16 MAY 07: WALK WITH THE KINGS

Based on our e-mail, it seems someone took our advice about how to spend Mother's Day - and watched poker on television:

I WAS TICKLED TO DEATH THAT SHANNON ELIZABETH BEAT THE COSTA RICAN MADMAN HUMBERTO BRENES! ! ! !

If you're totally confused by this, let me explain. NBC has been showing the "National Heads-Up Poker Championship" on Sundays, over the last several weeks. It's a one-on-one invitational tournament with "64 elite players" - and I think Shannon Elisabeth is considered "elite" because she's the only young actress who hasn't been in rehab lately.

Shannon Elisabeth has been on an amazing roll at the National Heads-Up Poker Championship - winning four matches in a row, to reach the semifinal round. She seems to think it's because she read the book "The Law of Attraction." As if most single men wouldn't be attracted to her, anyway....

Last Sunday, Shannon Elisabeth indeed beat poker pro Humberto Brenes in the quarterfinals. Brenes is considered a very colorful player -- as he puts on Costa Rica jester hats, jumps around the table and picks at his opponents with a little toy shark. If Brenes was in the National Football League, he'd be fined at least $100,000.

So Shannon Elisabeth goes on to.... what? What's that you're saying? This is The Blog of Columbus, not the Poker Pow-Wow?? Well, have you considered Columbus has developed its own version of a "poker tour?" Those stiff-necked folks at the city government channel simply haven't discovered it yet, to show it to you.

Several Columbus restaurants and bars now have poker nights during the week, where apparently you can enter for free and play for prizes. Playgrounds Magazine has noted even Peach Bowl Lanes has a poker night - and hopefully the regulars realize a 6-10 is much easier to handle in bowling than in poker.

In fact, there's a club with Thursday night "hold 'em poker" within walking distance of my home -- a close enough distance that I think I could walk home safely with a jackpot, without anyone noticing.

I haven't taken that Thursday night walk to play poker yet -- but I'm now prepared to make a confession. I'm getting ready. I've been practicing my poker game for several weeks - although something tells me I'd do better walking over to that club for a karaoke contest.

I've been watching the pros play poker on television for a couple of years - because on cable TV these days, you can dial around and find a poker game at almost any hour of the day or night. Yes, poker has become the new "Law and Order."

The real-life poker practice sessions for me take place online, at Yahoo Games. But I should stop here and clarify one key thing. In case my Pastor's reading this blog, and he occasionally does - I'm NOT betting real money. It's all pretend, and "just for fun." The tithe check will be in the mail this weekend, as usual....

Unlike the TV poker games where players throw out raises of $5,000 or more, the Hold 'em Poker games at Yahoo are quite small. The most you can offer in any round of betting is 20 dollars. This truly lives up to the Georgia Lottery slogan about "playing responsibly."

Yahoo gives you a pretend bankroll of $1,000 to start its casino games. In the early going, I did fairly well in poker - reaching a high of about $1,500 on April 13. I had some up days and some down days. But the down days weren't so far down that I kept playing beyond 30 minutes at a time.

One of my happiest poker afternoons came April 19, when I was dealt a pair of queens - and then two more queens turned up on the table at "the flop." I hadn't been surrounded by so many ladies since I was somehow the only man invited to a dinner with single women in Atlanta 20 years ago.

(For the Internet addicts: you might say I had four awesome queens - or F.A.Q's.)

But sadly, I've had my biggest poker slump so far in the last week. I logged off May 7 with $1,011 - and quit Monday at $561. Maybe I should go find a different online game, which involves investing in Dow Jones stocks.

I think I lost so much at the poker table because I was up against aggressive players - people who don't care how much pretend money they lose. Hopefully these people are a bit more responsible with their credit cards....

After a drop of about 45 percent in my bankroll, I was due for a comeback - and as it happened, Tuesday was the day. In my first hand at the intermediate poker table, I made a full house with three queens and two threes and earned a fast 98 dollars. But I ended the session only up 45 - so Kenny Rogers was right in that old gambling song: you've got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

One side benefit of playing online poker is meeting and chatting with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. On Monday, someone alongside me actually had "Aflac" in his online name. Yes, I asked - but that person never typed in a message. So perhaps he was playing while on company time....

As I write this, my pretend wad of cash stands at $606. I certainly don't think I'm ready to drive to Biloxi, or board a gambling boat in Brunswick. But before long, I might be ready to take that short walk to the neighborhood bar - as long as one of the other poker players doesn't spike my diet cola.

Now let's cut the cards (so to speak), and check some more important items from Tuesday's news:

+ Columbus Council heard a proposal for a gates community near Rigdon Park. It would have 800 units for "active retired" people - and won't it be fun to see them racing motorized wheelchairs in the street on weekend afternoons?

+ Columbus Police reported a funnel cake machine was stolen from the new International Flea Market on Tenth Avenue. This is the most obvious sign yet that people miss Riverfest.

+ WRBL reported the sexual harassment suit by Russell County Administrator Leeann Horne-Jordan against former County Commissioner Tillman Pugh was dismissed. The case was about to start in federal court - but perhaps a judge finally noticed Pugh wasn't in office anymore.

+ The evening news interviewed Rome baseball announcer Josh Caray. He's the son of Atlanta's Chip Caray, the grandson of Skip -- and he's probably thankful he wasn't nicknamed Flip.

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: The jokes for today officially have concluded - but you're welcome to read on for some personal reflections on the news.)

BUT SERIOUSLY: At the very opposite end of the spectrum from playing poker, it was sobering to learn Tuesday of the death of Pastor/political activist Jerry Falwell. Admittedly, not everyone was sobered by it. One young woman in an office asked who he was, and another gave a one-word response: "nut."

A response like that shows how divisive Jerry Falwell could be. People who knew who he was had no middle ground about him. They either loved him for endorsing moral stands and conservative values - or they loathed him for being as "old-fashioned" as a basic male-female marriage.

Yet I look back on the life of Jerry Falwell and think I'm actually on middle ground. I agree with parts of his preaching and doctrines. I don't agree with other parts. And I wonder if he ever met a Democrat he actually liked.

I watched a variety of religious TV shows during my teenage years. Jerry Falwell's "Old Time Gospel Hour" was one of them, at 8:00 on Sunday mornings. At first he seemed old-fashioned to me as well, as he preached often against the Equal Rights Amendment. But he dared to quote the Bible for much of what he preached - and since local ministers around me didn't do that very often, that challenged my thinking.

(Our family actually was on the Jerry Falwell mailing list for awhile, as I ordered one of his free bicentennial Liberty Bell lapel pins. Sadly, I lost that thing -- and Falwell lost us, when he demanded a donation to continue receiving his newsletter.)

Jerry Falwell and other broadcast preachers helped mold the moral thinking I have today. But Falwell always struck me as toeing the edge of what a "minister" ought to do. He could come across as a Bible know-it-all, certain he'd never lose at anything he did. But he did that based on faith - and looking back, more of his big dreams came true than fell apart.

But Jerry Falwell finally went over the edge for me during the 1990's, when his weekly "Old-Time Gospel Hour" turned into one-hour infomercials for efforts to impeach President Clinton. When he quoted mysterious Arkansas State Patrol officers more than the Bible, something didn't seem quite right.

Jerry Falwell's weekly telecast now is called "Live from Liberty," and recent broadcasts on WYBU TV-16 suggest his son Jonathan will carry on the ministry he started. But modern history shows the sons of legendary preachers don't tend to be as successful as the fathers. Sons tend to be milder in their views -- perhaps realizing that warming up modern-day crusty honey bottles only melts plastic.

(Did you notice how the CBS Evening News handled Jerry Falwell's death Tuesday night? I was stunned to see it receive 13 minutes of newscast time - the entire first and last sections. If Dan Rather saw that, I hope a CPR specialist was nearby to revive him.)

One interview I saw of Jerry Falwell Tuesday night showed him wishing more pastors would be controversial, and speak their minds. I've known ministers with views just as strong as Falwell's -- but wishing no one outside the church building knew what they said.

Whatever your opinion of Jerry Falwell, he exercised both freedom of speech and freedom of religion as fully as he could. To him, the Bill of Rights was more than a historical document - it provided instructions for how to live as a U.S. citizen. Even if he didn't always like how some newspapers and TV networks handled freedom of the press....

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