Text © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Nin

Beckham's goal against Chelsea in 1996

Thanks to Austin Calleja for the pic.

Footnote:

Starting from the 2003/2004 season, Beckham left Manchester United, England, for Real Madrid, Spain.

The David Beckham this planet knows is the one whose free kicks become any goalkeeper's nightmare. In 1996, in this game against Chelsea FC, London, Manchester United's Becks was still a young sorta happier kid who got all the luck he could dream of. A kid who so loved football above all else.....

I miss that Becks today, no matter how much better his skill is compared to that day.

Yet, it's in him. It's always there, even if sometimes hidden deep below the surface of steely sheer professionalism and haphazard showmanship.

I've been a football fan since I was a kid, like, in 1980. What I expect from footballers is just the love of the game -- goal-scoring frenzy is only a bonus track.

Cut from My Red Devils © 2000 NIN

Entirely quoted from other source: David Beckham's profile -- only until 2001.

"Born on 02/05/1975 in Leytonstone, England, height 6'0ins, weight 11st 12lbs. David is a supremely talented midfielder, with a sublime range of passing and shooting skills, yet in 1998-99 the Manchester United star's life seemingly oscillated between triumph and disaster almost on a daily basis. After his marriage to Spice Girl Victoria Adams in Dublin in the summer of 1999, the back pages continued to portray him as either a hero or a villain, depending on the particular writer's point of view, during the following season. Apart from a weekly barrage of insults from rival supporters, there was a £50,000 fine for breaking a club curfew before a key European game, occasions when more column inches were devoted to his “petulant” behaviour than to the team's actual performance on the pitch, his wife's misinterpreted quotes about how it would be more advantageous if he played for a London side, and then a bust-up with Sir Alex Ferguson after he missed a training session to look after his poorly son Brooklyn. Quite how David manages to stay on an even keel amid such hyperbole is one of life's great mysteries; but despite it all he remains, quite simply, the most outstanding English footballer of his generation. To illustrate the point, he started the season with his now mandatory free-kick “special”, with Arsenal the victims in the Charity Shield opener at Wembley. Although he waited another 18 games to register his next competitive goal, against Zagreb in the Champions' League, he took the runner-up spot behind Rivaldo in the “European Footballer of the Year” award. Despite being sent off against Necaxa in the World Club Championship in Brazil in January, and the FA extending him an invitation to explain his supposed petulance on the pitch in October, the hard facts were that David had gone 520 minutes in the Premiership without even receiving a yellow card. Although the media circus continued to link his name with a possible £25 million move to Arsenal or Inter Milan, both David and United dismissed the stories out of hand. Insisting that he was happy to stay at Old Trafford for the rest of his career, he was even looking forward to the day when he might captain the side. Once again playing wide on the right of midfield, where his inviting crosses posed a constant threat, he came to the fore as the season reached its exciting finale but, while his goals against Leicester, Bradford and West Ham kept United in line for another Premiership title, his brilliant solo effort in the European Cup quarter-final against Real Madrid at Old Trafford wasn't enough to prevent their elimination from the competition. Also a fixture in the England line-up, he was one of the few successes of the Euro 2000 campaign, laying on both goals against Portugal and providing Alan Shearer with the winner against Germany. David's talents were again recognised by his fellow professionals, who included him in the PFA award-winning Premiership team." [Austin Calleja for Red Cafe]

Michael Beck
[1966-2000]

How do you define "best friend"?

Somehow right through the years until he passed away I have never even asked myself this question.

I don't go to the places he haunted. I don't know his other friends. I wasn't the one who dragged him back to the shady apartment when he got too jazzed and started to talk of devils at the bar. I didn't sit all night with him at the sidewalk where he smashed that guitar. I wasn't there when his kids were born. I wasn't there when he got the split-up and he got the lawyer fed-up.

We were, except for the first few months when we were colleagues, always oceans away from each other. I am the one who stays put and he was the gypsy that got blown out around the world. Cultural, racial, ethnic identities that never got in the way (except, to me, his maddening accent) were substituted by a sheer physical distance. On average we only met once or twice a year.

But I was there when he was f----ed-up. I was there when he cried. I was there when he was happiest. I was there at his kid's first birthday and his wife's first solo gig. I was there when the mist got too thick and it was the last time I ever saw him.

And he was the only one that was here inside my dungeon and with me slaying some dragons.

He called me his best friend too.

Was I? Was he?

But I know one thing -- this question was, from either side, never asked.

Oda Nobunaga

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Oda Nobunaga

I fell for Oda Nobunaga a long long time ago as my raging hormones of the time demanded hero-worship. As fate would have it, I turn out to be devoid of such an exhausting human nature, but still I retain the medium-sized adoration towards several historical icons including Oda Nobunaga. This man fulfills diehard warlike romanticism I am always vulnerable against.

Here is a description of Oda's personality, translated from some Portuguese missionaries' notes by Walter Dixon: "He is a prince of large stature, but with delicate complexion; with a heart and soul that supplied all other wants; ambitious above all mankind; brave, generous, and bold, and not without many excellent moral virtues; inclined to justice, and an enemy to treason. With a quick and penetrating wit, he seemed cut out for business.....never using any heads but his own. He sought to see into others, and to conceal his own counsel, being very secret in his designs. If he asked advice, it was more to know their hearts than to profit by their advice."

Oda Nobunaga never did anything against his conscience. I think that is good enough for a man whose taste in dressing up is said to be closer to Flash Gordon's Emperor Ming (or Versace, whichever) than the League of Ordinarily Elegant Gentlemen's dress codes.

And I love men who dream of the impossible -- and who dream this to life.

Blue, Simply Red's album in 1998

Blue was produced by AGM (Andy Wright, Gota Yashiki & Mick Hucknall)
© 1998 Warner Music U.K. Ltd.
© 1998 Simply Red
Photography by Zanna
Photography art direction
by Carolyn Quartermaine.

Blue songs: 1. Mellow My Mind 2. Blue 3. Say You Love Me 4. To Be Free 5. The Air That I Breathe 6. Someday In My Life 7. The Air That I Breathe Reprise 8. Night Nurse 9. Broken Man 10. Come Get Me Angel 11. Ghetto Girl 12. Love Has Said Goodbye Again 13. High Fives.

Maybe I got Simply Red's albums only because Mick Hucknall (singer/songwriter) not only loves football but also plays it -- or because the band's name signifies what I also have been: a Manchester United fan (nicknamed 'the Red Devils'). Born in Manchester, Simply Red got directly involved in football events, like charity games against other club's celebrity fans. Hucknall wrote the theme song for the 1994 World Cup (in of all places the USA). They also kept releasing unforgettables like Stars.

But Blue is different. It's not just a large package uselessly wrapping one single hit. As a whole, the album got the best of Simply Red; the versatility, simplicity, ambience -- it never pushes you into it, it never forces itself to you. It just be and be good. All the thirteen songs are Simply United.

Cabins
In Minnesota

In Missouri

Buffalo Bill's

Minnesota cabin: thanks to Erik Rolff
Missouri cabin: thanks to Fiona Keller
Buffalo Bill's cabin: thanks to
Steve Davidson (1967-2001)

This family of mine has never owned any piece of land anywhere at all. Weird, but that's how it has been for several generations. They -- we -- have always been some steps below the land-purchasers, mostly for financial reasons. When other people's ancestors give inheritance in the form of land, cattle, gold, and Swiss bank accounts, my forepersons hand down cosmology. With that sort of DNA in you, it's not surprising that you'd end up broke after lunch.

But this year there was an anomaly -- my little sister started to think of being a landowner.

To me the thing itself has always been bizarre. Land is. The air is. Waterways be. I guess I can never elaborate this thought I have, but in short owning any piece of the aforementioned stuff is odd. Even nations' claim of sovereignty over them is actually weird to me.

I did my homework before writing this down, scrutinizing myself for clues -- did this happen because I tried to rationalize in some distant past? Was it a result of my conscious attempt to make sense of our poverty? As far as I know, none of my predecessors ever did so -- they simply acknowledged that the relation money has with land-owning thereby excluded them. Well, practically speaking I admit this too, but still it is impossible for me to even think of myself as a landowner, possessing a piece of paper issued by the state that I have paid some hard cash to acquire a piece of the big cake named Indonesia, itself a piece of the even bigger cake called Asia, itself is part of the biggest cake around named Earth, itself a cut of.....

That, to me, is utterly ridiculous.

But, as has usually been the case, I might be the wacko here. Under this same roof there is a different head thinking of buying a piece of land where she would build her dream-house on.

And she actually criticized my attitude towards the thing. "Now this is weird even for a weirdo," she said last Tuesday. On Wednesday, still talking about the same theme, she added, "How would you get your log cabin if you don't own land?" Piece of cake, I said. I will rent it from her. At this point she said okay, but she would only rent me a big, concrete house, because even a second dream-house of hers doesn't involve logs.

See, that is some landowner's attitude. They all seem to want to occupy the little piece of earth -- literally. Houses much bigger than anyone ever needs, some solid buildings on it that couldn't even fall down after several times of bombing attacks, for....what? Just a feeling that the land is their something.

So I got a hunch that I would be an everlasting homeless person in the land-owning sense, though I really love cabins beyond any sense of reasonability. (But there is a "One day, blah blah blah", right? Thank God.)

Grandma
[1918-2000]

We're not flower persons, Grandma and I. But she's passed away in 2000, so if today someone brings her some she wouldn't really mind. It's just a custom anyway. She'd make concessions.

Anyone who died must be someone else's somebody. You know, like the grocer's uncle who's caught by a shark, the boss' favorite kid who's O.D., anonymous someone snatched by the interstate bus, a friend's father that went away with such a complicated companion that you need several years in medical school to know actually why he died.

Wait a minute. Why he died?

Because he was alive, that's why. And so was Grandma.

That Grandma was old enough to beat this republic's age by a wide margin didn't make it easier for me. Okay, so maybe your grandma could die simply because she's 82, but certainly not mine. No, no, no. Nobody ever died in this family. No one should die if he or she ever slept in my bed. If I happen to be in a good mood I would even say not a single person could die if he or she is in my mailing list.

But Grandma only died in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service. That's good! In my mind, she's never been written in past-tense.

To me, little stuff like a smile, a kind word, a nice voice, are what makes life -- in the same string with a lie, a stab, a word that hurts. They all stay. A simple math once in a while would do to know which are pearls and which are plastic beads, are we sort of happy or are we more or less miserable. But we can always zoom in the one single bead that looks good, we can hold it a bit longer, we can relive the moment it represents. From time to time, when the goings get tough, when the hurt is too much, the last layer of the defensive system is dangerously torn, a desperate look at one of the brighter moments could help a little bit.

This goes on whether we are conscious of it or not.

To me, there has never been such a thing as "....but he's family!". I will never respect someone just because he or she is relatively my relative. I will never love anybody simply because he or she is filed by the government as my family's member. I will never expect anything either from any of them but this same practice -- I hope I earn their affection and such, and so do they, so should they, in my eyes, if they want it.

Grandma did earn it.

She could be your grandmother and I will still feel the same to her. She could be a jailbird's mom, the President's cook, a hobo, whatever, as long as she is what she is as an individual, I will still feel the same.

Only accidentally like a river she flows there, cooling off the burning rage and disappointments, the mental blisters and the bleeding wounds, filling up the void.

And it is good to have a friend who knows what it's like to feel the way I do about her. That way the flowers meant something.

Whenever I remember Grandma, there is nothing I couldn't forgive.

Like A River She Was Is © 2000 NIN

Key Largo pier, FL

Thanks to Erik Rolff and Ryan Kane who both sent me pictures of the same pier. This one is Erik's -- but the 'why' is Ryan's.

Sometimes you can't say anything about something except by homespun homilies or rustic cliche or the same old song -- pictures are windbags now and then. They do say more than a copy of Gulag Archipelago, though most of the words are either unprintable or in German. Shortcut: this picture told me much of what I already knew.

A simple memory of someone standing there once, talking to me -- all the waterway and the sky and the breeze got through -- it is one of the best five minutes in my life, one I'll never forget. I've got a friend.

Lina Inverse, The Slayers

© 1995 IG Film, SoftX, TV Tokyo
Directors: Watanabe Takashi, Ishizaki Susumu, Yamazaki Kazuo, Sato Masahito, Iwasaki Yoshiaki, Kawaguchi Moto, Mizushima Seiji, Kato Eiji. Designers Miyata Naomi, Teraoka Kenji, Higashi Toshihasa. Animation by Miyata Naomi, Sasaki Kazuhiro, Kikuchi Seiji, Abunai Mitsuru. Music by Tezuka Osamu & the band Vink. Movies, videos and TV series were released in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 2001.

In the mostly predictable world of anime, Slayers is a deserter at least in one major way: the heroine Lina Inverse has small tits. Oh yes, that couldn't just mean nothing; not if you are familiar with Japanese animation films.

In the TV series the mistress of magic Inverse is teamed-up with an assorted bunch of typical anime characters, such as a cute little princess named Amelia who adores her. In the movies, Lina Inverse is accompanied by another magic-user, Nahga, who dresses like Marylin Manson and laughs like goblins and (but) is blessed with a pair of bouncy Dolly Partonian boobs (some fan-service, this is).

Lina and Nahga are both far from adjectives such as 'gorgeous', although one of their movies used this word in the title. They are not beautiful -- Lina tends to sway towards cute rather than anything -- and the baring of the flesh in Nahga's (un-)attire mostly serves comic effects rather than geeky lust. Their attitude, too, is impeccable carelessness. The series move on from one adventure to another while Lina, with the gang on TV or with Nahga on widescreen, follows the voice of her heart and the smell of food and/or money (she's magic for hire, I forgot to say)..

This series is among the ones I like most because of its lighthearted approach to anything. It is, as far as I'm concerned, an entertainment. Once you have finished watching your five hundredth movie, you would, I guess, find how rare is an entertainment entertaining. Slayers is.