Nostalgia can be a strange thing because there are so many possible targets for fond memories. A scent half-remembered from a childhood summer dream. A snippet of a song floating on the breeze. A time before you ever heard someone described as “the Ryan Seacrest of pickleball.” It’s a magical thing.
This reflection presents you a new piece in The Hollywood Reporter this weekend, which everyone involved assumed would be a slow News weekend because it’s about Jamie Foxx’s private, wild pickleball parties. (You know what pickleball is, right? We’re 40 and we’ve heard of it, so we’re assuming we were the last to know.) Foxx is apparently just crazy about the sport, has started selling his own line of very expensive racquets, built himself a three-court complex on his Los Angeles estate, and regularly hosts parties for 400 people that feature, quote, “influencer-led cardio classes, swimming, a taco truck, a full bar, and a DJ.” The article’s prominent representative is the aforementioned “Seacrest of pickleball,” former college tennis player Matt Manasse, a man we only know two things about: He’s the kind of person who unironically says, “You never know when Jamie Foxx’s pickleball party is going to be, but when you get the DMs or texts, you know you’re in for something special,” and he’s the Ryan Seacrest of pickleball.
(If it sounds like we’re totally fixated on this sentence, that’s because we are. What does it mean? mean? Does he host pickleball competitions where rude Brits criticize your skills? Is he constantly on the radio talking about pickleball? Does he aspire to one day become the Dick Clark of pickleball? We live in furious amazement at these fanciful notions.)
The THR Piece could not cite Strictly speaking famous people (including Foxx) about the parties, but it talks to a prominent pickleball racket seller who wants everyone to know that pickleball apparently The The secret to good Hollywood marketing right now. “When you get good at pickleball, you never know who you’re going to meet… The doors to the pickleball courts are opening fast.” Chill!
We cannot in good conscience recommend that you read the article – it drove us crazy and made us Ryan Seacrest, who uncovers arcane, horrifying secrets about the doors that opened pickleball for us into the walls of our tiny cells — but if you do, be aware that you’re about to learn that Matthew McConaughey sells what he calls “the official tequila of pickleball.” We don’t know what to do with this information; we’re kind of glad that Jamie Foxx is doing so well that he’s way too interested in all this shit; we don’t know what to do with any of this at all.
