Elephants and Whales

We were deep into the healthcare reform summit, determined to figure out this enigma wrapped in a riddle, when a friend notified us that the women’s curling semi-finals were on the USA network. We left the gas bags behind and quickly switched channels.

You can have your Lindsey Vonns, Apolo Ohnos, Johnny Weirs and snowboard dudes and dudettes; we’ll take the ladies of delicate releases, gentle twists of slim wrists followed by the furious sweeping or gentle nursing of dedicated handmaids, aiding the direction and speed of m’lady’s stone.

It’s a chess match on ice, matched only by the thrust and parry of our republic’s representatives in advocating competing cures for healthcare nation. To hear them talk, one would think 300 million people were in the intensive care unit and the remaining few were asking the ailing if they want to live forever.

“It’s a thingy, a fiendish thingy!” as George Harrison exclaimed in the curling sequence in “Help!”.

Yes it is, George. Luckily, Ringo escaped the exploding stone and the Beatles found themselves at Scotland Yard, seeking protection.

“And you shall have it,” the intrepid inspector promised as he cowered beneath his desk.

Just as the wide-eyed Ms. Ott of Switzerland (is she related to Mel of New York baseball Giants fame, who caused Leo Durocher to famously assert, “nice guys, they’ll finish last”?) and the steely Ms. Bernard of Canada dueled in Vancouver, the lawmakers slid their stones, sweeping with statistics, studies and anecdotes in an effort to announce checkmate. Alas, it was a stalemate.

In curling, competitors get extra innings, er, “ends,” to determine a winner. In policy-making, suits and ties and strands of pearls spin stories until the mind is dizzy with argument.

It seemed to us that one of the purposes of these United States is to save capitalism from its voracious self. Someone has to train the captive elephant not to step on the fleas, or let the beast roam the savanna; persuade the captive killer whale not to eat its keeper, or let the whale kill who it might in the ocean.

‘Tis a special art, like curling and (dare we mention it) golf, which requires furious effort or benign neglect. Yet, as Joyce told us, the newspapers were right. The snow was general all over Ireland, falling faintly on the living and the dead.

This Lenten Life

The cruelest month? ‘Taint April, Mr. Eliot. It’s February in Brooklyn: bare trees snarling at us; snow still piled on the shady side of the street; surly young men with sweatshirt hoods shrouding their faces, looking like so many Unabombers; nervous young mothers and take-charge nannies clogging the grimy sidewalks, pushing strollers that wrap their young’ns in plastic; sad brownstones gray with a kind of bone-deep moisture; the endless analysis of NBA contracts, the hair-shirt advent of Lent (how’s that for mixing liturgical seasons?).

But there’s hope. Lent’s privations will lead to Easter. Tulips will bloom and bare trees will smile. The hooded swains will bare their heads to seek their Jills. The byzantine NBA will give way to the Amen Corner at Augusta National. Children will frolic in parks while radiant parents and caretakers enjoy a picnic lunch, leaving the sidewalks free for us surly old men on meaningless jaunts.

We know these things are true because a flock of millionaires and wannabes are at this very moment spitting sunflower seeds before heading to the golf course in the gentler winters of Florida and Arizona. We all would have been among them at one time if not for the indisputable fact that hitting a curveball is impossible in the real world. This feat requires a magical incantation passed down among a select few from Nap Lajoie and Wee Willie Keeler (“hit ’em where they ain’t) to Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols. Will Dan Brown reveal it in his next “Da Vinci Code” spin-off?

Forlorn as we are in this somber period, itching to take to the local muni track with yet another new swing and putting stroke, the boys of summer at winter training (hey, it ain’t spring yet) fill us with hope of life after death. They have convinced us to embrace each new minute of sunlight that appears with every revolution of the planet until the vernal equinox, an event for mourning because the hourglass is turned over and the daytime begins to dwindle ever so sneakily.

Before that day in June, we predict the Kansas City Royals and the Pittsburgh Pirates will meet in the 2010 World Series and Eldrick Woods will retire from golf to become a Buddhist monk.

Fail Safe

Failure is an illusion. “Be not proud … for thou art not so,” John Donne said of the ultimate failure.

In the late, great Supe 44, the crucial decision wasn’t Coach Sean Payton’s onside kick at the beginning of the second half, which led to a score. It wasn’t Tracy Porter jumping the route (as the football mavens say) in front of Reggie Wayne, which led to a game-sealing pick six (as they also say).

No, the big moment for the fleur de lis of New Orleans vs. the horseshoes of Indianapolis was going on fourth down and goal at the two near the end of the first half – and failing. The Colts were exultant over their goal-line stand. Yet their doom was sealed. Be not proud.

The horseshoes curled in their cocoon. Why didn’t Manning and company get aggressive and throw the ball downfield to get a first down? Instead, they went three and out and punted, giving the holy ones a short field and a resulting field goal – the same number of points they would have corralled if they had not gone for the touchdown, kicked off and given Manning and company a perfect chance to increase their lead.

The rest is history, as the experts say.

Sometimes the singular failures that mark our lives mask the sweeter things that follow. The girl who guffawed when we asked her out because she smiled a certain way, yet a great love with another followed. Going for broke from behind the trees only to end up with a mere 10 yards and still make par. Then there was the truly momentous decision to poach in a doubles tennis match and send a sure winner out beyond the line and win the game on a double fault.

Here’s to failure! We wish we could have been on Bourbon Street Sunday night.

Perchance to Dream

We know that recounting dreams is fascinating to the teller and tedious for the listener, but recount we must. Somehow we had become POTUS. Yes, that’s right, president of the United States. Strangely, we had never campaigned and thus had not undergone the intense vetting of our personal life. W appeared and told us not to worry. Cut taxes and start a few wars, he advised.

We were terrified. Surely some nosy reporter would find that square-grooved Ping wedge in our bag and get us banned for life from playing with our previously unsuspecting golfing buddies. What good is a president who can’t find anyone who will play with him? A president sans golf is a sad thing to contemplate.

The snooty Old World would harrumph when we pleaded for help in our Middle East adventures. China, appearing to own this century, would refuse to buy our Treasury bonds. Portugal, Spain and Greece, teetering on the brink of budgetary disaster, would require us to pay outlandish greens fees. Children would give us the Bronx cheer when we came to read “My Pet Goat.”

Why, a man, not to mention a POTUS, without golf is like Robert E. Lee without Stonewall Jackson. “He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm.” (No offense to one-armed golfers).

Yet, as we took office in midwinter and the annual addition of fat around our girth made buttoning our slacks a bit of a wrestling match, we found that our Chancellorsville victory was not pyrrhic. We had not lost our right arm. The Tea Partiers had arrived to save the day and reattach it.

Dimon and Blankfein took their bonuses in restricted stock and stock options (boo hoo), the Cosmo centerfold took the oath of office in the world’s greatest deliberative body, the productivity of the American worker surged in the latest quarter because fewer hamsters were running faster, the Super Bowl pitted the horseshoed computer with a right arm against the Big Easy “Breesy” lads.

“When you break it down,” we said to the hopeful nation, “expect Reggie Bush to pop a big return to make the difference. The Saints will go marching in. For entertainment purposes only, take the points, my fellow citizens, and invest your funtime winnings in my next campaign, in which I pledge to use a legal wedge and thus secure our return to the world’s end zone. Then drop kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life.”

We awake on a frosty morning, floating end over end through the uprights as time expires. Good luck to all.

Unhorsed

We can almost hear the Indianapolis Colts’ President Bill Polian shouting “An ankle, an ankle, my kingdom for an ankle!” His remarkable right defensive end, Dwight Freeney, like Richard III, has been unhorsed. A torn ligament in the crucial joint just before the battle with the New Orleans Saints in Miami has apparently pushed the spread down a point to minus 5 in favor of the horseshoes.

The news must have made the saintly quarterback Drew Brees draw a breath of hope that his blind side might be less vulnerable with Freeney possibly out of action.

Our national economy had a blind side, too. Wall Street, oblivious to its own hubris, pummeled pedestrian quarterbacks with pass rushing techniques that defied chip blocks. Exotic mortgage securities and credit default swaps eventually swamped the credit markets and the pass rushers themselves. No flags were thrown.

After dusting themselves off with the help of taxpayers, the game resumed, the pass rushers doing God’s work in directing capital to its most efficient use, which meant outsized bonuses for the saints of capitalism while unemployment stayed at 10%. “Kezar Stadium, Roman Gabriel back to pass…but no! from out of nowhere, it’s Paul Volcker to intercept!”

The lion-hearted Volcker, the first and last Fed chairman to use money supply as a target and let interest rates roam where they may, has become the left tackle protecting our blind side, essentially urging a return to Glass-Steagall, the 1930s legislation that separated commercial banking from investment banking to prevent conflicts of interest. Of course, the Goldman Sachses and Morgan Stanleys, now officially bank holding companies but retaining proprietary trading desks, do not wish to be fettered.

“Yeah. That’s it. More. That’s right! I want more!” Edward G. Robinson confessed in a bathtub to Humphrey Bogart. (Name that movie, sports fans).

But in fairness, bashing Wall Street is tantamount to bashing New York. Let’s face it; the pinstriped bankers buy lots of goods and services with those checks. Folks in Detroit similarly would love to see GM, Ford and Chrysler flourish.

But there have to be rules. It reminds us of Phil Mickelson’s use of grandfathered Ping wedges with square grooves. The United States Golf Association has banned such wedges, but a successful lawsuit allowed the Ping clubs to be used. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em was the outcome. Those without an old wedge in the garage are at a disadvantage. Those who use them may not be technically cheating, but they are akin to Judge Smails invoking winter rules on a sunny summer day. How about a Fresca?

There may not be a God, as Bishop Pickering said after being struck by lightning just as he was about to break the course record at Bushwood, but down here we need someone – the Fed, the SEC , whomever – to keep the sky from falling on the weekend duffer and the blind side safe for the Central Park quarterback. Manning, Brees, Mickelson and Wall Street can take care of themselves. They get paid plenty for it.