Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Ali

Russell Brown

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 13:40:27 +1200

.I think I may have watched Princess Anne’s wedding under the influence of LSD…….Captain Mark Philips still freaks me out a bit….

I once stood next to Prince Edward, in public on a streetcorner, while I was on LSD.

Pretty sure I wasn't hallucinating either. He seemed to be nervously…

Chrys Berryman

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 13:26:43 +1200

...no problems with the school, we were all regarded as freezing work fodder anyway [altho I did manage some tertiary studies later on ]...a couple of my mates got zero...later they expressed their disappointment with this result as one had spelt his name correctly ,and the other one said he…

Russell Brown

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 17:20:42 +1200

On the 22nd November 1965 a group of us left our 3 hour School Certificate maths exam after 20 minutes [you couldn’t leave any earlier] and raced to the main street and the Farmers front window and watched Ali fight Floyd Patterson……live on T.V!
…….my mark for the exam was…

Chrys Berryman

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 16:20:54 +1200

On the 22nd November 1965 a group of us left our 3 hour School Certificate maths exam after 20 minutes [you couldn't leave any earlier] and raced to the main street and the Farmers front window and watched Ali fight Floyd Patterson......live on T.V!
.......my mark for the exam was…

richard maclean

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 17:29:07 +1200

Yeah we were sent home early from our intermediate school for the Rumble in the Jungle and then our high school the next year for the Frazier fight. Both schools closed down. Teachers in walkshorts legged it to the pub.

Alan Perrott

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 10:09:04 +1200

nah man, this was the 70s, think more twee, upscaled versions of your trad Lockwood home with driveways featuring a turning circle – that was the height of posh – and more than one chimney.
much more likely to be home to fondue key parties.

I asked my parents to…

Rich Lock

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 00:24:47 +1200

Okay, okay ... work with me here. Two pro wrestlers buy neighbouring houses – and then the problems start.

It's 'Neighbours at War' only with PRO WRESTLERS.

Throw in a leaked sex tape, an online 'new media' organisation with a dubious ethical track record, and a shady libertarian billionaire with…

Mike O'Connell

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 12:49:38 +1200

while Foreman, another black man, becomes the isolated bad guy.

Foreman also gained no rapport with the Kinshasa locals starting when he emerged from his plane with his alsatian, a powerful repressive symbol of Sese Seko's awful regime.

My memory is hazy too on the detail and timing of the…

Grant McDougall

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 11:25:45 +1200

Norman Mailer's book The Fight is a superb account of The Rumble In The Jungle, too.

Regardless of what you may think of Mailer as a person (personally, I thought he came across as a blow-hard) or anything else he wrote, it captures the lead-up, the fight itself and the…

Marc C

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 01:42:32 +1200

I have been counting the dead so to say, this year, and it shocks me. Bowie, Prince, Muhammad Ali, who will be next? It reminds me of my own mortality, and that of all of us, it really scares me, something seriously, how we will all end up there, ashes…

Joe Wylie

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 00:05:03 +1200

One of the tensions in When We Were Kings is the way Ali plays on the adoration of the people in Zaire while Foreman, another black man, becomes the isolated bad guy.

Ali's demonising of Foreman, backed up by the dubious showmanship of Don King, seems to have been a…

Hilary Stace

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 22:18:30 +1200

So that's where the George Foreman grill comes from!

Russell Brown

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 21:31:46 +1200

For me Mohammed Ali’s anti-war stand and friendship with Malcolm X were defining.

Later, in high school, I heard about Malcolm X (bless my great New Zealand liberal education), but in 1974 I was 12 years old and was taken by his extraordinary presence in popular culture. You could halve…

Russell Brown

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 21:22:05 +1200

It was barbaric. Corporal punishment was a doddle, but this stuff seriously traumatised me.

Everyone I've told about it reacts with a deep sense of shock and sadness. No, really, they do.

Russell Brown

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 21:20:35 +1200

yeah man, but the spell was broken for me when we went for a Sunday drive (what the hell were they about?) along Redoubt Rd and I found out Rick Martell and King Curtis were neighbours. that wasn’t right.

Okay, okay ... work with me here. Two pro wrestlers buy…

Rob Hosking

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 18:58:10 +1200

It was barbaric. Corporal punishment was a doddle, but this stuff seriously traumatised me.

Alan Perrott

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 17:04:43 +1200

izogi

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 15:34:32 +1200

+1 to that, except I don't personally fit the gender claim.

I guess I can't know how I'd have been affected by Ali if I'd been around when he was doing his thing, but in retrospect and as with people like Ed Hillary, I have far more respect for what…

Russell Brown

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 14:43:03 +1200

not to mention On the Mat…

Oh yes. We played out On the Mat just about every break for a few years. Never did me any harm!

Russell Brown

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 14:42:04 +1200

not to mention On the Mat….as for inter school- folk dancing though, bwaahahaha, you poor bastards.

Inter-school folk-dancing did not form any part of my childhood.

Fortunately.

Nat Curnow

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 14:36:55 +1200

Our Woodwork teacher at Northcote intermediate brought his own T.V. from home into school and we watched the 74 fight in the woodwork room, it was a big thing. It was partly Ali and partly that I was sick of getting picked on that led me into boxing as a…

Alan Perrott

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 11:30:03 +1200

not to mention On the Mat....as for inter school- folk dancing though, bwaahahaha, you poor bastards.

and sorry, Hilary, no idea what the girls were thinking. they still had germs back then and god only knows what was going on in their toilets. Didn't matter how much I was double…

Hilary Stace

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 11:14:01 +1200

Wonder if it was a gender thing? Nobody I knew (girls, sisters, women) was the least bit interested in the boxing and most mothers actively opposed it. For me Mohammed Ali's anti-war stand and friendship with Malcolm X were defining.

Rob Hosking

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 11:12:59 +1200

Anyway, I seem to remember it being fed by the Bruce Lee cult – did you know he got so fit and so strong he exploded? That was the gospel of the playground and you didn't dare state a winner in a Ali-Lee scrap without backup. Jesus, primary schools in…

Alan Perrott

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 11:02:23 +1200

That was a mad day, there were fights at morning tea, lunchtime and little play over who was better or because someone said Ali was too damn uppity. Then the final bell went and everyone charged for the gate. Not sure if we got anything done in class, the anticipation…

Public Address

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 11:02:23 +1200

Discussion from blog post.