Posts Tagged ‘Steven Soderbergh’

Bootleg City: Yes in Edmonton, September ‘84

Wow! People are really fired up about this Tuesday’s election in Bootleg City! As mayor, it warms my heart to see such civic pride and faith in democracy. Don’t forget to vote, everyone. Remember, we’re all in this together.

Everyone except the mayoral candidates whose asses I’m totally going to kick on November 3, that is. On that note, here’s my final attack ad of the campaign season:

Last summer Matt Wardlaw was quoted as saying, “Taco Bell and I have a relationship that dates back to an infamous church youth group trip in the late ’80s.”

So what else is Matt Wardlaw not telling us that he already did tell us but not without it being taken out of context?

For starters, just last week Mr. Wardlaw told Mayor Robert Cass, “Not if you were the last immigrant grocer on Earth!” But why does Mr. Wardlaw hate immigrant grocers? And does he plan to molest them the way he molested 14 innocent Mexican-American tacos in 20 minutes back when Republicans were still in the White House?

On November 3, don’t vote for a molester of tacos or any other foods made by hardworking, minimum wage-earning, American Dream-having immigrants. Vote for Robert Cass. Vote for him for Mayor.

Paid for by the Committee to Re-elect a Mayor Who Isn’t Addicted to Vinyl or Any Other Mind-Altering Substance.

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No Concessions: My Porn “Experience”

Twenty-five years ago, Brian De Palma planned to give porn star Annette Haven the lead role of “Holly Body” in his film Body Double, but backed off as controversy threatened to erupt. Today, Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh builds a whole movie, The Girlfriend Experience, around porn star Sasha Grey, and no one blinks. Why does the star of Anal Cavity Search 6 and This Ain’t Star Trek XXX land this rare crossover opportunity?

For the same reason that the 21-year-old has appeared in videos by the Smashing Pumpkins and The Roots, sat down with Tyra Banks, and been interviewed/celebrated by publications including Los Angeles magazine, Rolling Stone, and The Wall Street Journal—shaved and airbrushed, the porn industry just isn’t as dirty as it once was. I remember the filthy old days of the ’70s, when the New York Post ran titillating ads for adults-only fare like The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio (“It’s Not Just His Nose That Grows!”) and the neighborhood cinema where I grew up in sleepy suburban New Jersey went from showing Disney double features one summer to hardcore porn in fall. When Love Muscle replaced The Love Bug, a snake had clearly crawled into the Garden State. (more…)

Exit Music (For a Film): “Ocean’s Eleven”

Conceptually, counting cards is incredibly simple.  Take a deck of cards.  With a full deck, the count is zero.  Deal the cards out one by one.  Each time you see a card numbered 2 through 6, add one to the count.  Each time you see an ace, a face card, or a ten, subtract one from the count.  That’s it.  You’re done.  You’ve learned the basic high-low counting system, a system that mathematician Edward O. Thorpe developed and proved by winning huge money during a single weekend.

On the technical side, the hardest part of counting cards exists in playing with perfect strategy.  There are essentially 250 situations that can occur while playing blackjack, and you need to know how to play your cards in each of them.  Memorizing 250 different responses might sound intimidating, but it’s no harder than memorizing the multiplication tables, and you managed to accomplish that before you were nine years old.

Put these two basic techniques together, and you’ve got an edge on the casino.  All you need to do is increase the amount of your bet when the count is positive, and over the long haul you’ll win money.  Of course, any dealer worth the meager wages the casinos begrudge them can count cards as easily as you – so with a basic high-low system, what you’re doing is completely transparent.

The Film: Ocean’s Eleven

The Song: “69 Police”

The Artist: David Holmes

I saw Ocean’s Eleven (2001) at a special screening in Mission Valley for Qualcomm employees and their friends.  I had a roommate who was working on their digital cinema collaboration with Texas Instruments.  The film was a fun bit of fluff, obviously as enjoyable for the actors to produce as it was for us to watch.  The engineers at Qualcomm were deservedly proud of their work, which was absent of lint, spots, jitter or cigarette burns.  It was a fun evening – the Qualcomm folks were still enjoying the tail end of the giddy stock price heights of the 2000 dot-com bubble, and I was on the tail end of my own experience at pilfering money from a Las Vegas casino. (more…)