I got a flat tire yesterday, a day that was chilly, wet, as close as we get to raw in South Florida. So far this week we’ve rarely seen the sun, which seems fitting considering the inauguration that took place on Tuesday. It snowed in north Florida; New Orleans got 10 inches. Though this will just serve to convince our new president of the inauthenticity of global warming.
We went to the Beaux Arts festival at the University of Miami on Saturday and, as usual at South Florida art fairs, I found the artists more interesting than the art. One older gentleman was from Blue Hill, Maine.
“Roger Angell was from there,” I said.
“He was from Brooklin,” the man said, naming a nearby town. They had been friends. “What a dynamic man,” he continued. “Well into his 90s. He couldn’t see a thing, but he told wonderful stories. I miss him.”
I posted a cartoon last Monday, inspired by news reports about proposed warning labels on alcohol, so I didn’t really have to post one this week, but I thought the day demanded it. Over the weekend I drew the earth shaking, an action that was hard to depict on paper (I put lines suggestion vibrations on the four sides of the globe). Afraid that no one would get it, I drew my version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
On social media recently I came across a video someone had posted from Ho Chi Minh City. It was of a central square, which looked familiar, and as the camera turned, I saw the Rex Hotel, where I had stayed in 1994. There were a few new additions – a Gucci store – but the high-energy scene of traffic and people and lights was just as I had remembered it. I recalled how I would stand on the hotel steps, taking it all in and wondering how I could describe it to readers back in Florida, most of whom had never seen such a show. And, watching the video, I realized that travel writers are now relieved of the responsibility of description, for the physical world is now all on film.
The problem with the Australian Open is that most of the matches take place while you’re asleep. The beauty of the tournament is that you can wake up to exciting late-night tennis. Or, more accurately, early-morning tennis. At the moment, the American teenager Learned Tien is in the fourth set against Daniil Medvedev. It’s 1:29 in the morning in Melbourne. Medvedev looks to win the set, which will send the match into a fifth set that will surely not end before 2 am. I feel sorry for the players, but happy for Tien’s friends waking up in California. Especially if the teenager's legs can hold out.
Yesterday evening I sat down to watch Jeopardy! and was disappointed to find that ABC was showing Monday Night Football instead. OK, I said, I’ll watch the Australian Open; earlier in the day, the Tennis Channel had informed viewers that coverage on ESPN would start at 7.
ESPN, sadly, was showing Monday Night Football. Must be on ESPN2, I thought, and, changing the channel, found Monday Night Football again. Then I remembered that ESPN’s coverage of the Australian Open – one of the year’s four majors – has been beginning in the evening on ESPN+, which we don’t have a subscription for. It is one of many things that annoy me about the networks.
And I have nothing against football – I watched a bit of it over the weekend – but do we need three channels to cover the same game?