Shaking up the Establishment, Sitting in Limbo, and Fading the Valley of Death

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

Covering the 2005 WSOP

In 2005, I did something groundbreaking that shook up the establishment. I moved to Las Vegas and live-blogged the 2005 World Series of Poker on my dinky little poker blog, Tao of Poker. Over the first few weeks of the 6-week long festival of poker, I built up a rabid audience. By the time the Main Event (for you non-poker people, the Main Event is the last two weeks of the WSOP and it's what you see on ESPN) rolled around, Tao of Poker's traffic was redonkulously sick. Looking back at those salacious numbers, it makes me dizzy and jealous. I caught lightning in a bottle. Tao of Poker became a purple cow. I was in Las Vegas for less than two months during the summer of 2005 and in that short period of time I went from an unknown writer to "that guy from the Tao of Poker."

The popularity of Tao of Poker helped me launch a career as a poker reporter and freelance writer, but it also made me the #1 enemy in the eyes of the (poker media) establishment. This was smack in the middle of the glorious poker boom which had blossomed to a billion-dollar global industry overnight. At the 2006 WSOP, rules were instated specifically to prevent me and any other upstart websites from getting those million eyeballs during the World Series. Yeah, I got cockblocked by The Man and the powers that be instituted an hourly update rule. I couldn't post updates more than once an hour or I'd get my press credential revoked. I bitched and moaned about the new Draconian rules for a few days, but then I stopped feeling sorry for myself and plotted a new game plan. I did what my father (a former U.S. marine) taught me to do in the face of adversity... adapt and overcome.

That silly one-hour update rule was in effect from 2006 onward and all it did was protect the financial interests of whatever big media octopus decided to buy exclusive coverage and strangle the rest of poker media with its slithery tentacles. A precedent was set. Those exclusive official outlets were exposed as greedy fat cats because it was all about monetizing their monopoly on traffic than actually covering the WSOP. And of course, the overworked and underpaid kids doing all the grunt work were compensated peanuts and they never shared any of the millions in advertising dollars (from online poker rooms on a spending spree). Over the years, the official update fat cats reaped mega-profits from their monopoly. They wanted all the traffic and all the money. They became ruthless bullies trying to enforce those bullshit hourly updates rules. When it came down to it, they were afraid of one guy with a laptop.

After the 2005 WSOP, I got pushed off to the fringes of the burgeoning poker media industry, which is kind of where I belonged anyway. I liked it all the way out on the perimeter. It gave me a better perspective on the entire industry. It gave me tons of freedom to say what I want. But mostly, it allowed me to experiment with different ways of covering the WSOP through photos, podcasts, and even Twitter. In the end, I worked out a generous compensation package as an "affiliate" and the online poker rooms I pimped out did not give a shit what I wrote about so long as the traffic was bountiful and I sent them new players.

By the time the 2011 WSOP rolled around, Twitter was ubiquitous and the technology improved so everyone had an iPhone. Anyone could update the progress of the tournament. Anyone. That hourly embargo on information was obsolete. The now-bloated bloated media giants had become slow-moving dinosaurs on the verge of extinction.

In 2005, I'm was just one guy with a laptop and that scared the fuck out of the establishment. Just think about that simple fact, and apply it to the global marketplace and you'll start to wonder why all the titans of industry (across the board in all sectors) are shitting bricks right now. The dinosaurs are about to get slaughtered because they are unable to adapt to the sobering fact that millennials "won't pay dick" for content. The entire paradigm is shifting in media and Hollywood and in the music industry. I have no idea where it will end up but a firestorm is raining down fire and brimstone and it will eventually scorch the entire landscape. This apocalyptic battle of old media vs. new media is on the cusp of a resolution. And when it's over, the paradigm will finally recalibrate. The future is not pretty and filled with unicorns and rainbows. It's going to be a bleak winter of discontent like the gloomy scenes out of The Road. I've seen the horrors of journalistic cannibalism, and it's only going to get worse.

Anyway... sorry for that tangent.

2005 was a fine year. In March of 2005, a Vietnam veteran turned photographer and his tech-geek son (Flipchip and Poker Prof) hired me to help them cover the World Series of Poker for their Vegas-centric website. I moved to Las Vegas and the rest is history. I parlayed that original gig into a regular column in Poker Player Newspaper, and from there, I was poached by Fox Sports, who was seeking poker content for their new poker section, which was only in existence to compliment their foray into poker-themed television programming. I started writing for a couple of magazines, mostly new ones that came into existence for the sole purpose to create advertising space for dozens of brand new online poker rooms.

By the time I arrived at the 2006 WSOP, money was literally falling out of the skies. But underneath all the glitz and glamor was the underbelly of Sin City. The poker industry and the online gambling world had a wild wild wild west mentality. It's where former gangsters and web geeks met at the crossroads of commerce. I wrote all about the height of the poker boom in my book, Lost Vegas: The Redneck Rivera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker, which detailed my time in Las Vegas from 2005 through 2008, right at the apex of the financial crisis.

I wrote Lost Vegas as a cautionary tale. Millions of suckers bought into the American dream and the mythological notion of Las Vegas. They all took their shots... and missed. The house always wins. All of those gigantic gaming empires were amassed due to the unrealized dreams of broke-dick gamblers. Even for the few success stories, it was only a matter of time before their life leaks got the best of them and Sin City swallowed them whole.

Click here to buy Lost Vegas

After covering the World Series every summer since 2005, I took last summer off. During the 2011 WSOP, I was involved in a nasty car accident and I took that as a sign from God to get the fuck out of Las Vegas. I needed a break but I couldn't persuade myself to leave the circus. The universe made the decision for me and I hobbled away from a popular website. It was either the best decision I ever made, or I was committing blog-suicide.

After moving to San Francisco with my girlfriend and taking time off from the grind, I realized that was not mentally and physically prepared for another grueling summer in Vegas and made the wise choice to sit out and let the Tao of Poker go dark. You can't phone in a ginormous seven-week assignment like the WSOP and that's what would have happened if I took the money to return into the belly of the beast. Instead of compromising the quality of content on Tao of Poker and undermining my own integrity, I made the best possible choice I could make under those circumstances. I put Tao of Poker on indefinite hiatus.

There's a huge misconception that I hate poker and hate the WSOP. It's the complete opposite. I love poker and I'm eternally grateful to the WSOP. I have too much respect for the game of poker and the rich history of WSOP to do a half-assed job covering it. If anything, I hated myself more than anything else. The enemy is me. I loathed the metamorphosis that had turned me into a hollow shadow of someone I once knew. I'm surprised it took so long for the circus to corrupt me, but when we fall... we fall hard. I had succumbed to the dark side of the force (addiction is a son of a bitch) and needed to walk away from everything in order to pull myself out. Like I wrote last week in Speed Men, if I needed a crutch to stay on the field and cover the WSOP, then I shouldn't be there in the first place.

No one walks out of the Valley of Death. That's why it's fucking called the Valley of Death for a reason. I got lucky twice. I struck gold with Tao of Poker and in the process I got sucked into a vortex of the "heart of darkness", but I somehow found a way out and bolted to preserve my own sanity. I hope that if/when I return, that I can find the same way out again. If not, then once I return... I'm back in forever. No one walks out of the Valley of Death two times. No one.

I thought I would be back to writing half-baked tripe on the Tao of Poker by now and hoped the political climate would have improved by this summer, but it's still the same gridlock and in many influential circles online poker is still considered an outlaw pursuit (on the federal level) by the knuckleheads in DC. That's changing. Slowly. Even the puppets cannot resist change. The dinosaurs have been paying off the shifty-eyed shysters and snake-oil salesmen in DC to keep online gambling illegal (save for online betting of horse racing... ah, behold the deeply entrenched old boys network and the magic of "carve out legislation"). But all those old patrons are quickly dying off, which is why the racing industry has warmed up to online poker. It's not a question of "if", it's more of a matter of "when." Sportsbetting and online poker will eventually be legalized in America. It's just taking much longer than anyone wants to admit. Red tape is red tape. State rights vs. federal rights is a fucking nightmare and has been a struggle since the Founding Fathers sparked incendiary debates about it while designing the foundation of America. Then again, had the rebellious colonies lost the Revolutionary War, then we'd all be subjects of the British Crown, which legalized both sportsbetting and online poker. God save the Queen.

For now, the online poker world in the USA is caught in a murky grey area. It reminds me of that scene in The Great Gatsby when they are driving through the valley of ashes.

* * *

I'm sitting out the 2013 World Series of Poker. I was offered gigs to cover the WSOP for other sites, which I respectfully and politely declined. I even got a generous offer to reboot Tao of Poker. I could use the money, but I'm conflicted about returning to Vegas for another seven weeks of self-inflicted torture. I might be back next year... if the timing and price is right.

If you enjoyed Tao of Poker over the years, then head over to Bluff Magazine. They have my exclusive poker content and my archives can be found here. Last year Bluff launched a kick-ass mobile app, so you can read the current issue of the magazine on your hand-held devices.

If you're a hardcore poker junkie and seeking out some of the best and most comprehensive WSOP coverage this year, then check out updates from my colleagues on Bluff's website (Bluff.com) and follow them on Twitter (@BluffMagazine).

In the meantime, if you're looking for a poker fix, then purchase Lost Vegas. It's available on Nook and Kindle, and if you're a Luddite, you can even buy a physical copy. Not only to you get to read about the poker boom and the dark side of Vegas, but you get to support an independent writer in the process.

I'm just a guy with a laptop, who once shook up the establishment. I'd like to keep doing that, so please buy my books.

Speed Men

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

My breaking point is 40 hours. If I stay awake anything past 40, then its really fucking ugly. As an insomniac, I can stay awake for 24 hours without blinking. I often joke that I was born on a different planet that had 30 hour days instead of 24, which is why I have trouble going to sleep at a normal time. I had stints due to work (or work-related travel) in Vegas or during serious benders on Phish tour in which I stayed up for 2 days in a row. I think I only surpassed the 50-hour mark a couple of times. That's such a dark and terrifying place that I hope you never get to experience the physiological changes that occurs due to sleep deprivation.

You need sleep to keep you sane. If you don't get enough rest, then your mind runs rampant and you turn into a hysterical zombie. That's why meth is such a nasty drug. It's not the actual effects that will do you in, rather it's the prolonged effects of sleep deprivation that drives you insane and makes you do stupid shit like take apart your toaster to see if GE is spying on you, or decide to dig a hole to China in your neighbor's backyard.

If you watch Mad Men, then you know about last night's episode titled The Crash. By the way, if you're looking for funny recaps Mad Med, head over to Grantland and read Molly Lambert. She consistently nails it week after week.

If you haven't watched last night's The Crash episode yet, or not caught up yet with this season, then you probably should not read the rest of this post because it may contain some spoilers. Consider this a charity disclaimer. But then again, I really don't give a fuck about your viewing habits. I have a small window to write and I'm going to crank this out while the episode of the themes from The Crash are still fresh in my mind.

Speed. It's a crazy drug. The hippies saw the horrors of speed, which is where the tagline "Speed kills" originated in San Francisco. Marijuana and mushrooms are natural gifts from the gods, but speed is manufactured by the Man in sinister labss. The Germans invented speed. The Japanese perfected it. Soldiers during WWII (on both sides) were crocked to the tits on speed. The military dubbed them "Go" pills. In the wake of the Cold War, the Air Force perfected a new pill that would allow bomber and fighter pilots to fly 24-hour missions over the Arctic Circle and stay alert during the opening moments of WW3 with the Russians.

If you have a prescription to Adderall today, then you should thank the U.S. military for their willingness to create a magic pill that gives you the right amount of pep in your step and helps you concentrate, but with built in landing gear so you don't crash. Hard.

That's the inherent problem with speed. What goes up, must come down. When you crash from speed, it's not pretty. It's fucking ugly. But somehow, Big Pharma tweaked and tested and figured out the perfect mixture of a series of amphetamine salts in Adderall that will give you a prolonged buzz, but it won't absolutely tear out your innards while you're coming down.

Cocaine is like getting shot of a cannon. But the euphoria lasts maybe five minutes, or ten minutes max. That's why my favorite drug joke is this...

Q. When is the best time to do a line of cocaine?
A. Right after you did a line of cocaine.

The problem with cocaine is that it doesn't last long. Do a line, get gacked, then ten minutes later, you're rushing back into the bathroom to do another line.

What I liked about Adderall was that it felt more like cocaine and less like speed, except that you never came down. Once you got up in the atmosphere, you stayed there for several hours. Soaring. Flying high. It was truly a wonder drug. Cocaine high in pill form.

My married friends (particularly middle-aged moms) often hit me up for Adderall. It's easy to function with little to no sleep in your 20s. It's a struggle in your 30s. It's impossible in your 40s.

Back in the 1960s, "Mother's Little Helper" was a barbiturate or downer that helped get them through suburban malaise.  But today's postmodern soccer moms need a little extra ooooomph. Raising a family in the 21st Century requires an abundance of energy, so anything that helps get your ass in gear on sluggish days is a godsend.

I dabbled in Adderall, but I don't touch the stuff anymore. I think if I wrote better on Addys, then I'd be crushing those fuckers up and snorting them nonstop. As is, Addys gave me tunnel vision and hindered the creative process. Nothing can ever top a hit off the old peace pipe for the supreme writing buzz, but Adderall is something that is... 1) more suited for editing, or 2) a miracle drug for "all nighters."

My friends and I often joked that the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP) was really the World Series of Speed (WSOS). I had access to an Adderall prescription and several of my friends (both reporters and poker pros) regularly took the drug. For a 24/7 city like Las Vegas, a drug like Adderall is a necessity. It allows you to keep going and going and going and going and going.

In early 2005, I played poker at an underground club in NYC. At the time, a friend of mine was a grad student and she would not stop hyping up the joys of playing poker on Adderall. She used to take it to help study, but supposedly it was an immense booster at the poker tables because it helped her stay awake and allowed her to read players better. After I moved to Las Vegas and took a job in the poker industry, I quickly found out that cocaine and meth were old world drugs and that synthetics and pharmaceuticals were the new rage. The new generation of poker players were being funneled through the online poker realm. Most of those players were college-aged, so they were already familiar with the effects of Adderall for helping cram during exams.

In some ways, Adderall and other variants were dubbed smart drugs by Big Pharma. I always wondered if Adderall should be banned at poker tournaments because it is a performance-enhancing drug. The NFL put Adderall on the list of banned substances because it is a derivative of amphetamines. But I also know that if poker tournaments started drug-testing its participants, then no one would show up to play. You can only drink so much Red Bull or Starbucks to stay awake.

When I first got into the poker biz, I relied on my chronic insomnia to get me through tough stretches. As an insomniac, I was used to staying up late and being perpetually tired. Plus, when you're passionate about something, nothing can hold you back. The ability to write (well) while tired, coupled with the pure love of the game, carried me for the first few years in Vegas. But as soon as I became a jaded vet and middle-age crept in, I found myself struggling to tap into my internal energy reserves. I was surrounded by emotional vampires. I was running on empty and used up the last of the vapors. I was dunzo.

That's when I turned to Adderall during the summer of 2010. It was "my little secret how I got ahead." Well, not really. Everyone was doing it. I have an uncanny ability to look someone in the eyes and know precisely what drug their on. Just wander into any poker room and Vegas and you can easily spot the stoners from the kids cooking on Adderall. They have the same glossy gaze in their vacant eyes like cocaine-eyed starlets.

I did not cover the 2012 WSOP. I skipped it for the first time in seven years. The reasons are too numerous for me to discuss in this pithy post, but one of the contributing factors was age. When I got into poker, I had just turned 30. A decade whizzed by and I was approaching 40. It's impossible to work 16-18 hour days, seven days a week, for seven weeks straight without some sort of pharmaceutical enhancements. If I am unable to perform the job as a reporter without the assistance of high-grade Big Pharma speed, then I should not be doing the job in the first place.

I never understood why athletes took steroids until the summer of 2010. I finally got it. I felt like Eddie Harris from Major League. He was an aging veteran pitcher who needed to doctor the baseball in order to get outs and stay in "The Show." When he was younger, he could blow fastballs by his opponents. As an aging veteran with his arm barely attached to the rest of his worn-down body, he needed to do whatever it took to stay on the field and compete.

I had a job to do. I was getting paid big bucks to cover the WSOP on the Tao of Poker. I opted for a shortcut. I barely survived the 2010 WSOP, and wrote a couple of great pieces along the way (e.g. Most Likely You'll Go Durrrr's Way (And I'll Go Mine) and the Odium of Hellmuthstein), but when it was all over, I felt as though I cheated. I didn't have the same satisfaction that I had from previous summers.

I felt miserable.

I felt like a fraud (more so than usual).

I felt like a cheating whore.

I finally knew what it felt like to be Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa the year they chased Roger Maris' record. Be careful what you wish for, because if you take shortcuts to get there, you'll be haunted with the demoralizing truth that you needed an extra turbo-boost.

Sure, I'm being hard on myself about an Adderall prescription. I wasn't taking it to write better, rather, I was taking it to stay awake and be able to work 18-hour days, go home write, then come back and repeat the process. Many reporters took Adderall (and other derivatives) that summer. Thousands of poker players did too. I'm sure so did the poker dealers. And anyone else who had to hump late-night shifts. Heck, plenty of people have to take happy pills every single day in order to avoid clinical depression. Does that mean they're cheating too and their work is tainted as well?

I stopped taking Adderall in 2011, and for the most part, the 2011 WSOP was a sober series. I was stubborn and wanted to rely on my natural abilities. But, I might have popped it a couple of times -- as a last resort -- which was something I was cool with. In small doses (like once or twice over a 2 month stretch), Adderall can be a helpful wonder drug. If you abuse it, it will hallow out your soul and you'll end up a chatterbox speed freak with a million stupid ideas.

So I skipped the 2012 WSOP because I felt as though if I was physically unable to perform the job, then I shouldn't be doing it. I feel similar about the 2013 WSOP. If/when I return sometime in the future, my goal is to be able to maximize a peak performance but without the assistance of Big Pharma.

Which brings me back to last night's episode of Mad Men. In The Crash, the ad firm -- SCDPGCC -- is pulling an all-nighter over a weekend in order to prepare a new ad campaign for Chevy. The company got paid mega-bucks to deliver ideas, so they had to dance like a monkey. In order to keep the creative juices flowing, one of the partners called up his "witch" doctor. He was one of the many Upper East Side physicians who prescribed the rich and famous a concoction that was essentially B-12 and high-grade speed. The Beatles sung about those types of nefarious doctors with their song Doctor Robert. Aretha Franklin sang its merits with Dr. Feelgood.

Shit, feeling down in the dumps? Just call Dr. Feelgood.

In 2013, I have no idea how many kids are being prescribed speed for their ADHD. I have no idea how many college students and  how many professionals are being written prescriptions. All I know is that Big Pharma is raking in billions in profits on legalized speed. Starbucks and Red Bull are raking in dough as well because their products keep people a wake.

My greatest societal fear in a horrible natural disaster. The looting or losing electricity doesn't concern me as much as the tipping point when people drugged up on happy pills and fried to the tits on Adderall inevitably run out of their meds and then they crash hard and go berserk. That's when you'll really see the zombie apocalypse and people eating each other faces... when all the pharmies wear off.

Speed kills. That's no fucking joke.

Stardust

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

It's seventeen steps from a blackjack table to the Western Union window, the last window at the cashier. It's only seven steps from the roulette wheel to the same window. Whenever I see someone standing at that window, I know they've fallen upon hard times. Dense hard. Bedrock. Broke dick.

The blackjack advertised a $5 minimum bet. Behind the table stood a lanky, freakishly tall Icabob Crane-like dealer stood with his arms at his side. The dealer his best imitation of a bored-to-death employee who didn't a fuck about anything, let alone dealing 21 to slackjawed locals. At least Icabob was wide awake and alert. At an empty adjacent table, a considerably shorter and stockier Asian woman with a butch haircut yawned with her eyes closed. She yawned a second time and I felt sleepy. It's that copycat yawn thing that your brain sees then mimics. If I scratched my balls would she scratch herself? I tried. It didn't work. Every time I passed by her empty table she was yawning. And yawning.

2013. The winter of discontent. The bleakness of frigid Las Vegas. Although it was prime time gambling time, the pits were mostly empty. A junket of heavyset Hawaiian gamblers invaded the craps tables and baccarat section and almost dissipated in a thick soup of second hand smoke. A few locals were scattered about, but it was hard to find any other gamblers. No fresh, happy faces fresh off the plane. I stood in the middle of a locals' casino and where the fuck were the locals? You read all those stories in the business section about Las Vegas getting killed by Macau in gaming revenue but then you have other conflicting reports of a Vegas renaissance with increased revenues. I had my boots on the ground and saw with my own eyes. The slowdown continued and did not show any signs of relief.

How bad? A plethora of $5 blackjack tables. Blackjack is so cheap these days that the average trip to Starbucks cost more than a single hand of blackjack. Caffeine addicts are lined up around the corner to piss away beaucoup bucks on overpriced scalding cups of java. Starbucks' prices are hyper-inflated at their own stores so you can only imagine the prices inside casinos are on steroids. The Barry Bonds prices did not deter addicts from waiting twenty to thirty minutes to get coffee. The line wrapped along a row of sinister slot machines with a giant Panda on the screen. The redonkulous line reminded me of sullen bread lines behind the Iron Curtain in the USSR during the cold war, or like the gas lines in New Jersey during Hurricane Sandy. Everyone was restless and needing their fix. Reminded me of The Wire when all the junkies in the hood were jonesin' hard and drooling off their chapped lips, and their vacant eyes were bugging out of their heads and they couldn't stop sweating because they couldn't find an instant fix. Everyone at the Starbucks' needed a pick-me-up before they dove into the abyss... into the pits. Hungover convention people and snarling locals almost came to blows while the underpaid and overwhelmed baristas, two heavily-tatted up girls barely legal enough to be inside a casino, hustled to fill complicated orders.

Where did all the crazy Asian gamblers go? If you read the news today oh boy, you'd see the hysteria on a flu epidemic that swept America. Over the last decade, the bird flu and SARS freaked out a significant amount of the world's Asian population. Waltz through any international airport and you'll see at least one paranoid germaphobe with a SARS mask. I'm sure that at mahjong tables from Hong Kong to Canal Street, old Chinese ladies share conspiracy theories about the white man poisoning them with the bird flu. Aside from pokey superstitions, there's only one thing that would keep away degens from the Pai Gow tables... and that's a flu scare.

Open seats at the $10 Pai Gow tables? Unreal. A closer inspection revealed that each table had one or two open seats. A token woman at each table squatted on a seat. I assumed she had busted a few hands earlier and sat there until the pit boss kicked her out, or until one of her relatives was kind enough to give their auntie couple of green chips and get back in the game.

* * *

The slimy goo was on the floor of the elevator. It looked light yellow and I hoped it was just a loogey and not semen. I've seen plenty of weird shit in Vegas elevators... the worst was a human turd and the most disgusting was a soiled condom. I can't recall how many times I saw broken glass or vomit inside an elevator. I once rode one when a young girl in the tightest dress I had ever seen puked all over herself and her hipster boyfriend. They rushed out of the elevator and left the shoes behind.

One night at the our hotel, the floor smelled awful. We were used to the pungent aromas of marijuana because at any given time, there's someone toking up in a Vegas hotel room.  Instead of delicious marijuana, we were invaded by a horrendous foul stench. Initially it smelled like someone busted ass. Maybe it was a smelly diaper? Someone on our floor had brought their kids and we could hear them do wind sprints up and down the hallways at the crack of dawn. But then I thought maybe someone got so drunk that they passed out and shit themselves in the bed and was still out cold in a pool of mud. Halfway down the hall it smelled like a dead body. Like a dead body that shat themselves before dying and decomposing. Vegas is a depressing place and you'll never get an accurate number of Vegas suicides, because that's the kind of numbers that the local press and corporate-run casinos don't want the public to know that someone might have offed themselves in your bathtub. I try not to think about previous inhabitants, but there's something to be said about negative energy lingering around. I have problems sleeping in Vegas for that exact reason... the ghosts of suicide victims and overdoses haunt me during my dreams. I never sleep in Vegas. Insomnia fends off the ghosts.

Maybe someone shit themselves? Maybe someone killed themselves? Just another Saturday night in Las Vegas. Lure the weak ones to Vegas, intoxicate them with their own ego-driven benders, take their last dollar, and then hire an illegal immigrant maid to wipe up the mess in the morning.

* * *

You can easily pick out pot smokers in the parking lots. Maybe it takes one to know one, but whenever I see someone standing in the middle of nowhere, I assume they're up to no good. Maybe it's the part of me who wanted to be a detective when I was a little kid when I watched way too much TV and loved Hill Street Blues.

I spent countless hours lost in thought by looking out my hotel window and eyes scattering around the parking lot. The mountains in the background were drowning in chemtrails soup. My eyes focused on the activity in the parking lot. In between the cars. I swore I saw at least one drug deal. Then I noticed another person got dropped off and got into a car... I assumed they were too shitfaced from the night before to drive home and did the sensible thing and got a different ride. The occasional weed toker made laps and a construction worker took a nap in the back of his truck... which I dunno how he did in such frigid temperatures.

The luggage people baffled me. Or the bag people. They walked through a parking lot with one overstuffed bag or sometimes two duffel bags in each arm. They didn't look like tourists, nor did they resemble a casino employee. Where they homeless? Living in cars? Wandering from casino to casino to stay warm? Where these the denizens of the underground living in the tunnels below Las Vegas? Was it too cold in there and they couldn't take it anymore? These bag people baffled me all weekend. I spent more and more time at the window looking for more of them. Looking for signs. Any sign.

Hopelessness. Whenever I think about the saddest person in Las Vegas, that three syllable word comes to mind. There's something about the negative energy in Las Vegas that creates a vortex of hopelessness. There's several groups of people who feed off that harnessed energy. The Vegas vampires are emotional blood suckers, preying on fear and manipulating the smallest edges for their own gain. The Luxor's light is a warning beacon. Hope is destroyed for all ye whom enters.

I felt that familiar itch inside my skin. It was time to check out. And go home. Like the Catholic priest says at the end of a funeral... "Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Thou shall return."

Tax Exempt Hustlers

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

Did the magnetic poles shift over the last week? New York City is getting near-Spring-like temperatures while Southern California and Nevada sunk into a deep freeze. 

Step into the freezer?

I don't mind nature's curveball... so long as it passes quickly. The entire point of living where I live is to take advantage of the balmy weather in January, ubiquitous sunshine, and be in a city that is sympathetic to writers. Walk into any Starbucks in the greater Los Angeles area and wave a bunch of pages around and utter "Did someone drop their screenplay?"... then watch a dozen disheveled, half-baked writers bum rush you like you're helicopter pilot on top of the U.S. embassy and manning the last chopper out of Saigon.

NYC is a tough town for writers because there's way too many A-type personalities running rampant. Cocktail parties with pretentious drunkards on a wine-buzz are equally painful on both coasts, but the Upper East Side events are cliche-ridden conversations that sound more like Linked In quips while trying to compare cock sizes to bank accounts and where in the Hamtpons you summer. Sure, in the end everyone wants to talk about themselves (or talk shit about other people), but very rarely did the NYC hoi polloi inquire "What are you writing?" They're more interested in how much you pay for rent or how much Len Dunham's mother's TriBeCa loft is worth than wondering what kind of script you're working on or nor do they care if you're struggling to to hide your obvious literary influences and worried that none of your secondary characters complete an arc by the end of the third act.

Things are weird on the Left Coast, and as much as a loathe the plasticity and shallowness of Los Angeles, it is afterall, a show biz town which attracted insanely talented people for all over the world. Every other person is working on a script, or shopping one, or struggling to come up with an idea that will be a million to one shot to actually get made. Your valet driver. Bartender. The neighborhood dog walker. The guy working at the marijuana dispensary. The UPS driver. The girl working the front desk at the Namaste Yoga studio. The working class in Los Angeles is made up of aspiring artisans... writers, musicians, actors... all creative-types at heart, but slighted by society because they have to wear a name tag during business hours.

Anyone can write a bad screenplay. I've written dozens and have three or four rattling around my loins ready to be shat out in Final Draft or some other hacked version of screenwriting software. But there's so much more to a successful screenplay than snazzy dialogue and likable characters on paper. After the studio get done chopping up your bloodwork and it gets hijacked by a suit who really wants to bang Megan Fox, so he insists on casting her as the next door neighbor (even though you wrote the role as a 84 year old Cuban man). Selling a script in Hollywood is worst odds than trying to donk-win Lotto. There's an underlying deviant dark side of the business where pimps and agents blur the lines between exploration and art. Media manipulation and occult worship combined with overwhelming influence of the power brokers makes it almost impossible to get anything done without getting your best ideas stolen and cloned, with your originality deleted and liquidated. And then  there's an added element that I can only categorize as spooky paranormal shit that happens in the hills of Hollywood.

When I discovered about five or six years ago I did not have to live in Las Vegas to do what I do... I jumped at the chance to leave. There's plenty of good and quirky things about Las Vegas that caters my personality, especially the insomniac side and people watching. But problems arise when I'm confronted with the other demons like degenerate gambling, and the urge to say, "What the fuck?"

Or as the kid say today, "YOLO!"

For any of my readers who was born before Reagan took the White House, YOLO means You Only Live Once. My generations of Gen X snarked-out malcontents refer to the line from Tom Cruise's breakout role in Risky Business... "Sometimes you have to say, "What the fuck?'"

Those three words... what the fuck... steered me into many misadventures, both good and bad, yet mostly bad but in a good way because it gave me material to write about and life experiences for me to draw upon when trying to figure stuff out at a later date. Then again, most of the stuff that happened in Lost Vegas required me to just stand still and observe. Most of the time, that's what I enjoy doing the most. I like to watch life race by. But eventually the voyeurism in Vegas gets too perverse even for my tastes.

Vegas is a perfect city for people without vices. If you have your shit together, then you have the mental toughness to live in a town that profits off your every weakness. Sex. Drugs. Rock and roll. Gambling. Rehabilitation.

You'd be surprised at the ever-growing Mormon population in Vegas. I didn't realize the sheer numbers of the Mormon Army until I moved to the Vegas burbs in Henderson and became Grubby's roommate in 2005. He rented modest two bedroom condo in the foothills of Anthem. Most of the time, the front gate was wide open and young Mormons pedaled through the complex on bicycles. I never noticed how many guys in white shirts, ties, and bicycle helmets strapped to their heads knocked on my door at odd hours (and odd hours meaning during the days when I tried to sleep). The missionaries were trying to convert heathens... and I was in their wheelhouse as a fallen member of the Catholic church. Sometimes I wondered if they were trying to get me to read the Mormon Bible, or if they were hustlers try to scrounge up a few bucks by posing as Mormon missionaries?

One of the most successful poker players I know used to be a bible salesman before he took a shot at the big time. Seriously. Door-to-door salesmen are patient and hardworking folks because they have to pound the pavement instead of sitting in a boiler room and cold calling four thousand numbers a day. Some of my friends in college tried to get me to join them as door-to-door salesmen... one kid sold knives and another sold encyclopedias (this was the early 90s in an era before Google when people had to actually consult reference books to figure out shit). I was thisclose to becoming an encyclopedia salesman before I realized it's hot as fuck in Atlanta during the summers and I was better suited doing something else that did not require me to be lugging seventy pounds of books around.

Maybe I should start my own religion and peddle religious books so I can get tax exempt status? Then again, if I keep on this horrid losing streak in the NBA (1-7 in the last few days), I might be forced to dress like a Mormon and set up a stand in the hallway at the World Series of Poker and sell crucifix card cappers to broke-dick poker players desperate enough to try anything to jump-start their game. If things really get bad, then I'll be forced to hawk bibles door-to-door in Summerline specifically preying on their gambling superstitions and sound like a crooked preacher, "Repent now and read scripture from the St. James Gambler's Bible before you go to Bingo and the gambling Lord will shine his grace upon thee."

Las Vegas? Hustle City, USA. If you're not doing the hustling, then you're getting hustled.

14 Alaskan Crab Legs

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

I jerked the door open. The exposed roll of fat jiggled underneath an over-sized t-shirt. I giggled for a milli-second before dropping a stone face upon eye contact. The distracted owner screamed a a few f-bombs into her cell phone and grasped a McDonald's cup in the other.

First impressions are important. In my triumphant return to a Las Vegas casino I was not greeted by glamor or opulence. I opened the door and before the first sound of a slot machine got sucked into my ears, I was face-to-face, er... face-to-belly with sweet sweaty roll. Disgusting at the core, yet lathered in cheesy irony. White trash chic is never out of style in Las Vegas.

Welcome back to the land of self-indulgence.

I missed Vegas. Well, I missed a ticket to the circus and bearing witness to the unabashed lengths that some people will go through for gratification. I don't sit on my ass and watch reality shows and to glimpse the absurdity of world in HD. That's what Vegas is for. Like a wildlife safari, but with humans as the exotic, dangerous wild-a-beasts.

 Vegas used to be a classy place, but never more. Gone are the days of people dressing up in their Sunday's best clothes. We're not living in black and white photos anymore. The mob hasn't run Vegas in decades. It's all corporatized and sterlized, and the wiseguys have been marginalized. Sin City is a hackneyed spectacle.... Honey Boo-Boo whiskey tango accompanied by a Lady GaGa soundtrack.

People are herd-like animals by nature, yet often display remarkable chameleon-like skills by adapting to their surroundings just like the catchy P.R. slogan suggested -- what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas -- or in simple terms, do whatever the fuck you want without worrying about the aftermath on the body, mind, soul, and credit card.

Indulge now. Pay later. That's the post-modern American way. Debt fuels all benders. A faux sense of entitlement justifies the seedy and incorrigible behavior. Laws in a lawless enclave? Live now. Pay 30 days later. No money down!

Eventually, it all catches up to you. The hangovers. The headaches. The puke-a-thons. The fractured relationships. The guilty conversations. The embarrassing omissions and crooked half-lies like getting rolled in the back of a VIP room by a stripper with a meth habit three times your mortgage, or shitting yourself in the back of  taxi when you tried to drop a stink bomb, but the fourteenth leg of Alaskan King Crab you gouged on decided to expelled itself through your ass cheeks. If you're lucky you won't get taxed until the afterlife, or maybe you'll fade the gambling gods for a few more decades until one day you're a senior citizen and you leave your house without your pants and you're screaming at a parking meter: "Nice catch donk dick!"

My return to Vegas was marked by a sweaty roll. America the beautiful. Super-sized. Intoxified. And maxed out to the hilt. At least my casino greeter wasn't a former 400-cigarette-a-week smoker with a voice box following me around on a motorized scooter.  I'm not superstitious, except with $50 bills, but sometimes you get a warning shot from the gambling gods with an omen... something like a famished three-legged dog limping over to you and when you bend down to pet the mangy pooch, it pukes up its own feces.

Early Birds

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

Nicky and I made run too many times to count. She manned the wheel and I rode shotgun. Like peas and carrots.

I occasionally did solo sojourns from Los Angeles to Vegas and always got up at 5am to guarantee a quick exit out of the City of Plastic Angels to beat the first wave of rush hour traffic  and climb the Cajon Pass and reach Victorville before the bulk of truckers began their day. Before I knew it, I had burned through a full set of a Grateful Dead bootleg and racing through prime bat country... just outside Barstow on the edge of the desert. At that point it's smooth sailing... smooth flying... smooth driving. Set the gearshift on cruise control, roll down that hill, reach the state line and welcome yourself into the heart, soul and loins of the Nevada universe.

The drive is always 264 miles. Las Vegas. Founded by Mormons. Invaded by mobsters. Overrun by suits. From eternal salvation to overindulgence and eternal damnation. It's one crazy ride any way you cut it.

Nicky and I departed before lunchtime which meant our actual lunchtime was spent honoring a tradition at one of the few In and Out Burger weigh stations en route to Las Vegas. We listened to music and podcasts, which added something special in the background to compliment the scenery. The mountain tops had a light sprinkling of snow, just enough to make it noticeable that you were driving through bat country in the winter and not a 120 degree summer scorcher. We spent too much time in Vegas during the blistering summers; it was refreshing to make a quick trip in the middle of a SoCal/Southwest winter.

I didn't pack much. I also travel light. Habits are hard to break. I brought along a book because I figured my late nights would be devoted to reading. Expanding the mind. Feeding the vocabulary. I used to love late nights in Vegas... I was a vampire on the prowl, lurking in the shadows and ready to flirt with the Pai Gow gods at any given moment. But that was an edgy side of me I smoothed out over the years. The jagged edges are now mellowed and smooth. I curtailed the huge gambling leaks and no longer waste my breathing moments trying to beat the house. The house always wins which is why I only bet on sports these days. I'll only play Pai Gow as a social event with friends, but those uber-degenerate days sitting down to play heads-up against an old Asian lady dealer are a thing of the past.  Instead of embedding myself in the "cavern of shame" and donking it up in the pits with the other restless crazy Asians, I embraced a zen-like approach to just be myself... which means I sit around and read and reflect late nights. Just because I'm in Vegas doesn't mean I have to altermy current routine. I brushed aside the urges and welcomed the tranquility of listening to music while I read and listened to more music. Cultivate the mind and nourish the musical soul.

No more late night hijinks... at least for now. I finished a two-week bender in NYC and returned to the West Coast to get back on track. Writing and work.  I needed to be sharp. Very sharp. I didn't go to Vegas to party; it was all business. It was work. All work. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But I had my time to play in Vegas during previous trips. It's time for work.

The adult playground that is Las Vegas? Been there. Done that. It's not that sort of Mecca anymore. It's weird how living in Vegas tweaks your perception on the world, and then leaving Vegas sort of re-boots your brain and you realize it was all just a dream. But thus its appeal. It's where people go who never want to grow up. Degenerate Peter Pan. Disneyworld for alkies and hard luck gamblers. But that's not my vibe anymore. I'm not a fucking tourist looking for a cheap thrill and to suck out in blackjack or maybe go into an alcove in some whomping-ear-destroying-whomping club and get a sloppified handjob by a frisky cougar jacked up on diet pills and Appletinis.

I went to work as soon as I got into town. I got caught with my pants down backing my hometown Knicks... a team in complete disarray.  I told ya that Amare's return would upset the balance of the Knicks universe, right? But Melo was back in the lineup after sitting out a one-game suspension after losing his mud and going on Honey Nut Cheerios Mega Tilt (HNCMT). Ugly game. Knicks looked like shit. We tore up that ticket. Somehow, I bailed myself out with a couple of late night games.

Golden State is my new favorite team because they generated the most money. It's paying my bills. Putting food in my belly. I should be walking around my neighborhood with a David Lee jersey and taunting spoiled douche-tard Lakers' fans. And the Lakers? Disgusting. I'm a Jets fan so I can tell you it's not pretty when the wheels fall off the bus... and the bus falls off itself. Ugly. Fugly. Fucking fugly. I've cherry picked spots to bet against the Lakers all season. It was easy for me to walk up to the Cantor counter and take a position with Oklahoma City. The youngsters from OKC blew through town and Kevin Durant dropped 25 in the first half and 40 by the end of the 3Q. He finished with 42 and made Kobe his bitch. It was fun to watch the clerk cash my ticket. It was Friday. Pay day. Nothing is sweeter than turning the tables on the Man and taking away money from corporations.

I woke early on Saturday morning to write and check the latest lines at Cantor. They don't post their lines online which is why they are evil geniuses. I was up early. Light was still absent. Darkness everywhere. Very early in the morning for Vegas standards that I could have passed for a guy who was just going to bed. I had a rare opportunity to take advantage of multiple venues to wager on sports... legally... without the Man and his crooked Uncle Sam wagging his finger at me for doing something (betting on sports) that everyone does irregardless of laws and enforcement. My morning included a significant amount of running around. Back. Forth. Too bad I don't trust anyone to do the legwork for me, because I could have been curled up in a warm bed with my girlfriend. Instead, I got a good workout. Sprinting back and forth to different casinos and cross-checking offshore to get the best price. Bargain betting. The difference between a half-a-point has broken many a man's spirit, and bankroll, and skull, and backbone, and the will to live.

The early bird gets the worm. The worms eat our bodies when we die. There's lots of holes in the desert. It all comes full circle.

A Tale of Two Elvis

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

Today would have been Elvis' 78th birthday. He died face down, ass up in his bathroom crocked on a cocktail of pain pills and other heavy medication. Despite the rumors that he was a truck driver in Montana or had fled to Argentina, Elvis passed away in 1977.

There's two distinct versions of Elvis... skinny Elvis and fat Elvis. Both versions of Elvis paint a picture of 20th Century Americana.

The first incarnation of Skinny Elvis was deep-rooted in the South where an ambitious young and debonair musician had blended all the genres of music he loved the most from Mississippi blues to hillbilly music. Elvis was part of the first wave of rock-a-billy that eventually bled into rock and roll. Along the way, Elvis cranked out gold record after gold record, but got hooked on trucker's speed while playing and gyrating at endless gigs in venues (big and small) crisscrossing the country. Elvis got hustled by pimps in the record industry who pillaged the allowances of teen girls from coast to coast, and by the time he reached the hills of Hollywood, "Elvis" was a brand name. Putting him in "the pictures" was the equivalent of printing money for the fat cats running the studios in Tinsel Town. Skinny Elvis was a pretty boy and bankable as a magnet for swooning women. To quote Clarence Worley from the epic early 90s film True Romance... "If I had to fuck a guy, I'd fuck Elvis.... but not fat Elvis."

The second incarnation of Elvis... Fat Elvis... was bloated, drug-addled, stricken with over-consumption, and performing half-assed gigs by phoning in his greatest hits to shitfaced tourists in Vegas. I know a bunch of musicians whom aspire to reach that upper echelon of success (and excess). However, the second part of Elvis' career was the epitome of cheesy. Those words best describe America's decline in the second half of the 20th century... amidst the glitz and flickering bright lights of Sin City, a engorged and tired wastrel was paid off by a ruthless cartel (fusion of mobsters and bankers... alas, the origins of Banksters) to crank out watered-down entertainment in attempts to lure well-to-do people into casinos, so they could donk off a few hundred bucks while waiting for sweaty Elvis, clad in a one-piece jump suit, to waddle on stage to a pompous introduction of Also Sprach Zarathustra...


But shit... even during his worst days and cooking on a handful of Quaaludes, Elvis still had more gravitas in his little toe than the majority of modern day "pop" sensations combined. Elvis was the King because he made more women moist with one song that Beiber will do in forty lifetimes.

Happy birthday, Elvis. I hope they serve peanut butter and bacon sandwiches wherever you ended up in the afterlife.

The Circuit

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

My colleague Alexander Bradley (an Aussie ex-pat living in Paris) started an amazing project called The Circuit, which focuses on life on the international poker circuit. Alexander focused on Europe the last few months but has since arrived in Vegas to shoot a couple new covers, in addition to creating video versions for PokerListings.

Here's my cover of The Circuit...



And here's the video...


Check out more editions of The Circuit.

Random Red Rock Canyon Photos

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

Friedman and I went for a drive to Red Rock Canyon on Wednesday morning before I went to work. I took a few pics. Here's a sample. You can click on each photo to see a detailed and enlarged view.








You can always view more Red Rock photos. I have a gallery of 41 different photos from Red Rock.