I don't fear nothing but god and weddings: Rookie of the Year, Best New Dog

17 November 2007

Rookie of the Year, Best New Dog

Here at I Don't Fear Nothing But God And Weddings (IDFNBGAW hereafter) part of what we're all about hype, swagger, what your grandparents would call "moxy," and what Rick Lazio would call "chutzpah:" the Fresh, the New, and the True. So here we go with the young turks who are tearing it up and crocheting it back together into some sort of art-fag, avant-garde, postmodern triumphalist trompe l'oeil shit. We're handing out our annual Rookie of the Year awards in IDFNBGAW land.

Rookie of the Year, Best New Dog

Our ROY, Best New Dog is Thurston, our new house dog/alarm clock/personal trainer/really intricate toy.
Thurston is what we like to call a Santa Fe Heeler. He features distinctly washedout burnt sienna coloring;
large multi-plane independent pivot ears; and an eye patch.

When he was a puppy, Thurston
shanked a man in prison.

He enjoys listening to Brian Eno's ambient music.

He plays dead; don't hate the player hate the game!

He loves to loaf, but he can hang a triple double, 60
fantasy point week on you at any moment.

More ROY awards coming throughout the week.

On the Certainty of the Body

I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is, and also the most demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and that strange mix of caution and abandon we call courage. It also requires smarts. Just one single shot in one exchange in one point of a high-level match is a nightmare of mechanical variables. Given that a net that’s three feet high (at the center) and two players in (unrealistically) a fixed position, the efficacy of one single shot is determined by its angle, depth, pace, and spin. And each of these determinants is itself determined by still other variables—for example, a shot’s depth is determined by the height at which the ball passes over the net combined with some integrated function of pace and spin, with the ball’s height over the net itself determined by the player’s body position, grip on the racquet, degree of backswing, angle of racquet face, and the 3-D coordinates through which the racquet face moves during that interval in which the ball is actually on the strings. The tree of variables and determinants branches out, on and on, and then on even farther when the opponent’s own positions and predilections and the ballistic features of the ball he’s sent you to hit are factored in. No CPU yet existent could compute the expansion of variables for even a single exchange—smoke would come out of the mainframe. The sort of thinking involved is the sort that can be done only by a living and highly conscious entity, and then only unconsciously, i.e., by combining talent with repetition to such an extent that the variables are combined and controlled without conscious thought. In other words, serious tennis is a kind of art.*

*

I don't fear nothing but god and weddings

17 November 2007

Rookie of the Year, Best New Dog

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On the Certainty of the Body

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