2008 WSOP recap

November 13, 2008 · Filed Under Ranting, Vegas · Comments 

The World Series of Poker is finally over. Congratulations to Peter Eastgate on becoming the youngest player ever to win the Main Event at only 22 years old. I have a feeling it’s going to be a LONG time before anybody is able to beat that record.

This year, rather than playing out the final event of the World Series until there was 1 player left, when they eliminated the 10th place player, they put the tournament on hold and sent the players on a break. A LONG break. A 3 month break. If you are asking yourself why they would do something like that, well, you are not alone. Back when they first announced that they were going to do this, the explanation that I heard was that they were going to send the players home and invite them back in November to play out the final table live on TV. This would give ESPN time to show all the preliminary events, and the action from the main event up until the point where there were only 9 left. This sounded like an awesome idea. Last year I paid for the Pay-Per-View of the final table and watched about 7 hours of the event. I was definitely ready to watch the final table again this year. Unfortunately, that information was incorrect.

Over this past weekend, the “November Nine”, as they were so cutely named, took over the Penn & Teller theater and with about 1000 people in the audience, they played down to the final 2 players. The following evening, the final 2 came back and played it out until Peter Eastgate held all the chips in play. Of course all of this action was filmed, but there was no live broadcast, no pay-per-view, no extra content to be had at all. Instead, the well produced condensed version was shown on ESPN just like every week leading up to the final table. So why did they make the players wait? I have a guess; money.

If they had completed the final table back in July, even the most casual of poker players would have found out by now who won the WSOP. It’s not like the SuperBowl, but if you are in to Poker, you are going to run across the information on a website, magazine or word of mouth. But, by making everybody wait, they have a built up of excitement to find out who wins. This could cause poker players who may not normally watch the ESPN telecast to turn it on to find out who wins. Face it, most poker players don’t actually watch televised poker. ESPN wants those eyes watching. So anything they could do to build SOME excitement has got to be good for them.

I was pretty bummed when I found out they weren’t going to show the entire final table. But, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to watch the final show.

There were a couple of really ugly beats to knock people out, but I have to say, every player at this final table conducted themselves with a level of professionalism not normally found at the final table. When Scott Montgomery lost on the river to a one-outter, he simply smiled, shook everybody’s hand and walked away. It was a very refreshing sight.

ESPN did one thing during the telecast that is my biggest pet peeve when it comes to televised poker. When they were down to 8 players, they came back from a commercial and they are showing Kelly Kim shaking hands with some of the players. The announcer says that Kelly Kim has just been eliminated. Are you going to tell me that this player fought his way through more than 6800 players and you don’t even have the decency to show his final hand in the tournament? I don’t care if it’s the most mundane hand ever played, he deserves to have his final hand shown.

One other side effect of having a 3 month layoff before the final table, it gave all the players a chance to get sponsorships from dozens of companies. I had made a joke that it looked like we were watching a NASCAR event with everybody covered in sponsorship badges. For the players I’m stoked. Why shouldn’t they get an extra quarter-million if they can work the deals? However, for the viewers at home, I’m a little embarrassed. I would like to think that if I were to ever make it to a televised final table, I would pass up the sponsorship money and instead wear a comfortable suit that actually looks nice.

I’m really curious to hear the plans for next year’s WSOP event. I plan on playing in a couple events next year and want to know what surprises I have ahead of me. I guess I have to wait and see.

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Rocky Horror Revisited

November 2, 2008 · Filed Under Entertainment, Movies, Ranting · Comments 

Many years ago my wife and I used to perform in the Rocky Horror Picture Show when we were MUCH younger. On rare occasions when we are in Los Angeles over a weekend and we have Saturday night free, we stop in to the Nuart to see if any of our old pals are still around. We typically show up early to hang out with people in the parking lot before the show, go in to the theater and stay long enough to see the pre-show and then leave within 5 minutes of the movie starting. That’s pretty much been our only involvement with Rocky in the past 10 years or so.

Recently I learned that Todd had NEVER seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This came as a HUGE shock to me since Todd is a hard core geek. Well, when I found out that the Onyx Theater here in Vegas was going to be showing Rocky ON Halloween, which conveniently fell on a Friday night this year, well, there was nothing I could do. We were basically FORCED to drag him out to the show.

We put out an invite to a group of friends and found out that two other people we know, Kim & Rob, have also never seen the show. Ahh, this was gonna be fun!

The show was set to start at 8. We all met for drinks around 6 and showed up to the theater around 7:40. The theater is nestled in the back corner of a fetish clothing store called The Rack. We made our way in, got frisked by security (I made a second stop at the cute female security guard so she could pat me down a second time) and went in to find seats. The theater is really small and at first glance it looked to be PERFECT for showing Rocky. There was a nice sized stage area and the screen was low so the actors would be partly in front of the screen. Then, the show started…

The pre-show was decent. Our friends all took part in the Virgin Sacrifice. A healthy dose of embarrassing photos and a video later, they were back in their seats and the movie began. This is when the wheels started to come off the bus.

First, I gotta say that the cast, Divine Decadence, was pretty decent. They had good costumes and decent props. They did a few things differently than I’ve seen at other Rocky shows, so that part was pretty cool.

Now for the list of complaints.
- The Stage. I thought it was going to be cool that the stage was so close to the screen. However, given the size of the screen (it’s small), the actors took up 2/3s of the screen area.
- The lighting. This sorta ties in to the location of the stage/screen. When the cast members are on stage and the lighting crew is shining flashlights on them, it washes out the screen to the point of almost not being able to see it at all.
- The audience participation callbacks. The idea behind a callback is to say a line during the time the actors on screen are not talking. Then, the actor says something that goes along with what you said and hilarity ensues. Unfortunately, the people doing the call backs have horrible timing and would end up saying their line OVER the actor’s response. So, it was not only not funny, it was hard to make out the joke they were trying to make.
- The AMOUNT of audience participation. Rocky is 30+ years old. People have been watching the movie and coming up with new lines for that whole time. Over time you can come up with 2 or 3 (or 10) different jokes for the same callback. That doesn’t mean you need to try and yell them all. There was SO much yelling going on, hardly any of it in unison, so it was again, almost impossible to catch the jokes.

As a long time Rocky goer, it was difficult for me to follow along with most of the callbacks and sight gags. For my 3 virgin friends, it was nearly impossible.

We did all manage to have a good time. And yet, I’m not sure I’ll be rushing out to see Rocky again any time soon.

Here are some photos from our night at Rocky

It's the Pelvic Thrust Virgin Sacrafice Virgin Sacrafice Sacrafice those virgins John Todd Rob Kim Jack Skellington Tattoo Lock, Shock & Barrel costumes DSCF1698

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The Vote Is in

October 30, 2008 · Filed Under Ranting · Comments 

Let me start by saying, for those of you who know me, you know I am NOT a political guy. I try not to get in to conversations about politics. The main reason being, I just don’t follow them well enough to be able to carry on a conversation about them at anything more in depth than a superficial level. With that said, read on.

Obviously since I’m writing this on the last Thursday in October, the vote isn’t over yet. It won’t be done until late on Tuesday, but my vote is officially in. For the second election in a row I went out at lunch time and headed to the outlet mall right by my office. We got there and there was absolutely ZERO line. We walked right up, showed our voter registration packets, got scanned in and we were in the polling booths in less than a minute. A few minutes after that, I was out the other side and heading to the food court with me fresh “I Voted” sticker on my chest. Total time from start to finish: roughly 5 minutes. If you miss out on the early voting, I’m pretty certain you aren’t going to be getting in and out of any polling place in under 5 minutes on Tuesday.

So, if I’m not a political guy, why do I bother going out and voting early? Well, the truth is, I think it’s VERY important that everybody gets out and votes. It sounds funny for me to say that, but it’s true. The way I see it, if you don’t go out and vote, you shouldn’t complain about the way things are being run. Period.

I myself don’t vote on very many of the races on the ballot. Again, this is because I just don’t know enough about the issue, the candidates, their policies on issues, etc. So, as a non-political guy, how do I go about choosing who I’m going to vote for when it comes to our President? A friend sent me a link to a site called glassbooth.org. It helps match you up with the candidate best suited for you based on the issues that matter to you. You are given 20 points and you spread them out across the issues and then it asks you some questions about each issue. When it finally gives you the results it will tell you the percentage of a match you are for each candidate and it provides links to news articles, video clips and other information where each candidate spoke about the issues at hand. For a guy like me who doesn’t know much about it, I found the site to be very helpful.

So if you get a chance, vote early. You only have tomorrow to do it. If you miss out on the early vote, BE SURE to get out and vote on Tuesday. It’s important and it’s worth your time.

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Movie Review: Saw V

October 25, 2008 · Filed Under Movies, Ranting · Comments 

sucked.

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Why do you make us wait?

October 23, 2008 · Filed Under Ranting · Comments 

Have you ever used UPS or Fed/Ex to have a package delivered? Of course you have. It’s almost impossible not to. Buy something online and 9 times out of 10 you are going to have it delivered by one of these two companies. 99% of the time your shipment is going to arrive on time, undamaged and everything is going to be peachy. I’m not even going to complain about that 1% of the time where something goes wrong. Sometimes shit is just going to hit the fan and that’s all there is to it. When that happens, I’m pretty easy going and don’t get too bent out of shape. However, there is one thing that both of these companies do that irks me to no end. If you are having something shipped to your house by one of these two companies, be prepared to wait.

Recently I purchased something online from amazon.com and due to it’s price, amazon requires that somebody be at the house to sign for the package rather than allowing the driver to leave it in a semi-safe spot on the front porch. Since I’d hate to have anything happen to my purchase, I’m totally fine with this. I made arrangements to have somebody at the house all day to accept the package when it arrived. Just after leaving for work my wife calls to tell me we received an automated call from UPS stating that our package was out for delivery and that an adult needed to be on hand to accept it. I thought it was very cool that they had the automated system make that call. Very efficient. Now, we just need to wait for it to arrive.

Lunch time came and went, still no package. I called home before leaving the office at 4:30 and still no package. I got home around 5, still not there. We started cooking dinner and at 5:45 the doorbell rings and there’s my delivery. While I’m stoked to have the package arrive and arrive safely, even though I was at work, we still had somebody sitting at the house from 8 am until 5:45 PM waiting to accept the package. That is a fairly hefty delivery window and I was certainly not pleased.

I got to thinking and came up with an idea that I thing would be pretty cool. As your item gets scanned while it’s being loaded on the final delivery truck, that should update the online tracking site with the truck number. Then, when you are looking online at your delivery status, you could see on a map the location of the truck carrying your package. It doesn’t have to be real time. Updates every 5-10 minutes would be fine. This way if you need to run a quick errand, like getting food at lunch time, you could look and see if the truck is anywhere near your house yet. If not, you know it’s safe to leave the house without worrying that you are missing your delivery.

Yes, I realize there are safety issues with letting people see where the truck is. I get it. I’m just saying, for a company that does nothing but deliver packages all day every day, you’d think they could at least give you a delivery window of 1-2 hours rather than 10 hours. It’s called good customer service. You should try it some time.

The other solution I have for this problem is to have your packages delivered to your office. This is going to be my preferred location for all deliveries from now on. Because waiting all day sucks!

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