AimlesslyChasingAmy

I can’t watch the news on television anymore; even CNN.  It’s all become a series of sensationalized sound bites, spoonfed like pablum.  The still distant presidential election is portrayed like a trailer for Survivor.  Britney is given more coverage than torture.  If I want to know what’s going on, I read the NYT and hunt for decent investigative stories.  For news analysis, I watch The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Real Time with Bill Maher.  Although this week, I find myself cutoff on the televised front as the Writers Guild of America has gone on strike.  If you want to understand the issues that compelled them to walk, I recommend watching this video.  I’m behind them, even as a drift into ignorance of the world around me.  And if I find out that any unionized show scabbed out, they will be dead to me.  Forever.

Today I read that they busted Paul McKinney in a home game.  For god’s sakes, the man is 82 years old.  I got to watch Paul (pictured above at the 2007 WSOP) win the Senior’s event back in 2005 with his grandson.  It was one of the events I enjoyed watching most that year.  FlipChip took one of my favorite pictures of me watching the event with Tom McEvoy.  Paul also just missed a final table in 2006, finishing in 10th place in a NLHE event.  The cops also hit him up on a Schedule III narcotics charge.  I suspect that if I make it to 82, I might have a few pills on me.  How many of your parents travel with their perscription bottle?  Most people I know have those little pill cases with their daily meds.

I used to play in a regular and technically legal home game downtown.  I stopped soon after they started charging a rake.  It’s not that I didn’t want to pay or was that adverse to playing in a technically illegal game, but it was also about the time that some of the bigger illegal games in town were getting too much notice.  Sure enough, they busted the bigger games.  Some “clubs” have sprung up in their place, but they are being hosted by much of the same folks.  Do they think the police don’t know who they are at this point?  Another bust is just a matter of time.  You also have to sweat the robbery factor these days.  Big games = big incentive for robbery.

But tonight I’m headed to a legal, private, low stakes game and I’m pretty damn excited.  I haven’t played with any of the guys before, so I’ll be the ignorant fish - and still I’m looking forward to that opportunity. 

I enjoyed watching High Stake Poker (as always) this week.  My favorite moment was when David Benyamine (pictured above at the 2007 WSOP) took down Jamie Gold in a pot, bluffing with the hammer.  Gold had been going on and on and on about how he was going to pull off a world class bluff.  What goes around comes around, buddy.