Images of Me (14)

 

Back when the MGM Grand still had lions

Images of Me (11)

 

At the cat shelter in Las Vegas. 

Images of Me (5)

 

One of many images of the Poker Boyz at Binion's in downtown Las Vegas. This one is circa 2010.

For Just A Week

M&Ms in Las Vegas

Yes, there really is an M&M World on the strip in Las Vegas. And since it is right next to the MGM Grand where we were staying, several trips were made to capture the panorama and panache that is Las Vegas in chocolate. Again many thanks to Mike for the photography and playful spirit.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.

The sacred M&M wall, where pilgrims gather to leave messages to their long lost waistlines.

The aroma of cocoa can be overwhelming. They do have emergency supplies of insulin.

I was as diligent as a non-shopper can be in my attempt to fine any item I could tolerate in my apartment. Alas, the $34.95 beach towels drove me screaming from the store.

This is Mike (on the right) our intrepid photographer. The guy in blue with the white glove scares me a bit.

Las Vegas Boyz Trip 2011

We had one of our Poker Boyz trips to Las Vegas last week. Mike, as always, provides great photos for us and seemingly doesn't mind the intermittent nagging - "Get a shot of my with the stripper!" He also wanders around early morning and late at night for shots like this one. We did stay at the MGM this trip.

If you don't show up for a Poker Boyz trip, you get your head put on a stick and rude sometimes evil photos are produced. Viewing of those more seedy and salacious snapshots is restricted to bona fide PB members and blackmail.

OK, maybe not completely restricted.

Poker was played. This is me making a final table at Binion's. Two-tiered seven-way chop for the poker players out there.

Matty with Chihuly art at City Center.

Me, also with Chihuly.

Amy at our annual visit to the Cat Condos at the LV-SPCA.

me with kittums at spca

Las Vegas

Once again it is time for a Poker Boyz trip to Las Vegas. A bare quorum of the usual suspects begin arriving tomorrow. We are all staying at the MGM Grand after several weeks of email negotiations regarding a) room rates & deals; b) walking distance to several appropriate poker rooms; c) daily access to the lion habitat.

There may be a random report or two from Las Vegas if anything of interest occurs. But the likelihood is that there will be:

-a lot of poker

-dinners, drinks, snacks, buffets

-interesting even strange encounters with non-indigenous wildlife (tourists)

-an excursion to my favorite SPCA shelter for a cat condo purr-fest

-a memorial stop at the Sahara before it closes

-meet-ups with several friends from 'the olde days'

-a Bellagio run for the usual sites and current art exhibit

-a downtown run for a tournament at Binion's and the annual picture

-one quick & dirty business meeting

Since most readers these days have little or no interest in card games or Las Vegas, I have queued up appropriate non-gaming posts while I am away. 

M&M Monday - M&M World

There is an M&M World in of all places - Las Vegas. In fact, it's on the strip, right next door to the MGM Grand Casino. The key feature is the chocolate wall.

Yes they have many more colors and even flavors than what you can get in the normal course of human events. M&M World is not a regular stop on my visits to Vegas, not like the MGM lions or one of several poker rooms but I think next time I will make a pilgrimage if only to find new material for my art. 


You do know what is number #2 influence, after children's sweet tooths, that really keeps M&M sales going?

Oh and I guess I should mention - today is Pi Day!

--

Art is unsourced from the web

Penultimate Post

Time to travel a bit before the calendar turns another notch in our collective lives. I am off to Las Vegas in a few days for some time with a mini-quorum of my poker buddies. Will also be catching up with a lot of former poker media friends at the WPBT Winter Classic. All-in-all a week to ten days in the desert.

After Vegas I will not be immediately returning to the Berkeley apartment because a major remodeling process will begin while I am in Las Vegas; considering the holidays the entire project will take about a month and then I will be re-inhabiting a very upgraded living space. I have been packing and moving out for the last week or so; yet another opportunity to divest myself of accumulated stuff.

So after the time in the desert, I suspect I will return to the Bay area, check on the state of the construction in the apartment and then do some holiday visitations. Weather will be a big determining factor for where I will be mid-month, I really want to position myself for a clear view of the solstice lunar eclipse on the 21st.

Also my friends in Mt Shasta will be heading off to visit relatives and I am once again the house/cat-sitter designee. So at some point I will make the northern trek to Siskiyou County where I will remain until after the new year hath dawned on what I suspect will be a very fluid 2011.
--
photo: another NASA moon

Baking in the Las Vegas Sun

While we suffer through an unusual fall heat wave here in the Bay Area, I was sent this toasty story from Las Vegas. It seems yet another glass tower is turning people on the ground into sizzling strips of human bacon. This is not the first time this has happened in Vegas, they are known for buildings that double as solar reflectors. Today it is the brand new City Center on the Strip, more specifically the Vdara towers. Perhaps appropriately the focus of the heat wave hits the pool at Vdara, meaning the people are already bare and basted.

The curvature of the South Tower is the problem. It forms a really nice parabola that focuses the sun's rays into about a 10'x15' patch of sizzle that moves with the rotation of the earth. Pool goers have reported melted drink cups, scorched hair and many medium rare humans. You see these people are already laying out by a pool in the 100+ degree Las Vegas sun. Estimates are that the death ray reaches temperatures about 20 degrees higher than the surrounding safe zones, so we are looking at 130 even 140 degrees at times. By the way, management prefers "hot spot" or "solar convergence" to the more off-putting "Vdara death ray."

What is more interesting is that such solar problems were anticipated and a special film was placed on the glass surfaces of the Vdara towers which disperses 70% of the reflected energy. One has to wonder why the entire City Center isn't tapping this solar power to run the place instead of dispersing it below fatal levels. This is not the first time hotels towers have created hot spots, the golden towers of Mandalay Bay still do create a moveable baking spot, which pool staff note is often sought out by bathers in the early spring and late fall cooler days. In the summer apparently they simply avoid the spot, apparently there is a better early warning system at the Mandalay Bay pool.

---

artwork: Las Vegas Review Journal

One More Bit of Vegas Detritus

I am not a fan of slot machines. I will and do play some video poker when I am in Las Vegas but mostly while waiting for my poker playing friends to finish a tournament I have already busted from. However, my poker buddies have different attitudes towards the one arm bandits (none of which have arms anymore). They played a lot of Texas Tea slots, something about getting a lot of derricks and then a bonus round with a map of the Lone Star place. I sat in for Mike once and learned about all I needed to know.

But leave it to the evil temptress Amy to lead me away from the path of machine-less vacation. She introduced me to I Dream of Jeannie slots. You put in your money and Barbara Eden purrs -- "Hello Master". Yep, they got the real Jeannie to do the voice-overs and she hooks you (you being either male or a bi-sexual female). Next you spin the wheels and when a Magic Bottle (you know the one Jeannie lives in) pops up she says -- Yes! and second bottle and her voice goes up and gets faster -- Yes!! if you get the third bottle in a row, she practically comes in your lap -- YES!!!

You get a bonus pull for that third yes, but it is complete anti-climax or perhaps post-climax.

One of our buddies had not been introduced to Jeannie on our last night in town, so we sought out the bank of six machines at the Monte Carlo. Remember "The Game" from Star Trek TNG?

Anyway, when we got to the machines they were all occupied by women. I was going to do a quick anthropological survey of why only women were pulling on Barbara Eden's veil, but two side-by-side machines hit the Yes! Yes!! YES!!! bous and I had to go to my room to be alone.

That's it from the Las Vegas trip, we now return to our regular programming.

Just Because

I just wanted to post this photo because well its my blog and I can. Got back to Berkeley late on Saturday after eight days with the boyz in Las Vegas. Once again another great trip, despite the continuing slowdown in Vegas and the missing Zippy.

Annual Poker Boyz Excursion

For the next seven days I shall be participating in our annual Poker Boyz gathering in Las Vegas. Attendance this year is nearly complete (with the exception of Zippy who is not allowed to travel west of the great oil spill). Joel is on his way from Minnesota. Mike is already here in the Bay area, he and I will be driving over today. The Bill of the wild variety will be making a slightly late arrival in Henderson to join up with the Debonair one. Randy arrives from the land of pelicans and oranges and the leader of the leaderless pack, Amy is on her way from deep in the heart of.

Over the next seven days we will play some poker tournament or another; eat at some restaurant, buffet or local favorite spot; laugh a lot and repeat. A minority contingent will make a cat run to the SPCA before heading to yet another poker tournament. I am sure we will hit Binion's at least once, since most of us are staying at Monte Carlo that room will see some action, along with MGM, Aria, Venetian, M and even one or two other random poker dens approved by our local poker pro.

The World Series of Poker finishes it's summer run today, so we can thankfully skip the Rio but there is always a chance for a tournament and a steak at the Gold Coast. Hell we might even make it to the north end for a late night tournament at Sahara. We all take a piece of all the money winners and this time we actually hope to break even as a group, something we have not done in awhile.

For my non-poker readers, I have left some thoughts moldering in the cyber stew. I would not abandon you to a full week of silence. I am not the type of guy who has his fun and then doesn't call. Enjoy those post-dated ponderings but expect no live missives from Las Vegas, I have said all that Sin City stuff before.

There But For The Grace of Homer Go I . . .

I played a small poker tournament yesterday but this is not a poker story. This is a pondering morality tale with a poker backdrop.

It was a small tournament only two tables, Bill and I played. The young lady on my right was an OK player, her husband at the other end of the table was not. She wore too much perfume and over the course of the hour or two it took for her to bust out, I liked her less and less as her mood darkened and she complained about things irrelevant to the poker game. Some might call it: "just bitching". She went out 11th, so she bubbled the final table. Only the top two places were scheduled to be paid but when we got to four players (both Bill and I still in) the short stack player began to ask about a chop. The chipleader was not interested, so for about thirty minutes the stacks went up and down as the blinds went higher and higher. It became a shove-fest. I bubbled in 4th and the remaining three players chopped the cash.

But this is not a poker story. Last evening, I was down in the casino at Monte Carlo as I exited onto the Strip I saw several LVPD officers talking with the young lady and her husband who had played in the tournament. Out of curiosity I listened in.

It appears that after she busted out, she took her dark mood to another casino and playing what I believe was carribbean stud and won herself $40,000. She then decided to continue drinking heavily and to switch to playing craps, which apparently she did not understand well. While she was drinking, throwing dice, showing her tits and generally having a great time (did I mention she had ditched her husband?). Anyways at some point she had $5K of her $40K windfall on the craps table and the other $35,000 stuck in her purse in cash from where it was lifted by a crafty pick pocket. Hence, the police.

It took about five minutes of eavesdropping to get the gory details of her sad story, I believe I overheard rendition six or seven. All the while the husband kept chiming in with: "I don't know, she dumped me after she drank dinner. She still had all the money then."

So yesterday I bubbled a little poker tournament, all in all not a bad day . . . considering.

[my apologies for the poker jargon to my newer non-poker playing readership]

Just Las Vegas

I can't tell if I am jaded or if this is just a matter of coming to a "resort destination" where I once lived. I know Las Vegas. The glitz never really impressed me and since living here I know all the back ways, the 'ins & outs' of the city.

Granted I haven't seen the new City Center yet but I have been to the Black Bear Diner and the SPCA cat condos and I played a bit of low limit poker yesterday and really enjoyed dominating a table. My fellow travelers have arrived after a long day of Southwest delays, so group-think is in full swing. Tonight we do another friend's birthday celebration and tomorrow perhaps a poker tournament.

And then we search for something completely different. I have one idea in mind for the others, for me. . .  have I mentioned you can never go home again? Perhaps an opportunity for seeing with fresh eyes.

Addendum: To be fair. I had a long walk on the Strip last evening. Some observations - freedom of speech or not, the dozens of guys handing out cards for out call services should be banned, if only for the litter they create. City Center is a very cool site from across the Strip at night, on the other hand the city should fine the entire project for continuing to keep the west side of the Strip so screwed up well past any reasonable construction deadline. Go ahead and leave your overbuilt hotels unfinished but the public right of way needs to be open and navigable now. The Bellagio fountains remain a truly unique attraction even after so many years. The revamped Mirage volcano, not so much. And to the two hookers working the entry at the Mirage last night -- reconsider those haircuts and lose the chewing gum.

Leaving for Las Vegas

I will be off in a few hours for Las Vegas. Interesting to return to a place where I lived for three years but really had no significant connection other than work. While Las Vegas is not my kind of town, I don't have the aversion that many of my friends have to Glitter Gulch, Lost Wages, Sin City or whatever not quite appropriate labels non-residents have for Vegas. 

The trip is part-business/part-pleasure. Amy will be there for a financial conference and we have a couple of pending projects to discuss.  Several other poker buddies are in town already or will be passing through. In addition there is some writin' business to be attended to. Another book deal to mull over and some other potential assignments to be pondered and perhaps negotiated. 

Poker will also be on the agenda. I will hit the Venetian for some Omaha 8 and I imagine a tournament or two downtown at Binion's. Also, now that Debonair has moved his play to the MGM, I foresee several sessions near the lion habitat.

I am staying at the Monte Carlo for most of the trip, rates on the strip are definitely down and the latest really good deal was at Monte Carlo. Besides that puts me right next to the new City Center project. 

Somewhat pokerish updates to follow.

Here Today -- Gone Tomorrow

Now that I have a permanent address again, able to receive both mail and visitors; it is well time to consider where to travel next. With that in mind I did some bookings for Las Vegas last night. Buddies in the poker media will notice that I managed to schedule two trips in the next several months yet still managed to miss all of the World Series. I really am done with poker, besides they turned me down for a media credential, seems I don't have enough experience.  


I will be in Vegas in early May to do a little business and some research on a future book. In addition, my co-author Amy Calistri will be there spinning her wisdom for the investment minded at the Mirage. So Amy and I and another buddy will be spending some quality time at our olde haunts, which may include a casino or two but mostly the cultural and gustatorial highlights of the city. 


I also booked the discount deal at the Monte Carlo for mid-July, post-WSOP, for the annual Boyz poker trip. For the first time in several years I will not be the local host but merely one of the attendees. We expect a full turnout this summer with the obvious exception of he who shall not be harassed. Both of the Las Vegas trips will be around a week long. 


There is another more substantial vacation on the horizon. Vacation as a derivative of "vacate." At some point in the May-June-July period, there is a nascent plan to remodel the Berkeley apartment where I am currently resting my head. The remodel is so extensive as to require a complete vacating of both me and all the stuff in the place. Furniture, clothes, computers, kitchen all of it has to move out so the transformation can be done in some reasonable mediation of labor and time. At that point I am probably going to head up to Mt. Shasta to visit my good friends. We might even coordinate my vacating with one of their trips and wound two avians with one rock. 


All of this running about leads to a potential big trip in August. I guess I don't want to talk about this one too much quite yet. Just leave it for now that it does involve my passport, I don't speak the language and I have never been before. More on this one later.

For now, all my bags are unpacked but not stored away quite yet.
---
art credit: Golden Sunset by Lauren Luna


Hello Blogger! New template has some formatting errors . . .

Stardust Memories

I was just having a gulp of water one day this past January while I was driving across west Texas. I happened to notice that my water bottle was the one I got the last night the Stardust casino was open in November of '06. I have the last player's card ever issues by the Stardust, the last water bottle ever given away and until recently a one dollar chip from the last hand of poker ever dealt in the Stardust poker room I gave the chip to Amy.

What I pondered while my car slowly devoured the vastness of west Texas was that as a journalist I wrote in my article the next day for PokerNews that I had played one of the last hands of poker ever played at the Stardust. You see the last night at the Stardust was a night of nostalgia. Lots of old players, dealers and staff had come by to say farewell. Right around 10 o'clock the poker room manager told the dealers to hold up and then he announced that the next hand would be the final hand ever dealt at the Stardust. Then all four of the remaining tables dealt a single hand, most players stayed to the river just to be there for the final showdown.

As a journalist I reported that fact: four final hands at the Stardust. But today I was working on my current fiction project and I reproduced those events but, of course, I made it THE final hand and, also of course, I lost the hand on a river bad beat. I love being a writer and I am not a guy who tosses around the word love all that often.

I apologize to my non-poker readers for the nostalgia and the poker jargon. But think how my loyal poker readers feel when I write about wallabies, wombats and wampeters.

Henderson, NV.

OK, so moving 12 miles away from where I have spend the last two months is not a big move; but it is the first step on what now looks to be a five month or longer extension of my undomiciled existence. For the next week I am house & dog sitting at the Henderson house where I previously lived from late '06 until just about a year ago. My extended stay that the Extended Stay near the Rio is officially over, which means my WSOP '09 is also complete. I will be somewhere in the midwest come november nine final table time, so for me--done is done.

I am going to play some tournaments around town this week, I will spare you the details of those events. I am working on a short story that will use my various post-wsop stopovers as location hooks. I was considering serializing the first few chapters here but like others of my kin, I still see books as viable commodities for a few more years.

So just a brief geographic update today--a week in Henderson and then off to Sonoma and points beyond.

Assorted Ramblings

[Content Disclosure: A Little of This & A Little of That]

Just a mishmash of meanderings in and around the human psyche from my observations over the past several weeks, months, days and hours.

Otis on Twitter, Identity Theft and Cyber Sink Holes: "Let’s be clear: If you are a public figure, ever hope to be, or are serving as a PR consultant or publicist for someone who stands to be even mildly famous, you are being irresponsible for not securing a spot on Twitter and Facebook. Yes, Twitter and Facebook can be vapid holes of despair from which nothing good can ever rise. They also happen to be places where hundreds of thousands of people spend hours each day. If you are a politician or leader, these people are your constituents. If you have any hope of connecting with these people you need to be on top of it. At the very least, you need to have “your people” on top of it. And you need to check out who is using your name."

Nothing is quite so painful than to be following the WSOP tweeterverse and have some tangential player have a cyber-meltdown for all to read (divorce, broken air-conditioning, cursed by the poker gods, loss of bladder control, rolled by a hooker, did I mention divorce and who gets custody of the commemorative plates). As the Rob Lowe character on Brothers and Sisters said: "Get a filter for God's sake!"

Vapid holes of despair from which nothing good can ever rise. I promise Otis a citation every single time I used this line.

______________________

Bagels and OCD: When toasting two bagels with only a two slice toaster. Do you take the first bagel out when it is 3/4 done and then fully toast the second bagel before you finish the first? You know so the first one does not cool off before you get to consume it. 

____________________

Have you ever been stuck at a poker table or in a doctor's office or nirvana forbid on an airplane and the person next to you is going on about a topic you are intimately familiar with and they are just chronically misinformed. I mean usually it's because they are stupid. And yes ladies they are always men and always completely imbued with the 100% righteous knowledge that they are speaking the truth. It happens a lot to WSOP poker media when we take a day off to play in one of the smaller rooms here in Las Vegas. Yesterday, I played at Flamingo and the fool/tool from Indiana on my left knew all there was to know about the Series. You see he played for two hours in the most recent $1500 Donkument and that gave him his status of expertise.

I did not intervene in his brilliant pontifications but when he began his insider discourse on Mike Matusow and Phil Hellmuth, I thought my buddy at the table would explode from the repressed laughter. At one point, following a particularly erroneous Matusow comment, he even said: "Well this guy should know, he wrote the book." But the expert just ignored that and went on with his highly informative fiction.

___________________________ 

On an international note. It seems lots of news coverage is being given today to the elections in Iran. It appears that they may not have reported the true vote totals. Shock and anger seems to be the overwhelmingly popular reactions. I am shocked that more informed media types are not more prone to observe -- well Duh! And less we forget: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave: Florida November 2000. And before all of my newly acquired conservative friends get their panties in a knot or a painful cameltoe.... If the voters had gotten Al Gore, in all likelihood Barack would not be president today. Be careful which elections you steal.

___________________________

You didn't miss my guest spot over on the The Tao of Poker All-Stars did you? Just one of the infrequent opportunities for R-rated Shrinkable observations. It's called: "Ladies of the Night: WSOP version."

___________________________

Poker rooms I have played this summer:

Flamingo -- NLHE

Binion's -- NLHE tournament

Planet Hollywood -- NLHE

Orleans -- Omaha8

Tuscany -- NLHE tournament

Binions -- Omaha8 tournament

Flamingo -- NLHE

M Resort -- NLHE 

Venetian -- Omaha8 

SouthPoint -- Limit HE 

M Resort -- Limit HE 

Rooms where I couldn't get a game:

Golden Gate

Bill's Gambling Hall

Imperial Palace

Luxor