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.