Sunday, July 31, 2011
The internet is for videos of cats and for DC mayoral candidates
And also for Adrian Fenty, my vote for mayor last year, rap propaganda videos. By the way, they use the word politricks in this rap song. Politricks. This is amazing stuff. These dudes are representing Ward 7.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Debt Ceiling Dance off
I don't know if any of you folks out there watch Mad Men, but if you don't, you should. Anyhow, it had this amazing footage from the 1964 elections Goldwater v. Johnson. The footage revealed two parties with differing views about deficit spending and the size of the government. It was refreshing to see how much things have changed since...wait, nothing changed. That means the only thing you can do is have a dance off.
Listen, lil s has learned to dance. Unfortunately I have a however that I just want to get out there ahead of time instead of awkwardly pretending like it isn't there. Lil s can't quite stand up yet on her own. She needs an object to help hold her up. Fine. Move along, nothing to see here. But, she only dances with her lower body. And, the toy being at waist level and such, I'm only saying this so when we post the videos everyone else isn't thinking it but being too polite, it appears that she's engaging in uhhmmmm relations with the thing. Anyhow, it's both funny and kind of sad because she's just trying to dance, and she can't throw her arms in the air because she'd lose her balance, and she can't really cut loose because she needs to be holding on to something or she'll fall. So it's out there. We're posting videos. Deal with it.
The point is, as I was reading the article in The Atlantic about perhaps raising the debt ceiling, hint: it's everyone's fault, but mostly the Communists, I decided to do the only thing you can do when things seem hopeless. I played some modern disco music. And, s actually managed to briefly lift her hands to enjoy the dance, although she almost fell over in the process, and I had to steady her. But, the point is, one day my child will dance w/o looking like she's getting too cozy with her toys, and one day this fine nation will pay its bills. Or not.
Listen, lil s has learned to dance. Unfortunately I have a however that I just want to get out there ahead of time instead of awkwardly pretending like it isn't there. Lil s can't quite stand up yet on her own. She needs an object to help hold her up. Fine. Move along, nothing to see here. But, she only dances with her lower body. And, the toy being at waist level and such, I'm only saying this so when we post the videos everyone else isn't thinking it but being too polite, it appears that she's engaging in uhhmmmm relations with the thing. Anyhow, it's both funny and kind of sad because she's just trying to dance, and she can't throw her arms in the air because she'd lose her balance, and she can't really cut loose because she needs to be holding on to something or she'll fall. So it's out there. We're posting videos. Deal with it.
The point is, as I was reading the article in The Atlantic about perhaps raising the debt ceiling, hint: it's everyone's fault, but mostly the Communists, I decided to do the only thing you can do when things seem hopeless. I played some modern disco music. And, s actually managed to briefly lift her hands to enjoy the dance, although she almost fell over in the process, and I had to steady her. But, the point is, one day my child will dance w/o looking like she's getting too cozy with her toys, and one day this fine nation will pay its bills. Or not.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Quoting Things sort of related to expiration
Melville:
“Look ye, Starbuck, all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The white whale tasks me; he heaps me. Yet he is but a mask. 'Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung.”
Fitzgerald:
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Keats:
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
…….
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
……..
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
And now Steven Millhauser short story about that very thing
He’s nine going on ten, skinny-tall, shoulder blades pushing out like things inside a paper bag, new blue bathing suit too tight here, too loose there, but what’s all that got to do with anything? What’s important is that he’s here, standing by the picnic table, the sun shining on the river, the smell of pine needles and river water sharp in the air, somewhere a shout, laughter, music from a radio. His father’s cleaning ashes out of the grill, his mother and sister are laying down blankets on the sunny grass not far from the table, Grandma’s carrying one of the aluminum folding chairs toward the high pine near the edge of the drop to the river, and he’s doing what he likes to do best, what he’s really good at: standing around doing nothing. Everyone’s forgotten about him for a few seconds, the way it happens sometimes. You try not to remind anybody you’re there. He loves this place. On the table’s the fat thermos jug with the white spout near the bottom. After his swim he’ll push the button on the spout and fill up a paper cup with pink lemonade. It’s a good sound: fsshh, psshh. In the picnic basket he can see two packages of hot dogs, jars of relish and mustard, some bun ends showing, a box of Oreo cookies, a bag of marshmallows which are marshmellows so why the “a,” paper plates sticking up sideways, a brown folded-over paper bag of maybe cherries. All week long he’s looked forward to this day. Nothing’s better than setting off on an all-day outing, in summer, to the park by the river—the familiar houses and vacant lots no longer sitting there with nothing to do but drifting toward you through the car window, the heat of the sun-warmed seat burning you through your jeans, the bottoms of your feet already feeling the pebbly ground pushing up on them as you walk from the parking lot to the picnic grounds above the riverbank. But now he’s here, right here, his jeans tossed in the back seat of the car and his T-shirt stuffed into his mother’s straw bag, the sun on one edge of the table and the piney shade covering the rest of it, Grandma already setting up the chair. And so the day’s about to get going at last, the day he’s been looking forward to in the hot nights while watching bars of light slide across his wall from passing cars, he’s here, he’s arrived, he’s ready to begin.
Though who’s to say when anything begins really? You could say the day began when they passed the wooden sign with the words “INDIAN COVE” and the outline of a tomahawk, on a curve of road with a double yellow line down the middle and brown wooden posts with red reflectors. Or maybe it all started when the car backed up the slope of the driveway and the tires bumped over the sidewalk between the knee-high pricker hedges. Or what if it happened before that, when he woke up in the morning and saw the day stretching out before him like a whole summer of blue afternoons? But he’s only playing, just fooling around, because he knows exactly when it all begins: it begins when he enters the water. That’s the agreement he’s made with himself, summer after summer. That’s just how it is. The day begins in the river, and everything else leads up to it.
Not that he’s all that eager to rush into things. Now that he’s here, now that the waiting’s practically over, he enjoys prolonging the excitement of moving toward the moment he’s been waiting for. It isn’t the swimming itself he looks forward to. He doesn’t even swim. He hangs on to the inner tube and kicks his legs. He likes it, it’s fine, he can take it or leave it. No, what he cares about, what thrills him every time, is knowing that this is it, the beginning of the long-awaited day at the river, as agreed to by himself in advance. Everything’s been leading up to it and, in the way of things that lead up to other things, there’s an electric charge, a hum. He can feel it all over his body. The closer you get, the more it’s there.
Julia, thirteen, isn’t like him in that way. Soon as she’s finished laying out the three blankets, she’ll run over to the edge of the drop, scamper down, and cross the short stretch of ground to the river. She’s always been like that, throwing herself into things—piano lessons, blueberrying, hiking a trail, the bumper cars at Pleasure Beach. She thinks he’s cautious, too held back, timid even, and it’s probably true, but it’s also something else: he likes things to build up slowly, because when it happens that way everything feels important. Does this mean there’s something un-grown-up about him, something that’ll go away one day, like his stick-out shoulder blades and his knobby anklebones?
“Come on, give us a hand, Cap’n,” Julia says. He’s not invisible anymore. Julia doesn’t like people standing around doing nothing. He takes a blanket corner and before he knows it she’s off around the table toward the pine where Grandma’s sitting, she’s scrambling down the drop and out of sight. A second later her head appears, then she’s all there except for her feet, then she’s got heels, toes. She doesn’t stop, goes right in past her knees, bends to splash water on her arms. He can see the reflections of her red suit broken up in the water. The river has little ripply waves, maybe from a speedboat out beyond the white barrels. His father once told him the Housatonic’s a tidal river. He remembers the word: tidal. Could that be the tide he’s looking at, those ripples? The Housatonic. He likes saying it, likes leaning into that “oooo” sound, which reminds him of a train coming around a bend at night in an old movie. Julia throws herself in, begins swimming out to the barrels.
“You run along now, Jimmy,” his mother says. “I’ll be fine here.” He knows it’s time to get started, you can’t delay things forever. He goes over to the sunny inner tubes, lifts up the one lying on a slant against the other, squeezes the warm dusty rubber to make sure it’s tight. Then he begins rolling it bumpily over the grass around the end of the picnic table toward the pine where Grandma’s sitting.
It’s a short walk, in deep shade broken by spots of sun. He’s stepping on soft-crackly pine needles and spongy pinecones, which press up into the soles of his feet as though he’s walking on rolled-up-sock balls. The earth feels bouncy and hard at the same time. Grandma’s sitting next to a high pine that’s leaning a little forward, as if one day it started to fall then changed its mind. To the left there’s another pine, also leaning forward, and the two trunks form a kind of frame around the sunny river and the wooded hills on the far side. Everything’s alive with interest: that big pinecone in dark shade with one end glowing in sunlight, that cherry-stained Popsicle stick lying next to a bumpy root. Grandma’s chair isn’t the heavy long one from the porch, with adjustable positions, no, she’s got the small one with a straight back that unfolds with one easy pull. She’s wearing her dark-blue bathing suit and a pair of straw sandals, toenails polish-pink, her thick hair a strange sort of whitish yellowish orange. She’s always laughing about her trouble with hair dyes. She’s sitting in the shade near the edge of the drop, legs in sunlight, book in her lap. Her fingers are bent at the knuckles. She likes holding them up and showing them to him. See: arthritis. The crisscross strips in the chair are white and lime green. As he comes up to her, she turns her head, places a hand in her open book to keep it from closing.
“So, my good man, you’re going in? Look at Julia out there.” He brings this out in people, who knows why: Cap’n, my good man. It’s something about him. His sister’s by the barrels now, swimming on her back, kicking her feet, sweeping up both arms. “That’s right, my good woman,” he says, and Grandma does what he wants her to do, gives a deep-down scratchy laugh, a laugh with approval in it. It’s a witty family, you have to be on your toes. If he gets up late in the morning his father says things like “Out drinking again last night, eh, Jim?” or “Behold, the son is risen.” Standing beside Grandma, balancing his inner tube with his fingertips, he takes it all in: the two bracelets on Grandma’s wrist, one turquoise and one silver, her fingers puffy, her knuckles bumpy, the clumps of hot-looking droopy grass on the few feet of ground that go past the chair to the edge of the drop, the thick pine root twisting out of the slope. A piece of white string hangs over the root. These are good things to look at, but sometimes you don’t see them. You see them when they’re leading up to something.
He takes a few steps to the edge of the drop, the edge of the world. Behind him’s Grandma in her chair, the floor of pine needles, the picnic table. Behind that, the sunny blankets, a field—but why stop there? Connecticut’s stretching away at his back, the monkey cage in the Beardsley Park Zoo, the Merritt Parkway with its stone bridges, then comes Grandma’s apartment on West 110th Street, and, if you keep going, the Mississippi River, Pikes Peak, California. This is fun. You can do it in both directions. In front of him the slope, the sandy-earthy place at the river’s edge, Julia on her back. Then the white barrels, the wooded hills on the far bank of the river, and beyond the hills the other side of Connecticut, the trip to the whaling ship at Mystic Seaport, somewhere out there Cape Cod, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa. He likes standing here, thinking these things. He likes the picture of himself in his own mind as he stares out sternly over the river, frowning in sunlight, his fingertips resting on top of the inner tube, his other hand on his hip, Huck Finn on the shore of the Mississippi, an Indian brave with a quiver of arrows on his back, getting ready to go down to the canoes.
But he can’t stand there all day. Julia’s looking at him from where she’s resting against a barrel. She’s shading her eyes with one hand and waving him on with the other. Come on, Cap’n! Grandma’s looking up from her book to watch him. And, besides, he wants the day at Indian Cove to begin, he really does, even if all he’s been trying to do since he got here is hold it back for as long as possible. There’re two ways down to the river: the hard dirt path on the other side of the pine, where the grownups go, or straight down the soft, crumbly slope. Gripping the inner tube under his arm, he steps over the edge and half slides half stumbles down, feeling the warm sandy earth spilling over the tops of his feet. It reminds him of salt sprinkled into his hand. He’s there; he’s made it; he’s standing on the patch of orangey sandy dirt that’s too small to be a beach. The beach they go to has real sand, lots of it, with blankets and beach umbrellas, salt water, a refreshment stand, seagulls, dead crabs, sandbars, waves. This is the shore of the river, and it’s different in different places: here the sandy orange earth, farther down some boulders and cattails, elsewhere trees and grass right at the water’s edge. This no-name place is gentler than a beach, more quiet, more shut away, with the slope behind him, the green-brown water in front of him, the white barrels moving up and down a little, as if the water’s breathing.
He starts forward, rolling his inner tube. Nine or ten steps and he’ll be at the water’s edge. He can see ripples there, like very small waves: a tidal river. If he didn’t know it was a river, he’d think he was standing by a lake. Tree branches bending down to the water hide the turn of the river on both sides, and what you see is a lake with wooded hills, a few little houses on the far shore, a pier with a tiny man fishing. He rolls his tube over the warm sand-dirt. There’re pebbles here, but no rubbery piles of seaweed, no purple-black mussel shells. A green Coke bottle, empty, stands upright and looks out of place. It belongs on the beach, tilted in the sand next to a blanket. It’s got a green shadow. Blurred footprints, a smooth flat stone good for skimming. The excitement’s building; he’s almost there.
At the water’s edge he stops. He makes sure the little waves pull back before they can touch his toes. Through the water he can see ripply sun-designs on the river bottom. They look like a chain-link fence made of light. The river is it, the beginning of his adventure, and here at the final place he stops for the last time.
Everything has led up to this moment. No, wrong, he isn’t there yet. The moment’s just ahead of him. This is the time before the waiting stops and he crosses over into what he’s been waiting for. He inhales the river smell, takes it deep into his nostrils. He’s been moving toward the moment that’s about to happen ever since he woke up this morning, ever since last week, when his father came home from work and with his briefcase still in his hand said they’d be going to Indian Cove on Saturday if the weather held. Every day he could feel it coming closer. It was like waiting for the trip to the amusement park, like waiting for the circus tents to rise out of the fields the next town over. In another second the waiting will end. The day will officially begin. It’s what he’s been hoping for, but here at the edge of the river he doesn’t want to let the waiting go. He wants to hang on with all his might. He’s standing on the shore of the river, the brown-green ripples are breaking at his toes. The sun is shining, Julia’s waving him on, the white barrels are rising and falling gently, and what he wants is to go back to the wooden sign with the tomahawk and start waiting for the shore of the river.
What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he be like Julia? He loves this day, doesn’t he? Any second now he’ll be standing in the water up to his knees, swishing his hands around. He’ll go in up to his bathing suit. He’ll wet his chest and shoulders, hop on the tube and paddle out to Julia. He’ll laugh in the sun. Later he’ll throw himself on his blanket, feel the sun drying out his wet suit. He’ll eat a hot dog in a bun, drink pink lemonade from the jug. He’ll be sluggish with sun and happiness. At the end of the day he’ll change out of his suit in the creaking wooden bathhouse, he’ll fall asleep in the car on the way home, under the street lights. But now, as he stands at the end of waiting, something is wrong. He’s shaken deep down, as though he’ll lose something if the day begins. If he goes into the river he’ll lose the excitement, the feeling that everything matters because he’s getting closer and closer to the moment he’s been waiting for. When you have that feeling, everything’s full of life, every leaf, every pebble. But when you begin you’re using things up. The day starts slipping away behind you. He wants to stay on this side of things, to hold it right here. A nervousness comes over him, a chilliness in the sun. In a moment the day will begin to end. Things will rush away behind him. The day he’s been waiting for is practically over. He sees it now, he sees it: ending is everywhere. It’s right there in the beginning. They don’t tell you about it. It’s hidden away in things. Under the shining skin of the world, everything’s dead and gone. The sun is setting. The day is dying. Grandma’s lying in her coffin. Her crooked hands are crossed on her chest. His pretty mother’s growing old. Her fingers are thick and bent. Her brown hair is stringy white. No one can stop it. Julia’s dying, his father’s dying, the Coke bottle’s crumbling away to green dust. Everything’s nothing. If he stands still, if he doesn’t move a muscle, maybe he can keep it from happening. Things will stop and no one will ever die. His body’s shaking, he can’t breathe, here at the water’s edge he’s at the end of everything. You can’t live unless there’s a way to hold on to things. He can’t go back because he’s already used it up, he can’t go forward because then it all begins to end, he’s stuck in this place where nothing means anything, it’s streaming in on him like a darkness, like a sickness, he’s seen something he isn’t supposed to see, only grownups are allowed to see it, it’s making him old, it’s ruining everything, his temples are pounding, his eyes are pounding, he feels a scream rising in his chest, he’s going to fall down onto the sandy orange earth, “Ahoy, matey!” shouts Julia, and with a wild cry that tears through his throat he steps over the line and begins his day. ♦
“Look ye, Starbuck, all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The white whale tasks me; he heaps me. Yet he is but a mask. 'Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung.”
Fitzgerald:
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Keats:
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
…….
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
……..
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
And now Steven Millhauser short story about that very thing
He’s nine going on ten, skinny-tall, shoulder blades pushing out like things inside a paper bag, new blue bathing suit too tight here, too loose there, but what’s all that got to do with anything? What’s important is that he’s here, standing by the picnic table, the sun shining on the river, the smell of pine needles and river water sharp in the air, somewhere a shout, laughter, music from a radio. His father’s cleaning ashes out of the grill, his mother and sister are laying down blankets on the sunny grass not far from the table, Grandma’s carrying one of the aluminum folding chairs toward the high pine near the edge of the drop to the river, and he’s doing what he likes to do best, what he’s really good at: standing around doing nothing. Everyone’s forgotten about him for a few seconds, the way it happens sometimes. You try not to remind anybody you’re there. He loves this place. On the table’s the fat thermos jug with the white spout near the bottom. After his swim he’ll push the button on the spout and fill up a paper cup with pink lemonade. It’s a good sound: fsshh, psshh. In the picnic basket he can see two packages of hot dogs, jars of relish and mustard, some bun ends showing, a box of Oreo cookies, a bag of marshmallows which are marshmellows so why the “a,” paper plates sticking up sideways, a brown folded-over paper bag of maybe cherries. All week long he’s looked forward to this day. Nothing’s better than setting off on an all-day outing, in summer, to the park by the river—the familiar houses and vacant lots no longer sitting there with nothing to do but drifting toward you through the car window, the heat of the sun-warmed seat burning you through your jeans, the bottoms of your feet already feeling the pebbly ground pushing up on them as you walk from the parking lot to the picnic grounds above the riverbank. But now he’s here, right here, his jeans tossed in the back seat of the car and his T-shirt stuffed into his mother’s straw bag, the sun on one edge of the table and the piney shade covering the rest of it, Grandma already setting up the chair. And so the day’s about to get going at last, the day he’s been looking forward to in the hot nights while watching bars of light slide across his wall from passing cars, he’s here, he’s arrived, he’s ready to begin.
Though who’s to say when anything begins really? You could say the day began when they passed the wooden sign with the words “INDIAN COVE” and the outline of a tomahawk, on a curve of road with a double yellow line down the middle and brown wooden posts with red reflectors. Or maybe it all started when the car backed up the slope of the driveway and the tires bumped over the sidewalk between the knee-high pricker hedges. Or what if it happened before that, when he woke up in the morning and saw the day stretching out before him like a whole summer of blue afternoons? But he’s only playing, just fooling around, because he knows exactly when it all begins: it begins when he enters the water. That’s the agreement he’s made with himself, summer after summer. That’s just how it is. The day begins in the river, and everything else leads up to it.
Not that he’s all that eager to rush into things. Now that he’s here, now that the waiting’s practically over, he enjoys prolonging the excitement of moving toward the moment he’s been waiting for. It isn’t the swimming itself he looks forward to. He doesn’t even swim. He hangs on to the inner tube and kicks his legs. He likes it, it’s fine, he can take it or leave it. No, what he cares about, what thrills him every time, is knowing that this is it, the beginning of the long-awaited day at the river, as agreed to by himself in advance. Everything’s been leading up to it and, in the way of things that lead up to other things, there’s an electric charge, a hum. He can feel it all over his body. The closer you get, the more it’s there.
Julia, thirteen, isn’t like him in that way. Soon as she’s finished laying out the three blankets, she’ll run over to the edge of the drop, scamper down, and cross the short stretch of ground to the river. She’s always been like that, throwing herself into things—piano lessons, blueberrying, hiking a trail, the bumper cars at Pleasure Beach. She thinks he’s cautious, too held back, timid even, and it’s probably true, but it’s also something else: he likes things to build up slowly, because when it happens that way everything feels important. Does this mean there’s something un-grown-up about him, something that’ll go away one day, like his stick-out shoulder blades and his knobby anklebones?
“Come on, give us a hand, Cap’n,” Julia says. He’s not invisible anymore. Julia doesn’t like people standing around doing nothing. He takes a blanket corner and before he knows it she’s off around the table toward the pine where Grandma’s sitting, she’s scrambling down the drop and out of sight. A second later her head appears, then she’s all there except for her feet, then she’s got heels, toes. She doesn’t stop, goes right in past her knees, bends to splash water on her arms. He can see the reflections of her red suit broken up in the water. The river has little ripply waves, maybe from a speedboat out beyond the white barrels. His father once told him the Housatonic’s a tidal river. He remembers the word: tidal. Could that be the tide he’s looking at, those ripples? The Housatonic. He likes saying it, likes leaning into that “oooo” sound, which reminds him of a train coming around a bend at night in an old movie. Julia throws herself in, begins swimming out to the barrels.
“You run along now, Jimmy,” his mother says. “I’ll be fine here.” He knows it’s time to get started, you can’t delay things forever. He goes over to the sunny inner tubes, lifts up the one lying on a slant against the other, squeezes the warm dusty rubber to make sure it’s tight. Then he begins rolling it bumpily over the grass around the end of the picnic table toward the pine where Grandma’s sitting.
It’s a short walk, in deep shade broken by spots of sun. He’s stepping on soft-crackly pine needles and spongy pinecones, which press up into the soles of his feet as though he’s walking on rolled-up-sock balls. The earth feels bouncy and hard at the same time. Grandma’s sitting next to a high pine that’s leaning a little forward, as if one day it started to fall then changed its mind. To the left there’s another pine, also leaning forward, and the two trunks form a kind of frame around the sunny river and the wooded hills on the far side. Everything’s alive with interest: that big pinecone in dark shade with one end glowing in sunlight, that cherry-stained Popsicle stick lying next to a bumpy root. Grandma’s chair isn’t the heavy long one from the porch, with adjustable positions, no, she’s got the small one with a straight back that unfolds with one easy pull. She’s wearing her dark-blue bathing suit and a pair of straw sandals, toenails polish-pink, her thick hair a strange sort of whitish yellowish orange. She’s always laughing about her trouble with hair dyes. She’s sitting in the shade near the edge of the drop, legs in sunlight, book in her lap. Her fingers are bent at the knuckles. She likes holding them up and showing them to him. See: arthritis. The crisscross strips in the chair are white and lime green. As he comes up to her, she turns her head, places a hand in her open book to keep it from closing.
“So, my good man, you’re going in? Look at Julia out there.” He brings this out in people, who knows why: Cap’n, my good man. It’s something about him. His sister’s by the barrels now, swimming on her back, kicking her feet, sweeping up both arms. “That’s right, my good woman,” he says, and Grandma does what he wants her to do, gives a deep-down scratchy laugh, a laugh with approval in it. It’s a witty family, you have to be on your toes. If he gets up late in the morning his father says things like “Out drinking again last night, eh, Jim?” or “Behold, the son is risen.” Standing beside Grandma, balancing his inner tube with his fingertips, he takes it all in: the two bracelets on Grandma’s wrist, one turquoise and one silver, her fingers puffy, her knuckles bumpy, the clumps of hot-looking droopy grass on the few feet of ground that go past the chair to the edge of the drop, the thick pine root twisting out of the slope. A piece of white string hangs over the root. These are good things to look at, but sometimes you don’t see them. You see them when they’re leading up to something.
He takes a few steps to the edge of the drop, the edge of the world. Behind him’s Grandma in her chair, the floor of pine needles, the picnic table. Behind that, the sunny blankets, a field—but why stop there? Connecticut’s stretching away at his back, the monkey cage in the Beardsley Park Zoo, the Merritt Parkway with its stone bridges, then comes Grandma’s apartment on West 110th Street, and, if you keep going, the Mississippi River, Pikes Peak, California. This is fun. You can do it in both directions. In front of him the slope, the sandy-earthy place at the river’s edge, Julia on her back. Then the white barrels, the wooded hills on the far bank of the river, and beyond the hills the other side of Connecticut, the trip to the whaling ship at Mystic Seaport, somewhere out there Cape Cod, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa. He likes standing here, thinking these things. He likes the picture of himself in his own mind as he stares out sternly over the river, frowning in sunlight, his fingertips resting on top of the inner tube, his other hand on his hip, Huck Finn on the shore of the Mississippi, an Indian brave with a quiver of arrows on his back, getting ready to go down to the canoes.
But he can’t stand there all day. Julia’s looking at him from where she’s resting against a barrel. She’s shading her eyes with one hand and waving him on with the other. Come on, Cap’n! Grandma’s looking up from her book to watch him. And, besides, he wants the day at Indian Cove to begin, he really does, even if all he’s been trying to do since he got here is hold it back for as long as possible. There’re two ways down to the river: the hard dirt path on the other side of the pine, where the grownups go, or straight down the soft, crumbly slope. Gripping the inner tube under his arm, he steps over the edge and half slides half stumbles down, feeling the warm sandy earth spilling over the tops of his feet. It reminds him of salt sprinkled into his hand. He’s there; he’s made it; he’s standing on the patch of orangey sandy dirt that’s too small to be a beach. The beach they go to has real sand, lots of it, with blankets and beach umbrellas, salt water, a refreshment stand, seagulls, dead crabs, sandbars, waves. This is the shore of the river, and it’s different in different places: here the sandy orange earth, farther down some boulders and cattails, elsewhere trees and grass right at the water’s edge. This no-name place is gentler than a beach, more quiet, more shut away, with the slope behind him, the green-brown water in front of him, the white barrels moving up and down a little, as if the water’s breathing.
He starts forward, rolling his inner tube. Nine or ten steps and he’ll be at the water’s edge. He can see ripples there, like very small waves: a tidal river. If he didn’t know it was a river, he’d think he was standing by a lake. Tree branches bending down to the water hide the turn of the river on both sides, and what you see is a lake with wooded hills, a few little houses on the far shore, a pier with a tiny man fishing. He rolls his tube over the warm sand-dirt. There’re pebbles here, but no rubbery piles of seaweed, no purple-black mussel shells. A green Coke bottle, empty, stands upright and looks out of place. It belongs on the beach, tilted in the sand next to a blanket. It’s got a green shadow. Blurred footprints, a smooth flat stone good for skimming. The excitement’s building; he’s almost there.
At the water’s edge he stops. He makes sure the little waves pull back before they can touch his toes. Through the water he can see ripply sun-designs on the river bottom. They look like a chain-link fence made of light. The river is it, the beginning of his adventure, and here at the final place he stops for the last time.
Everything has led up to this moment. No, wrong, he isn’t there yet. The moment’s just ahead of him. This is the time before the waiting stops and he crosses over into what he’s been waiting for. He inhales the river smell, takes it deep into his nostrils. He’s been moving toward the moment that’s about to happen ever since he woke up this morning, ever since last week, when his father came home from work and with his briefcase still in his hand said they’d be going to Indian Cove on Saturday if the weather held. Every day he could feel it coming closer. It was like waiting for the trip to the amusement park, like waiting for the circus tents to rise out of the fields the next town over. In another second the waiting will end. The day will officially begin. It’s what he’s been hoping for, but here at the edge of the river he doesn’t want to let the waiting go. He wants to hang on with all his might. He’s standing on the shore of the river, the brown-green ripples are breaking at his toes. The sun is shining, Julia’s waving him on, the white barrels are rising and falling gently, and what he wants is to go back to the wooden sign with the tomahawk and start waiting for the shore of the river.
What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he be like Julia? He loves this day, doesn’t he? Any second now he’ll be standing in the water up to his knees, swishing his hands around. He’ll go in up to his bathing suit. He’ll wet his chest and shoulders, hop on the tube and paddle out to Julia. He’ll laugh in the sun. Later he’ll throw himself on his blanket, feel the sun drying out his wet suit. He’ll eat a hot dog in a bun, drink pink lemonade from the jug. He’ll be sluggish with sun and happiness. At the end of the day he’ll change out of his suit in the creaking wooden bathhouse, he’ll fall asleep in the car on the way home, under the street lights. But now, as he stands at the end of waiting, something is wrong. He’s shaken deep down, as though he’ll lose something if the day begins. If he goes into the river he’ll lose the excitement, the feeling that everything matters because he’s getting closer and closer to the moment he’s been waiting for. When you have that feeling, everything’s full of life, every leaf, every pebble. But when you begin you’re using things up. The day starts slipping away behind you. He wants to stay on this side of things, to hold it right here. A nervousness comes over him, a chilliness in the sun. In a moment the day will begin to end. Things will rush away behind him. The day he’s been waiting for is practically over. He sees it now, he sees it: ending is everywhere. It’s right there in the beginning. They don’t tell you about it. It’s hidden away in things. Under the shining skin of the world, everything’s dead and gone. The sun is setting. The day is dying. Grandma’s lying in her coffin. Her crooked hands are crossed on her chest. His pretty mother’s growing old. Her fingers are thick and bent. Her brown hair is stringy white. No one can stop it. Julia’s dying, his father’s dying, the Coke bottle’s crumbling away to green dust. Everything’s nothing. If he stands still, if he doesn’t move a muscle, maybe he can keep it from happening. Things will stop and no one will ever die. His body’s shaking, he can’t breathe, here at the water’s edge he’s at the end of everything. You can’t live unless there’s a way to hold on to things. He can’t go back because he’s already used it up, he can’t go forward because then it all begins to end, he’s stuck in this place where nothing means anything, it’s streaming in on him like a darkness, like a sickness, he’s seen something he isn’t supposed to see, only grownups are allowed to see it, it’s making him old, it’s ruining everything, his temples are pounding, his eyes are pounding, he feels a scream rising in his chest, he’s going to fall down onto the sandy orange earth, “Ahoy, matey!” shouts Julia, and with a wild cry that tears through his throat he steps over the line and begins his day. ♦
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Year one
Aging-
M: Are you excited about this foaming hand soap?
S: (non-committal yeah).
M: Oh, you're not excited about this hand soap? I love it.
S: I like it. I just wouldn't usually splurge for it.
M: Yeah, but it's lasting forever,
S: You're right.
After the movies
M: You're lucky to have a husband as good as I am. Now get your a-- upstairs and make me a sandwich.
S: How am I going to make you a sandwich upstairs?
M: Figure it out.
The days have a certain verisimilitude, which can be described alternatively as comforting or suffocating. The difference between the two probably has mostly to do with perception. In a sense, it had to do with levels of gratitude. If one awakes each morning expecting the world to sing brightly,
then you will be disappointed most days, and on the most triumphant of days, perhaps you will enjoy it, or perhaps you will already begin to reflect on how you will feel about this day in the future, the windswept sky, azure and pure, miles of hills and low lying places of water; you'll start to reflect on how you'll paint the picture of this day when you return home, the exact tenor of her voice, the soft light on her cheek; you'll already start making up a story before the light has even fallen.
By afternoon your mind will have filled in all the blanks. It will not remember that the sky was dark, that the girl never came, and that what you treasured most was being so marvelously alone. So alone that you could almost with that it was always so, and you know that the thought is dangerous, that it's the sort of thing that one lies down with in the crook of their arm and fades into dreamless sleep.
Me, I'll have already swam to that farther shore, where vikings split the skulls of holy men. Alone with my thoughts and those of dead men.
M: Are you excited about this foaming hand soap?
S: (non-committal yeah).
M: Oh, you're not excited about this hand soap? I love it.
S: I like it. I just wouldn't usually splurge for it.
M: Yeah, but it's lasting forever,
S: You're right.
After the movies
M: You're lucky to have a husband as good as I am. Now get your a-- upstairs and make me a sandwich.
S: How am I going to make you a sandwich upstairs?
M: Figure it out.
The days have a certain verisimilitude, which can be described alternatively as comforting or suffocating. The difference between the two probably has mostly to do with perception. In a sense, it had to do with levels of gratitude. If one awakes each morning expecting the world to sing brightly,
then you will be disappointed most days, and on the most triumphant of days, perhaps you will enjoy it, or perhaps you will already begin to reflect on how you will feel about this day in the future, the windswept sky, azure and pure, miles of hills and low lying places of water; you'll start to reflect on how you'll paint the picture of this day when you return home, the exact tenor of her voice, the soft light on her cheek; you'll already start making up a story before the light has even fallen.
Me, I'll have already swam to that farther shore, where vikings split the skulls of holy men. Alone with my thoughts and those of dead men.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesdays with Sadie: Standing alone
Around twelve o'clock or so I was lying on the floor with my glasses tucked behind my back as s crawled by. The glasses were tucked behind my back because s perceives that my glasses are akin to gold bars. Thus, when I see her doing the wounded buddy across the floor towards, panting slightly as she approaches, I remove my glasses and hide them behind me. Upon her arrival she usually pats my cheek then proceeds to sort of rake at it. This act, endearing as it is, is followed by a gentle probing of my eyeballs with her fingers. All charming I assure you. However, knowing s I can prepare myself for her unwanted abuse. That's why I was surprised today when s introduced a new trick. As I said, as I was lying on my back in a posture of extreme fatigue the wounded buddy made her way next to me, panting and smiling. And I, assuming that an eye gouge was at the ready, began to close my eyes, except, s wasn't interested in my eyes. No, she leaned forward and put her mouth over my entire nose. I'd chalk it up to teething, but let's be honest it's weird. I think a more sane father would probably understand that the cause was more sinister. She clearly believes that by closing off my airway she'll be able to get rid of me and have all the puffs she wants.
An hour after the nose incident I went to the kitchen to make myself a delicious lunch of microwaved hot dog. I would have checked in on s while I was doing it, but I was busy preparing her lunch as well. And, admittedly, the heavenly aroma of microwaved hot dog kept me there. So, upon noticing that she'd been silent for a bit I checked in on her. And there she was, smiling and sitting up on her knees at the foot of the bookshelf and just beginning to try and stand. Naturally I surrounded her with a bevy of pillows so that when she inevitably failed the crying could be held to minimum.She gamely reached up before crashing back to earth Icarus style, but she was cradled by a pillow. At that point she looked up at me worriedly as if asking what to do next, I smiled.
So now knowing that she's in the process of attempting to pull up I leave the room for a while to prepare her bottle, and I have to do this sort of mental dance of how long I should leave her because she won't pull up with us there because she uses us to pull up instead and whines a bit and does the wounded buddy routine. Like most artists she prefers being alone. Therefore, I let her work on the rocking chair in peace, and when I came back into the room she was sitting on her knees and smiling. And so I encouraged her to not give up, to not go quietly into the night, and she pulled herself up to standing for the very first time. I can't remember the last time I did something consequential for the first time.
Besides standing s's main goal in life is to climb without ceasing on whatever adult body lies near her. And, in the process, removing any excess skin you might have on your legs, chest, face, or arms. Sometimes I pull away and try and let her know that it hurts. We've taken to occasionally saying "gentle" when she touches my face, and S shows her how to do it more softly. I think this just incites more rage in her as she pulls on my face. Either that or she's certain that her parents are impostors and she's trying to unmask us.
Tangled- a brief review
Listen, it's hard enough to review a cartoon movie made by Disney or Pixar as everyone loves them. They routinely garner Rotten Tomatoes scores in the low to mid-nineties that only the best and least controversial of movies can hope to achieve, The King's Speech comes to mind. Anyhow, I am sort of pre-biased against them by this, and, I submit, this is where Rotten Tomatoes starts to fall apart. How good is good?
As I was originally saying I had a run in with a bottle of wine before we watched Tangled that left me a bit punchy and perhaps not at the height of my critical abilities. I mistakenly thought that a group of four of us were "sharing" a bottle of wine. This sharing turned out to be me drinking 95 percent of the bottle.
Singing- Disney movies always have lots of singing. One of my favorite things about the Pixar movies is the lack of singing. I'm not sure what I learned from all those Disney classics except that Prine Ali jolly is he might be the most annoying song known to man and also that A Whole New World was written to make me weep like a little girl. After A whole New World it's safe to say that music probably could have ended. Tangled winds up being a moderately pleasurable Disney romp but not nearly as charming as The Princess and the Frog, which breaks a little bit with the Shrek mold carved for Tangled. That is not to say that it isn't a good movie, it's just hard to quantify how good.
An hour after the nose incident I went to the kitchen to make myself a delicious lunch of microwaved hot dog. I would have checked in on s while I was doing it, but I was busy preparing her lunch as well. And, admittedly, the heavenly aroma of microwaved hot dog kept me there. So, upon noticing that she'd been silent for a bit I checked in on her. And there she was, smiling and sitting up on her knees at the foot of the bookshelf and just beginning to try and stand. Naturally I surrounded her with a bevy of pillows so that when she inevitably failed the crying could be held to minimum.She gamely reached up before crashing back to earth Icarus style, but she was cradled by a pillow. At that point she looked up at me worriedly as if asking what to do next, I smiled.
So now knowing that she's in the process of attempting to pull up I leave the room for a while to prepare her bottle, and I have to do this sort of mental dance of how long I should leave her because she won't pull up with us there because she uses us to pull up instead and whines a bit and does the wounded buddy routine. Like most artists she prefers being alone. Therefore, I let her work on the rocking chair in peace, and when I came back into the room she was sitting on her knees and smiling. And so I encouraged her to not give up, to not go quietly into the night, and she pulled herself up to standing for the very first time. I can't remember the last time I did something consequential for the first time.
Besides standing s's main goal in life is to climb without ceasing on whatever adult body lies near her. And, in the process, removing any excess skin you might have on your legs, chest, face, or arms. Sometimes I pull away and try and let her know that it hurts. We've taken to occasionally saying "gentle" when she touches my face, and S shows her how to do it more softly. I think this just incites more rage in her as she pulls on my face. Either that or she's certain that her parents are impostors and she's trying to unmask us.
Tangled- a brief review
Listen, it's hard enough to review a cartoon movie made by Disney or Pixar as everyone loves them. They routinely garner Rotten Tomatoes scores in the low to mid-nineties that only the best and least controversial of movies can hope to achieve, The King's Speech comes to mind. Anyhow, I am sort of pre-biased against them by this, and, I submit, this is where Rotten Tomatoes starts to fall apart. How good is good?
As I was originally saying I had a run in with a bottle of wine before we watched Tangled that left me a bit punchy and perhaps not at the height of my critical abilities. I mistakenly thought that a group of four of us were "sharing" a bottle of wine. This sharing turned out to be me drinking 95 percent of the bottle.
Singing- Disney movies always have lots of singing. One of my favorite things about the Pixar movies is the lack of singing. I'm not sure what I learned from all those Disney classics except that Prine Ali jolly is he might be the most annoying song known to man and also that A Whole New World was written to make me weep like a little girl. After A whole New World it's safe to say that music probably could have ended. Tangled winds up being a moderately pleasurable Disney romp but not nearly as charming as The Princess and the Frog, which breaks a little bit with the Shrek mold carved for Tangled. That is not to say that it isn't a good movie, it's just hard to quantify how good.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Reviewing Things: Amy Winehouse and Iron Man 2
Iron Man 2-
The Iron Man franchise acquires its bit of charm primarily through the acting prowess of Robert Downey Jr. I'd like to credit the writers and directors et al, but I'm fairly certain that the panache with which he carries off the role is a quality that only a few actors have. What I'm saying is that Vin Diesel would have killed in this franchise.
Anyhow, the pleasure in both of these movies is that they simultaneously rely on Downey's acting while not taking themselves too seriously, though Christopher Nolan has certainly benefited from taking the formerly campy Batman series to new heights by being deadly serious. I for one am not sure that I could take a whole bevvy of serious super heroes. Superman is kind of annoying.
The movie also includes Don Cheadle in a buddy role and Gwyneth Paltrow as the pseduo love interest. Pretty much the franchise has managed to accrue some excellent actors to get together for an action movie. On the downside the second movie isn't as good as the first. The movie isn't as good as the first because we've already seen Iron Man dealing with his inner demons, they're just of a slightly different variety. The movie doesn't take enough of a different tack to pave its own way. Thus, it's like a second kiss, or your fifth scoop of ice cream.
That isn't to say that it isn't worth watching. It is. It's just only worth watching if you want some brief entertainment, a respite from the real world. Though, to its credit, the overwrought fight scenes are kept to a minimum. The larger question is what are movies for? I don't have that answer though Tree of Life provides an interesting counterpoint. But I've no energy to talk about dinosaurs and the nineteen fifties.
So, this from Jay Caspian King on Amy Winehouse
0:06 She brought her own Pips! Those dance moves, however, are taken straight from the Temptations, probably from some long-forgotten performance of "My Girl." Right away, we're in two eras at once. And isn't it nice that we can have a white girl singing with three black back-up singers who are performing dance moves from the 1960s and the one thought that rises up through all the silly chatter is, "Holy shit, she looks cool." The flower in the hair, the black ruffled lace dress both set the bar high — if you're going to come out dressed like punk Billie Holiday, you better measure up.
0:11 This is called stagger-strutting — it's what you do when you're a bit drunk and want to hint that some better dance moves lurk under the surface, but you're keeping them under lock for when you need them. Standard way to set up a performance like this — lets everyone know you're about to get loose.
0:28 I love the scowl, the half-grimace on the first syllable of "tan-que-ray." Straight out of the Etta James/Mary J. Blige playbook — also known as the "stank exclamation point."
0:56 First time Amy looks straight into the camera and does the half-salute off her rib cage. Any hip-hop fan recognizes that move from every 50 Cent video ever.
1:17 This is where the high-wire act begins — everything up to this point has been referential and imitative. This doesn't mean it's been bad — quite the contrary. But when the song builds and you need to really fuck up some notes, do you have that next level of stank to complete the transmutation and turn this charming, anachronistic parlor scene into something better? Here, Amy blows right through it. Duffy would have fallen flat on her face, by the way. The illusion would have been broken and someone would have said, "Why is this girl pretending like she's Gladys Knight and it's still 1972?"
1:39 That's not a pretty face. But goddamn, when she yells, "My Blake!" who watching this right now doesn't wish that she was yelling your name?
2:09 Mugging the camera again. That's almost a Keith Murray face there.
3:10 Not quite a crotch-grab, more of a coquettish, flirty curtsey. The Marilyn.
4:11 This is the most important point of the performance, where she has to elevate what has been an admittedly flat past minute with theatrics, both vocal and dance-based. She starts out with the parakeet strut, goes to the hand-on-hip-and-point move (but with the Satan salute in lieu of the point), before transitioning straight into the "push you up the hill" move. That's going from two Diana Ross moves straight into an Aretha standard, but all of it done in a staggered, half-cocked way.
5:40 This is where the postmodern, music-blogging brain implodes into a chorus of apologies. I want to apologize for pointing out (fervently) a meaningful (possibly) moment in the life of someone who has just died. I also want to point out that same moment, fervently, for earnest reasons. I want to pooh-pooh anyone who would have the gall to suggest that any televised moment is "real," I want to write 500 words about what the word "real," means in the "zeitgeist," I want to tweet out the video link and the hashtag, but hide behind an ironic emoticon, I want to make a joke about the Grammys and link to the time when Homer Simpson threw his Grammy off the balcony. Despite all these interruptions, it's touching to watch a young woman realize that her life is probably not exactly what she thought her life had been.
The Iron Man franchise acquires its bit of charm primarily through the acting prowess of Robert Downey Jr. I'd like to credit the writers and directors et al, but I'm fairly certain that the panache with which he carries off the role is a quality that only a few actors have. What I'm saying is that Vin Diesel would have killed in this franchise.
Anyhow, the pleasure in both of these movies is that they simultaneously rely on Downey's acting while not taking themselves too seriously, though Christopher Nolan has certainly benefited from taking the formerly campy Batman series to new heights by being deadly serious. I for one am not sure that I could take a whole bevvy of serious super heroes. Superman is kind of annoying.
The movie also includes Don Cheadle in a buddy role and Gwyneth Paltrow as the pseduo love interest. Pretty much the franchise has managed to accrue some excellent actors to get together for an action movie. On the downside the second movie isn't as good as the first. The movie isn't as good as the first because we've already seen Iron Man dealing with his inner demons, they're just of a slightly different variety. The movie doesn't take enough of a different tack to pave its own way. Thus, it's like a second kiss, or your fifth scoop of ice cream.
That isn't to say that it isn't worth watching. It is. It's just only worth watching if you want some brief entertainment, a respite from the real world. Though, to its credit, the overwrought fight scenes are kept to a minimum. The larger question is what are movies for? I don't have that answer though Tree of Life provides an interesting counterpoint. But I've no energy to talk about dinosaurs and the nineteen fifties.
So, this from Jay Caspian King on Amy Winehouse
0:06 She brought her own Pips! Those dance moves, however, are taken straight from the Temptations, probably from some long-forgotten performance of "My Girl." Right away, we're in two eras at once. And isn't it nice that we can have a white girl singing with three black back-up singers who are performing dance moves from the 1960s and the one thought that rises up through all the silly chatter is, "Holy shit, she looks cool." The flower in the hair, the black ruffled lace dress both set the bar high — if you're going to come out dressed like punk Billie Holiday, you better measure up.
0:11 This is called stagger-strutting — it's what you do when you're a bit drunk and want to hint that some better dance moves lurk under the surface, but you're keeping them under lock for when you need them. Standard way to set up a performance like this — lets everyone know you're about to get loose.
0:28 I love the scowl, the half-grimace on the first syllable of "tan-que-ray." Straight out of the Etta James/Mary J. Blige playbook — also known as the "stank exclamation point."
0:56 First time Amy looks straight into the camera and does the half-salute off her rib cage. Any hip-hop fan recognizes that move from every 50 Cent video ever.
1:17 This is where the high-wire act begins — everything up to this point has been referential and imitative. This doesn't mean it's been bad — quite the contrary. But when the song builds and you need to really fuck up some notes, do you have that next level of stank to complete the transmutation and turn this charming, anachronistic parlor scene into something better? Here, Amy blows right through it. Duffy would have fallen flat on her face, by the way. The illusion would have been broken and someone would have said, "Why is this girl pretending like she's Gladys Knight and it's still 1972?"
1:39 That's not a pretty face. But goddamn, when she yells, "My Blake!" who watching this right now doesn't wish that she was yelling your name?
2:09 Mugging the camera again. That's almost a Keith Murray face there.
3:10 Not quite a crotch-grab, more of a coquettish, flirty curtsey. The Marilyn.
4:11 This is the most important point of the performance, where she has to elevate what has been an admittedly flat past minute with theatrics, both vocal and dance-based. She starts out with the parakeet strut, goes to the hand-on-hip-and-point move (but with the Satan salute in lieu of the point), before transitioning straight into the "push you up the hill" move. That's going from two Diana Ross moves straight into an Aretha standard, but all of it done in a staggered, half-cocked way.
5:40 This is where the postmodern, music-blogging brain implodes into a chorus of apologies. I want to apologize for pointing out (fervently) a meaningful (possibly) moment in the life of someone who has just died. I also want to point out that same moment, fervently, for earnest reasons. I want to pooh-pooh anyone who would have the gall to suggest that any televised moment is "real," I want to write 500 words about what the word "real," means in the "zeitgeist," I want to tweet out the video link and the hashtag, but hide behind an ironic emoticon, I want to make a joke about the Grammys and link to the time when Homer Simpson threw his Grammy off the balcony. Despite all these interruptions, it's touching to watch a young woman realize that her life is probably not exactly what she thought her life had been.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Thoughts
On Hummus
Whenever I'm at a party I'm always really impressed with how good the hummus is. It's inevitably better than the hummus I have at home, and I start wondering if I can ask where they buy their hummus. After thirty minutes or so I generally realize that the hummus tastes about the same as mine. However, why is their hummus so much better right off the bat? Also, do you think this is a world wide problem, wondering about other people's hummus, or is it more of a middle class thing?
Car Mistakes
I feel like my car is often lying. I drive it to work every day with a little sign in the back window that says, "Baby on board." The baby is never on board. I'm beginning to wish that my car didn't lie about its occupants. Although, to be fair, prior to the sign, which was put there by me, my car rarely if ever lied about its occupants. I suppose that the fault then lies with me and not the computer yet again.
Wise Men
I think it's fair to say that if cable television had never been invented that I'd know how to speak a foreign language, and that I'd have parlayed that into a foreign job. Sometimes when I'm pushing papers across my desk or heaving them into a trash can at my job, I reflect on the role that broadcast television has played in my downfall. My psychiatrist, who is a friend of mine, says that I should watch Telemundo and just shut the hell up. He is a wise man.
These are the things that I know about the debt ceiling:
The debt ceiling has been raised 89 times since its inception. During Ronald Reagan's presidency the debt ceiling was raised fourteen times.
Things I Miss
As a child I took my sweet time learning how to ride a bike. I was never certain why a big wheel shouldn't suffice for my mode of transportation for the rest of my life. Two summers ago my wife and I took a bike ride through D.C., gliding through parks and faint whiffs of pine, blocks of shadow in the form of trees until we reached the end of the line. "Let's do this again soon," she said, smiling. I guess what I'm trying to tell you is that I miss my Big Wheel.
These are the things I know about math
7x7 is 49.
X and y are not quite numbers, but they could be if you put in the right equation.
Bits of grammar
In England the phrase self-deprecation is pronounced as depreciation. We could argue forever about grammar, but it's probably best to agree that the term is best viewed in light of the article from the British telegraph, ""This is high-risk seduction. It is not for everyone." Indeed.
Whenever I'm at a party I'm always really impressed with how good the hummus is. It's inevitably better than the hummus I have at home, and I start wondering if I can ask where they buy their hummus. After thirty minutes or so I generally realize that the hummus tastes about the same as mine. However, why is their hummus so much better right off the bat? Also, do you think this is a world wide problem, wondering about other people's hummus, or is it more of a middle class thing?
Car Mistakes
I feel like my car is often lying. I drive it to work every day with a little sign in the back window that says, "Baby on board." The baby is never on board. I'm beginning to wish that my car didn't lie about its occupants. Although, to be fair, prior to the sign, which was put there by me, my car rarely if ever lied about its occupants. I suppose that the fault then lies with me and not the computer yet again.
Wise Men
I think it's fair to say that if cable television had never been invented that I'd know how to speak a foreign language, and that I'd have parlayed that into a foreign job. Sometimes when I'm pushing papers across my desk or heaving them into a trash can at my job, I reflect on the role that broadcast television has played in my downfall. My psychiatrist, who is a friend of mine, says that I should watch Telemundo and just shut the hell up. He is a wise man.
These are the things that I know about the debt ceiling:
The debt ceiling has been raised 89 times since its inception. During Ronald Reagan's presidency the debt ceiling was raised fourteen times.
Things I Miss
As a child I took my sweet time learning how to ride a bike. I was never certain why a big wheel shouldn't suffice for my mode of transportation for the rest of my life. Two summers ago my wife and I took a bike ride through D.C., gliding through parks and faint whiffs of pine, blocks of shadow in the form of trees until we reached the end of the line. "Let's do this again soon," she said, smiling. I guess what I'm trying to tell you is that I miss my Big Wheel.
These are the things I know about math
7x7 is 49.
X and y are not quite numbers, but they could be if you put in the right equation.
Bits of grammar
In England the phrase self-deprecation is pronounced as depreciation. We could argue forever about grammar, but it's probably best to agree that the term is best viewed in light of the article from the British telegraph, ""This is high-risk seduction. It is not for everyone." Indeed.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Vignettes
Marriage
In the afternoon I pick up two white socks from the landing, empty the trash can and recycling, put bags back inside to replace those removed, start the laundry, hang up the diapers. I do all of these things for no apparent reason. I do them because they need to get done. When I see my wife and tell her all that I have done, she smiles approvingly. I can tell in her heart of hearts that she loves a man who puts away his shorts, and I am reminded of how easy it would be to please her, but they still seem to find their way onto the floor next to my bed. Happiness be damned.
Swimming
For a year or so I took up swimming. At first I chopped at the water as though it was a tree to be felled, kicking up large arcs of water that bathed fellow swimmers in a waterfall of failure. You see, when I was six I had been held back in swimming lessons because my technique was so poor. If I could travel back in time I'd let the teacher know that it was a sign of my profound placement at the top of the evolutionary change. Remind her that my inability to do a solid butterfly kick was related to the vast distances that I'd traveled from those webbed things that had first crawled on solid earth. And I'd tell her, poor girl, that I still have many more miles to go. She was right though, I am a poor swimmer.
On dreams
I am not the sort of person who bothers to remember his dreams. For a while I thought about putting a dream journal next to my bed, sketching out the ragged edges of the pictures in my mind. But that's just it, all I ever did was think about keeping that dream journal, I never bought the damn thing. I'd like to say that it was some sort of conscious decision, not getting the dream journal, but I'm afraid it wasn't. But still, it leaves open the possibility that my mind will travel across the vast reaches of space without anyone ever knowing. Perhaps I'll be a king with sixty concubines each more beautiful than the last, a departed Mormon and god of his own little galaxy, or perhaps I'll learn to fly, or visit a city underwater, with beautiful mermaids who possess an exact replica of the world above, down to the minutest detail in a trench so deep that it is larger than the whole of the dry land. Perhaps in that life I'll be a fish, and I'll watch mermaids play ping pong with their tails. Who am I to keep my mind from dreaming? Who am I to record its wanderings? Each morning I awake anew to the incessant beeping of a small black alarm. Dreams are for those who never awake.
On yellow
It seems to me that yellow is the purest of colors. I'm biased I know, worshiper that I am of the sun, worshiper that I am of golden hair. Gold is yellow too of course, and I see that I am not alone in this love of yellow. I remember yellow hair, yellow moonlight on the water, yellow ducks swimming through yellow pools of light. What a color, I say, to the woman sitting next to me on the train home from work. She has black hair and does not remember who I am though we've known each other since childhood, and it's only just now that I've remembered. At the next stop she changes seats, stands up for no apparent reason. At her feet yellow light swims and the shadows dart across it as the train moves like a school of fish. I can see that she loves yellow too, but I keep the secret to myself. Some things, as has been said a thousand times before, are better left unsaid.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Science
It took a while, in the relative scope of technological growth, which as we all know increases exponentially, can I get a singularity shout out, the Internet took a little bit of time to find its way. In that time the Internet roved around chasing its own tail and occasionally distributing electronic mail form. And that's when the Internet found its true calling, a calling that involved distributing cute photos of the very animal that it emulates, a little kitten chasing shadows.
It took science a bit longer to find its groove. It wasted away for a while trying to figure out how to reanimate corpses, delved into creating mass amounts of corpses, and eventually tried to find a niche as a replacement for the seemingly outdated notion of religion, though this was decidedly undercut in much the same way that many people perceived religion to be undercut, by the whole making of corpses enterprise that still goes on.
The weird thing is that science got its groove back somewhere around 1960, but it needed the Internet to grow up and become omnipresent to reveal its true self. And now we have what science was created for. Youtube videos of kids trying to resist marshmallows.
Katie Baker from the wonderful folks over at Grantland describes it thusly:
Two years ago Jonah Lehrer wrote one of my favorite New Yorker pieces, about a psychological study conducted at Stanford in the '60s that examined children’s' willingness and ability to delay gratification. Overseen by Walter Mischel, the project evolved into a 40-year longitudinal study of its participants and gave rise to some compelling, if controversial, theories of human behavior. More importantly, it yielded a delightful YouTube genre: the Marshmallow Test.
Mischel's original Marshmallow Test is brilliant in its simplicity: A child of about 4 is plunked down at a table and presented with a plump, fluffy marshmallow. "You can eat this marshmallow now," a researcher tells the small, wide-eyed soul. "But if you wait until I get back in 10 minutes, then I'll give you another, and then you'll have two!" The door closes, and we're left with nothing but a marshmallow, a kid, and a camera.
It took science a bit longer to find its groove. It wasted away for a while trying to figure out how to reanimate corpses, delved into creating mass amounts of corpses, and eventually tried to find a niche as a replacement for the seemingly outdated notion of religion, though this was decidedly undercut in much the same way that many people perceived religion to be undercut, by the whole making of corpses enterprise that still goes on.
The weird thing is that science got its groove back somewhere around 1960, but it needed the Internet to grow up and become omnipresent to reveal its true self. And now we have what science was created for. Youtube videos of kids trying to resist marshmallows.
Katie Baker from the wonderful folks over at Grantland describes it thusly:
Two years ago Jonah Lehrer wrote one of my favorite New Yorker pieces, about a psychological study conducted at Stanford in the '60s that examined children’s' willingness and ability to delay gratification. Overseen by Walter Mischel, the project evolved into a 40-year longitudinal study of its participants and gave rise to some compelling, if controversial, theories of human behavior. More importantly, it yielded a delightful YouTube genre: the Marshmallow Test.
Mischel's original Marshmallow Test is brilliant in its simplicity: A child of about 4 is plunked down at a table and presented with a plump, fluffy marshmallow. "You can eat this marshmallow now," a researcher tells the small, wide-eyed soul. "But if you wait until I get back in 10 minutes, then I'll give you another, and then you'll have two!" The door closes, and we're left with nothing but a marshmallow, a kid, and a camera.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
A reminder
The internet is for cats...and the debt ceiling.
From an article
Honestly, why are you driving a BMW?
Olof Johansson-Stenman ∗, Peter Martinsson
Department of Economics, G¨oteborg University, Vasagatan 1, Box 640, SE-40530 G¨oteborg, Sweden
Received 18 June 2002; received in revised form 3 July 2003; accepted 26 August 2004
Available online 20 June 2005
Abstract
This paper proposes that people derive utility not only from goods or their attributes as in standard models, but also from their self-image as influenced by their own perception of their preferences. In a representative survey, most respondents considered their own concern for status when purchasing a car to be minor in comparison with the status concerns of others. Similarly, most individuals considered themselves to be more environmentally concerned than other people. These results are consistent with an extension of the conventional theory where an individual’s self-image is added as an argument in the utility function.
Most people want to give a good impression and be perceived as complying with various social norms in order to gain social approval and esteem. Hence, we have a personal interest in pretending to behave ‘better’ or more in accordance with (possibly local) existing social norms than we actually do; we may, for example, exaggerate our social responsibility or modify our musical taste in the presence of others. Kuran (1995) discusses such “preference falsification” to obtain social acceptance in depth and presents overwhelming evidence that preference falsifications are important for much of human behaviour. This is therefore,
taken as a point of departure in the present paper. For example, if it is considered politically correct to be concerned about the environment, then people have an incentive to overstate their own concern when communicating with others. A possible consequence of this isthat people may believe that others are more environmentally concerned than they actually are.
However, in addition to social norms (see, e.g., Elster, 1989; Young, 1998 for overviews)that we try to fulfill through modified self-presentation in order to obtain social acceptance,there are also personal norms that we try to comply with even when our behaviour is not observable by others (see, e.g., Aaron, 1994; Kuran, 1998a). One reason for this is that we
like to improve or maintain a positive self-image.
Let's go ahead and just get to the gist of this study. Shakespeare pretty much covered at least half of its findings in a much pithier manner, "All the world's a stage." There, I just saved you reading the next fourteen pages of the study.
The equally interesting portion, not the fact that I pretend to like certain types of music in groups, or synchronized swimming during the summer Olympics, rather, that people's perception of themselves is so skewed. Ie, I made this choice because I am a deep thinker. X or y made that choice willy-nilly. And we always say, willy-nilly. This sort of dialogue, common when I'm talking about political ills is perhaps, unfounded. Thus, when I decry the American public's refusal to engage with political issues and make informed decisions, perhaps I'm just attributing their difference of opinion to being ill-informed. Maybe everyone is considering the past ills of deregulation but measuring them out against governmental involvement. Maybe everyone just believes that top down economics result in more jobs for the lower classes, maybe they've considered the radical shift upwards in money in the hands of the wealthy and determined them to be good and honest hard working folks who deserve all that money because of it's relationship to their internal merit. Maybe....
But probably not. Those people are all stupid anyway ;).
Tuesdays without Sadie
Baby race. If it's not clear from the video I'm merely encouraging Sadie to run a good race. Mind you, after she completed her losing effort I let her know that just being in the competition was enough of a reward and that winning doesn't really matter, except to me, which is how she'll earn my love.
As I'm certain I've mentioned before the little urchin has been trilling for a few weeks in lieu of proper babbling. I don't entirely know where she picked it up. S is trying to claim credit, but I'm inclined to think that it's just further proof that people are the descendants of dinosaurs or birds or something.
We've let s know that we expect her to pay her own way through college. With that in mind we've an expectation that she'll probably go as an opera singer as the scholarships for opera singers are known to be plentiful. I can tell that s has been feeling a bit of pressure, and has, as a result, begun practicing on our time as well as hers. I think she's going to at least get in to JC.
As I'm certain I've mentioned before the little urchin has been trilling for a few weeks in lieu of proper babbling. I don't entirely know where she picked it up. S is trying to claim credit, but I'm inclined to think that it's just further proof that people are the descendants of dinosaurs or birds or something.
We've let s know that we expect her to pay her own way through college. With that in mind we've an expectation that she'll probably go as an opera singer as the scholarships for opera singers are known to be plentiful. I can tell that s has been feeling a bit of pressure, and has, as a result, begun practicing on our time as well as hers. I think she's going to at least get in to JC.
Monday, July 18, 2011
MSN Mondays: 14 Ways to Entertain in style
If you're like me you probably own a home. It's fair to say that most people are probably like me. If they aren't then I'd have to rethink all of my strongly held opinions about things like gun rights and social security and whether communism is amazing or not. Anyhow, let's just assume that most people are like me because it will help me sleep easier at night. This night in particular.
Since you're like me you often probably find yourself drinking some white wine in your backyard, complaining about bugs and wondering how you can show all of your stupid friends how awesome you are. Guess what? Now you can. I've searched far and wide, (inside my own brain) to come up with fourteen ways that you can show all those rotten people in your life how much better you are than them. Incidentally, this is the blog where I attempt to rewrite Catcher in the Rye for a modern audience.
1) You should throw one those mystery parties where everyone dresses up like Miss Scarlett, and then you murder someone and you have to figure out which Miss Scarlett did the murdering. That way everyone will be wearing nice cocktail dresses the whole night, and it will be funny to compare notes down the road on who was the best Miss Scarlett and who wasn't. Also, don't really kill someone because then it wouldn't be a stylish party. Mainly because blood is hard to get out of fabric.
2) You could have a Titanic themed party and hire an orchestra to play while the ship goes down. Also, sink your house and buy a chandelier and an old lady to talk about diamonds. And maybe steal the Hope diamond because we all know where it is, and I bet it's not that hard to steal if you really wanted it. People on the Titanic dressed up real nice, so you'd have that going for you, then you could get large blocks of ice and let everyone at the party carve their own sculpture, which is stylish. This party idea has gotten so good that I'm going to stop before you steal it from me.
3) It's high time that you flooded your house, built some crazy ass glass walls, and threw yourself a mermaid/merman party. But don't invite so many mermans because everyone knows that they are weird and carry pitchforks. Anyhow, then someone could say something bad about one of the mermaids, like, "That mermaid looks like a whor- or something," and you could say, "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," and everyone would laugh because in this case it would be true instead of a saying, and the whole thing would be really stylish. Also, the waiters should be fish. Highly trained fish. And maybe you should get some scuba gear or something because everyone would die otherwise or spend time treading water and treading water is not very stylish.
4) You could throw a black out party. Everyone would be wearing black ties and black dresses and all the lights would be out and everyone would be bumping into each other, and you'd have to guess if it was your date's hand that you were holding or just some old guy that was lost. It would make a real statement about how you didn't care what people looked like until everyone's eyes got adjusted to the dark after forty minutes or so, and then you could kind of peer at each other and maybe realize that the person you've been talking to this whole time is someone that you never would have talked to if the lights were on, and how strange it is how our perception changes in the dark. And maybe you'd drive home and write her marginal but really passionate love poetry. That sounds like a good party.
5) Dinosaur party. At this party everyone dresses up like a their favorite dinosaur, which probably doesn't sound stylish to you, but I can be forgiven if I have crummy ideas every now and again can't I?
6) You could do a Mad Men themed party because everyone on that show always looks real nice. Although, you and I both know that all the extras always look so good because of all those pretty girls who move to CA to be in the movies but who end up being just kind of blurry shapes in the background of television shows, which is better than being in a porno I suppose, so they've got that going for them. Anyhow, this party could be real crazy but at some point you'd have to bring in your lawn mower and run over someone's foot, and I've only got a push mower, so I'd just leave a mark and piss the person off, and what kind of party is that?
7) You could have a cloud themed party on your roof where everyone came as a different strata of cloud with all sorts of information about that particular type of cloud. This is the sort of party that you should do if all of your friends love the Weather Channel or are doing the weather on the local news. If someone got really annoying you could threaten to throw them off the roof, but they'd be fine because of the floating thing. You should probably get some new friends because these people sound strange.
8) You could have a party where everyone dressed like someone else at the party. This party would be great because is would allow everyone to really express themselves and have a good laugh. Although, I've found that when people imitate me, or create a caricature that it secretly hurts my feelings, and I laugh like everyone else, and clap the person on the back, and say, "You got it right, I sure do say that." But deep down I'm thinking about how I can whap the person over the head with a bat or lure them into a hornet's nest or something. Maybe this party wasn't such a good idea.
9) You could have a fur party. That would be real fancy. You could have an endangered species party where everyone had to wear the fur of some endangered species. I can't have this party because my wife loves the environment, so send me a letter if you have it and it all goes well. I'm jealous of you. I'd probably wear a bunch of black-footed ferrets because of the Beastmaster. If you haven't seen it it's a movie about a guy who looks like He-Man and his ferrets, and his panther, and hawk or falcon or something. I think you'll really like it.
10) You could have a party where everyone dressed up like the thing that they most wanted to be. None of the costumes would be slutty. This party is not Halloween. Everyone would just be dressed up as the thing they most wanted to be, like an astronaut or an art critic or a hermit crab or whatever weird stuff you and your friends like.
11) You could have a sprinkler party. Where everyone stands around talking and drinking wine and stuff except every twenty minutes or so each person has to run through the sprinkler and shout Wooooooo to remember what it was like to be a child and not such a stupid stuffy adult sitting around drinking wine and complaining about their job and stuff.
12) You could have an age party. Where people could dress up as Iron or Bronze or uhmmmm, fire. Did we have an age of fire? Anyhow, the people at the party could master the language and cultural mores of the time period they were to represent and then they'd have to act like that all night. Like someone could be an upper crust Brit from just before the dawning of the Industrial Age, and he could be talking about his income and traveling to Italy for his health and someone from the age of barbarians could come up and put a shiv in his ribs because he's so damn stuck up. If there isn't an age of Barbarians be sure to make one because people can be annoying.
13) You could have a zero gravity party. At this party you'd have to get some help from NASA and everyone would float around on the ceiling, or enter through the front door sideways, and you'd be in the bathroom taking a piss only to look up and discover that one of your friend's wives is standing on the ceiling in the corner. I know what you're thinking you perv. We wouldn't have any of that kind of stuff at this party. It would be nice because no one would have to wear those stuffy astronaut suits but we could all kind of cut loose and maybe vomit and stuff.
14) Maybe you could have a party where you invited all of the people that you love. Even those people who don't really know that you love them. Maybe you could get them all in one place and spread them out in a line and tell each and every one of them why you love them. And if someone couldn't come, you'd mention them to, how much you loved them. This is the sort of party that I'd never go to because praise makes me feel awkward. I'd probably just tell you to shut up and have a drink, and that's what you love about me.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Because it's summer
Perhaps the poem should be in the middle as it's the central point of the narrative. However, it was also the genesis for the idea, the Big Bang, to put two seemingly disparate ideas together. Remember, when reading poetry it's best to use a soft soothing internal voice, those of Garrison Keillor or DFW.
Mother, Summer, I by Philip Larkin
My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,
And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.
The man himself:
“A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded pistol on your coffee table — there’s nothing wrong with them, but it’s hard to stop thinking about it.” — Garrison Keillor
Poetry:
I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips. ~Violette Leduc,
Summer truths for teenaged boys and homeowners.
A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. ~James Dent
A deep and abiding truth in and of itself:
Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. ~Sam Keen
Ah, the soul finds its rest:
Heat, ma'am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones. ~Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir
Dear sir Lubbock, the mere inclusion of waste of time seems a discredit, summer is not worthy of its inclusion:
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time. ~John Lubbock
Depends on the heat and humidity Mr. James:
Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. ~Henry James
Somewhere a Bronte sister has something to say:
"He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly." Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
For me, summer is the only season. When it passes, I write it letters for nine months from dimly lit rooms begging it to return by the next train.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Tuesdays with Sadie
Right now the little minx is in the throws of developing a bit of an attachment to her parents. While it seems as though it would be inimitably charming to have such a cute little rascal scurrying after you, albeit at a rather slow rate, it turns out to be a bit of an annoying kind of charm. A bit like the attentions of an unwanted admirer. Though flattered, it is not entirely welcomed.
Though I'd been fairly certain that the little devil had been developing this propensity for the chase it was not until today when I stepped away to momentarily relieve myself, while lil s was lying on the floor in the middle of the carpet playing with her giraffe, which she tends to bite on in such a way as to bring to mind a lioness on the savanna, only to arrive back downstairs to find her whining to herself and attempting to lift herself up the stairs. Charming though the act was, it is more troubling when she bawls her head off when I leave the room to warm up her milk. Apparently she regards that simple act, despite my assurances to her which I assure you are to the contrary, as tantamount to abandonment, and I've no doubt that at some point in my life she'll go to a Freudian psychiatrist and unearth these kitchen abandonment's and blame her unhappiness on none other than her father. (As I write she's sort of moaning herself to sleep or deciding that sleep is untenable).
The whole thing is strange. I'll leave her playing in the living room, and she'll show up a few seconds later, dragging herself across the floor to reach me. The whole scenario is actually a bit like a movie about a psychopathic killer because she drags her feet on the ground wounded buddy green army man style and pulls herself along on the floor with her hands, which results in a slapping type noise on the pergo flooring. This constant slapping, coupled with her heavy breathing/whining as she comes at me from the other room is borderline horrifying. It's just that instead of an axe wielding psychopath I see a two and half foot tall baby smiling up at me. Although lately she sometimes eschews the smile and crawls all the way into the kitchen with me and proceeds to but up against my legs like a house pet that needs attention. Also, she's probably harboring deep desires to cut me with an ax for leaving her behind.
At around five o'clock after spending the whole day as the wounded buddy lil s starts screaming at the top of her lungs for no discernible reason. I'm not talking unhappy screaming, just wild screaming. It turns out that a baby can scream pretty loud, and it's a bit annoying. I try to let her know that we reserve that sort of screaming for the prow of the Titanic and the Grand Canyon but to no avail. She just loves to scream.
The one plus in terms of development that we've seen is that we realized that the little clicking noise that she'd begun making is almost exactly the sort of noise that lips make when giving her a kiss. Thus, she's imitating a kiss from her mommy and daddy. Granted she doesn't actually give us a kiss back yet, but it's pretty damn cute to give her a kiss on the cheek and hear her make the little noise in kind. The important part is that she recognizes that she's loved. Even if I do wish she'd stop loving me so much and go play with her toys.
A good video about perspective
People, at least the people I know, occasionally try and remind themselves when they're feeling really down that their place in the universe is a wee bit small. This video of the known world does a good job of reminding us just how small our little planet is. It's not quite sitting in front of the ocean because it's rendered, but it ain't bad.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
MSN Mondays: 23 surprising things that guys like
1. Women
2. Girls who pretend to like action movies but deep down really prefer foreign movies and documentary's about all the ills in the world.
3. Women who pretend to be into high fashion and clothes and bags and stuff like that but who secretly squirrel money away in Swiss bank accounts and have an interest in investing more fully in their 401K.
4. Women who pretend to not enjoy cooking and say that they want to eat out all the time but who secretly make peach pies every weekend and watch Martha Stewart occasionally to get good ideas.
Aside: I want you to know that the generic MSN article had a bunch of random dudes texting in things like "a chick who will play ps3 with me" and "women who wear boy's shorts all the time." I'm just updating their shoddy advice and should probably be remunerated properly.
5. Women who enjoy traveling. More specifically. Women who are good at figuring out complex train schedules in foreign locales, so you don't end up in some backwater village without a hotel reservation.
6. Women who aren't afraid to give credit to their boyfriends/husbands for stuff that they've done. I mean, the world didn't couldn't have existed as a patriarchal society for a few thousand years without this system.
7. Women who not only say, "I like those flowers," but women who point and say that they enjoy heath aster and primrose and the rails of a stand of lodge pole pines.
8. Women who enjoy taxidermy. Nothing says that a lady is ready to settle down like a nice stuffed moose just hanging out in her apartment. It says, hey, I'm beyond the catch stage. I'm doing things. Look here at this raccoon I've stuffed and put in a life-like replica type scene near this eagle that's trying to eat it.
9. Women who enjoy french doors. Taking a liking to French doors pretty much tells a dude all he needs to know about the sort of aesthetic trappings that a woman likes. If she's attaching herself to such a profoundly good architectural structure, she's probably a catch.
10. Women who understand that Pottery Barn is a nice place to look at furniture, but that you should probably go buy it at Crate and Barrel outlet or Ikea. This appreciation for beauty, coupled with an appropriate frugality really turns men on in the 18-26 range because that's the sort of thing they are concerned about.
11. Women who enjoy bull fights. That's right. The kind of woman who knows enough about history to appreciate the mystical act of animal sacrifice in the scope of humanities relationship to religion and itself. Who understands that the transaction is certainly not merely material but spiritual as well, even if in a sort of retrograde way. That kind of girl.
12. Women who enjoy screen porches. Any woman who lives west of the Rockies and isn't agitating for a screen porch in here future is the sort of woman you want to avoid. You want a woman who knows about malaria, and dengue fever, and West Nile and has a healthy fear of them as well as that Frankensteinianesque company that developed male mosquitoes to wipe out populations in the Cayman islands.
13. Women who don't like pets. You want the type of woman who understands that the attachment that she's formed with her pet is the sort of thing she should be lavishing on other human beings and that the arrival of any offspring will necessitate that offspring crawling through bits of fur, and practically subsisting on dander if she just resists the temptation. Fish are okay though because of their truncated lives.
14. Women who enjoy being outdoors. Men want the type of girl who can appreciate the pleasing light at the end of the day and who can identify cloud shapes and types, and who understand that people who live in cities are pretty stressed out because of all those dirty people that live around them and that the very fact that they think of them as all those dirty people is indicative of the problem.
15. Women who pretend to like abstract art because it's the sort of thing that a person is supposed to do but who secretly love photography and sculpture way more. Women who understand the complex relationship and are emotively moved by the connection between Michelangelo's David and the idea of a creator God molding them from clay. Also, they should like pictures of trees.
16. Women who enjoy boat races. No, I don't mean those type of races that take place on yachts. Do we still have the America's Cup? I mean the type of races that take place in the gutter or on a river between two bits of bark or sticks. Women who understand that this sort of simple competition evokes their own childhood innocence and that it is beautiful.
17. Women who enjoy sun browned hills and live oaks.
18. Women who enjoy staying up all night to talk.
19. Women who enjoy eating garden fresh vegetables.
20. Women who enjoy silence.
21. Women who don't mind sitting in the sun, if the proper amount of sunscreen is applied, and reflecting on their life and the strangeness of a plane overhead full of other people with other problems that they will never meet.
22. Women who laugh frequently.
23. Women who enjoy long train rides through foreign countrysides, streams cutting like ribbons through old valleys, where older women string clothes on lines.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
How to make art
Please ignore the coarse language and stick it out for the last minute and a half because it's simultaneously hilarious and insightful.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Potent quotables: Tennis from DFW or Federer as religious experience
Note: This is a long one, and if you just want to skip ahead, go ahead and read a couple of paragraphs at the beginning and then skip down to footnote 17, which is a doozy and the whole point of the essay in a way.
DFW
Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re O.K.
The Moments are more intense if you’ve played enough tennis to understand the impossibility of what you just saw him do. We’ve all got our examples. Here is one. It’s the finals of the 2005 U.S. Open, Federer serving to Andre Agassi early in the fourth set. There’s a medium-long exchange of groundstrokes, one with the distinctive butterfly shape of today’s power-baseline game, Federer and Agassi yanking each other from side to side, each trying to set up the baseline winner...until suddenly Agassi hits a hard heavy cross-court backhand that pulls Federer way out wide to his ad (=left) side, and Federer gets to it but slices the stretch backhand short, a couple feet past the service line, which of course is the sort of thing Agassi dines out on, and as Federer’s scrambling to reverse and get back to center, Agassi’s moving in to take the short ball on the rise, and he smacks it hard right back into the same ad corner, trying to wrong-foot Federer, which in fact he does — Federer’s still near the corner but running toward the centerline, and the ball’s heading to a point behind him now, where he just was, and there’s no time to turn his body around, and Agassi’s following the shot in to the net at an angle from the backhand side...and what Federer now does is somehow instantly reverse thrust and sort of skip backward three or four steps, impossibly fast, to hit a forehand out of his backhand corner, all his weight moving backward, and the forehand is a topspin screamer down the line past Agassi at net, who lunges for it but the ball’s past him, and it flies straight down the sideline and lands exactly in the deuce corner of Agassi’s side, a winner — Federer’s still dancing backward as it lands. And there’s that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and John McEnroe with his color man’s headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), “How do you hit a winner from that position?” And he’s right: given Agassi’s position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of “The Matrix.” I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.
Anyway, that’s one example of a Federer Moment, and that was merely on TV — and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.
Journalistically speaking, there is no hot news to offer you about Roger Federer. He is, at 25, the best tennis player currently alive. Maybe the best ever. Bios and profiles abound. “60 Minutes” did a feature on him just last year. Anything you want to know about Mr. Roger N.M.I. Federer — his background, his home town of Basel, Switzerland, his parents’ sane and unexploitative support of his talent, his junior tennis career, his early problems with fragility and temper, his beloved junior coach, how that coach’s accidental death in 2002 both shattered and annealed Federer and helped make him what he now is, Federer’s 39 career singles titles, his eight Grand Slams, his unusually steady and mature commitment to the girlfriend who travels with him (which on the men’s tour is rare) and handles his affairs (which on the men’s tour is unheard of), his old-school stoicism and mental toughness and good sportsmanship and evident overall decency and thoughtfulness and charitable largess — it’s all just a Google search away. Knock yourself out.
This present article is more about a spectator’s experience of Federer, and its context. The specific thesis here is that if you’ve never seen the young man play live, and then do, in person, on the sacred grass of Wimbledon, through the literally withering heat and then wind and rain of the ’06 fortnight, then you are apt to have what one of the tournament’s press bus drivers describes as a “bloody near-religious experience.” It may be tempting, at first, to hear a phrase like this as just one more of the overheated tropes that people resort to to describe the feeling of Federer Moments. But the driver’s phrase turns out to be true — literally, for an instant ecstatically — though it takes some time and serious watching to see this truth emerge.
Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.(1)
Of course, in men’s sports no one ever talks about beauty or grace or the body. Men may profess their “love” of sports, but that love must always be cast and enacted in the symbology of war: elimination vs. advance, hierarchy of rank and standing, obsessive statistics, technical analysis, tribal and/or nationalist fervor, uniforms, mass noise, banners, chest-thumping, face-painting, etc. For reasons that are not well understood, war’s codes are safer for most of us than love’s. You too may find them so, in which case Spain’s mesomorphic and totally martial Rafael Nadal is the man’s man for you — he of the unsleeved biceps and Kabuki self-exhortations. Plus Nadal is also Federer’s nemesis and the big surprise of this year’s Wimbledon, since he’s a clay-court specialist and no one expected him to make it past the first few rounds here. Whereas Federer, through the semifinals, has provided no surprise or competitive drama at all. He’s outplayed each opponent so completely that the TV and print press are worried his matches are dull and can’t compete effectively with the nationalist fervor of the World Cup.(2)
July 9’s men’s final, though, is everyone’s dream. Nadal vs. Federer is a replay of last month’s French Open final, which Nadal won. Federer has so far lost only four matches all year, but they’ve all been to Nadal. Still, most of these matches have been on slow clay, Nadal’s best surface. Grass is Federer’s best. On the other hand, the first week’s heat has baked out some of the Wimbledon courts’ slickness and made them slower. There’s also the fact that Nadal has adjusted his clay-based game to grass — moving in closer to the baseline on his groundstrokes, amping up his serve, overcoming his allergy to the net. He just about disemboweled Agassi in the third round. The networks are in ecstasies. Before the match, on Centre Court, behind the glass slits above the south backstop, as the linesmen are coming out on court in their new Ralph Lauren uniforms that look so much like children’s navalwear, the broadcast commentators can be seen practically bouncing up and down in their chairs. This Wimbledon final’s got the revenge narrative, the king-versus-regicide dynamic, the stark character contrasts. It’s the passionate machismo of southern Europe versus the intricate clinical artistry of the north. Apollo and Dionysus. Scalpel and cleaver. Righty and southpaw. Nos. 1 and 2 in the world. Nadal, the man who’s taken the modern power-baseline game just as far as it goes, versus a man who’s transfigured that modern game, whose precision and variety are as big a deal as his pace and foot-speed, but who may be peculiarly vulnerable to, or psyched out by, that first man. A British sportswriter, exulting with his mates in the press section, says, twice, “It’s going to be a war.”
Plus it’s in the cathedral of Centre Court. And the men’s final is always on the fortnight’s second Sunday, the symbolism of which Wimbledon emphasizes by always omitting play on the first Sunday. And the spattery gale that has knocked over parking signs and everted umbrellas all morning suddenly quits an hour before match time, the sun emerging just as Centre Court’s tarp is rolled back and the net posts driven home.
Federer and Nadal come out to applause, make their ritual bows to the nobles’ box. The Swiss is in the buttermilk-colored sport coat that Nike’s gotten him to wear for Wimbledon this year. On Federer, and perhaps on him alone, it doesn’t look absurd with shorts and sneakers. The Spaniard eschews all warm-up clothing, so you have to look at his muscles right away. He and the Swiss are both in all-Nike, up to the very same kind of tied white Nike hankie with the swoosh positioned above the third eye. Nadal tucks his hair under his hankie, but Federer doesn’t, and smoothing and fussing with the bits of hair that fall over the hankie is the main Federer tic TV viewers get to see; likewise Nadal’s obsessive retreat to the ballboy’s towel between points. There happen to be other tics and habits, though, tiny perks of live viewing. There’s the great care Roger Federer takes to hang the sport coat over his spare courtside chair’s back, just so, to keep it from wrinkling — he’s done this before each match here, and something about it seems childlike and weirdly sweet. Or the way he inevitably changes out his racket sometime in the second set, the new one always in the same clear plastic bag closed with blue tape, which he takes off carefully and always hands to a ballboy to dispose of. There’s Nadal’s habit of constantly picking his long shorts out of his bottom as he bounces the ball before serving, his way of always cutting his eyes warily from side to side as he walks the baseline, like a convict expecting to be shanked. And something odd on the Swiss’s serve, if you look very closely. Holding ball and racket out in front, just before starting the motion, Federer always places the ball precisely in the V-shaped gap of the racket’s throat, just below the head, just for an instant. If the fit isn’t perfect, he adjusts the ball until it is. It happens very fast, but also every time, on both first serves and second.
Nadal and Federer now warm each other up for precisely five minutes; the umpire keeps time. There’s a very definite order and etiquette to these pro warm-ups, which is something that television has decided you’re not interested in seeing. Centre Court holds 13,000 and change. Another several thousand have done what people here do willingly every year, which is to pay a stiff general admission at the gate and then gather, with hampers and mosquito spray, to watch the match on an enormous TV screen outside Court 1. Your guess here is probably as good as anyone’s.
Right before play, up at the net, there’s a ceremonial coin-toss to see who’ll serve first. It’s another Wimbledon ritual. The honorary coin-tosser this year is William Caines, assisted by the umpire and tournament referee. William Caines is a 7-year-old from Kent who contracted liver cancer at age 2 and somehow survived after surgery and horrific chemo. He’s here representing Cancer Research UK. He’s blond and pink-cheeked and comes up to about Federer’s waist. The crowd roars its approval of the re-enacted toss. Federer smiles distantly the whole time. Nadal, just across the net, keeps dancing in place like a boxer, swinging his arms from side to side. I’m not sure whether the U.S. networks show the coin-toss or not, whether this ceremony’s part of their contractual obligation or whether they get to cut to commercial. As William’s ushered off, there’s more cheering, but it’s scattered and disorganized; most of the crowd can’t quite tell what to do. It’s like once the ritual’s over, the reality of why this child was part of it sinks in. There’s a feeling of something important, something both uncomfortable and not, about a child with cancer tossing this dream-final’s coin. The feeling, what-all it might mean, has a tip-of-the-tongue-type quality that remains elusive for at least the first two sets.(3)
A top athlete’s beauty is next to impossible to describe directly. Or to evoke. Federer’s forehand is a great liquid whip, his backhand a one-hander that he can drive flat, load with topspin, or slice — the slice with such snap that the ball turns shapes in the air and skids on the grass to maybe ankle height. His serve has world-class pace and a degree of placement and variety no one else comes close to; the service motion is lithe and uneccentric, distinctive (on TV) only in a certain eel-like all-body snap at the moment of impact. His anticipation and court sense are otherworldly, and his footwork is the best in the game — as a child, he was also a soccer prodigy. All this is true, and yet none of it really explains anything or evokes the experience of watching this man play. Of witnessing, firsthand, the beauty and genius of his game. You more have to come at the aesthetic stuff obliquely, to talk around it, or — as Aquinas did with his own ineffable subject — to try to define it in terms of what it is not.
One thing it is not is televisable. At least not entirely. TV tennis has its advantages, but these advantages have disadvantages, and chief among them is a certain illusion of intimacy. Television’s slow-mo replays, its close-ups and graphics, all so privilege viewers that we’re not even aware of how much is lost in broadcast. And a large part of what’s lost is the sheer physicality of top tennis, a sense of the speeds at which the ball is moving and the players are reacting. This loss is simple to explain. TV’s priority, during a point, is coverage of the whole court, a comprehensive view, so that viewers can see both players and the overall geometry of the exchange. Television therefore chooses a specular vantage that is overhead and behind one baseline. You, the viewer, are above and looking down from behind the court. This perspective, as any art student will tell you, “foreshortens” the court. Real tennis, after all, is three-dimensional, but a TV screen’s image is only 2-D. The dimension that’s lost (or rather distorted) on the screen is the real court’s length, the 78 feet between baselines; and the speed with which the ball traverses this length is a shot’s pace, which on TV is obscured, and in person is fearsome to behold. That may sound abstract or overblown, in which case by all means go in person to some professional tournament — especially to the outer courts in early rounds, where you can sit 20 feet from the sideline — and sample the difference for yourself. If you’ve watched tennis only on television, you simply have no idea how hard these pros are hitting the ball, how fast the ball is moving,(4) how little time the players have to get to it, and how quickly they’re able to move and rotate and strike and recover. And none are faster, or more deceptively effortless about it, than Roger Federer.
Interestingly, what is less obscured in TV coverage is Federer’s intelligence, since this intelligence often manifests as angle. Federer is able to see, or create, gaps and angles for winners that no one else can envision, and television’s perspective is perfect for viewing and reviewing these Federer Moments. What’s harder to appreciate on TV is that these spectacular-looking angles and winners are not coming from nowhere — they’re often set up several shots ahead, and depend as much on Federer’s manipulation of opponents’ positions as they do on the pace or placement of the coup de grâce. And understanding how and why Federer is able to move other world-class athletes around this way requires, in turn, a better technical understanding of the modern power-baseline game than TV — again — is set up to provide.
Wimbledon is strange. Verily it is the game’s Mecca, the cathedral of tennis; but it would be easier to sustain the appropriate level of on-site veneration if the tournament weren’t so intent on reminding you over and over that it’s the cathedral of tennis. There’s a peculiar mix of stodgy self-satisfaction and relentless self-promotion and -branding. It’s a bit like the sort of authority figure whose office wall has every last plaque, diploma, and award he’s ever gotten, and every time you come into the office you’re forced to look at the wall and say something to indicate that you’re impressed. Wimbledon’s own walls, along nearly every significant corridor and passage, are lined with posters and signs featuring shots of past champions, lists of Wimbledon facts and trivia, historic lore, and so on. Some of this stuff is interesting; some is just odd. The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, for instance, has a collection of all the various kinds of rackets used here through the decades, and one of the many signs along the Level 2 passage of the Millennium Building(5) promotes this exhibition with both photos and didactic text, a kind of History of the Racket. Here, sic, is the climactic end of this text:
Today’s lightweight frames made of space-age materials like graphite, boron, titanium and ceramics, with larger heads — mid-size (90-95 square inches) and over-size (110 square inches) — have totally transformed the character of the game. Nowadays it is the powerful hitters who dominate with heavy topspin. Serve-and-volley players and those who rely on subtlety and touch have virtually disappeared.
It seems odd, to say the least, that such a diagnosis continues to hang here so prominently in the fourth year of Federer’s reign over Wimbledon, since the Swiss has brought to men’s tennis degrees of touch and subtlety unseen since (at least) the days of McEnroe’s prime. But the sign’s really just a testament to the power of dogma. For almost two decades, the party line’s been that certain advances in racket technology, conditioning, and weight training have transformed pro tennis from a game of quickness and finesse into one of athleticism and brute power. And as an etiology of today’s power-baseline game, this party line is broadly accurate. Today’s pros truly are measurably bigger, stronger, and better conditioned,(6) and high-tech composite rackets really have increased their capacities for pace and spin. How, then, someone of Federer’s consummate finesse has come to dominate the men’s tour is a source of wide and dogmatic confusion.
There are three kinds of valid explanation for Federer’s ascendancy. One kind involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. The others are more technical and make for better journalism.
The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. Good analogues here include Michael Jordan,(7) who could not only jump inhumanly high but actually hang there a beat or two longer than gravity allows, and Muhammad Ali, who really could “float” across the canvas and land two or three jabs in the clock-time required for one. There are probably a half-dozen other examples since 1960. And Federer is of this type — a type that one could call genius, or mutant, or avatar. He is never hurried or off-balance. The approaching ball hangs, for him, a split-second longer than it ought to. His movements are lithe rather than athletic. Like Ali, Jordan, Maradona, and Gretzky, he seems both less and more substantial than the men he faces. Particularly in the all-white that Wimbledon enjoys getting away with still requiring, he looks like what he may well (I think) be: a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light.
This thing about the ball cooperatively hanging there, slowing down, as if susceptible to the Swiss’s will — there’s real metaphysical truth here. And in the following anecdote. After a July 7 semifinal in which Federer destroyed Jonas Bjorkman — not just beat him, destroyed him — and just before a requisite post-match news conference in which Bjorkman, who’s friendly with Federer, says he was pleased to “have the best seat in the house” to watch the Swiss “play the nearest to perfection you can play tennis,” Federer and Bjorkman are chatting and joking around, and Bjorkman asks him just how unnaturally big the ball was looking to him out there, and Federer confirms that it was “like a bowling ball or basketball.” He means it just as a bantery, modest way to make Bjorkman feel better, to confirm that he’s surprised by how unusually well he played today; but he’s also revealing something about what tennis is like for him. Imagine that you’re a person with preternaturally good reflexes and coordination and speed, and that you’re playing high-level tennis. Your experience, in play, will not be that you possess phenomenal reflexes and speed; rather, it will seem to you that the tennis ball is quite large and slow-moving, and that you always have plenty of time to hit it. That is, you won’t experience anything like the (empirically real) quickness and skill that the live audience, watching tennis balls move so fast they hiss and blur, will attribute to you.(8)
Velocity’s just one part of it. Now we’re getting technical. Tennis is often called a “game of inches,” but the cliché is mostly referring to where a shot lands. In terms of a player’s hitting an incoming ball, tennis is actually more a game of micrometers: vanishingly tiny changes around the moment of impact will have large effects on how and where the ball travels. The same principle explains why even the smallest imprecision in aiming a rifle will still cause a miss if the target’s far enough away.
By way of illustration, let’s slow things way down. Imagine that you, a tennis player, are standing just behind your deuce corner’s baseline. A ball is served to your forehand — you pivot (or rotate) so that your side is to the ball’s incoming path and start to take your racket back for the forehand return. Keep visualizing up to where you’re about halfway into the stroke’s forward motion; the incoming ball is now just off your front hip, maybe six inches from point of impact. Consider some of the variables involved here. On the vertical plane, angling your racket face just a couple degrees forward or back will create topspin or slice, respectively; keeping it perpendicular will produce a flat, spinless drive. Horizontally, adjusting the racket face ever so slightly to the left or right, and hitting the ball maybe a millisecond early or late, will result in a cross-court versus down-the-line return. Further slight changes in the curves of your groundstroke’s motion and follow-through will help determine how high your return passes over the net, which, together with the speed at which you’re swinging (along with certain characteristics of the spin you impart), will affect how deep or shallow in the opponent’s court your return lands, how high it bounces, etc. These are just the broadest distinctions, of course — like, there’s heavy topspin vs. light topspin, or sharply cross-court vs. only slightly cross-court, etc. There are also the issues of how close you’re allowing the ball to get to your body, what grip you’re using, the extent to which your knees are bent and/or weight’s moving forward, and whether you’re able simultaneously to watch the ball and to see what your opponent’s doing after he serves. These all matter, too. Plus there’s the fact that you’re not putting a static object into motion here but rather reversing the flight and (to a varying extent) spin of a projectile coming toward you — coming, in the case of pro tennis, at speeds that make conscious thought impossible. Mario Ancic’s first serve, for instance, often comes in around 130 m.p.h. Since it’s 78 feet from Ancic’s baseline to yours, that means it takes 0.41 seconds for his serve to reach you.(9) This is less than the time it takes to blink quickly, twice.
The upshot is that pro tennis involves intervals of time too brief for deliberate action. Temporally, we’re more in the operative range of reflexes, purely physical reactions that bypass conscious thought. And yet an effective return of serve depends on a large set of decisions and physical adjustments that are a whole lot more involved and intentional than blinking, jumping when startled, etc.
Successfully returning a hard-served tennis ball requires what’s sometimes called “the kinesthetic sense,” meaning the ability to control the body and its artificial extensions through complex and very quick systems of tasks. English has a whole cloud of terms for various parts of this ability: feel, touch, form, proprioception, coordination, hand-eye coordination, kinesthesia, grace, control, reflexes, and so on. For promising junior players, refining the kinesthetic sense is the main goal of the extreme daily practice regimens we often hear about.(10) The training here is both muscular and neurological. Hitting thousands of strokes, day after day, develops the ability to do by “feel” what cannot be done by regular conscious thought. Repetitive practice like this often looks tedious or even cruel to an outsider, but the outsider can’t feel what’s going on inside the player — tiny adjustments, over and over, and a sense of each change’s effects that gets more and more acute even as it recedes from normal consciousness.(11)
The time and discipline required for serious kinesthetic training are one reason why top pros are usually people who’ve devoted most of their waking lives to tennis, starting (at the very latest) in their early teens. It was, for example, at age 13 that Roger Federer finally gave up soccer, and a recognizable childhood, and entered Switzerland’s national tennis training center in Ecublens. At 16, he dropped out of classroom studies and started serious international competition.
It was only weeks after quitting school that Federer won Junior Wimbledon. Obviously, this is something that not every junior who devotes himself to tennis can do. Just as obviously, then, there is more than time and training involved — there is also sheer talent, and degrees of it. Extraordinary kinesthetic ability must be present (and measurable) in a kid just to make the years of practice and training worthwhile...but from there, over time, the cream starts to rise and separate. So one type of technical explanation for Federer’s dominion is that he’s just a bit more kinesthetically talented than the other male pros. Only a little bit, since everyone in the Top 100 is himself kinesthetically gifted — but then, tennis is a game of inches.
This answer is plausible but incomplete. It would probably not have been incomplete in 1980. In 2006, though, it’s fair to ask why this kind of talent still matters so much. Recall what is true about dogma and Wimbledon’s sign. Kinesthetic virtuoso or no, Roger Federer is now dominating the largest, strongest, fittest, best-trained and -coached field of male pros who’ve ever existed, with everyone using a kind of nuclear racket that’s said to have made the finer calibrations of kinesthetic sense irrelevant, like trying to whistle Mozart during a Metallica concert.
According to reliable sources, honorary coin-tosser William Caines’s backstory is that one day, when he was 2½, his mother found a lump in his tummy, and took him to the doctor, and the lump was diagnosed as a malignant liver tumor. At which point one cannot, of course, imagine...a tiny child undergoing chemo, serious chemo, his mother having to watch, carry him home, nurse him, then bring him back to that place for more chemo. How did she answer her child’s question — the big one, the obvious one? And who could answer hers? What could any priest or pastor say that wouldn’t be grotesque?
It’s 2-1 Nadal in the final’s second set, and he’s serving. Federer won the first set at love but then flagged a bit, as he sometimes does, and is quickly down a break. Now, on Nadal’s ad, there’s a 16-stroke point. Nadal is serving a lot faster than he did in Paris, and this one’s down the center. Federer floats a soft forehand high over the net, which he can get away with because Nadal never comes in behind his serve. The Spaniard now hits a characteristically heavy topspin forehand deep to Federer’s backhand; Federer comes back with an even heavier topspin backhand, almost a clay-court shot. It’s unexpected and backs Nadal up, slightly, and his response is a low hard short ball that lands just past the service line’s T on Federer’s forehand side. Against most other opponents, Federer could simply end the point on a ball like this, but one reason Nadal gives him trouble is that he’s faster than the others, can get to stuff they can’t; and so Federer here just hits a flat, medium-hard cross-court forehand, going not for a winner but for a low, shallowly angled ball that forces Nadal up and out to the deuce side, his backhand. Nadal, on the run, backhands it hard down the line to Federer’s backhand; Federer slices it right back down the same line, slow and floaty with backspin, making Nadal come back to the same spot. Nadal slices the ball right back — three shots now all down the same line — and Federer slices the ball back to the same spot yet again, this one even slower and floatier, and Nadal gets planted and hits a big two-hander back down the same line — it’s like Nadal’s camped out now on his deuce side; he’s no longer moving all the way back to the baseline’s center between shots; Federer’s hypnotized him a little. Federer now hits a very hard, deep topspin backhand, the kind that hisses, to a point just slightly on the ad side of Nadal’s baseline, which Nadal gets to and forehands cross-court; and Federer responds with an even harder, heavier cross-court backhand, baseline-deep and moving so fast that Nadal has to hit the forehand off his back foot and then scramble to get back to center as the shot lands maybe two feet short on Federer’s backhand side again. Federer steps to this ball and now hits a totally different cross-court backhand, this one much shorter and sharper-angled, an angle no one would anticipate, and so heavy and blurred with topspin that it lands shallow and just inside the sideline and takes off hard after the bounce, and Nadal can’t move in to cut it off and can’t get to it laterally along the baseline, because of all the angle and topspin — end of point. It’s a spectacular winner, a Federer Moment; but watching it live, you can see that it’s also a winner that Federer started setting up four or even five shots earlier. Everything after that first down-the-line slice was designed by the Swiss to maneuver Nadal and lull him and then disrupt his rhythm and balance and open up that last, unimaginable angle — an angle that would have been impossible without extreme topspin.
Extreme topspin is the hallmark of today’s power-baseline game. This is something that Wimbledon’s sign gets right.(12) Why topspin is so key, though, is not commonly understood. What’s commonly understood is that high-tech composite rackets impart much more pace to the ball, rather like aluminum baseball bats as opposed to good old lumber. But that dogma is false. The truth is that, at the same tensile strength, carbon-based composites are lighter than wood, and this allows modern rackets to be a couple ounces lighter and at least an inch wider across the face than the vintage Kramer and Maxply. It’s the width of the face that’s vital. A wider face means there’s more total string area, which means the sweet spot’s bigger. With a composite racket, you don’t have to meet the ball in the precise geometric center of the strings in order to generate good pace. Nor must you be spot-on to generate topspin, a spin that (recall) requires a tilted face and upwardly curved stroke, brushing over the ball rather than hitting flat through it — this was quite hard to do with wood rackets, because of their smaller face and niggardly sweet spot. Composites’ lighter, wider heads and more generous centers let players swing faster and put way more topspin on the ball...and, in turn, the more topspin you put on the ball, the harder you can hit it, because there’s more margin for error. Topspin causes the ball to pass high over the net, describe a sharp arc, and come down fast into the opponent’s court (instead of maybe soaring out).
So the basic formula here is that composite rackets enable topspin, which in turn enables groundstrokes vastly faster and harder than 20 years ago — it’s common now to see male pros pulled up off the ground and halfway around in the air by the force of their strokes, which in the old days was something one saw only in Jimmy Connors.
Connors was not, by the way, the father of the power-baseline game. He whaled mightily from the baseline, true, but his groundstrokes were flat and spinless and had to pass very low over the net. Nor was Bjorn Borg a true power-baseliner. Both Borg and Connors played specialized versions of the classic baseline game, which had evolved as a counterforce to the even more classic serve-and-volley game, which was itself the dominant form of men’s power tennis for decades, and of which John McEnroe was the greatest modern exponent. You probably know all this, and may also know that McEnroe toppled Borg and then more or less ruled the men’s game until the appearance, around the mid-1980’s, of (a) modern composite rackets(13) and (b) Ivan Lendl, who played with an early form of composite and was the true progenitor of power-baseline tennis.(14)
Ivan Lendl was the first top pro whose strokes and tactics appeared to be designed around the special capacities of the composite racket. His goal was to win points from the baseline, via either passing shots or outright winners. His weapon was his groundstrokes, especially his forehand, which he could hit with overwhelming pace because of the amount of topspin he put on the ball. The blend of pace and topspin also allowed Lendl to do something that proved crucial to the advent of the power-baseline game. He could pull off radical, extraordinary angles on hard-hit groundstrokes, mainly because of the speed with which heavy topspin makes the ball dip and land without going wide. In retrospect, this changed the whole physics of aggressive tennis. For decades, it had been angle that made the serve-and-volley game so lethal. The closer one is to the net, the more of the opponent’s court is open — the classic advantage of volleying was that you could hit angles that would go way wide if attempted from the baseline or midcourt. But topspin on a groundstroke, if it’s really extreme, can bring the ball down fast and shallow enough to exploit many of these same angles. Especially if the groundstroke you’re hitting is off a somewhat short ball — the shorter the ball, the more angles are possible. Pace, topspin, and aggressive baseline angles: and lo, it’s the power-baseline game.
It wasn’t that Ivan Lendl was an immortally great tennis player. He was simply the first top pro to demonstrate what heavy topspin and raw power could achieve from the baseline. And, most important, the achievement was replicable, just like the composite racket. Past a certain threshold of physical talent and training, the main requirements were athleticism, aggression, and superior strength and conditioning. The result (omitting various complications and subspecialties(15)) has been men’s pro tennis for the last 20 years: ever bigger, stronger, fitter players generating unprecedented pace and topspin off the ground, trying to force the short or weak ball that they can put away.
Illustrative stat: When Lleyton Hewitt defeated David Nalbandian in the 2002 Wimbledon men’s final, there was not one single serve-and-volley point.(16)
The generic power-baseline game is not boring — certainly not compared with the two-second points of old-time serve-and-volley or the moon-ball tedium of classic baseline attrition. But it is somewhat static and limited; it is not, as pundits have publicly feared for years, the evolutionary endpoint of tennis. The player who’s shown this to be true is Roger Federer. And he’s shown it from within the modern game.
This within is what’s important here; this is what a purely neural account leaves out. And it is why sexy attributions like touch and subtlety must not be misunderstood. With Federer, it’s not either/or. The Swiss has every bit of Lendl and Agassi’s pace on his groundstrokes, and leaves the ground when he swings, and can out-hit even Nadal from the backcourt.(17) What’s strange and wrong about Wimbledon’s sign, really, is its overall dolorous tone. Subtlety, touch, and finesse are not dead in the power-baseline era. For it is, still, in 2006, very much the power-baseline era: Roger Federer is a first-rate, kick-ass power-baseliner. It’s just that that’s not all he is. There’s also his intelligence, his occult anticipation, his court sense, his ability to read and manipulate opponents, to mix spins and speeds, to misdirect and disguise, to use tactical foresight and peripheral vision and kinesthetic range instead of just rote pace — all this has exposed the limits, and possibilities, of men’s tennis as it’s now played.
Which sounds very high-flown and nice, of course, but please understand that with this guy it’s not high-flown or abstract. Or nice. In the same emphatic, empirical, dominating way that Lendl drove home his own lesson, Roger Federer is showing that the speed and strength of today’s pro game are merely its skeleton, not its flesh. He has, figuratively and literally, re-embodied men’s tennis, and for the first time in years the game’s future is unpredictable. You should have seen, on the grounds’ outside courts, the variegated ballet that was this year’s Junior Wimbledon. Drop volleys and mixed spins, off-speed serves, gambits planned three shots ahead — all as well as the standard-issue grunts and booming balls. Whether anything like a nascent Federer was here among these juniors can’t be known, of course. Genius is not replicable. Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform — and even just to see, close up, power and aggression made vulnerable to beauty is to feel inspired and (in a fleeting, mortal way) reconciled.
(1) There’s a great deal that’s bad about having a body. If this is not so obviously true that no one needs examples, we can just quickly mention pain, sores, odors, nausea, aging, gravity, sepsis, clumsiness, illness, limits — every last schism between our physical wills and our actual capacities. Can anyone doubt we need help being reconciled? Crave it? It’s your body that dies, after all.
Related
Federer as Religious Experience (August 20, 2006)
The New York Times
Sports Magazine
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There are wonderful things about having a body, too, obviously — it’s just that these things are much harder to feel and appreciate in real time. Rather like certain kinds of rare, peak-type sensuous epiphanies (“I’m so glad I have eyes to see this sunrise!” etc.), great athletes seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch and perceive, move through space, interact with matter. Granted, what great athletes can do with their bodies are things that the rest of us can only dream of. But these dreams are important — they make up for a lot.
(2) The U.S. media here are especially worried because no Americans of either sex survived into even the quarterfinals this year. (If you’re into obscure statistics, it’s the first time this has happened at Wimbledon since 1911.)
(3) Actually, this is not the only Federer-and-sick-child incident of Wimbledon’s second week. Three days prior to the men’s final, a Special One-on-One Interview with Mr. Roger Federer(†) takes place in a small, crowded International Tennis Federation office just off the third floor of the Press Center. Right afterward, as the ATP player-rep is ushering Federer out the back door for his next scheduled obligation, one of the I.T.F. guys (who’s been talking loudly on the telephone through the whole Special Interview) now comes up and asks for a moment of Roger’s time. The man, who has the same slight, generically foreign accent as all I.T.F. guys, says: “Listen, I hate doing this. I don’t do this, normally. It’s for my neighbor. His kid has a disease. They will do a fund-raiser, it’s planned, and I’m asking can you sign a shirt or something, you know — something.” He looks mortified. The ATP rep is glaring at him. Federer, though, just nods, shrugs: “No problem. I’ll bring it tomorrow.” Tomorrow’s the men’s semifinal. Evidently the I.T.F. guy has meant one of Federer’s own shirts, maybe from the match, with Federer’s actual sweat on it. (Federer throws his used wristbands into the crowd after matches, and the people they land on seem pleased rather than grossed out.) The I.T.F. guy, after thanking Federer three times very fast, shakes his head: “I hate doing this.” Federer, still halfway out the door: “It’s no problem.” And it isn’t. Like all pros, Federer changes his shirt during matches, and he can just have somebody save one, and then he’ll sign it. It’s not like Federer’s being Gandhi here — he doesn’t stop and ask for details about the kid or his illness. He doesn’t pretend to care more than he does. The request is just one more small, mildly distracting obligation he has to deal with. But he does say yes, and he will remember — you can tell. And it won’t distract him; he won’t permit it. He’s good at this kind of stuff, too.
(†) (Only considerations of space and basic believability prevent a full description of the hassles involved in securing such a One-on-One. In brief, it’s rather like the old story of someone climbing an enormous mountain to talk to the man seated lotus on top, except in this case the mountain is composed entirely of sports-bureaucrats.)
(4) Top men’s serves often reach speeds of 125-135 m.p.h., true, but what all the radar signs and graphics neglect to tell you is that male power-baseliners’ groundstrokes themselves are often traveling at over 90 m.p.h., which is the speed of a big-league fastball. If you get down close enough to a pro court, you can hear an actual sound coming off the ball in flight, a kind of liquid hiss, from the combination of pace and spin. Close up and live, you’ll also understand better the “open stance” that’s become such an emblem of the power-baseline game. The term, after all, just means not turning one’s side all the way to the net before hitting a groundstroke, and one reason why so many power-baseliners hit from the open stance is that the ball is now coming too fast for them to get turned all the way.
(5) This is the large (and presumably six-year-old) structure where Wimbledon’s administration, players, and media all have their respective areas and HQs.
(6) (Some, like Nadal or Serena Williams, look more like cartoon superheroes than people.)
(7) When asked, during the aforementioned Special One-on-One Interview, for examples of other athletes whose performances might seem beautiful to him, Federer mentions Jordan first, then Kobe Bryant, then “a soccer player like — guys who play very relaxed, like a Zinédine Zidane or something: he does great effort, but he seems like he doesn’t need to try hard to get the results.”
Federer’s response to the subsequent question, which is what-all he makes of it when pundits and other players describe his own game as “beautiful,” is interesting mainly because the response is pleasant, intelligent, and cooperative — as is Federer himself — without ever really saying anything (because, in fairness, what could one say about others’ descriptions of him as beautiful? What would you say? It’s ultimately a stupid question): “It’s always what people see first — for them, that’s what you are ‘best at.’ When you used to watch John McEnroe, you know, the first time, what would you see? You would see a guy with incredible talent, because the way he played, nobody played like this. The way he played the ball, it was just all about feel. And then you go over to Boris Becker, and right away you saw a powerful player, you know?(†) When you see me play, you see a ‘beautiful’ player — and maybe after that you maybe see that he’s fast, maybe you see that he’s got a good forehand, maybe then you see that he has a good serve. First, you know, you have a base, and to me, I think it’s great, you know, and I’m very lucky to be called basically ‘beautiful,’ you know, for style of play. ... With me it’s, like, ‘the beautiful player,’ and that’s really cool.”
(†) N.B. Federer’s big conversational tics are “maybe” and “you know.” Ultimately, these tics are helpful because they serve as reminders of how appallingly young he really is. If you’re interested, the world’s best tennis player is wearing white warm-up pants and a long-sleeved white microfiber shirt, possibly Nike. No sport coat, though. His handshake is only moderately firm, though the hand itself is like a carpentry rasp (for obvious reasons, tennis players tend to be very callusy). He’s a bit bigger than TV makes him seem — broader-shouldered, deeper in the chest. He’s next to a table that’s covered with visors and headbands, which he’s been autographing with a Sharpie. He sits with his legs crossed and smiles pleasantly and seems very relaxed; he never fidgets with the Sharpie. One’s overall impression is that Federer is either a very nice guy or a guy who’s very good at dealing with the media — or (most likely) both.
(8) Special One-on-One support from the man himself for this claim: “It’s interesting, because this week, actually, Ancic [comma Mario, the towering Top-10 Croatian whom Federer beat in Wednesday’s quarterfinal] played on Centre Court against my friend, you know, the Swiss player Wawrinka [comma Stanislas, Federer’s Davis Cup teammate], and I went to see it out where, you know, my girlfriend Mirka [Vavrinec, a former women’s Top-100 player, knocked out by injury, who now basically functions as Federer’s Alice B. Toklas] usually sits, and I went to see — for the first time since I have come here to Wimbledon, I went to see a match on Centre Court, and I was also surprised, actually, how fast, you know, the serve is and how fast you have to react to be able to get the ball back, especially when a guy like Mario [Ancic, who’s known for his vicious serve] serves, you know? But then once you’re on the court yourself, it’s totally different, you know, because all you see is the ball, really, and you don’t see the speed of the ball.... ”
(9) We’re doing the math here with the ball traveling as the crow flies, for simplicity. Please do not write in with corrections. If you want to factor in the serve’s bounce and so compute the total distance traveled by the ball as the sum of an oblique triangle’s(†) two shorter legs, then by all means go ahead — you’ll end up with between two and five additional hundredths of a second, which is not significant.
(†) (The slower a tennis court’s surface, the closer to a right triangle you’re going to have. On fast grass, the bounce’s angle is always oblique.)
(10) Conditioning is also important, but this is mainly because the first thing that physical fatigue attacks is the kinesthetic sense. (Other antagonists are fear, self-consciousness, and extreme upset — which is why fragile psyches are rare in pro tennis.)
(11) The best lay analogy is probably to the way an experienced driver can make all of good driving’s myriad little decisions and adjustments without having to pay attention to them.
(12) (...assuming, that is, that the sign’s “with heavy topspin” is modifying “dominate” rather than “powerful hitters,” which actually it might or might not — British grammar is a bit dodgy.)
(13) (which neither Connors nor McEnroe could switch to with much success — their games were fixed around pre-modern rackets.)
(14) Formwise, with his whippy forehand, lethal one-hander, and merciless treatment of short balls, Lendl somewhat anticipated Federer. But the Czech was also stiff, cold, and brutal; his game was awesome but not beautiful. (My college doubles partner used to describe watching Lendl as like getting to see “Triumph of the Will” in 3-D.)
(15) See, for one example, the continued effectiveness of some serve-and-volley (mainly in the adapted, heavily ace- and quickness-dependent form of a Sampras or Rafter) on fast courts through the 1990’s.
(16) It’s also illustrative that 2002 was Wimbledon’s last pre-Federer final.
(17) In the third set of the ’06 final, at three games all and 30-15, Nadal kicks his second serve high to Federer’s backhand. Nadal’s clearly been coached to go high and heavy to Federer’s backhand, and that’s what he does, point after point. Federer slices the return back to Nadal’s center and two feet short — not short enough to let the Spaniard hit a winner, but short enough to draw him slightly into the court, whence Nadal winds up and puts all his forehand’s strength into a hard heavy shot to (again) Federer’s backhand. The pace he’s put on the ball means that Nadal is still backpedaling to the baseline as Federer leaves his feet and cranks a very hard topspin backhand down the line to Nadal’s deuce side, which Nadal — out of position but world-class fast — reaches and manages to one-hand back deep to (again) Federer’s backhand side, but this ball’s floaty and slow, and Federer has time to step around and hit an inside-out forehand, a forehand as hard as anyone’s hit all tournament, with just enough topspin to bring it down in Nadal’s ad corner, and the Spaniard gets there but can’t return it. Big ovation. Again, what looks like an overwhelming baseline winner was actually set up by that first clever semi-short slice and Nadal’s own predictability about where and how hard he’ll hit every ball. Federer sure whaled that last forehand, though. People are looking at each other and applauding. The thing with Federer is that he’s Mozart and Metallica at the same time, and the harmony’s somehow exquisite.
By the way, it’s right around here, or the next game, watching, that three separate inner-type things come together and mesh. One is a feeling of deep personal privilege at being alive to get to see this; another is the thought that William Caines is probably somewhere here in the Centre Court crowd, too, watching, maybe with his mum. The third thing is a sudden memory of the earnest way the press bus driver promised just this experience. Because there is one. It’s hard to describe — it’s like a thought that’s also a feeling. One wouldn’t want to make too much of it, or to pretend that it’s any sort of equitable balance; that would be grotesque. But the truth is that whatever deity, entity, energy, or random genetic flux produces sick children also produced Roger Federer, and just look at him down there. Look at that.
DFW
Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re O.K.
The Moments are more intense if you’ve played enough tennis to understand the impossibility of what you just saw him do. We’ve all got our examples. Here is one. It’s the finals of the 2005 U.S. Open, Federer serving to Andre Agassi early in the fourth set. There’s a medium-long exchange of groundstrokes, one with the distinctive butterfly shape of today’s power-baseline game, Federer and Agassi yanking each other from side to side, each trying to set up the baseline winner...until suddenly Agassi hits a hard heavy cross-court backhand that pulls Federer way out wide to his ad (=left) side, and Federer gets to it but slices the stretch backhand short, a couple feet past the service line, which of course is the sort of thing Agassi dines out on, and as Federer’s scrambling to reverse and get back to center, Agassi’s moving in to take the short ball on the rise, and he smacks it hard right back into the same ad corner, trying to wrong-foot Federer, which in fact he does — Federer’s still near the corner but running toward the centerline, and the ball’s heading to a point behind him now, where he just was, and there’s no time to turn his body around, and Agassi’s following the shot in to the net at an angle from the backhand side...and what Federer now does is somehow instantly reverse thrust and sort of skip backward three or four steps, impossibly fast, to hit a forehand out of his backhand corner, all his weight moving backward, and the forehand is a topspin screamer down the line past Agassi at net, who lunges for it but the ball’s past him, and it flies straight down the sideline and lands exactly in the deuce corner of Agassi’s side, a winner — Federer’s still dancing backward as it lands. And there’s that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and John McEnroe with his color man’s headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), “How do you hit a winner from that position?” And he’s right: given Agassi’s position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of “The Matrix.” I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.
Anyway, that’s one example of a Federer Moment, and that was merely on TV — and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.
Journalistically speaking, there is no hot news to offer you about Roger Federer. He is, at 25, the best tennis player currently alive. Maybe the best ever. Bios and profiles abound. “60 Minutes” did a feature on him just last year. Anything you want to know about Mr. Roger N.M.I. Federer — his background, his home town of Basel, Switzerland, his parents’ sane and unexploitative support of his talent, his junior tennis career, his early problems with fragility and temper, his beloved junior coach, how that coach’s accidental death in 2002 both shattered and annealed Federer and helped make him what he now is, Federer’s 39 career singles titles, his eight Grand Slams, his unusually steady and mature commitment to the girlfriend who travels with him (which on the men’s tour is rare) and handles his affairs (which on the men’s tour is unheard of), his old-school stoicism and mental toughness and good sportsmanship and evident overall decency and thoughtfulness and charitable largess — it’s all just a Google search away. Knock yourself out.
This present article is more about a spectator’s experience of Federer, and its context. The specific thesis here is that if you’ve never seen the young man play live, and then do, in person, on the sacred grass of Wimbledon, through the literally withering heat and then wind and rain of the ’06 fortnight, then you are apt to have what one of the tournament’s press bus drivers describes as a “bloody near-religious experience.” It may be tempting, at first, to hear a phrase like this as just one more of the overheated tropes that people resort to to describe the feeling of Federer Moments. But the driver’s phrase turns out to be true — literally, for an instant ecstatically — though it takes some time and serious watching to see this truth emerge.
Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.(1)
Of course, in men’s sports no one ever talks about beauty or grace or the body. Men may profess their “love” of sports, but that love must always be cast and enacted in the symbology of war: elimination vs. advance, hierarchy of rank and standing, obsessive statistics, technical analysis, tribal and/or nationalist fervor, uniforms, mass noise, banners, chest-thumping, face-painting, etc. For reasons that are not well understood, war’s codes are safer for most of us than love’s. You too may find them so, in which case Spain’s mesomorphic and totally martial Rafael Nadal is the man’s man for you — he of the unsleeved biceps and Kabuki self-exhortations. Plus Nadal is also Federer’s nemesis and the big surprise of this year’s Wimbledon, since he’s a clay-court specialist and no one expected him to make it past the first few rounds here. Whereas Federer, through the semifinals, has provided no surprise or competitive drama at all. He’s outplayed each opponent so completely that the TV and print press are worried his matches are dull and can’t compete effectively with the nationalist fervor of the World Cup.(2)
July 9’s men’s final, though, is everyone’s dream. Nadal vs. Federer is a replay of last month’s French Open final, which Nadal won. Federer has so far lost only four matches all year, but they’ve all been to Nadal. Still, most of these matches have been on slow clay, Nadal’s best surface. Grass is Federer’s best. On the other hand, the first week’s heat has baked out some of the Wimbledon courts’ slickness and made them slower. There’s also the fact that Nadal has adjusted his clay-based game to grass — moving in closer to the baseline on his groundstrokes, amping up his serve, overcoming his allergy to the net. He just about disemboweled Agassi in the third round. The networks are in ecstasies. Before the match, on Centre Court, behind the glass slits above the south backstop, as the linesmen are coming out on court in their new Ralph Lauren uniforms that look so much like children’s navalwear, the broadcast commentators can be seen practically bouncing up and down in their chairs. This Wimbledon final’s got the revenge narrative, the king-versus-regicide dynamic, the stark character contrasts. It’s the passionate machismo of southern Europe versus the intricate clinical artistry of the north. Apollo and Dionysus. Scalpel and cleaver. Righty and southpaw. Nos. 1 and 2 in the world. Nadal, the man who’s taken the modern power-baseline game just as far as it goes, versus a man who’s transfigured that modern game, whose precision and variety are as big a deal as his pace and foot-speed, but who may be peculiarly vulnerable to, or psyched out by, that first man. A British sportswriter, exulting with his mates in the press section, says, twice, “It’s going to be a war.”
Plus it’s in the cathedral of Centre Court. And the men’s final is always on the fortnight’s second Sunday, the symbolism of which Wimbledon emphasizes by always omitting play on the first Sunday. And the spattery gale that has knocked over parking signs and everted umbrellas all morning suddenly quits an hour before match time, the sun emerging just as Centre Court’s tarp is rolled back and the net posts driven home.
Federer and Nadal come out to applause, make their ritual bows to the nobles’ box. The Swiss is in the buttermilk-colored sport coat that Nike’s gotten him to wear for Wimbledon this year. On Federer, and perhaps on him alone, it doesn’t look absurd with shorts and sneakers. The Spaniard eschews all warm-up clothing, so you have to look at his muscles right away. He and the Swiss are both in all-Nike, up to the very same kind of tied white Nike hankie with the swoosh positioned above the third eye. Nadal tucks his hair under his hankie, but Federer doesn’t, and smoothing and fussing with the bits of hair that fall over the hankie is the main Federer tic TV viewers get to see; likewise Nadal’s obsessive retreat to the ballboy’s towel between points. There happen to be other tics and habits, though, tiny perks of live viewing. There’s the great care Roger Federer takes to hang the sport coat over his spare courtside chair’s back, just so, to keep it from wrinkling — he’s done this before each match here, and something about it seems childlike and weirdly sweet. Or the way he inevitably changes out his racket sometime in the second set, the new one always in the same clear plastic bag closed with blue tape, which he takes off carefully and always hands to a ballboy to dispose of. There’s Nadal’s habit of constantly picking his long shorts out of his bottom as he bounces the ball before serving, his way of always cutting his eyes warily from side to side as he walks the baseline, like a convict expecting to be shanked. And something odd on the Swiss’s serve, if you look very closely. Holding ball and racket out in front, just before starting the motion, Federer always places the ball precisely in the V-shaped gap of the racket’s throat, just below the head, just for an instant. If the fit isn’t perfect, he adjusts the ball until it is. It happens very fast, but also every time, on both first serves and second.
Nadal and Federer now warm each other up for precisely five minutes; the umpire keeps time. There’s a very definite order and etiquette to these pro warm-ups, which is something that television has decided you’re not interested in seeing. Centre Court holds 13,000 and change. Another several thousand have done what people here do willingly every year, which is to pay a stiff general admission at the gate and then gather, with hampers and mosquito spray, to watch the match on an enormous TV screen outside Court 1. Your guess here is probably as good as anyone’s.
Right before play, up at the net, there’s a ceremonial coin-toss to see who’ll serve first. It’s another Wimbledon ritual. The honorary coin-tosser this year is William Caines, assisted by the umpire and tournament referee. William Caines is a 7-year-old from Kent who contracted liver cancer at age 2 and somehow survived after surgery and horrific chemo. He’s here representing Cancer Research UK. He’s blond and pink-cheeked and comes up to about Federer’s waist. The crowd roars its approval of the re-enacted toss. Federer smiles distantly the whole time. Nadal, just across the net, keeps dancing in place like a boxer, swinging his arms from side to side. I’m not sure whether the U.S. networks show the coin-toss or not, whether this ceremony’s part of their contractual obligation or whether they get to cut to commercial. As William’s ushered off, there’s more cheering, but it’s scattered and disorganized; most of the crowd can’t quite tell what to do. It’s like once the ritual’s over, the reality of why this child was part of it sinks in. There’s a feeling of something important, something both uncomfortable and not, about a child with cancer tossing this dream-final’s coin. The feeling, what-all it might mean, has a tip-of-the-tongue-type quality that remains elusive for at least the first two sets.(3)
A top athlete’s beauty is next to impossible to describe directly. Or to evoke. Federer’s forehand is a great liquid whip, his backhand a one-hander that he can drive flat, load with topspin, or slice — the slice with such snap that the ball turns shapes in the air and skids on the grass to maybe ankle height. His serve has world-class pace and a degree of placement and variety no one else comes close to; the service motion is lithe and uneccentric, distinctive (on TV) only in a certain eel-like all-body snap at the moment of impact. His anticipation and court sense are otherworldly, and his footwork is the best in the game — as a child, he was also a soccer prodigy. All this is true, and yet none of it really explains anything or evokes the experience of watching this man play. Of witnessing, firsthand, the beauty and genius of his game. You more have to come at the aesthetic stuff obliquely, to talk around it, or — as Aquinas did with his own ineffable subject — to try to define it in terms of what it is not.
One thing it is not is televisable. At least not entirely. TV tennis has its advantages, but these advantages have disadvantages, and chief among them is a certain illusion of intimacy. Television’s slow-mo replays, its close-ups and graphics, all so privilege viewers that we’re not even aware of how much is lost in broadcast. And a large part of what’s lost is the sheer physicality of top tennis, a sense of the speeds at which the ball is moving and the players are reacting. This loss is simple to explain. TV’s priority, during a point, is coverage of the whole court, a comprehensive view, so that viewers can see both players and the overall geometry of the exchange. Television therefore chooses a specular vantage that is overhead and behind one baseline. You, the viewer, are above and looking down from behind the court. This perspective, as any art student will tell you, “foreshortens” the court. Real tennis, after all, is three-dimensional, but a TV screen’s image is only 2-D. The dimension that’s lost (or rather distorted) on the screen is the real court’s length, the 78 feet between baselines; and the speed with which the ball traverses this length is a shot’s pace, which on TV is obscured, and in person is fearsome to behold. That may sound abstract or overblown, in which case by all means go in person to some professional tournament — especially to the outer courts in early rounds, where you can sit 20 feet from the sideline — and sample the difference for yourself. If you’ve watched tennis only on television, you simply have no idea how hard these pros are hitting the ball, how fast the ball is moving,(4) how little time the players have to get to it, and how quickly they’re able to move and rotate and strike and recover. And none are faster, or more deceptively effortless about it, than Roger Federer.
Interestingly, what is less obscured in TV coverage is Federer’s intelligence, since this intelligence often manifests as angle. Federer is able to see, or create, gaps and angles for winners that no one else can envision, and television’s perspective is perfect for viewing and reviewing these Federer Moments. What’s harder to appreciate on TV is that these spectacular-looking angles and winners are not coming from nowhere — they’re often set up several shots ahead, and depend as much on Federer’s manipulation of opponents’ positions as they do on the pace or placement of the coup de grâce. And understanding how and why Federer is able to move other world-class athletes around this way requires, in turn, a better technical understanding of the modern power-baseline game than TV — again — is set up to provide.
Wimbledon is strange. Verily it is the game’s Mecca, the cathedral of tennis; but it would be easier to sustain the appropriate level of on-site veneration if the tournament weren’t so intent on reminding you over and over that it’s the cathedral of tennis. There’s a peculiar mix of stodgy self-satisfaction and relentless self-promotion and -branding. It’s a bit like the sort of authority figure whose office wall has every last plaque, diploma, and award he’s ever gotten, and every time you come into the office you’re forced to look at the wall and say something to indicate that you’re impressed. Wimbledon’s own walls, along nearly every significant corridor and passage, are lined with posters and signs featuring shots of past champions, lists of Wimbledon facts and trivia, historic lore, and so on. Some of this stuff is interesting; some is just odd. The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, for instance, has a collection of all the various kinds of rackets used here through the decades, and one of the many signs along the Level 2 passage of the Millennium Building(5) promotes this exhibition with both photos and didactic text, a kind of History of the Racket. Here, sic, is the climactic end of this text:
Today’s lightweight frames made of space-age materials like graphite, boron, titanium and ceramics, with larger heads — mid-size (90-95 square inches) and over-size (110 square inches) — have totally transformed the character of the game. Nowadays it is the powerful hitters who dominate with heavy topspin. Serve-and-volley players and those who rely on subtlety and touch have virtually disappeared.
It seems odd, to say the least, that such a diagnosis continues to hang here so prominently in the fourth year of Federer’s reign over Wimbledon, since the Swiss has brought to men’s tennis degrees of touch and subtlety unseen since (at least) the days of McEnroe’s prime. But the sign’s really just a testament to the power of dogma. For almost two decades, the party line’s been that certain advances in racket technology, conditioning, and weight training have transformed pro tennis from a game of quickness and finesse into one of athleticism and brute power. And as an etiology of today’s power-baseline game, this party line is broadly accurate. Today’s pros truly are measurably bigger, stronger, and better conditioned,(6) and high-tech composite rackets really have increased their capacities for pace and spin. How, then, someone of Federer’s consummate finesse has come to dominate the men’s tour is a source of wide and dogmatic confusion.
There are three kinds of valid explanation for Federer’s ascendancy. One kind involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. The others are more technical and make for better journalism.
The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. Good analogues here include Michael Jordan,(7) who could not only jump inhumanly high but actually hang there a beat or two longer than gravity allows, and Muhammad Ali, who really could “float” across the canvas and land two or three jabs in the clock-time required for one. There are probably a half-dozen other examples since 1960. And Federer is of this type — a type that one could call genius, or mutant, or avatar. He is never hurried or off-balance. The approaching ball hangs, for him, a split-second longer than it ought to. His movements are lithe rather than athletic. Like Ali, Jordan, Maradona, and Gretzky, he seems both less and more substantial than the men he faces. Particularly in the all-white that Wimbledon enjoys getting away with still requiring, he looks like what he may well (I think) be: a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light.
This thing about the ball cooperatively hanging there, slowing down, as if susceptible to the Swiss’s will — there’s real metaphysical truth here. And in the following anecdote. After a July 7 semifinal in which Federer destroyed Jonas Bjorkman — not just beat him, destroyed him — and just before a requisite post-match news conference in which Bjorkman, who’s friendly with Federer, says he was pleased to “have the best seat in the house” to watch the Swiss “play the nearest to perfection you can play tennis,” Federer and Bjorkman are chatting and joking around, and Bjorkman asks him just how unnaturally big the ball was looking to him out there, and Federer confirms that it was “like a bowling ball or basketball.” He means it just as a bantery, modest way to make Bjorkman feel better, to confirm that he’s surprised by how unusually well he played today; but he’s also revealing something about what tennis is like for him. Imagine that you’re a person with preternaturally good reflexes and coordination and speed, and that you’re playing high-level tennis. Your experience, in play, will not be that you possess phenomenal reflexes and speed; rather, it will seem to you that the tennis ball is quite large and slow-moving, and that you always have plenty of time to hit it. That is, you won’t experience anything like the (empirically real) quickness and skill that the live audience, watching tennis balls move so fast they hiss and blur, will attribute to you.(8)
Velocity’s just one part of it. Now we’re getting technical. Tennis is often called a “game of inches,” but the cliché is mostly referring to where a shot lands. In terms of a player’s hitting an incoming ball, tennis is actually more a game of micrometers: vanishingly tiny changes around the moment of impact will have large effects on how and where the ball travels. The same principle explains why even the smallest imprecision in aiming a rifle will still cause a miss if the target’s far enough away.
By way of illustration, let’s slow things way down. Imagine that you, a tennis player, are standing just behind your deuce corner’s baseline. A ball is served to your forehand — you pivot (or rotate) so that your side is to the ball’s incoming path and start to take your racket back for the forehand return. Keep visualizing up to where you’re about halfway into the stroke’s forward motion; the incoming ball is now just off your front hip, maybe six inches from point of impact. Consider some of the variables involved here. On the vertical plane, angling your racket face just a couple degrees forward or back will create topspin or slice, respectively; keeping it perpendicular will produce a flat, spinless drive. Horizontally, adjusting the racket face ever so slightly to the left or right, and hitting the ball maybe a millisecond early or late, will result in a cross-court versus down-the-line return. Further slight changes in the curves of your groundstroke’s motion and follow-through will help determine how high your return passes over the net, which, together with the speed at which you’re swinging (along with certain characteristics of the spin you impart), will affect how deep or shallow in the opponent’s court your return lands, how high it bounces, etc. These are just the broadest distinctions, of course — like, there’s heavy topspin vs. light topspin, or sharply cross-court vs. only slightly cross-court, etc. There are also the issues of how close you’re allowing the ball to get to your body, what grip you’re using, the extent to which your knees are bent and/or weight’s moving forward, and whether you’re able simultaneously to watch the ball and to see what your opponent’s doing after he serves. These all matter, too. Plus there’s the fact that you’re not putting a static object into motion here but rather reversing the flight and (to a varying extent) spin of a projectile coming toward you — coming, in the case of pro tennis, at speeds that make conscious thought impossible. Mario Ancic’s first serve, for instance, often comes in around 130 m.p.h. Since it’s 78 feet from Ancic’s baseline to yours, that means it takes 0.41 seconds for his serve to reach you.(9) This is less than the time it takes to blink quickly, twice.
The upshot is that pro tennis involves intervals of time too brief for deliberate action. Temporally, we’re more in the operative range of reflexes, purely physical reactions that bypass conscious thought. And yet an effective return of serve depends on a large set of decisions and physical adjustments that are a whole lot more involved and intentional than blinking, jumping when startled, etc.
Successfully returning a hard-served tennis ball requires what’s sometimes called “the kinesthetic sense,” meaning the ability to control the body and its artificial extensions through complex and very quick systems of tasks. English has a whole cloud of terms for various parts of this ability: feel, touch, form, proprioception, coordination, hand-eye coordination, kinesthesia, grace, control, reflexes, and so on. For promising junior players, refining the kinesthetic sense is the main goal of the extreme daily practice regimens we often hear about.(10) The training here is both muscular and neurological. Hitting thousands of strokes, day after day, develops the ability to do by “feel” what cannot be done by regular conscious thought. Repetitive practice like this often looks tedious or even cruel to an outsider, but the outsider can’t feel what’s going on inside the player — tiny adjustments, over and over, and a sense of each change’s effects that gets more and more acute even as it recedes from normal consciousness.(11)
The time and discipline required for serious kinesthetic training are one reason why top pros are usually people who’ve devoted most of their waking lives to tennis, starting (at the very latest) in their early teens. It was, for example, at age 13 that Roger Federer finally gave up soccer, and a recognizable childhood, and entered Switzerland’s national tennis training center in Ecublens. At 16, he dropped out of classroom studies and started serious international competition.
It was only weeks after quitting school that Federer won Junior Wimbledon. Obviously, this is something that not every junior who devotes himself to tennis can do. Just as obviously, then, there is more than time and training involved — there is also sheer talent, and degrees of it. Extraordinary kinesthetic ability must be present (and measurable) in a kid just to make the years of practice and training worthwhile...but from there, over time, the cream starts to rise and separate. So one type of technical explanation for Federer’s dominion is that he’s just a bit more kinesthetically talented than the other male pros. Only a little bit, since everyone in the Top 100 is himself kinesthetically gifted — but then, tennis is a game of inches.
This answer is plausible but incomplete. It would probably not have been incomplete in 1980. In 2006, though, it’s fair to ask why this kind of talent still matters so much. Recall what is true about dogma and Wimbledon’s sign. Kinesthetic virtuoso or no, Roger Federer is now dominating the largest, strongest, fittest, best-trained and -coached field of male pros who’ve ever existed, with everyone using a kind of nuclear racket that’s said to have made the finer calibrations of kinesthetic sense irrelevant, like trying to whistle Mozart during a Metallica concert.
According to reliable sources, honorary coin-tosser William Caines’s backstory is that one day, when he was 2½, his mother found a lump in his tummy, and took him to the doctor, and the lump was diagnosed as a malignant liver tumor. At which point one cannot, of course, imagine...a tiny child undergoing chemo, serious chemo, his mother having to watch, carry him home, nurse him, then bring him back to that place for more chemo. How did she answer her child’s question — the big one, the obvious one? And who could answer hers? What could any priest or pastor say that wouldn’t be grotesque?
It’s 2-1 Nadal in the final’s second set, and he’s serving. Federer won the first set at love but then flagged a bit, as he sometimes does, and is quickly down a break. Now, on Nadal’s ad, there’s a 16-stroke point. Nadal is serving a lot faster than he did in Paris, and this one’s down the center. Federer floats a soft forehand high over the net, which he can get away with because Nadal never comes in behind his serve. The Spaniard now hits a characteristically heavy topspin forehand deep to Federer’s backhand; Federer comes back with an even heavier topspin backhand, almost a clay-court shot. It’s unexpected and backs Nadal up, slightly, and his response is a low hard short ball that lands just past the service line’s T on Federer’s forehand side. Against most other opponents, Federer could simply end the point on a ball like this, but one reason Nadal gives him trouble is that he’s faster than the others, can get to stuff they can’t; and so Federer here just hits a flat, medium-hard cross-court forehand, going not for a winner but for a low, shallowly angled ball that forces Nadal up and out to the deuce side, his backhand. Nadal, on the run, backhands it hard down the line to Federer’s backhand; Federer slices it right back down the same line, slow and floaty with backspin, making Nadal come back to the same spot. Nadal slices the ball right back — three shots now all down the same line — and Federer slices the ball back to the same spot yet again, this one even slower and floatier, and Nadal gets planted and hits a big two-hander back down the same line — it’s like Nadal’s camped out now on his deuce side; he’s no longer moving all the way back to the baseline’s center between shots; Federer’s hypnotized him a little. Federer now hits a very hard, deep topspin backhand, the kind that hisses, to a point just slightly on the ad side of Nadal’s baseline, which Nadal gets to and forehands cross-court; and Federer responds with an even harder, heavier cross-court backhand, baseline-deep and moving so fast that Nadal has to hit the forehand off his back foot and then scramble to get back to center as the shot lands maybe two feet short on Federer’s backhand side again. Federer steps to this ball and now hits a totally different cross-court backhand, this one much shorter and sharper-angled, an angle no one would anticipate, and so heavy and blurred with topspin that it lands shallow and just inside the sideline and takes off hard after the bounce, and Nadal can’t move in to cut it off and can’t get to it laterally along the baseline, because of all the angle and topspin — end of point. It’s a spectacular winner, a Federer Moment; but watching it live, you can see that it’s also a winner that Federer started setting up four or even five shots earlier. Everything after that first down-the-line slice was designed by the Swiss to maneuver Nadal and lull him and then disrupt his rhythm and balance and open up that last, unimaginable angle — an angle that would have been impossible without extreme topspin.
Extreme topspin is the hallmark of today’s power-baseline game. This is something that Wimbledon’s sign gets right.(12) Why topspin is so key, though, is not commonly understood. What’s commonly understood is that high-tech composite rackets impart much more pace to the ball, rather like aluminum baseball bats as opposed to good old lumber. But that dogma is false. The truth is that, at the same tensile strength, carbon-based composites are lighter than wood, and this allows modern rackets to be a couple ounces lighter and at least an inch wider across the face than the vintage Kramer and Maxply. It’s the width of the face that’s vital. A wider face means there’s more total string area, which means the sweet spot’s bigger. With a composite racket, you don’t have to meet the ball in the precise geometric center of the strings in order to generate good pace. Nor must you be spot-on to generate topspin, a spin that (recall) requires a tilted face and upwardly curved stroke, brushing over the ball rather than hitting flat through it — this was quite hard to do with wood rackets, because of their smaller face and niggardly sweet spot. Composites’ lighter, wider heads and more generous centers let players swing faster and put way more topspin on the ball...and, in turn, the more topspin you put on the ball, the harder you can hit it, because there’s more margin for error. Topspin causes the ball to pass high over the net, describe a sharp arc, and come down fast into the opponent’s court (instead of maybe soaring out).
So the basic formula here is that composite rackets enable topspin, which in turn enables groundstrokes vastly faster and harder than 20 years ago — it’s common now to see male pros pulled up off the ground and halfway around in the air by the force of their strokes, which in the old days was something one saw only in Jimmy Connors.
Connors was not, by the way, the father of the power-baseline game. He whaled mightily from the baseline, true, but his groundstrokes were flat and spinless and had to pass very low over the net. Nor was Bjorn Borg a true power-baseliner. Both Borg and Connors played specialized versions of the classic baseline game, which had evolved as a counterforce to the even more classic serve-and-volley game, which was itself the dominant form of men’s power tennis for decades, and of which John McEnroe was the greatest modern exponent. You probably know all this, and may also know that McEnroe toppled Borg and then more or less ruled the men’s game until the appearance, around the mid-1980’s, of (a) modern composite rackets(13) and (b) Ivan Lendl, who played with an early form of composite and was the true progenitor of power-baseline tennis.(14)
Ivan Lendl was the first top pro whose strokes and tactics appeared to be designed around the special capacities of the composite racket. His goal was to win points from the baseline, via either passing shots or outright winners. His weapon was his groundstrokes, especially his forehand, which he could hit with overwhelming pace because of the amount of topspin he put on the ball. The blend of pace and topspin also allowed Lendl to do something that proved crucial to the advent of the power-baseline game. He could pull off radical, extraordinary angles on hard-hit groundstrokes, mainly because of the speed with which heavy topspin makes the ball dip and land without going wide. In retrospect, this changed the whole physics of aggressive tennis. For decades, it had been angle that made the serve-and-volley game so lethal. The closer one is to the net, the more of the opponent’s court is open — the classic advantage of volleying was that you could hit angles that would go way wide if attempted from the baseline or midcourt. But topspin on a groundstroke, if it’s really extreme, can bring the ball down fast and shallow enough to exploit many of these same angles. Especially if the groundstroke you’re hitting is off a somewhat short ball — the shorter the ball, the more angles are possible. Pace, topspin, and aggressive baseline angles: and lo, it’s the power-baseline game.
It wasn’t that Ivan Lendl was an immortally great tennis player. He was simply the first top pro to demonstrate what heavy topspin and raw power could achieve from the baseline. And, most important, the achievement was replicable, just like the composite racket. Past a certain threshold of physical talent and training, the main requirements were athleticism, aggression, and superior strength and conditioning. The result (omitting various complications and subspecialties(15)) has been men’s pro tennis for the last 20 years: ever bigger, stronger, fitter players generating unprecedented pace and topspin off the ground, trying to force the short or weak ball that they can put away.
Illustrative stat: When Lleyton Hewitt defeated David Nalbandian in the 2002 Wimbledon men’s final, there was not one single serve-and-volley point.(16)
The generic power-baseline game is not boring — certainly not compared with the two-second points of old-time serve-and-volley or the moon-ball tedium of classic baseline attrition. But it is somewhat static and limited; it is not, as pundits have publicly feared for years, the evolutionary endpoint of tennis. The player who’s shown this to be true is Roger Federer. And he’s shown it from within the modern game.
This within is what’s important here; this is what a purely neural account leaves out. And it is why sexy attributions like touch and subtlety must not be misunderstood. With Federer, it’s not either/or. The Swiss has every bit of Lendl and Agassi’s pace on his groundstrokes, and leaves the ground when he swings, and can out-hit even Nadal from the backcourt.(17) What’s strange and wrong about Wimbledon’s sign, really, is its overall dolorous tone. Subtlety, touch, and finesse are not dead in the power-baseline era. For it is, still, in 2006, very much the power-baseline era: Roger Federer is a first-rate, kick-ass power-baseliner. It’s just that that’s not all he is. There’s also his intelligence, his occult anticipation, his court sense, his ability to read and manipulate opponents, to mix spins and speeds, to misdirect and disguise, to use tactical foresight and peripheral vision and kinesthetic range instead of just rote pace — all this has exposed the limits, and possibilities, of men’s tennis as it’s now played.
Which sounds very high-flown and nice, of course, but please understand that with this guy it’s not high-flown or abstract. Or nice. In the same emphatic, empirical, dominating way that Lendl drove home his own lesson, Roger Federer is showing that the speed and strength of today’s pro game are merely its skeleton, not its flesh. He has, figuratively and literally, re-embodied men’s tennis, and for the first time in years the game’s future is unpredictable. You should have seen, on the grounds’ outside courts, the variegated ballet that was this year’s Junior Wimbledon. Drop volleys and mixed spins, off-speed serves, gambits planned three shots ahead — all as well as the standard-issue grunts and booming balls. Whether anything like a nascent Federer was here among these juniors can’t be known, of course. Genius is not replicable. Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform — and even just to see, close up, power and aggression made vulnerable to beauty is to feel inspired and (in a fleeting, mortal way) reconciled.
(1) There’s a great deal that’s bad about having a body. If this is not so obviously true that no one needs examples, we can just quickly mention pain, sores, odors, nausea, aging, gravity, sepsis, clumsiness, illness, limits — every last schism between our physical wills and our actual capacities. Can anyone doubt we need help being reconciled? Crave it? It’s your body that dies, after all.
Related
Federer as Religious Experience (August 20, 2006)
The New York Times
Sports Magazine
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There are wonderful things about having a body, too, obviously — it’s just that these things are much harder to feel and appreciate in real time. Rather like certain kinds of rare, peak-type sensuous epiphanies (“I’m so glad I have eyes to see this sunrise!” etc.), great athletes seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch and perceive, move through space, interact with matter. Granted, what great athletes can do with their bodies are things that the rest of us can only dream of. But these dreams are important — they make up for a lot.
(2) The U.S. media here are especially worried because no Americans of either sex survived into even the quarterfinals this year. (If you’re into obscure statistics, it’s the first time this has happened at Wimbledon since 1911.)
(3) Actually, this is not the only Federer-and-sick-child incident of Wimbledon’s second week. Three days prior to the men’s final, a Special One-on-One Interview with Mr. Roger Federer(†) takes place in a small, crowded International Tennis Federation office just off the third floor of the Press Center. Right afterward, as the ATP player-rep is ushering Federer out the back door for his next scheduled obligation, one of the I.T.F. guys (who’s been talking loudly on the telephone through the whole Special Interview) now comes up and asks for a moment of Roger’s time. The man, who has the same slight, generically foreign accent as all I.T.F. guys, says: “Listen, I hate doing this. I don’t do this, normally. It’s for my neighbor. His kid has a disease. They will do a fund-raiser, it’s planned, and I’m asking can you sign a shirt or something, you know — something.” He looks mortified. The ATP rep is glaring at him. Federer, though, just nods, shrugs: “No problem. I’ll bring it tomorrow.” Tomorrow’s the men’s semifinal. Evidently the I.T.F. guy has meant one of Federer’s own shirts, maybe from the match, with Federer’s actual sweat on it. (Federer throws his used wristbands into the crowd after matches, and the people they land on seem pleased rather than grossed out.) The I.T.F. guy, after thanking Federer three times very fast, shakes his head: “I hate doing this.” Federer, still halfway out the door: “It’s no problem.” And it isn’t. Like all pros, Federer changes his shirt during matches, and he can just have somebody save one, and then he’ll sign it. It’s not like Federer’s being Gandhi here — he doesn’t stop and ask for details about the kid or his illness. He doesn’t pretend to care more than he does. The request is just one more small, mildly distracting obligation he has to deal with. But he does say yes, and he will remember — you can tell. And it won’t distract him; he won’t permit it. He’s good at this kind of stuff, too.
(†) (Only considerations of space and basic believability prevent a full description of the hassles involved in securing such a One-on-One. In brief, it’s rather like the old story of someone climbing an enormous mountain to talk to the man seated lotus on top, except in this case the mountain is composed entirely of sports-bureaucrats.)
(4) Top men’s serves often reach speeds of 125-135 m.p.h., true, but what all the radar signs and graphics neglect to tell you is that male power-baseliners’ groundstrokes themselves are often traveling at over 90 m.p.h., which is the speed of a big-league fastball. If you get down close enough to a pro court, you can hear an actual sound coming off the ball in flight, a kind of liquid hiss, from the combination of pace and spin. Close up and live, you’ll also understand better the “open stance” that’s become such an emblem of the power-baseline game. The term, after all, just means not turning one’s side all the way to the net before hitting a groundstroke, and one reason why so many power-baseliners hit from the open stance is that the ball is now coming too fast for them to get turned all the way.
(5) This is the large (and presumably six-year-old) structure where Wimbledon’s administration, players, and media all have their respective areas and HQs.
(6) (Some, like Nadal or Serena Williams, look more like cartoon superheroes than people.)
(7) When asked, during the aforementioned Special One-on-One Interview, for examples of other athletes whose performances might seem beautiful to him, Federer mentions Jordan first, then Kobe Bryant, then “a soccer player like — guys who play very relaxed, like a Zinédine Zidane or something: he does great effort, but he seems like he doesn’t need to try hard to get the results.”
Federer’s response to the subsequent question, which is what-all he makes of it when pundits and other players describe his own game as “beautiful,” is interesting mainly because the response is pleasant, intelligent, and cooperative — as is Federer himself — without ever really saying anything (because, in fairness, what could one say about others’ descriptions of him as beautiful? What would you say? It’s ultimately a stupid question): “It’s always what people see first — for them, that’s what you are ‘best at.’ When you used to watch John McEnroe, you know, the first time, what would you see? You would see a guy with incredible talent, because the way he played, nobody played like this. The way he played the ball, it was just all about feel. And then you go over to Boris Becker, and right away you saw a powerful player, you know?(†) When you see me play, you see a ‘beautiful’ player — and maybe after that you maybe see that he’s fast, maybe you see that he’s got a good forehand, maybe then you see that he has a good serve. First, you know, you have a base, and to me, I think it’s great, you know, and I’m very lucky to be called basically ‘beautiful,’ you know, for style of play. ... With me it’s, like, ‘the beautiful player,’ and that’s really cool.”
(†) N.B. Federer’s big conversational tics are “maybe” and “you know.” Ultimately, these tics are helpful because they serve as reminders of how appallingly young he really is. If you’re interested, the world’s best tennis player is wearing white warm-up pants and a long-sleeved white microfiber shirt, possibly Nike. No sport coat, though. His handshake is only moderately firm, though the hand itself is like a carpentry rasp (for obvious reasons, tennis players tend to be very callusy). He’s a bit bigger than TV makes him seem — broader-shouldered, deeper in the chest. He’s next to a table that’s covered with visors and headbands, which he’s been autographing with a Sharpie. He sits with his legs crossed and smiles pleasantly and seems very relaxed; he never fidgets with the Sharpie. One’s overall impression is that Federer is either a very nice guy or a guy who’s very good at dealing with the media — or (most likely) both.
(8) Special One-on-One support from the man himself for this claim: “It’s interesting, because this week, actually, Ancic [comma Mario, the towering Top-10 Croatian whom Federer beat in Wednesday’s quarterfinal] played on Centre Court against my friend, you know, the Swiss player Wawrinka [comma Stanislas, Federer’s Davis Cup teammate], and I went to see it out where, you know, my girlfriend Mirka [Vavrinec, a former women’s Top-100 player, knocked out by injury, who now basically functions as Federer’s Alice B. Toklas] usually sits, and I went to see — for the first time since I have come here to Wimbledon, I went to see a match on Centre Court, and I was also surprised, actually, how fast, you know, the serve is and how fast you have to react to be able to get the ball back, especially when a guy like Mario [Ancic, who’s known for his vicious serve] serves, you know? But then once you’re on the court yourself, it’s totally different, you know, because all you see is the ball, really, and you don’t see the speed of the ball.... ”
(9) We’re doing the math here with the ball traveling as the crow flies, for simplicity. Please do not write in with corrections. If you want to factor in the serve’s bounce and so compute the total distance traveled by the ball as the sum of an oblique triangle’s(†) two shorter legs, then by all means go ahead — you’ll end up with between two and five additional hundredths of a second, which is not significant.
(†) (The slower a tennis court’s surface, the closer to a right triangle you’re going to have. On fast grass, the bounce’s angle is always oblique.)
(10) Conditioning is also important, but this is mainly because the first thing that physical fatigue attacks is the kinesthetic sense. (Other antagonists are fear, self-consciousness, and extreme upset — which is why fragile psyches are rare in pro tennis.)
(11) The best lay analogy is probably to the way an experienced driver can make all of good driving’s myriad little decisions and adjustments without having to pay attention to them.
(12) (...assuming, that is, that the sign’s “with heavy topspin” is modifying “dominate” rather than “powerful hitters,” which actually it might or might not — British grammar is a bit dodgy.)
(13) (which neither Connors nor McEnroe could switch to with much success — their games were fixed around pre-modern rackets.)
(14) Formwise, with his whippy forehand, lethal one-hander, and merciless treatment of short balls, Lendl somewhat anticipated Federer. But the Czech was also stiff, cold, and brutal; his game was awesome but not beautiful. (My college doubles partner used to describe watching Lendl as like getting to see “Triumph of the Will” in 3-D.)
(15) See, for one example, the continued effectiveness of some serve-and-volley (mainly in the adapted, heavily ace- and quickness-dependent form of a Sampras or Rafter) on fast courts through the 1990’s.
(16) It’s also illustrative that 2002 was Wimbledon’s last pre-Federer final.
(17) In the third set of the ’06 final, at three games all and 30-15, Nadal kicks his second serve high to Federer’s backhand. Nadal’s clearly been coached to go high and heavy to Federer’s backhand, and that’s what he does, point after point. Federer slices the return back to Nadal’s center and two feet short — not short enough to let the Spaniard hit a winner, but short enough to draw him slightly into the court, whence Nadal winds up and puts all his forehand’s strength into a hard heavy shot to (again) Federer’s backhand. The pace he’s put on the ball means that Nadal is still backpedaling to the baseline as Federer leaves his feet and cranks a very hard topspin backhand down the line to Nadal’s deuce side, which Nadal — out of position but world-class fast — reaches and manages to one-hand back deep to (again) Federer’s backhand side, but this ball’s floaty and slow, and Federer has time to step around and hit an inside-out forehand, a forehand as hard as anyone’s hit all tournament, with just enough topspin to bring it down in Nadal’s ad corner, and the Spaniard gets there but can’t return it. Big ovation. Again, what looks like an overwhelming baseline winner was actually set up by that first clever semi-short slice and Nadal’s own predictability about where and how hard he’ll hit every ball. Federer sure whaled that last forehand, though. People are looking at each other and applauding. The thing with Federer is that he’s Mozart and Metallica at the same time, and the harmony’s somehow exquisite.
By the way, it’s right around here, or the next game, watching, that three separate inner-type things come together and mesh. One is a feeling of deep personal privilege at being alive to get to see this; another is the thought that William Caines is probably somewhere here in the Centre Court crowd, too, watching, maybe with his mum. The third thing is a sudden memory of the earnest way the press bus driver promised just this experience. Because there is one. It’s hard to describe — it’s like a thought that’s also a feeling. One wouldn’t want to make too much of it, or to pretend that it’s any sort of equitable balance; that would be grotesque. But the truth is that whatever deity, entity, energy, or random genetic flux produces sick children also produced Roger Federer, and just look at him down there. Look at that.
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