launch monitor - swing statistics (golf)


          I used a radar to determine my current average golf club distances.  This is a first for me (and I enjoy tracking anything done for a first time).  As one ages and loses muscle, one's "numbers" change.  Hopefully, this will help.  Too often, I'm missing the club's sweet-spot...which is lowering my carry distance.    

Club (degree)  Speed (mph)   Loft (angle)   Carry Yardage     Total Yardage             

Driver (10.5)        96                13.5                    222                      245
3 Wd (15)            91                11.5                    187                      207   (should be 210-carry 225-total)
5 Wd (19)            92                15                       190                      208
3 I (21)                88                17                       175                      188
4 I (23)                84                17.5                    164                      176
5 I (27)                83                18                       150                      157
6 I (30)                84                21.5                    144                      152
7 I (34)                84                23                       133                      140
8 I (37)                83                25                       122                      126
9 I (41)                78                28                       110                      113
PW (45)               73                30                         90                        91

Hypocrisy — An Invaluable Discriminator

          I recall riding in cars in the 1970's with my step-dad behind the wheel.  In traffic, he would holler and gesture and 'talk a blue streak' (mom-speak) about other drivers and pedestrians.  At home, he would occasionally shout at TV newscasters.  In person, however, he was always polite...to a fault.

          Who was my step-dad?

          A reactionary, idiotic, rude, old man; intelligent enough to know when to filter himself?  Or was he a courteous, open-minded, thoughtful person who—when safely ensconced on the other-side of a protective barrier—ranted at the occasional egregiously-behaved fool or jester?  I don't know if the answer is important.  I suspect it's not.  But the question is.

          Immediate family were the only witnesses to his bursts of vitriol.  I seriously doubt he would ever have defined himself using negative verbiage of any stripe (even the concept of defining himself would have been foreign to him).  I think of all the co-workers, fellow congregants, neighbors and extended family members who thought they knew him but who never witnessed him shout, "Pick a fuckin lane you miserable cunt!" or "They otta throw all those longhair-draft-dodgein-fags in the slammer!"

          If you subscribe to the belief that people 'reveal their true nature' in times when their guard is down...my step-dad was Archie Bunker wearing a Jimmy Carter mask.  When I consider his behavior in the context of how it affected who I grew up to be, I focus on the hypocrisy.  His lifelong struggle to keep internal-Archie mute and fabricate the external-Jimmy persona must have been immensely difficult; as difficult as a homosexual who (in 1966 America) decided at the age of thirty-nine to forevermore deny his innate attraction and marry an aging divorcΓ©e with two grade-school children before moving his ready-made family half-way across the country (this unrelated suspicion I have about my step-dad is based on very few facts; I merely include it here to suggest there were possible other hidden layers to "who he really was").

          Back to hypocrisy.  I suspect it's a much more valuable discriminator than many people realize.  How often do you attempt to measure someone's normally hidden hypocrisy?  It's one of, if not THE primary tool I use to decide if someone is a trusted friend or merely an acquaintance.

         Here is a quote from one of the most un-hypocritical people I've ever known; I hope he remains my good friend for a long time to come:  "If I'd been friends with OJ Simpson, and, back in 1994, I went to talk to him and he said to me, 'Dude, I just snapped when I saw 'em together.' Then I'd have just said, 'That's cool, let's go play golf.'  But if he was all, 'Hey, I hope they catch who really did it.'  Then I wouldn't have been able to stay friends with him."

          Chris's blog post Don't call me a "liberal" begins with this excerpt (above-right) of commenters on a Weather.com article about the current drought in Texas.  As is often the case, give a hypocrite a protective barrier (the epitome of web-commenting) and they let their inner Archie Bunker out.

          I learned from my step-dad what I didn't want to be.  Who you read here is who you talk to on the phone is who you meet in person.  Liberal?..ok.  Hypocrite?..never.

You might also enjoy:

LIMBO - game review - ☆☆☆☆☆

          I enjoy puzzles.  I get a wonderful micro-instant brain fizz when, after extensive trial and error (or in the case of this game—trial, death, and re-spawn) 'I can't figure this one out' crystallizes, the solution clicks in my gulliver, and...'oh yea! Gotcha.'

          If Edward Gorey designed a side-scroller like The Humans, it would be Limbo; a game with good value for average invested entertainment time ($15 for ≈15 hours).  A few of its 39 chapters are time-sensitive, which seem more a test of hand-eye coordination than mental dexterity; others rely on pure deduction (path + tools = looks impossible but it's not); a few are sequence oriented; many are a combination of all of the above.  Add the occasional anti-gravity device, electro-magnet, huge insect, and...well...you get a great puzzle game.

summer-goings-on


          The summer is half-gone.  The weather outside is delightful (with nary a day above 90 this year).  I'm not rubbing it in, I empathize with the rest of the sweltering US, but in a glad-it's-not-me kind of way.  I've kept busy golfing (although I only broke 90 once), disc golfing, hiking with my cat, preparing my 5th wheel trailer and selling it, as well as playing the video game Fallout New Vegas.

         I played the first Fallout for a brief time in 1997 and hated it.  This one, the fourth in the series, was much more of a "puzzle solver and strategy game" than a "first-person shooter" and, therefore, very enjoyable for me.
        

RUBBER - Film Review - ☆☆☆☆☆


          This quirkaholic of quirky independent films is very worth going out of your way to see if you're a fan of un-pigeonhole-able esoteric comedies.

          Why quirky?  Well, let's see.  Although it looks like it was filmed in the high-desert of California, it was actually filmed by French filmmakers, in Angola, (where Portuguese is the national language) with an all English-speaking cast.  Except for the tire.  It doesn't talk.  It kills people; but it does so mutely.  The name of the film's production company is Elle Driver; that's pretty quirky...Daryl Hannah's character in Kill Bill.  The capper for the label king-o-the-quirk is the film's preface-prologue-dialogue:
          In the Stephen Spielberg film ET, why is the alien brown?  No reason.  In Love Story, why do the two characters fall madly in love with each other?  No reason.  In Oliver Stone's JFK, why is the president suddenly assassinated by some stranger?  No reason.  In the excellent Chain Saw Massacre by Tobe Hooper why don’t we ever see the characters go to the bathroom or wash their hands like people do in real life?  Absolutely no reason.  Worse, in The Pianist by Polanski, how come this guy has to hide and live like a bum when he plays the piano so well?  Once again, the answer is:  no reason!
          I could go on for hours with more examples.  The list in endless.  You probably never gave it a thought; but all great films
without exceptioncontain an important element of: 'no reason'.  And you know why?  Because life itself is filled with no reason.
          Why can't we see the air all around us?  No reason.  Why are we always thinking?  No reason.  Why do some people love sausages and other people hate sausages?  No fucking reason!
          Did you enjoy laughing at This is Spinal Tap and Grindhouse?  The litmus test is not if you laughed, but whether (when you reflect on those film-watching experiences) you think to yourself, 'I remember enjoying the humor'.  Then you'll enjoy Rubber.

          I enjoyed it immensely.