各大媒体写了很多，我就不写了。转一篇NBC写的，把他们写美国职业体育的删了一些。显然他们遗漏了足球，而欧冠1/4决赛，阿森纳对利物浦惊心动魄的第二场，这是我今年印象最深的足球比赛，胜过欧洲杯逆转王的土耳其和欧冠决赛。

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/28187269/

The greatness of 2008 won't be forgotten

Phelps' gold, Tyree's catch, Lakers-Celtics, Nadal-Federer only part of story

If years were fish, most would get thrown back as too small, not the right kind or just not interesting enough to keep. A few would be the kind you measure and take a picture of to show off to your family and friends.

There’d be others that might have been great, but they snap the line or slip the hook and get away, leaving you with nothing but stories few believe about the glory that might have been.

But once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you hook something that makes your pole bend in half and your heart race and your spirit soar. And when you finally haul it in, it’s the biggest and most glorious thing you’ve ever seen, the kind of prize that tops the record books and needs a mount the size of a pool table.

Fifty years later, anybody who sees it will stare at it in awe and demand to know its story. And every new monster that’s caught will be compared to yours and still be found lacking.

Such a monster is the Year in Sports 2008. Back in July, when the year was barely halfway done, we said that we had it hooked. Now, we can say it’s finally been landed, and the tale of the tape says it’s the greatest one ever.

The parts are spectacular in their own right. Start with Super Bowl XLII and Eli Manning’s escape and David Tyree’s incredible catch and the Giants’ miraculous comeback win over a Patriots’ team that hadn’t lost a game all year. Fast forward to June and Tiger Woods dueling Rocco Mediate on a wrecked knee and broken leg in a U.S. Open that went into 19 holes of Monday overtime before the world’s greatest golfer finally cemented the greatest win of his career.

There was Rafael Nadal ending Roger Federer’s string of Wimbledon championships in what might have been the greatest final the All England Club had ever witnessed. That same month the Celtics and Lakers finally met again in the NBA Finals and the Celtics won.

In Beijing, Michael Phelps became the greatest Olympic athlete ever and Usain Bolt the fastest sprinter who ever lived. The Redeem Team brought basketball gold back to the United States, reclaiming national supremacy on the court and dignity off it.

The Phillies won the World Series, beating the Rays, a worst-to-first Cinderella team for the ages. The Crimson Tide surged again in college football. Jimmie Johnson became only the second person ever to win three straight NASCAR championships. Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an Indy Car race. Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain became at 23 the youngest F1 champion ever — and also the sport’s first black champion.

You can argue with any of the individual achievements. Maybe the 1958 Colts-Giants NFL championship game was greater than the Giants win over the Pats. Maybe Ken Venturi or Ben Hogan had a greater win in an Open. Perhaps another Wimbledon final from another year was greater.

But you can’t argue with the overall greatness of 2008. No year has ever packed so many all-time thrills into one circuit of the calendar.

It started with the Giants’ improbable run to the Super Bowl with three road wins in the playoff during which Eli Manning came of age and silenced all questions about his ability to win big games. The NFC Championship game took them to Green Bay and went into overtime, where Brett Favre threw an untimely interception and Manning led the winning drive.

The Giants had lost a tight game to the Patriots in the season’s final game, and New York was given little chance to beat 18-0 New England and quarterback Tom Brady in Phoenix. Brady was coming off the greatest year ever by an NFL quarterback, and the Patriots were on their way to undefeated immortality.

In a game dominated by the defenses, Brady finally got the Patriots four points ahead with time running out. And then Manning went to work. The big play was the fourth-down Hail Mary that Manning threw up after fighting his way out of what would have been a game-ending sack. David Tyree, who had scored his first touchdown of the entire season earlier in the Super Bowl, went up, and with a defender all over him, caught the ball against his helmet. The miracle catch set up the winning touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress, the exclamation mark on a game that was instantly hailed as the greatest Super Bowl ever.



It started with the Giants’ improbable run to the Super Bowl with three road wins in the playoff during which Eli Manning came of age and silenced all questions about his ability to win big games. The NFC Championship game took them to Green Bay and went into overtime, where Brett Favre threw an untimely interception and Manning led the winning drive.

The Giants had lost a tight game to the Patriots in the season’s final game, and New York was given little chance to beat 18-0 New England and quarterback Tom Brady in Phoenix. Brady was coming off the greatest year ever by an NFL quarterback, and the Patriots were on their way to undefeated immortality.

In a game dominated by the defenses, Brady finally got the Patriots four points ahead with time running out. And then Manning went to work. The big play was the fourth-down Hail Mary that Manning threw up after fighting his way out of what would have been a game-ending sack. David Tyree, who had scored his first touchdown of the entire season earlier in the Super Bowl, went up, and with a defender all over him, caught the ball against his helmet. The miracle catch set up the winning touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress, the exclamation mark on a game that was instantly hailed as the greatest Super Bowl ever.

......(下面讲Tiger Woods在美国公开赛上逆转获胜的故事)......

Sports fans could be forgiven for wondering what could possibly top Woods’ win at Torrey. Three weeks later they found out when 22-year-old Spaniard Rafael Nadal, who had won his fourth straight French Open earlier in the spring, faced Roger Federer, in the Wimbledon Finals.

Federer was 26 and being called the greatest player in the history of the game. In the final, played the day after Venus Williams beat her sister Serena in the women’s final, Nadal won the first two sets with relative ease. Federer won the next two in dramatic fashion in tiebreakers.

The match included two rain delays which served only to draw out the drama. It would last nearly five hours in actual playing time — an all-time record. And the final set went 16 games, with Nadal finally defeated Federer 9-7. It was immediately hailed as the greatest final in Wimbledon’s long and storied history.



Federer would come back to win the U.S. Open in September for the fifth straight year — a streak matched only by Bill Tildon in the Roaring Twenties. The U.S. Open would also see the return of Serena Williams, who won her first title in Arthur Ashe Stadium since 2002 and took over the top spot in the rankings for the first time since 2003.

......

Summer would end with the Beijing Olympics, played in the finest facilities the Olympic Games had ever seen. It was a fitting stage for the greatest individual performance of all time.

There is nothing harder than living up to extraordinary expectations, and no one had ever had more on his athletic plate going into the Games than Michael Phelps. The swimmer had won six gold medals in Athens, and now he was coming to Beijing in quest of eight. If he could do it, it would be the most gold medals ever won in one Olympics, one more than the seven swimmer mark Spits had won in 1972, when the competition was far thinner than that faced by Phelps.

Phelps pulled it off, his quest saved by Jason Lezak, who swam the greatest anchor leg ever in a 4x100-meter medley relay, beating his French rival by inches in the last few yards of the race. He also won the 100-meter butterfly by .01 seconds, trailing the entire race and winning on his final stroke.



When Phelps was done, there was no question he was the greatest swimmer ever. The real question was whether we had just seen the greatest athlete even in any sport.

Swimming consumes the first week of the Olympics. The second week is dominated by track and field, and that’s where Jamaican Usain Bolt put on the greatest demonstration of raw speed ever seen. He started by shattering the record for the 100 meters, so thoroughly trashing his competition he pulled up before the finish and cruised across the line. His time was 9.69 and could have been faster if he hadn’t pulled up.



Bolt followed that with another world record in the 200, running a 19.20 final into a headwind. Three days later, he anchored a world-record performance by the Jamaicans in the 4x100-meter relay.

The other great story of the Olympics was the return of U.S. men’s basketball to world prominence. Kobe Bryant and LeBron James led a team coached by Mike Krzyzewski through the preliminary rounds. In the final, the so-called “Redeem Team” needed all their talent and passion to beat Spain, 118-107. But beyond reclaiming world supremacy, the team also behaved impeccably, charmed a basketball-mad Chinese public and restored the honor of the NBA.

We returned from the Olympics in time for the final month of the Major League Baseball season that had surprises of its own. The Yankees struggled all season, finishing out of the playoffs for the first time in 14 years. And the best team in the AL East wasn’t the Yankees or the Red Sox but the Tampa Bay Rays, who had never had a winning season and had been the worst team in baseball the previous season.

Elsewhere, Manny Ramirez pouted his way out of Boston and onto the Dodgers. In two months, he single-handedly carried Los Angeles into the playoffs. In Milwaukee, CC Sabathia, acquired from the Indians, was doing the same for the Brewers. And in the NL East, the Mets were in the process of blowing yet another September lead, opening the door for the Philadelphia Phillies to try yet again to win the franchises second title ever and Philadelphia’s first major sports championship in a quarter century.

The Cubs were the NL favorites, and if they had won, there’d be no question about 2008 being not just the greatest sports year we’ve ever seen, but without question the greatest we would ever see. But the Cubs choked as only they can, opening up the playoffs for the Phillies. They met the Rays in a World Series whose final game took three days to complete. It wasn’t a seven-game classic, but any time any Philadelphia team can call itself champions is a year for the history books.



It didn’t matter what kind of auto racing you were a fan of, 2008 delivered for you. Danica Patrick became the first woman to win in an Indy Car early in the season in Japan. She didn’t win again, but she did get in fights with other drives, both male and female, and kept attention focused on the sport. In F1, the void left by Michael Schumacher’s retirement was filled by the 23-year-old Lewis Hamilton. The British driver wrapped up the championship at the Brazilian Grand Prix in November, suffering racial taunts in becoming both the youngest F1 champion and the first black champion.

......

Okay, so it’s not one of the greatest stories ever, but it kind of fits in the greatest year ever, a year that decades from now you’ll be telling your great-grandchildren you were lucky enough to witness.

不是一个游戏迷，也没玩多少游戏，不过打发时间总离不开它。罗列一些今年印象深刻的游戏，他们给我带来了不少愉快的时光。如果你像我一样不常打游戏的，以下的几款会有一款适合你的。

提名：

->终极弹球 Ricochet Infinity

本质上是非常简单的打砖块游戏，三四月份在写论文时玩的。画面精美，有的关卡打起来很刺激，而且花头很多，创意无限。可以自己编辑关卡并上网共享，据说已经有22000+关，全部打完必然无法。可玩性很好，也可以反复玩。






->功夫熊猫 Kung Fu Panda

动作类的RPG，六月份毕业前蹭同学的电脑玩的。感觉剧情很好，主角很可爱，游戏不难，但是我的水平烂，还是玩了很久。画面有的地方不是很精致，声效也一般，不过对于我这个游戏菜鸟来说已经够了。游戏和电影同步发售，当时还没看过电影，玩好了游戏下定决心去影院看。





-> 粘粘世界 World of Goo

从IGN的年度游戏奖中知道这个游戏，就下了玩。一个基于物理和建筑原理的益智游戏，像搭积木一样把一个个粘性物质搭到一个地方就行了。实在很佩服老外的想象力，这样的题材也能编成游戏，适合小孩子玩（我现在还很小吗），真的很好玩。








-> QQ游戏

比较没创意，但这大概是我今年花时间最多的游戏。在寝室里和同学一起玩，或者在家里一个人玩。




获胜者：



和两款益智类相比可玩性一般，不过熊猫的形象真的可爱，想像一下你操纵一只熊猫打架。比起游戏来，电影反而一般了。当然选择它，可能和当时在毕业季玩有关。好心把电脑让给我的同学（他的“好心”从大三就开始了），可能在新加坡看着我的blog偷着乐呢。

这个周末过得很愉快。

先是周五晚上去钱柜K歌，把部门的group fund用掉了大半。部门内部年龄的代沟还是挺大的，唱了几首不新的五月天的歌，都说没听到过。而老大们，吻别啦，潇洒走一回啦，唱得很投入。我恰如其分地用点歌来调节K歌气氛，大家唱得喝得都挺high。

周六是师兄师姐的婚礼。开玩笑说，同门之间结婚，可以少送一份钱。不过立马受到反驳说，以后收回来的也少了。也是，不过应收账款还是少一点好，说不定以后还要提减值准备呢。想想他们也是挺不容易的，一个四川，一个福建，真像婚礼主题所写的，有缘千里来相会，未来的宝宝这回有了100%的精算基因。精算界一门两fellow的不在少数，我们部门经理级别（含）以上都是这样的。闲下来，都要考试，没什么时间也是一个因素。不过我还是喜欢有点差异的说。

参加完婚礼去打大怪，有段时间不打了。上次和精算师们打，这次也一样。大怪还是蛮好玩的，牌可以有很多种组合，尤其是最后时刻的惊心动魄，相互算计。我是感觉流的，不是计算流的，总不能打得尽善尽美。不过有时觉得算得很完美，就像把牌摊打，反而索然无味了，有趣一部分的原因是因为未知心理而产生的变化。大家以后大怪缺人时可以叫我。

周日又去看了电影，这次是非诚勿扰。看电影之前，已经在东方早报上看到了一些相关的报道。但是看了电影之后，倒不觉得它像有些评论说的那么糟糕。冯小刚的贺岁电影是我等小老百姓喜闻乐见的，它的确有些拖沓，有的地方不知所云，广告太多，有旅游风光片之嫌。但是整个故事主体还是连贯的，男一号是幽默的，女一号特写镜头有些显老，总的来说还挺好看的，表演也挺到位。作为爱情片，贺岁片都值得一看。就是我们身边的事情加上一些艺术加工。如果有一个不是像葛优那么丑又那么贫的海归，有一个不像舒淇那么漂亮的空姐通过朋友介绍认识，双方有点past，然后去海南岛玩玩，出了车祸，于是感情升华，最后结婚。这种故事可能发生在坐在电影院里的每一个人身上。

中饭时在交流职场的所见所闻所感，听上去不像抱怨，倒是挺enjoy的。enjoy就好，不过这种事情却很小可能发生在我身上，我enjoy的是周末的闲暇时光，和K歌、大怪、电影和吃饭。虽然我们有LAP（是这么拼吗），被吹风要eat hour，不过目前来讲和很多人比起来，我还是很开心的，要感恩了。

明天就周一了，又要上班了。而且碰到降温，不管是在office上班的，还是在外面奔波的，都要多穿点。

 

去看了《梅兰芳》，颇为失望。自然，它与里程碑式的《霸王别姬》无法相提并论。没有一个完整的故事，我不知道这部戏到底是讲梅兰芳的，还是讲邱如白的。艺术感染力不强，影片无法让我看到梅兰芳在艺术上的伟大。演员的表演颇为生涩，黎明太过拘谨，章子怡还是玉娇龙，陈红还是贵夫人。不过最让我看不下去的是编剧。

 

怎么说呢，梅兰芳作为一代名伶，身上的闪光点太多了。中国抗日战争期间，梅兰芳为拒绝为日军演出而“蓄须”，八年间无一次演出而断去经济来源，后靠卖字画和奖杯维持家人和剧团生活。[1]这自然值得好好加工入戏，美国演出也是其人生中辉煌的一章，还有他对日本的复杂感情。他曾于1919年赴日本演出引起轰动，曾有评论“有此双手，其余女人的手尽可剁去”。1924年因曾经为日本关东大地震赈灾义演而受邀再次赴日演出，期间突患急性肠胃炎危及生命，后被一日本医生医治。医生不收费，仅要一景泰蓝袖扣。1956年第三次访问日本再次引发轰动，同时履行30多年前承诺。[2]这与他拒绝日本占领军的演出要求是很大的戏剧冲突。

 

让我们在看看他的婚姻和家庭：1910年，梅兰芳与出身于京剧世家的王明华结婚。婚后王明华生了一双儿女后做了节育手术，后来儿女不幸夭折，后因王明华身体不好在天津养病。1921年梅兰芳娶旦角演员福芝芳为平妻。福芝芳为梅兰芳生下九个孩子，但只有四个长大成人，分别是梅葆琛、梅绍武、梅葆玥、梅葆玖。他的女儿梅葆玥唱老生，小儿子梅葆玖继承梅派京剧艺术。1925年，梅兰芳与京剧名老生孟小冬同居，5年后两人分手。[3]同居的故事自然可以写，但是第一段婚姻、如何到第二段婚姻、再如何又到同居的，可以挖掘的东西似乎更多。

 

作为80后的一代，我不认为京剧是属于我们这个时代的。但这并不妨碍我们去欣赏京剧和梅兰芳，因为京剧是另一个时代的艺术皇冠，而梅兰芳就是皇冠上最璀璨的宝石。只可惜我们不太了解，看不出一挥手、一踱步中到底有什么细微的差别，不懂演到什么时候应该叫好。我们知道的是，走进电影院，看《梅兰芳》，然后和朋友谈论一番。这样，我们可能就不知道邱如白其实应该是齐如山，也不清楚梅兰芳之所以不朽的真正原因。