Guest Host Post: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

I thought it was a nice gesture, if not the epitome of magnamity. A guy I know, Russ, for the last couple of years has hosted a charitable golf outing, The Luddite Open. The charity is Russ himself. He swears 100% of all proceeds go to help pay his alimony. Since everyone who knows Russ likes his ex-wife Doreen a lot more than Russ, it seems like a good cause. The Luddite part comes in when you get to the course and Russ hands you a beaten up wood wood, most of them circa 1967 (Russ has strange collecting tastes; just ask Doreen about the amount and variety of whoopee cushions he amassed over the course of their 12-year marriage), and a dozen Top-Flite range balls fished out of a reservoir adjacent to a driving range outside of Clyde, Ohio. All the participants must play the entire 18 holes with the water-logged Top-Flites and must tee off on every hole with a wood wood. And the only carts allowed are the pull kind.

Anyway, somehow Russ is able to get people to donate door prizes, skill prizes, hole sponsorships, and items for a silent raffle that is the climax to the whole event--in true Luddite, guy-who-struggles-to-pay-his-alimony fashion, the "meal" at the end of the round consists of Kool-Aid poured from suspicious looking plastic pitchers, loaves of Wonder Bread and containers of generic peanut butter and jelly, and marshmallows for toasting on a small grill (BYOS--bring your own stick for those). So this year, obviously overestimating the popularity of this blog, I donated for the silent auction the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to "Guest Post" my blog. Whoever ponied up the most money for the privilege would be allowed free range on this blog to rant/rave/entertain/shill/whatever for one post. Knowing the kinds of participants the Luddite Open draws, I was thinking conservatively when I told Russ I thought the offer would bring in one, maybe two C notes--which is no small portion of Russ's monthly amount due.

Unfortunately, on the day of the outing my other altruistic endeavor, manning the phone lines for the local Grammar Hotline, got in the way: Just as I finished my round I got an urgent call regarding a semi-colon pile up at the home office of a summer school correspondence course woman who was trying to complete a term paper on just how Mia Farrow could fall in love with both Frank Sinatra and Woody Allen in one lifetime. So I missed the after-golf shindig. Nevertheless, I was anxious to find out who had won the guest-blogger prize. Russ was evasive when I called him a few days later. "Damn, I don't have the list of winners in front of me," he claimed. "I'm sure it's someone you'll know and they'll be getting in touch with you soon enough." Well, that was eight weeks ago, and quite frankly I had forgotten about the whole thing until I got a call from a guy named Lou last week wondering how he could claim his prize. After a weird chat of about five minutes it became clear Lou had no connection with Russ, indeed had never played golf in his life, and didn't even know what a blog is. I had to investigate.

The following is not pretty. After much badgering Russ admitted no one had bid on my donation and that he ended up giving it to some guy named Ralph who was a guest at the outing of our friend Ray and who, Ralph, was pissed that his door prize was a whoopee cushion signed by Soupy Sales. Ralph turned out to be a bit of a Neanderthal who told me he gave the "stupid thing" to his miscreant daughter Raynelle. Tracked down in a high school parking lot cutting class and smoking Native American Spirits, Raynelle, after I convinced her I wasn't trying to lure her into a circus life and that I wouldn't tell her father anything, admitted she used the piece of paper on which I had written my generous offer to write a rather raunchy note to some kid named named Ricky in Mr. Jettison's chemistry class, because, "like, he'll flunk you on the spot if he catches you texting, man." Ricky was a scared little would-be hood who confessed upon some arm-twisting (both figurative and, as it turned out, literal) that he had used the paper to wad up some gum ("my mother always told me to dispose of gum properly, not to just spit it out") when he went joyriding after school with some wayward friends who had stolen the car from the maintenance staff's parking lot and who ended up totalling it and abandoning it. Enter Lou, who drives a tow truck for a wrecker.

"I work in salvage, so I salvage. Everything's got some value. I want mine. Now what the hell is a blog?" Thus my introduction to Lou. Turns out the guy, though not particulary loquacious or creative in blogging terms, is a pretty nice guy. We've made plans to go bowling over the winter. Anyway, after much cajoling and attempted creative jump-starting, I here present Lou's blog post (Lou isn't much of a typist, so his entry was dictated):

Lou Barbuto's Top Ten List Of The Use Of The Number Ten (10)

10. "I can't really think of a tenth one. Are we finished now?"

9. "Technically it's not really a use of ten, but I liked the old ten dollar bills with the cars and the people on the back. Did you know you can see a guy hitchhiking, if you look really close?"

8. "Top ten lists, I guess. What the hell?"

7. "The Aerosmith song, 'Big Ten Inch Record.'"

6. "Ten fingers seems perfect to me. I once knew a guy named Ron who was born with six fingers on each hand. Looked freaky if you ask me. Toes I don't care about."

5. "First and ten. Football. Ten yards for a first down is excellent."

4. "Bowling. Ten pins perfectly arranged in that little triangle. Huh? And ten frames of course. It's all pretty cool." (note to self--write a blog about the differences between bowlers and golfers re what is cool)

3. "Pearl Jam's Ten album. Kick some ass, man."

2. "The Ten Commandments. Not the movie, I hate Heston, but the actual Ten Commandments. Gotta give God his due on that one."

1. "That bathing suit. Those cornrows. Bo Derek, the movie Ten."

(I'll be back next post.)