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October 17, 2005
Poker Night in Elgin
Spent five hours Saturday night learning poker the hard way, i.e. playing for money. Not too bad. Buy-in was only $10, and most of our antes were only a nickel. At our table at least. One table over you could hear cries of, "A dollar? Big spender!"
The currency conversion that happens in poker is fascinating. The actual value of a US dollar increases significantly when tied to a black chip. A single dollar becomes 100 pennies buoyed by a big dose of bravado and bullshit. It would seem that bullshit carries infinitely more value in poker than it does in real life. At the table, a bluffer is respected and awed. "I can't believe you won that with a seven high." Players who folded cluck and shake their heads in disbelief. Yet you take this same talent in the boardroom, "We expect to beat expectations by 82% in the third quarter," and executives snicker and dismiss such blatant claims. There's just no bluffing a corporate competitor.
At the table, everything seems exponentially funnier. It must have something to do with equality and social space. Everyone starts off on equal footing. Identical antes, identical buy-ins, and the same number of cards each. The dealer rotates from one player to the next. It's the great equalizer. Your ability to win does not depend on how big you are or who you know, but on what cards get dealt. Players are seated close enough to trade witty reparte, but far enough apart to prevent chip snaking.
One of the players seated at our table, Michael, kept winning hands with a dependable pair of queens. Oh, how he loved his queens. This of course led to much jeering, jiving, and even the creation of a new game in his name. In the poker variation dubbed 'Michael', "Queens are wild and there ain't no straights." Hobie had us on the floor with that one.
Other, more familiar games were Screw Your Neighbor, Little Kings, Night Baseball, Iron Cross and the ever dependable five and seven card stud. By the end of the night, my shuffle had deteriorated and my eyes were blurry, even though I only had three beers over the course of five hours. It was sheer poker exhaustion. And through all the laughs and curses, I managed to come out six bucks ahead. Not bad for a novice.
Posted by carolyn at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2005
Sushi-licious
One of the great things about dieting is that I can allow myself as much low fat, high protein sushi as I want. For lunch today, I picked up a godzilla roll over at the Tokyo Lunchbox in Merchandise Mart. It is an enticingly yummy concoction, with eel, avocado, tobiko and spicy sauce squirted all over the place. Tokyo Lunchbox used to be a weekly treat for myself when I worked downtown, and it was heartbreaking when I took the new job. I thought I would never again enjoy the $7.99 godzilla roll ($8.61 with tax, thus the once-a-week limit). When I found out they opened a kiosk at the Mart, a mere six blocks away from my new job, I was giddy!
The one weird thing about sushi that I still can't figure out is the sushi grass. It is so ubiquitous, in fact, I think it's going to be the next pop culture icon. I knew someone who knew someone who wallpapered his corporate cube in sushi grass. What an excellent idea.
Posted by carolyn at 05:39 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
Losing Poundage
Alright, so the five-mile Turkey Trot is in seven weeks, and I am ten pounds above my usual weight. This is horrible! Add that to my monthly bout of insecurity and I am a mess.
Ten pounds. It's really frightening, but for good reason. Once in my life, my 5'5" body topped 171 lbs. It never really mattered to me, I was secure in myself back then. I was confident in my abilities and pretty much okay with how I looked. I never had issues attracting men, so the extra weight never bothered me too much. It wasn't until my parents said, at Christmas breakfast, "You can't lose that weight, you're too old."
At that point, it became a challenge. I joined Weight Watchers and started training for the AIDSRide. I dropped 30 pounds in seven months. It changed my life. I felt healthier, fit into jeans two sizes smaller than before, and was not embarassed squeezing my body parts into lycra gym wear.
The catch is, I'm more insecure. There is guilt associated with eating that was never there before. I constantly check nutrition labels and watch caloric, fat and fiber intake. I try to run 10 miles a week and hit the gym on an almost daily basis. And I feel guilty and fat if I don't. It's sad, the change in my attitude and self confidence.
Also, being ten pounds heavier than my normal weight is somewhat traumatizing because it seems like a gateway to my heavier self. But awareness is good, and at least I know that once I acknowledge and dedicate myself to losing weight, I can. So it's back to journaling everything that goes into my body. Back to counting points and treating my body as though it were a task to be completed.
Weight: 150.6 lbs
Body Fat: 25.6%
Posted by carolyn at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2005
Dedicated Art System
So I've been reading about this new trend toward interactive, electronic art. In its most accessible form, it's probably this $125 DVD you pop into a player and display on a flat-screen plasma TV. Click your remote and the piece morphs in response.
I don't get how this is any different than a stupified video game with no objective. You pop in a cartridge, something appears on the monitor, you click around and the environment responds to your actions. It would seem to me that if we are to consider the DVD as "art," then video games should also be considered art. Which is somewhat preposterous. Entertainment, yes. Art, not so much.
The question I have is how much of this "art" is defined by marketing spin? I could take that same DVD, sell it in a baby goods store, and call it a developmental toy. I could synchronize it to music and call it eye candy. I could leave it be and call it a screensaver. But calling it "art" seems a bit of a stretch to me.
A bit pulled from the NYT:
"Between the Rees pieces is a large framed print, "Black and White (Old Testament)" by Mark Napier, that looks like an abstract ink drawing suggestive of wildly uncoiled spools of wire, but is actually, Mr. Sacks said, every word of the Bible converted into the digital language of ones and zeros."
Since when did translating something into binary code become "art"? If this is the case, then I should dig up all my sixth grade homework and sell it on eBay.
What happened to brushstrokes, light sources and one-of-a-kind masterpieces? Is art getting distorted or destroyed?
Disclaimer: Of course, this is just opinion. I am well aware that art is in the eye of the beholder.
Posted by carolyn at 10:00 AM | Comments (1)