W.W.W.H.D? (What Would Will Have Done?)

Performing Shakespeare live, in a public park, has the feel of controlled anarchy to it. Despite the fact that the Portland Actor's Ensemble has a permit to stage The Tempest in Lovejoy Fountain Park Thursday-Saturday between now and mid-July, there is a vibe of being in a group of kids who have snuck into the area and begun acting out for the amusement of themselves and anyone else who happens by and wants to watch. Here's a picture of our theater, which also acts as a space for dog walkers, street punks and harmonica-playing vodka-swilling street people. More on that in a moment.

The spontaneous feel of bringing The Tempest to life is not in any way hindered by the fact that we rehearsed it for nearly two months before starting the run. The reason? We're dealing with elements that are beyond the control of the actors and our stage manager. Take opening night for example. A long-haired heavyset fellow sat, shirtless, drinking vodka from a bottle in a paper bag and playing riffs on his harmonica. The trilling was loud, random, and mostly non-musical. When we gathered in our warm-up circle to stretch, vocalize and otherwise get ourselves into the right frame-of-mind to perform, we found we'd added a cast member. The drunk had sauntered over and joined in. He also kept a running commentary going that was apropos of . . . well . . . nothing. My fellow cast members, being, basically, a mellow bunch just went about their business and tried to ignore him. This strategy worked fine until we actually began the play and he took a seat in the audience. Here's the first scene of the second act in which my character Gonzalo a loyal, optimistic and somewhat delusional advisor to the king is being harassed within an inch of his life by the King's brother and Prospero's usurper, who later plot to kill us both. 

 

Problem is, while they were harassing me, our friendly mouth-harp player and drooling drunk was laughing hysterically at non-existent punch lines, advising the actors on technique and muttering loudly. 

We played on. One of the board members of the Portland Actor's Ensemble sat down next to our problem drunk and managed to mellow him out for a time. Or perhaps he took a little Smirnoff fueled nap. We did encounter him backstage (behind the sculpture) early in the third act  where he seemed to be enraged that we were returning to the actor's area after finishing our scene. "Get the bleeeep back here." He commanded. "You're not done yet." Maybe he had access to pages of the script we'd never seen? After that he returned to the audience and continued his running commentary. We forged ahead and made it to the last ten minutes of the show, the dramatic climax, when he snapped to life and began blowing the mouth-harp in the middle of one of Prospero's speeches. 

Once again an arm-over-the-shoulder and a quiet word from the Actor's Ensemble's resident diplomat managed to bring him under control.

 After that, the next two nights of the show were a piece of cake. All we had to deal with was inclement weather, a collection of street punks and their barking dog backstage, people passing by carrying on loud cell phone conversations and a 3-year old who escaped the clutches of her father and ran onto the stage. Apparently she had some strong opinions about Caliban's plot to whack Prospero. 

So, I can see the question forming on your lips. Why on earth would anyone want to subject themselves to this kind of pandemonium and fear-based adrenaline? Here's what it boils down to for me. So much of life is predictable, repetitive and frankly, boring. We go about our day-to-day routines, act responsibly and meet our obligations. There's something life-affirming about putting yourself in a situation where anything can happen and probably will. Since The Tempest occurs on a desert isle, populated by strange-and-wonderful creatures, our talented and unflappable cast view Mr. Vodka Mouth-Harp man, the opinionated toddler, street kids, jets passing by drowning out the dialogue, sirens wailing and the loud hum of traffic as part of the adventure. These wacky and random encounters provide us with ammunition as we gather after the show at nearby Karaoke bars and pubs to commiserate, revel and toast each other for not panicking, staying in character and entertaining our "peeps." despite anything God or vodka could throw at us. Personally, I feel like I'm creating memories that I'll take to the grave with me. Some families you're born into. Others you acquire.

I'd like to think that Will Shakespeare would have laughed at our travails and totally understood how we felt. After all, his plays were performed in front of an audience of rabble who stood in the mud and talked, gambled and even fornicated while they tried to remember the Bard's words in their proper order. The nobles, who sat in the higher reaches of the theater, viewed the swirling, swearing, drunken crowd below as much a part of the show as Caliban doing a spit-take on Prospero. What would Shakespeare have done with our heckler? Hard to tell. But Will knew, as all of us do, that the play's the thing.

For performance times and directions to the park check out the web site for the Portland Actor's Ensemble. 

http://portlandactors.com/

The Pit Bull and the Pendulum

Bubba:  Okay, squirrel boy, pay attention.

Max: (lunging against sliding glass door) Of course. I'm listening to 

every . . .every . . .

Bubba: Word I say?

Max: Word you say. Right!

Bubba: The topic today is Pit Bulls.

Max:  That's our topic?

Bubba:  Right.

Max:  No problem. I've got an opinion. Me, me, call on me.

Bubba:  (sighs) Max, go ahead what's your opinion?

Max:  I'm all for them. Absolutely. 100% in favor without question.

Bubba: Really. You feel that way? You like Pit Bulls?  Big scary dogs with teeth that lock down on you like a land shark on steroid?

Max:  Pit Bulls. Oh. (he blushes) Geez, I thought you said pet bowls. Where our food lives. (long pause) Never mind.

Bubba: Here in Vancouver, dogs and their people have been attacked by Pit Bulls whose owners didn't have them on a leash or weren't strong enough to hold on to them.

Max: We've got some in our neighborhood, huh?

Bubba: Before you came along, when we still had Dudley, the wonder dog, one came after us. Mom screamed and scooped me up and he rushed to defend us.

Max: Wow, I bet that was exciting. (thinks about it) and scary.

Bubba: The Pit Bull got Dudley by the neck and wouldn't let go. Dad tried to pull it off, and got bit.

Max: Wow! What happened.

Bubba: Finally, Dudley got loose, and the women grabbed the Pit Bull and Dad called them some very dirty names.

Max:  Like the ones he calls me when I get him out of bed at 2am to let me out so I can chase squirrels?

Bubba: Like that, only worse. Anyway, they're talking about whether or not to outlaw Pit Bulls in the city limits.

Max: Uh, well, maybe, I could see that. Couldn't I?

Bubba: The problem is that when nice people raise Pit Bulls and keep them under control they're okay.

Max: I see a big, hairy, Schnorkie but coming here.

Bubba: But, some really scary, nasty, mean, stupid and inconsiderate people like to raise Pit Bulls and use them to show people how tough they are.

Max: Ooh, big dilemma. Like when I'm trying to decide whether to play little football down the stairs or sleep in Dad's lap.

Bubba: But if they ban them all, what's to keep somebody who doesn't like, say Maltese, from banning them? Or if somebody gets bit by a renegade Pomeranian, and the next thing you know, dinky dogs like us are forced to become outlaws. Or move to La Center.

Max: So what do we do?

Bubba: That's a tough one. I guess maybe we just bark like crazy at any dog bigger than us . . .

Max: Pretty much all of them, right?

Bubba: Right. And hope for the best. Say, isn't it almost dinner time?

Max: I think I heard the can opener. Race you to the Pit Bull.

Bubba: You mean pet bowl.

Max: What you said.

Birthing a book – part II

IT'S A BOOK !!!

 Welcoming another book to the Rose/Nettleton shelf

        An Uncertain Refuge

        Born to Carolyn J. Rose

        May, 2011

        100,000 words

        

 

        

        

        Recently I compared writing a novel to being pregnant and compared publishing a book to delivering a baby.

        Well, here’s the official announcement. An Uncertain Refuge emerged from my keyboard and became a Kindle and Nook last week.

        So far, it seems happy and healthy in the e-nursery with thousands of others. The text is relatively free of blemishes and it has all (or almost all) of its commas and periods. It just got its first review and more readers every day ask to hold it.

        That’s gratifying because An Uncertain Refuge had a long gestation and a difficult birth. 

         235 agents turned down the opportunity to deliver it to a publisher.

        Eventually I considered the state of the publishing industry and decided on a “home delivery.” With the assistance of cover artist Allen Chiu and the support and coaching of digital conversion midwife Kimberly Hitchens of Booknook.biz who kept telling me to keep breathing and schedule a panic attack later, An Uncertain Refuge became an e-book.

Next month Patty G. Henderson will create a print version and a friend whose job was out-sourced to India will help me wedge it all into a template and enable the book to stand on its own two covers.

        Given all that, it’s hard for me to let go, hard not to check on it several times a day to see if it’s still making friends.

And it’s harder still to admit that there’s nothing I can do if it isn’t. I’m not going to be the kind of author who jumps in to defend a book and ends up in a vitriolic exchange that goes viral.

Honest.

I’m not.

Really.

I promise.

       

Show Bidness is/was My Life

 "I'm a little tea-pot, 

short and 

stout, this 

is my 

handle-"

      A historic moment is just weeks away.

      My proudest moment in a long and checkered almost-show business career is about to be replaced on my life's highlight reel.

      It only took a summer pulling twenty-four foot boards off a planing mill's conveyor belt and another loading eighty pound bales of hay onto twin trailers of a semi truck in the August broiler of Klamath Falls to propel me into show business. There had to be a better way to make beer and cigarette money than sweating your noogies off and having to peel straw out of the crack of your buttocks. (Not that there's anything wrong with that or any other good honest work) I set off to find it.

       I'd dabbled in show business all of my life, of course. I think my older sister Lana said it best when she snapped at me—"Sit down and shut up, you tubby little show-off you! "—Or words to that effect. I may not be remembering the moment accurately, as I was ducking to avoid a steak knife she'd flung at me at the time.

       When I entered college, under the influence of a profoundly talented high school teacher, I began as a math major. This quickly changed during my Freshman year after drawing a calculus instructor whose voice was so flat and uninflected, it sounded like a Gregorian chant riddled with equations. Ninety minutes in his classroom was the spoken word equivalent of a Kenny G concert. Forget waterboarding—any suspected terrorist would break down and blurt out every secret he knew and several more he'd borrowed from his friends just to escape the lecture hall.

       Somehow, I drifted into the theatre department and soon found myself on stage as part of several graduate student thesis productions. (They were desperate, all the real actors were already in the mainstage show). From there I stumbled down the hall of the fine arts building and into the 5 watt student radio station. My career as a semi professional pronouncer had begun.

       "Here is my handle, here is my spout."

       Realizing I'd discovered a perfect match for my skill set (combining physical sloth, healthy ego and runaway mouth), plus a great scam (what could be better than being paid to talk?), I began a lifelong journey as a radio performer. My dulcet tones and rounded vowels, (I understand there is surgery to correct that painful condition these days) disarming wit ( some would say I'm overstating this boast by 50%), and first name relationship with local U-haul rental agencies, by career's end, I'd managed to claw my way up to the middle of the broadcast industry.

       I'd estimate, that over 43 year career as a radio performer, I've been in front of the mic somewhere in the neighborhood of, lessee now 43 years, 52 weeks each year, five or six days a week, plus more when somebody didn't show up on time, subtract vacations, mental health days and hangovers, carry the seven, divide by 43.8, factor in the square root of . . . Okay, a whole bunch of times. Plus I've performed on several thousand commercials, did promotional appearances, MC work and public address gigs. I even chewed up the scenery in several more stage plays in the years since I left college.

       If someone is assembling a life highlight reel as Albert Brook's proposes in his film Defending Your Life, I'd like to shuffle the order of my top five moments. There's a new kid at the top, thanks to director Nathan Markiewicz's drunken decision to cast me as Gonzalo in the Portland Actor's production of The Tempest in Lovejoy Fountain Park this summer. Actually, I have no evidence he was drunk, but it offers the only realistic explanation for his choice.

       But I digress (words that may appear on my tombstone). Let's run down the newly adjusted top five. Maestro, a little countin' 'em down music, please. (Kenny G's version of "Give My Regards To Broadway" plays under this segment.)

  

#5. Hosting the local segments of the Miss U.S.A. pageant in front of a crowd of 10,000 people. I shared a stage with 52 of America's most beautiful and voluptuous women (including queens from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) without once having an embarrassing pants moment. If you catch my drift and I'm sure I do. To this day, I remember the reaction of my male friends to this news. "Dude, you gay, or what? It's okay, with us, but Duuuuuude !!!"

#4. Conceiving and collaborating with my unindicted co-conspirator Rick Huff on the "First and Only Annual Albuquerque April Fool's Day Parade." This imaginary procession existed only on the radio. Thanks to my multi-voiced friend Huff, we managed to check in throughout the morning from our reviewing stand at the intersection of two streets that ran parallel to each other, several miles apart. Featured performers included: The Amalgamated Burrito Folders Precision Refried Bean and Baton Drill Team, The "Hang 'em All Now, Let God Sort It Out Later Mounted Vigilante Posse, and marching bands from non-existent area high schools tromping out-of-step while playing medleys of movie music, television themes and Broadway show-stoppers. All of which, strangely enough sounded exactly like a very discordant version of "The Stars and Stripes Forever." This bizarre broadcast caused lots of local buzz and got the radio station sued by a listener who'd packed his wife and kids into the family station wagon and spent the next three hours trying to find the parade. The "First and Only Annual Albuquerque April Fool's Day Parade" probably contributed to my next career move, collecting unemployment.

#3. The reaction of my parents after they watched me perform as Wong, the Chinese water boy in a college production of Berthold Brecht's brilliant and supremely confusing musical "The Good Woman of Sezuan." Smeared with almond-tinted body makeup and sporting an unconvincing Queue (Chinese ponytail), I'd spent two and a half hours on stage warbling songs in Mandarin, running away from the angry gods and trying to convince the good woman (a hooker with a heart of gold) to take pity and offer a freebie. My mother, whose gaping open mouth had to be surgically closed could only beam and pat my head. My father on the other hand bellowed "I thought you were a math major."

#2. "When I get steamed up, hear me shout. I'm a little teapot, short and stout." For years the unquestioned number one show biz moment in my life was my triumphant performance, as a seven-year old musical theatre prodigy of "I'm A Little Teapot Short and Stout" in the Bandon, Oregon Cranberry Festival talent show. Pushed on stage by my beaming mother and sniggering older sister I nailed it. Not only was I the physical personification of the little teapot, both short and stout, but I "became" the teapot on stage. The U.S. Savings Bond I won, had it been left to mature in seven years would have been worth a mind-boggling twenty-five dollars. However, I invested heavily in Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Batman comic books and only realized twelve dollars and fourteen cents. An early reminder of the fickle nature of show business.

#1. During the early rehearsals of the opening scene from Shakespeare's The Tempest director Nathan Markiewicz told us; "It's a huge storm, the boat is tossed on the sea like a leaf in a wind storm. Everybody on board the ship is terrified and seasick. Who wants to vomit on stage?" Without a moment's thought I raised my hand and began waving it back and forth. "Me, Nathan, Me. Pick me. I want to do it." Though I hadn't known it until that moment, this was my chance to cap my show business career with a supremely dramatic reading of the upchuck chronicles. Despite the rabid competition for the honor, I won the great honor of feeding the fish in front of culture-loving outdoor audiences during some sixteen performances. If you're planning on attending one of our free shows (donations happily accepted) at Lovejoy Fountain Park, Thursday-Saturday from mid June through mid-July, and were planning on sitting up front, have no fear. No Koi will be harmed during my on-stage antics and no actual projectiles are involved in the aforementioned Ralph-a-thon. Thanks to my imagination, vocal chords and a handy nearby white five gallon bucket I'll be able to create the illusion without paying anyone's dry cleaning bill.

I anticipate that nothing will ever replace this crowning achievement.  After all, come on, shouting at my shoes on stage? How much better could it get? Unless my other, long repressed fantasy somehow becomes reality. But somebody's going to have to pour a lot of liquor into the director of a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, for that to happen. Anybody know where I can find a tutu in a 38 long?

GIVING BIRTH TO A BOOK

    GIVING BIRTH TO A BOOK

 Any day now I’ll release a suspense novel titled An Uncertain Refuge.

Because it seems that this book is a lot like a baby, I’ve been thinking about the process of writing and comparing it to pregnancy.

        But before I blog further, let me make it clear that I’ve never given birth, so the comparisons I’ll make here are based on guesswork and extrapolation from the information—sometimes WAY TOO MUCH information—that friends and relatives have shared. If I miss the mark, please leave a comment below and set me straight.

Concept/Conception

 

        Like a pregnancy begins when a speedy and determined sperm collides with an egg primed for fertilization, a book begins when a tiny idea that won’t be denied discovers a warm and nurturing niche in the brain.

        Immediately, the idea explodes in all directions, creating a wave of euphoria. I dream about its future. I dream it will be popular, maybe even win a prize. People will talk about it, be unable to forgot the chapter where the protagonist . . .

        Well, you all know how dreams go, right?

Rocky Reality

        Then, like morning sickness, I’m seized with bouts of cold and queasy doubt. I consider the long months ahead when ever-expanding plotlines will grow fat with scenes and characters and I feel already weary with the strain of carrying them all to the conclusion. I dread the days when the characters will feed on me, sapping the brainpower I need for other tasks. And I cringe at the thought of the logic holes that won’t seem to knit closed, and the sleepless midnight hours when I’ll wish I never allowed that tiny idea inside my skull.

        And I worry about whether the original idea will prove to be strong enough to become a fully developed story with a clear theme supported by plot, with characters that feel human, and a setting that seems real.

Serene Acceptance/Attitude Adjustment

        At some point in all of my novels, the characters take control and it seems they need only my fingers on the keyboard to grow. At this point, I no longer worry about whether I’ll be able to carry this book to term. Instead, I worry about what will happen after complete it.

Delaying the Due Date

        I spend days revising and re-revising, tweaking and over-thinking that first paragraph. As long as I hold onto the story, no one will see it, no one will criticize it, or give it a no-star review. No one will say the kinds of things I blurt in desperation when someone thrusts a homely baby at me. Things like, “Well, he certainly won’t have problems hearing.” Or, “She certainly has hair.” Or, “Plenty of room for teeth in that mouth.”

        On the other hand, if I don’t let go, no one will ever say anything positive, either.

        So, I dither, worrying about this book being out there on its own.

Then I remember that my mother once told me the mark of success as a mother was that your children were eager to leave home and be on their own, not because they didn’t like it there, but because they were prepared and ready for that next step.

Push/Push/Push

        Whether I’m ready or not, this book is. So I’m taking a deep breath and pushing it down the publishing chute.

        Like labor itself that will take a little time, a lot of effort, and some professional assistance.

        I’ll tell you more about that the next time the dogs let me have a turn on this blog. 

         Watch this space for an announcement of the birth of An Uncertain Refuge 

Bark/Counter Bark/Max's Great Medical Adventure

Max:  How come you’re not speaking to me?

Bubba:  You should know. Just think about it.

Max:  Thinking. Thinking. Thinking. Got nothin'.

Bubba:  Isn’t that just like a guy, totally unaware.

Max:  And isn’t that just like a girl, thinking we guys should be mind readers. In touch with our feelings and like that.

Bubba: (sigh) Good point. Okay, I’m mad because you got to go on a special trip with Mom and Dad Saturday night.

Max: You won’t be mad when I tell you where we went.

Bubba:  (cocking her ears) I’m all ears. Where did you go?

Max: Beats me. It was a place with metal tables and a man in a white coat and they put me in a cage and stuck a needle in me and made me hurl my dinner.

Bubba:  Eeewwww. Why?

Max:  Beats me. When Mom carried me in the door she told a woman something about morning glory leaves and then the woman yelled, “Triage to the lobby.” Then another woman came and took me down a hall and after I puked they squirted this saline stuff under my skin and made me eat charcoal.

Bubba: I thought charcoal is what Dad cooks with in the barbecue.

Max: Me too, but I guess the guy in the white coat cooks with something else, because he told Mom he wanted to give me some to eat to clean out the toxins.

Bubba: (shuddering) Ugh. I’m glad I have sense enough not to eat stuff that’s bad for me.

Max: Hey, how was I to know? Mom had these plants in a pot by the window. They were green, just like the lettuce she gives us sometimes. And they were down where I could reach them. It coulda happened to any dog.

Bubba:  (sotto voice) Any dog with a brain the size of a pistachio nut. (aloud) Yeah, I guess it could.

Max:  And I thought all the stuff on the floor was mine to chew on. You know, like all our toys and Dad’s underwear, and the cardboard cylinders that fall out of the recycling, and the carrot pieces that get away from Mom when she’s making salad.

Bubba: (sighing) Maybe we need to review what we find on the ground and what’s safe to eat and what isn’t.

Max:  Okay. Good idea. Good idea. How about those chewie things Mom brings home from the store?

Bubba: Check.

Max: Peanut butter toast crumbs?

Bubba: Check.

Max: The crunchie stuff that falls out of our Orbo toys?

Bubba: Check.

Max: Pizza crusts.

Bubba: Check. But only if Dad doesn’t say, “Leave it.”

Max: Leave it. Okay. Okay. What about stuff outside, like frogs and toads?

Bubba: Eeewww. If you so much as lick a toad, you’re never grooming my face again. Besides, Dad says licking toads can make you hallucinate.

Max: What-in-ate?

Bubba: See things that aren’t there.

Max: There where?

Bubba: What?

Max: Or here where?

Bubba:  Anywhere! Everwhere!

Max: Underwear. Silverware. This is fun! Rainwear. Teddy bear. Brush your hair. Double-dog dare.

Bubba:  Stop! You’re giving me a headache.

Max: Oh, sorry. I’ll run get Mom and Dad so they can take you to the man who makes you puke and then you’ll be all better.

Bubba: No, don’t! Hey, look outside, it’s a—

Max: (turning on a dime and racing the other way) Squirrel!

In Defense of Golf

The only time in our 28 year relationship that I ever manhandled my wife came during a visit to a golf "superstore" in Albuquerque. I'd gone in to scope out a new set of clubs I lusted after and since Carolyn happened to be with me, she allowed as how she'd come in and "look around a little."

Understand, my wife does not understand my life long love affair with the game of golf.  She would agree with Mark Twain who once said: "Golf is a good walk, spoiled." When others of our acquaintance ask if she plays, she always says: "If I'm going to pay for real estate, I'm going to damn well own it."

To her credit, she at least tolerates my addiction and politely asks, when I come home from walking eighteen holes: "How did you play?"  I'm sure an answer like "Great," or "Good," "Bad," or even "Okay," would more than suffice for her to feel she'd fulfilled her spousal supportiveness obligation for the week. But as any linkster knows, there is no simple answer to that question. I usually generate a nonsensical overshare that sounds something like: "So I had a twisting twelve-footer at number fourteen and I was sure it would break at least eighteen inches right then start up the slope to"—I can see her eyes begin to glaze over and her mind hop a bus to another mental area code. The only other time her facial expression approximates this is when she answers the door to find a missionary proffering brochures and promises of eternal life.

Back at the mega-golf mart I heft a set of Ping irons and cast an eye around the store for Carolyn. She's standing near a rack of golf shirts, holding a particularly egregious fuchsia-tinted polka-dotted number at arms length and trying to stifle an explosion of laughter with the palm of her hand. A smarter man would have made his move right then, hustling her out to the car and planning a solitary return trip to look at the clubs later. But I didn't.

Maybe my golf infatuation is just a part of my Karma. On the day I was born, November 7, 1948, my father was employed as a greens keeper at Glendoveer Golf Club in Portland, Oregon.  He didn't play the game. In fact, as a life long working class guy, he felt golf was an affectation of  the idle rich as a part of their efforts to look down their noses at "ordinary people." He'd taken the course maintenance gig after his doctor told him if he spent another year in the copper polishing plant, his lungs would shrivel up and turn to dust. Dad took the doc's advice to heart and hired on to start mowing greens at four in the morning, staying just ahead of the crack-of-dawn types trying for a fast eighteen before work. As it turned out, the job suited him. He enjoyed the early morning solitude, the smell of freshly mowed grass and laughing at the spastic flailing of the less coordinated members of the crack-of-dawn foursomes. As we all know, Golf spelled backwards is flog. Which, for some of us, describes what we do as we try to make stick hit ball.

Back at the golf shop, Carolyn is now in full dudgeon, pulling all manner of golf slacks, sweater, knickers, vests and socks out, pointing at them, slapping her knee with her palm and making sputtering noises. Drool is beginning to leak ever so gently from the corner of her mouth. She's seconds away from totally losing it. I really have to get her out of there. But . . . I look longingly at the perfectly balanced four iron. Just a couple more waggles. Just a quick imagining of myself setting up for my second shot on the torturous dogleg left par five 10th hole at Arroyo Del Oso.

Golf is no longer a game for elites, although there are country clubs where snobbishness flourishes. I share my father's disdain for those exclusive facilities, agreeing totally with Groucho Marx's sentiment that "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." I play at many of the affordable public links in the Portland area and enjoy meeting a wide variety of regular people who share my sickness. I enjoy the walk, the air, the challenge and the Zen of the game and hold strong opinions about the way it should be played. Among my convictions:

• Motorized golf carts are an abomination. Unless your doctor orders you to ride, you should walk. It's indicative of our culture that four pot-gutted thirty somethings riding around the course with a case of beer can claim they're out for exercise. 

• If someone's cell phone goes off on the course, the offender should immediately be flogged by the other members of his foursome with their golf towels and his smart phone given a swimming lesson at the nearest water hazard.

• If you spend most of your time on the course angry at yourself for playing badly, you should give the game up. Don't you get enough stress at work and at home? Breathe deeply, hit the ball, go to where you hit it and hit it again. The game is inherently ludicrous. Revel in the stupidity.

• You won't hit the ball any better with a $400 dollar driver than with a $7 Goodwill bargain bin club. You could set Tiger Woods up with a set from a garage sale and he'd still make a run at winning the Masters with them. Plus, his ex-wife could thump his cheating melon with a forty-year old rusty Sarazen eight-iron as well as with a kiln-forged, atomic thrust, molybdenum core "scary long" three-hundred dollar hybrid iron. 

• Don't lie about your score. None of your friends care that you got a nine instead of a seven on that tough par four. And you'll always know you cheated. At a recent PGA event, a talented young player took a nineteen on one hole. It made me smile to hear the audio tape of him trying to make a final count of his strokes after the hole had ended. He was laughing and taking it in stride. And it was costing him substantial money. Bottom line. It's only a number. Who cares?

The moment has arrived. Carolyn is on the floor of the golf emporium, laughing, coughing, hiccupping and snorting simultaneously, tears running down her cheeks in a torrent—thrashing her arms and legs up and down—occasionally stopping to point up at a violet and green striped pair of polyester pants hanging from a rack nearby. She is incapable of speech, reduced to fits of uncontrollable laughter and gasping. I'm afraid she'll swallow her tongue.

"Time to go, dear." I pick her up as gently as possible, throw her over my shoulder and start for the door. As the sliding electric eye doors snick open I toss back a John Belushi-esque "sorry" over my shoulder at the gaping clerks and customers who've stopped to watch the spectacle. Carolyn continues out of control, beating her fists on my back as waves of laughter send shudders throughout her body. I know, at that moment, that I'll never be able to return to that store again. In fact my name and description will probably be distributed to every outlet that sells golf equipment and clothing throughout the city. I sense I'll know first hand what India's untouchable caste feels like.

It occurs to me that I titled this blog "In Defense of Golf," and really haven't made much of a case, have I? Well, here goes.

During a recent round (on the first sunny day we've enjoyed since last October) I was fishing stray golf balls out of a water hazard when it occurred to me. If you go bowling and take your own ball, you'll come back with one ball. (Unless the machine eats it, which happened to me once). If you play softball, you'll return home with the same bats, gloves and balls you started with. But with golf, if you keep your eye peeled in the long grass and water, you may end up on the plus side of the ledger. Thus, golf is the only participation sport where you stand a chance of ending up with more equipment than you started with. If that's not a reason to take up the game, I don't know what is.