The Wooden Finger Five - October 2014

No. 5 Two Weeks – FKA twigs

My feelings about FKA twigs’ music are I think similar to my wife’s feelings about modern art – sure, it demonstrates talent but it is a bit too abstract for me. And when it is ‘plain’ enough for me to get into it sounds a bit like Portishead 2014. I do like the single ‘Two Weeks’ though; it would be a good tune even without (or in spite of) the dirty lyrics. (Sample lyric: ‘Beep beep beep, I’m healing for beep you’re dealing, beeperbeeper, get your beep beep you know you’re beep … ‘)

No. 4 Carnival of Light (album) – Ride

I love ‘90s British indie rock band Ride’s first two albums: the self-consciously epic ‘Nowhere’, and the looser, lighter ‘Going Blank Again’. And then a few weeks ago I thought, ‘Well, Ride did more albums, didn’t they? … I wonder if they are any good?’ Their 1996 release ‘Tarantula’ I am not sold on, but I have enjoyed listening to 1994’s ‘Carnival of Light’. All of the first five tracks – particularly ‘1000 Miles’ and ‘From Time To Time’ – are all pleasant tunes, though looking over the songwriting credits as I type this I’ve realised that those were all written by Mark Gardener, which makes me wonder if Oasis ended up recruiting the wrong Ride member (Andy Bell). Anyway for anyone who wished the Stone Roses’ second album ended up sounding more like their first, this album might be worth a stream or two.

No. 3 Every Other Freckle – Alt-J

What the hell are Alt-J saying - ? ‘Gonna paw paw at you like a cat paws at my woollen jumper … ?’ ‘I want to do all the things your lungs do so well … ?’ ‘Oh oh oh devour me … ?’ The images used in the lyrics of ‘Every Other Freckle’ might be seen as original or weird, depending on how much you like kittens in your bedroom, but the appeal of this song for me compared with other Alt-J songs is that Joe Newman’s usual reedy vocals are counterpointed here by Gus Unger-Hamilton’s altogether stouter undulations. (‘Stouter’ seems a funny word to use if one has actually seen a photo of Gus Unger-Hamilton.) Novelty point: the band have released two versions of the video to this track – (Girl) and (Boy) – which differ in terms of which gender you get to see a butt-shot of.

No. 2 Cosmic Vibrations – Foxygen

 

When my wife and I were in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco five years ago, my wife tells me she saw a guy with a sign that said ‘need money for drugs’. (Two shout-outs to my wife in the same post! Can you tell that we have been together a long time?) Foxygen at times come close to that Californian stoner, hippie cliché, and a single that is called ‘Cosmic Vibrations’ fits right into that image. But as with other good psychedelic revivalists, it ends up sounding like something that could have sprung from their minds only. On the other hand, part of the reason it appeals to me is that it reminds me of one of the best and most underrated Beatles tracks, George Harrison’s ‘Long, Long, Long’ from ‘(The White Album)’.

 

No. 1 Better Than It Ever Could Be/It Gets Better – The Preatures 

 

‘Is This How You Feel?’ is probably the Preatures’ best song, but this column is not concerned with 2013 anymore. Oh wait … this song is from 2013 as well? Never mind … I have just got into it though with the release of the Preatures’ first album ‘Blue Planet Eyes’. While Preatures’ frontwoman Isabella Manfredi sang with cool, discoball reserve on ‘Is This … ?’ she belts out ‘Better … ’ with unreserved, morning video show, singing into your hairbrush joy: ‘And in the corners of my mind/ I see reasons I can’t find, sound and vision in my sleep …   it gets better than it EVER COULD BE!’

BEER!![17] – Astor Ale

Name:  Astor Ale

Brewery: Mildura, VIC

Alcohol Content: 4.5% ABV.

The Astor Ale is actually named after the old movie theatre in Mildura that is now the home of the Mildura Brewery. But being a Melbournian, seeing it reminded me of the theatre of the same name in St. Kilda that is closing down next year.

My first memory of the Astor is seeing the posters of the movie schedules in the room of my uncle – a big old-time film buff. The Astor was probably something that always seemed a little better in imagination than in reality. Parking there was always difficult for me, even when I lived in Caulfield, and I probably only visited there two or three times in the end. Indeed I can’t recall what I saw there, though I am pretty sure I saw Orson Welles in ‘The Third Man’, a movie that I had seen many times already on VHS, and which my girlfriend at the time found perfectly dull.

But even if I did not frequent it that much, I always liked to think it was there. I liked its art deco feel. I liked the staff’s suits. I liked how each showing was made to feel like a matinee, with an interval in between for the double headers. I liked the fact that they showed double headers, which also looked really cool on the upcoming movie schedules. Drinking the Astor Ale, even if did turn out to be referencing another theatre, made me think of those things again.

I bought the beer however when I saw the recent movie ‘Boyhood’ at the Kino Cinema in Melbourne’s CBD. The Kino is a different cinema to the Astor – the theatre I sat in had only four rows – although both have a reputation for being a cinema of choice for ‘discerning’ movie goers. Watching ‘Boyhood’, which essentially looked back at the 2000s, at a cinema just a few minutes walk away from work, made me feel pretty good about the present era. But sipping the Astor Ale I did long for a little the art deco past.   

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 91

POLITICS: The case for and against Melbourne’s proposed East-West Link road.

ECONOMICS: France is productive, but should be more so …

BASKETBALL/FOOTBALL: NFL teams if they had the logos on their NBA counterparts.

FOOTBALL: Home ground advantage is not as strong as it used to be in English football – why?

MUSIC/FILM/BOOKS: A chilled-out Hermione Granger music video.

How Average Is Shane Watson?

 

From 2005 - the year of Shane Watson's Test cricket debut - through to 2014, the average number of runs Australia has scored per wicket is 36.63. Shane Watson's Test cricket batting average is 36.26.

Over the same period the average number of runs scored against Australia per wicket taken is 30.12. Shane Watson's Test cricket bowling average is 31.96.

Which suggests to me that Australian Test cricket, in evaluating the value of its players, could introduce a variant of the baseball statistic Wins Above Average Player. They could call it Wins Above Shane Watson.*



*In defence of Watson:
P.S. Australia's players have, on average, been better than Test cricket players overall.
P.P.S. An average player is still better than a 'replacement level' player.
P.P.P.S. And anyway, it is quite OK to be an average Test cricketer.

The Shoot Gamer’s Review – ‘BioShock Infinite’

What be this then? Seems the Man With The Wooden Finger hath travelled back to the dim, distant era of the Year of Our Lord … Twenty Thirteen. Oho! – there’s a rib-tickler! Nay, the first-person shoot-‘em-up ‘BioShock Infinite’ is in actuality (or at least in this actuality) set in 1912 Anno Domini. As former Pinkerton (look it up, curious gamers!) agent Booker DeWitt thou travel to the floating city of Columbia in order to bring back a girl and wipe away your debt. And glory be! – what a beautiful city it is. In a medium that flings off the assembly line one dark, dystopian future after another, this colourful, cravated, barbershop of a game feels like a vintage store dream. I have no love for shooters – and the gameplay in this particular shooter could be described as “no more than adequate” – but I was stuck to my keyboard, driven by momentum across the planks, all the while raiding corpses and pocketing Silver Eagles. (It also helped, that in keeping with my shoot gaming, I early on locked the easiness level on to its highest setting.)

The distinguishing point of ‘BioShock Infinite’ though must surely be the fair damsel Elizabeth (aka the Girl You Must Bring). Blue-eyed Beth is by you for the majority of your journey, tossing ammunitions, salts, and ‘health’ – ‘health’ here being an object you can heave – over to your fingers just at the moment when you are nearing your death-bed. Many of the story’s cut-scenes also revolve around her, including the wit-twisting ending, which me being now in the year 2014 I foolishly spoiled for myself in my obsession with all things Infinite …….. But onward! Blood and organs aside, BioShock Infinite could be just the tonic for the literary-minded that would otherwise dismiss modern arcade games as pubescent tomfoolery. Aesthetically it cannot be faulted; even the moniker Booker DeWitt rolls off the tongue like a silver pearl. Story-wise it holds your interest right until the final door is opened. And that shooting … well, sometimes you just have to shoot your way to where you want to go.

The Bulldogs’ Unlikely NRL Grand Final Berth

This week the Bulldogs will play in the National Rugby League Grand Final, despite finishing the regular season in seventh spot. It has been seemingly an unlikely finals run, particularly when compared to the Australian Football League, where no team outside the final four has made a Grand Final since 2000.

Was the Bulldogs’ seventh-place finish misleading? In my AFL Power Rankings system I try to give a ‘truer’ indication of where teams are at by ranking teams according to how much they have won or lost by, adjusting for strength of opposition and home ground advantage, and giving higher weight to more recent games. If I had constructed an NRL Power Rankings for this season, would the Bulldogs have been a top four team?

Probably not. The Bulldogs’ point difference over the regular season was just +7, only the tenth best point difference in the league. How did they perform in recent matches? In their final five matches of the regular season their net margin was -17 in total, or -3 per match, and their opponents were relatively weak with an average net margin of -7 per match. So any NRL rankings system I constructed would have had them ranked around mid-table at best.

I expect the favourites in the AFL win more often than in the NRL; the statistics I found, albeit taken over 2007 to 2011, indicate that AFL favourites win about two-thirds of the time, while the winning percentage of NRL favourites is a few percentage points less. So Grand Final berths by ‘lesser’ finals teams should not be that much more likely in the NRL, although the Bulldogs did start as favourites over the better-performed Sea Eagles and Panthers. Hence, I don’t think there was much to suggest that the Bulldogs were a good chance to make the Grand Final. And I don’t think there is much to suggest that they will beat the Rabbitohs on the weekend, but hey, there is still a one in three chance …

AFL Power Rankings: Post-Finals 2014

RISING UP

With its win in the Grand Final, Hawthorn ends the 2014 season as the #1 ranked team … just. Though the margin was significant in the premiership decider the Hawks and the Swans were pretty close throughout the year and between them held the top spot for all but one week. This is the third year in a row the Hawks have ended up as the ‘best’ team; despite their loss in the 2012 Grand Final they were rated as the best team in that year as well.

However, in terms of improving their standing, the Port Adelaide Power were the ‘winners’ out of the final nine games of the season. A big win against Richmond, a win away against Fremantle, and a narrow loss against Hawthorn meant they ended up as a clear third in the post-finals rankings.

FALLING DOWN

The Swans, Dockers, Roos, Cats, and Tigers all lost ground following their performances in September. The Dockers dropped the most spots (from third to fifth), but the Roos – despite making a preliminary final – lost the most ranking points after their big loss to the Swans.

ALSO OF NOTE

I have adjusted the rankings points so that they now sum to zero, while maintaining each of the teams’ relativities. Previously, as the net average margins of the top teams fell during the finals this meant that on balance the sum of the teams’ ranking points was negative, which always slightly bothered me.

That is it for this year – as always the AFL Power Rankings will return next season.     

 

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 90

TELEVISION: Did Sopranos’ creator David Chase reveal that Tony Soprano was alive? No, apparently he was misconstrued. Which means I am still going with fifty-fifty on this.

MUSIC: What on earth is Ariel Pink on about?

FOOTBALL: How to enjoy a whole football game, like Borussia Dortmund manager Jurgen Klopp. I enjoyed watching Arsenal getting swamped by BVB myself.

MUSIC/ART: Chart-topping pop songs redone as pie charts and graphs.

TELEVISION/HUMOUR: Inspirational posters using quotes from Black Books’ misanthrope Bernard Black.