The Mercury Music Awards
The media love award ceremonies. Well,
it saves all that tedious listening / reading / watching / looking
(that's Mercury, Grammy, and etc. / Booker, Orange, and etc. / BAFTA,
Oscars, Golden Globe and etc. / Turner Prize, and etc) doesn't it.
You can just scan the lists and bluff your way through any social
event, dinner party, or examination. That's probably unfair on any
number of honest journalists working their socks off, and entirely
accurate about the top few with their feet up smoking huge cigars and
drinking brandy all day.
I will still try to get through the
Booker Prize short (and maybe long) list every year, but last year's
result, favouring the entirely safe over the difficult and edgy but
arguably more rewarding and (if you gave it the chance and worked a
bit yourself (it don't hurt so much, you know)) handing the prize to
Hilary Mantel over Will Self, has knocked my faith in the selection
of the judges and their judgement, and this year's lot have left The
Kills off the short list, which seems to include some inferior (but
shorter and more accessible) options, while they still made a brave
overall winner decision.
James Blake's won the 2013 Mercury.
I'll have a listen when I get a chance.
The alternative...
...according to the Guardian:
I've listened to the Boards of Canada's
Tomorrow's Harvest,
and enjoyed it, I think it's a superb piece of work.
Disappointing...
...to lose to Chelsea. At home. In the
League Cup.
This is my (and mine alone) take on the
game:
Momentum, confidence and doubt. Always
undervalued, everywhere and by all parties, momentum gets a knock, as
does confidence, doubt increases and (whatever else the arguments
are, and they're all sensible) our stopping the time without a trophy
clock ticking options are reduced from four to three.
There's no right and wrong to this and
no 'told you so' other than suggesting the application of hindsight
given previous experiences, but another winning nothing season isn't
going to look back at this game favourably. Hopefully I'm way off
course here and we'll do the league, cup and champions' league treble
and the open top bus will break down under the load of all the
silverware. However, I fear that Arsene's attitude to the cups, and a
tendency to fall for a flattering league position in making cup
decisions, and a lack of squad quality in champions' league terms
(coupled with his lack of the sort of tactical nous that Benitiz and
Mourinho have) might lead to another, and future years of drawing
blanks, unless you buy into the top four finish = trophy argument.
I've just had an idea (few and far
between as they tend to be, but here goes). The argument should be
whether or not the top four finish is better or worse than winning a
trophy. That's the question, and again it isn't a simple health and
safety clipboard exercise. Winning the league cup and being relegated
is vastly different to winning the league cup and finishing second in
the league. But this squad and this club and this bunch of fans need
something to cling onto and build from, and I'm not sure Arsene is
the right bloke any more and I've doubts that this year will end
differently to the last few years.
Arsenal: (official party line): top
four = a trophy.
Me: no it don't.
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