Golf, A Tidy Game For Crushing Bores

In an ideal world...

When I die and go to hell, I will find myself sitting at a table in a club house surrounded by golfers. For eternity I will have to overhear their detailed conversations about the 18 holes they have just played. “Did you see that shot I made up the slope with my six iron approaching the green at the 14th?” Every time I plead with Satan to be stretched out on a rack and have molten lead poured down my throat for a few million years, he’ll just cackle and turn away. The devil knows that the golf punishment is sicker than any twisted nightmare that Dante could have envisioned.

The US Open starts today just up the road from us, and that means more traffic and many more bona fide wankers in the bars of Bethesda. This has prompted me to analyse what it is about golf that I so detest, and the answer I came up with is simple: golf is the tidy sport for tidy people. That final putt on the pristine, flat green is like the player combing that final preppy hair into place before the Country Club Annual Golf Awards Dinner. On the green itself, each perfectly manicured blade of grass boasts as much individuality as the golfers themselves. And there’s not a scantling of noise allowed, because a golfer is deeply concentrating. Not defusing a bomb, or re-connecting the arteries of a transplanted heart. No, you have to be really, really quiet because they are trying to nudge a small ball into a

Being Very Important (For A Night)

Ever had one of these? No? Not very important then, are you, eh? EH!

After my previous adventures in failed freeloading, I was on the guest list at the 9:30 Club again last week when Death Cab For Cutie came to DC. Again it was sold out, so again I knew this was my only way into the concert. Again, the girl behind the glass screen couldn’t find my name on the guest list, and started flapping through several sheets of paper. This time I leaned over far enough to read the list, and just as she flipped over one page, I yelped, “There it was, the one you just turned over, right at the bottom!” Yep, right at the bottom of the guest list, but at least I was on it. She smiled apologetically (when she was probably thinking, Okay okay, calm down, you grey-capped tosser) then handed me my ticket and my day-glo orange VIP wrist-band.

Very bastarding Important Person. I moved straight from the VIP ticket window to the door of the club, but a 9:30 employee standing out on the pavement stepped forward and diplomatically asked me, “Can I help you, sir? The line’s this way.” He pointed to a long queue of people that stretched all the way down the road and around the corner, consisting exclusively of a common rabble of paying punters. Did he really expect me to stand and mix with these mundane souls on a breezy summer’s evening? What if they saw my VIP wrist-band, got all jealous and resentful, then beat me up and stole it?