Moses and José Alvalade

How could someone possibly relate an unrecorded song by Coldplay with the hometurf of Lisbon's second football force? Well, I can. Oddly as it sounds.

A few weeks ago I found myself deeply bored in Lisbon, but found out that Luis Figo was promoting a friendly to raise funds for his foundation, dedicated to help children with cancer. That alone would be a reason for attending, but people are not usually so giving, so Figo managed to gather some football stars all over Europe to lure the selfish bastards that wouldn't give a dime to children with cancer, but would pay 20 euros to watch Zidane live. That would be me and the other 14k attendants. And boy was our money worth paying.

But anyway, amongst the players, Figo has also invited some artists. Chico Buarque was in the starting lineup, for instance, playing in Figo's team. I was able to recognize pretty much every face and name. With the exception of a certain Will Champion. I was trying to recall the few games I've watched of the Premier League, but couldn't figure out where was this guy from. And his ability seemed to fit the average english skill (...). Well, went back to the hotel without knowing who was that guy, whose highlight of the night was a weak shot on Francesco Toldo's right angle.

On the next morning, reading about the game in the local newspaper, the answer, so obvious that I really couldn't tell at the game: Will Champion, Coldplay drummer, whom I've seen so many times at the fantastic DVD of their live presentation in Paris. Specially when he's performing Moses, my favorite song. Which I've never found in an album, not even in a studio recording. Just the Paris live version. Which is outstanding.

* * * * * *

Players on the field:

- Luis Figo

- Zinedine Zidane

- Luis Enrique (u. a. Fc Barcelona, Real Madrid)

- Guardiola (u. a. Fc Barcelona)

- Sergi Barjuán (u. a. Fc Barcelona)

- Chico Buarque

- Will Champion

- Rui Costa (Benfica)

- Mantorras (Benfica)

- Giorgos Karagounis (Benfica)

- Nelson (Benfica)

- Paulo Jorge (Benfica)

- Eros Ramazzotti

- Pepe (FC Porto)

- Hélder Postiga (Fc Porto)

- Ricardo Quaresma (Fc Porto)

- Fernando Meira (VfB Stuttgart)

- Francesco Toldo (Internationale Milan)

- Olivier Dacourt (Internationale Milan)

- Patrick Vieira (Internationale Milan)

- Santiago Solari (Internationale Milan)

- Dejan Stankovic (Internationale Milan)

- Zlatan Ibrahimović (Internationale Milan)

- Hagi

- Popescu

- Frank de Boer (u. a. Fc Barcelona)

- Abel Xavier (LA Galaxy)

- Geremi

Light in the Darkness in the Light

Of what I've read so far in 2007, I'd highlight 2 books with striking differences and similarities.

The first one is "Kite Runner", by Khaled Rosseini. Not a very exciting story, to be honest, with some decisions that I would reconsider if I were the author, to say the least. But beautiful, very beautiful. It is lyric, it is amazingly well written, and it is profoundly human. If I had a little more self confidence, I'd confess that my eyes were edged with tears in two different parts of the story.

The second is a masterpiece. Not on literature, but on the human condition. Ishmael Beah was only a young kid back in Sierra Leone, in the nineties, when civil war tore the country apart. He leverages on his photographic memory to narrate, in "Long Way Gone", his experience as an orphan on the run, then corrupted by the forces of the government into becoming a doped combatant, and then rescued back to humanity by the UNICEF. It is so inspiring and powerful that is one of those stories that actually change your view of life. He's been recently touring the book in the US and Canada, and there are some interesting interviews (I'd highlight http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1538, for a canadian channel) with what appears to be an honest hindsight.

What is so amazing about the story is that there is no right, only wrongs, there is no redemption, only some sort of salvation, there is a bitter somewhat happy end, but there is a strong and remarkable 101 on very raw human relations.

The first book mimics reality superbly (ok, not as much on the plot, but mostly on the characters).

The second book is on a reality so strikingly harsh, that it's like it's flirting with fiction.

Two great books for this first semester. No wonder I've been reading John Grisham in the last couple of weeks (The Broker and The Last Jurors). My mind needs rest from so much humanity.

San Berdoo Sunburn

Pra abrir a série "A Melhor Música de Todos os Tempos Agora": San Berdoo Sunburn, Eagles of Death Metal.

Eagles of Death Metal não é uma banda de Death Metal, naturalmente. É um projeto antigo de um sujeito chamado Josh "Baby Duck" Homme, em parceria com Jesse Hughes (na foto, segurando um "souvenir" atirada pela platéia), ambos da California. A banda nasceu em 98, mas ficou meio no limbo por causa do sucesso da outra banda do Homme, Queens of the Stone Age (se não me engano, no QOTSA ele tb toca bateria). O nome seria uma brincadeira com um amigo de Homme, que teria tentando convencê-lo a gostar de Death Metal.

Eu assisti a essa banda há pouco mais de um ano. Eles abriram o show do Strokes no Hammerstein Ballroom. O Jesse Hughes é uma figuraça. Uma espécie de Freddie Mercury, talvez um pouco menos viado. Performático, carismático, tem muito do que imagino ser a tal "presença de palco". No dia o Homme não tocou. Mas deu pra ver claramente uma característica marcante de qualquer banda aonde o baterista é um dos líderes e fundadores: a equalização da bateria é um pontinho acima do que se está acostumado.

Em "San Berdoo" não é diferente. Bateria marcante, muitos pratos, guitarrinha compassada (whatever that means, só queria comentar sobre a linha da guitarra, que é divertida), uma música com jeito meio "Route 66" de ser.

E uma homenagem à minha amiga Ana, que foi a primeira comentarista ever desses espaço.

Regular Specials

All right, so let's get this thing going. Chances are that, in between my remarks, I'm gonna regularly add some impressions on 3 things that are really my daily crush. Futebol (don't expect to find many posts in english on that one), Music and Books. Maybe movies, sometimes, but that one shouldn't be regular. I don't feel like writting about movies that often.

Futebol

Futebol é conversa pra todos os dias. Invariavelmente é tema de posts inteiros e, quando o assunto não estiver devidamente esgotado no blog de quem realmente sabe escrever disso, meu amigo Lédio Carmona (Jogo Aberto, no http://sportv.globo.com/SporTV/), aqui deve rolar uma saideira, uma prorrogação pra trocar uma idéia a mais.

Music

I've once read a book on music (pretty sure it was in one of the endless books I've started and never finished back in the bipolar days, when I used to read several different books at the same time). Though I never got to the middle of it, an interesting concept stuck.

The book basically states that there are two ways of experiencing music:
1) a scientific one, where you analyze the science behind music or, more specifically, the "Music Theory", whatever that means. That would the proper chords, arranges, scales and all the major F's, #'s and all those other conventions I seem to be unable to replicate on my Fender that my beloved wife gave me last xmas;
2) a visceral one, that of the rest of us, that experience that makes us all emotional on even the most cheesy melody+lyrics, just because that means something. But hey, isn't the average human mind structured on language that have meanings? So, visceral experience on music should be us... being us.

Well, I'm visceral about music. So the "Melhor música de todos os tempos agora" ("best song of all times now") section is a reflection of my way of seeing and experiencing music.

Books

Well, enough was said above on my interest in reading. That's what the "Books of the Times" section is about (sorry, NY Times, if for whatever reason I'm supposed to grant your credits, that means this blog is way above its ambitions).

Point of Vista

POV is about perception, about insight, about interaction. And obviously about a more mundane impulse. Namely, about enhancing my communication skills. With myself, mostly. Ok, that was not very mundane. I'm also after enhanced writting skills, plain english, plain portuguese, whatever best fits the subject (one should not expect to find the word "Soccer" being repeated in this blog, for instance; actually, I really don't intend to use the word "Football" in the english original).

I've just read on the New York Times an article about employers seeking for the keeping-a-blog skill on their employees. Not that I really care about such topics, I usually don't. But what's underneath the story really caught my attention. Blogging seems to be some struggling initiative of human adjustment to the new levels of interaction and speed brought by the information age. If blogging is the new group dynamics, so be it. I'm getting old, but getting old doesn't have to mean becoming an old timer. For blogging is probably the human-the-social-animal response to the introspective and reclusive world of the internet.



Not quite sure, that's just a point of view.