Lucky Me

Sharkey: You raised me with nothing?
Huck Cheever: Sometimes nothing's enough

“Lucky You”

First off – no news on the baby front. Little Ed is still hanging in there, comfortable as could be.

Over the weekend, since the Distraction is in no shape for much activity, we decided to catch up on some viewing and I finally got around to watching “Lucky You”. I had the lowest of expectations going in, and thankfully the movie surpassed them, if only just.

Lets face it, it was never going to be better than Rounders, and probably wasn’t targeting at that same feel. The fact that they even had to set it to pre-Moneymaker days shows how much the poker landscape has changed over the past few years. Having said that, has anybody ever watched Rounders and thought that the relationship between Mikey and his girlfriend should have been a bigger focus of the movie?

Only douches did, that’s who.

But alas, the movie does have it’s good points. I can’t believe they got Sammy Farha to stay quiet at a table for so long. The degenerate gamblers depicted seem realistic enough, and living so close to broke for the “Blaster” was a welcome change from the often glamorised image of professional poker players. For every guy making millions and living with “TMM” there are a thousand guys visiting pawn shops to get enough scratch to make the minimum buy in.

The prop bets were great, and obviously there was a bit of a tip of the hat to some of them. I also liked how he took the $100 across the room without touching the floor bet, just because he thought it would be funny for “Billie”, Drew Barrymore’s character.

But in the end, the support characters are very bland and forgettable. Poker analogies to life are far too corny and common in the movie. It was not as bad a movie as I thought it would be, it’s far from the worst poker movie but it’s far from the best as well.

I’ve got quite a pool going now on the birth of the baby, with most of the money going for an overdue baby girl. That could put a great dent into my prop betting action this year, but some favourable results (like a baby boy any day until the 10th) would get Little Ed’s saving account off to a flying start. We’ve just about settled on names too I think, but whether to baptise the kid or not is a whole other thing. I just don’t get it, why would you baptise the kid of an atheist and an agnostic? And just doing it for the sake of having the event seems a bit insulting to the religion if you ask me. But alas, it’s more like buying car insurance for my Distraction. She wants it “just in case”. What can you do?