Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down Read Online Free PDF

kidding about our final common golf question, which is:
    Q . If I do not wish to stand around on a golf course listening to a bunch of business clients drone on about their “mulligans,” can I hire somebody to play golf with them for me?
    A . Yes! Alert dentist Steve Carstensen sent me a flyer for a new Seattle outfit called Golf In Action (“We’ll Play for You When You Can’t”). The idea is, you pay a golfer to take your clients out and play with them, thereby (to quote the flyer) “giving you the freedom to continue your important daily business needs.”
    I called Golf In Action and spoke with the founder, Sheila Locke, who told me that her idea has gotten a good public response,although a lot of the calls are from people who want to join her staff and get paid to play golf.
    Me, I love the idea of paying somebody to play golf with your clients, and I’m thinking: Why not take it further? Why not pay somebody to have meetings with your clients, and take your clients to dinner, and smoke cigars and drink brandy with your clients, and then throw up on your clients’ shoes because you hate brandy and cigars? This company could be called: Businesspersons In Action.
    So those are your golf basics. Good luck out on the “links,” and be sure to say “hi” to my editors, “Tom” and “Bill,” who will be easy to spot because they get stuck in the sand traps with those high heels.

Fore! II
    I imagine you sports fans are dying to learn the results of my golf tournament.
    That is correct: I have a golf tournament. It used to be that you had to be a major star such as a Bob Hope or a Moammar Gadhafi to have one, but now anybody can. It has reached the point where, if you apply for a credit card, the first two blanks on the application are “Your Name” and “Name of Your Golf Tournament.”
    Mine is “The Dave Barry Classic,” and it attempts to raise money for the American Red Cross. I’m a fan of the Red Cross, because after Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida, the Red Cross provided us with the one thing we most desperately needed: showers. This was a godsend, because after a few days without plumbing, we all smelled like Eau de Athletic Supporter.
    And so when the local Red Cross chapter asked me if I’d host a golf tournament, my answer, without one instant of hesitation, was: “I don’t play golf.” This is true. I don’t have anything
against
golf; it’s just that, if I’m going to play a sport, I want one that provides more aerobic benefits, such as “Rock, Paper, Scissors.”
    But I told the Red Cross people I’d host the tournament anyway, because I sincerely believe in “giving something back” to the community. Plus they said there would be beer.
    The Dave Barry Classic was held at Doral Park, which is a residentialgolfing community catering to people who enjoy combining the pleasure of living in attractive homes with the pleasure of never knowing exactly when a small, hard, white sphere will penetrate your recreation room traveling upward of 140 miles per hour. This happens routinely because golfers, despite the fact that they are using expensive, modern golf clubs made from space-age materials and engineered to tolerances of thousandths of an inch, have absolutely no idea what the golf ball is going to do once they hit it.
    I say this after spending a day observing the golfers in my tournament. These were mostly middle-aged business guys who had come out because they truly believe in the ideals of the Red Cross, especially the ideal of holding a golf tournament on a Friday afternoon.
    “I would love to stay in the office wearing a tie and talking on the phone with boring people I dislike,” they probably told their business associates, “but I have an obligation to the Red Cross.”
    In addition to the business guys, we had some big celebrities on hand. I do not mean “big” in the sense of “famous”; I mean “big” as in “larger than your junior high school.” For