Tennis Porn

I remember seeing Maria Sharapova at the US Open some years ago.  She wasn't massively famous then and I just wandered into whatever the lean-to stadium it is that's attached to the Louis Armstrong Stadium and sat down about ten rows from the front.  And I remember thinking yikesaroony in a way that perhaps someone my age shouldn't have been thinking about somebody who was, at the time, 17 or 18.

Which leads us, inexorably, to this.  To paraphrase the Honorable Potter Stewart, "I can't define tennis porn, but I know it when I see it."

How odd.  What is up with the New York Times?  I can't decide whether this is a good thing or a bad one.

Quick personal note:  I think it was 2005.  My friend Chuck and I and some other people were riding in the New York Century charity bike ride and we found ourselves, perhaps 60 miles into the thing, taking a breather in front of the National Tennis Center in Flushing.  We spied what looked like a press scrum so I, still then a PR guy, kind of wheeled over to see what was going on.  Suddenly the whole crowd started walking in my direction.  I was straddling my bike, and since bikes don't really go sideways -- or backwards, really -- if you're on them, all I could do was stand there as a bunch of people milled past me the way the rats milled past the Robot-Coupe in Ratatouille.

Or the sea past an ocean liner.

And then, suddenly, there was Kim Clijsters, who had just won the Open.  Some security people made a half-hearted effort to push me to the side, but bikes don't really go sideways, so I reached out my hand -- it was hot and I was wearing those bike gloves with no fingers and sweat was pouring off every part of me -- and said congratulations.  She smiled, shook my hand, said thank you and then she was gone.

Like a dream.

And now she's Exhibit A in my Tennis Porn post.

Ratatouille.  What a mouille!  I mean movie!



Here's a cautionary note for all you people who think it's okay to kill mice with spring-loaded traps.