[Today's unlovely slice of hot doggerel is served up (stinking & steaming) by guest-poster, Tuppenceworth stalwart, and occasional fustar.info football correspondent - Fergal Crehan. Take 'er away, FC.]

It is generally the case in writing that if you don't attempt anything too fancy, if you stick to the simple task of putting one word after another in some sort of coherent way, you can't go far wrong. Paramount on one's agenda must be getting the point across. Doing so with a minimum of fuss should be enough to make one's prose, if not exactly good, then certainly not bad either. Bad writing, almost invariably, is writing that thinks it's actually good. It reaches for the stars, and falls far, far short. How else to explain this, from The Sunday Independent's John Drennan:

“As O'Donoghue turned upon Labour matador Eamonn Gilmore — who had plunged the final piccolo between the shoulder blades of our hero…”

There are at least three things wrong with that sentence, but the main one is that a piccolo is a wind instrument. Our scribe probably thought he was doing something a bit classy, adding a touch of Hemmingway-esque Mediterraneana to the philistine pages of the Sindo. Thus does excess of ambition transcend the merely dull, and achieve the authentically bad.

Poetry is so much higher in the firmament than mere journalism, that it inevitably leads to poor writing. Most people just can't write the stuff. Even good poets miss the mark occasionally. But bad poetry is still readily identifiable as poetry. One senses that the poet at least had an idea of what she was trying to do. Occasionally though, one comes across something so bad that one must wonder if the poet had access to actual poetry, or was merely working from memory of a poem glimpsed many years before, and dimly. Had he, in fact, never seen a poem at all? Was he relying on second hand accounts from those better-travelled than he?

William Topaz McGonagall is considered by many to be the worst poet ever. These pages have already paid tribute to him, and to his masterpiece, "The Tay Bridge Disaster". Today, I prefer to look at one of his lesser known pieces, a tribute to his (long-lost) brother poet, Shakespeare.

Immortal! William Shakespeare, there's none can you excel,
You have drawn out your characters remarkably well,
Which is delightful for to see enacted upon the stage
For instance, the love-sick Romeo, or Othello, in a rage;
His writings are a treasure, which the world cannot repay,
He was the greatest poet of the past or of the present day
Also the greatest dramatist, and is worthy of the name,
I'm afraid the world shall never look upon his like again.
His tragedy of Hamlet is moral and sublime,
And for purity of language, nothing can be more fine
For instance, to hear the fair Ophelia making her moan,
At her father's grave, sad and alone….
In his beautiful play, "As You Like It," one passage is very fine,
Just for instance in the forest of Arden, the language is sublime,
Where Orlando speaks of his Rosilind, most lovely and divine,
And no other poet I am sure has written anything more fine;
His language is spoken in the Church and by the Advocate at the bar,
Here and there and everywhere throughout the world afar;
His writings abound with gospel truths, moral and sublime,
And I'm sure in my opinion they are surpassing fine;
In his beautiful tragedy of Othello, one passage is very fine,
Just for instance where Cassio looses his lieutenancy
… By drinking too much wine;
And in grief he exclaims, "Oh! that men should put an
Enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains."
In his great tragedy of Richard the III, one passage is very fine
Where the Duchess of York invokes the aid of the Divine
For to protect her innocent babes from the murderer's uplifted hand,
And smite him powerless, and save her babes, I'm sure 'tis really grand.
Immortal! Bard of Avon, your writings are divine,
And will live in the memories of your admirers until the end of time;
Your plays are read in family circles with wonder and delight,
While seated around the fireside on a cold winter's night.”

"An Address to Shakespeare" manages to suggest at the same time that the author is both familiar with Shakespeare and entirely ignorant of all literature. While he does show some passing acquaintance with certain moments in the Shakespearean oeuvre, he has little to say about any of them except to note that they are “particularly fine”. “Particularly” is an odd choice of word here, given that he is less interested in describing any such moments as in simply enumerating them. The poet having said nothing on what made them fine, we may guess that they have been chosen at random, and used as an occasion for the poem itself. Which would be fine had he used the occasion as a jumping-off point for something ambitious. But the poem is resolutely earth-bound, “I Love Shakespeare”, with McGonagall in the Stuart Maconie role, shunting snippet after snippet with a perfunctory remark.

It is this half-arsedness that is most striking, and ultimately most heroic about this poem. Nothing in there is outrageously bad on its own, apart perhaps from the deadening repetition of the word “fine”, but there's not a single line that couldn't quite easily be removed. To be fair, you couldn't say that about "The Tay Bridge Disaster". Often, even good writers will throw in a line for the sake of a rhyme. But in the "Address", every line seems that way. Indeed, the entire poem is a piece of filler, written without any apparent zest, as if someone had given McGonagall 30 minutes to knock out something about Shakespeare and wouldn't take no for an answer.

Why did he choose that particular scene from Shakespeare? Why write that particular line? Why, in fact, write the poem at all? Some writers are doomed to be in thrall to a muse that cruelly ignores their love. Though talentless, they display at least an affinity for talent. They know the good stuff when they see it. In McGonagall we have a man who, though he devoted his life to poetry, had no understanding of it whatsoever. He wrote hundreds of poems, not one of which ever gave the merest suggestion that he was barking up the right tree, few hinting that any pleasure was taken in their composition. It was as if, having decided he was a poet, he applied himself to it as a job, trudging through his “duties” without relish, like a time-serving civil servant. You could never call him talented, and most days you'd be hard put to say what his function in the office was at all, but his attendance record was perfect.

Virtual awards time! The inaugural Clanging Gongs of Doom show starts here and starts now. Or, actually, in a little while. Have to go change a nappy. Back in a bit.

Ok. Nuclear bum waste disposed of. And I didn't get no shit on me tux neither. Let's get to it.

1) The "Ah crap…I'm genuinely upset that this relatively famous person has died" Clanging Gong of Doom for 2009 goes to…

Dan O'Bannon

2009 – that rabid devourer of life and livelihood – has (in its final days) claimed another victim. Into its gaping (frost-bitten) maw has tumbled a "genre" hero. A titan of B-Culture. *sniff*

While most obits (such as there are) have focused on the John Carpenter connection (Dark Star) or the begetting role he played in Alien, comparatively few have made much mention of what is (for me) his magnum opus.

Baby-watching detail doesn't allow time for much fresh elaboration, so I'll dip into my archival sack and recycle some previously aired thoughts:

Few things are as enjoyable (when successfully realised) as good horror comedies – the only problem being that there are so few of them around. List-compiling film buffs routinely cite the same three or four features as high points of the sub-genre: An American Werewolf in London, Evil Dead 2, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein etc. Rarely (outside of 'fanboy' circles) however, does one hear mention of Dan O'Bannon’s delightful and delirious Return of the Living Dead. Best known perhaps for being the film that introduced the classic zombie "Brrrraaaaaiiinnnsssss!!" refrain to cinema audiences, its ingredients – general daftness, a cast of fairly irritating teens etc – do not appear overly promising on paper.

What makes it memorable (and highly rewatchable…especially after a few pints) though, are three perfectly pitched performances from the senior male leads: James Karen (as the folksy and avuncular 'Frank'), Clu Gulager (as his put-upon, pragmatic boss 'Burt'), and Don Calfa (as the Nazi-loving mortician 'Ernie').

Add in a kicking soundtrack (from The Cramps et al), a 90 minute runtime that ensures the joke doesn't become too strained, a winning affection for its (unabashed) 'B-Movie' aesthetic etc, and the result is a gooey, gory, hilarious treat. There may be one or two more important zombie films (Dawn of the Dead, for example) but none are anything like this much fun.

Dan – your award is now beaming its way o'er the astral networks to the happy lands of the dead. RIP.

Now for a long-ish commercial break – a day or so most likely (this ceremony is to be a very leisurely affair, allowing ample time for Yuletide reflection on mortality).

Later.

26/12/09
And…we're back. Stuffed to overflowing with day old turkey and sprouts (and stuffing). Giddy from the effects of one too many hot ports. Delighting in the gifts we have received (most notably a sumptuous book on the work of Ray Harryhausen, signed by Ray Harryhausen). Ready to dish out more gongs.

2) The "Tireless Promoter of Crude Gender Stereotypes" Gong of Doom goes to…

Radio Advertising

If you discount, a) the buffoonish entrepreneurial comedy stylings of Ben Dunne, and, b) twee Ould Mr. Brennan chuckle-fests, then 100% of all remaining Irish radio ads are puke-inducing, "War of the Sexes"-style shitathons.

The message is ever the same. All fellas are slovenly, disorganised eejits – but (Ho! Ho!) loveably rougish for all that. You can't actually see them winking cheekily to camera (what with it being radio and all) but the wink (and elbow nudge) is automatically implied.

All "girls", on the other hand, are nag-o-maniacal bitch-monsters who alternate between joyless tut-tutting (at their fella's many failings) and coquettish arm-twisting to get what they want. And what they all want, of course, are a) shoes, b) vouchers for the Kildare Village Outlet Centre, c) chocolate-coated Sex & the City box-sets, and, d) huge fuck-off engagement rings.

Having established the above facts, radio has (for the last 12 months) beamed out non-stop messages like these:

"Staggering home from the pub? Langered drunk? Forgotten to do that thing you were asked to do (like, forty times)? Don't sweat it! Pop in to your nearest Londis and pick up a Mega-Bar of Galaxy Indulgence for only €1.50. We guarantee it'll shut that bitch up!

Way hey! Go on the lads…

Not all advertising is this evil of course. Some of it is life-affirmingly wonderful. Behold (even if you've already beheld it):

Along with its magnificent "making of" companion, this was the YouTube find of the year. Snow-speeders in space (traveling with an Imperial fleet)? Decidedly non-canon "Beam Transfer" technology? A Darth Vader/Maurice Pratt buddy movie dynamic? This ad had it all. It's a worthy winner of…

3) The 2009 "Priceless Pop-Cultural Treasure Dragged Back from the Edge of Oblivion" Clanging Gong of Doom.

More to follow (probably).

28/12/09

Right. Last couple of gongs going mouldy in the bottom of me bag here. Beginning to reek. Time for some quick-fire awarding.

4) The Clanging Gong for "Bestest and Fabulousest (Irish) Blog Post of the Year" goes to…

The Notional Conversation (Fergal Crehan, Tuppenceworth)

At a time when public figures were lining up to sing (with misty-eyes) the praise of Questions & Answers (and John Bowman) – Fergal's cracking post exposed the inner-workings of the (smooth & pointless) "public discourse" machine.

5) The Clanging Gong for "Weirdest & Most Brain-Searingly Wonderful Book of the Year" is hereby awarded to…

You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! (Fletcher Hanks; edited by Paul Karasik, Fantagraphics).

Question: How would you punish a criminal master-mind who tried, using his "oxygen-destroying ray", to take over the world by suffocating "every big shot in America"? If you answered, "By using my transforming ray to turn him into a giant head before hurling him into a 'space pocket of living death where the headless headhunter dwells'", then Fletcher Hanks (a demented 1930s/40s comic auteur and visionary) may be something of a kindred spirit.

Long neglected and largely forgotten, Hanks' work has undergone something of a revival in the last 2 years or so, thanks to Paul Karasik's (Eisner award-winning) reprint collection I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets (Fantagraphics, 2007). Hanks (as that astonishing volume delightfully illustrated) was churning out his violent tales of bizarre crime and savage (grotesque!) retribution at a time when "Superhero Comic" conventions had not yet been established. Without a prescribed path – and cursed/blessed with a stiff and crude artistic technique – Hanks was free to indulge in "righteous" morality tales of power, potency and gleefully excessive brutality. His villains were decidedly un-super: bumbling gangsters or fifth columnists. Ape-like hoods as drawn by Hieronymus Bosch. His heroes, like the "Super Wizard" Stardust, were omnipotent dolers-out of the roughest justice.

Hanks (an alcoholic, violently abusive father) died destitute & frozen on a park bench. The work in (volume 2) You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! (produced entirely by Hanks, at breakneck speed) might be testament to rage-filled, borderline psychosis – but it's thrillingly vital and magnificently (uniquely) strange for all that.

Hmmm…I smell yet another atomic nappy. Time to don the Hazmat suit and begin Operation Destinkify. That's yer lot for the 2009 Awards. Semi-regular service will resume in the New Year. 2010! We're living in the future!

I have been silent for too long here at SESP, and for that I apologise to you all, and most cravenly to Fústar, who has been left carrying so much of the workload a-keepin’ this blog ticking over. While my Orange boys were out doing wonderful things against France the other weekend, I was drinking beer and eating pie in Kilmainham, watching Leonard Cohen being spellbinding. On Sunday, as the Turks and Czechs battled each other, I was in Vicar Street, caught up in the whirlwind of fierce beauty that is the live Bonnie "Prince" Billy experience. Such was the degree to which I refreshed myself at those cultural events that it’s only now that I’ve returned to peak blogging condition.

During my absence from the first team, I noticed an interesting piece in the Guardian where they sent their arts critics to sporting events and their sports writers to arts events. With a few exceptions, the critics didn’t get the sport; with a few exceptions, the sportswriters were pleased with the culture. What does this prove? That Art is better than Sport? Maybe. That the Guardian's jocks are more rounded writers than its nerds? Definitely.

Thomas Castaignède, rugby correspondent, loved the opera, and even went so far as to do a post-match interview with one of the tenors, an innovation which could add a fascinating new dimension to arts coverage, though I suspect that most actors, at least, are as boring and banal in the locker room as are footballers, though they probably don’t say "all credit to the lads" as much. Now M. Castaignède is French, which may explain his conception of Sport as analogous to Opera in the intensity of its high drama. Nonetheless, I am as one with him when he says "I just love to watch people giving it everything – in any walk of life". And it is true that that the football of the past week has been good enough to provide me with moments of pleasure (though perhaps not as many) at least the equal of anything given by Messrs. Cohen and Oldham. And that’s without even mentioning tonight.

Surely I was not the only one out of my seat and pacing the floors this evening, as the Croatia-Turkey tie came to its spectacular, cruel, spell-binding climax? Both teams were so likable, and so passionately supported that it seemed a shame to send either of them home. By extra time, I thought that whichever team could manage a goal from play would be the deserving victor.

Then Rustu made an insane decision to chase a ball way out of his area of responsibility. Failing to capture it, he was sent racing back to his line after a ball that sailed inevitably netward. Croatia it was then. But with ordinary time done, and the single minute of injury time completed, the amusingly named (to Irish ears at least) Semih sent a rasper into the corner of the Croatian net. It was struck more or less on the stroke of full time, and sent us into the fascinating and sadistic ritual of a penalty shoot-out.

I hate to see games decided by shoot-outs; they are a blunt instrument, their only virtue being that they at least put an end to what otherwise might go on all night. They are cruel, and cannot even begin to determine who the best team is. Still, they do provide a certain insight into the character of teams and, especially individual players. Weak teams will invariably crack in a shoot-out. My Dad suggested to me last night that nothing sums up Christiano Ronaldo’s weaknesses like his too-clever-by-half and ultimately bottled penalty in the Champions League Final.

Thus, it was the Croatians, understandably shattered by the last-second equaliser, who were found psychologically lacking. The Turks, all steely determination and never-say-die attitude, slotted their kicks home like men of the fine old school. Then, at last, the final kick of the game, and Rustu, the 117-times capped veteran, redeemed himself in the eyes of his nation, and the Turkish fans went every bit as mental as they deserved. The Croatians, a team of such great charm and passion, go home. It’s fascinating, exhilarating and dramatic; it’s also arbitrary, crude and cruel. But then, as they never say at Covent Garden, that’s football.

Russia 2-0 Sweden

Spain 2 – 1 Greece

Portugal 2 – 3 Germany

Turkey 1 – 1 Croatia (3-1 on penalties)

But all of this was mere frippery when compared to the entrance onto the Euro ’08 stage of my Dutch boys. Things did not bode well in the run-up. Certainly, the Dutch public were in gloomy mood. The team, Netherlanders were saying, was the weakest they'd had in some time, and Van Basten was playing a defensive game, not true to the best traditions of Dutch football. The ever-present promise of player dissension had yet to materialise, but there was always the possibility that such matters as the absence from the squad of Clarence Seedorf would lead to a bust-up. All it takes is a bad opening game; someone mutters “This wouldn’t have happened if Clarence was here", and it all kicks off.

Thus it was no surprise to any seasoned Holland-watcher when, in preview mode, RTÉ’s Bill O’Herlihy mentioned reports of a training pitch row this very morning. Some weaker souls would have thrown their hands in the air; fighting each other the morning before you play the world champions? A recipe for disaster, surely? Not a bit of it. The Dutch thrive on this stuff. Such is The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football. They'd come out and be awesome, just to confuse us.

So I settled in with a can or two of Dutch Gold and an ounce of prime Amsterdam superskunk, and watched them play the pants off Italy. Admittedly, it was a rather creaky, arthritic Italy, and the first goal was so obviously offside that you’d be doing it a favour if you called it dubious. Even Van Nistelrooy himself looked a little sheepish in his celebration, a change from his usual, more equine aspect.

Nonetheless, Holland worked hard, making tackles and blocking down passes right up until the final whistle. The second and third goals were excellent; Sneijder's strike might even force us to get the Whelanometer out. And where Italy looked not just incapable of scoring, but uninterested in it, Holland had the kind of attitude you’d expect of a nation with a club called the “Go-Ahead Eagles. With France looking a bit crummy, Holland are suddenly contenders, thus making a massive argument significantly more likely. Minor spats like this morning’s to-do on the training pitch are but minor tremors – we await the Big One with trepidation, for when it comes, it will destroy everything. But tonight is more than enough to be going on with until then. I'll write a post with some analysis of what the papers are saying back in the Netherlands, as soon as I've learnt Dutch.

]]> http://www.fustar.info/2008/06/09/holland-contrary-as-ever/feed/ 5 http://www.fustar.info/2008/06/02/orange-flakes/ http://www.fustar.info/2008/06/02/orange-flakes/#comments Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:42:55 +0000 Fergal http://www.fustar.info/?p=587 continue reading »]]> Every year the soccer club of my place of work takes a trip abroad to drink and to play a match against the locals. This year Munich was the destination, and 4-0 the victory against the footballing lawyers of that city. Despite the size of the margin, the Irish lads, a friend assured me, needed to keep their concentration right until the end. Why do you think that was, he asked me. Because, I replied, without the need for even a hint, You Can Never Write Off the Germans.

If the Germans and their unwriteoffability is European football's greatest cliché, then the tendency of the Dutch “camp" to have “trouble" in it comes a close second. There’s a school of sports writing that likes to conflate playing style with (stereotypical) national character. Thus the Nordic teams are strong, doughty and a bit boring, the Brazilians play to the rhythm of the Samba (a ridiculous notion, if you think about it for even a moment), the French ooze panache, finesse and even joie de vivre.

But where does that leave the Dutch? A sensible, reasonable nation, even their liberal views on drugs and sex seem to be born of pragmatism rather than radical hippiedom. And yet their football teams are volatile and cranky off the pitch and outrageously creative on it. Time after time they arrive at a tournament loaded with great players only to explode at the key moment due to an outbreak of player power, or the right back having an affair with the goalie’s wife, or an argument on the relative merits of smooth and crunchy peanut butter getting out of hand. Cutting a dash in their glowing orange shirts, they are as infuriating as they are entertaining, in part because of the nagging suspicion that you can’t have iron discipline and still play Total Football. This is football as it might have been conceived in May 1968, where every player is an artist, and “management" is no less than enslavement of the soul.

Of course it only works if you have vastly talented players, and the Dutch often have those aplenty. The year it all came together for them was 1988, their victory in the Euro Championships giving them their only tournament win thus far. The team contained their current manager Marco Van Basten, not to mention Ruud Gullitt, Frank Rijkaard, Ronald Keoman, Arnold Muhren and Hans Van Breukelen in goal. Looking back, it seems obvious that this was a great team, but in 1988, Holland were an unknown quantity. The Total Football generation had long passed, and there had been no Dutch participation in any tournament since 1980, when they didn’t make it past the group stage of the European Championship. In a friendly against England shortly before the beginning of the competition though, they put the world on notice that something special might be happening.¹

Later immortalised by the European Court of Justice, John Bosman was the scorer of the goal in the purely formal sense that he was the one who headed it over the line, but you could have quite reasonably credited the score to the entire team. What was important about the goal was what it said to the watching world about the team’s attitude to the game. Passing the ball around easily and patiently, probing for weakness, then suddenly going in for the kill, this was an extraordinarily accomplished football team. Most teams would have given up and hoofed up a long ball somewhere around pass number five.

It was of course the Dutch who sent us home, (curse you Wim Kieft!), but we couldn’t be especially angry at them, not after a second flamboyant trouncing of England (this was back when it was still OK to enjoy watching England lose. The whole “our maturity as a nation" business was to come later). Van Basten scored a wonderful hat trick in that game, setting himself up as the great star of the tournament. He took his form all the way to the final and finished it with a remarkable goal, a volley at an impossible angle from a high pass from Muhren. Looking at his goals on Youtube, I am reminded of the sheer pleasure he gave me that summer. Seeing them again is like hearing a once-loved pop single on the radio.

Two years later, the same team had a dull and dour World Cup, utterly forgettable apart from the famous Rijkaard-Voller spitting incident. Since then, it’s been back to the same old pattern of flakiness and talent in equal measure. This year, if not up to the standards of '72 or '88, they have some decent players, and the mood of the squad has not yet turned nasty. In the absence of an Irish team to root for, I plan to adopt them for the purposes of this blog. I’m not sure what actual effort on my part that might entail, but I’m sure they’re grateful to have my best wishes. I’ll be with them all the way to the semi-final, which they will lose after having an all-in brawl in the dressing-room at half time. I can hardly wait.

1. Video is a bit slow in loading. Press play, pause it, allow it to load, finish reading the post, and come back to enjoy [Ed]. [back]