Sizing Up Another Year

(Mix)

III.

Dearest mother,

I've been so busy with the end of the semester I haven't had the time to pen you. But school is tapering off like the winter's last snow and now I sit ready to pass the days in a sluggish torpor. I tell you mother, this business of card playing is some sort of devil. It has been a full 365 days and over 1,000 hrs. and like we thought, we are not rich, but we are not broke, and I suppose that is more than most in these curious times. Self destruction has pinned herself to my sleeve every once and a while, but don't you know, I've found ways to whisk her away like cigarette smoke? She comes scratching late in the evening and sometimes I curl up like I've seen a ghost, sweating, turning and tossing, but sometimes we waltz into the purple morning hours, carrying on like old lovers and rattling our old bones. However, we know it will never be, so I open the window and let her disappear into the world.

You might be surprised to hear that I have moved on from strictly playing Hold'em. The beauty of variation! I am getting to a comfortable spot in most games. I've learned and lost and won and studied. At the moment I am playing online in a cash game rotation of 8 of following games, 6 hands of each:

2-7 limit triple draw
Limit Hold'em
Limit Omaha H/L
Razz
Limit Stud
Limit Stud H/L
No Limit Hold'Em
Pot Limit Omaha

I do okay. The rotation has rekindled my spirit and thirst for no limit cash games as the past year I have focused primarily on learning the mixed limit games. I've really taken to Limit Stud H/L, mother. I don't play in many tournaments, but my only 1st place finish was in Stud H/L over the past year. Also came in 2nd in one as well. So I have been thinking about the World Series of Poker Stud H/L event. If I can go on a run here I may make a trip to mecca, but that is most likely not to happen because of school.

What do you think: do we have another year in us? I feel pretty good I must say. Taking care of school and getting outside and playing music and writing keeps me somewhat balanced. No worse than before anyways. There is this business about graduation at the end of the summer though, so I'll have to be moving on soon. We will be in touch, but for now give my love to all.

From the other side of the world,

B.

Dust Bowl Gansters

(Concert/Music Reviews)

My crippled bankroll needed a breather this weekend, and although I recently saw them in Rochester, I decided to go to The Felice Brothers show. Taylor Hollingsworth opened up for them and I was pleasantly surprised by his solo performance. Although his young voice conjures the ghost of Daniel Johnston, his writing is spangled with very profound and beautifully absurd lyrics.

Ian Felice strikes me as a modern day vaudevillian tweaker. I say that with artistic love. He rocks, sways and winces like a marionette attached to the dusty wild west. Any band that has more than one mustache rules, and Christmas, the dice throwing bass player is obviously goddamn pimp.

I envy their rowdy and drinking ways on stage, but hope I don't read about a canceled tour due to 'exhaustion'...

With a shifting focus,

B.

You are not lonely, nor are you alone

Mix

II.

We are friends, no?

The rotund Jew with milky blue eyes, hooded by worried brows looked at me and explained his position "I didn't feel good and if I stayed home I would lay around and just eat." I sipped my coffee and contemplated why I was there. The William Burroughs look-alike pursed his lips and said, "My wife died 3 years ago." The pock marked Italian chirped, "This place is like a bar, you see all the regulars here like you would at a bar." I couldn't agree with him more. It is a way to be close to people without letting them in. Once they get in, they rummage around and see how messy, insecure, dreamy, lovely and foggy your life really is.

Excuse me, why am I here? "I am a card player sir, and my car broke down near the edge of town and I am just looking to get some coin to get back on the road. I have a lady the next town over waiting for me. We plan on moving to the country as soon as I get fixed up real proper, sir. Three tens? I have aces over eights, you win again."

Affectionately yours,

B.

The Lonely Librarian

I.

The Kiss of Death

I am approaching the year long mark of my reintroduction to poker. I thought I might have written much more on the subject, but I must say that I have been hesitant to go in-depth with the whole thing. I think it's time to play catch up with the topic. One of the points of this blog was to address some of these issues, but I can't help but feel incredibly self conscious about the experience. People generally have a distrust or preconceived picture of what kind of 'folk' we are. Degenerate, swindler-type-snake-oil-salesmen. I don't define my existence as a poker player, so why the guilt? (Although I did name the blog in accordance with the lifestyle)Might you label me childish and morally unkempt? Well, I have to get over that b/c even though I don't define myself as such, I take it pretty fucking serious nonetheless. Maybe it's my seriousness that I feel foolish about...Do I really think I can make it as a player? At any moment I could stop playing-the money could run out-the game ends. I already feel the game approaching the end as it is. The name of the blog would then be changed to The Failed Librarian or The Recreational Aging Musician or no, I got it: The Surrealist Librarian. I think I like that better, anyways...What does that say about the amount of energy I have shoveled into this locomotive? Could the energy have been better placed, such as relationships, creativity, grad school, etc? Perhaps, but right now I am having toooo much fun alone and lonely in Buffalo. Kenmore, NY to be exact.

With psychological wanderlust,

B.

M. Ward Buffalo, NY

What's worse: A roomful of douche bag poker players or a teeming room of hipsters? At any rate, it was my first show in Buffalo and I was looking forward to seeing how Matt was live. He can't be going that bad can he? He's kind of like the darling of the indie-world, right? Why then, did he rip his backing band from the local blues-joint open mic? No chemistry, looked like it was their first show together and the sound was not helping their cause. As for Matt, I really think he has good material but I was worried how his incredibly-over-processed-voice was going to hold up in a live setting. Not so well. There were points in the show when you could hear his 'true' voice and it isn't that bad. Maybe I should quickly explain: on his studio albums he adds a bunch of effects to his voice to sound hip. Not necessary. So during the show it was hard to hear what he was singing/speaking and I actually liked his natural voice that slipped out once and a while. Having said that I really enjoyed Post-War, Chinese Translation and Undertaker. I would have liked to have heard Hi-Fi, but ah, weeell. I enjoyed his vacant but totally in control stare that he donned the entire show as well. He knows what he is doing and that is why I was so thrown off by his band...If I were drunk or stoned I probably would have been more impressed that Oakley Hall joined him on stage, but it just didn't add too much to the overall show.

(Side note: I need to combat a previous entry in the WILCO review where I claimed that I hate music and musicians. I realize that I am a musician and I include my own artistic self-hatred in that statement. I generally love everything about music-sometimes it's just so fucking self-righteous. I get really turned off by it, and in turn stop playing it, stop listening to it, etc. I think I was coming off of a 24 month bender where I was totally immersed in The Alpine Black, so I just stopped practicing and writing. Just burned out on it. When I wrote that entry I was deep in the valley. Luckily for me and unluckily for my neighbors, the embers are glowing once again)

With busy fingers and clanging vocal folds,

B.

A Quiet Walk

It has been a long time since taking the night deep into the morning. That old-time feeling of courting the sunrise and counting the minutes. Feeling the hunger come creeping in, slow and steady...The 5 am walk outside: cold, refreshing and incredibly still. Peeling off the layers of the night as it ebbs and flows; the black sky massages the moon into a silent bottomless sleep.

Ever yours,

B.

A Quiet Drive

I like driving over the second bridge at night. After a win, or after a loss. Approaching the slow blinking red lights at the top of the bridge makes the world seem afloat-makes the world seem slow and penetrable. The snow curling around the long metal cables disappear like plumes of old dusty smoke. Here I feel small, but here I feel the natural order of things. Knowing the bridge connects a lonely divide, where underneath the heartbeat of a sleeping, frozen lake swooshes in and out, waiting for the thaw.

And my car climbs the quiet small of the night: flooding the bridge with tears of youth, flooding my youth with tears of age.

Balancing on the edge of nothingness,

B.