The Bryan Bridge Over The Niobrara River In Northcentral Nebraska

   North-central Nebraska is comprised of seemingly endless miles of low-rolling grass-covered sand hills (not dunes - they are known as the Nebraska Sand Hills, get that right) interrupted by valleys and canyons and a large variety of wetlands which include small lakes, streams and marshes. Those wetlands are there due to the Ogallala aquifer, one of the world's largest freshwater aquifers*.

   There is also a fairly long river flowing from eastern Wyoming / western Nebraska east to the Missouri river at the junction of Nebraska and South Dakota. This is the Niobrara river, and most of the water in that river also springs (yeah, that was intentional) from the Ogallala aquifer.

   While the river is considered low-flow, and there are places where it's barely a shallow stream, it does need to be spanned by bridges in several areas. One of those areas is just south of Valentine, Nebraska, along U.S route 20 (considered state highway 20 in Nebraska)*. 

   In the early 1930's a pin-connected steel truss cantilever arch bridge* was built over the Niobrara river in an area now known as the Niobrara National Scenic River*. The bridge was designed by Josef Sorkin of the State of Nebraska's Division of Bridge Design, who (when interviewed by the National Register of Historic Places representative) stated that he chose that specific design for that specific spot because it was aesthetically pleasing, blended in well with the surroundings, and was economically sound for the building site (not his exact words, but, you know, paraphrasing).

   The bridge was selected by the American Institute of Steel Construction as the Most Beautiful Steel Bridge in Class C (Class C means the bridge cost less than $250,000 to build) for the year 1932.

   It is indeed a beautiful bridge IMHO, and served the community well as the primary span over the Niobrara river in that location along route 20 for 65 years, until it was replaced by a less attractive bridge along a rerouted section of route 20 approximately 2,000 feet to the north in June of 1997.

That is a seriously attractive Art Deco / Arts & Crafts font used on that plaque

    The less attractive bridge that replaced the Bryan bridge for everyday use along a rerouted route 20

    The span - notice where the two cantilevered arches meet in the middle held in place by a single pin.

                                 The Niobrara river, view from the bridge looking west

                Twenty U.S. tons...that's still the current fully loaded legal weight for 53 foot trailers.

   The Bryan bridge was named after the then sitting Governor of Nebraska, Charles W. Bryan - a nice tribute to a man who had the responsibility of leading the state during the early years of the great depression (1931 - 1935) and managed to reduce taxes, limit state spending, and still see the economy flourish.

   The section of what was once state route 20 that the Bryan Bridge is located along is now known as River Road, and can still be used to drive across the river.

* There is a lot that can be written about aquifers, but I'm trying to stay on topic here, so you'll have to look it up yourself.

*There is a lot that can be written about U.S. route 20, but I'm trying to stay on topic here, so you'll have to look it up yourself. 

    

*There is a lot that can be written about steel truss cantilever arch bridges , but I'm trying to stay on topic here, so you'll have to look it up yourself. 

*I'm going to assume you're catching what I'm dropping by now.

The Best Happens Best When You Make It Happen

    Today, this very day, may be one that you single out as a fond memory at some point in the far, far future.

    People single out specific periods of time when they wax nostalgic primarily because those times were good - not everyone though, some people seem to like dwelling on the bad ol' days for whatever reasons.

   Me, I'm one of those who enjoy recalling the best of times, as I'd rather smile than frown while reminiscing.

   That right there is what keeps me going to events I find exciting and visiting places of interest. It's what keeps me developing relationships with people and undertaking new and intriguing endeavors.

    Because I do not want to become an 85 year-old broken-down curmudgeon who sits around and cannot recall anything but a past of dull days that repeat each other ad infinitum.

  

The Samuel Bak Museum: Learning Center, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

    A couple of months ago I was once again in Omaha, Nebraska. This trip was more for pleasure than business, and it being such I was able to visit a few of the museums in the city. 

   The one I visited that made the biggest impression on me more than any since my first visit to the Louvre was the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, located at 2289 South 67th street in the very heart of Omaha. 

   Samuel Bak's art is striking for far more than his skill and ability as a painter, or even his incredible capacity to project mood and sentiment on a two dimensional canvas. The sum of his physical, emotional and mental capabilities far exceed the whole, and there is a readily understandable reason for that.

   His life's experiences, what he has had to endure, survive, and finally thrive in spite of. It's flat out beyond the ken.

   Samuel Bak is a 93-year old survivor of the Holocaust. He was born in 1933 in what was then known as the city of Wilno, Poland, but had been known previous to WWI as the city of Vilnius, Lithuania, and by 1939 was again known as Vilnius, Lithuania.  

   In 1941, when the Nazi army rolled into Vilnius, he and his family were evicted from their home and ordered to live in the Vilna Ghetto, a small area in the old Jewish quarter of Vilnius. 

   Samuel had been known for his talent as an artist since early childhood, and at the age of nine while living in the Vilna Ghetto, the first exhibition of his work was produced.

   The Nazi's had quartered a reported 12,000 people into the Vilna Ghetto, an area that had formerly housed 4,000 people, with the expectation that the overcrowding would result in unsanitary living conditions that would result in easily spread diseases and illnesses that would eventually decimate the population.

   They were half right. Illness and disease did indeed kill upwards of half the inhabitants of the Vilna Ghetto, but that did not satisfy the Nazi régime. When it was determined by the Nazi leadership that only the most skilled workers would be spared to be used as slave laborers, the extermination of the remaining Jews began in earnest with a reported 3,000 Jews killed on November 5th of 1941 alone.    

   By 1943, when it was becoming apparent that the Nazis were beginning to lose the war, the last of the dwindling Jewish population in the Vilna Ghetto sensed that the end for everyone was near. Young Samuel Bak was chosen by two Jewish elders to become the guardian of the Pinkas (the official record of the Jewish community) with the hope that Young Samuel and the record would somehow survive the war.

   Samuel Bak and his mother found refuge in a Benedictine convent with the assistance of Maria Mikulska, a Catholic nun. Despite her courageous efforts however, Samuel and his mother were both soon deported to a forced labor camp, from which they eventually were able to escape and again find shelter at the Benedictine convent, where they were able to stay until the liberation of Vilnius by the Red Army in July of 1944. 

   The Jewish population of Vilnius before the Holocaust has been estimated at 60,000 to 80,000. The number that survived the war, including Samuel Bak and his mother, is placed at 250. Even today, in a city that numbers over 600,000 inhabitants, the Jewish population is less than 1,000.

    The Jerusalem of Lithuania has truly never recovered.

   That Samuel Bak and his mother survived the Holocaust is incredible. The following years, when they went from resettlement in Poland to the American-occupied zone of Germany then to Israel, is another extraordinary tale. Suffice to state that Samuel Bak learned how to survive in the very belly of the beast.

    Eventually, after art studies at both the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and the École Nationale Superieure Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then residing for various lengths of time in Italy, France, Switzerland and Israel, Samuel Bak and his wife moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1993 and have become naturalized U.S. citizens.

   He continues to paint and educate to this day. Here are a few pictures of his works that are on display at the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center. 

                                 Target Revisited, 1996 Oil on Linen approx. 63 X 78 inches

Close by, 2015 Oil on Canvas approx. 30 X 40 inches

Icon of Loss, Identity, 2008 Oil on Canvas approx. 48 X 60 inches

                       After the Outcome of Peace, 2013 Oil on Canvas approx. 24 X 36

Composition With Banana In F Minor (Between Gray & Highly Tinted)

 

   He got his hands around the throat

                    The fat bloated mid-afternoon three-cocktail-hour lunch throat

                    Of the persuaders that decided the public wanted good looks

                    Far more than they wanted quality or efficient performance

                                                   No one wanted to think anymore

                                                   Therefore they weren't

So they repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated 

             The message

                    And the message was, "This will fulfill your wants and needs"

So buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it

             Until your wallet bleeds

Andrew's style came of age 

                When the style over substance transition was engaged

While creating art for a living wage 

           He drew inspiration from the comics page

The galleries decried what he was doing was better done by Roy and Blake

       Muriel playfully suggested he should just print his own money 

                   Proclaim his love of currency is solely for arts sake

                                  He had learned the art of emotional manipulation 

                                  At the feet of the New York mad ad men

                            His muse was lucre then

                                   Floriano taught him how to screen

   

                                            When galleries declared his banknotes as worthless

                               While sipping soup he decided to try his luck in Los Angeles 

            Where his cans-vases met with disdain and he was proclaimed recusant

                               Which he relished as those words translated as original

                                            And no one was confusing him for Rembrandt

                                          A December show in Cali but still the critics squealed

                      So like a white Christmas in SoCal that show was cancelled 

                           The blow was softened however when ten canvases were sold

                   Nothing screamed success better than when the coffers swelled

           So he screened and screened and screened and screened and screened

                                                                                      Marilyn and Elvis

                And the reaction was, "This is fulfilling our wants and needs"             

     So they bought them, bought them, bought them, bought them, bought them

                                              He opened up a factory with the proceeds

                                                          He set his mind on the minimalist approach

               The dry dramatic middle class grey-three-piece wool suit approach 

               Of the seekers of the publicly acceptable but avante garde images

                     Far more for the association with decadence than appreciation   

                                                  No one wanted to feel anymore

                                                                   Therefore they didn't

                                                  

 

                                                   

  

The Indicators

She never imagined the relationship could turn violent

Much like that of her parents

It crushed her when she realised that she was just like her mother

And the man she had married was so much like her father

They fought and it felt like she was reliving her childhood

Watching them fight over matters little and matters large

Neither of them capable of apologizing or expressing regret

For words screamed in anger or actions taken with bad intent

Just like her, just like him

Those promises she made that she wouldn't let it happen

She couldn't, wouldn't believe she had ended up like this

Staring into a mirror with her face (and life) a mess

The Tree Fell & Everybody Heard It

 

Last Night I Dreamed Of Snakes

 Rarely do I remember a dream this distinctly.

In the dream I was standing in a street - just off the sidewalk a foot or so, not in the center of the street.

And I was watching a large snake, maybe six feet long and about as thick as a spray paint can, crawling it's way up the sidewalk with what looked like a pastry in it's mouth - like, a maple bar or some such treat.

I watched as the snake crawled up to a patch of grass at the end of the sidewalk and joined three other snakes that were also holding pastries in their mouths.

All four of the snakes were about the same size, and they were lined up parallel to one another as if in some snake military formation.

As I looked at the snakes one of them dropped the pastry that it was holding and looked over to me and said, "These pastries are not yours, they are ours."

And that was it, the whole dream that I had last night, or at least what I recalled with an odd clarity when I woke up this morning.

The Big Storm On The Night Of August 22nd Over The Eastern Plains Of Colorado (& Western Plains Of Kansas)

   Driving northbound along a two lane county road somewhere near the Colorado / Kansas border last Saturday night, and in the distance looking west I could see a thunderstorm actively forming on the far horizon.

   As the storm was to the west and I was driving north, I decided to pull over and watch the storm as it rolled across the prairie -  it looked like it was going to be fairly big and powerful, and it might be worth trying to get a few lightning pics.

   Bolts of lighting shot from the heavy, low-lying clouds that hung over the Prairie as I got out of the car to find a good spot to take pics with my cell phone camera. It was still hot - the temp had hit the mid '80's in the afternoon, and it was still in the mid '70's when I pulled over.

   As I was primarily interested in the electrical activity of the storm and how the lightning bolts lit up the clouds (and the pitch black Kansas night) I really didn't notice anything else about the storm.

   The low rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance, and by my calculations (...one Mississippi, two Mississippi...all the way up to 70 Mississippi's, then divide by 5...) I was at least 15 miles from the storm.

     It wasn't raining where I parked, and the wind was very mild, so I did not give any thought to being caught in a downpour or anything like it. I just stood outside the car and took picture after picture, hoping to catch lightning.

   Mostly I only saw and got pictures of the flashes - all the bolts seemed to be either behind, above, or in the storm itself.

   There were a few single bolts every few minutes though, and I did get a few shots of those, which I discovered after I got back in the car to review the shots I had taken.

   I also discovered something else in the pictures though, something a lot less visually appealing, at least to me.

   What I was seeing, or at least thought I was seeing, was a funnel taking shape in the middle of the thunderstorm

   The intensity of the storm seemed to increase a little as I sat back in the driver's seat and reviewed the pics I had just taken, and even though I was still calculating the storm to be at least 10 to 15 miles away, I was getting a bit concerned with what I saw forming - at this point I was 100% sure it was a funnel.

   Not only was a funnel forming, the clouds appeared to getting closer to the ground, and the lightning was getting brighter with every crackling bolt.

   The bolts of lightning also started moving horizontally, becoming sheet lightning, an indication that the storm had become a severe thunderstorm - which is where tornadoes are formed.

   Not good.

   

   It was clearly time for me to skedaddle, which was made more apparent in the next few seconds as the blots of lightning started turning the night into day.

   The bolts that didn't light up the entire horizon revealed that the clouds were getting lower and lower still. Like an idiot rubbernecker passing a fender-bender, I started out driving away from the storm slowly, and all the while nervously looking back.

   I was acting like an adrenaline junkie, feeding off my own fear.

   It is bizarrely riveting watching a severe electrical storm raging full on. It took all of my will to focus on the road ahead and start driving away from what could be a potentially life-threatening dangerous situation.

   There was clearly a funnel taking shape out there, and it was getting closer to the ground with every passing second.

   The flashes were also becoming brighter and bigger - my calculations for the storms distance from me were now in the 5 to 10 miles range. This was shaping up to be almost as fear-inducing a storm as the one BWB and I drove through in '03, when we were returning to Colorado from a day trip to Alliance, Ne.

   I'm no storm chaser though, if anything, I'm a storm flee-er.

   As I drove away from the storm it started to rain, at first just with a smattering of heavy drops but within a few short minutes it began to come down hard and fast.

   It wasn't too long until the hard rain turned to pebble sized hail. 

   Visibility became an issue and soon I was literally driving by following the suddenly blurry yellow line that divided the road. I drove like that for about 10 minutes before I was clear of the rain and hail and could actually see the road. 

   It was another 10 minutes or so before my heart stopped beating like Keith Moon attacking his toms and I could breathe regularly again.

   

Reflecting Upon A Brief Relationship Between Two Financial Anarchists Who Like To Play Banjo Kazooie

He's prone to handing poor downtrodden sods a dollar

Because he's a deep believer in faith, hope, and charity

                                                  Those are the rudimentary requirements, he swore

        To living a righteous, deliberate and unrehearsed life

He's been walking the straight and particularly narrow

Ever since he heard the great and glorious word

                                      That saved him from the evils of pilates and acting

         Elevating his consciousness from banality and strife

He whistles while he works and listens to Marlowe

All the while calculating how long it would take him

                      To memorize all the lyrics on Angelic 2 The Core by Feldman

       While cutting through a frozen banana with a rusty butter knife

                                           Ooh Mao Mao

                                        Zedong Mao Mao

                               Falling asleep on the dance floor 

                                    Bicycling to Pao Pao

She's got him on at least three charges of using trigonometry

To seduce a thrice-divorced matron he met at the automat

                                             A woman of high-standing though low morals

         Who claimed to be great in geocaching but really lousy as a wife

She's been known to use caressing a well-used cheeseboard 

As a means to gathering insights while meditating

                                 Being as how it had been cleaned with potato whiskey      

         By an under-assistant barber found running down a Saharan saif

She cannot afford to be out in public without her trusty blue apple

It helps to soothe her mind when she's feeling a little saudade

                            Like a butterfly she deftly plays the hydrocrystalophone   

        Much to the delight of both the woefully wealthy and offensively rife 

                                             Ooh Mao Mao

                                         Zedong Mao Mao

                            Falling asleep on the dance floor

                                      Bicycling to Pao Pao

                 

It's National Photography Day! Whoo-Hoo!

    Yes folks, it is National Photography Day. A grand and glorious day indeed! Somewhat better than National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day (which was last week, btw), but not quite as noteworthy as International Whiskey Day (that's March 27th).

   To celebrate, I did what I do most every single day - I took some pictures. Here are a few from my walk around the reservoir this afternoon:

   Slap me on the  ass and call me Galen Rowell.

How Schools Inadvertently (Or With Malicious Subtlety?) Encourage Innocent People To Join Cults*

    It's the class projects.

   That's it, TLDR right at the get go.

   Kids are subdivided into smaller groups and told to work together as a group in order to accomplish a compulsory goal.

   And if you, as a kid, reject the idea of having to be in a group in order to succeed, you are written up for it, as in "doesn't play well with others."

   That right there is the first glowing ember of cult recruitment. 

   As kids progress from grade to grade, the group projects become more and more important grade-wise, and participation is closely monitored.

   "C'mon Jonesy, where's your school spirit?"

   Until, eventually, you are being dinged on your report card for not participating, and in the comments section your teachers start writing "not a team player, does not exhibit a desire to cooperate with others."

   We will teach you how to be one with your fellows indeed.

   At the college level it amps up to eleven making it a graduation requirement, essential to the actual awarding of the degree you so assiduously have been working toward by requiring you to volunteer with some group or other. 

   Of course, the college labels it "community service" and states that it's necessary in order to develop valuable life skills and may even be beneficial for your career progression, but the truth about community service is it's just cult prep.

   Take a look around you and do a little research into how cults recruit, and then tell me I'm wrong.

*Look, I'm being half-assed sarcastic here...let's not take anything I write too seriously, eh? 

A Time & Place Best Not Discussed

The morning walk was going as uneventfully as ever

Until a woman walked up and said "Didn't we know each other in '94?"

In over twenty years of morning walks the total times anyone 

Had ever said anything to him at all

Equaled a grand total of, well, never

Staring intently at her face as if it were an unusual flower

Wondering if maybe she had mistaken him for the guy who lived next door

He repeated the question to himself and replied

"If we did that would mean we were locked up in the same psych ward"

The woman seemed to stop breathing when she heard that 

And then laughing said, "Well, now I'm quite certain that we did."

Which, if you factor in that he now was living seven states from there

Meant that a random coincidence of geography was afoot 

The chances of such a meeting had to be a phenomenal stat

The woman stared at him and realised he was being serious

As he stared right back with almost irrational intensity

Trying to remember a time he had spent years working to forget

Which made his efforts an exercise in futility 

"I must apologise," He said with courteous grace

"For I cannot rightly recall you or your name at this moment"

The space between them seemed to widen a little

And she spoke an apology with a hint of sadness

"My mistake, I thought I recognized your face"

After slight mutual hesitation they both resumed

Their walking in opposite directions on the same path

Both leaving the presence of the other with the same thought

That sometimes it's best not to revisit an old wound

                               

The Hardships Of The Laboring Classes

Quitting Is For Winners

    I saw a decal on a car bumper the other day that stated "Quitting Is For Winners" and due to the fact I was driving along behind said car on a fairly hazardous road, I was not able to get a picture.

   I was able to get a picture of the road I was on (see above) because I quit driving, put the vehicle in park, and got out to take a picture, even though the car that was sporting the decal had long since driven out of eyesight.

   The picture I did take is fairly nice, what I would call a "winner," so yeah, in certain circumstances, quitting is definitely for winners.

   Which I believe I have seen elaborated upon on signs somewhere - signs that say "If you find yourself stuck in a deep hole, quit digging," and "If your job requires you to lie, quit now." and so on.

   Now that I've been thinking about it for a long minute, several other examples of when quitting is the best way to be a winner have sprung to mind, such as when you are reading a dull book with a lousy plot and no character development - just skip to the last few pages, find out how it ends, and then go out and find a better book to read.

   Same advice applies to bad television shows and movies. Your time is pretty damn valuable, don't give it over to undeserving tripe.

   Heck, if this little diatrible I'm putting together is boring you, quit reading it. Respect yourself and use your time, resources, and energy for whatever you find fulfilling or at least interesting. 

   Hmmm...that is advice I should heed myself. I'm outta here, maybe I'll change my front brake pads or some such more important (and productive) chore.

   

The Lure Of The Thrill Of The Stage

   He said his biggest thrill in life had been the two years he spent trying to break into comedy, which took all of us by surprise. 

   We had been sitting at the small table in the bar located across the street from the restaurant which had become our usual Sunday evening gathering spot, and the question of the night was "What is the biggest thrill you have ever experienced?"

   All of us had answered with a singular event - sky-diving, solo sailing between several Hawaiian islands, climbing Mt Elbert, the birth of a first child, going on a dive bomb run in a fighter jet, and becoming a published writer. 

   TCR was the one who answered with trying to break into comedy. Most of us had known TCR for at least the past decade, and none of us had ever known about his foray into comedy.

   So he pretty much had our collective undivided attention as he elaborated on his biggest thrill.

   He started off by explaining that it was at a time in his life when he didn't have much going on - he had dropped out of college for the third time (all three attempts at a higher education had been at different colleges), was living by himself in a studio apartment, and hated his job as a shuttle bus driver at a large amusement park.

   Pursuing comedy as a career was, he said, something he had thought about since his high school days, when he had dated a girl who was way out of his league but had told him she went out with him because he was funny.

  So five years after that one girl had made that comment to him he finally found the courage to get up on stage at a local comedy club's open mic night and spout off a few jokes and wisecracks.

   He told us that the first experience was fairly innocuous, but he did get a few laughs, and most importantly, he wasn't booed off the stage.

   Furthermore, he said he met another comedian that night who asked him how much time he had spent preparing his material, and when he told that fellow comedian that he hadn't spent any time preparing his material, that he had just got up on the stage and winged it, the guy nearly fell out of his chair.

   That fellow comedian recommended that he stop winging it and start preparing at least 15 minutes of material that he could recall without thinking, as the well runs dry pretty quickly when you rely on the sporadic funny bits you can come up with on the fly.

  Realising the truth he was being told, he said he then started writing down everything and anything he could remember saying or experiencing that was even remotely funny, and that he would spend hours putting it all into a cohesive routine he could readily recall.

  He elaborated that, as it was in the time when television was limited to three, maybe four channels, and you watched whatever the channel masters wanted you to watch, his only exposure to practicing comedians was limited to whoever Johnny Carson or Tom Snyder was giving a few minutes to, or to occasional visits to Comedy clubs when it was open mic night or when he could snag an opening slot or get comped a seat.

   Saturday Night Live was a show he watched religiously, along with a few other variety shows of the day such as the Carol Burnett show and Shields & Yarnell.

   Albums, he said, was where he was able to hear the great comedians - he told us of the hours he spent scouring flea markets and garage sales for old albums by Comics such as Newhart, Bishop, Pryor, Wilson, Diller, the Smothers Brothers, Rickles, Cosby, Bruce, Rivers, Foxx, Youngman, Warren - even the Firesign Theater gang.

   Those albums, he claimed, were his textbooks for comedy school.

   With somewhat of a wistful look he told us that It took him a few months of listening and repeating and showing up at open mic nights to practice performing until he felt confident enough to take his act on the road and see if what he had would play in Peoria, and so he did,

   For almost two full years he said he traveled around the country, living out of his car or staying in cheap motels, working as an opener or a middle/second act to earn $25 to $40 a night, and sometimes as much as $100 to $200 if he got on a long weekend bill - which would be Thursday through Sunday and usually require 7 or 8 thirty minute routines.

   He paused his story for a few long seconds after that revelation, then continued by saying that, after nearly two full years of non-stop travel and performing, he was not only broke and worn-out, but he had an epiphany.

   And that was, he almost looked ashamed to admit, that not only did he not have the stage presence or charm that most of his contemporaries had, he was also not anywhere near as funny as any of them.

   At that point a few of us looked at him with expressions of disbelief regarding what he had just related, and KAP, with her usual blunt (though not crass) manner, asked TCR if he had ever met up with anyone during those two years who actually made it.

   TCR nodded his head affirmatively and said he had shared the same stage as Barry Crimmins at a club in Boston that Crimmins owned, and an Irish comedian named Dave Allen who smoked like a chimney but was probably the funniest person he ever met - never got big in the states though (which was obvious, as none of us had ever heard of him).

   KAP followed up that question by asking if he had met anyone that they had actually ever heard of, and TCR nodded his head again and said that, while he did open for a few comics that either were big or got big, and listed Gilbert Godfrey along with Barry Sobel among them, he said he never got to actually hang out with any of them. 

   We all kinda nodded our heads after that in a mutual silent agreement that that was most likely because TCR wasn't now and probably wasn't then the most sociable person to be around - he was a fairly quiet guy and for him to claim that he once made a go out of being a comic...well, it's not that we didn't believe him, but we all were thinking it was quite the stretch.

   Finally, RBG asked TCR to tell us one of the jokes from his routine, and after a few seconds, TCR cleared his throat and said that he always got laughs with this one:

   "The other night I played poker with a few of my friends and it did not go very well for me. I had to go home and tell my wife to pack her bags because I'd lost her to Jimmy Keaton on the last hand of the night. As you might imagine my wife got a little angry and asked how I could possibly have lost her in a poker game - I told her it wasn't easy, I had to fold with a full house, Aces and Kings."

   No one at the table laughed, though DV smirked a little.