The Greatest

It wasn't a great match, but it was a great moment. By beating Robin Soderling on clay at Roland Garros Roger Federer joins Andre Agassi as the only other man to have won at the highest level on every surface and equals Pete Sampras' record of 14 slam titles. He is now- officially- the stats can't be denied- the greatest player of all time. The only fly in the ointment is that he keeps getting beaten by Rafa Nadal.

Tennis thrives on these great rivalries. Borg- McEnroe for instance. The Sampras years- when the great man bestrode the world like a colossus- and rivals were routinely wiped off the court by that tremendous serve- were kinda dull- so much so that I stopped caring. And now for Wimbledon- and the likelihood of yet another Federer/Nadal final.

A Happy Outcome

There was a big upset over at theferrett 's place the other day. I don't know quite what caused it, but it was something to do with trans-sexuals. He got a huge amount of horrid nastiness flung at him- and deleted his LJ.  His world isn't my world so he's not on my fl, but he's good people and one of our best writers- and I check in on him every so often for the pleasure of reading someone who is honest, original, funny and fearless.  It made me very happy this morning to see that he was back.

PS: No sooner do I post this than I find he's deleted again. Never mind; I have reason to believe it's only a temporary expedient.

PPS: Ignore the postscript. He hasn't deleted again. As pondhopper kindly pointed out, I got his name ever so slightly wrong. This has now been rectified.

PPPS: Actually, ignore the post-postscript, it seems that there are two ferrets- one who has deleted and one who hasn't. My ferret is still gone. I think.

PPPPS. No he hasn't. And that's because he's not a ferret but a ferrett. Sheesh. Thanks to purple_pen for pointing this out.

Diary Of The Dead

Romero made two- perhaps three- of the greatest horror movies. Night of the Living Dead revived the genre. Dawn of the Dead is a huge, outrageous, deliriously funny masterpiece. Day of the Dead (about which critics differ) is almost unbearably tense. The next entry- Land of the Dead- which saw him working with a proper Hollywood budget and star actors- is a bit of a let down. In the latest in the series- Diary of the Dead- he returns to his gonzo, low-budget roots with a movie that purports to have been stitched together by a bunch of students on the run. He's not ahead of the pack any more- and he's borrowing other people's ideas rather than innovating (Blair Witch got there first) but he's still the master. Diary has the clunk factor that was always a part of the Romero aesthetic- and the preachy voice-over gets to be a pain- but it's nimble, it's scary, it has it moments of great grue- and while it's not on the level of the initial trilogy, it's a worthy afterthought.