All In

I wouldn't call myself a gambler, but I've been known to make a wager from time to time. I would say my betting style is fairly modest - I mainly play Blackjack, and I usually just move the chips around in a circle, all things considered, and count myself lucky if i got a few hours of good entertainment without losing a substantial amount of money. But there have been a few occasions when I've pushed the whole stack forward on a hunch, and I'd be lying to you if I said the outcome had anything to do with something other than just pure dumb luck on my part.

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One of the things I love about music: the moment when you hear a song for the first time, and it is just the perfect song for the moment. Something about the lyrics, the cadence, the tone of the singer's voice that is just so, like you can see the glimmer of a half-smile on his face, or a wistful stare. And you get that feeling that every excellent songwriter must long to achieve, that sense that "this song must have been written about the one I love."

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Take my wife, for instance. If you went back through my life, talked to the people that knew me in high school, my parents and sisters, drinking buddies from college and the Marine Corps - they would all have looked at Doc and said "No way, Shaw. Not in your wildest effing dreams." One young man in college, not knowing what he was talking about but hitting close to center mass just the same, remarked: "You know, if you got her to go out with you, that would be a victory for guys like us all over the world." That's the truth. 

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One of the things I love about Pandora: the way you can plug in a song you lie and get some really great music, not too many repeats, even fewer commercials. Just really good tunes that take you to the place you want to go. Hooking Pandora up in my car was one of the best things I ever did, i was so sick of Top 40 radio and too busy to make new mix tapes - er, CDs.. And on top of it, every now and again you hear a new song, not just from another album of an artist you already love, but a whole new song. And rarely, it is the song that you had been needing to hear, the one that was actually written about the one you love and puts every inexpressible thing you've been feeling and thinking into words, and puts those words to music, and rocks it out over your car stereo while you hurtle down the highway, grinning from ear to ear.

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Well it rained every day for a week / We had pots and pans and cans everywhere there was a leak

The sheetrock in the living room came down in one big sheet / on the couch, and the TV, and you and me

I tell you what we need to do / remember that above the clouds, the sky is always blue

If I was a betting man, I tell you what I'd do / I'd bet it all on me and you

We put every dime we had in that old car / but it's getting hard to count on 'cause it's getting hard to start

We're better off to walk these days if it ain't all that far / To the place we gotta be, you and me

I tell you what we need to do / remember that above the clouds, the sky is always blue

If I was a betting man, I tell you what I'd do / I'd bet it all on me and you

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I haven't had much inclination to gamble recently, these last 5 years since I've been married. When you realize you just won a gazillion bucks by by throwing all your chips on the woman of your dreams, stacking quarters on some cheap felt with people you don't know just seems like a waste of time. I'd rather go home and count my winnings from the big game.