I am trying to come up with blog titles as good as "Must be the feeling" and "Brick-a-brack" but honestly I just keep whiffing.

I am at WSOPE playing some poker tournaments and staying in a sweet apartment in the middle of everything. I am pretty torn about my adventures so far here. On one hand, I of course like the idea (perhaps idealistically more than practically) of being in a new place that I am unfamiliar with. It provides me with an experience that I'll almost certainly take something from. But, (and I'm probably quoting someone famous here) experience for the sake of experience blows (but sometimes you have to experience the experience to experience that disappointment). It feels like some sort of pseudo bonding experience with other poker players being in a foreign land. I'm interested in many things about France and have appreciated much of their cuisine (the food industry in general just embarrasses the States-- LOLUSA). I feel like #firstworldproblems are coming too a head too often for me while I'm here-- I hate that everything is open ~20% less than in the States (especially with playing poker during the day and the hours that I keep), I hate the language barrier (frankly, I feel stupid-- I do not speak any French and I think it'd just be embarrassing to try to learn a dozen phrases while I'm here), I hate the timezone and dealing with staying up until 6AM to finish watching football and MMA.

I have a tendency to be a whiny bitch. I am cynical in a jovial way, for the most part (if that is even possible or makes any sense). I'm cranky for a number of reasons-- I haven't had a chance to lift (tried to go to the gym 30 minutes before they closed and they basically just LOL'd at me for trying to sign up and get a quick lift in... they were all trying to be out the door, gym cleaned up and lights out 5 minute before they closed, the French are lazy), I haven't been able to get on a good sleep schedule, it took me 30 minutes to cash out my $1,843 Euro mincash, it took me 30 minutes to "find" my own $20k Euro wire and then explain to the people (I blame the WSOP for not having at least one person fluent in English at the cage for the signup process) that I did not want to wear a half dozen fucking plastic bracelets for a week. Look, I hate negativity, but I'm just telling it like it is. I complain about most of thees things relatively tongue-in-cheek. In reality, I'm just trying to win a poker tournament and creep on French girls.

Speaking of trying to win poker tournaments, I got a bunch of chips in day 1 of this 1k Euro tournaments and made it to day 2 with an average stack. I was largely card dead until I ran queens into jacks, literally the first hand after the bubble burst. Yay me for cashing, yay me for busting early instead of playing a few more hours and still cashing for relatively the same amount. My arm is getting tired from patting myself on the back, but I'm playing poker tournaments pretty well. I hate them less than I used to since I've cashed in a few out of my last few. They are probably an okay outlet when traveling and a good break from grinding online cash, but I certainly couldn't be subjected to playing them exclusively for a living. Before that ship is sailed and online poker is overrun with bots (likely more on that in a later blog) I will hang it up before I turn to playing live tournaments. It's inconceivable that you could play better than everyone and have to wait for variance to run it's course (hint: it never does).

A lot of things have been swell lately in life, of course. UFC has been incredible lately. MMA has always been pretty interesting to me but I've only recently gone from being a casual fan to a slightly less casual fan. Last weekend's card (basically) lived up to the hype as one of the greatest cards of all time (both title fights were solid enough, Sonnen was remarkably dominant, and Phan/Garcia was awesome-- even some of the prelims were good). Can't really say I'm looking forward to much on this Condit/GSP card, although I always root for Denis Siver, who has the GOAT spinning back kick basically.

TV is also firing on all cylinders (even though I won't be around to keep up with a lot of stuff), as the Breaking Bad finale last night was incredible. I can't imagine they could have ended Season 4 and that general storyline any better, as the good guys won (which, tbh, I didn't fully expect), and it was clever without it seeming like the show was trying to hard. Multiple times I felt myself just smiling and laughing outloud while watching it by myself. Of course the double meaning of the title was elite as well... Do yourself a favor and buy it and watch all four seasons right now if you haven't, S3 and S4 are definitely elite. Boardwalk Empire and Sons of Anarchy are also in the midst of promising seasons, I'll be thrilled to get back and have a dozen hours of good TV to watch after all this traveling and pokering for sure.

I'm so tilted that I forgot to bring another book after I finished Where Men Win Glory (strong recommendation, 9/10, particularly relevant perhaps if you have strong feelings on the military), if you've got something I might be interested in and are in Cannes I'll appreciate it-- what I won't appreciate is you telling me how I'm a fucking asshole for not getting a kindle or something yet. Thanks, but I'm privy to things that obvious guy says too.

Yes I do write the best blogs but this one is getting a little long, so I'll end it here as I see the sun is coming up in Cannes, I took a nap earlier but hopefully I'll be able to get some sleep and workout before the shootout starts-- this is probably my best event (although there is a heads up I just found out about recently, non bracelet event).

Also, I lost a few games in fantasy football that I was definitely a favorite to win this week. There's variance in fantasy football, who knew?