Still My #1

Tiger Woods is still my favorite golfer.

I can see why people give me funny looks (and sometimes disgusted looks) when I say this. A lot of people, my roommate included, think there must be something wrong with me. "Really? After all that he's done?" people say. Really, and here's why.

First of all, let me make one thing clear: In no way am I defending Tiger for cheating on his wife. It's something that rightly made a lot of people mad and it's something that he's going to have to deal with in private (and in public) for a long time. Simply put, he screwed up. But here's my question: does he really deserve all that he's had to put up with since the truth came out?

Up to Tiger's crash in late November last year, he had been in the tabloids about as much as I have. After all, he's a golfer, how exciting could his personal life be? After the crash, we got our answer: very exciting. Soon, he was being bombarded by paparazzi and media and his life got a whole lot crazier.

Question: Can you remember any non-politician getting this much media attention for cheating on his wife?

The last athlete I can remember getting attention like this was Kobe Bryant during his rape case. But Kobe was being accused of a crime. There was nothing criminal about what Tiger was doing. Morally wrong? Yes. Criminally? No. So why would Tiger get so much attention when he didn't break any laws? Two reasons.

Reason 1: He's Tiger Woods. Tiger is probably the most famous athlete in the world. He's sport's first $1 billion dollar man and he's a notoriously private person. If you're a member of the paparazzi and you're looking to go after someone big, there's no one bigger than Tiger. Once the paparazzi smelled blood, it was all over.

Reason 2: He plays golf. Golfers are the pretty boys of the sports world. Think of every sports scandal you can before Tiger's. Did any of them happen in golf? Football has people like Brandon Marshall,Terrell Owens, and (fill in the blank) of the Cincinnati Bengals. Baseball has Milton Bradley and Roger Clemens. Cycling has Floyd Landis. Skiing has Bode Miller. Basketball has Ron Artest and Kenyon Martin. Sports are supposed to have their bad boys. Can you think of one golfer (besides John Daly) who has made a headline for anything besides winning a golf tournament? Golfers are supposed to be boring. They're not supposed to have wild secret lives. But Tiger did and he's getting shelled for it. What's strange about this is that athletes in every sport cheat on their wives. And yet how many athletes have been forced to hold news conferences to confess to cheating?

I know what you're thinking, So he's still your favorite golfer...why? Glad you asked.

I started playing golf in 1996. Coincidentally, this was the same year that a young golfer named Tiger Woods turned pro. A year later, he won his first major championship: The Masters. I remember hearing a lot about Tiger and once I started watching him, I knew there was something different about him. For one thing, he didn't seem like a golfer. Tiger had an intensity to him that I had never seen in anyone else. I was just getting into golf, and I had always thought (like so many other people) that golf was a boring sport to watch on TV. However, I found myself glued to the TV whenever Tiger was playing. It didn't matter if it was The Masters or the Byron Nelson, I was watching if Tiger was playing. Maybe he didn't always win, but you knew that at some point during the round, he was going to do something special. It was like watching a hockey game because you wanted to see a fight. Maybe the rest wasn't nail-biting, but you knew at some point, it was coming. And when it did, you could always count on Tiger react in the perfect way. You never knew exactly how it was going to go down. Was he going to unleash his trademarked fist pump? Was he going to scream and hug his caddy? Was he going to grab a t-shirt gun out of his bag and start shooting red nike shirts into the crowd? You never knew. During the 2000 PGA Championship, Tiger was being challenged by a player named Bob May. Everyone knew that Tiger just had to win, but May kept playing good golf. Eventually, it went into a three hole playoff, and that's where the real magic happened. On the first playoff hole, Tiger had a long birdie putt to go one shot up on May. When the putt was about halfway to the hole, Tiger started running after it, finger pointed at the hole. The putt dropped, the crowd went nuts, Tiger picked the ball out of the hole, gave a fist pump and let out a scream and just like that, you knew it was over. There were two holes left in the playoff and May was only down by one shot, but everyone knew it. No one was coming back from a shot like that. Most players are lucky to have a career defining shot. For David Toms, it was the hole-in-one during the PGA Championship which he later went on to win for his first and only major. For Shaun Micheel, it was the shot he nearly holed from the fairway to win the PGA Championship a few years later. For Tiger, there isn't one. For anyone else, that putt would have been the shot. It was incredible. For Tiger, it's just another to add to an ever-growing list.

There's something different about a tournament when Tiger Woods is a part of it. Everyone knows it, even if the players won't admit it sometimes. There's an electricity in the air that just doesn't seem to be there if he's not playing. Go to a tournament that Tiger's playing and you're bound to know where he is on the course at any given time, no matter where on the course you are. They're called Tiger Roars, and you can hear them from miles away. They happen when Tiger does something special. When he does, every bit of energy in the crowd is released and they go nuts. Maybe it's a birdie, maybe it's a long par putt, maybe it's a chip in. Whatever it is, everyone on the course is going to know it just happened from the roar the crowd makes when the ball goes in the hole.

I was lucky enough to be on the 18th hole at the US Open at Torrey Pines when Tiger made his putt to send the tournament into an 18 hole playoff the next day. That day, things weren't looking good for Tiger. He was limping around the course like someone had Tonya Harding-ed him and he seemed unable to really get anything going (probably because of his leg, which was later found to have a broken bone in it). Despite these things, he wasn't throwing away strokes. He was staying within reach of the leader, Rocco Mediate. He came to the 18th hole, a par 5 over water, needing birdie to tie Mediate. I was waiting under a huge scoreboard near the fairway with one of my best friends and his girlfriend and we had been trying to get updates on Tiger's standing for a long time before he got there. Finally, when he reached the 18th hole, we learned that he needed birdie. When Tiger hit his third shot safely on the green, the crowd went nuts and everyone waited in nervous anticipation as he walked to the green. We were all jostling in my section, trying to stand on little hills, roots, legs of bleachers, each other...anything to see what was going to happen when Tiger putted. He took a few minutes reading the putt and right before he hit the ball, I stood on my tip toes and was able to see everything. The second the putter touched the ball, everyone started yelling for it to drop. A few seconds later, it did and there was absolute pandemonium. Never in my life have I heard anything so loud in my life. Tiger was screaming and missing high fives with his caddy. We were screaming and missing high fives with each other and strangers. It was something I doubt I will ever come close to experiencing again at any other sporting event. Shaking his head in the scorer's tent, Mediate turned away from the TV he was watching and said the words the all of us there were thinking the minute Tiger hit the putt: "I knew he was gonna make it."

Maybe Tiger Woods isn't a fantastic human being. Maybe he swears a lot on the course and throws clubs and cheats on his wife. Maybe he doesn't give autographs and high fives to kids and kiss babies like everyone wants him to. But what he does give us just may be better. Tiger gives us moments unlike any we have seen or experienced before. Standing behind the scoreboard on 18, I didn't need him to sign my hat or take a picture with me or kiss my dog. I needed that putt to drop because every bone in my body was telling me that it was going to. Something inside me that loves this crazy game called golf and grew up idolizing a man named Tiger felt like it needed that birdie to survive. Something would have felt so wrong inside me watching someone other than Tiger hold the trophy after all that Tiger had been through for this tournament. Could I still have faith in a game in which someone who deserved to win as much as Tiger did that week lost? I didn't know and I didn't want to find out. I needed that putt to drop.

And it did.

And that is why Tiger Woods is still my favorite golfer.

Say What?

I was browsing around espn.com last night in the hockey section and found what has to be the front-runner for headline of the year:

"Bruins sign Satan to bolster offense"

As if that wasn't enough, when you click on that link, the headline for the article itself reads:

"Satan at Bruins' Sunday Practice"

(Note: There is a player named Miroslav Satan. Still, tell me that's not the best headline you've seen all year.)

Strict Joy

A long time ago, someone who loved music very much told me that when they got an album, they just hoped for one good song on it. I was just getting into music myself, and I was a little shocked. "How pessimistic," I thought. "Why get an album if there's only going to be one song that you like on it?"

However, as I began to compile more and more albums, I started to think that maybe they had been right. I would hear a song on the radio, rush out to buy the album hoping for it to be filled with similar songs, and almost always wind up disappointed. I still refuse to completely admit that my friend was correct in her assumption. With a lot of the albums out there though, it seems to be that there are far more instances in which she was right than wrong. Since I heard her say that, I've spent many years hoping that every album I get will have more than one great song on it. Over the past ten years, my list has included albums such as: Coldplay's "Parachutes" and "Viva la Vida," Jack Johnson's "In Between Dreams," Thrice's "The Artist in the Ambulance," Thursday's "War All the Time," Arcade Fire's "Funeral," and Radiohead's "In Rainbows." There are definitely more to add, but the list is small, and the list of albums where there are more than three or four "great" songs is even smaller. However, today I am proud to add another to the list.

Anyone who has seen the movie "Once" doesn't need me to tell them that Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova work well together. Though not romantically involved anymore, they still form the band "The Swell Season" and their music is as beautiful as ever. Their new album "Strict Joy" is without a doubt one of the best albums out this year and made it onto my list with one listen.

No one likes a one trick pony, and lately it seems like that's what a lot of bands have become. There are so many bands I can think of that are immensely talented, but when you buy their new album, you know exactly what you're going to get before you listen to the first song. It's because of this trend that the surprising range of songs in "Strict Joy" caught me so pleasantly off guard. The songs range from Hansard singing alone with an almost Damien Rice sort of sound in some, to the flamenco inspired "Paper Cups," and from the mystical and almost mythical sounding "Fantasy Man" to the flat out gorgeous and sad "I Have Loved You Wrong." Irglova has the uncanny ability to change the sound of her voice to match the emotions of the song. In "Fantasy Man," her voice is soft with an almost gypsy-like quality to it and seems so delicate that it could crack at any moment. In "I Have Loved You Wrong," her voice seems stronger, but retains a sadness as she confesses: "Forgive me lover for I have sinned, for I have loved you wrong." Coupled with Hansard's restrained harmonies, the song is hauntingly beautiful and maybe the best of the album. Despite the pained and sometimes yearning lyrics that may or may not reflect how the duo feels about each other, there is an unmistakable air of hopefulness to the album that ultimately holds it together. Whether it's the lyrics coming around to resemble optimism or the music itself failing to sink to the emotional lows of the lyrics, I can only say one thing to the end result: "You're on the list."

A Moving Find

I recently moved to a new apartment. Whenever I move, I find tons of stuff that I have no recollection of ever having. This time was no different. During the course of moving and throwing stuff out, I found a bunch of old assignments that I did for writing classes. Things that I completely forgot that I had written. Reading back over something you have no recollection of writing is always an interesting experience. If you're lucky, you have some moments where you're pleasantly surprised by your writing. If you're not, then it's at least a chance to see how far your writing has come. Either way, it can be an interesting experience. Here's one of the stories I found. The assignment was to come up with a scene in which there are two characters and each one knows something that the other doesn't. This is what I came up with.

A Strange Occurrence

“Do you want any more juice?” she asked, crossing the tile floor of the kitchen to where he sat, halfway through that morning’s paper.

He looked up for a moment and smiled weakly. “No, I’m fine, thanks.”

She whistled and pulled her small glass with ladybugs frosted on the outside towards her and poured herself some juice. He glanced up from the opinion column.

“Since when can you whistle?”

“Since forever, silly.”

“You’re in an awful good mood today.”

She looked at him, surprised. “Well why wouldn’t I be? It’s such a nice day and it’s so quiet in here, just the two of us.”

He looked up from his paper again and glanced around.

“It is quiet in here. I wonder if Sergeant Tibbs is awake.”

“Ugh! That bird is all you talk about,” she moaned.

He didn’t seem to notice and went back to the paper. She walked back across the kitchen and began scrubbing a bowl in the sink, letting the soapy water seep through her fingers. She glanced out the window.

“Honey, where’s Mr. Tumnus?”

“What, that cat?”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen the baby all day and I set out his foie gras hours ago, but it looks as though he hasn’t touched it.”

“You spoil that cat too much. One day, it’s going to have to learn to live on its own,” he said. “That damn cat eats better than I do.”

She turned towards him.

“Well maybe if you talked to me half as much as you talk to that bird, things would be different. Anyways,” she said, turning away from the sink, “I have to go to work.”

She walked towards the door and grabbed her black coat, felt for her keys in the pocket, and then blew him a kiss and walked out the door. As soon as she was gone, he put down the paper and walked towards the guest bedroom. Condensation had begun to form on the ladybug glass, and the only sound in the kitchen was the soft ticking of the Felix the cat clock that hung above the sink. Their screams pierced the silence simultaneously, and they both ran into the kitchen at the same time.

“You ran over my cat!”

“Well I was going to get the paper and he was in the way!”

“You had to drive to get the paper? You know he likes sleeping in the driveway! Your car is still on top of him!”

“Well you’re the one who killed my bird and wrote a suicide note to me from him!”

“Honey, he looked kind of depressed last night when I saw him. Maybe there was something he wasn’t telling you,” she said quietly.

"Sergeant Tibbs can't write! And there was box of rat poison next to his cage!"

Smashing Pumpkins (Not the Band)

Ask people what they do for Thanksgiving and the phrases “watch football,” “family time,” and “food coma” are bound to come up. Ask me what I do for Thanksgiving and you might get something a little different.

My dad says it started when I was born. My mom says it started two years later around the time my sister was born. Regardless of when it actually started, I can’t remember a Thanksgiving in which we didn’t go over to my grandparents house, dress up like pilgrims and Indians, and then march up to my grandparents’ roof to throw pumpkins off of it.

Every year, my grandfather goes to the pumpkin patch the day after Halloween and buys as many pumpkins as he can get his hands on. The bigger the better. Days, and sometimes weeks before the actual event, my grandma starts to tell us how many pumpkins my grandfather was able to pick up. Sometimes we even go over a few days early and check out the stock, admiring and making mental notes of which ones we want to lob off the roof. The anticipation builds and builds this way until, finally, the day arrives and my family and I drive the seemingly endless thirty minutes to my grandparents’ house. When we get there, the first thing we do is check out all the pumpkins lined up on the porch. Somehow, my grandpa always seems to outdo himself. I still don’t know how he gets so many pumpkins in an aging minivan, but each year, it seems like there are more pumpkins lined outside the house.

The level of anticipation at this point is almost unbearable, but rules are rules, and no one gets to throw a pumpkin off of the roof without the proper garb. My grandparents were both born in Holland, so they (and anyone else present who was born overseas) get to wear full pilgrim outfits. Anyone who was born in America is deemed a “Native American,” and so boxes of apparel are strewn over the surface of the pool table in my grandparents’ game room, and there is a mad dash for the best headdresses and plastic bear claw necklaces. When everyone is satisfied with their appearance, it’s photo time with the pumpkins. Everyone in the family poses together either perched atop or standing next to the soon to be doomed gourds.
The Thanksgiving photo shoot was the worst nightmare for every kid growing up in my family. It was like someone giving you a present on Christmas and then telling you that you had to wait until the Fourth of July to open it. As a kid, all I could think about during the photo shoots was that pumpkin I was sitting on. After about ten or fifteen photos, I was always sure it was mocking me. I remember nearly falling off of pumpkins I was sitting on when I was little just because I wanted to smash them so badly.

Finally, it’s time. Everyone picks up the biggest pumpkin they can find and marches around the house to the metal ladder that goes to the roof. On the side of the house, the roof lowers to about six feet in height, so we hoist the pumpkins onto the roof first, and then climb up to retrieve them. Once everyone and their pumpkins are on the roof, we march to the highest point, directly over the cobbled patio.

When everyone gets their pumpkin to the top of the roof, it’s finally time. At the count of three, there’s a collective grunt as everyone launches their pumpkins and then about two seconds of absolute silence before the pumpkins hit the ground and explode. After a few rounds of this (no, we don’t just throw one each), the patio is covered in orange carnage. You can barely walk through the patio because there are pumpkin pieces everywhere you step. When the last pumpkin has been pitched, it’s the kids job to shovel the smashed pieces into wheelbarrows, and then wheel the wreckage to the creek. Over the years, we’ve dumped so many pumpkins into the creek that new ones have begun to grow on the banks. Once all the pumpkins are cleaned off the patio, we move on to a much more traditional Thanksgiving dinner in the house.

Even though we’ve done the pumpkin toss for as long as I can remember, I can’t fathom ever tiring of it. It has become something that I associate with Thanksgiving just like most people associate bunnies with Easter. It’s a chance to spend time with family and maybe do something a little different in the process. Every family has their quirks. Mine just happens to be that we like to throw pumpkins off of a roof.

Flopping

So right now, I'm watching the Barcelona /Inter Milan game. Personally, I would love to watch more soccer, but it's pretty hard to find televised matches in the U.S., and when they are televised, they're often shown at times I either have work or class. When I do get the chance though, I try to watch, especially when Barcelona is playing. For some reason, soccer is still not very popular in the U.S. (hence the lack of televised matches). I think you could definitely argue that it's getting there. In the last few years, I've noticed an increase in the attention sports fans pay to soccer. However, I think that there is one perception that needs to change before soccer can really become popular. (Note: this is my opinion as a casual observer.)

Soccer players are a bunch of pansies: At least this is what it looks like every time I see a match. Every time someone comes near them, they fall to the ground grabbing something on their body like they just got shot. By no means is this true for every soccer player, but many of them take more flops in a match than a white center in the NBA.

Having played and watched soccer, I know for a fact that there is a lot of contact in soccer. I don't want to come off like I'm knocking curling here. There is plenty potential for injury over the course of a soccer match. However, isn't it a wee bit peculiar that when a player goes down, he's only "hurt" for as long as it takes the referee to either make or deny him the call? It's a little hard to take a sport seriously when this is allowed to go on. The NBA had a flopping problem and ended up handing out fines to frequent floppers. In soccer, the issue is still allowed to go on.

Here's what I think the real problem is: Too much reliance on referees. In sports like basketball, we see this a lot as star players like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James often blindly charge at the basket late in games counting on referees to bail them out with a foul call. In soccer, we see the same thing, with start players like Cristiano Ronaldo falling down and grabbing for their ankles seemingly every time they touch the ball.

On a side note, in the France/Ireland game that ended with a controversial handball by Thierry Henry, the Irish were so sure that they were going to get the handball called that they stopped playing defense and gave up the game winning goal. If you look at the pictures of the goal, you will see Henry's teammate, William Gallas calmly heading the ball home for the winning goal while the Irish defenders around him are looking away from the goal with arms up to signal the handball. Yes, it was a terrible call and the goal should not have counted. However, players can't just count on the referees to always bail them out. This is true for any sport. Referees are human. They're going to miss calls every once in a while.

So, basically, what it comes down to is that soccer players need to focus on playing the game. The game is beautiful when played correctly. However, when there is constant flopping and pleading for calls, people assume that soccer players are a bunch of pansies. In a place like America, that perception can be fatal to a sport. If it's between playing a sport like football (where they can knock the crap out of people without penalty) or soccer (where it can seem like every time you breath in someone's direction, they go down in pain), most young boys in America will choose football. Ultimately, I think that whether or not the flopping issue is addressed will have a huge effect on whether the sport survives.

The Case Against Tourism

One of the amazing things about being alive in this age is that it is easier than ever to travel. I have been fortunate enough to travel all over the world in the last fourteen years of my life. It started with a trip to Ghana with my parents when I was ten and my most recent longer distance trip was to Montreal last summer. I love travel and traveling, so whenever someone tells me they're going somewhere, I always ask them what they're going to do there.

"Well, first we're going to wake up on Monday and see the Eiffel Tower. Then, we're going to go to Pere Lachaise at 2 in the afternoon for a tour and then we're hurrying to the Arc de Triomphe by 3:30 and then it's dinner in the Saint Germain at 5. The next day..." Ok...good, I suppose.

"To tell you the truth, I have no idea. I just want to see Paris." Better!

Right after I graduated high school, I got to take a five week trip to Thailand with a group called The Experiment in International Living. Occasionally, our group leader would give us short assignments to do when we were there. Usually, it involved him giving us a quote to think about, followed by us freewriting our thoughts on it for a few minutes and then sharing. On the plane ride across the Pacific, he gave us a quote to write on. It went like this:

"A traveler sees what he sees. A tourist sees what he has come to see."

This has since become my mantra for traveling. Here's the way I look at it: Any given place you go to has much more to it than any travel book on it you will ever buy. It's up to you to find it while you're there. I don't think it's a bad idea to plan out a vacation. If you go to London, it's not a crime to see the changing of the guard. However, I don't think you should be so distracted on the way to Buckingham Palace that you miss everything on the way. I think that it's important to stop at places that look like they might be interesting because chances are they probably are.

When I went to Australia with my grandparents a few years ago, my grandpa was very specific with my cousin and I when it came to our souvenir shopping:

"Don't buy anything you can get back at home."

For me, this turned into the purchasing of a didgeridoo, a handcrafted boomerang, a kangaroo pelt, and a cement stuffed cane toad. My grandpa took his own advice to heart and ended up with a crocodile hand back scratcher and kangaroo scrotum coin purses for all of his friends. Since the trip to Australia, I haven't been able to travel anywhere without remembering his advice. To this, I've also learned to add a new element as far as eating in other places is concerned: Don't try anything you can get back at home.

For me, one of the most exciting things about going to a new place is the opportunity to try new foods. In particular, I really like trying different meats. When I was in Ghana, the locals sold something along the side of the road called grasscutter (to non-Ghanaians, grasscutter is barbecued rat on a stick). While at the time I was appalled, now I can't stop wishing I had tried it. Granted, the idea of a rat on a stick isn't really appealing, but the chance to eat something truly unique like that in a place like Ghana is to me. Since then, I've tried not to pass anything up that looks or sounds unique. My first experiment was a crocodile pot pie in Australia. I followed that up with a kangaroo steak a few days later. After that, my appetite for trying new meats had been whetted and I was just getting going. Since then, I've been able to have crocodile again in Thailand, snails and a reindeer pancake in Holland, a wild boar sandwich in London, and rabbit in Paris. On the home front, I've been able to try frog legs, buffalo, deer, elk, eel, crickets, kudu, just about every kind of fish imaginable, and, most recently, sea cucumber.

I absolutely love trying new meats, but there are a few lines that I wont cross.

1. Nothing that might kill me- While you could argue that grasscutter might fit into this category, I'm still putting grasscutter on my safe list for now. The number one thing in this list has to be fugu. Fugu is the name given to pufferfish meat. While, if prepared correctly, pufferfish has the potential to be delicious, I'm staying away from that one at all costs.

2. No weird body parts- I like meat, but there are some types of meat that I'm not a fan of. If someone offered me weasel brains today, I would probably think: "Hmmm...weasel...yes. Brains...no." A few months ago, a friend let me try a cabeza taco at a local taco stand. For those not familiar with Spanish, cabeza means "head," so you can see where they're going with the cabeza taco thing- cow brains. While it wasn't the worst thing I've ever had, I think the idea more than anything else got to me. Therefore- no strange body parts.

3. No endangered animals- As far as I know, I'm still good on this one. I've eaten a lot of strange meats, but I would never eat anything endangered. This includes animals like whales, dolphins, gorillas, pandas. I don't care how good looking a piece of panda meat looks, I won't touch it.

4. No pets- Having had both dogs and cats as pets, I think it would be nearly impossible for me to eat one and keep a clean conscience. Now, I know that the boundaries on this one are kind of vague. There are probably those out there who would consider a rabbit and maybe even a kangaroo as a pet. For now, I'm sticking to the traditional ones- dogs and cats. I'll throw horses in there too. Guinea pigs, you're still fair game.

I think the biggest mistake that people make when they're traveling is being afraid to try new things. Obviously, you shouldn't just go for everything. Streaking down a back alley in Caracas or urinating on Angkor Wat may be new but they wouldn't necessarily be good ideas. Every new country should be looked at as an opportunity to try new things, not just as a chance to see what everyone else has already seen there. So go out, try new meats, explore new places, and see what you see.