Thursday, June 01, 2006

A Haircut You Could Set Your Watch To...

I woke up at 6am to write again. I attacked my keyboard for about two hours. About 40% of my efforts could be classified as decent writing. The rest I deleted. I listened to a Dead bootleg from 1977 after a 6:20am wake and bake. After I wrote for two hours, I read the news online then headed over to get a haircut.

Yesterday afternoon on the way to the subway, I walked past Vinny's place. He's my barber and I popped in to see if he had any openings for Thursday morning. He put me down for 9am. I showed up a few minutes early and read the sports pages. The Yankees are the big story as they slid into a tie for first place with Boston. The Yanks won five straight games and are the hottest team in baseball. They took 2 out of 3 from the Red Sox at Fenway and won three straight against the Detroit Tigers, and are looking for a four game sweep after tonight. The Tigers are statistically the best team in baseball and the Yanks are on the verge of sweeping them in their own home ballpark. As of now, only four teams have better records than the Yankees, who may throw Gary Sheffield back to the DL. My new favorite Yankee is... Melky Cabrerra.

Anyway, after a brief discussion about the Yankees to start out my haircut, Vinny segued into gambling and Atlantic City. He got a postcard in the mail from Harrah's offering him a free room to play in their Three Card Poker tournament. He declined and proceeded to tell me about a rush he had playing high limit slots in the Sultan Room at the Taj Mahal. He took down a hefty jackpot and hasn't been back since.

After the haircut, I went to the bagel store for breakfast and picked up an Everything bagel with extra butter and a plain croissant. The croissant was not as good as the ones I get at Yum Yum Donuts on La Cienega in LA. When I was waiting in line, I spotted two squad cars across the street in front of the construction site. One of the workers stood behind me waiting to buy coffee.

"What's up?" I asked pointing to the cops.

"One of the electricans got picked up for assault. He bashed his girlfriend's ribs in with a hammer. He found out she cheated on him. He took a screwdriver and shoved it up the...," he paused and looked around before he continued, "he shoved it up guy's ass. Ya know, the guy who was doin' her. Can't say that I blame him for taking the hammer to his old lady."

"Was it a Philips head?"

He smirked.

* * * * *


Jaxia and I sent a few IMs to each other. I told her about the haircut.

"I'm afraid to show u a pic -- I'm looking devastatingly handsome, and that might make u give up lesbianism."

My passport expires at the end of the month and I need to get it renewed, in addition to getting new passport photos. There's a place that I know where I can get those taken care of. I used to go into a small film processing place all the time before I bought my digital camera. I haven't been in there in a couple of years. I have to do that before 5pm today.

I paid my MasterCard bill this morning: $2,560. Ouch. I paid it all in full too. I won't blog my bill like last month, but there were some random work-related charges. I also bought a decent amount of music and books from Amazon and iTunes. I have random meals on there from a Cracker Barrel in Kentucky, to the Riverdale Diner in NYC, to Nick's Coffee Shop in LA.

That bill also includes payments for two months of cell phone bills, two flights to LA (one from NYC and the other from Las Vegas), one flight from Vegas to Denver, one flight from NYC to Tennessee, two sets of Widespread Panic tickets, and a new drive for my laptop. My DVD/CD-RW drive died. I found a replacement for $80 and it arrived in less than four days from when I ordered.

I got some interesting mail yesterday, and none of them were bills:
The alumni office at my college is offering graduates a break on car insurance if we buy from one of their partners.

The latest issue of Poker Pro Magazine arrived. I wrote an article on the WPT Championships and they included a few of my photos.

I also got a postcard from my high school alumni office reminding me about the annual golf outing... in October. It's going to be held at Sleepy Hollow country club. I'll probably skip it.

I got a nice letter from the headmaster thanking me for my generous donation for 2006. Not to brag, but it was so big that I had to break it up into monthly payments. They told me that the donation bumped me up into a different bracket of donators. I think I get a free hat and an invite to a special rubber chicken dinner.
Yesterday afternoon I sat on the coldest subway car currently in operation in NYC. My nipples were hard for fuck's sake! And so where the nipples on the art-freak girl with paint splattered jeans and jet-black dyed hair who sat across from me. They were sticking so far out, you could hang your jacket on them.

Despite the huge erection, I managed to finish the end of Alan Watts' book on the subway. That concludes my brief re-introduction to Alan Watts and Zen Buddhism. I read three of his books in the past month and feel much better about myself for doing so. I still have more than half of Blue Blood to read.

I'm in the middle of finishing up the third of three freelance articles I've written since Tuesday morning. On Monday I penned my bi-monthly column for Poker Player Newspaper. It took me about an hour to crank out 650 words on online gaming legislation. On Tuesday night I wrote a Truckin' story about getting wasted and driving around town with my friend Nicky. Yesterday, I wrote a 2,000 word article on poker pro Erik Seidel for a series I have been doing called Poker Greats. I started writing a preview of the 2006 WSOP and will have that done before the Yankees game starts. My preview of the 2005 WSOP got picked up by Fox Sports last year and they put it on their front page.

I made a list of articles I have to write before I leave for Tennesee in 10 days and I'm slowly crossing off things on that list.


Recent Writing Music...
1. The Grateful Dead
2. Radiohead
3. Essex Green
4. Van Morrison
5. Charlie Hunter

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