Living All In

Quick!  After Las Vegas and Atlantic City, what U.S. city has the most casinos and gambling attractions?

If you guessed Tunica, Mississippi, you my friend need to go to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. 

From Bloomberg:

Casinos began rising from Tunica County cotton fields beside the Mississippi River 14 years ago. Now officials are negotiating for a $2.7 billion gaming-free development in adjacent DeSoto County, anchored by a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. movie theme park and backed by about $200 million in state incentives. Plans for the project, called Riverbend Crossing, include hotels, golf courses, shops and rides.

“This isn’t Las Vegas,” said Marty Wiseman, a government professor at Mississippi State University in Starkville. “We haven’t reached the point where we can gamble and get naked. It’s still Bible Belt Mississippi.”

That last quote from Professor Wiseman is hilarious.  "We haven’t reached the point…" sounds like they’re striving toward a lofty goal!  I’m sure that wasn’t his intention, but still.  Having lived in the South for three years now, this ‘gaming-free’ zone makes perfect sense.  Chrisitanity in the Bible Belt is a life of compartmentalization.  People around here did it with civil rights, so why not gambling?  Especially since it fills the coffers of local and state governments.

The thought process works like this:

"Gambling is evil"
…but we can stick it next to the Mississippi River because riverboat gambling is part of our heritage."

"Having theme parks connected to casinos (like in Vegas) are evil because it’s luring our children into gambling"
…but if we develop it just across the county line, it’s just a theme park for family tourism."

To turn a Southern phrase used when confronted with idiots, "bless their hearts."

Author’s note - Isn’t my daughter (in the slot machine) gorgeous?!

Evangelicals in the U.K along with the Church of England are beside themselves in trying to convince their government to ban children from using slot machines and other electronic gambling devices.  Unless the British government drastically changes course in the eleventh hour, the new gambling legislation allows children of any age to wander into seaside ‘arcades’ and bet money to win money.

Next up on the UK legislative docket: kiddie escort services…legal!

Teens in Canada’s province of Ontario (home of the Great White North’s largest city Toronto for those geographically impaired) are bellying up to the poker table at an escalating rate.

From the London (CA) Free Press:

More than one-third of people aged 18-34 play poker for money, with nearly half of people in that age group saying they play more now than they did two years ago, according to the Responsible Gambling Council Poker Poll conducted by Ipsos-Reid.

I can honestly say that if the Texas Hold ‘Em craze would’ve hit when I was a teen, I would’ve run to my guidance counselor’s office to apply to UNLV.

Back in July when I read this Business Week article on the Internet Gambling enforcement bill that the House had passed, I chalked it up to a bunch of congressmen trying to look tough in an election year knowing full well that their Senate counterparts would not pass similar legislation. It happens every two or four years on flag burning and other issues, so I didn’t give the bill much hope. Boy was I wrong. With the Senate sneaking the bill through with little media attention or fanfare, the offshore gambling meccas of Antigua, Gibraltar, and others were rocked with the immediacy of losing one of their biggest markets with only one month’s notice.

I was anticipating the issue would have gotten more sustained media attention, but alas, the Mark Foley page-gate scandal.  The amazing thing to me isn’t so much that the legislation passed, but it’s that the legislation was so well conceived that the offshore gaming companies haven’t thought of a work around.

Internet gambling has been illegal for a long time in the U.S., it’s just that the U.S. government hadn’t figured out a way to prevent companies in other countries from flooding the Internet with poker sites.  Maybe it was because they thought the Internet was a big truck, and not a series of tubes. (h/t Sen. Ted Stevens - R AK) 

Time will tell how watertight the legislation really is because, as we all know, the house isn’t used to losing.

Already getting questions on the picture of me on the banner of this website:

• Did you Photoshop that?
• How did you get it to stick?
• What’s the symbolism (if any)?

In short, no it’s not Photoshop, it’s a real card.  I was at a photo shoot for my wife Hayley because she needed some new headshots post marriage/motherhood and the photographer, Michael Gomez (great guy-MEGA talented), was kind enough to squeeze me in after a gazillion shots of Hayley and Addy.  I brought a deck of cards for a prop just in case.  We shot a few with me holding the cards that
 turned out pretty cool including the one in this article.  The only problem was I felt uncomfortable with the cards in my hand. 

Or maybe too comfortable.  Both I guess.

Comes with the territory of having spent so many hours/weeks/years in casinos holding those things.  But it’s not the cards that ruin your life, it’s the guy holding them.

Even so, I asked if we could shoot one more, licked the back of the ace of diamonds and applied it "directly to forehead"  Some people that have seen it have instantly liked it.  A couple people at our publisher weren’t fans when I suggested it for the cover flap of the book.  On the surface, a smiling man holding two aces out seems like a great picture, but that’s not my story.  I had gambling on the brain.  I used it as half escape, half gun-to-my-head to avoid facing my fears and risking for good.

That’s why I really liked the poker-head pic, I didn’t look happy, but I still looked at peace.  Not to mention placing a card on your forehead is a mainstay of the kooky poker variation, Blind Man’s Bluff.  Funny, that was me- once blind, always bluffing…
 
BTW - I did not use this to stick the card to my head: