CSotD: It’s Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs Time!
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One of the jobs I got straight out of college was at a pizza/burger place. I started as a pizza maker, but the hand-eye work placing the ingredients was not my thing, so when I had a chance I switched over to the grill and I really enjoyed the challenge of making everything come out at the same time and as ordered. I still enjoy going to a diner where you can watch the short-order cook work his magic.
It made me dream about having my own place, but what put me off was that the sort of familiar neighborhood place I had in mind would require a liquor license if it were going to be profitable. I didn’t want the hassles of people getting rowdy, but I also didn’t want to burden my karma by serving people who ought to stop spending the rent and go home. And that second part was more important than the first part.
Here’s another reason, which came after I’d been a business reporter for a few years: A local bank was robbed at gunpoint, and in the aftermath, I was standing in the parking lot talking to the bank vice-president. I asked if they were bonded and he said yes, and I said, “Well, it could have been worse. They could have taken out a loan to open a restaurant. You’d have never have gotten that back.”
I think it was the only time that day that he laughed.
I will admit I don’t get gambling. I’m perfectly happy to make a bet with a friend over an upcoming game in which our favorite teams are playing each other, but that’s just friendship and not real gambling. And I used to play the office NFL pool, again more as an amusement than a serious undertaking. But the people who do that stuff for real are way beyond what I consider fun.
I don’t even like giving points. If I bet on a team, I want them to win, whether by 20 points or a last minute field goal. Winning and losing are binary; you do one or the other.
Once you start making up fantasy leagues, your loyalty is to individual players, and you may find yourself rooting against the home team because you’re invested in an opposing wide receiver, while, if you start messing with those predictive companies, you don’t give a damn who wins or loses, as long as they fulfill whatever you put money on.
The legalization of sports gambling took it out of the hands of the Mafia guys I used to know and made it the purview of less moral people: Corporations.
I’m sorry that professional sports leagues are catering to this, and doubly so because I don’t want to hear about it on the game-day broadcast. In the olden days, when sports gambling was illegal, we could watch the games as if they were some kind of athletic competition.
So I’m with Tank: Just play the freakin’ game. Let the gamblers bet on how many people wearing hats will pass by a particular street corner between 11 and noon.
I love Roz Chast. Always have, always will. And while Constant Readers are aware of how much I defend self-check, I’m not sure they’re aware of how much I enjoy going to the store and not having to deal with anybody.
There are specific people at the stores that I will approach with questions. Some of them are lowly shelf-stockers, but they’ve been there awhile and they actually know how the place works. I look at some of these familiar characters and hope that the store knows how valuable they are.
But I do so without any expectations.
I was the house-parent and cooked 20 of our 21 meals each week, so I believe the cook should also be the shopper.
But if you aren’t pitching in enough to be able to pick up a few things, you’re not part of the family. I see these guys at the store with their phones in their hands and think, dear god, she might as well have sent the family dog on this errand.
I have no problem with Harry Bliss making a joke about it, because these unconnected guys are the male equivalent of those silly girls who simper and giggle and provide the stereotype to condemn their gender.
We don’t need either of them.
Crabgrass is a lot of fun most days, but its silly events come from a rock-solid backstory, and I’m glad to see its underpinnings laid out for us to see. We think of political cartoons causing change, but I can imagine some kid reading this in their Sunday funnies and having a moment of clarity.
Crabgrass is a strip worth watching.
This is absolutely brilliant: If AI is going to scrape artists’ work to create their own slop garbage, why not mess with their default images?
It would be wonderful if artists were to flood the Internet with idiotic garbage that would then be scraped and put into the system to screw it up completely. There should be a grass-roots movement among artists to make AI useless.
Bravo’s piece reminded me of how dank it seemed in the Expos’ dome as compared to sitting in the sunlight of the stadium in Denver. Same teams — in the good old days, Denver’s farm team fed into the Montreal Expos.
We used to sit by first base at Mile High Stadium to watch Tim Raines steal second. But when we moved from just south of Denver to just south of Montreal, we found ourselves in the nosebleed seats where individual players looked like Lego minifigs.
Once you trade the pleasure of a sunny afternoon for night games under a ceiling, you realize that not much is happening on the field and you’re mostly there for the hot dogs.
Rick Reilly put it brilliantly in a column that will live for the ages.
But I spent a few days at a county fair with Clete Boyer, who had seen it from all sides. He had been a solid player on some memorable teams and he had heart. It matters.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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