For the boys

"Rugby reminds me of American football for Dummies. I find it rather boring. One has to admit it doesn't take a great deal of intelligence to play rugby.
In American football coordination, saavy, atheleticism, and the ability to second guess the opponents intentions are all factor's in determining a victor. The luck factor also play's an important role. An example of the luck factor would be a tipped ball being intercepted and run back for a touchdown"

That was a comment placed anonymously in my post about Jonah Lomu. I could tell right away that it could be only one of my readers: My Dad. He'd be the biggest American football( hereafter known as football) fans I know of that reads The Finndego. So I had him up about it and here is the conversation that ensued:
Me in italics and the old man in bold

Is that you commenting on The Finndego? The poor grammar, spelling and nonsensical arguments make me think it was you. Just kidding, but I do disagree with the points made and I want to find out who it is. Mark

Why what did they say?

Comparing rugby and football but I disagreed with argument. I hate the commenting on blogspot. It's more difficult than it should be. You sure it wasn't you?

What makes you think that I would do such a thing ? So tell me what is nonsensical about the guy's arguement. Now you should know by now I am quite knowledgable when it comes to football. I know nothing about rugby except they get in a bunch and play grab ass with each other.

I sent 10 things that I liked about rugby over football and he responded below them.

1. Games are over in 90 minutes. There is an eighty minute clock with very little stoppages. The action can stop but the clock keeps running and no time outs. No 3 1/2 hr games where the last 5 minutes of game clock takes 35 minutes.

Ya , so you have 80 minutes of sheer boredom and a bladder full of urine.

2. 15 a side with six on the bench but only 3 substitutes allowed.

Irrelevant.

3. While like football there are specialist body types for some positions everyone plays offense and defense. When the ball gets turnedover, that's it you gotta go tackle someone

So the game was made for someone with my mindset and athleticism.

4. No pads

Doesn’t bother me either we never had them when we where young. Unfortunately for you adults got involved in your game. Don't ever do that to your kids.

5. When a guy makes a regulation tackle he doesn't jump up and do a silly dance. One reason is because the ball is still live and the other is because generally they see themselves as sportsmen and not entertainers.

Well that’s the end result ogf the civil rights movement.

6. The game didn't go professional until 1996. Before then it was completely amateur.

To me it still is.

7. Because there thirty guys on the field it's pretty hard to break the defensive line. It's very tactical and it's all about keeping lanes and field positioning and tactical nous and counterattacking when possible.

Same with American Football , but by having separate plays our game becomes more like a chess match. Don’t forget if you know what the other team is going to do you will almost always be successful. That is on both offence and defense. That my son is one reason why there are so many upsets.

8. It's tradition after the game for the guys to go into each others locker rooms and drink a beer and swap stories. That's a holdover from the amateur days.

Our tradition was to find the bastard who clipped ya and clip him. When you were a kid and our softball team played for beers there was no spiking people and all that crap. Once we got into a league I for one turned into TY Cobb. I wouldn’t shake hands after the games either because I didn’t like them before during or after.

9. It's international. NZ,Australia,South Africa, England have all won World Cups while France,Wales, Ireland and Scotland are all good and each country have slightly different ways of playing the game. Their own style so to speak.

It may catch on but I wouldn’t expect a big following, I had to endure a game before going sky diving up in Maine with a friend it didn’t do nothing for me.

10. It still cheap to go to a game.

That’ll change

I feel like I'm trying to turn a born again christian! Look at a game of football like you've never seen one before or better yet try to explain agame to someone whose never seen one. If you can't explain a game in 5 minutes to a someone it's probably not even worth it. The NFL has the largest rule book of any major sport. You've got about 18 minutes of live ball action out of 3 1-2 hours of viewing. How is that a good thing? TV timeouts!? You are being brainwashed by the networks who sell advertising into believing this is a good thing. I'll watch games because of history but on my cable we also get a replay of the days game cut down to 2 hours. It's much better. When was the last time you ever went to a game?

Look at what the announcers call the intangibles that can turn a game. A fumble, a tipped pass, a dropped punt, weather, injury etc… Good play calling is just as important as the ability of the athletes involved., especially at the professional level which is much more sophisticated than a pick up game.
Balance has to be considered a an offence that scores 35 PPG is good , but not good enough if the Defense gives up 42 PPG. Speed and size matter but again intelligence and exploiting the oppositions weakness’ can also turn a game. Thus you need a good passing game to have a good running game and vice versa. You need smart and fast corners and safety’s , You need big fast and strong linebackers , to go along with your big line. If a team find a weakness you’ll know real fast. That’s what ended Bledsoe’s carreer

But Pudge, a lot of sports are very similar to that. There is nothing special about trying to exploit your strenths or the other teams weaknesses. What I like about rugby is the organisational skills required to keep attacking and defending in fluid play. A rugby team may think it has an advantage in it's forwards and keep pounding the ball up the middle until the defense weakens and draws in more defenders and then wait to swing it outside. This may take several play the balls before the defense is trapped and vunerable. You may counter that football does that play to play which they do, but they've got four coaches up in a box with cameras and phones down to the sidelines and quarterbacks who aren't even allowed to call their own plays. In rugby all this has to happen in the moment and all the players must regconise what is happening instintivley. Not only that all the players are touching the ball and offloading in the tackle and they require tremendous ball skills and hand eye coordination. A lineman's role is to be fat and block this guy or that one while the defensive lineman must fill this gap or that one. In rugby EVERY player requires some of the skills of a linemen,running back,quarterback,wide receiver,linebacker and safety. The percentage of each is divived unequally through the different positions but even the biggest of front rowers must possess the skills of running the ball, catching the ball and tackling. Oh did I mention that most football teams carry two players on their roster whose sole function is to kick the ball at the end of a possesion. Ridiculous.

The funny thing is, I tried to get him to have the same sort of email conversation with me when Massachusetts lost it's Senate seat to the Republicans but that didn't really happen. Talk about football though and it's on like Donkey Kong. I know that it will bother him to no end but I'm going to declare myself the winner but somehow I have a feeling it won't end here.

Next Week: The Finndego vs. Sarah Palin on shooting large mammals in high heels, Obama's Death Squads and molecular biology.

Wonderful Indifference

Here's a video that I got off of Boing Boing of this wonderful self-taught African guitar player. As much as the amazing talent blew me away, I was almost more blown away by the absolute indifference of the performer. Too cool for school!!

For The Ladies

On a scale of 1 to 10 my love of women is a ten and my understanding of women is about a 0.5. The man who ever figures them out will be richer than Bill Gates overnight. They are life's eternal mystery and unfortunately the answer is not 46. It's maddening how maddening they can be. If God is man (debatable) women are the test. If I ever make it to the Pearly Gates, St. Peter won't ask me if I lived according to God's will he will ask me if I lived to women's will and I will say "Yes... but not without a fight". Does that make me righteous? Maybe.
I love them for their ability to care, understand, love, succor, organise, feel, communicate. I hate them for their ability to make all of those things so difficult. Their is a reason that they do the things they do, I just wish I knew why.
I've had 2-1/2 relationships in my whole life that were worth a damn. There is an argument there that I've been noncommittal, but my argument would be, that actually I have been very committed when the feeling was mutual. I'm prepared to put in what the other is prepared to put in, but somehow I never felt like I had control of that negotiation. I'm not saying that I felt like a puppet, but more like the choices I had to make were put on the table for me and then I had to make the choice. Somebody tell me I'm wrong and that's not the way it is. Therein lies the reason why I think there should be more women politicians. It's this innate ability that women have of making men think they have a choice when they actually don't that makes them the master negotiator.
Every movie I've ever seen where the bank robber takes hostages, the FBI negotiator has always been a man. In the beginning, they always play hardball. They threaten to send in the SWAT team or turn off the power or turn up the air conditioning. They will tell the hostage taker that he is having to hold back the snipers because they've got an itchy finger or if he comes out now everything will be OK because nobody's been killed yet (has that line ever worked yet). Soon they'll soften their stance and say that they are trying to organise a bus to take them all to the airport, where a plane will be waiting to take them to Cuba. (Two things here: That's obviously not gonna work, it hasn't worked in the previous movies so why is it gonna work in this one and why do they always want to fly to Cuba? Is their some sort of hostage taker retirement home there?) Later in the piece when the negotiator starts getting desperate because nothing is working, the tables start to turn and all of a sudden the hostage taker starts getting his demands met. Maybe it's just pizza in exchange for a few of the elderly or sick hostages or even the pregnant one who just went into labor. 12 hours later, they will meet face to face in a standoff at the front door of the bank, Mano y Mano, with all guns trained on the hostage taker and the place will absolutely reek of sweat, testosterone and pizza and it will all be very dramatic. In my reality, the women negotiator comes in offers pizza right away, which will be delivered by the hostage takers mother(definitely not the girlfriend!). Mom and the negotiator will have him crying into his pizza within 15 minutes and we'll all be home by lunch. Not a very good movie all the same but at least everyone get's home alive.
In conclusion, my respect for women is immense. So much so that I'm almost ready to become a lesbian myself. Barring that impossibility, I've done the next best thing. I've done a playlist! As always, the list is incomplete but hopefully there is something in there for someone. Love you all!

This Sporting Life: Jonah Lomu

I love rugby. Everyone knows that New Zealanders love their rugby too, so why should I be different. I liked soccer when I was in Holland and baseball when I was in America. That's just the way I am. The All Blacks may possibly be the most the single most popular entity in New Zealand ever. They have the the highest winning percentage of any professional team ever at 74.49%. The other 25.51% of losses have mostly come at semi-finals of World Cups. To be honest though, I never knew that much about rugby before I came here. The one player I did know was Jonah Lomu. If there ever was a world rugby star then it was Jonah. In all rugby playing nations he was revered execpt for possibly New Zealand. It's quite hard to try and explain the relationship between New Zealand and Jonah. It's not necassarly "tall poppy syndrome" that is quite prevalent here but more of people here not knowing how to or where to place him. This is probably because he was such a unique player. Big, strong and fast, there hadn't really been anyone like him before. Wingers in rugby were lean, light and quick. One on one against an opposing winger was almost unfair for Jonah. Unfortunately, rugby isn't played one on one but 15 against 15. Given space to roam or bringing the ball into contact against smaller players is really where he came into his own. To an unendearing New Zealand public he always had fatal flaws. He couldn't play defence or wasn't any good under the high ball, are the most common ones. The funny thing was, in England,France,Ireland,Scotland and Wales he was almost godlike. It's a well known fact that he turned down multiple offers from the UK and France to go and play for clubs there (something a lot of other All Blacks have done) but he is hardly ever credited with staying. Of course, with New Zealand's rich rugby history they have always had great players and I really feel that if they ever made an alltime XV Jonah would somehow miss the cut. Players like John Kirwan or Jeff Wilson (great players by the way) would probably get the nod on the wing and that might be fair enough. I'm really just trying to say that while I often hate sometimes how sport is commercialized and sold, in this case no one has been more important at selling the All Blacks "brand" than Jonah Lomu. Jonah did things the "right way" just like a lot of the other greats. He played hard, no one doubted his commitment to the All Blacks, he was humble and fronted up to criticism. He spent a lot of time promoting the game worldwide and has never gotten himself into any real strife. It only came out in his later career that he was suffering from a debilitating kidney disease that would eventually see him require a kidney transplant. Yet somehow, he's never gotten himself into the pantheon of great players and I wonder why. All I know, is that before I knew rugby I knew Jonah Lomu.
I got a few clips off of youtube that cannot be missed. Most people in New Zealand will have seen them a million times but it has to be done. Just like Van Basten's goal against Russia or Fisk's homer in game six these are the ones you remember.
1. The Classic - Has anyone's career been more defined by one play than Jonah's or Mike Catt's than this. I threw in French commentary to spice it up.

2. The Favourite - I love this one because when I first saw it it I was right in the middle of trying to explain the rules of rugby to one of my dutch friends. Basically, I was trying to say how in rugby you need to stay with your support players because in rugby if your isolated you could lose the ball at the play the ball area. Then this happened. I just said, "Unless your Jonah, of course."

3. The Commercial - I always loved this commercial. I love the van hit at the end. I don't know who came up with the idea of this commercial but I always thought it was very original.

By the way, for those of my readers who don't know the All Blacks or rugby at all let me just say that this is one of the coolest things in sport because even if you don't like sports you'll feel something watching this. And here's why they do it.

Obama

Friend or foe you have to feel for Obama (I'm sticking with the one name,like a Brazilian footballer). Does anyone remember the glow of his inauguration anymore? It seems now, that a year and a bit later is seems that that was the moment that he jumped the shark. The poor man has done nothing wrong besides get nothing done. He was gift wrapped a Senate and a House of Representatives and all the goodwill in the world to clean up the poo-poo platter that he was left with. Hey, I know, let's close Guantanamo. Who could have problem that? Why is it still open? Because it was set up to be a purgatory outside of the law, it really hard to bring it back into the fold. Nobody wants the inmates that remain, even though nobody knows how many are guilty or innocent. Let's put that in the too hard basket. We were then told that the sky would fall if we didn't bail out Wall Street. I honestly can't remember one person of consequence saying that we shouldn't bail out AIG, Fannie Mac, Lehman, Bank of America etc. etc. I do remember some companies not getting bailed out but none of the talking heads said don't give any money to any of them. So Obama had carte blanche to throw a few trillion around because that's what we all were told what needed to happen. Any problems with that? Wait, don't answer that. OK, let's go with the universal healthcare for the millions of uninsured in America. Really now, who could have a problem with THAT! Whoops. It boggles the mind really. Uninsured, these people are more of a burden on society than with insurance, so what's the problem? I saw a clip from one of Obama's town hall meetings were this young guy asked Obama if he really willing to take away pharmaceutical companies right to make a profit? I turned my head sideways like a dog trying to figure that one out. (Sidenote: I read not to long ago that a lot of doctors in America are using placebos nowadays to help cure a psychosomatic nation. Unfortunately for the doctors, sugar pills cost relatively nothing, so the patients were catching on because their pills cost so little. The solution? Increase the price of a sugar pill! Now, so that the patients won't catch on, a sugar pill could cost $5 dollars a pop! A financial placebo effect for a placebo! Brilliant!)
All of this was really was a fancy schmancy way of an introduction. It's really bad for the man that he can't close Gitmo, solve America's financial strife or get universal health care for the people who need it the most. Now, he has to put up with people making really bad paintings of him. How much of this can a man take before he snaps!

Afternoons with Jim Mora

I did a radio interview today on New Zealand National Radio. Here is the link.The link will be on the main page through the weekend or otherwise chose from the 5th of March audio archive on the left hand side. Be quick, because the link will be deleted after a week. Basically, listeners nominate a song of their choice as "The Best Song Ever Written". I explain in the interview why I chose the song I did, so I won't bother here.By the way, they don't even play the song in the link due to copyright restictions. You can find the song on my Grooveshark playlist link from a few weeks ago. The interview itself was pretty vanilla. I was ready for anything (Mining, Obama, Massachusetts or the homo-erotic overtones of the 2-man Luge.) but didn't really get the chance so that was a bit of a bummer. On the other hand, at least I didn't drop any "F"-bombs which I was really worried about!

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou

Thanks to Boing Boing for putting me onto some new music. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou are from Benin in West African and were rocking Cotonou (the capital of Benin) in the early 70's. Here is a playlist from Grooveshark. I've always liked African music (in a former life, I took Djembe lessons for a few years) but like a lot of things, if you don't really know where to start you just put off starting. You hear names but can't relate them to any context. It's almost like listening to African music is like joining a secret club.
Now that I've been onto Grooveshark for a while, I've gone from catching up with old music that I missed out on to expanding horizons and chasing obscurity and quality in equal measure. These guys do certainly do that for me. Welcome to the club!

Insuffcient Funds

It was payday today, thank god! My phone ran out of credit the other day and when I tried to send a text to Mrs. Finndego, Vodafone came back and said I had "insuffcient funds" to send this message. All I could think was "if you only knew". As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever had "suffcient funds". To be honest, I don't think any one has ever had enough. I'm pretty sure Bill Gates wakes up in the morning and checks how Microsoft stock went in the night. Why? He already has a gazillion dollars, why would he care?
I earn enough to say that we are solid "middle class". As a matter of fact, barring the dog and the white picket fence and "the gimp" that we keep in the garage we are middle class personified. Yet, now that Fletcher has started Kindy, talk has turn to Mrs. Finndego going back to work to give us "breathing room". (I don't know what's happening to me, but I can't stop using "quotation marks" tonight). We have no "needs" but "wants"(I can't help myself). We are conservative in spending, don't have any debt (well except for that little mortgage thing) but besides that we live paycheck to paycheck, save when we can, spend when we can afford it. Yet, we still feel the need for more and yet both of us will go to our graves claiming that we are not "consumerists".(Stop me before I quote again!). Sometimes, I wish that I could win the lottery just to show everyone that the money wouldn't change me. I mean I would still hang out with all my old friends. Sting, Beyonce and Bono. I would still find time to come out of my hyperbaric chamber to fly on my private jet to a global warming conference to rail against carbon emissions from the "fat cats" (I didn't need quotations marks there but it had been almost two sentences since that last ones). I would still only drive the Hummer when absolutley necessary, like when I needed cigarettes or something.
I saw a list today of 75 albums that I "absolutely" (I'm just messing with your head now) had to have. I could take it or leave it to be honest but I found a few in there that I'd like to give a go. Apparently, "Explosions In the Sky" (not my fault, good grammar requires I use them there) a instrumental band from Texas is so uplifting that anything you do while listening to it becomes more enjoyable. I couldn't think of anything better to have then while reading this post. "Enjoy!"