Paul Harris Online

Adam Savage's Failures

2012-01-26T05:22:00.001-06:00

Adam Savage of "Mythbusters" spoke at The Amazing Meeting in 2009 about learning from your mistakes...

For more skeptical videos from The Amazing Meetings, check the James Randi Educational Foundation's YouTube Channel

Tired Of Being Famous

2012-01-25T20:03:00.000-06:00

When the story came out this morning that Demi Moore had been hospitalized for "exhaustion" (she's burned out from trying to think of something clever to say on Twitter), my first thought was that she got the rich person's diagnosis.

I've never heard of a blue collar worker being hospitalized for exhaustion. People who work two jobs to support their family, pay their mortgage, and scrape together some savings are not diagnosed that way. They may end up with heart disease, or high blood pressure, or other problems, but they never think, "You know what would be a good cure for my fatigue? A few days in a hospital bed." Even if they did come to that conclusion, they probably don't have a health insurance plan that covers "being wiped out by life."

Having been in a hospital bed (for surgeries, not "exhaustion"), I can tell you that it's not exactly a restful place to be, either. Between the midnight blood draw and the IV-monitor beeping when the bag goes empty, and your roommate snoring, no one gets a good night's sleep in a hospital unless they've had some pharmaceutical assistance.

Which is how most rich celebs ended up with the "exhaustion" diagnosis in the first place.

What's The Silver Lining?

2012-01-25T19:44:00.000-06:00

My friend Rocco complained this weekend that he had to increase the data plan for his Android phone because he was listening to so much music from "the cloud." He had blown right past the limits on his original plan and had to buy one that cost $50 more per month, all for the pleasure of listening to music from his own collection, which he had uploaded.

I pointed out that he could save all that money by simply keeping the music on his phone in the first place. It would be different if he didn't own the music and was using a service like Pandora or Spotify -- each of which eats up that data bandwidth as it streams from the cloud -- but with 16gb of memory, his phone will hold a couple of thousand songs, and it costs nothing to listen to them.

So why does anyone use the cloud?

Less Than Fair

2012-01-25T19:36:00.000-06:00

The results of a new NY Times/CBS News poll about Americans' views on tax policy includes one interesting nugget that may help define the path of this year's presidential election.

First they asked, "Do you feel you pay more than your fair share in federal income taxes, less than your fair share, or is the amount you pay about right? A little more than half of the respondents chose "about right," while a third said "more than fair share." The numbers didn't change from Democrats to Republicans to Independents.

Then they asked "Do you feel upper-income people pay more than their fair share in federal income taxes, less than their fair share, or is the amount they pay about right?" This is where the differences became apparent -- 70% of Democrats said "less," while only 37% of Republicans said "less."

But here's where we get to the important number. Among those identifying themselves as "Independents," 58% believed that the rich aren't paying enough in taxes. That's a big number, 58%, and it's from the group that will decide this year's election -- those who have no allegiance by party, the swing voters.

Income equality wasn't even on the map as a campaign issue until the Occupy Wall Street movement began last fall. But now, with stories like Mitt Romney's tax rate, and unless some catastrophic story comes along (an attack on the US, a natural disaster, etc.), this will be one of the defining issues of the year. The candidate that convinces those 58% will win in November.

Apple Bites

2012-01-25T16:17:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, before Apple announced its earnings for the 4th quarter, Wall Street investors were selling the stock, nervous that the company might not meet "expectations." That drove Apple's value down about $7/share (a little less than 2%).

Then, after the markets closed, Apple released its quarterly earnings, and those "expectations" were completely wrong. The company sold 35 million iPhones and twice as many iPads as last year, not to mention a whole lot of Macs and Macbooks and Mac Airs -- in 3 months. Today, Wall Street loved the stock again, running it up to a $26.25/share gain (6.24%).

I'll bet that many of today's buyers were yesterday's sellers, the ones who blew it. Think any of those analysts' jobs are in danger today? I doubt it.

KTRS This Morning

2012-01-25T04:04:00.000-06:00

I'll be back on The Big 550 KTRS/St. Louis this morning from 6am to 10am. You can listen live here.

Final Table #155: Matt Savage

2012-01-24T19:58:00.001-06:00

Today on the Final Table radio show, we recapped our weekend poker road trips. Dennis was at the Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma for a World Series Of Poker Event, along with such notables as Scotty Nguyen, TJ Cloutier, Men The Master, and Todd Brunson. Meanwhile, I was in California to play cash games on Live At The Bike (watch it here, with commentary by Bart Hanson & David Tuchman) and at the Commerce Casino, where the LA Poker Classic kicked off with a massive field in its first event. That led to a discussion of the pros and cons of re-entry tournaments, as well as a piece of cash game strategy you should use whenever you play in a poker room against players you don't know.

In our guest segment, I talked with the very busy Matt Savage, tournament director of the LAPC, the Epic Poker League, Bay 101, and the World Poker Tour. The conversation touched on those re-entry events and other new tournament ideas, the obscure questions Matt answers via his Twitter account, strategy changes he's noticed in recent years, and much more.

In our news segment, we discussed Zynga admitting that customers of its free-play internet poker platform (with more than 30,000,000 players per month) are interested in playing for money online, progress on i-poker legislation in Iowa, and a story about the man who bought Peter Eastgate's 2008 WSOP Main Event Champion bracelet and wants to use it to raise more money for charity.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes or click here to subscribe via Stitcher (for Android phones and other devices).

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

Wolfman Birthday

2012-01-21T19:09:00.000-06:00

I hope Dave Logan won't mind my borrowing this from his Facebook page:

Wolfman Jack's birthday today. He was one of a kind who knew about the magic of radio. His interaction with Curt shows why DJs mattered back in the day. This scene was shot in Berkeley, CA at the historic KRE-AM studios which now hosts the California Historical Radio Society and The Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame. And yes, it's open to the public.

Wolfman Jack
American Graffiti at MOVIECLIPS.com

In Case You Missed It

2012-01-19T15:15:00.000-06:00

From my Twitter feed...

An appreciation of "Sunday Morning," the CBS tradition that provides a respite from all the shouting on other networks.
Jesse Eisinger explains that, while there are a lot of issues confronting our country, debt isn't one of them. He argues that Mitt Romney, more than any other candidate, knows that you have to borrow money to make money (exactly what he did at Bain Capital), so he shouldn't squawk so much about the federal government doing the same.
When Newt Gingrich told Marianne he wanted their marriage to be "open," she probably told him she preferred his mouth "closed." Neither was very likely to happen. Meanwhile, he persecuted Bill Clinton for his extra-marital shenanigans.

Talk Like An American

2012-01-19T13:02:00.000-06:00

The US may be the only country whose citizens are proud they only speak one language. While children in the rest of the world are bilingual by default, our kids can learn Spanish or French or Italian in school, but most don't become fluent enough to use it much as adults. At least I have an excuse, since I spent four years studying Latin, which is about as useful in modern daily life as the Fortran computer programming language I mastered in high school.

There's also some xenophobia (hey, Latin!) in play here, especially when it comes to presidential candidates. John Kerry was mocked for speaking French, and Mitt Romney's being similarly attacked. Jon Huntsman got no credit for speaking Mandarin Chinese (surely one of the world's most difficult to learn languages, but only spoken by 836 million people). Obama gets away with a few foreign phrases, and Bush pandered to Hispanics in their native tongue, but there's still a large swath of voters who view such linguistic skills as anti-American.

Here's more on the topic from PRI's Alex Gallafent...

In Praise Of Jimmy Fallon

2012-01-18T09:31:00.001-06:00

In a new post on The AV Club, Steven Hyden makes the case that Jimmy Fallon has become the best host in late night, and I agree with much of what he says. Fallon's rise is a classic example of not judging a show based on its first few episodes (or even months), but giving it time to grow and find what it does well. Compare the third and fourth seasons of "Seinfeld" or "Friends" with episodes from their debut season and you'll see what I mean -- they had to find their groove.

Fallon has certainly done that, and in some ways reminds me of a morning radio host. Even the best in the business had those early years where they struggled, trying to do too much, telling lame jokes, forcing banter with their co-workers, and airing bits that didn't work because they were better than nothing. After a while, the good hosts learned through trial and error not only what they were comfortable with and what had to be jettisoned, but more importantly, how to relax and have fun on the air.

That's where Fallon is now. Watch his show any night and -- aside from the monologue, a vestige of every previous late night show, which he should drop -- the guy is clearly enjoying himself. And it's contagious. Where he once interviewed guests like an autograph-seeking fan-boy, he now gets guests caught up in the fun environment he's created. Fallon's also found some durable bits of his own, like Thank You Notes and Slow Jamming The News (with help from Brian Williams), which add to the notion that this is more than just another talk show with parade of guests with something to plug.

One of the the most popular things I ever did in my radio career may have been a trivia segment called The Harris Challenge. Listeners loved to play along, even if they never called in to participate on the air, and so did many of my guests -- Regis Philbin, Connie Chung, Graham Nash, John Goodman, various politicians and sports stars and other celebrities -- asking the questions, helping contestants with answers, or sometimes just announcing the prizes we were giving away. Fallon does the same thing, getting his guests to take part in silly games like Charades or Password, with random audience members as partners. What other TV host does an interview over a game of Beer Pong?

Another morning radio similarity is Fallon's penchant for song parodies. The difference is that most radio hosts have someone else who does them (a brilliant parodist named Mark Bradford contributed material to my shows for more than 15 years). Fallon doesn't need anyone else to do them, because he's the impressionist on his show, and he's terrific. Take a look at his Neil Young singing "Whip My Hair" or Bob Dylan doing the "Charles In Charge" theme or last week's Tim Tebow/David Bowie parody...

While Fallon imbues his show with cleverness like that, Conan O'Brien looks like he's still trying too hard to prove something to the world, Craig Ferguson has let his quirks overtake his amiability, and Leno and Letterman are repeating bits they wore out a decade ago. Only Jimmy Kimmel infuses his broadcasts with energy and fun in a style that approaches Fallon's -- not a surprise, considering his years doing morning radio!

Jimmy Fallon is putting on A Show, and it takes time to get it right. He has.

No One To Blame Butter Self

2012-01-18T02:20:00.002-06:00

I don't watch the Food Network or any of the TV cooking shows, nor do I know anything about any of the celebrity chefs. But I do know the name Paula Deen, because I've been to the buffet that bears her name at Harrah's Tunica and, based on what I saw there, I was not surprised when she announced today that she has diabetes.

Granted, most buffets (particularly in casinos) are not full of food for people on diets. They are essentially gorging venues that offer high-fat, high-carbohydrate items. You eat all you want, then have more, and then start in on the desserts. I try to avoid them, but a few years ago I was in Tunica with an hour to kill before starting a poker tournament at Harrah's, and the only other lunch options were a Quizno's and a Dunkin' Donuts, so I decided to give Deen's buffet a try.

What I discovered was that Ms. Deen has never found a food item she couldn't deep-fry or swaddle in shortening. You know the way some restaurants post the calorie count of their menu items? There aren't numbers high enough for Deen's entrees.

I'm not a health food nut, but I realized I had made a mistake as I walked past creamed this and fried that and several dozen people lined up for all-you-can-eat crab legs (complete with your own bucket o' butter!) and prime rib with extra added fat and -- I swear I'm not making this up -- deep-fried stuffing on a stick (!). My cholesterol level was rising and I hadn't eaten anything yet.

I finally found the small salad bar at the end of the buffet. There weren't many other people in this section (surprise!), so I didn't have to fight a crowd to fill my plate. It wasn't the best salad I've ever eaten, and I'm sure there was no fat-free dressing, but it was better than the alternative. As I sat there eating, I heard arteries hardening at nearby tables.

One news report today said that Deen knew about her diabetes diagnosis three years ago, but waited until now to make it public because she wanted to develop a healthier line of foods and sign an endorsement deal with a pharmaceutical company that makes a drug for diabetics. How altruistic of her. Wouldn't it have been nice if, instead of waiting, she'd stopped pushing all those ultra-fat recipes to the public? She could have at least changed her buffet to offer more healthy options. I've heard a rumor that there are actually food items that taste good without being battered and deep-fried.

Ms. Deen would call that crazy talk. As she reached for her insulin injection.

Final Table #154: Matt Glantz

2012-01-17T22:39:00.002-06:00

Today on the Final Table radio show, Dennis shared more stories from the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas, including an oddly-played hand in a cash game and a great run of events for 2010 WSOP Main Event Champion Jonathan Duhamel.

In our guest segment, we talked with Matt Glantz, who has won over $4 million in poker tournaments, including a big year in 2011. He discussed his success in high-stakes mixed-games, his involvement in the Epic Poker League Standards and Conduct Committee, and his recent blog post about Responsibility In Poker (in which he urged poker pros to realize how their actions reflect on the entire industry).

Reminder: if you're going to be in St. Louis over the next two weekends, there are a couple of events you should be a part of at Harrah's St. Louis. On January 21 and 22, you can play in the $200 double-shootout World Series Of Poker Main Event Qualifiers, and on January 27-29, it's Big Game 2 weekend -- with at least two tables of $25-50 no-limit hold'em ($15,000 minimum buy-in) and two other tables of $10-20 no-limit hold'em ($2,500 minimum buy-in). If you're interested in playing, send your name and e-mail to the address on the right side of this page and we'll send you full details on how to lock up a seat, get a discounted hotel room, wire money to the poker room cashier, etc.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes.

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

Today Minus Sixty

2012-01-17T00:00:00.018-06:00

Here's a piece of American television history -- the opening half-hour and final 15 minutes of the very first "Today" show, which aired on NBC sixty years ago, on January 14, 1952.

It's a reminder of a time when viewers would be dazzled by live video from the streets of Chicago or the parking lot of the Pentagon, unseen correspondents checking in via phone from London and Frankfurt, wire service photos shown "minutes after they were taken," newspaper headlines flown in overnight from across the country -- and the lowest-tech weather graphics you've ever seen. It was full of technical snafus and segments interrupted with no warning, but remains fascinating to watch.

In those days, "Today" was essentially a newscast for white men by white men, anchored by Dave Garroway with a huge microphone hanging off his chest. There were no cooking segments or author interviews that morning, but there were musical interludes, in which jazz records were played while the camera panned across the studio, because -- as Garroway explained -- "we realize you're not going to have your eyes glued to the screen all morning."

Other things you may notice in this black-and-white TV time capsule, captured on film via a feed from NBC's flagship station, WNBT/New York:

A news ticker scrolling along the bottom of the screen;
Garroway and his news anchor reading typewritten scripts, in the days before teleprompters;
Amazement at a new device called the electric typewriter;
Several people smoking cigarettes on camera;
The emphasis on international news, thanks to the clacking teletype machines of United Press, International News Service, and Associated Press;
The repeated concern over flammable sweaters;
Don Pardo, at the time a relatively new employee, serving as the booth announcer for live promotional announcements during network breaks in the final segments.

Worth A Link

2012-01-16T21:59:00.000-06:00

Andrew Sullivan offers a forceful defense of Barack Obama against critics on both the right and the left, with evidence from the actual record (hey, an argument based on facts -- that's crazy talk!) and admiration for the incumbent's political long game.

The Candidate Of Principle

2012-01-16T21:00:00.000-06:00

Huntsman Then: "Romney's bad for the country. Seriously, you can't vote for him."
Huntsman Now: "I quit, so vote for Romney, he'll be good!"

A Message For The History Channel

2012-01-12T08:21:00.000-06:00

From Trey Parker and Matt Stone...

Another Political Thought

2012-01-11T09:57:00.000-06:00

Now that Mitt Romney has won Iowa and New Hampshire, political pundits are acting as if the GOP nomination battle is over, so they're looking ahead to the next battle, which means making general election prognostications based on Romney vs. Obama polling.

It's all garbage. Not because someone else may become the GOP nominee (they won't), but because you haven't seen the Obama machine in action yet.

He hasn't had to run any campaign ads, he hasn't criss-crossed the country with rallies and speeches, and we haven't even seen what his overriding message will be. Obama is laying the groundwork by taking on the Republicans in congress, but he (and the SuperPACs that support him) have barely put the machine into first gear, so any predictions at this point are as irrelevant as boasting that your fantasy football team will win the Super Bowl before you've drafted the players.

A Political Thought

2012-01-11T09:29:00.004-06:00

How different would the race for the GOP presidential nomination be if, instead of Iowa and South Carolina, the caucuses and primaries began in New Jersey and California (which won't vote until June!)?

I'd bet that the nominees would be different, because the voters in those states aren't nearly as conservative as the ones who act first under the current calendar. Candidates like Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum -- who never really had a chance of becoming Obama's opponent anyway -- would probably not have run, and more moderate Republicans might have given it a shot (although there are other reasons, which I wrote about here). It might also help bring that party back from the extreme social conservative brink and turn the emphasis away from topics like gay marriage and contraception.

If they adjusted the calendar that way, Mitt Romney wouldn't have to pretend to be as conservative as he does. However, there doesn't seem to be any desire inside the GOP mainstream to appeal to the moderates, which is why they ended up with the crop of crazies in this year's field.

Final Table #153: PCA 2012 + Chris Krafcik

2012-01-10T16:01:00.004-06:00

Today on the Final Table radio show, Dennis reported from the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas, with stories of its Main Event, its Super High Roller ($100,000 buy-in) Event, and the effect Black Friday and the loss of US players had on attendance. We also discussed whether a new Guinness record for Fastest Online Poker Player (set by Randy Lew at the PCA) was really about poker.

In St. Louis, I revealed details for the first World Series Of Poker Main Event Qualifiers of the year at Harrah's St. Louis (1/21-22), and for Big Game 2 weekend at Harrah's St. Louis, January 27-29, with at least two tables of $25-50 no-limit hold'em ($15,000 minimum buy-in) and two other tables of $10-20 no-limit hold'em ($2,500 minimum buy-in). If you're interested in playing, send your name and e-mail to the address on the right side of this page and we'll send you full details on how to lock up a seat, get a discounted hotel room, wire money to the poker room cashier, etc.

Other topics we touched on included a goodbye to Jimmy Sommerfeld (retiring after 18 years as one of the best tournament directors in poker), whether Phil Ivey was worth the $11 million/year he was paid by Full Tilt, and Daniel Negreanu offering to sell pieces of himself for the $1 million buy-in One Drop tournament at the WSOP this summer.

In our guest segment, we talked with Chris Krafcik, research director for Gambling Compliance, about the latest developments in getting internet gaming back into the US, including:

how Nevada may lead the way in licensing online poker this year;
comments from the heads of two Las Vegas casinos who oppose online poker;
how New Jersey's attempt to legalize sports betting will have to overcome a federal obstacle;
whether Missouri and Illinois are likely to allow any of this in those states.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

Marilyn Monroe Doctrine

2012-01-08T09:44:00.004-06:00

I've never gotten the Marilyn Monroe thing. Maybe it's because I'm not of her generation, or maybe because I've never seen her in anything except the perfect comedy "Some Like It Hot" and the far-from-perfect Marx Brothers vehicle "Love Happy." Don't get me wrong -- she had a helluva body, but it was clear there wasn't much else there (the modern word for that: Kardashian).

So, when I saw "My Week With Marilyn," it wasn't because I was a fan of hers, but because I usually enjoy movies about movies. In this one, a young guy named Colin is hired by Lawrence Olivier to help out on a movie he's making with Monroe -- as preposterous a bit of casting as Colin Firth co-starring with Paris Hilton.

While it pretends to be a little bit inside-the-industry and a lot more star-gazing-bio-pic (with a very solid performance by Michelle Williams as Monroe, seen above), the movie is really about how men allow bombshell women, particularly famous ones, to get away with pretty much anything. Monroe's constantly late, keeping Olivier and the entire crew fuming and waiting for hours while she sits freaked out in her dressing room. She insists on having her acting coach by her side at all times. When she wants to go for a drive, she tells Colin where to go and what to do and he pants like a poodle in heat, giving in to her every whim. She is endlessly narcissistic and riddled with problems, obviously fighting severe mental difficulties and pharmaceutical nightmares.

None of that keeps Colin from falling for her, head over heels. Same for virtually every other man she encounters, except Olivier, who is exasperated by her. Each of the enthralled men no doubt harbors a secret sexual fantasy about Monroe, but it's better they never consummate their fantasies, because that va-va-voom superpower wears off after awhile (as her frustrated husband Arthur Miller can attest after escaping her grasp in England to return to the US and some semblance of sane existence).

At some point in their lives, most men encounter a woman like this. Perhaps they even date her for awhile. I did.

Before I met my wife, I went out with a fashion model for a few weeks. She wasn't smart, but she was stunning and sexy and, most important, willing. As a guy in my early twenties, the brain was not the dominant decision-making organ in my body, so I put up with all sorts of nonsense -- some of which bordered on the psychotic -- because I knew where we'd end up as the evenings wore down. But after awhile, something Bill Maher once wrote kicked in: "Show me the most beautiful woman in the world, and I'll show you a guy who's tired of fucking her."

Just ask Marilyn Monroe's three husbands.

Neil deGrasse Tyson & Stephen Colbert

2012-01-05T00:00:00.000-06:00

Science has no greater spokesman today than astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who can explain even the most difficult concepts in a way laymen like you and me and understand. In addition to his role as executive director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and the many bestsellers he's written, Tyson speaks all over the world to promote science literacy, raise money for science education, and generally increase the public's knowledge of our world and universe. Here he is in a conversation with Stephen Colbert at Kimberley Academy in Montclair, New Jersey, last January (this runs about 85 minutes, but is fascinating throughout, particularly at the end, when Tyson makes an impassioned plea for parents to allow their children to discover more through experimentation)...

Final Table #152: Tristan Wade

2012-01-03T22:09:00.000-06:00

Today on the Final Table radio show, we talked about what a recent ruling by the Department of Justice regarding online gambling could mean for the return of legalized online poker in the United States. We also discussed an odd hand Dennis witnessed in a local Vegas tournament, the unique feature of Jamie Gold's poker room at the Tropicana, and how PokerStars has developed a new way to ensure that player funds are protected.

We also revealed details for Big Game 2 weekend at Harrah's St. Louis, January 27-29, with at least two tables of $25-50 no-limit hold'em ($15,000 minimum buy-in) and two other tables of $10-20 no-limit hold'em ($2,500 minimum buy-in). If you're interested in playing, send your name and e-mail to the address on the right side of this page and we'll send you full details on how to lock up a seat, get a discounted hotel room, wire money to the poker room cashier, etc.

In our guest segment, we talked with Tristan "Cre8ive" Wade, who won his first bracelet at the World Series Of Poker Europe a couple of months ago in a Shootout event. He explained the different strategies necessary for six-max games vs. full ring games, as well as how bet-sizing is a key to successful play in both cash games and tournaments. Tristan is one of the DeepStacks Live pros who will take part in the new DeepStacks Poker Tour, which kicks off next month at the Seneca Niagara Casino.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

Lenore Skenazy, Free Range Kids

2012-01-03T21:59:00.002-06:00

FDR's famous quote, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," is still true in America -- and perhaps more so. We have become a nation of fear-mongers, trained by politicians, media, and authority figures to worry about bad things happening to us and particularly our children. Unfortunately, the things that we're supposed to be afraid of are based on anecdotal evidence, not real data. And that hurts kids more than anything else.

Today on KTRS/St. Louis, I spoke with Lenore Skenazy, who has been fighting back against the paranoiac beliefs that keep our children from playing outside, have turned parents into 24-hour watchdogs, and taught those fears to a new generation. Her site, FreeRangeKids.com, is a bastion of relief from a world that says your kids are in danger every moment they're out of your sight (and often when you're looking, too). We discussed the untrue horror stories that keep kids from trick-or-treating on their own, the media's misguided attention to stories of an abducted child while ignoring all the good things that happen to kids every day, the impact of eliminating recess in schools and outside play at home, and much more.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Here's the op-ed piece Skenazy wrote for the Wall Street Journal, which I referenced during our conversation.

Twofer Tuesday

2012-01-03T00:02:00.002-06:00

I'm starting the new year on The Big 550 KTRS/St. Louis today from 10am to Noon CT. Among my guests will be Lenore Skenazy of Free Range Kids. You can listen live here.

This afternoon, I'll switch venues and stations to do The Final Table poker radio show with Dennis Phillips. We'll discuss a recent ruling from the Department of Justice that could mean online poker returns to the United States much earlier than we had predicted. We'll also talk with Tristan Wade, one of the pros taking part in the new DeepStacks Poker Tour.

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

Come Together

2012-01-03T00:00:00.014-06:00

You're at the Mala Restaurant on Maui on New Year's Eve, and there's a pretty good band playing some classic rock. At one point, they launch into the Beatles' "Come Together," with a trio of singers you'd never expect to see together -- Steven Tyler, Alice Cooper, and Weird Al Yankovic. Naturally, you whip out your cell phone to record the moment for posterity...

Note that Weird Al is the only one who doesn't need a lyrics sheet, even though Tyler's the only one who recorded a version of this song -- he and Aerosmith did it 30+ years ago for the soundtrack of the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" movie that Robert Stigwood produced with one of the oddest casts ever assembled: Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees, Donald Pleasance, Steve Martin, George Burns, Earth Wind & Fire, Billy Preston, and Carel Struycken, with dozens of cameos by people like Carol Channing, Dame Edna, Jack Bruce, Leif Garrett, Jose Feliciano, and Keith Carradine. I hosted the 1978 premiere and had to apologize to the audience the next day on my show.

There was no apology necessary for the ecstatic crowd in Hawaii that night, except perhaps to Mike Myers, who was also there (with Tom Arnold?) but didn't get to the microphone until the song was over.

Tim Minchin's "Woody Allen Jesus"

2012-01-02T00:00:00.001-06:00

Here's one of the ballsiest things I've ever seen on television.

It's a performance from Jonathan Ross' immensely popular UK television show, with a guest list that included Tom Cruise, the ladies from "Downton Abbey," and singer/songwriter/satirist Tim Minchin, who wrote this song specifically for that final show before Christmas. He played it, everyone laughed, the audience applauded, Ross complimented him, and then Peter Fincham (ITV's director of television) yanked it. The song never aired -- because we certainly can't have religious satire at the holidays. Fortunately, Minchin got a copy of the video and posted it on his site, along with the behind-the-scenes story...

A New Year's Suggestion

2012-01-01T19:29:00.000-06:00

If you're a business person, here's a suggestion that will make 2012 go better for you: before you make any decision that affects your customers, particularly involving higher rates or extra fees, take a moment to use Google News to look up how 2011 went for Verizon, Netflix, and Bank of America.

I was going to charge you an extra $5 for this advice, but after evaluating the feedback from my extensive database of listeners, readers, and barbers, I've decided to waive my fee. You're welcome.

Loathe The One You're With

2012-01-01T19:07:00.000-06:00

In Frank Bruni's column, "The Iowa Caucuses' Bitter Harvest," he explains how the extremist candidacies of Santorum, Perry, and Paul are damaging both the Republican Party and the country on the whole:

As the hour of actual caucusing drew closer, Ron Paul’s campaign trumpeted his endorsement by a pastor who, as it happens, has spoken of executing homosexuals. Rick Perry pledged to devote predator drones and thousands of troops to the protection of the Mexican border, making the mission to keep every last illegal immigrant from crossing sound as urgent as rooting out terrorists in Pakistan.

And Rick Santorum, bringing his "Faith, Family and Freedom" tour to this eastern Iowa town on Thursday, promised never to be cowed by all those craven secularists who believe that a stable, healthy household needn’t be headed by a God-fearing mom and dad.

None of these three men is likely to win the Republican nomination. But before they exit stage right — stage far right, that is — they and a few of their similarly quixotic, similarly strident competitors will do no small measure of damage to the Republican Party and no great favors to the country as a whole. What happens in Iowa doesn’t stay in Iowa: it befouls Republicans’ image nationally, becomes a millstone around the eventual nominee’s neck and legitimizes debate about some matters that shouldn’t be debatable.

Why is the GOP field so beyond the beliefs of mainstream America? Because the more moderate among them (Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, etc.) didn't want to run against an incumbent president who won't have to spend a penny on a primary fight and will have a war chest of hundreds of millions to spend when the battle really begins this summer. That left the field open -- even after the press stopped falling for fake-outs from Sarah Palin and Donald Trump -- for every level of circus performer, from Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich. Thus Mitt Romney appears to be the only reasonable person in the field, but that's damning with faint praise.

It will also make voters about as excited in November as Democrats were in 1988 when they had to endure a carnival primary season that included ex-Klansman David Duke, soon-to-be-convicted-felon James Traficant, and sit-on-my-lap-advocate Gary Hart. In the end, they ended up with another boring Massachusetts governor who couldn't be president -- Michael Dukakis. And if you want to complete the Massachusetts can't-win trifecta, don't forget John Kerry, the 2004 candidate the Democrats settled for instead of womanizing John Edwards, lying Al Sharpton, and screaming Howard Dean.

Then, as now, the only voters ultra-motivated by their bland, robotic, fallback guy will be the party faithful who want the current White House resident thrown out at any expense. But more important will be whether Romney can pull in the Ron Paul activists who can't stand him, the evangelicals who don't accept Mormonism as a real religion, and the independents who like the health care reform law and wonder why Romney was for it before he was against it.

Maybe we should stop telling our kids that anyone can grow up to be President and start encouraging the really good ones instead.

Screen Spies

2012-01-01T17:56:00.000-06:00

I've seen a couple of spy movies in the last week, and they couldn't be more different.

"Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" is exactly what I expected -- lots of action, amazing stunts, Tom Cruise playing Tom Cruise, solid support from Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner, a breakout performance by Paula Patton, and a plot that barely matters. As with all movies of this type, some of the hand-to-hand fight scenes go on too long, because it's easier to get up and keep fighting when that kick to the solar plexus/head/groin has been choreographed and there's no contact. In real life, any one of those body shots or head-on car crashes would be enough to make you call Time Out until your insurance company could look over your claim. Still, I went into this knowing exactly what I was going to get, and director Brad Bird (whose "Iron Giant" is one of the most underrated animated movies of modern times) delivered it.

At the other end of the spectrum is "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy." I didn't read John LeCarre's novel, and I wish I hadn't wasted two hours watching the movie version. Although, to be precise, I didn't see the whole movie -- it was so boring, I fell asleep in the middle, and I can't remember the last time that happened. As for explaining the plot, that's your impossible mission. There's something about a mole in the British intelligence service and....any more than that was a mystery to me. Worse, every actor in the movie -- from Gary Oldman to John Hurt to a half-dozen guys you've never heard of -- speaks in the same low, growly voice, no matter what they're trying to convey (including Colin Firth, who should have been able to give everyone elocution lessons after winning the Oscar for "The King's Speech"). To top it off, director Tomas Alfredson shot in a palette of grays that might well represent Hungary in the early 1970s, but it comes off as dark and unappealing, which doesn't make the indecipherable dialogue and mundane plotline any better. Nor do the many short scenes with nothing happening that leave you wondering what it all means. Perhaps those who've read the novel are intrigued by watching a document dumbwaiter move through a building, or two men sit and sip coffee wordlessly, but those shots (which often last just a few seconds and then smash-cut to another) add nothing for the rest of us.

Caveat: don't see "MI:GP" if you're afraid of heights, and don't see "TTSS" if you're afraid of a nap.

My First 2012 Resolutions

2012-01-01T00:01:00.014-06:00

I don't really make New Year's Resolutions, but I'm committed to making a major effort in 2012 to:

Continue my lifelong record of never seeing any movies with the words "kung fu" in the title, particularly if they're followed by "panda";
Track down and then smack the person responsible for deciding that every Mexican food recipe would be better if it included cilantro, when the opposite is so clearly true;
Finally learn which switch in our bathroom controls the fan and which turns on the light (you'd think I'd be able to remember that after more than a dozen years in this house, but you'd be wrong);
Quadruple the amount of televised soccer I watch from zero games per week to zero games per month.

David Pogue's iPhone Secrets

2011-12-30T16:43:00.001-06:00

If you have an iPhone 4S, you probably don't know all the cool stuff it can do because Apple didn't give you a manual. There's isn't a complete guide to the iPhone in the box or on the website. Fortunately, NY Times personal tech columnist David Pogue has one for you -- it's his "iPhone: The Missing Manual," which he has just updated for the newest version (and the iOS 5.0 operating system you may have on an earlier version of the iPhone or the iPad).

Today on KTRS/St. Louis, Pogue revealed some of the features Apple didn't tell you about, including:

how to use Siri to learn who's in your family to make it easier to text and call them;
how to take a picture even faster without digging through several screens;
how using the iPhone's voice-recognition software makes driving safer;
how "assisted touch" makes using iPhone easier for the disabled and non-disabled;
how Apple's phone technology compares with what Google's Android phones can do.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

You can buy Pogue's book from Amazon here, or download the e-book version at half-price here until January 3rd.

It's Not Heaven, It's Iowa

2011-12-30T16:32:00.000-06:00

With the Iowa caucuses three days away, I invited Josh Kraushaar (executive editor of National Journal's Hotline) to join me on KTRS/St. Louis and analyze how things look on the weekend before the first votes of the 2012 presidential election season are cast. I asked him why the caucus matters, considering that Iowa Republicans chose Mike Huckabee 4 years ago and rarely are a predictor of who will win the nomination. We also discussed why Mitt Romney's pressing so hard to win there, how much of a factor Ron Paul will be, and how much Newt Gingrich has faded from view. He also revealed an odd decision by the GOP in Virginia, where voters will have to sign a party loyalty oath before being allowed to vote in the primary.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

KTRS Today

2011-12-30T00:02:00.002-06:00

I'm wrapping up the year on The Big 550 KTRS/St. Louis today from 10am to Noon CT. Among my guests:

Josh Kraushaar, executive editor of National Journal's Hotline, discussing the upcoming Iowa caucuses.
David Pogue, NY Times personal tech columnist, whose new book, "iPhone: The Missing Manual" has just been published.

You can listen live here.

Say Something Nice

2011-12-29T06:20:00.000-06:00

The number one fear people have is supposedly speaking in public, but that wasn't true for many folks who encountered a megaphone in New York's Union Square. It was placed there by ImprovEverywhere, which usually puts on stunts involving hundreds of people who know ahead of time what they're supposed to do. In this case, nothing was prearranged except for the plaque on the lectern, which provided three words of instruction: "Say Something Nice." As you'll see, most random passers-by did...

Of course, there will always be some who see this as an opportunity to speechify or do something other than the original intent. Here's a report on them.

Frank Schaeffer

2011-12-28T06:42:00.003-06:00

"I guess this 180, if you're talking about politics, would take me from being a radical, right-wing, bomb-throwing evangelical on the far right to a position of what I would call 'moderate sanity,' in terms of social views and political views."

That's Frank Schaeffer, talking with me yesterday on KTRS/St. Louis about "Sex, Mom, and God," his latest book about how he left behind a fundamentalist upbringing and years spent as one of the founders of the Religious Right to become an Obama-supporting critic of both the Republican party and the church, particularly in their dangerous overlap when it comes to political leadership.

In our conversation, Schaeffer went after the GOP candidates who prefer faith over facts regarding the economy, global warming, abortion, and more -- essentially taking the evangelical agenda (that he helped develop even before Reagan became president) and continuing to push it into the public policy arena today. He correctly sees the emphasis on social issues like gay marriage and abortion as a distraction from the real problems facing America. That's just what manipulative power brokers like the Koch Brothers and Goldman Sachs want, because they're not interested at all in the social issues, but rather in reducing regulation of their businesses. So, the more they can foment distrust of government and incite Tea Party-like resentment of all things official -- to the point where middle-class Americans vote against their own economic interests -- the better it is for their bottom line.

You don't hear many people explaining the synergy between politics, religion, and greed as well as Schaeffer does here. Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

By the way, the full title of Schaeffer's book is "Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics -- and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway."

Merrill Markoe

2011-12-27T23:47:00.007-06:00

Merrill Markoe helped change television as head writer of David Letterman's daytime and late night NBC shows. Since they broke up, she has continued to write, with several books to her credit. Her newest is a collection of essays entitled "Cool, Calm, and Contentious." In it, she explains how having a narcissistic mother is one of the keys to a career in comedy -- and hers certainly qualified.

As she explained to me this morning on KTRS/St. Louis, Markoe's mother believed in brutal honesty, which was not a good recipe for her daughter's self-esteem. That approach wasn't reserved solely for Markoe, though, as she discovered after finding her mother's travel diaries and noticed that they contained negative comments about nearly every place she visited -- in a way that would make you shake your head in disbelief.

We also discussed her suggestions for How To Spot An Asshole and why she likes tweeting as a platform for comedy (you can follow her on Twitter here -- and I'm here). Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Today At The Final Table

2011-12-27T10:00:00.000-06:00

Today on The Final Table poker radio show, we're going to re-run a show from this fall that became our most-downloaded podcast ever. It's a conversation I had with poker pros Dave Tuchman and Bart Hanson, co-hosts of the "Live At The Bike" video stream of cash games at the Bicycle Casino in Las Vegas. Dave also did some of the near-live streams from the WSOP this summer, and Bart has his online video coaching series.

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

KTRS This Morning

2011-12-27T06:00:00.001-06:00

I'm back on The Big 550 KTRS/St. Louis today from 6am to 10am CT. Among my guests will be Merrill Markoe, author of "Cool, Calm, and Contentious," and Frank Schaeffer, author of "Sex, Mom, and God." You can listen live here.

Worth A Link

2011-12-27T00:01:00.003-06:00

Not long ago, Andrew Sullivan endorsed Ron Paul for President. But in light of Paul's non-explanation of the racist newsletters that went out under his name (which he profited from immensely), Sullivan explains why he has re-thought and retracted his endorsement.
Kevin Trudeau, who sold millions of phony cancer cures and other anti-science nonsense in thousands of late-night infomercials, has lost his appeal in federal court and must pay $37.6 million in fines.

Titanic Thompson

2011-12-26T00:02:00.002-06:00

I like stories about con men. I don't ever want to be their victim, but I'm intrigued by their cleverness and the psychology of how they play their marks. I'm a fan of movies like "The Sting," "Criminal," and "Confidence," and as a kid admired the intricate plots of "Mission: Impossible" episodes.

That's why I was drawn to Kevin Cook's book, "The True Story of Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet On Everything." While some describe Thompson as a gambler, he was really a con man who never bet on anything unless he had the edge. He took tens of thousands of dollars off opponents on the golf course, in card games, at horseshoes, and any other way he could think of. As with any professional, he also had to practice a lot, but it was the way he cheated his victims that's so entertaining.

I invited Cook to join me on KTRS/St. Louis last week so we could talk about Thompson, his cons, and his exploits with Al Capone, Minnesota Fats, Houdini, golf stars Raymond Floyd and Lee Trevino, and Arnold Rothstein (who fixed the 1919 "Black Sox" World Series).

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Security Theater

2011-12-26T00:00:00.002-06:00

Three stories to consider as you travel during this winter break and think the TSA is making it safer to fly...

TSA agents seized a red-velvet cupcake from a woman because the frosting was a dangerous "gel"
FAA rules say you have to turn off your iPhone and Kindle during takeoff and landing -- but an electric razor is okay
Walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier and he'll point out how useless the TSA's "security theater" is, how it hasn't made flying any safer, and how pointless the facade of the checkpoint is

Two Follow-Ups

2011-12-23T09:09:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said "no" to the NTSB's proposed ban, which effectively kills it at the federal level -- for now. I wrote about why I opposed that proposed ban earlier this week.

Louis CK's online experiment (which I wrote about here) is an unqualified success and perhaps a paradigm-shifter. After more than 220,000 people downloaded his "Live At The Beacon" comedy special, he has announced on his website that he's going to give away $280,000 of the proceeds to five charities.

KTRS Friday

2011-12-23T06:00:00.002-06:00

I'm back on The Big 550 KTRS/St. Louis today from 6am to 10am CT. Among my guests will be Kevin Cook, author of "Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet On Everything." You can listen live here.

Cell Phone Ban Reactions

2011-12-21T21:44:00.002-06:00

Responding to my piece on why cell phones should not be banned in cars, Alan Keathley emails:

I do not agree with you in that all distractions are the same. Talking on the phone (hands free or not) is a lot different than listening to the radio or talking with another passenger in the car. Listening to the radio is a very passive act and one can automatically tune out when driving situations require it. The same is for talking with a passenger. The passenger is involved with what is going on on the roadway and conversations will change or stop as a result of changing situations. Talking on the phone is more active and the person or persons on the other end do not have that same vantage point.

I didn't say that radio is as distracting as using a cell phone. I said that when radios were first introduced in cars, they were a distracting technology that people had to get used to, just as we're still in the early years of learning to drive and communicate simultaneously. And while Alan is right that the person at the other end of the call doesn't have the same vantage point that a passenger would, I can always stop the conversation -- or drop the phone -- if an emergency situation arises on the road.

However, Alan and I agree on his next point:

You can rest assured that congress will not pass any such legislation as many of them, if not all, engage in cell phone use while driving. They could always exclude themselves from such legislation and other special interest groups that buy them tickets to next year's Super Bowl game. Not like that's never happened.

Bob Robinson writes:

The NTSB, among others, seems to be ignorant of the fact that most, if not all, states have laws on their books concerning “failure to pay due care and attention”. I know Maryland has one, as my older sister got cited for it in 1975! That particular case was bogus, as it was th other driver who should have been charged. But I digress. The plain and simple fact is that any state that passes a law against all cell phone use will be looking to accomplish only one thing – raise revenue.

Of course, if you’re going to implement such a ban wouldn’t it only be fair if the police charged with enforcing it were required to abide by it first? Yes, I am aware of the irony of expecting law enforcement personnel to obey the very laws they are charged with upholding.

Interestingly, all of the venues that do have cell phone bans in place -- including the one for commercial truckers that goes into effect next month -- have carved out an exception for CB radios. I suppose the thinking is that we've had that technology around long enough that drivers can use them safely. Maybe what we need now is an updated version of CW McCall's novelty hit "Convoy" with a bunch of suburban commuters on their cell phones in rush hour.

Iowa, The Bad Bellweather

2011-12-21T13:16:00.000-06:00

The political media can't stop talking about the Iowa Caucus, which takes place in a couple of weeks and they tell us is the first official electoral event of the 2012 presidential campaign. They're all playing it up like it means something, like it's a predictor for what happens next and who will become the GOP nominee.

That's because they don't remember history and have no perspective.

If you don't believe me, ask President Mike Huckabee. He was the beneficiary of all the pre-caucus hype four years ago and ended up winning in Iowa with 34% of the vote, the kind of kick-start a campaign of destiny needs. How'd that work out? While it did get Huck a contract with Fox News, he was never really a threat to the eventual nominee, John McCain -- who came in fourth in Iowa with both Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson finishing ahead of him, too.

In 1988, then-Vice President George HW Bush finished a weak third behind Bob Dole and Pat Robertson (!), yet somehow managed to succeed Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office. Dole, by the way, did go on to win the nomination -- in 1996, after barely getting more Iowans to choose him than Pat Buchanan.

What does all this mean? Mostly that Iowa is a terrible bellweather state. Its Republican base is much more white-bread conservative than the rest of the country, so the more extreme a candidate's right-wing-ishness, the better their chances. Remember, this is the state that even liked Michele Bachmann for a couple of minutes.

But let's not allow the facts to get in the way of the hype. Let's play up Iowa as the most important place on the political map -- and don't let me hear you say anything bad about corn subsidies and the ethanol mandate mistake.

Why Cell Phones Shouldn't Be Banned In Cars

2011-12-21T08:48:00.001-06:00

Last week, I saw a TV reporter doing a live shot from the side of the road discussing a report issued earlier that day by the National Transportation Safety Board which recommended banning the use of all cell phones while driving. It was already dark outside, and as cars drove by him with their headlights on, I couldn't help but wonder how distracted they were by the light on top of the camera that was pointed at the reporter -- and at the vehicles coming in the opposite direction. Maybe the NTSB should look into banning unnecessary live shots, and leave me alone so I can call my wife and explain that I'll be late for dinner because there's an accident ahead caused by a TV guy with a bright light shining in our eyes.

The NTSB's recommendation is bad policy because it's premature, based on anecdotal evidence, and ignores the technology learning curve.

Yes, it's sad that 3,000 people died last year in accidents caused by distracted driving, but there's not enough proof that cell phones were the primary cause. Drivers are distracted by all sorts of things in the car, from a crying baby in the back seat, to finding a radio station that didn't go to an all-Christmas music format on Labor Day, to the passenger loudly explaining why the Rams still suck -- not to mention juggling the Egg McMuffin and coffee they're consuming on the way to work. Yet no one would dare suggest we only be allowed to sit behind the wheel alone with no audio, nor will any fast-food restaurants be forced to close their drive-thru windows anytime soon.

One of the anecdotes that led to the NTSB's recommendation stemmed from an incident last year in the St. Louis area, when a pickup driver who had sent 11 texts in 11 minutes was paying so little attention to the road that he slammed into a tractor-trailer, and was then rear-ended by two school buses full of kids. The pickup driver and a 15-year-old died, and more than three dozen people were hurt.

That's a bad accident, but no one should conclude from it that all cell phone use must be banned. Texting and talking are not the same thing, as they require different levels of concentration. Most states already have laws against texting, and some ban handheld phone calls, but what's the difference between using a hands-free device and talking to someone you car pool to work with?

The NTSB's decision is premature because we're still fairly early in the cell phone technology timeline. When I got my first cell phone in 1994 when my wife became pregnant, most people didn't have them yet. But in the last decade, with the explosion in popularity of iPhones, they've become omnipresent. There are now more cell phones than people in the United States -- a number so large that the 3,000 deaths are a sad but small statistic.

Banning their use in cars ignores the learning curve required with any new technology. I'm sure that when a radio was first installed in a Model T, it took some time for people to get used to it. The same goes for the introduction of windshield wipers. Anything that caught the driver's eye could become a distraction, but we adapted to them and figured out how to drive safely and enjoy those options. We're still developing new multi-tasking skills behind the wheel with in-car navigation systems and other digital info on our dashboards. It's called progress.

Moreover, the technology is getting better and more useful. Hands-free devices and bluetooth connections have helped, as have services like Siri and OnStar. With the former, I push one button on my iPhone (without having to look at it), tell a voice-recognition personal assistant who I want to send a message to and what I want to say, she repeats the info out loud, confirms that she has it right, and then sends it. With OnStar, you can push one button and speak to a live operator, who can give you directions to your destination or contact the cops to report the crash that was caused by another driver who, instead of using her cell phone, was applying mascara at 60mph.

Regarding that learning curve, I have no problem with laws that keep new drivers from using cell phones. A teenager who is still getting comfortable with highway speeds shouldn't be on the phone, even with a hands-free device. But leave us multi-tasking middle-aged guys alone, because we've been ahead of the game since we mastered the ability to drive with our knees while enjoying a sandwich and a soda while singing along to "Won't Get Fooled Again" at top volume.

Will the NTSB's report lead to legislation prohibiting all cell phone use in cars, not just texting? There's already a federal ban set to go in place at the start of the new year for commercial truck drivers, and some companies already have regulations regarding cell phone use. But Rick Newman of US News told me last week that he doesn't think politicians will take that step for all drivers...

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Final Table #151: Poker Year In Review

2011-12-20T21:36:00.003-06:00

Today on the Final Table radio show, we recapped the biggest poker stories of 2011, with help from two of the industry's top reporters, Chad Holloway of Poker News and Kevin Mathers of AllVegasPoker.com. Among the items we discussed:

the impact Black Friday had on players, tournaments, cash games, sponsorships, and the poker media;
how near-live streaming coverage of the WSOP Main Event has changed the way we watch poker on television;
the loss of most other TV poker shows, including "High Stakes Poker" and "Poker After Dark";
the launch of the Epic Poker League and its chances for success going forward;
whether we'll ever see Full Tilt founders Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson playing poker publicly again;
our picks for the person who had the most impact on poker this year.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

Louie's Most Impressive Act

2011-12-20T16:01:00.001-06:00

Much has been (and continues to be) written about Louis CK's new stand-up special, which is only available on his website, not on any TV network. The pieces are either about the economics of delivering his content to viewers this way (an experiment he deems successful), or a recap of some of the material he performed at the Beacon Theater while the cameras rolled (note to reviewers: standup routines are never funny in print and out of context, because you always need the comic's unique voice and delivery to make them work).

But not enough has been said about how prodigious Louis is. In addition to writing, directing, editing, and acting in his FX series, "Louie" (which begins production for its third season in February to air next summer), he also develops an entirely new hour of standup material every year. An hour a year may not seem like a big deal, but it is. Most touring comedians are lucky if they come up with 15 or 20 good new minutes in a year. They have to conceive it, write it, try it out in clubs, perfect the wording and timing, and do it over and over before it becomes an official part of the act. Once they get it right, they may perform that bit for several years, adding it to others that always work onstage.

If they're lucky, one of the TV networks will offer them a comedy special, and they'll cull their best bits from previous years to cram the half-hour (or hour) with stuff they know will kill. Meanwhile, they continue to work the road, whether it's comedy clubs or theaters, doing essentially the same act from town to town. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, some of the cleverest comedians I've ever seen have only been lucky enough to grab the brass ring of TV once, yet still had long, happy careers.

If they get a second TV offer, it's usually a few years later, which gives them lots of time to develop new material. Sometimes, the subsequent TV shot will even contain bits they did the first time around. I recently re-watched the first few HBO specials Robert Klein (once one of my comedy heroes) did in the mid-1970s and saw at least three bits he repeated -- not to mention the various versions of his "I Can't Stop My Leg" song that stopped being funny sometime around Jimmy Carter's inaugural but became a dead horse he was still beating in his stage show as recently as two years ago.

So, when Louis comes up with a new hour of standup, it's impressive. What's even more impressive is the fact that, each year, he throws away all the previous material. He may still discuss the same topics -- sex, parenting, his dreams and nightmares -- but it's all new every year. That's virtually unheard of. Jerry Seinfeld at one point took the material he'd done for 20 years, compiled it into a special called "I'm Telling You For The Last Time," and then never did any of it again. When Seinfeld decided to start developing a new act, he took along cameras to witness the journey, which became the terrific documentary "Comedian." But even he doesn't have an entirely new act every year.

The only other comedian I saw who regularly produced new material at that volume was George Carlin. The problem was that Carlin stopped being funny in his last decade. His later concerts and TV specials were overrated by an audience thrilled to be in the presence of a hall-of-fame comic, but his material didn't deserve the adulation. There would be some flashes of fancy wordplay, but too often he simply ranted about one thing or another he hated about the world. It's not that those weren't subjects worth ranting about, but somewhere along the line he forgot to be funny.

Louis may get to that point, too, as his career continues. Forcing yourself to create that much content -- and perfecting it to the point where you want to present it to the world -- can burn people out. Let's hope he's an exception, because at the moment, he's at the top of his game, one of the best comedians of his era.

The Best Christmas TV Tradition

2011-12-20T11:36:00.000-06:00

You can have all of your TV Christmas traditions. I'll take Darlene Love's annual performance of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." She recorded the original version (written by Phil Spector, Ellie Greenwich, and Jeff Barry) in 1963, and since 1986 has done it on David Letterman's final show of the year, backed by Paul Shaffer and his band and a slew of other musicians and singers.

Here's video of Shaffer and Love behind-the-scenes, along with a montage of their performances through the years. It doesn't get better than this -- or maybe it will this Friday night when the 2011 version airs...

My Holiday Turkey

2011-12-19T23:37:00.003-06:00

The first radio station I was paid to work for (after several years of volunteering at non-commercial college and high school stations) was WRCN/Riverhead. It was a classic small-town station on the east end of Long Island that played "album-oriented rock" to an audience that tripled in size as soon as Memorial Day rolled around and The Hamptons filled with an extra million beach-goers.

I started as a part-timer in April, 1978, doing the Saturday 7pm-midnight shift. Soon I was given the Sunday afternoon slot, too. A couple of months later, they started bringing me in during the week to help produce commercials. There was very little ad agency business, so we had to write, voice, and record almost every spot for local advertisers, and I provided an extra voice to supplement the other jocks, who all had production duties in addition to their six days a week on the air.

In a market that small, WRCN wasn't charging all that much for commercials. I think they may have gotten $20/spot during morning drive, the highest rated daypart, with some nighttime commercials going for "a buck a throw," or added on to a time buy as a bonus. There were also a very large number of spots that aired as a trade with the advertiser. If the radio station's owner needed new tires for his car, we ran free spots for the tire store. We did spots for the local gas station that filled up the tanks of our sales people. We ran freebies for John Duck Junior, a famous east-end restaurant where many of our clients were schmoozed over drinks and dinner (I begged the sales manager to let me take my parents there for their anniversary and finally tasted the duck, which was even better than I'd made it sound in their commercials).

So it shouldn't have come as a surprise when the station owner added a special something to our pay envelopes in the week before Christmas that year -- a gift certificate for a free 15-pound turkey from a local supermarket that had just started advertising with us (retail value: about ten bucks). This wasn't exactly the kind of gift a 20-year-old guy could get excited about. I was making about $3/hour, so some extra cash would have helped. Plus, I had never cooked a turkey at that point in my life, and since I lived by myself, it was unlikely I was going to start with that frozen bird. Besides, I was the low man on the staff totem pole and in addition to my weekend shows, since Christmas fell on a Monday that year, I was going to spend the holiday filling in on the air for a six-hour shift that took up the whole afternoon.

I went to the supermarket and explained my situation to the manager, asking if I could use the coupon for regular groceries instead of the bird, but after casting a wary eye on me -- what kind of crazy person doesn't want a complimentary Butterball? -- he denied my request, explaining that the coupon had no cash value. I tried to trade the coupon for something else from a couple of my fellow staff members, but none of them needed another free turkey, so I ended up giving it to Ernie, the incredibly patient mechanic who ran the auto repair place down the block from the radio station and was always working on my car (a 10-year-old Ford Galaxie 500 with over 125,000 miles on it and a penchant for spewing blue smoke).

In the end, it all worked out. Ernie and his family had a nice, free turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and I got a complimentary oil change -- which was something of a Hanukkah miracle, because those five quarts of 10W40 lasted for about eight nights in my car.

Highlight Spotlight

2011-12-18T13:54:00.001-06:00

James Brown is a very good sportscaster, a success for over 20 years, who not only handles the formatics of hosting the NFL coverage on CBS, but knows how to keep things moving as he describes highlights. Yet for some reason, the higher-ups at CBS Sports decided that rather than having JB handle those duties, he would just be the hand-off man while Dan Marino, Bill Cowher, Shannon Sharpe, and Boomer Esiason turned into the recap men.

That's not what they're there for. They're all pretty good as analysts, but they're not broadcasters, and they always stumble somewhere along the way, leaving Brown to play the role of safety net and traffic cop. It's a poor use of his abilities.

This leads to the awkward handoff that occurs every time they go to an in-game highlight, such as when Greg Gumbel pauses his play-by-play of a live game to throw it to New York for a clip from another game, only to have JB take it and toss it to one of his studio-mates. That's too many people involved in a replay that only takes about 10 seconds. And it's no better in the halftime show, when each of the four ex-jocks take turns reading the copy prepared by some associate producer (the staffer who's actually been watching the plays as they happen) as the various game highlights are aired.

The blame probably falls at the feet of the rival NFL show on Fox, where Brown used to work. Once he left and Curt Menafee took his place in the host chair, the highlights packages were handed to Terry Bradshaw to bungle in his inimitable style because he's the top banana. I'm sure that the agents for the Dan-Bill-Shannon-Boomer foursome saw that and made the case that CBS should use their guys more, and so JB's role has been diminished.

That's a shame because, as he proves on Showtime's "Inside The NFL," he's a total pro and a generous host, more than happy to set up his colleagues, but he's having the rug pulled out from under him by the other big men with big egos.

The Spielberg Face

2011-12-18T08:17:00.000-06:00

What do all Steven Spielberg movies have in common? According to Kevin B. Lee, it's a close-up of an actor surprised, or in awe, or in shock. Here's his video essay providing evidence...

This Excuse Is All Wet

2011-12-16T18:55:00.002-06:00

Jerry Sandusky doesn't just have one bad lawyer in Joe Amendola (who allowed his client to do that live TV interview with Bob Costas). Now he has another bad attorney in Karl Rominger, who told a local TV station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that there could be another explanation for why Sandusky was in the shower with young boys. Wait until you hear this...

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Fighting Super PACs

2011-12-16T18:46:00.000-06:00

It's been almost two years since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which allows corporations to spend as much money on political campaigns as they like. This will be the first presidential election impacted by that decision, and we're already seeing the influence exerted by Super PACs that are set up to support one candidate or another. It's legalized corruption and a corrosive influence on a government that long ago lost its right to be called "of the people, by the people, for the people."

Today on KTRS/St. Louis, I talked this over with Democracy 21's Fred Wertheimer, an outspoken advocate of overturning Citizens United, reducing the influence of the rich and powerful on our politics, and returning to public funding of presidential campaigns...

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Hercules Has A Stroke

2011-12-16T18:30:00.000-06:00

Kevin Sorbo was on top of the world a few years ago. The show he starred in, "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys," had replaced "Baywatch" as the most-watched television show on the planet. Then he had a stroke or, more precisely, three strokes. How does an actor continue to work after that, particularly one who's been doing all his own stunts as the strongest man on Earth? That's what we talked about when he joined me yesterday on KTRS/St. Louis...

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

You can read more of Sorbo's story in his book, "True Strength."

KTRS Friday

2011-12-16T06:00:00.002-06:00

I'm back on The Big 550 KTRS/St. Louis today from 6am to 10am CT. Among my guests will be Rick Newman of US News on why cell phones will never be banned in cars, Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 on the influence of Super PACs on presidential campaigns, and David Blaustein reviewing the latest Sherlock Holmes and Mission Impossible movies. You can listen live here.

Kurt Anderson on The Protestors

2011-12-15T09:03:00.001-06:00

Kurt Anderson joined me this morning on KTRS/St. Louis to discuss his cover story for this week's Time magazine, which named "The Protestor" as its Person Of The Year (apparently I was tied for second again!). We talked about the aftermath of the Arab Spring protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and what form of government will replace the dictators who ran those countries. That led us back to the Occupy protests here in the US -- from whether they can succeed without an outspoken leader to whether the protestors are worried about being co-opted by professional politicians.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

KTRS Thursday

2011-12-15T04:23:00.002-06:00

I'll be back on The Big 550 KTRS/St. Louis today from 6am to 10am CT. Among my guests will be Kurt Anderson, who wrote the cover story for Time magazine's Person Of The Year issue (winner: The Protestor), and Joe Garner, who has compiled another coffee-table-book-and-DVD collection called "100 Yards Of Glory: The Greatest Moments In NFL History." You can listen live here.

John Feinstein One on One

2011-12-14T16:19:00.000-06:00

John Feinstein is one of America's great sportswriters and a money-in-the-bank guest, too. He joined me on KTRS/St. Louis this morning to talk about his new book, "One On One: Behind The Scenes With The Greats In The Game," in which he looks back at some of the sports stars he has covered and written about in the last 25 years -- from Bobby Knight to Tiger Woods to John McEnroe to Mary Carillo to Mike Krzyzewski.

I asked him whether it's tougher to get access to athletes and coaches these days, which is the hardest sport to cover, whether it's important to befriend the subjects of his stories, and more. I also got John to explain what really happened when ESPN made a horrible TV-movie version of his "Season On The Brink" (one of the all-time bestselling sports books).

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

Also on Harris Online...

Congressional Insider Trading

2011-12-14T15:50:00.002-06:00

On November 13th, "60 Minutes" aired a piece on insider trading by members of Congress, who use information garnered in private meetings from lobbyists or agency regulators regarding publicly-traded companies and then use what they've learned to buy or sell stocks -- all in secret, with no one looking over their shoulders. If that were done by a Wall Street executive, it would be a felony. But Congress has exempted itself from punishment and oversight.

After the TV show aired, dozens of senators or congresspeople hastily signed onto new legislation to curtail the practice, but as Professor Jonathan Macey of Yale Law School explained to me on KTRS/St. Louis this morning, the bill would not really solve the problem. In fact, he says, there's likely to be more congressional insider trading after the statute becomes law...

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

KTRS This Morning

2011-12-14T00:02:00.003-06:00

I'll be back on The Big 550 KTRS/St. Louis today through Friday from 6am to 10am CT. Among my guests will be John Feinstein, talking up his new book "One On One: Behind The Scenes With The Greats In The Game." You can listen live here.

Final Table #150: Jean-Robert Bellande

2011-12-13T17:40:00.001-06:00

Today on the Final Table radio show, we recapped the final weekend of the Gateway Poker Classic at Harrah's St. Louis, as well as Dennis' weekend at the inaugural event of the CardPlayer Native American Casinos Poker Tour at Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma. That led to a discussion of other new poker tours that are planned for 2012 and the latest super-high-roller tournament at Bellagio. We also touched on whether remarks last week by Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson (who said he was "morally opposed" to internet gaming) will affect ongoing efforts to legalize, license, and regulate online poker -- and whether players should direct anger about those remarks at The Venetian, a Sands property.

In our guest segment, we talked with Jean-Robert Bellande, the poker pro who was a "Survivor" contestant four years ago and is now living like a millionaire in Las Vegas, despite the fact that he's constantly broke. We talked about his huge Twitter fan base (over 30,000 followers), how he gets staked to play cash games and tournaments, which games are in the mix he plays in the Aria poker room, whether he played differently in this year's WSOP Main Event (where he finished 65th), and what his new website and bankroll management app will offer players. He also reviewed a famous hand on "Poker After Dark" earlier this year which did not end well for him.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

Look At All The Singing People

2011-12-12T00:00:00.000-06:00

If I said I wanted to show you video of a guy singing "Eleanor Rigby," you might not care. If I said I wanted to show you video of 32 guys singing "Eleanor Rigby," you might be a little bit interested. But what if I said that all 32 guys singing "Eleanor Rigby" are the same guy? Watch Dan Wright in action (take it full screen for best effect)...

Saving American Democracy

2011-12-10T00:01:00.001-06:00

Here's one of the best speakers in Congress, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, introducing the idea of a constitutional amendment that would reverse the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which allows corporations and special interest groups to spend unlimited funds on political campaigns. Sanders says he does not propose this bill lightly:The Constitution of this country has served us well for more than 200 years, but when the Supreme Court says that for purposes of the First Amendment, corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, when that occurs, our democracy is in grave danger.

One Man, Two Moms

2011-12-09T00:00:00.007-06:00

Next time someone wants to argue with you about whether gays and lesbians should have the same right to marry that we do, show them this video from February that's making the rounds again because the Iowa caucuses are a few weeks away. It's Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old University of Iowa student with two mothers who spoke about the strength of his family during a public forum before the Iowa House Judiciary Committee, which was considering a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Despite remarks like Zach's the Republican-controlled Iowa House did pass the ban, but the Democratic-controlled Iowa Senate hasn't voted on it (and likely won't anytime soon).

What was the impact on Zach of the video going viral? He wrote this week in The Daily Beast:
As crazy and awesome as this ride has been so far, I had decided to temporarily suspend my studies to focus on advocacy work because of a Facebook message I received back in February. At the guy’s request, I’m withholding his name, but here it is, verbatim: “man, i just watched your video on youtube. being from the south, the deep south, I have been raised ‘anti-gay.’ Pardon the slur. but that completely changed my view on the subject. Just amazing. Im leaving for the army in two weeks and was pretty upset about don’t ask don’t tell being repealed but again you changed my view on that. I just thought it would be nice for you to know you truley opened someones eyes. Thank you.”

On the one hand, it’s cool to know that folks like Ellen DeGeneres, Ashton Kutcher, Rosie O’Donnell, and Melissa Etheridge know who I am, thanks to my video. But, sorry, stars, the previous message was way better. It’s a testament to the power of stories to change minds and a testament, too, to our willingness to reevaluate long-held convictions. And it’s that willingness—that open-mindedness—that has driven progress in this country for centuries. It is at the core of what made America possible in the first place.
In addition, Zach is finishing a book entitled "My Two Moms: Everything I Needed to Know About Gay Marriage I Learned in Boy Scouts," which will be published next spring.

Like It Or Not

2011-12-08T14:06:00.001-06:00

A friend asked me to "like" his wife's jewelry store on Facebook because I have a few hundred followers there and he wanted some publicity for her. I agreed, although I very rarely accede to such requests, because I don't care about my Facebook page. I only started it for one reason -- to check on what my daughter's doing online. Yes, I have my Twitter feed sent to my Facebook page, but I have never posted anything directly to Facebook, and I'm not interested in receiving invitations to play games, go to meetings, or join groups.

Twitter is the only social media I use other than this blog, and I try to tweet and post something every day. But if you send me a request to connect with you on LinkedIn, I'll ignore it because I closed my account on that site when I realized I never checked it (despite having a couple of hundred connections, which I also never looked at). You also won't find me on FourSquare, Google+, Tumblr, Meetup, MySpace, or Friendster.

It's not that I'm internet-averse. I've been online for over 25 years, back to the early days of CompuServe, through AOL, right up until I started my own site with my own coding in the mid-1990s. But I don't need more phony friends or people who want to associate with me just to increase their own numbers. I also won't retweet your message because it's your birthday or you have a sick family member or you want to win a new car. That's just web clutter, which I want no part of.

While I'll never reach Andrew Sullivan or Mark Evanier levels of output, I'm making an effort to do more writing/venting for this site. If you want to read what I have to say, or get updates on when I'll be doing a radio show, or listen to the thousands of podcasts I've posted, or follow me on Twitter, I appreciate it very much. If you want to get in touch with me, my e-mail address is on the right side of every page of this blog.

But that's about as social as I'm ever going to get.

Sound Defect

2011-12-08T11:47:00.000-06:00

Dennis Hartin e-mails:

Every so often, I hear a commercial that uses a sound effect to announce a 180-degree turn in the discourse, as in, "Sure, we're selling cars with 0% financing, but now...[sfx]...you pay no money down!" The sound effect used is the sound of a needle being shoved across a vinyl record. I know vinyl is making a comeback, but I suspect many of the people hearing that commercial have never actually heard a needle being shoved across a vinyl record. I wonder what they think the sound is.

That's a good point. The commercial was likely produced by someone over 40, for whom vinyl records were once a daily reality. But to my daughter's generation, it's as irrelevant as the sound of tape rewinding. Or a busy signal.

Disgraced But Embraced

2011-12-08T10:42:00.001-06:00

Judge James Zaget listened to Rod Blagojevich plead for leniency yesterday, then slapped him with a 14-year prison sentence for corruption and other charges. Blagojevich's statement, in which he finally admitted guilt and accepted responsibility, was a big 180 from the public entreaties he'd made in the previous three years, a period in which he not only maintained his innocence and mocked his accusers, but also got more publicity than he deserved. It was also a period in which shameful decisions were made by media executives who happily exploited Blagojevich's infamy and portrayed him in a positive light instead of as the criminal he is.

WLS, a Chicago talk radio station I worked for in 2008 and 2009, proudly wrapped its arms around the disgraced governor. He appeared regularly on the Don and Roma morning show, not just to discuss his own case, but to comment on items in the news or joke around about other things. No one gave the impression that he'd done anything wrong. To the contrary, he was treated as if he were a victim. WLS liked the loudmouth-with-perfect-hair so much they gave him his own weekly Sunday show on which he could spout off about whatever he liked, and he used that megaphone to blast his accusers and attack his enemies.

This was after he'd been indicted by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and then impeached and removed from office by the state legislature. The man may have been a disgrace to his state -- another in a too-long line of disreputable Illinois governors -- but that didn't keep the radio station's management from embracing him as their guy. When I filled in for Don and Roma, I had to play along even though it made me very uneasy knowing I had to use kid gloves every time I talked to him. On my Saturday morning show, I avoided the topic entirely because treating him that way made my stomach turn.

Then there's NBC, which furthered the exploitation via its reality shows. The network wanted Rod on "I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here," but to Judge Zagel's credit, so Patti Blagojevich went instead. But a year later, Rod was allowed to do "The Apprentice," where uber-weasel Donald Trump praised his courage -- because he admires people who game the system to enrich themselves, apparently. Again, everyone treated Blago as if he'd done nothing wrong.

It wasn't just broadcasters who wanted a piece of the action. Blagojevich got a book deal, which led to a book tour. He signed autographs at a comic book convention. He appeared at rallies and parties and anywhere he'd be perceived as a good guy, not a corrupt lowlife.

All this for the man who, while in office, received the lowest approval ratings in three decades from the public he screwed. But out of office, he got the highest approval ratings from everyone who could make a buck off of him.

Remembering Pearl and John

2011-12-08T00:01:00.000-06:00

With important anniversaries yesterday and today, here are links to 2 previous columns of mine. With the 70th anniversary yesterday of the Pearl Harbor attack, here's what I wrote in 2009 about visiting the memorial there. And here's my 2010 column on how I handled the morning after John Lennon's murder on my radio show in 1980.

Best Dance Routine Ever

2011-12-08T00:00:00.000-06:00

Here's the kind of entertainment you'd be hard-pressed to find in a modern movie or TV show. It's a scene from the 1943 film "Stormy Weather," starring Lena Horne and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, although neither of them are in this scene, which takes place in a nightclub where Cab Calloway is performing "Jumpin' Jive" with his big band. At one point he strolls over to a corner of the audience where the Nicholas Brothers (Harold and Fayard) pop up from their chairs and completely take over. What follows is what many -- including no less an expert than Fred Astaire -- consider the greatest dance routine ever captured on film...

Words With A Flight Attendant

2011-12-07T23:34:00.000-06:00

Alec Baldwin had a run-in with an American Airlines flight attendant who insisted he stop playing Words With Friends on his phone even though the plane was still parked at the gate. The result was Baldwin being escorted off the plane and having to take a later flight. Afterwards, he wrote this blog entry, in which he apologized to his fellow passengers, yet managed to get in a few shots at the current state of misery that is flying commercial in the US these days.

On a related note, things are so slow for Baldwin's brothers Stephen, Billy, and Daniel that when they play Words With Friends, their rack is filled with nothing but consonants.

Final Table #149: Gateway Poker Classic

2011-12-07T02:00:00.005-06:00

Today on the Final Table radio show, we recapped the first few days of action at the Gateway Poker Classic, including me playing in Friday's tournament, Dennis playing in today's event (he was being blinded off while we did the show!), the unique structure of Thursday's Jack and Jill event, and the schedule for the rest of this week, leading up to the Main Event this Saturday at Harrah's St. Louis. We also discussed Dennis' weekend at a Heartland Poker Tour event at the Peppermill Casino in Reno, Nevada.

Among the topics in our news segment:

The revelation that Facebook is planning to expand into real-money online poker in the UK, while the CEO of Zynga Poker (the free-money poker site that has more players than any other) says his company has no plans to shift to a real-money platform;
Why Pius Heinz' net take from his WSOP Main Event victory was more than any other winner in history;
Why it took so long for PokerStars to sign a deal with WSOP Main Event runner-up Martin Staszko;
Why "High Stakes Poker" is being yanked off the schedule at GSN at the end of this month after a six-year run

We also answered several listener e-mails about Full Tilt Poker's potential settlement with the US government, including whether the Department of Justice will turn over players to the Internal Revenue Service, whether the DOJ can go after "phantom funds" never collected from players' accounts, and whether it would be worth it to take a piece of the new Full Tilt in lieu of cash still in your account.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

The Power of Pictures

2011-12-07T00:00:00.012-06:00

Amidst all the information available to us almost instantly, credit must be given to the news photographers around the world who bring us stunning images, often in the midst of devastation. Buzzfeed has compiled 45 of the Most Powerful Images of 2011, like this one by Yomiuri Shimbun from March 14th, showing a sightseeing boat tossed by the tsunami from 1300 feet off-shore onto the top of a two-story house...

Squeaky Wheel Discount

2011-12-05T11:55:00.000-06:00

"I guess I'll have to call Dish Network."

That's what I told the AT&T customer service representative this morning when she wouldn't give me a discount on my U-verse service. We'd signed on a year ago and received a $35 discount for 12 months, but that just expired, and I didn't want my rate to go up. So I called and -- after negotiating their voice mail tree of hell, and waiting for far-too-many minutes -- finally spoke to a woman who looked up my account and said there were no current offers available, so there wasn't anything she could do for me.

That's when I said the line about Dish Network (who we'd dropped when we switched to U-Verse because it has a better multi-room DVR system). Immediately, the customer service woman replied that, if I could hold for a minute, she'd transfer me to another representative who might be able to find some kind of deal for me. I agreed to hold.

When the new rep picked up, she'd been clued in to my 8-word magic sentence and asked, "What can I do to get you to continue as an AT&T customer?" I explained that she could dig through her computer to find me a discount close to what they'd given me for the previous year. "Let me see what I can find," she said.

Her search took exactly 10 seconds. "Well, if we put this promotion together with this promotion and don't charge you for the extra receiver and renew the discount on your high-speed internet service, would that work for you?" Since the number she quoted was close to the original $35 discount, I said that would be fine, that she'd convinced me not to call the rival company.

She punched a few keys, asked me another question or two, and we were done. The best part of this was the facade she put up, pretending that she was giving me a special deal, as if she doesn't do this all day every day for other customers savvy enough to know what one simple complaint will get you.

Now if she could only make the U-Verse DVR accept multiple simultaneous HD streams.

Starting Over

2011-12-05T11:37:00.000-06:00

I solved a frustrating technical problem this morning with a solution I should have thought of days ago.

I use Quicken's money management software to say on top of my various financial accounts, download transactions, reconcile statements, update security prices, etc. For some reason, the software stopped accepting information from my bank 3 weeks ago. All the other accounts still updated, but not the ones with my local bank. The online connection was being made as usual from beginning to end, with no error reports, but there was never any new data.

I called the bank to see if they'd changed something, and the woman I spoke with said they hadn't. After a few basic questions that indicated I wasn't a novice at this ("Are you using the correct password?"), she ran a few diagnostics on my account, couldn't discover anything wrong, and suggested I try contacting Quicken. I knew that was a dead end, because they would just try to get me to upgrade to their latest version (which I don't want to do yet), and since there had been no changes to the software on my PC, it seemed unlikely they'd be able to offer a solution.

I let it sit for a few days until this morning, when I decided to completely deactivate and remove the online features from each account. Then I closed Quicken, waited a couple of seconds, re-opened it, and re-activated everything. Voila! Down came the transactions, integrating with my accounts just as they always had. Whatever the glitch was, it was gone, thanks to the solution I should have tried first. Ironically, I'd had to do the same thing with my wireless router just a week ago when it stopped connecting other devices to my printer. That one frustrated me for an entire hour until I remembered having the same problem last year and solving it by simply unplugging the power cord for a minute or two, then plugging it back in. Sure enough, everything reconnected automatically.

From now on, when a high-tech snafu occurs, I'll try to remember the first four rules of solving IT problems: revert, re-activate, re-install, re-boot.

Hope for Woody

2011-12-05T00:01:00.001-06:00

My wife and I just finished watching the PBS American Masters special about Woody Allen that aired a couple of weeks ago. At 3.5 hours, documentarian Robert Weide took his time exploring Allen's life and career, including dozens of interviews, film clips, and behind-the-scenes stories on many of Woody's movies and the process of making them.

In the section on "Love and Death," there's a discussion of how Allen was essentially doing an imitation of Bob Hope, whose film work he so admired. My mind immediately flashed to this parody from SCTV, circa 1980. It aired on NBC when the network picked up the third season of the show and aired it late on Friday nights in a 90-minute time slot. That gave them plenty of time to do an extended bit like this, in which Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas do spot-on impersonations of Allen and Hope, with Joe Flaherty in a cameo as Bing Crosby. The premise starts a la Allen's "Play It Again Sam" and winds its way through several sharp scenes showcasing the differences and similarities in their comedic styles...

And here's a clip from the Weide documentary (which you can buy on DVD), in which Allen's neurotic opinion of his classic "Manhattan" is 180 degrees from everyone else's...

Stay Classy, NFLers

2011-12-01T00:00:00.004-06:00

Thanks to Jay Weston for sending me a link to this Bob Costas rant, which I missed on Sunday night. In it, Costas goes after all the classless NFL buffoons who over-celebrate whenever they score a touchdown, sometimes to the detriment of their team when they're penalized by the officials. What he didn't mention are the guys who act like this at inappropriate times, like a defensive end who gets a sack in the fourth quarter of a game his team is losing by three touchdowns, yet still celebrates as if he's won the Super Bowl...

Updated 10:29am...The video I originally embedded was removed from YouTube, so I substituted another one, but I don't know how long it will remain available. Unfortunately, NBC doesn't have the video -- embeddable or otherwise -- on any of their sites, so I'm adding the text of Costas' comments below. It's not quite as good as seeing the accompanying images, but it still gets his point across:

For those of you too busy keeping up with the Kardashians to notice, we live in a culture that in many ways grows more stupid and graceless by the moment. Sports both reflects and influences that sorry trend, so on playing fields everywhere, true style is in decline, while mindless exhibitionism abounds.

In the late sixties, the Giants had a receiver named Homer Jones. He invented the spike — and it was great; a simple, elegant punctuation that somehow has devolved into this (imagine video of excessive celebrations here).

Given the tone of the times, it’s probably too much to expect that most players would appreciate that back in the day, this guy (Barry Sanders) was much cooler than this guy (Mark Gastineau), or that there is a difference between spontaneous and/or good-natured displays of enthusiasm and calculated displays of obnoxious self-indulgence. No, that train has already gone so far down the wrong track, there’s probably no turning back.

So our suggestion here is a more modest one: Hey, knuckleheads, is it too much to ask that you confine your buffoonery to situations that don’t directly damage your team? Week after week, game after game, we see guys who think nothing of incurring penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct, costing their teams valuable yardage, even late in close games.

Today’s most conspicuous culprit: Buffalo’s Stevie Johnson, who after a TD catch versus the Jets, thought it would be a good idea to go Marcel Marceau, pantomiming, among other things, Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg. But in this case, it was Johnson who shot himself in the foot, as his display cost his team a 15-yard penalty on the ensuing kickoff. And given a short field, the Jets proceeded to score in a critical game that wound up 28-24, New York.

Which raises this question: Where are the coaches in all this? Guys are routinely benched or called out for blown assignments. When is a coach going to make an overdue statement and sit a guy down on the grounds of pure selfishness and unprofessionalism detrimental to his team?

By the way, late in the loss to the Jets, Johnson dropped a pass that could have led to a Buffalo win. Shockingly, he didn’t follow it with a rehearsed “my bad” dance of apology. Maybe he just forgot.

Alarming News

2011-11-30T10:51:00.001-06:00

Brian Williams had a rough time on "NBC Nightly News" last night when a fire alarm in the studio went off just seconds into his broadcast -- and continued through most of the next half-hour. Williams, who can ad-lib his way through anything, explained to viewers what was happening as he continued to anchor the newscast despite the alarm's piercing tone. I don't know how many other broadcasters could have pulled that off without losing it.

Watching the clip below, I wondered two things. First, how many viewers tuned out to avoid the sickening sounds and how many stuck with Williams, if only to make sure he was okay (or the sickos who hoped it was a real fire so they could watch him burn up on live TV)?

Secondly, just moments after the alarm starts sounding, Williams announced that everything was okay and everyone was safe. How did he know that for a fact? Yes, it turned out to be a false alarm, the kind that happens in businesses all over America on occasion, but shouldn't a serious news anchor take a couple of minutes to investigate before coming to that conclusion? Obviously, Williams couldn't leave the studio to look around, but there are plenty of people behind the scenes and in the Nightly News control room who could have at least checked to make sure a piece of 30 Rock wasn't going up in flames. I'm just saying.

I was also surprised that such a noisy alarm is allowed to exist in that studio in the first place. At all of the radio stations I've worked at (including at NBC in the mid-1980s), any such notification was always muted. Of course, that did lead to a problem that I wrote about in this column earlier this year.

Here's a montage of Williams dealing with the sonic intrusion, as seen on "Morning Joe" today...

Digital Flying

2011-11-30T09:39:00.000-06:00

Next time a flight attendant tells you to turn off your iPhone or Kindle during takeoff or landing, think of this Nick Bilton piece...

According to the F.A.A., 712 million passengers flew within the United States in 2010. Let’s assume that just 1 percent of those passengers — about two people per Boeing 737, a conservative number — left a cellphone, e-reader or laptop turned on during takeoff or landing. That would mean seven million people on 11 million flights endangered the lives of their fellow passengers. Yet, in 2010, no crashes were attributed to people using technology on a plane. None were in 2009. Or 2008, 2007 and so on. You get the point.

Surely if electronic gadgets could bring down an airplane, you can be sure that the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, which has a consuming fear of 3.5 ounces of hand lotion and gel shoe inserts, wouldn’t allow passengers to board a plane with an iPad or Kindle, for fear that they would be used by terrorists.

Here's the quote I love, from FAA spokesman Les Dorr, who wants to err on the side of caution:"There was no evidence saying these devices can’t interfere with a plane, and there was no evidence saying that they can."
That's a horrible basis for policy. There's no evidence one way or the other regarding the effect of cotton on aviation either, but we don't limit passengers to polyester pants.

Final Table #148: Greg Mueller & Jamie Gold

2011-11-29T22:41:00.002-06:00

Today on The Final Table poker radio show, we squeezed in two guests, plenty of news, and full details on the schedule and structure of the tournaments that will make up the Gateway Poker Classic series beginning this Thursday (December 1) at Harrah's St. Louis.

We began with two new kinds of tournaments Dennis encountered at Bellagio, each of which requires some novel strategic thinking. In one, you can buy-in to Day 1a, 1b, and 1c -- and keep all the chips you've accumulated going into Day 2, rather than just your biggest stack. The other was a "position poker" tournament, in which the person who wins each hand then gets to act last (after the button!) on each betting round of the next hand.

In our news segment, we discussed Tobey Maguire, Gabe Kaplan, and other Hollywood celebrities settling a lawsuit filed by victims of a Ponzi scheme operator looking to recoup huge amounts of money lost in a Hollywood home game. And we debated whether Barney Frank's impending retirement from Congress will hurt the effort to get online poker legalized, licensed, and regulated in the US.

Our first guest was Greg Mueller, winner of 2 WSOP bracelets and over $1.7 million in tournament winnings. We talked with him about his hand analysis work on ESPN's coverage of the World Series Of Poker this fall, a famously classy play he made in this year's Main Event, how he controls his inner maniac, and -- since he was a Full Tilt pro -- his thoughts on the indictments and possible sale of that online site.

Then we spent a few minutes with 2006 Main Event champion Jamie Gold, who's promoting a poker seminar he'll do this Friday at the Peppermill Casino in Reno, where he and Dennis and other pros will play in a Heartland Poker Tour event this weekend.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

First Amendment, Kansas Style

2011-11-28T00:03:00.001-06:00

If I was doing a talk-radio show today, I'd be ranting about the high school student who was punished for tweeting some negative comments about Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. It's a clear case of the grown-ups overreacting. The governor's staff should apologize to her, not the other way around, and the school should use it as a teaching opportunity instead of reprimanding her.

Updated at 4:34pm...I say it here, it comes out there: Brownback apologized to the student (Emma Sullivan) this afternoon, admitting that his staff "over-reacted." And the school district issued a statement saying that she wasn't required to apologize to the governor and that the matter had resulted in "many teachable moments concerning the use of social media."

The Pizza Is A Vegetable Song

2011-11-28T00:02:00.003-06:00

Congress' recent decision to classify pizza as a vegetable for the purpose of healthy school lunches inspired Jonathan Mann to create this one-minute ditty...

*Yes, I know this only runs 52 seconds, but on Capitol Hill, that qualifies as a minute.

Space Science

2011-11-27T11:57:00.002-06:00

As a child of the dawn of the space age, I still get a little excited seeing a NASA launch, like yesterday's liftoff of the Mars-bound Curiosity rover. How cool is that we're sending a a nuclear-powered mobile laboratory to gather and analyze the Martian soil, with a drill to dig into the planet surface and a laser to zap rocks in its way?

Endorse Race

2011-11-27T11:37:00.005-06:00

I've never had anyone tell me that they voted for anyone based on an endorsement, yet much is being made this morning of the Manchester Union-Leader endorsing Newt Gingrich instead of Mitt Romney. Part of the reason is that it's the largest paper in the state where the first primaries will be held, but the choice shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone who knows the U-L's conservative history.

I'd like to see some intrepid media reporter (hello, David Carr?) analyze whether any newspaper's endorsement carries real weight these days, as well as checking past elections to determine whether those endorsements: a) helped candidates gain votes; and b) served as any kind of predictor of who would win. In the case of the Union-Leader, they haven't had much effect. Only twice in the last 40 years has it endorsed the eventual Republican nominee -- Ronald Reagan in 1980 and John McCain in 2008. In other presidential elections, the paper threw its weight behind also-rans Steve Forbes (2000), Pat Buchanan (1996 and 1992), Pete Dupont (1988), and John Ashbrook (1972).

While you're at it, how about researching the endorsements made by politicians themselves? Does getting the thumbs-up from an incumbent (or former) office-holder do anything positive for a campaign? I'd bet the impact is much less than that of big donations and Super PAC special-interest money.

A Vacancy Among Occupiers

2011-11-27T11:18:00.000-06:00

Most Occupy Wall Street sit-ins across the country have been dismantled, leading some to ask whether the movement is over. I doubt it, but it is unlikely to return in the form it took for the last two months.

The problem with OWS wasn't a lack of support for the income-inequity argument, it's that it had no spokespeople who could focus the message enough to garner consistently positive media attention. A revolution doesn't run on crowd-think, drum circles, and finger-waving consensus-building. Someone (either singular or plural) has to take the reins, make the speeches, set the agenda, organize the voices, and galvanize popular opinion. That's how you grow crowds from a few hundred to tens of thousands, and it's only at that volume of humanity that attention will be paid. OWS resisted having any of its "leaders" take on that role -- even when invited to sit down in front of cameras and microphones and make the sale to the American public.

They must now retreat, but only long enough to chart and implement a new path towards change, one that includes a more effective way to spread the message and encourage others to take part.

Natalie & Larry & Jerry

2011-11-23T15:59:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure why Natalie Wood's death re-appeared in the news a few days ago, but it made me think of this conversation between Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld in season 7 of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," in the midst of a discussion of doing a "Seinfeld" reunion...

Final Table #147: An Online Poker Update

2011-11-22T22:45:00.005-06:00

Today on The Final Table poker radio show, we covered the latest developments in the online poker story, from the Full Tilt/Department of Justice agreement to when players can expect to get their money back from that site (and Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet) to whether last week's congressional hearings are bringing us any closer to legal, licensed, regulated online poker in the United States. Rich Muny joined us for updates from the Poker Players Alliance's perspective.

Also on the show:

We previewed the first-ever Gateway Poker Classic coming up at Harrah's St. Louis December 1-11 (click here for the full schedule);
We considered whether any poker pros are properly bankrolled to take part in Guy LaLiberte's $1,000,000 buy-in tournament benefiting his One Drop charity next summer at the WSOP;
We got some help from listeners on the math from last week's amazing hand;
Dennis recapped his trip this weekend to the Hollywood Fall Classic.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!

We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

More Quirky Science Stunts

2011-11-22T16:03:00.001-06:00

Professor Richard Wiseman is back with his third set of quirky science stunts you can try at home...

Sam Donaldson

2011-11-22T07:37:00.000-06:00

This morning on KTRS/St. Louis, I asked Sam Donaldson if, in all his years covering Washington, he has ever seen a Congress as dysfunctional as this one. The ensuing conversation touched on the failed super committee, whether Americans' dislike of Congress will lead to a "toss the bums out" effect in next year's elections, the attack ad Mitt Romney launched against President Obama today in New Hampshire, how Newt Gingrich keeps putting his foot further into his mouth, and some thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Listen, then click here to subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes!