Roller Coaster

That's how I would describe my poker of late; up, down, and a lot of sideways. I won two freerolls in two weeks (beat out 389 players in the first one, 494 in the second, pictured above), but have been getting owned in the sit-and-go tournaments, which are single-table, ten players, winner take all. I think the problem is that I usually play very low-stakes games, and therefore people have little to lose, and luck is more of a factor than it should be: people don't respect a healthy bet, people chase hands till the end, and, quite frankly, people do absolutely idiotic things and occasionally get rewarded for it. Luck has to be part of the game, otherwise it wouldn't be fun, and I have certainly gotten lucky my fair share of times. However, as ironic as this sounds, I think I need to play in games where there is a little more at stake to cut down on the "luck" factor.

I'm sure my wife is thrilled to read that.

Fortunate Son

I finished The Greatest Man In Cedar Hole, by Stephanie Doyon, last week. I liked this book a lot; I thought that the characters were interesting, the plot was a little predictable but still fun, and the author's writing style was light and easy to follow. Not the Greatest Book In My Library, but definitely enjoyable.

I particularly enjoyed the subplot about Spud's business; without giving too much away, I will share that he gets involved in a get-rich-quick scheme that actually gets him fairly rich, fairly quick. I thought the author handled this very well; it must be very tricky to allow the reader to see just enough of what is going on without giving too much away, and to do it in a way that seems plausible to the characters as well. Nicely done; I'll go B+ and recommend this book.

Sweeping the clouds away

Had a great time last night; was on "the list" for an event put on by the JCCCNC, an organization in which a good friend of ours is very active. The event was called Asian Americans on Broadway: Opening Doors; the show consisted of half a dozen Broadway vets singing show tunes from shows they have performed in, as well as telling stories about the difficulties involved in getting roles. It was an entertaining evening; Michael K. Lee has a voice that could stop a truck (a good skill, since he mentioned leaving for Korea soon to do Miss Saigon...remember to duck and cover, Michael!), and Christine Toy Johnson's story of how the poster art for the show She Loves Me was changed from a blonde to a brunette when she starred in it was a crowd pleaser. When I met Christine in the lobby later, I told her I remembered her role on Oz; she seemed pleased and surprised, all at the same time. I loved Hazel Anne Raymundo's rendition of "The More You Ruv Someone" from Avenue Q, and I especially liked that the crowd enjoyed it as well.

But there is no question that, for me, the highlight of the evening was watching and later meeting Alan Muraoka, seen here with my beautiful wife. If you don't have kids (or, in the alternative, if you aren't a big geek like me), you may not know that Alan is a regular on Sesame Street; he is the current proprietor of the store that used to be run by Mr. Hooper. Alan was not only gracious enough to pose for a photo (I played the "my nephews and niece are big fans" card, allowing me not to embarrass myself further with the "I was sad when Mr. Hooper died, even though I'm a grown man" or "I have a Sesame Street tattoo, even though I'm a grown man...do you want to see it?" cards. That would have been pretty pitiful), he is sending autographed cast photos to said nephews and niece, thus finally assuring I will not win the "Worst Uncle Ever" award again this year. I was running out of room on my metaphorical mantle.

A great evening...a "magic carpet ride," if you will...

P.Y.T.

Finished Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill, and have to say that while I enjoyed the author’s use of language and her writing style, I think I read this book incorrectly. The prose is beautiful, but the plot, characters, and story are forgettable; I take it this was intentional, as the story revolves around a young woman who becomes a model and is, herself, beautiful and forgettable. Because of this, I think this book would be great to read inside of an International Coffees commercial: on the couch, cup of (pseudo) coffee steaming next to you, rain smacking lightly on the windows, pausing occasionally and thinking about Jean Luc. You would have a chance to enjoy the language all at once, and then put the book away and let it drift quickly out of your memory, like literary cotton candy. Instead, I read this book in short bursts on the train, surrounded by loud, often smelly people, which didn’t allow me to get very involved in the language, and only heightened the shallowness of the story itself.

I’ll give this book a B-, but have a feeling it could have gone higher if I had read it differently.

Great Expectations

Wow, I really wanted to like this book. A thumbnail sketch of the plot of Winkie: a forgotten teddy bear decides to run away from home, only to be arrested by the FBI and put on trial as a domestic terrorist. What's not to love about that premise?

Granted, the book is more than that, and has a bedtime story feel worthy of its protagonist. Unfortunately, I once again allowed my expectations to get set too high, and so what is basically a sweet, funny little book was built up in my mind, and I just didn't think it was as wonderful as I am convinced it could have been. I think one of the main problems was the various reviews I read calling this book a "satire," which it is not, although the premise certainly lends itself to that genre. Note to self: stop reading reviews before you read the book.

Overall, I thought this book was...nice. I'll give it a C+, and mention that I did not regret the time spent with Winkie, especially the parts that made me remember childhood toys that I hope are not living in a shack in the woods mailing bombs to various people and organizations.

[speechless]

The day has finally arrived: after years of waiting and hoping, we are finally the proud owners of TiVo! I could not be more excited; I spent most of the weekend just playing with it, learning the features, setting up a Season Pass or three, and just generally geeking out. Fantastic.

As you may be aware, TiVo tracks what you record and how you rate suggestions, and then automatically records shows it "thinks" you may enjoy. After being plugged in for about 10 hours, TiVo apparently knew me well enough to record something called Sushi TV, a show that features clips from wacky Japanese game shows. It was spectacular.

I am not sure whether to be impressed...or a little frightened.

This was no lawn mower accident!

Finished The Ruins this morning on the train; I will give it a B- in that it was entertaining, kept me interested, and was a solid light read. Something positive about both this book and Smith's previous book, A Simple Plan, is that the author does a great job of creating relatable, interesting characters, and additionally does a great job of making their interactions very believable. Like the previous book, the reader can see the characters moving towards the precipice, and can see the characters realize they are moving towards that precipice and can't seem to turn back, and the reader is forced to continually ask himself how he would react in a similar situation.

The reason I'm going with a B-, and the negative I have to mention (and I will try not to reveal too much in saying this) is that the set up and premise of this book are so implausible that, no matter how solid the characters and their interactions are, the fact is they are stuck in a wacky sci-fi/horror movie dilema just to the left of Little Shop of Horrors. Where his first book took an improbable, yet possible premise, and placed us smack in the middle, this book sets us down in what reads like a "please option me" screenplay for the new wave of graphic horror movies. Scott, you are better than that.

Do the (b)Right(ness) Thing

Watched Spike Lee's The Inside Man over the weekend; at the time, I was struck that Lee and the art director had made such an interesting choice to shoot the movie primarily in pinks and greens. The better half was convinced there was something wrong with the DVD player, but I created this whole scenario in my mind that Lee, in shooting a modern film noir, was making an artistic choice to shoot his movie in colors which would be the opposite of black and white.

Nope. Color balance was off on my DVD player, and didn't realize it until after we had watched the whole thing, after I spent time listening to the commentary on the DVD, waiting for comments about the color, and after I looked up pics from the movie this morning. Score (yet) another one for the wife.

By the way, entertaining movie.

Mini video of the MINIs

I posted a video I made with my cellphone on YouTube so you can enjoy the kickoff of the MINI Takes the States Rally like you were standing right next to me (how cool is that sentence?). What a world we live in.

1,540 miles later...

We got back from our road trip last night; I wasn't able to update the blog along the way, so this afternoon I will post stories about each day of the drive, along with some pictures I took. I'll change the dates so the stories reflect the calendar a little more accurately. The short version: over the past week, we drove to Las Vegas and back again, and had some fun adventures along the way. Scroll down and enjoy watching my beard grow!

Day 6: Homeward Bound

We left Avila this morning and headed north to Hearst Castle, something that we've talked about seeing in the past, but is just far away enough that we've never gotten around to visiting. The tour was nice; I am not sure if I am in awe of the splendor, or disgusted by the excess, but either way, it's a hell of a house. I asked the tour guide if Hearst had ever screened Citizen Kane in his theater; she said no, but I doubt that is true. A lot of the tour seemed to gloss over and whitewash Hearst's past, so I took all of it with a grain of salt. Sand? Whatever it is you take a grain of. Regardless of whether you view Hearst as a Nazi sympathizer or great American capitalist, the idea that this man was spending $10,000 a month on ice for his polar bear at a time when most of the world was plunged in the depths of the Great Depression strikes me as obscene.

After the tour, we headed home, and wrapped up our trip across the western part of America. According to the odometer, we covered more than 1,500 miles. According to the temperature gauge, we went from the low 50s leaving SF to 114 in the Mojave Desert. We played some good (and not so good) poker, ate fantastic food, met interesting people, and didn't kill each other. A successful vacation, indeed.

Day 5: Las Vegas to Avila Beach

We actually planned on the fifth day of our trip being long, but I miscalculated a little, so it turned out LONG. We left Vegas around 11AM and headed west towards LA. We did manage to spot a Fazoli's for lunch, a rare treat for us since moving away from Kentucky.

The bad part was that we hit Los Angeles right around 4, just in time for rush hour. Ouch. We crawled up the coast towards Santa Barbara, and got to our hotel in Avila Beach about two hours later than we'd hoped. This didn't leave any daylight to explore the area as we'd wanted to, which was fine, since we weren't really in the mood to get back in the car. We had dinner at Fat Cat's Cafe, down on the pier at the beach; good food + low prices x silly pictures of cats on the walls = feeling better.

One of the amazing and infuriating parts of the drive was what I will call the Accordian Effect: that weird traffic anomaly whereby traffic comes to a complete standstill for absolutely no reason at all. My guess is that, like the proverbial butterfly in China, one guy taps his brakes (rather than just laying off the gas...I hate brakes on the highway about as much as I hate anything in life), which causes the guy behind him to tap his, causing the next guy to lay on his a little more, and so on, until traffic is coming to a complete stop back down the highway, and then will continue to speed up and slow down as people break free, speed up, and then have to slam on their brakes again. Annoying to say the least.

Day 4: The Poker Gods smile on us

Tried the noon tournament at the Luxor again; stayed in longer this time, but it's a tough tournament if you want to play good poker. Allow me to explain: you start with $500 in play chips, but the blinds start at $25-$50, and go up every 15 minutes. That means from the very beginning, you are committing 10% of your stack in the big blind, and a standard raise in poker (3x the big blind) commits almost a third of your chips. Therefore, it is very difficult to hang around and wait for good cards, or you will get blinded out. The result is a lot of all-in bets early on, and you hope to get lucky. I did not get lucky. In fact, as I was about to get blinded out, I went all in with Ace, King...and got beat by a guy who went all in with King, Queen and hit the Queen on the turn. I had a couple more chips than him, so was forced to go all in on the very next hand. I look down at Ace, Queen...not a bad starting hand. The same guy calls me with King, Jack...and hits his Jack on the river. Ouch. One hand, okay...but two in a row? The Poker Gods were telling me it was not my time. Yet.

Since we had the car, we decided to drive out to the Red Rock Casino to take a look and see if we could meet Heather from Hell's Kitchen. The casino is nice, and the poker room is very large. Unfortunately, the games were a little out of our comfort zone, so we opted not to play. We did go to the restaurant that I was told Heather would be executive chef (scroll down a bit for my earlier post about this), but were told by the hostess that while portions of the show were taped there, in fact Heather had been offered the exec chef job at their Italian restaurant...and still hadn't accepted the job. So no pseudo-celebrity meet and greet for us. Back to the Strip.

We signed up for the 6PM tournament at Mandalay Bay, and went to play some low-limit at the Excalibur again. We both ended up down this time, so a wash from the previous day. On the way out, the host told us this long and very personal story about an experience in Big Sur that he felt was both spiritual and very emotional...why he chose to share this with us, I am not sure, but I have to admit it was a nice story.

Mom, if you are reading my blog, skip this next section...

[Interesting side story: Vegas is a constant destination for conventions, and while we were there, we kept seeing people with two different badges; one for something called Isagenix, and then a whole different kind of badge, with naked ladies on it. I found out that there was a convention for owners of "gentlemen's clubs" going on, which partly explained why we also kept seeing women with basketball-sized breasts walking around...aside from just being in Vegas, that is. Anyway, when we sat down to play at the Excalibur, we happened to sit down next to this woman. Huh...small world.]

The tournament was great; both the wife and I made it to the final table, and both of us made it into the money. The better half came in fifth, and I came in third. The money from that made up for our ealier buy-ins and then some; in total, we ended up leaving Las Vegas with all of the cash we brought plus about $50. How cool is that?

Also fun: there was a UFC fight coming up at the Luxor over the weekend, and so a bunch of fighters and trainers were in town, and several played in our tournament. One of the fighters, Thomas "WildMan" Denny sat at my table, and we had a very cool conversation about Ultimate Fighting and poker. He said that he gets more excited about going all in sometimes than he does at his fights; I pointed out that in poker, there is more luck involved since fat guys like me actually have a chance of knocking him out. He thought that was pretty funny.

Day 3: Viva Las Vegas!

The third day of our Odyssey was one of the best days I have ever had in Las Vegas, and I have had some great days in LV. Started with the noon poker tournament at the Luxor; not my best poker (went out on the first hand I played when I went all in with top pair, and guy called me with a draw...which he of course hit on the river...unreal), but I'm not at work, so things are magic. The better half almost made it to the final table, but also felt the wrath of the dreaded river. After poker, we headed to the spa for massages; very nice after a couple days in the car.

The poker was still calling to us, so we headed over to the Excalibur for some low-limit fun; played for about an hour and a half, and we both walked away up. Nice. After that, we headed back over to our hotel for a fantastic dinner at Diego (some of the best guacamole I've ever had), and then wrapped up the evening with a show at the Tropicana. The show was as cheesy as we expected, and topless showgirls do not automatically equal "sexy" (Baywatch was wrong; naked people should not run). Still, entertaining, and one of the last Las Vegas review shows around, so glad we saw it.

On the way back to the room, I finally spotted a celebrity (one of my long-standing issues is that I never see famous people; I guess they don't hang out at the 1-3 limit poker tables?): Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and a woman I assume is his girlfriend were heading into Tabu. I gave Shari the camera and got ready to do the gushing "I'm a big fan" speech, but it was clear that Chris and his lady friend were arguing about something, and given that he was on a date and not in the best of moods, I decided against asking for a picture. Part of me thinks I did the right thing, but then again, Chris was wearing his signature cowboy hat and a Full Tilt Poker bowling shirt, so it's not like he was going incognito or something. Oh well.

A great day!

Day 2: Santa Barbara to Las Vegas

The second day started well: free cinnamon rolls in the lobby, which was filled with a mixture of rude Europeans and families, headed by Angry Dads that made it clear they didn't like my t-shirt. So sorry.

We headed down the coast, skirting LA (didn't see the Hollywood sign?) and heading off into the desert towards Barstow, the site of a planned pit stop hosted by another group of MINI owners.

Had lunch at an In and Out Burger (I don't like their religious messages, but MTTS gave us gift certificates for a free lunch...I put my feelings aside for a free lunch), and met Jim McDowell, president of MINI USA. Nice guy.

Drove on to Nevada, where we stopped at Buffalo Bill's Casino for a free ride on The Desperado. I sat next to Jim, and I am still kicking myself for not taking a picture of me and the president on the coaster...that would have gotten me on the website for sure.

Finally made it to Vegas and our hotel; got the sweet upgrade to the bigger suite (why? Because I'm Brendon, dammit...that's why! Seriously, I think it had more to do with it being mid-week in August, and therefore not a lot of guests), and then headed over to the House of Blues for the MTTS event. Not that exciting, but we're in Vegas, and that's all that matters.

Day 1: Monterey to Santa Barbara

Today we began our road trip with other MINI owners as part of the MINI Takes the States Road Rally. We drove to the kick off in Monterey while it was still very dark; as usual, MapQuest screwed up a pretty important left vs. right, and it took us a while to find the gathering. Once we spotted the parking lot with about 200 MINI Coopers, we were pretty sure we were in the right place.

The beach party was nice: coffee, donuts, coffee, bottled water for the road, and did I mention coffee? We took our photo with the cutest sand castle ever.



The drive down the coast is very windy; we stopped at a vista or two just to get out of the car for a minute.



Also stopped in Pismo Beach for lunch and a look at what the beach looks like without fog and wearing a sweater. Who knew?



Eventually got to Santa Barbara and our hotel on State Street (think Union Street in San Francisco, only everyone is tan and in shorts). The hotel was "historic," which is code for "small elevators." Still, a fridge and a comfy bed...nice.

"It's raw fish, SLICED!"

Semi-enjoyed the season finale last night of Hell's Kitchen, a reality show on Fox that was (like a lot of reality tv) good, dumb fun. I say "semi-enjoyed" because I had been hopeful that Kevin "K-Grease" would pull out the win, but I also thought Heather was the clear favorite from the second week or so. Glad Virginia didn't smile her way into her own restaurant.


Here's a surprise: this is the restaurant where Heather is now the executive chef. How do I know this? Certainly not from the casino or show websites; not a single mention anywhere on either. Doesn't that seem odd? I guess if the Red Rock is trying for upscale, maybe they don't want to advertise that their exec chef is a reality contest winner, but still...I would think they would advertise this a little bit?

So how did I figure it out? I called the Red Rock Casino reservations line and asked; the woman who answered had no idea what I was talking about, nor had she ever heard of the television show, but put me on hold while she asked her supervisor. She came back on the line to tell me that it is the chop house, and then added, "But sir, you know that Hell's Kitchen isn't a real restaurant, right?" I appreciate that the Red Rock is concerned about my ability to differentiate between fiction and reality. I'll remember that when I go to their pool and can't figure out where all the half-naked models are, the ones I see cavorting (that's right, cavorting) on their commercials.

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

If you don't know me very well, here is a small window into who I am. One, I love sushi. Two, I love robots.

So why does this disgust me so deeply? I guess I was hoping for something a lot cooler, like the one in Runaway that Tom Selleck orders from, the one that says (with a horribly un-PC accent), "You want sushi? HA HA HA!"

Now that would be cool.

Your chance to do the Hump

Silly. Juvenile. Wrong. And yet, funny. If you own a Hummer, check out this site to see if anyone has violated it recently.

And by the way, especially if you own a Hummer, go see An Inconvenient Truth. I saw it last weekend, and I thought it was very interesting. It is fascinating that there are still people out there who doubt global warming. Maybe the sand smells nice?

Not fun

Among the many things you don't want to hear from the train operator on the way home, when the train is stopped and the doors are closed:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the delay...the police should be here shortly."

iPod, take me away.