BUYING THE STORY

going through life
kissing the man's enormous ass
for a mythical job that doesn't exist
and at the end, being pissed
because we didn't get it.

buying the story
that the man tells
is buying a ticket
to capitalist hell
where all the little workers go
to pay for the sins
of their masters.

nose to the grindstone
shoulder to the wheel
dick up your ass
and how does that feel?

buying the story
that the man tells
only costs you your soul.

poker story and the walls didn't come tumbling down

my poker game did not seem to have gotten rusty, i won a little short of 200 yesterday at mandalay bay.

there will be situations in a game where two (and sometimes more, but usually just two) players will get in a "pissing" match where their goal is to beat THE OTHER GUY. now, if you can be in a hand with those two and you have the monster, you can use them to bet your hand for you. here was a situation yesterday when i wished i had bought in for more money.....there is an asian fellow and a tourist from germany who were the two gamblers at the table and as a consequence they played many hands against each other with no other players involved. both had a history of raising ten dollars, the asian with usually good cards and the german with almost anyfuckingthing. i am on bb and asian raises to ten and german calls, i look down and i have ace-9 of spades, i call the extra 8 dollars. flop comes 8h 3s 2s. i check, asian bets ten dollars and german raises to 20, i call. i have two overcards and the nut flush draw and at this time i only have 110 dollars in front of me from my buy-in of 140. the next card is the 5s, i have the second nut flush (the 4-6 of spades would be straight flush) and so i check. asian bets 30 dollars and the german goes all in. i can't get my money in quick enough. lol. the asian hesitates and then he calls as well. the german had 8-Q off suit so he went all in with top pair, fair kicker with both a straight and a flush possibility on board, the asian had KJ of spades so he had third nut flush. they were both surprised when i turned over the winning hand. fact of the matter is that THEY NEVER EVEN SAW ME. THEY WERE SO INVOLVED IN TRYING TO BEAT EACH OTHER THEY NEVER ASKED THEMSELVES, JUST WHY IS THIS LOCAL ROCK IN THIS HAND. and now they know.

on to something else. i have always had a problem with "gated communities" because i think they are elitist and racist. this past monday there were heavy thunderstorms here in las vegas and one of the gated communities flooded because THE WALL HELD IN THE WATER! kept the colored folk out though.

oh well, off to have breakfast with my lovely wife and one of my very best friends and then off to relieve some tourists of some money.

rove, gonzales, vick. the musketeers of scum

back home in vegas for all of two days and then off to sacramento. the show that my daughters came to in arlington was just fabulous, i got three standing ovations, one in the middle, one at end of show where the crowd demanded an encore and another at the end of the encore. must admit, i was very glad for my girls to see that the old man still has some gas in the tank.

gonzales quit. you know who he worked for before bush grabbed him? the law firm that represented (are you ready) HALLIBURTON. i am sure there is a job waiting for him. hopefully, the democrats will continue their investigations of the justice department and bring "fredo" up on charges of perjury. (incidently, it is no coincidence that bush nicknamed him, fredo, after the weak brother in the godfather films) his testamony before congress, under oath, was contradicted by not only his own staff members but the head of the f.b.i. as well. someone was lying. lying under oath is a felony crime. put this m.f. in jail.

rove is probably going to go back to work for the tobacco companies before he latches onto another republican who needs help spreading lies.

vick pleaded guilty. not what he was saying a month ago. but then again, that was before he saw all the evidence against him. i hope the judge gives him a couple of years to rethink his life. you already know my feelings on dogfighting and the people who engage, in any fucking way, in it; they are some of the lowest of scum.

rock and roll. gotta go wash all my clothes and play with my dogs.

go ask alice

back to bush's speech the other day where he tried to equate iraq with world war II, vietnam and cambodia. one of the neo con's favorite past times is to revise history to fit their view. they do this with a lot of impunity because americans are pretty much illiterate when it comes to analyzing past events that have shaped our country. we know what happened to anna n. smith and can tell you which current heart throb or tv star is in what rehab center but to know our history, especially history that paints us in an unfavorable light the pool of "duh" forms in the collective eye of the public.

let us look at cambodia:

bush said, "in cambodia the khmer rouge began (after our withdrawal from vietnam) a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution."

let me quote robert buzzanco who is the professor and chair of dept. of history at university of houston: 'his analogy of cambodia is off-track. the khmer rouge slaughter was not caused by the u.s. withdrawal from indochina in 1973 but by the u.s. escalation of the war and intervention into cambodia in the years prior to that time . the united states had been conducting a SECRET WAR kept secret from the american people but not from the cambodians on the recieving end of b-52 strikes since the late 1960'sw. in april 1970 richard nixon (another neo con) authorized what he called an "incursion" of cambodia on the pretext of destroying the headquarters for vietnamese communist military operations there.

"a month earlier, however, in march 70, the united states had facilitated the ouster of the cambodian head of state, prince norodom sihanouk, and replaced him with a weak but pliable politician named lon nol. at this time, the khmer rouge was a small splinter group of the far left, without much popular support or military power. but the u.s. sponsered COUP, and the subsequent invasion in april, proved to be a great blessing to the khmer rouge. with sihanouk, who had tried to remain neutral in the larger indochinese conflict and thus was not preventing either the vietnamese or the u.s. from operating in cambodia, out of the way and lon nol perceived as a "puppet" of nixon, in office, there was no middle ground in cambodia. as a result, the khmer rouge soared in influence and popularity by exploiting the heavy-handed american political and military intervention.

"by the mid-1970's, as the u.s. air war against cambodia continued, KILLING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of cambodians, the khmer rouge was well-positioned as the anti-american and anti-lon nol alternative, and so was able to swarm in phnom penh and establish a regime in april 1975 and then unleashing a genocidal wave of killings that lasted until THE VIETNAMESE intervened and OUSTED THE KHMER ROUGE LEADER, POL POT in january, 1975. even after that ouster the UNITED STATES CONTINUED TO WORK WITH THE KHMER ROUGE supporting covert operations against the vietnamese supported new government in phnom penh and even, in the REAGAN YEARS, supporting the khmer rouge's claim to cambodia's seat at the united nations."

so, georgie boy, once again, you have mistated history. we, the united states, facilitated the killing fields of cambodia. the vietnamese stopped the killing. not us. brothers and sisters, the 58,000 american men and women who died in vietnam DIED FOR NOTHING! just like the thousands of american men and women who have died in iraq. FOR NOTHING. not our security. not our freedom. not in a war against terror. we are the terrorists in iraq, not the iraqis. we are the ones who bombed the cities, who have killed more civilians than the militias of iraq. we have caused the chaos. by our actions we have created MILLIONS OF POTENTIAL TERRORISTS WHO HATE US WITH EVERY OUNCE OF THEIR BEING. wouldn't you hate the foriegn government who invaded your country? who bombed your cities? who killed your children?

so today, we trade with vietnam and have china (you know, COMMUNIST CHINA) make our clothes, our toys and even OUR AMERICAN FLAGS THAT WE PUT ON THE COFFINS OF THE SOLDIERS WHO DIED IN IRAQ. and if that doesn't make you feel just a little sick in the stomach then there is something wrong with you.

down the rabbit hole we go. and our president is speaking backwards and i wish i had some kind of mushroom but the only mushroom we will get with george is an atomic one. just go ask alice. if she isn't in, ask the cambodians.

the electronic museum, jane and george.

last night we went to the GULF COAST ELECTRONIC MUSEUM which is owned by a friend of mine, jane wiley. it was orginally a warehouse for military surplus electronic equipment from world war II and then after the war it became a factory for making high end stereo equipment for both personal and concert use. jane's late husband owned it and when he died she and some artist friends made it into a museum with displays, sculptures and wall designs all made out of the electronic equipment in the warehouse. part of the building has been made into a little showroom complete with stage from the original COMEDY WORKSHOP ANNEX. to be in this place is, to use an old hippy term, a trip. a combination of futuristic and historic, the visuals are such that one alternates between being in some kind of space ship to being in an electronic workshop of the 1940's. amongst all of that, jane performed a concert for us, singing and dancing with a sax player and a one-armed piano player backing her. she went through a play list of tourch songs from the 40's and 50's, september in the rain, old black magic, the lady is a tramp, foggy night in london town and several others. then she did some of her orginal compositions playing off the saxaphone player in a jazz duet.

for most of the "concert" there were only 5 of us in attendence but as the night got longer various artists and muscians came in and then some of them performed including a young man who appeared to be a teenager playing a bass guitar as though it was the lead instrument and just blew the room away. he was a genuine talent. by the time midnight rolled around the place was full of interesting people. the whole scene was reminesent (sp?) of a 60's coffee shop in greenwich village in new york city. beautiful women, singers, actors, musicians of all stripes from reggae to blues plus some straight looking lawyer-types all were wandering in and out of the club from the patio outside where the aroma of fine weed mixed with the magnolia tainted night air. great conversations were to be found inside and out.

jane, herself, is worth the visit. my friend, brookie, said the way she described jane is a brunete marilyn monroe who has grown up but not grown old. that description pretty much fits her; she is attractive in a 1950's sort of way, dramatic and flamboyant. she also has a husky singing voice that is well suited to the songs she sang. (think julie london singing "cry me a river" and you have jane)

it was a night and a place to remember. if you are ever in houston and you have made it to radio music theater then your next stop should be jane's place. have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and hang out and see just who all comes in.


on to something else: george bush yesterday tried, in a speech, to tie the war in iraq to not only vietnam but to world war II. it does have a real tie-in to vietnam; bush didn't fight there either nor did any of his family. to try to equate the reconstruction of japan to the iraqi debacle is quite a stretch; japan wasn't full of people who hated one another and we left the emporer in place in japan giving the people a leader with whom they were already familar. also iraq did not have anything to do with 9-11 and trying to compare pearl harbor to the attacks on nyc by osama to justify attacking iraq shows, once again, that georgie boy has no concept, whatsoever, of history. his statements about vietnam were even more historically incorrect. communism did not spread across southeast asia and then into the phillipines as was predicted by the war hawks of that time. in fact, vietnam went to war with two communist countries. yes, hundreds of thousands of vietnamnese did flee the country after we left but millions have already fled iraq. and in another feature that the revisionists tend to leave out, the south vietnam government was a MILITARY DICTATORSHIP. actually a series of military dictatorships, during the years we were there, the south vietnamnese had 13 changes of government and all of them were by military coup. hard to say we were fighting for democracy now isn't it?

oh well, life goes on. tonight we go to radio music theater and then tomorrow i scoot back on up to arlington for the friday and saturday shows.

the only thing i worry about this long road trip is my poker game will get rusty. well, that and i do miss rhonda when i am out here. she would really have enjoyed last night.

ode to houston

always good to come back to houston for a while and see old friends. houston was always good to me, even in the worst of times i knew that if i could just get to houston with one hundred dollars in my pocket i could be back on top of the game within a month or two. it is a big, dirty, humid, heavily trafficed, grid-locked town full of great people. much more working class than dallas and a hellava lot more fun. houston has 5 comedy clubs, a world class ballet, a renowned opera, three major sport teams, two major colleges plus a half dozen smaller colleges. plus it has the best caberet theater in america, RADIO MUSIC THEATER, which i cannot recommend highly enough. if you are ever here, do yourself a favor and go see these guys. two men and a woman play multiple parts and the show changes every 4 months or so. it is a musical caberet theater with all the dialogue and music written by it's resident genius, steve farrel. it is the best in the country and will make you laugh out loud over and over again. let me put it this way: when hicks, butler, kinison or myself went to another show it was always radio music theater.

a day in the life

it was a real treat to see my three daughters, stefanie, mica and kimberly all together for the very first time. only 4 years or thereabout seperate them in age (and there was a boy in there as well in the same basic time frame---i was a randy sort of fellow...) and they all got along fabulously. the whole afternoon with the girls and 5 of the 7 grandchildren was a very good experience for all concerned. one of my ex-wives, kathy, mother of mica and kimberly, was there as well. she had never met stefanie so it was an experience for her as well.

if you have followed my writings or my comedy, you have to have noticed that i do not speak of my ex-wives or lovers (with the exception of heather, who shows up in my "sex is good" routine). the reason why is that i happen to like all of my ex's and have nothing but good to say about them. they were all outstanding women in every sense; beautiful, smart, well educated, great mothers, successful, articulate and funny. they loved me and i loved them...i just didn't stay. they didn't badmouth me to any of the kids and for that i am very grateful to them.

shame my son, hudson, could not have been there today but maybe we will get another shot and a shock kid reunion some other time.

incidently, there are five ex's; rusty, sharon, kathy, heather and ellen. both rusty and ellen have passed from this mortal plane, the other three and i keep sort of in touch.

oh well, just another day, another story, another unusual happening.

cook out with daughters

a little of this and that as i get ready to leave fort worth.....

glenn morshower, whom you have seen on 24 (he was agent pierce who guarded the president's wife), west wing and now in friday night lights and, most important, was a final table player on the wpt was at my show friday along with 20 others. glenn has been a fan of mine for many years and i owe him a debt of gratitude for introducing me to texas hold-em in 91.

apparently there is girl comic who is using my "ball shrinking cold" routine complete (or so i am told) with "not letting hot air out" "not dangling around for this" she was on last comic standing.
once, someone asked me if i had been on last comic standing and i said, "no but my material has." i told my wife that ball shrinking is a fairly common expression and i am sure that millions of men have used it to describe the weather but "hot air out" is not all that common. regardless, if someone did 'steal' that tiny bit, so what? it is nothing but a throw-away for me and a way to get a cheap easy laugh at the beginning of my set. besides, it is a little strange for a woman to use it.

shows here were just great. am off to have a 'cook out' with my daughters and then off to houston to visit friends. (hope dean doesn't make a major turn to the north)

under george w. bush the veterans administration has CUT BENEFITS! unfuckingbelievable! to send men and women off to war and then cut their benefits is so telling of this man's mental makeup. george can't spell "empathy." nor "truth".

gotta go.

first night of 8 weeker

man, what great shows tonight in fort worth, bygoddamntexas! these truly are some of the best crowds in the whole nation. (not only that, the owner hires the most beautiful girls to be the cocktail servers--he is the hugh hefner of comedy)

it is good to be out here on the first week of what is 8 straight weeks of work. first time i have done that in many a year and i am looking forward to seeing just how it goes. if i am right and tonight was any indication, i am going to have a lot of new material and new ways of doing some of the old by the time the trip is through.

rock and roll my brothers and sisters. rock and roll

thank you, karl

never know how i feel
from the freedom of the wheel

kenny moore, from the song "black pass"

back in my honda accord, cruise control and rolling stones both on. nice buzz, rolling across america again, through new mexico, albuquerque, santa rosa, tucumcari and across the panhandle of texas, take a right at amarillo and go through the green fields of north texas down through wichita falls and then on to fort worth. 1230 miles to clear my mind and get my own motor running. will rock the room tonight.

in retrospect, i would like to thank karl rove for his role in destroying the neo-con wing of the republican party. thanks to karl we were able to see the arrogance and total lack of empathy that is so inherent in that group of people. true republicans should thank him as well, while they won't be electing many folk next year at least they will have the time to reclaim their party and re-assert their values into their party's platform and take it back. as i have said before, the ideas of smaller government, fiscal responibilty and non-meddling in foriegn affairs which used to be the mantra of the republican party are not something that i deride, in fact, i agree with most of it but the republican party has been highjacked by the neo-cons lead by bush, cheney and rove and drove it into the ground. the specter of iraq will haunt that party for years to come because it is the biggest foriegn policy blunder not only of our life time but maybe the life of the republic itself.

got to go now, will write more on poker this coming week.

dove hunting

going back to vegas from atlantic city today which is as going from podunk to new york city, mississippi to amersterdam, hell to heaven. (however, god bless the poker players of atlantic city and may they never run out of money!)

no, we don't need a national health care system, we have the finest health care in the world. that is the mantra of the conservatives who are, of course, backed by the big insurance companies and the drug industry. HOWEVER WE ARE 42ND IN LIFE EXPECTENCY AMONG THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. BEHIND EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY THAT HAS A NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM. but hey, who are you going to believe? republicans or your lying eyes?

karl (the fixer) rove quit this morning. what is that "splashing" i am hearing? could it be the sound of rats jumping off the ship of state?

Lee Iocca has a book out that i would recommend highly, WHERE HAVE ALL THE LEADERS GONE? and the title is a damn good question. our country is at a crucial juncture in our history and we need men and women with vision, passion and an undying love for this country and it's constitution. a leader, not an egomaniac or some power-hungry career politician. someone who can unite us and bring us back to our core values, someone who can restore our place in the world where we are looked up to with admiration and not envy or fear. someone who can bring back american industry so that OUR people have jobs. someone who can get us out of the middle east and motivate americans and american industry to find the ways to wean us off our oil dependency. someone who can lead us into a century of peace and not perpetual war. where is and who is that person?

incidently, karl rove said he was going back to texas to do some dove hunting. however, he also added that dick cheney was not invited.

poker philosophy 101

poker has become so national, transgenerational and multi-racial in the last 6 years it seems like everywhere i go people of all stripes are talking poker with "expert" opinions bandied about by one and all or so it seems. all of it, of course, centers around no limit and no limit tournaments and everyone is going to turn pro. to hear everyone talk, they are all winners and on the days they did just happened to lose it was because "some idiot" drew out on them. the "bad beat" stories abound.

one of the things that i have noticed in vegas and atlantic city where i have been playing for years is that the men and women who were good limit players are now winning at no limit and the ones who struggled at limit are losing even more at their adventure into no limit. the qualities that the good limit players brought to the no limit tables are discipline and patience. these two things will insure profit over the long run and failure at these two will bring long term losses regardless of how tricky and clever the player may be. one time rhonda and i were hanging out with a real good player and he asked her what is the single most important thing in hold-em and she said, of course, "big cards." right, big cards win more than little cards but then my friend, jake, said to her, "do you think that all the losing players you see know this?" and she answered that she thought they did. jake said, "right, they all know it, they just don't have the discipline to ALWAYS PLAY CORRECTLY." they, the losing players, know what to do they just don't do it. you can read all the books, you can analyze until your head explodes but until you have the discipline to wait and wait and wait some more until you get the right cards in the right position with the right amount of money in the pot before you risk one single dollar of your stack you won't win.

you want to be able to play poker for the rest of your life and each and every year bring home a profit? toughen up that butt, buddy. learn to be able to sit for hours if necessary before the cards come your way. your biggest enemy is boredom and the lack of focus it brings. so, before you learn to become johnny chan or phil or daniel or any of the others on tv, you have to learn to be a rock. once you can be a rock then you can learn to be tricky and clever and devolope some moves but only after rockdum is conquered.

i am far from being any kind of expert at no limit hold-em but i know enough that i am thousands of dollars ahead this year. not as much as i normally would be at this time in the year if i had been playing limit but enough to pay our house not for about 5 months. i know discipline, patience and big cards. i will learn the rest.
-
so, kiddipoos, learn to wait for big cards and play them aggressively. may all your flops be good.

table laugh

the player in seat six, across from the dealer, has his phone ring.

dealer says, "if that is my wife tell her i am not here."


i say, "if that is his wife, tell her i am not here either."


in a club a comic gets a "house laugh." here i got a "table laugh."

MORE ATLANTIC CITY POKER--SAME DAY

two hands will tell you everything you need to know about the ac players: i have raised with ace jack of hearts and am called in two places. flop comes Js, 5h, 7h. first guy checks, second guy bets 15 dollars into me and i raise to 40. the other player folds and this guy calls. the next card is another jack giving me 3 jacks, ace kicker, nut flush draw. my opponent bets 15 dollars and i go all in, he cannot get his money in fast enough, leaps to his feet and shows KING TEN OFF SUIT. HE HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, NO DRAW, NO PAIR, NO NOTHING! he had misread his hand and thought he had jack ten. mercy.

30 minutes later i raise with ace king of spades from the button. two callers. flop comes Kh 6s, 9s. they check to me and i bet 20 dollars and am called in one place. next card is a 5 of diamonds. he checks i bet 45 dollars and he calls and the last card is another king and he puts me all in. i call and he show a pair of 5's for two pair against my 3 kings!

am now up over 900 dollars and have to go to do a show but will be back at the tables later tonight.

i think these people bluff so much that they think others do it as well. how else can you explain these plays. (well, one guy did misread his hand but even then, he thought he had a jack with a ten kicker and the second jack on the board did not seem to slow me down at all.)

oh well, one time here i won 1,800 dollars in two days playing 1-2. they are really bad.

POKER IN ATLANTIC CITY

last night i sit down at 1-2 table and am in big blind. pot is raised to 17 dollars and 3 people call and i look down and lo and behold, ACES. i reraise to 67 dollars (a fifty dollar raise) and the original raiser goes all in and the others fold. i, of course, call; he turns over kings and i double up in my first hand at table. this goes back to the previous post about how dangerous kings and queens can be. since it was my first hand and no one on this table had ever played with me, i guess the guy didn't believe the obvious.

so far, i am up a little over 500 for the week which ain't half bad since i started the week 200 in the hole.

i am what is called, a grinder. i sit and wait for good hands in good position and count on fools to pay me off. today, i doubled up on my first blind. there are 7 callers and i look down and there is ace king of hearts but i do not raise because on this table i have seen already people call big raises with shit cards so i decide to see the flop and go from there. flop is Ad, 4h, 8h. nice. i bet 20 dollars and am called by the man on my left and a guy in late position, next card is the 6c, no help and i bet 35 dollars and am called by the guy on my left and the late position folds. last card is 8c. i bet 40 dollars and the guy on my left goes all in. i call. he had ace 4 so while he had me beat until the river, he now had aces and 8's with a 4 kicker! double up!

another thing i try to do is if i catch myself making mistakes such as bad calls or bad bets i leave and take a nap or a walk and then go back later. after i go ahead big today, i lose about 75 dollars back by playing poorly so i get up and leave. always remember, THE GAME GOES ON FOREVER. you don't have to win this session, what you have to do is play well. playing well leads to winning sessions because so many people do not play well. (see above)

anyway, now it is nap time.

KINGS AND QUEENS IN NO LIMIT HOLD-EM

i am opening this one up for discussion. these two hands are very, very pretty and very, very vunerable in the smaller no limit games, in particular the 2-3 hundred dollar buy-ins and and 1-2 blind structure that are very common because people in these games will call a medium sized raise with ace anything and will sometimes call with suited medium connectors. if you raise a considerable amount, say twenty dollars one of two things will happen, everyone will fold or you will get reraised by aces and have to lay it down. most likely you will collect the blinds and any limpers 2 dollars each for a profit of 5 dollars, (s.b., bb and one limper) and you risked 20 to do it.

there is also the situation where there has been a raise prior to you and it was in the 15 dollar range, which is fairly high; now what do you do? in limit, it is no-brainer, reraise! ah, but no limit is different. there are much fewer no-brainers. incidently, i cold call raises with queens or jacks and reraise with kings. the jacks and queens become invisible that way if you happen to flop a set. they also become harder to play on the flop if no overcard is out there.

anyway, how do you play these. i am going to go to one of the poker chat rooms and throw that question out. i find these two pairs the hardest to play properly. they are hard to lay down unless an ace is on the board.

history does repeat itself

"voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of it's leaders. that is easy. all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. it works the same way in ANY country."

herman goring
nazi war crimes trial
nuremburg, germany
1945

ten after two

started on the book tonight, the title in microsoft word is "the long awaited and much anticipated book."

very seldom do i confess weakness here in my dialogue with you but must admit the task in front of me is daunting. i do not know that if inside of me is the ability to give these stories their just due.

you see, as a verbal storyteller i have an inate ability to "know" when the audience "gets it." i can feel you getting it. the verbal word carries more connotations than the written word. these connotations are conveyed by tone and emphasis and are heard, so to speak, on many different levels. somehow, and i really don't know how, but somehow, i know when the audience, as a whole, has heard and understood what i just said. writing it, i cannot feel you. because of that i feel an obligation to put in more words to explain the connotations of the word that i really want to use. but then again, on the other hand, i do not want to bury the beauty of the story beneath a mountain of words.

the only time i ever had creative sessions of writing were when i was alone with my dying ellen out on our farm in the middle of nowhere and late at night as ellen would sleep and when the wind would blow and the coyotes would howl i would sit alone with my thoughts and write vampire poems full of dark and dangerous images. it was the only way to confront my fears and to gird myself for the coming day's battle that i had no choice but to fight. i will include them in the book.

i have so many tales to tell and you, as an audience member, have heard only a small percentage of the overall catalogue. i escaped from l.a. county jail. there are very few people in the whole country that can make that statement. how i did it is quite a story and one that i have never shared with a comedy club audience.

i saw and heard things in orleans parish prison in the 1950's that stir my sould today. if i can find the words to write that capture those "things" and put them on the paper in proper sequence your soul will be stirred as well for it is a story of man's better side coming out even when embroiled in the direst of circumstances. if i fail to find just the exact right words it becomes just another story of not so glorious days.

i can write of gun smuggling and assassinations, of cons and scams and poker hands. of life in the fast lane complete with limos and private planes. stories of women and children and the cad i have been.

to be good, it has to be honest and honesty is, far and away, not the easiest of policies.

and these are my thoughts at ten after two in the morning.

economics 101

the market tumbled again yesterday thanks to more and more coming out about BEAR STEARNS and the meltdown going on in their portfolio. the reprecussions of the subprime real estate market touch so many things; pension funds being one. however an idiot or a small child could have seen this one coming. if you lend money to someone who has little or bad credit and then structure the loan so that the payments will go up in two years you have to expect that a large number of those people will default on their loans. they have bad credit for a reason. plus the fact that wages are flat so if someone gets a loan where their monthly payment is 1 thousand dollars a month to begin with but two years later the payment goes to 13 hundred per month their wages DID NOT GO UP 30% in the the two years. they barely could afford the grand per month but the extra 300 just buries them. ba da boom, ba da bing the loan goes bad. when the loan was made, on paper, it was a very profitable deal for the lender, what with them getting such a high rate of return on the loan when the higher interest kicks in after the two year period. the lender then sells part of the loan to someone else and once again, on paper, everyone is just going to make a killing on this deal because mr. and mrs. deadbeat will somehow find a way to make the new higher payments. and to think investment bankers who put all of this together make 6 to 8 figures per year for their brilliant expertise. duh.

DANGER ON THE TURN

in no limit hold-em the most dangerous time is on the turn because this is where the hammer will come down on you if you happen to have the second best hand. way too many people over-bet the turn putting themselves in a position to be check-raised and then having to make a really difficult decision. for instance, you have made a raise from late position with ace-queen suited and are called in two places. flop comes ace-ten-7 with one of your suit. you make a fairly big bet on the flop and are called by one player. the turn is a 3 not of your suit. on the surface you have the best hand but you are vunerable to a set of tens or 7's plus ace-ten, ace-7 or ace-3; remember, in low limit no limit people tend to play ace-anything and will take a card off against a big (but usually not an all in bet) on the flop. i believe the best way to play the hand is to check the turn and see what happens on the river. by checking, you can also induce a bet on the river by someone with a lesser ace. usually, at least in the games i play, you do not have to face an all-in bluff on the river because at the low no limit games there aren't really strong players who will do this. if you check the turn you can call a small to medium bet on the river with you ace queen and will win most of the time. this is also a case of you "playing the player" and not just "playing the cards." you have to know who your opponent is and what his tendencies are: will he trap, will he bluff, will he just call you down with a medium to weak hand?

conversely, the turn is where you want to drop the hammer if you have the best hand. this is especially true when you have flopped a set and there are multiple draws on the board. if i have a set i want to eliminate the draws and i do this by putting in huge bet or check raise (if i know the player will bet for me) on the turn.

going back to the first paragraph and knowing your players: for the first 30 minutes to an hour i play in hardly any hands at all, only big pairs usually. why? because i want to watch how everyone else at the table plays. where i play, mandalay bay in vegas, usually i know two or three of my opponents but the others are tourists/strangers; and it is these people i am interested in. given enough time most players will declare themselves and will show just what kind of opponent they are going to be for the rest of the game. one of the advantages of playing what i call "low limit no limit" is that the games usually do not have really good players in them. those players go on to play the "higher limit no limit" games and the good players who are left are like me, grinders waiting for the monster hands. in no limit you can have a very profitable night of it by winning just one or two hands; remember you are trying to get the other guys entire stack if possible.

as an example of that particular strategy one time i was on the bb with a pair of queens and there had been a medium raise from an aggressive player and it had been called by two people and i just cold called with my queens. flop comes Qs, 7h, 5h. i check, just knowing the raiser will bet right here but he doesn't and neither do the other two players. fuck! i am going to lose this hand to a heart flush just sure as shit now. the turn comes a heart but it is the queen of hearts. heh-heh-heh. other than the straight flush possible draw, i have the proverabial monster. i check my four queens and the three players ALL GO ALL IN!!! can you fucking believe it? the raiser has AK of hearts, one guy has 5's full and the other guy has 7's full. i call. heh-heh-heh. that was about a thousand dollar win on just that one hand. that is what you are looking for.

right now i am in scranton, pa. and guess what? i am opening! how this came to be, i book myself for the week end prior to atlantic city in clubs called "wisecrackers" which are owned by a comic, scott bruce. well, months ago when i got my upcoming a.c. gig scott gave me this week end but he didn't know just where. turns out there is a hypnotist who scott had bumped several times and so he had to give this guy this week so instead of bumping me, scott did the right thing and kept me in so the hypnotist has a very expensive opening act this week-end. i haven't opened in ages so, in a pervese way, i am looking forward to the shows.

incidently, the area up here is just beautiful. people in the west have no idea of just how pretty the northeast is. we tend to think of only the big cities and forget that pennsylvannia is heavily wooded and has some great mountains. not like the rockies but mountains just the same. today i am going to just go on a nature drive and look at the countryside.

for those of you who have requested poker blogs, write me and tell me what you want to discuss. once again, let me reinterate; i am not an expert at no limit, i am learning this game. i am ahead so i guess i know something but am far from being what i would consider to be a really good player. my strength is patience. i can be a leather-butt and wait 'em out. but i do like talking/writing about the great game of poker so if you have questions, comments or would just like to start a discussion, bring it on.

how many american bridges are in need of repair? how much will that cost? how much are we spending in iraq? could that money be better spent here in america? how about really making america safer? just a thought you know. or as my friend, brad, said, "just me, tilting at windmills."