letter in response to jonah goldberg article 11-13 on attack at fort hood

mr. goldberg,

i read your column today on the killings at ft. hood, and you make some very good points about our reluctance to point out the obvious (i.e. that major hasan was a muslim and was, if the reports are true, in fact, a radical, terrorist muslim at that.

that being said, you did make a statement, that puts you into somewhat of a radical category yourself: "there is a powerful case to made that islamic extremism is not some fringe phenomenon but part of the mainstream of islamic life around the world."

what exactly is that "powerful case?" you don't back up that inflammatory statement with any proof or facts. there is no evidence whatsoever that islamic extremism is part of the muslim mainstream. indeed, there is ample evidence that it is not. to wit: there are 1.1 BILLION muslims in the world, and if even 10% of those people (110 million) were extremists then there would be thousands upon thousands of terrorist attacks against western targets, if not monthly, then yearly, and there are not. according to the united nations charter, resistance to an occupying army is NOT terrorism but something that is EXPECTED of the population of the occupied country. whether or not we americans think we are occupying afghanistan or iraq, you can rest assured that the citizens of those two countries do. in the early '60's, the CIA overthrew the duly elected government of iran, installed the shah and continued to meddle in their affairs for years. were the iranians who protested and took americans hostage (but did not harm them) terrorists? radicals? or were they iranian patriots?

here in the united states, there are millions of muslims. where are all the attacks? where are the bombs in the shopping malls? at the sporting events? in the vegas casinos? all of those are what the military would call "soft targets" and yet none of those millions of american muslims have planted a bomb in any of those. where is your case? where is your proof? what statistics can you quote?

and fyi, i am not muslim nor am i from the middle east. i'm just a catholic boy from oklahoma who happens to believe in fair play; who would rather the world live in peace than in constant conflict and would wish that respected writers such as yourself refrain from making broad, inflammatory, accusations against millions of our fellow citizens.

i surmise that you are jewish, based upon your name and, if so, shame on you. surely you must be sensitive to broad, racist, statements, directed against the people of the jewish faith or nationality and surely you would not want to be lumped in with the bigots and monsters who made those broad un-provable statements by making broad un-provable statements against people of the muslim faith.

i look forward to your follow-up article where you retract that statement...knowing you to be a generally fair-minded, intelligent and thinking man.

ron shock
las vegas



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ron Shock

the new royalty

i have always believed that the history of western society is anchored in the history of the struggle of the common man against the royalty. revolutions happened when the proletariat and bourgeoisie banded together because there came a time when they BOTH realized they were being screwed by the royalty. the proletariat always knew/know that they are getting the shaft, but the bourgeoisie, because they were somewhat better off, did not; but when they fnally realized it...ba da boom, ba da bing, heads rolled and down went the king. now that is simplified but it is accurate. if you look at the english revolution in 1066, the american war for independence in the latter part of the 1700's and the french revolution right afterwards and then look at the russian revolution of the early 1900's you will see that one thing in common: the people knew that the royalty, be they kings or czars, were doing none of the work and taking most of the profits, so to speak.

well, now the royalty is, for the most part, a thing of the past but they have been replaced by the new boss, the major corporations. they are the new royalty, they now control the finances and the resources of nations. they are now the ones who want us to do the work while they make the money. our founding fathers saw this danger on the horizon and tried to warn us but not enough listened then and hardly any are listening now.

thomas jefferson said in 1816, that he hoped to "CRUSH IN ITS BIRTH THE ARISTOCRACY OF OUR MONEYED CORPORATIONS, WHICH DARE ALREADY TO CHALLENGE OUR GOVERNMENT TO TRIAL OF STRENGTH AND DID DEFIANCE TO THE LAWS OF OUR COUNTRY." wow, huh? had we listened to t.j., we would not have had a bail-out of goldman sachs or aig or bank of america or general motors, etc, etc. we wouldn't have creeps like daschle working as a lobbyist for united healthcare while he advises the government on healthcare reform.

and, thanks to the right wing, the supreme court is poised to lift the ban on corporate financing of political campaigns. the origin of the ban goes back to 1896 when republican william mckinley defeated william jennings byrant. byrant was far and away the better man for the job, but thanks to corporate money, mckinley out spent him 10-to-1. mckinley's political advisor, mark hanna(think karl rove), said it best, "there are two things important in politics. the first is money and i can't remember what the second one is."

if the ban is lifted, then corporate america will elect almost every politician at every level, state and national. we would then become the UNITED STATES OF CORPORATE AMERICA. we already have a taste of what that would be like; wars in foreign countries where they just happen to have natural resourses that corporations want (iraqi oil) or are where they would like to build pipelines (afghanistan), bail-outs of the banks who stole the money in the first place, bailouts of giant insurance companies, bail-outs of all those who devised devious ways to scam consumers, give tax cuts to the rich and lessen services for the rest of us.

my only hope is that, one day, the american people will pull their collective heads out of their collective asses and realize that the country they have is not the country they thought they had. that is the fear of many of the corporations and their lackeys in government. that is why american troops have been and are being trained to put down civil unrest right here in america. that is also why we are constantly pitted against one another; black vs. white, brown vs. yellow, liberal vs. conservative; us vs. them (whoever "them" are). that is why we demonize other countries and other religions. it is why we have the fake war on drugs, which is really a war on civil liberties and has nothing to do with drugs...if it did it would surely include nicotine and alcohol which are the main killers but, guess what?, they are marketed by, are you ready, corporations.

but my hopes are dim and my vision of the coming age is dark. i, personally, will survive because i know how to make it outside of the system, always have and always will but my children and my grandchildren are fucked and are going to see their standard of living go down and down.

we have been sold down the proverbial river and one day in some coming decade, revolution will happen here again and the streets will run red with blood and the bankers, the oil men, the polluters and the insurance honchos will be dragged out of their gilded offices and estates and be hanged from lamp posts and the people will cheer and my only regret is that i probably won't be alive to see it.

woodstock and me

i was not at woodstock since i was way too busy making money in 1969 but it inspired me to help set up a similar outdoor rock festival in australia in the early 70's. it was called the Oddessy Festival and was held in a large field right outside of walicha. my friend, bobby oliver, was married on stage by a hippie guru and he and his wife rode off the stage on a motorcycle. it was too cool. my partner, ray patton, and i helped finance the shindig and made some money off of it but we would have been happy just being there.

woodstock had 450,000 people there for 3 days; to my knowledge no one got killed, no one got mugged, no one got raped, there were very few fights and for the vast most part everyone got along just fine. all this in the mud and rain while a very large number were doing all kinds of drugs and still it was peaceful. show me a town of that has 450,000 people between the ages of say 16-30 (which would mean a city of what? a couple of million or so?) where over any given weekend they had no murders, no rapes, no muggings by any of those 450.000 and i would kiss your ass in the middle of main street and give you a couple of hours to draw a crowd to watch me do it.

love and peace, brothers and sisters!

those days of love and peace and rock and roll and lsd helped change my life and from them i evolved into the man i am today, for better or worse. the 1968 democratic convention in chicago made me a pacifist. previous to that event, being from a family that had sent men off to war in WWI and WWII and being ex-army myself, i thought that the protesters against our involvement in vietnam were just cowards but when i saw those young people, all of whom were about my age or a little younger, face those cops and offered flowers to men who were about to beat them with clubs i knew that while they may have been many things, cowards they weren't. that lead me to do something i had not done before and that is look critically at what we were doing and why we were doing it and i realized that i, and the country had been conned and we were totally in the wrong in southeast asia.

BY THE WAY, ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE I RECENTLY LISTED ALL OF THE COUNTRIES WE HAVE BOMBED SINCE THE END OF WORLD WAR II. CHECK IT OUT.

on to michael vick. fuck him. he does not deserve another shot at the nfl. killing dogs shows a moral compass that is totally out of wack. most mass murderers start by killing animals. his brother is a creep too and got kicked off v.t.'s football team. there is something seriously wrong with mv and you just watch, he is going to do something horrible to somebody before his miserable life is over. wanna bet?

poker has been a disaster this month. the worst month i have ever had. every decision i make is wrong and if a miracle card can come up for my opponent it does so. shit.

i know i haven't been writing much on this page recently so i have probably lost a good number of readers but i just have had nothing to say so that is what i said.

i am also VERY disappointed in obama and will go into that on my next post whenever that may be.

vegas good and bad and minor poker talk.

the good and the bad about vegas from yesterday's paper.


the good: a couple wishing to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary called a restaurant, INTIMATE FINE DINING RESTAURANT in henderson (a suburb of las vegas)because they had been there once before and had enjoyed it. they wanted a reservation for the 4th but were told by the man on the phone that they were only open thursday through saturday. the woman was very disappointed and explained that they had canceled a trip just to do this. the man then said, "well, come on and i (turns out he was the owner, DON ESPANILA) and i will cook a meal just for you and your husband."

the place is really small, 8 tables, but when they got there they found out that he had put a table in the kitchen so they could watch him cook. the menu: lobster, osso bucco, fois gras, lamb chops and fresh veggies. the desert was a black and blueberry chessecake cobbler with lemon verbena.

isn't that just so cool? guarantee you that rhonda and i will eat at this place.

a guy named don barker, former health and safety manager for boyd gaming who quit in protest of the company's handling of safety issues following the death of two workers went on to teach osha rules at unlv. so far, so good huh? a guy who cares, right? well, there's more. the government suspended his license to teach because, "he was submitting falsified information regarding the instructional time spent on topics, failing to collect and retain required documentation and inappropriately ADVISING STUDENTS NOT TO CONTACT OSHA TO REPORT SAFETY ISSUES"!!!!"


now on to, as cows would say, udder things: i have won every session since that disaster but they were small wins, which are, of course, better than losses both from a financial and mental basis but i need to hit a big one. also, i am not really playing my A game..don't know why. every month this year has been over a grand profit and that is with and average of only 50 hours per month of play.

coincidentally, yesterday i played at the mgm room and sat next to a nice young man who reads this blog. he and his wife had seen me at the trop one time and became fans. he beat me on my very first hand (if i am going to make mistakes at a table it will be in the first hour of play...seems like it takes an hour for me to get 'into' the flow of the game) when i made a horrible call on the river. so here is a shout out to (i hope i remember the spelling) mr. and mrs. sonnar.

if it could go wrong...it did.

i should have known by the very first hand that this wasn't going to be a good day... i am on small blind and flop second nut flush. i check and so does everyone else. great. next card is a nothing, i bet 15 dollars and only the bb calls. river is a nothing so i bet 25 and bb raises to 65, i call...he has nuts. the last hand of the day is the real clincher. i have been down all day and at one time was 250 in the hole but have brought it back to only 120 down or so when i am dealt a pair of 7's. 8 people are in hand. flop comes 7-9-10. checked to me and i bet ten dollars into 16 dollar pot and am called in three places. turn is a queen and the whole board is a rainbow. i bet 25 dollars and am called in one place. river is another queen and the only player in front of me who has been checking now bets 60 dollars, i go all in. he had queen 9 for queens full. i had 7's full. shit.

overall, i had aces twice, queens twice, nut straight, second nut flush and a full house. lost three hundred dollars. lol

oh, the horror.

man oh man, some of the stuff that people are spreading out here in cyber space about obama, his programs, health care etc, is way beyond the pale.

no thinking person could possibly believe that obama was not born in hawaii (oh, for you neo-cons a little secret...hawaii is a state) the state of hawaii has posted his birth certificate on the web, the newspaper in his home town published a birth notice when he was born. so to believe he was not born there is to believe a conspiracy that started in, what? 1961 i believe, where they posted a false birth certificate under the name of barack hussian obama because they were going to get him elected president 47 years later. and the world is flat. and we really didn't land on the moon. and obama has a secret plan to take your guns away. oh, the horror.

the new out-and-out lie is that the new health care plan is going to make elderly people commit suicide. oh the horror.

i think we have developed a rather large group people that have lost or never had the ability to think critically.

we need a national health care plan. we pay more for health care than any other country on a per capita basis. the rest of the industrialized world has national health care. they have longer life spans, lower infant mortality rates and their people are not put into bankruptcy by medical bills. only the insurance companies would be hurt by a n.h.c.; not you, not me, not our families. the insurance companies.

plus you are paying for health care over and over and over and over again. every time you buy a product you pay for the health care of every company involved in the manufacturing and shipping and storing and selling of that product. they all add the cost of their health care to the cost of the product. that is how business works. cost + certain %. duh. so if you buy a car that has 25 different companies involved in making it, you are paying 25 times for health insurance plus the health insurance of the truckers that brought it there plus the health care of the dealership. how much does that add to the cost?

every service company that has health care adds it to the cost.
every state, every city, every county has health care and we pay for that.

if we had a national single payer health care plan the cost of practically everything could go down. (oh, it won't because companies would make such a huge profit by eliminating their health care costs but not subtracting it from the retail price)

we already pay for it. but we don't have it. wake up.

tell the family that lost their home because of medical expenses that we don't need it.

and, by the way, this does not affect me. i am covered. i am in the v.a. and have medicare a and b. (both of which are a single payer system...duh)

our government officials have a single payer system but some of them, mostly republicans, don't want you and i to have it. i wonder why. could it be money from the insurance companies? nah, that couldn't be it.

oh well, i am farting in the wind. no one listens. besides obama is a foreign agent is going to sap our precious bodily fluids.

grand kids

two of my grand kids have been here since the middle of last week and we have had a very good time getting to know each other. they have been to THE LION KING and to CARROT TOP and tonight we go to see todd paul and his show at hooters. as i said on facebook, i have introduced them to some exotic foods which they liked a lot.

last night, we were up on sunrise mountain looking over the city and paris says "screw it, i am not going back to north carolina, i want to live here!" guess she likes vegas.

their cousin from l.a. came over and they all went out to ride roller coasters and shop.

i had never spent much time with these two kids, not being the family guy type, and it has been a great experience me and i believe for them. they are bright, aware and hip. we have had some great conversations and, i believe, have formed a bond that was not there before. today we head out to hoover dam and lake mead and tonight i am going to take them out into the desert after the show. the desert at night is a wonderful place, unlike anything they have seen or experienced; hopefully we will be there for the moon rise since it is either full or almost full tonight.

i wanted to take them over to los angeles for a day or so but that will have to wait.

anyway, blah, blah, blah.

1 percenters fucking 99 percenters.

according to government figures, 1 percenters' share of america's total income is the highest it has been since 1929, and their tax rates are the lowest they have faced in two decades. through bonuses, many 1 percenters will profit from the 23 trillion dollar bailout largesse the treasury department now says could be headed to financial firms. most of them benefit from irs decisions to reduce millionaire audits and collect zero taxes from the majority of major corporations.

but what really makes the ultra-wealthy so fortunate, what truly separates this moment from a run of the mill gilded age, is the unprecedented protection the 1 percenters have bought for themselves on the most pressing issues.

to review: with 22,000 americans dying each year because they lack health insurance, congress is considering universal health care legislation financed by a surcharge on income above $280,000- that is, a levy almost exclusively on 1 percenters. this surtax would graze just 5 percent of small businesses and would recoup only part of the $700 billion the 1 percenters received from the bush tax cuts. in fact, it is so miniscule, those making $1 million annually would pay just $9,000 more in taxes every year or said another way, 9/10ths of their 12 month haul.

nonetheless, the 1 percenters have deployed an army to destroy the initiative.

the foot soldiers are the land rover liberals. these democratic lawmakers secure their lefty labels by wearing pink ribbon lapel pins and supporting good causes like abortion rights. however, being affluent and/or from affluent districts, they routinely drive their luxury cars over middle-class economic interests. hence, this week's letter from boulder's dot com tycoon rep. jared polis and other so called liberals calling for the surtax's death.

echoing that demand are the corrupt cowboys--those like sen. max baucus, of montana, who come from the heartland's culturally conservative and economically impoverished locales. these cavalrymen in both parties quietly build insurmountable campaign war chests as the biggest corporate fundraisers in congress. at the same time, they publicly preen as jes' folks, make twangy references to "voters back home" and now promise to kill the health-care surtax because they say that is what their communities want.

that fantastical fairy tale, of course, couldn't exist without the millionaire media- the elite journalists and opinionmongers who represent corporate media conglomerates and or are themselves extremely wealthy. ignoring all the data about inequality, they legitimize the assertions of the 1 percenters' first two battalions, while actually claiming america's fat cats are unfairly persecuted.

most brazenly, nbc's meredith vieira asks president obama why the surtax is intent on "PUNISHING THE RICH"?


for his part, obama has responded with characteristic coolness-and a powerful counter-strike, "no, it is not punishing the rich," he said, "if i can afford to do a little bit more so that a whole bunch of families out there have a little more security, when i already have security, that is being part of a community.

from the coloradoan and written by david sirota.

politics, police, professor, perspective and poker

3 of the BILL HICKS CHRONICLES are now in the can and one of them will be posted on utube soon with links on my web site and on face book.

as soon as obama made the "stupid" remark about the professor and the cops i knew he had stepped into some shit. he cannot, under any circumstances, be seen as the BLACK president and he came across that way by those ill conceived statements. he is now trying to make ammends and probably will but the republicans will play the race card over and over and in these times with so many important things on his plate obama cannot afford these kind of distractions.

on the surface of it, the cops were doing the right thing. they had a call from a neighbor that two black men were breaking into a house. the "black" in the statement was not racial it was descriptive. apparently the professor took umbrage at someone accusing him of being a burglar and refused, at first, to show i.d. well, what did he expect the cops to do?

not every time a black person is stopped or questioned by the police is racism involved. to the contrary, i would say that the majority of the time there is a good reason on the cops part for the incident whatever it was. and i say this as a strong supported of civil rights for all and have stood on that side of the fence all my life but a crime is a crime and a criminal is a criminal regardless of race. the police have a very, very dangerous job and they are, for the most part, good men and women (of all races...one of the cops in mass. was black) of good character and good intentions. are there rotten apples in the cops cart? of course. are there black (or brown) people stopped just for racism? of course. but some long haired white kids are stopped because of a "profile" as well. perfection is really hard to come by and, as far as i know, no one person nor one race is perfect.

i hope that obama will make an apology for his remarks, not just to say that he could have said it better but an out and out apology. we shall see.

on the poker front: one of the reasons i like mandalay bay is their "high hand bonuses" where they pay extra money for 4 of a kind or better with both hole cards playing and 20 dollars in the pot to qualify. yesterday, rhonda and i were playing there and we were at a short table of 5 when i said that i was not going to play where my money, so to speak, was 40% of the total so i went and got some coffee and cigarette. finally someone else sat down and i came back. even though i would have the blind in two hands i went ahead and posted my 3 dollars (fair is fair) and took my seat. i look down and there is a pair of tens, so i raise to 10 dollars and am called by one person. flop comes ten, ten, jack. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS thank you very much.

heads up

the road does something to my head
vampire poems
and odes to the dead

i saw psycho killer eating a burger
at jack in the box
he had a head in a box
everybody knew
but said nothing
he might have room for two

while i am not happy with a lot of things that president obama has done so far (and some of his plans for the future) but i still feel that his head and heart are in the right place. i saw a poll today that his support on job creation is falling and i can, in a way, understand that, however he has been in office for all of SEVEN MONTHS and things move very slowly in washington. as he said, it took years for us to get into this mess and it will take quite some time to get us out of it.

my biggest complaint so far is that the "work" he has envisioned leaves no lasting monuments to it. no hoover dam, no tva, no grand scheme to rally the people around. i have said it before but...what he should do, in my opinion, is build a series of desalination plants along the pacific and gulf coasts. then we build water pipe lines to california, nevada, lake mead, arizona, new mexico, utah and idaho and in the gulf we build pipe lines going up to the midwest, kansas, oklahoma, nebraska, iowa, etc. we would then be in a position of not being dependent on the whims of nature. we would always have water and thus we would always have crops. it would open so many places to agriculture that we could see a whole new wave of small farmers. droughts would not be the disaster there are now and we would be more secure. plus, our food exports could triple without in any way decreasing the supply for the homefront. ah but i dream of big things but we have a government of little minds.

oh well, life goes on. rock and roll.

back in vegas and glad to be here

back from a very long, very tiring trip to the northeast. providence and atlantic city (where, as a comic once said, it is halloween every day). providence is a pretty little town with lots of history and the club was in a slot casino out of town. thousands upon thousands of people were there putting their hard earned money into slots whose payouts are much, much lower than l.v. or a.c. slots are testament to americans inability to understand math. they are not good here but in indian or state casinos they are just short of highway robbery. blah. will not be going back to providence and may not be going back to atlantic city; it is too long a flight and too much hassle for me now. i don't want to work any more than 20 gigs next year and 11 of those will be in texas so there will have to be clubs cut from my schedule. san francisco, sacramento, indy, louisville, hilton head, lexington, sarasota will also make the cut leaving only a couple of other weeks to be filled. i have picked up some new clubs in oklahoma, kansas and arkansas and i will do a couple of them next year so that may be all. i will, of course, be working here in vegas multiple weeks so you can always see me here.

i will say that the new jersey turnpike between philly and nyc is one of the best roads in the world. what a piece of work that is! at times there are 16 lanes and the rest of the time 14. beats anything i have seen in this country.

both of the acts with me in a.c. were just great, eric o'shay and joe mulligan. it was a fabulous show!

gotta go, glad to be back, stay tuned for poker and politics and pontificating.

Ron and the oldest of his 8 grandchildren...Paris.

my beautiful wife rhonda smiling at me.

One wall in the living room at the Shock Household when house was being remodeled...you can see the dust from the drywall...these masks are Memories of New Orleans and days gone by and great times had by one and all...

The Shock Girls and Dad

another poker story, liz..just to bug you

in reference to my post, "you want them to make that call" when i flopped three kings with ace kicker and lost to a king/ten offsuit when they filled on river. the very next day i lost when i raised with kings and caught one on flop and lost to runner runner flush. the reason i bring this up is that yesterday i was down about 80 dollars in a 1-2 game and changed seats and took the big blind immediately. it is called by two people prior to the button who raises to 18 dollars. I look down and see my favorite hand, ACES both black. i take the bet up to 45 dollars and only the button calls. the flop is Kc, Kh, Qc. I check and he checks. At this point i figure he has AK because he was fairly short stacked and probably would have come back over the top with kings or queens. the turn is the Jc, I check and he goes all in for his last 100 dollars or so which is about what i have and I call figuring that any club, any ace or any ten (the club ten would give me a royal) would win and lo and behold, a club comes and i win the pot and from there i can't seem to lose for the rest of the evening and carry a couple of racks of reds to the cashier later on. moral of story: what goes around, comes around. another moral; you better bet 'em out when you can...if he had gone all in on the flop i would have thrown them away.

(hey liz, it is another poker story)

anyway, tomorrow i head back east for the weekend in providence rhode island and then atlantic city, tropicana. since my traveling computer is on blink, probably won't post any until i get back a week from this coming monday. but then again, you never know.

i cannot recommend the article in rolling stone about goldman sachs highly enough. read it!!!

love dem 3's; part two

while calling with small pairs in early position is not something i would recommend as a regular habit, the make-up of the table has to be taken into consideration. if you have a loose passive type of table with little or no raising going on then you can speculate with these giant killers. the day of the four threes, i went back to play that evening after a nap and dinner. lo and behold, i had the right kind of table and there were those 3's again in early position so i call the two dollars. this time i didn't flop 4 of them but did flop a full house! 3-8-8. lordy lordy.
got paid off on that one by someone who had tens but did not raise with them. there is a moral here.

off to see my friend TODD PAUL who has his room at HOOTERS CASINO. todd is a great act, combining comedy, magic and an unicycle. you know, just like my act.

today at the tables i lost 49 dollars and realized that i was not playing my A game so i came home. there is a moral there as well; if you are not playing correctly or if you feel bad or are sick or are tired DON'T PLAY. the game goes on forever, it will be there when you can be your best so go home, take a nap or come back another day.

5th of july.

well, a belated happy birthday, america, where, for all its faults, it still is the best place to be. one day, i hope, america will live up to its ideals, where talent and integrity count more than money, where contributions to mankind are looked upon with more favor than contributions to the sporting field. where a mother teresa would get a bigger funeral and farewell than a michael jackson. (not that mj didn't contribute to the world, he did, he wrote some wonderful music and revolutionized the idea of music videos...but you know what i mean.) where financial shenanigans are punished with the same severity as, say, armed robbery. (the motherfuckers of goldman sachs and aig stole their money with a pencil not a gun but they have ruined more lives than all the armed robbers of the last ten decades) a country that has its military only for the purpose of defending our own country and not defending the interests of, say for instance, the oil companies. where we become more like switzerland and less like imperial rome. oh well, one can always hope and dream.

great opinion piece in today's LAS VEGAS SUN by THOMAS FRIEDMAN about how, in olden days, john dillinger didn't steal nearly what the bankers stole and neither did bernie madoff.

on the poker front, today i flopped 4 threes and had two people betting and raising into me. it was a nice pot.

another good opinion piece in the sun by paul krugman who says that obama needs to get off his ass and put more money into job creation.

the republicans must be spinning after s. palin's latest stunt. she resigned to follow a higher path. i think sarah may be high anyway. just think she could have been vice president of the united states. another scary thought: john edwards could have been president.

you want them to make that call.

at mandalay bay, i dropped about 170 into a really good game and rebought for another hundred. worked my stack back up to within 30-40 dollars of even when this hand occurred: i am in big blind and it has been straddled to 4 dollars and there are 6 callers plus the original straddler and the two blinds, small blind folds and i look down at Ah, Kh. there is 31 dollars in the pot so i raise to 24 dollars and get one caller. flop comes Kd Kc 7c. i go all in and am called. we turn over our hands and he shows ks Th. great!!! fucking river is, you guessed it, a ten. man.

on the other hand, my philosophy on this is: I WANT HIM TO MAKE THAT CALL. I JUST DON'T WANT HIM TO HIT HIS 3 OUTER. but i am never upset over a deal like this, if people didn't make those foolish calls then i would never make any money. you can't get mad over something like this, you just say, "nice hand, sir" and move on. in this case however, i pulled out my gun and shot the motherfucker.

smashing assholes, how sweet it is.

i go to the venetian to play but the list is so long that it will be hours before i get in (they are having a tournament and most of the tables were for that) so i go over to mandalay bay where i get into a rock-em, sock-em game with two maniacs and several bad players who are calling station. one of the maniacs has about 900 in front of him which is not bad for a 300 dollar buy-in game and is the time of guy who will raise with anything and push hard with draws; dangerous but potentially profitable. after about a half an hour it is obvious that the guy is an asshole as well. shitty attitude, saying snide remarks to other players, smirking when he wins and bitching if he gets beat. ah, but lo and behold, eventually his wild ways catch up with him and he busts out and on the hand he busts with he has to put in pretty much his last 390 dollars into the pot, he counts out 385 dollars in three stacks and then pushes them over into the pot. dealer says, "you are 5 dollars short." he says that he isn't and makes the dealer restack everything, lay out the bets, etc and the dealers says, "you are still 5 dollars short." he still wants to argue but finally throws in the last five dollars with cuss words to go along. he leaves but we haven't seen the last of him. he goes and gets another 300 and sits back down about an hour later. i get all of that when i flop the nut straight and i sucker him into an all-in bet. it was sweet.

latest issue of rolling stone has scathing article on goldman sachs and how they have been scamming the system for over a hundred years. what motherfuckers these guys are and how they are so entrenched in our government especially in the treasury department. REQUIRED READING FOR THOSE WHO WONDER HOW WE GOT IN THIS MESS. a couple of years ago, i said in this blog that someone once told me the following: "the stock market moves on lies, rumors and bullshit and the only people who make money in the long run were those with insider information." he was the guy who got me to buy travelodge at 8.5 one day and see it go to 12 and 7/8ths the next. he knew of a tender offer that was coming. 50% profit overnight. and goldman sachs apparently does this on a daily basis. cool, huh?

oh well, gotta go. see ya at the tables or in some smokey nightclub on down the line.

home at last, home at last!

four weeks on the road and i am home! man, that was a long one but on the other hand it was quite soul-satisfying since i think i reached new levels of comedy. each town got at least one MAGICAL show, those that reach far and above what i do on a nightly basis, where the audience and i are in a separate universe, cut off from the rest of the world and its cares, its problems, its worries and its responsibilities, where old material is done in new and improved ways and new material flows forth from my mouth with no pre-thought whatsoever. the "zone" as sport players call it. where i can do no wrong and every word, every phrase, every pause, every emphasis is just exactly perfect. when i have shows like these it is though i am, in a way, a part of the audience and what i am hearing is brand new to me as it is to them. when you have crowds that flat ass will not let you off the stage you know you are doing something right.

i am never so happy, never so fulfilled, never so one with the ONE as i am in these shows. they keep me alive and they keep me healthy. they restoreth my soul. they are when i am my fullest me. they are a reminder of why i do what i do and that i am doing what i am supposed to do. they are performance art, a word painting that is just for those ones in front of me at that time, never to be duplicated, a one of a kind show. magical and mystical, they will always remain in my memory and the memory of those who were there.

now that i have said all that, i am going to close this post and will start writing again every day about this or that or something in between.

go dodgers!

There's no place like home...

(view of the straposphere from in front of the house)

off to louisville, so long to bloomington,

rainy day in bloomington and i am off to louisville as soon as i get myself gathered. shows here went very well, one of the comics who was with me was blown away because i did two entirely different one shows. the first show, the crowd was small but almost all of them had seen me before so it was like a "conversation with ron shock" more than so-called 'material.' i just sat up there and told stories, some of which are hardly ever in a show. over the years i have done some incredible shows here, this small club in the back of a pizza joint seems to bring out the very best in me.

they had the best house m.c. in the nation, a young man named brad. well, a couple of months ago, brad went a did a guest spot on a thursday night at the funny bone here in town and the owner of bear's place (actually the new owner, the old one would have never done something like this) fired brad because of that. now, brad had never been told he couldn't perform at fb, and bear's does monday night so ... why the big uproar? apparently the owner is what is commonly called a "dick." brad is not a full time comic, on the contrary he works with disadvantaged youth here in bloomington, so not only is he the best house m.c. in america he is truly a GOOD GUY and the world is rather short on that species. some of the girls who work there or had worked there told me the owner would make passes at them and when they objected he told them that if they didn't like it they could try to sue him and he had better lawyers than they did. hmmmm, i think the word, "dick" fits. maybe "prick." maybe "bastard". maybe "s.o.b." maybe...well, you get the point.

this club, bear's place, is one of if not the longest running one-nighter in america and i have been playing it off and on since 86. i don't know exactly when the new guy took over but one of the many things he did was to no longer give the comics a free pizza between shows. (now it is half price but what does a pizza cost to make? a dollar maybe? it is the principle of the thing) the food is no longer as good as it was before..(bear's place was once so good it got national press) i would stop coming here but that wouldn't punish the prick, it would just disappoint my many fans here so i kept my mouth shut at the club but if this blog gets back to him, i will probably be banned....but, what the hell, the truth is the truth. and, one other thing, brad was so popular here that when he left, business went way down, this prick has pissed off many and many of that many won't come back to his club regardless of who is playing.

oh well, now that is off my chest...

kobe missed more freethrows last night than i would have. ratings?

anyway, gotta go, rock and roll, thanks for reading, maybe next time i will have something worthwhile to say.

more indy dates for the old man

at last, a usuable computer. at the hotel in indy, the computers would not let me go to my blog because it contained "objectionable material." i didn't bother to ask anyone just how they determined this and, even more important, who did it because i was going to hear that home office did it and they, the local people, have no control over this. oh well.

indy went very well. the crowds were never large but with only the exception of second show saturday, they were very good. first show saturday was balls to the wall good and the owner/booker of the club was at that show and she wants me to play that club 3 times in a year and also wants me to be the new year's act for next year. back when i played indy multiple times per year i had a nice little following there and both ruth-anne and i both think it could be done again. while going to indy in the dead of winter is not all that appealing, it is nice, and an honor, to have a club like you and want you that much especially in today's economic times. not only that there are a lot of comics out there and to get 3 weeks in a year is a coup.

i have always been good about keeping myself booked. incidently, i never use an agent, i do my own booking and except for a very short time in the 80's, always have. i want to have a possible 30 weeks of work for me out there on any given year. not that i will work that many weeks because i won't as long as rhonda has a job but it is could to have for that "just in case" scenerio. know what i mean? i lost the trop in vegas but have replaced it with two other clubs and will probably get back in the riv and possibly in planet hollywood. i picked up a guy who has 4 clubs, okla city, tulsa, wichita and little rock of which i am working okc this year and will get all 4 next year. i get 11 weeks in texas next year, 6 in houston, 2 in san antonio and then ft. worth, dallas and arlington. i also picked up providence, rhode island this year and 4 casinos in northern california. of course, i will be in hilton head a couple of times per year, chattanooga once, louisville and lexington, sacramento and san francisco punch lines, ( i am s.f. week-before-christmas-act each year which is cool because rhonda can with me and san francisco does christmas right) sarasota is once a year as is (i think) mrytle beach but i may not get back in there, i felt as though i wasn't sure just how much the owners like me. i am also going back to anne arbor next year. i would like to have more clubs in the west but i don't. i ought to take shot at portland, vancouver and seattle but probably won't. once the economy is back on an even keel i will cut back to around 20 weeks per year plus a new years somewhere or another and that will be plenty.

my grand-daughter, paris, came over from purdue with her boyfriend to see the saturday shows. no, i don't change anything or censor myself in any way with her in room. she is a very impressive young woman, bright, insightful and quite pretty to top it all off. i told her that her grandmother, my first wife, was crazy and i know that she had made my daughter, stefanie, crazy as well and that i had been worried that stef would have then made her, paris, crazy as well. paris told me that thought had occured to her as well so she has been in therapy for the last couple of years. lol.

am in bloomington staying with friend of ours and will perform here tomorrow night and then off to louisville for the rest of this week.

another friend of mine, glen morshower, has major role in the new TRANSFORMER movie and he and i are going to the opening up in reno when i am performing there. glen is on 24, friday night lights and did have a reoccuring role on west wing. he is the person who got me started on hold-em way back when. OH, and something cool, in the movie glen plays a general named MORSHOWER. they liked his name so much they used it for the character...how cool is that?

hope to see amos chang this week, he is a poker-playing comic who used to be a cop. once they put us on the same bill as cops and robbers and did some nice press about it.

anyway, dat's all for now, folks.

on the road again

it is the first of june, summer just starting. dogs are out in their room chewing on bones, pool was inviting so i took its offer up and now i am taking a break from packing for a 4 week road trip. (speaking of dogs, i give maverick, the great dane, cow femur bones and he EATS them. listening to that dog's jaws literally crushing a bone the size of our leg bone, if not a little bigger, is one of the reasons i don't worry about rhonda when i am on the road)

george burns has always been my idol in comedy for what he said way back when; "i can't die, i'm booked." that is what keeps me healthy, keeps me happy and i truly believe keeps me alive...i am booked. solid for the rest of the year. matter of fact, when i get back i will start booking 2010.

all that being said, i will only be posting my feeble ramblings on here every couple of days or so because my traveling computer is on the blink but i should be able to use the clubs or the hotels...we shall see. not that i have anything to say anyway.

i will be in indy this week at the downtown crackers club, bloomington indiana on monday and then louisville comedy caravan through that week and then off to dayton for wiley's, which is one of my favorite clubs. it pays very little and the crowds are small but the owner is one of the all time good guys, the staff is great and the crowds, though small, are as hip as any you could want..they come for comedy and they know the difference. dave chappel used to come in there to watch my show. there is another club in dayton but wiley's gets the best comics because they also know the difference and would rather work for less than work a corporate club which is only in the business of selling liquor and doesn't really give a shit about the comics or the show per se as long as those drinks are flowing. then i fly home for ONE day and then off to reno for catch a rising star. all in all it makes for a long month but some good money, good clubs, good friends to see and good times to be had. my grand daughter, paris, is coming to one of the shows with her boyfriend. she saw me for the first time early this year in mrytle beach and now is hooked on comedy.

well, my friends, be well, be safe and for those who play poker may all your flops be good.

but what did gibbons know?

just back from poker and with a story to tell: in my very first played hand i had aces under the gun so i raised to 12 dollars (1-2 nl game) and two people went all in, one for his last 60 dollars and another one for his last 120 or so. i, of course, called. here were the hands: first player Ah, Kh, second player Kc,Kd. perfect! flop was amazing A,K,3 no hearts. nice way to start. for the rest of the session, however, i pretty much stayed where i was and came home after a couple of hours with close to 200 dollar win.

so, okay, okay, i can't help myself...more politics.

dick, 5 deferments during vietnam war, cheney is off telling lies about the value of torture and trying to scare people about putting the gitmo prisoners into american supermax prisons. somebody needs to tell this man to shut up. no one has ever nor will ever escape from a supermax prison. as a former prisoner and someone who did manage to escape from l.a. county jail, let me tell you there is NO FUCKING WAY you could get out of one of those joints other than being released or dying. PERIOD.

clinton and gwb are off speaking together. makes one think that all of them are in cahoots together. how could the man who left us a record surplus share the stage with the man who, not only spent that surplus, but then left us with record deficits and an economy in such dire straits that comparisons are being made to the great depression? how could clinton, who gave gwb a security memo that said, OSAMA BIN LADEN IS PLANNING ON ATTACKING THE UNITED STATES BY FLYING AIRPLANES INTO BUILDINGS, and then had that warning ignored stand on the same stage and smile and joke with bush???? could it be that all of our presidents are of the same party, THE WAR PARTY?

methinks that in a real democracy bush would be in the dock along with cheney and rummy. methinks that an invasion of a country which had done nothing to us and was no threat to do anything to us and that invasion lead to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, iraqis dead and millions displaced would be a WAR CRIME. if it is not, please tell me why. and that begs the question of why is obama willing to overlook the past and tell us to focus on the future? we didn't do that at Nuremberg (sp?) nor did we do it with pot pol in cambodia. why is the bush/cheney gang exempt from the law?

i can kind of understand the argument that the photos of the real atrocities committed by american troops in iraq not be released because they would put american troops in more danger but THOSE PHOTOS ARE EVIDENCE OF WAR CRIMES AND WE SHOULD RELEASE THEM AND LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY!!!!!! our troops should not be there in the first place so their argument is flimsy at best. they tell us, "oh those photos would enrage the people there." but what they are really afraid of is that those photos would ENRAGE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. and then, perhaps, we would demand accountability and demand our troops come home. remember, if the reports are right, we are talking about beyond torture to things such as rape, which is, in some states a capital crime and in the rest carries prison sentences in the decades range. if one of our troops raped an iraqi prisoner and we knew about it and did not bring that man to justice then everyone in the chain of command that knew is FUCKING GUILTY. what kind of country are we that we would let this slide?

have you read THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by gibbons? if not, do so. if you have don't you see the sameness here? the decadence, the looting of the treasury to support foreign wars, the bread and circus (oh we call it tv and sports but it is the same) and how we have alienated entire sections of the world? no? oh well.

go dodgers. lol

who was that riderless horse?

so i wasn't going to write about politics but the comments i got, for the most part, were about politics. sincity has the best point in that we need to rail against the puppet masters. those monsters in the military industrial complex who are running and ruining the country. some of my readers write directly to me and one of them said that we all need to keep involved by writing our congresspeople and speaking our minds. politicians are whores and their only loyalty is to getting re-elected so they can keep sucking on the public teat. by writing them about our concerns and if enough of us do it then they will respond...not out of love of country but love of self...they will do what they think will keep them in office. i, for one, will write all my congress people, democrats especially, and tell them that the promise was to GET US OUT OF IRAQ and that is what we expect. we are an occupying force in someone else's land. we bombed their cities, we killed their people, we ruined their lives, the least we can do is to get our bloody asses out of their country. if iraq disintegrates into civil war so be it. it is their country. let them have it and do with it as they will. i have said before the only way to insure that we will not have radical islamic terrorists attack us is for us to quit giving them reasons to attack us and we can only do that by getting out of the middle east.

anyway....lakers will take orlando in 5 or 6. i was pleased that the cavs were eliminated after hearing one of their players brag that they were the best team in basketball. no, you aren't. you may have the best player but you are far, far from being the best TEAM.

a guy at the poker tables today said that the last horse he bet on came in last and that was behind the horse whose rider fell off.

hit three teamer yesterday, dodger/cubs to go under, sf to win and the lakers on the money line. how sweet it was.

yesterday as well i got two people to put all of their money in when i had the best hand. how sweet it was.

dodgers to win national league pennant and the world series are two bets i also have.

back again

it has been quite a while since i have "blogged" on this site and the reason was/is that i had run out of words, of thoughts, of comments, of importance (if there ever were any), of humor, of etc. my disappointment with obama and his catering to the military industrial complex (see dwight eisenhower's farewell speech) and his insistance on giving money to the banks without getting money into the pipeline for the american people runs very deep. while i am sure in my heart that we made the right choice for president OF THE THREE WE COULD CHOOSE FROM, he is showing himself to be another puppet of the military. we are NOT getting out of iraq and we have esculated the "war" in afghanastan. while he talks tough with the israelies, we still give them billions of dollars in so-called 'aid' and billions more in military assistance. (gee, why to the muslims hate us?) in the meantime, millions upon millions of our fellow citizens are out of jobs, out of their homes and out of luck. ah well, fuck-em, huh? what happened to the "urgency of now"? NOW is when we need assistance to the citizens. tell it to someone who is out of a job and his children are sick and he has no health care and no money that sometime in 2010 the money for the people will be forthcoming.

with all those thoughts running through my head, i couldn't write. but, my voice is not heard beyond a few dozen people and who the fuck cares what i think about politics anyway? so, i am going back to what i did before the election of 08 and write about my life, poker, my dogs, my wife and other inconsequentual topics.

in the paper today it said that mixed race people were the fastest growing racial group in america. that is great news! mutts are healthier than pure breeds and when you cross races you get the better genes from each. so fuck each other and save the country. if we were all mixed race then racism would no longer exist and if you expand it out for, say, two thousand more years we will all be one race and that would help end wars.

a lot of baseball fans had many bad things to say about juan pierre of the dodgers and how they were paying him too much, he has no arm, is defensive liability, don't need him and so on and so forth but since manny r went down, pierre is hitting over 400 and is scoring runs and batting them in. the dodgers would not be having the season that they are without him. i, on the other hand, have always been a big fan of that little wisp of a man who battles every at bad and can run like the wind. so there you go.

a real shame about mike tyson's little girl. just when iron mike looked as though he was finally getting his shit together this tragedy strikes. tyson is a much more interesting man than people give him credit for. he has always been a mixture of rage and calm, of hate and love and boy and man. if one looks beyond the hype and what other people say and really looks at tyson they will see a different man than is presented in the press. (he has copped to all of his misdeeds with the exception of the rape charge which, to this day, he denies doing and maybe he is right) when he bit holyfields ear he was in one of the dirtest fights ever, holyfield was a very dirty fighter, he just had good press. go back and look at some of his fights and you will see what i mean. tyson basically said that night, 'oh, you want dirty? i'll show you dirty, motherfucker!"

poker is going very well and my win rate is over 65% and my wins are MUCH bigger than my losses. i have a cut off number for losses so i never lose more than that amount on any given day. so i have had 24 wins over 200 and 0 losses of over 200. that makes a big difference.

so, there you are, a new post from the old man.

back home

twenty years ago or so, downtown fort worth was a dive. matter of fact, the whole town basically sucked. times change and now downtown fort worth is thriving and has a wonderful mixture of old and new. on the weekends the whole place rocks with night clubs, bars, shows, movies and outdoor activities during the warmer months. (there was a fight card put on in sundance square this past weekend) they have festivals and other special events there as well.

the shows were pretty much packed and the old man rocked the room over and over. (ask anyone who was there)

back home for a couple of days then off to arlington and dallas the following weekend.

is manny stupid or what? these guys think they will never get caught, amazing. oh well, still think the dodgers will make playoffs but won't go to world series unless manny comes back and has a great second half.

scully and the dodgers.

the dodgers have been on local radio since i first moved here in late 89 but this year the station went to kiddie music and did away with the dodgers. (a great article was in the las vegas review journal today in the sports section..the writer was ed graney if you would like a good read google it up) i have been a dodger fan since 1963 when i was incarcerated in a california prison. due to some rather violent acts i was sent to disciplinary segregation (the hole) for 18 months. we had two radio stations that we could listen to in our cells and one carried the dodger games. vince scully got me through most of my time in there, since they broadcast some of the spring training games then the season, post season and world series. his call of the game was so eloquent, his cadence so soothing, his knowledge so complete that i was able to escape the horror of my day to day existence and transport myself from a concrete dungeon to another place where the breeze blew softly and the grass was green and koufax was on the mound and drysdale was going tomorrow and the yankees didn't stand a chance. roseboro behind the plate, wills at short, fairly at first and others whose names escape me but the third pitcher was johnny padres who pitched the final game of the four game sweep of the hated yankees in the series.

if you have never listened to scully, you have missed the greatest baseball announcer of all time. he has been broadcasting the dodger games since the 1950's and must be in his 80's by now so he won't be around much longer. when he goes, we will lose an icon and on that day i will cry.

hopefully he will last this season because this may be the best dodger team since the early 80's and i have already bet them to go all the way. we have 4 youngsters who are going to be super stars; martin behind the plate, looney at first, eithier in left and kemp in center. they are all in their early 20's and have an unlimited future in front of them.

go dodgers.

no knowledge---no problem

aha! some stimulus money is going to jobs as road and bridge repair gears up for the summer. the only problem with these jobs is that they end when the money quits flowing. i would also like to see the government get into the building business by financing v.a. hospitals, v.a. retirement homes, schools, homes in new orleans to replace those destroyed by katrina and say, libraries. (that is if anyone reads any more..which judging by just watching and listening to the american public, i doubt) because these kinds of construction use more skilled labor than just roads and bridges do; ie. carpenters, plumbers, roofers and all the assorted material suppliers that would be needed.

there was an article in usa today that said that the next supreme court justice may not be a lawyer. oh good idea, let's get someone in there who knows nothing about the law. jesus!

oh well.

and yesterday i had aces cracked TWICE! once by 3-6 off and k-4 off. jesus!

gotta go take a nap. see you in texas. ye hah!

DANNY GANS

DANNY GANS died at home in his sleep last night. he was the biggest name in vegas even if he wasn't known nationwide. for those of you who don't know who he was, his act was musical impressions of all the greats, sinatra, presley, cole, armstrong and some of the current singers. apparently (i never saw his show) he was a fabulous entertainer and, by all reports, a good guy. there was never a hint of scandal attached to his name. in his last performance he changed the ending from APPOLO to bobby darin's closer, THE FINAL CURTAIN. here are the final stanza of that song and it one that i would wish they would play at my funeral.

"your cheers and laughter will linger after
they have torn down these dusty walls
people say i was made for this
nothing else would i trade for this
and just think i am paid for this

goodnight ladies and gentlemen and God love you all"

rest in peace, danny

jefferson, adams, biden and obama.

just some thoughts while i am waiting for the "stimulus plan" to create some real NEW jobs for unemployed americans and, at the same time, watch our government grow and our debt increase:

"government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. the course of history shows that as government grows, liberty decreases."

thomas jefferson.

and

"there are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. one is by the sword. the other is by debt."

john adams

this is not to say that i think that what obama is doing is wrong, it is to say that we, the people, need, for once, to pay really close attention to what is going on. as a nation, we were asleep at the wheel when gwb was getting us into wars and deregulating the financial institutions. now we are still in those wars, both of which should which should not have been started in the first place. and YES, i mean BOTH of them, afghanastan is bogus as well, though we did have to try to capture or kill bin laden (and still do) but we did not need to occupy a country to do so. we could have worked with the taliban (everyone and every nation will do what is in their own best self interest and the taliban would have gotten out of the way if we had a. declared not a "war on terror" but a MAN HUNT FOR A COMMON CRIMINAL and b. offered them some face-saving way to co-operate in his capture.) at the same time we are putting trillions of dollars into the greedy little hands of greedy little bankers and the corrupt financial institutions that got us into this mess instead of taking back our own banking system by nationalizing it and letting the "bad" banks go under.

on to something else: the republicans are having conniptions over specter's defection saying that we should be afraid of what a one party control can do to a country. THEY SHOULD FUCKING KNOW! LOOK WHAT THEY DID WITH THAT POWER. (see above) i don't think the administration should have promised specter anything. the demos would have won pennsylvania without him and would have then had a new, young go getter in place instead of an old political hack.

i used to really like joe biden but apparently i just didn't know enough about him. hey joe. PUT YOUR MIND IN GEAR BEFORE YOU PUT YOUR MOUTH IN MOTION. jesusfuckingchrist, this guy is a moron at times.

obama talks a great "green" talk but consider this: he went to des moines for EARTH DAY and to give yet another speech on how we must reduce our carbon footprint (as the current popular fad calls it). well, that is all well and good...BUT when he went he flew on air force One and along with it came a C-17 which is a HUGE cargo plane and out of that plane came his limo and a helicopter and many, many black suburbans for his security detail. JUST HOW MUCH GAS WAS USED FOR THIS POLITICAL TRIP TO PROMOTE USING LESS GAS?????? an armored limo must get all of 2 mpg and the suburbans which are also armored must get 5. not counting the planes and copter.
hypocrisy is saying one thing and doing another. at least that is what the dictionary says.

i read where there is a movement afoot to make the presidential election decided by the popular vote and to do away with the electoral college. hmmm. i don't know whether i like that or not. i just don't know. i do know that if it were in place in 2000 we would not be in the mess we are now so that is a good argument for it but i have reservations about letting the big states control the election. california, new york, texas, florida, pennsylvannia and ohio would really be in the drivers seat. but, then on the other hand, it would be DEMOCRACY which we claim to be a big supporter of..........

anyway, off to texas next week, come on out and see me if you can.

more;

the swine flu is panicking america and we have had only one death from it. are we a nation of scaridy kats or what? so, come out and see me anyway, chances are all you will catch is a good time.

aint we got fun?

back on the subject of when i was a kid....i left out in the jobs i had catagory, pushing a hot dog cart in new orleans when i was 16 and working as a "barker" in front of a strip joint on bourbon street. what i said was: "come on in! 48 DOUBLE D BIGGEST PAIR YOU'LL EVER SEE!" now that was a good job! as a bonus on that job, i lost my virginity to a stripper in that club in a booth. too cool. when the girls found out i was a virgin they decided that something should be done about that. god bless those girls.

in the paper today i saw where we, the united states of america, hire UGANDAN soldiers to, are you ready?, guard american ARMY BASES IN IRAQ. what the fuck? i just can't get my head around that. we HIRED some african soldiers to guard american soldiers in an arab land. you know.... when i was in the army, we actually did guard work ourselves. imagine that. we also did kp (kitchen patrol) ourselves. we hire that out as well. we also drove our own trucks. we hire that out as well. we did the fighting ourselves and had no mercenaries along for the ride. (see blackwater) what the fuck? what kind of army hires people to do army work? army strong indeed.

swine flu
bird flu
killing me and you
mad cow disease
disappearing bees
somebody please
tell me what to do

homeless
helpless
living in the streets

gotta get a gun
gotta get a gun
kill the next one
kill the NEXT one
then run, run, run
aint we got fun?
right here in america.
right here in america.

(those are the words to my next big hit)

shit.

i've lost my fucking mind.

rant for the day

there was a list of things that are disappearing posted on aol (i think..rhonda showed it to me) and these caught my attention:

the bees. this is a real problem; we depend on the bees and they are dying out and no one seems to know why. i do. it is mother nature and she is pissed. we are, as bill hicks once said, a virus with shoes and we are contaminating the planet.

kids to do chores in the neighborhood. i had a fair amount of work to be done in my front yard, leaves to be racked, weeds to be pulled, trees and bushes to be trimmed. i live on a corner lot and there is both a high school and a middle school within three blocks of me and every school day dozens of kids walk by my house. NOT ONE EVER STOPPED AND ASKED IF THEY COULD DO THESE CHORES. NOT ONE. i eventually went and got two day laborers, both probably illegal, and paid them one hundred dollars to do the work. i would have paid a couple of kids the same but... i don't want to sound like the typical old man (why, when i was a boy etc etc etc) BUT when i was a boy, i mowed lawns, washed cars and windows, had a paper route, worked at the grocery store as a sacker and all of those jobs i went out and hustled up. the kids walking by my house seem to all have cell phones and ipods and hundred dollar sneakers. where are they getting the money from? i can only imagine if i had asked my folks for the money to buy a pair of tennis shoes that cost 5 times more than the just regular cheap ones what would have happened. but, one thing, i know is that they would have never given me the money though they did have it...we were not poor nor rich but true middle class and they were very big on earning your own money. so i ask: what the fuck is going on? from what i read about the schools here in vegas a good many kids are going out into the world with a piss poor education and to top it off, no work habits. good luck to them.

a catholic education. both rhonda and i went to catholic schools. both rhonda and i can read and write, know history, know math, know science (not my strong suit), etc. while catholic schools had and have many things about them i don't like they did one thing really well...THEY FUCKING MADE YOU GET THE GRADES BECAUSE IF YOU DIDN'T YOU DID THE YEAR OVER. PERIOD. NO FUCKING AROUND. YOU DID IT OVER. and no kid likes that. also, because they did cost a pretty penny, the parents were involved and today, the teachers i speak to who are from public schools tell me that it is like pulling teeth to get parents involved. when kimberly and mica were going to school be it public or private (they did both depending on how much money we were earning) their mom and i knew their teachers, talked to their teachers, supervised their homework etc etc. guess what? they were good students who went on to college and now have good careers and their kids get good grades. not that i was a great parent, i wasn't because i left, but when i was there, books were in the house, we read to the kids from almost day one of their lives and guess what again? they grew up with a love of books, learning and reading. those are great assets to take into the world. (here i must give almost all credit to their mothers but i did my part when i was there...hell, stefanie's first word was "daddy" because i was a stay at home dad for the first two years of her life.) ((hudson i can take no credit for at all other than being a sperm donar as sharon liked to call me...lol...but he turned out great as well))

those that is my rant for today. off to play poker.

just some thoughts to lighten up your day

the reason i have not written anything here for quite some time is that my mind has been spinning and my thoughts have been scattered. i find myself worrying more and more about my country and the direction it is heading. all empires collapse and our time may have come. our karma is bad and maybe the piper of history wants to be paid and paid NOW. the saddest part is that we started so well with such fine ideas and even finer ideals. life and liberty and freedom and justice for all (except the slaves of course, but why quibble?) then, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, we freed the slaves and kept the union. but to do what? kill the indians? steal land from mexico? import chinese and make them slaves to build the railroads? get involved in foreign wars? make us a land for the rich and everyone else be damned?

you read our REAL history, not the namby pamby claptrap that is fed our children, and you read a history of greed and corruption, of conquest and exploitation, of rewarding dishonesty and crushing honest dissent. we are feared and hated around the world and for good reason. we use the poor of africa to experiment on with our new drugs, we prop up dictatorships in central america so we can rape the land, we use the so-called "war on drugs" to justify a police state here at home. could you or i find a totally honest politician among our current crop? probably not. i can't name one. (obama was my last great hope but he has reneged on so many of his promises that he is beginning to seem like same old, same old, just with a different colored face. maybe his goals were pure but he is kowtowing to the same old forces, the banks, the military, the pharmaceutical companies, the rich and the powerful. we are not out of iraq nor do we plan on being so, we are shifting wars but not ending them, bailing out banks but forgetting the people. where are the jobs? were are the public works? where is the relief to the people?) our founding fathers were giants and now we have gnats.

now we are having arguments over whether or not torture should be used in the pursuit of national security. man oh man. if we torture ONE PERSON we are different from nazi germany only in degrees. we still are the ONLY country to use an atomic bomb. and not only did we use it, we used it on CIVILIANS. the first, on Hiroshima could be explained but the second on Nagasaki was mass murder. oh, that is not what WE call it, it is only what EVERYONE ELSE calls it and what history will call it. so what the hell, if we are mass murderers then we might as well torture huh?

we have raped our planet and one day mother nature will have her due. be it global warming or pandemics or whatever that piper is going to be paid as well. all we, that's you and me, can hope for is that it doesn't happen in our lifetimes. but, that would mean our children are fucked.

so, aren't you glad i am writing again? always nice to have a comic to lighten up the day.

small talk

have landed in Hilton Head where they have a computer i can use. last week in mrytle beach was very cool and one of those "once in a lifetime" experiences: two of my grand kids came to see me perform for the very first time. they saw all four of the weekend shows and they got the whole gauntlet, a magical show, a great show, an okay show and LATE SHOW FRIDAY complete with drunks yelling and screaming. and what impressed paris and hunter the most was how i handled the bad show with that audience who had just slaughtered the first two comics. i actually got those people but it was hand to hand combat for a while...but i got the mothers. teach 'em to fuck with me.

paris and hunter got to hang out with comics and the owners of the club and were accepted immediately. they thought that was very cool. comics and comedy club people are just good people and, for the most part, great fun to be with. the kids are going to come out to vegas to hang out with me for a while this summer. it will be very cool. rhonda is just going to love these kids, she already likes them just from their pictures but is going to have a wonderful time with them.

nothing really to say, just checking back in and letting you know i am still around.

off to south carolina

i leave tomorrow for south carolina and will get back in a couple of weeks. not taking computer with me but i am sure i will be able to use one in mrytle beach and KNOW there is one for me in hilton head.

last night rhonda and i had another one of our magical restaurant experiences: we went to Lucio's way out west on sahara for some italian food. we heard about it through the BEST IN VEGAS that newspaper puts out each year and it was the reader's choice. cool place. service was a little slow but we think it was for a reason; the waiter kept telling us that they had a pretty good band that was going to play later on. so we had a leisurely meal of multiple hors d'ouerves,(sp) a filet for her and pasta with meat balls and a red wine sauce for me. very, very good. the pasta plate was the best i have ever had in a restaurant (rhonda's is the best) ah, but then the band came on. started with a piano player, bassist and drummer, soon electric guitar showed up, then two trombone players, one of which blew a great sax later. then they brought up a woman singer, whose name we did not get, who did a rendition of "stormy weather" that you feel in your toes, followed by "foggy day in london town" and she left to a standing ovation. but wait, that's not all, another female, a spunky little mixed race woman who looked to be maybe Jamaican was next and did some ella fitzgerald skat followed by "get your kicks on route 66" that brought the house down. a man who was there with his wife for her birthday got up and sang "funny valentine." each one of these people were real pros and were, at one time, members of big bands that had played here in vegas. there are hundreds of really gifted musicians living in vegas who show up a various night clubs and cafes and share their gifts. i left a hundred dollar tip for a night that we will never forget...it was truly magical.

THE COMING BILL HICKS CHRONICLES

what i am going to do is to post on utube some little stories about BILL HICKS that are not in the books nor have i ever heard mentioned in any interview with bill. to be truthful, i am doing for two reasons: a. (and philosophically, the most important) to tell the stories and to do them justice in the telling. b. (most important selfishly) to introduce myself to the hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more, hicks fans. i have never met a hicks fan who didn't like what i do. never. i am no bill nor do i try to be. i'm ron shock and i do me quite well and bill thought i was one funny motherfucker. his fans will too.

bill and i go back to my very first road trip where bill hicks and i do lsd at the second night of the GIG FROM HELL. bill tells that one in an interview that is posted on my website. (and he tells it wrong! he has the town wrong and how it came to be and he doesn't make himself out to be the real hero that he was. he downplays his role. for real. the real story is much better than the way bill tells it.) bill and i were two of the seven comics who became known as the TEXAS OUTLAW COMICS. we did dozens of shows together. we wrote bits together. we had a very strong friendship. i was not, by any stretch of the imagination, his "best" friend, far from it, i was 18 years older than bill and had a life outside of comedy. on the other hand, bill and i did have some fabulous times together, deep conversations together, hallucinogenic experiences together and we liked and respected each other. i spoke to bill the night before he died and on the night he did die, kenny moore and i had a mind boggling experience that we attribute to bill. it's a hell of a story.

bill liked talking to me because i had experienced things that he hadn't; i had been in prison and i was a hot shot in the corporate world. i could talk about places and thoughts and events and feelings and because i can tell a story well, bill was able to grasp the "essence" of what i was saying. for instance: (i think i have written about this one before, but it bears repeating) one night in houston, bill and i were walking my great dane, che dog, (dog of the people!!), and i got to espousing about the money system; silver standard vs. gold standard, federal reserve, banking systems, etc. blah, blah, blah. THE NEXT NIGHT, BILL HICKS WENT ON STAGE AND DID TEN KILLER FUCKING MINUTES ON MONEY! i thought, "you know, i have known that information for 15 years (at that time) and i haven't thought of a single funny fucking thing to say about it yet. (and still haven't)

i'm getting old and if i am going to ever penetrate the american mind, then i am going to have to do it viz the internet. i'm funny and i'm different and, for the most part, nobody knows who i am. i am going to use the net to introduce myself to an already established target market: bill hicks fans. they'll like me.

i have already filmed some of the stories and may keep one or two of the ones i have but really want to tell them over and over and over again until i just nail it. know what i mean?

i've got some great bill stories. stay tuned

poker and republican bashing

sooo, i went on facebook where i have upteen million friends and asked them to read the previous blog and give me their thoughts. none did. so much for that. apparently i have shrunk to about 5 readers but what the hell, i do this more for me and rhonda than anything else. it is sort of a daily diary and probably will just concentrate on poker with a little bit of rebulican bashing just for fun.

speaking of which: did you read the republican "alternate budget" proposal? brilliant. these people have no clue of what middle america (dat's you and me) want or need. to wit: they propose to cut the taxes of the WEALTHY so that the ceo's of wall street and the banks would pay a much lower rate on their already obscene pay packages. boy, that will resound with american workers! then they propose freezing all discreationary spending which has historically shown to be very important in lifting the country out of recession. no sense in expanding say, unemployment for instance, let us eat cake. and to top it off they want much higher premiums for the elderly on medicare. not only are the republicans heartless they are clueless and soon will be only a force in the intellectual wilderness of alabama, georgia, south carolina, arkansas and louisiana. with some folk in kansas, nebraska and montana coming along. the rest of america will go about their business and just ignore them.

in poker today, i had a woman who has a very slow learning curve (probably republican) i won three huge pots from her when she called my very large bets. first one, i had a set of tens on the turn and she had the nut flush...but didn't raise my little 15 dollar bet. board pairs on river. she pays off 75 dollars. next, there is a raise to 8 dollars and i and 6 others call. i have a pair of 6's. the flop comes 6-3-J. player number one who was in blind bets 50 dollars into a 56 dollar pot. everyone folds except this lady. i raise to 100 dollars and orginal player folds but she calls. turn is a blank and i go all in and she calls and shows a pair of queens. after she rebuys again and ten minutes goes by and i am now in small blind. there are 5 callers plus bb already in...i look down and there are aces. I raise to 20 dollars and everyone except her folds. flop comes Q-7-3. I bet 75 dollars and she goes all in, showing me a queen-ten suited. i show her the aces and take the pot. she leaves then and the dealer, who has been there for two of these hands, says "that woman just won't learn will she?" i said, "i hope not."

so that's it for today.

peace for us all.

my thoughts on the gm situation and i want to know what you think

i watched a very good discussion last night on cnn about the obama plan for the car companies. the show had people both pro and con and one kind of inbetween and after it was over, rhonda and i talked for hours about what was presented.

you know part of me believes that we are on our way not to economic recovery but to a world wide depression that could make the depression of the 1930's seem tame while at the same time i think that we could pull out of this within a year. i would be interested in reading what any of you think because i just don't know.

back to the car companies, gm in particular. here is my take: i think that any company needing tax payer assistance must be held to some standards. (i will get to the banks and insurance companies later) by that thinking, gm must come up with a viable plan to start on the road to recovery. gm has been making bad decisions for a couple of decades by not concentrating on building cars that americans want. they make superior trucks and suvs and i have bought one, a 1993 gmc Z-71 pickemup truck that was, dollar for dollar, one of the best vehicles i have ever owned but trucks really should be for a very limited market; cars are what most people drive. every year, honda and toyota sold more cars than gm, the japanese cars ran better, looked better, got better gas mileage, lasted longer, were better appointed inside and had higher resale value. did gm (or ford or chryler for that fact) look at what was happening and try to bring cars of equal quality and reliability? hyandia (sp) is another prime example; they started, what? 10, 15 years ago? at first their cars were crap but each year they got better and better and better and now their ratings are sky high. if a south korean company can start from scratch and within two decades become not only viable but a leader then why couldn't gm or chrysler? it is not the unions fault that the powers that be in those companies didn't design and build superior cars. ford on the other hand has increased their small car department and the FIT is doing quite well in europe and probably will here as well. the new mustang is a much better car than the mustang of the 90's.

the car makers of america and all the suppliers and dealers make up about 16% of the american work force and account for a huge percentage of gnp. how can we let them fail? also our national security is tied to the car makers, they provide vehicles for the military as well. how can we let them fail?

BUT on the other hand, if a company makes bad decisions year after year, makes bad products year after year, squanders money year after year HOW CAN THEY NOT FAIL? if you or i had a business that did those things we WOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS AND GOOD RIDDANCE TO US. right? so how can they not fail? should we, the taxpayers, keep pouring money into companies that will continue a proven bad business plan just because the companies are "too big to fail?"

and why was not the same kind of pressure put on the banks and aig? why do we keep throwing money at them when they have cost us much more than the car companies? why are we willing to have thousands of blue collar workers be put on the bread lines when we coddle the bankers and the wall street fat cats. obama makes the head of gm step down but citibank and boa keep rocking along with the same management as before. why is that gander not as good as that goose?

(personally i think, wagner at gm, did something or said something that brought the hammer down on him. flying to the d.c. meetings in his private jet didn't help his cause at all but i think it was something more and he pushed obama and thought he could get away with it but obama has shown he is willing and able to play really hard ball. besides it was a "shot across the bow" for all chief executives of all the companies looking for tax payer money and you can rest assured that they all took notice)

i have no answers. i have questions. i have worries. i have anger. i have concern for my country. i think the american public better start paying really close attention and start getting more and more information. the power still rests with the people as it always has but the people must realize that and use their power. the power of the vote, the power of the protest, the power of unrest.

i always had a certain amount of regret that i was born when i was, i missed the great events that shaped world history. i was a baby during wwII, too old for vietnam, wasn't here for the civil war or the american revolution or the french revolution or wwI or roman empire etc etc, but, sure as shit, i could be here for the fall of america. bummer. especially since i am old and not really ready for the barricades but if it comes to that, well, count me in. i won't be violent and i won't hurt my fellow man but i bet i could come up with some mischief to perform.

dis and dat and a new tooth

and that is why i didn't bet on louisville. i did bet on the tarheels to cover the 7 against ou and that was all for yesterday. for the tourney, i am ahead. also won again yesterday, but small. 13 out 14 is the streak since i moved to the venetian poker room and i'll take that.

if you come to vegas, go see LOVE at the mirage. best show in vegas. words fail me.

gotta go do stress test for my heart at the v.a. and then off to get my new tooth. glad i am getting it before i go on road. it is right there in front and i look weird. (not that i will look "good" when it is back in but ...)

LATER THIS DAY...

won again today after getting tooth. now i can smile without looking like someone out of DELIVERANCE. "squeal for me, boy, squeal like a pig". sorry.

a thought on a proposal that some congress people put forth about AIG where they were going to write a law and tax those bonuses at 90%. amazing how they could want to write a law just to get some people they DIDN'T LIKE. those men and women who were to get those bonuses did nothing illegal. their bonuses were guaranteed by contracts. regardless of how reprehensible they were, they still did nothing wrong. if congress had gone forth with this idea it would set a precedent where they could do it to anyone that crossed them. as dr. martin luther king said, "an injustice to one is an injustice to all." that is why the KKK will be supported by the ACLU (of which i am a dues paying, card carrying member), not because they agree with them but the rights of citizens apply to ALL citizens. we cannot pick and chose who has the right to free speech or the right of assembly. either we all do or none of us do.

but anyway, rock and roll

and

peace to us all.

READ THE NEW ROLLING STONE ARTICLE

MATT TAIBBI (who is a great writer) has an article in the april 2nd issue titled THE BIG TAKEOVER in which he lays out a case that "the global economic crisis isn't about money--it is about POWER. How wall street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution." it is fucking scary. he names names and takes us through a step by step explanation of how these bastards are basically taking over the government. (which is merely an extension of the ideas laid out in WEB OF DEBT). read it and weep.

we are so fucked, my friends. however, one of these day, this year, next year or 50 years from now, there will be a worldwide revolution of the people. throughout history, one theme has remained constant, the battle between the people and royalty. the kings always wanted to do no work yet get 98% of the proceeds from work. now the kings and queens have morphed into the international banks and corporations but the battle is the same. as RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE said, CLASS WARFARE--JUST DO IT.

see every time someone brings up class warfare it is shouted down by the powers that be. BUT CLASS WARFARE IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW. the rich have gotten richer and we have gotten poorer. hmmmm. the deck is stacked for the banks and corporations. when they get into a mess, such as right now, we, the people, fools that we are, bail them out. "hey peons, give us your money" "oh, yessir, massa, yessir, we'se gonna bail yer ass out again, oh yessir massa, yessir. whatever you say, massa" you see, to the ultra rich, we are all niggers. just slaves to the machine. the black people know this but haven't been able to convince their white brothers and sisters that THE MAN is not on any one's side except his own.

AS GWB SAID TO A GROUP OF ULTRA RICH SUPPORTERS, "SOME MAY CALL YOU THE HAVE MORES BUT I CALL YOU MY CONSTITUENCY" since he took office in 01, real wages have gone down and the rich have gotten MUCH MORE RICH. check it out.

and obama is playing right into their hands. whether it is on purpose or not, i don't know but, my friends, we are fucked. my hope is that the american people will come out of their self induced stupor and really get mad. i mean REALLY GET MAD. the old I AM MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!!" speak up, let us have a peaceful revolution of the people before we have to have a violent one. when there are 30 million homeless in america it will be too late for peaceful means. act now. we have been stupid and greedy and blind and uninformed for way too long. the net allows to contact our fellow citizens, obama showed us that if he does nothing else. "yes we can" shouldn't just apply to his campaign but to us the people; yes, we can make a difference but not by being silent, not by being afraid, not by being blind. open your eyes. then open your mouth.

and a happy saturday to you.


p.s. watched SOUTH PACIFIC on PBS last night as it was performed at CARNEGIE HALL on the GREAT PERFORMANCES series. it was so good. reba mcintyre played nellie furbush. each performer had the script book in their hands, so it wasn't like the original play but it still was an amazing piece of work. from our front room, rhonda and i gave it a standing ovation at the end. check it out.

tonight we go see LOVE. i can hardly wait, it should be great.

seat position

very seldom put up two posts in one day but ....

one of the things you have to be aware of is seat position and by this what i mean is that you want the strong players to your right and weak to your left. today there was a fellow who had over 2k in front of him which is HUGE at a 1-2 table and i moved to another seat so he would be to my right. he liked to push all in and i wanted to be able to trap him. also he raises a lot and that will keep me from playing so-so hands, which is cool.

well, i trapped him on basically my very first hand after moving. i am in bb with 5-7 off suit and there is no raise. flop comes 3-4-6 rainbow. da nutz. i check and everyone checks. fuck. jack of diamonds comes on turn putting two diamonds on board. i bet 15 dollars into pot and everyone folds to big stack who is on button. he goes all in. i call. he had 5-2 for the smaller straight. YES.

ended up about 400 to the good today.

and that doesn't count my winnings on bb yesterday where i had uconn, xavier, missouri, and villenava (sp) on a parlay and uconn by itself. YES!!!!

today i have okla., n.carolina and michigan state. we shall see. probably should have taken louisville to cover but i am not sure about them. hell, unlv beat them.

pssst. afghanistan is not a country. pass it on.

anback to winning ways, making it 9 out of last 10 at the venetian. small win but will take it. so, for 3 days of basically no cards, i still won a minor amount and that is good. minimizing losses and all...

rhonda has put me on face book but it all seems rather silly to me. not to be rude, but why would someone put on the net that "am bored."? "going to store" ?? eating a cookie, wiping their ass etc etc? this is not networking but i don't know quite what to call it. maybe it has some value as far as introducing people to me and my comedy but we haven't figured out how to make it work in that direction. i have no desire to skim through several hundred messages, most of which are trivial in content on any kind of regular basis. oh well, maybe i am missing something. if you know of a way to put it to work...enlighten me.

i have a very close and dear friend who thinks that obama is a demon and is going to bring the country down. i do surely hope they are wrong. i am, however, getting more nervous by the day with not only his appointments but now i see he is going to put even more troops in Afghanistan.

one of the real problems that we have in dealing with Afghanistan is that the united states keeps on acting as if Afghanistan was a COUNTRY. it is not. it is a collection of war lords and tribes that live in that part of the world. they don't think of themselves as afghans so why should we think of them as such? get out of that hell hole. and for that fact, get out TOTALLY from iraq. yes, it is going to descend into violence as the shiites fight the sunnis, the sunnis fight the shiites, the arabs fight the kurds, the persians fight the arabs and the kurds, the kurds fight the arabs, the shiites, the sunnis, the persians and the turks. AND WE WANT TO STAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT? jesus.

want peace? want to eliminate so-called islamic terrorism? GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST! it is the one and only way. there is no other way. duh. we and the british have been fucking around there since world war one. and incidentally, the jews didn't take isreal from the Palestinians, they took it from the british who took it from the Palestinians. duh. our fingerprints are all over the wars and conflicts of the middle east and while the people of that region know this the people of america do not.

want to live in peace?
get out of the middle east.

poker streak comes to an end and what is obama thinking?

all good things come to end and today i lost a grand sum total of 65 dollars. i made a 40 dollar mistake and the rest was just 9-3 followed by 6-2 followed by Q-4 followed by......blinded out basically. that's alright, it happens and when i saw that it just wasn't going to be my day and, on top of that, it was a very dangerous table i got up and left and came home to pick up dog shit. from shit to shit, so to speak.


i am becoming very concerned about some of the nominees that the president has put forth because of their ties to the very companies that got us into this mess. his latest, gary gensler to be chairman of the COMMODITY FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION is a point in fact. he played a central role in blocking regulations for some of the exotic financial instruments used for hedging. also he spent 18 years at GOLDMAN SACHS. hmmmm

BERNIE SANDERS tried to block the nomination pointing out that sanders had worked with phil gramham to except CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS from regulation. it is those very things that brought down AIG. he also worked to deregulate electric energy swaps which is what our boys at ENRON were doing. what in the fuck is obama thinking?

he keeps putting men into place that were knee deep in the shit. what is he thinking. have we been fooled again? is obama just a spokesperson for the huge financial institutions? i certainly hope not. but facts are facts and crooks are crooks and deregulators are the enemy of the common man and the ally of wall street and all that implies. man oh man. we shall see but my concern is growing.

another win and a quote from jefferson

won again today for the 8th straight session but it was very small. in a way, i played better today than most of the other 7 times because i was card dead for hours at a time and picked off only a few little pots to keep my head above water. you have to recognize when it is just not your day and don't stay when things aren't going well at all. i made some very good lay downs today and almost sprained my wrist from throwing cards away.

oh well, off to watch obama's press conference. i am beginning to have my doubts about the wisdom of his bank bailouts; i would much rather he just nationalize them and concentrate more on jobs but will see what he has to say this evening.

"i fear for my country when i contemplate that god is just"

thomas jefferson.

we, as a country, have piled up some really karma over the last 8 years what with our naked aggression and corporate greed.

just a thought

poker commentary from captain hook.

since i am so tight i hear the criticism that no one will call my raises or big bets because they would know that i have the goods. also, i hear that i can't just wait for aces and kings or big pairs that i have to mix up my game. one other thing i hear is how much people hate jacks (or aces...they say, "i always lose with aces") all three of these are dead wrong. remember something, my fellow good players, we don't win by being better than our opponents, we win by not being as bad as our opponents. we win by outwaiting our opponents. we win by throwing away hands that are beat. we win by maximizing our winnings and minimizing our losses. some cases in point from today's session:

still playing at venetian and the game today was wild and woolly at times with several loose aggressive players who had big stacks. not my favorite kind of game but there i was. first hour i don't play in a single hand and am down 15 bucks or so. i call under the gun with pair of 4's. wild and woolly next to me raises to ten dollars and since everyone at the table knows by now that he could have anything from a pair of aces to 3-7 off suit (for real) he gets 5 callers so i put in the extra 8 dollars to see the flop. flop comes Qc 9d 4d. i check, he bets ten dollars which is raised to 30 dollars and is called by button. i raise to 90 dollars and take down the pot. (eliminate the draws). another hour goes by and i am on little blind with jacks. button raises to 12 dollars and i call as do three other people including one of the loose aggressive players. flop comes Ad Jc 3h. beautiful. i check, loose aggressive bets 20 dollars, button calls and i raise to 75 and loose aggressive goes all in. i call. he had ace king. ba da boom. 45 minutes later from button i raise to 12 with jacks again. four callers and one of them has BIG stack. flop comes Qc, Jc, 4c. hmmmmm. it is checked around to me and i bet 40 dollars and big stack calls while everyone else folds. i am afraid he has flush. turn is the 4 of diamonds. beautiful. he checks. i check. river is a nothing. he bets 50 dollars. i raise to 100. he raises all in. i call. he shows nut flush. thank you. after i won another hand with jacks they started calling me captain hook.

another example: i raise to ten with ace king of diamonds. flop comes Ac Ts 6s. an asian woman bets 40 dollars right into me and i fold. why? because i was beat and i had no spades. she is called in one place. she had tens and 6's and lost to a spade flush on river.

poker and plans

i am running really good at poker and i am doing so by being super tight. i have had people tell me that since i am so tight that people will not call me when i raise or bet because of my table image. WRONG! for instance, i had been at the table for several hours and was up big when this hand happened....i raise to 17 with aces and am called in two places. flop comes Q, 5, 7 rainbow. they check and i bet 50 dollars and am called by one guy. next card is a 2. he checks and i bet 75 dollars and he goes all in with his last 100. i call. he has QJ and i take the pot. earlier in the day i had raised with jacks and spiked a jack on the flop against two opponents but the board was dangerous. Tc, Jh Kh. ace queen or 9-Q and they have a straight and, of course there is the heart draw. I bet 60 dollars into a 50 dollar pot and get called in both places. hmmmm. turn is 7c putting two flush plus another straight. they check, i bet 75 dollars and both call. well, shit. river is perfect, the 2 of clubs, they check and so do i and they were both on a draw.

the great advantage of 1-2 no limit hold-em is the quality of your opponents which is poor. like i have said before, i am not out to make tens of thousands of dollars per month; i am out to make a grand or so every month. i am not trying to win a lot of hands; i looking to win a couple of real big hands. slow and easy and super tight will do the trick at low limit no limit.

on to another subject; the more i read about the people and companies that got us into this position the more i realize that it is many people and many companies and they all seem to be inter-related. larry summers in the clinton administration lead the way to deregulate. gaithner (sp) is right in there with him. citibank, goldman sachs, aig, bank of america. peas in a fucking pod. we have foxes guarding the hen house. we are so fucked.

all of us better batten down the hatches and start making some plans of what to do if everything does go to shit which it very well may. i have poker and a small ss check and rhonda can always do individual taxes, that is assuming that somebody still has a job. also, i know how to hustle by buying some little thing that i can sell and double or triple my money on it; whether it be peace buttons or pool cues that double as a walking stick (hey heather). we also have a very low mortgage payment that we should always be able to cover. and if all else fails, i have a brother in law up in nebraska who has a small farm that grows enough food for several families and he also is a hunter and has always brought home fresh game. he has told rhonda and me that if it all goes down, we are to scoot on up there and we will ride it out together. so we have plans, a, b, c and d.

fear and loathing in america brothers and sisters. fear and loathing.

what did they call with?

another mistake that 1-2 players make is that they don't ask themselves "what did he call with?" if you fail to do that, you can walk into some real problems.

i raised with aces to 18 dollars which was a big raise for the table i was on and am called by two people. flop comes Q, 9, 3 rainbow. it is checked to me and i bet 50 dollars and one guy, who i know to be fairly loose, calls. there is now aprx. 150 in the pot. turn is a K. he checks. now, what did he call with? ten jack? he has a straight. Q,K? two pair. AQ, i am golden. QJ? could still be good but he picked up draw. i check.

river is another King. he debates and checks. cool. if he had QK he would have bet since i checked the turn, same if he had straight because he would be afraid that i wouldn't bet. i bet 100 dollars and he calls with AQ. thank you. my check on the turn got me an extra hundred. (and let me know what he had by how he played the river.)

i am on button with pair of 4's. flop comes 9-4-2 rainbow. three people plus bb in pot. bb checks, next player bets 10 dollars, player to my right calls, i raise to 20 dollars. bb folds, first bettor folds and other guy calls. turn is Q. he bets 50 dollars into me. now, he either has two pair or a set of 9's or 2's. (would have raised with queens) i think he has Q-9 so i call. river is a blank and he fires 100 dollars into pot. i call. he turns over Q-9. thank you.

nothing of real importance in those two examples just telling you how it thought it through.

ENOUGH ALREADY!

AIG'S CEO edward m. liddy was on tv earlier today spewing forth his lies and justifications about the bonuses but no senator brought up mr. liddy's background and just how deep he personally was in this whole thing.

he was A DIRECTOR OF GOLDMAN SACHS and was paid 685,770 dollars in 2007 and would have been brought in for questioning if g.s. hadn't gone belly up. liddy even headed their AUDIT COMMITTEE during the 5 years before he resigned to take over AIG in 2008. as for his salary sacrifice, not to worry, in 05 when he as still ceo of allstate insurance he received 26.7 MILLION dollars in compensation.

in other words this creep should have been very aware of underwriting practices at aig since he had been paid millions by another insurance company. between aig and goldman sachs he oversaw the collapse of the american financial sector and there he is being referred to as "sir" instead of "motherfucker" which may be what the "m" in his name stands for.

all these guys seem to be in cohoots with each other. chris dodd was chairman of the committee that should have been overseeing the financial sector but there he is acting all sanctimonious.

what does it take to get the american people stirred up enough to DEMAND some rolling of heads? i am not advocating violence (but i would understand it) but i am advocating some civil unrest until we see some actual and factual and effectual actions, not words, coming out of washington.

(thanks to yvonne c. for sending me the information on edward motherfucker liddy.)

it's the congress, stupid.

$807,500 for nevada fair housing foreclosure effort
$507,000 access to healthcare network for uninsured
523,000 to fight hepatitis c
$ 1 million to assist the university of nevada health sciences nursing program
856,000 to school system to school district to prevent dropout
856,000 to another school district for same thing
800,000 for university of nevada reno for agricultural related programs
269,000 to help carson city battle erosion
300,000 to city of fernley for law enforcement equipment
235,000 to nevada dept. of agriculture for weed control
4.78 million for truckee meadows flood control project
2.5 million for truckee canal reconstruction
3 million for water treatment at lake tahoe
18 million for rural nevada water infrastructure and water quality projects
money to study wildlife habitat in central nevada lakes and to restore the lahonthon cutthroat trout population
608,000 to help wells recover from earthquake
150,000 to restore a church
475,000 for the virginia and truckee railroad
190,000 for amargosa valley community center
300,000 for wastewater treatment in goldfield
190,000 for community center in elko
285,000 truckee meadows community college low income student recruitment
1.5 million for interpretive center in elko
24,000 to help poor schoolchildren in lincoln county
381,000 for nevada cancer institute to fund hope coach mammovans

how many jobs do these projects create? and the ones that are created, how long will they last?

while each of these is commendable in a way, they are not what we need. WE NEED SOME FUCKING GOOD PAYING LONG LASTING JOBS!!! jesusfuckingchrist. without jobs for the unemployed all other things are just farting in the wind.

this is just a partial list and god only knows what is in the "stimulus bill" for other states. i know that obama has said that these PORK projects only make up 1% of the overall bill but i don't believe him. i believe that the congress in general and the demos in particular are loading this up with enough pork to choke us all. obama promised no more pork but he has gone back on his word.

i told all of you why i was voting for obama and i also told you that i would bitch and moan if he didn't live up to his promises. well, i am beginning to bitch and moan.

the treasury secretary, gaither (sp), sounds like he has no clue as to what he is doing.

congress must be reigned in. the democrats, now that they control congress, are acting like children in the candy store and showing no restraint at all. fuck.

write your congressperson and DEMAND no more pork and DEMAND that it is jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs that get the money.

NAMES AND PHOTOS WOULD DO THE TRICK

the president is taking a lot of heat for the AIG fiasco bonuses and the wolves are howling but most people don't understand the bind he (we) is (are) in. these bonuses were contracted last year and are legally binding. now, since we, the taxpayer, have a stake in the company and we don't pay the bonuses then there will be lawsuits which they will win.

i have an idea though that would keep us from paying these outrageous bonuses to people who got us in the mess in the first place: publish their names, their addresses and their photos in the national press and on the internet. then let us see if these greedy motherfuckers still want to take that money. already, aig hq is under armed guard because the people are more than a little upset over this and it is hard to blame them.

it has a good chance of getting really ugly here in america and fear and loathing is sweeping the land. the barricades are being erected and the pitchforks are being sharpened. somewhere, some old lady is stitching names into a blanket. those names are going to be checked and heads will roll. (re: tale of two cities)

in the nit tonight, take kentucky and give the 7 over unlv.

nationalize the banks and do away with the federal reserve. the f.r. is a PRIVATE bank that LOANS our money to US. now is the time for real change. it may get a little bloody but as thomas jefferson said, "the tree of liberty must watered with blood of patriots and tyrants."

oh well, i am old and have lived through the golden age of america, the richest times in the richest land the world has ever seen. my children and grandchildren will not have it nearly as good as i did.

top of the morning to you.

a little dose of epictetus

what a relief it is to feel good again. i don't do "sick" with any kind of aplomb and am, in fact, a real woosy when i am feeling bad. but i am back, feeling my oats, full of piss and vinager so let's rock on.

the purpose of the exorcise in poker is twofold: minimize your losses and maximize your winnings. with that in mind, here is what i believe to be the best way to play those dueces that we have talked about: remember sets are very, very powerful hands and can be huge winners because they are hidden.

preflop. call the two dollars and then call the small raise. (there is another way right here but very dangerous and that is to raise big when it gets back around and that way either take the money right then and there or eliminate weak speculative hands. if you are called however, you are in horrible position and would have to make all in bet on flop when you spike the 2)

flop: you are first to act and it is a dangerous drawing board with both straight and flush possiblities. CHECK AND CALL

turn. now there is a flush and straight possibility on board. check and call any bet up to 25 dollars because pot odds are so good at this point, if board pairs on river you will take down big pot more than likely. if it is bet big, fold.

river. was another heart incidently so folding is easy. if board pairs or miracle 2 shows up, you should bet it straight out big.


this way of playing it keeps your exposure small and your possible gain big. you can abandon ship easily enough when scare cards come up and then someone bets big.

aggression is a winning tactic, obviously, but there are times you must temper aggression with a little common sense. i am always looking to trap; i want the hand that i know will win not the one i hope will win.


so that's it for the 2's.


"in theory it is easy to convince an ignorant person: in actual life, men not only object to offer themselves to be convinced, but hate the man who has convinced them. whereas Socrates used to say that we should never lead a life not subjected to examination"

Epictetus


that quote has nothing to do with the 2's other than it has something to do with everything.

dis and dat on a sunday night

dr john and the neville brothers were beyond words!

scotty, i got to hear aaron neville sing AMAZING GRACE and he sang the verses we couldn't come up with. unfuckingbelievable. it was great!

over the past three years of this blog i have said over and over we need to get our ass out of the middle east. we meddle, we sign agreements with isreal that are not in our best interests but theirs, we give money to egypt and take money from the saudis, we do the biddings of the kuwaitis, we invade iraq, we threaten iran, we invade afghanastan, piss off pakistan, bomb by proxie the syrians, abandon the kurds and invest in dubai. we are so incredibly stupid and arrogant. we don't read history and get our information from 30 second sound bites.

so just some thought from other bloggers, much more knowledgeable than i, throughout history.....



Now it is not good the the Christian's health to hustle
the Aryan brown,

For the Christian riles, and Ayran smiles and
he weareth the Christian down;

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name
of the late deceased,

And the epitaph drear; "A fool lies here who tried
to hustle the east."

---Rudyard Kipling, "the naulahka"


"You have eyes but you do not see
And you have ears but not hear."

Jesus H. Christ



"how many times can a man be robbed--on the same street, by the same people---before they call him a rube?"

Hunter S. Thompson


"there's a sucker born every minute."

P.T. Barnum

beware the cure

not only am i not getting better, i seem to be getting worse and i think it is from the medicine i am taking. how this came down was the dentist who did the surgery gave me an antibiotic but then after taking it for a week i end up with a fever of 102 so i go to the v.a. and my doctor there gives me AVELOX, a much more powerful antibiotic, and then the real fun begins: oh my fever goes down after a couple of days but my left hand cramps up so much that it is unusable, my right leg cramps up, my right arm cramps up, my lips break out in blisters, sweat pours off me at night and when i wake up the bed is drenched. i then read the warnings about the drug and all of these things are side effects and can be very serious. each one of them with the exception of the blistering lips (which is highly unattractive, i might add) comes with the warning "see your doctor immediately". fucking great, the v.a. is closed on weekends and i am not going to some emergency room where there are people stacked up to the ceiling and get charged several thousand dollars to be told, "see your doctor for another prescription." so what i am doing is not taking any more of this until i talk to dr. leon on monday. it has been 24 hours since i last took a pill and guess what?, hand is okay, leg is okay, blisters are gone, arm is okay. think i should take another pill? guess not.

besides all of that, unless i am on my death bed tonight, i am going to see DR.JOHN AND THE NEVILLE BROTHERS at the hilton where i have 4th row center tickets. this is the very first time they have ever toured together and should be a tremendous show. i saw the neville brothers in new orleans last year at jazz fest which was the first time they had played in new orleans since katrina and, as i told you then, it was a spiritual experience and brought tears to the eyes of all who were there. arron neville's voice is a national treasure and if you have never heard these guys....DO SO! dr. john also is something special. i do hope he does WALK ON GILDED SPLINTERS because it is the most unusual version of that song ever recorded. and what a show man he is. if i am still alive tomorrow i will tell you about the concert.

i know that almost everyone who reads this is someone who reads, i can tell by your comments, and i want to tell you again to read WEB OF DEBT which is so incredibly relevant to what is going on that it is scary. same with SHOCK DOCTRINE. it is the banks who have done this to us and there is a cure but it is radical. read these books. educate yourself and then pass it on. it is we the people who have to turn things around, we cannot count on politicians to do it. obama, as sincere as he is, is tied to the old ways and unless we speak up and demand some fundamental changes in our money policies the current situation will reoccur over and over and over again as it as done for the past century.

oh well, back to basketball and fruit juices.

peace to us all

random thoughts from my sick bed

you won't ever see a better basketball game than syracuse and uconn last night. big east bb allows contact to go uncalled that would be felonies in some states. no a league for the faint of heart. gamblers had to be living and dying.

i have been sick as dog for past week hence the absense of blog but if a sports fan is going to be under the weather this was a good week to do so.

just when is this stimulus money going to create a job? it has proped up banks and insurance companies and credit card companies and has created a hog heaven of pork but so far as i know not a single dollar has gotten to the people who need it. and congress did grant themselves a new pay raise. cocksuckers.

no wait, some of the finest people i know are cocksuckers so let's just call them insensitive pigs.

next week the ncaa's kick off and unlv will not be there; they went out with a whimper. we failed to live up to our hype. oh well, wait till next year.

if san diego state gets in and his a high enough seed to not be playing one of the top three or four in their bracket in the first game they will be a good bet, they are good athletic team that is peaking at the right time. you heard it here first.

too tired, too sick, too medicated to write anything of consequence, not that i ever do, so this is just to let you know i am still around

flop and turn for the ages

i started out the day at MGM but after about an hour of just being card dead and down about 30 bucks i decide to go check out the venetian poker room and so off i went and am glad i did. first of all, the room is just GREAT, big room, big tables, comfy chairs, food service to your table and dollar an hour comps. i have been at table for about ten minutes and in first position i find a pair of jacks and raise to ten dollars and five people call. and lordy, lordy, how sweet it was, flop comes JACK, JACK, ACE! gotta love that. i of course check as does everyone else and then, my friends, the miracle card comes...another ace. the guy with ace king thought he had a hand.......lol.

all told today i won 520 dollars in about 3 hours and came on home.

more stories and the end of the poker quiz/lesson/example tomorrow (i hope)

peace to us all.

mistakes in poker and politics

since i play at the 1-2 tables, i am playing with players who are not real good on the whole and i see them make many mistakes, the biggest two are not raising big enough with big pairs and then after the flop not betting enough to run people off hands. yesterday, i was in the big blind and 5 people call and then the button raises to 7$. i look down and i have the 4s-7s, obviously not a very good hand but i know that everyone else is going to call so i put in the extra 5 dollars. sure enough, the other 5 call so now 7x7 or 49 in the pot. flop comes Jc, 5s, 6s. i bet ten dollars into the pot to represent the jack and everyone folds except the button who raises me to 20 dollars; i call. the turn is the 3h. i check and now he wants to bet big and bets 30 dollars. i raise to 60 dollars and he then compounds his mistake (s) by going all in and i am now 200 dollars richer. he had kings. had he raise to 15-20$ preflop as he should with that many people in before him i would, of course, mucked that piece of cheese and he would have won the pot. plus, if he had bet huge on the flop i would have had to drop my cards but he priced me in and it cost him his stack. you gotta remember what grandma said....always raise big with big pairs....grandma didn't fuck around and neither should you.

today, i played for a little over 4 hours and won 152 dollars and was in maybe ten hands not counting blinds all day. i just refused to get involved with less than premium cards and just waited those people out and paid off on the few hands i won.

i will go back to the case of the dueces tomorrow and maybe another shoot-em up story.

sure hope that stimulus money gets into the economy quickly before everybody is unemployed. i agree with paul krugman that the only problem with what obama has done is that it is not big enough. we gotta fix things (bridges, roads, levies,) and build things, (schools, high speed rail, desalination plants) because just giving the money to banks to loan isn't going to work. we've tried that and all they did was go buy other banks and still refuse to loan our money back to us. (it is a good thing for the bankers and stockbrokers and politicians who got us into this mess that we don't live in france of the 17 hundreds because we would have those motherfuckers up against the wall or on the chopping block....not that i would do that but, truth be known, i probably wouldn't stop others from doing it) jobs is what we need. manufacturing is what we need. not only do we have to fix the immediate problem we have to face the fact that we don't make enough here anymore. true wealth of a nation is in WHAT THEY MAKE, tangible goods not intangible services.

oh well, our greed and stupidity got us into this and hopefully the nation as a whole will learn some very vaulable lessons from this disaster. number one of which is never elect another republican to the presidencey. check out when unemployment was the highest over the last 50 years, see how it was ALWAYS the republicans who got us into these messes. nixon, reagan, bush and bush all brought us recessions. we are slow learners.

poker, robbers, shooters and always keep your cool

at this point i have to get more specific because the action heats up. (this happened at the mgm and it was a buddy of mine who had the 2's and he was sitting right next to me and i had folded and he showed me his cards preflop. after the hand we discussed at great length.....

he bet 30 dollars into the pot and was called by the maniac and the button. pot is now pretty big.

the next card was the 8h. now what? do you back off or do you bet and if so, how much?


speaking of buddies, one of mine got robbed at gun point the other night and it reminded me of something that happened in the 60's......

it is late night in oklahoma city and i was running a book office at the time and on that night i had gone to see a boxing match downtown and afterwards i had to go to the bus station to pick up supplies that had been sent to me. (back in those days, shipping by greyhound was the fastest and most economical way to get boxes of whatever sent from a to b) i go in and pick up two boxes weighing maybe 15 pounds each and go to leave. the bus station sits on a corner and my car is parked right across the street if i were to go to my right it is right there. as i am leaving with my hands obviously full, i notice two rather scruffy looking young black guys get up and follow me out. downtown is deserted at this time of night and i am a little skeptical of the action so instead of turning right to go to car, i go straight across the street and they follow, maybe ten yards behind me. i then take a right and cross the street and they follow. now so far it could be just a coincidence but then i take a right again so i am going back the way i came but just across the street. they follow. now i know something is amiss. i get to my car and throw the boxes on my trunk and spin around with my right fist cocked, i am going to punch the first guy before they can jump me. however, as i turn i find myself facing a snub nosed .38! (lesson: don't bring a fist to a gun fight) i freeze in mid punch and the guy with the gun says, "be cool." i say, "i am the coolest motherfucker you have ever seen." he says, "give me your money" and i reach very slowly to my wallet and hand it to him. inside is about ten dollars. he says, "fuck! you are more broke than we are." i say, "look, keep the money, give me back my wallet and i.d. and i will get in my car and go about my business and will not call the cops" he says, "promise?" i say, "absofuckinglutely." and that is what we did.

the lesson here is threefold: be aware of your surroundings and be willing to change tactics is the situation changes are the first two and the third one is always keep your cool.

and that story reminds me of the times i have been shot at and maybe next post i will tell one or two of those. yeah, yeah, i know; everyone of you have been shot at multiple times...... lol.

peace to us all.

rock and roll.

enjoy today, tomorrow could be worse.

for those of you who are still in game. raise was called by everyone so pot now contains 7x7 or 49 dollars.

flop is Jh, 7h, 2c. your hand contains two red dueces.

you are first to act.

bad tooth and poker problem part II

for any of you who were planning on seeing me this week up in northern california at a couple of casinos...i aint gonna be dere. yesterday i had to go to the dentist because one of my teeth had abscessed and it was full of infection. tooth was pulled...not a lot of fun but it was the aftermath which was horrible. the infection was so severe that it "ate" the (the word that i can't spell but is the pain killer that a doctor shoots into your mouth) and thus the nerves were exposed. let me tell you, you don't want that! i screamed in pain. i cried. i moaned. i screamed some more. rhonda, poor thing, was going crazy with worry; she had taken off work and here she is with screaming husband. we get me home and i gobble down some pain pills and finally get to sleep. it was a long day.

now for poker puzzle from previous post: (all except one, decided to call) well, 6 people call and then the button raises but only to 7 dollars or 5 dollars more each. bb calls but lb throws away and now it is back to you.

politics and poker

aig wants (and will get)more money and so do some (dare i say, foolish) banks. i have a problem with bailing out companies that are bad shape because they made bad decisions. while i have socialistic ideals and believe in my heart of hearts that a nation's worth or greatness lies not in the power of their military but how they treat their citizens, i have enough free enterprise in my personal system that failure should not be rewarded. aig is in the situation that they created. like i have said before, i called the housing collapse waaaaay before it happened and if i, drug addled, poker playing stand-up comic with no college education could read that writing on the wall then how come these "masters of the universe" could not? did they know that if they failed then someone would come along and bail their sorry asses out? same with the banks. why not, if we are giving out money, support those banks who did not play the fools game of derivatives and shaky loans to shaky people? let them continue to prosper and give them more capital to work with since they seem to know what they are doing?

i can understand the rationale behind the support for the car companies in as they employ so many people and we, the people, will get benefits from them recovering whereas what is the benefit to the american people if aig makes a comeback? they are an insurance company, there are LOTS of insurance companies. and we all know just what fair minded people insurance executives are. (speaking of which, according to tv commercials we all ought to change our car insurance to x, y or z because each and every one of them has the lowest rates.....could it be that they are lying? nah? not an insurance company)

"getting out of iraq" does NOT mean leaving 50,000 troops there. that is not getting out. that is reducing forces. and there is a huge difference.

my wife, rhonda, says that we should not be nitpicking right now because that just plays into the republicans game but i say that life and death on foreign soil is not nitpicking. while i agree with 90% of what president obama has done so far, i cannot in good conscience support leaving american boys and girls in iraq for any reason. yes, i know that violence is going to break out and that there will be blood letting on all sides, shiites, sunnis and kurds but let us not shed another drop of american blood there. we broke it and we can't fix it. so let us get the fuck out. a new strong man will come out of the chaos and establish a new dictatorship there. so be it. once that happens we can establish some kind of relief fund for them with strings attached of course and help who ever it is to right that particular ship of state.

as far as the republicans go they are committing political suicide right in front of our eyes. bobby jindal in louisiana is a joke and so is samford in south carolina. they have NO ideas, NO plans, NO proposals other than give tax cuts to the rich. man. and to hear rush Limburger cheese (they both smell) say that he wants obama to FAIL is beyond my comprehension. for obama to fail the country fails. unemployment reaches TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. that is what he wants? talk about unpatriotic. if they had an alternate plan that would be one thing...but they don't.

oh well, tomorrow we go back to poker blogs for a while ... i have some interesting hands to discuss.

matter of fact here is one now but with a twist. i am only going to give you the hand as it came out and you write me and tell me what you would have done. once we get enough people to comment on preflop we will then go to flop and start the process over again.

you are in first position at a table that usually gets lots of callers but few raises preflop but can get really hairy from there on out with one certified maniac who has lots of money in front of him but i have already seen him bluff off several hundred dollars in the short time i have been there. there are others who are loose and will gamble but he is the only maniac.

first question on this problem: you have a pair of 2's. what do you do? fold, call or raise?

saturday's song

grey days and grey times
country falling apart
millions jobless, homeless
daggers through the heart
of america

smiley people on tv
selling things
that no one needs
in their home
but thank god
they cured
restless leg syndrome

land of opportunity
they come from wide and far
working hard, got a job
living in their car
opportunity wasn't lost
it was stolen

all that money wasn't lost
on stocks and bonds
don't you see
it was stolen
from you and me

somebody has got it

and they ain't giving it back

jack


preachers speaking of a god
that they don't believe in
money changers in the temple
exchanging souls
for dollars

happy saturday to you too

maverick is home

maverick came home this afternoon but he is pretty heavily medicated so he is rather doped up and not interested in anything other than a drink of water and nice soft bed. annie d. dog is quite upset that she has to be separated from him and sits and howls. sad but irritating. hard to explain things to a dog; she feels as though she is, in some way or another, being punished but she knows not why. i understand but wish she would lighten up on the music.

but what cha gonna do?

looks like rhonda got out of her previous company just in time, she heard from a past fellow co-worker that they are laying off a lot of people while rhonda's little company is thriving. another example of god working in mysterious ways.

speaking of which; may i recommend highly the book LAMB: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BIFF by christopher moore. REALLY GOOD. reminds me somewhat of tom robbins, who is, far and away, my favorite author. if you have never read JITTERBUG PERFUME do yourself a favor and do so. tremendous book. robbins best known book was EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES but it is, in my opinion, not anywhere close to several others of his creations. FIERCE INVALIDS HOME FROM WARM CLIMATES is my second favorite of his. read jitterbug and you will be hooked, he is able to pull off funny and deep at the same time.

on the subject of books, i finally got around to watching the HBO version of JOHN ADAMS and though it was good, it fails to live up to the book. tv, being such, puts too much emphasis on drama of the personal sort and not enough on history. this is our history and one of our all time great men....read the book.

reading seems to be something that vast numbers of people don't do. or they read just fluff without ever taxing their mind or their imagination. i can not imagine what it would be like not to read and to read constantly. from childhood and even through prison i have read thousands of books and some of them i have read multiple times. moby dick is so much better the second time through; as is cicero, plato, emmerson, twain, jung, (i have read everything this man ever wrote and that is enough to fill a small library) and numerous others but you get the point. and it is never too late to start reading. keep your mind engaged and your life will be fuller.

oh well, nothing to say but needed something to do while watching over sick dog.

rock and roll

peace to us all

a very long night

last night was one of the longest nights that rhonda and i have gone through: our two dogs, maverick (the great dane) and annie d. dog (the mutt) sleep in the pool room and last night when i went out to close the door for them and give them their evening treats, i noticed that maverick was obviously not feeling well. nose was dry and he was extremely lethargic. rhonda and i immediately took him to an emergency animal clinic and it was a good thing that we did: his stomach had torn loose and had twisted in his body and he was going into shock. we had him operated on then and there and i was at that clinic until almost 4 this morning. the doctor said that the operation had gone exceptionally well and he thought maverick was going to make it. we had him transported to his regular vet clinic at 7:30 this morning and at 2 this afternoon, our vet said that he was doing "wonderfully well."

when we found out about his stomach tearing last night, it really hit me hard because i had lost my first great dane to this horrible event. it strikes mostly large breeds and the great dane in particular. the stomach literally turns over in his body. fucking horrible. they have to open him completely up, take out his spleen, turn the stomach around and attach it to the walls of the body. it can go either way and if not caught in time it leads to an extremely painful death for the dog. anyway, when the doctor told us what was going on, i broke down in tears and, my brothers and sisters, i really thought i was going to have a heart attack right there on the spot. i almost died of grief. for real. i do love that dog.

maverick is one of the most magnificent beasts you will ever see. his grand dad was a national champion as was one of his aunts. when you see maverick, you see what a great dane should look like. he is 35 inches at the shoulder and weighs aprox. 160-170 lbs. (you try getting a dane on a scale...i used to weigh zeus by putting him in my car and then weighing the car with him and without him. lol) the danes are loyal, intelligent, powerful, protective, playful animals that were bred to be a personal protection dog from bandits and the european wild boar. the ewb weighs in at about 4-500 pounds and the great dane can grab that animal by the neck and lift it off the ground and then snap it's neck. that is a powerful dog, jack. only the big bull mastiff is more powerful.

anyway, just spoke to the vet and she said that maverick is doing quite well and in fact, wants to PLAY, can you fucking believe that? he comes home tomorrow.

i don't pray a lot but saint francis of assisi got some calls last night.

peace to us all and may maverick be with us for years to come.

MAKE THE BANKS COME UP WITH CONTRACT

TOO COOL! i thought i might be right when i wrote about making the banks come up with the actual contract. (SEE POST, SOMETHING FROM THE PAST....from just a couple of posts ago...)

from this mornings l.v. paper: (and a.p. story by mitch stacy) "kathy lovelace lost her job and was about to lose her house, too. but then she made a seemingly simple request of the bank: show me the original mortgage paperwork.

"and just like that, the foreclosure proceedings came to a standstill."

the story goes on to say that thousands are using this to stall foreclosure while they try to get their financial houses back in order.

SO, IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS FACING THIS HORRIBLE FATE POINT THIS STORY AND TACTIC OUT TO THEM...IT COULD BUY THEM ENOUGH TIME TO WORK THINGS OUT.

on to something else....


maybe muzzammil "mo" hassan was just mad at his wife for not giving him head.


and something else....

i want to make it perfectly clear: roland burris did not raise any money for me. (that prick!)

and something else....

back on just chit and chat; the weather here has finally let up and we are back to bright sunshine and warmer temps. i have very low tolerance for cold which is one of the reasons i like vegas, though it can be cold for about 30 days out of the year, the rest of the time it ranges from warm to FUCKING HOT which is fine with me.

gotta go, i hear a poker table calling.

mumble mumble

one of my very best attributes at poker is my incredible patience; i can sit there and throw away cards for hours and not get tempted. none of this, "well, i can't get good cards so let me play this 6-7 off suit here in the cut-off"...or something equally as stupid.

today at mandalay bay, i had no cards, no pairs, no fucking nothing and have blinded out some 70 dollars when this hand happens: i am on the small blind with 7 callers and i look down and there is the jack-4 of diamonds so i put in the other dollar, let's take a peek. the flp comes Jc, 7c, 4c. i have flopped two pair but, of course, there is a possible flush already out there. I bet ten dollars and am called in two places. pot now contains 46 dollars. the turn card is the 4s, giving me a full house. COOL. now to get the max out of the hand so i check. next player checks and the other bets 20 dollars, i raise to 40 dollars and the other player folds and the bettor calls. the last card is the 8c, i bet twenty dollars and the other guy goes ALL IN. cool. i put in all my chips and he shows me the STRAIGHT FLUSH. fuck.

and that is why most people can't play no limit, the swings are brutal and can leave you talking to yourself.

mumble mumble grumble grumble toil and trouble.

peace to us all.

rainy days

cold and wet here in sin city, bedraggled and drenched whores under the awnings looking for a dry fuck somewhere. streets are flooded washing away the city grime and all the used needles.

we have more illegal pain pills here in vegas than in any other city according to something i read a month or so ago. we are a lortab kind of town. a lot of pain here, might as well stay medicated.

poker rooms are full though so money is still flowing into ye old bankroll. so let it rain, let it rain and don't let me die in the winter.

hopefully spring is just around the corner and i can get back in the pool and do some laps. we are going to put the diving board back up this year but it will probably be more for show than for my use, i surely would hurt myself, just not as cordinated as i used to be.

in the "our father", the word for father should have been translated as "source" taking the personality out of it. the word "heaven" could be translated as "expanding everywhere." so then it becomes "our (my) source which are everywhere"
big difference.

may parnell rot in hell

i have been asked many times why i up and left the corporate world, the world of "business", the world of profit and the world the three piece suit. the world where you are judged by how much money you make or what private country club you belong to or the car you drive and the place you live. that world. well, let me present as evidence of why, mr. stewart parnell, president of peanut corporation of america.

if you missed this story this morning, mr. parnell when presented with evidence that his plant was selling peanut butter that was contaminated with salmonella tried to a. get another company to run tests, b. pressured regulators to allow him to ship the product anyway and c. went ahead and shipped contaminated product with homemade certificate that falsely attested to the purity of the product. though people were dying from his product, mr. parnell complained about the money he was losing.

read the story. google it up. it is the story of capitalistic america. money rules and the people be damned. wall street and banks with their unmittagated gall and arrogance, the car companies who refused to see the writing on the wall and then when the house came tumbling down blamed it on the unions. jesusfuckingchrist. can't recall that peanut butter because it will cost us money. jesusfuckingchrist.

(they even sent the peanut butter to nursing homes...there is a special place in hell for mr. parnell.)

also today's paper was this little jewel of a story: in wilkes-barre pa., juvinelle court judges were sending kids to private owned prisons in exchange for bribes. many of these kids were up on extremely minor offenses and even the prosecutors and police said that there was no reason for them to be incarcerated. the two judges got over a million dollars each in bribes. money rules and the people be damned.

i may have written this before but i told one of the talk show hosts that i met more honest people in prison than i did in corporate boardrooms. here is a list of the companies that either i worked for or was a high paid consultant to: i.t.t., itt life, itt financial services, beneficial life, aig, mcmillan publishing, grolier, british printing and c & s. each and every one of those companies lied in their sales presentations and in their advertizing. my crime was that i knew they were lies and i trained the sales forces and advertizing sections how to tell the lies. one day, i just couldn't do it anymore. i got honest and it has cost me millions. but honesty gave me peace of mind and ability to look at myself in the mirror. (and i was never as low as mr. parnell.)

anyway, peace to us all. rock and roll.

something from the past that may help today

let me tell you a story from days gone bye that may have some bearing on what is going on in the housing market and maybe a way for people to keep from being thrown out of their houses.....

i started a company in the 70's which, because of its nature, required that i and my managers presented a "successful" front. i found a luxury car leasing company that was getting ready to go under and i bought 6 cars from them, two panteras, two lincoln mark IV's and two lincoln town cars. i made a very small down payment and took delivery. when the first monthly payments came due i refused to make them because the company had indeed gone under and the "banks" owned the paper on the cars. problem was (for them) no one knew just which bank owned the paper on which car since there were multiple banks involved and they had, as in today's housing market, "bundled" them and sold and resold the paper. i would tell the person calling about my notes that i was glad to make the payments but i had to know that whoever was collecting the money actually had the title to which ever car. since they could not come up with the proper documentation i made no payments for a year. (as a side note, by the time they had figured it out, my company had gone broke so i just gave the cars back....all except one pantera which had caught on fire while driving across the lake ponchetrain bridge)

i think, but do not know, that the same tactic could be used by homeowners who are being evicted. does the bank actually have the physical title to the home? i don't think they can produce a clear ownership of title because these mortgages were sold and resold and then resold again. someone ought to look into this because if i am right, hundreds of thousands of folks could keep the wolves from the door while they get their ducks in a line. (lot of wildlife in that sentence)

if any of you do look into this please let me know what you found out.

on to the stimulus plan, i find the republicans hypocritcal to the nth degree by screaming fiscal responsiblity and fighting tooth and nail to keep the plan from going forward. this after years of fiscal diaster as bush and company fought wars without raising taxes (first time in our history) and running up huge debts. now that the piper has to be paid, the republicans are screaming like banshees. (more wildlife)

the plan is far from perfect and, in my opinion, does not do enough NOW to putting people to work. fdr had dozens, if not hundreds, of programs going and almost all of which put huge numbers of people to work and today those projects are still viable and are being used by millions. i think that obama has to face the fact that the republicans are not willing to go bipartisan and he will have to just run over them. by taking his plan to the people and pointing out what the repubs are doing then the people will put enough pressure on to get things going.

one of the things the country has to realize is that we all are to blame. citizens spent money like crazy running up huge debts on credit cards and home equity loans. the government under bush had no restraint whatsoever. when we went to war the citizens were not asked to sacrifice in any way and in fact were told to "go shopping" as our duty in the war effort. what a crock. businesses and citizens saved nothing for the rainy day nor did the state, local and national government. what a crock. we, as a country, acted like immature teenagers buying all the gadgets and status symbols we could put on our visa cards. (i must say that rhonda and i did not fall into that trap nor did we refinance our home, matter of fact, we made such a large downpayment that our house note is less than 900 per month and that includes taxes and insurance so we should always be able to keep roof over our head...but you never know.)

one final comment...i think they should have left in the BUY AMERICAN part of the plan. i am not buying the argument that if we only spend money with american manufactures then we could cause a trade war. that sounds like the international corporations just covering their asses. but what do i know?

mrs. hicks and letterman

over the past week or so, many people have contacted me about the letterman show with bill hicks' mother where they talked about when bill's routine was cut. let me tell you my take on this:

bill called me right after he did that set which was about 6 in the evening east coast time. he was really excited about it and said that it was, far and away, the best set he had ever done on tv. i might add here that bill was hardly ever excited about anything he did on tv or in clubs for that fact...he took his talent, not for granted, but knowingly. he knew he was good. he didn't brag or boast. this time, however, he was truly excited. (it is very hard to do really good sets on tv..the time is too short, audiences are much different, pressure is immense. best you can usually hope for is a good set with no mistakes. now, cable shows, with no censorship and longer time are an entirely different thing.....)

then, later that same night he called back after the set had been cut. he was livid. my vocabulary fails me here, livid, upset, pissed, mad as hell, etc.

here is what i remember him saying...it was NOT david but the censors who cut the piece. now, david is saying that it was he who made the final decision. i think that david is taking the blame but it was not really him. i do know that bill wrote a very long letter to a writer at newsday that evening. that letter, which is surely somewhere, will tell the full story. i am going to try to track it down.

i haven't seen the show with mrs. hicks but will take a look later today.

gotta listen to grandma.

first of all, my doctor today gave me a clean bill of health in all areas. once again, thanks for your concern.

in reference to first sentence in previous post: come to think about it, great minds do not think alike; great minds think independently and orginally which is what makes them "great". by the same token, i will stick with 'small minds think alike'.

poker is off to a great start for 09, i might add. i have gotten even tighter than i was before and it is paying off quite well.

three times today i saw someone not raise with aces and it bit them in the ass each time and one of those times was a big pot for me.

i have cold-called under the gun with a pair of 5's hoping to get into an unraised pot to see a flop looking for, of course, another 5. my thinking on small pairs is to always call with them in unraised pot and, if enough callers, a small raised pot because those small sets can win huge pots. anyway....sure enough the betting goes all the way around with 6 callers and no raise. flop comes 5d, 7c, Jc. cool. i am under gun and there is only 12 dollars in the pot. i bet ten dollars and next player raises to 30 dollars and there is one other caller and then back to me. the pot now contains 82 dollars and i make it 100 to go or a 70 dollar raise. next guy abandons his aces (he showed them to another player before he threw them away, just so people would know he folded them.) and it is back to the woman at the other end of the table so we are looking straight at each other. she hesitates and hesitates and finally calls. next card is the Qd which is perfect for me, no straight and no flush is possible at this time. i go all in. once again, she hesitates and says, "i'm on a draw." i just look at her. she calls. she misses. i double up. the guy with the aces says, "you haven't played a hand and now raise me, i knew i was beat." he misplayed his aces by not raising but he did pick up on that i truly had not been in a hand since i sit down which was about 45 minutes earlier and that, obviously, i am not a maniac. he discounted ace jack on my part or two pair, why? i wouldn't play ace jack that way and there was no way in hell i was playing jack - 7 or even worse, 5-7 because i was under the gun. (the woman had a small flush draw) now if he had raised preflop i wouldn't have been in that hand and he would have won. now whether it was a big win or not doesn't matter, he wouldn't have lost any money with them. gotta listen to grandma...ALWAYS raise with aces. grandma didn't fuck around and neither should you.

we had maniacs at the table. one guy raised with 5-7 off suit on the button, got reraised, called and pulled a straight out of his ass on the river. side note: he ended up losing all his money. surprise!

i'll tell you something i have never put in print before. i have studied and thought about what is commonly called "the Lord's prayer" for well over thirty years now. it was by understanding it and the effect that had on my life that allowed me to have the courage to become a comic.

the only person outside of my family who i have ever spoken about this to in depth was bill hicks. (well and steve epstein but you guys don't know steve) to talk about it in depth on this blog is something that i haven't resolved yet in my mind. it is such a part of me because i really do think about it almost every fucking day but i am still of two minds on this.

anyway, last night i was talking to rhonda about this feeling of creativity welling up in me and she is quite excited about it as well. just what i am going to do as a stage show, i don't know yet nor do i know where i will do it but it will, more than likely involve scotty may and if at all possible, kenny moore. the music adds so much to the show.

sure, i close for now.

peace to us all.

before i go

great minds think alike or so we are told but something was left out of that statement and that is small minds think alike as well. here's the kicker: there are many more small minds than great minds.

the only thing i can comment on with any degree of expertise is myself and the art of comedy. i know me and i have a grasp of comedy. but i know me. and i am beginning to feel that restlessness of mind that has always preceded any growth either of myself or my art.

when i look back, THE STORYTELLER was the best work i have ever done and yet i fucked it up royally. i failed to listen to better minds than mine and i paid the price. well, that and we had it in the wrong location even though, on the surface, it looked ideal. we, my management and i, failed to think it through because if we had we would have put it in a different location, a theater not as nice but better situated. los angeles is not a theater town and the only way you can fill a nice theater like ours in century city was to put in a star from tv or movies in a play and then they would come. if you, however, are a relative unknown, doing a theatrical piece that is not in a genre that they would recognize, it is better to go into the "theater district" on santa monica blvd where there are about 12 little theaters and people walk up and down this little area, a couple of blocks at most, and decide which one to go to based on the posters and local word of mouth. but even if i had been in there and did get better and larger crowds, the show still fell short (even though in many minds it was a great show, rick messina said it was the best show in l.a. and the reviews, such as they were, liked it). i should have put it together better. the idea was great, the music was great, the stories were great but the show lacked a theme and a discernible beginning, middle and end. looking back, it sucked. in comparison to what we could have done.

one of the things i like about poker is that it is a thinking game. the best thinker is the best player.

(everyone gets the same amount of "luck", every one gets their share of bad beats and miracle cards...it is the player who is always thinking and thinking correctly who will, in the long run, get the most money and money is how you keep score)

i need to think more about my art and do another kick ass stage show before i go.

and i need to start writing these blogs more on my inner thoughts and not what i think about the world in general. fuck, i am beginning to bore me, no telling what i am doing to you.

if i could type as fast as i think then some of this shit could be real good. but i can't and so what happens is that i have some great starts but

dis and dat vol. XVII

home to rhonda and those dogs. cold here in vegas and will be glad when spring comes to warm my weary bones. if you ever get a chance to come to this part of the country in the spring, you owe it to yourself to go drive out in the desert and see it bloom. for 3 weeks or so, the desert is alive with color as all the plants come out in their easter dress.

obama seems to be making all the right moves but he must get federal money flowing into job creation before it is too late. the tax cuts, which are so dear to republican hearts, will do nothing to create jobs and jobs is what we need. jobs (to state the obvious) create more jobs as people spend the money they are making. tax cuts only help, and not all that much, those who are drawing a paycheck of some kind.

i am concerned about his plans for afghanastan which look like the plans of the russians before us. you CANNOT win in afghanastan with military, no one ever has and no one ever will. we have no real beef with the afghani's nor do we have a real beef with the taliban. oh, they are a despicable group but their "crime" was to not turn over osama bin laden right after 9-11. now, before you blow a gasket, look at the facts: we had no proof at that time that obl was involved in the attacks and afghanastan, being a sovereign country and all, refused to turn over someone in their country to another country just based on the word of that country's president. we, the united states, would not do that, why are we condemning afghanastan for doing what we would have done? the way it is going and the way obama says he wants it to be going we could be in afghanastan until next century. the only out we have, in my opinion, is to find and capture or kill osama bin laden, declare victory and boogie on out. same in iraq: declare victory and come home. why continue bush's mistake? iraq will probably divide itself up and the kurds will probably get screwed but there is NOTHING we can do about it now. the quickest way to end islamic terrorism is to get out of the middle east. withdraw our troops from their lands. put our efforts into brokering a "deal" with the palistine people and the people of isreal. notice i did not say 'governments' but the 'people'. the government of isreal and hamas in palistine are too locked into their war mentality to ever really seek peace. the answer lies in the people; they are the ones who are dying, who are living in poverty and fear in palistine and in fear in isreal. people, all over the world, want basically the same things, peace, food, education for their children, a way to better themselves etc. governments want power.

oh well, i ramble. off to play some poker. fuck 'em all.

more places to eat in houston

a couple of weeks ago i met a man at the poker tables and we struck up a conversation in which he informed me that he owned a french cafe here in houston. well, last night we went and what a treat it was! LE MISTRAEL on eldridge parkway. if in houston GO! the chef was a private chef for a billionaire oilman and his family for over a decade traveling the world on yachts and private jets. he saved his money and brought his brother, an architect, over from france to run the place. the architect is the one i met; he designed the building and runs the show while david cooks. we were treated as royalty last night and had a meal to remember. five stars from the shock review.

also here in the montrose area we ate at RIVA'S italian and it was great as well. some of the best i have had in years and at a really reasonable price.

you may have noticed over the years i like to turn people on to great places to eat that i have found in my travels. these are strictly my opinions and no owner ever knows about them.

i am over my melancholia .... probably because i go back to work tonight. i am up at the willowbrook mall area in tomball at the COMEDY SPOT...come on out if you can.

don't have my computer with me on this trip so will write again when i get back to vegas. not that anyone is awaiting this blog...lol. sometimes i think it is just mental masturbation on my part. there are times though when just a blog of trivia and blather casts out some of my demons. i try not to lay them on you, just get them away from me.

going to be in the mid 70's here today .... eat your heart out those of you in the snowy lands up north.

southern winds

many times recently i have found myself wandering through past memories; some sweet and some bittersweet and some so sad as to bring tears. the COMEDY WORKSHOP ANNEX is now a GOODWILL DROP OFF office and the cabaret is a cleaners. not a plague nor a sign saying that here southern comedy was born. the store, in front of which sam kinison crucified himself, still stands. that stunt started the mystic of the annex and soon crowds were lined up around the corner waiting for someone to leave that 88 seat theater so they could get in. we went from 8 until we ran out of comics or out of crowd and then the comics stayed way past 2, drinking snorting, smoking, joking, telling and retelling, laughing and sometimes passing out. they were good times filled with good people and the world was our oyster.

the beautiful old house that heather and i owned in the heights is now a church parking lot and all the wonderful oak trees have been cut down. i used to climb out of a second floor window and sit on the roof of the porch amongst those trees and listen to the birds who sang their songs of life and love and days gone bye. their melody haunts my memory to paraphrase stardust.

houston has always been good to me and still after all these years and all those cities and all those foreign ports with their exotic names and historic pasts, houston still holds a place in my heart. i will never move back, rhonda and i will make our final stand in las vegas but i will always come back to see friends and to drive the streets with their canopies of oak.

one of the problems of advancing age is the passing of so many friends and family. my mother, father, brother and sister have all gone on plus way too many close friends, running buddies and cohorts to even count but sometimes, in the late afternoon as the sun goes from the bright of noon to the golden beams that soften the view and expand the mind i see their faces and hear their voices and sometimes the pain of loss is almost more than i can bear.

today is bright and warm and the southern wind brings the smell of the gulf. alone in this little apartment in the montrose, i dwell in the past and put my recollections in a blog.

houston shows and a plug for RMT.

greetings from houston, just finished at the COMEDY SHOWCASE and it was just great! danny martinez has owned this club since 84 and this is his new building and the club is extraordinary! a world class comedy showroom, top of the line in everything. holds 250 and we sold out (sro) all four shows and the room was duly rocked.

on thursday, i went to see opening night at RADIO MUSIC THEATER, for their new show, GRANDPA HASN'T MOVED IN DAYS. i have told you guys about this group before but i reinterate DO NOT MISS SEEING RMT IF YOU ARE EVER IN HOUSTON. this is the very best cabaret show in america, bar none. sheer genius every show. they have been here for 20 years and have never advertized, it is strickly word of mouth. this is a smart and clever show for smart people who like to laugh. a good time will be had by all.

am hanging out with friends until next weekend when i work the COMEDY SPOT up in the northern suburbs.

haven't heard from my doctor which i take as a good sign but i am going to call her tomorrow. will let you know what the verdict is....

anyway, glad to be here.

thanks for your concern

i thank all of you for your concern and your words of encouragement. i don't think it is anything of importance after speaking to my doctor but i am getting more tests today. on the other hand, we all die anyway and there is no sense in being afraid of the inevitable besides i know that there is a spirit inside of me that is seperate from my physical self and that spirit, being energy, does not die with the physical self.

i was reading about the world's oldest person and one of the people who research people who live to be 100+ said that what really is the determining factor is not whether they smoke or drink or whatever it is family history, if your family lives long chances are so will you. on both sides of my family, people live very long and some on my dad's side lived to 100 so i plan on being here and telling stories and jokes for quite some time. but then again, a woman may jump off a balcony and hit me as i am walking out a door. and watch out for ducks and trains and be careful when fishing.

but again, thanks for your concern.

really, the only thing that would worry me is rhonda and how it would hit her if something were to happen to me. she loves me with a love that i have never experienced before and i would not want her to go through that. for that reason, i am going to do everything in my power to make sure that i live a long time and that includes quitting smoking. i have cut way back and will do it this year. wait and see.

oh well, off to the doctor. tomorrow i head to my old stomping grounds of houston where i am playing two clubs back to back...it will be a great time.

poker and some possible bad news

back when i was playing limit hold-em, there came a day when i "saw the game" and what was fuzzy before became clear. i think that i have had the same Epiphany with low limit no limit. i "see the game" and my wins have been big and my losses small since then. whether or not i am right and whether or not i can continue on this track remains to be seen. it has been a revelation to me. my mistakes have been very few (not counting the time i MISREAD the fucking board...) and i have made some wonderful plays and some stunning laydowns. i must be playing very well because several of the really good pros have come to me recently and complimented me on my overall game and especially the proper reads leading to proper laydowns.

i had a situation that was very similar to the one i laid out for you in the "don't hurt to be lucky" post, even to the same set. i am in first position with a pair of fours and cold call, a player who is overly aggressive and raises almost every hand makes it ten to go and there are 3 other callers before it gets to me. i call. flop comes A 4 6 rainbow....perfect! i check, raiser bets 20 dollars and the others fold. i call. next card is another ace and i check, he bets 30 dollars and i raise to 75 and he calls. the last card is a king. damn, but it didn't pair board. i check and he goes all in. i say out loud, " i was full on the turn!" and, brothers and sisters, i saw him flinch. i call and get all his chips. the fool had ace-2!

what makes this story even better is that he and i had another big run-in an hour or so later. by this time i am up over 500 dollars, he has re bought and has about 350 in front of him. i raise to 20 dollars with queens from the cut off position and am called by the button and this guy in the big blind. pot has 68 dollars in it. flop comes 2-4-5 with two clubs. (i have the queen of clubs). it is checked to me and i bet 40 dollars and the button folds and this guy raises another 75 dollars. i ponder, knowing that he is capable of a big bluff but by his body language i know that he has a monster...i fold. he is stunned. i tell him, i have a big pair and you have me beat. he shows a set of 5's. i pick up my winnings and go home.

now, he should have waited till the turn but i probably wasn't going to bet again, didn't like it that he even would call but he was too eager to get his money back and thus, i lost only a little bit in the overall scheme of things.

on to other things. i am awaiting a call from my va doctor because there is a chance that i may have, are you ready?, breast cancer. damn. hope not but if so, what the hell, it is curable and i can do with one less titty. will keep you posted.

LUCK DON'T HURT

sometimes it helps to get a little lucky in poker: i raised from late position with AQ suited and am called in two places, bb and one other. flop comes A 4 5 with two diamonds which is not my suit. bb, who i know to be a very good player, bets 20 dollars into me, other guy folds and i raise to 40 dollars. bb says, "do you have a set of aces?", not really expecting me to answer, more just thinking out loud and calls. hmmmm. damn. what does he have? AK? a set of 4's, a set of 5's, a straight??? the last of which is unlikely since he would have had to called with 2-3 but... the turn is the Ace of diamonds putting a pair on board and the diamond flush possibility. bb checks and i check. the last card is the 5c double pairing the board and giving me a full house. BB shows his set of 4's before i can bet and throws them away. he was full on turn but failed to bet, hoping to trap me as he told me later but i didn't go for it. i figured, correctly as it turns out, that i was beat at that time. (granted, he could have had something like ace jack or even a pair of kings or queens and had bet just to see if i did indeed have the ace and took off a card to see if he hits his big pair but in my mind that was unlikely.) the 5 gave me a bigger FH. i knew when he called the raise on the flop that i was beat. he asked me later if i would have laid it down when the second ace came and i assured him that i would have because i knew him to be a good player and not a fool, if he had pushed instead of trying to trap the pot would have been his. thank you, poker gods.

incidentally i have made 1095 dollars in the first 5 days of play this year. nice start, now let's see if i can continue to play at my top level.

one of the things that i am attracted to in poker is that the game lends itself to constant evaluation and, like baseball, you can talk about at great length, there are so many variables and possibilities and different ways to play certain hands that you can analyze to your heart's content. being a talker and thinker and analyzer it is right up my alley.

one of the mistakes, in my mind, that las vegas has made over the past decade is the change from coin machines to paper machines in the slots. on top of that, the strip casinos have cut their payouts way back. greedy corporate bastards. now, though, this has come back to bite them in the ass. slot play is waaaay down and that means a smaller bottom line for the casinos. by cutting out coins they were able to get rid of x amount of employees but what has happened is that people walking through the casino will not put a couple of quarters in a machine because a. they aren't going to win and b. if they do win, say a dollar, they have to take a piece of paper and put it in another machine to get that dollar. too much trouble, they save their quarters and the casino loses. greedy but stupid corporate bastards. in a way, vegas was more fun when the mob ran it. oh, you would get cheated here and there but the slots were loose and you were treated with a certain amount of respect and pizzaz.

saw in paper today that a isreali investment company plans on building the world's largest hotel here. as if we didn't have enough hotel rooms as it is. another one of our problems is that vegas has overbuilt, there are already too many rooms for rent here. greed got 'em here. same as in the country as a whole. greed. thinking home values would go up 20 percent per year forever. what a crock of you know what.

oh well, gotta go.
rock and roll

peace to all of us.

just a thought

never have figured out why they call him the "grim reaper."
he's always glad to see you.

WHAT GRANDMA SAID

two hands made my day. first one was a pair of 7's under the gun with which i just cold called. turned out to be 6 callers. flop was Ks, Js, 7c. i bet ten dollars and player to my left calls but the player to his left raises to 50 dollars and everyone folds around to me and i make it 100 and the guy in between us folds so back to the fifty dollar guy.....he thinks about it and does the "staring" at me that he has seen on tv and then he goes all in and i call. he had aces. didn't raise with 'em and he paid the price....so to speak. (my dear old grandmother told me to always raise big with aces and grandma was a helluva poker player)

later in game, i am on button with 8d, Td. the flop comes 7-9-J with two clubs and one diamond. sb bets 15 dollars and bb calls and everyone else folds to me and i make 50 to go and small blind raises me back to 100. (i should have gone all in right then but didn't) i just call. the turn is a scary ten and sb bets another hundred and i call...now i am a little concerned about bigger straight but am not worried about flush draw. the river is a red ace and we both check. i win. (he had jacks and 7's)once again i should have bet the turn and the river harder but what the hell......

between those two hands i ended up better than 500 dollars and so i left.

fyi: i have been playing back at mandalay bay because i had two losing sessions in a row at mgm and so i went back to my buddies at mb. will stay there until i have a couple of bad sessions and then off to somewhere else. the tables are tighter at mb than mgm but you really only need a couple of fools at the table to make your day.

for a good laugh

read the comment by "linda" on my previous post and my response to her.

i will put it this way....i laughed when i wrote it.

random thoughts on the first day of the year.

you know that team that kicks the winning field goal as time expires....i bet on the other guys.

the two teams that combine for 74 points when the over/under was 71...i had the under.

the guy that fumbles on the one? that's my guy.

the defensive player who, instead of just falling on the fucking fumble, tries to pick it up and run with it but then drops it and kicks it farther down the field for the other guys who do then recover the fumble.....that's my defensive star.

the joy of hitting that 5 tamer has dissipated into the deep fog of horrible bowl bets....lol. back to normal. i am the world's worst sports bettor.

but hope springs eternal and there are more bowl games to come.


but on to other things......

i had said that 08 was indeed a memorable year and 09 is going to be one for the books as well. i have always thought that if mankind does survive another 500 years when they write down the history of The Now they will write it as a comedy. our list of presidents over the past several decades is one of bumblers, bums, liars, thieves, incompentents, warmongers and rascals. from richard, i am not a crook, nixon to gerald, oops, ford to jimmy, i will never lie to you (but i did have lust in my heart), carter to ronnie the actor who went senile right front of our eyes to george, read my lips, bush the first to can't keep his dick in his pants billy boy clinton to the great disaster, the quasi dictator bush the second (jeb is in the wings) and his bully gang of warmongering neo cons to the great black hope obama we have the makings of great tragedy and comedy combined. (where is the great bard, willie shakespeare when we need him?)

and, by the way, why is obama black? he is exactly half and half. he is just as much white as he is black but here in racist america, a little bit of black apparently goes a long ways. he is, in truth, a real african/american, that is if there really is such a thing. just a thought.

we had 291,000 people on the streets here in vegas for new year's eve which was MORE than last year but not anywhere close to 06. vegas should weather the storm okay even though our unemployment is higher than it has been since 01-02 but not as high as it was during the last reagan recession. nothing has staying power like vice. whiskey, wine, women, drugs and gambling have a certain appeal, wouldn't you agree? now if we will just legalize marijuana and go ahead and make prostitution legal (there are whore houses up in parumph (sp?) and there are HUNDREDS of pages of ESCORT services in the phone book here, paid for pussy is still outlawed in vegas. not that it is really enforced but it is illegal to charge for sexual "favors". make downtown a "red light" district ala amsterdam and we will rock and roll regardless of what happens. but, hey, why let logics get into politics. gotta keetow to the puritans ya know.

(like a comic said, in vegas you can get a whore to your room than a pizza. the escort services promise 20 minutes but pizza takes a half hour.) i guess that is because the pussy is already hot and ready to go.

UNLV BEAT LOUISVILLE IN LOUISVILLE YESTERDAY. now maybe they will give us some notice in the polls.

have a happy new year.

peace to us all.

throughout my life, memorable as it has been, (at least to me) there are only a few years or events that i remember distinctly. where i was on Nov. 23 of '63, same for 9-11-01, the Chicago riots of 68 all come to mind and if i were to live another 66 years i would always remember 2008. this has been the year that certain illusions were shattered, that someone of color would never be elected to the presidency and that capitalism was king. Obama is going to be the president and wall street has been shown to be the charlatan that it has always been. what a surprise that greedy bankers and greedy stockbrockers acted as greedy bastards with no thought, WHATSOEVER, of possible failure. they believed their own bullshit; that the markets were king and that they, masters of the universe, could ever make horrible mistakes.

"what is good for GM is good for america" is what was preached by the idiots who ran our largest car maker. but what did they make? good cars? no. they did make good trucks but in the overall scheme of things not many people really need a truck. farmers do and construction people do but stockbrokers, insurance salesmen, clerks, etc do not but they bought them anyway. what we need and what they did not make is small, fuel efficient, dependable, long lasting, driver friendly cars. and now they need a bailout. and because so many jobs are dependent on them, we (that's you and i) have to give them not only our money but our children's money and our children's childrens money. so will they make a car that is as good as a honda or a toyota? probably not.

2008 will also be remembered as the year that the ERA OF STUFF came to an end. go to the mall and take a good hard look at all the STUFF (dare i call it, SHIT?) that people are supposed to buy. it is just stuff. not really useful stuff or necessary stuff or even pretty stuff, just fucking stuff. this is what we were encouraged to buy. stuff. shit. crap. pick a word. shitty, crappy stuff. buy some now. two shitty things for the price of three. buy this stuff and stuff it up your ass.

i think, hope and pray, that when we finally come out the economic doldrums the american people will rethink their attraction to stuff and QUIT BUYING IT. hell, none of it is made here anyway.

i hope we start building factories here that make the things that people need; furniture, television sets, GOOD cars, air conditioning units, washers, dryers, clothes, shoes, etc. (look at what you are wearing right now and see where it was made...are you wearing anything at all that was made in america? chances are you are not. oh it is slightly cheaper to buy a shoe made in a sweat shop in some third world country where people are paid pennies per day and the corporations make millions than to buy an american shoe made by american workers who then spend their money HERE but that, in my opinion, is penny wise and pound foolish. i buy NEW BALANCE shoes because they are made here. converse is made here. some of the dress shoes are made here. ( i don't mind buying 'things' that are made in other first world countries such as bally shoes because their workers recieve living wages). i would buy an american car if they made one. i did have a gmc truck (a Z71) that was a tremendous vehicle but i lived on a farm at the crossroads of two dirt roads at the time.

anyway.

STUFF

r.i.p.

(buy american)

peace to us all.

happy new year.

poker

i didn't get in my christmas poker game because rhonda was ill and i stayed home with her. played again though today and winning streak continues but today was small...39 dollars but, hey, a win is a win and a hellava lot better than a loss. just no cards today, won one medium pot and a couple of small ones but mostly sit and threw away cards for several hours.

i really don't know how many of you who read this are poker players and of those who are, i don't know what skill level you have accomplished but most of my hints, thoughts, ideas, recommendations, etc are directed at people who are playing low limit no limit and are fairly new at it. with that in mind, here is my advice on hand selection.

in early position DON'T PLAY ANYTHING that you are not willing to either raise with or call a raise with. this especially applies to weak aces, ace ten or lower. don't play ace 6-9 suited in early position, don't play kj or jt or jq in early position unless two things are there, a. they are suited and b. there is not much raising at your table.

don't call raises with aj, at, or even aq off in early position. you are too vulnerable to ak or big pairs.

you can call with small to medium pairs in early but be willing to fold to big raise but you can call small raises with them if there are enough callers. (sets are wonderful things) ((the odds of you hitting your pair on the flop is 7.5 to 1....know that)

when i am playing my best poker i hardly ever call a raise with ANYTHING less than AK. i would rather be the leader of betting not the the caller of betting. i would rather wait until i am fairly sure i have the best hand before i call any raise. why gamble? i am not there to gamble. i am there to win money. hmmmm

oh well, i am rambling and i am tired. so good night.

merry christmas

merry christmas to all.

peace on earth.

INTERNATIONAL NEEDS AND POSITIONS

i think that obama's most pressing needs in the international field are fourfold:

1. stop, once and for all, the vendetta against cuba. drop all the sanctions, open the door all the way for not only american citizens to go to cuba but american companies to do business there and at the same time let the cuban people and companies come here. this little country, which should be our natural ally never did anything to us that was not predated by us doing something to them. (their only "crime" was to let the soviets put missiles on their land but that was in response to our quasi invasion at the bay of pigs) castro overthrew a mob connected fascist dictator and raised the living standards of his people. what is the crime in that?

2. get us out of iraq. for the umpteenth time i repeat, iraq did nothing to us. they were not involved in any shape, form or fashion in 9-11. hussian was the arch enemy of osama bin laden. they had no weapons of mass destruction. we murdered tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of iraqis and if there are any "terrorists" in iraq we created them.

3. for once, have an even handed approach to the Palestine problem. we cannot continue being the unequivocal supporter of isreal regardless of their positions. without a solution to the palestine problem, there will never be safety in the middle east for the usa or our citizens.

4. in Afghanistan, we must wage more a war of ideas and progress than just a war of violence and bombing. the taliban would not win any elections in Afghanistan, they were unpopular when they were in power but by using the same tactics that the soviets did in the 80's we are driving the population back to talibanism.

the list of empires and powerful countries who have fallen into the ash heap of history because of their meddling in foreign affairs while draining their national treasuries is very long; greece, rome, persia, babylonia, russia, england, france, spain etc etc etc etc. do we wish do add our name to the list? our founding fathers were totally against us getting involved in foriegn wars and disputes. "trade with all, ally with none." was their motto. (or j. adams' anyway)

what do i think about obama's choices? so far i would give him a B+. some are very good to excellent but some i question, especially emanual. but i do believe we must give him and them time. there are very tough times in front of us and hardly any of us will get through it unscathed so i do truly hope everyone in his circle is up to the task because the future of the nation now depends on these men and women.

oh well, off to play some poker and then tonight UNLV basketball game. go rebels!

peace to us all.

back home and glad to be here

the shows in san francisco went very well, especially the one that hudson, molly, sharon et all came to, which was SECOND SHOW FRIDAY, the one show that is always iffy. this time, however, it was the best show of the week. cool. a good time was had by all and afterwards the 7 of us went out to eat at a place named GLOBE which is right down the street from the punch line. i bring up the name of the place because your humble eater had the best fucking lamb ever there! check it out when you go to s.f.

saw on news today that president bush has a bad shoulder....probably from patting himself on the back during his LET'S REWRITE HISTORY TOUR. you know the one where he has been telling us just what a great president he has been and how all his decisions were right. (oh he was sorry about that "bad intelligence" that led us to war......but neglected to point out that intelligence had many caveats about how the information was suspect.....no, he just got bad intelligence....or was it he had bad intelligence?)

laura, the stepford wife, and dick cheney, merchant of death, both have come out and told us just how great george has been. unfuckingbelievable.

i hope that all of you have been following the last days of the bush regime where he is doing all he can to get around enviromental protections and give his buddies the last of the treasury. the list is too long to go into here and those of you who care already know and the ones of you who don't care...why bother with you?

UNLV finally played a good game of basketball and showed the team that i thought they were going to be by beating a very good arizona team which had just beat gonzaga. now i am back to thinking the rebels could be a team to be feared come tournament time. we play very, very good defense and when we hit out 3's we are a load.

anyway, glad to be home and off for a while to watch bowl games and play poker.

peace to us all

dis and dat and off to san francisco

it is sleeting here in vegas right now with snow predicted for later today and an accumulation of 1 to 4 inches in some parts of the city. how bad is your luck running if you freeze to death in the mojave desert?

brought my winnings for this week up to 700 dollars so the change to mgm is working out quite well.

off to san francisco tomorrow and so this is last post for this week because i am not taking computer with me but am taking camera and will film all the shows there in the hopes of putting enough together for a new video.

thanks to the 185,000 people who visited my web site last year. (or to the ten of you who visted it 18,500 times each)

my son, hudson and his wife, molly along with one of my ex-wives, sharon (hudson's mother) are coming up to san francisco for the shows. rhonda will be coming up for the week-end and all of us are going out. i know it surprises some people (that's you liz) that i get along with my ex wives but i do. they were outstanding women when i married them and they are outstanding women now. i have lived with or married 6 women, four of which are still alive and i would put them up against any six women in the world for all the qualities that make for outstanding; including intelligence, wit, compassion for their fellow humans and success in all their endeavors. each of them added immensely to my life and each made me a better person.

anyway, off to san francisco.

peace to us all

why i moved from mandalay bay poker room

the reasons i moved from mandalay bay to the mgm grand has nothing to do with something negative about mandalay bay, matter of fact, i really enjoy playing there more than anywhere else. having said that; the reason i play is not for enjoyment but to win and supplement my income. the enjoyment of m.b. actually has turned to be a negative for me. i know too many people there and as a result i spend too much time talking and joking instead of paying close attention to the other players. yesterday, for instance, at mgm where i won just a shade under 200, i bet i didn't say 5 sentences all day long to another player. my concentration is much better when i don't talk.

another reason is that mandalay bay has bonus hands: any 4 of a kind or better pays extra money, from 20 to 500 dollars for four of kinds and straight flushes and uncapped for royals. over the years i have made thousands upon thousands of dollars with high hands but most of them were at limit. in no limit, i found myself calling medium raises with small pairs looking not only for the set but for the high hand. also i found myself calling with small suited connectors for the same reason but the fact of the matter is that i (you) are a 7.5 to 1 underdog to hit a set and straight flushes are in the thousands to 1 category. i would call with 4-5 suited and the 2-6 of the suit would hit with say a king of opposite color. i found myself making a call of 20 dollars hoping to hit that straight or flush and sometimes would indeed hit flush but not the straight flush and would lose to a bigger flush which costs a lot of money.

i was not managing my money correctly and so i moved. now, i never call with small suited connectors unless am at rear of betting and there are no raises. see, the problem with suited connectors is that you often flop four fifths of a hand and now are in drawing mode. well, i hate to draw; the draw is always an underdog.

i am back to playing nothing but big cards and preferably big pairs and am willing to sit and wait and wait and wait for the RIGHT cards in the RIGHT position.

the old saying: "those who play for straights and flushes soon leave this town on greyhound buses" is an old saying because it is TRUE. draws are the death of bankrolls. look for sets and top pairs with good kickers.

since i changed i have had for the last three weeks of play; 880, 710, 514 winnings. not bad. i can live with that.

once i have my total game back i will probably hit m.b. a couple of times per week but maybe not, hate to leave winning grounds.

one hand from yesterday: i raise from middle position to 20 dollars with aces and am called in one place. flop comes Q,Q,6 rainbow. i bet 45 dollars and my callers goes all in for his last 75 dollars. (and he does it quickly) i think about it and call. here is my reasoning: a. he is an idiot anyway. b. he pushed all in so quickly (showing strength often means weakness) and c. he is short stacked and short stacked people have tendency to bluff (especially if they are idiots) because they are getting desperate. he turned over 3-6 suited LOL so he had two pair. i also thought that if he had the queen he would have waited for turn to push. anyway, i was right and there you go.

more poker thoughts..perfect table...looking to fold

there is a real good poker writer, mike caro, with whom i do not always agree but recently i have been thinking about a couple of his theories and how they have helped me. he has a column in one of the poker publications and his most recent one was about 'what is the right kind of table to look for' and it confirmed something i have always thought and it is something that a lot of players would disagree with:

to wit:

some players will tell you that they look for a table with lots of big pots and lots of action. i say, look for the table where there are lots of callers but hardly any raising. this, to me, (and to caro) is the ideal setup. these are what he calls, loose/timid tables which is as good a label as any. many times these players will come in with hands they are "hoping" to hit but will then fold when you raise putting a fair amount of "dead" money in the pot just to start. and, even better, they will come in at (in 1-2 game) for the two dollars with 7-8 off suit and then will call your pocket kings raise of 18 dollars and then have to fold on the flop when the law of numbers shows it's ugly head.

i have never understood how someone can call a 2 dollar bet and then call 18 more. if you have a 20 dollar hand why didn't you lead the raising? if you don't have a good hand why are you in the pot in early position anyway?

one of his other theories is that bad players look for reasons to call and good, money making players are looking for reasons to fold. i mean why get involved in a pot that you might win instead of getting involved in pots that you are going to win. unless you have a very, very good reason to believe that you have the best of it, why risk a large amount of your money? and the key word in that sentence is RISK. i am not looking to risk anything, i am looking to invest in a pot in which that i believe i have the best hand.

right now i am playing the best poker of the past two years that i have been playing no limit. i am tighter than ever and looking for reasons to lay 'em down. i am particular in what games i sit in and if the table is not "right", get a table change. my room change from mandalay bay to the mgm grand has been a major factor in my win ratio and i will go into that in another post.

anyway, all for now;

peace to us all.

parleys, bridges, troops in the streets, poker

florida giving the points over alabama
florida/ala. under
okla. giving points against missouri
okla/mo over
ucla plus points against usc.

there is nothing sweeter in las vegas than hitting a multi team parley and the above was my 5 teamer saturday. how sweet. and nerve racking.

actually i had 3 bets. a single bet on florida.
a two teamer with floriday and oklahoma
then the 5 teamer above

that may have been the only 5 teamer i have ever hit. but it was a good christmas present for the shock family and put me ahead of the sports books for the year. (not by much but ahead)

the hilton book opened this morning with florida a 3 point favorite over oklahoma and i am going to take oklahoma straight up.

on to other things:

back in 1986 when ellen and i were first together we were in el paso and decided to go over the bridge into juarez, mexico. as we were crossing over i asked ellen if she could run fast. when she said yes, i told her that if the shit hit the fan i would meet her on the american side.

no superhero, me.

laid off workers have taken over closed factory. we will see much more of this in the coming months. that is why the government is transferring 20,000 troops to american soil.

i have heard from recently retired military men that there are plans afoot to ward off riots and public protests by using american military against american citizens and that the military, mainly the army, have been practicing for this for several years now. originally it was to quell anti-war protests but now it is to keep the unemployed masses at bay. can't have them ransacking wall street. (that could be why the bankers got all that money from paulson, you know, a get out of town fund) how obama handles this could shape our democracy for decades to come.

"four dead in ohio"

the belief here in vegas is that the casinos are going to drop their opposition to online poker so that they can operate their own sites. if we could have some kind of regulation authority and some safeguards against cheating then online poker will be legalized and taxed. the government needs as many revenue options as they can get and there are billions of dollars being bet on the net right now anyway so why not get some of that? my concern is that cheating will still go on and there really isn't anyway to stop it. that is why i don't play anymore on the net. i find it odd that i can beat the live tables for 18 straight years and cannot bet the net. it could be because i can't pick up the visual tells or that i don't pay enough attention but i can't beat it. it doesn't seem to me that i play a high enough game for there to be cheating but still.......

cheating is too easy on the net. you, me and one other guy could go on a site and get in the same game and just by telling each other what our cards are would give us an insurmountable edge. hell, you could have 4 computers, 4 accounts, 4 phone lines and play that game all by yourself.

oh well, happy holidays.

sick as the proverbial dog

steve martin in his book, BORN STANDING UP, tells a story about how he did an important gig and afterwards got deathly ill and went on to wonder just how many times that happens to performers; getting sick after an important gig when their body defenses which had been on high alert come down. it just happened to me: i headlined the trop here and had quite a few family and friends in to see me and though i felt like i might be coming down with something i had some just great shows. monday night through this evening i have been sicker than i have been in years. just fucking horrible. it broke about an hour ago. goodness.

i also have had times when i was sick as the proverbial dog before a show and performed myself well. i have had other comics tell me of similar experiences. my own opinion of that is: when we are on stage we are our fullest self and that self is a healthy self and that overcomes whatever illness we may have brought with us onto the stage. that may sound weird but i think that is what happens.

but anyway, i was sick but am not now.

bookings for this coming year are coming right along; i now have gigs through june. during basketball season i am not working all that much so i can follow the rebels and watch the mountain west conference tournament which is held here in las vegas. so far i have bookings for two weeks in houston, 4 casinos in california, indy crackers, sarasota, mrytle beach, hilton head, dallas, fort worth, arlington and of course, vegas and atlantic city. i will post them in the next week or so.

i may have over rated the unlv basketball team....we shall see.

becoming a comic, writing jokes. (part III)

the way i learned to put together not only jokes but an act was to concentrate on writing 5 minutes of material. not ten nor twenty but only 5. once i had 5 golden minutes, i broke it in two and put 2.5 minutes up front and 2.5 minutes to close and in the middle of that i put a new 5 minutes. that way, i opened well and closed well and was able to concentrate on that middle 5 minutes. eventually, i had ten minutes and then did the same; put 5 golden in front, 5 golden to close with and another 5 minutes in the middle. i continued with this until i had a 20 minute act which is what you needed to open. once i passed that level, the writing became much easier and especially when i got to the newspaper stories which basically write themselves.

jerry seinfield once said that if a joke does not get a "house laugh" 98% of the time then that joke does not belong in your routine. comics who say "that joke was just for me" are kidding themselves and shortchanging the audience. the jokes are for THE AUDIENCE. i have always used this criteria for whether a joke stays in the rotation.

i then learned the wonderful world of "tags." jay leno said that any good joke should be tagged if possible, why get just one laugh out of a good joke when two or three or possibly four can be squeezed out? my first killer routine was about houston traffic, a pedistrian subject i will admit but, hey i was new. it became a routine of a few good lines and some killer tags.

the first joke was "four way stops are lessons in psychological warfare." tag. "guy with biggest balls has the right of way." tag. "if you have little bitty balls you could spend all day at certain intersections." tag. "best bring your lunch with you when you drive." tag. "like a friend of mine once said, if you are wondering whose turn it is....ain't yours." tag. "the women in the room understand that i am using the term "balls", metaphorically. i have known women with more and bigger balls than any man will ever hope to have." tag. "i know because i have married a couple of them." tag. "i like women with balls. ... it is when they put on the dildo that i drew the line." tag. "i don't mind you having balls, baby, but that dick has to go!" tag. "but i was younger then. get me drunk...pinch my nipples, spank my ass, tell me i am a little whore; see what i will do."

that way i turned one good line into a couple of minutes of good lines. each laugh gets bigger because of the flow. (this is on DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS and you can hear how it builds and builds)

i did the same with freeway driving; starting with one line, "at the speed limit you are a traffic hazzard." tag. "people are dodging your ass. ((demostrate)) eaaakkkk, sumabitch was parked there!" and so on and so forth. this also can be found on DITHOT c.d.

van seats was written on the way to a church gig. i know, that is hard to believe. they had called the COMEDY WORKSHOP office and i just happened to be there and had answered the phone. they said they needed a comic who could do 30 clean minutes and i said i had just the guy, ron shock. they said can he work clean? and i, of course, answered, "no fucking problem." i saw the guy with the van seats and the routine came to me right then and over the years it has changed very little if at all. it killed at the church group and killed last night at the trop.

the 14 minute long ORAL ROBERTS AND HIS 900 FOOT TALL, FLOATING UP IN THE AIR, JESUS took me almost two years to perfect. same with WORLD'S GREATEST DOPE STORY. the long ones are difficult because there is no way to bail if it starts going sideways on you. oral started with one idea; that he, oral, had to be the hardest man in the world to impress if jesus the christ had to grow to 900 feet tall to get his attention. one day i was driving down the road and the four possibilities came to me and for the first and only time I WROTE SOMETHING DOWN, i pulled off the road, went into a denny's, got a napkin and wrote. "CRAZY. LSD. LIED. TRUE. " (i still have that napkin)

being around such funny people it became easier to "think funny" and that is a great asset to have if one plans on being a comedian. our lunches and dinners were funnier than any movie ever made. the conversation would jump from one to another and pretty soon laughter would be booming. it was great. the TEXAS OUTLAW COMICS came out of a mexican meal at 3 in the morning.

oh, and incidently there were SEVEN PEOPLE IN THE TEXAS OUTLAW COMICS. (now i hear of dozens of people who claim to be one of us but there were only 7.) BILL HICKS, STEVE EPSTEIN, RILEY BARBER, ANDY HUGGINS, JOHN FARNETTI, JIMMY PINEAPPLE AND ME. if you see or hear any other comic claim that title...call them on it. you can tell them that you got it from one of the founders of the group.

well, there you go for what it is worth. that is how i wrote material. if i think of anything else i will put it in another post.

peace be to us all.

how i got in comedy...part II

(a continuation of previous post)

so, there i am. a jobless wannabe comic at age 40. no idea of how to write a joke, no idea of just how to get started. even if i did come up with an act miraculously there was no place to work at comedy in late 1982. was i discouraged? hell no, i was more excited than i had been in years and years if not my entire life.

i probably didn't get a laugh for the first three months but i went up every night, sunday through thursday, at the COMEDY WORKSHOP and some nights i would do an early set there and then drive 20 miles north and do a late set at THE GOOD HUMOR BAR.

every sunday, the WORKSHOP would post a list of "regulars" on the bulletin board in the green room and if you weren't on that list you had to "write yourself in" and hope that you got a decent spot. months went by and my name was never on the list of "regulars" even though i was there every night. i took to writing under the list of regulars..."PUT MY NAME ON THE LIST, I AM NOT GOING AWAY!"

i taped each and every show that i did and then went home and listened and charted the laughs (what few there were) so that i could develop an act that had a "flow" to it. i tried out new material every week, most of which i soon discarded because....well...they just weren't funny.

one of the great advantages i had was that i was at the COMEDY WORKSHOP and the acts that were there were so incredibly good that it inspired me to try new and different things. it is amazing just how many of us went on to make a living in the entertainment business. bill hicks, sam kinison, brett butler, t. shawn shannon, jimmy pineapple, steve epstein, riley barber, jack mayberry, fred greenlee, rashawn mcdonald, danny martinez, cheryl holliday, jeanne garafolo and andy huggins just to name a few were regulars when i was there. some of those names you won't recognize but they went on to huge careers as writers and producers. every one of them was original, no hacks, no guitars, no props....pure stand-up. the years between 82 and 87 were the best of my life in oh so many ways.

i got my first paid gig in june of 1983 when i opened at the WORKSHOP. my first road gig was with bill hicks and bill silva when we went on the ill fated trip to louisiana to play red neck discos and biker titty bars. "no business like show business...like no business i know...."

by late 85 i was headlining at "A" clubs in the Midwest, chicago, indy, louisville, lexington, detroit, cleveland, dangerfields in new york, etc.

next post i will spend more time in how i went about writing the jokes and refining them.

from there to here with here being a comic.

in 1972 i met a man who started me on a path of re-evaluation and self realization which led me, ultimately, to comedy and the life i have today. who he was and what he taught me are not important here because a. it is way too detailed a subject to take on in a short piece of writing and b. it took me ten years to master it myself so i don't think a short explanation would do you or i or him any credit. basically,it is a way to find that "thing" that i was created to do but first i had to rid my mind of all my plans, goals, dreams and the things that i thought i wanted to do. i found that my goals were not of "doing" but of "rewards for doing", ie to get rich or to have x or y or z. i had to find that something that i, in my heart of hearts and soul of souls, wanted to do, needed to do, was created to do. to do this, i had to say to God (the universe), "i don't know...show me the way." christians call this "turning your life over to God" but i don't think many of them really do that. i did.

by 1980 i had rid myself of many of the trappings of my previous life in "business" and, thanks to my wife, heather, was able to basically quit work and spend my time reading and meditating and waiting for the "sign" that i knew would be forth-coming. she had a very good job at a large insurance company and made enough money for me to not work and for us to still live comfortably. she had faith in me that i would find that thing that i was looking for. (even though, i was not really "looking" but more so "waiting" for it to manifest in my life.

in 1982, i enrolled in the fall semester at the university of houston; not to get any kind of degree but to broaden my horizons, to learn some new things, to stimulate my mind. i took three courses, history of revolution, senior level logic's and introduction to theater. i have always been a student of history so the revolution class was up my alley and logic's is a tough subject especially at the senior level so i knew it would be a challenge. (i ended up embarrassing my logic's prof by proving him wrong in front of the class one day...but that is another story). i knew nothing at all about theater and so that one fell into the "learning new things" category.

so there i was, unemployed, supported by my wife, no plans, no goals and now a part time student and i was going to turn 40 in october. perfect.

in november, right before the thanksgiving break, 26 years ago, in the theater course, another man walked into my life and brought the sign that i had been waiting for. his name was hayden roarke and he was the actor who played col. bellows on I DREAM OF JEANNE. that fateful day, the students were required to perform a skit that they themselves had written. it could be anything, a little drama, or story, or song etc etc. i did a little piece about how i walk like a duck with my feet out. (feats don't fail me now) hayden roarke thought it was funny and after class took me aside and we went and had something to eat. over lunch, he asked what i was doing in college at my age and i told him pretty much what i have just told you. during my little discourse i made him laugh out loud several times and out of the clear blue sky he says, "you ought to be a stand up comic." the sentence that changed my life. through his mouth, God's words were spoken.

he tells me about the COMEDY WORKSHOP there in houston and how i can go and sign up for amateur night. now understand, brothers and sisters, i had never even been in a comedy club and the only comic i had ever seen was buddy hackett in a dinner theater up in denver in the 70's. didn't own a comedy album. wasn't a fan. oh, i had listened to comedy albums when i was young, my dad being a comedy fan. brother dave gardner, bob newhart, bill cosby, the two black crows and some others that i don't remember now.

so, on a tuesday night the week after thanksgiving i went to the comedy workshop to see a show. when i walked into that little dingy club there in the montrose district of houston it was as though a light shone down on me and said "this is what you are supposed to do." on sunday night i went up and did 5 minutes at the end of the show and bombed horribly and, from that day on, i have never done anything else other than stand-up. (well, there is poker but that is not a "job")

i, in a way that i care not to explain, made a "deal" with God. i would do this only for the sake of doing it. i would never do anything with comedy just for the money. the art and the art alone would be my mistress. i don't do commercials and have been offered them. i don't do corporate shows if there is ANY restrictions on what i can do (and there always is, so no corporate for me and besides i detest most corporate people anyway) i did do two cruises but won't do another. i won't work at any club that censors me in any way.

i kept my end of the bargain and God kept it's side. (not "his" side, God is not human and therefore is not a man...God is.) i have never wanted for money, have kept a roof over my head and a set of wheels under my ass so that i can get to the next gig. even when i was taking care of ellen during those horrible years in the late 90's i never asked anyone for money and yet thousands of people sent me money. clubs did benefits for us and raised tens of thousands of dollars. i did the right thing, for the right reason (love) and God or the Universe, if you can't come to grips with the God concept, took care of me. just like Jesus and Buddha said would happen.

every day (well almost every day) i give thanks for life i am allowed to live. i also must give credit to three women, heather, ellen and rhonda who added so much to my life, gave me encouragement and support and love. each of them, i loved and each of them loved me. i have been truly blessed by these women. (i would also have to give credit to rusty, sharon and kathy all of whom i loved and all of whom added to my life but many years ago.) as a side note, i keep in touch with sharon, kathy and heather. rusty passed a couple of years ago.

so, 26 years ago, i was born again....as a comic. and there you go.

you heard it here first, folks....UNLV is going to be a powerhouse this year! this is an impressive team and will go ten deep with real power coming off the bench. when you have a 7 footer and a 6-10 player plus not one but two real hot shot guards as reserves then you have the makings of a team to be reckoned with.....

i have laid out my schedule so that i am here for most of basketball season including our conference championship tournament which is held here at the thomas and mack so i am quite excited. rhonda and i have season tickets right smack dab in the middle of the court but up in the second level. great seats, would like to be downstairs but the only ones we could get were at one end of the court or the other and i would rather be in the middle even if it is upstairs. oh well, go rebels.

surely some of you out there are college basketball fans; write and tell me about your teams. there are always some teams out there under the radar that are really good...let us know about yours....

i'll tell you what; the democrats are going much easier on liebermann than i would have... obama is a real pragmatic man and we need that right now and if he feels that j.l. can be of help in his position then so be it.....but i would have cut his legs off.

i see where rush limbaugh is already calling it the "obama recession". amazing. the man has no shame. but then again, he is an entertainer. that is what he calls himself. (and he has many more fans than i do..so there you go.)

oh well, still looking for inspiration for something worthwhile to write about. i am just playing with words instead of my dick over these last few blogs. bear with me...surely i will come up with something.

peace to us all

is all enough?

las vegas, be it ever so humble, there is no place like home. am so glad to be back, weather is beautiful, dogs are playful, rhonda is playful, i am playful and basketball season is upon us. we are going to game tonight, unlv vs. little sisters of the poor (texas pan american) which we should win handily. both the ap and usa today have unlv at number 26 in their polls. we beat a pretty good san diego team, though they were missing some key players, while i was gone and have some big name teams coming up; louisville and arizona to name two. we start 3 seniors and two freshman and have a 7 footer coming off the bench. lon kruger is a great coach and if our young guys mature properly we could very easily be a top 15 team this year. i was here in 90 and 91 when jerry tarkinian's team went to the final four two years in a row and won it all once. i was in houston for phi slamma jamma and in l.a. for the 97 ucla championship team so i have seen some great college basketball teams and kruger is building a program that will produce a final four team before it is all over. go rebels!

i do truly hope that president-elect obama is devoting this time to figuring out what steps to take as soon as he steps into office to help jump start the economy. every day, or so it seems, more bad news comes....jobs are being lost at way beyond what we can afford, companies who have been around for a century are closing their doors, the car makers are on their last legs, the stock market is tanking and no end in sight. there is much talk about "bailing out" the car companies but if no one is working no one will buy cars anyway. duh. putting people back to work would be the best course of action. (in my opinion)

supply side, trickle down economics should for once and for all be put in the grave of "things that do not work" and never to be raised again. if we recuperate from this then we need to look at some 21st century ideas and though i know it will cause great angst among some, the government(s) must take a larger role. left to their own accords the masters of the universe will continue to rape and pillage and the peons like you and me will be the ones who get raped. the robber barons of the 19th century became the m.o.t.u.'s of the 20th and their goal is to get it all. not part of it, all of it. and the "it" is our national wealth. they don't want the nation to own it, they want to own it. how much of our national wealth was transferred during the bush years? how much has haliburton made? if a stock was bought at 300 dollars and it went down to 10 dollars was 290 dollars lost? fuck no. it was transferred. somebody has that money. there are people on wall street who have been pushing the markets down by short selling and they are making millions on the misery of others. masters of the universe. up against the wall, motherfuckers.

if this collapses we will see revolution in the streets and it won't be pretty.

arm the homeless.

arm yourself....you may be the homeless in the near future.


oh well, i am going to a basketball game.



my schedule is starting to fill up for next year and i am already booked through may. i even have next new year's eve booked. cool. i will be posting the 09 schedule soon.

last day of the road trip

the first show here, i was informed just before i go on stage that the audience was a large christian group in on a fund raiser. they were non denominational and turned out to be a very good audience. i closed with oral roberts and his 900 foot jesus and made them like it. the owner of the club, colleen, came up to me the next day and told me that she was so pleased at how i had handled the whole thing. lol.

i was one of the very first comics ever to grace this stage way back in the 80's. it is owned by bruce and colleen brashop and bruce is one of the richest men in texas. he built this club for colleen because she was and is a huge comedy fan. over the years i have come to know them both and they are just great people. the staff has been with them forever, some from the very beginning. bruce pays his people well and they are extremely loyal to him. they bring in people whom they think are funny not just because someone is "hot" at any given time. bruce hardly ever comes to shows anymore but always shows up for one of mine. the club is in the rivercenter mall right on the riverwalk and because of it being downtown it does not draw well from the locals and is mostly a tourist type crowd. they are thinking of opening another one out on the loop for the locals.

the last day of the last week of any given road trip is always soooooooooo long. the time just drags by. my heart is already at home but my body is stuck in san antonio. back when i drove most places and sometimes would be gone 4 or 5 weeks at a time, when the last show was over i would get in my truck and head home even if it was thousands of miles away. now that i fly, i end up not sleeping the night before, tossing and turning, awaiting the dawn. blah, blah, blah.

last week of the year other than the week before christmas when i go to san francisco for the punch line...one of the best comedy clubs, if not THE best, of all times. i am always their week before christmas act which is great because of a. they have their bill graham presents christmas party that week and b. the city itself is, of course, all decked out for the christmas season complete with choirs singing in the downtown parks. just great. rhonda is going with me this year, the punch line always puts me up in some cool little boutique hotel right there in the heart of things. i will take my camera this year and post some pictures of that club and the city.

oh well, rock and roll and peace be to us all

meandering thoughts on a saturday afternoon

i wrote so much during the presidential campaign that i seem to have run out of words and no other subjects interest me. the economy seems to be coming apart at the seams and washington runs hither and dither and thither and yon with nary a solution in sight.

they told us that unless the bailout was approved on that very day that civilization as we know it would end at sunset; that plagues and pestilence would overwhelm the land and all would be lost. so they passed it, all 770 billion of it and now they say that "well, our first plan was not the right plan and so we are going to do something else." paulson has released 290 billion but we don't know who got the money. we do know it wasn't us.

now they are talking about bailing out general motors because they create so many jobs. ford seems to be in a better position and i don't know about chrysler but they haven't been mentioned in the latest rumors. it seems to me that our auto companies have been married to the next quarter bottom line and have not thought about the future. they did not react to the success of the Asian car makers which came about by giving the people smaller, more fuel efficient, more reliable cars. while i would love to buy american, i have 3 honda's, a 91 civic, an 03 accord and a 07 element. the 91 is getting a little long in tooth but still runs like a top and with 500 dollars worth of work will run another ten years, the accord has 120,000 on it and i have never had a lick of trouble with it and the element is, for all purposes, brand new with less than 10k on it. when america makes a car as good as a honda i will buy it but so far i haven't seen one.

oh well. the shows here have been good and the crowds fairly large so comedy still is bringing them in. every club that i work is doing well and some of them are having record years. that fits in with the history of bad times....entertainment does well because people want a relief from the gloom and doom.

rhonda will always be gainfully employed (we hope) and so we should be able to get through the next couple of years okay until the economy comes back around...assuming that it does come back around and that the whole world doesn't just collapse under the weight of the capitalistic system gone amok. obama has his work cut out for him.

time to start getting ready for the shows. will be glad to get home and play some poker.

peace to us all.

good week in reno

last day of what has been a really good week here in reno. the shows have been just great, though the week day crowds were fairly small, c.d. sales went well and made over a grand at the poker tables. dat's a good week!

about two months ago i went through a very discouraging losing streak and i had to re-evulate my game and, as a result, i went back to SUPER tight and it has paid off quite handsomely. i had become too tricky, too loose, too willing to draw and it cost me. my theory of hold-em has always been (though i didn't always follow it....because i am an idiot...but that is another story) play tight and aggressive and when you have the hand bet it big and let the fools pay you off. now this probably wouldn't work at some of the larger no limit games but at the 1-2 it is, as far as i am concerned, the way to make money on a regular basis. i have had people tell me that if i am too tight then when i do come into a hand with a raise that everyone will fold. wrong. the good players will get out of my way but i am not really trying to beat the good players, i am trying to get the fool at the table to pay me off...and they will....and do.

for example: i am on the big blind and there are 5 callers before it gets to the button who raises to 15 dollars which was a fairly big raise at this table. i look down to find two red aces and i take the bet up to 55 dollars hoping to either a. take the 28 dollars already in the pot or isolate the button so it is just he and i. surprisingly one of the early callers does just that; call. the button folds. the flop comes ace of spades and the 9-ten of clubs. i bet 120 dollars into the pot which puts the other guy all in if he calls...which he does. i don't know what he had since he never showed and threw his cards into the muck. i did everything except show my cards...how could he have not known i had aces?

that particular scenerio happened a couple of times over the course of this week; i would raise big with big pairs and would be called and then i would hit and bet big and was called over and over. i had one of those weeks where i got good cards, good flops and got paid off. three of the days i was more or less card dead and won small amounts each day but the other three days have been where the big profit came.

this has been happening for me as well in vegas at the mgm grand poker room. i usually play at mandalay bay but it was there that i had the losing streak and so i changed rooms.

as i have said over and over again, i am no expert at no limit hold-em but i am a winning player and that can only be said by less than 10% of all the poker players according to what i have read and i would say that is true by watching thousands of games over the last 18 years. most players at the levels i play are not very good. they gamble way too much and make bad calls over and over. even the people whom i see play all of the time at the rooms in vegas are, for the most part, too loose. loose will get cha if you hang around long enough. a good number of these people are retirees and poker is their vice or hobby as the case may be. but here, once again, i am a bottom feeder, i play 1-2 no limit with a 200 dollar buy in; i am not grazing in the fields where the lions lay in wait...nor do i ever want to go play the big boys since i am sure they would beat my brains out. i am not looking to make a living, i am looking to supplement my living.

oh well, had to write something about anything other than politics.

see some of you in san antonio next week. come on out and we will rock and roll.

greetings from reno

almost every comic is liberal and for the last 48 hours i have been receiving phone calls from all across the nation from my fellow laughmasters. the most poignant was from carl falkenberry whose father, a white methodist minister, marched with dr. martin luther king, jr. all across the south. his father has passed but i told carl that his father, who surely is in heaven, must be very proud and very happy today. carl and i cried together.

come january, president obama (ain't that a great couple of words?) will be facing some staggering problems. i am sure in my heart that he will indeed reach across the aisle and engage the republicans to help resolve them. we are in this together and only together will we get out from under this avalanche of bad news.

i am in reno working at catch a rising star and everywhere i go people are just estatic about the election. there is a new mood in america and a new enthusiasm that "yes we can".

i don't really have a lot to say today but thank all of you who participated in this election and went out and voted; whether it was for obama or for mc cain or for any of the other candidates. 62.5% of the electorate voted which is still not nearly enough (we need everyone to vote) but much better than it has been recently. it is our country and it requires our participation. only fools and defeatists think that voting isn't important. the only thing that keeps us from facism is the ballot box...use it and use it wisely.

thank you, scotty, we fought the good fight together. thank you, yvonne. thank you, mike. (mike is one of my republican friends and all of our discussions and arguments have been civil as they should be in a democracy) thank you seth, and j.t. and even joe and liz. thank all of you who read this and comment on it.

i am going to lay off politics as i decompress from this election and will move on to other subjects, one of which has been requested and that is the real and full story of how i went from corporate to comedy and maybe a little texas hold-em poker thrown in as well.

a great day in america

in the early fall of 1957 i was a student at subiaco monastery in arkansas and two friends of mine and i went to little rock to carry signs saying ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL and EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL to central high where 9 little black girls were being escorted by national guard troops so they could attend school. we were cursed and threatened and rocks were thrown at us.

fifty one years later, i was able to put up a sign in my front yard promoting an african american man for president. i worked for that man, canvassed for that man, caucused for that man, phoned people for that man, sent money to that man and then, last night, watched that man become president of the united states of america.

i have lived through and participated in history.

we, as a nation, have grown up and have seen the world for what it is: a multi-racial, multi-cultural place. we have reclaimed the moral high ground and reaffirmed our claim to be the land of real opportunity and equality for all.

this election has motivated the world and shown the world that we, as a people, are not the racist warmongers that they had come to think we were.

as a side note, i do not believe that God ever becomes involved in human affairs but if i am wrong then God's timing of the economic meltdown on wall street was impeccable.

it's a great day in america.

why i am voting for senator obama

while i have never achieved "stardom" as a comic, i do have a dedicated and loyal fan base, helped in many ways by sirius and xm radio, both of which play my comedy a lot. when i am out here on the road i end up talking to dozens, if not hundreds, of people each week from the staff of the clubs to the patrons...and i am amazed at the number of them who tell me that they read this blog regularly.

some have told me that my writings on the presidential race have changed their minds and they now are voting for obama. in the hope that i can change a few more, let me list my reasons for why i am voting for senator obama. obviously most of these i have already covered but repitition does not hurt.



THESE ARE IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER OF IMPORTANCE:



1. WALKS THE WALK. all of his life obama has worked helping people. he started as a community organizer and then when he realized he could do more with a law degree he went to harvard and got a degree. while there he became the first african american to edit the prestigious HARVARD LAW REVIEW. that alone would have qualified him for a position with a large new york wall street law firm with a starting salary in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year with perks the likes of which you and i cannot fathom. instead of cashing in on this, he went back to chicago and worked in some of the worst slums in america trying to help people pull themselves out of poverty. that speaks volumes to me. it shows me where his heart is, and that he likely cannot be bought.



2. INTELLIGENCE. not only did obama finish in the top 1% of his class at harvard (think how hard that must be...there are some really sharp people at harvard) when he got back to chicago and was working as a community organizer to supplement his income (community organizers do not make very much money), he taught CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO which is, in itself, an institution that is toward the top of all lists of prestigious universities. we live in a very complex world in very complex times and we need someone who is bright enough to see the complexity and respond intelligently to it. (john mc cain finished in the bottom 1% of his class and we have seen what george w. bush with his C average did) in addition, we need someone who knows the constitution, as it is obvious that gwb either did not know it or chose to just ignore it when it came to his own personal agenda.



3. HE IS COOL UNDER FIRE. we all watched the debates and we watched how each candidate responded. mc cain grimaced and rolled his eyes and looked angry. obama never wavered, never got off message and never showed disrespect as mc cain did when he either would not look at obama or referred to him as "that one." obama has never engaged in vicious attacks against his opponents and has brought much dignity to the process. he has always wanted this election to be about ISSUES that face the american people.



4. HIS ORATORY SKILLS. we are in tough times folks, and they are going to get tougher. we need someone who can speak to the american people in times of crisis and motivate and encourage them and the ability to speak well really comes in handy. we need someone who can reach across party lines to get people to put aside personal and party dogmas and work together for the common good and, once again, the ability to use the language to get important points across is paramount.



5. HIS POSITION ON ROE V. WADE. the republican party wants to repeal roe v. wade. as a feminist, i believe that it is a woman's right to chose what she does with her own body. the democratic party position is that roe v. wade should not be repealed. while i know this is a very devisive issue i must come down on the side of women making the choice. (incidentally, i really do have credentials as a feminist. when i was in business i had the very first office in the nation for mc millan publishing that had all female managers. i always promoted on ability and results and never on sex, or color. i have three daughters and have been married (or living together as man and wife) 6 times. my ex-wives and my daughters all like me and my wives will tell you that though i can be an asshole (hey, who can't?) they have no doubt that not only do i like women i respect them and treat them as equals.



5A. HIS POSITION ON EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. why is it that a women makes less than a man for the same work? that is sexism at it's worst and must be stopped before we can really become a nation of equals.



6. HIS OPPOSITION TO THE WAR IN IRAQ. it was an illegal and immoral war against a country that had done nothing to us. iraq was not part of 9-11. there were no iraqis on those planes. there were no weapons of mass destruction. there was no connection between iraq and al qaeda and as a matter of RECORD, osama bin laden hated saddam hussain and the feeling was mutual. HE ALONE OF ALL THE CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF DENNIS K., WAS AGAINST THE WAR FROM GET GO. compare that with john mc cain's enthusiastic support for the war even though john mc cain DID NOT READ THE INTELLIGENCE REPORTS THAT HAD ALL THE CAVEATS IN THEM ABOUT HOW THE INTELLIGENCE COULD BE WRONG. whose judgement was correct here? one rushed to war, while the other cautioned against it until all the facts were in. because of this, i am afraid that john mc cain would rush us into another war in the middle east, guaranteeing more hatred for america, more risk to american lives, more risk to american interests and even more drain on our treasury. we are spending TEN BILLION PER MONTH IN IRAQ, we need to get out of there as soon as possible and obama will hopefully do this and i am afraid that mc cain would not.



7. TAXES. obama will give a tax cut to everyone making less than $250,000 per year. obama will repeal the bush tax cuts for the rich. mc cain will give no tax cuts to the middle class and will continue the failed policy of bush of giving huge tax breaks to the rich and to corporations. I CANNOT EMPHAZISE THIS ENOUGH: TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS DOES NOT WORK! IT HAS NEVER WORKED! IT WILL NEVER WORK! HISTORY HAS PROVEN THIS OVER AND OVER. IT DOESN'T WORK FOLKS! DON'T BE FOOLED AGAIN! if anyone needs a break from taxes it is the middle class, not the rich. our wages have stagnated during the bush years....do you want more of the same? the middle class is the backbone of not only our country, but our financial success or failure. the gap between the rich and the rest of us is widening and if we are not careful we will end up as so many third world countries are, with a small percentage of the population rich and the rest of us in varying degrees of poor. anyone who does not think this could happen to us is not aware of history. we would not be the first great empire that crumbled over debts caused by foriegn wars and raiding of the treasury at home. (see rome, greece, persia, babylon, england, spain, france, etc.) some sank into oblivion and some came back from the edge but none regained their influence and world wide power. england is still hanging on, as is france, but we are supporting them.



8. HEALTH CARE. one of the biggest threats to our economy is the ever growing cost of health care. obama's plan, while not perfect, is so much better than mc cains as to be laughable. it is not "socialism" to bring health care to ALL OF OUR PEOPLE it is just common fucking sense. the cost of health care keeps rising, but if you look at where the money is going, it is not to the doctors and nurses but to the insurance companies and the large corporations that now own our hospitals. we must stop this upward spiral or it will cripple us in more ways than one. by allowing people to buy into a federal insurance plan THAT IS ALREADY THERE and making that plan cover pre-existing conditions, which WOULD NOT HAPPEN UNDER THE REPUBLICAN PLAN, we protect ourselves from financial disaster.



9. GREEN ENERGY. obama's plan is to invest billions into making america free from our dependence on oil. we have 3% of the world's oil reserves and we consume 25% of the oil. we are supporting regimes around the world instead of bringing that money back home. we cannot drill our way out of this folks. we don't have enough oil to do that. we need wind power, solar power, electrical power, wave power, thermal power and the myriad of other possible cures that could be out there. we won't find them unless we make a concentrated effort to do so. john mc cain is too tied to the oil companies and has been against every clean energy idea ever floated in front of him. we live in the 21st century and we must get 21st century ideas to confront 21st century problems. TO ME, SENATOR OBAMA REPRESENTS THE FUTURE, WHILE JOHN MC CAIN REPRESENTS THE PAST AND NO SINGLE ISSUE MORE ILLUSTRATES THIS THAN THE ENERGY POLICIES OF THE TWO. oh, john mc cain is giving lip service to green energy, but look at his past votes on the issues. he is in the pocket of the oil companies and obama is not.



10. JOB CREATION. what we need to do, in my opinion, is to use federal monies to create jobs and millions of jobs could be created with the GREEN ENERGY push that was described above. beyond that, senator obama has stated that we will use the vast power of the treasury to create jobs, not only in energy but in rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our schools and other infrastructure components. think of what ten billion per month would do if it were spent here creating jobs for americans instead of being spent in iraq.



11. OUR INTERNATIONAL REPUTATION. when we attacked iraq without provocation we made enemies of millions of muslims and lost the respect of most of the western world. we have been bullies on the international scene for all of the bush years and we are hated for it. the election of senator obama would do wonders for our reputation by showing that we are moving beyond the bellicose unilateralism of bush, cheney and mc cain. WE NEED TO TALK TO OUR SO-CALLED ENEMIES BEFORE WE START BOMBING. that is a major difference between john mc cain, who seems to like war over peace, and senator obama. when george bush called iraq, iran and north korea the AXIS OF EVIL, it ensured that the populace of those countries feared and hated us. INCIDENTLY, ONCE AGAIN, THOSE THREE COUNTRIES HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH 9-11. that kind of belligerent war-mongering and name-calling does nothing for our international reputation except to pull it down. while americans may not know history, the rest of the world does. we may like to think that we can go it alone but the truth of the matter is that we live in an integrated world and we must make allies and friends much more so than we need to make more enemies. john mc cain likes to make a big deal out of obama saying he would meet with the heads of countries that don't like us but to me, the willingness to talk before fighting is the mark of great men not little men.



12. THE SUPREME COURT. if elected, obama will have a chance to put someone on the supreme court who will look at the constitution as something that guards the rights of citizens over the rights of government and corporations. the present court with its conservative majority has consistently favored corporations over citizens and, i believe, that must change. also the supreme court could overturn roe v. wade if mc cain comes into power. that alone would make me want to vote for obama. the republican party is the party of the rich and the corporations and their supreme court nominees have toed the party line and we need to put a stop to that.



13. THE RACIAL ASPECT. an election of a person of color would show not only the world, but ourselves, that we have moved past our racial divide. the saying of parents all across this country that "anyone can become president" would ring so loudly and so clearly, that i believe it will do wonders for our country. it would remove an excuse that some of color use that this is strictly a white person's country and make them re-evulate their beliefs. the election of senator obama will ring the bell of freedom for all our people, white, black, brown, asian, native american and all the others who have come to these shores seeking freedom and equality. we would show the world that we practice what we preach.





i know there are men and women of good conscience who do not agree with me. i know that there are millions who do love this country as much as i do who will disagree with my take on these matters. that does not make them bad people, nor bad citizens, and because i know my own stupidity more than anyone does, i know i could be wrong...but in my heart of hearts and my soul of souls i don't believe i am. i really think that senator obama is our absolute best choice for president in this year of our lord, 2008.

more baseball

the owner of the club here in chattanooga, michael alfono, and i were talking baseball last night and he brought up a good point: that baseball is shooting itself in the foot and is going to cost itself it's fan base over the years by putting all the world series games on at night. everything is done for tv and the real fans, those who buy the tickets and go to the parks, be damned. i remember when teachers would bring radios or small tv's to school and would give all of us updates on the scores and sometimes would let us watch or listen instead of doing "school" work. this was in amarillo, not a major league town.

when i was in l.a. for the playoff game i spoke to several young men in their 20's and 30's about how lucky they were to grow up in a major league city and to be able to go to the games. they all said that it was harder to bring their kids to the park because there are hardly any day games anymore. rigley field in chicago had only day games for what? a century or so and everyone loved it and the place was full. a baseball game takes over 3 hours to play and what with getting back to your car, fighting the traffic out and then driving home you and your kids get in bed after midnight. as a result of this fewer and fewer kids are growing up as bb fans.

that, and the lack of playing fields in the cities. in vegas we have several really nice soccer fields but i have seen only one really nice little league bb field. the kids in innercities don't play baseball any more because of lack of facilities and because basketball and to some degree football are more "glamorous".

if you don't know the game, baseball looks dull on tv when, in reality, most baseball games are very intense and have well over 200 different plays each game. every pitch is a play, every shift of the defense, every throw to first to hold the runner, every signal from catcher, every signal to a base runner all of those and dozens more are part of the game. i grew up with baseball so i see all those things but if you didn't.....

another well pitched game last night and the issue was in doubt until the very last batter. this kid, price, for the rays, had ice water in his veins. i think he is 23 and started the season in the minors and here he is pitching in the 9th in the world series. how cool is that?

i have made rhonda into not only a baseball fan but a college basketball fan as well. while she had some rudimentary knowledge of both games she now is a FAN and sees the game properly. of course, she had no choice. lol.

rock and roll and peace to us all

politics and pitching

rhonda and i are on opposite sides on the palin clothing spending spree, she believes that palin needed the clothes on the stump while i think the symbolism alone is such that reflects badly on the republican message of "joe the plumber", ie the everyday working man is being helped by the republican policies. 150k for clothing (that is the figure quoted today) in a month is not something that relates to joe the plumber and joesphine his wife. on that subject, the republican party has, over the years, convinced working people to vote against their own self-interest. they are quite good at it. they preach the things that really do not matter but resonate with blue collar people, guns (the demos are going to take away your guns), religion (the demos are going to outlaw christianity or the demos are not REAL christians or, in our present case, obama is a muslim), family values (the demos are going to allow queers to marry), patriotism (the demos are not real patriots and are, god forbid, against going to war against anybody we want) and if all that fails calling the democrats socialists, communists and any other ists they can think of. what they do not talk about is economic policies other than always accusing the democrats of " raising your taxes." you know, "tax and spend" democrats.

our economy is on the brink of disaster and so let's talk about william ayers.

jobs are being lost by the tens of thousands per month so let's question obama about his patriotism.

millions are losing their homes so let's accuse obama of being a socialist. (not mentioning that we just GAVE 700 BILLION dollar to banks which, of course, is socialism for the rich).

we spend more on health care than any country on the face of the earth and john mc cain wants us to turn it all over to the insurance companies. (let me tell you something from personal experience: INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF PAYING CLAIMS, THEY ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF COLLECTING PREMIUMS.)

so, john mc cain, who can't remember how many homes he owns and sarah palin whose husband belongs to a group (or belonged to) that advocates alaska succeeding from the union (which is, incidently, high treason) go on painting obama as an elitist socialist but do not come up with viable ideas to get us out of this mess whereas senator obama does have plans and has spelled them out in great detail. read the two parties web pages and see which one applies to you.

great game last night if you like pitching. on both sides, the pitching was just great. when i played baseball (a jillion years ago) i pitched and played short stop and some third base. i pitched several no hitters in junior high but was a horrible batter and so, once in high school, i concentrated on boxing. several kids that i played bb with went on to pro sports, the most notable of which was lance rentzel (sp?) who played pro football. others went on to play bb but got no higher than triple A. our jr. high team went to the state finals twice and lost both times, once, as i spoke of in long ago post, on my error in the last inning. (we had however blown a 6 run lead so my error was only the last fuckup of the day). anyway, point being, i really like pitching.

two related stories

chattanooga in time for first game of the series; an easy two day drive from houston. i started rather poorly though; rented a sebring convertable and top wouldn't come down so a guy that worked there at DOLLAR jiggled something in trunk and lo and behold the top went down. however when i got to brookie's house i wanted to put it back up so i could put stuff in trunk and the top refused to budge so i take the car back down to hobby airport to exchange it. they said that i would have to pay $6.99 per gal. to fill the tank back up! after a small but effective temper tantrum they relented and got me a chysler 300 for the same price. gads.

two related stories:

the gap between rich and poor has grown tremendously since 2000 here in the united states and now trails only turkey and some other small country whose name escapes me.

sarah palin spent 125,000 dollars of republican campaign money for new clothes. (the exact figure is rather obscure...but over 100k)

i guess she was spreading the wealth.

since the republicans used to refer to obama as "elite", let me ask you every day people...do you spend 100k on clothes in a month? would that be "elitist"?


i think the republicans will say almost anything in the hope that the public won't take the time and effort to check out the facts. the republicans have been spouting the "joe the plumber" story and now have added another twist...that somehow the encounter between senator obama and j.t.p was "confrontational." well, go to utube and watch the whole thing. case closed. obama's answer and explanation was more detailed than ANYTHING mc cain has said about his own economic "plan."

the republicans keep repeating (ala j. goebbels) that obama will "raise your taxes." obama will lower the taxes on everyone making 250k per year and the only tax increase will be his repealing the bush tax cuts for the rich. tax cuts that JOHN MC CAIN HIMSELF WAS AGAINST WHEN BUSH SIGNED THEM INTO LAW, SAYING THAT THEY ONLY HELP THE FEW WHO DON'T REALLY NEED THE HELP. go check it out if you have any doubt. can you say "hypocrite"?

rep. michel bachman of minn. said on msnbc that obama was an "anti-american muslim." she is the incumbent republican. joe mc carthy was from minn. i do believe.

be sure and read colin powell's complete statement on why he is backing senator obama.

(for my friends in philly, i know that all of you aren't bad fans but some are just awful: loud, rude, crude, beer-throwing, fight-picking awful.)

10,000 to one. what a bet!

got up too late to head to new orleans, oh well.

i was talking to the owner of the club here and he said that he was in vegas and talking to a bookmaker and the b.m. told him that he would have gladly put the rays at 10,000 to one to win the world series and would have slept well. man. what a bet that would have been. i think the official line was 200-1 but surely they were a longer shot than that. i will be pulling for them all the way even though i am a national league fan. besides the phillies has some really obnoxious fans...booed santa claus and all. (not as obnoxious as the red sox fans have turned out to be....i liked them more when they were loveable losers)

sevesteen, i am taking your advice. you are absolutely right.

i have already heard someone say that colin powell endorsed senator obama because he is black. man oh man.

i have another new club for next year...mrytle beach for easter week. for my fans in sarasota, i will be there in feb. so check my schedule or mc curdy's comedy theater web site.

last day in houston so brookie and i will spend it eating at different places...our usual routine.

maybe off to new orleans

let me pass on a culinary tip...mai's on milam in houston. scotty mentioned it in a comment and then i remembered it as the vietnamnese place that the comics used to go. great food.

now let me pass on a tip to joe and liz. keep your comments to the blog i posted. save your little attacks on me...i will delete them. if you have a comment on a given post (except this one) go right ahead and fire with your thoughts but no longer will i let stand unrelated comments which are just your way of blogging on my blog. actually both of you could stand to get a life; if you dislike me soooo much why in the world do you read me? (don't answer....it will be deleted...this particular post is not up for discussion for you two...regardless of what name you use)

rays and phillies for world series...go rays. they are the best story in baseball and for them to go ahead and win the world series will make them a legend and a motivating story for coaches for all time.

hopefully, the leaves will be in their colorful mode on this drive up to chattanooga. may leave early and go to new orleans for a day and eat at irene's in the quarter. walk along the river and then get some of that wonderfully strong coffee at cafe du monde as the fog rolls in. watch the whores, the tourists, the street vendors, the street performers, the hustlers and the hustled go about their nightly dance.

ah well, late at night here...peace to us all.

friends of mine...ringo included.

what a great week i just had here in houston. this club is primo and it is a real pleasure to play. we had quite a few "shock fans" in the crowds and i was able to do several requests for them. (tiptone, did you make one of the shows?) the owner is having me back twice a year and i will be the new year's eve act in 09 which will be the first new year's eve i have worked in 20 years since i feel that they are amature night but don, the owner, assured me that he charges so much money that the crowds are just great. i will be working in a tux. cool.

this coming year i will be doing 11 weeks in texas and i couldn't be happier over that. i have a tremendous amount of "texas" material that kills here.

today is my 66th birthday and brookie and ed are taking me out for seafood this evening.

boy, there are a couple of guys who write me on this blog that seem to just hate me. now, i am be chastized over ringo starr one saying i have terrible choices for friends because i am a friend of ringo. gads. i will put my group of friends up against anyone's, from college profs to lawyers, to artists, to movie stars, to comics, to club owners, to poker players, to writers, to philosphers, to rock stars, to a couple of old gangsters, to undercover cops, to a major general in the united states army, to songwriters, and to doctors my friends are straight, gay, white, black, brown, asian, young and old. they are liberal and conservative. when times were tough they banded together and helped me without being asked. so, if you think i have bad choice in friends then you don't know my friends. as far as ringo starr goes, i don't know what prompted him to cut off fan mail (and neither do you) and i don't care...that is his business. he has been very nice and gracious to me. a gentleman at all times.

oh well, happy birthday to me and peace to us all.

friday night late show

wouldn't you know it, i mention that the late show friday is always the show to avoid and then last night, late show was fantastic. big enthusiastic crowd that was there for anything i wanted to do. what a show!

tonight we do three shows...7-9-11...we shall see.

this club gets a nice mixture of people, since this is in the montrose, which is, in my opinion, the coolest part of houston, we get the coolest crowds. they get the jokes. they get the references. they get my vote.

colin powell is on meat the press tomorrow and s. palin is on saturday night live tonight. fitting.

(one is a joke)

nap time. for all of you who came out to see me...thank you.

peace to us all.

late night mexican food

this new LAFF STOP in houston is a beautiful club and we had a very good audience last night; as my friend, brookie, said "we got biker's titty bar and the world's greatest dope story" both in the same set. the bikers' story is a texas story and i had that as sort of a theme last night complete with, yes liz, VAN SEATS which, truth be known, is a texas story and the original guy was north of houston on I-45. in my road shows, i sometimes move him to various states to fit in with whatever i am doing at the time. artistic leeway.

i rent car here next week and drive up to chattanooga and the drive should be pretty because some of the leaves will be turning ... i think.

well, joe the plumber turned out to be: a. not a plumber, b. not making anywhere close to 250,000 per year which is what it would take for obama's so-called tax increase to come into effect...i say "so called" because what will really happen is that the bush tax cuts for those making over 250K will be allowed to expire., and last, but not least, c. joe, the wannabe plumber, owes back taxes.

hell, for all i know, the republicans may be "throwing" this election because whoever goes into office is facing some really serious problems. the hole we are in is going to take some digging to get out of and, if mc cain were president, he would be faced with a democratic controlled congress and would have proble