We interrupt your regular scheduled 2010 wrap-up for a brief service announcement…

What if the ATP top 5 were forced to wear elf costumes, make funny faces, and dance to a discofied Christmas tune? Well now you know… sort of.

From the ATP top 5, as well as Ana and myself, have a fantastic, safe, and generally tennis-free holidays everyone.

I feel like I’m a bit late to the show here, like saying “Rafa winning the USO was huge” or “the fall of the Berlin wall is going to be a significant historic event”. But screw it.

THIS IS THE GREATEST THING IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY.

Ahem.

There’s 300 views on this thing. Get on it people.

“This is good stuff, I think.”

“This way, this way, move like this.”

Indeed, Pico. Indeed.

Delpo kicks it off against Oli Rochus, presumably on Tuesday. I can’t wait. Can you tell?

Couple vids up of Rafa who has been practicing with buddy Marc Lopez back home. He leaves for Toronto on Thursday and is doing the draw in the CN Tower on Friday. Win! He practices a whole bunch of random stuff, and it’s cool to see, especially if you need your Rafa fix.

Thanks to Your One Stop Shop For Rafa, NadalNews.

Big ups to Tiggy on his fantastic piece about the movie The French, based on events of the 1981 French Open.

He makes the great point that tennis movies, in theory, are stupid. With other sports movies, they can often focus in on the specific things one player, or group of players does on a team. Take football for example. Unless you’ve played in the NFL, no one really knows what it looks like deep down in the trenches, or exactly what goes on in huddles. You can pull that off in a movie. Tennis, not so much. It’s a personal sport, and both players are always being filmed. It can also feature a competitive explosiveness that would be difficult (and perhaps a tad silly) to act. To be honest, it’s kind of why I hate sports movies. Why not just watch real sports and wait for the actual moments to happen with athletes, not actors. It’s a bit silly to try and recreate it.

Which is why this video really caught my eye. The shooting of it is entirely cinematic, with ground level shots and isolated video of Conners and J-Mac, something you would expect from a Hollywood movie.

It’s also super cool to see a really young looking J-Mac and follow his trades and reactions piece by piece, and it really captures the atmosphere of the match (yes, French fans were just as ridiculous 30 years ago).

Anyway, just thought I’d share for the 2 people who don’t regularly read his stuff, or might have skipped over it. There’s lots of other links on youtube to other pieces from the movie, be sure to check ‘em out. Gotta love the lines too.

“It would make me feel a lot better to not have you in the chair”…

And my personal fave: Mac, after bitching and wanting someone to check out the court, gets the chair to call, and he let’s out a “I appreciate it. OK.” in typical Mac fashion as if to say “well, finally”. Classic.

They’re baaaaaack…

Haha, Caro KOing someone. Funny idea. Though the girl does have some serious pipes. By far the best one:

Wait for the end. Nails it. No more “it must be love” though. Maybe cause Delpo and Kim won it last year. And yes, Mel Oudin has one.

If you don’t find this at least mildly entertaining, cute, or heart-warming, you officially have no soul.

There’s been lots of epic RG karaoke vids this year, including Kuz, Sod, Jo and Muzz. But this is by far the best one. I laughed pretty damn hard. This deserves a spot on the blog.

See guys? Not being a homophobe can actually get you girls… in a strange, semi-backwards kinda way. Also, Vik totally looks like Thomaz with that wig and the epic tan. Just throwing that out there. Nole’s best impression yet. I was pretty sure that was the actual Shakira for the first half of the video.

Great (long) interview in Spanish with Rafa, where he looks and sounds about a thousand times more comfortable than when speaking in English (probably helps that the inteviewer seems cool). He discusses everything from Ferru and him watching football during the rain break in Rome, how the whole Shakira thing happened, and why he’s playing Madrid this year.

This is epic awesome. I’m a little biased, since Troy is one of my fave football players… but the Masha thing totally makes it worth it. And P-Mac. Nike knows what’s up y’all. And by that, I mean: brilliant marketing job.