Month: August 2004

Well, what the hell do I know: Chanda and Venus have been ousted in doubles.
But she beat Cara Black (6-4, 3-6, 6-3), putting her into the third round. I doubt she’ll get past Mauresmo, though.

The schedule is up for the Austin City Limits Festival next month. A tentative suggested plan:
Friday:
4-5 p.m.: Sloan (although Neko Case is tempting)
[early dinner]
6-7 p.m.: Broken Social Scene
7-8 p.m.: Ryan Adams (but leave a little early and catch some of…)
7:15-8:15 p.m.: Rebirth Brass Band (but leave a little early and move to…)
8-8:45 p.m.: Franz Ferdinand (although Gomez is tempting)
8:45-9:55 p.m.: Los Lonely Boys
[party]
Saturday:
[sleep in late, then straggle in late to…]
2-3 p.m.: Josh Rouse
3-4 p.m.: Old 97s
4-4:45 p.m.: Bruce Robison (and hope he plays this song)
[early dinner, unless I grow remarkably more pro-Modest Mouse]
6-7 p.m.: My Morning Jacket (although Los Amigos Invisibles is very tempting)
7:15-8:15 p.m.: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (leaving early for…)
8-8:45 p.m.: The Neville Brothers
8:45-9:55 p.m.: The Pixies
[party]
Sunday:
[sleep in late, a hearty migas brunch, then…]
1:45-2:30 p.m.: Calexico
2:30-3:30 p.m.: The Roots (also tempting: Doyle Bramhall and Shelby Lynne)
3:30-4:30 p.m.: Ben Kweller (but leave after three songs for…)
4-5 p.m.: Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra (but leave after two very lengthy songs for…)
4:30-5:30 p.m.: Elvis Costello
5:30-6:30 p.m.: Spoon
[get in the car, drive back to Dallas, moderately sad over missing Wilco, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, David Garza, Cake, and Ben Harper in the evening]
Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately. My pace will pick up soon, I hope.

Here’s my story from today’s front page. Most of you will find it more interesting than most of my stuff — it’s about how test-prep companies like Kaplan and the Princeton Review are profiting from anxiety about the new SAT test that will debut in March.

ChandaWatch: She won her first-round singles match over the koala Samantha Stosur. But the fact it took her three sets (6-2, 6-7, 6-0) doesn’t bode well. Next up: the Zimbabwan menace Cara Black. If she gets past Black, it’ll be the 2 seed, Amelie Mauresmo, in the octofinals.
The Chanda/Venus doubles team faces the Chinese Ting Li/Tian Tian Sun duo later today.

U.S. Senate candidate (and Barack Obama opponent) Alan Keyes rocks the showtunes.
Maybe Obama and Keyes could settle this whole Senate race thing with a showtunes battle — sort of like 8 Mile but with a Andrew Lloyd Webber vibe. It might be Keyes’ only chance at victory.

Screw-loose Screw founder says he got screwed.
A large silver cross around his neck gleamed against his chest hair. He has been wearing it for a few months. “I feel doomed as a Jew,” he said. “I’ll try anything else.”

Great piece in WaPo about the perils of mixing race baiting, stand-up comics, and t-shirt manufacturing. (Well, it’s a great story — the writing’s a little awkward in a few places.)

ChandaWatch: Our Hero’s chances at a medal just improved greatly. It seems that Serena Williams, hours before she was to board a flight to Athens, backed out, claiming “lingering knee pain.”
That means Serena’s singles spot will be wasted — the deadline for replacing members of your Olympic team has passed, so Aussie Samantha Stosur will get the spot. But Serena had planned to pair with sister Venus as the top American doubles team. (They won the gold in Sydney.) So now Venus’ new doubles partner will be…Chanda Rubin!
This is excellent news on a few fronts. One, obviously Venus is a hell of a doubles partner. Two, when you’ve got an achy knee (as Chanda has had since January), doubles play is a much better fit than singles — much less lateral movement, much heavier reliance on upper-body reflexes. And Chanda’s a heck of a doubles player herself — her only Grand Slam title to date remains winning the Australian Open in doubles a few years back. So while her singles campaign probably doesn’t have much of a chance, we may see Chanda on the medals stand yet.

It’s time for a special summer edition of ChandaWatch, that hoary crabwalk.com tradition in which we track the tournament progress of Chanda Rubin — the only person in the world to be both (a) a highly-ranked women’s tennis player and (b) my high school classmate.
Normally, ChandaWatch is reserved for the Australian, French, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. But this is a Very Special ChandaWatch — our hero is headed to Athens.
She’ll be one of four American women competing in singles, along with the Williams sisters and one TBA. (It was Jennifer Capriati, but she dropped out today, as had Lindsay Davenport before her.)
Chanda’s been nursing a knee injury all year, which doesn’t bode well for her prospects. But when the blood of patriotism starts coursing through her veins, who knows what is possible? Play starts Sunday.
I wish I could be there to root her on; there was a slight chance earlier this year I was going to be able to cover the Olympics again, just as I did the Salt Lake City games in 2002. But alas, ’twas not meant to be.

How does one end up with a painful cut on the back of one’s left earlobe? One has no idea what one could have done to create said cut. Said cut hurts like hell, one could tell you.
If you are the person who created said cut — perhaps as part of some jujitsu-by-night campaign to cripple crabwalk.com — one would appreciate hearing an apology. One would.