The shortes way, but not legal
Attention all CrossingEuropeans! Were you in Linz on the 26th of October, 2006? It was a Thursday, if that helps your memory. No good? Well, unless your name happens to be Mary Pierce, and you are a professional tennis player (unlikely, I know), you’d be forgiven for “drawing a blank.”
Pierce was playing in a tournament here in Linz on that date, against Vera Zvonareva, when she suffered a particularly nasty injury. In the spirit of the original weblogs, which often consisted of just a list of webpages the blogger had visited that day, I now direct you to it at http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=WcG0RylJ8yE
It was posted by an individual calling themselves “Picsaver”, who rather heartlessly describes its contents thus: Mary Pierce tored [sic] her cruciate ligaments in the match against Wera Swonarewa at the WTA tournament in Linz. She cries in agony like hell. Awesome !!!”
There are evidently rather a lot of sick and/or sadistic folks out there, as at the time of writing this clip has been viewed no fewer than 427,574 times. But this doesn’t actually hold the record for the most popular Linz–related clip on the internet. That honour instead belongs to the somewhat self-explanatory ‘Car in the Subway’ (‘The shortes [sic] way, but not legal’), posted by ‘BlueAngel2006’ on 24th March 2006:
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=un5UbyGRf-o
It’s debatable whether this clip – the music is, as experts on old-school Hamburg hip-hop won’t need reminding, An Tagen Wie Diesen by Fettes Brot (with Finkenauer), sampling Falco’s uber-notorious single Jeanny – shows Linz in a more appealing light than the Mary Pierce incident. Is this how the younger Linzers get their kicks these days, by putting their own lives (quite literally), on the line?
Or should we take some degree of comfort from the fact that, even in this modern age where security and safety are so dominant, there still exists a rebel element within society who isn’t just going to break the rules, but is going to broadcast the fact to the world on the internet.
Of course, merely by viewing the clip it could be argued that by even looking at the clip you have added to the hit-count and thus have boosted the its prominence, and thus inadvertently encouraged others to engage in similarly foolish / reckless /antisocial acitivity.
Here we see, yet again, the pleasures and inescapable dangers of the moving image – worth remembering in this of all weeks. And in a way, Crossing Europe itself is a little like that speeding car: the way it zooms eyecatchingly, audaciously, intriguingly, unavoidably, though what is, for the rest of the year, a rather quiet, perhaps even sleepy city, leaving a variety of impressions, from openjawed admiration to blank–faced bemusement, in its noisy wake. We, of course, are the passengers: and we ride, and we ride.
Pierce was playing in a tournament here in Linz on that date, against Vera Zvonareva, when she suffered a particularly nasty injury. In the spirit of the original weblogs, which often consisted of just a list of webpages the blogger had visited that day, I now direct you to it at http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=WcG0RylJ8yE
It was posted by an individual calling themselves “Picsaver”, who rather heartlessly describes its contents thus: Mary Pierce tored [sic] her cruciate ligaments in the match against Wera Swonarewa at the WTA tournament in Linz. She cries in agony like hell. Awesome !!!”
There are evidently rather a lot of sick and/or sadistic folks out there, as at the time of writing this clip has been viewed no fewer than 427,574 times. But this doesn’t actually hold the record for the most popular Linz–related clip on the internet. That honour instead belongs to the somewhat self-explanatory ‘Car in the Subway’ (‘The shortes [sic] way, but not legal’), posted by ‘BlueAngel2006’ on 24th March 2006:
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=un5UbyGRf-o
It’s debatable whether this clip – the music is, as experts on old-school Hamburg hip-hop won’t need reminding, An Tagen Wie Diesen by Fettes Brot (with Finkenauer), sampling Falco’s uber-notorious single Jeanny – shows Linz in a more appealing light than the Mary Pierce incident. Is this how the younger Linzers get their kicks these days, by putting their own lives (quite literally), on the line?
Or should we take some degree of comfort from the fact that, even in this modern age where security and safety are so dominant, there still exists a rebel element within society who isn’t just going to break the rules, but is going to broadcast the fact to the world on the internet.
Of course, merely by viewing the clip it could be argued that by even looking at the clip you have added to the hit-count and thus have boosted the its prominence, and thus inadvertently encouraged others to engage in similarly foolish / reckless /antisocial acitivity.
Here we see, yet again, the pleasures and inescapable dangers of the moving image – worth remembering in this of all weeks. And in a way, Crossing Europe itself is a little like that speeding car: the way it zooms eyecatchingly, audaciously, intriguingly, unavoidably, though what is, for the rest of the year, a rather quiet, perhaps even sleepy city, leaving a variety of impressions, from openjawed admiration to blank–faced bemusement, in its noisy wake. We, of course, are the passengers: and we ride, and we ride.
Neil__Young - 24. Apr, 19:20
