In the past week, a leading news story has focused on the child sexual abuse connected with Penn State, and day-by-day the story has gotten worse. We are hearing about a horrible situation that has led many to believe that there was the worst kind of abuse of power, by Penn State coach Joe Paterno, and many other people on his staff, and in the administration at the University.
The only story in my lifetime that I can reasonably compare this story to is the systematic cover-up of child sexual abuse perpetrated by the Catholic Church for many, many years.
The Penn State story is a lot different in that it’s centered in one spot (for now), and that to many of us that follow sports, having Penn State and Joe Paterno involved shines a enormous light on a problem that is endemic in this country, and throughout the world.
Two days ago, I read that it’s estimated that 1 out of every 4 girls, and 1 of every 5 boys in this country has been a victim of sexual abuse.
In my job as a manager of public housing, I have seen and heard about things that I have reported to the police and to child protective service over the years that are awful for me to recall. I have spoken with mothers whose children were sexually abused, who are now "acting out," and becoming abusers themselves. In some cases these mothers are being evicted from their homes because an adult victimized their child, and now that same child is victimizing someone younger and more vulnerable. I don’t know why this seems to happen so often, but it does.
Similarly, I have assisted individuals that served long prison terms for sex crimes. At these times, I am simply doing my job, because there is a legal imperative with what I do – to treat everyone fairly. I have to admit there have been moments in which I have forgotten what someone has done in the past. I have found myself treating an individual with kindness or empathy that in retrospect I would otherwise find myself wanting to spit on and stomp.
As the story at Penn State continues to evolve, we may find that these crimes involve the disappearance (over 6-years ago) of a District Attorney named Ray Gricar. He had an opportunity to prosecute Jerry Sandusky 13 years ago regarding alleged child molestation. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/sports/ncaafootball/questions-on-sandusky-wrapped-in-2005-gricar-mystery.html?_r=1
Gricar just vanished. Could it have something to do with a story like this?
http://www.nesn.com/2011/11/jerry-sandusky-rumored-to-have-been-pimping-out-young-boys-to-rich-donors-says-mark-madden.html
Another statistic I have heard this week is that the average male pedophile sexually abuses 109 children in his lifetime, and Jerry Sandusky is almost 68 years old. Is it possible that there are people my age (59), or a bit younger that are living with the memory of Sandusky sexually abusing them?
Of course it’s likely. It’s extremely likely that we have victims from age 8 to age 58.
A big part of the disgust associated with this story is what can only be described as the enabling that Joe Paterno and other employees at Penn State were a part of. It’s seemingly impossible to understand how anyone could not do more, to do something over all this time (13 years), to end this horror.
How many more children were abused in those 13 years? How many of those children are now adults, and acting out, and abusing a new generation of children?
How many lives has one man ruined? How many other lives have been ruined by Joe Paterno and all of his men failing to do the right thing?
Penn State indicates that they have 80,000 students, statewide. About half of those are at school in State College, Pennsylvania.
When about 2000 students gathered to protest Paterno’s firing a couple of nights ago, I am guessing that reasonable people thought it was one of the sorriest excuses for a protest imaginable? In fairness, some stated that they thought Paterno should go, and I do think that there were many students out there that night just to be a part of what was happening.
I wondered how many of those 2000 kids have been abused, and how many may already be, or may become absuers?
Similarly, when Penn State’s football team released a statement that they would give the Game Ball to Joe Paterno if they won their game Saturday versus Nebraska, I felt a bit angry, and a bit sad. Of those 100 or so football players, how many of them voted to give Paterno the game ball because they felt pressured to be part of the team – to go along with something they knew was wrong? How many wanted to stand up and shout, "No, Paterno was a fraud, he didn’t do what he should have done to protect kids when he had the chance!"
How many of those young men have been abused, are abusing now…or will abuse?
I am certain that one reason behind these misguided actions is what is called the "fog of war." This is defined as being in the middle of a fight, and not knowing or recognizing the difference between left and right, night and day, friend or foe, let alone right and wrong. It’s difficult to do anything more than fight for survival sometimes, and when the battle is done, and if one survives, then maybe it’s time to go back and begin to figure out what was right, and what was wrong.
The "fog" is lifting, and I think most of these kids will come around to a different way of thinking, and part of that was displayed Friday night in State College, when an estimated 10,000 students held a vigil for the victims of the abuse. I believe what happened was that many of those young people found perspective. In a very short time many of them gained enough life experience to behave reasonably, and make the correct decision based on evidence, without emotion.
Experience is worthless without the proper perspective, and the willingness and courage to express it.
So how could it be that with too many adults at Penn State that none of that mattered enough for at least 13 years?
I honestly believe that in years to come, because of this horrible story that we will see more being done to stop the sexual abuse of children, and for finding ways for people to come forward with their stories of abuse, and get the help many desperately need. Maybe a bit of good can come out of something so bad, as the fog lifts, and time passes?
The adults failed, but we should not use the same brush on the students. We need to give them a bit of time to adjust, and do the correct thing. It’s very sad that it often takes something bad to be able to do something good, but it is an opportunity to do just that – to use something awful as a wake up call to do something good. To use this story as a way of reaching out to any child who currently suffers, or anyone who has suffered from the worst kind of abuse. I expect that current students at Penn State will be among the leaders in bringing resources and passion to the cause of working to end the abuse.
I think we will ultimately see that happen with many of these young people in State College, and that this will be a defining period in the lives of these students. I believe that in years to come, because of this horrible story that we will get a lot more great things than we would otherwise have expected from Penn State’s children.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Bill Simmons, and “The Book of Basketball”
"Oh, I wonder, wonder who, mmbadoo-ooh, who, who wrote the Book Of Hoop."
With apologies to The Montones.
A review of Simmons book, with zero footnotes, but many comments.
My son Matt and daughter-in-law Shannon sent me a copy of Simmons book for my birthday about a month ago, which I finished yesterday. I didn’t take it with me to Cape Cod for the two weeks Susan I spent out there, which is one reason why it took about a month to read. The other reason is it’s 704 pages long.
Simmons claims to have written the most comprehensive book on the pro game ever, and I have to give him that, considering he spent three years writing it in what I have to believe was his spare time. I mean, aside from the fact that Simmons writes for a living, and has a wife and two small children, he had to have spent a few hundred hours reading a few dozen books on pro hoops, but must have watched thousands of hours of NBA game films. Simmons has written an outstanding book, and even though I have some arguments with a number of his ranking of players, they are mostly too small to mention. Beyond the enormously useful volume of information and data, the book is constantly entertaining, easy to read in small or large chunks, and very, very (very!) funny.
It’s been quite a long time since I have cared much for the NBA. Unlike a huge number of folks that began to watch (a lot) more of the game, I lost interest during the Jordan Era.
Why?
Well, it was a combination of things for me, not the least of which was that during the 1990’s my favorite team was the New York Knicks, and they played this ugly and nasty-assed playground style of ball. That mode of play became the signature style in the league for many teams after the Detroit "Bad Boy" Pistons perfected it starting in the late 1980’s, and later won 2 NBA titles. In retrospect I think Pat Riley (NY Knicks coach) looked at what he had for players, and knew he had zero chance of winning otherwise, so a huge number of games turned into street fights. He carried this philosophy to Miami too. It nearly ruined the game for me, especially after those Knick teams, the '77 Trailblazers, the Showtime Lakers, and the great Celtic teams of the '50's, '60's, and '80's
Another aspect that made me turn the dial away from the game was I figured the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan were just going to win anyway, and I got bored with it, the same way I became bored watching Tiger Woods winning all those golf tournaments for 10+ years.
The irony is that I grew up during the 1950’s and ‘60’s, which was the time when the Boston Celtics were winning every year, but looking back now I realize what attracted me to the game was the way it was played by that team. The teamwork that those teams displayed was a beautiful thing, and when my Knicks won titles in 1970 and 1973, I had never seen such perfect passing, excellent shooting, and team defense and rebounding. I have still yet to see any team approach the beautiful way those guys played the game. Back in the day, I watched a lot of NBA hoop at my friend Scott’s house, with a variety of other friends. It was the year of the Knicks.
There was a John Mayall ("The Turning Point") album out in late 1969 that was all jazz blues fusion, without drums. Lots of harmonica, bass and guitar, and a limited amount of vocals on most tunes. Try a listen on this one, with a basketball game playing, sound off. It's called "California." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqcqZlFMUYQ&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL33219CEE3D0D5FCA
The music flowed freely while we turned the sound off on the game, and we marveled at how the game and the music meshed to near perfection. If the pace of the game gets frenetic, try "Room to Move." Take 5 minutes and click on the link below. There isn’t a true music fan alive that doesn’t recognize the genius in this song. 1969-70 was the Knicks and Mayall’s year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htt2Kcxuwfk
I was very pleased to read that Simmons’ dad (who has had Boston Celtic’s season tickets forever) considers Walt Frazier the other guard (with Jordan) that he’d put on his all time team. (Full disclosure – I’d have MJ and Jerry West)
Similarly, it was nice to see Simmons recognize the brilliance of Bernard King, another Knick that I still consider the most unstoppable scorer I have ever seen, albeit for only a couple of years (1983-85). I guess it’s the way I feel Bill Walton in 1977 had the absolute best season I have ever seen a basketball center have, and I have see them all.
Simmons captures Rick Barry perfectly. Has there ever been a better athlete who was such a complete dick as Barry? Certainly not in basketball, unless Simmons is missing someone, and I’d bet everything I have that Simmons missed nothing. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Ty Cobb is Barry’s great-uncle.
So the book was a great journey back in time for me, and if had any trepidation when I began to read it, that feeling quickly went away.
The last lines that Simmons wrote before his epilogue:
"I am a basketball fan. I am always waiting for the next surprise. You never know when true greatness is lurking around the corner. Just make sure you don’t forget the ones who already lurked."
A copy of "The Book of Basketball" and a pro basketball encyclopedia would be a great cornerstone to any library. In addition, grab a copy of Simmons favorite basketball book was (the late) David Halberstam's, "The Breaks of the Game," which remains my favorite as well.
You have to love the old lurkers.
With apologies to The Montones.
A review of Simmons book, with zero footnotes, but many comments.
My son Matt and daughter-in-law Shannon sent me a copy of Simmons book for my birthday about a month ago, which I finished yesterday. I didn’t take it with me to Cape Cod for the two weeks Susan I spent out there, which is one reason why it took about a month to read. The other reason is it’s 704 pages long.
 |
| The Sports Guy |
It’s been quite a long time since I have cared much for the NBA. Unlike a huge number of folks that began to watch (a lot) more of the game, I lost interest during the Jordan Era.
Why?
Well, it was a combination of things for me, not the least of which was that during the 1990’s my favorite team was the New York Knicks, and they played this ugly and nasty-assed playground style of ball. That mode of play became the signature style in the league for many teams after the Detroit "Bad Boy" Pistons perfected it starting in the late 1980’s, and later won 2 NBA titles. In retrospect I think Pat Riley (NY Knicks coach) looked at what he had for players, and knew he had zero chance of winning otherwise, so a huge number of games turned into street fights. He carried this philosophy to Miami too. It nearly ruined the game for me, especially after those Knick teams, the '77 Trailblazers, the Showtime Lakers, and the great Celtic teams of the '50's, '60's, and '80's
Another aspect that made me turn the dial away from the game was I figured the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan were just going to win anyway, and I got bored with it, the same way I became bored watching Tiger Woods winning all those golf tournaments for 10+ years.
The irony is that I grew up during the 1950’s and ‘60’s, which was the time when the Boston Celtics were winning every year, but looking back now I realize what attracted me to the game was the way it was played by that team. The teamwork that those teams displayed was a beautiful thing, and when my Knicks won titles in 1970 and 1973, I had never seen such perfect passing, excellent shooting, and team defense and rebounding. I have still yet to see any team approach the beautiful way those guys played the game. Back in the day, I watched a lot of NBA hoop at my friend Scott’s house, with a variety of other friends. It was the year of the Knicks.
There was a John Mayall ("The Turning Point") album out in late 1969 that was all jazz blues fusion, without drums. Lots of harmonica, bass and guitar, and a limited amount of vocals on most tunes. Try a listen on this one, with a basketball game playing, sound off. It's called "California." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqcqZlFMUYQ&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL33219CEE3D0D5FCA
The music flowed freely while we turned the sound off on the game, and we marveled at how the game and the music meshed to near perfection. If the pace of the game gets frenetic, try "Room to Move." Take 5 minutes and click on the link below. There isn’t a true music fan alive that doesn’t recognize the genius in this song. 1969-70 was the Knicks and Mayall’s year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htt2Kcxuwfk
I was very pleased to read that Simmons’ dad (who has had Boston Celtic’s season tickets forever) considers Walt Frazier the other guard (with Jordan) that he’d put on his all time team. (Full disclosure – I’d have MJ and Jerry West)
 |
| King Bernard |
Simmons captures Rick Barry perfectly. Has there ever been a better athlete who was such a complete dick as Barry? Certainly not in basketball, unless Simmons is missing someone, and I’d bet everything I have that Simmons missed nothing. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Ty Cobb is Barry’s great-uncle.
 |
| Great baller, Rick the Dick |
So the book was a great journey back in time for me, and if had any trepidation when I began to read it, that feeling quickly went away.
The last lines that Simmons wrote before his epilogue:
"I am a basketball fan. I am always waiting for the next surprise. You never know when true greatness is lurking around the corner. Just make sure you don’t forget the ones who already lurked."
 |
| Frazier shoots over West |
You have to love the old lurkers.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Tony La Russa folds his cards
 |
| The "genius" |
The fact that La Russa needed a second wild card (the first was in 2006) to get into the post-season this year is just the way things happen in MLB now – just get in, and anything can happen. We’ve all seen that movie a few times, and soon we’ll have another wild card team added in each league. What’s the over/under on when we get the first World Series Champ from behind Door #5? Three years? Four? Two?
A Wild Card team has now won the World Series 5 times, out of 10 appearances, in 17 seasons, which is pretty impressive, in my opinion.
What wasn’t impressive was watching Nelson "Groin Pull" Cruz struggling and failing to snag David Freese’s fly ball to right field in the bottom of the 9th inning in game six. That’s a ball most MLB outfielders catch with little problem, in my opinion, but that’s almost like saying Ron Washington pulled a John McNamara, and should have slipped a healthier guy in right, just as McNamara should’ve subbed for Billy Buckner in ’86.
If Cruz had made that catch, maybe we’d be hearing a bit more about that garbled phone call to the bull pen and resulting screw up, but winning erases many mistakes, just as losing gains you nothing but cold beer and fried chicken jokes.
I don’t want to go into all the reasons why I haven’t liked Tony La Russa for close to 30 years, but I will give you all a few:
Basically, I resented the way La Russa presented himself as this genius who was all-knowing about things baseball, but could never adequately explain to us (apparent) dullards why hitting his pitcher in the 8 hole was so genius? Tony wouldn’t answer some reporter’s questions if they called him on strategy moves, implying that it was too complicated for most folks to understand. The public wasn’t smart enough to grasp his genius – that kind of thing.
At one point during the recent World Series, Tony went to some length to denigrate the "Moneyball" concept of trying to create a winning team. He never touched upon the crux of the concept that Billy Beane used in Oakland, which was finding inefficiencies in the market to form a ball club that could complete with little payroll. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that Tony couldn’t get out of Oakland fast enough when new ownership arrived, and he found out he’d have to manage a team with one of the lowest payrolls in MLB?
Yeah, Tony took the Cardinal job, which was offered in no small part because of his managing 3 AL pennant winners in Oakland. This is the team with the "bruise brothers," you know, with those heroes McGwire and Canseco, the one that could only win one World Series, despite being favored all 3 years. Have you ever wondered why La Russa didn’t bring in Canseco as a coach, after bring Big Mac back? It wasn’t because Jose told folks that Tony knew what he and Mac were doing with those syringes, was it? Does anyone really believe Tony didn’t know about the steroids? Hasn’t Tony more-or-less told us he knows everything, so how could he have not known that?
Tony also gets a large amount of credit for creating the "one inning only for a closer" philosophy, that he began with his use of Dennis Eckersley. Considering how phenomenal Eck was, and the fact that Oakland won 3 pennants, every other team in MLB shortly followed suit. I am not going to argue the merit of using one of your best pitchers in that way, but I will say that there is considerable evidence supporting a radically different way to use that kind of talent. One way that had been in vogue in MLB for many years in different incarnations was bringing your stud relief pitcher in when the game was on the line, pretty much any time after the 6th inning or so, and letting them finish the game. Guys like Lyle, McGraw, Fingers, Gossage, Sutter, and Mike Marshall had some great seasons being used like that. Few managers in recent years have done it that way, though Joe Torre used Rivera early and for multiple innings for many years. Granted, it’s an arguable point, but if it were my team, wasting my stud closer in the bottom of the 9th in a game I am winning by 3 runs seems a poor use of resources. When I am up by a run in the 7th, and the bases are loaded with one out, that’s when I want my best guy on the mound to save the game right then, when it needs saving.
The idea of batting a pitcher 7th or 8th, or wherever (instead of 9th) has been around forever. Its all just so much BS, as enormous Sabermetric studies of game records have shown that batting order has very little to do with winning or losing. Basically, what we have now makes sense for the most part -- you want your best hitters to bat the most times, but I’ll save that topic for another rant.
I will give Tony credit for one thing, and that was getting his old teammate Dave Duncan to be his pitching coach for all these years. I don’t know Duncan’s method of turning mediocre starting pitchers into good ones, but the evidence is undeniable that he’s very, very good at it. I wonder if Duncan will stay in the game? Is he a candidate to be a manager? If he isn’t a jerk like his buddy, I’d give him a shot, wouldn’t you?
There are other things I have heard and read about La Russa, some of them baseball related, and other stuff on his personal life. The latter stuff made him a pretty unlikable guy to me, but I don’t want to smear him on things I am not certain of, or that are not baseball related in any event. He didn’t handle the Hancock drunk driving death well, and Tony had his own bout with a DWI. He had a chance to say and do the right thing at that time, but went into a defensive (and angry) shell whenever his "code" was challenged, so he fought back. Having had a DWI myself I know that it’s huge reach to not think that Tony had a drinking problem, but winning may solve many problems, especially when Budweiser is paying your salary?
I know Tony got his law degree after a few years of study when (I believe) he was in his 40’s. That’s nice, but I could never figure out why he did it, unless he was trying to create further evidence on how "smart" he is? I guess he used it to his advantage with reporters at times, not that I can blame him for a lot of that, but other managers can parry the media and not be smarmy about it.
So, is Tony gone for good?
No freakin’ way! He’ll be on ESPN before you know it, making John Kruk look even dumber than he does now (sorry, that’s wrong, Kruk can’t be made to look any more dumb than he already looks), and reciting the baseball gospel, according to the Genius. I have this awful visage of seeing and hearing La Russa and Rick Sutcliffe on TV at the same time. With Joe Morgan being fired a year ago, I can only imagine Tony and Joe going at it…a couple of ex-second basemen that can tell us every freaking thing we’ll ever need to know about baseball.
So, of course there will be the Hall of Fame for Tony five years from now, assuming he doesn’t come back to the game in a couple of years.
Bill James wrote a great book a few years ago, in which he tried to determine the best managers of all time with a formula that was basically based on how much teams improved (year-to-year) under the helm of a certain manager. I can tell you that the theory/formula works, as most of the guys you’d expect to find near the top are there, though not all of them. It takes into account a guy being handed the 1962 Mets, versus the guy who got to manager the Yankees to five straight World Series Championships. (What? Oh yeah, same guy.) Kidding aside, it’s an excellent and insightful book. I can’t tell you where La Russa would rank in a Bill James baseball history ranking, but he won’t be voted in based on that kind of thing anyway.
La Russa managed 33 years and his teams won a lot of ball games, but for the most part, almost all those Oakland and Cardinal teams were supposed to win a lot of ballgames. I don’t really care if he makes the Hall (he will) or not, I am just very happy that he’s gone.
Still, I really wish Cruz had just caught that ball.
Monday, October 31, 2011
I knew the Cards would win
Susan and I got back from two weeks on Cape Cod on Saturday, just beating the nasty snowstorm that clobbered the northeast, and I called my son Matt (in Tucson) not long after we slogged all our crap inside.
Matt and I hadn’t talked about much sports related stuff for a while, or anything for that matter, as where we stay on Cape Cod is very unfriendly to cell phones. There is no Internet or TV either, but the very limited access (from anyone to us) is one big reason why Susan and I like going where we go. I do draw the line in regard to being able to access the World Series but at least this year, finally, we were able to listen to baseball playoff and World Series games on the radio. There are a few places within a few miles that serve food and adult beverages that also have ballgames on TV, but I’ve never been a "nurse a couple of beers" kind of guy. Alternately, getting popped for DWI is not something I wanted to experience a second time, 27 years after my "celebration" of Matt’s birth got me my first one. These days I tend to let someone else drive, or take in the game at home.
But anyway, the time Matt and I did talk (we had a landline in our cottage) was after game 2 of the Series, but the subject wasn’t about baseball. Rather it was which one of two job offers Matt should take, and he wanted my input. Being the half-drunk gambler kind of guy that I am, I was adamant that he should take the job in Las Vegas, and I’d be out there to visit him as soon as I brushed up on my Blackjack strategy.
Actually, both job offers were Vegas-based, so I am being disingenuous, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that my boy will be living and working (for the record, as an attorney) in one of his old dad’s favorite towns soon enough!
The way I see it, as I inch towards retirement, I will need some way to pass the time in my doddering old fartitude. I figure that free drinks at the tables will save thousands of dollars, but it’s really about just having a place to go and spend productive time. When the deck is running hot, the dealer is showing 6, and I am splitting Aces, could there be a better place for me to have a free drink served by a sexy young lady? Talk about making a "hard eight," huh?
Someone might be thinking about all the great shows the casinos put on, but to me that’s like some porn junkie (back in the day) telling me he bought a certain issue of Playboy for the interview with Jimmy Carter. Plus, there are swimming pools on casino property these days that allow ladies to go topless, which does not suck, and for anyone inclined to recline, there is an abundance of love for sale.
Of course prostitution isn’t legal in Vegas (Clark County), but no one is seriously fooled into believing that the law is strictly enforced when there are 50+ Yellow Pages of listings for escort services in the local phone book. The top-end casinos don’t let working girls troll their premises for the most part, but unescorted "escorts" do slip through the lines quite often. This generally happens late at night, not that 50% of the clientele at any given time has any idea what time it is. Anyway, nothing perked me up more than a 3:14 A.M. conversation with a voluptuous and scantily clad lady on a casino floor, unless it was a hot run of cards at a $25 Blackjack table.
Come to think of it, during the times when my stack of chips was growing larger by the minute, I’d often see a young lovely in my field of vision, sucking a coke through one of those narrow cocktail straws. One time I gave my cocktail waitress an extra large tip if she’d buy the young lovely at the bar a drink and ask her (as a joke) when she got "off duty?" I have no idea what my waitress said to the lady at the bar, but I do know that she came back to me and whispered "Not sure about her, but I get off in a couple of hours."
You have to admire self-promotion and a strong work ethic.
I had an opportunity many years ago (mid-1970’s) to move to and (potentially) work in a Vegas casino, but I chickened out, and stayed in Tucson. In retrospect, if I’d taken a job in Vegas, it’s 90% certain I’d be long dead – too much sex, drugs and gambling. It’s only a matter of luck that I didn’t die in Tucson, where I worked with an endless stream of cocktail waitresses, and the drugs were just as plentiful. Picking my way through that minefield was tough enough, without gaming tables.
But that aside and soon enough, Susan and I will have a place to stay in Las Vegas, and I will have a direct connection to a very successful law firm in case I get into any trouble! No hookers need apply -- that ship sailed long ago, and I love Susan too much. Even the beautiful young lady on the right wouldn't have been able to woo me. I dare say that I'd have left...
Thinking about Vegas and gambling while the World Series was taking place got me to recall that the most money I ever won on a sporting event was the 1976 World Series. I had the Reds over the Yanks, but also had a Reds sweep, and bet all 4 games as well. 6 for 6 ain’t easy, and I even received a "very well done" from my bookie, along with the cash. He also told me about a casino in Vegas that got hammered by a flood of Cincinnati bets, as gambler’s invariably bet favorites. It was around that time that I began to study gambling and the history of Las Vegas as well.
So, with Matt and my daughter-in-law (Shannon) living and working in Las Vegas soon enough, it kind of connects my son to me to my dad and to my dad’s mom, Florence, and completes a circle in my life, so to speak.
Back in 1952, a few months before I was born, my parents (Mary and Charlie Sr., hereafter, sometimes referred to as Senior) bought a house in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. 60 years later, my son will be working at a job that will pay him more money in one week, than his grandfather made in all of 1952. Matt will make a lot more money in one month than that house cost, when my parents bought it. About 10 days ago, I left a tip for a food waitress at a favorite restaurant in Wellfleet, Massachusetts that was equal to the mortgage payment Senior told me he had to scramble to pay each month in the year I was born.
I am telling all of that because of what happened in 1954.
Senior was a huge New York Giant fan, and an even bigger fan of Willie Mays, who to Senior’s dying day called his "cousin." (It was part of the times to patronize black sports heroes in that way, and many other ways. My dad was a racist, just as a huge part of the American population was. One of the best things I can tell you about my dad was that he truly changed, when he realized how wrong he’d been.)
Senior had gotten his love of the Giants at an early age, from his mother, Florence (his father died when he was 5 years old). Dad told me that his mom was known to wager one or two dollars on the Giants once or twice a year. He told me a wonderful story about he and his mom, along with his older brother Hank going to a New York Giants versus Cincinnati Reds game at the Polo Grounds, sometime in the early 1920’s. Senior said that Hank was a big Reds fan, particularly a huge Eddie Roush fanatic – the Red’s (Hall of Fame) centerfielder. On that day, Cincinnati was beating the snot out of Florence’s Giants, and 10-year old Hank was cheering and shouting like the crank he was when my grandmother had finally had enough. She slapped Hank across the back of his head and lectured that "When I buy your ticket you root for the Giants or bite your tongue!" I have to believe granny had a wager that day.
By 1954, Senior had been a Giant fan for more than 30 years, and he "just knew" that the New York Giants were going to beat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series that October. The Indians had (still) one of the greatest seasons in baseball history that year. The Yankees had won 5 straight World Series, and won 103 games in ‘54, and finished a distant (8 games back) second – that’s how good Cleveland was. They were a prohibitive favorite to brush the Giants aside, which was how Senior got such great odds on New York. For the time, and based on how much money he made in a week, he put a large bundle down on the Giants to win. He told my mom he’d placed a wager, because he was such a forthright guy he couldn’t imagine how he’d be able to explain the devastation if he’d lost. It was also a fact that he didn’t tell my mom exactly how much he’d bet, giving her a substantially lower sum. She was rocked anyway, so when he asked her about putting some additional funds down on a bet that the Giants would sweep, she cried, and he said he wouldn’t do it. But he did put some money on the sweep, just not that much.
Of course the Giants swept Cleveland and my dad won a bundle, but never again tempted any amount of money he couldn’t afford to lose, like a $2.00 bet on the Kentucky Derby, stuff like that. It remains one of the greatest pieces of advice on gambling I have ever received when my dad told me to "Never bet more money on a game than you can afford to throw down a sewer – unless you are really sure who will win."
Hence, my Cincinnati bets. Even with the odds seriously on the Reds to win, I never hesitated for a minute to back them as a big favorite – I just knew, you know?
Over the years Senior would come up with his fair share of touts, which I took in with varying degrees of attention. Later, after the event, he’d ask me if I followed his advice, because invariably, his picks would win. It got a little eerie after a while, and I started (slowly) to put some actual keesh on his picks, and won every single time. There weren’t many over the years, and you couldn’t force a pick out of him, rather, these forecasts would just come to him, and he’d give them to me. This went on for about 12 years or so, beginning in the early-1970’s. They weren’t all underdogs, and the sports varied. One of the last ones he gave me was Oakland’s dismantling of Philadelphia in the 1981 Super Bowl. The Raiders were about a 3-point dog, and became the first wild card team to win the championship. It was the second most money I ever won on a sporting event.
Senior almost always introduced one his rare (maybe 15 total, all time) touts in the same way:
"Charlie, would you like to make some money?"
"Shit yeah!"
It was kinda like having my own Lefty Rosenthal, without having a vicious Joe Pesci-type maniac killer on the side. (As a side note, Rosenthal – Robert De Niro’s character -- really was the target of a car bomb. I worked for a guy in Tucson whose son, Gary Triano, was the victim of a car bomb in the parking lot of a Tucson (La Paloma) country club. For a while, one of the leading theories about the murder was it was casino related, as Triano was allegedly working with Chinese investors in an attempt to start a casino in any number of locations aside from Vegas.
I don’t know if it was a coincidence or not, but after my mom died in 1982, the touts just stopped. A number of years later Senior married Donna, and they both loved to take those group bus-trip junkets (from Tucson) to Loughlin (Nevada) for some casino gambling. Senior would spend a few hours at the $2 and $3 poker tables, while Donna pounded the slots, but my dad was never really a gambler. The man had often worked 3 jobs while I was growing up so he and his family would have nice things in their lives, and he was too smart to think that gambling was an easy avocation.
I pretty much gave up betting on sporting events in the late-1980’s, when Matt was still a little boy, but I "rediscovered" Vegas again in the late 1990’s, and had excellent success playing 21 on any number of visits.
Matt is not a gambler, though he does love games, and he especially loves card games. He is not averse to making a wager on a game here and there, but generally speaking these are "friendly bets," the kind you have a difficult time collecting, like the $100 I still owe him for losing a chess match to him about 10 years ago.
Soon, I will have a chance to go to a casino with him, and maybe I’ll get him to sit down with me at a $5 Blackjack table, and sip some free highballs. Then we can spend a little time at a sports book, and wager a few dollars on a game. I have an image of a cocktail waitress coming by, and we’ll order a round, I’ll over tip her upon her return, but then shue her away too.
After the Rangers failed to score in the top of the 11th inning of game 6, I turned the radio off, and went to bed. I was absolutely certain that Texas would lose the game. Similarly, I knew the Cardinals would win game 7. I thought of my dad asking me if I wanted to make some money, and actually considered calling Matt, and telling him to find a way to bet on St. Louis that night.
From my dad, to me, to my son…right.
It 1985 I placed an enormous amount of money on the St. Louis Cardinals to beat the Kansas City Royals in the World Series, and also bet each game. When the day of game 7 beckoned, I was in a considerable hole, and still had my huge series bet riding. I was looking at a financial disaster as I spoke with one of my closest friends, and fellow gambler, Al.
"This is from the guy so sure St. Louis would win, right dickwod?" Al asked. "Why don’t you wipe your ass with your St. Looey bet and just get even, if you can’t afford to let it ride?"
"Huh?" I muttered.
Al asked me how much did I stand to lose if Kansas City won, and I squeaked out the figure. He then called a bookie and placed that amount of money on KC to win the seventh game that evening.
"That’s your bet, dipshit," Al said, "you’ll be a big zero on the books."
"Al, you’re genius."
"Shut up St. Louis breath and tell me who you like in the Cowboy/Redskins game on Sunday… cause I’m gonna bet 10-grand on the other side."
I often think about gambling as a metaphor for the ocean’s tides, the way the dollars come in, then get washed away. I have often told folks the story about Florence swatting my Uncle Hank upside the head when he rooted for the wrong team on her dime. But most importantly, I will never forget the simple lesson my late friend Al taught me back in 1985
So I didn’t call Matt, and St. Louis won, of course.
Did I mention that I knew the Cards would win?
Matt and I hadn’t talked about much sports related stuff for a while, or anything for that matter, as where we stay on Cape Cod is very unfriendly to cell phones. There is no Internet or TV either, but the very limited access (from anyone to us) is one big reason why Susan and I like going where we go. I do draw the line in regard to being able to access the World Series but at least this year, finally, we were able to listen to baseball playoff and World Series games on the radio. There are a few places within a few miles that serve food and adult beverages that also have ballgames on TV, but I’ve never been a "nurse a couple of beers" kind of guy. Alternately, getting popped for DWI is not something I wanted to experience a second time, 27 years after my "celebration" of Matt’s birth got me my first one. These days I tend to let someone else drive, or take in the game at home.
But anyway, the time Matt and I did talk (we had a landline in our cottage) was after game 2 of the Series, but the subject wasn’t about baseball. Rather it was which one of two job offers Matt should take, and he wanted my input. Being the half-drunk gambler kind of guy that I am, I was adamant that he should take the job in Las Vegas, and I’d be out there to visit him as soon as I brushed up on my Blackjack strategy.
 |
| Wouldn't you take a free drink? |
The way I see it, as I inch towards retirement, I will need some way to pass the time in my doddering old fartitude. I figure that free drinks at the tables will save thousands of dollars, but it’s really about just having a place to go and spend productive time. When the deck is running hot, the dealer is showing 6, and I am splitting Aces, could there be a better place for me to have a free drink served by a sexy young lady? Talk about making a "hard eight," huh?
 |
| Our lusting President |
Of course prostitution isn’t legal in Vegas (Clark County), but no one is seriously fooled into believing that the law is strictly enforced when there are 50+ Yellow Pages of listings for escort services in the local phone book. The top-end casinos don’t let working girls troll their premises for the most part, but unescorted "escorts" do slip through the lines quite often. This generally happens late at night, not that 50% of the clientele at any given time has any idea what time it is. Anyway, nothing perked me up more than a 3:14 A.M. conversation with a voluptuous and scantily clad lady on a casino floor, unless it was a hot run of cards at a $25 Blackjack table.
Come to think of it, during the times when my stack of chips was growing larger by the minute, I’d often see a young lovely in my field of vision, sucking a coke through one of those narrow cocktail straws. One time I gave my cocktail waitress an extra large tip if she’d buy the young lovely at the bar a drink and ask her (as a joke) when she got "off duty?" I have no idea what my waitress said to the lady at the bar, but I do know that she came back to me and whispered "Not sure about her, but I get off in a couple of hours."
You have to admire self-promotion and a strong work ethic.
I had an opportunity many years ago (mid-1970’s) to move to and (potentially) work in a Vegas casino, but I chickened out, and stayed in Tucson. In retrospect, if I’d taken a job in Vegas, it’s 90% certain I’d be long dead – too much sex, drugs and gambling. It’s only a matter of luck that I didn’t die in Tucson, where I worked with an endless stream of cocktail waitresses, and the drugs were just as plentiful. Picking my way through that minefield was tough enough, without gaming tables.
 |
| Elisabeth Shue |
Thinking about Vegas and gambling while the World Series was taking place got me to recall that the most money I ever won on a sporting event was the 1976 World Series. I had the Reds over the Yanks, but also had a Reds sweep, and bet all 4 games as well. 6 for 6 ain’t easy, and I even received a "very well done" from my bookie, along with the cash. He also told me about a casino in Vegas that got hammered by a flood of Cincinnati bets, as gambler’s invariably bet favorites. It was around that time that I began to study gambling and the history of Las Vegas as well.
 |
| My lovely grandma, Florence, and grandpa Frank |
Back in 1952, a few months before I was born, my parents (Mary and Charlie Sr., hereafter, sometimes referred to as Senior) bought a house in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. 60 years later, my son will be working at a job that will pay him more money in one week, than his grandfather made in all of 1952. Matt will make a lot more money in one month than that house cost, when my parents bought it. About 10 days ago, I left a tip for a food waitress at a favorite restaurant in Wellfleet, Massachusetts that was equal to the mortgage payment Senior told me he had to scramble to pay each month in the year I was born.
I am telling all of that because of what happened in 1954.
Senior was a huge New York Giant fan, and an even bigger fan of Willie Mays, who to Senior’s dying day called his "cousin." (It was part of the times to patronize black sports heroes in that way, and many other ways. My dad was a racist, just as a huge part of the American population was. One of the best things I can tell you about my dad was that he truly changed, when he realized how wrong he’d been.)
 |
| Senior, top left, Hank top right, w/ Wilb and Dolores |
By 1954, Senior had been a Giant fan for more than 30 years, and he "just knew" that the New York Giants were going to beat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series that October. The Indians had (still) one of the greatest seasons in baseball history that year. The Yankees had won 5 straight World Series, and won 103 games in ‘54, and finished a distant (8 games back) second – that’s how good Cleveland was. They were a prohibitive favorite to brush the Giants aside, which was how Senior got such great odds on New York. For the time, and based on how much money he made in a week, he put a large bundle down on the Giants to win. He told my mom he’d placed a wager, because he was such a forthright guy he couldn’t imagine how he’d be able to explain the devastation if he’d lost. It was also a fact that he didn’t tell my mom exactly how much he’d bet, giving her a substantially lower sum. She was rocked anyway, so when he asked her about putting some additional funds down on a bet that the Giants would sweep, she cried, and he said he wouldn’t do it. But he did put some money on the sweep, just not that much.
Of course the Giants swept Cleveland and my dad won a bundle, but never again tempted any amount of money he couldn’t afford to lose, like a $2.00 bet on the Kentucky Derby, stuff like that. It remains one of the greatest pieces of advice on gambling I have ever received when my dad told me to "Never bet more money on a game than you can afford to throw down a sewer – unless you are really sure who will win."
Hence, my Cincinnati bets. Even with the odds seriously on the Reds to win, I never hesitated for a minute to back them as a big favorite – I just knew, you know?
Over the years Senior would come up with his fair share of touts, which I took in with varying degrees of attention. Later, after the event, he’d ask me if I followed his advice, because invariably, his picks would win. It got a little eerie after a while, and I started (slowly) to put some actual keesh on his picks, and won every single time. There weren’t many over the years, and you couldn’t force a pick out of him, rather, these forecasts would just come to him, and he’d give them to me. This went on for about 12 years or so, beginning in the early-1970’s. They weren’t all underdogs, and the sports varied. One of the last ones he gave me was Oakland’s dismantling of Philadelphia in the 1981 Super Bowl. The Raiders were about a 3-point dog, and became the first wild card team to win the championship. It was the second most money I ever won on a sporting event.
Senior almost always introduced one his rare (maybe 15 total, all time) touts in the same way:
"Charlie, would you like to make some money?"
"Shit yeah!"
 |
| Lefty...on the left |
I don’t know if it was a coincidence or not, but after my mom died in 1982, the touts just stopped. A number of years later Senior married Donna, and they both loved to take those group bus-trip junkets (from Tucson) to Loughlin (Nevada) for some casino gambling. Senior would spend a few hours at the $2 and $3 poker tables, while Donna pounded the slots, but my dad was never really a gambler. The man had often worked 3 jobs while I was growing up so he and his family would have nice things in their lives, and he was too smart to think that gambling was an easy avocation.
I pretty much gave up betting on sporting events in the late-1980’s, when Matt was still a little boy, but I "rediscovered" Vegas again in the late 1990’s, and had excellent success playing 21 on any number of visits.
Matt is not a gambler, though he does love games, and he especially loves card games. He is not averse to making a wager on a game here and there, but generally speaking these are "friendly bets," the kind you have a difficult time collecting, like the $100 I still owe him for losing a chess match to him about 10 years ago.
Soon, I will have a chance to go to a casino with him, and maybe I’ll get him to sit down with me at a $5 Blackjack table, and sip some free highballs. Then we can spend a little time at a sports book, and wager a few dollars on a game. I have an image of a cocktail waitress coming by, and we’ll order a round, I’ll over tip her upon her return, but then shue her away too.
After the Rangers failed to score in the top of the 11th inning of game 6, I turned the radio off, and went to bed. I was absolutely certain that Texas would lose the game. Similarly, I knew the Cardinals would win game 7. I thought of my dad asking me if I wanted to make some money, and actually considered calling Matt, and telling him to find a way to bet on St. Louis that night.
From my dad, to me, to my son…right.
It 1985 I placed an enormous amount of money on the St. Louis Cardinals to beat the Kansas City Royals in the World Series, and also bet each game. When the day of game 7 beckoned, I was in a considerable hole, and still had my huge series bet riding. I was looking at a financial disaster as I spoke with one of my closest friends, and fellow gambler, Al.
"This is from the guy so sure St. Louis would win, right dickwod?" Al asked. "Why don’t you wipe your ass with your St. Looey bet and just get even, if you can’t afford to let it ride?"
"Huh?" I muttered.
Al asked me how much did I stand to lose if Kansas City won, and I squeaked out the figure. He then called a bookie and placed that amount of money on KC to win the seventh game that evening.
"That’s your bet, dipshit," Al said, "you’ll be a big zero on the books."
"Al, you’re genius."
"Shut up St. Louis breath and tell me who you like in the Cowboy/Redskins game on Sunday… cause I’m gonna bet 10-grand on the other side."
I often think about gambling as a metaphor for the ocean’s tides, the way the dollars come in, then get washed away. I have often told folks the story about Florence swatting my Uncle Hank upside the head when he rooted for the wrong team on her dime. But most importantly, I will never forget the simple lesson my late friend Al taught me back in 1985
So I didn’t call Matt, and St. Louis won, of course.
Did I mention that I knew the Cards would win?
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Pickling Willie Mays
Anyone with a reasonable sense of humor has a time (or 1000) when something just cracks them up so much, they can’t repeat why they are seemingly hysterical. So it was about 10 days ago when I attempted to tell Susan why I was laughing so hard that snot was running down my cheeks, and my eyes were stinging from the tears.
The reason for me is below, and it's for anyone who may ever be called upon to describe what a great base runner Willie Mays was, Bill James has given all of us the perfect line:
"Catching Willie Mays in a rundown is like trying to assassinate a squirrel with a lawn mower…"
Friday, October 14, 2011
Boston Chicken
After reading and hearing all the stories that have come out about the Red Sox, I am left one big question?What video game were Josh Beckett, and his minions Lackey and Lester playing in the clubhouse? I mean, admit it, you’d like to know right?
I also wonder if anyone screwed up at a critical moment because one of the controller buttons was greasy from all the fried chicken greasy fingers?
If there is anything I take away from this it’s that age-old truism that when a team is winning, all these stupid and selfish behaviors by players are never news, but losing spawns countless pieces of evidence why a team was doomed to fail.
Jack McKeon was interviewed about Beckett, having managed him in Florida during the Marlins championship 2003 season. Apparently McKeon had to chase Beckett out of the clubhouse with a bat that year, and later keep the clubhouse locked to prevent guys from flaking off during games. Does anyone think that Beckett wasn’t pounding Bud’s in the clubhouse every year while he was with Boston?
The thing about Terry Francona abusing painkillers really bothers me. The guy’s playing career ended very early due to operations on both knees, and (so you know) he was the NCAA College Player of the Year in 1980, so the man could hit. To think he suddenly started to abuse prescribed medications after close to 30 years of taking things to alleviate pain is the worst kind of journalism, in my opinion.
Sometimes, things just play out, you know…they just end. That’s what happened to the Francona era in Boston. A bad mix of personalities combined with a few too many injuries to a team that didn’t have a player or two capable of kicking some teammate’s asses when things started going bad.
The Boston media has many villains to blame in all of this, and the team will spin it the best way they can. The bottom line is that the players couldn’t figure out how to police themselves, and not one guy in the starting rotation was able to be a stopper down the stretch.
So, with Boston a no-show, the Phillies not nearly as good (no hitting) as most folks thought, and the Yankees exposed (no starting pitching) as a post-season fraud, we are left with perhaps Texas being the best team in baseball? We are also being treated to being able to watch the best hitters in each league (Cabrera – AL and Pujols and Braun – NL) play deep into October, and a very realistic chance that one franchise will win it’s first ever championship. If either Texas (spawned as the expansion Washington Senators in 1961) or Milwaukee (Seattle Pilots – 1969) win it, it will be the first time.
I continued to root for Tampa Bay, and whichever team is your favorite, wasn’t it hard to not root for those guys and their manager, Joe Maddon? How many managers would have had the guts to start a rookie (Matt Moore) with a total of 9 and 1/3 innings of MLB experience in a critical game #3, on the road versus Texas? Girardi may have done it, but then he’d bring in a reliever in the 3rd, one in the 4th, another 2 guys in the 5th, etc., etc. Does anyone over-manager more than Girardi?
Answer: Yes!
 |
| And you wanna be my latex salesman? |
It’s hard for me to believe that he and Jim Leyland are such good friends, the way Leyland is so down to earth, and so much of a throw back to the way managers used to be when I was a kid. My lips say Texas, but my heart says Detroit.
I really don’t have a take on Ron Roenicke, except that he was a fair-to-suck MLB player, and he seems like he’s on auto-pilot as a manager, which may not be the worse thing for that team?
Ron Washington looks like he’s still doing lines, all fidgety and jumpy. You’d think that incredible bullpen and all those great hitters would calm him down a bit, wouldn’t you?
In parting, I thought Francona was great fill-in for Tim McCarver, but then a lot of guys would be a huge improvement over Tim. I am liking A.J. Pierszynski a lot, though it’s easy to see why he’s pissed off so many teammates over the years – baseball players don’t like guys that are smart, critical, and talkative.
Wouldn’t that be something? Only thing better would be those two guys celebrating a World Championship in Chicago in a year or three, with their star players, Prince Fielder and Jonathan Papelbon.
Remember where you first read that last part.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Free Beer and Naked Women
I’ve thought about writing something for this blog for about half of the 45 days since I last posted, but too many things got in the way. The biggest one was just losing my muse for doing it, and it’s given me a whole new and deeper respect for the folks that actually write multiple columns a week that thousands or millions of people actually read.
Another major thing was trying to figure out what I really want to say, and how to go about putting it out there? Do I want photos each time, or are the photos I add (without permission) just something to entice people to read what I’ve written?
I really like looking for photographs and other things about people I am referencing, because I think it makes what I am "talking" about more amusing or interesting, and hey, if it ain’t amusing or interesting, even I don’t want to read it.
But who does read it, and why?
Most interesting to me is that the biggest ‘keywords’ for finding this blog on the Net are the names Lindsay Fredette and Brandi Chastain. Google tells me this is true, and they would know. Far and away, the most searched is Jimmer Fredette’s older sister Lindsay, who I mentioned in a wacky piece way back on January 31. Brandi gets searched quite a bit too, with one keyword being "Brandi Chastain’s boobs." That is great! To think that there are probably enough guys or gay ladies out there, wanting a look at Brandi’s boggles? It boobies the mind!
Years ago, when I lived in Tucson and worked as a bartender, I had a Monday night to work. The regular band was off on Monday’s, so we’d have a band fill in for the evening. It was often a very dull night, with hopefully enough friends of the band filling some seats, buying some drinks, and not starting any fights.
(The place I was working at the time was called the "Longhorn Saloon," so you have to just trust me when I tell you we had fights in that place. The bar sat right outside the main gate of Davis-Monthan AFB, so imagine all those young and drunk airman stumbling into a cowboy bar for last call? It got nasty some nights…days too.)
This Monday we had a band with 5 guys, a couple of whom I knew from other bands and other clubs. The lead guy in the band and I were lamenting the crappy turnout when he told me the secret to getting new business was to open a bar and call it:
Free Beer and Naked Women (Now I have hit the title to this piece, and if you’ve gotten this far in reading it, well, you’ve read about 450 words.)
I don’t know what a lot of people’s reactions would be if they saw that sign lit up in big letters on the top of some bar, but it would get my attention. I’d also bet that it would get the attention of a lot of the same guys that are Googling Brandi’s ta-ta’s, or Lindsay in a swimsuit?
Of course I can also imagine having a bar with that name, and putting up with all the crap from boozed up dudes looking for what’s on the sign, if someone could actually get the sign up to begin with? It’s a more PC world every day, and while I can see being able to do it in Tucson, up here in Burlington (VT), things like that are just not done.
I wonder what ever happened to a bar outside of Miami called Sofa King? Susan and I heard their ad on the radio one morning in 2005 while driving (and getting lost) on the south Florida highway system.
"Sofa King! You gotta be where the sounds are sofa king cool, the beer is sofa king cold, and the ladies are sofa king hot!"
It’s an old joke, but to actually hear it on the radio was nuts, so think about advertising a bar called "Free Beer and Naked Women?" If liquor laws preclude you from that I bet "Cold Beer and Naked Women" would work pretty well. Hey, chill the beer lad, how you supply the sofa king naked women is your problem -- I am just selling the franchise fees here.
By the way, the word "free" took on a different meaning for me about 6 or 7 years ago while I was driving through one of the housing developments I manage. As I circled through I noticed that one apartment had placed a number of things on the green space that everyone is praying to find! Great stuff like broken and cheap furniture, bags of stained and dirty children’s clothing, old tires, and stacks of car repair manuals, kid’s VHS tapes, and James Patterson novels.
It’s a city code violation to put stuff on a green space (the area between the sidewalk and street), so I took special note of the fact that the tenant had not put the usual "FREE!" sign up. When I told the story to Susan she reminded me that when we had moved from Shelburne to Essex, we had done similarly. What was funny was that along with taking most of our discards, someone took our "FREE" sign as well.
Vermonters make up their own rules about these types of things, because we don’t want anything to go to waste. Somewhere, some day, the person that took that sign will find a use for it, or know someone who’ll need it.
"Harry, hold on! I have a sign that already says "FREE. You don’t have to do a damn thing!"
"You’re kidding right? You’re not? Dude, that’s awesome dude, frikkin’ awesome! Thanks for borrowing it to me man"
As a further digression, a few years ago there were a couple of signs Susan and I used to see every time we went to her dad’s house. One was for a guy named Tardie, and he was an accountant that did the IRS thing for folks. What better way to let potential clients know that then by putting a sign out that read "Tardie Tax Returns?" Really, that was his sign. Maybe he attracted clients anyway…you know, those that like a joke about the IRS auditing them?
Maybe none of my tenant’s property left the green space because it was not quite free?
The big sign on top of the pile had one word, perhaps a warning, or more likely an omen?
It read "Feer!" Seriously, and yes, I was.
Along the same route as "Tardie Tax Returns" there was a landlord with a vacancy that needed filling. So, he (or she, but I gotta bet it was a guy) bought a 2-foot by 3-foot piece of thin white cardboard, and nailed it to a phone pole with the following written on it:
Yup, rnet, but someone caught it after the fact and added a ^ between the R and the n, and placed an e above the ^. The way I read it was "House for Renet." I tried calling the number, but got no answer. I figure the owner must have been at an Algonquian Round Table meeting, so I let it go, but would it have killed the guy to buy another piece of cardboard, and spell the damn word correctly?
Okay, I’ve been writing this thing over a couple of days now, and just enjoying the process of writing, which was the entire point of this blog anyway. I used to write so many long emails that I’d get folks telling me to just blog, which I took as a polite way of saying, "Write your ass off, just don’t send it to me because I’ll feel guilty if I don’t read it. You should start a blog. That way, if I don’t read it I will just be one of billions and billions of people who don’t read it, instead of just me."
Last words about "free beer" is that beer should always be free, or we should only be charged for renting it. I think this is a law Vermont could enact?
I also doubt I could have "naked women" as part of the name either, but I could have a sign at the door telling folks that there is never a cover for naked women.
I have one more day of work left before I am on vacation until November, which is nice. Susan and I are going to spend a couple of weeks in a cottage on Cape Cod that looks out over the Atlantic, just relaxing. I am old, and need to relax.
Time for baseball.
Another major thing was trying to figure out what I really want to say, and how to go about putting it out there? Do I want photos each time, or are the photos I add (without permission) just something to entice people to read what I’ve written?
I really like looking for photographs and other things about people I am referencing, because I think it makes what I am "talking" about more amusing or interesting, and hey, if it ain’t amusing or interesting, even I don’t want to read it.
But who does read it, and why?
Most interesting to me is that the biggest ‘keywords’ for finding this blog on the Net are the names Lindsay Fredette and Brandi Chastain. Google tells me this is true, and they would know. Far and away, the most searched is Jimmer Fredette’s older sister Lindsay, who I mentioned in a wacky piece way back on January 31. Brandi gets searched quite a bit too, with one keyword being "Brandi Chastain’s boobs." That is great! To think that there are probably enough guys or gay ladies out there, wanting a look at Brandi’s boggles? It boobies the mind!
Years ago, when I lived in Tucson and worked as a bartender, I had a Monday night to work. The regular band was off on Monday’s, so we’d have a band fill in for the evening. It was often a very dull night, with hopefully enough friends of the band filling some seats, buying some drinks, and not starting any fights.
(The place I was working at the time was called the "Longhorn Saloon," so you have to just trust me when I tell you we had fights in that place. The bar sat right outside the main gate of Davis-Monthan AFB, so imagine all those young and drunk airman stumbling into a cowboy bar for last call? It got nasty some nights…days too.)
This Monday we had a band with 5 guys, a couple of whom I knew from other bands and other clubs. The lead guy in the band and I were lamenting the crappy turnout when he told me the secret to getting new business was to open a bar and call it:
I don’t know what a lot of people’s reactions would be if they saw that sign lit up in big letters on the top of some bar, but it would get my attention. I’d also bet that it would get the attention of a lot of the same guys that are Googling Brandi’s ta-ta’s, or Lindsay in a swimsuit?
Of course I can also imagine having a bar with that name, and putting up with all the crap from boozed up dudes looking for what’s on the sign, if someone could actually get the sign up to begin with? It’s a more PC world every day, and while I can see being able to do it in Tucson, up here in Burlington (VT), things like that are just not done.
I wonder what ever happened to a bar outside of Miami called Sofa King? Susan and I heard their ad on the radio one morning in 2005 while driving (and getting lost) on the south Florida highway system.
"Sofa King! You gotta be where the sounds are sofa king cool, the beer is sofa king cold, and the ladies are sofa king hot!"
By the way, the word "free" took on a different meaning for me about 6 or 7 years ago while I was driving through one of the housing developments I manage. As I circled through I noticed that one apartment had placed a number of things on the green space that everyone is praying to find! Great stuff like broken and cheap furniture, bags of stained and dirty children’s clothing, old tires, and stacks of car repair manuals, kid’s VHS tapes, and James Patterson novels.
It’s a city code violation to put stuff on a green space (the area between the sidewalk and street), so I took special note of the fact that the tenant had not put the usual "FREE!" sign up. When I told the story to Susan she reminded me that when we had moved from Shelburne to Essex, we had done similarly. What was funny was that along with taking most of our discards, someone took our "FREE" sign as well.
Vermonters make up their own rules about these types of things, because we don’t want anything to go to waste. Somewhere, some day, the person that took that sign will find a use for it, or know someone who’ll need it.
"Harry, hold on! I have a sign that already says "FREE. You don’t have to do a damn thing!"
"You’re kidding right? You’re not? Dude, that’s awesome dude, frikkin’ awesome! Thanks for borrowing it to me man"
As a further digression, a few years ago there were a couple of signs Susan and I used to see every time we went to her dad’s house. One was for a guy named Tardie, and he was an accountant that did the IRS thing for folks. What better way to let potential clients know that then by putting a sign out that read "Tardie Tax Returns?" Really, that was his sign. Maybe he attracted clients anyway…you know, those that like a joke about the IRS auditing them?
Maybe none of my tenant’s property left the green space because it was not quite free?
The big sign on top of the pile had one word, perhaps a warning, or more likely an omen?
It read "Feer!" Seriously, and yes, I was.
Along the same route as "Tardie Tax Returns" there was a landlord with a vacancy that needed filling. So, he (or she, but I gotta bet it was a guy) bought a 2-foot by 3-foot piece of thin white cardboard, and nailed it to a phone pole with the following written on it:
House for Rnet
999-9999
Yup, rnet, but someone caught it after the fact and added a ^ between the R and the n, and placed an e above the ^. The way I read it was "House for Renet." I tried calling the number, but got no answer. I figure the owner must have been at an Algonquian Round Table meeting, so I let it go, but would it have killed the guy to buy another piece of cardboard, and spell the damn word correctly?
Okay, I’ve been writing this thing over a couple of days now, and just enjoying the process of writing, which was the entire point of this blog anyway. I used to write so many long emails that I’d get folks telling me to just blog, which I took as a polite way of saying, "Write your ass off, just don’t send it to me because I’ll feel guilty if I don’t read it. You should start a blog. That way, if I don’t read it I will just be one of billions and billions of people who don’t read it, instead of just me."
I also doubt I could have "naked women" as part of the name either, but I could have a sign at the door telling folks that there is never a cover for naked women.
Time for baseball.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
