I never really liked the guy who was in the news all the time a few years back. What's his name again? Trump?
Yeah, that's it. Something Trump. It's one of those Dickensian names, like the sound you'd imagine he'd make if he was one of those Muppets like Animal or Swedish Chef who doesn't speak English: "Trump trump trump trump."
That's how I picture him, a bit of squashed-down sculpted orange felt in a little blue suit with teeny fingers just barely peeking out from the sleeves of his suit jacket and an adorable pouf of yellow yarn combed over the crown of his head.
But while I'll admit he has some potential as a plush toy, I can't say I ever cared for him.
A lot of people seemed to really, really like him, and I want to be clear that I was never one of them. I didn't know him that well, but from what I saw, he just felt a little off.
Sure, you'd see him around. He was unavoidable, no matter how hard you tried to avoid him. The kind of guy who'd tell these jokes--but it was like he didn't really get what a joke was. He'd say something ugly and/or cruel about the waitress or Ted's wife and start laughing. A little too hard. For an extra beat or two.
I have heard the rumors, and can't say that he wasn't like some creature from another dimension who was trying to pass for human, but I'm not sure I believe those rumors either. Everybody is entitled to their own alternative facts these days, but in my experience, lizard people usually have a little light behind their eyes. And no offense, but he obviously wasn't some alien from an advanced civilization.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the guy had trouble working the Roku remote, and he never really got the hang of social media. Like, c'mon man, leaven the feed with a little playfulness and poetry, and please lay off THE ALL CAPS SHOUTING. (Spellcheck, annoying as it is, can sometimes be your friend.)
He didn't know how to flirt, if you know what I mean.
Still, you try to be civil. You don't want to go all mean-girl on a bro when you're getting a beer after work, so we'd always make a point of asking if he wanted to come.
We all knew he didn't drink, so the invitation was like what my Scottish buddy Nick calls "a soft goal in injury time." If the guy had been a boozer, there would probably have been more of a discussion about whether we actually wanted to take the chance he'd say yes and join in. Because none of us--even the guys who did kind of like him, and there were a few--wanted to spend much off-hours time with him.
And yeah, I did play golf with him on a couple of occasions.
But you have to understand: I like golf. And I don't play social golf; for me it's all about the shot values and the way that on a sweetly struck ball you can feel that little soft poof on the clubhead, running up through the shaft into your heart.
I play golf with people I can't stand all the time--golfers, as a rule, are the worst--and it doesn't bother me because I'm not out there to chop it up with the boys. I'm out there to make birdies and drink beer, and we've already established that this Trump guy was not someone with whom you could have a beer.
And although I didn't pay much attention to his game, I think we all can agree that the best club in his bag was graphite-shafted and two inches long.
Still, in all fairness, he wasn't the worst stick ever, consistent 230 off the tee with a polite fade, but he was a disaster with anything longer than an eight-iron off the carpet. Some people say he couldn't play dead in a cowboy movie, but the truth is he was just your average mediocre hack carrying a vanity handicap he couldn't play to from the up tees in a one-man scramble on an executive nine-holer. Which is OK, 'cause after all, golf is a hard game.
What was annoying, though, was all his fronting as a one-iron-carrying multiple-club champion.
He's the sort of guy--and I peeked in his bag once, in a weak moment of which I'm not proud--who would wrap X-100 stickers over his soft regular iron shafts. His driver's stated loft was 8.5 but he had it set up to 11 or 12 degrees of loft. And I'm pretty sure he sent the clubhead off to one of those shops that for $200 will shave the face down so you can enjoy an illegal coefficient of restitution. That last part's just speculation, but you know, he seemed like the type.
That's another reason I never liked him.
And what was up with his ties? Do you know? Does Countess Mara make extra-long ones for basketball players or something? Even with his lifts, he hit like what? Maybe 6-foot-1? It's not like he's Kevin Durant. Somebody must have told him those floor-draggers made him look thinner or something.
Whoever it was sure wasn't his friend.
That Muppet doll I mentioned earlier--yeah, it needs a strip of red silk hanging down between its chubby knees. That could sell, couldn't it? Don't you think that could sell?
But come to think of it, I'm not sure he had many friends. Maybe Rudy, for a while. He seemed to get along with Bill OK, but then he jumped ugly with Bill's wife and that was that. Funny though, Ted seemed to like him a lot more after Trump went after his wife. But I don't know that you could call them friends.
Maybe Dennis. Vlad, though I'm not sure that guy really does friendship. I think Kim genuinely hit it off with him, but never really got a read on that duck.
Now Jeffrey, he was a friend back in the day. But that ended badly. A shame all around. I think he kept in touch with Ghislaine in a 50-50 split for a while. I wonder where that crazy chick is now.
I guess I'm being what you kids call "inappropriate." Don't hold it against me, it was just the time when we were raised, back when you wanted something, you could just grab it.
If you were famous.
So basically what I'm saying is, I'd like to help you out, but I just don't have much to say. Like Lindsey and Billy Barr and the Mooch and 50 Cent and Melania and Mikey C. and Little Marco and Eric and Emmanuel Macron and Susan Collins and Chris Christie, I am firmly and irrevocably on Team I Never Liked the Guy.
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