Alex and Friends go
Mini-Golfing!
On Saturdays, absolutely nothing happens between the
hours of recovering from Friday's hangover (usually 1:00),
and beginning to cultivate the next one for Sunday morning
(usually 9:00). This leaves an entire eight hours time in
which the devil claims our idle hands to use for his evil
workshop. To keep ouselves busy and make sure the devil
doesn't make us commit sin such as murdering the pope or
touching ourselves, we took up our righteous putters and
went mini-golfing for the lord. No, we actually went
mini-golfing because the TV on Saturday is terrible. God
forbid I actually glimpse even a moment of Andromeda
starring Kevin Sorbo.
There's only one place to mini-golf that we knew of because
you can see it from the highway. It was none other than
George Vitense Golfland, a paradise created by the one and
only George Vitense who is likely a professional bowler
with a penchant for golf. Golfland also features a driving
range, par 3 course, "Water Wars", basketball on
trampolines, and a batting cage. Actually, I think George
Vitense was some kind of all-pro fake sports hero. We,
however, decided to stick with the mini-golf. A merry band
we were, consisting of:
Emily, "The Girlfriend"
Alex, "This Guy"
Tom, "The Drunk"
Zaynab, "The Angry Foreigner"
The clubhouse was packed with eager golfers of all shapes
and sizes, most notably round. We shelled out the
outrageous six bucks a pop and argued for a while over who
got what colored ball. Our most important decision of the
day was to decide which course we would play, "California"
or "Wisconsin". We chose California, because Wisconsin is
the wrong answer to anything except "What is the shitty
state to the right of Minnesota?" Ready to rock, we hit the
links.
Now those are some motha-fuckin' golfers. I'm not pictured
anywhere in this article because I took the pictures. Dur.
And so we began our journey into the glorious realm that
was the California course at Golfland. Look at it! It's
beautiful!
It wasn't one of those lame-ass manicured "I wanna be a
real golf course but instead all I am is a glorified
putting green". No sir. Golfland had the full compliment of
Wacky Shit™ neccessary to make the mini-goolf
experience what it truly deserves to be. However, all the
wacky shit was total dilapidated crap. For instance:
That first guy sat ominously on the second hole. What sort
of animal is it? A bear? A lion? The hole already had a
tiger and a bear, so maybe it's a third mystery animal
known only to George Vitense. Second is a picture of the
swirly path your ball could follow if you shot it right on
one of the holes. However, the path was crammed with leaves
and cigarette butts, so we weren't sure if there was a shot
penalty if the ball inevetably got stuck. Last is a fucking
eyeless stuffed hedgehog sitting on a plastic baby-chair.
Welcome to crazyworld (thank you, Truth anti-smoking
campaign).
There were a number of other course decorations that
surprised and delighted us, including, from left to right:
A wooden dog bench with the alphabet written on it, a gnome
cart with rainbow wheels being pulled by a duck, a rainbow
llama-thing, a cement head on a stump, and the "Cooking
Monster". Also delightful but not pictured is the barbed
wire that protects the park from intruders who might want
to play mini-golf for free late at night, or perhaps
defecate on the cooking monster. I have to say though, it
was a surprisingly hard course with a lot of water traps
connected by streams that went through almost every hole.
Every time you hit a ball in the drink, it rode the rapids
and you had to chase it down across the course. And the
water attracted dangerous animals, one of which got a hold
of Tom.
Of course, without totally absurd holes, mini-golf would be
nothing, and Mr. Vitense did not disappoint. There was a
barn you could walk through and slide down the back after
hitting your ball under it (and apparently it belonged to
O.L. McDonald). Therer was also a six-foot model of the
Eiffel Tower to hit your ball through, except it was
covered in rainbows. There was even a hole that was a
mountain you'd hit your ball off then slide down through a
tube.
Hands down, the worst part about the mini-golf trip was the
heat. It had to be nearing the temperature inside one of
the fat-rolls of one of those 200 pound babies you see on
Ricki Lake. Tom golfed shirtless for much of the game, and
unsurprisingly Emily and Zaynab did not. I wore jeans and a
polyester golf shirt. I did this because apparently I am
retarded. We were practically bathing in the water traps,
except me, because I didn't wear sandals. In this picture,
Tom has the right idea.
But the biggest story of the day was the fault of me. So
we're on hole number 10, a.k.a. "Pinwheel". There's a wheel
that spins very fast that is covered in colored dots and
eight balls. Next to the wheel is a gnome-thing labeled
"Jim L." Golfing in front of us were a party of what
appeared to be teen parents who got to work very early, as
the had about seven million children in tow, including a
baby strapped to the teen father's chest.
So here's where disaster strikes. I'm up on the pinwheel
hole, and this wheel is hauling ass. So I decide
(logically!) to whack the ball really hard in order to get
it through this diabolical wheel. And whack it I do. It
goes flying off the ramp, and as I see this happen I turn
away to exclaim "shit". However, the next thing I hear is
tom yelling, "You hit that baby, you asshole!" And so I
did. the symbiotic chest-baby had been clocked by my ball,
but obviously not very hard, because it didn't yell. I
apologized, and we went on our merry way. Oops. And while
hitting babies is funny, the true funny didn't happen until
a few holes later, when we saw this sign:
Hoo boy, was that a good laugh. This sign was in relation
to a hole involving baby hippos, however, the rest of my
golf party insisted it applied to regular babies as well.
Because of this, I ended up in a tie with Tom at 74 strokes
each. Emily had a respectable 76, and Zaynab a dismal 80.
Just kidding, Zaynab. Needless to say, everyone was pretty
tuckered out, except Emily, who looked surprisingly
dignified for sitting on a bench that looked like a
dinosaur.
So after our long, hard day of golf, we went across the
street to the Coppertop Family Restaurant and had us some
eats. It was sub-par food, but had air conditioning.
In all, it was a super-sweet day of extreme mini-golfing
action. One day we'll have to return to attempt the surely
crappier Wisconsin course. And shit, they've got a driving
range. I can't golf for crap, but I do like a good driving
range. Maybe I'll even return for trampoline basketball.
Thank you, George Vitense, for a delightful afternoon. Even
though I'll bet you're probably dead.