Ten Fuckin' Minutes: Did We Just Break Up?

A friend of mine was having a tough time on his blog. He wrote a semi-depressing 2nd Blog Birthday post and I told him he needed to do the ten minute exercise that I came up with to keep things fresh with my main blog. It worked for Wil when he was caught in a rut and it's worked for me as well. This past week, the Nerd took my suggestion to heart and he had two of the more interesting posts he's had in a while. Plus I got to know him a little better when he discussed his personal life instead of posting about poker strategy, which he's one of the best at doing.

When I read about him having to explain to his two-year old daughter why she shouldn't over use the word "nipples" I nearly did a spit-take. Good stuff. Made me almost wish I had kids. Almost. Then if I did, my blog would sound more like Neal Pollock's musings on being a soccer Dad these days. If I had kids and sat around all day and smoked weed and played poker with degenerate gamblers in Vegas for three days non-stop, I'd get thrown in jail for being a bad parent. I'd get lumped into the same category as Courtney Love, Michael Jackson, and Susan Smith.

Anyway, I wasted two minutes with that rant. I got eight more minutes to complain about the weather and my health.

It's cold again in NYC. We had temperatures that were 30 degrees above normal when I came home. Now it feels like winter again. Booooooo. Plus I'm sick. It's like the flu and it's festering inside of me. I've done everything I know to try to kick it... except sleep. I've been writing nonstop since Sunday and my head hurts. My back aches from sitting down and writing in a crappy folding chair for 50 hours straight. I know that if I get some rest, then my body can fight the infection. I did serious damage to my body in LA after 23 straight days of intense partying. I only took one day to catch up on lost sleep when I needed at least a week.

Who am I fooling? I need an entire year to rest and sleep after partying hard for 17 years and working just as hard during that stint.

Back in the 19th Century European doctors used to describe "sleep" as a drug for either physical or mental ailments. They'd tell their patients to do nothing but rest and sleep. That's how spas were invented... places for rich people to relax and catch up on sleep.

When I think about that... I realized that I do need some time off. The last week of 2005 was reserved for me to relax and do nothing. Sure, I didn't write any assignments. I took off from work, but I didn't really relax. I had the stresses of the holidays (and the first Christmas without my Grandmother which was a mental toll on my family) to endure along with the anxiety of knowing I had less than 2 weeks to write the perfect book about Las Vegas.

What good is one week off when I spent it depressed and anxious?

I fucked up. I never should have undertaken such a huge project, one that could make or break my career. I loathe writing about poker on some days (ok, on most days) and to write an entire book about Las Vegas was not only artistic suicide, it was just down right a fuckin' bitch to write.

I made a bad decision. I read somewhere than people with integrity and character can admit when they made a mistake. I made a huge one and I got a lot of other people involved in my vain pursuit. I cannot possibly write anything of substance in two weeks, let alone the first book I want to get published. Even if I took two months, that's still not enough time to write about an epic city such a Las Vegas. I need at least a year maybe two to write the book.

I'm foolish and I thought I was strong enough to do the impossible. Man, I was so wrong. Now my head hurts and my health is fading because all I want to do is finish the book. I can stop now and declare that the first draft is officially complete, but I know as much as I hate to admit it... I can write better than that.

I have a lot of pride and if I say I'm going to do something... that I'm gonna fuckin' do it. I told myself I was going to write a book about Las Vegas. I should stop bitching about it and crank it out. My intentions were pure and I thought I can perform a miracle. Now that I'm stuck in writer's quicksand, I'm fearing for my life. I totally fucked this up and I'm jeapodizing my career as well.

Why am I doing this again? I lost sight of my original intention. I wanted to write a commercial book about Las Vegas so I can eventually sell my other books.

But why do I want to do that? All I wanted to do in life was to write. Not write books for sale. Just to write. I lost touch with the sole reason that gets me out of bed every day.

I think about how guys like Francis Ford Coppola said "Fuck it," and still went off to the jungle to make the impossible Vietnam flick Apocalypse Now. Or how like the guys from Phish decided for twenty years that they were going to play what they want, when they want.

But I'm not even in the same category as those guys. I'm a fad. A trend. I'm an entertainment hack. I'm on the lowest rung of the entertainment ladder just a step below reality TV stars and women who contributed nothing to society aside from fucking famous people. Yeah, I'm grouped together with star fuckers and reality TV losers.

And at some point, poker's popularity will die down and I'll become someone who used to be famous once. Maybe then I can have my old life back when I played poker for fun, wrote one novel a year, and penned monthly short stories. I was broke, but happy then and thrilled if just one or two people read what I wrote.

Now I'm surrounded by fleeting feelings of fame licking at my bare feet while the heavy weight of wealth drawing me in a totally different direction. I'm more confused than ever. There's a mob of people waiting for me to say something everyday. The more that I think about that reality, the pressure to perform is immense. Imagine an entire town of people, heck how about a small city of people stopping by. Everyday. Sure it's cool and the ego has a hard-on the size of a Redwood tree, and I have a core group of people (my friends) who encourage me to say anything and write whatever I want. But having a group of people the size of a small city stop by everyday to check up on me or they are there so they can kill their boredom... certainly scares the bejesus out of me.

And it's getting bigger and bigger everyday.

Be careful what you wish for.

I have to say this and I have to say this now...

I want to walk away from my blogs. I want to quit writing on the internet.

But the money is too good. And the popularity is at its peak. And I'm a whore for the attention. Today the empty and hallow feeling I have inside of me by fat outweighs the desire to have attention and the eyes of the world constantly focused on me and my life.

To walk away now would mean that years of hard work would end up becoming meaningless. But life has become utterly meanlingless to me. I used to be an existentialist. I've morphed into a nihilist. I believe in nothing. Plus blogs are not cool anymore. Everyone has one. I want to be the first one to walk away.

I'm 33 and 1/2 years old and I've hit the wall.

I keep telling myself... "Six more months of life as a monkey grinding it out as a writer for the Man."

I thought that being able to take off for a month or two months at the end of the year would be the coolest thing ever and make me happy. My goal was to finish up the 2006 World Series of Poker and make enough money so I can take off the rest of 2006 to rest, travel, and re-write Jack Tripper Stole My Dog and another project... either a novel or screenplay.

Now I know why Phish broke up. Exhaustion. Confusion. Artistically bankrupt. Too much time on the road.

I realized today that if I want to live until I'm 40, then I need to take a year off. I'm seriously considering a hiatus... not just from my blogs, but from myself.

I must do the following very soon (the first two points sound like rehab!) or I will go completely crazy:

1. Sleep for one month. Just sleep. Repair my body after 17 years of non-stop partying.
2. No TV and no gambling for the same month.
3. Read 30 books.
4. Take two months to re-write Jack Tripper Stole My Dog.
5. Take off four months to travel and visit 10 new cities.
6. Take 3 months to write a new book/screenplay.

That's ten months. If I took a ten month hiatus starting on August 20th, then I'll be able to show up in Las Vegas for the 2007 WSOP completely refreshed. That is, if I decide to come back to poker and to blogging. Who knows if I discover something else that's more appealing?

I'm sorry folks, but I think we're going to have to break up. It's not you... it's me.

Jaywalking in the Old Neighborhood

I finished an article about 6 hours before this morning's deadline. I worked on it for about six hours straight on Sunday afternoon and for another hour late last night. It's almost 5K words. That's more than 3x as much as I usually write. Although I get paid by the word at my highest rate for this particular publication, there's a max payout, so I'm not going to get any more than normal. My only hope is for the rare bonus. I've gotten those a couple of times, but never for that particular magazine.

I also got offered up a regular column for one media outlet I had done freelance for. It pays much less than my current rate, but they only want 600 words twice a month. I'm gonna do it anyway. And yes, I have to write about poker.

Someday someone is going to pay me to write about something other than poker. I eagerly await that day.

For now, I'm fortunate that I make a comfortable living writing about poker. It could be much worse and I could still be pitching pharmie stocks on the Street and have to wear a tie everyday and have to deal with a dipshit boss who I'm a thousand times smarter than.

Ah, I got my jaywalking ticket in the mail. $114! Fucktards. Bastards. $114? You can see a scanned copy of it here. I'm just gonna pay it especiallybecause I expect to go back to LA in a few weeks. Like I said before, jaywalking was the least illegal thing I did when I was in LA. $114? That sucks goose testicles. LA county is infested with child molestors, rapists, murderers and people who are doing all kinds of human smuggling, and that's just in Beverly Hills. They could have let me go and used that time to go break up a ring of Thai sex slaves run out of the back of a dry cleaners in Glendale.

Moving on...

I worked on the Las Vegas book for a little bit today. I spent the late afternoon playing online poker and then went food shopping. I cooked dinner for me and my brother, some Italian food. Those spicy sausages rocked. I even made my own sauce. Needed more garlic I thought.

Take a peek at this blurb from Gothamist: Riverdale Country Day School is the most expensive private school in NYC. My father thought about sending me to Horace Mann, but I got a scholarship to an all boys Jesuit school in Manhattan and I wanted to go to school in the city. I'm glad I did instead of going to some tight-ass prep school in my neighborhood.

I strolled down the heart of Riverdale down aptly named Riverdale Avenue this afternoon. There were like a half a dozen construction projects going on as new buildings were popping up during the recent housing boom in my old neighborhood. Because it's an excellent school district, plenty of yuppies with kids have been trickling in. It's still part of the city but on the fringe of the burbs so you have the best of both worlds. I noticed that plenty of random 20-somethings have been moving in as well. All the hipsters and trendoids drove up the rents in all the cooler neighborhoods and the kids without trust funds or generous parents had to look for cheap housing. I guess $1400 for a studio is cheap compared to the outrageous rents in Manhattan. Growing up, my neighborhood was dominated by Irish and Jewish families. Over the years it fluctuated and more ethnic groups moved in. First it was a wave of black and Asian families, then Hispanics and Russians. These days, it's just like NYC... a mix of all kinds.

I bumped into someone I knew during my walk along Riverdale Avenue. Milla came out of the flower shop with her twins. It had been a while since we last saw each other because her kids were running around. The last time I saw her she was pregnant and the size of a school bus. She couldn't talk for too long. Thank God because she had the little ones to attend to. I got caught up in what Larry David called "The Stop & Chat." It happens more in NYC than LA or any other city, especially since everyone walks around in New York. I couldn't tell if she knew I had a blog. If someone from my past doesn't bring it up, I assume they don't know and rather keep it that way.

Anyway, I chatted for a few minutes. Mentioned about my trip to LA and my upcoming trip to Las Vegas next week. Milla had that look in her eye that's he wished she could go with me, even just for a day.

I headed to the post office which was packed during lunch hour and I kicked myself in the junk because that was a rookie move on my part. Never go to the bank or post office in NYC during lunch hour. With only one window open, the line snaked around the small room. It was hot as hell in there too and I sweated profusely as I stood in line.

To determine how long I was going to wait I counted everyone in front of me and I multiplied by 3 minutes. That's the conservative estimate for post offices. During holiday season I'd add an extra minute. There were four people in front of me. I figured 12 minutes. I settled into "stuck in a line" mode and figured out what I had to do the rest of the day. An old Jewish lady got right behind me as the line quickly tripled in size. The old lady already started complaining.

"Why is there only one window open? It's so hot in here. Why don't they turn on the AC?"

I ignored her as I waited for an Irish guy at the window to finish up his transaction. He was obviously sending two packages home and he had to fill out the extra paper work that the post office required post 9-11 for all overseas packages. The old lady grew more bothersome. I don't mind waiting in line. What I can't stand is being stuck with impatient people. They test my patience.

"Why is this taking so long?" she moaned trying to illicit sympathy from anyone.

I refused to acknowledge her. A young woman with a stroller bought stamps next. She was quick. We were back on schedule until a large black guy waddled over to the window with a huge package wrapped in brown paper and about forty CDs wrapped in white packaging. He was a DJ sending a piece of equipment back somewhere and he was also submitting demos to different clubs all over the world. I could hear the post office worker call out the countries he was mailing his grooves to.

Australia. Japan. Germany. England. Canada. Brazil. Netherlands. Los Angeles. Spain.

He took at least eight or nine minutes while he engaged the postal work in idle chit chat as she frantically stamped all of his packages. I dunno what made the old lady behind me more angry; the fact that the guy and the postal worker were both black and having a polite conversation or that she had to wait in line a few minutes longer.

"All right. Can we go a little faster please?" she nearly screamed. "The blacks are always so slow."

Everyone heard her. Especially the postal worker who all of a sudden slowed down her pace. That's when I snapped. Everything was going fine until the old lady bitched.

"What's your problem? There's twenty people waiting patiently in line and you know what were all thinking? 'I wish that old lady would shut the fuck up.' Waiting in line sucks as is, you're making it worse."

"You have no manners," she screamed at me.

She looked like she was going to throw a punch. She turned around to complain at the nurse standing behind her.

"He's right," the nurse said.

The old lady pushed me aside me and walked up to the window as the DJ paid his tab.

"That man harassed me. I want you to call the police."

I should have kept my mouth shut and started to regret what I said. That's when one of the guys standing in line said, "What's your problem ma'am?"

It was one of NY's finest. The cop was waiting in line with the rest of us. And he was black. As she went over to complain, an old man in front of me with a NY Mets hat on walked up to the window. He had to send something through registered mail. Then it was my turn. I quickly got postage for my taxes and apologized to the postal worker for snapping at the old lady. She laughed it off. You really have to have a good sense of humor and a Buddhist attitude if you are going to collect a check as a postal worker.

The old lady was too busy complaining to the cop that she missed her place in line. I left the post office as I heard her shriek, "Aren't you going to do something?"

21 Flavors: LA Picture Dump

Here's a huge LA picture dump. This is just a small percentage of all the photos I took over the last three weeks. By far my favorite set of pics were taken at Zuma Beach in Malibu.


Moe Zuma Beach


Downtown LA




With Spaceman in media row at the LA Poker Classic










From the Bluffs


Wil, Costanza, and Danny Masterson at the WPT Invitational


Fabric store on 3rd Street






At Zuma Beach






The wall in Swingers


Big Boy in the Valley




Side street


A view from the car

Last 5 Random Google Referrals...
1. free sex wth dogs
2. olympic garden "vip room" blowjob
3. cost of a panini sandwich
4. 17 year old girls seducing dogs
5. southern college girls that like to get golden showers

Ten Minute Saturdays: Mr. Clean

It all started with the messy desktop on my laptop. I recently added a new background image from one of the pictures I took at Zuma Beach last week. I couldn't see most of the spectacular beach because of all the orphaned files and unused shortcuts that infested my desktop. It took a good hour, but I finally got rid of most of them.

I can see the ocean now.

That frantic energy spilled over into cleaning up my storage space in my mother's apartment. My old bedroom is where Derek and I store random shit. He has boxes of old insurance manuals and files. I have dozens and dozens of boxes of books, CDs, and hundreds of Grateful Dead bootlegs on cassette tapes that take up a ton of space. I also have all of my paintings in the corner along with a few boxes of clothes, not necessarily old clothes, just the items that missed the cut. I pretty much have a limited wardrobe since I'm on the road more than half of the time. I can only wear what I can fit in my luggage.

I took a good three hours to clean up all that crap. I tossed some old clothes and set aside a bag or two for the church clothing drive. I'm sure there's one out there that would be willing to take a few questionable purchases that I made over the last decade. There's a nice hipster dress shirt than an exgirlfriend bought me which I refused to wear on principle along with a sweatshirt from some seaside resort town that someone gave me as a souvenir. The thought of some poor and freezing immigrant wearing something that I never wore that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

I slept until noon today. I crashed around 4am and first woke up at 9am. I went back to sleep before crawling out of bed to do laundry. I printed up my taxes in between cycles and played a poker tournament online. I cashed and made the money. I ended up making the final table (the first final table for me in a very long time) and took 7th out of 468.

I did my taxes last night. I started at Midnight and it took me less than two hours. I used Turbo Tax. I did a few hours of prep work before I left for California and had all my business expenses already itemized. I owe about $4K which is great considering I had a very good year as a freelance writer. I expected to pay double which would have wiped out most of my poker bankroll.

I have about 36 hours until a deadline for a magazine article. I have not written a word and I've been procrastinating. I mean, I willingly wanted to do my taxes before I worked on the assignment. I also did laundry, answered a back log of email for two hours, and cleaned up my storage space getting rid of a ton of trash and old clothes. I'm looking to do "busy" things to justify why I'm putting off the writing assignment for a few more hours. Heck, I'm even wasting time surfing for Swedish lesbian porn and writing this post.

In college, I used to clean my room in my fraternity house before writing a lengthy paper. I didn't want to rush the process so I distracted myself. I did laundry, threw out empty cans of beer and bottles of Jim Beam, and returned random dishes, spoons, and cups to the kitchen. I'd clean out my bong. I'd return all those random phonecalls that I had been blowing off.

My attitude then was that I'd write when I'm ready and I'm not quite there yet. Same still applies today. I'll start the article later tonight and I'll probably finish the first draft by noon on Sunday. That's my goal.

Of course there are four things I wanted to write over the next two days and I'm gonna do all of those before I start the article... which is the only one that has a deadline. I thrive on pressure.

I watched The OC via TiVo yesterday afternoon. What a let down. It sucked big time. We need Seth smoking more pot and more 15 year old sex kittens raising hell in trailer parks.

Recent Writing Music...
1. Widespread Panic
2. Wu-Tang Clan
3. John Coltrane
4. Bob Dylan with The Band
5. Charlie Hunter

5 Random L.A. Food Pics


My weakness: Yum Yum donuts


Fries at Apple Pan


Daddy's wet dream




Penne a la Vokda with spicy sausage