Yesterday we drove to Finster Murphy’s on 17th Street for lunch. During the 10-minute drive I had to swerve on Davie Boulevard to avoid hitting a car that had pulled out abruptly from the slow right lane; then, a few minutes later, on Miami Rd., I had to stop suddenly as the van in front of me made a U-turn in the middle of the street. Arriving at the fish shop, I found a car taking two parking spaces, not in the usual way, by straddling a line, but by sitting horizontally across two spaces.
Fortunately, my king mackerel and seaweed salad were delicious.
The French Open is in its second week and yesterday it offered up one of the most enjoyable matches I’ve ever watched, partly because the players – Carlos Alcaraz and Ben Shelton – looked to be enjoying it too. Until Alcaraz came along, you rarely saw players smile during matches; yesterday, Shelton smiled as he was hitting one ball. Alcaraz, better known as Carlito, also won a point by throwing his racket at the ball, which is illegal; then he lost the point by informing the chair umpire that his racket had left his hand by the time it made contact with the ball. (The French Open doesn’t use replays, so the Spaniard’s honesty was all the umpire had to go on.) At the end of the match, the two players had a long hug, and laugh, at the net. They had just finished a hard-fought match in the fourth round of a major tournament and they looked as if they had just concluded an amazing and grueling practice session.
This seems to be the trend, at least in the men’s game; the top players all appear to have not just great respect but also affection for each other, despite the fact that, week after week, they find themselves in fierce competition with each other. Perhaps the world's leaders should start watching tennis.
PS After one phenomenal shot by Alcaraz, Shelton's father applauded in the stands.
The New Yorker asks readers every week to supply a caption to a cartoon. The Spectator has a more challenging competition that changes every week. A recent one asked readers to rewrite the Hokey Pokey in the style of a famous poet. Winning entries included the Hokey Pokey written by Philip Larkin and the Hokey Pokey written by Emily Dickinson.
The other week, driving through the neighborhood to visit Elvis – our resident peacock – Hania and I were surprised to find a new peacock on Elvis’s street. We knew it wasn’t Elvis, who was nowhere in sight, because he had a scraggly tail.
A neighbor appeared, and we all agreed Elvis’s new friend needed a name. The woman suggested Presley, which I wasn’t crazy about. It wasn’t a first name, and it suggested the two were related.
As we drove home, I tried to think of singers from the Elvis era who were known by one name. Donovan was too long. Deano was too obscure for anyone under 60 (but a pretty good name for a peacock). Dylan could work as a first name (it did for Thomas), but not for a peacock. Finally, I came up with Freddie. Freddie Mercury came after Elvis, but the bird kinda looked like a Freddie.
Then the other day, driving down Peacock Street (not its official name), we ran into a resident sitting in a lawn chair. We asked if he’d seen the new bird. “You mean Elton?” the man replied.
The TV critic for The Spectator, James Delingpole, has a rule for streaming: For high quality, you have to get something with subtitles. (Though in our case, that includes British shows.) His latest recommendation, Eternaut, is an Argentinian series which we tried but, because of our aversion to science fiction, we stopped after one episode. Though I did see its merits. What I’m looking for is not exactly another Shtisel, but a show that, like that one, is about “love, loss and the doldrums of everyday life.”
The long holiday weekend brought the usual problem of what to watch. I have called a temporary moratorium on mystery and detective series – and a lifelong ban on Harlan Coben, a writer I had never heard about until I subscribed to Netflix. How can it be that so many shows have been made from books one never sees in bookstores – even airport bookstores?