mariness

So, as mentioned, last week followed the costumed and robot chaos of Megacon with ICFA (an academic/writer's conference focused on fantasy/science fiction), the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill (golf), and the almost complete collapse of my ability to use Twitter on any of my remote devices (almost entirely the fault of Apple, but we'll get there.) Also, a Tor.com post about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and some tornadoes!

Which is all just a touch too much for one post, so, first, lessons learned from Arnold Palmer:

1. Tiger Woods may or may not be back. But his crowds? Definitely back. I quote from my Twitter

"A whole mass of people are trailing behind Woods, like a large pack of brightly colored cockroaches."

2. Being right on the edge of the hole when Woods' crowds arrive, and by "right on the edge" I mean "right behind a rope, which is not technically an edge, but edge sounds better here, and I'm losing this sentence, I see, so let me get back to it," is a moderately terrifying experience, and by moderately terrifying, I mean that even with brakes on it will feel as if the masses of people behind you will push you right into Tiger Woods.

3. Your fears that people will push you into Tiger Woods will be easily overcome by fears that a Reuters photographer is about to fall on you.

4. This will in turn lead to something distinctly different about the 2013 tournament – actual, loud, noise on the 7th hole (and to a lesser degree on hole 10 and holes 1 and 9.) Noise distracting enough to cause caddies to frown and call for noise reduction which will end up being completely ignored.

We honestly wondered what might end up happening with that – the noise came from a corporate group who had rented a large air conditioned tent with a balcony and bleachers and also apparently provided a lot of wine. (I am guessing on the wine, but almost everybody on their balcony had a crystal glass in hand and the noise level suggested a certain relaxation level.) On the one hand, golf is meant to be quiet for a reason – a missed stroke can cost someone thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. On the other hand, this was obviously a corporate sponsor. Hmm. I've no doubt something was said, especially since this was hole 7, but whether anything was done is another question.

5. The habit of pretending that you are really at the coffee shop to work, work, work and certainly not to people watch or socialize or anything has indeed spread to the porches, patios and balconies of people with large, elegant homes right on the golf course ostentatiously "working," while constantly raising their glasses.

6. Thanks to modern technology, even the fierce rules of the PGA Tour (NO CAMERAS NO CAMERAS NO CAMERAS ABSOLUTELY NO IPADS UNLESS YOU ARE AN ACCREDITED MEMBER OF THE PRESS AND EVEN THEN WE ARE NOT HAPPY AND YOU MAY NOT, and by not, we mean, ON PAIN OF EXECUTION AND LOSING ALL ACCESS TO THE INTERNET FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER, TWEET RESULTS WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?) cannot prevent people from ALSO following March Madness even as they happily trail behind Tiger.

7. You will go ahead and tweet what's happening anyway, just without golf scores, Just To Be Contrary. (I did feel like pointing out that a grand total of one person on my twitter feed might be interested in golf scores and that one person would be considerably more likely to check, say, CBS, and not me, but I felt this might end up causing more of an argument than was warranted.)

8. Golf is a lot more fun when you have a lot of wind, and by a lot more fun, I mean balls go into trees and into paths and bounce round and round and round.

9. You will not be at all surprised to find that the able bodied man attempting to burst into the disabled porta-potty is the exact same man who was earlier cheerfully smoking a huge cigar right next to people who were pointedly coughing to make him go away.

10. A gator who has climbed up to the sixth hole because, you know, all the water is just too much, will be almost completely ignored by the various very focused golfers, proving once again that Florida residents are hardly the only ones to feel blasé about gators.

11. Rules or no rules, you will end up taking a picture of the gator anyway because, gator on golf course.

12. Because this is your cheap cellphone no one will believe that you took a picture of a gator, because instead of a gator, what they will see is something blurry that might, or might not, be grass, and behind that, something blurry that might, or might not, be water, or possibly a nuclear waste site. This will all be terribly unfair to the immaculately kept Bay Hill golf course.

13. Despite having found in previous years much better food around the golf course than the kinda tragic hamburgers and hot dogs offered at about a third of the holes, you will once again completely forget this and find yourself eating a not very good hot dog. On the bright side this will be on hole 17 where balls often go hop hop hop into the water which is an excellent distraction from problematic food.

14. Despite careful, careful application of sunscreen everywhere and chilly temperatures which cause you to keep most of yourself fully covered, you will still miss a tiny patch of skin just above your foot which will then burn and burn and burn causing all kinds of angst at ICFA, like, WHAT SOCKS CAN I WEAR WITH THIS, and PLEASE TELL ME HORROR WRITERS ARE NOT STARING AT MY FEET GETTING IDEAS. But that's another post.

Ok, so, my one attempt at playing golf resulted in a score of 88 – for one hole. (I allowed other groups to pass me, one reason my, um, "game" lasted so long.) In my defense, that score only happened because a) the trees kept jumping in front of my ball, deliberately, b) the various clubs weren't actually interested in swinging where I was making them swing and c) some of you may not believe this, but I think the ball (er, balls, eventually) were under a curse because they were not rolling the right way.

To be fair, this may not be entirely the fault of the game of golf, since I am nearly as bad at miniature golf. Actually I find miniature golf goes best when I play it with my eyes shut.

But watching the game on the internet? (Not TV. TV coverage is the very definition of dull.) That I can do. Which is how I ended up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and learned a few things:

1. If you want to see Harry Potter at Universal's Islands of Adventure, but don't want to pay the insane parking fees for the world's largest parking lot on top of the ticket prices, your best bet is to show up during the Arnold Palmer/Bay Hill event and announce, in cool and collected tones, that you are there for the Bay Hill event. The ticket agent will then smile at you and hand over a complimentary parking pass and – unusually enough for the Universal parking lot – actually send you to the correct parking location (in this case, Spiderman.) You can then join various happy golf spectators as they negotiate the insanity that is that parking lot, going UP the elevators or the (once again not working) escalators and OVER the walkways before quietly vanishing into the happy Harry Potter/Spiderman/Thing One and Thing Two crowds. Your wallets can thank me later.

2. If, however, you are actually heading to the Arnold Palmer Invitational you will first need to negotiate the ticket area which is inconveniently located in the general walkway to Universal Studios (where the walkways for the two garages meet up with the walkway to City Walk). You will then need to go back DOWN to the bus/taxi parking lot.

3. This is about the time when you will realize that Universal Studios is not actually all that close to Bay Hill.

4. Thanks to the miracle of iPhones, however, everyone can watch golf coverage on the not short shuttle ride to Bay Hill. The delight of this will be considerably mitigated by the insistence of the driver on telling Tennessee jokes. And Auburn jokes. And Georgia jokes. And UM jokes. And Florida State jokes. You will feel renewed pride and joy in the University at Binghamton.

5. Your entrance into Bay Hill will be further delayed by the need of Tiger Woods and his entire entourage and a very large group of happy fans to cross a road. (And that was the only time I saw Tiger Woods the entire day – we thought he was going later so otherwise missed him, which given the happy crowds following him was probably just as well).

6. Bay Hill is located in a residential district of lovely homes, with residential streets crossing the golf course here and there. This is lovely for the homeowners, and rather less convenient for people actually trying to get into the tournament, as traffic is constantly stopped by golfers and spectators.

7. Spectators will get considerably more involved in the game than I thought, and by more involved, I mean, participating in conversations like this:

Player currently in the lead: "DID IT FALL INTO THE HAZARD?"

"YES!"

"NO!"

"WHICH SIDE OF THE RED LINE?"

"THE LEFT THE LEFT THE LEFT!"

"THANKS!"

Also players occasionally throw balls at small and cute children or at harmless, unassuming, water hazards and lakes. Also, caddies run around raking up sand. I did NOT KNOW THIS.

8. Great blue herons are, to my surprise, very intense golf fans. They love it.

9. Ducks are, not to my surprise, not very intense golf fans. Anhingas will eat fish.

10. Golf is the sort of game that allows you to learn these sorts of things.

11. Hunter Mahan wears cute sunglasses. You do not actually need to attend a PGA Tour event to know this but I thought it should be mentioned.

12. The very rich often have very bad taste. This will be demonstrated by a house on what I believe was hole 15 which was not merely three times larger than either house beside it, but also, and this cannot be concealed, horrifically balanced and just flat out ugly and too large for its lot.

13. Even though the course is covered with various large airconditioned tents, various large TV screens explaining where everybody is at any given time, electronic golf swing analysis, materials scientists, computers immediately calculating speeds and locations, huge TV cameras, the main leaderboard/scorecards ARE STILL CHANGED BY HAND. And by hand, I mean, six people on each board are climbing up and down latters moving names and numbers around and rechecking what people on the ground are saying all while trying to be absolutely quiet.

14. Speaking of quiet, this is a remarkably quiet sport, with everyone going, hush, hush, even when, as was happening more often towards the end of the afternoon, everyone was increasingly drunk.

15. An astonishing number of wealthy homeowners will decide to augment their income by selling cheap drinks and candy on the side of the course. These sales will be further augmented by what I am certain is a merely coincidental decision on the part of some of the women to sell these drinks and candy in bikini tops and short shorts.

16. SPF 30 sunscreen is not quite as reliable as its label claims. I'm just saying, if in a rather painful fashion.

17. Everyone, including you, will wander round and round and round, which will a) force everyone to buy more drinks from the wealthy homeowners and b) cause various crowds following the big ones to shift here and there, allowing you to easily pinpoint when the major players are approaching a hole.

18. You will never be able to figure out why anyone would decide to wear a black cocktail dress, emeralds, and six inch heels on a golf course, but you will be able to figure out pretty quickly why she looks utterly miserable.