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Too many decisions; Sun City swinging; games of chance

Posted: May 11, 2010 - 5:17pm

Time to check in with the mailbag in another edition of Overtime.


We stirred up the nostalgia with the April 18 "Choose Your Own Adventure" column. It was funny and weirdly reassuring to hear from so many of you. Made me feel like I wasn't such a dork growing up.

You had some very strong feelings about "CYOA" versus the "Time Machine" series.

"You couldn't even put 'Time Machine' in that category. It didn't let you choose anything. The minute you chose wrong, you got eaten by a dinosaur or killed by a gangster," Allie Trebia said. "No, I wanted at least 10 different ways to get to the end. It was like a video game that you could actually play for more than a day. It made me feel like the $5 I spent at the Bookmobile was actually worth it."

Some of you didn't like having so many choices.

"There's only one right way to get down to the Lowcountry: as quickly as possible," said Sharlene Riggles in Sun City. "I didn't like my kids to have too many decisions to make. 'Time Machine' was right about their speed."

Sharlene said she also laid out her son's Dickies until he was 13. My bad, that was my mom.


It's never smart to soil on the folks who pay your salary. That's the message from a bevy of riled-up Sun City readers that wish I would stop talking about the randy romps going on inside the gates.I definitely brought it up in the April 25 column based on the new reality show "Sunset Daze," but the entire column wasn't about the swinging lifestyle going on out there.

I get it. Listen, your grandkids don't want to know about you having relations or frolicking in hot tub parties. I brought it up because readers have brought it up and kept bringing it up.

"There are people out here that aren't sleeping with four different partners," said one Sun City reader. "I've been with the same person for 54 years and I have to say that it's insulting to be grouped in with the rest of these horndogs."

Another senior was more than a little curious and thankful for us bringing up the subject.

"It's been 15 years since I've been with another woman, three years before my wife passed away from cancer. You kind of just forget about it, but really, I was just a shell of myself," said Frank R. "I appreciate you talking about us this way. It's made me realize that I have a little bit of living left to do and I need to stop dwelling on what was, even thought it was pretty darn special. Hey, do you have the address of these swingers?"


It wasn't surprising that the only folks to chime in on my April 21 column on Columbia's sloth-like movement on games of chance."Poker is the devil's game," Rich Libretto said. "Why don't you play some 'Go Fish' with your kid or something? Why do you need to be playing Texas Hold 'Em?"

"We don't need to make home poker games legal," Uri Whipple said. "I have a guy that had a home game down the street. It kept getting bigger and bigger and there was a lot of drinking and rough housing going on."

The 14 folks who wrote or called make me feel like I was morally corrupt for liking poker. I asked each of them if they played Kismet or Yachtzee. Did they play bridge or cribbage or gin rummy?All of them played one of those games. I asked if you play five cents a point or some kind of wager on the guy. Again, all of them did. What's wrong with that?

My point exactly. If there's nothing wrong with doing it on those guys, there's nothing wrong with letting folks have their poker games.


A bunch of you wondered how much I was exaggerating in my May 2 column on teachers' wages.

The first part of my article was all facts, unfortunately. The only thing I was joking about was the list of ideas to save or raise money off of teachers. Some of you thought I was dead serious there.

"I think we should make the teacher pay double if he or she chooses to teach an illegal alien," said one Westbury Park reader. "I love your list of ideas. I think teachers have had it easy with automatic raises and job tenure. Make them start passing evaluations. The bottom 10 percent each school year are let go. You're on to something here, Tim. Keep it up."

The danger in satire is that some folks just don't get it.


You didn't take too kindly to the idea behind the new video game belt loop being handed out by the Cub Scouts that we wrote about Sunday.

"No, let's go with this. Help your parents pick out a new Lazy Boy and then stain it with a chicken wing sauce or a sour cream and onion dig and you win your merit badge for reclining," said George Pake. "What in the world are the Cub Scouts thinking? Is it really worth keeping lazy kids who don't get the whole idea of scouting in the first place?"

"You show me a dude making a career out of being a slacker video game guy and I might think this is a good idea," said e-mailer Tom Perry.

Well, I have to chime in there. Actually, there's a number of professional gamer leagues where the top guys are making up to $500,000 per year. That demo is growing expotentially, as are the chances to make money.

Just last week, 2K Sports announced they had a $1 million winner in their "Pitch a Perfect Game" contest. It was supposedly statistically impossible to do, but a 20-something did it within four days of the game being released to earn the mil.

Think they're nothing but slouchers now? It's no different than day trading if you can find a way to make money doing it.


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