Strange Things Are Happening

What in the Sam Hill is going on here? Tiger Woods, married to one of the most beautiful women in the world, is purported to be cheating on his wife (I know he's Tiger Woods, but even at his house is a five iron that readily accessible at two in the morning?), Grady Sizemore, up until now I guess a reportedly shy baseball player for the Cleveland Indians (come on, Grady, we Cleveland sports fans don't need any more embarrassment at the moment), sends his Playboy Playmate girlfriend racy photos of himself that get accidentally leaked on the Internet (speaking of leaking, put the toilet seat down when you're taking pictures, Grady, and really, a tea cup? this is a shot and a beer town!), and the editor of Newsweek is calling for Dick Cheney to run for president in 2012.

Just when I thought maybe I had been teleported to some parallel universe, I scanned some more news and found some old tried and true stories that have reassured me that I am still inhabiting my usual world, even if that world is undergoing a bit of a bumpy spin presently: Notre Dame has fired another football coach after another fully dissatisfying season, and not only has Jesus made an appearance on somebody's iron, but Michael Jackson's visage has shown up in a pregnant woman's sonogram--thank God for the humdrum, I say.

After digesting all of this, though, for some odd reason I started to think of the relatively recent musical phenomenon of mash-ups, where clever re-mixers take two or more popular songs and mash them up into one funny and/or intriguing song. What if we could do such a thing with all this purported news that seems to be clogging up the air and web waves? What if Charlie Weis and Tiger Woods's wife were having an affair? What if Grady Sizemore sent Dick Cheney an e-mail photo of his tea leaves which kind of had the image of Bert Convy in them? What if the Second Coming took place in the form of Jesus taking over the reins of the Fighting Irish football team, and in a package deal, Michael Jackson took over ND's theology department? What if Dick Cheney accidentally shot Charlie Weis while hunting, the bullet bounced off Charlie's staples-have-come-undone stomach and ricocheted off Tiger Woods's fire hydrant and ended up obliterating Grady Sizemore's last tea bag, forcing him to get in his SUV at 2:30 a.m. and start driving to Giant Eagle where he encountered Michael Jackson bagging groceries for Bert Convy? The permutations are myriad and certainly not that farfetched, wouldn't you agree, given the news of the day.

All of this is just to bolster my claim that really, I swear, today on e-Bay I won the auction of a bent-shaft five iron on whose clubface is the spittin' image of Spiro Agnew. I chatted up the seller, some woman named Elin, and well, we'll be trysting this weekend in the South Bend Ramada Inn's Charlie Weis Honeymoon Suite (the price nosedived today) which includes the Bert Convy vibrating bed, complimentary tea, massages by one D Cheney, and free clothes pressing by Jesus Jackson. Top that.

Vic Chesnutt-Dick Cheney