Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Youtube and Tennis II

It's a little embarrassing to realise that I'm repeating myself year after year on this blog. Just about everything I'm putting into this post I replicated last year. It's also worth noting that I was completely wrong about Gael Monfils. I haven't heard anything from him since.

Anyhow ... First, the prediction. More the comment. If you are a Leyton Hewitt fan, then here is a video of the first bloke to beat him in straight sets in Melbourne since 2000. If you think Spewy is a little prick who deserves to have the pants whooped off of him, then this is, curiously, also a video for you. I give you the number three seed: Novak Djokovic.



Jim Courier is still around and I think I've solved last year's Cool Commentator or Crass Cockhead Conundrum. He is both. He is an annoying, sexist, American jock. Oversexed, overorange and over here. However, having listened to John Alexander, Todd Woodbridge and Aussie Drongo Number Three tittering and chortling over the women's doubles last night, I must say that I preferred Courier's cheeky, know-it-all and often bizarrely surreal commentary. Yes, Dad, he is American, but his input to the coverage is many times more entertaining and bearable than our national old farts whose idea of interesting is to repeat over and over again how hard the 'girls' hit the ball as though it were a revelatory insight. You could hear them stuffing their fists in their mouths when the super slo-mo camera showed a chest-high shot of Molik hitting the ball. At least Jim would have covered the comment-less silence like the Pro he is. Probably with something like: "Hur hur, boobies." And thus does my point stand. Entertaining and knowledgeable!

1 comment:

  1. Novak continually cracks me up with his impersonations and overall comedian style of behavior. I'm glad the game of tennis has someone like him.

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32