Over the course of our four-year friendship, BJ Nemeth and I have probably spent a good nine hours of our lives, at least, debating the best way to abbreviate “big blind” as a unit of measurement.  

Whenever I think about what differentiates me from BJ the most when it comes to personalities, I think of this statement I told him in regards to this ongoing argument:

“You know BJ, the biggest difference between us is that you take pride in caring about this minutiae. And I hate myself a little bit that I can’t help but care so much.”

Providing more evidence that I am Generation Xer in a Millenial disguise, one of the first albums I became genuinely obsessed with was Schoolhouse Rock Rocks!, a series of Schoolhouse Rock covers by rock bands.  Better Than Ezra handled “Conjunction Junction”, Moby took “Verb: That’s What Happening” and made it his own.  My favorite Skee-Lo song is still his “Mr. Morton”, and my personal favorite of the covers is probably Pavement’s take on “No More Kings.”

I elected to showcase Blind Melon and their “Three Is a Magic Number” though because 1. It is kitschy and catchy all at the same time and 2. I really would guess more of you know Blind Melon over Pavement as well as “Three” over the American History ode to democracy.  The whole album is freaking awesome though, so enjoy this and I advise checking out more:

When composing a Tweet, ask yourself what purpose a hashtag serves before blindly hashtagging everything.

So I finally got around to watching “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” this weekend.  While there is certainly a diatribe to be written about why it took me so long to see such a charming musical, this isn’t that diatribe.

This is a diatribe about dance competitions.  Let me explain how these two things relate:

While watching the movie, I came to this scene.  It is one of the pivotal points of the picture. The Texas A & M Aggies defeated the Texas Longhorns in their yearly brawl. The prestigious alumni of the event plant to reward the seniors with a trip to the titular whorehouse.  This is the song they sing about how excited they are for the night:

As I watched the opening verse of this song, a thought came over me. “I know this song. Where do I know this song from?” I haven’t seen the show, “Aggie Song” isn’t exactly a standard in the Broadway catalog either. I knew it was from my childhood, but I couldn’t fathom how this song about going to sleep with prostitutes would’ve come up.

Then I had the moment of realization: A group of girls in my old dance studio once did a tap dance to this song.

The details quickly came back to me. They wore plaid shirts, cowboy hats, and white pants. Halfway through the song, I kid you not, the gals ripped their pants off, revealing leotards and suntan tights underneath.

I am not entirely sure their ages at the time, but my guess is they were between 14-17 years old. They were the oldest girls in our competition group, while I was the youngest by a margin. If you are unfamiliar with the reality show “Dance Moms” on Lifetime, you probably don’t know that competitive dance is about one step removed from child beauty pageants. In our competition circles, girls would do their routines for a season, dolling themselves up at local and regional events to win a spot in Nationals, held in the redneck mecca, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

At first, this seemed harmless enough. My sister and I both loved dance and showed a fair amount of promise at it, so when the dance studio decided to form a competition group, we got invites. Even without my two front teeth, six-year-old me was actually pretty cute and I racked up a few trophies with my ballet dance to “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from the musical “Oklahoma”.

The next year though, you will see that the perils of competitive dance were starting to become more apparent. Keeping with the “ballet dances from popular musicals” theme, I did a number to “Meet Me St. Louis”, complete with parasol.

I hope you can see how much make up I am wearing. This was during the period in the early 1990s where Kentuckians still hadn’t figured out that blue eye shadow should not be slathered on, and instead applied multiple layers of it preferably in a color identical to your outfit. This is also during the time where fire engine red was the lip color du jour, even if it clashed with your naturally red hair.

I look like I am enjoying myself and, at the time, I was. However, there were some far-reaching effects of this year of my life. First, I can’t really watch “Toddlers and Tiaras” or “Dance Moms” cause it is less “let’s point and laugh at the buffoons” and more “there are a disconcerting number of similarities between yourself and Honey Boo Boo.” Second, I can’t own eyeliner and whenever someone tries to apply it on my face, I have some sort of optical seizure. Our dance studio secretary, Miss Eleanor, did our make up for these things and her approach towards the cosmetic arts bore a strong resemblance to Mimi from “The Drew Carey Show”. Imagine a face like that coming at your eye with a sharp pencil and you can see why eyeliner might give a girl the heebie jeebies. By my last year of competition, I was developing into quite the little princess.

My friend Erin and I did a rather precocious duet to a song called “Polka Dots, Checks, and Stripes”, a children’s music anthem to the importance of individuality as well as the fun one can derive from mixing patterns in your wardrobe.  We actually did remarkably well with the routine, winning our category with ease every time and frequently getting in the top three for overall duets/trios, besting kids much older than us.  In a particularly fitting turn of events, the same dance teacher who thought it a good idea to choreograph a tap dance to a song about men eager to get their procreating on would frequently complain that the other trio of girls our age at the studio got snubbed for their jazz dance to “2 Legit 2 Quit” (Hey Hey!).

This photo was taken at awards, which means it was hours after we actually performed and I still appear to have more make up on than I wore to my senior prom.  I am also wearing a hat with a ribbon hot glued to it.  And that writing on the hat? That is done with sparkly puffy paint.  Please also observe the liberal use of the splatter paint technique too.  And the cuffed jean shorts.  I am a walking tribute to all that is wrong with female fashion in 1993.  Erin is sporting a perm, something she was told to get because our hair needed to match.  There was also quite a hullabaloo around the fact Erin was about six inches taller than me.

The following year, the dance studio broke the two of us up for those very reasons.  Erin was paired with another, taller girl with blonde hair and they did a duet to the Michael Jackson song from the movie “Free Willy”.  In order to find a girl anywhere close to my height, I was forced to partner with a seven year old.  I was 11 at the time.  We did a number to “Wherever We Go” from “Gypsy”.  

You know, the movie about the stripper with a heart of gold?

It was about then that I started to get burnt out on competitive dance.  My mom, who is the absolute antithesis of a stage mom, was also getting tired of the travelling, the costumes, the classes, and having to do things like hot roll her already curly-haired daughter’s hair.  

She drew the line when I was recruited to be in a company number of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.  Less than two years removed from my father passing away, the dance teacher with the Whorehouse tap dance routine told me I was going to play a zombie–effectively a dancing corpse.

My mom was quick to point out the potential psychological harm of making her daughter dress up like a decomposing corpse and prance around so soon after her father’s death and I was demoted to a bat instead.

I quit before I could ever learn exactly what kind of glittery hair and make-up would go with the bat costume.  I also never learned what kind of glittery made-up person I might have turned out to be.

Being from Kentucky, I am a sucker for groups that take a non-country song and give it a Bluegrass twist.  So when my favorite Bluegrass band covered what I think is my favorite Britney Spears song, I fell in love:

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check my cell phone.  Before I brush my teeth, make breakfast, or even sit up, I have to check Twitter.  

This is no one’s fault but my own.  I have become that mediated friend who genuinely can’t be away from her phone.  My college friends kind of hate me for it.  They glare out of the corner of their eye when they see me tapping away during a lull in dinner conversation.  They didn’t quite understand when I had to skip a wilderness wedding because I genuinely couldn’t chance not having an internet connection.

A couple of years ago during a trip to LA, the joke among the group was how absurd they found it that I claimed reading my Twitter feed was “work”.  "Hard at work little Twitter bird?“ While I think their stance has changed since, they didn’t understand that keeping tabs on the poker world via Twitter really was imperative in order to keep up with what was going on in the community.

I can only assume (hope?) this problem extends beyond poker.  The more smart phones, tablets, laptops, and social media seek to improve our lives, the more I feel tied to my job.  During the WSOP, I find it is only when I am asleep that I get to log off and, even then, I fully expect texts or calls to come in all but about two hours of the day.

Moreover, I don’t even feel like my Twitter account is always my own.  Caesars is relatively lenient in their social media policies, basically asking that, as an employee, I try not to publicly embarrass myself and to avoid criticizing the company, both of which seem like more than reasonable requests.  However, the nature of my job is where this Twitter friction arises.

Thanks to the small pool of poker media members and positions that have previously put me in poker’s public eye a fair amount, people within the community know who I am. They also know what I do.  

While I am certainly content to answer the occasional work-related Tweet on my personal account, one thing needs to be clear: it is my personal account.  I enjoy sending out WSOP-related stats and I like offering insight on the events from the floor.  I would also be lying if my social media profile didn’t have some influence on me getting the position I currently hold.

If you are wondering how difficult it could possibly be to deal with a few pesky Tweets about start times or complaining about structures, the Twitter harassment that stems from my job is worse than you think.  In the not quite seven months I have worked for WSOP, I have had an impostor on Twitter who told me I deserved to get raped in an alley, I’ve had someone send out 10-12 Tweets in a row assaulting my character for a WSOP-related issue in Britain I still don’t fully understand that involves a Partridge that neither resides in a pear tree nor rides around in a bus singing with their family, and at least once every couple of weeks someone gets on my case about the Circuit, the livestream, or some other relatively insignificant issue in the greater scheme of things.

I am not complaining. This is part of the gig and there are plenty of upsides that far outweigh these online nuisances.  I like getting feedback, positive and negative, and Twitter has that in spades.  Plus, every time I see what WPT Executive Tour Director Matt Savage and WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel have to put up with, I thank my lucky stars that my job and my Twitter account don’t go more hand in hand.

Here is something I don’t think some people fully understand–Matt and Jack’s Twitter accounts are theirs.  They aren’t managed by WSOP or WPT, they don’t get paid by the Tweet.  Yet, I see these two guys with seemingly endless patience answer just about every question that comes their way.

On occasion, they don’t though.  And every time they don’t because the question was abrasive, rude, uncalled for, or because they were off doing something like sleeping or spending time with family, I seem to see one person or another question their professionalism.

The action of blocking people on Twitter meets even more scrutiny.  The argument some pose is that it is their obligation to put up with people they would never tolerate meddling in their personal lives off the clock because their jobs and, in turn, their Twitter feeds need to be open to everyone at all times.  I guess I can understand in the sense that businesses don’t call block their customers.

But businesses don’t divulge their employees’ personal information like emails, phone numbers, and addresses either.  You see where I am going here…?

Am I being unreasonable to expect that my Twitter feed has boundaries? That I don’t have to answer every @ reply?  Or that I can even operate the @WSOP Twitter in business hours only?  I desperately need an "off” switch in this world that always seems to be on, but I don’t know if being constantly plugged in is just part of the bargain when it comes to my job.

These aren’t rhetorical questions. I genuinely don’t know where to draw the line.  I know the expectations for Jack and Matt are, in my mind, absurd.  To tell these guys how to RT, what to Tweet, and complain that, when someone harasses them on Twitter, they choose to block it rather than engage, is just way too much to ask.  If you don’t like what they Tweet or how they Tweet, don’t follow them.  No one is forcing you to follow them, so stop forcing them to not be able to walk away from the job at the end of the day and relax.

But I still haven’t figured out where and when to say my Twitter account is mine.  Opting to take part in social media implies you have to socialize, but if these are people I wouldn’t want to have my phone number, isn’t it fair to put up boundaries and not establish an all-hours channel to contact me about whatever issue you see fit and expect a response?

Liz Lemon got married this week.

She may be fictional, but this event, which played out on this week’s episode of “30 Rock”, has shaken me a bit.  Even though Liz Lemon isn’t a real person, I can’t help but have a visceral reaction to the nuptials of a character my close friends frequently compare to me.

The reason I earned the nickname “The Tina Fey of Poker” is not so much for any resemblance to Fey, but because the disheveled world of the haplessly single career-oriented Liz Lemon bears a strong resemblance to my own life.  We even made a “Jess and BJ” episode in which I “played” her and several other gags on our short-lived poker recap extravaganza came from the show, like fake boyfriend, astronaut Mike Dexter.

You would think a single girl who hopes to someday be married, like myself, would be happy to see her fictional counterpart tie the knot, but I found myself feeling mostly angry that the show took this turn.  Mary Richards didn’t get married.  Sally Rogers didn’t get married. Murphy Brown had a husband once, but it was in the fictional time before the run of the TV show. She got by just fine on her own.  

It sounds terrible to admit it, but I am just going to come out and say it–I don’t want Liz Lemon to get everything she wants.  Nay, I need Liz Lemon not to get everything she wants.  I need Liz Lemon to learn to be happy with her lot, much like she has the past six seasons.  She finds boyfriends, she tries to compromise, she realizes she is giving up too much, and goes back to being single.  

I don’t adore “30 Rock” because Liz Lemon provides me some sort of wish fulfillment. It is one of my favorite shows because I appreciate that it is one of the only portrayals of a nerdy girl on television that fully embraces what a nerd she is. We see the upside of Liz, which is that she is funny and self-deprecating and manages to oversee a TV show stocked full of crazy people, but we also see her readily admit she stayed home all weekend to watch Bravo reality shows and drinks white wine and Sprite with ice.  She isn’t glamourized, she isn’t idealized–she is about as realistic a portrayal of girls like myself I am going to find.

And realistically, Liz Lemon is not getting married to James Marsden.  While the wedding and Liz’s surprisingly poignant comments on marriage fit with her POV, I find both the spur of the moment nature of the wedding and the whole character of Criss to miss the mark.  In fact, Criss is basically a male version of the female archetype I have previously railed against, best embodied by Zooey Deschanel. An overly attractive nerd who seems to exist in some sort of fairy tale world in which things like finances, personal accountability, and the ability to accomplish basic tasks like crossing the street or buttering toast aren’t as important as they are here on Planet Earth.

There are instances in which I like an escapist fairy tale where the nerd girl wins over the dreamboat of a guy, don’t get me wrong. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have watched “Two Weeks Notice” 100 times.  But when I watch uptight Sandra Bullock win over playboy Hugh Grant, it is escapism. I know it is a fairy tale and I accept it for what it is.  Even “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” is a bit of a fairy tale, where we girls can pretend that we are pleased as punch to be alone in our sassy Minneapolis apartment and that our salary working in the local newsroom can somehow pay for an endless array of adorable and kitschy 1970s outfits.

I love Mary and I love Sandy, but I loved Liz most of all because she was the rare fictional heroine I could turn to without the pretense of fairy tales and wish fulfillment forms of entertainment.  Liz Lemon may be surrounded by absurd characters and storylines, but fundamentally, the character of Liz was so true to my life that I always viewed the show as a witty commentary…something to cheer me up about the fact that I may not get everything I want in life, but there is way to get through things with a smile on your face.  Now that my plucky, haplessly single Liz is married to a guy who once played a cartoon prince, I have to wonder if even that is just a fantasy.

I am a big fan of unusual and unexpected cover songs. I thought here would be a good place to share some of my favorites. We’ll see if I can keep this up every week.

This week, I introduce you to my latest obsession, Matt Alber, who made the pop dance tune “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” into an emo lament I can’t stop listening to:

I had a debate with a friend shortly before Thanksgiving on whether or not atheism is a religion.

You see, I am surrounded by a fair amount of atheists in my line of work and, as a theist, this tends to lead to some friction.  Your mind might be jumping to the conclusion that as a somewhat lax Catholic, I am the one telling them they are wrong.  On the contrary, I get preached to by atheists far more often than I get preached to by Catholics, by Pentacostals, by Mormons, or by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I endure so much preaching from atheists (I’m looking at you BJ Nemeth), that I often wonder if part of their doctrine is similar to religions that encourage believers to spread the word.  I’ve told BJ more than once that I fully expect him to start going door-to-door, ringing bells to proclaim to home owners “You know there is nothing, right?”

If you don’t believe in God or the afterlife, more power to you.  If it makes you happy, who am I to judge?  I don’t even mind the preaching.  I understand that if you believe in something or the absence of something strongly, you feel compelled to share it.

There is one point where the aforementioned atheist friend and other atheists lose me though:

When they claim atheism is not a religion.

On the surface, I understand this argument.  Rejecting theism, the belief in god or gods, is choosing not to believe in what is often the defining trait of a religion.  However, there are several religions that do not require belief in a deity, like Wiccan, Taoism, Scientology (stop rolling your eyes), and some sects of Unitarianism all have a belief system absent of a deity.

So now it is time for me to be that annoying girl that whips out the dictionary to prove a point.  Here are the five definitions of “religion” as listed on Dictionary.com:

So, save for possibly the fourth definition, I am not seeing how atheism doesn’t apply.  The atheists I know hold the belief there is nothing and it dictates how they go about their everyday lives, they all seem to agree about the lack of a God, and, according to recent research, their numbers are growing by the day.

The thing about religion is that it extend beyond God.  Religions are cultural institutions, social constructions, and imbued with influence from aspects of society that have nothing to do with heaven, hell, or a higher being.  At its core, a religion is a belief system.  Now, while atheists may contend the lack of belief in a God is not a belief, I’m not sold.  Hearing atheists talk, the more I am convinced this belief in nothing is not all that different from belief in something in that they draw the same strength to get through life from their position that I draw from mine.