Victor, who thankfully has not retired his blog, alerted me to this personality test.[1] Good thing, too, cuz every day that goes by without knowing my true nature is a day wasted. My true nature?
Norma Desmond. Who else? Thank heavens for personality tests. The fame and success part is pretty off, though the "avoid being seen as ordinary" part is pretty dead on. Also weird: most of my "very accurate" answers were about being balanced and un-moody and preferring comfort over effort, so I don't know how in the world the algorithm can come up with Sunset Blvd. Have these people seen the movie?
[1] Jo just informed me that she had already sent me this link in April, and I'd previously taken this test. Last time I took it, I was...Sunset Blvd. At least this test is consistent.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Under the gun
I. Online Poker: Boom or Bust?
Party Poker is projecting profits of $350 million this year? Wow. But I can believe it. The online poker gaming business is a cash cow -- Party Poker now has 40,000 or more players online at any given time (and reportedly over 1 million registered players) generating $1 million in rakes per day. *Plus* they can invest the $200 million or more in cash deposited by those 1 million players for a 3-5% return that can cover overhead. They're just printing money at this point. Now they're about to go public. A good buy? Depends on whether you think the poker boom will last.
Seems like everyone's playing internet poker these days, which has lead to talk about whether the poker explosion is a "bubble". As a bear (by which I mean I'm a naysayer, not a hairy burly dude in Bob Hoskins mold), count me in as to predicting a big slowdown in poker in the next five years. The reasons why:
(1) At some point the fish will get tired of losing their money and the pond will dry up. As in real estate, if everyone you know is making a ton, who are the chumps giving their money away? With anything generating such easy money, the losers will catch up to the winners.
(2) Having so many smart guys waste away so much time on something entirely unproductive can't be good for the world economy. I expect some kind of government intervention at some point.
(3) Computer robot players might be just a year away. Once bots become widespread, I imagine fish and recreational players will be very leery of playing online, except in private tourneys.
Last week, my cousins and I were ruminating about designing 'bots playing Sklansky-textbook poker that can probably earn $100,000 or more a year 4-tabling the $25 cash game 24 hours a day. Of course, having no programmers in the family, it was just a fantasy. Well, bots are coming. Supposedly, poker, with the x-factors of incomplete information and psychology, make it difficult for programmers to design skilled bots. It's easy to design a bot to just play the cards. You can beat the microlimits just playing tight textbook. But in anything above the micro-limits, you gotta play the player along with your cards. How a bot deal with the nuances of poker psychology? Well, some computer programs can already give you a big edge by analyzing opponents' play. With programs like Poker Tracker, a human player can already compile info on players you play against, categorize their tendencies (including how many times they go into a pot, how much they raise on each street, and what hands they've shown down with), then adjust play accordingly.
According to Poker Tracker, my play is loose-aggressive-aggressive. I've got a "Taz" icon. I take down a lot of pots by being aggressive, and I play a lot of suited connectors/one-offs. A bot sophisticated enough to analyze this data and change its style against me will play back at me more, and possibly call down more of my position bets. Sure, if you know you're playing a bot, you can try to outwit it. But I don't think it'd be impossible to design a program to beat the online cash game up to the $200 buy-in level. Play differently in pots against specific players using Poker Tracker type technology; make mathematically sound calls on draws, all-ins, etc. Plus, the bot can still take advantage of dumb mistakes by mediocre players at that level. It'll be a long time before a bot can beat the WSOP, or even the top high stakes SNG games, but a proliferation of bots at the lower stakes will drive out the recreational player.
I think in the end, a few poker sites will remain highly profitable (the business model is an MBA's dream -- all cash/no risk), but we're hitting just about the peak of the craze.
II. The Value of Suited Connectors
Eric, my hyper-aggressive poker savant cousin, was shocked to hear that I'm now loose-aggressive. My style-change happened some time in May, when I became a decent poker player who netted the monthly income of an administrative assistant, at three times the hourly rate. Prior to May, I was a marginal player who played mechanical tight-aggressive poker, textbook style. I raise with premium hands, play the recommended starting hands, leverage position, and look for odds on draws. I look to minimize mistakes and exploit unsound play. I won some, lost some, and generally pocketed what amounts to loose change. A winning player, yes. But not much of one.
So how did that change? After two or three consecutive days of playing in May, I became more confident -- and more willing to experiment. Following Mike's strategy, I realized that the NL cash game is a game of implied odds. The game's not about picking up small pots, though that's important (I'll pick up any pots that can be won with a bet). It's about busting people by taking their stack. Textbook poker will only get you so far; you end up playing too predictably to be given any action. I began to emulate my cousin Eric and try to see a lot of flops. Many of the best players in the world have a loose aggressive style, but to be a consistent winner, you've got to read the flop and other players better than your opponents. The risk in limping in with trash like 64s or calling a raise with marginal hands like QJo (which you shouldn't do) isn't in putting in the money while you're behind; it's the risk of getting trapped by hitting a marginal hand you can't lay down. You limp-call a raise with QJo in middle position. The flop comes Q 8 5 rainbow. You bet, the pre-flop raiser raises 2x. Well, out of position, you've got to lay it down. Maybe he's making a play with AK or TT. But if you're wrong, it'll cost you.
Medium suited connectors are a safer bet. According to Poker Tracker, my two most profitable hands, after my rockets got choked out by an idiot hitting his flush on the river after the guy called his entire stack on the turn with 1.5-to-1 odds yesterday (turning AA into just a marginally profitable hand for me), are 76s and 53s. I've taken down huge $300+ pots with them and won a few other decent pots. Calling raises with suited connectors -- provided you can lay down your hand if you hit just a pair -- is the best play in NL cash games. My absolute favorite hand is when I flop an opened-ended straight and flush draw and have an overpair bet into me. I've won more money in those situations than in any other.
Doyle Brunson reaffirms my attachment to medium suited connectors in his seminal Super/System, which I finally read yesterday thanks to Eric. I wish I'd read it earlier, since he's got great tips that would've helped with my recurring mistakes (not playing fast enough with two pairs, overplaying AA/KK/QQ/JJ, and being a net loser with AK). The key is to be able to get away from a hand. Plus, the trouble with my new flop-heavy aggressive-style is that when I'm off my game, it can be costly. You end up going too far with one pair and misreading people for overcards when they've got JJ/TT. I still make too many mistakes per hour to feel comfortable moving up in stakes. But I do well enough two-tabling the $100 ($.5/$1) cash game, where there's plenty of fish to give you action. And there are plenty of mediocre mechanical players to piss off. If I could get a nickel for every time some by-the-book loser bitches me out for calling a raise with 54s... (Those morons who talk about the poor "expected value" of suited connectors need to actually play poker instead of running computer simulations (obviously, if you take 76s to a showdown out of 1,000 hands, you'll lose way more than if you showdown KTu 1,000 times. But that's why you fold 76s when you don't hit it, and play to extract your opponent's entire stack when you do.))
III. Poker Nerd Threads for Amusement and Fun
This poker nerd thread is really funny. It's the Jack Madison of poker nerd discussions.
And these two poker nerd threads, by internet sit n go monster Gigabet (who reportedly makes six-digits a month six-tabling $200+$15 sngs) is very informative for anyone looking into how a top player thinks at the highest levels in high stakes SNG play.
Party Poker is projecting profits of $350 million this year? Wow. But I can believe it. The online poker gaming business is a cash cow -- Party Poker now has 40,000 or more players online at any given time (and reportedly over 1 million registered players) generating $1 million in rakes per day. *Plus* they can invest the $200 million or more in cash deposited by those 1 million players for a 3-5% return that can cover overhead. They're just printing money at this point. Now they're about to go public. A good buy? Depends on whether you think the poker boom will last.
Seems like everyone's playing internet poker these days, which has lead to talk about whether the poker explosion is a "bubble". As a bear (by which I mean I'm a naysayer, not a hairy burly dude in Bob Hoskins mold), count me in as to predicting a big slowdown in poker in the next five years. The reasons why:
(1) At some point the fish will get tired of losing their money and the pond will dry up. As in real estate, if everyone you know is making a ton, who are the chumps giving their money away? With anything generating such easy money, the losers will catch up to the winners.
(2) Having so many smart guys waste away so much time on something entirely unproductive can't be good for the world economy. I expect some kind of government intervention at some point.
(3) Computer robot players might be just a year away. Once bots become widespread, I imagine fish and recreational players will be very leery of playing online, except in private tourneys.
Last week, my cousins and I were ruminating about designing 'bots playing Sklansky-textbook poker that can probably earn $100,000 or more a year 4-tabling the $25 cash game 24 hours a day. Of course, having no programmers in the family, it was just a fantasy. Well, bots are coming. Supposedly, poker, with the x-factors of incomplete information and psychology, make it difficult for programmers to design skilled bots. It's easy to design a bot to just play the cards. You can beat the microlimits just playing tight textbook. But in anything above the micro-limits, you gotta play the player along with your cards. How a bot deal with the nuances of poker psychology? Well, some computer programs can already give you a big edge by analyzing opponents' play. With programs like Poker Tracker, a human player can already compile info on players you play against, categorize their tendencies (including how many times they go into a pot, how much they raise on each street, and what hands they've shown down with), then adjust play accordingly.
According to Poker Tracker, my play is loose-aggressive-aggressive. I've got a "Taz" icon. I take down a lot of pots by being aggressive, and I play a lot of suited connectors/one-offs. A bot sophisticated enough to analyze this data and change its style against me will play back at me more, and possibly call down more of my position bets. Sure, if you know you're playing a bot, you can try to outwit it. But I don't think it'd be impossible to design a program to beat the online cash game up to the $200 buy-in level. Play differently in pots against specific players using Poker Tracker type technology; make mathematically sound calls on draws, all-ins, etc. Plus, the bot can still take advantage of dumb mistakes by mediocre players at that level. It'll be a long time before a bot can beat the WSOP, or even the top high stakes SNG games, but a proliferation of bots at the lower stakes will drive out the recreational player.
I think in the end, a few poker sites will remain highly profitable (the business model is an MBA's dream -- all cash/no risk), but we're hitting just about the peak of the craze.
II. The Value of Suited Connectors
Eric, my hyper-aggressive poker savant cousin, was shocked to hear that I'm now loose-aggressive. My style-change happened some time in May, when I became a decent poker player who netted the monthly income of an administrative assistant, at three times the hourly rate. Prior to May, I was a marginal player who played mechanical tight-aggressive poker, textbook style. I raise with premium hands, play the recommended starting hands, leverage position, and look for odds on draws. I look to minimize mistakes and exploit unsound play. I won some, lost some, and generally pocketed what amounts to loose change. A winning player, yes. But not much of one.
So how did that change? After two or three consecutive days of playing in May, I became more confident -- and more willing to experiment. Following Mike's strategy, I realized that the NL cash game is a game of implied odds. The game's not about picking up small pots, though that's important (I'll pick up any pots that can be won with a bet). It's about busting people by taking their stack. Textbook poker will only get you so far; you end up playing too predictably to be given any action. I began to emulate my cousin Eric and try to see a lot of flops. Many of the best players in the world have a loose aggressive style, but to be a consistent winner, you've got to read the flop and other players better than your opponents. The risk in limping in with trash like 64s or calling a raise with marginal hands like QJo (which you shouldn't do) isn't in putting in the money while you're behind; it's the risk of getting trapped by hitting a marginal hand you can't lay down. You limp-call a raise with QJo in middle position. The flop comes Q 8 5 rainbow. You bet, the pre-flop raiser raises 2x. Well, out of position, you've got to lay it down. Maybe he's making a play with AK or TT. But if you're wrong, it'll cost you.
Medium suited connectors are a safer bet. According to Poker Tracker, my two most profitable hands, after my rockets got choked out by an idiot hitting his flush on the river after the guy called his entire stack on the turn with 1.5-to-1 odds yesterday (turning AA into just a marginally profitable hand for me), are 76s and 53s. I've taken down huge $300+ pots with them and won a few other decent pots. Calling raises with suited connectors -- provided you can lay down your hand if you hit just a pair -- is the best play in NL cash games. My absolute favorite hand is when I flop an opened-ended straight and flush draw and have an overpair bet into me. I've won more money in those situations than in any other.
Doyle Brunson reaffirms my attachment to medium suited connectors in his seminal Super/System, which I finally read yesterday thanks to Eric. I wish I'd read it earlier, since he's got great tips that would've helped with my recurring mistakes (not playing fast enough with two pairs, overplaying AA/KK/QQ/JJ, and being a net loser with AK). The key is to be able to get away from a hand. Plus, the trouble with my new flop-heavy aggressive-style is that when I'm off my game, it can be costly. You end up going too far with one pair and misreading people for overcards when they've got JJ/TT. I still make too many mistakes per hour to feel comfortable moving up in stakes. But I do well enough two-tabling the $100 ($.5/$1) cash game, where there's plenty of fish to give you action. And there are plenty of mediocre mechanical players to piss off. If I could get a nickel for every time some by-the-book loser bitches me out for calling a raise with 54s... (Those morons who talk about the poor "expected value" of suited connectors need to actually play poker instead of running computer simulations (obviously, if you take 76s to a showdown out of 1,000 hands, you'll lose way more than if you showdown KTu 1,000 times. But that's why you fold 76s when you don't hit it, and play to extract your opponent's entire stack when you do.))
III. Poker Nerd Threads for Amusement and Fun
This poker nerd thread is really funny. It's the Jack Madison of poker nerd discussions.
And these two poker nerd threads, by internet sit n go monster Gigabet (who reportedly makes six-digits a month six-tabling $200+$15 sngs) is very informative for anyone looking into how a top player thinks at the highest levels in high stakes SNG play.
Friday, June 10, 2005
"the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor"
I so wish I could write like this. (The link is to Stuart Klawans' superb write-up of the ecstatic/enthralling/exhilarating Kings and Queen, pulling waaaaaaayyyy ahead in the Film of the Year race. Klawans, perhaps the most elegant stylist among the major film critics, deserves far more exposure than he gets, that cursed subscriber firewall over at that leftist rag at which he toils blocking widespread dissemination of his reviews. So it's a boon to find out that you can get his reviews for free at this site, which is a compedium of lefty commentary. Worth a bookmark.)
Update!
This just in! As of 15:43 PDT on Friday, June 10, 2005, the 100 point scale of criticism remains retarded. Will it continue to be retarded next month at this time? Tune in to find out.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
the geek triumphant (?!?)
Are we entering a world in which the Chess Club prez is voted homecoming king while the football team captain is forced to take his cousin to the prom?
Yes, according to the NY Daily News. One supporting piece of evidence? A reality TV show produced by Ashton Kutcher, called Beauty and the Geek. The article then reels off the exploits of Tiger Woods, David Arquette, etc., as examples of geeks winning beauties, never mind that supposed geek Tiger is actually the highest-paid athlete in the world. Since the late Nineties, I've come across at least an article every few months that claims that American culture has finally embraced the quirky sexual magneticism of geeks and nerds. Celebrities are dating them. Women's mags are extolling their virtues. The draw? If you believe this article, their attraction is the combination of financial success coupled with a lack of sexual self-confidence that make geeks less likely to cheat.
Maybe there's something to that. But that explanation simply reinforces the general tenets of evolutionary sexual selection. It shouldn't be a big shock that geeks get play: after all, geeks are the alpha males of capitalist societies. The "geeky" types that win over women are largely financially successful entrepreneurs or techies, which, according to sexual selection theory, make their "geeky" (read: socially valued) genetic traits that much more alluring for females. So part of nature's grand design is that geeks get laid.
I think the reason geek chic remains a baffling concept to some is that many people can't let go of high school categories. The insular world of high school formed our earliest and often most traumatizing social experiences, which, for many, hover over their adult lives like an albatross [1]. But a funny thing happens on the way to life: high schools hierarchies are eventually turned on their heads. When you're sixteen, jocks rule and geeks drool. But as we see from stuff like The Last Picture Show, the highlight of the jock's life in high school; the geek becomes a millionaire Google programmer, while the jock ends up an alcoholic mechanic. Who's the top dog, now, huh? Think of the most powerful people in the United States: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton, Karl Rove, Alan Greenspan, William Rehnquest -- where do you think they fall on the jock/geek division? Of course our popular culture still celebrates square-jawed manhood, probably as an extension of our high school fantasies, but the reality is quite different. Geeks rule, and they've ruled for some time, as long as they're powerful and/or rich.[2] Just ask tuba player Bill Clinton.
[1] I have this theory that right-wingers are often sexually frustrated dweebs who often got picked on by party guys/girls in high school and have unconsciously spent their adult life returning fire. Imagine a young Newt Gingrich, mercilessly tarred and feathered by libertine kids and humiliated in front of his big crush Julie Thompson. Like a young Peter Parker, he vows to get even some day. Voila! A politics revolving around evil liberals and their "permissive" liberal licentiousness.
[2] Though if you're a geek without much money, power, or social skills, like nerdy film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader (whom, by the way, I once had the pleasure of urinating next to), that mysterious sexual allure is way beyond your grasp. Check out this pathetic Real Audio segment from This American Life, where Rosey tells Ira Glass the he saved a hackneyed love letter believing that maybe he's scored an admirer, only to learn later that said letter was a Dreamworks promo.
Yes, according to the NY Daily News. One supporting piece of evidence? A reality TV show produced by Ashton Kutcher, called Beauty and the Geek. The article then reels off the exploits of Tiger Woods, David Arquette, etc., as examples of geeks winning beauties, never mind that supposed geek Tiger is actually the highest-paid athlete in the world. Since the late Nineties, I've come across at least an article every few months that claims that American culture has finally embraced the quirky sexual magneticism of geeks and nerds. Celebrities are dating them. Women's mags are extolling their virtues. The draw? If you believe this article, their attraction is the combination of financial success coupled with a lack of sexual self-confidence that make geeks less likely to cheat.
Maybe there's something to that. But that explanation simply reinforces the general tenets of evolutionary sexual selection. It shouldn't be a big shock that geeks get play: after all, geeks are the alpha males of capitalist societies. The "geeky" types that win over women are largely financially successful entrepreneurs or techies, which, according to sexual selection theory, make their "geeky" (read: socially valued) genetic traits that much more alluring for females. So part of nature's grand design is that geeks get laid.
I think the reason geek chic remains a baffling concept to some is that many people can't let go of high school categories. The insular world of high school formed our earliest and often most traumatizing social experiences, which, for many, hover over their adult lives like an albatross [1]. But a funny thing happens on the way to life: high schools hierarchies are eventually turned on their heads. When you're sixteen, jocks rule and geeks drool. But as we see from stuff like The Last Picture Show, the highlight of the jock's life in high school; the geek becomes a millionaire Google programmer, while the jock ends up an alcoholic mechanic. Who's the top dog, now, huh? Think of the most powerful people in the United States: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton, Karl Rove, Alan Greenspan, William Rehnquest -- where do you think they fall on the jock/geek division? Of course our popular culture still celebrates square-jawed manhood, probably as an extension of our high school fantasies, but the reality is quite different. Geeks rule, and they've ruled for some time, as long as they're powerful and/or rich.[2] Just ask tuba player Bill Clinton.
[1] I have this theory that right-wingers are often sexually frustrated dweebs who often got picked on by party guys/girls in high school and have unconsciously spent their adult life returning fire. Imagine a young Newt Gingrich, mercilessly tarred and feathered by libertine kids and humiliated in front of his big crush Julie Thompson. Like a young Peter Parker, he vows to get even some day. Voila! A politics revolving around evil liberals and their "permissive" liberal licentiousness.
[2] Though if you're a geek without much money, power, or social skills, like nerdy film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader (whom, by the way, I once had the pleasure of urinating next to), that mysterious sexual allure is way beyond your grasp. Check out this pathetic Real Audio segment from This American Life, where Rosey tells Ira Glass the he saved a hackneyed love letter believing that maybe he's scored an admirer, only to learn later that said letter was a Dreamworks promo.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Punching bag
As is already widely blogged, today's Boston Globe reports that John Kerry's recently released war records show nothing new, except records of praise from the some of the same Swift Boat Pond Scum who mounted that despicable campaign after the Democratic Convention. So why did Kerry stonewall the press in August 2004 when releasing these records would have easily quelled the "controversy"? The official explanation is that Kerry didn't want to give the Swift Boat Liars the satisfaction of forcing Kerry's hand. My hunch is that Bob Shrum and co. focus-grouped the Swift Boat stuff, found the focus group folks saying that they dislike negative advertising and figured Kerry'd be better off sticking to the "issues", like health care tax credits, rather than prolong the this obvious bullshit. To be fair to the Kerry campaign, this strategy of sticking to the gameplan sounded legitimate at the time. They figured that the press would fact-check this stuff and dismiss it. The major papers did eviscerate the Swift Boat Liars, but that wasn't enough. What the Kerry campaign didn't figure, but should have, is that cable news and talk radio are driving political conversation, and let's just say these folks don't have much use for actual facts. So today we learned that all this time, Kerry had the H-bomb to drop on these guys, but didn't. This restraint -- or rather, this mush-headed faith in the media and the attention span/bullshit detector of the American populace -- coupled with the focus-group-tested "all positive" Democratic convention, stalled Kerry's momentum. Remember, soon after Kerry picked Edwards, Bush looked for all the world like a guy destined to lose by 100 electoral votes. The game was lost early in the third quarter, when Kerry couldn't counteract the negative spin and left himself open to the Rethug sliming at the GOP convention.
I don't think Kerry ran an awful campaign overall, but he did make some serious mistakes in the dog days of summer. It changed the complexion of the campaign, keeping Kerry in a defensive posture. That might've proved to be the difference. When will the Democrats learn that you can't negotiate with the right-wing, you just have to annihilate them?
I don't think Kerry ran an awful campaign overall, but he did make some serious mistakes in the dog days of summer. It changed the complexion of the campaign, keeping Kerry in a defensive posture. That might've proved to be the difference. When will the Democrats learn that you can't negotiate with the right-wing, you just have to annihilate them?
Monday, May 23, 2005
Helper Guy Addendum
It occurred to me over the weekend that many of my favorite films that had moved me with their indelible portraits of romantic yearning are actually case studies on helper guy pathology of one type or another. Scottie, in the first half of Vertigo, is a classic helper guy: he saves Madeleine's life, changes her out of her wet clothes, listens patiently while she spins a bizarre past-life possession tale. Looking at it through the lens of "guy" archetypes, Vertigo can be read as a cautionary tale on What Happens When the Helper Guy Flips Out. Lesson? Don't fuck with the helper guy for he will turn into a sexually possessive maniac (the type essayed by Robert De Niro in New York, New York and Raging Bull).
Mr. Chow is also a kind of helper guy (the kind of I've personally played) in In the Mood for Love, doing maintenance, lending a shoulder to cry on, etc. As in Vertigo, though, the heartbreak that ensues shakes up the helper guy's soul. A few years later, in 2046, Mr. Chow has become the antithesis of the helper guy; he is instead the commitment-phobic charming rogue. A psychologically dubious transformation or an incisive portrait of helper guy mutation?
There's Newland Archer, the constant consort and companion to the socially ostracized Countess Olenska in The Age of Innocence, forever at her side, wanting to jump her bones but couldn't make the move in the end.
And finally, cinema's ultimate helper guy might be Joseph Cotten's hapless Holly Martins in The Third Man. Was the last shot the most evocative expression of unrequited love in movie history, as I previously thought? Or is it the final comeuppance for a doofus who should've stepped up to the plate instead of spending the entire movie trying to steal his bud's girlfriend through helper guy means?
And how about Casablanca? In romantic triangle situations, I would fancy myself as a jaded Rick Blaine, but isn't he finally the self-sacrificing helper guy, hanging around and trying to steal the wife before giving up and helping the couple get away? On second thought, no: since Rick spent the entire movie not being a helper guy before finally giving in, he's more a dude given to noble romantic gestures rather than being cut from the same cloth as parasitic helper guy Holly Martins.
Still, this sucks. I just found out that I spent my adult life worshipping cinematic odes to my romantic rivals. What's next? Biographers reveal the helper guy in Murakami and Lou Reed? Abe Lincoln, great statesman and helper guy?
Mr. Chow is also a kind of helper guy (the kind of I've personally played) in In the Mood for Love, doing maintenance, lending a shoulder to cry on, etc. As in Vertigo, though, the heartbreak that ensues shakes up the helper guy's soul. A few years later, in 2046, Mr. Chow has become the antithesis of the helper guy; he is instead the commitment-phobic charming rogue. A psychologically dubious transformation or an incisive portrait of helper guy mutation?
There's Newland Archer, the constant consort and companion to the socially ostracized Countess Olenska in The Age of Innocence, forever at her side, wanting to jump her bones but couldn't make the move in the end.
And finally, cinema's ultimate helper guy might be Joseph Cotten's hapless Holly Martins in The Third Man. Was the last shot the most evocative expression of unrequited love in movie history, as I previously thought? Or is it the final comeuppance for a doofus who should've stepped up to the plate instead of spending the entire movie trying to steal his bud's girlfriend through helper guy means?And how about Casablanca? In romantic triangle situations, I would fancy myself as a jaded Rick Blaine, but isn't he finally the self-sacrificing helper guy, hanging around and trying to steal the wife before giving up and helping the couple get away? On second thought, no: since Rick spent the entire movie not being a helper guy before finally giving in, he's more a dude given to noble romantic gestures rather than being cut from the same cloth as parasitic helper guy Holly Martins.
Still, this sucks. I just found out that I spent my adult life worshipping cinematic odes to my romantic rivals. What's next? Biographers reveal the helper guy in Murakami and Lou Reed? Abe Lincoln, great statesman and helper guy?
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