honoring your written and oral contracts and keeping your word…or buying really expensive glue?

Just asking………

Vince Van Patten of the show-biz family is the co-host of the WPT (World Poker Tour) tv show, and his role in writing this mystery (for which he gets top billing and larger letters on the cover) is to shill for the WPT. (The WPT logo even has a prominent spot on the dustjacket.) I have been reading mystery/crime novels for more than 50 years, and I never heard of Robert J. Randisi. When I googled him, the reason for my ignorance was clear. The guy has written a gazillion potboilers novels under a gazillion names.

Briefly, the amateur sleuth in this novel is one Jimmy Spain, an ex-con recently sprung after a ten-year stretch and a (former) poker pro. Shortly after his return to society after paying his dues (or at least some of them), he is summoned to the palatial home of a very rich fellow ex-con (think Enron guys and Martha Stewart). Mr. Very Rich and Formerly Somewhat Crooked offers Spain a whole bunch of money and a whole lot of perks to teach his Goth chick daughter to be a winning poker player and to smooth off some of her rough edges while he’s at it. Obviously an offer that can’t and won’t be refused. The only catch–Goth Chick must never know that Rich Daddy is pulling the strings. In any decent fairy tale this geis would turn out to be an important part of the plot, but here it’s part of a sub-plot that goes absolutely nowhere, like a lot of the rest of this novel.

Eventually Spain takes his Goth chick mentee to Vegas where they both buy in (with Rich Daddy’s money) to the WPT tournament at the Bellagio.This gives Vince Van Patten the opportunity to drop the name of every tv tournament pro from Dolly Brunson to Gus Hansen, from T.J. Cloutier to Jesus Ferguson. WPT stalwart Mike Sexton shows up on every other page, and we hear from Linda Johnson, too. Representing celebrity poker players, there’s mouth-running, jaw-flapping, trash-talking James Woods, with a nod on the side to Tobey Maguire. There’s even a shout-out to the Ol’ Poker Maven himself, although Goth Chick’s poker library consists of Super System II, Mike Caro, and Phil Hellmuth (of course). And the job of transforming Goth Chick into something more feminine and fashionable falls to Cloney Gowan and Evelyn Ng.

This is a murder mystery after all, and when a certain “fictional” character shows up, his real-life “inspiration” will be obvious to anyone even slightly in the poker gossip know, and no one will be surprised when said “fictional” character turns up dead. While the identity of the perp may or may not be a surprise, the perp’s motivation struck me as absolutely ludicrous. Knowing the history of the real-life prototype(s) of the victim(s), I can think of a number of reasons why someone might want such individuals dead, but, unless I know less about the nature of the Vegas gamblers’ world than I think I do (which is certainly possible), the motive the author(s) has/have chosen to give us is just, well, silly.

In the poker mystery I reviewed previously, Jackie Chance’s Death on the Flop, the sleuth was a completely clueless poker newbie who somehow manages to make herself the queen of the pokeristas. The Picasso Flop has not one, but two, hot (in various senses of the word) poker playing women. I am also reminded of Michael Connolly’s Harry Bosch novels where Harry Bosch’s ex-wife and mother of his daughter shows up occasionally–in Vegas where she is a poker pro, grinding out a living for herself and her little girl. Is this a trend? Women infiltrating the “No gurrlz allowed” little poker-boys club? I imagine that books which spotlight female poker players aren’t going to sit too well with the kind of misogynist who got all over my son’s case when Edward had the nerve to use feminine pronouns referring to the hero in poker hand analyses–and expected me to support his misogynistic lunacy.

Seriously, The Picasso Flop is not a very good book, either as an example of the mystery genre or as a view into the poker world. As a mystery it is not well written. It’s got extraneous plot elements flapping around. The characters range from not particularly well developed or interesting to ridiculous caricatures. Compare this novel to those of James Lee Burke or Michael Connolly or Dennis Lehane (not to mention the Lady Brits Ruth Rendell and P.D. James), and you will see Randisi’s work has no depth, no texture. And its view of the poker world is no more than what the producers of the WPT want the reader to see.

Like the mystery novel itself, poker is a game of interpreting incomplete information. It’s a game of both chance and skill (yes, US Congress, skill), mathematics and psychology. It attracts the highly intelligent and the highly intuitive (and the best players pretty much have to be both), the risk-takers and the self-controlled (and the best players ought to be both, but all too often aren’t). It’s a game where large sums of money hang on the turn of a card, and everything is not always on the up and up. It’s deeply ingrained in American history, from its roots in New Orleans and on the riverboats that once paddled on the Mississippi to Wild Bill Hickok and his dead man’s hand in Deadwood, South Dakota, to Harry Truman and his famous home games (which once included Winston Churchill). If Dick Francis made a long career writing mysteries set in the world of horse-racing, surely someone with talent and grit can do the same for poker, a milieu filled with colorful characters from grifters to politicians, from movie stars to highschoolers on the computer in mama’s basement, from highly educated math whizzes to barely educated con artists, set in venues ranging from the backrooms of ramshackle roadhouses on the Texas plains to the glittering pleasure palaces of the Vegas Strip. But it ain’t happened yet.

Some weeks ago Poker World was rocked by the Saga of Brandi Rose, a young and sort of semi-hot (well, semi-hot by the standards of the sex-starved poker dudes) poker dudette wannabe, who, for reasons best known to herself, apparently gave a significant sum of cash to a random old-time gambler (let’s call him Cap’n Crunch) to “hold” for her. The problem according to Ms. Brandi was that he held it way too tight, so tight that she couldn’t pry it out of his hands. I gather that this possibility had never occurred to her. She managed to recoup some of her alleged losses by hitting up other well-known gamblers, and not satisfied with this partial restitution, went public with her complaints on Poker World. However, Cap’n Crunch’s rapacity was not the only problem. It seems that, money issues notwithstanding, Ms. Brandi shared a hotel bed with the Ol’ Cap’n and was shocked, utterly shocked, that during the night his elderly erection somehow rubbed itself along her back. Who would have thought! This occasioned a meltdown in the adjacent bathroom, writing a cryptic message in blood on the wall, and other mishegas. Brandi went on to attach herself to a random young poker dude and supposedly obtained his password and lost a lot of money on his online account. It was also said that she got young poker dude to stake her in a tournament in exchange for anal sex. Well, that is just the bare outline of the saga which went on and on (illustrated by assorted “provocative” illustrations) for the delectation of the hordes of poker dudes who inhabit Poker World.

The saga had pretty much played itself out when a photo surfaced in which Poker Maven is shoving Brandi up against the wall at the Bellagio. Now, Brandi strikes me as a little long in the tooth for Poker Maven’s taste, but there it was, and the poker dudes were making the most of it. When Mr. Highest Quality and Utmost Integrity Poker Publisher was asked what he thought of Poker Maven’s latest escapade being played out on his corporate website, he simply said that after 20 years of working with Poker Maven, nothing bothers him. Ms. Brandi herself went where even Ms. 16 year old runaway declined to go and said that Poker Maven was endowed with a good nine inches, although it is not entirely clear to me exactly how she came to know this (in the welter of foolishness I might have missed that part). No matter how you look at it, nine inches (if that’s what it is) is a mighty hammer, but in this case the mighty hammer would still be attached to Poker Maven, so whatever….

Apparently not content with the attention that this Brandi up against the wall photo had already received from the gossip-mongering poker dudes (those who think the women have the gossip arena largely to themselves are grossly mistaken), Poker Maven decided to start his own thread on the subject, comparing Ms. Brandi Rose to Saura the 16 year old runaway, basically saying that while he knew Saura very well (some might say–indeed have said–entirely too well), he had roughly a ten-minutes’ acquaintance with Ms. Brandi (ten minutes during which she got the measure of nine inches??!!). And he further announced that Ms. Brandi was the only girl he had ever slapped. After going out of his way to kick up a mini-storm, Poker Maven admitted that the picture was staged–something obvious to the reasonably discerning at first glance (for one thing Ms. Brandi may be the world’s worst actress)–and that the so-called slap wasn’t really a slap, more like a flick of the wrist.

So the question arises: why on earth would a well-known and decidedly middle-aged (i.e., old enough to know better) authority on mathematical approaches to poker stage such a ridiculous photo with the intention of having it posted on the internet and then, presumably not content with the significant response the photo received, start his own thread to call further attention to this charade. Ms. Brandi’s motivation for consenting to participate is pretty clear. She has been playing every angle she can think of in her efforts to become some sort of a poker celebrity, or at least personality. Indeed I don’t doubt that poker personality-dom looks like a much better deal than, say, getting a job sweeping up. But why would Poker Maven go out of his way to make a public fool of himself and then call attention to his own foolery?

Well, PM says that this is all a fun little experiment to see who can apply Bayes’ Theorem. O rly?! Yeah, poker dudes, Bayes’ Theorem will be on the test, so y’all better get crackin’. Bayes’ Theorem notwithstanding, it looks to me more like a complete disconnect with any concept of appropriate social behavior–or the world’s worst male midlife crisis.

Anyhow my son and daughter-in-law went down for carnival this year. They are staying with a friend in the Marigny, partying on Frenchmen Street, ready to mask on Fat Tuesday. Last year my kid went as a wench with a pink wig. This year he and his wife are going as “fucking ninjas,” garbed in black from head to toe and swinging nunchuks (or whatever those things are called) made of dildos linked by chained nipple clamps. I can’t make up my mind if I did a lousy job of bringing my kid up–or a really great one.

Some New Orleans transplants get into carnival in a big way. I wasn’t one of them. My very first week in New Orleans, one of my students came up to me in class and said, “You are going to love living in New Orleans. We don’t let Jews participate in Mardi Gras.” Um, OK, so I inadvertently landed myself in anti-Semitism central. I learned thereafter that New Orleans Jews stereotypically leave town on Mardi Gras and go skiing in Colorado.

Never mind Bakhtin’s view of the carnivalesque. The Rabelaisian carnival of the Renaissance may have undercut the established hierarchy and turned the world up-so-down as Chaucer would have put it, but in New Orleans, despite the drinking and ribaldry and casting off of the restraints of ordinary life (including, in some Quarters, clothes), not to mention the occasional physical danger, that Rabelais would have recognized, Carnival serves to reinforce hierarchy, as the wonderful carnival anthem, “Ain’t No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day” makes perfectly clear: “Rich folks get to pee on Mardi Gras Day. They get annoyed if they can’t void on Mardi Gras Day. They up there on their balconies, they pee all over you and me. Rich folks get to pee on Mardi Gras Day.”* Mardi Gras may be, as it bills itself, the world’s greatest free show, but it is only free for those who stand in the streets stepping on little children’s fingers to collect worthless junk thrown by the carnival elite, the soi-disant kings and queens, nay, gods and goddesses. At least the largesse thrown to the masses by the real kings and queens of the Middle Ages and Renaissance was edible and spendable, unlike the aluminum doubloons and plastic jewels that litter the streets of New Orleans. If carnival is free for those who stand in the streets, for those who ride on the gaudy floats, it’s mighty expensive. And while mere money can get you into one of the downmarket carnival Krewes, you/ve got to have the right ancestors to join the ones at the top of the heap.

True, there is satire and parody of the powerful here and there, but don’t expect the hereditary aristocracy of New Orleans, who so need mocking, to mock themselves. That was once the function of Zulu, although one might be forgiven for considering the sight of (not very) black men in black(er) face to be a form of self-mockery. If New Orleans carnival reinforces the socioeconomic hierarchy, it also reinforces the racial divides of the community. That is to say, it makes clear that New Orleans is still a city socially segregated into communities of black, white and creoles of color. Of course, people of every race and background can be found reveling on the streets, but despite the efforts of the late Dorothy Mae Taylor, the scourge of the uptown carnival set, Rex, Comus, Momus, and Proteus, the krewes of the local elites, are still essentially white. Of course, in order to keep their parades on the streets, Rex and (very recently) Proteus capitulated and admitted a token African-American or two, but Comus, the oldest and most elite of all, remains as white as the lilies of France which are the ubiquitous symbols of Nouvelle Orleans. The aristocracy of the creoles of color, who make the brahmins of Boston look like egalitaritarians, have their own parallel carnival universe: The Young Men’s Illinois Club and the ORIGINAL Young Men’s Illinois Club, and which of these is the real in-crowd I do not really know. I do know that these are sincere imitations of white carnival high society, complete with a debutante coterie, not a tongue-in-cheel parody. And then there are the carnival manifestations of the working class black population, the most notable of which are the Mardi Gras Indians with their incredible beaded and plumed costumes (very similar to those of the working class Philadelphia Mummers), their call and response chants, and their history of murderous rivalries between the uptown and the downtown tribes, rivalries now sublimated into shows of plumage as competitive as those of any flock of peacocks.

As for The Quarter and Bourbon Street, that’s the carnival of the tourists and the gay community and the artists and bohemians–and the religious zealots who think that drag queens and leather lords and “fucking ninjas” do not represent “family values.” (Hey, that’s my family down there twirling dildos!)

Well, wherever you are, have a nice Mardi Gras.

May sheepsheads grow on apple trees,
May the moon be turned to green cream cheese,
If ever I cease to love………

*”Ain’t No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day” by Bennie Grunch and the Bunch can be heard, along with other carnival music, at http://www.walkerpub.com/jukebox_songs.html. (Scroll down until you see the Mardi Gras heading). Pro bono publico!

So my feelings are mixed. On the one hand I am relieved to be rid of the responsibility of a ruined property, now without insurance of any kind. I no longer have to worry about gambling on the future of New Orleans with my very limited resources. I don’t have to hassle with the State of Louisiana over the Road Home money. But I miss my house and the city of New Orleans as it was more than I would ever have thought possible. And I now have no permanent address, no place to vote, nothing I can call home, and I don’t know where I am going next and whether I will ever be able to have a home of my own again. The State of Louisiana very kindly reminded me that I am still legally domiciled in Louisiana and will be until I establish a domicile elsewhere if and when that ever happens. So I have a domicile, but no home and no address. The State is eager to claim me, but only for the purpose of collecting income tax from me. So now I can be taxed without being represented. Fortunately State of Louisiana pensions are not subject to State of Louisiana income taxes, but still….

Gimelstob’s Brother Charged In High Speed Chase

 By Tennis Week
09/27/2006Â Â

Joshua Gimelstob, older brother of Justin Gimelstob, was charged with reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident and failure to report an accident after leading police in a chase in Chatham Borough, New Jersey over the weekend, according to a published report in The Star-Ledger. The 31-year-old Gimelstob was released on $25,000 bail.
The incident occurred nearly a decade after Joshua Gimelstob pled guilty to negligent homicide, hit-and-run driving and obstruction of justice in 1997. Â Â

]]> http://lolspeaks.ooshee.com/2007/01/26/some-people-just-never-learn.html/feed http://lolspeaks.ooshee.com/2007/01/23/my-bohemian-friend.html http://lolspeaks.ooshee.com/2007/01/23/my-bohemian-friend.html#comments Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:19:56 +0000 lol http://www.lolspeaks.com/2007/01/23/my-bohemian-friend.html After Katrina I had lost track of my Bohemian friend who travels the globe from Africa to the Central Asian steppes and back again. A couple of days ago I heard from him again with very detailed accounts of his pleasant memories of times we spent together. He says he misses me. It feels nice to be missed….It would be nicer yet if I didn’t have to miss almost everyone I care about, all scattered hither and yon.

This book, occasionally sub-titled “swimming with card sharks,” claims to be the “first poker mystery.”* If so, I can say with confidence that the great American poker mystery has yet to be written. I sha’n't worry about spoilers since what starts out rotten can scarcely be spoiled later.

Suffice it to say that the heroine/amateur sleuth in the space of a couple of days goes from a state of complete ignorance about poker, not knowing a straight from a flush, to the winner of a major Vegas tournament and queen of the poker babes, all thanks to being coached by some not-quite-so-random hot guy she picks up in a casino and reading the best book on poker, later identified as being written by someone named Hellmuth (LOL).

*CSI did an episode on poker back in its early days, but apparently the publisher does not count tv scripts.

Hi LoL. I hope you chime in on this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=8865423&page=0&vc=#Post8865423

Â

Hi El D–

I am going to reply to you in a new post since I was just about to comment on this situation anyway.  Actually I was going to comment on the companion thread in the Poker World gossip forum in which the former 16 year old paramour of Poker Maven volunteers to answer all questions. First of all, I will never again post directly on Poker World because I will never forgive the treatment my son and daughter-in-law received there, and I do not mean the mouth-running of the little poker dudes. I mean the behavior of Mr. Poker Publisher who is so proud of his integrity and of the quality of his products and of his business acumen and who has alienated almost everyone in the poker business, even those (perhaps relatively few) who are standup people, and who has certainly alienated the hell out of me.

What sort of quality and integrity is it when Mr. Poker Publisher permits the now 21-year-old former paramour to discuss the size of his prize author’s virile member (we are coyly given to understand that it is not inconsiderable) on the website which represents his beloved high quality business (and which indeed is a lucrative, very lucrative, part of said publishing company)? And to discuss a threesome in which Poker Maven disported himself with the 16 year old runaway (”SauraV”) and a 32 year old woman (who was almost too old for the decidedly middleaged Poker Maven)? On a website where threads are locked and deleted willy-nilly and posters are constantly being banned for offenses which range from nothing much to racist and anti-Semitic remarks, SauraV’s thread is allowed to stand, and not only that, Mr. Poker Publisher has posted in the thread to mention that he and his wife socialized with Poker Maven and Ms. 16 year old runaway. And no one seems to think any of this is inappropriate. Indeed Poker Maven himself states that he encouraged SauraV’s thread to demonstrate that he is not a predator. All I can say is OyVey!

Now to Poker Maven’s original post in the thread you cited…..Poker Maven only cares about what people think of him in the (presumably rare) case that such people are smart enough and knowledgeable enough to play in his league. Fair enough. I myself certainly only care about the opinions of people whom I respect. However, Poker Maven has a very narrow definition of what constitutes smart and knowledgeable–which boils down to people who have high mathematical aptitude as he constantly tells us he does. My view is that people who are worthy of respect can have a variety of different characteristics, personalities, and capabilities. And there are people with high SAT math scores (Poker Maven’s ultimate guide to human worth, near as I can tell) who are pieces of dirt and whose opinions of me (or anything else) I don’t care about in the slightest. For what little it’s worth, I am quite sure that my combined SAT scores (from roughly the same era as Poker Maven’s) are higher than his. My verbal and math scores were statistically equivalent and very very high, and I rather doubt that Poker Maven’s verbal score was anything to get excited about. Certainly he never mentions it (not my knowledge), and I have read his raw writing (before anyone has tried to make it readable). And yet I am quite sure Poker Maven would be dismissive of anything I have to say (including my opinion of him). After all, I am female, old, and not hot, so why would he care? Of course, he himself is not high on my list of people I respect, so I imagine we’re even.Â

In any case, only someone who did in fact care about what people think would have started such a thread. He has been criticized for harboring an almost underage runaway in exchange for sexual access, and that criticism must have stung, because he doesn’t want to be thought a “predator.” So he gets the former runaway to say what a wonderful influence he has been on her life. That’s got to be the case since the next thing she did after leaving Poker Maven’s safe haven was get herself, a young single woman, knocked up. Of course she was better off with Poker Maven than falling into the hands of some pimp and getting herself turned out on the streets and addicted to drugs. But I can’t give Poker Maven a pass on this. Clearly his ego is fed when he buys sexual access to very young women, but a responsible man in his 50s would look more closely into the situation before he started screwing a random young waif who showed up in his doorstep. I will admit that my ego is fed when I have sexual relations with men who are half my age or younger, but all of them are well over the age of consent and I don’t have to pay/support/buy presents at the mall for any of them. We could argue whether Poker Maven’s behavior is or isn’t predatory, but it sure is skeevy.

Finally El D, your assessment that SauraV is a troubled young woman who should have counseling…. She thinks she’s absolutely hunky-dory, and that pretty much settles it. Whether her self-analysis is right or wrong, counseling is useless for someone who thinks she doesn’t need it.