DOLDRUMS

My bad run is ongoing. I won't detail the misery but will offer two examples. In a $200 STT it was down to four players, otherwise known as the bubble. I got all my money in with AJ v KJ and watched the guy flop a straight. Aargh! But this one takes the cake - playing pot limit Omaha/8 the flop comes 996 rainbow. I am first to act with AKJ9 against three opponents on the very first hand of my session. In Omaha you should just come out betting your good hands, but I checked here since there was no draw other than the 87 and even that should be folded with a pair on board. The next player fires out a huge pot-sized bet and it folds around to me. His bet was big enough that I could come back all-in and that is what I did for my full $240 buy-in. He called instantly and showed 6542. Okay, he has absolutely nothing but it is his lucky day because if the cards can possibly conspire to torment me, they will and they do - it comes diamond/diamond to give him a flush with his 52 to scoop the pot.

I sucked it up rather well and then the guy starts trash talking me, saying that if I had bet my hand then the money would be in my stack and not his. I simply replied "I played it fine" and let it go. The other players at the table clarified for him that he just made the biggest donkey call of all time and now he is schooling me. I just got back to playing and broke even the rest of the way but donkey kong went bust half an hour later, spreading my chips around like they were his playthings.

On a side note, I watched THE GOONIES with the kids on Tuesday night since there was no baseball. I had never seen it but I knew that Spielberg is attached to it so I figured it was some sort of family classic. Oh my, that had to be about the stupidest movie I have seen since THE MATRIX RELOADED. I usually don't see films this bad because I generally only watch acknowledged classics or enjoyable offbeat fare. It was really bad and almost worth watching because it is so lame, but only once.

I watched FITZCARRALDO recently. It had been on my to-see list for some time and I finally got around to it. I watched it a second time with the Werner Herzog commentary track. I could listen to Herzog all day every day - he has such a soothing voice with a touch of poetry in his cadence. I have not yet seen BURDEN OF DREAMS, the documentary which details the legendarily difficult shoot that was Fitzcarraldo. Herzog would say in the commentary that his film was about a man going to extreme lengths to realize his dream and the more difficult shooting conditions became for him, the more determined he was to finish the project because to give up on realizing his vision would be ... "not the kind of person I wish to be."

He seems so laid back that you can never imagine the guy weathering any rough conditions, but when asked if there were any injuries during the shoot, he calmly says "no there were no major injuries" then he adds "There was just one incident in which one of the production designers was clearing some trees and suddenly he is surprised to be bitten on his foot by something in the underbrush. It is painful and his reaction is that he drops the chain saw which he is using and he sees the culprit slithering away and recognizes it immediately as a bushmaster snake, the Amazon's most poisonous snake. He has learned that to be bitten by this snake means that cardiac arrest will set on in sixty seconds and we are in the middle of the rain forest with no anti-venom and no way to procure medical attention, so realizing the situation, he of course picks up the chain saw and takes off his foot. But this was the only injury that I can remember during the entire production."

Herzog lives somwhere around here. If he ever stops making movies and just retires to the San Fernando Valley, I think I will seek him out to see if he will go have a beer with me when Tom is in town.