Some poker-y things that I miss

The Las Vegas Hilton poker room

NetTeller

Party Poker

Shana Hiatt

The "Red Bull and Poker" blog


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OK, that's all this crummy little post is going to be (except there was one more thing that I thought of to add to the list, then promptly forgot again; I'll add it back in later if I remember). But now I have a problem. It has to do with the ease with which I can be distracted from one task by another only tangentially related. You see, I tried to do a simple Google Images search for "sad" to find something appropriate with which to illustrate this post. One of the first images that caught my eye was the one shown above, which is Marcel Duchamp's 1911-1912 painting "Sad young man in a train." I looked, then looked again, then looked some more, and for the life of me couldn't see either a young man or a train.

This intrigued me, and soon trying to unlock the mystery of this painting completely displaced my interest in actually making something useful and/or thought-provoking out of a list of poker-y things that I miss--which is why the list didn't grow any longer or more interesting. I haven't found any one place that dissects the painting and points to specific parts saying, "this line is ______ and this curve is _________." Sort of a map of the painting, which is what I was looking for.

However, I did find a bunch of short descriptions of it, including a bit by Duchamp himself, and learned the following additional tidbits: The young man is nude. It's a self-portrait. The young man is walking down the corridor of a train that is violently lurching to and fro, tossing him about. There are actually many separate renderings of the young man, apparently sort of a stop-action sequence, as with Duchamp's most famous work (which came right after this one), "Nude Descending a Staircase." He is smoking a pipe. The pipe and his walking stick are beloved objects. According to one commentator, the man's penis is prominently displayed and he may be masturbating. Yes, in the corridor of a train. There are theories about why he is sad, all of which seem to be wildly speculative and ungrounded.

OK, I can see the walking stick. I think the thing just to the left of the walking stick looks like a tibia, so is probably supposed to be the lower leg. I also found the alleged penis, because of the detailed description of the masturbation theory here. That small, dark, horizontal thing may be the pipe with a wisp of smoke coming out of it, though it looks more like a cigar to me, if anything. But honestly, even after an hour spent looking at and reading about this painting, I still don't see the overall outline of a man, nor his face, nor features that would suggest sadness, nor multiple copies of the figure, nor anything that looks like a train or the corridor thereof, nor anything that would clue us in that the pipe and walking sticks are beloved objects. Yet apparently all of these things are there, and quite obvious to other people who have studied the painting. (Unless it's all just a massive case of the Emperor's New Clothes, and Duchamp is having a big ol' laugh at everybody who thinks they see these things. With Duchamp, that is not an impossibility.) Maybe if one looks at the full-sized original it's all easier to see. Here is the other most complete description of the painting that I found, though it's not really a lot of help.

(OK, I can see a shape that might be his head. But if so, it's hugely oversized compared to what I think is his leg and the walking stick, and distorted, looking sort of like an Easter Island head. Furthermore, if that's his head that I'm seeing, then it looks like both of his hands are holding his head, just like in "The Scream." But then that would leave no hands with which to be holding his walking stick or his, uh, other implement. Besides, that would make him anguished, not sad. I really don't think Duchamp would be copying or parodying Munch here, at least not without that being prominently featured by every commentator. So I'm not blind to what might be his head--it's just that I've considered it and decided that I'm trying too hard to discern it, and my eyes are finding things that aren't there, in addition to not finding things that are apparently there.)

Anyway, as you can see, this bit of intrigue completely overwhelmed my initial interest in drawing up a list of poker-y things that I miss, which means that said list will probably never be completed now. It has now completely overtaken this blog post as well, making it almost entirely about something other than what it started out being, and having nothing to do with poker, except for the (now misleading) title and the first 17 words. I can't even think of any relevant labels to attach to it. I'm pathetic.

This may be the strangest post I've put up yet. For the record, it is the first time that the word "masturbation" has appeared. I thought it would also be the first time that the word "penis" appeared, but a quick search told me I was wrong about that. There was one previous such usage, which I had forgotten about.