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Roasting Linda
By Max Shapiro
Linda Johnson was honored and humbled August 26 at a roast at the
Bicycle Casino following the Legends of Poker awards ceremonies.
Because Card Player has so many ads there was no room for a separate
write-up, so it was placed here; and since I'm not paid to write happy
talk, I can skip over all the praise heaped upon the former Card Player
publisher, the "First Lady of Poker," and cut right to the juicy stuff.
The tone was set by emcee Mike Sexton, who called Linda a cheap,
foul-mouthed woman who constantly tells stories that would make a
sailor blush. Since she no longer makes out the checks, none of the
speakers, except for her best friend Jan Fisher, has to kiss her ass any
more, he said. He immediately zeroed in on her cheapness. During
his years at Card Player, Sexton said, the magazine tripled in distribution
and quadrupled in ads (a number expected to increase under the reign
of the Shulmans, "who would take ad money from Nellie's whore house"),
but Linda never gave any staffer a dime raise. He revealed she tirelessly
traveled to casinos not to promote poker but to get comped. He was
sickened hearing about what a tireless worker she was because she never
came to the office before noon. Finally, because she was too cheap to
give out any of her half-cent business cards, he distributed Linda
Johnson business cards in the form of poker chips to the audience.
A photo slide show, with captions, followed. Sample: a picture of her with
Barbara Enright, with Linda's comment: "She sucks, I'm the best player."
Bonnie Ratner, a Card Player account executive and Linda's roommate,
said that Linda was such a winning hold'em player, not because of her
solid strategy, but because she always sat down with a big pair.
Linda's friend Mike O'Malley noted that Linda donated money for
college scholarships after winning a World Series bracelet. He later
discovered that, as a condition, the kids had to spend one day a month
for four years washing her dishes, mowing, vacuuming, giving her massages
and pedicures. He also found out how cheap she was when he saw her
hiding 50-cent items at a bargain store so she could come back for a
half-off sale to buy them for a quarter.
Mike Caro was introduced as the greatest poker player in the world who
hasn't won a tournament in 20 years. He said Linda assured him, after
she became publisher, that she was a credible journalist by showing him
a copy of an in-house publication she edited called Oceanside Casino Table
Talk. It featured a major story about the casino placing new faucets in
the ladies rest room and quoted Barbara Enright exiting the toilet and exclaiming: "These faucets don't leak at all!" She also assured Caro that
the "biggest names in poker" would vouch for her. Even Dirty Wally.
And Sam Grizzle.
Linda's friend Joan Destino advised her that she was washed up and it was
all over for the comps, freebies, limos and suites, pampering and being
fawned over. She said how sick everyone had become of the obnoxious tag
line to her column, "Now let's play poker," and how tedious it was to hear
about every new card room opening from here to Podunk. She also said the glamour shot Linda once ran over her column was more appropriate for the
"paid entertainers" section of the Vegas yellow pages.
Phil Hellmuth Jr. began reading a tribute to Linda as a great poker player, perfect in every way, until he realized she had edited his material. He
debunked the notion that Linda did things for the "good of poker" like
traveling to casinos for expensive dinners and picking up $2,000-a-page ads.
He noted that not everyone who won a poker tournament got their picture
in Card Player, but she always did. There was a photo of her winning
$11,000 ("woo hoo!") in the July 21st issue, but none of Xiao Deng,
winning $41,000, in the next. He questioned her credentials to be a Bay
101 "Shooting Star," suggesting that it might be a move on the casino's
part to get publicity, and on her part to get ad revenue. Finally, he said
that Linda started Card Player Cruises to get free voyages, charge
"outrageous amounts" for tickets, and take big drops at the poker
tables, but justified it by saying she did it for "the good of poker."
Marsha Waggoner read a poem read a "bon voyage" poem and thanked
Linda for their special shared friendship. Russ Hamilton related how
Eskimo Clark overheard a conversation about how frugal Linda was and
asked, "Frugal? Does that mean she can have a lot of babies?" Linda's
fondness for the opposite sex, he said, was reflected in her applications for
cruise dealers where any applicants who where male, tall and under 35 got
hired if they could recognize a deck of cards all others were reviewed.
Jan Fisher related that Linda was so cheap that she only allowed her $15
a day per diem - either for food or lodging - when she drove a truck with
cruise items cross-country. She also told how she found $30,000 in cash
in their cabin during a cruise but couldn't get in into the safe because
Linda had stuffed it with Equal.
In rebuttal, Linda said the notes she was taking weren't for her speech,
but to write the speakers out of her will. She said Mike Sexton didn't
care how people treated him, so long as they treated him, and he was so
slow in reaching for a check, that was how slow-motion photography got invented. She did laud Bonnie Ratner as a great salesperson who could
sell microwave ovens to a sushi bar. She praised Mike Caro as a genius
who could do anything except make a living. "Mike is easy to get along
with. All you have to do is worship him."
She had been hesitant about letting Phil Hellmuth write a column because
he was less than a role model. "I'm the John McEnroe of poker," he argued.
"That's the problem," she replied. She got the biggest laugh of the night
when she asked Phil: "If you had to do it all over again, would you still fall
in love with yourself?"
She noted that when Marsha Waggoner was a dealer and then a floorperson
in Australia, she got arrested for loitering. She mentioned the difficulty
Mike O'Malley got into at a golf course when he found a ball wash. She
noted how gullible Jan Fisher was. After listening to news accounts of
Princess Diane's crash, she asked: "Why was Pavarotti chasing her?" And
she lambasted Russ Hamilton for fudging on a weight loss bet they had by
eating ribs and arguing that was part of a "man's diet."
She ended by describing her involvement in poker as a dream come true,
and said how happy she was that women were increasingly making their
marks in the game.
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