Taking Sides: Snooker vs Buffy

In revenge for having my perfectly good Pub Nightmares thread overrun by Buffy and Gothenghast chat.

Sarah Michelle Geller is really nice. I like her. She was so nice to one of her fans on MTV's Fanatic. I watched Snooker out of utter boredom today.

snooker unless it's buffy the movie with DONALD SUTHERLAND.

Buffy is too Preppy to be Gothic.

Snooker! Ray Reardon = a better vampire than all yr Spikes and Willows and Twigs put together etc. Doesn't Steve Davis look old these days? And isn't Ronnie O'Sullivan the first 'indie' snooker superstar?

I cld be mean and say that I love it when snooker, bowls, iceskating etc. knocks Duffy or some other genre cobblers off the Beeb Two schedule, but it bugs me v. much when the same thing happens to The Simpsons, so I will try to be nice and share the pain of those that love it. Hah!

(BTW, an acquaintance who also loves the Duffster recently tried to convince me that one of the best things about the prog is that the lead actresses are not 'conventionally attractive'. Hah!)

since the terrorists haf won and snooker soils the airwaves:

drusilla = goth (minor character wiv lousy "english" accent)
spike = punXoR
willow = uber-indie girl
tara = lilith-fair wiccan folkie
xander = i don't know
giles = early nick drake fan, actually dated gabrielle drake
anya = ICP
buffy = britney

Andrew L's friend is korrekt: it is important that buffy = wooden and earnest, and also dresses v.badly, v.consistently

but OH, Alyson Hannigan...

Oh indeed. Sigh.

Buffy, and anything else that happens to be in the slot the bastard snooker/other sports usurp. Only those with brain damage watch snooker, ie my dad, but then he's a BIG GORRILA anyway.

DG, is yr Dad a stoner? ('cos snooker best 'sport' to watch while mashed. No 2: indoor bowls. No.3: golf.)

Fuck, I really must be brain damaged...

Wanna see how fast I can move when my remote's broken? I'm waiting on Buffy...they announce BASTARD SNOOKER. Tack-ee. I have to get from point A (the chair or the bed) to point B (channel tuner button) before that evil pub-rock theme begins even one note.

*shiver*

I hate snooker. But it's better than Buffy. Stick that in your big book, Mark.

Here in Belgium I get an extra opportunity to catch this Buffy season on Kanaal2. But they've been a week behind the Beeb up to now, which can get very confusing. Hopefully, this is now rectified. So for one week only - "Snooker loopy nuts are we..."

i'd take Darts over Snooker, but either beats Buffy...

* tongue poking from side of mouth, writes laboriously*
"plague of ironic sports supporters haha they shall pay oh they shall pay"

Snooker cues make really good stakes.

Spike vs Jimmy White. Spike plays a pretty mean game of snooker. And can include sarky lines about chicken wings. I love Spike. Jimmy White has mingy dandruff. In fact, even William the Bloody could take ANY snooker player. Ronnie WHO?

I'll be the first to make myself groan by replying..."Corbett".

Canadian snooker players were the best - Cliff Thorburn, Kirk Stevens, Big Bill Werbeniuk who legend had it was prescribed beer by his doctor. Snooker is the baby that needs to be saved when the bathwater of lad culture is flushed away by the likes of Suzy.

incidentally the snooker table at the Bronze has RED baize, and cues have OFTEN been used as stakes duh

What Mark said. Snooker is tack-ee. Has about as much style and design sensibility as wall murals in Belfast - the other 'bad' aesthetic that will never, ever catch on, not even with ironists.

Suzy, snooker is great because it is the one free enclave in a world dominated by style and design sensibility.

Also Belfast wall murals may not be beautiful but they and wall murals in general are always pretty interesting. There's a huge WTC one in the tunnel under the Headington Roundabout currently (this is more graffiti than a mural).

Actually as I said in the question snooker now is rubbish. My love of it is nostalgic not ironic, though - it was the one sport which me and my Dad would watch together (I watched no other, he liked the motor racing) thus making me feel like I was doing proper son-and-dad things.

No, it does have an aesthetic its participants conform to - I just happen to find it really gross. Waistcoats! I mean, if one of them could look as 'good' as the most rat-faced sommelier in a Mafia restaurant then I'd just ignore, but I swear withh the first belch of the rolling pub-rock guitars UP go my hackles and NEXT! goes the viewer-as-executioner.

I love graf murals by the way...

I wish I'd taken a picture of the WTC one, it really shocked me when I first bumped into it, and now it's got some other guy's tags all over it and useless annotations etc.

The more I think about it though the more I like snooker, just as a game. I like the slowness and the tension of it, the horrible psychology of having to wait while your error gives your opponent the opportunity to finish you off at leisure: basically snooker is a drama of impotence which is no doubt why middle-aged men play it and love it so. Yes of course you are right - the Big Break/Matchroom Mob/pub rock trimmings are horrible and the men are not the height of fashion but nor are most sportsmen let's face it. (Why is this?)

See? If it's a game of impotence chasing itself around a baize NO WONDER I don't like to watch. Not even for the schadenfreude.

can you describe the WTC graffiti a bit Tom?

OK, tunnel has a descent, a tunnel, and an ascent. I was lucky to see it first coming the 'right' way to get the full effect (i.e. from Barton towards Headington)

Descent: huge black letters, "WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO?" This is a change from the usual "I fancy Kirsten" stuff so I am on kind-of alert.

Tunnel: big big (8 foot or so I'd guess) stylised black WTC with smoke coming out of the first tower, looking v.eerie in striplit tunnel. In red beside it "STOP ME BEFORE I PAINT AGAIN".

Tunnel and ascent: a series of ellipses, then "tick tick tick tick tick" and then a picture/tag of a bomb.

This was all about the 15th or so. Shocking I suppose cause it brought home to me that this huge event was something the entire world was thinking about, even the graf kids in Barton.

Suzy, it is not pub rock. It was composed by Booker T & the MGs.

Yes house band for Stax I know but I recognise them as *pub rock from another era* ie BOOGIE. My dad runs a sports and blues bar in a place where men in pickup trucks flout drink-driving regulations; this shit is the SOUNDTRACK TO THEIR LIVES.

Use a word longer than three syllables and they're all 'well, lah-di- dah.' Say you're a vegetarian and they ask if you're munching rug. Express a liberal viewpoint and hey presto, you're a Commie. And whatever you do, don't pull their fingers if they ask. Drives me nuts - - so stock hatred of this stuff comes pretty naturally. And it's a pendulum anyway; his parents were effete fashionable city types who spoiled him rotten.

And it's happened again! Our guide to the modern world unjustly usurped by endless hours of green baize action from Wembley!

And isn't it great, Clive, that Ronnie O'Sullivan's behaving himself now and is a proper man after his well publicised personal troubles and he now wears a proper waistcoat and bowtie that marks him out as a changed man and he cleared the table there 5-1 up with a 143 break but has he gone too soon, Clive, because it's never always wise to win all your qualifying round matches if you want to have any fuel reserved for the all-important final. And there he shows respect by letting Hendry win the next 24 frames, what a sporting chap O'Sullivan is - that is class snooker!

Right, come on, sing along all:-

"Now old Meo/As we all know/'s got loads of dapper suits/London bred/But he keeps 'is head/Though he's got EYE-TALIAN ROOTS-AH!"

Virgo: "If Ebdon can get out of this mess I'll give him a pound."

Two seconds later: Virgo: "Well I was only speaking metaphors like..."

Can I please have Sarah Michelle Geller's phone number,address,and a
picture of Tara,Buffy,Riley,Angel,Xander,Dawn,Willow,Anya,Giles,Spike,
Glory,and Joyce SIGNED BY THEM WITH THEIER AUTOGRAGHES.And can Sarah
please write me back.

No.

Haha this is one of the great proto-geeza threads.