Lego x Nostalgia = Stupid Kids

Old news this may be, but I've noticed a slightly disconcerting trend. A trend that deals with something immensely close to my heart. Lego.

Now when I was a kid, lego came in brick form, if you were lucky, you maybe had a big box of bricks and shite, and then the odd pirate ship, castle, space station or if you were Pete Hayman, a petrol station...

You emptied the box all over your bedroom floor and went to town. Worlds were created, super duper, customised jet fighter/speedboat/space cruiser hybrids were built and then destroyed. It was great fun, but it was also the means by which i could be creative, learn basic engineering principles, appreciate the complexities of asthetic design vs functionality, it was a remarkably educational toy for something so enjoyable.

Try telling me K'Nex can do all that...

But over the past five or ten years, things have begun to change, with Lego teaming up with a variety of big-screen tie-ins, Spiderman, Batman, Star Wars, Harry Potter and now Indiana Jones.

The biggest of these is of course the Star Wars kits, there have been literally hundreds of sets, from the tiny, to the truly massive. And I must say they are superb, brilliantly capturing the look of the sets and vehicles from the films in tremendous detail.

But what can you do with them!? You cant break them up to use for something else because a) they look so cool, b) they're so damn expensive, and c) all the parts are so specialised they wouldnt fit with anything else anyway, and as the hardcore builder knows, uniformity is key.

This isnt Lego made for kids, kids will buy this, and get bored cause you cant really do anything with it. So why when you look for the best selling Lego kits on Amazon its almost all Star Wars? The answer I'm ashamed to say, is me. I have sitting on my shelf, three lego star wars kits of fairly decent size. One was a gift from my wonderful girlfriend but the other two were symptoms of my childish obsession with all that is kitsch and nostalgic. Clearly I am not alone as Amazon shows, and was further evidenced on the occasion of the MagLab crew discovering Lego Indiana Jones. There were some very real calculations done by those present as to whether you could justify the expense of a Temple Escape Playset.

This is the problem, Lego is catering to man-children in their twenties to rake in the cash rather than continuing with it's own endeavours, gone are the pirate, space and medieval playsets of old, replaced with movie tie-ins and the hated Bionicle.

Hysterical teachers and politicians often lament the lack of creativity and imagination shown by children today and TV and Computer Games are often the percieved culprits, but if you ask me, you need only look over the water to the Denmark to see who really has corrupted our youth.

Mr Christiansen would be spinning in his grave...

Yids for the Championship anyone?

Having just wasted 90 minutes of my life watching Spurs just about managing to beat Hapoel Tel-Aviv I have firmly concluded that it was actually the worst game of football since last years completely abysmal FA Cup final. And that was really, really bad.

On paper it looks like a comfortable result for Spurs but it wasn't, it was a dull boring match with exactly 57 seconds of interesting play and the rest of it soul sapping, mind numbing rubbish.

Spurs scored two goals from the exact same play and then spent the remaining 89 minutes showing everyone just how poor a team they are.

No disrespect to Hapoel Tel-Aviv, but they are shit. And I do not say that lightly. In UEFA ranking terms Hapoel are a whopping 127th, below powerhouses such as Grasshoppers Zurich, Hearts and even the mighty Millwall.

Spurs on the other hand are ranked 55th, not exactly high flyers either but a gulf this big should mean that Spurs should be metaphorically shitting on them from a great height. You can say that Spurs have had a shocking start to the season but Hapoel have too, so much so that their manager will be out the door on Sunday if they lose and he seems to wish they didn't have to play in Europe anymore...

But instead of dominance, for the first hour of the game we had complete and utter ineptitude. They looked panicked in midfield, hurriedly shooting off half-arsed passes as soon as they were put under the tiniest bit of pressure. As for defence the makeshift assemblage which had Chimbonda at centre-back, looked as if it was going to break under the slightest pressure, if not for Hapoel's complete lack of adventure and one uncharacteristically fine save from Paul Robinson, they would have bagged at least one.

After an hour though, things somehow, got worse. Gal Shish was dismissed for a second booking and it seemed like Spurs might actually make the win look impressive, but no. Within ten minutes Robbie Keane, the only player who seemed to care, was off, and double goal provider Malbranque followed soon after.

Spurs played most of the second half with a man advantage, with three strikers on the pitch, and somehow the keeper had less to do than vegetarian in a butchers shop.

They were woeful, inept and at many times painful to watch, especially as Berbatov seemed to be genuinely trying to get sent off. What has happened? Spurs last season would have pounced on an opportunity like that to put five goals past them in style!

The problem, as Pete, Andy and I discussed in the pub, was heart. It's not that the players don't care about the team, or about winning, they're professional sportsmen and want to perform to the best of their ability. Even Berbatov seemed to care, despite the rumours that he is so lazy and malcontent at Spurs this season that heartfelt pleas of loyalty are required to try and convince the fans that he's not off in January.

Several times Berbatov shrugged with a look of "what the hell was that" when yet another pass went astray. But that was all he did and that, is the problem.

When a team are struggling with form, as Spurs clearly are, you need fire, you need leaders to step up on the pitch and make a point that you need to pull your finger out. No one on that field in Israel was prepared to do that, when Robbie Keane went off, the captain's armband went to Paul Robinson. Paul Robinson?! That says a lot about the mentality in the White Hart Lane dressing room.

Great teams have players that are never satisfied, even when all is well they are screaming, shouting, extolling and berating their team mates to sharpen things up, to push up to the next level, to make the team better.

Man United are brilliant at getting players like that. Roy Keane used to look thoroughly annoyed even when they were 3-0 up and when they were down or playing badly he would become positively psychotic. They have similar players now in Rooney, Rio Ferdinand and others who are shouting at their team mates non-stop from start to finish, embarrassing them into not becoming complacent.

Without such players, teams get sloppy, teams get comfortable, and then you start wondering why that top four finish you were targeting has turned into a relegation battle. Spurs don't have a big, angry personality to keep them in line, even the new coach seems positively taciturn no matter what is going on, and that does not bode well for Spurs this year.

But I don't really think that the Yid Army will be enjoying away days at Ninian Park next year, the sheer amount of quality in their attacking line-up combined with how poor Derby, Bolton and others are playing this year gives me hope, but that won't solve the problem. Mild mannered, aloof players with fantastic ability are great when you're winning but useless when your losing, who will stand up and fight for Spurs?

And he can't pronounce Kurt Warner...

As I settled down to enjoy a rare evening of American sport being broadcast at a reasonable hour, I found myself slightly shocked.

Firstly, Mark Webster, for a man anchoring the biggest event in British basketball this millennium, looked much akin to a man dragged through a bush. Backwards.

Now, as a proud sporter of poorly contrived facial fuzz on many occasions I sympathise. But honestly, when your beard is that grey, that patchy, that generally shambolic and national TV is involved, really, its time to break out Mr Razor...

Still reeling from the shocking state of anchorage, we turned to the pundits, perched, as they stylishly were, on kitchen stools behind a festival security barrier... "Ah-ha" I foolishly thought, "surely the colour commentary will offer us some balance!"

First up was the deliciously alliterative Andre Allyne, who is so important that THIS wonderfully crafted web-page is the only piece of useful information Google threw up on him. I believe he is probably the coach of the London Towers, but who knows.

Andre was not alone however and perched precariously next to him was none other than DJ Jazzy Jeff! He looks much the same as the last time we all saw him, albeit minus his one time "home-boy".

Now in fairness to both these men the analysis was decent enough, and the chit-chat fairly enjoyable, but what gets me is... why them!?

With Jeff, I wonder why, asides from a tendency to "boom shake shake shake the room" in the Summertime, and being a big 76ers fan, why on earth should we pay any attention to his opinion? He didn't even get thrown out of a mansion by James Avery. Not once.

And as for Andre, a man without even a Wikipedia page to his name, is he really the only British basketball personality who was free? There are not one, but two British-born active NBA players tearing up the court at the moment, and yet they were hardly even mentioned! And while they are probably busy with pre-season, surely John Amaechi could take some time out from being hated by Tim Hardaway to give a night of his broadcasting skills?

Truth be told, it was a decent game and a good showcase for the sport but in my opinion, five seriously lacked the balls to get behind the event.

No studio, no personalities, broadcasting on fiveUS when there was nothing but the usual garbage on the big channel is just lame. Hella-lame in fact. Combine the general lack of substance with the fact that the on-screen scoreboard kept appearing and disappearing at random and that points were added to teams totals apparently whenever the chap operating it came back from his fag break, it was a shambles.

The error was compounded by cringeworthy "chance" interviews with celebrities who wanted to watch the game not be harassed ("Oh look! Its Didier Drogba... and Lewis Hamilton.. and Nigel Reo-Coker... and Rio's rubbish little brother... and that cunt from Blue..."). Really, was this the best they could do? Or was it just that they really wanted to pull in the young black male audience by saying "oh look your heroes think this is cool... so should you"?

Either way, what a missed opportunity for Channel 5 to show that they aren't just the joke commercial station that's gone and stolen Neighbours, and what a relief that Sky have got the NFL and are doing a stellar job of promoting it. Now that's what I'm talking about.