Ocean's Immigration Reform

This past weekend The Great One Whose Room is Actually Slightly Neater Than Baghdad went to a sleep-over, so spousie and I sped off to the movies. Since my job brings me into a realm of those who would routinely attempt to perpetrate fraud, exploit others for personal gain, and subject helpless people to humiliating bodily intrusions, I just wanted to see something that was fun.

So no Kevin Costner for me. We saw Ocean's 13.



It was a great and stylish caper movie, fully in and reverent of that wonderful film tradition that goes all the way back to Rififi, which I've heard is undergoing a remake with Pacino in the lead.

Anyways, a strand of the twisty plot involves infiltrating a remote Mexican desert maquiladora where dice are made. One of Ocean's guys foments a worker's revolt at the plant creating a diversion, to let them load the nascent dice, which then of course end up at the rigged craps tables in the Vegas casino they intend to plunder.

There's a discussion back in Vegas about the arrangements that must be made to pay off the striking workers for helping out. An Ocean accomplice says something like "They want $36,000." One of his buddies then says "well, there's about 200 of them so, doing the math, we need to come up with another $7 million."

"No," the first guy says. "Just 36 thousand dollars."

"For the whole bunch?"

"Yeah," says the first guy, adding that this amounts to a raise of about 5% per week for the factory workers.

"Hell," says another,"We'll cut 'em a check right now."