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Oct-07-17
 | | offramp: I was watching <Anchorman>, which is a great film. (Anchorman 2 is also very good.) In that film Ron plays the jazz flute in a restaurant and ends the song by shouting "Hey Aqualung!!" That induced me to get my Jethro Tull collection out. They used to be colossal but seem to have faded from peoples' memories. Great songs. |
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| Oct-07-17 | | thegoodanarchist: There was a fellow once wanted by the police. His real name was Didier Lefarge. But he called himself Huntington Priestly. In some society circles, he was known simply as Christophe. (aka "The Christophe"). His con was to seduce wealthy widows, and sell them timeshares in Boca Raton. Well, in chess he was unlucky. One norm away from the IM title, he slipped on a banana peel before the penultimate round of the Hungarian Invitational, breaking his hand. His chess move hand! Of course everyone knows the curious tournament rules in Hungary that are strictly enforced. The arbiter made Didier withdraw from the tournament, half a point shy of his final norm. Thereafter, he restricted his chess activities to hustling homeless players for refundable pop bottles. But his criminal activities continued unabated. Anyway, I saw the documentary of his life on the crime TV channel last night. It was fascinating. |
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Oct-07-17
 | | saffuna: Jethro Tull was great. What you don't point out, and wouldn't know if you haven't seen them live, is that Ian Andersen was as funny as any comedian I've ever heard. Closest I can think of is Billy Connolly, if you know who he is. My first encounter with them was at Fillmore West when I went to see Chuck Berry, and Jethro Tull was second-billed. I had never heard their music. I expected them to trudge out and play heavy blues like Led Zeppelin or Fleetwood Mac (1969 version). But they charged out onto the stage, began playing immediately, with Andersen hopping around the stage on his left leg, kicking his right leg in time as he played his flute. And amazing patter between songs. |
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| Oct-07-17 | | thegoodanarchist: Jethro Tull was also an English agricultural pioneer who helped bring about the British Agricultural Revolution. I didn't know he also was a comedian. |
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Oct-07-17
| | offramp: Ian Anderson is indeed a funny guy. I have seen him on things like <Parkinson> and <The Old Grey Whistle Test>. But the thing is, if you have been on the road for 40 years THERE WOULD BE A <TENDENCY> for a British rocker to have a small store of humorous anecdotes. Admittedly some stories must be kept forever secret. But by now many protagonists will be dead. Dead, I tells ya! |
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Oct-07-17
| | saffuna: His stories the night I saw him were new.
The band had missed the previous night's show because Andersen had come down with serious digestive trouble. So between songs he went through the night, in excrutiating detail, naming every doctor every medicine and their exact effects. Riotous. Also, their drummer was absolutely tremendous. |
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Oct-08-17
| | offramp: <offramp: How about a caption competition?
http://bucket2.glanacion.com/anexos...
Provide a witty caption to that picture in a million words or less and you could win a set of 3 surgical wheelchair-enabled steps.
PLUS if you respond within the next ten minutes you'll be eligible for a copy of my out-of-print autobiography, <"Bikes Babes Bombs Bullets Benonis and Benkos: My Journey of Self-Discovery From Krakatoa to Hiroshima via Tunguska & Roswell.">The guest judge for this round is Sir Richard Branson. Also, use the hashtag #freewheelto help make the Primorsky Stairs (aka The Odessa Steps aka the Potemkin Steps) wheelchair accessible.> The winner was User: Sally Simpson with his dazzling: Kovalyov: <"Who called this place the Isle of Man."> Many congratulations to him. The set of 3 surgical wheelchair-enabled steps is on its way. |
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Oct-16-17
| | offramp: <Henry Blofeld was born in 1939, on the landed Norfolk estate where his family have lived since the 16th century. He attended Eton and then King’s College, Cambridge, despite not passing any A-Levels (“my family had been going to King’s forever”, he explained). Asked by an interviewer many years later what subject he studied, he thought for some time before responding: “I think it was history.”
He failed his Cambridge exams and dropped out. This, however, did not deter a merchant bank in London from taking him on at the persuasion of his uncle, a wealthy City financier. After a while, however, Blofeld began to get bored of that.
“A couple of my friends were writing about cricket,” he thought. “Why the hell shouldn’t I do likewise?”
At a cocktail party in Knightsbridge he met John Woodcock, cricket correspondent of The Times, who arranged for Blofeld to write some county reports, despite possessing no formal skills or training. And thus began the tale of Blowers, which ended at Lord’s on Saturday evening after a 45-year career, with a boundary lap of honour, a plate of lobster thermidor, and warm tributes from on and off the field.
It has been a good life, and an easy life too, as these things go. Naturally, Blofeld was self-deprecating to the last: “Listeners will be relieved to know that their chances of being told the right name of fielders have greatly increased,” he wrote. And this seems to sum up Blofeld’s broad and lasting appeal: a cherished broadcasting persona based on two parts upper-crust charm, one part winking incompetence.
This is to make no personal slight on Blofeld himself: a clever, erudite, well-read, well-travelled man who has endured some genuine strife, and whose buffoonish radio guise is, you suspect, only a well-rehearsed fraction of the whole. I wish him the happiest of retirements. Equally, however, I think his journey matters, because it raises important questions: about the type of public life we want, the public figures we want, and who can prosper in a society we occasionally and amusingly describe as a meritocracy.
Was Blofeld the best man for the job over his 45 years? Or was he simply in many right places at many right times? How many potential commentary greats from less privileged backgrounds never enjoyed his fortune, never knew the right people, never had the luxury of being able to give up a good job, never got to go to the Knightsbridge cocktail party? We shall never know. At every stage of Blofeld’s life, his path was smoothed, facilitated, expedited. Doors swung open; you can hardly blame him for walking through them.
Blofeld’s good fortune continued to inure him in the commentary box. Over the years, his melodic Old Etonian vowels and kooky gift for description earned him a certain kooky affection. His mistakes - an increasing inability to identify players, misquoting the score, a tendency to talk over his fellow commentators - were invariably explained away as foibles, bloopers, part of the endearing, vaguely-bewildered-posh-man schtick that Boris Johnson and latterly Jacob Rees-Mogg have exploited to great effect.
Only the privileged white man has this luxury: of being cast as a “loveable eccentric”, “a distinctive voice”, “a bit of a character”. The young female commentator who keeps misidentifying fielders will not last long. Nor will the working-class black commentator who frequently gets the score wrong and refers to Jonny Bairstow as “David”. This is the gift of privilege: you need only be half as good as another to earn twice the acclaim.
The world is changing. Test Match Special is changing, too: the culture of chattering “ex-public schoolboys”, as the late Don Mosey put it, is slowly eroding. And you suspect that a good deal of the affection towards Blofeld is actually nostalgia, not so much for one man, as for what he represented: a place of pigeons and buses and cake and laughter, where the cream always rose to the top, and everyone knew their place.> |
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Oct-20-17
| | offramp: How about another caption competition?
Provide a witty caption to this picture
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia...
in 1000 words or less.
User: Sally Simpson had me chuckling away with his brilliant winner for the last one; how will he do with this one?
The prize is the same: a set of 3 surgical wheelchair-enabled steps. PLUS if you respond within the next ten minutes you'll be eligible for a copy of my out-of-print autobiography, <"Bikes Babes Bombs Bullets Benonis and Benkos: My Journey of Self-Discovery From Krakatoa to Hiroshima via Tunguska & Roswell.">
The guest judge for this round is Harvey Weinstein. ALSO, please use the hashtag #freewheel to help make the Potemkin Steps in Odessa wheelchair accessible. |
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Oct-20-17
| | saffuna: <Provide a witty caption to this picture > "Why don't we set the board up correctly next time?" |
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Oct-20-17
 | | moronovich: "Dont play this again,Sam!" |
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| Oct-22-17 | | thegoodanarchist: < offramp: How about another caption competition? Provide a witty caption to this picture
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia...
in 1000 words or less. >
Remember that time we held your cousin's head in the toilet? Yes, of course! |
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Oct-23-17
| | offramp: <offramp: How about another caption competition?
Provide a witty caption to this picture
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia...
in 1000 words or less...>
Guest judge Harvey Weinstein writes:
"There was a record entry for this month's caption competition. I had a look at the picture and it looks like two guys playing chess. One looks a lot like Christopher Lee. Is it him? OK, so who is the other guy. Is it Vincent Price? I had sex with Christopher Lee. I don't really know much about chess, but this caption tickled my funny-bone:
<PRICE: Remember that time we held your cousin's head in the toilet?
LEE: Yes, of course!>
That has had me laughing away merrily for a week now, so I suppose that one is the winner." Mr Weinstein is referring to the caption from User: thegoodanarchist and he is therefore the winner. His prize of a set of 3 wheelchair-enabled steps is on its way. I have sent them to the Post Office in Jackson County, Kentucky USA. Simply approach the clerk and say in a big loud voice, "<I am The Good Anarchist and I want my disabled steps, goddammit!> Commiserations to all the losers. There might be another CC next week. |
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Oct-23-17
| | offramp: Why did none of the Beatles go deaf?
A: Ear prudence. |
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| Oct-23-17 | | technical draw: What Beatle song was about chess?
A.Norwegian Woodpusher. |
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| Oct-23-17 | | thegoodanarchist: I won!? I can't believe I won!
I won! I won! I won!
I never win, not since I won a Bay City Rollers 45 record in 4th grade ("Saturday Night"). Another boy won a C. W. McCall 45 record, "Convoy". He offered to trade, and I said no. Worst decision of my life! |
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Oct-24-17
| | offramp: <thegoodanarchist: I won!? I can't believe I won!
I won! I won! I won!
I never win, not since I won a Bay City Rollers 45 record in 4th grade ("Saturday Night"). Another boy won a C. W. McCall 45 record, "Convoy". He offered to trade, and I said no. Worst decision of my life!> ...You may swap your wheelchair enabled steps into normal steps if you wish. Go to the sheriff and say that you are authorised by the offramp to swap your steps around, and he'll or she'll do it. |
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Oct-27-17
| | offramp: When I was growing up all my great-aunts and -uncles on my Mum's side, the clever side, had bookshelves full of books by George Bernard Shaw. There were books by him on philosophy, vegetarianism, politics, his plays, his journalism. I actually looked at one of them once. In the last thirty years I have probably heard his name mentioned, in any meaningful way, about a dozen times. Talk about <his star has faded>! The only other English writer I can think of who has faded so apocalyptically is Wyndham Lewis (who?), the founder of vorticism (what?) who was so massively influential in the 1930s that whole sections of Finnegans Wake criticise him. Now he is famous for only one single thing: A portrait of T S Eliot with a huge cock behind him. LOL. |
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| Oct-27-17 | | thegoodanarchist: Now I have only 1 question about George Bernard Shaw. OK, two questions.
1. So he wrote on vegetarianism. Did he ever write on fruitarianism? 2. When pronouncing his middle name, which syllable is emphasized, "Ber" or "nard"? |
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| Oct-28-17 | | zanzibar: <Major Barbara> - so make that thirteen times. <However, the father argues that poverty is a worse problem than munitions, and claims that he is doing more to help society by giving his workers jobs and a steady income than Major Barbara is doing to help them by giving them bread and soup.> He was ahead (and behind) his times:
<Shaw's expressed views were often contentious; he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform, and opposed vaccination and organised religion. > Shaw's irrelevance has been predicted long before: <In the 1940s the author Harold Nicolson advised the National Trust not to accept the bequest of Shaw's Corner, predicting that Shaw would be totally forgotten within fifty years.> Let's finish where Shaw himself finished:
<In its obituary tribute to Shaw, The Times Literary Supplement concluded:He was no originator of ideas. He was an insatiable adopter and adapter, an incomparable prestidigitator with the thoughts of the forerunners. Nietzsche, Samuel Butler (Erewhon), Marx, Shelley, Blake, Dickens, William Morris, Ruskin, Beethoven and Wagner all had their applications and misapplications. By bending to their service all the faculties of a powerful mind, by inextinguishable wit, and by every artifice of argument, he carried their thoughts as far as they would reach—so far beyond their sources that they came to us with the vitality of the newly created.> Wiki stuff/fluff. |
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Oct-29-17
| | offramp: An official definition:
<Anything in which it is possible to participate while smoking a cigarette is not a sport.>. So chess isn't a sport. |
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Nov-02-17
| | offramp:
Somewhere, somewhere my brain
Is being used by a scientist
It swims in a jar
Of electrolytic fluid
But my body rots in the sea
We will return!
The love that my brain
Has for its corpus
Is like the love that Hillary
Had for Sherpa Tenzig
When they kissed on that peak.
We will return.
Can we all fit in that hammock?
Give me back my brain.
This time will be better.
I won't do that again.
I <did not> dive my brain to science!
My body and brain will never rest.
We will return. |
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Nov-03-17
| | offramp: How about a third Caption Competition, for All Saints Day? https://pix.avaxnews.com/avaxnews/3... Provide a witty caption to that monstrosity in 50 words or less or you may die. The guest jusk is Elon Musk.
The usual prize, i.e. a set of three wheelchair enabled steps. Second prize is two steps etc.
Please add to your entries the hashtag #whoooahPotemkin to add pressure on the Ukrainian government to make the Potemkin Steps wheelchair accessible. |
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Nov-03-17
 | | OhioChessFan: "I should have counted to 12 and logged off before reading <offramp's> bio." #whoooahPotemkin |
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Nov-05-17
| | offramp: "Needs a sharp tap on the chuck with a spanner." |
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