HOPPING ARTISTE”
GORDON
Phil was the easiest birth you could hope for. I barely noticed the
size of his head, but I felt something when we got to his privates.
No, not THAT. I’m talking about the horseshoe that was up his ass.
—Phil’s Mom
Phil is six-foot-nine, charming, rich, and retired. He travels
the world for fun and adventure while television show offers and
book deals drop from the sky. He gets provocative offers from
supermodels and party invitations from Hollywood.
It can be a bit much—even for us.
Fortunately, Phil has a tragic flaw that keeps the universe
from spinning off axis and makes him welcome at every home
game: Phil is perpetually on tilt.
We can hear him now, sweet as a lullaby:
What are you guys talking about? I’m not on tilt, I don’t care
what you say, and I’m not going to tilt tonight. Whose fucking deal
is it?
At one time, Phil and Diceboy were roommates. Quantum
physicists would call this an unstable relationship: Tilt meets
anti-Tilt. Week after week, Phil bitched about the high cost of
living with Diceboy. It seems Phil’s poker, gin, and Roshambo
losses paid for groceries, rent, and household expenses.
We dismissed these complaints as typical Phil tiltedness—
until somebody noticed a long list tacked to Phil’s bulletin
board. The larger and larger dollar amounts cascaded down,
each scratched out with increasingly frenetic strokes. You could
almost measure the tilt, like reading the Richter chart of the ’89
quake.
Phil survived this brief living arrangement, eventually mov-
ing out with enough belongings to fill the trunk of Kim’s Miata.
To us, this seemed shortsighted—just eavesdropping on
Diceboy’s calls to his broker would have offset the losses and
then some. But Phil had his blood pressure to consider, and no
other Tiltboy repeatedly redlines the TiltMeter like Phil.
With an Achilles heel like that, Phil has had to choose his
friends carefully. Luckily for him, we are not without compas-
sion. We ignore our mercenary tendencies, and refuse to exploit
his weakness to line our pockets. We’re better than that.
We do it just to amuse ourselves.
To repay such loyalty, Phil will sometimes self-tilt for our
entertainment. Planning Rafe’s 25th birthday party—back in
1995—Phil came up with the brilliant idea of inviting five ex-
girlfriends (all his) along with his current squeeze. Three drinks
later there were six ex-girlfriends to invite to the next party.
But getting back to tilt...If we’re not tilting Phil, and Phil’s
not tilting Phil, the universe will take care of it:
I set a new record last night at Bay101.
Some guy went 23 bets with me on the flop.
Here's the hand:
I look down and see Q-Q. Cha-ching! Raise
before the flop, small blind calls. I cover
my eyes and the flop comes. I ask the deal-
er if my opponent checked yet. Dealer says,
"Nope--he bet." I raise, still without look-
ing. The guy re-raises so I decide I have to
take a look at the flop. Q, 5, 4, all dif-
ferent suits. I have the immortal nuts! I
re-raise, he re-reraises ad infinitum until
he's all in--23 bets total. The table is
cracking up.
I turn over Q-Q and the table oohs. He turns
over Ad Jh! Long story short: 3 on the turn,
2 on the river. Ai-yah!
Phil on mega-tilt.
Just a few days later, Phil showed up at the game and told
us about the girl he’d been dating.
OK, so Madeleine asks me if I believe in God. I say no. She goes
into this long diatribe about past lives and karma and all that shit
and was visibly upset when I was making fun of her. Anyway, she
gets to the point of hysterics, and then she starts talking about—get
this—how her PAST LIFE REGRESSION THERAPIST relieved
her from the need to take PROZAC! I almost shit in my pants. I’m
definitely running away. (Long pause) Just as soon as I’m sure the
girl I met today puts out.
Some romantic escapades work out better than others.
There was the night Bruce was working late, and Phil was down
the hall in his office finalizing code for a new piece of software.
After noticing a tall redhead leaving the building, Bruce walked
into Phil’s office. Wearing his trademark smirk, Phil asked, “So
have you ever gotten a blow job at your desk while coding? I
highly recommend it—does wonders for productivity.”
You might think this would get old, but we’ve learned to
take it in stride. When Phil hosted the next game, and that tall
redhead was serving beers and giving back rubs, we had to
admit: It’s good to know the king.
Phil wasn’t born to the manor. An underweight, over-
limbed adolescent, he surrounded himself with books, comput-
ers, and bottles of lubricant. Rafe met Phil just as the butterfly
emerged from the cocoon, frantically making up for lost time.
We could take a few pages here to share some brilliant sto-
ries of scamming, seduction and conquest—Phil himself spared
no detail when extolling the virtues of each new girlfriend: the
when, the where and the how often. However, Phil might have
political aspirations, and it’s always good to keep some leverage.
Phil’s creativity isn’t limited to the arts of self-tilt or seduc-
tion. He’s masterminded many of the escapades that weave the
fabric of Tiltboy cloth. In fact, the cloth itself is his brainchild.
Phil designed the original Tiltboy t-shirt. On the front was a
photo Phil had taken at the game; the back had only the word
“MEGATILTED,” leaving it for the viewers to decide whether
the shirt refers to themselves, or to us.
Phil retired at 28 and began traveling, taunting us with invi-
tations to drop everything and join him. When he returned after
a few years with plans to play poker full time, we were counting
on the universe to do its thing. With Phil’s ego and tiltability,
he’d be out of Vegas and back at the home game in a month.
Imagine our surprise. Instead of burning out in cash games, Phil
channeled his energy into tournament poker. The payout struc-
ture gave him incentive to keep his tilt under control, and the
fixed buy-ins limited the effective cost of tilting. Next thing we
knew, Phil was at The Main Event final table of the World Series
of Poker.
Jimmy Carter is famously observed to be “the only man in
American history who used the United States presidency as a
stepping-stone to greatness.” Taking a lead from his fellow
Georgian, Phil made the crown jewel of poker look like a satel-
lite win. Working his usual angles of self-promotion and
schmoozing, he parlayed his new-found fame into a spot on
Blind Date, an endorsement deal from Full Tilt Poker, a starring
role in Celebrity Poker Showdown, multiple book deals, satirical
treatments by Mad Magazine and Saturday Night Liveand—the
one thing every cross-dresser dreams about—a guest appearance
on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
Phil is our success story—the embodiment of all that’s pos-
sible if one strictly adheres to the Tiltboy Manifesto. He remem-
bers his friends and his humbler beginnings. All successes aside,
he’s still our Phil.
So, pay no attention to that perfectly composed guy joking
with Dave Foley or promoting his latest book. Rest assured, at
the next home game, we’ll have him frothing at the mouth as
usual, flinging cards across the room and vehemently insisting
that he is absolutely, positively not on tilt.
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