Mean Gene

Cowboy Up; or, Sketchy Comedy

If I've learned anything about playing poker in the past year or so, it is this: as soon as you think you've "figured things out", you will quickly learn that you were badly mistaken. You may gain insight, you may experience an epiphany, you may have a lightbulb appear above your head and cry out "Eureka!". But when you get smug and say, "Oh, this is EASY", this is when you are cruising for a bruising.

Played some Omaha the other night, played tight, won some money. It felt like I was getting away with something. Having three or four people betting into you when you have the nuts will do that to you. Silly me took this to mean that, for the rest of my days, every Omaha session would be like this. Uh, no. That first night I got clobbered in the face with big cards and nutty draws. I played Saturday night and it seemed like every hand I was dealt was Q-8-5-2 off-off-off-suit. When you're playing with a four-color deck and you see so many hands with red hearts and black spades and blue diamonds and green clovers that you develop a hankering for Lucky Charms you know its gonna be a long night.

I dropped like 30BB in 100 hands, and I don't think I played more than a handfull past the flop. Won two hands. Could not get anything going at all. I might've lost 3x as much had I played like the other folks at the table, a fishy school of chaser who might've been floured and fried in my metaphorical pan had I gotten a hand now and then.

So I'll still be adding Omaha to my repertoire when I play. To recover (and because I wasn't sleepy even at 2AM) I played a SNG and took second. That helped, and then last night I played another and took 3rd. No biggie, but I had no reason to make the money. In one hand I was dealt KK, raised it wayyyy up there, and had FOUR people call. Great. So the flop comes Q-7-7. Crap. No one has a 7, right? I make a bet, three fold, and the shortstack calls. Next card is a blank, I'm pretty much committed, I push all in. She calls, turns over J-7. Huh? I'm about to break my rule about belittling players and type "You called a huge raise with J-7!!!" when I spike a king on the river and knock her out. "Sorry, that was brutal" I type as penance and go back to the fray. That's about the 4th SNG out of 5 where I won a big hand with KK. Not a bad hand to have.

In sum I broke even for the weekend, not bad after a horror session. Now I have to gear up for the next WPBT event at PokerStars Wednesday night. All bloggers and readers are welcome, maybe we can get over 200 people for this one...?

After dinner #2 last night and watching The Incredibles with the niece and nephew I saw about 7 minutes of "The Sketch Show", which I called the worst show in history last week. This weeks show did nothing to change my opinion, but something else got me to thinking. There's one scene where you see a guy playing piano in what looks like the ballroom of a country club (he's playing, and then suddenly you hear some dissonent notes, plays some more, same thing happens. Even before he stood up I knew that one of his hands was either fake or a hook. It was the latter) and another where a guy steps down from a Lunar Landing Module (he steps off the ladder, takes off his helmet, takes a deep breath, and collapses. This is the whole joke). What struck me is this--how much time and effort is required to put these sets/locations together? I mean, the ballroom scene had 10-20 people sitting around tables, there's a piano, the actor is in a tux, there are flowers all around...and the scene is maybe 10 seconds long. The lunar module thing looked pretty fancy, there's the moon surface to put together, the guy is wearing a full astronaut's uniform...all this for a horrible joke that lasts maybe 10 seconds. I can't imagine being the set designer or the prop master or the costume dude and have to do all this hard work for an insipid half-skit that lasts a few heartbeats.

After watching the horror that is "The Sketch Show" I watched the genius that is "Chappelle's Show". Both feature sketch comedy...beyond that there is no comparison. The whole "Wayne Brady" episode, where Wayne and Dave are out driving around at night, just leaves me in awe. I laughed so hard I thought I hurt myself internally. And the Rick James True Hollywood Story will be talked about for generations.

After coming down from that high of hilarity I put in a DVD of the first season of "Mr. Show", a sketch comedy series that appeared on HBO. The 3rd and 4th seasons are much better, but the shows from this season still have their moments. David Cross as Ronnie Dobbs, the ads for the hamburger chain where everyone is swearing...lots of good stuff. Mary Lynn Rajskub, who is one of the actors on "The Sketch Show", also appeared on "Mr. Show". I wonder what thoughts are going thru the poor woman's head as she appears in ultra-lame bits like the one where she's biking down a road, sees a sign indicating curves ahead, and starts weaving back and forth as she pedals along.

You may want to leave here and head to CNN or whatever news you follow, there's been another huge (8.2-8.5) earthquake in the same spot where the one that spawned the tsunami hit. Unreal. There's a tsunami warning and the NOAA is advising people in the area to evacuate.

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