"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

It's Always Something - Rick Springfield (mp3)
Lose You - Pete Yorn (mp3)

Last Friday, Tax Day, the FBI shut down the three largest online poker sites in the United States.

Saturday night, I rewatched Chinatown for the first time in over a decade and watched one of the special features that came with the movie, where screenwriter Robert Towne and Jack “Jake Gittes” Nicholson were both interviewed about the experience.

Towne’s script was inspired by a number of very real experiences and conversations, which is how a movie originally titled “Water and Power” -- a great title, by the way -- could end up being named after a location which only shows up for the last three minutes of the film. Towne explained that, in conversation with a friend who had once worked law enforcement in Chinatown, the man had said the best thing for American law enforcement to do in Chinatown was “as little as possible.” Because they were surrounded by a people and a culture they couldn’t translate and couldn’t understand, they were never sure whether they were doing something that would benefit justice... or whether they were being played and manipulated by various nefarious forces.

Or, as SparkNotes puts it: “Chinatown, a place where secret organizations rule, the law is meaningless, and good intentions are brutally suppressed, serves as the symbol for the true nature of every city.”

If you haven't seen this amazing film and don’t feel like reaching back to what a panel of Guardian (UK) critics declared “The greatest film of all time,” then how about a reference to Die Hard?

“You asked for miracles, Theo? I give you the F.B.I.”

These are the words of Severus Snape (he went by "Hans Gruber" in 1988), smiling with maniacal glee as the feds follow their playbook and provide the criminals with exactly the help they need to rob Nakatomi Plaza of its precious store of barabonds (not to be confused with Barry Bonds).

In regards to the shutdown of online poker, the owners and CEOs of casinos all over this great land of ours are smiling maniacally, watching as the FBI follows its playbook and buffs out one of the biggest dents in their Indian Reservation business.

"These defendants, knowing full well that their business with U.S. customers and U.S. banks was illegal, tried to stack the deck," said Janice Fedarcyk, FBI assistant director-in-charge. "They lied to banks about the true nature of their business. Then, some of the defendants found banks willing to flout the law for a fee. The defendants bet the house that they could continue their scheme, and they lost."

I can’t personally recall the last time a high-ranking law enforcement suit, upon making a serious criminal bust, found himself or herself so tickled with puns. “Stack the deck”? “Bet the house”? I somehow doubt that if she had just busted a child pornography ring or captured a serial killer, she would be having fun using words involved with the trade. Strangely, she never chose to utter the phrase "victimless crime."

It’s just online poker. It’s hardly even illegal, really, otherwise we wouldn’t have entire cities and towns built around monstrosities erected merely for such activity, and we wouldn’t have hundreds of hours worth of TV programming dedicated to the “game of chance.”

It’s hardly illegal, but it’s illegal enough, and the FBI has every right to act. Even if Bugsy Malone and Noah Cross and dozens of wealthy shady figures sit in their back rooms, counting their extra money and laughing at how beneficial the FBI can be for their own business. I’m sure those men will kick a little extra here and their to some elected officials. Legally, of course.

As a regular online player who rarely won much and rarely lost much, online poker was merely a cheaper and more convenient way to throw away money than golf. It was cheaper than World of Warcraft or keeping up with the video game universe. It was a modestly-competitive but ultimately harmless game. I will miss playing it, but the system wasn’t getting rich off me, and I wasn’t getting rich off the system. My reaction to all this news was simple:

Forget it, Billy. It’s Chinatown.

Casino Life

I feel a little bit like I'm stealing this topic from Billy, but I thought he'd have written about it by now, so what the heck. Maybe he will weigh in on this topic, too, since he sees a side of casinos that I don't...

Wilco--"Casino Queen" (mp3)
Clive Gregson and Boo Hewerdine--"Sin City" (mp3)

I harbor a certain fondness for places that are artificial and decadent--Las Vegas, cruise ships, the French Quarter, the tourist sections of Key West. Aside from the obvious connection of activities and vices, these places share another quality--they make you forget about time and the outside world.

My daughter's return from Disney World a few weekends ago has had me thinking about this very topic, though the truth is that I've never been to Disney World, even though it meets both of my criteria above, albeit in the guise of good, clean family fun. But that is perhaps a topic for another time. One of my favorite created decadent worlds is the casino.

On the surface, since I'm not much of a gambler, you wouldn't think that this would be so. After all, the last time I was in a casino, during Christmas vacation, I put $20 in a penny slot machine, elected to play every line available (if you aren't a slot player, a "penny" slot can cost you 50 cents or more, if you want to have a realistic chance of winning), pushed the play button one time, won immediately in the form of "free spins," and after these and numerous bonus rounds, my winnings totaled $80. From one push of a button. I immediately cashed out and didn't play another slot the rest of the night.

Nor do I go there to play poker. In fact, these days, I usually don't go unless my dad is paying, but that doesn't mean that I don't cherish my time there. Or my timelessness there. Or the wealth of experience. I've been to all manner of casino--the big themed ones in Vegas, the cruise ship diversions, the sad imitations in Tunica, the Indian reservation variety, even the docked riverboats on the Mississippi.

I entered my first casino in Las Vegas in 1980. A friend and I were driving cross-country to California and stopped in the magic city for a night or two. Back then, nothing was too high tech or sophisticated. In fact, one of the lures for us was that casinos advertised their "All-You-Can-Eat" buffets for $.99. That's right, ninety-nine cents. You got cheap roast beef, pre-fab mashed potatoes, lettuce and maybe a few carrot sticks and Thousand Island dressing (the only choice), jello, and chocolate pudding. Maybe a roll and butter.

We stayed at a Motel 6 and frequented the Circus, Circus casino. My friend, long-deceased by his own hand, fancied himself a skilled blackjack player who eventually came to believe, later in the trip, that we could subsist in Reno on his blackjack winnings, would spend his time at those tables while I tried to keep from losing anything at the prehistoric slot machines and video poker and blackjack games.

From my perspective, always somewhat on the outside, what drew me to casino life was the desperation. If you like to watch people, there is no better place than a chair in front of a slot machine in a casino. Especially if you like to watch people on the edge. Especially if you are desperate yourself. My dominant memory from that first trip is a non-descript bride in a light blue dress trailing behind her newly-minted husband through the room of games and machines, her special day sullied by his desire to spend part of that day living casino life.

Today, you can see the same desperation in simple details: the casino card on a lanyard around a woman's neck, as if somehow enough senseless spending will reap rewards (those rewards will be discounts to encourage future trips to the casino), the ATM receipt left hanging in the machine, someone in too much of a hurry to grab it, the empty drink glasses and full ashtrays stashed between machines (because now the drinks are free and you can even order them using a button on the slot machine), the photographs of winners as you walk into the casino (the amount they've won to make the wall far less than it used to be), the willingness of all of us to believe the happy, smiling faces of gamblers that we see on the billboards. Inside a casino, the real look of a gambler is weary resignation, the look of someone in it for the long haul. Even if someone wins, the celebration is brief, the joy is transitory. A win keeps you gambling; it does not change your life.

And so, gambling, at least on slot machines, is about buying time. You know that you are going to lose, that given enough pulls of that machine, everything that you have will be taken. But that is a deal that you are willing to make, as long as the house will make those machines loose enough that you can spend the evening in that fantasy land of stale smoke and no windows and not have to go back to that ATM too many times.

I have a friend with whom I've gambled a time or two, and his goal is to win. He plays the big slots, the dollar slots, because he thinks that that is what he has to do if he is going to make money on the transaction. (NOTE: if I were Bob Dylan, I would stop here to write a song about how if you have to win, you're bound to lose)

One time when we gambled together, he ran through all of his money in about 10 minutes, while another friend and I nursed our investments and chugged free drinks at the cheapest slots we could find. The other time we gambled, which was actually in the Las Vegas airport, my friend who has to win actually got up on machine, but couldn't let it go, had to keep pushing buttons until his early winnings had dissipated, and we boarded the plane with that sourness in both of our mouths.

All of which may have you wondering why, exactly, I am enamored with casinos. Well, put simply, I like to be in places where pretensions are stripped away. My friend who has to win is a good, church-going man, and his self-allowance to grapple with these machines shows him one of his true selves that he might not want to see, but that we all need to be reminded is there.

I am much the same. Though I have no weakness for gambling, there is no doubt that every time I pull a lever or push a button, I have visions of a bell-ringing, everyone rushing to my machine kind of victory, the hope against all odds, even as I remind myself that I am no different from a primate in a lab pushing a button repeatedly in hopes that, randomly, if I keep pushing that button enough, something good will happen. Sometimes it does. So, it might again.

Couple that with the fantasy element of living, however briefly, in a small, self-contained world with few rules and a singular purpose, and you've got me hooked--on the experience, at least.