Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!
Did ... you ... see ... it? Tiger Woods annexed entire quadrants of outer space (his original home) to insert long empty pauses between normal words, so that the phrase "this is between a husband and his wife" actually took 3.75 millennia to speak and comprised the creation of five new religions.
It was like being transported back 10 years to the early days of corporate robotic answering machines, with their staccato repetition and bizarre intonation on wrong syllables and pieces of sentences. "Please wait, someBOdy will BE with YOU in a moMENT."
Tiger Woods was a man going through the motions during his 14-minute mea culpa to the world in Florida yesterday (which I'd begged him not to do). I kept thinking, "Where the hell is Jeff Dunham?" the ventriloquist. Words kept coming in staccato measure from Tiger's lips, but nobody was home, except some ethereal voice locked deep inside and intoning platitudes fed to it by some diminutive Shrink while the puffy eyes and puffy face moved from side to side (think Pink Floyd's "Us and Them" on those last five words).
Chilling! Sad! Distressing! Disturbing! Surreal!
Many people interviewed worldwide afterward said they felt they didn't get to see HIM, that he should've taken questions from an audience so they could've seen spontaneity, some feeling, some emotions, SOMETHING. You have to wonder at a man who decides he must apologize to the whole freaking world and yet doesn't give the whole freaking world HIMSELF. What's the use? What's the purpose? It's easy to ask forgiveness from those you haven't even done anything to. ... Too easy. It's childish.
We got a hint of the small, screaming boy inside from one particular snippet: "I felt that I'd worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me." Paraphrased: "My father made a slave of me and I just wanted to LIVE!" His father pushed young Tiger nearly every day from the age of 2 to play golf and be the best at golf, with Tiger's own ambitions and desires taking a back seat. The boy never became the man. He became what his father wanted. Cheap psychology? Yeah. And I won't charge a penny for being right.
When people grow up living their lives for others' values and demands, they do not know how to properly find their own and become accountable for their own, thereby becoming promiscuous in value seeking. And they almost always seek some sort of "spiritual security."
Enter Buddhism in Tiger's talk. (This is where the pathetic became pathological.) He'd been practicing his "faith" from childhood but had drifted away (toward a dozen or more women's bedrooms outside of his marital bed). He claimed that Buddhism teaches him "to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint." How's that for patchwork morality. "I'm not going to go down that road or that road or that road even though I WANT to 'cause Buddha says it ain't no good at all and it will piss off my sponsors."
Tiger finished his remote control with, "I ask you to find it in your heart to believe in me again."
Actually, in my heart, I wish Jack Nicklaus were still around. These new-generation man-boys who feel the need for public expiation and tepid emoting are costing me a fortune in vomit bags.
Showing posts with label Tiger Woods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tiger Woods. Show all posts
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Tiger talk -- or NOT
Tiger Woods plans to spill tomorrow to the press during the first major golf tournament of the year, The Accenture in Arizona.
He'll look sufficiently contrite -- or NOT. He'll sputter the necessary cliches about fidelity -- or NOT. He'll intone about how he's let a lot of people down -- or NOT. He'll get teary-eyed -- or NOT.
You know what I wish he'd do?
Nothing!
Just play golf and ignore the press. He doesn't owe them or his audience one goddamned thing. Yeah, he's a schmuck, but the only ones he owes an apology to are the people and companies he made commitments to: his wife and the corporate sponsors who's contracts he violated.
For once -- oh please, just once!! -- it would be great to see a schmuck celebrity who's getting his shit together simply walk past the cameras, microphones and bigger schmucks behind them ...
... and then go do what he has to do. In this instance, it's playing golf ...
... with a smile on his face because he knows he's getting his life, his morality, his values, his honor back together -- which I hope is the case for Tiger, as I wish it to be the case for all humans seeking righteousness, purpose and self-esteem.
Play ball ...
... and starve the vultures.
He'll look sufficiently contrite -- or NOT. He'll sputter the necessary cliches about fidelity -- or NOT. He'll intone about how he's let a lot of people down -- or NOT. He'll get teary-eyed -- or NOT.
You know what I wish he'd do?
Nothing!
Just play golf and ignore the press. He doesn't owe them or his audience one goddamned thing. Yeah, he's a schmuck, but the only ones he owes an apology to are the people and companies he made commitments to: his wife and the corporate sponsors who's contracts he violated.
For once -- oh please, just once!! -- it would be great to see a schmuck celebrity who's getting his shit together simply walk past the cameras, microphones and bigger schmucks behind them ...
... and then go do what he has to do. In this instance, it's playing golf ...
... with a smile on his face because he knows he's getting his life, his morality, his values, his honor back together -- which I hope is the case for Tiger, as I wish it to be the case for all humans seeking righteousness, purpose and self-esteem.
Play ball ...
... and starve the vultures.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Tiger Woods enters ... The Twilight Zone
If we are to believe the women who have claimed affairs with Tiger Woods (or even some of the women), Mr. Woods has been making holes-in-one all across America -- and perhaps the world.
The number of women who have come forward now numbers 14 -- which equals the number of major tournaments Mr. Woods has won in his 13-year pro career. Nice symmetry, that.
I had planned for this blog entry to be another of ridicule and humor, but the Woods saga has now entered the realm of The Twilight Zone. This guy's a seriously disturbed human being, a serial bigamist, a promiscuous of historical proportion, a tragic Greek figure, a sick man
The sickness he has forced upon himself now makes him the object of abject pity and disgust. If he had allowed himself one dishonesty to his wife and family and the business world, it would've showed a mind not capable of keeping focus momentarily, especially if he reconciled himself with that lapse and corrected it. We could've easily forgiven and wished him best once he got right with all of the above and himself.
But to regularly bed other women for years of marriage represents something so monstrous and so ethereally disembodied that one can only recoil in incredulity. It shows such a Leviathan disconnect with one's values and those one values that you seriously have to speculate as to the sanity of the individual. In each instance, he had to willfully block from his mind his wife, his children, his business promises, his charity and all whom he cared about and feigned honesty with. And then he had to live with it by suppressing all to his subconscious, which eats away at self-esteem and pride like parasitic wasp eggs inside young, live caterpillars.
In retrospect, as I've said before, one can see in Mr. Woods' behavior over the years the elusiveness, the ethereal traits, the personal distance, the robotic responses, the smug demeanor, the unctuous moralizing, the supercilious walk down the 18th fairway, the temper tantrums and verbal lashings, for what they are: the tangible products of a sickness, perhaps some pathology. He is Raskolnikov, but not seemingly the full fatalist or futilist or, of course, murderer.
I remember many hundreds of times being riveted by the above traits and wondering what must be inside the man's head, and thinking to myself: "I don't think HE knows what's inside his head." One can, indeed, extrapolate from evidence, but had I mentioned that something disturbing lay inside, people would've thought ME insane. "He's just got a lot of responsibilities," I would've been told. And, in fact, that was often said by TV and print commentators who tried to sum up Woods' distant demeanor. Of course, Jack Nicklaus and Michael Jordan had equal pressure and maintained healthy psyches and genuinely jolly spirits.
I, myself, have been within two feet of Mr. Woods many times as he has stridently loped between the crowd ropes in an affected, defensive fog with a look of some inner terror, as if being chased by some unseen Cheat Death. His demeanor in such times has been rationalized as "concentration," but it so apparently more than that, some distant inner-world of dread and misery.
Tiger woods was raised specifically to play golf, from the age of two, by his father. He was paraded before the world on the Mike Douglas Show at the age of two, carrying a tiny golf bag over his shoulders. It used to be a sweet moment caught on film that people gushed over. It now looks macabre, surreal, oppressive, exasperating. He was controlled a good deal by an overbearing father, like many of us, but Mr. Woods did not make the time to get away from the public eye to get his shit together; he did not TAKE the time to get his shit together. He has been on the path of destiny, manifest destiny -- his father's path first, like Mozart's. Are we ever to know if such children would choose such a path if given the opportunity? No. Greatness is nothing if it is not one's chosen path.
Mr. Wood's evangelical podium has been the 18th Green. It is my fond hope that he takes plenty of time now to seek out psychological help away from the madding crowd and find in him who he is. If I see such a man emerge, I will shed tears of joy, and he may become my new Jack Nicklaus or Michael Jordan. Godspeed.
The number of women who have come forward now numbers 14 -- which equals the number of major tournaments Mr. Woods has won in his 13-year pro career. Nice symmetry, that.
I had planned for this blog entry to be another of ridicule and humor, but the Woods saga has now entered the realm of The Twilight Zone. This guy's a seriously disturbed human being, a serial bigamist, a promiscuous of historical proportion, a tragic Greek figure, a sick man
The sickness he has forced upon himself now makes him the object of abject pity and disgust. If he had allowed himself one dishonesty to his wife and family and the business world, it would've showed a mind not capable of keeping focus momentarily, especially if he reconciled himself with that lapse and corrected it. We could've easily forgiven and wished him best once he got right with all of the above and himself.
But to regularly bed other women for years of marriage represents something so monstrous and so ethereally disembodied that one can only recoil in incredulity. It shows such a Leviathan disconnect with one's values and those one values that you seriously have to speculate as to the sanity of the individual. In each instance, he had to willfully block from his mind his wife, his children, his business promises, his charity and all whom he cared about and feigned honesty with. And then he had to live with it by suppressing all to his subconscious, which eats away at self-esteem and pride like parasitic wasp eggs inside young, live caterpillars.
In retrospect, as I've said before, one can see in Mr. Woods' behavior over the years the elusiveness, the ethereal traits, the personal distance, the robotic responses, the smug demeanor, the unctuous moralizing, the supercilious walk down the 18th fairway, the temper tantrums and verbal lashings, for what they are: the tangible products of a sickness, perhaps some pathology. He is Raskolnikov, but not seemingly the full fatalist or futilist or, of course, murderer.
I remember many hundreds of times being riveted by the above traits and wondering what must be inside the man's head, and thinking to myself: "I don't think HE knows what's inside his head." One can, indeed, extrapolate from evidence, but had I mentioned that something disturbing lay inside, people would've thought ME insane. "He's just got a lot of responsibilities," I would've been told. And, in fact, that was often said by TV and print commentators who tried to sum up Woods' distant demeanor. Of course, Jack Nicklaus and Michael Jordan had equal pressure and maintained healthy psyches and genuinely jolly spirits.
I, myself, have been within two feet of Mr. Woods many times as he has stridently loped between the crowd ropes in an affected, defensive fog with a look of some inner terror, as if being chased by some unseen Cheat Death. His demeanor in such times has been rationalized as "concentration," but it so apparently more than that, some distant inner-world of dread and misery.
Tiger woods was raised specifically to play golf, from the age of two, by his father. He was paraded before the world on the Mike Douglas Show at the age of two, carrying a tiny golf bag over his shoulders. It used to be a sweet moment caught on film that people gushed over. It now looks macabre, surreal, oppressive, exasperating. He was controlled a good deal by an overbearing father, like many of us, but Mr. Woods did not make the time to get away from the public eye to get his shit together; he did not TAKE the time to get his shit together. He has been on the path of destiny, manifest destiny -- his father's path first, like Mozart's. Are we ever to know if such children would choose such a path if given the opportunity? No. Greatness is nothing if it is not one's chosen path.
Mr. Wood's evangelical podium has been the 18th Green. It is my fond hope that he takes plenty of time now to seek out psychological help away from the madding crowd and find in him who he is. If I see such a man emerge, I will shed tears of joy, and he may become my new Jack Nicklaus or Michael Jordan. Godspeed.
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