Howdy, everyone. I hope y'all can come around for our virtual Holiday party starting tomorrow at 5 p.m. Jackie-Oh is still making the egg nog, and I think Jewell is going to bake some Christmas cookies. It's been a hectic holiday season for me, mostly for work-related reasons, and this year I resolved to cut back a little at TennisWorld over these slow weeks of the off-season. I've been writing the blog for almost five years now (or is it five?), and can honestly say that I never thought the well would be so deep.
You've done your share of the heavy lifting, too. Did you know that we are bearing done on the one million comment mark (not all of them put-downs by NP, either)? I have to think up a way to commemorate that. Of course, "prolific" is a relative term. My not-so-secret vice is the western novel, and just yesterday I downloaded (to my new Kindle) a single file containing 13 novels by Max Brand. The whole shebang cost me a whopping 99 cents.
I had thought that Louis L'Amour, one of my favorites, had a fertile mind and a fast hand (he wrote 89 novels and a boatload of short stories, while living a life filled with high adventure). Well, Brand, who was born Fredrick Faust, churned out some 500 novels, sometimes at a clip of 12,000 words per weekend. Production-wise, he rivals Edgar Wallace and Isaac Asimov. And he was a surprisingly "literary" person and author. Tell that to your slacker nephew in Brooklyn, who's still waiting to go on Charlie Rose because he published a dark short story three years ago in an obscure Southern literary magazine . . .
"Dark" is awfully big lately, haven't you heard?
I love that anecdote about L'Amour's toddler daughter wandering into his study and asking why daddy was typing so "fast." To which L'Amour replied, "Because I want to see how the story ends!"
When I first started writing this blog, I worried I'd run out of topical material, the stuff of red- meat posts, long ago. Instead, I'll still wake in the middle of the night, thinking something like: I really need to write that post about the 1991 Orange Bowl. . . or, We really need to address this issue of surface properties other than speed.
But I forced myself to cut back a little during this holiday period, to re-charge the batteries for the new year. The scary part is that writing becomes like breathing. You just do it automatically, as a natural part of life. I also learned that the difference between your best and worst writing is minimal, at best. Writing faster doesn't necessarily mean writing less well - in fact, the opposite may be true, although it's up to your readers to make the call on that one.
I enjoyed cruising through the comments responding to my tennis vs. golf post yesterday. Like certain other subjects (think "horned barnyard animal heavily consumed in many parts of the world outside the USA?"), determining which sport or athletic role is the toughest, most demanding, etc. is a topical gift that never ceases to give.
I even like the fact that the issue ultimately remain unresolved. Life should always contain mystery and a measure of chaos, right? I have just three things to add, the first of which I wish I'd thought to include when discussing tennis and golf yesterday (apologies if someone made this point and I missed it):
1 -In tennis, you must react to, chase, and strike a moving object. In golf you have all the time in the world to prepare, swing, and strike a stationary one. That makes all the difference in the world.
2 - An NFL cornerback (as opposed to quarterback) is at the very top of my totem pole of great athletes. He must be fast enough to cover the fleetest men in the game, the receivers, but also strong and tough enough to bring down a tight end or running back who might outweigh him by 50 pounds. He must also be skillful with his hands, to intercept or bat away passes. And he works under an enormous disadvantage: the other guy, at least in the case of a pass receiver, knows exactly where he's going and where to expect the ball to be thrown. This calls for an unusual combination of skills and athletic flexibility and decision-making under pressure - sometimes at serious risk of bodily injury.
3 - Boxers are the must underrated of all athletes.
And in the interest of full disclosure, I sheepishly admit that I did not know that the Swiss named a skier, rather than Roger Federer, their athlete of the year. I guess they wanted to send a message: We've got more than that Roger Federer going on here in our pleasant Alpine hideaway!
I have a new post by Bobby Chintapalli going up tomorrow morning. Have a happy day, everyone.
-- Pete