Playing golf is bad enough. Here you have an activity that is difficult and frustrating to begin with, but with the added benefit of being expensive and time consuming. You need to buy golf clubs, golf balls, golf tees, golf shoes, and special weird-looking golf clothes that you can’t (or shouldn’t) wear anywhere else. You need to pay for golf lessons, greens fees, cart rental, human being rental (caddie), country club memberships, and God only knows what else.
Then you get out there and spastically flail away for a few hours, sweating like a pig in the hot sun, lying about your score, swearing and throwing your golf clubs as you drive the ball into the rough, into traps, into the trees, into other golfers, and maybe eventually into a little hole in the ground. To quote Major Clipton at the conclusion of The Bridge on the River Kwai: “Madness! Madness!”
But watching golf on television? You have to get home to watch golf on television? Now that, my friend, is weird.
You have to get home to watch a large group of people watch a much smaller group of people walk around and hit little balls with sticks? To watch golf balls flying through the air, and then watch instant replays of the same balls flying through the air? To listen to long, boring discussions about the golf course, the types of grass used on the golf course, the types of clubs used depending on the particular situation, the relative humidity, or the amount of goose poop on the fairway? To watch the spectators do weird little golf claps, emit strange “oohs” and “aahs,” and shout sketchy things like, “Get in there!”?
Even if you’re weird enough to play golf to begin with, at least you’re outside doing something, as opposed to sitting on your backside in front of the television all afternoon.
And watching golf on TV is spectacularly boring! Could anything possibly be more boring to watch than a televised golf tournament? The commercials are more interesting than the golf. If they’re televising golf, why not televise other incredibly boring activities? New, this fall:
- Guys Paint my House
- Fish Tank!
- Professional Knitting
- Cloud Watchers
- Nursing Home Rec Rooms
- Vacuuming!
You might just as well televise nose-picking:
Announcer: We’re here at the 44th annual Nose Am tournament speaking with three-time Nose-Masters champion Bill Picker. Bill, I noticed you decided to go with your pinkie on the second hole…
Picker: That’s right.
Announcer: Can you tell us why?
Picker: Well, on this hole I was dealing with a tough little booger that was stuck in the rough way up the nostril. I usually prefer the index finger on the second hole, but I could tell that wasn’t the way to go this time.
Announcer: So that’s when you switched to the pinkie.
Picker: Yep.
Announcer: And then you put it in your nostril.
Picker: Uh-huh.
Announcer: Can you tell the folks watching at home what happened next, even though they just watched it a couple of minutes ago?
Picker: Well Sir, I snagged that booger on the first try!
Announcer: A hole-in-one! Spectacular! What’s your secret?
Picker: Well, there are a couple of things…
Announcer: Yes?
Picker: Grow your fingernails long.
Announcer: And?
Picker: Two words: dry fingers.
Well, I’m off to film a couple of pilots to pitch to the networks. And I like my chances, because apparently the bar is set very low, my friends, very low.
If you like watching golf on television, please feel free to continue. At the very least it indicates that you are easily amused, and you may perhaps be somewhat brain-dead. And it definitely classifies you as WEIRD.
But please keep watching your TV listings for my new show: Turtle Ranchers!
