If was gonna say just one thing to y'all tonight, I'd say set the artist free. I'm talking about this artist in here, set it free. I'm saying quit yo' day job. Now I know a lot of you here are saying, 'I can't quit my day job, I got kids to feed Jack'. Quit ya day job, focus on your craft one time. Before it's all over, you've died, you've squandered it, YOU FUCKIN' ROBOTS!Jack Black, "Tenacious D", HBO television series.
Yes people, the new chips and poker table are at my house. My excitement at seeing them was quite surprising even to me. I had great pleasure ripping all the cardboard, foam, plastic and more cardboard off the packages...And I was pleased. The chips are fantastic, the table top is actually made of plywood not MDF (I work in the plywood industry, so that was kinda important to me.) and seems a lot more stable than I originally thought. It is a little bigger than our current table, so it looks like I might be making another table for this to fit into. It will be a slap together job, that's for sure, if I do it at all. But I can say it looks great, and the WPT is only a matter of time now! Of course, setting it all up and analyzing every last chip, trying my hand at my first "chip trick" (failing, then trying again), throwing mock-deals across the felt, stacking the chips in piles, then in the holders, then half in the piles half in the holders, meant that I didn't actually get online to play any poekr at all. Then there is the dealer button. What a great invention. Sure, we could know who the dealer was by just looking at who was the guy with the deck of cards in their hand - but now if anybody has any doubts, there is a big white disk in front of the dealer. I know, they are meant to be used when you have a house dealer doing the duties, but I don't know how common that is in home games.
I'm going to break from tradition slightly, and give some plugs out here instead of at the end. Firstly, Jamie Berger's website has this fantastic poker story that I have just finished reading. I found it via a link from some other poker blog, but I can't remember which one. This is exactly the kind of story I love to read. Just brilliant - I would love to emulate his efforts.
Secondly, and I can't believe I haven't done this yet, I have to recommend Outkicked, the poker blog of JW. I have been reading it for a few weeks now, and since we both share a common problem (I call it "distractions"), and the fact that he tried to get other people from his blog to help me getting the casino cards is just top notch. Hopefully I will have some by the end of this week, next week at the latest.
As I said in my last post, it is a little funny how when anything Olympic related happens, Dawn Fraser comes out and makes a statement about it. Well just yesterday the swimmer Ian Thorpe made himself Australia's greatest Olympian ever by winning the most gold medals. Top job by the way. But no more than a few hours after I finished by post about Dawn here at Poker on Film, I am driving home and I hear an ad for A Current Affair tonight - and their interview with Dawn Fraser. She wasn't just asked for her opinion over the phone, or even a quick photo op at her house, she was coming in to the fucking studio to do a full blown interview with Murray Rose (another former Olympian) about Ian Thorpe's achievement and to "pass on the torch". I could not believe it. I laughed so hard I nearly crashed. If anybody else hears anything about Dawn getting herself in the media, let me know and I will keep all our faithful DFW (Dawn Fraser Watchers) posted right here.
Speaking of the Olympics, I was watching a bit of the men's 3m synchronized springboard diving last night. The Chinese rule in these events, and when it came to the last dive they were so far out in front they could have won first and second on their own. Their last dive was a bit tricky, and one of the divers got lost halfway through his twisty flippy thing and slammed into the water back first while doing his best impersonation of a used staple. Now, I have been watching some of the diving because there are a few Aussie winning medals and all that. The judges at these games are shit. I don't know whether this is consistent with all diving competitions, but in one case the same dive got 8.5 from one judge and 3.0 from another. Are they watching the same thing? Anyway, with this Chinese dive they all gave the same score - 0.0, a big fat zero. In their eyes, it wasn't worth even a lousy half point. I think if I stumbling along a spring board holding a beer in one hand and a hoola hoop in the other, drank the beer and then through the hoop into the water and then tried to land ass first through the hoop I could get at least a 1.5 from the New Zealand judge. That would have been enough to beat out the Gold Medal favorite Chinese divers on their last attempt. But then a Russian guy hits his feet on the diving board on the way down and he too enters the water showing all the kiddies what a right-angle looks like. This was unbelievable, the best diving competition in the world, and three teams screwed it up in quick succession. It was fantastic! I loved it, and diving may become my new favorite non-mainstream sport from now until the end of the Olympics. Oh what I would have given to do commentary on that event. I know that it is sad that they gave away four years of hard training and so on, but if it gives me a little chuckle them I'm sure they think it was all worth it.
So yeah, poker...I haven't played a hand since last post because of setting up the new stuff and playing around with that (pictures coming soon...as well as a comment from Dawn Fraser on what my new poker chips will mean for poker getting accepted into the Olympics.). Good news is it look s like our Saturday night game will have at least 7 players, maybe more. That's great news for me, even if we are not going to bet real money it should be fun. I might be able to convince them to go into a $1 buy in tournament, but who knows. We did try the new stuff out last night with me against my distra...My girlfriend heads-up. This is too easy sometimes, and no matter what pairs she has she will bet 2 pair like it is the nuts. She doesn't understand the philosophy of slow-playing a set either, and she knows I like to bluff lots against her. Out of the first 20 hands, she won 13 of them. Problem was, I was chip leader by about 4-1. When she won, it was because I folded pre or post flop. When I won it was because my set of jacks beat her pair of 6's at the showdown. It's not really good habits that I learn from these games, but if she won I would never hear the end of it (so she never will win).
I am still rotten that I can not go in the MMPBT that Iggy has organized, but I can be included in another way. A lot of people are offering up bounties on some people in the tournament to add a little spice to things. Well, since I am so proud of my new poker toys, I am willing to offer my old plastic poker chips and a beat up deck of paper playing cards (may or may-not have come free with a happy meal) to the person that comes in dead last as a booby prize. Said person would then have to post me a picture of the chips and cards being put to use. The chips are 300 genuine plastic (none of that fake plastic crap) chips in four colours with a big spade in the middle. They have ridges around the outside so that they are un-even enough to make stacking them any more than 8 high impossible. They also have a dollar amount written on them in big black pen. The cards will be some crappy deck I find in the bottom of a box that will have all 52 cards, and are guaranteed to last out the first hand. After that, you're on your own. I hope Iggy accepts this offer, as it lets me be a part of the action even though I can not compete. And besides, my offer has the word "booby" in it.
Thank you again for reading, I have noticed a lot of new readers lately and many returning punters too (even a few from military address'). My plight is a long one, but it will be all worth it in the end. On the film side of things, this weekend being my birthday, I will be receiving a little bit of funding from family and friends to go towards getting the first movie out of the pages and onto some film. I will still be way off getting something that is presentable, but every step forward is a good one! I hope you will be along for the ride! In my next post, in addition to my continued DFW updates, I will be posting a short history of Australian sporting legends that the majority of my US friends would never have heard of. And sadly, the few Aussie readers here might not know them either. Until next time, have fun!
2 comments:
On the diving topic, I watched the same event on the CBC here in Canada. The commentator actually said before the chinese scores come up that if the divers do not complete the dive they planned, then the judges have to give them zeros across the board.
So they didn't really have a chance to give them the paritial points the diver that didn't blow it earned.
Yeah maybe, but that still doesn't take away from my fun. It wasn't like there were the only ones that screwed up, they were the only ones that got a zero though.
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