Don’t hate me because your name’s not Coco Brown. Been there, done that, more pleasure than pain on balance, but the source of so much recent material I don’t even know where to begin. Believe me, despite my tendency to mumble her name in public when I should know better than to even bring her up, hating me for it will just lead you around in circles the way my dog chases her phantom tail. Heavy psychic cargo, okay. Spiritual barbed wire. And we’re not talking some hack like that nickle and dime palm reader on Western next to the hundred year old Mexican place where they mash up the quacomole at your table. Nor is this a matter for the crackpot tarot reader who only dresses in black and white like some new age zebra and hangs out on Fairfax in front of the Wells Fargo ATM. I’d do better listening to what my dog has to say when it comes to Coco Brown, but the big white furball with her tail chopped off is not really the issue here either. So let me just finish this cup of tea and collect my thoughts for a sec before I get to the point. Got this cool hot-water bottle like boiling thing I recently picked up in Taipei that is the bomb. Making the tea is now as much about firing up this little rocket launcher as it is drinking it, which finally brings me around to what I’ve been getting at: Patrick McEnroe gets on my fucking nerves. Not sure why. The guy is nice enough. Well spoken, polite, plays by the rules. Doesn’t fornicate in public. No DUIs or drug busts that I’m aware of. Former Davis Cup Captain. Loves America. Steady gigs on ESPN as well as CBS, where he soldiers through the insufferable Mary Carillo and plays that brother, John, card just about right. Hats off to his striped tie and blue blazer, but he still bugs the shit out of me. Maybe it’s his habit of babbling on about “champions” and over quoting the Boris Beckers of the world with respect to cliches like “the fifth set in a grand slam is all about heart.” Truer words may have never been spoken, but speak a few of your own once in a while, P-Mac. Just because you say something more than once doesn’t mean you thought of it yourself. Oldest trick in the book, but in getting back to Coco Brown, not a clue other than it’s just one of those names that sets you off in all directions. You do know what I mean, or you wouldn’t be here saying it to yourself now either.