand 3 hours later... playing with Derek, HDouble, & IggyThat's a start. OK, so after the tournament I found myself leaving Sam's Town in a cab with the NYC crew... Derek, Ferrari, F Train, and Julie. We all grabbed dinner together and Ferrari made the most questionable food choice of the weekend... the fish n' chips with milk. After that I pretty sure we headed to the poker room. I was seated in the back right next to Bad Blood's no limit table. If I turned around, he was right there. We chatted a lot in between hands, just like any night on Party Poker. By the way, every time I saw Bad Blood in Las Vegas, he was playing poker. He even offered up a hammer bounty for his table. A few folks from Otis' crew were peppered throughout the Excalibur Poker room. And I'd wave and check in for regular Hammer updates. Iggy recharged his batteries and eventually woke up before Midnight. He quickly joined my table and we were chatting it up. He was chugging Budweisers and extolling the virtues of Yahoo poker in an attempt to snag an Oscar nod for Best Fish-like Performance. Grubby, F Train, EvaCanHang, and HDouble were all rocking a NL table near the Christmas tree. I heard F Train tried to crack Eva's Kings with the Hammer! And Grubby tried to crack HDouble's pocket aces with the Hiltons... to pick up a Pauly painting and to get HDouble a wheel spin. Aces held up. Maudie was cleaning out a bunch of frat boys and cowboys at her $1-3 table. Everytime I walked by she was grinding it out. Same for Bill Rini. Every time I checked, he had another rack of chips! At some point, just when I thought I had seen it all... the monkey on the dog was shown on the big screen. Yeah, ESPN2 had full rodeo coverage all weekend long and that was the main attraction on the big screen in the poker room. When they unleashed the monkey, the entire crowd began hootin' and hollerin'. It reminded me of the insanity on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. It was one of those bizarre scenes that you completely miss the context of while reading my report in your cubicle at work. But trust me, if you were shitfaced at 4am, floating around in a sea of loose cowboys at a poker room in Las Vegas and you saw two hundred and fifty people cheering for a monkey dressed up like a cowboy on a Collie... then maybe you too would start to think that time travel is probable, peace in the Middle East is possible and that I'm 100% pretty sure I'll catch my next gutshot draw, even if it is a one outer. Certain moments in your life define your existence. That was one of them... a monkey in a cowboy outfit riding a dog. That was also the only other sentence I had scribbled in my notes. So the next time someone corners me at one of those dreadful New York cocktail parties and asks me if I believe in God, I can honestly say, "I do believe that monkeys can ride dogs. I've seen it in Vegas." I tried my hardest not to laugh watching Iggy play low limit. HDouble joined our table and he accidentally turned over his cards when he thought the hand was over. He showed J7o. Yes. I have proof that not only did HDouble play J7o in Vegas... he won the pot with two pair! Later on in the night, Iggy cracked Derek's KK with 89s and even predicted that he'd river him preflop! Grubby would sit and play in either my seat of Iggy's seat when we'd take a breaks. I'd be making the rounds visitng CJ and other tables while Grubby would play out of his rack. A few times he used Iggy's rack and I was surprised no one said anything, not even the dealer! Sitting at the same table with Iggy, Derek, Grubby, and HDouble was one of those moments in Vegas where I was like, "Damn... there's no place I'd rather be!" We were playing a $2-6 spread table and I dropped the Hammer in a pot with six limpers after raising the max preflop. Two callers and I came out firing on the flop. Everyone folded and I flipped over The Hammer! Some goofball kid from LA in Seat 10 was miffed. The rest of the night he kept talking about the hand. After a dropping the hammer, you know that everyone will call you down afterwards... so you'd better be prepared to have you high pocket pairs cracked by people playing marginal stuff. I tightened up and played good hands the rest of the night and built up a nice stack, doubling my buy in easily. Those fucktards at the far end of the table were analyzing and dissecting that move for more time than it actually deserved. I never got more attention at a poker table before. Hours later he'd say something everytime I'd raise or win a pot. Eventually I snapped at him. "Geez. Let it go man. I was obviously fucking around. How many pots have I taken off you since then?" He shut up after that and the hammer put him on tilt. He foolishly called everytime I raised thinking that I had nothing. Oh well. Before the night ended, I sat at Maudie's table. She was exhausted and was only staying up because it was her last night in Vegas, but she continued her run and doubled up her buyin. On my way back to our room for a late night party, I saw Otis sitting by himself at a Pai Gow table. I wish I had a camera. I also saw Grubby and EvaCanHang happily playing the slots. Little did I know that they'd be playing until the early morning hours. Yeah, hanging out with poker bloggers, sucking up too much pure casino oxygen, and drinking watered down strawberry coladas makes you do weird things at 7am. But weird is the norm in Las Vegas, and in the end we were just just like the other animals at the circus; tired, dehydrated, and desperately needing a bath. ... to be continued. Here's the timetable of the rest of my trip reports:As you can tell the timetable for my trip reports have been constantly changing. I have too much to write!! Stay tuned for more wild and wacky Vegas stories. | Permalink | Sunday, December 19, 2004
Sundays Are Fundays Well, sorry for the lack or normal updates. I've been back for a few days and my days and nights have been hectic. I haven't been going to sleep before 6am and 11am has been my normal waking time. I've been writing a ton, playing a lot of cards online late nights, and busy shopping for Christmas presents. I have been posting all my trip reports from Vegas the last few days on both sites. Overall I feel that there is very little poker content in some of them... so I think if you are not into gambling they should still be entertaining. Most of my afternoons are filled with writing up the Vegas trip. There is too much material to write about. I'm afraid if I wait... then the overall content will diminsh. I have a feeling this past weekend will be one of those trips that I'll be talking about five years from now. Then Senor called this morning while I was passed out... he wants to go to Foxwoods this week. Well, I can't turn down that offer for a free room and night of drinking with the Tao of Pauly's favorite pants dropper! Briana is having a Christmas Bash this week too... well... can't miss up that rocking party. Where else can I fondle scantly-clad, malcontent, coke fiends at four in the morning... besides Bill Clinton's house? On the poker front, I'm doing pretty well the last two weeks. In the last eight days I've come in 6th out of 30, 11th out of 60, and 6th out of 150 in various tournaments in Las Vegas and online. I missed the money by a few places in two and made the money in a multi table 150 person tournament on Party Poker in the wee hours of Saturday. 
Big Unit! On the sports front, the Knicks and Jets won. The Yanks got the Big Unit. Yeah my favorite sports teams are doing well for a change. This is for the Poker Geek. Recent Writing Music... 1. Ornette Coleman 2. John Coltrane 3. Bob Dylan with The Band 4. Theolnious Monk 5. Karl Denson Female of the Year 
Please vote for me! Please vote for Elsiha Cuthbert since I nominated her for a contest that Sigge from Norway is running on his blog. Last year I nominated Katie Holmes and she lost to Angelina Jolie. Oh well. And I need all my fellow bloggers and readers to vote for her as many time as possible. Vote early. Vote often. It don't matter if you live in a blue or red state, just vote for Elisha. | Permalink | Saturday, December 18, 2004
Chapter 4... Day 2, Part II: The WPBT Holiday Classic "You have to be willing to die, if you want to live." - Felicia LeeSaturday, 12:55pm PCT... We finally made our way down to the poker room. It was very well lit, something that I liked right away. Dick's staff were professionals and they seemed excited to have us. We drew for seats. I picked up my card and nearly fell over when I walked over to my table and saw everyone seated. If the WPBT Holiday Classic were a televised event, chances are my table would have been the "feature table". Table 1Yeah, I would have liked to sit down at any other table. With three pros (I consider Felicia a professional) and Grubby moving to Vegas to play full time... all sitting to my left... I wasn't too thrilled. I knew I would have to play solid, limit my mistakes, and catch good cards. Then maybe I had an outside shot of making the final table. Having that third double shot of SoCo a half hour before the tournament was probably not a good idea. I was buzzed and terrified. 
Last place prize! I picked up a cool bounty to give out to the blogger knocked out first. I have a great sense of humor don't I? The Gigli bounty was a hot potato. No one wanted to be given that honor. I especially didn't want to get booted first. My palms began sweating profusely. Only one thing to do to settle those chilling fears and to quell those inner demons. I ordered a beer, took a big swig, and the tournament was on it's way. I said an "Our Father" in Latin and in the back of my mind, I told myself... "You are never going to get better playing against fish. If you wanna be the Man... you have to beat the Man." 
AlCantHang searches for a waitress Level 1: Blinds 25/50 and you start with T2000 in chips. Top 5 places paid cash. On the first hand of the tournament, G-Rob dropped The Hammer! God bless him. It seemed to me that Charlie was messing around in the first level. He got me to fold QJs to his 46s when he raised my blind. I told myself not to play anything aside from Group 1 hands in the first two levels. Within seconds of each other, we lost our first two players. On my table, Flip Chip's AA were cracked by Max's AJs when Max hit a flush. Second earlier Al Cant Hang's AQ knocked out Bill Rini's QJ and Bill got the dreaded Gigli prize. By the time the level ended, I had T1800. 
Charlie and Daddy Level 2: Blinds 50/100... and I made a move on Daddy. I had AJs and I got him to fold AQ on a ragged flop. He showed me his hand and asked me to wait until he got back to Indiana to read my tourney report to find out what I had. CJ knew right away that I had AJ. A few hands later Daddy went up against Charlie. His KJ lost to Charlie's KQ when they both flop top pair. Outkicked, ouch. T2125 and 17 players remaining. 
Where's Otis? Level 3: F Train lost a tough hand to Ferrari after he flopped trips and let Ferrari see a free card. On the next hand he was booted by EvaCanHang and won his bounty... and F Train tshirt. I think AlCantHang almost knocked out two players on one hand. Linda's 66 and Bad Blood's KK were no match for another AQ from ACH. He flopped a pair and crippled Bad Blood while knocking out Linda. Back on my table Felicia's AK lost to Brian's AT when she pushed him all in on the flop and he caught a 10 on the river, With Felicia shortstacked she pushed all in on the very next hand with AQ. I found the Hilton Sisters and called. I think she had less than T500 remaining. When I saw her hand, I asked the dealer to hold onto those aces! I think an ace hit the turn and I doubled up Felicia. She had plenty of ups and downs early. She tripled up against Grubby and Charlie. And that was the beginning of her run. I had T1300 left and looking to hold onto my chips. 
Half of -EV, Foiled Coup, and Derek Felicia did a great job writing up the next hand that I was involved in with Max. Here you go: A funny thing about that, was a hand that was so painful to watch which occurred right before Pauly's run. This is the hand that really got me talking more at the table, since Max was offering his advice, too, in between kidding and joking around.In my defense, I put Max on JJ or Hiltons. If I suspected he had AK, I would have pushed. I had a gut feeling it was a higher pair. I showed him hoping that he'd show me which he did. That opened up a series of small talks that Max would give me the rest of the afternoon. Betwen Max and Felicia, I got plenty of solid advice on my game. Watching the pros play at my table made me aware of the little things that I need to do to improve me game. OK, so I fucked up and folded pocket 10s to Max's suited slick. But soon after I was stuck by a calming moment. I recalled some words of wisdom from Lao Tzu: "Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, 
Maudie's got AK, but check out Bad Blood's t-shirt! Level 4: Julie's shortstack doubled up against HDouble when her AA held up. We now had G-Rob and The Poker Prof seated with us. Felicia's 55 beat out Charlie's AQ and that left him with only a few chips. He was KO'd on the same hand with the Poker Prof when Max's small pair held up against their overcards. 21 players left. 
Charlie Shoten and the Poker Prof Level 5: I found the Hilton Sisters once again. Mas threw out a bet UTG almost half his stack. I pushed right away. He must have had a seriously marginal hand otherwise he would have called instantly. I figured Mas had a small pair and eventually decided to take the coinflip. I was surprised to see JTo and that was the reason he took a long time to make his decision. My Hiltons held up and I doubled up against him. G-Rob was knocked out by Felicia. 18 players left, T4100 and looking great. Level 6: Down to two tables. Otis, BG, Bob and AlCantHang were moved to our table. Derek's shortstack got knocked out by Foiled Coup's 27o. -EV and EvaCanHang were also out. Back at my table, Bob's AJ lost to Max's AA. Everyone was dropping out like flies. I was gaining more confidence and then I ran into a monster. I usually wait until everyone to look at their hand first before I look at my hole cards. For some reason, I peeked at the first card as soon as it hit my stack. Ace of diamonds. Not too shabby. Al Cant Hang bet 1/3 of his stack under the gun. I told myself that if I saw any paint I was going to call. When I got my second card... the ace of clubs... I knew that AlCantHang was going to be toast. I pushed all in and I saw AlCantHang drop his head, with his chin buried into his chest. "Pauly, Pauly, Pauly! Why did you do that?" he muttered. He thought about it for thirty seconds. He called even admitting before he turned over his cards that he was far behind. He was... with ATo (not KJ like he claimed on his blog). I doubled up against AlCantFold's stack and had over 10,000 in chips. Ferrari was kncoked out by 10-10 and we were down to 12. I found pocket Jacks under the gun. It's my least favorite pocket pair so I moved all in. Otis called in LP with Slick suited. My Jacks hold up and I knocked out Otis. That was sweet revenge for that bad beat I suffered months earlier in the True Poker event! Boy Genius knocked out Mas for the Battle of the Geniuses. I was the chipleader and had T12000+ and had more chips than Max. It was breaktime and I made the decision to play conservative. I didn't want to give up my big lead on foolish calls. The Final Table:Level 7: Ah, the chipleader. The last time I held a chip lead at the final table in a blogger sanctioned event... I blew it all during the infamous Pauly Implosion. 
I just got moved to the final table as the chip leader. Those are all of my chips in that rack next to Julie. I had the most chips at the Final Table, with Max not far behind, and Felicia looking solid. HDouble and Foiled Coup had the shortest stacks. And without a doubt, AlCantHang must have been the biggest surprise of the tournament. Nobody picked him to make the final table. None of the bloggers, none of the oddsmakers in Vegas, none of the offshore books, not even his wife picked him! Is he a better player than he gives himself credit to be? Or did he level the playing field by getting everyone crocked all morning long? For years poker scholars will be debating the AlCantHang factor in the first WBPT Holiday Classic. On one the first hands, AlCantHang pushed his chips all in against Max. And for the second time he ran into pocket aces. Ouch, anothe rmonster. Nothing you can do about that. He quickly headed for the bar out in 10th place. I had been bullying Boy Genius when he was moved to my table before the final table seating. He played a hand and his AT was outmatched by Foiled Coup's AJ. BG was left with a shortstack and Foiled Coup was able to double through. I looked at my stack... about T15,200 and behind Max after he took all of AlCantHang's chips. Felicia knocked out BG a few hands later when her 88 won the race against his overcards. BG left in 9th place amid a warm shower of applause. HDouble had been aggressively stealing blinds just to survive. If I had anything I would have called him a couple of times. I found a Q9s once and considered it... but my mentality at that point was to let the smaller stacks knock themselves out. Glenn almost knocked out HDouble... A7 to A6. He had the shortest stack and was hanging on. Martin was the next to go when he ran into Julie's A7. What was up with A7? It was winning a lot of pots for the entire trip. Seven players left. HDouble's tiny stack tripled up against Felicia and Max. He was fighting for every chip! That was, until he ran into Max's Big Slick when he had AJs. HDouble's 4th quarter rally fell short. He finished in 7th place. Bubble Boy We're all on the bubble. The top five places paid... and I could see the piece of paper that Dick posted on the wall behind the table with the prize payouts. Top 5. Julie was in the big blind, Glenn in the small blind. I am on the button. Felicia and Max fold to me and I moved all in with 66. I was on a steal. I didn''t want any callers, just the blinds. I had not played any hands (aside from stealing blinds twice) at the final table. I had not seen one flop. Julie had KQs and called. The flop looked great for me... all rainbow rags. Same on the turn. The Queen spiked on the river and I was devastated. "You got to be kidding me!" I yelled in my best John McEnroe imitation. So much for winning my first blogger tournament. I had next to nothing in chips. Next hand I had A3s. I moved all in and Julie called with A7. I lost and walked way pretty ticked off. Al Cant Hang was standing around and he's the first person I saw. "Dr. Pauly needs a shot," he said. The next thing I know I'm knocking back SoCo and wondering why I didn't limp in with 66. I bubbled out in another tournament. That is the most frustrating feeling in poker. And that's been my sad story about my poker play this entire year.... I'm the bubble boy. It's a bad habit that I must break out of in 2005. I went back to the table and picked up my notebook from Derek. He was taking notes for a little while during my decompression session with AlCantHang. 
Three Way Action Level 8: Foiled Coup moved all in with AQ and luckily caught a Queen on the river to beat Felicia's AK. Glenn was shortstack and he pushed all in preflop with A9s against Max's AK. Another big hand for Max. Felicia took a big pot from Julie when he Big Slick held up against Julie's J-10. Foiled Coup's run at the final table was over when he had to push all in from the big blind against Max's 22. A valiant effort from a the member of the Lasvegaslasvegas crew. It was three way... Julie, Max, and Felicia Lee. 
Julie bluffing Max at the final table. Without a doubt, Julie was overmatched. That was her first ever NL tournament and her run was impressive. She lost a tough pot to Felicia's high straight and then doubled up against Max with A7. Max eventually knocked Julie out and she took down a third place prize outlasting the pack. Felicia ended up beating Max when her K7s bested his AJ. Joaquin was generous enough tp purchase and ship a cowboy hat for the winner... which went to Felicia. I was happy to see Felicia win the Holiday Classic since she had been very sick the last week or so leading up to the event. I picked Glenn to win only because he had been playing more NL than Felicia, but I was still happy to see her take us all down. 
Felicia Lee wins! The Final Results:If you would like to view the photo gallery for the WPBT Holiday Classic... here's the link. Thanks again to Joe and Joe, Sr. for all of their help. All of these pictures are courtesy of Lasvegasvegas.com. Thanks also to Jeff from Check N Raise who helped sponsor the event and gave out cool jackets to everyone. Anyone have a pic of those? Thanks also to the folks over at All N Poker. They gave out t-shirts for the final eight and shotglasses to 9th and 10th place. We got some positive feedback from the staff at Sam's Town. Here are some of ths comments, Dick posted on his blog: "Where did these people come from? They are great!"Whew. I was a little worried that a few of us were intoxicated and acting unprofessional. I'm glad that everything worked out. 
Thanks to Dick Gatewood! Special thanks goes out to Dick Gatewood. He completely hooked all of us up with the tournament, banquet hall, and discounted rooms. The next time you are in Las Vegas, go to Sam's Town to play poker... and make sure you tell him that Pauly and the bloggers sent you. You can pick up some last minute cool poker related gifts at his main site Buy It In Vegas. Here's the timetable of the rest of my trip reports:As you can tell the timetable for my trip reports have been constantly changing. I have too much to write!! Stay tuned for more wild and wacky Vegas stories. There are plenty fo Hammer stories too. In the meantime, please visit everyone's blog for their kickass trip reports; Iggy, Derek, Poker Prof, Flip Chip, and Foiled Coup from Lasvegasvegas, Dick from Buy It In Vegas, Riding the F Train, Boy Genius, Bad Blood, Bill Rini, Felicia, Glenn, Otis & CJ & G-Rob, Al Cant Hang & EvaCanHang, Maudie, Signor Ferrari, - EV, Bob, Grubby, Mas from Genius of Poker, Martin from JMC Automatic and Brian, Linda from Poker Works, and Daddy from Snail Trax. Did I miss anybody? Some are up, some are in the process of writing them, and some people like my brother are swamped with work, so I'm sure you'll be reading about this trip over the next few weeks. Thanks for stopping by. | Permalink | Friday, December 17, 2004
Chapter 3... Day 2, Part I: Sherwood Forest and the Sam's Town Meet & Greet "This little insidious thought terrorist has got to go or my radiant contagious smile will not be appearing as often in my future." - Charlie ShotenSaturday 8:31am PCT... As I closed my eyes, I swear... the phone was ringing. It was my wake up call. Wake up? I just went to bed! I was still wearing all my clothes from the night before. I was suffering from mental dehydration and had a wicked case of cotton mouth. As I stared up at the ceiling, all I could think about was... where the fuck was Grubby? Derek shuffled off to the shower and I fired up my laptop for a quick update of two of my blogs. The poker bloggers in my life wanted to hear juicy details of the trip... and the remainder of my friends back home wanted to make sure I was still alive. Everyone knows I'm a big boy and hanging out with Al Cant Hang is an adventure in itself... but partying with ACH on a three day bender in Vegas is like foolishly walking into downtown Fallujah with a squirt gun and a swizzle stick. I had about ten minutes to write. How does one condense a full day of madness in Sin City into a 200 word blog entry? I was working on a dial up modem and tried my best. I ignored the slew of errors, posted, and hopped into the shower. I got out, dripping wet when Maudie called. We went up to her room, checked out her view (much better than ours), and inspected the infamous, kick ass WBPT t-shirts featuring the logo she designed. Derek and I helped carry the shirts, Maudie grabbed her "bounty" and we headed downstairs. The time was 9:20am and our intentions were to get to Sam's Town way before 10am. We were on schedule... were... until Little Red Riding Hood was ambushed by the Big Bad Wolf. It was still early in the morning for Vegas standards and we navigated through a slew of Rodeo families with small children in cowboy hats as they rambunctiously made their way to and from breakfast. I like kids, especially red neck kids. They're the cutest. However, my tolerance for little ones runs thin when I'm hungover especially in Vegas when you have a throbbing headache similar to the feeling you'd get when you slam a car door onto your fingers. I side step the wee ones like dog shit on a crowded Manhattan sidewalk. We finally make our way through the first obstacle and quickly head towards the front door. Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone stumbling through a row of nickel slot machines. Poor guy probably stayed up all night drinking and gambling and it appeared he couldn't find his room. Just another victim of the depravity of the dark side of Vegas. I stopped for a second to get a better look at the unlucky fella. Holy shit. It was Iggy. I completely forgot he was in Vegas. Our epic meeting just nine hour earlier wasn't a dream after all. In Vegas, my short term memory was as spotty as my cellphone reception. OK, so I found an inebriated Iggy who opted for more liquor than sleep. But Grubby was still AWOL. Just as I grabbed Iggy, I realized that the Sherwood Forest bar is packed with bloggers and King Al Cant Hang is holding court with his beautiful blonde bride... Queen EvaCanHang at his side. His merry jester BigMike kept everyone happily entertained with multiple rounds of hearty meeds and ales and a smattering of his loyal soused subjects sang his praises. Iggy's liver had been hijacked by BigMike just around the time I passed out at my laptop. He didn't look like he was going to make it as he slumped back on a stool at the bar. Within seconds, I had a shot of SoCo in my hand. Before I could consider the circumstances, like Pavlov's frothing dog and in a worldly Zen moment, the edge of glass automatically hit my lips as the nectar of the Gods struggled to make it's way into my queasy stomach, into my reluctant liver, and into my starving soul. It was 9:20am on a Saturday morning in Las Vegas. I just inhaled a shot of SoCo with AlCantHang and BigMike before I even had a bite to eat or a sip of water. What a start to the day. What could I do to top that? A second shot of course. That one went down much smoother. Bad Blood was a little tipsy and gleefully showed Maudie and Derek pictures of Mrs. Blood and the mini-bloods. His 42 inch guns were proudly on display underneath a t-shirt that HDouble aptly described as "the best and worst shirt he's ever seen." Daddy never made his way back to Sam's Town and had been knocking back cocktails with Iggy and BigMike since 4am. Here is Daddy's take: I've done some partying in my day. There isn't a man on this planet who can hang with Big Mike Cant Hang. He drank enough Southern Comfort to kill a decent sized village, and that was just in one 4am-8am session. Truly fucking amazing.G-Rob was super tipsy and EvaCanHang was impressing the peanut gallery with her ability to knock back tequila at 9am with the same grace as Willie Mays shagging down a rope into the gap at the Polo Grounds. When Otis appeared, I thought we were going to have to call a doctor. His face was the same shade as the olive green jacket he wore. "Otis, my man, do you need a doctor or something?" I said in my most serious tone of the entire trip. "I thought you were one, Dr. Pauly?" I paused and let my short term memory collect itself. "You betcha. This doctor says you need a second opinion from Dr. Hang." I have never lost a patient before and I would be damned if we lost Otis on the operating table. We were lingering at the bar when BigMike assured us that he was renting a stretch limo, a SUV Excursion, to whisk away to Sam's Town. Ah, we were with royalty. We were hanging with rockstars. Who takes a taxi in Vegas? Peasants! That's who. We were still on schedule but I made the first coinflip decision of the day to stay with the group. If I left and took a cab... then I was sure they would be super late or never show up. With my presence, it gave the group a feeling of urgency that we needed to get to Sam's Town as soon as possible. In a rampant stupor, we all bolted for the front door. The time was 9:35am and the limo was late. Who would have expected... a gaggle of drunks were early. That's Vegas for ya. Oh well. Thanks to BigMike for the hookup. He's one of the most generous guys you will ever meet along with AlCantHang. The reason their bar tabs are so astronomically high that it takes a core of engineers outsourced to New Delhi to compute the nightly totals... is not because they like to drink... it's because they like to buy everyone within a twenty foot radius of them a drink. To that generosity, I am thankful. The limo ride was rowdy. Bad Blood had given AlCantHang a mix CD of various metal bands. The limo driver was blasting it for a while before I begged him to turn on the he radio. Of course he puts on a metal radio station despite the pleas of Maudie for some Frank Sinatra. At that point, Otis looked his worst. I mentioned something to G-Rob and he admitted that "There was an 80% chance of Otis puking." "I'll take that action!" I shouted. I lost another side bet. Not the first and not the last. My head should be struck off with a blunt object for making foolish bets like that one. Late Bloggers I finally caught a glimpse of Sam's Town. It looked pretty cool. As we all de-limoed, a group of young kids (a church group? a school group?) were getting onto a bus. They all stood in awe as AlCantHang exited. "Hey what band are you in?" one of the youngsters shouted at AlCantHang. "The AlCantHang Experience," he said as he scribbled down a few autographs. Julie had told me later on that she though AlCantHang looked like a roadie. Rockstar wasn't too much of a stretch when you got long hair and have an entourage the size of a baseball team. The kids thought they were meeting a rock icon. I eventually found my way to the ballroom and the first person I saw was the Poker Prof. I quickly apologized for our tardiness and I realized I was more buzzed that I wanted to be. The lack of food in my stomach killed my tolerance. I made a beeline for some fruit and water and talked to Dick Gatewood as I tried to collect myself. 
Meet and Greet I found Grubby finally! And it looked like everyone was trickling in. Linda from Poker Works gave me a big hug! Glad to see that she made it. I thanked and chatted with Charlie for a few moments with G-Rob and F Train about various topics. Charlie and I grew up in the same borough of New York, so we had that connection. 
F Train, Pauly, and G-Rob with Charlie Shoten I wandered over to Marcel Luske. He gave me his business card and spoke for a long time with Maudie about trying to get America to have universal poker rules... since each state (and Indian reservation) has their own set of rules. He was a very serious conversationalist and didn't act like that goofy guy you saw on TV. At heart he has a lot of respect for the game and based on his impassioned talks, I could tell he truly loved poker. 
Derek and Maudie chat with Marcel I got to talk a little bit with Ron Rose. He autographed his book, Poker Aces, for me and thanked him for coming. I told him I give him a good review on my blog. I was going to talk to Tom McEvoy and Kirill Gerasimov but because we were all late and short on time, Charlie's lecture began. Charlie Shoten took time out of his busy schedule to help us all out and shared his experiences in life and with poker. He could have been playing at one of the Bellagio events, but instead he was hanging out with bloggers. 
Introducing Charlie He touched on some topics in his upcoming book No Limit Life specifically his Ten Commitments and stressed that how you approach life and how you approach poker is attributed to how you think about things. He hit some rough spots in his lecture but I got the overall jist of what he was trying to convey. Focus is key especially in any lengthy major tournament. And if you employ the Ten Commitments to your life, you will be able to overcome the Thought Terrorists and smoke them out of their caves. Halfway through the lecture, Max Pescatori and Evelyn Ng appeared. I read all about Max in some of Felicia's previous write ups and I was interested in meeting him. 
Marcel Luske and Evelyn Ng I felt bad that no one had any questions for Charlie. I think people had general questions, but thought he was fielding specific questions on his Ten Commitments. Next up to speak was Jeff from Check n Raise Poker an online poker site. He flew in from Canada to help sponsor the event. Check n Raise Poker also hooked everyone up with really kick ass jackets. Due to problems with customs, he was only able to bring a few with him into the country. I felt bad for Jeff. The boys at Homeland Security were giving him a hard time. He was giving out some cool card cappers and keychains. He answered some questions about his site and even suggested that he would be interested in hosting a bloggers tournament. I was glad that everything worked out well. 
Tom McEvoy during the Q&A Tom McEvoy spoke for a few minutes in a Q&A session. I quickly seized control and asked the first question. It was one of several questions I had carefully thought out to ask the professionals before I arrived. "I seem to have trouble with AK. It's a hand that gets me knocked out of more tournaments that any other hand. Am I playing it too strongly or should I be laying it down more?" That got a light chuckle from the audience but Tom jumped right in to answer. He said the old adage, "In no limit, you have to win with AK and beat AK to be successful." He agreed that it's the most overrated and most misplayed hand in hold'em because the value of AK preflop is not very high since it's a drawing hand... and that's why it's tough to win consistently with AK. I was pretty happy that I got to ask a world champion advice on a hand I always seemed to have problems with. Glenn asked a great question about the new generation of online players and how the professionals were handling them. McEvoy said he didn't have a problem because he plays online more than live games on PokerStars and has a better familiarity of the style of online poker players than seasoned cash game and tournament players. He even joked calling the site he plays on... RiverStars. When Tom finished his session, we all mingled for a little while longer. Most of the pros had to return to the Bellagio to play in the NL event. It was cool that they stopped by. I ate some more fruit and bagels and courageously tried some orange juice. I got to sit down and chat with Linda from Poker Works. I read all about her tattoos and wanted to see them for real. She was completely cool and showed them all to me. Her journal was one of the first poker blogs I ever read, along with Iggy's, Mr. Decker's, and Felicia's old yahoo groups. Great to finally put a face with her tales about dealing poker at the Bellagio. I was helping Dick get everyone to pay him the entry fee and we discovered that Max Pescatori wanted to play with us, who would be taking Dick's spot who couldn't play due to Nevada gaming laws. We now had two professionals joining the mix. I wandered out to the bar, which looked like the size of an NYC apartment. AlCantHang bought me another shot and I collected a few more entry fees. 
Santos' artwork The Poker Prof handed me a special present from Santos. Above is the strip that the Poker Prof presented to me. Pretty cool, huh? If you have never seen J. Santos' artwork... you're missing out. I love his warped sense of humor. Anyway, we finally made our way down to the poker room to play in the first ever live World Poker Bloggers Event... the Holiday Classic. ... to be continued. 
Thanks Poker Prof! Thanks to Dick Gatewood, Joe and Joe, Sr. for all of their help with the Holiday Classic. All of these pictures are courtesy of Lasvegasvegas.com. Here's the timetable of the rest of my trip reports:As you can tell the timetable for my trip reports have been constantly changing. I have too much to write!! Stay tuned for more wild and wacky Vegas stories. There are plenty fo Hammer stories too. In the meantime, please visit everyone's blog for their kickass trip reports; Iggy, Derek, Poker Prof, Flip Chip, and Foiled Coup from Lasvegasvegas, Dick from Buy It In Vegas, Riding the F Train, Boy Genius, Bad Blood, Bill Rini, Felicia, Glenn, Otis & CJ & G-Rob, Al Cant Hang & EvaCanHang, Maudie, Signor Ferrari, - EV, Bob, Grubby, Mas from Genius of Poker, Martin from JMC Automatic and Brian, Linda from Poker Works, and Daddy from Snail Trax. Did I miss anybody? Some are up, some are in the process of writing them, and some people like my brother are swamped with work, so I'm sure you'll be reading about this trip over the next few weeks. Thanks for stopping by. | Permalink | More Vegas Numbers... Total Trip Combined Winnings by Bloggers: -1100 Poker: +400 Sports Book: +330 Prop Bets: +30 Keno: -5 Horse Racing: -70 Pai Gow: -85 Slots: -485 Craps: -500 Black Jack: -825 I polled 17 bloggers... to figure put approximate wins and losses. Al Cant Hang suggested that we consumed roughly $1000 in alcohol a day. 86.7% of that was by Al Cant Hang and Big Mike. One anonymous blogger dropped over $1500. It's obvious that as a group we're doing OK in poker and at the sports book. We get our asses kicked in -EV games like slots, blackjack and craps. Stay away from those tables! And make sure you don't place a bet when The Cooler is lurking. Someone asked me how I did for the trip. Well, I won enough to cover my airfare and hotel from NYC and a couple of Christmas presents. So now, I'm even. Spending my winnings once again instead of building my bankroll. Over the weekend, I missed making the money in two tournaments by four places in total... bubbled in the blogger tourney 6th/30 and came in 11th/60 in another. A cash in any of those would have added to my winnings. | Permalink | Thursday, December 16, 2004
Getting Props I have had a lot of good things said about me by some bloggers who met me for the first time. Here's some om my favorites. Bob wrote: If I had one day to spend in New York, Pauly would be the guy I want planning my day. You get the vibe from Pauly that he could get anything done within an hour. Need a place in Vegas to host a private tourney? Pauly will take care of it from New York. Need a hooker to disappear? My guess is Pauly could get it done.Otis mentioned: BadBlood was near bubbly as we hit the motorized walkway. He'd cashed in his first Vegas tournament and we were on our way to meet the bloggers.And of course, Iggy the Blogfather joined in: Only one thing is gonna cure what ails me: booze and lots of it. After praying with Saint Hair of the Dog for a bit, I snack on some olives for breakfast before finally hitting the card room and sitting with Pauly and Derek. Had a damn good time hanging with these two, not only here, but all weekend. Pauly's blog doesn't do him justice, believe me, you've got to hang with The Good Doctor to get a full sense of his huge, gregarious personality. You can't make a guy like Pauly up.And one of my favorites, was from Maudie: I found the poker room at last and immediately spied Pauly (I'd seen his picture), sitting at a table playing. I went to the counter, however, and asked them to page Dr. Pauly. The guy said, "Dr. Pauly? I know where Dr. Pauly is..." and he took me to Pauly. And it begins. I got a big hug from Pauly, then I spied something out of the corner of my eye - someone stood up and yelled "Ant Maudie!" - and there was Al, arms outstretched and a shit-eating grin on his face.More to come. | Permalink | Day 1, Part II: Cowboys, Iggy, and the Hammer! "Our WPBT event coincided with the National Rodeo Finals. That meant Vegas played host to the largest collection of cowboy hats and plastic breasts since the release of Western Barbie." - CJ8:34PM PCT... I was up $7 for a seven hour session at the Excalibur. With dealer tips ($1 per pot, $2 for big ones) and giving away a $1 everytime I ordered a drink, I was probably up $40 or $50. I was starving and headed for a quick dinner at the diner next door to the poker room with Bad Blood, Daddy, Derek, and Maudie. That was the first time we all got to chat without poker chips and cards in front of us and the ambient casino background sounds of slots machines, cocktail waitresses whoring watered down drinks, and some rip roaring drunk Cowboy from Amarillo hootin' and hollerin' at a nearby blackjack table. During our lengthy dinner, we chatted about some personal stuff. I felt that meals, the few which I had in Vegas, were the rare opportunities to truly get to know my fellow bloggers. Man, I never knew that Daddy was an engineer! Bad Blood was an ivy leaguer? Never knew... because I never asked. Maudie played the role of Ariel? (Sorry for the Shakespeare reference). Even my brother let his guard down and admitted he worked for a major insurance company on Wall Street. For some folks poker is an escape from their 9-to-5 lives and the last thing they want to do is chat at the tables about their personal lives... family, work, inner demons, etc.. That's why although I felt I knew some intimate details of my fellow bloggers' lives... I definitely didn't know some of the basics. I honestly had no idea what the majority of them did for a living (aside from fleecing the fish on Party Poker). I guess that's because I never judge anyone on what they do make money. I don't allow someone's job description to define who they are as a person. In America, especially in New York City, that's exactly how you are judged, pegged, and pigeonholed. Hearing Maudie's subtle Oklahoma drawl was something that just doesn't translate over an IM or in the chat on Party Poker. It's those little things that made the weekend fascinating. Putting together the little pieces of the physical person and having that mesh with the internalized projection of that specific blogger. Next time I'm on Party Poker, the blogger sitting in seat 3 is not just a blank face... I can now imagine Bad Blood flexing his muscles as he calls an all in pre flop bet and takes down a monster. I can picture Maudie shooing away her cats from the keyboard. And I can visualize Iggy swigging a bottle of his favorite beer while penning one of his uber-posts. After some stellar conversation, we headed back to the tables. I was still waiting on the parts of NYC crew to arrive, along with CJ, and Grubby who was AWOL. I eventually got to sit with Maudie again! Late Night Cowboy Table:Now if you don't know by now, the rodeo was in town. The rodeo finals draws cowboys from all over the country and late night the poker room is flooded with them. It reminded me about the last few times I was in Vegas to see Phish concerts and the casinos were filled with random neo-hippies. Just like the cowboys you can spot them from a mile away. The tables are filled with fishy cowboys too. Seriously, the bigger the cowboy hat, the bigger the fish. These are the types of guys who will see anything to the river. They like to "keep you honest" and call you on the river even if they know top pair is a loser against a flush. Yep. You can't bluff the hybrid Cowboyfish. But they are fun to play with although plenty of dealers were complaining because they did not tip after winning a pot. I felt bad for them and over compensated. I would give $2 or $3 per pot (instead of $1) to make up for the miserly cowboys. Now let me tell you about the two young cowboys that sandwiched me. Their names were Shane and Cody. I'm not making this up or changing it for "privacy purposes". You can ask BG if you don't believe me. He sat with them later on in the trip. Anyway, these guys were in their late 20s and flew in from Utah. They were decked out in cowboy boots, the most popular form of footwear for folks heading to the rodeo finals. They both wore blue jeans, held up by belt buckles the size of CDs and plaid shirts. They had goatees and drank Budwesier. One of them was decked out in a black cowboy hat and the other a white one. That's how I was able to distinguish the two from one another. "So which one of you is the bad guy?" I said as I sat down and stacked up my chips into neat columns. "You got the black hat on," as I pointed to Shane, "I'm willing to bet $1 it's you." "Yer, Gawd dam'd riiight!" he said as he took a huge sip. "Where are you from?" "I'll tell you, but I don't think you've ever heard of it... it's very small town." "Tell me." "New York City." It took several seconds before he got the joke and started laughing. Nice to know that cowboys from Utah operated on a seven second comedic delay. Seriously, they were hilarious. Cody was a nice fella. They both were for that matter, just two guys in town having a blast drinking and yapping at the poker table while their wives were off blowing vacation money at the slots. These guys were loose and Shane was seeing every flop. Maudie was running over the both of them before I sat down. That's when I let them know that she's my aunt. "She's yer aunt?" Shane blurted out after he swigged the last backwash of his beer. "Shit. I'm scared of yer aunt." "You should be, pal. She's going to pay for her trip on fishy plays from cowboys like yerself." OK, I didn't say that. I really wanted to... that's what the wise ass New Yorker in me would say... but just smiled and kept my mouth shut. I wasn't going to blow Aunt Maudie's cover. Don't tap the glass, right? "So, New York, what kind of hands to you play?" Cody seriously asked me after I bought a round of drinks for them and a Corona for myself... and by saying bought I mean that I tipped the waitress $3 for all three of us. It was a small investment but the drunker they got the better the chances we'd get even more river calls with bottom pair. "I only play good cards." That got a chuckle from the cowboys. Both the dealer and Maudie giggled. "I like playing any Jack, like J-2, J-3. Are them good cards?" inquired Shane. "Yes. Yes they are," I agreed trying to hold a straight face. That was my biggest bluff of the trip. Shane and Cody also bestowed upon me the most original nickname I ever got... New York... which they'd shout out at me when I'd see them from time to time in the poker room over the weekend. So, there was an old cowboy sitting next to Maudie who looked like Black Bart. His face was weathered like an old catcher's mit. You know that guy's had at least a dozen of empty Jack Daniel's bottles smashed over his head in various backroom brawls in his younger and wilder days. Some of the scars on his hands and face were older than me. The dealer was getting pissed at him after he won three big pots in one orbit and never tipped her once. Black Bart took a monster pot from me. In fact everyone at the table was taking pots from me as I suffered some brutal river suckouts. My Hilton's lost to Cody's J-10. Slick suited lost to the Shane's Varkoyni. My Hellmuths lost to Big Bart's Q9. That really hurt. Maudie told me that he was calling me a "terrorist" for raising pots preflop. Oh well. He had a monster stack and I was going to bust his loose eventually. It was a scene out of a classic John Ford western movie when I, the obvious outsider, was destined to take out the aging, morally corrupt gunslinger and teach the Wild West that there's going to be a new Sheriff in town ending his tyrannic rule of the poker table. Here's what Maudie had to say: Played for several hours until I could barely think. I mostly folded. I was astounded at the stretch of cold cards - 9-2, J-3, T-4 and on and on. Cowboy Tom to my left was warning folks at my end of the table that the guy at the other end (Pauly - who'd been table hopping and had returned to this one) that "that feller over thar will play Ace King 'n, well Ace-King..." Pauly was wiping up. I continued to play tight and do my best to maximize my good hands. I was liking live play a lot!Lucky for me I caught Big Slick at least ten times over the next few hours. In a few hands I wiped out my early losses and I was on my way to doubling up thanks to all the loose cowboys at the table. I made sure I got two Bud's for Shane and Cody everytime the waitress came by. Bill Rini had finally arrived to the jam packed poker room and I met him up front for a quick chat. He sat down at a table and grinded his way to a good night. He's one blogger that I wish I had more time to hang out with and specifically play at his table. CJ, one of the tallest poker bloggers (he's up there... er, literally with HDouble and Mr. Decker) magically appeared. It seemed like within an hour he already had a Hammer story! Here's one of my favorite hand of the weekend as recanted by CJ: I'm dealt two black 6's and Otis raises in front of me. I call, hoping to catch a 6 on the flop. It didn't come, but it wasn't the worst flop ever: 2-3-5, all clubs. Otis checks, I bet out $6 and I believe Otis raised me. I was worried about a flush, but had to call. The turn was the 4 of clubs. Jackpot. I've never had a straight flush at a B&M table before, but I think I hid it well. I was really hoping Otis didn't have the ace of clubs. That would be a hellish beat. He checked and I bet out.I admit I was not playing every hand and took a lot of breaks. I was getting up to walk around the poker room every twenty minutes or so. I always checked up on my brother. I'd head over to Bad Blood's NL table or find the Otis' crew's table. Everytime I checked up on Bill, he had more and more chips. CJ and I would stand in the middle of the poker room and just give a quick update on the blogger tables. "I just dropped the hammer... Derek's Hilton's were cracked by 76o... Maudie's running over the cowboys... Where the fuck's Grubby?" I can't tell you how cool it was to be checking out different tables and seeing someone you knew there. It was almost like a Friday night on Party Poker except we were in Las Fuckin' Vegas and I had my pants on. HDouble, sporting a LA Dodgers hat, eventually wandered in and we recognized each other right away. By that point Al Cant Hang was just that... not hanging. He was out cold. That was the first shocker of the weekend. Al Cant Hang was the first to crash... before Midnight of all things. Little did we know, he was just taking a cat nap, and was ready to unleash a wicked bender. Maudie was getting cold cards and after Black Bart left, I switched seats next to her. Derek joined the table and we had bloggers on one end, and drunk Cowboys on the other. After a few orbits a guy came over to us. I had seen him playing on HDouble's NL table the few times I wandered over to talk. "Hey, I just wanted to say that I'm a friend of Hank's from LA. I read both of your blogs and I really like them." Maudie was flabbergasted. I've met fans before so that was not a new experience for me. I still don't know how to handle it, but I'm getting better with handling compliments from readers and people I never met before. I thanked him and something about him struck a wave of familiarity with him. Yeah I got that sense that we met before. I pointed to Derek. "This is my brother." "Oh, Derek from Poker in the Weeds," he quickly said. Even Derek got suspicious. No one aside from bloggers reads his blog... and only a handful do; Halverson, Daddy, Bob Genius and Boy Genius, AlCantHang, and.... Iggy. "Iggy?" I half whispered. He smiled. I gave him a big hug. At that moment I knew that no matter what else happened in Vegas, the entire trip was worth it, even if I was beaten to a bloody pulp by a guy named Vito or got drugged by a sexy starlet at one of the casino bars and lost both of my kidneys by a sophisticated ring of Chinese organ thieves... none of that mattered because I met the Blogfather! And he was drinking... Budwesier. Huh? At least the two biggest rumors on the net were squashed. Only rumors about Lindsay Lohan's fake boobs were burning up the Internet as much as the actual identity of Iggy. Yes, it's true. Iggy was a normal sized human and he was not a sober housewife from Ohio as I originally hypothesized. Otis... on the other hand... is a 93 year old Grandma in a walker, the ones with tennis balls on the bottom instead of wheels. And that old broad can drink! With the internet rumors squashed I let out a sigh of relief. When I set up this event there was one person I had set in my mind that I really wanted to meet more so than everyone else... Iggy, naturally. When he told me he couldn't come I didn't want to push. I let Al do that and it worked. He had me fooled for sure. The night before I left for Vegas we played on a table at Party Poker together. I felt bad that the bloggers (Sean, SirF, Glyphic) I was playing with would not be able to come with. Little did I know Iggy knew he's be seeing me the next day. The fucker! I also realized how hard it is for a guy like Iggy to find time for everyone in Vegas and I was honored for the time we did get to hang out. Every fuckin' second. He found a seat at my table and all I kept thinking was how much the trip was getting better and better. Maudie, Me, Iggy, and Derek... all in a row. Man oh man. 2:13am PCT on Saturday in Vegas was a moment I'll never forget. There was no other place on Earth I'd rather be. We played for a few more hours and the cards were a blur. I chatted with Iggy about so many things. Our blogs, his horses, living in Vegas, the trip so far. He was trying to keep his identity a secret and eventually told Boy Genius, Otis, and CJ. I cashed out... up a few bucks and we were off to wake up Daddy who passed out in my bed hours before. On the way to our room, we spotted a bar. I really wanted Krispy Kreme, but how could I pass up having a drink (or three) with Iggy in Las Vegas at 4am. We stopped at the Sherwood Forest Bar and became engrossed in a conversation that I wish I could have kept going until sunrise. Maudie, Iggy, and Derek were all yapping about poker and life and blogs. Maudie has some life experience and has plenty of stories to tell. Afterwards, Maudie retreated for some sleep and we ran up stairs to wake up Daddy. He had no clue Iggy was coming and was pumped when Iggy woke his fat ass up! We hung out for a while before they went downstairs. Now the late night mini-parties in our room (Derek and I shared a room) are a serious blur. I'd wake up and find the room trashed and empty bottles all over the place and I'd forget exactly who was up there hours earlier. I can't recall the full roaster of people there on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday and it's probably best we don't talk about what happened between the hours of 4:20am and 6am in Vegas. It's just a personal rule of mine. Events transpired in Las Vegas County between those said times are not in anyway blogworthy... that's the stuff you'd have to read about in my novels or in sealed court documents. With that being said, I was exhausted. I only had 3 hours of slumber in my previous two days! I had to get some semblance of rest before the big event... the Holiday Classic at Sam's Town. I also had a couple of hours of personal writing that I had to do before I slept. I fell asleep at my laptop, when I woke up an hour later I shut the fucker, rolled over and as soon as I closed my eyes, I swear... the phone was ringing. It was my wake up call. Wake up? I just went to bed! I was still wearing all my clothes from the night before. I was suffering from mental dehydration and had a wicked case of cotton mouth. As I stared up at the ceiling, all I could think about was... where the fuck was Grubby? ... to be continued. Here's the timetable of the rest of my trip reports:Stay tuned for more wild and wacky Vegas stories. There are plenty fo Hammer stories too. In the meantime, please visit everyone's blog for their kickass trip reports; Iggy, Derek, Poker Prof, Flip Chip, and Foiled Coup from Lasvegasvegas, Dick from Buy It In Vegas, Riding the F Train, Boy Genius, Bad Blood, Bill Rini, Felicia, Glenn, Otis & CJ & G-Rob, Al Cant Hang & EvaCanHang, Maudie, Signor Ferrari, - EV, Bob, Grubby, Mas from Genius of Poker, Martin from JMC Automatic and Brian, Linda from Poker Works, and Daddy from Snail Trax. Did I miss anybody? Some are up, some are in the process of writing them, and some people like my brother are swamped with work, so I'm sure you'll be reading about this trip over the next few weeks. Thanks for stopping by. | Permalink | Some Cool Trip Reports BG talks about strippers on one of his Vegas posts. Here's my favorite part... Do "dancers" smell like whores, or do whores smell like "dancers?" Either way, it takes a lot of mid-priced perfume to cover skank adequately.Oh yeah. And AlCantHang has some gems about Vegas on his site. I hope EvaCanHang posts something of her own! Definitely check out The Poker Prof's write up of the blogger's tourney. There's a pic or two of me on there. | Permalink | Wednesday, December 15, 2004
The Real Vegas Reports: Day 1, Part I "Let it be said that Pauly knows how to throw one helluva party." - IggyFirst of all, thanks to The Poker Prof from Lasvegasvegas.com in addition to the rest of his crew, his dad, Santos, and Foiled Coup. They helped get the pros together for the Meet & Greet. And definitely thanks to Dick Gatewood from Sam's Town. He worked hard to set up the ballroom for breakfast and his tournament went as smoothly as any live one I've attended. His dealers and staff were great. We were treated like high rollers! Seriously, everyone's thanking me for the weekend, when it's Dick and the Poker Prof you should be thanking. My hat goes off to you for all of your help. Now go read their blogs and sites... there's plenty of Christmas shopping you can do on their other sites. Special thanks to all of the professionals who showed up. Ron Rose hooked all of us up with free copies of his book. Charlie Shoten handed out excerpts of his upcoming book and shared a lot of his wisdom in a great lecture. Thanks to Tom McEvoy for enduring a Q&A session with the bloggers. And thanks to Max Pescatori who skipped a Bellagio event to play with us and take all of our money, except Felicia's. Prologue There's never a perfect place to start a Vegas trip report. You just have to close your eyes and pluck moments out of the air. Ah, and notes are a godsend. I flipped through the first pages of my notebook. I filled an entire small one up with hand histories, overall thoughts, ideas, cell numbers of strippers (just kidding Briana), and even a poem or two. Based on my handwriting, I could tell that I was nervous. I might seem like a guy that acts cool in tough situations but on the inside I was freaking out for the entire week before Vegas. If I wasn't busy writing a new novel in November, I would have been freaking out some more. Some days I feel like I'm hanging onto life by a tiny piece of dental floss as I'm getting tossed around, when other days it's the opposite and I feel like I tearing down the open road of life at 100mph in full control of my destiny. I prayed to the poker gods that Vegas would be a trail blazing adventure. After reading people's trip reports, I'm starting to think it was. One of the good aspects of my personality is that I feel I can talk to anyone about anything. Individually I was not worried about meeting anyone, even the pros. I love those types of things. My concern was meeting twenty bloggers for the first time (and the more I thought about it, someone like -EV, Bill or Maudie never met any of us before so for them it was meeting 30 people) and not finding enough one-on-one time with everyone. My biggest regret is that I did not get to spend a substantial amount of quality time with... well, pick a name! I wish I could have spent an entire day with everyone one-on-one... walking around Vegas, having a good meal and conversation, and playing at a table with you against tourists, specifically Cowboys. That was tough and as much fun as I had with some people, I felt that I let down a lot the others due to limitations in time, my short attention span, and my precocious gambling and scathing substance abuse problems. Bottom line, I wish I had more time to hang out with all of you but the time we did spend together was special to me. I might do something like HDouble posted jotting down some special memories that I shared with everyone. Yes, I am honored and humbled that everyone took time to come out. I am also touched to hear how so many folks that could not come out wished us good vibes and were hitting up our blogs all weekend, looking for live updates. Everyone who didn't come was certainly missed. And that might be my second biggest regret of the weekend... that not everyone got to come. I know that this weekend started the ball rolling for future live events, and I hope that we'll have a bunch in 2005 so you can pick one to attend. Seriously, everyone was much cooler than I imagined. Oh, and my third biggest regret was everyone blowing off Felicia's stud tutorial after the tourney. To Felicia and Glenn, I fully accept the blame on that one for failing to rally the troops to get kick ass advice from a world class stud player. I definitely lost out on improving my stud game. I hope you can forgive me for that. I knew that everyone spent time and money and cashed in favors (spousal or work-related) to make the trip and with knowing all of that, I was hoping that everyone would have a great time and more specifically, have one great Vegas story. The more I reflected on my flight home, the more I realized that the blogger weekend was one of those events that could be the core of a future novel. Don't get your hopes up too high. I have at least three other novels to write before I could consider writing up this weekend. Which is why these mini-reviews and live updates have helped, along with my scribbled notes, and these trip reports. Seriously, I spent hours this morning ready everyone's versions of the weekend and seeing some random pictures of all of us out there. Getting There Every journey begins with a first step. I knew I was going to Vegas in December over a year ago. Derek and I love heading out to Vegas during March Madness and the week or two after Thanksgiving. As soon as I mentioned it to Boy Genius while I was dropping him off at the airport in Philadelphia after the insane AlCantHang's Bash at the Boathouse, both he and his brother Bob booked their flights and rooms as soon as he got back to Michigan. Once AlCantHang and EvaCanHang heard the epic news, their posse booked flights. With six of us confirmed, and knowing Felicia and Glenn were nearby I decided to get in touch with the Poker Prof to find out if he knew a place that would host a private table. I spoke to Dick from Sam's Town and he offered up a private tournament. And that's how it all began. One by one some of the bloggers and folks from NYC I was friends with joined in. That was expected. Several bloggers that I only knew through reading their blogs (and never spoke to before via IMs or calls) were reserving spots. Now that was cool! I was worried about filling up one table. We now had two tables and it looked like we were going to fill up three. And in the last week, I got word that HDouble and Daddy from Snail Trax were coming and I knew that I had to stop worrying. Everyone was going to have a blast. Daddy was the first blogger to arrive late Thursday night. He called me from the airport to announce the beginning of his whiskey bender. Just as I was falling asleep, The Poker Prof called with great news; Marcel Luske was going to attend the function. Of course, I couldn't sleep all night anticipating my trip to Vegas. I should have left Thursday night. I woke up restless to a wet, cold, rainy day in the big city. When Derek and I get into the cab at 7am on Friday to go to the airport, I forgot which one were were flying out of. NYC has three major airports. I knew it wasn't Newark. So I found myself with my first coin-flip situations. LGA or JFK? I figured it was JFK and called to make sure. I was so flustered that I forgot to print up my flight info. I always fly JetBlue to Vegas from JFK. They have direct TV for everyone. That helps kill half of a 5 hour flight. But after the second hour I was sick of four ESPN stations. I secretly wished that they carried TBS so I could watch Dawson's Creek. Instead I ended up watching cartoons and avoided the real world and stayed away from the alphabet news stations. I began counting the minutes to touchdown. Luckily were were 30 minutes early. On line at the cab stand, Derek spotted Senator John McCain, while I was trying to read my seven text messages and over a dozen voicemails. As we got out of the cab at The Excalibur, I heard someone shout, "Pauly!" I looked over and AlCantHang and EvaCanHang were rolling up in their rental car. We checked in, grabbed a quick bite and found Daddy, BG and Bob chilling out at the sports book. Within minutes I was hearing the first of many Vegas stories. Daddy's story was hilarious. He was telling me about eating a patty melt at a diner in Sam's Town at 5am with some guy named Vinny. It took just a few seconds to drag them over to the poker room. We all put our names on a list. Felicia and Glenn sat down at a NL table and I almost joined in, but I didn't want to lose some of my bankroll in the first hour against some of the best NL players I have met! I decided to play the lowest limit $1-3 because I wanted to take plenty of table breaks to chat with everyone and be able to field phone calls and meet everyone as they arrived. Most of the weekend was like that. I didn't get to play as much as I would have liked because I was acting as the host, especially on the first day. Luckily were seated at a new table around 1:50pm PCT and the mayhem began The first ever blogger table in Vegas...The action started out fast. EvaCanHang adheres to the no-limping rule. Bob liked to see a lot of flops and pounded Corona's while AlCantLimp tracked down waitresses for shots of SoCo. 1:55pm PCT... I called a preflop raise with 55. Daddy raised me after I hit a set on the flop. I just called and even asked, "Do you have a set?" I ended up cracking his pocket Jacks. As I stacked up my chips I had the first surreal Vegas moment... How the hell did I get here? BG to my left, The Hangs to my right, Derek and Daddy at the same table with me. Amazing. 2:45pm PCT... I hear over the loudspeaker, "Dr. Pauly, you have guests at the front desk. Dr. Pauly?" I always wanted to be paged in Las Vegas and I was by Otis and Bad Blood. I had seen pictures of both guys but lemme say, Bad Blood had a pair of guns for arms. If I was cut like that, I'd wear muscle shirts all the time. 3:30pm PCT... Felicia got an Omaha 8 game going for a second blogger table. I passed. I'm a bleeder in Omaha 8 and bankroll management was important for me the first few days. Sounded like everyone was having a good time in the far corner. Whenever I came over to the table everyone asked, "Where's Maudie?" There was a woman roughly the same age as Maudie playing Omaha with the bloggers. She had the same hairstyle and wore glasses. For a second a few of us thought that was her. I called her cell just to make sure it wasn't. Sure enough she arrived and was on her way! I feel that I have special connections with a lot of poker bloggers. The most unique is with Maudie. Sure we are divided by a whole generation gap (Baby Boomer vs. Gen X) as well as a regional difference (big city boy vs. an Okie gal) but we have plenty of connections. She's a theater gal. We have similar tastes in music and donuts, and then there's poker. We've had a whole running joke that Maudie had given me up for adoption 32 years ago and we found each other through poker. We were even going to try to pull off that story at a table. We almost did it once. But I'll tell you that later. My point is this... poker is a unique entity that brings people from all works of life together. It was great to see that connection in real life. Anyway, here's what Maudie said about our first meeting: I found the poker room at last and immediately spied Pauly (I'd seen his picture), sitting at a table playing. I went to the counter, however, and asked them to page Dr. Pauly. The guy said, "Dr. Pauly? I know where Dr. Pauly is..." and he took me to Pauly. And it begins. I got a big hug from Pauly, then I spied something out of the corner of my eye - someone stood up and yelled "Ant Maudie!" - and there was Al, arms outstretched and a shit-eating grin on his face.I felt like a celebrity during those moments. Shit, I felt like the most famous person in Vegas for the entire weekend. It was pretty cool. Maudie sat down and we all started chit chatting. It was almost like Party Poker but with a bigger chat box. One of the dealers asked us how we knew each other. The table grew silent for a few seconds when I muttered, "Prison." That got a chuckle for everyone. Again, I usually don't tell people at a poker table that I'm a poker blogger. And I didn't want to blow our cover. The Hangs and Felicia and Glenn headed out for sushi off the Strip. I desperately wanted to go but I felt I had to stick around the Excalibur to wait for more arrivals. Grubby was no where to be found and that was a concern. That was the first coin flip decision I had to make in Vegas and I was bummed out that I missed everything especially reading Felicia's take on the dinner. We played for a little while longer as I directed people to the poker room and giving out other minor directions. I needed some food and we ate at the diner right next to the poker room. ... to be continued. I will end this section for now. I have too much to write and will spread it out over the next week. Lucky Julie, 3rd place winner at the WPBT Holiday Classic, will be posting some of her tourney write up here as well. Stay tuned for more wild and wacky Vegas stories. There are plenty fo Hammer stories too. In the meantime, please visit everyone's blog for their kickass trip reports; Iggy, Derek, Poker Prof, Flip Chip, and Foiled Coup from Lasvegasvegas, Dick from Buy It In Vegas, Riding the F Train, Boy Genius, Bad Blood, Bill Rini, Felicia, Glenn, Otis & CJ & G-Rob, Al Cant Hang & EvaCanHang, Maudie, Signor Ferrari, - EV, Bob, Grubby, Mas from Genius of Poker, Martin from JMC Automatic and Brian, Linda from Poker Works, and Daddy from Snail Trax. Some are up, some are in the process of writing them, and some people like my brother are swamped with work, so I'm sure you'll be reading about this trip over the next few weeks. Thanks for stopping by. | Permalink | Random Vegas Numbers... Number of Krispy Kreme donuts consumed: 18 Total shots of SoCo I downed with AlCantHang before 11:45am: 6 Dwarf sightings: 2 Hours of sleep since Thursday: 12.5 Times I saw Otis at a Pai Gow table between 2 and 4am: 3 
Me, professional player Max Pescatori, and G-Rob at Sam's Town during the bloggers tournament in Las Vegas, NV | Permalink | Tuesday, December 14, 2004
The Brawl Still in Vegas. Just a quick story about the fight that happened at my poker table last night at the Excalibur. I never saw a actual fist fight in a poker room before. Sure, there were heated arguments and shouting matches. Even some pushing and shoving, but never a full on fight. And you know what? It happened at my table. I was in the middle of the hand... and I had the absolute nuts too in an pot well over $100. Seat 1: Pauly Seat 5: Guy #1 Seat 7: Drunk wife Seat 8: Her husband I just sat down at the table. A young, chubby girl with breasts the size of a microwave sitting in seat 2 was wasted as she sipped on vodka cranberries. Later on Grubby and I had an interesting conversation trying to decide if she was a hooker or not. Anyway, I must say for the first few minutes at my table, she was talking non stop to me. I never had a chance to glance down at the other side of the table to see who was who. I never knew that the people sitting in seats 7 and 8 were a married couple. A new dealer sat down. Since I'm in Seat 1, right next to the dealer, I always make small talk. I asked her how her night had been going, "I just started. Ask me in a little bit," she said. I'm on the button, I have Q-9s and I limped in a seven way pot on a $2-6 spread table. The flop has an ace but with two flush cards. Everyone limped and I called. No flush for me on the turn and ended up raising and got a few callers. The river was a King of spades. I hit the flush... the nut flush. I had the best hand at that point. Apparently, I spaced out for a few seconds. Everyone had checked to me. I was thinking the proper amount to bet to get the most callers. At that point the drunk woman in seat 7 flipped over her cards. She wasn't paying attention and thought I checked the betting. I told the dealer I needed "time" and was deciding. Dealer told her to turn her cards back over. "What the fuck," she said pointing to me, "he checked." "No, it's still his turn to act," replied the dealer. She was angry. I bet $6. The guy in seat 4, check raised me! Great opportunity to win a bigger pot. I love when people bet into me when I had the nuts. Everyone in the hand folded. I was ready to raise and picked up a few chips. "Way to go you dumb shit," said the man in seat 4 to the married woman. "Hey, watch you language!" shouted the dealer. "Go fuck yourself!" she yelled in his direction. "It won't be as good as fucking you," he quickly shot back. I was about to utter, "Raise," when the husband in seat 8 jumped up and ran towards the guy on seat 4 who stood up ready to confront the angry husband. He tackled him and threw him to the table one row over (in front of the Bad Beat Wheel). Chips went flying everywhere when they landed on the table. It was surreal, just like out of a movie. No one saw them coming. "Security!" I heard someone yell as they were rolling on the table and an old lady got caught in the fracas. Right away, I said, "Everyone, protect your chips," as I slammed my hand down on my hole cards to protect my hand and put my left arm and hand over my stack of chips. It took security a few minutes to arrive and when they finally showed up, they were in full force. The wife tried to run away and was caught a few steps outside the poker room. It took nearly twenty minutes to sort everything out. It seemed like there were three people sitting at that other table who were hurt and shaken up. $1 chips cluttered the floor. The entire poker room was buzzing and everyone stood up to see what happened. My brother had jumped up and thought I was in a fight. Otis' brother called Otis and said, "Get back to the poker room, there's a fight at Pauly's table!" It took twenty minutes for everything to be sorted out. The floor person came over to the table to discuss the situation with the dealer. The hand was still alive and I was not going to leave without taking down my pot. A police man escorted the guy in seat 4 to the table. His face was all puffy. The husband was giving him the business when they were rolling around the table. We completed the hand. I should have raised him! But I simply called. He had a baby flush and I had the nuts and took down the monster pot. I tipped the dealer $10 from the pot. She was psyched since she didn't get any tips during the down time. Grubby was sitting at the table right in front of mine. They were brawling just behind him. Derek and Otis ran over to get the story. Unreal, eh? The entire remainder of the night, everyone was talking about it. I must have told the blogger and Otis' crew the story at all their different tables. It was weird to have an entire table and dealer stop their game to hear my side of the story. I guess I became a part of the story. I was the guy who had the nuts when the fight started! I wish I could get the video tape to post on my blog. Ah, just another night in Vegas! | Permalink | Monday, December 13, 2004
Jesus, Bad Blood and the Bellagio A quick update... I apologize for the crappy tourney report full of spelling and grammatical errors. I'll post a kick ass one when I get back to the big city. Saturday night at the Excalibur, I played at a table with Iggy, HDouble and Derek. That was cool. When Maudie left Vegas she was crushing a $1-3 table at her last session. Before I crashed, I found Grubby hitting the slots with Mrs. Cant Hang. We woke up late and I was doing shots of SoCo with Al Cant Hang by 10:06am PCT at the sports book in Mandalay Bay. BG gave me a suggestion on a horse that got scratched. I got a tip from Iggy and bet on the Bengals... thank God for that fake punt. Derek, GRob, and I all had money on the Bengals. We were all knocking back drinks for the duration of the games. I saw Bad Blood drop the hammer! He caught his two pair on the river. Amazing. Nothing has been better than the buzz in between tables when you find out so-and-so dropped the hammer at the table. CJ and the Poker Prof had a great meeting with the folks over at the Aladdin... a possible spot for a future WPBT event. With both BG and Grubby sweating me on one of my tables at the Excalibur, I dropped The Hammer! Flop: AxJ... River was another ace. After raising preflop, I was leading out in betting all the way. Lucky for me he folded on the river. I flipped over y cards and declared, "The Hammer!" A few folks were pissed. One woman was like, "You raised preflop with 27o? That's the worst hand in poker?" In my smart ass (and very drunk) New Yorker sarcastic retort, I muttered something like, "Worst hand? Really?" Saw -EV and his girfriend in the poker room. Wish I got to play with him. Late night, I found myself at the Bellagio at 2am having a drink at the bar next to the poker room with Julie. On our way in, we saw Jesus. I shook his hand. I also saw Freddy Deeb. He was smoking a ciggarette near us. I also pointed out the infamous Bellagio hookers to Julie. We caught one lady of the night in action as she went in for the kill against one old guy at the bar. Oh, and out of nowhere, Bad Blood appeared! He was playing $4-8 and told me he saw a slew of famous poker players in the room. Back at the Excalibur, around 3:04am there was an Otis sighting on the Pai Gow tables. Check out Bill Rini's blog for a good write up. | Permalink | Felicia Rules! Congrats to Felicia who won the Holiday Classic at Sam's Town. She outlasted pro Max Pescatori to win the first live event at Sam's Town. The surprise of the afternoon was Julie from the Blue Parrot. In her first ever NL tournament, she came in third place and held her own when it was a three way match with Felicia and Max. I came in 6th place. I'm a fuckin' buble boy. Julie knocked me out. She beat me two hands in a row. It was ugly. Anyway, when I made the final table, I was the chip leader, a little ahead of Max Pescatori. I lost a coin flip against Julie... my 66 vs her KQo which cost me dearly. Other highlights included knocking out Otis with my JJ vs his AKs. I also KO'd Mas and of course when Al Cant Hang put out a big raise UTG with ATo... I moved all in with AA. He called and I doubled up against Mr. Hang... and that propelled me to a huge lead. Top 5 made the money. The (unoffical) standings:Congrats to Bill won won the booby prize... a copy of Gigli. Felicia won the cowboy hat, courtesy of Joaquin. There were plenty of other bounties but I don't know all of them right now. Maudie's shirts were awesome. Check n Raise send us cool jackets and All N Poker had shirts for the final table. Breakfast was awesome. Thanks to Dick and The Poker Prof for all their work. Ron Rose, Marcel Luske, Evelyn Ng, Max Pescatori, Charlie Shoten, and Tom McEvoy were all there. Charlie and Tom spoke for a bit. | Permalink | Saturday, December 11, 2004
Vegas Day 1 Mini Update Greetings from Sin City. After just three hours of sleep, I am happy to report i am alive, well, and that we have no causalties to report. Daddy from Snail Trax was the first blogger to arrive in Vegas late Thursday night. Early Friday morning he was the first blogger to puke. Derek and I saw John McCain at the airport. As the cab dropped us off at The Excalibur, Al Cant Hang, Mrs. Hang and half of his soused entourage were rolling up in their rental. Met up with Daddy, Boy Genius, and Daddy at the Sports Book. Then we were off for poker. Slowly one by one, bloggers appeared. Otis and Bad Blood were playing in the Noon freezeout at the Luxor. Bad Blood made the final table and made the money in the tourney. Otis is the man. He had cool business cards made up. Felicia and Glenn appeared as did Mas, the Genus of Poker. At one point, at my table were... Derek, The Hangs, BG, Bob, Daddy, Otis, and Mas. Motable hands... my 55 cracked Daddy's JJ when I flopped a set. Pretty soon, Felicia got the manager to spread an Omaha hi/lo game! I skipped out. Before we knew it, Maudie arrived and was seated to my right! Wow... some of my favorite bloggers in the flesh, in Las Vegas... that was a little overwhelming at times, and I kept saying to myself, I can't believe everyone is really showing up. A very tall CJ was next and before long he was dropping the Hammer at his table! Bill Rini stopped by and after a quick dinner break (and I was up $9 at that point) we headed back to the tables. Since it was rodeo week, I was sitting at a table with Maudie and two loose, drunk cowboys! Two guys from Utah were cracking me up all night. I tolded everyone that Maudie was my Aunt and oshe kept beating one cowboy in particular. "You aunt scares me," he admitted. Lol! Of course all my monster hands were badbeated... KK, QQ, AKs... all cracked by crapola. Ferrari and Julie arrived just around Midnight. Hdouble wandered in... and of course we both knew what we looked like, so I spotted him right away. At this point, GRUBBY was AWOL. Both Hdouble and myself didn't have his cell phone number handy... so we had to pray and assume he was knocing back cocktails, playing blackjack somewhere. Oh man. Grubby, where are you? G-Rob finally got in after Midnight and I met some weird looking... very short fellow who told me that he actually read my blog. Wow. Meeting a fan in las Vegas. I hope he used my bonus code... Tao4. Had a late nigth drinkw ith a few bloggers... and went back to my room for some hang time with BG, HDouble, and Daddy where we rapped about all things poker. I evetually crashed at 5am, and beged the operartor for a 8:15am wakeup call. So here I am. I still have my kidneys. My bankroll is only $30 thinner. I've met 7 (ok 7 1/2) bloggers I never met before. Have I mentioned how it's surreal to kinda know someone from their blog, and feel like you know them intimately, and tehn meet them in real life? OK, just a quick update before I head off to Sam's Town. Hope to meet everyone else later today. Including Grubby. We can't officially file a missing person's report on slots-addicted, Wendy's eating poker bloggers. | Permalink | Friday, December 10, 2004
Vegas Bound I'm off to Sin City for an unspecified amount of time. I'm still shocked that Sam's Town, an actual Las Vegas casino is hosting 29 of my friends plus me for a private tournament with professional poker players hanging out and playing with us! That's like having a basketball tournament with your buddies and Stephon Marbury shows up. Pretty cool. I'm kinda all geeked out that I'll have a chance to meet and ask questions with an actual World Series of Poker champion, Tom McEvoy (1983). Chances are that I'll be updating my poker blog more than this blog, unless something really juicy happens. In the meantime, if you are bored, take a peek at my new fotoblog gallery. I'm slowly moving pics off my old gallery and into this one. When I get back from Vegas, I'll update the gallery. Most of those pics I took during my travels. And if you haven't been reading Truckin'... here's your chance to start reading back issues that you missed. Yes, I'm excited to play in the blogger's tourney. I've met 1/3 of the players before. The other 20 or so I have not met. A few of us talked on the phone. I've IMed and played with most of them online at Party Poker... but never met the majority of them in real life. In so many ways, on so many levels, this trip is extremely humbling for me. A year ago, I only knew about a few other poker blogs... but in the last several months, the entire poker scene and the entire blogging scene blew up over night. Add them both together and you have one of the fastest growing and one of the more popular niches in bloggerdom. To be included in that community is an amazing feeling. To be recognized for my writing skills by people from all walks of life has been inspiring and without a doubt, that got be back on track artistically. I mean let's face it, people are coming to my poker blog in huge masses not because I play poker well... it's because I write about poker very well. I've logged a lot of long hours working on my craft and although I never started writing with an audience in mind... to know that I have one, and a loyal and supportive audience at that... is a soothing feeling. Some of the artists, writers, and other creative people that I admire never got a small percentage of the support I thrive in on a daily basis. Thanks to everyone for that. Time to stop blogging and go to the airport. Recent Writing Music... 1. The Band 2. Bob Dylan with The Grateful Dead 3. Sidney Bechet 4. Lou Reed 5. Radiohead | Permalink | Thursday, December 09, 2004
Vegas To Do List... People that know me well know that I make up these To Do lists on scratch paper and I won't throw it out until everything is done that I wrote down. Here are a few things I must do before I leave for the airport in 21 hours... 1. 2. 3. Pack... clothes, laptop, and other stuff 4. 5. 6. Write a review of Schanzer's new book 7. 8. 9. Compile a list of phone numbers of people in Vegas 10. 11. The OC episode four write up 12. 13. Vote for Elisha Cuthbert 14. 15. 16. Buy HELLO MY NAME IS... name tags 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. Crank call Otis 23. I am fortunate that I get to travel a fair amount so packing is almost second nature to me. I can do it all in less than thirty minutes. A trip to Vegas is the easiest to pack for as compared to say a camping trip. Since I'm going to spending all of my time indoors in a casino, all I really need is a nice shirt, sunglasses, and cash... and I'm set. Here's my formula for packing... 1. Underwear = amount of days traveling + 1 2. Socks = amount of days - 1 3. Pants = amount of days divided by 3 4. Dress shirts = 1 per week 5. T-shirts = amount of days divided by 2 6. Cash = $1000 per day in Vegas | Permalink | Marissa Flipping Out Thursday is The OC day on the Tao of Pauly. Here's a link to a short clip of Marissa flipping out on the first (or second) episode of The OC... when she wigs the fuck out! I'm getting really bad flashbacks. There's seems to be a little of Marissa in every woman I dated. | Permalink | Lost Lohan 
Cokehead? Or just a pothead? I've been getting bombarded with emails from concerned friends on why I haven't been tallking about the most recent drama in the life of Lindsay Lohan. If you don't know... the other day word hit the web (in an email) that Ms. Lohan left her purse in the back of a NYC taxi. Lost items included an AMEX Black card, her driver's license, and a big bag of cocaine! Wow. If I never saw more proof that she's sliding down the Tara Reid pathdom towards Cokewhore. I was fuckin' irate when I heard the news. That snarky bitch is doing more blow than me these days. You can read the full email here. This is my favorite part: Inside the cab Charley opened the wallet and found a liscence, an American Express Black card, a $20 bill rolled tight, and a folded up $1 bill. He yells: "Oh my God, guess whos wallet this is!" I said: "Whos? I found it, hand it over!" To my surprise it was Lindsay Lohan's California liscence and credit card! I took out the dollar bill and unfolded it to find a rather large bag of what looked to be cocaine! I couldnt believe my eyes! We had a pop star's wallet with illegal drugs and she's only 18! The first thing that came to mind was to blackmail for a large amount of cash or a casting in her next movie...Now unfortunately, this is just another hoax as reported by Defamer.com. So someone made it all up. Everyone jumped at the bait. Funny thing was that during Turkey Day, pics hit the internet of Lindsay's friends smoking a fat blunt in an SUV that she was riding shotgun in. So is she a pothead or cokehead? That leaves me with an idea... 5 Actresses I Would NOT Want to Do Cocaine With... 1. Julia Roberts 2. Angelina Jolie 3. Cameron Diaz 4. Britney Murphy 5. Courtney Love I really think that none of them would shut the hell up and completely kill the buzz. Nothing is worse than being stuck in a bathroom snorting lines with an insecure actress for thirty-five minutes straight while she yammers on about herself the entire time. And Courtney Love is in the Top 5 because... well, she's just plain nasty. 5 Actresses I'd Like to Smoke Pot With... 1. Meryl Streep 2. Judi Dench 3. Scarlet Johansen 4. Elisha Cuthbert 5. Carrie Fisher Elsiha can bogart my joint any day of the week. | Permalink | Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Tao of Poker Review My poker blog was written up on a cool website called Professional-Poker.com. Check it out. Here's a bit: Although you will not find specific information on poker theory on his blog you will be entertained with a steady flow of poker related humor where he weaves philosophy, politics, pop culture, and gambling into his entries.Pretty cool site. I might be writing a feature article for them in the future. | Permalink | 48 Hours to Mayhem "Sitting at a (poker) table with a bunch of bloggers is kinda like playing a game of chess, in a comedy club, while getting interviewed by a reporter, with the soundtrack to Oceans 11's being played by a Mariachi coverband. Oh yeah it's for your hard earned cash too." - UWannaBet Everyone recalls my infamous post called Grublog Classic Prep where I told everyone how I was trying to pump myself up for the first ever poker blogger's event. Well, here's the follow up... Holiday Classic Prep I've gotten rid of all my clocks so I have forgotten the concept of time. I tried to fill my brother's apartment with pure oxygen to resemble the casino effect. Instead of getting high, I got a wicked headache. I have been limiting myself to two hours a sleep a night, sleeping in my clothes, and with my bankroll rolled up in my underwear. I have been giving away nearly a hundred dollars in the past two weeks to homeless people on the subway in a desperate attempt to improve my poker karma. I have been playing various ambient noises (slot machines in particular) instead of the usual poker playing music that I listen to while online at Party Poker. I've been practicing my poker faces in various elevators throughout the city and even dared to stare down passengers on the subway. That's the type of thing that can get you shot in my town... just the wrong glance could sent some freakazoid off on a shooting spree. But shit, if I can out menace a fellow New Yorker on the subway, then I'm confident I can successfully mask any of my emotions at a table with Charlie Shoten and Ron Rose. I refused to cut my hair because of that Samson effect. However, I did shave because sometimes one of my tells is when I rub my beard with my left hand. To be able to compete with heavy hitting alcoholics like Al Cant Hang and Big Mike, I asked Victor Conte to set up a training regimen for me. Every other day I've been spreading the Cream all over my body in addition to injecting The Clear into my buttocks. We've also set up a steady IV drip of Southern Comfort so I can build up a vast tolerance to the nectar of the Gods. Although I'm somewhere in between Albert Finney and Dudley Moore on the alkie scale, I definitely feel I can pull a Pedro Martinez fastball down the right field line at Yankee Stadium for a home run. In order to fit in with the South Carolina crew, I started listening to Jeff Foxworthy albums and have been watching Nascar races nonstop. I picked up dipping again and I even bought a pickup truck with a gunrack, complete with a Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun bumper sticker. In order to get into the minds of my fellow bloggers I have been picking up their habits in an attempt to figure out how they think. My meals have been strictly Wendy's in homage to The Poker Grub. I have been listening to heavy metal for weeks now to get into Bad Blood's head. My ears hurt and I have this compulsive reaction to slam my head up against random walls. Also, I have the sudden urge to body slam the people standing next to me on the subway. To get inside of BG's head I have been smoking American Spirit Organic Lights and decided that I too would admit on my blog that the worst looking celebrity who I would sleep with is Caroline Rhea. I've been listening to pre-hippie, beatnik music like Peter, Paul, and Mary to get a feel for Maudie's personality. I always giggle when I sing the lyrics to Puff the Magic Dragon. Are you a pothead, Focker? To impress Otis and CJ I have been practicing my newscaster voice. "I'm Kent Brockman with Eye on Springfield." I realized I sound more like Jeff Spicoli than Edward R. Murrow. To figure out what it's like to be Bill Rini I tried to do some scuba diving. There's not much of that in the big city so I resorted to holding my head underwater in the bathtub for several minutes on end. All have to show for that is a nasty swimmer's ear, but some of the ladies in my life (one blonde in particular) would love to know that I can now hold my breath for up to four and a half minutes. Oh yeah! Oh and I've been playing 3 table SNGs on Party Poker with poor results. I've been getting whooped. Just call me 12th place. I cashed in just one out of ten. That's not very promising. That's my prediction for me on Saturday. 12th place. I could go on and on, but I don't have any more time. I'll be ready for Vegas. Will you be ready for me? | Permalink | Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Denny's Hooker Denny Neagle has now surpassed both Lindsay Lohan and Tara Reid as the sole celebrity who has been getting me a shitload of Google hits in the last 48 hours. A few months ago, it was Lindsay Lohans boobs that were getting all the attention. Last month, it was Tara Reid's boob slip. Now... it's Denny Neagle's hooker. If you have no idea who he is, or what he did then check out this story: Colorado Rockies pitcher Denny Neagle was arrested early Friday for allegedly paying a woman $40 for a hummer is a story that made me chuckle. Here's the skinny: Neagle was pulled over by police for speeding on a Denver street, at which time an officer noticed the pitcher's watery and bloodshot eyes and detected an odor of alcohol. The officer also noticed Neagle's pants were undone, and when queried about it, Neagle reportedly told the officer that he was "just getting comfortable." But a woman inside the car told police she had performed oral sex on Neagle for a fee of $40.I don't have any pictures of Denny Negale's hooker if that's why you are here but I do have a link to some screen captures of Natalie Portman's performance as a stripper in the film Closer. Check those out. | Permalink | 5 Random Things I'm Going to Do in Las Vegas... 1. Win the betting pool... "Who's the poker blogger to puke first?" (My pick: Otis) 2. Beer bowling at 4 AM 3. Do all my Christmas shopping at the Elvis Museum 4. Bluff with The Hammer at least five times 5. Try to get a Bellagio hooker to give me a "poker bloggers" discount 
Elvis is the fuckin' King! | Permalink | Drunk Talk "I'm drunk! And I'm in Mexico!" she shrieked. "Cool. I'm naked and in bed," I quickly replied nearly dropping my cellphone. It was almost 4:30am. I was in the warm company of a young lady and she was sound asleep. Most of my friends know that I'm an insomniac and that usually I'm up at odd hours. It's not infrequent that I get calls from West Coasters or extremely liquored up friends in the Eastern time zone at 3 or 4am. I found out that Otis had something to say on the subject in a blog entry over a week ago: It was much too late for G-Rob to be calling. In the old days (read: a couple of years ago), it would've meant nothing for him to call at 11:30pm. However, these days, a call at 11:30 meant one of a couple things: Somebody was dead or it was time to put one of our buddies in a mental institution. At the moment, I didn't feel much like dealing with either. I picked my cell off the coffee table and flipped it open.OK, it's not quite the same situation as Otis. But the next morning I found myself in a touchy situation. "So who called you at 5 in the morning?" "It was 4:30 and it was XXXXX. I thought you were asleep?" "I was, but woke up when I heard the ringing. I fell back asleep." I guess one of the things you should know about someone before you get into a serious relationship with them is: What kind of people call you at 4:30am? So who calls me that late? Hookers? Drug addicts? Senor? Degenerate gamblers? Suicidal friends? Drunk high school girls? Several years ago... the same friend called me from Mexico. That instance she was with her best friend and they were both rip roaring drunk. One of them still happened to be in high school at the time (I think she was still 17 then) and they did a little drunk dialing after an evening of binge drinking. When I answered the phone, I was in bed again.. with a young woman who I just started dating. She woke up in a not-so-fun-mood and heard a couple of girls laughing loud over the phone. She had to get up to go to work the next day and wasn't thrilled by the late night soused disturbance. "Do you always have drunk giggling high school girls call you up at 4 am?" she snapped. Honestly? Well, yeah, that happened a lot. At the time, I said what any guy in my situation would have said, "Never. I would never encourage drunk high school girls to call me late at night." After you stop laughing, I can continue this story. This particular ex was a little paranoid that I was going to run off to Mexico with a gaggle of drunk high school girls. I'm well past that phase but she was still skeptical about any future post-Midnight incoming calls. | Permalink | This Almost Made Me Cry Paris Hilton eats McDonalds is a sad tale about an heiress and her addiciton to fast foods. | Permalink | Monday, December 06, 2004
WPBT Holiday Classic Update 
Thanks to Maudie for the T-shirt design! 4 days until Vegas. How about an update? I talked with the Poker Prof. It's confirmed... Evelyn Ng will be attending the breakfast Meet & Greet. As you know Charlie Shoten, Ron Rose, and Tom McEvoy are all expected to be there as well. Wow. We now have four professional players to hang out and talk shop. As I said before, being able to pick the stellar minds of some great players will be an amazing opportunity to help improve all of our games and also a chance to ask questions about life as a professional gambler. I just picked up a prize for last place. So for the poor blogger KO'd first... don't fear! You won't be coming out to Vegas for nothing. I will reveal the prize on Saturday. I will be running a Hilton Sisters Challenge during the tournament and online at Party Poker on the same day. Stay tuned for details. We will also be getting some free stuff. The guys over at All N Poker are giving out t-shirts to the final table. The online site Check n Raise will be giving everyone a free jacket, in addition to awarding the winner of the tournament a $100 bonus to play on their site. What: WPBT Holiday ClassicI hope I didn't miss anybody. We have a few names on the maybe list and a few on waiting list. Stay tuned for more updates. Any questions? Shoot me an email. I'll be sending around a group email in the next few days. Check your inboxes. Charlie's Excerpt Make sure you read No Limit Life/Poker From Charlie's Soon to be Published Book. | Permalink | Web of Influence Schanzer sent me this link called Web of Influence which focus the attention on the imporatnce of blogs. Here's a bit: Blogs are becoming more influential because they affect the content of international media coverage. Journalism professor Todd Gitlin once noted that media frame reality through “principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters.” Increasingly, journalists and pundits take their cues about “what matters” in the world from weblogs. For salient topics in global affairs, the blogosphere functions as a rare combination of distributed expertise, real-time collective response to breaking news, and public-opinion barometer. What’s more, a hierarchical structure has taken shape within the primordial chaos of cyberspace. A few elite blogs have emerged as aggregators of information and analysis, enabling media commentators to extract meaningful analysis and rely on blogs to help them interpret and predict political developments. | Permalink | Sunday, December 05, 2004
Happy Birthday Otis! Otis turned 31 yesterday! Congrats. See you in Vegas for boat drinks. | Permalink | Last 5 Flicks I Watched... 1. Party Monster 2. Before Sunset 3. Shade 4. The Station Agent 5. The Pink Panther | Permalink | Al Cant Hang Wins College Football Pool! Congrats to Al Cant Hang who won the third annual Pauly's Pub College Football Pool. He had a monster weekend (last week) and beat out my brother. Congrats. Al wins $900! Good job. | Permalink | Saturday, December 04, 2004
Band Destroyer How the Internet Destroys Jambands is an article written by David "Zzyzx" Steinberg. Here's a bit: While this is most obvious with political discussions, it also comes up in musical discussion boards. If the majority of the vocal participants of a board don't like a song or a band or a jam it becomes received wisdom. The booing of the "Secret Smile" encore in Camden last year probably would never have happened without the weeks of people mocking the song on the Phantasy Phish message boards. It's not just songs that get bashed of course. One of the most unfortunate trends of the jambands world these days is how people use homophobia to mock String Cheese Incident. There are many things that I don't like about that band these days but a perceived lack of straightness isn't one of them.Some of the better stuff he wrote was about the relationship with Phish and the internet. Check this out: One of the lucky breaks that Phish got is that the Internet came along at the perfect time for them. With the exception of that one disastrous Colorado trip, they didn't even leave the northeast for the first six years of their career. It took them nine to get as far as the west coast. Yes, tapes circulated if you happened to know the right people and you could occasionally hear someone playing Phish in the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show, but it really wasn't until their eleventh or twelfth year until Phish really became known outside of a small cult crowd, just in time for the net to be at a point to help their growth. Those dozen years were put to good use. They had time to discover what songs worked and which ones didn't. "Lushington Miles," "Anarchy," and "Dear Mrs. Reagan" were dropped. The silly lyrics of the Junta period were replaced with the more intriguing songs of the Rift era. Chris Kuroda had time to become an amazing lightman and Paul Languadoc developed the ability to make any room sound amazing. It's not enough to have talent. You also need the time to hone your skills. There's reasons why so few Phish tapes from the early 80s circulate.I got to meet Zzyzx a few times at various shows. Nice guy | Permalink | Shits and Giggles Russian exchange student feels right at home is a hilarious read. Here's my favorite bit: To better fit in with her Cannelton High classmates, Kedrova has taken up many of their habits. She now smokes cigarettes and marijuana and also started sleeping around. A straight-A student in Russia, she now has a “D” average. She has also gained approximately 30 pounds since arriving in August and has gotten several tattoos. “As they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do,” says the 16-year-old.And who said Americans were fat, dumb, and lazy? And stoned to the gourd as well. Colorado Rockies pitcher Denny Neagle was arrested early Friday for allegedly paying a woman $40 for a hummer is a story that made me chuckle. Here's the skinny: Neagle was pulled over by police for speeding on a Denver street, at which time an officer noticed the pitcher's watery and bloodshot eyes and detected an odor of alcohol. The officer also noticed Neagle's pants were undone, and when queried about it, Neagle reportedly told the officer that he was "just getting comfortable." But a woman inside the car told police she had performed oral sex on Neagle for a fee of $40.20 pounds of pot discovered is a sad story. Here's a bit: Drug agents are investigating how a 20-pound bale of marijuana got mixed in with a truckload of watermelons that were delivered to the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Auburn. | Permalink | Female of the Year
Please vote for me! Please vote for Elsiha Cuthbert since I nominated her for a contest that Sigge from Norway is running on his blog. Last year I nominated Katie Holmes and she lost to Angelina Jolie. Oh well. This year, I'm hoping to steal this election like Papa Kennedy in 1960 and Papa Bush in 00 and 04. And I need all my fellow bloggers and readers to vote for her as many time as possible. Vote early. Vote often. It don't matter if you live in a blue or red state, just vote for Elisha. | Permalink | Friday, December 03, 2004
Seven Days... Daddy's In I just got more good news about the Holiday Classic in Las Vegas. Linda from Poker Works is going to be playing! She is the author of a poker journal where she talks about her job as a poker dealer at the Bellagio. I mentioned her before in my blog and posted parts of her write up of the night she was dealing to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck at the Bellagio. Otis mentioned something to me the other day about inviting her. He sent Linda an email and she's in. We now have 28 confirmed players with a few maybes. And of course Daddy from Snail Trax is in! He called me today and said he was booking his flight. Sickness will ensue. Wil sent me an email regretting that he will not be able to attend. His comedy show is opening the same night! We wish him the best of luck. Hopefully we can get him to play in the next event. In the meantime, I went scrambling to find a celebrity guest to fill in on short notice. I sent an email to the Hilton Sisters' PR person. I explained to them the history of the Hilton Sisters nickname for pocket queens and invited them to play in the tournament, specifically requesting Nicky, but I said "We'd be more than happy to have Paris and Tinkerbell." I had this image of Al Cant Hang swigging back a double SoCo with Tinkerbell in his arms and then handing the little pooch over to Paris after I knock her out with The Hammer! Alas, I have not heard back from them. Not to fear, I already sent out emails to some of my favorite TV characters hoping that they might randomly show up at Sam's Town. That list includes Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch, Screech from Saved by the Bell, Rerun from What's Happening, Arnold from Diff'rent Strokes, and Greg Evigan from BJ and the Bear.     | Permalink | Monkey in the Window "Do you think I'm crazy?" She asked me out that question of the blue. I had been rambling on about an episode of Dawson's Creek that I had been watching in between inhaling early morning bonghits and playing a tournament on Party Poker. My cell phone was having one of those drop-every-fiftth-word moments. I thought she said, "Do you think I'm lazy?" "Of course I do," I joked, "Get off your ass and do something about it." "Would you be sad if I killed myself?" I laughed again. Of course I got a mixed message. On my end I heard, "Would you be sad if I kissed myself?" "Kissed, diddle, grope. Do what you want. I like to watch." I was preoccupied. Multi-tasking is usually my forte but I was seriously distracted. I had pocket Jacks and some loose guy reraised me all in preflop. Should I call? Joey and Dawson were having one of their heart-to-heart talks and I love how the corners of Katie Holmes' mouth curl up when she's nervous. Should Dawson kiss Joey? I would. "Something inside of me clicked. And I thought how I need to stop that lonely feeling that haunts me every day I walk down the street," she muttered in an unusally soft tone. I'm not her therapist but I watched Dr. Phil three days a week and I got an A- in Abnormal Psych. I blurted out something that sounded deep and insightful, but I was pretty much making it up on the spot. "Stop being paralyzed by some romantic notion that one day everything in your life is going to finally gel and the world will make perfect sense. That will never happen. The sooner you drop that, the better off you will be. I used to experience life through a window. Some days that window was dirty and I struggled to see the world through the filth. One day I smashed through the glass. I made a mess, and cut myself up pretty good, but I finally got to feel what it was like to be in the moment instead of watching someone else in the moment. Someday so will you." "What if you encase yourself in glass all the time? And on purpose?" she persisted. "Well," I said glancing at a bad commercial for Jimmy Dean sausage patties, "sounds like you're pretty much fucked." | Permalink | Thursday, December 02, 2004
Find Danny Alea sent me a link to a thread on a Phish Phantasy Tour message board about a guy named Danny Clune, a Phishead from NYC who has been missing for almost a month. Visit the site that his family set up. One company anted up $5,000 reward to help out. Here's the related article Company offers $5G to help find missing man. Here's a bit: A Manhattan-based pet products manufacturer pledged $5,000 yesterday to help find former Matawan and Point Pleasant Beach resident Dan Clune, bringing the total reward for information leading to the safe return of the missing man to $10,000. The Sporn Company, which employs Dan Clune's sister Kristen as an illustrator and graphic designer, offered the matching reward to provide a bigger incentive for people to come forward with information about Dan's disappearance, President Joe Sporn said.Good vibes go out to his family. | Permalink | The OC Updates OK, we're almost into the fourth episode of The OC and I haven't said one word about it. I've been busy... but I haven't missed an episode. Yes, I watched the season premiere in Rhode Island at Senor's and I'm pumped for tonight's show. Just in case you haven't been keeping up... or if this is the firsttime you are reading my blog... I'm addicted to The OC. I have a special weakness for donuts, poker, blondes, and poorly scripted prime time soap operas. Fuck reality shows and Gilligan's Island. Give me Summer anyday of the week and I'm a happy camper. Over a decade ago, we used to have parties in my fraternity house and everyone would be drinking beers, inhaling gravity bongs, and watching two hours of mayhem... 90210 > Melrose Place. Those were the days, huh? Episode One: The Distance The Cohen house is packed full of topless construction workers while Kirsten is renovating the house. She's been maintaining a cold relationship with her husband Sandy, who she's tired of how he's handling Seth's insistence on staying away from home. The tension in the room is thick enough to spread on Sandy's bagel. The azure blue of the California sky matches the azure blue of the pool at the palatial Nichols mansion. A sizzling, well tanned Summer and a hyper anorexic Marissa (back on the sauce) are lounging around the pool making eyes at the sexy pool boy DJ. I like calling him Paco the Pool Boy and from here on out we'll refer to him as such. What we don't know is that Marissa and Paco the pool boy have been tickling each other's genitals for some time. The subtle glances give it away. Summer is still furious with Seth who left everyone and she moved onto a cute guy named Zach. Lucky fucker is the rebound guy! I'd give up poker and my left nut to be the rebound guy! Meanwhile, Ryan is busying humping a shitty construction job while his knocked up girlfriend is waffling back and forth between various levels of psycho-bitch. One second she's peeling oranges for him and the next she's convinced that Marissa is trying to get Ryan back. The poor idiot has one of those "How the fuck did I get here?" looks on his face. And how about Julie and Caleb? He's fucked and will most likely be going to jail, while the ever materialistic, superficial trophy wife Julie is a clueless wench. How about Jimmy Cooper? He's been banging Hailey all summer on his yacht and looks more like a skeevy meth addict than a multi-millionare. Sandy decides that only Ryan can get Seth to come home to Orange County. He hooks him up with a plane ticket and more drama ensues. After a late night hang up phone call, Theresa's suspicions are heightened. Ryan once again is in the middle of a tough decision. Where do his loyalties lie? His knocked up girlfriend from Chino or the richest idiots in The OC? Sandy ended up flying to Portland to find Seth. He hates Newport despite he's been killing his mother in the process. She's been worried sick. The entire crux of the show could be summed up in one line by Seth: “You can't spend my entire life telling me every thing that's wrong with Newport and just expect that I'm going to go back.” Sandy knows he's right. They get stoned and fuck abunch of hookers. Naw, just kidding. That's what they would have done in real life. Julie Cooper storms over to the poolside area where Marissa is basking in the sun listening to her shiny new iPod while she's three sheets to the wind. The two were supposed to go to an afternoon of “CardioBar,” and now they're late. Julie grills her daughter and she flips out, starts screaming like a wounded monkey, and begins tossing around pool furniture into the pool and freaks out in a way that would make an overwrought Sylvia Plath look like a placid Martha Stewart. Summer goes back to the Cohens and drops of fall of Seth's stuff that she accumulated during their dating stint. You know it's officially over when you have the final exchange of personal stuff She dumps it on his bed. She was wearing these sexy little shorts. Man oh man. Ryan shows up in Portland and the guys bond over videogames and junk food. Then Theresa called and gave him some bullshit story that she had a miscarriage. She was lying (didn't I see that happen in Fools Rush In?). Ryan's a poor poker player. He missed that obvious bluff... but he didn't care. Why should he? She gave him a free trip outta the hood. As far as he knew, he was not going to be a father so he could go back to The OC and live in luxury and hang out with hipsters and trust fund nimrods. Seth and Ryan decide to go back to the OC! I knew it was coming since it was 8:55 pm. By the way... Theresa fucked up. If you thought he was not happy working a shitty job to support her knocked up ass, wait until he finds out she lied about the miscarriage and kept his kid! Episode Two: Way We Were OK, the first synopsis went way to long. I'll try to be more succinct. Ryan and Seth don't want to go to school. They want to avoid the chicks. And see them The reunions are awkward. Summer is still wet for Seth but she's still pissed. And Marsisa has to figure out how to dump Paco the Pool Boy to get it back on with Ryan. Caleb gets drunk because he's going to jail. Sandy tries to help like always. He has to give the bad news to Kirsten that she might be going down with Caleb. In other news, Hailey has a gig on another show so that was her last stint on The OC. She bails for Maui, er Tokyo for a modeling job and poor Jimmy is left without a lady friend. To quote BG, it looks like Ryan has all of a sudden turned into the kid from Good Will Hunting. He's the bad boy, but wicked smahhhhh-t! He could get a scholarship to college if he works hard enough. And now he's a geek too, after he joined the Comic Book club with Seth. We officially find out that Marissa and Paco the Pool Boy have been knocking boots. She's so dirty. Poor Ryan. He's stuck in the middle of a love triangle with two crazy girls. One is a spoiled rich girl who's a raging bipolar drunk, and the other is a jealous, manipulative, insecure bitch who's hiding her pregnancy from him. Once again, Marissa is drinking (this time in school, spiking her latte). She ends up sweating Ryan about his ex-psycho bitch. They kiss in full view of Paco the Pool Boy. Cue dramatic music. Paco confronts her and she flips out again. And then they start hooking up. This girl cannot be trusted. I wish I had her cell phone number. Ryan stops by Summer's house. She's wearing skimpy clothing while doing yoga. Oohhh la la. I watched that scene 14 times. Anyway, Ryan is there to apologize for driving Seth away from her. She blows him off. Ryan ended up seeing that moment with Paco and Marissa and when Ryan confronted her, she got caught up in a lie and came off bad. Ryan looked like he had enough of the psycho-girl babble and walked away. Seth acts like an idiot and tries to get Summer back and it backfires. Girls hate guys who pay too much attention to them. Treat them like shit and they won't stop calling you. When are nice guys going to learn? Oh, and like clockwork the episode ends with Caleb getting arrested by the pigs. Episode 3: The New Kids on the Block Seth realizes that he's self centered and is destined to change that obvious character flaw. Caleb has to decide who to put in charge of his empire; his highstrung daughter Kirsten or his ditzy wife, Julie. By the way, an awful hipster band called The Walkmen performed and it ruined the episode. Kids today are wasting their money on crapola! Just because they are on The OC doesn't make them good. Anyway, Seth knows there's going to be a Walkmen concert and decides to get Summer and her boyfriend tickets. It's really a ploy to act cool to get her back under the guise that he's trying to be a nice guy and hooker her up with tickets. Ryan meets the new girl, Lindsay, after he spilled his gourmet coffee all over her. She's also the girl from the other side of the tracks and she pegged Ryan for a rich kid. Little does she know they have more in common. They get off to a rocky beginning and it's just a cover for a deeply rooted sexual tension that they are trying to ignore. That set the scene for even more drama in the life of Marissa. She has another female to worry about drawing away the attention from Ryan. Of course she gets jealous right away when she sees them flirting during a study session. She's everything Marissa is not... sober, smart, goal oriented, not 10 pounds underweight, and down to Earth. Seth finds out that the tickets are sold out and ends up taking a job as a jizz mopper (just kidding, he's janitor) at the hip new club (and hangout in future episodes) The Bait Shop to pay for the tickets. That place reminded me of The Peach Pit. And there was even an offhand Nat reference. Summer shows up without her boyfriend and Seth makes a stupid move and tries to kiss her. Been there, done that. Ryan finds Marissa outside and he invites her in. Sandy got fired from his law firm for being Caleb's lawyer. Caleb tells everyone Julie will be the new CEO. Kirsten gets all pissy. Sandy strong arms Caleb about his poor decision. He wants to appoint her to CFO, since whoever controls the money controls the company. She accepts. Seth tries to find Summer but she's having lunch at the club with her father and her boyfriend Zach. Dejected he goes outside and buys some heroin. He finds Marissa and they shoot up in the bathroom at Jack in the Box. Aw, I made up the last two lines. I wish that happened. It would have been more compelling! | Permalink | Pieces of Pauly What did I eat today for lunch? Two chocolate donuts, an orange Gatorade, and a sliced spicy chicken breast sandwich with American cheese on Italian bread. | Permalink | Before Sunset I had this great post written... then blogger ate it! Fuckers. Now I'll have to rewrite this very fast due to time constraints. I'm sure I'm leaving things out. I watched another flick with Briana yesterday. It's become a routine of ours. Since we're both perpetually unemployed, it's cool to hang out in the city on lazy afternoons and putz around. I've been catching up on a lot of films I've been wanting to see but was too cheap to pay $12 to see a flick in a theatre in NYC. Before Sunset was directed by Richard Linklater. He's the mind behind some of my favorite films (School of Rock, Dazed & Confused, A Waking Life, Before Sunrise, Slacker) and he's slated to direct the remake of The Bad News Bears, one of my favorite films from my childhood. I guess you can call Before Sunset a sequel, although it's not your typical Hollyweird sequel which was churned out by the greedy studios to capitalize on the monetary success of the first film. These films take place nine years apart and the first one never made any amount of significant money, although it generated a cult following. Both main characters briefly appeared in a scene from A Waking Life and it was obvious that Linklater liked them so much he wanted to use them over and over. I have plenty of characters that I created which I am fond of. Ivan the Russian Cab driver is one such instance. He's appeared in several of my manuscripts, short stories, and in both screenplays! The story in the first film Before Sunrise was simple. A young American (Ethan Hawke) meets a young French girl on a train in Europe and they spend one night in Vienna together. When I saw that flick 8 years ago, I quickly fell in love with French actress Julie Delpy and admired the way in which Linklater told his story both visually and with his intense dialogue. The story behind the second film is also somewhat simple. Nine years have passed and the two meet up in Paris. The American is a famous novelist on a book tour (in which he subsequently wrote about that one night in Vienna with the French girl) and he spends an afternoon catching up with the girl who got away when she magically shows up at his last book signing in Paris. Since almost a decade has passed, the actors have grown a little older, something you can easily compare with the random clips from the first film thrown in from time to time. But they still have that spark. Linklater's films (er, screenplays) are heavily dialogue based. He has an amazing knack to cover a multitude of topics in a causal conversation; briefly touching on politics, psychology, philosophy, pop culture, and art. On this script both the actors and Linklater shared screenwriting credits. He allowed the actors to write some of their own scenes. That's trust. I put Linklater up there with my favorite group of screenwriters which include himself, Woody Allen and David Mamet. Was it a great sequel? I didn't have high expectations, so I was pleased. The film was shot in Paris (in 15 days!) which was cool to have various Parisian landmarks in the backdrop. All those visuals made me want to go check out Paris even more. I got the sense that both characters were not too pleased with their lives (who in their early 30s is fully content?) and both secretly asked the question "What if I did XYZ differently?" Although Jesse (Hawke) is a successful writer, his marriage is shaky. You get the impression he isn't all that pleased with how his life turned out. Although Celine (Delpy) has a great career as a political activist and songwriter, she lacks passion and emotion in her everyday life. Both characters seemed to be clinging onto a romanticized notion of the one night they spent together nine years earlier and the failures in their immediate lives come to light after they see each other for the first time in nine years. The past is a son of a bitch to let go. I've learned that if you don't let some things go... they'll eat you up inside and you'll rot away. | Permalink | Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Cucumbers and Carrots This is why I don't eat carrots. *** Disclaimer: Unsafe for the workplace... and the home for that matter. *** | Permalink | Last 5 Books I Saw People Reading on the Subway... 1. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 2. When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? by George Carlin 3. Reunion by Nora Roberts 4. Basic & Clinical Pharmacology by Bertram G. Katzung 5. The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac | Permalink | Quick Change A quick question to all my Canadian readers. Do you guys get as irked as I do when you go to a store, make a purchase, and after looking through your change you find an American coin? I get Canadian pennies, nickles, and dimes all the time. Just wondering. Maybe we can set up some sort of Exchange Your Change program. | Permalink | HOME
Archives 2002: May - June - July - Aug - Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec 2003: Jan - Feb - March - Apr - May - June - July - Aug - Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec 2004: Jan - Feb - March - Apr - May - June - July - Aug - Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec 2005: Jan - Feb - March - Apr - May - June - July - Aug - Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec 2006: Jan - Feb - March - Apr - May - June - July - Aug - Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec 2007: Jan - Feb - March - Apr - May - June - July - Aug - Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec 2008: Jan - Feb - March - Apr - May - June - July - Aug - Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec 2009: Jan - Feb - March - Apr - May     |
