Throwback Thursday:  

The Indian Wells tennis tournament is coming up for 2022.  Here’s what it was like pre-pandemic.

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Goddamnit, Indian Wells changed the margarita glasses at the fucking tennis tournament this year.

Who knows why the wife decided we had to have a collection of these cheap-ass, one-use glasses. She liked the phrase “No Fault,” and she had to have them “all.”

Hey, if she is willing to sit in the 90-degree sun for 7 hours, I’ll carry around all the trash she wants. But do we have to take it home, wash it, and pretend like we are every going to fucking use these glasses again? I don’t mind the labor, I’m just allergic to the bullshit.

In 2017, the glasses looked like this. But that’s not glass — that’s a half-assed piece of plastic that I could crush with my pinky.

The wife decided she needed a set of 8 — $12 a pop. Fuck me.

“Hey, I see a bunch of that plastic in the trash, I can just…”

“No fucking way,” she said. “I’m not taking our new glasses out of the trash.”

After 30 years, I’ve learned there is no use arguing over such “logic”. But I guarantee that if I took a few glasses out of the trash, 5 minutes later we would not be able to tell which were “ours” and which were “garbage.”

So we spent the $100 on margaritas in 2017. Damn that day went fast. I can’t remember who played.

We washed those glasses and put them in a cabinet somewhere. Don’t ask me where. I think I saw them come back out once… at one of the Savage gatherings when we ran out of every kind of other glass. The Savages were holding up this take-out plastic shit, and looking at me like “what the fuck is this”? They know better than to poke the wife.

Cut to 2018, and fucking Indian Wells does this to their margarita glasses.

One of these things is not like the other.

I’m not paying the slightest attention. The wife notices right away.

“I guess we’ll have to drink another set this year,” she said. Fortunately, they ran out briefly at one of the bars and she lost interest.

Unfortunately, she re-found the “clothing” tent and spent twice as much on new shirts and shit for me. Notice that green piece of shit I had on in 2017 — $80 a shirt. See that long-sleeve blue thing in 2018 — another $90. And there was a pile of new shirts and a few shorts from both years. Clothes I didn’t need nor want.

“You are lucky I don’t play tennis,” she said. “They have some cute outfits…”

But she doesn’t play tennis, and I got to play the “Shirt Nazi” — no clothes for you, ONE YEAR!

If felt good for a second. Then she fell for the “jorts” (jean shorts for fuck’s sake) for me?

“Let’s see if you like them,” she said.

I could only see the blue material when she first pulled the jorts out and they felt soft and comfortable. But then I saw that light blue cuff or whatever the fuck that was at the bottom…

I usually don’t care what I wear or what it looks like. But if I wore those damn things to the Third World Tennis Club, even Pussy Joe would kick my ass. I had no fucking idea what to say.

Fortunately, wives read minds. Or maybe she noticed the disgust and depression that covered my face like a burka.

“OK, OK, I’ll take them back,” she said. She did. But she came back with 3 more shirts. Fuck me.

Before I buy tickets for next year, I’m going to Goodwill and loading up on tennis clothing, and I’m checking to see what their margarita glasses look like. New design, no go. If I want to retire this century, I can’t afford this shit again.