The Oranje - Sometimes you just can't win

This is an appropriate tune, I think, for the Dutch football team, falling at the final hurdle as usual.

It's a classic 60's garage/psychadelic Nugget - Mouse and the Traps doing 'Sometimes, You Just Can't Win'. Great Farfisa organ sound on this...

World Cup - No Sympathy for the Devils

Great to see Brazil exiting today. It has always been a gripe with me that half of their squad seem to be evangelical christian nutters, especially these days: golden boy Kaka, gutless midget Robinho and semi-retarded defender Lucio:-
After a tournament hosted in Germany, Lucio seemed to sport a T-Shirt claiming that Jesus loves dick. May he burn in the eternal fires of hell for this libel! I'm pretty sure that Jesus is/was pure and generally asexual, like a nice priest, although he may have been tempted by Magdelene minge once or twice.

Brazil's onfield prayers before the game and pious, rapturous gestures to the sky whenever they score a goal are pretty sickening. Maybe they should save it for the privacy of their changing room.

Well, it looks like their saviour has forsaken them in this instance. Hope Holland can go all the way now. Should have got on them when they were 10-1 outsiders...

Anyhoo, there is a theory doing the rounds that Brazil lost the game due to the presence of Mick Jagger and his Brazilian son.

It does make sense, as Sir Mick had previously been seen in the stands supporting Team USA when they lost to Ghana, and also supporting England as they bombed out to Germany.

http://deadspin.com/5578517/the-world-cup-curse-of-mick-jagger

Think Mick has a history of this. Any football or cricket game he shows up at, his chosen team inevitably loses. Guess you can't always get what you want...

Perhaps he could attend the next Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis and put his curse on them?

World Cup Punditry

The standard of punditry at the current tournament has been pretty mixed.
Dunphy has seem strangely subdued on RTE - leaving senior analyst Gilesy to get worked up about poor standards of play, introduction of goal-line technology etc.

Liam Brady has also been quite low-key so far, sticking to a few of his stock phrases, e.g.
"I'd have to agree with John on that, Bill".
The Lads

Maybe some of The Lads are a bit worried about how Aprés Match will treat them if they get too worked up on any issue, this time around...

Ronnie Whelan and Graeme Souness do enough to earn their cheques, whenever they are on.

As a guest panelist, Ossie Ardiles was entertaining, although it required quite a lot of attention to understand much of what he was saying. He has left the panel now. Perhaps too many social nights out with Dunphy in the Horseshoe Bar have put him off the whole enterprise.

Didier 'Didi' Hamann is good value also. In a typically German fashion, he is astute and honest in his analysis; He does posess a few annoying habits though:-

• Dressing like he had got his complete outfit from a charity shop.
• Performing strange squinting motions with his left eye whenever he is asked a question.
• Beginning every reply with the standard English pundit's banality "As Eamonn said/As John said/As Liam just said", even if his response bears no relation to anything they had said.

Best newcomer is Richie Sadlier in the graveyard highlights shows on RTE. He's analyst skills are excellent but it will probably be a couple of years  before he makes the first team panel, because, as Dunphy would put it - "He's never played at the highest level, like John or Liam".

ESPN's South Africa Nightly is very strange. Presented by ex-BBC guy Ray Stubbs, it's an hour long magazine-type show, i.e. they don't seem to spend more than 90 seconds discussing any single issue.
They have a variety of ex-footballers as pundits, some of whom actually need to use interpreters.

EuroSport
Former Dutch striker Patrick Kluivert is one of their main go-to pundits He normally looks about as interested in the whole thing as a grumpy adolescent forced to attend church might be.
  
BBC and ITV have also gone Dutch.

ITV have the scowling Edgar Davids, usually wedged between Andy Townshend and Gareth Southgate, who seem slightly afraid of 'the Pitbull' in case they contradict any of his monosyllabic opinions and get a good slapping.

The Beeb have drafted in Clarence Seedorf, who is super-relaxed, even to the extent that he laughs at all of the weak puns that regulars Hansen & Shearer and presenter Lineker constantly come out with.

I think there might be some jealousy from Hansen & Shearer, as Clarence speaks standard received English almost perfectly, often using much longer words than Shearer in particular can comprehend, plus he's won a lot more in his career.

Anyhoo, don't think many other of the panelists on any TV station would try this pose, but apparently it was for an Italian charideeee calendar a couple of years back.
"Yesh Gary, I feel that the overall dynamic ish good in the current group of Dutch playersshh and I am confident that we can defeat Brazil, eshpeshially if we can maintain our exishting modalities in the midfield  and if our overall dialalectic holds in defence, allowing the forward players the requisite freedoms to fully realiseshh their potentialities."

Government wins vote on Wildlife Bill

This is a great laugh. Just listening to NewsTalk and they have an array of hang-sangwidge bogshite TDs opining that the banning of 'controlled' stag hunting in Meath is the beginning of the end of rooerr-tal Ireland.

A Wild Stag, roaming free in the Phoenix Park

A Political Stagg who encountered some problems whilst roaming in the Phoenix Park

"Next ting you know, those elite Dublin Libb-har-rils will be going after coursin' and fishin', and banning G-AY sports cus they might be a bit violent if the odd schmozzle or bit of manslaughter happens in an inter-county game".

Mary O'Rourke said she and her party "would not accept further inroads into rural pursuits". I'm not sure if she includes incest, Country & Irish showbands and clerical abuse under the umbrella of rural pursuits.

Sure enough, Jackie Healy-Rae and Michael Lowry indicated that they would vote against the Bill. The biggest buffoon in the Dail and the biggest crook in the Dail, respectively.

Geno Washington - Michael the Lover

This is the same Geno made famous by the Dexy's Midnight Runners classic tune from around 1980. Geno was an ex-GI who stayed on in London in the mid-60s and was a hugely popular act on the scene, as the Stones and the Yardbirds had fecked off to America for long tours, so he cleaned up on the R&B crowds.

Not sure what he's up to now - last I heard, he was a qualified a hypnoetherapist or something, and is a DJ on regional radio in England. I have a book that he wrote, somewhere - never finished it - quite the most bizarre novel I've ever read; a cross between an African 'Mills & Boon' gone mad and a Frederick Forsyth politicial intrigue thing. 

There are a few online interviews with Geno on the web - one with Noel 'fecking' Edmonds. In all of them, Geno comes across as the nicest, maddest and funniest person on the planet.

Anyhoo, Kevin Rowland's lyrics with Dexys were alway incomprehensible, but thankfully we have Google now to assist in solving such mysteries.
Academic inspiration, you gave me none
You were Michael the Lover
The fighter that won
But now just look at me as
I'm looking down at you
No, I'm not bein flash
It's what I'm built to do

That man took the stage, his towel was swingin' high
This man was my bombers, my Dexy's, my high
Oh-oh-oh Geno-o
The crowd they all hailed you, and chanted your name
But they never knew like we knew
Me and you were the same
And now you're all over, your song is so tame, brrrrr
You fed me, you bred me, I'll remember your name