This is all you need to do: just hit the ball back. Be Björn Borg — one of the greatest tennis players ever (from one of the best eras of tennis ever), he hung out at the baseline, just hitting the ball back, not trying to do anything fancy, not going for the putaway shot, just hitting the ball back, over and over and over again. That was his game: calm consistency. And he kept it up long enough so that most of the time, the other guy screwed up and Borg won the point (often times, if the player was someone volatile, like John McEnroe, his victories would come amidst lots of spitting and crying).
Anyway, my point is to be calm and consistent, and don’t try to score the gotchas or the zingers, because your opponent is inexperienced and has a lot to prove, so chances are she’ll be overreaching. If you just keep hitting the ball back to her, she’ll eventually screw up — and she doesn’t need any help from you to do so. So be chill and mellow.
(And in the case of Obama, this goes doubly, because John McCain is flailing all over the place, like a drunk trying to find the door in the dark, AND he’s got a pissy temper. He’ll totally play the John McEnroe to your Björn Borg, if you’ll just let him.)
It’s official. Rafa Nadal became #1 in the world tennis rankings today. He’s a clay specialist no more — he does it all.
photo by Christophe Ena
photo source unknown
photo by Clive Brunskill
• A team of paleontologists have discovered a huge Stone Age cemetery in the Sahara desert. Here is a woman and two children who were found holding hands, arms outstretched toward each other, with evidence to suggest they were laid to rest on a bed of flowers (follow the link for more photos and a video about the find from National Geographic).
• American team members to watch now that the Olympic games have moved on from swimming to track & field.
• What if Karl Rove were working for the Obama campaign?
• This is just the kind of thing that long ago made me resolve to never do business with AT&T again. I found myself on more than one occasion trying to get my money back from AT&T after they over-charged me for lame or inept reasons. For them, screwing customers while hoping they’re not paying attention is the #1 item in their business practices manual. And in this case, someone turned their frustration into to a bit of silliness.
• Everyone’s favorite East Tennessee politician is back once again! This time, she’s talking about Jesse Helms, who she says is a great American. (Of course, as much as I loves me some Griffiny Juneness, I gotta wonder what sort of crack heads are running the KNS these days!)
On the night when Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of this Olympic games, let’s give him his due, but not forget about some other events of the day…
To start with, it was Old Woman Day in Beijing, with 41-year-old American Dara Torres capturing two silvers in swimming and an incredible gold for 38-year-old Romanian Constantina Diță-Tomescu in the marathon.
And then there was an absolutely jaw-dropping performance from Jamaica’s Usain Bolt in the men’s 100 metre. Who knows how fast he would have been if he didn’t slow down as he approached the ribbon?!?
The whole evening gives me chills!
I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay up late enough to see Rafa Nadal and Fernando Gonzalez’s gold medal match (the live coverage starts at 2am eastern), but it’ll be some great tennis! Perhaps it will be rerun tomorrow…
Not really.
But can you imagine the news coverage if it was true?!? It would be huge. It’s not, however, something I concocted from thin air. The story is true, only John McCain is the guy who cheated on his first wife and then married his second wife before the divorce was final with the first wife, who he dumped because she was a cripple and not as rich as the trollop he would ride into the Senate. No kidding. But watch and see how nobody cares about the story, even though the news media would be lapsing into a collective case of apoplexy if Barack Obama had done something even half as bad. Damn liberal media! Oh, yeah — and then McCain lied about it all. Yet again, you gotta love those Republican family values.
It’s been a newsy weekend! I posted a couple of stories yesterday morning, but there’s more!
- _blank">Jesse Helms: Not everyone believes the man who brought us so much negativity, hate, and prejudice deserves the half-staff treatment. A few are even willing to take a stand. Others feel obligated to give him a hat tip.
- Gina Gray got fired from her job at Arlington Cemetery because the Pentagon doesn’t want you to know that in a war, soldiers die. Will the Army do the right thing?
- The Chattanooga Green Report calls for more buses and more recycling! Maybe instead of spending money on a stupid raccoon, we should spend it on actual incentives?
- Their design is great, but so is the heavy-handedness. More and more, it’s getting hard to like Apple Computer.
- Via Craig Hickman, an awesome tennis blogger I only just discovered, check out the ITF’s new book promoting the Beijing Olympics.
- Pam directs us to Women We Love!
- Barbara talks about Megachruches and Hamas
- Bush is still embarrassing us around the world. And then there’s sleaze and those pesky little war crimes. Only six more months (at best!).
- McCain: oh, where to begin?!? He’s had such a bad week (though you’d never know it from the American press coverage!). More campaign shakeups, and it turns out that his homophobic campaign chairman has sex with men (now there’s a surprise! Yet another self-hating gay Republican!). And he, along with a lot of Republicans, hates birth control — doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to improve access to it. This story won’t go away! Also, the fallout from the Gramm idiocy continues — the hypocrisy, lies, and questions about leadership and credibility. He’s been caught lying (or is it just memory problems?) about his experience as a POW (which, btw, he doesn’t want to talk about, unless he’s exploiting the experience to scare up some votes). And through it all, the poor thing is trying to learn how to open a web browser (which isn’t necessarily a dig at his age, but does bring into question his competence). So much for the press to ignore!
And finally, check out this cool experiment in physics and sound (the tray, which contains a mixture of corn starch and water, is sitting on a speaker while the music plays):
I’ve been watching this match since 9:00 this morning. Absolutely incredible tennis, and the longest final in Wimbledon history.
And still not over…
UPDATE: Rafa did it! 6-4, 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-7(8), 9-7 — that was the best tennis match I’ve ever watched and you gotta give props to both players for the respect they show to each other and to the game. What a couple of class acts.
I’m still sorting through my travel photos while also slogging through some blogs, getting caught up on the news I missed. There were a lot of big stories — ranging from the very sad (Ted Kennedy’s health problems) to the exciting (California’s Supreme Court sanely confirming that all people are created equal) — but those stories have been beaten to death. Here are a few links that cover some quieter events:
- Exits: Annika Sorenstam (golf) and Justine Henin (tennis) are both retiring — Justine is the first tennis player to quit while holding the #1 spot!
- Via Boing Boing is this gorgeous public spaces animation
- beep found some incredible photography
- Chris points to some beautiful underwater footage
- Cute Overload discovered some animal odd couple images
- Bush claims that he’s made great golf-related sacrifices because of his war. But he lies. And he got busted. And mocked.
- And finally, a couple of quotes. These are the kind of take-no-prisoners Democrats I’ve been wishing for all these years!
“While I always appreciate hearing the news from John McCain, he should explain to the American people why almost every single promise and prediction that he has made about Iraq has turned to be catastrophically wrong, including his support for a surge that was supposed to achieve political reconciliation. While John McCain offers his poor judgment in supporting George Bush’s war and a failed foreign policy that has left us less secure, I will continue to make the case for a new foreign policy that deploys all elements of American power — including tough, principled and direct diplomacy. It’s stunning that in such a lengthy written statement, John McCain could not articulate a single new idea that hasn’t been tried — and failed — over the last eight years.” — Barack Obama
The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran’s pockets.
The worst nightmare for a regime that thrives on tension with America is an America ready, willing and able to engage. Since when has talking removed the word “no” from our vocabulary?
It’s amazing how little faith George Bush, Joe Lieberman and John McCain have in themselves - and in America. — Joe Biden
- UPDATE: one more… Bob Geiger: Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed (via Nicole Belle)
This is from Improv Everywhere, which in the past has brought us Frozen Grand Central and the Ben Folds Fake, among many other events. In their latest mission, they “turned a little league baseball game in Hermosa Beach, California into a major league event”:
In order to pull this mission off we worked with the commissioner of the Hermosa Beach Little League. The commissioner provided us with the names, numbers, and batting order of all of the players for both teams. He told us the 2 PM game between the Mudcats and the Lugnuts would be ideal for our mission, and allowed us to arrive early to set up all of our equipment. He was the only person involved with the league who knew what was going to happen. The players, coaches, and parents were kept completely in the dark.
(Via Fire Dog Lake)
Why has the drug use of a man who plays a game become a Congressional problem?
Sorry baseball fans, but from the Mitchell Report to today’s hearings, this all strikes me as a colossal waste of our legislature’s time.
It’s baseball. Not foreign policy. Not the world economy. Not health care reform.
They’re talking about overgrown boys who knock around a ball. Of course they take drugs — look at what a ridiculous amount of money is paid to the hottest players! Many of them will do whatever it takes to get the big paycheck. There’s no mystery here. The game is corrupt as hell and it will stay that way as long as people continue to subsidize those gazillion-dollar salaries.
It’s a busy weekend! I understand today was very competitive for nuptial bookings, with so many couples wanting to make their anniversary unforgettable. I’ll be one of many people attending a wedding later in the day. In the meantime, I spent the morning with Breakfast at Wimbledon, while others (those with what a friend calls “the bourgeois cable”) have already been blogging and watching LiveEarth. So little time, so much entertainment!
Congrats to Venus Williams, who captured her fourth Venus Rosewater Dish (and equal pay!) this morning. Venus was, as always, very gracious in victory, showing much admiration for her opponent, Marion Bartoli, and acknowledging Billie Jean King, who was in the champion’s box (along with Björn Borg and Martina Navrátalová), for her numerous and great contributions to the sport.
Now on to the men’s semis, and we have another Breakfast at Wimbledon to look forward to tomorrow morning, for the finals (go Rafa!)…
Oh, yeah! And not only is tomorrow my brother’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Bro!), but it’s also the promised deadline for announcing the winner of the Million Dollar Portfolio! Keep those fingers crossed! My cousin Mary Sue is still in the running!
