KELSO GETS LUCKY (TWICE)

Regular Flopper "G" levelled some harsh but fair criticism at Kelso in the response to the entries entitled "Selena I" and "Kelso At The Pulpit". G has taken Kelso's reasoned response to heart and provided everybody with one of G's favorite Woody songs that sounds an awful lot like Mr. K on a binge. Worth looking at the whole string. Kelso acknowledges house, glass, feet, clay.

This means Kelso didn't have to go into lecture mode about how this site SERVES ONLY VITRIOL WITH A CAUSTIC SODA BACK, that he's tired of justifying himself, but if it's good enough for Marshall Mathers who is talented, it ought to be good enough for a talentless little prick like Kelso. G has let Kelso off the hook.

Kelso's Nuts are not feeling scalded in the slightest. And he is in a very loving mood right now. So, as a special bonus, Kelso admits a lost argument to a more intelligent person that worked out great. In the aftermath of the memorial service of a mutual friend, Kelso's friend, The Arapahoe Cowgirl, a Bay-Area writer and journalist of great distinction, started talking politics with Kelso and Kelso took the opportunity to wedge himself into the very small space to The Cowgirl's left on the subject of charity. Kelso took the quasi-Marxist line that a government has the obligation to feed, clothe, house, educate and medically treat all its citizens and charity was a right-wing canard to absolve a right-wing government from that responsibility. Arapahoe, quite properly, pointed out the zillions of flaws in that argument and made the perfectly sensible suggestion that the next time Kelso takes down a score of some kind to pick a charity that he supports that does something different than the obligations both Kelso and Arapahoe tend to support, and give generously to that charity. To square a very bizarre circle, G was also a crony of the dead man, albeit from a different time and place than Kelso and Arapahoe were.

Two weeks later Kelso hit a pick-6 at Hollywood Park for $120K. He gave generously to Code Pink and later to Gold Star Mothers For Peace, because being both pro-peace AND a parent, those were two charities he was proud to support. Kelso's thrilled he did.

Kelso is generally extreme in his views, but is quite conventional in one area: Kelso likey Cindy Sheehan velly, velly much. Kelso also understands that mothers and sons disagree all the time, and that Casey Sheehan was a courageous man and a great American patriot, just like his mother, from different ends of the political spectrum. Why it seems impossible for America's right and center-right to hold both viewpoints at once is beyond Kelso. But that this national cognitive dissonance obtains, suggests that PT Barnum may have been right. This ignorance may be good business-wise for Kelso but very bad for the country.

Writ very small, Kelso doesn't have the words to express how much he loves his own Mom, but he doubts he will be able to talk her into Weld for Governor of New York State. On the Democratic Mayoral side, though, he believes he has talked her into Miller. Ferrer? ineffectual, Fields? Very bad machine pol, Weiner? Trying (!) to be Ed Koch redux. So, it's Miller by default in the primary.

Now how did Kelso get lucky again? Earlier this week he went to his favorite card club in NYC (the one on the East Side at which gay and straight have easy camaraderie and the standard of poker is very high) and sat at a table of 5-5 No Limit Texas Hold 'Em. Kelso reckoned that he was 7th best of 10 including two extremely good players. So, when another 5-5 NL HE table was opened Kelso switched. At this other table there happened to be a wannabe wiseguy drunk off his nut with a stripper by his side nodding from smack. Kelso, wearing his customary New York Mets cap, sat down. His first hand was Big Slick, so he made it $50 straight to go. Everyone save the wannabe wiseguy folded. The latter said to Kelso, "Hey Piazza, I'm going to fuck you in the ass!" The dealer intervened and said to wiseguy "Sir, this is a gentleman's club we do not tolerate that sort of language." This was very much NOT the kind of gay-straight camaraderie Kelso was referring to. This man was a fool. The true banter can get crude at times but it is among friends and acquaintances who have spent hundreds of hours together in fierce competition for decent sums of money. It's a way of easing tension and boredom between hands and is never fueled by liquor or rancor. Let's get that (um) straight.

Kelso let it pass cheerfully and said "don't call me Piazza, call me Pedro." At any rate, wiseguy pushed all his chips in, a move Kelso was only too eager to call. The hands were turned up and wiseguy was showing 9-3 off-suit to Kelso's Slick. Slick held up and Kelso won a huge pot. Wiseguy bought more chips and on the next hand Kelso was dealt pocket 7s. Same scenario, he made it $50 straight to go. Wiseguy again says "Hey Piazza, this time I'm really going to ass-fuck you." He proceded to push all his chips in. Kelso was again only too happy to call and Wiseguy turned over Q-x off-suit. The 7s held up and Kelso won another big pot. Wiseguy grabbed his nodding stripper and left, leaving Kelso with a big smile and Kelso's friends at the club quite envious of Kelso's good fortune to run into a player who was truly stoonad.

Sometimes it works out.

Kelso suggests floppers pay attention to the phenomenon that is Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners. The boy is only 19 years old and is pitching lights out against top-flight major league competition, including holding Rudy Giuliani's Girls Of New York to only two runs this night. Unfortunately, Randy Johnson pitched a shut-out.

Sometimes it doesn't.

A couple of notes. The reference to the Arapahoe Cowgirl (Cowboys and Indians, geddit?) puts Kelso in the mind of one of Billy Bragg's great lyrics: "Don't tell me the old, old story/Tell me the truth this time/Is the Man in the Mask or the Indian and enemy or a friend of mine?" Kelso figures this will form the basis of his take on the Jack Abramoff/Ralph Reed/Tom DeLay scandal. Perfectly finessed pun, no? Expect villains to be taken to task, but expect something different from what you are reading and hearing in the mainstream, right-wing, and left-wing press.

The Cowgirl, the rest of Kelso's family, and many, many of Kelso's friends are writers. Kelso acknowledges that his stylings are to theirs what his poker is to Phil Ivey's. But as Kelso occasionally has to engage in salesmanship in his other businesses and doesn't like it (hates rejection), his blog is not about promoting anything -- you will never read about any of his business other than the gambling, for example -- and he hopes his friends and family understand and don't feel dissed. Pseudonyms and privacy will always reign here.

Kelso's Nuts love you very much.