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Imagine – if you will – that you’re out playing a quick round on a 9-hole muni course in Southern California. The 90-degree rule is in effect, but you decide (wrongly) to violate the daily cart path regulation by driving down the middle of the fairway to get to your ball. Predictably, a marshal with an evil grin on his face approaches. You prepare yourself for the usual stern warning as he pulls up and, before you can utter a sound, he opens his mouth and says (insert really spooky Boris Karloff voice here):
“I’m going to mash if you do that again.”
If this happens, you should eagerly agree to be “mashed,” because you’re in the presence of greatness. The creator of what is arguably the No. 1 novelty song ever written is sitting in the golf car next to you.
Believe it or not, Bobby Pickett, the man who penned and sang the all-time Halloween anthem, “Monster Mash,” is a part-time marshal and starter at Penmar-By-The-Sea Golf Course in gorgeous Venice, Calif. This is what happens when you’ve been collecting music royalty checks for 44 years. You can do whatever the hell you want.
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I caught up with Pickett via e-mail during his annual Halloween tour. I had heard that he worked at a golf course in his spare time. You can find out more about Pickett – perhaps the ultimate one-hit wonder – at his Web site: www.themonstermash.com. Here’s what he had to say:
GCN: What drew you to working at Penmar?
Pickett: “I love golf and played there frequently.”
(GCN thought: So would I if cash simply dropped out of the sky and landed in my mailbox every day.)
GCN: Why do you enjoy the game?
Pickett: “It teaches me to deal with my frustration.”
(GCN thought: Frustration? You struck gold nearly a half century ago. You wrote one of the only three songs to reach the Billboard Top 100 three different times. Your song has been featured in a bazillion different movies and TV shows. An extra Christmas comes for you every Halloween. The biggest frustration I can imagine is only finding a dozen royalty checks in the mail every day.)
GCN: What kinds of monstrous behavior have you observed from golfers while on the course as a marshal?
Pickett: “Where to begin? Littering. Bad etiquette. Bad manners. Bad dress. Drinking alcohol, and on and on.”
(GCN Thought: Wow … that sounds exactly like a typical Halloween to us.)
GCN: What would Boris Karloff tell our 30,000+ readers on Halloween?
Pickett (again, insert Karloff imitation voice here): “Hit them straight and long.”
(GCN thought: Duh.)
Elvis Presley called Pickett’s famous song, “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” I call Pickett the smartest course official in America. He has nothing to lose, and Frankenstein’s Monster riding shotgun with him every day. That is a graveyard smash by any measure.
Happy Halloween everybody.
PJ
