So I'm dog-sitting for my mom, which means I'm in Rutledge (and also, as per usual, forgot any extra clothes or toiletries, so I smell like Goodwill clothes off-the-rack with bad breath) and I want to watch the Sharapova/Henin match that played at 3:30 a.m. our time last night. I couldn't watch it then, because every Tuesday morning, I have to wake up slightly late thinking I have more time than I do, race from Philadelphia to Media, park illegally, and run through a slipshod metal detector check at the County Courthouse to see what council's up to. Today, it turned out the first order of business was boring everyone into a coma.
But I digress.

I wanted to see this match so badly, I had gone so far as to threaten the life of our Web editor should he say anything about the outcome before I saw the replay.
Only I couldn't see the 3 p.m. replay on ESPN2, because I was writing about who's running for what office, or the County Council snoozefest, or something.
"But, a-ha!" thought I. "I can catch it online on ESPN360.com after work! Hooray, me!"
Only I couldn't. Because Comcast doesn't carry that service here. I have no idea why - works great in the city! You can watch five simultaneous things if you want (and you're completely insane). But not here. Even though it's the same cable provider.
Gah. And let me just get this in here, too, while I'm at it: OnDemand is awful. Whatever their commercials say, they only have a paltry few television stations worth watching, and even those don't have the one or two shows you actually want to see. Dog the Bounty Hunter? Yeah. That sucks. We don't need 14 episodes of it On Demand. Wild On X? How about The Soup? Oh, sorry, no. But here's something about Red Carpet Mishaps! On ... Demaaaaaand. And the movies? Good God, no. The ones you don't have to pay for drive me up a frickin' wall. I'm something of a self-inflicted insomniac, granted, but can't you do any better than Rollerball?
Anyway. I went to the Youtube and searched for "Sharapova Henin Australia," which of course brought up a clip with the title: "Sharapova wipes Henin across the court like she was a dishrag and it was a ... a counter, I guess." I'm paraphrasing. Totally ruined it for me, as you can imagine.
I can't say I wasn't unprepared for that. I was wincing at the idea of actively searching for this game and trying to peek through my fingers at the screen, so that I could maybe catch only the terms I had typed in, but not the outcome. Naive, I know, but I had little recourse - I'm stuck here 'til Thursday, when I can get back to Philly, where Comcast does carry this ESPN service online (which, by the way, is brilliant) and surely it would have been obvious by then who had won.
I hate Comcast.

At least the Ivanovic/Williams match was outstanding. Did you see it?! It was like Clash of the Titans! They just pounded away at each other for about two hours until Ivanovic finally won out - her first against Venus, I might add. She'd never even won a single set before that. Ahhh, I'd marry her, if only she was old enough to drink.
Maybe she will be, someday. Someday...
Venus was, admittedly, not totally up to snuff. A smaller bandage she wore around her left thigh previously had pretty much swallowed it by Tuesday. Which is a shame, really, because she might have the greatest legs in professional sports. And, honestly, if you're going to beat someone, don't you want them to be at their fighting best? That way you know, hands down, you really beat them.
This bandage, by the way, provided for my favorite part of the match. At first I thought it might be a clever ruse, designed to lull her opponent into a false sense of security, but I guess that was not the case - although it didn't really seem to hamper her much, aside from her serve, which isn't all that much to write home about anyway.
No, my favorite part had nothing to do with the match. It came when commentator Dick Enberg said fairly early on that Venus was not giving anything away about her ailment to reporters.
"She said 'It's a little SOMEthing, something," said Enberg, perfectly enunciating every syllable, and really putting emphasis on the first half of the first word.
"That's about as obtuse as you can get!" was the next sentence out of his mouth.
Ohhhhh, I love the irony. I LOVE it!
Now, I didn't hear Venus when she said this, but being a chick from Compton, I can only imagine what she actually said was something more like: "It's just a little sumpm sumpm." Because that's how you say that, even if you're white, and, much like Clinton was the closest thing we've had to a black president, I'm the closest thing the DT has to a black guy at the moment, so trust me on this. Enberg could not have sounded more out of touch, not only with black culture, but WITH THE ENTIRE WORLD of popular culture If. He. Triiiiiied.
I am at least happy to see tennis is not impervious to the type of boneheaded statements generally reserved for Mike Quick ("At the end of the day, the team with the most points is going to win the game") or John Madden ("Now, what the defense wants to do here is stop that offense").

Parting shot: Got bored after that and ordered 'The Order of the Phoenix' on the On Deemoooonde ... for a nominal fee, of course.
Ok, in the next movie? People have to start believing Harry Potter. Every damn time it's, "Ah, Potter, yor outter yor mind." Then by the end it becomes, "Oh, Harry, you were right all along!"
That's how you know they agree: they start calling him by his first name. But by the start of the next movie, it's right back to, "Ah, what a nutter!"
So here's how I see the next one going:
Harry Potter: " 'Old on a tick - somefink's fishy!"
Everyone else: "Tell us what it is, Harry, we'll totally believe you, whatever you say."
Frees up the movie to get on with it a bit, don't you agree? I also don't know why he's Cockney all of a sudden. Ask the director.

Fin.