Douchebaggery II

I need to apologize to Slothrop for bailing on our date to watch Food, Inc. I am the Roger Federer of untalented, no-Wimbledon-winning, plan-cancelling, oversleeping, malaise-cultivating, stick-shift-stalling, dissertation-procrastinating, Narcadia-needing, too-late-apologizing champions.

And so in order to exorcise the nerve demons and self-doubt that plague my game specifically and my life generally, I read The Inner Game of Tennis, recommended to me as the best of its kind, the Shuriken of sports self-help. I planned to read Brad Gilbert's Winning Ugly, a tennis classic of another kind,

but I took one look at Gilbert's fugly mug, remembered that I'm a conscientious objector, man, and very sensitive, read the first page, which quotes John McEnroe on the author ("I don't think much of Brad Gilbert"), and realized that I don't intend to do anything ugly, not even win.