Monday 21 December 2009

freddy versus jason elam

Sorry, NFL fans - it's been two weeks without a proper Any Given Sunday magazine post, but I've had a couple of excellent but preclusive Saturday nights out.

Just a quickie, then:

Player of the Week - Jason Elam

Kickers are funny. They can play for twenty years, and brilliantly do a thing that loads of people can do nearly as well as each other, even if it is very high pressure, which means that two mistakes and they're out on their ears. Jason Elam is out on his ear, after a long and successful career (two Super Bowls with the Broncos).

'But is this enough to make someone your prestigious player of the week?' I hear you cry, expecting something better. Yes, is the answer. 'So, is there more?'

Oh yes. Because Jason Elam is the author of Amazon.co.uk's one million twenty-nine thousand, four hundred and sixty first best-selling book, Monday Night Jihad (I'm sure it is doing better in the States).



Publishers Weekly says:
Just in time for the Super Bowl is this debut suspense novel from a 14-year NFL place kicker and his Colorado pastor. The result yields some nice moments paired with problematic writing and improbable plot twists. Air Force 2d Lt. Riley Covington is given grace to play NFL football instead of serving out his military time, but he opts to return to active duty after a horrific stadium bombing. Hakeem Qasim is an Iraqi groomed for terrorism by tragic events in his childhood. The lives of both the squeaky-clean Christian Riley and the radical Muslim Hakeem intersect in a way that readers will see coming early in the novel. Rich details about life as an NFL player invigorate the story; the details become problematic when the story gets wordy (as in one long and unnecessary chapter toward the end of the book). Although the final [...] plot twist is too easy, unexpected humor helps leaven the serious themes, and the sparks of romance that fly between Riley and an American Muslim woman will pique readers' interest
It sounds very moving. But I think we all want to know about the pastor who also co-writes thrillers in which, according to the author of Unveiling Islam, 'Each page has a pulse and every act has significance. This is more than a novel—it’s a genuine work of masterful suspense.'



Well, he graduated from Multnomah Bible College, stinted as a biblical videographer and his hobbies include translating the New Testament from the Greek and maintaining a world leaders database. How can you not be interested in this guy? It's easy to sound snide, actually, but I think he and Jason sound like nice guys who have found themselves in a weird place where chatting with their mates about a great story they'd like to tell has turned into a literal, actual, Christian techno-thriller.

You probably want me to review the book, but Mike Tanier, my most prestigious Nemesis, has already done it on Football Outsiders. You really, really should read it. It opens like this:
Riley Covington is a driven, passionate man. He's an expert marksman who can fly an airplane, prays roughly five times per day, and isn't afraid to resort to violence to solve a problem. He's the kind of hero America's enemies just cannot relate to, and in Monday Night Jihad, Jason Elam and Steve Yohn's wry deconstruction of the potboiler formula, Covington is on a one-man quest to stop a tight-end-turned-mad-bomber. Covington is aided on this one-man quest by a host of federal agents, quirky code breakers, gorgeous Iranian snipers, and heroic hot chocolate vendors.

On the surface, Jihad is a sanitized sub-Clancy quality techno-thriller, filled with stock characters and giant plot holes. But Elam and Yohn are clever writers who toy with our expectations of structure, storytelling, and grammar, creating a kind of un-novel that is every bit as deep as it is entertaining.
Every bit. Tanier is the bomb. As for Riley Covington: there are two sequels. He might get his nipples tortured, but he never swears.

Peter King

Sportswriting is relentlessly of the now. We analyse today's game and extrapolate wildly, as if it cancels out the past and predicts the future. Or, if we are a tennis commentator, we do the same with this game, or even point. If we are a tennis commentator, we should really get some perspective, to be honest. All I mean is that it is very easy to point at a sportswriter who has extrapolated wildly, because they all do it all the time. It is part of the bones of the air in which they breathe, and that's the way the world crumbles.

Peter King SEEMS to understand this in his absolutely Nemesis-worthy Monday Morning Quarteback Column for Sports Illustrated. He says it's silly to write off Tony Romo simply on the basis of a couple of bad games:
We have a tendency in micro-examining this game to make judgments too fast on players at difficult positions to judge -- such as quarterback
However, at the top of the column, writing about the same game, which saw Romo's Dallas beat the previously undefeated Saints on the day the generally outstanding Minnesota lost disappointingly and Philadelphia won big, he couldn't have shown more knee-jerk extrapolative vim:
In one weekend, the best NFC Championship game scenario may have morphed from Minnesota-New Orleans to Philadelphia-Dallas
Doing these on one page takes a special skill. Or dopiness of sub-editor.

You should listen to more Hello Saferide, by the way (thank you Big Mouth on the right). They are on Spotify. Sample lyric, about being young and in a holiday home with a guy she would have liked to have lose her virginity to:
Well, he said something I didn't understand
'Cause he was from the south of Sweden, he spoke just like a Dane

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