On today, the first day of the Tiger Woods Invitational Fun Fest, otherwise known as the Masters I have some random ideas that are not cogent enough to put into an essay. I also have taken so many supplements that I have ADHD. So there is no way I could have the patience to write 3,000 words about any one subject.
* I need to again make my push to have the Washington Nationals be moved back to Montreal where they came from. They are a terrible team and will always be a terrible team if they are forced to stay in Washington, which is one of the worst sports cities in the world. They have no fans. More Phillies fans have shown up for the first two home games of the season than any Nats fans (by a 5:1 margin) I think Budapest is a better sports city (killer soccer team and roving gangs of communists). I will continue to refer to the Nationals as the Expos until they move back to Canada...or move to Vegas.
* Speaking of Vegas, I am still in support of moving an NBA team to Las Vegas. I believe that it is the absolute perfect city to have a NBA team in this era. The All-Star Weekend in Vegas a few years ago was one the greatest Vegas sports weekends ever. Huge gambling on non-sensible things. Guns being displayed at every strip club and poker table. Multiple unplanned pregnancies of Vegas natives. It had everything you could ever want. So why not have it year round? Add Jordan to run the team into the ground. Have a washed up Rasheed Wallace and Allen Iverson as starters. Add Artest, Shaq, Stephen Jackson, and Gilbert Arenas (and his arms cache) to the mix and David Stern will have to quit running the NBA because he would have so many ulcers that all he could consume is Ensure and Slimfast.
* I know the Houston Astros are not a good baseball team, but watch out for the San Francisco Giants. They have some stellar pitching and just enough offense to contend with the Rockies and Dodgers in their division. This will hold until Lincecum throws his arm out in September or gets caught with Barry Zito driving around San Francisco with about 200 pounds of weed. Dippy would be so proud. By the way, Zito is also pitching better. His fastball is up to 87 and 88 as opposed to 82. His ball placement is significantly better (and he's smoking more pot than usual).
* Dippy is now completely out of control. I don't know if he can make it to his seasonal job at the Wyndham. He's being chased by Russian mobsters with AK-47s. I have no idea where he is an really what kind of trouble that he has gotten into. he was supposed to be interviewing West Virginia basketball coach Huggy Bear, but he couldn't make it to Indy. His girlfriend got involuntarily hospitalized in Virginia for trying to pull out all of her eight seven piercings and then decided to call the mayor of her town to ask him where his 15 year old daughter was at 2:37 in the morning. Not good at all. Dippy sent a text message about some sort of seven foot rabbit with an AK-47. This clearly means that he is also dropping acid. His whole Russian bride pyramid scheme was outrageous and brilliant, but Dippy went Tony Montana "Scarface" crazy and now some guy named Vladimir is chasing him down.
* In regards to Russia, their war on terrorism continues against the Islamic militants in and around Chechnya. Early last week, two female homicide bombers blew themselves up on subway trains in Moscow. The subway in Moscow is used by several million people on a daily basis. Think New York City and you should get the idea. One of the homicide bombers was the 17 year old widow of a killed Chechnya militant leader. Though female homicide bombers do not have the after-life perks of their male counterparts (though some suggest that a woman would be reunited with her husband in the after-life though this is not widely accepted) this marks further deepening of the war on the part of militants. Female bombers have struck in Russia before (at parks and festivals), but not on crowded subways. Until now. They are unlikely to stop and the Russian authorities will act just brutally enough against the Chechens to continue the tic for tac bloodshed. Furthermore, the Russian government may be OK with this in the short term. Vladimir Putin wants to get his Stalin on by "crushing" the terrorists into the ground. He did everything but bang his shoe on the podium. Putin is on the Russian roster as the prime minister, which really means that he is the President. Meanwhile the figure head President is Dimitry Medvedev who is the puppet of Putin until the next election. Putin will run as President again and will run on a campaign of fear (just like Bush, Rove, and the GOP here in the US) stating that only his father-like leadership can lead Russia to victory over the "animals" from the Caucasus Mountains. Putin has been accused of having the FSB (the Russian version of the FBI/CIA) blow up apartment complexes in Moscow and blaming the attacks on the Chechens. Lest anyone forget that Putin was a staunch Stalinist Communist and also a KGB head before politics. So stunts like this are not out of the question. So the new attacks fall right into his future plans perfectly (maybe a little too perfectly). The Russian culture is one built on paranoia. Fear of outsiders. Fear of Fascists. Fear of capitalists. Fear of themselves. Fear of their fellow neighbors. Fear of the KGB. Fear of famine. Fear of George Bush. Fear of Spider-Man. Sorry, I made the last two up. I think. This paranoia had led to the continuation of Russians desire to have a father-like saviour that leads the populace against whatever the current threat is. It worked against the Poles, Mongols, Finns, Americans, and Germans (twice). It has worked for close to two decades now with the Chechens. This allowance for a single authoritative leader allows the populace to ignore the fact that basic freedoms are vastly reduced such as independent press, public demonstrations, political choice, and freedom to shop at the Gap. OK, I may have made that last one up again. The Russian government tells the population that they are taking control and freedom from them in order to protect them and to actually give them freedom (i.e. freedom from threats). Remember, George Bush II (President Asterisk) tried to pull the same stunts in 2001 and got away with it for at least four years (just long enough to get him re-elected) As a result, the new wave of terrorism by "Black Widows" brings on a newer edge of fear into the mix. This plays into Putin's hands. He will say that the country now "needs" him to take over. They need him to make things right again. The population will have no choice but, to listen and respond (because in the background any and all opposition will be crushed and labeled as "sympathizers") with their votes. The violence will continue in the Caucasus and in Russia's largest cities. Just what Putin wants.
* I wasn't going to do it. I was not going to watch our favorite psychopath Tiger Woods hit his first competition golf ball in Georgia. However, as the clock struck 1:40 pm EST I switched from watching Dippy's favorite baseball team, the L.A. Dodgers, to the Masters. I was one of 400 million people who did the same thing. The crowd was 400 deep along the fairways, greens, and at the tee. They gave him a loud ovation as he was introduced. Clearly, Tiger "looked" like he was moved by the response. In all likelihood, he cared less about the crowd's response (except for his need to give him unconditional positive regard) than the hummer he was going to get on the "19th Hole" after the round. I was unmoved by the crowds response. It is clear that all they care about is golf (not necessarily a bad thing if we all are to move on). The first tee shot landed in the fairway. The crowd cheered. It all seemed back to normal. But, its not. Everything has changed. Images have been made, broken, and remade. Nike launched a new ad featuring Tiger's fake sullen face and his deceased father's voice admonishing and questioning him (totally out of context). This is the new image of Tiger. It is the image of feeling sorry for Tiger. For empathizing with Tiger. It's classic advertising. And it will work...even though it really shouldn't. I just hope that not everyone will be as fooled as I think they will be. I am certainly not. There is nothing to empathize about Tiger. He is not like anyone of us. There is no way we can even imagine what it is like in his shoes. He is on a totally different plane. He is richer than 99.9% of us. He plays "a game" for a living. That means that he is on another level (not higher or lower) than 99.999992% of us. How can we empathize with that? Dippy the Pirate Bear is more real than Tiger's new image can ever be and he is an emo kid in a bear costume. You know who I empathize with? Any player that has to be paired with Tiger during the tournament. Those people are going to deal with 400 times more distractions than they are used to and it will hurt their chances. Tiger is not going to contend this weekend, but as long as he makes the cut that will all the TV networks and Nike will care about. If I have to see the new Nike ad anymore I am going to throw my TV out of the eighth floor of a college dorm in Richmond after setting it on fire.
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