Special to Page 2
TROON, Scotland -- Live from the British Open, it's the fourth annual EuroCooler.
You know how it is in Europe: Everything you're used to is just a lit-tle bit off.
The Diet Coke has a slight, barely detectable, taste difference.
Houses have an unidentifiable, yet consistently different, smell to them.
And Chinese restaurants pop up in the middle of Scottish seaside villages -- odd, because at no point in your travels, walks through town or pub crawls, will you actually see a Chinese human being in Scotland.
So forgive me if EuroCooler's gags are just a lit-tle bit off.
You'd understand if you experienced the Kafka-esque travel horrors endured by Yours Truly and my buddy, Billy Nick. Sparing you the gruesome details, suffice to say it included: A missed connection from Chicago to Glasgow, a missed connection from London to Glasgow, missing bags for both parties, laptop meltdowns, unusable pay phones and a three-hour wait under the fluorescents at baggage claim -- at which point, I was in a Scottish remake of "The Terminal." Might as well have taken up residence at Glasgow Airport. Squatted, even. I could live off Kit Kat bars, Pringles and lemon Fanta, the food currency of Europe.
This is the second year in a row that Billy Nick and I have been crushed by the Travel Gods. Faithful readers will recall last year's EuroCooler, which chronicled the 15-hour traffic jam in southeast England. I gotta drop Billy Nick as a British Open roomie. The guy has the Travel Karma of Steve Martin in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles."
The good news is, the American dollar is making like a 98-pound weakling these days, having sand kicked in its face by the British pound. We're losing this one, like, two to one. Blowout City. It completely messes with your head. I had a nice dinner Saturday, got the bill for 22 quid and thought: Not bad! I happily paid up, and tipped big. I roll like that.
Only later did it dawn on me that it was over 40 American clams for the grub. I got jobbed. I wanted to return to the restaurant and shake down the waiter for 60 percent of that tip back.
The exchange rate can crush you. You fly through the grocery store, slinging goods in the cart: four-pack of John Smith's Extra Smooth for 5.99? Sweet! Box of Cocoa Pops for 4.00? Righteous.
Only later, when you pay 55 quid and realize you only have a few cans of John Smith's Extra Smooth, a box of Cocoa Pops, some Pringle's and some toilet paper to show for it, do you realize how badly you've been hosed.
I hate to think how the exchange rate will treat Tiger and Phil at Troon this week. I can see the scene in the scorer's trailer: R&A Official (counting): 3 on 16, 4 on 17, 4 on 18 ... OK, Mr. Woods, you shot 69. (Official whips out calculator.) Given our current exchange rate, you just officially shot 135. Best of luck tomorrow. You're only 66 shots behind the leader. All the best, then. Right-o. Cheerio now. Next!
On, then, to the EuroCooler Weekend List of Four (Exchange Rate cost me an item. Apologies):
1. Ode to the Cart Girl
Don't get me wrong. I love Europe. Great chance to get away, see another culture, spread your wings and go to bars where Light Beer isn't even an option. I'm serious. Not even on the radar screen. It would be a moral violation to order a Coors Light over here, and you'd run the risk of getting your butt kicked by a Millwall F.C. soccer fan. Of course, a Millwall F.C. soccer fan would want to kick your butt anyway, just for the sake of kicking random butt. But that's beside the point.
But I do have one beef: Where's the Cart Girl?
This all came up as we played a twilight round of golf on Sunday, here in the Land of the 10 p.m. sun. The golf was great, the evening sun strong as it hung over the Irish Sea, and all was well. Except one thing: We were dying for a Cart Girl.
They don't do Cart Girls in Scotland. Here in the Home of Golf, they must consider it an impure act against the game. But I ask you: What can be impure about a chesty young maiden who skippers a giant cart packed with beer and Snickers on ice around a golf course, bringing refreshments to the golfer hard at work on his craft?
I say to you, there is nothing impure about it.
Beer! Frozen Snickers! More beer! And did I mention the Chesty Young Maiden thing?
As pure as Old Tom Morris's swing, I say. (And I hear he had a seriously hot daughter who easily could have manned the cart at Prestwick in the 1862 Open Championship.)
Anyway -- something to think about, Scotland. Consider it dropped in the Suggestion Box.
2. British Radio
Maybe it's because I'm overseas and everything seems more exotic, but it hit me: British radio trumps American radio.
One reason: Lack of Format Dogma.
In America, stations are tethered to a format, for better or worse.
Hey, you're listening to the Classic Oldies 99.1; and after the break, we've got some Rolling Stones, some Who, some Beatles, I'm going to dig deep for some Creedence Clearwater Revival and, if you're caller No. 99.1, you get a chance to win a holograph of Jim Morrison's grave ...
Or ...
That's the No. 1 Nashville hit, "Kill Me Some Foreigners" here on Country 101.1 FM. After the break, it's a Tanya Tucker-Dolly Parton in-studio mud wrestling contest, to be decided by our in-studio guests, Tracy Lawrence, George Jones and Toby Keith ...
Here's the deal in the U.K.:
Got in the rental car. Fired up the engine. Heard, in order:
And as if that sequence didn't tip the ends of the Insane Variety Scale, the station backed up the noon news with a double-dip of Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate," washed down with Stevie Wonder's "I Was Made to Love Her."
The only thing missing was Maxine Nightengale's "Get It Right Back to Where We Started From," one of recorded music's most underrated tunes.
But no bother. I was in pure bliss, enjoying the unpredictability.
Now, take issue with the Britney tune, yes. Wonder, if you must, about the musical street cred of the underrated R&B-songsters New York City. (But you're missing out; trust me.) Sneer, if that's your thing, at Kool and the Gang.
All I'm saying is this: The tunes, heard one after another as one drives on the left side of the road through a land of rolling hills, gray skies and grazing sheep, provides one trippy and potent audio cocktail.
3. Say Cheese!
Have to love Scottish pubs. The denizens are wholly unafraid to get in touch with the guilty pleasure of Total Cheese. (And from a Saturday night survey of the thick-ankled, dairy-fed lasses of Troon, unafraid to say "More cheese, please" on the ham-and-cheese sandos at lunch hour.)
DJs pump Eurobeat disco tunes, and the denizens bop their heads in Eurobeat rhythm while mixing in Jell-O shots. Karoake bars thrive like opium dens in 1920s China. And, failsafe, there's a summer hit on the radio with a ludicrous hook that gets an entire pub singing. This year, the chorus of said tune sounds like a bird-call, or the sound a lunatic makes upon his jailbreak from a sanitarium. I don't know the tune, and I still can't get it out of my head.
When I lived in Ireland in 1992, the runaway summer hit was a pop-punk tune called "Where's Me Jumper?" by the long-forgotten Sultans of Ping. It's an entire song about a guy losing his sweater at a disco.
European pop music culture -- wholly unafraid to immerse itself in kitsch.
4. A Lifeline!
How much smaller the global village has become in the last 10 years! It's wild. When I lived in Dublin in '92, pre-Internet, I used to die for Giants scores. SkySports wasn't its robust self yet, and the idea of actually broadcasting ballgames -- as they do now, late at night, live from the States (we had Cubs-Cardinals last night) -- was as ludicrous as a Tony Blair-George W. Bush alliance.
To get my Giants' fix in '92, I'd loiter in the newspaper section of Eason's on O'Connell Street in downtown Dublin, ignore the enormous sign that read "DON'T READ PAPERS UNLESS YOU'RE BUYING;" and in one deft, Bruce Lee-like motion, would swoop down to the International Herald Tribune rack, peel back the last page, get a quick read on the linescore from Candlestick Park from two days ago, then dash for the door as Eason's security fired stun-gun darts at me.
Now? It's an embarrassment of sports riches over here. I'm fresh off of watching the John Deere Classic, live, from Illinois. Caught the playoff between John Morgan and Mark Hensby. Hell, I wouldn't watch the damn John Deere Classic if I were at home! But because it's there, and because this American-British TV sports alliance is so flush, I bask in it.
Can't wait for some late night "World's Strongest Man" competitions.
I have plenty of cans of John Smith's Extra Smooth to keep me company, too.
Brian Murphy of the San Francisco Chronicle writes every Monday for Page 2.