Northwest Passage
Jul. 30th, 2006 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI would have played some more at Party this morning, but the milk had turned, and so had my luck. I think that if you go a good way up in a short space of time, but then lose half of it back, it's a good idea to "book the win".
I went out early this morning to take the car for a little drive, else it would just sit there rusting from month to month, never being used. Luckily it had rained a bit overnight, making it easier than normal to clear the accumulated detritus from the windscreen. Idly looking at the screen, I noticed that my tax disc was two months out of date. Hmm, I thought to myself. Funny. Funny (in a kind of Dudley Moore "Pete And Dud" manner). I could have sworn that I bought a new tax disc a couple of months ago.
Well, of course, I had, and it was still sitting with my insurance and MOT certificate in the car's paperwork.
I'll say one good thing about privatizing the firms that issues parking tickets; they might smack you with a piece of paper for being 18 inches into the land of the yellow line, but apart from that they couldn't give a shit. My car is (virtually permanently) parked in a residents' parking zone, which is checked, oh, at least three times a week by traffic wardens. But the car has happily sat their all this time, apparently untaxed, and no-one has said a dicky-bird.
And, speaking of dicky-birds (quality segue here), up, yours, Pakistan. Really classy batting from Alastair Cook, or what? I mean, I thought that he was 15 or so. Do they let him into pubs? But apparently he's 21.
__________
Clearly, no-one in the US would have understood any of the preceding two paragraphs, so perhaps I'll shift to more cosmopolitan ground.
I finally got round to seeing Spike Lee's Malcolm X last night, which was notable for being, er, long. My version was 185 minutes, but IMDB tells me it's even longer than that, so perhaps the UK print was edited.
However, like Apocalypse Now, it's a worthwhile journey. Comparisons were made with the work of Oliver Stone, and certainly you can see echoes of the style of JFK and Nixon. In other ways I felt that this was Lee's take on Once Upon A Time In America, but for black people rather than for jews. Denzil Washington is stunning as Malcolm X, and the supporting players were up to the mark. It's sad to say it, but movies about black America (think The Cotton Club) have suffered because great black Hollywood actors are not thick on the ground. This movie managed to get Al Freeman and James McDaniel in, but I was surprised by the strength of the rest of the supporting cast (as well as by the absence of Andre Braugher and Morgan Freeman!).
Part of the problem with Malcolm X is, of course, that what he was preaching was anathema to white liberal Democrats, and was also not dissimilar to the line proposed by the British National Party over here and the Afrikaans Defence League (or whatever it is called) in South Africa. It's a bit hard to say "America welcomes you" when the other guy says "I am not an American. I didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on me". Spike Lee is a clever film director, and one moment in the film deliberately but elliptically points to the fascist undertones of Nation of Islam.
Despite my sympathy for anyone who refuses to say "but on the other hand...", I'm afraid that my sympathies lie with King here rather than with Malcolm X. Nation of Islam was a kind of cod-religion/cult put together by a bit of a nutter. Unfortunately, people often fall for that kind of thing, and Malcolm Little was prime material for recruitment.
________
The WSOP circus is half way through the four days that are day one, so to speak. No Action Dan at the final table this year. No Doyle Brunson hangin' around. They are gone, man.
Hellmuth doesn't say many sensible things, but he did notice that just because it was a field of 8,800, it didn't matter that much, since about 6,000 of the field would probably be knocked out while he was at home watching Celebrity Death Match. You can see his point. Hell, you could say that he's already beaten 40,000 people in what is, in effect, the biggest rebuy tournament in the world. It's just that the rebuy bit takes place online as players try to qualify.
Why not give people the option of lumping up $100K and coming in just as everyone else gets into the money? Change the rules so that the first two days (i.e. six days in real time) are a super satellite. Everyone goes back to $100K in chips when you get down to 880 players (with prize money being $20K from that point on) and the "seeded" players sit down with $100K in chips for their $100K entry money.
That way ESPN wouldn't even need to pay for cameramen for a week.
++++++++++
I went out early this morning to take the car for a little drive, else it would just sit there rusting from month to month, never being used. Luckily it had rained a bit overnight, making it easier than normal to clear the accumulated detritus from the windscreen. Idly looking at the screen, I noticed that my tax disc was two months out of date. Hmm, I thought to myself. Funny. Funny (in a kind of Dudley Moore "Pete And Dud" manner). I could have sworn that I bought a new tax disc a couple of months ago.
Well, of course, I had, and it was still sitting with my insurance and MOT certificate in the car's paperwork.
I'll say one good thing about privatizing the firms that issues parking tickets; they might smack you with a piece of paper for being 18 inches into the land of the yellow line, but apart from that they couldn't give a shit. My car is (virtually permanently) parked in a residents' parking zone, which is checked, oh, at least three times a week by traffic wardens. But the car has happily sat their all this time, apparently untaxed, and no-one has said a dicky-bird.
And, speaking of dicky-birds (quality segue here), up, yours, Pakistan. Really classy batting from Alastair Cook, or what? I mean, I thought that he was 15 or so. Do they let him into pubs? But apparently he's 21.
__________
Clearly, no-one in the US would have understood any of the preceding two paragraphs, so perhaps I'll shift to more cosmopolitan ground.
I finally got round to seeing Spike Lee's Malcolm X last night, which was notable for being, er, long. My version was 185 minutes, but IMDB tells me it's even longer than that, so perhaps the UK print was edited.
However, like Apocalypse Now, it's a worthwhile journey. Comparisons were made with the work of Oliver Stone, and certainly you can see echoes of the style of JFK and Nixon. In other ways I felt that this was Lee's take on Once Upon A Time In America, but for black people rather than for jews. Denzil Washington is stunning as Malcolm X, and the supporting players were up to the mark. It's sad to say it, but movies about black America (think The Cotton Club) have suffered because great black Hollywood actors are not thick on the ground. This movie managed to get Al Freeman and James McDaniel in, but I was surprised by the strength of the rest of the supporting cast (as well as by the absence of Andre Braugher and Morgan Freeman!).
Part of the problem with Malcolm X is, of course, that what he was preaching was anathema to white liberal Democrats, and was also not dissimilar to the line proposed by the British National Party over here and the Afrikaans Defence League (or whatever it is called) in South Africa. It's a bit hard to say "America welcomes you" when the other guy says "I am not an American. I didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on me". Spike Lee is a clever film director, and one moment in the film deliberately but elliptically points to the fascist undertones of Nation of Islam.
Despite my sympathy for anyone who refuses to say "but on the other hand...", I'm afraid that my sympathies lie with King here rather than with Malcolm X. Nation of Islam was a kind of cod-religion/cult put together by a bit of a nutter. Unfortunately, people often fall for that kind of thing, and Malcolm Little was prime material for recruitment.
________
The WSOP circus is half way through the four days that are day one, so to speak. No Action Dan at the final table this year. No Doyle Brunson hangin' around. They are gone, man.
Hellmuth doesn't say many sensible things, but he did notice that just because it was a field of 8,800, it didn't matter that much, since about 6,000 of the field would probably be knocked out while he was at home watching Celebrity Death Match. You can see his point. Hell, you could say that he's already beaten 40,000 people in what is, in effect, the biggest rebuy tournament in the world. It's just that the rebuy bit takes place online as players try to qualify.
Why not give people the option of lumping up $100K and coming in just as everyone else gets into the money? Change the rules so that the first two days (i.e. six days in real time) are a super satellite. Everyone goes back to $100K in chips when you get down to 880 players (with prize money being $20K from that point on) and the "seeded" players sit down with $100K in chips for their $100K entry money.
That way ESPN wouldn't even need to pay for cameramen for a week.
++++++++++
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-01 01:46 pm (UTC)Wonder if he'll be at this year's MSO (http://www.msoworld.com/)? :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-01 03:44 pm (UTC)That said, Gryko knows how to play a large stack and I suspect that there are a good few around him who don't know how to play a small one. I was (previously) quietly optimistic. Here's still hoping.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-08-03 07:31 pm (UTC)Whoops.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 05:22 am (UTC)PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 07:13 am (UTC)Nothing to see here. Carry on about your business, citizens :-)