Required Reading

• Are we sure this is Na Li?
• Don't care much for the discussion of the MSG event (only because I didn't really care about the event itself) but some interesting observations in the Notes section.  My gripe: Nole has not become Fed.  He's just Nole.
• Speaking of which: "Slice, variety, patience: They aren’t working against him these days. Nothing is."  The analysis on Vera is dead on as well.
• "Yes, sort of," is precisely right.
• Unless Rafa and Fed were in cahoots, it was technically a duopoly.
• You greedy, Italy.  You greedy.
• "Twitter, almost accidentally, has turned every game into an Event, or at least a thing that only exists to the fullest in real time."  Yup.
• He says Jimmy Connors, I saw FLAWED.
• I've enjoyed reading the Justine eulogies.  Some have chosen to focus on her skill as a tennis player, some have focused on her shadier moments.  I feel like that was the struggle for fans throughout her career.  Liked Tignor's take.
• Tips on Indian Wells.  My biggest tip: You won't realize how much you're sweating because of the dry desert heat.  Drink lots of water and know that you will get drunk faster (and harder) than you expect.  I have a broken camera to prove the latter.
• Consider me a card-carrying member of the Petko Party.
• "Know he's capable of greatness; know it's no longer a given."
• An interesting discussion of objectivity vs. fandom in TV criticism that I think is relevant to the discussion regarding journos, bloggers, and fan-bloggers.
• Non-Required Reading: "I’m not saying I WANT John Galliano to have been killed by the Nazis, I am just saying that people who live in gas chambers shouldn’t throw hate speech."  And that's how blogging is done.
• Non-Required Reading: "A widely praised film about a wayward media mogul — with genius galore, but no central sympathetic character — was up against a sentimental, well-wrought family drama set in the U.K. The first movie earned all the respect; the second made people cry. And in the end, the family drama, How Green Was My Valley, won Best Picture over Citizen Kane."  Sounds familiar....
• Non-Required Reading: I still remember the day my friends and I wasted a day at work Googling Scientology and found out about the OTIII, Galactic Lord Xenu stuff.  An awesome piece of reporting in The New Yorker about Paul Haggis' defection from Scientology.  A long but must-read.
• Non-Required Reading:  You should probably educate yourself on the best of Charlie Sheen quotage.  Lord knows I'm going to be citing that shit for years.
• Non-Required Viewing: Lightsabers make everything better.