Category Archives: Billiards Web Series

Gotham City Grind

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In film, sometimes the venue is the star. 

Meticulously selected, elegantly framed, perfectly lit, and cinematographically fine-tuned, the specific locale can be as memorable and essential as the actors, songs, script, or action.

Consider the old Ames Billiards Academy, a second-floor loft in the Claridge Hotel on West 44th in Times Square, that was home to the epic showdown between Fast Eddie Felson and Minnesota Fats in The Hustler. Or, the iconic, vintage Chris’s Billiards in Jefferson Park, Chicago, where Vince first duels with Grady Seasons in The Color of Money. For TruTV’s series The Hustlers, Steinway Billiards in Queens, New York, featured so prominently it was almost an hour-long advertisement. I don’t remember much about Penance except the awesome appearance of Top Shot Billiards in Alberta, where the movie was filmed in entirety.

Presumably, most venues would jump at the chance for this kind of product placement. But, when those starring roles don’t come knocking, there is always the last resort to create one’s own show. Such is the playbook Gotham City Billiards Club (GCBC) adopted in May 2016 when it launched the web series Gotham City Grind, featuring their Avenue U pool hall in Brooklyn as the homebase. 

Unfortunately, there are many good reasons why this path is not well-worn (e.g., cost, production value, lack of human interest, etc).  All of these reasons are on vivid display when one suffers through any of the four webisodes in the series.

Gotham City Grind opens with the voice-over, “This is not your average pool hall.  It may look like it, but Gotham City Billiards has an untold story, and our story begins with some of our usual players.” 

While the proclamation is well-intentioned, the series never actually tells the untold story.  Fine, whatever. The far greater gaffe is presuming that the “usual players” have a story that is interesting to anyone outside the pool hall’s doors. 

The first webisode, “Never Give Up,” focuses on Thomas Rice, a 17-year-old who turned to pool to counter his ADHD and struggles in school. Rice says, “I couldn’t focus in school and as soon as pool came into my life, it changed everything… started focusing better, winning tournaments, hanging out with the right kids not the wrong kids.” He then plays some nineball and prepares for an upcoming tournament.

That’s great, admirable even, but it’s hardly engaging video-watching. Maybe that’s why the webisode then abruptly shifts focus to Brooklyn denizen and actor William DeMeo, who is in town to promote his new film Back in the Day. (He was Jason Molinaro in seasons 5-6 of The Sopranos.) But, this is also a dead-end, an irrelevant cameo, unrelated to Thomas Rice, to GCBC, or even to billiards. We’re basically watching a pool hall promote itself promoting a straight-to-cable film that no one has heard of.

The second webisode, “American Dream,” is even worse; I found myself wistfully hoping for another D-list celebrity pop-up. Instead, we meet Koka Davladse from the Republic of Georgia. He is a “regular player with an infectious laugh” who came to America to study and play pool because “Georgia is dead, no tournaments, no payouts.” He has not seen his family in five years.

Awash with pathos, we then follow Koka’s storyline as it abruptly veers into a ten-round game of nineball against an opponent named Jerry T.  Koka wins, and the narrator rewards us with the platitude, “It takes courage and determination to follow your dreams. You have to want it bad enough. Most won’t even try, but whether you fail or succeed in the process, you have to believe in yourself.”

Stunned by such banality, I could not bring myself to watch the remaining two episodes, “Love for Pool” and “Legacy.” 

If you learn the untold story to GCBC, send it my way; otherwise, don’t waste your time grinding it out with Gotham City Grind.

 

Welcome to the Billiards Zoo

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Since the dawn of the green baize, there have been animals playing billiards:  Johnny “Scorpion” Archer. Alex “The Lion” Pagulayan. Jeanette “Black Widow” Lee. Horace “Groundhog” Godwin. Steve “The Whale” Melnyk. The zoological roll call of billiards monikers can go on and on.

The Secret of Magic Island

But, nicknames aside, animals have throughout the years picked up the cue stick to entertain. For example, costumed monkeys were shooting pool in an uncredited film from the 1930s. Far stranger is the 1957 French film, The Secret of Magic Island, in which real rabbits play pool (along with a picture-snapping dog and a motorbike-riding frog). Mister Ed, that famous TV Palomino, pocketed a shot in the eponymous 1964 episode “Ed the Pool Player.”  Today, it seems every animal even wants its 15 fifteen minutes of fame; YouTube  is rife with homemade videos of dogs, cats, and squirrels shooting stick. 

Well, this billiards menagerie better make some room. In the television episodes and short film below, there’s an international vivarium of dogs, chickens, toads, badgers, weasels, pigs, tigers, wolves, and bears ready to pot some shots.

Mad Dogs

Throughout the UK – and splattered across the internet – are kitschy paintings of dogs playing pool in pubs. This canine camp provided the perfect inspiration for the creative trio at Gadzooks Animation. Released in 2019, their film Mad Dogs is a seven-minute, stop-motion, animated film in which a nonet of regional British dogs discuss the quintessentials of British culture while drinking beers and shooting pool in a pub. Mad Dogs was created in response to Article 50, an open invitation to artists, commissioned by Sky Arts, the British 24-hour television channel, to define who the British are as a nation. It is available to watch here. 

The pint-drinking pack includes an English Foxhound, Afghan Hound, West Highland Terrier, English Bulldog, Old English Sheepdog, Scottish Terrier, Welsh Terrier, English Bull Terrier, and a Welsh Corgi. Each speaks with a specific regional accent. The dogs’ personalities are wonderfully distinct, and the dialogue hits the right mix of pride and pretense. 

My only gripe with Mad Dogs is after the English Bull Terrier takes its shot and rips the baize! How this faux pas doesn’t incite the crowd to a heightened level of rabble-rousing rabidity is the real unanswered question.

Chicken Stew

Cartoon history is replete with famous rivalries: Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote. Tweetie Pie and Sylvester the Cat. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.  To this list, add the chicken trio (Uncle Wattles, Free Range, and Small Fry) and weasel duo (Slim and Glutton) of the Chinese animation series Chicken Stew. 

First aired in 2009, Chicken Stew focuses on the weasels’ harebrained schemes in hapless pursuit of an elusive chicken dinner. In the 2011 episode “Blame It On Billiards,” available to watch (in Chinese) here, Uncle Wattles and Free Range are competing in a friendly, albeit dishonest, game of billiards. Tables are tilted, pockets are relocated, but it’s all in good fun, until Slim and Glutton try to weasel their way into the game. While their disguises work, their plans fall apart. Bombs go off, flying nunchaku come out, cue sticks are brandished, and poor ol’ Glutton gets a multi-billiard ball ass-whupping.1

Wind in the Willows

Noone likes to be told he’s a “social calamity,” least of all Mr. Toad, whose failure to understand the game of bridge leads him to purchase a billiards table, “a game no gentleman’s residence should be without.”

That’s the setup for “Champion of the Baize,” the 1987, Season 3 episode of Wind in the Willows, a British stop-motion animated series based on Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s novel of the same name. The full episode is available to watch here.

https://youtu.be/IPDY7TQv0KU

While this dapper amphibian certainly has the means to buy the table, Mr. Toad is too proud to admit he has no idea how to play the game. This leads to some fairly jovial banter with Mole and Rat, who attempt to explain what a rest is, how to chalk one’s cue (or “pole”), and why the object of the game is not to bounce the ball off as many “things” as possible.

But, when two weasel passersby hear the “sound of ivory on ivory,” they challenge Mr. Toad to a game of snooker, and that’s when his vainglory becomes more of a problem. Flattered by the weasels, Mr. Toad is hustled into wagering his motorcar, which he quickly loses to the more skillful opponent. However, in a scene reminiscent of the Fresh Prince episode “Banks Shot,” Mr. Toad’s elderly friend Badger requests a match, feigns ignorance about the required sequence to pot the snooker balls, and then proceeds to hustle the weasel in a 7-0 run, promptly winning back the auto. 

For all its British formality, “Champion of the Baize” is a wonderfully enjoyable television episode that shows a great appreciation for snooker. A considerable number of minutes is devoted to the matches, in which backspin features prominently and the shots are at least somewhat realistic in their execution.

Masha and the Bear

“That’s Your Cue” is a seven-minute billiards episode from the Russian animated television series Masha and the Bear. Join 11.6 million other viewers (!!) to watch the Season 3 episode on YouTube.

First aired in July 2018, “That’s Your Cue” begins with Whiskers n’ Stripes, a Siberian Tiger, visiting his circus friend, a retired Kamchatka brown bear, in the forest and surprising him with a billiards table.  They decide to hold a billiards tournament, and quickly enter the forest to source players.

While they’re gone, three-year-old Masha enters the bear’s house and innocently swaps the billiards balls with a set of numbered blocks. When the tiger and bear return, along with six additional competitors – a Himalayan black bear, two gray wolves, a she-bear, a cat, and Rosie the pig – they are startled to find the balls missing. But, the tiger is undeterred and convinces his furry brethren to improvise and use the blocks as balls instead.  

So begins the elimination tournament that ultimately ends with Rosie pocketing cubes one through seven in a single break and then sinking the eight-cube to beat his gargantuan opponent, the Himalayan bear. 

That rounds out our billiards animal kingdom. To the best of my knowledge, no animals were harmed in the shooting of these billiards sequences…though more than a few had their egos bruised.

******

  1. For other cartoon nemeses battling on the baize, check out Tom and Jerry (“Cue Ball Cat”) or Woody Woodpecker and Buzz Buzzard (“Cue the Pool Shark”).

Dude Perfect – “Pool Trick Shots”

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Dude Perfect may sound like the name of a frat-bro Venice beach cover band, but the moniker belies one of the world’s foremost sports content marketing juggernauts. Consisting of five former Texas A&M college roommates, Dude Perfect has created an eponymous YouTube channel with more than 57 million subscribers. Those numbers make it the second most popular sports YouTube channel and the 21st overall most subscribed YouTube channel.

Since launching in 2009 and shortly thereafter setting the Guinness world record for the longest basketball shot after shooting from the third deck of the Aggies football field, they have produced videos consisting of various sports trick shots, stunts, and battles, and in turn, have amassed more than 14.2 billion views (and 14 Guinness records).

Many celebrities have starred in the Dude Perfect videos, including Green Bay Packer Aaron Rodgers, Phoenix Sun Chris Paul, Australian ten-pin bowler Jason Belmonte, actor Paul Rudd, country singer Tim McGraw, beach volleyball star Morgan Beck, NASCAR drivers Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and tennis player Serena Williams. 

Not surprisingly, that star-studded guest list also includes world-renowned billiards trick shot artist Florian “Venom” Kohler, who appeared with the Dude Perfect quintet in “Pool Trick Shots” (December 2014) and again in “Pool Trick Shots 2” (February 2017).

Mr. Kohler is himself a bit of a YouTube wunderkind.  His jaw-dropping trick shots, which often involve ball jumping, massé-ing with multiple cues simultaneously, executing jump and massé shots on moving balls, and executing very high jumps, are mesmerizing. In a world where less than one percent of all YouTube videos exceed 100,000 views, Mr. Kohler’s posts, such as “Sexy Bikini Trick Shots” and “Sexy Pool Trick Shots” (featuring his wife Iana), have generated 14 million and 22 million views, respectively.

But, when you marry Mr. Kohler’s billiards mastery with the global reach and antics of Dude Perfect, it takes trick shots to a whole different level.

“Pool Trick Shots”

Mr. Kohler’s first appearance on Dude Perfect feels like a match made in high-fiving, fist-bumping, bro-hugging heaven. For fans of his milieu, the episode provides the opportunity to expand his viewership by 4-5x, while making shots that are creatively named, albeit somewhat familiar. They include the Curling Coffin Corner, the Beard Trimmer, the Jumbo Curve, and the aptly-named “Cody [Jones] + Ty[ler Toney] Trust Shot,” in which Mr. Kohler jumps a ball off the table into a clay target that is precariously nestled just below Cody and Ty’s genitals.

Whereas other Dude Perfect videos often feature the famous five performing the athletic feats, this webisode largely celebrates Mr. Kohler’s accomplishments, though the guys do make some impressive shots, including hitting two billiards balls from opposite directions into opposing corner pockets at the same time. 

“Pool Trick Shots” now has 79 million views and is available to watch here.

Pool Trick Shots 2 

Twenty-six months after his Dude Perfect debut, Mr. Kohler returned, bigger and ballsier – literally – than before. For starters, the “Trust Shot” from 2014 has been upped, with all five Dude Perfect members putting their nuts in the crosshairs. But that shot is pocket change compared to the Upper Decker Hole in One, in which Mr. Kohler shoots a billiards ball 28 yards out from a second-floor balcony onto a table, and then hits a second ball into that airborne ball pocketing it into a first floor golf hole.

Once again, the bro-clan celebrates every shot like they won the lottery. They make a few of their own creative shots, such as shooting a billiards-ball-tipped arrow onto a table, where it caroms three balls into three pockets; or, dressing up like a giant panda, slap shot a puck from one table on to another table, where it hits a ball into a pocket.

The webisode’s grand finale is the “Ty Trust Shot,” a shot so complex it’s hard to explain, but I will try. Mr. Kohler bounces a cue ball off a rail, hits that ball mid-air into a vertical trampoline, causing the ball to leap over the first table, when it then bounces off a rail on a second table and subsequently shatters a sugar glass perched atop of Ty’s head.

“Pool Trick Shots 2,” now with 81 million views, is available to watch here.

Kiss of Death

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“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” said PT Barnum, the mega-successful 19th century American showman and circus owner.

One has to wonder if that proverb weighed on the minds of Kiss of Death (KOD), the six-member women’s billiards team, who opted to star in Kiss of Death in 2010. The eponymous web series followed the women in the 12 weeks leading up to the May 2010 BCA Pool League National 8-Ball Championship, where they would compete in the Women’s Masters Team Division for the first time.

Presented by NYCgrind.com, a now defunct New York​-based online pool and billiards magazine, Kiss of Death was a series of weekly five-minute webisodes featuring members of the KOD team:  Alison Fischer (the editor of NYCgrind), “Queen B” Borana Andoni, Olga Gashcova, Michelle Li, Emily “The Billiard Bombshell” Duddy, and team captain Gail “g2” Glazebrook. Having won the Women’s Open Championship in 2009, KOD hoped not only history would repeat, but also that the lead-up to the tournament would make for engaging viewing.

Let’s start with the obvious: this web series was terrible.

I made it through the first four webisodes before I nodded off due to complete boredom. Judging from the number of views on YouTube, I’m probably not alone. (Episode 2 had 8,690 views. Episode 5 had just 1,737 views.) You can watch the first episode here.

Kiss of Death suffered from a fatal mix of lack of script and plot; an over-reliance on a single song for each episode; the in-your-face promotion of Poison Billiards; ridiculous montages of the women being cute for the camera; and an insufficient amount of enjoyable billiards. By episode 4, when half the time is spent watching the women watch themselves on episode 3 (oooh…how meta), I knew I would not make it through the remaining two thirds.

Apparently, the KOD women did not fare much better. The first place Women’s Masters Team prize of $3500 was won by Magoo’s Masters from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Team Tick Tick Boom from Chicago took second, followed by team Logistically Challenge.

But, PT Barnum was onto something. While the web series was a bust, it most certainly sowed the seeds for a future wave of media and self-promotion, primarily focused on some of these same New York based female billiards players.

About 18 months after Kiss of Death, Gail Glazebrook teamed up with Jennifer “9mm” Barretta to launch Rack Starz. In partnership with Amsterdam Billiards, local home court to many of these women, Rack Starz featured a dozen “sexy intelligent women from all over the world brought together to take the game of pool out of the smoke-filled back room and into the mainstream limelight. The Rack Starz are not only athletes, but they are also moms, models, actresses, nutritionists, CEOs, and marketing analysts, with many holding advanced degrees.”[1]

The 12 members of Rack Starz featured the original six KOD members, plus Neslihan Gurel, Supadra Geronimo, Caroline Pao, Jennifer Barretta, Yomalin Feliz, and Liz Ford.

While RackStarz would fizzle out years later, the women successfully leveraged the early excitement and media attention to star in another web series, Sharks, in 2012.  This equally ill-fated series featured a number of the same women (i.e., Jennifer Barretta, Borana Andoni, Caroline Pao) portraying fictional ladies who hang out around Amsterdam Billiards.  Unfortunately, some enjoyable billiards scenes could not compensate for the series’ cheap production value, hackneyed soap opera dialogue, and paper-thin characters.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

The HustlersThree years later, two of the NYC women – Jennifer Barretta and Emily Duddy — skyrocketed past their niche web audience to that of mainstream television by starring in TruTV’s new pseudo-reality show The Hustlers about a group of pool players vying for the top spot on Steinway Billiards’ “The List.” Unfortunately, the show elicited strong reactions, many of them negative, from viewers, who found the premise and the characters preposterous.

TruTV opted not to renew The Hustlers. For a while, that decision appeared to mark the end of the NYC billiards women’s media run.

And yet, it did not.

In 2019, Emily Duddy was back, this time in the new Bravo series In a Man’s World, executive produced by Oscar winner Viola Davis.  Far more serious than any of the previous billiards incarnations, the “Emily” episode focused on exposing the sexism women experience every day through temporary gender transformation and hidden cameras. Ms. Duddy, in makeup and prosthetics, became Alex, a male pool player.  Jennifer Barretta came back on camera as friend and confidante. And the cartoonish Finnegan, most recently seen on The Hustlers, but even popping up way back when on Kiss of Death, was the uber-chauvinist who learns a thing or two about disparaging women.

I guess Kiss of Death wasn’t such a kiss of death after all.

[1]      https://www.newswire.com/news/rack-starz-launch-new-website-93762

Benrat – “Billiards”

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By my count, a near Noah’s ark of anthropomorphic pool players have picked up a cue stick.  I’ve written about cats and mice (Tom and Jerry – “Cue Ball Cat”), ducks (Donald in Mathmagic Land), sharks and rainbow fish (Rainbow Fish – “Pool Shark”), sheep and sheepdogs (Shaun the Sheep – “Shaun Goes Potty”), woodpeckers and buzzards (The New Woody Woodpecker Show – “Cue the Pool Shark”), and even a talking Palomino (Mr. Ed – “Ed the Pool Player” ).  Now, to this menagerie, we must add rats and bears.  Welcome to the “Billiards” episode of Benrat.

BenratBenrat is a Chinese animated web series that included 30 six-minute episodes released across two seasons in 2013. “Billiards” is the fifth episode from the first season of Benrat.  The series features four characters: the eponymous Benrat, an optimistic, well-intentioned murine; Bossy, a self-righteous, trouble-making bear; Noby, a smaller ursine who is simple and honest; and Fansy, a cute pink female rabbit. Together, this quartet engages in a variety of activities, from the mundane (e.g., “Brushing Teeth,” “Waste Sorting”) to the competitive (e.g., “Archery,” “Ping Pong Ball”).

BenratUnlike some cartoons aimed at the pre-tween set, Benrat seems to offer no life lessons for kids; rather, it is intended purely to engage and elicit laughter, even at the expense of the characters. In “Billiards,” Benrat and Bossy compete in a game of 8-ball.  Bossy, clearly the better players, sinks all the balls, except the eight, on his break.  When Benrat has his turn, he accidentally jams the cue into the felt, ricocheting him backward into the wall.  With the game up for grabs, the pair continue to distract one another with harmless antics, until Bossy’s cue stick hits the overhead lamp, causing it to fall on him and — electrocute him (?!?), thereby giving the victory to Benrat. (Kids, do not try this at home on your parents’ pool table.)

You will not find Benrat on any network or on IMDB. There is a surprising dearth of available information about the series.  Ultimately, I realized this is because Benrat is a property created by the KungFu Animation Group. It can be found on KungFu World, their online animation copyright trading portal, which exists for the sole purpose of allowing Chinese animation copyright owners to sell their works to professional buyers overseas. [1]

Though there is a distributor (Elite Movies) associated with Benrat, I could not determine if the series had found an international buyer.  The little rodent may have won the game of 8-ball, but I suspect his days of billiards were numbered.

The “Billiards” episode of Benrat is available here to stream on Amazon.

[1]       https://www.pressreader.com/china/china-daily/20150812/282243779320634

The Break

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For most billiards buffs today, the coupling of billiards and radio can only mean one thing: American Billiard Radio, the popular radio-based podcast that began in December 2013 and continues to air every Thursday evening at 9pm CT.  Conceived and produced by Chicago Billiards Museum curator David “Mr Bond,” the weekly show has featured a panoply of pool professionals, spanning the alphabet from (Johnny) Archer to (Mike) Zuglan, in its effort to bring a “healthy dose of pool and billiard fun from sea to shining sea.”

The BreakBut, for the denizens of Las Vegas, the union of billiards and radio may conjure up a different broadcast – namely, “The Break,” the web series from local station KOMP 92.3 FM that featured radio personality Carlota playing cutthroat pool with members of hard rock bands (of varying name recognition) while she engages in friendly banter.  Each episode was 4-5 minutes.

To my knowledge, only five episodes were produced. The first, from September 2014, reveals the show’s lowbrow appeal.  Filmed inside a nondescript Las Vegas dive, Carlota plays pool against Rick DeJesus, frontman for local hard rock band Adelitas Way. She speaks to him about their new album and the significance behind their singles, “Stuck” and “Dog on a Leash.”  Of the five episodes, this one is the most revelatory, with DeJesus lamenting the state of rock-and-roll and the backlash against edgier bands like his.  The full episode is below.

We don’t get invited to the VMAs. We don’t get invited to the YMCA…We’ve been blacklisted because rock-and-roll is dangerous…I feel rock-and-roll has become so corporate….Youngsters have to get a dictionary out to look up ‘rock.’  Everyone is playing it safe.  Fun is popular.

Following the DeJesus pool match interview, “The Break” got a little more upscale and moved inside the Hard Rock Hotel, where Carlota interviews the four members of Otherwise.  The Las Vegas-based rock band, who talk about their new album (Peace at All Costs) while they founder at their pool game.

The third episode features an interview with frontman Johnny Hawkins and (now-ex) drummer Paul O’Brien of Nothing More, a band primarily known for their single “This is the Time.” The interview is light on content, but the entertainment value is high, specifically because Hawkins is so god-awful at pool.

The fourth episode is another Hard Rock Hotel cutthroat game, this time with Matt DiRito (bass) and Leigh Kakaty (lead vocals, founder) from the Kansas-based rock band Pop Evil. Giving off a 24/7 hard rocker vibe, DiRito and Kakaty talk about life on the road, the lure of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the appeal of hot sauce (“on everything”), and the challenge of being the one guy who knows nothing about sports.  Once again, none of these guys can play pool for shit.  The episode is available here.

Finally, the most recent episode from May 2015 involves Carlota playing cutthroat at the Hard Rock Hotel with Sully Erna (singer, founder) and Shannon Larkin (drummer) of Godsmack, the globally popular band with 20 top ten rock radio hits, including the Grammy-nominated “I Stand Alone,” which powered The Scorpion King soundtrack. Unfortunately, the interview does little to take the listeners behind Sully’s sunglasses, which he wears most the game.  The one memorable nugget is Sully’s confession that he has dressing room OCD.  The episode is available to watch here.

Odd Noggin Land – “Pool Shark”

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Have you heard the one about the cheeseburger, the French fries, and the ketchup?

If you think that’s the start to a bad joke, just wait until you see the webisode that features this same trio of edibles in a starring role. You will see something not just bad, but downright atrocious.

Odd Noggin LandIn 2008, New Hampshire artists John Herman and Ryan Plaisted had the crackpot idea to launch a musical web series that anthropomorphized a cheeseburger, French fries, and a bottle of ketchup.   Or, more precisely, they swapped the heads of two men and a woman with these three staples of our Fast Food Nation, and asked the three friends to otherwise go about their daily lives. The series was called Odd Noggin Land. It debuted on December 15, 2008…and lasted for just seven episodes. (Hey, the television show Lawless with the Boz lasted just one episode.)

Odd Noggin LandThe fourth episode of Odd Noggin Land, entitled “Pool Shark,” is 200 seconds of inanity, an online goulash of unenjoyable song lyrics, lame jokes, jackleg billiards, and overgrown vittles. The show begins with Cheeseburger losing a game of pool to Fries, who can now use the winnings to “get his mole removed.” Cheeseburger wants a rematch, but now cashless, he must bet his Chevette. Fries takes an early lead and it looks like Cheeseburger will be walking until the game is interrupted by Ketchup, who laments, “I can’t take [cheeseburger] anywhere without you playing pool and gambling.” Trying to save his sesame seed buns, she wagers her car against Fries’. She seizes the cue stick, and though her grip and stance are abominable, she runs the table. Cheeseburger rejoices by taunting, “Show me the money;” webisode watchers everywhere cringe as the pop-up speech bubble points out that this is the second Tom Cruise reference. (I think you can guess from what movie the first reference came.)

In their attempt to market Odd Noggin Land, the creators described it as what would happen “if Jim Henson and David Lynch had ever collaborated on a primetime sitcom.” Hah, right! And you thought Cheeseburger had a fat head.

The full episode is available to watch here.

http://youtu.be/JYXp0Vhls3g

Sharks Web Series

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In last week’s post on the billiards movie Legend of the Dragon, I highlighted the creative casting of snooker sensation Jimmy White as the primary nemesis in the film. Mr. White has almost no lines in the movie, but he lights up each of his scenes because he is prominently featured doing what he does best: shooting snooker. His on-screen time is mesmerizing as a result. It helps that the movie stars veteran Hong Kong comedic actor Stephen Chow and is directed by Danny Lee, who has worked in film with iconic director John Woo.

Sharks Web SeriesIn stark comparison is the Sharks web series, which is set around billiards and shot at Amsterdam Billiards & Bar in New York City. Filmed and released throughout 2012, the series consisted of 21 episodes, each 7-17 minutes in length, and featured an all-star cast of female billiards professionals, including Jennifer Barretta (“Ann”), Borana Andoni (“Kelsey”), and Caroline Pao (“Samantha”). Many other notable players make cameos.

Sharks 1The problem, however, is that billiards is only tangentially relevant to the overall storyline, which is about betrayal, jealousy, deception, and winning, and reads like a poorly-stitched collection of inane dialogue from amateur, hackneyed soap operas.   With talent like Ms. Barretta, Ms. Boroni, and Ms. Pao, the fundamental want is to see them play pool, not watch them try to act their way through lamentable scenes of late-night dinners, exercise workouts, urban strolls, and domestic violence. (Ms. Barretta seems to have unfortunately stumbled into the casting niche of abused pool player, given her similar role in the 2012 billiards film 9-Ball.)

It also doesn’t help that the production value is god-awful. Created, directed and produced by Jim Murnak, the gifted craftsman behind Murnak custom cue cases, Sharks is rife with cheap green-screen production, bad audio dubbing and background noises, amateur editing, ill camera direction choices, unnecessary montages, prop gaffes (i.e., Jennifer Barretta’s character Ann wearing a “Jennifer” necklace in Episode 6) and an over-reliance on music.

Fortunately, most of the episodes include, albeit jarringly and poorly edited, a billiard scene. Those scenes are the hallmark of Sharks.   For example, Episode 6 (shown below) includes Mika “The Iceman” Immonen, a past winner of both the WPA World Nine-Ball and World Ten-Ball Championships, schooling an out-of-towner in nine-ball with a dazzling display of pool prowess. (Humorously, the out-of-towner is played by Carl Yusuf Khan, a well-known pool player.)

Similarly, Episode 3 features the incredibly sexy Yomaylin Feliz hustling a local yokel. She makes some incredible shots, even if they are unfortunately interspersed between some dreadful third-grade banter.

One of my favorite sequences was from Episode 2, watching Jennifer Barretta and Borana Andoni’s compete in nine-ball. I chose to ignore the purpose of the match, which was to see who would ‘win the boyfriend,’ and instead focused on the beautiful safety shots, trick shots, and cuts made expertly by both players. Ms. Andoni also has a wonderful straight pool sequence in Episode 5. And Ms. Barretta is elegant in her execution of the nine ball “L Drill” in Episode 6.

In short, so long as Sharks lets the players shoot billiards, there is beauty to behold. But, whenever that pool is suffocated by the bad dialogue, acting, and production, the series suffers to an unwatchable level.   That’s why the scene with Mr. Immonen is so rich. Like Jimmy White in Legend of the Dragon, it’s just a master with his cue stick, doing only what he does best: shooting pool.

14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment

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Joshua Hornbeck had been playing pool for 20 years.  He grew up in a family that celebrated – and lived – off the sport. “I got all three of my brothers who play pool. My dad.  My dad’s dad. It was a big thing in our family.  You know it’s big when you don’t even know what pool is, but you got an eight-foot pool table in the dining room…that’s how dad made our lunch money.” But, after two decades of playing pool, Joshua still hit balls too hard, used too much spin, and lacked certain ball control skills. His playing was decent, but nothing that could enable him to win his father’s pool memorial tournament and a prize upwards of $6800.

14 Days Great Pool ExperimentThat is, until Joshua was selected to participate on Tor Lowry’s billiards web series, 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment. For two straight weeks, eight hours a day, Tor, a managing member of Zero-X Billiards and the creator of the “Secrets of Pool” instructional video series, worked diligently with Joshua on his pool game at his home in Owl City, Pennsylvania, while the cameras rolled and recorded everything.  During those 112 total hours, Joshua’s game was surgically diagnosed and he was then given a prescription of improvements, ranging from stroke drills (“1200 times in 2 days”) and center-ball positioning to half-table pattern play and kicking and breaking.

For all this instruction, Joshua did not pay Tor a cent.  That is not to say, however, that Joshua did not undertake a serious financial commitment.  As Joshua shared, his family “lives paycheck to paycheck,” so taking two weeks off from work was an enormous burden.  His wife, Lisa, added, “He’s taken a lot of time off from work, but I’m supporting him.  We saved for it. It’s an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And I’m just behind him all the way.”

The improvement, documented over the course of an 80-minute web episode (shown above), is extraordinary.  Joshua shares at the end that he “felt like he had hit the lottery.”  And, with true “pay it forward” spirit (one of the tenets of 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment), Joshua is now training local youth by teaching them the same transformative billiards techniques Tor taught him.

Joshua is not an anomaly.  There have been other participants in Las Vegas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, and Texas.  A number of their stories are viewable on YouTube.  Many more will be posted soon. Their stories and skill levels vary widely, though the people Tor accepts all share the same DNA of being passionate, driven, and motivated.   They range from league players to young children, from widows to wounded warriors (including an Iraqi War veteran who lost his arm and plays with a strap).

If this is all starting to sound like an episode of the reality show Restaurant: Impossible or Extreme Weight Loss, that’s not a coincidence.  In fact, Tor says those kinds of shows were the inspiration for 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment.   Tor, who played pool for a living in the 1990s (and had received professional training from pool legends such as Dallas West, Hal Mix, and Jerry Briesath), had been watching these kind of reality shows and started to wonder if someone could significantly improve their pool game in just 14 days.  “It was an experiment.  I didn’t know if I could do it or not,” said Tor.  That was the genesis of 14 Days. 

Since March of this year, more than 1000 people have applied to participate on 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment.  Tor’s goal is to teach up to five people a month (sometimes several people on the same table, as was the case in Indiana) through June of 2014. Tor confided the travel and pace can be difficult, especially since he does all the teaching as well as the editing and production work.   And the work is certainly not all altruistic.  As Tor shared, “Every time I put out an episode, I get more interest in my videos and DVDs.  It drives sales.  I break even.”

But, watching the show and talking at length with Tor, it’s apparent that 14 Days is not about getting rich, even if the show ultimately lands a separate sponsor.  The show’s mission is to “make the game of pool easy for everyone.”  Even broader, Tor wants to spread his love of the game. “I want to broaden the appeal of pool…Pool isn’t really dying as a sport, in fact, it’s more popular than ever. Pool simply has changed.  It’s a different audience.  It’s not all about the seedy side.  With 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment, I hope to demonstrate how a unified pool community is necessary.”

8 For Vegas (billiards web series)

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Ah, the “mockumentary,” that malleable film genre in which fictional events are presented in a documentary format as a form of parody.  While dating back to at least the late ‘60s, the format became immensely popular when Rob Reiner released This is Spinal Tap in 1984.  Ever since, topics of all niches, from Mormon boy-bands (Sons of Provo) and Dungeons & Dragons (Gamers: The Movie) to hairdressing (The Big Tease) and darts (Good Arrows) have been lampooned through mockumentaries, occasionally successfully (e.g., Best in Show; Borat; Man Bites Dog), but more often, terribly.

Unfortunately, 8 For Vegas, John Painz’s 2011 9-part web series about an NYC amateur pool league team, Show Your Balls, and its quest to win a trip to a national pool league tournament in Las Vegas, is one of the less successful mockumentaries in its un-funny portrayal of pool league players as vapid drunks, lecherous sloths, and one-dimensional sex-starved cardboard cut-outs.

8 For VegasAccording to Painz’s blog, the original script was written in 2002, and then it was dusted off and turned into a mockumentary ten years later after a little soul-searching and a desire to “get [his] name out there and at least have something to show people.”  In his yen for authenticity, Painz made some questionable decisions to cast a number of people who obviously don’t play pool and to create “realism” through having the boom microphone get in the way and shaking the camera a lot, among other annoying auteur preferences.

Painz also explains that “one of the challenges of writing the script [is that] after a while, pool is BORING. Not, you know, watching pros and all… but when you have a 2 playing against another 2, and they take 2 hours to play two or three games, you pretty much want to kill yourself.”  For this reason, he “made it a goal to make sure that the characters are what stood out in this project. Sure, you get to see some pool play. You have to. But the majority of it is really a comedy about friends getting together every week, and the things happening in their own lives, outside of pool.”

Now, call me cynical, but if he believes pool is that “boring,” it’s probably not the best topic for one’s coming out party, film opus. Moreover, if the series is really about the friends, then, good lord, why is this octet of losers so odious?  You can meet each of them in the first episode show below, but here’ my rundown:  (1) John, the team captain, who can’t get dates; (2) Walter, the lazy wannabe comedian who uses his iPhone to take upskirt pics of (3) his teammate,  Jennifer, the “whore” who hates her ad copy job; (4) Ian, the super-gay guy who was once caught “trying to deep-throat a bratwurst”; (5) Leslie, the failed author who drinks constantly; (6) Nicole, who seems to puke constantly; (7) Heather, who wears shades, says nothing and knits; and (8) George, who we never meet because he’s in jail.  Quite the posse, eh?

The first season of 8 For Vegas consists of 9 episodes, each 10-12 minutes long, that each represent one week in the team’s quest to win the city championship and go to Las Vegas.   Most the episodes focus on a particular character, followed by 1-2 minutes of pretty bad eight-ball, shot on location at Society Billiards & Bar in Manhattan, against teams, such as Stroke This, Ball Breakers, and Stick It In.  I won’t give away the ending, but the team does it make it to the city championship, after winning the division finals against Balls to the Wall…but not before most the team had zogged out on Xanax.

You can watch the entire first season on YouTube.  Amazingly, there was also a second season that wrapped in March, 2013.