Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis

Is it really the getting it off your chest that helps? i.e., a religious person's praying is really talking aloud and to "someone else" about their issues.

If you feel it helps, please continue to post on those topics. We're here to listen.

On the plus side, at least the treatise didn't become a manifesto.

i ham thoroughly inspidered by your 8 1/2 Weeks comparison with Coppola and Tarantino

thought of you a few weekends ago while value hunting at a local
within 40 spins on four different firecracker machines ran 200 up to 2100
high score of 1150

My thoughts on the religious aspect of recovery run along three different tracks, which leads to a very long post, which led to me trying to avoid it. Instead, I'll try to be brief and just summarize, but a lot of the supporting statements aren't going to be in there, so it'll be easier to pick apart, which I should just accept and let go.

(1) Humans are wired to need each other to get the big things done. On our own, we can't run very fast, or see or smell or hear or fight very well. Our claws and teeth are relatively puny and weak, so we've always needed to gang up. A gang needs leaders; however, once we hit adulthood, a lot of us who aren't management material realize that our parents and tribal elders are just as flawed and stupid as we are, and are therefore necessary but not sufficient in terms of leadership. So, something more is needed to keep us in line, and that something is gods, who act essentially as parents and elders who are not as flawed as their real-life counterparts. Modern secular nation states have attempted to replace the gods with constitutions and the rule of law, but these things have not been around long enough, relative to the age of our species, to have an evolutionary effect.

These parental, tribal and spiritual combinations are still around because they work, and they've been around for so long that evolution has shaped us to be receptive to then. The 12-step programs replace parents and elders with sponsors and doctrinal steps, but they also call in the gods because our minds are wired to be receptive to the complete package.

(2)

In this indescribably vast and ancient universe, for one to believe that a species of ape that has been around for the smallest fraction of an eyeblink represents the highest pinnacle of intelligence and development is hubris and folly. It has to be extremely likely that there are smarter beings out there. Whether they know of or give a crap about humanity, never mind me personally, is another matter, but there we are...

(3) I tend to intellectualize things, and that is a shackle in terms of recovery in the same way that it was a shackle for Hamlet in terms of avenging his father's murder

This isn't so much a musing on the efficacy of religion as it is a matter of me shutting my brain up and just doing the stuff that has worked for other people, thus the getting down on my knees without a belief in a particular higher power.

DFW, who was a lot more intellectual than me, writes a lot about this doing over thinking when recovering from addiction. Of course, he killed himself, but he was clinically depressed, so that was another animal aside from addiction.

Thanks REDeYeS00! Keep an eye out and you'll probably see some slot grinders out there doing their rounds.

Congrats on the four-month streak. I hope you'll find yourself back at the tables soon.

This was wonderful. It reminded me of Powers of Ten.

Thanks, Sheep!

I was going to use the Powers of Ten, but the other one had a stronger open, imo, so I went with that.

The next movie I watched was Citizen Kane from 1941, directed by Orson Welles. Some critics have claimed that this is the greatest movie of all time; I thought it was very good. It's a beautiful movie to look at, and I wouldn't mind seeing it on the big screen.

Rather than write a long review, I'm going to focus on a single frame.

This one:

I talked about excellent blocking in another review, and it's showcased as well in Citizen Kane, blocking being the arrangement of actors and scenery across the frame in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and conveys information about the characters, or story, or theme, or tone, or what have you.

Look at the depth of field in this. The two men are 20 yards (m) or so apart in depth, yet they're both well in focus. Hell, the third man way in the background is hardly fuzzy. You don't see this sort of view in the old movies. I might bet good money that there are more than a few lengthy treatises out there on the symbolism of the deep focus in Citizen Kane, but to me it just looks good.

And, as it was with Fellini's 8 1/2, the masterful placement of blacks and whites and greys across the scene makes me feel a bit shortsighted for spurning black and white films for color.

On our left we have a 25-year-old Orson Welles in excellent makeup, playing a middle-aged Charles Foster Kane, a titanically wealthy newspaper baron modeled after William Randolph Hearst, the father of tabloid journalism.

Kane also has a bit of Elon Musk in his personality, in that he's sort of a goofy sociopath who spends inordinate sums in various polarizing attempts to prove that he's an inspired man of the people and get everyone to love him.

The man on his right, played Joseph Cotten, is Jedediah Leland, Kane's former best/only friend who split with Kane after drunkenly calling him out at length on his Elon-ness.

After their break, Leland still worked for Kane's Chicago newspaper as a theater critic, and when Kane built a lavish opera house in that city for the sole purpose of showcasing his twenty-something second wife's terrible opera singing, Leland attended her awful debut in his capacity as a critic, but as he was typing up a scathing review of said shitshow, Leland got so drunk that he passed out halfway through the column.

Kane had seen to it that the entire front page of his Chicago newspaper was filled with glowing reviews of his wife's performance, but there was still one column missing from the page just before press time, and that was Leland's review. Kane found Leland slumped over his typewriter with only half of the devastating piece completed. The above scene shows Kane at a (unseen) typewriter finishing Leland's review in time to get it into the paper, and a newly awake Leland walking up to him in dread.

The twist is:

So it's a complex and dense scene in terms of shot composition, plot development, and character interaction. And Citizen Kane has many more scenes that are just as weighty. The movie lives up to its reputation as one of the greats, and it's worth a watch.

I have been meaning to watch Citizen Kane for what, 20 years now... It is something that I should definitely get to... in good time 🙄

Poker poker poker!

Hey, I too am a often unwell recovering addict. As far as the God thing, the way I see it as it doesn't really have to be a belief in higher being or anything like that. I think its just about knowing there is something bigger than your personal self, the bundle of thoughts and feelings that a person thinks they are if that makes sense. I just thought I was praying to my subconscious and that was good enough for me. Or you could just consider it as praying to the part of you that is aware of those thoughts and feelings that you consider yourself. Its hard to talk about this stuff in a way that makes sense. Anyways I enjoy reading this blog and gl to you.

by suitedjustice k

The next movie I watched was Citizen Kane from 1941, directed by Orson Welles. Some critics have claimed that this is the greatest movie of all time; I thought it was very good. It's a beautiful movie to look at, and I wouldn't mind seeing it on the big screen.

Rather than write a long review, I'm going to focus on a single frame.

This one:

my tool sense about framing is mostly related to the space between objects and how to fasten them together

You have no idea how much a framing carpenter makes in Austin. The good custom framers go to work in limousines with a 2nd chauffeur driving their pickup truck.

Look up depth of field, and movie camera lenses. It becomes quite technical. Also good to know about in still photography. There are limits to what can be achieved.

Austin has some great bbq places. As far as carpentry goes some of the bbq places in Austin (and elsewhere in Texas) look as though they will collapse in a heap within a day or two. So get your bbq to go is my advice.

jedi
redeye
depth of field measured in eff stop every time i choke down swear words

Once they develop a pinhole movie camera, worries about depth of field will be a thing of the past.

I'll try to return to 40 hours this week: 10 hours each on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

I appreciate the insight, POWERlimp. The possibility that our inner universe is also vast is intriguing and gives me hope. Thanks for reading! As they say at the meetings: keep coming back.

Lenses and lensing are beyond my technical abilities, but I do appreciate the results when they look good.

Blocking used to be my nemesis, and something I would try to flummox and thwart at every turn, but that was back in high school when I was a defensive lineman on our football team.

we'll cross that bridge when we get there

SJ, are there any advantage slots you'd recommend for a slots noob who is going to Vegas for poker, but may occasionally want to try a different +EV game?

Hi Sheep. GL in LV!

Cash Falls can be fun.

Check out the 2nd column. See the blue frame around it? That's what you're looking for. When you spin, the coins marked 125, 100 (I think, as it's partially obscured) and 75 credits in column 2 will stay in place and the Q at the bottom of column 2 will disappear to be replaced, hopefully, with a coin with a credit value on it. Or more often you'll whiff and get junk there.

See those two yellow dots on the bottom of of the column? That means you'll get two spins to try to fill in the last coin on the bottom of column 2, where the Q is meow. If you do, then you'll win the value of the 125+100+75+the 4th coin value in credits.

However, whenever you see a blue frame in there, all the credits currently in the blue frame need to add up to 6x your cost in order to be worth it, as the odds of getting a coin in the last spot are worse than 6:1 (but the sought-after final coin should make up for the difference). So 125+100+75 is only 300 credits, so your spin cost needs to be 1/6th, or 50 credits or fewer. It would be a play for 50, but not for a single credit more. You can have 1, 2, or 3 tries left, depending on the number of little yellow dots at the bottom of the column. That doesn't matter. You'd like to hit on the first try, but if you don't, it's still a +EV play on the 2nd or 3rd attempts.

If there's no blue frame and the column is filled except for one spot, that means that the last person whiffed on that spin and everything in that column is going to reset on the next spin, so leave it alone.

Rarely, there's more than one column with a blue frame around it; in that case, you just add up every coin within however many blue-framed columns there are and see if it adds up to 6x or more the cost of your spin. If it does, then play it until you win and/or lose and it doesn't add up any more. It's only ever going to cost a few spins if you're unlucky.

On the Ultimate Fire Link version of Cash Falls, the coins inside the blue frame(s) only need to add up to 5x your cost, or if there's a Fire Link coin inside of a blue frame, play it no matter what, as that can be big money.

Check the bet amounts carefully, they can range form 50c to $150 per spin. Each bet amount gives you a different screen to check, so make sure you're checking every possibility on each machine.

Good Luck!

From the lack of updates, you might guess that I haven't returned to work. I'm still having some trouble getting out the door. When I get back to the casino, I will post about it.

Thanks so much for that write-up. ♥ I may give it a [strike]try[/strike] spin.

The next movie I watched was The Red Shoes from 1948. Martin Scorsese picked it as one of his top 5 desert island films, and I vaguely recall other famous film auteurs being enamored with it, so I added it to the list.

Come to find out, the film is all about ballet, and I've always placed that genre on the same list with opera and NASCAR as Entertainment Forms That Don't Interest Me In the Slightest.

I mean, I have boundless respect for the incredibly talented and near-anorexic women and men who destroy their feet and toes, push themselves past the point of agony, are screamed at hourly by sadistic choreographers, live off fast food salaries, room together in slums and cheap motel dives, and eat bulk ramen and millet—when they eat anything at all—for their art, but all that dainty hopping and leaping and twirling to insipid chamber music just bores me stupid.

Instead of spurning it, I kind of fell in love with the movie pretty quickly. The plot has new and unknown composer Julian and poor little rich girl Vicky, both filled with boundless talent and potential, finding themselves thrown into a whirlwind chaos of high-stakes live performances, massive egos, and vicious public puncturing of same, within a famous ballet troop touring London, Paris and Monaco, filmed in beautiful color by co-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Sure, it looks great, until you find yourself at the top of the stairs, completely covered in ticks.

The ballet performance within the movie is called The Red Shoes, based on a fairy tale by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, about a vain girl who loves dancing so much that she skips her adopted mother's funeral to go to a ball and show off her fancy red shoes, after which she is cursed to always wear the red shoes and to never stop dancing.

The movie is analogous to the fairy tale, wherein Lermontov, the head of the ballet troop, plays the part of the red shoes to his dancers, bringing them great fame and accolades, but never allowing them to stop dancing, by seeing to it that they don't have lives outside of the troop. The dance, to Lermontov, is the be-all and end-all of life. This is what first attracts him to Vicky Page, the ballet ingenue, when she gives him the answer that he's looking for by turning his question back on him.

Also, Anton Walbrook does the single most elegant spit-take here that I've ever seen.

Speaking of elegant, many of the male roles here are played—shall we say—daintily.

Several of the male characters are quite probably gay, is what I'm saying, and it's encouraging to see them in a movie in 1948, and to find them not being mocked, or portrayed as villains. In that way, this movie was far ahead of its time. Mind you, these characters are often shallow, ego-driven and bitchy, but no more so than the straight supporting characters in the troop. Everyone is more or less a prima donna in this movie, with the lone exception being Vicky Page, who is of course the biggest talent in the bunch.

I found arguments online about Lermontov's sexuality, because he's openly jealous of Vicky and Julian's romantic relationship, and he ends up firing Julian over it, but I still believe that he's either gay or asexual. Lermontov covets Vicky because he's the red shoes, and he wants her to dance and only dance and to never have lovers or any other distractions.

After Julian gets fired, he confronts Lermontov and says "You're jealous of her." and Lermontov answers. "Yes, I am. But in a way that you will never understand." I didn't find that way to be amorous or romantic, but I could be wrong.

Finally, there's a 15 minute slice of the ballet performance in Act II, and it's just lovely to look at.

The filmmakers cheat quite a bit and do things with projections and camera tricks that could never be done on stage, but that's all right. We're meant to realize that we're looking at dazzling feats of movie magic for that time, and it works as a great and lavish combining of the stage and screen.

I did not expect to like this movie, but I was wrong about that. It's very well written and gorgeous to watch, and I would recommend it.

I think you are doing the right thing. Live poker was never meant to be turned into a factory job with a time clock.

I think that the prospect of jumping back in for a 10 hour shift was intimidating. Last night, I showed up at the casino late and picked up $100 from the poker room for last month's hours promotion, but I didn't play poker. Instead, I ran an early AM slot sweep.

Tonight, I'm going to shoot for a 3 hour poker session, then a 6 hour session tomorrow, then an 8 hour session Friday. That's the goal.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 0 hours (promotional $ pickup)
+$100.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 4 hours
+$78.25

2024 Running Poker Total: 235.5 hours, +$1323.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 127 hours, +$5625.38

2024 Grand Total: 362.5 hours, +$6948.38