Because my nerves are going to need a day to recover from those Safina and Federer matches.
(Yes, this was a paltry post, but I’m still too jittery to write anything else. Give me a few hours to calm down and sleep a little, and then I’ll try to scrounge up something to complain about.)
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
The Australian Open starts in five hours (the official website has a countdown clock), and I’m so excited about it that I feel like an honorary Pointer Sister. American viewers, here’s the TV schedule. And readers, be warned: If Roger Federer makes an early exit, I’m going to be even crankier than usual. Enough so that the Department of Homeland Security will have to raise my crankiness alert level to red, scaring schoolchildren and delighting Wolf Blitzer in the process.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Roger Federer, the tennis genius I refuse to call the Swiss Maestro because it makes him sound like a character from a Seinfeld subplot, has withdrawn from next week’s Stockholm Open. He explained his decision by saying, “I feel fortunate to be healthy again, but I want to remain at the top of the game for many more years to come and go after the No. 1 ranking again. In order to do that, I need to get a proper rest and get strong again so that I am 100 percent fit for the remainder of the year or next year.”
Good plan and everything, but why didn’t he try it earlier in the year when his game was suffering the most? I’m a Federer fanatic, as some of you might know, and I’ll probably be in therapy over his Wimbledon loss for the next several years. His performance at the U.S. Open made some of that anguish (yes, anguish — I was like a character in an Ingmar Bergman movie following that Wimbledon final) subside, though there were times during the Andreev match when I almost threw my remote at the TV in frustration.
Work prevented me from writing much of anything about the U.S. Open this year, but nearly a month later I can say this: It will be a long time before I forget the feeling of Zen-like calm that came over me when Federer dismantled Novak Djokovic in the semis. It was apparent that his desire to win was great enough that neither Nadal nor Murray would stand a chance in the final, and in many ways his win over Murray was anticlimactic.
As for Murray, while I’m appreciative of his improved game and enjoy his celebratory flexing, I’ve yet to buy into this “Murray as master tactician” line of thought. A master tactician wouldn’t have played Federer the same way he played Nadal — anyone could have predicted it would result in a loss.
On a tennis-related side note…
To everyone who finds this blog via the search string “maria sharapova lesbian” — and there have been a lot of you lately — let’s get something straight. Yes, I joke about Sharapova every now and then. She’s one of my favorite players and she’s someone who registers on quite a few gaydars, so for me it’s an ‘I kid because I love’ kind of thing. To save you any time you might waste poking around for previous mentions of her, here’s the deal: I haven’t written anything about her personal life. I don’t know anything about her personal life, though I’m aware of the rumors.
If asked to comment on her personal life, there are three things I would say:
1) I can’t believe people were stupid enough to fall for those fake Adam Levine quotes. (Please, don’t be fooled by Yakov Smirnoff, humor does exist in Russia.) Okay, fine, I can believe it. People are really stupid.
2) It comes off as pathetic when tennis commentators are eager to romantically link her to any male player she’s friends with. How often do you tune into an NFL game just in time to hear Joe Buck say, “And there goes #45, who is rumored to be boinking that redheaded cheerleader with the smokin’ ass!”
I know that just about everyone who makes a mint off the sport is eager to assure the viewing public that those “four in ten” figures Rennae Stubbs offered to The Age are baloney, but they should also understand that we don’t turn on tennis coverage expecting to hear breathless reports about the mating (or shopping) habits of the players. That’s better left to Entertainment Tonight. Mary Hart can sell that kind of crap. Tennis analysts can’t.
3) You’re off your ever-lovin’ rocker if you think the highest-paid female athlete in the world would come out in her early twenties, when she’s still a top player and raking in endorsement cash. That’s assuming she’s not straight, of course.
Anyway, let’s recap: Federer should have worked on the proper rest thing months ago. And if you’re looking for photos of Maria Sharapova playing naked doubles with Camilla Belle, you’re in the wrong place.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Wimbledon starts in just under eight hours, and questions about the tournament abound: Will the swashbuckling Rafael Nadal make it to the finals again? Will Ana Ivanović continue to pump her fists every two seconds? Will Novak Djoković’s family continue to annoy me from the stands? And perhaps most importantly, what will Maria Sharapova and Roger Federer wear? We’ll find out soon enough, provided there aren’t any rain delays on Monday. American viewers can look up TV scheduling information here, and don’t forget that ESPN 360 will stream 250 hours of live coverage and press conferences as well.
Related: Official Wimbledon website
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Maria Sharapova has been ousted from the French Open by Dinara Safina. It wasn’t a surprising turn of events — Sharapova had struggled in all her previous matches, while Safina seems increasingly determined to prove she’s no Marat — but that doesn’t lessen my sadness over today’s results. Not only have I been robbed, cruelly robbed, of the chance to type this again at the end of the tournament, I’ve also been robbed of the chance to see Sharapova’s nifty Nike duds for the next week. At least Roger’s still around and looking dapper as ever.
In other news…
The New York Times ran an interesting piece today called “When Intolerance Becomes Intolerable.” Writer Marci Alboher profiles Lisa Sherman, a marketing VP who quit her job at Bell Atlantic fifteen years ago, after a diversity training seminar revealed her colleagues were a bunch of raging homophobes. Sherman’s exit from the company prompted chief executive Raymond W. Smith to take swift action in making Bell Atlantic a gay-friendlier corporation, and Sherman is now a bigwig at Logo, also known as the nonstop Bad Girls and Queer as Folk channel. Which is another way of saying that I wish Logo’s programming department would have some kind of diversity training seminar.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
North American viewers, take note: ESPN2’s coverage of the Australian Open begins tonight at 7 EST. The Australian Open, like all Grand Slam tennis tournaments, has special significance to the gay community. Every year, for two weeks at a time, it allows us to gawk at a seemingly endless parade of lesbians dressed in small amounts of clothing, locked in sweaty battle with their rivals. On the men’s side, there are the cheeky antics of Novak Djokovic to look forward to—and it’s just a matter of time before some crazy straight women start writing X-rated Federer/Nadal slash fiction.
As for me, my favorite part of the Australian Open is the commentary provided by Mary Carillo, who is more likely to quote Simpsons episodes as she deconstructs a player’s game than gab about her jewelry or what she had for lunch. (Yes, Tracy Austin, I’m looking at you. I don’t watch tennis to hear about your salad or what you’re wearing.) My love for Carillo, which blossomed when I read that she once explained a loss by saying, “I blame society,” and grew when I saw her spots with Johnny Weir during NBC’s Olympic Ice, is sometimes the only thing that keeps my TV off mute during ESPN2’s tennis coverage. One can only listen to so much Patrick McEnroe, Pam Shriver, Chris Fowler, and Mary Joe Fernandez before lapsing into a coma, and I’m expected at work this week.
UPDATE: The Internet is a truly magical place. Not long after I posted this, I was sent a link to Tennis Slash. While I’d never given much thought to a Safin/Federer pairing, I have to say, until Rafa cuts his hair and burns every last pair of those awful capri pants, it’s the hotter alternative.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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