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#689 – NBC Heads-Up Championship #10 – Durrrr & Blur: Day One in the Clubs & Spades Brackets, Part A
Apologies for not filing the results of the Clubs & Spades brackets immediately after their completion. It was a very long day, with the Spades immediately following the Clubs. Then, as should be obvious from the beginning of this account, I was too debilitated to post anything late Friday night. I shall do my best – it’s now 10:45 AM Saturday – to post these results and observations along with a preview of the upcoming Round 2 matches before they start at 1:30 PM today.
I wouldn’t normally include the following several paragraphs. In fact, they are somewhat embarrassing. But you deserve to know why I didn’t get you the news of the matches immediately yesterday, and hopefully you will understand.
[The following was written at 12:15 AM Friday/Saturday]
We finished at about 11 PM with the last bracket. That left me with two brackets to report. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t type coherently. I couldn’ty write complete sentences in my notebook. Somehow, I made it back to my room; my motor skills were able to accomplish that much.
I sat on my bed and tried to think. It’s a weird sensation to believe you can’t think any more. So I tried to verbalize what was going through my brain. But I couldn’t tell if I was talking or thinking. Or neither. So I took out my voice recorder.
[The following was written at 3:30 AM Saturday]
I was watching Phil Laak’s match with Kenny Yeh. Wait, that was in the Diamonds bracket. Didn’t I already report on that? Anyway, it was a long match, the longest of the day. And Kenny Yeh compounded it by taking eons on every decision at the end. Jennifer Tilly, one of my favorite actresses, was sitting next to me, humoring me as I complained of how long the match was taking.
I felt a tug on the back of my head.
Jennifer had reached behind me and gently pulled my ponytail. At this time last year, my head was shaved. I did that periodically while Jo Anne was undergoing chemotherapy, and then once more when radiation treatment (which had no effect on her quickly growing hair) also proved to be a pain in the ass. I haven’t cut it since and, though my hair is thin on top, it’s long, curly, and thick in the back. I’ve recently been tying the ends into a short ponytail.
“What do you think of it?” I asked Jen. I felt her fingers on the back of my neck.
“It’s the same color as mine before I colored it.”
“Maybe because we’re the same age,” I told her.
Then I woke up and wrote this down.
[The rest of this blog was written once I was fully awake on Saturday morning.]
I forgot that I left my voice recorder on last night; I must have fallen asleep while it was still running. The battery had died and I just got back from purchasing a replacement in the gift shop. This is what I discovered:
* Two minutes of music playing from my iPod, which was hooked up to speakers next to my bed.
* The music is interrupted by a single line of recorded dialogue. Phonetically, it was “I fink my thung theels fick.” After listening to it repeatedly, I think I was trying to say, “I think my tongue feels thick.” Profound, huh?
* Twenty-seven more minutes of iPod music in the background, before the battery ran out.
Now that I remember things better – or at least can read CardPlayer.com’s accounts – here is what I remember:
* Full Tilt is jinxed in this year’s Championship;
* Tom Dwan and fifteen others advanced in the last two brackets;
* Caesars should check the ventilation in the tournament room. Maybe it’s something in the heating ducts, which seem to be working overtime. It wasn’t just me. Everyone seemed dosed by the end of the last match of the day. Even Jordan, the unflappable tournament announcer, was affected. Normally, his on-the-cuff accounts of the big hands are as crisp as any studio commentator working later off tapes and notes. But by the end, he was stumbling, and the situation wasn’t helped by the fact that the sound system supporting his announcements may have been a recycled Mr. Microphone. It was in no way his fault. It was either the equipment or the ventilation … or me. I swear, by the final matches, when he spoke, all I could detect was some clicking and buzzing.
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