FRIDAY NIGHT NOT AT THE MOVIES: Neil’s solstace party is going on right now, so get over there, ok? John Unger is still in need of warm bodies and healthy backs this weekend, it’s crunch time, so help him out, ok? The first movie of the Ring trilogy is out, and i don’t mean that hack wagner (when she say’s dylan, she means Dylan Thomas! the girl ain’t got any culture!) Mail servicces apear to be stable, so feel free to mail me. and if you do get a bounce, please post the bounce to the comments sectrion, thanks!
IN CLOAKED AND GUARDED TERMS: I finally managed to check out the east pilsen floating inside straight and omphaloskepsis society meeting (thirty points to whoever gets the reference.) (and yes, this is in muddied almost iimpossible to decipher terms, owing to the nature of the pursuit pursued) Most everyone seemed to have fun, except the loosers, and there in lies the rub, because it’s not about knowing when to hold and fold, it’s about knowing when to play. Penny ante is for pleasure, anything else is for money. And you can’t make money playing. which reminds me of one of my story’s…
I spent my twelth sumemr with my grasndmother. and she wanted to play cards. i never really played, unless you count fuish and war cards. My grandmother had been an avowed gambler for her entire life: the fights over poker and pinochle and gin in our apartment’s both before and after my birth were legendary. By the time i was twelve, almost all her friends were dead or moved off, as were most of her relatives, and she had few oppertunities to play. Enter me, and that long summer. We played a lot of cards,from poker to gin and beyond including games whose names and rules i can’t remember. I made the usual newbie mistakes of always drawing to an inside stright, and betting on a low pair. My grandmother had a ball.
And I lost 24,000 dollars. Well, on paper, i didn’t have 24k bucks, and neither did she. but she always insisted we play for money, “because anything else is just solotaire, and money shows who won.” So i owed her a shitload of money, and she insisted i play her one last game of five card card draw poker, nothing wild, double or nothing. I reluctantly consented, and drew a royal flush. No dummy I, i refused to draw another card. She drew 3. “I think i actually said read em and weep!” as i slapped my cards down, i was so excited. She just smiled and laid down 4 aces, one after the other, and then paused dramatically, and put down a fifth ace, and reminded me that 5 of a kind beats a royal flush. I protested, claimed cheating, said something about the deck only having 4 aces in it, and she said no, this deck had more, and peeled off a few more aces from the deck, and few from my pocket, and a couple from my lap, and one from behind my ear…
{which reminds me about a conversation between Harold Ross and one of his writers, where he recounted “the damndest card game” which he’d seen the night before. One player drew an ace high straight and the other drew four aces. The writer listened to the story and then asked him who got shot–and had to explain what had happened to Ross.}
Anyway, that’s why i had fun last night and some other people didn’t. She taught me not to gamble, probably unintentionally, because she always grumbled that i would never play her after that, but that’s the lesson i got. And if she were still alive, i’d still be mowing her lawn to retire my debt. So don’t bring it to the table if you don’t have it to loose, don’t cry when it’s gone, because it was going there when you first pulled up a chair.
