Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Column 422
An Open Letter about DARTS to Kim Jong-un
Dear Jong-un…
Please accept my deepest condolences to you and your family on the death of your father and also my apology for addressing you informally. I mean no disrespect. I write in friendship to ask for an invitation to come to North Korea to introduce you and your country to the international sport of darts.
For most darts players your country is a mystery. We know only what we read and, as you may know, reading is not one of the strong suits of the average competitive arrow man. So some of what I refer to below – which has led me to believe you will appreciate the sport of darts – may be based on information which is inaccurate or has been misinterpreted. I mean no offense.
What I do mean to suggest is that, like you (at least according to press reports), those who enjoy the sport of darts are fiercely competitive, have a distaste for defeat that is the direct inverse of their taste for booze, are good at math, and thrive on the respite from life’s daily pressures and enjoy the camaraderie and just plain fun that go hand-in-hand with the sport.
Some of us even could dribble a basketball as well as you’re rumored to be able before we got old and grey and more adept at dribbling beer on our shirts.
That’s another thing about dart players. We have a sense of humor.
Forgive me for some of what follows.
We have a saying here in the West. Sons who grow up to resemble their fathers and behave much as their father did are often referred to as “chips off the old block.” This is a respectful reference and a source of pride for sons who take after their dads. Those sons who take after their mothers and wear panties and heels are called (sorry, but my wife has requested that I delete the last word of this sentence and I listen to my wife, sometimes).
It has been written that your father was one of Hennessy’s biggest customers, supposedly importing £350,000 worth of the cognac annually. It has been said that your father was one of the world’s greatest golfers having once demolished a par-72 course in just 34 strokes (including five holes-in-one). It is written that he invented the hamburger.
I know that the press has a way of exaggerating and I truly mean no disrespect to your father but if any of this is even close to accurate then you clearly have in your blood the stuff of which great dart players are made. I say this in all seriousness as I personally know the father of a superb young Canadian dart player (named Ringer) who, after drinking a bar dry, claimed to have caught a whale on dime store fishing line, thrown multiple perfect games in a row, and invented sex. His name is Ron Wilcox (and his wife’s a babe).
Although sketchy, the intelligence on you is equally impressive and, as already noted, suggestive that you’d be a natural at darts. It is written that you have degrees in computer science and physics, are a brilliant basketball player, and a fan of kung fu king Jackie Chan and NBA superstars Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. It’s also said that you own one of the premier Nike shoe collections in the world. This is all great stuff and, while some of this may be exaggerated too, if even partly true it is evidence that you have more than just the bloodline to excel at darts.
Math and physics are important to the sport of darts – one has to be able to multiply and subtract quickly (darts is great for teaching children their arithmetic) and without flights a dart will fall to the ground as fast as an airplane without wings. In darts as in basketball or any sport modeling one’s technique after the winning traits of one’s heroes is the stuff from which excellence is crafted. And in darts, as in any highly precise and competitive endeavor, it is one’s intense competitive spirit – that failure is not an option – that is the fabric which separates excellence from mediocrity. Shoes must be worn.
When all else fails and you find yourself on the losing end of a tough match (which you will if you invite me to Pyongyang) you can just pull rank. You’re the head of Workers’ Party Central Committee. You command almost 10 million active, reserve and paramilitary personnel. You have a frickin’ nuclear bomb!
Who the hell am I to argue?
Take a break from consolidating your power, mystifying the rest of the world, and scaring the shit out of the South Koreans and send me an invitation. Have some fun.
You bring the booze and maybe grill up some of your father’s famous hamburgers.
I’ll bring the darts and boards, a basketball, and maybe Ron Wilcox’s wife. (My wife thinks this line is inappropriate too but, well, I didn’t listen to her.)
I guarantee a terrific time.
감사합니다
From the Field,
Dartoid
