The Authoritative Guide to the US Open

September in Flushing–the Mets suck, and a hurricane is destroying the city it’s rainy and windy everything closed for a fake hurricane, but at least there’s tennis. We’re here to tell you about it.

MEN

-Novak Djokovic is really good. Him retiring in the finals of Cincinnati is not a big deal. #analysis

-Rafael Nadal is having the type of bad year that Federer patented: win a major, lose a bunch of finals to one dude, everyone panics. The twist is, though, that Nadal dropped a first-rounder in Montreal this year to Ivan Dodig, a random tour grinder who’s never made noise at any high level. Masters aren’t majors, and Nadal will probably slaughter the field on the way to a semifinal. But the US Open has long been his worst major, and Nadal this year hasn’t been the whirling dervish of destruction that he’s always been. He’s been tentative during big points in all five finals he’s lost to Djokovic. More distressingly, his forehand, the shot around which the rest of his game is constructed, has deserted him at moments. Nadal has a fairly soft quarter, and he shouldn’t have too much resistance en route to the semifinal. Keep an eye on his third round match with David Nalbandian, as the Argentinian has given Nadal trouble before. But Nadal doesn’t really lose in the third round of majors. This is probably the limpest quarter. It also has Andy Roddick, but he’s terrible, so whatever.

Sam and Sandro’s MLB Stretch Run Preview

The dog days of summer are upon us, and with them come both the best and most excruciating part of baseball season. April is not the cruelest month, but it’s filled with naivete and false hope. (And if you’re the 2011 Pirates, so are May, and June, and July.) October is a crapshoot. But August and September, well, that’s when the real men do their work. We’re here to guide you through it, division by division.

AMERICAN LEAGUE EAST

Sandro: It’s a two horse race and barring some sort of monumental collapse, both the Red Sox and Yankees will be in the playoffs anyway. This race is not nearly as fun as some of the other divisions. I think the Red Sox pull it out, just because they can’t lose to the Yankees this season. I still think the Red Sox make the World Series. Their offense is positively terrifying, they have a strong bullpen, and two legitimate aces. If either Lackey (not counting on it) or Bedard can step up and be a solid #3, I think this team wins the World Series. Despite their success, I do not trust Colon and Garcia for the Yankees in the playoffs (this is based off gut and nothing else…It’s just impossible for me to see them shutting down the Red Sox or Rangers in October), and I don’t see Phil Hughes being much of a factor either.

Sam: I have the Red Sox winning the division as well, because they’re a better team than the Yankees, because their players are better. ANALYSIS! As to Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia…there’s no way they don’t get lit in the division series and get crucified by Yankee fans. The Yankees won with a three-man rotation in 2009…can they do it again? (I’m assuming AJ Burnett is secretly assassinated by Joe Girardi and has to go on the 60 day DL.) There’s actually some value to winning the division though; the Tigers/Indians/whoever comes out of the Peter Stuyvesant Little League are a lot easier to beat than the Rangers or the Angels.

Some vaguely connected thoughts on a show you should probably watch

Louie is one of the most inventive shows on TV. It defies comparison; the closest I can come is Seinfeld meets Murakami. This is a comic’s comedy, and one that demands to be written about. As a television show, Louie is rarely entertaining, at least in the Friends or Cheers sense of “setup-punchline-laffs”. In fact, after the “Subway/Pamela” episode, I can no longer be sure that Louis CK is really even making a sitcom.

This is one of the more jarring episodes of television I have seen in a long time, but the way that Louis CK alienates and disorients his audience is fundamentally different from, say, Breaking Bad. Whatever emotions you feel as Gus Fring suits up, slits a throat, and cleans himself, they occur within the narrative. The resonance is built in-universe. What is Louie’s universe, exactly? The Comedy Cellar, his apartment, and the more neurotic blocks of Manhattan? And what are the stakes? What’s the conflict? He thinks his friend/crush is awesome. His friend thinks he’s alright. Hardly Aristotelian dramatic arc.

Louis CK is not trying to tell a story, nor is he trying to be inventive for the sake of being inventive. He doesn’t play with sitcom tropes like 30 Rock or Community do. The show simply speaks a different language.  Where else are you going to find a cold open like “Subway/Pamela”‘s? No one speaks. A hobo washes himself to what I can only imagine is a call-out to Joshua Bell’s publicity stunt. Louie cleans cocaine off a subway seat in his imagination, everyone loves him and he gets head from some random woman on the train. Then the train jerks him from his daydream. Cue opening credits. (Which, by the way, come on. Louie Louie you’re gonna die?!)