NOTE: This post was originally published on Substack. You can subscribe for free here.
. . .
Let’s Try This Instead
It’s U.S. Open week, I’m told.
I don’t watch much golf anymore. The LIV-PGA Tour war broke me. On the LIV side, you had a few dozen of the sports world’s most humanity-indifferent pieces of shit playing in meaningless, uninteresting golf tournaments. On the PGA Tour side, you had several dozen hypocrites and back-stabbers playing in their own meaningless, uninteresting tournaments. Turning it all off wasn’t virtue signaling. I just lost interest. And when you’ve got two small children, there’s only so much time available to keep something on the TV that isn’t “Power Rangers” or some such. Baseball and hockey were in. Golf was out.
A turn of events, perhaps, for a one-time golf addict who spent most of the pandemic doing the math on how to quit practicing law and keep paying the bills on blogging and podcasting to the tune of, at best, $20,000 per year.
I still get out to the driving range to hit balls every few weeks. But as with my cholesterol, my mid-40s golf scores are usually too high with not enough give-a-shit. Maybe I’ll start doing better tomorrow. Yeah, that’s it. Tomorrow.
Anyway, it’s U.S. Open week. I hear Scottie Scheffler is good. Pick him.
. . .
“If you’re not blogging about golf anymore,” you might ask, “what’s with this e-mail?” I’m glad you asked. I miss writing. Even in my new era of golf nihilism, 500-ish words on the sport still stroll through my brain once in a while. More often, though, it’s something more interesting, like baseball or wiping a melted popsicle off the kitchen table.
That’s where this comes in. As long as I’m still paying $165 per year to Squarespace for the website, Lying Four might as well still be a thing. But for now, I’m fresh out of 2,500-word think pieces juxtaposing the rise of anti-vaxxers and a crummy residential course. So I’m pivoting to gonzo Substacking — occasionally about golf, but with heavy servings of other meaningless wastes of time, too. I’m starting with a goal of doing this once per week. If I can make that work without putting my kids in an in-patient psychiatric ward, then we’ll reassess. (I suppose I’d also better reassess if they do wind up in the psych ward.)
If this sounds amusing, or anything short of insufferable, then stick around. If it sounds awful, then I’m sure there’s an unsubscribe button somewhere around the bottom of this thing. And if, improbably, you actually end up liking whatever comes of this, then consider forwarding it to a friend with similarly low standards.
Anyway. Spencer Schwellenbach is going back out for the ninth with the Braves up 6-2 on the Brewers; the president is gonna celebrate his birthday by rolling tanks through the nation’s capital; and Lying Four is sort of a thing again. For all reasons, hold on to your ass.
. . .
You Might Also Enjoy Reading…