by Pete Bodo
Mornin', everyone. Are we sick of doing the time-zone calculations yet, terrified that we somehow missed the all important Shilpenseviski vs. Ramantangathura match? Welcome to Australia - all those fragrant Eucalyptus trees, all those emerald waters, all the burning rubber and flesh, as the tennis players feet become welded to their custom insoles. I already foresee the next great marketing innovation coming down the pike from the R&D folks at Nike, Adidas, Wilson, Prince, et al - honeycomb soles, to provide ventilation to hot feet.
Seriously, though, it's a great idea. And credit Tom Perrotta, who's sweating it out in Melbourne with the rest of the pencils, for raising the issue in his Jelena Jankovic post at *String Theory*. Are y'all reading Tom yet? And remember, Abby Lorge is doing her *Aussie Diary* blog, too. Drop by, show them a little TWibe love. And yes,that makes four Tennis magazine bloggers (Steve Tignor and I are "anchoring the New York coverage" - just thought I'd throw that in there to sound as pompous and self-important as a TV anchorman). But back to television later. . .
I don't know about you, but here in the EST, the realities of Greenwich Mean Time couldn't be more well-designed to totally disrupt both our days an nights. Thus, "covering" the US Open tends to be more like sorting nuts and bolts than plopping down with orange food for a three-hour straight-shot of tennis. That is, you can screw around a little, walk away, do a few other things, come back and resume sorting. So far, I've experienced the tournament in bits and pieces. Oh, it's seven PM, got to watch Serena! What's that, honey, help Luke with his homework? Oh, that Luke. . .
Anyway, before this morning I caught the end of the wild-card battle between Christina McHale of the US and Jessica Moore of Australia. Those images of McHale (who lost the three-seat heartbreaker) afflicted with cramps were, as is usually the case, enough to send shivers down anyone's spine.
A player who gets cramps looks like he's just been shot, or that her fibia has broken clean through. It evokes all kinds of horrible visions and empathetic feelings of bone splintering and tendons ripping, and the pain (surely you've experienced that weird crampy thing in the arch of your foot and bounced, howling, out of bed?) is. . . hmmm. . . actually not. . .that. . . bad.
Cramps in almost all cases are about discomfort, not pain. Cramps are debilitating without being veryt painful; they are not nearly as agonizing as they look, except in the sense that when you're cramping, you can't imagine not being cramped, and the inability to make a limb execute the command send by your mind and nerves is a undoubtedly a disconcerting and mildly panic inducing experience. In bizarro world, cramps are the ultimate proof that there really is such a thing as the proverbial "free lunch." When you cramp, you look like you're about to collapse and die - without having to pay the comensurate price in pain. In some cases, five-minutes after your cramps, you're running around like a regular Roger Federer, whacking forehands left and right. Harold Solomon used to drink pickle-juice to avoid cramps (I, on the other hand, drink pickle juice because I like the taste).
On a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of pain, cramps (in most cases) come in at a whopping 2 or 3. Of course, the surrounding issues are another story - fatigue, dizziness, faint, searing heat, tired muscles, all of them can make a cramping player's discomfort intense. But the cramps themselves? You may not to be able to get to your chair under your own power, and the television audience may be mortified at the degree to which you look as if you've turned to jelly. But you're a lot better off,and have a much better chance of living to fight another day (or set) than if you had rolled an ankle, or pulled a hip muscle.
Anyway, I watched Pam Shriver's interview with McHale right after the match (by which time, the cramps were long-forgotten: Cramps? Oh, yeah, those. Bummer, I thought I was gonna die, but here I am!). The poor girl from New Jersey looked disoriented and inconsolable, but I think that had less to do with suffering a bout of cramps than with just having lost an extremely tight but winnable match. You had to feel for her, and for a moment it looked as if ESPN would hit media paydirt by getting her to cry on camera.
What is it with television, that getting someone to turn on the emotional faucets is the Grail? Not that Pam Shriver, or anyone in her shoes, is looking to make some poor teen-ager cry on camera - she's not, and she's just trying to flesh out the narrative of the just-completed drama. But somehow, the weepy shot has become synonymous with Great Television. . . and that's because great television is basically defined as whatever it is that keeps you from hitting the "last channel" button to go to a rival network to check out the basketball score between Soutwestern East Lousiana State and North-Central Arkansas Tech. You'd never do that, when you could be watching some kid cry. It's must-see TV.
Television, especially live TV, loves emotion in a way that only a cold and bloodless medium can - like a 300-year old vampire with stringy hair, yellow eyes and purple skin loves a wide-eyed virgin with a peaches-and-cream complexion. It kind of tells you something about the essential nature of television, and I'm not sure it's good. But you can also argue that cramps are the greatest thing to happen to television since Elvis appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and famously gyrated his hips. The drama quotient in a cramping player is off-the-charts high, but nobody really pays too heavy a price. TV gets its drama, and the virgin escapes without getting her neck bit (even the mark goes away quickly). Cramps are great theater. They're the all-show and no-go injury. If cramps were a beverage they would be non-alcoholic beer; if they were a band, they would be The Pet Shop Boys (actually, there was a band called The Cramps, and they were very un-cramp-like).
End of rant. I'm going to have lunch with Billie Jean King (report on that tomorrow) and then watch some Australian Open tennis. I'm not sure y'all want or need many red-meat posts for the next few days (I will provide some pink-meat, though), because even I'm not dumb enough to stand on the tracks with a train bearing down on me. I'm getting out of the way so y'all can watch, talk, have fun, and lay around eating Cheetos or Doritos while you enjoy the tennis..
Or, if you prefer the snack-food equivalent of cramps, celery sticks.