Nickleanddimes

WPBT 2011: Hold On

2011-11-30T06:19:00.000-06:00

Ah yes, it's Carnie, Wendy, and Chynna before she became a WWF wrestler, Playboy model, and porn star (don't look up the last one you may need a Sham-wow full of industral-grade bleach to wash those images away.

Good morning for one last time before the annual WPBT takes over Las Vegas trip, like the Muppets Take Manhattan only smaller buildings and more drinking. Not sure if I'll ever "mature" as the gray stubble shows up in my bathroom mirror more often these days, but that's just an age thing and cannot be stop unless I find Jean Claude Van-Damme's time machine and tell my 16 year old self to buy some Apple stock and stop drinking tequila sunrises during parties because its not attacting the ladies like he thinks it is.

Can you tell I haven't slept much? Excellent, we can be friends again.

To see the friends that I hold most dear that I can't hold since they are selfish enough to live in far away lands like Milwaukee, Greenville, foreign countries such as California, and something called Can-a-da. Never was good at geography, advanced calculus, or making pie crust. We will rock the town once again, to cheer those running, whether it be with 40,000 others in the Las Vegas half-marathon, or from the police after trying to motorboat the Eastern Bloc tall blonde pai gow dealer at 2am from the Gold Coast who doubles as a high-end escort that specializes in something called Nipple Eroticism.

Yes, kids it time to take down the cowboys at the table, cheer for Whiplash, and try to pack years of friendship into four days of degeneracy. My plane touches down around six tomorrow night, and once again I hope to be seated in first class making my money back on the free libations trying to keep up with the sloshed housewive of a car tire baron that does nothing but watch Ren and Stimpy re-runs and yells PAI GOW at random times.

Hold on for one more day.

WPBT Time 2011: The Race for the Stella

2011-11-27T11:51:00.000-06:00

Wasn't Kim Karadishan still a blushing bride on Sept. 15th?

My story of busy, busy, busy do not need to be retold but the announcement of the WPBT and my immediate if not sooner acceptance to subject myself to good food, better friends, and comfy wheelchairs took place nearly three months ago.

This space along with getting back to the gym and curing stupidity will all happen as soon as my college agrees that I rule and hands over that piece of paper that signifies that I can in fact sink 10 straight beer pong shots while completing the end-year journal entries for a parent and a foreign subsidiary that uses a different currency.

Monte Carlo will be home base this year as they blessed me with a redonkulous rate thanks to the birthday efforts of me, Otis, GRob, F-Train, Doc Jeff, and Absinthetics around of table of Pai Gow betting some chips over the course of several hours upon lifting our collective heads off the felt notices only a couple of guys from Brooklyn playing blackjack on a nearby table and vacuum cleaners sucking up the lost souls.

This year's activites: Golf, Food (off strip for the first time ever), Poker, Pai Gow, Drinks, Beer, More Beer, if I can find it the finish line for the Las Vegas half marathon to hand out well-deserved beers to WPBT'ers and a potential future in-law as my brother's girlfriend's brother mentioned to me that he is running with the chick that did her last half marathon in 1:11. Oh dear.

See you in five days.

The Future of Blogging: Viable Media Outlet or Online Personal Diary

2011-09-15T11:42:00.000-05:00

Advanced Composition. Tough course, but opened my eyes and keyboard to some new twists to include while I'm writing. If you'd like a gander at my final paper which is relevant to blogging and might be quite TLDNR for most, for others I hope its up to your standards of reading my words here and elsewhere.

Warning! ACHTUNG! CUIDADO! This is not in APA-format so if you require such things and are not my professor, I suggest you ask for an Irish Hot Chocolate next time you're at Starbucks.

On with the show:

Titled: The Future of Blogging: Viable Media Outlet or Online Personal Diary?

    Just fourteen years ago a man named Peter Merholz broke up the word “weblog” to bring the world a new era in writing that played off the evolving usage of the internet. Little would people know that random musing on message boards and personal websites would turn into a viable source of journalism and profits. Today, there are over 152 million blogs in existence (Pingdom, 2011) where a person can learn about artificial limbs from a scientist, read the adventures of a first-time mom in suburban Los Angeles, or catch up on the latest video game rankings. But, have blogs become too cumbersome in the newest age of instant news (Twitter and Facebook)? Will they continue to bring debate to an open forum? Will blogs remain a viable way to writers to earn a living? As shown by the amount of major media outlets that continue to drive web-based advertising and hire bloggers, the medium of blogging will continue to a viable route for aspiring journalists, subject matter experts, and amateur writers to get their voices heard and paid for their words.

    The road to blogging for money is a long and treacherous one for those wanting to cash in on their labor. Many factors come into play for writers seeking a paycheck or recognition for their contribution towards a certain subject. Being an expert in a certain subject matter is often the road to becoming a paid blogger as search engines such as Google and Yahoo! look for key words and list the webpages according to their importance on the subject at hand. As David Hall from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Inc. explains “To really understand the methodologies that are used to achieve top rankings, we should first put ourselves in the shoes of the engineers at Google. When a user types a keyword or phrase into the Google search box, that user is requesting that the search engine returns a list of webpages that will provide the answer or information the user is looking for” (Hall, 2011). Hall is explaining the phrase “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a noise?” as it pertains to blogging. If no one knows you are writing, does it matter what and how polished your content is? Blogging is not all about drafting the next Hemingway novel, or banging out a 20 page presidential election synopsis, it is about gathering readers to you. Buried within those 152 million blogs may be the next Edward R. Murrow, Einstein, or F. Scott Fitzgerald putting out content that would land the person behind their laptop a Nobel prize or a fat publishing contract, but if no one is attracted to the web site how do you get a start?

    This author makes some side cash from a job for an online poker site which employs several bloggers to write wraps (or recaps) for their major tournaments. To get to this point, I spent several years writing about poker for a personal blog with no pay, no advertising dollars, nothing to motive myself except for my love of poker. Then, a small job opened up writing poker content at $5 a post, which was gladly welcomed as my name started to be included in this niche group of poker writers who were also being courted to cover the tournament circuits such as the World Poker Tour, and grandest stage of them all, the two-month long World Series of Poker held in Las Vegas, Nevada each year. Fast forward to today where there are several companies within this small community of gamblers, which employ these writers full-time to travel around the world and cover both live and online tournaments. Another success story would come from local Minneapolis blogger Aaron Gleeman who started AaronGleeman.com back in 2002 as a personal site to muse about his favorite pastime of baseball, and specifically the Minnesota Twins. After showing his expert grasp on the subject as well as entertaining non-baseball talk for years gathering several thousand followers, and appearing on different forms of media such as local sports talk radio and podcasts, he was tapped by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) sports division to write for their baseball blog called “HardballTalk” @ http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/.

    Success stories are easy to find since they are front-and-center but knowing how those success stories came about is the key for future bloggers if they wish to find their way into making blogging a potential career. Having a passion for the subject matter is the number one key to good blogging and the easiest way to get noticed. Much like many literature and creative writing books will outline for those striving to improve their skill, without knowledge and an extra drive to write about the subject, the person reading the blog will feel that energy of lack thereof while pouring though a blogger’s recap of a recent scrapbooking convention. Anyone can write, anyone can start a blog as all it takes is an email address while signing up at one of the many blogging platforms such as Blogger, Moveable Type, or WordPress but if the blogger’s intent is to make living from their words, having the drive to continue writing well when no money is on the line is the key to connecting to and growing an audience.

    Not so fast, says Nick Denton whose name is synonymous with blogging as he owns several large complication blogs under his Gawker media umbrella such as: sport site “Deadspin”, “Lifehacker”, “Jezebel”, and the self-named entertainment/celebrity following blog “Gawker”. In a short interview by Dan Duray of the New York Observer, Denton says “I don’t really see a blog business” (Duray, 2011). Other writers such as The Awl’s Choire Sicha chimed in the same article “It always has been an embarrassing word, first it was embarrassing because bloggers were these dirty, horrible people, and then it was embarrassing because our grandmas have blogs, God bless them” (Duray, 2011). This is the slippery slope that bloggers can fall into, once you plan to crank out content, you need to stay on top of the subject of which is the source of the blog or the hundreds of other bloggers out there covering the same topic will shadow your work, thus devaluing anything published. People like Kevin from blogtipz.com can give you insight on how to achieve the goal of a profitable blog. ““Natural” bloggers find the task of starting a new blog, finding guest posters (to alleviate everyday work), and managing their collection of blogs easy. They have a set of procedures that they follow and adapt to achieve periodic goals. Overnight, they hadn’t become perfect, but by evolving their schedules and knowledge on each step of blogging, it became easier to match each of their previous goals and expand upon their previous figures” (Kevin, 2008). But, even a well-put together blog is useless in today’s blogging arena if the content is not fresh and unique, and despite using Kevin’s nine highlights of a successful blog and blogger: “perseverance, time and content management, the looks, contemplation, don’t exhaust yourself, honesty, good social and networking skills, persistence, and pessimism and/or optimism” (Kevin, 2008) a blogger can find themselves without an audience and without direction if they do not catch that lucky break of advertising dollars or getting a contract to write for a larger blog.

    Another hurdle for bloggers is overcoming the negative connotations from traditional media and the public in general. Take noted sportswriter Rick Reilly’s comment about bloggers from a Newsday article republished by Deadspin’s A.J. Daulerio “If you suddenly change who you are, the other half will hate you. I don't really care what people holding down couch springs do or say" (Daulerio, 2009). This is the public’s perception of a blogger cranking out content in their parent’s basement drinking cases of Mountain Dew while playing World of Warcraft for 18 hours a day. But, even the skeptical Reilly has come along for the blogging ride with regular postings as a “columnist” at ESPN.com, and traditional media noticing the power of social media outlets being viable ways to get their voices heard with the decline of newspaper readership and advertising revenue. Mashable.com showed a huge drop in newspaper revenue from $37.8 billion in 2008 and $27.5 million in 2009 while online advertising revenue continues to increase (Parr, 2010). With these sorts of trends, bloggers, tweeters, and those who know their way around Facebook will continue to become more and more valuable to companies that are moving away from traditional media outlets such as television, newspapers, and magazines.

    Even the newly created social media writers are split up into different competitions between each other for media dollars and contracts. Writers on Twitter need to be up to the millisecond with trending information in order to stand apart from the 60 million accounts that are actively being used. Also, unless you are Shaquille O’Neal, Lady Gaga, or another famous celebrity, finding real followers to your Twitter feed could be too daunting to continue establish an online presence in that form alone. Same with Facebook, which is generally used to connect friends, unless your friends are in the media or publishing business, getting a six-figure contract from McGraw-Hill from a status update about a weekend keg party does not seem likely. The savvy blogger however can use these medium and conjunction with their blog and self-advertise. For example, noted blogger and co-creator of Grantland.com (which is owned by ESPN) Bill Simmons can tweet about the most recent articles on the website, drawing traffic from those who read him, or those who read him and re-tweet the links to their readers creating a reverse pyramid of readers and reaching thousands instead of relying on Google or Yahoo! to put those blog postings at the top of their key word rankings. Simmons could also hop over to his Facebook account and post a link with a description of best-selling author Chuck Klosterman’s latest musings on Grantland.com to entice those who do not use Twitter on a daily basis and capture even more readers.

    While blogs have lost ground to people’s fascination with news in under 140 keystrokes and uneducated opinions, they provide things that other social media mediums cannot. Blogs can be geared specifically to the writer’s content, whether is it a company website describing the latest products, or starving artist showing off his grasp on dark poetry. The freedom to shape those words and the message going out with no restrictions will allow blogs to live on as Facebook and Twitter become mediums to draw readers to blogs as sort of funneling system towards the real money maker. Without blogs as a foundation in the social media package, people are left with half quotes and no content, like having the ingredients for the perfect mixed drink without a glass to pour it in and drink from.

References

Daulerio, A. (2009, February 20). Rick Reilly Still Unimpressed With Blogs, But Wants Everyone To Know He Actually Likes The Sports Fella. Retrieved September 9, 2011, from Deadspin.com: http://deadspin.com/5157404/rick-reilly-still-unimpressed-with-blogs--but-wants-everyone-to-know-he-actually-likes-the-sports-fella

Duray, D. (2011, February 01). The End of Blogging. Retrieved August 30, 2011, from The New York Observer: http://www.observer.com/2011/tech/end-blogging

Graveris, D. (2011, January 1). Revolution and the Future In Blogging World - Art Direction Trend. Retrieved August 27, 2011, from 1stwebdesigner.com: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/inspiration/revolution-future-blogging-world-art-direction-trend/

Hall, D. (2011, August 15). Relevance and Importance for SEO. Retrieved August 27, 2011, from SEOinc.com: http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/relevance-and-importance-for-seo/

Kevin. (2008, June 16). Principles to Achieve Blogging "Perfection". Retrieved August 27, 2011, from Blogtipz.com: http://blogtipz.com/2008/06/16/principles-to-achieve-blogging-perfection/

Parr, B. (2010, March 26). The Dire State of the Newspaper Industry [STATS]. Retrieved September 9, 2011, from Mashable.com: http://mashable.com/2010/03/26/the-dire-state-of-the-newspaper-industry-stats/

Pingdom. (2011, January 12). Internet 2010 in Numbers. Retrieved September 9, 2011, from Pingdom.com: http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers/

Schwendiman, H. (2007, August 21). Direction, goals, and blogging. Retrieved August 27, 2011, from Hollyscorner.com: http://www.hollyscorner.com/blog/2007/08/21/direction-goals-blogging/

Not back, never left

2011-09-13T20:57:00.000-05:00

Also, not a post.

Finals week.

WCOOP reporting.

Three soccer games.

Annual golf outing with father-in-law.

By Sunday.

It's a Red Bull hold the vodka week until Saturday night/Sunday morning when WCOOP Event #39 H.O.R.S.E. finishes up in the wee hours of the morning and it is time to relax (well, until next Wednesday and start over again).

I was told I could sleep when I die, I just hope not to die sleeping. Work hard, play harder, make sure you have a luggage rack/wheelchair to get you home.

Nighters.

On the Road to Danbury

2011-08-30T06:46:00.000-05:00

If you told me four years ago I would still be blogging and sometimes getting paid for it there's a good chance my off-key laugh would have been directed towards your face. If you told me I would be writing a six-to-eight page research paper for an advanced composition class that I asked to be in, on the path to a bachelor's degree, I'd ask for a hit of whatever you were smoking.

Despite the next four weeks being the most crammed, stressful, busy, in-need-of-a-clone time of the year, this space is needed to let the air out of my belly before everything besides my appendix and bruised liver bursts. This blog feels like a neglected puppy, cowered in a corner from lack of touch versus abuse, just wanting someone warm to cuddle up with and maybe tell him a story while in a lap on the back deck and a late summer's breeze drifts over both of them.

In the mist of this presidental-like schedule there are places to carve out tax cuts for the rich and relief from stress. "Honey, I'm going into town". Didn't take much as school provides education and a reason to seek WiFi during our weekends up north. The drive is under 15 miles and seems too short when the weather cooperates. A single gas station on the right with a selection of porn better fit for SexWorld in downtown Minneapolis, the family golf cart dealership where the wife has been eyeing half of my scant poker bankroll for a cart with a backseat rigging so the kids could comfortably get shuttled from the cabin/trailer to the pool and the clubhouse for the best dollar ice cream this side of Coldstone.

Passing the unseen town of Swiss with a sign leaning back like a limbo dancer, probably caused by the straight-line winds that still show their destructive forces in the small town of Danbury that was my destination. The "Welcome to Wisconsin" is a awesome sight for someone who stupidly ran out of beer and ththankfully the cheeseheads have no blue laws on the books to keep me from enjoying one more day of sun and suds. As the first turn into town there's "Stubbs Fireworks" which I can't tell if its the proprietor's name or an unfortunate moniker from an M-80 mishap.

After the bend the new St. Croix Casino (formerly Hole in the Wall casino, which was a dead ringer for what is was, desperate gamblers and slot machines inside of connected trailers) stood tall at the end of road just past the four block stretch of the town.

Homemade fudge, fresh broasted chicken, an arts-and-craft store that smelled like lavender soap, and a giant Leinenkugel's chair in front of the grocery/liquor store in which some Chardonnay, chicken dry rub, and New Glarus Spotted Cow were on the list. But, my spot was on the left at a bar named Wild Waters. Log exterior, comfy interior, sizable enough to move around, not-so-big to miss a person's conversation from opposite ends of the bar. This was my fourth visit of the summer, and surly owner always corrects my pronunciation of the delicious New Glarus on tap as I take a seat along the wooden tables with change stuck underneath the glass.

While I am there to figure out the variance between standard and actual cost for an imaginary manufacturing company there's an extra pint or two taken with each visit just to watch the locals filter in. Some by ATV, by Harley's, and some by foot. All coming in with smiles on their faces, catching a quick chat with the others while watching the Packers updates on the flat screen hung on the back wall (although this week the Vikes were showing despite knowing I was probably the only Purple and White fan in the joint).

One or two beers is mostly the cap for these folks, as it is the afternoon on a Saturday or Sunday and not exact prime time to start up rounds of Jagerbombs. To me there's a relaxing feeling in those pure oak stools, something not found in surburbia-land where corporate heads suck all of the life out of glass before its even poured with flair. But, it's my time. And my time does not come over very often with full time school, work, and the upcoming WCOOP at PokerStars next week.

Yes, I did and do manage to find my way into the St. Croix Casino, much like asking a married man if he finds Minka Kelly attractive, this gambler has some oats to sow that don't involve breaking his marital vows to Deter Jeter's girlfriend. During these rushed times it necessary to drop your business suit, parenting suit, and even your birthday suit if you're into that sort of thing, and take a few minutes to breathe. What gives you that air is up to the individual and holding your breath too long will take the life from you.

Same old, Same old (tired) situation

2011-08-09T06:46:00.000-05:00

A post seen too often lately from friends followed for almost eight years. "Where have you been?", "why haven't you been posting?", "is this place getting dusty?".

The first one, school has kicked into high-gear, combined with no weekends off for over month plus trying to get up to the cabin every weekend, equals zero time to jot inane markings of my boring suburbanite married life. Busy does not equal exciting, at least in my world, to others flying around the world in exotic lands and less-than-safe hotels and airports, my path is pretty straightforward with the same 8.7 miles commute in the wee hours of the morning, same return trip and maybe spice it up with a stop at the Holiday gas station, then back home to become either daddy or that one parent trying a little too hard to remind his five year old daughter to keep her hands together while swinging the bat playing T-ball.

Add in the Swedish sauna-like heat over the past three weeks, plus an annual guy's weekend trip that included passing out next to a bottle of Pliny the Elder and getting stacked in a $20 buy-in NLHE game by a chick that had her chair crying for mercy, and you've got one tired blogger. Hell, Saturday night there was me, myself, and I slumped on a tan sectional all alone when I should have been downtown having a beer on a rooftop with good friends. But the sirens of the afternoon nap called and four hours later I woke up to Parker Bonn Jr. trying to close out a bowling match on ESPN 26.

Lack of posting is both the above excuses, which really are lame, and lack of desire. Since my advanced composition professor has decided to make our fingers bleed while banging out long drawn out analytical thesis, 10 to 1 arguments, scouring academic papers for the true meaning within, and becoming conversant while penning the next Moby Dick, my fingers and whatever is left of the magical pixie dust of creativity within my rum-soaked fingers is dried up from the effort. The challenges are awesome, I mean who wouldn't want to learn how to draft a cost summary for a processing plant while derviving the meaning from a paper that compares tommy girl perfume commericials and corporations exploiting nationalist pride for profit?

Again, exciting life I lead.

The film of non-use on this writing shelf? Since this is my shelf to place trophies, kids stories, and bitch about when the missus and I have not had sex for weeks, it will be used, abeit sparingly during the summer. Much like the golden ages when Americans could play quasi-legal online poker for more than points towards a t-shirt or brass bracelet, my fun time online takes a big dip in the months filled with baseball, sweaty boxer briefs, and tall, cold pours of Surly Furious on the deck. Drunken poker Thursday are no more, as my degeneracy has been diluted to playing slots on Facebook.

See DOJ, you make me cry, turning my hobby night of blank thoughts into an evening of Mark Zuckerberg sponsored pokes and pop-up windows to remind my friends that I'm playing Slot-O-Mania past midnight. No worries about that five page paper and 30 different general ledger entries due by Sunday before getting the low-down on the final two tables of the PokerStars Sunday Warm-up. Yep, NO FUN FOR YOU! /Soup Nazi

No drawn out rant today as tonight I'll be thumbing through 20 pages of academic writing penis pumping (or titty enlarging?), as the author's of the textbook seemed more concerned with the amount of 50 cent words they could cram into paper-filled vacuum than trying to teach a point to improve my writing skillz (or lack thereof). Reading while taking my son and 10 other kids to something called "SkyZone" to wear them out playing dodgeball on trampolines. Actaully looking forward to this as we had a blast the first time I took him here, something that the recent stock market roller coaster, riots in London, or moral online gambling zealots won't touch.

And times like these will get my pen here for a few minutes each week.

Warrior Dash 2011

2011-07-26T07:36:00.000-05:00

The night prior was spent in leisure. Sitting along the third base line on an overhung piece of concrete in folded chairs cheering on the embattled 2011 version of the Minnesota Twins. The night was perfect, short breeze coming in from right field, with a full view of the Minneapolis skyline and Graves 601 hotel sign peaking just aside from a neon pole that announced the latest hometown batter to step to the plate. The game was uneventful as my brother-in-law the Tigers fan got the first, second, and last laugh as the home team tanked losing 8-2 while several $8.00 Captain and Cokes washed away any care for the game.

A solid buzz gathered as the three couples made their way back to suburbia despite pleas for extending the night at a local strip club. But, without a unanimous decision, the only titties that would be in view were our spouses before slipping into their nightly sleeping arrangements. As the clock rolled past midnight and a solid effort by the nighttime Perkins crew with their above par bacon and ham omelet with three buttermilk pancakes, a brief rest was needed as three of us would be waking up in five hours for a race unlike any we have completed together.

The "before" picture (no idea about the hats I just follow along)

The Warrior Dash awaited our crew of my sister and father in law, my beautiful bride, and that tall thing you see on the left. After getting married the four of us have gone on countless bike rides and 5Ks/10Ks, it is something that I found refreshing when introduced to this healthier side of athletic competition as my friends were more inclined to play a volleyball tournament in the back of bar that offered 3 for 1s and waitresses rarely kept track of how many drinks to charge you for. But, today was different as the drive from my father in law's place in Robbinsdale took us through the once proud North Minneapolis neighborhood which now resembles the crumbles of gang/drug violence, so bad that even charities have packed up and left. Signs of recent tornado damage accentuated the peeling paint, cracked and neglicted wood, and blacked-out store-fronts that a decent chicken dinner could have been purchased with a biscuit on the side for $4.99 but no more.

After getting out of the city, it was on to Afton Alps. A popular, small skiing destination that was last visited 16 years old by a college student, his girlfriend, and my future brother in law with my girlfriend's friend packed into a mutlicolored 85' Nova hatchback (all parties over six foot tall) but it ran and got great gas mileage! Ok, its was a piece of shit but skiing for the first time was an adventure after getting lost in the middle of the slopes and "walking" back to the chalet an hour after they had their feets up by the fire.

Forward to today our goal was this:

Not pictured the three feet of mud below the sign

The goal was one hour, but changed to around 45 minutes after watching someone come flying down the final descent in 24 minutes. Not that I could even run seven minute miles on a flat track but it seemed plausible despite zero training and a decent rum induced hangover.

The race started with about 500 of us packed at the gate with flame roaring above the sign. The few yards was cake, and then around the corner was the pain. A slope that I remembered being quite easy to come down with pieces of fiberglass and several feet of snow beneath my feet, was about to kick my untrained ass trying to climb. About half way up I joined the rest of the sheep, some dressed in nothing but loincloths, others with names across their back proclaiming a wedding party (which actually is a pretty kick-ass idea), and some ladies that obviously had trained were showing their tight superhero underroos (I found a liking to Superwoman).

After the first climb we were met by cars and a tire run to climb across and immediately met by several snow makers blowing cold water full speed like a sideways downpour. Felt good but blinded and now carrying several hundred pounds of extra water weight, the view after regaining my sight was exhausting. Three hills were in view as seen by those with much more superior skills already tackling their heights and valleys. Another obstacle, this one of five foot barriers to climb then a barbed wire fence to duck (repeat X 5). Finally a pacer appeared as she was moving along the same speed. Wearing "I Heart to Fart" granny panties from Spencer's and a well-shaped black bodysuit she would become my rhythm that would hopefully help me reach the 45 minute goal.

After another climb and a twenty foot cargo net wall to climb, there was a large tent ahead. The race official proclaimed "FREE WOODTICKS INSIDE!" yeah thanks dude. Asshole. A tiara wearing princess yelled "NO FARTING!" which was great advice and spared my life as the tent was complete absent of any light and much to my forehead's dismay, there were boards set up to keep you body close to the ground as opposed to crawling through this void. Once on the other side, a breather was taken on the side as my pacer bounced away for the moment.

A rally for air came and thanks to some unknown upper-body strength, the rope climb over the wall was cake as the big red heart was visable again. Through a maze of marshy mud, the final climb had a reward at its peak. A huge waterslide with separated lanes to slide down and a refreshing spritz before the last downhill run. Only two things separated my beaten up body and the final line with a table full of bananas and water. Bricks of fire were stoked as each runner lept over the flames before jumping into a three foot deep/ten yards long pool of mud that required crawling as a barbed wire fence hung above the pool

Fire! Fire! Fire! /Beavis

Once properly caked in mud it was just a few more feet to the volunteers handing out medals for all finisher, a token of completing the course and do something a little nutty for a change. My time was a shade under 48 minutes, I blame the temptress and her fine ass for not pacing us appropriately, but nonetheless the experience was one that will be repeated next year with a little preparation in mind (and yes, booze will involved).

Why yes, I would like a beer right after I rinse off 10 pounds of mud

Speaking of booze, by turning in the time chip, a free Shock Top await your hand (or Mich Golden Light if you like such things) along with tasty meats for purchase as modeled by my lovely wife below:

She likes legs, I prefer the breasts

Onward back to a shuttle which was NOT equipped for people that have stilts for legs, but the aisle provided enough room to doze for the five minute, bumpy ride back while snacking on sunflower seeds. Warrior Dash you have four repeat customers awaiting your return to the Twin Cities.

(* all photos taken by my sister in law)

The family man and the gambler

2011-07-12T06:43:00.000-05:00

The walk has changed only a little over the years. It is one that has been made hundreds of times in my youth. To the west what was once an old decrepit farm house and adjoining fading red barn with mysteries inside that 10 year olds with nothing to do on summer days used to explore hoping to find something interesting under the various Folger's tins and rotted stairs. In its place is a brand new elementary school that once housed all six grades but due to budget cuts now splits those students between the older school a few blocks away that the 10 year old version of myself attended.

But the reminder of the landscape hasn't changed at all. The fields still filled with white and yellow "flowers", fields "1" and "2" still retained their metal bleachers and wooden benches for the various team that visited the mighty Orioles in hopes of coming away with a win. Several healthy trees spotted the grounds as I lugged sporting equipment home. Well, what was once my home, now just two people reside there, joined by a gaggle of little grandchildren as the engineer works his remaining days until he can finally enjoy the fruits of his many hard years in the construction business. The baseball bag on my shoulder wasn't mine anymore, a dull ache from a pitching injury years ago now comes back to life with every step of the black strap pulling down on the bone. It's a minor thing however as my attention is to the little hand wrapped around my ring and middle fingers happy that her father was there to see her pounce on a ground ball with the grace of a grizzly bear on ice skates.

I was once content to letting my life run its course, never changing like that ball field, the twin white hockey rinks behind it, and the old school to the east. A moderate income from a job that does not require much effort nor brainpower to complete, a content spouse, but it was watching the two kids that changed that. They were mimicing my sloth. Not to the point that it was obvious, but they stopped being curious, stopped asking questions (which some parents would throw a party for at time), stopped growing allowing the lights and advanced graphics of the Playstation 3 or Cartoon Network website to turn them into mindless drones.

One thing that a person with a hearing loss becomes whether they like it or not is being very observant. Watching every twitch, every movement, every blink to get those actions to speak so that the words you could not hear or understand would become a sentence. Hemmingway had a "five finger exercise" to paint a picture for the audience that would bring you instantly to my parent's backyard in enough words that wouldn't have the commentor stating "tl;dr" in the box. While I hope to bring my drunken ass to Key West again before I die and have another go on the mechinical bull (inner thigh bruises and all), grab a lap dance in a back-alley strip club, and enjoy being surrounded by friends at Irish Kevin's, that will depend on a little luck in the months/years to come.

Recent I have tried to better my life from a work and academic standpoint, learning more about the profession I am in, and also taking some writing courses which hopefully won't screw up my lispy "voice" too much that some seem to enjoy. But the pressure from being on the go, to be a good parent, student, husband sometimes gets me staring out my porch window at 2am wondering would it be easier to ditch all this for a life in a hotel room and no responsiblities beyond finding food and keeping a bankroll large enough to live. The dark specter of the gambler is one that I playfully state "it's for fun" "it's relaxing" but so tempting to dive into a rum and coke while piece of clay sit in front you and cards that randomly hit the felt determine if the night is a success.

For now and hopefully until I walk my daughter down the aisle or sitting on the porch of my retirement house adjacent to the 16th fairway of an unnamed golf course in Texas or Arizona, the family man who wants that little hand to squeeze a little tighter around his fingers will win out because when I look in the mirror I like that guy, as the gambler can wait as his turn, more specifically until December 2nd, 3rd, and 4th and ya'll will come see him and toast to being able to separate those two and enjoy both for who they are.

Looking over the walls of Shawshank

2011-06-28T06:50:00.000-05:00

Wow, it took awhile to have the creative juices dry up, perhaps all this rest and recouperation from yet another challenging quarter of college has left the guard down and allowed the unspeakable writer's block onto my now seemingly regular day of posting on Tuesdays. Windows are finally down, air is just starting to get a little thicker outside as both my kids tackle baseball during the summer months with soccer in the fall. Watching the five year old daughter blossom into the Patti LeBelle of T-ball after a rant about receiving a commoner's drink of water in her Barbie sports bottle. Refusal to hussle, turning a deaf ear on the high school juniors working for $10 a session with "Park and Rec" emblazed in gold across the baby blue t-shirts like a spoiled Manny Ramirez she pouted until daddy coming straight from the office dropped by with an individual serving of Sunny D. Soon afterwards she combined the speed of Flo Jo with the defensive ability of Ozzie Smith to show her parents that an attitude adjustment (absent of shock therapy and threats of the removal of toys) would be in her future after returning home.

The boy is the same but different. His issue isn't defiance or a need for attention but more about trying to find a reason to show what talents he may have hidden. When prodded he regularly beats out the other boys in races, shows a fluid swing at the plate, and isn't afraid to get a little dirt on the gray pants.

Likewise for their father during the changeover from quarter to quarter, I try to re-evaluate why am I doing this? The easy answer is for a better future. Stability at work, gain of knowledge that I normally would not have had the drive to seek, and the satisfaction of following through on something that was started 16 years ago in a dorm room at ASU. No, not the quest to get laid, but to finish the bachelor degree that seemed so easy to grab but personal insecurity, financials, and health reasons pushed finishing my education off.

Image credit

The hard answer is do I want to remain in this corporate setting? Meet person X, do project Y, get reward Z. Its a formula learned in a middle school algebra class but also by watching Red speak to the parole board near the end of The Shawshank Redemption. He talks about normalacy, and how when someone is accustomed to a certain setting that they let go of their individuality, let go of hope, let go of the drive to seek new things and allow themselves to be swallowed into whatever is spoon-fed to them via company email and internal classroom settings. While I love the corporation, there's a nagging piece of me that wonders what's beyond those walls, what if I took a rock hammer to the soft brick and tunneled into something new?

Barring a complete meltdown of the company, my employement here is relatively secure since for the most point I keep my head down, work hard, learn everything I can, do extra projects, make friends, in other words exactly the type of suit they like. But, am I reaching my potential? Granted my options are not endless as my wife and kids come first before any life-changing decisions are made. But, when you sit back in your computer chair and gaze across the screen to read about the exploits of friends and seeing yourself sitting on that barstool/typing on the laptop next to them, or see yet another promotion pass you up there's self-doubt that trickles in, feeding the fire that maybe this isn't the right path. Would happiness be found by tossing away a decade and half of climbing a ladder that seems to be slicked with bacon grease for the unknown?

For now things are stable but just to make sure there's a little sriracha sauce in my life, I've poking around for a new job here with any hope I can put together enough corporate cliches that would get me to a more interesting job and check out the view from the next rung on the ladder.

Just like Red would say that rehabilitation is a made-up word, and that a person should get busy living, or get busy dying. Or in my words, stop fucking around and get something done. Too bad it took me 36 years to finally realize that.

Watching the future

2011-06-21T06:49:00.000-05:00

For the nearly decade of working in an office building, you try to find something different or at least something constant to pique your interest should the job behind the cubical walls not satisfy those few intellectual brain cells not harmed from the flowing river of rum and coke downed while parked at a bonfire the past weekend.

If you're curious enough, people watching is a fascinating way to get through what normally would be a run-of-the-mill corporate hustle workday. While braving a shopping mall this definitely comes into play as there's so much cheap college perfume/cologne waffing from American Eagle/Abercombie/Gap or the annoying salesguy at Brookstone telling you its not ok to sit in the full vibrating recliner for 30 minutes with a huge grin on your face. Taking note of that guy with the sullen look on his face as his helicopter wife rattles off 15 things the kids are doing to embarrass her in public as she exposes her XXXL black lace thong from Fredrick's of Hollywood while picking up pennies that someone threw but couldn't quite make it into the fountain that collects money for the local food shelter.

There's that guy at the office you always nod to but don't know his name, where he works, but a silent understanding that a greeting must take place since you both walk down the same hallway at the same time each day. You with the glass of ice water, him with a toasted bagel and a tub of Philly cream cheese on top. Then there's oddballs like the security guard you have passed every morning for the past nearly 10 years. Looking more like your average Euchre rounder at the VFW, in the twilight years he decided to take an easy job and probably earned it after fighting in a war, working the assembly line as a steering wheel adjuster at the local Ford plant for 35 years and now passing time until an Arizona retirement community calls his name. But it would take several years to notice a pattern of behavior that struck as odd but funny in way. If a male enters the building under his purview he will completely ignore that person regardless of dress, size, shape, or even if he approaches the guard desk at which time the guard steps back and lets one of his co-workers deal with you. If a female comes through the door he ALWAYS greets with a smile and remembers most of their names regardless of dress, size, shape.

He may not even realize he does it and it's behaviors like the security guard's that I find add a little spice to the current rushed lifestyle. Yes, a rent-a-cop's proclivity to boobs is amusing to me. When I can't be in Vegas due to time and family constraints and have to live vicariously through my many friends swimming through the muck of reporting from the WSOP, it's the little things that keep you going as I just finished the half-way mark of my college journey hoping to finally bed a junior or senior this quarter from the softball team or I could stay with status quo and enjoy not invoking the wrath of my wife while continuing the awesome resurgence of my marriage.

Even at home I've noticed more things about her just by slowing down to watch instead of letting the time pass in a rush, and how beautiful she becomes as I appreciate her more each day. Whether I turn into that horny security guy in 35 years is beyond me but for now I'll take every chance to hug my daughter despite knowing she just downed a giraffe's neck worth of Fruit by the Foot or my son who can't peel his eyes away from Johnny Test. And in six quarters, they'll get their dad and husband back full-time.

Of Places I Would Rather Be

2011-06-14T06:46:00.000-05:00

WSOP time.

Twice I have made the journey to the seemingly bottomless pit of cards, booze, and degenerate prop betting. The first time was do to the real thing, crossing off a bucket list item by actually playing in a World Series of Poker event.

That did not go well.

Despite high hopes I made two fatal flaws. 1) Played with scared money 2) Failed to drink

At the time it should not have been scared money as my bankroll was large enough, had backers, and online money was still flowing through ads, writing, and bonus whoring. Nonetheless, I was not as aggressive as I was sitting behind an avatar but instead adjacent to Marcel Luske and arms reach from the 2005 Main Event champ Joe Hachem. Noted warthog Joe Speaker was there to record my exploits to the masses but my tepid play had me fizzling out on a non-descript hand shortly after the first break.

Two years later I found myself in Vegas during the WSOP again, but this time it was to sweat the media at the World Series of Pai Gow, an event I'm much more equipped for and play downtown at the Binion's Poker Classic where the buy-ins fit my bankroll much more easily. CK, Tuscaloosa Johnny, and myself braved the other side of Vegas, a throwback to what Vegas used to be before the corporations splashed gold-tinted mirage of $100 margaritas, and five star dining two doors down from the 24-hour McDonald's. This time I played it right. The game was Omaha Hi/Lo again, this time limit but a game I'm most comfortable with in any setting with any stakes that does not cost me a mortgage payment to check-raise the turn.

But instead of listening to blog postings about playing "optimal tournament poker" by "getting sleep", "staying away from the pits", and most of all "not drinking". I did the opposite. Instead I got myself into that comfort zone. You know the one. It feels like fantasy sex, downslope of a rollercoaster, the perfect lick of ice cream on a day reaching triple digits all while sitting on a cloud. After hour four the waitress who seemed to be the only one serving the 214 players in the tourney didn't even bother asking if I wanted another and would just switch out the cup of ice for one filled with spiced rummy goodness and a splash of Coke.

Later on that night my friends, the ones with press badges around their necks, already taking a beating from the grueling WSOP workdays in the Amazon Room encouraged me to stay in my zone, especially one AlCantHang whom I would ~~walk~~ stumble back to the final table with holding two drinks after a shot at the bar right before chop talks began. AND still had enough in the gas tank for watching my card-rackery continue at the Pai Gow tables at the Gold Coast. True friends, they are. Almost kin-like to my degenerate side.

I mention this now because life is in the way of hopping on a plane to create another Vegas memory. Work, lack of vacation time threw away the keys as for once, money isn't throwing up the bars of steel, nor is my understanding wife who actually encouraged me to go. But, thanks to Twitter, the PG-13 rated version of my friend's exploits come to life in 140 characters or less. I'll have to wait until December or a possible WPBT side trip to hear the XXX version only available after a full night bender and a few toasts to those who couldn't make it but wished they were here.

Redirected to virtual oblivion

2011-06-07T07:03:00.000-05:00

There's a moment each workday morning if the weather is particularly calm and not freezing things at the rate of liquid nitrogen where this suburbanite can stand outside the home he grew up in after tucking the kids in with nana and pa for the day to reflect for two seconds. Much Arthur Dent watching Earth being put back together, there's an eerie fakeness to how calm everything seems without another soul moving or making a sound.

Then like a record that suddenly has the needle slammed down on it and scratches a few moments become picking up the music embedded below, life continues on with grabbing my wife's ass and piling into the car for another day of climbing the corporate ladder. Then after a hard day of spreadsheets, and a spittle of inane shop talk there home with a five year old with too much energy and the body that can't keep up with band-aids covering 70% of it from various falls. The boy quietly laying the groundwork to become a gamer and requires a few pokes before he comes to life and get a few details about the final days of his second grade year at school.

But, before crossing threshold of the porch is the kitchen which underwent a massive remake from a hindrance into the best part of the house besides the family room/porch. On the floor are little black critters which have been squished, poisoned, and flicked like those paper footballs that you hit Carly Cosgrove with right between the eyes with 28 years old. No, these are not Otis' ants, those spawns of Satan can stay in the South, just annoying black ants that crawl around for the sake of getting my preschool graduating daughter to try to pick up a bowling ball to kill one.

Subtlety is not her strongest suit. Make note of that future ex-boyfriends.

Last on Sunday night as I was wrapping up my second to last week of the Spring quarter (only six to go WHOOOOOOOOOWHOOOOOOO!!!) on a spreadsheet solving for a company's ROE and suddenly one of those ants seems to have burrowed its way into my laptop as one by one my windows started shutting down. For the next two days, thanks to the wonderful hacker that found a way to set a redirect virus into my laptop, the ant became the one squishing me. Nothing work, all my school/PokerStarsBlog/music files were gone and it seemed like there was no way of getting them back. Luckily enough my friends are smarter than me and pointed me to malwarebytes.org to patch the problem, then last night after some research I was able to restore my files by reloading from a time where I didn't worry about ants attacking my hard drive.

The laptop is still infected despite the malwarebytes holding off the actual virus while browsing the internet, as luck would have it again, I have been looking for a new laptop anyway. Luck? No, more like a lesson as I was ready to tear the hard drive out, have it professionally "cleaned", and throwing a bunch of cash at this just because I wasn't diligent enough to turn on the anti-Malware package that came with the computer.

Never again. And no, there will not be another convert into Steve Jobs' techno-borg beyond a possible iPhone5 purchase in a few months (oh you know its coming stop thinking its not) by snapping up a MacBook Air that I can't afford . Another PC laptop suits me just fine but time I'll be laying some virtual cornmeal laced with a little acid around the perimeter so no more ants find their way to my armless midget porn and schoolwork that become less and less with each passing week of the year.

Poker Bloggers RISE-ing

2011-05-31T07:04:00.000-05:00

This not a post, but is since well I'm typing here but not the one that I wanted to refute the notion of a book my wife is reading that claims money does not give individuals a life advantage over those who do not have such sums for better housing/education/brand-name soap. I suppose life is what you make it, but money allows opens doors to the clearer path versus having to step on nails while finding a way to scrap by.

Wanted to throw a little link love for three friends that I hope to see this summer sometime and hope their newest ventures:

- Dr. Pauly is back with a novel that I've heard about ever since I met this soul several years ago at the Plaza as he continues to be one of the very reasons I don't shut-down this slice of the internet entirely while trying to fit 25 hours of work into 24 hours of the day. If Jack Bauer can do it, so can I. And so can Pauly who after his success with Lost Vegas presents Jack Tripper Stole My Dog (book purchase linkage here) and I'm also pleased to see he is returning to Vegas for the WSOP this summer....

- ... and three of my friends will be working together for RISE Poker which comes at a time after Black Friday showing some hope to the post-US online poker wasteland that players have options (even if it isn't 12-tabling 6-max PLO until the handle of Captain says "please stop pouring me" at 2am). F-Train and Change100 will be in Vegas for the WSOP along side Chops of Wicked Chops Poker fame rounding out their all-star WSOP coverage crew (if I'm missing anyone it's because its early in the morning and I haven't had my caffeine yet).

Ok, back to the grind and not mentioning my decent degen gambling weekend as I won a Vegas plane ticket worth of ducats playing slots and pull tabs... a sign to go?

It's what I do

2011-05-24T06:55:00.000-05:00

"It's what you do"

I'm not Kobe, LeBron, Wade, A-Rod, never the superstar, never a person who seeks the spotlight. My father instilled that quality in me, for the past nearly 40 years he has been fixing elevators, getting called at ungodly hours to drive/fly somewhere in the Midwest region because some mechanic kid doesn't know the difference between the blue wire and the red wire and the building's contractor is bitching out the home office something fierce because they cannot complete their $50 million cubical maze without an OSHA sign off on the lifts. He puts head down, gets it done without flair, without demands, without extra needs. He could expense bigger hotels, better meals, but chooses to pack a lunch/dinner with chocolate chip bars from my mom while staying in a place that's no more than a bed to lay down on after making things right at the job site for 12-14 hours then comes back home to be an on-call help desk.

He missed his kids growing up and just now at the age of 60 as started to get to know them. I love my father dearly, always have, always will and I see little bit of myself in him. Just the honor of someone appreciating my hard work is worth doing the job. Some may call that being naive and those people would be absolutely correct. But as long as I receive the satisfaction of doing something right, my reward may not be tangible but its worth more than anything currently parked in Paris Hilton's gargage.

All my life, I just yearn for a chance. My current employ, where I will probably retire from in the year 2035, has shot me down for several promotions due to a lack of a piece of paper that I currently am in the pursuit of achieving for both personal and professional reasons. But when one has a disability there is always a nagging itch with each denial. "Is it because I cannot hear?". It's an irritation that grows with every rejection, and wondering "am I in the right business?", "should I be taking my talents somewhere else?". Instead I put my head down and keep churning out productivity.

I am not a genius, nor do I feel particularly talented at anything but I work harder than most as people who know my schedule get winded just reading it. While sitting up in the metal bleachers at Field #1 behind my parent's home and Cedar Island elementary school directly to my right where I attended and teachers still asked about me 25 years later, I still wonder what I did to make such a lasting impression besides my unkept hair, ability to say "what?!?" every other word, and do my multiplication tables faster than anyone in the room. Then I looked up at my boy finally showing some effort on the field, sliding side-to-side for grounders and showing a bit of the smooth batting stroke that got his father a place on a few baseball/softball teams. Of course in my lap was a copy of Fundamentals of Corporate Finance and a rather dry chapter about WACC, betas, CAPM, and the cost of equity since my time was in short supply this week. But, cool, nearly windless night made it perfect to sit outside and watch my son finally show some effort that I hope I can instill in him as my father did in me.

Hard work does pay off, it may take longer for someone who doesn't chirp about not getting "his due", but the person who doesn't ask for those extras shouldn't expect them, instead receiving the little satifsfaction like a son's smile after finally catching a fly ball, getting an insignificant grade on a college paper, or working long hours on a blog post that felt good to finish and not caring how many people read it because you were proud of the words put to print.

A good friend told me "it's what you do" and he couldn't be more right.

And I'll continue to be a parent, a writer, a number jockey, a friend, a husband, a provider, a student until I'm ask not to. When all those jobs are done and there's nothing left, I'll take myself somewhere to rest with a handle of rum in my hand of course. But until then its time to get back to work.

Monday Ribeyes

2011-05-17T07:02:00.000-05:00

Came home yesterday to smell of steaks on the grill as the wife explained she was feeling nice and decided instead of Easy Mac N' Cheese a full steak dinner with roasted potatoes, ribeyes soaked in wine (I added a little Famous Dave's Devil Spit which completely kicks ass), and grilled corn-on-the-cob. Due to the nature of our schedule, Monday - Thursday is usually a throw something in the microwave and rush back out the door dinner. The surprise is how my wife expresses that I done something right recently but since I have the game of Revenge of the Nerds stand-in, I'll just keep scanning the credit cards to see if I've purchased a Mexican cruise for two in September before passing out after reporting last weekend.

The first weekend of the post-Black Friday SCOOP tournament series and while the numbers are down, they are cracking the guarantees with good amount of players for every buy-in level. The production got a step-up this year as they've added a daily recap show called Inside SCOOP with Joe Stapleton and Nick Weathall commanding the microphone with interviews from the winners via Skype as well as Team PokerStars pros and Team Online. Even got to see a few hands I reported on as Alexander "josio" Kostritsyn went on a tear last weekend collecting a 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, and 3rd in the high buy-in tourneys. But, after two days off I'll be back in the fray tonight through Sunday reporting for PokerStarsBlog and getting to know my couch for the next five days.

I get four weeks vacation each year and for the past three years I have used two of those weeks to work for WCOOP and SCOOP. To tell you the truth, it feels more relaxing and fulfilling to indulge in job that I love to do but don't have the necessary equipment (bad hearing makes live reporting juuuuuuuuuust tad tough) outside of being behind a laptop to complete. I'm not a journalist, nor a writer, just a card player with a love knack for throwing a few readable puns together. When I write for these series know that I enjoy the action, and give a little OW! when a nasty river card hits at 4:30am despite having zero personal financial consequence. Unlike accounting where you're supposed to leave your emotions at the door, I'm a little colorful when it comes to poker or poker reporting, call it releasing the inner-degen, something I cannot or should not do while sitting in cubicalandia behind Dilbert cartoons and an outdated computer.

I know the loss of online poker for Americans sucks and people within our little niche circle are good work for little consequence like Karak who penned a great post about seeing the issue of legalized internet poker from the eyes of the morally right. Adding the disclaimer that he is Christian and is completely honest about the beliefs from powerful political groups like Focus on the Family. CK and Grange of course continue to do the leg work of hammering out rough, massive mounds of rocky lawyer babble into malleable, clean, easy-to-read sheets of information for the masses. 2+2 continues to have too have too many forum tards that want to spend more time flinging poo at company reps (but some it admittedly is justified as a simple one sentence explanation for the delay would sedate many people) versus having solution discussions, but luckily you can tap Karak or KevMath to sift through the muck to find the good stuff (yes, it does exist).

Online poker and poker in general will continue to be part of my life until pen is forced to be dropped, and even then I'd find a way to put together a few sentences about this card game whether it be in a professional capacity or screeching my bow across the strings here. WPBT get togethers will still happen, likely a smaller crowd but if you enjoy those weekends of stepping outside your skin, fellow degens will available long after Harrah's.com becomes the official online card room of the 2015 WSOP. Why? Because everyone needs to step out of their monkey suit, briefcase, stethoscope, laptop, fortran code, parenting skin for just a few days to realize how good they have it to be in that skin eating a juicy steak during a busy Monday, starting another busy week. I'll be there in December, tournament or not to see these people, even if MGM insists on charge $11 for Cap'n Coke because the cowboys don't know better, because you never know when you'll be wisked away in a limo with five other guys with grins that reached LA to G-Vegas after a concert that touched your soul.

Something you won't find banging at a keyboard at home, here's to hoping I see ya'll soon (a WSOP trip 06/26-06/29 is starting to get my interest).

Where we talk about poker before writing about poker

2011-05-10T07:47:00.000-05:00

Twitter went abuzz yesterday as US players who did not ask for the bank wire option payout from PokerStars got their checks. Sure enough when I got home there was one sitting on the kitchen table underneath an ad from Aria and Harrah's. WSOP time? No, the check wasn't for that much but enough for a "free" ticket to Vegas and a decent hotel and since I still have a workable bankroll, the WSOP is a possiblity, more so if backers sprout up.

Should I stay or should I go? (if I go there will be trouble... that much is certain)

Another shot at a WSOP tourney is food for thought, especially after the confidence boost from roaching my way to chopping up that O8 tourney at Binion's two years ago. But, really I'd rather see my degenerate friends for a little school/work/kids/life stress relief and sling some chips. Add on a nice extra paycheck from assisting with the SCOOP series that got off to a bang on Sunday with all three tourneys beating their guarantees. Be sure to check out the recaps from your hard ~~drinking~~ working bloggers at PokerStarsBlog. I'll be joining the team on this Thursday, working through the weekend, then starting up again on Tuesday afternoon through Sunday where some juggling in schedule between a fun run at Como Zoo that I forgot about will happen Saturday morning (those playing the high stakes PLO tourney that morning, please stretch your Euros a bit while I get some sunshine with the kids). But, with the size of the fields thus far and the length of the tourneys there should be no problem trying to keep up with my daughter for a half mile and heading back to the reporting cave for some GAMBOOOOOOOOOOOOL! (6-max PLO is my favorite tourney to watch/report on).

Full Tilt unfortunately continues to have issues stemming from separating player/company funds as my meager bankroll there is still locked up and they can no longer sponsor that graphic you see on the right hand side of the blog. But, it will remain there regardless. They have supported us poker bloggers for too long to cut and run until the company itself asks for the ad to be taken down. I sincerely hope things improve soon for my friends and a site that supported us throughout the years with freerolls and especially the Battle of the Blogger tournament series where my luck always seemed to be at its worst.

UB/AP continues its fall into the abyss as they axed their US-based pros yesterday along with bankruptcy scares, raids in Costa Rica that spilled over to the wrong poker site, and unfortunately leaving a good friend who is one of the best in the business, out of a job. He'll land on his Pittsburgh sports homer feet soon enough, but UB/AP deserves to die a quick death along with the millions they have stolen from poker players around the world. Restructuring to capture non-US market players? Minimal caps on cashouts (and not to mention a "check processing" fee)? Why would any player with Party, Tilt, Stars available want to play on a site that has cheated its players (read all about the scandal with an upcoming book announced by uber-sleuth Haley Hintze yesterday), couldn't even figure out a decent RNG for a simple game like Keno, and saw its two biggest "stars" walk away at just the right time (strangely not a lot of talk about their seemingly innocent departure)...

Hmmm... indeed

Rambling man found dead in Abbottabad

2011-05-03T06:57:00.000-05:00

So... anything interesting going on in the last few weeks?

I'll remember my porch and Twitter locking my feeble laptop while trying to upload the May Day version of the Sunday Warm-up as Osama Bin Laden finally drew his last vile breath on Earth. Looking up and seeing it was 9:30pm with only four players remaining and thinking about finally getting a decent night sleep to help battle this chest cold that has lingered for two weeks, but suddenly Twitter exploded with 100+ twits, twats, tits in a matter of a few minutes. After armageddon was disproved and I put away the snide remarks to my wife about going out with a bang (h/t Chevy Chase and Aykroyd), I flipped over from the poker wrap to see that the world's number one terrorist would not be plotting any more.

This does not stop the religious abuse, the shoe bombs, the potential future 9/11-like attacks, in fact it may just piss off the lingering terrorist cells into doing something rash. But, the head is severed from the body. The thinking leader behind the reason you take off your shoes and get a free hand job before joining friends at McCarran airport for a weekend of Pai Gow, foie gras with unpronounceable flavorings, and ripping up $100 wagers on the 3am Tanzania/Turkey cricket tilt.

No more.

Oh, don't worry you'll still get your complimentary sexual healing from the TSA, but Bin Laden won't be laying out the blueprints any longer. For the current time, intelligence agencies will seeing a fight or flight by the terrorist cells linked to Bin Laden. Will they use this to paint an (un)holy martyr and rally around their fallen leader to enact something even more terrifying than the 9/11 attacks? Or disperse into smaller acts of a car bomb here, suicide bombers there, slowly trying to gather enough steam for another massive attack? Citizens like myself will have to rely on those whose names will never appear on a newspaper, faces that are unknown to any database, and hope those who crawl through the slime trails left by these holy pretenders find them before they find us hiding behind our Dodge Caravans.

There are no words that describe their sacrifice and I certainly couldn't write enough to properly thank them. No amount of money or materialistic items will ever be enough, but if you ever lucky enough to meet someone who has served this country without selfish thought, buy them a beer and thank them for allowing the biggest problem in your day is getting your daughter to eat her green beans or the ability to play online poker.

And to those who thought Obama was taking some kind of victory lap with that beautiful speech Sunday night? Kindly place a large rusted spiked unlubricated object up your self righteous ass. Obama did good, he did something right, save the bashing for when gas prices hit $5.00/gallon and ExxonMobile or BP comes out with another record breaking quarterly profit announcement...

Being yourself is hard work

2011-04-28T06:56:00.000-05:00

"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This morning there was a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich, hot from the microwave sitting aside from a tall glass of OJ which I've been mainlining for the past two week thanks to a chest cold. It said "Turkey sauage, egg whites and cheese on a whole wheat bagel", my description was more "water chestnut (seriously are those things good for anything while baking???), on top of vulcanized rubber inside a colon blow patty of bread".

But, it was quick food since my lovely daughter decided to turn off the alarm clock while watching Trollz before retiring last night, thus me and wife snapped awake when the internal alarm clocks went off 15 minutes late. I did have a few moments of reflection on a friend who found a big missing piece of his life and wrote about it yesterday. If you read here, you probably know about one of the best pens on the west coast who is currently cursing his Kings for the quick exit from the Stanley Cup playoffs.

He may be missing a hockey team, but found something 100x more important, his faith. I wrote on twitter yesterday that a person should stay true to themselves if anything. If you read the archives here you'd see my struggle with marriage, kids, and myself over the course of nearly eight years. But, it was the writing and friends that got me to the spot I find myself today. No burning bush, no shooting star, I did not wake up suddenly and exclaim "HEY I'D LOVE TO HAVE NO FREE TIME FOR THE NEXT THREE YEARS AND GO BACK TO SCHOOL WHILE WORKING TWO JOBS AND TAKING CARE OF TWO KIDS!".

Doesn't work that way.

As Joe Speaker describes the hints, the reflections in his great post, all people who have poured their hearts onto a page get something back from it. A blog doesn't care about your chosen faith, color of your skin, your sexuality, if you enjoy using a toothbrush in a manner not recommends by three out of four dentist. It is a blank page to let go, and show your readers who you really are behind that Armani business suit, the eaten up North Stars cap and stale smell of alcohol while leaned over a townie bar's chipped rail, or for most reader here: a poker table.

I have met the most amazing people through this medium. People who wouldn't have entered my life if it didn't exist. I've penned many sappy posts about them but the fact remains that my life was able to progress because of those folks, quirks and all. Just like Speaker's true friends embrace his renewed faith in God, people accepted me at face value and that's never happened before.

I've pretty much found my purpose in life. Teach my son to spin a decent curveball, trying to teach my daughter that jumping off a roof may seem like fun but the landing is a bitch, and my wife that its ok to be herself and to start enjoying life without worrying about what others think. I am a degen, and will always be. Work hard, play harder is my mantra and will go to my grave knowing I gave this life all I had, and lived out all I've ever wanted.

I may not get the corner office, I may not ever reach Machu Picchu (go read Pauly's epic adventure in Peru and don't forget the photos at the end, breathtaking, even the receipt to use the bathroom), but I will get my college degree 16 years after I started it, I will get to Europe (even if I blow through my savings account for just one beer at Oktoberfest), I will walk my kids down the aisle while groaning at the promise of an open bar, and I will see Speaker again and hand a beer over to someone I geniunely respect for sharing a lot of himself yesterday and taking an actual leap of faith.

Clean Slate

2011-04-26T07:01:00.000-05:00

He can't see, he can't hear.

Uncoachable.

20(!!) years ago on a back field at Osseo High School, right next to the tin shack of a hockey arena that was reeciving a much needed face lift and second rink, there's a worn down baseball diamond. The backstop is littered with uncut follage, the fence curls upward in places allowing passed balls to become free bases, the outfield is sparcely cut and has no fence allowing home runs to become very long doubles, and the pitching rubber slightly tilted upwards to remind the hurler to mind his delivery or be prepared to eat some gravel along with a chorus of heckling.

A tall, skinny sophomore who never played on the teams with button down jerseys, matching pants and stirups, or freshly polished shoes walked across the long stretch between the high school and this long forgotten place of play.  The benches were no more than a plank of warped wood on the open field, unsheltered from the errant foul tip.  But, Mr. Darby Carlson sat there waiting to begin choosing who would work their way from this blight to the concrete dugouts of the varsity field located right next to the gym exit.

"If it doesn't happen, I can hang up my glove for good"

Years of tears, disappointments, road trips, tubes of icy-hot all for a shot to make a school team which carried the weight of several recent state tournament appearances and players going off to play for college teams. And here was the last chance as Darby had no thoughts of nepotism, no parental handshakes for their sons to walk on the team, no worries about pieces of plastic in my ears, a clean evaluation for the first time.

I wasn't the most gifted athlete, hell at best I was average.  But, good enough to wear a varsity letter my senior year because of honest coaches who saw that I had a talent of ~~plunking batters~~ throwing hard enough and working hard enough to pitch for this team three years prior. A ray of hope that there are somethings you CAN work hard for and get paid off.

My naiveness of the current online poker situation is a mix of assuming too much and not knowing enough. As I took the family last night to a local bar called J. Cousineau's, a long-time supporter of my days before responsibility, the cajun chicken sandwich and seasoned fries were unmarkable but decent bar food as the waiter certainly exceeded expectations and was very friendly and genuine.

Surrounded by jerseys of Dino Ciccarelli, John Randle, and a flag from Bushwood Country Club signed by I'm assuming Carl Spackler right after his miraclous cinderella man shot, was a TV showing a different set of programming than the Yankees/White Sox tilt shown on the other ten sets. TVG.com was playing as the 5th at Turf Paradise was calling the horses to the gate. Listed below were the odds from the nine's 5/2 all the way up to the four horse's 85/1 (sired by Mr. Otis perhaps?).  OTBs are not legal in Minnesota, but holding a phone with internet capabilities for the first time, if I wanted to plunk a few dollars down on a horse that will likely fall before the announcer gets the word "OFF!" out of the microphone, I could.

Why could I wager here, but not on something with much better odds AND knowing I hold an edge? If I'm faster, throw harder, work harder, why don't I get the spot on the team? If I'm more knowledgable, better personality, have more drive to succeed why don't I get the job.

Naive.

World doesn't work that way dumbass.

The difference between what should be and what is, is called life. Deal with it, or get run over. Finally after several years of tryout disappointments, the lanky kid who walked off that field with the tattered hand-me-downs of the varisty jersey package worn three years ago, including a turtleneck that was a better fit for the arctic circle, found a place on the sophomore team and finally realized what is, is, what didn't happen you can't control so after a good cry, its time to move on.

Finally the lesson sunk in after the favorite crossed the line and my kids were asking about a summer trip to Canterbury Park, and some friends with their heads on much straighter than my own via Twitter explained the gray parts of the online poker proceedings.

The fight for online poker in the US isn't about who did what, or "freedoms", nor is it about what is right. Its PR, its American Idol where phone-in votes count (some more than others), its about money and globs of it, high enough for Scrooge McDuck to make a second swimming pool vault.

It's about opportunity, selling the right idea to the right person at the right time. Just like I managed to finally sneak onto the team from years of playing behind a wall of favorites, I managed to take advantage of the situation. Will online poker advocates do the same?

April Snow Showers

2011-04-20T07:01:00.000-05:00

In November when the first snow drops expectantly, resting gently on top the needles of the Nordic pines and bare branches of sturdy oaks, it's pretty. Even a lifelong resident of this state will take sometime to prop two knees on the couch which overlooks a backyard in need of a landscaping manicure. Watching the big flakes stack on top of each other, similar to being back in Mrs. Hughes' 1st grade class and outlining a tree in Elmer's glue then sprinkling glitter down the construction paper for an easy art project to put up on the fridge.

pic cred

However.

When the day on the 2011 Dilbert calendar claims it's one day after Passover, having to don winter coats and drive thru snow just might set off a rant about the weather. A little bit.

Much like the current online poker (in the US) collapse, it is better to take the stance of inevitability (but if you're like myself were hoping for the best outcome), read about those who can speak about the events with their awesome lawyerly knowledge (a gentleman with good taste in wine but bad taste in starting hand selections and the black widow herself), and make the best of a shitty situation. The PPA has shown over the weekend of its misguided attempts and misunderstanding about what took place and how to react to it. Thankfully within our little circle of poker media, bloggers, and players we're a pretty smart bunch. I do not include myself, but those like Wicked Chops who took an excellent government messaging programs created by the PPA (they are good for something), and turned their OMG POKER IS NOT ILLEGAL!!?!?!!1111 message into a prose of understanding the big three potentially did something wrong and this should push those officials into doing something right by allowing the millions of players in the United States to play legally from their homes under a regulated and taxed platform.

And to those who think the government did not force the hand of these operators? Five letters. U.I.G.E.A.

To the hypocritical government that allows people to throw large amounts of money at Wall Street while day-trading, how exactly is that different from betting on a 71% chance of fading six outs? I know, old argument, same ol' rant, go collect your UPC label citizen.

To myself and my family this will hurt the elasticity of my bank account. Less going out, less fun, and unfortunately, less seeing my dear friends scattered across this country. While all is light and fluffy at the present time, it will be tough to see that things will run as they have in the past for much longer (although if it could last until I walking down the aisle with my accounting degree in hand next year that would be super-awesome). Personally, I have no desire to pick up a second job other than the one I have currently. I work for a friend who tends to make people reflect on things profoundly with each carefully crafted paragraph and descriptions that give the five senses a tingle, especially after hearing the porch floorboard creak exactly one step from the recliner on the west wall when getting home yesterday. On a working basis, there's no one I'd rather lose a little sleep for, especially for the fact that he took a leap of faith with this very green blogger and trusted him to come through over the past three years. That trust is worth more than he'll ever know regardless of how this bad situation shakes out.

Change is coming, eventually the snow will melt along I-94 and the pines lining my property line. The big three will have their day in court, and next week the family cabin/trailer will be opened for another season of deckside drinks while brushing off the grime of the suburban shuffle and other petty life worries. I was told during my interview feedback session that my best quality was my tenacity and ability to adapt to change.

Here's my chance to prove it.

Red Dawn Online Poker Style

2011-04-18T06:51:00.000-05:00

Honey Badger vs. Wolverines who wins?

Sigh.

Last weekend was a blind-side tackle from a defender people knew was on the field but didn't know how hard or when he would hit. If you want the meaty portions of the lawsuits with excellent commentary and legalese CK rocks it with a three parter check em out here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

I'm sure the people who read here also have penned their tears of online poker in the US going poof and watching helplessly as our friends from places Not America are able to continue their hobbies, or in some cases, their living as a professional card player.

Me? I was shocked by a text message as over the weekends I tend to stray from checking Twitter, poker sites, and blogs too much due to school and spending time with the kids. Now armed with an old Blackberry to replace the phone I lost in Texas, I could check Pokerati and other sites while in line for the 2-liter pop bottle ring toss at the local school carnival (I won a bottle of Grape Crush if you must know). And while my kids tried their luck on the lollipop tree hoping for a colored tipped stick good to trade-up for the little stuffed animal, my thoughts were on those most affected by the government's rash decision to blitz the "Big 3" with criminal charges.

Surly these companies had some sort of plan should the shakedown come down especially after Jon Kyl in his rabid anti-fun anti-logic brigade snuck the UIGEA into the books several years ago. We can't stop two rich women from abusing the financial laws to the tunes of nine figure sums, making the already super-rich into being able to take over a decent sized country (h/t to Change100) but the US can crackdown down on people trying to have a little fun in the comforts of their own homes or a coffee shop, or even a few who are skilled enough to make a living from poker. Even worse are the people who may lose their jobs as accountants, analysis, computer programmers, and something that closer to home, the poker writers.

Who exactly is hurt by online poker, where's the seedy back-alley drug exchange taking place? Sadly I don't have the time to go into a long rant other than to say my government continues to adhere to policies that become the fight of the few who hold the power versus the word of the many. This is still a democracy right? Word of the people and all that?

No. It's become something else. A nation where two women can make more money then 99.999% of the world could dream of spending by twisting a few words and filling out the right forms, and a righteous team of feds can take away the hobby of millions and jobs of thousands because they couldn't get their flopped flush to hold (sorry had to use at least ONE poker pun).

I love my country, and much like a 4 year old who got send to bed early last night due to a bad attitude, I may be pouting right now but I hope with some sleep and dreams, things will be better in the morning.

Misplaced Sour Grapes

2011-04-13T07:37:00.000-05:00

Minnesotans live through the five to six months of winter for days like the two that passed way too quickly with several hours behind a desk when a multi-colored disc golf driver should have been putting a dent or three into trees at the Elm Creek Park reserve course.  The wind, minimal. The skirts, short. The sun hitting like someone set the outdoor thermostat to Perfect. While I groaned at the piles of dead grass freshly raked by my wife knowing my two hands currently on a steering wheel would be wrapped around a similar rake for the next two hours, once I opened the door to the car and felt the warm blanket of my work-in-progress backyard there not enough hours in the day.

Pine needles, plastic golf balls, and crushed leaves were unearthed in the spring cleaning of sorts that becomes less and less each year as we discard the remains of the previous owner's wayward ambition to cover the spacious backyard too many trees that competed with each other for space and light and instead caused mass woodicide ending up in the Hennepin County compost site several year later. Never met the man as he was divorced six years from the woman who sold us the house as she probably hid a snicker while selling and not informing us of the aborted attempt to recreate a green nursery in the backyard which was covered by three feet of snow at the time of the sale (won't mention the unusable driveway, torn roofing, and million other things the $250 home "inspector" managed to miss).

But, this was a happy time. Wife threw some hamburger patties on the grill which gave my nose an erection making it harder to concentrate on the task at hand as seen by the several little scrapes along my shins this morning that feel like I hid a rabid squirrel done there. Add a little Famous Dave's Devil's Spit BBQ sauce and I was in need of a tissue or two.

It was a good feeling, yard work done, school work slowly being chipped away while the Twins showed a couple of a rays of life in defeating the Royal while a mid-week adult beverage was most welcomed.  While sifting through Twitter making a 30 minute Finance assignment into two hours, there was talk about an article posted at CardPlayer which I was anxious to read, but not for the sunny reasons that I'd rather be on the open deck at 10pm.

Someone allowed this cockjob (who will not be linked for his fabulous poker skills as self-described at the bottom of the "article") to post a long winded rant, mostly about Team PokerStars pro Vanessa Selbst (who is likely more interested in repeating as the NAPT Mohegan Sun Main Event champ at the moment with fellow NAPT title holder and tournament destroyer Joe Tehan close behind). The lovely Change100 was kind enough to do the dirty work and unearthed this filth probably while doing a little research for the current assignment, which is ringside at the NAPT's final table or possibly researching for the next gig while joining up with her soon-to-be two-time published writer Dr. Pauly in Lima, Peru.

Unfortunately, I got the edited version which likely cut out the juicy parts but left the ignorance of a player who had to bloat his "tournament winnings of 300K" from the actual 230K over six years (thanks for the research Mr. Schleger). Honestly, if you think 230K = 300K either you hired an accountant from Enron or there's a 100% possiblity that you have stuffed your boxers with a sock in the past ten years to impress the ladies. Luckily I don't have an issue with wang size nor telling people my actual poker winnings (enough to take trips, but not near enough to fathom playing for a living), just the fact that showing my sizable package to other ladies besides the TSA would catch the ire of the one person I enjoy showing it to.

But this isn't about me its about someone who took a misguided rant to a major part of the poker media that was better left on a personal blog or even a forum post (or if this guy had any fucking clue not written at all). While Vanessa is due a huge apology, not the half-hearted disclaimer which currently sits a top of this 3am milky bowel movement after eating an undercooked $2.99 Grand Slam breakfast, the secondary problem is Cardplayer ALLOWING this to be published un-edited. When I write for PokerStarsBlog it stays professional for the most part with some (funny probably only to me) puns to lighten up the poker hands because honestly, a little spice is needed even for the best cut of steak. As it should.  "Calling out" those in such an ignorant manner should have their pink polka-dot blankees taken away, especially when ranting about players who are wildly more successful than the author!

pic cred

For several paragraphs (and this is getting too long as it is) the author continuously shows his inability to understand that sometimes the best hand doesn't win in poker like its a bad beat thread on 2+2 circa 2001. Wake up kid, start typing up your resume because you ain't gonna make it in this business by waiting around for Aces.

If anyone has the unedited version of his post I'd love to see what was changed.

Gambling Mexican Style with Refried Beans and Rice

2011-04-11T06:45:00.000-05:00

If you like even an iota of sports you probably watched the exciting ending to The Masters yesterday and today thousands of bloggers will pummel you with Spaceballs quotes. MAY THE SCHWARTZ BE IN THE HOLE! HIS SCHWARTZ IS MUCH BIGGER THAN YOURS! Somewhere Mel Brooks is gearing up the distribute Spaceballs the Loft Wedge and Spaceballs the Divot Repair Tool.

Just remember who set the trend before the South African even stepped up to the first tee at Augusta National.

This guy.

Not really, I thought Bo Van Pelt and the rest of the crew from the Grand Ole Opry would gank the green jacket yesterday.

I looked up this morning and saw it was April already meaning time is not exactly slowing down for this multi-tasking white boy, but at I can open the windows now without fear of catching frostbite while typing up the Sunday Warm-up wrap at PokerStarsBlog. Or mindless entertainment from DragonAge 2 which will be in place until the poker gods decide to stop the spankings that would make a submissive scream the safety word. January to Mid-March = Awesome, Mid-March to yesterday = fuck you very much

Subtle.

See? Poker whines can be condensed to small packages in which you owe no one a dollar and they don't hop screens to read about Paris Hilton's new favorite orifice to hide crack rocks on TMZ. If I can find my Flip camera, I'll try to post a wonderful short documentary on How to Survive a Mexican Bathroom by drunk Drizz in which I don't remember a thing and my wife's photos from Facebook were the only reminder that I was there. That and some bruises from trying to arm wrestle with a beefed-up gringo slinging $2 movies named Jhonny. Oh, and extending my reach of degeneracy to the younger aged members on Nuevo Progresso as seen below:

It's no Mr. Cashman, but the slot machine does pay out just not to me

I put in a dollar (12 pesos) and sadly did not win enough to feed the multitude of beggers along the streets. But I did have enough for a Mexican Mojito which consist of nothing but alcohol with a faint splash of club soda. Faint as in pouring as long as your four year old's attention span while Phineas and Ferb are on and you're trying to ask them what they'd like for dinner.

Good day.

Spaceballs: The Vacation Recap

2011-04-07T07:00:00.000-05:00

$369 Round-trip from Lindbergh Terminal to McCarran on December 8th.

This pricing is courtesy of Orbiz.com *start deep announcers voice* where our price assurance guarantees you never pay more than the lowest stated fare!

Or plan degenerate gatherings too far in advance.

Wow. Didn't take long to hop off one vacation think about the next now did it? If I were to reach into the DSM-IV to reach a prognosis for the past month Manic-Depressive would leap from the couch and bill me $200 for the hour with a handful of happy pills.

First I didn't get a promotion, then won an employee of the year award, then went on vacation in a shitty mood, got drunk several times, shitty mood did not improve, finally resolved shitty mood, enjoyed remainder of vacation, came back to work in zombie-state, got yearly review, received a mark reserved for the top 1% of employees, and got to play with kids. I think avoiding the PLO Rush ring games for the next month will prove to be wise.

If anyone could find normal out there lurking behind mediocre, I'd appreciate if he'd drop around for a chat because my handle of Captain at home is going to take a hit unless someone quieter days come without group-think level existentialist discussions about life, marriage, and parenting bouncing around in my head. Throw in this new pressure with school and being the BMOC at work (while still in the pint-sized cube of course) and there’s something that has to give.

But, it doesn’t. Stretching is something mentioned in this blog more than once and I’ll continue doing so until Reed Richards leans back and says “DAaaaaaaaaaaaamn!”. Oh, I’ll also be using my annual poker reporting card to join the PokerStarsBlog crew once again for full coverage of the 114 events (!) of the 2011 SCOOP tournament series.

Sleep? For pussies. Luckily, I find an extra tank of natural Red Bull when musing about the scary turn card, so weaving some rather interesting workdays into the normal routine shouldn’t hurt.

Well, nothing that a caffeinated drink and bowl of Fruity Pebbles can’t solve. Yes that’s a double negative, but my blog is a grammatical train wreak anyway and nothing that Denzel Washington or any college professor of the verse could solve. Or hope to repeat for that matter.

Ok, vacation. The Spaceballs short-short version.

Flew to San Antonio
Drank.
Mexico.
Cards.
Mexican strip club (seriously, $100 gets you all the syphilis you could want to gather up with an endless bottle of Sol in your hand).
Mexican bathroom video (may post, may not, definitely don’t remember doing this)
Golf (windy and humid but struck the ball well including several drives that did not anger the local's roofs and windows)
Pouted, then pouted again
Hashed things out with wife
Happy again
Drank
Drove to San Antonio
The Alamo (awesome history lesson wish I had more time)
Riverwalk (tell me why there are no rails next to the river with $2 beers and Sangria specials?!!?!?)
None of your business
Twins lose to Yankees again
Raising Cane’s chicken strips at 10am (I’d gain 30 pounds if this place was near me)
Read Falstaff’s Hard Day’s Knight vol. 1 on the flight home (well done again sir)
Hugs from two kids and promptly pass out after tucking them in

Word.

My Road to San Antonio

2011-03-29T06:52:00.000-05:00

No Wilson Phillips.

Sorry.

That's reserved for the same special day out of the year before I come see my fellow degenerates in Vegas for stories that shall remain in a small, tucked away pocket of my 20 year old blazer (which finally got replaced because you never know if another interview might come up).

No new job unfortunately but last week's rollercoaster ended on a pretty big high as our annual full department meeting gathered for a wrap up of closing the books on 2010 and an award ceremony.

Foreshadowing here. Subtle as a Blake Griffin dunk on a midget.

Yes, I won an Employee of the Year award out of 400 people, seven of us walked away with a silver star which if it was pure silver, according to Tao of Fear, I could melt it down and take over the island of Togo with my own badassed all-female volleyball playing assassin group ala Gaddafi. Near tears and shaking after the applause and the requisite reading of my accomplishments for the year. They chose to leave out my four- to-five hour Pai Gow bender at the Monte Carlo and walking away $5 down after consuming my weight in greyhounds, CapN'Cokes, and professing my love for Frank Caliendo.

Instead, a dinner after work at my favorite restaurant (Three Squares) with two well-behaved kids who did indeed eat all of their veggies, snacking on a curious "Minnesota" styled crab cake (shrimp and walleye, don't ask me but it rivaled the ones I had at Rick Erwin's while in G-Vegas last year) and washed down with two Surly Furious. Of course.

Then despite flushing some more bankroll cash down the drain, I won the tptpoker weekly tournament after finishing second the previous week. Yet lost money on the night because, I play dum. Also, found me on top of their monthly leaderboard which will most likely go to waste since I'm 95% sure this next paragraph's activity will kill any reason why I'd want my laptop with me.

Vacation time in Texas. It's near 90 there. Here? Not so much, as the dash read 18 degrees with the landscape still glossed over by a sheet of snow/ice and blades of brown grass fighting for air. Mexican mojtios which contain creme de minthe, Malibu, and vodka with sugar (no mix) will toted around the border town of Nuevo Progresso for a dollar. Golf will be played with minimal skill, and maximum usage of the beer cart chick. And anything resembling work or school will be left in my porch outlooking the frozen backyard as I'm off this week at the PokerStarsBlog as well after an interesting night which Comcast decided to pull the plug on my connection with six players left in the Sunday Warm-up and as the Turbo Takedown was down to just two tables.

McFuckers.

Luckily a Fonzie-like move of banging the router and shouting enough four-letter words to get applause from Sam Kinison got the connection back in time before the possible dash to my parent's house to write the rest of the story with four left, and close the books on the weekend around 2am.

And now, I bid adieu with without Carnie, Wendy, and Chynna, instead with my vacation arrival point in song: San Antonio Rose.

Home Game Full Moon

2011-03-24T07:02:00.000-05:00

It was not 75 with a cool breeze sitting off the front porch being served cold cervezas. There was no newly minted news anchors or like-minded degenerates sitting on my left and right. Instead, my left foot was near frozen after coming back in from taking the garbage out and two kids needed tucking in after watching an Animal Planet special on desert animals.

The laptop was on to check my school email account and sign up for next quarter's classes and run through the personal accounts to delete messages from Adam and Eve and other companies who don't share my wife's opinion that my dick is long enough. Twitter came on for a debate by various poker friends over the Two plus Two forums and their utility in the poker universe. It is a great tool, vast amounts of information on just about any topic you could think of within the 52 cards in play. But, it is also bloated to the point that non-regular users without a direct link to a certain article would be lost to find information on. The last time I went diving into the forum without a link, I was searching for others having issues with Full Tilt/Stars check cashing problems. 30 minutes later I finally found a thread, despite trying to use the search function which normally I would feel fairly competent at, or even would brag that only the Cray-5000 supercomputer known as KevMath would be a faster researcher than I. Great information, needs a slim-fast weight loss program.

Moving on.

While the virtual spittle was flying The Mark hopped on to catch a fish looking for some home game action. The G-Vegas degens above such BadBlood and GRob were enjoy a peaceful southern evening under a half moon while I worried about catching frostbite thanks to a state that doesn't know it's almost April and decided to dump a half a foot of snow on the three million of us already suffering from cabin fever and quashing my plans of testing out my new disc golf set this weekend.

Thanks to PokerStars and their Home Game set-up I was able to sit at The Depot in G-Vegas to play some six handed PL Hold Em'/Omaha. While I'd rather be downing a half bottle of Captain while losing music prop bets to the table, this filled in nicely regardless of outcome.

The outcome of course was brutal for one table member as I was logging in, BadBlood was all-in after a flop gave him an around-the-world wrap versus Grob's two pair. Ship buy-in #1. Happened a short while later with another big, favored draw against Grob's flopped set. Turn, makes broadway for BadBlood, River ships quads to your new G-Vegas news anchor quietly awaiting his new desk. Ship buy-in #2.

This went on for the ~2 hours of play with Grob of course giving several words of encouragement for the run-terrible heavy metal fan. Then after dropping my son off in bed for the third time after the shadows spooked him again, I came back to BadBlood open raising the button for the 10th out of 10 time on my blind while I held 9-6-6-7 and Grob in the small blind making the call. Badblood had a fresh $50 stack while I luckboxed into a little under $70 and Grob was over $200 with $.25/$.50 blinds.

*puts on reporting cap*

Why don't you take those quads and shove em' up your ass!

With the fixed blinds at $.25/$.50, resident table pinata, BadBlood44, made the raise to $1.50 as GRobman and Drizztdj in the blinds both called to see a coordinated 9c-6d-6c flop. GRobman, sporting Trey Anastasio's mugshot, made a quick check as did Drizztdj who was fighting connection problems. BadBlood44 followed through with a $4 bet as both the blinds found the courage to make the call. Turn card came the Kd as again both blinds turtled up to the muscle bound man on the button as BadBlood44 shoved out $7 and was quickly called again.

River card was the Kc completing a potential stack busting flush, as GRobman starting listening to some Phish bootlegs he picked up at Langerago and checked, Drizztdj came to life and shoved out a pot-sized bet and BadBlood44 equally as quick shoved in the rest of his stack as GRobman said "whatever dude" and folded quickly while grooving to "AC/DC Bag". Drizztdj holding 6-6-7-9 for the flopped quads quickly called and the half-moon outside may have really been a full one as BadBlood revealed not only the second nuts, but the second nuts made twice showing the flopped top full and rivered top full K-9-9-T and had to watch yet cooler and another buy-in ship outside of his reach.

First drink on me next time we meet sir.

The Candidate

2011-03-22T06:45:00.000-05:00

The rain would hit the hood of a ski jacket that had seen its better days. A cigarette burn just below right second pouch, a reminder of the last time the garment actually saw a slope of snow other than its front yard. The dark blue color fading sightly, but not so much to match Tar Heels baby blue. The crackle of rain off the hood amplified by hearing aids sounded similar to the omnipresent fresh popcorn maker which was used last on Sunday night as the family has taken to watching "Family Game Night" on Hub network while munching on the freshly popped corn with too much cheddar seasoning.

Its rough coming back after rejection, walking through puddles towards the office. If you followed my Twitter feed yesterday knowing that another candidate was chosen for the promotion I applied for. Knowing from the first syllable and tone of voice with the recorded message that it was not positive, then listening to a very ambiguous HR rehash of the reasoning left me more confused than hurt. While at the time my plans were to punch a few kittens to alleviate any inner-pain, sorting through the interview and whether or not it was worth the feline violence seemed better for the Meow Mix crowd and any karmatic retribution.

Luckily I have an awesome supervisor and friends who offer their experience as mine in this situation is extremely limited. She offered a few explanations that fit the mold of how the interview went without even being there. As you know, I am very excitable, something I try to can at times but it's me and well, not gonna happen. I may have been too knowledgeable, too eager, too much for the job which was a small promotion, but nonetheless, one that would mark another step towards overcoming the darkness that plagued me for years.

Couple that with nearly dusting off my online poker bankroll on the weekend and you've got two days worth of suck. But these are VERY minor, personal problems (well, not the dusting because I'd never done that before in such a I-dont-give-a-shit way). But, this is a personal blog not a news outlet, a political sounding board, or a place that cures hunger, just me and a boring suburban life that takes enough twists and finding a few words along the way to enter on the Internet.

Will I be applying for another position? Yes.

Regrouping first to get the details and next time not coming off as used-car salesman trying pawn off a Pinto as a Maserati Quattroporte while interviewing. The first equation that came to mind was best qualifications = best candidate.

Wrong.

If my personality doesn't jib with those who work in the department, it doesn't matter how productive my cube may be if the rest of the time sits there seething. Just its their petty problem, but one the supervisor doesn't need if it can be easily fixed by finding someone who fits the need both talent and personality wide. Keeping an open mind to that rather than finding an excuse an hour to belittle the deserving person who did get hired will keep petty jealousy next to the stapler in my middle drawer.

The hearing aids will continue to pick up new sounds, and I continue to pick up experience until my name is called. Now, the poker issue, that's a different post, maybe one for a place for such things.

Shamrocks and Blogger Shenanigans

2011-03-17T06:56:00.000-05:00

In 2008 Carter "ckingusc" King was just about to take down the WCOOP Main Event for a lump sum that rivals what I may make for the next 20 - 25 years. The WCOOP that year marked my first foray into actual poker reporting, the live blog we did had two shifts. The first one was fairly easy as you'd work six hours and stop to be relieved by a second crew in the evening. The second shift lasted much longer and required you to find some wit at 9am the next morning for the wrap. I remember working a solid week and a half going to bed often at 8 or 9am and waking up a handful of hours later if slated for the afternoon coverage.

It was exhausting.

And I loved every minute of it (especially when the prize at the end was meeting up with the equally tired boss man for Al's Bash and a for a sample of a Bash go to the master's site). For the first time I felt a part of something that required some skill, some creativity, something other than plunking numbers into spreadsheets and formulas. There was a huge sense of pride regardless of the number of readers because it represented doing something I loved and getting paid to do it!

Fast forward thru my daughter exiting her crib and now demanding to be rocked to sleep by Big Time Rush (sigh) and a decision that leaves me in a similar state of hallucinations and confusion about what day it is it. No, its not REX MANNING DAY, but rather March Madness which I've taken a preemptive strike and torn up my brackets while burning a few twentys that will make their way Otis' son's pocket before Wofford and Richmond break my heart (and wallet).

Yes, yes we do

As of tonight after one more exam, I will have completed my first full year at college sans bong hits and 1800 Tequila Shot races that end with a body shot off a tri-delt (and with me finding a balcony to puke off of with two people making sure I don't flip over the edge because I'm smooth like that). Granted it IS St. Patrick's Day and being a quarter of Irish blood I do owe a little bit to celebrate my Eire heritage with drink this evening. But, instead of stumbling from The Local to Kierian's downtown among the ladies stretching the words "STARE AT MY TITS, I'M IRISH!!" across their chest that's covered with beads, LED-light shaped shamrocks, and plastic hats from Jameson.

No, instead I'll opt to losing my wits at home since this Anatomy and Physiology exam will most likely wipe whatever will power that is keeping this body upright at the moment because I can't feel a goddamn thing and while drunk women with bouncing chest distractions and friends is always a good time, a quiet whiskey on the back porch (with sweatshirt on, it's not that warm out) seems more approps today.

As of right now, I feel like I'm sitting behind my laptop in the basement as I did three years ago, hitting "publish" one last time and feeling good about what was being sent. Much like those long hours behind the keyboard writing about future poker millionaires, it's about pride and a future as I still love writing about poker three years later and I will have that college degree on my desk in two years.

Swirling in the void

2011-03-15T06:39:00.000-05:00

To watch a person with an internal struggle is both horror and entertaining. To be that person is both horror and entertaining.

For the past few months my self-doubts and insecurities have bubbled up more than my mouth or the words I type on various websites would like to admit. To the point of letting depression grasp what I have worked so hard to attain. A loving relationship with my wife, two kids who want daddy to play with them at any given moment, gaining professional status and praise for jobs well done. All good things.

Depression isn't really ever defeated in the sense of never coming back, more like pushed down a drain by medication, friends, family, and using the garbage disposal for several minutes to churn it into fine particals to be sent into the sewers. But, it always comes back. How much a person lets those dark, rabbit hole thoughts invade depends if others can see how much you're hurting.

We've all watched the Charlie Sheen live-action "mental illness" episode for the past month or so, and its a testament to those who let themselves go just how creative and entertaining such a thing can be. His drug of choice is an eight-ball off a Brazilian hooker's ass, mine sits above the charcoal black stove with the words "spiced rum" across the label. Granted for the most part, I am an upstanding citizen, I don't show up for work blitzed, never getting hammered around my children, choosing to sink into my rabbit hole of a couch a few times a week hoping the strength will be there to climb out the next day.

Robert Jordan (real name James Rigney Jr.), author of several very long books of Fantasy genre on the "Wheel of Time". It's main character, Rand, struggles throughout the series with battles of the mind in a classic good vs. evil sense. He enters "the void" to calm himself, and make the magic within to come alive. Jordan can describe that "void" much better than I could ever hope to, it where creativity has no bounds, no social or moral eraser, just a continuous flow of words and ideas that leave others to marvel at its output. If I ever took myself seriously as a writer, a bottle of Captain would sit right next to my black Toshiba with the power cord that looks like its been chewed by a hampster and pen whatever exits that void and it would be ten times better than the sober words you're reading right now.

I skipped out on a social gathering last weekend due to this. While I didn't pen a thing, it was to be alone, with no noises to embrace the quiet. Sure I had hair metal blaring in my ears and the ping of online poker on the screen, but they were hardly heard, barely a whisper to where I was really at. Standing alone with no worries of final papers, getting a promotion, or pleasing my family. Just is. Breathing. Stepping outside of all the petty, little nuisances of listening to ignorant people at work or in the line at Dunn Bros. Coffee. No need for sex, or money, just is.

Would I go on another wheelchair ride if I had the means? I do, but I wouldn't. Something catches me now that didn't before. People like Sheen don't have that proverbial safety net and society bashes him for abborent behavior just because its public. If he blew those rocks where papparazzi lens couldn't reach he'd be an regular out-of-work actor bumming for a waiter job at TGI Friday's instead of the fountain of entertainment that he currently expells.

People who don't give a fuck fasinate those who choose to live by society's rules. I for one just spoke to a law enforcement officer yesterday for just the second time in the my life (the first time was when a small cub wandered through our neighborhood and sounded like a drunken burgular looking for my Millano cookies.

School is still important (finals week!), I still adore all of my friends, I still love my family and give my life to them, but for now my body is tired to the point of passing out at any given moment, tired of fighting physically and mentally. Maybe a good bender would allow for the rest needed to refuel, but as I've found since this page was started seven years ago, releasing words from my rum-soaked head onto these non-edited pages is better than any bottle of lithium or an army of self-help doctors could do.

Stacking Papers

2011-03-10T06:27:00.000-06:00

Today the pen came down and wanted to draft something about disabilities and lowered standards while over-cheering for someone like Corky from Life Goes On.

Or myself.

But, then the positive half of me said "shut the fuck up and have a drink you little bitch".

So I did.

Turns out there's good advice found underneath the self-wallowing, as in accept what people say, not what you perceive to be a participation medal.

Yesterday, I shoved all self-doubt out the window for a period of 1.5 hours in order to chat about a job with three different individuals of separate corporate importance. The results of the chats are not important, as we're not talking about a life-type changing position such as Craakker hammered down recently. More of a Q*Bert disc to float me away from the purple snake of immobility and stasis while continuing this revival of all things progressive in my life. (*side note, damn you Doc, I played that game for almost two hours last night really wished I knew what Q*Bert says behind the !@$$#!@ when the snake gets him). Q*BERT4ROLLZ?!?!?!

An interview something my monkey suit and tie have not seen for seven years, perhaps overdue, and certain during a time this body could use less stress not more. But, neccessary. New blood was needed, is needed, and just the attempt yesterday gave a much needed transfusion in my "career". The word "career" sounds pretentious when referring to the types of jobs held by myself up to this point, perhaps after I stand in front of my family in 2013 with a cap and gown there will be a reason to take down the quotation marks.

For now, I hoist The Mystical Cup of Collating Papers to Mr. Wil Wheaton, for showing that we're all human no matter what degree of "celebrity" one has attained and some of us can make other's day just by sitting at a desk with a devious smile and neatly alligned 8" by 11" pieces of paper in hand.

Mr. Wheaton, stay awesome.

To the rest of my readers, I thank you for your continued support and don't make it too long until we drink together again.

Oh, to celebrate my lets-wait-for-a-month-before-hearing-if-I-got-the-job-and-cant-sleep-until-I-know Grand Casino Hinckley was kind enough ~~because I spent too much money there last time~~ to offer free lodging and side cash for my family to head up there tonight since the school district is intent on giving days off for Middle Name Pride Day and Johnny Appleseed Day? *facepalm*

(Yes, I know it's the beginning of Lent, but my kids do not attend a Catholic/Christian school)

Natural Caffeine

2011-03-08T06:48:00.000-06:00

"... the solid ace became a solid pair of aces on the flop [5c][Kc][Ac] and a winning pair of aces by the river [5s][2h] as FlipFlopUK collected the remaining 17.5 million chips from the pot winning the entire $187,207.92 first prize after defeating the 6,153 player field!"

And scene.

Damnit Raiders of the Lost Ark had to start up now? It's like the pool scene with Phoebe Cates or watching Andy Dufresne break out of Shawshank. The Hovitos poisoned tipped darts, the gate of metal piercing Indy's "friend" as he tried to run off with the gold statue, being chased by a concrete snowball, and diving thru a spider web out of the tomb just in time to hand over the artifact to Belloq.

Will power finally turned up while finding the power button to turn off Indy's race thru the forest as the natives chased him. The article finally published as the Windows updates kept me up for another five minutes but that was ok because despite my utter hatred of snow there was a fresh three inches falling outside.

All of the lights in the house were off and not needed to view my little corner of the neighborhood which was rightfully sleeping at near midnight on Sunday going into Monday. The brightness of the powder illuminated the townhouses across the street, covered the black ice which showed for the past couple of weeks as Mother Nature can't decide if its time to thaw or hit our state with another icy blast. It was sort of a ground level aurora borealis with a many layered orangish hue swirling around my kid's snow fort down the street that I would be traveling in five hours for work.

Pretty.

A quick few minutes of reflections on a busy month, interrupted by a sleepwalking seven year old grasping the black and orange oversized gorilla he won at Dave and Busters during our guy's day. Picking up the not-so-little one and carried him and the primate back to the safety of his faded Transformers sheets. Noticing he's getting bigger and requires two arms to grasp him down the stairs, yet still involuntarily squeezes tight as a side hug before tucking him back in.

You want to know what fuels my schedule? Those squeezes. The feeling of being needed without reward. The feeling of not being viewed as disabled. I'm just dad to my son and daughter, someone who provides and takes away. Someone to cuddle with (for now). Hopefully when the cuddling stops we can still be friends when school drama enters the picture.

When its late and the glare of the computer screen informs me of two more pages of discussing the pros and cons of a Flat Tax system are due, those squeezes, those looks of adoration pack more caffeine than a six-pack of Red Bull. They won't always be there, but the memories will.

Billy Madison to Drizz: YOU BLEW IT!

2011-03-03T06:58:00.000-06:00

My daughter's new favorite stuffed animal is a small shaggy purple dog named Barky. Thanks to the good, quality people at Dave and Buster's the wife has performed minor surgery on Barky several times in the past month but some tears could be attributed to my daughter's not so sugar and spice and everything nice way of getting through the day with those toys.

"Barky could walk around like Funky!" she exclaims.

The thought of an overweight shaggy purple dog with a belly swishing around like a half drained keg does seem amusing but impossible outside of Mary Poppins dropping in to make the medicine go down and utensils dance.

While her dreams are personal and not probable, mine focused too much on the real yesterday, making my attempt at rising up a rung on the corporate ladder end like this (couldn't find Billy Madison's clip which would have fit the bill better).

Yeah, I blew it.

My normally silver lispy tongue decided to not function yesterday as I stammered thru the HR interview with the wit of a contestant on Hillbilly Jeopardy. Answers swirling in my head, taking the time to prep for the questions that I knew were coming, and instead approached some epic corporate fail with all the smoothness of a Jersey meathead trying to cold-call a one night stand at a country club. Maybe the fiscially elite go for that sort of approach, but regardless I sucked, I sucked bad, and if by some small mircle I get the position it will solely on the fact that I'm tall because that's about the only message to cross the room yesterday standing a foot and a half over the lithe HR rep.

Concession on this position, not on the goal however. That's a good thing.

What's on tap this weekend? $5 million and a Lambo at PokerStars? Much like Astin's point on twitter yesterday, I may take half my bankroll on Stars and give a shot at a guaranteed $1 million payoff and finish agonizingly in 13,271st place. It's not every day a Lamborghini could be parked in the lower-middle income area of surburban Minneapolis. A plus would be zooming out to Palo Alto for an epic race with Doc's Ferrari. I'd need a Space Racer helmet and my lucky PokerStars monkey for props.

See it's ok to dream, even if its winning a poker tournament, having sex with (insert obscenely hot actress/porn star here), or having a stuffed animal down some Puppy Chow and piss all over your new iPad2. It's the real ones that you bank some emotion on that hurt. Throwing virtual money at cards carries nearly zero emotions at it. Regardless of how high (like last weekend's drubbing of the Rush PLO fishes) or the lows like the previous three weeks of dusting cash like Dan Shak chasing gold futures, poker carries emotion only when friends are involved (again I apologize for my excitement at the WPBT but it will happen again so ply me with another drink and I'll lose some silly prop bet to you).

Son's mangled digit

The work dream will continue on another day, for now its back to the grind which isn't so bad if you look at how it could be sitting on a couch wondering where that next paycheck is going to come from, or how am I going to pay for my son's double fractured pinky. Instead I sail on even waters, turning the sail in every direction until some wind catches it just right to start in a new direction.

Ginsu > Drizz

2011-03-01T07:09:00.000-06:00

Ginsu knives.

The one standing made me its bitch, ow
They cut through cans and STILL slice a tomato with the sharpness of Louis CK discussing father's day. Human flesh does not mesh with Ginsu knives however as the human flesh loses the battle. Badly. And that person being a parent of two children ages four and seven with four boxes of band-aid cannot find out that does not have Dr. Doofenshmirtz or a Disney princess on the front. So to save face and the embarrassment of reaching for a sharp blade and forgetting my recent anatomy lesson that while skin does amazing things (especially on Marissa Miller and she got to hang out with Captain Morgan! So jealous) does not withstand a blade that if you call RIGHT NOW, you can a five-piece blade set AND no shipping and handling for just $19.99! What they don't add are the band-aid costs as they are needed when a half-sleeping dolt reaches into the soap covered sink and splices his digit.

Despite Agent P battling the evil doctor on the same finger that holds a $10 wedding ring found in the back alley of Nuevo Progresso, Mexico, I bleed for my tens of readers who drop by. You're welcome :)

Yesterday I did something that was put in the back closet with my Playstation 2 and sex toys nearly seven years ago. Actually, that's my real closet this one was proverbial and at work and I doubt corporate rules allow anal beads in the workplace.

I went on two interviews.

Informational only but this employee, this father, this mix of degeneracy and hard work finally decided another piece was missing and trying to obtain a job that matches my new found drive to make something more of myself but it wasn't to seek a bigger paycheck. In the two interviews one paid more, one had a good vibe. Vibes are good, money can be replaced by people who don't understand four card poker (quick poker tip to those trying to beat the Rush PLO games... to beat the monkeys, you need to play like one to some extent, I suggest alcohol and a lot of buy-ins because my graph, while it ticks upward looks like something you'd go dashing for a defibrillator to correct). The hiring manager looked beyond my obvious rust in this setting and spelled out a job description that fit my plans, and while the pay is about the same, the opportunities to advance and get to where I'd like to go (Australia, Key West, Keeley Hazells's cleavage) are there. The second position paid more, fit my skills, but had the personality of bed lint.

The thought of coming in and not talking to my co-workers on a strict 9-5 Monday-Friday schedule much like a cubical prison did not appeal. I'd go back to being a collector if more cash and high-pressured job contained in three walls sounded sexy. Cash is sexy, pressure causes acne and 50 page rants about parking spaces being too small at the Mall of America. Plus like my job on the weekend, and similar to doing recaps I will feel like I'm contributing to something. A small part, just like at the PokerStarsBlog, but a part that fills a need for readers nonetheless.

I'll never be the phoenix, the BMOC, the lead actor, but rather I enjoy plugging in my two cents worth of sweat and watching something or someone become successful as a result. And to further my recent revival without hymns or born-again retreats its time to make it happen at work as well.

Oh, a quick personal note.

Actually this has been all personal but the sentence came out and so it be.

MR. APA managed to find enough right with my final paper after I researched the perfect APA-formatting template to fit my unneccessarily neatly crafted eight page research on job retention and I aced it. A third straight Dean's List and 20 free tokens at Chuck E. Cheese IS MINE!

Can, Bottled, or Tapped

2011-02-24T06:36:00.000-06:00

Finally.

The open road.

It was an early start to a great adverture with loosely knit plans. The cooler was stocked with some fine Minnesota microbrews from Town Hall, Great Waters, Fitger's, and of course Surly. A hop-filled travel log that was heading east on 94 towards Wisconsin to make rounds of places like New Glarus and Tyranena and maybe discover a few more on the way.

Photo Cred: Rachellb.com

The snow finally made its way off the highways and the only thing slowing us down were the notoriously fickle Wisconsin State Troopers who lined every part of the highway from Hudson to Milwaukee. My wallet was a little fat from some ~~skillful~~ lucky runs in poker so degenerate stops at a few tribal casinos was in order, especially since their poker rooms were allowed to spread no limit unlike the Minnesota rooms were.

Tree, brews, friends, and most of all, no schedule. No rigidly formatted APA-approved stamped papers to write, while I would miss their genuine hugs and smiles, no kids to shuffle off to their activity of the night, and no sudden must-make social gatherings to attend. Just road, fermented hops, poker, and stories that are only told when a gathering of long-time friends meet, much like the yearly sojourn to Vegas for like minded poker writers.

The smell of a great plate of wings with a strong whiff of cayenne peppers and liquid smoke came under my nose as I was just around to dip it in a ranch with sprinkled Lowry's and pepper mixture when...

...it was time to turn off and go north on 169 and head to work in the dark.

Maybe this summer.

Definitely this summer.

But a choice will need to be made as I cannot do both. A possible trip around cheesehead land in search of great frothy drinks ending with a possible baseball game in Milwaukee or Chicago. Or taking another low-roller shot at the WSOP with possible backing and see all my writing friends toiling away along press row and setting up some late night hooker bar/pai gow/strip club goodness.

What the future brings it brings as being under a metric ton of snow this winter has left me daydreaming of letting go of my tightly-knit schedule for a week and remembering that while working hard gets you to where you want to go, it doesn't give the destination.

A different kind of recap

2011-02-22T06:55:00.000-06:00

The past five days have been a chance to catch up on what has been hovering out me while I do my best Rodney Dangerfield impersonation minus the team of experts to write papers for me and the ability to pull off the triple lindy.

With the ladies doing their thing:

Color me amazed that she sat still for 20 minutes

I took the boy out for a guy's day (alas with no pictures, but a short video coming soon). First, off a trip to Perkins for a hearty breakfast to soak up any remains of the previous evening's run to another victory in my favorite $5 PLO MTT for $200. Quick aside on that: It is now a multi-entry tournament at Full Tilt and while I don't buy all four entries, giving someone with an iota of clue for Omaha and making the final table one in three times (with a field around 250-300) isn't that tough. As seen with the FTOPS Main Event 7 out of 9 players were in for the max (6 entries), only two of them managed to get thru the massive 14K+ field to reach a shot at the $1 million prize (chopped by Blair Hinckle).

Did I have 6 * $640 to maximize my shot at a win? Hell no, at least I wouldn't put out a ~~good~~ HUGE chunk of my bankroll to do so. But, I DO have the funds to buy in multiple times at the levels I'm comfortable with ($5-$10 MTTs). People who satellite in are left with the same issues as if they won a ticket to a rebuy tourney. But, the responsibility goes to the person who is in the satellite, not Full Tilt, not those who can afford to blow nearly $4K, know the rules before playing the game. There's good (massive prize pools) and bad (elite players can play looser knowing they get more than one barrel), again know the rules and plan your game accordingly, for the record I had two entries of the 277 that signed up on Thursday night, one finished in 53rd after aces were cracked, the other won the whole thing.

Now after biscuits, gravy, chicken fried steak, gravy, homestyled potatoes, and you know it MORE GRAVY it was time to hit the road with the first stop at SkyZone. After getting to the massive trampoline park we were greeted by a massive line of weird high school/toddlers mix and a clipboard stating the next jump time available was another hour and a half away.

No worries.

Quick dash home since my cell phone is the equivalent of something you'd see during a 80's John Hughes marathon on TMC and fired up the laptop to make reservations for later in the afternoon to give us time for a movie before playing dodgeball on trampolines with kids. To my surprise the boy picked out Gnomeo and Juliet over MegaMind, after which I demanded he do two shots of Jack with me for manliness. But the movie didn't start for an hour so we killed time at the local Dave and Busters where I refrained from a little hair of the dog and focused on winning enough prize tickets for the stuffed orange gorilla he wanted.

King Kong acquired and a Chipotle stop for more alcohol soaking goodness, this time wrapped a tortilla and smoothered with sour cream and pulled pork.

The movie did not disappoint as I managed to stay awake and enjoy it unlike last time while at the IMAX theater up in Duluth when I somehow fell asleep to the Dinosaurs documentary despite the volume going to 11.

Finally, hopped up on excitement we got to strap-on the blue boots at SkyZone to jump around like an idiot for an hour. I lasted 30 minutes as my knees and dignity quickly fell in short succession. My son however bounced his way around, up and down, flipping into a foam pit, and taking a Globo Gym-esque sized shot to the mid-section (he would have a tear and beg to get into another game five minutes later). For $12 and an hour it was an awesome value. Then it was homeward bound for a pizza picnic (THAT'S INDOORS BECAUSE MOTHER NATURE INSISTS ON FISTING MINNESOTA LIKE A FIVE DOLLAR HOOKER IN THE BACK ALLEY OF HENNEPIN AVENUE).

Sorry.

I really hate snow.

Back to family time, and no I do not have Tourette's but would take every ounce of patience not to forearm shiver someone who is excited by the nearly two feet of snow we've received in the last two days.

SKIING YEA! FRESH POWDER!!!1111

*thump*

Find a three foot icicle and promptly fuck yourself. After five months of winter "sick of it" doesn't cut it, swearing and drinking are my equalizers.

Ok. Back to the family moment.

Pizza, yes. Me and missus who returned home from their day and new nails enjoyed bacon, pineapple, black olives and pepperoni while the kids opted for just the pepperoni as we watched Despicable Me which despite a bad review from my sister-in-law was very watchable and I dare say funny. Loved the The Godfather/head of horse scene that Gru gets after the girls are sent back to the orphanage.

Both promptly took to their beds while I barely remember getting into mine. For one day, daddy didn't have to "get a paper done" or "work", no instead daddy got some time to refuel the parenting engine and let his kids know the real reason why he's behind that laptop all the time.

Wheaton's School of Hard Work

2011-02-16T07:11:00.000-06:00

O Hai!

Not "back", just never gone and usually have my head stuffed in a textbook, directions on how to nuke dinner, or playing the ridiculously addicting Call of Duty: Black Ops late at night. Despite being a self-named gamer, I have never seriously played a first person shooter game since Castle Wolfenstein and even then it was nothing more than a fun diversion to my usual game playing on the Diablo series.

Well, I learned a lot in the past week. Drinking a third of a handle of Captain Morgan in three hours almost proved disastrous as pictures have popped up from last weekend's ice fishing tournament that I have no memory of. All I remember is laying down eating the best turkey and pepperjack cheese sandwich known to mankind while staring at the two moons of Mars, then waking up the next morning with thigh bruises, a hard hat, and a sore neck. If I didn't know better I thought someone shipped me down to Key West for the night with a construction crew.

On the academic front, thanks to the readers here I have made peace with MR. APA with fifteen different letters after his name. A little aside however as I was trying to understand his grading policy, I finally got him to admit what he was really looking for. After asking about a course-long research paper and what the requirements were on length, girth, and thrusting motion he responded "I am not interested in the content, only want to see if it is in APA-approved formatting".

*thump*

Jaw meet floor.

Yeah, my efforts to polish a paper to make these wingtips shine, I was being told to get my shinebox and stop fretting over a few sentences and just put them in the box correctly. As I've repeated several times while going thru this academic journey to capture this allusive degree, my motivation is not the piece of paper (although its a nice side benefit much like getting paid to write about poker). Its the learning. I enjoy it. For the years between being an eager corporate beaver looking to impress and bypassing those dark years of my head injury, leading to where today I refuse to sit around watching life go by any longer. Wil Wheaton who is known to type readable words and make a funny via podcast once every era, recently felt the need to clarify calling out some slackers on twitter

"If high school was "boring" and college was "too hard", don't complain about your "dead end minimum wage" job, twentysomething."

And followed it up with this gem:

"On the other hand, if you're one of those kids who told me to go fuck myself, get off my lawn and go back to school. Work hard, because nothing worth doing is ever easy, and the more knowledge you have, the more options you have, so you won't have to spend your life in a dead end job that you hate. Trust me, you'll be glad you did. Maybe not now, maybe not in a year, but some time in the Mysterious Future when you're feeling cranky at the Damn Kids Today you'll be able to shake your cane at them with authority."

Bravo Mr. Wheaton, here's your shiny gold star and Magic: The Gathering 5,000 card set for $1,000,000 (but could you kick in the $14.99 for shipping and maybe the million as I'm $999,950.27 short) as you described my worthless ass a few years ago. Unmotivated, unrewarded, looking for a hand-out, and not seeing what I had which was an incredible support system of friends and family and doing nothing by sitting on my ass singing "Nothing Else Matters" on repeat while plunking away at keys to whine about it.

Call it finding yourself, call it a revelation, call it admitting that your parents were right. Just don't call it in anymore and try to make something of yourself if you don't like that person in the mirror. And especially don't turn around to other to bitch about it, your self-motivation problems are not theirs. I have found thru this blog and others I read on a daily basis that people are glad to help if you have a plan, a goal, an end-game. No one is going to click that PayPal donation box if you don't write, why expect them to give a handout if your daily routine consist of sitting outside of a 7-11 ala Jay and Silent Bob wondering how you got there.

Bad luck happens, I know I've taken my share of bad variance, but I refuse to give up until my body can take no more. Hopefully those twentysomethings Wil mentioned take a look at themselves, and notice there's a reason why he's got the cash (if you don't, I suggest going thru his blog's archives).

It's called hard work (if you read his blog, my mind is BLOWN at how busy he is and that's coming from someone who starts his regular day at 4:30am and gets home from the library/kids activity at around 8:30pm).

Using a frozen lake as a bar

2011-02-10T06:58:00.000-06:00

I did not have my ear removed ala J. Paul Getty III.

I am not suffering from any lasting effects of a disease. Unless you count immaturity as a bad pathogen, or this headache caused by a mix of lack of resting and mother nature forgetting to take her Midol.

Healthy and still kicking. Busy and loving it. Annoying giving the middle finger to an otherwise stressful time of year. Talks of Brooklyn Center, a suburb near the border of Minneapolis, is perhaps diving into their biggest potential for tourism by molding city orgs to built a Surly Brew Pub and allow them to flourish versus continue being contained by restricted barrel laws. At the moment the city's claim to any fame is a rotting mall called Brookdale, which as a kid I spent many a weekends there but now it is riddled with empty space getting emptier, the surrounding businesses like the bar on the southern side of the complex has changed hands more than a collection plate at church. Surly is offering tourism, potential jobs (the awesomeness of being nearly require to drink on the job?), and most of all tax revenue. Don't mess this one up BC, although my and my friend's wife joked they probably wouldn't see much of us if it is built.

Truth.

Normally I take tonight to make an ass of myself online while giving away poker funds. Tonight however due to tattooing APA-formatting tramp stamp style to my body and hoping to soak in the bibilography goodness via diffusion, it will be a night of killing online pixels via Call of Duty. While my gaming chops are at an all-time low, the fun is needed to break up MR Jackhole's inevitible half-comments to my short four page research paper which sits neatly on a Microsoft Word document waiting to be to primped for the Sadie Hawkins dance. There have been internal promises to read his grading with a bottle and shot glass nearby while reading phenomally bent prop betting stories like the one F-Train linked to last night concerning a huge running bet in which Ashton Griffin ran 70 miles in 24 hours for $300,000.

I think Otis is off the hook for eating crayons now. STEAK AND EGGS BABY!!

Check back this weekend as Drizz goes ice fishing. Kinda. Actually I'm just out there to drink. And not fall in, and spend most of my time in the heated fish houses which has the feel of being in a hot tub outdoors in the mountains but no swimsuits or boobs to ogle at. Imagining such shapes thru three inches of gore-tex is a bit of a stretch.

I will not be working this weekend, but last weekend's Sunday Warm-up had some heavy star power when four Team PokerStars pros were among the final 24 including Daniel Negreanu. But it would physist, metal rocker, and overall hottie newly minted Team PokerStars pro Liv Boeree taking home the $148K first prize after an aerial dogfight with James mig.com Mackey, you can check out my recap at the PokerStarsBlog or the video recap at PokerStars.TV .

One of the bigger ones I've covered, hope I didn't screw it up. Cheers to enjoying whatever and whomever fills your glass.

I am not APA approved

2011-02-08T07:49:00.000-06:00

Two of my friends are going thru two types of stress right now. Mrs. Chako has quantity stress while the good doctor Chako tangles with quality stress. Anyone would gladly take quantity over quality in this case as we're not talking about football or sex.

Being a busy person myself quantity stress is a part of my life now and will be until March of 2013 when I fly down to Florida to don a cap and gown, with probalities of trekking to Key West as a self-release from three years of work-schoo-familyl-work-school-me time-school type schedule and work myself into a rum-induced coma along Duval Street.

Unforunately, one of my professors continues to press quantity stress into quality stress with needling that irks my personality. I am a firm believer in quality work, that if the product's quality outweighs a structured outline then it should be graded as such. Not Mr. APA-jackhole. Oh, the citations are super-neato spiffy now thanks to Lightning and his wife's suggestion (the citation creator on Microsoft Word worked like a charm THANKS!).

The assignment "Describe a personal situation in which YOU had to overcome cultural differences in communication". Not a problem since my company merged some of its duties overseas and I have daily emails/calls/IMs from the crew across the Atlantic. This interview-styled paper would be a snap. Of course when I receive such papers back there's no mention of the quality, only the quantity has it has been for this quarter.

"You cannot use first person verse" was the only comment.

This is poo.

Thankfully Otis gave me a sample of writing from personal experience without using first person verse which I will be attempting to use for future assignments, but outside of Bobby Bracelet's third person mastery I was a bit stumped as to how to go about this. It's a PERSONAL experience, not writing from someone else's experience and breaking down their prose. Also, not one mention of the content. It's almost as if the professor skims the paper (entirely possible) for APA-related errors and moves on.

I don't half-ass assignments, I write them as if someone is paying me to do so but if this is how the education system works (for this guy at least) and this professor is forcing me to play his game, so be it. You will receive what you ask for: robotic, monotone scribble BUT in perfect APA formatting. Sir.

This is killing half the reason I returned to school. Yes, pretty paper with official seals and Dean of Whatsamatta U's signature on it is the end-game, but feeling good about the work produced, writing for a purpose much like I do on the weekends, is what I really wanted. I gave up on floating thru the remainder of my breaths four years ago after hitting rock bottom for myself, my kids, and most of all my wife. Sure days filled with a bland 9 to 5 job, Call of Duty, porn, alcohol, bars, and take out pints orange chicken with cream cheese wontons sounds great, but I wanted more and my friends and family deserve more.

And despite the professor's will to blacken my return to school, I'll play his game for now and prevent the quantity stress from becoming quality stress.

Bringing on the Pimp Hand

2011-02-05T12:27:00.000-06:00

I'm going to be link happy today because well, I need to write for school and a side job for the walking party himself.

First off, Dr. Pauly steps over to Poker From the Rail at Full Tilt to give his thoughts on the summer festival of poker love otherwise know as the World Series of Poker. Check it out here: Dr. Pauly and the 2011 WSOP Schedule.

Next up Grange has been crushing the law books for humble folks like myself who want to know more about what roadblocks are ahead in this uphill battle for legal virtual felt poker on United States soil. Read his latest: The Intersection of Law and Online Poker - Personal Jurisdiction and feel your brain expand a bit in the process. Do not however, follow his advice on NFL team teams to root for tomorrow ( NO PACK NO!!! ) nor how to play 58 offsuit in position (he will never live this down, until of course the Packers win tomorrow and we're forced to bow to Rodgers Nation and do the Raji for a year.)

If you don't read these two blogs already, I suggest stepping up your 9600 baud modem to something more modern. Or zombies may eat you. Hyperbole and a Half and The Bloggess think somewhere between the box, the moon, and that back corner seat of a muni that no one sits in.

Your humble ~~writer~~ blogger will be covering the Sunday Warm-up at PokerStarsBlog tomorrow during the Super Bowl but the peace and quiet will make up for missing out on my buddy's chili.

Have a great weekend folks and remember NO PACK NO!

Mister Mister

2011-02-02T06:56:00.000-06:00

I had my own DYKWTFIA moment the other day and frankly to throw in a movie line "I'm too old for this shit".

It was bound to happen and perhaps a few of you academically inclined people out there who stand in front of students giving your knowledge on a subject of choice, could tell me the right way of going about this:

The college I attend online suggest a website called Noodlebib to record all citations and give the wonderful people who teach us about the Nodes of Ranvier, Myelin sheath, and Schwann cells credit for their knowledge much like a picture on a blog. For my first year I ran into zero problems using the site and getting credit for doing so.

Enter the crabby professor.

Yes, he had a bio page at least a page long that was filled with books released, academic titles unknown to myself and 99.9% of the world, awards, created cold fusion, and probably got a blowjob from Raquel Welsh in London during his wild and crazy days at Oxford while on a Fulbright scholarship. Bravo. *golf clap*

Yes, you win the prize sir

.

For the first five weeks of this class I get papers returned saying "not in APA format" as the only deduction in my grade. In other words, the paper was fine but because I didn't use 13.75 Wing-Dings font and 5.29" indentations while using a school recommended website, I lost points.

I do not like this. Again, 12 classes taken, zero problems.

So I type a quick email asking if he could point out the errors of the program so I appease his anal retentive ass. I may have used other words after all this is a Professional Communications class. I get the reply:

"I did not tell you to use Noodlebib, you are responsible for knowing how to use citations in APA format" signed MR. Johnson (bolded on the email as in DYKWTFIA!?!?).

Frankly, I don't care about the nit-picking (and I MAY have replied with his own assignment directions to use Noodlebib putting it in quotes, I heart pointing out things like that) and its bad because even in the corrected copy even he did not cite correctly, that's besides the point. The point is the MR part as I started the email using his first name. This is not high school, I pay to go to college, I am 36 years old and the last time I referred to a male as mister it was accepting my baseball letter from Osseo High School from Mr. Anderson (I think that was the coach's name) about 18 years ago as a 130 pound waif of a senior with a live arm, bad skin, and no self-respect. For you professor and teacher types out there, and well anyone who enjoys "status", do you require or want to be called Ms. Mrs. Mr.?

Now I have a big exception for Doctor, you earned that and fully deserve that in front of your name even after you're unable to solve the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune with all the letters turned over. Mister is a title you get for having a dick or in this case being one, I suppose some doctors are dicks but they were not born with knowledge of the body and earned the title through a mountain of student loans, long study nights, and ramen noodles.

The question I have for the 20 or so people who probably know me personally, how does one respond so I don't have a big bullseye on my head for the remainder of the class?

Do you know how popular I am?!!?!?

The gift that keeps giving

2011-01-31T06:34:00.000-06:00

Image credit

When I finally looked up there was a 30 foot floodlight post with chipped brown paint standing tall hovering over me. The sounds of the skating rink were a little different than I remembered growing up even if the little warming house still remained the same. Sure the vending machine changed a bit from a quarter to $.75 with one of those new fangled dollar acceptors connected to it. But the wood benches, puke spackled rubber floor and multi-colored brick interior with a lingering smell only hockey players could enjoy (or tolerate) still made up the hexagon shaped building.

I laid back for several minutes listening. To the wind which brought a sharpness to an otherwise tame Minnesota early evening. To the skaters which I could hear every c-cut and snowplow stop in the ice and could tell if they should be running down to Dave's Sport Shop on the other side of I-94 for the best skate sharping in town. My kids were directly ahead of me but half of a football field length ahead of me on the "practice rink" on which if a hockey stick appeared the husky lady would don her Maple Grove Park and Rec jacket and give a few shouts until the heathens put away their warrior spears made by Reebok instead of Christian Brothers now. The slap of the puck sounded differently as well, the wobbly mis-fires much different from the shots that rattled the back of the make-shift red pipe and fence goals.

My hearing aids have brought new sounds and experiences into my life since dropping a third of a Honda Civic on the Paparella Ear, Head, and Neck Institute in exchange for those noises heard above. Some people stuff a pipe and smoke its contents to feel, hear, and smell different things, I have molded plastic in my ears so I can do the same. The crunch of the snow while extracting my body from the snow bank to join my kids on the pleasure rink and pick one up to hear "go faster daddy!" as I go a little slow than I did as a lanky 130 pound center who spend plenty of time avoiding goons who were, well my size now but probably didn't have the 10 years of bar fly experience in high school.

We would visit the double-sided hockey rink twice last weekend and both times the new music of the place gave me the pause to sit back and let the sounds come in. That and I found out quickly my 36 year old body can't take more than three rushes up and down the opposing red lines without being completely wiped any longer. Even nearly two years after shedding a tear inside my car after receiving this wonderful gift, the present still gives and will continue to do so.

Change starts with getting out of bed

2011-01-26T07:03:00.000-06:00

Thundercats, thundercats, thundercats, HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Let's see we brought back Transformers and "found" Megan Fox, who will profit and become the lust of males once Cheetara makes it to the big screen?

The WBCOOP kicked off with a PLO on Monday afternoon which like most hard working cubical-bound workers I was not able to attend. Last night, I was bound to my headless chicken schedule that had me going from a 10 hour day at the office and exiting the new Maple Grove library at closing time with a fictional tax return done for Bob and Amy Booth who will be receiving $1,337 Sklansky Bucks in the mail from the IRS or Mason Malmuth thanks to me finding an extra deduction for washing Amy's nursing uniform. Tax deductions? I jump on it. Still hoping to play the PLO8 tourney tonight (nope, skating classes for the kids), and definitely the Thursday night round when my textbooks are shoved aside to let my inner degen before my body gets crippled into something resembling responsibility *shudder*

I see Michelle Bachman once again spouts the evils of ObamaCare (see third or fourth video) last night and continues her waffling ways of demeaning BIG government while continuing to tell gamblers they should not be allowed to spend their money the way they want to while fighting the repel of the UIGEA. America is not Burger King Ms. Bachman, you can't have it your way and expect the country to run. As I learned yesterday as I spoke with a co-worker about religion (I know, shouldn't do that) that according to her Muslims will be continuing their blood-thirsty war until all other's are wiped from the earth. And using my face reading skills, she was dead serious. The uninformed people of the US, and there are many, are the greatest threat to this country. Even I regret to know nor understand the inner-workings of our government and politics in general but I do understand that neither "party" is working for that middle ground and that goes for the State of the Union speaker last night as well.

To expect everyone to wake up educated on what is going on is a practice in futilely. Much like trying to teach Waffles tilt-control or bankroll management, the majority of this country is lower-middle income God-fearing people who believe what they see on the TV, and do not research the vast amount to information available on the internet to see if a story is true. If their pastor, rabbi, other person-of-the-cloth says its true and dangummit it MUST BE! The hypocrisy of things like holding a state lottery and not allowing gambling, or politicians like Michelle Bachman who slam big government (rightfully so) but offer no solutions (maybe she does but in all the videos I have seen of her its nothing but finger-pointing versus a platform).

Nothing will change here until someone steps up to solve the problem. My wheels have been spinning career wise much like Ferris Bueller's Ferrari when him and Cam tried reversing the mileage so I did something about it. The bachelor's degree doesn't guarantee me a job, far from it, but at least there is no glass ceiling from the position I want "Supreme Overlord Galxicia King of the Spreadsheet" if you must know or "Staff Accountant". Instead of sitting in my current position waiting for a hand out, waiting for divine intervention, I got active. Most people in this country think a higher title, more money, is being "active" or "winning". Absolutely wrong. It's feeling good about where you are, and where you are going. Two years ago I probably would break down from my schedule, weeping how bad I have it. Instead, I look at how lucky I am to have a house that stands and keeps people warm, I have two kids who are disease-free, I have a wife who is trying to fit into a bikini again because she wants to feel better about herself (she still has a great ass), and me, finally breaking free of the martyr mindset and enjoying my long nights stiffing thru Latin names for the muscles of the body and seeing just how lucky I am to be learning, advancing, and best of all working towards being a better person.

Ok, sappy shit aside, people are not going to change much like my co-workers who are set in their ways, but that doesn't mean you have to blindly follow their road into perpetual apathy. As a long-lost blogger who recently came back to pen some feelings about his journey and I feel exactly the same:

"So here I am, 7 years after I wrote the above lines, ready to start again. I have changed. My voice has changed, my style has changed. I still think about poker a lot, although I am not as immersed in it as I once was. I will be writing about life here. Hopefully you’ll join me for the ride." - HDouble

Earning my yearly poker blog cred

2011-01-20T06:45:00.000-06:00

With an added $325 from Full Tilt and PokerStars all thanks to the WPBT Luckbox last longer and added money by Poker From the Rail. I hear some extremely talented writers drop by that site and write about poker, I think you should check out this post: Aftermath of Winning for such an example of awesomeness.

Or lameness.

Because Al is downing hurricanes and stripper's g-strings while I'm hoping my car doesn't break down in the ass cold sub-human temps we are set to receive with zero lube for the next few days. Actually the lube would turn into an icicle with painful results, so keep the Astroglide indoors for safe use with your 16 gear rabbit vibrator.

Many semi-busy bloggers *points at self* have the fancy graphic of PokerStars' World Blogger Championship of Online Poker blinking on their dusty online journals ready for the battle to see who's got game behind the swirl of horrible puns and barely readable metaphors. Maybe a few of you can write, and some knock it out of the park with the funny (see: Wolves by Hyperbole and a half and always tip your babysitter even they managed to not steal anything).

Pot Limit Omaha January 24 14:00 ET Tournament ID 339187689

No Limit Hold’em January 25 19:00 ET Tournament ID 339187690

PL Omaha H/L January 26 22:00 ET Tournament ID 339187691

No Limit Hold’em January 27 14:00 ET Tournament ID 339187692

8-Game Mix January 28 17:00 ET Tournament ID 339187695

No Limit Hold’em January 29 15:00 ET Tournament ID 339187696

There's your line up kids, fear not as I have zero chance of playing the first tourney because I am the lame and responsible type who will be pecking away at spreadsheets instead of winning a free trip to SCOOP.

It will be tempting to stay up for the Wednesday tourney of course because who needs sleep when a split game tourney is guaranteed to go at least 6 hours which is exactly when my alarm would ring my ass up for work.

Lucky for a reason

2011-01-18T07:01:00.000-06:00

There are reminders that surround me daily of who I am, and what I wish to become. Sure, the tedious studying of the human anatomy is better left to those like Dr. Chako who I'm certain could rattle off the names of the 8 cranial bones and 14 facial bones with no issue and his patients are better off with such expertise. Sitting across the desk from myself however, I doubt once I gather up my bachelor's degree and hope to continue on to a CPA certification that you would care if I know the three layers of skin and their function beyond recommending a lotion with the cold weather turning your hide into something found at a leather store.

Well-rounded student I GET IT. Trust me, yes I enjoy learning about the human body (ya'll got some gross stuff going on in there) but is it necessary that a 36 year old married guy with two kids to spend time on electives. Its not like I'm looking to change majors, rush a different frat house, or have a change in heart about what I want to do in life. Accounting is where I want to be, spreadsheets and databases get the blood flowing in the right places. I need to move positions and quickly as currently the walls are closing in on me, feeling like wasted talent that could be doing more but instead forced to listen my career dying like my co-worker's persistent cough.

Phil Mackey, a local sports radio show host, co-creator of the Minnesota State Poker Tour (MSPT) and Minnesota Poker Magazine (where I was left off the recent top online players in the state list despite owning the 91st best player the state ranking by PocketFives HUZZAH!), and someone I had the pleasure of helping out on their poker blog for a bit (until I decided to return to school, still hope to cover an event the right way online) gets a lot of guff for having strong opinions and "getting lucky" to be in the position he is in at such a young age (read his recent post on the matter). What these rubes don't see is how hard the man worked to get there and gave himself a chance to "get lucky". Working in sports, getting to travel to the different venues on the company dime, seems like a great gig and it probably is but Mackey had a vision on getting there and went for it.

Much like the very popular MSPT which is now going online at Bodog for qualifers (see the Minnesota Poker Magazine link above for details) it started with hard work and not much reward. Look at Otis or Pauly, think they started their poker blogs with grandeur visions of cross-country tripping around the world being paid to watch and record millions of dollars sliding verticial along a poker table? It's possible. But it started with a love for the game, the they went out and made the connections to various people and sites and their given talents did the rest.

I was fortunate enough to meet Otis early on at the WPBT tournaments, chat on Yahoo, and share the experience of becoming a newly branded father and continue with parenting stories for years to come. With some luck, I am able to call the final stretch for the Sunday Warm-up at the PokerStarsBlog and get tapped for SCOOP and the World Championship of Online Poker along side real writers like Shamus, defending PCA Women's Event Champ Change100 (hoping to peek at the screenplay before Universal snaps it up), Otis himself, Dr. Pauly, Writer Jen, F-Train.

Lucky? Like a (insert worn out poker cliche involving river card here).

My co-worker constantly bitches about her life and her health but does nothing but stare at the retirement clock sitting on top of her PC while browsing thru homes online that she'll never buy. Think I would be in this position if I'd stayed on the couch after my head injury? Happy with a revived married life, two kids who can't wait to see their dad, and a side job that I love? People like Phil Mackey, Otis, Pauly, successful writer John Hartness who despite working a full-time job is cranking out some kick ass novels, and even myself on a much lesser scale get there because they took extra shot, got out of bed when the floor was ice cold and fired up the laptop instead of giving up.

There's saying you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, and you may miss nine out of ten times, but live to hit that tenth attempt. And if the tenth shot is fouled off your shin, you walk it off and get back in the box for number eleven. Because no one is going to hand you the career/life you're looking for. Maybe this is why learning the functions of cilia and endoplasmic reticulum are worth a few hours at night.

WBCOOP at PokerStars

2011-01-15T18:47:00.000-06:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.
Registration code: XXXXXX 640181

Home blogger team gotta defend their turf yo! See you at the PLO8 tourney at least.

2011: The Search for Perry

2011-01-11T07:03:00.000-06:00

Fresh year, fresh quarter of school, and fresh snow for all! Including our friends in G-Vegas who unfortunately lack the snow removal tools to deal with the white, slippery stuff. It's a sliding scale of course as people in the northern states and Canada-land are used to the delays, hourly shovelling, and the bitter cold of the winter months whereas those south of the Mason-Dixon line may not have city wide plows, salting trucks, and a general tolerance for such weather.

image credit

Dead birds, mass flooding, and the Packers somehow winning a playoff game have the conspiracy/Armageddon nut cases in a frenzy as 2012 approaches. If the world is ending prior to my 2013 graduation from college (current GPA a double flex worthy 3.98, ladies form the line to the right, I've been told there's plenty for everyone) why not party it up?

This year will be busy if not more than last year when I stretched myself to the limits by returning to school on top my daily routine which tires most people out just reading it. The plan is to stay the course, continue to find pockets of fun underneath the wave of swimming lessons and Income Tax code books that outweighs a pan of lasagna for 10.

Last year took me to G-Vegas for Mastodon Weekend which was the perfect kick off for returning to school. A weekend without my fingers being frozen while waking up, bars that don't force their employees to wear flare and served awesome beers, and most of all like-minded friends who shared themselves and dropped their professional suits in the garbage bin full of empty Yuengling bottles and strapped on the degeneracy wear to tear up downtown Greenville.

There was making sure I had the funds for such hijinks as I helped out the PokerStarsBlog for the PokerStars SCOOP and WCOOP tournaments, trading regular sleep patterns for final table wraps about people winning six, even seven figures online. My love for cards and watching the action got me thru the wee-hours of the morning and kissing the wife go to work at six a.m. and finishing up while dishing out Fruit Loops and bacon for the kids. Reporting on poker is something that gives me a little extra spark as my regular job lacks forward thinking and being able to shove a few puns and use active thinking while writing helps bring some energy to a rather drab cubical life.

Then the circus came into town for a Twins game, golf, and gallons of Surly Furious as Gentle Summit invaded downtown Minneapolis where we got Speaker and his newly minted lovely wife Emet addicted to the local brew. StB sailed in from Milwaukee and DonkeyPuncher found the ability to board a plane semi-sober and stumble down Hennepin avenue with us. I was lucky enough not kill everyone with my "sunglasses at night" trip from Canterbury Park and even walked away with enough money to cover the weekend's lap dances and Drizz drooling over 2am beers and wings expenses. This summer however I vow to best Speaker on the golf course despite having the inability to swing a club for the next five months and will remember not to partake in that seventh NewCastle on the back 9.

After our usual kick-ass summer at the cabin/trailer, the fall months quickly brought December and my month to unwind from a stressful year. Birthday, WPBT, four day weekends, New Year's parties, two weeks off of school, basically an off-loading of every deadline, every six page double spaced paper with appropriate APA formatting and reference page, every "I DONT WANT TO EAT THAT!!!!1!!!", every argument with my better half who I lean on more than I should but she stands tall despite being a foot shorter than I. Every inch of stress gone, ready to reload for 2011 as the only memory still not on paper is the kick ass Black Crowes concert that may be Truckin' worthy once I finish it.

2011 brings something to look forward to versus something to be endured. I've already hit the ground running with a spring break trip in the works, and a long time friend dropping in from Philly to make sure I get my alcohol and poker quotient in for the ~~month~~ year. If I survive the AlCantHang experience again, you'll read it here.

Mrs. Gayle Homestead's Lottery Numbers Do Not Win

2011-01-05T06:58:00.001-06:00

(AP) Limpson, MS --- January, 5th 2011

The homemaker of six sits quietly on her wrangled porch. White paint peels from cracks within the wood as screening hangs in certain places that show years of neglect. "I've been meanin' to fix that up, and was already to have Hank down at Ace hardware do so but... but..." says the defeated Mrs. Homestead who couldn't bear to finish the sentence.

She will spend the next days of her life wondering what went wrong, was it punishment from God for tossing her fourth child in front of a Ford 150 that dodged the little boy at the last moment to "knock some sense into him" after she found her cookie jar depleted of $1.56, today was supposed to be a day of redemption as her as her husband Bobby Joe who lays prone on the couch watching informerials smelling like a mix of raw eggs and Jack Daniels mumbling something about needing a sandwich and a Slap Chop.

"This was supposed to be the best day of my life, but those fancy folks on the TV FAILED TO PICK MY NUMBERS!" Gayle exclaimed

Yes, millions of sad stories like Mrs. Homestead will start pouring out today from the far reaches of the Catskill Mountains, to Tijuana, Mexico where you can find cheap ornaments like severed heads while entering the city, to the celebrations of THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY's silented victory party once the coaches, players, and fans found out they too had losing lottery tickets while winning a useless college football bowl game. All saddened by the fact they will not be able to dance the dougie wearing ass-less chaps on their boss' desk this morning.

The $355 Million from the Mega Millions went to two tickets in Idaho and Washington when we told Mrs. Homestead about this she could utter a "fuck that shit" and headed back to porch swing with a pack of Newports and a fifth of Mad Dog 20/20 awaiting her to help cope with this solemn day.

Sappy with a side of hash browns

2011-01-03T06:40:00.000-06:00

Perseverance with bursts of joy.

If someone were to ask me what being a parent or a spouse was about I would answer with the sentence above. It's about work, but it's a job in which no clock is punched, no annual reviews with scary upper management types who merely see you as a piece of paper with long winded self-empowerment words learned at another seminar. There are no chances for promotion, no one trying to leap over your rung on the corporate ladder, just people who you choose to spend your life protecting and thinking about ways to improve their lives.

Even as I watched my stillborn son's pictures with pats on the back of condolence, our lives crumbling beneath a blackness of bad luck and apathy, we pushed on.

Before the wonderful people who I call my dearest of friends scattered across the US, and soon-to-be invading the UK and Australia came into my life there was a void that they filled. They gave hope, they gave themselves up, naked on a computer screen with stories of divorce, heartbreak, and also laughter, joy, and triumph. They could gather together and out smart the monthly meeting of MENSA folks at the Holiday Inn off 494 and Plymouth Dr. or form a business with an army of lawyers, doctors, accountants, writers, marketing reps, and slimmed down news anchors.

And they still continue to do so up to and beyond today. As I have told many times in this space, my not-so-invisible "internet" friends inspired me to get off the couch and do something about my life. Change is the most difficult of human emotions to force oneself into, as it means breaking outside of that warm Snuggie and getting up to face the cold floor. It means pain, not a Brock Lesner right cross to the mid-section jolt of hurt, but perhaps trading a comfortable eight hours of sleep for four when a paper is due and the kids need help with their weekly spelling tests or enduring the blandness of financial statements.

Last night many of those folks stood virtually behind me as I won a bit of cash playing poker (ok, it was the most I've ever won online). This being a poker blog I should regal you with grand stories of check-raises and screenshots. But, instead I'd rather talk about someone who was checking in during the tourney while doing squats and arm curls, a guy who gave someone a chance to write and it changed his life even beyond the job itself, to friends who gave a cheer for that King to fall with four players left, and that in 11 more months (or sooner if there's hope) I'll be able to shake their hands and buy them a beer or a double SoCo with a water back.

Perseverance with burst of joy, you could say a poker player's biggest need is to push thru the bad days for one like last night, sometimes waiting years for a decent score. Since I had lived thru bad days, weeks, months, or even a yearrrrrrrrr (ok I'll stop the Friends theme song before you folks develop an earworm), coming out stronger on the other side has given me the drive to start school, start being a better parent, being a better spouse, and maybe someday I'll get around to shaping up again to run a 5K. I'm sure there are those reading this right now looking for a prop bet but it will have to wait a bit as learning tax codes and proper ledger entries comes first.

2011 has started off as 2010 left.

With hope.

WPBT 2010: A question

2010-12-29T06:48:00.000-06:00

Shock and awe.

Two things that kick start a day better than any RockStar/Red Bull/NoS/Triple Cap-Low Fat-Double McTwist.

Yes the Vikings won last night, yes I am happy as a fan and it is with hope that Winfield got the game ball for shutting down Vick in the first half.

But, the fandom of rabidly rooting for the Purple was put away like Favre's noodle several games ago before some supreme being decided that this once proud team in August needed a second helping of humility by popping the bubble and sending a Minnesota style blizzard to Philly with in three weeks.

The football game wasn't the shock and awe and nor did that happen after the lights went out with a couple in their mid-30s going to sleep. That was two nights ago. No, the shocker (also not used) was my wife's annual planning of our Spring Break trip. Since she has worked for a school district ever since I got attached to the short softball player with great legs coming thru her grey St. Cloud State mesh shorts, Spring Break has been the time to take a vacation. Whether its a couple of nights up in Duluth, across the border for an indoor water park at Wisconsin Dells, or the most popular stop: Las Vegas.

While the wife thru out Atlantis in the Bahamas a few times and looking at the price tags that would burn the remainder of my depleted bankroll that "BET MORE" during the WPBT got (yes more WPBT stories to come, sorry but there has been Captain to drink, sledding to do, and kids to unwrap presents with stories about getting 86'd at Sherwood Forest and chopping up the WPBT tourney will need to wait). Aside from winning a PCA ticket like some Hollyweird blondes did (congrats again Change!!) that would be out and set aside for a bucket list or save for a year type thing.

The thought of going did appeal to me especially with the frozen wasteland I'll be gazing into for the next four months, its easy to picture oneself sipping on a Mai Tai while watching bronzed asses bounce by and a symphony of waves crashing live instead on an iTunes playlist. Wife turned her full attention towards going to Vegas of which got an reaction out of me that was nothing short of shock and awe.

I didn't immediately want to go. In fact I actually argued against the idea.

BAD DEGEN BAD!

This last WPBT trip ruined the Vegas experience for me. It was like the best sex with the hottest partner you could ever imagine and then turning to your fleshlight stroker with Anal Queens 15 in the background and just turning over to go to bed. The things I got to do on that trip three weeks ago will never happen again for mostly monetary reasons, but certainly the luck of each scene playing out to its perfection. The dinner, The Crowes (which I have a bottle of Captain waiting this weekend to write it up properly minus embarrassing stories which will remain in the minds of those who attended), The wink of the leftover Asian hooker at 5am (not found at a Steel Panther concert), Betting without concern of losses, The Sunday football games, The flight of a golf ball heading towards Red Rock national park, The WPBT tournament run, The birthday Pai Gow binge, The first class seat, and the perfect mix of degenerates and professionals one could possibly gather.

How do I top that?

Or perhaps how do I not try to top that and enjoy the moment with the love of my life while laying out at the MGM Grand pool with an overpriced mixed drink in hand?

Work (recaps not spreadsheets) and online poker funds acquired via recent ~~strong~~ lucky play will cover the trip's cost but it won't be the same. Maybe I just answered my question, different but same, after all there are other ways to reach euphoria than ordering your sixth round of drinks off the 61 year old former Miss Golden Gate Imperial Palace waitress who you genuinely questioned the sustainability of her out of place looking fake tits and if they would make it back for round seven after five hours of getting cold decked playing Pai Gow dealt by a former North Korean water torture specialist named Kim.

I don't doubt I'll have a great time with the wife, but my hesitation about going back to Vegas was nothing short of eye-opening.

WPBT 2010 Day Two: The Bankroll Sleeps with the Fishes

2010-12-21T07:48:00.000-06:00

The morning after a bender can be awesome, or be spend on a floor curled up naked trying to soak up the coolness of the surface wishing to die. Since I was not plied to drink whiskey/scotch on my birthday, the awesomeness of being still buzzed while going to Starbucks in the morning started the day just right.

After picking up an overpriced hot chocolate it was time to truck down to the IP where various WPBT'ers that were sane enough NOT try to survive five days of this drink-a-thon were filtering into thru the perma-busted front doors of the Imperial Palace (seriously guys, five years is enough time to make the brass door to your dump swing open). After a leisurely stroll from MGM to IP I happen to see a Badger fan grabbing his bags from the front door and kindly told him that his kind is not welcome here.

I think I woke him up, had I know I'd had a Miller Lite tallboy in hand for him.

Walked into the cloud of despair and menthol smoke that is the IP with StB and found my lunch date Kat, who was checking in near the blogfather himself. After a quick check of plans I was going to get my first blooming onion. No, dear reader not this kind of blooming onion (writer's note : OWWWW!) but this kind over at the Outback Steakhouse. Ok, whomever came up with the ass thing needs I guess lots of lube. Anyway, the four us checked down to Casino Royale walking past the Ben and Jerry ice cream stand that my hungover nose sniffed some Chunky Monkey that would have sated the Greyhounds and Cap'nCokes swirling in my stomach, but alas there was slabs of meat and fried onions to eat!

And the lunch was a perfect example on how to enjoy this weekend. See people who know, or don't know, grab them for a bite to eat, some Pai Gow, a two-minute quickie in the back bathroom stall and get to know them behind their writing voice. Most of the time you'll see the same person describing their lives on the internet except with facial expressions which completes the picture.

After a non-anal intruding lunch in which I did not drink as a lemonade with a big burger and fries built the greasy base for my second long Pai Gow session of the trip. Up and down with Kat and CK as bloggers filtered in, I believe I met Numbono for the first time who was immediately chastised for not placing a redbird on the bonus circle (OhCaptain would also receive such a warning but getting him to play a -EV game was hard enough). Several hours passed and with slight win (near even with several drinks is known as a Win-Gow so coined by Aussie Garth). If I played to win free drinks, then call me a hundredaire, otherwise I won back lunch money despite betting a quarter or more a hand.

Soon it was time to go back to the room and get overdressed for the fancy dinner at Picasso. Yes, I overdressed with a blazer, button-down shirt, slacks, and loafers but that was my choice as I don't spend $200 on a dinner. Ever. That and I'm a dork, will always be a dork, I embrace my dorkism.

Aussie Garth brought his wickedly smart and beautiful G with him, as Kat, Gracie, SWEET SWEET PABLO, the walking party AlCantHang, and my fellow Minnesotan who also avoided the 5th largest snow fall ever in our state, OhCaptain made up the dining party. For the next two hours we were pampered by the staff, as well, we were the only ones basically in the room! But, the dinner, the conversation, the wine guy's two minute speeches on the clear liquids in front of us, the Bellagio fountains behind, all painted a masterpiece that even the Cubism master with baseball team's list of surnames would have had a tough time creating. Right before the chocolate lava cake I excused myself to the restroom and upon coming back a familar face walked past to the same destination. After sitting down and enjoying this sweet ending to wonderful meal it was none other than Antonio Esfandiari who was celebrating his WPT win at the same casino and the only other table still there after we posed for pictures outside the restaurant.

Our band of eight would return to the IP where bankroll-geddon happened that evening while managing to blow through a little too much at craps, Pai Gow, and my dirty secret of playing slots left me fat from dinner, and remorseful that I did not just jump into the poker fray (where someone got 86'd) or the Geisha Bar for less costly things like $4 pitchers of Coors Light. But this was the weekend of "Bet More" and if I lost most of my bankroll I going to do it without whining about it (so pretend I didn't write this paragraph).

Back to the MGM at around 5am where tomorrow would be about fairways, greens, and mixed games with the blogg... oh wait I didn't play and instead was blessed with music and hurried limo rides, more on that later.

2010 WPBT Day One: Bet More, Win More Drinks

2010-12-16T06:59:00.000-06:00

Here we go!

Most of my birthday on Wednesday was spent in a non-blog worthy way. Staring out at the snow in the backyard while wrapped in a Snuggie (Yes, I'll own up to wearing one, as flaccid as it may seem they work) and plowing ahead with school work thus leaving little to none for the extended weekend of blogger debauchery. After finishing up a statement of Cost of Goods Sold with a side of cheesy hash browns it was time.

The theme of this trip was "Bet More", not just placing a different colored chip in the Pai Gow betting circle or hitting max bet on a slot machine, but to do the things I would normally skip due to cost. After saving up my funds from working at the PokerStarsBlog and catching a few cards at Full Tilt I had the bankroll to say "yes, I think I'll have that or do that". While my last few trips to Vegas haven't been bargain bin adventures, this one for the WPBT Winter Classic would have zero boundaries (well, at least ones that wouldn't have me signing divorce papers in three months).

I showed up at Humphrey International Airport (otherwise known as Terminal 2) about four hours early and was greeted by a very pregnant desk worker for Sun Country. "You know he's supposed to have the same birthday as you but didn't want to come out today". Despite the nine pound bowling ball dropping within 48 hours she managed to to give great service and inspired by the theme I asked "do you have 1st class available?". For just $109.00, I got bumped up to 1st class, granted this is not Delta or United but 1st Class is 1st Class meaning no cramped seats with senor dickhead ramming their seats into my lanky legs. Plush seats, COCKTAILS!, a hot meal that didn't suck, and the ease of being able to stretch out my frame all well worth the cost. While I did want to take full advantage of the free drinks, there would be a crew assembled on the ground ready for alcoholic libation offerings to the Pai Gow gods and I didn't want to sprint out of the gate, literally.

So to pace myself I just ordered a drink whenever the well-to-do mid 50s lady next to me did. Eight drinks later (paced myself with a lush, well played Drizz) we're feeling pretty good and hopping in a cab for the strip. After a nod to the driver for telling me that he would forego the highway without being told it was time to hit up the MGM Grand and the West Wing room that awaited. Frosted windows for the toilet and shower, huge king sized bed, TV on the mirror?, and enough pillows for a six year old to make a fort, the bags were quickly dropped off as Badblood was down in the poker and The Mark were already tilting cowboys in the poker room. Once the slot machines gave me a hint that playing them would not eat up time before Pai Gow was to be played late night ($100 gone in five minutes), I decided to try my luck in the poker room. Normally I'd sit down with $1,000 at 2-4 limit and have more fun making chip castles instead of actually making reads and check-raises, but instead I sat down and play a little 1/2 NLHE (which is foreign to someone that plays strictly PLO and PL/NLO8 cash games).

Enter Otis, Dr. Jeff, and 1/2 of G-Rob who's transformation was phenomenal, losing 100 pounds from the last time I'd seen him at Mastodon Weekend. They had a poker jones to sedate, so I grinded at my table picking my slot losses and diving into Cap'n Cokes with nothing to stop it. The water backs allowed for more consumption as proud poppa Ryan from Absinthetics dropped in to join our merry band on the road to drunken Pai Gow as I left over 1/2 buy-in up and was ready to get my Pai Gow on!

Cock blocked by the Asian pit brush who wouldn't lower an empty game to $15 (on a slow Wednesday night) we were quickly tag teamed by two well-dressed gentlemen who represented a den of ill-repute. Right in the middle of the gaming floor, not off to a corner or behind the Starbucks but five feet away from the stick handler shouting "SEVEN OUT!". Promises of limos and boobs caught the attention of BB and The Mark as the remainder of us took to the strip in search of Dragons and Bonus Hands.

New York New York lacked any love, but the Monte Carlo had the perfect nearly empty $10 table with we would set up shop for the next 5-6 hours. Multiple drinks, multiple attempts to crack the hard-lined brush that refused to join in on the jokes, as we sat for a bit when F-Train hopped into degeneracy and betting amounts increased while the action surrounding us decreased. As in none, save for a couple of guys in the adjacent blackjack table we were the only ones still playing Dragon hands while listing to a live band that didn't suck. Think the pit boss could take her heart out of the freeze slide us a comp for such play? No. While denied Steak and Eggs, we would not be denied multiple bouts of white-boy dancing after the dealer turned up Pai Gows. As the crew dispersed it would be me and Otis enjoy a non-freezing walk back to the MGM with my birthday dance done, and day one of the WPBT in the books.

Call it a filling appetizer for more to come. I thank those who my birthday an enjoyable one, but the fun was just beginning...

Five days away from home

2010-12-08T09:19:00.000-06:00

This is what I'm currently looking at...

This is what I'll be looking at seven hours (photo cred)...

And this is what you get if you bust me from the WPBT tourney, hope you're thirsty!

Russian Imperial Stout that kicks yo ass!

Wilson Phillips is here with a public service announcement

2010-12-07T06:39:00.000-06:00

It is here.

Much like those days of yesteryear if you celebrated Christmas, sitting in your bed Christmas Eve with eyes wide with anticipation and it didn't matter what was or wasn't underneath that Douglas Fir, just the thoughts of ripping thru that Target-bought wrapping paper to get at something new, something exciting, something that hasn't been broken in yet.

WPBT-eve is upon us degenerates, you read the stories, you've seen the heartbreaks and triumphs, and now you get to see those friends once again or perhaps revel in the absurdness of the Geisha Bar at 2am for the first time. It's the ex you never had sex with, the one with the Playboy model body, brain of a astrophysicist, and knows the the Kama Sutra in 15 different languages. She still pops in your dreams despite laying next to the love of your life, call it a guilty pleasure that you will never act on, but gets you through the night.

Go in this weekend with zero expectations, go out with new friends, and a story to tell your grandkids. There's no need to try to keep up with AlCantHang (as a "seasoned" drinker myself, I suggest finding other mountains to climb), but definitely shake the man's hand for getting Full Tilt Poker to not only add $1,000 to the WPBT poker tournament at Aria on Saturday, but got well-known pro Alex Outhred from Deepstack U to hand out a tutorial before hand for just a fraction of the usual $150 price tag. And if that wasn't enough, as most people know we gather on Sunday to watch football (someone will be forced to wear Packer gear and not like it, we won't mention such things). Lagasse Stadium served us awesome last year and we'll be doing again this year on Full Tilt's tab. Drinks are your responsibility so I suggest finding Al under a SoCo bottle and slipping him the money up front.

PokerStars as mentioned several times is putting up the hammer challenge, the last longer, and the OG-blogger knockout bounties. Which puts me in an odd spot of needing to start drinking much earlier since my best poker is played under the influence, not to mention I should be able to go a little further than second out this year. Perhaps Mr. Outhred could spare me from a repeat (although I did win $700 playing craps shortly after...).

Tomorrow is reserved for birthday silliness, so if you can find me (not an easy task) I'll be the tall, chalk-white guy mostly likely double fisting Cap'n Cokes and $2 Win-Place-Show bets while playing Pai Gow but not making airplane noises. No, we won't be doing that.

But if I can get GRob to go on Color Wheel Tilt at Excal again, it would be the best birthday present evar. That and taking home the golden hammer on Saturday.

Just one more day folks...

Story behind the story

2010-12-06T07:09:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I need a haircut thanks for noticing.

Wow, was so busy this weekend hardly noticed that we're TWO DAYS AWAY from the 2010 WPBT Winter Classic kicking off. Yes, I may have mentioned it here sixteen sextillion times but it bears repeating because such awesome people not named me will be there and I hope you, the reader, are one of those people.

But, first life threw me a nasty curveball, or rather Comcast did. It looked like a waist-high batting practice pitch after leaving the lanky pitcher's hand. The day was cold even by Nordic standards but the kids still went out to pave a decent run on the sledding hill in the backyard while mother and father enjoy Vikings football after it looked grim for the home team early on. Favre threw one pass for an INT while taking a shot that I heard from the ~~Metrodome~~ Mall of America Field 15 miles away. Then T-Jack predictably jump passed his way into a pick six. But, the defense got its angry on and treated the Bills Quarterback Fitzpatrick like toddler toy and Sidney Rice ascended many time while coming down with the ball to play like the team they were supposed to be winning 38-14.

While the game was on, I managed to finish a project for school, and turned on the poker machine. Full Tilt was unkind to me, or specifically PLO Rush poker was lancing my bankroll $25 a time while I dinked around in a couple of MTTs, busting early in 4 of 5 of them. Finally, sane me stopped playing PLO while I still had chips in a $5 Rebuy PLO8 MTT before taking my handle of Captain Morgan 100 proof acquired as an early birthday present down from the cabinet. While I didn't crack the bottle, I did crack enough aces on the way to chopping up the tourney for plane ticket type money (sorry no tourney recap, you'll have to read on for one of those...).

An hour later I tried to log into the PokerStarsBlog site and get an error message as I started my preamble and wanted to set up for the night's Sunday Warm-up that I was covering.

No bueno.

Power surge? Na.

Complete shutdown and reboot? Three times.

TO THE CLOUD!! *cue wavy dream music*

Instead of polishing up the final table write up while wrapped in my Captain Morgan blanket and a rough Steelers/Ravens game on, I had to throw on 15 layers because Minnesota is cold in the winter (errr, autumn, yeah right) and head over to my parent's house as they are my back-up and are used to their son stumbling in at weird hours. However, I was stone sober and rushed to my old room to set up shop and.... NO CONNECTION! Except for PokerStars which ran just fine, however anything thru a browser was met with an error message.

But I had an out, my dad fires up his hard-lined work computer and says to just work off of there since his browser worked just fine. Yes!! Victory is mine internet goblins, gimme the +4 Staff of Awesomeness!

But wait, what's this? A firewall that doesn't like poker words? No publishing site access, No PokerStars, back to square one.

So I text a probably sleepy Otis about the issues (I found out this morning, all of the Twin Cities metro area was down, lucky for that hard-wired account or I'd been really FUBAR'd), and get on the phone with the one person I know would be up. Enter Bluff Magazine nominated Short Stack Shamus into the fold. Since I couldn't publish it, and I knew he would be up doing the Sunday Million I had a plan. Finish the wrap on my laptop since I could watch the tourney and write it out, transfer the document and screen shots to a disc, put disc in dad's computer, then email it to Short Stack to publish.

Brilliant!

Except Yahoo mail was also behind the firewall, no likey connection. *insert John McEnroe you can't NOT be serious*

Ok, dove around in dad's computer for an email account, hack the password (shhhhhh), and mailed off the Sunday Warm-up wrap in time for consumption for the masses!

Oh, my fuel light came on, on the way home so I had to stop and catch a handful of frostbite before returning to my snoring wife who has a bit of a sore throat and slept sparingly. Fun night? Youbetcha!

Please enjoy the wrap, and thanks again to Short Stack!

Two days folks.

Nothing to read on the way to WPBT? I have your back

2010-12-01T06:35:00.000-06:00

For those looking for something to read on their plane ride NEXT WEEK SEVEN DAYS 168 HOURS FROM NOW WHOOOOOOO WHOOOOOOOO.

Sorry.

*ahem*

After your TSA-mandated prostate check or shocker for those who lack such plumbing but still need to be check for C-4 filled vaginas, I suggest settling down with one of these books for your terrorist-free airborne travel.

Dr. Pauly has a great deal going on at Lulu and Amazon..com for his book "Lost Vegas", I'll let him tell you about it:

Sorry for the intrusion, but I have good news -- after months of waiting, Lost Vegas is now available on Amazon.com! If that's where you do the bulk of your Christmas shopping, then stop by my page and pick up a copy or two. Through Amazon, you can also purchase an e-book copy for your Kindle for only $9.99.

If you would like to save $3, you can buy copies of Lost Vegas for 15% off via Lulu.com. At checkout, you use coupon code STOCKING305.

The 15% off coupon is valid through December 15th. Don't worry... the discount comes out of the publisher's pocket and I get my full cut.

Just a reminder... Lost Vegas is cooked to order, which means it's Print-On-Demand (POD). Due to high volume of orders with my publisher at Lulu, I encourage you to buy the book before December 5th to ensure a Christmas deliver. Please note that this only covers orders directly through Lulu.

Click here to buy a copy on Amazon.

Click here to buy a copy on Lulu. Don't forget to use code STOCKING305 for 15% off.

---

Photo Cred: JohnHartness.com

Yes, Kick Ass and Hit Girl took time from their busy schedule of algebra and extracting Columbian drug lord's tongues from the their bodies to pimp "The Chosen" and "Hard Day's Knight" by John "Falstaff Hartness. I'm currently thru 1/3rd of "The Chosen" and Hard Day's Knight is my next book to tackle (planning on purchasing one from the author in exchange for a plastic pitcher of Coors Light), will finally be able to set down my accounting textbook long enough to enjoy the book on my ride to Vegas ONLY SEVEN. DAYS. AWAY!!!! WHOOOOOOO WHOOOOOOO!

Again, apologies. I'm not known for restraint and give apologies in advance if my excitement annoys you (I am reasonable, just tell me I'm being an idiot) but given that I'm locked away in a cube half the year and being a parent/school boy the other half, being able to let loose in Vegas for a closet degenerate is well relieving not in an asian massage happy ending way, but more of a first cold drink on the back porch in autumn sort of way. That's autumn in places like South Carolina, not Minnesota where such as drink turns into a slushy within .5 seconds of sitting down on top of 6" of snow.

Anyway, go now if you haven't purchased these fine books as time is running short and I've already started to get up every night at 3:30am wanting to post a Pai Gow Fortune Bonus bet.

7 days.

I'll wipe that smile right off your face

2010-11-30T07:04:00.000-06:00

Is it time for Wilson Phillips yet?

No?

Sigh.

It's the home stretch to the 2010 WPBT Winter Classic where smiling is actually encouraged and won't get you a press conference beat down by our many illustrious poker writers for many different outlets. Seriously? Smiling? I understand one question about the smirk, he answered cordially but to keep needling the guy and a team who just played awful football for 60 minutes is akin to having TMZ on your press pass. Yep, just like those "reporters" who walk up to random celebs with hot-button questions "So OJ how's the right hook coming along?" "Paris do you prefer to use the left or right nostril?" "Hey! Mr. Gibson could you tell us how you REALLY feel about Jews?". Report, don't become part of the story. Of course I did not attend J-school and since my poker reporting is done in the comfort of a Snuggie with a laptop and a Cap'n Coke sitting aside from the couch, I can't completely know what was going thru the mind of that reporter after last night's Monday Night Football game.

Photo Cred: ParkThoughts

Update to the last post: I finished 12th in the PLO8 MTT after I was unable to keep my eyes open and opted for sleep. Bad degen. A decent shot for another small score but this week's schedule is brutal. A full financial analysis of PartyGaming is due which was taken on due to being curious about the aftermath of leaving the US player base. Profits down of course, but not as bad as you think. I'll publish the numbers here after handing in the assignment. Then, a 5-6 page essay comparing two short stories, along with normal weekly assignments, and trying to work ahead for next week since I don't feel like doing anything related to school in Vegas. Oh, and there's taking the kids to see Santa at the Mall of America all day Friday
where I have two all-day passes to Nickelodeon Universe readied as a gift for daddy going away to spend a few days with friends.

If you see a spare me currently wandering around the back bank of slots at the Gold Coast or giving away money at the Flamingo's $2/$4 game at 5am nursing a hot chocolate, send him back to Minnesota, I could use my clone for this week.

In case this is your first or fifth WPBT Winter Classic, is it imperative you read Dr. Pauly's guide to surviving the weekend. Leave passing out on an off-strip Pai Gow table while Xi is trying to collect your losing bonus bet to overworked parents and veterans of such degeneracy. We're used the five second naps and snapping awake with zero consciousness and appearing to function normally when the four year old is asking for help after turning the sink into a giant tub of cherry flavored kool-aid and playing Barbie's beach house from the sides.

8 days folks.

Saturdays with Dr. Pauly

2010-11-28T00:02:00.000-06:00

If you ask me why I'm up at nearly midnight watching Mallrats on a night I was resigned to head to bed early.

I have no clue, I really don't. But, I can tell you what I did at a more reasonable hour:

That would be me, luckboxing my way thru this courtesy of Dr. Pauly. The Turkey cup wasn't a choice as my old ass was passed out by 9pm the previous evening, but PLO + kids giving daddy a little time to play = good decision.

Wow, Shannen Doherty was hot!

Anyway Dr. Pauly was putting up a signed copy of Lost Vegas (NOW 15% off!! Head over to Lulu for details, or click the link) and while I was planning on asking the good doctor to sign the copy I purchased a few days after it was published, a second copy for a Christmas gift would be perfect.

Since a recap of the action is better suited for people who can write such recaps and I'm still baffled as to why I'm still up grinding in this $5 PLO8 tourney, I'll leave it that I got lucky and won. Period. Exclaimnation point.

In light of the Gophers (football, not hockey, not basketball, but FOOTBALL) winning tonight I'm going to allow someone else to claim this nightcap because I will be covering the monthly promo tourneys at Stars tomorrow, and I hear a gathering of likeminded degens is getting rather close. Good night and may the wraps be with you.

11 days.

Wife Knows Best Chapter 10: He WILL Forget

2010-11-24T06:49:00.000-06:00

After walking through the front doors after a longer-than-usual commute (a whole 15 minutes!) and missing the fine smell of bacon-wrapped steak that was promised to be pan-searing when I got home, an audiable sigh left my nose.

"Oh, I can still throw the steaks on" said my wife, at least those were the words from her mouth.

The actual words were "I got home and did the laundry, vacuumed the floors, pulled your daughter down from the ceiling, and rescued a bus load of 8th grade volleyball players after their driver fell asleep trying to pull an all-nighter so don't ask me to make your fuckin steak".

Calmly, I suggested Leeann Chin's and I would offer to climb right back into the car to retrieve the Sesame chicken goodness with a side of egg-fried rice and gooey cream-cheese puffs. Also, as a bonus, the mystery package I signed for yesterday happened to be a large (for me) check from my musings on PokerStarsBlog and after checking my bank balance, a wire transfer from Full Tilt also went thru so "bet more" at the WPBT may be back on (if the funds clear of course)!

A side trip to the bank was made where a cute Thai teller that would have made F-Train throw out a few suave lines, I however stumbled thru the reasons for the large foreign check and made a joke about giving it to my wife for Black Friday (which isn't entirely false, but don't let her know when she finds some extra cash in her purse from the degen fairy). Then on to the Leeann Chin's I go to about twice a month noting the usual surly but hot blonde who wears too much makeup and a distaste for people on her face serve up some Sweet and Sour chicken for the kids, Lemon for the wife, and as an audiable, some Mongolian chicken for myself. Wrapped up with two pairs of chopsticks for the kids to poke their food with, it was back home to a "movie night" (meaning a late-night date with "An Introduction to Literature" for daddy).

pic cred: dan-dare.org

Toy Story 3, and this one lived up to the hype, with a excellent ending, on top of an excellent ending. Just when you thought it was over with Woody and Buzz saving the day again, it jerks your heart strings for a few minutes more.

All the pillows and blankets were gathered up as the nightly ritual of getting the kids to brush their teeth without flinging poo at each other began. But tonight there was no poo, perhaps after-glow from the awesome movie as they settled down quickly, got tucked in as I returned to the porch and found my fat cat Funky rightfully assuming my ass would be on the couch for the next few hours.

Just before cracking open the play "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell and later "The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Chekhov my wife came in to remind me to put away the turkey that had been thawing out in the sink before going to bed. I looked up and nodded telling her not to worry about it. But, my wife was not convinced. She takes out a strategically placed chair which blocked the walkway between porch and living room (the kitchen is in-between the two) and places a pan on it. After seeing this I raised a middle finger in salute, and got one in return with a smile.

After the required reading I was too tired for the writing portion of the assignment and shut off the lights to the porch which were the last lights on in the house and started stumbling to bed much like I do on later nights.

WHAM! #!#$&$#!@@

My middle toe rang with pain as I slammed it into the strategically placed chair which filled the lane like Wilt Chamberlain and Shaq standing side-by-side. As my trudged my bruised toe and ego to the kitchen light and took the medium-sized wet turkey placing it in the fridge, I could almost hear my wife down the hallway laughing in her sleep.

14 days folks.

Quick hits: Parenting question for those with good poker faces

2010-11-23T07:06:00.001-06:00

Quick hits:

Brad Childress fired = Drizz happy camper. It doesn't help the team any, but least shows they're willing to move forward. My hopes that the "moving forward" part means building a stadium in Blaine, MN not LA.

There are just 15 days left before the WPBT Winter Classic. Do you have your three person PokerStars-infused prize pool last longer team in place yet? What the fuck are you waiting for? The Lions to the win the Super Bowl or Obama to admit he could have done things differently in his first two years in office? Not gonna happen. So go. Sign up your weak-ass team that will visiting Davy Jones' Locker after run over by the Brad Childress-less Viking ship of TEAM SKOL!!! If you dare bust one of us out I'm sending this guy to your house to rinse your mouth out with month-old dead trout or his unwashed arm pits:

Photo cred here

On Sunday I got a lazy day as a present to myself for waking up at 6am and busting out a two page essay on poems, half of my final paper (due in three weeks), and finished a statement of cash flow for a mock corporation. Shortly after the Viking's implosion that had Packers Fans creaming their green and gold g-strings my daughter entered the room with a worried face. Usually this means a) "Daddy, I took five bars of Hersey's chocolate and ate four of them while smearing the fifth one all over the kitchen" b) "I want to watch Strawberry Shortcake's adventure in Berry-Berry land for the fifteenth millionth time but can't get the DVD player to work after jamming three discs in there" or the dreaded c) "I did something that I won't tell you, but know it's wrong and need to be questioned like a police's person of interest". Can any parent tell me the secret behind keeping a straight face while your adorable four year old daughter tells you she cut her bangs with safety scissors? Bluff a flush draw on the turn in a heated PLO game with a stony face? Yes sir! Not laugh on my cutie's hair malfunction?

Not this guy.

Updated pic of said daughter for those who do not follow me on Twitter

Life imitates smartphone

2010-11-18T06:33:00.000-06:00

While skating last night with the kids as they attempt to gain mobility on Minnesota's most known surface, there were strands of little kids in various hockey and bike helmets in various stages of ability. The chair-user, the future Gretzky, and the kids having the ability to stop which mine don't thus run the risk of having their faces find out just how hard the boards and plexiglass really are.

Then there was this guy...

Since our two little ones had adjacent lesson times with a half-hour practice time in front of each one, we got to spend an hour whipping around on the ice and I got a few loops with carrying the kids that they enjoy. But, THAT guy above is real. It's not a fuckin commercial. He laced up his skates, most likely his kid's too, and stood on the ice Twittering to his little heart's content. Not once looking up from his smartphone to see a smile on the kid's face or chase him/her until they would get caught.

The sad disconnect of the digital age is real, I know it because I'm at home pecking away at school work while the kids are up when I should be explaining that you go up the ladders and down the chutes and to stop trying to take five spaces when a four is spun. At least my intentions are somewhat benefiting the kids with potential higher earnings and a father who is trying to become a better person by not standing around looking up nude Bristol Palin pics as life skates by.

Instead of saying the cliched "thanks" next week: I thank my kids and wife for being understanding of the need to return to school, to be with friends in far away places, to allow me to be myself and not forget how big of a dork I am. I thank my friends for the same reasons, whether you read here or not, just the occasional text message or even a "tweet" that makes me smile even when you're just as busy as I. I thank my father who now has seen more injuries cutting down trees than his two Purple Hearts while serving in Vietnam, how you and mom selflessly give without any reward other than a fading embrace from a rushed son and grandchildren.

To those who help me purchase my hearing aids last year, I thank you and another round of drinks awaits in Vegas in a mere 20 days, as I can't wait too see everyone again and hear their tales versus reading them.

Using a page from the whining book

2010-11-16T06:23:00.000-06:00

Whine and thou shalt receive.

My kids employ these method on a daily basis and once in a great while through frustration I'll give in. Softy, I know. Mostly because the words "daddy is working" coming out of my mouth while doing homework or describing the seventh place finisher in the Sunday Warm-Up at PokerStars, has a ghastly charcoal taste to each syllable. Last night it was creating invoices and receiving payments for a fictional landscaping company while my son wanted a second knight to accompany him in a game called Castle Crashers on the PS3. For the low price of $14.99 (plus some PS3 add-on cost of a buck and change) these little square-headed knights bop different ghouls and wombats Street Fighter style with a little RPG thrown in as there's leveling, gold collection, and standard strength, magic, dex, and defense add-on to improve your character. For a quick game, well worth the purchase.

As I poured some tears out on these pages way too soon about floating cash at Full Tilt the joy seeing that cash with a bonus enough to cover more than the bank fees (thank you good sirs) was back in my account by the time Michael Vick was in the middle of going All-Madden on the Redskins last night (seriously, if the Eagles played like that, can anyone beat them?). Now with two accounts flush with online moneys, the question is: is it safe to try to withdraw again? One method involves several fees adding up to $60 which doesn't appeal to me but for the sake of "bet more" in Vegas a few less lap dances won't hurt the silicone and baby powder crowd too much. The other method is wait and pray that the check clears, and with three bad checks already in the past few years I don't need my bank getting itchy to close my account that has been open since Ronnie Regan ruled the White House and I was getting my 100 pound skinny ass kicked in middle school.

For those who still drop by and play, let me know if you've had experiences (good or bad) with cashing out, and I'm not talking about getting your aces cracked five times in row while your brand new 100" 3D-HDTV blows up in the background from the cash-out curse. Save those stories for the Geisha Bar.

22 days shopping days till my birthday folks. Get a move on.

Checks and chips

2010-11-15T07:05:00.000-06:00

Trying to keep my eyes open on the ice-slicked roads of Minnesota this morning thanks to winter's regurgitation of snow overnight on Friday, there was more than a few odd sights on my ass-crack of dawn commute. The gray with white flecked bunny with ears seemingly lopped off, perhaps from a gang initiation which must have included darting out in front of a tired suburbanite at five a.m.with hopes that his green tea fix kicked in enough to dance his truck around around those short, fast legs.

No squished bunny, he'll survive enough to terrorize the neighborhood by knocking over a few gas stations before meeting his maker by a vigilante Ford Probe's front right tire.

After avoiding animals there was the Stephen King-like mist with a 16-wheeler coming over the top of a narrow bridge that I was attempting to cross at the same time taking up the entire width. Luckily by the time Maximum Overdrive's figure peered thru the fog it became just another commuter that probably had his eyes open no more than me.

Sufficiently awakened by new found alertness, I see its November 15th and we're only 23 days away from the 6th installment of the WPBT Winter Classic which only half of the field has signed up for the biggest giveaway we've had thanks to the wonderful folks at PokerStars. Be sure go to Up For Poker's for the details on the last longer, hammer challenge, and my favorite... bust an original player from the first WPBT tourney. No, I was not one of those folks as my bankroll was in its infancy at the time, marriage was about as stable as Brad Childress' job, head injury still kept me under supervision, and my son was just drawing his first breath so running off to Vegas that year wasn't possible. But, those who survived the first year's drinks at Sherwood Forest will be back and guarding their bust out prizes like a child's stuffed animal.

Lately on the online front things have not been rainbows and perky tits waiting to serve you another Jag Bomb because you're just so darn cute (or probably because you're the only one tipping consistantly). This weekend I had not one but two checks bounce from the major sites.  Full Tilt's check bounced after waiting A MONTH for it, offered no explanation nor any forebearing that processors were having troubles. As you know my bankroll isn't big (see: name of blog) and we're talking about enough for a plane ticket and maybe enough money to bring my golf clubs with.  It wasn't until I wrote in after my bank informed me of the NSF check that an apology was given. PokerStars however offered a pre-emptive strike telling not to cash the check (which I didn't) and gave a bonus on top of my withdrawl and the funds are once again back in my account (unlike Full Tilt who continues to drag their feet about this...).

In the year of "bet more" since I had been doing not-so-bad at the tables lately, there was a little extra to enjoy an upper crust dinner with good foodie friends, whiskey with a Packer Fan and a husband to a Packer Fan, golfing with a soon-to-be groom, and still have enough for playing 3am Pai Gow with Hong and Dr. Pauly at the Gold Coast.  Those things will still happen, but this extra bit was my reward to myself for the hard work over the past year. Going back to school full time with two jobs has been tiring especially when you add a daughter who thinks it's ok to get up at 5:30am on a weekend to climb into the freezer using a chair and phone book to gobble down 2.5 bars of Hershey's then proceed to bounce off the walls for the next five hours on a sugar rush while daddy tries to book a sale of a 20-year bond bought at 102, and sold six years later at 98.5 with an interest rate of 11% and coupon rate of 12% and writing a two-page compare and contrast essay on two poems (seriously, how do ya'll read poems, I'm baffled).

As the king of the deuce-four, PokerGrump, added in a recent post about cashing out at Bodog where he was given an ATM-type card instead of cash with a bunch of loopholes and fees attached to it (read the post as he explains all the fine print). Is this the direction we're going to avoid the UIGEA? Or until the government finally allows us to go back to the good ol' days of NetTeller and wire MY money as quickly as needed?

We shall see as Bodog wrote to me a few days ago telling me I had more than happy meal money in my account to cash out should I not want to play there. Thanks to the cancelled checks I feel like I had just split the uprights for the game-winning 37 yard field goal and as the guys were carrying me off the field Rex Ryan comes over to laugh in my face as he called a time-out right before I was to get in the hot tub with the Dahm triplets and I needed to compose myself for another try.

Neither site has commented on the ability to try again, and the 2+2 threads on the matter do not show much light as to people receiving and clearing a second check. As told, I "need" those degen funds before escaping the sub-arctic temps of Minnesota for the poker felts of Vegas. The question is, will I be on a budget and just enjoy the fact that I'm surrounded by good friends that I only get to see 2 or 3 times a year, or will "bet more" be in play making airplane noises at Excal playing 4am craps?

Just putting a pen down and writing

2010-11-09T06:54:00.000-06:00

It's taking out the overstuffed garbage with the last bit of your wife's BBQ meatball grinder tray that fed the dozen or so friends that came out to spend a day trading landscaping work for decent beer and food. Standing in the driveway with a fading sunset and hues of dark red climbing beyond the wall between your place and those with net incomes that will be attained sometime close to retirement. The delicate balance between being responsible and giving up is a juggling act that most people lean towards punching their time cards five days a week at the same time or with enough regularity that the in-house Starbucks barista has your triple no-foam mocha Grande espresso ready before punching up Microsoft Outlook to see the balance of inane meetings and fake smiles for the day.
Getting in a routine is good for goal-setting and attaining. Each day the work gets done to the point that the pile of dishes are not resembling something you'd see an art museum next to the human vagina project that the state paid $100,000 for someone to simulate menstruation every fourth week of the month inside of glass box. Routine of sleep, work, kids, homework, sleep gets broken briefly with self-imposed time-outs for imbibing in a few adult beverages without worries that your essay on Anne Bradstreet's "To my dear and loving husband" written with the help of rum and a deep love for my fellow routine task-master. She's more than that, my friends are more than that, I am more than that, there's needs to be a point of satisfaction and despite having everything I could possibly want, the bottomless hole of want never gets filled. It's not a bigger TV, house, or cool phone that produces perfectly slow-cooked ribs with a touch of a button, and achievements won't slow this down either. No amount of "employee of the month" or Dean's List certificates (although I'm a little proud of that fact and hope to continue to carry a nerdy GPA until graduation in 2013) will stop the cold chill feeling like I need more.

More what? It's dark, shapeless, odorless, tasteless, it's carbon dioxide, there's no stanza to describe the more that is needed to feel whole. Do you give up the routine that keeps you buckled down enough to enjoy those who are kind enough to put up with your quirks and earn enough monetary funds that society accepts you as a productive member. I thought going back to school would fill a void, and it does on a resume and more to the fact that the cobwebs upstairs needed cleaning. But, I've also learned that I will never be completely satisfied no matter the amount of small glimpse of joy like sex, a Vikings victory, or the feeling my kids or wife give me with an unconditional embrace. The latter keeps me going at 11pm after getting up for work at 4:30am while trying to figure out the present value of a $400,000 bond with a 12% contract rate and 11% interest rate paying semi-annually and how to book it properly.

Maybe someone at the Geisha Bar or a Pai Gow table while surrounded by my very good friends in one month could sit down with me under similar intoxication explain how they "got there". Or least how they look at themselves daily in the mirror and say "I'm pretty ok with you today, so don't fuck it up". I apologize for my usual no structure writing but I've found that my "Nuke" Laloosh form of posting is my voice since that's also the way I threw a baseball for the Osseo Orioles 18 years ago.

In the WPBT news "Team Procedure" captained by BadBlood is looking for a wing-man (or woman) to fill out their feeble attempts to overtake Team SKOL at the Up For Poker last longer portion of the Winter Classic sponsored by PokerStars. My advice... don't arm wrestle The Mark left handed, drink whatever is put in front of your with a smile, and if you want to keep your winnings don't join those two degens at the PLO table afterwards.

29 days, get my birthday presents ready folks, I have high demands. Like smiles, drinks, and tales of Superpanchos while discussing who gets the dragon hand in Pai Gow.

Heidi Montag's Tits are the Nation's Financial Problem

2010-11-04T07:22:00.000-05:00

Kid Dynamite - Former Wall Street Trader and Vegas crusher (seriously go read ANY of his Vegas trip reports, it's a level of degeneracy I strive for myself but never get there) turned meat grinder/home garden extraordinaire packs mostly financial news with enough layman terms sprinkled in so someone like myself can understand TARPs and other news concerning our government handing out money to those who cry because they had to do away with their third Bentley.

Seriously go read, he's like a Rosetta Stone for finance.

Anyway, there was post on someone named Paul Krugman whom I'd never heard of since my reading and media interactions are mostly poker blogs and watching Johnny Test, SpongeBob, and Literary textbooks for school. Anyway Mr. Krugman apparently slammed people like myself who having been saving versus spending in recent years and trying to be as fiscially responsible as a good degen can be (sorry but the siren calls of Pai Gow bonus bets and Mr. Cashman slots MUST BE ANSWERED! I didn't completely neuter myself after marriage and kids). Me and my wife both work full-time, getting up at 4:30am every day during the week and get home around 5pm, then dinner, taking the kids to swimming/dancing/skating/advanced assassin techniques for ninjas class level three then around eight or nine I start to study since I returned to school full time. Oh, and she also works occasionally at a senior citizen function while I help out with the Sunday Majors coverage at PokerStarsBlog. All this to pay a mortgage that is barely above water (no we did not buy "too much house" it's barely 1,400 square feet and 30 years old so take those arguments elsewhere) but on the good side our cars are paid off and we carry no credit card debt which allows us to live a little instead of going dumpster diving for half eaten ramen noodles.

The reason I mention the above was after reading a story about a chick who is more plastic than my daughter's Barbie dolls "Heidi Montag files bankruptcy after blowing $10 million". My point isn't the money since this nation's elite need to buy rich things and do or have done something to earn that money. It's their prerogative (ok, busting out Bobby Brown since you can't say that word without the song popping in your head)

Ah, ah, ah. THAT'S MY MY MY PREROGATIVE ... Oh welcome back. Montag. The whole irk behind her "financial woes" lies behind her spending something she never earned. "We thought The Hills would be like 90210" was the excuse. Can I please punch her in one of those over-inflated tits please? Why should semi-decent hard-working folks like myself slave over humping crappy jobs when we could be snorting coke off high priced stripper's asses at Cheetah's and playing poker with Doyle Brunson? Just charge it, lose my house because I can't even afford the minimum payments on my 15 maxed credit cards? Fuck you! I'm ENTITLED to my house, you're going to throw out a family of four because I can't pay my obligations? /internet sarcasm

I don't know when or why people in this country got to the point that don't feel responsible for their actions or even try to rectify the issue "I almost stripped for Playboy until my parents took us in!" says Montag. Well, I don't have DDs or a vagina for that matter, so my chances of doing something on a similar last-ditch effort are slim to none, can't even spooge in a cup for cash since not producing another child we can't afford seemed responsible.

Responsiblity has a price, if a little sanity is the cost, I'm ok with paying it so I can look at myself in the mirror in the morning and only hate the fact that I root for a football team which enjoys torturing its fans year after disappointing year.

34 days.

A Rolling Moss Gathers No Wins

2010-11-03T06:37:00.000-05:00

My favorite football team continues yet another epic collapse. This isn't the 1983 season where Les Steckel dropped a 3-13 bomb on this franchise with coaching ineptitude unseen until, well, now. Brad Childress has shown this year that he is a staff accountant trying to do the CFO's job. Last year was an aberration in a few plays that went their way, no injuries to the ghost of a Hall of Fame quarterback and his favorite receiver. No quarrels with star players that will quit on 3/4th of the plays as I'll give Favre credit here as being someone who will put his best effort forward despite a coach with granite in his ears and similar legs for moving in a different direction when the first plan doesn't work.

Image from http://www.footballbabble.com/

Then you have Randy Moss. A true Viking, another future Hall of Famer who had returned to the team after a few games to seemingly take the place of Sidney Rice (who took some horrible career advice and delayed his hip surgery enough to take him out this all-star lineup). He caught Favre's 500th touchdown, much joy returned to Mudville as with the unseasonably warm weather up here just kept getting brighter. Since I personally was not eating with the team on Friday, to expound on the catering incident isn't right. I wasn't there and can only read about what happened and offer editorals like Sportcenter ran off for the past 24 hours. It could be a product of the Vikings' PR machine trying to save its battered coach's face, but now that the owner of the restaurant is being quoted:

Tinucci's co-owner Gus Tinucci said Tuesday. "(Moss) he comes in, and I'm helping one of the guys and didn't look up, and all of a sudden I heard, 'What the (expletive) is this? I wouldn't feed this (expletive expletive) to my (expletive) dog!' And he's screaming it at the top of his lungs.

It's hard to think Moss' return had anything with wanting another shot at 1998. Can we blame the coach? After all it is his responsiblity to manage the talent, as it's the owner's job to make that talent available. Childress didn't sell the program to Moss, or Moss is just an insufferable prima donna bitch, or both. Either way the season that could have been, is mired right now in confusion with a future that has a "must-win" this week, and the next, and the next, and the next. If there's a poker analogy, the Vikings are stuck five buy-ins looking to get even and just mortgaged the house to get back in the game. Playing scared isn't an option, they need leadership in that locker room, they need Jared Allen to rebirth Mullet Nation and find his competitive fire after getting married becoming that guy who says he can't come out with the boys tonight, they need someone besides Brad Childress who can't fire up a lighter soaked piece of wood with a spark hanging over the top of it.

/end rant

In other news, there's 35 days until my birthday party in Las Vegas. I hope a few of you drop by as social media doesn't give what a drink and smile do.

Again, didn't we do this just a few minutes ago?

2010-10-29T06:02:00.000-05:00

Like begging the significant other for seconds the morning after... Drizz did it again, after final tabling a small PLO tourney on and then this on the site that I've been donating my second paycheck to all year...

Ok I didn't get Megan Fox but in my current state WHY NOT! I'm f'in hot dammit! Yeah, I'm suburbanite making shit per hour with two kids and going to school but hey I knows how to play the pokers! Ok, again maybe not but I do bust thru once in a while. Like below (boring brag below, no more titties for you!)

Don't tell you love me, I. don't wanna knoooooooooooooooow. Sorry I'm in my 80's hair band mode and Night Ranger hit my stick becaus they rock EVEN THOUGH YOU MAY DISAGREE! You want to see my name up top right? Ok then. Without further adieu, or Favre's average sized penis... here's we go:

ME-FUCKIN-OWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! That's right I don't suck at poker for one whole night! Kids are getting up in an hour and I need to go retrieve an energy drink because I'm screwed if I don't since I agree to read Hooper Humperdink at my daughter's pre-school in a few hours. Speaking as a degen should wake up the kids? Good grief I think I'm just a bit lame for staying up this late BUT DONKEY WISHED TO GIVE MONEYS AND I TAKES IT!

I'm done. For now. No more penis. Or carpet cleaner. Need an energy, or some spare meth. Otis talks about such things, maybe I should inquire. Or not. I like pie. Good morning VIETNAM! Yeah, I'm screwed.

Darkness Day 2010

2010-10-28T07:03:00.000-05:00

Last year about this time me and three other fellow beer enthusiast decided a week prior that we would make an effort to get to our favorite brewery a little early for their once-a-year, limited edition beer called "Darkness". Surly Brewery where Omar and Todd put their collective hop heads together and spawned a home in Brooklyn Center around 2005. Since then the following of this beer has steadly grown since the days we would drop by on cold Saturday mornings to wait in line to swap out empty growlers for fresh product which sometimes included a small batch of speciality beer that the owners have been working on.

Growlers (2006-2008) R.I.P. my dark glass encased friends

After the city put the kaboooosh on selling directly from the brewery due to city ordinances, growlers ceased to exist except for nice trophy cases above refrigerators across the state of Minnesota. But, that didn't stop the flow of microbeer lovers from worshipping such finely mixed beverages. No, the reaches of the songs of "Darkness Day" grew despite the release timing of the annual brew being in late October into November as Minnesotans know that despite what other states call "fall", winter's onset usually takes place while shuffling kids around the neighborhood in their Power Rangers outfit bought at Target along with 542 other things you didn't need there but bought just because. Much like a casino, you can't walk inside a Target without spending money.

Darkness label 2010 style

After dancing around severely underdressed last year, showing up like amateurs at around 8:30am with bellies full of Sausage McGriddles, our group decided to kick things up a notch this year since the lines were getting noticeably longer at even earlier hours. This year it was no impromptu journey to the warehouse district in Brooklyn Center, we planned our attack to be at the brewery at 6:00am with folding chairs (unlike last year where we sat our posteriors on a nice, cushy ass-frozen curb), a cooler filled with beers that a long-time friend filled with a yummy selection from his gate of beer heaven, and of course bean bags! Six hours is a long time to wait and chat about just beer although the subject has conversation power and less likely to invoke religious or political backlash because beer is fuckin awesome unlike Glenn Beck.

7:36am - Do you know where your beer is?

Just an hour and a half since we parked ourselves on the corner with shots of hot cider and Sailor Jerry, the line started to inch out towards the highway already and would hit the end of the block by nine am. Fanatic much? People were setting up grills and one had a full open tent complete with 24" TV with an XBox360 running while our neighbors in line toyed with a iPad and of course playing "Angry Birds". I inquired politely if he bought the tablet computer just for the game, he snickered just like I was his mother asking why the ceiling tile was off-center after hastily putting away a 6 month old Playboy and went back to demolishing those nasty pigs.

The corner bar

After eight am and the above picture I retired the camera to its resting place because batteries are a bitch and everything electronic should have the ability to be willed to life (yeah, I suck, NICE PREP WORK IDIOT). After sunlight approached and the weatherman's prediction of rain thwarted (take THAT Sven Sundgaard!)my friend B grabbed a bottle of beer that had it's own box and was wax capped to something called an offering table. I have a shitty cell phone pic of it, but it was literly beer porn laid out for anyone with a glass to sample some of the finest beers around the world (but mostly from the US). It was here that I started observing license plates from Tennesse, Illinois, Wisconsin, Dakotas, and New York?!?!? To think my commute to the brewery was a whopping 10 minutes these guys took toll ways and mostly likely started their trek on Thursday.

Advantage: fly-over state

After sampling a few of the beers (as you can tell I am not expert on the subject matter to expound on the savory tastes within, I just consume, a lot, because I enjoy something better than Mich Ultra while watching Brett Favre's ankle tank my beloved team's last chance at a winner for the next 10 years), there were two food trucks set up for noshing and one had these donuts with a seemingly ring of incased butter on the inside that made me moan like the time my wife... ok I'll stop right there, but honestly, AWESOME. I had two bags because one was an insult. I think it was this one "Chef Shack" feel free to correct me of course. But, after being recognized in line as "that cornhole champion from SurlyFest" (yes, my abilities known state wide people) it was time to hop in line for wristbands as my wife joined the crew to up my purchasing power to two six-packs.

What $200 in beer might look like

And fin. The beer is now sitting in the cellar with one bottle marked for a Chicago fan who will probably try to a take bath in the bottle and other things that should only be seen on chatroulette. The rest I'll figure out as tonight marks the first night I'll be able to sit and enjoy what will hopefully become a yearly journey to that small brewery that made it big.

See beernews.org for another recap and more photos of the event.

Walking Scared

2010-10-27T07:03:00.000-05:00

Walk with a careful step down Sanguine Court with Otis' short story titled "Walking Gray".

And do it with the lights on. Not sex you perv, the reading. Do it now.

Couldn't get the photos from Darkness Day loaded so tomorrow I'll muse on spending $200 for beer. Until then, enjoy one of the best twisters of the English language I've ever had the pleasure of sharing a Pai Gow table with.

Champions on Paper

2010-10-26T06:41:00.000-05:00

In the shower, along highway 169 with the tidal wave of road construction during the wee hours of a rainy morning, sitting with friends in an industrial park waiting for a brewery to open its gates like Willy Wonka. So many things to say, so little time, so my musing go buried into what's left of my head after a 10 hour work day, followed by impromptu wrestling matches with the kids, and finally lessons on Plot, Setting, and Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" until my eyes can take no more and the cycle begins a new.

To paraphrase a certain poker brat "if it wasn't for time, I'd do it all". My interest in things outside of this self-inflicted schedule have a gray-ish layer over them. Even my beloved Purple and Gold have seen the decibels lowered with every Favre penis story and pick-six that would normally have me firing off a 1,000 word volcano that would be invoked even if Tarvaris Jackson lined up behind whatever center they throw along the line since the departure of Matt Birk. Instead of the gladiator that was the scourge of the Twin Cities and football demi-god to he legion of fans, Brett Favre has turned into a circus sideshow. Injuries, passive-aggressive tangles with a coach that shouldn't be there, Jenn Sterger's tits popping up unwillingly according to most reports right behind Ed Werder's mustache. In what was supposed to be a reincarnation of last year improbable run to banish the ghost of the Purple People Eaters of the 70s and the near-perfect 1998 season. But, as Dallas Cowboys fans are learning as well (Romo going down last night was a painful metaphor for their season), the only things favorites on paper win is lining the bottom of a bonfire on a chilly November day.

Sure it's easy enough to say "Brett should have packed it in" while the team is 2-4, and like most NFL teams a few plays would have reversed that record (Purple Jesus unable to plunge into the end zone against Miami and extracting Favre's head from his ass during the Packers game). He's throwing the ball with the zip of a young quarterback while moving like one that is better suited in play $5 Euchre tournaments after steak night at the local VFW. It is my hope he puts aside this quest to "go out in a blaze of glory" *cue Bon Jovi guitar riff* and does what's best for the team. If Favre is healthy and believe he can do more than add another tick to that game-streak, by all means chuck all the TDs and INTs us fans can handle.

I'll be there to watch 2-14 or 12-4 with my jersey on (except apparently during the WPBT which I'll be donning some Green and Gold of the dreaded Green Bay Packers again due to a text message I believe was pre-written by The Wife just waiting for Favre to toss the last ball over Randy Moss' head) just make it entertaining Mr. Favre regardless of the outcome, I'm sure you will.

Tomorrow or Thursday I hope to have my post up about Surly Brewing's Darkness Day. Really, driving from New York to get a bottle of beer? They were not the only ones.

Your table is ready Mr. Pappagiorgio

2010-10-19T06:42:00.000-05:00

I want to be Rusty Griswold.

Photo cred: dvdbits.com

You wake up and roll over to the digital alarm clock that reads "TOO DAMN EARLY!" in bright red robotic font. The muscles don't move as well as they used to even after just strenuous activities such as "golf" and "drinking too much" on the weekend. Yes, a day of a 40 minute commute in heavy traffic with Mike and Mike giving point counter point commentary on the sports world where the athletes make your yearly salary while taking their morning piss. The work day isn't much better as you toil within your cube like a caged cat while the scent of catnip whistles by in the form of Krispy Kreme donuts that you can't touch because your supporting your wife's decision to lose a few pounds and just one frosting fleck would be the same as banging a mid-priced hooker in the Buffalo Wild Wings bathroom and her finding the used condom in your Docker's left front pocket.

You avoid the temptress while buzzsawing your way thru a dozen Blazin wings and buffalo chips with cheese and a tall Guinness and make it home in time to read a Scooby Doo adventure to the kids while the four year old manages to kick you in the balls three times because sitting still isn't in her vocabulary daddy. A deep sigh comes after picking up the Monday Night Football game in the third quarter as the Titans have already put this one to bed and your wife takes a quick sniff of your polo shirt to make sure hot sauce was the only thing that splattered on it.

But, there's hope Mr. Pappagiorgio. In several weeks there's a plane ticket with your given birth name on it for a round trip to VEGAS! Yes, you can grab a fake ID, lay $5 on a craps table, roll it up to several thousand impressing the Mirage enough to sport you a three bedroom suite with hot tub filled with European models and wise-guys who take you in as part of their crew without asking you to whack someone. Yes, you could be snorting coke off Paris Hilton's ass in the TAO VIP lounge while playing heads-up $10K/$20K with Doyle Brunson after getting backed by the New Jersey mafia. No Dora the Explorer to be found within a 500 mile radius of the Spearmint Rhino rooms with women of questionable morals grinding on YOU.

It's amazing that several millions Nick Pappagiorgio's visit Vegas every year toting $10 plastic replicas of the Eiffel Tower with dreams that they will be magically plucked from obscurity and placed into the life of a high-roller. But isn't that the whole point? The chase, the dream, the alternate reality. It's not a concrete goal like running a 10K, or losing 20 pounds, it's slipping thru Alice's Looking Glass and seeing a different side of life. Parents like myself love their kids and wouldn't give them up for all chips in Bobby's Room at the Bellagio. Nor their spouse for all the fake tits and perfectly toned legs that line up nightly at the strip clubs, because the wife gives you something that baby powder and glitter can not.

You can read Lost Vegas by Dr. Pauly and get a peek at the Vegas facade as the Nick Pappagiorgio's of the world pile into the World Series of Poker every year. Most will go home with pockets emptied by fellow card sharks and hooker bar denizens after rolling up the stakes and going to Vegas like Mike McD and getting busted on a two-outer by some 21 year old Scandi who's bankroll online would cover your yearly household expenses with enough left over to buy two brand new Benzs and slap a new roof on your 30 year old house.

Reality isn't why we go or get excited about Vegas, it's about the trip, the anticipation, and for this guy meeting with friends and co-workers in a way that degenerates should instead of on their respective couches wrapped in a lavender Snuggie with an internet connection. It is 50 days until I get to become Nick Pappagiorgio for five days straight and I can't wait.

Jenn Sterger's Meal Ticket

2010-10-13T06:56:00.000-05:00

"I slipped one past the goalie!".

Now that statement would wake up a few people if said in a bubble or shouted over the top of several conversations at a recent party like my annual Oktoberfest shindig that 30+ people plus their kids drop by for bier and spatzel. My super-sperm however is unable to even get out of the equipment room and is as cold as a puck in a bucket of ice after having my wang flipped about by the Lara Croft assistant while high on Xanax. When you're married you remember such things vividly as penis touching by female other than the one who yells at you to stop playing poker so late or ask why you bought the salmon instead of the rainbow trout because she had a coupon for buy one get one free. Now I doubt Brett Favre got his junk grabbed by one Jenn Sterger (as seen here when she was first "discovered" as a FSU student). Like my naughty nurse who was probably thinking about where to have a nice pasta bowl after work, Sterger got an upfront view of a married man's unit that was attached to a very popular football player. A player who many see as iconic but flawed which shows on the field with brillant performances and equally heart-breaking defeats. You could play the old "Wide World of Sports" music in the background while Vinko Bogataj takes a tumble off the ski ramp and Favre throws an interception late in the fourth quarter of a playoff game.

"To be great you take risk that no one else would", a quote stated in many different forms since the time of Socrates, most likely this wasn't our quarterback's line of thought while texting dong shots to a woman who has already lined up her second Playboy photo shoot (pending as I received an *ahem* email with pictures of a future shoot, it's NOT MINE I swear honey!). Not to be sexist and it will come off as such, but Sterger is not Millie "Auntie May" Babbs, 74, from Council Bluff, Iowa who enjoys a rousing game of a tournament Euchre after the Knights of Columbus Fish fry at the Christ the Redeemer church following five o'clock mass. Did Streger deserve unwarranted post patterns? No. Is there probably more background to this story that will never come out? Yes. As someone who used her road block sized chest to obtain jobs and cash do you think a pics of a man's member really upset her enough to wait TWO YEARS before talking about it after getting fired by Sport Illustrated and timing the coming out party for maximum *insert Bevis and Butthead laugh* exposure while the folk hero took the field as an opponent during a MONDAY NIGHT game against the team she represented at the time of the pictures.

But, but ,but she shouldn't be subjected to such barbarism! True. I'm not in the "she deserves" it for wearing such lack of loincloths. No woman should, but there's a place of common sense here that Sterger comes off as opportunistic in this case over and over. If she wanted to be taken seriously or was truly appalled like I'm sure the millions of Favre fans out there are, then those photos should have been produced days not years after receiving them. Because now it feels like a sports bettor who goes to the casino window after the game is done and says "I want my money because I totally would have bet on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to upset the Argonauts today". No statute of limitations? This wasn't rape, he didn't grope her after a Thursday practice, or try to dry hump her leg while doing body shot at Hooters, it was a picture. One that seemed to have stayed on her phone for two years... do you have many pics on your phone from two years ago?

Creditability of the witness is something lawyers use to shed their opponents in court. Flaunting your tits in public should not subject you to unwanted cock shots, but since there was no immediate reaction from yourself or public outcry of such phallus phunny talk and the timing of the story, why should we care?

Answer: let it go, move on, nothing some eye bleach won't solve, and hope the future Hall-of-Famer can throw on some pants and not throw a pick-six late in the game the next time.

Last to the party, still leaves with the hottie

2010-10-09T00:28:00.000-05:00

I final tabled a tourney last week (possibly, maybe, don't know) anyway after watching Lady Gaga for the 16th time today while eating a box of Cheerios with hopes of soaking up my party for one last night I fired up Full Tilt after a running my mother to Grand Casino Hinkley as an upcoming birthday present. Why yes I played slots next to women chain smoking Virgina Slims while wearing enough make-up to paint my son's second grade class as clowns for Halloween in a few weeks.

Won at slots, won with kids who enjoyed their $15/hour babysitter which included Skid Row's reminder that she ooooonly seventeen SEVENTEEN working the desk and asking if I'd like her to put my penis someplace around that severely stretched polo shirt. After remembering that my mom was five feet away and I'm married and don't wish to go to jail or be that creepy old guy who hits on high school chicks with their mothers sitting in close proximity, I took the wristband with my children's name on it without further incident as there was some gambling to do. Slots, slots, and more slots after seeing a sad dealer with no players at the Pai Gow table. Pai Gow normally a degenerate activity goes to level 23 if you play alone, besides my mom needed me to needle her by winning on every other spin while she plunked down twenty after twenty while chasing Mr. Cashman.

After padding the WPBT trip roll a bit, being disappointed that Ms. Jail Bait had been replaced by a cross between Velma and Grimace, and taking down the prime rib buffet that actually doesn't suck it was time to bring the kids home and straight to bed. "No, no booze tonight" said my body so I jumped into a play chip PLO8 game with Bluff's newest all-star KevMath and TheKeyLime. Needed little something, I spotted my new favorite $3.5K guarantee Rush PLO8 rebuy tourney in late regs. I almost missed the cut off but managed to plunk down two shiny dollars in time.

Three hours later I walked a lad through the ropes of making a three-way deal...

I wonder if this is the other side of variance that I haven't seen for a couple of years. Any how, happy. Much. Still not going to drink anything heavier than cherry flavored kool-aid.

Lady Gaga loves drunks

2010-10-08T10:27:00.000-05:00

Found my computer still on from last night/this morning: Me + Alcohol + $25 Rush PLO =

Where's the too drunk button? Kid's with the degen for the weekend and its freakin nice out so.... we're going to hit up the casino for my mom's birthday then some frolfing but we all know that Poker + Alcohol = the below video for me. 60 days till WPBT time to train those livers kiddos.

Now where are my orange wedges

2010-10-06T07:03:00.000-05:00

Up above a world so high, Orion's Belt held in the sky. And you're welcome for the earworm this morning. Last night with weather that could only be described as Utopian-like, low 70s, a breeze light enough to hear to make that Snuggle fabric softener teddy bear giggle, a man stepped onto a playing field. That man was me, the playing field was a jigsaw puzzle of sod with outlines of a soccer pitch and some worn down goals thrown behind two football goal posts.

Soccer was a sport that never caught on since its season meshed between the end of baseball and the start of hockey and perhaps due to the fact that my lanky body threw the ball much harder than I could kick one. Sure, deep in my parent's treasure trove of little Drizz baby and bath pictures are faded photographs of the moppy-hair-turn-sideways-and-he's-invisible elementary school kid in soccer gear with kids from the neighborhood that I could name to this day despite having trouble recalling one memorable moment playing the sport.

Last night wasn't about playing, it was my first of many parents vs. kids games of which I assume there's a graph of parent's age/ability that crosses over kid's age/ability for the perfect game when neither side has to "let" the other team win. Since my son is seven and three of the dads actually PLAY the game on a semi-regular basis complete with shin guards, 25 yard rockets, and touch passes light enough for the rank amateur in the Surly beer t-shirt to put one past the sprawling second grader. The parents played position while trying to spread the mob of purple jerseys with their first names imprinted on their backs.

Before the window's down ride to the field after a long day at the office and having to check my email at home, my son had to make a choice if he would like his mom or dad to join him. "Daddy's always super-busy and needs to work". Ouch. Instantly I was set back to 1985 where my father wouldn't get home until it was too dark yet again, but just in time for a meal because of working overtime so his kids could play those sports and we could continue our lower middle income existence with a few much appreciated extras. A lot of self-practice that involved a tennis racquet and wall, of course later on "self-practice" would be better served by a Penthouse or wavy porn on a 13 inch TV after the parents were asleep but that was far out of mind for the geeky kid who just wanted his father to play catch with. Before I took on going back to school full-time, before I took on the gig with PokerStarsBlog on the weekends and during its big tournament series, I sat down with my wife and kids and told them, no matter how tired I may be I will always make time for them. Period. Exclamation point. Signed, sealed, and delivered with a lisp.

My wife gracefully bowed out claiming a need to get ready for a trip (which she did, but not for two days), as I set down the laptop and peeled out of the work clothes for more suitable attire. The old man held himself well remembering how to curl a ball inside the posts, and make a few passes that would turn the head of Victoria Beckham (actually... she needs a steak dinner) and the rest of the WAGs of in my direction. That's right babe, bring that 70 pound body and 50 pounds of tits my way, I got orange slices, lines of blow, and 80's metal waiting in the truck. The boy's spirits seemed lifted with a genuine smile as we traveled back home in time for me to start up my new quarter school with the Wadsworth book of too many frickin English grammar rules that I'll never learn.

I may be busy. I may be tired. But, I've learned that if I don't spend my short time here enjoying all the people around my existence what's the point of sitting in front of that monitor at 11pm learning about literary canons and contra-accounts. None. There's no reason to work yourself silly for money unless you know the real value are those you spend the money with. I work full-time so we have a home/food/Sportscenter, I go to school make sure I keep my current and future work positions, I work at the PokerStarsBlog so I can see my friends both far and near along with some selfish reasons. And that's enough I's for the day because the Twins are on tonight and WE will be watching them take down the Yankees for once.

Jack Frost hiding behind the pine tree

2010-10-05T06:43:00.000-05:00

Growing up it was easy to justify calling October the beginning of winter. There was the infamous Halloween Blizzard in which a 17 year old me was working at the store which will probably become his only place of employment until its time to wear trifocials and oversized suspenders while flagging down the sympathic high school waitress at a $2/$4 table in Arizona. Shoveling snow for two hours AFTER my shift of stocking toilet paper and 12-packs of Coke products for the weekend dollar days sale, just to get my multi-colored 85' Nova hatchback on Bass Lake Road and home to two worried parents since the wonders of cell phones were left for those who earned slightly more than my $3.25 an hour. The beginning of the month however is best that this barren Nordic land can offer. A breeze with a slight nip tickles the senses just enough as the sun does its job by keeping you warm like a blanket during a bonfire. A last call for frolfing and taking the garbage out barefoot at anytime of the day.

October used to be a resting time, time to recoop from the summer's go-go-go schedule and September's month of work-work-work. But, now since some "friends" woke the sleeping academic bear inside of me, I am in my third quarter of studies which include an Introduction to Lit course. My previous exposure to such lofty writing was back in high school with an English teacher I admired but unfortunately his demands at the time and my already stacked class load which included HP Calculus and Physics along with the rigors of two-a-day baseball practice and part-time job, I took the easy way out and slid over to a different English course whose final consisted of watching Blade Runner as Harrison Ford battled the replicants.

This time there is no such option and nor would I take it, while I don't take my "writing" seriously, I do appreciate the chance to pick up a few pointers from those long dead and maybe mesh their works into my posting here for extra buttery flavor. And as the leaves fall on a daily basis and 15,347 trips to the county compost site become a weekly occurrance, its one more step in the direction of obtaining that degree. The steps are getting steeper at this point which more advanced Accounting terminology being introduced and again the Lit course with its 900+ page tome of Shakesphere, Keats, and Plath. All this as the breaths are starting to show during my son's soccer games and hot chocolate on the sidelines becomes more of a hand warmer than a belly one.

We'll see if the college dream implodes now that the subjects are brand spankin new and if the 35 year old freshman is up to the challenge of juggling school with family, work, and play. My only hope is to come out of this with a little more knowledge, little more tolerance, and a little more self-awareness in finding out just who am I besides some goofball that enjoys an adult beverage or seven at a card game.

Steps in Parenting: Try or try not

2010-09-29T06:34:00.000-05:00

The bargain bin alarm clock with the red tag of clearance half torn showed a blurry 4:37am as the clock puncher rolled out of bed to start the morning ritual. The schedule returned to watching Sportscenter as the best team in baseball can only draw 17,000 to their home games despite giving away tickets. But, on my mind wasn't the inability to avoid rather sizable obstructions like walls and refrigerators while trying to splice together a quick breakfast. It was another parenting lesson.

Two days ago while still hit hard by the moonlighting as a online poker reporter, there was some fatherly duties to attend to for the precious daughter. Dentist at 4pm proved to be a breeze as I answered questions as to why my eyes looked like I just ran over my dog and decided to knock away the pain by watching Lassie re-runs on Nick at Night while downing a handle of Captain. No, "just some extra work that I'm proud of doing and hope those who read it get some pleasure from the words" was my reply. After the teeth were whitened to an ivory sheen, the Spongebob Squarepants toothbrush acquired, and an extra prize gift grabbed from the long forgotten basket in which she took a piece of twine that was wrapped as a "present".

No idea, I don't claim to understand the female specie. Anyway, she happy with said rope, I was happy she didn't try to spit the industrial strength mint flavored toothpaste all over the 42" flat screen or jerk her head while the dentist was probing her mouth with a metal pick.

Happy would end about two hours later in an elementary school gym where after getting dressed up a leotard and tights it was time for dance class. A see-if-she-like-it type thing put on by the community as I still hold wishes she'll take up volleyball or softball and grab a college scholarship after being named to the all-state team three times (not likely but one can dream). For the first half she performed gracefully as I peered over the top of the new book I got from Lulu the other day. "The Chosen" by John Hartness with the picture of my favorite kilt-wearing blogger on the back, and I got to the part where Adam and Cain reconcile their differences over an AlCantHang-sized bender (side note: Happy Birthday to the original walking party himself) and are heading to New Orleans to confront Eve.

My son's PSP went down due to lack of batteries and the charger was left on the kitchen table as he pulled the book down to inform me that someone was being less than cooperative in the dance line. I didn't need to even look to figure out it would be my purple spandexed spawn refusing to getting up despite plees from the community-ed instructor who was probably getting $25 for putting on a fake smile for 50 minutes while dancing to Kidz Bops 14. Sure enough my daughter with a mix of my stubbornness and my wife's fierceness sat on her ass while the 14 other little girls twirled for their parents.

Since these was not a first offense, she knew what was going to happen. "Wyatt, go politely tell your sister to come here" I said in a calm voice that rivaled The Godfather's right before the violin music came out and someone got whacked. To my surprise she came right over, sparing her the potential embarrassment of going in front of all these parents while I tried to catch her in front of the room. I told her she knew what would happen, and to my surprise she didn't cry as I carried her to the car 15 minutes before schedule.

To tie in as I buckled her to her new big girl car seat booster, I looked back at the boy and told him about his "less than stellar" (copyright Joe Speaker) performance in his Saturday soccer game that made Manny Ramirez look like Pete Rose, if I saw him do the same thing in Tuesday's game I would walk across the pitch and carry him home as I have just about zero shame. Fast forward to yesterday's performance in which the team won their sixth straight game 7-0, he played with a extra kick, challenging balls and not giving up after the first try. Running up and down the field, abeit bunching up as mob-styled play prevails at this age, but showing speed versus the light gait of a snail shown on Saturday.

Nothing makes a parent more proud of their offspring to see them try. Some may force their children to "be the best", and forget those little legs may not have the genetics to become the next AAU all-star, but to allow them to smile and recap the shot on goal that missed by a time zone but to someone who hasn't scored all season got that chance, was a boost to a kid normally regulated to video games. Perhaps this is something to build on, a reason to go outside and practice a bit with the under-coordinated father and maybe build some skills.

Even if he doesn't, he made a dad proud. Now, I just need to figure out the other one...

Coming out of my WCOOP shelter

2010-09-28T07:42:00.000-05:00

**Warning this gets rambling and make no sense, much like Paris Hilton's existance or my daughter's tantrum at dance class last night which was trigger by UV40 rays and lack of gummi bears in the school's vending machines**

Returning to normalcy.

Or what I once thought as normal, the shower, breakfast, 9 to 5 job, the cube, commute, dinner, ball game, kids, bed. Many stick themselves on this wheel and don't stop to break it enough until the wheel spins too fast and their lives become a really boring reality show that would get worse ratings than a Tiger Woods talk show on fidelity. Every September for the past three years, I have been invited to enjoy sleep deprivation, breakfast at two in the afternoon, and a break in my "normal" routine while playing the part of online chronicler for the PokerStarsBlog along side some of the best in the business (Otis, Dr. Pauly, Change100, Shamus, Jen Newell, F-Train, and a computer program called Kevmath who will take over the world by 2014 or at least break the record for most posts at 2+2 and Twitter).

On most nights/mornings last week I sat on my couch drafting about the latest tournament and trying to find a little something interesting about its players. One was quite easy when Team PokerStars pro Jason Mercier used full-on aggression plus a little run-good at a final table to take down his first WCOOP bracelet. It gave a little something extra to root for going into the wee-hours of the morning. Unlike Otis and Change100 who had to battle labor disputes and roaming dogs on the way to work in Buenos Aires, I just had to pack up the kids, replenish my supply of Wheat Thins or Triscuits, and battle dozing off before the six a.m.final tables hit.

But it wasn't about the poker, it wasn't about the millions being thrown around during the WCOOP or the extra paycheck that will be redistributed in Las Vegas over at Cheetah's, Gold Coast's Pai Gow pit, and most likely the Geisha Bar at Imperial Palace during the WPBT in December (you have signed up for the Up For Poker last longer challenge correct??? Free money people, and you can laugh at G-Rob after busting him!!). No, working the WCOOP is about friendship, its about stepping outside the comfort zone, it's about being called upon to do something that isn't drafted in some dusty 15 volume tome of corporate suck. Here's the story, go write it. That's it (and of course there is some structure but mostly to get the maximum amount of readership and so the good writers of the blog have future work). Unlike every job I've ever held from planting trees at parks, to frying frozen tacos at Jack-in-the-Box, to sitting in a secluded mail room with millions of invoices everything had structure with no sense of creativity. No injecting sour cream in the tacos to make them taste better, or finding a new filing system for the invoice, just do your job like a robot and move on. Granted my career and schooling choice of becoming an Accountant frowns upon "creativity" as seen when Accountants *ahem* use there skill to "find" and "report" debits and credits in ways GAAP does not intend. Nonetheless, I enjoy finding the numbers and putting the in the right places, much like a final table story at the PokerStarsBlog, I have been proud to be a part of the team for the past three years.

The artist formally known as Poker Shrink, now just "The Shrink" talked about "normal" in a blog post that smacked me a bit as I overwork myself to retain my little world of normal, but instead of the upper-middle income family he speaks about in the post "Dis-ease", my world of going back to school full-time while holding down a full-time job, two kids with multiple activities, a wife, and a part-time job that keeps me glued together, I work hard just to survive. There are no real "extras" except the occasional jaunt to meet up with my dearest friends and authors across the nation. Whether it be in Las Vegas, G-Vegas, Chicago, or a $100 cab ride to Philly's airport while still trying to figure out why I craved a TastyKake and a WaWa sandwich, these things keep me "normal". A little hip check to the routine keeps everyone fresh, and without the above, I would sink into the same abyss my co-workers at my "normal" job suffer. They are set in their ways, counting the days to retirement, some even with a little clock that has five years, 345 days, 21 hours and 15 mintues on it.

Why?

Sure they're older but why live to die? Despite the shit hitting the fan yesterday during 24 hours of nothing going right including flushing half of my online bankroll in the toilet, paying for a $48 slab of lasagna then blowing up with the wife as she picked it up when I explained I ordered the single serving and she got the wrong order, then having both kids decide to mimic daddy's deaf ears and filter only for sentences containing: "treat", "play", "movie". My mind went spinning for most of Sunday afternoon into Monday, but I finished up the final write up around 8:30am Monday morning, calmly put together a skillet (no, THAT kind of skillet) and let the crazy wash off before returning to "normal" today.

Hugs were given, invoice for the work sent in, and Excel spreadsheets about to filled by the college student who is now done with 2/11 quarters from fulfilling a hole that I never wanted to admit was there. The degree won't make me "normal" but it will push me to continue being weird by trying something new and giving a reason to not settle for my present cube.

Up for Poker - Luckbox Challenge Act II

2010-09-14T07:08:00.000-05:00

Ok, ten or twenty people who drop by my little place here. It's a far reach when this used to be a poker blog that morphed into a personal diary/poker/parenting place to vent. The WPBT Winter Classic is kicking off it's seventh (?!?!!?!?) year of existance with a huge bang. No, some lucky blogger is not getting married way above their means again (looking at you Mr. Buddy Dank).

Instead Otis, CJ, and G-Rob the self-proclaimed Frolf champion of the G-Vegas upper east side past McDonald's but not before Barley's Taproom have put together the biggest promotion yet for our still growing community. Yes, poker is a fad and that fad has faded, except that it hasn't, and barring some heavy DOJ action between now and December, let us welcome the second edition of the Up for Poker/Luckbox Challenge!

You and two other degenerates. Yes, degenerates, we don't take kindly to straight laced white-collar folk around here, leave that shit at home to be a good parent or spouse, come to Vegas to punish your liver and laugh with friends without volume/social graces control. PokerStars despite the WCOOP raging on (I'm on for Friday's O8 tourney and working nightly (morningly?) next week, got together a package for us scribes of the four suits that will have me foregoing any prop bets that involve myself staying awake for 48 hours in Vegas. Other prop bets on bar games will be gladly accepted.

$3,000 prize pool for a team of three to enter (by shipping CJ the cash or PokerStars transfer). My team is pretty much set so you will not have the pleasure of me finishing second-to-last unless you a) like the Vikings and can name at least five Vikings quarterbacks not named Favre (my favorite will always be "Touchdown" Tommy Kramer) b) had the pleasure of going to work while its -10 or below for a solid two weeks c) plan on tilting Yankees fans when we win the World Series this year!

Minnesota homer much? Yes. It's who I am, but I still refuse to eat lutefisk or tell an Ole and Sven joke.

$500 Hammer Challenge! Still play Grubby's hammer like it's 2006? Get rewarded! $50 to the first POST-FLOP hammers to take down a pot. This should lead to some interesting first and second blind level post-flop play which will probably get someone Pauly's copy of Gigli. If you find me sober, please be kind and order me a wine (or a Cap'n Coke is always accepted). I play sober poker like Paris Hilton's cocaine stash and legs, open for all to see.

O.G. challenge - there were 14 original players in the WPBT at Sam's Town, some of which arrived like the rock stars they are in a limo. Knock them out, buy them a drink, tell them to peddle their segway ala Tony G outta here, and take their trinket to CJ in exchange for some more cash.

It's 85 days to my birthday when I touchdown in McCarran that Wednesday and hopefully retain lifeforces without ending up in the Nevada desert as another sad sap tale of degeneracy gone wrong.

I don't know who will be there for birthday shots, I don't know where I'll end up doing my usual disappering act, but come noon on December 11th at the very classy Aria poker room, my presence will be with friends who have given me more than they'll ever know. Check out April's WPBT facebook page for more details on the tourney and buy your damn ticket already!

Accounting for thongs

2010-09-10T07:04:00.000-05:00

Why I'm writing a mere four hours after finishing up my first leg of ten recaps for the 2010 WCOOP at PokerStarsBlog is beyond me. Something piqued my interest while getting gas before work and before long I drafted the bestest blog post EVAR!

Yeah, must like my dreams where I'm a stallion in bed listening to Anna Paquin and Jessica Biel scream out my online name and take pots off name branded poker pros half-crocked on Captain and Coke in Bobby's Room at the Belliagio, the post sounded better as the meter on the pump hit north of $40.00 and the cashier who was probably as awake as I, reminded me to pay inside. But, across two islands of gas pumps was a guy in a non-descript car with overalls and a patch with his name on it. It said "Steve" in red stitching as he probably worked in the nearby industrial park specializing in putting things together or repairing them for folks like myself who have a comparable power tool dexterity of a zebra. Steve drove off while I purchased a much needed energy drink after finishing up this morning's Event #13 final table wrap and heading in for a full day at the office with Event #16 awaiting me when I return home in ten hours.

It hit me after seeing Steve as to why I returned to school. More money from a better job sounds a like a cop-out and it is. Money should never been someone's driver for lofty aspirations, unless you're a poker player outside of a friendly home thus money is the only reason you should be sitting down. No, an enlightened bank account didn't get me to go back and learn how to separate partnership's capital accounts with salary and interest when one partner puts up X amount of money and the other puts up Y amount (which is less than X) while Mr. X works 50 hours per week at the business and Mr. Y spends more time at the local rub and tug while claiming to be networking.

Sadly, it was not for my family and friends. As I give ever little ounce of myself to my two kids and wife along with dear friends who's followed my sappy tale of woe here for nearly six years, there a little piece of me that is finishing up quarter two of 11 towards my bachelor's.

I want to be able to do something.

Steve the mechanic can probably hop under a car or machine press and fix the problem because of past knowledge and knowhow. I can tell you in under four seconds how many outs you have with three board cards and if the guy in the nine seat is drunk enough to call you. I can whip up a simple database or fancy spreadsheet, maybe make a few people laugh with attempts of humor and self-pity while having the writing amplitude of a half eaten Pringle. No, I wanted more. And I feel selfish now that it took Steve to make me realize why I'm lugging around those textbooks, staying up late to complete computer lab assignment when my head should be next to my wife's.

I want people to come to me for help, and I want to be able to sit down with a tax return, or ledger and just let the number flow much like my words seem to do in satisfactory ways while writing about poker. Note, I LOVE writing about poker, I LOVE the game and will never lose that, but becoming an Accountant or at the very least having an accounting degree means the world to me. Laugh if you will, accounting is a noble profession in my mind, but it's not going to get the ladies La Perla lacy underthings saturated (I'd plug in "moist panties" here but a good friend of mine says those are the two worst words in the English language). Some people were built to inspire, others to annoy, and me, I just want to do. I want to be Steve, minus the grease, better pay, and some stock options so I can retire before my Viagra years kick in.

Nine quarters from now we'll see if that pocket protector with my name etched in midnight blue is waiting for me.