Three Things About Atlantic City

ONE
I like that the best bet at a Casino is to not play. It gives me a good reason to sit around my hotel room in my underwear, writing.

Know who else gets a lot of writing done in casinos? Woody Allen.

Know who else compares me to Woody Allen? My mom.

TWO
I have a habit of finding one place where I like to eat and then never eating anywhere else ever again. In Atlantic City, that place is the Asian fusion restaurant in Caesar's, which is called KWI.

The first time I was in Atlantic City, I went on a tour of casinos because I'd read in a book that doing this was cheaper than gambling.

When I went through Caesar's, this place smelled amazing. I promised myself that if I won enough money to afford it, I would come back and have a meal. That night, I got exTREMEly lucky on the river, and so the next day I had lunch at the place.

It. Was. Amazing. I ate with a bunch of Asian-New Jerseyite high rollers and one of them shared his snow pea tips with me. The - Best Korean barbeque. Some other thing that wasn't on the menu that I don't remember that was delicious. Fuck. Ing. Amazing.

Last weekend, I took my second trip to Atlantic City, and I didn't waste any time. I think I ate three meals there in three days, and the portions were so big that I pretty much just ate that and breakfast.

The food there was so good that I actually had to start eating better food once I got back to New York. I remember the first time I ate a sausage bagel breakfast sandwich after I got back from AC. I was disturbed that one of my usual New York meals seemed bland and flavorless, but I was more disturbed that maybe it had always been that way and I just had never noticed it before.

That's the problem with affected luxury - you can get used to it.

PostScript: After writing this, I realized that after a single night being bumped up to a Trump Taj Mahal luxury suite, I finally rented a new apartment.

THREE
Despite my best efforts and self-awareness that I was a living cliche, staying at an Atlantic City casino reminded me of the following bits of media:

Ocean's 11
Ocean's 13
Rounders
The Apprentice
This episode of Cowboy Bebop, particularly the scene where they're standing in the futuristic elevator and it lists all the games you can play at the casino and what floors they're on.

Terrible, Terrible Movies

Mission Impossible II inspired this little gem. All in all, over 300 hours of my life that I will never get back.

Last updated 10/21/07

2 Days in the Valley

A.I. Artificial Intelligence
American History X
Anger Management
Antz
Arsenic and Old Lace
Austin Powers: Goldmember

Bad Boys
Bamboozled
Barb Wire
Batman Forever
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000
Beverly Hills Cop III
The Big Chill
Big Fish
Bio-Dome
The Birds
Black Sheep
Blade
Blade II
Blow
Blues Brothers 2000
Bowfinger
Breaking Up
Broken Arrow
Bringing Down the House
But I'm a Cheerleader

Cabin Boy
Chelsea Walls
Chocolat
City of Angels
The Cooler
Cop and a Half
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

D2: The Mighty Ducks
Dancing at the Blue Iguana
Daredevil
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Days of Thunder
De-Lovely
Death Becomes Her
Deep Impact
Desperately Seeking Susan
Die Another Day
Dirty Dancing
Dirty Harry
The Distinguished Gentleman
Down to Earth
Dr. Dolittle 2
Duplex

Enemy of the State
Entrapment
Existenz
Eyes Wide Shut

Finding Forrester
The Firm
First Knight
Forget Paris
From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money
From Here to Eternity

Galaxy Quest
The General's Daughter
Gods and Monsters
The Golden Child
Gone in 60 Second
Gone With the Wind
Yeah, that's right - Gone With the Wind
Gothika
Grumpier Old Men

Heavy Weights
Highlander
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Hollywood Ending
House of 1,000 Corpses

Independence Day
Intolerable Cruelty

Johnny Mnemonic
Jury Duty
Just Cause

King Ralph
Kingpin
A Knight's Tale

L'Auberge Espagnole
The Ladykillers (2004)
Lawnmower Man
Legally Blonde
Legend
Lethal Weapon
The Librarian
Lord of War
Lost in Space
Love Potion No. 9
Lucky Number Slevin

Mafia!
Major League
Man on Fire
The Man Who Wasn't There
The Mask of Zorro
The Matrix Revolutions
Meet Joe Black
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible II
Muppets From Space
Music From Another Room
Mystery Men

Natural Born Killers
The Negotiator
The Net
Network
Never Been Kissed

Ocean's Twelve
The Odd Couple (1968)
An Officer and a Gentleman
Old School
Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Patch Adams
The Phantom Menace
The Pillow Book
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Plan Nine From Outer Space
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Platoon
Play It Again, Sam
Point of No Return
Poison Ivy
Popeye
The Postman
Predator
Practical Magic

The Quick and the Dead
Quills

Radio
Real Women Have Curves
The Road to Perdition
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Roger & Me
Roll Bounce
Route 666
The Rugrats Movie
Runaway Bride
Runaway Jury
The Running Man

Saw
Seabiscuit
Serendipity
Serial Mom
Shane
Silent Movie
Sixteen Candles
The Sixth Sense
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Sling Blade
Small Time Crooks
Something's Gotta Give
The Sound of Music
Spanglish
Spice Girls
Spy Games
Spy Kids
Starman
Summer of Sam
The Sure Thing
Syriana

Talladega Nights
The Terminal
Thank You for Smoking
There's Something About Mary
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
Three Kings
Tommy Boy
Top Gun
Total Recall
Traffic
True Romance
Two Weeks Notice

Velvet Goldmine
A Very Brady Sequel
The Virgin Suicides

Waterworld
What About Bob?
Where the Buffalo Roam
While You Were Sleeping
Wild Things
Wild Wild West
The World is Not Enough

X-Men
X-Men II

Ocean's 13 Lingo

My notes from the movie. Who takes notes during a movie? I am finding this whole List Posts stage I'm going through very disorienting.

"But there is a lot of that in the Oceans films where they say 'Let's do a Susan B. Anthony or a Sticky Fingers or a Monkey On a Sidetrap, Sling it Down on the Woodshelf, and then put it Oh for Two, Oh For Five' and everyone goes, 'Yeah, yeah let's try that, let's try that.'"
-Eddie Izzard on The Daily Show, Thursday June 7, 2007.

"We have to offer a Billy Martin."
"It's a Reverse Big Store."
Irwin Allen
Wowser
Pancake Eater
The Brody-Prop
Dock the Showboat
Cattled
Cougar-Sponder
Gilroy
Set Up a Cartwheel
Pulled an Audible
Saw a Blitz Coming
Working a Frame
"I've gotta jump."
"So it's back to the Susan B. Anthony again."

I also like the running gag where whenever Pitt and Clooney talk about their girls, they each seem to know exactly what the other one is thinking despite the fact that neither ever finishes a thought or a sentence.

Possibly an Illustration of the Long Tail Theory

Why are people coming to ribble's?

1) To figure out what the slang in Ocean's 13 means.

2) Looking for titles of porn movies.

3) Interested in women bass players or, occasionally, women wearing overalls.

4) Actually know me and found this through Facebook.

5) Want to read Deadliest Catch fan fiction.

Sport Movie References

So I'm writing a sports movie, and one of the fun things about it is that I've gotten to run down all these great movie references while trying to figure out this movie. It's so gratifying to be putting my favorite things about movies in the world of my movie. It's like I get to experience my favorite movies for real.

Like there's a scene where a character has to start everybody on their training by giving a rousing speech, and I got to think a lot about the rousing speech Sean Connery gives in The Man Who Would Be King - the one that begins "We're going to teach you soldiering. The world's noblest profession. When we're done with you, you'll be able to slaughter your enemies like civilized men." I've always wanted to start a speech by saying "I'm going to teach you how to be PAs - the world's noblest profession."

Or I decided that I was going to spend my first act introducing a bunch of characters because I needed a bunch of characters on my sports team. So I've watched the first 30 minutes of favored ribbles movie Ocean's 11 like four times (and taken notes.) I have come up with like a dozen new reasons this movie is genius (example: each character gets an appropriate individual version of the theme music in their introductory scene.)

Another interesting phenomenon: because I am trying to write pretty close to formula for the first draft of this film, thinking about bad sports movies has been just if not more useful than thinking about good sports movies. Enough so that I can no longer figure out which category Cool Runnings falls in to.

Ooh! And because it's a woman's team, I get to name everyone after my ex-girlfriends.

Notice to Blockbuster

My favorite place to rent videos has this important advantage over your neighborhood megacorp: they use the categories that people who like movies use.

If you want to watch a James Bond movie, there's a shelf of James Bond movies. You don't have to go wandering through the Action section trying to remember if On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the one with George Lazenby or the one with Diana Rigg. They're all right there. Woody Allen is a category. Local-made is a category. They think like I think.

Screw "Action". Screw "Drama". We need categories that make sense to us. Here's my top five movie genres:

Catholic Horror
Catholic Horror is any movie that borrows the laws for its in-movie world from the Catholics. We're talking Exorcist, Devil's Advocate, Rosemary's Baby, that sort of thing. (Note that although Carrie had a couple of Catholics in it, it was a high-school horror movie. Totally different.)

In a place where anything is worthy of a sequel if you don't have to think about it too much, it makes a sort of Hollywood sense to just lift your world from a popular, established religion instead.

Heist Movies
Every man wants to be part of a heist. If a heist movie comes out, I'm probably going to watch it.

Rififi and Le Cercle Rouge are my favorite French heist films, but, because they're French, it all has to end in tears. There's a real sense of joy in American heist films. We love being along with the bad guys.

Ocean's 11 was fun. Heist was an interesting heist movie because the thieves took the quite rational step of not talking about the crime. Heat instantly became the Pacino/De Niro heist movie. I remember it came out at the same time as a bunch of other three-hour movies and I was in three-hour movie heaven. I think I might have even watched it twice.

Objectively? The best American heist movie of all of all time? Die Hard. By far. Full stop.

The Die Hard novel didn't even have a heist. It was movie-making genius John McTiernan who realized that for the audience to have fun, it had to be able to enjoy watching the villains be villains. It's hard to enjoy a bunch of terrorists being terrorists for terror's sake. The moment they're after some money, we Americans feel like we can relate to them.

McTiernan understood the sheer joy of the Heist movie. He even went so far as to make the movie's theme song "Ode to Joy." Ladies and gentlemen, that is movie-making genius.

New York Movies
I was born in Albert Einstein hospital in the Bronx, lived in Scarsdale from zero to five, then moved to sunny South Texas. The big significance of zero to five was that I felt like a New Yorker in exile until 11 or 12. I remember being shocked at 10 that I'd spent as much time living in Texas as I had living in New York, and that's probably the clearest memory of being 10 that I have.

I didn't even really know anything about New York until I met some kids from there in summer camp and started visiting them every few years. Most of what I knew about New York came from New York movies.

The opening sequence of Manhattan made me cry, but then Woody Allen is really his own category. There's French Connection. There's Taxi Driver. But as far as I'm concerned, the quintessential New York movie is Ghost Busters.


Ghost Busters was a childhood obsession - I too was a ghost buster for Halloween - and it's probably the reason I'm writing a New York movie right now. There was all this New York stuff: these quirky people I felt like I could relate to, guys starting a business in a cool New York space, the tough-as-nails girl next door. At the beginning of the movie, they even walk through America's greatest library in the course of everyday business, just like I do now. But the most New York thing about Ghost Busters was Comedy Central's Official Biggest Smartass of All Time, Bill Murray.

Harold Ramis said his character was the brain of the Ghostbusters, Danny Ackroyd was the heart and Murray was the mouth. Bill Murray had the most New York attitude of anyone I'd seen on film before. This idea of someone who can't shut up even when it's clear it can only make a situation worse, that's what makes Ghost Busters my favorite New York movie.

Sequels
There are really two categories here: Good Sequels and Bad Sequels. A good sequel expands the world of the original movie, like if your original characters leave the setting of the first movie and head to the outside world, or you introduce Tina Turner to the environment. There are 2.6 million opinions out there about this already, so enough said.

The 80s Movies You Like / The 80s Movies Your Girlfriend Likes
You like Weird Science. She likes Pretty in Pink. She likes Labyrinth. You say it's time for her to grow up and see The Man Who Fell to Earth. She says she likes Breakfast Club, and besides The Man Who Fell to Earth was from 1976. You say you like Rocky IV. She says she likes Sixteen Candles, and she doesn't believe you really like Rocky IV, she thinks you're just saying that. You insist you like Rocky IV, and also Earth Girls Are Easy. She suggests you may be thinking of Rocky III. You say you aren't thinking of Rocky III, you were thinking about Rocky IV like you said you were, and why is she always acting this way? She throws your copy of Short Circuit out the window, and then she starts to say she likes either Flashdance or Footloose, but you'll never know because before she can finish saying anything you punch her in the mouth. What's the solution to this problem?

You both need to watch Die Hard and shut the fuck up.