jayward33.blog-city.com
THE RAGE OF STEVEN WELLS
posted Friday, 26 June 2009
Back in the old hood
in my favorite diner,
The Templeton
Jukebox with old favorites for a quarter
The old Motorola Jukebox
Out front
Today is pension day, and haircut day and the one day I'm in the old Hood. As you know from my meme haircuts are one of my favorite things. Had some blue berry banana hotcakes with maple syrup at The Templeton and although I was a bit bloated after I ate the meal, their coffee is awful, I had time to visit with the guys at Leo's Camera shop and buy some film for the jazz festival this weekend, and yes I'm still shooting film.
My friend Dave has it right about the Olympics
JWL
[E of S] Read the Rage of Steven Wells
From: Dave Zirin (edgeofsports@gmail.com)
Sent: June 26, 2009 6:49:07 PM
To: photoimage33 (photoimage33@hotmail.com)
E o S Nation: In 6 years of writing this column, I’ve never sent out someone else’s work. But today I do because the great Steven Wells, the sports columnist extraordinaire for the Guardian, has died at age 49 after a valiant battle with cancer. “Swells” was also a legendary music writer, championing then unknown punk bands like Black Flag, the Mekons and the Redskins. He was part Hunter S Thompson, part Lester Bangs, and part Bob Lipsyte. And he was my friend. I didn’t agree with everything he wrote, but I was always provoked. Rage in peace, Steven.
Dave Zirin
PS – I’ll have my own piece out on Edge of Sports tomorrow. But today is for Steven. Please read the below. He was that good.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/22/olympicgames20081
Let's shun the multinational monsters' festival of Olympic McSports
By Steven Wells
The People's Republic of China are torturing, culture-smothering and democracy-crushing bastards. But then so was Germany in 1936. And Britain in 1908 and 1948. And the Soviet Union in 1980. And the USA in 1984 and 1996. Then there was the massacre of hundreds of Mexican demonstrators to pave the way for the games of 1968. In fact the history of the modern Olympic movement is one long, sad litany of imperialism, racism, exploitation and oppression. But that's not why I think we should boycott the Olympics.
And I do think we should boycott them. Not just the Beijing games. All of them. Forever. Why? Because of the total disconnect between what the Olympics are supposed to be about (grace, beauty, athleticism, sportsmanship, solidarity, brotherhood and the human spirit) and the sordid reality — as superbly illustrated by what the preparations for the 2012 London games are doing to the Manor Garden allotments.
Ask yourself this question: are the drug-riddled, debased and corrupt Olympics worth the demolition of a single 80-year-old community institution that genuinely and continually promotes health, mental wellbeing, exercise, neighbourliness and fresh vegetables? And (while we're at it) was it worth ripping up the much-loved and heavily used five-a-side football pitches in East London's Spitalfields market just so the City of London could have yet another identikit shopping/office development? (If you answered yes to either question, stop reading and trot off and fellate a stockbroker, you dominant ideology humping Tory bastard).
Don't get me wrong. I dislike cockney gardeners just as much as the next professional Northern bigot. Indeed I have as little affection for the shitty-fingered vowel manglers as I do for the feudalism-loving and ear-flapped-twat-hat-wearing ning-nang-nongers who got their skinny Buddhist asses kung-fu-ed by the track-suited thugs of the Sino-Stalinist sports Gestapo when they tried to blow out the Olympic flame.
But when I see our socialist heritage of collective gardening trampled underfoot by the size-900 Adidas bovver sneakers of soulless corporate sport, I'm there on the front line, jabbing at the scaly, baby-eating, corn-syrup spewing monstrosity with a dung-smeared pitchfork, glotally whining in my best Thames Estuary accented sub-English: Bugger off back to whichever focus-group driven hell spawned you, Nikezilla. Ils ne passeront pas, me old cock sparrer, ils ne passeront bleedin' pas.
What are these Olympics anyway? Every square inch of its corporate jism-soaked soul is fully owned by one crap-peddling multinational monster or another. And all the major events are dominated by freakish, faceless, unreal, disconnected, socially-crippled identikit meta-humans, most (if not all) of them as keenly engaged in an ever-escalating techno-war with the drug testers as they are in actually running, jumping or throwing stuff. Why should I cheer these freaks on? Because they supposedly represent the patch of dirt I was born on? Is it not absurd that an event so wedded to the increasingly redundant eighteenth-century notion of the nation state should be owned lock, stock and logo-plastered barrel by nationless corporations, all of whom automatically shift production to anywhere the grateful peasants will work for a dollar a day (and all the rice and rat meat they can eat) at the drop of a spread sheet?
Attending a Nike product launch in Berlin in 2006, I was somewhat stunned to hear an executive boast that "Nike has nine teams in this World Cup". I immediately imagined a "group of death" comprised of Nike, Adidas, McDonalds and ING. So much more sensible than the current arrangement.
The fact is that we have irrevocably lost the Olympics to the dumb, piggish maelstrom of corruption, blind self-interest, amorality, blandness, hypocrisy and lowest-common-denominator aesthetics that is corporate capitalism. And no amount of hand wringing or faux-nostalgic bleating about Corinthian values is ever going to bring it back.
Instead we need — as journalists, readers, editors and bloggers — to celebrate the sporting grass roots. Real sport. Y'know, jumpers for goal posts. All that corny good stuff.
And when something wonderful like the "gay world cup" (more properly called the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association World Championship) takes place (as it will in the last week in August in London) we need to be talking and writing and reading about it — and not just treating it as a snigger-worthy freak show.
There's your real Olympic spirit.
And yes, when the corporations start to sniff around the edges of these events (as they already do, the bastards) we should kvetch like billy-o. No, not because it'll do any good, but because not to do so means to accept cultural brain-death, to become sports Tories, to march in corporate sponsored official replica shirt-wearing lockstep into a new serfdom where our only functions are to slave and consume.
I give you the NFL, the NBA, the Premier League and every other professional league on the planet, all of them to a greater or lesser degree on the slippery slope to soulless shut-up-and-consume McSports status.
That's why we should boycott the Olympics. Don't give it a penny of your money, a minute of your time or a second of your attention. Go support your local athletics club instead. Get your fat arse down the park for a kick about. Coach a local kids' team. Or come down to Regents Park from August 23-30 and watch homosexuals (and the homo-friendly) from all over the planet put on a display of footballing passion that will take your breath away. Or at least make you smile. Better still enter your own team.
(By the way, resistance to the 2016 Olympics coming to Chicago is already under way).
Edge of Sports | Modify Your Subscription | Unsubscribe Now [Powered by Listbox]
JWL
[E of S] Read the Rage of Steven Wells
From: Dave Zirin (edgeofsports@gmail.com)
Sent: June 26, 2009 6:49:07 PM
To: photoimage33 (photoimage33@hotmail.com)
E o S Nation: In 6 years of writing this column, I’ve never sent out someone else’s work. But today I do because the great Steven Wells, the sports columnist extraordinaire for the Guardian, has died at age 49 after a valiant battle with cancer. “Swells” was also a legendary music writer, championing then unknown punk bands like Black Flag, the Mekons and the Redskins. He was part Hunter S Thompson, part Lester Bangs, and part Bob Lipsyte. And he was my friend. I didn’t agree with everything he wrote, but I was always provoked. Rage in peace, Steven.
Dave Zirin
PS – I’ll have my own piece out on Edge of Sports tomorrow. But today is for Steven. Please read the below. He was that good.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/22/olympicgames20081
Let's shun the multinational monsters' festival of Olympic McSports
By Steven Wells
The People's Republic of China are torturing, culture-smothering and democracy-crushing bastards. But then so was Germany in 1936. And Britain in 1908 and 1948. And the Soviet Union in 1980. And the USA in 1984 and 1996. Then there was the massacre of hundreds of Mexican demonstrators to pave the way for the games of 1968. In fact the history of the modern Olympic movement is one long, sad litany of imperialism, racism, exploitation and oppression. But that's not why I think we should boycott the Olympics.
And I do think we should boycott them. Not just the Beijing games. All of them. Forever. Why? Because of the total disconnect between what the Olympics are supposed to be about (grace, beauty, athleticism, sportsmanship, solidarity, brotherhood and the human spirit) and the sordid reality — as superbly illustrated by what the preparations for the 2012 London games are doing to the Manor Garden allotments.
Ask yourself this question: are the drug-riddled, debased and corrupt Olympics worth the demolition of a single 80-year-old community institution that genuinely and continually promotes health, mental wellbeing, exercise, neighbourliness and fresh vegetables? And (while we're at it) was it worth ripping up the much-loved and heavily used five-a-side football pitches in East London's Spitalfields market just so the City of London could have yet another identikit shopping/office development? (If you answered yes to either question, stop reading and trot off and fellate a stockbroker, you dominant ideology humping Tory bastard).
Don't get me wrong. I dislike cockney gardeners just as much as the next professional Northern bigot. Indeed I have as little affection for the shitty-fingered vowel manglers as I do for the feudalism-loving and ear-flapped-twat-hat-wearing ning-nang-nongers who got their skinny Buddhist asses kung-fu-ed by the track-suited thugs of the Sino-Stalinist sports Gestapo when they tried to blow out the Olympic flame.
But when I see our socialist heritage of collective gardening trampled underfoot by the size-900 Adidas bovver sneakers of soulless corporate sport, I'm there on the front line, jabbing at the scaly, baby-eating, corn-syrup spewing monstrosity with a dung-smeared pitchfork, glotally whining in my best Thames Estuary accented sub-English: Bugger off back to whichever focus-group driven hell spawned you, Nikezilla. Ils ne passeront pas, me old cock sparrer, ils ne passeront bleedin' pas.
What are these Olympics anyway? Every square inch of its corporate jism-soaked soul is fully owned by one crap-peddling multinational monster or another. And all the major events are dominated by freakish, faceless, unreal, disconnected, socially-crippled identikit meta-humans, most (if not all) of them as keenly engaged in an ever-escalating techno-war with the drug testers as they are in actually running, jumping or throwing stuff. Why should I cheer these freaks on? Because they supposedly represent the patch of dirt I was born on? Is it not absurd that an event so wedded to the increasingly redundant eighteenth-century notion of the nation state should be owned lock, stock and logo-plastered barrel by nationless corporations, all of whom automatically shift production to anywhere the grateful peasants will work for a dollar a day (and all the rice and rat meat they can eat) at the drop of a spread sheet?
Attending a Nike product launch in Berlin in 2006, I was somewhat stunned to hear an executive boast that "Nike has nine teams in this World Cup". I immediately imagined a "group of death" comprised of Nike, Adidas, McDonalds and ING. So much more sensible than the current arrangement.
The fact is that we have irrevocably lost the Olympics to the dumb, piggish maelstrom of corruption, blind self-interest, amorality, blandness, hypocrisy and lowest-common-denominator aesthetics that is corporate capitalism. And no amount of hand wringing or faux-nostalgic bleating about Corinthian values is ever going to bring it back.
Instead we need — as journalists, readers, editors and bloggers — to celebrate the sporting grass roots. Real sport. Y'know, jumpers for goal posts. All that corny good stuff.
And when something wonderful like the "gay world cup" (more properly called the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association World Championship) takes place (as it will in the last week in August in London) we need to be talking and writing and reading about it — and not just treating it as a snigger-worthy freak show.
There's your real Olympic spirit.
And yes, when the corporations start to sniff around the edges of these events (as they already do, the bastards) we should kvetch like billy-o. No, not because it'll do any good, but because not to do so means to accept cultural brain-death, to become sports Tories, to march in corporate sponsored official replica shirt-wearing lockstep into a new serfdom where our only functions are to slave and consume.
I give you the NFL, the NBA, the Premier League and every other professional league on the planet, all of them to a greater or lesser degree on the slippery slope to soulless shut-up-and-consume McSports status.
That's why we should boycott the Olympics. Don't give it a penny of your money, a minute of your time or a second of your attention. Go support your local athletics club instead. Get your fat arse down the park for a kick about. Coach a local kids' team. Or come down to Regents Park from August 23-30 and watch homosexuals (and the homo-friendly) from all over the planet put on a display of footballing passion that will take your breath away. Or at least make you smile. Better still enter your own team.
(By the way, resistance to the 2016 Olympics coming to Chicago is already under way).
Edge of Sports | Modify Your Subscription | Unsubscribe Now [Powered by Listbox]