Sometimes things work out in odd ways. I did the Story Slam reading a couple weeks ago, and after the Friday night session, Gina Stewart and Brenda Gambill, better known around Charlotte as the ringleaders of Doubting Thomas, played a set. Gina told a great story about walking through New York City and seeing a guy sitting in the doorway of the Chelsea Hotel cutting himself, and the conflicted feelings she felt before she went over to him to see if he was okay. It shook loose a chunk of poem that I’ve had locked up for a while, and I pounded this out the next afternoon. I read it that night and it got a good reception. I haven’t named it yet, maybe I’ll just call it Chelsea. The filename I saved it under was Wet Concrete, but that doesn’t feel right.
I don’t see him dragging a stolen Food Lion grocery cart uphill
loaded down with a hot water heater and cans picked up
off the side of the road
heading for the recycling center hoping for just enough
to get another bottle of get me through the night.
I don’t see her pay for a corn dog and cup of complimentary ice
with pennies and haul the seven mismatched garbage bags
that make up her whole world out into the heat of the August afternoon.
I don’t see him sitting in the rain mumbling at nothing
and carving names into his wiry limbs with a rusty jacknife
while his own blood drips pink
and runs off down the sidewalk,
puddling for a second around my Ecco loafers.
But I see you
kneeling in front of a wild-eyed Walt Whitman madman
to say “hey man, you alright?”
I look at you
in your duct-taped Doc Martens
thrift-store Dickie’s work shirt
maybe a dollar and a half in your own pocket
while you kneel on the wet concrete
to touch the face of a stranger
and for a minute
before the world washes my vision away again
I see.
I’m trying to get back to blogging on a more or less regular basis, and for now I’m obviously leaning towards the “less regular” side of things. Back from Pensacola/Biloxi, and managed to recoup some of the losses I saw on my trip there earlier this year, picking up about a $400 profit on the trip. My bankroll is still pretty anemic, but that’s just the status quo for right now.
If you’re in Charlotte this weekend, and have any interest in seeing me read my poetry, come out to Festival in the Park. I’m reading Friday evening and Saturday morning on the Theatre Stage, and I’ll have copies of my book to sell as well. I’m reading at 6:30 Friday and at 11:15 Saturday, so I hope I’ll see you there. I also will be doing a special evening at Story Slam! later this fall when I read poetry with a couple of friends, so I hope you can make that as well.
As trip reports go, this one will be pretty boring, not many hands of interest, but a couple. I played the noon tournament at the IP in Biloxi (a significant upgrade over the property of the same name in Vegas) and busted shortly after the first break when it turned into a shove-fest. I moved over to 4/8 limit to get my feet wet for a little while and treaded water for a couple hours before I decided to go look for greener pastures. I think I cashed out up about $5 on the limit game, which means I was down about $100 for the day with tournament fees, some ill-advised time at a slot machine and a minor Pai Gow loss. But I did have a free buffet coupon, so at least I ate for free.
I headed over to the Isle of Capri, which again was a decent enough place, if small. Most of the casinos around Biloxi felt small, and the thing that continued to screw me up was the fact that they were multi-level casinos. Not huge hotels with casinos, but two and three stories of gaming. So you took escalators to different sections of the gaming floor. I think it hearkens back to when they had to be built on boats or at least piers, so they needed to have a smaller footprint. I think the Belterra in Indiana was also two stories. But it was odd to me to have the machines and tables split up by escalators.
So I played 1/2 at the Isle and ended up with a good session, although it didn’t start well.I picked up a few small pots here and there and finally called a raise in early position with QJo against a loose player who was catching everything he went after. I know, even for me that’s a loose call, but the two other callers helped. The flop helped more, coming down Q-J-x rainbow. Gin! Even better gin when the guy in front of me, who was steaming a little after stacking off to the laggy chaser open-shoved for 80+ into a $45 pot. I put my $88 into the pot, and the laggy chaser called both our all-ins. He was getting about 2.5-1 on his money, so I could see where chasing the gutshot with unimproved AK seemed like a good idea. The guy who open-shoved tabled Q-8 for just top pair, and I tabled my top two.
You know the story, right? Not just a 10 on the turn, but the river as well, in case I missed the straight the first time. So there went my first buy-in. On the one hand, I bought in short so it didn’t hurt as much. On the other hand, if I’d had $188 in my stack instead of $88, I probably could have pushed him off the draw. Meh. Poorly played on all streets. Again.
So I reloaded for another hundred and went back to work. Now I only had a day, so I only took $500 with me to Biloxi, and it had all the makings of an early night, but I started to run a little better, read little better, and generally play a little better. I had developed a tight table image (not sure how that happened), so when I raised UTG to $11 with pocket eights, I was surprised to see a guy two seats down (we’ll call him Steamy) re-raise me to $40. He gets one guy to flat-call, and I look at my stack of about $120. I can’t call here, because I’m out of moves at that point, and I think he might be looking to exploit my tight image by pushing me around with Ace-paint. So I shove. Steamy folds, the flat-caller flat calls, and the board runs out J-J-5-x-x. I show my eights, the caller mucks, and Steamy goes apeshit about how he gave me too much credit and it wouldn’t happen again. I couldn’t resist trying to stick the needle in a little further, so I looked down and said “Tens?” He replied with “I folded the winner, that’s all YOU need to know.” As I was stacking the pot, I gave in to temptation again and said “Obviously you didn’t, because I’m stacking chips.” Dickish, I know, but it felt good. I also knew that if I got the chance I could double through him because there was no way I’d ever push him off another hand.
And I didn’t. I picked up two kings in early position, made the same raise to $11, and he three-bet me to $40. I shoved for a little over $220, and he quickly called. No ace hit the board, and even though I was a bit concerned that he may have flopped a set of queens, he quickly mucked and left as I tabled my kings. That hand put me at the high-water mark for the table, and I began to seriously think about leaving. I’ve gotten a little gun-shy about being the prohibitive big stack at the table, because of horribly mis-playing a big stack in Charleston and not racking up when I realized I had the entire table covered. So I paid a little more attention to what was going on and took care not to loosen up too much before I made the decision to leave. Not long before I headed out, a guy sat down who was obviously a regular, and obviously a player. He looked around the table, checked out the stacks, and made sure he had enough to stack anyone sitting there. Apparently there’s no max buy-in to most of the no-limit tables in Biloxi, because that wasn’t the last time I saw somebody sit down and buy in huge to a 1/2 game. I played a few pots, picked up a few chips, and then racked up when the blinds came around again. He confirmed my suspicions when he said “You can’t take all that money, it’s the only reason I put this much on the table!” I left him disappointed and took my profits off into the night.
Crashed at the Grand because I could use Total Reward points toward my room, and if I didn’t use them before November they’d vanish. The Grand doesn’t have a poker room, but the room was only $99, and I had enough points to cut it to $50 by the time it was all said and done. I spent a little time at the tables playing a game called Flop Poker, which I’d never seen before.
It’s kinda like real poker, and kinda like Let it Ride. You put $5 into the pot, as do all the other players at the table. Then you put a $5-$25 ante down. You get 3 cards, which you look at and decide if you want to stay in the hand. If you do, you match your ante with a flop bet. I gave up on trying to evaluate starting hands and just played blind, which means you put your $5 ante and flop bets out before you ever get cards. The dealer then turns over a 3-card flop, and you must use two cards from the dealer’s hand to go with your three cards to make a poker hand. You have to make Jacks or better to win the ante and flop bets, but the best 5-card hand wins the pot regardless, because that’s where you compete against the other players.
So I played that for about an hour, and hit a couple of big hands. A straight at that game pays out 11-1, so that was worth $55 on one hand, and then I made a full house, worth 30-1 or $150. After that I decided to toss the dealer a redbird and go on to bed.
Still alive, mostly. Work has kicked my ass over the past couple of weeks, and all the hard work I put in on Seussical made me remember why I quit doing theatre – it’s HARD. The show looks great, though, and with 500 light and spot cues in 95 minutes of show, it’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever written. If you’re in Charlotte this weekend or next, I recommend it, especially if you have kids. Or act like one.
Right now I’m in a Springhill Suites in Pensacola Beach, Florida, after teaching a session at a Lighting for Worship workshop today. I’m teaching another session at the WFX (worship facilities expo) conference the end of next month, so if I’m not careful, I’m going to end up the expert on energy-efficient lighting for churches in the Southeast. There are worse outcomes, of course, but it’s not exactly where I’m shooting for my career to be heading. Not that I’m really sure where I want my career to be heading, but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish, as they say. But work is going okay, even if I’m juggling managing two offices with directing a play. How did I ever think I was effective as a manager while I was running a theatre company? Talk about self-delusion! Yeah, now I manage more than twice as many people and do less than a quarter the theatre stuff I used to do, and it still takes all my time. Good thing I was kinda burned out on theater anyway.
I played a little poker last weekend at Bad Blood’s – finished down $40 for the night. Realistically should have finished up significantly, though. I got my stack in the middle three times, every time a big favorite, and got stacked once, quartered once and doubled up once. I got it in against Jim with nut flush against top set and he went runner-runner boat on me. Then I got it in against Lee Jones with top pair and a flush draw against overcards and a smaller flush draw. We ran it twice and he turned a bigger pair on the first board then got there on the low on the second board to quarter me. The last time I shipped it in I doubled through Otis with two pair and a flush draw in O8 against his overcards and a smaller flush draw. That one held up to double me up for only a small loss on the evening, but if my favorites had worked out I would have been a significant winner. Oh well, tomorrow I’m taking a vacation day and heading to Biloxi to see if I can recoup anything I lost there earlier this year.
Looking very, very forward to Vegas after a busy fall…
All I been thinking about lately is Seuss, and Gone with the Wind. If that seems a strange pairing, well, that’s my life kids. I’m smack in the middle of theatre-world again, after continuing to think I’d escaped it. I guess I steered the ship too close to the vortex, and now I’ve been drawn back in, at least for a few more weeks.
The next eight days are all about Dr. Seuss for me. I’m designing lights for Seussical! The Musical (exclamation point not mine) for Theatre Charlotte, which almost goes without saying, since that’s about the only place I’ve designed for a couple of years now. It’s a fun little show melding a bunch of Dr. Seuss stories into a moderately cohesive plot. There’s a Grinch, Horton the Elephant, Green Eggs and Ham, Whos, and of course, the Cat in the Hat.
When the director first contacted me about doing the show, I only had one demand: time. The shows that people want to hire me for are more flashy, more rock-show type lighting. That means I bring in a lot of technology for the shows. A LOT of technology. There’s about $50K worth of lighting equipment in the air for this show, and a new lighting control console as well. That level of tech is a little more complicated than the typical show (in Charlotte) and requires a lot more programming. So I asked for, and got, a full day of programming time dedicated just to little ol’ me in the theatre. So I signed up for a vacation day this Friday and I’ll spend it in a darkened theatre making lights move and go blinky-blink.
One reason I agreed to do the show (in addition to the fact that my fee, after I pay my assistant, will be about equal to the price of two round-trip tickets to Vegas) is because I could take a look at a lot of new LED technology in real-world applications. LEDs are a real hot topic in stage lighting right now, and I wanted to see what we could really accomplish with them. So I can use this show as a sales tool as well as just a show, bringing customers through the venue during the day and showing off the rig to designers, engineers and architects. So I can bring the work world and the hobby world together a little. It should be a pretty good-looking show, I’ll try to post some photos here whenever I get a chance. If you’re around and wanna come see it, let me know.
And in yet more theatrical news, I’m directing a play called Moonlight & Magnolias for another local community theatre. It’s a comedy about the frantic period in film when David Selznick shut down production on Gone with the Wind and fired both the director and the screenplay. The play is set over five days wit Selznick, Victor Fleming and Ben Hecht crammed in a little office rewriting the book into a screenplay at a fever pitch. It’s pretty funny, and I have a decent cast, it’s just a challenge to me to direct something so small after the past few years of only doing Shakespeare.
So I’m back into theatre for a little while before I retire again. I know, me and Favre. But I’m pretty sure I’m done lighting shows after this. I’m tired of taking my weekends and evenings to do theatre when I could be working on my writing or hanging with the wife, who is currently remodeling the upstairs bathroom while I try to make enough money to pay for it. I need to find her a cheaper hobby.
So that’s life here for the next couple weeks, if you need me, I’ll be in a theatre. Somewhere.
I’m thinking about starting a new feature here involving hotel and restaurant reviews, given the amount that I’m travelling lately. Of course, the information contained herein would likely only be of use to folks travelling to Atlanta or various portions of North Carolina, but who knows, maybe somebody would find those scribbles useful. There’s certainly nothing to report on the poker front, since I haven’t played a hand of cards in weeks. I’ve got a seat at a new small buy-in tourney tonight, though, so we’ll see how that goes. This weekend might even see a return of the home game if I can make the schedule work. Summer’s tough for home games with people taking long vacations and other travel, not to mention my screwy work schedule.
So last week was spent mostly on the road. I drove to Atlanta Sunday afternoon to be there in time to do my scintillating recap of the Sunday Warm-Up for PokerStars, then was in Atlanta through Tuesday afternoon. Spent Tuesday night at home, then headed east on Wednesday morning. I went to Elizabeth City on Wednesday, then continued on to Manteo (home of the first honky child born in the US and the Lost Colony outdoor drama). From Manteo went back to Elizabeth City, then to Greenville, NC (NOT G-Vegas, dammit), then to Washington, NC (also the less interesting of two cities of the same name), then back home after a couple of meetings in Raleigh. That road trip sucked up 3 days and roughly eight or nine hundred miles. I typically stay in Marriott hotels when I travel, because I’m high on the rewards list with Marriott, and the rooms are typically harmless. I crashed in a nice Marriott in Atlanta, then a decent Fairfield in Elizabeth City.
FairField Inns are kinda hit or miss. As the entry-level hotel in the Marriott chain, the older ones are pretty dumpy, with exterior doors (a big negative on my travel requirements) and crappy beds. But some of them (like the one in Wytheville, VA) are pretty damn swank. The one in Elizabeth City was pretty nice. I sprung for the jacuzzi room upgrade, which turned into a suite, with a pair of LCD TVs and an iHome stereo rig. So I put the iPod on the stereo and settled in for a nice soak. Just what the Dr. ordered after a long day in the car.
Less impressive was the Courtyard in Greenville, NC. I’m always baffled by the fact that the Courtyard, which is designed for business travelers, is typically more expensive with fewer amenities than a Fairfield. Yes, it did have wireless internet while the Fairfield had wired internet, but that was the only upgrade. The bed was hard as a rock, and the shower head was located at about 5’5″ off the floor of the tub. I’m 6’1″, so this was an issue. I do not enjoy doing backbends in the shower in the morning. Any place with low-hanging shower heads goes on my “not again” list.
So I’ve been skewing my lodging choices to the ends of the spectrum, either hitting a full-scale Marriott, or trying to find a new or newly renovated Fairfield. The rooms (and bathrooms) in the Marriotts tend to be bigger and nicer, but the automatic inclusion of the mini-fridge in a Fairfield counts for a lot when I’m going to be in the town for several days.
Later on, we’ll talk about road food, when to explore and when to concentrate on getting something harmless that won’t have you doing unpleasant butt-clenches on the highway.
I’m sitting on a 3.99 plastic Wal-Mart chair
on a concrete balcony
on the third floor of a Courtyard motel
in Eastern North Carolina
watching rainbows smear the asphalt
across the parking lot
as oil and water play stubborn
through the summer thunderstorm.
I’m drinking a lukewarm Miller Lite trying not to notice
the fat woman testing the superstructure of her halter top
and the suspension of her ’93 Yellow Geo Tracker.
Her flip-flops thwack-splish thwack-splish
across the parking lot looking for a vacancy
and maybe a little shelter from the storm.
I put a little Jessica Lea Mayfield on the in-room iPod rig
and prop my bare feet up on the wet wrought iron railing,
letting the dog-daily 4 o’clock shower
wash 300 miles off my tired feet.
A dragonfly wanders by for a sip of my beer.
I share.
He doesn’t drink much, but it looks like enough
’cause he flies off in a meandering besotted path
beating his wings in time to the music
and dancing between the raindrops.
That’s kinda what the last half of my week was like. I put in somewhere around 1,500 miles from Sunday to Friday, and had more than one project crisis to deal with along the way. All in all it was the kind of week that you’re really happy to see the back side of. So now that I’m looking at the back side of it, we’ll see if there’s any ammunition for stories or poems in there.
So last night I found myself in a somewhat familiar situation of late, I wanted to go see a concert and Suzy didn’t want to go with me. Since I don’t really have a designated wingman in these situations, I took the comp tickets I had to the Avett Brothers show and went by myself. I was pleasantly surprised when I got there to see that my free tickets were next to my friends Gillian and Douglas, so at least I had someone to chat with between sets.
BTW, I’m taking applications for wingman. There’s a lot of good music out there, and Suzy and my sister don’t always wanna go. Lemme know if you’re in.
Regardless, this was supposed to be the album release/homecoming party for the Avett Boys, but label things/tour and tweaking caused the record to be pushed back another month. So all the folks that bought tickets got a coupon for a free download of a live EP from the show and a free poster. The show didn’t sell out, looked like it was about 5,000 strong by the time the Avetts took the stage, but there were plenty of seats available. The boys had a good time, playing some old favorites and about half a dozen tracks off the new album, too.
This was the first time I’d seen the Avetts with a drummer. The drummer for the album came out and played on a bunch of the more rock n’ roll songs with them, and it added a ton to the sound. Having a full drum kit backing up the band was a huge adder in my opinion, and something I hope they will keep in the future.
I like everything I’ve heard off the new album, but I can see where some of the long-time fans are going to have issues. There’s a lot more straight-up rock songs, and the sound is a little more poppy. There’s a lot less of Scott on banjo in the new songs, and more electric bass and drums. I think it’s a good move, as it will broaden the band’s appeal to a wider audience, but it’s gonna piss off some people. Of course, it’s impossible to change anything without pissing somebody off, so fuck ’em. As long as the boys are having a good time and writing killer songs they’ll be just fine.
Anyway, the video below is from last night. I didn’t shoot it, just embedded off YouTube.
Now that the lovely April has confirmed the annual degenerate’s poker tourney at Caesar’s Palace for 12/12/09, it’s time to lock in those Vegas plans! Now I booked a room for Suzy and I at the MGM Grand a while back, and got what I thought was a pretty good deal – $149/night with an all-day buffet pass for each person in the room. That works out to be at least $100/day worth of free food, so in essence we’re staying at the MGM Grand for $50/night!
I know, I won’t be eating all my meals there, but I can certainly schedule my life so that I’m eating most of them at the MGM buffet, and even if it just covers breakfast and one other meal for Suzy and I each day, that still covers at least $50-60 per day. Plus after our trip last December, we swore we weren’t staying at fleabags anymore. So sorry, IP, I must depart for softer beds and better food choices.
So we’re going to arrive on Thursday, party like rock stars for several days, and head back to the CLT on Monday. Now I had a crazy idea, or more to the point the vivacious Betty had an idea, that maybe we could find a place to set up tables and sell/sign our books at some point over the course of the weekend. Then I got to thinking, there have been a bunch of books published (or in the process of being published) by our blogger brethren and sistren over the past couple of years. So here’s the question – would any of the other bloggers that have published books in the past year or two like to go in on a reception area for a couple of hours? You know who you are, lemme know if you’re interested in a concerted joint book-pimpage.
Then afterwards we drink like college kids. Of course we do that anyway. See you in December!
I was at the beginning of a long, drawn-out post on whether or not to start writing chapters of a book on sales here or keep this as a more focused fiction/poetry blog, when I remembered something April once told me. I think her words were “It’s your blog. Fuck ’em if they don’t like it.”
See? We don’t just like her because she’s really cute. With good shoes.
So there will be some stuff coming in the next few weeks about how to sell things. If you like it, read it. If you sell stuff and find it helpful, great. If not, oh well, there will continue to be poetry, fiction and random stories from my life floating around as well.
And one day I might get the chance to play poker again and have something there worth writing about. Maybe.
It was some time after anything that could be considered early morning, so the boys decided to forego breakfast, rummaging through the economy-size cooler in the lower levels of the houseboat to find a pack of brats to grill up. John Roy manned the grill, Joe Don being barred from anything having to do with fire after the unfortunate fart-lighting incident that cost John Roy his favorite sofa a couple years ago. The brats were nearing the perfect mix of plump and sizzly when Joe Don called down from the roof of the houseboat.
“Hey! Car comin’!”
“I can see that from here, dumbass. Can you tell who it is yet?”
“No. Car’s all I can see.”
“Well, that ain’t gonna be nothin’ good.” Nobody John Roy was interested in talking to drove a car. Unless you count a hearse, and with all the jackin’ up Elvis had done to his hearse, it was more Gravedigger than anything a real-life undertaker would be driving, so it most likely didn’t count. John Roy’s suspicions were furthered when the Mercedes S-Class sedan pulled up in front of the houseboat in a cloud of red Georgia dust.
The door opened and a shapely leg extended, followed by the rest of an equally shapely woman in her late thirties. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she wore rimless glasses that gave John Roy a few unfortunate Sarah Palin fantasies and he tried to still the stirrings in his cutoff shorts as he wiped bratwurst grease on his apron as he approached the woman.
“Hey there. Somethin’ I can help you with?” John Roy extended his hand, but the woman just looked at it hanging there like a hopeful trout, and after a minute he put it in the pocket of his shorts.
“Are you John Smith?” the woman asked, looking at an envelope in her hands.
“Yes ma’am. John Roy Smith IV, at your service.” He sketched a rough bow, punctuated with a flourish of his grillin’ fork that came within an eyetooth of puncturing the woman’s impressive bosom. She jumped back and uttered a little squeal, startling John Roy, who lost his balance mid-bow and had to correct a little to keep from sprawling in the dirt.
“Ahem, yes. Mr. Smith, my name is Cynthia Johnson-Martin and I am an associate with Martin, Beckwood, Averett and Vincent from Memphis.”
“Woooo, Memphis. That’s a long way away. You must be tired from all that travelling. Why don’t you come on over here and set a spell. Joe Don! Throw me a beer for the lady.” He yelled over his shoulder. Joe Don tossed a PBR in a perfect spiral to land in John Roy’s outstretched palm.
“Hey, asshole! This here’s a lady! She needs a glass, too!” Joe Don followed the beer with a vintage Burger King Star Wars glass featuring Princess Leia in her slave girl costume. John Roy had a complete set of eight of these glasses. But only the ones with Leia on them, because in his words, all the rest of them Star Wars dudes were homos. Except R2D2, he was kinda cool. John Roy poured the beer into the glass and tossed the empty up onto the deck of the boat as he steered the woman into one of his webbed lawn chairs.
“There, that’s better. Now, what can I do for you? You wanna brat? They’re almost done.” John Roy was at his most solicitous, somewhat concerned that this woman was here to serve him with divorce papers from the temperamental Erlene. He didn’t remember marrying Erlene, exactly, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d ended up in court over something he couldn’t remember doing.
“No thank you, Mr. Smith. Now, as I mentioned, I am with the firm of Martin, Beckwood, Averett and Vincent in Memphis. I am here to inform you that you have been named a beneficiary in the estate of your grandfather, John Roy Smith, Jr. Our firm had handled Mr. Smith’s affairs for some time now, and with his passing last month we are now dealing with the final dispensation of his assets.”
“Wow. Well, I sure do hate that you came all the way out here for nothin’, but my Grandaddy died before I was born, so I’m afraid I ain’t the John Roy Smith IV you’re looking for. Too bad, I coulda used some beneficiary-in’. As you can see, we done seen better days ‘round here.”
The woman took a long look around the dry lakebed, the houseboat, the fraying lawn chairs and the grill with its feet mired in what once was the bottom of a lake, and couldn’t help but agree.
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