Saturday, December 19, 2009

One's too many, a hundred's not enough

Far be it from me to pile on Tiger Woods here, although I will be able to take my unblemished record of marital fidelity to the bank when it comes time to cross the bar. No brag, just fact. It's quite likely that he has many good qualities that we just aren't hearing about right now, although I do have to say that he seems to have that golfer's thing of demanding absolute silence as he concentrates on hitting a ball that isn't even moving. And we could probably get a good discussion going with the topic being, are golfers really athletes, since all sorts of non-athletic types in all sorts of conditions play golf...maybe not as well as Tiger and his PGA friends, but still...

...I've heard this from several people, and it's interesting that all of them have been women and wives, thereby giving them a standing in this debate. The statement is, "Well, I could see forgiving Tiger if he had just been running around with one woman, but when it turned out to be a dozen or so, then no, that's messed up." Or words to that effect.

The "One's too many..." quote above comes from the movie "The Dirty Dozen," and...no. JUST kiddin'. It comes from "The Lost Weekend," an old (1945) Ray Milland movie about alcoholism. This was before Ray Milland's greatest turn in the movies, that being "Love Story," where he managed to look all the way down the end of his nose at Ryan O'Neal while asking, "Have you gotten this girl in trouble?" while reaching for his checkbook to write a check to get her out of trouble, although no check in the world was going to help her out of the trouble she was in. And then there was the horror movie, "The Thing With Two Heads," where he was a second head attached to the body of Rosie Grier in what must have represented the perigee of the careers of Milland, Grier, and the guy who swept up the theater that it played in.

Another notable cornball line from "Love Story" had Milland, as Oliver Barrett III, saying, "If you marry her now, I'll not give you the time of day!" To which Oliver IV (O'Neal) replied, "Father, you don't know the time of day!" They just don't write movie dialogue like that any more, and for that we can all be grateful.

I guess those of us who are married can be grateful if our spouses have remained faithful, have not canoodled with 13 floozeballs, and have not come home with Ray Milland suddenly and permanently surgically attached. Two heads are not always better than one, and a hundred heads is just out of the question.

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