There.
All better.
When I started this blog back in the days when bloggers where no more than people who would trade hand histories while attempting to beat the quarter/half-dollar games at 888.Poker and PartyPoker, I never intended to spill out my live story here. Instead this became a place of solitude, a place to spill my burdens and a place to meet friends.
Those friends have done some amazing things lately and I was reminded quickly last night after putting the kids to bed and learning how to properly book a discounted notes receivable with a maturity date beyond one year. College student at 35?!? I had thought I was done years ago, set into my pigeon hole at the big bullseye, content with a marriage that wasn’t enjoyed but got the job done, and two kids that I was more concerned about versus getting to meet them and enjoy their presence.
I had stopped living.
But this little space and the people who still drop by despite Google’s iron curtain cloaking me from their massive search engine, saved me from putting my life in auto-drive and for that I thank YOU. As noted above my friends have pushed their lives forward and put a lot of their soul out for anyone to see in book form:
The Chosen by John Hartness
My original partner in crime at the PokerStarsBlog back in August 2008. We traded sanity and sleep to stay up late on Sunday nights/Monday mornings after Otis dropped in to offer us final table recaps of PokerStars’ biggest Sunday Major moving on to doing World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), Spring Championship of Online Poker, and Sunday Warm-up after Jen Newell thankfully came into the mix from the opposite coast to allow for some sleep before a ten-hour day of spreadsheets and databases. My hopes of the success of his book mirror his drive to get this work published (my long overdue purchase was made this morning, hopefully gets here before Labor Day).
Look back here for a review of the book in the next couple of weeks. I may even find a proper kilt to wear while enjoying the book my cabin's deck.
Lost Vegas by Pauly McGuire
As I wrote on Lulu.com:
“As the people who wrote the forewords state, if you have never met Paul McGuire one would think his vivid stories from the World Series of Poker, Phish concerts, strip clubs and Las Vegas in general are fiction. Far from the truth. As the man who stepped away from a life chained to an Armani suit working on Wall Street and stable paycheck to becoming his own boss and in charge of his own destiny Lost Vegas gives a small glimpse of that life that many of us 9 to 5'ers would gladly trade in our mini-vans for. Mixing degeneracy and philosophical debates is not for the weak, and Pauly brings it every page with existentialist musings from chatting shop with his fellow overworked poker writers to the afternoon shift strippers who can't kick their adderall addictions. If you ever wanted a peak behind the Belliago fountains, Cirque du Soleil shows, and 5-star restaurants, here's your chance to see Vegas in a different light. You won't regret your purchase.”
Pauly is one-of-kind despite that New York Yankees cap on his head. I had never met someone who lives the moment more than him and inspired me to do the same after my two-wheeled epiphany of sorts. And if you want insight into how Pauly became one of the most respected writers (not just poker) came to be, along with his journey for the past five years grab a copy of the book and dig in. Honestly, I wanted some more Phish concert stories despite never hearing a single song simply from reading his personal site Tao of Pauly.
A true friend. And whatever part of my readership here does not know about Doc’s ability to mix dead philosophers musings and Paris Hilton into a poem-like sentences should do themselves a favor and start reading both the book and the blogs (in that order).
