Why You Should Watch The Paralympics

I have to admit I’m more excited about the Paralympics than I’ve ever been for the regular/normal/ordinary Olympics.

Maybe it’s because of the cool ad campaign for the Para’s –the Public Enemy track banging while the Paralympians look all surly on-screen, Murderball wheelchairs slamming into each other, and the blades that Oscar Pistorius runs on look a bit like alien legs, awesome.

Or maybe it’s because regular, normal and ordinary is a bit boring.

A while back I had a beer with a marathon runner. He had lost his leg in a motorbike accident and what would make most people shrivel up under the bedsheets and bemoan their potential invalidity didn’t stop him from sucking it up and just getting on with his life.

He told me that after running for tons of hours it was his ‘good’ leg that ached and gave him gyp. His lost limb, as you’d expect, didn’t give him any problems at all. He even mentioned that it would be a lot easier if he had two prosthetics instead of only the one.

Kind of casts doubt over the expression: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

According to all the sci-fi flicks we’ll soon be replacing our ears with mobile phones and iPods, exchanging our eyeballs for digital thingies that can upload holiday snaps to Facebook and zoom in like Superman’s, and chopping off our arms so they can be replaced with bionic ones. And when all this ramps up we’ll be jostling for mega-legs that run faster, jump higher and turn footballs into cannonballs.

A couple of years back the Olympic committee didn’t want SA’s Ozzie Pistorius to compete with the norms, saying his blades gave him an unfair advantage. So it only seems logical that in a few decades’ time it’ll be the Paralympians that break all the records.

But the Paralympics is about more than sporting achievement, and in my mind is more important than the regular/normal/ordinary/boring Olympics. The Paralympics has the power to inspire not just the disabled, but every one of us. In fact, it should make the rest of us feel shame for every time we gripe about the weather or our boss or anything for that matter.

The boring Olympics might highlight the physical triumphs of exceptional men and women, but the Paralympics does more – it showcases the triumphs of the spirit, and the strength of the soul.

A Reboot with Soul

So I got up nice and early and made bacon and eggs and coffee to take up to the missus in bed and still didn’t get to see the new Spiderman movie.

It’s not like she doesn’t go in for comic book movies – she loved Iron Man and enjoyed Avengers – but she just doesn’t get all giggly about the impending ‘Dark Knight Rises’ like I do.

At least superhero films these days manage to get decent actors and an actual live scriptwriter. I shudder at the thought of the pre-Nolan ‘Batman & Robin’ with Arnie Schwarzablahblah and she-of-the-weird-feet Uma Thurman.

It was fucking embarrassing when I insisted a group of us went to the cinema to see it. When we all left I was mortified and my girlfriend at the time patted me on the shoulder and said, “It wasn’t that bad” as though she was consoling me for the loss of my dog.

If they’d taken the piss out of me it’d have been okay, but they consoled me, for Christ’s sake. It was THAT bad.

But the good thing about these films is if you fuck up you always get another shot. Hell, the ‘reboot’ was invented by the comics. There are so many versions of Batman it’s hard to keep track so when I heard grumbles about it being “too soon” to reboot Spiderman I waved the notion away.

The Tobey Maguire Spiderman got a bit naff, so instead of wringing their hands about it they just had another go. I hear the acting's better in this one, anyway.

Comic companies are always reinventing these myths. They do them in creative ways like ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths” in the Eighties or “Zero Hour” in the Nineties, or they have cool asides like the fascist Superman in “Elseworlds” and the brilliant “Dark Knight Returns” by Frank Miller. If you think about it, the Batman turds that came after Tim Burton’s two were so different they were practically reboots; it’s just that there wasn’t the concept of ‘reboot’ in Hollywood yet so they called them sequels.

I hear so many new Batman fans sad because Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is coming to an end. They think there’s not gonna be another Batman movie for ten years.

Personally, I think that if the Bane character in “Dark Knight Rises” does what he does in the “Knightfall” storyline in the comics (i.e: breaking Batman’s back and putting him in a wheelchair), there’s going to be another trilogy with the new Batman/Azrael character and how he goes psycho and Bruce Wayne has to come back and fight him and reclaim the mantle.

How cool would that be?

My wife knows better than to want a lie-in when Batman hits the big screen. Coz then she’d be waking up to an empty house while I’m munching popcorn and staining my trousers with excitement.

Backs to the Wall, the Gay Green Lantern is on the Way!

It has the faint aroma of a gimmick, but only time will tell if DC Comics’ gay superhero coming out story will have any kind of impact on mainstream society.

Yes, that’s right, Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, the guy in the green trousers and puffy red shirt with the purple cape, is coming out of the phone booth. When you take a look at his outfit it kind of makes sense. I mean, superheroes have always been a bit camp, but the OGL… the penny finally dropped.

Big news: The “Mums of America” or whatever the Christian fundamentalist jobsworth group is called were up in arms about it, bingo wings flapping, saying, “…they want to indoctrinate impressionable young minds…”

Dude, I watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show a million times as a teenager, but you don’t see me running around in suspenders and facepaint… well, maybe on special occasions. You either like a bit of cock or you don’t – reading about a superhero who does isn’t going to change anyone’s sexuality.

The question really is: Will he be interesting?

It’s a bit like politically correct rebelliousness. They want the little bit of scandal to garner some press coverage, but when it all dies down what then?

In the Nineties the Hal Jordan Green Lantern killed a bunch of people and tried to destroy the universe and recreate it as a better place. He became the ultimate villain. Will they give the gay GL some kind of dark side?

Here's the rub: Just like the Christian mums scream about a gay superhero, you’re gonna get people calling you a homophobe if you let your Pink Avenger do anything bad. Even though they’ve stirred up a faux-controversy with a superguy who bats for the other team, will they risk the political incorrectness of having him do something unheroic?

I doubt it. They’ll most likely have him come up against a homophobic villain and come pretty close to killing him, but in the end he’ll ‘do the right thing’ and just send him to prison. He’ll be the most goodest, clean-cut superhero ever. He’ll make Superman look like a kiddy-fiddler.

It would be wonderful if they really showed everyone that "hey, gays are people too", and had him, like everyone else, be a good bloke but also be a bit of a dickhead sometimes too. Once we get to that stage then the world really will be a place where no one gives a shit about your sexual preference.

But then there wouldn’t be any controversy then, would there?

Why You Should Buy A Kindle

I had to pause for thought the other day when a columnist wrote that they didn’t want a Kindle because then guests wouldn’t be impressed by their well-stocked bookshelves any longer.

I thought: Surely someone who is well-read can’t be so shallow!

Or maybe, like me, they’re just what is called a ‘late adopter’ of technology. When the e-reader first came out I, like so many, scoffed and blah-blah’ed about the smell of a new book and how proud I was of my bookshelf.

Then, alas, I moved to another continent.

Anyone who has moved house knows that worse than the sweat and swearing of hauling the refrigerator and washing machine up stairs is the ball-ache of carting boxes and boxes of books up the very same stairs. At least the telly gets up in one go, but a library of novels can take a week.

It’s a pain because books are heavy. I’m not talking about the intellectual weight of Tolstoy; I mean that you can’t shove all your books in one big-ass packing case. You’ve got to mix them in with clothes or stick ‘em in in smaller shoeboxes.

So when I moved from South Africa to England I had to part with all my imaginary friends and their exciting adventures. These fictional characters had changed my life, and as I handed them over to charity shops or second-hand stores I performed many tiny eulogies.

Two months later I unwrapped a shiny new Kindle courtesy of my amazing wife!

It is rare that as an adult one opens a gift that slaps a genuine look of wonder on their steadily-wrinkling mug, but that Christmas morning a childlike grin and sunfire eyes blossomed on my grizzled visage.

Since then I’ve become a wannabe poster boy for the Amazon Kindle.

There are so many reasons for this:

Bizarrely, it’s easier to read than a book. It must be the magic of e-ink, but my eyes don’t tire as fast with the Kindle and I can read for longer.

I love browsing in bookshops, and there is no bigger store than the online Amazon store. If you’re looking for your favourite author she’s right there – everything she’s ever written! If you like something Amazon will recommend stuff that’s similar. I’ve also found so many new, brilliant writers that just talking about it makes a big sparkling heart grow where my small black coal-shaped one used to live.

Also, you can only lend something to someone for a fortnight; and even though you can’t access it on your own Kindle when it’s lent, it comes straight back after those two weeks. This means that you never give someone something to read and never see it again.

I won’t bang on about how comfortable it is to hold or how cool you feel reading it on a bus when everyone thinks you’re much smarter than you really are – ooh, he’s reading; must be a doctor or something.

But the best part of a Kindle is this: I’ve often wondered how many books I’ve read in my lifetime. Heavy readers will say they’ve read over a thousand, but when you think about that it’s a book a week for just over nineteen years. Now imagine giving one to your kid when they start to read and in twenty years’ time that kid having a record of every book they’ve ever read.

Not only that, but they’ve still got all those novels stored forever.

Sad, but things like this make my heart dance like the Lilliputian toes of cherubs getting shot at by dirty Wild West gunslingers.

So you can keep your showy-offy bookshelf, fat and groaning with its unread copies of War & Peace and Noam Chomsky. We all know you hide Maeve Binchy in your sock drawer, and secretly read Twilight alone in the bog.

WIN WIN WIN

My wife loves yoghurt – but only in the small single serving pots. The larger buy-in-bulk-and-save tubs make her sick. Even a mention of them forces her to emit that gag sound like she’s about to throw up.

She has a few hang-ups like this. The vomit noise can also be brought about by a picture of Tom Jones; sometimes merely his voice on the radio.

I have my own quirks. For instance, if I buy a book, magazine or newspaper I don’t like anyone else to read it before me. Also: When dining I try to get a bit of everything from my plate onto my fork with each bite, thereby ending with a neat sample of the entire meal for my last taste – if I finish the meat before the veg, and am left with a bit of chicken sans the accompanying slice of carrot, a small wave of sorrow flows through me.

Granted, if someone reads my copy of Empire or I have a few chips left over after my burger I don’t want to hurl, but sometimes psychological pain is worse than physical.

My mum has a friend who is a compulsive competition enterer. The prize is unimportant, and whether one can win a holiday in Spain or a year’s supply of anal bleach she will enter it regardless.

Of course she wins a lot of stuff she will never use – like power tools and the complete works of Fifty Cent – but you can’t argue that if you’re gonna succumb to a bit of OCD then that’s one to go for.

Back in the day competitions were all about sending in a postcard with your name and address on. These days it’s on your mobile or online.

My advice: go for online.

Driving around one day long ago I kept hearing a radio competition centred on the new Whitney Houston album. They were incessantly playing her new ‘hit’ about how she looked or felt like a Million Dollar Bill and I couldn’t help thinking that the only million dollar bill I knew of was the Zimbabwean one, worth about one Rand or eighty pence, and that was how I usually felt after a big night out drinking tequila and pepper-spray. After a while I got so irritated I entered the damn competition by texting the relative number.

I didn’t win a cd, but what I did receive was non-stop messages from the competition sponsor. And being that Whitney’s primary target market was middle-aged female divorcees meant that the people behind it sold things like pills for menopause and books such as Eat Pray Love.

So in future I’d obviously go for the online option with a fake email address. If I’m lucky I’ll win a Tom Jones dvd or a lifetime supply of big tubs of yoghurt.