“I used to play doubles with Dana Fairbanks, if you catch my drift.”
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.
Roger Federer’s so good that he often has ball boys hold books for him to read during matches. He won this point while engrossed in Dr. Zhivago.
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genius I refuse to call the Swiss Maestro because it makes him sound like a character from a Seinfeld subplot, has withdrawn from next week’s Stockholm Open.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.
When Andy Roddick and Novak Djokovic meet tonight at Arthur Ashe, will they be clad in neon spandex and trailed by an entourage of menacing, mullet-sporting goons as WWE music plays in the background? We’ll find out soon enough, but in the meantime I just wasted a good five minutes looking for a picture of a wrestler holding a tennis racket. Didn’t turn up anything useful, FYI, and I wasn’t even directed to a bunch of adult-oriented websites featuring “straight” college jocks experimenting with each other. It’s like the Internet is broken today.
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.
Remember that ludicrous Jacqui Smith business from earlier this week, when the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom was stupid enough to suggest that Iran is safe for homosexuals? All they have to do, she more or less advised, is spend their lives hiding in the closet. Then they won’t have to worry about being hanged or seeking asylum in the UK.
Well, Smith is again commenting on homophobia, only this time it’s the kind that happens on her own soil. A Stonewall-commissioned report released on Thursday found that one in five gay, lesbian and bisexual people in Britain have been a victim of some kind of hate crime or homophobic incident since 2005, and that 3/4ths of them declined to file police reports about it.
The results of this poll have been called shocking, but I was immediately reminded of another survey about gay Brits, and have to say that if you’re not willing to divulge your sexuality to a random census-taker, chances are you’re not going to walk into a police station and say you were just assaulted or verbally harassed for being gay. (You could argue that it isn’t a fair correlation to make, as the Stonewall report obviously used self-identified gays and lesbians as their sample group; additionally, respondents cited perceived police indifference as a reason for not filing reports. But I think that taken together, the results of the surveys indicate a sizable percentage of gay men and women in the UK don’t feel as comfortable standing up for themselves as they should.)
Curiously, given Smith’s own indifference towards gays in Iran, she responded to the report swiftly and decisively, stating:
“In the 21st century no one in Britain should ever feel under threat of verbal or physical violence just because of their sexual orientation.
“We’re determined that lesbian and gay people should have the confidence to report crimes to the police knowing that they will be taken seriously, the crime investigated and their privacy respected.
“Our key priorities are to increase reporting; increase offences brought to justice and to tackle repeat victimisation and hotspots.”
All sentiments that are very nice and proper, but how about extending that sense of justice to people who are in danger of being executed because of their sexuality?
And while I’m complaining…
This is admittedly shallow — inappropriate, some might say, given the seriousness of the subject matter we just dealt with — but why does it seem as though ESPN and NBC, in their coverage of Wimbledon, conspired to keep me from staring at Dinara Safina’s arms? She’s out of the tournament now, having been ousted by Israel’s Shahar Peer in a close three-setter earlier today, and what did NBC show instead? A Venus Williams match that’s result was old news.
I’m demanding better treatment next year. You hear that, you programming bastards? I’m like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction: I will not be ignored. I don’t care if Americans played earlier in the day, I want live tennis. Live! If you do not meet my demands, I will not watch the rest of your network’s offerings. And if I’m already giving your shows the cold shoulder (sorry, NBC, but you know you suck), well … I don’t know. I’m sure I’ll come up with better threats over the coming months.
Color me outraged! Maria Sharapova, who indulged her love of menswear by dressing in a tuxedo top and shorts at this year’s Wimbledon, got her ass kicked by Alla Kudryavtseva today. (If her name is unfamiliar, it’s because Kudryavtseva generally sucks.) The final score was so awful that I can’t bring myself to type it here, but that’s not the source of my indignation. What has me all riled up* is what Kudryavtseva said when asked what propelled her to victory: “I don’t like her outfit. It was one of the motivations to beat her.”
C’mon, Kudryavtseva! You have to give Sharapova some credit for making a bit of a Marlene Dietrich-like, Katharine Hepburn-esque fashion statement at Wimbledon. (For those of you who don’t watch tennis, even the tacky British newspaper The Sun, which initially criticized Sharapova’s tux, later apologized for their rush to judgment. Check out the third picture in the slideshow if you want to see why I think her getup was altogether badass.)
All the dress-wearing gets boring to watch sometimes, and I encourage Sharapova’s fellow WTA player to change things up every now and then, just as I encourage the men of the ATP to consider a little on court cross-dressing of their own. ‘Cause you have to admit, Rafael Nadal would look handsome in a skirt.
* Maybe “riled up” wasn’t all that accurate. Mildly annoyed would be a more apt description, and even that was offset by Kudryavtseva adding, “She’s brave enough to experiment. Sometimes she has good ones, sometimes not. That’s my personal opinion. Maybe someone will tell me I dress terribly.”
But I wanted to post something today, and it was either this or complain about Sarah Bird’s recent ‘blah blah gay son blah blah stereotypes blah supposed satire’ monstrosity at Salon.com. Problem was, I couldn’t make it past the second or third paragraph of the Bird whatsit, so all I could honestly say about it would be this: The way A.O. Scott felt about The Love Guru — in his words, “an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again” — that’s how I feel about Bird’s strenuously unfunny piece.
“I used to play doubles with Dana Fairbanks, if you catch my drift.”
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.
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.
The French Open starts in a little more than 90 minutes, fellow gays, and that early round action can’t come soon enough. I’ve been bored out of my mind for weeks now, which is why I’ve been giving the Internet the silent treatment. There’s nothing to write about. Fine, so the lesbian world is abuzz with talk of Jodie Foster reportedly ditchingher partner for Melanie Mayron’s partner, but is there anything interesting about any of that?
(I’d like to point out, since I’ve seen a spike in Melanie Mayron-related traffic in the wake of the Foster hullabaloo, that while Mayron has previously opted to have journalists describe her as a single mom rather than acknowledge her long-term relationship with Cynthia Mort, their union was hardly cloaked in a veil of secrecy, so I didn’t exactly out anyone when I wrote what I wrote about her — and I hardly wrote anything at all — back in February.) It only gets interesting if the tabloid feeding frenzy moves Foster to issue a denial or offer some kind of confirmation, and image-conscious as she is, it’s hard to imagine the latter happening anytime soon, assuming there’s any truth to the rumors.
