Feeling both grown-up and not grown-up is a timeless, ageless, human state, explored in poetry and fiction for generations. It’s currently being explored by a generation with miserable job prospects and good access to birth control, that’s all. Its called “Slouching” toward adulthood.
But this week The New York Times featured on its website a lengthy and ominously toned story entitled “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” in which science writer Robin Marantz Henig explores psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s theory that people in their twenties inhabit “a newly recognized stage of life.” Honestly, it makes you wonder just who has too much time on their hands?
Dr. Arnett’s research itself seems entirely un-accusatory. He’d be the cool dad on the expert block. He builds on older studies demonstrating that children’s brains continue to develop well into their twenties and that society needs to label this developmental stage “emerging adulthood.” …Everything’s bathed in an emotionally convenient false nostalgia for a time when mothers were mothers and fathers were fathers and both were adults – for a time when we were children.
Tiger Woods and John Daly have indeed been slouching back slowly into adulthood, likely to be the subject of new studies on those stubborn thirty-somethings whose trip into adulthood has been a series of invisible dog legs, sand traps, and water beds. Shanking, flubbing, slicing; its obvious Tiger’s putter is at half mast, soft and out of touch with those fast and furious greens.
“…It was his second-worst single-round score behind the 81 he carded at the 2002 British Open, and his highest 36-hole total meant he missed the cut in a non-major for the first time since 2005.The 34-year-old, who took a five-month break from playing following the scandal over his admitted marital infidelities, admitted he was feeling pressure due to continued questioning about his private life. ”Well, I get asked every day. Every day I do media, I get asked it, so it doesn’t go away. Even when I’m at home, paparazzi still follow us, helicopters still hover around,” Woods told reporters in quotes carried by his personal Web site.
Although Tiger, in a Nike Commercial, made a mea-culpa to his dead father who voiced his displeasure from beyond; the semiotics of the commercial, according to Roland Barthes, could be easily deconstructed to reveal that the underlying pathos was a totally synthetic “mythologie”. Barthes directed us to other phantoms from beyond and we dusted off and spruced up Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to give us advice. R.D. Laing was on the short list, but his suggestion to Tiger to smash a putter into his father’s legs was considered outside the purview of our needs. Repression and testosterone, creates a volatile compound, and it was decided to send both Woods and Daly to the “Rubber Room”. perhaps indefinitely…
The Rubber Room is the name for the places where New York City teachers who are under disciplinary investigation are sent to await their hearing. For months — sometimes years, and sometimes decades, these teachers go to “work” every day in a mostly bare room, and wait, and wait, and wait. Even if exonerated, many of these teachers are so stigmatized that they have to switch careers. Sounds like something out of Sartre or Kafka, but it’s just New York.
Every day, hundreds of suspended teachers report to “Rubber Rooms” around the city rather than their schools. A slang term, Rubber Rooms are holding facilities for teachers charged of misconduct. Temporarily and indefinitely revoked of their teaching privileges, the accused educators are paid in full each day for months – and sometimes years – as they wait for their adjudications. Annually, the NYC Department of Education spends an estimated $35-65 million to sustain these Rubber Rooms. Complementary therapy on our thirty somethings will also include rigorous testing by none other than Tim Roth of “Lie to Me”
Roth plays the role Dr. Cal Lightman, a scientist who pioneered the field of deception detection. The doc is a human lie detector, skilled at reading the human face, body and voice to uncover the truth in criminal and private investigations. The science in the show is genuine, based on the work of Dr. Paul Ekman; it was felt that Tiger’s infidelities could have been prevented, or at least deterred if the corporate sponsors acted acted promptly. It is to be noted that Roth also played a hitman in the film “Little Odessa” so a little stick with the carrot may also keep these randy rabbits on the fairway and not the gangway of the Rocking Horse cafés of the pro-tour.
…Certainly the world of golf is not lacking in sexual puns and metaphors for the pleasures of the 19 th hole. In addition to being mildly nauseating, there have been a number of problems with Wood’s statements namely that his male sexuality is a disease, at least in terms of the pseudo-science junk psychiatry that classifies it as such. Woods continues to demean himself like a penitent before a Puritan congregation; swept up in a rogue time machine back into the seventeenth-century.
- ”I’m definitely rooting for Tiger to succeed this weekend. Not only will it make things way more interesting, but it will also infuriate every female in the country. I’m no misogynist, and I think girls are great, but any time you can see an entire subset of people get pissed without anyone getting hurt, you have to root for it. It’s like how every affluent white man stared angrily into his stone fireplace after the OJ Simpson verdict (minus the murder part). If you want to add fuel to the ire, and you’re a dude, say something like “Look, I get that what he did was bad. But it wasn’t that bad.” ( Seth Curry )
Nike’s ad was short, captivating and a little unsettling. Can a disembodied voice from beyond the grave rehabilitate Tiger Woods’ public image? Or at least sell some overpriced clothing made in sweat shops? Nike was banking on it. The company, which stayed off the dump-Tiger-as-a-spokesman bandwagon, has released an unconventional commercial to coincide with Woods’ return to competitive golf today at the Masters.
In it, a doe-eyed Woods stares at a slowly zooming camera, while the recorded voice of his late father, Earl, says, “I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are. Did you learn anything?” Woods looks like a shamed adolescent staring into the mirror to see if his acne has calmed down. Bringing the deceased Pops back onto the green is a stroke of genius. We get to see the occult and paranormal side of Woods, that we knew was there, but the cerebral little head that guides him had most of hoodwinked for some time.
The marketing potential is enormous now, with the thought that Woods has occult powers and can communicate with the dead. The notion that he is a hybrid, or multi-personality controlled from the beyond may help bring golf to a new breed of participant; Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley and Dr. William Wynn Westcott, to name but a few, should be able to induce some favorable rolls and bounces that would help Tiger drain a few more putts. However, his first round partner could be none other than Rasputin. If Woods can read minds, with a little nudging from beyond, he can certainly read a golf green.
”Many nefarious claims have been made about Rasputin, and perhaps not all of them are undeserved, but he was not the monster with a hypnotic gaze later hack writers tried to turn him into. There were many temptations that came with his success, including alcohol and adultery, and if the Czar’s secret police can be believed (and that’s certainly a big “if”), he succumbed to them. His daughter Maria, wrote a biography of her father years after his death, and claims he was a pious man and dismisses the stories about him. Occultists are fascinated by Rasputin, because of his alleged healing powers, and because he managed to become a favorite of the Romanov’s. Several theories have been made as to the source of his “powers”. One theory is that Rasputin belonged to a religious sect called the Khylsty, which practiced sex rituals, but historians conclude there is no evidence to support this idea. ”. Well perhaps not exciting enough for network television after all. Alesiter Crowley. He knew how to get ratings:
”Crowley was very fond of demons and sought them out on many occasions. One technique Crowley used to accomplish this was to sodomize a fellow magician, either man or woman, and then eat the semen or feces after the act took place. Crowley believed that sodomy attracted demons, and by eating these vile things (in a sort of mock communion) he could bring the demons inside himself and gain their powers and knowledge. Thank you for not throwing up on this book when you read that. Whatever Crowley thought he learned from these experiences is unknown, and you’d be an idiot to want to try these techniques.
While Crowley never became the Devil’s chief of staff he did, according to his followers, become demonically possessed on at least one occasion. During a ritual in the desert, along with two of his disciples, he attempted to invoke a demon called “Chronozon”. It is said Crowley did all the things you’re supposed to do, drawing his cute little circle in the sand with all the names of the God that he so despised inside to protect him. But, so the story goes, the demon simply kicked sand on the circle, walked right in, and possessed Crowley. It was said after this incident, Crowley appeared to have aged 20 years overnight. Many of his followers believe Crowley was possessed by this demon for the rest of his life! These are things one must consider when deciding to follow the teachings of this man.”
The irony is, that all these mediums, communicators with the dead, ”flimflammers” as Houdini called them, are all fraudulent; from Edgar Cayce to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to L. Ron Hubbard. Anyone claiming paranormal powers is a fake who make suckers out of their followers. The conclusion. Woods is a fake himself, brainwashed and used for his money. If he is sincere in believing he does connect with the beyond; he is likely hopelessly insane or a pathological liar. But, was Wood’s set up:
”To be serious for a moment, everyone wants to scoff at the “sex addict” stuff. The general opinion seems to be that he was just a horny dude, not a victim of some mental illness. But if you look at those text messages he sent, it just seems so out of character. For a guy known for caution and privacy, it’s like he was trying to get caught. It’s a mistake that Tiger in his right mind would just never make. Maybe I’m being naive, but I think he has a real problem, and I think it’s good he’s coming back to golf so soon. He needs to press on with life.”