Hakuna Matada
I know most of you think that Minneapolis is a cultural wasteland, but in reality we have a thriving arts and in particular theater industry (Grubby and Maudie would probably find a lot to do here). On Friday night I went to the Broadway production of “The Lion King”. This production, by the way, made its WORLD premiere in Minneapolis in 1997 and I saw it then too. It is un-freaking-believable. If you can see this, you should. The costumes are incredible and the show is great.
Home Improvement
Saturday was home improvement day at Chez Halverson, and I was en fuego. I installed, hold on now, a new sliding glass door lock and a door closer.
OK, my son did most, well, OK, all of, the sliding glass door lock.
The door closer, however, was all mine.
It came with a template so that you can’t screw up where to put the screws for the brackets. I, of course, screwed it up and was off by about 1/8th of an inch.
Yes, I screwed up even with a template.
As my friend Jason can attest to, home improvement to me is like voodoo. Using a tape measure may as well involve nuclear physics (and remember, I failed Calculus. Twice.). I’m terrible at this stuff, but amazingly the door closer actually works and everybody is happy.
Poker
Due to my handyman prowess, my cultural outing, and blowing off homework until the weekend, I played exactly zero hands of poker this weekend. Not good when I’m trying to do a quick buildup before Vegas.
I did, however, watch the last two episodes of the Heads Up Championship. Unlike Mean Gene, I actually really enjoyed it. I thought they showed quite a few hands, and they weren’t all ins. The final between Ferguson and Hellmuth was good IMHO. Yes, Phil was a bit over the top, but how is that news?
I loved watching Ferguson’s deliberate play. Always the same no matter what he had. Now, if somebody did this down at Canterbury, I’d laugh in his face, but this is for real money and he is, after all, a world champion. That being said, and keep in mind, who knows how many hands we missed, but when he fell for Phil’s limp with the 9s after he had been raising everything, I had to wonder what he was thinking.
Now, of course, Chris Ferguson has more poker knowledge in his pinky toe than I have total, so my “critique” should be taken with a metric tonne (that’s for our NZ friends, go play footie, ok mate?) of salt, but even I thought something was fishy when he just limped. Oh well, I have no heads up experience either, so I’m sure I’m missing something.
Anyway…I thought the final round was an interesting idea. Best two out of three and very deep stacks. Watching Ferguson catch his two outter, twice, was amazing. I agree with Gabe Kaplan, each one played one game great and blew the other. The third match could have gone either way, especially after Hellmuth got all worked up and stormed off.
Great show, good production, and they did a good job showing a decent number of hands. I see that they’re selling the DVDs, but it’s only the 8 hours that they showed on TV. I was hoping they’d show all of the finals or some more of the side tables, but I guess not. That’s too bad, they could have had a pretty good set there that offered more than what was shown. When will the TV people learn that they’ve already got the footage, just throw it in as an “extra”, don’t bother with commentary, just spend a little time throwing up the hole cards and we’d be happy.
Now my wife wants to go. On Thursday, look for me at the Barbary Coast, or anywhere else they offer cheap craps with a lesson because I’ve never played either (hints?).