Golf Spelled Backwards Is Flog

I've been taking golf lessons lately. I will admit readily that I am not a good golfer, nor do I play a lot. However, I've been motivated to improve what game I have by three factors: 1) On the rare off day that I will have once I start grad school, I can take advantage of the free golf that the local country club offers students of my chosen university, 2) My brother-in-law has informed me that my 9-year old nephew could probably beat me now (and he's probably right), and 3) I have this weird idea in my head that I've already got the short game because I play a terrific round of mini-golf.

Yeah, that's pretty silly, but give me something to hang my hat on; I don't have much. I just happened to have a 9-hole run of a lifetime on a recent evening at the local mini-golf course, getting a hole-in-one on 6 of the 9 holes. And this isn't just some Podunk Putt-Putt course, these are tricky holes. I was this close to making the record board at this particular course.

Okay, now while I wait for the real golfers to stop laughing their butts off, I KNOW that being good at the mini-golf course doesn't mean squat on a real golf course, and I've played a couple... only a couple. I've spent most of my time at driving ranges and it is there that I learned that I have serious and ingrained problems with my golf swing, which can be quite frustrating. It got to the point that on one particular range, I WANTED to hit the ball in the water because it meant I was hitting the damn thing straight. On the course was another issue altogether. When I hit a tee shot, it would be nice for it to not do either of the following... slice or fail to get off the ground. Hit it straight and up, that's all I want. We'll worry about shaving strokes off my game later.

And so it is that I've been taking golf lessons the last few Monday nights. The club pro is definitely a likable guy, the kind that tosses out one-liners and follows them with, "That's as funny as I get," just to make sure he gets a laugh out of you. Plus, he knows his stuff. See, I was originally taught how to play golf some 10 years ago for my PE credit in college, and while the teacher may have thought he knew what he was doing... well, it didn't work for me, and the club pro got that immediately. He looked at my grip and said, "You slice." See, he knows his stuff! Plus, he built us up piece by piece, one week being one step and the next week going a little farther. I saw immediate improvement, and this is when I discovered the other part of game improvement...

See, once you're doing well from a physical standpoint, your confidence builds and then the mental standpoint improves, and your nerves settle, and it just becomes muscle memory. Next thing you know, you may have reached zen... or at least as close to zen as you can get on a golf course. Mind you, I'm still just chipping balls with a 7-iron, so don't try hoping for inner peace when you're in the middle of an intense round of 18; I'm sure it doesn't work the same. Still, when you work a job as stressful as mine has been lately, with all the other assorted hassles of the day, something like this is MUCH appreciated. I managed to have this great feeling the first two weeks, so I was eager to build on it tonight.

Well, tonight I took a step back. But I needed that. See, the opposite of inner peace happens when you lose the ability to hit the ball the way you were hitting it the previous two weeks. That's when you start thinking, and as any good golfer will tell you, the key is NOT to think. Once you start thinking, you focus on all the things you think you need to do differently instead of the simple routine of just hitting the ball. But here's where the club pro's advice came in handy once again. He waited for us all to think we could come out shooting (and I actually did, but after a few perfect shots, it fell apart pretty quickly) and after we fell on our faces, he told us all the CORRECT way to start a warm-up. And it makes sense... break down the swing back to elementary and build up from there, a few balls at a time. Pretty soon, I was back in business.

Now time will tell as to whether or not all I have learned will translate to an actual round of 18, but I feel more confident about my game already, and once that happens, you can take advantage of the real reason why people play golf... to HAVE FUN. Let's face it, you're not going to take several hours out of your weekend to willingly do something that is not fun (note I said willingly). So maybe there is hope for me as a golfer, and if there is hope for me, there is truly hope for us all.

Take This Job and....

(WARNING: This column is written in a style commonly known as "TONGUE-IN-CHEEK". So don't go calling me "stupid" or "incompetent" for the views expressed here, as I was recently labeled by a certain reader of this blog who shall remain nameless... because he posted anonymously. Incidentally, this would be as good a time as any for me to remind you that if you want to post comments, feel free to do so, but at least make SOME effort to identify yourself, even if you don't want to give your name...)

We all know the world has a lot of problems these days, but most of the ones we care about are of the simple everyday variety. The headaches of our jobs, for one. Let's face it; if you took a poll, you'd probably find that a large percentage of Americans don't like their job or at least some major aspect of their job. I think I can trace all of these problems to one thing: business school. I'll explain...

For almost 3 years, I've been working a 8-to-5 job in the wonderful (not) world of market research. The big boss is a business school grad, as most big bosses are. I can tell you from my time in college that a good amount of people who go to business school are, shall we say, not all that good at dealing with people. They've never had to be good at dealing with people, so why start now? And in business school, they don't get trained all that much at dealing with people. Sure they take a class like "Interpersonal Communications" or something like that, but that's their blow-off course. So they go out into the world and become big bosses and all they know how to do is get the numbers and get them ASAP. Oh, and belittle those who work under them and make their lives a living hell...

If there's an actual personal issue that needs to be resolved, well, that's what HR is for, and don't resolve it on company time, do it on your own time. In many cases, the HR person had the same business school training and therefore couldn't care less about your problem either even though it's THEIR JOB to care. And then there's the newly-hired business school grad who wants to "make an impression" on where he works. When you get one of these types, you live in fear, because you suddenly start seeing people around you getting fired for miniscule offenses and a general tightening of the rules.

Is it any wonder we blame Corporate America for all the evils of the world? And every year, another class of these types graduates into the business world, ready to "make an impression" and work you like a dog so they can live well. So I'm sure you're thinking that the solution should be for people who don't like their lot to go to business school themselves so they can be higher up on the totem pole. Well, some people just aren't right for the type of business school training these corporate Napoleons receive. It comes down to psychology. Most people are either right-brained or left-brained. The left-brained types are analytical and focus on the concrete and logical, while the right-brained types are given to creativity and feeling. Guess which ones usually wind up coming out of business school to be your boss?

Funny thing is, you take Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and the founders of Google and YouTube, right-brainers all of them, and the one thing that none of them have is... you guessed it, a BUSINESS SCHOOL DEGREE. Jobs took one semester of college, Gates dropped out of pre-law, Chad Hurley of YouTube fame got his degree in FINE ARTS! But the one thing that all of them have is more money than god. So I suppose there is hope for those of us who care less about the numbers and more about showing off our creative sides, but these "mavericks" are still in the majority and always will be so long as thousands upon thousands of business school grads enter the workforce every year.

So what do I, right-brainer that I am, propose as a solution? Well... one that will NEVER happen, but here goes... yeah, that class on communicating to people that you take as a blowoff course? It's now a requirement to graduate, and a right-brainer has to teach it, since most communications majors and likely most communications professors are right-brainers. You have to take the class with creative types. We observe your every word and action and if we sense you're belittling the right-brainers, you fail and you don't graduate.

There you go... that's how we creative types can finally get control and power over the future overlords of Corporate America, MWA HA HA... sorry, got carried away there. Told ya this was a tongue-in-cheek entry...

Are We Winning?

Watching the news each day, reading the paper, occasionally watching the network news, I really have to wonder if we as a country are winning not only the war on terror, but the "war of ideas", that being the constant struggle to convince the rest of the world that we're not such a bunch of bad guys after all. Even when good news happens, it seems like they are fodder for more problems, more criticism, more negativity. Tough to keep up a positive front when confronted with all this.

Take, for example, the recent arrests of the terror suspects who were plotting to blow up fuel lines at JFK. First of all, the arrests were reported on Saturday morning, and while that's really no fault of the FBI or Department of Homeland Security, it happened during what is called in the media the "down news cycle." This is because when news breaks on Saturday, a lot of people miss it because fewer people watch the news on the weekend. Yes there is the Sunday paper, but at least here in Syracuse, the local Sub-Standard, errrr... Post-Standard barely mentioned the arrests on the front page sidebar, and relegated the main story to page 4. By Monday morning, nobody was really talking about it anymore. Way to bury the successes of our Department of Homeland Security, mainstream media.

And just in case burying the story didn't work, for the people who DID watch the news Sunday night, we were treated (at least on CBS) to the reminder that critics think the evidence against terrorists in cases like this one is flimsy and that they were only caught because they were stupid. So either way, the great work of our much-maligned DHS gets ignored. After all, to praise DHS is to praise the president who created it and whose administration it serves under, and that just wouldn't do. However, when Scooter Libby got sentenced, don't you know that it got wall-to-wall coverage for going on 2 days now... with most of it centering around the growing "big lie" that is starting to spread about President Bush pardoning Libby. He's NOT GOING TO PARDON HIM. This is not up for debate. However, the media starts asking if it will happen, and then come the letters saying, "Of course Bush is going to pardon him, EVERYBODY KNOWS that..." and you know how it goes from there; at least you do if you read this blog on a regular basis.

Although I guess I can understand the media's motivation to not make a big deal out of a terrorist plot getting busted up; after all, in the past when such plots have been sniffed out, there was an immediate backlash from the usual suspects about how this was just timed perfectly to help the president and how dare the media keep trying to scare us. All right, there's a difference between the kind of junk the media throws at us around sweeps time, when your local TV affiliate teases their nightly newscasts with things like, "What's in your sock drawer could kill you, more at 11...", and the actual reporting of the snuffing out of a nascent threat to our nation's security. But the media has to mind its P's and Q's apparently, so come Monday morning, instead of continuing coverage of the pursuit of the fourth suspect in this plot or attempts to bring people who missed the weekend's coverage up to speed, we get wall-to-wall coverage of... Paris Hilton going to jail. Thank god.

Reporting things like the terror arrests is not, despite what some may think, spreading a "climate of fear". It is instead spreading a climate of awareness, and that's the media's job, to make you aware of what is going on in the world. We need to know how other nations are seeing us, we need to know what's going on in Iraq, we need to know how this will affect us. I've said previously that I could do without spin, but it will be there; the point is at least report it, even with the spin. We are at war, so an informed public is more important now than ever.

Of course that depends on whether or not you consider what is going on right now a war on terror, or as John Edwards claims it is, "a bumper sticker." Call me naive, but I've never heard of a bumper sticker stopping a terror plot. Want to know what I fear? I fear John Edwards. I fear him for his outright attempts to become the darling of the 23% Crowd, for chiding his fellow front-runners Sens. Clinton and Obama for not doing enough to keep our troops from being funded, for belittling a policy that has resulted in ZERO terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since its creation. I fear him because he advocates massive tax increases, because he wants to pull us out of Iraq (and probably Afghanistan) as soon as possible, and now because he hobnobs with Danny Glover, America's biggest cheerleader for Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. The same Venezuela that almost came into play over the weekend when the police in Trinidad made their big arrests. See, one of the suspects, the former parliament member from Guyana, was nabbed when he was just about to board a plane for Venezuela, on his way to Iran for a forum on Islam. Had he made it onto that plane and gotten to Venezuela, I'm sure upon news of the other arrests and word that this man was himself a suspect, Chavez would have probably granted him safe harbor and refused to turn him over to us.

Most of all, I fear that Edwards will find a way to win the Democratic nomination (perhaps just by winning Iowa and New Hampshire while Obama and Clinton split the more moderate voters, then cruising from there through the shortened primary season), and then will win the White House just because he's not a Republican. I fear that more than Vladimir Putin threatening to restart the Cold War, more than any al-Qaida video, more than any threat by the president of Iran to wipe out Israel. See, we are just as capable of losing the war on terror as radical Islam is of winning it, and as much as I find fault with President Bush (and believe me, I do), I do sleep better at night knowing the people in charge of our country have proven themselves quite capable of protecting us. I just wonder how many other Americans feel the same way...

There's No "I" In Team... But There Is a "Me"

I get that our sports scene these days emphasizes the individual at the expense of the team. We care more about the exploits of "me first" athletes over the great team efforts in sports. But it doesn't mean I have to like it. Frankly, I don't. In the past week, we've been subjected to "me-first" overload, and it's just plain getting ridiculous.

Let's start with the guy that Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News called the new face of the New York Yankees... Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod. Or for the purposes of this column, "Team Cancer #1". He's the highest paid player in baseball with the worst possible postseason statistics over the past two years. Of course, he won't have to worry about that being held over his head this year as the Yankees have ZERO shot of making the playoffs. Now I've been told by the resident Yankee fanatic at work that were it not for A-Rod, the Yankees wouldn't even be as "good" as they are now... they would resemble the Kansas City Royals without A-Rod. Okay, let's break down the numbers. When A-Rod had his monster April, tying the record for most home runs hit in that particular month, the Yankees were stumbling to an 8-14 start. Since then, A-Rod has struggled, hit only 5 more homers... and the Yanks have played .500 ball over that span (16-16). In other words, they play BETTER when A-Rod is struggling. Maybe that's because the other Yankees start to put more of the weight on their shoulders, like a good team should.

I agree with Lupica, though; A-Rod is the face of the new losing New York Yankees, and they deserve each other. For the previous several years, the face of the New York Yankees was Derek Jeter. Let me just say this right now... I don't like Derek Jeter. I don't like the fact that he walks around with that permanent smirk on his face that says, "I'm all that and I don't care who knows." I don't like how he comes up in game situations and delivers over and over again. Why? Well, it's because I don't like the New York Yankees. Why don't I like the New York Yankees? Because they win all the time... or at least they used to. However, that being said, Derek Jeter is the type of guy you want on your team, the guy with a winner attitude, the team leader, the captain. If he was a Met, I'd probably like him. But he's a Yankee, so I don't like him.

Now the Yankees are all about A-Rod, and never was that more evident than Wednesday in Toronto. I'm not even gonna get into the whole story about A-Rod going to strip clubs and being spotted with a "mystery blonde" which wasn't his wife that was running in the paper that day. In the 9th inning of that night's game at the Rogers Centre (nee Skydome), the Yankees were winning, 7-5, with A-Rod on 2nd and 2 out. Jorge Posada popped one up between the Toronto shortstop and 3rd baseman. As A-Rod ran by on his way to 3rd, he either yelled "Hah!" or "Mine!", depending on whose side you're on. Whatever he yelled, it caused Blue Jays 3rd baseman Howie Clark to back off and let the ball drop. As you can imagine, the Blue Jays were STEAMED, and rightly so. That is just a bush-league move, not necessarily illegal, but below the ethical standards of baseball, much like stealing a base when your team is up by 10 runs. Unfortunately, Toronto did not deal with this before that night's game ended, so we're going to have to hear about retaliation in late July when they next face each other.

Since then, everyone has weighed in, major leaguers, minor leaguers, Charlie Sheen... A-Rod himself said it was something he did often: "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." His teammates all distanced themselves from him. His manager, Joe Torre, said later that A-Rod shouldn't have done it. Most major and minor leaguers agreed that this was something you just don't do... with one notable exception:

Barry Bonds. A.K.A. "Team Cancer #2."

Fitting that another "me-first" guy would take up for A-Rod. After all, the Barry Bonds Steroids Sideshow in San Francisco has probably had as much to do with the Giants' mediocrity the past few years as anything. Barry came to New York for his one and only time this season last week, and the Shea Stadium crowd gave him the appropriate response: boos, chants of "You did steroids" and "Barry sucks". Barry handled this in typical Barry fashion... by first promising the New York media an audience with him on Tuesday (like he was the friggin' pope or something), then blowing them all off, then letting them ask away on Wednesday, but not answering many questions and giving friendly answers to fewer. Oh by the way, Barry didn't homer and the Giants lost 2 of 3 to the Mets. He also didn't homer in Philly... but I'm sure all will be right with the world when he returns to Frisco to be surrounded by his adoring (and obviously braindead) home fans. Next thing you know, he'll probably ask to play home games only. You already know how I feel about Steroid Boy (and if you don't, click here), and I really wonder if Giants GM Brian Sabean actually thinks his team will ever rise above 4th place with this permanent distraction in place for the entire season, before and after Barry passes Hank Aaron to put an asterisk on the most well-known record in sports.

Turning to pro basketball, a sport I don't even watch anymore because of how "me-first" the sport has gotten. Kobe Bryant (A.K.A. "Team Cancer #3"), whose team has been out of the playoffs for a month now (bringing up another reason why I don't like the NBA: the endless postseason), demanded a trade from the Los Angeles Lakers because they wouldn't talk Jerry West out of retirement to come take over the basketball operations. Then, a few hours later, he changed his mind. I wonder if in those few hours, Kobe's Laker teammates weren't pinching themselves to check if they were dreaming. Since Kobe drove Shaq out of Hollywood and made the Lakers a team that revolves around him, the Big Aristotle has won one more NBA title than Solo Kobe, and the Lakers have yet to win a playoff series... but of course, Kobe's had a ton of 50-point games and I'm sure that's all that matters to him. Every time I hear that Kobe scored 50-plus points in a game, my first question is, "Did the Lakers win?" Because it's not necessarily a sure thing. Thank goodness LeBron James, a superstar yes but more in the Derek Jeter mold, managed to not get overshadowed with his playoff exploits that brought Cleveland within reach of an elusive major sports championship. Yes, LeBron scored all of his team's points when they needed him, but that's the point. They needed him; it wasn't a situation where someone else could have stepped up and scored but LeBron wouldn't give up the ball.

What do all these "me-first" players' teams have in common? Mediocrity or worse. Yet that's what we give the most attention to in sports these days. Pardon me while I go watch my Mets play winning baseball without a team cancer...