The Dutch Touch

As much as any other player, the Dutch striker, Dennis Bergkamp, used to beat defenders and score with pure skill. He made the most sublime control of the ball look easy and natural. I submit two of his most astonishing goals to "the beautiful game" series of posts.

If you've never tried before, you'll have to trust me that controlling a +60 yard pass with a single touch of an outstretched foot while leaping midair is not something that you just do and then coolly recover from and score.

An interesting fact about Bergkamp is that he had such an intense fear of flying that he couldn't compete in the 2002 World Cup. This earned him the nickname "the non-flying dutchman." Another nickname that he has is "the iceman" because he's ice cold under pressure and possibly because he looks a little like Val Kilmer.

The Dutch team really should have pulled a B. A. Baracus to get him over to Japan and Korea for the games. Here Dennis, enjoy a long drink from this cool refreshing glass of not the least bit drugged milk.

As It's Spoken

That's a clip from "Home Movies" which was on UPN and the Cartoon Network for awhile. Thanks to the DVD and the internets I've been watching a lot of it lately. The show was produced by the company Soup 2 Nutz which also did "Dr. Katz" and another education show by called "Science Court". Those were some really good shows.

One of my favorite things about that show and other shows like it such as Nick Park's "Creature Comforts" are their playful use of language.

For the Soup 2 Nutz stuff, the focus on language exists because most of the show is recorded in an improvisational manner and then carefully reedited. In "Creature Comforts", audio teams go all over the UK to conduct interviews in a relaxed natural context with average everyday people.

When people speak in real life, they hesitate, repeat words, change sentence structure mid sentence, and interrupt and overlap with other speakers. Almost all TV shows and movies abandon this mode of speech in favor of cleaner and more presentable stage speech.

The Hippiest Generation

The reign of the hippies is almost at an end.

Yup, the generation of baby boomers which have been firmly in control of government and business in the United States for the past ten years or so is almost over. Hooray. I for one have had enough of there pro-drug legislation, anti-business and corporate agenda, the loose sexual morals they promote, their absolute aversion to war of a any kind and their devotion of so much of the nations resources to fulfilling the dream of civil rights.

Ah, sarcasm, my old friend. Where would we be without you.

Seriously, people tend to think of 60's counterculture as infusing all the youth of the era. So, how did we end up with a large group of people from that era in positions of authority who have white hot button down white picket fence conforming values? First, you have to realize that as evidenced by the name, counterculture was never mainstream culture. Therefore, one would not expect to see it well represented in the majority of people of that time. While some significant social changes happened in the sixties, it was a really a revolution in perception (hyped by mainstream culture to mobilize the silent majority) more than anything else.



Another interesting thing to note is that as society was moving left, the economy was moving right. The sixties marked a move away from strong unions and a prevalence of unskilled labor jobs. Small businesses were evaporating to be replaced by large corporations created in mergers. The seeds of a culture of consumption where starting to sprout.

(graffiti via Banksy)

I Live by a Strict Moral Code

Here's the letter I'm putting in the time capsule so that when people invent time machines in the future, they can send this one back to 1965:

Dear George Putnam Outstanding News Reporter,
You don't know from porn. Just wait till you get hit with the internet. Also, do you think it's a good idea for you to narrate in near ecstatic detail a "flood tide" of images to which "prolonged exposure of even the normal male adult to this type of publication, though he may not be aware of its true nature, may nevertheless pervert"?

You are forever in my thoughts,
theunbeatablekid

How outstanding is George Putnam anyway? For one thing, at 92 years old, dude is still on the air. His conservative radio show Talk Back is on KCAA in California.

Slow News Day

So, as reported by the New York Times, representatives from the US and Iran met and had an "impromptu 3 minute discussion" at an international conference in Egypt. To which, I must respond: Yip di diddle.

In other news, as reported by the note Rachel handed me in my in English class, Brendon totally likes Jamie.

I've heard of television diplomacy but not middle school gossip diplomacy.

What is it Good For?

A couple of ongoing fictional series' have indirectly taken on the War on Terror as a subject for drama. The new Battlestar Galactica and Marvel comics Civil War certainly try. One of the most appropriate works which takes on the issues of the war is the Japanese manga turned anime Full Metal Alchemist.

If you don't like anime and you want to see what I'm talking about, you should skip ahead to 6:40.

Even without any political overtones, Full Metal Alchemist reaches the top of the anime pyramid as it alternates between comedic and dramatic, lighthearted and deep in contemplation of the darkness of the soul. It does get a bit long winded and plot twisty in the middle of the series though. Leave it to Japan to understand what it means to be a dominant colonial power as well as a satellite state.

Planetary

I've finally gotten my hands on the "latest" issues of Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday. This comic has had some of the best writing and art of any superhero comic of the last ten years. The only drawback is that it can get a little wordy with psuedo-scientific mumbo jumbo. Well, that and it's been really slow in getting new issues. Since 1998, there have been 26 comics total. There series ends at #27 and I'm hoping that the last one will come out any year now.

The story follows a superhuman team of archaeologists who investigate and document the strange and secret happenings of the world. Sometimes, that means looking into alien invasions and sometimes it means traveling to monster island. I'm don't want to describe it in any more detail than that because it's the kind of the thing you'll want to read without too much prior knowledge. I will say that the whole series is masterfully constructed.

And the art is absolutely fantastic. Check it out.

(Picture via Planetary issue #4 by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday, color by Laura Martin)

Tin Tin Quentin

Pulp Fiction is a fluke. It's the one movie in the overblown portfolio of Quentin Tarentino that I like. Normally, I try to refrain from being a hater but QT is such a petulant egomaniac that in this case I just can't help myself.

Why do I gotta knock the Q? After all, he's a decent director and has produced a series of almost watchable movies. My problems is that his stuff outside of Pulp Fiction is basically a mediocre reworking of older and better movies. All these other Hollywood jerks pretend that he is this brilliant and that his "homages" are in fact favors to old genres instead of exploitation.

I would watch any Shaw Brothers or Sonny Chiba film over the Kill Bills any day.
Black Belt Jones in all of its outstanding awfulness is a peg or two above Jackie Brown.

Quentin made a big deal of bringing Wang Kar Wai's "Chung King Express" (an awesome movie) to the states. If you get the US version, it starts with about 10 minutes of him explaining how great the movie is. He does a decent job but you know who does a better job of doing that? The G-D movie that he's putting on hold by talking about how great it is.

So here's the thing. I love the old genres that Tarintino mines to get his material. I love the fact that Sonny Chiba and Gordon Liu have some cool scenes in a big Hollywood flick. But, if someone just redid "Master of the Fatal Flying Guilotine" with respect to the original, he would be my hero.

Cats in the Backseat

I had a dream last night that I drove my car into a lake. While that's typical dream stuff, what was weird was that as the car slowly sunk into the water I realized the backseat was filled with cats and infants. It's one of those dream puzzlers. Dream dilemma. So, trying to save both, I started to throw the cats towards the shore with the hope that I could then carry the tiny babies to safety. But, the cats kept swimming back to the boat. Luckily, I woke up before anyone was harmed.

(The picture is "Study of a child with a cat" by Leonardo da Vinci via ARC Museum)

Split the Difference

As you may have noticed, I'm currently helping my friend Recon with his extra super smash hit you-go-crazy-you-like-so-much blog monkeys for helping. I'm not duplicating posts between both the blogs so some of the things that come up here (in my posts and in the comments) show up over there and visa versa. Stylistically, it's easy to decide what belongs where (if you've read both blogs you should agree). In case, you were wondering.

(The picture is a guitar ukulele combo via fretboardjournal.com)