Tenni(y)s Week

There are examples of professional athletes and entertainers conspicuously doing the right thing, so I'm not here to claim that the event we're here to discuss is entirely unique. But it's on the rarer side of the grilled meat of sporting meals. I'm jumping on zman's beat to celebrate sportsmanship in the face of frustration and the worst pain there is.

Tennys* Sandgren is a modestly-successful American professional tennis player. He's earned more than $3.3m in his ten-year pro career, even reaching a pair of Aussie Open quarterfinals. He's been ranked as high as 41st in the world, and sits today just outside the top 100. Which explains the setting for today's story.

* Sandgren is named for his Swedish grandfather, and kinda didn't have a choice about his career path.

He was the top seed at this weeks ATP Challenger event in Cary, North Carolina. The Challenger Tour is one step below the main tour, kinda like AAA tennis. Sandgren faced fellow American Christopher Eubanks in the first round. Sandgren broke Eubanks to start the match, then faced deuce in the second game.

We'll let Sandgren take it from here:

So tonight I got hit in the nuts by a ball kid toss with a little too much mustard, slapped the wayward ball into the fence, which collided with a refs tushy as he was walking to the other side, resulting in a default.
How’s your evening going? 😂 pic.twitter.com/Tqe7lOkCLy

— Tennys Sandgren (@TennysSandgren) September 15, 2021

He followed that Tweet up with another that read, "And just to be clear, this was all totally my fault."

In addition to defaulting the match against Eubanks, Sandgren was forced out of the doubles event, as well. Costly nut shot, but Tennys Sandgren earned some fans by being accountable and even having a little fun at his own expense. He even earned a Twitter follow from me. Which has gotta be worth something.

Here's video of the entire very short match - the action that matters happens at about the 1:20 mark:

Audience Participation

Big day for our pal Whitney. He's purchased the frozen peas. He's consulted his doctor. He's still got oats to sew, but as of this morning, no more seed. And to help him through, we commissioned a playlist.

Or at least the beginnings of one. You, the good people of Gheorghe: The Blog, get to add to this to your hearts' desire. Be kind, but be amusing.











zed man wanted something sexy, so here we are:

















All yours, friends. Let's send our friend's, um, friends off in style.

Beware Swedes Bearing Catalogs

It's been quite a week for Swedes. Henrik Stenson and Jonas Blixt played in the penultimate group at the PGA Championship. Zlatan Ibrahimovic pulled an epic pout in Paris Saint-Germain's Ligue 1 opener against Montpellier. And the White House announced that President Obama will head to Stockholm in September instead of Moscow.

The President would be well-advised to prepare himself for what he might find. Our investigative reporters have spent the past several minutes digging into a trio of stories that suggest that the normally benign Swedes may be quietly working on plans the likes of which even Dr. Evil might find audacious.

As most Swedish plots must, this one begins with IKEA. The video below purports to show the ingenious way the furniture giant is using mobile technology to enhance the shopping experience. Using a new IKEA app, consumers can superimpose any piece of the company's furniture into their own room. In and of itself, this is a brilliant piece of marketing magic.

 

But here at G:TB, we don't take such things at face value, because we have active imaginations and often too much time on our hands. The Huffington Post reported last week on a Swedish lab's announcement of the creation of a new form of magnesium carbonate, dubbed an 'impossible' material.

Named Upsalite, the new material is extremely porous, and likely to be extremely efficient in absorbing moisture and controlling toxins from industrial accidents. 


"So IKEA has a new way to control manufacturing tolerances," you say. And you'd be right. It's the final piece of the puzzle that's so terrifying.

DO NOT BE DISTRACTED!

The National History Museum of Denmark has warned of the presence of pacu off the coast of Southern Sweden. (It's noteworthy that we're forced to rely on the Danes for this bit of news - obviously, the Swedes are trying to hide something.) Though pacu sounds like something from a dirty Irish-Italian version of Pokemon, the truth is far less amusing. The 25cm member of the piranha family is known for its attraction to a certain portion of the male anatomy.

“The pacu is not normally dangerous to people but it has quite a serious bite, there have been incidents in other countries, such as Papua New Guinea, where some men have had their testicles bitten off,” said Henrik Carl, a fish expert at the Danish museum, speaking to The Local, an English-language newspaper in Sweden. “They bite because they're hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth,” he told the paper.

That last sentence may well be the most chilling in the history of the written word.

So let's consider what we've learned. The Swedes have mastered teleportation. They've developed an ability to control moisture levels to a very precise degree. And they've bred testicle-devouring superfish. While we've been distracted by their beautiful women and friendliness, they've built a doomsday machine the likes of which the world has never seen. Millions of tiny yellow and blue ball-chomping fish may soon rain into living rooms and men's grills across the United States, if we don't stop them.

President Obama, you're our only hope. You, and Iron Balls McGinty.