Posts by Simon Poole
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Without wishing to derail the thread:
the Hamilton gully system
Yes, this! I cannot count the number of hours, days and weeks spent in the gullys of Hamiltons south-west. From the one that was literally our back yard when we first moved from Auckland when I was 6, to the parks of Glenview and Fitzroy later on. They were 'O' for awesome.
Many a happy hour wandering knee-deep in the various creeks, making huts out of fallen punga and waging war on my friends from the mud.
Sadly, Hamiltons main appeal now is that friends and family reside there. Rolling around in the mud isn't as fun as it used to be.
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Crap, forgot the sports grounds! Waikato Stadium is awesome for watching rugby. The sound in the old stand when the bells are going is deafening. The view from the new stand is unrivalled.
And Seddon Park must surely rate highly on the list of NZ's cricket grounds. I do have the Basin Reserve a short train-ride and walk away, however.
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Geoff: I spent most of my childhood and adolescence in Hamilton, educated at Deanwell Primary and Melville High. I was up last weekend to visit family and friends. The Riverside lanes are fantastic, the rest of the city does not hold that much attraction.
Oh, the botanic gardens in Hamilton are also excellent - best in the country and I try to visit them a couple of times a year. (I don't know why Christchurch gets The Garden City...)
Otherwise... not so much.
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140 is probably better than my average - I tend to be all over the place. The same night I bowled my 222 - 30+ points better than my next best - I also bowled an 80-odd.
It is amazing how much a couple of great rolls (or a couple of poor ones) can swing your score.
I was very happy with my consistency during that patch - I think my lowest roll was 130 or so, with the bulk hovering closer to 140. To be fair, in a week I played something like 15-20 games which was a little extreme. I wouldn't put any money on being able to continue that streak now.
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As for Donny, it was just a theory. You're right the Dude speaks to him, but only once ("Phone's ringin' Dude" "thank you Donny").
Yeah, I had to think about it for a while. It's kind of like the Janitor in Scrubs - no one but JD speaks to him for the entire first season. Somewhere between there and the second they decide they like the character too much for him to be a figment of imagination so begin scripting interaction with other characters. Watching later episodes, it's not something you realise they ever contemplated.
Oh, and following your link, it's good to see that the strings on the pins weren't a figment of my imagination. I swear that I saw pins that should have fallen just slide a little and stay upright. Fucked me right off, that did.
See Lanes? This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!
Amen.
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I love bowling. And I love The Big Lebowski . (Donny is not Walters imaginary friend. The Dude speaks to him, and the clifftop sequence at the end would make absolutely no sense unless Donny was real.) I've been trying to write this post since yesterday afternoon, but work keeps getting in the way.
There is something incredibly simple about bowling that just makes it fun. It's easy to learn, very easy to improve technique, but hard to master. Oh, and it is almost mandatory to drink while playing. It totally parallels pool, which also rocks.
That said, I hate the Lanes in Wellington. I'm not sure hate is a strong enough word. To be fair, however, I have been once shortly after they first opened, so maybe the surface hadn't worn in or something, but everything just felt wrong.
Most of my bowling has been done in Hamilton, at the Sky Riverside lanes - and I totally recommend it to anyone that is forced to spend any time in Hamilton. It's basically the best thing the city has on offer. In one week of furious attendance I managed to push my average from 100-odd to 140, and bowl my best ever game of 151. It's not a patch on Graemes 222, but I love that just by watching what happens when you do this compared to that and making small changes it's very easy to go from rubbish to decent.
That said, I haven't had the cash to bowl for a long time, and would probably be happy to roll 80-90 in my first game. Too bad there isn't an accessable set of lanes worth using in the CBD. Is there?
I recently sold off a good chunk of my dvd collection to raise money for the impending newborn. The Big Lebowski is one of the few titles that survived the purge. I recommend it to anyone that hasn't seen it.
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I think they need to assign a single person to mark him the whole time and to rush him almost every time (at least in the second half when he's more likely to go for a dropgoal).
That leaves a) a hole in the defense or b) a gap on the wing (move a player to the midfield to do the rushing).
Plus it's going to wear someone out quick. I know these guys are professional athletes, but sprint-training (fartlek) is tough for a reason, y'know?
I just don't think it's a strategy that they can keep up all game.
If I were of a more malicious mind, I would say that Butch James knows how to deal with problems like these (And little else)
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but that wouldn't work if him being a better 8 than Lauaki didn't make up for Lauaki being a much worse 6 than Messam
This.
Laukai is a handy 8 at times, and as mentioned often does well at a Super-14 level. He's not mobile enough to make enough impact on the blindside, imo. He does round out the Latimer/Messam trio quite nicely however.
Of course, Henry has tended to play a more aggressive 6 (Collins, Kaino, Read) and have his 8 do a bit more of the scavenging to take some pressure of Ritchie - Messam fits this role nicely. Lauaki, not so much.
As for the final... Drop-goals from half-way make the game difficult to win. The Chiefs can't rush Steyn expecting him to drop-goal every time because it opens up the defensive line. But it seems that, on half the pitch at least, you can't afford not to rush him or you'll give up three points. Sure it's easy to spot when he's dropping into a pocket to take the kick, but that defensive line is going to have to be quick and accurate all night to shut him down. Here's hoping Kahui makes it back or the Chiefs will really struggle.
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Yo, lil' p.
I'll admit, I haven't been following your entire argument, because it sounds long-winded and seemed to come in out of nowhere when people were talking about sow crates and the whatnot, but I digress.
Can you please, just for me, alleviate the nagging suspicion I have that your 1.56pm post is alleging that medical research types have largely invented the African AIDS epidemic (you know, that has killed more than two million people) in order to generate a bit of funding for themselves?
Because that's how I read it. Maybe I'm just tired, I don't know.
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Gb2TBR. Please.
Good-bye to the Business Roundtable?
Amen to that brother.