Liberty is so Twentieth Century

The Daily Telegraph is unhappy that the UK’s first identity card for sixty years does not contain the union flag or any mention of the word Britain. For something that will be used as a proof or residence, it is a shame, say the campaigners, that there are not more symbols of Britishness.

It is not the first time that the identity card scheme has provoked hostility. Other critics have suggested that the cards will erode civil liberties, do nothing to combat terrorism and will cause friction within communities. The cards have also been beset by soaring cost problems.

It would appear that the government has missed a trick.

Instead of forcing foreign nationals to carry this new polycarbonate document, why not thrust a HMG affinity card in their wallets instead?

Affinity cards are a type of credit card that donates an amount to the organisation every time the consumer uses it to make a transaction, so the immigrant would soon be contributing to the economy. The cards would more than pay for themselves. They could even be issued with a pre-paid level of debt which the recipient would be expected to pay back, preferably before accruing interest. Think about it.

If every one of the affinity cards came saddled with a five grand debt, it would cement community relations because anyone new to these shores would be in the same boat as a sizable proportion of the populace. Any subsequent benefit claim could simply be added on.

Moreover, what better way to defang anti-Western terrorists than by granting them high-street spending powers? If the government insisted that new arrivals are expected to purchase a HD-ready TV in the first three months of their occupancy, any firebrands would soon be more concerned with anti-aging balms.

After the immigrant’s first year, the government could perform spot checks to gauge the level of naturalization: applicants could be termed British as soon as they are spotted waiting in a shopping queue, drooling over the sweets by the till.

HMG equity cards are the way forward.

There is still a suggestion that they might erode civil liberties, but who cares?

We don’t need the union flag to denote Britishness. We’ll just tag on some Nectar points.

Bouncing Balls

Inspired by the shenanigans at a friend's recent wedding, I've attempted to offer a selection of tracks that cause the men to hit the dance floor en masse. Normally we lurk around the periphery, reluctant to indulge in frivolities, but there are certain numbers that tend to cause some primeval movement in the hips and leave us valiantly attempting to decimate the dance floor.

Let's start with one that is not too demanding on the male hip: Hotel California by the Eagles. After all, the wedding probably has one person who is tiffany twisted and there will be some dancing to forget.

(It is a great regret of mine that I am yet to attend a wedding which plays the version by the Gypsy Kings , a cover that was used for the 'Da Jesus' scene in The Big Lebowski. An image of certain male guests trying to replicate its ball polishing action would enhance many a wedding album.)

Irresistibility rating: 5/10. Possibly only guarantees movement from men who normally wear lumberjack tops open over t-shirts

Chance of women leaving the dance floor: 6/10. Even the bride would struggle to look good dancing to this

Strutting potential: 3/10 (Potential for ambling in the middle of the dance floor looking simple 7/10)

Opportunity to hug a man and call him bro: 2/10 – it provides an arm's length experience for those in their comfort zone

Next on our playlist is one destined to get those arms closer together: We are the Champions by Queen. A real favourite of the karaoke and the terraces, it almost guarantees an image of the best man that could hang proudly on the walls on any ear, nose and throat department.

Irresistibility rating: 8/10. Dance floor will fill with: any male who has ever kicked a ball, ordered cable TV or sliced a particularly troublesome portion of brie.

Chance of women leaving the dance floor: 6/10. Usually one to observe and snigger at, although women may feel secretly intrigued if their beau is not joining in.

Strutting potential: 4/10 (Swaying potential: 19/20)

Opportunity to hug a man and call him bro: 7/10 because 'we are the.......' No, let's move on.

From a festival of waving we now chug to a classic of calypso, one that isn't for those who don't dig loud music (man) – The Banana Boat Song. If it is played at any wedding, it peels back the layers of self consciousness and gets everyone roaring, even those people whose surnames have apostrophes. It also prevents this post looking suspiciously like the track-list from Guitar Hero.

Irresistibility rating: 9/10 – we are powerless against the desire to scream 'Daaaaay-O'. After this, the vocal chords of the earlier speech-givers are often severely strained.

Chance of women leaving the dance floor: 1/10 – the urge to test the venue's acoustics is stimulated in both genders

Strutting potential: 6/10 (assuming the organisers hide the deadly black tarantula)

Opportunity to hug a man and call him bro: 6/10 – (time to tally the bananas)

From dockers working the night shift we now move to the union strikes, for it is time to celebrate that triumph of hope over despair that is best played in an opulent mansion: Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer.

Irresistibility rating: 9/10. Although Gina works the diner all day, Tommy's got his six string in hock. I mean, come on!

Chance of women leaving the dance floor: 6/10. Hard to feel loved during this level of male bonding.

Strutting potential: 1/10. While Tommy's down on his luck, the dance floor is declared a swagger free zone.

Opportunity to hug a man and call him bro: 1000/1000. If you are male and your shoulder isn't clasped by a firm hand during this song you may need to consider having your chromosomes tested.

You see, floor fillers aimed at the X-Y community tend to be either tracks that celebrate the forging of the solid bonds that enable the tribe to triumph together, or pieces that urge plucky underdogs to stick it to The Man.

In the latter category, the undisputed top dog is Survivor's Eye of the Tiger. It is, as one comment on YouTube puts it, 'metal up your ass.'

(Drunk guests that are already considering the floor as an appealing resting place may prefer the cover by Frank Bruno.)

Irresistibility rating: 6/10 (unless the venue has a high stage with plenty of steps, then it becomes 10/10.)

Chance of women leaving the dance floor: 7/10 (particularly if some male guests start to believe that they are in a Siberian log cabin and begin to skip.)

Strutting potential: 10/10 – they stack the odds 'til we take to the street

Opportunity to hug a man and call him bro: 4/10 – it doesn't feel appropriate to seek male affection while another guy sings 'we kill with the skill to survive.'

And now, just before the community is united by New York, New York, it is time for me to kick back and leave you attempting to work out which is the best track that, when played at a wedding, guarantees swaying scrota.

PS – although I couldn't find the best version (apparently YouTube has deleted it) this is still pretty good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qFRN_0qtmc

More Bad News

Britain has tumbled a few places in a table, compiled by Transparency International, that ranks countries for their level of corruption. We have fallen from 12th to 16th.

There will probably be some hand-wrangling about what we can do to reach the heights of New Zealand but I am going to take immediate, positive action.

Will someone fetch a large cattle prod while I go and lasso the Hamiltons?

Status Anxiety

According to a piece of dialogue from the film The Nines, a pretentious piece of mumbo-jumbo from director John August(a man well versed in the Dummy's Guide to Philosophy), the bean counters from the Office of Cosmological Statistics rank koalas higher than humans.

Harsh, I thought, although found myself nodding when I remembered that the males have a bifurcated penis and females have two vaginae.

However, the dialogue goes on to explain that 'koalas are telepathic' and 'they control the weather'.

Wow.

And their conversation status is only listed as 'low risk'?

Drinking

Here is a small report from yesterday's Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/sep/17/drugsandalcohol.health

It identifies nine different types of heavy drinker.

The Hurt Locker

A film generating a significant amount of buzz at the Toronto International Film Festival is The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

Although she hasn't directed many films, Bigelow's cinematic offerings can leave a strong impression. In Point Break she created what one critic on the Internet Movie Database referred to as 'the greatest surfer-action movie of all time' but it was with the release of Strange Days in 1995 that she managed to cause an even greater outpouring of emotionally affected comments.

Strange Days is not a great film (although one critic boasted it 'literally has something for everyone') but it is a good example of cyberpunk, with a nod towards William Gibson and a wink at Raymond Chandler.

Set in the last few days of the twentieth century, Strange Days stars Ralph Fiennes as an ex-cop, Nero, who deals in illegal recordings. The discs and their playback machines have become the new drugs: when the user places a device resembling a face-hugger (the script is by James Cameron, who may have been creatively influenced by his work on Aliens) on his head and closes his eyes, he experiences all sensory input as though he was the participant.

The first five minutes of the film let the audience know what to expect: Nero plays a recording and we are treated to a first person perspective of a botched robbery. It terminates when the protagonist dies.

Nero throws off the machine and berates the dealer for giving him 'black jack', or snuff. It is a disturbing scene which is paid off at the midway point when Nero receives an anonymous recording.

At first it seems similar to the initial scene, as we see a pair of white gloves breaking into a hotel room. As the door opens, we see a young woman wearing a white nightdress who becomes panic stricken when she sees the intruder. Within seconds, she has her hands tied over her head and has been incapacitated by a stun gun. The intruder now places the machine over her head.

The screenplay describes:

'[She] can now see herself as the wearer sees her....wide eyed with terror, white-lipped, weeping. And she can feel what he feels.'

When the attacker places a blindfold over her eyes, 'she can only see what he sees'. She, Nero and, by extension, the audience are forced to experience both the woman's terror and the attacker's 'exhilaration, pounding heart, flushed skin, panting breath'.

The scene, which ends in the victim's death and an image of the killer reflected in her eye, is extremely disturbing. After Nero removes the device and vomits in a shop doorway, the screenplay describes the moment as 'the worst thing he has ever experienced'.

Some male critics agreed. Paul Gambaccini, then presenter of the Radio 4 arts programme Kaleidoscope, refused to interview Bigelow because he would be able to 'do nothing but insult her'.

It is a testament to Bigelow's skill as a director that she provoked Gambaccini into providing an inadvertent example of the link between fear and scapegoating. He feels revolted because the rape scene erodes the sense of distance between the screen and the (particularly male) viewer.

Bigelow, presumably aware that a whiff of female fear is present in some pornography, uses the camera to prompt a complex emotional reaction and thus illuminates the debate on cinema violence: point of view matters.

Although Bigelow serves the audience what appears to be a traditional slasher moment (the victim is a hooker) by changing the focus, she catches the audience off guard. For once, a depiction of rape and murder is not used simply to bolster a patriarchal character's motivation to catch the assailant. It is a challenging scene and one that is arguably more disturbing because it occurs in a sci-fi film that has the tagline, 'You know you want it.'

Given Bigelow's experience making Strange Days, it is extremely possible that The Hurt Locker, a film about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, will be important, powerful and harrowing.

Its tagline is 'You'll know it when you're in it'.

A new dawn

I dedicate today's post to the Large Hadron Collider, which was yesterday put through its paces for the first time in Cern.

The LHC, the acronym I'm sure is on everybody's lips, is a hundred meters underground and utilises a seventeen mile tunnel.

According to chemistry professor Otto Rossler, there was a danger that the collider might cause 'mini black holes' which may 'survive and grow exponentially and eat the planet from inside'.

Normally, that sentence would be crying out for a good, humorous kicker.

The reason I have resisted an attempt at mockery is because the other possibility (according to Professor Llewellyn Smith) is that the crashing of subatomic particles will eventually lead to a 'theory of everything', which has to be good news for all, with the likely exception of Bill Bryson's publishers.

It is a stance also bolstered by David Evans, a physicist from the University of Birmingham:

'It will certainly advance the knowledge of mankind...and pushing technology to the limit always has spin offs.'

Indeed it does David, indeed it does.

I am already experiencing one.

This device could explain the forces of nature.

I feel greatly humbled and refuse to highlight my ignorance of such physics by making jokes.

Honestly.

That is why I resisted the chance of an easy dig at Otto.

Once we buy him a raincoat, a placard and boot him onto a street corner, we can start thinking about the benefits of the LHC.

Look at this way: one of the unforeseen consequences of the big bang was Gillian Mc Keith brandishing a clear plastic tube on television.

Can the LHC really not be a good thing?

 

 

 

Unplugged

There is a post from earlier this month stating that I have created a new blog because this one was becoming top heavy with poker articles.

Well, with uncanny timing, the new blog was rendered unnecessary as the day I created it, the gaming company made their London editorial team redundant and my freelance arrangement was terminated.

Therefore, I have deleted the other blog and I can now only think of two scenarios that could feature the word 'flop.'

Saturday Night

‘Shall we step outside?’

If I tell you I heard those words in a south London pub at around 11pm on a Saturday, what would you think?

Here’s more info.

It’s the (official) last weekend of the summer. We have reached the stage of the day when parts of the British psyche kicks off its heels and decides if the rest of the night should feature slippers or jackboots.

It is best if you look at the question as a type of cognitive behavioural test in which your answer supplies possibly unwanted insight into your way of viewing the world.

(Readers who are particularly enamoured of the idea should probably stop reading here and simply skip to the comments section to post their thoughts. I’m about to offer different options which may preclude the more imaginative ‘through the looking-glass’ scenarios that you may like to explore. Please do. I promise a very thorough analysis).

It could be:

a) A woman so stifled by the oppressive male atmosphere that she is inclined to sample the night air of Clapham for it may be a better arena for her uproarious anecdotes about her months as a cleaner of crime sites.

b) A friend so irritated by the clean air that he yearns to step outside and inhale a well-deserved bifter.

c) A man so annoyed by his lack of opportunities that he demands the chance to exchange bruises and provide me with a firsthand experience of his pain.

You’re probably thinking it is b but, if I could be a bit more specific about the part of Clapham, you may be inclined a stab at c.

In a way, it was all three.

When we stepped outside I had a rare opportunity to fill his ears as he filled his lungs, and so I started on semi-drunken splurge about something that seemed important (at the time).

A good looking woman in her late twenties stepped out and said ‘Wow, I hear an accent, where are you from?’

‘Liverpool, originally’, I said.

‘By way of Eton’, chirped my friend.

‘Oh wow, I’m from Preston and I love Northern accents’, she responded, although this was a little odd since her ‘ts’ were conspicuous by their absence.

‘Did you really go to Eton?’

‘Yes, but they were no match for my untamed wit.’

I should have said that.

Instead, I admitted my friend was joking and she repeated her fondness of the Northern voice.

‘Well, I’m from Liverpool.....’

‘AND I’M WIGAN’, boomed a newcomer to the Clapham based ‘Friends of the North’ club.

Normally, this kind of scenario would be a simple example of male competition for the attention of an attractive woman. However this time, it was a territorial boast.

He was probably in late twenties but he was running to fat and staggering to watch. He placed his meaty arm around the woman’s shoulders and sang ‘Free Neil’.

I was about to ask what Neil was inside for when I realised I had the words wrong. He had assumed (correctly) that I support Everton and it was a reference to the day’s home drubbing by Portsmouth. Annoyingly, Wigan had hammered Stoke 5-0. Everyone look embarrassed, apart from Wigan, who clearly knew he had hit comedy pay dirt.

As my friend and I watched the woman squirm, I could only hope that her weakness for the northern accent had not caused her to be trapped on the relationship equivalent of the M6 slow lane, unable to perform a U-turn.

We needed a large, flashing overhead sign that stated,

‘Warning: For Next 50 Years
Expect Depression’

but it was hard to escape from the conclusion that she might end up visiting Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls Factory.

Plug

Please feel free to check out my new blog at : http://spectacles71.blogspot.com/

Bodensee Poker Championships

We at Eyebrows can’t help but think that the winner of Saturday’s Bodensee Poker Championship, Michael Keiner, made the right decision to quit medicine and become a professional card player.

He is just a little too comfortable taking risks and we’re not sure that is a desirable character trait for a plastic surgeon.

Creativity and inventiveness have their place but arguably not in the head of a mask-wearing man wielding a scalpel who is about to restructure someone’s face.

It’s just not cricket.

Before he became a pro, Michael was a hugely successful trader on the stock market but, one day along swam a black swan (complicated economic metaphor for ‘shit happens’) and it pecked away millions from his portfolio.

Not a man to let such trifles keep him down, it wasn’t too much longer before he became a pro and now has five WSOP cashes, including one bracelet.

His triumph over eighty-three opponents in the €1,500 NL tournament at Casino Bregenz netted him €35,910 and he did it without spilling any blood.

It takes certain people a while to find themselves but we feel it is generally better that wanderers on the road less travelled do not have daily access to anaesthetised bodies.

Bodensee Poker Championship – Casino Bregenz 1,500 NL

1. Michael Keiner – €35,910
2. Peter Hohenleitner – €26,330
3. Danny Ehrenberger – €19,150
4. Vito Branchivorte – €13,170
5. Stefan Rotach – €9,580
6. Max Eibel – €7,180
7. Jurgen Paoletti – €4,790
8. Guyla Forqacs – €3,590

Poker Alice

It is time to wheel ourselves around the expansive shelves of the library and only hit the brake when we hit the section marked ‘Poker History of the Wild West’.

Ah, here we are.

Welcome to Deadwood.

Fans of quality American television may remember the series in which Ian McShane plays the aptly named Al Swearengen, a character based on a real life brothel owner.

Most of the show’s characters were modelled on actual people who lived in the town in the 1870s but it is a shame that the writers omitted ‘Poker Alice’.

Alice has had some twentieth century screen time but, sadly, her character was only judged worthy enough to feature in some made for tv tosh called ‘The New Maverick’. (A character rides in town. He’s meant to be a professional poker player but has to borrow money so he can play a game against Poker Alice. You might see a copy next time you are on a garage forecourt.)
She deserves more.

She was born in England but moved to Colorado and married the kind of mining engineer who should have paid more attention to the canaries. Finding herself young, free and widowed, she turned to the gambling halls as a means of support.

After the kind of time that writers of obituaries might call ‘colourful and eventful’, she met her second husband, a gambler called Warren G. Tubbs. He became the love of her life, despite an inability to know his aces from his no-goes.

Alice could mesmerise Warren and most of her male opponents at the poker table, partly because of her good looks, but also due to her expression. Her impenetrable face was a great counterpoint to their impenetrable stupidity and her win rate was such that she could support their seven kids. In an unlikely scenario, she was a type of early feminist, in that she was the breadwinner and the hapless Warren G was forced to paint for his supper.

Such was the difference in their poker ability that Alice frequently had to defend Warren, often by waving a shooter, sometimes squeezing the trigger.

When Tubbs croaked due to tuberculosis, Alice left Deadwood and picked up a third husband, George Huckert. It proved to be another short lived affair and Alice was soon a widow again.
It proved to be the beginning of the end, as the halcyon days of youth turned into a period resembling ‘the dog-food years’, described by William Boyd in his novel ‘Any Human Heart’.

She was now often seen dressed in clothing more suitable for a man and she lost the joy of playing poker. She ran liquor for a while until prohibition forced the liquidation of her assets and motivated her to serve the interests of the nation by providing the solders at nearby Fort Meade with a convenient cathouse.

In 1930, a lifelong attachment to cigar smoking took its toll and she was buried at St Aloysius Cemetary in the Black Hills.

Her formidable poker skills won her a place in Deadwood’s folklore and she is still remembered in the town’s ‘Days of 76’ parade.

It is a far more fitting testimony to her character than depicting her as the love interest to James Garner.

APT - Macau

It is appropriate that one of the richest cities in the world should host a poker tournament with largest (guaranteed) prize pool in Asia.

Macau, the first and last European colony in China, is home to the Galaxy StarWorld Casino, an establishment that is ‘thirty-eight storeys tall as an emblem of Asian wit and experience’.

Both of the latter qualities, if not the ethnicity, were evident as seasoned pro and emblem of Texas, Doyle Brunson, cut the ribbon to begin the event on the Asian Poker Tour.

257 players took part in an historic handover as they watched their $5300 buy in disappear into the clutches of the StarWorld. For some, the three day affair was bitter, for others it was sweet but for all it was an emotional tussles for the $500,000 first prize.

Eventual winner, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, originally from the Ukraine but now living in America is a reflection of the appeal of a tournament that saw five different nations in the final ten players.

Special credit should be awarded to Joonhee Yea who sat at the final table in second last position but managed to outlast all bar one, finally accepting his fate when his KQ failed to improve against QQ.

Main Event – APT – StarWorld Casino, Macau – NL Hold ‘em, $5,300

1. Yevgeniy Timoshenko – USA $500,000
2. Joonhee Yea – USA $250,000
3. Robar Karian – THA $126,000
4. Casey Kastle – USA $90,000
5. Julio Diaz – SPA $67,500
6. Quang Nguyen – USA $52,500
7. Chong Wing Cheong – HKG $37,500
8. Michael Pedley – AUS $26,250