Poker Face

In 40 years (hopefully) when I look back on my life and reflect on all the craziness that was my youth, I'll remember a phrase that shouldn't have popped up multiple ways but did: Poker face. First, when I was a high school senior, Texas Hold'em poker became a fad across the U.S. due to the World Series of Poker, and became especially popular for 18-year-old high school kids searching for excitement, competitiveness, and risk-seeking behavior like me. I learned what a poker face back then was, which was to keep one's face a blank slate no matter if you're telling the truth or "bluffing" in poker (lying about what cards you have, or at least misrepresenting it). This became a huge ego-driven contest for me through end of high school into college: I wanted to have a great poker facer and be a great liar! Great aspirations! 

Nowadays, of course, I'm totally content with not being a great liar: I just feel funny doing it, my face heats up a bit and become flush, I don't like lying to people while looking that person straight in the eye. It's fine of course when I tell the guy on the side of the road asking me for change that "I don't have any cash on me right now," but someone who I consider a friend, family member, or really anyone I've known more than 10 minutes, there's guilt and deception, and maybe after you lie to that person your relationship with that person changes. 

The other "Poker Face" that stands out is the Lady Gaga hit song of 2009.......it took me a LONG time to get that song out of my head. It kind of reminds of the "I'm Good" earworm by Bebe Rexha and David Guetta that's been a hit since last year (a remix of another earworm song of my teenage years, "Blue" by Eiffel 65). These are the songs that unfortunately define my musical tastes: instead of the sophisticated, smooth caviar-like sensations of the Eroica Symphony by Beethoven, my mind just gets drawn into the junk food Top 40 hits with synthetic and artificial-sounding beats of the latest pop song. And it all began with "Poker Face." 

Finally, the Poker Face that's currently in my life is the 99% Rotten Tomato-certified fresh TV series on Peacock streaming (they really need to consolidate all these streaming channels into bundles, and fast) starring Natasha Lyonne (has been used as an answer to a Jeopardy clue, so you know she's made it) as a former poker player who has the superpower gift of reading other people and being able to tell if that person's lying. It's like my entire life history with "Poker Face" come full circle: poker, lying with a poker face, and bad TV.......except it's REALLY GOOD TV! 40 years from now the greatest TV shows of so-called "Prestige television" will likely still feature some of the names TV viewers worship nowadays like The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Sex in the City (Jk, MJ, definitely not Sex in the City), without Poker Face on it (it doesn't even have the "championship belt" of being the best TV show out there right now, which most critics will agree is The Last of Us, but it is definitely high up there in the "whodunnit" and mystery categories. Artfully done by Rian Johnson, the director of "Knives Out" (another movie where the main character has a quirk of only being able to tell the truth.) It really makes me wonder about what it'd be like to know if other people are lying, aka being a human lie detector. Not the most useful skill to have and not the one I'd select if given a choice (not to mention being a common trope in movies like "What Women Want," and I suspect it's a rather depressing superpower in that you realize how much people lie and how often, which is pretty much all the time. And that's just the lies that people say out loud: there's other lies like living a lie, acting out a lie, giving out false information through the news, etc. etc. Is this world that we're living in a lie? A simulation that's not even real and we're just characters in some kind of game? Yup pretty depressing, but unlike all those "top shows ever" contenders I mentioned + Last of Us (VERY depressing post-apocalyptic world), Poker Face is actually a pretty fun show! (except for the people who get- spoilers!!!!!- murdered).