As Far As You Know

Nice to see the top four men in the world have made it through to the semifinals of the French Open, setting up what should be a spectacular series of showdowns ahead. Nadal, Federer, and Murray all won quarterfinals without the loss of a set. And Djokovic didn't have to set foot on court, advancing to the penultimate round with a walkover. So on Friday, five-time Paris champ Nadal will face Murray, who gave him a good test on the clay at Monte Carlo in April. And Djokovic--still unbeaten in 2011--will meet Federer, who appears to be in excellent clay court form.

Less than 24 hours after his triumph on the terre battue in Paris, Rafael Nadal was in East London today, getting accustomed to the greensward of Queens Club for the Wimbledon tune-up tournament there. Pretty quick turnaround from the end of the clay court season to the start of the brief grass court campaign!

A dramatic match for the French championship, with an in-form Roger Federer mounting a game challenge, at least through the first three sets. Two key turning points in the match: a barely missed drop shot by the Swiss player which would have locked up a 6-2 first set for him, and Nadal rebounding from a 0-40 deficit on serve in the first game of the fourth set, having just surrendered a lead in the third set to let his opponent back in the match. Good stuff!

My iPad and Kindle are loaded with a digital "stack" of books, patiently awaiting the expanse of summer so that I can work my way through it. Looking forward to tackling some of these titles!

Took a few kids to see the midnight premiere of X-Men: First Class at the local multiplex tonight and was pleasantly surprised at how good this film is. Lots of treats for the fanboys were included, but also a fast-moving and dramatic storyline set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis that appeals to those who didn't grow up on comics.

I digested all of Steve Jobs' keynote address from earlier today, in which he unveiled new operating systems for the Mac ("Lion") and iOS (version 5) as well as iCloud, Apple's new approach to syncing digital media, software, and data. Lion and iOS 5 are full of incremental improvements, some of them pretty dramatic jumps forward. It all looks pretty spiffy, of course, and instantly unleashes a new wave of tech lust! Apple has raised the bar once more and its competitors will be scrambling to stay in the game.

I woke up this morning and received a notification that the new Sports Illustrated issue was available for download (I am a print subscriber, so I have free access to the electronic edition via the iPad app). So a few minutes later here I am reading the French Open wrap-up before even getting out of bed!

Saw this somewhere on the 'Net and thought it was a good prescription for June, July, and August:

ESPN3 is offering terrific Wimbledon coverage over the Internet to supplement the traditional on-air programming on ESPN2. While away from the television, I can sit in my office and take my pick of virtually any court at the All-England Club and have a match--or up to four matches, in fact--on as I work. Since I moved a 27" iMac to my office desk, I can do other things on my MacBook Pro while the tennis plays in the background. Commentary is pretty solid, too, with the likes of John McEnroe and John Lloyd covering some of the men's matches.

Here is a screenshot from a few minutes ago:

Ah, jet lag! Got home to Wallingford a bit after 6pm last night. Intended to head out for dinner and perhaps catch the new Green Lantern flick, but I crashed in my bed with the lights on by 6:30 and slept straight through for the next nine hours!

Since I was on the other side of the Atlantic when Green Lantern came out stateside, I knew the movie had been getting mixed reviews, so I watched it tonight (in 2D, by the way) with appropriately lowered expectations. Good thing. The film is no great shakes, but not as horrible as some detractors would have you believe. It lacks a bit of heart--which often happens when the real star of the show is CGI visuals. And yet there were some nice touches, too. Maybe this will be like the 1979 Star Trek big screen debut: a set-up for a much better sequel?

Our KLM flight from Vienna deposited our group in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, where I picked up the U.K. edition of Wired, with a pretty interesting cover story on lessons to be learned from Steve Jobs.

Our connection to JFK departs shortly.

A few of us headed out after dinner tonight and stumbled across a block party with bands set up to play at opposite ends of the street. Close to where we settled in for a couple of beers was a Beatles cover band that was awesome. Looking up the band on the Internet back at the hotel later, it turns out that this group--the BlackBirds--is from Hungary!

Turned out to be a great night out in Vienna: an unexpected delight!

Our group headed to the Volksoper tonight to see Bizet's Carmen. Having seen this work performed twice, I briefed the kids--almost none of whom had ever been to the opera before--about what to expect and explained this work would contain a few musical themes they would recognize. (If one is an opera newcomer, Carmen is an ideal first exposure.)

Turns out when we arrived that what we were scheduled to see was a ballet, not an opera. Now I'm sure it's a beautiful art form for those who understand it, but dance is not really my cup of tea. The music in this performance was only loosely based on Bizet's score. So it was disappointing, though there were some striking visual images created on stage.

Spent most of the afternoon exploring The Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna's world-class art history museum, with the treasures of the Habsburgs displayed in a spectacularly beautiful, yet surprisingly comfortable, venue. This may well be my favorite among the major museums of the world, pulling ahead of the British Museum. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman collections here were first-rate. There were couches arrayed in all the rooms displaying paintings, encouraging visitors to take their time to appreciate the art. Among the notable painters represented are Caravaggio, Rubens, Raphael, Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Eck, Durer, and lots of Brueghel.

My favorite painting of the day was Caravaggio's "David with the Head of Goliath."

The TV tower that looms high above what once was East Berlin is the most prominent landmark in the city. Our hotel is positioned adjacent to it, and to Alexanderplatz. This is one of the tallest buildings in Berlin and supposedly was the premier accommodation for visiting dignitaries from the Eastern bloc back in the day.

This morning I watched the HBO documentary "McEnroe/Borg: Fire And Ice" and enjoyed the rarely-seen film clips and photos, as well as excerpts from the NBC feed of the classic 1980 Wimbledon men's singles final. Truly this was the golden age of professional tennis!