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Sunday, November 10, 2013

Card Sharp

Last night I dreamed I was in the back seat of Arnold Schwarzenegger's car, leaning over the back of the front seat pitching a movie while he drove and chomped on his cigar.

"It's called Card Sharp," I told him. "You're a champion poker player and knife fighter. But a cabal of drug-smugglers using the big Las Vegas poker tournament as a cover for their criminal enterprise have kidnapped your wife because she knows too much."

I then described a few of the film's action set pieces. In one scene Arnie's character infiltrates a backroom poker game being played by a bunch of mid-level henchmen. One of them asks Arnie to cut the cards.

"Of course," he replies. "It's my favourite part of the game."

He then does the 52 pick-up trick and impales a card to each henchman's chest as it falls, save for the last henchman, who he "punches" with a knife so hard that the man goes flying out a window and lands in a bloody heap on the sidewalk below, shards of glass following him down.

"That's what happens when you don't play with a full deck," Arnie quips. "Not too sharp."

Many of the puns and cheesy lines I dreamed up are already fading from memory, but I distinctly remember "Never bring a deck of cards to a knife fight," "Nothing up my sleeve - except these knives," and "I'm not really into poker; I'm more of a poke 'em player." "Poke 'em?" "Yeah, poke poke poke 'em!" (As Arnie stabs another bad guy over and over.)

And of course, at the climax, the main villain has Arnie's wife clutched close to him in the main ballroom, forcing her to dance, implicitly holding her hostage to slow down the hero's rampage. But Arnie flings his knife into the villain's forehead and scoops his wife into his arms, chuckling "May I cut in?" to the villain as he slumps to the floor.

Talk about contributing to a culture of violence; I guess I've done my part for the day.

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