Holiday Road
For the last week, Dawn Summers has been on a quest to convince me to make the pilgrimmage to Las Vegas next weekend, joining her, Grubby, Grubette, Doug and one or two others. As much as I loooooove the $10 pai gow, I decided not to go for a couple of different reasons. As a result, I find myself with no plans for the 4-day weekend (praise the Jews, I have the last two days of Passover as work holidays).
Mary, like the crackhead she is, suggested a trip to Cracklantic City might be in order so that we can gamble on Easter. It's what all good Catholics do, right? Contact me through the usual channels if you're going to be there - I'll probably go anyway, but it never hurts to have extra incentive.
In other news, I'm going to be on the tee-vee tonight.
The genesis of my appearance is two years ago, when I was interviewed by a graduate student from Columbia's journalism school about the underground poker scene in New York. We met for dinner near his apartment in the East Village, and I told him all about the games. He wasn't a poker player (or even American), and as a result he peppered me with questions while we ate and talked, taking copious notes on everything I said. When dinner was done, he thanked me for my time and told me he would follow up in a few days.
A few days after the interview, the New York Post beat him to the punch and published a piece detailing the inner workings of the underground poker scene in New York. His angle blown, the student emailed me and said he'd be in touch if he could figure out a new twist on the story. In the meantime, I figured that was that.
About two months ago, I received an email from the same guy, now graduated and working for CBS News. He wanted to interview me again for a piece that was being produced for CBS News about the impact of the UIGEA on the online poker scene. After my previous experience, I knew that there was not a 100% guarantee that the piece would "make the cut", but even if it didn't, I figured "no harm, no foul". One morning before work, I went in to the CBS studios, conveniently located not far from my office, and recorded another interview.
That piece is airing tonight on 60 Minutes. Set your DVRs - 145 Pounds of Fury is going to be beamed into households across the nation! (The camera adds 15 pounds, right?)
I got to talk about poker blogs for a small piece of the interview. Hopefully that makes the cut -- and hopefully I won't come off as too much of a prick.