Look out, Jerry Seinfeld. Timo Boll is muscling his way into your turf. Seinfeld, when he gets bored of swimming around like Scrooge McDuck in a giant vault of earnings from his eponymous sitcom, enjoys the simple pleasures in life. Currently, he cherishes the company of collegial comedians, whom he chauffeurs to consume coffee and converse. Seinfeld's Netflix series, the aptly titled "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," features seductive, slow-motion shots of coffee being brewed to fuel the witty banter. Timo Boll (pictured, center), who won a record 13 German national championships before retiring from the event in 2019, is also a self-described "coffee nerd." This week, on his YouTube channel, Boll hosted a kaffeeklatsch with two of his country's finest athletes, Valentin Baus (pictured, left) and Thomas Schmidberger (right). Like Seinfeld's segment, Boll's featured steamy sequences of coffee concoction and consumption. The highly caffeinated "vlog" entry proceeded to a nearby table tennis hall, where Baus and Schmidberger made quick work of Boll, making his debut in wheelchair table tennis. (Just so we're all on the same page here, "vlog" is short for "video blog." "Blog," in turn, is short for "web log." "Web," in this case, refers to the World Wide Web, which you may know or have heard of as the "Inter-Net." The "log" in question is a form of regularly recorded entry, as in a "captain's log." Hence, a "vlog" is short for "video World Wide Web log," a popular form of modern mass media.) Boll's countrymen Valentin Baus and Thomas Schmidberger both won silver medals in the 2016 Paralympics. Baus, owner of a merciless backhand smash for which Boll had no answer, lost to China's Cao Ningning in the men's Class 5 finals. Schmidberger, for his part, failed to decipher the reverse spins coming off the long pips of Feng Panfeng's backhand in the men's Class 3 finals, another China-Germany clash. "He tries to destroy everything what you want to create," lamented Schmidberger with a wry smile. Anyone who has been worn down by the physics-flouting filaments can relate to his frustration. Naturally, both competitive sportsmen are eager to improve on their previous finishes. With the Tokyo Paralympics delayed a year, Valentin Baus and Thomas Schmidberger are taking full advantage of the extra training time. The friendly training session with world #10 Timo Boll certainly does not hurt, even though Boll struggled to keep the ball on the table against the wheeled warriors. "I have a lot of respect [for] what you guys are doing," Boll marveled, likely before retreating to comfort himself with another steaming hot cup of coffee. But seriously, folks, what IS the deal with the vlogs?

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