“
Soccer forces life to move on. There’s always a new match. A new season. There’s always a dream that everything can get better. It’s a game of wonders.
”
”
Fredrik Backman (Britt-Marie var här)
“
I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how anybody
does it, waking up every morning and eating and moving
from the bus to the assembly line, where the teacherbots
inject us with Subject A and Subject B, and passing
every test they give us. Our parents provide the list of
ingredients and remind us to make healthy choices: one
sport, two clubs, one artistic goal, community service, no
grades below a B, because really, nobody’s average, not
around here. It’s a dance with complicated footwork and
a changing tempo.
I’m the girl who trips on the dance floor and can’t find
her way to the exit. All eyes on me.
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)
“
Liam cleared his throat again and turned to fully face me. “So, it’s the summer and you’re in Salem, suffering through another boring, hot July, and working part-time at an ice cream parlor. Naturally, you’re completely oblivious to the fact that all of the boys from your high school who visit daily are more interested in you than the thirty-one flavors. You’re focused on school and all your dozens of clubs, because you want to go to a good college and save the world. And just when you think you’re going to die if you have to take another practice SAT, your dad asks if you want to go visit your grandmother in Virginia Beach.”
“Yeah?” I leaned my forehead against his chest. “What about you?”
“Me?” Liam said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m in Wilmington, suffering through another boring, hot summer, working one last time in Harry’s repair shop before going off to some fancy university—where, I might add, my roommate will be a stuck-up-know-it-all-with-a-heart-of-gold named Charles Carrington Meriwether IV—but he’s not part of this story, not yet.” His fingers curled around my hip, and I could feel him trembling, even as his voice was steady. “To celebrate, Mom decides to take us up to Virginia Beach for a week. We’re only there for a day when I start catching glimpses of this girl with dark hair walking around town, her nose stuck in a book, earbuds in and blasting music. But no matter how hard I try, I never get to talk to her.
“Then, as our friend Fate would have it, on our very last day at the beach I spot her. You. I’m in the middle of playing a volleyball game with Harry, but it feels like everyone else disappears. You’re walking toward me, big sunglasses on, wearing this light green dress, and I somehow know that it matches your eyes. And then, because, let’s face it, I’m basically an Olympic god when it comes to sports, I manage to volley the ball right into your face.”
“Ouch,” I said with a light laugh. “Sounds painful.”
“Well, you can probably guess how I’d react to that situation. I offer to carry you to the lifeguard station, but you look like you want to murder me at just the suggestion. Eventually, thanks to my sparkling charm and wit—and because I’m so pathetic you take pity on me—you let me buy you ice cream. And then you start telling me how you work in an ice cream shop in Salem, and how frustrated you feel that you still have two years before college. And somehow, somehow, I get your e-mail or screen name or maybe, if I’m really lucky, your phone number. Then we talk. I go to college and you go back to Salem, but we talk all the time, about everything, and sometimes we do that stupid thing where we run out of things to say and just stop talking and listen to one another breathing until one of us falls asleep—”
“—and Chubs makes fun of you for it,” I added.
“Oh, ruthlessly,” he agreed. “And your dad hates me because he thinks I’m corrupting his beautiful, sweet daughter, but still lets me visit from time to time. That’s when you tell me about tutoring a girl named Suzume, who lives a few cities away—”
“—but who’s the coolest little girl on the planet,” I manage to squeeze out.
”
”
Alexandra Bracken (The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds, #1))
“
lf you’re going to deal with reality, you’re going to have to make one big discovery: Reality is something that belongs to you as an individual. If you wanna grow up, which most people don’t, the thing to do is take responsibility for your own reality and deal with it on your own terms. Don’t expect that because you pay some money to somebody else or take a pledge or join a club or run down the street or wear a special bunch of clothes or play a certain sport or even drink Perrier water, it’s going to take care of everything for you.
”
”
Frank Zappa
“
Which is how he ends up in his J. Crew best on a Saturday at the Greenwich Polo Club, wondering what the hell he’s gotten himself into. The woman in front of him is wearing a hat with an entire taxidermied pigeon on it. High school lacrosse did not prepare him for this kind of sporting event.
”
”
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
“
(...)"Flapper"— the notorious character type who bobbed her hair, smoked cigarettes, drank gin, sported short skirts, and passed her evenings in steamy jazz clubs, where she danced in a shockingly immodest fashion with a revolving cast of male suitors.
”
”
Joshua Zeitz (Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern)
“
As I’ve mentioned, I am an only child. This makes me a member of the worldwide super-smart-afraid-of-conflict narcissist club. And let me emphasize: afraid of conflict. Since I had no siblings to routinely challenge/hit me and equally no interest in playing sports, I had grown up without any experience in conflict. I therefore had no reason to imagine that confrontation of any kind, ranging from fighting to kissing, was not probably fatal.
”
”
John Hodgman (Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches)
“
To all the readers,
whom despite
the attraction of tv,
of internet,
of family troubles,
of video games,
of sport,
of night clubs,
have found some hours
so we can all dream together.
”
”
Bernard Werber
“
Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting and watching (stalking), throwing with incredible accuracy and speed, sprinting, dodging... and hitting moving objects real hard with clubs! And arguing. Hey, what else could you possibly need? Now, tell me, how do soccer or basketball prepare you to survive in the wild, hm?
”
”
David Brin
“
AFC Leopards were as thrilling a side as ever took the pitch and they dominated East African football in the eighties. That Kenyan players were an excitable bunch was attested to in one memorable Leopards match, with the opposing goalkeeper being handcuffed and dragged away to jail by police.
”
”
David Bennun (Tick Bite Fever)
“
The club is not a business. It's a populist democracy.
”
”
Simon Kuper (Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport)
“
It is not just bookstores and libraries that are disappearing but museums, theaters, performing arts centers, art and music schools— all those places where I felt at home have joined the list of endangered species. The San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and my own hometown paper, The Washington Post, have all closed their weekend book review sections, leaving books orphaned and stranded, poor cousins to television and the movies. In a sign of the times, the Bloomberg News website recently transferred its book coverage to the Luxury section, alongside yachts, sports clubs and wine, as if to signal that books are an idle indulgence of the super-rich. But if there is one thing that should not be denied to anyone rich or poor it is the opportunity to dream.
”
”
Azar Nafisi (Things I've Been Silent About)
“
Poshlust,” or in a better transliteration poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature—these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know. Poshlost speaks in such concepts as “America is no better than Russia” or “We all share in Germany’s guilt.” The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as “the moment of truth,” “charisma,” “existential” (used seriously), “dialogue” (as applied to political talks between nations), and “vocabulary” (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name—that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost’s favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wreckers, building crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, Zen stereos, polystyrene stinkbirds, objects trouvés in latrines, cannonballs, canned balls. There we admire the gabinetti wall patterns of so-called abstract artists, Freudian surrealism, roric smudges, and Rorschach blots—all of it as corny in its own right as the academic “September Morns” and “Florentine Flowergirls” of half a century ago. The list is long, and, of course, everybody has his bête noire, his black pet, in the series. Mine is that airline ad: the snack served by an obsequious wench to a young couple—she eyeing ecstatically the cucumber canapé, he admiring wistfully the hostess. And, of course, Death in Venice. You see the range.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Strong Opinions)
“
President Josiah Bartlet: Good. I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.
Dr. Jenna Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President. The Bible does.
President Josiah Bartlet: Yes, it does. Leviticus.
Dr. Jenna Jacobs: 18:22.
President Josiah Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town: Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you? One last thing: While you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club, in this building, when the President stands, nobody sits.
”
”
Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing Script Book)
“
We are like The Breakfast Club: An army jock, a pretty girl, a basket case, and a nerd. Except, imagine the Breakfast Club covered in dirt and zombie guts, sporting bruises like they’re this summer’s latest fashion trend.
”
”
Flint Maxwell (Dead Hope (Jack Zombie, #2))
“
The Premier League is a timeless tale of boom and bust, no different from all those other bubbles they warn you about in business-school textbooks. Except, that is, in one crucial respect. In football, the bubble never burst.
”
”
Joshua Robinson (The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports)
“
What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.
”
”
Bobby Robson (Newcastle: My Kind of Toon)
“
We were blessed with excellence, and excellently blessed, and our schoolwork and sports teams and choirs and clubs and shoulders thrummed with Calvinist confidence that is actually a threat: if you do not become spectacular, it means you are not us.
”
”
Lacy Crawford (Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir)
“
I'd always assumed Beth and I would be friends forever. But then in middle of the eighth grade, the Goldbergs went through the World's Nastiest Divorce.
Beth went a little nuts.
I don't blame her. When her dad got involved with this twenty-one year old dental hygienist, Beth got involved with the junk food aisle at the grocery store. She carried processed snack cakes the way toddlers carry teddy bears. She gained, like, twenty pounds, but I didn't think it was a big deal. I figured she'd get back to her usual weight once the shock wore off.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the only person who noticed.
May 14 was 'Fun and Fit Day" at Surry Middle School, so the gym was full of booths set up by local health clubs and doctors and dentists and sports leagues, all trying to entice us to not end up as couch potatoes. That part was fine. What wasn't fine was when the whole school sat down to watch the eighth-grade cheerleaders' program on physical fitness.
”
”
Katie Alender (Bad Girls Don't Die (Bad Girls Don't Die, #1))
“
Destroyed, that is, were not only men, women and thousands of children but also restaurants and inns, laundries, theater groups, sports clubs, sewing clubs, boys’ clubs, girls’ clubs, love affairs, trees and gardens, grass, gates, gravestones, temples and shrines, family heirlooms, radios, classmates, books, courts of law, clothes, pets, groceries and markets, telephones, personal letters, automobiles, bicycles, horses—120 war-horses—musical instruments, medicines and medical equipment, life savings, eyeglasses, city records, sidewalks, family scrapbooks, monuments, engagements, marriages, employees, clocks and watches, public transportation, street signs, parents, works of art. “The whole of society,” concludes the Japanese study, “was laid waste to its very foundations.”2698 Lifton’s history professor saw not even foundations left. “Such a weapon,” he told the American psychiatrist, “has the power to make everything into nothing.
”
”
Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition)
“
Seemingly every year at least one of the league’s top sluggers can be found in Boston’s lineup—and often times more than one. David Ortiz was second or third in slugging five consecutive seasons from 2003-07. Manny Ramirez was in the top five in slugging six consecutive seasons from 2001-06. Manny and Big Papi were one-two in slugging in 2004, and from 2003-06 Boston’s big bats gave the club two of the league’s top five sluggers—something no other team in the league could boast.
”
”
Tucker Elliot (Boston Red Sox: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports)
“
Think of it as plastic memory, this force within you which trends you and your fellows toward tribal forms. This plastic memory seeks to return to its ancient shape, the tribal society. It is all around you—the feudatory, the diocese, the corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell, the planning council, the prayer group . . . each with its master and servants, its host and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to “those better times.” I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square thoughts which resist circles.
”
”
Frank Herbert (God Emperor of Dune (Dune, #4))
“
Welcome," Vassily said, and smiled. He showed teeth. "To Immortal Battles. We don't fight to the death -- we fight beyond death, in the world's most dangerous sport.
”
”
Rachel Caine (Bite Club (The Morganville Vampires, #10))
“
I've never had an interest, but baseball looks abnormal.
”
”
Emily J. Proctor (The Baseball Club for Girls (The Baseball Club, #1))
“
A baseball club for girls?
”
”
Emily J. Proctor (The Baseball Club for Girls (The Baseball Club, #1))
“
In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
But the bill was also loathed by the National Party because it would drain university sporting clubs of cash. Out in the bush, those clubs and that money mattered.
”
”
David Marr (Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott [Quarterly Essay 47])
“
I think that after a revolution a man needs a few years to get used to the new era. I knew from my limited and worthless experience that those who tear down and destroy one era cannot build another. Just as weapons can't suddenly become flowers, a killer can't suddenly turn gardener.
Hasan-i Tofan, an earlier killer and member of "The Finishing-Off Sports Club
”
”
Bakhtiyar Ali (I Stared at the Night of the City)
“
I think that after a revolution a man needs a few years to get used to the new era. I knew from my limited and worthless experience that those who tear down and destroy one era cannot build another. Just as weapons can't suddenly become flowers, a killer can't suddenly turn gardener.
Hasan-i Tofan, an earlier killer and member of "The Finishing-Off Sports Club
”
”
Bakhtiyar Ali (I Stared at the Night of the City)
“
It’s as important, if not more important, to create alternative identities in terms of more local communities—communities of chosen values, which for some people might be religion and church, and for others might be the hiking club or a sports club. What’s important is that people don’t feel lost. Nationalism affects mainly those who need ties, need bonds to communities, and don’t have them.
”
”
Ben Rhodes (After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made)
“
This business, ultimately, embodied the challenges of globalization, of the push and pull between expansion and identity, about the universalization of a product that is steeped in decidedly nonuniversal customs.
”
”
Joshua Robinson (The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports)
“
There was a diet center that sported a plywood cutout of a pink pig wearing a brick-red polka-dot dress. The bubble coming from the pig’s mouth held this phrase: A New Way To Lose Weight Without Starving To Death.
”
”
Mary Karr (The Liars' Club)
“
Tsukuru visited railroad stations like other people enjoy attending concerts, watching movies, dancing in clubs, watching sports, and window shopping. When he was at loose ends, with nothing to do, he headed to a station.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage)
“
Carli’s was a small club at the end of a passage between a sporting-goods store and a circulating library. There was a grilled door and a man behind it who had given up trying to look as if it mattered who came in. (Smart-Aleck Kill)
”
”
Raymond Chandler (The Simple Art of Murder)
“
The club supporters’ old practice of shooting arrows into the air from their wands every time their Chasers scored was banned by the Department of Magical Games and Sports in 1894, when one of these weapons pierced the referee Nugent Potts through the nose.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Quidditch Through the Ages)
“
The rise of the English Premier League is a story about the sports world's wildest gold rush. In the span of twenty-five years, the league's twenty clubs have increased their combined value by 10,000 percent, from around $100 million in 1992 to $15 billion today.
”
”
Joshua Robinson (The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports)
“
He had met John Kieran at a Dutch Treat Club luncheon and had been impressed with the depth and scope of Kieran’s knowledge. Kieran was a sports columnist for the New York Times whose writings had earned him the title “sports philosopher.” He was fluent in Latin and a scholar of Shakespeare, knew music, poetry, ornithology and the other branches of natural history, and had a strong base of general knowledge. This was wrapped up in a Tenth Avenue New York accent, a streak of what one writer termed “pugnacity concealed by modesty.
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
The Victorian English aristocracy was a distinct tribe, with its own hierarchies, accents, clubs, schools, colleges, career-paths, vocabulary, honour-codes, love-rituals, loyalties, traditions, sports and sense of humour. Some of these were quite intricate and almost impenetrable to outsiders.
”
”
Andrew Roberts (Churchill: Walking with Destiny)
“
We are supposed to consume alcohol and enjoy it, but we're not supposed to become alcoholics. Imagine if this were the same with cocaine. Imagine we grew up watching our parents snort lines at dinner, celebrations, sporting events, brunches, and funerals. We'd sometimes (or often) see our parents coked out of our minds the way we sometimes (or often) see them drunk. We'd witness them coming down after a cocaine binge the way we see them recovering from a hangover. Kiosks at Disneyland would see it so our parents could make it through a day of fun, our mom's book club would be one big blow-fest and instead of "mommy juice" it would be called "mommy powder" There'd be coke-tasting parties in Napa and cocaine cellars in fancy people's homes, and everyone we know (including our pastors, nurses, teachers, coaches, bosses) would snort it. The message we'd pick up as kids could be Cocaine is great, and one day you'll get to try it, too! Just don't become addicted to it or take it too far. Try it; use it responsibly. Don't become a cocaine-oholic though. Now, I'm sure you're thinking. That's insane, everyone knows cocaine is far more addicting than alcohol and far more dangerous. Except, it's not...The point is not that alcohol is worse than cocaine. The point is that we have a really clear understanding that cocaine is toxic and addictive. We know there's no safe amount of it, no such thing as "moderate" cocaine use; we know it can hook us and rob us of everything we care about...We know we are better off not tangling with it at all.
”
”
Holly Whitaker (Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol)
“
Flare riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in existence, and those who can dare and afford to do it are among the most lionized men in the Galaxy. It is also of course stupefyingly dangerous—those who don’t die riding invariably die of sexual exhaustion at one of the Daedalus Club’s Après-Flare parties.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1-5))
“
The toe end of the golf club caught him just behind his right ear and Grant had put all his considerable strength into that one shot. The cracking noise of the impact was impressive. Indeed, I was surprised that the metal hadn’t gone right through the skull and embedded itself deep into Forrester’s brain. Now who thought golf was a silly sport? Not me.
”
”
Felix Francis (Pulse)
“
Then he placed his hands in his pockets and stood in the middle of the street alone, giving the silent roaring rage inside him time to ease down and out, and after several long minutes he once again became who he was, a solitary middle-aged man in the August of life looking for a few more Aprils, an aging bachelor in a floppy suit standing on a tired, worn Brooklyn street in the shadow of a giant housing project built by a Jewish reformer named Robert Moses who forgot he was a reformer, building projects like this all over, which destroyed neighborhoods, chasing out the working Italians, Irish, and Jews, gutting all the pretty things from them, displacing them with Negroes and Spanish and other desperate souls clambering to climb into the attic of New York life, hoping that the bedroom and kitchen below would open up so they could drop in, and at minimum join the club that to them included this man, an overweight bachelor in an ill-fitting suit, watching a shiny car roaring away, the car driven by a handsome young man who was pretty and drove away as if he were barreling into a bright future, while the dowdy heavyset man watched him jealously, believing the man so pretty and handsome had places to go and women to meet and things to do, and the older heavyset man standing behind eating his fumes on a sorry, dreary, crowded old Brooklyn street of storefronts and tired brownstones had nothing left but the fumes of the pretty sports car in his face.
”
”
James McBride (Deacon King Kong)
“
A man needs understanding because he is existentially alone. He stares into the darkness.
That was the difference between men and women, Leo thought. Men need groups and gangs and sport and clubs and institutions and women because men know that there is only nothingness and self-doubt. Women were always trying to make a connection, build a relationship. As though one human being could know another.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson (The Gap of Time)
“
Hockey is not for pussies. Technically, it’s defined as a sport. Words like play and game get thrown around liberally to shield its true nature: hockey is warfare with water breaks. In the rink, you have over two thousand pounds of brute force clashing with whittled clubs, a rubber disc that could crush a larynx, and knives attached to feet. Let’s not pretend there’s anything civilized going on here.
”
”
Kate Meader (So Over You (Chicago Rebels, #2))
“
But the coffeehouse was still the best place to keep up with everything new.
In order to understand this, it must be said that the Viennese coffeehouse is a particular institution which is not comparable to any other in the world. As a matter of fact, it is a sort of democratic club to which admission costs the small price of a cup of coffee. Upon payment of this mite every guest can sit for hours on end, discuss, write, play cards, receive his mail, and, above all, can go through an unlimited number of newspapers and magazines.
Perhaps nothing has contributed as much to the intellectual mobility and the international orientation of the Austrian as that he could keep abreast of all world events in the coffeehouse, and at the same time discuss them in the circle of his friends. For, thanks to the collectivity of our interests, we followed the orbis pictus of artistic events not with two, but with twenty and forty eyes. What one of us had overlooked was noticed by another, and since in our constant childish, boastful, and almost sporting ambition we wished to outdo each other in our knowledge of the very latest thing, we found ourselves actually in a sort of constant rivalry for the sensational.
”
”
Stefan Zweig (The World of Yesterday)
“
Today each nation flies its own flag, a symbolic embodiment of its territorial status. But patriotism is not enough. The ancient tribal hunter lurking inside each citizen finds himself unsatisfied by membership of such a vast conglomeration of individuals, most of whom are totally unknown to him personally. He does his best to feel that he shares a common territorial defence with them all, but the scale of the operation has become inhuman. It is hard to feel a sense of belonging with a tribe of fifty million or more. His answer is to form sub-groups, nearer to his ancient pattern, smaller and more personally known to him - the local club, the teenage gang, the union, the specialist society, the sports association, the political party, the college fraternity, the social clique, the protest group, and the rest. Rare indeed is the individual who does not belong to at least one of these splinter groups, and take from it a sense of tribal allegiance and brotherhood. Typical of all these groups is the development of Territorial Signals - badges, costumes, headquarters, banners, slogans, and all the other displays of group identity. This is where the action is, in terms of tribal territorialism, and only when a major war breaks out does the emphasis shift upwards to the higher group level of the nation.
”
”
Desmond Morris (Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language)
“
Last year we stepped onto an elevator.
We politely asked the white lady behind us
If she could please take the next lift
To continue social distancing.
Her face flared up like a cross in the night.
Are you kidding me? she yelled,
Like we'd just declared
Elevators for us only
Or Yous must enter from the back
Or No yous or dogs allowed
Or We have the right to refuse
Humanity to anyone
Why it's so perturbing for privileged groups to follow
restrictions of place & personhood.
Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power
has shackled on the rest of us.
It is to surrender the one difference that kept them separate & thus superior.
Meanwhile, for generations we've stayed home, [segre] gated, kept out of parks, kept out of playgrounds, kept out of pools, kept out of public spaces, kept out of outside spaces, kept out of outer space, kept out of movie theaters, kept out of malls, kept out of restrooms, kept out of restaurants, kept out of taxis, kept out of buses, kept out of beaches, kept out of ballot boxes, kept out of office, kept out of the army, kept out of the hospitals, kept out of hotels, kept out of clubs, kept out of jobs, kept out of schools, kept out of sports, kept out of streets, kept out of water, kept out of land, kept out of kept in kept from kept behind kept below kept down kept without life.
Some were asked to walk a fraction / of our exclusion for a year & it almost destroyed all they thought they were. Yet here we are. Still walking, still kept.
”
”
Amanda Gorman (Call Us What We Carry)
“
When I think about it, I have to say that by 1919 even the Hitler Youth had almost been formed. For example, in our school class we had started a club called the Rennbund Altpreussen (Old Prussia Athletics Club), and took as its motto “Anti-Spartacus, for Sport and Politics.” The politics consisted in occasionally beating up a few unfortunates, who were in favor of the revolution, on the way to school. Sports were the main occupation. We organized athletics championships in the school grounds or public stadia. These gave us the pleasurable sensation of being decidedly anti-Spartacist. We felt very important and patriotic, and ran races for the fatherland. What was that, if not an embryonic Hitler Youth? In truth, certain characteristics later added by Hitler’s personal idiosyncrasies were lacking, anti-Semitism for one. Our Jewish schoolmates ran with the same anti-Spartacist and patriotic zeal as everyone else. Indeed, our best runner was Jewish. I can testify that they did nothing to undermine national unity. During
”
”
Sebastian Haffner (Defying Hitler: A Memoir)
“
What could rightly have worried my dad about me and surfing was the special brand of monomania, antisocial and ill-balanced, that a serious commitment to surfing nearly always brought with it. Surfing was still something that one did—that I did—with friends, but the club thing, the organized-sports part, was fading fast. I no longer dreamed about winning contests, as I had dreamed about pitching for the Dodgers. The newly emerging ideal was solitude, purity, perfect waves far from civilization. Robinson Crusoe, Endless Summer.
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William Finnegan (Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life)
“
I don't know how they do it. I don't know how anybody does it, waking up every morning and eating and moving from the bus to the assembly line, where the teacherbots inject us with Subject A and Subject B, and passing every test they give us. Our parents provide the list of ingredients and remind us to make healthy choices: one sport, two clubs, one artistic goal, community service, no grades below a B, because really, nobody's average, not around here. It's a dance with complicated footwork and a changing tempo. I'm the girl who trips on the dance floor and can't find her way to the exit. All eyes on me.
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Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)
“
Worry about Fischer led the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Sports, which studied the psychology of sports, to appoint a Soviet grandmaster and theoretician, Vladimir Alatortsev, to create a secret laboratory (located near the Moscow Central Chess Club). Its mission was to analyze Fischer’s games. Alatortsev and a small group of other masters and psychologists worked tirelessly for ten years attempting to “solve” the mystery of Fischer’s prowess, in addition to analyzing his personality and behavior. They rigorously studied his opening, middle game, and endings—and filtered classified analyses of their findings to the top Soviet players.
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Frank Brady (Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness)
“
Instead, Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes and archers. So, to recap: he never played a sport, was shot with a ton of arrows and then beaten to death with clubs and bats, and the Church made him the patron saint of athletes and archers! Essentially, we made him the patron saint of people who brandish clubs, bats or bows. That means someone trying to shoot something with an arrow or hit something with a bat, may actually pray to Sebastian for help. Why would we do that to him? If I were Sebastian, I would never want to see an arrow, archer or bat again. That’s like making JFK the patron saint of sharpshooters, or Elvis the patron saint of bacon cheeseburgers.
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Ryan Patricks (You're Not Helping...)
“
When the culture of any organization mandates that it is more important to protect the reputation of a system and those in power than it is to protect the basic human dignity of the individuals who serve that system or who are served by that system, you can be certain that the shame is systemic, the money is driving ethics, and the accountability is all but dead. This is true in corporations, nonprofits, universities, governments, faith communities, schools, families, and sports programs. If you think back on any major scandal fueled by cover-ups, you’ll see this same pattern. And the restitution and resolution of cover-ups almost always happens in the wilderness—when one person steps outside their bunker and speaks their truth.
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Brené Brown (Braving the Wilderness: Reese's Book Club: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone)
“
Many Ottomans of this period viewed life as a perennial tug-of-war between modernity and tradition. In several important ways, Salonica tilted toward the former. The city sported bustling Western-style cafés serving Viennese beer; literary clubs hosting philosophical debates; theaters staging dramas, comedies, and operettas; numerous institutions of learning; and a sizable and vibrant European community. Altogether, Salonica had undergone a major transformation during the reform era and had begun to look like a Western European city. The Muslim community, and especially its progressive Dönme component, had established the most advanced schools in the empire. Young Mustafa, who had ample opportunity to contrast the old and the new, chose to embrace modernity wholeheartedly.
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M. Şükrü Hanioğlu (Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography)
“
One more thing about the kind of audience that football has decided it wants: the clubs have got to make sure that they're good, that there aren't any lean years, because the new crowd won't tolerate failure. These are not the sort of people who will come to watch you play Wimbledon in March when you're eleventh in the First Division and out of all the Cup competitions. Why should they? They've got plenty of other things to do. So, Arsenal... no more seventeen-year losing streaks, like the one between 1953 and 1970, right? No flirting with relegation, like in 1975 and 1976, or the odd half-decade where you don't even get to a final, like we had between 1981 and 1987. We mug punters put up with that, and at least twenty thousand of us would turn up no matter how bad you were (and sometimes you were very, very bad indeed); but this new lot... I'm not so sure.
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Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Community as belonging . . .
In many groups of people and clubs of all sorts (political, sports, leisure, liberal professions, etc.) people find a sense of security. They are happy to find others like themselves. They receive comfort one from another, and they encourage one another in their ways. But frequently there is a certain elitism. They are convinced that they are better than others. And, of course, not everyone can join the club; people have to qualify. Frequently these groups give security and a sense of belonging but they do not encourage personal growth. Belonging in such groups is not for becoming.
You can often tell the people who belong to a particular club, group or community by what they wear, especially on feast days, or by their hairstyle, their jargon or accent or by badges and colours of some sort. Grouping seems to need symbols which express the fact that they are one tribe, one family, one group.
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Jean Vanier (Community and Growth)
“
I love football. I love the aesthetics of football. I love the athleticism of football. I love the movement of the players, the antics of the coaches. I love the dynamism of the fans. I love their passion for their badge and the colour of their team and their country. I love the noise and the buzz and the electricity in the stadium. I love the songs. I love the way the ball moves and then it flows and the way a teams fortune rises and falls through a game and through a season. But what I love about football is that it brings people together across religious divides, geographic divides, political divides. I love the fact that for ninety minutes in a rectangular piece of grass, people can forget hopefully, whatever might be going on in their life, and rejoice in this communal celebration of humanity. The biggest diverse, invasive or pervasive culture that human kinds knows is football and I love the fact that at the altar of football human kind can come worship and celebrate.
”
”
Andy Harper
“
Unlike some of his buddies, Truely had never been afraid of books. Following his daddy's example, he had read the newspaper every day of his life since the sixth grade, starting with the sports page. He had a vague idea what was going on in the world. It was true that Truely could generally nail a test, took a certain pride in it, but he was also a guy who like to dance all night to throbbing music in makeshift clubs off unlit country roads. He liked to drink a cold beer on a hot day, maybe a flask of Jack Daniel's on special occasions. He wore his baseball cap backwards, his jeans ripped and torn--because they were old and practically worn-out, not because he bought them that way. His hair was a little too long, his boots a little too big, his aspirations modest. He preferred listening to talking--and wasn't all that great at either. He like barbecue joints more than restaurants. Catfish and hush puppies or hot dogs burned black over a campfire were his favorites. He preferred simple food dished out in large helpings. He liked to serve himself and go for seconds.
”
”
Nanci Kincaid (Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi)
“
I’d been reborn since Marlboro Man had entered my life; his wild abandon and unabashed passion had freed me from the shackles of cynicism, from thinking that love had to be something to labor over or agonize about. He’d ridden into my life on a speckled gray horse and had saved my heart from hardness. He’d taught me that when you love someone, you say it--and that when it comes to matters of the heart, games are for pimply sixteen-year-olds.
Up until then that’s all I’d been: a child masquerading as a disillusioned adult, looking at love much as I’d looked at a round of Marco Polo in the pool at the country club: when they swam after me, I’d swim away. And there are accusations of peeking and cheating, and you always wind up sunburned and pruney and pooped. And no one ever wins.
It was Marlboro Man who’d helped me out of the pool, wrapped a towel around my blistering shoulders, and carried me to a world where love has nothing to do with competition or sport or strategy. He told me he loved me when he felt like it, when he thought of it. He never saw any reason not to.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
Possibly, the main reason for my father’s respectability fixation was a fear of his inner chaos. I felt this, viscerally, because every now and then that chaos would burst forth. Without warning, late at night, the phone in the front hall would jingle, and when I answered there would be that same gravelly voice on the line. “Come getcher old man.” I’d pull on my raincoat—it always seemed, on those nights, that a misting rain was falling—and drive downtown to my father’s club. As clearly as I remember my own bedroom, I remember that club. A century old, with floor-to-ceiling oak bookcases and wing-backed chairs, it looked like the drawing room of an English country house. In other words, eminently respectable. I’d always find my father at the same table, in the same chair. I’d always help him gently to his feet. “You okay, Dad?” “Course I’m okay.” I’d always guide him outside to the car, and the whole way home we’d pretend nothing was wrong. He’d sit perfectly erect, almost regal, and we’d talk sports, because talking sports was how I distracted myself, soothed myself, in times of stress. My father liked sports, too. Sports were always respectable.
”
”
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
“
Fifteen of his clubs, dedicated to politics, music, and the performing arts, had all been developing strategic plans for the past two years. And the local branches of various societies--whose goals were to advance aviation, knowledge of chemistry, automotive transportation, equestrian sports, highway construction, as well as the prompt eradication of ethnic chauvinism--existed only in the sick imagination of the local union committee. As for the school of continuing education, of which Sardinevich was especially proud, it was constantly reorganizing itself, which, as anybody knows, means it wasn't undertaking any useful activity whatsoever. If Sardinevich were an honest man, he would probably have admitted that all these activities were essentially a mirage. But the local union committee used this mirage to concoct its reports, so at the next level up nobody doubted the existence of all those musico-political clubs. At that level, the school of continuing education was imagined as a large stone building filled with desks, where perky teachers draw graphs that show the rise of unemployment in the United States on their chalkboards, while mustachioed students develop political consciousness right in front of your eyes.
”
”
Ilya Ilf (Золотой теленок)
“
PHYSIOLOGY 1. Sex 2. Age 3. Height and weight 4. Color of hair, eyes, skin 5. Posture 6. Appearance: good-looking, over- or underweight, clean, neat, pleasant, untidy. Shape of head, face, limbs. 7. Defects: deformities, abnormalities, birthmarks. Diseases. 8. Heredity SOCIOLOGY 1. Class: lower, middle, upper. 2. Occupation: type of work, hours of work, income, condition of work, union or nonunion, attitude toward organization, suitability for work. 3. Education: amount, kind of schools, marks, favorite subjects, poorest subjects, aptitudes. 4. Home life: parents living, earning power, orphan, parents separated or divorced, parents’ habits, parents’ mental development, parents’ vices, neglect. Character’s marital status. 5. Religion 6. Race, nationality 7. Place in community: leader among friends, clubs, sports. 8. Political affiliations 9. Amusements, hobbies: books, newspapers, magazines he reads. PSYCHOLOGY 1. Sex life, moral standards 2. Personal premise, ambition 3. Frustrations, chief disappointments 4. Temperament: choleric, easygoing, pessimistic, optimistic. 5. Attitude toward life: resigned, militant, defeatist. 6. Complexes: obsessions, inhibitions, superstitions, phobias. 7. Extrovert, introvert, ambivert 8. Abilities: languages, talents. 9. Qualities: imagination, judgment, taste, poise. 10. I.Q.
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Lajos Egri (The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives)
“
What would be the natural thing? A man goes to college. He works as he wants to work, he plays as he wants to play, he exercises for the fun of the game, he makes friends where he wants to make them, he is held in by no fear of criticism above, for the class ahead of him has nothing to do with his standing in his own class. Everything he does has the one vital quality: it is spontaneous. That is the flame of youth itself. Now, what really exists?"
"...I say our colleges to-day are business colleges—Yale more so, perhaps, because it is more sensitively American. Let's take up any side of our life here. Begin with athletics. What has become of the natural, spontaneous joy of contest? Instead you have one of the most perfectly organized business systems for achieving a required result—success. Football is driving, slavish work; there isn't one man in twenty who gets any real pleasure out of it. Professional baseball is not more rigorously disciplined and driven than our 'amateur' teams. Add the crew and the track. Play, the fun of the thing itself, doesn't exist; and why? Because we have made a business out of it all, and the college is scoured for material, just as drummers are sent out to bring in business.
"Take another case. A man has a knack at the banjo or guitar, or has a good voice. What is the spontaneous thing? To meet with other kindred spirits in informal gatherings in one another's rooms or at the fence, according to the whim of the moment. Instead what happens? You have our university musical clubs, thoroughly professional organizations. If you are material, you must get out and begin to work for them—coach with a professional coach, make the Apollo clubs, and, working on, some day in junior year reach the varsity organization and go out on a professional tour. Again an organization conceived on business lines.
"The same is true with the competition for our papers: the struggle for existence outside in a business world is not one whit more intense than the struggle to win out in the News or Lit competition. We are like a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last possibility. You come to Yale—what is said to you? 'Be natural, be spontaneous, revel in a certain freedom, enjoy a leisure you'll never get again, browse around, give your imagination a chance, see every one, rub wits with every one, get to know yourself.'
"Is that what's said? No. What are you told, instead? 'Here are twenty great machines that need new bolts and wheels. Get out and work. Work harder than the next man, who is going to try to outwork you. And, in order to succeed, work at only one thing. You don't count—everything for the college.' Regan says the colleges don't represent the nation; I say they don't even represent the individual.
”
”
Owen Johnson (Stover at Yale)
“
HE DO THE POLICE IN DIFFERENT VOICES: Part I
THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
First we had a couple of feelers down at Tom's place,
There was old Tom, boiled to the eyes, blind,
(Don't you remember that time after a dance,
Top hats and all, we and Silk Hat Harry,
And old Tom took us behind, brought out a bottle of fizz,
With old Jane, Tom's wife; and we got Joe to sing
'I'm proud of all the Irish blood that's in me,
'There's not a man can say a word agin me').
Then we had dinner in good form, and a couple of Bengal lights.
When we got into the show, up in Row A,
I tried to put my foot in the drum, and didn't the girl squeal,
She never did take to me, a nice guy - but rough;
The next thing we were out in the street, Oh it was cold!
When will you be good? Blew in to the Opera Exchange,
Sopped up some gin, sat in to the cork game,
Mr. Fay was there, singing 'The Maid of the Mill';
Then we thought we'd breeze along and take a walk.
Then we lost Steve.
('I turned up an hour later down at Myrtle's place.
What d'y' mean, she says, at two o'clock in the morning,
I'm not in business here for guys like you;
We've only had a raid last week, I've been warned twice.
Sergeant, I said, I've kept a decent house for twenty years, she says,
There's three gents from the Buckingham Club upstairs now,
I'm going to retire and live on a farm, she says,
There's no money in it now, what with the damage don,
And the reputation the place gets, on account off of a few bar-flies,
I've kept a clean house for twenty years, she says,
And the gents from the Buckingham Club know they're safe here;
You was well introduced, but this is the last of you.
Get me a woman, I said; you're too drunk, she said,
But she gave me a bed, and a bath, and ham and eggs,
And now you go get a shave, she said; I had a good laugh, couple of laughs (?)
Myrtle was always a good sport'). treated me white.
We'd just gone up the alley, a fly cop came along,
Looking for trouble; committing a nuisance, he said,
You come on to the station. I'm sorry, I said,
It's no use being sorry, he said; let me get my hat, I said.
Well by a stroke of luck who came by but Mr. Donovan.
What's this, officer. You're new on this beat, aint you?
I thought so. You know who I am? Yes, I do,
Said the fresh cop, very peevish. Then let it alone,
These gents are particular friends of mine.
- Wasn't it luck? Then we went to the German Club,
Us We and Mr. Donovan and his friend Joe Leahy, Heinie Gus Krutzsch
Found it shut. I want to get home, said the cabman,
We all go the same way home, said Mr. Donovan,
Cheer up, Trixie and Stella; and put his foot through the window.
The next I know the old cab was hauled up on the avenue,
And the cabman and little Ben Levin the tailor,
The one who read George Meredith,
Were running a hundred yards on a bet,
And Mr. Donovan holding the watch.
So I got out to see the sunrise, and walked home.
* * * *
April is the cruellest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land....
”
”
T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land Facsimile)
“
Women can be kind of a blood sport.
”
”
David Gilmour (The Film Club: A True Story of a Father and Son)
“
Clubs are all about winning. National teams, however, have an additional function: to incarnate the nation.
”
”
Simon Kuper (Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport)
“
But there isn’t much else most club managers can do to push their teams up the table. After all, players matter much more. As Johan Cruijff said when he was coaching Barcelona, “If your players are better than your opponents, 90 percent of the time you will win.” There cannot be many businesses where a manager would make such an extravagant claim. The chairman of General Motors does not say that the art of good management is simply hiring the best designers or the best production managers.
”
”
Simon Kuper (Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport)
“
Alfredo Di Stefano changed the history of this club and he changed the history of football. He has left us, but his legend will live forever.
”
”
Florentino Pérez
“
Arsenal hasn’t been a great soccer club lately, but it has been a good business. This is what a soccer club run as a business looks like: high ticket prices, little desire to win trophies, and respectable profits. If FFP takes force, and other big clubs end up being run like Arsenal rather than like Abramovich’s Chelsea, then we predict: • A fall in players’ wages • A fall in transfer fees, which would mean less money trickling down from big clubs to the rest • A rise in club profits, which would mean more money being taken out of the game by people like the Glazers
”
”
Simon Kuper (Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport)
“
Another way to see the problem is to think about public spaces. If you share a space with people who aren’t looking at their smartphones, you are all in that space together. You have a common base of experience. It can be an amazing feeling, and it’s a big reason why people go to clubs, sports events, and houses of worship.
Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Posición en Kindle1000-1003). Henry Holt and Co.. Edición de Kindle.
”
”
Lanier, Jaron
“
On Sunday mornings there used to be grand spectacles of rat-slaughter. And there were numbers of young men, very gentleman-like men, some of them, who would pay half a guinea for admission, and a seat, to see the rats being killed, and the rat-dogs torn and worried in the conflict; and the prices ranged as high as a sovereign a seat when, in addition to its ennobling sport, there was one of the badgers brought out from the cupboard to be drawn. "Jacobs's Church" was a by-word amongst a certain sporting community; and I have seen men whom I subsequently saw in the House of Commons, and at the celebrated Clubs, come thither on a Sunday morn after a late breakfast, to assist at the precious spectacle of dogs and rats fighting, tearing, and slaughtering one another till the pit was red with blood.
”
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Ouida (Puck)
“
Across the ancient Roman Empire there were only four chariot teams, each designated by a color. By the fifth century, those had been reduced to two, the Blues and the Greens. At least once a week the gates of the Hippodrome would open, allowing thousands of Constantinople’s citizens to file in. To the left were the seats reserved for aristocrats and governmental officials. The closer that one could sit to the imperial loge, of course, the better. To the right were the sections for the regular citizens. Here, too, there were sharp divisions, first by team supporters and then by social status. And the divisions went deeper than that. The Blues and the Greens were not simply teams, but highly competitive clubs of sports fans, whose activities extended well beyond the games. They were, as historians refer to them, circus factions, and they had a clear organization. The faction leaders sat directly opposite the emperor; they were present for the award ceremonies and, in later centuries, took part in virtually all civic ceremonies inside and outside the Hippodrome. Emperors usually expressed a preference for one faction or the other (usually the Blues), and in later years the favored faction could occasionally provide an emperor with armed support against urban insurrections. It is not true, as one sometimes reads, that the factions were political parties. Instead, they were extremely enthusiastic fan clubs whose members, when unhappy, could become very, very dangerous.
”
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Thomas F. Madden (Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World)
“
Plesbol adalah salah satu berita sepak bola yang menyediakan jadwal pertandingan luar dan dalam negeri, baik club maupun negara sekalipun.
”
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Sport Media (2018 FIFA World Cup Official Tournament Magazine: The Official Tournament Magazine)
“
Thirteen Reasons I Don’t Go to Sporting Events Anymore 1. Every time I went, they asked me for money. 2. The people sitting in my row didn’t seem very friendly. 3. The seats were very hard. 4. The coach never came to visit me. 5. The referees made a decision I didn’t agree with. 6. I was sitting with hypocrites—they only came to see what others were wearing! 7. Some games went into overtime, and I was late getting home. 8. The marching band played some songs I had never heard before. 9. The games are scheduled on my only day to sleep in and run errands. 10. My parents took me to too many games when I was growing up. 11. Since I read a book on sports, I feel that I know more than the coaches anyway. 12. I don’t want to take my children because I want them to choose for themselves what sport they like best. 13. I can play sports anywhere, I don’t need to go to a stadium. Do these reasons sound familiar? Have you lost your passion for local church ministry? Are you treating Jesus’ bride like a social club or an extra-curricular activity?
”
”
Paul Chappell (Sacred Motives: 10 Reasons To Wake Up Tomorrow and Live for God)
“
The very same government that, by raising taxes, permitting uncontrolled immigration, weakening the military, failing to control the national debt, and fostering skyrocketing unemployment, was making it impossible for them to feed their families and provide better lives for their children. She’d come to tell them that their problems could be solved if they were willing to sacrifice, to transcend their personal interests and become part of something larger. Their needs would be met, their nation restored to its former glory—a process that could start with sports and physical fitness. Who didn’t want their destinies to be more heroic, to surrender to something higher than the question of who cheated which sibling out of an inheritance and
”
”
Francine Prose (Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932)
“
In truth, Belmont’s Jockey Club, the organization that controlled Thoroughbred racing in America, was founded by a mix of people. Some were blue-blooded Americans who traced their ancestry to Mayflower voyagers and Puritan founding fathers, and others were nouveau riche industrialists who wished to ally themselves—through marriages to aristocrats, membership in the Episcopal Church, and associations with the elite sport of horse racing—to the American upper crust. At
”
”
Elizabeth Letts (The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis)
“
Southern Humor Hit List
Here are just a few topics to get you started:
• Yankees. We know ’em when we see ’em, and so do you.
• White trash. It’s the way you act, not your socioeconomic standing.
• Rednecks. No shirt, no shoes, no service, but plenty of bawdy humor.
• Sports teams. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t played in a decade, we’re still mad about that game from 1962.
Note this is the only category of Southern humor truly born of hate.
• Fans of sports teams. They bring it on themselves with their shakin’, screamin’, game-goin’ ways.
• Cheerleaders. Nothin’ but beauty queen wanna-bes.
• Garden club ladies. So prim, but so dirty!
• Marriage. You better laugh, or the stress will have you pushing up daisies with the garden club sooner than you think.
• Country club ladies. Life is nothing but tennis, bridge, dining, and whining.
• Politicians. Anyone fool enough to run for office deserves what they get.
”
”
Deborah Ford (Grits (Girls Raised in the South) Guide to Life)
“
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS
These days, there are special interest groups of all kinds: sports clubs, outdoor clubs, singles activities, political groups, cooking clubs, travel groups, and many more. You can join any of these groups as a way of experimenting with your social self. The people there need never know you wrestle with social anxiety. If you seem quiet or reserved at first, that’s natural. If you need to, you can apply your self-help strategies to make it easier for you to interact.
”
”
Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
“
Soccer is Italy’s favorite sport, and is played and watched all over the country. Each Sunday the great stadiums of Milan, Turin, Naples, Rome, and Bologna are filled with thousands of fans. Italian club soccer teams are among the best in the world, and regularly win international competitions. The national Italian team won soccer’s World Cup in 1982. Wages for successful players are high, and this helps to attract soccer stars from many other countries.
Cycling also is very popular, as a sport to both do and watch. The Grand Tour of Italy takes place each year, following a long, grueling course over mountainous country. Many Italians forsake their favorite cafes to watch this bicycle race on television. Other popular pastimes include bowls, a game played on a sanded rink, and card games, commonly seen in cafes and bars across the nation.
During August, many businesses close and workers go on vacation to the coast or mountains. The big cities are mostly deserted, except for tourists.
”
”
Marilyn Tolhurst (Italy (People & Places))
“
It's an established fact that the very few naturally gifted "born teachers" are enormously more effective than the great mass of those in the teaching profession who teach with care and attention and even with good new ideas, but without the charisma and the flair that distinguish the best teachers as well as the best actors. In my ideal school of the future, children would assemble each afternoon for sports, music, and club activities that require group interaction. The mornings would be reserved for individual study, probably at home. The child would be in a private room in one-on-one interaction with a "tutor," the realistic, holographic presentation of an actual human being, one of the rare, inspiring, one-in-a-thousand superbly gifted teachers. Brief lectures, personally directed to the student, with lots of eye contact, would be aided by all possible tricks of costuming and special effects, but those lectures would have been staged as carefully as a dramatic movie
”
”
Gerard K. O'Neill (2081)
“
Technology has sanded away the necessity and inconvenience of interacting with other human beings: We can work from home, order groceries online, stream movies from bed. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who participate in social groups—whether it be social clubs, sports teams, community centers, volunteer organizations, or religious groups—has fallen, Holt-Lunstad says.
In a dizzying number of ways, modern life is designed to disengage us from one another.
”
”
Holt Lunstad
“
Did you know that golf is such a popular sport worldwide with an estimate of 60'000'000 players around the world, 30'000 golf courses and a history dating back to the 1400s?
Welcome to Pine Club Golf.
Here you will find guides and articles related to Golf, Golf rules, how you can improve your game as well as guides for beginners. We also review the latest in your favorite golf gear and equipment to help you increase your golfing experience!
Please interact with us with everything from with what you think we should write about or if you want us to review the latest iron set from Taylor Made!
”
”
Pine Club Golf
“
He had my-Lorded his young friend at first, and now brought out the name with a hesitating twang, which the young nobleman appreciated. But then the young nobleman was quite aware that the Major was a friend for club purposes, and sporting purposes, and not for home use.
”
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Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
“
I figured my father would like that.
”
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Ann M. Martin (Abby the Bad Sport (The Baby-Sitters Club, #110))
“
I nodded. I didn’t belong to any clubs or sports. The little time I did have—not occupied with home life—I worked to make money or study. Sure, it was going to help when I applied for college but I felt like I was missing out on something. I never got a chance to do something because I wanted to. I did things because I had to. Without thinking twice about it, I ripped the flyer off the bulletin and stuffed it into my book bag.
”
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K.L. Randis (Spilled Milk)
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Page 32:
The phenomenal commercial success of the Chinese in Thailand, and indeed throughout Southeast Asia, has no single or simple explanation. Certainly this success is partly attributable to such personal qualities as perseverance, capacity for hard work, and business acumen, but one of the most important factors has been the tight social and economic organization developed by overseas Chinese communities. Such communities in Southeast Asia appear remarkable self-sufficient and to many observers seem to form alien societies within the host society. They have proved unusually effective, on the one hand, for encouraging mutual aid and co-operation among heterogeneous linguistic and socio-economic groups and, on the other, for providing protection from hostile or competitive individuals and governments. Better than most people the Chinese have learned the dictum that ‘in unity there is strength’. Their organizational cohesion furnishes much of the answer not only to the economic well-being of the Chinese as a group but also to the persistence of their cultural patterns and values in an alien and sometimes unfriendly social environment.
This is a community of interest as well, for the wealth accumulated by the successful business man is used in part to support a multiplicity of ethnic organizations: trade guilds, a powerful Chinese Chamber of Commerce, dialect associations, benevolent and charitable organizations, surname associations, religious groups for both men and women, sports associations and social clubs.
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Richard J. Coughlin (Double Identity: The Chinese in Modern Thailand)
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We took eight selections. Our first five picks, Stephen Hill, Hayden Ballantyne, Nick Suban, Zac Clarke and Michael Walters, all became significant players for us. We took another five selections in the rookie draft, with Matt de Boer, Clancee Pearce and Greg Broughton in particular playing major roles in the club’s climb up the ladder.
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Matthew Pavlich (Purple Heart)
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Well, since you’re so in the loop and seem to hear—or find out—everything, what am I supposed to wear tonight?” “Well, my personal belief is the shorter, the better,” he says with a smirk but then refocuses. “But so far, I’ve heard a few things. I’m not the best with descriptions, but I’ll do my best. Uh, one girl is wearing a short dress with a sweetheart neckline—not sure what that is. Another is doing a cocktail dress that’s black with shiny beads. Another is wearing something red and lacy. The girls behind me were debating jersey dresses. They say that they either make you look amazing or like a stuffed sausage. Though I’m not really sure why they would wear a sports jersey to the club.
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Jillian Dodd (The Exchange (London Prep #1))
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Montreal was the location of ice hockey’s first formal game (1875), its first published rules (1877), its first official club (1877), its first major tournament (1883), its first intercity league (1886) and its first national champion (1893).11 That occurred when the reigning governor general, Lord Frederick Stanley of Preston, presented his famous Cup, and a five-team league—three of which were from Montreal—settled on its winner.12 For much of this time, hockey as an organized sport had been marginal and largely unknown in Toronto.
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Stephen J. Harper (A Great Game: The Forgotten Leafs & the Rise of Professional Hockey)
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was running out of valuable athletic clichés. Would beach volleyball say much about proposals for federal health care reform? Could I use mumblety-peg comparisons to explain the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations? Golf, however, is ideal for these purposes. “Christian fundamentalists put a wicked slice in the Republican party platform.” “Somebody should replace the divot on the back of Al Gore’s head.” “Let’s go hit Congress with a stick.” I also wanted a sport with a lot of equipment. All truly American sports are equipment intensive. Basketball was strictly for hoop-over-the-barn-door Hoosiers and Jersey City Y’s until two-hundred-dollar gym shoes were invented. And synchronized swimming will never make it to network prime time because how often do you need new nose plugs? I’m an altruistic guy, in my own Reaganomics way. Sports gear purchases are about all that’s keeping the fragile U.S. economy alive, and you’d have to get into America’s Cup yachting or cross-country airplane racing to find a sport that needs more gear than golf. I’ve bought the shoes, hats, socks, pants, shirts, umbrellas, windbreakers, and plus fours—all in colors that Nirvana fans wouldn’t dye their hair. Then there are the drivers, irons, putters, and the special clubs: parking-lot wedge, back-of-the-tree mashie, nearby highway niblick. MasterCard has installed a plaque on the wall of its headquarters to commemorate my taking up golf.
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P.J. O'Rourke (Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader)
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The Home Guard overtopped the million mark, and when rifles were lacking grasped lustily the shotgun, the sporting rifle, the private pistol, or, when there was no firearm, the pike and the club. No Fifth Column existed in Britain, though a few spies were carefully rounded up and examined. What few Communists there were lay low. Everyone else gave all they had to give.
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Winston S. Churchill (Their Finest Hour: The Second World War, Volume 2 (Winston Churchill World War II Collection))
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Perhaps the most costly disassembly in which our culture has been engaged is the disaggregation of life itself into work, play, learning, and inspiration. Each of these aspects of life has been separated from the others by creating institutions for engaging in only one at a time, excluding the other three as much as possible. Businesses are designed for work, not play, learning, or inspiration. Country clubs, theaters, and sports stadiums are designed for play, not work, learning or inspiration. Schools are designed for learning, not work, play, or inspiration. Museums and churches are designed for inspiration, not work, play, or learning. However, one of the most important products of systems thinking is the realization that the effectiveness with which any of these four functions can be carried out depends on the extent to which they are carried out together, in an integrated way.
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Russell L. Ackoff (Re-Creating the Corporation: A Design of Organizations for the 21st Century)
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Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen's Club Dallas
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Chapter 12 Numbers ‘I asked whether the number 28 shirt, which I wore at Sporting Lisbon, was available. Alex Ferguson said to me, “No no, yours is the number 7.” “Ok boss!” I replied. I wasn’t going to say to him, “No no, mine is the number 28.”’ Cristiano Ronaldo describes how he came to wear the famous number 7 at Manchester United, worn by all the great Red Devils players before him: George Best, Steve Coppel, Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona and David Beckham. But how did such a young new signing get to don such an important shirt number in the club’s history? Here’s how Sir Alex explains the motives behind his decision to the press: ‘We have given Ronaldo this shirt
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Luca Caioli (Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo - 2017 Updated Edition: Head to Head with the World's Greatest Players (Luca Caioli))
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According to Arsène Wenger (current manager of Arsenal football club), “the biggest difficulty you have in this job is not to motivate the players but to get them relaxed enough to express their talent
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Aidan P. Moran (A Critical Introduction to Sport Psychology)
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Craig, on the other hand, sees nothing but blue skies in this change of circumstance. He’s been busy setting up a business he calls Wattle It Be, a touring fan club for the Australian cricket side. Ahead of every international tour he buys cut-price packages for people like himself: sweaty single males who like to drink and chant while they get sunburnt in front of sport. The whole concept is horrific, but it’s a roaring success. He’s turning people away. After two or three tours he works out thtat he can recruit a retired Test player to operate as a kind of figurehead and pub coach, offering special comments and war stories, and the not-quite-promise of access to the players. Pg140
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Jock Serong (The Rules of Backyard Cricket)
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In June 1949, the Koreans who previously had belonged to the Japanese Communist Party migrated en masse into the newly created Korean Workers’ Party, as the North Korean communist party was called. Like its counterparts all over the world, the KWP showed a formidable knack for creating associations with the allure of democracy and openness to the public. There were women’s associations, movements for the defence of culture and peace, sports clubs, and various other groups which the Party could influence from the shadows. My grandmother was among the Party’s most active organisers and eventually became director for the Kyoto region.
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Kang Chol-Hwan (The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag)
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Oh yeah,” said Annabelle. “If you want to drive yourself nuts spend a couple days zooming around country roads with Mr. Speedy while he drones on and on about some dead writer no one but him has ever heard of.” “Sounds delightful,” replied Chapman. “Sort of like gnawing off one’s arm for sport.” “Caleb,
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David Baldacci (Hell's Corner (Camel Club, #5))