Sometimes I get a convenience-store banana. I’m at my office and I get a sudden hankering for a banana. I know intrinsically that the bananas up at The Loblaws at Yonge and St. Clair are superior. If not actually tastier, the supermarket banana will certainly be more aesthetically appealing (excuse the pun, get it? a – peeling?), but moreover there will be less chance of indiscernible internal bruising. You have far less chance of getting a dud. The last thing you want to do is peel open a banana and find out it’s a lemon,right? We’ve all been there.

But I do it anyway. I go to the convenience store right beside my office because it’s just more… well… convenient. It’s closer, cheaper, and far less time-consuming.

And that’s how I now find myself in Verona, New York at The Turning Stone Casino awaiting the start of this afternoon’s 1500 dollar buy-in Heartland NLHE Classic main event.

It ain’t Vegas. It sure as hell ain’t Monte Carlo. (That’d be like going to Pusateri’s for your banana!), but it’s close-by and relatively easy to get to on short notice. And you know what? Now that I’m here, I can tell you that the bananas don’t look half bad.

I’m here with my friend Michael Redhill. Now this guy is impressive. First of all, how many guys (especially guys with a wife and two kids!) can you call up on a Friday morning at 11:30 AM and tell him that you’re thinking of heading down the highway to a poker tournament THAT AFTERNOON, and he’s at your office at 2:30, bags packed and ready to go? Not too many guys around like that anymore. And he didn’t even know where it was! He thought we were going to fucking Connecticut. That’s ten hours each way, and still he shows up, no questions asked. That’s either a very good friend or an incredibly compulsive gambler.

Not to mention that he’s a legitimate novelist. To clarify that for some of you, a novelist is a guy that writes books that are not about poker. And he’s serious. He’s won awards. And I’m not talking about the 1974 Forest Hill Hockey Association Most Improved Player Award (although that was a very proud moment for me, I must say). He won like the effing Giller Prize, or the Man Booker Prize, or The Isle Of Man Prize or some fucking thing. OK maybe he didn’t win, but he was nominated. Whatever, the guy is a real deal writer of long-form prose. Just so you know, that’s the kind of intellectual I hang with. Uses big fucking words too. And I often understand them. That’s how I roll, baby.

And let me tell you cruisin’ down here in the new convertible Beemer, sun shining down on my bald pate, with The Reverand Donnie McClurkin for inspiration, was no fucking chore. Well, other than the fact that Michael needs to stop to pee every fifteen minutes. That slowed us down a tad. (Personal note to Ruth: I promise I will never ever bug you about that again.) But the journey was smooth sailin’. In fact it was a dream. Speaking of dreams, we play later today. Keep ya posted.