Among the many funny things Jeff Borden said during our time as across-the-hall neighbors was his offhand observation about exercise: “I could get into it if I could find one like…oh, like sex. You work a little while, you get a big reward, and then you go to sleep.” Ha ha.

I swam on Sunday for the second time in 72 hours, and reflected that it is the most paradoxical of the three or four workouts I most often do. It’s the one I have to work hardest to show up for, but once it’s over, I feel much better than after boxing, cycling or doing weight work. I don’t know if it’s the shower, or what. I certainly don’t get an orgasm out of the deal. But I always leave feeling not just exercised, but energized.

Then I go home, eat my weight in carbs, and fall into a food coma.

Swam 2,075 yards in 58 minutes, average heart rate 121. Nothing special, but it started the week off right.

Most of the weekend, I worked. I had to file 1,600 words on pickleball, and I now invite you to ask me anything about pickleball, a game I’ve never played. My favorite research was on the war between pickleball players and those who do almost anything else on a court. Pity poor tennis, now eclipsed by what appears to be a goofier form of ping-pong. In Santa Rosa, Calif. in 2021, pickleball courts were vandalized by a deliberate motor-oil spill:

The players also found a profanity-laced note printed on a piece of white paper lying on one of the courts. Its writer threatened to key the cars of any pickleball players who came to the courts, and called tennis players who didn’t do anything to stop the pickleball players “chickens.”

Don’t cross Big Tennis! They don’t mess around!

Then there’s this guy, who squats on handball courts in New York to keep picklers away:

His name is Paul Owens (or maybe Paul Rubenfarb or Paul Rosenberg); he claims to be 97, and his cryptic business card reads “Let’s go dancing,” while listing a variety of genres like “doo-wop” and “1950s red-light mambo.”

All they know for sure is that his life seems to revolve around arriving at the North Meadow Recreation Center as early as 7 a.m., well before Parks Department employees clock in for the day, and just as the earliest pickleball players begin trickling in. That is when he stakes his claim in the middle of the courts and, in a sense, holds the pickleballers hostage. He contends they are taking away space originally devoted to the proletarian sport of handball, historically favored by teenagers of color. (He himself is an ex-handball player, but like many old-timers, he has switched to paddleball, which is more forgiving on the knees.)

To anyone who asks why he insists on ruining the fun, he hands out a flyer in the style of a ransom note that slams “pickleball’s well-off aggressive elite.”

My dad played handball. He often called racquetball “a ladies’ game.” I wonder what he’d think of pickleball. My guess: Not much.

Otherwise, it was a pleasant weekend. J.C. and Sammy are swinging through tomorrow for a brief visit, and I’m very much looking forward to that. Thanks for your comments on my Belle Isle piece, also. I don’t have a lot to add, except that the man with this big idea went on something called the Charter Cities podcast to discuss it. I gather the concept of charter cities is the same as charter schools, i.e., a boondoggle that allows chartered individuals to step outside the law with the promise of innovating their problems away. I expect it will end the way the charter-school movement has, i.e. with wealthy people getting wealthier, the problems remaining and the rest of us, screwed.

Bloggage? A good WashPost dive into the state of the Kennedy Center (gift link):

So what is the Kennedy Center now?

For one thing, it’s getting a Trumpian revamp. He ordered new marble and the repainting of the exterior columns in austere white. Portraits of the first and second couples now hang in the center’s Hall of Nations, and the building exterior is occasionally lit up in red, white and blue (a move that, many staffers joke, makes the building look like the flag of France, not America).

…(Kennedy Center President Richard) Grenell, who directed his staff refer to him as “Ambassador,” quickly began overhauling the center’s leadership. Hires included Roma Daravi, a White House communications aide from the first Trump administration and a former ballerina, as head of the public relations team; and Lisa Dale, a former senior campaign adviser to Trump ally Kari Lake, as the senior vice president of development. He installed the former national chairman of the Young Republicans, Rick Loughery, and his longtime adviser Nick Meade in top roles. None of the three had any previous arts expertise. (Staffers quickly dubbed the trio “The Icks.”) Grenell spends a significant amount of time in California, where he primarily resides, and is rarely seen in the building, staffers say.

Ai-yi-yi. Can’t wait to see the new medals.

OK, time to make some dinner. Have a good week, everyone.