Watching the EPL Live ... Or More Often Not

 

I enjoyed the rare luxury of watching a chunk of the last round of English Premier League matches before the New Year, as I had time off work and temporary access to the Fox Sports channel. My viewing started with the Manchester United v Chelsea match early on the Tuesday morning [Australian Eastern Standard Time], continued on for three more matches on replay, and then finished off with the Leicester v Manchester City and Sunderland v Liverpool matches. (Alas, due to a few low scoring matches, I saw only one goal ‘live’.)

 

My EPL ‘binge’ raised what I thought was an interesting point about watching EPL matches – you can see relatively few matches in or close to their entirety as they happen. Generally over half of an EPL round is played at the same time on a Saturday afternoon [UK time]. I purposefully did not check the scores of the matches that were being replayed before I watched them, but the fact remains that they had already happened; the result was not in doubt as I was watching.

 

Personally I find it kind of cool and somewhat quaint that many of the EPL matches are still played all over the country at the same time. When I first started watching Australian Rules football most of the Victorian Football League matches occurred on a Saturday afternoon as well. It was exciting to be at a match and see the progress scores on the scoreboard, or listen to the radio and go around the grounds. The last Saturday afternoon of the 1987 VFL home and away season, when every match was close and had an impact on the finishing order for the finals, still stands as one of my all-time favourite sporting days. The EPL sometimes has that sort of excitement when the title is up for grabs on the last match day.

 

America’s National Football League has a similar schedule to the EPL. Most of the matches are played in two blocks; the first on Sunday afternoon [American Eastern Standard Time], and the second on Sunday evening. Again then, it is not possible to watch a lot of matches in or close to their entirety as they happen. A side effect of this is that the matches that do not occur within these two blocks take on extra significance, namely the Monday night and Thursday night matches in the NFL, and the early Saturday afternoon and Sunday and Monday matches in the EPL. For me this significance does not even come from these being the only live matches for the day, since I can usually only catch the highlights for these matches. Nevertheless I almost always watch the highlights for the ‘off-match/game day’ bouts.

 

Down in Australia of course the schedules for the two main football leagues – the Australian Football League (the former VFL) and the National Rugby League – have become stretched out over the weekend so TV viewers can watch as many live matches as possible. This may have also been done so that, if you regularly worked on a Saturday afternoon, you would not miss all of your club’s matches. If your preference is to sit on the couch all weekend watching match after match, which personally I do not do except during the finals, then you probably really like this type of schedule. At the least it means you can watch a lot of matches live if you want to.

 

The other major American sports leagues aside from the NFL have so many games that surely few people would want to sit through all of them. Nevertheless you can watch a lot of games live if you want to, although not in their entirety, due to the time difference between the East Coast and West Coast games and to some extent the Central games as well. In the case of the National Basketball Association currently only my desire not to spend my whole day on the weekend watching basketball prevents me from starting my viewing at 11.00am [Australian Eastern Standard Time] and ending at 5.00pm, although we will see if that still holds once the playoffs begin.

 

Anyway, the point of all this is just to muse on the different approaches to scheduling, and how they affect your experience of following a sport. As I said, I sort of long for the days that most of the Australian Rules matches were played on a Saturday afternoon. I enjoyed my EPL ‘binge’ because it was a rarity, not because I would want to do it every week. Plus, given the time differences, on some days I would prefer to sleep.

Too Young To Be An Avenger: The All-New, All-Different Avengers

“YOU’RE A JERK!” That’s what the new, teenage Ms Marvel shouts at the new, teenage Nova on the very first page of Marvel’s ‘All-New, All-Different Avengers’ book.

 

The line-up in Marvel’s new Avengers book could be said to be composed of two groups. One group is the ‘old guard’, with a ‘new twist’: (the African-American) Captain America, (the female) Thor, (the speculated-to-be-different but original) Iron Man, and the Vision.

The other group is the new, teenage members: Spider-Man (the ‘Ultimate Comics’ version, not Peter Parker), Ms Marvel, and Nova. Hence, about half of the current team is of high-school age.

When I think of the Avengers, I tend to think of a team full of strong, athletic (admittedly mostly white) men and women in their late twenties to late thirties. You can see this in my dream Avengers line-up: there is not a single underdeveloped jaw among them.

 

My first exposure to the Avengers was ‘Avengers’ #300 (1989), which was drawn by John Buscema, and featured a team which included Captain America, Thor, Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman – all definite mainstays of the Marvel Universe. Big John Buscema’s characters were strong and dark, with solid brick walls as their backdrop. In that issue dark demons flew through the streets; foes to be handled by warriors, not kids a few years older than me.

 

 

The other Avengers team at the time, the West Coast Avengers also featured a team of Marvel mainstays, not a fresh face among them. It was drawn by John Byrne, who like Buscema, had a very classic, dramatic, semi-realistic comic book drawing style.

 

These were the comics that shaped my view of what the Avengers was and should be. Even the word Avenger back then, before they let everyone in, had connotations of having earned your stripes – characters had usually been kicking around the Marvel Universe for a few years before they were invited to join.  Therefore, having half of the team filled with ‘new, teenage’ Avengers will take some getting used to for me.

 

“YOU’RE A JERK!” It’s the type of petulant saying that you wouldn’t think you’d see in an Avengers book. It’s a preview of a mini-story at the end of the first issue in which Ms Marvel and Nova first meet, and Nova makes all the wrong impressions. Nova tries to be heroic by bringing down a giant foe; Ms Marvel – who knows the neighbourhood – goes ballistic at him for not thinking about the property damage. And then when Ms Marvel is angry at him Nova overcompensates by sharing his secret identity with her. Take away the superpowers and it’s more akin to the interactions you see in writer Mark Waid’s current ‘Archie’ stories than your traditional ‘Avengers’ comics.
 

The style of the art, especially in the Ms Marvel/Nova story by Mahmud Asnar, is lighter and looser than your traditional Avengers comic as well. Perhaps because of what I was first exposed to I’ve never been huge on the cartoony or manga-like style of drawing in American superhero comics, used by artists like Humberto Ramos and Joe Madureira. It seems to me you can’t do a true, epic, super-hero saga with figures like that. Assuming that is what you want to do …

 

The kids are alright though. Miles Morales the new Spider-Man, and Kamala Khan the new Ms Marvel, are two of Marvel’s most interesting and most acclaimed new characters from the past five years – aside from their adding some much needed diversity to the Marvel Universe. Their dialogue is light and slightly amusing. In line with this tone the ‘adults’, like Captain America and Iron Man, have lighter dialogue as well. If you can get into the fun of the book then it works.

 

Still it seems like the Avengers are in a bit of a lull, a notion supported by the sales figures. The fault to me mostly lies elsewhere – ‘All-New, All-Different’ seems the only somewhat consequential Avengers title now; ‘New Avengers’ has barely a member that matters, and ‘Uncanny Avengers’ got smothered under its use of continuity a while back. Further, Marvel’s other long-time pillars are in trouble: the Fantastic Four no longer has a title, the X-Men are far from their glory days, and even Spider-Man has seen better times.

 

If ‘All-New, All-Different’ has an important shortcoming then it is that it lacks the significance to make it seem like the Avengers, or even the Marvel (comic) Universe, matter anymore. Jonathan Hickman’s run may have been a downer tone-wise, but it had weight. In shedding this weight the ‘All-New, All-Different Avengers’, enjoyable as it is, carries the risk of being too slight to hold its ground.

The Best of Everything in 2015

Best Book: ‘Misbehaving’ – Richard Thaler. ‘Between The World And Me’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which I’m reading currently, is getting the most plaudits, and it is good. Thaler’s ‘Misbehaving’, which recounts the history of behavioural economics, has stuck with me more though. Based on Coates’ book, that’s probably very white of me.

Best Album: ‘My Love Is Cool’ – Wolf Alice. It seems sort of wrong to give best album to this over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’. ‘… Butterfly’ sounded like Album Of The Year the first time I heard it, but the problem is I haven’t really listened to it that much since. In contrast, for a while there I couldn’t stop listening to Wolf Alice’s album, and that’s why it gets the nod.

Best Song: ‘King Kunta’ – Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick gets best song though. ‘ … Kunta’, with its strong beat, is the first track that will pop into my head when I think about music in 2015.

Best TV Show: ‘Mad Men’. My favourite show of the past ten years came to a satisfying end, with all of the main characters ending up in places that made some sort of sense for them.

Best Film: Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This is more my favourite film of 2015, rather than what I think is the ‘best film’. I doubt that this will be a serious contender for any Best Picture gongs. But it was the best Star Wars movie for 30 years, and had me all revved up afterwards for the next instalment.

Best Comic: ‘Sex Criminals’ – Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. I almost gave this to ‘Saga’ for the fourth year in a row, but I enjoy ‘Sex Criminals’ just as much, so I’ll give it to that instead. It’s a very funny (and very dirty) series.

Best Sporting Event: National Rugby League Grand Final. I did almost pick the Cricket World Cup final, which fulfilled one of my life dreams to see Australia win a cricket World Cup in person. The final though wasn’t particularly memorable in its own right, whereas the NRL Grand Final between the Broncos and the Cowboys definitely was, to the point where people were wondering if it may have been the best grand final ever. The last ten minutes – which saw the North Queensland team score the tying try just as the siren sounded, miss the conversion that could have won it, and then win the match in extra time in any case – was definitely the most intense ten minutes of league I’ve seen. 

Best Sportsperson: Stephen Curry. Bill Simmons called Curry’s first 20 games this NBA season – which his Golden State Warriors won all of – the best 20 game streak by anyone in the history of basketball. His numbers, particularly his three-point shooting, were all insane. Already the best shooter ever, and there has never been another player quite like him.

Best Website: Grantland. Sadly missed.

Best Post: AFL Club Songs Ranked By Ambition and Boastfulness. Read this and you’ll never listen to some AFL club theme songs in the same way again.

Best Twitter Feed: Titus O’Reily. I do like his clever one-liners about AFL and cricket.

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 116

FILM: The New Yorker interviews an author who has recently done a whole lot of research on ‘Star Wars’

FILM: And again on ‘Star Wars’ – who are Rey’s parents? (Spoilers in the article for the new 'Star Wars' flick.)

MUSIC: The most common names in songs. ‘J’ names are popular.

FOOTBALL: Evidence for the case that passing is more important to winning in the National Football League than rushing.

FILM: The top 100 grossing movie stars in the US of all time. Check out the average box office take of #3.

The Wooden Finger Five – December 2015

5.Blackstar – David Bowie

It took about fifteen years but, with ‘The Next Day’ album and this track, David Bowie has finally got his creepy goth elder statesman act right. It is one of those ten-minute long patchwork tracks, which Bowie of course has done himself before with ‘Station To Station’. Unlike that classic track ‘Blackstar’ doesn’t really go anywhere much, but it seethes, and that keeps the listener going through its longer-than-usual duration. Just before writing this I have heard his next new track ‘Lazarus’, which clocks in at six minutes itself, making me wonder if Bowie is going back to the 1970s style of only having seven or eight tracks on an album.

4.One Million Bullets – Sia

Despite generally appearing on radio stations I don’t care for I’ve always kind of liked Sia, with her early track ‘The Fight’ getting a fair amount of plays on my old iPod. She’s had bigger hits since then, but her new track ‘One Million Bullets’ may be my favourite of hers since then. The chorus – ‘Under your moonlit gaze/I know I’d take one million bullets for you babe’ – could be seen as more cheesy than powerful, but it makes the neck hairs slightly stand up for me. I hope this one becomes an anthem for her, though it also sounds like one of those tracks that clocks in at No. 35 or so on the charts, and then because of nostalgia, is treated more fondly ten years later.

3.To The Top – Twin Shadow

I heard this song when I recently played Telltale Games’ excellent, and quite funny, ‘Tales From The Borderlands’ series. Each of the five episodes had a credit sequence a couple of scenes in with a relatively recent track playing over it, and the choice of music was great. James Blake’s ‘Retrograde’, for example, turns out to work really well for the desolation of space.

Even better though is the fourth episode’s use of Twin Shadow’s ‘To The Top’, which I hadn’t heard before, and could have believed was a lesser-known ‘80s power ballad. It plays over one of the funniest sequences in the series, which is the cast doing a slow walk towards a spaceship. It’s the type of scene that has played for laughs before, such as the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movie, but this is better. But it’s hard to explain its amusement value if you haven’t played the game itself, so I’ll just add that you should play the game, and then it’ll be hard to think of this song without thinking of that slow walk credit sequence.

2.Sentimental Wilderness – Bop English

This year’s album by Bop English, a side project to a band that is not that well-known in the first place, is great. Every track gets me actually listening to it, which is what my favourite albums do. Each track also has a slightly different style, with ‘Sentimental Wilderness’ recalling the late-‘60s folk-rock songs, both with its finger-picking and verboseness. Its beautiful what-sounds-like-the-chorus (but it only occurs once) is the highlight.

1.Fight The Start – The Kilians

In the past couple of weeks I decided to look into which were some recommended European indie bands, starting with French bands, and then German bands, and then Spanish. I heard some really good stuff, but the track I’ve played over and over again is ‘Fight The Start’ by German band The Kilians. It had a British indie rock feel to me, with the lead singer’s voice reminding me of Jamie T and Miles Kane (although the video clip made me think they were going for The Strokes – whatever, it sounds like the kind of track NME would usually go mad for). It’s fun, it’s vital – it’s also nine years old – but oh well, I’m still happy I found this catchy little track.

Other tracks by German indie bands I recommend: ‘You Don’t Have To Shout’ by The Robotic Klaus, ‘Ein Kompliment’ by Sportfreunde Stiller, and ‘Chemicals’ by The Notwist. For French bands I recommend Stuck In The Sound’s ‘Tender’.

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 115

BOOKS/FILM: The most extreme cases where the book was better than the movie.

BASKETBALL: The Golden State Warriors are so good they are breaking the NBA.

WORK: Why job interviews are pointless.

FOOTBALL: Star Wars themed football kits.

FOOTBALL: What may have happened in Barcelona’s 4-0 drubbing of Real Madrid had gone beyond the final whistle.

The Leaden Finger Gamer’s Review – Game of Thrones Episodes 2 to 6

Late last year I reviewed the first episode of Telltale Games’ Game of Thrones video game series. Now episodes two to six have been released, with the final episode coming out this week. The series has had mixed reviews, but I’ve enjoyed it enough to keep an eye on when each new episode is about to be released, and played each one almost as soon as it has come out.

As I said in my previous review, the series centres round the Forrester family, who are a noble family that were aligned with House Stark. Like other Telltale Games such as ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘The Wolf Among Us’ the choices you make as your character affects how the game unfolds. Unlike those other games though in ‘Game of Thrones’ you play as multiple characters, in this case multiple members of the Forrester family.

There are five different characters you play as in the course of the game, from the lord of the House to one of its faithful squires. The stories are set in different parts of the Games of Thrones world, such as King’s Landing, Meereen, and the far North. In each of those stories you encounter characters from the TV series voiced by the actual actors, including Jon Snow, Daenerys, Cersei, Tyrion, Margaery, and Ramsay. 

Most of the game consists of choosing dialogue and actions. Apart from perhaps ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Game of Thrones’ seems as well-suited as any TV show to this type of gameplay, given that much of the tension in the show derives from the choices the characters make. Being responsible for the fates of the characters, many of which are ‘your family’, does heighten the intensity of being involved in this world. I was worried that the specific choices I made were causing more characters to perish; as it turns out I don’t think I killed off many more people than other players.

Given the mortality rate of ‘Game of Thrones’ though, trying to save characters’ necks probably shouldn’t be your main aim in this game. As one of the characters, Mira, points out – at least in my play through – how you go about living in the face of your fate and therefore how you are remembered are possibly more important than whether you live or not. Without giving too much away, you will be confronted with how you ‘lived’ and how you will be remembered before the credits roll. And even though the other characters were all two‑dimensional figures, I still felt failure when I disappointed them, and triumph when a rare smile came across their face, though more often fear at their narrowed eyes.

While things come to a head as the episodes progress, the last episode ends on a somewhat anti‑climatic note, which made me suspect that another season was in the works, as indeed there is. The more interesting ending actually comes in the penultimate episode, which as I understand it, really affects how the final episode unfolds. I’m not sure I felt as into ‘Game of Thrones’ as much as ‘The Walking Dead’ or ‘The Wolf Among Us’, but I am still a sucker for these games, and very likely will play the next season when it rolls around.

The Beatles’ Big Five Albums

 

 

The Beatles are my favourite band ever. But for me my love of the Beatles pretty much rests on just five of their albums, though supported by some great non-album singles from the same period. Those are the five albums made between 1965 and 1969 which are typically considered their greatest – ‘Rubber Soul’ (1965), ‘Revolver’ (1966), ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ (1967), ‘The Beatles’ (1968), and ‘Abbey Road’ (1969).

It has been almost twenty years since I first got into these albums, but I still love and admire how each of them is very different from the others. Many have written about what these albums mean to them. This is what they mean to me.

Rubber Soul: In my view, this is when the Beatles were just on the verge of getting interesting, and it is not as creative as their later albums. However there are some really good, catchy pop songs on here, such as ‘Drive My Car’, ‘You Won’t See Me’, ‘Think For Yourself’, ‘The Word’, and ‘If I Needed Someone’. Then it also has the less poppy, but compositionally interesting John Lennon tracks – ‘Norwegian Wood’ with the sitar, ‘Girl’ with the pot smoking, and ‘In My Life’. Overall, ‘Rubber Soul’ kind of marked the Beatles’ transition from pop/R&B-combo to artists, and that puts it up with the top Beatles albums for me.

Revolver: Now, and for some time, my favourite Beatles album. There is not a weak track on it, and a huge array of styles. George Harrison’s ‘Taxman’ kicks things off right with an infectious bassline and guitar. ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ is a beautiful piece of psychedelic pop. Paul McCartney’s ‘Here, There, And Everywhere’ is just a beautiful song full stop. ‘Yellow Submarine’ is fun and I love the effects and how the Beatles sound half-drunk when singing the final chorus in unison. Lennon’s ‘She Said She Said’ and ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ are great pop-rock tracks packed into two minutes each. ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ is an excursion into soul that works. And ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is one of my two favourite Beatles tracks ever. Ringo’s drums are humungous, and John’s voice does sound like he is calling from the end of a tunnel. Also, not one of the backwards guitars, unlike many other psychedelic tracks, sounds the least bit out of place.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: The first Beatles album I ever bought, but perhaps in part because I listened to it a lot when I didn’t own many CDs I don’t listen to it much nowadays. It has only three standout tracks to me: the opening title track backed with ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, and the amazing closer ‘A Day In The Life’, which is my other favourite Beatles track. But a lot of the other tracks are good stuff as well, such as ‘Lovely Rita’ and ‘Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite’. This album just doesn’t seem to flow as naturally as ‘Revolver’ and ‘Abbey Road’ do though. I still have a fondness for it, particularly the album cover.

The Beatles (White Album): I remember listening to both discs all the way through for the first time on a Sunday afternoon, and being somewhat pleasantly confounded by them. The Beatles seemed harder on this album than any of their others, which indeed they were. On tracks like ‘Back In The USSR’, ‘Helter Skelter’, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’, and ‘Birthday’ the Beatles have a raw rock sound that they don’t really have on any other album – parts of ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘Let It Be’ excepted. John Lennon wrote his greatest batch of songs for this album, apart from ‘Happiness …’ there was also ‘I’m So Tired’, ‘Dear Prudence’, ‘Cry Baby Cry’, ‘Revolution No. 1’, and others. Most of Paul’s tracks are pretty good as well, and George contributed two classics of his own. And count me as one person who actually quite likes listening to ‘Revolution No. 9’.

Abbey Road: Having played together for a decade the Beatles never sounded as effortless as they did on this album. When I first heard the medley I was surprised to hear the album end when I thought it was only up to track 10. Now the medley is the highlight for me – possibly Paul’s finest ever fifteen minutes – along with George’s great songs ‘Something’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’. They sound like they are taking the piss half the time on this album, or can barely be bothered, but they still have enough love and commitment for the tunes to make it work.

And those are the big five. Can any band come close to matching that for peak output? A few may be close: the Stones’ big four albums in the late ‘60s-early ‘70s, Bowie’s ‘70s albums if you excise ‘Pinups’ and ‘Diamond Dogs’, Radiohead’s output from ‘The Bends’ to ‘In Rainbows’ skipping over ‘Amnesiac’ … But a lot of those albums sounded similar even if they are fantastic, whereas the Beatles’ ‘big five’ albums have so much variety on them. Even twenty years after I first heard them there’s still, for me, nothing quite like them.