they think it’s all over

May 23, 2009May 23, 20096 Comments

Sunday sees the end of the 2008-09 English Premier League Season. Manchester United have already snatched a third successive title, so the real focus is at the table’s foot, where Newcastle, Hull and Sunderland are fighting for survival, with the other North-eastern club Middlesbrough already all but down. Mystic Pete assures me that Hull, who are playing Man U, will go down (as you know, I am Mystic Pete’s representative on Earth, and he is seldom wrong, well, sometimes, well, all the time), but in many ways I’d prefer Newcastle to drop. Not that I have anything against them, if anything I feel great pity for Newcastle: not many big teams make a bigger balls-up of things and go through managers than my beloved Spurs, but Newcastle really teach us a lesson. It’s as if the people running the club want them to go down. It reminds me of the Eurosong organizers in that episode of Father Ted, who let Ted and Dougal’s “My Lovely Horse” win. My Lovely Horse, running around in the field… (um, don’t tell Michael Owen)

As for Spurs, well we got out of that battle a while ago, and how! Now we’re a win away from getting into the Europa Cup (that’s the UEFA Cup; as Alan Partridge would say, “they’ve rebranded it you fool!”) which we purposely got knocked out of this season, to give us a better chance of getting back into it next year. Speaking of Europe, Manchester United face Barcelona in the Champion’s League final on Wednesday in what should be a classic. A phrase which guarantees it will be a 120 minute 0-0 affair ending in tired overpaid stars tapping in penalties. Perhaps we’ll be surprised.

The season finale I’m following most closely however is that in France. When we lived in Aix, in 2002, Olympique Lyonnaise won the title for the first time ever, and we were all pleased. They have won it every year since, totally dominating. This year, however, they’ve slipped up and allowed Bordeaux and Marseille to slug it out. As a Marseille fan I’m delighted, (though Pierre Mystique tells me that les Girondins will break OM hearts), but I just hope this ushers in a new era of competitiveness in French Football.

This time of year though is the time when new football shirts come out to play, and debates rage on football shirt websites (such as football shirt culture, or football-shirts.co.uk) about the lame unimaginativeness of Nike’s templates or the dread felt by fans of teams who have Puma that their new kit will also be in their new cheap wierd chevron style (that’s my concern for the upcoming Tottenham kit anyhow; Puma make nice trainers, but atrocious football kits). Kit companies have taken to releasing ‘leaked images’ of fake kits, to throw off the counterfeiters; Umbro did so with the new England kit. And of course, South American and lower-league English teams are still using female models to launch their new shirts (many of whom wear them much more elegantly than the average beer-and-pie-guzzling footy fan would), but this year’s prize for gratuitous use of female model goes to Northern Ireland’s Linfield. Their new Umbro away kit apparently features some sort of thong. That makes a change; most of the new kits this year are just pants.

name that toon

April 4, 2009April 4, 20093 Comments

This week’s Illustration Friday theme is Talisman; my entry is football legend Alan Shearer, former talismanic striker for Newcastle Utd, and their new (temporary) manager. What a career he had: Southampton, Blackburn, Newcastle and of course England. These days, his beloved home-toon club is in absolute turmoil; I thought being a Spurs fan was a hard ride. Now Shearer is in charge, can he keep them up? Will he be a talismanager?

For my American friends: Alan Shearer was an absolute goal machine in the nineties, but you might not know about him because he didn’t marry a pop-star or have a girl’s soccer film named after him (“Run Away After Scoring and Point in the Air Like Shearer” never made it off the storyboard). He was in that film ‘Goal’ though, which also featured cameos by both Beckham and Zidane. I know you’ve heard of them.

not that pelé

January 17, 2009January 17, 20093 Comments

Yohann Pelé, goalkeeper for French club Le Mans (who according to France Football wants a move to Angleterre), and my illustration friday entry for this week, theme being ‘pale’. Yes, Pale. And this guy’s name is Pelé, which is close enough, right? but it’s not that Pelé, it’s one who surely pales in comparison (oh please). Plus he’s wearing a pale blue kit.

I wanted to draw a footballer from my France Football paper (which I bought in Belgium; can’t get it here in Davis, but I accumulated a massive pile of them when i lived in France, best footy paper in the world). I wanted to do some sketching in pencil and coloured pencil, I was playing around with it, and I like it.

juande, but not today

October 9, 20082 Comments

deadline day

September 2, 20082 Comments

Cor, that was exciting, wasn’t it! I don’t mean Obama’s big speech, or the rain on his parade caused by McCain’s choice of Veep (oh yeah, I hate that word, don’t I) in Sarah “who the..?” Palin, or the rain on the republicans parade caused by hurricane gustav, or the rain on that parade caused by the whole bristol palin non-story. A few days ago I’d have thought bristol palin was an office supply company or something, and as for trig palin, well there’s a name for your “babies, guns’n’jesus” candidate’s son/grandson. Now there seem to be a lot of people in the news dedicating airtime to discussing how they shouldn’t be discussing that story, and before you know it oops, we can’t talk about candidate’s policies, we’re out of time, back later for an interview with the baby’s father…

No, my American friends, my excitement was caused by something which you have undoubtedly no interest in whatsoever: transfer deadline day for the English Premier League. You do things different here, with your drafts and your salary caps, but yesterday in England it was Crazy Season. The deadline to make transfers was midnight September 1st, so clubs and agents were frantically trying to broker deals and outdo each other before midnight, when their expensive striker might juts turn into an expensive pumpkin. I was glued to my computer (midnight there being a comfy four pm here), following the updates on two sites, and was astonished at the mischief suddenly-rolling-in-it Manchester City were causing. I have no doubt that their hilarious bid for Berbatov, gladly accepted by Spurs who were keen to see the Bulgarian fulfill his dream of a move to somewhere in Manchester, helped us get the 30 million we were asking, which United begrudgingly coughed up. Now sulky Berbs has his dream move, and will be with a team that will win things for him, as opposed to one where he actually had to work for his wage packet (oh, except if he was sulking). By the way, sir Alex, four years seems to mean two years these days, so watch out for Real Madrid’s inevitable courting come 2010, and Dimitar’s sudden lifelong dream to play at the Berbateu – I mean, Bernabeu.

There were nails bitten aplenty – would anyone sign Michael Owen? Would Arsenal sign anyone? People texting in claiming to have seen [insert any footballer here] getting out of a taxi outside [insert any football club here]. City were my heroes of the day though, landing the Brazilian Robinho, beating money-bags Chelsea to his signature; he too had talked endlessly about his dream move, but in actually turning the money-grabber’s dream-team down for even more lovely wonga he truly embodies the modern shamelessly greedy money-grabbing bastard footballer of today. Hooray!

I love staying up all night for general elections, watching as each constituency announces their result, watching as the Monster Raving Loony Party honk away at the back; I was reminded of the look on Michael Portillo’s face when he lost Southgate when I though of Chelsea, shortly before midnight, only this time the Monster Raving Loonies actually won the seat, and will apparently soon be trying to win the biggest seat of all, with a flipping hysterical and audacious bid for Cristiano Ronaldo. Oh, please please do it! Just for a laugh. I wish Spurs could get bought by some super-rich Arabs (pretty unlikely though, given Tottenham’s Jewish tradition, Yid Army and all, but you never know – it could be the first step to world peace?).

Bristol who?

pessi-mystic pete

August 23, 20084 Comments

You may have wondered what has happened to Mystic Pete this new football year. Well, my sources tell me he is taking some time off from his uncanny prognosticising to spend more time in the garden, predicting rain and such forth (which may explain the drought we’ve had). He did mumble something about Rafael Benitez being the first managerial sacking, but even that was half-hearted. (Oh, I just noticed “arsenal to win shit” in the message above, it means “arsenal to win shit”, not “arsenal to win shit“. This being a message from Mystic Pete hopefully means arsenal will win shit. But that’s Opti-Mystic Pete, and he’s not in the building).

For those unfamiliar with Mystic Pete, he’s the guy who predicted France would win Euro 2008.

two from the top and four small ones please

July 29, 20081 Comment

You might think the title should be “little green bag”, but since the bag is blue in real life, I’ve gone for a vorderman reference.

This is my my trusty blue shoulder bag, in which i carry my sketchbook and pencil case, along with something else to write in or perhaps read, everywhere i go. It’s from eddie bauer and has a million pockets; it’s the perfect size. I keep my little waterbottle in one of the side pockets, several other useful items like clips and tissue and business cards and bus schedules to sacramento litter the other pockets. I’ve had such bags before (all bought from one store in Aix-en-Provence), all sketchbook sized and convenient, but never with this many pockets. Drawn in olive green copic 0.1.

And Americans may not know what I’m talking about in this one, so let me explain. Robbie Keane, my favourite footballer (that’s soccerer to you), has left my club Spurs and joined Liverpool, who he supported as a boy. I am gutted, gutted, but I don’t blame Keane, I’m pleased for him; if I played for Liverpool and Spurs came in for me, I’d go yesterday. It’s just, we Spurs fans, all we really wanted was a team of Robbie Keanes. We sold Defoe, the ‘too many strikers’ excuse. Berbatov will go anyway. We’re left with Darren Bent.

And Vorderman leaving Countdown!!! (I wonder how many google searches of ‘vorderman’ and ‘countdown’ will end up here now? I had bloody ‘ars*nal sketchbook’ direct here last week, i’m not happy about that) It’s a world gone mental. I don’t know how to correctly write those last few beats of the countdown music, but imagine them in your head now for vorderman:

dun-uh, dun-uh, dun-uh-nuh-nuh.

shuttup old man!

June 29, 2008Leave a comment

Well, euro 2008 turned out rather well, and I’m just now sitting waiting for the Final to kick off, I have my Pepsi Max, I have my Pringles (the crisps, not the cardigans), and I’m impressed that after all his unpredictable prognostics, Mystic Pete got one thing right: Germany in the final. And who said Mystic Pete couldn’t really see the future? (with apologies to France and Portugal, etc)

But there’s now a contender: Mystic Mister T. When asked for a prediction for the final, he scowled at the camera and gave a simple response: “Spaiiin“.

Can’t argue with Clubber.

at world’s end

June 27, 2008June 27, 20083 Comments

After – how long is it, a month and a half maybe? – it looks as though I am finished with the ‘how to save the world’ sketchbook project is finished. Well, there are a few finishing touches to be done to the inside cover, perhaps, but all of the pieces are now complete. Here we are then, at parts 23 to 27.
Part 23 is ‘feed the baby’, which is a pretty good idea if baby wants to keep growing like he does. And he does. Most of these drawings were done at night either while waiting for baby to wake up for his bottle (in this case he was sleeping pretty well), or just after he’s had his bottle and gone back to sleep.

Part 24 is ‘write postcards’ – as you may have seen from a previous colourful drawing, i do like postcards, and have a great deal, in fact it is possible that by saving these little pieces of the world over the years i am in fact saving the world, you saw that one coming didn’t you. (ok no you didn’t but i bet you like to think you had).

Part 25 is fairly relevant to the current period as it is follow the football, or the footy, or as many of you on this side of the pond say, the saacurrr. This is a fair attempt at drawing a couple of footy magazine and a pile of football shirts while watching the semi-finals the Euro 2008.

Part 26 is easier said than done for an up-late-stayer comme moi. My foot appears to have edged into the picture. The crib obviously belongs to the baby. He was alseep in there while I drew, so I had to be quiet with those micron pigma pens. There is a cd player, playing pre-recorded noises of the bathroom fan, which helps the baby sleep; he’ll probably grow up all into avant-garde experimental sampling music now, oh dear.

And then finally, at the top, Part 27 which is of course ‘save the world’.

And so the overall theme was to draw things around the home (which is where the world begins for everybody) because by drawing them you are saving them in some format. And the writing is completely and utterly made up as I went along with pretty much no aforethought whatsoever. Pretty much like the world in general I think. And there you have it. I’ll have to send this off to Atlanta at some point soon.

mystic pete strikes again

June 15, 2008Leave a comment

I have at last gotten to see some of this thing you call football, in this thing you earth people call euro 2008. And wow, is Mystic Pete on good form! Predicting Germany and France to reach the final – before they both decided losing was their preferred tactic – stating categroically that Portugal would get knocked out in round 1 while the Swiss would go through – yes, probably not the best thing to bet on – the Czechs would qualify (got knocked out by the Turks today), the Dutch would be rolled over (completely the opposite), and the Austrians would be out before you can say Viennese whirl (nearly, but not there yet). Still, Mystic Pete is legendary for such predictions, but at least this year he is not alone – any look though a footy magazine pre-tournament will say the same (except for Portugal bit – but to be fair Mystic Pete did think they’d be rattled with all the talk of Ronaldo and the fact thier manager will be a big target for rich managerless clubs, like chelsea, or so MP tells me now, after the fact).