Mike O'Connell

When you’re a white guy who doesn’t go in for political correctness you might be stumped for things to do on Martin Luther King Day. Personally I think your best bet is just to lay low, say nothing, and enjoy the day off. Me, I’m going to be catching up on some old (when I say old I mean like a few months old) TV shows that have caught my attention and interest recently.

Not long ago, and after much delay, I got back into watching BoJack Horseman on Netflix and I must say that show found itself toward the end of Season One and into Season Two. It’s worth muddling through some subpar episodes in the middle to get to this point, and if you’ve got the time today I say go for it.

Secondly I recommend Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle. Based on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel, Castle presents a post-World War II America in which the Axis powers defeated the Allies. The Empire of Japan administers our West Coast and the Nazis rule the East, with a sort of Wild West neutral zone of resistance existing in the inner regions. It’s compelling stuff, and at least one example that Amazon’s original programming is up to that of Netflix.

Good job, world. Good job.

Dr. King would be proud.

A “local-interest” piece in my local rag this past Sunday noted a bizarre phenomenon occurring these days on Capitol Hill.

Congressional staffers, those college kids and twentysomethings who secretly run the place, are wearing expensive clothes!

Yup, you heard it here first (well, Post first here second), scandal on the Hill, expensive clothes and accessories among Washington’s non-elite.

How can this be? Many of those people aren’t even paid, and the ones who are get laughably-low internship stipends that barely cover sublets in this increasingly-expensive town of ours.

You see (drum roll)… most of those kids have… rich parents!

Gasp.

The author notes the problem. These are the people who run our society. (That’s not a stretch: the idea is to parlay your internship into a full-time gig, and most of them do.) So our pool of applicants to run our society is a group of people with rich parents who don’t really need to work who’ve never earned anything in their lives and don’t mind spending other people’s money.

Yup, that’s the group of people I want to send my tax dollars to.

Spot on, author. So what’s your solution?

Give more money to those interns and junior staffers!

Yeah, with higher salaries, a greater cross-section of people will go for those internships and be able to spend my money for me. Awesome idea.

While we’re at it, why don’t we just pay everybody in Washington more to be fair about it? After all, they’ve got that big money tree there, right? Might as well spread it around a bit.

Awesome.

Just when the holidays are over and the cold weather hits, just when you think there is nothing good or worth looking forward to in this world, there is football, sweet football. Yes, I realize that through the fall there are way more games on every weekend, but this is special. Four highlighted NFL match-ups this weekend followed by the CFP National Championship on Monday night? That’s the football equivalent of March Madness right there.

I’m a bit disappointed that the game I care about most (Redskins vs. Packers) I’ve got to wait around until Sunday night to see, but I think that’s going to make watching it that much sweeter, and keep me interested in all those undercard games they’ve got going on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

Somebody told me there’s some kind of political thing going on in Iowa too.

Whatever.

Reason number one million that following sports is better than following politics.

You’d think that 16 days off in a row from work would be enough, but no, it’s never quite enough, is it?

It’s just never enough.

The thing Tiger Woods has had going for him his whole life is that he is young. He was young when he played golf with Bob Hope on TV, he was young when he won the U.S. Amateur, he was young when he won at Augusta, and he was young when he won five majors, then 10, then 14.

Today Tiger Woods turns 40.

I’ve been a fan of Tiger Woods for 20 years. Since he was, you know… young.

I was young too.

I feel as though Tiger Woods needs me now as a fan, and I’ve written about this before. Tiger Woods is somehow now an underdog, like Tom Brady and LeBron James, Peyton Manning and Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod hit a home run on his 40^th birthday, remember, one of 33 he hit during last year’s turn-around season.

Does Woods have it in him to play at that level again? Maybe not 57 home runs in a season, but 33? My God, it’s golf! String together four good days and you can win when you’re 60.

Woods will likely play a limited schedule this season (doesn’t he always?) following his second back operation in two years. Put that on top of about a dozen knee surgeries, an ACL, MCL, Achilles, “elbow strain,” and various bouts of mental and physical exhaustion, and yeah, I begin to doubt his ability to play competitively again let alone win.

But if anyone can do it it’s this guy, even when he’s 100.

He’s still golf’s number one attraction, even on crutches.

And even when he’s no longer… young.