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the donkament siren summons me

My poker blogging friend, April, wrote a nice piece about an event called the WPBT, or the World Poker Blogger Tour.  It's a connection I made around five years ago, back in my blogging heyday, thanks to Wil.  He used to host a blogger tourny at Poker Stars back then (bring it back, Wil!), and I kind of got hooked into the group (though I was way more of a blogger than a good poker player).  Unfortunately, I'm still not much of a poker player, but the WPBT is a blast.  She sums up the experience nicely.  Here's an excerpt.

"In a little less than a month I will sit at the Sportsbook bar behind the poker room at the MGM Grand surrounded by this weird little family we’ve made. The bartenders remember us. The dealers all know us. It’s our annual meeting point for the Friday night of our trip; where the poker room manager makes sure we’re taken good care of. It’s the first place I met many of these people in person and a big part of why the MGM Grand means so much to me. People brought together from all across the country by a shared love of cards, to meet in the gambling mecca. These days we don’t even play cards much anymore, a fact my mother cannot wrap her head around – it’s more about the group of friends getting together to connect face to face in a world where it’s getting way to easy to maintain a friendship with mouse clicks and touchscreen texts alone."

The full post is here. 

I'll be playing (and um...gambooollling!) in the event this December.  More than likely, I'll donk off a bunch of chips to Speaker or Metsfan, drink SoCo shots with Pauly, play Pai-Gow with Otis, and rip up all of the ATM withdrawal receipts, thus canceling out the fact that they ever happened. 

But I intend to make the final table this year.  What do you figure the odds of that are, Pauly?  :)

Can't wait.

writer writer chicken biter

It's like running, writing.  If you stop, you keep coming up with excuses for why you shouldn't start again.  The longer you stay out, the less sense it makes to get back in.  Your subconscious clamors for it though, whether you drown the voice with beer or stubborn disregard.

They quench something, both running and writing.  It hits a spot that is not reachable by other means.  If you want to satisfy the urge to write something, you must sit down to write it.  If you want to feel the thrill of a completed run, you must put on the shoes and do the work.  There is nothing like a runner's high or a writing high.  Just as any drug-induced high is an inadequate and hollow version of a good runner's high, Twitter is merely a huff of Nitrous Oxide compared to the release a good writing session provides.

I have been lazy about both.  For the purpose of this entry, let's focus on the writing.

I'm not counting, of course, the writing I do in my real career.  Each day at work, I solve problems and fill holes and supplement existing content with better content, and make cuts and move stories around and essentially, I'm writing every day, with the help of a story department and editors and other producers.  We are constantly writing, even if most days, it's simply replacing index cards on a bulletin board. 

Nor am I counting the web pilot I've been working on.  There has been plenty of writing and re-writing for that project, but it doesn't qualify as a brain dump.  And I guess that's what I'm talking about: dumping out the stuff cluttering my brain.

Back when I tended to this blog the way I now tend to my Twitter account, I found great relief in writing the things trying to get out of my head.  It allowed me to focus my thoughts and face my fears and express things otherwise vague and undeveloped.  Ideas were forced to take form; fears were drawn out and slayed; memories were shared, and long held burdens released and resolved all because of what is essentially a public diary.  It was a kind of therapy that I miss.  I struggled with making personal anecdotes public, but I lived with the exhibitionist guilt to arrive at that place of clarity that sometimes comes after one of those writing sessions when your mind and fingers take over the keyboard; when the subconscious seizes it's window to become the conscious; when words flow like a fresh wound, healing as they escape.

No one reads blogs anymore.  Not the way they used to.  If I see a blog entry that's longer than a few scrolls down, I'm probably out.  I simply don't have the interest I used to have in most of the blogs I used to read.  I wonder if that makes me selfish.

I already hate this entry, but rather than kill it, I think I'll post it.  Maybe I'll start writing as an exercise again.  I miss being good at it.

The Ten Twitter Commandments

1. You are only as awesome as your last tweet.
2. Don't beg for followers. Just be interesting.
3. Drunk tweeting is ill-advised. (but often hilarious)
4. Just unfollow quietly. Don't be a dick on the way out the door.
5. Don't tell anyone else how to use Twitter. There are no rules.
6. No one cares what you're doing in the bathroom. Ever.
7. #FollowFriday suggestions are about as effective as banner ads unless you elaborate.
8. Don't be afraid to delete tweets.
9. Promote yourself sparingly.
   
10. Twitter ≠ Real Life.

Truck Nuts

I was on my way to Wil's wife's 80's party a few months back, and recorded this vlog on the way there.  It's the last of the Honda Element vlogs in my wife's mini-van.  Anyway, if you're wondering why I'm wearing a lime green, sleeveless shirt, it's because I went to the party dressed like this:

I'm the nerd on the left, Wil is the rock star on the right.  See what I did there?

Anyway, Truck Nuts:

Truck Nuts from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

Travis Barker and Bobby Light (Rob Dyrdek)

This was probably my favorite day of shooting Season 2 of Fantasy Factory.

the last king

I'm watching Letterman because Barack Obama is a guest tonight.  I sure enjoy watching our eloquent president speak. It was also nice to check back in on Dave's show after so much time away.

Let's talk about Dave Letterman for a minute.

I was thinking about it. We lost out as a television audience when NBC chose Leno over Dave.  The Tonight Show was recently rebooted with a Jimmy Fallon version, but Jimmy Fallon doesn't have to fill Carson's shoes.  He only need fill Jay Leno's shoes, which is not nearly the task it would be to fill Carson's.  Letterman would have been able to do it though, had they chosen him instead of Jay.  He would have done it from the day he sat in that chair on the NBC set.  Instead, we all lost touch with Dave when NBC turned their backs on him and he was exiled to CBS. Something changed and never got fixed.

Tuning in to see him interview Barack now feels like I'm watching Carson as a kid, from the darkness at the top of the stairs, hands clenched around the railing bars, trying to stay silent so my parents won't hear.  The last remaining giant of Late Night has aged over the years, and yet his style is still unmistakably Letterman; a not-so-distant relative of the talk show hosts of the Jack Benny and Ed Sullivan era.  And now, watching Letterman's show, so many years past it's prime, it's as if I've stumbled upon my parents old Tonight Show; a show that seemed so foreign to me as a very young kid, but somehow became as comforting as a televised late night summer baseball game.  The music, Ed McMahon's voice introducing Johnny, the monologue loaded with references and double entendres, the guests that I didn't know or understand.  The fact that Carson was such a legend by the time I was old enough to watch from the top of the stairs.  Tonight's Letterman echoes that old familiar Carson format. 

This is not the Letterman I grew up with, but it has its moments.  You probably won't see Letterman flinging toast at his audience these days.  Gone are the risky skits and edgy comedy. CBS' Letterman is actually a lamer, more conservative version of the NBC classic "Late Night with David Letterman."  Now, THAT was a show I used to sneak downstairs at night to watch, just after my parents had gone to sleep. It was remarkably clever and interesting and biting and memorable.  Dave Letterman was a young upstart compared to Carson, but his show felt more dangerous.  It was a perfect mix: the time slot, the unremarkable photos of things in NYC with the Late Night logo, the low budget feel, the amazing writing, the guests.  Everything about the old NBC Late Night show worked.  There are remnants of that show in Dave's current CBS show, but they are merely echoes of a younger, hungrier man.

Tonight, Dave threw Obama softballs, and Barack spoke about what he came to speak about.  It was enlightening, if rehearsed. Dave is the last talk show host of a three network era; a throwback to the days of the TV I remember as a kid, when if it wasn't on NBC, CBS, or ABC, it probably wasn't relevant. Yet he survives and thrives as a television personality.  I have a hunch his ratings are going to start climbing again, now that people like me are old enough to embrace the nostalgia for a different television time, a time not long ago, when cable TV was new-fangled and still mostly terrible, a time when David Letterman was on the very cutting edge of Late Night network television.  I suppose a part of me misses those times.

He may have mellowed out over the past fifteen years, but you know what?  Maybe part of the reason I'm drawn back after all this time... is because I have too.