Los Angeles Douchebagicus
· CommentsLos Angeles Douchebagicus is a member of the Douchebagicus family and is most widespread in the American West. A domesticated ancestor of the wild French Douchebag, the L.A. Douchebag (as it is commonly known) survives mainly on a diet of cocaine, energy drinks, and self-synthesized “sweat of the entitled.”
Unable to survive outside of its own packs, the L.A. Douchebag tends to travel in groups of three or four, walk with an affected and often replicated swagger, and dress exactly the same as his fellow L.A. Douchebags. While able to communicate outside its species, the L.A. Douchebag prefers to speak in phrases it has seen on television or on TMZ.com.
Unlike most animals that split their time between mating and foraging for food, the L.A. Douchebag is solely focused on mating and eschews all foodstuffs in favor of hunting for silicone-enhanced females. A paradox within its species, the L.A. Douchebag goes out of its way to avoid actual procreation, leading many scientists to believe the L.A. Douchebag is midway through its evolution to a fully homosexual animal.
While the L.A. Douchebag is not limited by geography, it tends to stay in the greater Los Angeles, CA area during the week. On Friday and Saturday nights, many small packs migrate to Las Vegas where they can be found at the Palms Hotel and Casino in their full splendor.
[For the female version of the L.A. Douchebag, see Slutae Withnoselfrespecticus.]
Not-so-total recall
· Comments(Las Vegas, NV)) I walked into the Rio’s Amazon Ballroom last night to re-visit what doubles as my office for the next three weeks.
“Welcome to The Suck,” Owen said. “And congratulations on the new baby.”
The many people I saw last night have been here for the past four weeks. They have the thousand-yard stare poker writers get after a long World Series of Poker stretch. Nearly every one of them welcomed me to hell or some variation on the theme.
It’s a familiar world full of friendly people. I spent more than an hour just catching up with people I haven’t seen in months. Most of them recognized me on sight and said if there is any difference in the way I look from last time, it’s that I’m a little more tan. I would have preferred to have been better looking.
I made a pass through the cash game section. I spotted CK sitting in front of a pile of redbirds and playing some game of witchcraft with Warren Karp and a few other people I didn’t know. I waited until she was out of a hand, then said hello.
She looked up, smiled the smile of a person who is just being friendly to an annoying stranger, and then looked back at the table. I stood there for a second and she realized I wasn’t going away. She looked up as if to say, “What? Really, what the hell do you want?” It took another couple of seconds before she realized who I was. I didn’t blame her. I’m your average, balding, beer-gutted white boy. I barely recognize myself on most days.
It would not have been significant but for a moment later that night.
I sat down at a poker table and played for an hour or so against an African man named G. I busted him within five minutes and he went for a walk. He came back ten minutes later with $500 and sat down on my left. A few minutes later he said, “I know you.”
“Probably not. I’m not from here,” I said.
“No, I know you. Last year. I had two pair. You took all my money,” he said. “I remember you.”
He then recounted the hand card by card, the time of night, and even where we were sitting. By the time he was finished, it was like I’d just read an account out of my poker diary. I finally recalled the hand and remembered it like it was last week.
It’s funny, you know? Beat downs tend to stick with people longer than most things.
I expect most of the poker writers here will remember this summer for some time.
Gone, Daddy, gone
· Comments(Las Vegas, Nevada) Yesterday my son jumped into the swimming pool and swam the length of it without stopping. When he finished, he popped his head up out of the water and looked at me. He was waiting to see my reaction. He wanted to see how I, an out-of-shape thirty-something reacted to a not yet five years old kid swimming with such gusto.
I sat there for half a second in utter amazement, then pulled him into my arms and hugged him until he squirmed away. I was barely sure what I was feeling. It took a full five minutes before it hit me.
It was pride.
Since my second son was born, I have taken on a much more active role in the older boy’s life. While my wife tends to the feeding and making-sure-the-infant-stays-alive duties, I have been turning into a different brand of father. I don’t think I realized entirely what being a father was until the last few weeks. That’s sort of embarrassing to say, but if I’m being honest, it’s true.
This morning at 5:30am, I kissed my wife and walked out of our bedroom. The boy was asleep in his room. I did something I’ve never done before. I walked in, kissed him on the forehead, and told him I loved him. He never woke and I didn’t want him to. The moment was just for me. Seven hours later, I was checked into my home away from home for the next three weeks. I’m 53 floors above Las Vegas and already missing home.
I don’t mean to be sappy. What I’m doing is the burden of every traveling father. Even my son understands that to make money to live as we live, I have to go on the road sometimes. What’s more, if I have to travel, circumstances could be much worse. I get to live in a posh hotel and be around a ton of very good friends. I get to do something that I, for the most part, enjoy doing. Not many people can say that.
And it’s not so much that I fear for my wife. She’s a tough little bitch (and would take that description as a compliment) and will be able to hang with two kids as well as she has hung with one while I was on my other trips. I hate that she has to endure the stress, but I know she gets it. Where in the past she might have not quite grasped how much work this actually is, I know she understands now.
No, the only thing that puts a frog in my throat, the thing that makes me want to run home and take a job waiting tables, the thing that makes me want to make more of myself so that I don’t have to leave for so long is the fear that the bond I’ve formed with my boy over the past six week may not be there when I get home. He’s become more than just my kid. He’s become more than simply my son. He’s become my buddy and I don’t want to lose that.
Deep down, I know it will all be fine. I know that the boy will be occupied with camp, his grandparents, and his little brother. I know that it’s only three weeks. I know my buddy will be there when I get back.
I just miss him.
Already.
Friday Mental Massage: The last Friday
· CommentsWhen I woke up this morning, I put on a live Allman Brothers album, opened all the curtains, and sat in the Carolina sunshine. Everything is green, I wake up every morning in a familiar bed, and I know exactly how long it will take me to get that first shot of caffeine. Living at home with a new baby is not easy. Being a family of four is harder than even I expected it to be. Still, this is home, and it is as comfortable as anywhere right now.
This is the last Friday I’ll spend at here for a while. This time next week, I’ll be waking up to cover one of the biggest events in the world. It’s $50,000 entry fee makes it an exclusive club and I again have the dubious honor of eavesdropping on the degeneracy.
Because I’m getting ready to jump into several weeks of writing and 16-18 hour days, I’m not going to spend a lot of time here today. I’ve done quite a bit of writing this week, and I need to recharge my noodle. Here are a couple of things that didn’t appear here.
Fringe: Jeffrey Pollack and the Fine Line–My buddy Pauly has been with me every year at the World Series of Poker since 2005. Because he is on Phish tour right now, he has asked some of the more well-known poker writers to fill in for him on his popular blog. The piece I linked is my submission from today. For those who don’t know the WSOP, it may be a little Inside Baseball for your taste. Nonetheless, it’s fairly reader-friendly even if you don’t know poker very well, and it gives you a good idea of what my life is like every summer.
In Memory of Chiquitita is a piece I wrote for the PokerStars Blog. I don’t get a ton of opportunities to write from the heart there, but when a man I met last winter died unexpectedly, I felt like I needed to write something about him.
Now, it’s time to get in gear and pack as much as I can into my remaining days at home. Over the next five days, I intend to get finish up some undone work, get a real massage, hang out with my family as much as possible, go to a minor league baseball game with my boys for Father’s Day, hit the weekly poker game, get some shopping done, and pack.
And then, to Las Vegas.
The Friday Mental Massage is how this blog would appear if I didn’t care what my writing looked like and people cared about the mundane aspects of my life. Its goal is to massage all the junk out of my mental muscles at week’s end with the hope of returning to better writing and subject matter.
Bands of brothers
· Comments“Is Carlo dead?”
My four year old son son sat wide-eyed and confronted the reality of it all. Carlo, a giant gash in the side of his head, lay in the sand. Flies buzzed around his silent frame as the camera did a long, slow death zoom to the open wound. The bleeding had stopped because there was no heartbeat to push it.
“Daddy, is Carlo dead?”
My wife looked at me, her eyebrows raised in an unspoken question. “Is now the time to start talking about death?” it asked.
I nodded.
The boy has already grasped the concept of death, but generally only as it applies to old people taking the dirt nap. In this case, Carlo was capital D dead and on his way to capital Nasty rot.
“Yes, baby, it looks like he is,” my wife consoled.
My boy picked up his plastic meerkat in his hand. “But I named this one Carlo,” he said and hung his head.
I didn’t really like seeing my son sad, but Carlo was dead and there was nothing we couuld do about it. Meerkat Manor hangs some harsh reality on a four year old brain, but it’s far from the worst thing my son saw on TV yesterday.
***
I have never come as close to barring my child from watching television as I did last night.
We don’t let the boy watch a lot of TV. He gets a couple cartoons in the morning, and, after a long day of swimming or playing that knocks his happy ass out, he might get a nature program or two. On rainy days, we’ll watch a movie. But, the TV is largely off at our house for most of the day.
Yesterday was one of those special afternoon in which the boy had been to camp all morning and then kicked some major swimming ass in the pool once he got home. He was wiped out and so he plopped down for a little TV time. I was working and not paying much attention when I heard the worst thing I’ve ever heard out of my son’s mouth.
“The Jonas Brothers rock the house,” my son said with a straight face. “They blow the roof off the house.”
I looked up, turned to the television, and then turned to my wife.
“Turn it off,” I said to my wife. “Turn it off!”
***
My son is smart when it comes to music. He instinctually knows when to throw the goat. Motley Crue’s “Live Wire” will come on XM and I don’t even have to ask whether the boy will be sticking out his index and pinky fingers in rock tribute. I just look in the rearview mirror and there it is.
The kid loves Crue. He loves Led Zeppelin. He likes jam grass. He likes music. I love him for that.
The other day, we were sitting in a restaurant and “China Grove” came on the speakers.
“Who is this, Dad?” he asked.
He heard the guitars, the syncopation, the drive. He felt it. He knew it was rock and roll.
“That’s the Doobie Brothers, buddy.”
The boy nodded and then listened. I was happy.
“Are they like the Jonas Brothers?” he asked
***
In the history of bands with “brothers” in the name, I would have paid to not live in a time in which my child’s first frame of musical reference would be The Jonas Brothers.
I grew up in an era that enjoyed the Doobie Brothers, Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Allman Brothers. Those bands, for better or worse, shaped who I am today. Hell, I even named my second son, in part, after one of the people in those bands. My generation was not the greatest in history, but we’re getting by and doing the world right. Hell, we even had the Blues Brothers and we’re better off for it.
And there are more. The Isley Brothers, The Everly Brothers, The Righteous Brothers, The Neville Brothers. I would have preferred my child had turned to me and said that any of them blew the roof off the house.
And it’s not as if there are not several good “brothers” bands in action today. Disney has completely ignored the talents of The Avett Brothers, Wood Brothers, and Waco Brothers. Instead, I get the 2009 version of the Monkees, except these kids wear purity rings on their fingers and vow to not get laid until they are married.
Rock and roll.
***
I know, I know. It’s a generational thing. It’s a Disney thing. No permanent damage will come of this. I should just let it be. But, I can’t. If I let this continue, who knows what will become of my boy?
I honestly am not sure how I’m going to handle it. I’ve considered throwing out the TV, putting a parent lock on the Disney Channel, and submitting my son to an hour a day of listening to my iPod. All of it seems a little harsh, so I’m thinking about telling him the coolest new kids’ show is called “Austin City Limits.”
If all else fails, I guess it’s good that my son has recently been learning about death.
At least he will understand what The Jonas Brothers have done to his daddy’s soul.
The mayor who Twittered (or didn’t)
· CommentsNote: The following contains some language you might not normally expect to read on a Sunday afternoon. You’ve been warned.
It was dinnertime on Friday night and the city of Greenville, SC was ramping up to another night of revelry. Summer in the city would see thousands of people milling around the downtown bars and restaurants. It was all a testament to the success of a two-decade revitalization project, most of it overseen by local boy done good, Knox White.
The mayor looked out over his domain, and if we’re to believe his Twitter feed, decided to tell the world, “I don’t know, but he’s being a real motherfucker about it. Call me.”
Huh?
Those of us who have met the smiling, glad-handing mayor could picture the friendly vitriol. It was certainly possible somebody had crossed the mighty mayor on Friday afternoon and the city’s leader had committed the equivalent of the “open mike at a press conference” sin. It was no scandal. You don’t change the face of a city this fast without a few blue words. And it looked like Mayor White was going to dispose of his slip of the fingers as quickly as possible.
Eleven minutes later came the next Twitter post. It read, “sorry about that folks guys, was intended to be a private message. my apologies.”
Folks guys around the Upstate snickered, “Somebody needs to teach Knox to delete his Tweets.”
***
Anybody can create a Twitter account under any name they choose. When I began using the social networking service, somebody had taken the name “Otis” already, so I created the _Otis_ account and have been using it ever since. After using Twitter for a while and realizing it wasn’t going to die off quickly, I made sure to secure my real name. My reasoning was two-fold. First, I might need it in the future. Second, I didn’t want anybody else pretending to be me. I went to this effort despite my only lasting fame being based on eating keno crayons for money.
There are a ton of cases of real celebrities getting on the Twitter wagon too late. The most famous is probably Shaquille O’Neal. Somebody took Shaq’s name before he could get to it, forcing Shaq to do the next best thing and create THE_REAL_SHAQ account. Baseball’s Tony LaRussa just went one step further down the baseline and sued Twitter because someone was impersonating him online.
But that’s for the big celebs, right? That’s for the people who come to Greenville to play in the BMW Pro-Am Golf tournaments with Kevin Coster and Cheech Marin and then walk a red carpet in front of Knox White’s City Hall. The mayor of the little city should never have to worry about that, right? He should never have to worry about people looking for his face and seeing…
Adolf Hitler.
***
By 10:30 that Friday night, the bars in downtown Greenville were hopping. Hundreds of people had looked at a screen capture of the mayor’s misstep and asked, “Seriously, is he ever going to delete that? One little motherfucker isn’t going to hurt anybody, but he really should delete it.”
By 10:45pm, the mayor of Greenville, SC had become der fuhrer. The photo of the smiling White had been replaced by the black and white visage of Adolf Hitler. The user name read “Adolf Hitler” instead of “Knox White.” The bio had been changed from “Hey, y’all! Would like to talk to my fellow Greenvillians” to “PISSY!” The offending “motherfucker” comment had finally been removed. The last message (and the one that remains of this writing) is the undecipherable “Tickle es Jungs.”
Remarkably, Knox White Adolf Hitler only lost two followers.
***
There are several explanations for what transpired over that few hours and none of them are particularly helpful for the mayor’s reputation. The most obvious is that he messed up and is now trying to cover his tracks. It’s been suggested by local Twitter maven Amy Wood that the account never belonged to the mayor in the first place. Based on the number of celeb impersonations, that is a likely story, except for the fact the impersonator would have had to have been really good at finding the right people for the mayor to follow. The people the knoxwhite account followed were a who’s who of the city’s inner workings, and not exactly the kind of people your average huckster would know about. Case in point: I’ve been in a fantasy football league with a guy for the past eight years and worked with him for six of those years. He now works in local government and has a Twitter account that I didn’t know existed, but whoever ran the knoxwhite account did.
The next scenario seems to be the most likely to me–the mayor messed up, his account became public very quickly because of the publicity, and then somebody hacked the account and changed it to make White look worse.
Finally, it very well could be as Amy suggests, that someone has been impersonating White all along. If so, I don’t get it. The whole idea behind a hoax like this is to make a big splash during the reveal. Instead, if there was an impersonator, he chose to make it look like the mayor slipped up and used some bad words and then changed the account to portray Hitler?
So, what really happened? Who is the motherfucker? What does Tickle es Jungs mean?
Maybe the mayor will tell us when he gets back to the office. Or maybe he has no idea.
Maybe that’s the real problem here.
***
Let’s be clear: If you are a public figure, ever hope to be, or are serving as a PR consultant or publicist for someone who stands to be even mildly famous, you are being irresponsible for not securing a spot on Twitter and Facebook. Yes, Twitter and Facebook can be vapid holes of despair from which nothing good can ever rise. They also happen to be places where hundreds of thousands of people spend hours each day. If you are a politician or leader, these people are your constituents. If you have any hope of connecting with these people you need to be on top of it. At the very least, you need to have “your people” on top of it. And you need to check out who is using your name. In this case, we’re supposed to believe White has the ability to change the face of a city, but isn’t keeping tabs on what his face looks like online. (Knox, right now it looks like Hitler.)
Whether this is a wakeup call for people of Mayor White’s ilk, we’ll have to wait and see. It may very well be the good ol’ boys would prefer to keep doing things the good ol’ fashioned way. And, you know, maybe that’s for the best.
Because, as Mayor White learned this weekend, technology can be a real motherfucker.
***
Update: Rather than write a whole new post on this, here are a few updates.
Late last night, a local reporter tipped me that “Tickle es Jungs” is a bad Babel Fish translation of “Tickle it, guys.” That’s the catchphrase of local shock jocks, The Rise Guys. Since then, the Rise Guys have denied any responsibility for the impersonation/hacking. That’s pretty smart, because to claim responsibility for it would mean the Rise Guys aren’t funny. They are smart enough to pull off better gags than this. That is a long way of saying, “Hey, mayor, we’re funnier than that. Blame somebody else, man.”
Update: #2: WYFF is now on the story and reports White denies any connection to the account. White said, “I do not have a Twitter account. It’s too bad people can get on there and act like an imposter. We will be investigating this.”
Good luck, there.
Update #3: And now the @knoxwhite account has been deleted.
Friday Mental Massage: Summer’s end edition
· CommentsWell, summer is almost over. Hot one wasn’t it? Oh, you’re just getting started? I get it. You’re normal.
For me, I’m headed off to summer school (read: work in Las Vegas) very soon, so these four…relaxing…weeks I’ve had since Dos’ birth are all I’m going to get for a while. Life gets weird in less than two weeks. With little time to focus today, here’s a little bit of what’s going on outside the blog lines.
Dos is healthy or at least as healthy as he is going to be. We ended up back in the hospital for some more tests this week. All of them came out normal, which leads me to believe we either have a very cautious doctor or one who is having a special relationship with our insurance company. Either way, it’s nice to know our kid’s insides look good from just about every perspective. This morning my wife called me the “Baby Whisperer” because I managed to hypnotize the boy with a mere flick of my finger. In fact, I was just turning his crib mattress into a 1970s style coin-operated vibrating bed to make him sleep.
I think DirecTV is awesome. There are people who don’t agree with me, but in terms of price and customer service, I don’t think I’ve had a better experience with such a large company.
We will finish… A friend of mine sent me The Cult of Done yesterday. A little inspiration, perhaps. We’re hopefully going to finish something we’ve been working on for a while. If not, I fear rot. Actually, I fear rot all the time, but in this case, I fear rot as related to this project. We will be done. Call it soup. Whatever. Done. Creativity is better than any antidepressant.
Speaking of creatvity, Shane Nickerson is back. This is the type of thing that should make you happy. Life got sort of mundane when Shane fell off the radar. (Apparently he got busy exec producing some TV show or something). I haven’t seen Shane for about 18 months and the last time I left him, he was promising to be right be behind me as I cashed out from a Pai Gow table in Las Vegas. I wasn’t sure he was still alive. He’s back with a vengeance. This is not safe for work, or kids, or people who don’t like the f-word, but, if you know anything about Twitter, will make you laugh.
My wife got a cute and sorta sexy new haircut, which is a lot like someone painting my house and telling me I can’t go inside for several more weeks.
Many of my friends are at Bonnaroo right now. I’m doing my best to be an adult about this.
So, my kid was enjoying a show about big cats on the the National Geographic channel, and I thought it was pretty cool he was learning a lot. Half an hour later, he is still watching and loving it. I looked up to see a screaming man standing over the body of his dead daughter–just killed by a leopard. I can’t turn off the TV before the narrator says, “And big cats are now encroaching on the United States.” My son is now in the other room warning my wife about the dangers of big cats in America. This on the day that one of our local gorillas decided to go for a walk.
My friend T just found this old thing which I had almost forgotten about. That was a long time ago.
Thoughts out to an IIF who lost her mother this week.
The Friday Mental Massage is how this blog would appear if I didn’t care what my writing looked like and people cared about the mundane aspects of my life. Its goal is to massage all the junk out of my mental muscles at week’s end with the hope of returning to better writing and subject matter.
My phirst time
· CommentsTrey Anastasio might be the world’s greatest hypnotist.
It takes talent to put just one person under a spell. The power of suggestion can sometimes be enough for a stand-up hypnotist to control a small stage full of people. Anastasio can capture the minds of tens of thousands of people at once, and he only needs a guitar to do it.
It’s impossible to understand a Phish concert unless you’ve stood in the sweating, writhing throngs and experienced it yourself. Up until last night, I’d seen Phish videos and listened to more than a few shows from all over the world. I knew I liked the band and would dig it. Then I stepped into the Asheville Civic Center.
We stood ten feet in front of the sound board. The room went black, the temperature rose by ten degrees, and something happened. It took me more than four hours to figure out a way to explain it.
In the meantime, I tracked giant balloons across a ceilinged sky. I watched four men in their forties drive past the description of “rock star” and into one that is impossible to define. It was akin to some Southern Pentecostal church service done to an extreme such that the religious snake handlers would happily and reverently step aside. Some people might even call it a giant cult, except Trey Anastasio is no Jim Jones and the only Kool-Aid anyone is considering is something Tom Wolfe might have written about.
During the first set, I watched the red haired hypnotist force thousands of people to move. The upper deck was one giant mass of movement, like a hive of bees with four-chambered hearts. The closer I looked, though, it wasn’t like bees. The dancing, jumping, and swaying all worked as one, like a single-celled organism with a singular purpose. That was when I figured out Anastasio’s trick. It’s not that he is simultaneously hypnotizing thousands of people. Anastaso is hypnotizing one giant organism and doing it with such efficiency that it seems effortless. If he were evil, the world would be in trouble.
I thought if I figured out the magician’s trick, I might better understand what was happening to me. I might somehow figure out how–at 35 years old and seeing a band for the first time–I was experiencing something so completely foreign and different. I felt like a child who knew way too much at a way too early an age.
Listen, there are a lot of people who build things up to be a lot bigger than they are. Some people do it for profit, some people do it to feel a part of something greater. I told myself going into this show that I refused to come out as some Phish poser. That understood, somewhere in the middle of the second set, I got it. I had a way I could describe the experience to just about anybody.
The revelation hit me after T and I climbed up into the upper deck to watch the show from directly behind the drum kit. From our vantage point, we saw what the band saw. We saw the unmatchable light show from the show’s artificial starscape. The crowd–still moving as one–sat bathed in polka dots, green waves, or purple mist. Then, all at once, a giant flash of white–a blinding nuclear blast–lit the people at once and simultaneously with the band’s ear-piercing punctuation.
That was it. It was that moment–that one that happened more times than I could count–that let me explain it to my wife when I came home. It goes like this:
Imagine walking down the street. You’re happy. You’re listening to something nice on your iPod. You know exactly where you’re going and you don’t have a deadline. You’re content to know you will get there when you get there. Then, without warning, you experience a giant, bone-rattling orgasm.
That is the live Phish experience.
***
I benefited from a confluence of happy factors. I went with a great crew of longtime fans, including Pauly, The Joker, G-Rob, Ms. Beth, and T. The venue was one of, if not the most intimate on the tour (although still a pretty big show). The fans agreed the Asheville show was one of the best since the late 90s. So, I got pretty lucky, I guess.
Perhaps the only trouble to come out of the whole experience is that I can’t imagine it getting much better than that. After seeing the faces of people who have seen dozens and dozens of shows, I knew I’d witnessed something that was even special to them. This, my first live experience with the band, could very well be the best I ever have. I think of people whose first sex was the best they’d ever experience. Everything afterward stands to be a disappointment.
I guess it goes without saying that–at my advanced age and advanced responsibilities–I couldn’t be truly converted. If I had, I would be in the RV with the rest of last night’s crew as they sit in traffic waiting to get into tonight’s Knoxville show. And maybe that’s for the best. Maybe that was the best Phish will ever be for me.
But, you know, even if I knew sex wouldn’t ever get better, I probably wouldn’t stop having it. That is, maybe that mass hypnotism doesn’t stop when the encore ends. Maybe I’m still under Trey’s spell.
The ease of it is comforting. I don’t have to worry about coming off as a poser, because I don’t have to proselytize. It’s not an experience I can adequately share, so I’m not even going to try. And really, I don’t care if you like the band or not, because–unlike almost any band I’ve ever seen–it’s impossible to understand unless you see a show. What’s more, I’m not going to jump on the tail end of the bandwagon and declare Phish the best thing ever.
To be doubly trite, it simply is what it is, and you had to be there.
Fortunately, I was.
***
For more from our crew:
Coventry’s Phish Asheville review
Tao of Pauly
A few pre-show photos from T
Have fun at Bonnaroo, you miserable bastards.
Go check out all the great photos from phishfromtheroad
Frolf body
· Comments
I rolled over this morning and wished I’d had a mirror nearby. By all indications, I’d been in a car wreck, and I wanted to know how bad it had been. Had my beautiful face been mangled? Was I monster? Even if crippled, as I almost surely was, could I still woo the ladies with my dashing good looks and ample eyelashes?
Everything on the right side of my body hurt, The pain began on the right side of my neck, crossed over my shoulder blades, settled in hard in the lumbar region, then exploded down my right hip, right through the knee, and settled in my right big toe. I cried for a couple of minutes and lamented my terrible luck. Here I am in the prime of my life–at a time when I could be a master of the universe!–and I was lying in a bed, never again to walk with a manly swagger. Even the Hindenburg reporter couldn’t fully capture the tragedy.
After a few minutes of weeping (the heaving sobs hurt my back too much to continue), I managed to pull myself from the bed. I could walk, but not comfortably. I may not have been crippled, but it was close. I tried to recall the night before. Had I been drinking? Did I finally hop in the MMA ring like I’ve been threatening? Did I again pick a fight with a little person in a leather jacket (again)?
When the cobwebs cleared, I remembered.
It was the damned frisbee.
***
Purists of the game look down their nose at people who call it Frolf. It conjures up memories of George Costanza happily ignoring his responsibilities and hopping through Central Park with a giant Frisbee. The preferred name is “disc golf.” Though traditional athletes look upon the sport with no small amount of superciliousness, the game has been around since the late 60s. The game we think of today, the one in which custom discs are thrown into chain-topped baskets began about 30 years ago. Creator Steady Ed Headrick may be no Naismith, but you gotta give the guy some credit for developing a game that seems so ridiculous but has such a big following.
My friends and I, constant competitors, took up the game seven or eight years ago. For a couple of years, we did little else. It filled countless hours. We had a website, teams, a league, and superlatives. It was silly, considering, in retrospect, that we were not very good. Time, as is its wont, went by, and we gave up the game in favor of families, poker, and prop betting on who could eat the most wasabi in one sitting.
Last summer, my buddy G-Rob suggested we go back out for a game…you know, just to see what happens.
What happened? We’ve played 4-5 times a week for the past ten months. I have dozens of discs and a bag specifically designed to carry them. I actually spend late nights looking at training videos on You Tube. I have developed Gortex socks envy. I have a pair of shoes (Eccos, natch), that are used for little else but playing disc golf. How I play on any given day can affect my mood such that you don’t want to be around me if I’ve played badly. When the mailman delivered my 165g Monarch last Monday, I wondered just for a second if my infant son was so sick that I couldn’t fit in a quick round before we went to the hospital.
You know, a casual hobby.
***
I thought I had gout.
Dr. Google told me that an acute pain isolated in the big toe was symptom of the Disease of Kings (so named because kings were so wealthy, they could overindulge in everything and give themselves the illness). I limped around in embarrassment for weeks. I stared at my big toe and implored it to stop hurting. If I had to tell my friends I had gout, I would never hear the end of it. What’s worse, if I’d gone to a doctor, he would tell me to stop drinking beer and eating steak–my equivalent of prison or the ministry.
G-Rob were walking down to Hole #2 at Timmons Park several months ago when I finally confided in him.
“My right big toe is killing me,” I conceded.
His eyes lit up. “I’m so glad you said that!” he said, and then with a wash of relief told me how his left big toe had been keeping him awake at night, how he thought he had gout, and how he’d been afraid to tell anybody. We were like two young girls discussing their first menstrual cycle.
The more we talked, the more we realized that our overindulgence on the disc golf course was killing the strong sides of our bodies. Left-handed G-Rob was destroyed on his left side. Right-handed Otis was limping on the right.
We were frolf cripples and had no one to blame but ourselves and Steady Ed Headrick.
***
The incredulous reader might be asking himself right now, “How much effort really goes into throwing a damned frisbee? How can two grown men be hurting so bad from tossing a piece of plastic around?” There are two viable answers.
First, there is a lot more to the game than most casual observers recognize. Consider this: I’ve been playing for years and play five to seven hours per week. The pros–yes, there are sponsored professionals in this sport–routinely shoot 14 to 18 strokes better than me. I am a rank recreational player at best. The constant throwing, stopping, and snapping are like a thousand tiny car wrecks every week. It’s tough on a body.
Second, we’re old. Given, we’re not old by 40-something standards, but this kind of activity takes its toll on a 35-year-old body. If we play two rounds in one day, the next morning turns me into a 70 year old man.
When I limp downstairs, my wife will look at me sadly.
She calls it “Frolf body.”
She doesn’t mean it as a compliment.
***
G-Rob and I are taking a break. We’ve decided to focus more on taking care of our bodies for the longterm. There is much more to life than playing disc golf and tearing ourselves apart. It’s time, we’ve decided, to take on more healthy activities.
So, tomorrow he’s going on Phish tour.
I’ll be going to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker.
After we finish up those weeks, frolf body will feel like a massage.
If you like a man in a kilt…
· Comments…you might like a few of the pictures I took this afternoon at the Greater Greenville Scottish Games and Highlands Festival.
I can’t quite pinpoint what it is about men in kilts throwing very heavy things that has such a wide appeal, but they’ve obviously got something going for them.
My only regret is that I didn’t have any gamblers with me. The prop betting potential for the Scottish Games was fantastic. I can’t tell you how badly I was jonesing to bet on whether the big guys could flip the caber end over end, or, as in the photo below, use a pitchfork to throw a heavy burlap sack over a large horizontal pole.
More men with big muscles and insufficient lower-wear at my Flickr account.
Update: Tom, a fellow local blogger and photographer. has a much more comprehensive report on the games over at Random Connections.
