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Where's Waldo?


[Content Disclosure: Travels, Mt. Shasta and Some Poker]


I should be drifting back down to Sonoma in the next couple of days after a week in Weed. Actually I am getting close to my homeless date, my friend will be back to reclaim her cottage in Sebastopol in early May. With the WSOP starting at the end of May, I guess I should start looking for a summer rental in Las Vegas.

We now know the Matusow book will officially hit the stores on May 12th. I wish I could be enthused about that, but the final editing process ground a lot of the joy of accomplishment out of the whole process. But over a month to recover should help a bit.

The ever so slow scramble for WSOP media positions is in full crawl. The Shrink will be there for the entire Series again this year; stay tuned for assignment disclosure. I would like to predict that the planned twitter projects are overkill. Too much information for too small an audience. But then again, I didn't buy Google stock.

Finally, in the "All Good Things" category filed under 'Kittens I Have Known." Smokey has gotten very old since I last visited and I expect she will not be here next time I venture up to the Mt. Shasta area. We shared the bed as always and she remains in fine if subdued spirits. It has been over a decade of visits that I have shared with Smokey and she will be missed and warmly remembered.





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Who Wrote That Song and Why?


[Content Disclosure: No Poker, Some Music, Serendipity]

I was digging around in my bag o'discs and found an old one from David. While I drove around Mt. Shasta today, I heard Jerry Jeff Walker make a reference in a live concert track to "being inspired to write this song, in the First Precinct jail." Hence this story:

After being arrested Fourth of July weekend 1965 in New Orleans for drunkenness, Jerry Jeff Walker found himself sharing a holding cell with dozens of street people, who had been rounded up in conjunction with a murder investigation. "Round up the usual suspects (and all the homeless)."

Among those those into the First Precinct cells was a street performer who used the alias of "Mr. Bojangles" clearly after the great negro performer Bill Robinson. As Walker tells it, the man told story after story but the mood darkened after he told about his dog being run over. To bring the mood (in the cell), someone suggested a tap dance and Mr. Bojangles obliged.

Walker always makes the point that the object of his song is not Bill Robinson but indeed this street performer, who Walker notes was white. Had to be, even the jails in New Orleans were segregated in 1965.

I wander around the InnerTube a bit to find some covers of Mr. Bojangles:
Video:
Sammy Davis Jr. (for Bea)
Audio:

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Lessons Learned and Relearned

[Content Disclosure: The Book and therefore Poker; Publishing; New Ground & Old Lessons]

I don't know why but blue brains seem to be in pain or confusion. -- me


There are hundreds of classic interpersonal struggles inherent in the process of creation or perhaps better said production. Our post-modern, not yet post-industrial age gives us: manager versus worker and artist vs. producer or maybe commercial interface (the salesman). These conflicts give rise to those pithy sayings: "Those that cannot do teach, those that cannot teach manage, those that cannot manage own."

When we hear stories of such fracturous interactions we tend to either dismiss them because we really don't care about which hedge fund associate warned who about which mortgage backed security or we hear the beginning of the tale and instantly have the "been there, suffered that" reaction.

So if you are a published author or should you have engaged in any endeavor that allows you to use the term "editor" as a pejorative, you may want to skip this post. Sometime in the last few hours the Mike Matusow auto/biography was sent off to the printer. That means it is now in the form which hopefully large numbers of people will read. No more commas will change, no more sentences will be tweaked, no more discussions will be had over the direction, focus, message, intention or meaning.

I have heard war stories about authors and editors. Quite frankly, I (Amy & I) do not have a story worthy of "war." What we do have is our first major experience with being artists and having a major work bent to the will of the consumer world. Unfortunately, that consumptive mass of Visa card holders out there can only be interpreted by those "in the business." That means there are no fast rules and no absolutes. Our ongoing experience with having our articles and posts edited, did not prepare us for eighteen months of work coming under the microscope, the blue pencil and in particular the rewrite.

So we struggled over keeping the book in Mike's voice. We put in scenes, took them out and recast them. Grammar tried to win the day against the elements of truth in self told story. Chapters came and went and combined and got renamed. We even changed the title of the book at the eleventh hour. No one liked the old title, but equally no one had a new one. Does "The Damn Thing's Done" strike you as too self indulgent?

Sometime in April, I am going to lock and load on my next book length project. But right now I am wondering if a 8-5 cubicle does not have some inherent sanity protections not afforded to creations out of whole cloth.
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Sonoma Cats


[Content Disclosure: 100% Cats and nothing but Cats]


It has been pointed out to me that my promised exposures of the Cats of Sonoma is overdue. So here is installment #1.

That golden lovely up top is Tigr, one of Matthew's three domesticated kitties. Tigr is the oldest and pretty much runs the household.

This is Coco in one of her many roof perches. Coco is fond of trees, particularly at petting heights. She is the youngest of the clan, which includes Matisse, who has not stood for a photo yet and at least three semi-feral kittens who may yet be captured in a telephoto shot.


The roley poley pussy is JoJo who lives in the other cottage and is aware that just inside my cottage door is a bag of kitty treats. Two males come by often to serenade JoJo but as yet they have not allowed any pictures or pets.

This is the landlady's kitty, who only visits on weekends but always stops by for pets and treats which are technically not allowed. Below one more photo of the lovely Tigr.

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Olde Friends

[Content Disclosure: Relationships, Love, Marriage, Life and General Human-like Goofiness]


I'll wait for you
And should I fall behind
Wait for me
Springstein

I have these two friends. I met them in 1971 when they were a new couple. They did typical 20 year old kid stuff, like arguing about nothing and fighting about air. He slept on my couch half a dozen times when he couldn't or wouldn't go home. I was at their wedding in 1975 but turned down any official position in the wedding party. I thought I might be needed to referee.

They moved. I moved. Diana visited me in Hermosa Beach in 1985, a couple of years after their divorce. She was older, wiser and still had no clue why she and Paul were either at each others throats or genitals with nothing in between. She had always been the stable one in those early years, at least that was my perspective, but then again, she never got booted to my divan.

I saw Paul several times in the 90s, he had a new wife and then he didn't. But in both cases he talked about Diana. I heard they made an abbreviated attempt at round two or round seven right around the millennium and apparently had a major shouting drama at a fund raiser for the Cleveland Art Museum, complete with thrown champagne.

My point?

I got an invitation to their re-marriage coming this June. Fortunately, I have other commitments that month and this year and for the next decade but I am considering a new sofa. I think it is only fair for aging friends to have a more comfortable place for olde love warriors to fall.
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View from the Back Seat


[Content Disclosure: Existential Angst 67%; Illness 9%]


The most compelling metaphor I have ever heard about illness was told to me by my best friend Tom. This was in his sixth or seventh month of being sick and tired every day. He told me that being around the rest of the family was like viewing the world from the back seat of a car. While we were all up in front having a life, enjoying the day or not. He was stuck in the back, unable to engage with the world without his "illness filter". He was already always the sick person. The world was up there and he was always in the back.

What struck him most profoundly about this view was not how others treated him. They were entitled to their own reactions and fears. No, what haunted him to the very core was that this was indeed this reality. His world was a world of illness and deprivation and that was not going to change. I remember just a week or so later, he told me that he would give anything to just have one more normal day. Twenty-four hours without pain, fatigue or side effects. He was willing to trade days, even weeks for that singularly normal day.

He never got it. Think about it the next time you have a couple of lousy days in a row. You know you have another plain, old every day just around the corner. At least I hope you do. I hope we all do.
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Funeral for a Friend


[Content Disclosure: Life, Death, Synchronicity]


She said, "There is no reason
and the truth is plain to see.'
But I wandered through my playing cards
and would not let her be
one of sixteen vestal virgins
who were leaving for the coast
and although my eyes were open
they might just as well've been closed


I was talking to a friend the other day and he mentioned plans for his funeral. After a period of empathy, I pointed out that telling me was not going to assure his minimalist last wishes were going to be followed. He either had to tell his executor, put it in writing or put me in his will to carry out that portion of his requests/bequests. He asked about my own "after" plans and while we have similar desires (a quick flash bake and the nearby friends get the kitchen stuff); he was surprised that I also had some olde plans that included music for any eventual gathering of friends.

Later that same evening, I was having a completely different conversation with another bestiest friend and somehow we drifted to that same fatal/final topic. We discovered we had the same primary request for music, which I offer you the opportunity to listen, ponder and enjoy.

I must add that I wouldn't be adverse to a second verse for after the florid speeches.
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