DON’T PLAY GAMES WITH ME!
 
This is not a deep psychological warning of some sort. I mean it.  Literally.  I don’t play games well.  Not any kind.  
 
I don’t like them.
 
Actually, it’s that I get very unpleasant when I loose.  And possibly even worse when I win.
 
I can’t resist gloating when I win.  Maybe because, as someone once said, “You obviously haven’t had a lot of practice at winning.”
 
I was about 12 when I first realized that I wasn’t meant to be a competitor.  I was making my maiden voyage into the world of betting.  Pennies, but still betting.
 
I don’t remember what game we were playing, but it was an important one.  For the first time in my life, we were betting pennies instead of matchsticks.
 
 I had apparently decided I had a winning hand and bet all of seven cents to back it up.
 
The game seemed endless.  I’d take a card then my opponent took a card…then I took a card than she took a card.  Endless.  But I was one card short of a win when suddenly, Dorothy, my opponent, and best friend at the moment, smiled at me in that snarky way someone does who knows she has bested you. Smug.  Practically drooling.   She laid her cards on the table,  and there it was…she had won.  I watched as she pocket my seven cents, and then – I fainted. The tension had been too terrible to be borne.
 
I never gambled again until one time on a visit to Vegas someone handed me $200 and said…go have fun.  I lost $20 in the slots in about five minutes.  I gave the rest of the money back.  I couldn’t even enjoy losing someone else’s money.
 
I used to make an exception for Scrabble…because I know a whole lot of words and I could beat most people I challenged, so I didn’t get all tensed up on the possibility of losing.  And I wasn’t nearly as obnoxious as I could have been over winning.
 
I even beat my sister, Jackie, and I NEVER beat my sister at anything.  The thing is – and I say this without fear of contradiction –  she knew more words than anybody – and could spell them.  She’s so good that one time, when I challenged her on a word, she insisted she was correct.  I smugly informed her that I has just recently had occasion to check that word and it didn’t exist.  
 
Okay.  That should have squashed her.  Instead she informed me that the dictionary was wrong1  Some gall, huh?  Well, guess what?   She was right.  The dictionary was in error!
 
Jackie and I played for about six months and she never won even once.   With all those words at her command she couldn’t see past CAT on a Scrabble board.
 
Now you might reasonably assume that I would get great joy out of playing games with Jackie.  But no.  After a while my whole preoccupation was “What on earth is wrong with her that she is still having fun while loosing so consistently?”  So I stopped playing with her.
 
You might also imagine that beating Jackie would have bolstered my self- confidence, and, for a while, it did.  But then I figured it out: You didn’t need to be the brightest piece of jewelry on the tray, just kind of sly.  One really helpful talent I developed, was an eye for ways to fill in odd little spaces that would suddenly make new words out of four or five already in place.  Lots of winning points there, and I could do that. Way to go me!
 
Jackie never saw those openings.
 
One of the best ways to win at Scrabble however was the ability to spot ways to play all seven of your tiles at once.  That feat got you 50 extra points – a really nice leg up for a win!  
 
For some reason, my mind seemed to stop at six letters…which wasn’t too bad until I played against a buddy of mine who, it turns out, never met seven letters he couldn’t turning to a word.  After six sad months of losing, I gave up Scrabble.
 
Now I am playing Scrabble by myself.  This is a recent preoccupation.  But I am getting better.  I came up with two seven letter words in one evening. Admittedly I couldn’t find any place to put them on the board, but I did see them.
 
I call my players Lefty and Righty.  Subtle isn’t it?  I don’t keep score.  I keep a dictionary open to check the spelling and try to keep an open mind as to who should win.  
 
 I’ve been playing fairly steadily for about two months now and I see an unfortunate thing occurring. I am beginning to side with Lefty. I don’t know why exactly…there’s just something about her.
 
But Righty is getting up tight.  I know I’m going to have trouble with her if the tides don’t turn in her favor soon.
 
If I’m not careful, I’m going to start cheating in Lefty’s favor and we’ll all be in trouble.  I mean, really, you can’t play a decent game with a hand that you know is cheating.
 
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Yo!  I just laid out another Scribble game.  Lefty opened with the word IVY.  Righty thought about it a long time.  Her letters were

GENTSL and a blank.

Smarty pants used all her letters.  Can you?  Hint.  Keep the board in mind.

THE GOLDEN RULE IS WRONG!

After all these years I have come to a monumental decision.  The so-called Golden Rule got it wrong.

WE can all quote it:

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Now understand me.  I know the rule is well intentioned.  I realize that the error might just rest in the translation.  But that doesn’t change the basic fact.  The damn rule is wrong and has been the cause of a great deal of unhappiness throughout the ages.

The way I see it, what the rule wants to accomplish is just splendid.  It wants people to be nice to other people.  But treating them the way you want to be treated is not necessarily a good thing.

I made this discovery while I was living with my sister, Jackie.

 Now you must understand that, among well-intentioned people, my sister has always ranked high.  She only wants the best for you:  the best as she knows it, wants it, and dispenses it.

However, there is a problem with that.  I want it, see it and dispense it in a totally different way.

Example:

When my sister was not well, she liked to be fussed over. Confined to her bed, she expected me to make frequent visits to her room with offers of hot tea and dry toast or stewed chicken – already cut to bite size. 

And if I, as the visiting nurse, could remember that her favorite ice cream was coffee with a just a touch of Bailey’s Cream poured over it – she was in heaven.

She even, as I remember it – liked it that I stopped by frequently to check her temperature and offer hot or cold cloths for her aching head.

This, unfortunately, is not what I gave her.

What I offered was the joy of being left alone.  I’d stop by in the morning and offer her an appropriate breakfast, and then I’d close her door and go away.

I wasn’t being mean, I was doing unto her what I wished she would do unto me when I felt sick.

 LEAVE ME ALONE!

She never did.

She was indefatigable.  Every five minutes or so she was there with some new, helpful, tender way to minister to – and add to – my discomfort.

Was Jackie just a natural born sadist?  By no means.  Instead, she was a compassionate follower of THE GOLDEN RULE.  And I really hated it.

Hence my declaration of independence from said rule.  Don’t treat people the way you want to be treated.  Instead, treat them the way they want you to treat them. Their way.  Not yours.

I call this THE GOLD PLATED RULE.

It is not really easy advice to follow.  After all, you know that your way is the right way.  Otherwise you would have been doing it her way all along. 

The good thing is, the recipients of your new awareness are very grateful.  They may not realize just what’s different, but they will be content, and, after all, isn’t that what we hoped for all along.?

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Having said that, let me now move on to a totally different subject

I just got home from the theater where I watched Judy Garland disintegrate.

The play, “End of the Rainbow”, is, I believe, a dead-on representation of the pathetic sad, sad world in which one of a America’s most beloved stars lived and died. 

The title is based a Garland quote:  “…I believe in the idea of the rainbow.  And I’ve spent my entire life trying to get over it.

Tracie Bennett WAS Judy.  Every jerk and tremor that we all remember – or, having seen it so frequently in replays of her late performances, think we remember, was there. Totally recognizable and totally tragic. 

Ms Bennett even managed, against a background of a fine combo, to  sing off key.  Not all the time, and not by much.  But enough,  And that, as anyone who loves music knows, is VERY, very difficult.

To say that I enjoyed the show isn’t quite accurate.  I think I appreciated the play…the writing, the staging, the memories…but I also felt like I’d been dragged through a war zone where a horrific battle raged.

Aside from the aforementioned combo, there were three other participants in the drama, and, while they were all fine, and all necessary to the action, the show was all JUDY.  Love her or hate her,  you are really going to understand her and her monumental demons when you leave the theater.

In his review of the play, the New York Times critic wrote – in part:

As befits a play about Judy Garland, a woman known for liberally mixing her pills, Peter Quilter’s “End of the Rainbow” is a jolting upper and downer at the same time. After watching Tracie Bennett’s electrifying interpretation of Garland in the intense production that opened on Monday night at the Belasco Theater, you feel exhilarated and exhausted, equally ready to dance down the street and crawl under a rock.

Listen to the man.  Go see it at a theater near you.

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A COUPLE OF THINGS THAT DRIVE ME CRAZY

Not the rain so much…it’s just wet. It lacks the drama of a nor’easter.  No flashing and booming and winds.  Just wet.  But there isn’t much of it and because this was once a desert, five minutes after the rain stops, the pavements are dry and the skies are clear.  Perfect!

I love being close to the ocean and having people from just about everywhere in the world as neighbors.  I love all that California stuff.

But recently, we, the people, have been party to a couple of – to my mind – incredibly stupid activities.

THE JOURNEY OF THE LEVITATED MASS.

Remember way back in June of last year?   All the hype about a 340-ton rock headed from Riverside to the hallowed grounds of LACMA?  No? Then let me remind you. 

For 11 torturous days, this behemoth was moved slowly through the streets of LA and surrounding areas, tying up traffic, and tearing up streets. All while being referred to with amazing gravitas as LEVITATED.

I don’t often doubt myself when it comes to the meaning of words, but considering the mountain of evidence (nee ROCK) being presented, I chose to look up Levitated in my Webster.

Webster is on my side.  It describes levitated as.”…Floating…appears to defy gravity.”  Okay, this rock didn’t even pretend to defy gravity.  It needed a special transporter to get it from there to here; here being the museum where a great 456-foot-long concrete channel had been patiently waiting for said rock to be lowered into place.

I journeyed to the museum to view this wonder, to try to understand why a man would nurse along this dream for four decades.  But that’s what the artist, Michael Heizer did – until his patience paid off to the tune of millions of dollars.

So what did I see?  I saw this HUGE rock sitting on a marble wall built over a long channel.  THAT IS NOT LEVITATING.  That’s resting on a wall!

A loyal employee of LACMA overheard my snort of derision apparently and he hurried over to assure me that – if you stood directly UNDER the rock, it APPEARED to levitate.

 In a city that is on continuous alert for its next big earthquake, you are invited to stand UNDER that rock.

Right.

Why do I picture Mr. Heizer laughing all the way to the bank?

GETTING THE ENDEAVOR HOME.

This was a unique experience, which millions of people watched and took pride in.  Here, after all, was the REAL DEAL.  The actual piece of man-made machinery that had circled the globe again and again at speeds even the Star Ship Enterprise would envy.  Twenty-five successful missions.

I have long felt that America is starving for real heroes, but here we had a chance to honor the people who labored long and hard to bring this day to reality…the men and women who first imagined, then designed and built, this over-sized space-ship that would ultimately go on 25 missions into that great question mark that is space.

I can almost feel again the excitement of that first lift off and successful return.  What joy. What pride.  And it was ours…our American ingenuity and determination…Well, come on…I’m not suggesting that there couldn’t be a couple of parts in there somewhere that say Made in China, or Japan, or Thailand for that matter.   But it’s still OURS.

By this time however, the active part of Endeavor’s space travels are in the history books.  Now all that remained was for us to bring our baby back home to the California Science Center where it will properly take its place as one of American’s great achievement.

So what did we do?

Well, first we had to get the Endeavor back to Southern California where it was largely built.   We did that in fine style by mounting the 122 feet long and 78 feet wide shuttle that stand five stories tall at the tail, onto the back of a modified Boeing 747.  Ingenious. America!

Okay.  so the Endeavor is now here at the LAX, but it needs to get home from the airport, and, as most Angelinos will tell you, “That ain’t no easy ride.”  Not even for people.

So we did what we do best.  We planned a parade – a parade that involved cutting down several hundred trees, shutting down small businesses, and angering a lot of people whose power supplies were temporarily interrupted when lines had to be cut to accommodate the height of the shuttle.

But we did it.  We delivered the Endeavor – late but happy to be home I‘m sure – to the Science Center.

But wait!

Between the Endeavor and the Science Center there was one last little problem.  The Manchester Avenue Overpass!  The Endeavor and its high-tech ride were too heavy for the overpass, and so the load had to be lightened.  Which meant pulling the Endeavor across that 100-yard expanse.

But this is America, and we know how to plan a dramatic finish.

As the world watched and waited, crews unhooked the Endeavor from its transporter.  Television cameras swung into frantic action to cover the last, triumphant moments.  Finally the crewmen stood back and the Endeavor could be seen across the world as it was pulled slowly, but proudly, across that overpass by….

A TOYOTA!

Now, call me crazy, but in this All-American moment, couldn’t we have used an AMERICAN car to bring the baby home?  A Ford?  A Chevy?  A combination if neither would suffice?

Apparently not.

(If my mother hadn’t taught me that “A lady never uses vulgarity to     achieve a point,” this would have been a much longer rant.  I’m really……pisXXX…perturbed)

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A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY to writing this, my first post.

I turned on my television and watched as a detective solved a murder.

It was fascinating.

You may have heard of this detective.  His name is Nick Charles, AKA The Thin Man, who, with the help of his bungling but smarter-than-you-gave-her-credit-for wife, Nora, solves the crime without breaking a sweat or putting down his drink.

He didn’t have any tools of the trade except for a flashlight which he had to explain to Nora, and a gun, which he never fired except by amusing accident.

The movie was made in 1934.  I was 10.

I thought William Powell who brought the character to screen life, was, without a doubt, the most sophisticated man in the world.  I also thought I noticed a marked resemblance between Nora and me.  As I watched the film play out this time, I realize I was wrong.

However, the important knowledge I gained from watching that film, was how much harder we had to work back then  to accomplish things people do so easily today.

Take, for example, the simple act of calling the police. One could not just reach into his or her pocket and pull out a cell phone and hit the number one on speed dial.  No, One had to find the yellow pages and look up the number of the local police station and dial each number carefully on the rotary display.   Then one waited, impatiently, while the dial made the return trip.

Believe it or not, the hard-pressed detective couldn’t activate an app to find the suspect’s car parked in front of a supposedly deserted rail yard full of (also supposedly) empty, rusted cargo containers.  He didn’t even have heat-seeking equipment to help narrow down the possibilities.

And don’t even get me started on the role of the dogs. Today’s canines can sniff out and identify more drugs than the average college student.  And they are trained killers.  These dogs are ready to take a big bite out of the bad guys, should they even consider attacking our hero detective. Nick, on the other hand,  had Asta – an adorable pet whose greatest talent when faced with danger, was the ability to find the safest place to cower.

So, then – who did Nickie rely on?

HIMSELF!

All he had was his brain, which was more than a match for any killer.
Nick wasn’t introspective.  He had no doubts about his – well, his anything.  He knew he was good         .  He wasn’t secretly indulging in heavy duty drugs, or hiding a past that could cause the world to blow itself up.

No, Nick was a simple man.  What you saw was what you got.  Smart.  Sophisticated.  And slighty drunk.  He wore a tux a lot and it was never mussed.  Not even on the rare occasion when he had to do something physical.

The real world didn’t have much to do with Niick and Nora. But there was a lot to be learned from them.  They had manners, They were loyal to their friends.  They were kind to a fault.  And they never lost track of the idea that, if you wanted something done well, you did it yourself.

At least, that’s the way it played out in 1934.

The introduction is to me.  I am Elizabeth Ruth Regina Steck Bonaduce.  But you can call me Betty.

My background is in show business.  My father, Jack Steck, was an early showman.  Meaning he worked in vaudeville, starting out as an adagio dancer. That career ended earlier than he’d planned when he tossed his partner into the air and failed to catch her.

Nothing daunted, he managed to reboot and ended his show business life some 65 years later as Program Director of WFIL-TV in Philadelphia.

It was in this capacity that I was invited to join him in my first  professional job since graduating from Temple University with a degree in communication.  Unfortunately, at the time, communicating earned me a Bachelor of Science degree or a B.S.  Which, while literally true was not much appreciated.

Since television was such a new idea then, and no one knew for sure if it would ever catch on, there wasn’t a whole lot of money to spend on things like on screen talent.  Or writers.

I was right there and I would have happily paid them to let me write.  So they did.  I think I was called a volunteer!

I met and married another writer, Joe Bonaduce and together we wrote for some the greatest sitcoms ever seen.

Then there were my biggest productions, four more Bonaduces to enrich the world.  And they did!

And that brings us to a Blog. 

Every writer needs readers and a Blog seems like the answer to a prayer.  I get to write.  You get to read.  Then you get to write back at me and I get to…well, you know.

So let’s get started.  I go first because it’s MY Blog.