Nicolosi: One Writer's Journey

My friend Michelle Vranizen Rafter from way back in the Orange County Register days (1990-1999) asked me a couple of days ago if I'd answer some questions for her cool blog, Word Count.

I did, and she just posted it here.

I can't find the battery charger

... for my camera. That bums me out on several fronts:

-- I like having the little digital camera in my back pocket in case I see something I want to photograph for the blog. It's out of juice.

-- I get anxious when I can't find stuff. Probably a half-repressed childhood fear of getting in trouble for losing things.

-- Connectedly, since I usually know where everything is, if I can't find something that's a pretty good indication that this place is a mess. It means there's stuff to put away, things to clean.

And so, I guess I'll do whatever I do when there's housework to be done: go play cards.

I'll find the charger later.

Chapter One: No Luck

When we leave next month for our "Pie in the Sky II" road trip, part of the plan is to play poker across the country, hoping to qualify somehow for this summer's World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. If all goes well, we've thought, maybe we'll write a book about the experience.

On Sunday, in kind of a pre-trip prep run, we drove down to our favorite local cardroom, the Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn, to play in one of their monthly World Series "satellite" tournaments. You pay $170 to enter. If you're lucky or skillful enough to win, the prize is a seat in the $10,000 entry-fee World Series main event, the same tournament I played last July with help from Team Mark.

It's a long shot, but hey. Hitting the jackpot before we even hit the road would be a pretty good start.

On the 45-minute drive down to Auburn we talked tournament strategy and quizzed each other with problems from "Harrington on Hold 'Em, Vol. III." You know: You're dealt the ace and queen of clubs in late position and two players before you "limp in" to the pot (calling the blinds without raising); do you fold, call $60, raise to $240 or push all-in? Stuff like that. We had a similar conversation last summer, when Michelle gave me her pre-tourney pop quiz: If you're dealt pocket kings on the first hand and another player goes all-in do you call or fold? We disagreed about that one.

Ever the optimist, Michelle blurted out halfway to the Muck on Sunday: "OK baby, you know this is the first chapter of your book ..."

Well, I don't know about that, but I did see a pretty close approximation of Michelle's pocket-kings pop quiz. I wasn't involved in the hand, unfortunately or fortunately, but it was interesting to watch.

In the second hand of the tournament, a woman who I hadn't seen before and who didn't seem very experienced tossed a $100 chip in front of her before the flop, clearly intending to raise to $100. But the rules of tournament poker state that unless you explicitly announce the amount of your raise, any single chip bet will be assumed to be a call, not a raise. So the Seat 5 woman was forced to merely call the $50 big blind. The action folded around to Bonnie, a Muckleshoot regular and a good tournament player, who might have missed the other lady's bungled raise. Bonnie popped it to $500 and the other woman pushed all-in. Bonnie immediately called.

What disappointment and horror she must have felt when she proudly flipped over her pocket kings -- the second best hand possible before the flop -- only to find that Accidental Caller Lady had inadvertently "limped" with pocket aces. The rockets held up and Bonnie was out on the tourney's second hand.

Me, I didn't have any such close calls, or even difficult decisions. I folded hand after hand for two hours, seeing nothing even to get out of line with. I won one small pot with an offsuit 5-2 in the big blind, when no one raised and I flopped two pair. Eventually the rising blinds nicked away at my chip stack and, in the fourth round, I went out when my best starting hand of the day -- ace-king -- lost an all-in bet to a guy with pocket queens. Ah well.

Michelle, at an adjacent table, lasted about half an hour longer than I did. She said later she didn't get many good cards either. Sometimes it goes like that.

Further evidence of poker's whims: When I busted out I went to join my friend David in a live game. In the first three hands I was dealt I saw better cards than in my entire two hours of the tournament. I cashed out a $180 winner -- enough to cover my tourney entry and buy my standard Muck lunch, seafood fried rice.

Chapter One will have to wait for another day.

The Ricoh 500

Yesterday, while Mark played a little poker with my boss David, I dropped by the Goodwill down in Auburn, where I bought an awesome Ricoh 500 for the steep price of $1.99.

The Ricoh 500, complete with Triggermatic Action Lever, was on the market back in 1957 -- before it had fully been decided where all the functions of a camera should go, and how they should work. The Triggermatic Action Lever -- used to advance the film -- is on the bottom of the camera. (#4). Cool.



"The Triggermatic action lever is an outstanding feature of this miniature camera," the manual says. "The lever-pulling and shutter-releasing action is so rapid and smooth as to as to be a feature unequalled in other cameras."

So you can take bitchin' fast action shots like this:



"The camera is a precision-build instrument that requires the greatest care and attention," the manual warns. It requires all kinds of feeding and special care, including this special caution: "When putting the camera in the case, set the distance at infinity."

Happy Snapping!

Modie hangs 'em up

After nearly 38 years as a Seattle P-I reporter, Neil Modie called it quits last week, heading into what sounds like a very fun retirement of mountain climbing, do-gooder traveling, drinking and reading with his cool wife Helen, pictured with Neil above.

I've known Neil for a long time -- since way before I started working at the P-I four years ago -- and I felt privileged to be invited to an intimate farewell lunch on Friday at Etta's in Pike Place Market. There was a larger going-away party Friday night at Buckely's, the paper's semi-official tavern; I couldn't go to that one but Michelle stopped by for a beer.

In every newsroom there are a few characters who through quirkiness, talent or just longevity and familiarity seem to define the place. Modie to me was one of those people for the P-I. A longtime political reporter -- he must have had other beats over the years, but none I can remember -- Modie was the consummate pro, a man of few words (and, I liked to tease him, stories), but excellent news judgment and tight copy. He was a pleasure to edit.

Competing with him, which is how I first came to know him, wasn't as much fun. Neil was sneaky good; he could make reporting look very easy.

I recall once, as a youngish political reporter at the Seattle Times, nearly 20 years ago now, I was assigned to cover the Redistricting Commission, the group that was supposed to redraw the state's legislative map to account for population changes in the latest census. It was a long, frankly boring, process, with many meetings that stretched deep into the night in an airless room by the airport. One night I sat dutifully transcribing the meeting, glancing at my watch and stifling yawns. I noticed Modie sitting in the audience too. Wow, the P-I had sent some old guy (he would have been about my present age) who was barely bothering to take notes. Proof, I figured, that I'd been assigned a dud story, thing number A, and, B, that I was wasting a lot of effort writing down all these quotes. Modie was barely paying attention.

So I filed my story and then picked up the competition the next day to discover that Neil not only had managed a sharper account than mine of last night's dull meeting, but had somehow learned the details of a negotiated agreement among the commissioners that hadn't even been publicly discussed yet, let alone announced.

Bastard! He looked so calm because he had the story in his back pocket all along. I got smoked.

Years later, when I went to work at the P-I as city editor, I couldn't wait to see up close how Modie did it. He must be some furtive genius of sourcing, I thought, a master of working the phones and of meeting in dimily lit parking garages, with file cabinets full of dirt on everyone.

But no. I never did figure it out. Where Modie's newsroom neighbor Jane Hadley, a superlative reporter of similar vintage, had stacks of carefully annotated government reports on her desk, Neil had decades worth of press releases and old notebooks in a precarious heap. Where Jane could be heard cross-examining and brow-beating hapless bureaucrats on the phone, Modie occasionally could be overheard discussing a weekend hike on Mt. Rainier. He never seemed to be doing much of anything. But just about the time I'd be ready to roll up my sleeves and demand an accounting, Neil would turn in a perfectly crafted story nailing this or that politician's malfeasance, or explaining some interesting trend or phenomenon that no one else had quite noticed yet.

Pretty good trick. Plus he's one of the world's genuine great guys. Generous, self-deprecating and friendly to all -- even editors! even (especially) the poor dimwitted public official he's about to skewer -- Neil struck me as the rare reporter whom everyone truly liked.

At lunch the other day there were the expected jokes about his length of service (OK, his age), his deliberately paced work habits and the state of his desk -- Neil allowed that he'd managed to excavate the press-release pile back to the 1970s or so -- but the truth is that he'll be incredibly missed at the shrinking P-I. I've already missed him in the year that I've been off work.

For his 65th birthday a couple of years ago, Modie's wife Helen took him to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. He not only finished the climb, but he wrote this excellent article about the experience for the New York Times. Now that he's done working, Neil and Helen are going back to Africa, this time to do volunteer work in Darfur and elsewhere.

Enjoy your retirement, I told him over lunch. After all this practice I'm sure you'll do just fine.