It’s unreal that we are just six weeks away from the NFL kicking off. OK, preseason, but still. Super Bowl prediction – Broncos over the 49ers in overtime, 41-38. My Cowboys will even make the playoffs but lose to the hated Redskins when RGIII throws a pass to himself for the winning score.
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Arkadelphia golf fans were having fun this past Sunday when Ken Duke knocked a wedge stiff on the second hole of sudden death to win his first PGA event at the age of 44. It means a lot – a two-year PGA exemption, a spot in the 2013 PGA Championship, the 2014 Masters, the World Golf Championships, not to mention $1.1 million other reasons to smile.
If you don’t believe in otherworldly karma-filled mojo stuff, then you weren’t watching Duke’s magic ball in The Traveler’s. On the 10th, he hit a ball way up into the tops of the trees on the left side of the green. But the invisible tree gorilla slapped it away and it came to rest five feet below the hole.
Then, on the next hole, he made a 17-footer for birdie. But it was the putt on 13 that confirmed that there really is a 5th Dimension, and it lives in Duke’s Titleist. He hit his 45-footer with perfect speed, but it was obvious a few feet away it would miss right as it broke away from the cup. There was no way it was going in until it slowly straightened out and then went left, where it fell from the right lip to the bottom of the cup.
And as if Duke’s possessed ball wasn’t enough to seal the deal, it took a sudden Reddie wind to blow Bubba Watson’s un-magical ball into the lake at 16, and then over the green, for a trophy tanking triple.
•••
I got a call Monday morning from Catherine, who works for the Yellow Pages phone book people. She wanted to know if I had received my new copy. But before she asked that, she told me her call to me could be recorded for informational purposes.
“Don’t you know?” I asked.
“Pardon me?”
“The recording–don’t you know if it is or it isn’t?”
“Well, sir, let’s say that it is.”
“But it might not be?”
(Big sigh from Catherine, who I guessed hadn’t yet hung up on me just in case it was being recorded)
I relented because someone who sounded as nice as Catherine did not really deserve me on a Monday morning.
•••
I took Kathy to see World War Z on Sunday afternoon. Basically it’s about a world gone mad. How mad? Well, try and imagine if Usain Bolt and about a million of his Jamaican track teammates were suddenly flesh-eating zombies, then you’d be in the ballpark.
It starts out calm enough and everything seems fine in the suburban Philly home of Gerry and Karin Lane, and their two little girls. But of course we know it isn’t fine, even before little Constance Lane asks, “Daddy, what is martial law?” while Gerry cooks pancakes and Karin just stands there grinning, probably because she woke up with Brad Pitt in her bed.
But, because of movie trailers, we know we aren’t at a remake of “Mr. Mom.”
It hasn’t always been this way, though. Years ago, my sweet mother-in-law and her friend Bea went to see a movie about the search for the Holy Grail. They must have missed the trailer for that one. And they must never have heard of someone called Monty Python either.
Later, when Life of Brian came out, they passed.