The Cain Mutiny

I’m wondering who the next person to come forward to claim Herman Cain groped them and am fearful it might be me. Our paths have crossed.

Sharon Bialek says she was in Washington staying at the Capitol Hilton in 1997 when Cain made a lust-fueled lunge at her loins after drinks in the hotel bar.

The news stirred The Washington Post to write the scandal puts the Hilton in the “elite pantheon of hotels of infamy.”

To me, it’ll always be in the elite pantheon of hotels that host kids that can spell words like cymotrichous and stromuhr.

The hotel was the long-time host of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, an event I twice chaperoned to the fiscal detriment of the Nashville Banner’s profit margin. The hotel was the landmark site of my first opportunity to blow out an expense account.

Part of my “expenses” involved lobster dinners and a $90 ticket to see Charlton Heston star in “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial” at the Kennedy Center. Ronald and Nancy Reagan attended the same performance. I wrote about the whole thing here.

Remember the great 1954 movie? It starred Humphrey Bogart as Capt. Philip Queeg of the Navy minesweeper Caine. The Caine captain loses touch with reality and is eventually disgraced.

We’re today witnessing the beginnings of another Cain mutiny.

He’s finished. His campaign surge struck me as odd and an indication of how desperation is leading the GOP off the presidential cliff during what should be a gimme election.

Bialek made the charges beside her attorney, feminist crusader Gloria Allred, who should consider for reasons of accuracy changing her name to Gloria Allmakeup.

The charges seem credible. Of course, I’m a liberal Democrat, so charges against a Republican carry more weight with me than when the same charges are leveled against someone like Bill Clinton.

It’s the exact opposite with Republicans who unleash special prosecutors and moral indignation whenever a Democrat is accused of the same murky shenanigans.

Really, a more non-partisan question always pops into my head whenever I hear a woman say, as Bialek says, her date shoved one hand up her skirt while using the other to push her head into his lap.

The question is: Does that ever work?

I imagine there are women out there who’ll succumb to that sort of blunt maneuver, but I think most of them are either hookers or pancake waitresses interested in dating Tiger Woods.

I’d never dream of trying that sort of thing. I’d be terrified the woman might sever the relationship -- and I’m not just talking about the relationship between me and her.

I’m talking about the relationship between me and my tender little troublemaker.

As romantic come-ons go, it certainly lacks the subtlety and sophistication I champion.

I was advising a heartsick friend the other day that he’d never need to worry about meeting strange women -- and women who talk to friends of mine are uniformly strange -- because I authored the George Clooney of pick-up lines.

I share it because it saddens me to think of how much loneliness there is in the world and because my married butt has no use for it.

I told him to approach the most stunning woman in the room and say with utmost sincerity: “Was it as difficult for you growing up beautiful . . . as it was for me?”

It’s irresistible. It’s complimentary and manages to be simultaneously self-deprecating and egotistical.

It’s a pity I thought up that line about five years after I became a married father -- and that happily married men still spend idle hours thinking up winning pick-up lines is the reason attorneys like Allred will never be broke.

I have to admire Cain’s moxie. He’s insisting on not talking about the only thing everyone is talking about. He’s threatening to sue news organizations that report on the existence of factual documents he signed. And he’s acting like old Capt. Queeg did before the Navy instigated court martial proceedings.

I’m not saying he’s crazy, but he’s certainly engaging in calaginous behavior.

Calaginous is a Latin adjective meaning dim, murky, dark or obscure.

Care to hear it used in another sentence?

Oops. Sorry.

Oh, how the sweet sting of spelling bees past forever lingers!

Who knew lobsters and bees would be such a memorable combination?

Tiger fires his Tonto

Who’d have figured? Today’s most famous celebrity break-up doesn’t involve shiny Hollywood starlets, but a professional golfer who hasn’t won since 2009 and the guy who toted his golf sticks.

As is required in any TMZ break-up, the two men were passionate lovers.

Not of each other.

Of themselves.

After enriching him for 12 years to the tune of more than $10 million, Tiger Woods decided he needed another caddie and fired Stevie Williams, who is to surly what Hershey is to sweet.

This is big news in the insular golf world where sycophantic golf writers are today asking, Stevie, are you bitter? Stevie, will you write a tell-all? Stevie, will you grant me an exclusive?

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is asking, Stevie, just who the hell are you?

I guess the best way to answer that question is he’s what you’d get if you combined Tonto with Paulie Walnuts, the sidewalled thug who used to whack all Tony Soprano’s real and perceived enemies.

Like Tonto to the Lone Ranger, he provided on-course guidance and was intensely loyal to Tiger, who is now renown for being intensely loyal to his own selfishness.

And like Paulie to Tony, he was a numbskulled goon. He’s wrestled cameras from countless photographers whose trigger fingers he deemed too itchy (one belonging to an off-duty policeman), and threw one fan’s $7,000 camera into a pond.

He called Phil Mickelson, one of the game’s truly nice guys, a word the newspapers deemed unworthy of proper publication (out of my respect for my newspaper background, I’ll not repeat the slur. Hint: it starts with a “p” and ends with a “rick”).

He’d glare at anyone who’d so much as dare extend a pen and paper or a warm handshake in Tiger’s direction.

“He ain't there to talk to every Tom, Dick and Harry at the course each day,” Williams said. “He's there to work. And to win. And if anybody doesn't like it, that's their problem."

He was saying Tiger cared only about winning (we soon learned in sensational fashion winning wasn’t all Tiger cared about).

Now after spending more than a dozen years seeing a man treat individuals and loved ones like hapless extras in a Batman movie, his tender feelings are hurt he’s being treated like a hapless extra in a Batman movie.

“I’m extremely disappointed, given all I’ve been through the past 18 months,” he says, referring to Tiger’s myriad scandals, injuries, swing changes and what for him is an interminable losing streak.

“You could say I’ve wasted the last two years of my life.”

If that’s the way he feels, it’s actually worse than that.

This is a man of considerable means, a married father. He lives in New Zealand, a land I know virtually nothing about, but I can’t believe it would be as easy to blow $10 million there than a less remote land like, say, Old Zealand, wherever the hell that is.

Most of us dream of having money so we could spend more time enjoying our families, our friends and our pastimes.

I contend the years he spent with Tiger were the ones he wasted.

Together, the pair won 13 major championships, 72 professional tournaments and nearly $1 billion in earnings.

I wonder why it is I look at both and feel like using a judgmental word my newspaper background makes me uncomfortable using without two on-the record sources.

Hint: It starts with an “l” and ends with an “osers.”

Kim Jung Il should try PGA Tour

Many narrow-minded American golf fans have been upset by the onslaught of talented Korean golfers crowding the LPGA leader boards.

They ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Because the world’s best golfer now has time to play more and if past ambitions are any indication, he’s bound for the PGA Tour.

It’s soon-to-be retiree Kim Jong Il, the despotic president of North Korea.

State run media reported in 1994 that Kim was eager to try golf on his nation’s first course when it opened near Pyongyang. The results stunned the world.

The first time he ever played, Kim is said to have shot a jaw dropping 38-under-par in a round that included 11 holes in one.

It’s impossible for a non-golfer to appreciate the staggering scope of this achievement. For perspective, I’ve been golfing an average of about 25 times a year for 35 years or so and have never had a single ace.

That’s about 15,750 aceless holes.

Kim played 18 holes and snagged 11.

Two of the greatest and most prolific golfers ever, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, have only had 20 and 19 respectively.

Of course, this shouldn’t be surprising. This is a man so powerful his subjects believe the weather is controlled by his moods and his body so evolved it produces neither urine nor feces, a bit of a pity, perhaps. You’d think the sprinkled tinkle from a body so divine would be nourishing enough to feed the millions who are starving to death under his tyrannical rule.

But having a man of Kim’s accomplishments would be a boon for the PGA Tour, a realm so priggish it spent the entirety of the 2010 season rattled by the private shenanigans of Tiger Woods.

Golf’s never had a real villain and Kim’s a real villain. He regularly cracks the top five of the world’s worst despots lists. There’s rampant starvation, disregarded international nuclear weapon treaties and cruelty and eccentricities grand enough to smack of sheer lunacy.

From 1993-94, he was Hennessey’s best customer and spent $750,000 a year to import the stuff to a country where the average worker earns just $900 during that same span.

So having him on the PGA Tour would not be without its PR challenges.

Still, there are sound reasons why Tim Finchem should consider recruiting Kim to try his hand at Tour Q school.

It is reported in all the school text books that when Kim was born on February 16, 1941 -- he’s an Aquarius just like me! -- that spring suddenly bloomed and the country was showered with a spontaneous outbreak of rainbows like what happens in the Care Bear stories I read to my 4 year old.

And we all know how cool that looks on hi-def.

For ratings purposes, it’s a can’t miss for the PGA. People would tune in for the controversy, for the aces and all those rainbows.

And, really, how much worse could he be than John Daly?

Ed. Note: Much of the "research" for this found on Sam Greenspan's hilarious site, http://www.11points.com. Check it out.

Who's the worst man in America?

I’ve tried in vain for the past week to calculate who’s the worst man in America. The competition is just too, well, stiff.

Is it Tiger Woods? Ben Roethlisberger? John Edwards? Jesse James?

It’s an engaging topic among worldly men like myself. We’re the kind of guys who understand every single motivation a man could have for cheating on his wife.

Marriages go stale. Passions cool. Temptations beckon.

So men come at the topic with a slightly more sympathetic angle than would, say, a jury composed of 12 angry married women.

But the other night five of us were discussing over beers just which of these four men is the biggest disgrace to those of us who lug around the Y chromosome.

The misbehavior of each is so operatic that we were unable to agree on a clear winner, and by winner I mean loser. For that, we’re going to need spreadsheets, categories, assigned points and about eight more pitchers of beer.

We all agreed that Roethlisberger is the biggest jerk because his misdeeds are just a few splashes of DNA-testable material short of criminal. You’d have to give a ton of points for non-consensual acts.

He’s clearly the most stupid of the four. He could have been living Tiger Woods’s illicit life and no one would have cared.

So while he loses points for being a single man on the prowl, he gets a bunch for raping drunk women he should be sending home in cabs. And, remember, points here determine who is the most despicable.

I wouldn’t want any men to read this and think me and my buddies are going to buy them a beer and salute them for doing things for which they should be slugged.

The other three are married men involved with consensual adultresses.

So give Woods, Edwards and James points for being married. The marriage vow should still mean something and with our calculations it does.

But who among that trio is the worst cheater?

Tiger wins on volume, but loses points because, clearly, he felt no emotional attachment to these women who were either hookers or have undergone extensive plastic surgery to ensure they’d look like hookers.

Jesse James is an interesting contestant -- or should it be detestant?

He didn’t cheat as much as Tiger, but he gets a lot of points for cheating on America’s sweetheart with a Nazi. A Nazi!

“My wife says she feels no sympathy for Sandra,” Dave said. “She says she should have known he was a scumbag because his last wife was a porn star.”

Excellent point, but still . . . a Nazi! Plus, the news broke the night of her Oscar celebration so he gets incidental creep points for that. And if we’re giving Tiger 5 points for each women he’s cheating with, we’d have to give James 50 points for choosing to cheat with . . . a Nazi!

That brings us to John Edwards. One category is “Man with the Most to Lose.”

Edwards runs away with this one. Think of it: this could all be happening while he was president. It’s not much of a stretch.

The right despises Obama. Just imagine what Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh would be saying if our president was flying Air Force One to Charlotte to visit his mistress and their love child.

He loses points on the adultery scale because it was only one woman and he did have a caring relationship with her. But he gets huge points because he got her pregnant, blamed it on a buddy, and because his wife was battling cancer during the affair.

This is visceral with women. They just hate Edwards for that.

With most women, the rankings are Edwards, Rothlisberger, Tiger, and James.

Guys are more nuanced. We see mitigating factors.

With Edwards, we see it as a man trapped in a marriage that had broken down. We think Elizabeth should have said, “John, we had a nice run, lovely kids, etc. But I now see you’re unhappy and want to spend your life with the comely and new-agey Rielle. Go! Be free! Just please don’t bring her to my funeral. That’d be tacky.”

We can’t help it. That’s just the way we think.

So after an evening of boozy consideration, I still can’t decide who’s the worst.

For now, our only logical conclusion is this:

Not only do we men have penises, alas, sometimes we just can’t help but act like them, too.

Tiger, tips & teeth

There is much criticism today over how the herd golf media was cowed by Tiger Woods.

Me, I’m just happy for the opportunity to describe paunchy writers who cover a pastoral game as being a cowed herd.

Of course, no one should have expected any revealing news to emerge from Tiger’s press conference.

Golf media are so timorous their idea of a tough question is asking an arthritic old caddie if the lordly Davis Love III used a 5 or a 6 iron when he dunked his approach into a pond.

And who can blame them? It’s a great gig. It’s free food and free golf at some of the most idyllic places on the planet. It’s a boat only a fool would want to rock.

Why do you think someone as lazy and unscrupulous as I engaged in golf writing from 2000-2007?

Still, I couldn’t resist the urge to play armchair golf journalist again.

I had two questions and the topics were tips and teeth.

My first question: “Tiger, your former 1,000-watt smile’s now registering only about 920. Why is your left front tooth a shade darker than the rest?”

I think that would have been an artful way of shaking some truth from him. He’s said his only injuries from the November 26 accident were a sore neck and five stitches on his lip.

There are armored tanks in war zones less safe than the $50,000 Escalade he was driving that night. He grazed a curb, a fire hydrant and a tree and wasn’t going fast enough in any of the bumps to cause the airbags to deploy.

So how did he lose the tooth? It’s a simple question.

The second question is in-directly related to the first: “Will you, a man who as recently as last year was worth nearly $1 billion, strive to become a better tipper?”


Many wise observers are saying that what happens between him and his wife is between him and his wife. True, but that ignores the universal impulse to lean closer to the open window whenever the neighbors raise their voices.

But cheapness is an affront to all mankind. I despise it.

Stories of him stiffing waiters and waitresses are legion, and I’m not talking about the parking lot kind of stiffing he gave Mindy Lawton, who earned $8 an hour slinging pancakes in the cream and green uniforms issued by Perkins.

I’m talking about how he mistreated all the women who were either hookers or underwent extensive plastic surgery to ensure everyone would think they were hookers.

Even in those tawdry sorts of encounters, the parties are entering a social contract that is loosely defined but understood by all.

He gets lots of wild sex. They, in exchange, should expect some lavish perks that go with bedding a superstar athlete on the hush.

They should get cars, jewelry, luxury rendezvous apartments in fabulous places.

It’s just understood, sort of like Elin had a right to expect some old-fashioned fidelity from her husband.

But Jessica Junger ended her affair after Tiger refused to help when she was in danger of eviction.

Lawton, the Perkins waitress, said the only thing she ever got from Woods was a chicken sandwich wrap from Subway, which might be acceptable if she’d been screwing that Jared guy. But not Tiger.

If he really wants to turn his life around, he should become a one-man stimulus package.

Me, I’m an extravagant tipper and it feels great. I recently left $5 tip for two beers and a friendly smile. The bartender rang the bar bell and yelled, “Man, you’re awesome!”

And for that moment, I was. I know most people in the hospitality industry would rather be home with their kids than out pretending my jokes are funny.

It’s such a simple gesture and it won’t break anyone, but you’ll feel great doing it and when they’re home soaking their aching feet they’ll say prayers asking God to bless people like you.

And God will.

So I’d advise Tiger to fix his marriage and stop screwing Perkins waitresses either in parking lots or with less than 20 percent gratuities. If I were him, I’d never leave less than a $100.

And, for heaven’s sake, don’t skimp when it comes to picking a dentist you rely on to get the shading of your replacement tooth just right.

Those are my tips to Tiger.

Damn, that felt good.

Merry March Madness!

You can judge how much a guy dislikes any given holiday based on the number of greeting cards he has to send or see.

So far, there are no “Happy March Madness!” greeting cards.

And, make no mistake, March Madness is the number one guy holiday on the whole guy calendar. It has gambling, drinking, saturation coverage and the kind of buddy-buddy camaraderie that’s been absent from even professional football ever since the NFL decided to feminize the sport with women’s outreach programs and things like Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez.

I have gainfully employed friends who are taking the day off because their employers don’t put March Madness on equal footing with all the repressive religious holidays that involve sermons and in-laws.

So, of course, I’m taking today off, too. Instead of falling short of my thrice-weekly goal to write one coherent 750-word blog post, I’m posting this multitude of shorter, equally incoherent ones.

And I’ll leave it to you gainfully employed folks to wonder what a guy who doesn’t do or earn anything does differently when he takes a day off from whatever it is he does or doesn’t do.

• If the people who sold beer and booze with ads that earnestly urge “Please Drink Responsibly” were the least bit honest they’d say, “Please drink lots -- just don’t get caught breaking anything!”

• There are well-regarded sitcoms with million-dollar budgets and squads of witty writers that fail to produce anything as funny as either of the Old Spice deodorant commercials involving the black guy on the white horse and the dashing gent who makes an elegant meat portrait out of carved turkey for his girlfriend. If I didn’t already use Old Spice, I’d be switching.

• As a proud alumnus, I couldn’t be more thrilled about the Ohio University upset over Georgetown. It’s the biggest victory in the school’s history. I just had to fill out a questionnaire that asked the offbeat query: “Where would you most like to be?” I put “1985” because it was my senior year at OU in Athens, Ohio. I don’t want to diminish all my other years, but it was just such a great time and, for better or worse, Athens was where I became who I am. Still, I’m happy right where I am. But putting “1985” sounded like a more creative answer than “Outer Banks” or something new agey like “Stuck in a Moment.”

• I like to joke that the only thing I learned during my four years at OU was to never mix Ouzo and beer. It’s an exaggeration, of course, but the essence of the wisdom should not be overlooked: Mixing beer and the volcanic Greek liqueur will inevitably lead a foolhardy drinker to wake up in a strange place, with a killer hangover and no recollection of what happened to his or her pants.

• Anyone who thinks the election of our first black president has done anything to dent our historic racism ought to spend an afternoon watching college basketball in a bar full of rednecks like the one where I imbibe. Your average redneck bases for whom he is rooting solely on the number of blacks on each team. It doesn’t matter if they look like gansta rappers or young Denzel Washingtons. If they’re black, the redneck wants them to lose.

• Still, these are great guys and I prefer their company to that of many more fair-minded bores. It just says something about where the country is right now. And, yes, there’s this: They think Sarah Palin’s going to be a really swell president.

• I’ll be following the recent celebrity breakups of Sandra Bullock and the effervescent Kate Winslet. Too soon for me to play matchmaker, but I’ll figure it all out soon enough. I prefer Winslett to Bullock, but if either of them ends up with Jon Gosselin I’m canceling my People magazine subscription.

• Me and the boys back in Athens used to think we were great wits when we’d say things like, “You can’t spell Ouzo without OU.”

• I’d love to know how many days Tiger Woods devoted to saving his family. By his returning to golf so soon, it’s clear saving his family is driving him right back to the lifestyle that jeopardized it in the first place. I love my wife and kids, but one of the reasons I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize my family is because I know I’d be forced to spend more time with them. We already spend plenty of time together. Any more and they’d be sick of me and all those friendly rednecks would be the poorer without access to my enlightened insights.

• But I wouldn’t recommend the way I live to many others. It’s like the great Capt. Augustus McCrae says in one of my favorite books, “Lonesome Dove.” “Boys, what’s good for me, ain’t necessarily good for the weak-minded.”

• You can’t spell bourbon, voudka or Scoutch without OU either. See, I learned something in Athens!

• Merry March Madness to one and all!

Conversion immersion: feet to meters/Buddhist to Christian

I thought of old Mr. Barnaby, my fifth grade teacher, this week when I was immersed in tricky conversions involving feet to meters, dollars to Euros, and Buddhists to Christians.

I remembered how he used to whip chalk board erasers at me and scream, “Quit wiping disgusting things in Kim’s hair and pay attention! Pretty soon the whole world will be using the metric system and it’s something you’ll need to know every single day the rest of your life! Now learn!”

I learned all right. I learned a young boy can do a lot of critical thinking in hour after hour of solitary detention. And I clearly recall thinking, “Old man Barnaby’s off his rocker. Why would we drop a perfectly reasonable system of measurement for one that is just as hard to learn as the one we already understand?”

Now I can see Barnaby was right. I do use the metric system nearly every day. I use it every time I go to the grocery store and make the conscious observation that two-liter bottles of soda consume more square footage than the aisle that offers fresh fruit and vegetables.

That’s it. The lone dent the metric system has made in our vast system of measurements can be reduced to the familiar size of containers used to freight teeth -rotting soda from the stores to the mouths of our 200-pound 12-year-old boys and girls.

My wife never asks me to pick up a liter of milk, informs me that a meter of snow fell overnight or that going 95 kilometers per hour is too fast for the driving conditions. A golf course is still 7,000 yards long, it’s still about 146 miles from Pittsburgh to Cleveland and men still think 10 inches is a significant distance.

Why two-liter bottles stuck when nothing else did is a topic for another day. Right now I have work to do.

I was recently asked by the in-flight magazine for Singapore Airlines to do a story about the world’s must-visit amusement parks. The finishing touches have become a babel of tricky conversions. Somewhere Barnaby is probably chortling.

Well, sorry, but the fifth grade educator/seer failed to envsion that one day there would be the cerebral smorgasbord that is the internet.

I was able to convert all the numbers in about 90 minutes. Really, a more focused researcher could have done it in about four minutes, but the internet is also a smorgasbord of news, porn, funny cat videos and other distracting nonsense.

I wonder what Barnaby would say about Brit Hume’s suggestion that Tiger Woods convert from Buddhism to Christianity.

“He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith,” Hume said. “So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’”

He makes it sound as if it were as easy as finding a website that will with one click allow you to convert from feet to meters.

If Tiger does as Hume suggests, I think it will appear superficial and the last thing the world needs is another Born Again hypocrite.

I’d be more impressed if he announced he was switching from Nike to Callaway. That would seem, coming from him, a gesture of sincere commitment to true change.

I think it would be easier to go from Christianity to Buddhism, a religion of self-denial and universal brotherhood (I’m guessing Tiger’s somewhat of a lapsed Buddhist since he doesn’t seem to have the hang of that self-denial bit).

Buddhists certainly have the more cuddly deity and I respect that in any religion.

I admire men like Hume who believe change can be so simple. They are the same people who think homosexuality can be “cured.” Dig deep enough and I’ll bet men like that think you can “cure” people who were inconveniently born black.

I have stubborn trouble changing anything. I’ve always used Old Spice deodorant, prefer Macs to Windows, bourbon to Scotch, and heterosexual jollies to more offbeat versions. I’m a long, long way from changing any of those hidebound customs.

I’m talking thousands and thousands of miles.

You’ll have to find old man Barnaby if you want that converted to kilometers, but I think I’ve made my point.

Male birth control with teeth

It’s becoming clear that mankind will never have successful birth control until a drug is designed that diminishes the length of a man’s penis every time it has unprotected sex.

For the good of steadfast families and population control, this drug should be mandatory for all males over the age of 15.

Three weeks into the scandal, I continue to be amazed at the recklessness of Tiger Woods. Here was a man with so much to lose. Clearly, risking his family, his vast riches and his prestige didn’t matter to him.

So what’s the one thing that really does matter to him?

Anyone need three guesses?

It’s impossible for me to be detached from a subject to which I’m so attached and which, coincidentally, is so attached to me, but for the good of my brothers this drastic solution must be considered.

I’ve seen too much wreckage involving men I admire to stand by without addressing the subject -- and there’s no other way to put it -- head on.

It’s happened with Tiger, John Edwards, David Letterman, Bill Clinton and even Charles Kuralt, the late more-wholesome-than-milk broadcaster whose homespun “On the Road” reports made him part of every home in America.

In fact, that was particularly true with homes in both New York and Montana. Shortly after his starspangled death on July 4, 1997, it was revealed that he’d for nearly three decades kept a shadow family in Montana, which kind of made him a polygamist with frequent flyer miles.

I don’t think anybody gets into a marriage and plans on having it end with tawdry infidelity. But it happens all the time.

Why the young Tiger wanted to get involved in the pretense of marriage is a mystery when it’s clear all he wanted to do was spend his idle hours dabbling with hookers or women who devote hours to makeup, wardrobe and costly reconstructive surgery to ensure they resemble hookers.

It’s more complex with men like Clinton, Edwards and certainly Kuralt.

I have a theory that our rampant infidelity is a result of the grinding boredom that comes with man’s ever-increasing longevity.

Think about it. Just 250 years ago, the average life span in America was about 40 years. Strong and faithful men with names like Miles would get married at about 18 years old and swear before fellow pilgrims that, “By God, I’m going to be true and faithful to Hester for the rest of our natural days.”

Then Miles would get to be about 38 years old, he’d say, “I am so sicketh of Hester. Our marital relations have soured, her figure has lost its sturdiness and she never did learn to roast a goose the way mother did. Oh, well, I’ll be dead in two years. Might as well sticketh it out.”

Our life expectancy has been extended dramatically, but young people still feel family pressure to marry in their still ripe 20s.

I was able to resist those pressures and didn’t marry my sweetheart until I was 33 (three years after we began a sinfully sensible shack up).

Men wouldn’t get in so much trouble if they’d had a grandfather like mine. I remember leaving home to attend Ohio University back in 1981. He pulled me aside and said, “Boy, just keep your pecker in your pants until you’re 30 and you’ll be fine.”

I thought of Papa anytime I got into trouble that stemmed from disregarding his advice.

If I ever have a grandson, I’m going to tell him what Papa told me and amend it to address times sure to be even more sex-obsessed than ours “. . . and if you fail to do so, be sure to put condoms on everything and three condoms on some things.”

And the world spins on with fresh reports that Elin Woods is going to shorten the marriage that, I’m sure, both she and Tiger hoped would last forever.

Tiger could lose a whopping $500 million.

He should consider himself lucky. Nobody would blame her if she drastically shortened something that clearly means more to him than marriage.

Indestructible wedding rings to outlast any marriage

I received a polite and solicitous e-mail today that wondered what it would take to get me to mention “Tungsten Wedding Bands” on www.EightDaysToAmish.com and provide the promotional link, www.superiorweddingrings.com.

Company rep Nick Hudson said he was eager to improve the snazzy jeweler’s Google page rank and for some reason thought a site that mentions “Amish” in the title would do the trick.

Well, it hasn’t really worked much magic for me, but best of luck with that.

“We operate on a small budget, and we would be more than willing to give you a tungsten ring from our site in exchange for a link,” he wrote. “Let me know if this would be something that you would be interested in. Thanks for any help you can give us.”

I decided to do so because I believe this sort of behavior should be encouraged, and I mean polite earnestness like the sort practiced by Nick.

Sure, I believe encouraging people to offer me free stuff should be encouraged, too, but that’s beside the point.

See I don’t need another wedding ring. I already have a dandy one that’s been on my finger since September 1996.

Like the marriage it represents, it is golden, priceless to me, makes a nice appearance and has a few scratches of character that come with age and finger fidelity. And by that I mean I never take it off. It’s on me when I’m golfing, cutting firewood or raising a champagne toast to my still lovely bride.

It is the only jewelry I wear. For great swathes of the 24-hour day, it is the only thing I wear, as I don’t wear my glasses and nothing else to slumber.

Note that it is gold and not a Tungsten Wedding Band, something I didn’t know existed until Nick’s e-mail zoomed into my computer.

Tungsten is a robust metal that resists melting until heated to excess of 6,192-degrees Fahrenheit. That means these wedding rings could survive a honeymoon stroll through a fiery coke oven at a steel mill, even if you and your betrothed could not.

I’m a little confused about the technology of constructing indestructible wedding bands in an age when so many marriages are downright disposable.

We are today witness to headlines of cheating on a (speaking of indestructible) Titanic scale. Today, the Tiger tally is up to nine women, including an Orlando pancake waitress and porn star Holly Sampson.

And it looks like that’s just the tip of the, speaking of Titanic, iceberg. The man who'd never dreaming of cheating on a golf course makes up for it in his marriage.

Call me naive, but I’m stunned. It’s impossible to peek behind the curtains of any marriage, but why get married in the first place if the bedrock principles behind the coupling are such a sham? Why expose the mother of your children to such global ridicule?

It’s all so sordid. Although I do like, for the purposes of holiday cheer, that the porn star’s name is Holly.

It’s been reported that Tiger and Elin Woods are renegotiating their pre-nup to $75 million if she stays with him for another two years.

And he’s supposedly ring shopping for what’s called a Kobe Special. That’s in reference to the $4 million 8-carat purple diamond ring NBA star Kobe Bryant bought his wife after he’d been accused of sexual assault in 2003.

Two children and six years later, the pair are still married. Maybe the fact that Vanessa still has nine other fingers has something to do with it.

Maybe all marriages should start out with the bride and groom exchanging candy rings made of Necco wafers that my daughters love so much.

Then on your first anniversary, depending on marital evaluations, you either eat it and move on or swap it for sturdier models. As the marriage thrives through the successive difficulties wrought by children and financial woe, the better quality rings could be showcased combat like metals on generals.

So, there you go.

As the FTC is all of a sudden getting finicky about full blogger disclosure, I feel compelled to announce I am hearby for now declining Nick’s gracious offer of a free ring.

I will, however, keep his e-mail in the hopes my marriage shows the tungsten like-grit to make it to 2046 and our 50th anniversary.

And you never know. Maybe one day Nick will get hired to do marketing for Lamborghini.

Like Tiger, I reserve the right to be a little choosy when it comes to ethical matters.



Ed. NOTE #1 . . . Here was Nick's reply to the post:

Thank you, Chris, for your help and the great post. I was wondering if you could also put a link on the side bar saying "Tungsten Wedding Ring" so that when add more posts and ours gets bumped off of the first page we still have a link there. Thank you for your help I greatly appreciate it.

Nick


Ed. NOTE #2 . . . Somebody should give this guy a raise. Consider it done!

And, once more just for good measure . . . TUNGSTEN WEDDING RING!

I want Tiger for my son-in-law

My scheme to become future father-in-law to Tiger Woods gained steam this week when the golfer’s Escalade hit a fire hydrant and his marriage the rocks.

The ensuing $164 fine, all the unseemly speculation and today’s couched apology do nothing to dissuade me: Tiger would make a fine son-in-law.

Understand I take no pleasure in the misery of any soul. I want everyone to be happy. That high minded standard is never more in play than when that forlorn soul is my very own.

Nothing in this earthly world has caused me more persistent torment than a love of golf and an aversion to in-laws.

Loving golf is like a gypsy curse. Your very best round is guaranteed to be marred by decisions that’ll cause lifelong regret.

As for in-laws, here’s what my wise brother said one marriage and four in-laws ago:

“The difference between in-laws and outlaws is that outlaws are at least wanted by someone.”

That’s the reciprocal way it’s been with me and my father-in-law. We couldn’t be more different. He’s honest, ambitious, sober and hard-working.

I’m, well, not.

That’s why I believe with one fell swoop I could eliminate two vexing hardships. I’m sure Tiger swing tips could cure my devastating slice and we could enjoy adoring in-law relations that have for so long eluded me.

So I’ve spent the past nine years grooming my daughters to become leading candidates for what I calculate ought to be Tiger’s second or third trophy wife by about the year 2029. That’s when Tiger will be 53 and my daughters will be 29 and 23.

My wife and I are raising our darlings to be well-rounded, thoughtful, creative and witty girls who one day will grow into outstanding individuals. This, we believe, will make them attractive to any caring and accomplished gentleman of the future seeking matrimonial bliss.

This wildly assumes, of course, that anyone of either gender will still be even the least bit heterosexual in 20 years but it can’t hurt to hope.

See, when Tiger married the comely Elin Nordegren in 2004, it dawned on me that according to celebrity custom the marriage would last about 12 years before he traded her in for a newer, sportier model -- and I do mean model.

I sensed opportunity. Woods changes drivers nearly every year. I guarantee you that club’s performance means more to him than anything a wife could do for him.

That’s not intended to disparage marriage or women. It’s simply a function of being a dazzling celebrity worth an estimated $1 billion dollars. He can’t hire a nervy substitute to bang 350 yard drives up the 18th fairway at Augusta or sink a 6-foot birdie putt with $10 million on the line.

But he can hire or obtain someone to do anything an intimate wife will do.

And that’s apparently what caused all the Thanksgiving Day trouble.

The National Enquirer reported the world’s greatest golfer and professional party hostess -- great work if you can get it -- Rachel Uchitel are having an affair.

For me this was a happy collision of two of my most stalwart career disciplines.

I spent 1992-2000 doing more than 1,000 swashbuckling non-celebrity features for the Enquirer. Then I made the numbskulled career pivot from 2000-2007 to become a feature writer for Golf Magazine and other swanky industry publications.

On top of that, like Nordegren, I’m of Swedish descent. If I can manufacture some African-American/Thai connection to my lilly white world then, book it, I’m a lock to appear this week on Larry King Live.

Many people are saying this is none of our business. True, but that ignores the universal impulse to hide behind the drapes and lean closer to the open window whenever the neighbors raise their voices.

Ending any marriage can be painful and laden with financial and emotional pitfalls that can devastate both parties.

And, yes, the same results can apply to all those who stay married so that’s sort of a wash.

The romantic in me hopes they can work it out. I like Tiger and they’ve always seemed to me like a nice family at ease with his solar celebrity.

But the practical side of me sees a relationship with lots of troubling questions.

I hope they’re resolved without any more trauma. I want an in-law, not an outlaw.

My golf game’s not going to get better all by itself.

Step. Step. Twist, The Tiger Beat Goes On

My brother Eric correctly predicted exactly what was going to happen with Tiger Woods on the 72nd hole at Bay Hill on Sunday.

Not that he’d make the winning putt. That was too obvious. Tiger’s ahead of pace to become the greatest golfer of all time. He wins nearly one out of every three tournaments in which he enters.

“You watch,” he said. “He’s going to sink the putt, lose control and go step. Step. Twist.”

The greatest threat to Tiger’s relentless march to greatness isn’t current challengers or surging young golfers like Anthony Kim or Rory McIlroy. By most historical standards, Tiger should have 10 years of prime golfing longevity left in him where he’ll be untouchable.

The greatest threat to him is that he keeps winning so frequently and so exuberantly that he blows his knee out after sinking a winning putt. And -- Step. Step. Twist. -- it could happen. If it does, it’s going to be like watching a thoroughbred break an ankle coming down the homestretch at Churchill Downs with a 33-length lead on the rest of the feckless field.

Tiger’s the only golfer in history who ought to begin practicing what he does when he wins. He needs a new signature celebration, one that is stationary. He’s expending more reckless energy celebrating his victories than he ever does attaining them.

His exuberance is such that he rarely observes a ball as it routinely rolls into the hole. He’s fist pumped at Muirfield Village. He’s gunned it down with a finger pistol during his memorable win over Bob May at Valhalla, and he’s generally exhalted in ways that would have historic stoics like Ben Hogan shaking his head with scolding disdain.

But in the last couple of years his most euphoric dance step has become as predictable as the result. He’s textbook as the ball leaves the putter. Then as the putt rolls within five feet of the cup he goes into a dance step that could be called the Tiger Beat.

He begins to back away from the cup with a little shuffle (well-bred etiquette, too, as he doesn’t risk dancing on his opponent’s line). He takes another step, this one a more emphatic march to launch sequence. Then as the ball dives into the cup, he turns tornado and on that recently repaired left knee torques skyward with an awkward oomph that reminds us of why Stanford friends nicknamed him “Urkel.”

Unless there’s some future scandal involving illicit tapes and a nasty divorce, it’s the only time any of us will ever see Tiger when he’s absolutely out of control.

For the good of his career longevity, Tiger needs to practice what he’ll do the next time a winning putt leads to an on-course climax.

He needs to be more bored with winning. He’s done this 66 times as a professional. He doesn’t enter a tournament he doesn’t expect to win. Him getting excited about winning is like George Clooney getting excited about a first date.

He’s not a kid anymore. The guy knows exactly what’s going happen.

To be fair, those kinds of out-of-control moments never get boring or routine for the rest of us. But we’re only human.

He’s Tiger.