another round?
this is one of my favorite images. I've only seen MTM in re-runs. izzy (one of my oldest and dearest bff'ers), and I call each other on our birthdays to sing the theme song every year. every single year.
I always watch the intro to an episode when I'm a bluejew and it makes me smile. for that moment everything is right with the world. I love that. I love that I have that.
I'm just venting here. I don't need a pep talk or anything. I just know that as you get older, life doesn't get easier. it seems that more bad news than good news is common.
when you think you can't go another round. you can. because you are that strong and you are that capable. you are also able to appreciate what you have if and I do mean IF you are willing to look in the nooks and the crannies. read between the lines and look a little bit deeper. I'm not saying it's easy. in fact, I think running into a 70-year-old hooker with a prolapsed uterus in a pink mini skirt at hunter's point STILL able to turn a trick is way easier.
today was my aunt fudgie's birthay. she turned 87. every year she comes up with a slogan. last year it was, I'm 86 and in a mothah fuckin fix. she was recovering from a virulent eye cancer. this year, her slogan is I'm 87 and I ain't in heaven. she played me her birthday recordings that she put together for her fiesta. dude, she is queen of the mix tape. celebrate good times, sexy back and drop it like it's hot. if that isn't one inspiring broad, I don't know who is.
today was my aunt fudgie's birthay. she turned 87. every year she comes up with a slogan. last year it was, I'm 86 and in a mothah fuckin fix. she was recovering from a virulent eye cancer. this year, her slogan is I'm 87 and I ain't in heaven. she played me her birthday recordings that she put together for her fiesta. dude, she is queen of the mix tape. celebrate good times, sexy back and drop it like it's hot. if that isn't one inspiring broad, I don't know who is.
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I loved MTM ... and I was home every Saturday night to watch each original episode. Age has its privileges.
Have you heard Hüsker Dü's cover of the theme song? Brilliant. More brilliant: Have Coaster Punchman MTM you.
lou Grant to Mary after her first effort as producer of show: "It didn't stink..."
I've also heard that Randy Newman's son had a punk band in LA and as he had grown up across the street from Ted Knight, the band's maiden effort was a song called "Ted Knight's A Fucking Asshole."
And the weirdness keeps piling up on me. Rhet's run in with FARC was probably way worse, but I had an UNUSUAL evening straight from the X-ILE FILES or THE LIFE IMITATES ART FILES....
A couple of guys I play with in the large stakes Omaha game owed me some money and told me to come to the Royal Casino to collect, because they were playing with these weird Colombians from Barnquilla with leather satchels full of money who couldn't play at all.
I had about $8000 on me and one of my friends owed me $500, the other $1300, so despite being a little short-stacked -- this was No Limit Omaha with $25 antes and $200 blinds -- I decided to sit and play a while because I had played against these Colombian guys once before and knew they were horrible. Sometime within the first hour I beat the guy to my right in a smallish pot (around $1200) and he derisive asked me in Spanish if "I needed a bodyguard." (I'm only 5' 7" and normally proportioned and generally have a middle-class air about me and truthfully can't dent a pillow with my punch and have no experience whatsoever with firearms). I replied that I had two bodyguards already plus two lawyers, one of whom was Judge Arosemena, the former Attorney General of the Republic of Panama.
For the rest of the night the guy kept ragging me, calling me and the guys I play with "maricas (faggots)" and shit like that. Every time he'd say something nasty in Spanish, I'd respond in New York English: "WHAT YOU NEED, BOSS?" even though I'm fluent in Spanish. And we stared each other down. He beat me out of a $4000 hand and started declaiming himself as the world's champion Omaha player.
After three hours, I caught A-A-J-x. He made it $500 to go, I flat-called. The flop gave me a J which didn't help but two cards to an A-high flush. He checked, I made it $1300 to go, he pushed $20,000 in...I read it for a bluff because if he had something great he'd try to squeeze all the value out and maybe raise me $4000 or $5000, but $20,000? So, I as had a decent hand with my A-A, my flush draw and the J-J re-draw. I said "aw fuck it" and called the $20,000 bet. My Aces held up and I took all his money.
He was madder than a wet-hen and stormed out of there. And then returned stomping around, with about 5 friends who had not been playing. I did not waste a second. As I had NOT been lying about the bodyguards, I called Raul and Coco and said come and pick me up.
They got there in 10 minutes. I got in the car and they told me that they sensed some hurry in my tone so they made sure to bring their pistols just in case.
I am safe and sound at home!
A rather freaky experience. Believe me, a lot of the tough-guy music stuff is just posing. When you're in that situation you really have to know when discretion is the better part of valor and being a tough guy when you're not (I'm not) is very, very stupid. Glad I kept my wits about me.
I gave the fellers HUGE tip.
The game may spread again tomorrow and I'd like to play but if I do I'll just have my guys wait for me in a car in shifts.
I'm not exactly Henry Rollins, so help is ALWAYS appreciated in these spots. It was a punk rock situation all right.
I need a drink and a valium bad! Or to not have a mid-life crisis. Or to have a mid-life crisis that can be satisfied by a trophy girlfriend and an Aronow speedboat.
Oy gevalt.
I'm glad you enjoyed the tale. I set it forth there because jewgirl seemed to be lamenting something or other and I wanted maybe to demonstrate that one rarely gets more trouble that one can handle. To show how someone like me like her could get through swimmingly what could have been a terrible situation. I don't want to go into what cardrooms are like, what costenos are like, what happens to a successful straight white man when his country deems him disposible. And how one tackles these stressful things. I don't know maybe to give her some reassurance that whatever is causing her stress and anxiety will pass. One always finds resources and nothing ever is as bad as you think it will be.
I apologize if I went on to long but i don't do pass notes. I was raised by two writers and I write what I feel. I have a blog which I enjoy maintaining but I mostly use it for political musings. The personal nature of this story did not lend itself well to my blog.
I've looked at your profile and I've drawn some inferences about our differences. I believe that you seek the peaceful and meditative which gives you strength and my street wisdom and formal education through post-graduate give me strength.
I think you'd have a hell of a time breaking a costeno for all he had, which to be fair he was totrying launder. To me that situation is common. I would, however, be frightened to death of most of your interests. I can barely swim. I don't enjoy the outdoors and I'm a rock and rap guy. I don't like tourism. And I usually stay up all night. I also work very, very hard. I could never do any of the interests you take for granted. The thought of scuba diving for example terrifies me. The thought of having an angry costeno wanting to hurt me does not scare me all that much because I know how to handle those situations. The thought of not being busy scares me. The thought of being somewhere of no interest to me -- a medieval cathedral for example -- for an indefinite period of time scares me more than anything. The thought of a walk in the woods scares me.
I am so flattered that you could enjoy a little story from a life far afield of your experience. I don't know that I'm broad minded enough to be able to do the same.
Once again, if this is a HINT to stop writing such long comments, just come out and say so and I'll stop. I had thought I was adding another perpective to the jewgirl blog experience. Perhaps, not so much.
thank god, not even close. it's because she's so sweet.
I have never heard of Hüsker Dü's. can I look for it on jewtunes.
that is one hell of a yarn. you live right on the edge, my friend. you are no joke, yo.
ps: you are welcome to spin your yarns here at any length you wish. capisce?! capisce?!
I don't know about cpunchman's mtm service. I am so emailing him about that.
she's a riot. you must rent mtm on netflix. you'll love it.