| golf |
the MetLife blimp
Snoopy One. my father
hated this blimp
Snoopy One. my father
hated this blimp
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| golf on tv a highly subjective view |
It was last year at the Honda classic and the TV zeroed in on a kid holding a sign and on the sign he had written: “Mike Tirico I want your job“. The kid had a point. These are the jobs--to travel first class and eat first class and retire for the night first class and get to play golf first class and it doesnt cost you a dime. All that is required is to show up in a good suit groomed to within an inch of your life and slip on the headphones and look into the camera with a happy face--and why shouldnt it be--and stay alert for your cues. Thats the job. Lets talk about these people. Ill start with who I like. It’s a short list: Judy Rankin, Bob Murphy, Roger Maltbie, Peter Oosterhuis and 2 or maybe 3 others. Peter Oosterhuis goes to the top of the list He is a class act--a perfect complement to the action. He has enthusiasm to burn and a sense of taste and something called balance--to make a point when there is a point to be made and to otherwise exercise restraint—to resist the laboring of the obvious. As I say--a class act, Up in the booth Johnny Miller is by far the best. He is funny, keeps the hype and cornball jokes to a minimum and does a good job of presenting the two pieces of information I most desire: analysis of the swing and course management. That is whey I am watching: to learn something. Those are the people at the top of the list, my personal list, entirely subjective I grant you but there you have it. Lets go to the bottom of the list. At the top of the bottom of the list is Gary McCord. Maybe you like Gary McCord. Gary is a clown—the funny type. That is his act—a lucrative act and my hat is off to him for it —but the act has gone on for too long and showing signs of wear and tear. There is something about that voice and style of delivery and the relentless hype that prevails when describing the action that makes me nuts. He has one gear—overdrive. Listen to Gary describe a three foot putt, uphill with no break and it sounds like he is giving birth. I reach for the mute. Next--Dan Hicks over at NBC. Dan is up in the booth—the network anchor play/by/play. For those of us who grew up on the west side of buffalo there is an unbearable type, the cornball type and this is Dan, a cornball big time, that is strike one, and there is a strike two--a nervous chuckling snort, habitual and reflexive he peppers you with during the chit chat that is maddening. . Thats Dan: “Chuckles“. I am sure that for the millions watching on TV this nervous verbal tic is not a problem--if they notice at all. But for me--I go nuts. I trigger the mute. What about Mike Tirico--CBS. I liked Mike better when he was just starting out and the job was still up for grabs and he was feeling his way along being cool. The cool style is long gone, replaced by a tone that has crept into the voice of someone in love with the sound of this voice along with the implication that here is the job he was born to do and on he rambles, on and on, about this, that and the other--and its all quite pointless and dull as dirt and I must trigger the mute. Faldo/Azinger. These guys solo aren’t bad but together—I go nuts. Faldo is another cornball and in his case its twice a curse because it’s the limey version of cornball and he fires off some hideous limey cornball quip and Azinger feels compelled to reply and back and forth they go, on and on, something about a shirt, the color of the shirt, the price of the shirt, fabric and on and on it goes and I reach for the mute. I have one more: Jimmy Roberts. You may recall Jack Whittaker--old timer over at NBC who filled a particular niche--the “Essayist” niche--whenever the network decided from time to time that enough was enough, garbage- wise, something more edifying was called for and the viewer was invited to share a profound moment. Jack is long gone and the “essay” chores have fallen into the hands of Jimmy Roberts. Being short isnt fatal, nor is a sarcastic demeanor or a voice that has the charm of a can opener. The three can be combined in the same package and it means nothing if there is a mind operating behind it all that insists on the attention of the viewer via the power of the language. Jimmys not the man for this one. What you get instead is a simple mind presenting a simple- minded point of view, the humor is nowhere to be found and there is laboring of the obvious--big time. Thats the story. Why do I bother to mention any of this? I will tell you. My father played golf, well into his 80’s and then he got severe arthritis in his hands and that was it for the golf—a low moment. But he enjoyed to watch on TV—the one pleasure that remained. There he sat, the poor guy, with a simple desire: to watch players hitting shots. But he couldnt watch players hitting shots. He had to watch all this garbage: the commercials and promos, and more promos still, wave upon wave, and up in the booth the idiotic mindless cornball chit/chat of the network anchor types, of this, that and the other, or a Tim Finchen interview, or a Jimmy Roberts “essay” of Fred Couples at home in Santa Barbara farting in the yard feeding biscuits to the family dog, in slo/mo yet, etc, etc, and I have one more— the Goodyear Blimp, Snoopy One, hovering into view to provide yet another break in the action. My father hated that blimp. He would start screaming: who gives a piss about that stupid fucking blimp! And I am the same. I suffer, as did my father—from a common symptom of the aging process: mind pollution. We have lived too long--to reach the point where so much junk has installed itself up there it is filled to the max. Clutter is another word. I dont speak of TV or the TV commercial only. I speak of the media--any word uttered, of music heard or journalism read or image that registers upon the eyeball and it all feeds into the brain where the brain interprets it as useless info--empty, redundant, dull as dirt. And this is why, when the Goodyear blimp Snoopy One drifts into view and Dan Hicks throws down a chuckle and spritzes you with some riveting stats about this beast--cruising speed, altitude, milage covered each year, the pilots name, etc, and the whole thing doesnt take ten seconds--its ten seconds too much. You cant handle it. You trigger the mute. |