This Is This

On Saturday, my one of my top two weekend days of all time, Everton (my football team of choice, not that I had one) played Reading at Goodison Park.

If you who don’t know much about football, or me, here’s a little context. I support Everton, who play in Liverpool, where my family is from. Liverpool is an industrial town in the north of England with a rich culture and heritage, but it’s a bit scruffy. It makes Manchester look posh.

So imagine my surprise when Sylvester Stallone, sorry - Hollywood’s Sylvester Stallone - took to the turf before kick off, waving an Everton scarf and wearing a cheap bomber jacket with the club badge on it.

I ran into Sly once in a small art gallery in Philadelphia (not the Musuem of Art with the steps and everything, but a smaller one out of town, and yes, everyone runs up the steps of the MoA while their friends sing the music so you can pretend you’re in the movie).

I was about 16, and Rocky walked in with some friends into the small house and stood about 10 feet away from me. My first impression was how small he was. He must be five and nothing. Anyway, me and my friends start doing the voice to each other while he’s buying his ticket. “Yo, I wanna look at da pictures. You, know, artists and paintin’s. Youze got scultchers?”

We made sure we were out of earshot, lest the Italian Stallion open one of Warhol’s famous cans to reveal that it contained not Cambell’s Soup, but in fact whoop-ass. (nice)

I saw Rocky 2 at the movies in 1979 and I was blown away. It was the first time I had been to the pictures without my parents and I went into the city with our babysitter and her boyfriend. Seeing Rocky in a cinema in Philly must be like seeing U2 in Dublin, or Monet in the Louvre. Or eating a salade nicoise in the Cours Salaya. It’s so right that to do anything else would feel wrong.

The crowd was all a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ with their “Go Rock!” and stuff and the air exploded with ovations whenever your spirit leapt. We were the heart strings with a brass section - and we were all Philadelphia.

As Rocky fought the odds, I fought back the tears, just as I would years later when I walked out on the turf at Goodison Park.

And then one day, last weekend, he did the same. And something else came full circle.

Related posts:
Walking on the turf
Picture

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