I say, anyone for tennis?

When I was a newbie at my favorite university in the United States, I found plenty of Americana to be absolutely fascinating, one of which was American football.  Within a matter of days, it seemed like, I was familiar with the rules of the game and was a passionate follower of the college and professional varieties--without ever having even touched a football!  Ah, those were some wonder years of my youth that have faded so rapidly!

The quarterback of the team was Rodney Peete, who had one of the best smiles ever.  A talented multi-sport guy, Peete chose football for good.  He duked it out with the crosstown rival, Troy Aikman and led USC to the Rose Bowl game.  Which is why I didn't understand a fellow graduate student's comment that Peete would not make it to the NFL.  The NFL and the fans, he explained, were racist to think that a black guy wouldn't have the abilities to quarterback.

That understanding of racism in American sports was also a part of the Americana that I have been following since.  This is a very strange country, to say the least!

But then that following January, Doug Williams became the first African-American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl and he and his team thrashed John Elway and his team with 42 unanswered points.  A black quarterback won the NFL!

Peete went on to the NFL, and had a moderately successful career, although nothing like Aikman's glorious years with Dallas.  Fast forward the years that I have been in the US.  I no longer care for sports.  There is no emotion invested anymore; I scan the news only to know who won and lost.

When I read that Serena Williams had won, again, my first thought was, "isn't she too old to play competitive tennis?"  And the next question was, "'how come she is not celebrated big time?"  Maybe the second question was because that has been analyzed quite a bit.

A year ago, after her victory at the US Open, the New Yorker noted:

Forget tennis for a moment, though: when I say the greatest athlete in a generation, I mean the greatest in any sport. Sorry, LeBron. Sorry, Tiger. Sorry, Derek. For fifteen years, over two generations of tennis, Williams has been a spectacular and constant yet oddly uncherished national treasure. She is wealthy and famous, but it seems that she should be more famous, the most famous. Anyone who likes sports should love Williams’s dazzling combination of talent, persistence, style, unpredictability, poise, and outsized, heart-on-her-sleeve flaws.
But not everyone loves her.

Why?  As Vox put it right in the headline, "Every Serena Williams win comes with a side of disgusting racism and sexism."  At least Peete didn't have to deal with sexism!

In the moments surrounding her win, Williams was compared to an animal, likened to a man, and deemed frightening and horrifyingly unattractive. One Twitter user who wrote that Williams "looks like a gorilla, and sounds like a gorilla when she grunts while hitting the ball. In conclusion, she is a gorilla." And another described her as "so unbelievably dominant...and manly".

 It is a bizarre world in which we live :(

"The racism raining down on Serena's victory parade highlights the nature of white supremacy ... her career has been one marred by the politics of hate, the politics of racism and sexism," Leonard wrote.
The racism that underlies the characterizations of her as hypersexual, aggressive, and animalistic, also means that when she dares to express frustration, she's stamped with the infamous "angry black woman" stereotype.
It's as bogus as the rest of the labels she's endured, but given the slights against her over the years, she has every right to be outraged.

A tweet stated it succinctly:

Actually you see a lot of demands that successful Black people be humble. That's left over from Jim Crow era etiquette.

Of course, things have changed.  The NFL now features plenty of non-White quarterbacks.  But, there is a long, long way to go before we can be free of racism and sexism in sports.

I, for one, am mighty impressed that Serena Williams continues to win even at the ripe old tennis age of nearly 34!  Awesome!

Game. Set. Match. Who cares!

I have played tennis--more like hit tennis balls with a racquet (might as well be a racket!)--for perhaps a grand total of two weeks in my entire life.  That was two decades ago.  The tennis elbow that I am dealing with now is one heck of a delayed reaction, it seems!

Months it will be before this contraption goes into the trash :(

Anyway, it is Wimbledon time. I couldn't care.

I look up the news and scan the line about the latest from there only because I am a news junkie.  Even if I didn't look it up, I am confident that I would not miss any damn thing.

It wasn't always that way.

I recall Ivan Lendl's frustrations at Wimbledon, which led him to a sour grapes comment that grass is for cows to feed on.  It was on the tiny black/white television set that I watched Boris Becker serve his way through to championships as if he were born only to roll around at Wimbledon and to do nothing else in life.  Even before all that, I was upset as a kid when Bjron Borg lost his groove and then hastily retired from the sport altogether.  Tracy Austin I followed with my heart beating just a tad more for her.

The Hindu's  reports on Vijay Amritaraj winning even a set on the grass court was always exciting, and even more it was when another Tamil, Ramesh Krishnan (no, not the sports-crazy friend, K_Ramesh, who is my debating partner here at this blog) achieved quite some success at the tourneys.

But, with every passing year, I lost that much more of an interest in following sports. Cricket, badminton, hockey, football (soccer,) tennis, baseball, football (American,) ... one by one, they have all become additions to the graveyard of my past sports interests.

"Entertainment" is the very bottom-line.  I don't care to be entertained anymore.  If I am an active participant, then it is fun. But to be a passive spectator became such a bore.  A painfully boring experience.

I cannot understand anymore how I was once an excited spectator.  Once, when recovering from typhoid that was surely from the water at college, much against the doctor's suggestions, and my father's worries, not to exert myself, I sat up for hours to watch Wimbledon during those Becker years.   I should have sued Becker for compensation, for the relapse that I had!

And that compensation was another reason I quickly lost interest in entertainment.  It was an epiphany, that was further reinforced in graduate school, when I realized that I watch entertainers--be they in sports or movies or whatever else--and laugh and cry with "their" victories and losses, when, at the end of it all, I have lost time and money, whereas those entertainers had by then amassed quite some wealth.  They were doing that proverbial laughing all the way to the bank.  A fool and his money are soon parted, indeed!  I think I am wiser now.

Over the years, I have found a lot more entertaining activities to pursue.

My work itself is pretty entertaining--hey, other than that grading, my work is no chore at all.
Blogging is a whole lot of fun.
To know that blogging leads to stalkers is even more exciting!
Experimenting with cooking is fun, though when once the oil exploded and caught fire, it was no fun when it scalded my skin.
Traveling is one heck of an engaging entertainment, though expensive.
Walking is fun--there is enough and more in nature to entertain me.
Yesterday, when driving I spotted a few geese by the roadside.  Afraid that they might get run over, I slowed down to a crawl and passed them.  And watched the birds in my rearview mirror.  The lead goose checked both directions, and then led the group to cross the road.  Absolutely entertaining that was for which the birds charged me no money at all.

The entertaining "fruit soup" experiment yesterday!

To give up all those and more that I could do in which I am an active participant and to, instead, watch two people hit a ball back and forth, often with accompanying horrible grunting sounds as if they were suffering from acute constipation?  And then to read about the millions of dollars they earned for doing this!

Nah!  I am not entertaining any such thoughts!  Maybe later in life, when I am senile.

For now, if I need to be entertained, I will simply walk up to the river, looking forward to the show the geese and the ducks have planned for me!

Tennis: A new China? Cool!

From the Australian Open:

China’s Li Na could ascend to the final while charming everyone in Melbourne with a hilarious postmatch interview in which she blamed her snoring husband for her lack of sleep, among other humorous anecdotes. That spawned the idea that Li could be the crossover star in tennis that Yao Ming was in basketball, but Greg Couch writes on Fanhouse.com that he doesn’t believe she can capture enough attention in the United States. She will get attention in China, however, where tennis was once so obscure Li had to explain the sport to her mother when she decided to play it.

Tennis is, of course, like gymnastics and diving, an individual sport.  Here is a column I wrote on how China doesn't seem to make it in team sports though.

Argentina .... I will be there soon .... some day

Even as a kid barely able to hold a newspaper I got to know a little bit about Argentina. It was always in the news--bad economic conditions, dictatorial governments, and later on the Falklands War. And, of course, the news always punctuated with the word "Peronistas". But, there was something about Argentina that captured my imagination--truly my imagination because it was way before the Web, and back in a resource-constrained small town, it was more imagination with the little bit of news than anything else ....
And then there was the sports aspect of Argentina that always made sure it was in the news. In tennis, it was Guillermo Vilas who made sure that I knew where Argentina was. No, I don't play tennis :-) I am just an information junkie! And, of course, football (soccer) and Maradona.

The net result: Argentina has always been on my list of places to go to. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita then was the icing on the cake.

As if I did not have enough reasons, the coffee maniac in me then read the following and is now ready to pack my bags :-) (this is an excerpt; read the complete post here.)

The One-Hour Cup of Coffee

Buenos Aires is a great coffee city. No, you won't find myriad varieties of beans here, or some great technological advance in the brewing process, but this is a city that knows the art of drinking coffee well, if not the perfect technique to brew it.

In Buenos Aires, you don't get a 20-ounce latte in a to-go cup, in fact there is nearly no coffee to-go in the city, except for a chain of coffee shops called Havanna that offer the amenity. But very few take them up on it (and those that do tend to get strange looks from passers-by).

Instead, coffee here is enjoyed slowly, at a sidewalk cafe, sitting still, in an actual mug, with no plastic lid getting in the way. Throughout the day, locals take their time with it, chatting up friends, admiring the street scenes, or reading the newspaper. Coffee here is a more measured decision, because instead of five minutes you are more likely to spend an hour with your cup.

The coffee is strong, and best enjoyed in smaller quantities--the cortado is my favorite, an espresso with just a spoonful of steamed milk on top (identical to the drink of the same name in Spain). Others prefer the inverse, the lagrima, which is a cup of steamed milk with just a spoonful of espresso (lagrima is Spanish for "teardrop"). There's also cafe con leche, cappuchino, and a wonderful take on hot chocolate called submarino (which I'm saving for a later post).

I want to go there. Please? :-)