Tennis love for ailing Baltacha

April 28, 2014

Sending out love to former British tennis star Elena Baltacha as she battles liver cancer. The Ukrainian-born “Bally” rose to British No. 1, winning 11 singles titles and four doubles titles despite a knee injury and being diagnosed at age 19 with primary sclerosing cholangitis. This is an inflammatory, autoimmune disease of the bile duct that can lead to cirrhosis of the liver or cancer, as it has in Baltacha’s case.

This summer, Andy Murray and Martina Navratilova – a former world No 1 and breast cancer survivor – will lead a group of players in a “Rally for Bally” fundraiser to aid Elena, who is now a tennis coach in Ipswich, England.

The return of Feddy Bear

March 19, 2014

Congrats to Nole, who beat Feddy Bear in the finals of the BNP Paribas Open March 16 in Indian Wells, Calif. 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (3). (That was the tournament Nole was headed to after he played at Madison Square Garden on World Tennis Day, another BNP Paribas event.)

But apparently, the big news out of the California desert is that Roger Federer is back in the top five at age 32. A larger racket, a healed back and the hiring of Stefan Edberg – yet another 1980s star coaching players who were born in that decade – as adviser have all been credited with FedEx’s renewal. (They call them Fedberg. Cute.)

15 millennia of fame

March 18, 2014

One of the great pleasures of reading the Weekend New York Times – apart from the opportunity it affords me to collapse with breakfast, lunch or a cup of coffee – is trolling for blog ideas. The March 16 edition of The New York Times magazine yielded a doozy – a map, as it were, of a new project from the Macro Connections group at M.I.T.’s Media Lab called Pantheon. The odd thing is that The Times’ article doesn’t give the website. But here it is.

This being from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pantheon has come up with a complex formula to measure historical cultural production. I won’t bore you with methodology – because I’m not smart enough to. But what’s fascinating to me is what piqued The Times’ interest: What does Pantheon say about fame and celebrity? Something I and others have long suspected and that should give our notice-me, selfie society pause: Fame and celebrity are not the same thing.

In “Frozen,” Elsa embraces her magical powers as she sings “Let It Go.”

Are men the hotter sex? Or are women just ‘Frozen’?

March 9, 2014

It’s been a week since the Oscars, but Cate Blanchett’s Best Actress acceptance speech is still trending with me. Or rather, Maureen Dowd’s riff on it is.

Blanchett implied that her Oscar win for “Blue Jasmine” proved that films with women at the center aren’t “niche experiences.” Dowd’s March 5 column “Frozen in a Niche?” demonstrated otherwise:

“The percentage of women directing, writing, producing, editing and shooting films has declined since 1998, according to an analysis of the top 250 grossing films of 2013 by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. (The anticipated halo effect from Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to win a directing Oscar for 2009’s “The Hurt Locker” never happened.)

“The center’s latest report had some stunning stats: Women accounted for 6 percent of directors, 10 percent of writers, 15 percent of executive producers, 17 percent of editors and 3 percent of cinematographers. And women are still more likely to be working on romantic comedies, dramas or documentaries than the top-grossing, teenage-boy-luring animated, sci-fi and horror movies.”

Sound like a niche to me. Mais pourquoi?

Nole + Andy = Love at the Garden

March 4, 2014

World Tennis Day – which was celebrated March 3 with marquee matchups of past and present stars around the globe – featured something that Andy Murray said we were not likely to see again. He and Novak Djokovic squared off in the “BNP Paribas Showdown,” an exhibition that reminded us what makes tennis and friendship so great.

A tennis exo – as exhibitions are sometimes called – is a bit like a rock concert mixed with a boxing match. There’s smoke (no mirrors). There are lighting effects and an irresistible beat. There’s an announcer who pronounces everyone’s name dramatically.

Jason Collins, the gay Jackie Robinson

February 25, 2014

Jason Collins has rejoined the Nets with a difference: He becomes the first openly gay athlete in any of America’s four major sports.

There’s lots of symbolism here: The team now plays in Brooklyn, where Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. The Nets are owned by Mikhail D. Prokhorov, from Russia, which has taken a tough anti-gay stance. And Collins will wear his regular No. 98, in honor of Matthew Shepard, the college student who was murdered for being gay in 1998.

Collins may soon be joined in pro sports by Michael Sam, who’s just come out and is on-target to be drafted by the NFL.

All of which makes me look prescient for publishing “Water Music,” a novel about four gay athletes and how their shifting rivalries color their personal relationships with one another.

Sochi, au revoir

February 24, 2014

So the Winter Olympics are over, and while I’ll miss the intensity of the pass two weeks, I realize it’s also impossible to sustain that intensity forever. (Still, on to the Paralympics, which begin March 7.)

When a global event ends, I always like to stop and consider what I’ve learned. I think the first takeaway from these Games is that they really represented a changing of the guard. Continuing a theme that has played out all season first at the Australian Open and then at the Super Bowl, the sure thing wasn’t. In Sochi, the heavy favorites – the Shaun Whites, the Shani Davises, the Bode Millers – weren’t necessarily atop or even on the podium. Instead we were introduced to medalists like skaters Yuzuru Hanyu and Yulia Lipnitskaia and skiers Matthias Mayer and Michaela Shiffrin, just to name a few.

Why did many Olympic veterans struggle?