It's Cute! It's a Mutant!!

I call it a cutant:




This picture was "Picture of the Week" in the Telegraph (Torygraph?). Anyway, this beautiful mutant, named Magdalena, should grow up to the perfect girlfriend for this guy, because, after all, even a mutant girlfriend is better than a blow-up one.

Speaking of blow-up girlfriends, am I the only one to be weirded out that there were two songs about... er... inflatable paracoitae released at roughly the same time in the U.K.? Am I also the only one weirded out by the fact that I have both of these songs on my portable music thingamadoobob?

Does this Accordion Make My Tuesday Look Fat?

In keeping with our Mardi Gras tradition, here's a little "green beans" music for to make you shake your ass:





In another hilarious thread at "Snark Central", a takedown of professional scold Ross Douthat goes on. Some bastard in the thread wrote a description of Ross' brand of Catholicism as "All Ash Wednesday, no Mardi Gras." When Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany (another "Ash Wednesday all the time" guy) was named Pope, I complained because I thought that it was time to nominate a Brazilian cardinal (Brazil being the most populous "Catholic" country in the world). Unfortunately, the College of Cardinals decided that they didn't want the Pope standing on the Vatican balcony in a Speedo, giving blessings, so they passed over the cardinal of São Paulo in favor of the guy who ran the remnants of the Inquisition.

Unfortunately, Catholic scolds like Ross and Ratzi are too busy snooping in people's bedrooms to look up and see that sun that Hillaire Belloc described:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!

Yeah, Hillaire, I get ya... forget the prudes and scolds, the Church needs more of this:

Manliness! Models!! Monomachy!!!

Yesterday, the 2011 New York Open Judo Tournament, sponsored by Filmannex, was held at the New York Athletic Club:





In a departure from previous NY Open Tournaments, this year's open featured only four teams, the U.S., Canada, Italy, and Germany. Each team featured five judoka, so the many hours of preliminary matches were unneccesary. This event was pretty much "all finals, all day". Also, there was only one mat, which improved the viewing experience (previous "Opens" had two competitions running simultaneously, which often led to frustration when spectators watching one match were surprised by a call of "Ippon!" from the other mat). Yeah, the one mat format was an improvement over the two-mat tradition. Additionally, moving the mats out of the gymnasium after the tournament was a lot less time-consuming. In an even greater departure from previous events, this year's Open, helmed by mad genius and Friend of the Bastard Francesco Rulli, had a hipper vibe- more nightclub than school gym. The lights were dimmed in the room, throwing the competition area into greater prominence. There was a busy beer concession, and about forty up-and-coming fashion models were in attendence. A D.J. was playing tracks between matches, and a recording of Japanese drumming was sometimes used to heighten the tension of the matches themselves. All told, the event had a more modern, more European vibe than previous Opens. Color commentary was provided by five time national champion Carrie Chandler.

I spent some quality time watching serious competition while drinking beer with good friends, all the while contemplating this hipper new incarnation of the Open Tournament. While the afternoon was a spectacular success, I did miss the more international flavor of previous years, when teams from Brazil, Mongolia, Poland, Haiti, Japan, South Korea, and several former Soviet republics were in attendence. Hopefully, next year's Open will feature more teams, while keeping the one mat format, and the "hipper", more modern vibe. Kudos to Francesco for masterminding an event which will most likely form the template for future competitions.

Also in attendence at the Open was film industry gadfly Abel Ferrara. I was able to speak with him briefly about the beauty of our weapons of the sport. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to pitch my idea for a musical based on The Bad Lieutenant- sample Just Two Girls from Jersey:

I thought it would be just a routine traffic stop,
But then I realized he was a crazy cop.
Why is my ass sticking out this win-in-dow?
Why is my best friend miming fellatio?
OOOhhhhh!

Uh, I digress... back to the tournament- the German team won the gold, with the U.S. taking silver, and Canuckistan taking the bronze. For a taste of the action, here is video of a great match (though a bit of a hearbreaker, as local favorite Garry St Leger was thrown for "Ippon" by German player Rene Kirsten):





The technique used was uchimata, which means "inner thigh". Uchimata belongs to the family of hip throws- here's a nice breakdown of the throw, which looks a hell of a lot worse than it actually is.

In Keeping with a Sombre Mood

In keeping with last year's tradition, I'm starting the run-up to the Solemn Feast of St. Patrick a couple of weeks in advance. Just as I initiated last year's run-up by linking to the video for the improbable dance hit in Germany Dearg Doom by Horslips, I am kicking this one off with a Horslips' tune. Being in a somewhat sombre mood, I'll post a video for a more morose tune from Horslips' 1973 Táin album. Next week, I hope to do a bit on the Táin Bo Cuailnge, because Kinsella's translation of it is one of my favorite reads.

The song Cú Chulainn's Lament is perhaps the most outré love song in the English language- the semi-divine hero Cú Chulainn sings a lament for his friend Ferdia, whom he has just slain in single combat. In the course of the cattle raid narrated in the Táin, Medbh, Queen of Connacht, promised the hand of her daughter Finnabair (a cognate of Gwenhwyfar, which in turn is the root of the name Jennifer, or is that Jennifer? Who can tell with all these Jennifers gadding about?), and her "friendly thighs" to Ferdia if he could defeat Cú Chulainn in single combat.

The combat, like many of the fights described in the Táin, takes place in a river-ford. Before the combat, Cú Chulainn tries to warn Ferdia off- I love the line "everything I do is ringed about with fantasy" (it would be a good motto for someone). In the course of the battle, neither Cú Chulainn nor Ferdia can gain the upper hand- they strive in combat by day, then share their provisions by night for days. Finally, Cú Chulainn calls for his secret weapon, the Gae Bolga, a wickedly barbed spear, which only he knows how to employ, in a most bizarre fashion:

And Cúchulainn called for the Gae Bulga from Laeg son of
Riangabair. This was its nature: With the stream it was made
ready, and from between the fork of the foot it was cast; the
wound of a single spear it gave when entering the body, and
thirty barbs had it when it opened and it could not be drawn
out of a man's flesh till the flesh had been cut about it.

Ferdia, having (much like Achilles) an impenetrable skin of "horn", is fatally pierced through his bunghole- one possible original meaning of Gae Bolga is "spear with a sack", so make of this episode what you will, you dirty dogs. So, in an abrupt shift from salacious to sombre, here's Cú Chulainn's lament for his fallen friend:





For the sake of completeness, I must also note that the Decemberists released an album inspired by The Táin as well. I'll have to track down some videos to link when I finally get around to doing my bit on The Táin.

Kia Kaha

AK made me aware of the Māori phrase Kia Kaha. I'm heading out to the wake for my family friend, who succumbed to cancer at the age of twelve. In the face of such a horrifying tragedy, the normal mourning process tends to be short circuited, the platitudes we tend to mouth at memorial services are trite and meaningless. It's better to just lend support, to be a visible presence.

Tonight, it's "Closed mouth, open arms."

Kia Kaha!

Thanks for the outpouring of support!

My Heart Has Joined the Thousand

I just received word that my friend Nick succumbed to cancer after a heroic year-long fight. Nick was a gentleman, a scholar, an athlete. He bore the burden of his illness with dignity and grit. Before he fell ill, Nick used to volunteer with disabled kids in an outreach program run by his taekwondo school.

For those unfamiliar with the post title, it's part of a quote from the novel Watership Down by Richard Adams: "My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today." Nick was exactly the right age to read a book like Watership Down for the first time. Nick was the perfect example of the adage "The candle that burns brightest burns briefest." As much as I mourn the loss of the boy who was, I weep for the loss of the man he would have been.

My deepest, most heartfelt condolences to his parents, his big brother, and his little sister.

Effin' Bloomberg, Effin' New York Times

NYC mayor Michael "I was for term limits, until I was against them because I wanted to get re-elected" Bloomberg has announced that he wants to carry out a plan to lay off approximately 4,700 city teachers. The article in the fucking New York Times, while mentioning that the city has lost about $2.1 billion in state aid, fails to make a single notice of the damn near $ 700 million City Time automated payroll system scandal. Bloomberg, a man reputed to be a business whiz-kind and a technocrat, characterized $80 million of stolen money (part of a badly-contracted, badly-overseen $700 million boondoggle) as having "slipped through the cracks". Fucking technocrats, how do they work? Suffice it to say, Bloomberg's scrutiny of teachers making $37,000 to $57,000 is greater than his scrutiny of consultants making ten times as much. In keeping with
zrm's new internet tradition, FUCK YOU, MIKE BLOOMBERG!

Of course, the "paper of record" has lagged behind the "local tabloid" in coverage of this story. Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News has been doing heroic work keeping up with the CityTime scandal.