Hacker's Slow Play Spoils Golf Game

Here's a letter from the old mailbag:

Dear Ace,

Seeing as you are one of the world's leading authorities on matters of psychology and sports, I was wondering if you could help me with this problem I have.

Well, the problem's not mine, exactly. It's not Doc's or Lefty's either. It's the sole property of another member of our foursome, my brother-in-law Pete, or as we call him behind his back, re-Pete. We call him that because of the zillion annoying and time-consuming motions he goes through each and every time he steps up to a golf ball.

First thing he does after club selection, an agonizing process in and of itself, is set his grip. Defying description is the unique way he wraps his stubby fingers around the shaft, squeezes, then twists them inward, inward, inward, about 27 times.

Lefty calls this maneuver "screwin' the cue," because it resembles the way a pool player would screw a two-piece cue together. I call it "screwin' your friends," because of the effect it has on our playing. Eventually, after 95 to 100 seconds, Pete will shoot us a smile, meaning he's satisfied with his hold.

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We don't get excited, though, not about phase one of the gripping ceremony. That's what I said-phase one. Phase two comes later, after he steps up to the ball, adjusts his feet, flexes his knees, one-two-three, and fixes the target with a long, hard stare. Then, after 11 to 13 seconds goes by, he starts shaking his head "no." How we dread that moment knowing, next, he'll step back from the ball, let his grip unravel, and start screwing the cue all over again. Never fails!

Ace, no lie, I'm not the fastest guy off the blocks, but I can usually get a shot off in 15 to 20 seconds. By the time Pete drops the lid on phase two gripping, three minutes have crawled by.

Lefty calls Pete's next move "the tap waggle wiggle." That hardly describes it! With those gnarly, sweaty little hands finally locked in place, Pete again steps up to the ball and, with the head of his club, taps the ground behind it three times, tap, tap, tap, then in front, tap, tap, tap, then in back, again. Next, he waves his club, slowly and unrhythmically, over the ball-waggle, waggle, wag. Then he shifts his hips, left-right-left, takes a long, deep breath, and checks his alignment. We dare not speak, sneeze, or pass wind at this juncture for fear of disrupting Pete's concentration. That would force him back to phase one cue screwing.

Tap tap tap, tap tap tap, tap tap tap; waggle waggle wag, waggle waggle wag; wiggle wiggle wig, wiggle wig. He re-Petes that little ditty no less than 23 nerve-wracking times, adjusting his aim a little left, a little right, between verses, until he finally feels everything is just right. Then, and only then, will he take one of his rickety swipes at the ball. Elapsed time: seven minutes.

Frankly, Ace, golf has ceased to be a joy for me, Doc, and Lefty. Fact is, it's pure torture. On a good day, it takes us seven hours to play nine holes. Tell us, please, what can we do?

Desperately Yours,
On the Green, and Blue

Dear Blue,
It appears to me that Re-Pete's ritualistic behavior is symptomatic of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), known also as Hand Washing Syndrome. Unfortunately, every time Pete strikes the ball, he reinforces each of the "zillion" undesirable behaviors that preceded it, thereby assuring that he will repeat the sequence, ad infinitum. Consequently, if you really want to put the fun back in your game, and at the same time perform a service for golfers everywhere, I suggest you break his arms and legs.

(Note to Blue: It was recently brought to my attention by an irate emailer that OCD is a serious and devastating illness. After what it's done to your Saturday mornings, I don't think I have to tell you that. He also pointed out that it can be treated by antidepressants. The six drugs that have been shown to be effective include: fluvoxamine (Luvox), fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), paroxetine (Paxil), citalopram (Celexa*), and clomipramine (Anafranil). Anafranil has been around the longest and is the best studied throughout the world, but there is growing evidence that the other drugs are as effective. Of course, before you slip any of these drugs into Pete's coffee, you should consult a professional.)

(This article is based on a real life experience of the author and has previously been published, elsewhere.)

ABC Pest Control Inc (New Port Richey, FL) - Thumbs-Down Review

I'm not a fanatic about my lawn, but I do care about it and have fallen into a pattern that has rewarded me with a pretty nice yard, much better than most of my neighbors. Like, in early spring, I hit it with Weed Be Gone, once, sometimes twice. Then, if any bare spots appear, I rake them clear. If they're not too big, I can count on the surrounding grass to fill those spots in when the rains come, especially after I fertilize. That's how things were going this year. In fact, I was feeling pretty good about the lawn - it was green, there were only a couple small bare spots, and I had just applied some Scotts Turf Builder.

Then I come out of the house one day and find the bug guy going back to his truck with a spreader. "What were you spreadin'?" I ask. Without getting specific he answered fertilizer combined with some kind of insecticide. Somewhere along the line, the bug people had volunteered to be my lawn people, too. They never asked me if I wanted them to do that, they did it on their own so they could come more often and make more money off me. I told him I had just fertilized myself a few days before but that brought no reaction, even though it's possible that too much fertilizer can cause fertilizer burn. He just left his bill and took off.

Now, let me reiterate  the day I spotted him with his spreader my lawn was green. I didn't think to take any "before" pictures because, at the time, I didn't realize there was going to be an "after." Suffice it to say the overall impression one got upon looking at my lawn was this:

Green

Two weeks later, I began to notice some yellow patches appearing here and there. Three weeks later, I had a mostly dead lawn. Here's some pics:

East of the Trailer - Not Green

North Side Rear - Nope, Not Green

North Side Front - No Longer Green

West Side - Dying Fast

South - Dead

Well, to tell the truth, and I told the girl at ABC Pest Control in New Port Richey, FL, the same thing, the lawn looked like someone had sprayed it with Round-Up. "We don't use Round-Up," she replied. "I'm just telling you what it looks like," I said. Finally, she said she'd have someone come out and look at my lawn. Unfortunately, he came the morning I had a doctor's appointment and, though I got home by 9 AM, he was already in the wind. Below, find the form he left me.

Front 

Rear

Here's what he said: "Areas of drought and some winter weed dieing. (on their own) out such as carpet grass. (etc) I advise rake out and put down (Bahia Seed. Keep) watered -" Below, he added "As you Travel  Thru out the park you will see simular. In other lawns." [Misplaced periods, misused parentheses, misspellings and grammatical deficiencies have not been corrected. I'd like you to see for yourselves the quality and brain power of the dude they sent out to view my lawn.]

Of course, having been dealing with this lawn since we moved here in 2000, I had a much better idea of what was going on with my lawn than he had. Fact is, even though I had two or three different kinds of grass growing, I didn't care. It was my lawn, it was green - I was happy with it. Plus, I ride around the park on my bike every day and am perfectly aware of the sorry state of many of the lawns. The thing is, mine was fine! My was not burnt up, mine was not brown like theirs - IT WAS GREEN! Besides, I hired these guys for pest control. What in hell makes them think I want them screwing around with my lawn? I called the office and voiced my displeasure to the girl who answered the phone. She had the guy who had come out give me a call. He repeated what he had written on the form, concluding that his company had done nothing to destroy my yard. Trying to make it simple for him, I repeated my position - my lawn was green when your man spread his chemicals on it, now, it's yellow, it's brown, and totally burnt. He didn't want to hear it.

I imagine if I lived down in Trinity or some other relatively affluent community the company would have been more accommodating  But, since I reside in a 55 plus mobile home park, he couldn't care less that his company destroyed my lawn. Fine. I mean we all make snap judgments, don't we. For instance, he thinks people who live in an old fogy's trailer park have mush for brains, and I think he's a nitwit. At one point, he bragged, "I've been in this business 30 years." How embarrassing for him! You'd think in 30 years, this minion of veracity, with his ample supply of writing and verbal skills, might have made something more of himself.

ABC Pest Control

8320 Massachusetts Ave.

New Port Richey, FL 34653

May 25, 2013

Please cancel my account. I do not desire or require your services any longer.

Michael Toscano

  

Michael Toscano

No sense bogging them down with details. That would only confuse them.

To E.K.: You've Got A Problem

I'm a reader, a reader, I might add, who hasn't yet surrendered to the electronic revolution and the kindleization of the book world. As such, I do a lot of book buying in second hand stores where I can pick up books at bargain prices.

Unfortunately, you never know what kind of surprises await you inside a second hand book. For example, a few weeks back, I purchased a novel by Elizabeth George at the Hospice store. I had never read any of Ms. George's novels but I was familiar with her character, Inspector Lindley, through the British TV series that airs stateside on PBS. It wasn't until I started reading it that I realized the book reeked of cigarette smoke. Since I had bought the book at the hospice store, it didn't take a detective to figure out the fate of the previous owner. Luckily, or unluckily, I subsequently bought a second book by Ms. George which turned out to be the very same novel. So, I switched to the non-smokers edition in midstream.

This brings me to another book I recently bought, a John Lescroart “Dismas Hardy” novel. I've long been a fan of this series and didn't recognize the title, The Suspect, as one I had read. It sat on my shelf for a month or so while I worked my way through my queue of unread books, then, yesterday, upon finishing a Karin Slaughter novel, I picked it up.

It starts off with a man sitting by a mountain lake, fly rod in hand, waiting for dusk when the trout should start rising to feed on the mosquitoes. Being a person who has done his fair share of trout fishing, in streams and in lakes, I was immediately hooked.

I sailed through the first chapter, but on the second page of chapter 2 I was stopped by someone's errant scribble over a piece of dialog. The dialog read, "We've got a place at Echo Lake, up by South Tahoe. I was there for the weekend." Someone, and I'm assuming it was E.K. since she was kind enough and proud enough of her handiwork to initial the front free page, had put a line through the “ve got” and written above it in ballpoint pen "have."

Weird, I thought that someone would think that the "got" was something that had to be corrected, especially, since it occurred in dialog which should mimic everyday speech regardless of it's violations to the rules of proper grammar.

I read on, only to discover that every single “got” in the entire book, all occurring in dialog, had been crossed out, sometimes in pencil, sometimes in pen, by D.K. In another piece of dialog the speaker used the word "snuck" which she had transformed to “sneaked.”

The pages were peppered with these corrections and they were becoming increasingly distracting because every time I came across one my mind went off course and injected the comment, "She's nuts." I say "she" only because the scrawl appeared to be feminine. And I doubt a man could be so hell-bent on extinguishing these expressions from ordinary speech. If she had been a mother, I can see her spending a great deal of time correcting her children's language, as had her mother before her. But, you shouldn't spend your time correcting the speech of characters in a novel. And, if you somehow have been entertaining the notion that you are correcting the author John Lescroart's errors, you are simply out of your mind. Dialog is and should be full of colloquialisms. That's what makes it sound true to life.

In closing, I realize that, since I bought this book at the Hospice Store, E.K. could have, by now, succumbed to whatever was ailing her. But, if perchance she has not, here's a message for her:

E.K., you've got a problem.

Obsessively compulsive, E.K., that's what you are. Congers up images of continuous hand washing and freaky folks who roll their own feces into little balls. I've checked the book for brown smudges and shitty finger prints. It's relatively clean. Thank God, it's a good novel and I'd hate to have to throw it out.

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In My Own Defense by Ace Toscano

“I. Didn’t. Do. Any. Thing. Wrong!”

The way they're acting, you'd think I was a fuckin’ criminal or something.

I mean, if you want to blame somebody, blame the mambo – forgive me, I guess it would be more respectful to say "Spanish dude". Anyway, this mambo on roller blades came up to me a few months back at the park where I normally do my walking, called me a miserable old fuck, and claimed I didn't get out of his girlfriend's way fast enough when she came skating by me. Forget that his girlfriend couldn't skate a lick; she rolls around with her arms flailing like Helen Keller looking for her car keys. If the path at the park had been as wide as I-95, she still wouldn't have had enough room to get by me. So, I tell Mr. Mambo, "Fuck you and your fuckin' girlfriend," after which he informs me that if I don't get out of his way next time he comes around he's going to knock me on my fuckin' ass. Well, considering the guy had me by at least a hundred pounds and 40 years, I don't think it was the least bit unreasonable for me to go online that very day and buy for my protection a heat treated Smith and Wesson collapsible 21 inch baton. I mean, a bona fide threat had been made upon my person by a certifiably hot-headed spick, I mean mambo, I mean Spanish dude. What was I supposed to do, roll over and play muerto? Anyway, I've felt a hell of a lot safer since I started packin’ my heat treated S&W skull buster.

Besides, it isn't like the skater's the only asshole I've had to deal with - the park is a haven for all kinds of creeps and losers. Like the homeless people who spend their nights sleeping on picnic tables and benches and wake up hungry and feeling like the people walking through the park owe them some kind of breakfast. Yeah, sure. "Get lost," is how I usually respond which isn't exactly what they want to hear. And, the dogs. Their dumb-assed owners, openly disrespect all the park rules about keeping their dogs under control, letting their mutts prance around unleashed whenever and wherever they like. It isn't hard to envision several scenarios which end up with me wielding my baton and bashing both bowwow and owner.

And, just because several months went by without me once feeling the necessity to deploy my heat treated baton, I wasn't about to fall into the trap of thinking the threats had disappeared. I stayed on my toes, always on the lookout for fat spicks, angry vagrants and attack Chihuahuas.

Then...

Click here to read my latest short story in its entirety.

God Bless the Assholes – Adventures on County Line Road

When I feel like shooting pool, I usually head up to Capone's in Spring Hill because it's a nicer drive than the one down to DJ's in New Port Richey. Of course, "nicer" doesn't necessarily mean pleasant.

I was heading north on 19 the other day toward Capone's when I come to the intersection of 19 and County Line Road. If you're not local, let me explain to you that the west end of County Line Road has recently been renovated. Once a two lane road, it has been widened and now sports two lanes going each way. In fact, for the first quarter mile there are three lanes heading east and west. It has cut the driving time to the pool room by five or ten minutes mainly because of the two or three miles during which you can pass a lot of those drivers who get off causing log jams.

The route isn't without its irritants, though. There are those women and old coots who jump into the left lane only to go the exact same speed as cars in the right lane thereby virtually blocking off the road. Then, there are those who drive 60 mph, making it ill advised to pass them since the limit is 50 mph, but who eventually, when the traffic merges into a single lane, slow down to 45 even though the speed limit hasn’t changed. Old drivers in Florida have a favorite song. It’s I love a parade and there’s nothing that brings them more pleasure than seeing a line of cars behind them. I usually get close behind these morons and flip them the bird, hoping they see me in their rearview mirrors.

Anyway, when I got to the intersection of Hwy 19 and County Line Road (CLR), the light was red but there was an opportunity to go right on the read. Unfortunately, the dude in front of me in this white sedan was dozing. I sounded the horn and he finally went into motion just as the southbound 19 turn lane got the green. There was quite a lot of action with us and, now, the turn lane entering CLR. The guy in front of me turns directly into the middle lane and I turn into the right lane. I want to pass him, but he doesn't like the idea and speeds up. Finally, I kick it into passing gear and get around him just where the right lane ends. It's then the siren comes on and a state trouper pulls me over at the traffic light by the golf course.

Now, the trouper had been watching the whole thing play out. He walks up to my window and asks for my paper work. While I'm digging around for it the dude in the white car sitting at the red light and feeling all good about the way things were going gives a celebratory toot of his horn. The trouper gives him a long look and then turns back toward me. I think the toot of the horn was what tipped the scales in my favor because he told me to drive a little more carefully from then on, which I did... for a few days, anyway.

The point being, the asshole in the white car did me a big favor when he tooted his horn. Though I hate the bastard and would have liked to pound the shit out of him and that gloating pig sitting next to him, fact is, on account of him being a dedicated asshole, I was spared a ticket.

Funny how things work out sometimes.

The Iron Nymph - Another Story by Ace Toscano

I don't write that much anymore, though you think I would, since time is winding down. Not that I'm sick or anything, but I recently turned 65 and even the most optimistic forecasts don't have me reaching 80. My old man died at 69, ten years after he was stricken with cancer of the colon. It took ten years for the cancer to hit his liver and on from there. His father died young, and so on and so forth. So, realistically, I'm a short timer. But there are so many distractions - WeTopia, Hidden Chronicles, Solitaire Blitz, Bejeweled Blitz, Solitaire, Pyramid Solitaire, and on and on and on. Then there's my website and the hundreds of pages I maintain, though, I confess, I'm not very vigilant about that except for my pool pages. Still, every once in a while, I get an idea for a story and I start working on it. I don't labor over each word like a skilled artisan. I just plow through it, hoping to get it finished. Which is what I've done yet again. I'm pretty lucky, really. Some of us 65 year olds don't have enough brain power left to write a story, even a lousy one. So, I'll go with that. Here's the story:

The Iron Nymph

by Ace Toscano

 

Marge was hot.

Not Angelina-Jolie, Charlize Theron, Maria Sharapova hot.

Not sweaty, ninety-nine degrees in the friggin' shade hot.

Marge was snorting, snarling, spitting, teeth-grinding, red-in-the-face hot.

Marge. Was. Pissed.

And, she was holding it in. Which wasn't good.

She hadn't said a friggin' word since Kalispell.

She hadn't been making any of her usual casual observations about the weather or the scenery -- oh, how she loved the Montana scenery -- during the drive south, nor had she graced him with any of the little reassurances she habitually served up, like reaching over to gently touch his hand as he held the wheel, while softly declaring, "Love you, Cuter."

Cuter - that was her nickname for him. He called her Dolly, because she was and always had been, a doll, that is. She'd been a doll when he met her thirty years before when they were sixteen, and she was a doll, now. He couldn't remember exactly how long she'd been calling him Cuter, but he believed it had started shortly after he had confided to her that, growing up, his father had enjoyed telling him that he had a face only a mother could love. She had never thought much of his old man and after hearing that she had thought even less of him. Of course, in truth, Johnny really wasn't much to look at, but, if he pointed that out to Marge, she'd always insist "You're cute to me. That's all that matters."

But, he probably wasn't looking that good to her, today. At least, she wasn't saying so. She hadn't even squawked when he made an unannounced detour West on I-90 to St. Regis where he left her alone in the camper for three hours while he tried his luck on an unheralded stretch of the Clark's Fork he had heard about from Freddie, the guy in the Whitefish fly shop.

And she hadn't done much yakkin' during dinner at the OK Cafe, at least not to him. She spoke to the waitress long enough to order and later to rave about the "wonderful" grilled salmon. Not to be outdone, Johnny had complimented the chef on the "divine" burgers, fries and onion rings which really were pretty good. He usually didn't get a chance to eat that kind of stuff, not with Marge actively making sure he didn't over-indulge his artery clogging fetishes. But, for the time being, she apparently didn't give a shit if he died or not, so, he had stuffed himself with all the high-cholesterol food he could stand. He kicked himself later for not having added a couple eggs to his order.

Marge hadn't even reminded him to take his pills.

She was extremely pissed.

Of course, it wasn't a mystery why she was pissed. She was pissed on account of the way things had gone down with Jeannie Logan.

For the rest of the story, go here.