oh dear.

to cover all the bases: still no definite news on any jobs. cool, bases covered.

i spent the day at the us open. my aunt julie said that she wanted to go for her birthday, though i would have probably gone anyway without the birthday impetus. it's a strange game, tennis, made all the weirder by the pomp and circumstance that these professional tournements afford it. there are a lot of white people there, and a very heavily imbalanced upper-crust presence. i started thinking of a movie plot that involved bombing the us open because of the high-concentration of rich white folk, but just as this idea occurred to me, i looked around and at that particular moment, i was surrounded by minorities. go figure.

all of the ritual involved with the game is so goddamn precious i could just puke. there needs to be silence for play, fans who cat-call the players are given dirty looks and clucked tongues, and people are seated only in between games. come on... are these guys professionals or are they pansies!? "i'm sorry, sir, but that woman was calling my mom a whore while i was trying to serve." pansies. the best part of that whole thing is that the us tennis center or whatever the place is called is in flushing, queens, right next to the subway, the long island railroad and la guardia airport. the official at one particular match, blake v. monaco (fifth-seeded blake has a following of vocal and well-watered fans known as "blakeheads") had to shush the crowd three or four times, and then gave the players the go ahead even as a 747 roared right over the stadium. peace and quiet indeed.

along with julie, my cousin isabel and her friend francis attended. isabel had had four teeth taken out the day before, and they'd forgotten her pain medication, so that was fun, though probably, least of all for her. francis is going into eighth grade, and his voice has just dropped the first octave... he sounded quietly obsessed with his new tenor. his dad is white and his mom is brazilian, so i predict (with no pedophelic inclination whatsoever, sickos) that he's going to be a lady-killer someday, probably soon (what am i talking about? eighth grade? he's probably knee deep in dead women as we speak...).

it was good to hang out with julie. i got to unburden copious amounts of my parent- and job-related anxieties on her, an occaision to which she rose admirably, helping me contextualize and rationalize some of my parents more peculiar behaiviors. for instance, she pointed out that my parents have this life surrounded with academia, and that it's hard for them to understand certain things outside of that realm. also, she quoted my uncle's speech at my cousin's wedding, which involved birds and nests and so on and so forth, saying that their way of channelling there parental anxiety is to pass it on to me. how kind.

so, long story short, it was a good day. i had a pensive train ride back from dobbs ferry (where i dined and indulged in some daily show/colbert report), trying to convince myself not to feel guilty about being at the open instead of... what, really? that's right. nothing to feel bad about. chin up, say what.