Parkheaders

I don’t know much because I am merely a normal Irish person. There are others though, living amongst us, who are special. They are super Irish. Turbo charged, fuel injected Irish. They can usually be spotted on Saturday afternoons, predominantly in urban areas though not exclusively as they have also been known to thrive in more rural settings.

The allegiance they have chosen is designed to say something very strong and unambiguous about them. They have chosen to transcend geography, logic and aesthetics and hitch their wagon to Glasgow Celtic.

And these people want there to be no doubt about the symbolism of such a gesture. They want there to be no doubt that if, say, they were stranded on a snow capped mountain in South America after a plane crash and were forced to sacrifice a fellow passenger to eat in order to stay alive that they would choose a British person over an Irish person. That they would unhesitatingly, unerringly, undoubtedly choose the British person. Over the Irish person. And the solidarity and synchronicity with which these people stand when it comes to the issue of the prioritization of nationalities for cannibalisation in extreme survival situations is so staunch that it necessitates the wearing of a costume. It is white with a series of parallel green hoops. The costume is also designed to illustrate that the person in general would have a preference for all things Irish, would do his best in any given situation to err on the side of Irishness, to lend his support to Ireland and to do all these fine and noble things with more verve, gusto and enthusiasm than normal Irish people would.

And so it’s not easy to support Glasgow Celtic from the middle of Ireland. There are softer options available in order to attain access to football of a roughly equivalent standard. There’s Turners Cross, Inchicore, Tolka Park, Oriel Park, the Brandywell, the Showgrounds. But the super charged Irish don’t want it too easy, they believe a certain amount of self flagellation is only right and proper when a person unearths a real, hardcore vocation.

So Glasgow it is, to get behind the team with the kind of Irishness the super chargers insist upon, the kind you’ll never find in Dundalk or Galway or Derry. The Holy Grail, the deep fried Mars bar of Paddyism.

Liverpool 2 Manchester United 0 - An Apology

In my previous post I tried to convey the impression that Rafael Benitez is a total clown. This morning I would like to issue a correction to this assertion. He is in fact a total genius. I apologise for any inconvenience this misunderstanding may have caused.

Liverpool 1 Lyon 2 - An Apology

In my previous post I tried to convey the impression that Rafael Benitez has a personality which is made up of equal, independent strands of genius and clown. This morning I would like to issue a correction to this assertion. He is a total clown. I apologise for any inconvenience this misunderstanding may have caused.

Three Things

What the fuck is Bill Cullen up to? He fired Maria. The only normal one. He must have had a few jars on board. That’s the only plausible explanation.

Why didn’t John O’Donoghue make out that he had been taken hostage by extreme right wing French nationalists that time in Longchamp? No one would have batted an eyelid about him coming home on the government jet. Not like him to miss a trick like that.

Rafael Benitez is the only person that I know of who is simultaneously a genius and a complete clown. Tonight, against Lyon, he will show us the genius. On Saturday, against Sunderland, he showed us the clown.
Rafa can be summarized thus: (cl+pl-c/38)=(g+c)-g/6+4

Subhuman Resources

I have tried to give the protagonists on The Apprentice a chance, I’ve tried to like them but alas I appear to be fighting a losing battle with my better self. I can’t help but hate them all. And seemingly this is my default setting with so much of this reality based programming. I hate them all and I love Bill because Bill gives them all such a hard time. He abuses them unrelentingly and he seems to enjoy it. He takes pride in attempting to systematically dismantle their character from every conceivable perspective. I would enjoy it too. I love Bill.

They annoy us instantaneously; so self involved, so shallow and manipulative. And we know that the person or thing who devised the concept of humanity had the direct opposite of people like this in mind when he was coming up with his first sketches. And we wonder how people who are mostly in their mid twenties could be so numbingly dull.

It’s not of course that they are bad people but probably because they tend to take things a bit too seriously. And have a tendency to try to rationalize the most damning of situations into their favour. In blatant contradiction of the evidence. So their problems could be summed up by saying that they do not know when to let it lie. And in this regard they are probably no different to anyone born in this country after 1980. So it might not even be their fault per se. But that does not make them any more palatable.

This is why we get the likes of Brendan seeking to explain that his refusal to take responsibility for the management of a task in which he had a lot of experience reflected more poorly on his team mates than it did on himself. He did not know when to let it lie. And Bill came very close to cutting him loose as a result. But he won’t learn. They never do.

You don’t want to do it but it happens involuntarily; your mind casts back to your college days and you try to imagine sharing the same airspace with people of this ilk. Clean cut super heroes, learnt everything they know from long running American network sitcoms. Nobody comes out of that mental exercise smelling of roses let me tell you.

We will never embrace this medium, we knew that before we started. This medium with these young people in this young country in this unprecedented funk. And if we can’t embrace something like The Apprentice which within its genre is pretty mild, well what’s left, what slivers of modern pop culture are left for us. In America they seem to have got it figured out, like a lot of things that will eventually dawn on us over here. They have had their flirtation with reality but also had the decency to remember to make a few good TV shows while they were at it. They have something to fall back on. We have The Byrne Ultimatum.

We can at least give ourselves credit for starting the whole thing off in the first place all those years ago. Remember Superstars with Gerry Loftus and Declan Burns. They even had the odd celebrity like Pat Spillane and Jack O’Shea to add a touch of glamour. Reality TV ground zero right there baby. Don’t know if it’s any consolation, but it is the truth.

The Shrugs Don't Work

You look at some leaders and ascribe to them superhuman qualities. You marvel at their ability to do what they do, to motivate themselves day after day to deal with huge and complex issues, to navigate their way through the quagmire of partisan politics and global expectations to produce tangible results or at the least a sense of hope and optimism for the future.

There’s the crippling workload; the speeches, the committees, the meetings, the skill and nuances of diplomacy required to extract results from seemingly hopeless situations. There’s the unrelenting glare of the world’s media honed on them as go about their business, as they address world leaders, chair summits, give press conferences, do interviews or take part in live debates.

You see them do all this and think about the qualities they must possess. The composure, the poise, the work ethic, the confidence, the eloquence, the nervelessness. You know you could never do what they do, the mere thought is preposterous.

These people, people such as Obama possess such presence and charisma, such miraculous ability to lead and comfort people with the knowledge that whatever problems we face are eminently surmountable as long as he is at the helm. They have your admiration because you cannot for one moment imagine yourself in their shoes.

And then you look at Brian Cowen and you see what way things would pan out if by some bizarre mix up you yourself became prime minister of the country. You look at him and instantly recognize all the failings and shortcomings that you know you would be guilty of. The lack of motivation, the negative body language, the absence of any guile, confidence, enthusiasm or commitment. You look at him in the Dail and you think of days at work when you could not take your eyes off the clock such was your all consuming desire to get out of there and have a few pints on the way home. When it didn’t really matter how half assed you were doing your work as long as you kept out of the boss’s way and got paid every month.

The Obamas of this world belong to a parallel reality, one where real application and ability can produce real results for billions of people. Our reality contains Brian Cowen, midlander, nod’s as good as a wink, one of our own. He’s one of us all right; fuckin’ hopeless. And livin’ for the weekend.

Sure You Can't Have Everything

When Brian Cowen took over as our glorious leader he was touted from all quarters as an intellectual powerhouse. I took this to mean that under his stewardship we would soon see, all over the country, smoke filled bistros and cafes heaving with beret wearing militants chain smoking Gauloise, sipping absinth, talking revolution and discussing the later works of Baudelaire.

And none of this has happened.

What has happened is that Cowen has officially opened several unnecessary stretches of very wide tarmacadam, been photographed in a tractor at the National Ploughing Championships, fucked off to New York for a week to discuss the weather with Angela Merkel's wardrobe consultant and generally come as close to resembling an intellectual powerhouse as Dizzie Rascal has to resembling the next Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Ah well, it’s a good thing he’s so easy on the eye. I’d never forgive him otherwise.