POLITICS TAKES A HOLIDAY--SOMETHING OF A DIARY ENTRY

Down here this is the week of "fiestas religiosas": Passover yesterday and today. Whatever it is Catholics do tomorrow and then Good Friday. In Kelso-ville, most of the stores in the mall are closed as are local places like Joyeria Lekach (Kelso still needs an adjustment to his watch-band) and Kaplan e Hijos (Kelso needs suit and tie). Being new in town, Kelso had to make the SNY feed of the Mets/Cardinals game and a few shifts in the poker room his first seder. Tonight's we'll leave up to the imaginations of the nieces and nephews and floppers-of-the-nuts in general.

Winter such as it is in the Southern Hemisphere seems to have arrived which means that instead of every day being 85 degrees and bright sunshine, it's 90 degrees, 100% humidity, rain, pollen and mold. Kelso got pounded in the sinuses with all of this as a front moved through, and embarrassingly so as he was in the process of sorting out some admin with his licenciada (who happens to be the daughter of the former Attorney General and a Supreme Court judge here and a partner in his firm, so as Bush famously said "bring it on" or more properly "si mandas, yo pago--je,je."). Sneezing fit, stuffy nose and a race down to the pharmacy for Claritin and Afrin. Kelso's Jewish ENT troubles are now in check, so it's story-time.

Last week, Kelso sat down to play some 5-10 NL-NC-HE. Now, the rules in this casino are very clear: Spanish only at the table except for English in cases of technical issues involving the play of the hand or the rules. There was a relatively insignificant hand with 4 players to the turn, each with about $90 in. Kelso was one (pocket 4s and a straight re-draw), an (East) Indian another, and two local Chinese guys. The dealer called out the Chinese guys for speaking in Chinese and making signals. The floor manager came over and called a halt to the hand, ordering all bets returned and a new hand dealt. Kelso believes the penalty should have been stricter, but OK. For whatever reason, the dealer ran the turn and river, the players showed down the cards expecting to have their money returned. The dealer, though, pushed all the chips to one of the Chinese guys who had the "winning" hand -- a naked ace with an ace on the board.

Then things got nuts. The floor manager scooted away. The Indian guy and Kelso jumped up crying foul. We ran over to the floor manager and explained in colorful Spanish that as there are usually other Indian and Jewish players at these tables we always had the option of cheating but stuck to the rules. The Indian explained how it could go down in Hindi. Kelso said that he could always do something like if he had a good hand make it $200 to go on the flop and say something like "macht, macht" or "flopee der schvantz" or with an Honor Club flush "bere pri hagofen," and no Jew would misunderstand, but no one else would have a clue. Landsmen would just get out of the way and return the favor later. The floor manager realizing that he'd handled the situation weakly and embarrassed by this striking lack of machismo got tough by sticking to his inaction! Then came the huelga (strike). Every non-Chinese player got up, cashed out and left. We all sort of trickled back in over the next week or so.

The manager was apologetic as each of us made our return, gave us some baseball caps with the casino logo, treated us to half-hour Swedish massages at the table and Coca-Cola in cans instead of from the fountain. Wow. But...it's still the best card room in town and Kelso will continue to play there despite all the cigarette smoke and lax management; Vicks-coated cotton balls up the nose work for about three hours until the smoke makes Kelso's eyes water and gives him a bad headache. Makes for short sessions, but the games are soft. We make our compromises.

A day in the life of an exile.

Add Cink and Oberholser at long odds to your Masters portfolio. Or genuflect before pictures of John McCain and Bill Frist. Me da igual.

Buenas fiestas. And apologies for generally poor copy-editing.

Kelso's Nuts love you.