|
"screw you guys, I'm going home..." I didn't even bother shedding a tear this time. What was that song, "Everyone seems to know the score, they've seen it all before..."? I still hid in the kitchen during the shoot-out, though. I caught Steve McLaren looking over at Big Phil Scolari, thinking, "so that's why they gave hime the job ahead of me," while Sven (telepathically) pointed out, "yes, well this is why he didn't take it, too." As for Rooney, well, he may as well have kicked me in the nuts. Any guesses on the tabloid headlines tomorrow? Sven will Roo the day he ledt Defoe behind. At least Brazil, with their Two Ronnies, were also sent packing. Perhaps now the planet-wide arse-kissing of Brazil will stop for a while. This wholesale "they will win it, they're so good, I love them" rubbish was exactly what we heard in France four years ago (by the way, I'm still laughing about that, all this time later). Mystic Pete, who up until yesterday was looking pretty spot on (I was considering becoming my alter-ego full-time), has been shattered, to a point (I still think Germany will win it, and I was right about England getting knocked out on penalties, though I think even Mystic Meg could have predicted that).
And now I'm watching baseball, the Dodgers vs the Angels, an all-LA clash. It's so wierd; players actually aren't falling over clutching their face whenever someone else runs past them; it's so different, this sport, I can't get used to it. See you in four years; what's the odds Sven will be managing South Africa or someone?
|
|
|
1.7.06 22:25 |
|
|
Week Forty: America's Birthday I'm glad England doesn't have a birthday. What would I get it? A World Cup, perhaps? They wouldn't look after it; they lost the last one, and had to rely on a dog to find it. (Perhaps they should have a dog to manage the team, even a chihuahua would have had the sense to put more than one striker up front.) What's more, what with the whole 'United Kingdom' thing, you couldn't get a present for England and leave out Scotland or Wales, it really wouldn't be fair. Still, at least a national birthday would give the English something to do with all those St.George's flags they took down after Rooney trod on Portuguese balls. Today was the Fourth of July; in fact it's on the same date every year. Also known as Independence Day (I think it was named after a famous sci-fi movie; I wish there was a Star Wars Day as well). Over the past few days we have partaken in the barbecues, the cold beer, the discounted shopping, and, tonight, the fireworks. Hundreds (possibly millions, I can't count in the dark) gathered as the sun set in the Davis Community Park, seated upon towels, deck-chairs or just the plain old grass, as if waiting for the Mother Ship to play them a bit of Jarre. The exploding colours began immediately, accompanied by no music (though local radio stations apparently play a soundtrack you can listen in on with headphones). The funny thing about fireworks is that sometimes, even if you're unimpressed generally, you feel compelled to say 'wow,' and wonder at how the designers managed to get the shape of the explosion just so (well, they've had thousands of years to perfect it, maybe millions, I can't count). I managed to keep my 'Independence for whom?' views to myself as well. I had been a little nervous that, as a Brit, I'd be singled out for attention, them being the enemies in the American Revolution and all. I didn't feel like getting into the whole thing about me having all Irish ancestry, about California being nowhere near part of the US at the time of the nation's inception (it wasn't colonised until much later; in fact, I think it's about time this colony broke away from King George's super-empire, those Federal taxes are not being spent as Californians think they should), about the fact it was the colonists and not the colonised who gained independence (it didn't exactly get better for the Native Americans), or about the fact that most Americans celebrate something that their own ancestors were not part of, because they were immigrants - but that's getting all messed up in Americana, and the psychology of what defines a country's self. I'm not going there. In fact, all I got was a comment on the fact I wore black today. "For us it's a day of celebration, for you a day of mourning!" It took me a few moments to twig that he wasn't talking about Beckham standing down as England captain. "But I always wear black," I mumbled. I think it's just better to let Americans celebrate their day, cheer for their fireworks, go to their sales, enjoy their barbecues, wave (or burn) their flags; at least they know when they were born, even if they divorced their parents. So Happy Birthday America - look at you, you're getting bigger every year.
|
|
|
4.7.06 23:44 |
|
|
atrophy isn't fun So another musical event missed last night, because I'm five or so thousand miles away: mr solo (aka the vessel, of dd&hsw) played a gig in Bethnal Green; haven't the foggiest how it went, but i'll bet it was good fun. His first album as mr solo ('all will be revealed") is 'out' now; download only, y'see. And I've not been able to do so; I've been trying to get it from msn music, and it keeps saying stuff like "could not download". I'm having the same problem with the new david devant album "the lost world of david devant", a collection of previously unreleased oldies. I can't seem to get down with the loading. How frustrating!! I do love vessel's new single, formerly known as 'home sick home', now re-christened 'number one'. I've been humming it to myself since it first appeared many, many months ago; the lyrics pretty much summed up my pre-job Davis existence ("the sun is bright, i wake up early...she packs her bag, i write my blog...there's a look in your eyes that says that i've been staring too hard at the screen''). And they're having a single launch in London too, another thing I'll not be able to go to. Speaking of waking up early and the sun being bright, i did today, full of hope about the Saturday ahead. So far I've washed the dishes and used the new vacuum cleaner. Now it's nearly one, I'm watching a pointless World Cup match for third place, downing my last Sobe (carrot flavour), entertaining thoughts of taking a trip into Sacramento to look at some decent shops. But I might not; it's too hot. Maybe I'll stay in and write a song about it. |
|
|
8.7.06 20:42 |
|
|
que j'ai lu... It's too hot to go outside. I know, because I've just been out with the rubbish (sorry, the garbage). So I'm going to stay in a little longer, and I've decided to add a new category to my blog: 'j'ai lu...'. Since I started reading non-academic and non-medieval books again, I've been determined to write down not only my thoughts about the book, but how long it took me to read it (a good barometer in how much I enjoyed it - was I able to put it down?). I don't know what I hope to achieve with this. The last novel I read was Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke; I finished it a couple of weeks ago. I'll start by writing about that, and then mention a couple of other books I've read since the start of 2006 (such as American Gods, by Neil Gaiman). I might even throw a couple of past bookward entries into this category. Just don't expect the flipping New York Review of Books or anything. |
|
|
8.7.06 21:33 |
|
|
the 'championship' match? I am about to watch the World Cup Final...and I have it on ABC, in English. American English. Have I decided, after a whole tournament of Spanish commentary, to abandon my Mexican freinds? Already I can see why I've preferred the Mexican - the commercials are not even remotely about footy on ABC. It's all about movies and scary news reports. The Mexican adverts are so much better (such as the one about the Mexican guy and his American friend watching the World Cup in a bar; the American - Smith - isn't as ecstatic about the events, so he gets substituted for a hispanic guy named gomez! Wicked!). Oh I don't like this. They had adverts right up to the Italian national anthem, missing the start. If they have adverts during the match, I will freak out. I'm only watching the first half in ingles anyway. I am taping the whole match in espanol. Who do I want to win? I suppose I should want France, having lived there. But I just want the team that dives the least. Unfortunately England are already out. I do have a soft spot for Zidane though - it's his last match ever, too. Allez les bleus? Well, Italy are wearing blue today. France are again in their away kit. My two least favourite shirts of the tournament - France's was designed in an 80s nightclub, Italy's looks like there are permanent sweat-stains beneath the armpits. The commentator keeps calling it "the Championship match". I wish he wouldn't, I really do. And we're off! Half-time: It's 1-1; the penalty looked liked a dive but didn't Zidane take it cheekily?! Mixing the 1976 European championship final Czechoslovakian kick with the temporary 'was it in?' drama of 66. and then the Italians score again with a header - yes, I had to turn it back to the Mexicans for the "gooooooollllllll!!!!!" - the Americans do not get anywhere near as crazy. It's been a good half, so far, with comments from the Americans about "the unpredictable, yes, unrpedictable Fay-bian Barthez" and the fact that Zidane is one of the all-time greats but keeps hitting the deck. 90 mins: I think it'll go to penalties, but it's been a wicked game so far. Zidane went down hurt, but got back on the pitch, yeah! Go team! as they'd say here. And Italy with an off-side disallowed goal, oh dear. 110 mins: WHOAH!!!!!!!! Zidane sent off in his last ever match!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a butt, too. Will he get to lift the trophy? What drama! what did the Italian guy say to him to make him turn? the Americans are all saying, "that was absolutely awful what he did, you don't expect that of him. A player of that stature, his side a man down in the second overtime of the championship game." 120 mins: That's it, 'penales'. No Zidane, no Ribery, no Henry... Italy are at least without Baggio (ahem!). "Eh Bobby," says Thierry, "what's ze French for 'ze only way'?" The End: And so it doesn't matter about Zidane; his stupid reaction may have cost the team the World Cup, what a finish, Italy finally expel the defeat of 94 (and of 2000, too), and despite not being the better team on the day, at least they weren't as dirty (in my opinion), and despite being embroiled in utter corruption back home, they are now World Champions. Four stars. Who would have thought it? Certainly not Mystic Pete.
|
|
|
9.7.06 13:45 |
|
|
"He will walk into that mirror and he will not come out again." Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (by Susanna Clarke)
As soon as I put the book down I was immediately sad, because it was over and I was sure that I would not read another book quite like it again. This book was a one-off – a blend of early nineteenth-century fabulous literature with the modern taste for simple, no-questions-asked magic, and utterly driven by the strength of the characters. Carrying it around was like carrying a brick, but it never weighed me down, and I don’t think I’ve ever thought of a book that was nearly 850 pages long as being far too short. I put it down saying to myself, ‘Pete, I think that was probably the best book you’ve ever read’.
Its power lay in the strength of its characters. Gilbert Norrell, a secretive and jealous old Yorkshire magician who gives himself the grand task of restoring English magic, took on the incredibly likeable and eternally curious Jonathan Strange as his student, only to end up hopelessly in his shadow. Creeping through the shadow of every page was the mysterious historical figure, the Raven King, who ruled northern England centuries ago when magic and fairy-servants were very real and very un-theoretical. Their world, while being the very real world of Wellington, Napoleon and mad King George, was nonetheless an alternate-England, with an elaborate parallel history, played out in chapter-length footnotes.
The consistent use of archaic spellings such as “chuse”, “scissars” and “ancles” was welcoming not only for helping this wannabe time-traveller go back to the time of Dickensian surnames and murky gaslight, but also because I’d recently read a Terry Pratchett book that had been re-edited for the American market by a five-year-old, and was subsequently riddled with so many typographical errors that it resembled a drunken effort with magnetic poetry. Thankfully Clarke’s usage was purposeful, and Bloomsbury USA had opted to leave it all be, even if it means Americans think we spell control with a ‘u’.
I read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell a couple of days after finishing the shorter but much longer American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. I’d been meaning to read Norrell for some time, but my mind was set when I read Gaiman’s lengthy post-novel thank-you notes, which included a shout-out to Ms Clarke, who by that time had not even finished her colossal debut. Gaiman has since referred to Norrell as “unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years.” This is a bit of a shame, really, because it doesn’t leave much that can honestly follow it. So I’ve decided to read something of a different tone, something that I’ve always meant to read but never have, a book which has not an alternate history exactly, but alternate future, Orwell’s 1984. Yet for all the political prophesy of Big Brother and the Thought Police, no literary image has stuck with me as much as when Jonathan Strange stepped out of the mirror and into a Hampstead drawing-room, smiling and bidding his hostess “good evening”. Now I look for the King’s Roads every time I have a shave.
Read between May 9 & June 18, 2006
|
|
|
10.7.06 22:34 |
|
|
Week Forty-One: I'm Gonna Git You, Soccer As the 2006 World Cup blasts away into the history books, everybody’s talking about him. Well, a lot of people are talking about him. A bit. And most of them are foreigners. Yet there is a sense that, for a few shining moments, most people in America know who Zinedine Zidane is, that bald French guy who finished his soccer career by head butting an Italian square in the chest. “This is one Frenchie who doesn’t surrender!” Quite. Of course, now it’s all over, and the brief and unusual connection to the rest of the world’s reality has been immediately replaced with all of the arguments of why they don’t like football/soccer here anyway. My eyes were led to an article on the front of USA Today, that acme of journalism (or is it acne?), entitled “Why the United States doesn’t take to soccer.”
‘Un-American’, ‘Not in our DNA’; let’s face it, footy, the US is Just Not That Into You. But I get the feeling that headlines like this are more of an attempt to reassure worried Americans that their traditional culture base is not under threat from the Sport of the Foreigner. Completely bypassing Budweiser-commercial irony, it is even suggested by one supposed academic that the sport might be accepted if they make some American-friendly changes, such as getting rid of those pesky goalkeepers. But it really does come down to what football does best, and that is simple tribal loyalty – you stick to what you grew up with. As long as the media paints soccer as ‘new to America’ and as the sport of the foreigner, people will never have the same attachments to it as their own sports, with their own long histories. History is important to this tribal loyalty, and many Americans don’t realize that their own country’s World Cup history stretches further back than England, and even current champions Italy. The US came joint-third in the first World Cup, and in England’s first ever appearance, in 1950, they lost – yes, lost – to the Americans. Does the world even want America to be that good at football though? I get the impression outside of the US that football is better off without the ‘American touch’, and that too much American interest could damage the game and turn it into a soulless, corporate-suckling mega-financial madhouse where dollars talk more than loyalty and players care more for massive sponsorships than for trophies (whereas, what we have now, um... ). So why does America always tell itself that it’s on a planet outside the soccer world? It could be because of isolationist issues, let the world do their thing and we’ll do our thing; on the other hand it could be that they secretly want to be on the team, but feel nervous about their chances, not wanting to be the last kid left against the school-yard wall. Before the First World War, the US was not really a player globally, it preferred to be out there on its own. The twentieth century saw America take a centre-stage politically, before ultimately becoming the Brazil of global affairs. If the US takes the same initiatives on the football field as they have on the battlefield, they could dominate (though they’d probably score a lot more own-goals, and you wouldn’t want to be sent off against them, or you may be sent to an off-shore holding camp for ‘red-carded combatants' ). This, I feel, may be an analogy too far (though I know there’s a joke in there about handing out green cards). Let’s just say for now that you watch football, I watch football, let’s call the whole thing off.
|
|
|
12.7.06 22:37 |
|
|
superman est de retour I forgot, we went to see Superman Returns a couple of weeks ago. In short, it was superb. Brandon Routh is such an amazing Superman, he plays it just as I wanted it to be played (ie, just like Christopher Reeve; and he is such a spit for Reeve that it's a shame they couldn't get a more Lois-like Lois). Spacey was a very good, if more sinister, Lex Luthor (Criminal Genius). The story apparently follows on from Superman II, but five years later; no reference is made to earlier events such as Zod or the bizarre things that took place in II and, dear oh dear, IV. But the fact that Luthor went to the Fortress of Solitude, and the fact that Superman and Lois had a thing going on, well, that was in there. How does Superman react to Lois having moved on with her life? Well, he's only Kryptonian. But the fact she has moved on and married none other than Cyclops from the X-Men (whose character is just as much of a pussy), well, Supes, that's gotta hurt, that's gotta be like Kryptonite to the balls. There's a lot of parallel with Superman I, though - in fact in many ways, this is a remake, plot-wise. And with liberal use of the classic original score, as well as the original style opening credits, you are always reminded that this is a Superman movie, not your Lois'n'Clark or Smallville stuff, this is the real deal, with better effects than before. And when Superman actually returns, wow, all I can say is do not see that on a little TV screen from some dodgy pirate dvd you bought off a Chinese woman in Holloway, see it on the Big Screen, pay the extra - it is worth it. Superman holding a commercial aeroplane in the middle of a crowded Baseball stadium - how all-American can you get? I could just feel the post 9-11 US smiling, wishing that superman really would come back, kick a few terr'rist butts and get rid of king george while you're at it. Mind you, there is one bit where he is floating in space, listening to everything on the planet, everybody's conversations, everybody's pleas for help, and you can't help but think that the NSA would love this guy working for them. I did find one scene in particular to be, well, irresponsible. Clark is drowning his sorrows in a bar with Jimmy Olsen (he may have been drinking Kestrel Super, so he should have been on a Burnt Oak park bench). Anyway, he's there getting as drunk as a Kryptonian can, and straight away afterwards he's out there flying. Drinking and flying. FUI. Now come on, Superman, what kind of message is that to give to kids? Buzzed flying is drunk flying too, you know. |
|
|
14.7.06 02:01 |
|
|
aux armes, nos citoyens It's the quatorze of juillet, Bastille Day, so a big bonjour to my French amis. I'm sure you were tous glued to the telly the other night, mes amis, watching the héros national, Zinedine Zidane, apologising to the kids and explaining why he did what he did. His sudden transformation into the X-Men villain Juggernaught came apparently because Materazzi said something about his mum. Well, on the playground, you gotta do what you gotta do, as Kenny Rogers used to say, "sometimes you gotta fight when you're Zidane". It could be that Zizou has actually done more to raise the profile of soccer in the United States than anybody else, maybe even Beckham. Everybody's talking about him. Even David Letterman made references to him last night on the Late Show, remarking that calling your mother a whore is a standard greeting in New York. Maybe he could get him to come on the show? Perhaps Zidane is the man to heal Franco-US relations? Happy Bastille Day, citoyens. Good luck getting rid of the extrème-droit in the next elections. Liberté, égalité, fraternité, et tous ça.
|
|
|
14.7.06 20:40 |
|
|
a global warning Tonight, after a hot day of shopping at IKEA and Target and all those other big-box stores, we went back to being Davisites, having a meal at Sudwerk and popping down to the small independent Varsity Movie Theater (check out my American spelling) on 2nd Street, to watch the Al Gore documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. Before I go on, I am telling you now, all of you, you must go and see this picture now. Right now.
Watching Al Gore is a bit like the end of Bullseye, "let's have a look at what you could have won." Here is a man who is clearly intelligent and works tirelessly to get this issue to the forefront. You hear him speaking earnestly and you think of King George's smirk and chuckle and you get both sad and angry that when we reached the crotch in the trousers of time back in November 2000, the reality in which Gore was President went down one leg while we went down the other, the leg with the dripping willy, pissing all over us and everyone else.
So it was refreshing to have this guy back, and pushing the point home that global warming is an immediate threat to everybody. The melting of the polar ice-caps and the glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, it is happening right now, and the evidence is everywhere. The population of the planet is exploding and yet if sea levels rise there will be less land for them to live on, and with the increased heat there will be less usable water and usable land to grow any food. The scientific community - the people who actually do the research, not the talk-show hosts, media-hacks and political soundbiters - are in unanimous agreement that global warming is FACT, yet people here still do not entirely believe it. There is a policy here, promoted by the people in charge, to debunk it as simple unproven theory, while in the meantime sea temperatures rise causing storms to get worse and cities such as New Orleans to get destroyed. Gore demonstrated the evidence that this is not merely cyclical, and that the enormous human population of the planet with its massive emission of Carbon Dioxide has had an effect on the planet's climate. He asks us to ask ourselves, what will happen to the planet in the very near future? What will happen to our societies, which can barely handle the refugee situations we have now, let alone if every low-lying city in the world (Beijing, London, Calcutta, all of Holland) were deluged? Bye-bye, mate, goodnight Kyoto.
Gore blimey, guv! But An Inconvenient Truth does not make you leave the cinema wanting to join the doomsday cults just yet, for there is hope, and there is still time for us to change the way we treat this planet of ours, the only one we have. I won't tell you what he said though, because I don't want to spoil the end of the film for you.
|
|
|
16.7.06 09:23 |
|
[next page]
powered by
20six.co.uk
