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[17 Aug 2008|02:51pm] |
I <3 the Tour
Okay, so it's one of the big mountain days (they've gone over the Tourmale and they've got another Haut Categorie climb coming up) and so those team leaders who are aiming for the yellow jersey have started manouvring. CSC are probably the best organised. So, at the first big break away, Fabian Cancellara, who is a world champion in his own right, was sent up by his team to stay with them. The group split in two, with about 5 heading off up the road, containing non-contenders, and the second group which had a couple of half-decent riders. Cancellara is not a mountain man but he kept up with them, and drove them on, breaking two of the contenders further down the pack (who are mountain men, or at least can cope). On the ascent up the second big hill, Cancellara ran out of energy and got dropped so the other eight or so that were with him all congratulated him on a job well done as he went backwards. If whoever CSC's main man is, Sastre I suspect, does win the yellow jersey, it'll be partly thanks to today's ride from Cancellara.
And Jens Voight who is still going but um, his awesomeness, is expected. Yeah, you read that right, people are confused when Jens is less than awesome. Jens for CSC team leader.
Exactly why Jim White, respected football journalist, is wrong
His article here - http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/feelfootball/article/1425/
Now normally whenever a journalist publishes his flights of fancy (or articles as I think they prefer to call them), I try to at least see where they're coming from. This time it's impossible, because he's cherry-picking his examples.
Harry Redknapp has bought 7 English players unlike everyone else who is buying foreign. Mr. White's hypothesis is that this is unusual and it's rarity is because managers increasingly believe English players aren't good enough.
What he's missing, or chosing not to report is that 1) Harry Redknapp is a wheeler-dealer and only buys cheap players and 2) Chelski, the club he is buying a lot of these English players from, are one of the few clubs who can afford to sell players at a loss.
Because the reason managers buy foreign is that they're cheaper, or, if they're not, the same price buys a higher quality. Compare £10 million for Berbatov to £16 million for Darren Bent. Makalele for £16 million to £14 million for Michael Carrick.
English players are almost always over-priced.
The players he uses as examples of where this isn't fair are all goalkeepers and while I've yet to figure out why more team aren't clamouring for Scott Carson and Ben Foster, they're merely victims of this. Because goalies are the only players who's prices aren't hype inflated (because the press doesn't care about them) but if a manager has already stopped looking in England then he's going to miss them too.
Dear UCI and ASO
Please don't make comments about cycling being clean before the start of the Tour because it almost makes certain that there will be half a dozen positive tests (3 so far).
Ultimate Job Security
For the tropes meta/fic thing penknife is running.
So I had the choice of three tropes, Chained to the Bed (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChainedToABed) which I have no real interest in, Vichy Earth (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VichyEarth) which I have a real and extreme interest in but my view points are possibly obnoxious, terribly long-winded, and require references and actual research so I have settled for the third option - ultimate job security (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UltimateJobSecurity).
Why is it a trope? Because TV drama has two needs, it needs drama, often caused by inter-personal problems, and it needs continuity, because you can't keep hiring and firing actors, you end up with a bad reputation. Also, a lot of drama hinges on personal, shall we say abrasiveness, that you don't get in real life. If we take my work as an example, it's a pit of vipers, several layers of nested vipers at that, but we're terribly polite about it and always do it behind each others backs, and that just doesn't work for TV drama.
Drama also needs a setting and since the two most common settings are work and home, and home tends to be the setting for comedies, while work tends to be for dramas. So you have a situation where people do things that should get them sacked and they don't for reasons that have nothing to do with the story and more with backstage reasons. Cue trope.
Another thing that tickled me was that two of the shows named in the tropes are things I'm into, and two others I know well enough to understand that their rationalizations work. The latter two are House and MASH, and yes, doctors are nigh on impossible to sack.
Onto the two I'm fannish about which are Torchwood and Wrestling. Torchwood first:
You can almost forgive them for this one because there is an in-canon reason not to replace them, because it would be damned difficult, given that it appears that it took Jack a fair few years to get a team post the thing that happens in Fragments (why the hell Torchwood fandom doesn't go 'Oh Jack' like Supernatural does is beyond me. Possibly because we're too busy doing it about the whole lot of them). Except, especially in season one, they were that bad it might have been worth it. So why was no one making them behave - well the whole unpleasant thing at Canary Wharf went down, but I refuse to believe someone, like say UNIT, didn't come and smack them down and hard. So yeah, there's something totally bizarre in canon (except I think they enjoy pretending UNIT doesn't exist unless they need to use it). House at least explains why the lead character cannot be sacked. Torchwood never does. It's not like they're running low on ret-con.
Wrestling: First a quick definition for the non-wrestling fans who read this - kayfabe is the story we see on screen. I'm going to use that world as the real one, mostly because what goes on backstage is even more convoluted.
TV tropes chose Austin as the example of someone who never gets sacked no matter what. This makes me believe that whoever it was really didn't watch that hard because he was forever getting sacked and just ignoring that fact. The person I'd put up there is Vince McMahon, the chairman himself, because really, if a real executive behaved like that, he'd be kicked off the board and possibly thrown in jail. Admittedly he does get shoved out of the way at various time by the rest of his brood but much like the Maxwell family, I'm reasonably sure all the members of the McMahon family cluster should have been up before one magistrate or another a long time ago.
This is also one of those tropes that people notice a lot, possibly because very few people in the real world are lucky enough to have this. I've noticed that people spot and object to its existence more when the person is incompetent (see Torchwood, series one especially) than when they're good at their job, but obnoxious (see House). It really grates a lot of people because it's so different to how the world works, but is found a lot more often in real-world based programmes than in absolutely and resolutely non-reality related ones.
It's a very silly trope, but due to confines of television, one that will be with us 'til doomsday.
Victory Road (and the Impact leading up to it)
So I haven't seen all of it, but I fear I may have a new favourite wrestler, Alex Kozlov because ( Because (spoilers) )
Um, if any of the more indie aware people on my f-list would care to recommend any of his matches, I'd be grateful.
I think I may also love Masato Yoshino. And the chap with the invisible dog.
I also love the Knockouts, if not the Beautiful People's entrance. In relation to the Impact, I see exactly what Opera sees in ODB.
Things I don't understand - the Samoa Joe/Kevin Nash hook up. What?!
Whether Booker's supposed to be a heel or a face.
Pretty much everything in TNA except for the Xs and the Knockouts.
I also loved BG James's intro for Victory Road.
Holidays are here again
Off to Paris till Sunday.
I've organised the trip, so if it all goes tits up, it's my fault. I plan on enjoying myself immensely. Further reports when I get back.
Jul. 28th, 2008
Back from Paris. Posts and pictures later.
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