No Bursting My Babble

I am emotionally spent so this will be short. Several Fridays ago, the Champions League quarterfinal draw was held in Nyon, Switzerland; clearly, the cosmos had much too much alcohol and handed Club of My Life the most difficult tie:

They say a blink banishes a ghost, but a dozen blinks after, forty winks later, a hundred years it felt like, the spectre of the third draw above continued to haunt me. What to do but grit my teeth and bear it? The game between Barcelona and Arsenal, the two primary advocates of playing the Beautiful Game beautifully, was hyped to such heights that it could only have disappointed. It didn't.

How could it, when the story was limned with subplots of the Prodigal Sons: Thierry Henry returning to Arsenal in Barcelona colors and Cesc Fabregas captaining The Arsenal against the Catalan club where he learned his craft and cunning; Barcelona golden boy, Lionel Messi, the world's best footballer at present; Arsene Wenger who has won all coaching accolades except the elusive Champions League; Pep Guardiola, former Barca captain, who on his maiden coaching year won all the competitions to be won with his stunning Barca squad; oh and the little matter of the 2006 CL Finals, which Barca nicked (just!) from under Arsenal's nose? (This loss is on equal tragic footing with the World Cup 06 debacle.)

This was a game played atop a gunpowder keg. And were there ever explosions!

The fluidity with which Barcelona demonstrated the passing game, the Tiki Taka, at Arsenal's home, The Emirates, in the first half, particularly, the first painful twenty minutes, and the dispiriting Arsenal response, whose Tippy-Tappy football was nowhere to be seen, would have been enough to send the faint-of-heart crawling back to bed with a bottle of vodka, a mat of sleeping pills, a hastily scribbled holographic will (remember to date it), and a tear-stained No more, Cruel World! No more! valediction...

But I am masochistic some ways, and I got through what was the most humbling forty-five minutes of many a game night reelingly delighted at how Beloved Team had weathered the Barca onslaught with the halftime scoreline at eggs. Yes, a most mystifying 0-0 when the Blaugrana had dominated the Gunners so completely, no one would have begrudged Barca had they led by five goals.

On the half hour mark, Andrey Arshavin, Arsenal midfielder, had to come off because of a strained calf muscle. By his self-diagnosis he classified said calf-muscle as torn, but Arsene Wenger quickly refuted our Russian tragedist's "I fear that I am out 'til the end of the season" claim by saying he should be good to play by the 24th. Smiles.

The gamble on the William Gallas' fitness seems to have backfired though. Everybody was surprised by his return to first team action-- against Barcelona, no less-- since he has not played for months. But Arsenal are desperately short on defenders, so he had to be called in. Unfortunately, he had to be stretchered off just before the first half ended. Arsene Wenger has since confirmed that Big Billy, unlike Arsha, would be out for the rest of Arsenal's games.

A fifteen-minute suspension of proceedings, a ciggie break, a phone call to Miko at 4 am-- hysterical, incoherent, dazed, a cup of hot chocolate, and a packet of cookies. Alien times and an alienated soul demand the comfort of the familiar.

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Because I thrive on show-and-tell’s.

Because for someone mildly scatty, I find in football unblinking focus.

Because Arsenal is my unashamed ardor.

Home Sweet Home

My world stops when Arsenal FC play. I realized that I was irreversibly a Gooner when Thierry Henry left for Barcelona, and it did not even occur to me to switch allegiance.

The Good Old Days

It is a testament to unrehabilitatable fangirlyness that not even Henry could sway me. In the 06 finals of the Champions League, where Arsenal played Barcelona, Miko and I saw the 3 am telecast together. Oh, and what sorry results. Taking cue from, and envious of Miko, who had the good sense to file for a leave the day post game, I called in sick and spent hours and hours being all hangdog and feeling hard done by. (Almost three years on, that travesty of refereeing still haunts me.) I later told one of the bosses that I had a coronary condition. Yes, heartbreak qualifies.

On nights of inspiration, this club is peerless. I have waxed lyrical about Arsenal’s win over AC Milan last year, but I am more forcibly reminded of the September 2008 game where the Gunners well and truly flattened the Rovers 4-0.

Emmanuel Adebayor

Emmanuel Adeboyor’s hat trick was almost secondary to the crafting of the second goal (EA’s first of three), where the Gunners completed twenty-seven passes (twenty-seven!!!) before EA headed the ball past Blackburn's keeper. That is class. Of course, that is overelaboration too (and Arsenal are frequently faulted for this). But that is one such moment when you know that you have been witness to magnificence.

And because Arsenal are Beloved, I am ever-compelled by the urge to walk up to people who wear jerseys emblazoned with “Rooney”, “Lampard”, “Terry”, “Totti”, or “Pirlo” (among others), ask “Why????” or say “You have no idea.”

Even though Arsenal are suffering a goal drought, even though this season seems to be every supporter’s winter of discontent, even though the thaw does not seem to be forthcoming, the thought of not cheering the team on is untenable.

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Cookies to the first to say what song this entry’s title is from. I challenge the cognoscenti (you know who you are).

While Wilson Phillips may hark back to the prehistoric era of cassette tapes, I find that every listen is still a renewal. How could Hold On (which single, I distinctly remember, was No. 1 the day I turned twelve.), Release Me, Impulsive, You’re In Love, Eyes Like Twins ever grow old? Sap, you say? Oh, but isn’t that the one sentiment that will always hold?

It is no exaggeration to declare that this album ruined for me pretty much every other pop effort for years after its release. This is the soundtrack to my twelve year old self’s elbow grease laborings (sweep the floor—which I would always be pants at, and coco husk it to a red shine—which I could never be bad at), unsound imaginings (I felt every word of Release Me, and to this day don’t know why), and nighttime drama rituals (hymns before prayers).

It is one of my woebegonenesses that subsequent collaborations amongst Chynna, Carnie and Wendy were not quite up to par with their first, but then again, I am certain that very few other works are. On the matter of certainties, I end by referring to a cheddar cheese author, whose tour de force (hahaha) I may have referred to in my LAE interview (cringes), “I have one thing to say, one thing only, I’ll never say it another time, to anyone, and I ask you to remember it. In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you have.”

Notes:
1. A et moi were supposed to review West Side Story. She was to be Objective, and I was to be my Fangirl me. That is, I was to rush to the defense of Christian Bautista, who all natterings of ‘miscast” aside, was… pretty good. Hah. This, from someone who thrives on superlatives.
2. Ever-loath to keep anyone on tenterhooks, the uninitiated can listen to the seventh or eighth track in this link. That is the title. And that is sublime.
3. A, Dreamy Dreams with M aside, this is possibly our best topic yet.

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See also: The Sun Might Rise in the West

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A foxhunt, scheming and plotting, family conferences, more scheming and plotting, weddings and divorces, yet more scheming and plotting, births and beheadings, still more scheming and plotting. All told, this is the lushly-appointed, substance- challenged, and rather good fun The Other Boleyn Girl. Based on the novel by Philippa Gregory (which I haven’t read), this is likewise a moral tale, heavily disguised- so heavily disguised it never quite molted- as a Melrose Place melodrama in corsets and leg-of-lamb sleeves.

If heaving bosoms (less Natalie Portman’s and more the hypermammiferous Scarlett Johansson’s), racy romps in drafty castles (both Natalie Portman’s and Scarlett Johansson’s), and bluebloods in tights and fur capelets (i.e. Eric Bana in P. Diddy duds) appeal, then this may very well be one’s type of entertainment. It wangles quite a few laughs, all unintended to be sure, manages to draw nil sympathy, which could not have been intended, and inspires… jewelry design, which for me at least, is a happy and redeeming accident.

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This snippet ran in the pre-Valentine's Special of a broadsheet some months ago: "I love that line from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet":'My only love sprung from my only hate.'

It's spoken by Romeo who's a Montague who finds out that Juliet is from the enemy Capulet clan. I like it because I am able to relate to it based on my experience."

Diether Ocampo, actor, model, sometime-restaurateur, frequent shirt-shedder

And somewhere, in the chancel of a church in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, the mortal remains of one W. Shakespeare flurries in vociferous protest. You would think that Mr. Ocampo would’ve left the Bard of A. alone. Really, you would. The trouble with quoting he who is the quotablest of quotables, is that everyone knows that the line is Juliet’s. Methinks Mr. Ocampo is better off taming his errant wife. Or getting an anime cut-and-color. Or flexing his pectorals for an apparel endorsement. Or possibly, even reading The Alchemist.