Monday Monday

- What do they call annoying mass emails in Germany, spam or schnitzel?

- No matter what anyone says about the quality of play in the poker blogger quasi-community, it must be better than the quality of poker play in the reader community.

- Does anyone else think Jeff Probst is sick of dealing with all of the dysfunctional dipwads on Survivor and is just cashing paychecks at this point?

- If they take Vegas odds on the smaller events at the WSOP, I think there will be a lot of last-minute drunken blogger money flowing into Joe Speaker, Wes, Russell, and Bobby Bracelet. The sooner you get your money down, the better your odds. By the time all of the bloggers hit the strip, all four of them will be even money.

- Empire just gave me a $10 just-for-living bonus. Trying to decide whether to play a few orbits of $.5/1 and just try to double up quickly, or play a few of their $1 mini-tournaments.

- I’m on a mini-winning streak on Full Tilt, cashing in five of six small stakes SnGs, either $5 two-table or $10 single table. Whoop-de-freakin’-doo. I’m back into the mode I was in last year where I’m getting to the money, but with an impossibly short stack. Gotta crank up the pressure a little earlier to give myself a chance to WIN these damn things.

- Why does every show that is on the air for more than two seasons have a “Farewell” episode? Ever since MASH, sitcoms have felt the need to tie everything up into a big bow long after the ratings have dipped into Nielsen purgatory. Bad idea. And Raymond is still a relatively popular show, particularly among married people who spend the entire half-hour nudging each other in the ribs saying “She sounds just like you” or “Your mom is just like her”. Most single people don’t understand the relationships in the show. The lazy husband who just wants to be left alone (but still wants the occasional nookie), the angry, harried housewife who doesn’t get any help from the lazy husband, the interfering in-laws who butt in at exactly the wrong time. It’s all too real for many of us.

- And this is probably heresy, but I never got into the 90’s juggernauts, Seinfeld and Friends. Too East Coast for me. Home Improvement, even though set in Detroit, was at least about family and suburbia, and featured more than a bunch of self-absorbed single white people whining about their empty lives. When watching Seinfeld or Friends, you always KNEW that the only place people act like that was in New York. With Raymond, it could be in Nebraska or California or Minnesota and the family dynamic would still be the same.