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Sports is all about hype. It's all about anticipation. It's all about endless debate. Occasionally it's about those rare days when all the hype, anticipate and debate fades into insignificance and you're there, witnessing a classic moment where two teams with everything on the line battling it out to decide exactly who is the champion. Then it's about reflecting nostalgically on these classic battles.
In the early rounds of the AFL it becomes difficult to sort out just what the results really mean. Geelong is on track to be the next Brisbane Lions 2001-2003. The last time Geelong started 5-0 in 1998 they missed the finals. Hawthorn is set to be the big challenger. In 2001 Hawthorn started 8-0 and then last five of their next seven and finished fourth. Yet the anticipation for the Geelong v Hawthorn battle in round 17 can hardly be held in.
The NBA playoffs have begun too and every game's result while not definitive in a seven game series somehow speaks volumes about how good the team and their championship chances are to the word-hungry sports journalists. Yet if there's anything that's been proven it's that the results of one game rarely affect another. An example being in the NBL Grand Final series earlier this year when a miraculous comeback by the Sydney Kings in Game Four seemed to hand them all the momentum only for the Tigers to bounce back and win Game Five and the series.
I wrote a piece called "Prediction Posturing", Really Long Link that highlighted the ridiculousness of pre-season "expert" predictions in AFL. Through the first five weeks of the season I was proven correct with the overwhelmingly popular choices for second and third, those eternal wannabes, St. Kilda & Fremantle, failing to live up to the hype. Their high-profile draft choices once again duping experts into believing that somehow this constitutes a good team. While Fremantle have looked dismal winning only one game, St. Kilda have certainly not looked like the premiership team many predicted in lame losses to the Bulldogs and Geelong.
So while journalists whip up a storm of debate, and generate hype and anticipation, we all wait for that day when everything coalesces and you have two teams recognised as the best, playing their best, struggling against each other, and finally willing their way to victory and you don't need to check the newspapers the next day because you saw what happened, and you'll be talking about it with your mates for the rest of your years because they're the moments that make sports worthwhile.
I decided to pry my mate Brendon Mikronis' mind to see what I could find. After almost a year of travels in Thailand, Cambodia and India I thought his philosophical and creative insights into the world worthy of an interview.
Sitting with his knees on a black leather sofa in the basement of his family home smoking a cigarette, Brendon talked about what's been on his mind since returning to his home city Melbourne.
"I’ve been really paying attention to the Western way of thinking, after having spent quite a bit of time in the Eastern Societies and seeing how they’re living. I think by being away from the Western point of view, you can really get a better perspective on looking at the condition that we’re living in at this point. Everyone seems to be in quite a rush all the time. No one seems to have the time for the common little things in life, which make life, in my opinion, worth living."
India was particularly influential for him in seeing a different way of life. Living amongst the people in working class areas he saw a more organic way of life. One of the rituals of life over there was the chai (tea) shops, which proved to be an excellent grounds for casually observing life while on the road. He uses the example of the chai shop owner and his willingness to socialise with his mates and customers to illustrate his point on the differences between that society with the Western. "His social life and his working life, the point where they meet is very blurred, it’s all a part of his life. Here you’ve got your social life and your working life and it’s very separate. Over there it’s more organic but here it’s more based on this ideal of time and efficiency and working to a deadline." These difference his may stem from "the money factor" driving society here in Melbourne.
Brendon, before engaging in travel, had plans for a career in animation. His short animation Monkography was a Popcorn Taxi Flagfall Film Festival Selection (it can be viewed here Really Long Link and he had his photography exhibited at the Circus Gallery. While in Varanasi, India, he was taught the tabla, the Indian drum played with the fingers.
I was interested in what creative projects he was currently working on.
"I'm still trying to put everything together since I got back. I can feel something brewing but I'm cocooning at the moment. At this point my artistic expression is being directed towards my friends and family. Everything we do is an expression of ourselves. Art is life, life is art. "
Finally I wanted to know what his idea of an artist was for the present times. "We’re just filters for life. Life comes in and comes out through us and your ego only gets in the way of that. It’s a selfless thing, you’ve got to see the world without ego. 99% of people are ego-driven. Everybody's living in, like, the Matrix, under this illusion. I think the artist has got to be outside of that"
Brendon is uncertain where his future currently lies but he expects to return to India at some point to soak up more the rich Eastern culture there. Artistic expression will surely play an important role in his future endeavours with the form this takes dependent on the nature of the ideas flowing through him. Above all though Brendon will continue his one-man mission to lead the blind ego-driven masses, one at a time, to a more sustainable life of peace inside the mind and therefore outside. I wish him luck.
I like to read books. Not just any books. Really good books. Books like John Clellon Holmes' Go! that gives a vivid portrait of the exciting lives and amazing characters of Beat Generation members like Jack Keruoac (known in the book as Gene Pasternak), Allen Ginsberg (Stofsky) & Neal Cassady (Hart Kennedy).
Back before these guys became classic literary figure in works like On the Road and Howl, these guys prowled the lively streets of 50's New York, partying in decrepit apartments, mixing with energetic and edgy characters, diving in and out of bars, espousing profound ideas but more importantly living out their ideas in their frenetic, free-living, go go go way of life.
The book is inevitably compared to its Beat Generation successor On the Road. To me they're companion pieces as its great to see the two different perspectives on the same group of characters. Holmes' book doesn't have the style of Kerouac's modern classic but is a more effective documentation and more objective look at both the positives and negatives of the new way of life expressed by the Beat Generation.
Another book that I poured over recently was Charles Bukowski's Post Office, which was a flying read, a kind of autobiography reflected in the character of Henry Chinaski. A depraved character who thinks little of his actions but just goes on, enjoying little in life but booze, women and the races, he captures the heart of every male, seeing a little of themselves and a little of what they wish they could be. It's not an uplifting or thought-changing voyage Bukowski takes us on, it's a dark, dirgid and humorous look at the reality of how life will be for the majority of us folk condemned to live our lives in pointlessness and obscurity.
Then I took turn into fantasy with the brilliant Japanese author Haruki Murakami's book Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. The name describes what you are getting into pretty accurately. It's a wild journey that fuses many classic genres and filters them through Murakami style of pop-culture references, unique characters and vivid imagination.
In the novel, each chapter alternates between from two different stories. One story, appears similarly to the world we inhabit but incorporates surreal elements while the other story is a classic fantasy story setting with archetypal characters and setting.
Murakami has an ability to draw you into his story and feel for his characters and become involved in his world, like no other writer. This work won't be seen by critics as his finest art but the tapestry he weaves here is so complex and compelling that I enjoyed it even more for its use of low-art genre forms. This novel is at times breathtaking, baffling, hypnotic and endless more superlatives. If you like imaging worlds through literature this is for you.
Kobe Bryant for MVP seems to be almost a given among pack-following sports journalists at the moment. I believe this is just another logic-defying choice for MVP in the NBA. Let's go through the different arguments for a most valuable player:
The best player on the best team:
This is the only argument for Kevin Garnett's candidature with Boston's supreme record. In the West, New Orleans have been the best team this season and Chris Paul's Hornets are 2-0 vs. Kobe's Lakers
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There has been little mainstream media coverage of what could be a monumental time in the sporting landscape of Australia. One of the major sports in Australia, and one of the two great global sports, is facing a crisis that sees its National League on the edge of oblivion.
Flying under the radar, as usual, has been the massive news that Fox Sports is considering pulling its television coverage of the National Basketball League. What would this mean for basketball in Australia
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I sat down on the couch, ready to finally see a good Boston Celtics match live on my TV set in Australia. Every other time I've seen them they've to blow the team out of the water.
Coming off huge wins against reigning champs San Antonio and then 22 game win streakers Houston, sitting on top of the NBA standings, I was unsure whether they'd be in top form for this one
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I think the idea came to me as I was waiting in line at the Centrelink office. I'm unemployed, in debt, living with my folks at home, I'm a joke... I think I'll open an online sports betting account.
I've never gambled much before. I went to Vegas for three days and all I did was play one roulette table, bet on one sports game and put a dollar into a pokies machine
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It is time. Our beloved sport, footy, is set to begin another season. The papers have been emptying their sports sections of non-footy material and gearing us up for the new season. To sustain the drive toward a footy takeover during the past week the "experts" clamour to be heard over each other's din so they can tell You about the season to come. Colour liftouts with player lists, double page spreads of "expert" predictions and Top 50 player rankings for the season ahead, are all the norm at this time of year.
And as I see this jostling for position to win the footy media war I can't help but wonder is there anything of any substance amongst all the hoopla
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I woke up at 11.30. It was quite an effort to get up earlier than the usual 12.30 wake up time. I stumbled out to the TV to check what bball game was on.
I pressed the power-on button on the remote ten times then I hit the remote and tried again and again and then figured finally there was no power to the TV. Upon inspection the power in the rest of the house was out too.
I went outside to the control box to check the switches, they were fine. I walked around checking every light switch and electrical instrument again, yep, the power was really out
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The lament of "serious" journalists is the utter unaccountability of the Blogger. The Blogger is not beholden to any system of truth verification, is not subject to any system forcing responsibility, does not come from within a system in which we can "trust". And of course that's the point, the breakdown of trust in the traditional media sources led directly and indirectly to the creation of this new source and format of information, the Blog.
How therefore can we trust the Blog's unverified, subjective information? Quite simply, we don't. We approach everything cynically, critique everything and from this develop our own opinion of what is "true". And we do this by writing a blog critiquing the blog
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Comment by Mark Simpson
on Basketball at Beijing Olympics
A Blog Too Far