Like many American males in their 30′s, I am a pretty sporty dude – if, that is, you consider “sporty” sitting on my couch with as few articles of clothing as is possible (which varies wildly depending on who is home), remote in one hand and some kind of alcohol in the other, screaming at the television in response to every victory and/or defeat that I am engaged in witnessing. Which, if you’re an American male in your 30′s who is not currently a professional athlete, that really should be the extent of your participation in “sport.” Otherwise you could end up that particularly pathetic species of male who goes to pubs in a dirt-stained baseball tee with other fat dudes to celebrate totally winning the shit out of that slo-pitch softball game that was literally unwatchable but watched regardless because your wife is just kind of depressed about how fat you’re getting and at least she’s watching you run for god’s sake, even if you’re going to ruin it all by eating a basket of chicken wings that’s going to give you diarrhea that feels like it’s being pumped through you from the gates of hell. I know a guy who tore his ACL playing slo-pitch softball. I’m going to tell you, there is little to be said about an overweight middle-aged man who blew his leg out trotting around second base because he was trying to fart at the same time and is now hobbling around with a 23rd century knee brace on AND crutches because he’s overweight and the leg can’t take it other than “that really could have been avoided, man.”

And so, in keeping with my lot in life, I’ve been watching a lot of tennis lately because it’s French Open time, and, so far, it’s been a pretty great tournament. This week I watched Roger Federer come back from two sets down to steal a win from an obviously belabored Juan Martin del Potro and Novak Djokovic come back from two sets down to steal a win from the entire country of France, when he beat the prodigiously talented and joyfully charismatic Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga – the latter match being a gargantuanly disappointing result, as not only did Djokovic, the most obnoxious #1 player in men’s tennis of seriously ALL TIME, fucking win by narrowly snatching the victory away, he stole from us the opportunity to view the best celebration dance of all time:

Jesus, nothing I do makes me feel like that. I’ve been working on the same 400 words for the last three days [edit: 7 days, now, actually], and when I finally limp this thing out onto the internet I’ll think “thbbpppptt. Thank god that’s done. Now what do I do?” – the typical answer to which is “masturbate!” And, much as I enjoy masturbating, it’s just not really a “triumph of the human spirit” moment. It’s more of a “I hope nobody saw me doing that” kind of thing.

But that is the natural order of things. If we celebrated the mundane victories  – masturbating, cleaning the kitchen, finishing a mediocre blog post, watching THE FUCK out some TV, posting an hilarious status update on Facebook that gets, like, 45 “likes” – the way athletes celebrate winning then there would be way TOO MUCH of this:

And let’s be real: You DO NOT want to be standing in some line to pay some traffic ticket or some shit and every other dude dances away from the clerk like Mr. Tsonga up there. Because for every bullshit thing you get done in your day, there’s two other failures that, because it’s so goddamn boring in the first place you shrug it off and sigh to yourself that you’ll get it done tomorrow.

Of course, if all of it was monetized the way professional athletics is, well – let’s just say that would change everything. EV-ER-Y-THIIINNNGG.

Holy shit the junk I could paid for! I am a supremely talented bowel evacuator. I would make a lot more money than I do now if I got paid for every dump I took throughout the day.

Another thing that I’m really good at? Just letting the kids run around, my shoulders slumped in resignation while they absolutely destroy the house with like crayons and Sharpies and crumbs and half-eaten fruit and shit. But, if I could sponsored for it, well, that’s something I could really throw my shoulders back in pride over. Weekly bonuses for finally freaking out and yelling at the kids to please shut up and fucking sit down and stop dragging the goddamn Cheez-Its out of the box and dumping them all over the couch? That would be a big-ass bonus for me.

You sure as shit would be seeing a lot more of this out of me:

***

Rafael Nadal pretty much mushroom-stamped Novak Djokovic to the clay courts of Roland Garros early this morning. I’m about to drink a beer and read a book. That’s not so bad a day, I guess.