2002-07-09   12:08 p.m.

4 minutes ago marked the end of the gambling movie marathon, the most elaborate of our movie marathons to date. all movies on the original set list, with the exception of bugsy, made it to screen in this order: maverick, the sting, rounders, casino, vegas vacation, and the marathon was complete with a half pound of starbucks' "caffe verona, the coffee of romance" beans (chosen only for its smell, not for the proclivities of its main demographic), creation of souvenir-wear, and exercise.

the prelude was the last-minute parental rental orange county, which pushed back our launch time a good two hours, to about 8:40 pm yesterday (though it is unrelated to gambling, and thus was not included in the marathon, my parents decided they had to watch it immediately upon renting it, even without the days of premeditation and scheduling that had gone into the marathon). jack black ran around like a retard, and colin hanks got into the industry because of his superpowerful father; both entertained me.

maverick was funny, but much longer than we expected. mel gibson and james garner rule. there was a short intermission during this film, with dannyr starting the r&d for our gmm2k t-shirts, and me talking to Brytne for a bit. sorry for being brief, cutie, but duty calls :-*

the sting (winner of 7 academy awards, including best picture) was really cool, but much longer (and older) than we expected. danny and i concluded that robert redford looks at least 75% identical to a brad pitt of comparable age. i guess women never change. lots of 70s and/or 30s slang involved in this movie about a group of con artists (grifters) going for the biggest hit of their lives. reminiscent of ocean's eleven, right down the the brad-pitt-lookalike playing man#2.

the first large intermission came after the sting, and found dannyr and me meticulously designing the back print for our gmm2k t-shirts. we whipped out some of that uber-expensive t-shirt paper and printed out one of these, in mirrored landscape of course..

then, after about the 6th round of coffee, we moved on to the big hitters, the dvds of the crowd: rounders and casino

these obvious favorites in the gambling movie scene did not fail to please, though casino obviously failed to be edited -- oh well, i wouldn't have had it a bit shorter than its weigh-in at 178 minutes. rounders was thoroughly enjoyable, though danny complained about edward norton's character.. but whatever. the movie is worth its weight in gold (and by that i mean the weight of the real reel!) for the weird poker-player slang we picked up.

after rounders, we decided it was a good time to finish off the shirts by designing the fronts (combined onto one sheet, for economical cut-and-iron use), which can be seen here

by this time, it was about 6:15 am -- obviously, time for dinner, as the parents were just waking up for their "days". however, we were starting casino, so all that could wait until an appropriate time to pause the movie. that time came about 85 minutes into the movie, when the dvd player decided it was high time to overheat and stop giving us sound. so we unplugged everything from the wall, and looked for a way to waste our time while she cooled down...

so, logically, dannyr and i fired up the stove and cooked a box of pizza pasta hamburger helper, madstyle (well basically, i cooked and danny paced around the kitchen being gay). so we downed (or, as m-w's word of the day would have it, we ingurgitated it) the grub during the first half-hour or so of post-break casino (or, about one-sixth of the way through it). the film was beautiful, complete with crazy violence, vengeful violence, calculated violence, and lot of mob talk before and after the violence. some very godfather ii-ish "powerful man loses connection with family" and "wife loses connection with powerful man" scenarios were involved, but the main storyling follows deniro as a badass gambler who's put in charge of a casino in vegas, while gii-- not that these are bad things, because both casino and godfather ii will rock your socks off.

after casino, our tires were wearing thin (approximately 10:30 am), and we needed something to rejuvenate us. our stomachs were both torn up from the massive amounts of coffee and lack of food (besides a 3-am potato skins run), so we decided rather than downing more caffeine we'd just increase bloodflow -- that's right -- and go for a jog. hey, everything's a good idea when you haven't slept in twenty-four hours. so, right, we jogged about 8 blocks total, walked about 8 blocks total -- which really isn't bad considering our terrible physical states... and then we returned for the grand finale

well... the finale

right. apparently, vegas vacation is a godawful movie, and in no way is any better a choice to end a movie marathon than the better movies it defeated to make our set list. during a pee break, Brytne got online (scarily, she'd slept since we'd last talked) and said a few words, but i warned her (indirectly) that i was in a frantic sleepless frenzy which absolutely required that i finish this movie marathon... soooo, back to the torture chamber. though funny at times, mostly due to the terrible camerawork and, in a more twisted way, the 20-minute laughless dry spells, vegas vacation failed to please. oh well, though, we had some shirts to finish.

we have designed printed both sides of both shirts, and are just awaiting my mom (the only woman in the household) to return from work, so she can find good t-shirts and iron our stuff onto them..

hopefully, though, i can catch a few winks while danny showers..

yup, that's what i'll do

- jon kyle wild

we call them strong

those hearts that have no scars to show