#208 Minnesota Fats

I remember a house in Tyler, TX on the east side of town right off loop 323.  I visited this house several times a year to drink beer and raise hell with old college friends.  It was a bachelor pad, complete with a pool table in the living room, an above-ground pool in the backyard, no doorknob to the bathroom, and an out-of-work fridge in the kitchen.  The house was void of decoration, save one poster that hung on the wall.  It was a poster of Jackie Gleason holding a pool cue.

This poster confused me.  None of us watched Jackie Gleason films, and none of us were great at pool.  I asked my friend why he had the poster, and the answer I received was, "Dude, that's Jackie Gleason!"

That answer didn't mean much to me.  I knew Jackie from Smokey and the Bandit and his role as Tom Hanks' father in Nothing In Common.  That's it.  Jackie was no pool shark to me, and I certainly didn't respect him enough to hang his poster in my living room.

Fast forward 10 years.  Tonight I'm at home and looking for a movie to watch.  I surf through Amazon Fire for a prime movie I've never seen.  I search old and new movies until I stumble upon a 1960's film titled The Hustler, starring Paul Newman.  Not sure why, but I choose this movie.  Not 15 minutes in am I introduced to Minnesota Fats, the most feared pool shark in the country.  Minnesota Fats steps up to the table cue in hand and says, "Fast Eddie, how about we play a game of pool."

There's the shot.  This is the poster that overlooked my friend's living room for years.  I'd not thought of that room in a decade, yet memories upon memories flooded my mind.  I slept beneath that pool table once.  I wrestled my friend's brother (aka Jim Morrison) in that backyard.  I played quarters in that living room with a girl who needed a bowl in order to play the game with us.  I was asked if I loved karaoke, because all Koreans love karaoke.  My brother earned his nickname "Pretty" in that living room.  And all that time I had no idea what this poster referenced.

Now I know.  And I wonder if I'm the only person in the group that has actually seen the movie.  The moral of the story is this: watch old movies.  You never know when you're gonna reveal the essence behind a particular time and place.

#207 Resolutions 2015

Here are my resolutions for 2015:

• Publish 4 novels.  2 in the Exchange Day series and 2 stand alone stories.
• Drink fewer than 167 bottles of wine.
• Get back into soccer.  Been out of the game since I hurt my ankle last summer.  Ankle is better, I think, so its time to get back out there.
• Review at least 12 books on my blog.
• Buy at least one pair of new shoes.  It's been years.
• Watch at least one movie in the theater.  Even if it costs me $48.
• Show doodle plenty of love.  He needs it this year.
• Help guide Cody through writing his stories, comics, and reviews.
• Clean out the garage.
• Do something about the weeds taking over my yard.
• Graduate Polly from the adult crib to stairs.  Pretty sure this isn't going to work.
• Be less reclusive.
• Do more on the Twitter.  Just learned how to use it in 2014, but I'd like to get better at it.  Starting now.
• Practice more Yoda.

#206 Year In Review - 2014

Time for my year in review.  As usual, I like to do these from memory.

• Wrote and published my first two novels.  Exchange Day and Hand In The Dark.  They're awesome.  Go buy them.  Now.
• Polly's operation.  Earlier this year she ruptured a disc in her spine and lost control of her back half.  The operation was a success.  Though she's still a bit wobbly, Polly recovered and is as happy as can be.
• Drinking 167 bottles of wine with L.  
• Fire pit movies at the Whites.  Before the fire pit was installed, we could only watch outdoor movies.  I think the first one we watched was Big Trouble In Little China.
• Listening to Cody read his short story at the Dallas Area Writer's Group meeting.
• Joining our first wine club.  Jessup Cellars.  We received our first case in November.
• Joe's campaign.  He ran for 258th District Court Judge.  Though he didn't win this year, I'm excited for him to run again in the future.
• Meeting Savannah.
• Concerts
• Alt-J: We saw Alt-J again with Liz, Craig, Ceren, Fro, and Lauren.  Love this band and can't wait for them to return.
• 311:  Cody's first concert.  High energy music that brought back lots of memories.  
• Arctic Monkeys: Totally dig this band, though I was not impressed with the venue.  We felt too far removed from the band.  Hopefully next time they play somewhere else.
• BTE:  We see them every year they come to town.  And as always, we enjoyed the show.
• NIN:  I'd been wanting to see them since high school and never got the chance.  Liz and I drove to Houston and saw them at Cynthia Woods.  Trent still gots it.
• The first annual Chicago Fire Festival, though they had trouble lighting the four bonfires.
• Thanksgiving night with Cody and Meyers.  We played high/low and taught Cody how to play the drums.
• Eating L.'s homemade Pad Thai.  3 times.  
• Halloween flip cup with the Tinman.  And Ceren.
• Seeing Steel Water Blue in Houston.  They played at a wine bar and I got in trouble for requesting new glasses of wine.  The ones they served tasted awful.
• Germany with Katrina and Jason
• The quaint hamlet of Rothenberg.
• Holding my hair on the autobahn.
• Watching Germany defeat Brazil in the semi-finals of the World Cup in a German bar.  They went on to defeat Argentina in the finals.  
• Monastery where monks have been brewing beer for hundreds of years.  It's also where I ate a pig knuckle.
• Underground bunkers from WWII.  I got in trouble for taking a picture minutes after the guide said no photos.
• Flat tire on the autobahn.  We cruised on the back of a tow truck, driven by a man smitten with my wife, until we reached Wurtzberg (birthplace to the all-mighty Dirk), where we traded our nice car in for an old van.  It had a standard transmission, and I was the only one on the trip who could drive a standard.  We ate dinner at McDonald's.
• The wine tasting party we hosted.  We drank 10 bottles ranging in price from $3-$89.  L. passed out by 11p.  She woke up at 4a and found me stumbling around the kitchen cleaning.  I'd already broken several dishes and two wine glasses.
• Watching Spaceballs twice in one week.
• Losing horribly to the girls at pictionary.  They're really good.  Also, everyone loses when it's strip pictionary.
• Painting the interior of Suanne with the Codester.  We're not the best painters.
• Playing soccer and basketball with the goofball brothers.  One of them is convinced I owe him $20.
• Alice's Restaurant with L. and Solanki.  Later we played Bocce Ball.  L.'s a Bocce Ball prodigy.
• Meeting Griffin.  
• Discussing astrophysics with Gita and Andrew.  If a flea is on a dog that's running on a treadmill inside a rocketship propelled outside the earth's gravitational pull, how much booster power would the ship need for a course correction of say, 10 yards?  And how come the earth doesn't just travel away from rockets shot outside it's gravitational pull?  The rest of the party fled outside because we were just too interesting.
• Going with Dugat to buy his Les Paul.
• Roy and Dee's wedding.  Thankfully I missed LaBare afterward.
• Feeding Blue beer and wine until he stumbled and snorted his way to his piggy bed.
• Amsterdam with Katrina and Jason
• Anne Frank House
• The red light district after midnight.  It was insane.  There were a bunch of guys trying to jump onto a concrete wall.  They were yelling at people and making me nervous.
• The coffee shops.
• Watching The Netherlands in the World Cup semi-finals.
• Jamming with Meyers, P. Courtney, Ceren and L.  We played Amy Winehouse, Lorde, Michael Stipe and Kelly Clarkson.
• Watching Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead in the adult crib.  
• Playing the mandolin and singing the high-pitched vocal track to No Rain.
• Seeing Louis CK and Sara Silverman with the Ballews.
• Helping Cody create his blog, where he reviews beers and posts his stories.  It's called: Chasing Shadows.
• Meeting Sawyer.
• Napa with L. and Meyers
• Drinking 2 bottles of Giana at dinner.
• Surviving the caves beneath Bremer Von Scary
• Drinking Sintilation at Kate's wedding.
• Visiting Darioush and Orin Swift
• The barrel tasting tour at Del Dotto.
• Cody and I tipping our cats to the US Soccer team.
• Recording Why Can't I Be You.  And Blur.  And Last Dance With Mary Jane.