If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me that they can’t stand Bernard Tomic I’d have,like, 30 dollars. It totally annoys me. I have long been of the opinion that only myself and Belinda Neal are authorised to express unfettered disdain toward total strangers. Who are all these other under-informed and over-opinionated imposters and why do they remind me of nothing so much as those dogs that bring discredit to their entire species by standing and barking witlessly at people and/or inanimate objects? Women handing me change from cash registers tell me they don’t like him. “Why can’t he just keep his mouth shut?’ they say. They shift uneasily on their swollen ankles as my avian, specifically seagull stare penetrates their stinking souls. Their disapproval is without context, and they have ham-hock cankles. I reject their reality. My mother tells me she doesn’t like him. ‘Why doesn’t he smile?’ she says. I do not tell her to look forward to being strapped upright and unattended in an unforgiving chair while pureed corn beef dribbles down her chin later in life because she’s heard it many times now and the threat is in danger of losing its potency so I just bark “HE DOES FUCKING SMILE: AFTER HE WINS MATCHES ON WITS AND GRIT AND WHILE HE IS BEING INTERVIEWED BY JIM COURIER AND JIM COURIER’S SPECTACULAR SWOOSH OF STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE HAIR HE FUCKING SMILES. BESIDES, HE’S OF EASTERN EUROPEAN DESCENT – THEY HAVE POOR DIETS MADE UP OF TERRIBLE CLAGGY FOODS AND WHILE OUR PEOPLE WERE CLEARING BUSH AND RELEASING CRATE LOADS OF RABBITS INTO WHAT WAS LEFT OF IT HIS PEOPLE WERE BEING ETHNICALLY CLEANSED AND RAPED BY COSSACKS WITH A GIDDY LUST FOR ATROCITIES, OR SUCH IS THE COMBINED TOTAL OF MY UNDERSTANDING OF AUSTRALIAN AND BALTIC HISTORY.” Anyway, no matter. Now he lives the Kanye West version of The Good Life, splitting his time between the Gold Coast and Monte Carlo; but don’t worry, Old-Worlders, because his grim odyssey is not over yet - he supports the Titans in what is an obvious nod to ancient ancestral hardships and struggle, and long may it flourish. Speaking of ancient struggles, over in Hollywood Dax Shepard is unhappy that Justin Beiber has moved into the mansion next to him - “The music and the parties and the paparazzi,” Dax reveals. “I mean, it’s like living in Lebanon now.” A provocative claim, but perception is a curious thing. What might represent ‘reality’ to Dax Shepard (he dates Veronica Mars you know) is outright unrecognisable to, like, the less obnoxious and those of us who have the misfortune of not being, like, American. I don’t know. Maybe Tomic’s various neighbours think the same thing, what with the 5:30am spa-bath based brawlings and the revving of high performance luxury cars and the crunch of jack-boots on gravel as police try to gain racially-motivated entry and the assumed explosions of Old Man Tomic because if there’s one thing years of tennis history has shown it is that it really helps to have a paranoid, delusional or manic father in your corner, and that it is best to hang fast to their principles, even to the detriment of your career. Anyway, what a fucking baller - I mean have you ever tried to even clamber out of a spa-bath when you’re out of your mind messy? Remember the attorney in the White Rabbit “I want a rising sound” bathtub scene in Fear and Loathing? It’s not easy, even for the lithe and spry, which you, reader, are probably not. Look at you, right now, wincing even as you shift in your ergonomic executive swivel chair, regretting that attempt at blow-drying your balls in the gym locker room earlier. Don’t you feel stupid!
