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.

Old Mail Day in Hooterville

It was the greatest letter I’ve ever received and it was nearly lost forever because, with the exception of one shining superstar, my home is in Hooterville.

It was a personal letter from one of the most famous people on the planet. It said he looks forward to reading something I write every day and he just wanted to let me know how much he enjoys my work.

It was sent December 23, 2008, and it finally landed in my hands yesterday. It took 93 days to travel two miles.

Don’t blame the U.S. Post Office. Blame Hooterville.

Hooterville was the fictional site of the still uproarious TV Land staple, “Green Acres.” It was a town populated by dim wits who forever are causing vein-popping consternation for erstwhile attorney Oliver Wendell Douglas, the naive farmer who ditched lawyering in New York for the bucolic life among the country rubes.

It’s one of my favorite shows and one of my favorite episodes dealt with the fury Douglas, played by the inestimable Eddie Albert, felt on Old Mail Day down at Sam Drucker’s general store.

Old Mail Day was the festival when Hootervillians gathered to get the old mail that Sam had misplaced or found when he was cleaning behind the pickle barrel. Many once-important pieces of mail were distributed. I remember Fred Ziffel was stunned to read he’d been drafted to serve -- in World War I.

I thought about that episode when my good friend Dave said he had a letter for me. Dave owns the ground floor tavern and rents me for cheap one of the three second floor apartments above his business. It’s where I keep a shabby little office and am always handy if the bar runs short of thirsty customers.

He asked if I was missing any mail. I told him I don’t receive any mail here. All my mail goes to my home address.

“Well, you got one letter here that was dated December 23. Your idiot neighbor upstairs got it by mistake and never bothered to give it over.”

His harsh assessment of my neighbor John was correct. He’s an absolute idiot. He’d fit right in on “Green Acres.” Arnold Ziffel could wear an “I’m with Stupid” shirt around John and no one would dispute the pig.

Still, John and I are on good terms. If I restricted my friendships and conversations to only intelligent people it would be a very lonely existence and I’d have to stop even talking to myself. It was strange that he hadn’t just given it to me.

“He said he felt bad. He found it under a stack of old papers he was about to throw away. It’s a letter from Arnold Palmer.”

Well, you could have knocked me off my bar stool with a feather -- and I was just sipping my first beer so don’t factor inebriation into the equation. I was stunned.

I looked up across the bar and there on the television was Arnold Palmer himself. By the most surreal of coincidences, a 93-day-old letter from Palmer was delivered to me while we were watching Arnold Palmer being interviewed on television about the Arnold Palmer Invitational golf tournament being played this week at Bay Hill Club in Orlando.

For 10 years I’ve been doing the Amazing But True Golf Facts page-a-day calendars. Every Christmas, I’d always take a few up to Palmer’s long-time assistant, the great Doc Giffin. I never dared try to talk to Palmer himself, even though Doc told me the boss was an enthusiastic reader of my little calendar pages.

I was doing a lot of golf writing in 2005 when Doc asked me to do a major website project working with Palmer web wizard Scott Curry. We were to go though decades of old newspaper clips detailing every newsworthy activity Palmer did on every day of his life. It’s cool. Check out the timeline at www.arnoldpalmer.com.

And it is a momentous life of rarely equaled exuberance. Set aside the 93 professional golfing victories, the legions of adoring fans and all the indelible and enduring charity work, and it’s one of the most amazing lives in American history.

An expert pilot, he’s set around-the-world aviation records, is best buddies with several presidents and golfed with all but two of them since Ike. Bill Clinton says one of the great perks of the office is getting to play golf with Arnold Palmer. Kirk Douglas said in 1970 that no one -- not Sinatra, John Wayne or Ronald Reagan -- has more charisma than Palmer.

Even though I began interviewing him on a regular basis, I was still convinced the first time he was ever going to utter my name was when he’d say, “We have to fire this Chris Rodell!”

Now here I was holding a letter from the man himself. I opened it and read it aloud to my friends at the bar:

Dear Chris,

Many thanks for the new 2009 calendar. You do know how much I enjoy reading the amazing golf facts each day. Even when the day is done, I tear off the page and keep it for future reference. My very best holiday wishes to you and your family for a Happy Holiday.

Sincerely,

Arnold

I’m starting to think one of the most famous men in the world considers me a friend. And now I have evidence that I’m not a Hooterville kind of crazy.

Sometimes some of the best things in life are hiding just out of reach behind life’s proverbial pickle barrel.

I hope there’s some good news out there that you don’t know about that one day, maybe months from now, will make your day the way that letter made mine.

And best wishes to you and your family for a very Merry Christmas.

Should have been a sandbagger

The year 2008 proved a tremendous boost in my life-long ambition to die broke. I’ve always hoped that I'd spend whatever I'd earn in life and cash out on zero. Ideally, I’d like my last check to be to some fabulous resort and I’d like that check to bounce.

I’d hoped to squander a fortune, but it’s not looking like that’ll be the case.

If things keep going like that did in 2008, I should be able to hit that check-bouncing target by about June 20 so maybe it’s time to start thinking about booking an extravagant cruise, chain smoking and gorging on too much red meat.

I didn’t know last May when I christened my home blog, “www.EightDaysToAmish.com,” that within six months I’d be about three days to Amish and that the rest of the world would be dashing to get there with me.

I’ve never been so broke. I’m just wrapping up my taxes and it looks like 2008 was the worst year I’ve ever had as a wage-earning adult.

In fact, it’s looking like one of the worst years I’ve had since I was a wage-earning teenager. And it’s looking only slightly better than some of the years I had as a prepubescent wage-earning paper boy (for readers under 25, a paper boy was someone who delivered the historic artifacts known as newspapers, not a lad composed of the material people used to write upon before they’d did things ike Tweet).

I’m writing it off -- that’s what writers do -- as a transitional year. I’m trying to move away from getting paid next to nothing for writing magazine articles to getting paid next to nothing for writing books.

I’m spending all my time polishing my manuscript and trying to find an agent. At night I lay awake and wonder if I could be doing more to get published or if I should try and devote more time to earning money in more conventional ways like hoping one of my basketball pools hits.

I worry my professional life has been one big mistake.

I had a friendly exchange with my man down at the post office and walked away thinking, “Now, how come some fancy college guidance counselor never advised me to go to work for the post office? I’ll bet he never lies awake thinking, ‘I’m such an idiot. Why didn’t I try sell Rodell the duck stamps instead of the Liberty Bells?’”

He just does his job, collects a steady pay check and goes home and turns on the hockey game. To me, that’s starting to sound like a slice of couch potato heaven.

The day I finished the taxes I had to run into the woods with my chainsaw to cut some timber to clear my mind of the math and the misery. It’s true work with a tangible reward -- a warm home in winter. If I was independently wealthy, I’d probably just stack wood for old people.

I’d like to do something physical for a living that would help my neighbors.

That’s why I’m hoping we get some big flood threat near my home.

I want to be a sandbagger, a word that has two meanings. One is an expert golfer who wins large amounts of money by pretending he’s no good and fooling opponents into wagering large sums they lose when he confounds them with winning shots when the big dough’s on the line. He plies his nimble con at posh country clubs and on sunny fairways around the world among the playgrounds of the rich.

The more newsworthy definition involves more than 2,000 heroic volunteers bagging and stacking sand on the banks of the rising Red River near Fargo, North Dakota.

I read about English teacher Renae Czeczok who said she and 15 of her students drove a couple hours from Pillager, Minnesota, to get to the riverbank to help out. “It’s continuous hard labor,” she says. “But we want to help. We’re doing everything we can.”

Resident Sean Padden, 29, says, “This is one heckuva town. It’s a hardy community. People are banning together. It’ll take the entire community, but we’ll get through it.”

I’d love to be a part of that. I just imagine the hours of backbreaking labor as the waters rise, the real sense of mission, camaraderie and, let’s pray, the shared euphoria they’ll feel as they watch the waters begin to recede inches before they breech the bags

They’ll have been a part of something great. They’ll have have saved a town.

Yes, I wish I was one of the world’s best sandbaggers, an anonymous hero waging kindred battle against the forces of nature’s menace.

Or I’d settle for being the fancy suntanned golfing kind.

Either one’s got to beat what I’m doing these days.

The condom and the cross

I’m sensing the Pope would have been pleased if I’d have given up condoms for Lent. He was in Africa last week and spoke about the evils of condoms in ways that might confuse Satan into thinking they were talking about him.

He seems to think they’re wicked tools of evil, which is about the same thing my wife thought about associated parts of me after enduring the divine pains of childbirth.

Proponents of condom usage say they’re crucial in stopping the unholy spread of AIDS on a continent where two-thirds of all HIV-infected -- 22 million -- people live. Emaciated infected babies dying in orphanages break the hearts of men like South African Bishop Kevin Dowling who insist condoms should be used to prevent the deadly transmission to the innocents.

I agree. If I was in charge of public health in Africa I’d be loudly advising everyone to put condoms on everything.

And three condoms on some things.

But the pope says nope.

“You can’t resolve (the AIDS crisis) with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem” by promoting promiscuity, Pope Benedict says.

Back when I had a carnal interest in promoting promiscuity, I used to think the same thing. But my experience -- and I’m one-up on the pope in maybe this one regard -- taught me otherwise. As a young man consumed by ambitious lust, having a condom always seemed to ensure I’d never have a reason to use it.

It was like some diabolical gypsy curse.

I’d carry one in the same wallet that contained my driver’s license with its generous organ donor card. But I was young, awkward around the ladies and none of them ever expressed any interest in accepting any of my organs.

Then the instant I stopped carrying the long-since expired prophylactic around, women of low reputation seemed to find me irresistible. They’d come up to me in dim, smoky bars and with bloodshot eyes hint at illicit fun just outside in the parking lot.

Of course, this was when AIDS was just beginning to roar across America’s social landscape. We were learning that free love sometimes carried a steep price.

To dare unprotected intimacy with any of these women would at the very least lead to weeks of worry about exotic social diseases and would certainly damage my carefully constructed reputation. But, let’s be honest, being linked to me wouldn’t exactly launch them into society page prominence at the next season’s debutante balls.

With so much at stake, what did I do?

Why, I’d order us each another snort of Jagermeister, slam ‘em down, and dance her out to the parking lot where we’d steam up the windows of her pickup truck until the cops came tapping on the windows.

Did it every chance I could. If refined lovelies didn’t want me, then I’d be wantin’ anything wanton that would be wantin’ me back.

That’s just the way we are. We’re not made of wax. We’re lonely flesh and blood animals who’ll scheme and dream of any chance opportunity for cuddles and pokes. This life’s not for sissies. Rich, poor, black or white, we’re all looking for love.

Even the Catholic hierarchy in Africa seems to understand this -- and some of them are reveling in it. Priestly affairs are rampant across the continent, says Velesiwe Mkwanazi, a co-founder of Women Ordination South Africa, who says she knows of two priests with children. And Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube stepped down in 2007 after he was photographed naked in a bedroom with a woman.

Now, I’m not Catholic. But my wife Valerie is a Lutheran church organist who helps edit a Catholic newspaper. Her ecumenical duality gives me rhetorical cover to discuss our Lutheran organs and all things Catholic from condoms to commas.

It’s heartbreaking to think of the millions of people who will die because the church’s stubborn insistence on keeping its moral head in the sand while its faithful have their heads frolicking in other places.

It’s a sticky situation. Without some sensible interventions, things in Africa are bound to get really hard.

I can’t think of a more perfect set of circumstances for a condom to come riding to the rescue.

Daddy home alone

The girls cried two years ago when they pulled out the driveway for five days away with Mommy and their aunt. “We’re gonna miss you, Daddy!” the older one wailed as the car rumbled on down the street.

As soon as the car was out of sight, I remember doing a euphoric little jig. It’ll forever confound me how the three people I love more than any others can make me so ecstatically happy by leaving me all alone.

The scene will be repeated tomorrow at 8 a.m. For the first night in more than two years I’ll have the house to myself. No wife. No kids. No cares.

That means I have fewer than 18 hours to invent from scratch a machine that can stop time. The girls will be gone about 36 hours. If I could I’d stretch that period to, say, a week, I’d do it. That would give me time to do all the nothing I’ll not be able to squeeze into tomorrow and Sunday.

And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. I’m not going rake the yard, put up the screens or dust any of the house hold items that’ll be gathering dust through a weekend of peaceful inactivity.

If they’d present a trophy for what guys like me do on rare weekends like this, the golden figure would be seated in a recliner with a remote in one hand, a beer in the other, and a bowl of pretzels cradled in his paunchy lap.

There are many good family men who want to spend their every waking moment with their families. Any separation freights them with a sadness they wear like a cloak.

I’m not one of them.

My family reminds me of an old country song, “How Am I Ever Going to Miss You if You Never Go Away.”

Part of the problem is I’m just not brave enough to be lazy. Val works very hard to keep the house and the kids looking great. So if she walks in a room and I’m -- heaven forbid -- just sitting there, I feel guilty. In fact, I often pop up out of my seat so the motion will confuse her into thinking I’m just finishing or about to embark on some tedious household chore.

If I had more time, I’d like to have all the boys over for cigars and beers. This is another thing I never get to do. We have a really great guy house with a big back porch that overlooks the woods and a babbling mountain creek. The woods are a great place for beer drinkers to stumble about and decorate the rocks once our bodies are done with the beers, and that’s perennially fun guy thing to do.

But having the boys over would cut into my sitting time. I plan on being the first couch potato so sedentary that he lapses into a persistent vegetative state.

I plan on watching one John Wayne movie (probably “Red River”), one Rolling Stones concert DVD, a replay of the Steelers Super Bowl victory, the hilarious guy movies “Animal House” and “Hot Fuzz,” and about 16 hours of NCAA tournament basketball.

I’ve made some delicious seafood soup, plan on having at least one pizza and plan on grilling a juicy steak.

The whole time I’ll feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

And on Sunday evening, I’ll once again be confounded as to how a guy who can be so blissfully happy when he’s left all alone can be surprised by a jolt of euphoria at the sound of his three girls storming back into the house.

Tar and feather their asses

It’s been fascinating to watch the country that recoiled at Abu Ghraib embrace with gusto the concept of inflicting bodily harm on the A.I.G. bonus babies.

Insurance giant employees that scooped up more than $200 billion in taxpayer bailout money are being inundated with death threats, and you can bet some of the 73 who snagged $1 million or more are devoting at least part of their time writing some extravagant policies in the event something unexpected upends their own actuarial table.

Sen. Charles Grassley said the shamelessness of the A.I.G. crew made him nostalgic for days when honor required that people who performed poorly at their jobs carved smiley faces into their sternums with their Samurai swords.

It’s a good thing for Capitol Hill janitors that Grassley doesn’t hold himself and his congressional colleagues to such a finicky standard.

Of course, many of our more creative fellow citizens think an honorable suicide would be too tidy a fate. The country is united in outrage. A bloodlust sweeps the land. Some think the perpetrators should be drawn and quartered and the severed limbs and torsos dumped into vats of acid.

Somewhere Dick Cheney is enjoying the warm and fuzzy feelings that people like me and you get when we watch things like “E.T.”

Me, I’m more of a squeamish sort. To me, the situation calls for a punishment that was popular when our Founding Fathers were first weighing in on issues of constitutional justice.

I’d like to see them tarred and feathered. Heck, I’d like to see anyone tarred and feathered.

I could never be a part of an angry lynch mob. Neither could most of the people I know. That kind of violence is unacceptable.

I often enjoy the noon meal at the bar beneath my office. Lined up along side me are a bunch of fair-minded individuals who come to dine and chat about sports, politics and the complex strategies it takes to succeed on “The Price is Right.”

They’re salt of the earth Americans. They’re furious about the bonuses but I don’t think they would ever be part of a killing posse so angry that they’d let it disrupt the important business being conducted by Drew Carey and his bevy of beauties.

They don’t have it in them to be an angry lynch mob. But an angry lunch mob? That’s another story.

Say, for instance, if someone came storming into the bar and said, “Hey, we’ve got Burt from the bank cornered down at the convenience mart! Anyone want to come help tar and feather him?”

I know at least a dozen guys who’d say, “Me! Me! Me! Save my seat . . . and somebody TiVo the Showcase!”

It sounds like great fun. I think it would be a dandy punishment that involves both pain and shame. Plus we’d all enjoy a day-brightening moment any time we’d get to see a rascal like Burt at the grocery store months later with chicken feathers still decorating his big bald spot.

I think tarring and feathering would be a sensible judicial middle ground between murder and letting the scoundrels get off scot free with the taxpayer loot.

And it would be a far better fate than that meted out upon those who displeased the great Kublai Khan, the 13th century Mongol ruler of China whose exploits were first detailed by the intrepid Marco Polo.

Khan’s preferred method of execution was to pack the mouths of miscreants with excrement until they suffocated, a send off that spoils all the fun of the whole condemned man’s last meal tradition.

I don’t know the source of the excrement, but if it was self-produced then the Chinese can take credit for inventing ultimate recycling right along side things like gunpowder, pasta and the first movable press.

Again, I’m a squeamish soul. I don’t think any violence of this unholy sort should be practiced against Wall Street titans or those who defend their excesses.

I'm just saying so much crap has been flying out of the mouths of Wall Street big shots for so long that seeing some of it moving in the other direction for once might be kind of refreshing.

Lasering in on good news

Tom Friedman is my favorite pundit because he always writes something so illuminating it leaves me feeling elevated or something so stupid it makes me feel I’m superior to his evident genius.

For instance, a couple of months ago, Friedman wrote that the economic crisis in which we are mired is so foreboding that we should stop dining out.

I immediately thought, “What an idiot! Stop eating out? What about all the creative and fun people who run restaurants? Shouldn’t we now, more than ever, support these wonderful places of convivial fun so they’ll be open when we want to celebrate the good times that are bound to come back?”

What did he expect us to do? Rush out to Sam’s Club en masse and stock up on barrels full of macaroni ‘n’ cheese, rice ‘n’ beans and corn flakes and graze on that unappetizing mess while all our favorite restaurants go belly up?

I reacted to his plea for sensible restraint by taking my wife and kids out for five consecutive nights of expensive splurges at all our favorite locally-owned restaurants. I left 20 percent tips for even the mean and homely waitresses. I paid for it all with a fan of nearly maxed out credit cards. To this day, the ungodly sum rides as I squeak by on $10 monthly minimum payments on a sum that cooks along accruing 18 percent interest.

I remember thinking, “That ought to show Tom Friedman and his stupid arguments about fiscal responsibility!”

Then there are the days like today when I wake up and read Friedman’s fine column
The Next Really Cool Thing.

In it he talks about the National Ignition Facility near San Francisco. The government stimulus-infused plant consists of 192 giant lasers. Friedman doesn’t say how big a giant laser is or if Godzilla could wear one in a holster, but we’re to assume they’re powerful devices.

What happens is these lasers pour their concentrated energies into a target chamber housing a tiny gold can with a peppercorn-sized particle of frozen hydrogen. Once one of those pellets is heated and compressed by the lasers, it reaches temperatures over 800 million degrees Fahrenheit or, according to NIF director Edward Moses, a temperature “far greater than exists at the center of the sun.”

Here’s one way in which Friedman and I differ in a journalistic sense: He accepts as fact that this guy Moses claims to know how hot it is at the center of the sun. I guess I’m old school in that regard. I would have pinned Moses down on that last point.

“Have you, Mr. Moses, or any of your scholarly friends ever actually been to the center of the sun with a nuclear themometer and, if so, did you need something along the order of SPF 99 Trillion to survive the visit?”

(The other ways in which we differ is Friedman has a vast and influential readership, a deep-pocket expense account and an honest-to-goodness employer, but let’s try not to lose our focus here. Remember, this is a story about lasers.)

The process causes the pellets to give off a burst of energy that can be harnessed to produce massive amounts of steam to drive a turbine and create electricity for your home, a process not dissimilar from what a coal plant does. “Only this energy,” Friedman writes, “would be free, globally available, safe and secure and could be integrated seamlessly into our current electric grid,” he writes.

This is the kind of thing that just thrills unabashed optimists like me. I’ve long argued we are captured amid some kind of awful lag where our brightest minds have access to these incredible computer technologies and choose to fritter them all away on creating games and fluff. I think it’s long past time our Einsteins stopped making iPods.

Friedman calls this laser technology a potential game changer, something unforeseen that can come in and in one fell swoop eliminate some of the global problems that seem so vexing and hazardous.

I hope on this one, he’s right.

If he is, I’m going to one day inform Friedman I was an early and ardent supporter of the technology and congratulate him for, on the NIF story, being brilliantly illuminating -- and using a word like “illuminating” to describe a .story about laser technology is a play on words a writer like Friedman ought to love.

Maybe he’ll hail me as an insightful colleague and accept my invitation to go out to dinner at one of our fine local restaurants. He can pay.

Remember, Mr. Big Shot’s the one with the expense account and I’m sure the restaurant will appreciate the business.