I saw this headline and immediately thought of Being There: al.com: Casino Night in garden will do local hearts good

The story is about a charity casino night in Alabama that seems all inclusive: from Al.com:

Be a little bit bad for a good cause next Friday. Casino Night in the Garden of Good and Evil will be an opportunity to try your luck at games of chance in the inviting setting of the Huntsville Botanical Garden Arbor.

The Madison County Medical Alliance is presenting the charity event. Enjoy an evening of roulette, black jack, craps and poker, raffles and auctions of fabulous prizes including Lasik surgery at Huntsville Center for Sight, a sunset cruise on a 60-foot yacht, two round-trip airline tickets, a Christmas breakfast, a handmade gemstone and pearl necklace and one week at The Royal Sands Villa in Cancun. But if you come only to eat Narvell Patton’s wonderful cooking, your evening will be well spent.

The MCMA will donate all proceeds to purchase automated external defibrillators to be placed throughout the city of Huntsville.

Casino Night in garden will do local hearts good

They’re just giving stuff away: cruises, necklaces, eye surgery. And it’s for a good cause, though I remember when one article talked about automated external defibrillators as one of the “comps” that casinos offer to lure in older patrons.

Blackjack, prize giveaways, and food? As Chance might have said, “the garden that I left was such a place.”

Thanks to this Being There page for the image.

When I tell Australian people my name, a lot of them say, “Cool.” I wondered why, until someone told me that there’s a famous Austrailian football (soccer) player named David Schwarz–just like me, but no T. It guess it’s like if someone from Australia was named “Roger Clements” and was talking to American baseball fans.

It may be coincidence, but he’s in the news for gambling. From the Courier-Mail:

FORMER AFL footballer David Schwarz has two people to thank for rescuing him from a destructive gambling habit – his fiancee and his accountant.

Schwarz, 33, a former Melbourne Demons vice-captain and 173-game veteran who retired from the game in 2002, said he lost $500,000 in a year at his gambling peak, and turned over $100,000 in bets in one day.

His gambling problem began at his local TAB at the age of 14 and ended in March this year.

Speaking at the Certified Practising Accountants (CPA) congress in Melbourne today, Schwarz backed the extension of a joint program between CPA Victoria and the Victorian Government to tackle problem gambling in the workplace.

The crunch for Schwarz came two years ago when his fiancee, Karen Tanner, opened a box containing 2200 unopened letters – unpaid bills, fines and GST slips.

They argued and Schwarz had to choose between his fiancee and gambling.

“I had to make a decision and the punt was the thing that I decided to let go,” he said.

The Courier-Mail: Ex-footballer backs gambling scheme [20oct05]

I got to thinking that this might be some sort of cosmic balance thing–if there’s a guy named David Schwartz who never gambles, there is someone with a similar name who gambles too much on the other side of the world. Like a parallel universe or something.

Anyway, good luck to Mr. Schwarz with keeping his gambling problems at bay.