Another quote from one of the greats for Halloween

Note: This entry was actually submitted by p.d.diablo and runs about two pages. The views expressed do not necessarily represent the opinions of the management of this blog or its affiliates.


"We're obviously separated by denominational differences."
-Charlie Brown (that's right. Charlie Brown)
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

And we were supposed to understand this stuff when we were kids?

This quote from the movie is from a scene where Charlie Brown asks Linus when he's going to stop believing in the Great Pumpkin, some apparent spectre (or so it seemed) that would rise out one chosen pumpkin patch somewhere in the world. Linus responds that he'll stop believing in the Great Pumpkin when Charlie Brown stops believing in some fat, jolly guy who squeezes down chimneys every year with presents (or some wording to that effect). Charlie Brown then fires off the aforementioned one-liner.

Think about that for a moment.... Could it be a masked discussion of the differences between Pagans and Christians?

But I'm not going that deep today. We were just kids, for hell's sake. I always liked this Charlie Brown cartoon as a child. It was a little spooky at parts, right? Kinda like the one where they all go to France, and the Chateau where Charlie Brown (I think... maybe Linus ) is staying catches on fire. Meanwhile, of course, Snoopy is off drinking in the pub dressed as a fighter pilot. Hey, if he's got the money... But I always remembered the tension in that one (was it Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and don't come back)?).

One thing we all understood from these cartoons was that we didn't want to be Charlie Brown. In case any of you had forgotten (or never seen in the first place), in Great Pumpkin, while trick-or-treating with the gang, after each stop the children compare their loot. Candy bars, caramel apples, a quarter, etc... First off, I never got money when I trick-or-treated, but even more than this, apparently it was customary in 1966 (date of release) to give the children infortunado a rock in their bags. Charlie Brown must've got five. Every house dropped a stone the size of my fist instead of a treat into his sack. Can you imagine how heavy his bag would start getting? And you know that the Charlie Brown we never saw was throwing those rocks through the windows of the houses at two a.m. And why not? He didn't have any real parental supervision. "I'll show you a trick," he'd be grumbling. Probably cursing, as well.

Another quickie.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
-C.S. Lewis, and to stick with the movie motif, also heard in The Usual Suspects.

The other thing we learn from this one is that, right up until the end, we want to be Linus seducing the little blonde into the pumpkin patch on Halloween. And he's good, man. He's the sensitive, honest guy, right? "It's the most sincere pumpkin patch anywhere...not a sign of hypocrisy," he says. And Sally starts off playing it coy, tells him if he tries to hold her hand, she'd slug 'em. Ahh, a challenge. Did we really care if the Great Pumpkin showed up or not?

But here's the cincher. His romantic ideals were enough to reel her in, but in the end they weren't enough to keep her around. When Linus couldn't produce the great pumpkin, Sally walked out on him. Did this disprove the existence of the Great Pumpkin? Of course not. Only that his efforts had been insufficient. Somewhere lay a more sincere pumpkin patch. He had tried his best, and they called him a liar. Even worse... a blockhead.

I bet next year Linus figures out how to rig up a mechanical Great Pumpkin rising out of that patch, which, during his efforts to develop the illusion, will have since wilted, once great green leaves crisped in the sun, pumpkins brown and rotting. But they would believe him next year, dammit! And he'd get the girl. And maybe, just maybe, he'd jimmy a flamethrower in his Great Pumpkin that, at the moment they admitted that they were wrong...

You can almost see him working in the dusty shed late at night under a bare light bulb, fastening the device's giant pumpkin head together. "Call me a liar, will you? I'll show you a liar," he'd be grumbling. Probably cursing, as well.

Happy Halloween.

Did I mention Jennifer? 

Poker and Self Help Books- part two- Madison, WI

Author's note: Sorry it's been so long. Things have been pretty hectic. Nest egg finally cracked and I had to go back to work swinging a hammer until the book advance for "The Imaginings" (knock, knock, knock). Of course I'm still working on rewrites, but those should be done before the end of the year. Anyway, this is the second part of the Poker series (obviously) and runs about four pages. And one more thing, certain [facts] have been changed to protect the innocent.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Madison, Wisconsin.

I was looking through my computer case with Jennifer a couple nights ago. I’m not sure exactly what we were looking for. Nothing earth-shattering, I imagine, but late on a Saturday night, (or late for me, actually. I had just worked my first day back to construction after doing a whole lotta’ nothing for the past three months. And a Saturday, even. Needless to say, I was in my pajama pants reading on the couch by eight. Anyway…) sitting in the living room with Jennifer after her own long day, we were in the midst of some interesting anecdote which led me to the computer case, I’ve no doubt. I believe it was about Jews for Jesus, one of the many pamphlets I was handed in New York City later on my summer adventure. I always take pamphlets. You never know what gems of information you might stumble on. Especially in Vegas. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

But I was getting around to talking about Madison. I didn't even go to Las Vegas on this trip. And New York wasn’t for another couple weeks on my summer agenda. I was telling you about looking through my computer case. Along with the pamphlets and the pack of Lucky Strikes (for more information on these, read “Minneapolis, MN part two- Elsie’s Bowling Alley) I found many scraps of paper from along the journey. On a torn piece of newspaper from one of the local underground rags in Madison, I found this note to remind myself.

“The four ‘P’s’
-Parking Lot
-Prohibition
-Pig Pen
-Poker”

In part one of this segment I already explained my theory that if my cousin, Matt, had been around during the days of Prohibition, he would’ve owned a speak easy.

As to the Parking Lot, well, I scribbled the addendum “the Bat Cave.” You see, not only does my cousin own his own pool hall in Madison, one of the older billiards establishments (they even have actual billiards tables, sans pockets, a game of which Matt explained the rules, but I’ve since forgotten), but he also has his own parking space in what would appear to be just another warehouse-esque/possible building space next to the block where Cue-nique is located. (Follow that whole sentence? My God, I can’t believe Word let me get away with that one.). To get to his parking space, you go around the block, through a side parking lot, punch in a secret code, a bay door opens, up the ramp into an open level for discreet parking, complete with the surrounding square panel-sectioned warehouse style windows. We departed the batmobile and took the batpole to the ground level.

So there’s ‘Parking Lot.’ And the whole point of this section (there’s a point?) was Poker and Self-Help. Note that it’s not an either/or case.

I didn’t play Texas Hold-‘em (am I righting that write?) for anything more than a handful of nickels and dimes for seven years after that time in Missoula. But upon my arrival in Madison, Matt informed me that Cue-nique [wasn’t] hosting a game that evening. Twenty-five dollar buy-in. Nothing too major.

As far as I could tell, this game that [wasn’t] going on wasn’t exactly “legal,” but apparently previous employees of Cue-nique [weren’t] related to local cops, so nothing was going on. Plus, apparently of the fifty or so players that [wouldn’t] be there, many of the older players [hadn’t] been playing for “match sticks” for years already sitting at one of the shadowed booths or tables on the perimeter of the raised bar overlooking the poolroom floor, hosting at least fifteen pool tables to the best of my recollection. Which, by the way, was a little fuzzy for the few nights we spent at Cue-nique. Another perk of being related to the owner.

So I figured, what the hell? I had caught a few episodes of the World Series of Poker, had even played a game or so for small potatoes, like I said. It was still early on my trip. What was twenty-five bucks.

To make a long story short, turns out twenty-five bucks was about five minutes of play. I’ve learned better since (I’ll expand on this momentarily), but let’s just say that going “all-in” probably wasn’t the best idea on that first hand. As the first player out of the game, I spent the rest of my evening talking with Matt, drinking, and watching.

The players whittled down over the course of the next probably four hours until it was finally won by a regular to Cue-nique, affectionately known as Pig Pen. Relatively loud, a bit rotund, seemingly jovial, but apparently with occasional behavior contradicting normal social niceties, Pig Pen was an interesting study. While he took the eventual first place, I wondered at his tendency to show his cards even after everyone else had folded, an action that isn’t required in these circumstances and essentially lets your opponents know if they had been bluffed or not.

Regardless of all of this, had I made it past the first few cuts, I’m sure I still would’ve lost the big pot. What I’ve realized since is that this is true partially because I would’ve been afraid to lose. (Mostly it would’ve been lack of skill, of course, but I was looking for a way to quickly segue into my “Self-Help” portion of this segment. I should write damn books, I tell ya’. Hey, wait a minute…)

A couple weeks later, I played again in Maryland with family and a smaller buy-in, and took third. Then again a couple weeks ago here in Cedar City with some old friends from the college daze and walked away with a hundred bucks. Now I’m not saying how it’s much better to beat friends and family out of their money than it is a bunch of strangers in Madison (even though it sounds like it). What I’m saying is that I did better because I wasn’t afraid to lose. When it came to my friends and family, these were people whom I would’ve outright given money to had they asked, so I didn’t mind losing it to them after a good night of playing cards and catching up.

The key was, I wasn’t afraid of losing. (Okay, single reader, are you picking up on the motivational stuff, here?)

“Fear is the mind killer.”

"The only thing to fear is fear itself.”

“I’m afraid, Dave.”

Many times, envisioning failure only serves to create it. I was going to say that it’s similar to the idea that you can create your own successes, as well, but while I believe that to be partially true, I think a few other factors need to be involved, like some sort of talent in the area you want to succeed. However, all you need is your own fears and insecurities to orchestrate failure.

Okay, enough about that. It sure was a long way around to a couple cliché paragraphs, but I’ll just say two things. 1- There’s a reason things are cliché, and B- I really just wanted to say how I finally won a game of Texas Hold-‘em a couple weeks ago. Jennifer was there with me, watching me play, and that always helps to look cool in front of your new girlfriend. Plus, I’m sure she was a little bit of good luck as well.

I know I should say more about Madison. Lots of trees. I mean, thick with ‘em. Super pretty. First time I’d seen lightening bugs since I was a little kid in the South. Some bar with a huge tree dominating the interior (might’ve even been “Paul’s.”), etc…, but I’ll save that for the longer version of this trip which will optimally be published one day (knock, knock, knock). With all due respects, though, it was great seeing Matt and his girlfriend, Liz, as well as other family I hadn’t seen in years. And if you’re ever in Madison, be sure to stop in to Cue-nique and ask to see the batcave.

A quote from "Immortality"

I stumbled on this one the other day, and thought how it echoed p.d. diablo's sentiment on the homepage. Far more expansive, though.

"To load a program into the computer: this does not mean that the future has been planned down to the last detail, that everything is written 'up above.' For example, the program did not specify that in 1815 a battle would be fought near Waterloo and that the French would be defeated, but only that man is aggressive by nature, that he is condemned to wage war, and that technical progress would make war more and more terrible. Everything else is without importance, from the Creator's point of view, and is only a play of permutations and combinations within a general program, which is not a prophetic anticipation of the future but merely sets the limits of possibilities within which all power of decision has been left to chance."

-Milan Kundera
Immortality

Poker and Self-Help Books-part One

Author's note: Just a little over three pages, this piece transitions you, my one reader, from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Madison, Wisconsin during my Summer Tour.

Funny how the cards are played.

My history with Texas Hold-em Poker is dicey, at best. The first time I ran into the game was about seven years ago in Montana, before it became the game popularized by the recent televising of the World Series of Poker. I had just moved to Missoula and didn’t know a soul. I ended up wandering around downtown and ended up in front of Stockman’s bar.

Funny sidebar that actually has to do with karaoke… My first trip out of the two room shack that I had rented site-unseen, located amongst similar shacks and a few trailers in the industrial park of town, had been a venture across Broadway to what used to be the Limelight Bar. I don’t know if I knew they had karaoke that night (it might’ve been on the sign) or if it was just the closest bar in an unfamiliar town, but (similar to Stockman’s) I didn’t go back much after this particular evening. It was a Friday and the bar was full of cowboy hats and trucker caps. At the time, my hair was the longest it had been, probably down to my shoulder blades, and the song I chose to do was Buffalo Springfield’s “For What it’s Worth,” one of my old favorites from my Utah daze. You know the one… “Something’s happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear…”

What wasn’t exactly clear to me at the time was the fact that it was a protest song, and judging by the video playing on the big screen behind me as well as a few others in the bar (a video I had never seen during my previous performances… more on this later) there was a heavy slant towards Civil Rights in the song.

So while the long-haired hippy stood on stage singing, throngs of black children played on the screen behind, splashing in spraying water from opened hydrants on city streets and eating their popsicles. I finished the song, and somewhere in the distance, crickets were heard to chirp. Not a big hit apparently.

“Thank you! Goodnight! Don’t forget to tip your servers!”

Okay, now for a brief segue before returning to the main story.

Karaoke videos. Good Lord, they’re horrible. At some other point I’ll tell you the story of performing Waylon Jenning’s “Luckenbach, Texas” in a Chinese karaoke bar in Honolulu in front of a widescreen consisting entire of cows. But the American versions aren’t much better. Personally, as a singer, I never want to the video version. And sometimes it’s a gamble, because the songbook will have two listings for a song, and you just know the version you pick will be one with the video, and when you get up to do “Mamas, Don’t Let your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys,” there will be a bunch of pretty boys who have probably never even been within twenty feet of a horse sashaying around with a semi-modern version of Daisy Duke.

I used to joke about these actors, wondered who was putting on their resume that they played Johnny in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Turns out a friend of mine from college went to acting school in Florida, and one of their exercises involved making karaoke videos. When “Man Without a Band” eventually gets published, I will include an interview with Mr. Russ Benton, but if you wish to see him before then, you can catch him live in Las Vegas starring as Merlin in the show at Excalibur.

And now, back to gambling.

I was never a big gambler. Having spent enough time in poverty in my in-between colleges years, I’ve never been a big fan of losing money. Sure we had the nickel, dime, quarter games between friends in college. You might be surprised; some of those pots could get over a hundred bucks. But it was always between friends, and when you wanted to quit, just like Blackjack, you could walk away, with your winnings or whatever you managed to salvage.

Such isn’t the case in a serious game of Texas Hold-em. To get in the game, you buy in for a certain amount. Depending on the number of players, the winnings can then be doled out between the top winners or simply taken by the last person in the game. There are many variations I’m sure, but the important thing to know is probably the obvious. In many instances, you might walk away with nothing but the memories.

Most of my limited knowledge of the game has been picked up with the rest of America over the past year or so, but when I stumbled on a game seven years ago at the back of Stockman’s Bar (“liquor in the front, poker in the rear”) I barely remembered the order of winning hands from the old college games. Similar to the Limelight, Stockman’s is populated mostly by cowboys (again, probably obvious by the name), and while the guy dealing the cards was younger, most of the occupants of the table were well past college years. Now, while the guy actually dealt the cards, he was not actually “the dealer.” Montana law is, the bar can host the game, but they’re technically not “the house.” You play only against the other players. Or something like that. Whether or not the bar took a percentage of the buy-in was unclear to me, but judging by his come-hither comments, I would say the dealer was either working for the bar, or working for the other players. They had recognized a dummy, a dupe, lingering just outside the perimeter of the table.

“Why don’t you play?” the dealer asked. Five heads turned my direction.

“What’s the game?” I asked.

“Texas Hold-em,” he said. “It’s easy. Like regular poker, just a little different. Watch a few
hands, you’ll get it.”

I finished my beer and sat at the table. Yeah, I didn’t get it. Forty dollars and about five minutes later, I was stepping away from the table. The dealer handed me a card with a offer for a certain amount of “house credit,” telling me I should come back and play again another time, and everyone at the table smiled congenially, but I never played again in the back, or rather got poked again in the rear at Stockman’s.

I’m still getting to the self help section of this story, but it’s getting late, and I’m getting tired. But what I will say is that I didn’t play Texas Hold-em again for seven years, not until my summer trip this year.

My cousin, Matt McCabe, owns a pool hall in Madison, WI. Cue-nique Billiards. One thing I’ll say about Matt… I feel fairly certain that if these were still the days of Prohibition, Matt would own a speak-easy, instead.

An insertion near the End

author's note: At just under four pages, this is a short anecdote/semi-epiphany I had nearing the end of my summer tour. No karaoke involved. I'll be getting back to that soon. I might have sped this one up a little at the end for the sake of brevity. Or maybe I'm just tired.


Labor Day weekend.
Driving from Portland to San Francisco.

“Life is a short, warm moment,
and death is a long, cold rest.
You get your chance to try
in the twinkling of an eye,
80 years with luck,
or even less.”
-Pink Floyd “Free Four”

So I survived the flights to Maui and back. 5000 miles in the air. Over the ocean, no less. But I survived.

Probably my worst flight experience (and minor, at that, I’m sure compared to more seasoned travelers) was flying back to Missoula, Montana, one winter a few years back. I had just visited my parents for the Christmas holidays in Utah, and my final connection from Salt Lake was in a puddle jumper. Okay, I realize it was a little bigger than say, perhaps, float planes, but it still had propellers. I’m not real comfortable with that.

In case I hadn’t explained (or for those of you who don’t know), while I’m okay with flying, I’ve lived most of my life with a fear of falling from heights. A few years ago, I came to agreeable grips with my fear of falling (a skydiving experience helps this considerably), and a few years before that I gave up any sense of control when I had to travel by airplane. I figured, one way or another, the plane was going to come down. But in all of these years, I still hadn’t given up the possibility that any one of my flights might come down in a hail of fire and twisted metal. It’s the horror writer in me, what can I say? That “Final Destination” movie didn’t help much, that’s for sure. Actually, that movie, combined with my natural fears played a big part in the development of my second book, currently in the works, “One Second Until the Hour.” (shameless future plug).

Anyway, for the sake of brevity (haven’t quite accomplished that yet), I was on this puddle jumper bouncing in mountain turbulence coming into the small Missoula airport, which was covered in snow and ice.

My friend, George Auckland (as in the guy who is working on my website), was my “airport pick-up guy.” This was pre-9/11, so he was able to wait in the terminal by the gate. A news crew was also allowed in the terminal. They were doing a piece on people returning after holiday travel. Now you gotta’ know George. Anyone who does could see this coming a mile away.

“You should film my friend, Paul,” he apparently told the crew. “He’s coming back from Utah.”

Actually, I’m not sure what exactly he said, but as I stepped off the platform to find a crowded waiting room, somehow the cameras found me. I’m sure I hadn’t slept too much and drank too much Bushmill’s over the visit. I think I said, “Well, I cheated death again.”

I never saw the report, but I don’t think they used it.

So I’ve always wondered if my death would come by plane, the one force of motion, and fast motion at that, I had given up any control over. But I survived the flight to Maui. And I was on my way to San Francisco to meet up with the guy who was editing my book for my agent.

In nearly 8000 miles on the road by this point, I had somehow managed to work my travel days in at times that excluded heavy traffic. Of course, traffic is considerably heavier on the East Coast than the West, but most of my driving had transpired either on a weekday, or a Sunday at the worst. But here I was, near the end of my trip, ready to be done with almost three months on the road, and traveling on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend. Out of Portland. Towards San Francisco.

Traffic was practically bumper-to-bumper through all of Oregon. Into Northern California it started to thin out, but I was already realizing that I wasn’t going to make it to my evening meeting with Adam in San Francisco. I hadn’t convinced myself yet, though, so when I got the opportunity mid-afternoon, with some flat ground and not too many other vehicles, I put on the steam a little.

On a dusty patch of road about two hundred miles north of the Bay Area, I had probably just started to relax. The day was cooling off, the shadow of my truck stretching longer towards the East as it bumped along through the dirt and brush. Window rolled down. Listening to Tuatara, a heavy instrumental band, no lyrics at all actually. Again like movie-theme music, but more tribal and diverse. (How about that for vague?).

Suddenly, about a hundred yards ahead of me, I see a flash of something big flip skyward, gleaming of metal, a swerving of vehicles and a plume of flying dust as whatever it was flew off the road into the dirt.

Like the possibility of wildlife on a dark highway at night, these are the moments you anticipate when you’ve spent many miles on the road by yourself. There’s plenty of time to think, and you imagine how you would deal with the worst case scenario (or maybe this is just me.)[1]

Instinct kicks in. I quickly check behind me and start tapping my breaks to signal any vehicles behind me, followed by a quicker succession of actual breaking. Traffic slows to 60…50…35… 25. Vehicles have pulled off to the side. A full-sized pickup truck is stopped in the median with an empty flatbead trailer. No vehicles on the road seem damaged, but the cloud of dust from whatever was on that trailer has yet to settle. As I continue slowly past, just seconds after the incident, I see a construction Bobcat flipped over on the west side of the Interstate.

The dust clears as I pass the accident. My first thought is, “That poor guy who lost that piece of equipment. Just ruined his weekend.” My second thought? Had the cards been layed out differently, I could’ve been right behind that trailer, doing 70 miles an hour, when that probably half-ton piece of machinery flipped off, for whatever reason, a bad tie-down, a faulty clamp, one 2 inch screw that just happened to work itself loose from a bolted down bracket. In a flash, it could’ve flipped onto my truck, and that would have been the….

But it didn’t. And my second thought was what a tenuous grip we have on this life. What peril we put ourselves in by just waking up in the morning. Just last night, winding down, sitting and listening to the radio, I saw a Black Widow spider just a couple feet away. And today I might have seen a Brown Recluse. (I probably shouldn’t say all of this about the wild kingdom, otherwise Jennifer might not come back by.).

But that tenuous grip is determined, dammit! That’s what makes this life so great, if we appreciate it. Death is nothing to be afraid of. There’s nothing we can do about it, not when our clock is up, not when the cards are laid out on the table. Aces over eights.

Maybe that’s the great test of this life. Do you live in fear of death? Or do you live in celebration of life? We have to take advantage of every moment we’re given. Even in the hard times, we are given another day to see the sun and breath the air. As I said a couple years ago, just before I was to leave a comfortable life in Montana for an uncertain one in Southern California, “the only thing you can be certain about is where you are right now. So you might as well enjoy it.”

[1] This often includes stories for highway patrol in case you’re pulled over for speeding. And I know I’m not the only one who does that.hors note: