I played a lot of Putt Putt when I was a kid. Not miniature golf, mind you, with the windmills and the dinosaurs, but Putt Putt. The Brand. The Franchise. There was a Putt Putt Championship broadcast on ABC every year. I watched it every year.
The great thing about Putt Putt was how well thought-out it was from a golf point of view. Eighteen holes was par 36. Every hole was a par two and every hole had a hole-in-one as a possibility. The hazards and mounds and bumpers all served a purpose. You could play the undulations to make the putt. Putt Putt, in two words, kicked ass. I don't know if there are any of those franchises in existence anymore, I'm sure the land became more valuable than the game in most cases.
So today I got talked into going to play a couple of rounds of Glow Golf at Opry Mills by a certain 5-year-old who can pretty much talk me into anything. I hate, no wait, I HATE Glow Golf at Opry Mills.
The attraction is that it is lit in black light, and has glow in the dark golf balls and flourescent tape and paint all over everything. The reason I HATE Glow Golf in Opry Mills is because it has nothing to do with golf. Whoever built the thing had no clue about anything to do with putting a golf ball. It looks like it was put together by Cletus and his Uncle Bubba over a weekend with a bunch of scrap PVC, scrap wood, flourescent paint and three cases of beer. The "hazards" are randomly cut blobs covered in splattered glow paint, put haphazardly in the way of the path to the hole. There are holes where you actually have to lay up.
Yes, lay up. You don't lay up in miniature golf. At Glow Golf in Opry Mills, you have to.
The holes aren't even real golf holes, as is standard at all miniature golf courses on Earth. The holes are slices of PVC pipe. They aren't even all the same size. Not only are they not regulation, they aren't even the same from hole to hole.
The builder of Glow Golf in Opry Mills is, hands-down, the Worst Golf Course Designer in the World.
I didn't keep score. I know I kicked her ass. But I still lost 18 bucks. To the cashier.
The girlfriend was driving back to Nashville on I40, and she stopped at the Holladay exit for some gas. She made me aware of an establishment known as "Country Hooters."
When I first discovered Maxim magazine about ten years ago, I immediately ordered a subscription. It was refreshing to have a magazine that spoke directly to me, an American man. That magazine made no apologies that American men are horny drunks who like to go fast and blow shit up. Their light hearted articles about hot women, beer, sex, fast cars and blowing shit up was a nice change from all the other men's magazines on the racks.
(heh, heh, heh . . ."racks")
I was a bit taken aback when Shorty declared that Maxim, for him, was dead. I did notice a drastic reduction in page count, but the content seemed to be the same, so I continued to look forward to each issue.
Until this month. Maxim has a list of the 50 lamest things, ever. The 14th lamest thing ever is baby boomers. "Putting them in a nursing home will be so sweet."
I was born in the last year of the baby boom. I am a baby boomer. I guess I am no longer welcome at Maxim. I am the 14th lamest thing of all time. Lamer than the Holocaust. Lamer than the potato famine. Lamer than that guy Tony Little who yells at you to buy his excercise tapes with his blonde pony tail pulled through his ball cap. It is a hard pill to swallow, but if Maxim says it is so, then it is so.
After 10 years, I guess I'm going to have to cancel my subscription.
I am not aging well. I had to start completely over with my life a couple years ago, and I had to face a lot of realities, and one of them that still hasn't sunk in was that I am no longer 29. I suppose at my age, I don't need to be leering at photos of nearly naked girls I've never heard of, like last month's Lacey Chabert, who were born when I was already finished with college.
I don't think men my age are any different than we were 10 years ago. We're still horny drunks who like to drive fast and blow shit up. It's just that now, we drink expensive wine and go fast in nice German cars. I'm with Shorty. I need a new magazine. Maybe one with pictures of a nearly naked Diane Lane.
I'm thinking the Saints will surprise everyone, yet no one, and slaughter da Bears by 17 points. The other game, pitting whiny Payton against Dreamboat Tommy, will be a low-scoring affair, with whichever team has the ball last winning on a field goal as time expires. I don't really care which team it is.
By putting this prediction here, I suppose this is the official end of that failed experiment known as The Staggering Prophets.
Speaking of Dreamboat Tommy, I had a lovely couple come watch the games last weekend with me and the girlfriend. I have never heard so much chatter from two women over one man's ass. The girlfriend got up to leave the room at one point and asked, "You don't think they're going to let Tom Brady talk on camera, do you?"
Well apparently some of the fellas like him too. I present to you an unbelievably touching tribute to Tom Brady:
I'm watching an interview show on voice actors. Elmo is a big, bald black dude. Bobby on "King of the Hill" is an attractive woman. That's her there. I'll never be able to watch "King of the Hill" the same way again.
My kid woke up sobbing over a sore neck this morning. I knew she wasn't faking, because she doesn't do that, plus this was going to be her first day back to school since Christmas and she was excited to see her friends. She was in obvious pain and could barely move her head.
I figured she just slept on it funny.
So I took her with me to work to get things squared away and told her I would take her home and she could just relax until her mom came and got her. I told Joel at work what was happenning, and he casually said, "Is there any meningitis going around? It starts in the neck."
Well I took her home and she was still in a lot of teary-eyed discomfort. I got her settled in on the couch with some Mac and Cheese and began my internet research. There was a lot of information on the disease, but all I could read was that IT STARTS WITH NECK PAIN AND IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR CHILD TO THE DOCTOR RIGHT THIS SECOND FOR A SPINAL TAP, SHE WILL DIE AND IT WILL BE YOUR FAULT.
I called her mother and had her make an appointment. She wasn't going to come get the little whippersnapper for a couple of hours, thus giving me some quality time with her in what could possibly be her last few moments on earth. Lo and behold, somewhere during the Fry Cook Olympics episode of SpongeBob, she had a miraculous recovery. Well, not really a recovery, she's still sore, but she really cheered up. Upon further review, to be meningitis, she has to have a sore neck plus a fever and sensitivity to light and vomiting and some other stuff she didn't have.
Two atoms are walking down the street. The first atom turns to the second and says, "I just lost an electron." The second atom says, "Are you sure?" The first atom says, "I'm positive."
My kid is taking horseback riding lessons. Probably because at five, she is incapable of coming up with a more expensive hobby. Maybe in a couple of years, she'll decide to take up flying. But until then, it is horses.
They put 5-year-olds on full grown horses. It's crazy. She trots and weaves through cones and backs up and all kinds of horsey stuff. She's not even able to wipe her own butt yet, but she is weaving a full grown horse through a slalom course.
A lot of you who started reading last year know that my blog got sanitized when I lost my anonymity. That's because my mom reads this crap now. So, if you are my mother, here is a picture of your granddaughter putting away her horse after riding last week. She doesn't even come up to the horse's nose.
CLC got his own domain name. When I first started getting readers, (most of whom left when this site got, uh . . . sanitized with my coming out of anonymity) I checked, and NashvilleKnucklehead.com was available. I'm sure it still is, I just didn't really want to spend the money, so I stuck with blogger.
I am the administrator for the Staggering Prophets. When I switched to the "New" Blogger that one went too, whether the other members liked it or not. John H. didn't like it. He refuses to switch to Blogger Beta. I don't blame him.
I thought I did it by accident - clicked the wrong button and next thing I know I am signed up for "Beta" and can't get out. But tonight, I figured out what is going on.
It is no longer "Beta" anymore, it is the "new" Blogger. And they are going to move your account whether you like it or not. I went over to my work blog, and that is exactly what happened. They have moved it, and I can't post until I create a Google account for that blog.
You know, Google, the folks who bought blogger who would most benefit from you having a Google account.
So maybe I should move my work blog to my work website (which I planned on doing anyway) and get NashvilleKnucklehead.com, and while I'm at it, just for good measure, I'll register MerrilHogeIsAnIdiot.com, which is available.
ESPN's Merril Hoge said Bush also should've won the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year award, which went to Young on Wednesday. Hoge doesn't get a vote. If he did, he said, he would've put Young fourth.
"Here's what happens: People vote off what they see on TV, seeing a bunch of highlights. They don't see the entire concept,'' said Hoge, one of Young's harshest critics.
"Watching Reggie Bush play three different positions — impacting games as a wide receiver, a running back and on special teams — to me, he had a much better rookie year than Vince Young did.''
Look, Merril, there are only 50 voters for the Rookie of the Year. It is a panel of 50 national sportswriters and broadcasters. Twenty-three of them, nearly half of them, voted for Vince Young.
Let me repeat one thing, it is a panel of 50 national sportswriters and broadcasters.
Hoge went on to say:
"Basically (Young) won this off two games — the Buffalo game and the Houston game,'' Hoge said. "I see every snap of every game of every player and Reggie Bush was far superior helping his team.
"You show a few highlights of (Young) and (voters) see that and remember. When he's 8-of-22 at Philadelphia, they don't show that. You don't see his bad games.''
Dear Merril,
Are you so fucking arrogant that you think you are the only one who knows what happened in pro football this year? This isn't like the Oscars, where thousands of dottering old actors vote for best lighting on documentaries they never saw. This is a panel of 50 national sportswriters and broadcasters. What you are saying is that they don't take the responsibility of voting for the Rookie of the year seriously. Apparently, only three of the 50 national sportswriters and broadcasters were serious enough about their duties and smart enough about football to vote for Bush. The rest of the voters who cover sports every single day for a living are such slackers and idiots that they voted for Young based on seeing highlights from two games.
Obviously, the right to name of the AP Rookie of the Year needs to be stripped from the AP and given to you.
I have two main interests outside of work which I indulge in when time permits -- golf and cycling. I've been playing golf my whole life and love to watch it on TV and love to read the golf magazines and dream about getting a new set of clubs anytime someone invents a new set of clubs. I also have an expensive road bike and I am one of those guys that puts on the skin-tight clown suit and helmet who rides in a line with four other jokers, blocking the road when you are on the way to work in the morning because we are trying to get 40 miles in before it gets hot.
This was the first year my kid was old enough to pick out my presents herself. She got me six bright yellow Sponge Bob golf balls and a horn for my bike with the Harpo Marx honk-honk squeeze air bulb.
