A GIANT IS LOST
Ferenc Puskas is dead.
For those not in the know, Puskas is a footballing legend. "The Galloping Major" was the inspirational leader and talisman of the all-conquering Mighty Magyars, the Hungarian footnall team of the 1950s (How good were they? They did England 6-3. At Wembley. England's first ever defeat at home. They still talk about it.) . He was the rock behind which the all-conquering Real Madrid of the 1960s stood when they won 5 consecutive La Liga titles and 3 European Cups, a record that stands unequalled today.
How good was he? Puskas was a striker. For a striker, a return of one goal in every three games is considered pretty damn good. The really great ones, they might score once every couple of games over the course of their career.
In 529 games for Real, Puskas scored 512 times. His 84 games in a Hungarian shirt yielded 83 goals.
I have some footage of him in action from his Real days. He is nothing short of mesmerising.
He is, unarguably, one of the 3 or 4 greatest players ever to have lived. He is easily the greatest European ever to play the game.
Football is lessened by his loss.
HANDED IN:
The second draft of The Memory of Breathing, to Producermatt. Now to wait for his Producer's Notes, and research animal liberationists in preparation for draft number three.
And finally get on to some short stories again!
AS COOL AS PRESENTS GET
Earlier this week, Aiden presented me with a belated birthday present. He'd warned me it would be late-- he had to hand it in to his teacher and get it marked first.
If there's anything cooler than getting something handmade from your kids, I don't know what it is.
So how great was it to be given this weird and wonderful handmade clay head? Very great indeed.
Ferenc Puskas is dead.
For those not in the know, Puskas is a footballing legend. "The Galloping Major" was the inspirational leader and talisman of the all-conquering Mighty Magyars, the Hungarian footnall team of the 1950s (How good were they? They did England 6-3. At Wembley. England's first ever defeat at home. They still talk about it.) . He was the rock behind which the all-conquering Real Madrid of the 1960s stood when they won 5 consecutive La Liga titles and 3 European Cups, a record that stands unequalled today.
How good was he? Puskas was a striker. For a striker, a return of one goal in every three games is considered pretty damn good. The really great ones, they might score once every couple of games over the course of their career.
In 529 games for Real, Puskas scored 512 times. His 84 games in a Hungarian shirt yielded 83 goals.
I have some footage of him in action from his Real days. He is nothing short of mesmerising.
He is, unarguably, one of the 3 or 4 greatest players ever to have lived. He is easily the greatest European ever to play the game.
Football is lessened by his loss.
HANDED IN:
The second draft of The Memory of Breathing, to Producermatt. Now to wait for his Producer's Notes, and research animal liberationists in preparation for draft number three.
And finally get on to some short stories again!
AS COOL AS PRESENTS GET
Earlier this week, Aiden presented me with a belated birthday present. He'd warned me it would be late-- he had to hand it in to his teacher and get it marked first.
If there's anything cooler than getting something handmade from your kids, I don't know what it is.
So how great was it to be given this weird and wonderful handmade clay head? Very great indeed.
You talkin' ta me? You talkin' ta me?
As befits a present so froody, it was made an immediate addition to my Corner of Cool, that section of the office where I keep all my bits-n-trinkets that capture my imagination. As a Bonus Parent, to receive a gift that a Bonus Child has made specially for me is deeply touching. It's a sign that, to Aiden, I'm a genuine parent. Pride of place on the corner of the desk for this baby, let me tells ya!
Head and friends
BEING A GRANDFATHER IS HARD WORK
One of the finches escaped on the weekend: I was trying to get their water dish out of the cage, and the little bugger flew straight over my shoulder. We've promised Aiden a new one (what else could we do?), and thanks to a trip into Joondalup on Sunday, we know where to get it.
There's a pet shop next door to Bunnings. And it's open on Sunday.
And I'm not revelaing who it was that suggested we pop in and do some Christmas shopping. For the Finches.
But it wasn't me.
All I did was choose the ladder with the rough steps to help them groom their claws. And the straw nesting box. That's all.
I have no emotional attachment to these birds whatsoever.
CAROLE KING IS NORMAL, HUZZAH!
The ABC's Articulate column contains an interview with Carole King, who is touring Australia for the first time. I don't know any of M s King's music, except for a sneaking memory that she was the one responsible for the inane soundtrack to one of the Winnie The Pooh movies my darling daughter has made me watch over and over and over and over......
However, what pissed me off upon reading the column was that Ms King notes that "her greatest achievements include having a 'normal life'."
What the hell? I mean, mad as I may be, surely if you want to live a normal life, why become a fucking artist? It's not like the lifestyle, or the demands of creativity, are unknown. I mean, surely it doesn't come as any sort of surprise.
And what is so damn special about a normal life? It's the norm. It's the base template from which you deviate to add spice to your existence. As if the ability to get up in the morning, wallow in mundanity, and go to sleep at night is cause for applause.
Jesus. Fuck normal. Celebrate anything but normal. Be a bird and fly.
Of course, not having sold umpty-million albums and not having had a way to avoid a day job since the age of 14, I may be missing the vital ingredient in this argument...
MYSPACE?
A serious question: what's the attraction with MySpace? A lot of people seem to be signing up, and seem very happy at having done so. I've looked at the Home/About pages, and I'm not sure I'm not missing something.
Anyone have a MySpace page? Want to tell me about it? Head to the Message Board so we can have a group back and forth on the subject.
MYSPACE?
A serious question: what's the attraction with MySpace? A lot of people seem to be signing up, and seem very happy at having done so. I've looked at the Home/About pages, and I'm not sure I'm not missing something.
Anyone have a MySpace page? Want to tell me about it? Head to the Message Board so we can have a group back and forth on the subject.
MOOFIES
A quick note regarding some movies Luscious and I have watched recently, in lieu of taking the time to think up proper reviews:
Children of Men: Astonishing SF of a type that rarely makes it screen these days- literate, intelligent, thoughtful, and genuinely moving. The performances are routinely excellent, with the usual exception of Julianne Moore, who is as stagey as ever. See it at the cinema so that the sheer scale and noise of the final third is at its most effective.
Serenity: So, in the aftermath of the Civil War, a disillusioned Confederate Captain leads his ragtag group in a guerilla war against the agents of the Union, having to make a run through vicious tribes of Red Injuns and back to deliver an escaped pair of zzzzzzzzzzzz...... unlikeable characters, nonsensical plotting, cartoon performances.... maybe I had to watch the TV series Firefly to get the full gist of this movie adaptation, but then, if I have to do that just to watch a movie, it's failed before I even hand over my money. The sort of bad SF I have to keep telling people I don't write.
Lord of War: A sublime black comedy, unrepentantly amoral, with a sense of irony so thick you could serve it with sauce. As surprised as I was by Keanu Reeves in Constantine, I am more so by the normally terrible Nicholas Cage in the lead role here, although, like Reeves, I shouldn't have been-- if you want oily, insincere, and slick as teflon-coated shit, who better than Cage? It's a comedy about arms dealers, and the blacker it got, the more I laughed.
Hotel Rwanda: Good God. A movie to watch if you feel like hating everybody, especially your leaders. By turns horrifying and heartbreaking, and the usually underrated and ignored Don Cheadle turns in a performance of astonishing range. An amazing filmic triumph, with performances that mesmerised me, and a level of violence and helplessness I would not have believed if I did not remember the real life footage of the Rwandan conflict.
We're currently in the middle of Battlestar Galactica Season One, an SF series that surprises me with the solidity of its plotting and intelligence. The original was cheesy fun for a pre-teen in the late 70s, and I really didn't expect much from this remake/extension, despite the fannish over-excitement from the same people who told me how great Babylon 5 and Serenity were. It's heights aren't brilliantly high, but at no stage in the first season does it ever drop to the depths of the first season of Star Trek: TNG. A pleasant surprise, so far.
Song of the moment: Museum of Idiots They Might Be Giants
Reading: Officially between books, as I finished the current one this afternoon.
3 comments:
Simon Haynes persuaded me to give Myspace a go. I did, it sucks. Impossible to navigate around, you can't respond directly to comments, soooo clunky it's scary.
Elaine
Don't know if I mentioned this but we have 4 budgies plus one finch - the latter rescued from a shopping centre carpark about 2 months ago. The little bugger is a Houdini, and has already darted out of its cage twice with the door open nobbut a crack.
I watched all the episodes of Firefly back to back before getting hold of the movie, and I grew to like the characters a lot during the series. I can't imagine watching Serenity without seeing the series first - it'd be like watching the world cup final without ever having seen a game of football before.
Re myspace: I have about 750 'friends' (more like contacts) and many of them are sf fans. I enjoy it because the contact seems much closer than you get through blogs or websites. The latter are 'here I am, say something about my post' whereas Myspace is more give and take. Maybe it's the little photos - God knows. But people do seem to chat and communicated a lot more freely.
There you go - two widely differing opinions on Myspace ;-)
Elaine, are you broadband? You should also be using Firefox with the Adblock and Greasemonkey extensions, which kill off all the crappy media players many people infest their profiles with.
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