My father was a bookmaker. Not like someone who binds books, but a guy who makes book. A bookie. Back before there was a government run lottery, guys like my dad were the lottery. It was just one of those things around the neighborhood... some of the delivery guys would even take bets for this or that bookie.
You would think that should make me someone who's interested in gambling, or, at least, someone who has some kind of unique insight when it comes to making bets. It does not.
Every year when the Super Bowl rolls around, when discussions of prop bets and point spreads reaches a crescendo, I'm forced to acknowledge just how little I know about the family business.
I'm the kind of person who used to drive to Vegas to see a show and not place a single bet. I always loved hanging out in Sin City the first weekend of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, but that was because I could walk into the sports books and see all the games at once. I don't think I ever actually made a bet on a single one of the games. I did place a Super Bowl bet one of the times that I was in Vegas around the time of the game. I lost.
Other than the fact that I know what a point spread is and I know how to correctly use the terms "vig" and "moneyline," I have no idea how to gamble. Not just sports betting and the like... any gambling. I suck at cards. I have to think hard to remember the rules of craps... and, I only know what I do because there's an Abbott & Costello routine about it. The randomness of a roulette wheel appeals to me... until I lose twice and then I'm done. I won once on a slot machine and stopped gambling for the rest of the day.
As a toddler, I was at a horse racing track so often in the summer that I still remember the office secretary who would watch me when my dad got sick of having to keep track of me. The smell of cheap cigars and stale beer still makes me feel all warm inside. Do I have any idea what horse I should be looking at on a racing form? Nope, none at all.
I've spent a chunk of my life writing about sports, but I can't pick against the spread to save my life. Not on football. Not on basketball. And, with apologies to Pete Rose, I don't have the first clue how you're supposed to bet on baseball.
I've never won an office pool. I'm bad at fantasy sports. If they were to invent a new way to gamble tomorrow, I'm sure I would be terrible with it.
I don't think that I'm missing out on anything. In addition to being a bookie, my dad was also a bit of degenerate gambler. There was either a lot of money around when I was little, or no money. I still remember the one Christmas Eve when my father hit a decent score and then bought me a bunch of toys at the last minute. I was confused about why there was only one year that Santa didn't wrap anything. But, he also took every bit of birthday money that I got and bet with it.
Still, when I tell people about my dad, I always have that moment of embarrassment where I'm afraid that I'm going to be asked about gambling strategies or for an explanation of how baccarat works (I've watched the stupid video on that in Vegas hotel rooms 15 times and I still don't understand that game, but it always looks cool).
I'm sure that I'm better off being a semi-well-adjusted, responsible adult than I am being too much like my dad, but I still wish I had paid a little more attention during those first seven years so that I could at least fake things a little better. ("little better," son of a bookie... get it? Yeah, well, they can't all be winners.)
Showing posts with label father. Show all posts
Showing posts with label father. Show all posts
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
New Life
If you’ll take a look at the post history of this blog you’ll notice that there is a significant gap between the previous post and this one. What was I doing, you might ask?
Well, even if you didn’t ask I’m going to tell you because this is, after all, my blog. The primary reason for the break in a blog about the joys of my domestic life is that I got a divorce. Since the point of the blog was that my life as a husband and father frequently resembled the sitcoms that myself and many of my friends either write for, wrote for or tried to write for, suddenly not having a wife presented a problem.
Turns out that I didn’t think much of anything was funny about the divorce.
Having had about a year to digest it all…well, I still don’t think the divorce part was funny. I’m pretty sure that there aren’t too many worse things that you can have happen to you than to believe yourself to be happily married only to find out that only one of you feels that way.
With time, though, you start to find more things funny. Little by little, I’ve started to find the humor in life again. Like when my cousin seemingly forgot how to talk after an afternoon of drinking beer in the sun. Of course, first we had to verify that he wasn’t having a stroke but once we were sure that it was just the demon booze it quickly became funny. The paramedics might not have thought so but I did.
Just as things had seemingly settled down from the whole divorce brouhaha and kids were settled into a routine of going back and forth between parents, I subsequently lost my job. Unlike the divorce, that one I kind of find funny.
I didn’t particularly like my job. I was an empty suit in middle management not really doing much of anything of use to most people. It’s hard to feel bad when you loose something like that. The only problem is that I’m an adult with responsibilities…I have to pay child support now for God’s sake. I might have hated the job, but the fact of the matter is that I wasn’t just working as a drone for the fun of it. They paid me real money for kind of, sort of doing some things.
When I was younger and was a struggling writer in Los Angeles, not working a real job had a certain amount of cache. You were working on your material. You were available for meetings any time that your agent or a producer might want to see you. The fact that no one ever wanted to see you was irrelevant. Plus, it’s easier to go see movies by yourself in the afternoon…and you probably won’t be alone for long once you spot three or four of your “struggling artists” writer friends taking their own mental break to see a matinee.
Being single and unemployed as a 45-year-old dude in the Midwest is a lot less fun. I can try to call myself a struggling artist around here, but the more official term used by the local citizenry is “bum.” I can’t even ride the rails and upgrade to “hobo” since I still have to care for two children.
However, if being Irish has taught me anything it is this: When life hands you lemons, go trade them for some beer and get pissed.
I’m going to go back to looking at the bright side of life, as Monty Python famously taught me as a youngster.
You, gentle reader, are invited back to partake of my ramblings and amusing stories about my life, many of them tied to the darndest things that my sons continue to utter. And, if you happen to know of anyone hiring empty suit, middle management types that are also failed writers...well, I'm easy enough to find and less picky than a chess club geek on the eve of prom.
Well, even if you didn’t ask I’m going to tell you because this is, after all, my blog. The primary reason for the break in a blog about the joys of my domestic life is that I got a divorce. Since the point of the blog was that my life as a husband and father frequently resembled the sitcoms that myself and many of my friends either write for, wrote for or tried to write for, suddenly not having a wife presented a problem.
Turns out that I didn’t think much of anything was funny about the divorce.
Having had about a year to digest it all…well, I still don’t think the divorce part was funny. I’m pretty sure that there aren’t too many worse things that you can have happen to you than to believe yourself to be happily married only to find out that only one of you feels that way.
With time, though, you start to find more things funny. Little by little, I’ve started to find the humor in life again. Like when my cousin seemingly forgot how to talk after an afternoon of drinking beer in the sun. Of course, first we had to verify that he wasn’t having a stroke but once we were sure that it was just the demon booze it quickly became funny. The paramedics might not have thought so but I did.
Just as things had seemingly settled down from the whole divorce brouhaha and kids were settled into a routine of going back and forth between parents, I subsequently lost my job. Unlike the divorce, that one I kind of find funny.
I didn’t particularly like my job. I was an empty suit in middle management not really doing much of anything of use to most people. It’s hard to feel bad when you loose something like that. The only problem is that I’m an adult with responsibilities…I have to pay child support now for God’s sake. I might have hated the job, but the fact of the matter is that I wasn’t just working as a drone for the fun of it. They paid me real money for kind of, sort of doing some things.
When I was younger and was a struggling writer in Los Angeles, not working a real job had a certain amount of cache. You were working on your material. You were available for meetings any time that your agent or a producer might want to see you. The fact that no one ever wanted to see you was irrelevant. Plus, it’s easier to go see movies by yourself in the afternoon…and you probably won’t be alone for long once you spot three or four of your “struggling artists” writer friends taking their own mental break to see a matinee.
Being single and unemployed as a 45-year-old dude in the Midwest is a lot less fun. I can try to call myself a struggling artist around here, but the more official term used by the local citizenry is “bum.” I can’t even ride the rails and upgrade to “hobo” since I still have to care for two children.
However, if being Irish has taught me anything it is this: When life hands you lemons, go trade them for some beer and get pissed.
I’m going to go back to looking at the bright side of life, as Monty Python famously taught me as a youngster.
You, gentle reader, are invited back to partake of my ramblings and amusing stories about my life, many of them tied to the darndest things that my sons continue to utter. And, if you happen to know of anyone hiring empty suit, middle management types that are also failed writers...well, I'm easy enough to find and less picky than a chess club geek on the eve of prom.
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