Chess wrestling

Like an Egyptian magician, DL conjured up free tickets to last night's sold-out WWE RAW Survivor Series show at the Acer Arena for himself, CM and I - in the Foxtel corporate box! It was my first experience of stadium luxury. Spacious and comfy seating, as much greasy/sugary tucker and amber nectar as we needed, and a spectacular view of the professional rasslin'. The No. 1 bout for moi was William Regal versus Brian Kendrick: a deceptively skilful, old-school heel, alternately bullying and cowardly, against a dynamic youngster with the crowd in his corner. The Triple H-Umaga brawl was decent. That lazy lump Randy Orton barely took part in his three-way battle with Mr Kennedy and Jeff Hardy. The rest of the matches were OK - even Beth Phoenix v. Mickie James. Sharing our skybox was legendary entertainer Kamahl, who does tongue-in-cheek WWE ads here in which he trots out his catchphrase, "Why are people so unkind?" He was a dapper chap, and the Foxtel reps and our food'n'beverage lady couldn't have been more accommodating.

I evened the cosmic ledger slightly this morning by buying tobacco and rolling papers (forgot the lighter) for a local tramp who resembles a Himalayan tribesman. At least he won't have to fish fag ends out of the main street bins for a while.


Watching: "My Brilliant Brain: Make Me A Genius" (National Geographic Channel documentary about the first female chess grandmaster, Susan Polgar. Covered her hothousing (they didn't use that term) as a child, calculation versus intuition, and concluded that the facial-recognition area of her brain was wired (or had been rewired) to remember board configurations in the same way).