#61 Take-Your-Pick Haikus

My Late Afternoon Pond

Slanting sun makes

Toy sailboats from floating geese.

Who is the child?

or

Sly slanting sun 

Makes toy sailboats out of the

Floating geese. Childish!  

jdmjr

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#60 "I Give the Mass." Continued His High Quarkness. "but Not THAT Kind."

[c.f. last post]

No, not related, etymologically. There's a great joke going around though: a Higgs boson walks into church and the priest says, "I'm sorry we don't allow sub-atomic particles." The boson parries, "But you can't have MASS without me."  hahaha. I love a good laugh because it's serious stuff literally, that I deal with down here, 24/7 times infinity--a real head- (if I had one) ache keeping all those other quirky quarklets (some officially monikered e.g. "strange" and "charm"  no kidding) in line, giving them mass, and a certain gravitas. Haha ...told you  This is why I affectionately refer to St. Peter of  Higgs also as Dr Higglety-Pigglety. The quantum scene is to my poetic ear (if I had one) a double-dactyl rumbling-tumbling surreal sort of miasmic musical maelstrom (ha) that even I/ME find hard to believe in.                                                                               

[1] But back to the point: mass in the hieratic sense derives from the Late Latin "Ite, missa est" which means literally in order "Go,  dismissal is" from the past participle of mittere, to put, to put out, to place, to go,  etc. (and cognate with so many other Latin borrowings like mission and mess, in the sense of meal – the putting-out and placing thereof). Did I mention that I dearly love Latin, my second language? Well, so the Ite etc. phrase means more loosely something like Go away, it's put-you-out time. Funny isn't it that the parishioners would remember the end of the service as if glad to be through with it, rather than the beginning or the middle or the whole. The poor peasants didn't understand a word that was being said anyway. But in the late Middle Ages with the usual linguistic forces of phonetic compression and folk etymology ( the sense of "massing" together) at work, the phrase became the single word mass, unrelated historically to any other usage. But I love folk, and their etymology, and massing-together is so sweet an idea to a sentimental Old Particle at heart, if I had one – haha, somebody please stop me – because there's a symbolic connection at least between the priestish mass and myself. We're both in the congregation business – aggregating, gathering together bunches of people massed together at these holy functions, like e.g. the "masses" showing up in huge quantities for Funny Hat Day at St. Peter's (pace Higgs) Basilica most famously on Easter Sunday.

[2] But for me, the original Matter-Maker, mass has in fact a much more ancient and pregnant meaning, if you will. Goes like this: Proto-Indo-European root into Greek "Massein" = to knead (massage is related), and then into the Latin noun masa, the finished product = a lump of dough. Interesting creational implications here of course. and even Eucharistic. Matter is another matter – ultimately coming from another Latin  borrowing: mater, and, hey, I'm sort of in the mothering business myself. One more thing and I'll shut up:

[3] As to mess, as in meal, repast, brunch, munchies, snack, etc-- it's like the biblical mess of pottage or modern mess hall or in the epigraph to this blog's fraternal twin Daily Mosteller Weekly (below masthead), which asks the reader pun-ishingly to sit down to a "mess" of memes and mummery. You would expect the form to be related to the mass-masa-maize lump-o'-dough family, but no. We're back to  the holy service once again with that workhorse Latin verb mittere, which means, we recall, to place or put out though NOT in this sense the parishioners, but rather a meal. Of course the Eucharist is in its own way a mess, and after church they could mass in the mess hall and maybe get a group massage ...

Our interviewee continued in this vein for some time, later extolling in particular the virtues of the old-timey Latin form of mass, even praising current practitioners like Mel Gibson and Antonin Scalia as among his favorites, reminding us that grammar school originally meant learning LATIN grammar back in the day (one simply KNEW English already, forheavensake), and that Anglo-Humans should return to the old practice of high-school Latin for everybody, and Greek in college. Modern languages--pshaw. After this lengthy divigation the Supreme Quarkman returned to the issues at hand::

However, jokes and etymology aside, there's a nice parallel here because I AM in the congregation/aggregation business. I get things together and afford them weight and quant-ity, so to speak ... and then let them go. There's a cosmic cuteness there--don't you agree?-- and I'm the guy-particle who does it, by God. My good friend Peter Higgs figured it out mathematically. Another old friend, Pythagoras, had it half-right when he said that mathematics gives you the key to the universe, but only after you humans bumped your heads and started counting things. Incidentally, isn't it weird that Pythagoas, the first great "bean counter" in history, hated beans and forbade his followers from eating them! But I digress. Sorry. My first interview after all. Anyway, for Peter Higgs Ph.D. my quarkhood just had to be there, somehow, either as a particle, or field, or maybe both at the same time. Also weird, but that's Quantumland for you. Kudos to the young man– oops, it was 50 years ago– who predicted me, and now the CERN people, whoever they are, confirming my existence in the Large Hadron Collider, whatever that is.. I understand that they actually have sparkly images of me in action, or I should say REaction, to some pretty painful neutron bombardment just short of the speed of light. Ouch.  One of Me only lasts a Godzillionth of a second, but they managed to get me in the picture. You should be able to detect a smile.

Higgs Boson Residue, Two Lines on Right

This reporter readily agreed with the painful aspect of his experience because I had spent some stock-still bombardment-time in an MRI sound tunnel while in terrible back and sciatic pain ... and could sympathize. I felt like a subHUMAN particle. So why was it, I asked, that he/it could "crack" a smile, as it were. And how did it feel personally to be a SUB-atomic particle, the lowliest of the low in the material universe, not up even to the atomic level ... a fortiori the molecular and above (using a little Latin to put him at ease).

I'll take the second question first: technically I'm not quite a quark, since they discovered so many of us little buggers at Fermilab or Livermore or someplace North American, exploding the atom into all of those literally strange and plasmatic parts underlying everything that is or ever was even onto the Big Bang. They had to rename some of us undergirding the atom, which poor unsung Democritas, another old friend, discovered some 2500 years ago! I'm a big-banger, you know, from the very beginning of things. And remember, young man, I keep YOUR (M)ASS together. So I'm lately not a quark because of something or other, I don't know, but a boson. Nothing against the term quark – and I'll explain that in a minute –but I do alternatively like the very sound of  b o s o n. Pronounce it. How deep and masculine it is, and dignified, suitable for one in charge of massivity throughout the shiny parts of the universe. Sonorous. Nothing wimpy or tinny to the ear. Two great (un-morphemic) half-words as well: bow and son, the whole comprising deep-throated, low-back vowels. Nice.

But back to quarkitude: I don't mind being lumped with with those guys; they're terrific crazy twee things ...  fun to be with. I have, on the other hand, the weightiness of a proton or neutron, I'm told, all the better to throw it around and get these little Big-Bangers into a bonding frame of mind. Got to, in order to make things work, and let the graviton do ITS thing. And BTW I'm just crazy about Finnegan's Wake, though even I can't understand it. But I know enough to know that Murray Gell-Mann and his gang were right on track, and in probably a celebratory state, in naming all of us drunken and shaky maelstrom mavens after a phrase from the novel. The barman of the public house yells to a dipsodic regular, "Three quarks [quarts] for Muster Mark!"

 Since I forgot question #3, if there was one, I'll answer #1: Why am I smiling? Well, it's like this: as for the material, luminous universe, YOU'VE NOW GOT ALL THE ANSWERS ... right down to the singularity and the act of creation, a.k.a. the Big Bang. The subatomic quantum world is complete. No more mystery. Okay, y'all may need to deal with arcane problems like oscillating neutrinos etc etc and blah blah a bigger puzzlement afforded by those dread twins, Dark Matter and Dark Energy that seem to make up only the other 95% of the cosmos! But no more need for the SUPERnatural to answer the age-old question of how you got here. I am the answer. Here's the catch.[another smile] It's a terrifying but at the same time liberating idea that you humankind have reluctantly known in your hearts for a long time: you're on your own.

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#58 Death of a Childhood Hero [in progress]

Smilin' Ed McConnell died right in front of me ... sort of. He was right there on the television machine one minute, and then he wasn't ... because he was dead, I was alive and only eleven,  What's happening? He was right over there on the screen last week. It's gotta be that old Froggy playin' tricks again. But there seemed no amount of  plunking on his magic twanger could get Ed back.

I.didn't know him "face-to-face" till his transition from radio to TV, which sadly was a short 2 or 3 years. And it took me at least that long to get over it. Here's the deal ... I loved the guy.  I got to know Smilin' Ed before I could see his smile/ Ed was in my head.

[ A "partial post"  related to DMW #233. More to come, but here it is for now.]

#36 January Jottings

As months go ... for the speaker in T.S. Eliot's
Wasteland"--

APRIL is the cruellest [sic] month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow ... (1922)

Winters in London (the double-"l" gives the poet's expatriation away) are somewhat milder in temperature than than those in the poet's native Connecticut, but even more uncomfortable due to the island's inherent (gulf-stream) foggy/flaky clamminess (think Oliver Twist here).

Okay, he's making a symbolic point--in fact one of the clearest in that famously obscurantist poem. In an obvious thought-inversion of the Canterbury Tales' opening lines, the pessimistic speaker sees in nature's promise of renewed fecundity only disillusionment, as compared with the human world. Memory reminds him that budding desire has been re-deadened in the past, as perhaps a late April frost might kill off the new Lilacs. Can't blame the guy. T.S. Eliot was in a kind of "green-card" marriage gone bad in and around the time of the poem. No small thanks to free-loving philosopher Bertrand Russell, who had earlier bedded young Tom's terminally-neurotic English wife, Vivienne, who he admitted later was the poem's primary muse. (For a pop-version of this interesting story, Netflix 1994's Tom & Viv.)

But give me the unambiguous optimism of Chaucer's April, thank you. It's the linchpin of the Prologue, appearing in first few lines of the classic eighteen that I always had my students commit to memory by the end the term:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes ... (c. 1385)

Here the sweet showers of April pierce to Eliot's dull and drought-ridden roots of March, and, by "virtue" of this, the spring rains will with absolute certitude engender those Lilac-flowers. As well as all the other tender crops, because Chaucer's warm west-wind's sweet breath will bring no frost. The clever word-choice of generic vertu bounces us easily into the human world, taken up the lines following those above. "Inspired" also are those spiritually dried-up pilgrims "from every shires ende of Engelond" seeking to get a virtue-fix at Canterbury Cathedral. A little holy water in the presence of the Martyr should do the trick. (St. Thomas still resides there, I'll bear witness, in a lovely effigy-topped tomb, easily accessible to the pilgrims who keep on a-coming, over 600 years later.)

So ... for want of a better segue in getting back to the point--and pace Mr. Eliot--Kalendis Ianuarius still has to be the mostest cruellest month of all. To body and mind. In fact, even in the lower-temperate zone of Mediterranean Rome, the early Latins found the 30 days or so of deep winter so unspeakably unpleasant that (in addition to the next 30 or so for good measure) they remained nameless in the Roman calendar for hundreds of years! Along with the "washing-up" month of Februarius, the name of the two-faced god Janus was a relative late-comer to the yearly time-keeping instrument that has ruled the West for ages. (more)
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#27 Obama and THE Shaggy Dog Story

This is Bo, First Dog, Obama-family-wise. Not as shaggy as his master's AfPac speech last week, but 'twill do for illustration. I'll get back to more substantive analysis back over at the war-torn Daily Mosteller shortly, but gimme a break. His speech reminded me so much of a Shaggy Dog Story that I thought I'd "muse" myself over here and give you the classic original--which happened to show up serendipitously last week in the 22nd annual installment (haven't missed one) of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader! Here's his version:

A wealthy man lost his beloved, valuable pet dog, an incredibly shaggy dog, maybe the shaggiest dog in the world. The man took out a newspaper advertisement that read, "Lost: World's Shaggiest Dog. Large Cash Reward." A young boy saw the ad and wanted the reward, so he decided he'd find the world's shaggiest dog and return it. The boy combed his town, and the next town over, and the one after that, looking for shaggy dogs. He found some in pet stores and dog pounds, and they were shaggy ... but not shaggy enough. [At this point, BlogManFans, you can take the boy around the world, piling on the detail and repetition.]

Finally, after the 30th dog pound he visited, the boy found an incredibly shaggy dog. The dog was so shaggy that he tripped over his own fur, because it covered both his paws and his eyes. when he barked, you couldn't even hear the sound because it got lost in the dog's layers of fur. [A good storyteller could add example after example on this theme.] It was the shaggiest dog the boy had ever seen in his life, and there was no way a dog could be any shaggier.

So, the boy bought the dog and carried him all the way to the home of the wealthy man who had placed the ad for the lost shaggy dog. He had to carry him because the dog was so shaggy he couldn't see to walk properly. Finally, the boy got to the rich man's home and rang the doorbell. the man answered the door, glanced at the dog, and then said to the boy, "Not that shaggy."

Embellishment is all. Always pushing, Andy-Kaufman-like, the patience of your audience, begging them to stick it out for the grand finale, and then pulling the rug with an anti-punchline. (Hollywood recently made a whole movie, "The Aristocrats," with guest comics doing their versions of the same dirty joke, following the shaggy-dog template. Some of my favorite funny-men, but unwatchable.) The important thing it that it all end in complete bathos--low-down, disappointing anti-climax. Not humor for all tastes. My favorite is the first ever told to me: what I'll call the High-Lama of Ultimate Wisdom story. Severely elided version:

Unhappy man seeks meaning of life ... travels world ... many wise-men ... loses wife, family, job ... travels more world ... many more wise-men ... loses youth, money, health ... finally last chance ... shreds and tatters ... climbs to Tibetan Monastery high in Himalayas... wisest man in the world ... hundreds of years old ... "Father, what is the meaning of Life?" ... "My son, Life is a fountain." ... "What?! Why you *&#%$#@&! I've come all this way etc. etc. etc. and that's all you've got to tell me? ... shaken, the High-Lama replies, "It's not?"

Obama's shaggy-dog speech? Lots of narrative detail, embellishment--but bathetic in the end. No punchline. What starts out as an argument for "the strategy that MY administration will pursue ... " turns out to be not his strategy after all. It's no more than a Bush/Cheney "surge"--pure and simple. And it's not funny.
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#20 Luck, Woody, Tennis, Gump IV

One last peeve. Love Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump (1994). Truly the Feel-Good-Movie-with-Grit for the ages. Whenever it comes around on its two- or three-year cycle on cable, I can count on being thoroughly entertained again. Sort of like my thing with The Thing--the John Carpenter/Kurt Russell 1982 version (NOT the albeit great 1951 James Arness original that I originally saw only fitfully through the seat backs and in between frightened runs to the lobby long ago at either the aforementioned Avalon or Stoney in Chicago)--but for different reasons.

Well, one of the movie's life-analogies--the more famous one--is to a box of chocolates, as pictured in last post and containing half of the home-spun words of wisdom. Adumbrated by his mother, and repeated way too often in the course of the motion picture, here it is from Forrest:

My momma always said, "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

Gnash! The sound you hear is teeth a-grinding. It's hard NOT to get bruxistic about this line of dialog, because #1 it's taken up so often by otherwise smart, well-meaning people, who, perhaps brain-washed by that popular and well-meaning film, are half-consciously convinced that these ARE words of wisdom about our life on this planet. Heck, I've heard it used quite seriously by one of my former colleagues as the basis for a commencement speech! And #2: Woody Allen's bogus "net-court" tennis-analogy rises to sheer genius when compared to this pile-size dump of pop philosophy. Illogic squared.

To be fair, though, to the film-maker and to the novelist from whose work the movie is adapted, the line may have been meant to be stupid, as a handy bit of character-exposition. Gump IS so very stupid vis a vis the ways of the world, while being so very SMART in other very important ways. (In the novel, by the way, he's portrayed as something of an idiot-savant, adept in Physics and Math, which keeps his grades up for football.)

However, "Momma" is portrayed as being much more worldly-wise than her son. If her philosophy of Life and Luck, other than being in good fun, is to be taken seriously--and Forrest has more than his share of tragedy in an otherwise well-spent life--then it fails in the following respects, in ascending order of importance:

• There's most often a "actual-size" map/key printed on the inside cover of the box indicating the varied make-up of each chocolate confection in their separate compartments. If you can read, then you'll "know what you're gonna get." Nary a soupcon of Luck involved.
  

• Even if you can't read, or can't even see, there's a SKILL to be developed by the inveterate boxed-chocolate-sampler sampler. (The element of skill is also what hurts Woody Allen's net-court analogy.) Set by industry tradition, the contents of each chocolate-covered piece is identifiable by its generic shape, in conjunction with a distinctive "swirl" on top. Nothing random about it.

• Assuming illiteracy or blindness or lack of bon-bon acuity, no matter what you randomly pick, you're still gonna get a CHOCOLATE something-or-other, for crying out loud, not a camouflaged pebble. "Momma wants you to try one one of these, Forrest, but watch out for the pebble look-a-likes" ... "But how am I supposed to know which-is-which, Momma?" ... "Just go ahead, son, I'm teaching you a lesson about Life." Much better analogy.

• Make a totally gut-wrenching pick? You can simply spit it out. Life works just like that, does it not?

So enough with the box of chocolates already, which took on so much of a life of its own outside the movie. A more palatable analogy about Life in a world of Chance and Circumstance, and the role that Luck plays in it, is the White Feather that floats willy-nilly upon the scene from time to time. Forrest himself "unwittingly" defines the symbolism at the end of his truly eloquent speech to his now grave-bound Jenny:

I don't know if Momma was right or if it's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if we each have a destiny [not really supported by her chocolate-box nostrum, however], or if we're all floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time. I miss you Jenny.

Better ... but the white feather is so gratuitous. So inorganic to plot and character. At least the Wood Man makes the symbolism of the hovering net-court tennis ball tie in naturally with his mis en scene. Now, if Gump's feather had floated into his ear and given him a nasty infection ...
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#28 Luck, Allen, Tennis, Gump III

So ... even before the story proper begins, Match Point has us in suspense already by literally suspending us in mid-air along with the tennis ball about two feet above the net, ready to fall on either side, and so determine who wins and who loses in the course of the film to follow. Spoiler: the image never returns; the ball never drops. But something else does, analogously, later on.

Woody Allen's title takes literal meaning, of course, from the sport of tennis--the last point of the match that decides winner and loser, as we've seen in real-life examples. The main character, Chris Wilton, is a fictional real-life tennis-pro, retiring still-young from the tournament circuit, but--and this is important--already "winning" a job as an instructor at an exclusive club in the very first scenes of the film after the prologue. The title thus immediately and easily suggests figurative associations. From the other side of the tracks--working-class Ireland--pretty-boy Chris is a player in every sense. His only "skill" seems to be his intelligent, effortless charm, but that's enough to score winning points against the influential people in Society and Business who somehow come his way, and to make the right kind of "matches" that will get him ahead of the game ... except for one. Take a guess.

But let's take it ad nauseum. Sorry, bored, non-tennis-buffs. Got to do it. We never see Chris in competitive play (Allen has him standing at the net punching a few balls back to to wealthy clients just after he gets the job in order to credentialize his on-screen persona)--but we can imagine him NOT as a primarily offensive player like Federer, and especially Nadal, who power the ball at every stroke (as does most every other top-ten player these days). We perhaps are invited to see tennis-pro Chris as most like Andy Murray--another upstart out-lander, by the way; this time a proud Scot, which always seemed to cause media-trouble for him at Wimbledon--who is primarily a defensive shot-maker, relying more on placement than power, and waiting for the opportunity presented by his opponent to give him a ball that he can clearly hit for a winner. Not enough to win at the U.S. Open this year, but enough to be 3rd-ranked in the world.

Chris is at the top of his game as the movie opens. A mere twenty-minutes later, his charming, "passive-aggressive" style of play has already taken him to the top of London's upper-class society. His tennis-instructor connections have quickly led to the Irishman's plight-trothing with the daughter of an outrageously rich Brit, who has in turn hired him into a plush executive position in the family business. The audience must always keep in mind, however, that opening freeze-frame. The ball has not yet dropped over the net, one way or the other. (Bad analogy for Luck v. Life, but a great image.) You might say Luck brought Chris a future brother-in-law with a love-starved sister, but he had known just where to position himself, and had the skills to take advantage of the opportunity. Unluckily though, it would seem, the well-meaning brother brings with him a spoiler: his fiancee' Nola, the Scarlet Woman. (How well is the actress Ms. Johansson named, considering her role in the film?!) Do they fall in lust? Is a tennis ball fuzzy in the woods?

Yes, and the plot complications begin. I'll save us some time here and refer the Myriad Readers to Theodor Dreiser's classic novel, An American Tragedy, redacted in the equally great film, A Place in the Sun (1951), where Montgomery Clift plays the social-climber and Shelly Winters the femme fatale who would sabotage it all. The plots are well-nigh EXACTLY the same--I think Woody acknowledged his homage someplace or other. And the director borrows heavily, too, from his earlier award-winning and box-office-popular Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). In Match, the quadrangle soon becomes a triangle after Chris marries the daughter, the brother dumps Nola, who now can become the legitimate mistress, if she will. There are many lucky and unlucky twists that inhabit the line of action here, but the entertaining though never-funny comedy of manners inevitably devolves into the film noir we knew it would become. Bad luck: girl gets possessive and pregnant; threatens everything; must be killed. Boy kills girl. Good luck: boy gets away with it. Or so it seems as the credits roll. But the ball hasn't yet dropped.

At the end of Place, Mongomery Clift is punished for his crime. At the end of Crimes, the Martin Landau character, who does the deed through his ne'er-do-well brother and a hit-man, is not, at least not by the justice system. Both characters suffer their guilt, and in the former that guilt is expiated and mooted deus ex machina by the death penalty. Not so easy in Crimes. In the final moments of that film Landau confesses to the Woody Allen character, in a "hypothetical" conversation, that the "murderer" went through long periods of gut-wrenching guilt and remorse (he did), but one morning, surrounded by his happy family and accumulated wealth, it seemed that those demons had vanished. The character played by Woody remains dubious: "I just don't see how anybody could survive the terrible guilt of such a thing." Nonetheless, Landau rejoins and hugs his wife, and they return to the evening's wedding festivities. The credits roll.

Now here's the trick Allen plays on us in Match Point. Two or three tricks, really. First, it looks that after all Chris will not get away with his "perfect" crime, and will be caught by the authorities. Several events pop-up that would impede it, but he "lucks-out" on every one, and the murder has apparently succeeded in wonderfully noir-ish fashion. But then, after cleaning up the crime-scene, he throws potentially incriminating evidence into the Thames. All of the items make it over the guard-rail and into the river but one: a ring. It bounces off the top of the railing, hovers in mid-air for a slo-mo moment, and lands back on the embankment, after Chris had already turned and run off. Of course it sounds familiar, and visually it couldn't be a more perfect counterpoint to the first scene of the movie. True genius here. Bad luck has finally caught up with Chris Wilton. But nooooo--the homicide cops do investigate him, yes, for unluckily Nola has left behind a diary that her murderer overlooked ... and they find the ring. However, they find it in possession of a vagrant-burglar-drug-addict who had picked it up along the Thames, and who happens to answer beautifully to the bogus scenario that Chris tried to stage! Investigation over.

The ultimate twist, though, is more subtle ... and by allusion. Our protagonist is seen early on reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The novel most probably influenced Allen's earlier movie of almost the same name--Woody was a great fan of the Russian classics (cf. his Love and Death and Tolstoy)--but there's no doubt he wants us to apply it directly to what's going on in Match Point. To follow up on the book's appearance, he has the future father-in-law recommend the mentality of his daughter's suitor to his wife in the following terms: "Oh, yes, he's quite the educated young man; we had a nice chat about Dostoevsky the other day." As we know, after his murderous crimes, the novel's protagonist, Raskolnikov, is so violently guilt-wracked, that he has no choice but to give himself up in the end. Landau in Crimes, the same, as he confesses to the Allen character, though he stops short at turning himself in, and seems to get over it. But Woody plays Dostoevsky in that movie--"nobody survives the guilt"--and Dostoevsky plays Dostoevsky in Match Point.

Will Landau's character or Chris Wilton ultimately survive the guilt? Or is Woody Allen's vision totally bleak and morally nihilistic? Well, we see Chris in shuddering paroxysms of guilt before the fact, and of remorse, after. Apparitions of the slain women (he must kill two to stage the crime properly--thus three people counting the unborn) come to visit his fevered consciousness, even before he's questioned about the crime. The answer to my question earlier is NO. While we can't expect a simplistic, "Tell-Tale Heart" sort of resolution to the moral problems presented, I think Woody Allen is telling us pretty clearly that the guilty parties in both movies are deluding themselves. The guilt will catch up with them sooner or later, if not the authorities. In other words, the writer-director has given us implicit permission to condemn these characters to eternal psychological torture, punished for the rest of their fictional lives by the worst kind of Raskolnikovian misery. (more)

#27 Luck, Woody, Tennis, Gump II

Continuing from last post, the analogy of the "net-court" point with LUCK as a controlling factor in LIFE is a bad one, at least as formulated by Chris Wilton in the visual/voice-over prologue to Woody Allen's Match Point. His tennis-pro character should have known better, even if his creator did not. He's got the "luck" on the wrong side of the net.

But let's go back to Roger Federer for a minute to explain some of this from a real-life perspective. It so happens that he made a now-famous "lucky" shot--you may have seen a replay--penultimate to the for-real "match point" over Novak Djokovich in the semi-finals of the U.S. Open. It was a backwards between-the-legs shot, one that has now become classic since show-boaters like Nastase and Noah made it a crowd-pleaser a few decades ago. It's a desperation shot, but really the defender's only chance when caught too close to the net and the opponent's return is a low-trajectory lob. The ball is out-of-reach for an overhead smash, but chase-down-able. When the player catches up to the ball, there isn't enough time or space left to run around it and hit a face-forward, normal return (as in Roger's photo last post). So, while sprinting frantically away from the net toward the baseline, he must time his stroke for just when the ball, having already sailed over his head, is about to take its losing second-bounce. Down goes the racket between the legs, and ... thwack. Most of the time it's a futile effort--the ball dribbles away, or founders into the net--but the crowd applauds the lost-cause dedication all the more. Sometimes--more often than one would think--the acrobatically tortuous return makes it back over the net ... only to be put away by a smiling opponent now in near-impregnable net-play position. Even more applause. Quite often, though, the opponent will "net" the easy one, out of sheer shock that the ball came back at all. Most applause ever.

Not any of the above for Roger Federer. He hit a CLEAN WINNER! Utilizing his incredible speed and impeccable footwork, the world's #1 ranked player chased the ball down, hit it from between his legs at just the right moment, and at just the right angle, to send it cross-court past the astonished stare of Djokovich waiting at the net. That made it advantage and break-point for Roger in what was to become the deciding game. His opponent, doubtless shell-shocked from the previous point, blew his serve ... point and match! After the match, Federer was asked semi-facetiously by the always-sharp Mary Carillo about his miraculous shot-making:

--Is that a shot you guys practice a lot?
--More so than you might think, or that we should, really.

Aye ... there's the point, really. The over-and-under-and-between-the-legs thing is not a matter of luck at all--at least not if the opponent hits his lob to a place on the court that a skillful player can get to. Just how MUCH skill will determine the outcome. And Roger Federer's got it in spades.

Now let's go back to the bogus "net-court" analogy at the beginning of Woody Allen's fictional Match Point. (A peeve, I'll admit, but bear with me; it's a fine movie notwithstanding.) Recall that the tennis ball is freeze-framed above the net, equipoised between going forward or falling back. Totally in the hands of fate, it would seem. In tournament play, if the ball makes it over and drops unreachable on the other side, it's considered good tennis manners to give your opponent a sheepish little salute acknowledging your "lucky" shot. You're a spoil-sport if you don't. But it's simply a ploy to mollify the groaning fans. Behind that humble gesture is the knowledge--for any and every player--that the point was deserved. The "luck" involved is on the other side of the net: bad luck. The winner of the point has hit the ball skillfully enough that what might have otherwise flown cleanly over the net has hit near enough to the top to allow the ball to go over. Simple physics. In other words, the ball would have to be pretty-well-aimed in the first place. Less skill = lower on the tape. Point lost.

Okay ... so Woody chose an inept analogy--this doesn't mean there's not a lot of luck involved in the opportunities he presents his protagonist with in the course the movie. Cast willy-nilly amongst the high-tone, tennis-and-horsey-set of English society, our hero must nonetheless employ a panoply of natural and social skills to take advantage of these opportunities. One of them is played by Scarlet Johansson. No, that's not her in Vermeer's most famous painting, "Girl with a Pearl Earring," but it might as well have been. Little wonder that Peter Webber chose the actress for his eminently watchable movie with the same title (2004)--the resemblance is so remarkable. (more)
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#26 Luck, Woody Allen, Tennis, and Gump's Sampler

Speaking of the Wood Man (last MM), I finally got around to Netflixing Allen's Match Point (2005), right after the U.S. Open just few weeks ago. Though the fellow at right lost his match-point to Agentinian Juan Del Potro in an incandesent five-set final, Roger Federer--still the greatest player of all time after winning his Career Grand Slam at the French and surpassing Pete Sampras in total wins (16) at Wimbledon--now holds the record for the "luckiest" shot in Grand Slam history. Or was it skill?

Woody Allen's Match Point made some history, too. It was the first film that earned money-over-cost for him in the U.S. since the estimable Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)--a cool twenty-one films previous. Ironically--since it's his first one shot entirely outside this country. This film is uncharacteristically but beautifully set in quaint upper-class London and the luxuriant English countryside. All of his previous three-dozen or so had barely made it out of mid-town Manhattan. So this unusual departure from a typical "Woody Allen" had modest "good luck" at the box-office (the eccentric auteur has never come close to a blockbuster). Could it also have been because of his canny "skill" in choosing the only American in the cast: the "luxuriant" Scarlett Johansson, cine-genic sex-goddess for our times? For many in the audience, she would be worth the price of admission, me included.Then again, it could be because Match is NOT a dead-giveaway as belonging to the Allen oeuvre--he's not in it, for one thing, and it's not in the least bit funny. Altogether a very strange and surprising film for him to make. And I've seen most every one.

More of that later, but first: LUCK. No subtlety at all about it, the movie harps on the theme from first line to last, from one scene to the next. Like Bunuel's in Phantom of Liberty--if you've been keeping up--the world of Match Point seems to be ruled by Chance and Circumstance, and for the characters in this film the only winning skill we can bring to the "game" is keen opportunism. (Difference: nobody ever really "wins," or has to, in Bunuel's surreal vision.) Allen broaches the theme in the very opening frames through a voice-over by the wily male-lead, "Chris Wilton"--I can't help but hear a little "Wimbledon" in his last name--a tennis-pro, as we are soon to find out. We're focused on a tennis-court net, like the one above, over which several balls pass back-and-forth during an obvious rally, until one return strikes the "tape," bounces straight up a couple of feet, and freezes in mid-air. Meanwhile, we have been listening to the following:

The man who said, "I'd rather be lucky than good," saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can go forward, or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose. [The ball remains frozen to fade-out, and the movie-proper begins.]

The very last lines of the film are a restatement of the opening, thus framing the whole story-arc: at a festive gathering of the principals, the brother-in-law "corrects" an earlier toast to Chris's new-born son by saying, "No, no--not to be great; I would just wish him to be LUCKY!" (more)
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#15 Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll II--the Stone-d Age

Sorry, no "hard"evidence of drug use among the cave-people since last post, but I couldn't resist. However, the Cro-Magnon artisan who sculpted the little statue at right just had to have been "on" some potent substance or another for him to create such wonderful grotesquery out of the living rock (fossilized mammoth ivory, actually).

(Historical note: it's a widely held belief among crypto-paleo-anthropologists, of which I am one, that the first psychotropic drug was, in fact, a rock. Many of these of various sizes have indeed been discovered in and around prehistoric cave-dwellings. A carefully-directed blow to one's temple with such a "stone"--hence our modern term--would produce surreal images and spectacular light-shows of a truly psychedelic nature ... for the short term. Overdose seems to have been a problem, however. Some skulls have been uncovered where blunt-force trauma indicates just such an unfortunate accident. The "high" achieved would of course be accompanied by a rush of sheer physical pleasure and overall well-being, once the head-pain had ceased. Some contend--though I don't believe there's quite enough evidence--that this is the origin of the phrase "rock 'n' roll." The self-administrator takes his "hit" with the "rock"--a smooth one, preferably [perhaps from a creek-bed or nearby glacial deposit], in order to avoid unsightly blood-letting--and "rolls" upon the ground in unconscious ecstasy.)

Whether on drugs or not, the carver had no doubt that his little lady would bestow the proper kind of "high" on its owner. An "upper," if you will. For she is the "Venus of Hohle Fels," discovered only a yardstick away from that magic flute of my earlier post. She's the oldest of these figurines, dating from c. 35-40,000 years ago, but they all look the same. Wildly exaggerated vulva, breasts, belly, and hips--a stylized vision of fornication and fecundity, if not the goddess thereof. All of this I find unbelievably modern, in its own way.

It can't stand alone--deliberately no feet--and in place of the head you'll notice a carefully carved ring. IT WAS PORTABLE. Pendant-wise. Our male ancestor could not only celebrate a night in the home grotto with her and her real-life counterparts--accompanied by music, dance, and firelit cave-etchings--but also take her hanging around his neck to the office next morning. An ancient version of laptop porn. Le plus ca change ...

By way of ironic illustration, please marvel at the incredible naivete' of Cambridge archaeologist Paul Mellars, who comments on the figurine (May 2009 Discovery)--

It's at least as old as the world's oldest cave art ... can't avoid being struck by its very sexually explicit depiction of a woman. The breasts really jump out at you. I assume it was a guy who carved it, perhaps representing his girlfriend ... We just don't know how it was used at this point, but the object's size means that it fit well in someone's hand.

The only real question is: left or right?
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#13 Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll--Caveman Style

Well, maybe not drugs ... no evidence yet. I'm pretty sure, however, given our modern proclivities, that our ancestors were probably chewing hemp and popping poppy seeds far longer even than they were blowing the flute pictured at right. Dated 35-40,000 years ago, this is the earliest musical instrument, carefully crafted out of vulture bone, yet discovered (as published in Nature magazine late last month). I'm guessing, though, as a an erstwhile percussionist, that more perishable rhythmic devices--hollowed-out logs, drum-head skins, gourds, etc.--were in existence long, long before, which would have provided meet accompaniment to our own natural-born musical tools: the voice, whistle, and slap.

But what excitement must have ensued when Murray the Caveman announced his new invention to his fellow Cro-Magnons watching their evening schedule of cave-paintings. "Listen, it does my whistling for me! ... And what a gig we got cooked up for tonight!--with Marty on gourd and Mary the Cavewoman on voice-box." And you know there would have been dancing. Probably this fossilized instrument had it's own lengthy provenance, however, because of its "high-tech" craftsmanship.

When assembled, the vulture-bone flute is about eight and a half inches long, and has five finger holes. There are fine lines cut into the bone around the holes, suggesting that the flute's maker was calibrating the holes' placement to produce the nicest tones. One end of the flute is cut into a V shape, and the musician probably blew into that side of the flute.

Truly amazing. It's a modern flute!--complete with mouthpiece and measured fingering. Yes, a fine evening would have been had by all in Hohle Fels cavern in southwestern Germany, where it was discovered. And after music and dance, everyone may have been had by all in the darker reaches of that festive grot. For discovered lying a scant 30 inches from the flute was one of those prehistoric "Venuses," whose plump and headless form grossly exaggerates female primary and secondary naughty-bits. The most famous one is the so-called "Venus of Willendorf" (randy, those early Germans), found a century ago, and most often politely characterized as a religious amulet honoring some fertility goddess or another. You've seen pictures of it, I'm sure.

All in all, the excavation (literally) at Hohle Fels presents us with a fascinating picture of very "adult" and highly sophisticated entertainment probably dating back a hundred thousand years or more. No wonder the earlier cave-peoples couldn't compete, when these smarter and fun-lovinger Homo Sapiens Sapiens came on the European scene. After a hard day's work of hunting and gathering, our extinct cousins, Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, just didn't have enough to come home to--like the "Cro-Magnon Follies"-- in their caves. A mystery solved: they died out due to clinical depression.
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#10 Late-Night TV--"Tonight" and Beyond

Bringing us up to date from the obscurity and burlesquery of "Broadway Open House" at the turn of mid-century, Pat Weaver tried again with Steve Allen in 1954 and this time hit the mother load. Titled "Tonight," the format has remained the same ever since: talk/variety of decidedly after-prime-time-hours adultitude. Allen was the precursor of sharp-witted masters like Carson and Letterman, and later (before launching his great prime-time show) he shared hosting chores with THE avant-garde comic of early TV, Ernie Kovacs--before Jack Paar took over in 1957.

All of this self-indulgent TV nostalgia was triggered by the death of Carnac's old side-kick, Ed McMahon (off-camera stage left, above, setting Johnny up), but the larger point is that the "Tonight" show and its spawn provided the ONLY true, topical, hip, and grown-up entertainment on television ... not only then, but really all the way up to the post-"All in the Family" era. Setting aside some of the live drama on such programs as Studio One and Playhouse 90, most of the so-called "Golden Age of Television" was just enjoyable kid-stuff. For my generation and beyond, Late-Night was a kind of acculturation for pre-teens and semi-adolescents into the more sophisticated ways and thoughts of the adult world. The hosts based their monologues mainly in social commentary and political satire, and the guests included--along with the usual media celebrities, of course--newsworthy authors, scientists, politicians, even Presidents, as often as they could get them. In this sense these programs really did subtly educate as they entertained.

Steve Allen's stint was a bit sillier than later host's, but that's all right--he introduced us to the comic genius of regulars Don Knotts and Tom Poston, guests Lenny Bruce (one time, and then I never saw him on the tube again--wonder why ...), and ELVIS (first time, not Ed Sullivan, as is popularly thought). Cutting-edge stuff. Allen's successor, Jack Paar, stirred up controversy whenever he could, it seemed--much to the delight of a super-loyal fan base--such that in a famous episode he walked off the set in a dispute with NBC censors, leaving his poor sidekick, Hugh Downs, holding the bag for the rest of the show. A real shocker for its time, and I remember it well. Paar was back by popular demand within the month. 1962 began the reign of "King of Late Night" with Ed the court jester and Doc the royal minstrel, and the rest is history now.

David Letterman should rightfully have taken over after Carson's record-setting 30 years. Dave was part of the NBC team after all, hosting the precedent-setting after-Johnny show, and filling-in for his idol on many occasions. But not. Now he competes in the 11:30 slot for CBS. There are some who appreciate Leno, and now Conan, but in my opinion they haven't quite lived up to "Tonight" standards ... without going into a detailed critique. Let this suffice: What fun it was to see old Dave get into "trouble" over some satirical barbs vis a' vis Sarah Palin recently. So it's been Letterman for the Blogman since Carson relinquished the throne. Hey, you can only watch so much television.
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#9 Late-Night TV Through the Ages (& Wimbledon)

My ages, that is. Speaking of Ed McMahon in last post, I got in on the late-night TV phenomenon right from the beginning. We got our first set sometime in 1950 when I was seven years old. For a couple of years before that I had been able to watch "Howdy Doody" at a rich Jewish friend's house (sorry, but they got 'em first in my neighborhood), as "religiously" as I could, week-days after school. I was already hooked by the time my father got jealous enough, I'm sure, to avail the whole family of this new invention. Meanwhile and beyond, it was "Radio Days" (pace Woody Allen***) at the Mosteller household--the likes of "Lone Ranger" and "Inner Sanctum" for me, and maybe Fred Allen and Bob Hope for the parents (at least that's what thought I could hear when they thought I was asleep), because ... there just wasn't enough programming to watch (the "test patterns" were just fine, however, for awhile in between) on the fledgling medium for several years to come. We supplemented with old reliable radio. Strange as it sounds today, my father and I could watch "Gunsmoke" when it started-up on TV in 1955, and still listen to the ongoing radio show starring later "Fat Man" William Conrad as the voice of Matt Dillon! Many of the radio scripts, in fact, were re-worked for television.

As for late-night TV--maybe Van Gogh's "Starry Night" above will set the mood--for some reason I was allowed to watch some of it before the truly revolutionary newness wore off. Not really TOO late, though, because late-night programs started an hour earlier in CST Chicago--10:15, after the local news. So in 1950-51 I was privileged to witness the first great experiment in what was to become the "Tonight" show format. It was called "Broadway Open House," and invented by a then-boy-wizard at NBC named Sylvester "Pat" Weaver (father of Sigourney, believe it or not), who later tried again and wildly succeeded with Steve Allen's "The Tonight Show" and all its later incarnations, after creating the daytime counterpart and Mosteller family staple, "Today," originally with Dave Garroway. (For a news program, still kind of "burlesquey"--he was often upstaged by his sidekick, J. Fred Muggs ... a chimpanzee.)

The short-lived, talk/variety show was hosted on alternate week-nights by Jerry Lester and Morey Amsterdam. The latter's cello-accompanied, rapid-fire one-liners I didn't quite get (I was seven, after all), but Jerry Lester did such a good job mimicking the other popular Jerry of the day--physical comedy, slapstick--that he was funny enough. Pure vaudeville and burlesque--all the TV comics (Berle, Silvers, etc.) in the early days of television came from that background. Great fun for kids then, but unwatchable now by anybody but the Brits. I remember in particular that the show always opened with "The Bean-Bag Song"--the audience/viewers were loyal bean-baggers (much like comical GOP tea-baggers of late), encouraged to have their beanbags at home, so that everybody could join in the bean-bag comedy bits involving bean-bags going this way and that. If the show got more sophisticated ... by then it was probably past my 10:30 bedtime. But not before I got see DAGMAR, at least once.

Yes, the show did break ground on one level (a hyper-adult one at that), however, by introducing a comic side-kick for the host. Not quite an Ed Mahon though--she was a tall, bosomy blond, whose two principle charms were "barely" constrained by her low-cut evening dresses. "Dagmar"--of the contrived sexy-Scandian name (she was actually from the hills of West Virginia)--played the burlesque-inspired, dumb-blond role, but with sly flashes of wit. Even at seven I could tell. She was a sensation, and became more popular than the show. She made the cover of Life, and cameo appearances everywhere for many years after. Including my dreams.

***Can't resist: shortly after typing this post, I began to watch the Wimbledon Gentlemen's Finals. At a pause in the action, the camera duly focused-in on a special guest: Woody Allen! Not surprising ... he did a couple of movies there, one of which set in and around the tennis world called "Match Point" (on which I'll reserve comment for now). See last post for a Johnny Carson afterthought.
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#8 One More Dead Icon--Ed McMahon (& Wimbledon)

His iconic status has slipped in the last few years, mainly because he lived so darned long--he was 89 (and about the only prominent person who ever shared a March 6th birthday with me)--unlike Farrah and Michael, who died more notoriously later in the same week. But in his heyday and beyond Ed McMahon played the nonpareil Sidekick, Second Banana, Straight Man--many names here--Announcer, Spokesman, and above all Court Jester to the King of "Late Night" Johnny Carson.***

To the right is an "icon" of Henry VIII's comic sidekick, Will Sommers, almost as famous in his day as his boss (the re'all tennis guy from MM #4). With H(enry) R(ex) on his outwardly sober vestments, he revealingly clutches an antic tool of his trade--I'll call it his "razzberry" horn, which he doubtless tooted in full embouchere to punctuate his jibes at Henry when the king was getting too full of himself--the traditional role of the jester or "fool.". McMahon would toot his horn at Johnny on occasion, to comically deflate him a bit. Usually it would be a semi-snide reference to their perennial marriage/divorce problems or to past drinking escapades.

Most importantly he was an always jovial, counterweighted comfort-zone for the edgier Carson, and for us. His "iconic" Heeeeere's Johnny! invited us for an hour or so into the relaxed company of friendly people proffering a measure of sleepy-time purgation of our work-a-day cares. (Unless you were Shelley Duvall in "The Shining") For thirty years! An amazing run that no one before or after could match.

Unlike today (and long before DVR's), "Tonight" was the only quality game in town at that time of night. ABC's duo of Joey (Bishop) and Regis (yes, that Regis) stole some rating-points from Johnny and Ed for a short while in the late 60's (and they're the only failed competitors worth mentioning), but if you wanted to produce a successful TV talk/variety show, better do it during day-time hours. They were invincible at 11:30 pm. It was a bedtime ritual for most TV-watching Americans, and Ed Mahon's ever-familiar, comfy-cozy, welcome-to-the-show voice-over... helped make it so. Hi-Yo!

***This is a post-Wimbledon update: when I saw Woody Allen in the stands yesterday (MM #9), I was reminded that another celebrity, Johnny Carson, has been missing from his perennial spot for some time. Of course ... but for twenty years or so and even for a while after his retirement he would schedule his summer break around the All England Club thing. Always good for a roving camera shot, like Jack Nicholson at the Lakers' games. He was an avid tennis player in his middle and later years. And spectator. I can understand.
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#5 Summer Solstice 2009 (and Tennis Update)

Bad News! Rafael Nadal has withdrawn from Wimbledon. After all too much hype right here on these pages about a Nadal-Federer rematch, and the latter going for the all time number of Grand Slam victories. He'll no doubt make it now, if he can hold up under the "pressure" of NOT having to face Nadal, if you know what I mean. But say, a rematch between Roger and Robin the Scary Swede wouldn't be half-bad.

Meanwhile, here's a shot of Stonehenge, in celebration of the Summer Solstice tomorrow. It's less than an hour west of Wimbledon on the Salisbury Plain. You are looking at it from the perspective of adult eye-level with the hills in the background horizon, whose line is exactly even with the top plane of the "Heel Stone" in the middle of the photo. Notice that the sun has risen on this morning exactly over and in the middle of the Heel Stone, aligned with the summer sun outside the circle of triliths. It's June 21rst, and so the sun has risen thus every Summer Solstice for almost 5000 years. Such was the precision of these ancient astronomer-architects, who would then party down for the remainder of the longest day of the year.

Ever since, "midsummer" festivals have always been big in England, no matter the cultural or religious orientation of the peoples settled there, even unto the neo-pagans who will have special permission to celebrate at Stonehenge tomorrow. When I visited (twice) right around this time of year in the early-seventies, you could actually climb on the old rocks and give them a votive hug-and-a-kiss or a friendly kick or two. No longer. Now the monument must be viewed from a perimeter fence about 50 feet outside, I understand. Pity.

But tomorrow is also Father's Day. For a present I guess I'll wish for a miniature Stonehenge like the one the rock-band got stuck with in "This Is Spinal Tap."
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#4 More Tennis Footnotes

Sorry ... just a couple more:

• The most attractive (but unproven) etymology for "love" as a substitute for zero/naught/nothing is that on the score-board the oblong zero-symbol would resemble an egg, and of course we use Eng. slang "goose-egg" to represent just that idea. "Egg" in French is oef, or "the egg" syntactically, le oef, and with ellision l'oef--hence misconstrued/folk-etymologized as "love" in English. Problem is ... at Roland Garros you'll hear "quinze-ZERO," "trente-ZERO," etc. because the inventors of the sport of (Old Fr.) "Tenez" don't use "love," ironically. (Wouldn't "quinze-AMOUR" be just precious?) It's entirely English usage. My answer (because I haven't seen it anywhere else) is that tennis probably wasn't invented at the Parisian "court" until after the 1066 Norman (French) invasion of England (and even if it were before, the half-barbarian, recently-converted "Northmen" wouldn't have been invited to play anyway). However, once it too crossed the Channel, the game would have been adopted by the English nobility, but who stubbornly spoke Norman French well into Chaucer's time. You get the picture. The "courtly" l'oef, as a little spoof on "zero" the goose-egg, originated in England among the French-speaking aristocracy, but was "anglicized" to love as finally all classes of English society began to speak exclusively English.

• To muddle about further in tennis terminology, here's a little "real" life event. What is "real" tennis? My students and I got the answer while on one of my overseas courses. That particular day included a touristy stop at Hampton Court Palace, Henry VIII's favorite, and famous for, among other things like the World's Oldest Grapevine, that king's indoor tennis court--one of the first. I asked the uniformed attendant what kind of tennis was played there, pausing before getting more specific about nets (or not), racquets yet (or still by "palme"), etc. But he quickly answered with what he presumed would explain it all: "It was real tennis." Nice conversation-stopper, I thought. He could now get along on his rounds. Only later did I discover that he was speaking the anglicized version of Fr. re'all or "royal" tennis--attesting again to ancient roots across the channel. Hahaha on me. It's called Court Tennis in this country, where there are 4 or5 courts scattered about on the model of Henry's. (One of which is in Aiken SC, coincidentally, which my lawyer-son has actually played on.) I won't go into it, but the rules vary from modern tennis, considering you have to take into account balls bouncing off walls and turrets and what not. But that's real tennis for you.

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#3 Tennis Footnotes

Some addenda to last post:

• Tune in to the Roger and Raffa show at Wimbledon also by all means because they are so much FUN to watch ... Federer especially, who plays the prettiest game since Ken Rosewall (who got upset for the championship at Wimbledon by a young slash-and-burn upstart named Jimmy Connors in one of the first I saw televised). Roger fairly wafts across the court--fuzz up your eyes a little bit, and you can't see his feet when he's in motion. I'd swear that the very first time I saw a sweat-spot on the back of his shirt was against Nadal last year. Of course the latter has his own visual appeal as well ... very different and much like Connors of old Not only is he a cutie-pie (facial close-ups of Roger don't flatter), but he is the sweating, digging, swirling, raging beast of a player every moment of the match. On the other hand, Roger makes it look so easy, especially in past years, that it can get a little boring. Nadal will keep him literally on his toes, I hope.
  

• I'll have to confess that my competitive tennis will be mostly confined to the vicarious from now on. Except perhaps pitty-pat with the grandkids. A contorted, out-of-shape first-serve seems to have done me in while playing in a Tennis-League (.com, if your interested) match a couple of years ago. And maybe condemned me to a bit of chronic neck-and-back neuritis/neuralgia for the foreseeable future. Pity, please.

• But playing or watching, Tennis is such gentleman-and-lady sport! (The gender draws are still referred to in that way, though I notice they no longer post "Mr." and "Miss" next to their names. I think "Ms." threw them off their game.) No real physical contact, and the harshest (official) words spoken are "Fault" and "Quiet, please." You've got "love" and "service," "deuce" and "advantage," "set" and "match"--very pleasant and quaint. And when you win a point, you score not one, but FIFTEEN. Ah, those romantic Frenchmen, who invented the game, after all, way back in the Age of Chivalry. The "Faux!" and "Silence, s'il vous plait" that you heard at Roland Garros are thus quite ancient, though the stadium itself is named (more chivalry and romance) after a fallen WWI fighter pilot, not a tennis "ace."
  

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#2 French Open Tennis

Before this news gets very old, Roger Federer has proved himself to be the greatest tennis player of all time ... almost. In winning the French Open a couple of weeks ago, he passed a major milestone: he won the French Open. Rafael Nadal had denied Roger this, the only Grand Slam event he hadn't won, in the last four finals. Now the Majorcan Madman wasn't there, having been knocked out in the quarter-finals (!) by the truly-crazed Swede, Robin Soderling. A great match, and it looked like he might restore the Viking dynasty of old: Borg (in-the-stands), Edburg, Willander, etc., especially after he took apart his next opponent in the semis. But, no. Straight sets for the Roger of old.

The French made Federer a "career" Grand Slammer, in the company of only five others (incl. Laver and Agassi) who have won Wimbledon, U.S and Austalian Open too. And he's won those and others a bunch of times already, accounting for his record five years at #1 in the world. He's tied now with Pete Sampras for MOST Slams at 14. If he wins at Wimbledon next week or the U.S Open (defending champion) later in the summer--one of which, I have no doubt--he will have won the most of all time. I'm hoping for a re-match with Nadal at the All England Croquet and Racquet Club--Fededer's hard-fought 5-set defeat last year was one of the greatest matches I have ever seen. (see DM #22 from last year)

So ... fair warning ... tune in if you can to "Wim-blee-dawn"-- as the wonderful Bjorn Borg always pronounced it.
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