Michael Craig's Journal

That expression is supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse. I was reminded of it for two reasons. First, several people have said to me recently - none really as a compliment - that I lead an interesting life. Second, I just learned that it’s NOT an ancient Chinese curse.

The expression is widely used and represented as an ancient Chinese curse, but that’s a myth. No one who has looked has found it anywhere in ancient Chinese texts. I really like the expression, so I can see why people want to believe it has some ancient and mysterious lineage. The first place I read it, fittingly, was a book by Clifford Irving, who perpetrated the Howard Hughes bio-hoax.

Small talk aside, my apologies for not writing in the last few days. I actually completed a lengthy post the other day and got disconnected off the internet before I published it. I’ll try to recreate some of that now.

1. My slump on Full Tilt appears to be over. Full Tilt is doing GIGANTIC business since Party shut down, with more than 25,000 people on the site every night. Perfect time for me to stop spewing money in tournaments. I think I cashed in one tournament since the WSOP ended, and that’s after entering a lot of $200+ buy-in events on the site.

But now it’s TWO cashes since August, thank you. You are looking at the runner-up in the nightly $24+2 Seven-Card Stud tournament for several nights ago. So watch yourself.

2. Little pleasures.

If you are in Scottsdale, you should check out K. O’Donnell’s. Kevin made it to the second-to-last day of the main event at the World Series. I met him briefly. Very nice guy, very nice restaurant/bar. One of the reasons I bring it up, though, is that the greatest Italian take-out place on earth, Meatballz, is in the same strip center. If they were open past 3:30 PM, I’d probably order from there two times a day.

But if you don’t live in Scottsdale, that won’t do you any good. Another little pleasure these days for me is Staples printer paper, 24 lb./97 bright. I can’t begin to describe how much better this paper is than anything else you can put in your printer. The pages have this little bit of “sheen” to them that makes whatever you are printing look extra nice. (I suppose that can be a two-edged sword for a writer. I certainly could use having my stuff look extra nice, but perhaps that makes me less critical of it. Nah! If I was a professional baseball player and had a really cool baseball glove, I’d still know if I was a rotten fielder.)

Third little pleasure, a book titled THE BALLAD OF THE WHISKEY ROBBER. Great story about about Attila Arbus, one of the most prolific thieves of post-Communism Eastern Europe. I’m reading it for the second time, and looking around for stories that have the same potential.

3. Myspace Cadets

Did you know that most top poker players have Myspace pages?

I’m very new to this Myspace business, though I’m on a steep learning curve. First, I learned it was a big online singles bar. Then, I learned it was a big online underaged singles bar. Then, my 14 year-old daughter was on it all the time.

Then, she wasn’t on it anymore because she participated in setting up a page with some guy from school who she wanted last year to be her boyfriend. The page was an attack on the principal of the middle school they attended. (She started the high school connected to that middle school a couple months ago.) Although Ellie just vented, using inappropriate language - something I’m not thrilled with, but more a lapse in judgment than a crime - the erstwhile former boyfriend dude actually threatened to attack the principal. Bad news all over the place in this environment, not aided by the fact that Jo Anne now teaches at that middle school and the target of the page is now her boss.

Now I find out that poker players have pages there. Some of these are “fan sites”, either set up by someone who idolizes the player, though most of the fan sites look like they were set up in conjunction with the players themselves. In either event, they are mostly uninteresting.

You can, however, get to see just about all of them if you see any of them. They link to each other in an almost viral way. For instance, Barry Greenstein’s page lists as friends the following: Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Eli Elezra, Minh Ly, Chau Giang, Rene Angelil, Mike Matusow, Richard Brodie, Daniel Negreanu, Evelyn Ng, Sean Sheikhan, Josh Arieh, Mike Sexton, Todd Brunson, David Levi, Men the Master, the Grinder, the Grinder’s brother, Gus Hansen, etc. etc. etc. And if you check any of these other sites, you’ll see most of the same names listed as their “friends.”

I wonder the following: Why would someone be looking for Doyle Brunson on Myspace.com? And why would Eli Elezra have a fan site? I mean, I happen to like Eli a lot. I know him just a little but he seems like a great guy. But does he have FANS?

The much better sites are the ones that players maintain themselves. Clonie Gowen’s site is one of my favorites. First, it has pictures like this:

 

Second, the writing is very real. For example, she has a blog entry explaining why “Kung Fu Fighting,” a song almost as pitiful as the “Pina Colada Song” should be the official song of poker, then she tops it off by casting her own poker-themed lyrics. She had read me a blog entry recently - I haven’t found it in the blogs on the site, but I’ll ask her about it next time I talk with her, and you are welcome to look for yourself - about driving back from Vegas to Dallas with her friend Starr and how Starr thought for a few moments that she had gotten rich with a winning instant lottery ticket. It’s a very well-told story.

I’ve generally found that I like peoples’ writing on Myspace.com more than when I read it from the same people elsewhere. Lisa Wheeler has a very nice page. I’ve been a tiny bit critical of some of her writing (like Liz Lieu “riding the tournament dragon” or Liz and Erik Sagstrom “getting down and dirty on the felt” by playing heads-up at the Venetian), but her writing on her page, though she doesn’t do it very often, is much better. She writes about seeing a Cubs game and visiting Karen Williamson in Chicago; it’s a nice sharing of events. No overused cliches or mixed metaphors. Just sharing. (Of course, she can’t resist lapsing back into poker-writing. At the start of the WSOP, she wrote “The Mother of all poker events is here. She and her children will be staying a while.”) Lisa also has a terrific video, which she made out of Card Player photos from the World Series and Rob Thomas’s “Something to Be.”

Jeff Madsen also did his own page. There’s hardly anything on it, but it’s still very neat. Here’s what he wote about himself: “I hate doing this… I’m a Film Studies major at at UC Santa Barbara but after making four final tables and winning two bracelets at this year’s (2006) World Series of Poker who knows what’ll happen in the future. I’m an easy going, mellow person who likes to lay low and have a good time with whomever I’m with. I’ll let you know how balancing my last year in college and my new poker career goes. Hopefully I don’t go crazy and develop an insane drug habit.”

This, ultimately, explains what I like so much about some of these pages: they are so REAL. I met Jeff for a few minutes and it seems exactly like him.

Poker players are generally much more real than most categories of celebrities. That’s bound to change, though, so it’s nice to find examples of where it hasn’t changed yet.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 21st, 2006 at 8:44 pm and is filed under My favourites:.