fscobe144 | Frank Scoblete

They Fly

The South Shore Audubon Society’s lovable bird walk expert Joe was swabbing some stuff over his face and in and around his ears. Our bird walk was to take place at Jones Beach West End #2. We’d tramp through the underbrush as word had gotten out that migrating birds were in the area in full force. It’s spring; here come the birds!

We were in the parking field, the size of several football fields, waiting for everyone to show up. As Joe was smearing his face, I was engaged in a conversation that would probably make me a couple of enemies in the club. I seem to have that ability.

I had mentioned to some of the people around me that I watched La La Land the night before and that I disliked it. Well, perhaps I used the word awful a number of times and perhaps my wife was about to introduce me as her husband, Archie Bunker. I did not enjoy the poor singing (except for the one strong singer Johnny Legend), the even worse dancing and the story. Two men who loved the movie were crushed and dismayed by my criticism and strongly disagreed. I attributed that to the fact that we rarely see musicals anymore and that people have been hungering for such and La La Land filled the bill. For some reason, the two men didn’t speak to me for the rest of the bird walk. Hmmm.

Then Joe called us to attention. “Folks, there are a lot of mosquitoes in this area. I suggest you use mosquito repellent. They are out there in force.”

Mosquitoes! My sworn enemies! Even as I write this my face is itchy from a half dozen bites; my neck has even more such bites. My wife and I didn’t even think that in this early spring those monsters would be out, flying about, looking for a meal. And I am one of their favorite meals.

I kid you not. If I decide to take the garbage to the curb, I will return inside with a few new bites that swell and set me off a-scratching. My wife has no trouble with mosquito bites. The only upside to this is that my wife has to take out the garbage.

I wanted to find out why some people are the buffet of choice for mosquitoes and why some people are not.

I did a little research on the topic a few years ago. It seems that all humans have various kinds of bacteria on our skin – maybe a hundred different types. But some of us have a kind of bacteria that drives mosquitoes crazy with the munchies. As I stood next to my wife, I never saw one mosquito land on her. I was swamped with the buggers. It seems that I have the buffet bacteria and she doesn’t. Life is so unfair! But then again, there is the taking out of the garbage to balance things out.

We were in the dunes by the ocean, looking for beautiful birds (and we found many) but the flying mosquito monsters were buzzing around even more than the birds. I had a hoodie and I had it zipped to my chin but still my face and neck were there for a feeding. And those monsters were feasting. Every time I smacked my forehead I’d kill a couple, bloody mosquito carcasses were squashed on my fingers.

I learned a valuable lesson over the years; not all creatures that fly are wonderful and beautiful. Some are disgusting. Thus, the mosquito.

[Read Frank Scoblete’s books I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack, I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps and Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! All available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Teachers: The Great and the God-Awful

Most of us probably remember the teachers who were bad or so awful that calling them “bad” would be a compliment. I had a nun in third grade who called me up to the front of the class to cut my tongue out of my mouth for talking. I really thought this was about to happen so I gave it some logical thought, If I just put my tongue out a little she won’t be able to stop me from speaking in the future. It will be just a little snip. I was actually more worried about telling my parents I had been punished. (Oh, by the way, she did not cut any part of my tongue but as a kid I didn’t doubt she meant business.)

I had one biology teacher at St. John’s Prep who never hesitated to throw his heavy textbook at one or another of our student’s head for misbehaving according to his definition. Sometimes he hit them with that ponderous tome, once breaking a kid’s nose. He’d call us “monkeys” and say that “Your parents are monkeys too.”

I was always able to duck in time and was never wounded.

In seventh grade at Our Lady of Angels grammar school, I was taught by a Franciscan Brother Lucian, a red-faced, six-foot five mega-monster who would bring a misbehaving kid to the front of the class and wallop him. He did this in a unique way, holding one hand against the student’s check and walloping the other side of the kid’s face with his other massive hand. No one wanted to get hit by Brother Lucian. It was devastating and such walloping even made some of the tough kids cry.

He’d also fake a slap and if the kid flinched, “Well now sonny, you get two slaps for flinching.” The side of the face that was slapped usually had a big, red imprint of Lucian’s hand on it. That imprint would last almost all day.

He once brought me up to the front of the room and I was thinking quickly about what I could have done to merit this guy’s animosity. He laughed at me when I was standing trembling before him; he was looking down his high body at the small kid before him. “You did nothing wrong except fake me out in the basketball game last night.” He laughed. “Don’t do that again Scoblete. Now go sit down.”

Brother Lucian coached our seventh-grade basketball team. I was on that team but I never got to play. I just sat on the bench. I didn’t know what the hell that guy had against me but he evidently had something. I was the best player on the team.

The following year in eighth grade I not only started on a team that went undefeated, even beating Lew Alcindor’s team St. Jude in the LaSalle Christmas Tournament but I dominated every game along with our awesome center Pat Heelan. (Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul Jabbar and became one of the greatest players in NBA history.) That year I received several basketball scholarships to Catholic high schools in New York City. I was one of the best players in the city at that time. [You can read the full story of “The Real Dream Team” in my book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic.]

Fortunately, those abhorrent, angry, abusive teachers I had weren’t the ones to leave an indelible mark on my life. Instead, there were three others who gave me the tools and encouragement to equip me for success. They all taught at Our Lady of Angels grammar school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

In fifth grade I hated my teacher, Sister Patricia Michael of the Sisters of Charity, who seemed to have a real hatred of me too. “Francis, this essay is awful. You make statements you can’t prove. You keep writing this poorly and you’ll work as a garbage man – and be lucky to get that job.”

Every time I handed in something I wrote she would keep me after school to show me where I went wrong. “Francis, no one can be a good writer who doesn’t prove his case to the reader. I don’t want these statements unless you can back them up. You say here that Lincoln made very anti-Negro statements in some of his speeches but you do not quote any line from a speech. Where is your proof?”

And sometimes she would hit my hand with the strap if it looked as if I were daydreaming. She didn’t hit too hard – nothing like Brother Lucian.

In sixth grade I had Franciscan Brother Jonathan. He was a young man but a kind guy who never once hit a student. He was delighted by my writing and told me that “Francis, you will become a professional writer someday. Never give up writing. Just keep practicing.”

He knew a lot about theatre and never stopped praising the performance arts. We actually got to read real plays with real meaning. He would often be told by his superiors not to have his students read “adult” literature. He finally left the brotherhood, married a former nun, and pursued his love of theatre.

My third great teacher was Brother Barnabas, who demanded that I achieve an average of 90 or I would not be allowed to play on the basketball team. In those days you were seated according to your academic performance: the top students in the front of the class and the failures in the back. “You are too smart to be sitting in the back of the class with the idiots. You’d better get those grades up or you will remain a nobody.”

Barnabas was the coach of the eight-grade basketball team and I really wanted to be on that team so I brought my A-game to my academic life.

He also once told me, “Scoblete, you are going to be the guy to guard the best player on the other team. I expect you to shut down these great players. And kid, you are going to be the guy who will take the last shot in a close game and dribble to stall for time.”

I was even one of the three players guarding Lew Alcindor from the front, conveniently stepping on his feet as often as I could get away with. Alcindor was 6’10” at the time! I was 5’7”!

So my three elementary teachers put thoughts in my head. Thanks to Barnabas I was never afraid to put myself on the line. My father also had that philosophy and it stuck.

Jonathan was right, I did become a professional writer. He had seen a talent in me and told me about it. He also got me to love theatre. In 1978 I started my own theatre company with a fellow teacher. We worked the boards for a dozen years. I enjoyed performing before audiences. I considered teaching a performance before an audience – an audience that didn’t pay to get in and some who really didn’t want to be there (toughest audience in the world!).

My family was poor when I was graduating high school. I was lucky that I had a scholarship that paid my St. John’s high school tuition. Would I go to college? No one in my extended family, all of us from working-class parents, had gone to college. If I did, I would be the first.

I didn’t even know what the SAT exam was; just that one of the priests at the high school told me, “Scoblete, you are taking an exam tomorrow. Get a good night’s sleep. Bring a pencil.”

I applied to Ithaca College because it had a special program for 12 students called Triplum where you would major in three subjects, literature, history and philosophy. If I could get into that honors program a scholarship was possible.

My parents had no money, so I had to get a scholarship or go into the navy. I also knew that even if I got a scholarship I’d have to work, maybe full time, to send money home to my parents. But first things first: that scholarship.

On the entrance test you were given a topic and the honors committee would read your essay and let you know if you made the program and whether you’d be one of the three to get a free ride at the college.

I knew that if I didn’t get a scholarship I’d never make it to college. I journeyed to Ithaca, took the test, journeyed back home to Brooklyn and waited. Several days later I received my results. Yes, I had made Triplum and, yes, I did get the scholarship. I would become a college student.

That September I went to college and on the first day of the first Triplum seminar the professor said, “We had a remarkable essay handed in for entrance into the program. It had everything an essay should have; strong statements of opinion and facts to back up those opinions. I was quite impressed by it.”

I looked around the conference table at the members of the seminar. They all looked so intelligent. Which of them had written such a great essay?

“Mr. Frank Scoblete [holy shit!], you should be applauded for such a fine example of writing. You should be proud of yourself and you absolutely deserve the scholarship to our college. Keep up this good work.”

At that time I was so Brooklyn-born, that I used “yous” as the plural of you. I said “terlet” instead of toilet. When I first opened my mouth at the seminars I would get looks and some of the students would snicker at me. It didn’t matter. I was in college on a free ride!

On the winter break I went back to the convent of Our Lady of Angels. I asked to speak to Sister Patricia Michael. She met me in the lobby.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” I started.

“Oh, yes, I do, Francis,” she said.

I then told her how grateful I was that she took the time to teach me how to write a proper essay. I told her about Brother Jonathan liking my writing and then I told her about the scholarship based on writing a single essay and how it was considered an excellent essay.

I then told her that I had done this because of her. She had taken the time to develop my talent. I thanked her.

She cried.

[Read Frank’s book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available on Amazon.com, on Kindle and other electronic media, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Birds of a Feather

When I first took up birding in late September of 2016, I figured two things; that the majority of birders would be nuts or so severely neurotic that they could pass for nuts, and second, that the entire group would be composed of progressive leftists and Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders Democrats.

I got those ideas over the years by knowing nothing about birding or birders, and my first talk with a birder on one of my first South Shore Audubon Society birding walks incorrectly confirmed the progressive nature of the birding population.

I opened my conversation with this woman by relating that my recent trip to Cuba disgusted me by the filth, poverty, and unemployment of the country. Even the ships in the harbor were rusty! [Read https://frankscoblete.com/cuba-triumph-revolution/, October 15, 2017)

She listened to me and then said she and her husband were really impressed by the country and the people on their trip to Cuba. That had to be impossible because every other building was a decaying dump and little had been done to fix the crumbling once-great architecture of Havana. I didn’t argue with her because she was fierce in her belief in Castro’s revolution; a true progressive, she probably cut her teeth on the 1960’s love for the Communist movement.

She didn’t have anything negative to say about the revolution’s golden boy, Che Guevara, the official executioner of the regime. He probably lovingly watched the executions of thousands of people — that is, those he wanted executed. I am guessing good old Che was a hero to her as he is to the government of Cuba.

But I was wrong. The birders in our South Shore Audubon Society aren’t anything like a coherent group. Yes, most are of the left but there are plenty of Trump supporters. In New York City and its environs, the leftist Democrats rule by something like two or three to one over Republicans and conservatives. So I found the many rightists in the society surprising.

Now, many of my own opinions are leftist but I do not share the wide-eyed love of communism — a failed, violent philosophy that destroys societies. [Read the Black Book of Communism.] But I do have affection for some of the Trumpian ideas and I respect plenty of the basic conservative principles. I do not, of course, buy into the right-wing evangelism and anti-science nature of the ultra-right.

Aside from the love (or like) of birds, the members of our society are philosophically diverse but they all basically agree on several issues: protection of the environment, protection of our national parks and protection of the habitat of our feathered friends and other animals. Habitat is a key ingredient in the protection of birds.

The rightists and the leftists agree on these principles and that brings everyone together. They are birds of a feather.

[[Read Frank Scoblete’s Confessions of a Wayward Catholic and The Virgin Kiss. Both available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and other electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

The Resurrection of Jesus

The most important holiday in Christianity concerns the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb; this holiday is now known as Easter. Tales of this miraculous event set Christianity on a path of total religious domination in the Western world.

Christianity is still the largest religion in the whole wide world, even though the fecund followers of Islam are quickly catching up.

Ancient literature is filled with gods and humans who rose from the dead, those humans often becoming immortal. Any study of mythology will find ancient texts littered with the walking dead. Jesus, of course, is worshipped by many Christians and thus his rise from the dead fits both of those ancient patterns—Jesus is both a god and an immortal man.

Christian apologists—experts at defending their beliefs—call the ancient pagan resurrection myths a foreshadowing of Jesus. Those myths are not true but Jesus’s resurrection is true.

Certainly Christmas as practiced by us in the West is considered the celebration of the birth of Christ; yet Easter is the pivotal event in Christianity. If Christians did not believe that Christ rose from the dead there would be no Christians at all.

Christianity was (and is) an adaptable religion and, yes, many of its holidays have been drafted from other sources. There is a good chance that the life of the Roman god Mithras played a singular role in determining the birth date given to Jesus.

Easter Sunday – although pictured as a fun time of rutting bunny rabbits and eggs of various types – deals with a serious issue, a man/god coming back from the dead. One can speculate that bunnies and eggs represent renewed life in the spring and that Christianity adopted and adapted these images for its celebration of the continued life of their resurrected Lord.

The belief of many Christians is that the words and stories in the New Testament are factual, historical events, meaning such tales are absolutely true.

Jesus did in fact resurrect individuals in the Gospel stories, including Jairus’s daughter and Lazarus.

But now I am also looking for an answer from religious folks to this quandary in which I find myself. When Jesus died, hundreds, if not thousands, of people rose from their graves as well. This is clearly stated in the New Testament. (Check out the end of the Gospel of Matthew.) The Roman Empire may have been literally littered with those who had formerly been dead.

So where did all these dead, but now mobile people go? Were they alive as those of you reading this are alive, or were they just the undead? Were there legions of rotted corpses that had dug their respective ways out of the ground and the tombs staggering through ancient Roman cities? In fact, were the dead conscious or just reanimated bodies? Did they re-die in the future? If so, when? If not, where are they now?

I enjoy the ancient myths of the risen gods and humans but the New Testament is giving us some awesome events that modern religious folks believe are true and such folks should therefore have some reasonable answers for what troubles me.

Are these tales true? Did all those dead people come back? If so, what happened to them?

[Enjoy Frank’s book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and other electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Life After Death

What if it were proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was a life after death; that our consciousness definitely survives the Grim Reaper? What if this were proven scientifically, with no need for a mythical belief system as is found in most religions or esoteric philosophies?

In the past there have been supposed scientific studies that purport to show that life after death is real. These studies – each and every one I have read – are flawed, often verging on the level of absolute nonsense. Some people have confused “astral travelling” or “out-of-the-body experiences” with proof that there is a soul and that it survives death. That’s way too much of a jump. I wrote an entire section of my book The Virgin Kiss for my out-of-the-body experiences.

One radio-show host was very upset with me when I told him that my out-of-the-body experiences had nothing to do with an afterlife; that I didn’t know what they had to do with, but proof of a soul they were not.

Although, religious folks are sure of an afterlife, they can offer only individual spiritual experiences which are impossible to subject to rigorous study and testing.

So, let’s imagine a time when science proves life after death. This generates more questions than it does answers.

What impact would such news have on the world?

A recent Netflix movie, The Discovery, takes up this idea. A scientist has proven that life after death exists. The result? Massive numbers of suicides of people wanting to go to the “other side.”

Would such a thing happen?

Would more people become less concerned with their individual lives and participate in more dangerous activities, knowing that they cannot be extinguished by death?

Would there be more or fewer wars?

Would more religious cults spring up and revolve around this scientific proof?

What about our furry friends? Our dogs, cats; how about our reptiles—even disgusting insects? What if science proves their existences beyond death?

So what do you think would happen with proof of a life after death?

[Read Frank Scoblete’s Confessions of a Wayward Catholic and The Virgin Kiss. Both available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and other electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Annoyances

I have become somewhat grumpy as I await my 70^th birthday; in fact, my wife sometimes calls me “grumpy grandpa.”

When I was a teacher I was rarely grumpy, especially with students who would take things to heart if a teacher said grumpy things. “Timmy, you and your whole family should be shot into space without oxygen.” Timmy would never forgive me for saying such a nasty thing even if Timmy and his whole family actually should be shot into space – or just shot.

As many of you know when men get older they produce more estrogen, known as the “woman’s hormone,” and that’s why you tend to see older men cry a lot more than younger men who are filled with testosterone, the male hormone. Maybe grumpiness is the product of the increase of estrogen in my body.

Older women on the other hand start to lose estrogen and increase their levels of testosterone. They become more manlike in their behavior and men become more womanlike. So when a woman becomes an “old battleax,” her bite is just as bad as her bark. And many older women do bark a lot.

Okay, yes, I am right now in my grumpy grandpa mood because I have been thinking about a two things that annoy me. These are definitely on a par with structuring an affordable health care plan for all American citizens, stopping terrorists and creating lasting peace in the Middle East.

I hate it when waiters refill your coffee into the cup from which you are drinking. Then the careful work you put in trying to make the coffee palatable is now ruined. What do you do with all this new coffee? Add how much more sugar? Add how much more cream?

Second, I hate to see diners gobbling down bread before their meals. I freely admit that my staggering weight gain is due to an overactive fork. I enjoy the gourmet experience; just look at me now. I used to be a leading man when I was an actor; I was slim, strong, well-built but now I would have to audition for roles such as Jumbo the Elephant.

If you shove loaves of bread down your throat before a gourmet meal, you are satisfying your hunger but you are eating cheap stuff when an artist is working his or her butt off in the kitchen to prepare a delicious meal for you. Then the meal –usually a work of art – and the diner can hardly fit most of it in his or her stomach.

My rule, the grumpy grandpa bread rule, says, “Do not eat bread before a meal.” If you are still hungry after the meal then have some bread.

Okay, I had to get those two issues off my chest. When I am not feeling grumpy I promise to work on the real issues that humankind is facing such as wasting sugar by putting it on pancakes.

[Read Frank’s new book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available from Amazon.com, Kindle and electronic media, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

The Three Types of Blackjack Players

There are three types of blackjack players and sub-categories of these three. If you are a self-styled blackjack player using your own unique and probably wrong strategy and you are easily offended, you might not want to read this article. That’s my warning to you.

Blackjack players who are card counters, meaning they can get a small edge over the casino when they play, have certain things they look for. They want deep penetration into the deck, decks or shoe. This allows their count to become stronger as the cards have been played.

These players are not as interested in the rules as they are in the penetration (however, they will probably forgo the 6:5 blackjack games). Penetration is the key to the casino treasury. They would also prefer to play alone or with only a couple of players at the table. Advantage players want to play as many hands as possible. They love fast dealers!

Regular basic strategy players (basic strategy being the computer derived play of every player hand against every dealer up-card) want just the opposite. They want good rules, shallow penetration, a full table and slow dealers. The fewer hands such players play the better for them. Old, arthritic dealers or those dealers who love to talk are the best bets for a basic strategy player.

Card counters and basic strategy players are opposite sides of the blackjack coin; the two never to meet in their long-term expectations.

The third type of player, the category of which goes from stupid to stupider to “oh, my god, he did what?” Such players use their own well-thought-out-seemingly-logical strategy which is totally wrong and based merely on their own limited experiences in the casinos. (“I know what I am doing; I have been playing blackjack for years.” “Sorry, no, you don’t. You split 10s, double on 12, and annoy everyone by giving the wrong advice! And there’s a funky odor coming from you.”)

Players who try to use their psychic powers are long-term losers. Players who assume the dealer always has a 10-card in the hole, even though only about 31 percent of the cards are of 10-value, are long term losers. Players who always insure their hands, even their blackjacks, are long-term losers. Players who split fives…players who won’t hit their 16 against a dealer up-card of seven…players who don’t always split aces and eights – the list goes on forever – they are all losers.

Yes, basic strategy players are losers but they are basically losing a mere one-half percent of their action while our third category folks are losing their shirts.

Blackjack is a great game, for card counters and for basic strategy players, but each must play the particular game their strategies are suited for. And that third category? Sadly, there’s no talking to them.

[Read Frank’s new book I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack! Available from Amazon.com, Kindle and electronic media, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

I Miss Them

Over 25 years ago I took up casino gambling. At the time, I was an actor (and producer and director and teacher) about to perform a great role the dimensions of which baffled me. I was playing a degenerate craps player although I knew nothing about craps; in fact, I knew nothing about casinos or casino gambling. It was an alien world to me; a landscape I had never walked.

Since I had never been in a casino or played craps, I knew I had these great monologues about my great good fortune on a single night at the tables and I had no idea what the words meant. I would be emoting about – what? What did what I was saying mean?

So my co-star and I decided to go to Atlantic City to discover what this play, The Only Game in Town, was all about. My co-star was the Beautiful AP who would several years later become my wife and for 10 years my playing partner in the world of blackjack advantage play. We’ve been together now for three wonderful decades.

We went to the Claridge where I was lucky to learn everything there was to learn about craps and, by extension, casino gambling from the greatest craps player of all time, the Captain. He took me under his wing and I flew through the casinos from that first night for over 25 years. By the way, I also did a fine job in the play once I understood what I was saying.

The Captain had a Crew of 22 high rollers, men and some women, accomplished in life and joyous in gambling. Yes, almost all of them were losers, many were big losers as they were orange chip players (an orange chip is $1,000 and worth a lot more back then than it is now). The Captain had developed certain techniques of play, including rhythmic rolling (today called dice control or dice influence) and the 5-Count, a method for reducing exposure to the house edge.

I’ve written about all of these ideas in my books, the new one being I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps. The Crew? Except for “the Arm” who was the greatest dice controller I ever saw, and Jimmy P. (and later me and Satch), they just didn’t even notice that the Captain’s trinity were way ahead of the house.

There are now only two of us left of that great Captain’s Crew, Satch and me.

I look back at those times with great nostalgia. I fondly remember the Crew. I’ve written about them in my new book. They were a fun group; a boisterous, east coast, New York, Brooklyn, fun group; in short, a whole other world.

None of today’s dice controllers can match the Arm but the best of today’s group is the great Jerry “Stickman” who writes for CasinoCityTimes.com. I enjoy going to the casinos with him. I wish he had known the Captain, the Arm, Jimmy P. and the Crew; he would have fit right in.

I miss them; I do; I miss them all. They shine bright in my memory.

[Frank Scoblete’s new books are I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps and I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack. Both available on Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Teaching Grandchildren through Film

I am a firm believer that film can teach important lessons to kids and that’s why my wife, the Beautiful AP, and I love to show movies to our two grandkids, John is 11 and Danielle is nine.

Let me say first that my wife was an extraordinary teacher and I value her insightful expertise on anything to do with educating kids. I am with due modesty one of the greatest teachers who ever lived. So the two of us know what we’re doing.

We show our grandkids movies we think will educate them in the best of all possible ways.

Take the film Heat starring two of our favorite actresses Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. Even though it was rated a solid “R” our grandkids understood the plot of this movie and seriously loved this flick, as Melissa McCarthy was a boiling comedic swamp of a character that cursed, swore and used all manner of crude language. The sexual innuendos flew fast and furious. The grandkids loved it.

“This is such a funny film,” said Grand AP, my wife.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I agree completely.”

“John,” asked Grand AP. “What do you think of this film?”

“Well, I find that it has great cursing and vile language. It’s everything my father and mother are preventing me from seeing except I watch stuff on the Internet when I am at my friends’ houses,” John opined.

“I think it’s funny. The fat lady is really funny when she curses,” said the nine-year- old.

I could see that this movie was having a profound effect on them.

“Just do me a favor,” I said to them. “Don’t tell your parents what we’re showing you; they might not understand, okay?”

“You got it,” said John laughing at the latest disgusting quip by McCarthy.

“No problem,” said Danielle. “I like ‘R’ rated movies like this one. Our parents won’t let us watch any of these.”

The Beautiful AP and I smiled; our grandkids were learning an important lesson as we babysat them this night. Film can be fun…and educational.

Of course, John has a habit of not being able to keep a secret while Danielle is like a locked box; you have to pry stuff out of her.

As soon as Greg, our son, and Dawn, our daughter-in-law came home, John rushed over to them. “Dad, Mom, Grandpa Scobe and Grand AP showed us an ‘R’ rated movie! It was great.”

“Really?” said Greg looking at me.

“Danielle did you like the movie?” asked Dawn.

Danielle remained mute. (That’s my girl!)

“What movie did they see?” asked Greg.

“A very educational one,” I said.

“Very educational,” said the Beautiful AP.

“With a lot of cursing,” added John.

I wonder why we haven’t gotten many calls to babysit lately.

[Read Frank Scoblete’s book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic. Available from Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Slots vs. Table Games: No Contest!

Slot machines and table games are two very different things – and the casinos know this quite well. Slot machines are the cash cows of casinos, bringing in often more than twice the money as table games.

It is easy to get a good idea of why such a case holds true. If we take a one-dollar slot of the traditional three reels variety, we can speculate how much money this machine will make for the casino. We can then make a comparison with a table game. Obviously this comparison will be a generalization but it will hold.

Let us say that a slot player puts in three dollars per spin every six seconds, meaning 10 spins per minute. That’s $30 per minute. If the house has an edge of 10 percent, the player can expect to lose $3 per minute over time. In an hour that comes to $180. That’s what the player loses and that’s what the casino makes.

Now let us look at a $10 blackjack player. He plays two hands a minute which comes to $20. The house edge is around one-half percent, meaning he loses 50 cents for every $10 wagered. In a minute he loses one dollar. In 60 minutes he loses $60.

We can see that a one-dollar slot player loses three times more money than a $10 blackjack player.

So why would anyone play those slot machines? Well, first of all, not all slots are of the traditional variety. They come in all sorts of arrangements, from videos of movies, cartoons, television shows and outlandish multi-play machines where you can wager a few pennies all the way up to five or more dollars.

Slots offer the opportunity to hit a big one whereas a game such as blackjack would require a long string of good luck – a really long string – to bring in some big bucks. All slots come in with high house edges and can be played quite fast. The more decisions a game has the better it is for the casino. High house edges and fast speeds are the bane of casino players – and slot players know this quite well.

So if you wanted to open a casino, the crowd you’d want to bring in is undoubtedly a slot-playing crowd. If you check many of the newest casinos, they have table games all right but they are mechanized – they are slot machines!

Slots are more economical for casinos too. Not only do they make far more money but they cost far less to buy and/or rent. Slots don’t need salaries, sick leave, medical insurance, and they don’t get into arguments with players. People are far tougher to handle than machines.

In the contest between slot machines and table games, well, it is actually no contest.

[Read Frank Scoblete’s latest books I am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps and I am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack. Both available from Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at book stores.]