Category Archives: not really archery

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the joy of Google

13 February, 2014

Welcome-to-the-internet

Some of the several thousand Google search hits that have come through to my WordPress dashboard here at theinfinitecurve.com in the past eight months or so. Italics mine.

“joy of archery” come right on in

“how much is a pitcher of beer at the lakeside frimley green?” can’t remember, had too many

“archery fog” whuh

“why is darts such a big spectator sport?” read this, third paragraph from the end

“archery sexy girl” also “sexy girl archery”… and “girl sexy archery”

“the nothing and the infinite” booom

“deaths related to archery 2013” waaahh

“ridiculousness.pec”  try it yourself

“william shatner without his toupee” not sure how 

“korean women soho london” hmmmm

“i’ve come from the the *venezuela” hola

“pulled pork kimchi rolls”  yes please

“engelbert humperdinck crazy” eh?

“be don’t try to become”  I blame Yoda

“can arrows curve in flight?” they always curve in flight

“how to say “I like archery” in korean”   양궁 처럼, natch

“curve cu alune” appears to be Romanian for… well, why don’t you try translating it?

“神主 イラスト”   never very sure of a lot of SE Asian online translation, but this appears to mean ‘Priest illustrations’

“bbc sport darts coverage is rubbish” still better than Sky, mate

and sweetest of all:

“I want to be ki bo bae” 

Just makes me wonder what gems are hiding in the 3,600 other search terms that Google hasn’t deigned to pass on.

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a bow and arrow at #Sochi2014?

11 February, 2014

The Infinite Curve: bringing you all the vaguely archery-related Winter Olympic content. This is the ‘bow and arrow’ freestyle skiing manouvre performed by Dara Howell on her way to a slopestyle gold medal at Sochi this morning. I’ve watched it a few times, and I can’t ‘see’ it myself. Nor did the commentators, apparently – although they’ve not been covering themselves in glory these Games. See what you think!


Anyway, I’m proper stuck into the curling now, where #TeamGB have a good shot at a medal in both the men’s and women’s event.  Let’s face it, it’s basically archery on ice, isn’t it? 😉

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“I’m good with a bow and arrow”

23 January, 2014

Imagine my joy and surprise on picking up crappy London freesheet newspaper the Metro this morning and finding this headline:

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Unfortunately when I got to the actual copy all I got was this:

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BOOO! Still Knightley has several bits of form here – she flung some sticks (not in this clip) in King Arthur [2004]…

…and also in the made-for-TV ‘Princess Of Thieves‘. Found this clip of an archery competition, which also features Malcolm McDowell doing what he does best, i.e. scenery-chewing ham villainry. Skip to about four minutes in. Good with a bow & arrow? I’ll leave that up to you to decide:

 

 

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more terrible archery

29 October, 2013

This ad apparently came out last year, but I saw it run on some godforsaken digital channel only last night. Strongbow are a cider brand that have long used archery in their advertising, although I don’t remember it being quite as explicit as this.

So we have: sight set too high for 60m (or whatever that distance is), cheapo aluminium arrows way too long, stance too narrow. Whatever. Barebow anchor with a sighted recurve? Puh-lease. If you call that an anchor. And the ‘release’ is just hideous. Wish my arrows spun like that though…

The stupid thing about this ad is that real archers look completely awesome shooting. You could have found one with the requisite pecs and bearing without too much trouble, and it would have looked real – probably would have been cheaper than a male model, too. The viewing public tend to recognize authenticity when it is actually put in front of them, and that’s only going to add to the rugged individualism that they are trying to associate with their cider, right?

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out with the old

We burned the old target bosses on Sunday. It’s a club ritual every year. A Windsor round, a barbeque, some red wine, the gathering gloom, and the five or six oldest, most shot-out straw bosses on the fire, along with all the dead wood and leaves off the field and the broken boss stands. Once you snip the strings, they unravel like snakes.

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This time, there was a howling wind (the night would see the worst storm in Britain for a while) and the lot went up ferociously. A couple of the local residents came along to see the monster burn, and seemed surprised that we were an archery club rather than some kind of southern Beltane celebrators.

“So, is this so you guys have good luck with your arrows for the year?”

“Yes, yes, I suppose so.”

 

 

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archery & fashion pt. 27

6 August, 2013

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Spotted outside the J Crew store at the Biltmore Shopping Center in Phoenix, AZ by my friend Jen Turrell (who runs an amazing blog about autism and how it affects families) because she was ‘getting a new battery put in my Mac across the way’.

When I started this archery blog, I wasn’t quite intending it to be a catalogue of the gradual assimilation into mainstream culture of archery motifs, although there’s been quite a lot of that.  It seems to be a strange mix of simple cultural shorthand – the use of arrows and targets has long been used as a visual business metaphor – along with the now familiar sexing-up of archery in the last year or so, plus the fact that, of course targets and arrows and bows simply look awesome.

I actually quite like what they’ve done with the colours above, which remind me slightly more of RAF roundels than FITA targets. But I’m always a bit uneasy about the casual, shopping-mall, sell-some-chinos assimilation of archery. It’s better than that, isn’t it?

 

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archery songs pt 1 of…

21 June, 2013

Me and my arrow
Straighter than narrow
Wherever we go, every one knows
It’s me and my arrow

Me and my arrow
Taking the high road
Wherever we go, everyone knows
It’s me and my arrow

And in the morning when I wake up
She may be gone, I don’t know
And we make up just to break up
I’ll carry on, oh yes I will

[Chorus]
Me and my arrow
(do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do)
Straighter than narrow
Wherever we go, every one knows
It’s me and my arrow

Me and my arrow

[Chorus]

Taken from Harry Nilsson’s ‘soundtrack’ to ‘The Point!‘, best known as a cartoon, but a concept that appeared in other media too. It’s worth having a read about the guy, he certainly lived. 

An archery song? Whatever. I can never stop singing it when I hear it.