bambina writes

B on B: When Bambina Met Beckenbauer

Becks and me, August 2008.  Photo by Thomas von Ubrizsy

With the 2010 World Cup frenzy in full swing, everyone seems to have football on their minds.

In the summer of 2008, I met one of football’s greatest players, Franz Beckenbauer.  I wasn’t a football moron; my mother had some connection to FIFA once upon a time, and I grew up knowing, at the very least, who Pele was.  The national team I support is España, of course, and if pressed to choose a club, it would have to be Barça.  So anything to do with the Bundesliga, was, well, a bit too Deutschland uber alles for me.

But Franz Beckenbauer was a charmer, even if I had never heard of him before that sunny day in August in Ulrichen, Switzerland.  However, my cousin Rick – a sports journalist, football fanatic and Liverpool supporter – had, and when I texted him about the meeting, he texted me back immediately from Manila with a list of questions – he could barely contain his envy.  As I sat beside the original Becks before there even was a David Beckham, I pretended to be knowledgeable about the sport, asking what I hoped were intelligent questions, as per Rick’s instructions, like how he felt about Klinsman coming back to coach Bayern…

The Swine of the Times

When the avian flu broke out some years back, as a preventive measure, millions of chickens were slaughtered.  It may be too early to tell whether the current swine flu outbreak will reach pandemic proportions, but fortunately for us humans eating pork doesn't seem to pose any danger of contamination.

And fortunately, I am neither Jewish nor Muslim, because frankly, I love pork. In all its incarnations - roasted, deep-fried, grilled, braised, barbecued, cured, smoked, even boiled, depending on how it's cooked. Filipino-style preferably, in a tamarind-based broth perhaps...

The One & Only

No, this isn't about the star-studded grand opening of the One&Only Cape Town, which by the way, is a fabulous hotel by any standard.  With architecture by Ruben Reddy and Dennis Fabian Berman and interiors by Adam Tihany, it is sexy, modern and chic, and makes that grande dame of Cape Town, The Mount Nelson, look like its spinster aunt, creased but dignified, clinging defiantly to the glories of centuries past.  

No, this isn't about the hotel at all, though in a roundabout way, it is.

What Would Paul Newman Do?

 

I must have always had a thing for older men.  

When I was 11, maybe up to the time I was 13, I used to make lists of my celebrity crushes.  Not for me the likes of Leif Garrett, David and Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson - the late 70s equivalent of Zac Efron, the Jonas Brothers and Chace Crawford.  Too young, too scrubbed, too bubble gum.  Instead my lists featured - or so I believed - men of humor and character, men of experience, men of assured swagger.  Men like Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, James Garner, Alain Delon, James Caan, even Beau Bridges...

And then there was Paul Newman and his impossibly beautiful blue eyes, in a class of his own.  

Rhythm and Bruise

This was a question published recently in Parade magazine from a reader named Mike Waldo:

Ike Turner died of a cocaine overdose. Did ex-wife Tina attend the funeral?

I don't read Parade magazine, but California writer Tod Goldberg does, if only to lambaste the idiotic letters sent in by clueless readers. Tod Goldberg's blog, which I absolutely adore, is not for the faint-hearted. Punctuated with f-words, it seethes with his vicious brand of satire, aimed mainly at the inanity of pop culture. His main mission - admittedly futile and quixotic - is to rid the world of what he calls "fucktards". And for some reason, he believes, the readership of Parade magazine is awash with such fucktards.

Revenge of the Nerds

If you're a TV junkie like me with a penchant for late night talk shows, then you know about Sarah Silverman's hilarious surprise video gift to her boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel in which she tells him and the whole world she's f*cking People's Sexiest Man Alive, Matt Damon. There's a running joke between Jimmy Kimmel and Matt Damon - the Bourne Ultimatum star was a guest on the show once and never got his five minutes of airtime because time had run out.

Spelling with Fergie

lHow my kids learned to spell G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S, or as Perez Hilton says, Fergie is H-U-M-O-R-O-U-S!

Maybe the Midget's Presidential Legal Counsel Serge Apostol should join the spelling bee. His word: WITNESS. His answer: W-E-T-N-E-S-S.The Midget's own vocabulary is limited at the moment. N-B-N, Z-T-E, K-I-D-N-A-P.

Pretty soon, she'll be begging for A-M-N-E-S-T-Y. I hope the next president (a legitimate one this time) will tell her to go to H-E-L-L.

Tribute

This is one of the nicest tributes to Heath Ledger that I've come across, from Slate:

I'm Not There, the 2006 addiction drama Candy, and the tantalizingly creepy trailer for this summer's The Dark Knight all suggest that Ledger was learning to choose roles that took advantage of that peculiar quality he had of seeming at once larger than life and inwardly focused. In the years to come, I'm sure there'll be movies that make audiences think, damn, Heath Ledger could have nailed that role. So I won't opine on how sad it is that a gifted young man, someone's father and someone's son, lost his life at the threshold of a great career. I'll just say that the movies themselves will miss Heath Ledger.

I'm sure there's going to be a run on Brokeback Mountain this weekend at the video rental store. I think I'll try for 10 Things I Hate About You or A Knight's Tale.

Full House

The whole Britney saga is so nauseatingly inane, boring and white trash to the core that when I see anything about her on Perez Hilton or wherever, I don't even bother to give the news item a cursory glance. But this, from Moorish Girl, the blog of Moroccan-American writer Laila Lalami, made me laugh:

I heard that Britney Spears wants to convert to Islam. There comes a point in every lunatic celebrity's career when this happens (See: Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, etc.) And all I can say is: Our nut house is full, Britney. Please take up another religion, we have enough crazies of our own.

Yup, there ain't no room at this inn!

PS I'm still mourning Heath Ledger. So sad. Clearly NOT one of the crazies.

River Heath

Another brilliant but troubled actor dead, at 28.

The last movie I saw Heath Ledger in was Candy, with Abby Cornish. He gave a harrowing performance as a heroin addict consumed by love for his equally addicted wife, yet utterly ensnared and ultimately destroyed by heroin.

Turns out the actor was battling demons just as dark and persistent in his own life. Kind of like River Phoenix. Poor Heath.

Why is it that the intensely talented meet such tragic ends while the intensely stupid lead the paparazzi on a joy ride every night through the streets of LA?

In an interview with the New York Times last November, he said:

“People always feel compelled to sum you up, to presume that they have you and can describe you. That’s fine. But there are many stories inside of me and a lot I want to achieve outside of one flat note.”

Somehow prescient and somehow apt. Now of course those stories will remain untold, and that one flat note, elegiac.

(Photo still from the movie Candy)