I spent some time at the golf shop earlier this evening. I was getting my clubs re-shafted for the second time this year due to my increased swing speed.
After I had dropped my bag with the shaft master, I decided to try out a few drivers in the simulator just for fun. Naturally, it was a masculine stripe show. A crowd gathered, and I began to feed off the energy of all the masculine guys admiring my form. My hips thrusted hard, powering the engine of my stroke as I nuked ripper after ripper with a PING G430.
“Why can’t you hit it like he does?” I overheard a woman ask her boyfriend in a hushed tone, “he’d outdrive you with a 7 wood.” After I finished up and the crowd dissipated, I couldn’t help but notice that same young couple was next in line for the simulator. It turned out he was there for a fitting because he couldn’t hit a driver over 200 yards and needed to get a senior shaft on his driver.
He could barely look at me as I walked past, clearly emasculated by my performance. I couldn’t help but notice that he had a photo of Rory McIlroy as his phone background. Since he had outed himself as a beta male, I decided to have a bit of fun with him. “You might want to skip right to the ladies' shafts, son. I think the seniors will still be too stiff for you,” I said, looking at his girlfriend with a twinkle in my eye. To my surprise, she responded. “I hope your woman realizes how good she has it,” she said playfully.
I told her I was happily unshackled, and her tone of voice changed. It became abundantly clear that she was infatuated with me. Normally, this amuses me, but this time, it was different. I felt pity for this man.
“So, you’re telling me that having a man who can hit bombs off the tee is what cranks your tractor?” I asked. She said yes. “All right, let’s make it happen,” I said.
I walked past her into the simulator and put my arm around her boyfriend's shoulder. “I’m going to turn you into a man today. No more Rory McIlroy. No more soy lattes. You need someone to show you the way, and it’s your lucky day.”
I lined up behind him and began walking him through the basics of the golf swing. Demonstrating everything from hand placement to rotation to the hips. Just a few minutes later, he was hitting the ball 50 yards further and significantly more straight than he was before.
We worked up a bit of a sweat throughout the course of reshaping his swing, so I suggested we head out and grab a cold domestic and keep talking about his game. “Oh, I’d love to, but I rode here with my girlfriend,” he said. I shook my head and told him, “That was your first mistake. Let’s ditch the hen and head out. I’ll give you a ride home.”
We snuck out the back door and jumped in my truck. I started it up and then looked him in the eye and said, “Have you ever been to Hooters?”
Abandoned Blockbuster, location unknown.
A brief history of the rise and fall of the media giant and the ensuing Netflix takeover.
For almost two decades, Blockbuster was the go-to spot on Friday nights for families around the world. At its peak, it had 9,000 stores. However, by 2010, it had gone bankrupt. So, what happened to the video rental giant?
In 1997, Reed Hastings, the future founder of a fledgling company called Netflix, went to a movie store to return the movie "Apollo 13" and was hit with a $40 late fee. This incident, among others, sparked his idea for Netflix.
By 2000, when Netflix was still in its infancy, Hastings flew to Dallas to propose a partnership to Blockbuster CEO John Antioco and his team. The idea was for Netflix to run Blockbuster's brand online, while Blockbuster would promote Netflix in its stores. However, Hastings was laughed out of the room.
Ten years later, Blockbuster was out of business, and Netflix is now worth over $200 billion. It's easy to wonder what Antioco was thinking, but the answer isn't that simple.
Antioco, the Blockbuster CEO, was a competent executive who had doubled the company's revenue during his tenure. At the time Hastings approached Blockbuster, it had thousands of retail locations, millions of customers, massive marketing budgets, and efficient operations. Blockbuster dominated the competition, while Netflix was just a blip on the radar.
However, there was a major weakness in Blockbuster's model that wasn't clear at the time—the late fees. Blockbuster earned an enormous amount of money from late fees at its stores worldwide. Penalizing its patrons turned out to be its Achilles' heel.
Netflix, on the other hand, could cut out retail locations, lower costs, and offer a much greater variety of titles. Customers could subscribe instead of renting, and they could watch videos for as long as they wanted without worrying about returns. By the time Antioco and the company realized this, it was too late.
The 2023 Mountaineers will forever be the Big 12 Champions, the first in program history!
Plenty accomplished so far this season with more still to come!
#HailWV
Dak Prescott gave away the ball twice in the narrow loss to the 49ers, in a matchup the Cowboys had a chance to win if they didn’t again generate self-inflicted wounds.
#DALvsSF | #DallasCowboys