Somewhere, It’s Hammer Time - Part II - Reflections in a Dirty Glass
USA Today reported last week, “Consumers flocking to health food stores for the latest elixir of life — the red wine ingredient resveratrol — might want to wait a year or two, experts say.”
Nonsense, say the poker bloggers. A year or two for a “wine pill” to prolong their lives? What about people - well, the bloggers themselves to start - who don’t have a year or two?
Amy Calistri told me someone had some business to discuss with her at the Blogger Convention.
“When do you want to talk?” she asked.
“Well,” the person said, “sometime when you’re not drinking.”
I thought that was a slam at Amy, and maybe it was. But the theme of the blogger weekend was that no one was ever sober, unless they were hung over, barely awake, and looking for a drink.
On two occasions, bloggers asked if they could interview me. Because both requests came while we were talking about poker and things I had written, I said, “Go ahead.”
The response was the same both times: “Oh, not now. When I’m sober.”
At 4 AM Saturday, someone asked as particularly painfully drunken blogger if he was going to get some sleep before the tournament. He explained that he hadn’t bothered getting a room for his three days in Vegas. He was going to play some poker for the next ten or so hours until tournament time.
“I’m going over to the MGM Grand poker room to play,” he said. “They got donkeys over there that don’t have a clue.”
He wandered off, not realizing that we were conducting this conversation just outside the MGM Grand Poker Room.
Another blogger disappeared in the pre-dawn hours of Friday from the Geisha Bar at the Imperial Palace. Friends became concerned for the woman and contacted security. She was found by paramedics in the men’s room, sleeping. According to the woman, she was just taking a break from the revelry and decided to catch a nap in the toilet. Due to her “state,” she picked the wrong restroom.
This woman, a delight when sober - in fact, she seemed fine to me when I spoke with her a couple hours before - said to me late the next night, “I don’t know what it takes to get kicked out of the Imperial Palace, but I sure tried.”
Another woman had a full-blown breakdown, sobbing, hyperventilating. She had, I learned, prior problems with addictive behavior but had gone several months earlier this year without even a drink. I thought it was humorous and zany when she was riding on a Marine’s back at the bar next to the poker room at MGM. But when I learned her story, I realized that maybe it wasn’t all good, clean fun.
This was a great group of people, but what I had initially passed off as eccentric behavior was, I think, something more serious, at least for some of my new friends.
Pretty funny stuff, though, if you don’t have a conscience.
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December 15th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
wow, singling out a few people just to have something to write about. there’s nothing any more interesting going on in VEGAS? glad I didn’t show up…maybe if I scratched my ass, you’d blog about it and say I had a psoriasis problem or something. well done sir, you should be proud of yourself.
December 16th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Your "new friends" ???? Where I come from, friends don’t take their friends’ worst moments and personal pains and flaunt them for the world to see, just to have something to write about. This post is sick. You’re a classy guy, Mr. Craig.
December 16th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
Frankly it’s no worse than some of the stories michael’s written about his other friends like Mike Matusow. I have no problem with Michael using his blog to express his concern for the personal well-being of folks. God knows these are not the worst stories to be posted about this weekend.
December 17th, 2006 at 1:54 am
Just because it’s "no worse" doesn’t make it right. The "concern" expressed here is so thickly veiled that I’m inclined to find it more likely that Mr. Craig falls into the category of those with "no conscience" that would find this "funny."
I wasn’t at the blogger gathering this time around, but can piece together the faces behind the missing names based on tidbits from other trip reports. Does our "sobbing, hyperventilating" friend want the whole poker blogging community to know of her addiction problems? Maybe, but that’s not Michael Craig’s judgment to make. I wasn’t there, and now I know. At least the detrimental effects of someone’s behavior are limited to those who witnessed the event. Thanks to Mr. Craig and the almighty and constantly archived internet, many more people now know and will be able to research the fact for years to come.
That’s the thing that irritates me the most about irresponsible posts such as this one. I’m not saying Mr. Craig is the only blogger to write such posts - but he’s one of the highest profile bloggers to do so. As a professional writer, I would expect Mr. Craig to have the skills to focus his creative talents on things other than bashing people for fun and profit, and the common sense to be a little more sensitive to the implications of posting private details about peoples’ lives on the internet.
December 18th, 2006 at 5:33 am
Shelly, what you say is bullshit. I real a lot of blogs (A LOT!) and I haven’t a clue who he was talking about so the people are anonymous to everyone but the one’s who were there. Also, it is all right for other bloggers to write about their debauchery at a blogger convention and nothing is said but when Michael writes about ityou flame him? Get real.
One of the most disturbing blog posts I ever read was about Change 100 and Pauly hitting the six has dens in Europe in one day. Even if it is legal there.