Grow the roses

Posted on July 12, 2013 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

This week, I had the great pleasure of catching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on TV. Even though it was released in 1968, it has lost none of its appeal:

The film fits in with just about everything which TF stands for (with the obvious exception of the state-sponsored abductor of children). It starts with a man who is faced with the cold reality of life: his inventions, although brilliant, aren’t paying the bills or allowing him to give his kids the things he wants them to have. He’s told that he needs to stop dreaming and do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. In the end though, all of his dreams come true.

I could go on for ages about the different messages which I think stem from the film. However, I will skip the lecture on how it illustrates the point that, no matter how downtrodden they are, young folk will always prevail. In my opinion, the most important message comes from a group of imprisoned inventors who have been tasked with building a car as good as Chitty: from the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success:

It’s a theme that runs through the whole film. For example, as the opening credits roll, the car which will later become Chitty goes on fire and is destroyed. The leading man’s life is a bit of a disaster too. His wife (he’s wearing a wedding ring) is, for whatever reason, no longer part of the family and his home and career are a wreck. It’s only by sheer bloody-mindedness that he perseveres and succeeds. The inventors’ song tell us exactly why he carries on:

When it gets distressing it’s a blessing!
Onward and upward you must press!
Yes, Yes!
Till up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success.

This only occurred to me as I watching it, but literally 90% of the male cast has a Tash. It’s therefore hard to choose just one for this week’s TF. The spies and Baron Bomburst, for example, are particularly funny. However, Grandpa Potts wins it both because of this role in the “Grow The Roses” hymn but also because of the line:

“Never say “no” to adventures. Always say “yes”; otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.”

It just doesn’t get any better.

Have a fantastic weekend folks!

Keep going!

I ain’t got no worries

Posted on July 5, 2013 by tashfriday

Hey now Tash Appreciators

I was able to finally watch the decider of the NBA Finals this week. It was a close game and LeBron James of the Miami Heat was on top-form. In the end, The Heat were victorious.

I understand from those more knowledgeable than I, that James is one of the top basketball players of his generation. He can apparently sink jump shots even when he’s off-balance when his feet leave the ground. Some go as far as to say that he ‘balls (i.e. plays [basket]ball) so hard that people want to fine him. Lucky for him, first they have to find him.

James was the Most Valuable Player of the Finals:

As good as he is, James doesn’t always have the support of basketball fans. There seem to be various reasons for this, ranging from the way he left his previous team to him getting too much praise from the media.

In an interview after the decider, when he had been crowned Most Valuable Player and also a league champion (a video of which is on the TF Facebook and twitter page #shamelessplug), James is asked about how he plays and what he thinks about people who boo him from the sidelines. He said this:

“Listen, for me, I can’t worry about what everybody say about me. I’m LeBron James, from Akron, Ohio. From the inner city. I’m not even supposed to be here. That’s enough.

Every night I walk into the locker room I see a No. 6 with ‘James’ on the back. I’m blessed. So what everybody say about me off the court don’t matter.

I ain’t got no worries!”

It’s the last part that I really enjoyed. You can see in his eyes that, at that moment, he really means it: he is totally comfortable with who he is and what he does. In my view, you don’t need to be a superstar basketball player to have that attitude and find that peace of mind. He’s just a man doing what he enjoys and, in his words, “that’s enough”.

Often we – and I’m talking really about younger folk, here – get hung up on what we stand for; what we are defined as; what we put on our Facebook/LinkedIn pages as our profession. I put it to you that if we just concentrated on putting our all into everything we do (regardless of what that is), we’d be free of worries too.

I know what you’re thinking – has LeBron rocked a Tash? Has he ever! A cracking effort, actually:

Just to finish this week, there’s another man who knew the value of being satisfied with life, on the basis that he did things his way. I believe he said: “what is a man [or woman!]; what has he got? If not himself, then he has nought”:

Both Frank and LeBron can’t be wrong: just work hard, do it your way and all will be well.

Have a fantastic weekend folks!

Keep going!

LeBron getting dissed again? (thasportsjunkies101.wordpress.com)

Dance, dance, dance the night away

Posted on March 21, 2013 by tashfriday

Morning Tash Appreciators,

I was able to see Argo earlier this week and see for myself what all the fuss was about.

I’m not convinced that it deserved the Oscar for film of the year but if there was an Oscar for best Tash of the year (and if there isn’t, there should be!) then Argo wins hands down. Look at these belters:

The part I most enjoyed about Argo was the use of “Dance The Night Away” by Van Halen. Some of you will be aware of my penchant for cutting transcendental moves on the dance floor so not only does the message of the song appeal but it’s also very catchy.

Catchy, it’s not the most complimentary word to use when describing a song. However, for most of these monster 80s rock ballads, that’s about the measure of them: good fun but not the critics’ choice.

Interestingly, Argo is set right on the cusp of the 80s: when mainstream rock music started to move away from the classic” bands towards more pop based fare. And as pop-rock rose, the mighty Tash started to decline. Within a year or two, bands that had members who looked like this:

Started having to compete with bands whose members looked more like this:

Both are good but torn tiger-print leggings aren’t my thing… yet.

Have a great weekend folks.

Keep going!

Don’t ever let them see you coming

Posted on March 14, 2013 by tashfriday

Hola Tash Appreciators,

Some of you will no doubt have seen Barcelona’s superlative performance against AC Milan on Tuesday night. For those who didn’t, Barca were two-nil down following the first of a two-leg tie but then won four-nil on Tuesday to go through to the next stage of the Champions League.

Football fans love to talk about the Barcelona team’s skill and style of play (Tuesday was a shining example of both) but TF is more interested the manner of their win rather than the method.

After David Villa scored Barcelona’s third, crucial, goal, he celebrated like this:

The picture perhaps doesn’t do it justice but as I was watching it live I thought that it was the celebration of a man who just loved the game. He’s not celebrating with the fans and he doesn’t really acknowledge the 96,000 Catalans who are cheering their approval; he just seems delighted to have scored an important goal for his team after a long spell of poor form and injury.

The differences between AC milan’s players and the Barcelona players are interesting. Many of the Milan players have outrageous haircuts and obviously care a great deal about how they look on the pitch. For example, the worst look of the season goes to Milan’s El Shaarawy:

On the other hand, Barcelona seem to be more about substance. Lionel Messi doesn’t have a fancy haircut. More than that, he looks like (and seems to genuinely be) just like any other guy you’d see walking down the street.

I’m reminded of Al Pacino in Devil’s Advocate when he’s telling his young protege how to act in the big city:

“Don’t get too cocky my boy. No matter how good you are don’t ever let them see you coming. That’s the gaffe my friend. You gotta keep yourself small. Innocuous. Be the little guy.”

I’ve got a lot of time for that attitude. If you’re out and about these days, you’ll see many people wearing expensive clothes and driving flash cars. You’ll see folk spending huge amounts of money on champagne in clubs (or, as TF calls them, discotheques) and buying bottles of over-priced vodka with sparklers attached. All, presumably, in an effort to make themselves look more successful, smarter etc than they perhaps are. If it were me, I’d rather be under-estimated than fail to live up to the hype. Ask the AC Milan boys – “style” only gets you so far.

I’m also reminded of this week’s Tash. In one of his many movies, he played the role of a high school basketball coach. When talking to his team about having a bit of class and not being too showy on the court, he said this:

“Since when is winning not enough, playing hard not enough?”

This week’s Tash is Richmond High’s very own Coach Carter:

Have a great weekend folks!

Keep going.

We could be heroes

Posted on December 13, 2012 by tashfriday

Hello Tash Appreciators,

This will be the second to last TF of what is, incredibly, Tash Friday’s second year.

Earlier this week, I had a look back at what I said around this time last year. As some of you may recall, last year’s festive TFs looked at Christmases Past, Present and Future.

In the final TF of 2011, I said this:

With the Tash of Christmas Future, I hope that we can all look ahead to the things that can be achieved or, more excitingly, attempted. After all, it is only by pushing ourselves beyond what we perceive as our capabilities that we can really test our mettle. It’s also at these times that we tend to find that we are capable of doing more, and going further, than we thought possible.

If you look back at 2012 you can see numerous examples of people who did just that:

Closer to home, 2012 has seen numerous new jobs (100% decrease in unemployment among Tash Appreciators); new houses; exotic holidays; an engagement or two; weddings; and what would appear to be, in the main, relative contentment.Friday morning rhetoric about getting stuck in, aiming higher than just an “acceptable” level and about life being too short is one thing but it looks very much like this year exceeded expectations. If we had sat down a year ago, and recorded our hopes for the year, would we have thought ourselves too ambitious by suggesting that all of the above would happen? Yes, is probably the answer.

The question we therefore have to ask ourselves is: what’s next?

We must be ambitious, enthusiastic, vigorous and determined. The coming year will not bring financial prosperity for the nation or even, dare I say it, any indication that we’re on the right track towards it. However, this year has shown we can do just fine; even in times of relative hardship. Onwards and upwards must be our battle-cry!

So that leaves us with this week’s Tash. Serendipitously, Bowie just faded into my earphones and so, with the words “just for one day…” ringing in my ears, I leave you with this week’s Tash (from the excellent movie The Prestige), David Bowie:

See you next week for the end of year/world edition…Cheers.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Posted on October 18, 2012 by tashfriday

Salut Tash Appreciators,

There have been a couple of requests for TF’s views on Lance Armstrong and his fall from grace. In short, it’s been as if the curtain has fallen and he has been exposed as being what he really is – ordinary. It’s a bit like the Wizard of Oz:

There are some similarities between the impact that Armstrong’s story has had on cycling fans (and maybe everyone else, too) and the stages of grief. Even those involved in the sport were in denial about what was going on. They deluded themselves into believing that he was superhuman. Then came anger at the realisation of what he had done; bargaining (“they were all at it!”); depression (“the sport will never recover”); and finally, acceptance.

For those who follow cycling, the evidence against Armstrong has been known for a while. We are therefore mostly well on the way to acceptance (although we won’t wear our Livestrong T-shirts or jerseys ever again). The sport itself is dealing with doping and we’ll need to wait and see if the new clean policies of team directors have a positive impact. Like in all walks of life, there will always be those who seek to gain an unfair advantage, but the important thing is that the people at the top are doing the right thing.

Armstrong’s story is also a good metaphor for the last decade or so. He won an unprecedented 7 Tours between 1999 and 2005, just a year or two after he defeated cancer. His story, and the incredible things he did every July for seven years, caused most of us to believe he was special and that the conventional rules of physiology didn’t apply to him.

That matched our attitude to most things at the time. We were at the peak of our powers: house prices were seemingly on a never-ending rise; wages were increasing; there was no end to economic prosperity in sight.

Both in sport and economics, we were obviously wrong. However, on the upside, the recession, and now the Armstrong scandal, has left us with a healthy cynicism.

There was a fantastic article in a cycling magazine during the summer which questioned why everything about Armstrong was coming out now. It’s explanation was that we used to believe in fairy stories and drink in the impossible. To use a Scottish analogy, it was like we were bevvying hard on a Saturday night, having the time of our lives but thinking that by some miracle a couple of pints of water before going to mitigate would mitigate the hangover the next day… Or that all the partying wasn’t having an impact on our bank balances. But now we ask more questions.

There’s been a realisation that if something is too good to be true, then it probably is. That can only be a good thing. The more we question and evaluate what’s going on, the more we can influence things. This started with billion dollar enterprises being exposed as nothing more than fancy algorithms/classic frauds disguised in glossy branding and false-promises. Now all the curtains are beginning to fall and the “Wizards” are being exposed as what they always were – men in suits using smoke and mirrors.

To put that to the test, have a look at this week’s Tash. It’s Ben Stiller in Anchorman and his Tash is just outstanding. But is it real? TF knows the answer, but what do your instincts tell you?

Have a cracking weekend folks!

Dance or die

Posted on June 21, 2012 by tashfriday

Buenos dias Tash Appreciators,

In a month’s time, a film is coming out called “shut up and play the hits”. I’m telling you about it now so that if any of you hear when I can book tickets then you’ll let me know. If you’re good, I’ll tell you the story of the film later.

For the moment I’ll just say that it’s about a band called LCD Soundsystem but, by virtue of the fact that he’s the heart and soul of the band, it’s really about James Murphy:

LCD Soundsystem were a cracking band with a bunch of good songs and one exceptional anthem. I’ve quoted this one song numerous times in these emails and, most of the time, I carry the core rhythm of it in my head.

The reason this song is worthy of being the subject of a Tash Friday is because it talks about living life without regrets – “I wouldn’t trade one stupid decision for another five years of life”. However, I love it because it embraces a perfect contradiction: that living life to the full and without regrets will necessarily include risks which won’t always pay off and which you may later regret – “you spend the first five years trying to get with the plan and the next five years trying to be with your friends again”.

It also talks about the audacity of youth – showing your age by setting “controls for the heart of the sun” – and realising that you’re getting older – “when the kids look impossibly tanned and you think over and over hey I’m already dead”.

You’d think that growing old and having regrets would make for depressing listening but this tune revels in the reality of life and the fact that you can’t win ‘em all. It ends in a crescendo of guitars, drums, bass and piano, and reminds us that “to tell the truth, this could be the last time” (my favourite line and a modern take on carpe diem). Its final message is that everything will be of okay if only you answer one question: “where are your friends tonight?”

This week’s Tash, Yoni Wolf from the band Why?, said that he tries to make music that you can dance or die to:

I don’t think his music quite has that effect on me but I would dance or die to LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” any night of the week. In fact, I hope I die while dancing to it. I just hope that all my friends are on the dance floor with me at the time.

In the meantime, I fully intend to keep “the engines turned on”; set a course for “the heart of the sun”; use the “memory of my betters to keep me on my feet”; and spend as much time as possible with All My Friends.

Have a fantastic weekend folks. If you don’t know already, ask where your friends are tonight – they want to see you.

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