Training Program

So my girlfriend Joan wanted another female friend to fish with because I go with the guys too many times without taking her with me. Her friend Kelly grew up in Darby, moved away, and moved back again. She never learned to fly fish, but after hearing Joan talk about how fun it was, she wanted to give it a try.

Joan asked me if I would teach Kelly how to cast, which I was more than glad to do because there ought to be more women on the river. Among other things they improve the scenery.

I gave her the basics – you cast the line not the fly. Strength isn’t required; timing is. With the proper motion, the rod will bend, and when it unbends it does all the work for you. You have to wait for the line to straighten out and bend the rod before you can make it unbend. Moving the rod forward doesn’t make the line go forward; stopping the rod does.

You can’t pile too much technical stuff on a beginner because they can only take in a certain amount in one session. If you let them play around and feel happy about it, they’re more likely to want to do it again.

Once I got her comfortable with how the rod worked and what she was trying to achieve with the casting motion, I told her to practice for 15 minutes a day, 4 days a week. I told her how a repetitive training program was important to help build muscle memory, which would make it so she would develop a consistent motion and not have to think about the mechanics every time she cast.

To thank me for the lesson, Kelly took me and Joan out to supper at a fancy steakhouse. We ate big juicy rib eyes and drank a bottles of Cabernet. I felt like a real VIP.

That got me to thinking.

Different folks have different ideas on what it means to be treated like a VIP. Take fer instance the feller who went to Voyeur, a club in West Hollywood, and got the Republican National Committee to pick up the tab.

He was part of the RNC Young Eagles program, which means that he’s under 45 and he gives way too much money to the GOP. I guess he figured that they owed him a relaxing night on the town after all the backbreaking donating he’d been doing.

On Voyeur’s website, the place is described as “an intimate lounge that will draw guests into a provocative enclave where art, festivities, and entertainment converge in a sophisticated setting unlike any other.” Sounds very elegant and mature, refined and classy…the perfect spot to discuss politics over a glass of brandy.

It turns out that the type of art, festivities and entertainment that’s converging here is women in masks and leather undies with whips, dancing around topless on stage. Folks who’ve reviewed the club online have described the half-naked women hanging in nets suspended from the ceiling who occasionally whip anybody who isn’t keeping a sharp eye out.

Couples in bondage gear simulate S&M activities inside of glass boxes, and one gal wrote about two women pretending to have oral sex inside a see-through case in the middle of the ladies’ room. I wonder what a girl has to have on her resume to get a job like that.

There’s a line out front, but you can get around that if you’re a good looking woman or a man who’s willing to sit at a table that’s got a drink minimum. But it isn’t a one drink minimum; it’s a one bottle minimum for every two people. Some folks said that they spent $800 to $1,100 dollars per bottle.

Of course the RNC fired the leader of the Young Eagles program who approved the $1,946 tab. They made it clear that they don’t approve of using committee money at places like that. They assured us that everyone was sufficiently outraged. The Republican Party stands for morals and family values.

Now if you want to spend your own money at that sort of establishment, well that’s a different story. After all, the GOP hasn’t exactly been without scandal – with Republican elected officials being accused of soliciting gay sex in airport bathrooms or taking state funds to fly to Brazil to meet with a mistress (to name a couple of recent examples).

If you think about it, the whole Voyeur incident isn’t uncommon behavior at all for Republican leaders. In fact, you could look at the whole thing as a training program for aspiring young eagles.

I don’t know, I guess I think too hard about these things.

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