All in all, my time spent at the Rio has been good.  The media section I’ve chosen to homestead is great and I’ve had no problem with reclaiming my space each time I return…I usually get here earlier than everyone else does so I’m alone a lot of the first few hours.  Today when I arrived, the security lady inside the Amazon room told me I couldn’t come in until 2 p.m.  Really?  I left it at that and went to find someone in the higher-ups of the Media world.  I found Seth Palansky.   Within a few minutes I was unloading my computer case and setting up.

Here’s the steam.  I showed up about 11 a.m. yesterday, earlier than anyone else in media – other than Nolan Dalla’s computer appears to stay in the same place all the time.  The bracelet ceremony for Hoai Pham was supposed to start at 2 p.m.  I trucked down the hall with my camera to the Pavilion Room which the ceremony stage is set up in – and it’s filled with a zillion poker tables too – and started a walk through around 1:45, looking at tables and faces. A gent approached me and called me by name.  “Hello…” like how did he know my name since he wasn’t close enough to read my name tag.

Come to find out he’s a blog reader and has been for a long time.  I asked him how in the hell he picked me out and he said it was easy.  Crazy!  There were people everywhere, milling and seated in games, so how he spotted me is still a bit of a mystery in the speed winder part of my brain.  Anyway.  We visited for quite a bit and I got a very small glimpse of Michael Moore from New York.  Nice!

I walked back up in front of the stage and waited…and waited…and waited.  There was another media person there when I got there, then more began to arrive, including Billy Monroe, and my son and his girlfriend came in too just almost as the show began.  There were a coupla media people there with the giant cameras on giant tripods back behind us in the crowd about 10 feet away.

The $1K tournament in that room went on break and people were shooting out of cracks and from underneath the green felt to make it to the bathrooms and whatever else it is they had on their thoughts.

Nolan Dalla, Jack Effel, and a couple of others were chatting with Hoai Pham at the left side of the stage.

Michael Moore came up and joined us by the stage and we watched the proceedings as close to 2:30, the actual announcement started and Pham was at the center of the stage with Jack Effel.

We had heard previously that Hoai wanted to sing the Vietnamese National Anthem as it was played in his honor but he must’ve changed his mind since he never uttered a peep when it started.  His wife (assuming) was brought out to stand by him and I was snapping a few shots when I decided to change the way the tube/lens on my camera sets so I could hold the camera overhead and get more of a level shot of him and his wife, instead of being lower than them.  I set the camera, raised my arms up over my head, took two shots in fairly rapid succession, and BOOM!  The big freak with the gigantic video camera on the gigantic tripod thumped me right between the shoulder blades.  FUCK!  He’d managed to move right up behind me through the crowd…I should’ve looked to see if there were bodies underneath his feet and the tripod wheels.

I was so startled and thrown off base by it, I turned and made a remark like, “What are you doing?  How was I supposed to know you were right behind me?”  It just blew the wind out of my sails and irritated the shit out of me.  I was steaming.  I only made it another minute as I snapped my camera lens back on and shouldered it into the bag, told Michael and Billy goodbye, and told my son it was time to go – we were going to lunch and I needed to move out immediately or I was going to explode.  As I turned to leave, facing the direction of the ‘I’m-someone-with-a-big-camera’ I said, “PRICK!” loud enough where I hope he heard me.

If I could’ve collected my thoughts for a moment, I would’ve taken a picture of him before I left – or stood there and asked if I was in his way and when he said something, I would’ve put my camera up over my head and proceeded to stay in his way, but I was done, flabbergasted, irritated, and slightly unbelieving that a fucking camera person would hit someone else while the media floor is completely open and there were no boundaries set.

We had our lunch at the Poker Kitchen and I still couldn’t sweep it out of my mind.  My son is a big boy and he said it was all he could do to keep from slamming his fist into the side of the guy’s head as he saw the guy hit me.  We’ve had a lot of talks about anger management and I agree that he’s better off not to start swinging on someone like that…broken cameras cost a lot of money and I don’t need to be kicked out of the Rio on one of my first days of WSOP coverage.

When I came back to the media area, I spoke with Nolan Dalla about it.  But I was again surprised…Nolan seemed to brush it off, as if the guy accidentally bumped me.  If I knew what the guy looked like I would go to security and file a report against him.  I couldn’t even tell you what the guy looked like. But I have a feeling if I see him again, something will click. If I hadn’t been standing in a solid position, and if I was a frail person, he hit me hard enough that he would’ve knocked me into the stage, that is the main reason I would go to security, the 2nd is that no one, NO ONE, has the right to hit other people under any of the above circumstances…unless of course you are taking over their country and they don’t move, then just shoot them.  That concludes my steam blog for the day.

I have other things to blog about and hopefully will get in the daily habit while I’m here.   One thing of note, I’ve been exposed to chocolate eclairs three times at the Rio and have managed to avoid them waving at me and calling my name.  YIPPPEEE!