Andy's Glasses

Oh. My. God. This is the shape of the future. My own worst nightmare (that doesn’t involve Arsenal). No longer will ‘tossers’ be forced to hold their phones clumsily in their outstretched hand to ensure that they never look where they’re fucking going. Because you can now buy an Oculus Rift… thing. And never need to be bothered by the real world again.

Its essentially the world’s most expensive virtual reality gaming accessory at about 550 quid. But I see it as ‘the future’ of a lost generation. Who will never need again to exist in the real, actual, living world that they obviously don’t like very much. I see this picture as how the crowds walking down the Strand will look in about 6 months time. Fumbling around banging into each other, using google maps to direct them 25 yards in a straight line to the tube station because ‘looking’ is just so 1974.

God help us all. I’ve seen the future, but only through a screen.

Whereas the present is where its at. Well, it was last night. Went out for dinner with friends, arrived home, just in time for the news. So I thought. It was delayed. For the cycling at the Olympics. Oh, not so bad, I like cycling. Its very technical, the rules for each race are completely opaque to anyone who isn’t racing, including, as it transpired, most of the judges, but when the dust settles, Britain normally has another gold medal.

So the absolutely adorable Laura Trott (BIIIIIG Spurs fan that she is) won the ‘Omnium’ (don’t ask, 6 different events, most of which involve racing round on a bike faster than everyone else). Yippee. Her 4th gold medal. I love her.

As does her fiancee Jason Kenny. Who was riding next. Already the proud owner of 5 golds from the London and Rio olympics, he was in the final of the Keirin race. Which was delayed because of a little crash in the previous race. Which in turn is unnerving and unsettling. But Jason has nerves of steel. What you could see of him beneath his helmet and full face visor.

Finally the race started. And the keirin is odd (they’re all a bit odd, otherwise cycling would be the most boring spectator sport ever, other than golf). They have to follow a motor-bike round the track for about 4 laps, and they mustn’t overtake him. At precisely 3.5 laps (there’s a white line, so ya know), the bike has reached 50kph and leaves the track and riders all go mad for 2.5 laps to try and win or die, whichever comes first.

The first time someone overtook the motorbike prematurely. Probably 2 riders actually but despite having 67 million tv cameras spread around Rio, they’ve managed to avoid putting one on that white line. Which is so critical to the race that it was stopped. The judges, due to lack of camera-in-the-right-place, didn’t disqualify anyone, just restarted them about 10 minutes later.

More nerves, more unsettlement, more waiting, just what athletes love.

The race started, all good, 3 and a half laps and… someone overtook the motorbike again and the gun fired to stop the race. By which time everyone was getting bored and the judges didn’t even bother doing anything, they just started the race a third time. Probably with the instruction that if anyone fires that gun again, they will be shot. With that same gun.

The eventual, last 2.5 laps were magical. Jason Kenny was simply brilliant. Another gold.

Yiippee-ay-aye

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The main difference between ‘us’ in the ‘so-called’ civilised West, and the extremists from ‘so-called’ Islamic State is a matter of tolerance. Not to gluten, even though that’s a matter close to my heart, and certainly to my intestine, which lives nearby. Extremists are intolerant of pretty much everything. Unless its done, prayed, eaten, worshipped, everything according to their very narrow rules. We’re happy (ish) for them to eat, pray, worship, according to their wants and needs, as long as they don’t cut people’s heads off or blow things up. I think that’s reasonable.

So to sum up (not much to sum, I grant you); we are tolerant to everything; ‘they’ are tolerant to nothing. All Muslims can do what they want here, within our laws, obviously, which preclude beheadings and suicide vests, as long as they respect our right to do what we want, subject to those same laws. Which also protect the rights of gay men to hold hands in Sainsburys, by the way.

We’re tolerant; they’re not.

And then the French, the greatest mouthpiece for ‘libertee, fraternitee, egalitee’, has chosen, in certain cities, to ban the burkini. That rather odd (to my eyes) full body covering which is the chosen beachwear for Muslim women. To protect their modesty. And cover any waxing failures too. An added bonus. This is not about the covering up your women debate.

They Mayor of Nice banned it after the terrible massacre there, and now they’re banning it in parts of Corsica.

But if you preach ‘freedom for all’, you can’t then exclude certain classes just because it seems fashionable to do so. Or, in the case of the burkini, pretty unfashionable, but suitable to the cause.

If we are defending above all else, and we are, our right to live in a completely liberal, open and TOLERANT society, you can’t start banning things. If people are ‘free to adhere to their religion’, then let them, however odd, bizarre or silly we may find it. All religions are odd. They all have silly customs that really don’t do well in any reductionist paradigm. So don’t reduce them to ‘the bits’, just leave them alone.

The mayor in Corsica said he was banning the burkini because they represent extemism. They don’t. That’s bollocks. The burkini represents an adherence to a way of life alien to us in the West. Doesn’t make it wrong. Whether its a symbol of repression or a symbol of empowerment is the same argument you can use for a very skimpy bikini. But its not about that. Its about the fascistic exercise of banning something harmless because of what it represents.

You can’t be ‘tolerant’ to your own way of life and the exclusion of all others. That’s the whole point of tolerance.

Bloody French…

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Its great being 60. You get free tube travel. And… and… and…

You get to shit on a stick.

That’s it really. You’re suddenly old and two really big things happen. One is free transport (ONLY in London, the rest of the country, the ones that don’t count, have to wait til they’re 62), the other is that everything that hasn’t already fallen apart immediately starts to do so. And ‘they’ worry about you.

Every year brings about a new worry. You’ve crossed some threshold and gained entry into a brand new group of ‘at risks’. And at 60 its bowel cancer. So literally, the day after my birthday a letter came from the NHS. A big letter. I picked it up. “What’s this shit now”, I asked of no-one (you talk to yourself a lot at 60). And shit it was. Or, more precisely, very precise instructions how to shit. So they can test you. Without having to soil any NHS toilet facilities. In the comfort of your own home. Then you just post it off. Easy peasy.

Well, fairly easy. The ‘samples’ they require are tiny. And shit is, generally, much bigger than the quarter-inch square windows supplied. Hence the sticks. For transportation purposes. I’ll spare you the rest of the details. You’ll find out when you’re 60. If you have a wife like mine, ever vigilant, who wouldn’t let you just throw the thing in the bin.

So two guys, (above), are shopping in Sainsburys. Holding hands. In case anyone could be in any doubt that these 2 are gay. They couldn’t look any gayer if they were wearing tutus and Arsenal shirts.

A security guard called them over because someone had complained about their ‘behaviour’. Asked them to act properly, or some such.

He shouldn’t have done. Sainsburys should know better. The ‘complaint’ was either just because it was 2 men holding hands, in which case that is discrimination and illegal. Or it was about anyone holding hands in public, in which case the complainant should be immediately removed from society and shot.

There are so many public displays of anger, aggression, of road rage, shouting, screaming, fighting, how on earth can it be wrong to act in a perfectly innocent, in no way ‘inappropriate’ or even mildly offensive, display of affection? In who’s eyes can that be wrong. Unless its the gay thing, then the complaining asshole has transcended ‘wrong’ and entered ‘discriminatory’.

The gay and lesbian community held a ‘kiss-a-thon’ at the store in protest. A brilliant response. And Sainsburys gave the two guys a £10 voucher off the price of condoms. Ok, just a voucher. To say sorry.

I should think so too.

Happy Monday,

A xxxx

I feel I’m drowning. In a sea. Of sport. There’s just so much at the moment. Though yesterday it was rather depressing turning on the tv to find a choice between golf and tennis. Who needs that? Golf is not just boring, its grossly overpaid boring, and tennis I can’t watch unless its filmed live from SW19. Anywhere else is just rubbish. Fortunately I have a tv that has full NASA capability and is registered with data protection and can actually perform medical treatments of a very basic nature. So I finally found the ‘red button’ and there was even more choices. Loads more. Shooting things, badminton, windsurfing. I didn’t say they were particularly good choices, but certainly better than those made by the BBC for their two offerings. I opted for trampolining. Fuck me they go high. Apparently higher than a two storey house.

The problem is that all the good stuff is saved for insomniacs. Or dullards. Maybe a few early-home clubbers. You wanna see Mo win the 10k; its 3am. Jessicaaaaaaahhh, she’s on about 2, coming second in the pentathlon.

So whilst you’re waiting for that lot (as if) they brung ya back the football. It happened. Yesterday at 3, but the PM one, they started the Premiership season. Not on tv, obviously. Well, obviously to English people, decidedly lacking in obviousness for everyone else in the world. The bits where you either watch sport live in tv, or you don’t watch it at all.

Americans never got it together with this ‘recorded hi-lights’ shit. But we grew up with it. Live football was almost banned for my entire youth. All because of the failed rationale that ‘if you put it on’t telly, no-one will bother going to the games and the teams will suffer and games will be played in front of 7 people and a dog.

Football is massive. Its always been massive. West Ham just moved to a new stadium, twice the capacity of their old one and there’s a ten year waiting list for season tickets. And that’s West Ham; they’re shit. Do they really think that no-one’s going to go to Old Trafford to see United play Liverpool, just because its ‘live on tv’?

Of course, Sky changed things a bit and the ‘big game’ is allowed to be shown live on Sunday. So fans can go to church first, applying the same anachronistic illogic that prevents 3 o’clock Saturday matches being shown. And those Sunday matches seem miraculously to fill the stadia.

People go to football because its a fantastic (or fantastically violent) experience. Its an ‘event’. And its wonderful. Tv is a very poor substitute. Like Juan Mata.

Ironically, pubs are allowed to show Saturday matches live. That won’t encourage drinking then. And you can stream them yourself from Albanian sites, or Latvia or Ethi-fucking-opia, but not here. No. Is illegal. Innit.

We NEED more live football on tv. 17 matches a week is not enough for my wife. She needs more.

Show it live on Saturday. If they had, maybe Spurs would have won? Who knows.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

It doesn’t feel like the first day of the new football season. It feels like the Olympics. I can’t think about Mezut Ozil when Jess Ennis is on the other channel. In fact I can think of nothing else whilst Jess Ennis is around, generally. But now I need to focus. Because it starts today.

So forget Jihadi brides from Bethnal Green getting killed in IS-land (what the fuck did she expect when she went to war?) and forget rail strikes, at least til Monday morning, and forget the cricket. Its all irrelevant. I’ve already forgotten Donald Trump as irrelevant, because he doesn’t play for Leicester.

The football is back and it must be obeyed, revered and given the total focus and respect that it probably doesn’t deserve but will get anyway.

This is my favourite time of the year. 3 hours before the first ball is kicked. The potential is limitless. Anything can happen. To any team, by any team, in any host of the billions of probabilities and contingencies that will unfold in the following months. (Deep. Fucking deep.)

Spurs can win the league.
Leicester can win the league.
Arsenal can get relegated.
Manchester City can go bankrupt.
The financial fair play might actually be enforced.
Hull might get a manager.
Jose Morinho might explode.

5 minutes after kick off it’ll become a little more transparent. Although it generally takes a few weeks for teams to settle in and for any patterns to emerge.

After the usual insanity of the summer transfers and new managerial appointments, its show-time.

Everyone wants to win the league (please note; there’s only ONE league, the rest don’t count). But only one team can. Doh. And we have seven teams vying for that, realistically. Although as Leicester showed last year; there’s room now and again for a bit of the positively surreal.

So we have to consider Leicester as contenders. Even though there’s more chance of me winning a gold medal in the women’s gymnastics than of them winning the league again.

Manchester City have their new, very expensive manager, and loads of multi-squillionaire new signings. Manchester United have Jose and now Paul Pogba, on 300 grand a week, and yet no Champions League. Chelsea are horrible. New manager or not. John Terry or not. Horrible. Arsenal are still Arsenal and will be for the foreseeable future. So they’ll come 4th. Liverpool are still living on memories of the 70s even though their manager is good fun. And Spurs. Ahhhhh, Spurs. New players, best manager in the league, nicest fans (by some way) and Champions League football. Can we win the league? Can we finish above Arsenal??

Answer the second question first.

Happy Football Season. If only.

A xxxx

I worry that I’m becoming slightly gluten intolerant. Which would be fitting in a way as I’m pretty fucking intolerant to most things. But they’re all a matter of conscious choice, not bodily function.

So here’s the problem. Not the intolerance itself, should I be the ‘victim’ of such a thing, but the fact that I’ve always had almost zero tolerance to food intolerants.

Allergic to seafood? GROW A PAIR. Just man-up and eat those prawns; I’ve got an epi-pen which I’ll gladly stick in your face if you swell up like a balloon and lose your respiratory system for any significant length of time.

Lactose intolerant? Oh just fuck off, will ya? Stick to your soya latte and I’ll cream up. Like a real man.

And then gluten. Wheatgerm. The term for a gluten intolerant is a coeliac. Looks like a word for some commonly occurring invertibrate fossil, but in fact its not. Yet because its a fiddly word, the Younger Daughter coined her own term. Mainly to upset her flat-mate who suffers this affliction. She’s a ‘glutard’. I love that. Unless I’m included in the genus in which case DON’T YOU DARE USE THAT WORD!!!

And the problem is; I love bread. And every day I have a sandwich for lunch. Which is pretty immediately followed by a feeling of bloatedness, discomfort and fatigue.The very symptoms that some know-all geek expressly mentioned in a newspaper I read the other day that would indicate gluten intolerance. Well what about journalist intolerance? When you throw up over members of the press?

Why can’t I be intolerant to lettuce? Broccoli? Spinach? Radishes? Anything but bread or meat. Or chocolate. Potatoes. Bananas or ice cream. Banana-flavoured ice cream.

Is this what happens once you turn 60? Is this the beginning of the end? First you seem to exhibit a mild gluten thing, the next you’re in a care home, incontinent, with tubes sticking in and out of everywhere, dribbling down your tie? (I haven’t worn a tie for about 20 years other than daughter’s wedding and a dinner at Lords, but maybe I should start again, its what old people do).

This may affect my chances of being in the next Amerian Womens Gymnastics squad. My new aspiration.

Needs further testing. Where’s all these scientists when you need them?

Happy gluten-free Friday

A xxxx

I’ve decided that being Jewish is a ‘condition’. Like a disease, but not life-threatening. Like eczema. And the term ‘condition’ is appropriate because, like everyone else in the world, we are conditioned. Ours is just a bit different. Maybe because there are so few of us, maybe because we have a collective history that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, but we’re conditioned to find good things in Jews or find good things in other people and try to make a Jewish connection. Conversely, we try to disown Philip Green at every opportunity. Its the same thing. Big up the good, downplay the bad.

The language of the Jews is not strictly hebrew. That’s the language of prayer. So, many European religious Jews won’t use hebrew as a ‘language’ but only in prayer. To use it otherwise is somehow blasphemous. So in all of old Poland and Russia and Germany and Holland, they spoke Yiddish. A kind of pidgin German which endures today in all communities where ‘black hats’ are the prevailing trend. Even in Israel which, being a secular nation, has hebrew as its official language, the ultra orthodox there stick to Yiddish. Because its more fun.

Ok, that may not be their strict motivation, but Yiddish is undoubtedly more fun than most other languages. And certainly more expressive. The Yiddish expressions that have endured among the non-Yiddish speaking peoples (all of those who don’t do the black hat/long beard thing) are very difficult to translate. Because other languages have words sort of equivalent, but they lack the feeling, the emotion, the depth.

A ‘shlemiel’ is an idiot. But so much more than just any idiot. A shlemiel is such an idiot that he (or she, its very egalitarian) is almost a schmuck. Which is like a tosser, but raised to several powers of idiocy. To ‘shlep’ is to drag. But much more. To wrench, but with pain attached. If it doesn’t hurt, you ain’t schlepping.

Pride is a more complex thing. There are two wonderful Yiddish words for pride. But more than pride. Nachas is the pride you receive from someone doing something wonderful. Its the noun, pride, but its bigger, its bursting with pride, its tears in the eyes, its massively heart-felt. Whereas ‘kvell’ is the verb. To kvell is to do all of the above. You kvell because your grandchild came first in a maths test (he cheated, but that’s ‘chutspa’, something else for another day), so you get lots of ‘nachas’ from him.

Gwyneth Paltrow wins an Oscar, we find out she had a Jewish dad. Yippee, one of our own. David Beckham’s grandad was a Spurs supporting Jew, that’s like finding out my rabbi won the world cup with Brazil.

And last night, during the becoming-ever-more wonderful Olympics, the quite amazing American girls won the team gymnastics. Their captain is Jewish. So I was allowed to kvell a little. It was like every jew in the world was doing triple back somersaults with double twists, even the black hats. Though I took nachas from the whole team. Jew, Christians, white, black, hispanic. Amazing.

Now let me go check out Usain Bolt’s family tree…

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Sharks get a very bad press. And its just not fair. And its all because of the wrong kind of music.

When you watch an animal documentary, an Attenborough or some such, for long stretches there’s no narration. They play music instead. So as they show all those brightly coloured tropical fishes nibbling their merry way happily round the lovely, pretty coral, in a bright, shiny and beautiful way, the soundtrack is obviously representative. A nice bouncy bit of the Nutcracker. Tie a yellow ribbon. A nasty, muzak-elevator version of ‘I just called to say I love you’. You know, something really nauseatingly sickly and ‘nice’.

Then the music suddenly changes. It becomes dark. It becomes brooding, menacing. And you know, long before any visual confirmation, that there’s a shark around. Its not an internally genetic protective DNA thing, its not a way of safeguarding yourself and your family, mainly because, and I hope you realise this, sharks themselves don’t actually play that music to herald their arrival, the tv does that. But you know its a shark. And you run. Behind the sofa, anywhere. Or swim. Behind the sofa…

Its not genetic; its Jaws. That piece of music. If I had the technological ability I would put that at top of this blog instead of the picture. But I can’t be fucking bothered. You know the music anyway. Everyone does. If you missed the movie go to Universal Studios and take the ride. Loud booming music and the shark appears.

Interestingly they now play the same music when Putin appears. Or Arsene Wenger.

So ‘scientists have now shown’ (zzzzzz) that people’s view of sharks is greatly tainted by their widely accepted soundtrack. That if you show people film of sharks accompanied by nasty music, their perception of sharks is a bad one. Whereas, if you show them the film to the accompaniment of something light and airy, they rated their opinions of sharks much more positively, they felt far less threatened by the Great Whites of this world.

Which is all just so much total bollocks. Why would they want to change our perception of sharks? Its like changing our perception of house fires, child molesters, Chelsea fans. These things are fucking dangerous, with or without music. Every beach in Australia has a fucking great, reinforced steel ‘net’ going half a mile out to sea to protect bathers. Not from music, even though it can get pretty loud on some beaches, but from sharks. The ones that attack about 30 people a year in Aus alone.

So next time you’re out catching a few waves in Bondi/Martha’s Vineyard/Cape Town, and you see a massive dorsal fin coming towards you at some speed, just change the track on your waterproof ipod and you’ll be fine. See if your change in perception will have any effect at all on the fucking great, man-eating, 18 foot monster baring its teeth at you.

Happy Shark Day

A xxxx

The good thing about the Olympics is that its on for the entire day and most of the night. The bad thing is that its on for the entire day and most of the night. So I decided (very very early on in my life) that I would not stay up til 3 in the morning to watch Adam Peaty win Britain’s first gold medal of the Games.

There’s just so many games of things being played simultaneously that you suffer with overload and FOMO at the same time. For that alone the Olympic Games must be admired. For creating new, otherwise uncharted, levels of human discomfort. And I thought Spurs fans new every single imaginable type of sporting discomfort going.

You watch football, its on, they play, its done. The Olympics is so different. I don’t exactly ‘watch’ it like football, instead I kind’a dip in and out. And when faced yesterday with fencing, table-tennis or a 3 hour bike ride (the Olympic one, not me, my bike limit is strictly 10 minutes to the tube station) I faced immediate boredom. I don’t like any’a them.

But sport-watching is like heroin. It takes just 10 seconds and you’re addicted. Its called ‘snooker syndrome’ or ‘darts disease’, when any mind-blowingly boring un-spectator worthy sport is placed before you and quicker than you can say: “I’m not watching this sh-” you’re hooked. Perhaps its something evolved into the male psyche, the same gene that makes it impossible not to turn and look at the girl who just walked past you wearing Levis.

Fencing is wonderful. I wish they’d let them stab each other, but alas, they’ve changed it to Fencing Pokemon and its all digital, all electronic and virtual. Helmets flash, buzzers bleep, all manner of electro-wizardry tell you whether the geezer you can’t see because he’s wearing so much protective gear, would have been injured if he hadn’t been wearing it. Its brilliant.

The cycling was different. A sea of lycra sets out on the Copacabana, at the front Lizzie Armistead, the great British hope. World Champion road race cyclist. Who almost didn’t race because she’d failed to take a dope test. Which is way different from failing a dope test. Way different. And because she’s not in any way Russian, we’ll certainly give her the benefit of the doubt. As did the Olympic committee who ‘pardoned’ her. 3 minutes into the race she gets a puncture. Not her, the bike. Its not fencing.

I’m not saying ‘God done it’ nor ‘karma is the ultimate judge’, I’m just tellin’ the story. She came 5th. After a horrendous crash took out the leading Dutch girl. Who crashed because the games are in Brazil. A nation that lives for style and beauty over health and safety. For which I actually admire them. But they had the race on a road that, when wet, as it was yesterday, has a downhill stretch that is lethal. The men crashed there the previous day. But its beautiful. Looks great on tv. Windy steep road through the forest leading to the coast. I travelled that road after I went for lunch with Christ the Redeemer. Was bad enough in a jeep.

Our prize fencer failed to win the bronze. Lizzie just missed a medal. The Murray brothers are out of the tennis doubles. I hope, after the wonders of London 2012, that this is not to be an ‘ahhhhh, just missed out’ Olympics for my team. Perhaps they just need more drugs.

Happy monday

A xxxx

I have a bath every Sunday morning. That’s the most interesting thing you’ll read today, I’m sure. But I have a bath because I need to ease the aches, pains and stresses that I inflicted yesterday on the tennis court, so that I can do the same today. I don’t do aromatherapy fucking oils, honest. I don’t light a dozen feng shui candles, dim the lights and hummmmmmm… I just soak. And read the Culture section of the paper so I don’t get bored. Because I’m one cultured muthafucka. And I look at the films and music and plays, flick past the ballet, obviously, and opera, read the books bit and then, once the tv reviews start I throw it away.

Unless…

Unless the picture upon that page is one showing a young Robert DeNiro. As happened today. Bobby with Meryl. Unmistakably The Deer Hunter. Hmmm…

I love Robert DeNiro. Sorry, I loved Robert DeNiro until he turned into the worst kind of slapstick ‘funny man’ in a host of awful movies I refused to watch. In honour of what he had been. Ok, he redeemed himself a bit in Silver Linings Playbook, but really? Bobby playing a hapless schmuck agonising over wedding plans??? The Bobby of old would have wiped out all the caterers, planners and bridesmaids with a fucking kalashnikov. The good Bobby. The one I love.

People were polarised, back in the 70s/80s. Who is the ‘best actor in the world’; Bobby or Al Pacino? For me it was no contest. No matter how much little Al shouted and screamed in Scarface, no matter how brilliant he was in Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon (and he was incredibly so), he simply couldn’t match the smouldering menace of Robert DeNiro in absolutely everything. Taxi Driver (in my personal top 3 movies of all time; along with 83 others), Mean Streets, Goodfellas, everything totally brilliant. DeNiro and Scorsese; what a match.

And then Deer Hunter. Martin Cimino’s finest moment. Came out in a wave of Vietnam movies. Or anti-Vietnam movies as there was never anything good to come from that awful war. And the top movies were Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. Both outstandingly brilliant, both amazingly powerful, yet totally different. Whilst Francis Ford Coppola showed the horrors of the actual war and how it totally fucked up everyone involved in it, Deer Hunter was more about the way the war affected normal lives, and fucked up everyone involved in it, especially the amazing Christopher Walken.

The movie is so brilliant they’re showing it at 11pm on some third world, second rate channel. Which is why God invented things that record tv programmes.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx