I was asked to play poker for some celebrity thing on the radio with Mickey Dolenz, Frankie Valle, Danny Hutton, Mary Wilson, and a contest winner. It was, as you can see, for an oldies station in NYC. I was pretty excited. I understood that if the contest winner won, she'd keep the money and I'd be playing for Randi. Mostly I wanted to keep a promise to me when I was 12 and hang out with Mickey of the Monkees. I was pretty excited, but I wanted to play poker. As soon as I sat down and asked what the blinds were going to be, they all said, "Oh, he knows poker." I thought that was a bad sign. The big thug from the casino said we were going to play a couple hands for "fun" and then go "all in" and deal the cards face up and have it a game of chance for all the money. They hadn't cleared to really play poker. I was a bit sad.

I thought I'd play hard for the "fun" hands. You could tell that only Frankie and I even knew the rules because we folded and everyone else just kept yelling things they heard on TV. The second hand I was big blind and no one raised so I got to play free and I hit the flush on the flop, forced Danny all in and won. So, I had doubled up. Then the game was over. That was it. Two hands. I got a pair of Queens for the "all in" hand and then Danny sucked out on the river with a straight. But, it wasn't really poker.

But, Three Dog night was the first rock show I went to and I was sitting next to the guy I watched on stage. The Monkees were the first rock records I bought and I was sitting with them. Robin Leach was interviewing and that was fun. It'll give us some radio in NYC so that's good. It was fun to be chatting with Mickey. It meant something to me. I told him that Billy Connely said he'd met 3 of the 4 Beatles and I said I met all four Monkees - "And they're AMERICAN!"

I played poker with a Monkee, 12 year old Penn would have fainted.

You can check out pics of the event here.

Penn

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