Conquering Vertigo

Festivus for the rest of us

My sense of this blog as "the poor woman's Seinfeld" -- the blogsitcom about nothing -- increased last night in a conversation with my husband.

Richard is a multi-faceted jewel of a man. Reflections of other people can be seen as the light hits him in motion. He's like Jerry Seinfeld when it comes to neatness, the Soup Nazi when it comes to the kitchen, and now--alarmingly--I'm seeing the emergence of a combo-character: part Cosmo Kramer, part Mr. Costanza (George's father).

Here's what happened.

It started so innocently... He's mulling over the crossword puzzle (I'm a Sudoku fan, myself) and murmurs, "Ingredient in a fizz..."
I pop up with a perky, "Gin."
He nods, "But that doesn't fit -- they're looking for another ingredient, a liqueur of some sort."
I'm of no help, having never had a gin fizz.

This sparks another train of thought.
"You play gin rummy, don't you?" he asks.
"Of course, learned it at my grandfather's knee."
"I should teach you Hollywood Gin," he says with sudden Kramer-like enthusiasm. He didn't actually slide through an open doorway and across the room, shirt tails flapping, but he could have.

Immediately, I'm suspicious.
"Is this one of those games you keep inflicting on me -- one your father made up and you always change the rules while we're playing to make sure you win?"

Ruffled Italian honor takes umbrage: "I don't know what you're talking about."
I start naming the fake games.
He interrupts, "Nonsense, shh, quiet, you're upsetting the dog. Now, here's how you play Hollywood Gin."

So he launches into this dealing scheme where you have three piles of cards in front of you, and each pile contains one card face up and one card face down.

"Blackjack!" I yell, "Or poker! This isn't gin!"

He quells me with a stern look. "It is gin, and the three columns..."
Yada yada yada he goes into this long dissertation I'm certain is impromptu creativity, and then he says: "And if I reach a hundred in all three of my columns, before you reach a hundred in your first column, then I call out "Schneid!" and win the game."

"Schneid!?" I respond, indeed waking the dog, "Schneid isn't a word you say in gin. Schneid isn't even a real word. It's like Festivus for the Rest-of-us. Your father is Mr. Costanza! Do we play this game while sitting around a metal pole?"

While he sulks, I go online.
Grrrr.
There is something called "Hollywood Gin," and apparently Gin Rummy was a hot card game among Hollywood stars of the 1920s and 30s.

And... Schneid is a word too.
(sigh)
So we're going to play this weekend.
As soon as I start winning, he'll change the rules and suddenly yell, "Schneid!"

My only possible reply will be: "Serenity Now!"

Definition from www.word-detective.com
"The schneid" is a another good example of such a term, and, coincidentally, means nearly the opposite of "in the catbird seat." To be "on the schneid" means to be on a losing streak, racking up a series of losing, and especially scoreless, games. "Schneid" is actually short for "schneider," a term originally used in the card game of gin, meaning to prevent an opponent from scoring any points. "Schneider" entered the vocabulary of gin from German (probably via Yiddish), where it means "tailor." Apparently the original sense was that if you were "schneidered" in gin you were "cut" (as if by a tailor) from contention in the game. "Schneider" first appeared in the literature of card-playing about 1886, but the shortened form "schneid" used in other sports is probably of fairly recent vintage.

I should never have let him watch "Seinfeld."

posted by Woman In Love @ 7:53 AM