OK, THEN, HARVEY, THIS BUD'S FOR YOU (AND EVERYONE ELSE)...

...Kelso has made a liar out of himself principally because the same anxiety attack which made him want to heave this away for a while has given him insomnia and with work done and son asleep, this surely beats Yahoo! Gin or Friends as a time killer.

Harvey, thanks so much for the nice words. You're a class act, considering you're the fucker who got Kelso into this in the first place! In response to your comment about what Jews are really thinking and with whom they caucus, all K can say is 4 famous words from one of the great movies, albeit with a tiny adjustment: "RELAX, JAKE, IT'S PANAMA." That's the point we made over and over again earlier and in some ways it dovetails with "The Whitewashing, The Minstrel Show" post.

You have made a very appropriate reference to The Adventures Of Augie March. Bellow certainly one of the Old School neo-cons Kelso likes. And if Kelso's feeling charitable, he'll retell one of the adventures of Avran El Neoyorquino. Don't dispute for a second that the concerns of the American Jew are less Israel and not at all how to play 25-50 NL Omaha against maleantes judios y arabes or what the right price on Mayweather/Hatton should be. Panama? Not so much. In a lot of ways the Southwest Side of CdP is very much a hybrid of Bellow's 1950s Chicago and Western Europe 2007. Tony G is not really a factor because despite his being a Roman Catholic of Cuban descent on the sire side, he's a blue-blood Episcopalian on the dam side and orients very much that way in life-style and politics.

We have no Tony G's or Howard Deans for that matter here. The Southwest Side is Jewish (Ashkenaz and Sephard) and Arab (Muslim and Christian). The place is dominated by names you've never heard of but which mentioned here would be like mentioning Doc Holliday in a Western town in the 19th century and everybody freezes in their tracks and all you hear is the tumbleweed rolling across the mesa: Btesh, Heskey, Jabadallah, Fiero, Traad-Porras, Sarhal, Chumine, Malca...you get the point. Noriega himself was in no hurry to mess around in this district. Why should he? He had the rest of the country under his thumb, and these people could fight back. So, don't think of the Jews amongst these names as the kinds of Jews you know. They fit on the number line somewhere between Mr. College Savings Plan of the Upper West Side and Vladimir Gusinsky. Don't think of the Arabs you know. Those fit between Mr. Dearborn Michigan Deli Man and a minor Saudi princelet. This attitude filters all the way down to the younger guys of both semitic varieties and that's how it is. Velly, velly raw. And as Kelso has an unmistakably Ashkenazi apprearance and speaks fluent Spanish and knows about the stuff they're into, this is naturally where he's expected to fit in. And does. That's not why Panama is like the USA. It's why it's different. Jewish and Arab women here fit more a Western European model than an American one in that they have more pay equity in the professions but political-correctness is not a factor (though politeness is).

Kelso understands full well that (especially) suburban Jews have a goyische kopf back in the Union Of Confederate States. And Kelso is not so stupid as to think that every shaygitz is like James Dobson. Kelso was merely positing an argument. Wouldn't it be more fun and more empowering for Jewish men (at least) to identify with a more masculine, historically accurate antecedent than Lieberman's Moses-The-Law-Giver fantasy of Israel which, ipso facto, requires a very wimpy posture: start wars at will and let the poor and unfortunate fight them?

You want to fit in as a Jew in the States? Lots of ways to do it. Not too many here, and that goes for gay Jewish men here as well. They, too, must caucus with Arabs and know about all the Augie March shit. That is if you want respect. If you want to be a nobody, well that's your choice, but it's no fun.

Eugah, the Methodist neo-con, huh? Let's use an heuristic device first. Just how badly did J-Pass bend Eugah over on that Yeltsin bet? Eugah laid J-Pass a big price when according to the actuarial tables of the Camden, NJ, rock dealer, never mind those of a late middle-aged albeit alcoholic Russian, Eugah was a monster underdog. Kelso would call that a lack of judgement by orders of magnitude not a small mis-read of his odds and outs. It's like the 13th chime on the clock. But let's say he had gone through 10 back issues of Foreign Affairs, reading between the lines (he may have no math sense but the boy can interpret text like nobody's business) and talked to BoJo and the CFR and all that.

Kelso has studied "Decision Making Under Conditions Of Extreme Uncertainty" at the PhD level and employed it to win such bets as how many people were at guy's 25th Miami (Ohio) Univesity reunion. Kelso hardly needs to parse Foreign Affairs to price this better than Eugah can. Never mind what Russia, China, the EU and Saudi Arabia would do in the currency and debt markets, or with their own...er..tactical weapons, because, gee whiz, world powers doing that well economically really love instability, right?...What possible reason would the country with the greatest physical intensity in this, Israel, have to gain by letting it happen? With an election coming up? Just to give Giuliani 300bps in the polls against Clinton in a losing cause when HRC is not necessarily to Giuliani's left on the OTs and settlements? Does Ohmert or Netanyahu really want to be responsible for turning Israel into a grease spot? Israel could have a deal with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria tomorrow if Barak or Ayalon were PM. Get real. Please tell Eugah to give the Risk game and the G.I.Joes-with-the-kung-fu-grip back to Eugah, Jr., and go back to reading these countries' interests in those block trades in esoteric oil shares. MMMkay?

Oh, the story. Kelso was in a 100-100 NL Omaha game with a few of the local Jewish and Arab regulars and a bunch of Colombians from Barranquilla. There was one Costeno (Barranquillero), a Jew as it turned out, who had been ragging Kelso all night trying to get under his skin to the point that Kelso put on the I-Pod and spoke to him only in New York English (yeah,Paisano DistributorCap!) not a word of which he understood. The guy raises the blind making it 500 to go, Kelso w A-A-J-x flat calls. Flop J-x-x, the x-x giving him a nut-flush draw. Costeno checks. Kelso wants to see where he's at or maybe steal the pot so he makes it 1300 to go. The Costeno sets Kelso all-in for 27K. Now, Kelso has to think this through. Maybe he's protecting a set he made with one of the x's but why so much? He could make it 6K to go and he's good either way. Kelso folds and the guy wins the pot. Or Kelso calls and Kelso's ann 8/5 underdog to win. But $27K? Kelso did have A-A, a nut-draw and a back-door draw with the J, and it could have been a bluff, so he says "fuck it" and calls. Costeno shows 10-10-dreck-dreck. Kelso wins. The guy storms off in a huff and comes back with 5 big guys. Kelso chills. Plays two more rounds and calls a guy to come get him. 10 minutes later the guy calls back to say he's outside. Kelso pockets the cash, brings the chips to the cage, cashes them and leaves without looking back. The guy whom Kelso called to get him said "you sounded less cheerful than usual so I didn't take any chances. I brought my pistols." Kelso home in 15 minutes safe as houses.

Since then the Costeno and Kelso have become friendly and it's all super-chill. Very scary at the time. There was no guarantee Kelso wouldn't have gotten hurt, but Kelso kept his calm, his wits about him and it all worked out. Now, tell Kelso, si o no?, isn't the Augie March way of doing things more psychologically empowering on a cultural level than Lieberman whining to Russert about the need to hit Iran? And that "these Congressional Democrats just don't understand the enemy we're facing...this is the new front on our War-On-Terror." Kelso's a pretty wimpy guy himself but he doesn't whine (doesn't have those horrible zits, either) and was willing to face the consequences because he had no choice. To be fair to Holy Joe and the neo-cons, Kelso also knows that CdP has very little violent crime especially in that part of town, and the guy did need casino outs to do whatever it is that Colombians do with excess money :-D, so he knew that a really bad thing was extremely unlikely to happen. When the bombs fall, anything can happen.

*************************************************************************************
Much love to everyone else who wrote such nice things. A break is still in order, though. FranIam, Kelso feels especially bad about the Katrina comment which seemed to derail all further discussion, but Kelso knew he had avoided thinking about Katrina lo these two years for just that reason. He could not respond clinically and without affect. D-CUP, Kelso never meant to ALARM you, merely to advise you that if Kelso could become disposible anyone can. Don't worry too much. Kelso has lots of family in your home state and while it's not a real, real good idea to be putting any Kucinich or "Out of Iraq" bumper stickers on your cars, you are not likely to have any problems. To be purely pragmatic about it, however, some magnetic yellow ribbons wouldn't hurt (just kidding).

Kelso's Nuts love you