Many people laughed when she said it, but not Sam. Sam knows deep wisdom when it leaps off the pages of the Irish Times and bites him on the ass. I refer to the comments last week by Irish Times lit-chick Eileen Battersby, who said that John Banville winning the Man Booker prize made up for Ireland screwing up their World Cup bid.
Oh yes, the blokes in the pub snorted into their pints at that one, but Sam raised his Pimms in heartfelt salute. The first thing the lads got wrong was to give a flying one in the first place about the fortunes of the dingbats who pass for footballers nowadays. If, like Sam, you grew up on the sexy samba soccer of Brazil in 1970, then the lumbering efforts of our first eleven – all clunky first-touch and sweaty hoof ‘n’ head – bears about as much relation to the beautiful game as Sinead O’ Connor’s album does to reggae. Not that I’ve listened to Sinead’s album, obviously, but you just know I’m right. Seen. But not heard, as it were. Look, you can smoke all the spliffs you want and shout Jah Rastafari until the cows come home, but it’s just too long a way from Glenageary to Trenchtown – yes, even with the M50 in place.
Huge Doobie
But anyway, I digress. Nearly all modern football, and modern Irish football in particular, is crap, which is why no-one should get worked up about it for any reason, and least of all for the failure to qualify for a tournament which will only be worth watching when the canary yellow and cobalt blue of my South American chums are dancing across the screen.
Sit back, fire up a huge doobie and savour that little spectacle. And don’t dare harsh your mellow by even thinking about the sight of our boys disgracing themselves in Cyprus.
In her considered ‘think’-piece, The Batter also suggested that our bad boys in green should all be obliged to read a copy of Banville’s Booker-winner, The Sea. Presumably because they are all at.
Again, I heartily agree. Indeed, if I have but one criticism of La Bat, it’s that she didn’t go far enough. Surely, with a little imagination, we can see our way to transforming John Banville’s glorious victory into a national celebration that will give the whole country a lift in the absence of the traditional World Cup party we throw for the team when they get knocked out of the last 16 having failed to win a game.
So let’s have an open-top bus tour for Johnny Boy, with the man himself reading out exciting bits from his book, while the crowd chant, ‘C’mon you boy in spectacles’. Let’s pack O’Connell Street with thousands of people waving giant inflatable typewriters – the genuine kind, sponsored by Eircom. (Yeah, I know that should be a little ‘e’ but Sam always likes to take the opportunity to annoy sponsors. And anyway, my preference is always for a big ‘E’).
Let’s get some crap band to record a crap version of an old song, say ‘That Was The River, This Is The Sea’. Or, hell, just release The Waterboys’ original version, since it was an overblown, pompous monstrosity to begin with.
C’mon, let’s put it a little bit of oomph into this, people. It’s a big fucking deal. For the rest of our lives, people are going to be asking: where were you when you heard the news that John Banville won the Booker prize? And it simply won’t be enough to say: ‘Actually, I was watching some soft porn on Channel 4 and I got so excited I sat on the remote, inadvertently changed the channel and suddenly witnessed a small, grey man making lame jokes about unsaleable books and I was going, ‘what the fuck happened to Ingrid and Wolfgang?’
Nope, Johnny Boy deserves more respect than that. After all, his book is an intense and moving meditation on the power of memory to haunt our everyday lives, as expressed through the inner struggle of one man – of, indeed, Everyman – to reconcile the past and the present, as he wrestles for the first time with intimations of his own mortality. And there’s probably a bit about a beach in there as well.
Steamy Poontang
I mean: don’t ask me, I haven’t read the fucking thing, but the shite I wrote in the preceding paragraph is probably pretty close to the mark, not to mention the kind of thing which works well on The View. (But only in a sense, and on many levels). No, Sam hasn’t read Banville because, frankly, life is too short. And anyway, if there’s only one book you read this year, it should be my old mucker Declan Lynch’s The Rooms, which has loads of great stuff about rock ‘n’ roll and gargle, and lashings of hot steamy poontang (which, of course, I helped him to write).
And when you’re finished that, keep an eye out for Sam’s first venture between soft covers – like, hell – in the form of the exciting story of the development of underwear which, with due deference to my other old mucker, Stephen Hawking, I am proud to call: ‘A Timely History of Briefs.’ Buy it now before it’s given away free with a Sunday newspaper.
Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq