Hiaasen golfing?

Osama bin Laden waving sparklers on the Fourth of July. Adolf Hitler reciting the Torah. Martin Luther King, Jr., burning a cross.

These things are so crassly out of character that they would only really show up in the most grotesque kind of political cartoon--and maybe not even there because they're so unrealistic that they wouldn't even be funny or pertinent. They don't even bear thinking about.

With them, I would have put Carl Hiaasen being a devoted golfer. Hiaasen is the Florida-based author of pulpy, humorous about, among other things, lovable ecoterrorists.

But Hiaasen has written a new book that turns my world upside down. It's called "The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport” and, from New York Times reporter Charles McGrath's rather perplexing article on it, I gather that it is a playful, jargon-laced tribute to the author's love of the sport of St. Andrew's.

I'm confused. I swear, although I can't back it up (I don't own a copy and the library's is borrowed until August), that Hiaasen's "Sick Puppy" contains a passage damning the environmental consequences of golf courses.

I'm not an environmental scientist, but I'm pretty sure that golf courses threaten Hiaasen's beloved Everglades--even more so after ten seconds' googling.

Hiaasen only addresses the contradiction between golf and the environment with this weak observation: “The great irony is that golf courses are becoming the last bit of wildlife refuge we have. I saw a bobcat on a golf course once, and I don’t know that there’s anyplace else you could do that now.”

Of course, I'm willing to give Hiaasen the benefit of the doubt. It's possible, given the "Ruinous Sport" part of his latest title, that he addresses this conflict in his new book. I think this conflict is probably instead down to the Times story's author.

I didn't need to go to Houghton Mifflin's profile on McGrath to guess that he was a regular contributor to Golf Digest. The story on Hiaasen is plagued by jargon-laden banal passages like: "He suffers, it’s true, from occasional, unpredictable bouts of the ailment golfers dare not name: the shanks. But he has a not-bad-looking swing with a nice finish, and he hits the ball a long way."

As someone who doesn't play golf, I have no idea what that means.

McGrath does suggest that some of the slimy, environmentally negligent villains of Hiaasen's novels might like the golf course he plays at, but that seems to be more a commentary on the social, rather than environmental issues related to golf, and he dismisses that before he can even get into it anyway.

Whether because he is simply too much of a golf writer to see the essential contradiction in Carl Hiaasen's playing golf or because he is too much of a powder puff to wade into a turgid, ambiguous question like that one, McGrath is missing the point.

If he ever writes something good, I might just drop a tip with the CIA to start looking for Osama in the fireworks aisle of their local supermarket in midsummer.

Eagles hit Eleanor where it hurts.

Though I've already stated it, it bears repeating: I hate the Eagles.

I won't waste my time qualifying that hatred with intensives. I won't even waste it composing a grammatically cogent case for hating the band. I'll merely slice my head open and spill some of the adjectives therein into this post.

Corporate. Slimy. Self-satisfied. Bland. Disingenuous. Corporate again.

When Bob Dylan drew all that flak for switching to electronic instruments, it was because people thought he'd turn into the Eagles. Kurt Cobain shot himself because of the Eagles.

Whatever is wrong with Michael Jackson, the Eagles caused it.

So recently, when I found out that I liked two songs related to the Eagles, it hurt.

It started in a godforsaken lobby some months ago, not at the dentist's office, but certainly something more banal, but with larger windows. Since they had no interesting magazines, I was resting my eyes in some article in ESPN and tapping my foot absentmindedly to the beat coming from the television.

It was your typical 1980s pop workout, but there was something interesting and mournful in it. Danceable 1980s pop is trendy these days with the skinny-pants set, so I didn't feel self-conscious admitting I liked it. Then the video ended with a hammer blow to my heart.

"Boys of Summer," Don Henley.



Ouch.

But that wasn't too demoralizing. After all, it actually gave me some pleasure to think of this purported earthy cowboy genius shoehorning himself into a pastel suit and strutting to a synth beat amidst billowing beachside curtains in Southern California. That all neutralized the Eagles element. I was safe.

The next one was far more painful. In my childhood, I read and reread the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series by Douglas Adams. I was not just a fan, I was a worshiper.

Young Christians are taught to wonder what Jesus would do. I took to wondering what Douglas Adams would say if he were in my position. The literal-minded, understated, Adamsian irony I hard-wired into my brain is a fundamental part of my personality to this day. If I had not, at twelve, read his books, I would be a radically different person.

I also loved the videos my father showed me of the BBC miniseries of the books. And so, at one point a couple of days ago, I tried to find out who had done the theme song. I found the pop culture phenomenon I loved most dearly in bed with the one I hated most ardently.

The Eagles, "Journey of the Sorcerer."



And it was the Eagles at their most Eagles-like, a useless but hubristic exercise that combined sexless precision and faux-sincere countrification. A rinky dink neoclassical composition on space-age synth and banjo. Just the type of thing the Eagles would do.

And I couldn't deny I liked it. I did. I do. When I hear it, aside from the confused feelings it conjures now that I know who made it, it reminds me of the time I first read the series. I am transported back to the sunny Saturdays I spent curled around that hulking blue volume on my bed. I think of the tiny holes that termites left in its pages. I can't be angry.

Of course, conflicted feelings are all the more reason to restate: I hate the Eagles.

-Eleanor