In Celebration...

Once upon a time, the immature musings of Dids and I were housed over at a site called eBloggy (no, I'm not linking to it, because it's SHIT). As any loyal reader is undoubtedly aware, about two months ago, eBloggy decided to die. That, and the ridiculously long time it took those jackasses to start everything back up, is what precipitated our move to these cozier surroundings.

Why do I mention this? Because eBloggy has finally gotten our archives back up, and we've added a link to those old posts over on the right. Take a peek and see how it all started. I have to warn you, though, that the template over there is hideous, and that in any of my original posts where I typed the thing out in Word before pasting onto the site (i.e., all of my posts), all of the quotation marks and hyphens have been replaced by question marks. Yes, it makes for annoying reading. Still, we recommend that you browse, if you hadn't before.

So, in honor and celebration of the return of The Old Midwest Bias, this post will be a "MWB Classic" of sorts. It's kind of like ESPN Classic, except without the funny hairstyles, short shorts, and Dick Schaap. So, because I feel like it, we're gonna re-run the first two posts ever on the MWB. Um, not counting "Stupid Boban Head." They're about last year's first couple episodes of the World Series of Poker. Enjoy. Please.


Okay, 'Zilla. Chew on this.

I feel like we would be remiss if we failed to talk about the premiere of the 2004 World Series of Poker on ESPN last night. Sadly, I was at the movies last night, and missed the first hour of coverage (some small buy-in, No Rimit Hold 'Em tourney), so maybe you can fill me in and share some of your thoughts on The Goofy Englishman Who Fell Ass-backwards into His First Gold Bracelet. I, alas, can not.

I did, however, catch the second hour, the final table of a low-limit 7-card stud tourney. This being my first foray into this year's WSOP coverage, I came in with numerous burning questions, not the least of which was "Will anything in this year's first night of coverage come close to matching the comedy gold provided by Robert Varkonyi in last year's first episode?" Between the "Varkonyi 2000" and "I knew it. I knew it was Aces, I knew it," not to mention all of his goofy mannerisms and, let's face it here, his general appearance, the guy had the "unintentionally hilarious dork" market cornered, swiping the title from Todd, at least for one night. My hopes were not particularly high that I would be treated to a similar display of weak card play and inept social skills.

Needless to say, I was not happy to turn on my TV and see Lon McEachern and Norm Chad staring back at me for the second year in a row. On the very first hand, McHoofleck uttered the words that I'm sure are now a part of a vast, nefarious plot to slowly drive me insane: "(So-and-so) raises it to 5000 chips" (or something like that). For the love of God, no one at the table has 5000 chips sitting in front of them. No one even has 1000 chips at this point either. Someone - well, pretty much all of them - has at least $5000 DOLLARS worth of chips, but no one has such an astronomical number of chips themselves! The chips have VALUES, Lon! They're WORTH MONEY! Four minutes into the telecast, and I was already shouting at my TV. This was either a great start or an awful one - I haven't quite made up my mind yet.

However, I was glad to see Ted Forrest sitting there at the final table. I've been a big fan of Ted's ever since he so thoroughly impressed me with his seemingly-infallible bullshit detector against the Completely Insane Alan Goehring in last year's WPT championship. So I was borderline-giddy to see him play again. "Borderline" giddy quickly became "flat-out" giddy when I got a closer look at Ted - or, to be more specific, when I caught a glimpse of the cheesy, cheesy mullet he's currently cultivating. Five more months at the rate he's going and we're seriously in Steve Perry territory. Good lord. When you think about it, though, it seems to be a perfect look for him at the tables. He's combining the appearance of a crappy 80s movie villain with the gambling sensibilities of Marge Simpson at a slot machine. All he needs is the pornstache. And maybe a blue tanktop. Plus, ever since Scotty Nguyen decided to lop off his greasy mullet early last year, we've been practically mulletless at the TV tables, and that just will not do. I won't stand for it, Todd won't stand for it, and I'm sure the American public won't stand for it either!

That's all I got for now. Talk to me, Dids.

-Jack Fu

Whats Up? W-SOP? Word.

I was happy to see that ESPN had a counter until it began yesterday. I was comforted by knowing how long until I got to see Norman Chad and his non-earlobes talk about something stupid. Which he did...repeatly. But the highlights were still Ted Forrest's wicked mullet and Men the Master being wasted. He wasn't quite Extra-Crispy Mark wasted, but still pretty tanked.

It was different seeing 7-card stud being played as a no limit game, made things kinda weird. I'll stick to no limit hold 'em. DAT'S NO RIMIT BABY!!! But with that terrible British guy winning the first event, somehow it evened out. When you don't know the difference between a spade and club, you probably have no right to be at a WSOP final table. However, he was and he won. Whatever.

The best part of the first hour was me walking back into the room and seeing Chris Ferguson holding a banana, not saying anything, and then the screen went to a graphic saying, "THE NUTS". No explanation followed. Which in some ways makes it even better. While I still had my mental picture of Fergy working on that banana until it nut flushed, they started talking about Dutch Boyd and his "crew" that want to take over poker. That got me thinking, they need a rival gang. It should be led by Ferguson and his posse of Bible Characters.

Chris "Jesus" Ferguson
John "The Baptist" Hennigan
Annie "Jezebel" Duke
Scotty "I'm a 60 pounds of irritating asian" Nguyen
Robert "Version 2.0" Varkonyi

I'll think of more later, but those were all bible characters. Anyway, it needs to be WWE style where for no reason players join groups, leave groups, or turn on the group. Varkonyi has to be involved bc he has a poker coach aka his manager that can be accused of cheating for him. Then one of Dutch Boyd's goons cracks him with a folding chair, and Moneymaker's dad continues cattle mating calls in the background. While Varkonyi is distracted, Dutch "Cajun Gum" Boyd reaches over and steals some of his chips. Then it's a free for "all in." Until it's all broken up by the ever present posse of random dealers, and normchality (just go with it) is restored. Lon does his best Jim Ross, "It's MAYHEM, somebody stop that wild man!!" Give them all intro music and I'm bruised and juicy just thinking about it.

-The Diddy