Originally posted December 1st, 2004
By Michael Konik
On Thanksgiving Day most of us will eat too much. Many will watch football games. Some will retrieve playing cards from the closet, or a worn mah jong table. If we’re lucky we’ll be among friends and family, basking in the comforting warmth of people who know us well and love us anyway.
Few of us, though, will use the day off from work and routine to reflect on our bountiful gifts. Ours is a culture whose commerce is driven by doubt, by the niggling suspicion that we don’t have enough — that there’s always something more or better to acquire. When you’re constantly seeking caulking to plug the lacunae in your life, you don’t notice the goodness of the roof over your head, only the pockmarks in the walls.
Given the brutality and sorrow extant in the world, the hunger and suffering, the pain and . . . → Read More: Thankful
Originally posted October 26th, 2004
By Michael Konik
Last night, while most of us slept, the most cleverly marketed movie in recent history opened on thousands of screens across America. Before a single megaplex presented Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ,” the film inspired more editorializing, hand wringing, righteous anger, righteous pride, and cocktail party theorizing than every other work of creative fiction composed in the prior year combined.
By that measure, it’s a spectacular success.
I greatly admire the film’s director, the former star of “Air America” and “Lethal Weapon 3.” He had the courage of his convictions to self-finance a film that no one in their right mind would make. He also found a way to make people pay attention to a historical viewpoint most commonly held by AM radio cranks and paranoid-schizophrenic taxi drivers. Mel Gibson used his fame in the service of something he strongly believes in. Celebrities regularly redeem their faux credibility at the . . . → Read More: Mel Gibson’s Christ Porno
Originally posted October 14th, 2004
By Michael Konik
I have a very smart friend, an American, who never votes. He excuses his laziness with an intricate, self-negating argument that equates voting with an endorsement of a broken and fraudulent process. Like many citizens of this great country, my friend hasn’t traveled very much, and never to a place we would call a “third-world” nation, where the liberties we take for granted — like free speech, due process, and complete suffrage — are devoutly longed for dreams, the spoils of far more fortunate societies.
What non-voters don’t recognize, it seems, is the beautiful symbolism of casting a vote in a free election. One person, one vote: The pauper and the millionaire, no matter their usual differences, are worth exactly the same at the ballot box. Color, religion, sex, class — all that typically divides us becomes irrelevant at the polling place. Your vote is worth the same as mine, . . . → Read More: The Privilege, the Honor, the Responsibility
Originally posted October 8th, 2004
By Michael Konik
Not long ago a couple of friends invited me to watch a concert DVD of one of their favorite performers, a woman named Beyonce Knowles. One of my friends, a musician, said that although most fans admire Ms. Knowles for her pretty face, powerful singing voice, and shapely ass, the really impressive thing about her is that she composes most of her own material. (And she dances, too.)
It was easy for me to notice the pretty face, powerful singing voice, and shapely ass. What was less obvious to my benighted sensibilities was the accomplishment in Beyonce’s compositions. The lyrics were what one might expect from a semi-literate elementary school student. Most of them consisted of a banal phrase (“I wanna get with [pronounced: "witch"] you”) repeated ad nauseam. They were largely unintelligible. And they didn’t scan. The music that accompanied these modernist poems was similarly repetitious, thumpingly insistent, and mostly . . . → Read More: Mistaking Commercial Popularity With Achievement
Originally posted October 1st, 2004
By Michael Konik
AxD – P = M (C+F)
Where “A” represents apathy, “D” represents dismay, and “P” represents powerlessness. And “M” represents misery, “C” represents contentment, and “F” represents fulfillment. Thus, our formula expresses the ability of one force — the dismayed and apathetic individual with a perceived lack of power — to inflict misery upon another force — the contented and fulfilled individual — in amounts roughly proportional to the first individual’s sense of uselessness.
Q.E.D.
Everyone wants to leave his mark on the world. Some do it with art, some with technological innovations; some do it by leaving children behind, some by splashing the world with graffiti. Those who feel that their life is largely unimportant and forgettable — usually people in unskilled jobs that require waiting upon people with higher skilled jobs — tend to express their existential angst by having an effect (almost always detrimental) on the more . . . → Read More: The Magic Formula
Originally posted September 28th, 2004
By Michael Konik
The vast majority of books about gambling hold out the faint (and mostly spurious) promise that they’ll help you somehow gamble better. Or smarter. Or longer. They suggest, usually erroneously, that they contain some sort of heretofore unexpressed secret about beating unbeatable games. These books may be safely ignored, unless you’re a hopeless degenerate who feels infinitesimally better about your compulsion after having been reassured by a charlatan author that you’re doing the best you can.
The gambling books I’m interested in — and there are woefully few — tell me about real human beings, geniuses and fools alike, taking on an intractable opponent. I’m interested in gambling books that show me how gamblers, good and bad (but especially talented ones), think and feel about game problems. Books like Gambling Wizards, by Richard Munchkin and Big Deal, by Anthony Holden, contain genuine enlightenment. And some, like Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town, . . . → Read More: Gambling Book Worth Reading
Originally posted September 20th, 2004
By Michael Konik
Except for suicidal people, those desperate souls who wish for nothing more than oblivion, none of us wants to die.
Why?
Many religions teach us that there is a “better place” awaiting us when we depart this earthly plane. Whether it’s heaven, nirvana, or some parallel universe where Louis Armstrong provides the soundtrack and ice cream doesn’t make you fat, many of us look forward to an Elysium in which all our mundane fears and woes melt away in the mist. That sure beats a world where cruelty, malice, and astonishing avarice are the norms.
Yet how many of us are rushing headlong to get there? I mean, beside Islamic terrorists with visions of attendant virgins dancing in their heads?
Dying, some say, is the beginning of a new journey. If you subscribe to the concept of reincarnation, death on earth represents the commencement of a new life, albeit possibly . . . → Read More: The Bad Thing About Dying
Originally posted September 17th, 2004
By Michael Konik
Not long ago I had supper with a lovely couple, a sweet husband and wife of obvious intelligence and clarity of mind. One of their favorite pastimes, they remarked, was going to Las Vegas for quick one or two-day trips during which they assiduously avoided the showrooms, much-lauded restaurants, and anything else that might take them away from the true object of their affection, the casino.
People who know I’ve written several books about gambling seem particularly keen to share with me their best tale of risk-and-reward, and most of them involve unlikely success. Almost everyone seems to know a “system” for beating one game or another, and if they don’t employ it personally, they know someone who does, with astonishing results. This couple was no different. They entertained the dinner table with a detailed narrative about how they had won $500 at keno.
Originally posted September 16th, 2004
By Michael Konik
The other day an older friend of mine was telling me about a trend he had noticed among his acquaintances nearing the age of 60. “They all seem to be increasingly obsessed with things,” my pal noticed. “The older they get, the more money they have, the more stuff they want.”
He went on to recount a rather unappetizing story of a buddy who had spent more than $100,000 on a Mercedes-Benz only to discover after three days of ownership that the wheels the factory had provided were not to his satisfaction. He enlisted my friend to go on a shopping spree with him, to a wheel specialist in Beverly Hills, where chrome accoutrements line the walls of a palatial showroom. The car buyer found some rims he could live with and plunked down $6,000. Each.
“He spent twenty-four thousand dollars on wheels!” my friend recalled, helpfully doing the math for . . . → Read More: The Most Toys
Originally posted September 1st, 2004
By Michael Konik
My father Eugene Konik died yesterday, August 25th at 3PM, of congestive heart failure.
Family surrounded him at his hospital bed, and we held his hands and cradled his head as he passed on. If any death can be said to be beautiful, my dad’s was. His heart gradually stopped beating and his breath slowed gracefully; his face was utterly serene; and though he was unconscious, the sounds of loving voices and reassuring affirmations filled his ears. Until his last day, my father fought death with a resolve and mental strength that confounded the limitations of his physical maladies, but when it was time to go he didn’t struggle or suffer. My father died in peace.
I will miss him.
Eugene Konik was born in Chicago, Illinois, the first child of Polish immigrants. World War II raged during his childhood, and the Korean War occupied his early adult . . . → Read More: Eugene Konik, 1936-2004
News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100.
The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend to happen with alarming regularity. An entire building collapsed there not long ago, killing more than 1,000. It’s a delicate balance, isn’t it? Between protecting…
Were you aware that bottled water is “bad for the environment,” “bad for public water sources,” and “bad for your wallet”?
Neither were we! It’s pretty funny to think of something so obviously good – so amazing, when you think about it – as inherently evil, or something. Bottled water…
The commonly understood reason why terrorists wish to kill and maim Americans is because they hate our freedoms. That’s what’s behind all the civilian violence: they hate our freedoms. You can go ahead and enumerate all the freedoms the terrorists hate, but it doesn’t really matter which ones –freedom to…
The whole world is worried about North Korea. We’re not. We think locally. The area around which we can walk or ride our bike is our concern. We’re civic-minded that way.
Hollywood Boulevard is nearby. We walk on its sidewalks almost every day, often to access the subway, which serves…
We’ll never win a popularity contest, that’s for certain. We’re OK with that. To us, it’s more important to do what’s right than to be liked and admired and affirmed. That’s why we feel comfortable sticking up for society’s downtrodden, the friendless, powerless folks who bear the daily aspersions and…
Certain simple ideas have the power to transform humanity (for the better). Creating an organic community garden is one of those life-changing concepts. The forward-thinking nonprofit, EnrichLA, builds gardens at schools, using students, parents, and community volunteers to construct irrigated planting beds, trees, flowers, and vegetables. In the tradition of Habitat for Humanity, it all happens [...]
