It was a brutal game of drought-fried mini golf. My scorecard was filling up with laughably high numbers when my
attention turned to the Top 40 crackling over the weather- and
fidelity-proof speakers. Was this dreck affecting my game? I wanted to win.
The speakers began blaring music from the 80s, and more paranoid thoughts sprouted. It was making me lose. Those minigolf people are playing 80s music to taunt me. They're calling me old.
Then I had a stroke. Of genius--I'm not that old. Maybe what I needed wasn't
skill (actually, that would have helped), but my very own corrosive soundtrack to demoralize
my opponent. I'd play innocent-seeming music that would waft its way into the subconscious, and defeat the
enemy from within.
Because it would kill me to lose to the 10 year old I was playing.
A truly successful playlist, I reasoned--or hallucinated, I'm not sure which: it was very hot--a truly devious playlist should conjure an
endless series of mis-hits; physics-defying bad luck; deflating searches for golf balls; and the inevitability of defeat. My Golf Playlist (of Doom) would sound like
this:
- Cups/You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone - Anna Kendrick
- Walk 500 Miles - The Proclaimers
- Heartache Tonight - The Eagles
- The Bitterest Pill - The Jam
- Where Are U Now - Skrillex & Diplo With Justin Bieber
- Over the Hills and Far Away - Led Zeppelin
- Defying Gravity - Idina Menzel
- Crying, Waiting, Hoping - The Beatles
- Living on a Prayer - Bon Jovi
- You Can’t Always Get What You Want - Rolling Stones
- Story of My Life - One Direction
- Best Thing I Never Had - Beyonce
- I'm a Loser-The Beatles
- I Fall to Pieces - Patsy Cline
- I Swear - All-4-One
- Help - The Beatles
- Another One Bites the Dust - Queen
- Desperado - The Eagles
- Good Riddance - Green Day
- I Knew You were Trouble - Taylor Swift
- Here, There, and Everywhere - The Beatles