TMFD – FreakyTrigger https://freakytrigger.co.uk Lollards in the high church of low culture Fri, 16 Mar 2018 15:37:22 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 In praise of Thatcher. https://freakytrigger.co.uk/see/2018/03/in-praise-of-thatcher https://freakytrigger.co.uk/see/2018/03/in-praise-of-thatcher#respond Mon, 05 Mar 2018 18:49:46 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30986 No, not that one, it’s okay.  I mean Timothy Thatcher, the wrestling one.  No?  The one with the mean face.  No?  Let’s start this story again.

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I love professional wrestling.  It can be looked at in so many ways, on so many levels.  It can be gazed upon in childlike wonder as the 8-year olds cheer for the perennial babyface, action figure in hand, head to toe in WWE official merchandise.  It can be a much-needed way to remove oneself from reality for the duration of a match or a 3-hour show, thinking back to the story-lines of the past two months and how this might play out in the run-up to Wrestlemania [points at sign].  You can be a Johnny come lately, beer in hand, cheering “For whoever I fuckin’ like – I paid my money.”  Or you can take your starting point and … well, just run with it, devouring everything in your path; let it envelope you like a warm blanket or a Yokozuna bearhug, read biography after autobiography, watch Bruiser Brody swing his chain at the terrified fans in Tokyo in the 1980’s, laugh out loud at Ric Flair’s astonishing backstage promos, obsessively research Andy Kaufman’s feud with Jerry Lawler and explore the origins of pro wrestling in the travelling carnivals of America.

You may have guessed which category of fan I fall into and that’s why I’m so intrigued by this Thatcher character and what makes this chap tick.

Shall we begin where all professional wrestlers begin?  With a name and a look.  The name is critical; you can glean so much information from the name alone.  Is he a monster (Vader)?  Is she a femme fatale valet (Woman)?  Are they an embarrassing Chippendale style tag team (The Dicks)?

Personally, my favourite wrestlers let their wrestling speak for itself.  Men like Mark Andrews, Pete Dunne and Rampage Brown have no nonsense names, clear identities and get the job done.  But I’m talking about Timothy Thatcher, a Californian native whose career began in 2006 and whose first gimmick was the British Messiah.  He hailed from Brompton.  He wore an English rugby shirt or red military coat and spoke terribly but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and suggest that time spent in America had diluted his ‘accent’ and award bonus points for littering his circa 2009 promos with “Bloody,” and the phrase, “I kicked him in the bollocks.”  As time went on, he lost the accent and concentrated on trying to be the best shoot style grappler he could be.

To paraphrase Indy Darlings podcaster Ben McClung, by 2016 Thatcher was essentially disliked in America as they were bored by him and thought him too British, but he annoyed the Brits with this fake gimmick.  Although he’s Sacramento born and bred, his influences are undoubtedly British and whatever the nickname or accent the style is unmistakable.  The name is unmistakable too.  As is sometimes the way with wrestlers, his first name is kept; thus, Tim Moura became Timothy Thatcher.  But why Thatcher?  Yes, it does seem a typically English surname conjuring up images of men atop roofs in ye olden days laying down some serious thatch but for those he’s trying to mimic, those of us who are old enough anyway, Thatcher means Margaret.  Maggie Thatcher, the Iron Lady prime minister.  Loved by some, loathed by most.  Loathed enough for ‘Ding Dong!  The Witch is Dead’ from The Wizard of Oz to reach number 2 in the charts in the days after her death in 2013.  Personally, I’d have preferred Hefner’s ‘The Day That Thatcher Dies’ to have blasted from the living rooms of 40 somethings across the land but you can’t win them all.

We will laugh the day that Thatcher dies,
Even though we know it’s not right,
We will dance and sing all night.
I was blind in 1979, by ’82 I had clues,
By 1986 I was mad as hell.

However, there is another Thatcher in the world of pro wrestling.  His name is Les, he’s a legend and as his Pro Wrestling Tees bio explains, “Starting his career in 1960, Les Thatcher has seen and done it all.  He has been a wrestler, trainer, booker, promoter, and television announcer.  He helped produce the very first WWWF colour magazine and was a forerunner in the concept of the very first ever wrestling t-shirt created.”  Yes, that’s more like it, Timothy.

In 2017, Carsmile and I attended the Freedom’s Road Progress tapings in London where Thatcher was the first name announced alongside Matt Riddle.  On our way home after a few beverages, I complained about how unfair it was that people make fun of Tim for having one facial expression; the famous Thatcher grimace.  “Matt Riddle’s only got one face too!  He’s no better than Tim.  Why does no one take the piss out of Riddle?!”  To which Steve replied, “But Matt Riddle’s adorkable!”  “But Timothy Thatcher’s adork — oooooh, there’s an article right there.”

Adorkable (adj): Unfashionable or socially awkward in a way regarded as appealing or cute.

Yes.  Timothy Thatcher is adorkable.

In the late ‘80’s, I was the biggest Brosette EVER.  You could not see an inch of wall in my bedroom for all the Bros posters.  Dad bought Grolsch beer so I could attach the bottle tops to my Dr Martin shoes, I bought jeans from American Classics, I purchased all albums and singles in all formats … and my favourite was Craig Logan.  Not the blond and beautiful Goss twins; the brunette, nerdy mate of theirs.  Not smiley, washboard abs Riddle; the aloof, unshaven Thatcher.

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Tim

In the mid ‘90’s, I was a Blur fan.  Nothing outrageous.  No posters in my student digs … but I had a framed picture of Graham Coxon on my dressing table.  Not the floppy haired, cheeky chappy Alex; the awkward, bespectacled guitarist.  Not bro-tastic, ethereal Riddle; the headbutting, uncommunicative Thatcher.

I don’t mean to be a contrarian; I will fight anyone who doesn’t love Mark Andrews, the ultimate blue eye Brit, and I was utterly mesmerised after seeing Riddle for the first time, but I am generally drawn to an underdog and not just in a physical sense either.  On the face of it, reading that Thatcher lost his Evolve title to Zack Sabre Jr after an incredible 596 days may lead you to conclude that his reign was joyous; crowd go wild, held aloft on shoulders of stablemates, showered in confetti and streamers, “THATCHER, THATCHER, THATCHER!”  No.  Those were things that did not happen.  He cut a lonely figure at times.  Backstage clips showed him packing up his gear, checking his ancient Nokia style mobile phone, no allies to speak of among his peers.  He had no friends.

The crowd seemed to quickly tire of Thatcher.  Bored with his persona?  Bored with his technical, shoot style?  Maybe.  But this is why I’m fascinated with this curious character.  The Kaufman v Lawler feud is a personal obsession of mine and whilst I eschew conspiracy theories in everyday life, I did wonder if Tim and company owner Gabe Sapolsky were trolling the Evolve faithful.  A phrase used to describe Thatcher in a recent Cagematch review was ‘wrestling nihilist’.

Nihilist (noun): A person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles (from Latin nihil ‘nothing’).

This feeds into my doubtless inaccurate idea that Gabe’s plan for the Evolve title was intricately designed to create an anti-champion, a nihil-champion.  Is this the wrestling equivalent of Thatcher singing ‘100 Bottles of Beer’ or snoozing in a sleeping bag on stage at Budd Friedman’s comedy club?  Kaufman and Thatcher are undeniably top of their respective games; whether they are to your personal taste is another matter.  Although I don’t expect to see Tim compete, Kaufman style, in inter-gender matches any time soon*, I was thrilled to read Gabe’s comments in the aftermath of Tim’s title loss.  “We experimented.  We were fearless with it.  The title reign was art.  All great art has its critics.  I’m proud of Tim.”  Maybe I was on to something?  I’ll never know.

Pro wrestling is filled with the weird and wonderful, each character bigger and more colourful than the last.  Tim is a refreshing change with his black boots, small trunks and Dvorak Symphony No. 7 with its Jaws like introduction.  Arrive, turn your opponent into a pretzel, leave.  Job done.

Talking of opponents, his visits in 2016/17 to the UK saw him take on names that on the surface may jar a little; Lord Gideon Grey, Martin Kirby and Joel Redman immediately spring to mind.  The two Freedom’s Road shows saw him compete against the London Riots’ James Davis and Darrell Allen rather than locking up with Progress trainees eager to learn new tricks.  In December 2016, Joe Coffey took on Tim as part of ICW’s Friday Fight Club.  Coffey revealed in Morgan Webster’s podcast that this was the first time that he had not discussed a match beforehand; they entered the ring and did whatever felt right.  I have wondered whether Thatcher is seen as a standard of excellence in the field of shoot style wrestling, attracting those who want to prove something either to the fans or to themselves.  Does Kirby want to be a man who ‘pisses about’ all the time?  I’m sure he relished the opportunity to show the PCW crowd that he can grapple with the best and indeed tweeted this after the show, “Had the pleasure of facing Timothy Thatcher tonight.  Someone who’s a total breath of fresh air to wrestle.  Hope we get to do it again soon.”  Gideon Grey had a great match at the Cockpit with Thatcher and whilst Kirby and Grey might be better known for their comedic elements, Tim has been known to add a smattering of humour every now and then.  Subtly, mind you.  He’s no Grado.

Tim’s post-Evolve career has seen him relocate to Germany for several months and his trips to England have increased dramatically, most notably for Progress.  During this time, it’s become clear that the tide is turning for our Timothy; the masses have come around to my way of thinking.  I think they’ve got it!  By George, they’ve got it!  Okay, the word that immediately springs to their minds may not be adorkable, but something seems to have clicked.  Maybe it’s the wXw stable of Ringkampf that he’s a part of, which has gradually decreased in numbers over the past year (Alexander Wolfe, Axel Deiter Jr, Walter and Thatcher – only the latter two remain) but have increased in popularity or maybe it’s the higher profile he’s gained through the sheer number of matches across Europe.

It certainly won’t be through his social media profile.  He has none.  His near mute in-ring persona and online presence coalesce perfectly.  So perfectly, me and a couple of friends created #TTAS on Twitter safe in the knowledge Tim would be none the wiser as we discussed why we were the Timothy Thatcher Appreciation Society.  I made 20 badges adorned with his scary grimace to give to friends only to discretely remove mine upon his arrival at a post-show pub.  Carsmile bought the three members of Ringkampf a beer, I muttered something appreciative and we left.  The next day I was reliably informed that he was aware of the badges, wanted to say hello and, ladies and gentlemen, is now the proud owner of a #TTAS badge.

TTAS

The more I get to know the man behind the Harrington jacket, the more adorkable he becomes.  A 15-minute interview clip with wXw revealed a three-month stint of the UK holiday camps in 2007 with Brian Dixon.  Awesome!  He seemed like an athlete who was humble and continually strives for self-improvement, chuckling in remembrance of “Getting my ass kicked,” by an aging Billy Robinson.  Excellent!  After his tag-team match at Evolve 76, his partner and long-time friend, Jeff Cobb, called him out … and called him Timmy.  Adorkable!

*Since writing this, Thatcher has been booked as part of an intergender card at the Beyond Wrestling show in New Orleans on 5th April 2018 against the incredible Toni Storm.  It’s gonna be a CORKER!

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Guess My Theory: Part BELGIUM https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2014/07/guess-my-theory-part-belgium https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2014/07/guess-my-theory-part-belgium#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2014 20:26:12 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=27667 Marouane Fellaini

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Vinylanders https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2013/04/vinylanders https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2013/04/vinylanders#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 23:18:13 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=24466 Tree_Rex_Package Tree Rex. Eye Brawl. Scarlet Ninjini. If you’re the parent of a small boy there’s a good chance you know these names well: the ferocious cast of Skylanders, a computer-game-meets-action-figure franchise which has become my son’s first honest-to-goodness playground craze.

“Meets” here really means “versus”, in the way a mash-up is “versus”: the gaming and collectibles elements are fused to a fiendish degree. You play the game by placing a physical figure on a “portal of power” – presto! There he is on the screen, stomping around a pretty standard 3D platformer thing. The more figures you buy, the more characters you can use; the more characters you can use, the more game elements you unlock, and the more money Activision makes. There is very little Skylanders merch – no TV show yet, no comics, none of that paraphernalia – because why should there be? The basic collect-and-play mechanism has plenty of financial life in it.

This physical-digital fusion is the heart of Skylanders’ appeal, and it’s innovative in several ways, not all of them so fun. Playgrounds have always been hothouses where peer pressure and parental income brutally intersect – Skylanders rewards wealth (if not thriftiness) like any collectible fad. No novelty there. But successfully importing this mechanic into a console game is setting a precedent. The virtue of console and PC gaming used to be its completeness: buy a game and you’ve bought the whole game. Not so Skylanders: to my knowledge it’s the first really successful application of the “in-app purchase” model of mobile gaming to the big-ticket console mainstream.

Except, of course, the purchases are very much out-of-app: chunky, colourful, satisfyingly real figures. Frankly, they’re often gorgeous – good production values meet distinctive design. Some of the figures aren’t much cop – the dragon ones, a holdover from Skylanders’ genesis as a way to save crap 00s franchise Spyro The Dragon, are fussy and flimsy. But the others are great – there’s a kinetic, Kirbyish delight in action in the likes of Pop Fizz, Jet Vac and Tree Rex, which is pretty impressive given the figures have zero points of articulation. A limitation they work to their advantage – you want to see these guys unfreeze and come to gleeful life. (The graphical reality is actually kind of disappointing and jaggy to my adult eyes, but there’s no telling the kids that.)

Skylanders has accessed something very potent – physical objects which look and feel good, are satisfying to own, possess a mystique and beauty of their own, then come fully alive when unlocked by technology. But Skylanders didn’t really hit on this – it was lying around waiting for a game to pick it up, because it’s the same thing the music industry ran on for decades. Essentially, the appeal of Skylanders to kids is the same as the appeal of vinyl records and their packaging to grown-ups. Physicality, aesthetics, collection, anticipation and realisation through technology: these are the pleasures of vinyl as surely as they are the pleasures of Tree Rex whacking some pile of villainous polygons.

But the two desires are framed quite differently, in ways which speak to their media’s different history. Skylanders physical-technical interface is presented as a bold innovation, futuristic thanks to the invocation of words like “RFID” and “Near Field Communication”. It seems magical that a figure placed on a disc should suddenly appear on a screen in roaring life. But let’s face it, it also still seems pretty magical that a black circle can conjure songs from the air.

As this post from the Hardcorefornerds tumblr points out, there’s very little utilitarian, “you need it to play music” argument for vinyl – and Skylanders’ gameplay would be the same if it was entirely digitised and you did simply unlock new characters by forking out a tenner each for them. But of course the emotional impact would be quite different. Skylanders and playing records both situate themselves as a break from a digital norm – in Skylanders’ case the break is new and thrilling, in vinyl’s case the break is an act of resistance, a return to the authentic. The appeal of each is probably determined by your gut reaction to these narratives – which is why Skylanders is marketed to 8 year olds and vinyl to 38 year olds. In both cases the economics involved in the sale of high-margin goods get sidelined by these tales of emotion and innovation.

Games and music also have a very different relationship to nostalgia. In music the locus of respectable nostalgia is shifting, I’d say, from the content of music to its context. Writers who see a loss of music’s forward progression, and lay the blame on the weight of the past and artists’ obsession with it, are themselves often happy to wax lyrical about older formats, networks, and rituals of consumption. Games, on the other hand, seem to me to only recently have discovered the commercial power of nostalgia (i.e. getting people to repurchase old games on iTunes) and are some distance away from the flowering represented by format revivals. For that you’d need to be selling Radio Shack Tape Recorders and A/V leads, not a Portal Of Power.

The Skylanders audience is too tiny (age wise) for nostalgia anyhow, but among the standard consumerist lessons the toys hand out, the game is teaching them something about the value of the physical in a virtual world. Is this a good lesson to learn? It’s probably one that will end up with them spending more money. But amongst ad planners, technologists and cultural critics alike, the physical is so hot right now – in an odd way, Skylanders taps into some of the same currents as “maker culture” and the longing for durability. The levels and XP your creature gains are embodied in its physical form – lose it (or swap it) and you lose them: it’s a literal gamification of the aura of ownership and the patina of experience objects gain over time. Maybe the Skylanders fans of today are the physical revivalists of tomorrow – yet another generation of young people who, like Boomers or Gen X’ers or Millennials, “crave authenticity”. Or so marketers like to tell us. But if I’ve learned one thing from my marketing career it’s that “authenticity” generally just means “price premiums”.

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Come as you are (or not) https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2013/02/come-as-you-are-or-not https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2013/02/come-as-you-are-or-not#respond Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:44:30 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=24191 Ryan Lochte is never one to shy away from a good publicity stunt. He may have 11 Olympic swimming medals of various colours, but as you can see below his main talent is for getting people to look at him (this shot was taken for ESPN magazine).

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HOWEVER I feel that Ryan has missed a key detail of this well-known tableau! I’m sure this will be rectified by the magazine’s photoshop department later…

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I WAS A GOBLIN: In Which I Was Actually A Goblin https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2012/05/i-was-a-goblin-in-which-i-was-actually-a-goblin https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2012/05/i-was-a-goblin-in-which-i-was-actually-a-goblin#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 22:33:05 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23465 I was suspicious of Live Action Role Playing for a long time. I had three excellent reasons: it couldn’t possibly work, it verged dangerously close to SPORTS, and most of all White Dwarf strongly hinted it was a stupid idea. At the time I took White Dwarf very seriously. There was a whole underworld of role-playing fanzines who saw White Dwarf as the enemy of all that was righteous in the hobby, intent on straitjacketing the minds of infant games with their barely disguised pimping of glossy, shallow Games Workshop products. These fanzines were broadly right. But I didn’t read them: as far I was concerned, the Dwarf was mega and skill.

Games Workshop – White Dwarf’s publishers (hence the pimping) – had placed certain bets on the direction the HOBBY OF THE 80S was going to swing in. Their bets involved carefully painted dioramas rather than minibus rides to wet caves, so the magazine spent a lot of time taking the piss out of LARP. Some of this was also the unslakable thirst of the nerd to find someone they can look down on – sad we may be, but we don’t wave rubber swords around (we only paint lead ones). And some of it, it must be said, was justified. Like a lot of geek businesses in the 80s, LARP attracted a few thrusting young Thatcherites whose bold entrepreneurial spirit was matched only by their willingness to scarper with the money at the first opportunity. It gained a reputation for spivviness.

By the time I actually tried it, LARP was struggling towards respectability. It had a moderate following, enough to fill a stretch of Chislehurst Caves every weekend. It had a rules system of sorts, and punters dedicated enough to invest time in grinding their alternate self up levels. On the way there, my friend – who had been before – introduced me to an impressive figure, a boy of 13 or 14 who was now a Level 8 Ranger. What would I be, my friend asked. I wasn’t sure. Of course this meant I ended up as a Cleric – the “playing in defense” of the LRP world. My job would be to thump a monster or two with my rubber mace and to cast healing spells on some of the other boys.

Thrilling stuff nonetheless! With 6 or 7 other 12-year-olds and two grown-up referees, I set off into the dungeons. After that I mostly remember running around and shouting.

The grown-up referees, unsurprisingly, had a lot to do. An example of play might run as follows.

GROUP: Runs around and shouts.
MONSTERS (yet more 12 year old boys): Run out shouting.
ALL: Whack! Thump! Ow! Mister – are we dead? Are we?
Repeat.

It rapidly became obvious why nobody wanted to be the cleric. To cast your Cure Wounds spell you had to stand still and recite something. If you did this, you would get hit on the head. So you didn’t. The dungeon was no place for fair play.

Or for open combat. In a tabletop RPG, even one with miniatures, fighting tended to occur in the form of miniature battles or brawls. A group of adventurers would come upon a group of monsters, perhaps they would be DICING or DRINKING GROG. The monsters would sieze their arms and the MELEE would begin.

This did not happen in Chislehurst Caves. What you learned very quickly is that in a closed environment of corridoors and small rooms, all combat is hit and run guerilla fighting. Soon the whole country would learn this, virtually on FPS games and physically in Laser Tag. This was little consolation when my noble cleric got cut down like a rat by some little fucker reaching through an opening in the wall and stabbing me.

Still! My party’s loss was my gain, for now the real fun could begin and I could play a monster for the second half of the day. This was considerably better. For a start, there was no penalty for dying, so all monsters were suicide troops, happy to take preposterous risks to fuck the players up. You also got some great make-up and masks (which could fall down your face in a fight: a real kobold would not suffer such indignity).

I obviously impressed the referees with my monstering enough to land the apparently plumb job as a Vampire Lord. I was – so I believed – to be the final boss in the dungeon. I was given a coffin to lie in, and told to rise when the players came in. I waited, in anticipation of a starring role. What I wasn’t told is that they’d found an enchanted stake, so no sooner had I risen than the referee curtly told me to lie back down, for good this time. But it was fun while it lasted.

I never LARPed again, but I enjoyed my little taste of it. It was ramshackle and enjoyable, like British Bulldogs for the scrawny, stout or weak kids. A few moments were genuinely thrilling, and it taught me an important lesson: that it was very hard to simulate the rush and panic of physical action in a tabletop game. So the lesson was to accept the limitations, or to downplay it entirely. Or – and this is what I decided to do – to get a bit more creative…

(I Was A Goblin returns after a several-year absence, and I’ll be taking it to the conclusion always intended – looking at my experiences in the indie RPG scene in the 90s. So stay tuned.)

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The Levellers https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2010/09/the-levellers https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2010/09/the-levellers#comments Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:55:46 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=19626 I wrote a post before. in the “I Was A Goblin” series, about how the Dungeons & Dragons concept of player “levels” and “levelling up” was an innovation which became hardwired into pretty much every game since. That was back in 2006 or so. Now we’re seeing a lot of talk about how the priciples and mechanics of gaming can be transferred into everyday life – see this blog post on the “Decade of Gaming” for an excitable* example.

I have another blog where I can dig into the details and issues around that, but I thought it would be interesting on Freaky Trigger to delve a little into the history of the “levels” idea. So this is a bundling of sources – comments from anyone who can fill in more or have other ideas would be extremely welcome.

A brief recap of what we’re talking about – “level” is used in multiple senses in games: to talk about player rank, specific game areas, and the ambient level of challenge in the game universe. We’re interested here in personal ranking. The idea is that a player (or avatar) earns points through successfully carrying out actions or tasks: get enough points and you go up a level, which generally involves an increase in your in-game abilities or access to new ones. So where does that come from?

MILITARY RANK: This is the obvious place to start, since a) there have been military ranks as far back as we can trace military history and b) D&D’s roots were in wargaming, which would often use ranked units with different weights in gameplay. So case closed? Well, not quite: the thing about military rank is that it’s a relationship of command – a decurion reports to a centurion who reports to the geezer who sits in a tent with a big cloth around his shoulders. So rank is defined not by one’s actions but by the relationship between ranks, and there’s also not necessarily a sense of progress, at least not between the officer and non-officer classes. “Gygaxian” game-ready levels don’t really work like this, so we’ll need to draw in other ideas.

LEVELS OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT: Buddhism seems an obvious place to look for the idea of an individual’s progress in stages (and the era when D&D was developed was also the peak of Western pop-culture interest in ‘Eastern philosophy’. Of course, I know very little about Buddhism so my understanding that the path to enlightenment is a matter of going from step to step might be completely misguided. But here’s a possible philosophical root for the idea of levelling as an individual journey.

HIERARCHIES OF EXPERTISE: Dungeons and Dragons is a game set in a medieval world, and the professional life of towns and cities was deeply hierarchical, with guilds creating and enforcing a simple structure of levels: apprentice, journeyman, master. So here we’ve got an obvious source for the D&D style idea of levels as a function of “class” – the nature of the abilities you gain depends on the profession you’re in.

EXPERTISE AS ENLIGHTENMENT: When you combine the idea of mystical self-advancement and the idea of formalised hierarchies you get cults and initiatory organisations, most pertinently the MASONS, whose initial three degrees are the guild levels redux, but whose Scottish Rite involves levels 4 to 33, ascending orders of knowledge and revelation (and much more besides, according to airport revolving racks). Here we see the number of available levels increasing to a degree that suggests some kind of abstraction as well as simple organisational hierarchy. Also pertinent here: Scientology, whose upper levels overtly promise magical/supernatural powers.

LEVELS OF SKILL: We’re now starting to break away again from the merely organisational model, where the upper levels are somehow in charge of the lower models. The idea of levels of pure individual skill is embedded in the martial arts – like Scientology, the Masons and Buddhism big news in 70s pop culture and a massive influence on D&D. The idea of different levels of “belt” seems to be a relatively late (19th century) construction of a tradition, but for anyone doing “martial arts” at school or watching on TV it symbolised the entirety of the discipline. It’s important because it’s a very explicit recognition of levelling happening not because there’s a vacancy above, or because it’s time to understand the next mystery, or because you’ve petitioned your guild successfully, but because you’ve earned it by being good enough at something.

SCHOOL: Perhaps the most important thing of all, especially given the agegroup these games caught on with. The dynamic of tabletop games is of a group of individuals working together and typically advancing at roughly the same rate through the game. This owes less to guilds, or Buddhism, or karate than it does to school – the US system of years as “grades” as explicit a system of real life levelling up as you’d find. As you advanced to the next level you’d meet new challenges, tasks, and gain new skills. The sequence of grades – 1st to 12th – matches the levels most official D&D adventures focused on: once you got to “high level” the degree of challenges became vaguer, harder, and ultimately it was hinted your character should leave the life of adventure behind and get a job building magical artefacts or running a kingdom.

DETOUR 1: WHAT ABOUT DANTE?: When I asked about this topic on Twitter Stevie T suggested Dante as a source. The Divine Comedy is, obviously, all about levels, but it’s the other meaning of the word – levels as places. Said places of course symbolise different degrees of sinfulness or virtue, so there’s an element of human progression – and decline, much more unusual in these kind of models – but as a game mechanic Dante is unusual: you find out your final ‘level’ AFTER you’ve finished playing, and you have no chance of changing it.

DETOUR 2: POWER-UPS AND POWER-DOWNS: Hazel mentioned jousts and tournaments as another example of medieval game mechanics, where Knights would take part in tournaments and use the spoils as a means of upgrading, replacing and improving their armour and horse – a real-world system of power-ups and power-downs. This doesn’t have a lot to do with the “levelling” element but directly or not the ideas fed into these games in a big way – the problem with most systems of levels is that the amount of actual power differentiating each increment is pretty low, which is why it’s so often expressed in terms of hierarchy. So if you can include some kind of physical upgrade so much the better.

INDIVIDUALISATION: Almost all these “levelling” systems (except Buddhist enlightenment I guess) take place within an organisational context – even if being a higher level doesn’t give you automatic authority, there’s always somebody who has to ratify the fact of advancement. The real innovation in D&D was the moving of this ratifying authority into the person of the referee. This means that levelling up is now not a property of a body within the world but an automatic property of the world itself.** And this is the breakthrough in terms of gaming – if levels are a property of the gameworld, they can be automated and individualised. (The tension between individual reward and co-operative play is one of the things that makes RPGs fascinating).

I don’t know whether digging around in the roots of the “level” idea has much practical use for people designing “game-like” experiences today – I just think it’s interesting. But maybe exploring where these concepts came from is a good way to think about what subconscious expectations people might have of them, and how those expectations can be reinforced or confounded.

*as I said on Twitter, the fervour with which the writer is pronouncing one scene dead and another scene arriving is very reminiscent of the UK music press in its pomp, though I don’t think any NME writers styled themselves “Chief Ninja”.

**D&D itself took a lot of care in NOT fully realising the implications of this – there were an awful lot of rules about converting points to levels via study, ratification by the “Thieves’ Guild”, formal training etc. This was, in essence, an attempt to preserve the problem the game had already solved and I know very few players who stuck to them.

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Why Capello really dropped John Terry https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2010/02/why-capello-really-dropped-john-terry https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2010/02/why-capello-really-dropped-john-terry#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:33:43 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=17043 Of the thousands and thousands of words that have been written about The John Terry Situation this week, Louise Taylor’s ridiculously florid piece in the guardian on Wednesday which starts:

Fabio Capello’s still somewhat limited English vocabulary may not yet incorporate the term “invidious position”

must have been the turning point where Fabio decided that he had to go. Not because of Ms Taylor herself, but, I think, because of the following piece of genius from Freaky Trigger’s very own Patron Saint of Sport, Lord Harry of Bassett:

Dave Bassett endorsed [Glenn] Roeder’s view that a Rubicon has been crossed. “The problem is John Terry’s a wrong-un. He’s masquerading as one of the chaps but he ain’t because this shouldn’t happen,” the former Wimbledon and Sheffield United manager said. “Of course you have players misbehaving when they’re married. But they aren’t doing it to a team-mate’s missus. That’s off bounds.

“It sticks in the throat. There’s an unwritten rule that you don’t start messing with players’ missuses. I’ve had players who have left their missus or had bits and pieces on the side but they’ve not gone off with a team-mate’s bird. That’s crossing a line and where it comes unstuck with Terry. I don’t recollect it in all my years in football.

Gawd Bless yer Harry!

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The Most Important Game Ever Made #23: Druuuuuuuuugs https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2010/01/the-most-important-game-23 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2010/01/the-most-important-game-23#comments Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:04:58 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16909 Been away for a while and will probably be away for a while longer, but I have a brief window to advance this now-glacial series a little further. So then, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds:

William Shatner’s version, given a little extra ‘treatment’ for the YouTube generation by videoist Paul Heriot. I remember Lee and Herring describing this as Shatner believing that he had to be on LSD in order to sing the song, and Heriot certainly seems to be running with that ball (and also the Star Elephant that will forever be in any room Shatner inhabits). Personally, I love Shatner’s vocals and I think this might be the perfect song for his somewhat unique stylings… but this is a series about Beatles Rock Band and not Shatner Session Band so we’ll move on.

According to the factoids, this is not about drugs. It’s in fact about a child’s drawing, which just happened through a cosmic coincidence to refer to Lucy being in a Sky with some Diamonds, which spells LSD. Which is a drug. Obviously some people might draw a link there but not Harmonix. They point up the Beatlebots’ sobriety by having their sleepy, chortling, hippy-moustached faces lit up with pink, the colour of innocence, before they ‘come up’ on something – up into SPACE, on a TELEPORTATION BEAM, of course! No wonder Johnbot is screaming AAAAAAHHH he is plunging into a wormhole. Obviously this interstellar jaunt, during which the Beatles sing merrily about things growing ‘incredibly high’, represents a straight-laced career in the astronaut field, astronauts being kept on a tight rein and not allowed to stuff their faces with blotting paper.

Bravo, Beatles Rock Band! Say no to drugs!

(Although if you were out of your head on something you’d likely have no problem here as this is one of the easiest tracks in the entire game. Difficulty is zero or close to it across the board, so much so that my guitar ran out of batteries in the last verse and stopped working, and I still finished it with four stars. Is this a case of Harmonix tailoring the difficulty for the potential audience of stoners? Surely not.)

So anyway, some people think this song might be about drugs and the video would, to be fair, probably not disillusion them.

If anything, this video seems restrained to me, though. I’ve never taken LSD myself, and I don’t think I’d even heard of it when I first heard this song, so I took it completely at face value – as a disturbing  dream/nightmare landscape where the singer seemed to be trapped without hope of escape, following/being followed by a girl whose eyes have been replaced by multifaceted lenses filled with bits of coloured paper and glass. The whole thing seemed at the time to ring with the dream logic of books like the Phantom Tollbooth or the Magician’s Nephew  or the Oz books or Roald Dahl, or TV series like the Box Of Delights or the Magic Roundabout. A lot of kid’s TV and fiction was of that nature as I was growing up – filled with the idea that there were other worlds close to this one, and the wrong step could take you into them. Mr. Benn had his costume shop, Conrad walks through a wardrobe on the 35th of May, the celebrities on The Adventure Game take the wrong path and end up floating in the void, Turlough enters the TARDIS, John Lennon traps you in his world for the length of a song.

Listening to this, I would obediently picture it in my head, imagining something strange and colourful, dangerous, with rules I understood even less than those of the ‘real’ world – a world extrapolated from the cover of the album, rich and strange, a magical world I could almost see. Part of me was thinking I’d get something like that from the Rock Band video, a way back into that experience especially after the Pepperland vibe of the last one, and the mystery march of monsters in the intro sequence. Instead… well, these things are never just handed to you on a plate.

We got a starfield.

Yay!

That’s great.

Well, all those old kids shows were on drugs anyway, right? Jimmy Carr said so! That reading of things is well funny ‘cos drugs are funny, yeah? They’ve been funny since I was 14 and they’re funnier than ever! Thank you Jimmy Carr! Plus it lets us call all these old things that don’t fit in cool in a kind of ironic way that doesn’t need us to look into ourselves and realise that we’ve lost something essential and indefinable, some way of looking at things, and we don’t know where it’s gone or how to get it back and we’re stuck like this. And that’s mint and that.

I mean, drugs, right? Will Shatner must have been off his face!

NEXT: Getting better, although not getting better at putting these out in a regular fashion.

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Baseball roundup https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/baseball-roundup https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/baseball-roundup#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:31:36 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16008 p1_1013_pedro_apI’ve left it a little late, huh? The season could be over tonight, around 11pm. That’s Eastern Standard Time, Bronx Time, the time at Yankee Stadium, where the World Series returns this evening after a brief and inconclusive middle eight in Philadelphia. But now we come back to the chorus, the refrain heard so often in early autumn: the Yankees are about to win the World Series.

It’s enough to set your teeth on edge. The privileged golden boys of baseball – Derek Jeter, Andy Pettite, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and his mentor Joe Girardi – all of these guys first won the World Series way back in 1997, when owner George Steinbrenner was still giving great quote to reporters, when the World Trade Center was still standing, when the Yankees were still on WPIX every day through the summer and the “YES Network” (“Yankees Entertainment Sports”) was still just an agitprop gleam in Steinbrenner’s crinkly eye.

People talk about the World Series “coming home to Yankee Stadium” as if that’s the natural habitat of professional baseball’s most prestigious championship.

But the ridiculously wealthy Yankees haven’t sniffed a Series since 2003, when they lost to some team called the Florida Marlins and then you all know what happened the year after that. They were 3-0 in a best-of-seven series against the Red Sox, for a chance to go to the World Series. At the end of Game 4 they had both the lead and their best pitcher pitching – but somehow the Sox squeaked out of it, squeaked out of all of it, coming back to win the game, and then the next game, and the next one, and the one after that – the most epic choke in all of Yankee history, maybe in all of baseball.

The ace of that 2004 Boston team was a diminutive Dominican named Pedro Martinez. There is something about players like Martinez – their confidence, their fire, their unworldly ability – that makes games they play seem of outsized importance, makes the ballpark feel electric. When a player like that lands in the middle of a rivalry as hot as Yankees/Red Sox, the hype-ometer goes through the roof.

But Pedro rarely failed to deliver even on these expectations.

A year removed from this current Yankee dynasty’s best season (after which the team received rings that were, in a modesty typical of Steinbrenner’s Yankees, emblazoned with the legend “Best Team Ever”), Pedro pitched a game his manager called “the best pitching effort I have ever seen” against them, an effort that had Yankee manager Joe Torre reaching for comparisons with Sandy Koufax.

That was back in 1999, when congenital coke-head Darryl Strawberry was somehow still playing baseball, and playing for the Yankees (his first swing at a major-league pitch was as a New York Met, when Let’s Dance was at the top of the charts). But as time went by, the Yankees seemed to catch up with Pedro. At one point he said, “I just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy.” Bad move. Baseball fans have a jackal’s instinct for pouncing on weakness and can hold grudges into the afterlife.

Yankee fans have certainly never forgotten him, and his reappearance at Yankee Stadium is a thrilling throwback, a suggestion that sometimes life does have a kind of continuity after all.

Now Pedro is 38 years old and playing for the Philadelphia Phillies. He’s still tender from a major injury – he missed most of this season – but he’s still absurdly confident, telling reporters that he’s “probably the most influential player to ever step into Yankee Stadium.” He acquitted himself brilliantly in his first start of the Series, holding the Yankees to a run in five innings, but he finally gave up a two-run homer when his manager left him in the game too long. Yankee Stadium went nuts.

Tonight he goes again, against all the New York firepower that money can buy: Mark Texeira, Hideki Matsui (aka “Godzilla”, my personal favorite Yankee, who will probably be departing New York after this season), Nick Swisher, Robinson Cano, former Red Sock Johnny Damon, A-Rod – who’s still looking for his first World Series ring – and all the holdovers from the winning years of the last millenium, facing a Phillies team that’s strong on starting pitching, very weak at the end of the game, and with some surprising pop in their bats. Chase Utley currently has hit as many home runs in this World Series as the greatest World Series home run hitter of all time: Mr October himself, “the straw that stirs the drink”, Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson.

Tonight the Yankees can win it all, again.

All they have to do is beat Pedro.

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Films Are Short – GET A NEW BLADDER https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/07/films-are-short-get-a-new-bladder https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/07/films-are-short-get-a-new-bladder#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:53:16 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=14717 Things I have never really understood.

a) Pies at football
b) People going to the toilet during a movie

Both of these are predicated on the same issue really. Football matches take less than two hours. They take place, usually, in the afternoon – cannily timed between usual meal times. And yet at half time there are queues for the pie stall you cannot believe. You would think they were knocking out tubs of Ambrosia (foor of gods not rice pudding) for the stampede for a piss poor Pukka. Can’t you wait or do you have to graze at every opportunity?*

Ditto, films are usually about two hours long. I was taught, post potty training, how to hold it in for at least that long. Perhaps you had a few beers beforehand, perhaps you are drinking a VAT of coke. Perhaps this will add strain but you only have yourself to blame. Nevertheless for NAMBY PAMBIES with peanut sized bladders there is now a useful i-Phone App. Introducing RunPee: an application that tells you the best time in a film to have a wee. HAS IT COME TO THIS?

So this app tells you when the dull bits are, what you’ve missed (since dull bits are often, you know, dialogue and how long you have before something good happens). You can even since a timer to the start of a film and have it notify you of the dull bits. BECAUSE THE ONLY THING MORE ANNOYING THAN SOMEONE LEAVING THE CINEMA FOR A PISS IS SOMEONE USING THEIR MOBILE PHONE JUST BEFORE.

In some ways this is an interesting development. It has clearly invented a new, piss friendly, way of reviewing films. (The example above would present a possible problem: what are the dull bits in Crank 2?) But really. If you cannot go two hours without have a whizz, then you shouldn’t really be allowed out of the house without a catheter.

*This rule does not apply to Cricket which is designed to drink and have a picnic, or baseball where the food poisoning associated with the hotdog is the only suspense you might get all night.

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I Hate Andy Murray https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/06/i-hate-andy-murray https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/06/i-hate-andy-murray#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:53:00 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=14662 Andy Murray Andy Murray chastises a tennis ball

During Wimbledon’s inaugural set of night-time tennis on Monday night, played under what’s become the most famous roof since the Sistine Chapel, I found that I loathe every particle of Andy Murray.

Now, I realize Andy Murray is a professional athlete. Macho theatrics and being as interesting as a pile of firewood come with the territory. But Wimbledon is not just a collection of freakishly fit young adults whacking things between each other, it’s a drama, and in this drama he pushes buttons I didn’t even know I possessed.

I can’t stand his super-psyched mom.

I can’t stand his periwinkle-eyed girlfriend.

I can’t stand the way he throws his wrist bands into the crowd, like Jimmy Page blessing his fans with a plectrum.

I cringe at his whiny tantrums after every mis-hit, the snarled barks at himself to “FOCUS!” (I would have thought focusing was a given.)

And the fierce fist-pumps that accompany every single point he wins — and he wins a lot of them — are tiresome and bathetic.

People whose opinions on tennis I respect say that despite all this they love his game. And it’s true that he will occasionally dink in a nifty drop-shot that leaves his opponent basically pissed off at him (which is the default reaction to Andy Murray anyway as far as I’m concerned). And he does run after every ball like a singed hyena. And yes, he’s Scottish, so I guess that’s something, though it’s difficult to hear it through the braying monotony of his voice.

But mostly I see a guy who is content to hit soft backhand slices at you until you lose all zest for life and find yourself strategizing excuses to forfeit the match out of sheer boredom — feign knee injury? eat some amphetamines? say that you actually really need to call your sister right now cause it was her birthday yesterday and you forgot? — and boom your shot goes wide.

You look across the net and there’s Andy. Fist pump! BARK! C’MON!!

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Its Not Just Cricket, Its Maths! https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/06/its-not-just-cricket-its-maths https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/06/its-not-just-cricket-its-maths#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:45:47 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=14505 I cannot say I was over the moon when the Netherlands beat England in the opening game of the 20 20 World Cup.Clearly as a neutral it is great when a minnow beats a big gun, especially when said big gun is hosting the tournament. To win such a game at the “Home Of Cricket” is even more exceptional. However I am not a neutral, I want England to do well, and thus I could appreciate the excitement of the result, it felt horrible, we looked like we were going out.

Last night however, when England beat Pakistan comfortably I felt a little robbed of a close game. But again I was more than happy that the result meant that England definitely qualified. From despair to elation, via Maths. Because the other beauty of the 20 20 World Cup is that its 3 team league structure leaves us open nicely for surprisingly complex maths to work out who can do what. At which point I shall bow to out betters at the terrific cricket blog Kridaya to explain exactly how England qualified, and What the Dutch need to do to get through.

Note however the reason why I want Pakistan to qualify is in the bottom left hand side of this pie-chart from Friday’s game (like I say Kridaya is good for the maths and the graphs).

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Suspicious? Don’t be ridiculous! https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2009/04/suspicious-dont-be-ridiculous https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2009/04/suspicious-dont-be-ridiculous#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:04:09 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=13953 Two recent results from the South African Vodacom Second Division:

Young Pirates 2 Real Madrid (not that Real Madrid) 26

Namaqua Stars 50 Kakamus Cosmos 0

Extraordinarily, the South African FA is suspicious, and is investigating. They’ve already suspended all the match officials. My favourite bit, from this story from Kick Off, is from the spokesman for Namaqua Stars: “It’s quite possible to get 50 goals in one match. I wasn’t at the match, but the score at half-time was around 25-0. It is a genuine result, not fake, but we are concerned because how can Real Madrid score 26 times against such a good side as Pirates?”

Yes, 25-0 at half-time explains it all.

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Blind swordsmen are like football teams with ten men https://freakytrigger.co.uk/see/2009/01/blind-swordsmen-are-like-football-teams-with-ten-men https://freakytrigger.co.uk/see/2009/01/blind-swordsmen-are-like-football-teams-with-ten-men#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:33:45 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=13055 Hard to beat. Love and Honour the sadly generically titled final film in Yôji Yamada’s samurai trilogy is a sedate, old fashioned tale which features a blind swordsman. The ICA for some reason had to show it on DVD, whose reduced resolution made it look like a fifties Japanese film, which was exactly how it felt (like a low powered Ozu). This is no Zatoichi though. Instead we have a court food taster who ingests a bit of poison and it removes the power of sight. A few rumours and a wife needing to do what they can to survive and this peon finds himself committing to a battle for honour with a local samurai.

As we reached the climatic battle, and all the training sequences showed just how hard it is to fight someone when blind, I thought it might be the antidote to Zatoichi. The food taster wasn’t that handy with a sword in the first place, so by rights he should have been diced to pieces. SPOILERS:

He wins. Not in convincing heroic fashion, with a bit of a lunge and luck. Nevertheless I have never seen a blind swordsman lose a battle. Much like I have never seen a team with ten men lose a match of football*. The power of the underdog is a vibrant myth in human society, most usually demonstrated in the tenacity of teams reduced to ten men. Particularly if you think the sending off was unjust.

All that said, in reality blindness is a serious disadvantage in a swordfight, unless you can tap into the force or something. (Martin talks a bit more about this phenomenon here). Which reminds me of a Ruud Gullit quote when his Chelsea did not manage to beat a team who had had two men sent off. In his post match interview Ruud managed to croke out the following deathless quote: “You have seen how hard it is to beat a team when they are reduced to ten men. Imagine how much harder it is therefore when they are down to nine”.

*Unless the other team have ten men. Or if they were already losing. Or, well actually I probably have seen it but it wasn’t really all that notable. Well except in the World Cup when Beckham got sent off. Or Zidane come to think of it. But both of them deserved so there was no moral high ground.

Whatever. Leave me to my generalisations.

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UFC vs WWE https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/11/ufc-vs-wwe https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/11/ufc-vs-wwe#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:48:17 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12936 I’d never watched any of the ‘ultimate fighting’ stuff, bar a little in a pub once. It looked very boring to me. I’m a big WWE fan – as silly as it is, I am hugely entertained by that. At the weekend I saw an ad for the next big Ultimate Fighting Championship event, and the main match seemed to be a world title fight between someone called Randy Couture (who inexplicably seems not to have a line of clothing to promote) and Brock Lesnar, who used to be in the WWE. This intrigued me: fans of UFC will often regard the WWE superstars with contempt. Obviously it’s all fixed, and the wrestlers help sell their opponents’ moves to a very blatant degree, so those who dislike the WWE deduce from this that the stars are just showy bodybuilders with gimmicks, and wouldn’t last five minutes in a fight with, for instance, a top ultimate fighter. (A couple of top ultimate fighters had tried their hand in the WWE, but never amounted to much as far as I am aware – obviously it demands somewhat different physical skills, and to get to the top it helps to have some sort of distinct personal style too, of course.)

Couture, I soon found out, is the top man: the only five-time world champ, already in their Hall of Fame and so on. He has legitimate claims to be the greatest ever. But it was always clear, in the WWE, that Lesnar was an impressive athlete: big and very strong, extraordinarily athletic and quick for someone his size, and skillful too – he’d been a champion amateur wrestler. Then again, UFC fighting, it became clear when watching the rest of the card, does not resemble either amateur or professional wrestling. There is some grappling, and the occasional submission (never with as fancy a move as the WWE stars offer), but mostly when you get someone on the floor the purpose is to get in position to punch or elbow him in the head repeatedly. A lot of it is done standing up, more like boxing – Couture was some kind of martial arts champion, so that was his speciality. Also, Lesnar had had a total of three fights in the UFC before this big title match.

Their match was scheduled for five five-minute rounds. The first featured lots of wrestling, Lesnar on top, looking for openings, not finding any. He’d have won them on points, but no one was damaged. The opinion was that Lesnar, carrying something like 50 pounds more weight, would tire quickly as the match continued. The second round was quite different, a boxing match. After a couple of minutes, Lesnar landed a heavy punch to the side of Couture’s head, Couture went down, Lesnar climbed on and started hammering fists into his head and the ref stopped it.

It was barely a contest – Lesnar never looked in any kind of trouble at all, and it didn’t last a third of the scheduled time. I was pleased, in that this severely damages the “they wouldn’t last five minutes…” line, and it confirms my repeated claims that many (though certainly not all) of the biggest WWE stars are genuinely great athletes.

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Ted Williams’ frozen head has a myspace page https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/10/ted-williams-frozen-head-has-a-myspace-page https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/10/ted-williams-frozen-head-has-a-myspace-page#comments Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:48:22 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12260 this week the slugz of time talk cryostuff as the inspiration (?) for futurama gets read out and discussed, interspersed with a forgotten olivia newton-john classic about fate and “the gift of life extension”.

as for Ted Williams’ frozen head, it’s all true. it doesn’t have the same ring as “Andre the Giant has a posse” but times have changed and memes move on. Williams, the slender and irascible baseball player once known as the Splendid Splinter, author of The Science of Hitting, and generally agreed-upon greatest hitter of the last 60 years, was swindled by his son on his deathbed to sign his body over to Arizona-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation, who, upon the death of Teddy Ballgame in 2003, froze him up real good so that perhaps one day he could redon his spikes and dig his heels into some futuristic batter’s box. in the meantime, his frozen head rants on myspace.

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Hurray for the FSF! https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/09/hurray-for-the-fsf https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/09/hurray-for-the-fsf#respond Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:19:11 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12205 Never ones to miss the chance of a lovely headline or two, our friends at the Football Supporters Federation had this round the blogs by last night, well done them! I’ve seen some ridiculous measures in place to allow clubs to observe this outdated law, at Dartford they pull the blinds down in the bar at 2.50pm just in case, because it happens to look out over their lovely ground and its pitch. Having attended several rugby matches at Vicarage Road last year, it’s just so much more CIVILISED to have a pint of guinness in yr hand with yr pie…

Following Newcastle United chairman Mike Ashley’s Ashburton Grove appearance in the Toon end with pint in hand, the Football Supporters’ Federation is looking for any fans ejected and/or prosecuted for drinking in sight of the pitch this past weekend to come forward.

Drinking alcohol is sight of the playing area at professional football matches has been banned by law since 1985. The same activity is perfectly lawful at all other sporting events. If you’re a fan of rugby league or rugby union – no problem. Likewise cricket, American Football, speedway, horse racing. Even tiddlywinks as far as we know. Breweries and distilleries are a major sponsor of football.

We know of many supporters who’ve been banned from attending matches for three years for the “crime” of having a tipple whilst watching the game. Why? There are plenty of laws that the police can use to prosecute people who become abusive or violent though alcohol consumption. Being drunk in a public place is a criminal offence.

Why should the law abiding majority of football fans be singled out? If you’ve been ejected, banned or prosecuted for drinking in sight of the pitch, particularly this past weekend, get in touch with the FSF NOW at: info @ fsf.org.uk or on 08702 777777 (Mon-Fri office hours).

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Olympic Avoidance Log 2008: The End https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-the-end https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-the-end#respond Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:59:07 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12177 So the UK won more medals than ever before. Well ever if you don’t include 1908 which forevermore will be known as the British Cheating Olympics where we made up most of the sports and the competitors at the Olympics. But the question on everyone lips here at FT is, did Pete manage to avoid less that fifty nine minutes of it. If we are discounting the opening and closing ceremonies (which we are, because its my game with my rules) then the answer is YES. I only got another three minutes of tedium in over the weekend (OK four if you count the replays of a British woman kicking someone in the head in the Tae Kwon Do). So my final Olympic Avoidance Time works out at less than 51 minutes, and a new Personal Best.

And yet. I feel like there has been more Olympics around. Clearly this is the problem of success, the news clogs up with Super Saturday, Super Sunday and other days where the word super is less alliterative. We managed to annoy the Australians by being better than them (despite lacking the moral high ground of having a smaller population). The Australians manage to annoy us by saying that all our medals were in sports where we get to sit down and are almost correct. Everyone is nice about the Chinese and ignores their human rights violations much like you pretend to have fun at your racists grandfathers 80th party. We worried about Boris Johnson being a knob. Somethings at least don’t change. But with the spotlight now falling on London 2012, that is a whole new level of avoidance. It strikes me that this fifty one minute record will be impossible in 2012, as the Olympics will be everywhere. Unless I leave London, the next four years it will be impossible to avoid the Olympics. So its a bit of a hollow victory.

Better than failure though, as the UK diving team will tell you.

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the 2012 london olympics opening ceremony https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/the-2012-london-olympics-opening-ceremony https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/the-2012-london-olympics-opening-ceremony#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:46:36 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12168 question: who should create and direct it?

preamble: the chinese capitalised (er haha) on A: a known gift for fireworks, B: a known gift for people prettily running with flags, C: spectacular oriental spectacle, D: a population as numberless as the pixels in the ocean — and the Brits limp far behind on all counts; my suggestion is that we should make a virtue of necessity and scrobble our counter-spectacle up round the sense of grumpy, lumpy, stubborn, dry-witted, weird-crop SMALLNESS, the aesthetic legacy of a small crowded windy greenfield crag dropped into the north sea

hence my answer:

oranj1

oranj2

wicker1

cropcircle

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olympic fashion watch – prequel https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-fashion-watch-prequel https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-fashion-watch-prequel#comments Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:39:40 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12162 during the 2006 winter olympics in turin i developed an overweening and somewhat embarrassing crush on tempestuous skateuse IRINA SLUTSKAYA—she of the apple cheeks, mousy hair and how shall i put this—pleasing thickness that one does not normally associate with ice skaters.

Irina Slutskaya

something else one doesn’t normally associate with ice skaters is clothes you might actually want to wear yourself. but in 2006 russia had it goin on. their motif was a kind of cross between a paisley shape and a garland (or a zapf dingbat), and when applied to a straight-up indie gas-station attendant vibe i found the russian outfits almost as irresistable as a certain ice skater who wore them. (they also had their own twee mascot, the venerable cheburashka, who may have contributed to a new Olympic trend.)

it’s unnecessary to detail the hours i spent trying to track down the hoodie in the above photo. oh i was desperate, had taken leave of my senses. 1/2-inch enamel souvenir pins on ebay with the above garland/paisley design were enough to start me salivating. in the end i forgot about it. but here come the olympics again, taunting me with their inaccessible vestments, reminding me of the ones that got away. it appears that the company which made those russian outfits still have a web site and it’s being revamped. a dormant spark of hope flares up. are you out there, boscosport? do you do trackbacks? i’m an easy mark.

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After The Goldrush https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/after-the-goldrush https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/after-the-goldrush#comments Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:33:25 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12160 In an ordinary Olympic games, Britain racks up 5 or 6 gold medals: this time, we have 16 and counting – marvellous news, incredible work on the part of Team GB, etc etc. But also, in a sense a slightly raw deal for some of the athletes involved, as while the pot of fame and endorsements available to successful Olympians will be bigger than usual, it probably won’t be three times as big. Please don’t take this the wrong way: I’m not suggesting that fame and fortune is the main reason any of our athletes compete, but it’s got to be a nice bonus, and the fact is that following these Games some of our winners are going to end up a lot more famous than others.

It was not ever thus – take Britain’s performance at the Barcelona Olympics. Five golds, and four of the athletes involved became more or less household names. But the Beijing mob surely won’t fare quite so well: in fact looking at the media you can already see who’s being groomed for future stardom (in the British sense of the word, i.e. a comfy berth on a daytime TV sofa whenever needed).

What is the FAME FORMULA for Olympic success? In the grand tradition of bogus equations I give you this:

F = (A * C)/R

F, clearly, stands for FAME. The level of F determines your later station in life, whether it be beloved sporting ambassador, tut-tutting commentator, or advertising WellMan supplements on the tube.

A stands for ACHIEVEMENT. Winning an medal is an achievement, obviously, but this also includes factors like age, overcoming adversity, winning our first medal in something for a grillion years, losing it completely on the podium, etc.

C stands for CELEBGENICNESS, a complex word for a complex concept, as it encompasses things like future potential, down-to-earthness, audience being able to relate to, audience finding hott, and so on.

Finally, R stands for RUBNESS OF SPORT. This is a technical term involving the sport’s esteem in the eyes of the Great British Public, and the extent to which they can understand what happens in it.

A final factor is that there are only so many ‘slots’ available in the public consciousness for any given sport – we can win all the rowing medals we like, for example, but Redgrave and Pinsent have a lock on the Famous Rowers slots for now, even though they don’t actually race any more. This significantly limits the chances of any of the new crop becoming famous (at least after these Olympics, but possibly forever: consider the Famous Ice Skaters slot). There are a lot more slots open to track athletes, comparatively few for field athletes, potentially quite a few for swimmers, and so on.

Looking at our medalists in this games and applying the Fame Formula, the blindingly obvious winner is Rebecca Adlington: massive achievement, high celebgenicness, sport we vaguely care about, and an easy (too bloody easy) angle for non-sporting coverage viz. “likes shoes”. You can already see the media getting very excited and I hope she can handle it (this in itself is yet another angle – the oh now her life will change story). Adlington’s high Fame score will have a detrimental effect on some of our other winners, who fit a similar bubbly, down-to-earth bracket. Even though they’re in different sports, I’m guessing if it wasn’t for Adlington, Nicole Cooke would come out of these Games more famous than she will (except in Wales!).

You can see the media sizing up other athletes too – Rebecca Romero’s performance in two different disciplines is awesome, but the angle on her seems to be “she’s a mentalist”: scarily driven and very obviously different from the rest of us, whereas with the ‘nice’ athletes we can sort of ignore all the punishing training schedules and what they might imply about someone’s personality. This will limit her post-Games fame, which is a pity I think.

Who else? Christine Ohoruogu will get a big push as a Londoner, though the raging arguments on the BBC Sports Blog (and elsewhere) over her missed-tests bans suggest that the route to future fame won’t be that easy. The rowers are doomed, as is the Laser class sailing guy since i. his event is deceitfully named and ii. people have only just got their heads around Ben Ainslie being properly famous. Cycling is an interesting case – enormous medal haul means people will know more about it, so the R score decreases and more slots open up – Wiggins and Hoy will both step up a fame grade.

Then we’re into the “minor medals”, where people will also be a bit hard done by owing to the sheer bulk of GB medals around: ordinarily a couple of silver or bronze medalists push on to future fame, but in Beijing Louis Smith looks the only likely candidate so far, and in the current medal-drunk climate Britain winning a men’s gymnastics medal has been downgraded from “HOLY SHIT” to “only bronze?”. No room either for plucky losers, which is probably a good thing for the future success of British sport but I feel a bit sorry for Tom Daley, who’s turned from glorious hope to pub quiz answer inside of a week. (I don’t feel that sorry though, since he reminds me weirdly of James Harries).

I’m sure that come 2012 even the forgotten names will come flooding back to those of us who only pay attention every four years, but – like seeing what happens to Big Brother contestants – it’s going to be fascinating watching the ebb and flow of medalist fame. At the very least, this bumper crop should mean some vicious battles for commentary slots come 2024.

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Swimming: Analysis (incl. GRAPHS!) https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/swimming-analysis-incl-graphs https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/swimming-analysis-incl-graphs#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:12:25 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12154 The swimming is finally finished*, Michael Phelps is reaping in lucrative sponsorship deals and everyone has started watching the athletics instead, so it must be time for some stat-cruching!

The figures

There’s no doubt that this was the fastest Olympics ever:

World records set: 25 (in 21/32 events)
Olympic records set: 65 (in 30/32 events)
World records set in the LZR Racer swimsuit: 92%
Gold medals set in the LZR Racer swimsuit: 94% (89% of ALL medals)

Here’s the swimming medals table (no. gold medals shown in brackets):

Rank Nation Medal Total Mens Womens Individual Relay
1 United States 31 (12) 17 (10) 14 (2) 11 (9) 6 (3)
2 Australia 20 (6) 8 (0) 12 (6) 14 (4) 6 (2)
3 Japan 5 (2) 4 (2) 1 (0) 4 (2) 1 (0)
4 Great Britain 3 (2) 0 (0) 3 (2) 3 (2) 0 (0)
5 Germany 2 (2) 0 (0) 2 (2) 2 (2) 0 (0)
6 China 6 (1) 1 (0) 5 (1) 4 (0) 2 (0)

Well done us!

4th is a brilliant placing for Great Britain – three medals in one games is more than we’ve managed since the 80s, and to have two of them be gold, well, it’s absolutely brilliant. Rebecca Adlington broke a world record older than herself, and has automatically become an inspiration to every club swimmer grinding up and down the pool at 5am every morning.

As well as the medals, we also got a couple of 4th places and one or two swimmers in nearly every final – although you might think that’s not something to be particularly proud of, it shows how competitive we are compared to Sydney and Athens, and will make those swimmers who came in fourth even hungrier for medals next time round. Liam Tancock deserves a special mention for making three finals (backstroke, IM and medley relay), as does Fran Halsall who had a real chance to medal in the 50m free, the 100m free, the medley relay AND both freestyle relays. She looked so gutted after her last race (as well as absolutely exhausted).

Looking to the future – Rebecca and Fran are still teenagers, and at least half of the GB squad had never been to an Olympics before. In front of a home crowd, who knows what can happen in four years’ time? Hey, it took Michael Phelps two Olympics before he won gold…

America v Australia

On the whole, the non-Phelps favourites going into the games (e.g. Katie Hoff, Grant Hackett, Dara Torres) did pretty badly in terms of gold medals. Let’s find out just *how* badly they’ve done – in graphical format! Here’s the American and Australian gold medals since 1988:

Oh dear! The American women and the Australian men barely won anything this year! The Australian men failed to get a gold medal for the first time since 1976 – ouch. Where’s Ian Thorpe when you need him, eh? They were banking on Grant Hackett to deliver in the 1500m freestyle, and he just wasn’t up to the job this time. The American men obviously did pretty well thanks to SuperPhelps, and Stephanie Rice nabbed those vital medley wins to bump up the Australian women’s total from previous years. But we still can’t discount both AUS and USA’s enormous depth of talent. Here’s their total medals won since 1988:

Their overall team performances are still improving overall thanks to the demise of the Eastern European and Russian swimmers – the dip in Athens was mainly due to very strong showings from the Dutch, French and German swimmers. If Britain’s medal tally for the last twenty years was plotted on the same graph it would be lurking right at the bottom. We’ve still got a long way to go.

Tell you what though, the rest of the medals were really spread out – Brazil, Germany, South Korea, Zimbabwe and Tunisia all got golds thanks to sterling individual performances. France and China both got six medals each, and a whole bunch of European countries picked up silvers and bronzes. Swimming success is finally starting to be consistently found away from the American/Australian centres, and that’s got to be good news for anyone watching.

*Apart from the 10km open water races on Wednesday and Thursday of course – tune in and cheer on David Davies, Keri-Ann Payne and Cassie Patten.

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Olympic Avoidance Log 2008: Day 8 – Of Tables https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-of-tables https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-of-tables#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:33:57 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12152 STOP WINNING MEDALS so called Team GB (so British to invent a teamname which tries not to actually say the contentious British word). Its relatively easy to avoid the Olympics when your radar is set for the BBC with extra Clare Balding alerts. But win medals, (or lose medals with Paula Radcliffe) and the games make the news. And I want to watch the news, as Georgia is on my mind. And whilst sports commentators can be banal, add BBC news teams to this and you could end up with some sort of explosion of idiocy.

So it appears that the “GOLD RUSH” means we are third in the Medals Table, a table where it is mainly about the number of golds (silver and bronze columns see to be there for goal difference purposes). Which, incase you can’t see it with your eyes when they put the medal table up, means we are above Australia and Germany – which some people seem to think is significant. What I would also like to see is an actual medal table, of the actual number of gold medals we will be taking hime, bearing in mind that a few of ours would be in team sports. This would also make sense for those teams taking part in football, hockey and handball – where only one medal is available. It means we’d have six golds in the rowing, four in the sailing so far. It may also skew the other most ridiculous stat that is starting to be bandied around…

In a talkie bit on News 24 with the sports guy, the following assertation was made: “If you take out the achievements of Michael Phelps the UK has the same number of golds as the USA. Indeed if Michael Phelps was a country he would be fifth in the medals table”.

IF MICHAEL PHELPS WAS A COUNTRY? How would this work exactly? Can you be granted membership of the UN just because you are quite good at swimming. The GDP of Phelpsland one assumes would be from the sale of gold medals, which would need regular top ups every four years. And if Russia are so gung ho to go into Georgia, I think they would see an opportunity to regain their Olympic golory days and instantly send a tank in to Phelps to annexe him. Nevertheless feel free to send in what you think the flag if this autonomous, fast swimming nation would look like, so he can hoist it up his flagpole.

STEALTH NEWS MINUTES: Six
TOTAL OLYMPIC MINUTES: Twenty Five

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No Ray Ewry… https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/no-ray-ewry https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/no-ray-ewry#comments Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:14:43 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12151 So, OK, Michael Phelps may be rather good and no doubt in four years time he will become the most medaltastic performer in any sport ever ever ever, BUT at the moment he still just trails the great Ray Ewry who won TEN individual gold medals between 1900 and 1908* (Phelps is currently on nine individually, the rest are relays). The reason Ewry is not famous is partially because, dude, name any athlete from that long ago, but mainly because of his specialism, THE STANDING JUMPS. He was Olympic Champion at the standing long jump, the standing high jump AND the standing triple jump (and, it sa here in my Giant Book Of The Olympics, world record holder of the non-olympic BACKWARDS standing long jump, 9 foot 3, if yr interested).

It’s good to see that some people are still keeping this great event alive though:

*two of these were in the intercalated games of 1906 which kind of don’t count, BUT ANYWAY…

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Olympic Avoidance Log 2008: Day 6 and 7 – The Team, Lightweight, Coxless, Synchronised, Freestyle Yngling https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-day-6-and-7-the-team-lightweight-coxless-synchronised-freestyle-yngling https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-day-6-and-7-the-team-lightweight-coxless-synchronised-freestyle-yngling#respond Sun, 17 Aug 2008 06:54:11 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12149 As I move into the second week of Olympic avoidance, the game is getting considerably harder. The reason? I am no longer in charge of the television as I am visiting my parents. And they want to celebrate Great Britain’s successes and it would be sort of rude to walk out of the room whenever they flick the seemingly endless cycling on. So my awesome record attempt is crumbling due to people in funny hats cycling round and round in a circle. Occasionally they fall off, and men in jackets stare at the velodrome track. Sometimes the men put a bit of gaffer tape down on it. Being a cycling judge is clearly where roadies go to retire.

But there has been so much cycling. And so much swimming. And quite a lot of diving (though considerably less now we are rubbish at it). Put it like this, there has been more than I would expect from sports where you are racing over distances where one would think the medals may go to the best over 100m, 200m, 400m etc like in the athletics. Instead though the minor sports which make up the gravy of the Olympics are well aware that this is their one moment in the sun, every four years. And some of them have worked out the key part of making their sports seem more important: to have more versions of them so more medals are available.

A number of techniques it appears have been developed to do this, and here is your handy guide in case you want to beef up Handball (Hitler’s favourite sport):

Different Weight Classes: A great idea from boxing, it suggests that it is unfair that a shortarse should have to fight a beefcake. And perhaps it is true, but in rough and tumble fighting outside a pub, you don’t get to stop a fight because one of the protagonists is considerably lighter than the other. Nevertheless this idea has been stolen by many of the martial arts and in particular the weightlifting – where it seems that the basic question of this simplest of sports “how much can a human lift” has been bastardised to “how much can a human lift if that human weighs X”. A great way of multiplying the available medals in your sport, it also has the plus point of implicitly suggesting that the short and light people are effectively disabled and should be in the paralympics.

Diff’rent Strokes: This is one of the best innovations of swimming. Not only do they want to know how fast you can swim a certain distance, but they gve you different races for different ways to getting there. So Breast Stroke, Butterfly, Back Stroke, Freestlye (crawl) : WNY NO DOGGY PADDLE! Not only that but they then have a race where you do all of them, the awesomely names freestyle. Which means in total there are five different 400m races! Athletics is missing a trick here, the only time they have nicked this idea is for mincing walking. But imagine the 400m where each hundred is in a different syle. 100m running backwards, 100m hopping, 100m walking and 100m freestyle (probably running!) Get to it.

Synchro: Yes swimming but when I discovered synchronised diving the lightbulb tinged above my head. There seems very little implicit in the sport of diving that suggests that doing it synchronised with another person is anything but a bit hard – but not key to the development of the sport. Except it doubles the number of dives there are. Doing anything synchronised with someone else requires a lot of training, and why there is no synchronised gymnastics, or dressage I have no idea. Synchro pole vault, that would be good.

Multiplicity of equipment: This is posh sport heaven. Rowing and yachting seem to have hundreds of classes based on the number of different boats they can invent. It is almost worth it for the invention of the word Yngling. In gymnastics if they invented a new piece of awesome equipment tomorrow there could be a good chance that it got included – I am very keen on adding a bucking bronco to vault over.

Coached / non-coached: As an old cox myself, I am constantly impressed by the trick rowing played to double the events in their sport. Namely the version of their sport where they have a cox in the boat versus the coxless versions. Bearing in mind that the main job of a cox in river rowing is steering, and Olympic rowing takes place on a straight course, this is even more impressive. But surely other sports could benefit from this. Boxing with the trainer in the ring, cycling with the coach doing a backie.

Let’s team up: I like a good relay race (I like watching people drop the baton). But the “group pursuit” cycling seems like the oddest type of relay I have ever seen. And this suggests that you can make up any relay you like and call it a “team version”. Indeed the eventing and gymnastic teams are a way of squeezing another medal out of individual sports. They really should do it in weightlifting so we can discover the World’s Strongest Country.

So as you can see, I saw more sport in the last two day than I expected. Over ten minutes of blimmin’ cycling. Infact the only way to avoid it properly was to come and write this rant.

FOURTEEN PUSHBIKE MINUTES
NINETEEN OLYMIC MINUTES IN TOTAL

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Olympic Fashion Watch: ARCHERY https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/olympic-fashion-watch-archery https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/olympic-fashion-watch-archery#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:49:32 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12146 Taking time out from my dedicated swimming coverage, I caught a bit of the women’s archery last night. The Koreans totally dominate this sport – possibly because the opposition take one look at them and their jaws drop to the floor:

Women's Archery

Yun Ok-Hee here is modelling a PINK bow, and a cartoon panda chest guard!

I think I might take up archery!

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No Rubber and No Blow Up Dolls https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/no-rubber-and-no-blow-up-dolls https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/no-rubber-and-no-blow-up-dolls#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:00:41 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12130 You know how I keep saying I hate the Olympics. Well there is one bit of the Olympics I like, it’s the bit which suggests that there is still room for bonkers artistry and fireworks this a po-faced search for medal Dorado. I have always liked opening ceremonies; probably from the moment that bloke on a jet-pack flew around the stadium in Los Angeles. Casts of thousands, explosions and allegorical histories presented as interpretive dance. As a child I was really into interpretive dance, and was often praised for my ability to inhabit the persona of – say – Fernando whilst leaping around the living room. In later life I discovered the cruel truth that actually no-one EVER danced like that except Pans People and they (and successor groups) were wound up in the mid eighties. There was no career in it for me. Unless – 2012…

But before we get to 2012, let us consider last weeks opening ceremony. The Birds Nest Stadium is an impressive venue, and the Olympic district is packed with enough interesting buildings and boulevards to make this ceremony special. And the fireworks were very impressive. The opening synchronised drummers were also stupendous, down to the glow-stick drumming. It all started very well. But, well I think I can sum it up with two complaints.
-No giant inflatables
-No people in giant foam rubber suits. NOT EVEN THE MASCOTS.

The Olympic mascot should act as a clueless MC for the whole event. Oversize in uncontrollable inflatable form, or like a drunk giant in foam rubber, the mascots embody the essential silliness of doing the Olympics in the first place. A celebration of sports which by themselves are not very interesting, the Olympics gives gravitas to kayaking in a world which could not care less. The opening ceremony should be arty, should be ambitious and should be – like any mass art in a sports stadium – a bit silly.

China did not do silly. They tried to pack three thousand years of history into interpretive dance and hi-tech staging which was all very impressive but lacked the coherency of a giant inflatable panda rolling across a sea of people. We dreaded ten minutes of five hundred synchronised Ti-Chi martial artists, which we predicted. There were impressive bits: the giant planet at the end and the moveable type: but in the end Zhang Yimou threw manpower at the project and went for respectable. The invention of moveable type is important, but is it China’s killer app? Even when dancing like some sort of out-of-control robot? Or people drilled impressively inside boxes.

Which brings us to the BBC presentation of the opening ceremony. In the past they have been happy with Barry “I’ll commentate on anything for a tenner” Davies. He’s retired though and so the BBC struck some sort of truce between news, sports and arts coverage with Huw Edwards, Hazel Irvine and Carrie Gracie (who she?*). Huw tried to invest the whole thing with majesty – suggesting that we would be pleasantly surprised by how the did the movable type segment. We, rightly, guessed within a second, that there were people in the boxes. We were right and thus not surprised. Commentating on this type of thing is a thankless task, but the overall seriousness of the Chinese effort made it a lot easier than usual. The three presenters managed to find themselves special niches in the process:
HUW: To describe what we were seeing and say the word Undulating (FIVE TIMES)
CARRIE: To say what we are seeing is based on the theme of harmony (TEN TIMES) and Confucius (NINE TIMES).
HAZEL: To explain that in the eighties the contents of her wardrobe were mainly day-glo nu-rave outfits (the only piece of proper bonkers commentary).
So it looked nice, the gigantic scroll was impressive, but it was nowhere near silly enough to go down as a great. When rolling Sarah Brightman on at the end is the strangest part, you know it has failed in the mental. London 2012 will have urban street dance, an animatronic history of grime with a gigantic robot Wiley fighting a gigantic robot Dizzee Rascal and a holographic re-enactment of the battle of Britain. And a giant fellating foam rubber Lisa Simpson, AND BE ALL THE BETTER FOR IT.

(It will if I can get involved with it anyway!)

*She turns out to be another newsreader, this one, whose main qualification for being authoritative on Chinese culture is spending a year teaching English. To which I say Huw Edwards is Welsh, which is where the Inn Of The Seventh Happiness was filmed, so he knows AS MUCH AS HER.

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Swimming: Rebecca gets gold! https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/swimming-rebecca-gets-gold https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/swimming-rebecca-gets-gold#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:10:03 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12133 You’ve probably seen the headlines already – in the early hours of this morning Britain’s Rebecca Adlington won the 400m freestyle, making her the first women’s swimming medallist since 1984 and the first women’s gold since 1960! She paced it perfectly, even if the finish was a bit nail-bitingly close for us bleary-eyed viewers at home.

Here’s a short clip of the last length. Katie Hoff (USA) is leading in lane 3, Adlington is in lane 5 (the upper yellow one). Look how Adlington suddenly zooms up from metres behind in the last 25m, and just touches out Hoff at the last inch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI6xrhef-fI

Awesome stuff. Her teammate Jo Jackson had a superb swim as well to nab the bronze, and together their efforts have definitely lifted the British squad’s spirits after a hesitant start. The men’s 4×100 freestyle relay team put in a sterling effort to make the final (they only decided to bother fielding a team at all at the very last minute), and came within a couple of tenths of a second of the previous world record set by the American B-team in Sunday’s heats. Yes, the B-team. The A-team (Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones and Jason Lezak) knocked another four seconds off it again in the final, which is a staggering time, but even without a clock the race itself was a joy to watch (BBC video link). Somehow Lezak caught up Alan Bernard, who must have thought he had it sewn up. You really feel sorry for the French, but it means that Phelps’ eight golds target is still on track.

So what else has been going on in the pool? Well, world records have been tumbling all over the shop and there have been plenty of upsets for the Americans who aren’t in a ‘Phelps’ event:

Men’s 400m freestyle: Tae Hwan Park (KOR)
Women’s 400m freestyle: Rebecca Adlington (GBR)
Men’s 100m breaststroke: Kosuke Kitajima (JPN) – World Record
Women’s 100m butterfly: Libby Trickett (AUS) – Olympic Record
Women’s 400m Individual Medley: Stephanie Rice (AUS) – World Record
Women’s 4×100 freestyle relay: Netherlands – Olympic Record

The Americans were pretty much favourites for all of these events except the 100m butterfly and certainly expected to win most of them. Hard luck! The rest of the world is finally catching up with the USA. :)

Coming up tomorrow we have Hannah Miley and Keri-Anne Payne going in the semi-finals of the 200m Individual Medley, Caitlin McClatchey and Jo Jackson in the 200m freestyle semis, and Gemma Spofforth and Liam Tancock in the women’s and men’s 100m backstroke finals respectively. In recent Olympiads it’s been a rare sight to see a Brit in the final for anything, but right now you can see the confidence dripping off the British swimmers – they no longer seem intimidated by having world record holders or multi-medallists in the lane next to them, and are knocking seconds off their best times (except Rebecca – in her post-victory interview the first coherent thing she said was ‘I’m a bit disappointed with my time”). You can tell that the trusty BBC commentary duo of Andy Jameson and Adrian Moorhouse are having trouble keeping their excitement to a professional level as they watch.

So by all rights Team GB should bag themselves a few more medals by the end of the week! Let’s hope your correspondent isn’t suffering too much from sleep deprivation to bring you all the latest poolside action…

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His snatch was his downfall https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/his-snatch-was-his-downfall https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/his-snatch-was-his-downfall#respond Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:15:49 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12132 Thanks to the miracle of the BBC streaming video I have now seen some live weightlifting – the mens’ 62kg finals. I can report that I was – as someone in the comments mentioned – quite wrong about the lack of tactics: but the tactics are as brutal and all-or-nothing as the sport in general. Do you try and lift at the limit of your ability to post a total that might get you in the medals, and risk crashing out entirely? Or do you lift what you can, get a total on the board and seek to build on it (but risk exhausting yourself?).

It’s a tough choice, tougher when you have a dude like gold medalist Zhang Xiangxiang in your event, performing first-time lifts which better anyone else’s best with ease. He failed his second lift on the snatch, but that was the only hiccup until he missed a world record lift right at the end – by then he had won gold easily and was doing it more to please the home crowd.

I liked the guy who got silver, a surprisingly rangy Colombian called Salazar (though this lower weight class doesn’t really attract man-mountains) who was the most delighted when he managed each lift, and I felt bad for a Korean who’d taken an early lead before three fails in the clean-and-jerk ended his Games. That’s the starkness of weightlifting: unlike the swimmers, runners, cyclists, etc. there’s no multiple events to promise redemption, and unlike the boxing and tennis you don’t work your way through multiple bouts. In the lifting, you really do only get one moment in the spotlight.

These lower weight classes have, as predicted, been a goldfest for China. Eyebrows have apparently been raised over the initial gold in the lightest women’s class, whose bulky winner managed an improvement in a year equal to over half her bodyweight. But what impressed me about Zhang Xiangxiang was his calm as much as his formidable strength. Oh, and his name, pronounced by the BBC commentator with all three syllables the same, like a weightlifting version of !!!

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Olympic Avoidance Log 2008: Day 2: Bouncyball (Giant Division) https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-day-2-bouncyball-giant-division https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-day-2-bouncyball-giant-division#comments Sun, 10 Aug 2008 23:58:28 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12131 I saw a minute of the Basketball game between the USA and China today. Gosh Basketball is dull. Look at all the things I thought about in that minute to try to avoid engaging with the game

a) Is giganticism a kind of disability (door frames too low etc)? Hence shouldn’t basketball be in the Paralympics. Or maybe there should be a special division for people under five foot six playing basketball.
b) Basketball is a perfect example of a sport which humans have out-evolved to an extent that the game is completely different to the one originally intended.
c) In retrospect it was probably kind of dumb for the USA to have lobbied for certain sports that they were particularly good at to be involved in the Olympics. In the Baseball and Basketball they really are setting themselves up for a fall if they don’t win. (I know I am probably wrong in this, but the only way to get our Olympic loving statisticians to post is by deliberately provoking them!)
d) How do the US pick their national team (in this and the baseball)? Its kind of related to “how does anyone pick their national team” but in a professional sport where club competitions are paramount, is there an easy way to do this?
e) Whilst I have been told (three times in that minute) that basketball is massively popular in China, and Yao Ming is like the Chinese David Beckham, its still a bit odd that he was chosen to light the Olympic torch. Don’t you give that honour to someone who is a genuine gold medal prospect, which as far as I can see, is not the case with the Chinese basketball team no matter how much they like the game?
f) Actually, once a seven foot six bloke has got hold of the Olympic torch, its probably quite hard to get it off of him, so maybe that’s the explaination.

ONCE BOUNCY MINUTE. THREE OLYMPIC MINUTES IN TOTAL.

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Olympic Avoidance Log 2008: Day One – Rowing https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-day-one-rowing https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-avoidance-log-2008-day-one-rowing#comments Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:53:02 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12129 I hate the Olympics. But it is everywhere (except for the fencing), so it is very easy to accidentally stumble across it. In the last Olympics I managed a personal best of racking up less than an hour of viewing, but I hope to beat it this time. However occasionally I get tricked into watching some by virtue of something interesting happening. It is rarely the sport itself.

This morning it was an explosion at the rowing. Initially I was doubly excited. Finally the truth would be discovered that rowers actually rely on little motors under the boat. However it wasn’t that. Instead John Inverdale’s cro-magnon visage was explaining (by pointing) that the machine that made little bubbles to mark the finish line had blown up. Indeed behind him was clouds of thick smoke (admittedly difficult to distinguish from the smog) and a black smudge hole in the Olympic rings. Inverdale was predicting that this would soon be replaced, praising Chinese efficiency. I was just goggling at:
a) the fact they use a bubble machine to mark the finish line
b) that bubbles are seen to be rigourously accurate enough to MARK a finish line
c) that they got a shonky machine which on the first day of use blew up
d) that John Inverdale had not run off scared of the FIRE DRAGON, perhaps to run back to his cave to draw with the juice of some berries the trauma of the event.

Anyway, whilst marvelling at all of this, I saw a bit of a womens skulling pair race in which the hot favourites, the Chinese were pushed into, er, first place by the Czech’s and the Brits “would be disappointed with that”.
TWO MINUTES

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Foiled again! etc etc https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/foiled-again-etc-etc https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/foiled-again-etc-etc#comments Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:38:30 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12128 Unlike, say, sailing, fencing is a naturally telegenic sport. Violent and shrouded in darkness with dramatically spot-lit little runways for the fencers to jab at each other, each point of a bout will take up at most a few seconds of one’s precious, attention-deficit-addled time. In fact, bouts at this highest of levels are like that old nature film of the grizzly bear swiping salmon from a stream – the crucial action simply takes place faster than a human can see it. Like chess players, fencers are always several moves ahead of what’s actually happening. But with the camera and playback technology available today, every bind, circle-parry and change of engagement can be slowed down, isolated, remarked upon and put into the context of the bout. And like the other combat sports, fencing requires ingenuity, creativity and grace yet thankfully doesn’t depend on a judge somewhere. You either hit somebody or you don’t.

But head over to the BBC page for television coverage of the Olympics and try viewing the listings for fencing. Strange, no? It hasn’t – like baseball – been voted out (baseball will make its last Olympics appearance in Beijing this year). It’s just not being shown by the BBC.

Back in June, when the BBC’s coverage was being hammered out once and for all, there was only one Briton expected to compete in any fencing event. That was Alex O’Connell, who’s handy with a sabre – one of the three swords in fencing along with epée (thinner) and foil (the thinnest). Since then, in a mysterious ruffling of cloaks, the sport’s international governing body has decreed that Finchley’s Richard Kruse – a foil man – and Martina Emanuel – also foil – will get to stab a little in Beijing.

Fencing isn’t one of those Olympic sports where you’re washed up by the time you’re university age. At 22, Emanuel is a little green for a fencer – she’s mainly trying to get experience for 2012. (She also trains, lives, and was born in Italy. Hmm. British mum, apparently.) But there are high hopes for 24-year-old Kruse, who some say is Britain’s best shot at the country’s first fencing medal since 1964.

Today, American Mariel Zagunis took the gold in women’s sabre. (Americans won bronze and silver, too). Zagunis thus repeats as gold medalist. She won in 2004 – the first gold for an American fencer in 100 years – after a last-minute reshuffle allowed her to join her compatriots in Athens. So there’s hope for Richard Kruse yet. It’s just too bad his friends won’t get to tune in. Especially after he took the time to present this “fencing for beginners” guide for… BBC Sport.

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Olympic football and Eurosport commentators https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/olympic-football-and-eurosport-commentators https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/olympic-football-and-eurosport-commentators#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:07:27 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12123 “No score at the break – the mighty Brazil being held by Belgium.” We have the old problem here of commentators having stereotyped ideas fixed in their small brains before they have seen a team play. The best attempts and chances in that first half unquestionably went Belgium’s way. They continued to look the better side until a soft red card reduced Belgium to nine men, after which Brazil managed a goal. Belgium had another man sent off in what looked a crazy misjudgement by the ref, but there was still the sense of “mighty” Brazil hanging on, diving and wasting time, as the commentator admired Belgium’s plucky spirit, as if they were hopelessly outclassed but still fighting bravely. Brazil have never won the Olympic football competition, and it looks highly unlikely that this lacklustre team, even with Ronaldinho as one of their overage players, can change that.

So who looked good? Italy did outclass the opposition in a 3-0 win, but I can hardly assume that Honduras are especially high quality. Argentina look very strong, but the Ivory Coast gave them a good game in losing 2-1. Holland and Nigeria both looked pretty good in a 0-0 draw.

On a side issue, why do commentators keep using the phrase “he plays his football in [country]” when we are seeing international football? Is there more information, denotative or connotative, than “he plays in”? Would we think they meant something other than football, or that he plays someone else’s football there?

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Premature Sports and British Withdrawal. https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/premature-sports-and-british-withdrawal https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/premature-sports-and-british-withdrawal#respond Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:59:52 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12120 Isn’t the Olympic opening ceremony tomorrow? You know, 08/08/08 = money, money, money? (Actually the games start at 8.08pm, which suggests that the first track should be a cover of the Abba tune by 808 State). What I understand the term “Opening Ceremony” to mean is that it takes place before any of the sport starts. So why have the Women’s Football games already started? Yet more proof that the Olympics are rubbish, they can’t even start on time! Of course in the UK we have no interest in the football due to the pesky Scots not allowing us to field a Team GB football team – possibly on the correct assumption that no Scot is good enough to make the team. That said the suggestion of a home nation tournament in 2011 to select a GB team for 2012 I think could be quite good fun. But then it is football, they have their own World Cup and football has never really felt like an Olympic sport to me. Unlike, say, Hitler’s favorite sport Handball – which is as Olympic as they get (pointless silly foreign sport that no-one plays).

On the sad side there has been a spate of British withdrawals from the games, the most notable being Frankie Gavin, lightweight boxer for not being enough of a lightweight. A strange accusation to level at a boxer, and one which in a pub situation would probably earn a punch, but he was a medal hope in a sport we often excel at (its punching people – v.British). Beth Tweddle is still in some of the gymnastics despite having a rib poking out of her chest injury. Injury’s are a sad way to go out, though perhaps its better than being roundly thrashed on the mat, but if our entire England team had to withdraw due to injury, we could spenc the next four years pretending we would have won everything.Which would certainly be the case if we were int he football.

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Olympic Preview: WEIGHTLIFTING https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-preview-weightlifting https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/olympic-preview-weightlifting#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:36:55 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12115

Some of Freaky Trigger’s Olympic coverage, you will have realised reading Kat’s swimming piece, is being provided by writers who are genuine experts and enthusiasts in their field – as well as possessing a gift of bringing the drama of sport to you the reader.

Others, however, have chosen sports based on what was left over when everyone else had picked. Since this is very much how my participation in sports has always worked it seemed a fair method. Thus I introduce myself to you now as Freaky Trigger’s newly appointed weightlifting expert.

Weightlifting as a sport is both simple and mysterious. The simplicity comes from the fact that every single event in every single category at the Olympics is the same: no variance in victory conditions, rules or tactics, just in how enormous the participants are. The mystique comes from the fact that it’s never on the TV except when the Olympics come round, when it seems to fill up the whole schedule. Also, Britain don’t take part in it* so when I was small it seemed doubly baffling, as it was always there and yet nobody had anything much to say about it. It was dominated back then by the Eastern Bloc countries who were Our Enemies: while we concentrated on breeding a race of lanky fops good only for running away the iron men of Bulgaria and the DDR were busy practicing by lifting whole tanks.

Luckily times have changed! Here is what my literal half hours of research have uncovered about weightlifting so far.

The magic of weightlifting

Weightlifting is all about maximum individual effort. It does not seem to be a particularly tactical sport at the moment of competition (training and exercise regimes are another matter) – what’s needed is a combination of skill, power, and determination. Skill and power are familiar to us from other events, of course – the shot, javelin, or high jump – but what makes weightlifting uniquely compelling are two other factors in combination.

The first is the all-or-nothing nature of weightlifting. When you throw a javelin it goes a better or worse distance than your opponents. But weightlifting is more like the high jump – you either lift the weight cleanly or you don’t: no room for compromise or “good enough” or “puts you in contention”. The weight goes over your head or it doesn’t. And because the weight is such a big physical thing the fail in weightlifting truly is epic: the slang for failure in the sport is “bombing out”.

The second is the uniquely sustained exposure and pressure the weightlifter suffers. A high jump is over in a second or two: a clean-and-jerk can take up to two minutes before failure or success is confirmed. That’s two minutes alone on a stage, the audience (and worldwide TV audience), focusing on your every expression and movement as you try and focus on the enormous slabs of steel you’re trying to lift. It’s no surprise weightlifters seem to talk about the sport not in terms of competing against each other but in more individualist language: constantly striving to better their own personal physical limits, shutting out the rest of the sport and the world.

What will happen in Beijing?

There are mens and womens events, each divided into a half-dozen or so weight classes. Each contestant needs to do two lifts: the snatch, which is the lift done in one movement, and the clean and jerk, which is in two movements and involves heavier weights. The clean and jerk is the really dramatic one where you think the lifter is going to do themselves a mischief at the halfway point, and they drop the weights on the stage with an almighty bash if it goes wrong. The snatch is more a psychological battle where lifters just grip the bar, stare at it, and then walk away.

The winner is the person who hefts the biggest total weight over these two lifts.

So to Beijing: weightlifting is one of the events where China are looking to clean (and jerk) up, at least in the lower weight categories – they’re leaving the heavyweight ones to the traditional powerhouses from Eastern Europe and the Middle East (Iran is a big weightlifting nation). Most informed opinion suggests they will do so, and a lot of the interest will be in whether they can double up on the top medals, or whether a non-Chinese competitor can split gold and bronze. But of course, anyone can have an off day. The higher weight categories seem a bit more open: the superheavyweight mens looked set for an epic battle with the Iranian defending champion Hossein Rezazadeh hoping to win a remarkable third gold, but his doctors have informed him he must never lift again! Noes! But that event will still be exciting in his absence, and not just because of the stupendous weights being lifted: it is one of the few Olympic events which might well be won by a sitting MP. (Your reporter will of course be keeping a close ear on the unofficial SI units of weightlifting being used by the commentators.)

This being sport, the Australians seem in with a shout in a couple of areas too.

So far I have only found out much about men’s weightlifting: the women’s discipline isn’t as big news, and also has a long-standing image problem which it shares with certain track and field events: the imaginative jump from “unfeminine” to “not actually women” is easy to make. This is slightly unfair – in fact the entire sport across both genders seems to be riddled with doping with Bulgaria having already withdrawn its entire team for being drug-pumped weightbots.

Commentators have called for weightlifting to be withdrawn thanks to these scandals – this is unlikely to happen (cf that IHT article) as it’s a venerable Olympic sport. Also, for me anyway it’s harder to care about doping in weightlifting than in, say, cycling, where drugs are being used to give power an advantage over tactics and skill. In lifting, power is everything anyway: putting three times your bodyweight over your head on a huge metal bar is ALREADY completely freakish and eye-bulgingly mental, the monkey glands make a difference only in degree.

Stay tuned to FT for my virtual matside reports on the weightlifting events!

*(this is not wholly true – Britain’s one weightlifter in Beijing will be Michaela Breeze, who came 9th in her class in Athens and I remember seeing on Newsround where she came across as very nice and passionate about her sport. She said that to be a British female weightlifter was to plough a somewhat lonely furrow, which doesn’t really surprise me.)

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Olympic Preview: SWIMMING https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/olympic-preview-swimming https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2008/08/olympic-preview-swimming#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:06:47 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12112 Have we got a chance in the backstroke? Or will we sink without trace? As one of FT’s diligent aquatic correspondents I’ve put together a quick guide to the swimming events – the form, the favourites and whether Great Britain has a minnow’s chance at winning anything at all. So if you think an Individual Medley is something off the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, read on!

To start you off, here’s a useful run-down of the rules in swimming competitions. The Olympic-specific bits are as follows:

– No 50m events except for the freestyle.
– Up to two swimmers per country are allowed to enter each individual event.
– 50m, 100m and 200m events have heats, semi-finals and a final; 400m, 800m and 1500m events just have heats and a final.
– The 10km is a new event this year, and is going to be held in the rowing lake, the water quality of which has been upgraded from ‘too polluted for any human use’ to ‘suitable for industrial use and entertainment without direct touch of human skin’.

Swimming History 101

If you haven’t been paying attention, for the last decade or so swimming has been a straight-up contest between the USA and Australia. Before that the Americans were totally dominant, and from the mid-seventies up until 1989 the communist bloc was pumping its poor ladies full of steroids. Here’s the swimming medal table for the last five Olympiads:

  United States Australia Russia/Eastern Europe*
Athens 2004 28 15 11
Sydney 2000 33 18 13
Atlanta 1996 26 12 14
Barcelona 1992 27 9 20
Seoul 1988 18 3 45

(*For the purposes of this table I’ve tallied up the medals for Russia/CIS/Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland and East Germany.)

Since 1992, most of the Russian/Eastern European medals shown above were won by a handful of superstar multi-medallists such as Krisztina Egerszegi (HUN), Alex Popov & Denis Pankratov (both RUS) and Yana Klochkova (UKR), whereas the American and Australian teams have unmatchable depth of talent – several crestfallen swimmers broke the existing world record in their Olympic trials this year but didn’t make the team as they still came in third! In fact, check out the relay team medal table (in brackets are the number of gold relay medals won):

  United States Australia Russia/Eastern Europe
Athens 2004 6 (3) 3 (2) 0
Sydney 2000 6 (4) 5 (2) 0
Atlanta 1996 6 (6!) 3 (0) 2 (0)
Barcelona 1992 5 (4) 0 4 (1)
Seoul 1988 5 (3) 0 7 (2)

Australia’s rise to power in world swimming shows absolutely no signs of stopping – this year their women’s team may well overtake the Americans. However, until the Herculean Michael Phelps retires the Aussie men will have to settle for second best.

Of course other countries partake in swimming too: Italy, France and the Netherlands have several world-class freestyle swimmers each, Japan is very strong where breaststroke is concerned and – amazingly – the UK women are finally starting to have an impact! What’s going on?

Team GB: sink or swim?

British swimming has been splashing about in the shallow end with its armbands on for decades. For comparison with the tables above, Team GB has won 8 swimming medals IN TOTAL since 1988 and NONE of those were by women – relying on the male breaststrokers and distance freestylers to scrape the odd medal.

We have historically performed very well at short course (25m pool) events, but when it came to the big competitions (all in 50m pools) we were left in the starting blocks. This wasn’t due to a lack of talent or even hard work: many of our top swimmers had lost the race before they even arrived at the pool. Add this poor psychology to our dire facilities and a non-existent national coaching programme and you can start to see why our best swimmmers would be off training on their own in the US or Canada. For an ‘individual’ sport, you might be surprised at the importance of being part of a strong team for swimmers, both in training and racing. Something had to be done to revive the UK’s fortunes.

Step up Bill Sweetenham, a successful Australian youth coach who shook things up a little in the GB camp after their dismal performance in Sydney 2000. Not all the swimmers were in favour of the changes, and there was a lot of muttering in high-up places about what exactly was going on. But Bill’s talent clearly lay in nurturing young hopefuls and instilling into them the proper competitive mindset needed to be the best in the world. The media obviously expected instant results (despite Sweetenham’s weary explanation that, as with Australia, it would take a while to build up a successful team) and as such Bill has since departed for pastures mysterious (‘decided not to renew his contract’). But he set the wheels in motion, and the young Brits are now chomping at the bit for the chance to show what they can do.

The Girls

Our female freestylers are our best shot for a gold medal – yes, I said GOLD! Teenager Rebecca Adlington is ranked no.1 in the world this year for the 800m. She is terrifyingly fast even when in heavy training, and hopefully will do better than Becky Cooke’s 6th place over the same distance in 2004. Have a look at how her best time measures up:

Name Time Year
R. Adlington (GBR) 8:19:22 2008 (Personal Best)
J. Evans (USA) 8:16.22 1989 (World Record)
A. Shibata (JAP) 8:24.54 2004 (Olympic Gold)

Rebecca’s 8.19 is the fourth fastest time EVER, and she’s still got plenty more in the tank – her sights are set on the 400m as well. If she can hold off the Americans and Italians then HURRAY, double-medallicious!

Fran Halsall is a great little sprinter and could be up for a medal in the 50m or the 100m – world record holder Libby Trickett (AUS) probably has the gold sewn up here but the rest of the field is wide open. Caitlin McClatchey had a difficult 2007 and has sat just outside the world top ten this year for the 200m. However she clearly has a taste for victory after her two golds at the 2006 Commonwealths (beating Libby in a huge upset for the Australians), and has been working very hard this year.

Factor in Jo Jackson and Mel Marshall – solid world-class sprinters both – and we have the makings of our best 4x200m free team since well, ever. The Americans aren’t exactly quaking in their boots (not when they keep breaking the world record every other competition), but the Australians are apparently ‘not writing us off’! Blimey!

Elsewhere, Hannah Miley should definitely make the 400m Individual Medley final and could well get a medal if she can break her own European record, but she’ll have to absolutely swim out of her skin to do it. Her 4.33 time would have been a world record in Athens, but Katie Hoff (USA) and Stephanie Rice (AUS) will both be aiming to win in 4.30 or under. Jemma Lowe should be a finalist for the 200m butterfly and may well get a medal there too, but in the backstroke and breaststroke we’re still some way off the international pace for now.

The Boys

Cardiff lad David Davies seems to be on reasonable form to repeat his Athens bronze in the 1500m, though it’s hard to see anyone beating the legendary Grant Hackett (AUS) – Grant is looking for his third 1500m gold in three Olympics and will be unstoppable, barring him being run over by a bus or something. David is also swimming in the new 10km open water event – how this will go is anyone’s guess, especially as David is Scared of fish: “They’re not human. They don’t walk around. They’re different.” Oh dear!

Liam Tancock, Gregor Tait and James Goddard are all great backstrokers and Gregor at least should make the 200m final, but I fear the Americans are just going to be too strong for them. Liam holds the world record for the 50m backstroke but unfortunately that’s not an Olympic event. Sorry Liam! Chin up though, with a bit of luck you or James might get a bronze in the 200m IM instead?

Holding up the British men’s breaststroke tradition, Chris Cook has been rising up through the world top 20 for a couple of years now. He’s not that far off the top pace and won the 100m and 200m at the 2006 Commonwealths, but again he’ll have to pull out something spectacular to beat the Americans and the Japanese.

But you can’t even see their faces!

Swimming may just be a bunch of dudes going up and down in a pool, but it has its fair share of drama – the hot topic this year has been the Speedo LZR swimsuit which has apparently helped break FORTY-EIGHT world records this year. Some are calling it a cover-up for extensive doping, but I think it’s simply that Speedo has made a massive leap in its technology. If some swimmers want to take advantage of that then fine. Everyone else will just have to swim faster.

Still on the drugs theme, American breastroker Jessica Hardy discovered she had tested positive for clenbuterol (an asthma medication that improves lung capacity) just last week. She has tearfully denied everything, but it’s too late for appeals – she’s out.

There’s been a lot of hoo-haa about the finals being raced in the morning session (not just swimming – gymnastics too). This is unheard of in pretty much any sporting event (although a few morning finals were held in 1988 at Seoul), and is only happening in Beijing because NBC have signed a $3.5 BILLION dollar deal with the IOC so the Americans can watch it all at prime time. The Australians are NOT happy.

As well as their superhero Michael Phelps (who has been seen sporting a Mark Spitz ‘tache this week), the Americans will be spending their evenings watching Dara Torres, who at age 41 is competing in her fifth Olympics. Her first one was in 1984! She’s had more comebacks than All Saints. Unfortunately for Dara, last week her coach was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder and may only have days left to live. Yikes! Still, she’s not had it quite as bad as Laure Manaudou, who has had ‘lewd pictures’ of herself spread around the internet (allegedly) by her ex! The French freestyler has had a rotten year of it anyway, and has pulled out of 200m (in which she is the world champion). In fact, she’s thinking of packing in the freestyle altogether and switching to backstroke. Whatever you say, Laure!

Other brave soldiers: breaststroker Eric Shanteau was diagnosed with testicular cancer a week before the American Trials, but has decided he is going to swim the 200m anyway instead of going for surgery (!); world-record holder Liesel Jones has been on a soup-only diet for the last month (seriously, these breaststrokers need their heads looking at); Australian golden couple Eamon Sullivan and Stephanie Rice split up a couple of days ago and have lost all their joint sponsorship deals in the process (my heart bleeds for them, it really does) and last but not least, Kosuke Kitajima says that the food at the Olympic village is “the tastiest food I’ve ever eaten at any athletes’ village I have stayed at. I have gargled with the tap water too and that was fine I’m sure.” However there are NO BATHTUBS! The swimmers are unable to immerse themselves in water! Oh wait.

The Medal Contenders

Enough wittering. Here’s a quick run-down of my medal tips in each event:

Mens

Event World No. 1 Contender Contender
50m Freestyle Eamon Sullivan (AUS) Alain Bernard (FRA) Gary Weber-Gale (USA)
100m Freestyle Alain Bernard (FRA) Eamon Sullivan (AUS) Jason Lezak (USA)
200m Freestyle Michael Phelps (USA) Peter Van DerKaay (USA) Ryan Lochte (USA)
400m Freestyle Grant Hackett (AUS) Larsen Jensen (USA) Tae Hwan Park (KOR)
1500m Freestyle Peter Van DerKaay (USA) Grant Hackett (AUS) David Davies (GBR)
10k Open Water Vladimir Dyatchin (RUS) Petar Stoychev (BUL) David Davies (GBR)
100m Butterfly Michael Phelps (USA) Ian Crocker (USA) Fred Bousquet (FRA)
200m Butterfly Michael Phelps (USA) Gill Stoval (USA) Peng Wu (CHN)
100m Backstroke Aaron Piersol (USA) Matt Grevers (USA) Helge Meeuw (GER)
200m Backstroke Aaron Piersol (USA) Ryan Lochte (USA) Ryosuke Irie (JPN)
100m Breaststroke Brendan Hansen (USA) Kosuke Kitajima (JAP) Chris Cook (GBR)
200m Breaststroke Kosuke Kitajima (JAP) Alexander Oen Dale (NOR) Brent Rickard (AUS)
200m Individual Medley Michael Phelps (USA) Laszlo Cseh (HUN) Ryan Lochte (USA)
400m Individual Medley Michael Phelps (USA) Ryan Lochte (USA) Laszlo Cseh (HUN)

Womens

Event World No. 1 Contender Contender
50m Freestyle Libby Trickett (AUS) Marleen Veldhuis (NED) Dara Torres (USA)
100m Freestyle Libby Trickett (AUS) Britta Steffen (GER) Cate Campbell (AUS)
200m Freestyle Katie Hoff (USA) Sara Isakovic (SLO) Federica Pellegrini (ITA)
400m Freestyle Federica Pellegrini (ITA) Katie Hoff (USA) Laure Manadou (FRA)
800m Freestyle Rebecca Adlington (GBR) Kate Ziegler (USA) Katie Hoff (USA)
10k Open Water Larisa Ilchenko (RUS) Edith van Dijk (NED) Chloe Sutton (USA)
100m Butterfly Libby Trickett (AUS) Jessica Schipper (AUS) Christine Magnuson (USA)
200m Butterfly Yuko Nakanishi (JAP) Jessica Schipper (AUS) Jemma Lowe (GBR)
100m Backstroke Natalie Coughlin (USA) Margaret Hoelzer (USA) Kirsty Coventry (ZIM)
200m Backstroke Margaret Hoelzer (USA) Laure Manaudou (FRA) Kirsty Coventry (ZIM)
100m Breaststroke Liesl Jones (AUS) Tarnee White (AUS) Rebecca Soni (USA)
200m Breaststroke Liesl Jones (AUS) Rebecca Soni (USA) Megumi Taneda (JPN)
200m Individual Medley Stephanie Rice (AUS) Kirsty Coventry (ZIM) Katie Hoff (USA)
400m Individual Medley Katie Hoff (USA) Stephanie Rice (AUS) Hannah Miley (GBR)

The relay events will be dominated by the United States, with competition from the Italian and French men, and the Australian and British women.

And that’s your lot! Watch out for more updates once the Games get underway!

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Announcing The Comprehensive FT Olympic Coverage (Snidely) https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/announcing-the-comprehensive-ft-olympic-coverage-snidely https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/08/announcing-the-comprehensive-ft-olympic-coverage-snidely#comments Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:46:15 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12104 I hate the Olympics. Once every four years the world seems to stop –for some sort of celebration of fair play, school bullies and bizarre stage management. This seems all kinds of wrong to me, particularly in the middle of a balmy summer that grotesque mutants and posh people fill up our television schedules just for being quite good at something which is useless. Bookend the whole affair with staggering jingoism and an opening ceremony which is the last vestige of hyper-interpretive dance and I really do start to wonder the gawmping masses watching are actually pod people. So someone can throw a stick quite far. SO WHAT!

Sadly it appears that on Freaky Trigger, I am alone in this view. And so it falls to me, sipping my special edition Olympic Hatorade, to announce the comprehensive Olympic coverage on Freaky Trigger. You can get your Olympic fix from the BBC in High Definition, or on the radio in considerably less definition, but the proper Olympic analysis lives here. Basically, when I use the word comprehensive, I mean more in the sense that the Daily Mail uses it when discussing the education system: patchy, run-down and not fit for purpose. Think of our coverage as comprehenxive compared to the Eton of the BBC. And I know which I would rather be (and who I would rather punch in the face).

We have a crack team of reporters who wish they were in Beijing covering the athletics, posh sports and someone who owned a BMX once which qualifies them to comment on that. The anchor of our commentary will come from Olympic statistician extraordinaire Carsmile Steve, who will almost certainly mention the 1912 Swimming Obstactle course at least once. Talking of swimming Kat will be talking about this pointless splasharound and perhaps explaining why freestyle has not been renamed front crawl. Sarah will be looking at synchro swimming amongst other aspects and our own BAGA boy Alan will admire the young boys in The gymnastics. This is just part of the apparently keen and reverential coverage FT will give you starting next week on the 08/08/08*.

As for me, I will be trying to avoid the Olympics yet again. I will be trying to beat my own personal best of seeing only fifty nine minutes of coverage of the Athens Olympics – the edited highlights of which can be found on FT. So even if you are sharing my antipathy towards this celebration of 99.999% of the world being rubbish at stuff, you should still be able to enjoy FT during August. I’ll be in the cinema lots.

*The number eight is very auspicious in Chinese, as the word for eight sounds a bit like the word for money. So in Chinese, the Olympics are starting on Money Money Money!

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Blurzillas, the Olympics and Jet Li’s Piss https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/07/blurzillas-the-olympics-and-jet-lis-piss https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/07/blurzillas-the-olympics-and-jet-lis-piss#respond Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:30:11 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12092
So the BBC have launched their slightly abstruse trailer for the Olympics
. It being a two minute summary of Wu Cheng’en’s Journey To The West, better known in the west as MONKEY. The animated two minute trail takes a while to get on to the subject of the Olympics, and is subtitled Journey To The East – as that is what the BBC will be doing to cover the Olympics (DO YOU SEE). One assumes the music and imagery are largely based on the recent stage version of Journey To The West by Damon Albarn and Chen Shi-zheng, designed by Jamie Hewlett whose animation is unmistakable here. Fun that it is, it will probably infuriate a lot of people, and confuse anyone under thirty. Unless they know the story of the Monkey King all that well. Which they may have picked up a bit from Dragonballz, or seen the recent Jet Li, Jackie Chan film The Forbidden Kingdom.

In The Forbidden Kingdom, Jet Li pays the Monkey King with some awesome stick on whiskers. However it eschews the traditional story of Journey To The West and instead turns him into stone in the first third. This would be a waste of Jet Li, if he didn’t also play a mysterious monk who wants to save the Monkey King. In this his is aided in a fashion by Jackie Chan (after the obligatory meet-up misunderstanding) who appears to be reprising his breakthrough role as the Drunken Master. Both of them are actually aiding the Chosen One – who for some reason is a kung-fu fan teenager from Boston who has been transported in time for hilarious (read tedious) anachronism jokes. On the way the battle the Bride With White Hair, and hundreds of usual Wuxia army henchmen. Basically The Forbidden Army is a PG rated primer into kung-fu movies which should have been made twenty years ago. Not only would I have been young enough to enjoy it properly, but Chan and Li would have been young enough to make their pair really something special. Whilst they are impressive for old geezers, old geezers they remain and the film rests a little too much on their past glories. Whilst forgetting that in the meantime we’ve see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and possibly loads of other Hong Kong movies to make this kid friendly tale seem a little tame.

Nevertheless, there is something nice about seeing Li and Chan together. And like many Hong Kong classics, once it gets their obligatory fight out of the way, there is only one thing left to do. A sequence in which Jet Li pisses all over Jackie Chan. Literally. (When I mentioned this scene to a number of people they all reacted, unsurprised as if this is exactly what they expect from a Hong Kong action comedy). Here you can watch the highlight of the movie, where Jackie prayed for rain, but instead get u-RAIN:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C7KU6a__Tw

So not a proper Monkey movie then. Though Stephen Chow is rumoured to be making one for 2010 – which would be something worth seeing. As, maybe, would be the Journey To The West opera which is on at the ENO at the moment which seems to be fortuitously timed with the BBC advertising it using it in for their Olympic coverage.

(By the way watch this space for OUR exciting Olympic coverage!!!)

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Punk Metaphor Watch #1: Guess His Theory https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/05/punk-metaphor-watch-1-guess-his-theory https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/05/punk-metaphor-watch-1-guess-his-theory#comments Wed, 14 May 2008 13:29:10 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/05/punk-metaphor-watch-1-guess-his-theory/ With the biting winds of PUNK ROCK beginning to blow through the Popular comments boxes it’s time to examine the ways in which punk has become institutionalised as a metaphor – starting with Richard Williams on the Guardian football blog: Stadium Rock of Top Flight looks Bloated Against The Joy Division.

stoke.jpgducks.jpg

Richard Williams of course is a music journalist of old and his argument is a bit more nuanced than any article which begins a sentence “If Manchester United and Chelsea can be seen as the King Crimson and Moody Blues of English football in 2008…” has a right to be. He’s not comparing the Championship and Premiership to punk and prog: he’s comparing them to pub rock and prog rock – though by the end he permits himself an apocalyptic vision of collapse and change which does draw on some familiar metaphorical wells. Something to contemplate, anyhow, as the Tarkus of Portsmouth prepares to meet the Roogalator of Cardiff this weekend.

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cthulhuedo https://freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2008/05/chthulhudo https://freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2008/05/chthulhudo#comments Mon, 05 May 2008 13:13:51 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/wedge/2008/05/chthulhudo/ chthulhudothe hideously maddening game from World of Lovecraft:

yog sothoth beyond the mountains of madness with the indescribable terror

—the winged fungus-beings in the outer dimensions with the unspeakable grimoire

—the crawling chaos at your study door with the aarrgh — !

(concept courtesy AL EWING and some foax playin the arkham horror rpg at the pembury last night)

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mah jongg attacks! https://freakytrigger.co.uk/see/2008/02/mah-jongg-attacks https://freakytrigger.co.uk/see/2008/02/mah-jongg-attacks#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:29:51 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/see/2008/02/mah-jongg-attacks/ mahjongbelatedly reviewing lust, caution, the element i most woke up to was probably the mah jongg, a game my family played a little when i was a teen — we had a very strange set made not of ivory-bamboo or fake plastic equivalent but some curious crumbly black brick composite

as a game it has several evocative elements: problem being their evocativeness is often add-on orientalism introduced into the western version of the game; chinese mah jongg (as we saw in the film) is a fast-played social gambling game; i imagine ang lee had layered in certain plot/atmosphere/subtext elements which will have been lost on all non-players (not that i spotted any) (not that i really consider myself a player, tho i do sorta kinda remember the rules)

mahjong2A: evocativeness, non-bogus and otherwise

The game itself is a bit like canasta: you have a hand of 13 tiles only you can see, you draw from a pack (except it’s the great wall of china) and discard onto a pile; the next player can either pick up your discard or pick up from the wall — the most basic hand is four sets of three and a pair, though there are all kinds of variant…

The shuffling is called the twittering of the sparrows and this is presumably non-bogus, since mah jongg means “sparrow game” or “sparrow tiles” — it’s called this because proper tiles chirp and clatter in a birdlike way when you swirl them on the table

The tiles are ordered (by everyone, very efficiently and quickly if they are practiced players) into a square of four touching walls (each two rows high and 18 long): this is the great wall of china, and you ensure the walls touch to keep the devils out

i’m quoting from the little book of rules i have, by one max robertson, pub. 1938, reprinted 1968: we bought it opposite the british museum after the whole family had seen the MUMMY (except i didn’t dare look at it just in case!) in 1971 or so (also we bought two nice little furry chinese dragons on cardboard bases but they came to pieces eventually)

anyway the book is mainly given over to “special hands”, which the chinese don’t use (or only some):

ones they do use:
UNIQUE WONDER: or 13 Grades of Imperial Treasure
One each of the 1s and 9s in all three suits, one each of the 4 winds, one each of the 3 dragons, one of thesde paired to go out
IMPERIAL JADE HAND
All tiles must be green: viz 2s, 3s, 4,s, 6s or 8s from the bamboo suit and plus MUST HAVE 3 green dragon!: usual hand-shape ie 3 fours and a pair
GATES OF HEAVEN
No winds, no dragons, all from a single suit, 3 1s, 3 9s, one each of 2-8, one of these to be paired to go out — all must be taken from the wall except the last which can be from a discard.

some hands in the book with less than kosher provenance :

GRETA’S GARDEN
one of each dragon, one of each wind, a run from 1-7 in one suit
GERTIE’S GARTER
“knitting” hand, viz ALL PAIRS, but the pairs = pair of 1s, pair of 2s, pair of 3s, pair of 4s, pair of 5s, pair of 6s and pair of 7s, in one or two suits only
HITLER’S BLUNDER
Run from 1-7 in same suit, pung of dragons (ie 3 of the same colour) and one of each wind

On the first page, in successive paras the author
a: quotes a disgruntled “chinese gentleman”:”We Chinese have played Mah Jonh one way for a thousand years, but you foreigners have played it a thousand ways in one year!”
b: then argues (surely correctly?) that “if all players would strictly adhere to this set of rules they would more or less become UNIVERSAL” — er yes
c: And continues (with monumental cheek, given the fact of HITLER’S BLUNDER et al): “After all, the game was invented by the Chinese and their rules should be followed as closely as possible”

mahjong kungfuB: mah jongg movies
Mahjong movies are a subgenre of Chinese gambling films that focuses on Mahjong games and over-the-top tile-playing skills. The movie can be either a comedy or an action movie (occasionally with distinctive elements of Chinese kung fu). The films, produced in Hong Kong, are often released during the Chinese New Year. Mahjong movies are very popular, particularly in some Asian countries. (this is copied from wikipedia)

* Kung Fu Mahjong 3 (2007)
* Bet To Basic (2006)
* Kung Fu Mahjong 2 (2005)
* Kung Fu Mahjong (2005)
* Teenage Gambler (2003)
* Fat Choi Spirit (2002)
* Mahjong Dragon (1996)
* Why, Why, Tell Me Why? (1986)
* Mahjong Horoki (1984)* Mahjong Heroes (1981)

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Freaky Trigger & The Moomins of Pop – 13 February https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/02/freaky-trigger-the-moomins-of-pop-13-february https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/02/freaky-trigger-the-moomins-of-pop-13-february#respond Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:08:02 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/02/freaky-trigger-the-moomins-of-pop-13-february/ PLUG PLUG!

Tonight leading Moomin academic Dr Vick, Tom Ewing and Pete Baran, corralled into brilliance by the Atommick Brane herself halloo the return of the kid-lit husband list! (Ms Puddleduck come on down!) (PuddleDUMB more like!) We’ll tackle Tove Jansson, Raymond Briggs, Uncle (<— the Elephant in the Castle!) (he has a B.A.!), the general disjunction between morals and quality in children’s art and the horrific not-so-SUBtext of Toy Story II. Plus something SO SCARY even Beaver Hateman and Knobsman Carsmile will tremble in fear. Tune in and find out for yourself! 7pm GMT, 104.4 Resonance FM, online at www.resonancefm.com and follow-ups at freakytrigger.co.uk, wild surmise to ftlollards@gmail.com.

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A Trigger Almanac: 2007 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/12/a-trigger-almanac-2007 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/12/a-trigger-almanac-2007#comments Mon, 31 Dec 2007 12:32:13 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/12/a-trigger-almanac-2007/ Here’s a selection of some of the most entertaining/interesting posts on the site this year – thoroughly incomplete, as it doesn’t include much of the frothing ephemera that makes FT so good (in my partisan view). As usual when I look at the FT archives I’m enormously amused, amazed that there’s so much of it, and frustrated that loads of good ideas don’t get followed up, but such is the way of the blog.  Huge thanks to all contributors and a Happy New Year to all readers.

JANUARY:
More Cheese That’s Good To Fry: useful and nutritious.
“Maggie May”: where’s the chorus?
Jamie T’s Album Cover: this is our truth tell me yrs.

FEBRUARY:
It’s Hot!: the sleb comic strip lives on.
The All New SI Units Of Measurement: year’s biggest spam magnet! But a great post.
Shared Universe Comics: I was completely wrong about all this but I still like my idea better than the dire reality.
Your Own Private Quatre Bras: aka A Dalek Make Of Light Part 2.

MARCH:
“Vincent”: Don gets a 1.
Pomp and Circumnavigation: Pointlessness exalted at Wembley.
Sci-Fi for Kids: Andre Norton: big retrospective!

APRIL::
The Sex Pistols at the Manchester Free Trade Hall: pathbreaking pop archaeology.
Take The Brain: stupid chess.

MAY:
This Is The Review That Goes Like This: please don’t go and see Spamalot.
Worlds In Collusion: the problems of RPG worldbuilding.

JUNE:
Let’s Make Glastonbury Better: a sensible proposal!
“Mouldy Old Dough”: the heart of one 70s.

JULY:
“Oliver’s Army”: we could talk all night.
Moaning about Black Snake: psychological complexity EXPOSED.

AUGUST:
IHM Health And Safety Watch: no, Mike Scott, no!
Diet Water / The Scandal of Skinny Water: consumer watchdog on the prowl..

SEPTEMBER:
“Think Of You”: Whigfield’s only proper song!
Food Science: Mars Planets: the second law of thermodynamics – DEFIED.

OCTOBER:
“Waterloo”: A milestone for Popular
Radio Wrong: the horror, the horror.
Confused by Cerveza?: a linguistic lesson.
Yo DJ Pump This Party: Kat’s first gig!

NOVEMBER:
Whodiddit? – the rules of crime fiction, explained. 
Overgrown doorways: woods between the words
Burial – “Untrue”: writable music and the joy of the 6AM twix 

DECEMBER:
Self-organising systems in the London Bridge Pret A Manger: social physics! with diagram!
Spicy chocolate curry cupcakes: tasty yet controversial recipe!

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amisquake: or u can’t spell “ESTABLISH THE CALIPHATE” w/o a “q” https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2007/12/amisquake-or-u-cant-spell-establish-the-caliphate-wo-a-q https://freakytrigger.co.uk/sport/2007/12/amisquake-or-u-cant-spell-establish-the-caliphate-wo-a-q#comments Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:49:51 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/sport/2007/12/amisquake-or-u-cant-spell-establish-the-caliphate-wo-a-q/ arabble2.jpg

i. BUQSHA, BURQA, FAQIR, INQILAB, MBAQANGA, MUQADDAM, QABALAH, QADI, QAIMAQAM, QALAMDAN, QASIDA, QAT, QAID, QANAT, QI, QIBLA, QIGONG, QINDAR, QINDARKA, QINGHAOSU, QINTAR, QIS, QIVIUT, QOPH, QWERTIES, QWERTY, QWERTYS, SHEQEL, SHEQALIM, SUQ, TALAQ, TRANQ, TSADDIQIM, TSADDIQ, TZADDIQIM, TZADDIQ, UMIAQ, WAQF, YAQONA
ii. ???
iii. jihad!

arabic.jpg

disclaimer: yes yes i know not all those words are arabic THIS IS SUB-TILE POLITICAL SATIRE at the expense of boneheads and racists do keep up
also please to buy me this it is GORGEOUS

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More Songs About Volleyball and Food https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/more-songs-about-volleyball-and-food https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/more-songs-about-volleyball-and-food#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:44:07 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/more-songs-about-volleyball-and-food/ Following on from last night’s volleyballpop discussion on Lollards, I thought I’d do a quick post as a follow up with some links to the other songs I mentioned! Doing the theme tune to volleyball championships seems to be quite lucrative. I mentioned that the first NewS single was used as the theme to the 2003 World Volleyball Championships (although for convoluted reasons this wasn’t considered the band’s official ‘debut’!): ladies and gentlemen I present NewS NIPPON! Really, nothing, ever, could beat the awesomeness of this song which I loved for years before I even sought out the video which features dancing in space, Yamapi in shorts. They also appear to have borrowed some of Kylie’s spare C&A spacesuits – remember when Kylie went into space? Yeah! I could go on (seriously <3 <3) BUT there’s MORE to this volleyball lark!

Because – as it turns out, in 2005, ANOTHER NewS single was used as a volleyball theme, this time to the ladies volleyball championship! This wonder is called TEPPEN (‘top’ or ‘summit’, whatevs). This song actually has an actual link to volleyball in the video, which features the lovely band members wearing various shades of quasi-dayglo trousers (AND THEY ACTUALLY MANAGE TO STILL LOOK GOOD WTF) and playing a wide variety of sports in a very well-kitted out warehouse. Oh, apart from the warehouse is semi-flooded, so as they play kicky-ball they get WET. (Like Andrew WK). (Ok not quite). Anyway, they play basketball, fitba, give each other backies on a bike (I’m saying NOTHING – oh Shige), drink cocktails, sweep the floor in orange boiler suits. But they DON’T actually play volleyball! Argh! But at the end they jump up and down like DORKS and it’s great so they’re forgiven.

Final one is the new single which we played on Lollards last night by Hey! Say! JUMP! – there is, mathematically speaking, ELEVENTY GRILLION of H!S!J! which means they would make a very effective volleyball team – if backflipping is a legal move in volleyball that is. The tune is Ultra Music Power – which I didn’t like so much on the first listen, perhaps because I am seriously concerned that I am listening to groups featuring a large amount of members under the age of 15 (I am 26, I admit this). But – you know what, I give in, it’s BLUDDY GRATE. The video is suspiciously similar to NewS Nippon now I think of it, except they appear to be in a CITY OF THE FUTURE rather than in space with aliengs, also they are pod people. There’s quite a lot of angsty staring at the camera inbetween cracking dance routines which makes me wonder – just how seriously ARE they taking this volleyball lark? AGAIN, no volleyball appears in the video. I now have a TOTAL CRAVING to watch boybands play volleyball. They should have a boyband league all of their own, totally!

Ah, ah. I said songs about volleyball and FOOD didn’t I? OK then, a sudden change of pace from relentless jpoptimism, here’s the wonderful 60s beat Eating Cold French Fries & Drinking a Lukewarm Coke by Louise Lovett. Wrenching stuff! At the beach on a date, she goes to the hamburger stand (cz the way to a man’s heart, etc) comes back clutching grease only to find the boy kissing JUDY! The b1tch! Our Lou flees the scene, clutching the by now soggy fries and syrupy fizz – when he drives up alongside her! DOH – it wasn’t him kissing Judy! It was Judy’s boyfriend! Louise just can’t tell men apart! Ha – so Louise gets in the car and they share the cold french fries together – but the real gutter in this one is the line “they pretend it was a joke”. You can picture them eating the cold fries in silence, he drops her off at home but when they see each other at school the next day, the awkwardness is still there. She doesn’t trust him, he doesn’t like that, and she’s embarassed. By the end of the week it will be over and Louise will be embittered, and working at the burger stand. Why are the burgers so salty? It’s because of her tears…

Anyway! I think this is the most I’ve posted to Freaky Trigger in donkeys so – erm, enjoy your songs about volleyball and food! I’ve made myself hungry now…

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Jump, They Say https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/08/jump-they-say https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/08/jump-they-say#comments Wed, 15 Aug 2007 06:39:18 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/08/jump-they-say/ jumpsnap.jpgSorry, I don’t mean to turn this into the wacky world of inventions but these things keep nagging me from the edge of my consciousness. I’ll give you more on “The Scandal Of Skinny Water” later, but first let us look at the following statement. Bear in mind that when foreigners say “Jump Rope”, they mean Skipping Rope:

“JumpSnap founder, Brad LaTour, is a regular guy just like you, who struggled with his own weight for many years. He knew jumping rope was the best form of exercise to burn calories and lose inches, but tripping over the rope was incredibly frustrating. That’s why he invented JumpSnap. What started as the ropeless jumprope has grown to become so much more. “


You read correctly. JumpSnap is a skipping rope without that pesky rope to trip up on (watch out on that link, it has an auto informaercial on it made with THAT VOICE). Now I haven’t done any skipping for about fifteen years but I kind of thought that the rope was the key part of it. Without the rope, how would I know when to jump? What would be my incentive for jumping?

But then I hadn’t thought of getting two radio linked computerized handsets (complete with AAA batteries) with wobbly bobbles on them for a mere $49.95 (inc P&P). Indeed now I look at the JumpSnap it makes me wonder WHY OH WHY did we ever bother with that dangerous rope AT ALL? When all we needed was a simple computer linked pair of handsets. I bet there are schoolgirls all over the country looking at the four pound skipping ropes with the disdain it deserves.

There are a number of stages in innovation and product design where surely the JumpSnap should have faltered. The very first one springs to mind: “Need for the invention”. Is anyone really that pissed off by tripping up on a skipping rope? Surely the co-ordination part is part of the key. But OK, lets say people are. Stage Two of the product design “Finding a cost-effective alternative” must have sprung up. Because a tape which beeps when you are supposed to jump would have been a damn sight cheaper that waving a salt and pepper shaker in each hand. Luckily for the good people at JumpSnap they are working in the fitness industry, where any old tat can be sold for inflated prices via the means of daytime infomercial.

All of which misses what appears to be a key flaw in the JumpSnap (not including price-tag). If tripping up is a major issue with skipping, then co-ordination could be an issue with its users. Look at this testimony from Amazon:

“If you look at the picture of the JumpSnap, you’ll notice the ends of the handles have weighted blue balls attached to a short string to simulate the jumping rope action. They worked great as long as you are perfectly rotating the handles. If you break rhythm, change hand position, or stop, the balls will whack you in the hand. It stings!”

I think I’d rather get jiggy with a skipping rope than look like an idiot with a pair of blue balls cracking my knuckles like demented clackers.

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The Swish Of The Traditional Curtain Raiser https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/08/the-swish-of-the-traditional-curtain-raiser https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/08/the-swish-of-the-traditional-curtain-raiser#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2007 11:17:04 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/08/the-swish-of-the-traditional-curtain-raiser/ A question just occurred to me: does the phrase “traditional curtain raiser” get used AT ALL outside of a sporting context?

Actually I wondered if it even got used outside of the Community Shield context, but apparently it does – the Australian Grand Prix is a TCR, so is an MCC match at Lords.

It took until hit 35 on Google before a non-sporting traditional curtain was raised: hats off to the Malvern Spring Gardening Show, which is the traditional curtain raiser for the outdoor gardening show calendar, according to the Times.

What other non-sporting things have traditional curtain raisers? What should?

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Intertotal Football https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/08/11152 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/08/11152#respond Wed, 01 Aug 2007 09:55:43 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/08/11152/ My adopted* Veikkausliiga (Finnish Premiership) team, FC Honka, seem to be suffering a touch of ‘second season syndrome’, but I don’t mind, as one of my most enjoyable discoveries this summer has been the Football In Finland blog, written in English and always intelligent, entertaining and informative. This post is especially good, even if you’ve got no interest in the Finnish title race (such as it is) – it’s a reproduction of the programme notes from Tampere United’s recent Champions League qualifier game, and is a great look at playing in Europe from the minnow’s point of view:

And when we play in the Balkans or further east, where do you go for (e.g.) Armenian visas? Can you tell me where the nearest Armenian embassy is to Tampere? Apparently it’s a cash-only back-street alley in Tallinn. I know because I went there with 25 passports in my pocket back in 2002. 

*via the thoroughly modern method of picking them a couple of years ago in a Championship Manager game, because I liked the name.

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They Don’t Like Cricket… https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/07/they-dont-like-cricket https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/07/they-dont-like-cricket#comments Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:45:39 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/07/they-dont-like-cricket/ _145680_drag_fan.jpgDid the members of 10CC* actually like cricket or not (answer THEY LOVED IT!) Cricket has, for want of a better word, a fuddy-duddy image. It has panama hats, dress codes and ties for supporters. And whilst charming young gentlemen like this members of England’s Barmy Army try to move it into the progressive, cross-dressing 1930’s, this image is still difficult to shift.

But Test Match Special, the flagship radio show, is fighting this image. Whenever they see a member of a hip young rock and roll band in the stands, why they rustle them into the box for a chat. And to the credit of the young rock band members, they often aquit themselves well chatting to Aggers et al. But then the obtuse and somewhat jokey atmosphere on Test Match Special is not a million miles away from being interviewed on Popworld by a Christmas Pudding.

In my opinion though this is a hiding to nothing. Cricket’s image is one of its assets. By all means invent 20-20 Cricket, with Girls Aloud playing at half-time. But bear in mind that Test Cricket takes five days and stops for lunch and tea. Enless you change the name to EXTREME LUNCHEON, and RED BULL BREAK, you are never going to shake that off. No matter how many members of Razorlight or McFly you have on your side.

Actually especially if you have members of Razorlight on your side.

*What is the difference between 10CC and the ICC? NOTHING!

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The Dave Clark Five https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/07/the-dave-clark-five https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/07/the-dave-clark-five#comments Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:00:13 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/07/the-dave-clark-five/ davidclarke_capt.jpgHooray for the England Blind Football Team. They beat Greece 5-1 in what appears to be a bit of a walkover. And are happily anticipating the blind European champions where the prodigious talents of their striker may net them victory. The name of this footballing Wunderkind?

Dave Clark.

WHERE ARE THE DAVE CLARK’S FIVE JOKES ON THE WEB? He got five goals for crying out loud. Not bad for any striker let alone a blind one. The blind football team captain. Who works in a sewage plant in Deptford*.

The campaign for sports personality of the year starts here. Especially when you consider he is also a golfer and runner.
(More on blind football here).

*This bit and only this bit might be a lie.

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