Am I a DONK?

Last night I was playing poker online when I ran into an interesting hand.  If you don't know poker, I'll try to make this as simple as possible.  I was playing the .08/.16 table, which means the blinds are 8 and 16 cents...small potatoes, right?  I was sitting in the Big Blind, which means I had already paid a mandatory amount whether I played the hand or not.  If the raise by someone else on the table isn't too much, it makes sense from an odds perspective for me to pay the little bit extra and play the hand.  So I am in the big blind and I get pocket sevens.  The action goes around the table and a guy in middle position makes a minimum raise to 32 cents.  Another guy calls.  So when the option comes back around to me, even though I have the most inferior position at the table at the time, it makes sense for me to call the minimum bet and see the cards that fall.  When the flop comes, it reads 4(spades)-7(clubs)-J(spades) .

Generally when the flop is spread out, if you are holding a pocket pair that hits the flop (you now have three of a kind) you want to let other people bet into you to build the pot up.  The only cards you need to be wary of at this point are JJ, if your opponents have them.  There is potential that if someone is holding two spades that another spade will give them a flush and if they are holding, say, 8-9, then they have an opportunity to draw out a straight, but I'm not too worried about those right now.  My plan is to check my hand, giving them the opportunity to bet and if they bet, I will raise them.  This accomplishes two things.  First, it gets more money into the pot, when I have a very strong hand.  Second, it establishes me as the clear aggressor.  If someone calls my bet when I come over the top of their bet, odds are that they have the Jacks or that they are betting heavily on the board drawing out to them, completing their hand.  There's a lot of uncertainty in poker.  My opponent is betting that his cards are going to fall and that he will be able to overpower my hand.  I am betting that my hand is the strongest and that it could actually improve, as well.  After all, if a 4 or a jack falls, I will have a full house.

All of this is fairly standard to this point, which one proviso...I am out of position.  There is a term in poker called 'Donkey Betting' which is basically that i you are not the aggressor and you are in an inferior position, betting first is a low percentage play.  Now there are varying theories an interpretations of what to do with that designation.  There is the theory that you should defend your blinds and that good players usually do, rather than letting themselves get walked over by other players.  There is the theory that if you make your 'donk bet' by betting out of position that you are sending the message that you are strong and should not be messed with.  Often this is enough to make other players fold.  On a deeper level of poker, there is the theory that you want to appear strong by donk betting, which is to say, you make that bet even though you are weak, essentially bluffing the other players.  And there is the theory from the other side that position equals power and that if someone makes a donk bet, coming over the top of them from a superior table positioning makes this a very expensive hand for the donk bettor to be in.  I am aware of all this.  I am also aware that I have 777 and I am not ready to back down.  I don't want to make an initial bet, scaring potential money out of the hand, but there are two spades on the board, and I have t protect against that, so I decide to put out a bet of $.48.  there is now $1.52 in the pot and there are two players behind me.  I have committed to the donk bet, which should tell the table two things:  I am either very strong or I am very weak.

Incidentally, I have always found poker commentary incredibly interesting. The conclusions of the commentators on TV are rarely 'It's definitely this!'  Rather, they are murky interpretations which are very nearly always worthless.  "He's either very strong or very weak' pretty much runs the entire spectrum.  And very often...most often actually, good players are playing middle cards which are neither very strong nor very weak.  That's where the subtlety of reading people's body language comes in and it's why people see a showdown of 7-6 against 4-5 and think that they can play at that top pro level.  But I digress...Back to my hand.  

One opponent makes a bet of $1.30 and the third player folds.  So now there's $2.82 in the pot.  While you have to be wary of people playing possum and being tricky, there's really only one way to test whether they are or not.  And that is to raise.  Now with a flush possibility on the board, it might not be a bad idea for me to reraise this guy.  I'm essentially saying to him that if he wants to get to that card that makes the flush, he's going to have to pay for it.  On the other hand, there exists the potential that he has the Jacks or that he is just too darned stubborn to fold.  Either of these scenarios means there will be a rather dramatic pot escalation.  I would much rather see the next card before I get into that situation.  Another card means more information.  it could also be dangerous.  If an 8,9, or 10 comes, there is now a potential completed straight on the board.  If a spade comes there's a flush.   If, however, something like an ace comes and it is not a spade, my cards will almost certainly be the best cards.  But for now, I think we've done as much negotiating as we need to.  I've made my declaration and he's answered.  His bet size is a little more than 2.5x mine, so it's my guess that he's trying to get me off the pot.  Generally at these levels, players are still trying to get their experience at things like sizing bets.  Generally, a small bet looks strong, a strong bet looks weak.  There's one hand that beats me, so I call.  Also, he gave me 3.4:1 pot odds which means that if my odds of improving are greater than 3.4:1, I should fold.  with three 4's, three Jacks and one 7 out there to give me a full house, I have 8 chances in the remaining 35 cards in the deck to make a full house.  My odds on best hand are about 4.5:1.  But I also factor in the fact that my hand is good, as it is against all pocket pairs, all Ace+something else combinations and that he probably actually needs two successive cards to make his hand superior to mine.  If he's holding Jack+something else, even a good card like a king or an ace, he still needs another Jack.  If he held a Jack and there were 2 left his odds would be 36:2 or 18:1 of catching that third jack.  the general rule for calculating your odds quickly is number of outs*number of streets * 2.  So he has two shots at 2 outs or an 8% chance.  If he has a pocket pair higher than mine and manages to make trips on those last two cards, which would be rare, I think, I calculate 6 pairs (88,99,10-10,QQ,KK and AA) with two outs on each street.  Each of those would have an 8% chance to hit trips, as well.  I would say that according to pot odds, this is a marginal call, but according to the odds that I am going to commit money later anyway and that he will probably not make his hand, it's a good call.

Anyway, I feel that I am stronger here, so I just call.

The next card is a 10 of diamonds.  So the straight potential is there.  the flush potential is diminished. I decide that my play should be to check.  First, this eliminates me from being the donkey, by giving way to the raiser.  I am allowing him to dictate the action.  But I am also setting a trap...in my mind at least.  My guess is that he has a flush draw or a straight draw,  If I come over teh top of the bet he is about to make and make my bet a strong one, with one card to go, his odds go way down.  If he doesn't have it by now, it's going to be costly to get there.  He bets $2 into a $3.64 pot, making it $5.64 total.  So it costs me $2 now to see the next card.  My pot odds are 5.6:2 or 2.8:1.  The odds of me catching a card that makes my hand better have now actually increased because I can throw three 10's into the mix of cards that give me a full house plus th other 7.  My card odds are now 10 out of the remaining 32 cards or 3.2:1.  Although he's not giving me odds, I'm still not scared away.  A bet on the turn is usually the defining point in the hand.  Most people fold to a turn bet.  If they don't fold, you know two thing:  it's going to be a big pot and you're probably in trouble.

I raise, sending him the message that I am not folding and that I have a hand.  My raise is to $4.  Since he's already committed, he only has to put $2 more into the pot to win the $9.64 that's in there.  I've left him with a marginal call, as well.  If he happens to be holding a straight draw and a flush draw....say, 8-Q of spades or QK of spades or 5-6 of spades or 5-3 of spades, then he has nine flush draws and either 4 or 8 straight draws. (9+4)2=26%.  (9+8)2=34%.  I gave him 4.8:1 odds, which is about 17%.  In this situation, I would say I am hosed.  But if he's just hunting for another card to make his top pair better or to complete his trips, I am a favorite. 

His response to my aggression is to push all of his chips in.  It seems intimidating, but he has more chips than I do at this point.  I have $6.96 left.  He had $10.38.  So while the stack is tall, a lot of it doesn't count, as he can only match what I have to lose.  Anything extra gets returned.  So even though al his chips are in and it looks like there's $18.38 on the table, there's actually $14.38.  It would cost me my last $6.96 to win $14.38 which comes out to being 2.6:1 pot odds.  My card odds have not changed, though.  They are still 3.2:1 to improve my hand.  And if my had as it is now holds up, which it will about 75% of the time, I am guessing (I have not checked that figure), then this is a probably a good call.

Interestingly , he has given me better and better pot odds with each street of betting.  If he had committed all of those chips earlier, it would've told me that he had the Jacks, most likely, and I would've folded.  Instead, we are here. 

So I call.
We turn over the cards because we are both all-in.  His extra is returned to him.
As is often the case, he shows J-A.  Top pair with an ace kicker.  So now all of the other possibilities are eliminated.  He can be saved by a jack and a jack only.

The final card comes and it is a seven.  I had the hand won, but this sealed the deal. 

His comment to me afterwards was , 'Why did you take so long to call, DONK?!' 

Sorry I inconvenienced you, mister (or miss, as the case may be).  I was thinking.  I replied that I was thinking and since when was that discouraged in poker.  For me, this was not a hard decision and the entire hand went down in about a minute, which is an eternity in online poker.  As for the guy's accusation, it was meant as a slam against my poker skills.  I did bet out of position.  Some would call this an aggressive tactic, like hitting the biggest guy in prison in the face on your first day in jail.  Others call it foolishness.  I like to think that I make a strong play and then dialed it back a notch, not giving up, but not going out of control, either.

But the hand made me think.  Aren't we all donks?  Aren't we all, or most of us anyway, born into a situation where we don't have the advantage?  98% of us fall in the category of people who do not have the majority of the wealth or influence.  Sooner or later, we are all going to have to make your stand against the bullies who have superior chipstacks or position, or experience.  Sometimes, you get your shot when you are out of position and you just have to make that donk bet and hope for the best.

In the final analysis, I guess I am a donk.  But I have enough experience to know what to do with it and that being labeled is not enough to keep me down.

New Zealand...Rocks. I like that little bird they have, too.

Road Ragers Anonymous

Before I came out to L.A., I had heard of road rage. Somehow, when you come from somewhere else, the concept, though digestible, is still abstract. Then all at once and out of nowhere, there it is, right there in front of you. A crazed tyrant behind the wheel of two tons of moving metal is focusing all of his or her energy directly at you. The feeling is not unlike being pulled over by a cop...singled out amongst thousands of drivers for individual treatment, you freeze in your tracks in total disbelief. Well, folks...it happened to me.

Monday morning after taking my girlfriend to the airport, I drove to work. LIke an idiot, I decided that the freeway would be the best route to take. On the onramp, someone sped up behind my car at about 70 mph trying to pass me before entering the freeway. Now I freely admit that in circumstances like these, when confronted by someone with an exaggerated sense of aggression on my back bumper, I do what any free thinking human with an ounce of self respect does...I slow down...if for no other reason than to tell that bastard that he needs to slow down to a reasonable speed before he kills someone. Well, some people don't get the message. In this case, he certainly did not. The guy passed me, flipped me off, and upon seeing that I made a gesture in his direction (yes, I flipped him the bird), swerved back across three lanes of traffic to cut me off. Fine. I deserved that. I get the message. May we move on now? Apparently not.

He slows down to a crawl. He stops his car entirely on the 10 freeway. You're kidding me, right? He gestures towards the side of the road. Apparently this is the sign that I am supposed to get out of the car now. I am not getting out of the car. Traffic is building up behind us. He gets out of the car. "Oh fuck. What have I stepped in this time?" My internal monologue doesn't know what to say now. He walks towards my car. The situation looks pretty grim about now for me. Clearly this man is crazy. You don't stop your car on one of the world's busiest freeways and get out to start a fistfight unless you are crazy, correct? Is my mother going to see helicopter footage of two me fighting on the freeway and say, "that's my son getting his face pummeled on live television." No she is not, I decide.

Considering that getting pinned in with a madman is a great way to die, I'd left thirty feet or so behind my car and his, so I have some room to maneuver. If I had been right up on his bumper, I would not have had this escape. Spying an opening in the lane next to me, I swerve in front of a minivan and zip off into the morning leaving my would-be assailant standing in the middle of the freeway. On my way by he lunged at my car, yelling something unintelligible. I do not speak neanderthal. Just in case he managed to follow, I skip my exit, take a convoluted route of local streets and illogical turns to my place of work and valet the car. I am shaken. An hour later I am still shaken. At the end of the day, I leave work early and go to yoga in an effort to leave my highway anxiety on the road. It's too late, though. The stresses of the day are burned into my muscles. I'll be fine...Just please don't tell my mother.

I hate my screenplay

Well I've done it. Sat down for a month straight and pounded out 117 pages of what I thought was pure brilliance, editing as I went along. And then, a breather. I deserved a good meal and a big cup of coffee...and hey, I'll read that new book while I'm at it. After perusing Part iv on Storycraft in 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, I started getting down on myself. These guys are hard on themselves...harder than I am on myself. And that's saying a lot.

I began to realize that you can't just have a good screenplay. It's got to be great. There is no room for cliche', no room for boredom. Have I filled pages just to fill space out of obligation to the accepted formats? Do my characters have clear motivations? Are the stakes raised? Are they raised again? Is the story gripping in the way it's told...in it's choice of set pieces...in it's inventiveness? Does the first page get you? Do the first ten pages show you something new? Is the use of words economical, unique, and playful? Is the audience bored?

These are the issues one deals with after the first draft is done. These are now the issues that concern me. What concerns me most right now, is that I am trying to troubleshoot my story in my head when it's not even in front of me. I can't seem to put it down. But I have to.

So my happiness at finishing my first draft lasted all of about and hour and a half. And now I hate my screenplay. This is a good thing. If I were happy with it, I would be a shmuck. Besides, tinkering with something that looks and feels like its done...that's what artists do. At least this character has ample motivation to continue on with the story. Whether you want to turn the page with me is entirely another matter.

Harmonic Convergence

You've heard of it. Three inventors come up with the same idea within a day of each other, even though they are thousands of miles apart. Two businesses that do the same seemingly unique thing are launched at the same time. A succession of movies comes out and they're all eerily similar to each other. Perhaps nowhere on the planet is harmonic convergence more in effect than in Hollywood. This is a place where ideas flow like rivers. Now that I'm becoming more and more aware of the phenomenon, I'm also more wary of it.

Let me say this part first: I'm a skeptic. I don't believe in a God, at least not one with a face and not one who cares about what goes on in our meager little lives. I believe in physics and energy. I guess that makes me prone to belief in the unseen and so, for all practical purposes, I should believe in a God. But I don't. Probably a reaction to a good protestant upbringing. I believe in a common pool of human experiences. I believe in pop-culture and media contamination. And I believe in the fallibility of the human animal, willing to destroy his own kind for the most petty reasons. I think this pretty accurately describes Hollywood, don't you? Godless, petty, contaminated...yeah, we're livin' the good life out here.

Well, this morning I was talking to a friend on the phone as she described her current relationship breaking up. She mentioned the words 'reality check' at exactly the same moment I picked up a hat with that exact logo on it's front. This happens to me all the time. Two days ago I came up with an idea for a screenplay based upon a name which sounded catchy. That name was based upon a word which I just happened to be chanting like a mantra that day. Why that word? I don't know. Maybe it was part of the media-infected aether. I haven't heard that word for years. Anyway, no sooner had I written a quick treatment for it than I heard the word uttered on two separate occasions by two random and completely unconnected people. It's hard to accept you inner skeptic saying "it's a stupid coincidence" when external events are so obviously in alignment. So I finding myself uttering in the back of my head, "Coincidence? I think Not!" (one of my favorite lines from The Incredibles).

The question is, does this actually exist or is it just our ability to selectively hear, interpret, and free-associate that makes it seem like everything is connected.
And if nothing is connected, is it mere random activity, improbable as that may be, that leads to the expression of ideas in synchronicity? I think it's something else. Ideas are weightless and without physical form. As such, they are not subject to the ordinary laws of physics and logic. This makes sense to me. We are logical beings in an illogical world and it is precisely our lack of understanding about it that allows for all of the mysteries of the universe. Maybe we're all accessing a gigantic reservoir of collective knowledge. The Venn diagram of that scenario suggests that sooner or later we're going to overlap in our sampling of ideas. But I don't actually claim this notion as my own. In fact, I'm certain someone else already has.

Nobody Reads This Blog

I've now been a screenwriter for almost five weeks. Since the first two weeks were about loglines, beatsheets and outlines, the actual process of dialoguing has only been going on for three weeks. I have 104 pages. By my count, I was 17 pages over the mark I should've hit for the first act break and fourteen over for the second. I suspect that I have about fifteen pages to go and that I will need to cut at least ten pages of dialogue out. That puts my screenplay at 109 pages. My goal was 110. With at least three rewrites ahead of me, I figure I'll probably throw away another five pages in slimming it down and add another 7 pages in fleshing out and connecting dots to cover logical inconsistencies and plotholes.

In addition to referring to Save The Cat, Blake Snyder's book on being a slave to your logline, I've been using 101 habits of highly successful screenwriters and Syd Field's Screenplay. I'm sure I look like an idiot in referring to these books in public. Then again, I'm not having any problems coming up with ideas, connecting those ideas to each other, or making structural changes whenever I need to pull back and take a larger perspective. And I'm burning through the project. They may be shiiite, but I average 7 pages per day right now. In my book, that's a pretty good pace.

I used to date someone who, no joke, would kick out 35 pages on a good day. She just had the gift. But she also hit major snags and couldn't restructure when things got bleak because she was so tied up in the language. Honestly, I'm just going to be happy to reach the point where I can start making big cuts. Though I am editing as I go along, feeling out each step before I place all my weight on the next footfall, it's going to be a relief to get rid of a couple of those passages that Ive been carrying like a security blanket from the beginning. A quick reread today revealed that I have at least two lumps to remove.

Looking at the tracker today, I realized that no one ever reads this blog..which is quite allright with me. It's here for my benefit...a place to piss and vomit in public just to see how that feels. Perhaps one day when I' doing it for real, I won't be at all offended at the idea of making an ass of myself in public. Come to think of it, I'm not so worried about that at present. Maybe succes looms closer than one would think!

Graceful Aging

I have a couple of friends (well, former friends...now more of acquaintances, really) who are women in their mid to late thirties. Recently, I've seen a surge in their writings about age-related stereotypes they encounter. They're struggling with the fact that they are considered 'cougars' in the dating world, that the world doesn't appreciate their inner beauty,and that men seem to speak in the past tense when referring to their prime days.

Let me first say, that I adore women. I also adore women in their thirties...and their forties, and of all ages, actually. I find that, generally speaking, women in their thirties know exactly what they want so they have no problems in asking for it, even demanding it. This is an attractive quality, at least it is to me. Strictly sexually speaking, I find that most women in their twenties have no idea what they're doing, whereas women in the next two decades have perfected the art of making love. Granted, I am not the rest of the world, or consumer culture or Madison Avenue. I am just a man. But I am a man who loves women.

That said, women have a lot of self-image problems. Despite all of the empowering messages that circulate in pop-culture (girl-power, The Secret, libraries of female affirming literature, the abundant presence of positive female role models (Suze Ormand, Oprah, Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsberg to name a few), and Dr. Phil), many women of my age don't seem to be getting it. While they profess how confident they are and how happy they are they simultaneously bitch and moan, often publicly about how they're devalued and misunderstood. I'm a patient man. I read their concerns. I listen to friends who lie in this demographic. I am sympathetic, really...I am. It's time, however, to give the rest of us a break. Pleeease!

As a man in my late thirties who has never been married, lives as an artist, owns nothing, has little saving, and hasn't fathered a child, I can say that I sympathize with the plight. I get it. You're getting older. You may not find The One. And yet you want to get something rolling. With the exception of the female egg timer issue I relate to every one of these problems. AND I was raised by a single mother who had to deal with issues of self-image while raising two children. I empathize with you.

So here it is. Deal with it. We are, each of us, what we are. Possibly more...nothing less. If you don't like hearing people talk about what your better days WERE, either redirect the topic of conversation or find a new partner in conversation. If you don't like being called a cougar, don't listen...or stop dating men vastly younger than yourself. If I date someone who's in her early twenties, I am referred to as a scoundrel, cradle-robber, and pervert. Guess What? I don't give a shit. You shouldn't either. And if you don't like that the world is calling you old, stop complaining about it. The popular media prizes beauty, that's true. Don't we all know that the media is not to be trusted? If you feel resentful that the world is judging you for not looking a certain way and you choose to rebel by not wearing make-up...good for you! You made a decision and you're living by it. But don't then complain that the very source you're acting in opposition with STILL doesn't appreciate you. They never will! Get over it. Jeez.

Here's a fact...we age. We can't get around it. We also die (shocking, I know!). But what are you going to do? We can't avoid these realities. What we can do is recognize that the narrative in our lives is our self-growth. What defines character is not the circumstances you've been dealt, but how you respond to the circumstances.

And that, my dears, is the key to aging gracefully. Now I have to go apply preparation-H to the crow's feet and bags around my eyes. I have a date with a woman in her forties and I want to impress her.

Coffee Culture

It's so cliche'...hanging out in a coffee house all day long banging out a script. I used to think that those people were just trying to look like writers because all of the serious writers were at home or in offices at studios working. Maybe they are. I still don't know. I do know that I have friends who are successful writers who have offices....who need offices...to get their work done. But they have families and the standard excuse is that they had an office at home, but there were too many interruptions. Well I had an office at home, too. It consists of a chair, a table and an internet connection. I travel two feet from my bed and I'm working.

With all of the craziness around my apartment with the sanding and vacuuming and my cat screaming to get out because I've locked her in to protect her from the work chaos...I just couldn't take it. So for the past three weeks I have been keeping offices at a crepe shop and cafe near my place. And Now I'm one of them...one of the guys I would swear is doing nothing but surfing youtube all day and looking up facebook profiles.
In fact, I am writing. At first it was a lot of thinking and scribbling. Then it was two pages one day. Then three. Then for a week I averaged about five pages a day.

Last night I realized that it is going to take me five weeks to spit out even a rough draft of this script at that pace. That's a lot of crepes! So today I stepped it up...fifteen pages...many of them good ones (I anticipate an attrition rate of about 75 percent over the long haul, so getting the bad ones out of the way early is an important part of the purging process. At this pace, I'll have a rough draft by the middle of next week. I figure I'll slow up and speed up again so I'm guesstimating two weeks to hammer it out.)

Amazingly, the dialogue is tying in with the plot points I laid out so carefully in the blueprints. I love it when it comes together like that...from starting point into a dark fog, then softly dovetailing with a target that required a precision alignment...and it worked! Of course, I then blurt, go off point, redirect, then destroy (...er, edit)...but that's the process. It's awesome. What have I been doing with my brain for all these years? Clearly the coffee was not getting through.

I Ain't No Jim Bob

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - It's a happy Mother's Day for an Arkansas woman — she's pregnant with her 18th child. Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year's Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers.
Duggar has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her life, and the family is in the process of filming another series for Discovery Health.
Duggar said she's six weeks along and the pregnancy is going well. She and her husband, Jim Bob Duggar, said they'll keep having children as long as God wills it.
The other Duggar children, in between Joshua and Jennifer, are Jana, 18; John-David, 18; Jill, 16; Jessa, 15; Jinger, 14; Joseph, 13; Josiah, 11; Joy-Anna, 10; Jeremiah, 9; Jedidiah, 9; Jason, 7; James, 6; Justin, 5; Jackson, 3; and Johannah, 2.

My sister-in-law wrote me...so do you think Marcel and I should go for the record?

Here was my reply:
Well, you had better get busy. Thing is...I don't even think that's the record. Let's see, if that woman's oldest is 20 and she's 41, that means she started at 21. You're forty, so your a bit behind the curve. Oh and you're going to start having sex with my brother again...
Now, if you did decide to match her pace, she did wait two hears before having her second child. So you're right on track, actually. You have one child...oh, wait, she's turning two in a two months. Looks like you're going to be playing catch up from her on out, Jen.
The Duggers had twins so they went from one to three really quickly. Then they waited two more years. So up until that point, they were a pretty normal family. I think the fifth kid was the turning point for them , though. And you know it by two indicators: a. after Jessa, child number 4, they start having kids every year, not every two...that means they had a goal in mind. And after Jessa, which is technically almost acceptable as a name, they jump to "Jinger" which is definitely not. And after Jinger they turned to the Bible, naming their child Josiah. That's really the pint where you know they've gone insane. You can see they re-thought the Bible thing with Joy-Anna, reverting to their bumpkin roots and the tendency to combine names, as is common in the south and the undereducated. At least they were thinking for themselves. Then they come back with Jeremiah, Jedidiah, Jason, and James. It's clear that at this point they're just looking for help on the farm and to sweep the family reunion softball game with sheer numbers. Justin is clearly a "my eggs are drying up" kind of name. You never hear of an eldest child named Justin. They're always the runts. Jackson is a last name, which means they were reaching now for anything starting with a "J." It's a sign of desperation. Johannah is another reversion back to their southern roots, probably because they're just surprised that this woman is still kickin' kids out. I wouldn't be surprised if by now they aren't letting the other children name the children. The last child is named Jennifer. Traditional, obvious. If they'd thought of that in the first place, maybe they wouldn't have embarked on this mad Journey...which, by the way, is my suggestion for the name of the next child.