Tiger Woods is us, and we are him ... to a degree, anyhow

First off, no, the world doesn't need me chiming in about Tiger Woods. The other estimated 244 million chimers can handle that. Well, few of them can truly handle it, of course, but that's part of the fun.

Secondly, I certainly don't need an apology from Woods about his serial philandering. I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about it, because it is weirdly fascinating to me and I do love the weirdly fascinating. Folks, I've watched a couple hours of Olympic curling this week.

But if there is one PGA Tour star I demand an apology from, it's Phil Mickelson.

Lefty choked away a win at the 2006 U.S. Open, costing me money because I had him on my fantasy golf team.

See. Who am I to judge Tiger when I'm part of something almost equally as peculiar and twisted? By the way, I'm pulling for Paul Casey to beat Brian Gay in the World Match Play Championships today. If Casey loses, he owes me an apology, too.

This whole Tiger deal just adds conviction to my personal belief that every one of us is at least a little broken. You can be a Master of the Universe on a golf course, or in the board room, or in show biz. But all that does is make it more likely you're just a pile of spare parts as an overall person.

There are always exceptions, of course, or else they're wonderful actors. That relatively small group of people seem to have the perfect DNA, or are lucky to have one of those rare brains that are as reliable as a Toyota. As an older Toyota, I mean.

The older I get, the easier it seems to find cracks in myself, as well as everyone I encounter or read about. They aren't serious cracks in most cases. They're just quirky or insecure or odd traits. Evolution -- a concept for those of you who think science isn't a passing fad -- isn't fully evolved. But would life really be interesting if it were?

Just spend an hour going through random pages of Facebook or Twitter if you don't believe my theory. Notice me, we all practically beg. I'm somebody, and I have thoughts. Notice me!

That's no knock on social media sites. I'm a resident there, not a guest. Hey, I'd rather have people pleading for attention on a Web site than by, say, flying a plane into a building that housed an IRS office or doing something similarly insane and vicious.

My theory is everyone on the planet over three months old has at least a little faulty or frayed wiring, be it in the forms of egomania or low self-esteem or total self-awareness or no self-awareness or depression or the opposite of depression, whatever that's called. You know, people who are always bubbly and fired up when they really ought to take at least one day out of each week to stare out a window into the gray, bleak ... OK, let's move on.

So Tiger Woods either has some deep emotional void in his psyche, or he's an incredibly needy, horny person. Ever meet anyone like that? Change that. Is there anyone out there who hasn't met someone like that?

Woods served up his apology Friday morning, and millions of us (myself included) dropped what we were doing to watch it on one of a multitude of choices of television networks. Doesn't that make us about as off-kilter as him?

And frankly, the world's most-famous people ought to be the most-warped. The other day

I read this blog entry by poker star Phil Hellmuth. (Hey, I visit the New York Times and Wall Street Journal's Web sites sometimes, too.) I'd bet maybe one out every 20 of you at most would recognize Hellmuth if you saw him in person. But he is famous, and here's what he recently wrote about it:

Starting in 2007 fans began coming up to me many times a day to tell me powerful things, "You are my idol," or "You are the best poker player in the world," or "I aspire to be you," or "I love the way you play," or "I am a huge fan, I watch you play every single day."  This is good positive energy, but it is not natural for someone to get that much highly emotional praise every day.  I understand why most big stars act crazy, or start to act in weird abnormal ways.  By February of 2008 I couldn't deal with all of the adulation and I was having some "panic attacks."  In one weekend where I hit the wall, my wife and sons and I hit a hotel in Monterrey, and everyone I came into contact with seemed to know me, stare at me, come up to me, and they all called me by my first name.  I would be out for a walk at midnight with my son, and people would spill out into the streets and shout my name.  I would never wish that anyone ever felt whatever it was that I felt at that low point.  My stomach was in knots, my stomach was in constant pain (but not sharp pain), I was feeling under siege from the world, I wasn't sleeping well, every time someone started at me or came up to me it felt horrible (I still managed to smile and thank them for the praise), and I was short tempered with my beloved wife and sons.

Now imagine how unnatural and sometimes awful it must be to be Tiger Woods, even before the world found out he had cheated on his wife with porn stars and pancake-house waitresses. I'm sure not saying you should pity the guy, because rumor has it there are millions of people in our country alone who are poor, who have lost their jobs, who have terrible health problems, and a cavalcade of other unrelenting headaches. But all of us constantly live in our own heads, and sometimes most of us would rather take a vacation to somewhere else.

My only advice to Woods is to take the year off from golf. But that's only because he's not on my fantasy golf team and his absence gives my guys a much better chance of winning.

As much as that admission shames me, I will not apologize for it.