Those of you who are obsessive Simpsons viewers will get the headline.

And to answer Bloggie’s question on the previous post, NBC is going to start carrying broadcasts of English Premier League football [soccer to you Yanks]. The following promo ad is better than a wrap-around on a subway car.

Wrap-around ad, you wankers, get your minds out of the gutter!

And yes, Christopher Guest could – and should – totally extend this hilarious clip into a full-length movie, preferably with his Best in Show/Spinal Tap colleagues and Will Farrell involved.

[NYT]

My love for Dame Judi Dench continues to grow.  H/T Lux Mentis:

But perhaps the most arresting memory that they take away from being on set with living legend Judi Dench is not her boundless fascination with acting but her penchant for subversive needlework. Her work certainly did not resemble the delicately stitched roses of a Mrs. Bennet. “She makes these like needlework embroideries on set in the tedium of filming”, says MacFadyen, “but they are all: ‘You Are a Cunt’. And she gives them as presents. And it’s Dame Judi Dench. And she is doing this beautifully, intricate, ornate (work). You kind of see the work materializing as the shoot goes on. Like: ‘You Are a Fucking Shit.’ Knightley never received her embroidered cushion from Dench but remarks: “I love that! She gives this fantastic air. She just sits there and she embroiders and you think: ‘Oh, that’s so nice! It’s Judi Dench. It’s so quaint; she’s embroidering a cushion,’ and you go: ‘What are you embroidering?’ And (it says): ‘Fuck!’ Apparently she’s got hundreds of them just covered in swear words or rude sayings.”

[Darcylicious]

[Illustration/Make Your Own Kits: Subversive Cross Stitch]

[Guardian]

“Britain is on course to adopt gay marriage after the House of Commons voted to give the marriage (same sex couples) bill a second reading by a majority of 225. The bill will still have to receive line-by-line scrutiny in the Commons, and then it will have to get through the Lords, but the size of the majority, and the fact that the leaders of all three main parties are in favour, suggest that it is now inevitable that gay marriage will become law.” [Guardian UK]

“It reminds us of the potential in our societies that is yet to be fully unlocked and it encourages us to find ways to allow all girls and women to play their full part.” —Queen Elizabeth, on the Commonwealth overturning a centuries-old law requiring male primogeniture in Royal successions. [Daily Mail, via ThinkProgress]

Our guest columnist is National Review’s Frank Miniter, who is totally not gay.

With London succumbing to looters and muggers, it’s time to ask what happened to the once-manly English people. The August 9 issue of the Daily Mail, for example, includes a photo of a young man taking off his pants on the street as an impatient looter waits with the emasculated Briton’s sneakers and shirt already in his hands. Luckily the feeble Englishman chooses boxers over briefs, but I can’t help wondering if men such as T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, or Lord Acton could have stomached the state of manliness in this generation of Englishmen.

England Used to Be a Country of Men [NRO]