Wisguy

Eric, your juvenile name-calling in lieu of actually addressing the points I made demonstrates clearly that I was correct. My response to your comment was direct, on point, and explained precisely with examples why you were wrong. You responded with the maturity of a 13 year old boy on a video game website with conclusory statements, no more. In fact, your post said little more than the oft-heard playground chant "IKNOWYOUAREBUTWHATAMI? ~~"IKNOWYOUAREBUTWHATAMI?" . Your post, childish personal attacks and all, was a rant. My comments were far from being "absurd" or a "random rant." I was addressing your completely unjustified and quite frankly defamatory accusation that I was a liar. Maybe people call you a liar all the time and you've grown immune to such statements, but I cannot recall the last time a rational person called me a liar and I take great offense at such an unfounded and derogatory accusation. Some newbie member posted about recently playing at St. Andrews and being disappointed and you threw a fit, disagreeing strongly with him, as I knew you would do when I first saw the title to his thread. But no, I'm just making things up and being ignorant. And keep kicking that dead horse about how awful the LPGA players are. Golf Digest came out with their list of best golf pros in the US a few months ago, a list that contained not just a few names but the names of hundreds of golf pros (i.e. not a tremendously selective list). Correct me if I'm wrong, but your name was not on it, was it? Restating contemptuously for the fourteenth time that the LPGA pros don't compare statistically with the male pros isn't going to get you on that list and isn't going to get you your PGA Tour card, is it? Unlike some of the other people on this website (and the last two posts you've exchanged with me show that you're in that camp), I'm honest and mature enough to admit when I'm wrong or someone else has made a better argument. I understand that everyone makes mistakes. It doesn't happen often and hasn't happened much here, but if someone does point out major flaws in my arguments, I'd much rather admit that I was wrong than be thought an idiot for continuing to defend an untenable position. In fact, I'll even concede some degree of error now. I haven't read my post on soccer for many months and forgot what exactly I said, as some moderator (I believe Jamo), locked me out of that thread and at least one or two others in which he found himself unable to respond to points I was making and threw a hissy fit, so I couldn't read it. But I logged off and went back and read that post and I'll concede that I probably should not have said that all soccer fans are less bright than the typical Bears fan (who I said are dumb for blaming their quarterback for playing poorly when he's injured and then blaming him for being gutless when he can no longer play because of those injuries). I probably did have a bad day when I wrote that - I should have criticized only the sport, not its fans, even though I was anticipating arguments (lame ones at that) that I've heard many times before from soccer fans. However, Erik, you couldn't even come up with the one thing that I said that was arguably inappropriate. The French bikini brief comment was funny, clearly was not intended to be a serious or spiteful attack against anyone, and it's rarely, if ever, inappropriate to mock the French. A single, only arguably excessively critical post does not make me a "blatant liar." However, I will defend the rest of my comments in that thread by saying the following: a) unlike many of the other people posting on that thread, I actually explained and very adequately justified my opinions; and b) the title of the post was "Sports Teams You Absolutely Hate" - it wasn't "Sports teams that cause you to have slightly-less-than-super-duper-pleasant, happy-happy feelings." If you don't like people expressing strong opinions, then stay out of threads that clearly state in their titles that they are inviting all posters to make them. I have a relatively low tolerance for fools and foolishness. Make intelligent, fair, and reasonable comments and we won't have any issues. The problem is that when I do explain exactly why the points I am making are correct, I get labeled either a jerk because I am right or else people say I am too verbose (which sometimes is true). If I'm so damn wrong, then make a more intelligent argument. If you can't, then reassess who is correct and who is not. Be mad at yourself for being mistaken, not at me for pointing out that fact. At this point, I don't anticipate that I'll receive any comments in response that deserve my further time or effort. I'm dealing with an ego that cannot admit he is wrong, plus a few follower-types that have to tag on their "ME TOO!!!" comments. I've made my arguments, provided logical reasons and examples to support them, and I think there's no point in paying any further attention to this thread, which clearly was created with spiteful, juvenile motivation (see its title). Contrary to your contention, the significant majority of my posts here have been solid, constructive and worthwhile contributions to discussions on the sport of golf and when I've been able to provide a word of help or assistance to those seeking it, I have tried to help others (if I was such a jerk as you contend, why would I condemn other members for attacking new members who claim to be mere teenagers?). This site has grown tiresome and I think I'll take a bit of a break from the Sand Trap. The several angry types here making posts far more influenced by ego than reason, plus the incessant whining about slow play, have soured me on the sport rather than made me more eager to play it. There is a foot of snow on the ground and I'm going to forget about golf for a few months.

Nonsense. I've pissed off a few people here because I have voiced strong opinions on certain subjects and several people have disliked what I said not because I was unfair, inaccurate, made personal attacks or used profanity (which I refrain from doing), but because they were unable to come up with better, more intelligent responses and their egos were too inflated to admit someone else had a better point. I'm engaging in a discussion for the purpose of discourse, not for the purpose of feeling better about myself by putting others down. That's not being rude. If someone makes a dumb and inaccurate point, am I supposed to pretend that he's right? Are you "rude" if you say "No" when on a 140 yard hole, your playing partner's second putt comes up 5 feet short and he says "That's a par for me, right?" Claiming I'm lying is not just ironically being completely rude, but it's altogether inaccurate - in fact, if one of the two of us is making dishonest statements, it is not me. I was surprised you made such a comment and waited a few days to respond, figuring you were just having a bad day and would come back and edit or delete your comment when you were in a more sensible frame of mind, but I guess that's not going to happen. There are more than a few people on this site who engage in name calling (which I do not do). Why are you getting on my case but you don't bother with people engaging in juvenile conduct that surely must break the site rules? Erik, we both know why. You're still harboring major resentment against me because I made two comments months ago that really set you off and enraged you and you simply cannot let it go. First, I said something to you that produced a reaction in you roughly the same as the reaction you'd cause in a more extreme member of the Taliban if you told him you just wiped your arse on pages torn out his holy book. I said, very accurately, that take away the history and tradition thing, and The Old Course at St. Andrews is a dull, unattractive, and rather poorly maintained course (your obsessive adoration blinded you but there were bare patches on at least one green at last summer's British Open). I have no idea why you are so obsessed with St. Andrews, but other than some soccer hooligans who are looking to cause harm to their rival fans (and even that may be more about being violent than being a passionate fan), I don't think I've ever heard of anyone being as obsessed about any aspect of a sport as you are about St. Andrews. I simply cannot fathom how anyone could be so blindly passionate about a golf course. I question if you'd react that strongly to someone besmirching your wife's virtue. You accuse me of being "rude" about women. I believe the specific comment to which you are referring was a comment I made in The Grill Room forum grousing about women's haircuts and it was the male equivalent of a woman griping about how men never want to stop and ask for directions - hardly egregious. I think your eager participation in a thread objectifying women (the "Beautiful Women" thread - exactly how many hot babe photos did you post in there Erik, a dozen, two dozen, more?), your starting a "Michelle Wie has Man Hands" thread, or your eagerness to disparage women as athletes in practically every LPGA thread in which you've posted in the past half year or more shows you to be a hypocrite for commenting about anyone else being a chauvinist. And that brings me to the second comment I made that pissed you off so badly so many months ago: I said that the contempt you voice for LPGA players is fueled in large part by the fact that you are jealous of and resentful toward golfers who you feel have skills and perhaps a work ethic that are inferior to yours (I have no idea if you are 100% correct or altogether delusional), yet those women get to make their living playing golf on a professional tour and you do not. To that second thought, I'll add the following: even though I'm sure there's more drudgery involved in being a golf pro than may be readily apparent, you're nonetheless earning a living doing your favorite activity/hobby. Most people don't like many, if any, aspects of their jobs and would tell you to open your eyes to the real world and quit whining about not having your every last dream come true. So go ahead, delete this post and ban me from the site. Or surprise me and be man enough to admit that there's more than a little truth to what I've said.

No, not really. I made a rather general statement. Club Ho, in his eagerness to assert what a terrific guy he is by putting someone else down (something I confess I used to do but discontinued around the middle of 9th grade), jumped to conclusions and chose to attribute to me a very narrow, specific interpretation of my words, even though there was no basis for so doing, in order to support his feeble attempts to claim I am an annoying fool.

Again, you're making a snap judgment and you're wrong. I never said I "stood directly behind the golfer." I was standing about 20 feet back from the tee box and slightly to the left of my friend, out of his direct view and in an unobtrusive position, where I usually stand and where my playing partners usually stand when I'm hitting off the tee. I was standing where one should stand, to watch the ball flight of one's playing companions' balls so as to help them find them if they are offline and cannot readily locate it - it's an important part of playing ready golf, to be able to help cut down on time spent looking for lost balls. If you're being honest about the handicap you've posted as part of your profile, you must be a pretty considerable natural talent - you don't seem to know as much about the game of golf as one would expect of the typical single digit handicap player. You also seem to be a pretty angry guy.

Thank you for the positive comment. You are entirely correct that I was trying to balance being helpful with avoiding being intrusive with unsolicited advice, particularly since my friend is a better golfer than I was. Golf is one of the toughest activities to master and I think one generally does need to have a very low handicap and/or be a teaching pro to understand the mechanics of a golf swing well enough to give thorough or more than basic advice . However, there are some elements of the game that are fairly obvious and some faults do not require a complete understanding of the golf swing to correct. In this case, my friend was a) a generally straight hitter who doesn't try to work his irons; b) lining up and aiming to the right and his usual straight shots were going exactly where he aimed - if he had aimed at the pin instead of 10-20 yards right of the pin, he'd have faced a makeable birdie putt instead of a longer chip. Telling someone their aim is off is to golf advice what telling someone they need to reduce the salt in a dish from 3/4tsp to a 1/2tsp or telling them that if the cookies are dark brown on the edges and crumble easily, they need to take them out of the oven a minute or two earlier; one does not need to be a trained professional to render that sort of advice. Club Ho, you strike me as the sort of person who makes irrational snap-judgments about people without any justification.

Try reading one of the books by John Sarno, M.D. He is one of the primary researchers on the connection between physical pain and mental factors (psychosomatic pain). I have no personal experience with his theories, but have heard good things about his books and the reviews on Amazon are extremely positive.

50 yards. It was my best day ever - I was totally alone on the course on a cloudy weekday morning, I was playing two balls and never got to finish because of a thunderstorm - I had to play speed golf just to complete the 9th hole as the rain was pounding down and at least get to put down a 42 and a 43 on my scorecard for 9 holes. It was years before I played nearly that well again.

Faraway, that's pretty amazing - I thought you were referring to clubs in a more general sense that would include such organizations as gentleman's clubs in London (a vastly different thing than an American "gentleman's club" which is a fancier, more polite term for "nudie bar"). Like I said, I don't think I've ever heard of an all-women golf club in the US - a quick look on Google turned up some women's clubs (i.e. groups or associations) at co-ed courses, but no females-only golf courses. I agree that if a private club wishes to take advantage of any public privileges, such as non-profit organization tax status or eligibility for hosting a sports tournament on the scale of a professional or significant amateur event, its membership should not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, etc....

I think this "well there are plenty/as many/more women's-only clubs of various sorts as there are men's club's" argument doesn't hold a whole lot of water for several reasons. First, most of those women's clubs are probably clubs involving craft-type activities that no man has ever shown any interest in joining. I bet that most craft clubs and a fair number of bridge or other card game or book clubs that have all female memberships would allow a man to join if a member said "My boyfriend/husband loves [this game or our book selections] and wants to join." The membership of most of those clubs is single gender not because of practices of exclusion by females but because of lack of interest by males. Second, a person could very easily want to join a golf club just to be able to play the course; it's not as if there many all-women's golf clubs, if any at all. If there were just as many all-women's golf clubs as men's clubs and they were as nice, then the "what about the women's clubs?" argument would make more sense, but that's not the case in the real world, at least the real world of golf Since even mega-length courses have a variety of shorter tee options for senior and shorter golfers, there's no physical reason why a decent female golfer would be a problem on a golf course and many avid female golfers might look at a particular club's layout and say "That's a gorgeous course, I'd like to play there regularly." If concern is slow play, have a minimum handicap requirement for all members, remind all members about playing expeditiously, and send a ranger or marshal around to bother any group that is getting too chatty, regardless of gender. Third, it's well-known that a lot of business occurs on the course or in the clubhouse of private golf clubs and business opportunities should be available to anyone who has the talent and drive to be in a position to make such a deal, regardless of gender. When's the last time that anyone has heard of two women closing an eight-figure deal at their weekly knitting or canasta club? I think only a dull-witted bigot would argue that it's OK to discriminate on the basis of race. If it's wrong to preclude an individual from potential business opportunities based on the color of skin he had at birth, why is it any less wrong to discriminate against a different individual because she had slightly different anatomy at birth?

This thread got me thinking, and I can't recall ever having a golf dream. I've had dozens of downhill skiing dreams over the past three decades and in every one of them, I've been a much faster, smoother skier than I am in real life; it's frustrating when I get out to a ski hill/mountain and can't replicate on a real slope (at least one steeper than a basic Green trail) what I could still recall from my dreams on what seemed to be Blue and Black trails. Something similar used to happen to me in high school and college when I'd speak French in my dreams - I was fluent in my dreams but never quite made it there in real life. I no longer have those dreams, though, as I've forgotten most of my French through non-use. But it's weird that I've never had a golf dream since I've played about 10 times more golf in the past 20 years than I've skied.

Being homeschooled shouldn't keep a kid from being on the local high school's golf team - I think it's pretty much mandated that public schools open up their extracurriculars to homeschooled kids. Having said that, I agree with SloverUT - practicing all day every day will wear a person out physically and mentally. I would think that the amount of golf you are playing sounds about as much as, if not more than, I'd ever want my kid to play, even if she did have LPGA aspirations. And speaking of the LPGA tour, Lexi Thompson was homeschooled, although she did have a number of older brothers who were also competitive golfers. I don't know if the homeschooled people I've encountered are representative, but the ones I've met are all somewhat lacking in social skills, reminding me a bit of how a single child who never went to preschool might react in kindergarten. They came from ultra-religious type backgrounds and were homeschooled to avoid such "sins" as learning science. These several guys were fairly driven and successful, but I don't think they had a lot of friends.

Now I'm not a woman regardless of breast size and I've never played one on television. However, I really have to question what sort of lunacy would make any female athlete with aspirations of turning pro get breast implants in general, let alone ones as big as Meghan had installed, particularly in a sport like golf where they can effect balance so much. I've known women who had chests not much heftier than Meghan's who got breast reduction surgery because of how they interfered with their coordination and caused back problems. Spit, what you say is true, which makes the following, taken from Meghan's website, seem a bit silly or at least wishful: I am golf . I am the future of golf. I am competitive . I will never give up on my dream . I belong on the golf course. MS, unfortunately, the only coach I've known like Doleman did not turn out to be an OK coach and good guy in the end, even though he actually looked like and acted like Doleman. He was my high school's head football coach (the old-school kind of coach who called his players "pussies" when he didn't feel they were giving 100% and had several kids pass out during August preseason practices because he wouldn't let them have water breaks since "real men" don't need them, even if it is 90 degrees out). My senior year he volunteered to be our head track coach, too, even though he did not have a milligram of knowledge about the sport or about running in his head. At the first practice, I liked his no-nonsense approach, as there was a group of drama club geeks who decided that "track is easy" who wanted to pad their extracurriculars for college applications who were goofing off and he made everyone do pushups for 10 minutes because of their constant chatting, resulting in all of said drama queens quitting. The distance runners had our own coach and the head coach left us alone until the day before the state championship, when our coach had a family emergency and was gone for the week. As anyone who knows anything about running will agree, the day before an important race is devoted to nothing more than stretching with a light warm-up and cool-down just to stay loose. The bull-headed head coach saw us jogging a few laps, thought we were slacking off, and ordered us to do ten 400's at full effort. On the 8th one or so, I cramped up with the worst charlie horse I've ever had that left me literally lying on the ground screaming in pain - my tendon had clenched up and you could see it twitching on top of my shin bone. I was limping for several days afterwards and it probably added at least 5 seconds to my time the next day. To add insult to injury, the damn coach didn't bother to attend the pre-meet coaches meeting, didn't know that the order of events had been switched with the mile starting an hour earlier than originally scheduled. So after the first event or so finished, I'm about 1/3 of a lap into my warm-up, hadn't even done my real stretching yet, and I hear over the loudspeaker "Final call for the boy's mile." I hardly got to the starting line before the race began. I was seeded 3rd, two days earlier I felt I had a good shot at 2nd (the 1st place guy was way too good to keep up with), gave everything I had and did run a PR, but my legs were so heavy and stiff I could not keep up with the 2nd to 5th place guys who I felt I normally could outkick, and only got 6th place. Tying this back to golf, flash forward a dozen years when I've given up running and taken up golf. One spring, my several golf buddies all got bit by the running bug, stopped playing golf so they could devote all of their spare time to running, they started talking about running constantly (which most competitive runners don't do since it's not an interesting sport), and none of them were even any good at it. That was kind of a bitter pill to swallow.

I clearly counted some chickens before they hatched. What a poor showing. Regardless of the coach, Wisconsin traditionally has at least one bad game a season. Yesterday's home loss was that game. No BCS bowl game for the Badgers. Probably still a New Years bowl, though.

Please see below http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

So let me get this straight, you don't like it when people address your comments in a dismissive fashion. Uhhmmm, OK. You aren't familiar with this thing called "irony," are you? I suppose if my alma mater had been gifted with a national championship via the most imaginary pass interference call in history, I too might get tired of all the "should have" and "that was completely ridiculous!" type comments for many years afterwards. But tell us, what sports discussions do you consider to be more of a proper use of one's energy? Which ones are so vastly more constructive and useful? Can you give us a list of those sports topics that are acceptable and those which are not? I really don't want to run afoul of anything on your list in the future.

When guys talk about sports, the air is full of "should haves," "what ifs," and "could haves." Son, is this your first time participating in a non-golf sports discussion?

I haven't read through the several dozens of pages of posts here, but has anyone speculated what Wisconsin's ranking should be but for the officiating snafu in the ASU game that snatched a near certain victory (as certain as what, a 30 yard field goal can be) away from them, leading to a 9-2 record instead of a 10-1 record? Actually, the Badgers probably should be undefeated. In the Ohio State game, a freshman defensive back had an easy opportunity to pick the ball on third-and-long but instead swatted it way, probably figuring that the Badgers might get better field position from a punt than if he intercepted it and got tackled deep downfield. The only problem was that OSU didn't punt, they went for it on 4th down, made it and went on to score a TD. Ohio State won that game by 7, so at the very worst, it would have gone into OT, but for the rookie mistake. Currently Wisconsin is 15th in the BCS rankings. This weekend we've got Alabama vs. Auburn and Clemson vs. South Carolina, the week after we have Ohio State playing MSU, meaning that a minimum of three of the teams ranked ahead of them have to lose. Plus there will be at least one more top-ten matchup in the SEC championship, so four teams ahead of them will have additional losses and one may end up with a three-loss season. Looks like all the Badgers need to do is win at home Saturday against Penn State and they're BCS bound at 10-2. I guess we didn't need you after all Bret Bielma.

I have a vague recollection of this gent of whom you speak, Brent Farv. But as any mathematician will tell you, 12 is greater than 4 and I hope that will become reality eventually as to the good Brent's records.

Don't be too hasty to thumb your nose at commercial success and widespread popularity. The Mermen, a psychodelic-surf threesome, are one of my favorite bands, I'm on their e-mail list and I get all sorts of notices of their upcoming concerts. Unfortunately, those concerts seem to be within no greater than maybe a 50 mile radius of San Francisco. I've kept a lookout, but I don't think they've toured anywhere nationally or at least out to the Midwest within the past decade. So unless I want to go 1500 miles west, I likely won't ever get to see one of their concerts. One of my other favorite bands of all time was Marques Bovre and the Evil Twins, a fantastic local roots rock band who had a modest college radio hit "I Like Gyrls (Who Like Gyrls)" about 20 years ago, a funny song about a guy who always falls in love with lesbians. I saw them probably 25 times over the years, but a combination of health/family issues and questionable financial viability kept them from touring which relegated them to guys with day jobs who play in-state bars on weekends. After a dozen or so years, their guitarist saw the writing on the wall and moved to the East Coast giving up music except for a couple trips back to the Badger State for reunion concerts and instead of devoting himself to where his talents lay, as a really outstanding musician, he became a full-time nurse. MBET continued on for a few more years with a new guitarist but they were never the same. Marques himself faired less well and with numerous health issues and no health insurance, his body deteriorated and he died early this year from brain cancer. I have no idea if the outcome would have been much different if the band had been financially successful enough to have been able to afford health insurance, but that's a possiblilty. At his very last concert, a benefit concert attended by many local bands, by their original guitarist who flew back from the east coast and by Jim Schwall of the Siegel-Schwall Band with whom Marques worked on a side project for a few years, Marques was very weak but I think he was fully appreciative of a sell-out crowd who turned out to show their support. So there are two examples, and there certainly are thousands more, of how limited commercial success restricts access to quality music. If a band doesn't have adequate promotion to attract a large enough fan base, they may stay a local or regional band and never tour or the band members may simply give up and move on to something that seems better able to provide for a decent livelihood. Commercial success isn't always a bad thing.

Blame the cynic in me but I don't respond monetarily to solicitations of this sort. However, one of my best friends from grad school died from leukemia about a decade ago and you and your friends certainly have my sympathies. It's an awful disease. Have you a tried to attact some local media attention to your cause? In the States this month, the guys on the Today show on NBC have all forsworn shaving in November to bring attention to some cause or another (it didn't quite succeed with me) and I would imagine that the mustache thing is just the sort of quirky positive story that might warrant some focus away from negative journalism.

The site won't let me do a multi-quote today, but to address Jamo's comments above, I think you're making a few false assumptions. First, I have nothing to do with Facebook, Twitter, or the ilk. I don't feel any need to spend my time learning that someone just sneezed three times in past hour, his kid's got a weird rash on his ass, or that someone else is "Just Facebooking to see what everyone else is Facebooking about!" I keep in touch with my friends the old fashioned way, by phone, e-mail or meeting in person. Second, I think you overlooked the fact that I said that there are practically no modern bands anyone has ever heard of who are making quality rock music with an edge these days. I don't dispute that there are talented newer rock bands out there who have interesting songs featuring great guitarwork and other instrument playing (I'm sure they exist) but they simply aren't getting any sort of widespread recognition. I don't dispute that access to such music is easier now via internet than ever before. However, discovering such bands is not easier and requires more work. Twenty or thirty years ago, there were multiple radio stations in every market playing a variety of current rock music. Nowadays, other than little college stations (which sometimes play a lot of really weird crap), the only rock that exists on the radio is classic rock; my local alt-rock station has even basically become a second classic rock station, albeit with a bit of a more eccentric twist. No good rock music (not this sappy-crappy alt-folk stuff with peculiar vocals that seems to be popular now) gets any radio airplay or televison time. I try to catch a musical act on Letterman, Kimmel, Conan, Fallon, etc.. at least once a week or so and do pay some attention to the musical guests on SNL and they simply aren't playing interesting rock music. Last time I can remember watching any group that I thought worthwhile was a few years ago on Kimmel when he had the Foo Fighters and somewhat over-the-top German metal group Rammstein on within a few months of each other if memory serves. I'm not paying close attention to these shows every night, but the bands I see week after week are uniformly mediocre and uninteresting. Sure, there are musical websites where one can discuss and find out about bands via YouTube and band site links. And I suppose there are also some rock stations on Sirius/XM that I haven't bothered listening to yet because I'm usually listening to one of the comedy channels or the blues channel instead. But I can remember hearing dozens of new bands getting airplay and getting discovered that first week on the radio back in the 70's and 80's, groups like The Cars, Van Halen, Journey, etc... then they broke on MTV and they became household names nationally. I can even remember hearing Smells Like Teen Spirit (their only worthwhile song IMHO) on a college station months before the first week that Nirvana broke big nationally. That isn't happening with rock bands nowadays. There's no terrestrial radio rock stations other than classic rock stations, no music any more on MTV. And I'll give you Pandora, which I listen to a lot. The problem with Pandora is that one needs a starting point and picking a station to play music like an older group or song you like will tend to bring up almost exclusively music of the same era that you already know. If you don't have a modern rock band or song in mind to start with, it's not likely going to alert you to many more of the same. Pandora has helped me discover dozens of blues and surf bands I like, but not a single modern rock band, that I can recall off the top of my head, when I've created ZZ Top, Stones, etc... stations or stations for one of favorite songs of those bands. My problem is that there's a finite amount of time in a given day and paying proper attention to my family, my work, my house, etc... leaves me with less free time to discover new music than I had even 10 years ago. Several years ago I came up with an idea (I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it) of doing a musical competition reality show that isn't focused on a single individual's solo singing, but on rock bands. Call it Rock Gods, have the bands in the initial rounds play covers, in middle rounds have them all play at least one instrumental piece and an out-of-their-specific-genre cover, and in later rounds, once we become a bit more familiar with the better bands and their styles, have them play at least one original song. Have judges like Billy Gibbons, Slash, Tommy Lee, Sammy Hagar, Carlos Santana, Billy Corgan, Jack White, etc... people who have made it big in rock and who have big personalities - hell, maybe even drag Ted Nugent away from his killin' and politics and get him on the show. Have a significant portion of the competition be based on talent playing instruments, not vocals. So if a band's drummer plays as sloppily as Dave Grohl did back in his Nirvana days, they get the axe and conversely, a really talented drummer like Green Day's Tre Cool or a great bass player - today's Geddy Lee, could have a performance that saves a band. This show would not be popular with the 6 to 46 female crowd that makes up the bulk of the American Idol, et al. audience, but would bring in hundreds of thousands, probably millions of male viewers and they could probably attract some female viewers by having something cheesy like a calendar photo shoot on one episode. I bet such a show would be commercially successful and could resurrect rock music, much in the same fashion that The Ultimate Fighter was greatly responsible for the huge upsurge in popularity of MMA.

If you ever get a chance to see Dick Dale live, jump at it. You'll seldom see a comparable guitarist or live act and never see a more dynamic septagenarian. He's also a nice, if strongly opinionated, guy. I've seen him three times and in between sets he signs autographs and chats with fans and if you ask him a question, he'll give you a real answer, not just a generic soundbite. He's a guy who genuinely loves playing music and genuinely enjoys interacting with his fans. The fact that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has not inducted Dick Dale means the entire institution is a farce. He single-handedly invented an entire genre of music (of rock music, too, not just something vaguely related to some form of popular music) and when rock was in its early days, he was paying The Beach Boys $25 a night to open for his shows. And, his work with Fender on their guitars and amps is certainly fairly comparable to HOF inductee Les Paul's work with Gibson. People complained for years about the HOF's failure to induct KISS, Rush (recently remedied), Moody Blues, etc... while inducting unknown ancient bluesman, early R&B;/Motown artists, and bands like The Faces (I don't know anyone who has ever heard any of their music), but the real travesty is the failure to induct Dick Dale. I suspect he must have pissed off some music industry executives pretty badly or maybe it's his life-long anti-drug stance that's rubbed some people wrong.

Hammer, I heard a comedy song/routine on one of the Sirius/XM comedy channels by Axis of Awesome that consisted of the chorus portions of dozens and dozens of well-known songs, mostly recent but including a few 70's, 80's and 90's numbers, all sung to the same 4 chords. That musical comedy bit helped reinforce what I've been noticing for quite a while now, namely that modern music is really lacking in any musicality. Virtually all modern pop music features some slick choruses slopped together by professional songwriters who may not really even be much of musicians, held together entirely by vocals, with practically nothing in the way of any sort of interesting instrumental passages - anything other than the chorus is essentially a pre-chorus or a post-chorus, with nothing interesting happening in the rest of the song, it's just the same few chords worth of filler. With the rise of American Idol and similar reality singing competitions, all focusing on singers instead of bands, no one is coming out with cohesive songs - it's all just vocal melodies and choruses. Back in those teenage days when I was less secure about myself and catered to some of the tough-guy image associated with heavy metal, I used to scorn and sneer at those rather effeminate, gaspy-voiced New Wave British pop artists and practically all other pop performers from that decade. Having spent a number of day-long car rides over the past several years listening to my wife's Sirius channels of preference, playing 80's pop songs, I am now amazed that so many of those pop bands for whom I had contempt actually produced songs that reflected musical instruments, interesting instrumental passages between segments of the songs, and some outright talented musical skills. I was astonished to hear guitar solos and pretty good ones at that, in Duran Duran songs and most other bands of the day - even Culture Club - had something similarly musical going on during bridge moments in their songs. Nowadays, pop songs lack any pretext of musicality. Anyone playing an instrument on an album is studio musician being paid an hourly rate, not a member of the band who is a creative partner and co-songwriter. Rock is effectively dead. Other than dinosaurs from the 60's to early 80's, there's basically no one out there producing rock music with an edge that anyone has ever heard of except maybe Foo Fighters (the lack of any sort of real competition in the rock genre is evidenced by how that good-but-not-great band continues to rack up Grammy wins year after year - they have more of them than practically any group you could name, including the Beatles - there's simply no one else out there). The big name "rock" bands aren't rock at all - Maroon 5 is a couple-hit-wonder pop band fronted by a highly charismatic guy with a lame falsetto voice inferior to those of all of his team members on every season of The Voice. Coldplay is a too-serious-about-themselves Britpop band with a good song or two but far more pretentiousness than talent. Even the Black Keys, who ostensibly claim a blues-rock background, produced a big stinking pile of two-to-four-chord pop songs with a bit of fuzzy sounding guitars and absolutely no musicianship, El Camino, that was called by many the rock album of the year for 2011 - honestly, listen to their music and I defy anyone to find a passage of music that a typical college frat band or bar band couldn't play as well or better. I used to say that the rise of country, with its focus on vocals rather than instrumentals, helped hasten in the death of the electric guitar but judging by what's on TV, the guitar is now seen as a cool accessory for country musicians and although I don't like the genre, I have to admit that I've been seeing more focus on the electric guitar in country songs than ever before. I've often said that the entire country genre has produced not a single guitarist with star-quality talent and for years that was true - I literally could not name a single guitarist in the entire genre who was noted for his musical, as opposed to vocal, talent. A friend who plays guitar in a bluegrass band and who has more varied musical tastes than I do tells me I'm ignorant (he phrased it a bit more politely) and pointed out Keith Urban as an example of a talented country guitarist. However, he couldn't, off the top of his head, name another one, though. Music industry executives are quick to scream and whine about musical piracy and illegal downloads as the death of music nowadays. Talking to some younger co-workers, who have confirmed that illegal downloads are extremely prevalent among teens and 20-somethings, I guess I have to give those claims more credence than I used to. However, in addition to the creation of a huge new market for used CDs on eBay and Amazon which detracts from new CD sales, I really think that a major factor in the decline of music is the simple fact that with rock essentially dead as a genre, there'sno music worth buying. For the tens of millions of us who went out every Saturday and spent our $3-8 on a rock LP or cassette all through the 60's, 70's and 80's, no one is buying much of anything anymore - at least none of my friends are and it's not just because they are focusing all of their time and money on their families instead of themselves. Twenty years ago, I used to buy 100+ new albums a year. Nowadays, the only "new" rock CD I've bought in almost two years has been the ZZ Top box set, to obtain the digitally re-remastered songs back in their original versions from the 70's without the drum machines dubbed in to make them more "Eliminator-like." I buy some new blues albums, but there's nothing new in the rock genre I've heard that interests me. Even the formerly alt-rock station in town has now become more of a slightly-more-eclectic classic rock station. I hope eventually enough backlash against lame pop music erupts to reverse the musical momentum and what we are now experiencing is simply the bottom of a down cycle and things will soon get better.

I can be nearly as direct in real life as I am on an internet forum. Over the past two years, I've probably asked for a manager at a restaurant five or six times, once to complain about a really bad, inattentive server, the other times to compliment really attentive, excellent servers. Decent, even excellent servers outnumber crappy ones by a significant margin at the restaurants where I eat, but sometimes one can get bad service and the customer can be completely blameless. About 3 years ago, I had horrible service twice in few months, once at a high end national steak house where I got a bad, tasteless steak, the server was really snide to us even though we were dressed better than the average customer there and were doing nothing to deserve his attitude, and we had two 30+ minute periods where the server ignored us, including immediately after dropping a $45 piece of sub-Choice stew meat masquerading as a USDA Prime ribeye off for my entree. The second time was at a Mexican restaurant, the server was rude, it took 4 requests and 20 minutes to get a drink delivered to our table and on her way there, she stopped to shovel some garbage off the floor with her hands, pushed it down into a trashcan, and then grabbed our drink by the glass's rims without stopping to wash her hands. Neither server got a tip and the latter one got immediately replaced after the garbage incident when I demanded a manager and a new server. Those are examples of really bad service. It should be obvious what constitutes bad service and it should be obvious that someone who depends on 75+% of his or her income originating in gratuities should not provide bad service, but some people don't understand that. Being a server can be a lot more difficult work mentally and physically than a person who has never worked in a restaurant can appreciate. I'm more than two decades past my experiences working in a restaurant, but I don't forget what it is like to be a server on a Friday night when the line for tables is out the door. I'm not such a Marie Antoinette to assume that everyone can have their dream jobs. One can hate one's current occupation but still do a reasonable job at it. Not giving you a smile is not bad service. If a server takes the time to discuss a menu choice with me and steers me in a very good direction, that is terrific service worthy of over a 20% tip, but generally speaking, I don't need or want a server to be my new BFF. If a server keeps a straight face, but is attentive, polite and provides you with everything you need promptly, you'd be a total dick and a cheapskate even to consider giving him or her less than a 15% tip, let alone no tip, just because he or she didn't smile at you and get all cheery-cheery with you. Your comment "get a small amount of extra money as a thank you for caring" implies that you are tipping under 15% for acceptable service. That is an inadequate tip in this country. If you don't have the money or class to tip adequately and appropriately (15% for average, reasonable service, 20% or more for very good service), you should stick to fast food restaurants where you don't need to tip. EDIT: Now your TGI Fridays incident in the previous post was an example of legitimately bad service deserving much less than a 15% tip. I'd have called for a manager. If a server ever told me a tip was inadequate, I'd have fixed that by taking back the entire tip. I did that only once in the time I was a server, it was after a cheapskate teenager didn't tip me because I carded his 17 year-old butt and wouldn't serve him alcohol, and it was my very last night working as a waiter, so I wasn't worried about losing my job (which is appropriate for a server who complains about a tip under normal circumstances).

Congrats! Three things: 1) Expect your kid will probably be the best thing to ever happen to you. The first three to six months will be trying but after than it gets exponentially more rewarding - there is nothing so simple yet pleasing as getting a big smile and hug from your little one. You'll have some occasional nights when you'll get no sleep, your kid will cry for hours, and you won't be able to figure out why or figure out a cure. It's going to happen, so just be patient with it because it will pass - think of it like an hour in the dentist's chair, not your favorite time but it will be over soon. 2) Take more pictures than you think you'll need, regularly back them up onto a big flash drive or portable hard drive (or get an online storage service) and keep them stored in a fireproof safe. 3) Keep an online journal and record all of those milestones and quirky, funny things that kids say and do the same day they occur - you'll never be able to remember more than half of them and will regret how much you forget in later years unless you record it somehow. An easy way to do this is just to keep it in one or two draft e-mails to yourself under a Hotmail, Yahoo mail, or G-Mail account and just keep saving it as a draft after every update. Here's a few examples from my journal of my daughter's quotes: [THUD!, from the bathroom] - Q: Are you alright in there? A: OWWWWW! I fell off the toilet and hit my head so hard I can't do math any more." [age 4]. Q: What's your favorite thing to do? A: I like to go hang gliding. I think I used to hang glide when I was two. I used to play tennis when I was a baby in my crib until I hit myself and cut my lip [age 3].