A Respite

I showed a man my penis this morning. In addition to seeming impressed and a little envious, he also told me that no skin cancer lurked there or anywhere else on my body. I thanked the dermatologist, then muddled through my day because my night was flippin' awful. Thoughts roiling, my past snapping at me. I tried to get back on track by taking an exercise class at the YMCA, since I'm fairly certain that none of the attractive women in the P90X exercise videos I use is likely to transport herself from my television into my bedroom, so I showed up at Bootcamp, and basically got my butt kicked. By 60-year-old ladies. I managed to fake my way through most of it, including the endless jumping jacks, the incessant skipping rope and so much ab work that I cursed the sadistic instructor with each crunch, and I realize I have to pick up the intensity in my own workouts.

And then I turned on the Golf Channel to watch a bit of the Accenture Match Play Championship, a huge event that invites only the world's 64 top-ranked golfers, and what did I see endlessly crawling across the screen but the fact that The Philanderer has scheduled a "press conference" for Friday. The dickwad known as Tiger couldn't wait until Monday, a down day in golf, to reenter the fray (by not allowing the media to ask questions ... what a guy!), but felt compelled to interrupt the Match Play event, thereby stealing attention from the guys who are actually playing golf, rather than sullying it.

Then just as I was trying to coin another alliterative phrase to replace "arrogant asshole," the crawl on the bottom of the screen declared that Tiger needs only three more majors to tie Jack Nicklaus' record of 20. This is bigger news than all the strippers and porn stars and cocktail waitresses combined, yet it won't be covered that way. As every golf fan knows (hell, every sports fan), Jack has 18 majors, since U.S. Amateurs are not counted as majors, and Tiger has 14. The math, therefore, reveals that Tiger needs to win four more majors to tie Jack, but the Golf Channel is now fudging reality for Tiger by including U.S. Amateur titles, of which Tiger has three to Jack's two. So not only is the commissioner of the PGA sanctioning this sham of a press conference, allowing Tiger to control it (thereby certainly leaving the media—and by extension the public—unsatisfied), but also now the Golf Channel is cheating for the bastard.

It reminds me of all that ratshit years ago about Tiger winning the Grand Slam, until people who weren't actually lining their pockets by attaching themselves, however vicariously, to Tiger reminded the world that a grand slam has always meant winning the four majors in one calendar year, be that grand slam in tennis or in golf. So the sycophants altered reality by creating the Tiger Slam, which meant nothing at all but was elevated to the ranks of being significant, and thereby selling lots of shit. Impressive as hell, yes, that anyone could win four consecutive majors, but a grand slam, no. We're supposed to buy into crap like the Tiger Slam but if we slam Tiger, we're deemed to be piling on and dealing in the prurient. Hell, I'm still upset that I actually purchased Nike golf shoes (great deal; comfortable shoes), because people who see me wearing them may think I like the guy and will not be able to tell that I'm wearing them ironically.

Or I could simply be wearing them for David Duval, Stewart Cink and Anthony Kim.

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