But wait, it gets better as you walk around to the back, that is where they’ve added the ever-so-snappy customized license plate frame:

There is so much going on here, I don’t know where to begin. But that’s never stopped me before:

1. If you really do love Jack Daniels that much, that’s just plain sad. It’s such a middle-of-the-road whiskey. True rednecks drink Jim Beam, and scotch connoisseurs drink single-malt. Declaring one’s love for Jack Daniels is like declaring one’s undying love for Sandra Bullock. Meh.
2. Declaring your love for an alcoholic beverage upon your license plate is brazen at best, idiotic at worst. No real Jack Daniels drinker would put such a thing upon their plate because no real JD drinker would want to run the risk of ever being pulled over because a real JD drinker would always be running a BAL of %0.10 or better. Always.
3. “A Shot”? Really? Just one? Panzy.

Dear Presidio Trust,

Your decision to close Presidio Boulevard and a few “smaller streets” to eliminate “cut-through traffic” is short-sighted, at best. The Presidio is a very unique National Park in the heart of one of the world’s largest and most beautiful cities, and driving through it shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing.

Eliminating through traffic serves one purpose only: justifying the high rents you charge people who live on Simonds Loop, and making them feel as exclusive as the views they have.

I often drive through the Presidio because it is simply a prettier way to get from point A to point B. I like to have a view of trees in my day as I make my way across the city. It’s the same reason I often drive through Golden Gate Park, regardless of the actual traffic patterns there.

I use Presidio Boulevard to get from my house to the Golden Gate Bridge, yes. But I also use Presidio Boulevard to get from my house to the Bowling Alley and Sports Basement. Cut off my route through the Presidio and you cut off my support for those businesses as well.

If you make it more difficult for me to get to those businesses do you think I’ll go even further out of my way to get to them?

Your excuse that the Presidio is a national park, and you want to “improve the situation for visitors” is laughable. What other national parks have bent over backwards to allow George Lucas to build a massive, traffic generating business within them? What other national parks rely upon renting out residential and business buildings to sustain them?

You want less traffic in the Presidio? Kick out all of the business and all of the renters, eliminate the roads and return the park to its natural setting. But don’t make the Presidio just for the people who live in it, especially just the ones who live on Simonds Loop.

Sincerely,

Greg Quiroga

Animaniacs fans, unite! And you really had to see the rest of the bug: it is all done up to look like a ladybug. Shot on my phone, at night, there was no way I could actually get the photo. But if you live in Sonoma, you know what I’m talking about.

Of course you remember his most recognizable #1 hit, “My Yarmulke”

My yarmulke believe me, I wear it proud
I’m the jew with the crew that will rock the crowd
Cruisin’ in my benz, to the dope rhymes I pens
Cashin’ interest hard on the monies I lends.
I’m sorry if you’re not of the tribe
And don’t understand my cool ass jibe
Don’t mean to piss of those who follow the pope
But my bass is loud and my rhymes are dope.
My story is chill, my neighborhood’s not ill
But I still give it all I got, for my own Anim Zemirot
My name is Cool Jew, I get prescriptions filled at Pharmaca
And I couldn’t live without my yarmulke.

This is the C-series Benz that belongs to my 20-something neighbor. The guy opted to try and “secure” his front license plate with zip ties. Zip ties. Seriously, zip ties.

Not only that, but he only used two zip ties, so every time I saw his plate it was blown up on his grill like this.

Until the fateful day it blew off on the freeway.

I wasn’t sure until I saw the license plate…

Look, I realize the guy is probably some sort of system analyzer. It doesn’t preclude me from being incredibly immature, or thinking it’s a stupid license plate.

Just like it's inhabitant: lights are on, but nobody's home

If you check it against photos of the Governor’s mansion on Wikipedia, it really is the Governor’s pad. Only issue is, Palin doesn’t live there. But still, it is pretty damn funny…

Given that I only get to play a round every week or so, it is hard to keep my expectations in check. It also means I have lots of time to think about golf, and try to find ways to focus the next time I do play. This past Monday, I wanted to make sure I focused on having fun, and kept my expectations realistic. I really wanted to stay focused on playing every hole as if par were 5. Not as if it were a par 5, mind you, but as if par were 5. There’s a subtle distinction in there somewhere, I’m sure.

I also wanted to start working on pre-shot visualization: picturing the ball flight I want to hit for each and every shot. Without narration. Any time I catch myself thinking, “I want to hit a high soaring sand-wedge shot that sits next to the cup” I start over and try to just picture it. It is tough to do, but my golf self seems to respond.

The first four holes were far from stellar: double bogey, bogey, double, double. I was playing as a solo, and the threesome ahead of me was pulling away while the twosome behind me started pushing. The walk from the fourth green to the fifth tee was the turning point. I fought back the urge to go thermonuclear, and posited the question to myself: why do I play golf?

Re-focused on having fun and enjoying some time outside, I reset my expectations and relaxed. I found a key to focus on in my pre-swing routine for that next drive, and managed to par the hardest hole on the course. I got all jacked up for the next hole, took another double, and then parred the seventh.

I shot a 47 on the front, which isn’t a record for me at Lincoln by any stretch. I’ve shot a 42 on the front there once before. But I managed to keep my train running pretty smoothly for the rest of the round. I made a huge bogey save on #10, and then hit an 88-yard approach on #11 to within four feet to save par.

Coming into the home stretch of 15 - 18, I knew I was in good shape for overall score. I knew I was going to go way under my previous personal best of 98 at Lincoln, and might have even been facing a chance to break 90. I opted not to count up my score so I wouldn’t know for sure. I wanted to try and stick to playing each hole as it came, and not get caught up in the overall.

On fifteen, my approach shot came up short, but was right online. I chipped to within four feet and dropped the putt (I failed to mention that they aerated the greens the week before I played, and they were all sandy, slow and uneven. More so than normal). I took a bogey on the par-3 16h, and suddenly had just two holes to play, sitting on what must be a good score.

My drive on #17 was what I visualized, but my alignment was off. I got out of the sandtrap easily enough, but three putted. Then there was #18. I hit three horrible shots before I finally calmed down and hit a good iron to exactly where I was aiming. Too bad that by then I’d lost faith in myself, and wasn’t aiming at the green. Chip on, two putts and that’s a 7 to close out the round.

I got a drink and sat down to count up my score: 46 on the back (I think that’s my best back nine at Lincoln yet) combined with the 47 for my best round ever anywhere, Lincoln or otherwise. There were a lot of bright spots in the round, but surprisingly the number of fairways hit was not one of them. Every time I did hit a fairway, though, I reached the green in regulation.

Relevant stats:

Fairways hit: 3
Greens in Regulation: 3
Ups & Downs: 2
Pars: 4
Putts: 35
Fun Points: 33
Handicap before round: 30.8
Handicap after round: 30.3

Provided, of course, that you can actually make time to get out and play some golf. I managed to structure the past week-plus so that I had meetings or commitments every day that left only time to hit the range twice. Both times with my three-year old son, Ryder.

My father-in-law got Ryder a set of clubs for the holidays last year, and ever since I’ve been taking Ryder to the range. Up until recently, I would leave my bag at home and focus solely on having a good time with him. We’d go to the driving cage at the nine-hole in Golden Gate Park, where the astroturf slopes downhill from the tees into a net 50 feet away. I wanted him to have fun, feel successful, and not be intimidated by how far other people can hit the ball.

Just a couple of weeks ago this all changed. I announced that I was heading off to the range to hit some balls, and Ryder dropped what he was doing and came running out of his room exclaiming, “I want to hit balls too, Daddy!” This is the stuff golf dads dream of! I mean, I’m no Earl Woods - I respect the man and what he taught his son - but I do hope that Ryder will want to learn the game and that he and I will have the rest of my lifetime to enjoy rounds of golf together.

I instantly said yes, and we grabbed both of our bags and headed to the Presidio, which was closed (Monday afternoons, FYI), so we wound up at GGP, which he was already familiar with. I told him that since we’d both have our clubs, we’d need to either each pick a stall and hit on our own, or take turns hitting from the same tee in the same stall. He opted to share a stall and take turns.

I hadn’t anticipated how much my expectations would shift as soon as I had my clubs in tow. I kept unconciously shifting from father mode - which is extremely patient, forgiving and understanding of the extreme shifts in focus that come with a pre-schooler - to golf training mode - which is impatient, relentless and lacks compassion. I know, none of that bodes well for my golf game, let alone playing golf with Ryder.

If you have a pre-schooler you know that a child’s level of focus can be amazing and extreme…until their interest wanes. Then it is off to the next thing or things, as the case may be. My son loves to hit balls at the range. He also loves to talk about everything he sees while he’s hitting balls at the range. Which is fine and dandy out at Golden Gate Park, where he’s on par with most of the duffers who are taking up the game, and I feel no pressure about containing his wonderful running monologue.

But a week later, when we were out at Harding Park, another dynamic came into play: caring about what other people around us thought, and worrying about his verbosity angering other players.For whatever reason, at Harding Ryder lost his concentration early. He wanted to play a new game, which involved getting every tee out of my bag and sinking it into the astroturf.

He was happy to run around, “matching” up our clubs, so our drivers could meet, lining all of the tees up in little rows, and when it was his turn to hit, he’d just as soon talk about the ball collector as swing his club. In a sport focused so singularly on results, it is tough to disengage and simply have fun. But it is extremely educational.

At first, when it was my turn to swing and Ryder was talking through my entire swing, I’d tighten up and slice to holy hell. I imagined the guys on either side of me getting fed up with having to listen to this youngster blabber on, and slice even more viciously.  I took a step back and realized that this if this was how I was going to approach it, this wasn’t going to work out: I’d be forever frustrated, and Ryder would have no fun.

So I encouraged him to keep playing whatever games he enjoyed, even showing him a secret stash of tees in another pocket in my bag. Then I chose to find a new level of concentration that would allow me to focus and enter into golf traning mode long enough to make a good swing, before returning to father mode. Instead of worrying about the guys around me, I chose to see it as an opportunity for them to learn to swing with a whole new level of distraction. Truth is, most of them got a kick out of seeing Ryder swing his little clubs, and probably couldn’t care less.

After the bucket of balls, we went over to the chipping area, and this is where I discovered that the key to enjoyment is to find a game both of us can play. Ryder loves chipping, and we had a little two-ball chipping game for another 15 minutes before he completely burned out. At which point, I made the best discovery of all: he loves raking sand traps as much as I love hitting out of ‘em. I almost felt guilty, hitting two shots at a time out of the trap and then handing him the rake to hit, but he completely loved it.

The best part is that the next time I went out to actually play, I was able to achieve an incredible new level of focus and concentration. Members of my group talking during my setup or even in my backswing? People on the clubhouse patio murmering while on the first tee? Ha! That’s nothing compared to what my son can do (I look forward to saying that about his golf game someday, too).  If you want to work on your game, we’re available for training sessions for a nominal fee: Ryder likes 2.5″ tees.