Pool Party

A rainy weekend meant that I spent a lot of it sitting on the couch reading and watching Reto channel-surf. Personally my televisual preferences in this country run mainly to stuff in english, which means that I spend an embarrassing amount of time watching abysmal shows on Mtv (although I have to say that Flavor of Love, where trashy morons compete for the heart of the formerly well-known singer or something, Flavor Flav, is not abysmal or embarrassing at all. In fact, it's the best tv show I have watched since I left Australia and stopped watching things that allowed me to retain some semblance of self respect).

Anwyay, Reto has an inexplicable fondness for sport, so there was a lot of ice hockey to be seen and ignored over the weekend, and a lot of snooker, which I ignored slightly less because the commentating was in english and because the competitors were wearing such unattractive waistcoats (horribly shiny and with these awful pink-themed tartanny patterns on the back). As it turns out, this snooker thing is a competition which has been going on for something like a week, the horrible-waistcoated people didn't seem to make it past the early rounds, and it's actually kind of interesting. Well, not actually interesting, in the sense that it's not that much fun to watch, but interesting in the sense that I have a favourite player now and I want him to win. He is Mark Selby, and he looks kind of like a vampire or a victim of consumption or something. He is quite the youngster, too (only 24) and apparently last time he was in this competition he was eliminated in the second round. And everyone likes an underdog, especially an undead* newcomer underdog.

I first got interested in him during the semi finals, which dragged on and on and on forever on Saturday evening. He was playing against Sean Murphy, who I don't like at all (and he sounds like a complete dork from his wikipedia profile. Apparently he and Mark are good friends though. There's no accounting for taste), and it was the best of 33 frames (and considering that a frame takes something like half an hour or so, you can imagine that 33 of them takes what seems like a lifetime) . Happily I didn't watch most of it, but in the end it came down to the last frame, they were totally even at 16 frames each, and then against all my expectations, Mark won. By the time it was over he looked like he was on the brink of death, all pale and sweaty and grim looking, which didn't leave me too optimistic for the finals, which started the next day (Sunday).

My pessimism was well founded, it seems. The finals are half over, and the other bloke, someone called Higgins, is giving poor Mark a bit of a trouncing. It's 9-3 or so at the moment, and the rest is apparently on tonight, but I think Mr. Selby is just going to have to make do with second prize (which is something like £110,000 . Poor thing).



* although according to DJ Bobo, vampires are in fact alive, and may well be responsible for Switzerland trouncing the competition at Eurovision next weekend. Assuming he gets into the finals, anyway,and assuming that the voting public is insane enough to want him to win. Which is quite an ask, frankly.