Blueberries and Robert Christgau

I'm loving the blueberry action this summer. There must be a bumper crop of them upstate because my local stores are offering them at abnormally cheap prices -- $1.99 a pint. Yippee! There is nothing like their cool, subtle taste.

Lying on my bed in hot summer air with the electric fan swishing cool swaths over my legs. First time this year for the fan. There hasn't been any heat. As sticky and unpleasant as it can be, I love its limpid, humid embrace. I love what it does to the days. Everything sags. I should have lived somewhere equatorial -- I prefer days when nothing is possible.

Reading Robert Christgau, I'm blearily confused by his jazzed up syntax. His sentences go zigzagging away from you in a pile-up of mismatched metaphors and incongruous adjectives. I get that to write about rock and roll, you want to get into a "gonzo head" as he says in his introduction. You have to go with a certain wildness because that's what the music demands from you. But to write almost incomprehensibly? Here's a sentence on the New York Dolls' Arthur Kane: "But although the Dolls would have been tastelessly aggressive and urban even without Arthur, his inability to come up with a catchy counterrhythm, to supply the kind of syncopation that sets the body swaying, left them no room to be anything else." One negative too many, dude -- I'm lost.

In another essay, on Sonic Youth, he comments that "...early on I thought (correctly) that they sucked...." How can you say you were correct in thinking something? Or comment on your own comment as if you have some higher objectivity?

Still, he's someone who cared a lot about music and it's not unpleasant to quarrel mentally with him while reading him in the soft summer heat.

Andy Roddick

Unbelievable, brute, struggling, sheer, full-throated effort.

And not just that. Andy had retooled his whole game so it could deal with Federer. He completely rewrote his own approach -- not just a baseline pounder, but now someone who played with finesse, someone who used his mind constantly on the court.

And it worked. Federer is not flawless, or at least, he didn't play flawlessly last Sunday.

Andy surprised him by suckering him into baseline rallies with moon balls that threw off his rhythm. When he least expected it, there was Andy with a volley which he executed perfectly. Federer, the one with touch, the artist, looked like the slower, less strategic player. Federer was the one who repeatedly bailed himself out of trouble by serving one ace after another.

But then what happens? It turns out you not only have to develop your finesse, intelligence, subtlety, craftiness. In the end, the match became a slugfest. You ended up having to have held on to your slugfest abilities! The cruelest of cruel ironies.

Federer outlasted Andy physically. By the end, the American's face was gray with exhaustion and losing its look of grim resolve. He simply couldn't serve hard anymore, while Federer called on that weird reserve of energy he has for extreme, championship moments.

Andy looked ashen, beaten. He hadn't been outplayed -- just outlasted. But that brute fact must have been as painful as any. Who knew the Baryshnikov of tennis was also its muscle?

Oh and By the Way

Robot Secretary #5

You Are My Hero

Roddick's win over Andy Murray on Friday was awe-inspiring if you've followed the fortunes of this hard-playing but luckless young man. He happened to compete during the era of Roger Federer and more than for anyone else, Federer was Roddick's kryptonite. Against Roddick, Federer becomes even more perfect and polished than usual. Roddick thrashes and lunges and can't make a dent in the guy. Even when Federer started to be beaten by other guys, Roddick still couldn't beat him.

For years everyone told Roddick, or said about him, that he was finished. And diehard fans, including me, assumed he'd never pull it together enough to be a force in the top of the game.

But the other day, he did that. He faced Andy Murray and didn't get bottled up with his own desire. "Sometimes you want it too much," he commented after one loss, and finally, after all the years of struggle, he gained the experience to get on top of that unwieldy need, and just focus on winning points.

And he did it over and over. He didn't let his mistakes bother him. He came to net at intelligent times, not hare-brained ones. He served a ton of aces. But it wasn't just the serving. He stayed in each point, he didn't panic, and he found ways to win.

That's all new. He's had to get on top of so many things about himself, he could be a poster boy for Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections.

He had to get control of his temper. He had to curb his bash-from-the-baseline style and then go back to it to reinstate some of that mindless power. He had to practice his net play endlessly, I'd imagine, until he could toss volleys back without flinching, like Federer at his best.

All of this is not what comes naturally to him, but was within him if he brought it out the right way.

All the work meant he was able to be more fully and naturally himself. But better.

I can't explain it. He worked a lot, yet he also stayed himself, and his win over Murray meant he gained the skills to play within himself, as a sportswriter said.

That seems both profound and inspiring to me! In some ways Andy Roddick seems like the ultimate renegade -- toiling in obscurity, no one believing in him. But in truth he's been toeing the line as hard as he could. He's been trying really hard to be the best "him" he can be. In other words he'll do anything under the sun to win -- everything within his power to get out of his own way.

I'm too tired (and watching Michael Jackson videos) to explain this any better.

It's sweet and sad to see Michael Jackson with nice short curly hair and his own face. He looks so carefree, so lithe and blithe.
What happened? When did it all go south?

Good luck tomorrow, Andy R.