Over the years I have accumulated a list of peeves and aggravations long enough to make that old curmudgeon Andy Rooney look like Mary Sunshine by comparison. And not all of my annoyances even come from poker. Let me pick a few at random.
Take the business of printers, for example. You find one on sale for $49. What a bargain! Sure, until it's time to replace the ink and you discover that each new cartridge will cost you $59!
Even worse, a while back I was notified that I'm a participant in the settlement of a class-action suit involving the company that manufactures my printer. The suit charges that its printers indicate that cartridges are out of ink when in fact there is still plenty left.
That in turn brings us to the business of class-action suits themselves. The law firms pursuing this lucrative area of litigation collect billions of dollars, while the victims, if they're lucky, might get only 11 cents each as their share of a settlement. (Well, OK, in the printer suit, it's supposed to be $45, but let's see if I get it.)
Another thing that bugs me are "rebates." Let's look at that "bargain" $49 printer again. You discover, in type so small it would require the Mount Palomar telescope to read, there's the qualification: "after $200 rebate." What's with these rebates, anyway?
Why can't you just pay the advertised price? First, you have to pay tax on $249 for something that supposedly costs only $49.
Then, after you get the thing home, you have to read several pages of instructions on how to mail in your request for a rebate, which is supposed to be sent to you in three months. Why the wait? At the very least, the company is collecting interest on your money for all that time. But I'm also sure that they depend on your forgetting about the rebate altogether. Then, suppose that you
do mark your calendar and call the company three months later when your check hasn't arrived. You're put on hold, go through a half-dozen representatives, and are finally told you should have included some nearly invisible little UPC bar code buried in the packaging. "Do you still have that bar code, sir?"
"No, of course not."
"The receipt?"
"No."
"Sorry, sir." Click.
Has anyone in history ever collected on a rebate offer?
OK, now that I've vented about a few selected pet peeves, let me touch on one that's more annoying than all of the above put together.
That aggravation is known as Action Al.
I've written time and again about how Al keeps tracking me down to foist on me his latest "hysterical" (read, idiotic) column idea. I realize I should be more tolerant. After all, he's a friend trying to help me. But, as the saying goes, with friends like that, who needs enemies? And I assure you, Action Al's hallucinations are among the very few things I have never needed to make up or exaggerate in my columns.
Recently, I got an urgent e-mail from him. He had not one, but
two great new ideas. He said that he lost my phone number (thank God), so please call him. I should have known better, but since Big Denny had to skip town for a while, I was running low on column topics.
Al was pathetically happy to be able to tell me about his brainstorms. "Say, Maxey," he began, "are you familiar with the
X-Men movies?"
I said I wasn't. I like to watch X-rated movies, but only when the "X" derives from the women in the film, not the men. He explained that X-Men were comic-strip mutant superheroes, each of whom had some special ability. "You could write a column casting different poker players teaming up like X-Men, each with a supernatural ability, depending on what the player is known for," Al gushed breathlessly.
"Like who and what?" I asked, already confused and already sorry I had phoned him.
"Well, like Howard Lederer. He's known as 'The Professor.' Endow him with supernatural mental powers."
"Oh, that's falling-down funny. Who else?"
"Phil Hellmuth. He would have the ability to fly."
"Why?"
"Well, he's always flying off the handle," Al responded, laughing uncontrollably at his "witticism."
On a roll now, Action Al began rattling off other names. "Give John Bonetti witchcraft powers. He's famous for cursing, so give him the ability to put curses on other players. Or, take Phil Ivey. With that scary stare of his, you could make him into Laser Man."
I listened for as long as I could before finally cutting him off. "I get the picture, Al. I'll think about it. What's your other brilliant idea?"
"My other idea is, you could do a spooky column. Have a bunch of players staying in a haunted house, playing in a tournament.
Then, as each player gets knocked out, he dies, and the last player alive wins. You know, like in that movie,
And Then There Was One."
My patience was ending. "Al, that movie was based on a book by Agatha Christie called
And Then There Were None. Everybody dies. While there are some players I wouldn't mind killing off in print, I don't think they would appreciate it. And it wouldn't be remotely funny."
"Well, have them die in funny ways, then."
It suddenly dawned on me that Al had lost it completely. Ghost house tournaments and X-Men poker players! (And no, I am
not making this up!) There is a cosmological theory that unseen parallel universes may exist in other space/time continuums, and I began to wish for an X-Man with the power to send Al to one of those other universes. As I thought about it, though, I realized it was more likely that Al himself must have originally come from one of those mysterious places, and then the lyrics to an old Beatles song sounded in my head: "Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged."
In any event, please don't look for a column based on either of Action Al's nutty ideas anytime soon. My standards may not be very high, but even I have some.
