Bird’s Eye: The bird’s eye is closed, as it can’t bear to watch Rollerman. But the urban skiing (edited from a longer film) is well worth looking at, and the Peking Circus is simply unbelievable. Tennis isn’t considered an extreme sport, but the Wallace piece is one of the finest sports pieces I’ve read, and the way Federer plays is pretty extreme. (Comes with many footnotes, for all you Infinite Jest fans who are going through withdrawal.)
* JP Auclair Urban Skiing Video
Extreme sports at its best: amazing “Rollerman” Jean Yves Blondeau blasting high speed on mountain roads!
* Peking Circus – Juggling On A Unicycle via The Presurfer
Go on, try this at home. Be sure to send us the videos….
* Roger Federer as Religious Experience David Foster Wallace New York Times (2006)
There are three kinds of valid explanation for Federer’s ascendancy. One kind involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. The others are more technical and make for better journalism.
The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. Good analogues here include Michael Jordan,who could not only jump inhumanly high but actually hang there a beat or two longer than gravity allows, and Muhammad Ali, who really could “float” across the canvas and land two or three jabs in the clock-time required for one. There are probably a half-dozen other examples since 1960. And Federer is of this type — a type that one could call genius, or mutant, or avatar. He is never hurried or off-balance. The approaching ball hangs, for him, a split-second longer than it ought to. His movements are lithe rather than athletic. Like Ali, Jordan, Maradona, and Gretzky, he seems both less and more substantial than the men he faces. Particularly in the all-white that Wimbledon enjoys getting away with still requiring, he looks like what he may well (I think) be: a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light.
