Author: Muttrox

A killer of a bubble loss (that means: best player to not finish in the money). I started very strong. Within twenty minutes I have a healthy lead on the table of 11.

Ad-Jd. Blinds are at 50-100, I bet 400. I’m called. Flop is a bunch of low cards. I continue the pressure, 600 more. The turn is an Ace. 700 more. The river is another Ace. 800 more, she folds. I now have double the average stack.

An hour later I am still in strong position. I get the exact same hand, Ad-Jd. Blinds are 100-200, I put in 500 and the same person calls me. The flop is three low cards, one of which is a diamond. I check, she bets 600. I figure I still have two overcards and she bluffs a lot. I call. The turn is a low diamond. She bets 1000. I figure she either had a high pair (kinds or queens) or paired up something small on the board. Any diamond gives the nut flush, an ace wins it, and a jack probably wins it. There’s already 2500 or so in the pot, with her bet included I’m getting 3500 for a 1000 investment. And what the hell, I just feel like gambling. I call and catch the nut flush on the river, knocking her out.

Nothing much happens for a while. Eventually it gets down to four players (top three finish in the money). One other guy has a huge stack and there are two small stacks. I am just waiting for the two small stacks to go away so I can play heads up. We’re at 500-1000, average stack is 6000, I have around 12,000.

The other big stack goes in for 2500. The small stack to my right goes all in with 1750. I look down at Ac-10c. I call the 2500. The flop is an Ace and two small cards. I decide my only goal here is to eliminate the small stack. I check, and make the mistake of announcing I’ll check all the way. I am properly admonished. Big stack bets another 2500. Whatever, I got a pair of aces with a high kicker. If you want to make me pay for speaking out of turn, I’m still here. The turn is nothing special. He bets another 2500. He is also a big bluffer. And he could be playing to get me out so he only has to play for the main pot. Maybe he has a low pair and figures that’s strong enough in four handed. I call. The river is a meaningless seven. He puts his remaining 3000 in. I call. He has A-7, the river gave him his second pair. Darn it, I was ahead of him the whole time and he caught the river, damn damn damn!

On the other hand, it’s hard to complain too much about the river when it gave the nut flush earlier.

I am severely wounded. I only have 3500 left. I am lucky, because three more times players go in against each other. Each team the short stack is behind. If the hand holds up, I sneak into third place ($48). But they don’t, each time the big stack is bad beated. For example…

Player 1 goes all-in. Player 2 calls. They have the exact same amount. So I don’t care which one wins, either way I get into third place or better. I mentally count my money. They flip their cards. Both have K-10, they chop the pot, and we’re still at four players. Damn damn damn!

Eventually my all in with A-8 is beat by A-Q. I am knocked out in fourth and go off to lick my wounds.

Running Total: -$24

Happy Birthday bro! We’ll start with a couple superhero links…

I’m the goddman Batman!

The first trailer for Watchmen. Dr. Manhattan looks awesome, the rest… eh, we’ll see.

20 Supervillain plans, as flowcharts

Jib-Jabs latest masterpiece

Five approved Barack Obama jokes

Improv Everywhere, the human mirror

10 bands who should just stop (I disagree with at least three).

Interview gone bad

The 10 drunk people you don’t want to meet at a bar (I’m closest to #8)

World’s Greatest Dad Loses Title

Floor by floor demolition

No hands, no problem. Check out this guitarist. (I know the chords. He’s playing it straight.)

The eephus pitch

All kinds of economic indicators seem to vary wildly by what party is in power. I don’t know what to make of it either, but the graphs are compelling.

Geek Art (20 examples)

We were driving home.

Him: This is the wrong way!
Me: No it isn’t. This is the way home.
Him: No! This is the wrong way.
Me: I’m sure this is the way home.
Him: No!
Me: [kidding] Do you know where all the roads in Georgia go?
Him: [very certain] Yes!
Me: [laughing] OK, where does this road go?
He pointed through the windshield to indicate forward and said, This way!

Wife: He just outwitted you.

First of all, if you want to hear the Who’s music, don’t bother with this weak tribute stuff. Go straight to the source. You want live, get Live at Leeds. You want insights, you should watch the Amazing Journey documentary (in heavy rotation on VH-1, and the source for most of the clips they showed.)

Here’s my review of a bunch of bands I know nothing about.

Foo Fighters – Young Man Blues – Awesome. These guys get it. Not only are the great musicians, they bring the right attitude and that counts for a lot. For Bargain they brought out the lead singer of SuperGrass. Terrible! The guy can’t even hold the notes! Foo Fighters, yes!

Incubus – If you’re going to take on I Can See For Miles, you’d better have a drummer who can pull it off. They don’t. They also lost half the dynamic stop start feel of the song and basically destroyed it. I don’t know about their version of I Can’t Explain, I was already fast forwarding.

Flaming Lips (Tommy medley) – Very good. They did a lot of playing around with the music. They managed to keep the essence while doing something new with it. The lead singer came out in a giant plastic ball. He went over the audience, that’s a version of crowd surfing I hadn’t seen. He was either very cool or a giant hamster. Points for stagecraft in general, especially the bassist with a skeleton suit.

Tenacious D (Squeezebox) – I’m done with them. I am no longer amused by Jack Black saying words with excessive weight and seriousness.

Pearl Jam (Love Reign O’er Me) – Fantastic! So Eddie Vedder is a mega-fan of the Who. There hasn’t been a Who tribute or all-star show or benefit that he hasn’t snuck his way into. He has always been good, but frankly I have not been overly impressed. I’ve always wondered why he doesn’t bring all of Pearl Jam out because I would love to hear what they sound like. The answer is through the roof.
Love Reign O’er Me is the hardest Who song for a singer. Roger has always said it was always the biggest stretch for him. I saw them in 1996 with my college roommate. Roger could only hit the note by doing an enormous yelling screeching noise – you could practically hear his esophogaus tearing itself up. As roomie said, “Even if you don’t like the music you gotta respect someone who will do that to themselves just to sing the song right”. Um, what else… they get that the verses are all about the bass guitar it’s gotta be huge booming notes. Okay, back in a second, I’m 99% sure I heard the first note of The Real Me.

…yep, and it was just as good. Anyhow, my point about the Roger vocals is that for once Eddie was doing the all-out rock singing that you have to do. I’ve never been a Pearl Jam fan but I this may have turned me. More bonus points: The bassist did a great Enwistle imitation musically and he even had the tone right. The guitarist managed to do most of the Townshend stage moves (jumps, jumping splits, rump wiggle) and broke the headstock of the guitar at the end.

So far Pearl Jam is dominating. Only The Foo Fighters are even in the same league.

Adam Sandler (Magic Bus, Live at Leeds version): He’s got the feel. The words aren’t very funny at all. What happened to him? Aw, who cares, The Who’s coming out!

The Who!
Baba O’Riley – They start off pretty raggedy and weak. Roger can’t hit a note, Pete is just doing it by the book. About a minute in they hit their stride. They’re much better when they move out of the mindset of “Two old guys who do a really good job of covering Who songs” and into the mindset of “We own this song and we’ll do whatever we please with it.”

Who Are You: Highs and lows. They completely flub the first break section. Pete can’t get his clean sound working right. Roger messes up the verses. And yet when they are together it is incredibly good. It’s the willingness to just play it and damn the consequences that makes it so good when it’s working.

I wish they had done this show midway through a tour. I’ve seen them enough to recognize when they’re rusty. They’re rusty. And in normal concerts, they start with several easy songs to get themselves warmed up (usually I Can’t Explain and Substitute are in the early part) and they hit their stride about 20 minutes in. Here they are tackling two of their harder songs right off the bat.

Behind Blue Eyes: I’m just sick of this song. Here’s a couple more interesting versions.

My Generation: Uch, the missed cues again. The ratio of screwups to brilliance seems to be increasing. As a sidenote, Zak Starkey gets better every year he plays with them, he is fully locked into Pete now. I don’t care how great Pino Palladino is supposed to be, he’s a pale reflection of John. Even when he plays the notes right it doesn’t work somehow. Bring in the Pearl Jam bassist!

So far, this is a pretty bad performance by them. Coming back from commercial, they had a good montage of the boys at work. I’ve seen them a whole bunch of times when they were sixty-plus years old. It blows me away how vital they are, how energetic, how enthusiastic. That’s the part that’s not coming through tonight. They are concentrating on not messing up, they aren’t in the groove enough to hit that next level. That little montage gave a taste of how great they still are. I hope casual fans watching this show aren’t judging them too harshly by it. Eh, who knows, maybe I just see the imperfections because I know the band too well. Honestly, you should rent (or borrow from me) The Who at the Royal Albert Hall (the 2002 allstar show). That is an incredible gig.

Tea & Theatre: This song would be unfamiliar to most listeners, it’s the last track from Endless Wire (their 2006 album). It was the standard closer on their last tour. It’s about aging and loss and acceptance. I really like it as a closer for this also. It’s a very nice song of course. But mainly, it’s dignified. It’s a song written by older people for older people and that’s just how it is. And not just any older people, it’s obviously meant to be performed by Pete and Roger and no one else.

My final order of Performances:
1) Pearl Jam
2) Foo Fighters
3) The Who
4) Flaming Lips
5) Tie with everyone else
6) That loser from SuperGrass.

I hosted a very fun poker game last night. Smaller buy-in, more alcohol, looser play. I ran into more “bad beats” than I can remember. That’s not the righ term, they weren’t bad beats. A bad beat is when you make the right plays, start out ahead and get caught from behind against the odds. This time I had good hands that the odds said should have been high hand, but they weren’t and I just started out behind against the odds.

1) I get A-J suited. The flop is J-8-9. I have top pair with an ace kicker. The turn is an Ace. I lose most of money when it turns out my opponent has 7-10, he flopped the straight. I’m not too disappointed in this one because I didn’t raise preflop here, so I gave him the chance for a miracle flop with terrible cards. It’s always hard to figure out when to play aggressive and when to slowplay, I think this could have gone either way. If you are too consistent you get readable, this is the price for varying your game.
2) I have K-A. The flop is K-A-x. Can’t get much better than that, right? Only two hands can beat me, someone has both the remaining kings or both the remaining aces. He had both Kings.
3) My final hand. I got all in with A-Q. I am called a pair of 8s, I do not get my pair and I’m out.
4) Starting the consolation round, I have 9-2. The flop is 9-8-4. I have top pair, I bet fairly small. The turn is something small, maybe a 3. I bet fairly high, I am still called. The river is another 9, giving me a set. The other guy bets heavy, I call. He has 9-10 to my 9-2.

There’s gotta be a word for this. I never had the absolute nuts, but I had a lot of very good hands where it turned that the other player had a better very good hand. Any good or bad plays I made were swallowed up by these big hands.

I think I spent $30. It might have been $40. I’ll give myself the benefit of the doubt. And who cares, it was great fun.

Running Total: -$4.

Today I was at a vending machine buying M&Ms. Instead of using a dollar bill, I coincidentally had the exact amount in spare change in my pocket. I consider those M&Ms free.

God this gangbang is awkward.

Why the cavemen went extinct (Flinstones)

21 of the best mugshots

How not to use the drive through ATM

An unfortunate accident

Creationist Science Fair

A clip from Ricky Gervais’s show with David Bowie at his funniest.

Dogs hate The Who

I-phone or Millionaire?

Law and Order

David Beckham gets caught looking. Guys, eh?

How to beat the claw game

Obesity map of the USA

The Global Pool of Money, a podcast from This American Life. Several other bloggers recommended this. After listening, I agree. It’s a walk through the housing finance situation. It’s neither patronizing nor overly complicate.

Barack Obama is the new…

I bought a new edger at Home Depot. They didn’t demagnetize it correctly, and it went off as I was leaving. This was my only item. The door was right in front of the cashier, so I kept walking. I figured she remembered I had just bought it from her six second ago.

No. She called me back. The manager, who had seen the entire thing, beckoned me over. He took the edger and demagnetized it. Then I left.

How did this help anyone? The point of the security system is to let them know when I’ve taken something without paying. But both of them saw me take it and both of them know I paid for it. How did demagnetizing it help anyone?

I composed a great song last night. It had a very catchy chord structure, the kind that sounds right on the first listen without being exactly like any song you’ve heard before. The lyrics were a clever take on aging, the verses naturally lead into the tagline. I was excited about this song.

Sadly, the song was in a dream. When I woke up and ran it through my head I had a nasty suspicion. I went to the computer and confirmed it. I had managed to write new lyrics to David Bowie’s Rock and Roll Suicide. Dang it, those are good chords!

Eh, maybe I’ll write the song anyhow. I wouldn’t be the first to rip off another song.

I got this email today at work from our Accounts Payable department. Notice the date!

Based on a review of outstanding expense reimbursement checks, our records show that a check issued to you on December 19, 2002 in the amount of $45 has not cleared the bank.

In an effort to keep this unclaimed payment from becoming abandoned property and subsequently being escheated to the state, we are contacting you to request your assistance. Please advise Accounts Payable if this money is still owed to you. If so, a new check will be cut and issued to you.

Please respond by August 1st. Otherwise, the unclaimed check will be escheated to the state.

Accounts Payable can be contacted via e-mail at [email protected]. You can also contact Accounts Payable Manager xxxx xxxxx at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Thank in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

xxxxx xxxxxxx
Acct. Manager- Special Projects and Analysis

Wow. They find a discrepancy five years after the fact, and are still cutting me another check. Impressive.

Beatles lyrics, via Joe Cocker. Awesome.

All-time sarcasm winner? 10,000th shoplifter gets parade.

Larry David on religion

Bottled Water

WTF

That’s harsh. Read the first letter of each line.

Fantastic timing for hotels.com

Irish Scarecrow

Reaction to the Revelation That I Do Not Own a Cell Phone, By Year

Renting vs. Buying

Urban soccer goals

A very (isn’t that offsides?) sneaky goal.

On itching:

One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.

A montage of car crashes in an icy tunnel

The douchiest phone message ever

You suck, CNN. No, You suck! No, you both suck!

Taking pictures with the light that didn’t hit the object. Or something. Quantum Mechanics is cool.

Now that’s a representative.

Bill Gates as enduser – a usability email

The super-fan career: a six-figure salary

David Bowie on David Bowie’s best songs

7 people with real mutant superpowers (I suspect fraud in at least half, but still…)

It is now revealed what was known. We copied torture techniques from the bad guys. I liked Andrew Sullivan’s take, “But one thing is at least clear. The people who committed this form of “enhanced interrogation” knew full well it was torture. And they used that word. It’s a good one. And it means what it says.”

In other torture news, Christopher Hitchens undergoes waterboarding to see what’s it like. Much like everyone else who has tried it (voluntarily or not), he comes away convinced 100% that it is truly torture. Hard to see how anyone with a shred of honesty can argue the point.