Once upon a time I used to play poker constantly. Somehow while playing 5-6 games of soccer per week and holding down a full-time job I could still find the time to play 15-20 hours of poker per week. Moving to NY definitely changed how much I could play, but UIGEA is what really fucked it up for me. I pulled out almost every dollar I had in an online site, which was a good thing as I didn’t get my entire bankroll stuck in the Neteller mess.

A month ago, I decided to make an effort to start actively playing again. I randomly hit a limit blogger tournament and while I can’t dig up any hand histories, I do have this gem from the chat:

MiamiDon: thats limit with idiots
MiamiDon: most horrible play I’ve seen in weeks, KQ

I’m the idiot. If I remember correctly I spiked a jack to hit an inside straight and crack his aces. It actually got much uglier than that as I pulled a number of suckouts to stay alive for a while. Eventually I lost an all-in when I was ahead as the universe does have a sense of humor.

Today I decided to go back to the drawing board. Back to where I made money in poker to begin with. Limit poker. Low stakes. Today’s results were ridiculously good averaging somewhere around 20BB/hr. I don’t expect that to hold up, but it feels good to kinda get into the swing of things again. We’ll see where this goes.

I realized that I hadn’t updated about the knee recently. Basically, the story is that it started hurting again last week. Like on the level that it was hurting at the beginning of the year. Not a good sign. I’m still doing the therapy and I have another appointment with the doctor in a couple weeks. We’ll see what he has to say about it then.

While in DFW visiting Jim and Adrienne, we had the unfortunate luck of running into a youth group at a restaurant on Sunday afternoon. They were the most obnoxious bunch I’ve ever seen, but I knew exactly what to expect from them. Adrienne was not so lucky, I guess she had never experienced them on the level that I have. So I thought I should write down the personality types for her future reference.

The “Cool” Guy - He is the guy that can play guitar. He wears the trendy clothes like the real cool kids at school, but sings songs about how much he loves God. The housewives at church secretly want their daughters to fuck him so they can live vicariously through them.

The Alpha Male - Easy to spot with wardrobe of I love Jesus t-stirts, he is generally short in stature but makes up for it with his obnoxiously loud voice and spastic antics. In terms of sheer annoyance, he is only matched by the Alpha Female.

The Quiet Boyfriend - He’s been dating the Church Lovin’ Girl since like first grade and just continues to show up because he thinks he will eventually graduate from hand-holding to sex. He’ll likely marry her when they turn 18 because he wants it so bad. He’s going to be sorely disappointed.

The Gay Guy - Easy to spot because he’s the one with a girl on each arm. He’s super-gay but continues to believe that church can fix him. The church girls love him because he’s so easy to talk to and will revel in the fact that they used to hang out with “one of those gays”, but will totally turn their backs on him when he comes out of the closet his sophomore year of college.

The Rebel Girl - She dresses like the cool kids and hates church but continues to show up to events for one of the following reasons: her best friend is super into church, her parents would give her a ton of hell if she stopped going, or she has managed to corrupt one of the church boys and they have sex/do drugs in church on a regular basis.

The Quiet Girl - Already dressing the part of the non-sexy librarian, she is difficult to spot because most the time you won’t even notice her since she almost never speaks. She’ll develop an uncomfortable relationship with her 15 cats when she’s 50 and still single.

The Alpha Female - She’s the most religious of all and has no qualms about telling you so at any moment. She is impossible to miss because her voice is piercing even when she speaks in a normal tone. You can never have a conversation because she won’t let you get a word in and if you do happen to you can rest assured she isn’t listening to you.

The Church Lovin’ Girl - She loves God, plain and simple. she’s easy to spot with her homemade WWJD bracelet and tons of other Jesus paraphernalia. If she is abnormally hot for the church crowd, she surely has a long-term boyfriend that she’s been dating since first grade, but she wants to save herself until marriage. She’ll either marry her high school sweetheart or turn into a crack whore by the time she’s 19.

Youth Minister Guy - You can’t miss the “adult” in the group. Most of the time, he’s going to be the mid-30s guy using hip slang from 5 years ago. He has a myspace page so he can “keep an eye” on the kids in the youth group and will likely be featured on an episode of “To Catch a Predator”. He lives by Wooderson’s quote from Dazed and Confused: “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.” He’ll be the Church Lovin’ Girl’s first customer when she breaks up with her boyfriend.

Yeah, yeah. I’m going to hell. Whatever.

Or alternatively titled, “AC by way of Philadelphia”.
For my Chinese New Year AC trip I hooked up with some friends from work who happened to be going as well, which was awesome because they let me stay in their room on Saturday night so I didn’t have to suffer the late night Saturday bus ride back. To make it even better, we all chipped in and got a rental car, so I didn’t have to ride the bus at all.

Unfortunately, we didn’t do so well in the directions department (obviously not my fault) and we ended up missing the garden state parkway and took the nj turnpike the whole way. Our driver was a fucking maniac though so even with a stop for coffee we still made it in record time. Gold. I headed over to the Borgata and played craps, blackjack and poker until I couldn’t see anymore. Aahhhh home.

Saturday I decided it was time to get some value out of these comps and splurged on the massage/spa. Totally worth it. Not the best massage I’ve ever received, but good nonetheless. It probably would have been better if I weren’t already 6 drinks in. I do have to air a complaint about the spa though. The spa would be awesome if it weren’t for all the full frontal nudity. Seriously guy-getting-out-of-the-shower, I don’t need you to tell me how awesome the spa is while you are drying off your balls. In fact, I don’t need to talk to you at all. Save the conversation for a time when you’re wearing clothes.

I actually played poker with no success this trip. I really need to get my shit together and start playing more poker. And better poker too, this is getting ridiculous. I’m not even winning online anymore. Spanish 21 did me well this trip though, so I managed to squeeze out a winning trip for once.

I was actually disappointed at the Asian turnout at the Borgata this year. Last year I spent Chinese New Year at Caesars, which draws a much bigger Asian crowd. The Borgata didn’t even run any specials for it, likely because their customer-base generally consists of a bunch of kids pretending to be guidos. I love the Borgata, but I think I’m going to have to go back to Caesar’s for CNY next year.

Last year, I made a list of the worst shows I saw all year. This time around I had a much more difficult time thinking of terrible shows that I’ve seen in the past year. There were a bunch of blah shows, but nothing really stuck out to me as painful like 120 Days or Gang Gang Dance last year. I guess that’s because I didn’t torture myself by trying to make it to every show at ACL or by putting myself through another CMJ festival. So I’ve decided to write up a list of my favorite shows in 2007.

• Fujiya and Miyagi - at ACL Studios. Pretty much everything KEXP does is gold and this was no exception.
• Beirut - at ACL Studios. Definitely the best show I saw at SXSW 2007. They are fucking great live. Plus they give band nerds everywhere hope that they too may someday become indie rock heros.
• Monotonix - what’s not to love? Grunge rock from Isreal.
• Girl Talk - it was totally worth it to stay at Elysium all night just to catch his set. Awesomecross.
• Bjork - Bjork at ACLFest. Yeah.
• Arcade Fire - at ACLFest. Rock anthem rock.
• Cornelius - I didn’t write about it previously, but I saw Cornelius at Webster Hall and they are awesome. If you ever get the chance you could see them. Who cares if most of their lyrics are in Japanese?

Other cool things that happened last year.

• Weddings - it seems like everyone got married this year and as much as I hate weddings, I had a fantastic time celebrating them all.
• 30th birthdays - I had a fantastic time at my birthday party and Demanda’s was in Vegas which is always a winner.
• The comedy - performing at Caroline’s was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. I’m so glad I did though.
• Lake Tahoe - I want to go back (when I can snowboard, of course).

Then there were things that started out awesome, but eventually turned into the worst thing ever. I really can’t wait to start playing soccer again.

With the torn ACL, it’s been impossible to go to shows at all. I finally felt like I was capable of standing through an entire show and took the opportunity to finally catch Blonde Redhead. Of course, I didn’t make the decision until the show was completely sold out and I was forced to spend my afternoon responding to posts on craigslist until I finally lucked out and found a ticket for a reasonable price. Craigslist is still awesome.

This was my first show at Terminal 5, which is a pretty nice venue. The soundsystem is good and it has two balconies. I’m not sure how early you have to get there to get a good spot on the balcony, but it seems like it would be totally worth it. The place is huge and since I got to the show late I was stuck in the back and could barely see anything because I always get stuck behind the white guy with the afro.

Blonde Redhead sounded awesome, as expected. I loved how they were all business. They played for an hour and a half and I think they maybe spoke to the audience three times. And twice it was just “thank you”. But they played the hell out of their songs, so it didn’t really matter. I would pay to see them again.

You’ve seen the pirated chinese dvd version, now watch the official dvd of my stand-up from Caroline’s in December. And in case you’re curious, I’m looking to do my next show in March.

1. I fell down some stairs.
2. Don’t worry, I won.
3. It’s kind of like Fight Club.
4. I was just minding my own business when…
5. I’m an idiot.

Draw your own conclusions.

Oh yeah, I went to Lake Tahoe for x-mas. It is absolutely gorgeous there as you can see. I went with Jason, Balki, and Ezra. Here’s the trip in notable quotes:

“You are a bottle of jack away from closing that deal.”

“You need to start having sex with strangers.”

“I am a serial monogamist.”

“No matter what, Dan would tell you that he would have hit that.”

“Did you do that skiing?”

“I feel like every time I take a trip with you I lose a year off my life.”

“This place smells like strippers.”

“I want to see the crutches work their magic.”

“So, are you into guys or girls?”

“It looks like Montbleu only brought out the starters.”

“In chinatown they call that a ‘rucky nickel’”

“I don’t see myself staying away past six am.”

A more coherent write-up another time.

Writer’s strike? Who gives a fuck, American Gladiators is back on!

After the injury I watched a ton of American Gladiators on ESPN Classic and wondered why a show like that ever went off the air. Cheesy pro-wrestling theatrics? Check. Injury lawsuit waiting to happen? Check. What else do you need?

And now it’s back! If they could get rid of all the talking, the show would be awesome or as Wil Weaton suggested, take a drink every time Hulk Hogan says “brother”. The events themselves aren’t terrible, though I’m still trying to figure out how the Eliminator is so fucking difficult now. Is climbing a cargo net really that difficult?

There is one nice thing about all the talking though, you get to hear people say the most ridiculous things possible. In the first episode, my favorite line was from one of the female contestants before the Eliminator. She said “I’m all prayed up.” I guess it really strikes me as funny because she honestly meant it and the only other time I’ve heard “prayed up” is when people ask me if I want to go to church with them. “No thanks, I’m all prayed up.” Tonight’s episode had another gem from a female contestant before the rings event, “My momma is here and she told me to make her get wet.” Yeah. Right. Not creepy. It’s already in the DVR list.