The Finger Points Outwards - No. 27: Age and Ranking of Men's Tennis Players

Read an article in 'The Age' on the weekend about how the top male tennis players are becoming older - this article shows this is indeed right, at least when you look at the top 100.

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 26: 10 Best Blake Griffin Dunks (So Far)

(Half-)White rangas can jump!

Who's Crying Now?

England have won the Ashes not once, but twice, since I posted this (despite, as the Betfair ad would have us believe, the man in this picture betting against them).

Graphic Novels You Would Like If You Weren't Too Chicken To Read Them - Asterios Polyp/Wilson/Lint (Part Two)

There are few graphic novel creators that are more beloved by purveyors of all things hip and cool than Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware who, because we are also so hip and cool, are exactly the creators we are going to cover over the next few days! On Sunday, I termed the character Asterios Polyp a pompous ass; well, the titular character of Clowes’ most recent graphic novel ‘Wilson’ could best be described as loathsome and, according to the descriptions on the back of the book, ‘a sociopath’ and ‘a delusional blowhard’. (Though he is also described as ‘a delicate flower’ and ‘a devoted father and husband’, which are apt descriptions as well.) It would spoil the humour of the book to give away too much about how he manages to offend every person he encounters, but refusing to give directions to somebody just because they are driving a large vehicle, and sending a family a box full of dog shit are fairly typical examples. So why bother reading about this guy? Because, for all his bile, Wilson is actually not too far wrong in places about the manner in which people live their lives, and the myriad ways in which he confounds norms and expectations will make you think a little even as you cringe in your chair. That said if you don’t like stories in which the characters have few redeeming qualities, this probably isn’t for you. Perhaps the best approach is to pick it up in the bookstore, read a few pages, and see if you chuckle along or want to hit someone over the head with it. Though if it’s the latter, maybe this is for you as well!

Next up, Chris Ware’s latest beautiful issue of his irregular series ‘Acme Novelty Library’: ‘Lint’!

Image copyright Drawn & Quarterly

Graphic Novels You Would Like If You Weren't Too Chicken To Read Them - Asterios Polyp/Wilson/Lint (Part One)

Perhaps coincidentally, three of the most lauded graphic novels of the past couple of years have been one-off character studies of somewhat maladjusted men: David Mazzuchelli’s ‘Asterios Polyp’, Daniel Clowes’ ‘Wilson’, and Chris Ware’s ‘Lint’. Maybe graphic novel writers and readers are best suited to dealing with these types of people… I’m not going to judge (lest I implicate myself)… but each of these authors does seem to have a pretty good understanding of what it means to be something of a misanthrope. And going down this route does appear to gain the medium more respect than capes and power fantasies have ever done, partly because it allows the personal styles of the creators to shine through, thus showing that the medium has far more to say about the human condition than many believe.



Mazzuchelli’s ‘Asterios Polyp’ is the most self-consciously literary of the three (the author notes claim that Mazzuchelli has been making comics for years, but this is his first graphic novel), and takes as its subject an architect-slash-professor-slash-author. Polyp is, to put it bluntly, a pompous ass; at one point his long-suffering wife, herself a brilliant artist, exasperatedly asks him if he thinks she is stupid because he seems to always assume that what she says is wrong. Polyp’s story is interrupted at points to allow him to pontificate on his theories of architecture and duality, much of which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but they are presented in such creative ways that you wish you knew what he was talking about. Unsurprisingly, the thrust of the story is how Polyp learns to curb his arrogance and recognise the importance of others; however, there is no lightbulb-goes-off-in-the-head moment, and Polyp’s journey takes some unconventional routes, involving dream sequences with figures from Greek mythology, radical Communism-spouting country punk bands, and a big-bosomed astrology expert who calls herself ‘a goddess’. Mazzuchelli’s visuals themselves are pretty simple and clean – where the complexity comes from is the way he alters his figures and arranges his symbols so as to develop meaning (abstract though that meaning may be). Yes it all sounds very arty, but it also pokes fun at its own arty-ness, and it’s a bit of a pleasant surprise from an artist who, rightly or wrongly, is still best known for his collaborations with Frank Miller on ‘Batman: Year One’ and ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ (both of which are excellent by the way). Most people who have taken a college or university arts course at some point in their lives would get a kick out of this.

That’s it for the moment; I’ll cover off ‘Wilson’ and ‘Lint’ another time, hopefully later this week.

Image copyright Pantheon Press.

Game Review - Donkey Kong Country Returns

The two-player co-operative mode on ‘Donkey Kong Country Returns’ is a microcosm of any co-dependent relationship: you need to co-ordinate your efforts, use each other’s strengths to progress, know when to let the other monkey forge ahead and when not to leave the other monkey behind, and be careful not to free-ride too much on the larger monkey’s back. My wife and I have made our way across the beach, through the cave, along the forest, and on to the cliff, each of us alternating between Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong (aka the Didmeister), and it has done more to strengthen our video gaming co-existence than any game this side of ‘Rock Band’. Perhaps more so, given that DKCR also has a greater variety of situations than any game this side of ‘Super Mario Galaxy’; we’ve learned that I seem to have an advantage in swinging from vines, while my wife has an advantage in jumping around in mine carts and finding secret stashes of bananas. Alas, the dodgy controls that plagued DK ‘Jungle Beat’ are also evident here at times: you don’t always jump when you think you’ve jumped (or not as high), or duck when you think you’ve ducked. There is also a tendency for “spontaneous primate disappearance”, where you can’t work out where your chosen monkey is amongst the jungle backdrop and the little shits that are out to kill you. Never mind, it’s still fun enough for you to get past these frustrations and save the poor possessed beasts. Although perhaps it’s best not to tell people how much monkey business is going on in your household.

Image copyright Nintendo

Gig Review – Public Enemy – Corner Hotel, Richmond – Dec 29

The ticket claimed that Public Enemy would be performing their famous album, ‘Fear of a Black Planet’. However, after just six tracks in PE announced they would be interspersing their set with tracks from their other famous album, ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back’… except two or three more tracks in that plan was jettisoned as well. Instead PE went on for almost an hour past their scheduled finishing time with a marathon mix of greatest hits, new cuts, blues covers, guest MCs, two-man banter… and the band suggested that, if it wasn’t for a council curfew, they would have gone on for even longer than that. It was somewhat of a contrast from their heyday, when Chuck D’s tight, booming lyrical flow made the group seem like a major musical and political force to be reckoned with. Indeed, it seemed like Chuck’s position as the leader of the group has been usurped by his ‘sidekick’, Flava Flav, who has kept himself in remarkable shape, both physically and vocally. And the show itself seemed to reflect Flav’s on-stage persona: loose, rambling, a little nonsensical, politically conscious but not quite on the same cerebral level as what the PE of old brought to hip-hop. Tellingly it was Flav who delivered the final message of the night about how regardless of colour we are all part of the human race, which was certainly consistent with PE’s past messages of racial tolerance, but lacking a little in terms of the anger and eloquence about racial tensions in America that fuelled PE’s best work. Of course, the social landscape in the US has changed considerably over the past couple of decades – even before Obama’s ascent – and it may not necessarily be a bad thing that the group can nowadays kick back a little and have some fun. But you kind of wish that they had a new cause to put their fists behind – whatever, it was still cool to see one of the most important acts in hip-hop history. Fight the powers that be, then…

Rating Cricketers: Thoughts On A Simple Model

One way to rate cricketers is to measure them on their contribution to winning, or not losing, a match. A team’s chance of winning a match can be modelled as a function of the following factors:

- how many runs the team scores
- how many runs the other team scores
- how many wickets the team loses
- how many wickets the other team loses

And because of the time constraint on a cricket match, whether it is a Test or first-class match to be completed in a given number of days or a match with limited overs, these factors matter as well:

- how quickly the team scores runs
- how quickly the other team scores runs

According to this view, a cricketer’s contribution to the result of the match will depend on their contribution to each of these factors. In terms of bowling, a cricketer’s contribution will depend upon:

- how many wickets the cricketer takes
- how quickly the cricketer takes wickets (i.e. the cricketer’s bowling strike rate)
- how many runs the cricketer concedes from their bowling
- how quickly runs are scored from the cricketer’s bowling (i.e. the cricketer’s economy rate)

What would need to be done to measure the cricketer’s contribution in terms of bowling is to determine how each of these factors affects the team’s chance of winning. For example, each wicket a team takes could increase its chance of winning by, say, 0.5 per cent. A bowler who took 10 wickets in a match would therefore have increased their team’s chance of winning by 5 per cent. As another example, each run a team concedes may decrease its chance of winning by, say, 0.05 per cent. A bowler who concedes 100 runs in a match then would therefore have decreased their team’s chance of winning by 5 per cent.

In terms of batting, a cricketer’s contribution to the result of the match will depend upon:

- how many runs the cricketer scores
- how quickly the cricketer scores runs (i.e. the cricketer’s batting strike rate)
- whether the cricketer loses their wicket
- how long the cricketer can stay in before losing their wicket

And similarly to bowling, what would need to be done to measure the cricketer’s contribution in terms of batting is to determine how each of these factors affects the team’s chance of winning. For example, each run a team makes could increase its chance of winning by, say, 0.05 per cent. A batsman who makes 100 runs in a match would therefore have increased their team’s chance of winning by 5 per cent.

It would be interesting to estimate how important each of these factors is to the result of a cricket match, and how we might reassess the contribution of cricketers in light of them. One concern with this simple model is how to capture the contribution of fieldsmen. All thoughts and comments welcome.