Covering the Arsenal diaspora from the four corners of the globe
You see them huddled outside nightclubs anywhere in the world on any Thursday night: muscular young men, angular faces, perfectly cropped little beards, sporting tight-fitting sweaters and $300 designer jeans, smoking cigarettes with a young blonde — and texting. We call these people “young men out for a night on the town.” But when that young man holds the future of England in his hands and he’s caught with one hand about to pull a Camus Drag, well, then the only rational response is outrage.
Arsene Wenger was asked what he thought of Wilshere smoking and he said
I disagree completely with that behavior. There are two things: first of all when you are a football player you are an example and as well you don’t do what damages your health. The fact is that you can damage your health at home, you can smoke at home and you can drink at home, and nobody sees it, but when you go out socially you as well damage your reputation as an example.
As usual, Wenger is spot on. We don’t know what Wilshere does at home, though we have some idea now that he’s had his second child*. He could get home from work every night, head down to his “Man Cave” festooned with neon beer lights and giant peel-and-stick posters of liquor, pour himself a Scotch and smoke Camel barebacks in his private bar for all we know.
God I hope not. That would be more depressing than him sneaking a fag after a late night of boozing it up. Which is Wenger’s point about damaging your reputation, I think: if you’re going to have a smoke, at least do it in some style. Now a days you can’t smoke in the bars in England so you’re out on the street, everyone has a cell phone camera, they all know who you are, the kids are watching, so make it look cool. That’s what Wenger is really saying, right?
Take Wayne Rooney here as an example:
Rooney is not looking too cool with his impression of Bitter Beer Face. I’ve seen guys smoke like this outside of the bar on a Friday night and I’m here to tell you, you can’t be cool when you’re nervously wolfing down a smoke. Be a man about it, Roo, you’re a smoker, it’s not a crime (yet), take your time, enjoy that cancer stick like it’s your last one. Who knows, it could be!
Now here’s a guy who knows what he’s doing with a fat brown cylinder in his mouth, Diego Maradonna.
You want to know how to smoke, Rooney? That’s the image right there: just close your eyes and suck.
I will admit, it gets worse than Rooney, here’s Zidane.
When I first heard that Zidane smoked I imagined that he was the world’s greatest smoker. A man who could be at a suave dinner party, whip out a Gauloises, and light it with one motion. And when the hostess comes over to ask him to put his cigarette out he would shoot her a withering glance, followed by a wry smile and coolly extinguish the butt without leaving a trace.
But in reality he smokes very much like an American actor playing a French man smoking a cigarette: it’s all finger tips and “uh huh huh! OUI!” He couldn’t be more French if he wore a beret and had a baguette under his arm. In fact, the way he smokes makes me wonder if he didn’t head butt Materazzi because he was having a nic-fit.
This is behavior unbecoming a sportsman of Zidane’s stature. I mean, even Mesut Özil looks more comfortable smoking a cigarette, on a boat – surrounded by well-oiled young men, than Zidane.
It’s all about owning the look or as the French would say, “being comfortable in your own skin”. And no one is more comfortable in their own skin than Dimitar Berbatov. In fact, Berbatov is so comfortable in his own skin that he’s also comfortable in other people’s skin.
Berbatov, cigarette dangling from his lips, casts a look at the ground, pensive, and conflicted. He is a living sculpture. He is Rodin’s Thinker at the Gates of Hell, Berbatov at Heathrow Terminal 5.
I see that the Daily Mail (formed as it was by Viscount Voldemort, a known Nazi sympathizer) and all the bein-pensant journalists in England have taken the stance that smoking isn’t cool and are splashing their red-tops with the headline that Wenger has dished out some kind of public lashing for our young Wilshere. But I don’t see it that way.
I’m with Wenger on this one. You can damage your image. You could look, for example, like Mario Ballotelli.
Decked out in gaudy jewelry, hanging out on the balcony like some bespectacled grandma smoking a cigarette is no way for a popular young man to act. Especially, not with so many children looking up to him.
No, the way Wilshere handles that cigarette, leaning on the side of the building, finger poised to grip that fag tightly reminds me of James Dean in his pomp. And Dean owned his smoking as much as it owned him.
Which is surely the point. It’s all about image or as James Dean famously put it “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”
In other words, you shouldn’t smoke because smoking will kill you in the long run; but if you are going to smoke, at least be cool about it.
Qq
*You nerds will be interested in this. Both of Wilshere’s children were born in late September, Archie on the 29th and Delilah on the 26th. This makes both children Libras and given the coincidence of their birth dates I used a backwards gestation calculator (which is what freaky people use to calculate what days they should have sex on to try to force a baby on a certain date) and as it turns out, both children were probably conceived on or about January 1st. That’s Jack Wilshere’s birthday, just FYI.
You see them huddled outside nightclubs anywhere in the world on any Thursday night: muscular young men, angular faces, perfectly cropped little beards, sporting tight-fitting sweaters and $300 designer jeans, smoking cigarettes with a young blonde — and texting. We call these people “young men out for a night on the town.” But when that young man holds the future of England in his hands and he’s caught with one hand about to pull a Camus Drag, well, then the only rational response is outrage.
Arsene Wenger was asked what he thought of Wilshere smoking and he said
I disagree completely with that behavior. There are two things: first of all when you are a football player you are an example and as well you don’t do what damages your health. The fact is that you can damage your health at home, you can smoke at home and you can drink at home, and nobody sees it, but when you go out socially you as well damage your reputation as an example.
As usual, Wenger is spot on. We don’t know what Wilshere does at home, though we have some idea now that he’s had his second child*. He could get home from work every night, head down to his “Man Cave” festooned with neon beer lights and giant peel-and-stick posters of liquor, pour himself a Scotch and smoke Camel barebacks in his private bar for all we know.
God I hope not. That would be more depressing than him sneaking a fag after a late night of boozing it up. Which is Wenger’s point about damaging your reputation, I think: if you’re going to have a smoke, at least do it in some style. Now a days you can’t smoke in the bars in England so you’re out on the street, everyone has a cell phone camera, they all know who you are, the kids are watching, so make it look cool. That’s what Wenger is really saying, right?
Take Wayne Rooney here as an example:
Rooney is not looking too cool with his impression of Bitter Beer Face. I’ve seen guys smoke like this outside of the bar on a Friday night and I’m here to tell you, you can’t be cool when you’re nervously wolfing down a smoke. Be a man about it, Roo, you’re a smoker, it’s not a crime (yet), take your time, enjoy that cancer stick like it’s your last one. Who knows, it could be!
Now here’s a guy who knows what he’s doing with a fat brown cylinder in his mouth, Diego Maradonna.
You want to know how to smoke, Rooney? That’s the image right there: just close your eyes and suck.
I will admit, it gets worse than Rooney, here’s Zidane.
When I first heard that Zidane smoked I imagined that he was the world’s greatest smoker. A man who could be at a suave dinner party, whip out a Gauloises, and light it with one motion. And when the hostess comes over to ask him to put his cigarette out he would shoot her a withering glance, followed by a wry smile and coolly extinguish the butt without leaving a trace.
But in reality he smokes very much like an American actor playing a French man smoking a cigarette: it’s all finger tips and “uh huh huh! OUI!” He couldn’t be more French if he wore a beret and had a baguette under his arm. In fact, the way he smokes makes me wonder if he didn’t head butt Materazzi because he was having a nic-fit.
This is behavior unbecoming a sportsman of Zidane’s stature. I mean, even Mesut Özil looks more comfortable smoking a cigarette, on a boat – surrounded by well-oiled young men, than Zidane.
It’s all about owning the look or as the French would say, “being comfortable in your own skin”. And no one is more comfortable in their own skin than Dimitar Berbatov. In fact, Berbatov is so comfortable in his own skin that he’s also comfortable in other people’s skin.
Berbatov, cigarette dangling from his lips, casts a look at the ground, pensive, and conflicted. He is a living sculpture. He is Rodin’s Thinker at the Gates of Hell, Berbatov at Heathrow Terminal 5.
I see that the Daily Mail (formed as it was by Viscount Voldemort, a known Nazi sympathizer) and all the bein-pensant journalists in England have taken the stance that smoking isn’t cool and are splashing their red-tops with the headline that Wenger has dished out some kind of public lashing for our young Wilshere. But I don’t see it that way.
I’m with Wenger on this one. You can damage your image. You could look, for example, like Mario Ballotelli.
Decked out in gaudy jewelry, hanging out on the balcony like some bespectacled grandma smoking a cigarette is no way for a popular young man to act. Especially, not with so many children looking up to him.
No, the way Wilshere handles that cigarette, leaning on the side of the building, finger poised to grip that fag tightly reminds me of James Dean in his pomp. And Dean owned his smoking as much as it owned him.
Which is surely the point. It’s all about image or as James Dean famously put it “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”
In other words, you shouldn’t smoke because smoking will kill you in the long run; but if you are going to smoke, at least be cool about it.
*You nerds will be interested in this. Both of Wilshere’s children were born in late September, Archie on the 29th and Delilah on the 26th. This makes both children Libras and given the coincidence of their birth dates I used a backwards gestation calculator (which is what freaky people use to calculate what days they should have sex on to try to force a baby on a certain date) and as it turns out, both children were probably conceived on or about January 1st. That’s Jack Wilshere’s birthday, just FYI.
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