iRon Man

They say that a lot of business usually takes place on the golf course. That’s probably true, but in my case it’s more like monkey business. At our newspapers we receive a lot of invitations to golf tournaments. I get asked to many of them, which I would accept but for one thing: I suck at golf.

Seriously, I play maybe once every two or three years. That’s mostly because I’ve been banned from golf courses as my stray drives have caused much damage to surrounding buildings and human beings.

I think I just never had the discipline, and really wanted to drive the golf cart more than I did that little white ball. But this past Kamehameha Day I was asked to play in a HECO golf tournament benefitting Aloha United Way. I twisted the arms of two of my co-workers, “Hot Air” columnist Steve Murray and calendar editor Nicole Kato.

We were paired up with another “three-man” team. I prayed it would be with no one I knew so as not to embarrass myself. The Lord must have turned his iPhone to silent. We were paired with two captains of industry and the expresident/CEO of HECO, Michael May. Of course lucky for me, the bigger they are, the nicer they are, and so our partners were totally gracious.

I did my best not to make a fool of myself and stayed on track until the second-to-the-last hole. Mike May was teeing up and I sat on my cart when suddenly I pocket-dialed my iTunes music player. On it I had Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 popular songs of all time. It was set on random play, so this is what came blaring out just as Mr. May was taking a swing: The Bee Gees’ song How Deep Is Your Love.

The thing is, I could not shut the darn thing off. Needless to say, his drive went off course. I apologized profusely, and being the good guy that he is, he simply joked with me about it. I suppose it could have been worse. My daughter’s Justin Bieber download Baby could have gone off.