1. Every week The New Yorker magazine arrives on Friday or Saturday. It arrived today. For the first time in a long time, I almost immediately plunged into an issue when it got here. I learned more about London's former mayor, Boris Johnson; I read reviews of two television series, When They See Us and Chernobyl; I contemplated Walt Whitman turning 200 years old; I thought about Amy Davidson Sorkin's editorial on tensions between President Trump and Joseph Biden. For many years, I've read the New Yorker to encourage my fantasies of living in New York City and being able to go to plays and musicals, to hear music in clubs, to take in the latest exhibitions at the museums, to dine at different delis, bagel shops, and international eateries, and to follow the footsteps of New Yorker writers after they've written short pieces about observations they've made while strolling in particular areas of New York City. So, today, I read the latest theater reviews and imagined myself going to the musical The Secret Life of Bees and the Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. It was fun.
2. When it comes time to watch the Masters on television in April, I am always of two minds. On the one hand, I love the golf. I love seeing players return every year to Augusta National to confront the challenges of the golf course and I enjoy the many memories I have of past tournaments. Some of golf's most dramatic showdowns have happened at the Masters involving Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, and many others. I cannot imagine ever experiencing again an afternoon as thrilling as when Jack Nicklaus won the Masters in 1986, at the age of 46, shooting a 30 on the back nine, a 65 for the round, coming from at least four shots behind.
On the other hand, this annual tournament is hosted by an exclusive club that has been slow to invite anyone other than white men into its membership. It's a club that asserts authoritarian control over how the tournament is broadcast on television, how those who attend the tournament behave, and how information about the club and its operations is communicated to the public, if it is.
I bring this up because this week's issue of The New Yorker features a draw the curtain back on the Wizard of Oz styled article on the Masters entitled, "Unlike Any Other" written by Nick Paumgarten. (If you'd like to read it, click here and see if it comes up.) I'd call it a snarky article, maybe even a hit piece, that pokes holes in the props and looks behind the artificial scenery we see and the piped in sounds we hear at the Masters on television. The experience of being at the Masters or seeing it on television is a carefully curated and scripted one.
I love theater, so I enjoyed learning about the artifice: how the conditions of the golf course's greens are meticulously controlled by a system of underground pipes and mechanical blowers called Sub-Air; how the sounds of birds are piped into the course; the pine straw is imported, pine cones removed; the azalea blossoms are carefully husbanded so that they will be in full bloom for the tournament. It made me think how common this kind of staging is in our lives in the USA, whether in political gatherings, award shows, or sets of "reality" television. I thought about how any number of us, wealthy, famous, or not, present ourselves in public. It's all about making good appearances.
So upon learning more about the Masters as an event devoted to appearances, controlling people's behavior, coddling the powerful, and sustaining the privilege of wealth, will I stop watching this tournament?
No.
The golfers can't fake it. Within all the artifice and tradition and mythology of the Masters, the players face the authentic challenge of playing Augusta National, making sound decisions, hitting precise shots, confronting history, and dealing with the heat, wind, and rain, elements which not even the Augusta National Golf Club can control.
That, I love.
And, in the same way that I surrender myself to all kinds of artifice, visual trickery, and make believe when I go to see plays or watch movies or look at television, I willingly give myself over to the same when I watch the Masters. I let myself be moved and awed by the springtime spectacle of watching golf at Augusta National.
That, too, I love.
3. Speaking of the rich and powerful, as I fixed myself and enjoyed eating a green curry sauce with chicken and tofu to serve over jasmine rice, I tuned into watching the latest version of the Bronx Bombers, that is, the New York Yankees play the Houston Astros at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees have packed their lineup with powerful hitters. Today their two home runs came from less powerful players, Gio Urshela and Austin Romine, but the Yankees extended their streak of consecutive games hitting a home run to 25, tying a club record set in 1941. I am eager to see if this Yankee team, so powerful at the plate, so stacked to dominate the regular season, will also be a successful team in the playoffs.
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