Tuesday, September 15, 2009

I am almost ashamed to admit this, but my football stamina clearly has taken a hit in this my 29th year of watching it. I watched three games on Sunday, and two games last night, and I was just in a daze before I went to sleep last night. This reminded me of last summer, when the Olympics were seemingly on 24 hours a day, and I could satisfy my sports jones at any time. But there wasn't just football on this past weekend. There was plenty of tennis, and a golf tournament where Tiger Woods was dominant, so I had that to contend with as well. Then my boy came over for a little bit on Sunday, and we kicked it a bit, so you think that would have been a pleasant diversion, but even with him there, I STILL couldn't pull away from sports. And finally, I had to walk that delicate tightrope between pleasing my lady, and satisfying my sports quota for the weekend. This has been a long, rambling paragraph, but I do believe I have talked myself out of my stamina issues. I'll be fine next week.

Speaking of tennis, I waited a few days before I really formed an opinion about Serena's meltdown this past Saturday. When something of this magnitude happens in the sports world, there seems to be such a rush for folks to have knee jerk reactions, instead of waiting to form semi-intelligent observations, and I am guilty of that sometimes (but not this time). Serena had an Artestian moment at the wrong time, and she deserves to be fined and suspended. But I agree with my main man David Aldridge who said that a small part of the outrage over Serena's behavior is related to the fact that we aren't used to seeing a woman lose her cool like that. We see it from men in sports all the time, but if I challenged you to come up with a list of top five meltdown moments from women, you'd be hard pressed to do it. This doesn't excuse Serena, it just gives the entire situation perspective..at least to me it does.

I also think that Venus, as Serena's big sister, probably scolded Serena way worse than anyone else on this Earth. And knowing the sibling dynamics the way that I do, I bet it hurt Serena deeply that her best friend/sister had to talk to her that way. Conversely, if Venus had lost her cool (which older siblings rarely do), and Serena had tried to giver life lessons, Venus would have politely told Serena to GFY. That's just how these things work.

By the way, my brother's name is Jamal and I'm Rashad. There's an Ahmad Jamal and an Ahmad Rashad, isn't that special? I thought so.

Ahmad Jamal - Swahililand
This whole song is good, but the recognizable part come at the 7:30 mark (as Dilla fans already know)

1 comment:

£ said...

I can't think of any female (sports related) meltdown moments. You may be on to something there. Serena's outburst/tirade was surprising. I think even to her. I think homegirl blacked out out of complete frustration and just went OFF. I applaud her for apologizing though, a real apology, and not an apology by means of justification.

btw... you're right. older sibs very rarely lose their cool. I think its part and parcel with being first. we don't have room to act "out." a blessing and a curse.

as far as swahililand? dope track.. the first time I heard it... maybe 1998? I was blown away when I recognized the sample(which happens to be one of my fav hip hop songs of all time). de la/tribe had me and my brothers crate digging hard. It opened up a whole new jazz world for us. And Dilla... well he was genius. I'm gonna have to play fantastic vol 2 now.

go eagles!