Thursday, February 16, 2006

Tomorrow’s discussion topic, assuming we actually congregate, is preordained, solid and incontrovertible and primordial as my loathing for the greatest quasi-sport of them all: Whirlyball. That there was like a teaser trailer, so don’t say I never give you anything. Tonight, though, I have another quasi-sport on the brain, another activity requiring fine physical coordination with minimal physical benefits.

I’m thinking of darts. You’ll find my current skill level in suck country or thereabouts, yet I’ve become fascinated by the game. If we were talking about terrible basketball or tennis, I could at least fall back on the fitness factor, where incompetence is blunted somewhat by the amount of sweat expended. Not so with darts. You yoke your limbs to the noble task of directing sharp objects to a target, and failure only begets dangerous rage. There’s no increased heart rate here, only the promise of–oh sweet Shirley Temple did I hit the waitress again.

But I still prefer it to the driving range, which I’m almost sure I’ve complained about in the past. You know where the difference lies? It’s in the permanence. The consequence. I’m not swinging a club for hours, hoping to make efficient my ability to fish for a goddamn hole in a sea of grass. I’m the author of holes, the bane of the cork, the artiste whose canvas happens to be a dartboard. See how I threw right into the floor? I did that.