Michael Craig's Journal

I spent a day going through my notes of the evening of August 6. The Main Event played down from 27 players to 9. Unnoticed except for those who participated, 481 players anted up $1,500 apiece to take a second-to-last shot at a World Series bracelet. Shannon Elizabeth Fadal was among them and she proved to be a very worthwhile diversion from watching the same thing everyone else was watching that evening.

First important caveat: I just completed writing an 800-word article for my MR. INSIDE column for the October issue of BLUFF Magazine. Notwithstanding that they haven’t paid me for the September column yet, I’m saving that material for that issue. The article is called “Shannon Elizabeth Has a Cold” and it’s one of my favorites. But the first draft was nearly 2,000 words and it didn’t even include the first two points I’m going to make below.

There were a lot of interesting things that, for reasons of space or theme, didn’t make into the BLUFF column. Lucky you.

Item #1: Where have you gone, Joe Sebok?

Joe Sebok is either enviably close friends with Shannon Elizabeth or they are dating (which makes him even MORE enviable). I saw them together in the Full Tilt suite that afternoon, hours before the scene of the BLUFF article. I never asked if they were going out but if they weren’t, from what I saw when they were together, Shannon is refreshingly boundary-free when it comes to personal space.

Nevertheless, in the one-plus years I’ve known Joe Sebok, he has metamorphed from a likable young man to a supporting character in a Dostoevsky novel. In early 2005, he was an earnest young man with his feet on the ground, an eyebrow ring, and an interest in moving into his stepdad’s business but maintaining his independence.

Flash forward to August 2006: he’s won a big tournament, appears regularly on the radio and in print, drives a Jaguar convertible, has demonstrated a sense of humor that is both sly and absurd, and is dating a sexy movie star.

Then why did he seem unhappy when I saw him within tongue-distance of Shannon Elizabeth’s belly ring? He looked tired, maybe ill, and he was complaining about responsibilities: having to play the next day’s event, having to do the radio show, having to write for so many outlets.

I hope it was just the end of a long, draining World Series. Otherwise, where have you gone, Joe Sebok?

 

Item #2. Shannon flirts with my Kiss of Death

The Kiss of Death is my nickname for my bad habit during the Series of asking, “How are you doing?” seconds after my target has busted out of an event. It was always unintentional but my timing was so bad that I started feeling like I was cursed (or carrying a curse). It started just ten minutes into the first full-field event when I walked in the Amazon Room and almost bumped into Jim McManus. Jim and I had been meaning to get together for more than a year. I was alternate #142 and waiting to play but I thought we could set up a time and place to meet.

“Hey, Jim. Great to see you? How ya doin’ pal?

“Busted.”

He might have said something else but his face was a mask of fury and he was moving fast, shoulders squared, head down.

I just missed the Kiss with Doyle Brunson. I saw him coming right after he busted out of the HORSE. He was moving toward me in his motorized wheelchair, very fast. So fast, in fact, that he whizzed past before I could even muster a greeting. Just has he was reaching escape velocity, I realized it wasn’t worthwhile (nor probably physically possible) to run him down and ask how he’s been.

I hit Shannon Elizabeth square on the lips with a Main Event Kiss of Death. Maybe even a French Kiss of Death. I’d like to think it was karmic payback for her not mustering up sufficient acting ability to PRETEND to be impressed that she was meeting the author of THE PROFESSOR, THE BANKER, AND THE SUICIDE KING. (James Woods, Jennifer Tilly, and Wil Wheaton had the acting chops to mimic appreciation.)

But I was probably just being a bonehead. I saw her sitting, alone, silent, in the Full Tilt suite on the afternoon of Day 1B.

“Hi, Shannon. What day do you play?”

Pause.

“I played today.”

Pause.

Hopefully, what I said next didn’t sound as bad to her as it did reverberating in my head, which it continues to do to this day:

“Did you say you PLAYYYYYYYYYY today or that you PLAYEDDDDDDDDDD today?”

“I busted out a little while ago.”

She looked like a little girl about to cry. I thought - and pray to god did not say - wow, it’s not even time for the second break.

So when I saw her a week-and-a-half later, walking into the suite, I said, “I’m not even going to ask how you’re doing, Shannon, because I’m the Kiss of Death.”

“No, it’s fine,” she told me. “We’re down to 46 and we have to eliminate one more to the money. I don’t have many chips but I really want to cash because it would be my third cash of the Series.”

That is, by the way, three more cashes than I rang up this Series. Shannon didn’t know it - or maybe she did - but my Kiss of Death was just a peck on the cheek compared with her Slap to Oblivion.

Touche!

 

Item #3: The mood in the room.

I won’t describe the miraculous hand on which Shannon made it into the money but she was the shortest stack out of 46 players left and survived. When everyone had safely made it into the money, there were a series of events I had to mostly cut from the article but were, to me, hilarious:

“Congratulations. You are all in the money.” There is an unscheduled break in play as every other player comes by to congratulate Shannon and give her a hug. (I think a couple guys might have made two passes through the line. I know one player hands her his e-mail address on a slip of paper. On the next hand, he is back with another slip of paper with his cell number.)

Shannon has lit up the room, which now features a circle of spectators and, joining me, several other writers. As I bring them up to date and explain why I find this story so interesting, Brad “Otis” Willis says, “Make sure you include the guy’s butt crack next to her.”

She mixes it up verbally with the players at Table 22 – sunny, friendly, one-of-the-guys. She knows they are looking at her but her manner says, It’s fine. We’re all having fun together. (Besides, while you’re figuring out how to behave, I’m figuring out how to get your chips.)

You know who she reminds me of like this, in the flow, the center of attention, at ease but completely focused and using it to her advantage? To a spooky degree, she behaves just like Annie Duke at the table.

 

Item #4: Fans

There is a moment when Shannon notices that someone is filming her. She has security ask him to stop and he meets her later at the cashier’s cage and apologizes, explaining that he is no paparazzi. He just wanted to capture her excitement when she made it into the money. “I know what that’s like,” he told her. “I was on a reality television show.”

“Oh, I love reality shows. Which one?”

He then explained some show that neither of us had ever heard of, but he succeeded in scoring her e-mail address, though I shouldn’t complain because I used my proximity to get her social security number.

I also had to cut this bit about some Harrah’s employees behaving, I thought, inappropriately:

A dealer and a security guard ask to take her picture. She complies but they can’t get the cell phone working and insist she stay frozen in place while they figure it out.

 

Item #5: The Prince.

This is actually in the article but Shannon wasn’t going to play the final $1,500 event because she had to get back to L.A. She was due to leave the country in three days. She was going to the Prince of Brunei’s birthday party.

I didn’t put this exchange in the article:

Mike: “Does the Prince play poker?”

Shannon: “Not that I know of, but he could. He has the money.”

Mike: “I bet Chip Reese could convince him to play.”

Shannon: “What?”

Mike: “Nothing. Never mind.”

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 11:52 pm and is filed under My favourites:.