The Casino
And I visit the casino, with the view to improving my fortunes.
It's hopeless, this, I'm better off buying a lottery ticket, the amount of improving my fortune needs far exceeds any lucky streak this casino can offer.
But I'm looking for opportunity, trying to get out of my box, do different things, and this is one of those things. Never mind that the every fibre of my being resists this, it's where I'm off tonight.
From the moment of entering I'm distracted by the endless rows of VLT's.
I'm not a VLT sort of guy. I'll play them, for a few minutes, but the money goes too quick, the addiction wears thin, the winnings are trivial, the amusement slim and the losses great.
I walk through the dimly-lit maze of VLT's, searching for some games tables. Eventually I find some, but situated, as they are, in the dim light between the forest of VLT's and their attendant zombies I'm not so inspired.
I have a different vision of a Casino, and this isn't it.
I'm picturing, remembering a time when Casinos had a dress code, demanded membership, when the only games were table games - Baccarat, Craps, Roulette, Blackjack, Poker. Where to be there meant you had money to lose. I had a membership in London once, Charlie Chesters, I remember them because they sent me birthday cards, even when I moved back to Canada.
Now, here - and I mean the Alberta Government and the Native Run Casinos - they're all about the VLT's. I know they're great earners, but there's something missing. You follow around the retired people squandering their pensions, or smell them sat in front of their "Lucky" VLT, their pampers on to ensure they don't have to leave, you see the gangsters laundering their drug and other ill-gotten gains - obviously - (and in Victoria they've actually found money stained with dye-packs being laundered in government casinos), you see the single moms squandering their child support and welfare payments, single dads wasting - like me - their EI on the hope that they'll be paid just enough to....
It's bleak. Really bleak. There's no hope here, only despair, and I leave long before my budget's expired.
I have a different vision of a Casino. Where you can only lose money you have to lose, no VLT's, more Croupiers, table games, and everyone is dressed well. Here it's like standing in the welfare-recycling line.
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- Category: Miscellany
Babushka
I'm inline at the Good Samaritan Rummage Sale - Early, this is not one to miss. I was here at 7:15 AM, the sale starts at 9:00 AM, my early arrival guarantees me about position 50 in line, even accounting for the "filling" that goes on as friends join friends ahead of you.
There's no worries today, I know all the dealers in line and only one or two are of any threat to me, the rest are idle treasure hunters who show up at every sale then disappear. I know the competition.
And I've brought the coffee to propitiate the gods, hand one to the book fairy and a couple to random strangers, my karma is secure.
I recognize many of the faces from the preceding rummage sale. This event, it has it's regulars.
At 8:30 I see an old woman, stocky, short, limping, classical Russian Babushka heading towards the sale. She's limping, she marches into the line some 10 people before me and works her way towards the front, then stands at attention, left hand behind her back. I don't see her interacting with the other customers, there's no indication that she's found her granddaughter or grandson or group of seniors friends, she's on her own.
It looks to me for all the world as if she's butted into line, and I'm dead pissed off. Bad enough that people claim "friendship" and butt into line some 10 or 20 places early despite being late, but this woman can't even claim that.
But she's old, maybe late 70's, early 80's, and so I daren't say a thing.
I go for a cigarette, it's implicit that my position will be held by the rest of the line, I meet a vendor I'm familiar with.
"Her? She does that every year. A couple of years I tried to tell her to go to the back of the line, she tells me she's sick, I tell her then she shouldn't be here...."
She's still here. Her age is the antidote to waiting in line like the rest of us, she's used the "sickness" excuse how many years in a row to get pole-position on the best garage sale in the city. But what can you say? Start an argument, try to pitch her to the back of the line and you'll be expelled.
I can't wait until I'm old....
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- Category: People
Metropolis
Inspired by "Midnight In Paris" I've tracked down a masterpiece from the 20's - Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
Now I know that - to modern tastes- it's overacted, a little extreme, but look at the effects - the theme, the facial expressions -all this for the 1920's!
It is amazing. And if you can't read the German subtitles, well, it doesn't matter, the film explains (for this 10 minutes at least) itself. Marvelous.
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- Category: Film
Midnight in Paris
Written and Directed by Woody Allen, starring Owen Wilson, a charming and romantic look at one writer's discovery of the Paris of his dreams and imagination. To give away more might be to spoil it, so simply - a light film, perfectly suited for that first date with the English or Arts major you've been dying to ask out.
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- Category: Film
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