It could have been termed a miserable week at work but I've had this Good Karma thing going for me for about a month. Pretty cool having cosmic interference going your way! Silly customers, wicked traffic and then there was Wednesday when the steering broke on my 70,000 lb. rig...oh well, I got a coffee mug from the boss outa that deal. So I'm killing time waiting for a guy I know to come over and buy my faithful and redundant work car for his down-on-her-luck single mom daughter. Call up one of my fav websites http://www.pechanga.net and spot a link to an article about MindPlay 21. Ed shows up and I sell the Probe for cash. Karma and Benjamins.

So anyway, this article was titled something like "MindPlay Will Be The Death Of Blackjack" http://www.laweekly.com/ink/06/03/cooper-blackjack.php I was still miffed at being gamed by the HornSwoggle Indians when I went to their joint last month and I have a particular dislike for MindPlay 21. MindPlay uses those UGLY chips and the red ones bleed color off onto anything they touch. The article is written by Marc Cooper and he poses as a buyer at a gaming industry expo. Bally has moved beyond pretending that MP is player tracking device and just presents the bald fact that you can use this system in your casino to cheat your players. Well duh! Feeling vindicated, I noticed that linked under "features" there were more casino/gaming articles so I brought up the one about Phil Helmuth. Probably the best piece about a poker player I've read in a while. Better than that CardPlayer junk. Word Karma.

Well, this is going to be good! Put some "Essential..." Simon and Garfunkle in the system and cracked open an Irish ale from over in the northwest part of town and moved on to another L.A. Weekly piece. Shades of Joyce Carol Oates affected the story of the gal who went to Vegas to hand out T-shirts at a porn convention and found love at the baccarat table. If you've gone to Roulettenburg with that Dostoevsky fellow, you'll like the story about The Wheel Of Misfortune.

By this time I've been "Born In The U.S.A." with Bruce and across Canada with Neal Young and I've got an English ale from my hometown (Hood River) half killed. Used to read a lot of actual literature before computers came along and "work" got replaced with "content". Even though L.A. is one of my favorite places I'm not familiar with L.A. Weekly but man, I dig their style! The folks that wrote these pieces "get it" and you ought to take a look at the interview with Mike Sexton where he delivers The Truth about Big Slick. I hate it when I'm reading something and I know more about the subject than the writer. The guy that wrote about dealing underground Hollywood poker games knows that we know the game already! Cool! Some day someone is going to point out the connection between killer poker and art. Used to be you didn't want to play poker with someone nicked "Amarillo", "Miami" or "Chicago" but seems to me if you're at a table with an actor or writer you might want to move on while you still have cash left. Check out "House of Cards" for a rundown on LA cardrooms and notice the reference to Ernie Primm! Told ya, these guys get it and you wouldn't mind talking it over at the Splash Bar or having the Cobb Salad over at Peppermill with this bunch.

Hope you don't mind me blogging here for a moment, give these things a read if you can and I'm going to finish off my brew and listen to the rest of this Clapton CD. Layla Karma.