The Breaking Of The Fellowship

I'll stay a week or two/I'll stay the summer through/But I am telling you/I must be going
-Groucho Marx

_________

Andy Rooney outlived poker blogs.  Sad, but true.

"Don't worry. You can still follow me at
@OuchMyLungsggglllrrrrgghle.twitter.com"

I frequently survive on limited sleep. It's the way I'm wired. This comes in handy when you like to write but you have many daytime responsibilities, but it also opens you up to any number of interesting anthropological environments. By way of example, let me suggest to you a sight well-known to the collegiate amnesiac; the party after the party has fallen apart. Four AM after a rage reveals a grotesquery of detritus and incriminating evidence; floors sticky from cheap beer spillage, empty cases torn open and sodden in the corner, new stains on the carpeting, a half-passed out unfortunate on the couch with clown features and obscenities Sharpied onto his face. It'll be fun for him when he wakes up and runs to his scheduled meeting with his girlfriend's parents, failing to realize that he's been festively festooned.

That's us, now, poker bloggery poking around the leavings of the party, ever since the fuzz showed up on tax day, two thousand eleven, and cut the head right off of online poker in the United States. The fun was here, but now all that's left is carnage.  It's OK. Parties have to end. But it's always a shame when they end because the cops came to break it up. It's even worse when what the cops find is worse than what you'd thought.

What's become of us, anyway?  Remember blogging? Remember when everybody was writing long-form pieces and commenting and starting blogger drama and all the whatnot with the whadyacallit? Sure, I know that we still have Pai Gow and slots and pokies at the WPBT gatherings in winter, but come on. This was always a virtual group, especially for those of us who don't get over Vegas way that much. And sure, we're still out there in the tubes, in one form or another, but our linchpin was the ability to play cards together, and that's gone, baby, gone. We're all drifting our own ways, and one by one, many of us are slipping off unnoticed. Nowadays, on the increasingly infrequent times I fire up Blogger to make it happen I feel like the guy picking through the beer cans and taking the cap off the Sharpie.

"Um, yeeeah. I'd love to read your novel. Um, I just, um...hey,
what's that behind you?"

I'm writing a lot, these days. At this pace, I'll have a novel in a year or so, and I am quite happy with the quality of what I've pulled out of me so far. This is very exciting news to me, if to nobody else. It's easy to write in these morning hours after the party has passed, but I still miss the revel that preceded it. I think of some of the things that I posted in this space as the best I've yet done, and I think of the support and encouragement that I found here as the main reason that I continued on. And so, as I look forward to what this blog will become, I find that today I come to bury and praise Caesar, to remember what was.


Remember a whole week full of blogger tournaments? MATH followed by Skillz followed by the Mookie/Dank followed by something or other followed by the Donkament?  Remember? Remember when we could play online games in a reputable online casino? A whole night's fun for a lousy ten bucks and all the chat you could type? Remember Waffles, or Maniac35784 as he liked to be known? Remember tilting him and then jawing for hours about it? Remember calling all-in with the JackAce just in hopes that Hoy would expend 10,567 words on your idiocy the next morning?

Let's remember all of the blogs that have gone dark, or at least gray. If I forget you here, don't feel bad, which you won't. You don't read blogs anymore anyway. So few outside established media writers are left and still putting out regular posts. If I am still in touch with a blogger regularly these days, it is doubtless through Twitter or perhaps Facebook. Nothing against that platform, but man. What happened to the other one? Did we have to offshore everything to the social media circus?

Remember Fuel? Iakaris? JJOK? Katitude? Jecmiid? SNGMachine? Kajagugu? Raisin' Cayne? GCox? Riggstad? Skiddoo? Miami Don? Bayne? Up For Poker? Al Can't Freaking Hang?

Hey, if you're on that list and you want me to link you, just hit me up in the chat and I'll oh yeah nobody really cares if they get linked to their blog anymore.

Hey guys, remember Uberposts? Come back to the five and dime, Blogfather, Blogfather.On second thought, don't. There's no poker to discuss, anyway.  Let's just chill on Twitter. I'll retweet your back if you'll retweet mine.

"Co-mingling player funds? That's as frightening
as one of Gimli's mutton farts."

Remember when Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer and Rafe Furst were unquestionably stand-up guys? Remember Full Tilt? I miss Full Tilt. I miss thinking it was what I thought it was. I bet I'm not alone on that. Now I don't even get to remember it the way I remembered it. Did that make sense? If not, no matter. I'm insane half the time now anyway.

So the question becomes, what happens next?  I am pretty sure I owe you months of awesome and crazy. I think it's probably time for Retroactive Oscars of the 80s. I even have some rather unusual ideas about this book I'm writing.  Look, I've been in this space for five years as of New Year's Day 2012. I've got no intention of stopping just because I've got nothing left to say about poker.

Nothing? Well, not entirely nothing. I guess I'd better start by belatedly telling you about my WSOP.  Stay tuned, and stick around.