In what way? Your thoughts?
Maher drives me nuts sometimes. His spiel about calling this the Chinese virus is incredibly stupid. We get it, Bill. You hate the snowflakes. But not recognizing that the people promoting the term āChinese virusā are performing a dog-bullhorn specifically to be racist against the Chinese to have a villain to pin all this on is YOU being an idiot.
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If anyone is a Broadway buff (or curious), this youtube channel is showing stage productions, one each weekend. This weekend is the phenomenal 25th anniversary production of Phantom of the Opera at Royal Albert Hall.
(watch to the end, after Webberās speech for some nostalgic extra content)
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Send me an @ when they put up Book of Mormon or Hamilton
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They seem to be going through Webberās catalogue firstā¦but he and Lin-Manuel are buddies so thereās a definite possibility for In The Heights and Hamilton. (In The Heights is better, donāt @ me)
Chicago Bulls documentary is going to be sick. Starts tomorrow
Fuck this bitch. I donāt buy a second of her bullshit.
Jeff Lowe had an AmA on Reddit and people were raking that piece of shit over the coals.
Just generally speaking, āhope & changeā is a winning message, ādoom & gloomā is not. Letting Trump of all people claim the mantle of savior when he and his party are a massive reason why we are in this spot in the first place would be a galactic failure
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Also I am just starting Tiger King will give TR
I literally lolād at the āsmokingā warning, if Netflix has been doing that a while itās the first time Iāve seen it lol
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Hell yes. I was 11-18 years old and living in Chicago during their dynasty. Canāt wait to watch this.
Anyone else watching Mrs. America?
The Taylor Swift doc???
I hereby propose A Knightās Tale as one of the greatest sports movies ever made
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Shit, all Trump has to do to win re-election is shut the fuck up. If he stopped tweeting, stopped having press conferences, hired a competent press secretary who just made bland announcements and gave bullshit answers he could win the election in a walk.
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Watching The Golden Child on prime. Bad guy is a much younger Tywin Lannister
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Alright, back to the poker game.
At first, they told us just to sit anywhere at the table except for the two seats designated for the actors, so I sat in Seat 8. They switched a couple of us - you never know what they see and what looks good to the artists in charge.
There were a ton of things wrong with the poker game, though in the episode, only a couple are noticeable if you are a poker player who is watching closely.
The chip stacks were all setup already and it looked like everyone had the same amount, but the way the chips were stacked was off. The stacks were way too short and, IIRC, large denominations were hidden in the back sometimes. Not important, but I REALLY wanted to rearrange into stacks of 20 chips.
Thereās a shot at about the 42-minute mark of the episode where the camera rises up from the first floor to show the game intro. As I said before, there really were two stories to the casino - the camera rose up from the staircase. They did a whole bunch of takes of when Ruth welcomes everybody and introduces the tournament. Some of it involved timing - the scene also involved Jason Bateman (he directed the episode) and the male FBI agent making eye contact in the crowd. Bateman needed to make sure each little beat was just right and Ruth was at certain marks, so her walking pace/dialogue pace needed to be varied.
The funniest part was that in a few takes, she said āNo-Limit Texas Hold-Them.ā
My heart skipped a beat. A few of us at the table looked at each other in semi-horror. Fortunately, it was apparent that she realized this is was wrong and most of the takes were correct.
Iāll get to more of the oddities of the game later.
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Me: excuse me, mr Bateman, but a real poker tournament would have stacks of chips 20 high with high denomination chips in front
Jason Bateman (to assistant director): get that asshole off my set
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Yup, thatās the shot I was referring to. Thatās me in the light in the center of the shot. In order, itās me, dealer (back to us, obv), Ruth.
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The actor playing the dealer was really cool. Several people at the table knew about poker, but he and I were the most knowledgeable. More on that in later posts. Coincidentally, he is the acting coach of the African-American lady at the table.
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Ozark poker game time.
Not much to say about the actual filming details. Itās what you would expect - lots of takes, lots of angles. So now itās time to try to remember all the weird and bad poker stuff. Most of this, however, either didnāt make it into the episode or was so minor that nobody would notice.
I already mentioned the starting chip stacks and Texas Hold-Them.
- Everybody was told to call pre-flop. Well, ācallā wasnāt the term used, as the people in charge didnāt really know poker (which is cool - thatās not a criticism). We were just told to all bet a couple chips. At first, I was told to fold pre-flop (the only one), but then I was told to wait until the flop to fold (again, the only one). It annoyed me because in a $50,000 S&G, you would pretty much never have eight players min-betting like that. Not a big deal, clearly, and not noticeable in the episode because they cut it so artistically. My guess is that it just looked cooler to have the action of betting and gave more options for later in the hand.
Thereās a part where they show a close-up of someoneās hands mucking. Thatās me.
Fun fact: the first hand I folded, I had A-A.
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When Frank Jr. got kicked out, he threw a couple chips at the dealer. That was intended to be him angrily whipping a tip at the guy, but obviously that wouldnāt make sense in a tournament. It was kept in because it looked good. I doubt anyone would notice - it just looks like heās pissed.
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Related: when he was kicked out, Bateman or someone told him to take his chips with him. This is where my inability to speak up was really killing me. Fortunately, the dealer and I had built a rapport through lots of eye contact and telepathy and I was able to nudge him toward speaking up. Since he was an actual actor and was higher on the totem pole than the extras, he did say something about how a player would not take his tournament chips with him. Jason Bateman didnāt seem to quite understand. He was actually standing next to me at this point, so I found the courage to chime in with the dealer and quickly helped him explain that tourney chips have no cash value, would stay on the table, yada yada yada. The chips ended up staying.
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