Been watching the Presidents Cup flow by on my television set with the sound down, a lot of the time. Our alternative soundtrack today is brought to you by Boz Scaggs’s Out of the Blues.
Favorite line, from “I’ve Just Got to Know”: I think you want me for conveniency / If I’m wrong please tell me right.
The world, most of it, seems able to flow by and around the Presidents Cup, this biannual sporting curiosity. You don’t have to turn the sound down on it if you’re not watching at all, like most people, lexicographers possibly among them.
It’s being contested in a place we cleverly call “down under,” which sounds dirty, and being way down there puts a whole different meaning to flow, like, how could we expect things like beer, say, to flow the same way when it’s upside down? In any case, flow is not Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2019.
The word of the year is they, which has gone on its pronoun-ular way since before Merriam met Webster and they shared some Reese’s and ale and invented the hyphen and haggled over alphabetical order as we know it.
They, Merriam-Webster, were jovial fellows, and about four pints in they were singing, A before B before C before D / E before F, but hey, what’s the diff?
This year’s word of the year is the they for people who don’t see a need for any specificiticity in their genderishness and have no senses of humor and think when they put their pronouns in their digital signature block that we give a digital fuck. It’s none of our bidness.
they (Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged, Second Edition, p. 1,896): 1. the persons, animals or things previously mentioned: they is the nominative case form, them the objective, their and theirs the possessive, and themselves the intensive and reflexive, of the third personal plural pronoun: for the singular, see he, she and it. 2. people (or a person) generally or indefinitely, as, They say it’s so.
they (Grey Goatee Global Golf Dictionary, Unhinged and Unabashed, First and Only Edition, p. 20): 1. “those” people. 2. the “other team,” as in, Don’t even try, dude, they plays for the other team.
I don’t see how anybody could make a putt in the pressure-cooker of the Presidents Cup with the prospect of T. Woods in full glower waiting behind the 18th green. He is acting, by all accounts, the supportive and trusting mentor, but we know that notwithstanding any smiley-face happy talk he’s not a nice guy.
So the Americans made some putts in the afternoon session today and now are in position to win the Cup tomorrow for Woods, who didn’t compete in either session but instead played captain full-time.
Tiger, the leader. It’s a new view of a guy who even as a member of previous American teams flowed on alone and aloof.
And look who’s leading the fashion competition … the Yankee boys.
Lacoste’s bold red pants were enough to win the day, no matter what else was expressed, and in fact the navy shirts, vests and sweaters made the perfect complement.
It’s USA, 2-1, with the crucial final day left to be contested. The world awaits, except maybe for they who are watching C-Span or Jerry Springer or just about anything else other than the Presidents Cup, which is not, after all, the Ryder Cup.
For the record, my pronouns are “she/he” and “it.” They are pronounced, for conveniency, “shee-it.” Flows right off the tongue.
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