All Jittery

It's not caffeine - or even 5-hour. No, it's the scent of the coin. A free-roll into a $3100 tournament. What a beautiful country. Harrah's decides to shoot up something they're calling the Chicago Poker Classic with a $3100 buy-in. Harrah's wants to own the Chicago-land Poker market, and now they do. And in their corporate big-hearted way they decide to give up 50-something seats on the 3 and the 9, both p and a m for like two weeks. And who but our hero is sitting in on Monday night when he has to go work on Tuesday - but, hey, it's only 7:30, an hour-and-a-half to the next draw. What's there to say, but I'm in.

The pm 9 rolls around and the kind lady pulls the lucky table. Which is 21 where the hero is sitting his should-be-at-home butt. 21 the table hollers and the kind lady walks over says, deal. (The deal here is the lucky seat at the table that draws the high card wins a free seat into the tournament). Hero sits the 3 seat. Dealer deals 3, 4 ACE. Hero shoots dealer a big thumbs up and the ACE of clubs holds up.

Now what? Play aggressive - cause, hey, it's their money ($). Can you say free-roll? Or, do you play Lock-Down-Poker (LDP) because, hey, if you just make the money ($) you're probably going to make $4000, and depending on turn out, 1st might pay out like $120, 000.

Buckle-up boys and girls.

Me and Viet

I first became aware of Vietnam when I was in high school and the folks I ran with generally thought the war a bad thing. It defined the group politically and it was a good way to take a stand against parents and authorities of all types. Oh, and the draft. That was a bad thing , too. Scary bad.

But I got lucky. Real lucky. 18 and eligible and draft ends. How about that for variance? Peace-out, as they say.

Jump forward - quite a bit forward. Late 80's or something and I still don't know what I want to do. But I'm a reader, always have been. So I'm reading, and suddenly I think I can write. Blame Carver, blame LdG who turned me on to Dubus. Blame Anshaw who said there was something there and made me believe I should apply to Sewanee, which I did.

Which is where I met O'Brien who had just published the best fiction ever written about the war. Read: The Things They Carried. No really, I mean, read it.

And O'Brien played poker, though not all that well (Kent Nelson did - believe it- little can full of coins and bills - tough dude) - plus he drank less than me which made us even, I guess. Which oddly enough brings me around to D D who is now doing her PhD at Utah the same place where M S did hers and she brings us around to Sewanee and O'Brien and bottles of gin in the trunk - god, can the world be that small?

And why is it that, proportionately, there are more great Vietnamese poker players than any other ethnic group?

Which brings me to D, my own private Viet - who hates poker - but allows me to play so long as I don't bore her with the stories. Too much.

A man of the cloth?

In my profile here I list Religion as the Industry I am part of. This is, I had thought, an exaggeration. But a funny thing that happened on the way to work today has given me pause. Is it possible to be a man of the cloth and not even know it? Was an Industry listing meant to be humorous really an unconscious leap into the truth? Have I entered the twilight zone?

It happened like this:

I'm waiting on the corner for the bus when a car stops and its horn beeps. I peer in and an Indian man sporting a long beard is motioning to me. He looks vaguely familiar as so many Indian men do. He continues to motion and I am unsure exactly what he wants so I open the car door.

"Come in," he says. "I give you a ride." He says this with an accent.

I am surprised because an Indian man with an accent has never before stopped and offered me a ride to the El. There have, of course, been numerous cab rides with similar sounding and looking men, but those were business transactions and while those men may have looked Indian, they were for the most part Paki. I digress.

"I always see you on the bus," he says. "I often thought that some day I would sit and talk with you."

I'm thinking, WTF? But in a friendly manner I say, "Well, thank you for the ride."

And then he asks, "Are you in the clergy?"

When I explain that he must have mistaken me for some other holy man, he says again, "Yes, I always see you on the bus. I thought I could talk to you, and now I am."

It's a short ride to the El, and a less lazy man would leave a few minutes earlier and walk. But that man is not me. I am the man who is mistaken for the clergy and the clergy are given rides.

When we get to the El I thank the Indian man for his trouble. He says it is no trouble at all. I nod. He nods. Then I call D to share this story. She says, "Weren't you scared?"

Scared? Of a Gandhi-like Samaritan? He and I are cut from the same cloth. There is nothing we fear.