Tennis, Brought To You By Some Bank You've Never Heard Of

So for Christmas, Hubs bought us tickets to go to Palm Springs and see the BNP Paribas Tennis Finals. The tournament is large and attracts all the top-ranked players in the world. Very exciting.

The Women’s Final was first: Number-one-in-the-world-for-way-too-long-now Caroline Wozniacki. Not that I dislike her. She’s lovely, and does well with the media, she’s just not the most exciting player. But consistent she is, so I have to give her props. Her opponent was #14 Marion Bartoli. I’ve seen Marion’s name all the time over the last five years lurking in the top 20, but I’ve never seen her play. She has a two-hand forehand, rare these days, and it was strange to see.

Caroline breezed through the first set, 6-1 and the crowd was not happy. The match seemed like it would be over in a half hour, but then Marion came back and won the second set. The third set started out close, but then Caroline pulled away. Even though she was winning, she still got frustrated at one point and threw down her racket. It felt fake to me, like someone intentionally acting feisty to get the crowd on her side. I hope she was genuinely upset, and not just acting to make her lackluster game more exciting.



"Yea! I win! Am I still boring?"


The strangest part of the match was how some guy, hopefully someone from Caroline's camp, would yell when the crowd was silent, “Come on, cupcake.” At least once per game. Awkward.

And then the Men’s Final. This was the one everyone was excited about. #1 Rafael Nadal vs. Just-surpassed-Roger-Federer-by-beating-him #2 Novak Djokovic. Ah, delightful sigh.

I love Rafa. He’s quick, powerful, top-spinny, has water bottle OCD, and ninety percent of the time wears a completely disgruntled look on his face. And, added bonus, he has the best body on the tour. What’s not to love?



"This is the face of winning."


When Rafa won the first set, I cheered. The crowd was leaning heavily towards Rafa. Lots of red and orange in the crowd waving Spanish flags. But in the second set something happened that I’ve never seen before. Rafa lost his serve.

Tennis players lose their serve all the time and the mental defeat usually ruins their whole game. Sometimes they get it back and all is well. Sometimes they don’t. Maria Sharapova still hasn’t gotten her serve back two years after shoulder surgery, but that’s an extreme case. Rafa has a slower serve (although it’s gotten 10 mph faster in the last year) than many of the players, but the trade-off is that it’s consistent as hell. Well, not in set two. Or set three. And since his serve was off and he was just as baffled as I, there wasn’t as much scurrying behind the baseline and amazing curving shots that seem to defy laws of physics as there usually are. But it was still a good, competitive match and Novak played really well the last two sets.

Nobody pouts better than Novak.

And nobody wins better than Novak.

There were a group of teenage girls sitting not too far from us who knew how to turn every sports chant into a way to say “Novak Djokovic.” Tennis roadies.

But this is really what everyone paid money to see:

When changing his shirt, the number one tennis player in the world gets more cat calls than the Saturday night trannies outside Benitos Tacos on Santa Monica. Slightly degrading, and he deserves better. I remained silent. But made Hubs take photos.

It was a great day, even though Rafa didn't win. It was supposed to rain all day, but not a drop fell from the ominous sky.

And Rafa will get his revenge at the French.

R.I.P. Tim Heatherington

I've been out of the country and without internet access, so I was shocked and saddened when I learned yesterday that photographer and documentarian Tim Heatherington was killed on April 20 while covering the Libyan civil war.

His movie Restrepo almost made my Top Ten list for last year. It's a raw, moving, disturbing, and honest look through the eyes of American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley that everyone should see. This is what modern day war looks like. And Tim was brave enough to go behind the lines with the these soldiers and tell their stories. Before Restrepo, Tim went behind rebel lines in Liberia to cover the civil war there.

Tim left the world all the fascinating images he captured on his camera. This photo of an American soldier in the Korengal Valley was his most famous. It won the prestigous World Press Photo Award in 2007, out of over 75,000 other entries.

Says it all, doesn't it?

Objection! Relevance?

Yesterday, I went in to serve my civic duty aka Jury Duty. This was my third time on jury duty. During my first service I rode in an elevator with Jon Voight. Yes, even celebrities have to serve. He's incredibly tall, by the way.

This time, the worst thing about jury duty was how they brought in some judge to give us a pep talk, and it went on for fifteen minutes. Those fifteen minutes could have been used for some valuable sleep this morning. But no. Some guy has to talk about a quote. A famous, beautiful quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Lovely. Fine. I swear he said that quote at least ten times, I wish I would’ve kept track.

But this speech was bad. I mean, if this was being graded in college, it should’ve gotten a D. If you start out with such a beautiful quote, shouldn’t that be what your spiel is backing up? This guy was talking about how great the court system was in the 60’s. Look at what we did for Rosa Parks, and the Million Man March. And then we rewound even further and went back to Susan B. Anthony and how the courts ruled against her, but never made her pay the fine, so that made it okay and women eventually won the right to vote. Um, okay.

No mention of California’s moral universe bending toward justice until the Japanese internment camps during WWII were brought up. One of the prisoners sued and the court ruled against him. But decades later the case was revisited and it was determined that the internment camps were a gross violation of human rights, therefore he was vindicated. Yeah, I’m sure his ancestors are just peachy.

And then he started quoting “To Kill a Mockingbird” and I almost got the giggles. This was the worst pep talk ever! This guy is a judge. He could’ve told us one cool anecdote from his career about how he personally saw justice served, and we would’ve sat up, ears perked. Some people may have even woken up. Instead, we got a strange look-how-the-courts-have-made-race-relations-so-much-better by referring to the 60’s and conveniently failing to mention Rodney King or O.J. Simpson. There’s an arc for you.

I’ve been watching way too much “The Good Wife” lately, and had a feverish urge to stand up and object on the grounds of relevance. None of this speech was supporting the MLK quote or why we were there or what purpose we were serving. The quote was just a convenient ploy for him to use.

He left the room to tepid applause.

After that we were given instructions on how to “duck and cover” by a man who was barely literate. Remember when you were learning to read and each word in the sentence was pronounced separately until you became good enough at reading that the words flowed together into sentences? Well, this guy was still at the stage where every word was an accomplishment. He wasn’t reading as sentences, because when he finished the sentence you could see it click, what the sentence in its entirety meant, and then he’d go back and correct the words that he’d misread. Painful. There are so many unemployed people in L.A. Could someone who can actually read please hold the job that involves the reading-out-loud? Thank you.

Then we were left to wait for panels to be called. I've never heard so much snoring in a public place before. Red-eye transatlantics couldn’t hold a candle to that chorus.

The best part of jury duty is lunch due to the courthouse's proximity to the Grand Central Market. I had an amazing broccoli and cheese pupusa from Sarita's Pupusaria. Their pupusa is the best corn tortilla I've ever had stuffed with broccoli and cheese, topped with pickled cabbage, and served with a sweet vinegar sauce. So good. Then I had some ice cream. As I was leaving someone was holding a man against a wall and yelling for security with a crowd gathered. I think he was suspected of stealing something, but I couldn't tell what.

Back to the courthouse for a long afternoon of sitting. I was never called for any of the panels. At four we were released. Appropriately, the person who read the end of the day role call was the man who couldn't read. He read the name "Marianne" and pronounced her last name in syllables that I couldn't understand. No one said "here" and he didn't repeat the name. A young woman piped up, "Is it Mariana?" Yes, it was, even though that's not what he said. "If it sounds like you, then it's you!" Yelled the woman who'd been running the Jury Duty Show all day. Why she wasn't reading the role call, I don't know. I felt bad for Mariana. I wouldn't have responded to a first name that wasn't mine and an indecipherable last name either.

He had no problem with my name, though, and I was outta there. Justice served.

Nicholl Fellowship - part one

So, I have three scripts that I want to enter into the Nicholl Fellowship this year. The last time I entered the Nicholls I think was in 2005, so it's been awhile. That year, I didn't make it to the Quarterfinals, and I'm hoping one of my scripts can sneak through this year. I say "sneak through" because out of 6,000 entries, it takes a little luck along with a good script to get past the first round.

My first entry, The Rebound Guy, is one of my rom coms. I know the Nicholls aren't known for selecting comedies, but Greg Beal, the guy who organizes the contest, keeps emphasizing that they don't discriminate against comedies. Plus, I think it's a darn good script, so we'll see. Fingers crossed.

Time to whip the other two scripts into shape before the final deadline.

More Wall Decorations

After remembering the photo of Trent on my adolescent closet, I searched for other photos I had hanging up. Here's what I found:

Oh, Bai Ling. What went wrong? I saw you in Red Corner and thought you were so amazing and were on your way to being the next big thing. So beautiful, so talented. You were creepy in The Crow. Well done. Then in Anna and the King you were so beautiful and so talented again. And then you stopped being in movies and started dressing like a total wackjob, even winning Fug Madness (okay, I'll admit, that's impressive, but sad). And now you're going to be on Celebrity Rehab 5. Argh. You are still hot and can still act. You were even good in LOST, though I remember your part was some lame storyline to explain Matthew Fox's tattoos (you know, which are his real tattoos, so they need not be explained in a fictional show). But that wasn't your fault, that was the awfulness that LOST was at times. Please, clean it up, girl. I still have hope for you.

I was never a huge No Doubt fan, but I always worshiped Gwen's red lipstick and black liquid eyeliner. I also had mad respect for her multiple magazine interviews where she emphasized how she worked out a lot to keep her thin frame when all the other celebrities were saying they never worked out and ate whatever they wanted to. She made teenage girls believe they could grow up to be healthy rock princesses without starving themselves.

Rob Thomas? I guess I really liked Matchbox Twenty's first album. And the dude was homeless for a bit before their big break. It was a nice story. Moving on...

 CZJ, I loved you in Mask of Zorro. I'm still a little creeped out that you married Michael Douglas.

Wino Forever. How come Charlie Sheen can be a wife-abusing, anti-Semitic, host of porn stars hauling suitcases of cocaine, yet completely in demand when all he was good at in the first place was playing a womanizer who spouted bad dick and fart jokes? And you, with years of solid film performances and multiple Oscar nominations have one small misunderstanding with Saks and some prescription pills and your career is toast for ten years. Hollywood is not fair. Lucas was a childhood fave. Dracula, Little Women. So good. You looked great in Black Swan, not a hint of Botox. Here's hoping for more leading roles in the near future. And finally...

Okay, this was not the same photo of Shirley Manson that I had up, but it was the same hair and makeup, so it may have been from the same shoot. In my photo she was wearing a sleeveless robin's egg blue latexy shirt, but I can't seem to find that photo. Anyway, Shirley was my hero, still is. Love her voice, love her lyrics, love her style. Love Butch Vig and the rest of Garbage. No, I did not watch her in The Sarah Connor Chronicles because I gave up on that show long before then, but I'm always tempted to check out the episodes she's in. Maybe someday.

I had many, many more photos, mostly from Premiere (does that magazine even still exist?) and Rolling Stone, which is business savvy and makes you pay a subscription fee to look through their archives. Darn you RS for refusing to adapt to the free internet age.

Island of Flowers

I was watching the Nicaragua episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. He observed that it would be hard to do his gluttonous food show after witnessing young children digging through a landfill for food and recyclables. The scene reminded me of a documentary short that I saw years ago. It will definitely stick with you.

Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor passed away on March 23 at the age of 79. The media was quick to label the occasion as the death of the last true Hollywood star. Somewhere, Debbie Reynolds muttered, "Really? Are you effing kidding me?" And Lauren Bacall rolled her eyes and continued reading the phonebook just to listen to her own voice.

All the summations of Ms. Taylor's life have blurbed about her personal life overshadowing her acting career. Maybe it's because I wasn't alive when all the drama was taking place, or maybe because I watched a recent interview with Debbie Reynolds where she spoke of making peace with Elizabeth decades ago, but I've always just seen her as a gifted actress, stunning beauty, and gracious humanitarian. I recently watched Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Great performance. And, of course, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would be the performance of any actress's career.

Okay, her personal life was pretty soap operatic with her first husband, Mike Todd (founder of the famous Todd-AO) dying in a tragic plane crash when she was 26 and the whole Eddie Fisher drama to on again, off again with Richard Burton for over a decade. But I will always remember Elizabeth as National Velvet.

This movie was one of my favorites growing up, and it still holds up. The Pi? Any little girl's fantasy. And Donald Crisp and Anne Revere are the parents you dream of having as a child; smart, loving, and flawed, but able to recognize their flaws. Anne Revere won a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the film. Unfortunately, her film career was ruined after she was blacklisted for refusing to testify to HUAAC. Ugh, what an ugly time in American history. Such a shame for all the talent so senselessly punished, and such a shame for us all, missing out on so many great Anne Revere (and countless others) performances.

But I have digressed. Rest in peace, Elizabeth. I'm sure Hollywod will make a movie about your life soon.