US Open 2007: On Court Fashions

With the US Open now a few days old, most of the players have debuted their latest on-courts fashions.

Roger Federer rocked his all black looked for his first evening match of the tournament. This is the first time I have seen Roger wear black, and he looked good. His shorts were like a tuxedo pant with the satin strip down the side.


He always seems to look classy when he is on the court. Everything is fitted with no excess material flapping in the breeze. I heard a rumor that there is a jacket to go along with look, but I think that would have been overkill. To top off his look he has a black patent leather bags.


I, personally, wouldn't rock the bag, but I would definitely wear everything else he wore. I think I will have to rethink my outfit for an upcoming tournament.

Serena Williams is keeping it simple this year with a black dress with a hot pink strip around the bust line.

I think she just saw what Bethanie Mattek was wearing. (see below)
It this is very demure look for Serena ... remember the cat suit? I was loving the outfit until I saw that Ana Ivanovic were almost the same thing at the 2007 French Open.


The design of the outfit is a bit different, but the hot pink stripe makes it too similar. Serena hasn't debuted her day outfit yet because she had two night matches. I wondering if will be a pair of shorts.

Speaking of shorts, Venus Williams has been wearing her own line of tennis clothing called eleVen from Steve and Barry's.


Her day outfit consists of a pair of short-shorts, with a fitted polo with poofy (I don't know actual fashion term for it) sleeves. I like it because she has the body for it. The night outfit, on the other hand, I am not liking so much.


When I first saw it, I thought it was two pieces, then I realized it was just one piece. It looks like a throwback to the 70s Women's Virginia Slims Tour.


I loved the Diane von Furstenberg designs for Reebok Venus wore in 2003 and 2004. I like the color, but not the outfit. Hopefully, there will be another night outfit to make me forget about this one.

Maria Shriek Sharapova debuted "the red dress" (coral, actually) this past Tuesday.


It's okay. I don't love it, but I don't hate either. The Swarovski crystals seem to be a bit too much. What I REALLY hated about the outfit was the jacket she had the nerve to wear.


Sheer sleeves? ... really!?!? What the hell were you thinking? But at least she can take solace in knowing that she wasn't the worst dressed person playing.

That honor goes to Bethanie Mattek:


Really?!?! Gold lamé??? I seriously have no words.

Finally, what's with all the guys wearing the same Nike outfit?






Donald Young, Feliciano Lopez, Max Mirnyi, Tomas Berdych, John Isner, Frank Dancevic and Nicolas Devilder all forgot to call one another before deciding on what to wear.

How embarrassing.

Sources: AP Images, www.dvf.com, downthelinetennis.com, Yahoo! Sports

I Will Make A Fool of You .... TOP THAT!

I was singing (well...rapping) "Top That!" in the shower yesterday for some strange reason. I remember watching Teen Witch with my best-friend from elementary school in his basement, and dozens of times on HBO over the years. Even thought I haven't seen the movie in years, I still know 95% of the words. So when I found this online today, I had to post it.

Teen Witch, for me, was like Showgirls at the time I saw it. It was so bad, that it was so good. I still can't believe that this movie got a PG-13 rating considering that there is a sex scene and a scene where 10 variants of the word penis (in rap form)is used. I never heard of the word "schlong" until I saw this movie.

My second favorite song of the movie, "I Like Boys":


I love it when people randomly start dancing and singing in unison for no apparent reason.

US Open 2007: My Predictions

The US Open has begun, and it hard to determined who will come out the winners. But I have made my predictions:


Men's Winner: Roger Federer
Reason: I really think Roger has the tools to win another US Open title, but after the lose to Novak Djokovic at the Rogers Cup in Montreal, Quebec a few weeks ago, I am not sure if he is match fit. He won against James Blake in Cincinnati, OH but the only really competition he had was Llyeton Hewitt. I have my fingers crossed.


Women's Winner: Venus Williams
Reason: With a big serve and a powerful ground strokes, she is the the favorite to win on the fast hard courts of Flusing Meadows. Her only challenge will come in the Quarterfinals when she may meet up with Maria Sharapova.

I made a friendly wager regarding my predictions ... hopefully I will win. I got shoes to buy.

13 days later ....

I am alive and well, just have been really busy with a bunch of things. I will give a brief rundown of what I have done since I last posted.

Parties: Pool party, House-warming party, Tennis viewing parties
Going to the Movies: The Bourne Ultimatum, A Death at a Funeral, Hairspray
Watch TV shows on DVD: House, M.D - Season 2, Footballers' Wives - Season 1

I have been also working a tennis tournament website which required me to build a online registration system using PHP and MySQL. It has been a while since I've coded so it took a bit of time but it is finally up and running.

Speaking of tennis, I had a tournament August 10-12 and I ended up placing 2nd. I lost to a guy that beat me once before. His style of play frustrates me which causes me to commit a lot of unforced errors. I have 4 tournaments scheduled between now and December, so I have tighten up my game so I can end my 3.0 career on a high note before I move up to 3.5 in January.

I return to regular posting this week and hopefully finish my Road Trip 2007 posts. In order to finish them, they will be shorter with less detail. I will just get to the good stuff.

So I am fine (for those who were worried) and doing well.

I may have a new crush developing but I am not quite sure if there is any interested on his part. There is something keeping me from exploring it further: he's in the military. This guy invited me and a select few to a pre-Labor Day BBQ. So I will test out the waters.

Road Trip 2007 : Day 5 (From San Diego to Los Angeles)

Our last day in San Diego, we planned on going to the San Diego Pride Parade but after no luck find a parking spot, I finally gave up and made the decision to bypass the parade altogether and head directly to Los Angeles.

Half way to LA we stopped in Oceanside, CA for food. We walked along the pier and finally stopped at a Bubble Tea. After a croissant breakfast sandwich from Crepes Up! and peach flavored tea, we got back on the road.

We finally reached the outskirts of the LA and we hit TRAFFIC. The traffic jam added about 30 minutes to our travel time but we finally made it to our hotel in downtown LA. Not before getting lost due to Google Maps faulty directions. The hotel was nice, but the thing that I hate is when you shell out big bucks for a hotel AND THEN you don't have free wi-fi Internet access in your room. Why is that? Anyway ... we checked in, freshened up, and headed to Hollywood.

More traffic later, we finally made it to Hollywood & Highland Center right next to the Kodak Theatre.


We exited the mall and headed to the Graumans's Chinese Theatre. The plan was quickly abandoned when we saw of all of the tourists. It was so jammed packed full of people that I began to feel claustrophobic that I had to get out of there. We stopped at a local drug store for water and we began to walk down Hollywood Blvd. to Sunset (Strip) Blvd. We thought were heading toward the gay area but we obviously going the wrong way. I did want to ask for direction to the "gay area," for obviously reasons. But my friend had no shame and we got back on course and we were in the gay area in about 10 minutes.

The gay strip in West Hollywood was an experience considering it is so much bigger than the gay strip in Dallas. The guys, on the other hand, were so generic in LA. It seems like everyone looked the same but in a different race. It was weird. We took a break at a bookstore, and I noticed a woman reading the new Harry Potter book with a cup of Pinkberry. I asked where the nearest Pinkberry was and she pointed me in the right direction.

Before entering Pinkberry, the doorman greeted me (yeah...they have a doorman) with a "Welcome to Pinkberry!" and I had to figure out what the hell was Pinkberry so I could make an order. I thought it was ice cream but it actually some kind of frozen yogurt treat. I got a green tea with raspberries, blueberries and chocolate chips. It was weird, yet delicious.

We made our way back to the Hollywood & Highland Center three hours after we started, and the crowds were still huge. On our way to the food court I saw someone familiar. I have seen him somewhere but I wasn't sure where ... until it hit me.

Okay ... I am going to ask you not to judge me when I reveal how the person was. Thanks!

I recently watched a documentary called Mr. Leather, that Rich wrote about on his blog FourFour. I really liked it, but Rich ... not so much.


His name was Gannon Grey. Gannon was walking in front of us in a "Butch Bear" long-sleeve t-shirt and I excitedly I told my friend who was. I know the guy wasn't "famous" but I still excited. My friend told me that I should go talk to him but I couldn't work up the nerve to introduce myself, so I decide to stalk (in a good way) him a bit further. After he got himself a cookie/ice-cream treat from Nestlé and took a seat in the middle of the food court, I decided to make my move. I casually walked up to him and asked if he was from the documentary, which he confirmed my identification, and we chatted for a minute. I was a wreck. He was very nice to indulge me. He was much more handsome in person than in the documentary. He was a bit more grey and thinner, but handsome nonetheless. This even made me more nervous, so I decided not to ask to take a picture with him because I had to get out of there before I made a lost it.

We walked around the mall a bit more before heading Santa Monica Beach.


Santa Monica Beach was fun ... scary, expensive, cold ... but fun.

We had dinner at the Third Street Promenade were we had to wait almost and hour for pizza. It took about 20 minutes before our waiter even greeted us. We were not happy about our service.

We heading back to the hotel and crashed for the night.

Road Trip 2007: Day 4 (San Diego Con't)

We slept in late, and then had breakfast at the hotel. We were supposed to have a free continental breakfast, but they ran out of food. I don't know how, but they did. So we had to order from the menu and given a 10% discount. After breakfast we set out to walk around the downtown area.

Our first stop was Horton Plaza, which is a mall in the center of downtown.


The mall was as beautiful as it was confusing to navigate within it.

From there we headed south toward the bay and the Gaslamp Quarter. I saw tennis courts on top of the convention center and I tried to get there to view the conditions and to see if I could rent a court. Unfortunately, the courts were for guest staying at the Marriott. But I was able to get this picture:

photo coming soon

We walked to PETCO Park where the San Diego Padres play. I confused it with the stadium where the San Francisco Giants play because I know very little about baseball. I thought about going to a games because there was a lot of hoopla about a tribute to Tony Gwynn. We decided against it and continued our walk for a couple more hours before heading back to the hotel for some rest.

Our next stop was the San Diego Zoo:


This is the view from the Skyfari, which I was keen on taking but regretted it soon after because we were up so high. I have a fear of heights, y'all.

The zoo was nice, but most of the big cats were sleeping because it in the middle of the afternoon. We did a bus tour of the park and I got some good shots of the animals from my vantage point.


My friend told me that his friends urged him to visit the San Diego Zoo because it was one of the best zoos. I only found it okay. I think the Toronto Zoo was much better, but the last time I was at a zoo was 12 years ago.

Back to the hotel for a change of clothes and then off to dinner in Little Italy.

We walked from our hotel to a place called Zagarella Italian Restaurant, and had dinner on their terrace. Our waitress was nice, yet forgetful, but it didn't spoil our dinner. During the course of our meal there was their guy (which I assumed was Eastern European) pacing next to our table on the terrace. I thought the was an escort, but I can't confirm that because I didn't ask. We finished our meal, and then walked to Extraordinary Desserts for, what else, dessert. I got Gianduia (description: Myer's Rum laced chocolate cake layers are married with hazelnut buttercream, chocolate mouse, and boysenberry perserves.) It was delicious.

Back to the hotel for digestion and sleep.

More San Diego Zoo pictures: here