Sport: Blood and the Ashes

London — Twenty thousand Englishmen baying at the enemy. Screaming themselves hoarse, urging their champion to strike flesh. And then, it happens: The enemy is hit. Yes! Unwilling to show pain, he removes his helmet. Blood — the sight most keenly craved for — trickles down. His entourage runs to assist him — he attempts nonchalance, but concussion is an issue. The crowd is ecstatic.

Is this the Saxons at the Battle of Hastings, eager for Norman gore? Or Wellington’s men at Waterloo, bayonets fixed for Frenchies? No, it’s June 2005 at Lord’s Cricket Ground, the spiritual home of cricket worldwide. And the bloodthirsty mob of 20,000 are mostly wearing blazers, brogues and club ties. On other days of the week, you’ll find them at work in arbitrage.

And the blood? Australian, of course — the ancient enemy, rival for the Ashes, as the trophy for each five-match tournament between England and Australia is known. What a start that was, and there were still some 24 more days of such glorious skirmishing to look forward to.

In fact, the 2005 Ashes series turned into the greatest I have ever witnessed, the probable outcome seesawing almost hourly. There were moments when I had to leave the TV, my anxiety too intense. (Spectating can be more nerve-racking even than playing oneself.) I still cannot watch the highlights of the second match — which England won by the closest margin in 123 years of the contest — without fear stoking my pulse. It also remains the only time I have attended a victory parade: Trafalgar Square, London, was awash with jubilant jackets and ties that day.

England vs. Australia in cricket may be one of the oldest sporting rivalries, but it is hardly the most chivalrous. Rather, it is when this oh-so-civilized game truly reveals its nasty, brutish heart. Cricket may be the only team game in the world in which it is entirely legal for a player to make a move whose only purpose is to hurt, if not hospitalize, an opponent. In cricket, this is not a foul; no penalty is awarded, or score deducted. For, central to this gentleman’s pastime — whether played on a village green or at Lord’s — is “the bouncer.”

Sport: Arsenal, the Unravelling

So, the Gunners now have a win under their belts, and the seemingly disastrous transfer window now shows some glimmers of hope, with help form la Liga (and the Spanish economy).

Hooray.

Forgive this writer for not jumping and cheering. Underneth the sighs of relief, there is that feeling of "same crap, different season"

Another opening day. Another loss. Comprehensively beaten 4-3 by a marauding Liverpool side that included a familiar bane to Gunners in the form of Sadio Mane. Then on to a drab, scoreless stalemate at Champions Leceister City that might well have had a different result had a penalty been awarded for Bellerin's "professional" foul late in the game.

The truth is, Arsenal, for its seeming upswing, in in the throes of a long unravelling that is especially painful for fans. Season after season, the team underachieves, losing games that it ought to win, and i n some cases embarrassingly so.

And things are about to get worse. Old Wenger nemesis Jose Mourinho has taken the reins at Manchester united, while his bitter rival Pep Guardiola (who some had as a potential Wenger successor) is settling in for the sheiks at Manchester City. a massive Manchester Derby looms in about two weeks. Italian maestro Antonio Conte is leading a revitalized Chelsea squad untethered from the toxic relationship with Mourinho that torpedoed their title defense last season.

And Arsenal? Still plodding along with a manager stuck in the past, and propped up by a Board too busy milking the cash cow that the club has become.

Has Wenger been great for Arsenal? Without doubt. And the club has clearly benefitted form his tenure, both i n the footballing and the financial sense.

But Wenger has been making a string of inexcusable tactical errors ove the past few seasons. The most egregious being against Liverpool i nthe season past; Wenger, with a 3-2 lead and minutes left to play, he inserts Arteta into a game that we ought o have taken full points form; Arteta almost immediately gets caught out, allowing Joe Allen to run on to the loose ball and slot past a helpless Cech. And the less said about the Champions league tie against Barcelona, the better.

its easy to call for a manager's head i n the Premier League; money's being sprayed left right and centre like water treatment on a grass pitch, but it should be clear to even the most hardened loyalists that the end of the Wenger era is at hand.

to the Board: do it now, when there's less pain and there can - unlike the departure of Pellegrini at City - be some dignity; a proper farewell.

let's not let the team disintegrate before we do something

Where WoRds WanDer #8: hot potato

A problem so controversial and sensitive that it is risky to deal with. For example, Gun control is a political hot potato. This term, dating from the mid-1800s, alludes to the only slightly older expression drop like a hot potato, meaning “to abandon something or someone quickly” (lest one be burned). The idiom alludes to the fact that cooked potatoes retain considerable heat because they contain a lot of water.

Sport: In a hot English Summer, Paul Pogba Is Signing For Manchester United, and Sam Allardyce gets the England nod

-from SPORTSBIBLE

FINALLY! After months of negotiations, L'Equipe claim that Manchester United have finished negotiations for the transfer of Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba.

Although it has taken some time, it appears the transfer is finally coming to an end. The report claims that all three parties have reached an agreement and he will become a Manchester United player.

A price tag is yet to be announced, but it is expected to cost Manchester United upwards of £100 million.

Be happy, United fans. It seems to be happening.

Meanwhile....

Sam Allardyce will be the next man to lead England to disappointing international tournament failure after it was reported he will be announced as Three Lions boss.

Sky Sports believe his appointment will be ratified at an FA board meeting on Thursday and that current club Sunderland have accepted the decision.

The much travelled 61-year-old coach was the choice of a 12-man FA board panel, who also sought fit to offer Steve Bruce an interview in what must have been the world's shortest shortlist for any job, ever.

It has now been '50 years of hurt' since England's glorious 1966 World Cup triumph, and if that drought ends with Allardyce at the helm in 2018, TheSPORTbible will personally plant a big fat kiss upon Big Sam's ample rump.

Poetry: Kamau Braithwaite for "The Frost"

The Poetry Society of America is honored to announce that Kamau Brathwaite (right) is the 2015 recipient of the organization's highest award, the Frost Medal, presented annually for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry. Previous winners of this award include Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Lucille Clifton, Charles Simic, Marilyn Nelson, and Gerald Stern, the 2014 recipient.

 Brathwaite was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in 1930. He studied at Harrison College in Barbados, graduated with honors from Pembroke College, Cambridge, England, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Sussex. He is the author of numerous books of poetry include Elegguas (Wesleyan University Press, 2010), Born to Slow Horses (2005), Ancestors (New Directions, 2001), Words Need Love Too (2000), Black + Blues(1995), Roots 1993), and Trenchtown Rock (1993), among others. He has taught at Harvard University, and New York University, the University of the West Indies, as well as serving in Ghana's Ministry of Education.

The 2015 Annual Awards ceremony, which will honor Kamau Brathwaite and celebrate the winners of the Poetry Society of America's 10 other annual awards, will take place on Thursday, April 16th at 7:00 pm at the National Arts Club.

The Poetry Society of America, that nation's oldest poetry organization, was founded in 1910 for the purpose of creating a public forum for the advancement, enjoyment, and understanding of poetry. Through a diverse array of programs, initiatives, contests, and awards, the PSA works to build a larger audience for poetry, to encourage a deeper appreciation of the art, and to place poetry at the crossroads of American life. The PSA's signature program is Poetry in Motion, featuring poems on transit systems across the country. 

Freedom Sells.....But Who's Buying?

That's how it must have seemed to Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco Miranda(actually born in the Canary Islands) as he embarked on his quest to rid Latin America of foreign (read "Spanish")domination and create a republic from the base of the Mississippi to Patagonia governed by rule of law and the respect for individual freedoms.

In the wrong hands this could have turned out to be wretched exercise in Latin civics, but director Luis Alberto Lamata spins his true-life tale like the finest of swashbuckling political adventures, whilst maintaining an intimate feel for his hero. Miranda (a commanding portrayal by Jorge Reyes) opens the film in a physical and emotional funk: confined to a prison cell by the very people he banded together on the road to freedom (including an ascendant Simon Bolivar), he has only his trusted Man Friday - Salim, to relay on.

In comes a local priest, with an offer to write the general's awesome and multi-layered story for the world and future generations to remember. The over-protective Salim smells a rat, but Miranda is lured by the offer to immortalize him and his journey in words and thus begins a breathtaking (if at times a tad lengthy) odyssey across late 18th and early 19th Century Europe: Spain, France, Russia, England. America's in there too, with  Miranda contributing to the American and French revolutions before turing his full energies tothe cause that ignited him in the first place: freeing his homeland.

Here, the film becomes slightly less compelling, as apart from a fateful landing with his troops on what is now Venezuela's east coast, there is little to occupy the viewer satisfactorily apart from the inner conflict that now racks the priest as he seeks to sort out his now complete admiration for the man he was initially send to deceive and disgrace (and even kill, but we give away too much)

The appearance of Danny Glover, as a terror-minded free Black, is another sore point. Though the exchange between the two characters provides some nice insights, the overall scene is so contrived as to suggest that Glover's presence was almost solely for the purpose of attracting funding (who knows, he may well have funded it himself, at least in part).

Still, there's no denying Miranda is a stylish and moving true-life account of one of the most charismatic, polarizing and seminal figures in Latin American history.
Bob Marley said "Now we'll find out who is he real revolutionary" He needn't have looked as far as Zimbabwe in the late 70s. History already offered up a bonafide example in nearby Venezuela.

Small Screen, Huge Stories: Boardwalk Empire & The Pillars of the Earth

Time was, not that long ago, when the uncompromising dedication to narrative was left to (some) feature films, while television - read network television - followed the path of least offense.

The purveyors of cable TV had a different idea though, and certainly over the last decade, cable channels have surpassed both  their network cousins and much of the feature film world in showing compelling programmes in both comedy and drama. Showtime has "Homeland" AMC has "Mad Men", STARZ has "Spartacus" and Ken Follet's "The Pillars of the Earth" and HBO has, among many others, "Boardwalk Empire".
Prohibition was likely intended as a political solution to a social problem, but its hard to argue with the contention that is created far worse problems than it ever solved. By shifting the supply side form legal to illegal sources without addressing the demand, it aided the growth of mobsterism and corruption, with the attendant ills. Such is the premise of this series, which has gone through two very popular and highly acclaimed seasons. The setting is Atlantic City(which provides the "Boardwalk" of the title), 1920, and the focus is primarily on one Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, nominally city treasurer, but de facto the Big Kahuna; nothing goes down - or up - in the town precincts without him knowing, and collecting on it. from his suite in the Ritz-Carlton he presides over bootlegging, prostitution and a host of illegal and legitimate buisnesses, aided and abetted by his brother Eli, the sheriff, and the city aldermen, his confederates.
But uneasy sits the head that wears the crown, and it will take all the skill and wit he has to manipulate and fend off enemies from without and within.

Medieval England may seem a long thematic jump form Prohibition-era America, but the elements are quite consistent: power, intrigue, lust, violence mistrust - and the desire to build something greater than what has previously been. Ken Follet's blockbuster novel gets the period treatment from Scott brothers, Ridley and Tony, who serve as executive producers, overseeing a cast and crew drawn mostly from Britain, but spanning the Continent. A humble master builder has dreams of building a great cathedral, but to do it, he must outwit some powerful forces with their own outsize agendas.

On the whole, the Boardwalk story is more compelling to watch, but Pillars should hardly be dismissed out of hand. For one, its more restrained. The in-your-face style of "Boardwalk", with its blood-spattered killings, frontal nudity and soft-porn sex scenes can become tiresome with repeated viewings, even though the writing overall redeems each episode. Another important difference is that the 'Pillars" series has a lone director for all the instalments, as opposed to the "revolving door" employed by "Boardwalk" creators Terence Winter, Martin Scorcese and Mark Wahlberg. Not saying there are any obvious aesthetic gaps, but it does jar a little bit.
Such nitpicking aside, both shows make excellent viewing, whether seen as a marathon, or at your leisure. They represent two ways of exploring the issue of man's enduring quest for power and personal aggrandizeement, a fascination that hardly ebbs, and for which cable TV is the ideal medium.