CBS Sunday Morning Power Rankings

I lied. I am a liar. I said I was going to try and post three times last week and I fell short by 66.67%. Raise your hand is you saw that coming. Ha ha. Very funny. You may put your hands down. Anyway, I was convinced that the holiday weekend, combined with time off would be sufficient to squeeze in a couple of extra entries. What sucked up my time instead? In chronological order: Christmas shopping (not on Black Friday...) Biking Mowing/mulching leaves Apple Pie from scratch (peeling apples takes a freaking long time) Thanksgiving/general sloth Running Not going to mention the distance... But long enough that I sort of shot the day after Thanksgiving fully on running while listening to entirety of Blueberry Boat by The Fiery Furnaces 1.5 times. Christmas decorating More Biking Cooking Cleaning Laundry Hanging my paltry supply of Christmas lights I still have little more Christmas related stuff to do, but I've put most of it behind me at this point, so all I have left to do (in th...

Naomi Osaka Part 2: Don't You Know the Future's Coming?* * This is a very inside joke for a friend. Maybe I'll give it more context someday. I said I was going to write more about Naomi Osaka about a month ago so here it is. I'm didn't feel 100% up to writing something originally - Sunday Morning being dark this week is an excellent excuse to slack off - but sometimes, you just gotta do it to do it. One cannot always wait for the spirit to move oneself. Also, I did sort of skip the September 12 episode, and being a completionist, I am morally obligate to swing back and check that one off my list. First a quick check in tennis in general: The last meaningful tournament of the year finished (Indian Wells) this past weekend. I did not watch it. But I somehow managed to write a recap, which I then excised from the post due to editorial restraint. If you really want to read it... The only thing I actually wanted to say about Indian Wells is that I have this weird habit...

An update on some things: My house is partially clean. I am hoping to get to the rest of the most pressing stuff by the end of the week. At which point I'm sure it will need to be cleaned again. The struggle never ends. I haven't even brought up the once or twice a year tasks I still hope to get to. I am on page 200 of Dune and wish I was a faster reader. My frail aging body may force me to finally keep posts short. Typing is start to cause severe discomfort to my right wrist/hand/arm/shoulder. I don't think this carpal tunnel, but I think this needs to be addressed by a doctor at this point. I went to see a movie in a movie theater - Free Guy. Quick review: It's a fun movie. I would go so far as to say it is a good movie, but you may have to be into video game culture to enjoy it. The main cast of Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, that guy from Stranger Things (not that guy, the other guy, no no, the other other guy - the one with the hair) are good. Taika Waititi is enjo...

A list of tennis players Bjorn Borg John McEnroe Boris Becker Jennifer Capriati Andre Agassi Martina Hingis Kim Clijsters Justine Henin Mardy Fish Jelena Dokic Mirjana Lucic Serena Williams* Ashleigh Barty Bernard Tomic Nick Kyrgios If you are a reasonable tennis fan, or even just a casual observer, you can probably guess the commonality amongst this grouping. They all walked away from tennis, to varying degrees, when they were at or withing shouting distance of the top of the sport. That is, they left, or started minimizing their participation in the sport at a point in time in which they were or should have been peaking. * The inclusion of Serena Williams (and probably Venus too) is debatable. But Serena has essentially played only 10 tournaments a year for more than a decade, taking ample time away from the sport to pursue her other interests, like making music videos with her friend Beyoncé . Remember when she won the 2007 Australian Open while starting the year ranked 88? She'...

So this will probably be a short post. I don't know why I didn't get around to a recap last week. Here is a short list of possible reason: I am lazy. I needed a break. I was busy. The episode wasn't the most compelling. Sports. I.e. preoccupied with tennis (Wimbledon), baseball (All Star game), and basketball (NBA Finals). The power rankings committee was tardy in tabulating and submitting the results. Some combination of the above. Anyway, the finals are over, the Reds are losing again and nothing important happens in tennis until next week, and even then I'm more interested in the prospect of seeing some live tennis than I am in watching a spectatorless Olympic tourney where only about half the top players are attending. How far has American Men's tennis fallen when I have to Google one of the 4 entrants into the singles draw because I've never heard of them? (Apologies to Marcos Giron, who is apparently #64 in the world.) The CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKINGS...