Today, the Ambassador hotel was finally demolished. Meanwhile, I was perusing my TiVo, which had mysteriously recorded for me a screening of ”Deviant Vixens 2,” probably because of my love of nature documentaries. “Vixens,” however, is not about foxes at all!
One of the perks of Canadian TV is that there’s a much more relaxed attitude towards sexuality on the boob tube And in fact, this “Vixen” movie is a bit of a sex romp. (Hi, Mom!) But what I found interesting about it—and other than this, the film’s awful in every respect, trust me—is that it was filmed in 2002 on the grounds of the Ambassador Hotel!
The plot, such as it is, revolves around “Hotel Amore,” which was the playground of celebrities married and less married. The crew appears not to have gotten inside, but the building and grounds are filmed from all sorts of different angles, and the Coconut Grove is easy to spot. The long driveway with palm trees is also present, as is a little graffiti and various barred-off courtyards.
Is someone at CityTV a cineaste tearfully mourning the passing of a Hollywood icon? Was the last film made at the historic Ambassador a talentless yet strikingly appropriate blue movie? I don’t know. But I do know that TiVo’s ability to identify programs I like to watch just became a little scary.
“I find myself thinking of a checklist Wozniak wrote a few years ago describing how to become a genius. His advice was straightforward yet strangely terrible: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life.”
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.”
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)