Quotulatiousness

July 27, 2014

Teddy Bridgewater as the “anti-Manziel”

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:49

The Vikings traded back into the bottom of the first round of the 2014 NFL draft to take Louisville quarterback Teddy Bridgewater as their second pick in the first round (after linebacker Anthony Barr). Many Vikings fans wanted the team to take Johnny Manziel as the team’s quarterback of the future (I wasn’t among them … I thought Manziel would be too much of a media circus attraction for the Vikings). 1500ESPN‘s Judd Zulgad says that Bridgewater has been almost the exact opposite of the ongoing media extravaganza that is Johnny Manziel:

Johnny Manziel has spent much of his time since being selected in the first round of the NFL draft this spring fetching himself as many drinks as possible and calling attention to himself at every turn.

Teddy Bridgewater, meanwhile, has done everything in his power to maintain a low profile and hasn’t been photographed once with an alcoholic beverage near him. But Bridgewater might have left himself open for a photo op at one point Friday when he did have a drink in hand, although it was not of the alcoholic variety.

“He actually got me a Gatorade today, which I was really thankful for,” veteran quarterback Matt Cassel said of his rookie teammate.

Bridgewater would qualify as the anti-Manziel.

Manziel is cocky to a fault and before he’s even neared NFL stardom, or played in a regular-season game, he’s allowed his celebrity to continue to go to his head. It sounds as if this has left the Cleveland Browns wondering exactly what they have gotten themselves into.

Bridgewater, whom the Vikings took with the final pick in the first round of the May draft after making a trade with Seattle, not only doesn’t come across as brash, he’s getting sports drinks for the guy he ultimately would like to beat out of a spot for the starting job.

“Right now, my main focus is just getting better each and every day,” Bridgewater said Friday after completing the first training camp practice of his NFL career. “I’m going to continue to just push Matt and Coach Zim (Mike Zimmer) is going to make the best decision for the team. If the coaching staff feels that (I’m ready), that’s when my number will be called. But until then my role is just to continue to push Matt and make the quarterback room a better room.”

(more…)

Al Stewart (finally) goes back to Bournemouth

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

A long time ago, in an English town most of you have never heard of…

He has achieved huge success as a singer-songwriter and has – by his own reckoning – made and lost a million dollars three times.

But although he long ago moved to California, Al Stewart remembers in vivid detail his life as a pop-obsessed teenager in Wimborne.

He will be back in the town on Friday, August 1, for a sold-out concert at the Tivoli – and to visit his old home at Canford Bottom.

“I got a very nice message from the person who now lives in the house I grew up in,” he told the Daily Echo from California.

“This lady invited me to look at my old bedroom.

[…]

After leaving school, Stewart went to work at Beales in Bournemouth – not in the record department, but in the linen department.

He also played guitar with The Tappers, who later backed a young Tony Blackburn as he attempted to become a pop star.

When Stewart joined Dave La Kaz and the G-Men, Jon presented the band to the Echo, claiming hyperbolically that the guitarist had written 40-50 songs.

Bournemouth’s music scene was thriving at the time.

Manfred Mann were a weekly attraction throughout 1963.

Stewart knew Andy Summers, later of the Police, and remembers sitting in Fortes coffee shop off Bournemouth Square with star-to-be Greg Lake and Lee Kerslake, who would later become drummer with Uriah Heep.

He took 10 guitar lessons from Robert Fripp.

But the biggest star of the local scene, he recalls, was Zoot Money, whose walk he would mimic behind the singer’s back.

In August 1963, The Beatles played six nights at the Gaumont cinema in Westover Road.

Not only were Al Stewart and Jon Kremer there on the first night, but afterwards, they contrived a ruse to meet the band. Stewart tells the story on stage, while Jon Kremer set it down in his memoir Bournemouth A Go! Go!

Wearing suits, the pair managed to get backstage by telling the manager that they were from the Rickenbacker guitar company.

Before long, they found themselves outside the band’s dressing room.

Having dropped the Rickenbacker pretence, they spent a few minutes chatting with John Lennon and trying his guitar.

“People tend to forget that we weren’t living in an age of mega-security,” Stewart recalled.

“You can’t just walk backstage and talk to Justin Timberlake. In those days it was very lax.”

Not directly related to the story, but one of my favourite arrangements of “Year of the Cat”, in a live performance from 1979:

Floating HMS Queen Elizabeth for the first time

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:02

Three hours of careful work compressed into a short video:

QotD: Qui veut tout défendre ne sauve rien (Who defends everything defends nothing)

Filed under: Military, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

This is an elementary and self-evident Principle. Indeed, it is so axiomatic that few examples of it will be given in these pages. The only point to stress is that it is useless to hope to obtain complete security in passive defense. It is also unsound. “He who tries to defend everything saves nothing.” declared Marshal Foch, echoing Frederick the Great. It should be noted that the very act of assuming the offensive imparts a certain degree of security. Make as if to strike a man, and he instinctively assumes a defensive attitude. As General Rowan Robinson expresses it in his Imperial Defence, “The highest form of strategic security is that obtained through the imposition of our will upon the enemy, through seizing the initiative and maintaining it by offensive action.” There may sometimes be an element of risk in this, but, as we have seen, war in its nature involves risk.

Lt. Colonel Alfred H. Burne, The Art of War on Land, 1947.

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