The Game of Basketball When There Were No Multi-year Contracts or Slam Dunks.

Our 1913 basketball squad:

Winslow Cooper had a swell two-handed set shot. Unfortunately, he telegraphed it by grimacing slightly which allowed his defender to smash the ball back into his face which caused an even more profound grimace.

Mike “Cheetah” Andrews was only a marginally good player but oh my, the girls were sweet on him.

Belden Lowery the Third owed his spot on the team to the good graces (he bought the uniforms) of Belden Lowery Jr.

Casey Michalski was too dreamy as a rule but if the opposing players made even the mildest comment about his mother  he could literally rip the ball away from a circus strongman.

Svee Svenningson was kind, honest, hard working and generous to a fault.  He was, of course, despised by the rest of team.

Palmer Posivak was the Sixth Man before that concept had been invented.  At the time it was known as the guy who got in “if somebody broke their leg”.  His favorite part of basketball was snapping towels in the locker room.

The Good-bye Scene Before The Rewrite Filled It with a Bunch of Idealistic B-movie Dialog.

Note: This photo would also be an excellent page in that classic movie stills book — “Who Farted?”.

“So long, Johnny. Thanks for knocking over that gas station so my Ma could get that operation.  But you should have asked first. I could have borrowed the dough from my credit union.”

“Listen, Johnny I know you want me to wait for you but let’s face it you’re looking at fifty large to life.  And that’s with time off for good behavior.  We both know what a hot head you are.  You’re taking the ten count for certain sure.”

“Even if you got out early it’s not like you got some high paying job waiting for you. Sure, I love you now, Johnny but I bet by Christmas I’ll hardly even think about you.  Okay, I wasn’t going to tell you this but I got a date tonight.  Sorry.  Oh, I’ve decided I am going to testify against you.  Damn it, just blame it on my dumb old Catholic school training… Sure, I’m going to kiss you… wait, scratch that I remember I just reapplied my lipstick.”

The Never Dull Enough Life of Bill Steinkellner: Episode 58 – The Emergency Room

The first time I  went to the E.R. I was hit by a car (that never stopped)  crossing Melrose Ave going to the Groundling Theater. I learned that they take the worst cases first.  This makes sense but it really means that you are stuck behind a thin curtain listening to some stranger moan about his gunshot wound all night long.

Went for stitches when I caught an elbow while positioning myself for a rebound.  I got cut below the eyebrow so I’m lucky it wasn’t sight threatening.

Found out I had a broken wrist (hoops related, again) that I had  thought was just a bad sprain.  The ER doc rushed around and nearly slipped and broke something himself. Good thing he caught himself.  I could have been forgotten there forever.

Ended up there on New Year’s Day when our cat, Mo launched himself off the back of my hand when I tried to move him.  I couldn’t stop the bleeding. I was in the middle of moving him off the dining room table so I could work on my jig-saw puzzle so it makes a good story.

A guy I was guarding (basketball, naturally) picked up his head really fast and accidentally head butted me.  They decided not to put stitches in so I ended up going back (twice) to get it cauterized because the weird granular lip tissue grew through the wound.  I can still feel the scar tissue inside my lip with my tongue.

Went to one in Solvang because my toe hurt so bad that I thought it might be infected.  Nope, my shoes were just too tight. Prescription: sandals.

Brazil Gold: The Musical

It’s 1939 and young Pele Verde is totally oblivious to the World War raging on the other side of the world.  All wants is the hand of his beloved Chinchia in marriage.  But he knows that that can not be since he is but a poor cobbler in a shoeless village.  So, he must leave the little seaside village of Branco.  As he starts on his journey to seek his fortune he sings the sweet I Will No More See the Sun Disappear into the Sea.

Deciding that the only sure way for the unskilled to come up with  a fortune he declares that he will find gold, somehow.  His family blocks his way. He rebuffs their entreaties with the determined (and amazingly educational) The Primary Deposits of Brazilian Gold Remain for the Most Part Untouched.

Pele’ contracts jungle fever the first day out. As he zig-zags (DANCE SEQUENCE) through great swatches of country side he sings the hypnotic Aracariguama, Congonhas, Itapecerica, or Curitiba, It All Looks Greek to Me.

Stumbling upon the Caete’ Mine In Minas Gerais he secures a job when he patches the foreman’s boot. They sing the spritely native based duet,  A Lucky Patch O’ Leather. 

Pele’s youthful ambition inspires the whole work crew.  Singlehandedly his rendition of Four Grams of Gold A Day transforms this ragtag bunch of losers into a gold digging juggernaut.

The future is a shiny gold doubloon until the foreman dies of cyanide poisoning due to the processing of the metal.  As they lower the foreman’s body into the ground Pele’ leads the miners in the haunting All Gold is Fool’s Gold.

Pele’ returns top Branco, a loser, to find that Chinchia has become an international singing star.  Reunited and still in love he becomes her manager and soul mate.  Chinchia sings I Had My Treasure Buried in My Own Backyard, as Pele’ mouths the words and the opening credits of BRAZIL GOLD is projected over the golden couple.

 

Johnny Steinkellner: A Kid in ’50s America.

Here’s Johnny.  The quintessential 50’s kid.  Around five years old when the 50’s started and a hard working teen-ager when JFK turned them into the New Frontier.  He was the marble shootin’ champeen o’ the neighborhood and had two shopping bags full of marbles to prove it.  In this picture he is sporting a crew cut that must be carrying a pound of butch wax on it. So, of course his best friend was a guy named, Butchie.

He was the baby of our family until he was already in school but then guess who came along to usurp his royal highness’s role?  Yep.  Being king is nice but being the baby is sweet.

In spite of my rude arrival, he was always on my side.  One Christmas, I ate some candy that was in these little glass tubes that were decorating the tree.  He took the rap until enormous guilt (constantly tweaked by Catholic schooling) exploded in my brain and I tearfully confessed. If I had gotten away with it, Johnny might be on death row on my behalf today.

Once, when I was six, I was playing alone in the park with my balsa wood airplane when two kids (Marty and Mickey Smith who later in the Disney movie tradition would become good friends of mine) started hassling me.  Out of nowhere a sort of manly voice says “What’s going on here?”  My hero — eighth grader, Johnny.

He got me my first job as the assistant office boy (he was the head one).  The Lebhar-Friedman office was a dead wringer for Mad Men Chicago style.  Johnny really should have clued me in on the similar shenanigans that were alleged to be going on between  the secretaries and the salesmen.  At fifteen I had crushes on half of the secretaries. Later, when somebody wised me up,  it broke my heart.

He was a strong kid in a big shouldered city. A tireless hustler.  The hardest worker since Sisyphus.  And a  helluva big brother. Today’s his birthday.  Happy birthday, Johnny!

Pretty Much All You Need to Know about Theater in The Golden State

Pictured here the first theater in California built some 164 years ago.  The following events anecdotally occurred there for the first time.

The first putting on make-up with a trowel  to turn an adolescent  into an old codger.

The first forty-five minute explanation of the character’s life all the way back from her golden wedding anniversary to the moment she was conceived on a rainy night in the back of a pick-up surrounded by melons headed for Boca Raton, just to get the actor to exit stage left.

The first prop requested in the first stage direction of the first play is purchased. It is totally the wrong size but the receipt for it is lost so it can’t be returned. It must be used any way since there is no money in the budget to get the right prop. When the review comes out the reviewer goes on and on about how this stupid prop ruined the play for him.

The first realization that the star’s need to understand the psychological underpinnings of his character is really just a request for more lines that get laughs.

After the first 116 plays are reviewed badly, the theater receives the first good review.  It will later be revealed that the review was written by the theater’s publicist under an assumed name.  It isn’t even a rave.

The first director misconstrues the first playwright’s intentions for the first time.  This will go on with very little let up for the next one hundred and sixty four years.

Why Having a Son is Better Than a Laker Three-peat.

When you have a son you live in the sun

… Shakespeare or Confucius?

No, just wise-cracking me. But heartfelt just the same. It’s a joy to have a son (lucky me, my cup runneth over with two phenomenal daughters, too).

In a relationship with other men you are always in competition. You fight for the girl. Or the right to be CEO. Or higher esteem. Or the ball. Rare is the friendship where you can share in each other’s triumphs or go out of your way to help a pal (maybe in the Midwest or Europe or some other fantasy places but not in California).

With other men, when they gain you lose. They lose and you start worrying about losing something yourself. But with a son, the higher he goes the better. You can point to that escaped helium balloon in the sky and think that’s my boy.

You don’t have to say a thing. Other guys pat you on the back whether he’s wailing on the shofar or getting an audience to sing-a-long with a jingle he made up ten seconds ago.

You get to relive parts of your life with his victories.  And experience some you never had. Of course you also feel the slings and arrows when the bastards try to get him down.  But as Pee-Wee used to say on Broadway, “it’s all good.”

He’s named after my father.  That’s one of the best ideas I ever had.

What’s that Whirring Sound–Oh, It’s Your Mom and Dad.

“It is hard enough being a parent what with the diaper-changing and making sure they don’t run out into the street to get crushed by a truck.”

“I hear what you’re saying, Sid.  So, when you’re a concerned parent who is just trying to do their best for their child who needs all this mishagoss about being a helicopter parent?”

“Preachin’ to the choir, Cookie.”

“The papers, the tube, the internets (sic)-  it’s enough to make you nauseous.”

“These snarky writers with their vicious made-up pop psychology.”

“The attacks are pure ad hominem  or whatever the Greeks used to say.”

“Is it being a helicopter parent if you make sure that their  turkey sandwich with poppy seed bread and honey mustard has the crusts cut off?”

“That is what I would call caring.  Not overly caring or extraordinary effort. Parental love manifested, and that’s all.”

“So you drive them around.  It’s not like you do it every business trip. People get killed in plane crashes.  Why risk it?”

“You help with the down-payment on the house.  Maybe fill a couple of rooms with Ikea.  Big whoop!”

“Maybe you get the goods on the Bad Boss.  Make an anonymous phone call to the Board of Directors that the Bad Boss put his little chippy on his expense account and got her a company car.  Bye-bye, Mr. Bad Boss.  Since when is it a crime to want your  child to be a success?”

“Sid, here comes his car.  He’s back from the office.”

“Slump down, Cookie. You know how mad he gets if he thinks we’re interfering.”

“Us, helicopter parents? Ridiculous…Oh, for the love of Pete, he forgot to wear that scarf I knitted him.”

The Stuff that Women Absolutely Don’t Get About Men.

Men are willing to sweat like pigs and crash into one another willy nilly simply to do something out of the ordinary with a ball.  This is the nature of sport.  Somehow, it’s very important.

Men are proud of that fact that their emotional development was arrested at the age of twelve.

The basic difference between men and apes is that apes don’t need an insecticide to keep bugs off.

Men wouldn’t be so afraid of their feelings if they didn’t seem to get them into trouble on a daily basis.

Men are really quite happy to not give a damn.

Arguments to the contrary very few men look good naked. Hence the invention of clothes and eventually Western Civilization.

Running for the Presidency in 30,012.

“It pains me greatly to have to engage in this war of words and squarks with my opponent. I grieve that he has to stoop to throwing mud at me.  Mud that consists of innuendo, slurs and yes even dwarf star residue.”

HE PAUSES FOR A SIP OF LIQUIFIED METHANE.

“First his quote that he welcomes the voters with’ open arms’. This is a rather heavy handed reference that unlike him I have tentacles as well as arms, though I use both interchangeably. ”

“And let me be crystal clear about my tentacles. They can still hold a baby as securely as any arms. They can point the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy in the direction of prosperity as well as any arms.  And they can be raised in exaltation when our glorious victory comes on November 7th better than any arms.”

HE RAISES HIS TENTACLES IN THE GALAXY SALUTE AS  TWO TRILLION CITIZENS ALMOST PIERCE THE PLAS-MOBIUS-DOME WITH THEIR JOYOUS SHRIEKING.

“Now, as to my opponent’s frivolous charges of a mass murder and genocidal urges visited  by me upon the Glooges of the Eta Carina Nebula. I say first of all that it was youthful exuberance on my part. Besides, the Glooges have never, to my knowledge, been granted Super Special Higher Species status. If so, it was not true at the time of my well intentioned zealousness.”

“Since that time, of course, no one has fought harder to have their entire population officially reevaluated. God willing, I will have the power to reverse that travesty after the election.”

“Finally, as to the salacious insult that I am taking bribes disguised as donations.  Harumph, I reply. I do not take bribes, now. I did not solicit bribes in the past. And if I did, I did not know they were bribes. I thought they were some kind of legal non-bribe thing.  I thank you. God bless you and God bless the Magellanic Cloud- Milky Way Galactic Republic!”