Today Dickie, Sr. cashed in his annual father/son round-of-golf card.

Yesterday I spent six frantic hours preparing and serving food for the homeless, as well as cleaning up after them and treating them like VIPs, over at the Catholic Worker on Skid Row.

Guess which experience was far more humbling than the other.

There's a reason I play golf only once a year. That's about how much time it takes for me to forget...

See, golf is the one thing in life my dad is better than me at. In all other endeavors, clearly I am the superior being - truly a marvel of evolution at work. Except for being a bit slow mentally and physically, nothing short of an evolutionary marvel. Back off ladies, this one's taken.

But unfortunately I did not receive the drive-a-ball-perfectly-250-yards-down-the-fairway gene from my pops.

Meanwhile, we got matched up with this super-affable Cajun, about my age, fresh from the motherland (Louisiana). The kid was friendly, had a strong drive and a solid game, and was from my dad’s place of origin.

I’m certain they’ve already begun the paperwork to replace me as son.

So, in the spirit of today's humiliation allow me to decree the following: Golf is a very challenging game, requiring natural skill, tremendous focus and concentration, as well as ridiculous hand-eye coordination.

However, Golf is NOT, I repeat NOT a sport.

For the following reasons:

1. 70-year-old men (and women) can continue to excel and whip on 18-year-olds. Clearly, this is not an activity requiring cardiovascular conditioning and weight-training.

And no, walking around in the sun for five hours does not constitute cardiovascular conditioning. If that were true, we would call all those poor migrant workers picking lettuce out in the Central Valley 12 hours a day "super athletes." Golfers are not athletes, plain and simple. They’re talented, but they’re not athletes.

2. They let you drive an electric cart. Need I go on? (OK I will.)

3. Those golf pants that you still see on the greens today. Look, when I’m Supreme Dictator, the first people I’m rounding up and throwing in the soccer stadiums Pinochet-style are gonna be the dudes wearing the plaid and checkered pants. You know, the ones wearing them without any hint of irony. Guards, aim your weapons...

4. I'm not good at it.

In fact, we throw the term “sport” around way too loosely. Making a shih-tzu trot around a circle is not sport. Aiming a bow or a rifle is not sport. And I understand poker’s the new big thing, but anything I can do while drinking five gin and tonics and smoking a full pack of cigarettes at 4am in Vegas should NOT be on the Fox Sports Channel. (I didn’t say I could do it well.)

When I finally invent time travel, the first order of business is to hit Scotland, or wherever, and assassinate the schmuck who invented golf. That said, I still enjoy the opportunities it affords to hang out with Dickie, Sr.

Plus, I thoroughly enjoyed this gem out of the day, taken straight from Frosty’s blog over in Minnesota:

Just got a voice mail from my friend Dickie, who called from the 1st tee of some golf course in SoCal. He said he was "commiserating" with me, while basking in 73 degree weather on one of Cali's beautiful golf courses (OK, so I don't know how nice the course was, but anything with tee boxes and holes with flags in them in 73 degrees in December is beautiful to me).

What a jerk.


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Strap on my awkwardly fitted flight suit and fly me to the deck of the Abraham Lincoln. Mission: Accomplished!