Looking Forward to 2006

2005 was a good year I suppose. To recap, I: got married, bought a condo, quit two jobs, had an appendectomy, won my fantasy football league, and brought the handicap down to 12.4. Not a bad year.

In the world some cool stuff happened. The U.S. Women's Open was pretty cool, with Birdie Kim holing out a bunker shot on the 72nd hole to beat out Morgan Pressel. The White Sox won the World Series, which I personally don't care about, but it made a lot of people I know happy. Our long national nightmare of new Star Wars movies is finally over. The Cleveland Indians won 93 games, and almost made it into the playoffs. The Cavs are off to a good start. Oh, and we're winning that pesky war on terror thing, right?

ADVERTISMENT

So what are we looking forward to in '06:

1. Not working for the man - Iāve finally broken free from the confines of the corporate world, and have entered the ranks of ! the voluntarily unemployed. I guess saying that Iām not working for the man is a bit of an understatement because Iām now more reliant on the man more than ever for freelance work, and I now find myself begging and pleading for work, that I then have to actually do, as opposed to drawing a regular paycheck while slacking off as much as possible. Remind me why Iām doing this again?"
2. The 2006 LPGA Season - And I'm honestly not joking. Maybe I'm the only one paying attention to women's golf, and maybe it's just that I really like golf and no one really cares about golf at all much less, women's golf, but hear me out. I think that women's golf is poised for a major breakthrough in popularity similar to what happened in women's tennis in the 90s, for the following five reasons:

• Personalities: Men's golf is boring partially because outside of guys like Els, Woods, Singh and Mickelson, you really have no desire to see any of these guys play. And even Els, Singh and Mickelson are kind of a stretch. They're boring. Counter that with this new crop of female golfers, like Morgan Pressel, Michelle Wei, Paula Creamer, Jennifer Rosales, or Japanese sensation Ai Miyazoto, who won the LPGA Q School this year by 12 shots. These women have a lot of personality, in their game, and their clothing style.
• Looks: I know I'm not supposed to say this, because for some reason it's a taboo subject to mention a female athlete's looks, even though men have been sexualized in athletics ever since Joe Namath put on his mink coat and Jim Palmer slid into a pair of jockeys, but the way that the new crop of LPGA stars look will certainly help the popularity of the sport, in much the same way that young stars like Martina Hingis, Anna Kournikova, the Williams sisters, etc. made women's tennis more popular, rescuing their sports popularity from their chromosomally challenged forefathers, I mean foremothers·sort of.
• Fashion: Again, as a sports fan I know that I shouldn't care about this, but these women put a lot of their personality into their dress, and quite frankly it's a more interesting to watch Paula "the Pink Panther" Creamer in her pink outfits fight with Grace Park in her weird visors and jewelry looking like she's going out to play mahjong instead of play golf, then see Chris DiMarco battle <insert boring white golfer here> in their khaki pants and polo shirts and visor brought to you by a brokerage company.

• Intensity: If you've ever gone to a girls high school soccer game you know that women are much more competitive than men. Well, maybe I should say competitive in a different way. We may sense that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson don't like each other, and they probably don't, but when the cameras are rolling, Phil's got his shit eating grin on, and Tiger takes off his cap and politely shakes hands and smiles into the camera, just like their sponsor told them to. But when Morgan Pressel saw Birdie Kim hole out her birdie in front of her on the 72nd hole of the U.S. Women's Open, she was pissed, big time. And you know that all these women who have worked their asses off to get to where they are, hate the fact the Michelle Wei has gotten all this press and money when she hasn't really won anything yet, and you know they want to beat her, badly.
• Game Play: Again I'll draw the tennis analogy again. One of the reasons why women's tennis became more popular than men's tennis over the last 15 years is that men's tennis had turned into a pure power game. Serve and volley, serve and volley, rarely would someone break service. Women's tennis also added an element of power to make the game more exciting to watch, but not so much power that it took away the finesse game of groundstrokes with long rallies. Similarly men's golf has turned into a pure power game (I should clarify and say American golf, European golf still has a lot of shot making elements to it) basically bomb it out there as far as you can so you can hit one of your 6 wedges into the green and then make some putts. Women's golf has added power because of the athleticism of the participants, but it is now a more complete game where power is important, but so are long irons (ok, ok sometimes a 7-wood, but still), when was the last time you saw a PGA player hit anything over a 7-iron into a par 4 green?
3. The Finalists - I can't really say too much about this right now, but believe me, when it happens, you'll know.

4. The Death of Harry Potter - Ok, so maybe this isn't happening in 2006, but one can only hope that J.K. Rowling puts this whole thing in the ground. I mean she's already made over a billion dollars based on the fact that adults are basically illiterate retards who are trying relive their childhood by reading derivative watered down fantasy stories while wearing a scarf and petting one of their six cats. Listen, I don't really think that there is anything inherently wrong with the Harry Potter stories. They're ok I guess, and maybe I need to actually read the books before I comment on them (I only half-heartedly read the first one and I've seen like three of the movies) but they're kids books, and the fact that all these adults are not only reading these books, wearing the Harry Potter scarves and talking about them like they're Shakespeare or something. Don't any of these people read fantasy fiction for adults? Because there's a ton of it out there. Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, Tad Williams, Terry Prachett can all write circles around Ms. Rowling. Of course what am I saying, this is the same population that made Dan "I write at a fifth grade reading level, and stole the entire idea for the DaVinci Code from Holy Blood/Holy Grail" Brown a best selling novelist. I mean I guess Rowling should get some credit for getting kids to read and all that, but how come these kids aren't reading anyway, I mean I read a lot of books when I was a kid yet had a completely full childhood despite being born before a boy wizard. Pick up some other books why don't you, and while I'm at it, git off mah laawwwnnnn.
5. The PS3 - Actually I'm not that excited about the PS3, I mean, I'll get one and all, but I mainly bring this up to bring up something that I absolutely hate about Madden. Instant Replay. Instant replay exists in the NFL to fix the mistakes of the human refs. In the computer game of Madden, there are no human refs. The computer makes all of the calls. The only way the computer can't get the call right the first time is if that it is randomly programmed to call some percentage of close plays incorrectly. Is this really necessary? I mean I know that if it's in the game, it's in the game, Jeff Wilkins one white shoe one black shoe, all that, but is it really necessary to intentionally place in a mistake mechanism into a computer game, so that I have to waste time challenging plays?

So there you have it, the things I'm looking forward to in '06. And I guess there are other things I hope for, like peace on earth, hopefully a summer and fall without those pesky massive killer hurricanes, the war ending, shit like that too.

Don't forget to catch up on the next chapters of Vanamonde Scribblings - The Novel at http://todd.wordpress.com/.