Electric Mud

Roma eterna

«Na primeira visita à Questura na Via Genova, junto à Via Nazionale, saímos de mãos vazias, porque chegámos às oito da manhã e já não havia senhas. No dia seguinte, estávamos na bicha antes das seis e conseguimos entrar, rodeados por uma maré humana heterogénea, no pátio do edifício. Ao fundo, havia um postigo a que tínhamos de ir, um a um, com o passaporte e o contrato de trabalho. Com centenas de pessoas à espera, o postigo abria e fechava a espaços: agora atende-se, agora não. Aproximei-me para verificar o que se passava lá dentro e vi um cavalheiro com uns 30 anos e uns enormes óculos de sol a folhear La Gazzetta dello Sport. Quando encontrava uma notícia interessante, ou se aproximava dele um colega de trabalho para fazer algum comentário importante sobre o joelho do Totti ou o esquema táctico da Roma, o cavalheiro dos óculos escuros fechava o postigo; passada a emergência retomava o contacto com os cidadãos. Vão pensar que estou a inventar isto. Quem me dera.
(…)
Certa tarde, a caminho do meu escritório no La Repubblica, vi um miúdo a arrombar a porta de um carro no parque da estação Termini. Dois carabinieri aproximaram-se por detrás, agarraram-no pelos braços e algemaram-lhe as mãos atrás das costas. Nada de especial, uma simples cena quotidiana. Mas eu sou daquelas pessoas que, só para não irem trabalhar, estão dispostas a entreter-se com qualquer coisa, e fiquei a ver.
Um dos agentes foi-se embora e o outro ficou com o detido e encaminhou-se para a esquadra da estação. Lá iam eles, quando tocou um telemóvel, o do carabinieri. Levou-o ao ouvido e disse "ah, sí, mamma", ao mesmo tempo que dirigia um gesto de desculpa ao ladrão de carros. O miúdo assentiu, compreensivo, e ficou à espera, olhando ora para o céu ora para os sapatos, enquanto o carabinieri ouvia da mãe o que, a julgar pela cara dele, deduzi ser um reprimenda.
A fim de uns minutos, desligou e pediu desculpa ao detido: 
- Scusami, lo sai come sonno le mamme…
- Lo so, lo so, signor carabinieri, per carità… - respondeu o preso, com um gesto de compreensão infinita.»

Funky Beasts

"Nobody knows what awaits for the dead"

Eu, por exemplo, nunca pensei ir ver a Lady Gaga ao cinema, mas passei a chave do carro à minha dona e à filha mais velha. Para chegar ao cruzamento. De Cooper na música e Gaga nos filmes. 
E sem stops ou sinais vermelhos. Agora dou-lhes um beijo.

É óbvio !

Retweet if you remember using balls like this to play football as a kid! pic.twitter.com/KuL4og4qVw

— 90s Football (@90sfootball) 17 de outubro de 2018

One Day in his Life

«Who among those so-called humanitarians who had kept their silence on the H-Blocks, who among them could put a name on this type of humiliation and torture, when men are forced by extreme torture into the position that they had to embark upon a dirt strike to highlight the inhumanity poured upon them ! How much must we suffer, I thought. An unwashed body, naked and wrecked with muscular pain, squatting in a corner, in a den of disease, amid piles of putrefying rubbish, forced to defecate upon the ground where the excreta would lie and the smell would mingle with the already sickening evil stench of urine and decaying waste food. Let them find a name for that sort of torture, I thought, rising and moving towards the window to seek fresh air, the beatings, the hosing-downs, starvation and deprivation, just let them bloody well put a name on this nightmare of nightmares.

(...)

I find it startling to hear myself say that I am prepared to die first rather than succumb to their oppressive torture and I know that I am not on my own, that many of my comrades hold the same. And I thought of my dead comrades again. My friends who had stood beside me one day and were dead the next. Boys and girls just like myself, born and raised in the nationalist ghettos of Belfast to be murdered by foreign soldiers and lecky sectarian thugs. How many have been murdered at their hands throughout the occupied Six Counties. Too many ! One boy or girl was too many ! How many more Irish people would die ? How many more lives would be lost before the British had decided they had murdered enough and were forced to get out of Ireland forever ?»

passagem do testemunho

- Pai, we're afraid of no ghost. 

(diminuindo o tamanho da lista)

the last day of summer

Smells like Teen Spirit

A vida começa a mudar. A tua infância de menininha vai ficando para trás, depressa e ao ritmo dos passos com que desapareces a caminho do Liceu. Como areia por entre os dedos, dizia o meu Avô. Desces a rua e lá vais tu, sozinha. Deixando os manos e as primas na saudade de já não irem contigo para a escola. Livre (que é a melhor sensação que há no mundo), e responsável. Agora com a chave de casa e o cartão do sétimo ano na mochila. Com mais trabalho, mais disciplinas e cadernos debaixo do braço. Mas também com a música dos altifalantes da Secundária nos intervalos. Vais conhecer outra gente e outros lugares e descobrir novas bandas e os teus Nirvana. E vais procurar novos livros e filmes que nunca viste. Vais aprender. Muito muito mais. Coisas que nem eu próprio sei e que me vais ensinar. Todos os dias vão contar, e tudo for real ! Aos poucos virão novos amigos e alguns desgostos. E sensações que vão brotar com a força do mundo inteiro. Intensa e apaixonadamente. Que irás somar e colar na tua caderneta. Os teus olhos vão brilhar muito e sorrir imenso, e, de vez em quando, murchar um pouco. Nuns dias talvez acordes furiosa, noutros encher-nos de beijos. É um bocado assim. Serás a mesma embora diferente. E toda a roupa deixará de te servir. Vais precisar de novos tops e vai haver coisas que só vais falar com a tua mãe, porque vais crescer. E a vida vai deixar de ser só bela para ser muito mais interessante. E vai ser linda. E tu mulher... zinha.

Aznamour (1924 - 2018) *

* assim o chora a minha Mamazita.

tvCabo: God bless !

"I believe that a united Ireland is right and just"

«He had his own reservations about Hunger, all the same - partly because he had to lose 14kg to play a man who took 66 days without food to die; partly because of taking on the role of Sands, an intimidating prospect for any Irishman. "You don't want to do that if you think it's not going to be a good film, or it's not going to tell a story in the right way, or do justice to the amount of effort and time and work you put into it. But once I met Steve and Enda [Walsh, the playwright who co-wrote the script], I was like, I have to do this, I have to work on this."

Fassbender was four when Sands died in May 1981. His father Josef, a chef, is German; his mother, Adele, is from Larne, near Belfast. The family moved from Heidelberg, where Michael was born, to Killarney when he was two. Having grown up at the opposite end of Ireland at around the same time, I mention that I don't remember the details of the hunger strikes and their aftermath, but have very clear, visceral memories of the tension that hung in the air.

"That's what I remember. That's exactly it. I remember the tension. This Bobby Sands character, I knew there was a big commotion about this guy, and the struggle in Northern Ireland. Because my mum's from the north, all my holidays were in the north - we never went abroad. What I remember is the difference between the south and the north, crossing the border. Soldiers with guns. Watchtowers, helicopters. But I didn't really know ... we never really discussed politics at home." 

(...)

"I just knew that I had to do it. I knew all the stuff we had filmed before that was pretty ... special, and I didn't want the last part of the film to break the illusion. I knew I had to get superthin." He is careful not to claim anything so crass as an insight into Bobby Sands' mind, though I mention that the lowest weight Fassbender reached, 58kg, is the weight at which, in my edition of Sands' diaries, the Republican made his last entry. "Wow. I didn't know that. I didn't know he stopped at 58. Shit."»

'The Guardian', Outubro de 2008

a camisola não engana

A Júnior saúda o Capitão.

Jokerpot !

Repost from #toddphillips1:
Camera test (w/ sound). Joker. pic.twitter.com/R9W2QqKwNS

— Warner Bros. Pictures (@wbpictures) 21 de setembro de 2018

American Epic - III

American Epic - II

American Epic - I

Zoo2

Houve um tempo em que os U2 contavam. Na nossa Europa que estava toda a mudar e que o fazia todos os dias.
Tem 25 anos.

SpikKklansman

in their face

«Le Herald Sun republie la caricature de Serena Williams pour dénoncer le "politiquement correct".»

Liberdade de expressão não é só para os cartoons do Maomé.

tudo menos serena

[Mark Knight]

Depois do árbitro, agora é a vez do cartoon. 
Racista e sexista seria não escrever ou desenhar sobre o tema. Como racista e sexista teria sido desculpar o comportamento de Serena Williams em campo quando tinha acabado de partir uma raquete e chamado o árbitro de mentiroso e ladrão. 
Leiam Navratilova.

Keane by Roy

«Gary Neville  had come to see me just after the warm-up; it was an evening kick-off. We'd just come back into the dressing room. Gary told me that some of the Arsenal players had said something to him in the tunnel, that they weren't going to take any nonsense - they'd be waiting for him.
(...)
But I didn't pay much attention to what Gary said.
'Whatever, Gary.'
I was getting into the zone myself. I was concentrating on my job, getting ready to go out on to the pitch. I wasn't one for shouting and roaring in the dressing room. I'd be geeing myself up, in a calm way. The last thing I wanted was Gary in my earhole, going, 'They've been shouting at me in the tunnel.'
My attitude was, 'Fuckin' deal with it. You're not eleven.'
But he'd planted a seed in my head, warning me.
I was always one of the first out to the tunnel. As captain, I'd be leading the team out. The Highbury tunnel was a strange one, like a little alleyway. Very tight. It was hard to avoid contact with people, even if you were trying to. There was always a lot of tension there. And night matches always created more tension anyway.
I'd forgotten my captain's armband - simple as that. So I turned to go back to the dressing room.
'Go down, lads, I'll be with you in a minute; I forgot my armband.'
And I went back, past our own players. Albert, the kit man, had the armband and was putting it on me.
'All the best, Roy.'
As I walked to the front I heard something going on at the top of the tunnel. All I could see was a few fingers, pointing at Gary.
I lost it.
Five seconds earlier, I'd been perfectly calm, in the zone, ready for the match. But, because of what Gary had said to me, I just went, 'The fuckers - they are waiting for him.'
I'd thought they might have booted him out in the pitch. But in the tunnel? I just thought, 'The fuckers.' They are trying to bully him. They were a big team and, in the tunnel, they were even bigger.
So I said to myself, 'All right. Let's go.'
I went down there. I'd lost it, but I wasn't zoning out; I wasn't forgetting about the game.
I said, 'We'll see you out there.'
I just felt they were bullying Gary. I don't think it was intimidation; it was bullying. There's a difference. If Patrick Vieira had come up to me and said, 'I'm going to have you', that would have been intimidation. It would have been a clash between equal personalities. But Gary was quiet - I think they were going for one of the weaker players of the team. (...) In football, intimidation is legitimate but bullying isn't. I never went looking for a full-back who'd never done anything to me. I'd look for people who were in my position or were physically important for their team. I'd always thought 'They can give it back to me.' I never went for a tricky winger or a small full-back.
'I'll see you out there.'
I meant it. I love the game of football. We'd sort it out on the pitch - no hiding places.»

sempre a dar bronca

Kaleem Aftab: You've used present-day documentary footage to emphasise action in a fictional feature film before - the Rodney King beating at the start of Malcolm X, for example. What is the power of mixing modern documentary footage into period fiction?
Spike Lee: (…) I was in Martha's Vineyard last August 11th and 12th when that debacle happened in Charlottesville. We did not go into production on BlacKkKlansman until the fall, and I was really moved watching what was happening on TV, on CNN, and really it was David Duke, the alt-right, neo-Nazis and the Klan that wrote the ending for BlacKkKlansman that was not the original ending. Those motherfuckers wrote the ending at the expense of the life of Heather D. Heyer [killed when a car was driven into a crowd of counter-protesters]. Once that happened in August, I always knew I had my ending. I just didn't write it.

Boogie Reynolds

(1936 - 2018)

Acid Age