My Sick Mind

Some things take me by surprise. Mostly, because I'm cynical by nature and partly because I'm just surprised. As faithful readers know, I'm a fan of LPGA golfer Paula Creamer . Following golf requires that one pick a "favorite" and when I attend an event or watch on television, I like to have someone to root for. Rooting for Paula is easy because she embodies everything that I imagine athletes to be: Appreciative of her fans, friendly, easy to like and generally a good person. Two years ago, upon meeting her mother on the course at Bulle Rock, I told her that Paula was "my favorite professional athlete." What happened today cemented that belief. As usual, I spent the day walking the course with her group, which included Nichole Castrale and Kristy McPherson. Today, I went to the LPGA Championship garbed in a custom-made Paula Creamer T-shirt (above) and evidently, was the envy of my fellow Creamer followers . To the extent that a local newspaper...

There aren't too many people that I would (a) Drive 60 miles to see (b) walk for 4 hours through the hot sun for and (c) walk 6,596 yards for 4 hours through the hot sun after driving 60 miles to hang with. One of them was playing golf at Bulle Rock today, and even though Paula Creamer couldn't find her putter, it was still a great day for golf. It started early. I watched a few of the Plus three's tee off - Michelle Wie, Lorie Kane and Brittany Lang, then I headed for the best spot on the golf course; the hill that overlooks the 4th hole, 5th tee, 6th green, 7th and 8th holes. It's a great spot that fills up quickly. I sat up there in one of the few shady spots on the course for about 3 hours, until Christie Kerr's group came by, and I followed them back to the ninth hole. Paula Creamer was set to tee off at 2:22. It isn't a lot of fun watching the low end of the leaderboard play through. It reminded me of those NASCAR races where cars that crash early come o...

"I expect some good practice round pictures at least..." - Sparky Duck , June 5, 2007. Well, Sparks old buddy ... I hope the above snapshot qualifies as a good picture! That's me and Paula Creamer after her practice round today. After missing a couple of opportunities to grab the photo, it looked like Paula was heading back to the clubhouse to call it a day, so I quickly commandeered an unsuspecting spectator and gave her my camera and called to Paula, who politely agreed. The poor kid. The day began early. I got to the course at around 9:00am after a little more than an hour drive and shuttle bus. I figured I would walk the course with someone and take in the sights and sounds of my first live golf tournament. What I didn't realize was how accessible the players would be. Once that became obvious, I abandoned my walking idea and spent most of the day hanging at the practice green (between the first tee and the clubhouse) and watching the players wander around and te...

At Rancho Mirage today, Paula Creamer played the 18th hole as though she was playing it to win the tournament, when, in fact, there were 18 more holes to go. The good news, however, is that Lorena Ochoa was wishing that the third round was 16 holes and not 18, as she took a Quad-Bogie on 17 to drop to +1. Paula is second behind Sei Ri Pak going into Sunday's final round at the Kraft Nabisco Tournament. Lorena spit the bit on 17, where a bad drive compounded into bad chips and putts to drop her from a share of the lead to the third group on Sunday. Paula ran a birdie putt on 18 too far past the hole to give her a reasonable shot at par, and dropped a shot behind Sei Ri Pak, who discovered that consistent golf beats almost anything on the course. Rather than enter Sunday with a share of the lead, Paula Creamer opted to go for the outright lead with an ill-advised putt that ran well past the hole on 18. Still, a shot behind isn't the end of the world. Sunday at 3pm EDT, on you...

KAHUKU, Hawaii -- Paula Creamer won the LPGA Tour's season-opening SBS Open on Saturday for her first victory since 2005, handling the whipping wind to hold off Julieta Granada by a stroke. Creamer closed with a 2-under 70 for a 9-under 207 total and earned $165,000 for her third LPGA Tour title. In 2005 as a rookie, she won two LPGA Tour titles and also took two tournaments in Japan. I know, most of you care about this much. But, seeing as how I spent Saturday night watching the tournament, and I get at least 5 page hits a day from Google searches of "Paula Creamer [insert rude reference]" , I figured I owed it at least a brief post. I'm not sure what you expect to find, but here's another web hit for ya. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure how they get here to begin with. I suppose her name comes up in the same post as the words "hairy", "nude", "up-skirt" or "armpits". I really can't imagine how, but you know ...

Where have I been? The world spins, the oil still leaks, the Phillies play (just don't ask me the scores) and my postman continues to bring bills. Every so often I lose track of things. This week was LPGA tournament week around here. The girls were playing the Shop Rite tournament in Galloway, and I was there for a couple of days walking with Paula Creamer. Sadly, I could not go back today. Partly because of time commitments and partly because it was in the mid-90s with high humidity. I reach my warmth levels quickly. Fortunately though, I do own a television. The men are playing the U.S. Open in Pebble Beach (a far sight better than South Jersey) and once the LPGA tournament ended I switched over to the men. When you see two tournaments side-by-side like that, the differences in the two games hit you pretty quickly. The girls dress in bright colors with various accoutrement and colorful shoes and things like pink golf balls. The men - not so much. It's still the standard sl...

I had a good feeling about Paula's third round. There was a concert at Ripken Stadium on Saturday night, so our parking/shuttle area was moved to a corporate campus in Belcamp. On the way, I passed a Creamery Lane. An omen? I don't know. It sounded good at the time. She started the day at even par, teeing off at 12:14pm (in the noonday sun, as they say) and it was a challenge for her to stay there, and it wasn't until the 16th that she got into negative numbers with an elusive birdie putt. She managed to finish the day at one-under par, but it will be an uphill (if not impossible) battle to win with so many players ahead of her, and the leader at minus 10. So let's reflect on the week so far: FRUSTRATING: The shitty directions to the Belcamp parking area provided by the LPGA. First, they said, "go west on Route 563" but 563 runs North/South (odd numbers, don't-cha-know). It went downhill from there. We're back to good-old Ripken Stadium on Sunday. ...

NAPLES, Florida (AP) - Baseball revenue climbed to $6.075 billion this year, and commissioner Bud Selig envisions an even rosier financial future. "As I told the clubs today, we're on a great high here," Selig said Thursday . Oh, sure you're on a real high, you dumb jackass. The same day that Major League Baseball was announcing their great windfall, Barry Bonds was being indicted on perjury and obstruction of justice. That's a real high. "Pacman" Jones, Bonds, a couple of Penn State football players charged on assault , Marion Jones, Michael Vick, Ricky Williams is in again/out again ... and you wonder why I find the LPGA so appealing. Or maybe you don't? Today , in West Palm Beach, Florida the girls were playing the first round of the ADT Championship where the winners over the season gather to play for 2 million dollars. If it was up to me, I'd give them ten times that much, but we're enamored with juiced-up frauds who lie to Feder...

I stopped at a Havre de Grace 7/11 on my way to Bulle Rock today to buy a few newspapers. As you may remember (you do, right?) I had my photo snapped by a Hartford County newspaper photog while walking the course with Paula Creamer on Thursday. I was figuring they wouldn't print it, with me being from New Jersey and all, but lo and behold (whatever that means) here it was, on page 10 of The Record (serving Havre de Grace, Aberdeen, Perryville and Port Deposit): It beat the Hell out of the story on page three of the Aberdeen man who was killed while trying to cross Route 40. I took a shuttle bus. Meanwhile, on the course today, I had another opportunity to enjoy the company of Paula's mother Karen. I wanted to tell her how impressed I was with her daughter's kindness toward me on Thursday, and she remembered meeting me the past couple of years on the course. We chatted and walked the course with Paula in the mid-June Maryland heat. The morning started off promisingly, w...

Paula Creamer's bag in the foreground while Paula putts during the Pro-Am at Seaview Country Club on Thursday.  Photo by me. Two of the least spectator-friendly sports are taking place locally this weekend. One, the Shop Rite LPGA Classic , has been going on for a week.  The other, the 28th running of the Philadelphia International Championship , takes place on Sunday.  It has changed sponsors more than most people change their heater filters.  So much so that I had to look it up.  It probably should have been called the "International Championship" from the beginning.  CoreStates bank and whatever other institutions lent their name to it had nothing to do with cycling. Golf is a goofy sport to follow.   The courses are usually in the back woods somewhere, which means that spectators have to shuttle-bus in, as though they were being taken to another world - which is the reality. Golf courses were made for golf, not for watching ...

With the best of intentions, I woke up at 4:30am and was out the door by 5:30, but a navigational cock-up sent me east instead of west and what should have been a 90-minute trip to Bethlehem, PA took more like 120 minutes. So, I was a little late for Paula's 7:55 tee time. Thanks to my Garmin Nuvi, I was able to get help navigating through Allentown and around the Lehigh University campus where they had us park for the shuttle bus. I'd probably still be driving around looking for the golf course otherwise. She started on the 10th hole, so I managed to pick her up at 14. She was playing with Lorena Ochoa, so the Mexican Army was out in force and the galleries were huge. Much larger than anything I'd seen at Bulle Rock. They figure to be as large tomorrow, when their tee time is 1:25pm. All that means is that I'll be there until at least 5:30 and it will be warmer. Such is life. Saucon Valley is a nice place. Nestled in the Saucon Creek watershed , it's picturesque,...

Sometimes I post something that I think is weak, and I can't wait until the next time I get a coherent thought so I can post something new and put the ugliness behind me. Other times, I post something that I figure I could die the next day and have it be the last thing I say and be happy with it. Such was the case Monday . Now, I find myself in the unenviable position of having to post something equally as interesting today. It ain't gonna happen. I got a Tweet from Paula Creamer . I know, big deal, but with 3,800 followers, to pick me out to thank "for being such a great fan" was pretty cool to read. She's so awesome, it's hard to explain. Big Daddy Graham posted a link to the rant I did about music a few days ago. Also pretty cool. A web site called Shine (from Yahoo) offers tips on " How not to be humiliated when dining alone " as though it is humiliating to be dining alone. Humiliated? Really. We are supposed to be offended somehow when we ar...

Harry Hartounian was Navin R. Johnson's gas station boss in the movie The Jerk . When the new phone books arrived, Navin ran around the lot yelling, "The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!" Harry looked on incredulously and proclaimed, "I wish I could get that excited about nothing." Now it's your turn. The LPGA is playing their first major of the year. Paula Creamer came back from a first round 1-over par to tie for the lead in the second round, against the best woman golfer in the world right now... RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) Lorena Ochoa and Paula Creamer stared over the water to a peninsula green on the par-5 18th hole at a different point in their rounds and a different time of day in the Kraft Nabisco Championship. And while they reached different conclusions Friday, they wound up in the same position atop the leaderboard . So, OK ... It isn't as exciting as a new phone book, but right now, it's all I have. By the way, ...

This coming weekend may be a Top 5 Weekend of the Year. The weather is getting just a bit warmer, the birdies are chirping, the basketballs bouncing and the bats and clubs a-swinging. On the hardwood, we get the NCAA tournament cranked up again. I checked the futures sheet I brought back from Las Vegas in January. Georgetown was 40 to 1 to win the tournament. The biggest long shot of the 4. The others were in the 6 to 1 range, with Florida a 9 to 2 favorite to repeat. How much you want to bet that there are some vacationers from the D.C. area who may have laid down a shekel or two on their alma mater? The LPGA is cranking up their first major of the year, The Kraft-Nabisco deal at Mission Hills in California. It used to be called the Dinah Shore, but they took her name off in 2000. It's the one where the winner will jump in the lake at 18 on Sunday. I think it's the only sporting event where the winner jumps in a lake, if you don't count diving. Annika is having ...

My week off from work is winding down. Today was spent in Maryland at the Bulle Rock golf course watching the LPGA McDonald's Championship (presented by Coca Cola). After two straight late-nights at Dave Matthews shows (and yes, I did think of you ), I couldn't wait to get up at 6am and drive 65 miles to walk 6,630 yards (3.76 miles) with my favorite athletes - particularly Paula Creamer, whom I walked the course with today. Paula missed at least 4 easy birdie putts on the first 7 holes and I think her first inclination was to heave her putter into the lake, but she still had 11 holes to play. She finished one-under par. Paula's group was finished around 2:00pm, and I had the chance to go back out and walk the back 9 with Lorena Ochoa, Morgan Pressel and Karrie Webb, but I needed to get back to do my Thursday night 28-mile bike ride with the shop group - and my feet hurt. I know. The good news is that I'm going back on Friday, and since Paula's group teed off ea...

This was the forecast on Yahoo weather today: Tonight: A few passing clouds. Tomorrow: Sunshine along with some cloudy intervals. Tomorrow night: A few clouds from time to time. Sunday: Times of sun and clouds. Passing clouds, a few clouds, times of sun and clouds ( my favorite ) and cloudy intervals. It's impossible for them to be wrong. I'm telling you, the guys at the National Weather Service are on a break and the interns are filling in. Check the men's room. 2 meteorologists, no waiting. Weather forecasters must wash their hands before returning to work. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that my girl, Paula Creamer shot a first-round 60 at the Jamie Farr Classic. Yes, that Jamie Farr. Besides Annika's record 59 a few years ago, it's the lowest round of any LPGA player. Only 4 other LPGA golfers have shot a round of 60. Nice going, kiddo. When I was in Maryland last month I saw someone walking around with a shirt styled after a sports jersey. The name...

Paula Creamer won her second tournament of the 2007 season - The Mitchell Company LPGA Tournament of Champions. Don't ask me what The Mitchell Company does. I hope it isn't in the oil drilling business or responsible for making fur from baby seals. Not only did she win, but she was 20 under par and won the thing by 8 strokes over somebody named Birdie Kim (really). She would have tied the course record, but she bogeyed the 18th hole on Sunday, her first bogey since the front 9 on Thursday. Choker. As for the scorecard, I don't think you have to be a golfer to appreciate all these little circles. There are 23 of them. [How's that for a scorecard, Sparky ?] The tournament took place in Mobile, Alabama, so it might be a good idea to check on Paula later to make sure she made it home. Thankfully , she gave me something to watch instead of our pitiful Eagles who won also, but at this point, does it matter? As for me , I spent Sunday morning doing something I've never ...

I'd be derelict in my duties as both a fan and a blogger if I didn't mention that my favorite athlete, Paula Creamer , won the U.S. Women's Open on Sunday. It was a popular win with the golf world as well as my world. Since Annika retired and Lorena Ochoa left earlier this season, the search has been on for the next player to dominate the game the way those two did for several years. Would it be Christie Kerr, who won last year's Open and has both the game and the temperament to be the best player on tour? Would it be Suzann Pettersen, who has the talent but not always the fortitude to come through and win when it counts? Or would it be one of the Asian players who seem to have taken the game by storm over the past 5 years? The main reason Paula's victory was so popular is because she is so popular. She has a great attitude toward her fans and seems to be thisclose to winning almost every time she walks on a course. The past few years have been fraught with di...

Try as I might, I couldn't stay away from my favorite form of self-expression. I was watching a special "Friday Night Edition of Monday Night Football" on ESPN, when the sheer absurdity of the title prompted me to turn off the T V and seek refuge here. I ran to the Stat Counter to see how many readers I had today, and I was once again drawn to the methods with which people stumble upon this little portal. Among them: Paula Creamer hairy arm man pours gasoline on wife in t-mobile store Dallas sucks T.O. swallows and, the ubiquitous Cecily Tynan. A suggestion to the web searchers: Use the quotation ma rks. It will narrow down your search, since I'm quite sure I've never written about Paula's arms nor a T-Mobile gasoline incident. As far as Cecily is concerned, there seems to be a lot of interest - almost all of it somewhere in the greater Philadelphia region, so I can't help but wonder if it's one of her "people" checking to see what the Blogo...

Those crazy attorneys over at Lord, Bissell & Brook must have a lot of spare time. One of my latest hits came from a Google search titled "Paula Creamer's feet" which, sadly for the searcher, turned up a post, aptly titled My cat's feet smell like cat litter , a paraphrase of a quote from Springfield's Ralph Wiggum. The post had something to do with Don Imus and Beatles songs, with nary a mention of Ms. Creamer's pes , or anything above her Talus, either. It got me to thinking [oh, that again] about all the crap that people must have to sift through to either (a) figure out that they hit a dry well and should just stop reading, or (b) continue to the end just in case there's some wacky reference from out of nowhere. Mostly, it's "a". So, to all those poor souls who go out in search of those elusive Alycia Lane bikini pics, the Koreans who come here in search of the Big Ass and all my "no referring link" pals who wander over c...