I haven't checked my Analytics account in a while, but I'd set the over/under at about an average of 4.5 visitors per day to this blog over the past month. I started this blog not even a year ago. At the time, I had all the intention to build a blog awesome enough that if, it wasn't even authored by me, I'd still visit it at least a few times a week. Well... the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I don't really know what that means... but it felt appropriate to say.
I'm in a rare state of mind (well... not that rare... I'm buzzed) where actually putting my fingers to the keyboard and writing a blog entry sounds enjoyable. I've got two subjects to talk about.
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A few days ago I was playin' beer pong at someone's apartment. I'm friends with some smart guys. Like... I might have been able to fool myself into thinking I was "smart" while I was at Ball State, but I am truly humbled by some of the guys my roommate Michael is friends with from high school.
Anyway, a couple of these guys starting touting this show called "The Wire". I had never heard of it... but that was partially to be expected since I hardly ever watch TV. So these guys start talking about this show, saying things like "it's the best show I've ever seen on TV," and things like that. Now... the guys saying this stuff aren't clowns. I believe my buddy Aaron was the first to mention this show. He's finishing up his last semester at Harvard Law before he moves out to Silicon Valley to start working for [insert well-known law firm that isn't well-known to me here]. Another guy, Vinh, fresh back in his hometown after working for Teach For America in Brooklyn (where he was once mugged... a go-get-'em motherfucker Vinh is to take a job like that) said that, not only is it the best show he's ever seen, but that it's possibly the "best work of art" he's ever seen. I mean... these guys are all the devil's advocate type (perhaps as a result of their time in high school debate) who are reluctant as hell to stake their reputation on something as trivial as a TV show. And that's exactly what I told Vinh, "wow... you're really staking your reputation on this show, huh?" He said, "absolutely... check it out, and you'll understand why."
So I checked it out.
I just finished the first season tonight. You might think having a guy (who you previously had no reason not to trust 100%) tell you that "it's not only the best show I've ever seen, but the best work of art I've ever seen," is a perfect recipe for a grade-A letdown. I wasn't let down in the slightest. In fact... after watching the first season... I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that it's the best TV drama I've ever seen. I would say it's the best TV show I've ever seen, but I don't think it's fair to start comparing The Wire to comedies like Seinfeld and South Park.
But what you can compare it to are shows like Law and Order, Cold Case, CSI, [insert giant "etc" here], and Dexter, which is another show that I'm a huge fan of, but now seems suddenly mediocre relative to HBO's The Wire.
So what's The Wire about? The war on drugs from the perspective of the Baltimore Police and that city's respective drug traffickers.
Something I repeatedly thought about while watching the first season was that the show is more like a 13-hour long movie (there are 13 one-hour long episodes in season one) than it is a start-fresh-each-episode TV drama. More to the point, I can't imagine sitting down to watch some random episode in the middle of the season while having the slightest fucking clue what's going on. Shows such as CSI are meant so that viewers can come and go as they please. The Wire would be like going to a 13-hour long movie and only walking into the theatre for the middle hour of it. My point? If this blog at all motivates you to watch the show, start from beginning to end. Not only will you understand it better, but you'll also (ldo) appreciate it more.
Alright, if anyone who reads this actually decides to watch the show, you can come back to this entry after watching season one to see if you agree with my list of favorite characters from that season. Realize that this show has something like thirty characters that appear in most every episode, which alone makes it unlike any other TV show:
1.
Jimmy McNulty - I don't really think this show has a "main character" at all, but if you
had to finger someone as such, I think you'd have to go with McNulty. Played by British actor Dominic West, McNulty is that square-jawed action-hero type that every guy (at least secretly) wishes he could be. In at least half the episodes, he has a line that goes, "what the fuck did I do?," which stems from taking the heat on a lot of things that he's probably not responsible for, but gets shit for anyway 'cause he's generally a bit of an asshole. I'll gladly be an "asshole" too as long as it means being as cool and true to one's self as McNulty.
2.
Omar Little - The creators of this show really took a risk in making Omar's character openly gay. As a black man who robs others at gunpoint for a living, you wouldn't think that being openly gay would be acceptable as a lifestyle choice. But I think that's what makes Omar's character so awesome. As Aaron put it to me on IM while I was struggling to "believe" this character (if you will), "the fact that he can be openly gay in the hood just shows what a badass he is." Omar is almost too badass.
3.
Bubbles - The actor who plays Bubbles portrays a heroin addict so well you wonder if he's attending N.A. meetings in his personal time. Bubbles is generally used for a little humor relief or break in the action from the more dramatic scenes. He has a good heart. You can tell his reoccurring bids to clean up are both genuine and futile.
4.
Maury Levy - Every thugged-out drug kingpin needs a good Jewish lawyer to keep their shit clean behind the scenes, right? I completely fell in love with the character of Maury Levy 32 minutes into episode two. He shows up to a police interrogation where one of the kingpin's ken was saying too many words to the police while waiting for representation to arrive. Maury (a short, middle-aged white guy, clearly pissed that his client has been speaking with police), slaps a young, athletic black man in the back of the head and says "how many times do I have to tell you people the same fucking thing?"
5.
Stringer Bell - The right-hand man of the show's top drug kingpin is a valuable character. He's a bit of a liberal's fantasy; he attends community college while pursuing a degree in economics when not assigning soldiers to off snitches. Regardless, Stringer is cool, calm, and trustworthy; exactly the type of guy you'd want as your #2 if you were involved in drug trafficking.
The Wire's fifth and final season is currently airing on HBO. I can hardly wait for season two to finish downloading... err... I mean... arrive in the mail.
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Generally speaking, it's hard for me to justify writing a blog entry if all I have to talk about is gambling. The fact that I've been updating this blog so infrequently is largely a product of the fact that all I've really done in the past several weeks is gamble.
Last Wednesday, Michael and I went to L'Auberge du Lac, a casino just across the border of Louisiana. They're really good about comps and promotions, so it's actually +EV to go there (provided you're like us, hardly giving them a thing by making low house-edge bets). Anyway, I decided to run bad playing craps and dropped a good deal of my bankroll that night. I've won quite a bit of it back through online tournaments the past couple of days.
On Friday, I final tabled the PokerStars nightly $10 rebuy for the first time. Unfortunately, Ace-King decided to lose all-in preflop to Ace-Seven for a third of the chips in play with seven left. First was $15,000. I got $1,800 for 7th.
Today I played most of the Sunday majors. I had a few decent (but frustrating) results. In the Sunday Million, I had Ace-Queen lose, all-in preflop, to Ace-Jack for a pot that would have made me 200/2,000. Granted that was pretty early in the tournament, but I certainly would have been peering down the barrel of a second straight week of cashing in that tournament if a Jack didn't hit on the river.
In
Cake Poker's $100k guarantee, I sat on a stack of less than 10 bbs from when we were in the money (90 players), all the way down to 40 players, while probably not seeing more than 20 hands in between. The field was so nitty that everyone was using their 120-second time banks to try to squeak up another pay level. Eventually, I started to think a final table appearance was in my future, but then my 9 bb cutoff shove with Queen-Ten woke up against the big blind's King-King, ldo.
Most of my frustration came in the Bodog $100k, which I have five final two-table finishes (including two $14k second place finishes) in just the past 12 months. With 20 players left during 3k/6k, I was the chipleader with 200k. During 4k/8k, I doubled a short stack up in an unavoidable Eights versus Nines situation. The structure in that tournament moves very fast. Before I knew it, I had ten big blinds during 6k/12k while we were playing five handed on the FT bubble. Five-handed with an M (for the record, I'm not one of those "M-groupies") of 4, you kinda need to be dealt some cards. I wasn't dealt cards. I finished 10th for the second time in less than three months in that tournament. $1,000. First was $25,000. Ugh.
I feel
really good about how I've been playing though. Looking back to 2007, when I had three five-figure cashes, I can easily say that I'm significantly better now than I was then. 2008 is young. I feel like the pieces are in place for this to be, by far, the best year of my poker playing career.
Thanks for reading.
