Chip porn!

That sounds fun, but don't limit to diet, or even sodas. Might be interesting to see if old-fashioned stuff gets traction, or healthier (?) options like sports drinks move forward.

The porn that's almost always SFW.

I've given this an amount of thought that may be surprising and/or boring. Can something be surprising and boring? Yes! Tax audits come to mind.

In a fair taste test, I would always pick the regular stuff over the diet. My taste buds prefer sugar and, failing that, high-fructose corn syrup, over the low-calorie sweeteners. Also, 60-something cups of corn syrup in the first round of the tournament would be a ****-ton to drink in a short time, so the non-diet drinks are out. Not that 60-something cups of artificial sweetener would be much better.

After I took the picture, the table went south as several decent to very good $2/$5 regs came on. From what I can glean by playing against regs from those games when they've been slumming at the $1/$2 tables, the $2/$5 and $5/$10 games at Springfield are reg-infested and tougher than they should be.

Quite often, the floor will have enough players on the list to open a new $2/$5 table, but when they call the list, nobody shows up at the table, because they all know each other and have assessed that there won't be enough donators at it. Instead, they hang on at the $1/$2 tables and make my games worse.

Typically, when I find several good players at my table, I transfer, but yesterday, our table consistently only had 5 or 6 players at it, while the others had 8 to 9, and the floor frowns on transfers from emptier tables to fuller ones.

All this to say that I left early. And to avoid admitting that I left early because I wanted to book a solid win for the first time in a while, which is not the professional way to go about playing poker. It was, however, a psychological boost. I'll be back at it tomorrow, Undesignated Higher Power willing.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 4 hours
+$771.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 1 hour
+$2.50

2024 Running Poker Total: 242.5 hours, +$2328.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 129.5 hours, +$5597.53

2024 Grand Total: 342 hours, +$7925.53

Oh, I wasn't thinking you do the 64-drink playoff. I was thinking of it as a thing like we've done in OOT (maybe Lounge?) occasionally, where the people vote and we play it down that way.

Glad to see you've recaptured some motivation and are back at work.

Better a short session than no session. Here's where I normally write that I'll be back at it again tomorrow, but I seem to take a perverse enjoyment in following up with those sorts of announcements by not showing up when I say I will; so, I'll go back when I go back, and I'll report it here when I do.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 3.5 hours
+$149.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 2.5 hour
+$44.89

2024 Running Poker Total: 246 hours, +$2477.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 132 hours, +$5642.42

2024 Grand Total: 378 hours, +$8119.42

TV Shows To Watch

*** = in current queue
x,y or (x,y) = season and episode reached

30 Rock
3 Body Problem *** 1,2
American Gods
Arrested Development
Babylon 5
Barry
The Bear
Blackadder *** 1,4
Black Mirror (1,2)
Bojack Horseman *** 4,12
Bupkis
Castle Rock
Community
Conan O'Brien Must Go
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Dark
Devs
The Dirt
Euphoria
The Expanse (2,6)
Falling Skies
Fargo (2,1)
Flash Forward
Fleabag
Fringe
Game of Thrones (1,3)
The Good Place
History of the World Part II
Hit Monkey
Holey Moley
Invincible
Justified
Kingdom
The Larry Sanders Show
Lazarus Project
Louie
Mad Men
Maniac
The Man in the High Castle
Mr. Robot *** 4,6
The Office
Orange Is the New Black
Only Murders in the Building
Our Flag Means Death
Outer Range
Ozark
Parks & Recreation
Reservation Dogs
Santa Clarita Diet
Schitt's Creek
Seinfeld
Solar Opposites
Sons of Anarchy
The Sopranos
Sweet Home
Stargate
Ted Lasso *** 2,3
The Twilight Zone
Twin Peaks
Under the Dome
X-Files
Watchmen
W/Bob & David
Westworld
The Wire
The Witcher


Caught Up or Finished

11.22.63 (Fin)
Archer (Fin)
Better Call Saul (Fin)
The Boys (3,8)
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Fin)
Delicious in Dungeon (1,13)
Disenchantment (Fin)
Fallout (1,8)
Foundation (2,10)
Good Omens (2,6)
The Handmaid's Tale (5,10)
Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (Fin)
I, Claudius (Fin)
The Last of Us (1,9)
Letterkenny (12,6)
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (1,8)
M.O.D.O.K. (Fin)
The Orville (Fin)
The Queen's Gambit (Fin)
Rick and Morty (6,10)
Shoresy (2,6)
Squid Game (1,9)
Star Trek Picard (Fin)
Ted (1,7)
Wandavision (Fin)
Wednesday (1,8)
What We Do in the Shadows (5,10)
The Wheel of Time (2,8)

Shelved

Andor (1,3)
I Think You Should Leave (1,3)
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2,3)
My Next Guest Needs No Introduction (1,6)
On Cinema At the Cinema (8,4)
Stranger Things (3,4)
The Sandman (1,3)
Trailer Park Boys (1,5)
Veep (1,3)

Movies to Watch

All About Eve
Amadeus
American Movie
The Apartment
Badlands
Bean
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Breathless
Casablanca
The Deer Hunter
Ed Wood
Enter the Dragon
Flash Gordon
The French Connection
The Hateful Eight
The Haunting
High Anxiety
Hot Tub Time Machine
Husbands
Kingsman: The Secret Service
The Madness of King George
The Magnificent Ambersons
Modern Times
Night of the Hunter
The People vs. Larry Flynt
Rear Window
The Searchers
Shakespeare In Love
The Sound of Music
Spaceballs
The Seventh Seal
Soylent Green
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunset Boulevard
Top Secret
Trainspotting
The Trouble With Harry
West Side Story (1961)
Westworld

For the TV, I usually bounce between 5 different shows, with the current lineup being marked with a ***. I've only really binged 2 shows so far: Fallout and Ted Lasso.

I'm a big fan of several of the Fallout games, and the TV show really nailed the theme, tone, canon and history of the games, while seeming to tell a good story for people who aren't familiar with the games, so bravo for that.

The first season of Ted Lasso caught me by surprise, as I'm not a big fan of soccer (football), but I still found the show to be fantastic in just about every way. I'm currently on season 2 of Ted Lasso, so no spoilers please.

As for the Movies: I've never seen most of the titles on the above list. The exceptions are The Deer Hunter, Enter The Dragon, Flash Gordon, Spaceballs, and Trainspotting. All of those movies I've seen once and only once. But it's been more than 25 years since I've seen them, so that warrants a second viewing IMO.

I recently watched Vertigo, Rope and Super 8. I enjoyed the first two quite a bit, but I've already written a lot about Hitchcock, so I skipped over writing reviews for them.

Super 8 was a decent mid-tier Steven Spielberg movie, which means that I should have liked it a lot; unfortunately, it wasn't a Spielberg movie. JJ Abrams wrote and directed it, but it so closely followed Spielberg's well-known tropes that it became distracting. It was beyond an homage, somewhere between an homage and Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho.

I also watched It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World from 1963, kind of a predecessor to 1981's Cannonball Run, but better made and screwier. Instead of a road race, the packed all-star cast goes on a mutually destructive treasure hunt.

The ensemble has Spencer Tracy, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Buddy Hackett, Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, Edie Adams, Jimmy Durante, Peter Falk, Jim Backus (Mr. Howell from Gilligan's Island), and Norman Fell (Mr. Roper from Three's Company), with cameos from Don Knotts, The Three Stooges, Carl Reiner, Jack Benny and Buster Keaton.

The movie is packed with good gags, and cynical as hell. The only issue I had with it was its 3 hour and 20 minute running time, too long for a slapstick comedy, but it was easy enough to watch in stages at home.

The random number generator also picked Rear Window for me to watch, turning these last few weeks into an impromptu Alfred Hitchcock festival.

As always with Hitchcock, I enjoyed the movie, but I've officially had my fill of Jimmy Stewart for a while. His range is limited, IMO. I felt that his news photographer/Peeping Tom character in Rear Window required something a little more creepy and a little less gosh and gee willikers earnest, which is what Stewart typically presents, whether he wants to or not.

Likewise, I found Stewart's same approach a bit too cornball for his erudite, soul-reading professor in Hitchcock's Rope, playing an intellectual who had inadvertently convinced two of his students that superior beings like themselves could murder peons if they felt it was necessary, in the way of Nietzsche's Übermensch, Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, and real-life 1920s thrill-killers Leopold and Loeb.

And that reminded me that I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life, which is strange given the number of times it was featured on broadcast television for Christmas during my youth and young adulthood. I'm not putting it on the list, though, on the chance that the random number generator will pick it while I'm still fed up with Jimmy Stewart. Maybe I'll watch it for Christmas.

In 1963, theaters would have an intermission, especially for longer movies. You youngsters have probably never experienced this and have no reference point.

It’s A Wonderful Life is a sick, demented movie and every print should be burned!

The print of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World that I watched did have an intermission. I saw one or two movies in the theater in the late 70s or early 80s that had intermissions, but I can't remember which ones they were. I want to say that one of them was Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans from 1981, but that came in at just under 2 hours, so maybe not.

Richard Attenborough's Gandhi also had an intermission, but I never saw that in the theater.

If you happen to love The French Connection, consider watching the sequel as well. Part II is not nearly as well-known as the first movie, but I thought it was very good.

Thanks Sheep! I will check out the sequel for sure if I like the original.

Yesterday, for a few hours, I was the only slot grinder on the floor, a boon that hasn't happened for me in several months. I took advantage of it and found a number of good plays, but all that good EV didn't add up to much in real dollars.

That's gambling for you. Near the end of the run, I found myself breaking dead even on the slots, but the second-to-last (penultimate) machine of the night gave me a small win, so that was nice.

On the poker front: I've been running below expectation on the high hand promo (i.e. no hits at all for the last few months). I could have used a high hand last night. Hopefully, the promo gods will come through for me soon.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 5 hours
(-$200.00)
MGM Springfield Slots: 5 hours
+$76.75

2024 Running Poker Total: 251 hours, +$2277.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 137 hours, +$5719.17

2024 Grand Total: 388 hours, +7996.17