Tag Archives: entertainment

Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Day 1

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The question is on everyone’s lips as I walk down the street. I can see it in the sidelong glances and the more honest stares. Starlets, wondering who to sleep with to best promote their careers, pause and try to answer the question:

“Who is that guy?”

While most patrons have a badge that hangs vertically from its orange lanyard, bearing the picture of some model who is apparently the face of this year’s show, my badge is horizontal, and the picture on it is mine. Stamped in big red letters are the words “FILM INDUSTRY”. Combined with the sheer power of my charismatic personality (*cough*), it’s easy to understand why people would be intrigued.

Here, on day one of the festival, the power of the badge showed its first practical superpower as well. We selected the film we wanted to watch, and fuego went to get the tickets. “None available,” the agent told him. He asked for our second choice. Nope. Then when booking the third choice the agent saw The Badges. Whaddaya Know? There were tickets available for our first choice after all.

We watched Mister Lonely, an offbeat story of a Michael Jackson impersonator who gets recruited by Marilyn Monroe into a commune of impersonators. Then there’s the part where the nuns are jumping out of an airplane…

The show was quite good but missed an “excellent” by going flat at places. Marilyn’s performance went soft at a key moment. Still, a movie I’m glad I saw and one that would definitely be worth the price of admission should it show up in a theatre near you. It manages to combine the entire range of emotion from farce to tradegy — sometimes simultaneously.

In other news, I’ve run into several friends while here, some by design, others by accident, and they have helped make this one heck of a good time so far. There was a tense moment when we found that the apartment we had reserved was suddenly unavailable, but the folks at Shadows of Stars and Cine-Jessy came through and now I’m sitting pretty! Today I’m gonna watch me some movies.

Thanks!

You gotta believe!

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Believe In Me, a film built around the themes of values, commitment, and personal growth, will be coming out in a limited release soon. fuego worked on the film, and he tells me that when shooting wrapped the movie had a decent chance of being good. It’s a sports movie, based on the true story of a girl’s basketball coach in Oklahoma in the 1960’s. It was a small-budget production, shot mostly on the plains of Eastern New Mexico.

The initial release is scheduled for March 9th and will be in markets where the distributors think that basketball, values, and Bruce Dern will play the best. If it does well in these locations, then a larger release will be scheduled.

The planned release cities are (copied from fuego’s blog):

A R K A N S A S
+ Bentonville/Rogers

I N D I A N A
+ Indianapolis

I O W A
+ Des Moines

K A N S A S
+ Kansas City

K E N T U C K Y
+ Lexington

N E W M E X I C O (in April)
+ Albuquerque
+ Clovis/Portales
+ Other cities TBD

N O R T H C A R O L I N A
+ Raleigh
+ Durham
+ Chapel Hill

O K L A H O M A
+ Oklahoma City
+ Tulsa

T E N N E S S E E
+ Knoxville

T E X A S
+ Austin
+ Lubbock

If you live near one of these towns and occasionally find yourself lamenting, “whatever happened to good family entertainment?” now is your chance to vote with your pocketbook and give the little guys a boost at the same time. I don’t know how much marketing will accompany the movie, so watch for it and fill those theaters! If you see it, and like it, don’t hesitate to tell the world.

In the interest of disclosure it should be noted that some of my brother’s associates will benefit from the success of the movie, and therefore my brother might realize some intangible benefit, as well. That, in turn, could somehow remotely help me some day. I just wanted to be up front about that.

Thanks!

My favorite job

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I met Belladonna on a movie set, so it’s only natural that she thought I knew something about movies. From the start she was a better conversationalist than I was, more open and sincere, but she eventually tired of trying to reach me through cinema. ‘Do you remember in…’ she would ask, only to be confronted by my apologetic shrug. The list of movies I haven’t seen is immense, and finally she got tired of saying “I can’t believe you haven’t seen…”

There was a period when I felt very comfortable with Belladonna, when there was a mutually understood vast gulf between us. In fact, even now she is one of the few members of the XX set that I can just chill with, although I haven’t seen her for quite some time.

She would be surprised, I think, to learn that once it was my job, my paid profession, to watch movies and talk to people about them.

Once upon a time there was a video store. This is not a David and Goliath story; this little video store had managed to carve out a big chunk of the Southern California market. The way they accomplished this feat was remarkable, however. Get this: they succeeded with two crazy gambits. They offered bulk discounts (if you rent a lot of movies you don’t pay as much), and they offered good customer service.

In each store, much of the time, there was an extra person on payroll whose job was to hang out and talk about movies with the customers. That was it. Much of the time customers would approach that person for recommendations, but other times the movie whisperer would simply strike up a chat with indecisive renters. Did you see X? What did you think? If you’ve got a big sound system, you’re hurting yourself if you don’t see ‘Mission’.

You hit a couple of good recommendations, people are looking for you later. You miss, people are almost apologetic that they didn’t like it, but when they explain why you can nail the next recommendation. My job, even though I ostensibly was in management, was to watch movies at home and to talk about movies at work. I did that job well.

Some of you, the ones who have bought whole-heartedly my craftily-constructed image as an antisocial recluse, capable only of communicating through grunts and belches (and when confronted with a female simply losing consciousness), might be surprised to learn that I did very well in this role. Here’s why: It was a controlled transaction. I can deal with strangers, I can even deal with surprises. It’s uncertainty that’s tough.

Log jam in my head. So many metaphors, so many moments.

Back to Video Library. It was easy work, pleasant work, and almost none of the other people there wanted floor duty. Even people who loved to talk movies with coworkers dreaded going out and talking movies with strangers. So I would do it. It was better than working. It made it easy to go into the office each day. Working with Wendy and Maryann didn’t hurt, either.

Wendy. For a long time she thought I was gay because I didn’t hit on her. I wasn’t gay, I was just afraid. When I dropped a semi-truth to establish my heterosexuality I became a curiosity to her, a science experiment. Had the stars shifted a little bit one way or the other, placing me at the top of the stairs at a party rather than at the bottom, putting me in the back seat rather than in the front seat, I would have come to know all that lay behind the promise that was Wendy. Oh, stars! Still you taunt me so!

Wendy’s friend — I’ve called her Maryann, but as I sit here and remember it seems like there’s been a awful lot of Maryann’s in my life. More than is natural; I suspect I’m painting old faces I remember affectionately with a name I also like. None of them will ever touch the real Maryann, young and poised with dark hair and fair skin and, yes, buxom — she sat at the back of the bus, her stop beyond mine. She sat three rows behind me when I told the lie to Suzie (Susie? oh, please forgive me I don’t remember), the horrible lie that would have been nothing but I repeated it, and again; there was no cock to crow but the betrayal was just as real. And three rows behind was Marianne, cool and perfect and unaware. I never felt as alone as I did at her birthday party.

Which all leads up to Michelle. Susie introduced us; I think she was relieved to divert me. Michelle liked me. I didn’t really understand that, then, and even now it mystifies me. Michelle. To me she was (and still is) some unattainable thing, and I considered myself a dalliance and treated her the same way. We did not share our dreams. We did not reveal our secrets. But now, much too late, much too late, I realize that she liked me. At night, sometimes, I wonder what might have been, even though I know the answer. There is a little echo of her in every strong, intelligent woman I write. I miss her, and hope she is well. I doubt we shall ever speak again. I don’t think I’d have anything to say, even if we did.

That was before Wendy, before this particular Maryann, before Video Library. It was all a long time ago. It was a good job, though, talking about movies.

Thanks!

Important Safety Tip

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It was colder today, though still warmer than it should be. My wardrobe is limited; today I chose one of my favorite chill-weather shirts, a hoodie that was given to crew members after the filming of Hostel. I didn’t work on the film, my shirt comes via the largesse of others. I mentioned a couple of days ago that I didn’t think much of the movie, but whatever negative feelings I have for the flick are nothing compared to the hatred that many Slovaks have toward it. That nation does not come out looking very good in the movie. Not good at all.

Tonight I found myself at Pizzeria Roma, one of the best places to watch international hockey in this town, as long as you’re rooting for the Slovaks instead of the Czechs. I was sitting at my table, working on a screenplay of all things, when some of the regular Slovaks arrived. I recognized a couple of them, although I haven’t been there in a while. I was just finishing a read-through of the first draft of Revenge of Home Textiles when a local came to my table and sat across from me.

“You speak English?” he said, more from politeness than as an actual question. I closed my laptop and prepared for Conversation. “You made Hostel?” he asked. “No,” I said, “but my brother worked on it.” I gestured to the chair fuego had occupied some time before, although he had already left before this guy arrived.

“I do not think that was a good movie,” he said.

“I think it was a terrible movie,” I replied. “Horrible.”

We went back and forth like that for a while. “That movie… I was in America in 1997. Americans don’t even know where Europe is. When a movie like that makes Slovaks look so bad, and others…” he hesitated. “I don’t want to argue…”

“I think we agree,” I pointed out.

“Do you know Quentin Tarrontino?” he asked. “Maybe you could tell him what we think.”

I laughed. “No, I don’t know him.” (I don’t even know how to spell his name, it seems.) “He just put his name on the movie anyway. I’m not sure why because Hostel really sucks. The guy who made it was Eli Roth. I met him once and he seemed like an asshole, but I was not my best that night either.” In fact on the night in question I was far from my best. Eli probably thought I was an asshole as well, if he thought of me at all. There is at least one person at that party who thought I was an asshole. All that’s neither here nor there; I expect that all my Slovak interviewer heard was “guy who made it” and “asshole”. That was enough for this conversation.

“You could tell him…?”

“They don’t care what I think.” Emphasis on they. “I’m surprised the Czechs let them film the second one here.”

“There’s another one?”

I guess that movie’s not out yet. Word on the street is that it sucks less than the first one, but I doubt I’ll ever find out firsthand. I nodded grimly, kicking myself for being the one who brought that particular bit of news to Pizzeria Roma.

There wasn’t much for us to say after that; his attempt to lodge a protest with the powers that be in Hollywood had failed utterly. I mentioned that just two days ago I had written on the Internet that I didn’t like Hostel, and that seemed to satisfy him. He returned to his people to report on the outcome, and I went back to work.

Thanks!

Hey! He was in…

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People sometimes ask me what my favorite movies are. It’s not the kind of question I’m good at answering. There are movies I like a lot, there are movies I appreciate for some particular point, and there are movies I enjoy just for the fun of them. I would do much better with a list of movies I really hated.

One movie that is without question one of my all-time favorites is… I’ll tell you later. For now we’ll call the film Get Crazy. It is not an intellectual flick. But once again, a couple of decades later, I’m watching a movie and one of the big stars shows up and my first thought is, “Hey! That guy was in Get Crazy!”

The cast of this forgotten epic includes Daniel Stern, Malcom Macdowell, Lou frickin’ Reed, for crying out loud, Fabian, Bobby Goldsboro, John Densmore (the drummer for the Doors), Howard Calin (the Turtles), and a ton of other actors who went on to make minor names for themselves. The theme of the movie: Rock and roll is supposed to be fun. Yeah, they took some risks, there, but even back then we were wishing Mick Jagger drank whatever was in the water cooler at the Saturn that night. Reggie Wanker did, and rediscovered rock ‘n’ roll. It was the Wanker I saw tonight on TV. Then he played an aging rock star, now he is an evil european bad guy of some sort. He’s doing all right, but it’s nothing like his perrformance in Get Crazy.

That film, for all its throwaway one-liner genius, was above all a triumph of casting, and of giving the creative people the chance to create. There’s a constant barrage of little oddities, the kind of things you think of on the spur of the moment, and the folks making this movie listened to one of the characters: “Yeah, why not?” Even in post-production, there came the odd sound effects, and subtitles stating the obvious just for the pleasure of stating the obvious (“The Bad Guys” reads one, as the helicopter for Serpent Industries lands, and later “Boy Meets Girl”).

“Rock ‘n’ Roll is gonna be fun again,” we hear near the end of the film, from a surprise character. (I could tell you, but that would spoil everything.) “Good…?” Toad replies. The idea that Rock ‘n’ Roll might not be fun has never occurred to him. Let me back up and give you the dialog. Reggie Wanker is Malcom McDowell being Mick Jagger. Toad is John Densmore being John Densmore. I have not see this movie in several years, so the dialog might be a little off.

Reggie: Toad, meet our new manager.
Toad: Aaaug! Ugh!
New Manger: ‘ello, Toad.
Toad: Wha?
New Manager: I’ve got us booked into every bleedin’ dive in Liverpool.
Reggie: Rock ‘n’ Roll is gonna be fun again.
Toad: Good…?
Reggie: Go on, give the lad a drink.
Toad (pouring from his bottle): I ain’t gonna touch him.

The reason I bring this up, other than the fact I saw (but didn’t understand) a movie with Malcom McDowell tonight, is that lately I’ve been Reggie, when I really should be Toad. Tonight I am both.

Jerry: Writing is gonna be fun again.
Jerry: Good…?

And the actual name of the movie was… Get Crazy!

Thanks!

Odds and Ends

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The sun has flown south for the winter, and a very pleasant autumn had given way to long dark. There was a dusting of snow on the rooftops yesterday morning, and the temperature was looking upward longingly at freezing. When the landlord came by to collect the rent, he spent a little extra time trying to find out if there was anything I needed. It seems he’s not comfortable with someone who has no complaints. He went out of his way to ask if I was warm enough. It’s fortunate the itchies have mostly cleared up, because it is certainly time to bundle up, but overall I’m quite cozy. No need for the toasty tent yet.

I got my first haggle swag today. It’s a bound galley of a novel by one of the Jer’s Novel Writer faithful. I haven’t started reading it yet, it was waiting on my step as I headed out today. I’m looking forward to it, though. One happy side effect of creating the software is that I have come in contact with a whole bunch of thoughtful and articulate people who love the written word. They are by no means all professionals, but there is a camaraderie that I enjoy immensely. I felt the same thing back when NaNoWriMo was only 1100 people or so (don’t quote me on that number).

On the subject of JersNW, I had a really good day of coding yesterday. I explored a different architecture for part of the database, and the thing clicked into place with ease. I learned a lot while doing it, and the possibilities are really exciting. I just want to tip my hat to the kids at Apple who came up with NSPredicate. (Experienced cocoa programmers are rolling their eyes right now — yeah, big discovery there, Marco Polo — but I could never use the stuff before, because I was trying to maintain compatibility with older versions of MacOS.) Now, things I’ve been dreading coding I can’t wait to get to.

NaNoWriMo. This is by far the most challenging year for me. Not just 50,000 words, but 50,000 publishable words, and the story complete at the end. In other words, a finished product in a month. I have two word counts, one already way up there, the other behind the curve. Finished words take a lot longer. I believe I’ll devote another episode to go into more detail about my NaNoWriMo project, and to share the parts already published.

To my Arky cousin David: if you read this, the Little Café Near Home needs you. The chairs that inspired my thoughts about triangles in architecture are failing. Welds flexed too often are failing, the steel tubing itself is giving up. We need your welding skills stat (what does that actually mean?)! The things just aren’t safe anymore. Bring some triangles.

Right now the TV is on. They’re showing Mr. & Mrs. Smith, with Brad Pitt and that actress with the lips that would be sexy if they didn’t feel so unnatural. Mt. Pitt is a talented actor, but a skill more important than acting is choosing the right script. I was surprised at how much I liked that movie, and knowing the plot already, it’s easy to follow in Czech.There’s a concept that must have been easy to sell: Two super-assassins, and they’re married, completely unaware. Each accepts the other’s cover story. Maybe someday I’ll write something that easy to explain. I’ve come close a couple of times,

Thanks!

A Nation Comes Together

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The TV is not on here at the Little Café Near Home very often, but sometimes there is an event that draws people here to watch as a group. the most obvious example of this is for major sporting events, but there are other programs that draw in the crowds as well. One of those shows is on right now. I’d consider going somewhere else, but any other place with a TV will have the same show on.

What is this event that draws the nation together? I’ve mentioned it before, but the current season of Česko hleda Superstar is getting down to the finals. The good news is that means the contestants who really, really, suck have all been eliminated. Now we have a homogeneous batch of people who fit the formula. They all sound pretty much the same, craftsmen rather than artists, singing safe tunes written by other people. One of these will be labeled ‘Superstar’, a large fish in a small pond, and will then try to turn that into a career, just like the other winners of the other Superstar contests all over the world.

I’m not sure you can pin all the blame for the superstar formula on the U.S., but as the worlds largest producer of pop clones I think it’s fair to guess that the recipe for the McPopstar was perfected there.

As I was watching the show (I have no resistance to the box of moving lights) I started to wonder: what’s so damn special about singing that these guys are the superstars, while artists in other disciplines toil in relative obscurity? Technology is part of the answer, certainly; electricity has made it possible for there to be a music industry. People are listening to music all the time, where for most other art forms they have to dedicate time to appreciating it. Technology has changed both the product and the distribution.

A hundred years ago there were certainly celebrated musicians and entertainers, but back then there were people in other art forms that were just as celebrated. Maybe more so. I think for a while the writers had the edge — between the invention of the printing press and the invention of radio they had the best mass-market potential. Ah, if only I was born a hundred years earlier! Before that, I’m not sure. Whatever the talented person in each village did, perhaps.

The Buggles claim that video killed the radio star. That may well be true, but the singers are still hanging in there, as long as they are attractive enough. You can’t be a superstar if you can’t carry a tune. Well, let’s just say you can’t be a superstar without singing. With Internet getting steadily faster video will become more and more influential, but the difference is that people will be able to watch anything, whenever they want. By putting distribution squarely in the hands of consumers, we might (fingers crossed) see the last of the manufactured pop star. There will always be those who have big promotional budgets, flashier videos, and whatnot, but already I only buy music from independent labels (not out of any sort of protest, their terms and pricing on downloaded music are better), and I don’t think I’m missing out on much. Honestly, I have no idea who’s popular right now anyway, and I can always find something I enjoy on an indie Web site.

I am told there are even people who use the Web to read what other people write.

The next few years will be interesting. Big extravaganzas like the one I witnessed tonight will work to make the next superstar, while beneath the stage the termites are gnawing on the supports.

Thanks!

All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku

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Some of you already know that on occasion I take time out from my busy schedule to watch Japanese cartoons. There are many reasons for the rise of animated series in Japan, and at the top of the list is the same reason there are so many reality shows in the US: They’re cheap to produce. The similarity ends there, however, as some (not all) anime can be watched without first cauterizing the pain centers in your brain. (It’s like comparing levels of hell, but Czech reality shows are, from my limited exposure, even worse than the American versions, and even more popular.)

Sometimes I come across a title that says “watch me”. That happened this week, when I stumbled across a 14-episode series called All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku. Sometimes you have to ignore the warning bells in your head and remind yourself that cat girls are generally pretty hot, even in cartoons.

The story is a familiar one. A super-genius scientist has created a super-strong androbot, using a cat brain. Naturally he crafted his super-robot to look like a schoolgirl, and enrolled her at the local academy, so she could learn to have human emotions. The scientist created her to combat the evil cabal intent on taking over the world. Said cabal supports Nuku Nuku’s school in exchange for being allowed to use it as a place to test their evil inventions.

I’m told that Japanese are cliquish and hostile toward outsiders. Judging by the fact that it is nearly certain any “transfer student” arriving at a school will almost always lead to untold destruction, I can’t say as I blame them for being a little slow to accept outsiders. (I am now imagining a story in which an American student transfers to a school in japan, but much like in Galaxy Quest, this is a world where all the stereotypes are all true. American has no idea. On the first day he will be detained and arrive to class late, after everyone else is seated. “Class,” the clueless teacher says, “meet our new transfer student…” Pandemonium breaks out as half the class dives for cover while the other half point to the empty desks next to theirs. (Good things happen to the first person to befriend the transfer student/unstable superweapon.))

Where was I? Oh yes. Nuku Nuku. I watched episode one, and found myself laughing out loud. This was a show that didn’t take itself too seriously, and had fun with the same stereotypes I enjoy commenting on. In each episode, when a character comes on, the action goes to letterbox to allow room for the subtext: “Snobby Rich Girl” or “Nihilistic heart throb”. The show is oddly lacking, it occurs to me as I write this, in a Ninja Girl. All I can figure is she transferred to another school to raise some hell of her own.

It is silly, but they use the silliness to create a couple of nice twists. When we are first introcuced to the evil cabal we see employees of Mishima corporation receiving the message “Secret Call.” in various funny ways. (One employee is sitting on the john and when he pulls out the paper, there is the message. The bathroom stall, conveniently, is an elevator, and down he goes to the prominently-labeled “Evil Meeting Room.” Eventually all the members rise through the floor, dressed in outlandish evil outfits. Hell Mishima appears and addresses his troops.

Some of the troops are more enthusiastic than others. Many in the Evil Meeting Room would prefer that company staff meetings were run in a more traditional fashion, they way they had been when Hell Mishima’s father was in charge. In the end, all the evil plans, while convoluted and doomed to failure as all evil plans are, lack one key ingredient. Evil. Mishima Industries is just another multinational out to increase market share, or as Hell Mishima says, “Take over the WORLD! Bwa ha ha ha!”

“I hope he grows out of this,” one employee mutters to another.

There are a lot of jokes going past that I know enough to spot, but not to get. Nuku Nuku continuously calls the snobby girl by the wrong name, a different one every time, and I’m pretty sure all those misnomers mean things. Not flattering things.

They say that “well begun is half done,” (Ben Franklin is oft credited as being one them) and in the case of this series, I think that’s about right. After the first episode, with thirteen more to go, they’d used at least half of the jokes. Some jokes get funnier with repetition — to a point. Nuku Nuku reached the last of those points around episode three, when the Evil Women (aka marketing department) flashed back to the the laundry machine run amok landing on them — just before the microwave oven run amok landed on them.

Nuku Nuku had one flaw, that I noticed right away but have waited to mention. The opening theme is most decidedly not ridiculous. I’m sorry, but if you’re going to name the show All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, you damn well better have lyrics that match Cutey Honey or Club-To-Death Angel Dokuro-chan.

Thanks!

Arrgh!

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Still no Internet at home (long story getting longer), and today they’re filming something (probably a commercial) at the bowling alley, and that seems to mean no Internet here, either. Of course I didn’t realize that until after I ordered food.

On the other hand, I do have a good view of the thoroughly uninteresting production in the lanes below. The one good part is that the dude is a really bad bowler, so time after time he’s rolling the ball, then turning and doing a high five with the pretty girl as his ball trundles off course. Rack ’em up and try again, sparky!

The owner of the place just came by to ask if I was using the WiFi, and when I explained that it wasn’t working today he was surprised. Maybe I’ll get some love here soon.

Thanks!

Non-Stop Snack Bar

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Names of businesses are descriptive here, and Non-Stop Snack Bar is a perfect example. It’s a snack bar (emphasis on bar), and it never closes. This place is a little unusual in that the beer served is not prominently displayed. There are only two things a czech bar patron wants to know: when is the bar open and what beer is served. The rest is inconsequential.

This is the closest all-night place to where I live, and I have never been here before. Strašnica is not really your party-all-night kind of neighborhood.

I was just getting ready to write “this is a cash on the barrelhead kind of place.” I paid for my first two beers when they arrived, and I’ve watched other patrons, some obviously regulars, do the same. Third beer (laptop open), she marked a piece of paper and waved off the payment. I think the real reason is that she’s too busy scarfing down Buffalo Wings that she had delivered from somewhere else. Yes, it’s a snack bar, but the emphasis really is on bar. And Herna. There are slot machines all around me, taking the space where my favorite table would be, but they’re in quiet mode, softly purring in an almost soothing manner.

The TV is on. There’s a movie on with Harrison Ford in it. There is a limited pool of good dubbing actors, and the one who is playing whoever the hell Harrison Ford is supposed to be has a distinctive voice – kind of high and nasal. I don’t hear much czech TV, but I hear this guy all the time. Tonight the movie went into commercial break and we were treated to an ad for cold medicine where the guy had the same distinctive voice as the lead actor in the feature. There was another commercial that didn’t include him, but then the next one did.

I have been sensitized to his voice to the point where any time I’m listening to the television I can’t help but say, “There’s that guy again!”

Thanks!

Poker Online

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I’ve got a crummy little head cold right now, one that isn’t serious enough to put me under but is enough to keep me from being able to concentrate on anything. I don’t want to spread it around, so I’ve been spending a lot of time at home. Yesterday I installed myself at fuego’s place to abuse his Internet for a while (and water MaK’s plants). I tried to write, it wasn’t working. I tried to work on Jer’s Novel Writer, but I just didn’t have the patience. I found myself drifting around the Internet, looking for something to entertain me.

Somewhere along the way I stumbled across an online poker place that had a mac.com/patible client. I had seen someone playing online poker in a bar a few days ago, and I was curious. What caught my eye was that you can play for fake money. Aha! thought I, here’s a chance to hone the old poker skills without any monetary risk. Soup Boy’s been talking about having a poker night, so I figured it would be helpful to be in top form.

I ventured over to PokerRoom.com and read up on how the whole thing works. It’s pretty straightforward limit Texas hold’em (there are other games as well, but not for fake money). Finally I entered my vital statistics and joined a table.

Playing poker over the Internet for fake money is not the way to learn the game. I watched, incredulously, as people did the most amazingly stupid things. Case in point: on one hand there were two Queens showing. I had another, and a ten. There were no straight or flush opportunities showing, so I was pretty happy with three queens, but a bit worried about the limited support from the ten. Three other people were bidding up the pot extremely aggressively. I looked again at the cards, to see what I could be missing. One of those players might have the fourth Queen, but what was up with the other two? At the end I saw their cards, then went back over the play-by-play to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. Two players had bid up the pot to the limit based on having a pair of queens. The hand showing on the table. I wanted to smack them upside the head and say, “Hey! Did it occur to either of you that with all these people betting, someone might have more than the minimum possible hand?“

In the above account, an astute Texas Hold’em player wold ask, “But Jerry, why did you even play a queen-ten?” Indeed, I shouldn’t have, and I paid the price. I lost to three queens and a king. It’s just that when there’s so much “stupid money” on the table, sometimes you lose perspective. After that hand I reminded myself to be patient, to be the shark swimming deep under the silly people splashing above, and wait for my moment to strike. At one point someone else at the table noticed I had folded several times in a row, and posted a message, “When you play a hand, I’m folding for sure!” I played, he had a good hand, he stayed in, and I won. That guy was fun to have around, though. At least what he did made sense, in a loose and carefree kind of way.

I saw people do silly things over and over. People betting to the limit on a king high, with other people also betting enthusiastically. When four cards of the same suit are showing, people betting when they have less than a flush. People staying in the game when the junk in their hand should have been folded before it was even dealt. I folded far more often than anyone else, and I while sitting out I would watch the others play, hoping to pick up the patterns of my opponents, to try to learn what to watch for as the cards played out. There was no pattern. I would try to predict what people had before they showed their cards, but it’s tough to do when people who have no chance of winning continue to throw in chips. Time and again I would say to myself, watching two people run up the pot, the rest of the table blindly following, “Man, the one with the jack is going to be bummed when he finds out the other has a queen. I don’t know what the rest of these guys are thinking,” only to find out that the people raising and re-raising were not the ones holding the good cards.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Poker, at it’s heart, is a game based on greed. You want to take everyone else’s money away. I imagined that in the fake-money tables greed would be replaced by pride, but apparently the game is so well-focussed on pure greed that nothing else can ever replace it. Poker for play money, especially in the anonymous world of Internet poker, is not poker at all; it’s people throwing chips at each other. I wondered more than once if they were even looking at their cards.

I guess I’ll have to get my poker lesson somewhere else.

Thanks!

OK, there was one thing I did…

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I downloaded more or less at random a Japanese animation (“anime” the kids call it) called Cutey Honey Flash. Somewhere it was listed as a top download. It is a 3-episode reprise of a 1970’s TV series, done in the last couple of years. It’s about your typical super-popular high school girl, idolized by all her classmates, especially expert at fencing (judging by anime, these girls really are typical), who, by touching her brooch and shouting (in English) “HONEY FLASH!” awakens super powers so she can fight an all-female band of supernatural villains known as Panther Claw. (Pronounced “Panthl Crawl” – they choose to use English at the oddest times.)

This story has been redone several times, apparently, including a live-action movie. You just can’t get enough Cutey Honey!

I have only seen the first episode, but there are two things I really like about this silly show. First, the modern version does a great job staying in the whole ’70’s feel, especially the opening song in which, over trumpets and bongoes, a woman sings this (copied from the subtitles):

A right now, en vogue girl
a small bottomed girl
Look my way, Honey
Come on… Come on, just a little bit!
Please, oh please don’t hurt my feelings
My heart is racing!

No! No!
No, don’t look at me~
HONEY FLASH!

Please, oh please don’t come close
My nose is twitching!
No! No!
No, don’t look at me~
HONEY FLASH!

I’m changing!

HONEY FLASH! Is sung in English. My nose is twitching? Your guess is as good as mine.

My second favorite part is that at the end of episode one her father is lost in a fiery blimp crash. I’m a big fan of blimps.

Thanks!

Body Czech

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NOTE: This has been transcribed from the backs of Staropramen coasters.

Watching Czechs Bowl —
Body English is more than just an expression, apparently. Body Czech is much more reserved. While the ball is rolling down the lane, the czechs have three options: watch blankfaced, turn away, or practice their follow-through (and that only among the bowlers who had been taking lessons earlier). All other reactions are saved until after the ball hits the pins.

Among those I bowled with in the US, the ballet of the bowler, subtly influencing the course of the ball, is a big part of the game. The gyrations, the hand gestures, the instructions shouted down the lane, all those things mattered.

It says something about both groups — the Americans think they can change things they have no control over and the Czechs don’t try. In the case of bowling, the Czechs can probably take the philosophical high ground, what with physics and all, but I lean the American way myself. We’re the dreamers, the poets of bowling.

Golf and bowling may be the only recreational activities with such a gap between action and result, that period that allows the actor to perform. Indeed, it is that stretch between performance and result that makes the games worthwhile.

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Thanks!

Gold Class, Baby!

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fuego and I went and caught the new Star Wars movie the other night. I’d heard it didn’t suck as bad as the previous two, so I was up for it. It was the day for my czech lesson, and that just happened to be in a part of town with a theater fuego had been telling me about.

Gold Class.

Here’s how it works: You pay too much for your movie ticket, then before the movie you hang out in the lounge paying too much for beer. While you’re out there, you tell them when during the show you would like them to bring you more beer. You give the staff your seat number and pay too much for the beers they will bring you. Not American prices, mind you, just more than you’re used to paying here.

When the time comes they open up the doors and everyone goes in. By “everyone” I mean all forty people, if the show is sold out. it doesn’t take long for everyone to make their ways to their La-Z-Boys, settle in, and get comfy. Feet up, reclining, appreciating the sound system, I was ready to do some serious movie-watching. Well, almost ready – the previews were just finishing up when the first beer arrived. Bravo!

I suppose I should say something about the movie as long as I’m here. I’m happy to report it did suck less than episode 1. I never saw Episode 2 (not in English, anyway). fuego and I exchanged some snide comments during the movie; at one point the Obi-Wan has nasty little robots crawling around on the outside of his spaceship. Skywalker pulls off some flying miracles to clean them off. You know, because Jedi knights can’t manipulate matter from a distance. Oh, wait. they can. They just seem to forget that at the most inconvenient times. Yoda, at least, seemed to keep some grip on his own abilities when faced with crisis. It was the same in the Matrix sequel: If the power you have imbued your hero with is inconvenient, pretend it never happened. Didn’t someone ask the writer, “Hey, wouldn’t he have used the Force here?” And probably someone did, but the writers were too lazy or not creative enough to invent situations that would truly be a challenge to a jedi, instead hoping that we wouldn’t notice.

There were times the writing was terribly hackneyed, and times good writing was massacred by bad acting. Samuel L. Jackson put in his worst performance ever in any movie, somehow caught at the center of the vortex of stupid lines delivered badly. It hurt to watch sometimes.

On the other hand, Sith-boy (I must confess I don’t know the actor’s name), the new Emperor who will take three more movies to overcome, did a really good job. So many movie productions forget that not only do you need a star as the hero, you need a good actor for the villain. The power of Star Wars has always been the bad guy: Darth Vader, Darth Maul (I was sorry to see so little of him), and Sith-Boy. This guy has been all that’s buoyed up the last few episodes, though Frank Oz has helped as well.

I was interested in seeing this movie because it presented a great storytelling challenge: spin a good yarn that holds up even though everyone in the audience knows the bad guy is going to win. Send people home satisfied. But it’s a great opportunity as well, to write a story where the good guy wins but the seeds of his destruction three movies later are planted. “Into exile go I must.” “He still has good in him, I know it.” “Don’t you remember? you killed her.”

One more bitch: R2-D2, in this episode, could fly, combat dozens of war-droids, and generally kick ass. I missed one part where he got away from a bunch of bad guys or reduced them to scrap or something because my next beer had just arrived, but you get the idea. Compare this to the little trash can that gets captured by the glowing-eye guys in episode IV. Did all those systems break in the intervening years? Sure, sure, I know it’s hard to keep a story consistent over that great a scope, but don’t you think as they were writing R2 into the prequels they would have asked, “hey, why didn’t Obi-Wan recognize R2 in episode IV?”

Call me a nitpicker if you want, but stuff like that bothers me. I know what it’s like to try to get all the little pieces of a big story to work together, but they had friggin’ years to get it all together. The last night before they called their script final, they should have sat down and watched the original Star Wars. Their best work. They should have asked themselves two questions: “Do they fit?” and “Does this cheapen the original?”

Of course, episode IV, the original, had nothing to live up to. Partly because of that, because there was nothing to compare it to, it became the definition of the best, and Lucas has been behind the eight-ball ever since, getting castigated for making movies that are merely good, and hearing people like me say “Back when I was a kid your movies weren’t nearly as childish.”

In the end, I think the difference comes down to acting. The original had a bunch of unknowns (not for long) and one recognized great, who played in an action movie with grace and aplomb. It is unimaginable to me that lame, flat, dead, stilted acting like I just saw would have been tolerated on the original production. If you’re blowing a million bucks a millisecond on VFX, perhaps you could say, “Let’s do that scene one more time. This time, pretend you’re acting.”

It may not sound like it, but I really didn’t think the movie sucked. It was better than most other pre-constructed blockbusters. I’ll tell you this, though: I could have done a lot better. A lot better. I could kick that movie’s ass at a fraction of the cost. With a mere seventy million dollar budget I will make a movie that outgrosses all the Star Wars movies combined. I guarantee it. So come on, Hollywood, put your money where my mouth is.

Meanwhile, if the movie’s huge, spectacular, and overhyped, there’s only one way to go. Gold Class, baby.

Thanks!

No minimum sample size

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OK, so the Czech Republic is a whole country and everything, complete with it’s own traditions and character. You won’t find much of that on Czech TV. They have their own version of Superstar, on TV, where people with moderate talent compete to sound exactly like pop stars and thus become pop stars themselves. Just like America.

What prompted this episode, however, is the show blasting here at Roma right now. I think it’s titled “I’ll join your sham of a talent show and humiliate myself as long as you put me on TV.” The name is much shorter in czech, but I’m pretty sure of my translation. It’s like the gong show with more contestants and no gong. And the talent pool – and I’m using talent in the loosest possible sense – is much smaller here. Scary.

Thanks!