I'm not actually in hell, but damn, a lot of things are sucking right now. I don't want to get into a protracted whine here, so I'll ram it all together, run-on sentence style:

Well let's see I got sick, and I've had this sore throat for two days now and it isn't going away at all, and oh yeah I busted out of three multi-table tournaments yesterday, and on the last one my jacks lost to K7 (sooooooted! ) because some crazy-loose a-hole was sitting on such a large mountain of chips that he couldn't be bothered to fold, and then today in a cash game I once again got de-stacked when I had a set of threes to someone else's set of kings, which makes the third time in three months, in case you're curious.

But on the brighter side of things, I received my free laptop from Party Poker, and it's pretty nice; and tonight I'm going out of town, which means no work for the next two days. Instead I'll be sitting in a hotel room with my girlfriend, eating pizza and recuperating from my illness. Not so bad, my friends, not so bad. Me and my girl and my laptop are gonna blow this crappy scene and make a new one. Don't expect any reports - while you're here in the old scene, I won't be thinking of you.

BOOK/MOVIE TANDEMS OF THE MONTH

1. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Required reading of course, but the movie version is good too, and surprisingly faithful.

2. "The Orchid Thief"/"Adaptation." A surprisingly interesting book, a great (and very weird) movie that is only tangentially related to its alleged source material. Speaking of which:

3. "Naked Lunch." Take some drugs and inflict this combination on your brain.

4. "LA Confidential." Just got done reading this for the first time and seeing it for the umpteenth time. The movie - well you've probably seen it, and it's terrific. But the book is a more dangerous, scary animal. And if you think you already know how it ends... trust me, you don't. The book has a really... really... fucked up ending.

HOME REMEDIES FOR SORE THROATS OF THE MONTH

Got any? I'm sick of gargling salt water. It's barely working anyway.

POKER HAND OF THE MONTH

If you're not watching the high stakes poker cash game show on GSN, I pity the fool (a.k.a. you). Start watching. Last night's episode was brilliant - typical Sammy Farha, gunning down the table but making good folds here and there. And then this doozy comes along:

It's the last hand of the night. Most players are getting up from the table as soon as they fold, and the last couple hands have been uneventful - less raising, more limping, less betting, and more checking. But on this hand, Barry Greenstein raises with AA. And Sammy - poor Sammy looks down at pocket kings. So he re-raises. Everybody else folds, and they're still migrating out the door slowly. And then Barry re-raises by a huge amount, $50,000 into a pot of less than thirty, and you can see & feel everyone freezing. That unmistakable "something big is happening" vibe hits.

Sammy feels it too. You can tell. He plays with his cards, plays with his chips. He looks at Barry and shoots him a playful-but-serious comment - something like "It's the last hand of the night! You really want to get into this?" Barry says nothing. He definitely wants to get into this.

For a couple of minutes Sammy visibly and audibly toys with his next move. He has Barry covered, but he's ahead now and would be stuck if he goes all in and loses. He hems and haws. Everything he says and does makes it seem like he's on the verge of making the unthinkable fold - throwing away the kings. Finally and abruptly, almost like he's doing it before he can stop himself, he goes all in. Barry, of course, calls without hesitation. As they throw their cards over, Sammy says "You have aces?" He knows. And there they are, Barry's aces. Sammy's dead.

And a king flops.

Something like $200,000 changes hands over that king.

Sammy Farha - crazy-ass gambler, almost makes the greatest possible no limit laydown, instead gets very lucky... and proves that, like Matusow says, Poker! It's all skill! Start with the worst hand and go uphill...