I tried hard to enlarge this magnificent photograph, but every time I manipulated the code Nadal came out looking like that kid from The Elephant Man.We've had a historic Wimbledon. Let's take a moment to review:
1. It didn't rain.
2. The Queen Herself attended Andy Murray's second round match against Jarkko Nieminen. She hasn't been to Wimbledon since Bjorn Borg last won it thirty years ago.
3. But that didn't really matter, because on the same day, on court 18, marfan Frankenberry John Isner and vestigial human being Nicolas Mahut were struggling to finish a match they started three days earlier. By the time Isner finally broke Mahut, they'd played for over eleven hours, hit more than a hundred aces each, and smashed every sports record ever set by anybody. The match ended 70-68 in the fifth set. Her Majesty didn't see it.
4. That was in the first round.
5. Wimbledon's minions seeded defending champion Roger Federer first, despite his falling to number two in the rankings, behind Nadal, another (sort of) defending champion. Federer showed his appreciation by nearly losing in the first round to a Colombian who wasn't superfueled by cocaine and concealing dynamite in his shorts. He also nearly lost in the second round to a guy so obscure I can't even remember his name.
6. Nadal, seeded second, came from behind in both the second and third rounds to defeat negligible opponents in five sets, and then, in the quarterfinals, semifinals, and the final, against tennis giants, he transformed into one of those legendary Jewish golems. I've never seen somebody look so destructible and then so indestructible.
7. Nadal did a somersault.
8. Although he lost his semifinal to Nadal, Andy Murray, who arguably played the finest tennis of all one hundred and twenty eight competitors in the tournament, proved once again why he's smarter, saner, stronger, and more resilient than everyone not named Nadal. With his low-key genius and "I blame myself" attitude, he's impossible not to admire. I don't know whether he'll ever win Wimbledon, but he certainly deserves to. But so did Tim Henman, and all he got was a stupid hill named after him.
9. For the 124th consecutive year, Wimbledon desecrated strawberries by slathering them in cream. Flowers evolved for millions of years in order to furnish this world with strawberries, and if you can't appreciate the fruit without, let's be honest, turning your snack into a fucking sundae, maybe you should just skip the fruit altogether and eat some ice-cream, huh?
10. When she finished with more aces than any man except Berdych, Mahut, and Isner, Serena Williams finally convinced me that she's not a terrible athlete. A terrible person, yes. A bad sportswoman, yes. But a great athlete. Although, to keep things in perspective, remember that she and her sister Venus, who is better than Serena in every way except athletically, alas, were once so full of themselves--this was back in 1998--that they challenged any male player outside the top 200 to beat them. Now, if you need a restriction barring any of the world's best two hundred anything, you're probably not as good as think you are. Second, Karsten Braasch, who is memorable only for his epileptic service motion, not his talent, and was ranked 203 at the time, agreed to their terms and humiliated them 6-1, 6-2. Having learned her lesson, Serena Williams now is arrogant only toward other women.
11. For the first time since Ivan Lendl crumbled to dust in 1987, a Czech lost in the final. Nobody really cares when the last Czech won. Maybe never. That country has been so many different countries, it's hard to tell.
12. The best moment of the tournament? When all the greatest players assembled to meet the Queen. Federer wore a very distinguished black suit. Novak Djokovic wore a sweatsuit. What a numbskull, and I love him.
Slothrop: Praise be to Koko for this list, though how she could have even seen the ball on her mini-television set is beyond me. I'm guessing she just assumed that when the players swung and grunted that they were doing so upon contact with the ball?
And but because Koko is right almost always it logically follows that she's right about all her listed points here. Except she's not. Go ahead and read #9 again, Koko's passive-aggressive assault on Slothy's well-mannerred and finely cultivated tradition of always eating strawberries with whip cream, though I suppose it's just as often that he's eating whip-cream with the strawberries served as the extra ingredient. Regardless the perspective you take, Koko's analogy of the strawberry as an embodiment of perfection which can only be sullied is false. Something great can always be made better. Sex is great. But sex with a strumpet is even better. Bob Dylan is great; Bob Dylan on Empire Burlesque is even greater. Fruit is a tremendous accomplishment, no argument there. But fruit is no aesthetic nor culinary apex. A strawberry milkshake, for example, is a fucking sundae and it's better for being made with strawberries. All beer is best if it has fruit involved in it somehow. (Whiskey drinkers are pussies, turns out.)
For being such an open-minded and observant gorilla, I'm rather disappointed in Koko's elitism and predilection for her definition of strawberry-purity. For indeed, if strawberries are so pure, being sullied by whip cream could only make them purer in a point-counter-point kind of way. Whores can bring priests closer to god than any biblical passage, yes? Yes. As evidenced by Nadal's power on the court once Shakira made him her own. Upshot: Nadal is a strawberry, Shakira is whip cream, and together they do summersaults.
Koko: How 'bout I just point you in the direction of knife-brandishing Omar in the snow, eh? He'll show you about strawberries.
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