Garland,
Please tell me that you do not actually take my high-handed riffing seriously. The problem is that in the "good old days," before we opened the Treehouse hatch and invited rabble into our grillroom, most of us knew each other by phone or golf - or in my case, a revolving door of house guests who were only too happy to fetch the fixin's and vino from the grocery store for some home cooking at Casa de Armenian.
Now, I hardly know most of these guys and am so busy between running a business, trying to cure autism, helping my parents and dealing with an ongoing lawsuit that I have little time to post anything. Now and again, I'll crack my knuckles and let a little something rip, but keep forgetting that the tone of this corner of cyberspace has become deadly serious.
Ironically, the first step down the glacier was wrought by a couple of old timers - both of whom are terrific guys - who argued about Merion for so long they began to hate each other. To be honest, it turned me off to the entire game of ping pong because at the end of the day, our endless discussions on a arcane subject like golf architecture *really* provides a (very) loose framework for a bunch of guys to tickle each other's brains.
Maybe that is not what Ran intended, but just like a bunch of nerds in the bird watching society, its more about the camaraderie between like minded nutcakes . . . .
For the record, I was not terribly impressed by Houston, but my close friend Eric went over to Champions recently and spent over an hour talking to American golf's greatest sage. So he loves Houston . . . . I spent the week having my ear bent at the Houston Convention Center; my bemused remarks about K-Mart panties and bleach jobs was meant to be taken with the levity in which it was intended.
The only women I saw that week were hired eye candy at the Produce Marketing booths and overweight wives from Cleveland, noshing on whatever free samples being passed out while their polyester shirted husbands pretended to be important buyers.
To make matters worse, a hurricane was headed straight for Houston the day we were supposed to leave and for all intents and purposes, both airports were shut down. Believe it or not, we rented a car and dashed all the way to Dallas, one step ahead of the weather and dove onto a plane just before they suspended flights at DFW.
Ninfa's was awesome though - I have to admit. Even better than the food in San Antonio - which is one of my favorite cities on the planet. And Texas produces an unbelievable amount of great golfers and football stars - even more than Southern California. And yes, Texas chicks are ridiculously hot. Okay?
So, I am raising the white flag.
But the story about Anthony is 100% true. I swear it.