Oh, yeah. You knew I’d have to whip this bad boy out.

Do any other tennis fans start contemplating suicide every year when USA Network subjects us to countless hours of Tracy Austin nattering on about her accomplishments and her family and her lunch and what she’s wearing? I’ve had the TV on mute for several days now because of her.

But this afternoon, in the first set of the James Blake-Steve Darcis match, the gods of tennis smiled upon us and let Mary Carillo (or MarCar, as they call her in the tabloids when they cover her late-night club crawls with Puff Daddy and his crew) pop into the booth with her pal John McEnroe (who, as the Times pointed out over the weekend, still throws tantrums like he’s a pop diva with five ex-husbands, three sassily-attired Chihuahuas and a huge gay following) to say hi to us miserable bastards.

Carillo, as everyone who tuned into NBC’s Beijing Olympics coverage knows, just spent a couple of weeks filing stories on Chinese cuisine curiosities and the mating habits of pandas (zoo officials can say whatever they want, we all know the pandas listen to Al Green and do what comes naturally). The assignments were weak stuff compared to her antics with ice queen Johnny Weir at the 2006 Winter Olympics, but I guess it could’ve been worse — she could’ve been dispatched to milk more tears from the mascara-streaked eyes of Debbie Phelps, or we could have endured an extra ten minutes of Bob Costas’ self-important blathering each night.

I’m just glad that USA allowed her to check in with viewers today, because the monotony of their coverage has been driving me crazy. And the commercials! Oy vey. We get it, you want us to watch Burn Notice. Things explode in Burn Notice, and hip characters wear sunglasses and pepper their top-secreet cell phone conversations with sarcastic barbs, impervious to the danger around them. Now shut up about it. But the commercials for the remake of The Women that they’ve shown incessantly during the night matches, those can stay. Eva Mendes looks fetching in those.