Job Hunting with Ravi Bopara

So I’m jobless at the moment, with tons of free time on my hands. I thought it would be a good idea to apply to some freelance writing jobs to give myself something to do. Problem is I don’t have a resume nor do I have writing experience (minus this blog), so I’ve been putting off sending out emails to job ads. Then last sunday I was watching a cricket match at my grandfather’s house and the commentators were talking about one of the england players. One of them said, ‘why is Ravi Bopara still on the squad? He hasn’t had a good performance in months.’ And the other commentator replied, ‘your right he shouldn’t be on the squad, but he’s managed to convince everyone he’s having a good season. When reporters ask him about his bad form, he responds, “That’s not true. I’m playing the best I’ve played in my life, I’m having a great year, the best I’ve ever had.” He repeats this over and over and everyone is believing him.’ I thought, ‘that is brillant’ you don’t actually have to be good or even worthy of your postion or status you just have to convince everyone else that you are.

Ravi Bopara

And so with that philosophy I sent out some emails to some freelance writing adverts I saw on the internet. A sample-

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 1:26 PM, flinder boyd <lildozen@gmail.com> wrote:

To whom it may concern,

I’m interested in your job opening. I’m an amazing budding writing talent, with loads of potential and a propensity to dazzle readers with my dashing prose and daring conceptual skill.

I’d be an excellent member of your team. Motivation oozes out of my veins in an odorless rainbow sparkle, while ideas circulate seamlessly in the depths of my lungs and are revealed with each breath of the waking day.

Please look at the fabulous blog I’ve been putting together over the last few months, some call it the greatest blog dealing with european basketball players who happen to hail from california in the last 10 years. Stunning stuff. Some reviews of the blog: -’nice blog,’ ‘i like your blog, its cool,’ ‘goooood (sic) blogging’

http://iwishiwasalittlebittaller.wordpress.com/

Thanks for you time,

Flinder Boyd

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 1:42 PM, flinder boyd <lildozen@gmail.com> wrote:

To whom it may concern,
Allow me to introduce you to one of the most phenomenol new writing talents of our time. Drum roll please…. a little longer….
I stand before you as one of this generations most engaging and thought-provoking thinkers, rarely has the world come across such a combination of raw skill and subtle brillance. I believe T.S. Eliot was talking about me when he said, “There is no method except to be very intelligent.” Writing is in the blood, it is felt from the feet to the nostrils and blown out in menacing shapes and colors, to offend and inspire. Like Shakespeare my work is profound and yet simplisticly styish. I am able to create beauty from nothing like a alchemistic fountain tip pen.
Thank you for looking at my application for non-fiction book reviewer.

Flinder Boyd

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 1:55 PM, flinder boyd <lildozen@gmail.com> wrote:

To whom it may concern,

I’m applying for your position of freelance writer and I’ll tell you why. I’m a writer of the highest caliber, my abilities transcend modern writing mortals, and when my pen touches paper I have the ability to evoke the great writers of the past; Hemingway, Joyce, Dickens, Twain. Although yet to be published, if my thoughts and ideas were attached to paper a monument would be built in their honor. Kings and Queens would bow at my feet and other writers would cease to write immediately, as they become aware of the hopelessness of bettering a true genius. Excuse me if this sounds facetious, but literally, its thats good.

So please give me a chance to prove my worth and allow me to show you my true skill while writing for your local elementary school arts and crafts/science newsletter.

Thanks

Flinder Boyd

Shockingly this actually worked, within an hour I got this response from my first email-

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 3:03 PM, Debra Hutchins <debra.hutchins@globalgavel.com> wrote:

Looks good!  I have recommended you by name.  We have a ton of writers, and some are doing this full time as permanent content writers.    You will be given your own workspace to manage content and payments.

Just shoot me a quick email when done and we’ll go from there.

Thanks
Deb :-D
Writer/Facilitator

Indeed, Ravi Bopara is playing the best cricket of his life.

The Room- review

When I was home this summer I kept hearing about this movie The Room by Tommy Wiseau. It has been dubbed the ‘worst movie of all-time,’ and has grown a massive cult following since its 2004 release a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It plays once a month in LA, and people will wait in lines for hours to laugh at and recite all the lines of this ‘anti-masterpiece.’
So this weekend, I decided I had to see what all the fuss was about and got a hold of a copy for myself. Its written, directed, produced and starred in by Tommy Wiseau on a hefty 6 million dollar budget. Plenty of money to crank out a solid indie film in this age of digital cinematography, however the result is the ‘Citizen Kane of bad movies.’

The plot, if thats what you can even call it, is basically a love triangle involving best friends and a conniving girlfriend. It’s quite basic, following the plot isn’t difficult, however characters seemingly come in and out of story for no apparent reason, scenes are added to the film as if at random, love scenes seem to involve pelvic thrusting into ribcages, and then of course there is the acting. Incomprehensibly bad to put it mildly, we are left to wonder where they even found these people, not that the script does them any justice, such classic lines include ‘I’m tired, I’m wasted, I love you darling’. Wiseau himself plays the lead character Johnny-

It’s like watching Dolph Lundgren play a Romanian gypsy with down syndrome, absolutely brilliant stuff. The sheer arrogance for Wiseau to believe that we would buy into this nonsensical, indulgent farce is what leaves us with our mouth open for the 90 minute film, that is if we aren’t already laughing hysterically at the outcome.

However, its Wiseau who is ultimately laughing, with DVD sales skyrocketing, midnight showings for the last few years in LA, and screenings just landed in New York and London with no end in sight, he is laughing all the way to the bank. Which leaves us with a very valuable lesson to be learned from The Room, if you can’t be the best at something, then strive to be the absolute worst.

my new favorite band

The best laid schemes

The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leaves us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

-Robert Burns

My mum once told me, ‘you only get so many great moments in life, you never know how many you’ll get so cherish them. When your older these moments will be invaluable.’ I always remembered that because as an athlete you are constantly searching for that euphoric feeling that comes with winning big games or medals or whatever the objective may be. It becomes a competitive compulsion that pushes us to our boundaries and motivates us when all seems lost.
Last Tuesday night should have been one of those moments.

Me and Rubio

We were playing the second best basketball team in the world and current world champion, Spain in the Eurobasket tournament. They boast one of the best teams ever assembled in European basketball, led by LA Laker Pau Gasol. We on the other hand are made up largely of a group of relative unknowns whose salaries are a fraction of even the last player on the spanish bench (I wont even tell you what I made last year in the BBL, but likely the check-out girl from the fourth floor of the Debenhams would turn her nose up at my contract) I don’t think anyone gave us a chance, and quite honestly I told a friend if we lost by less than 20 points, I would consider it a success. I just didn’t see how we could compete with them.

Gasol goes to work

But compete we did. At first it seemed as if little could go right, we couldn’t score and they couldn’t stop scoring. We were down 12 points in the blink of an eye, but then something changed. Spain started to argue amongst themselves, Gasol miss-fired, then Navarro missed. Momentum didn’t change, the score remained relatively stagnant, but our confidence shifted, it was as if we had a collective epiphany, ‘they are in fact beatable.’ We began to believe.

We went into locker room down 10 points, the score seemed inconsequential at the time. Our coach looked us in the eyes at halftime and told us, urged us, begged us to see the possibilities. It wasn’t idle coach banter, ‘rah rah team, lets go’ etc., it was what we knew but needed to hear.

The second half started innocently enough, trading baskets, Spain maintained their sizable advantage. At one point they even increased it. The crowd began to deflate, cheering for the underdog didn’t seem so attractive anymore. Maybe we were wrong, I thought. A timeout was called, substituions were made. We made back to back shots, Spain missed. We scored again, a 12 point lead became 9, then 6, we scored again.. down only 4 points, Spain looked noticeably shaken, we had them! another shot, 2 point game….tie game! Could it be possible?! I looked at the scoreboard again. Giants had fallen but never like this, never with a dull, lifeless thud. This was it. The crowd erupted as Spain called yet another timeout.

Again we score! Great Britain up 2 points with 3 minutes to play. Again a basket! GB up 4 points with 2 minutes and 40 seconds to play!

2 minutes and 40 seconds! 2 minutes and 40 seconds!

For every great moment in our lives, there are equally as many moments that we would wish to erase from our memory. That no matter how hard we try to forget these moments we can’t help but grab our chest at the thought of the pain, and regret we felt. Our dreams can be made in these instances or they can be destroyed, and all it takes is 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

We lost that night. Gasol uncharacteristically nailed a three-pointer, followed by a GB turnover, my shot was blocked, Navarro hit a three, and Spain leaves the court with a smirk and a smile, ‘can you believe we almost lost to these guys.’

That night I lay in bed for hours, thinking of what might have been, of what I could have done differently. Reliving every play, the pain was deep. I turned on the internet, and read on fibaeurope.com that it was nearly, ‘the biggest upset in basketball history.’ That made me feel sick, instead it will be just another near-miss, just another notch in their belt. Maybe in the grand scheme of things it was an important game to earn Great Britain some much needed respect, and we won fans over with our heart. I know ultimately it was a successful night for us, we all know that.

Still, 40 years from now when I’m sitting in my rocking chair and my grandson asks me about Eurobasket 2009, and the greatest team we ever played, I know I’ll grab my chest, my heart will sink and I’ll think, ‘what could have been.’

Eurobasket!

We have arrived in Poland for the Eurobasket tournament, 16 of the best European teams going for the title of best team on the continent. We are faced with the reality that failure is very real. The learning curve has been steep, without our top scorer from last year we have stumbled at times.
We are pitted in a group with three of the best teams in Europe, if not the world. The chances of winning even one of these games and advancing to the second round is not big lets be honest with ourselves. A betting man wouldn’t bet the mortgage on us winning any games, he probably wouldn’t even bet his $30 chrome-plated Fossil watch.
However, here in lies the beauty, because of our unseasoned nature on the euro scene, we are left with very few expectations and of course pressure is directly correlated to expectations. Without the pressure the other major basketball powers face with have a decided advantage, the advantage afforded to the great underdog stories of our time. ’86 Villanova, Namath and Jets, ’92 Denmark football team, Obama.
Now, excuse the excitement, I don’t mean to interject that we might actually win the tournament. That would be a miracle, and not a ‘miracle on ice’ kind of miracle but an actual miracle. All I’m saying is that because of our inexperience we have a chance of showing europe that we are in fact not very inexperienced after all, if you catch my drift. Optimism is high within the team and as we’ve all learned from life, a chance is all you can ever ask for.

Music

What I’m listening to on the plane to Poland…

Discovery-LP

Nneka- heartbeat

Jamie Woon- Missing person

(I know Logan and Fern will like this)

…and best of all – Robbie Boyd
www.myspace.com/qwertybertie

Best/(Worst) Mustaches of Turkey