HOT TUESDAY NIGHT IN VEGAS

so the iraqi government goes on a month long vacation starting tomorrow (they were going to have a two month vacation but backed off of that) because it is "too hot" in iraq for them to govern. i am not making this up. our troops who are fighting and dying for those iraqi fucks are carrying, what, 60-75 pounds of equipment, wearing flack jackets, helmets, helmet liners, ammo belts, packs, shovels, canteens, gas masks, etc etc are out there in that "too hot" heat while the iraqi thieves, excuse me, politicians, go off to their villas in "the heavily armed green zone" to count their stolen millions of american taxpayers dollars. meanwhile, the decider in chief is waiting for his general of the month in iraq to report to him that all is going well but we will have to stay for another two or three or four or five or ten years and then we will, maybe, someday, in the faraway future, start drawing down. ye fucking gods! we have an insane man as president and there are american army generals who will sacrifice their own honor and the lives of our brave men and women to keep the insane one satisfied. only the generals who agree keep their jobs. disagree and bush fires them. then bush says, "see, all the generals agrees with me."

we build an embassy BIGGER THAN THE VATICAN and then say we are planning to leave. yeah, right. we build FOURTEEN PERMENANT BASES in iraq and then say we are going to leave. yeah, right.

acording to a report two days ago, pat tillman was shot in the head with two bullets from an M16 from a distance of about ten feet away. the bullet holes were just inches apart. totally different than anything we have been told before and it did not get hardly any play at all in the major newspapers and tv "news" channels. if he was indeed shot twice in the head from ten feet away it completely blows away even the story of "friendly fire" that we have been fed. first it was the taliban who killed him and then the story was that he was so far in front of his troops that they didn't realize he was one of theirs and consequently got killed because the troops thought they were firing at taliban fighters. yeah right. any soldier with combat experience will tell you that a captain does not get hundreds of yards alone out in front of his troops. that is just bullshit. it is looking more and more like pat tillman was killed by "unfriendly fire" but from his own troops. why? i have no idea. maybe he was so gung ho that they felt he was going to get them all killed. that happened quite a lot in viet nam. regardless of the reasons or the circumstances mr. tillmans family and the nation itself deserve a truthful account of what happened that day. the family because it is their due and the nation because bush and company made such a big ado about his "heroic death" when it happened we are entitled to know if bush knew that what he was saying was false and yet went on using this young mans death as a rallying point for his own personal bloodlust and propoganda for his own personal wars.

i don't know how many of you joined me in writing to the atlanta falcons and the nfl but enough people did that we got some results.

i would like to see the republicans do a YOUTUBE debate. bet they won't. republicans are afraid of questions that have not been screened. they are not the party of the people. and they really don't want "the people" asking them all those silly-assed questions like "how are you going to get us out of iraq?" they only want questions from rich people and corporations like "how can we get bigger tax cuts?" republicans love that question. say the words "corporate tax cuts" and republicans will whip their little bitty teeny weeny dicks and start masterbating. (well, maybe not, but it is a funny picture, some old fat millionaires jacking off to the wall street journal editorial page....especially now that murdoch owns it.)

speaking of YOU TUBE DEBATES, i thought hillary clinton acquited herself quite well as did barack obama. joesph biden had good ideas but he is starting to sound a little shrill. richardson is fading but will probably be offered the vice presidency on the clinton ticket. i can't wait for the presidental debates of next year. so far, the republicans only have rudy, who has some major baggage, and fred, who is not even in the race yet. romney is a warmonger and johnny mac is not only way too old but his flip flops have become a joke.

why do the republicans hate hillary clinton so much? could it be she is a better man than they? whenever you ask one why they hate her you get incoherent answers that make no sense whatsoever. it all boils down to that she is a woman. period. she is a strong woman. weak men are afraid of strong women. period. me, i like strong women. and strong women like me. but then again, i am not a republican.

dodgers are playing like shit since the all star break and injuries are taking their toll. the west is going to be a division of attrition.

just me at night
ranting and raving
with all my might
against the wars and the mongers thereof.

SORRY SINA!

first of all; my fan in salt lake city is not a woman. his name is sina and i just assumed it was a female name. my apologies.

i have been invited to perform at the VANCOUVER COMEDY FESTIVAL in september. very cool. they are having a theme this year and it is marijuana. hmmmmmm, wonder why they wanted me. i would really like to get a great film of WORLD'S GREATEST DOPE STORY and this just might be the place to do so. if i do, i will put it out immediately since there is no great film of that story and that is a bitch because it is, far and away, the most requested piece i do. on that subject, i am one of the very, very few comics who do requests. in reno, i had a writer request the 900 foot tall jesus and though i had not done it in a while it just rocked. i may put it back in the rotation.

oh well, not much to say other than watch out for falling stock markets; off to eat mexican food.

chit and chat, this and that, paddle wheelers in tahoe

back home in vegas reflecting on the past week or so.

reno went well with several great shows. my middle was kathleen dunbar who did a great job all week long. my lesbian fan club came out and were, as always, just wonderful. they treated me to some superior motivational herb for which i thank them.

ended up 609 dollars ahead for the week there at no limit hold-em by playing very conservative and waiting for the right hand to show up. incidently, i was able to get a guy in a set over set situation similiar to the one in which i lost to the aces full except this time i had the bigger set and he went all in (just i like did...lol)

in tahoe, performed on a very small paddle-wheeled boat for a dinner-comedy cruise around the lake. horrible. why bookers try things like that is just beyond me. they never look at it from the side of the performer; the way it was set up there was no possible opportunity for the comic to have a really good show. no stage, no stool, no mic stand. we did our sets on the floor right in front of the audience, which consisted of, oh, maybe 25 people with the waitresses walking right in front of us to clear the tables, people were still eating, the bar is right behind us and they get their drinks by getting up, walking in front of us (dodging the waitress), ordering, walking back in front of us (running into the waitress),sme of the people didn't speak english, etc etc etc all spelling h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e. the next night we were in a big concert hall in a casino and the show went great. why? well, because it was set up properly, was a venue designed for live performance and was properly seated and policed. duh. both gigs paid the same. give half as much money and let me do just the good one. the booker was a good guy, just inexperienced and, as with so many, let the money get in the way of any good sense he may have had.

saw a story in paper today about what a good guy michael vick and how he helped people from this housing project. can you say "spin"?

harriet miers was nominated by gwb to be a supreme court justice. she is now being supenoened (sp?) by congress for lying (read perjury) and contempt of congress. not surprising since the bush administration has shown nothing but contempt for congress and the american people for going on 7 years now and lying seems to be the order of the day in the administration.

now housing prices are falling and foreclosures are rising and nobody knows why. may i refer you to "last fool in line post."

american car makers are sinking into the sunset and blaming the unions for their woes. i didn't know the unions designed those pieces of shit gas guzzlers that the so-called "big three" tried to pawn off on the american public while the japanese were making quality cars that got good gas milage and lasted 200 to 500 thousand miles. damn those unions. didn't know union members got those golden parachutes that FAILED excutives got. didn't know the union members were drawing salaries of tens of millions of dollars while the companies went almost belly up. damn those union men and women.

poker advice: don't play ace jack off suit in early position in an aggressive game. throw away ace queen off suit to any raise in an aggressive game; both those hands are very vunerable. they look pretty but they just don't put out.

glad to be back home. better enjoy it while i can because for the next two months i am rocking and rolling from coast to coast.

THE FIX IS IN

all sports fans have read about the nba official possibly fixing games to affect the point spread. i don't know how many nba games are fixed but i know for a fact that some nfl games have been fixed in the past. you will notice that i said KNOW and not think, believe or assume. here is how i know:

in the early 90's i met a bookie who carried a ten thousand dollar book in a town in the midwest. he used to come to my shows and we struck up a friendship. over the course of a couple of years he told me games to bet on and told me to bet as much as i wanted just don't bet with him because the fix was in. EVERY GAME HE GAVE ME TURNED EXACTLY AS HE SAID IT WOULD.

when i asked him how they did it, he said that he didn't know, only that it was fixed. he then went on to tell me WHY they did it and that information was very interesting. the sports books in vegas have NOTHING to do with this, it is the mob doing it to protect their bookies across the country. in vegas when you place a bet, you put your money down. if you lose, they already have your money. if you win, they collect their vig. if, however, you bet with your local bookie (and every town of any size whatsoever has bookies) he does not collect your money at time of bet. if you win, the bookie ALWAYS pays. sometimes the losers do not pay their debt and over the course of a year bookies will have x amount of uncollected debts. many bookies are, in a way, a franchise of the mob and they "fade off" some of their bets. what this means is if you are running a book of ten grand, whenever the incoming bets get more than that, you then move that bet up the ladder and a guy with a much bigger book will help you cover it for a percentage of the winnings. every bookie that has a large enough "book" knows who to go to for coverage and the people they go to are affliated with the mob and that is how those things go. in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that. there is something wrong with fixing the games but since i knew which was it was going i decided not to let my morals get involved.

just another thought, i think they use the offensive and defensive co-ordinators to do the fix. if you, as a defensive co-ordinator, know what the offensive is going to run on a given play you can stop it every time. conversely, if the offensive guy knows what defense is going in, he can beat it every time.

anyway, that is why i don't bet sports.

write the falcons

little short post: will write more later.

go to the atlanta falcons website and they have an email address and then write them and tell them to do the right thing and not try to sweep the vick/dog fighting thing under the rug. any person is innocent until proven guilty but a. the evidence presented by the feds in the indictment seems, on the surface, quite damning and b. vick's statement is laughable (he just never noticed the dog pens, the fighting pens, the dead dogs, the blood etc). he should be allowed to play until he goes to trial but if he is convicted he should be banned from the nfl for life. what i worry about is that the falcons and the nfl will try to stall this as long as possible hoping that people will forget. LET THEM KNOW YOU WILL NOT FORGET. it is one of those times when we all can do the right thing.

A POKER LESSON

this is one of those poker hands that you replay in your mind......

i am in a no limit game here in reno with 1-2 dollar blind structure. some tricky players are lurking in my group of opponents. i consider myself a tight and aggressive player but not real tricky. i am on the big blind and the betting goes call, call and then a very good player raises to ten dollars, an eight dollar raise, it is then called by two more players and i look down and i have a pair of dueces. dueces are not any good at all UNLESS a duece hits on the flop which is, incidently, a 7 1/2 to 1 underdog BUT there is already 37 dollars in the pot and i know the other two who orginally called the two dollars are going to call the 8 because, there is just too much money in the pot not to. and they do. they call and so there are 6 players in the pot at ten each.

the flop comes As, Ks, 2d. i have flopped bottom set. i check as do the next two (the ones who had originally called the two dollars before the raise) and the raiser bets 20 dollars into the 60 dollar pot and he is called by one other good player who i figure is on the flush or straight draw or the royal draw and now it is back to me.

here is where i think we stand. bettor has either ace-king or ace-queen. why do i think that? a. because the orginal raise was only 8 dollars. if you have a pair of aces or a pair of kings you really don't want a bunch of opponents because your aces will USUALLY lose to someone if you have 4 or more opponents. why? well they are going to put up 3 cards in the middle and at 4 opponents, there are 8 cards out to match the 3 cards out there and you have only two cards and really you only have one card; why? because if no ace comes those 3 cards out there have a good chance of hitting someone else, especially it the flop is all paint, kings, queens and jacks and you could then be looking at various two pairs and a possible straight already. so, to eliminate drawing hands you want to limit the number of opponents by making a decent raise to weed out some of the folks. (in a game like this, a 15-20 raise is more, in the long run, profitable because you will only get called by maybe one or two people and against one you are a HUGE favorite and against two you are a favorite. so, conclusion is he does not have aces or kings. that is one reason but here is the second and, i believe, the most important, part of the equation. his bet was VERY small in comparison to the pot. there are multiple ways someone could hit a card that would beat 3 aces or 3 kings with this flop. why not take the pot right now when you know you have the best hand? his 20 dollar bet was not going to run anybody with ANY draw or pair is going to call. IT IS A REAL BITCH TO HIT YOUR HAND AND THEN NOT BET ENOUGH TO WIN THE POT RIGHT THEN AND THERE AND SOMEONE DRAWS OUT ON YOU BECAUSE YOU MADE IT PROFITABLE FOR THEM TO CALL. for instance, with the flop described above the flush draw is a 4-1 underdog, but if you add an inside straight draw as well, say Qs, Js so any ten also helps so now the draw is only a 3-1 dog. by betting 20 into a 60 pot it give a caller 4-1 right then and there and that is if no one else behind calls. the next guy is now getting 5-1 pot odds for his draw whatever it is. that is how trips get beat, you let the fuckers draw. so, my conclusion was that he had a good hand but not a killer hand because of size of bet. so i figure no trips.

now, i got trips. what to do? i have 3 options. fold, call or raise. well, i am not going to fold my trips. but i want to get the draws out. when it gets to me there is 100 dollars in the pot. i know the two limpers are going to fold against this flop. the flop has hit one guy and the other guy has a draw. i think it has hit me better. i raise to 100 dollars. (which is half my money) the orginal bettor then goes all in and the other guy folds. there is now 400 in the pot (when the other guy folds, his all in only cost me 100 and if, say he put in 500 dollars, when the other guy folds, he takes back 400 of it because all i have is 100...and so i call. he had three aces.

the bitch of the thing is, the turn card was a king which would have given me 2's full of kings but i would be very much at risk to ace-king because that would be kings full of aces. had i waited until the turn to try to make my move, the king would have stopped me dead in my tracks and would not call any bet after that. if he bet it, i would fold.

i don't know how i could have laid that hand down given my experience at this game before this hand was dealt. when i play it back over however, i have a sneaky feeling that i should have smelled a rat and not raise on the flop like i did but wait and see what the turn did bring. because by raising on the flop i am only going to get called by someone who already has me beat (the trip aces or kings) or someone who has a big draw. my hand can only improve with a duece. nothing else helps me. and, as i said in the beginning this was a tricky table. in retrospect, the guy took a calculated risk that it would come down the way it did because if it did it was going to be a huge hit for him. i made it possible for him to do so. i think i got outplayed. that there are times when the impossible read could be right. by only betting HE WANTED SOMEONE TO RAISE SO HE COULD RERAISE. i should have recognized this and indeed, wait for the turn.

well, there you go. i just got a valuable lesson. that is the thing about no limit, fucking lessons are expensive. in the long run, however, this particular one is going to a. save me a lot of money and b. make me a lot of money. he didn't play by the book. i would have played it by the book. though he took a risk of the spade or straight draw hitting he was able to make considerably more money that way. i need to learn when and how to do that. as i have mentioned before, no limit is new to me. i am ahead for the year but not nearly as far ahead as i was playing low limit hold-em. no limit is a whole new animal. you have to think a lot more in no limit than you do in limit. sherlock holmes would have done well at this game and so would brother william of the baskervilles (that was the hero in "name of the rose." sean connerly played him in the movie, umberto eco wrote the book--great book) because they both looked at everything logically. if you can do that in poker, you can win.

see, it is the lay-downs that seperate the winners from the losers. you gotta know when to fold them.

interview with bbc

it is always somewhat hard to determine how one does on an "interview" until it is seen or heard later but, having said that, i think the bbc interview today went quite well. now i am at the mercy of the editors and time will tell. i will post the time that it is to be broadcast in england and you can get it on the bbc feed on your computer.

we talked a little over an hour and i was given all the time in the world to answer the questions. so i got in several little essays on bill including the ferret story from lafayette, la. i also told of the strange events that happened the night bill died, a story that i have not blogged here as of yet and don't know if i ever will.

off to reno in the morning so probably won't blog for several days but we shall see.

once again, i encourage to post comments on anything i write. good, bad, critical, whatever; if you have something to say, say it.

bbc and upcoming book

a completely made-up phoney company was able to fill out all the proper forms and then order and then recieve material to build a "dirty atomic bomb" in 28 days. (fortunate for us, the made up company was a fbi sting operation) it takes american citizens almost 6 months now to get a passport. are we serious about terrorism or fucking what?

today is the BBC interview about bill hicks. tomorrow, the shockster heads off to reno for a week where my lesbian fan club awaits and then to tahoe. while laying around the pool during the day and playing poker at night is quite cool i am ready to go back to work. i get real antsy if i don't perform for a couple of weeks. in august and september i am working my little ass off and will enjoy every minute of it.

also this week i am officially starting on my book which i have been outlining for the past several months. whether or not it will be any good is yet to be seen. writing is a. hard and b. requires tremendous discipline. being a good speaker does not necessarily translate into being a good writer. what i am going to do is write down the stories from my life, not just the humorous ones that i tell on stage but also the tragic and serious ones. i have been shot, stabbed, beaten, clubbed, starved, homeless, tortured and troubled. my domicile has been from mansions to penitentaries, from harlem, new york to sydney, australia, top of russian hill in san francisco to a flop house in new orleans. i have eaten meals in restaurants overlooking the mediterranean sea and in a salvation army center in los angeles overlooking skid row. have had my own limo and driver and once had a ford falcon whose battery was dead and we had no money to replace it so it was always parked on an incline so we could roll the car and pop the clutch to get it started. now i have a giant pool but have had my water turned off and we had to go steal water from a close-by cemetary so we could cook and wash and flush. i have known the love of seven incredible women and have 4 children who turned out to be outstanding human beings. i have been a cad and a hero, a failure and a star. my face has been on wanted posters and on the front page of the life section of usa today. there are scars on my body and on my soul but, truth be told, for the most part, i have also had a smile on my face and a joke to tell (even under the most trying of circumstances). truly, they will be stories from a checkered past. wish me luck.

WHAT DO WE KNOW?

bono owes the name of his group to gary powers, who was indeed flying high.

sirhan-sirhan is not to be confused with duran duran. one's a group the other a dupe.

into the valley of death rode the 600 is not a nascar theme.

neville chamberlain did not play basketball (nor defense, as it turns out)

hoover in a dress was not a humorous vacuum cleaner commercial.

pickett's charge was not on a visa.

crossing the 48th parallel is not a reference to the matrix but it does have chinese characters.

all of these came to me after putting in the morman nailer joke, which i am sure would bomb in a comedy club nowadays. the pool of duh is very deep in many eyes that i look into from the stage.

what lead me on this train of thought was an article about mort sahl in the latest issue of vanity fair. here again, most people don't know who mort sahl is and most don't read vanity fair and that is a damn shame on both parts.

oh well, just playing with words instead of my dick....

random thoughts on a sunday afternoon

the difference between democratic and republican politicians getting caught having sex outside of their marriage seems to be the republicans have to pay for it.

there was a shooting here in las vegas last week at NEW YORK - NEW YORK casino. the shooter was going to start firing at 10:30 pm but put it off until later because "there were too many children on the casiono floor." what kind of parent has children on a casino floor at ten thirty at night? when he finally started shooting at 12:45 am, one of the people shot was a 13 year old child. same question, different time.

the shooter was taken down by four tourists. the casino did not make a big deal out of their heroism because they don't want people to think that those kind of things happen here and just wanted the story to go away. had that happened in, say, a mall in any other city in america the four men would have been hailed as heros and given the key to the city.

when you come to vegas and want to gamble remember something: HOUSE WINS. the casino wants to get all of your money and if you stay long enough at any of the house games they will get all of your money, the odds are ALWAYS ON THEIR SIDE. that is why i play poker and only poker because it is the only game in town where the casino is not your opponent. speaking of which, there is now a company that makes video poker tables so that, before long, the casinos will eliminate the poker dealers, the cards and the chips and everything will be done electronically. that will be a sad day for all. even though it will save the players from having to tip the dealers and in the long run will actually add to a player's winnings for a given year, poker will lose some of its finer points; i watch how someone holds their cards, how they look back at their cards, how they put their chips in the pot, how they stack their chips as they are getting ready to bet; all these things give me clues to their holdings. when we go electronic i will lose some of my edge. shit.

what do you get when you cross a carpenter with a writer from utah? a morman nailer. (thank you ron f. )

go dodgers!

FACT VS. FICTION ---RHETORIC VS. REALITY

"we are going to find him (bin laden) and get him; dead or alive." george w. bush, 2001.

"we have al-qaida on the run, we have seriously damaged them." george w. bush, 2007

"u.s. intelligence analysts have concluded that al-qaida has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the september 11th, 2001 terrorists attacks" associated press, yesterday!

"al-qaida is considerably operationally stronger than a year ago and has regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001." united states intelligence paper released 7-12-07

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"the iraqi army is getting bigger and better and will soon be able to take over combat operations now being done by u.s. troops." george w. bush 2007


"the number of battle ready iraqi battalions able to fight independently has dropped from 1o to 6 in recent months despite an increase in u.s. training efforts."
GENERAL PETER PACE, CHAIMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
july 13th, 2007

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"the iraqi police are a well trained force and work side by side with their american counterparts." george w. bush 2007

"u.s. troops kill six in firefight with iraqi police." newspaper headline, sept 14th 2001

(the article goes on to say how the iraqi police have been heavily infiltrated by shiite death squads)

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(MY PERSONAL FAVORITE)

while urging colleagues to devote more federal funding to programs urging sexual abstinence, SEN. DAVID VITTER, REP. LA., wrote, "the best way to avert teen pregancy is by teaching teenagers that saving sex until marriage and remaining faithful afterwards is the best choice for health and happiness."

in a speech on the senate floor last year supporting a constitutional ammendment against gay marriage, VITTER said it was "well overdue that we in the senate focus on nurturing, upholding, perserving and protecting such a fundamental social instititution as traditional marriage."

VITTER IS A MARRIED FATHER OF FOUR THAT NOW HAS BEEN LINKED TO A CALL GIRL OPERATION IN WASHINGTON AND WAS A REGULAR CUSTOMER OF A WHORE HOUSE IN NEW ORLEANS. HE HAS ADMITTED SOME "GREVIOUS SINS."

(he did not say what those sins were but i am leaning towards extreme hypocrisy)

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as i have said before, i have the time to read the newspaper(s) each and every day and i know that a lot of people don't. i, for the most part, avoid television "news" and also, the odds of you seeing the first two stories about what the administration says on one hand and what really happens on the other on television are quite small. oh, you might get what he says, when he says it, but when the opposite comes through the networks do NOT link the two together. i didn't watch the news over the past few days but if you have, let me ask you a question, did you see the story about the number of iraqi battalions and was it given any kind of prominance? if so, post here and tell me what network you saw it on.

the news reports things as if they, the things, exist in a vacuum and have no relationship to the past. this gives a distorted view of reality.

a story this past week was that the iraqi government had, for all practical purposes, NOT FILLED ONE SINGLE "BENCHMARK" THAT THEY SAID THEY WOULD. not one. nada. zip. there were a few meaningless little things they did but those had nothing to do with effective government; on the major ones. fuck all.

what was missing from all these stories was how the iraqi government has continuously done this. from 2003 to this very day, we tell them that they have to do something and they say they will do it and it doesn't get fucking done. over and over and over and over and over and over again. it is not JUST THIS SINGLE FUCKING TIME. the whole society over there is dysfunctional to a degree that is beyond our comprehension. and the iraqi government reflects that dysfunctional attitude. THEY, IN THE GOVERNMENT, CAN'T GET ALONG. and we are lead to believe that a dysfunctional government can lead a dysfunctional society comprised of TRIBES whom have never gotten along with each other for the last SIX CENTURIES to all of a sudden, get along and share dose good old oil revenues EQUALLY and everyone will live happily ever after. all we have to do is give them some more time and some more benchmarks and, by golly, peace will descend on iraq on the wings of a snow white dove.

by not tying it all together, by just seeing todays news as pertaining only to today the point is missed and, in fact, the news is not reported as much as perverted and distorted. (or converted, so to speak, so to follow the party line)

i wrote a blog about what i liked about america and americans but there are things that i don't like about us and one of them is that we, as a whole, don't pay enough attention. you gotta watch these fucks, guys! if we don't start paying closer attention those fucks are going to fuck us even more than they are fucking us now. for those of you who do pay attention, let me ask you a favor, try to get someone who doesn't pay attention to start doing so. you can convert one person to the idea of paying attention. they don't have to become a liberal or a conservative, they just have to become a citizen. if we are to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people then we, the people, must be part of that government and you do that by paying fucking attention to how the government is being run IN YOUR NAME.

i get an average of 800 visits to my website every day. some of them read my blog. surely not all of them agree with me on my politics and that is fair enough but if i can get just one more person to start paying attention then all this ranting and raving is worthwhile. while preaching to the choir is easier i really want to bring someone new into the fold.

there is a great idea out there called MYBILLOFRIGHTS.ORG. check it out. they put up monuments that list the BILL OF RIGHTS where ever they have put up THE TEN COMMANDMENTS on public property. we are a secular nation. we are not a theocracy. they take small donations, give one if you can.


anyway, come out to the shows, tell people about me, have them buy c.d.'s. rock and roll.

saturday afternoon in vegas, 108 outside, dodgers on the tube.

humpty dumpty sat on a wall
humpty dumpty had a great fall
all the king's horses
and all the king's men
couldn't put humpty back together again

so, i got to thinking: what do the horses do?

then i figured it out: glue.


joke i wish i had wrote:

"if there is safety in numbers, how come decimals keep getting rounded up?"

andy shaman wrote that joke. great joke.

looks like the BBC interview about bill hicks is a go. should hear this evening whether or not we got the npr station here to let us do the interview in their studio. if it is a go, broadcast will be on august 12th on bbc but no states broadcast scheduled. (bill, as i, could not sell out a phone booth here, he, however, played to giant crowds in the british isles) you will probably be able to pick it up on the internet and i will post their website when everything is finalized. stay tuned.

played poker today and even though i won 200 dollars am slightly upset (not quite the right word but it will have to do) because i could have won a thousand dollars. two times i got all my money in with the best hand and both times the miracle card came for my opponent. those two hands cost me almost 400 dollars and if i had won both i would have that 4 plus 4 that i would have won plus the 200 i did win and that = thousand dollar win. both times my opponents made mistakes and got bailed out. they made the play that i wanted them to make.... and, you see, i want them to make that play/call every time in the same situation and i am going to win the vast majority of the time. one time my opponent had 9 outs, there were 46 unknown cards so 37 hurt him and 9 made him so he was a 4-1 underdog. he was getting 2 and half to one by calling my bet. he makes that call 100 times, i am going to win 80 times. i just didn't win them today.

i attribute my win to a friend of mine who is an excellent no limit player. she got on me about letting my emotions get the best of me. i was letting bad beats get to me since it seemed, in my mind at least, as though it was happening EVERY GOD DAMN TIME, of course it wasn't but i found myself in the red for the month and a fair amount at that and i was letting it get me off my game and so the beats just got worse. she said if you are going to pout and stomp your feet this is not the game for you. she said that i had to adjust to that aspect of no limit; that you can lose a large amount just BOOM, like that and if it rattles you, this game is going to eat you up. and she wasn't nice about the way she told it to me. got right in my face, haven't been chewed out like that since a drill instructer in the army. i took her lesson to heart and, today, bad beats didn't faze me at all and even though i was in the hole big time right off the bat thanks to one of the bad beats, it still didn't bother me, i just stayed with my game. it was/is a very valuable lesson for poker and for life. remember: shit happens. don't let it get you down. play your best game every time and let bygones be bygones. by playing correctly the law of numbers will pay you off. luck has nothing to do with it over the long run; the BEST players win.

rhonda, my wife, is a real good coach as well. she has unlimited faith in my poker abilities since she has spent many an hour watching me play and never fails to say that. she recognizes my strengths and accentuates those to me, she is, truly, my biggest fan. listen, to have someone who is really on your side is to have such an overall advantage in everything words don't come close to explaining it's value. when i was going through this past bad streak rhonda always told me to get back on that horse and she did it during a time when we needed the money and she didn't let the losses both her at all. (too many spouses would have said, "you lost how much!? don't you know blah, blah blah, etc, etc.)

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT US. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA

so many of my blogs seem to be about the things i don't like about america. so here, on our country's birthday, let me list what i do like about us. i have traveled all over the world, including europe, africa, asia, australia and new zealand and north and central america so i have some valid basis for comparison.



our people: while we are not the smartest nor the best educated folks in the world, all in all, we are damn well the friendliest. thanks to my varied (and sometimes checkered) past and my current career, i have traveled this entire country and have mixed and mingled with people from every economic strata from the very, very rich to the very, very poor. by my estimate, i have given shows or speeches to close to a million people so i can claim some expertise in how the americans react to one another. i can tell you that we are just great fun to hang out with! we are, for the most part, open to strangers, more than willing to give a helping hand to someone in need, quick to laugh (it could be argued that one of our greatest contributions to the betterment of man is our humor. from our movies, ranging from charlie chaplin to woody allen, to our writers, be they mark twain or tom robbins, to our artists, from andy warhol to joel pett, to our stand-ups, from henny youngman to chris rock, we have provided the world with billions of laughs.) and we are, it seems, just inherently optimistic as hell. i have always thought we have more smiles per mile than any other place in the world. i like us. not all of us. but enough of us to qualify as us in general. like those signs you used to see on the outskirts of little towns that said, "the home of 3,123 friendly folk and 2 or 3 bad apples." for the most part, you could say, we are a simple, easy going, live and let live, friendly people. and i like that.



the land itself: for all of you who are planning to go out of the country for a vacation and yet have not even seen america, you might want to rethink that decision. beauty? we have an unending supply. i am not going to write a travel guide since each and every one of you has seen such beauty somewhere in this country as to take your breath away. my point is that there are a million million other scenes as equal and unique with beauty, beyond the ability of words to describe, all across this country. go see them. round up the kids, jump in the car and go somewhere and look in wonder and in awe at the beauty of america. you could go every year for the rest of your life and never see it all...and each and every day you will come across vistas and views so stunningly beautiful that no painter in all of history could come even close to capturing them. i love going and seeing those vistas and views. i always have and i always will...and i will never run out of places here in america that i haven't been to yet...and inevitably, when i do get to that place that i have never been to yet, then, guess what?, that place will just up and blow me away with it's beauty. and i really like that about here.



our music: talk about contributions to the world! how about the blues? from the dives of chicago, and the wooden shacks of the mississippi delta, and the honky tonks of new orleans has sprung the music of the soul of the common working man. songs about low wages and loose women. robert johnson may have made his deal with the devil and crossroads still challenges guitar players...and how about all that jazz?...the modern day classical music in it's way. music that expresses the individuality of instruments; the ode to musical improvisation including the human voice as a real instrument 'cause jazz could be skat, cha cha da do ba bow, don't cha know?...dixieland jazz? the saints will always go marching in and saint james' infirmary is never full...then there is country music, coming out the hills of tennessee and small towns of texas on the wings of a snow white dove. before country, there was bluegrass, the original feel good and get up and dance to music. how about that rock and roll? elvis gave big momma thorton's hound dog a new beat to bark with and jerry lee took note there was a whole lot of shaking go on and brothers and sisters we've been rocking the world ever since. how about rap? the modern day blues; the music of the oppressed urban underclass, a voice to the unheard masses. ice cube and nwa came and hit white america upside the head and now youth of all colors and all nationalities know how to hip and hop. so for our music, as they say in new orleans, "let the good times roll!"



our arts in general. we are, for all that i can ascertain, the first country to bring arts and entertainment to all of our citizens, rich or poor. we have ballets and symphonies, television and radio, theaters, movies, musical clubs, comedy clubs, musuems and galleries galore. thanks to public television, great works of theater and music are free of cost and free from commercials for anyone with access to a television set. you can't say we are a "cultured people" but you can say we have culture. it is there for all, and many times free to all. our writers, at every aspect of "writing"are, at the top level, world class...and over time we have made large contributions to the great litature of the world. hemmingway and twain---need i say more? but i could say more, and give thousands a name, for the list of great american writers stretches beyond the horizon. ahab will chase that whale as long as man can read and the bell tolls for us. movies? we made them and gave them to the world and to this day, we give the world the best movies ever made; from casablanca to citizen cane to pulp fiction and thousands in between. same with television. it is hard to imagine modern society without television. television is an art form and, as in all art, some succeeds and some sucks. don't forget there are many more bad books than great books, more lousy paintings than good paintings, more bad songs than good songs and so forth and so on, the difference being we don't have the bad books read to us and no one brings the bad songs and bad paintings into our front rooms so we, thankfully, largely miss out on seeing or hearing them, but we don't have that option with television. as an art form, it can only be judged by its great moments and not its bad ones. it has had some great moments. television brings the world together; from watching man land on the moon to learning about the roots of an american slave, american television has united, if only for a brief moment, millions around the globe and that's a contribution. american art is available to every american in every american town in some way or another. i like that about us.



our roads: we are a big country. and you can get there from here. by road. over mountains and through swamps we built the finest roads in the history of man. as a traveling sort of fellow i really like that about us.



our sports: we are a sports playing and watching society. baseball games at dodger statium or at wrigley field are just wonderful experiences. i got to watch phi slama jamma in houston and tarkanian's running rebels in their championship season. i saw a stanley cup playoff game between the red wings and the black hawks at joe lewis arena; that was high octane excitement. yankee stadium on a fall afternoon against the hated red sox and nebraska vs. oklahoma at norman field. i have watched some great sports, in some great places, filled with some very excited folks. that, brothers and sisters, is a lot of fun. the ncaa college basketball tounament is the finest sporting event in the whole world and it is uniquely american. butler beating the jay hawks was modern david and golieth and the country watched and cheered. you can journey most anywhere in our country and strike up a conversation with a total stranger (male, that is) about some kind of sports and that is cool. if you are at a home game you are with x number of thousands of other people who are all on the same side and that is uplifting to the spirit and even if you are on the "other side" you have nothing to fear other than some good-natured razzing that is part of the overall deal. (an exception must be made for raider fans, but i have already spoken about them before.) i must admit that my two favorite american sports are baseball at all levels and college basketball and i try to go to as many games as i can afford. we golf, bowl, play tennis and softball, we can be found on basketball courts in pick-up games and watching our kids play soccer. some of the most intelligent conversations on radio are about sports; if we gave equal thought to politics we would be better on the whole, but that is another subject. you could say we are the ultimate "good sports" and you gotta like that about us.

our attitudes about ourselves: america is a very forgiving land, it seems to be, somehow, in our national consciousness to always be willing to give someone a second chance. you are allowed to mess up here and, if you fail, you are allowed to try again. (the average self-made american millionaire went broke seven times before they actually made that first million.) the life i have lead is an american life; not "an all-american" life, but a life that could only have been lived in america. my bio of from prison to corporate america to show business, is an example of that second chance opportunity attitude. i will turn 65 this year. i turned 21 in solitary confinement in a california prison. today, i am a happily married man. I own a nice home in las vegas, am respected by my peers, have tens of thousands of fans around the world, am loved and respected by my children, count among my friends phd's and funny people, lawyers and gangsters (retired), movie and television stars, writers and photographers, casino workers and poker players, ballet dancers and political cartoonists, shop owners and philosophers, mechanics and addicts (reformed), people of every color (i lived in harlem for six months or so and was invited to live in east l.a. by a latino gangster's mom when i got out of prison because i had helped her son learn to read when we did time together), comics and saints and sinners, rich and poor and we all met here in america. america is about as close to a "class free society" as there is on the face of the earth and i, personally, love that about us.

america is my home and i like it here and wouldn't want to live anywhere else. happy birthday, united states of america.

mesquite, salt lake, luger

the show in mesquite helped remind me of why i do this: incredible crowd and got standing ovation at end of show. while big name "stars" get standing o's everytime it is unusual for an unknown to do so and when you do you know that it was for the performance and not for the name.

i have a big fan in salt lake city and she has arranged for me to come up there in september and play 4 days at some bars that cater to the liberal side of that town. (hell, there must be at least 5,000 liberals there out of the two million...lol) she allots that we are going to rock and roll. doug stanhope played up there and rocked so i am really looking forward to it. fyi if any of you are close to either a. vegas or b. somewhere i am performing and would like to do a similar thing let me know and we will see if something can be worked out. i have done this in towns big and small over the years and am always willing to listen to ideas. if it is close to somewhere where i am already booked, we must have enough time to arrange travel and i book airlines pretty far in advance so keep that in mind.

i see where more and more republican senators are starting to see the light about iraq and are now willing to buck the white house on it's insane course. GOOD FOR THEM! regardless of my rants, i have no problems with what used to be the republican ideals of smaller government, fiscal responsibility, non meddling in foriegn affairs, keeping government out of our personal lives, etc. the problem is, of course, that the bushies have increased the size of government, ran up the largest debt in our nation's history, are spying on american citizens without court orders, have got us involved in two foriegn wars that we cannot possibly win, destroyed our international reputation (remember that right after 9-11 almost the entire world, including the arab world, was on our side), now we are almost universally hated and feared) and have constantly lied to the american people and then called anyone who disagreed with them all kinds of names; unpatriotic, supporters of terrorism, defeatists, cut and runners and a host of other school yard names. so it was a real relief to me to see senator luger get up on the floor and denounce this admisistration. better late than never and i know it is extremely hard to admit that one has made a terrible mistake. GOOD FOR HIM!

let me clarify on the "republican ideals." i respect those positions that i outlined above, i do not necessarily agree with them and am, in fact, in favor of more government in many places; national health care for one. i believe that the government "owes" something to the people as the people "owe" something to the government because the two should not be seperate. we, the people, are the government. (at least in theory) countries, nations, civilizations, empires will not be judged only on their military might but on well their people lived. the united states is at or near the bottom for all industrialized nations in health care, infant mortality, life expectancy, education, crime, poverty rate and other indicators of civilization (for lack of better word). all of these reflect government policies. and it is a disgrace that we, the richest country in the history of the world, do not take better care of our citizens. we spend almost as much on military as the rest of the world combined! and we can't have a national health care system? where are our priorities?

so those are my thoughts on a monday morning here in las vegas where it is forecast to be 110 degrees today. time for the pool.