| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
 Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 1:33 pm Post subject: The Riviera |
 |
|
The Riviera:
The Good Thief
Based on the French classic,
Bob le Flambeur
DVD
| Quote: | Bob (played by a destroyed Nick Nolte, entering the elegant [i]Casino Riviera with Anne)[/i]: We're going to see fake glamor, serious money and a lot of bad plastic surgery. But remember: the dice falls the same for all of them.
Anne: That's lesson number four?
Bob: Five and six. |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2215#2215
Last edited by editor on Thu May 28, 2009 9:01 am; edited 13 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 2:32 pm Post subject: |
|
|
To Catch a Thief
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
DVD
Few women have looked better - or sounded worse - onscreen than Philadelphia rich girl Grace Kelly against a backdrop of the French Riviera shortly before she joined the Grimaldi dynasty there. She's paired this time with Hitchcock cash cow Gary Grunt, who plays a notorious jewel thief forced to pursue an uncanny imitator before the gendarmes find him and lock him up for good. Grunt's best chance is to team up with a reluctant insurance rep.
| Quote: | Hughson: H.H. Hughson, Llloyd's of London.
Grunt: Am I to understand you're the man who knows everyone who owns the best jewellery in this vicinity?
HH: We insure most of the important pieces.
Grunt: Insurance. That's gambling, isn't it?
HH: Well, shall we say, betting?
Grunt: Yes, let's just say betting because I have a longshot for you. A little help in return for some of your losses.
HH: So Mr. Bertani told me.
Grunt: Are you interested?
HH: Well, the proposition sounds intriguing albeit a little unorthodox.
Grunt: What does that mean - yes or no?
HH: Well, my dear Mr. Robie...
Grunt: Smith!
HH: I beg your pardon. Ever been married?
Grunt: No, but what does that have to do with yes or no?
HH: It might help you to understand my problem. I have two wives - Felicity, God bless her, and the London office. I must return worthy of both of them.
Grunt: I see, and you don't think they'd approve of your giving me a list of your richest clients.
HH: Officially, you come under the category of extremely bad risk. |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2216#2216
Last edited by editor on Thu May 28, 2009 9:02 am; edited 4 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 5:24 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Riviera
The Rise and Rise of the Cote D'Azur
Hardcover
By Jim Ring
| Quote: | With a territory amounting to little more than five square miles, much of it precipitous and barren, there was little for the Monegasques to live on other than what they could forage directly or indirectly from the sea. Menton and Roquebrune - the latter half village, half castle on the hills above Cap Martin - were part of the principality. The Grimaldis and their people lived on taxes levied on wine, tobacco, lemons and shipping through the port. Then, in 1848 - the year of European revolutions - Roquebrune and Menton played their own small parts by declaring their independence from Monaco. The loss of the tax revenues from the outlying communities led to a crisis that was solved in a remarkable way.
By the middle of the nineteenth centure institutional gambling had established itself in various German principalities, but was illegal in France and Italy. This provided Monaco's incumbent Grimaldi ruler, Prince Charles III, with an opportunity. In 1856 he sanctioned the building of gaming rooms in the principality, and a society was formed to construct and run them under the beguiling name of the Societe Anonyme des Bains de Mer et dur Cercle des Etranger a Monaco. This was astute: it followed the example of the German casinos in suggesting that the first rule of funning a successful casino was to pretend it was a spa. 'The bathing establishment,' wrote the Prince's lawyer and business advisor Monsieur A. Eynaud, 'should in a sense act as a facade for the gambling establishment.' The sort of bathing facilities then popular at French seaside resorts were built, together with gaming rooms, on a promontory a mile from the fortified town called Les Spelugues. (From the chapter, Francois Blanc and the Iron Horse, at p. 53). |
A most engaging little book, full of fun and all the nastiest tidbits of gossip. This, for instance:
| Quote: | ...By comparison, she (the actress, Grace Kelly, aka HSH the Princess) found the social life of Monaco narrow, stuffy and constricted...The community of exiles, arms dealers, professional gamblers, white-slave traders and foreign exchange dealers were not to Grace's taste...
There was not much to Rainier, she had discovered, beyond his palace and the playthings of the rich. Behind the charm he was an arrogant man who devoted his life to himself and his principality...When Rainier asked what she would like for a tenth wedding anniversary present, she snapped, 'A year off.' In 1969 when she celebrated her fortieth birthday, an age she regarded as of great significance for a woman, her marriage had become a matter of form,l the rumour mill attributing affairs to both principals. (From The Road to La Turbie at pgs. 204-205). |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2217#2217
Last edited by editor on Fri Oct 19, 2007 1:14 pm; edited 3 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:11 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Atlantic Monthly
Magazine Subscription
POST MORTEM
A Gentleman, of a Kind, Prince Rainier
of Monaco (1923-2005)
By Mark Steyn
July/August 2005
| Quote: | In contrast, when Prince Rainier succeeded his grandfather, in 1949, he was taking over an enterprise whose best days appeared well behind it. The pocket principality had suffered from France's legalization of gambling in 1933, after a century of prohibition. It seemed unlikely ever to return to its nineteenth-century heyday, when British music-hall songs hymned its raffish charms.
As I walk along the Bois Boolong
With an independent air
You can hear the girls declare
"He must be a millionaire."
You can hear them sigh and wish
to die,
You can see them wink the other eye
At the Man Who Broke the Bank at
Monte Carlo.
...By the time Fatty ("Fat Little Monaco" as he was known to his schoolmates) succeeded Prince Louis, the men who fancied breaking the bank at Monte Carlo had moved down the coast to Cannes and elsewhere, and the bank itself was near broke. The Societe des Bains de Mer, which ran the casino and hotels, reported huge losses that year. Next the Societe Monegasque de Banques et de Metaux Precieux, which held 55 per cent of Monaco's reserves and much of the Grimaldi fortune, went bust.
...Princess Grace missed movies, and Rainier gave her permission to return to her old job for Hitchcock's Marnie. But his people found the idea vulgar and demeaning, and so High Society remained the House of Grimaldi's last on-camera performance until Princess Stephanie's husband made his film debut with Miss Bare Breasts of Belgium. By then, Rainier was old, stooped, and exhausted; his princess was dead; and his children seemed determined to return the family name to its seedy antecedents. He made his dilapidated casino kingdom briefly romantic, and when he couldn't maintain the romance, he had the satisfaction of knowing that at least he'd made Monaco bankable again. But the thirteenth-century family curse came along for the ride, and in the end it broke the man at Monte Carlo. (-- pgs. 162-163) |
| Quote: | High Society
DVD
Featuring Grace Kelly
as she then was
|
Weeks after it hit the newsstands, you can still make out the echo of the author's tap shoes beating a rhythm on the Grimaldi tomb. A little less reverence next time ,if you please, Mr. Steyn, you starry-eyed schoolgirl.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2248#2248
Last edited by editor on Fri Oct 19, 2007 1:16 pm; edited 6 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
French Leave
Paperback
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | Old Nick's voice quivered with pardonable indignation.
"He invited me to dinner. Nothing in writing, of course, but a clearly understood gentleman's agreement that he was to be the host. We went to what I suppose is the best hotel in the town - certainly it was expensive enough - and he entertained me lavishly, pressing food and wine upon me regardless of cost. At the conclusion of the meal, which I will admit I enjoyed, for it was excellent, he excused himself to go and make a telephone call. That was the last I saw of him."
"He left you to pay the bil? You do have some extraordinary friends, Nick."
"Blamont-Chevry is no longer a friend of mine. I am a tolerant man. I can forgive much, but I cannot forgive his behavior of last night. I would like to horsewhip him on the steps of his club."
"But I suppose he hasn't a club?"
"No. That, of course, is the difficulty. He had six at one time, but has been expelled from all of them. So there I was, Jafe, with a hundred francs in my pocket ----"
"What became of that ten thousand?"
"I had reverses at the Casino. It's a long story. No need to go into it now. Well, there, as I say, I was with a hundred francs in my pocket, faced -- it was on a plate on the table before me -- with a bill for twelve thousand."
"I thought you said fifteen."
"Of course, of course. My mind is wandering. A bill for fifteen thousand francs."
"Embarrassing. So you tried to sneak out and they caught you?"
Old Nick raised his eyebrows.
"My dear boy, do you seriously suppose I could be as crude as that? No, I gave the situation a few moments of intense thought, and then -- the waiter had moved away -- I put a napkin on my arm and stepped across to a neighbouring table where a fellow who looked like an Argentine or a Greek or something of that sort was entertaining a lady whom he was plainly trying to impress. I presented plate and bill to him. With a careless glance at the latter, he threw on the former a pile of notes. I thanked him, put notes, plate and bill on my table, and sauntered out. This morning the police were round here, making an absurd fuss. They gave me till tomorrow to find the money. (From Chapter 2 at pgs. 39-40) |
Another charming Wodehouse foray, this time of three penniless, young sisters, chicken farmers, who come into an unexpected legacy, which two of the three are determined to use getting to the south of France and staying there for as long as the money holds out. Eldest sister Kate grudgingly agrees to go along as chaperone. Vintage mayhem. Typical Plum. As clean and crisp as starched white linen but with a jaunty French stripe down the pantleg.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2249#2249
Last edited by editor on Fri Oct 19, 2007 1:16 pm; edited 5 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2005 12:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Hot Water
The Autograph Edition
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | A passer-by, given the choice between looking at Mr. Gedge and at the view beneath him, would have done well to select the latter, for this tubby little man constituted the only blot on an impressive landscape. The Chateau was on a hill, and from its terrace the ground descended sharply through many-coloured gardens and shrubberies till it reached the lake. Beyond the lake lay sand-dunes, and beyond these glittered the harbour, dotted with boats at anchor.
The town itself was to the left, a straggling huddle of red roofs and white walls in the centre of which, raising a golden dome proudly skywards, stood the building which had made the place the popular resort it was -- the Casino Municipale. For St. Rocque, once a tiny fishing village, has become in recent years a Mecca for those who enjoy watching their money gathered in with rakes by sad-eyed croupiers. (p. 1, Chapter 1) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2286#2286
Last edited by editor on Fri Oct 19, 2007 12:54 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:25 am Post subject: |
|
|
Tales From the Drones Club
Hardcover
By Sir Prune Gadfly Steelschack
| Quote: | The thing started one morning when Bingo returned to the love-nest for a bite of lunch after taking the Pekinese for a saunter. He was in the hall trying to balance an umbrella on the tip of his nose, his habit when at leisure, and Mrs Bingo came out of her study with a wrinkled brow and a couple of spots of ink on her chin.
'Oh, there you are,' she said. 'Bingo, have you ever been to Monte Carlo?'
Bingo could not help wincing a little at this. Unwittingly, the woman had touched an exposed nerve. The thing he had always wanted to do most in the world was to go to Monte Carlo, for he had a system which couldn't fail to clean out the Casino; but few places, as you are probably aware, are more difficult for a married man to sneak off to.
'No,' he said with a touch of moodiness. Then, recovering his usual sunny aplomb: 'Look,' he said. 'Watch, old partner in sickness and in health. I place the umbrella so. Then, maintaining a perfect equilibrium...'
'I want you to go there at once,' said Mrs. Bingo.
Bingo dropped the umbrella. You could have knocked him down with a toothpick. For a moment, he tells me, he thought that he must be dreaming some beautiful dream. (From All's Well With Bingo at p. 160) |
| Quote: | Eggs, Beans and Crumpets
Audio CD
Narrated by our favorite Wodehouse
reader, Jonathan Cecil, whose
interpretive genius got a bit
of a head start, it seems
Listen to the story, which is included in this collection, one of the Wodehouse best and funniest available on CD! |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2547#2547
Last edited by editor on Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:26 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:13 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Good Time Girls
of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush
Hardcover
By Lael Morgan
| Quote: | Unfortunately, Corrine (B. Gray)'s press coverage usually meant trouble, for which she had as strong a penchant as she did for alcohol. And teamed with A.C. Stearns, a diminutive, sixty-five-year-old former physician known as the "Gambler Ghost," she sometimes outdid herself. "Doc" Stearns had broken the bank at Monte Carlo, so he was sually treated with deference, but together they made both the Klondike Nugget Semi-Weekly and the Dawson police blotter on September 27, 1899.
According to that account, "Doc" Stearns, a blasé habitué of the gambling houses and variety halls, and Corrine B. Gray, one of the airy fairies of Dawson's half-world, were ejected from the stage at the Opera House on Monday night... (-- p. 126) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3428#3428 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The Malaria Capers
More Tales of the Parasites and People,
Research and Reality
By Robert S. Desowitz
| Quote: | | Kala azar, however, is different: it has not yielded its past origins and epidemiology to the modern historian's search. This is peculiar because the disease is distinct enough that had it been present it should have been descriptively remarked upon in th eearly medical writings. It is not an indolent disease that would have gone unnoticed. Kala azar frequently occurs in epidemic proportion, killing thousands during its apogee. Nor can we attribute this narrative absence to an observational gap solely on the part of India's ancient writers. Visceral leishmaniasis (kala azar) is not confined to India but is now known to occur in a vast area of China, in Russian Turkestan, in the Sudan and Ethiopia, in Mediterranean Europe (southern Spain, France, and Italy, Greece, Malta, Crete, and Yugoslavia), 2 in North Africa, and in the New World as foci of infection along the coast of Brazil. Except for Brazil and the Sudan, these are regions with a rich written record spanning at least fifteen hundred years. In that record we can see the past epidemics of plague, typhus, malaria - but nowhere do we find an account of a disease that could be interpreted as kala azar. To the best of our admittedly imperfect knowledge, kala azar seems to have made its first attack on humans in Jessore 1824. And like AIDS, its true epidemiological origins may never be satisfactorily traced. (From the chapter, How the Government Disease Came to India, pgs. 34-35) |
| Quote: | | 2. The tourist and guide books certainly do not mention the risk of contracting kala azar at these European tourist meccas. The odds are admittedly very small. Still, a tourist stands a greater chance of getting kala azar in the French Cote d'Azur than breaking the bank at Monte Carlo. And while it is hardly a tourist resort, special and timely note should be made of kala azar's entrenched endemicity in Iraq. |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3611#3611 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 4:06 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The Complete Essays of Mark Twain
Hardcover
Edited by Charles Neider
Aside from Letters from the Earth (see below), the literary charm of this much revered American eludes us, much as his dream to sail a riverboat up and down the mighty Mississippi eluded Sam Clements. Unlike his fiction, however, the essays have much to recommend them. Here is a sample on the subject of the gaming houses he visited while vacationing in Aix-les-Bains in the sunny south of France:
| Quote: | I was never in a fashionable gambling hell until I came here. I had read several millions of descriptions of such places, but the reality was new to me. I very much wanted to see this animal, especially the new historic game of baccarat, and this was a good place, for Aix ranks next to Monte Carlo for high play and plenty of it. But the result was what I might have expected - the interest of the looker-on perishes with the novelty of the spectacle; that is to say, in a few minutes. A permanent and intense interest is acquirable in baccarat, or in any other game, but you have to buy it. You don't get it by standing around and looking on...
The thing I chiefly missed was the haggard people with the intense eye, the haunted look, the desperate mien, candidates for suicide and the pauper's grave. They are in the description, as a rule, but they were off duty that night. All the gamnblers, male and female, old and young, looked abnormally cheerful and prosperous...
The etiquette of the place was difficult to master. In the brilliant and populous halls and corridors you don't smoke, and you wear your hat, no matter how many ladies are in the thick throng of drifting humanity, but the moment you cross the sacred threshold and enter the gambling hell, off the hat must come, and everybody lights his cigar and goes to suffocating the ladies. (at pgs. 53-54). |
Even better:
| Quote: | Letters from the Earth
Paperback
By Mark Twain
|
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4079#4079 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:24 pm Post subject: |
|
|
With Fondest Regards
Hardcover
By Françoise Sagan
| Quote: | I first became acquainted with gambling one June 21st. Born on the first day of summer, I approached the gaming tables with firm resolve on the evening of my twenty-first birthday. I entered the Palm Beach in Cannes with a godfather on either side of me, both of whom were amused to witness my debut on the green baize. They did indeed witness the start of my career, but they were not there to see where it led, for by then I had escaped their surveillance and was racing from casino to casino without them.
(N.B. Contrary to what's been said about me, it's not true that I have lost any 'fortunes' on the green baize, never having had one - strangely enough - at my disposal. I have lost at the tables only what my way of life has left me to play with, a life not of luxury but of dreaming - a dream that meant I should have no material cares and that the only cause for worry and anguish in the faces of those around me should be the pain of love. The kind of protection with which I've always sought to safeguard my immediate present, heedless of days to come, has never left me the smallest fortune to squander in games of chance. And so I've had no difficulty in always playing beyond my means, which is the very essence of gambling. Moreover, I tend to win when I gamble, odd as it may seem, and the owners of the casinos where I've playedmust laugh bitterly whenever anyone refers to the millions that I'm supposed to have lost at their tables. I wanted to make this parenthetical aside in the event I should be suspected of masochism, and so that gambling not be seen as ome evil companion of mine. Just as my friends have been good friends to me, so too has chance been a good companion, changeable certainly, but both ways). (Opening paragraphs of Games of Chance, pgs. 17-19) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4601#4601 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ 
Search 
Memberlist 
Usergroups
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
