And At Hour 115, Laak Rests

That's the 4-minute YouTube video and podcast episode I just posted of Phil Laak ending his streak of 115 hours of poker at Bellagio. There's a great 90-second chat with Jen Tilly in the middle there. (The picture's a little choppy on YouTube and I'm not sure why, but it says it's still "processing.")

My news version of what happened for Agence France Presse is up, too, and a wacky Q-and-A with Phil during his 114th hour for GQ.Com.

In addition, I posted the audio of that conversation which is fascinating in and of itself because how often do you get to hear a thoroughly exhausted crazy person try to sound lucid and rational? There's an awesome spot at the 21:47 mark where he talks about how answering my questions is "extremely annoying," which is followed by a hilarious dissertation on the way comments are perceived and so on. What you don't hear is that at that point I was ready to leave him alone -- I figured he was rightly very tired and edgy -- and he apologizes (even though I was not wounded) and asks me to come back to talk more. Ha!

So just a couple more shots to belabor the matter. Here's Phil with Jennifer Tilly at with 97 seconds to go:


This is what the table looked like. There were webcams showing the cards and another focused on Phil.


More than 100,000 people watched every day from more than 90 nations, many of them texting SUNSHINE to 20222 to give $10 to Camp Sunshine, the charity of the moment. No word yet how much was raised beyond the half of Phil's $6,766 winnings and $1,000 he won for the camp doing 30 pushups in Hour 58.


This morning, before my 5:30 a.m. departure to the Bellagio, I was reading one of Miles' US Weekly's. I can just see this image about: "Stars, they're just like us! They take pictures of their boyfriends when they do wacky shit."

And finally, here's Phil at 115: