Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis

Thanks guys!
♥♥♥

Thanks golddog! Yeah I enjoyed the Car Talk guys as well. And I remembered that my friend Will lost a wheel down in New London many years ago. Fortunately for him, he was just starting from a stop light and didn't get into a wreck. I texted him asking if it was a ball joint. It was that; so I'm staying home until mine is fixed on Monday.

Thanks Dubnjoy000! I don't have a scale, but I think it's in the 25 lb (11 kg) range. OTOH, I ate 1100 Calories worth of donuts this morning, so I need to cut that **** out.

I can see clearly now the rain is gone.

seatedjustice

I've been away from the blog awhile, and am still catching up. Came across this item re the ATV earlier today, and loved it! SJ, if you wrote anything like this when you were younger, you must have aced every English Composition course they offered at your high school. Any decent teacher should have encouraged you to pursue writing as a career.

Hoping that as I continue to catch up, you continue to be well.

I'm glad that you can; I'm still stumbling around.

Common outside of mint condition. Don't pay more than face value for it.

The standingjustice coin, OTOH, is far more rare and valuable.

Thanks for reading, TopGun in VA! I appreciate you.

I was very good at the five paragraph essay structure when I was young, and I cranked out a lot of unimaginative As and Bs at the very last minute.

West Side Story

My Jeep is still in the shop. It should be done today.

In the meantime, I've watched a few classic movies to pass the time. One of these was West Side Story, from 1961, a movie about tough Manhattan gangbangers singing, fighting, and doing ballet-style choreography. I rather enjoyed it.

Natalie Wood, in brownface, is fantastic as Maria, the princess-like waif sister of the Puerto Rican gang leader. The great actress Rita Moreno also stars, in her own face, as Maria's hardcase friend.

The Puerto Rican gang are the Sharks, and they are opposed by the Jets, the "White" gang. I use the scare quotes because the Jets are largely from Polish, Italian and Irish stock. A few generations beforehand, their people had to form gangs in order to counter discrimination and harassment from the city's WASP population, ala Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

In West Side Story, they're the oppressors of the new Puerto Rican immigrants. Puerto Rico is part of the USA, so they're not really immigrants, but tell that to any of the White characters.

This dynamic was enough to hold my attention, but then there's also the fact that West Side Story was written as an updated musical version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

I'm a sucker for R&J, always have been. I fell in love with it in high school, fell in love with the wordplay and the music of the words as spoken. I still read it every few years, and it holds up.

Maria is Juliet, and her Romeo is Tony, the sometime leader of the rival Jets, played by Richard Beymer, about whom I don't know anything. According to IMDB, he played Benjamin Horne on Twin Peaks, which is on my to-watch list, eventually.

The plot plays out in a neat modern parallel to Romeo and Juliet, except that there's a lot more singing and dancing, and that's fine. I can, with effort, suspend disbelief enough to enjoy musicals, if they're good, and this one is.

On top of the plot, the movie also addresses social issues in a manner that's quite frank for 1961. I've talked about the 1934-68 Hays code and what that entailed for movies during that era: no nudity, no profanity, no perversions (LGBTQ+ behavior being considered as such), no miscegenation (mixing of races), no illicit drug use, no mockery of Christianity, and so forth, and I've always been fascinated by how some of the 50s and 60s movies started to skirt around those art-killing restrictions.

West Side Story definitely takes a few shots at the old Hays bulwark. The "Gee Officer Krupke" number, for example, covers alcholism, domestic battery, delinquency, drug use, sex work, and trans family members, and how the various pillars of society fail to address these issues, and caps all that off with a hearty "Gee, Officer Krupke, Krup you!"

Somehow this number made it through the US censors, but the BBC in the UK cut the song from the movie's release.

Also, there is Anybodys, who at the time would have been called a tomboy. She dresses like a boy and wants to become a member of the Jets.

This is all very much in keeping with Shakespeare. Women couldn't be actors back then, so Shakespeare had boy actors playing girls and women. And he often had his female characters pretending to be men.

The movie Shakespeare in Love from 1998 played around with this idea by having Gwyneth Paltrow's character pretend to be a man so that she would be allowed to act in Shakespeare's company, where she ended up being a girl playing a boy playing a girl playing a boy.

Damn I love those meta levels. Just shoot 'em into my veins.

Nowadays, we would call Anybodys's character gender fluid, or nonbinary. That's all fine now, outside of a few Deep South school boards and several middle-aged White guys wearing Oakley sunglasses and making YouTube videos from the driver's seats of their Ford F-250s, and it was fine in Shakespeare's time, but in the mid-20th century, it was unusual to see trans folk who were played not just for a laugh, as in Some Like it Hot.

Anybodys takes a lot of crap from the boys. They call her ugly and tell her to wear a skirt, but she gives it right back to them in spades, so it's a neat character study, coming out of that time.

So that's West Side Story. I enjoyed it quite a bit and I would recommend it. I mean, if you just can't get into musicals, then you might not like it, but otherwise it's worth a watch.

Two More Movies

Hamlet (1948)

The 1948 film version of Hamlet was a Lawrence Olivier joint. He directed the minimalist production, and he starred as a 40-year-old version of the sometime college student, fatal procrastinator, and heir to the Danish throne, Hamlet.

To say that Olivier pulled it off would be a massive understatement. He and the movie were showered with Oscar nominations, and he shipped the Best Picture and Best Actor awards, along with Best Art/Set Design and Best Costume Design.

Seeing as how I seem to mention Hamlet quite a bit in this blog, I was surprised that I hadn't yet seen Olivier's version until just a few days ago, given that it's reputed to be the best.

I still have a warm place in my heart for Michael Almereyda's postmodern Gen-X version of Hamlet from 2000, starring Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Julia Stiles and Bill Murray (it's great!), but Olivier simply put on a tour de force back in '48, one that made and sustained his towering reputation over the rest of his life.

Not much else to say about the movie, except that Olivier wrote out two of my favorite minor characters: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's dudebro college buddies and unwitting patsies, whom he condemns to death in place of himself, thwarting his uncle's murder plot.

I liked those guys. Like more than a few of Shakespeare's comic relief characters, they were simultaneously witty and stupid, which is hard to pull off.

The playwright Tom Stoppard liked them so much that he wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an excellent play wherein the two dudes are the main characters, and Hamlet's story goes on, but gets pushed far into the background.

Olivier cut them, presumably to keep the movie under 3 hours, as the play runs a bit longer than that on average. And the thing is: it worked! Olivier presumed to give the legendary William Shakespeare the equivalent of notes, and he cut out two of his beloved characters, and by God it worked. It was kind of a revelation to me that the movie really didn't need them, and that was a feather in Olivier's cap to recognize that.

A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

This one was on my bucket list because I hadn't yet seen a John Cassavetes movie, and he was known to be one of the great 1970s Auteur Directors, and I tend to like those guys a lot.

The movie stars Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands, and I did not make it through its 2 hour and 35 minute running time. I checked out after an hour and 45 minutes, around when Peter Falk's husband decides that it would be a good idea to throw a huge loud party in his small house to celebrate his wife (played by Gena Rowlands) coming home directly from a month's-long involuntary stay at a mental institution.

WTF?

I hated those two characters. It didn't help that Peter Falk was so deeply ingrained in my mind as Columbo that I couldn't help but think of his character as Evil Columbo, and Gena Rowlands did quite an excellent job of playing a character whom I couldn't be in a room with for more than 20 seconds.

After I bailed on A Woman Under the Influence , I tracked down Roger Ebert's (very positive)

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-a-woman-under-the-influence-1974

Roger Ebert

A Woman Under the Influence movie review (1974) | Roger Ebert

That makes sense, but I couldn't stand watching it in practice. I felt my energy being drained out within the first half hour. There's an old saying that goes: you get on my last nerve, and those characters did that to the point where I had to sign off.

while you've been Jeepless, I visited a few friends in Great Bearington and we drove over to MGM Springfield for a few sessions. If I was condemned to grind somewhere, it seems to me like a nice place to log hours. We had a fun time.

Hope you have a smooth return to the felt!

Thanks bob_124! I'm glad that you had fun. I'll be there tomorrow, ~2 PM-11 PM, if you're still in the neighborhood.

Belay that. I'm not going today. I still haven't gotten my sleep together. I woke up yesterday at 11AM, stayed up all day and fell asleep at 10PM., So far, so good. But then I woke up at 1AM and couldn't get back to sleep until 6AM. Woke up two hours later at 8AM, and couldn't go back to sleep.

I'm a basket case on this sleep business. I'm going to hit the pharmacy today and try some OTC Melatonin. Hopefully that will straighten me out.

Melatonin (10mgs) can be helpful indeed ; if not, I would recommend CDB oil drops. I have never tried it myself, but some MTT pros swear by it after 12-14h of live tournaments and a HIGH af adrenaline levels, you know 🙄 GL

if retired with no accountable schedule to keep
why not adjust sleeping patterns to the sun position and when your body feels tired instead of following some imaginary regimental rem routine

The melatonin worked. I bought cheap(er) 1mm gummies, so I took 3 of them, having no tolerance yet, and I slept from 11PM-6AM uninterrupted.

Given the high hand promo structure this month, a Mon-Fri schedule is best. Hopefully I can keep up the good sleep tonight.

I'm not retired. I need to make money for rent and food. The poker room closes late at night, and their best promos are during the day and early to mid evening, so I need to keep a schedule.

Moon position always worked for me. Sun, never. I guess some of us are weird.

apologies sir, yep
canadian cicada circadian cycle studies suggest lunatics may just believe some bugs react differently at night to humming light from a full moon maple

knock
turn it all off
and dye your nail
with a french manicure that reflects the current moon stages

I'm back at the poker table, finally. I'll play my best and let the gods sort it out.

may you run hot like the sun

if you happen to get bored and need to pass some time, try solving this revised version like an unlogical puzzle

Not bad, REDeYeS00! I wrote a lot of poetry when I was in my 20s—none of it particularly good—but I know that it gave me a better sense of the sound and the feel and the cadence of words in relation to each other.

Poetry is a journey that doesn't need a destination. You can have one, if you want, but it's by no means a requirement.

Yesterday was not a particularly triumphant day at the tables. At one point, I had to call a $100 all-in on the flop involving two shorter stacks, while I was holding only a inside straight draw.

I was priced in. My equity ended up being 27%, so I was going to lose that pot almost 3 out of 4 times, but the final pot, with my call, would have been around $420 after the rake, so I only needed to have 23% equity.

Why punt a hundo most of the time for a +4% EV play? Well, that meager edge adds up to $16.80 in Sklansky bucks. Folding would lose those bucks, just as surely as if I'd dropped them on the ground.

My draw bricked out.

I was set to have a losing day at the slots as well when—for the second time this year—I found a hundred dollar bill on the ground outside the entrance of the casino. If this is all some sort of long-running experiment testing people's honesty and altruism, then I have twice provided data points in favor of man's selfishness.

Oh well. I added the hundo to my slot total, tipping it into the green for the day. A slot grinder's job is somewhat akin to picking up cans on the side of the road. I go around the machines picking up little nuggets of EV, so I'm not too proud to check the ground while I'm at it.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 7 hours
(-$98.00)
MGM Springfield Slots: 3 hours
+$79.50

2024 Running Poker Total: 383.5 hours, +$4230.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 189 hours, +$6378.71

2024 Grand Total: 572.5 hours, +$10608.71

There’s a name for people that go around casinos looking for dropped TITOs, money and chips. Forgotten credits on machines. I think they’re credit vultures maybe? Generally done by homeless or nearly homeless people. I would however think it’s part of most slot grinders routine. As you said why not check the ground and the machines when doing your rounds.

I draw the line at taking other people's credits out of the machines. That sort of behavior earns a permaban from the casinos. Also, I could imagine my chagrin if the person came running back for their cashout ticket while I was sitting at their machine, either playing on their credits or cashing them out.

As for myself, I hop on and off a lot of machines in a short amount of time, and I have accidentally left tickets worth hundreds of dollars in machines at least 5 or 6 times. I've always caught my mistake within 2 minutes, and returned to the machine to retrieve my ticket, and my credits have always still been there, but the day will come when they won't be. That's why I cash out any ticket that gets over $300, so I'll never lose more than that through my forgetfulness.

bolded above to emphasize importance of milestones space bars within the sound time continuum

Miles is the only player who's been able to break my jazz tolerance threshold, that being around 7-25 minutes. Before that period kicks in, I can listen to most styles of jazz and enjoy the music, but after the threshold time arrives, a switch goes off in my head at some point, and suddenly I can't take another second of jazz. I become instantly irritable with whatever's playing, and I have to shut it off.

With Miles Davis, though, I was able to listen to his entire long album below and enjoy it without snapping.

Today, I'm off to Mohegan Sun for a quick session, then I'll visit with my friends in the area.

My review of sleeping pills (nearly comprehensive since my last visit to Cambodia, where you can get basically everything no questions asked 🙂)

Melatonin helps a lil bit but causes intense and unpleasant dreams, also you get used to it very quickly and it has no effect anymore. Reportedly it helps with jetlag, I have not found this to be the case much. Not addictive.
Doxylamine succinate (various brands), available without prescription at least in the US and Germany. Induces deep pleasant sleep, but addictive.
Diphenhydramine, same as above but not quite as good.
Zolpidem, zopiclone (Ambien, Imovane and other brands), also deep pleasant sleep but addictive, stronger than the ones before, usually cause dizziness in the morning, cause withdrawal effects when you take them too often and want to quit, mainly, who would've guessed, insomnia...
Diazepam (Valium), dangerous, causes deep sleep but can be literally forever, easy to overdose, had episodes where I slept 20h+ and almost couldn't get out of bed after and I didn't even take much. All of the stuff before is much safer, it will not act much stronger if you take too much.
Alprazolam (Xanax), ****, gives you a mild high for 1-2h, it helps sleep by reducing anxiety, but when you wake up you feel very bad.
Lorazepam, various brands, same as Xanax.
CBD oil, helps with inflammation, some peeps claim it helps sleep, I never found it to have any psychoactive effects in any variety.
THC OTOH, hell yeah, but it needs to be the right strain to sleep well, some strains you stay awake forever.

As always different folks, different strokes. I recommend THC :p