Posted by admin on Feb 1, 2010 in
Autobiography,
Madrid,
films 
The floating mountains held with bound vegetation were pure Dali. And the anti-exploitation/invasion sentiment was pure Anti-American sentiment. Odd that it’s a Hollywood blockbuster then, innit? It is, as others have said, Pocahontas meets tall hippy smurfs but it was beautiful in parts. The plot was typical myth structure. Yet it was good to see a hero who was disabled even if his deeds of derring-do were accomplished in another body.
The much talked about 3-D was not at all invasive and it was kind of the director not to shoot us in the eye with an arrow or throw rocks at us. It seemed a coming of age of sorts. The technology was almost not the real protagonist of the film and it made me hopeful for cinema maybe two or three years down the line when 3-D becomes commonplace and we don’t feel like a 1927 audience watching ‘The Jazz Singer“.
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Posted by admin on Sep 28, 2009 in
Madrid,
People,
zeitgeist
On Friday we will hear if Madrid has been awarded the 2016 Olympic Games. We deserve the Games. We want the Games. But what we don’t want, are the professional cheats.
Athletes are supposed to be role models for children. At least, when I was a child they were. They represented the triumph of will over adversity. Work hard, be faithful and you will, if not win, at least compete with dignity. That was the message.
How things change! The Olympic ideal of ‘mens sana in copore sano’ is as laughable as a bald man’s comb
There have always been cheats – people who confuse crossing the line first with winning. But it was in 1988 when ‘doping’ became an international issue. Ben Jonson, in the 100 meters race in the Seoul Olympics, used steriods to win a gold medal . He was supposed to use his legs.
Cycling may never fully recover from the shock of the entire Festina team being banned from the Tour de France for having suitcases of doping material with them. There were rumours of doping in that race for many years before.
Such is the effect of these elite cheats that doping is now appearing in amateur sport. School students are finding that steroids are cheap and easily obtainable. In the USA 4% of teenagers (mainly boys) have used anabolic steroids in the past year.
We are used to cheating in football. Every time a player falls down pretending to be fouled we get angry (if it’s their player) or shrug (if it’s ours). Football stopped being sport a long time ago.
But the Olympic Games are supposed to be noble. We’ve all seen “Chariots of Fire”. Surely we all know the story of the Jamaican bobseligh team who fought against all ridicule and technical problems after their first Olympics Games in Calgary? They went on to beat the USA and Russia in subsequent competitions. No drugs. No cheating.
And they don’t even have snow in Jamaica!
But what can you do? Now some athletes take ‘masking agents’ which hide illegal substances. For every drug test developed there will be some cheating chemist finding ways round it.
But it is not the chemists who take the drugs. Nor the team doctors. Nor the trainers.
The sole responsibility to take drugs out of sport lies with the athletes themselves. It is question of restoring sporting values.
In English a person who enters into the spirit of things is called “a good sport”. If you do something against the rules you are “not playing the game” and “it’s not cricket”.
Doped sportspeople should be ashamed of themselves. If they are not, we should make them be. Honesty is not something to flirt with. We must be married to it.
It should start in the home, continue at school until it eventually regains its place on a podium in an Olympic stadium. Maybe a podium in Madrid.
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Tags: Madrid, Olympics, Spain, sport
Posted by admin on Sep 21, 2009 in
Madrid,
People,
Poetry Listen to the PODCAST
Dowload
On Saturday I attended the first meeting of the Irish in Spain. Well, I suppose there must have been thousands or millions of meetings of Irish in Spain over the years but not a big, official one of the Irish in Spain where we have a look at ourselves and see what we’re all about.
I was lucky enough to get invited to read some poems such as the deeply beautiful Lake Isle of Innisfree by WB Yeats.This is one of my favourite poems of all time as opposed to just one of my favorite poems. The latter chop and change according to internal weather systems but the all-timers are as fixed as the North Star. Have a read and see how you can see twinkly stars in the second stanza and hear the lake in the third .
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there,
For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
To where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer,
And noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now,
For always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway
Or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
A million years ago in Manchester I used to perform poetry with the Live Poets Society (motto: Poetry So Good You Can Actually Understand It) and it was with that happy band of poets that I learned the difference between poetry on the page and poetry on the stage. You need to lift the language from the paper and get it flying around the room. Poetry isn’t literature! It is sound. It is physical.
This Yeats poem is perfect for reading aloud. It is joyous and reverent and decided.
Anyhow, the Irish in Spain event was great. I hope the Madrid Irish can get some regular meetings going and that we have a national event at least annually. Good craic so it was.
Read about it here innisfree1916.
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Tags: Ireland, Madrid, Poetry, Spain
