Fantasy Golf: Tampa Preview and Why Going to the Rihanna Concert is Good for Your Marriage

We need a rating scale for the level of devotion a man has to his wife based on the concerts he is willing to attend with her (just bear with me on this one) and it can only apply to concerts. Going to movies like Beaches, Steel Magnolias and anything from the Twilight series aren't as telling because the tickets are a fraction of the cost, the time commitment is less and there are rarely parking hassles. Not to mention, if a movie is that unwatchable, you can always sleep through it. You get a little more credit for attending chick-driven Broadway musicals like Mama Mia and Chicago but frankly, those usually end-up being pretty entertaining and the theatre crowd is generally tolerable as long as you steer clear of anyone in a beret and/or a turtleneck. Concerts, however, are work and if you're down on (as opposed to "down with") the performer, they're as bad as Walmart on Black Friday. But some are worse than others and for that, we "need" a scale. 

Oh my God that leg literally
stretches up to heaven.

It should run from 1-10 with a 1 being a show that you would never think to see on your own but that you don't find immediately objectionable when it's first pitched to you. For me, this was the Black Eyed Peas which I actually ended-up enjoying because (a) it turns out that I already knew and liked some of their songs, (b) will.i.am's medley included Don't Stop Believin' for which I am always a sucker and, most importantly, (c) we saw them in Baltimore where nothing except Crack the Sky concerts and monster truck shows sell-out so we spent most of the show five feet from the runway watching Fergie redefine the word "strut" for the better part of two and half hours. 

A 10 on this scale would be a show where if your wife said, "we're going to this together or it's over," you'd say, "all I want is my golf clubs, my car and the 60" plasma." This concert would have to be so bad that the only reason your wife would even ask you to go would be because you did something so wrong that it would elicit a response from Homer Simpson along the lines of "man, that's messed-up." The performer that immediately jumps to mind as a 1 on this scale is Justin Bieber.** If you get home from work one day and your wife says, "great news, I just scored us two floor seats for Justin Bieber on StubHub for only $825 each," you're going to need to stifle your initial response of "what the f--k?!?" and quickly pivot to a more attractive commitment that you previously had scheduled for that night like an appendectomy. 

What does all of this have to do with anything? Well tonight I will be in attendance at the second show of Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour. So the question is, where does the Rihanna concert fall on our devotion scale? Well the picture below alone means that it's not a 10*** for the same reason that seeing Madonna in her prime wouldn't have been a 10 (though it's creeping that way with each passing year . . . emphasis on the word "creeping"). I expect the production value to be pretty strong and the crowd should be relatively young and predominantly female so that's two more in the plus column. If I'm breaking this down honestly, that probably means I'm looking at something in the range of a 3.**** To put that into perspective, here is the complete scale based on my limited knowledge of current pop music:

Don't underestimate the train
wreck potential for these two.

1 - Black Eyed Peas
2 - Britney Spears 
3 - Rihanna
4 - Madonna (circa 1993)
5 - Justin Timberlake
6 - Beyonce
7 - Maroon 5
8 - Madonna (circa 2012)
9 - John Mayer
10 - Justin Bieber    

I actually think a Britney Spears show would have enough unintentional comedy value to make it bearable and I'd be very curious to see what her 2013 concert crowd would look like. Just one guy in a cut-off flannel shirt dropping his facade and going full trance dance during Womanizer would make it all worthwhile. You can add Coldplay somewhere in that 7-8 range and put the Jonas Brothers alongside Justin Bieber. You'd have to shoot me with a tranquilizer dart to get me to one of those shows and even then I would count on my subconscious to roll me out of the back of the van and into the safety of a drainage ditch until I came to. Any other ideas for this list? Email them to the FGR here and I'll follow-up with something more comprehensive later (says the guy who still hasn't published the second half of the Super Bowl Timeline as of March 12th). 

There's really no easy way to segue into fantasy golf picks from this topic but I'll give it a shot. Ummmm . . . check-out these fantasy golf picks. They're really cool.       

The Overall Top Five

Explain to me again why strip clubs get a bad rap. 

1. Jason Dufner
2. Adam Scott
3. Webb Simpson
4. Sergio Garcia
5. Luke Donald

One and Done Top Five

1. Jason Dufner
2. Webb Simpson
3. Sergio Garcia
4. Luke Donald
5. Jason Day   

Cadillac Report Card: B

1. Charl Schwartzel - 16th
2. Graeme McDowell - 3rd
3. Steve Stricker - 2nd
4. Justin Rose - 8th
5. Matt Kuchar - 35th
6. Luke Donald - 43rd
7. Adam Scott - 3rd
8. Hunter Mahan - 25th
9. Nick Watney - 49th
10. Tiger Woods - 1st

I seem to be developing quite a knack for picking the guy who catches fire on Friday and Saturday only to go down the tubes on Sunday. This week it was Charl Schwartzel who came up as short as his first name with a closing round 75. That was the highest Sunday score of anyone in the top 20 besides Bubba Watson and, in a related story, the top two picks on one of my two fantasy teams this year were Bubba and Charl. To make matters worse, my one and done picks for the week were Charl and Nick Watney who shot 77-74 on the weekend and appears to be dragging his slump into year number two (more on this in the FGR Rankings Update later this week). Meanwhile, Tiger is starting to look freaky comfortable on his favorite courses again as he is now the defending champ at Torrey Pines, Doral, Bay Hill, Muirfield and Congressional. Unfortunately, they didn't play a major at any of those courses over the last twelve months so for me, the jury is still out.

Endnotes

* This whole thing started as a simple endnote and then it got away from me to the point where it took over the entire post. Sorry for the lack of golf analysis but (a) it's not like we're previewing the British Open this week (last year this tournament was named after the modern version of Ambervision sunglasses), and (b) I'll make it up to you later in the week with a comprehensive FGR Rankings Update.

** Don't confuse this with taking your kids to a Justin Bieber concert which is a completely different animal as evidenced by the fact that I've seen the Wiggles in concert more times than I've seen my favorite band of all-time (The Who). I will add that, after seeing the Wiggles four times over a six year span, it's pretty clear that, whether you're trashing hotel rooms with Keith Moon or Wags the Dog, life on the road takes its toll. 

"OK Boys and Girls, who can tell me
what's in a Long Island Iced Tea?"

*** In case you were wondering, the band that gets a 10 on the female version of this scale is Rush. I've been to two Rush concerts in the last two years and I've only seen seven women at both shows combined. The sound of Geddy Lee's voice is apparently a taste only men can acquire . . . kind of like the taste of beef jerky and malt liquor.    

**** A 3 actually defeats the whole point of this exercise which was to build me up as a devoted husband for not only buying the tickets but agreeing to go. Doh!