Friday, July 22, 2005
Too little too late, but what the hell, something's better than nothing
Soundtrack: The Bring Back Thorpe chant. It goes like this: "BRING BACK THORPE! BRING BACK THORPE! BRING BACK THORPE! BRING BACK THORPE! Who do we want? THORPEY! When do we want him? BATTING AT FIVE, WITH PIETERSEN MOVING UP TO FOUR AND BELL GOING HOME TO WARWICKSHIRE!" Clear?
Good arvo this arvo or maybe not because we were 92-7 at stumps. The England cricket team are like the worst boyfriend EVER. You look at him and you see how handsome and talented he is, and you wonder how you ever found something so wonderful. And then he lets you down and breaks your heart. And you're so bloody stupid that you just keep on taking him back, again and again, and you justify it by saying: "But it'll be worth it for the good times!"...
...Vegemite's horrible. Nothing compared to Marmite. I expect it's another of those things where Australians are just obsessed with it because it's Australian, and even if there's a better international version of it, they'll still go with the shitty Aussie version because it's Australian...
...Do you know what's really getting to me? I hate Glenn McGrath so much, because he's an amazing bowler, he completely decimated out batting line-up last night, and I can't help but find him unbelieveably attractive. The cheekbones, the dimples, the long long powerful legs, the hair that's just the right length, how Brandom Flowers used to have it around the time of "Mr Brightside" and "Somebody Told Me." What the hell is wrong with me? As soon as a guy turns 35, I seem to start fancying him. That's probably why I think Stephen's so great: he was born 40 and aged onwards...
...I thought I'd take a trip up Chinatown and Fortitude Valley on Wednesday. It looked like quite a-ways to walk on the map from Queen Street Bus Station, which is the last stop on the 454 route, which is the only one that I can take from here, but it was surprisingly easy to get there. Chinatown was a bit rubbish - like the one in Adelaide. They call it Chinatown, but it's actually just a couple of streets with Asian restaurants and a couple of Chinese supermarkets. And a place selling pirate Cantonese DVDs - there's always one of those as well. The locals shorten "Fortitude Valley" to "The Valley," I think to make it sound like LA. It was full of real-life characters from "Nathan Barley" - idiotic, pretentious types whose adherence to "fashion" just made them look a bit daft, really. Unfortunately, there weren't any people with geek pie hair, which would've made my day. I get the impression that Queensland is the slightly less cool version of California: everything's really laid-back and relaxed, and the place is full of groovy-arty-bohemian-hippy-types. Queensland's nowhere near as trendy as California, though. Two things that never went out of style here were the mullet and the hideous Merv Hughes/Yosemite Sam moustache...
...I was very happy to hear Mike Atherton (we get the live Channel 4 feed here, which is cool because we get the Analyst) say that he thought that Graham Thorpe should've been an automatic selection. He said that it should've been betwen Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen, which is what I was saying all along. I was going to reserve judgment on the BBT issue until we batted, and after that, I can safely say that a) KP's ace and b) get rid of Bell - he just looks like a little boy. Even if we don't play Thorpey, play Paul Collingwood - he loves a scrap. And for God's sake, don't play Lardy Robert Key...
...I think I might do this "21 Grams" stylee, where everything just randomly jumps around until by the end it all makes sense. My head's in a bit of a mess this afternoon...
...Sunsets over Mount Ommaney remind me of Paradiso Lego. That was the one with only white bricks to build the houses, the ladies all had high ponytails and red red lips, and the horses weren't horses, they were white ponies. I know all of this not because I had Paradiso Lego, but because I didn't have it because my mother only let us have Lego Basic for years. But anyway, the boxes always used to come with a pinky-peace sunset in the background, and that's what Mount Ommaney looks like. Again, it isn't actually a mountain, but it doesn't really look like much of a hill either. It's just a fairly high-class suburb. Maybe it's like Mountstevens, but not a now-defunct chain of bakeries...
...I am very much not liking the new England Test strip. That navy piping! It's just so horribly retro, and not in a cool Franz Ferdinand way, but in a disgusting naff Seventies way. The ECB is all about fashion mistakes, I suppose - those training vests were a mistake from the offset, especially since most of the players don't have wonderful toned arms. The only people who those things look vaguely good on are The Quiet Ginger One and Simon Jones, and even then, they just look like wannabe gay icons. And the ODI kit just makes them all look like pizza delivery boys. The Kiwis have definitely got the best kit - all black. Why can't our kit just be all navy without all those crappy bits?...
...Yesterday was spent in the Spiegeltent catching more live music. Sadly, they've cottoned on, and have started charging for drinks, which I didn't realise until the girl charged me $3 for a lemonade. First up was a generic country singer called Gemma Doyle, who just made me fall asleep because she was nothing special, even though everybody had talked her up, probably because she was a Queenslander. And her bassist was so so behind. Later, she said that he was a temporary addition to the band, but that's no excuse. Even if you don't know the music, you should still play in time. Thinking about it, though, I'd hate to be a bassist in a country band. It would be so bloody boring. Next up was Neil Murray, who I get the feeling is a bit of a legend round these parts. He was really cool - he sang loads of Australian folky stuff, and his guitarist also did some hardcore ukulele solos, which was totally totally ace. Third, a jazz-funk trio called Misinterpretato, who were really funny when they were talking and their music was pretty smart, but not my cup of tea, really. Finally, a woman called Megan Shorey, who (like Martha Wainwright) seems really lovely and well-adjusted when she's talking normally, but when she starts singing she turns out to be really really angry and passionate. Her songs weren't really that great, but her voice was amazing, which rather made up for it. That afternoon, I also went to see a display of the history of Australian sheet music. It was amazing - all this crazy old sheet music, like themes for advertising campaigns and comedy songs about beer. And 78 gramophones, which I was well impressed by...
...All together now:
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
Who do we want?
THORPEY!
When do we want him?
BATTING AT FIVE, WITH PIETERSEN MOVING UP TO FOUR AND BELL GOING HOME TO WARWICKSHIRE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
I think it could catch on.
Good arvo this arvo or maybe not because we were 92-7 at stumps. The England cricket team are like the worst boyfriend EVER. You look at him and you see how handsome and talented he is, and you wonder how you ever found something so wonderful. And then he lets you down and breaks your heart. And you're so bloody stupid that you just keep on taking him back, again and again, and you justify it by saying: "But it'll be worth it for the good times!"...
...Vegemite's horrible. Nothing compared to Marmite. I expect it's another of those things where Australians are just obsessed with it because it's Australian, and even if there's a better international version of it, they'll still go with the shitty Aussie version because it's Australian...
...Do you know what's really getting to me? I hate Glenn McGrath so much, because he's an amazing bowler, he completely decimated out batting line-up last night, and I can't help but find him unbelieveably attractive. The cheekbones, the dimples, the long long powerful legs, the hair that's just the right length, how Brandom Flowers used to have it around the time of "Mr Brightside" and "Somebody Told Me." What the hell is wrong with me? As soon as a guy turns 35, I seem to start fancying him. That's probably why I think Stephen's so great: he was born 40 and aged onwards...
...I thought I'd take a trip up Chinatown and Fortitude Valley on Wednesday. It looked like quite a-ways to walk on the map from Queen Street Bus Station, which is the last stop on the 454 route, which is the only one that I can take from here, but it was surprisingly easy to get there. Chinatown was a bit rubbish - like the one in Adelaide. They call it Chinatown, but it's actually just a couple of streets with Asian restaurants and a couple of Chinese supermarkets. And a place selling pirate Cantonese DVDs - there's always one of those as well. The locals shorten "Fortitude Valley" to "The Valley," I think to make it sound like LA. It was full of real-life characters from "Nathan Barley" - idiotic, pretentious types whose adherence to "fashion" just made them look a bit daft, really. Unfortunately, there weren't any people with geek pie hair, which would've made my day. I get the impression that Queensland is the slightly less cool version of California: everything's really laid-back and relaxed, and the place is full of groovy-arty-bohemian-hippy-types. Queensland's nowhere near as trendy as California, though. Two things that never went out of style here were the mullet and the hideous Merv Hughes/Yosemite Sam moustache...
...I was very happy to hear Mike Atherton (we get the live Channel 4 feed here, which is cool because we get the Analyst) say that he thought that Graham Thorpe should've been an automatic selection. He said that it should've been betwen Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen, which is what I was saying all along. I was going to reserve judgment on the BBT issue until we batted, and after that, I can safely say that a) KP's ace and b) get rid of Bell - he just looks like a little boy. Even if we don't play Thorpey, play Paul Collingwood - he loves a scrap. And for God's sake, don't play Lardy Robert Key...
...I think I might do this "21 Grams" stylee, where everything just randomly jumps around until by the end it all makes sense. My head's in a bit of a mess this afternoon...
...Sunsets over Mount Ommaney remind me of Paradiso Lego. That was the one with only white bricks to build the houses, the ladies all had high ponytails and red red lips, and the horses weren't horses, they were white ponies. I know all of this not because I had Paradiso Lego, but because I didn't have it because my mother only let us have Lego Basic for years. But anyway, the boxes always used to come with a pinky-peace sunset in the background, and that's what Mount Ommaney looks like. Again, it isn't actually a mountain, but it doesn't really look like much of a hill either. It's just a fairly high-class suburb. Maybe it's like Mountstevens, but not a now-defunct chain of bakeries...
...I am very much not liking the new England Test strip. That navy piping! It's just so horribly retro, and not in a cool Franz Ferdinand way, but in a disgusting naff Seventies way. The ECB is all about fashion mistakes, I suppose - those training vests were a mistake from the offset, especially since most of the players don't have wonderful toned arms. The only people who those things look vaguely good on are The Quiet Ginger One and Simon Jones, and even then, they just look like wannabe gay icons. And the ODI kit just makes them all look like pizza delivery boys. The Kiwis have definitely got the best kit - all black. Why can't our kit just be all navy without all those crappy bits?...
...Yesterday was spent in the Spiegeltent catching more live music. Sadly, they've cottoned on, and have started charging for drinks, which I didn't realise until the girl charged me $3 for a lemonade. First up was a generic country singer called Gemma Doyle, who just made me fall asleep because she was nothing special, even though everybody had talked her up, probably because she was a Queenslander. And her bassist was so so behind. Later, she said that he was a temporary addition to the band, but that's no excuse. Even if you don't know the music, you should still play in time. Thinking about it, though, I'd hate to be a bassist in a country band. It would be so bloody boring. Next up was Neil Murray, who I get the feeling is a bit of a legend round these parts. He was really cool - he sang loads of Australian folky stuff, and his guitarist also did some hardcore ukulele solos, which was totally totally ace. Third, a jazz-funk trio called Misinterpretato, who were really funny when they were talking and their music was pretty smart, but not my cup of tea, really. Finally, a woman called Megan Shorey, who (like Martha Wainwright) seems really lovely and well-adjusted when she's talking normally, but when she starts singing she turns out to be really really angry and passionate. Her songs weren't really that great, but her voice was amazing, which rather made up for it. That afternoon, I also went to see a display of the history of Australian sheet music. It was amazing - all this crazy old sheet music, like themes for advertising campaigns and comedy songs about beer. And 78 gramophones, which I was well impressed by...
...All together now:
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
Who do we want?
THORPEY!
When do we want him?
BATTING AT FIVE, WITH PIETERSEN MOVING UP TO FOUR AND BELL GOING HOME TO WARWICKSHIRE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
BRING BACK THORPE!
I think it could catch on.
Comments:
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That's OK, I've been battle-hardened by Stephen; plus, you post less often.
You're clearly right about Pietersen and Thorpe, though the idiot selectors could have avoided this problem by picking Pietersen ahead of Bell, (or resting Thorpe, picking Bell and Pietersen and then dropping the least good one), against Bangladesh. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to find lead piping and David Graveney, in near vicinity of each other.
We should of course wait until Bell doesn't score a second innings century, but it's actually rather sensible to tempt fate and hope Bell proves us wrong, isn't it?
Bring Back Thorpe.
TCH
You're clearly right about Pietersen and Thorpe, though the idiot selectors could have avoided this problem by picking Pietersen ahead of Bell, (or resting Thorpe, picking Bell and Pietersen and then dropping the least good one), against Bangladesh. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to find lead piping and David Graveney, in near vicinity of each other.
We should of course wait until Bell doesn't score a second innings century, but it's actually rather sensible to tempt fate and hope Bell proves us wrong, isn't it?
Bring Back Thorpe.
TCH
# posted by 
: 8:21 am
: 8:21 am
Still not taking Miranda's advice.
Glenn McGrath? What about the cadaverous eyes of Matthew Hayden or the studied plainness of Simon Katich?
TCH
Glenn McGrath? What about the cadaverous eyes of Matthew Hayden or the studied plainness of Simon Katich?
TCH
# posted by : 8:25 am
: 8:25 am
That was one of the least successful and shortest campaigns in living memory, possibly just being beaten by the Frome 2012 Olympic bid.
Can't think why Thorpe decided to retire at that moment, though I suppose it's typically undemonstrative of him, retiring while everyone's interested in everyone else- Michael Atherton, who tried and failed to retire quietly, could learn a lesson or two.
TCH
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Can't think why Thorpe decided to retire at that moment, though I suppose it's typically undemonstrative of him, retiring while everyone's interested in everyone else- Michael Atherton, who tried and failed to retire quietly, could learn a lesson or two.
TCH
# posted by : 7:52 pm
: 7:52 pm << Home
