Everybody’s An Author – Even Fabio

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(From The Beach Reporter on 12/3/92.)

These are the times that try an author’s soul. To know that Madonna’s book is a number-one bestseller, right next to Rush Limbaugh’s, which I guess is supposed to even things out. To know that Kathie Lee Gifford has written her autobiography and that people actually want to read it. I can think of at least 100 things I would rather do before I read the autobiography of Kathie Lee Gifford. Things like hand wash or ironing pillowcases, filing my nails and plucking my eyebrows.

But all of these “authors” pale in comparison to the newest celebrity author on the block – Fabio. In case you don’t know who Fabio is, he is the hunk-of-the-year, now turned novelist.

Fabio is not just some dumb gorgeous guy who wandered into the U. S. via Milan. He is savvy enough to go by only one name, in the tradition of Madonna and Cher. His claim to fame up to now is his modeling career. His image has graced the covers of more than 350 Avon romance novels. He has his own beefcake calendar.

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Baseball Dreams and T-Ball Go Together

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(An essay from my column in The Beach Reporter on 6/11/1992.)

As some of you may have guessed from my last column, baseball is not my favorite spectator sport. At least in football and hockey things move fast. But in baseball you can go half an hour before anything happens to wake you up.

Not so in a T-ball game. For those of you who are unaware of this fabulous sporting event, T-ball is a scaled-down version of baseball for kids who are too young for Little League. Most of the kids are six or seven years old. The teams are mostly boys still, although there is the occasional girl on a team. The girls have their own softball league, but they are allowed to play T-ball or Little League if they choose to.

The big premise in T-ball is that all the kids play different positions on the team and the games are supposed to be low-key and non-competitive. I’ve seen professional hockey games that were less competitive than the average T-ball game. Let’s not forget that the South Bay is full of overachiever, Type-A parents, and that on a baseball field they can’t help but let their true personalities show through. Continue reading →

Please Don’t Take Me Out to the Ball Game

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(This column, from 6/4/92, was in The Beach Reporter newspaper.)

I know this will sound blasphemous, but I think that baseball is the most boring game in the world to watch. Actually, I guess that’s not completely true. Golf and bowling are more boring to watch. But baseball is right up there.

I used to go to the occasional Dodger game and pretend to be having a good time. But Picture Day at Dodger Stadium last summer did me in for good.

We started out for the stadium, a happy family of four, looking forward to a pleasant day at Dodger Stadium. We came home not speaking to one another and needing extensive family counseling.

The fun starts when you try to get into the parking lot. Six lines of cars inching their way up a steep hill to pay for parking is not my idea of fun. Especially if you are married to someone who always thinks the line next to you is moving faster, and cuts back and forth to save maybe thirty seconds of time.

I had envisioned Picture Day as described in the media literature: “A great opportunity for the whole family to take photos of their favorite players on the field.” My young son, the ultimate baseball fan, would actually get to meet his favorite players up close and personal, and snap a few photos for his baseball album. Not. Continue reading →

Writing About the Little Things in Life

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(Originally published as my weekly column for The Beach Reporter on 4/30/92. I like how I compared myself to Art Buchwald and not Erma Bombeck…)

When I first started this column more than four years ago, I thought my subject matter would probably be drawn from the headlines of the day. I would write thought-provoking commentaries on the weighty issues of the world, and dazzle everyone with my insight and my ability to turn that insight into sizzling prose.

But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming the Art Buchwald of the South Bay.
When I sat down at my computer each week, often the most pressing issue on my mind was not what was on the news that night. Rather, I was more likely to be mulling over the fact that it was swimsuit season again and I needed either major surgery or a nice caftan. Or I would be reflecting on the joys (?) of motherhood and why it was that my children refused to eat anything green.

Sometimes I do write about newsworthy topics. I feel that some of my best columns have been on how women live with violence, on the beer ads that dominate television, on the death of Ryan White, and on the commercialization of the Gulf War. Continue reading →