…with Gary Moss

Archive for February, 2011

I just hate it when I am derailed and fall off track. I bet that you hate it too. You know, it happens quite often to a lot of people.

For me, losing my ‘train’ of thought, is the way I usually experience ‘falling off track’. I can be sitting somewhere, typing, creating away, when someone calls my name or says something to grab my attention. The interruption can cause a similar result as if someone switched the track in front of a speeding locomotive. I lose it, I don’t set a bookmark in my mind, and fall head over heels off the track. At times, rereading the prior paragraph or thought can help me right myself, back on track. Other times, I just sit and stare blankly into space, feeling frustrated and defeated and at a loss.

On January 23 I was jarred off track. The phone rang. My brother told me that mom was in the hospital and had had a stroke. If you ever got that kind of a call you know how the world goes into ‘slow motion’. My adrenalin kicked into gear and turned my entire attention toward getting from southern California to a hospital in Southfield, Michigan. In an instant the decision was made to get myself on a jet plane: get a ticket, pack (winter gear for the snow and ice), get coverage for my scrabble clubs, change appointments. All that and out the door within a few hours.

I wouldn’t have considered acting any differently.

But, after handling the things that required handling and returning home after 12 days, my world at home had gone on without me and I found myself off track.

The longer one is off track, the more difficult it is to catch up and regain momentum. My blogs and my Letter Man episodes took the biggest hits. That’s not the end of the world . . . but it just is. There are only so many hours in a day, in a week, in a month. We set new priorities and take a step at a time.

After 9-11 there was total devastation at ‘ground zero’. Nothing will ever be the same again, but thousands of people continue to take one step at a time to recover their lives and rebuild ground zero.

Scrabble players know a lot about falling off the track. We have all started study regimens time and again, only to be distracted when life circumstances called. At those times we stopped our study. Sometimes we resumed after a day or two. Other times we didn’t return for weeks. Scrabble players, who have played long enough, have all experienced the euphoria of a WIN STREAK. During a win streak I have felt superior to my opponents; perfect combinations of tiles appeared on my racks, turn after turn; scoring bingos and other high scoring plays was effortless. And then . . . Oooops, I fell off the track; every rack had 5 vowels or 6 consonants. I couldn’t win a game if my life depended upon it. I felt like a total dummy. What is that?

Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and start all over again. CLICK

Up until about 2 years ago my Blogs were appearing under the title, Gary’s Slant of Things. It was at that time when I was approached by Chris Caesar, of The OC Register, who persuaded me to change my format and publish my Blogs here on WORDPRESS. As a result, today I offer up BLOG #500 in this format.

I can’t tell you the exact number of total blogs I have written because while using my former format I experienced two computer crashes when I was not backed up sufficiently and lost hundreds of blogs. (I estimate that I have written more than 1200 blogs to date.) I can tell you that from the very beginning of writing blogs on or about April, 2002, I have been like Forest Gump running back and forth from coast to coast. And I imagine at some point, just like Gump, I will simply stop running one day. But today is not that day.

In my current format, the titles of each of my blogs begins with SCRABBLE:. That’s because during this chapter of my life my whole life revolves around the game of scrabble. I actually see life as a game, with many of the same components of the game of scrabble: rules, design, interactions, strategies, knowledge, systems of learning, politics, good guys, bad guys, belief systems, haves and have nots, and everything else too. This year, I even got a wife as a result of a guy in a scrabble T-shirt being in the right place at the right time.

I would have never imagined in 2002 that I had enough things to say in order to sustain a daily blog for a month, let alone this amount of time.

Even in the 2 years on WORDPRESS, when I realise the fact that I have cranked out 500 blogs, I find this to be mind boggling. And yet, once I find my quiet place and sit down at my computer, a stream of thoughts just seems to flow through and out of my fingers. Just glance to the left at the Archives, listed month by month, for a refresher on some of the best from the past.

Thank you for reading and thanks for your comments. Thank you to Bruegger’s on Aliso Creek Drive in ALiso Viejo for being one of my writing places away from home. Thank you to Barnes & Noble in Aliso Viejo for the use of their free WiFi and cafe, another one of my unofficial offices. I find that the stir of people around me as I write is a help instead of a hinderance. Sometimes a scene or an outfit or a voice in the crowd produces an idea for me and leads me to the subject of my blog.

Wearing a scrabble T-shirt, while writing, has been an invitation of sorts for people to stop and chat with me about scrabble. As a result I have met many curious and interesting folks. Some have even taken the next step and have joined in at CLUB #350.

Blogging online takes me far away from southern California to places where I may never visit in person. I find it exciting to get a comment from a serviceman in Kuwait, a lonely housewife in Perth, Australia, or a scrabble director in Montana. In just the last 4 months this blog has generated 5,775 comments.

Competitive scrabble players love statistics and benchmarks. I record and update the best of CLUB #350 after almost every club session. CLICK HERE to see our statistical Honor Roll for 2010.

Benchmarks and Milestones are things we achieve but they are also goals that we aim for. This might be a perfect time for you to recognize your personal milestones and then raise the bar for yourself for 2011.
Number of Games Played
Number of Bingos Played in a single game
Number of Bingos Played in a single 4 game session
Number of Bingos Played in a month
Number of Bingos Played in a year
Highest Score in 2011
Lowest Winning Score in 2011
Number of Double/Doubles
Number of Triple/Triples
Number of words learned
Number of minutes of study each week

I’m taking a big chance here by positioning myself as ‘The Champ’. The truth is, yes, I have won several tournaments and been the champion on a number of occasions: Gatlinburg, TN. (Mar ’89); Los Angeles (May ’97); Brantford, Ontario, Canada (Nov. ’90); and more CLICK HERE.

But there was one time when I was the butt of a lot of controversy around the title of ‘champion’ due to no fault of my own.

It was 1989 and the National Tournament was held in New York City. I was still in my beginning years as a scrabble competitor. Going into the tournament, my rating was 1284. There were 72 players in my division and I was ranked 25th. It was my first Nationals. I was quite nervous, and yet I was playing relatively well. When the last game ended, I discovered that I had won a Ca$h Pri$e of $350. I had finished with the best record among players with starting ratings of less that 1400. Amazing!

Upon returning home I used my good fortune to gain attention for myself and possibly draw people out to my new, fledgling scrabble club. I called several local newspapers and shared my story.

Well, if you’ve ever been interviewed by a reporter, you may know how so many reporters try to embellish the news in order to make a big splash and gain notoriety.

Instead of printing that I had finished first among players with ratings under 1400, the reporter simply reported that I had finished 1st.

All hell broke loose. UPI picked up the story and misinformation was being unleashed. The real champion, Peter Morris, and his friends heard the reports and became angry with me.

For the next year or more I endured razzing from the EXPERTS who laughingly called me ‘CHAMP’.

I have since gone on to actually win a number of local and regional championships.

Since real competitors all want an opportunity to beat a CHAMP, I have created a number of events over the years taking on all challengers at the scrabble board.

Next Saturday, February 19th, I will once again invite challengers to BEAT THE CHAMP. The event will be held at BORDERS Bookstore, 3333 Bear Street, Costa Mesa, CA. Challengers who donate $10 or More to a charity of their choosing will be given the opportunity to take me on, at the scrabble board, using the rules and official word lists of NASPA.

10:00 AM – 3:00 PM (Schedule a time for your challenge: 949.510-1673)

All challengers shall receive a certificate, authenticating their challenge. Anyone who beats the champ will win free admission to a month of play at Club #350. The challenger with the highest game score during the challenges shall receive a special gift from BORDERS. In the event that a huge number of challengers, other local champions will be the meat to beat.

The sun shone brightly and the cool morning temperature was a crisp 50 degrees as I headed south on the 5 Freeway toward San Clemente. I was happy to be going to the 13th Anniversary Bash of The Tallulah Blankheads scrabble club, hosted by charter member, Gretchen Cowan.

Gretchen added some spice to the day, inventing a side game revolving around the number of ‘NO BS BINGOS’ played. A no BS BINGO is a play made using all seven of the tiles from your rack when neither an ‘S’ nor a ‘BLANK’ is part of the play. (ex: denture)

Today the Blankheads are scheduled to play a total of 8 rounds. When we first began in 1998 each session included 10 rounds.

Some time around midday we take a break and enjoy a Pot Luck Lunch. All day long the sharing table is piled with goodies to insure no player suffers from malnutrition.

Today’s players’ list is made up of James Cassidy, *Gretchen Cowan, Donna Dwaileebe, Lawren Freebody, Margie Gordon, *Lynn Gunn, Albert Hahn, Scott Hawkins, *Bill Lapinski, *Gary Moss, *Pat Reed, *Najat Reikes, Paul Rickhoff, Barbara Ring, *Tom Titus, Tina Udelson, and *Pat Yarnell. Co founders, Robert Peters and Paul Trachtenberg dropped in for lunch and brought a Tallulah Blankheads Scrapbook with an assortment of photos and articles that awoke old memories.

Click to see A FEW PICTURES

The overall winner today was Lawren Freebody: 7/1 +781; 2nd Gary Moss: 7/1 +245
The team with the most NO B/S Bingos was Albert Hahn & Tina Udelson with 6
The total number of NO B/S Bingos during the entire day was ’23′.
(Two people guessed the exact number: Gretchen Cowan & Pat Reed)
The total number of Bingos played today was 145
The most unique bingo played today was ‘quantong’ for 110 points by Najat Reikes.
Other bingo over 100 points: ‘clefting’-104pts. Pat Yarnell; ‘sixties’-101pts. Lawren Freebody

And they all lived happily ever after and the next two Blankheads events were announced.
March 19 the Blankheads will be hosted by Gary Moss at Laguna Woods Village and on April 9, Gretchen Cowan will host the group again.

I consider myself to be a ‘THINKER’. But the truth is, I’m a ‘thinker’ in the same way my ‘KOSHER’ mother would permit herself to eat pepperoni pizza on paper plates (In her mind, pepperoni WAS NOT pork . . . it was pepperoni.)

I’m probably a lot like you. I think about only the things I choose to think about. I ignore the rest because: ‘who’s got the time?’; ‘does it really matter anyway?’; ‘it’s an idea or concept expounded by some group that I disrespect’.

I recently spent some time with my brother Joel. I have always admired his unquenchable thirst for reading and writing. I consider Joel to be a deep thinker who is fearless when it comes to telling it like it is. He is a lot like Howard Beale in NETWORK: “I’m As Mad As Hell And I’m Not Going To Take This Anymore!” Joel shares his thoughts weekly in his own BLOG. Joel has become a vegetarian as a result of reading a book. I just had to read it for myself to understand the power of the information that drove him to make that change.

‘EATING ANIMALS‘ by Jonathan Safran Foer

I am not a vegetarian. I can’t imagine turning my back on a filet mignon, a breaded veal cutlet, or Lobster Larry. But then, I have never given any thought to seriously alter my eating habits. With regard to eating, I follow the crowd. Growing up in a ‘kosher’ home, I developed a taste for ‘gefilte fish,’ ‘lox,’ and ‘kasha varnishkes’. Had I been a member in a Polish Catholic family I would have had a different cuisine. When, at age 13, I discovered pizza toppings and shell fish I abandoned my kosher ways, sorry Rabbi. (It is very ironic that I recently married a ‘KOSHER’ wife and now have alter my menu and the silverware I use at home. Not such a big deal.)

I am only about 30 pages into reading EATING ANIMALS and already I see so many things that I have never thought about with regard to food. The way my mind works, my thinking doesn’t simply stop there. When I have an ‘AHA’ it is like a pebble dropped in the middle of a pond where the waters had been still. Ripples develop 360 degrees around the spot where the pebble splashed. The points being made might be directed at ‘eating animals’, but my mind sees how the same argument applies to politics, religion, ethics, psychology, learning, and more.

It can be exhausting; it is exciting. I want to read more. I want to know more.

I want to talk about it with people (but this can be very risky).

When at age 27, I decided to found a school, all I wanted to do was talk about my idea, my plan. Most people I talked to were the ’94percenters’. (94% of the population are sheep, followers, without an original thought). When 94 out of every 100 people you talk to have only negative comments, you have to be very committed to your idea or your confidence crumbles. (My school opened its doors in October of 1968.)

When at age 28 I became a dues paying member of Humanistic Judaism at The Birmingham Temple, it was seen as blasphemous by my parents and traditional Jews. In some circles I became an outcast simply for Thinking and choosing a life path outside the box.

Even among scrabble players, by ‘thinking’ about the game the way we do, we can segregate ourselves. Many casual players see competitive players as weird and obsessive. Most times I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t drop whatever they are doing and run to their local scrabble club. Duh!

We do the things that we do for our own reasons . . . not for anyone else’s.

But I’d like to advocate that we encourage all people to be open to thinking more often. And scrabble can be a great tool to help build those skills. CLICK

Years ago, in the suburbs of Detroit Michigan, the rage of the time was for people to attend ‘personal growth’ seminars. There were programs called ‘EST‘ and ‘Life Spring‘ that were the most popular. For a few years, back then, I was as dedicated to attending those seminars to the same degree that I am to doing scrabble things today. As you might be able to tell, I have never been able to just sit passively on the sidelines; I always jump into the game. So first, I became an assistant to the facilitator of ‘The Dale Carnegie Training‘ and later, after training, I facilitated ‘Adventures In Attitudes‘. I was also one of the principals who created ‘Jewish Marriage Encounter‘, following the formula developed by the Catholic Church to help renew relationships of married couples.

One of the seminars that I attended had far less bravado than the rest. It was called ‘Your Choice’, led by a young man, Nick Berar. And yet, it had one of the greatest impacts on my thinking.

You most likely have known and have experienced a place in life similar to where I was back then. Life was feeling painful to me. The days passed as the pages on the calendar turned, but I was feeling miserable. While driving to and from work I would sing Peggy Lee’s song ‘>Is That All There Is?‘, and feel full of sadness. I was totally plugged in and committed to my family, doing my job, spending time with my friends, working for my community, and yet . . . whenever my pace slowed and I came up for air, I felt trapped, unappreciated, and like a slave to the very life I had created.

It seemed like I didn’t have choices. While I had been living my life, I had not been paying attention to the direction in which my life was heading. I allowed others to choose for me and, after the fact, I didn’t like where I was.

Today, it is so obvious to me that we each have full control of our lives. Sometimes we live life on auto-pilot and don’t pay attention to all the choices that we make during everyday. Too often, those choices rarely get review on a conscious level and lead us into difficulty: over spending; over eating; assuming that we don’t need a doctor appointment this year; etc.

Scrabble is just like life. When we don’t pay attention we can lose a game that was winnable. When we don’t pay attention we can miss a bingo and leave 50 points on our rack. When we don’t watch what our opponents play they can get away with playing phonies. When we don’t spend even a little time building our word knowledge we fall further and further behind the pack.

How many of your 2011 New Year’s resolutions are you still being true to? See what I mean?

• Pay Attention
• Review The Important Things
• Live In The Moment; Have Fewer Regrets Later

Now, when did you say that you were coming out to play scrabble at your local club? Send me an email and I help you find a place for you to play. letter.man.moss@gmail.com

If you have read ‘Tuesdays With Morrie‘ or if you are Buddhist, the question above may have some deeper meaning for you.

My recent trip to Michigan to visit my 90+ year old mom set my thinking process in motion. Introspectively, I discovered, I am happy with myself in that I realize, that for the most part, I have lived my life, up to this point, fairly well. I am not implying that I have lived a perfect life. I don’t even pretend to know what that would look like. And even though I have had personal trials and tribulations, times when I buried myself in work to escape challenges with difficult personal relationships, at least I believe that I spent that time contributing to and helping strangers, making a difference.

Coming face to face with illness and other significant emotional events gives us all reason to take pause, reflect, and look deeper. Some of what we notice and think can be scary. In fact, it can be so scary that after we deal with the immediate situation we might conveniently retreat to our own comfortable, personal, hiding places: work; reading books; watching movies; playing scrabble.

The activities we do are not bad or good. They just are. It is more about how and why we use these places.

Our society does not encourage us to live and think about our lives, Buddhist-like. Rather, we are driven by the desire for immediate gratification and the accumulation of things and money. Things and money can be fun, but they are loveless and cannot provide sincere caring.

My experience of scrabble is that it is a reflection of all of the pieces of life. I believe that anything in which you are truly passionate can offer one a similar experience to the one that I get from scrabble.

Morrie says,

When you learn to die, you learn to live.

Most people live in a world of fear about the unknown. It may sound flippant for me to be comparing scrabble to living/dying, but I see the parallels very clearly with regard to how we tackle or hide from the realities in both of these situations.

The fear looking bad to others, of not being able to learn the 2-Letter-Words, The Stems, Using The Clock, Learning So Many New Words . . .

is not too different from . . .

The fear of looking weak and disheveled, not being able to face one’s personal decline at stages of an illness, the new limits due to the decline in health, and the ultimate end to a life itself.

It is often the case that fear stifles people and steals away the opportunities to experience the remaining good times, during the rest of their game, during the rest of life.

Morrie tells us to ‘DETACH’. “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

I wish you Health and Long Life. We usually do not know in advance if TODAY is THE DAY. Live your life fully. Love the ones who matter most. Use your entire self up.

Learn to bingo and BINGO often. CLICK HERE

When is a groove a ‘groove’ and when is it a ‘rut’?

The speed of change related to technology, information, and gadgets continues to build momentum. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing?

I don’t know if it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but it is a fact of the way life works.

If you suffer from ‘cancer’, ‘M.S.’, or some other awful disease progress on discovering the cure is moving way too slowly.

If you are someone like me, you are tickled pink by the fact that you can understand and use a MacBook. I use it to create blogs and movies and even original music loops. You may also react as I do when the hardware and the software that we purchase becomes obsolete the very moment we walk out of the Apple Store. The rate at which new gadgets are developed and improved can be mind-boggling for people at my level.

A lot of people are like me in that they like to feel competent and knowledgable using their tools. It’s not that we don’t appreciate the new technologies that make life easier and more productive . . . but the pace of growth and change is often overwhelming.

And then there are those other folks who become so comfortable in their routines that they have never driven on the freeways, even though they could save an hour of driving time every day. There are those scrabble players who learn new words one at a time, randomly, instead of utilizing the ‘STEM SYSTEM’ that would assist them to learn clusters of words, enhancing their productivity. These people are so entrenched in their groove that it has become a deep rut from which they can’t see the other possibilities at hand.

Here are a few tools that you can obtain and use to move the next level of playing scrabble.
WHIZ CARDS
BOOKMARKS
Using Zyzzyva Effectively
We all have our own comfort zones when it come to change. Know yourself well enough to understand the difference between the times when you are comfortable vs. the times when you are ‘stuck in a rut’.

Life is not easy. Trying to live life without confronting frustrations is most likely impossible. Too often it seems to me that people, businesses, and government go out of their way to make things difficult and confusing.

Consider my ongoing saga in Michigan (Day #9). I flew to Michigan on the ‘Red Eye’ from LAX to DTW. My mom, age 90+, had suffered a stroke and my brother, sister and I made our way to her hospital bedside, not knowing exactly what to find. As far as strokes go, our mom was pretty fortunate. She didn’t lose much, physically; but she was a bit confused (she couldn’t add 5 + 6 and she keeps on losing her purse).

Mom’s doctors broke the bad news to mom; mom had to hand over her car keys, no longer drive, and could no longer live entirely on her own. These changes in mom’s life required us siblings to take some immediate actions. None of us planned to be in Detroit for more than a day or two, but once we learned about the changes that needed to take place, we all altered our plans and rolled up our sleeves.

That’s when several challenges began to rear their ugly heads. Why can’t things just happen easily?

Take Thursday for instance.

We had arranged to use the moving company, 2 Men And A Truck, to move mom from mom’s apartment in Southfield, Michigan to an apartment with assisted living in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Last Tuesday, immediately after we had signed the lease at the assisted living apartments, I called 2 Men And A Truck, and hired them, providing a deposit with an American Express credit card. The operator at the other end of the line assured me that the truck would be there between 8AM and 9AM on February 3rd. Based on the moving date, both my brother and I made plans for return flights to our homes in New York and California, respectively, on February 4th.

The morning of February 3rd arrived right on time, but 2 Men And A Truck still weren’t there by 9AM. We were frantically annoyed because the loading dock at the new apartment was only available until 4PM. I went to my computer and looked up a number for the moving company. I called. I introduced myself to the operator and asked why the truck was late. She confirmed the spelling of my name and then told me, “You are not scheduled for a move with our company today.” I shouted, “That’s impossible!”

The voice at the other end said that she recheck her records and she did not have a record of me calling last Tuesday. I told her that the person I talked with took my credit card information and charged $214 onto my American Express Card. That’s when she told me that her company did not take American Express.

I was confused. I was panicked. Had someone scammed me?

I said good-bye and dialed the telephone number on the back and bottom of the American Express Card. That in itself was frustrating and confusing. The print was so tiny that I had difficulty seeing the phone number. Finally, I connected to American Express. I told my tale of woe and then asked if they had a record of my transaction. It only took a few minutes for American Express to confirm the charge on Tuesday to 2 Men And A Truck.

What was going on?

My brother remembered that I had made the phone call and placed the moving order from his iPhone. He checked the memory log of calls previously made. Voila! He had a record of the call and the phone number which I had dialed. Now I redialed the number and a sweet voice answered, “2 Men And A Truck, may I help you?”

Turns out that every 2 Men And A Truck is a privately owned piece of a franchise and the locations are not connected to any central booking system. This lady did indeed have a record of our move and the truck was delayed due to snowy road conditions.

Why didn’t the operator at the first number I had called tell me all that that? She could have alleviated a lot of worry and angst.

30 minutes later the truck arrived and mom’s move began.

Don’t you just hate it when others give you misinformation or partial information? That is a prime source for confusion and frustration.

When playing scrabble, help avoid confusion: always announce your scores clearly; count your scores accurately; write the information on your official score cards legibly; and whenever you play a blank, record your blanks clearly in writing.