A good rant on the current poker craze (as well as scrapbooking :-)) from "You Are Dumb." via Party Poker Blogs.

As much as I can sit for hours watching televised Hold `Em (which I would have thought would hold as much interest for me as watching paint dry), I tend to agree that the fad has gotten totally out of hand, with celebrities who apparently have never picked up a card playing like idiots in front of the camera*. What it most reminds me of is the dot.com boom, where everyone was talking about the stock market. If I went to a party, relatives would button-hole me and bore me to tears with their latest trades. Bartenders would pump me for stock tips because I was attending a tech trade show. Secretaries (sorry, admin. assistants) would spend hours in front of the screen, monitoring the performance of their 401ks.

Now when I go to family parties, the next generation, most of whom are in college, talk poker endlessly. Out of the ol' farts generation, I'm the only one (so far) who plays Hold `Em, giving me some good moments as their parents try to figure out what we're talking about. "You play poker on-line, Fred? Not for money?"

* speaking of Celebrity Poker Showdown, who is more annoying, the flaming, amazingly unfunny Dave Foley or the sepuchral, hollow-laughing Phil Gordon? Possibly the worse pairing since Merv Griffin and Arthur Treacher.

This would be the perfect birthday present for my buddy, Jill, the "Chuck Taylor All Star Hi Top John Lennon Peace" shoe.

Happy paraskevidekatriaphobia day (which is not the fear of small slender long-tailed parrots). Let's be careful out there today, okay?

It's a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do
Hey, who's in charge here?
It's a jungle out there
Poison in the very air we breathe
Do you know what's in the water that you drink?
Well I do, and it's amazing
People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don't think so
It's a jungle out there

The theme from Monk: "It's a Jungle Out There" -- by Randy Newman

The Standby Stooge: Paul "Mousie" Garner dies. via Mark Evanier's "News from ME"

My first comment: "Ignatious" who runs the mighty-fine "Party Poker Blogs" aka "Guinness and Poker" site, was kind enough to drop by and compliment the picture of Curly fending off the deer. As he notes in an August 9th post, his site is a major productivity-buster and well worth the visit.

Last of the rehash from the old "cellar door" Everything I said originally...

"You just have to admire Patrick Farley. His "delta thrives: set the control for the heart of the sun" online comic with a 3.5 mb 40,000 pixels wide page violates almost every rule of Web design ever propounded ... yet it's one of the best things I've ever seen.

Would that more people would just stop worrying about the "right" way of doing things."

...still holds true. Do not attempt this link without broadband, kids.

Bennet's "King of a Small World" reminded how much I liked Jim McManus' article "Fortune's Smile", a hard-to-read version of which can be found here. You'd be better off buying "The Best American Sports Writing 2001" anthology where the article (originally published in Harper's) appears, a collection I highly recommend even for those not interested in sports writing, by the way.

McManus' book "Positively Fifth Street", was unfortunately not half as good as the article, I think mostly due to his introducing a parallel storyline on the murder trial of Ted Binion. I think he would have been better off concentrating on the World Series of Poker, but perhaps he (or an editor) thought poker would only have a limited audience. As it turned out, I suspect that the elegance of "Fortune's Smile" introduced many people to Texas Hold `Em, me among them. McManus, an amateur player, entered the World Series of Poker, played against some of the toughest players in the world, and came out winning more than a quarter million dollars.

If you like"Fortune's Smile" and/or "Positively Fifth Street" , check out an unaired adaptation on the "This American Life" site that's also worth a read, an interview with McManus at PokerPages, and an article by McManus on playing in the Poker Million Tournament, "Feeling It on Man." McManus would later recycle "Feeling It..." into an Esquire article (registration required), "Further Adventures in Poker", which should be read in conjunction with "Fortune's Smile" as the flip side of poker luck...

"I hocked up a chunk of acid-washed prawn from the back of my right nasal passage, wrangled it onto my tongue. It was something, all right: the booby prize for the first Poker Million. Launching it dawnward, I leaned out and watched as it spiraled and bobbed through the strata of breeze, down and down and down, back and forth, before mingling again with the sea. My World Series showing had been a fluke, and now everyone was going to know it. Including expenses I was out about $12,000, having blown a great chance to win $1.5 million. I had seventeen hours of airports and coach seats ahead of me before I could hug all my girls. We were going to have a new president. "

It's worth noting that McManus grossed over $86,000 in 2003 playing poker.

A rehash of the Goggle game...

In Google Search, enter "yourname is" (with quotes). Put the 10 matches into a list. Thus ...

1. artsy fred is deep
2. Fred is right
3. fred is blogging
4. fred is a Belgian Web designer
5. Fred is condemned to death
6. Fred is free!
7. Right Said Fred Is It
8. Fred's is a great place to satisfy hunger for the taste of Italy
9. Fred is just like any other normal American In the United States
10. Aunt Fred is a Witch

... had to exclude some duplicates of the "Fred is dead" variety which seems to be the most popular "Fred is..." phrase. Liked the juxtaposition of "Fred is condemned to death" with "Fred is free!" And I am just like any other U.S. citizen...

...except, of course, for being a transvestite witch.

One line reviews:

Desilu : The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz -- Lucille Ball was not someone I would have wanted to work either with or for.

King of a Small World -- A good first novel from Tom Bennet. More about the poker life than the game itself, the cover blurbs notwithstanding.

"Sometimes good luck is bad, and bad luck good. You just don't always know. There's no such thing as not gambling." -- Tom Bennet

Curly Lasagna faces down an intruder.  

Spending money - Thomas Bartlett's article* on mp3 blogs at Salon (one of the few Web magazines that I can actually read), sent me off to listen to the truly awfully named, "Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr" group's "You Can't Blame Me", a song as beautiful as the group's name isn't. Everything Bartlett says is true, it's the sort of song that makes you stop whatever you're doing, and just listen.

The best of those songs give you that feeling forever. I can only think of a handful that affect me that way: Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", and Sophie Zelmani's chilling cover of his "Most of the Time", Rod Stewart's "Every Picture Tells a Story", The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" Joplin's "Piece of My Heart." Sinead O'Connor's "I Am Stretched On Your Grave."

Anyway, the song and a link from the article sent me off to the "Numero Group's" site (you'll need Flash, if you're one of the two people left who haven't installed it), and a look at the compilation "Eccentric Soul: The Capsoul Label". Listened to the other excerpts, and decided it was an album I needed to have.

Numero only has two CDs available, "Eccentric Soul" and "Camino Del Soul" from a group called Antena, who have a weird lounge lizard, psychedelic-Samba sound which kind of reminded me of the group Mello, who did the "CQ" soundtrack What the hell, only an extra 13 bucks, he sez, and buys it, too.

Didn't think all that much of the mp3 blogs the article listed, nor the other free downloads... probably just as well for my pocketbook.

*You'll need to sign up for a "free day pass" and watch a short commercial to gain access to Salon. It's worth it. If you don't regularly read Salon, btw, check out Patrick Smith's "Ask the Pilot" column in the "Tech & Business" section. It's worth the hassle alone. And hell, people have to earn a living somehow.

The LAPL - Photo Database is a very cool resource for vintage photos from the Los Angeles are. Try "Black Dahlia" or "Spruce Goose", for instance.

Virtual Vaudeville! is one of those sites that you think you'd read more about. A "Live Performance Simulation System" using Shockwave and QuickTime to recreate an old vaudeville comedy act. Probably mostly of interest to historians and technocrats, I guess. This is, btw, a test using "Blog This"

This week's Texas Hold `Em Update: With not a little amount of fear, I entered a 100-pt. buy-in sit-and-go yesterday (Saturday) at Ultimate Bet. And immediately had a panic moment on the first hand where I was in a show-down holding a Jack-high diamond flush when the flop showed all diamonds. The player to my right raised $100. I re-raised. Everybody remaining dropped, except the guy to my right, who raised again -- but raised the minimum.

Hmmm. Vince Van Patten and Mike Sexton speak in my head, "That's an unusual series of bets, Fred. He's either got two low diamonds or is holding one high diamond."

But it's the first hand. If I'm wrong -- or unlucky -- I'm going to be out the first hand, with only 26 UB points left to my name. But I go all-in... and he follows.

It turns out he does have one high diamond, the Ace, of course. If the board shows another diamond, I'm gone. It doesn't. He's gone instead and I have over $2k of chips after the first hand.

It's a pretty tight table after that. I win a few, lose a few... mostly folding and playing tight. My goal is minimum 3rd place and 200 UB points to double myself up. The guy on my left is either having connectivity problems, doing something else or, suspicious Fred thinks, has come up with some bizarre strategy where he wins a hand, then sits out for a few hands. Suspicious or not, the guy ends up in the final four with around $1,500 of chips left. I don't want to be left out on the bubble, so I fold a lot and pray, my $2,000 worth of chips now whittled down to around $1,700. And happy days, it's now just me. Mr. Bizarro who's down to under $1k, and the chip leader, who has won like three all ins, and has about $7,000 in chips.

Chip Leader takes out Mr. Bizarro, who apologizes for making us wait after all my chat raggin' on him, and I'm in second position, albeit short-stacked, around $1,700 to CL's $8,300. But I'm playing good, as I usually do one-on-one, and CL is playing extremely tight. I either raise or fold, and, after a couple of wins, we equal. He pulls a couple of bad beats when I straight twice on the river. Writing that I realize they weren't bad beats at all. Both times he let me get to the river by not betting into me hard.

Is there anything more boring than listening to poker talk? But it's my blog and I'll write what I want to. Anyway, CL, CL no longer, with only 900 chips, goes all-in, and since it will barely take a nick out of my stack, I call him with a suited J 10. He has an unsuited Q 9, so I'm the favorite, and win with a 10 showing on the turn. He leaves as silently as he played, and I win $500 UB points.

I do love sit-n-goes. Built up my ego after too many tournies placing out of the money... even though, as I regularly assure myself, finishing in the top 100 - 200 in a field of 2,000, finishing 30 once last week in an Aruba freeroll, ain't shabby and indicates I'm a fairly solid player,

I think.

Playing an Omaha Limit tourney at Pokerstars while I write this. Almost two hours. And I'm currently 357 out of 856 in what's left of a field of 2,000. Not bad considering I don't know what I'm doing. I had to look the rules of Omaha up, and have to keep on telling myself, 2 cards in your hand, 3 on board.

More productivity-busting. I've learned how to photo-blog. "Hello" and blogger make it exceptionally easy, I have to say.

The Hawk Bath: We have a family of five hawks living in the wooded lot next door -- 8 Reeds Ferry Way -- as Peg says. The kids like having a daily splash in what used to be the bird bath in our back yard.

Me, the British Bulldog. and Kamandi. Last Boy On Earth

Offshore outsourcing taken to a new level: Spiderman India. And the press release.

In a related story, Marvel Entertainment announced the layoffs of Peter Parker, MJ, and Aunt May. "We appreciate their many years of service and wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors," a spokesperson for Marvel noted.

Here's something collected from the old "cellar door"...

"...But I've learned I'm not a blogger, at least not the typical Weblogger (if there is such an animal) whose journal usually consists of link, pithy comment, link, pithy comment, ad infinitum.

Shelley Powers wonderfully expressed many of my concerns about cellar door in her reasons for discontinuing her blog, "BurningBird." As she says in her farewell note, it's "seductively easy" to write a Weblog. Too easy. Too facile. Too impermanent. Writing lite.

As good a writer as she is, Shelley also proves one of her points by misusing "compliment" in her fourth paragraph. The word she wanted was "complement." I'm probably not the first person to catch this, and it's likely that someone has even emailed her about it, but the rules of the game
- apparently - are that you don't edit after posting, even grammatical errors.

As far as community goes, I've done my best to avoid online communities, with some exceptions. The Google Answer Researcher forum is a perfect example of why, usually dominated by people who seem spoiling for a fight with anyone about anything..."

Update: Shelly's farewell didn't last for long.

Fred's been a busy boy. On Friday I:

1. Updated and uploaded the old Web site.
   
   
2. Bit the bullet and became master of my domain. I'm now the proud owner of www.fredbals.com* thanks to GoDaddy.
   
   
3. Revamped the old "cellar door" blog into the NEW, IMPROVED fhb blog.

*My other choices included "bals.com", already in use by a German "manufacturer of an extensive range of high quality industrial plugs and sockets...", "serious moonlight", homesteaded but not in use, and (half-seriously), quantic.com, which WHOIS says is owned by a domain broker, and, for reasons unknown is currently linked to a cheesy portal called Seeq.

Places to Go, Things to See Dept:

I like the retro interface of "Terminal Island" a lot. (Hint: Type "posts" at the $ prompt and hit return). Shades of VAX/VMS.

Found a good set of Poker strategy articles last week, as well as a link to pictures of the astounding Ms. Shana Hiatt, erstwhile hostess cookie of the World Poker Tour. I know, I know, my sexism is showing. She's still a babes. Speaking of which, btw, the Shana pictures are courtesy Shirley Rosario at pokerbabes.

Not a bad re-start, he sez immodestly. Think I'll stop while I'm ahead and save more for tomorrow.