It’ll be a long night here, as Crankenstein requested we watch part two of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I couldn’t tell you its running time (naturally, she’s partial to the extended edition), but even if it was only 90 minutes it would feel like six hours, just as part one did last night. To think she’s never seen a single Godfather film but has racked up double-digit viewings of Mordor and Orcs and homoerotic hobbits is as strange to me as my annual viewings of depressing David Sutherland PBS documentaries must be to her.*
The TV remote was in my custody this morning — and Crankenstein was out for a run — as Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Świątek met in Rome’s Italian Open final two weeks after duking it out in Madrid. Gone was the sensational suspense of their three-setter in Spain; Świątek’s dominance was such that she suffocated Sabalenka, as Andy Roddick aptly described it, from the start. In doing so she became the third WTA player in history to complete what is alternately known as the Dirty Double or the Dinara Double (the latter referring to Dinara Safina, the first to accomplish this feat).
Not only did Świątek out-slug the Belarusian brute, which is no small task, her already phenomenal footwork has been insane during this clay-court swing. Imagine being able to move like this — or having to play against it. In her runner-up speech, the always amusing Sabalenka vowed to seek revenge in Paris; before lifting the trophy (again barren of tiramisu), Świątek playfully addressed that challenge. If I worked at ESPN I’d ask the two to film “The Coupe is Mine,” a takeoff of Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy is Mine,” ahead of Roland-Garros, with the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen as their love interest.
* The Farmer’s Wife is the cream of the crop, one of the best American documentaries ever made. I couldn’t find it on YouTube but you can currently stream it on Amazon. And here’s the obligatory reminder that I’m an Amazon affiliate, a mandatory disclosure that makes the arrangement sound more lucrative than it is. Every now and then someone buys Storm Warning on DVD or rents the Jean-Smart’s-husband-is-gay movie and I earn a commission of 50 or 60 cents. None of it puts a dent in my hosting costs, and as you’ve probably noticed I prefer writing about movies that are free to watch anyway.