My ping-pong story

Plus my weekly shareables: Gary Gulman, Mike Tirico, and a dirtbag queen

A reminder: Next Saturday (Feb. 8) I will be part of the Savannah Book Festival, which has an incredible lineup of authors, including Scott Turow, Colum McCann, Anna Quindlen, my friends Joe Posnanski and Valerie Bauerlein Jackson, and MANY more. I’ll be talking about the making of DOGLAND and whatever else the audience wants to talk about. If you’re in the area, please stop by and say hey.

I should also note that Leopold’s, the famous Savannah ice cream parlor, has named a special ice cream for every author at the festival. Here’s my flavor:

Technically, I know, this is not exactly an ice cream flavor—a pup cup is usually just a little dollop of whipped cream. But, you know, dogs gotta eat. And anyway, there’s a LOT for people to choose from:

The Incredible True Story of the Ice Cream Sandwich is calling my name.

The great Jason Kottke (seriously, go browse kottke.org, a Hall of Fame blog) posted a video the other day with the caption: “I did not think I was going to watch this whole video when I started but I totally did.”

As soon as I saw what I was, I knew I would watch every second.

I played a lot of basketball growing up, a good bit of tennis, anchored first base for some softball teams, was in a couple of regular golf foursomes for a while. But there’s only one sport I ever thought I was good at.

Ping-pong. (Or, as it’s properly known, table tennis.)

I started playing a lot at a summer program before my senior year in high school—there was a vicious game going on pretty much from dawn to midnight, and I got pounded for a while until I built up some skills. Then my freshman dorm at UGA had a game room with three tables. A few of my buddies got into the game, too, and we took turns beating on one another and annoying the guys who were in the middle of a game of Donkey Kong when one of our smashes bounced off their screen.

By the time spring rolled around, I thought I was pretty damn good.

UGA held a yearly campuswide table tennis tournament. It was a two-player event—you played one game of doubles, then two games of singles, best of three wins. I signed up with my friend Bubba Cheek (now a vet in my hometown). Bubba was a real athlete, a quarterback on our football team in high school, and just as good at table tennis as I was. I liked our chances.

We won two or three matches and wound up in the semifinals. That’s when our opponents walked in.

One guy looked sort of like us and was carrying the same type of paddle we were (I bought mine at Walmart). The other guy had tank-top muscles and perfectly fitted shorts. He carried a little gym bag.

Bubba and I watched as he sat down on a bench, opened the bag and pulled out … table tennis shoes.

Until that moment, I had no idea there was such a thing as table tennis shoes.

I turned to Bubba. “Bubba,” I said, “we’re in trouble.”

I’m not sure I even saw half the shots the guy hit. I’m pretty sure I never hit one back. He had crazy backspin on his serve and a hammer topspin forehand. His doubles partner was smart enough to just put the ball in play when it was his turn. The big guy did the rest. We got skunked.

Talking to him later, we found out he had played in the U.S. Open that year.

I still love playing ping-pong whenever I get a chance. But I have never since then clung to any belief that I was actually good.

I say all this to set up this video of the best table tennis points of 2024, and to add two things:

—Every player in this video is 10x better than the guy we played at UGA.

—If you could slow this video down to 1/10 speed, it would probably look like me and Bubba did.

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation on this week’s SOUTHBOUND with Andy Corren, author of the wild-ass memoir DIRTBAG QUEEN, about his redneck Jewish mother and her felonious, squabbling, semi-feral kids. If there’s not a movie—or better yet, a miniseries—made from this book, Hollywood is doing something wrong.

2. My weekly for WFAE was about how counting the homeless of Charlotte turned into finding a homeless man dead on our streets.

3. Two of my favorite people talking: Anna Sale, host of the brilliant podcast DEATH, SEX & MONEY, spoke to comedian Gary Gulman about depression, insecurity, and all the other things that Gary has turned into some of the smartest and most beautiful humor around.

4. My friend Andrea Pitzer wrote a heartbreaking and infuriating story about how her mother bought into the Amway cult—and ruined their family. (The Atlantic)

5. Do you ever wonder how play-by-play announcers seem to have an encyclopedia of trivia and insight at their fingertips in real time? It’s a tremendous skill, and Mike Tirico is one of the very best. Bryan Curtis shows how Tirico gets it done. (The Ringer)

6. I met Pableaux Johnson once, at a Southern Foodways Alliance event a few years ago. We talked for five minutes and it felt like I’d known him forever. The people who really knew him were shattered when he died last Sunday while photographing a parade in New Orleans. Lolis Eric Elie, one of those friends, has a beautiful remembrance. (The Lens)

7. Finished another book this week: Rex Chapman’s memoir IT’S HARD FOR ME TO LIVE WITH ME. It’s an often grim, but ultimately redemptive, look at how Chapman struggled with racist attitudes (as a white basketball star with black teammates and girlfriends) and, later, addiction to opioids. My favorite factoid: as Dell Curry's teammate with the Charlotte Hornets, Chapman did some time as Stephen Curry’s babysitter.

8. British murder series update: We binged (and enjoyed) two short-run series this week … MOONFLOWER MURDERS is a sequel to MAGPIE MURDERS, and has the same double-tracked gimmick of a fictional murder that holds clues to a “real” murder.

9. We also watched THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB, about three enterprising women who set out to investigate the murder of one woman’s neighbor—and then get caught up in multiple killings.

10. MJ Lenderman, who put out one of my favorite albums of 2024 (MANNING FIREWORKS), did acoustic versions of some of his best songs for an NPR Tiny Desk concert. A-plus.
    

    

Upcoming events:

• Feb. 8: Savannah Book Festival (I’m speaking at 2:20 p.m., just before my bud Joe Posnanski)

• Feb. 22: Southern Voices in Hoover, Alabama

• March 30: Distinguished Speaker Series at Lanier Library in Tryon, NC

• April: DOGLAND paperback tour (dates TBA)

Have a great weekend, everybody…

—TT