Truckin'

Truckin’ new issue is out – check out some work by some of my favorite writers and my new story as well! Pauly is an internet mogul.

1. Memories in a Box by Tenzin McGrupp The emotional weight of all those photographs combined would equal forty thousand elephants. No person is strong enough to walk through life with such a cumbersome burden on their shoulders... More

2. The Returning by Mella The room seemed larger at night. The corners receded into black, the walls pressed back by shadows, everything coated in a thin veil of blue-gray moonlight. It spilled in through the sheer curtain, flooding the wooden floor. The air was thick, and it smelled like us; sex and sleep... More

3. Grits by Falstaff when you're drunk, fearless and hungry, you'll go places where no Yankee has ever gone before, the Birmingham Waffle House at 3AM. And trust me, in Birmingham, being from North Carolina marks me as a Yankee... More

4. JetBlue Judy Greer by Derek McGrupp As I waited at the gate to board my return flight to New York City, I noticed this girl who looked very familiar to me. I couldn't figure out who she was. It was killing me. Then it hit me. She was an actress... More

5. Flying Shotgun by Matt Robertson I begin screaming and this seems to agitate the bird who in turn begins flapping harder, slapping the side of my face, and screeching louder. I am swerving all over the road at this point... More

6. Rain by Sean A. Donahue I heard the fire trucks roll as the lightning flashed and as the thunder rolled across the plains of West Texas, I found myself loving listening to the rain again... More

Tags: WPBT, truckin'

I missed the DADI and didn't get shot in the process

So I didn’t play the DADI last night. Not that I have anything against rebuys, I just didn’t play. I also didn’t play the Mansion poker freeroll set up for folks on pocktfives.com that were playing the $1 rebuy when it crashed last week. You wanna talk about retarded? Think $1 rebuy tourney.

But anyway, I’m at work around mid-afternoon working on my third revision of a church lighting design, when I get a text message inviting me to a cash game in a rental house about 45 minutes from my house. I’d played there once before and was pretty sure they wanted me to come back, since I dropped $300 in less than 2 hours on my last visit. Queens just no good sometimes.

So I got permission from Suzy, which was no mean feat given the fact that Tuesday she got her walking cast on. Yeppers, my wife is now sporting a hot pink plaster cast for the next 3-6 weeks to correct her plantar fasciaitis. You listening, Mean Gene? Get that shit taken care of or it will come back to bite you in the ass. Or arch, more precisely. But anyway.

So I cruise in and there’s a pretty brand new cast of characters. The only one I recognized when I landed was Danny, the guy who runs the game. He’s a damn nice guy, looks like he bench-presses VW Bugs as a warm-up to his real workout. There were several young guys, including one with a shitload of tattoos and some brief fungus sprouting from his chin and lips. He might want to consider shaving until puberty really sets in, but that’s his call I suppose. An old guy named Willie and a young kid who really didn’t look old enough to drive after dark were playing heads-up for $100 a match when I got there, just killing time until everybody arrived. Kid looked like he had some game, and Willie looked like he had some gamble, so they were pretty evenly matched. They split two games and then we had enough to start a game.

This is a pretty good game, if a touch expensive. It’s standard $1/2 no limit, with 10% rake, no cap. They didn’t always take the full rake they could, I don’t think I ever saw the dealer take more than $5 for a rake, so I had no complaints. They provide drinks and food, and a pretty good dealer. Courtney is certainly better than the Luxor dealers I had to contend with my last day in Vegas. She played as well as dealt, since the game was a little short, but made it known to all the players when they came in what was going on. The only downside to that is that she’s good, so I tried to avoid getting in big pots with her.

It’s a pretty loose game, $12 is pretty much a standard raise. There’s no max buy-in, but no one bought in for more than $200. A couple of poor guys were the table ATMs, rebuying $50 at a time, sitting for 3-4 hands, busting, walking for a hand and then rebuying. Nothing really eventful for me for most of the night. KK no good, folded on the river to a tight player who I was sure was ahead of my when we checked around on the turn. He showed me that he filled up on the turn when another player paid him off.

Dropped QQ in a hand where Courtney had KK, the tattooed kid had JJ, Jason (one of the other guys that runs the game) had 88 and the flop came down A J 8 rainbow. Courtney and I ran away, Tattoo had folded to Courtney’s $50 re-raise preflop, and Jason showed his 88 when we rabbit-hunted. He woulda made quads on the river. I wasn’t sticking around that long. 88 v. JJ v. QQ v. KK. Live poker is so rigged.

Getting close to time to check out I was down about $50 and looked down at AA. Figured it was close to time to end it anyway, so I re-raised Danny’s $12 preflop to $25. Flop comes down K Q rag rainbow. I check, he bets out $50. I push my remaining $116 into the pot, making him pretty much pot committed for the $66 call. He doesn’t improve so my AA holds up against his KJs. Pretty much the perfect flop and flop action for my hand, so I was happy camper. Cashed out up $125 for the night and drove home, knowing I was gonna be draggin’ ass all day today. I was right. Ass is definitely draggin’. But with a little bonus whoring and that $125, the bankroll is back to pre-Vegas levels. I broke even with my play out there, but there were some withdrawals from bankroll to cover real life expenses, so I had a little dip coming home.

Now I need to assess my bankroll goals for the year and what I want out of poker. Right now what I want is a nice set of real clay chips for my home game, so that may be the next thing. I would like to get the ‘roll up to $3K so I could feel a little more comfortable playing NL100 and 3/6 Limit, and I’m only about $500 from there, so maybe those are the two things I’ll shoot for in the short term. Long term I want to build up enough to afford to go back to Vegas in December and party with my friends, so that’ll be the longer term goal, and I figure I need about another $1500 on top of gambooooling money for that. A little writing, a little real poker play and I should be there no problem.

The iTunes Gift card has been successfully spent

Because enquiring minds probably don’t really give a shit, here’s the list of what I bought with my $50 in free iTunes boogie. Thanks for all the suggestions, I actually listened to most of you.

Metallica – Enter Sandman
Metallica – Nothing Else Matters
Metallica – Turn the Page
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Tuesday’s Gone
Lynyrd Skynryd – Ballad of Curtis Loew
The Raconteurs – Hands
The Raconteurs – Store Bought Bones
The Raconteurs – Steady as She Goes
The Allman Brothers Band - Jessica (live)
The Allman Brothers Band - Melissa
The Widow – The Mars Volta
The Chemical Brothers – Block Rockin’ Beats
The Chemical Brothers – Setting Sun
The Crystal Method – Keep Hope Alive
The Crystal Method – Trip Like I Do
The Crystal Method – Busy Child
Oakenfold – Starry Eyed Surprise
Moby – Honey
Moby – Porcelain
Moby – Bodyrock
Moby – South Side
Moby – Why Does my Heart Feel so Bad?
Moby – Natural Blues
Elvis – A Little Less Conversation (JXL Remix)
Sean Paul – Temperature (I have no idea what he is saying)
Sublime – What I got
Phil Collins – Against all Odds (shut up)
Panic! At the Disco – I write Sins not Tragedies
Collective Soul - Shine (Acoustic)
All-American Rejects – Dirty Little Secret
All-America Rejects – Move Along
Sarah McLachlan – Angel (acoustic)
Cyndi Lauper – All Through the Night (Acoustic w/Shaggy) (again, shut up)
Cyndi Lauper – Time After Time (Acoustic w/Sarah McLachlan)
Cyndi Lauper – True Colors (acoustic)
Jeff Beck & Rod Stewart – People Get Ready
Gram Parsons – Return of the Grievous Angel
Gram Parsons - $1,000 Wedding
Enter the Haggis – No More Stones
Lit – My Own Worst Enemy
Jamie Cullum – Twenty Zero Five Live (Album)
Enter the Haggis – Lancaster Gate
Enter the Haggis – Long Way Home
The Fray – Over my Head
John Williams – Theme from Superman
The Fray – How to Save a Life (live)

Fairly eclectic I think, with a little bit of candy-ass pop thrown in. If you’ve never listened to Enter the Haggis, definitely check out Lancaster Gate, it’s an awesome Celtic rocker. Some people think 7:30 AM is too early for bagpipes and kick drums. If you’re one of them, this might not be the boogie for you.

My geek card is revoked, I think

I had to Google Jonathan Frakes after watching Season One of Roswell. Couldn’t for the life of me figure out who the fuck he was.

Really, Otis, crayons?

I just watched the video of Otis eating 2 Keno crayons for $400. I'm taking suggestions for bizarro foodstuffs and monetary amounts to carry down to G-Vegas next time I go. If Otis will eat crayons for $400, imagine what TeamScottSmith would do for $50? Cause them Smith boys is crazy.

I played a little poker last night. A very little. Like 30 minutes for +$20. I'll take it. It beats the shit out of the -$300 I was for the previous two nights. I took a shot at a NL200 table on Royal Vegas, and that didn't go well. It's not that the play was one whit better than the NL25 tables on Stars, just that, like Alan Rickman said in the really bad Robin Hood flick "It's dull, you twit, it'll hurt more!" Having a guy draw out with inappropriate odds to river his 4-flush hurts more when it costs you $200 than when it costs you $25.

Speaking of hurting more - sites that have mandatory bonuses that you don't ask for and must clear before making any withdrawals can absolutely suck me. I stuck $200 in Royal Vegas to clear a PokerSavvy Bonus (I do still like those guys, Matt's taken pretty good care of me, but I'm almost out of bonuses that I can clear since I have accounts with most rooms) and they gave me a $100 instant bonus. Catch is that I have to play 1,000 hands to clear the bonus. OK, no big deal, I'll do my PokerSavvy bonus and then leave, abandoning my other $100. Nope. Not so f'n much. They've reversed my cashouts twice now, telling me I have to play their 1,000 hands before I can cash anything out. So you can pretty well believe that once I've played my other 500 hands that they can suck me and I'll yank my cash so fast it'll make their head spin. I won't be returning to Royal Vegas, to put it mildly.

The only consolation is I'm winning just a little bit on there, so it's not unprofitable to play out my requirements.

I used up my iTunes gift card last night, thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions. I'll put together a list a bit later of what I actually bought with it, so you can see which of your suggestions I took and which ones I ignored. BadBlood must prepare for disappointment, but just to prove I'm not a total musical pussy, I did buy a bunch of Metallica, since their catalog is finally available on iTunes.

Tags: music, poker, pokersavvy

Another Charity Thing - Help us Fight Cancer

After you've gone to the For Peyton website and bid on the Ebay stuff, go to this site and help my office raise money for cancer and cancer research.

For the record, my fat ass is NOT riding in this 24-hour bike ride thing. I'm giving money. That's how I roll. On the non-exercising tip. Yo.

EDIT - Donkeypuncher asks how much toget me on a bike - on video. A grand. You guys come up with $1,000 and I promise to ride at least one 3-mile lap and get video of the ri-donk-ulously hot, sweaty, unattractive experience for all of you.

Suggestions wanted

So I got a $50 iTunes gift certificate from Pokersavvy, because Matt that runs the joint is a stand-up guy and looks out for me. But I have most of the boogie that I want, so I'm looking for suggestions.

I just got a $25 iTunes gift card last week and used it to buy the new Darrell Scott album (highly recommended), the first Old Crow Medicine Show album (also smoking) and some singles from Miles Davis and My Morning Jacket after reading Tony's blog last week.

So what's out there that's cool? I like lots of bluegrass, Americana, singer-songwriter stuff, old hair bands, old punk, old-school hip hop, basically anything. So hit me with some songs or albums that you think are must-haves, and I'll let you know in a bit what I get with my $50 worth of boogie.

No, really, I mean it.

Upon consideration of the current state of affairs in our country, and the dismal outlook for presidential candidates from both parties in the upcoming 2008 presidential election, and upon reading the requirements for serving as President of the United States of America, I have decided to enter the race to be the Republican Party’s candidate for the next President of the United States.

No really, I’m running for President. I’ve got less than a year before things really start to kick off in the campaign front, so I’m currently soliciting for a campaign manager. Preferably someone with a clue about political campaigns. I’m sorely lacking in that department.

I have decided to run for several reasons. Firstly I have no faith in anyone who has announced their intentions to run for President so far, nor do I have any faith in the current leadership of either party to run our country any more effectively than it has been run in the past five years.  Secondly, I will be 35 by November of 2008, I am a native citizen of the US and it’s my right to do so. Thirdly, I think it would be nice if the leader of the country was someone who actually lived like a normal person for a change. Finally, unlike most of our previous presidents, it would actually be a significant increase in salary for me.

I have chosen the Republican Party for very specific reasons. I have always been a registered Independent voter, leaving myself the freedom to vote in any primary I choose, usually to vote against a candidate that  I felt could be particularly harmful to my city’s government were he or she to be elected. I believe in the tenets of the real Republican Party, not the fascist neo-conservatives that have hijacked the party in recent years. I am in favor of small government and individual freedoms. I am in favor of fiscal responsibility. I am in favor of individual liberty without the fear of the government sticking their nose in the business of grownups who aren’t hurting anyone.

Here are some hot-button issues that will make large numbers of people unhappy with me.

1. I am not going to have an abortion. My opinions stop there. Since I personally will not have one, I will not legislate them.


2. I am married, and I am not gay. I do however feel that all people should suffer equally, so I am in support of gay marriage. Why should straight people be the only ones miserable?


3. I am in favor of gun control. Handguns really only exist to kill people, so if normal people own things that only exist to kill people, then things like trigger locks should be mandatory so kids can’t kill people.


4. I support our troops in Iraq. I also think they should not have been sent to Iraq in the first place and would like to pursue bringing them home as quickly as possible.


5. I think the current system of taxation is stupid and needs to be fixed. This will have to be done by people smarter than me, but I’m willing to hire them to do it.

Basically, my belief is that all common sense has left our government in favor of partisan politics and elitist corporate agendas. I would instill some common sense back into our government, along with a healthy sense of humor. After all, can’t you just see me referring to the French Prime Minister as a cheese-eating surrender monkey at a G8 summit? My platform consists of this statement – Vote for me, because it’s no stupider than anyone else elected in recent history!

Only because Tripjax said so...

And I'm a lemming.

Mac Poker

Do some good, you degenerate!

That Bobby Bracelet is quite the guy. He's gone and set up a whole bunch of
new items to be auctioned. It won't stop there, either. Look for additions
like 2 tickets to Howard and Suzie Lederer's WSOP party, a signed cowboy hat
by Kenna James, Matt Savage running your home game, Greg Raymer signed a fossil
for some lucky bidder, and even more!

Oh yeah, there will be a poker table auctioned off thanks to Bluff Magazine.
It will be signed by every pro that Gavin, Spaceman, and Bluff staff can muster.
It'll also be signed by the brand spanking new WSOP Main Event Champion. Then
of course, Bobby Bracelet will be auctioning that off to one lucky bastard.
Better bring your checkbook for that one though, cause it'll go for over 10k.

Here is a rundown of the stuff you will soon find on Ebay and ready for your
bids. And by "soon" I mean later today, July 19th.



Two tickets to the Full Tilt Poker Gala Event at the WSOP! There are two
tickets available, each one is allowed to bring a guest. This is up already
and will end in 5 days because the event is July 26th. It's at Pure nightclub
in Caesar's. Check it out, make a bid, meet and marry a celebrity.

LATE ADDITION!

One lucky sob and a guest have a chance to attend Howard and Suzie Lederer's
(and Steve Zolotow's) 4th Annual WSOB and Karaoke Championship. Thursday July
27th, from 6pm - ??? at a restaurant off the strip. Many of the top pros will
be there, and you never know, possibly a celebrity or two. I can't think of much
that would be more entertaining than seeing somebody like Phil Hellmuth belting
out Endless love.

Gavin Smith, poker professional and all around great guy, has the tickets and
we will get the winning bidder in touch with him to ensure the tickets are in
your hand in time.

(Note: this does not mean to imply that Phil Hellmuth will be there.)
(Also: WSOB apparently stands for World Series of Beer. NICE!)



Steve Zolotow has donated a night out at one of his favorite hangouts, a place
called Nice Guy Eddie's in New York. Dinner for two, drinks, and whatever sort
of poker conversation you'd like to have. Ask questions, listen to stories, get
some tips and pointers, or just shoot the breeze. He's a great guy that truly
enjoys conversations on a variety of topics.




Robert Mizrachi has offered a 2 Hour Lesson. This will be by phone unless by
some chance you can work out a time and place that works for him. With tourneys
and travel, chances are you'll have to settle for a phone lesson, but you never
know. Doesn't hurt to ask.



Annie Duke sent two signed copies of her book along with 3 DVD's. They were split
up into two packages. The first is the hardcover edition with the advanced secrets
DVD, while the other is the paperback version with two DVD's, one for beginners and
one for women.



Mike Krzyzewski signed a Duke hat. Bobby Bracelet tells me it has taken every
ounce of his will not to stomp it into oblivion before setting it on fire. If
you're a fan, it's a great Nike fitted hat. If you aren't, buy it for charity
and do exactly as Bobby would do in hopes it will work like voodoo on Duke's
chances next season.

There is another Card Player package like last time, only this time we have the
ability to also add a one year subscription to Card Player Magazine.

There is another Phil Hellmuth DVD package similar to last time, though it will
also be joined by a one year subscription to Card Player Magazine.

Go To For Peyton and keep in eye on these items. Should be up today.