This Is What I Did Yesterday...
Yup, I woke up at 8:00 and headed out to Flushing where we stayed at the U.S. Open from 10:30 to 7:30. Then, me and George left and headed over to Jones Beach to watch Aerosmith perform. We got back at around 2 in the morning, tired as hell. I think I slept in my shoes.
U.S. Open Day 3 Diary
At 10:30 we strolled onto the grounds and decided to watch Angelique Widjaja play the chic who beat Alexandra Stevenson. Stevenson by the way, is Julius Erving's illegitimate child. It's interesting when indiscriminate sex crosses sports boundaries, don't you think? Widjaja whooped her ass for about 15 minutes at the beginning of the match, but it went downhill from there. I was sad to see her eliminated, she's fun to watch which is not something I often say about women's tennis. I'll be honest, if I'm not a fan of either of the players, watching women's tennis for me is like watching paint dry or water drip. It's all just a slow-moving flurry of topspin, lobs and volleys. That's why even if the Williams sisters are built like men I'm still glad they're on the circuit. I used to love the women's pro tennis tour but now I find I'm annoyed by it. I miss Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Gabriela Sabatini, Mary Jo Fernandez, Martina Navratilova... players with class. All the women players do these days is whine. Like later in the evening we watched the marathon match between David Sanchez and Tommy Haas. They played for 3 and a half hours. By the end of the 5th set they were both cramping and stretching before points. They were exhausted and still battling it out ferociously with every last ounce of energy they had. When the match ended the entire stadium gave both players an extended standing ovation. I never understood why the women pros felt they deserved equal money as the men. Sure they draw people in, but you could also pay models in bikinis money to walk around the U.S. Open and that would draw men in as well. It's not something exclusive. Watching these two guys sweat it out for 3 and a half hours made me a bit ashamed to be female, and have other females believing they deserve the same amount of money for matches that never go past one and a half hours. It's like they're saying they deserve the same amount of money for less work, just because they did it in skimpier clothing. Of course, if I were a pro player I'd probably be saying the complete opposite right now. I'd be serving on center court in my bikini and demanding to be paid as much as Pete Sampras.
Okay, now that I've pissed off every female reading this, I'll continue. After Widjaja lost we headed over to Court 13 to watch my cousin Emer's friend Eric Taino play against Kristian Pless. Eric came out strong but wavered when Pless found his game. The chair umpire overruled two calls which helped Eric's opponent, so we were getting a trifle rowdy. After he lost the first set, Pless slammed the ball into the scoreboard so I was like "HEY!! You break it, you buy it!!!" Which of course, being some random guy from Denmark, he didn't get the joke. After Pless started acting up again I called out "Technical!! T him up ref!!!" which prompted the chair umpire to turn around in his chair and roll his eyes at me. He was laughing though so at least he had a really good sense of humor.
After Eric's match we headed over to the Grandstand because Geo wanted to watch Elena Dementieva play. Dementieva was seeded 12 going into the tournament, but wasn't playing very well. Sensing the impending upset, Geo took pity on my boredom and we headed over to the Louis Armstrong stadium to watch the Haas/Sanchez match. Once again... AMAZING. Probably the best U.S. Open match I've seen since the Agassi/Sampras match last year. After that we went to watch Jan-Michael Gambill's doubles match. Jan-Michael Gambill is the Anna Kournikova of men's tennis. All eye candy, little substance. The guy is super-gorgeous but a mediocre player AND a prick. He spent most of the match making his partner feel bad over his mistakes, conveniently forgetting the fact that his own mistakes caused them to lose the first set. I had an epiphany during the match though, I realized that despite my many years of tennis playing, I have a lob deficiency. I do not know how to lob. I can do the motions but it's a crapshoot as to whether it goes in or not. And if it did it was purely luck, not me employing any strategy of any kind. The chair umpire in Gambill's game was like 16 years old. He should have been a ballboy really. Gambill kept yelling at him and he didn't try to defend himself once.
In the final analysis, U.S. Open Day 3 was a whole lot of fun as well. Patrick wasn't there to talk shit with, but George was so I was okay. Filipino men have a gift for shit talk. More ticket money well spent.
"Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet Emoooooooooooooootion"
At 7:30 we exited the U.S. Open grounds and headed over to the Tommy Hilfiger Theatre at Jones Beach. After getting lost and ending up on some random peninsula, we finally made it to the bright lights and loud music. We got there right as Kid Rock was stepping off the stage which was perfect, since we don't really like Kid Rock anyway. How many good songs does he have, point five? It's like "Badwitaba" or whatever it's called isn't THAT BAD of a song, but the rest suck.
Aero finally came on and let me tell you it was worth all the stress of trying to find a theatre without any type of highway signage and every penny that I paid the thieving bastards at Ticketmaster. They opened the show with the classic "Toys In The Attic" and went through "Rag Doll"..."What It Takes"..."Dream On"...."Sweet Emotion"..."Girls Of Summer"..."Don't Wanna Miss A Thing"..."Crying"..."Dude Looks Like A Lady"..."Big Ten Inch Record"..."Jaded"..."Same Old Song And Dance" ...probably about 4 songs I can't think of right now and then finally ended with (of course) the "Walk This Way" duet with Run DMC. Kid Rock was there but I don't know why or what he was doing.
Random Notes:
1. Seeing Aerosmith live in concert was like #43 on my List Of Things To Do Sometime Ever so I can finally cross that off and add them to my list of bands I've seen live. That list is: Bon Jovi, Skid Row, Motley Crue, Faster Pussycat, Guns N Roses, INXS, Oingo Boingo, Gin Blossoms/UB40, Funkdoobiest/House of Pain, Cypress Hill, System Of A Down, Methodman/Redman and Limp Bizkit. I feel like I missed some but I can't remember who they are right now.
2. On the way to the theatre, I saw this Alitalia billboard in Queens. Alitalia (if I'm even spelling it correctly, since I can't read the font they use in their ads) is an Italian airline. This ad was a picture of a woman sucking on a canoli. No blue skies, no clouds, no airplanes, just a woman sucking on a long canoli. It wasn't even a subliminal image, it was a blatantly phallic image. They might as well have said "Fly our airlines and beautiful Italian women will go down on you ALL NIGHT LONG. We promise."
3. On the way out of the theatre, we were stuck at what I thought was a police check point. Later on I realized what a naive idiot I was to have thought the police would actually be smart enough to be doing drunk driving or drug tests on concertgoers exiting the concert. They were just stopping us and creating a 2-mile-long traffic jam so they could wait for all the buses to exit the lot. Fucking idiots. Who cares about the buses. Why don't you go peek into that Camaro over there and ask the driver why he's sniffing white powder off his dashboard.
4. The car in front of us in the traffic jam was a Saab with the license plate "WhaaSaab"... That should be punishable by death don't you think?? All those harmless murderers incarcerated and THIS GUY gets to drive around freely.
5. You don't want to know what people wear at an Aerosmith concert. It defies description. Even for me.
