As a poker player, I frequently am up late playing in games when it seems the rest of the world is asleep. I get bored and as a result have watched quite a few on demand movies recently. One such movie was the Adam Sandler movie from a few years ago called Click. This blog will contain spoilers so if you haven’t seen it and like to go in fresh, you should probably stop reading now.

Click is about a happy successful man with a loving, beautiful wife (played by Kate Beckinsale) and family. He doenst have much of an appreciate for what he has and he stumbles upon a universal remote that can control the world around him. He can pause everything, rewind to redo life, or as he finds is very useful, fast forward through moments that he just does not wish to live. When he chooses to fast forward, his body is still in place for all those around him to see, but it goes into standby mode pretty much where he has no personality at all (since his personality is fast forwarding through that time). This seems like a dream come true for Sandler, and probably most of the Betsies reading. He doesn’t count on the remote having a memory, much like TIVO, it can learn your preferences and apply them. Unlike TIVO, once it learns your preferences you cannot cancel them!

Sandler fast forwarded through boring little things like family dinners and lying in bed talking to his wife, and some bigger things like dealing with the stress of a job until he got his much awaited promotion. The remote quickly starts fast forwarding him through all the special moments with his family, and all the time in bed with his wife. Before he knows it, 10 years have been FFed, he’s overweight, divorced and fairly miserable (but very successful since he always put work first).

For the purposes of the blog the rest of the movie is kind of irrelevant, but I took a meaningful lesson from this movie. During the mundane, uncomfortable, and just downright annoying moments, life happens. My parents always told me not to wish my life away, and I am coming to realize that this is especially true for the moments you don’t want to skip.  “Gold” can be struck at any time and without much warning and you want to have your eyes wide open when it does. As poker players, there are times we all want to fast forward through, but will constantly remind myself to be aware, awake and present in the present.

At the risk of alienating most of my (probably very few) female readers, I find these laws to be pretty outrageous and sort of ignorant of all the evil in the world. Psychopaths are capable of coming off so well and lying in such a cool, convincing matter that Ted Bundy was thought to be a future senator when he was in high school. While the traditional view of a psychopath is that he is male, as we in the poker world know, there are many female ones as well. These people can be charming and convincing, certainly sly enough to convince a jury that somebody raped them. The fact that a psychopath heavy on vendetta and light on evidence can end a mans life by simply being a convincing liar on the stand terrifies me. Further, for the defense to not be able to delve into the alleged victims past seems to render the “he” impotent in any sort of “he said, she said” debate.

One of my friends sisters friends (and hopefully my friend now too though maybe not due to this discussion) took exception to my opinion and felt that the laws were appropriate since it has historically been difficult for women to report rapes. I sympathize with the plight of women and any other protected classes, but I simply cannot stomach the fact that a potentially crazy woman (or man for that matter) has so much power over anyone he/she hates simply because he/she is a very good liar.

Dear Journal,

I’m sorry I haven’t written in you for awhile, I have been very busy. Most recently I went on a trip to Long Beach Island. My friends parents rented a gigantic house on the beach which was full of family and friends, it was very fun and made me happy. I learned new games like Beach Baggo (the ultimate bean bag toss game) and Celebrity and also played some old ones like Cranium. On the last night a team of me, jill, lily and hillary lost cranium narrowly to jen, dannie, evan and deanna. That loss made me sad but the good teamwork and concentration both teams showed made me happy.

Dinner with these friends is always interesting. They are not afraid to speak their minds and tell it like it is. I was told on more than one occasion that I contribute little to society and that poker has dulled my moral sensibilities. This did not make me sad because I know all these people well, they have different opinions, and they are all wonderful.

Long Beach Island is a funny place. Lots of stores seemed to have very short hours of operation and odd customs. One friendly lady informed us that her store did not carry tens or dimes because they are terrible luck. Maybe I need to change over the content of my wallet before I start playing poker again. There were no superstitions in site on the beautiful beach though and I wish I could stay there forever.

To the diary writer who’s work i butchered in this blog entry, I beg u to remember that imitation is a sincere form of flattery and I know there was perhaps more depth of emotion in that diary than in this poker blog of a 24 year old.

Sincerely,

Steven “Stevesbets” Jacobs

The absurdity of someone praying over the outcome of a poker hand I doubt I need to explain, but I’ll outline a couple of points here. Firstly, for someone to win a poker hand, someone else has to lose. Does god like the winner more than the loser? I guess Jerry Yang would say yes. Further, Yang is praying to the same god in whose name poker has endured all of it’s recent legal problems stemming from legislators pandering to their lunatic bible-belt constituency. The people that care to outlaw poker have made it quite clear that their god does not like it.

There is an utterly hilarious scene from the 2007 WSOP (and props to ESPN for showing it properly) in which Yang and his opponent Lee Watkinson are in a big hand against each other. Yang falls into his usual prayer routine, but little does he know, he has to pray extra hard because Lee’s girlfriend is also a true believer!! She is praying with all her might for Lee to win the hand. As the cards slowly fall, this man and this woman both pray with an ardent fervor to the same god for an opposite result. If either of them can watch the episode without feeling like total fools then I’m truly amazed at the level of self delusion that is humanly possible.

The first and most basic of the tips that many players don’t know is that one should only play selected hands in poker games such as texas holdem. Too many people get caught up trying to make hands out of garbage hole cards when they should have just folded to begin with. One should only stay in hands that they actually have a chance to win with before the flop.

Another great tip is to know how to manage your bankroll. There are quite a few players who just don’t realize when it’s time to quit and so they spend more money than they are able to afford. One should never play in games where the limit is too high either until they’ve mastered the lower limits and then move up.

Another forgotten thing is to make sure to have fun with the game. People who only play for the money and don’t truly enjoy poker may get burnt out on it very quickly. But if they actually like the game then making money should come naturally.

What really irks me about this display is that I’m quite sure if I or any other competent poker player applied for a job at the School of Communications I would be promptly denied. This woman was clearly gainfully employed and respected enough to have the task of reading the names at graduation. How on earth did she get to that point? I was told that 90% of doing basically any job on earth just requires showing up for work. I truly hope this isn’t true and what I witnessed was a fluke.

I lived in Los Angeles for about a year and a half prior to moving back to Philly in September and I loved my time there…I think. I recently have randomly been reminded of my time there in 3 different ways.  I was watching the most recent episode of Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari’s show, “I bet you”, A hilarious half hour show where the two high stakes pros and best friends make wacky prop bets. Throughout the show they panned over the Hollywood and Highland complex, the place that houses the Mann Chinese theater, the Kodak theater and the hollywood walk of fame. I went there multiple times during my time living in Pasadena.

Secondly, I am currently reading a book of short stories called poker fiction which includes one by my favorite author Michael Connelly. In his story, a large element of the crime takes place at Commerce Casino. I probably went to Commerce once a week through my year and a half in Pasadena and I greatly enjoyed playing live poker there, much more so than any other casino I have been too. The images that the book evoked made me miss my weekly trips through the perfect LA weather to the casino with the top down gearing up to play.

Thirdly and most bizarrely, A random late night infomercial popped on where they were doing interviews in an outdoor mall.  I quickly realized that it was set in the paseo colorado (http://www.paseocoloradopasadena.com/) the outdoor mall (such things do not exist on the east coast in quite the same way) on which my apartment (www.terracesapartmenthomes.com) rested. Seeing my old domicile on screen was nothing new as it was featured in a scene from “Knocked up” and is across the street from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium where American Idol does “Hollywood Week” every year (the name Hollywood week being a total misnomer since they actually send the contestants to this auditorium in Pasadena, a solid 20 minute drive from Hollywood). Despite the frequency, the combination of seeing the Paseo along with the other two references really struck a chord with me and made me miss life in Pasadena.

When I think more clearly on the issue, I know that there were many problems there. First and foremost, my family and nearly all of my friends were across the country. Aside from my time at the casino I spent the bulk of my time in my apartment alone and fairly bored. When I was there I very much missed being back in Philly, I almost felt homesickness comparable with Will Smith when he first moves to the Banks’ mansion in Bel-Air, I just wanted a Philly cheese steak with the grease tearing a hole in the bag.

This academic knowledge flies in the face of the nostalgia I’m feeling and the only way to reconcile it is to understand that things are simply always better in hindsight. The bad parts melt away and all is left is a perfect fake image marked on the mind for posterity. It makes me wonder about our history books…

PS I have more to say on the religious debate but I didn’t want to make my blog entirely about that subject so I’ll save it for next time and I promise once again to post more frequently

A friend of mine who works for the city of Philadelphia informed me today of a real situation that relates to what I wrote about. Apparently there is currently a call for a Federal law against same sex marriage and the constituents are calling for him to get behind it. Their main argument is that it is god’s law and of course this is impossible to rebuke. As soon as they turn to a real world argument though the logic can actually be dealt with and a rebuttal can be attempted. The argument offered against same sex marriage is that it would pave the way for 2 drag queens to adopt a child, and how incredibly awful would that be?!?! There are many obvious retorts but I will go with the one that I can most personally speak about.

I worked in a school in the heart of West Philadelphia while I was in college at Penn. This school had about 40 kids to a class, and a teacher that spent the vast majority of her time trying to make sure that all the kids were accounted for (and she had been the recipient of many awards for top teacher in the area). They had one child who was deemed the technological expert because he was the only one that knew how to turn on the antiquated computers that sat on one of the tables in the classroom. I worked in the 8th grade in which over half the students had already seen someone shot and over half of the girls were already mothers, some of more than one child. These students could not turn on a computer or write coherently, and had almost all been a victim of some sort of major psychological trauma yet our society makes no laws against them being parents. (And I’m not saying we should or shouldn’t). How can anyone argue that in every case or even most cases of drag queens adopting a child that this child will be worse off than the oldest of 7 children of a 10th grade student who is charged with taking care of his siblings by the time he’s 6 years old because his mother is busy either finishing high school, working a minimum wage job or worse.

To legislate on the basis that any group as a whole would make unfit parents is totally absurd in our society today. Maybe, just maybe even the 10th grade single mother will be a decent parent. It’s really all a matter of odds. But hey, god’s law reigns supreme, so many people say our society’s laws should be based on it.

It is a very common belief that morality comes from god and the reason something is right or wrong is because god says so. Further, many believe that anyone who does not believe in god does not have much of a moral code. I give far more credit to the moral code of those who do not derive it from god and are “just good people” than those who follow “god’s word”.

When someone believes that morality comes from god, pretty much anything goes. Often without the insight or the desire to examine their beliefs, these people will accept what religious authorities tell them quite literally as gospel. They do not need to understand nor justify their beliefs to anyone because they come from the highest possible authority.  God has long been used as a justification for many unspeakable evils. I would not presume to argue that evil people would not find other reasons to do evil things if they were unable to use their god as justification, but it certainly does make it easier for them to still believe they are “good people”. After all, if two people that trust in gods moral authority argue over who is right when one says to blow up innocent people and the other says not to, just how in depth can the argument be when one yells, “god says to do so” and the other says, “no you got it all wrong”.

I have also heard the argument made that people are generally better when the feel they are answering to someone greater than themselves. There is no real way to measure this outside of experience, but in my (admittedly limited) human experience, some of the biggest scumbags are the truest believers (and being around the poker world offers some unique access to scumbags).

On the flip side, a moral person who derives his morals through logic and reason often has a much more complex thought process. I personally have always appreciated the golden rule of treating others how you would want to be treated, but this is fairly amorphous and I learned what I think is a far better way to reach similar values in college. I took an ethics class where we read a number of great writers, I apologize for not giving credit to the author of this thought process but I can’t remember his name. He argued that if humans form a society, unethical behavior will naturally be forced out. Take stealing as an example, in a society in which stealing is fine and accepted, people will naturally snatch the belongings as others. People won’t like having their hard earned possessions taken so they will form into bands that protect each other from such theft. These bands will become new societies in which stealing is immoral.

To me the thought process I just described offers far greater depth and is a far more interesting springboard for discussion than the classic discussion ender, “god says so”.

On a separate but related note I just finished watching this season of the Celebrity Apprentice. Stephen Baldwin was one of the contestants and he was hilarious to watch. He is someone who’s life was so messed up that he turned to religion for help. He became a born again Christian celebrity minister of sorts who I understand has quite a following. One of the highlights of the show for me was Stephen’s blank stare and vacant laugh in response to almost anything anybody said to him. If you are looking for  someone to take life advice from, choosing him seems totally absurd. If you would like a bit of further entertainment, I encourage you to check out the following link that has a list of Stephen Baldwin’s hobbies:

http://www.stephenbaldwin.com/hobbies.htm

Sorry for all the pseudo-intellectualism, my next blog will be about poker

Once again sorry I haven’t blogged in awhile, Ive been very busy and will get back to it soon