Where do I sit?

Paula Creamer's bag in the foreground while Paula putts during the Pro-Am at Seaview Country Club on Thursday.  Photo by me.

Two of the least spectator-friendly sports are taking place locally this weekend.

One, the Shop Rite LPGA Classic, has been going on for a week.  The other, the 28th running of the Philadelphia International Championship, takes place on Sunday.  It has changed sponsors more than most people change their heater filters.  So much so that I had to look it up.  It probably should have been called the "International Championship" from the beginning.  CoreStates bank and whatever other institutions lent their name to it had nothing to do with cycling.

Golf is a goofy sport to follow.  The courses are usually in the back woods somewhere, which means that spectators have to shuttle-bus in, as though they were being taken to another world - which is the reality.

Golf courses were made for golf, not for watching golf.  Spectators do one of two things:  They walk around with their favorite player from hole to hole (my choice) or they sit in one spot and watch the field play by.  Either way, you don't get a feel for the entire game because you're either watching someone who is playing their own game or you are watching randomly placed activities that have nothing to do with the tournament.

I'm a bit surprised, in the era of television, that someone hasn't designed a golf course for TV.  That is, elevated tees, depressed greens and places for spectators to gather around both with good sight lines and places for stands and ... money-making concessions.  I suppose golf is too far above the level of us ordinary people to even contemplate bringing itself down to us.

Bike racing is another weirdo.  You pick a spot on the course and watch 100 or so crazy peddlers whiz past in a couple of seconds ... and then settle in for another twenty minutes of nothing happening at all while you watch (if you're lucky) the rest of the course on a nearby TV.

I've been to a few of them, and I can say that, wherever I was I wished I was somewhere else.

The same can't be said for golf.  I follow Paula Creamer, and when I go to a tournament I walk with her group and I can honestly say that I've never thought, "Gee, I wish I was with [some other golfer] today."  I think, if bike race fans could follow one rider around the course it would make the experience entirely different, but they go too fast to follow, and we aren't allowed on the course anyway.

That's the deal with golf.  Spectators are sometimes right next to the player playing the shot and standing on the course.  It's the only game in which all of the spectators are that close.  Only a few people have court side seats to basketball or seats behind the dugout in baseball.  In golf, every seat is court side.

Thousands of people will descend on tiny Galloway Township for the LPGA and relatively tiny Mannayunk for the bike race tomorrow.  All of them will enjoy their day, but in both cases, participating in the sport is ultimately more satisfying than watching it from the sidelines.

Don't call us Indians. We're Native Americans.

That is a photo of an ad running on TV.  It's a loan shark outfit called Western Sky that will gladly loan you $10,000 at an interest rate of 89.68% with 84 monthly payments of $743.99.  Where do I sign up?

My guess is that, because it's a "Native American-owned business" that is "operating on a Native American Reservation" they can get away with charging 90% interest on a loan.  Otherwise, they would probably have the Federal government questioning their practices.  Finally, we have closure on the whole "Indian Reservation" deal.  This is how they get even with us white-folk. It's also nice that there are "no fees for early pay off" as though you could pay off a 90% interest loan early.

I wonder how many phone calls they get?  Like the kid who sells lemonade for $50 a glass, they only have to sell one.  I can't be the only person who paused his TV mid-stream to read the fine print on the ad.

Or am I?

The gap between reality and perception.

One of the themes I've been meaning to write about is the growing gap between the "have's" and the "have-not's."  That is to say, the One-Per-centers and the rest of the world.  More and more, we are faced with luxury suites at sporting events, up-scale mall stores and automobiles with more accoutrements than most of our homes have.  Disregarding that premise for now, I am left with these:

Boston Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett was booed after being removed from a game, after it was found that he played golf after being disabled because of an injury.  His response:

“We get 18 off days a year,” Beckett said. “I think we deserve a little time to ourselves.”

A little time to yourselves?  Your work year goes from March to October.  You have more time off than schoolteachers.  Games start at 7:05pm.  What are you doing all day, besides sleeping and eating?  My cat has it harder than you. Shut up and play.

Terrell Owens recently appeared on the Dr. Phil TV show with several of his out-of-wedlock sex partners and their (his) children.  Owens has earned $70 million over his career, he is said to be broke and as such, financially unable to support his babies.  He had this to say:

"I've been through a lot," he said when confronted with the children he fathered and owes support.

You've been through a lot?  What, exactly?  You made millions of dollars, been to Super Bowl(s) and made money for endorsing products that you use. Now, we are supposed to feel sorry for you because you squandered that money and had unprotected sex with at least four different women?  Sell sympathy somewhere else - we're booked-up here.

Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov did an interview with a Russian newspaper yesterday and had this to say about his year in Philadelphia:

"What I lived through this season I wouldn't wish to an enemy," he told SovSport in a story the Philadelphia Inquirer translated.

Hey, Ilya - let me be your "worst enemy" so I can sign a 9-year contract for $59 million to play ice hockey in Philadelphia.  I'll live through that for a while.

Philadelphia 76ers forward Andre Iguodala scored the winning points in the Sixers' playoff win against the Bulls on Thursday night. Afterward, coach Doug Collins had this to say:

Collins said. "Dre has gone through a lot here and I told him after the game that no one deserves more than you do to have this moment."

Oh, poor 'Dre.  (By the way, I'm not impressed that you call him 'Dre)  The poor guy makes $9 million a year to run up and down a hardwood floor 82 times a year.  When he fails (most of the time) he is so sensitive about being criticized that he feels as though he has to stand on the scorer's table at the end of a playoff game and thump his chest like he found a cure for cancer.  Get a grip, Dre.  You haven't gone through all that much.

Not only are these guys making millions of dollars in salary, but they are griping about their so-called "hardships" of the life that they bartered for.  Hey fellas, it ain't that tough.  Or, more accurately, YOU ain't that tough.

Anti-social Media

It's a lot easier to piss people off than it used to be.  Or perhaps it's the advent of social media that makes it seem that way? After all, our identity and proximity influences the volume of our opinions. It's easy to be angry and anonymous, but difficult to be confrontational in person.  Either way, making political statements on Facebook, Twitter and other such portals is the latest way to vent anger over something we find offensive.

The latest one is North Carolina's vote on "Amendment 1" which defines marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman.  It has turned the North Carolina Tourism Facebook page into a battleground of profanity, where critics have lashed out on the measure.  Many have said that they will no longer visit North Carolina because homosexuals cannot marry each other.  That makes good nonsense.

Of course, it's a tourism page, so one would assume (logically) that the visitors to the page are also visitors (i.e.: tourists) of the state and as such, shouldn't care what the voters in North Carolina decide.  It makes me wonder why people from, say, Arkansas would go to the trouble of logging onto their Facebook page just to post a snarky comment.  How many other states do they visit that have laws they disagree with?  Lots, I'd guess.  Utah and Nevada come to mind.

Never mind that North Carolina is the 31st state to do it under their constitution. So, if you're crossing states off your "anti-gay" vacation list, you're running out of places to go.  They are merely the most recent, and perhaps the only one with an accessible outlet like Facebook on which to vent.

What's the big deal about getting married anyway?  Why do people find that they need a piece of paper to declare their love for each other?  I was married once and I don't think I would have been any happier (or unhappier) if we had just lived together for 6 years and split up.  Why bring ink and paper into it?  Is it so horrible to commit to one another without a legal document?  I think there is a social side of the issue that needs to be explored.  Talk amongst yourselves.

So, visit North Carolina if you want.  Or don't. I hear it's a nice place. I'm guessing that for the duration of your stay you will not be forced to marry someone of the opposite sex and you may even escape without being propositioned.  You pay your money and take your chances.

The Birth of the Blues, Reds and Greens.

While I'm listening to Cocteau Twins I am thinking about my musical influences and how I came about them.

The Beatles were unavoidable.  Their music was everywhere, and even a 7-year old couldn't avoid them.  Lucky for me.

Their subsequent British Invasion clones and American counterparts would shape my thought as a young person of the 1960s, and I found myself drawn into pop radio and its influences, mostly because I exhibited no independent thought.  Once I did, however, my mind wandered.

Chicago Transit Authority would be later (and better) known as Chicago, and their music was foist upon me by their radio popularity and their popularity among the young hipsters in my high school.

That led to bands like Focus; Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Grand Funk Railroad who became popular among my high school friends - and me, in the case of Focus and ELP.  I remember being on my school bus one morning asking a seat-mate if he had heard "Hocus Pocus" by Focus.  It was a nice Doctor Seuss-way of introducing friends to new music, but in another way, I was seeing into the future.

I was a subscriber to Circus Magazine as a kid, and I remember a headline proclaiming "Keith Emerson's Favorite Cup of Blood: Genesis."  That led me into that end of what we called Progressive Rock music.  On another occasion, I was laid up with the flu and had read about Yes drummer Bill Bruford defecting to a band called King Crimson.  A new LP called "Lark's Tongues in Aspic" was out and I sent a courier to fetch it for me.  Undoubtedly, I felt better after I heard it.

The whole King Crimson ordeal led into a myriad of bands too lengthy to detail here:  Gentle Giant, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Kansas, PFM, Finch and their brethren.  I never recovered from the Crimson influence, and in their wake I was left feeling unsatisfied by subsequent bands who were labeled "edgy" or (God forbid) "Avant-garde."

That led to one afternoon, driving home, in the late 1980s that I heard Cocteau Twins' "Donimo" on our local college radio station WXPN.  In those days, one had to venture to a record store to find an album or compact disc of a band that we heard.  We were hunter-gatherers.  I ventured to the local record store to find these Cocteau Twins that I had heard and see what all the fuss was about.

It turned out that there was a huge fuss, and my search was fruitful.  In their wake I would discover such luminaries as Dead Can Dance, Throwing Muses, Colourbox and others of that era. It was the last of the great record company acts that were promoted by a label called 4AD.  They produced sampler CDs and promoted music, which is an idea that seems foreign now that television has taken over the music business.

I have recovered from that music promotion nightmare and have found myself regressing (?) back to the music of the artists that I loved.  Fortunately for me, at least one of those artists that I loved is still making music.  Her name is Kristin Hersh, and she still fronts Throwing Muses as well as my new favorite band 50FOOTWAVE.  Sometimes, going backward is a step forward.

What it shows is that you should never give up on the things you love because they will always be there in some form, and I am fortunate that Kristin is still inspired to make music.  It shows that we shouldn't give up on our ideas.  As much as TV shows like "American Idol" want to force-feed us crap, we still have the ability to choose.  Those choices are imbedded deep in our soul and our musical influences.

Do not let television or popular culture tell you what you like.  The thing that I have learned from these years of experience is that you should follow your heart.  Music is a reflection of your soul, and if you aren't true to your soul, you are just following the herd.

The artists I mentioned in this essay are minor in the grand scheme of music, but to me they are huge influences on my tastes and who I consider myself to be.  I would take them over any so-called popular music of the period.

I am artistically and musically stronger because they are a part of my life.

Drafting some thoughts on junk.

The National Football League is a marketing machine.  They have figured out how to make working out (The Combine) and choosing-up sides (The Draft) into prime-time television programs that run for several nights on big-time cable television stations.
What is more amazing is that people watch.

It reminds me of the saying:  Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the general public.

Is he really going to have GRIFFIN III on his jersey or was that just a prop for the draft?

I love the coconut water drinks that have started showing up over the past year or so.  I wonder if it's real coconut water or just a mix of chemicals designed to simulate coconut water?  I saw "Cast Away" and it didn't look to me like Tom Hanks was getting a lot of water out of those coconuts.  At least not enough for somebody to think that they could bottle the stuff and earn a profit.

We're a conflicted people.  Every day (or so it seems) we hear about how obese we are and how our bodies are ticking time bombs, yet every other day some restaurant chain comes out with a more grotesque version of something that is already hideous to eat.   One pizza chain is touting a crust that has little hot dogs in it and another surrounds the crust with cheeseburger sliders.
In February I read about someone who, while eating at the Heart Attack Grill, suffered an actual heart attack while eating a Triple Bypass Burger.  You'd think that their marketing people would have had a talk with them over the name.  But then, when your restaurant is called the Heart Attack Grill, how much could marketing help?  I wonder if the heart attack victim will be signing an endorsement deal?  You can't beat actual customer experiences.

The Quadruple Bypass Burger with 8,000 calories has been identified as one of the "world's worst junk foods". It consists of four half-pound beef patties, eight slices of American cheese, a whole tomato and half an onion served in a bun coated with lard.  It's the lard that gets you.

Walking across the common area on my way home from the grocery store, I could see that my downstairs neighbor was watching "American Idol" - with the closed-captioning on.  I thought, "what a perfect way to watch that program - with the sound off." It reminds me of the saying:  Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the general public.

As I passed the lobster tank at my local Shop Rite, a wave of sympathy came over me.  There they were, rooting around in a five-by-eight tank of stagnant filtered water, with their claws bound together with no hope for release.  It occurred to me that being thrown into a pot of boiling water is a preferable option to that life.
And then, I thought that I could be looking at my eventual animal reincarnation destiny.  And that didn't help me any.

We love what we don't understand.

I picked up my bag, I went looking for a place to hide;
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walking side by side.
I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on, let's go downtown."
She said, "I gotta go, but my friend can stick around."

Take a load off Annie, take a load for free;
Take a load off Annie, and you put the load right on me.

Levon Helm died on Thursday.  It prompted a lot of airplay for "The Weight," one of The Band's most popular songs.  One DJ said that hearing the song makes him cry.  I have heard the song a number of times and frankly, never had that reaction.  Mostly because I never knew what it was about.

I found the lyrics online and read through them and I still don't know what it's about.  That got me to thinking.

Tons of people love that song [pun] and if you asked them, I'd bet that either they don't know all the words or, if they do, they couldn't put their finger on exactly what the song means.  While it appears to be a tune about some conflict between the Devil and the narrator, it's unclear exactly what the conflict is, what caused it and how it is ever resolved.
 

Suppose you went to a movie, and after seeing it a friend asked you to explain it.   If you could not, what would your impression be of the movie?  You would leave the theater disappointed and either think that you weren't smart enough to know what was going on or be angry that you spent $12 to be confused.

Millions of people love music that, if you asked them, they would have no idea of the song's meaning or sometimes, its lyrics.  There is something about music that makes it appealing to us even though we have no idea of the topic.

Take The Kinks' "Lola" for instance.  It's a song about a transsexual.  But, if you brought the topic up in conversation, you'd be the most controversial person in the room.  Yet, we walk around humming the song to ourselves.
Even Ronald Reagan didn't know that Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." was a sarcastic smack in the face.  He read the title and thought, "Wow, what a great song."  But he had Alzheimer's, so maybe that's a bad example.

The point is (and there is one) that music does indeed have charms, even if we don't know what those charms mean.  We love music even though, often, the lyrics are incomprehensible or just plain nonsense.

I'll be the roundabout.

The words will make you out and out.

I'll spend the day your way.

Call it morning driving through the sound and in and out the valley.

In and around the lake,

Mountains come out of the sky.

They stand there.

See?