My roommate is obsessed with Halloween and does one of those little model villages every year with tiny spooky buildings that light up and stuff. I sometimes sculpt or 3D print parts and props for it. It’s fun to see how much joy he gets out of it, and how it grows a little each year.
Get a little sketch book or tablet. Every time an ad comes on, draw an object (or dog! Or person!) in the room with you. Try to do the whole sketch over a single ad break, focusing on the biggest, most important shapes first. You’ll learn to draw very quickly.
If you already know how to draw, draw. Use it or lose it!
Disclaimer: am artist, possibly biased. Doing art for its own sake is fun for me, so it doesn’t need to have a ‘point.’
I seem to recall Maverick(1994) having a good card game as a central plot element, which takes place on a river boat casino. It’s also just a really fun movie about three competing con artists (played by James Garner, Mel Gibson, and Jodie Foster).
It’s been a few years since I’ve seen it, and it’s set in the old west, so sorry if it has any racisms I forgot about!
I love monty python’s flying circus, but they had multiple sketches across several different episodes where the punchline was a gay person getting murdered. Kinda hard to watch some of them now.