A Not So Hard Days Night with the Beatles

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The Beatles have had a sort of weird place in mind when it comes to covering them. Early stuff like "You Can’t Do That" (etc.) is pretty straight forward, and the hard part of it comes in not from the complexity, but rather from the deceptively-simple sounding, but not at all straight forward (Think "Close Your Eyes"), chords they worked into those tunes. Their later stuff sounds so damned good — even after all these years — that I’ve had some kind of "I surely can’t play that because it must be hard" roadblock, even though much of it is Continue Reading →

Analyzing a Poker Hand

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I’ve been really focusing on the mental and player side of poker lately, and am really enjoying doing so. On Friday, I made a great read on a player and then played that read accordingly, and I have to tell you it felt great. The hand: I’m in the BB with the stellar holding of 9d5c. Three people limp, the SB calls, and I check. The flop is Ah 5s 2d I check, two others check, and the hijack bets. The SB folds, and I think about the hand.

My Biggest Leak

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I’ll be the first to jump up and admit that I am a far, far better poker player today than I was a few years ago, but my biggest leak has simply got to be my temper (second biggest leak is calling when I know I’m beaten, and a distant third is not playing back against a pre-flop raiser with a marginal holding when I know I am ahead). I’ve been working on it, to be sure, and I’ve certainly improved this aspect of my game. For instance, I’ve weaned myself off of (almost all) smartass comments when someone pulls Continue Reading →

The Beatles’ Anthology Rocks my World

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The Beatles’ Anthology — how in the hell did I miss this collection? Dave Bonora played 30-40 tracks from this incredible collection during our drive to Vegas last week, and man-oh-man is it incredible. When it was released, I had thought it was nothing more than yet-another-greatest-hits collection, but as most likely everyone else on the planet knows, it’s a collection of outtakes, alternate versions, live tracks, and even a dozen or so unreleased songs. This is, of course, the kind of thing I enjoy more than just about anything else from the bands I love, but to hear this Continue Reading →

OH MY GOD, WILL YOU SHUT UP?!?!

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Darla and I saw Jet Li’s Fearless in the theatre a few days ago. Great flick, if you’re into epic martial arts movies — and I am — but it was what occurred in the seats that I thought I’d write about. First of all, there were only about 20 people in the audience, yet four of them — a full 20% of those present — felt it was OK to talk during a movie. The two folks behind us were clearly discussing the movie (I could be wrong, as my Chinese isn’t so hot, but the rhythm and flow Continue Reading →

The Latest Bill O’Reilly & Fox News Lie

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The most recent lie from the crazy whack job known as Bill O’Reilly and his employer, Fox News, is almost too much to believe. During a recent O’Reilly Factor broadcast, these un-American pigs labeled Republican congressman Mark Foley a Democrat during a report about Mr. Foley exchanging sexually suggestive IMs with a 16 year old male former page. Mr. Foley is, of course, a Republican, the party for whom Fox News and O’Reilly work so hard to spread propaganda. Fortunately, John Amato at CrooksAndLiars.com got a screen shot — you know, for posterity. My good friend Greg Snyder suggested we Continue Reading →

Life, It Seems, is Indeed Good

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Listening to The Church’s excellent cover of "Cortez the Killer" — what a great song, and what a great cover — and it occurs to me that life is indeed good. I have an amazing woman that loves me, great friends, a great job that affords me absurd flexibility, a wonderful dog who’s greying faster than his pop, and (good) little things like great music to listen to and Battlestar Galactica to watch. With the assault on America being lead by the Bush administration and the Repbulican party, the destruction of our environment, religious zealots from many faiths trying to Continue Reading →