Just for fun

A friend from Minnesota tweeted a link to this YouTube video this morning, with the intriguing caption of "What Lutherans do for fun, as recorded at St. Luke's Lutheran Church, Park Ridge, Illinois, May 6, 2007." It's so thoroughly delightful that I felt compelled to share it. Please enjoy.

TV theme songs (no poker content)

Last night, out of nowhere, my friend Grange95 said via Twitter, "Hawaii Five-O is still greatest TV theme song *ever*." I countered with a few other possibilities, which he politely acknowledged as good, but not as good. He then suggested that we each prepare a list of our top 25 TV show theme songs and publish them on our blogs simultaneously.

I initially thought that 25 was too many and 10 was more manageable. He agreed to the lower number. But as soon as I started actually compiling my list, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I just couldn't narrow it down that far. Grange graciously agreed to bump it back to 25 so that I wouldn't go insane endlessly second-guessing my choices.

Still, it wasn't easy. I started with a list of 40, which I assembled after consulting various online lists of the best theme songs, such as these:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/photos/readers-poll-the-best-television-theme-songs-20110921

http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2008/11/the-20-best-tv-theme-songs-of-all-time.html

http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-best-tv-theme-songs-of-all-time

http://www.artifacting.com/blog/2010/03/24/100-greatest-tv-themes/

http://music.ign.com/articles/704/704547p1.html

http://www.amazon.com/All-Time-Top-100-TV-Themes/dp/B000XUGDDA/ref=tmm_msc_title_0

So, to the inevitable question that will come up in the comments, "What about _________? Did you think about THAT?" The answer is almost certainly yes.

I was surprised that the "Cheers" theme song ended up at the top of most of the lists. I've never cared much for that one. Which just goes to show how completely subjective and personal such lists will inevitably be. (Sneak preview: No "Cheers" below.)

I approached Grange's challenge by first asking myself what makes a TV show's theme song great? I decided that it must (1) stand on its own as a piece of music, (2) make you want to watch the show that its attached to, (3) set or suggest the mood of the show, (4) be so distinctive that the viewer quickly forms a Pavlovian mental connection between the theme and the show, such that any other possible music becomes unthinkable.

I decided that those goals are more difficult to achieve if the music is instrumental, foregoing lyrics, so I awarded bonus points to that category and (rather artificially, I'll admit) made my instrumentals list into the top ten and the best ones with lyrics my second ten. (Throughout this post, I am ignoring any distinction in terminology between "theme song" and "theme music.") I then added in five more that, while not necessarily great by the criteria I established for myself, have something about them that compels inclusion in a "best of" list.

I tried to include clips of the original opening credits, but in many cases they are not available due to copyright issues, so some of the embedded clips below are of poor quality, or are some version other than what was with the show originally (e.g., a fan mashup).

So without further ado....

INSTRUMENTALS

1. "Hawaii Five-0." Yes, in the end, after a couple of re-listens, I had to concede that Grange was right all along, dammit.

2. "Star Trek: The Next Generation." The theme of the original show was pretty good, but they managed to make it ten times better and more beautiful for the show's second iteration.

3. "Peter Gunn." Even if you've never seen the show (I haven't), you'll almost certainly recognize the music, from the great Henry Mancini.

4. "Mission: Impossible."




5. "Twin Peaks."




6. "Merrie Melodies"/"Looney Tunes."




7. "Dr. Who."




8. "The Twilight Zone."




9. "The Andy Griffith Show."




10. "The Waltons."





WITH LYRICS

11. "The Sopranos." The most perfect mating ever of a pre-existing song to a new show--so perfect that most fans assume the song was written specifically for the show.




12. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."




13."M*A*S*H." Yes, I know that it didn't have lyrics as used in the show, but everybody knew what the lyrics were, and that's important here; if the music doesn't call to mind "suicide is painless," then it doesn't really work well.




14. "Greatest American Hero." Maybe the best "feel-good" TV theme song.




15. "Ally McBeal."




16. "Rawhide."




17. "The Beverly Hillbillies." Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys? A shoo-in. Of all the ones in my list, this is the one that is most likely to become an earworm for me on any given day. Often just the mention of any its key words (oil, millionaire, swimming pools, movie stars) is enough to set it off. That's not so much because I love the song, but just because of how deeply it has managed to get ingrained in my engrams.




18. "The Monkees."




19. "The Addams Family." Though it deserves inclusion for its general charm and catchiness, this one could almost make the list just for the cheekiness of rhyming "scree-um" with "museum."




20. "Friends."





SPECIAL MERIT


21. "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." For being so iconically, inextricably linked with one man, one genre, one time slot.




22. "Jeopardy." For having become the musical embodiment of a social message in just about any context, "Time is running out."




23. "The Muppet Show." For maximal playfulness and inventiveness in always finding new twists on the theme.




24. "The Big Bang Theory." For the cleverest lyrics ever penned for a TV theme song. Seriously, incorporating Australopithicus, Pangaea, and "the autotrophs began to drool"? Genius!




25. "Gilligan's Island." For becoming the best-known TV theme show song of all time. Really—just stop anybody on the street and ask. EVERYBODY can sing along.

For the sake of completeness, here is my list of the ones that were in serious contention but didn't quite make the final cut to 25 (in no particular order):

Bonanza: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjdRgBAY278

The Munsters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0drJKnYg5-s

Hill Street Blues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yevI8xCAKuc

Sanford and Son: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WqazleR3FE

The Rockford Files: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d41cAOmcuxk

The Dukes of Hazzard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU6mPYFtF8E

All in the Family: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znrjbo9QRLk

Dallas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md2YoqPlEtU

Barney Miller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox-DmJ9H3ng

SWAT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAHvsCb-6vU

Taxi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzhwx8aOO0A

Lost in Space: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH6j63lhAAc

Mr. Ed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_PZPpWTRTU

The X-Files: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDZBgHBHQT8

As a final bonus, I give you the most famous TV show theme song that actually has lyrics, though you probably thought it didn't: "The Dick Van Dyke Show":

Grange and I agreed to set the posts containing our lists to publish simultaneously, at 8:00 p.m. my time, so neither of us has seen the other's yet. You can presumably see his list here, now that the hour has arrived. The question for you, dear reader, is this: Who made the more definitive list of the top 25?

Addendum

Grange's list is here. We had only 9/25 in common. Judging these in order of their summed ranks (lowest being best), they are:

Hawaii 5-0

Mission: Impossible

Star Trek: The Next Generation

MASH

Beverly Hillbillies

Gilligan's Island

Rawhide

Addams Family

Muppet Show

The only one on his list that I had not considered is "It's a Jungle Out There," by Randy Newman, from "Monk." I love that song and that show, and I agree with him that the song serves the show perfectly. I would have included it if I had thought of it. I'm amazed that it didn't appear on any of the lists I checked (unless I just missed it).

Judging by a Twitter exchange, he admits to about the same embarrassment for including "Cheers" as I do for including "Friends"--it's a surrender to sappiness on both sides.

Time Warp

I was just walking through downtown Vegas when a cover band started up with a familiar tune. Presented here so you can take the same trip down memory lane to the late 1970s that I did.

Cecilia (no poker content)

I just spent a very pleasant couple of hours rekindling an old romance.

In 1996, Cecilia Bartoli, a beautiful Italian coloratura mezzo-soprano who spoke almost no English, appeared on David Letterman's show, singing Non piu mesta, the flashy, fireworks finale to Rossini's opera La Cenerentola. As was my habit at the time, I had taped the show to watch the next day, having no idea who the guests would be. When I saw the singer, I was blown away. I nearly wore out the tape watching it over and over and over again.

Despite a lifelong appreciation for classical music, I had never understood opera. I saw it as bizarre. Not only was it not beautiful, it was downright irritating, like listening to the soundtrack of a catfight.

The discovery of Cecilia made me start to question whether there was something I had been missing. Her appearance on Letterman started what has now been a 15-year love of an entire world of artistic endeavor that had previously eluded me. I started by buying three operas on CD (La Cenerentola, Carmen, and La Boheme) and listened to them while following the libretto translation. Most importantly, I enrolled in some adult-education classes about opera at the University of Minnesota. (As an employee and could take them for free.) The more I learned, the more I liked. Boheme in particular was an epiphany as to the intensity of emotion that could be conveyed through this art form as in no other. I found myself moved to tears by O suave fanciulla, then utterly devastated the first time I heard the final, desperate words before the curtain falls, "Mimi! Mimi!"

When I get interested in something, I have a habit of going whole-hog, full-immersion, obsessive-compulsive. So it was with opera. I went on a buying spree, and ended up with something like 70 boxed sets of opera recordings. I listened to them every spare minute. (Later, when I got seriously into competitive shooting, I must have been quite an odd sight, sitting in my basement making thousands of rounds of ammunition on my Dillon loading press with Pucini blaring from a boombox.) I bought season tickets to the Minnesota Opera. I even subscribed to Opera News magazine. Opera is unquestionably an acquired taste, and I just kept on acquiring it.

Through it all, Cecilia remained my favorite performer. I bought nearly everything she recorded, anticipated and taped every TV appearance. She made my heart go pit-a-pat. My wife at the time, fortunately, joined me in this illicit little love affair, saying that she would agree to bigamy if the second wife could be Cecilia. Sadly, we were never able to make that happen.

It all reached a climax in 1998 when my wife and I went to New York City on a pilgramage to the Met. They have special weekends just for out-of-town tourists, during which they put on four different productions in three days. One of them was Le Nozze di Figaro, starring Renee Fleming, Bryn Terfel (the world's most amazing baritone), and, yes, Cecilia. It was heavenly.

When I moved to Nevada, much of my stuff had to remain in Minnesota due to lack of space. That included most of my music. As a result, I got out of the opera-listening habit, and gradually my Cecilia crush faded away.

Today, though, something reminded me of it, and I went to YouTube and found clip after clip of her in various operatic roles and singing a variety of songs. I was transported back to when she had first enchanted me. There's somebody I love more these days, but Cecilia will always own a little piece of my heart--even if she never knows it.

Here she is doing the achingly sad aria Sposa son disprezzata from a Vivaldi opera (lyrics with translation here). If it sounds familiar, it may be because this recording was featured prominently in a couple of episodes of The Sopranos on HBO.

Here she is singing what may be the most beautiful melody Mozart ever wrote (which is really saying something), Laudate Dominum (with a bonus photo gallery of her lovely face and fetching eyes):

And for the only finale that would be fitting, here she is with what has become her signature piece, the dazzling aria that first caught my attention when she sang it for David Letterman:

"Five-Card Stud"

I just watched "Five-Card Stud" (1968), which is available through Netflix, both DVD and instant view. It's the first poker movie I've seen in a long time. Except that it's not really a poker movie. In fact, we see exactly one hand of poker during the whole film. There it is above, in the opening scene.

Somebody in the old west town of Rincon, Colorado, gets caught cheating, and the others form a lynch mob and give the scoundrel the frontier justice that I think casinos still ought to deliver to poker cheats. The town starts going crazy, though, when the card-playing vigilantes start being found dead one by one. The mystery of who is killing the killers is the movie's whole plot.

It's all pretty lame, I'm afraid. But it is kind of fun seeing stars such as Dean Martin, Roddy McDowall, Robert Mitchum, Denver Pyle, and Yaphet Kotto in their much, much younger days.
Maybe the best part, poker-wise, is Martin singing the cheesy title song:



Lyrics (as found at the bottom of the page here):

FIVE CARD STUD
(Music by: Maurice Jarre / Words by: Ned Washington)

He was King at Five Card Stud.
The stranger's game was Five Card Stud.
He was hard to beat,
Rather play than eat,
Long as it was Five Card Stud.

When he played he played for blood.
When this ramblin', gamblin' man said, 'Deal 'em',
You had better beware.

Bet your poke and he'd leave you broke.
Then he'd make a joke as he slyly grinned.
Then he'd say, 'That's enough today!'
And he'd ride away like the wind.

Stud was all he lived and breathed,
But now and then a fire seethed.
Liked his gals and fun.
Then he'd up and run,
Run right back to Five Card Stud.

Never played two hands the same.
He could bluff you, bluff you blind.
You'd swear that He invented the game.

How he loved that Five Card Stud.
Life to him was Five Card Stud.
When he played he played for blood.
He was King at Five Card Stud.

Cheap classical music (marginal poker content)

Go here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000375211&ref=tsm_1_tw_dm199x5_20101110

For a limited time, you can download five different collections of 99 tracks each of classical music, and one such set of Christmas music in MP3 format for $1.99 each. I bought all of them. Almost none of the performers will be people who are big sellers here in the U.S.; most of the names and ensembles appear to be from Russia and Eastern Europe. But so what? They have excellent performers and recording studios there, too, ya know. There's between 6 and 13 hours of music in each set. I just finished playing two Bodog tournaments, took 3 1/2 hours. I started the piano music collection on iTunes when I started, for background music, and only got up through #31 of 99 tracks. The recordings were perfectly fine (and I'm pretty much a snob about classical music) and I greatly enjoyed having it on. I even ordered a couple of extra mini-SD chips (only $6 each now!) for my MP3 player so that I'll have room to copy these new acquisitions to it. Then you, too, can listen to nice music while you PLAY POKER. (See? There's your poker content right there!)

Hat tip to OhCaptain for the tweet about this. Excellent find!

What would you pick?

Earlier this year I read somewhere--and now I can't remember where, but perhaps in one of Phil Laak or Jennifer Tilly's columns in Bluff magazine--about how the players in this season's PartyPoker Big Game series got to pick their own entrance music, the theme that would be played upon their grand entrance to the poker rooom.

It's not especially likely that I'll be invited to play on that or any other televised poker show anytime soon, but upon reading that, surely I'm not the only one who starts imagining what music I'd pick should that miraculous day ever come.

It didn't take me long to decide. For as long as I can remember, there has been one piece of music that for me most perfectly embodies the idea of triumph, which is what I would want to convey in that kind of setting. No, it's not the theme from "Rocky" (though that's not half bad). It's the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony #7.

So if you ever hear that the Poker Grump is going to be appearing on the Big Game, here's what you can expect to hear as I am seen walking through the casino door. This is a performance conducted by the man who could put the brio in an allegro con brio like nobody else, the late, great Leonard Bernstein. Enjoy.

Pants on the ground (zero poker content)

There can be no argument about what the highlight of last night's "American Idol" was: Larry Platt singing his own composition, "Pants on the Ground." It delighted me. Still, it wasn't enough to trigger a blog post about it until just now, when I read this article, explaining what an interesting life Mr. Platt has had. It just makes his 15 minutes of fame all the more marvelous. Go read what he has lived through, and be sure, be SURE, to watch the YouTube video of his memorable performance that is embedded at the end of the text.

"Lookin' like a FOOL with your pants on the ground!" Somebody had to say it, and nobody better for the job than Larry Platt.

A question from 1979, an answer from 2009

A few days ago I was playing at the Venetian when I noticed that the music playing overhead was Ravel's "Bolero."

1979--the year the movie "10" came out--was the year I graduated from high school. I suspect that most people of my age had either not ever heard or not paid much attention to "Bolero" until seeing how it was put to use in this movie. I also suspect that just about nobody of my age bracket who saw the movie can fail to think of it on every rehearing of the music.

Sitting at the Venetian table with that music wafting, my mind drifted in directions both nostalgic and erotic. Although she answers, rather than asks, this question in the film, I imagined Bo Derek seductively querying me, "And what do you like to do to 'Bolero'?"

Middle age pierced through the daydreaming fog as I heard the voice in my head answer her: "Play poker."

Entertainment while you play

Played at Bill's again this evening. One of the sidelights of playing there is that if you time your visit right, you get to hear Big Elvis, who sings in the lounge maybe 30 or 40 yards from the poker room, so it's not hard to listen in. (They have the good sense to shut off the canned overhead music while he is performing.) According to Big Elvis's web site, he's there Monday through Friday at 3:00, 5:00, and 6:30 p.m.






When the game broke up unusually early at Bill's, I walked next door to the Flamingo. They had something going on I'd never seen before: Performers from the Flamingo's "X Burlesque" show (see review here) were dancing to loud music just inside the door. (Sorry for the blurry photos. They wouldn't hold still.) Maybe this has been going on for a long time, but never while I've been there. It appears that other girls from the show--or at least ones dressed as if they might be in the show--do some blackjack dealing in this area near the wide-open front door of the casino. As at Bill's, the poker room is close enough that you can listen in on the music, but you can't see the dancers from the tables. Probably a good thing--might be a bit too distracting. I liked Big Elvis's music better anyway.

Sorry, no interesting poker stories from tonight. I came home with more money than I left with, which is always plenty interesting to me, but not especially to anybody else.

Oh, but wait--I do have a story, though not much to do with poker. Bill's takes the rake in half-dollar increments, so you sometimes get 50-cent pieces back as part of the pot. You can also play two of them as if they were a $1 chip. Somebody did that, and I noticed that the sheen of one of them looked quite different from the other. I'm fairly sensitized to the appearance of real silver, because of having my one-ounce silver coin always in use as my card protector, and I thought this half-dollar looked much more like silver than most. And when the dealer picked them up and put them in the tray, replacing them with a $1 chip, the "clink" was definitely different from the usual cheap, tinny sound that American coins have been making since they stopped using silver and copper, and instead went to crappy metals like nickel and zinc. I could even see in the dealer's tray that the second one down looked different on its edge. So I asked the dealer to sell me two half dollars from her tray (she probably thought I wanted to use them to tip the cocktail waitress or some such thing). Sure enough, the second one was a 1968, when the alloy used was still 40% silver (see here for coinage history). It's about one-eighth of an ounce of silver, so, I dunno, something like $2 worth, that I purchased for 50 cents.

When Shamus was in town for the World Series of Poker and we played a little poker together at the Palms, he mentioned in his blog the next day about how observant I seemed to be at the table. Nobody had ever said this of me before, though I do try hard to pay attention to what's going on. I suppose it's true, given my irritating (to the dealers, anyway) tendency to be able to identify cards from tiny rub marks or creases I notice on their backs, pick up and later blog about snippets of other players' conversations, get grossed out by untidy dealers' ear and nose hair, notice illegally small raises, spot all sorts of nervous tells in opponents, etc. Now I have to add to the list that I notice the peculiar look and sound of coins in play! There are undoubtedly more important things to be noticing, but one really can't help what things catch one's attention.

The strange thing is that I'm completely obtuse and unobservant in life outside of the poker room. My friends will tell you that I can walk past some prominent object a thousand times before finally noticing it and asking them, "Has that always been there?"

Wow. This post really veered far from where it started. Sorry for rambling.

On my non-iPod

The first I heard of this CD was when Shamus mentioned it last week in a post detailing the poker references made in Rolling Stone magazine over the years. I zipped over to amazon.com and ordered myself a used copy right away. I've never come across anything that Ricky Jay has done or been in that I didn't like, so it was not a difficult decision. The disc arrived Friday, and I gave it a first listen today. Me likey.

There are 19 poker-related songs, plus one track that is a snippet of dialog between Jay and Joe Mantegna from the movie "House of Games"--coincidentally the same scene that I mentioned here.

The songs selected range in dates from 1914 to 2004, and come from jazz, blues, country, plus a few not readily categorized, such as Bob Dylan, or Lorne Greene narrating (rather than attempting to sing) a ballad, the plot of which might remind modern poker-playing listeners of the movie "Lucky You."

I think my favorite song on the first time through was, ironically, probably the least directly connected to poker: "Ace in the Hole," by Dave Van Ronk. Below are the lyrics, as found here:

This town is full of guys who think they’re mighty wise,
Just because they know a thing or two.
You can see them every day, strolling up and down Broadway,
Telling of the wonders they can do.
You’ll see wise guys and boosters,
Card sharps and crap shooters,
They congregate around the Metropole.
They wear those flashy ties and collars,
But where they get their dollars,
They’ve all got an ace down in the hole.

Some of them write to the old folks for coin,
That’s their ace in the hole.
Others have girls on that old tenderloin,
That’s their ace in the hole.

They’ll tell you of trips they are going to take,
From Frisco up to the North Pole.
But they’d end up on that line, in their clothes not a dime,
If they lost that old ace in the hole.

Wherever you might stray, along the Great White Way,
They’ll corner you and start in telling lies.
Of oil wells in Nebraska and gold mines in Alaska,
You’ll be immersed in bullshit to your eyes.
But every hustler knows
Bullshit buys no clothes
And only cold cash keeps you off the dole.
So some of them wash dishes,
And some of them are snitches,
But all of them have aces in the hole.

Drifters who dwell on that slippery slope,
Grifters who jump their parole,
Trying to sell bags of catnip for dope,
That’s their ace in the hole.

They’ll tell you of money they’ve made and they’ve spent
And flash a Missouri bankroll.*
But their names would be mud,
Like a chump dealing stud
If they lost that old ace in the hole.


*I had to look up this term. It's "a roll or wad of blank paper, cut to the same size as dollar bills, surrounded by a few real notes of high denomination." See here for the defintion and history.

On my non-iPod

OK, yeah, it's shmaltzy and corny, but I'm one of millions who love this music. There is little else that so intensely brings waves of childhood nostalgia for me.

I have wisps of memory of my parents taking me to see "The Sound of Music" in its original theatrical release, which was in 1965. Back in those days, movies had rolling releases over many months, rather than opening nationwide all at once, so it might have even been 1966 by the time it got to our medium-sized midwestern city. I was either 4 or 5, then. Of course, the plot completely baffled me. Nazis? Austria? Governess nuns? Why are they running away? Where's the kids' mom? Why are their clothes made out of curtains? None of it made any sense to me. Not much about the world really makes a whole lot of sense when you're that age.

I even remember that there was an intermission. When was the last time you went to a movie theater and got an intermission?

Anyway, my family had the soundtrack album, and I played it endlessly. It was hands-down my favorite record as a kid. And even now, with a slightly more refined taste in music, I don't think there's any denying that Richard Rodgers had an extraordinary gift for melody, comparable to that of Mozart, Schubert, Dvorak, or Puccini, though working in a different genre. Is it even humanly possible not to be moved by "Edelweiss," "Something Good," "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," or the title song? Furthermore, if anybody cares to challenge the assertion that Julie Andrews has the loveliest voice ever to grace Broadway or the cinema, well, let's step outside and settle it like men, OK?

The other day something I was listening to on the radio reminded me of this collection of music, and I was overtaken with an urge to hear it all again. I found an el cheapo used CD on Amazon. It arrived today, and I'm already on my fourth time through, playing it as background while I play online poker.

I have copied it to my MP3 player, and I expect that the next time I'm feeling cowed by a skilled opponent or a series of bad beats, I'll tune to "I Have Confidence" and flood my brain with this thought:

...Show them I'm worthy
And while I show them
I'll show me

So, let them bring on all their problems
I'll do better than my best
I have confidence they'll put me to the test
But I'll make them see I have confidence in me!

On my non-iPod

It's my birthday next week (47--almost too high to keep counting now). My brother (who is five years older but somehow still alive, which gives me a modicum of hope for a few more years of life, though I'm sure it will be a wretched, decrepit existence at such advanced years) sent me the CD pictured above as a nice b-day present.

What do you get when you cross bluegrass with Led Zeppelin? Sounds like it should be a joke, but it's not. I had actually heard of this collaboration late last year, from this review on National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16251067. I think that describes the result better than I can, so I'll just add that I like it. Nice, mellow poker music.

Old poker song

I was looking around in the web site of the Library of Congress when I came upon this song from 1878, and thought I'd post it here for your amusement. You can look at (and print out) the sheet music here: http://tinyurl.com/2yzq3d. The following web site saved me the trouble of extracting the lyrics from the sheet music myself: http://www.pdmusic.org/1800s/78tgop.txt.


Dedicated to the "Home Club" New York
"That Game of Poker!" (1878)
Song & Chorus
Words & Music by Charles MacEvoy
New York: William A. Pond & Co., 25 Union Square,
between 15th & 16th Sts.
[Source: 032/104@Levy]
1.
I'm a man of the world I would have all know,
And to learn of its follies I'm not at all slow.
At the “Home Club” I first indulg’d with delight,
In an innocent game that is play’d ev’ry night!
We play’d it with cards call’d “Squeezers,” they said,
The finest assorted, with backs blue and red!
But the pastime I sing of is well-known to fame,
I like it, you all do, “Draw Poker’s” the Game.
CHORUS [sung after each verse]
But that game of Poker, O that game of Poker!
All other card-games to it really seem tame!
A square game of Poker, a good game of Poker
I like it, you all do! Draw Poker’s the game.
2.
Forty five is the number, a quiet retreat,
Where all the gay vot’ries of “Poker” now meet.
’Twas there I first “Antied” my checks, hon’t with cash,
Which were rake’d off quite fast as I bet very “Brash!”
But during the “Session” four Aces I got,
I thought it the best had, and cried “that’s my Pot!”
But, another, with fiendish delight whisper’d “Hush,
”Your hand is no good, for I have a “Straight-flush!
3.
”There’s a “Rake” in this circle call‘d “Kitty” by name:
We do not object when we sit in the game.
For the players are jolly, of good things there’s lots,
While the Landlord, he smiles as so many “Jack Pots,”
The betting is high when the game waxes hot;
I once stak’d my pile in a very large “Pot”
I held three of a kind, but alas! what a fate!
I was beaten once more by a mean little “Straight!”
4.
I sometimes stand “Pat” when my hand is quite small.
They can’t raise me out and I never will “Call.”
At this kind of “Bluff” we are all often caught.
But the limit is reach’d and the result’s a big “Pot!”
When we draw to a “Bobtail” with hopes we may fill,
Our chances are few, but we stick to it still!
The “Widow’s” made happy and all thro’ our play,
But what do we care boys as long as we’re gay?
5.
’Tis true that this pastime is often abus’d
By “Parlorgame” swells, who are justly accus’d
Of stealing, but yet they don’t give it that name,
And “I. O. U.’s” tender but ne’r pay the same!
These fellows infest the best Clubs of the town.
A few, I could mention, have gain’d some renown
For playing mean tricks which you’ve all heard about.
For my part, I play where the chaps are ruled out.
6.
Then let us be merry and bannish dull care.
Now deal the cards lively be sure ’tis done fair;
If luck is not with you, why, don’t be profane.
Have patience, you’ll win and your losses regain.
By way of a moral, to close with, I’ll say:
At Poker be careful, and don’t overplay,
Unless you are wealthy, pray be not too rash,
And cut the cards always, ’twill save you your cash.

On my non-iPod

I suppose that my touch of eclecticism will be revealed here, because it's hard to think of three musicians with syles more diverse than these most recent additions to my MP3 player.

In the Hollywood weeks of "American Idol" this season, a couple of performers did songs from Queen, and it triggered nostalgia for the group. After all, their heyday was when I was in high school, and I think most people share the common experience that the music that's new and fresh in those years stays with you permanently. (I deeply resent radio stations that brand this stuff as "oldies." Harumph!)

This is among the most engaging music I've ever heard. If you can't feel moved by "Somebody to Love" or "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy," then you have no heart. If you don't puzzle over the phantasmagorical lyrics of "Bohemian Rhapsody," ("Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango"), then you're just not paying attention. If you don't involuntarily smile at the lyrics to "Fat-Bottomed Girls" or "Don't Stop Me Now" ("I'm burning through the skies, two hundred degrees, that's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit"), then you have no sense of humor. If you can't feel awake and alive while rocking out to "Another One Bites the Dust" or "We Will Rock You," then you're, well, dead.




Next up is the polar opposite, in terms of mood. I bought a Michael Hoppe album a couple of years ago and loved it. Listened to it a zillion times. But, oddly, it never dawned on me that he might have other similar stuff that I would like. A few weeks back, that notion did finally occur to me, and he did, in fact, have other CDs that I thought would be worth trying--and they're nearly as good as the first one (which was cello music). Some would call his genre "easy listening" or maybe "new age," but I think it's closer to genuinely classical. Although more modern in sensibility, it reminds me most of the kind of things that I believe Robert Schumann or Franz Schubert or Felix Mendelssohn would write, were they living today. That may be giving a bit too much credit to Hoppe, since his music doesn't have quite that level of rich complexity, but it at least points you in the right direction. Extremely mellow, relaxing stuff, it is, and very, very beautiful.





Finally, we veer into the genre of world music. Maybe a month ago the Australian parliament gave a formal apology to the "Stolen Generations," a shameful, tragic period in imperialistic history. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_generation. Also try to rent "Rabbit-Proof Fence" from Netflix or your local video store, for a moving, true story from that era.) I was listening to the BBC that night, and as part of their coverage of the apology, they interviewed Archie Roach, a musician that I had never heard of before. He was part of the stolen ones, and it caused horrendous havoc in his life, which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Roach. He snapped out of his personal hell eventually, though, and became a talented singer/songwriter. The BBC report included part of his most famous song, "Took the Children Away," and I found it so hauntingly lovely that I ordered the above two CDs ("Charcoal Lane" and "Jamu Dreaming") from Amazon.com as soon as I got home, and have not regretted it.

I'm cheating a bit by including them here, because I've found that they're not really great poker music--and when I started this occasional series of music-related posts, I promised that's what I would stick to. But he is so little known here, and so deserves to be heard more widely, that I'm giving this little plug. Give him a try, why dontcha? The sampling feature on Amazon makes it really easy.

On my non-iPod

One of the latest additions to my non-iPod is the Mozart Requiem. It is, by turns, stirring and calming, which is kind of a nice combination for poker.

It has the additional benefit of supplying me with nasty things to think about opponents who suck out a 3-outer on the river against me. Now I can dial in the "Dies Irae" and quietly hum along (because, yes, I happen to know the words in Latin, from a stint in a church choir long ago):

Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
teste David cum Sibylla.
Quantus tremor est futurus,
quando judex est venturus,
cuncta stricte discussurus!

(Day of wrath, day of anger
will dissolve the world in ashes,
as foretold by David and the Sibyl.
Great trembling there will be
when the Judge descends from heaven
to examine all things closely.)

This is among the angriest, most threatening music every written. If you've never heard it, it's worth two minutes of your life (especially if you imagine hissing the words in Latin under your breath to the moron who just took your whole stack of chips playing a 9-3 offsuit and hitting runner-runner flush):



If wishing eternal damnation on the soul of my unworthy opponent has not by then sufficient exorcised me, I can skip ahead a couple of tracks to the "Confutatis":

Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis,
Voca me cum benedictus.

(When the damned are cast away
and consigned to the searing flames,
call me to be with the blessed.)



Ah, now I feel much better. I am among the blessed. My river-rat opponents be damned--literally!

On my non-iPod

I don't have an iPod. When I finally decided about a year ago that I could use some music while folding hand after hand after hand at the poker tables, I definitely wanted an MP3 player that used flash memory instead of a hard drive. Flash memory is more durable, has no moving parts, uses less battery juice, and is more compact. At the time (and perhaps still--I haven't checked) the largest capacity anybody made was 8 GB. There were two models available, an iPod and this one from SanDisk: http://tinyurl.com/2rwcbq. The latter was quite a bit cheaper, so I went that way. I'm mostly content with it, though I know it's not as stylish or functionally elegant as Apple's offerings.

Anyway, it occurred to me today to post here occasional updates of new music I've acquired for my non-iPod. I will only include music that I think makes for good poker accompaniment. I'm not sure exactly what the criteria for that are, but some music that I like a lot just doesn't work well. For example, most good classical symphonic music (Beethoven, Brahms, Copland, Mahler, etc.) has so much range in volume that I'm constantly having to fiddle with the sound in order to keep the lows audible over the background casino noise, then turn it down again when it goes fortissimo. That's just too annoying.

I previously mentioned the last CD that I bought, a collection from Elvis's live performances at the Las Vegas Hilton from 1969-1972 (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/10/chuck-woolery-and-me-non-poker-related.html). Then somebody who likes me a lot bought me the "gold" version of the same album, which includes the bonus CD with the full recording of the first of those Hilton shows. Major smiles there. Elvis is, I think, the definitive music for poker.

Still, one needs some variety.

I got another new one this week, a Christmas present from my brother, and I'm already in love with it: "Begin To Hope" by Regina Spektor (http://store.wbr.com/store/prod.aspx?pfid=1210817). Best song of the set, already enshrined in my list of all-time favorites, is called "Better."

Turn up your computer speakers and enjoy:

Horrible casino music

Speaking of Planet Hollywood (as I just was in the last post), who was the executive who signed a contract for the horrible singer they have in lounge adjacent to the poker room? He's unbearable. He's far worse than a karaoke bar would be. He's been there for months, with no sign of stopping. I can't believe that somebody auditioned him and thought, "My God, what TALENT! Quick! Sign him up before somebody else nabs him!"

Another player had a cogent observation about all the people that were there listening to him. These idiots apparently looked over all of the entertainment options this city has to offer, and decided on this. They thought: "Blue Man Group? No. Penn and Teller? Nope. Barry Manilow? Naw. Maybe a Danny Gans or Gordon Brown kind of thing? Not this trip. Phantom of the Opera? Huh-uh. One of the Cirque shows? Naaaa. No, instead, let's go see if that really bad singer is still down at Planet Hollywood, and waste our time there! Yeah, that's the ticket!"

Hey, PH, listen up: This guy is really, really awful. What's more is that he's so loud that I can't drown him out with my iPod. Please can him. If you signed a contract, buy out of it. Or just don't give the guy a microphone for his routine.

Chuck Woolery and me (non-poker-related content)

I scored a free ticket to the "$250,000 Game Show Spectacular" (from http://www.showtickets4locals.com/) and went to the Hilton to see it today. It was more entertaining than I expected it to be. Chuck Woolery is really, really good at this kind of thing--funny and spontaneous. He's apparently there on Wednesdays and Thursdays, with Bob Eubanks and Jamie Farr hosting other days.

The show consists of a bunch of game-show rip-offs that audience members are invited on stage to participate in. (If you go, it's worth knowing that nearly all of the participants are selected by random-number drawings, based on a ticket they give you upon entering, so all the stuff they tell you about standing and jumping up and down and shouting "Pick me!" is pretty much hooey.) There were quick, miniature versions of Let's Make a Deal, Card Sharks, Name That Tune, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show, plus a few other games that didn't have any apparent connection to any known television show.

In one of the attached photos (apologies for the crappy cell-phone camera resolution), Chuck and his impossibly effervescent assistant Cindy are trying to get audience members to do a disco dance as part of The Gong Show. (It's a really great gong! If I had been one of the "judges" during that portion of the show, I would have kept hitting it just for the pleasure of hearing the thing reverberate, until they took my mallet away. I have just added to my list of life goals: "Own a huge gong that you can hit any time you like, just for the hell of it.") On-stage participants all won either tickets to another Hilton show ("Menopause," Barry Manilow, etc.) or dinner at one of the Hilton restuarants. The winner of each game got between $100 and $500, usually $200.

Between games, they show clips of bloopers and funny moments from televised game shows (as you can see happening in the other accompanying photo). The best was from The Newlywed Game. Bob Eubanks asks a young woman, "What one thing does your husband absolutely forbid you to put on his wiener?" The woman instantly responds in dead earnestness, "Oh, Ben Gay."

The "$250,000" name comes from the final game, in which ten audience members are selected at random, and by basically a random process are narrowed down to one. That one picks three envelopes out of 20, and if the amount of money in those three envelopes totals exactly $1000, the contestant wins $250,000, and everybody in the audience pockets $100. Failing that, the contestant gets to keep the money that was in the envelopes, which today totalled about $700. There is only one winning combination.

How many ways are there to pick three envelopes out of 20? That would be the formula C(20, 3), which is 1140--so don't be getting your hopes up. They'll be able to run this thing a long time before having to pay out the big bucks. There were probably 200 to 250 people there today (early afternoon show on a Thursday, which I assume is probably about as small a crowd as you can expect). So you have at best a 1/20 chance of getting onstage for the last game, a 1/10 shot of being the person who gets to choose envelopes, and a 1/1140 chance of picking the right three envelopes. In other words, your chance of scoring the quarter-million are, well, about one in a quarter-million.

See other news/reviews of the show:

http://www.lvrj.com/neon/10666216.html

http://www.lvrj.com/living/9755957.html

In keeping with being a grump about things, I have to add an observation here about how stupid people are, as a general rule. In one game, contestants had to guess whether each of seven cards would be "high" or "low." They were told that "high" cards were 10, jack, queen, king, and ace. Low cards were 2 through 8. There were no 9s in the deck. The instant they announced these terms, I thought, "There are more low cards than high ones? Doesn't that make the best strategy pretty obvious?" We weren't told anything about the distribution of the cards--specifically, whether a whole standard deck (minus the 9s) was used, whether the selection was truly random, etc. But having no other information, your best approach has to be to go "low" every time, because the seven cards you have to guess about apparently came from a deck containing 28 low cards (four each of 2 through 8) and only 20 high ones (four each of 10 through ace).

But not even one of the three contestants did this. Instead, they tried to just blindly guess. I checked as they went, and guessing "low" every time definitely would have won the game; nobody got more than three out of seven right, and two of the sets of seven contained four low cards, so guessing "low" every time would have scored a winning 4 for two of the players. Oh no, better to rely on your keenly honed psychic abilities rather than a probability-based strategy, I suppose. I have no idea why the cards were set up with this kind of inherent bias, yielding an obvious advantageous strategy. But it's not a flattering comment on the human race that zero out of three randomly selected people can think clearly enough to exploit it.

Low IQs were similarly on open display in the final game. The ten contestants were each given a roughly 12" x 8" card, one side of which was red and the other black. They had to pick one or the other and hold the card with this side forward. Then Cindy would pick at random from a deck of cards. If the card she picked was red, all of those who had red showing would play again, and those with black showing were eliminated, and vice-versa. Seven of these imbeciles picked red on the first round, and only three of them picked black, even though they could all see each others' selections and had plenty of opportunity to change their color if they wanted to.

Naturally, you're 50/50 to win either way, but the results of winning aren't equal. As it was, those picking red had a 50% chance of being one of seven players left, while those picking black had a 50% chance of being one of just three players left. Why wasn't it obvious to these idiots that it's better to have black in that situation? If any of the seven choosing red had enough brains to pass about the third grade, they would have switched to black until there were five of each color showing, after which point switching becomes disadvantageous.

I don't understand why people fail to think and act logically in such situations. It's not like it took any hard math or deep deductive logic to figure this out. There was maybe a ten-second window in which Chuck was asking if everybody was happy with their choices, the contestants were all gazing up and down the row at each other's colors, looking dumb, without anybody changing, and I was sitting in the audience, looking at the 7/3 split, and mentally screaming, "Change to black, you red-card cretins!" But I guess they couldn't hear my thoughts (a fact for which I suppose I should be grateful). People can be so dim-witted it makes you want to just shoot them on the spot and put them out of their misery. Except, of course, that they're too stupid to understand how miserable and pathetic their existence is at that level of intelligence.

I just Googled "newlywed wiener Ben-Gay" to see if others have commented on the clip I described above--because it must be at least semi-famous--and one of the hits was this blog post: http://giveamanapaintedfish.blogspot.com/2007/10/show-me-money.html. But that led me to read a previous one from the same author (http://giveamanapaintedfish.blogspot.com/2007/10/wee-o-ortne.html), which is about how head-slappingly idiotic people are about basic strategy in even such a strategy-thin game as "Wheel of Fortune." It's a hilarious post, very much in keeping with what I observed today about how many people walk around functionally brain-dead. I have no idea who this blogger is, but I think he and I could enjoy a few hours of yelling at hopeless game-show contestants together.

Despite the moronic side of humanity being made manifest at the Hilton yet again today, it was a decently fun way to kill 90 minutes, if you're so inclined--and especially if you can get yourself in for free. And it takes place in the same theater that Elvis used to revive both Vegas and his own career from 1969-1972, which makes just being there pretty cool (even though it's now mainly used by the distinctly un-cool Barry Manilow--not that I dislike Manilow, but you can't call both him and Elvis "cool" and have the word mean the same thing, and I suspect that even Barry himself would concede that point).

Incidentally, I recently bought an Elvis CD consisting of live recordings from those famous shows at the Hilton, though it was then called the International. Great CD, if you're into Elvis (and who isn't???). See http://jiath.notlong.com/. I just now learned, though, that there's a second "gold" version of this CD that has a second, bonus disc containing the entire first Elvis Hilton concert from August 21, 1969. Elvis connoisseurs say that that may have been the greatest performance of his entire career. Dang. Now I wish I had gotten that one instead!

One final note: On the back of the show ticket is a +$10 table-games coupon. For any even-money bet of $10 or more, this coupon adds a free $10 to the bet. I never play blackjack or craps or roulette, for a bunch of reasons (mainly: they don't excite me in any way, and I understand pretty deeply that they're essentially just throwing money away). But I'm also smart enough to recognize that deals like this turn a negative expected value into a positive one. On the roulette wheel, for example, I can now bet $10 and have just a little under a 50% chance of winning $40. That's a bet I'd love to be able to put down a few thousand times in a row. Suppose you do it 1000 times (not that the Hilton is likely to give you 1000 of these coupons, but this is just illustrative). You'd expect to win 18 out of every 38 times betting on odd or even or red or black, because in each case there are 18 winning slots for the ball to drop into and 20 losing ones, (including 0 and 00). In 1000 trials, that's 474 wins at $30 each (they push you $40, but it's only a profit of $30, because $10 of that is just your bet back), for $14,220. You'd lose your $10 the other 526 times, totalling $5260, giving you a net gain of $14,220 - $5260 = $8960 in 1000 spins. So the average profit (expected value) per spin with the coupon is +$8.90. I put my $10 and my coupon on "odd" and, of course, the nasty little ball insisted on landing on 12. But it's still one of the few smart table-game bets you can make in this crazy city, especially for being a free bonus with a free ticket.

Addendum, November 5, 2007

I went again today. It was a virtually identical show (no surprise there) except that it was hosted by Bob Eubanks, who I didn't enjoy as much as Chuck Woolery. Didn't win anything. The back of this ticket had a 2-for-1 cocktail offer, instead of the $10-added betting coupon. Dang. I assumed that I would score $10, but I guess not every ticket gets one.

Once again, during the high-low card game, not a single one of the three contestants picked up on the fact that there are more low cards in the deck than high cards. And, once again, the strategy of picking "low" every time would have won, because one of the rows had six of its seven cards low!

Predictably, again, in the last game, the people on stage didn't figure out the red card/black card optimal strategy. Eight of them went red and only two black on the first round. The card drawn was red, so the best strategy would have lost, but still--just being one of the two people selecting black there meant that your odds of being the person picked to play for the $250,000 prize zoomed from 1 in 10 to 1 in 4! People can be so dense sometimes....