Iverson with three or four fantastic alley-oops and a great dunk. 15 assists for AI but 2 for 20 in the first 3 quarters, then 13 points (of 20) in the fourth. Great highlights.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Iverson vs Kobe (2001)
This is a great video of the 2001 NBA Finals. Two of the best shooting guards in the game going up against each other. Iverson the MVP, versus Kobe Bryant who is just a little younger than me. Excellent footage of the battle.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Living a productive life & Capote's In Cold Blood
What a day! It's around 6 in the afternoon, and I've been lounging in bed all day. I've done absolutely nothing since waking up except lie in my cot fooling around on the internet. I joined up to Bebo, and made up a 'how well do you know me' style quiz. I've been looking at various stuff on YouTube as well, such as clips from Apocalypse Now and some basketball. The only drawback is that I've had nothing to eat except a couple of yoghurts and a lump of bread. I'm just after getting dressed this minute, and now I think I'll go across to the shop and buy some ice-cream. I know, I know, I'm an inspiration to you all...
Yesterday I added a book to my 2007 list of books: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Earlier this summer I blogged up a list of all the books I read in 2005, with the 2006 list to follow at some point. I'll publish the 2007 list at some stage next year. It's one of those books I've been meaning to read for a long time. I wanted to read it before I saw that film about Capote that came out recently, so I must rent that out one of these days now that I'm finished. Anyway, the book is a novelised account of a real-life multiple murder that happened in 1959. The novel begins shortly before the murder and ends with the evetual death of the two perpetrators, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. It reminded me of Steinbeck a little, although I'm not sure if that was due to the setting or the writing. Probably a little of both.
Apparently Capote was fascinated by the crime, and he certainly brings the events he's relating to vivid life. He paints an evocative picture of US society and does a great job of getting right inside the skins of each of the characters, even those who are only present for a handful of pages of the book. He also manages to successfully tread a fine line between having some empathy with the killers (particularly Perry Smith), and also emphasising the sheer nastiness and pointlessness of the crime. He manages to draw the events in a way that draws attention to all the contradictions and contingencies of the human experience, so that, for example, it's possible to see Smith as representing all points along a spectrum from cold-hearted, brutal psychopathy to likeable, sympathetic vulnerability.
I believe that Mr. Capote was gay. One thing that I wondered as I read the book was whether Smith and Hickock themselves had some manner of homosexual relationship. They seem to behave like a couple quite a bit, and Hickock has a tendency to call Smith 'honey' when he talks to him. But maybe that was just his way of talking. The book contained a reference to Smith being hassled by 'queers' in the armed forces, all right, but I don't think there were any other overt references to homosexuality. But I wondered if there was a latent current going on there. I'm not for a second suggesting that just because Capote was gay himself, this was all he was able to write about (or think about), or that he was projecting his own sexual identity onto these real-life characters. I just thought that this might have been an undercurrent in the book. I'll probably look into it myself on the interweb at some point.
You wouldn't think I've a thesis to write with all this blogging, novel-reading, internet-browsing, in bed-lying and quiz-making-upping, but I actually have to write 15-20,000 coherent words about International Relations by 6th September. It's a serious struggle. I do put a lot of time into it, and I've a reasonable amount of work done, but I've been finding it extremely slow going. I haven't yet been able to get into any kind of flow with my writing as yet. So far, I've only come up with around 2,000 usable words, and it was an ordeal to squeeze every single one of those out onto the page.
Nonetheless, I actually feel reasonably good about the whole thing. I have a couple of essays that I wrote during the year that I intend to plunder for more wordage, and I'm sticking with my mantra: there's plenty of time... Even though it's almost time to start counting down to the deadline in days instead of weeks... Aaaarghhh...
Plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time...
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote
Yesterday I added a book to my 2007 list of books: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Earlier this summer I blogged up a list of all the books I read in 2005, with the 2006 list to follow at some point. I'll publish the 2007 list at some stage next year. It's one of those books I've been meaning to read for a long time. I wanted to read it before I saw that film about Capote that came out recently, so I must rent that out one of these days now that I'm finished. Anyway, the book is a novelised account of a real-life multiple murder that happened in 1959. The novel begins shortly before the murder and ends with the evetual death of the two perpetrators, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. It reminded me of Steinbeck a little, although I'm not sure if that was due to the setting or the writing. Probably a little of both.
Apparently Capote was fascinated by the crime, and he certainly brings the events he's relating to vivid life. He paints an evocative picture of US society and does a great job of getting right inside the skins of each of the characters, even those who are only present for a handful of pages of the book. He also manages to successfully tread a fine line between having some empathy with the killers (particularly Perry Smith), and also emphasising the sheer nastiness and pointlessness of the crime. He manages to draw the events in a way that draws attention to all the contradictions and contingencies of the human experience, so that, for example, it's possible to see Smith as representing all points along a spectrum from cold-hearted, brutal psychopathy to likeable, sympathetic vulnerability.
Killers Perry Smith (top) and Richard Hickock
I believe that Mr. Capote was gay. One thing that I wondered as I read the book was whether Smith and Hickock themselves had some manner of homosexual relationship. They seem to behave like a couple quite a bit, and Hickock has a tendency to call Smith 'honey' when he talks to him. But maybe that was just his way of talking. The book contained a reference to Smith being hassled by 'queers' in the armed forces, all right, but I don't think there were any other overt references to homosexuality. But I wondered if there was a latent current going on there. I'm not for a second suggesting that just because Capote was gay himself, this was all he was able to write about (or think about), or that he was projecting his own sexual identity onto these real-life characters. I just thought that this might have been an undercurrent in the book. I'll probably look into it myself on the interweb at some point.
You wouldn't think I've a thesis to write with all this blogging, novel-reading, internet-browsing, in bed-lying and quiz-making-upping, but I actually have to write 15-20,000 coherent words about International Relations by 6th September. It's a serious struggle. I do put a lot of time into it, and I've a reasonable amount of work done, but I've been finding it extremely slow going. I haven't yet been able to get into any kind of flow with my writing as yet. So far, I've only come up with around 2,000 usable words, and it was an ordeal to squeeze every single one of those out onto the page.
Nonetheless, I actually feel reasonably good about the whole thing. I have a couple of essays that I wrote during the year that I intend to plunder for more wordage, and I'm sticking with my mantra: there's plenty of time... Even though it's almost time to start counting down to the deadline in days instead of weeks... Aaaarghhh...
Plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time plenty of time...
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