Smokin’ Joe Frazier Dead at 65

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Carps


“Down goes Frazier – down goes Frazier” 

Smokin’ Joe Frazier, who died today aged just 65, will forever be associated with that excitable bit of awed commentary, staggering around the ring in confused, blurred technicolor, Foreman landing unforgiving bombs on the back of his head. But if ever a man was short-changed by his soundbite it was he; for Frazier was truly one of the most astounding boxers that ever stalked a ring.

I’ve had a long, secret love affair with the 70s heavyweight boxers (not physically, I stress: I imagine that would hurt like hell). As a kid, I grew up with Tyson, Hagler and Hearns and the holy triumvirate of great British Middleweights – Benn, Watson and Eubank – but it was the footage of Ali, Frazier and so on that was the real fascination.

At first, it was all about Ali. Watching his interviews alone – never mind his fights – it was hard not to be captivated. The interviews leading up the Rumble in the Jungle (buy When We Were Kings) highlight Ali at his magnetic best. Shorn of his early brashness and more at peace than during the height of his Nation of Islam militancy, Ali was cute and mercilessly funny in his trashtalking. That he delivered the goods in the ring was merely the icing on the cake.

But as I dug into the scene, learning more about the guys that Ali fought, it was the steely dark presence of Joe Frazier that most fascinated. Frazier shared something in his attitude with Sonny Liston. Like Liston he was brought up in poverty and literally fought his way to the top of the tree. Like Liston his persona stood in stark contrast to that of Ali. No verbal slapstick accompanied his progress across the ring. Crouched low, head bobbing, snorting, shaking his head like a tethered bull. And completely, utterly relentless.

As a boxer, he held perhaps the most potent left hook ever seen in the ring. Ali was always vulnerable to left hooks. Even a relative unknown like Sonny Banks was able send Ali (then still just Cassius Clay) to the canvas with a left hook – not to mention Our ‘Enry, Ken Norton… and, of course, Frazier himself.

The Thrilla in Manilla has come to overshadow Frazier’s rivalry with Ali, but more significant was the ‘Fight of the Century’ when Frazier handed Ali his first professional defeat with a 15th round knockdown – delivered, of course, with that ferocious left hook. Much is and was made of Ali’s 43 month lay off before that fight. But entering the ring that night he was still young, still in his prime and as anyone who was watched the fight knows, was still possessed of much of the blistering hand speed and balance that had seen him clean out the division in the 60s.

On any other night, against any other fighter, Ali would have taken the bout by the middle rounds. But this was not any other not and this wasn’t any other fighter.

Frazier, as he always did, weathered the storm of Ali’s constant, numbing canter and peppering headshots. Walking through Ali’s best blows he came in again and again to deliver punishing body shots of his own. As the fight entered its second half Frazier merely became stronger. In the final round, he delivered the blow that he should be remembered for: a shocking left to the head that crumpled Ali and won the fight.

By that point, he could legitimately claim to be the best heavyweight alive. He had beaten Oscar Bonavena, Jerry Quarry, Ali, Bob Fost and George Chuvalo.

After the Fight of the Century, Ali was a changed boxer. By the famous Manilla rematch, his speed was a shadow of what it was and for the remainder of his career he would be involved in a number of victories that were ground out against largely forgotten (often unfairly) fighters like Norton, Shavers, Jimmy Young and Alfredo Evangelista. His ‘rope-a-dope’ tactic, adopted to stunning effect against Foreman, was really just a recognition that after his fight with Frazier his legs were gone.

Frazier showed Ali he was only human.

The only two men able to beat Frazier were Ali and Foreman. One a gilded, once-in-a-lifetime boxing genius – the other perhaps the most devastating puncher that ever lived. That tells you all you need to know about Frazier. He might have become defined by his relationship with Ali, but the best tribute is from the 58th minute on in the video below (until someone takes it down, anyway)

Enjoy

Posted in Random Crap | 2 Comments

Europe in Flames?

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Carps

If, as seems likely, the French and Germans get their way, Papandreou will be history soon. Who will replace him? Someone who is prepared to kowtow to the EU line and sign Greece up to decades of penury. How will that end? Badly.

I said yesterday that memories were short because apparently the leaders of the EU have forgotten the very recent history of Greece, Italy and Spain. As any fule kno, the Latin rim of the EU is culturally distinct from the ‘core’ of Northern Protestant Europe. Not for them the save hard/work hard ethic that has seen Germany rise to economic dominance – but as Hazlitt said:

“If we are the paragons that some people make us out, what must the rest of the world be? If we monopolize all the sense and virtue on the face of the globe, we leave others poor indeed… Let them have a few advantages we have not – grapes and the sun!”

Alongside the transparent folly of yoking different economies to a single currency, the undercurrents of culture and history still run deep – and are all but forgotten in the scramble to keep the FTSE on the up and France’s AAA+ rating intact.

No chance then that Sarkozy or Merkel would remember Versailles and the Weimar Republic. Then, in punishment for the Great War, the allied powers shackled Germany – crippling her industry, robbing her of autonomy and casting her into subjugation.

Unable to escape her bonds, Germany slumped into depression and hyper-inflation stoked by the measures necessary to pay their debts. Any one of a number of demagogues that flourished in Germany at the time could have trod the path taken by Hitler. Even if Germany deserved her punishment, it made for a fertile breeding ground for the dark powers of nationalism and the thirst for justice as they saw it. History remembers the Nazis, but in fact the country was overrun by extremist groups who may have differed in ideology, but who shared the common goal of revenge for Germany’s humiliation.

Melodramatic? Maybe. Perhaps the Greeks will settle into a couple of decades worth of poverty with calm understanding. Perhaps they won’t mind as they are asset-stripped, their public services decimated and their economic policy dictated from Berlin. It could well be that no charismatic orator will arise from amid this proud and ancient people to harness populist sentiment and yoke it to nationalistic fervour. Perhaps the Direct Democracy Now! movement will eventually wither into the Mediterranean dust.

Perhaps.

It’s not a game that anyone should play lightly though. Being scolded by the likes of Sarkozy must be a bitter joke to the Greeks. France has been cooking the books for decades and was warned again by the IMF for its budget deficit only in July. The Maastricht Treaty specified that no country should run more than a 3% budget deficit. In every year since 1997, France has failed in this obligation.

And yet there he is, admonishing the Greeks without shame from atop his stack heels. All because it is the French banking sector that is most at risk of a Greek default.

All ifs, buts and maybes. But if Greece defaults, France totters. And if France totters? Well. Let no-one pretend that France is above nationalist demagoguery itself. Be under no illusion: these are dangerous times – and not just economically. Whatever your feelings are toward bankers, the Eurozone or the political classes, whether you stand on the left or the right, you’d better hope that things change tack.

Posted in Pointless Futurology, Politics | Leave a comment

Drums… drums… drums in the deep

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Carps

UPDATE: I spent quite a bit of time writing this stuff about the Greeks last night, but the situation is moving fast. Now the EU is threatening to bankrupt Greece if they don’t agree to the terms of the bail out immediately by withholding the next tranche of funds.

Sarkozy apparently thinks he’s holding a gun to the Greeks’ head:

“Our Greek friends must decide whether they want to continue the journey with us. We cannot commit European taxpayers’ money unless the rules unanimously adopted in Brussels are respected to the letter.”

As the French banking system will collapse and plunge France herself into a death spiral if Greece defaults, it’s hard to know what the fuck he thinks he’s playing at. The stakes are high and all you can take from his words is actually blind panic.

Anyway. More about Greece below.

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UPDATE 2: According to the Beeb, Papandreou will be offering his resignation within the hour. The fogs are nowhere close to lifting on this. The threats of Sarkozy et al seem to have pushed Papa to the brink.

Before they parade around the estate, chest puffed out, it would, however, behoove the French to remember what happened the last time they were involved in a plan that put another sovereign country into austerity and ruin for a couple of decades.

If the EU plan goes ahead, how long before a Greek ‘strong man’ arises to awaken nationalist sentiment?

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George PapandreouGeorge Papandreou. Hailed as European Diplomat of the Year in 2003 by European Voice for his efforts to build a lasting, inclusive solution to the Cyprus dispute. The first person in Greece to introduce affirmative action. The first person in Europe to purge his army’s generals in how long? Decades?

Amongst the heat generated by his sudden decision to call a referendum on the EU’s proposed bail out (such as it is) his decision to sack the heads of the armed forces and make appoint loyalists was almost lost.

But the name Papandreou crops up throughout the last century of Greek politics. Both his dad and his grandad ran the place, back in day. Most notably, Papa Papandreou was caught up in the swirling torment of the Greek military junta.

Memories are apparently so short as to forget that as recently as 1974 Greece was under military rule. But Papandreou, it seems, has a longer memory than most – and his own family’s experiences must loom large in his thoughts. His decision to purge the generals can only tell us one of two things: Papandreou either fears his army or fears that he needs to use them.

Are things in Greece this bad? So far the intellectual firepower of the world seems to have been focussed on the Bad and the Ugly parts of the Euro crisis (there is no Good). To the elites, the demonstrators on the streets are every bit as much of an irrelevancy as Greek public opinion in general. Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister said:

“I truly fail to understand what Greece intends to have a referendum about. Are there any real options?”

Well, actually, Carl yes there are. The Greeks could leave the Euro. They could reject the plans that would leave them a vassal state of the EU superstructure.

They could revolt. Indeed, arguably, they have been for some time. People have already died on the streets.

Now everyone knows that the Greeks have long been taking a free ride on a gravy train funded by the workers of Germany (and, indeed, buying the products of German industry with the fruits of their ‘labours’). But the EU’s proposals are more about saving the Euro – and more particularly the French banking sector – than anything to do with helping Greeks themselves.

Whether or not there is a moral case that says that the Greeks should do whatever is asked of them to help repair the damage of the Eurozone, there is also the counter-argument that the Eurozone has been complicit from day one. The last 15 years have been an era of voodoo economics where the likes of Gordon Brown (to pick an entirely random example) seem to have fallen to the belief that money appeared infinitely from nowhere. Until Greek debt became an issue for the French banks, pretty much no-one gave a shit.

And now they offer 9 years of poverty and shackles – all to save France. All Greece’s assets to be stripped. Greek public services to be effectively closed down. Mass unemployment with no hope of relief. Indeed, the opposite of relief, because continuing membership of the Eurozone will mean a permanent enslavement in the name of protecting shareholders in French banks.

Why does any of this matter: after all, Greece is a far away country of which we know nothing, right?

Well, as I’ve been saying for nigh on a year now, ‘contagion’ isn’t just a word that the Euro must fear – it is an inescapable fact of history. If Greece fears the military then what of Spain – itself also under military rule until 1975 and swimming in the same economic waters? Just across the balmy Aegean, Italy was riven by paramilitary unrest into the 1980s. Never mind the “reaction of the markets”

Under this supposed ‘union’ of European countries lie nation states, long bitterly held memories and a boiling tempest of public opinion. Faster than they can comprehend, the Project is unravelling.

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A conversation with a minor celebrity about the nature of propaganda

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Carps

Fresh from a short, but illuminating conversation with ex-comedian Emma Kennedy* on Twitter in which she fell into the classic error of mistaking tabloid journalism for propaganda.

Talking to Alexei Sayle this pm, I realised one of worst tricks The Sun ever played is persuading the working class to vote Conservative EmmaK67

I hate this assumption – almost always held by those on the left – that the working classes they claim to represent are thoughtless schlubs who bend with whatever wind happens to be blowing through the pages of the press. Which I pointed out in return:

“Those working classes, eh? Such gulluble dupes.” carpsio

She replied:

“It’s not that. Media manipulation is very powerful”

My reply:

I think you can only assume that the media is powerful by also assuming that people are malleable.

And her final reply:

but they are. And always have been. Propaganda is as old as the hills. It goes back to Roman Times

I think this exchange is very instructive. Firstly, there is the aforementioned casual equation of tabloid journalism with propaganda. Like so much of what the Left believe, this has come straight outta academia – represented (surprise!) by our old friend Noam Chomsky. He decided that:

“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

Well that’s certainly one point of view. Another might be that the story of the 20th century was actually about the apogee of State Collectivism – represented by such luminaries as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hirohito, Mugabe, Castro and any number of murderous regimes responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocents. None of those were noticeably in favour corporate power. Indeed, most of them positioned themselves explicitly against corporate power – and this largely through propaganda as you, I and most sensible people would recognise it: total control of all media outlets. It’s of a different order to, say, Aon buying advertising space on Wayne Rooney’s chest.

The message in almost all cases was and is the same: the people/volk/working classes have been laid low by foreign/corporate interests and only Obergruppenfuhrer X or Ayatollah Y can deliver salvation. On the back of such populism are dictatorships made. At one of the spectrum the international jewry – at the other end bolshevik intellectuals or capitalist pigdogs. It doesn’t really matter where the spectrum is to some degree – it’s always about identifying an enemy and ultimately justifying their slaughter.

How does this tally with – to use Kennedy’s own example – The Sun? Well firstly, The Sun isn’t in any way mandatory. It’s not in the national curriculum, nor is it illegal to travel in public without it under your arm. “The Sun Says” is not read out over stirring patriotic songs every evening on the radio. It represents a certain political viewpoint, for sure, but it isn’t ‘propaganda’ in any serious sense. The paper was originally Labour supporting and spent a decade from 1995 onwards back in that mode so it isn’t even consistent with itself unless you belong to the ‘Tony Blair was just a Tory in a pink tie’ club.

Indeed, for supposed ‘corporate propaganda’ tools, it’s notable that the tabloids have often taken up arms against energy companies, banks and insurance companies for their profiteering ways (cast your mind back but a couple of years to the ‘Rip Off Britain’ campaigns, which were pure tabloid). Sure, they balance their interests carefully as they rely on advertising revenue but corporations are every bit as fair game as cheating footballers when the opportunity arises.

Secondly – and more tellingly – is the assumption that people just suck up whatever the papers tell them like animated, tracksuit-wearing sponges. In fact, as study after study has shown, journalism is (and was – long before the hacking scandal) among the least trusted of professions. At the danger of falling into anecdote, certainly most people I know treat newspapers and most popular magazines as little more than entertaining bullshit.

At the secondary danger of boringly fighting academics with academics, a study by Oxford academics found that the influence of the media was overestimated by most people when thinking about other people. Just as most people think themselves to be above average drivers, so most people think that other people are easily swayed by the media. It’s known as the ‘third person effect‘ – which is summarised thus:

“People exposed to a potentially persuasive communication will expect the message to have a greater effect on others than on themselves.”

So Kennedy believes that the Sun persuaded the working classes to vote Tory and that’s an end to it. Or to put it another way: the working classes are thoughtless sheep who’ll do whatever Rupert Murdoch tells them to do, unlike well-read academics and comedians who just know better.

And furthermore the final – if largely unspoken – assumption is that the Tories do/did nothing that benefited the working classes ever and that therefore any working class person voting for them was stupidly voting against their own interests.

Doesn’t that strike you as patronising as shit?

It is this underlying assumption that informs all this ‘nudge theory’ and ‘behavourial change‘ horseshit to which we’re subjected to (at our own expense, if you please!) We can’t be trusted to eat well because we’re blinded by advertisements for Poptarts. We can’t be trusted not to vote for the Nazis, make the right choice about our membership of the EU or decide the best way to get to work so either we’re not allowed into the debate, or are subject to relentless propaganda (irony of ironies). The Great and the Good – from David Cameron to dreary indie frontmen, every hand-wringing pulpiteer or well-intentioned comedian starts from this basis: they know best, so basically fuck you.

Depressing.

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*Her The Tent, The Bucket and Me is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. As no stranger to camping disasters, it very much struck a chord with me. A shame to discover that she is of this intellectual bent.

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Post Brain Surgery Recovery

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Carps

As I’ve averred elsewhere, no two brain operations are exactly alike. I wouldn’t take anything written here as anything more than just some personal reflections.

As the pile of Macmillan Trust pamphlets on my bedside table attests, meningioma is the merest whisker away from cancer. Only the difference between the words ‘malign’ and ‘benign’ separate the unfortunate from the unfortunate. But even being fortunate comes with a physical and mental toll.

The biggest thing has been sleep. At first, trying to kill the pain of the post-op scars, I slipped into taking Codeine Phosphate. So far as I can tell, this works by giving you distractions rather than by actually killing the pain. Those distractions are, in order of severity:

  1. Shitting-yourself level nightmares
  2. Unable-to-shit-under-any-circumstances level constipation

Hmm.

Progressing to paracetamol certainly ended the nightmarish dream state and liberated my bowels, but aren’t exactly a massive bulwark against the pain. It’s not that the pain is cripplingly severe, just a kind of ever-present background thing that makes it difficult to sleep or concentrate on things for very long.

Fortunately, my face now looks just common-or-garden fat again, rather than as if I’ve been repeatedly punched about the fizzog by some hamhanded angryman from a Pennine mill town. The anti-inflammatory drugs (dexamethosone?) at least did their bit of the job.

My staples are also out. I think I’m still slightly stunned by the revelation that they perform the operation with a ‘gamma knife’ – which sounds like something off of Blake’s 7 – and then put you back together with staples.

To remove them, they basically use a staple remover too. Nothing fancy. Just some plier-looking motherfuckers and a Woman What Does yanking them out of your head in a back office at the doctors while twittering on about X Factor. Uncomfortable. Now they’re gone, I can fully appreciate the scar though: there’s still a bunch of stitches which will dissolve with time, but now you can actually see the thing it’s quite impressive – a good 6-7 inches of twisted, bumpy flesh that will be a talking point down the Hare for years to come, I’m sure.

This week’s other interesting side effect has been fatigue. Lord alone knows they’ve mentioned it enough – I’ve a fistful of well-intentioned leaflets on the subject – but this week has been like swimming through a vague alcoholic fug of the kind you get when you’ve had a dinner time pint and suddenly find yourself outdoors. You know the thing when you’re very careful about where you put your feet as you walk/stagger back home/to the office? Well that’s been the story of the week. They have given me a clutch of notes telling me to get some exercise, but when you find yourself leaning on lampposts every 100 yards it’s hard to imagine popping down to the gym to work off your biscuit intake.

All that aside, my ability to hold a conversation (or type a meandering blog post) seems to be undiminished – a fact for which I’m sure you’re grateful.

I’ve got a vague hope that I might get back into the office next week. Hanging round the house might be doctor’s orders, but it’s also shit boring after a while.

Posted in life, meningioma | 4 Comments

Stone Roses Reunion

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Carps

It was 20 years ago today that… well. I was probably stood at a bus stop picking my nose, as I often did in the early nineties in all honesty. In the mental picture of myself that I hold from the era however, I am shambling around in my baggies (24″ Joe Bloggs Snow Wash) and Reni hat, trying to maintain an ape-like gait and pouting a lot. Pictures of the time actually reveal that I looked even more of a twat than that would suggest without ever getting near the cool I so desperately sought.

But yeah. The Stone Roses. Like all bands that happen for you during a certain time of life, the memories are so bound up with the music that critical distance isn’t really an option. For a couple of years, we breathlessly traced their every movement through the pages of the music press. Gifted with a clutch of timeless songs (with nowhere near the ‘dance’ edge they were given credit for at the time) they swaggered about on my teenage conscience as the perfect realisation of a what a band should be.

From the faintly homoerotic fascination with their trousers and haircuts to the nerdy obsession with chords and lyrics, lots of us breathed the Stone Roses. Still to this day, the gig where I finally got to see them in the flesh – the first comeback gig at Bridlington Spa Pavilion, 9th December 1995, is the pinnacle of my live music experiences.

Historically speaking – and taking out personal memories –  they left us with little more a clutch of great songs and the stylistic mannerisms that you come to expect from your indie bands these days: casual thug looks and mouthiness, allied to a kind of pop/rock classicism. And even those were refined and improved on by Oasis to such a degree that Ian Brown simply sits further back in that diagram of man’s evolution from naked ape that you always get in the front of textbooks.

But now they’re coming back. We’re expecting official news today of a reformation of the original line-up for the first time since 1996. Gigs and an album are rumoured.

Will it be the same? Never.

So much of music’s appeal is about the moment. And this isn’t the same moment it was. The Roses were always about positivity and the atmosphere of the early 90s – with ecstasy, Northern revivalism and the fall of communism providing the perfect milieu for the Roses’ brand of 60s tinged and gently dancey rock music.

Today, everything’s gone to shit so far as that’s concerned. We’ve got a world in hock to careless financiers and scumbag politicians and some pouting Mancunians in wide trollies are just going to be another retro moment for some of us to enjoy through some overpriced lager in plastic glasses.

All of which illustrates something else. Probably not since ‘Nevermind’ has there been a defining album for an era. An album that was on everybody’s lips and minds and that provided a soundtrack to events. When you look back on ‘Nam, it’s got a Doors/Rolling Stones soundtrack. Thatcher and Reagan coasted along on the cocktail stylings of the age and even Cool Britannia provided us with the Blur vs. Oasis soundtrack that effortlessly conjures up the age.

Today we’ve got the slightly-troubled-by-middle-class-love voices of Adele and James Morrison providing the backing vocals to riots, financial armageddon and political meltdown.

Sort it out someone. Please.

I fear that, whatever the world is waiting for, it’s not the Stone Roses. But nonetheless, I’ll be digging out my beanie hat and wishing I had a fringe to speak of.

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