by john | Nov 17, 2009 | Gambling, Poetry, Vegas
Does anyone have a good plugin or app to keep comment spammers off your WordPress blog? I’m by no means an expert on the format and I get tons of spam comments each day. So I’d love your help if there’s a solution out there that I just don’t know about.
Back in Atlanta this week, working (ish) ’til Wednesday afternoon. Got no plans tonight if you’re in the ATL and wanna get together, let me know. I’ve pretty much settled into a routine of staying at the Marriott Century Center, because it’s convenient to the interstate and thus my office in Midtown. It’s decent, and as of last night I’d locked up Marriott Platinum status until 2011, so I get the concierge level rooms. The nice bath mat and robe in the room is pretty spiffy, but I haven’t taken advantage of the concierge lounge yet. May check that out tonight.
Thanks for all the nice Facebook comments on my poetry contest win a couple weeks ago. It was pretty wacky to me to win the thing, since I’d never entered a poetry contest before. So I was shocked when I got the notification, and pleased because the way the poem came about was really neat. So I read the piece at the last meeting of the Writer’s Club, and it was very well-received. I kinda only started going to this club because my senior HS English teacher is on the board, so that gave it a measure of respectability in my mind. I gave her a copy of my book at the last meeting, and she was touched a little by the gesture.
Nothing really to report, since I had my crushing run at Omaha in West Virginia I’ve since given back $100 to the poker economy of Cherokee, NC on the electronic tables there, and dropped a gross $240 in my home game last week. I kept ending up second best, with draws that didn’t get there, or hands that wouldn’t hold up. I did manage to crack BadBlood’s aces with my kings in a hand that had we been playing deeper I could have gotten away from, but didn’t rake a significant pot for four hours after that.
In the AA v KK hand I had position on Blood, who was very early to act. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t UTG, but it was close. He raised preflop, his buddy Mike called and I three-bet. Now my preflop three-bet range is fairly narrow, and I need to work on expanding that, but I when I took his $3.25 raise to $8, I’d pretty closely defined my range as being a big pair or AK. Action folded around to Blood, who re-popped me to $31. Mike got out of the way and I thought to myself “He’s got Aces, but I don’t have any chips, I wish we each had a pile of money so I could get away from this hand.” But I had less than $40 in front of me, so I shipped it in. Blood called the five or six extra dollars, and I made a set on the turn to come from behind. I did have a bit of a sweat, as the Ks on the turn was the third spade, but I faded the flush and doubled up. It didn’t happen again all night, so I became the spewmaster. It wasn’t pretty.
Hopefully I can provide a better showing for myself in Vegas in a few weeks. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you there, and so is Suzy. We get in relatively early on Thursday and leave Monday, so we’ll be around to party and we’re both planning on playing the tournament. I bet I wouldn’t win a last longer with my wife.
A new episode of the Gambling Tales Podcast is coming up first of next week, with the inimitable Dr. Pauly as our special guest. We’ve got two more episodes in the can after this one, then we need to pick up more material for later shows. If you’ve got a great gambling story, drop us a line at gtpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks to everyone who’s downloaded and publicized the podcast, the response has been great and we’re having a blast doing it. I think starting in the new year we’re gonna try to do some promotional things, maybe with Cake Poker (bonus code GTpodcast!) in a shameless attempt to monetize the podcast and get more listeners.
by john | Sep 24, 2009 | Poems, Poetry
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.
by john | Aug 15, 2009 | Poems, Poetry
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.
by john | Jun 22, 2009 | Poetry
What’s going on in Iraq right now is fucked up. This isn’t finished, just a draft, but it kinda had to come out. Right Now.
Neda
I just watched you die
on YouTube.
While your father’s screams
tore through the streets of Tehran
I sat at my safe desk
eating my safe breakfast
while you bled out
the last seconds of your sixteen years
in the middle of a street
thousands of miles away
because you wanted
what I’ve never been without.
While I shoved a Twix bar down my throat
the last flicker of light
went out
of your eyes
on my monitor.
While I slept
thousands marched
into the jaws of a machine
hell-bent on status quo
that chewed you up
and spit you out
onto the internets
where your story
can live on
even as they wash your blood
from the streets.
by john | Jun 14, 2009 | Poetry
Drinking Philosophical
I’m drinking beer and waxing philosophical
while I look across another empty dinner table
and stare out the window
at an empty spot in the driveway.
I’m sitting here drinking
watching MASH reruns on the TV
wondering where she went
and if she’s coming back.
The letter on the fridge bets on “No”
but the seventh beer says “Maybe”
and the ninth says “Yes”
so I keep right on drinking
all the way to “Of course.”
I fall asleep in my chair again
while the cat stares disapprovingly
from the top of the TV set
and the dog drinks beer from his water dish
and eats microwave popcorn
from a half-melted Tupperware bowl on the floor.
