Things More Exciting Than Soccer

The plays of Eugene O’Neill

Amanda Plummer in anything

Evita

Migraines

Trying to explain about plots to musicians

American football

Newt Gingrich

Veal

Not a huge fan, but I’ll be tuned in at 2:30 EST to watch. Probably will root for the Brits.

Wow, you guys sound like Glenn Beck today. Why the diss?
mediamatters.org/blog/201006110034

@rmadrazo: Some of the men apparently are threatened by my plan to post a World Cup Hottie of the Day on a daily basis for the foreseeable future…

@SanFranLefty: Ah, but I will counter with the South Asian half time entertainment. She talks, and I think it is about soccer, but I’m never quite sure.

May I just say, since no one gives a damn and you’re all apparently watching Sport ball anyway, that I am sick and tired of the English complaining that we here in the States are anti-British because BP has come in for a tad wee bitty criticism re its apocalypse in the Gulf. By all means write yards of column space about the way we can’t speak English, mock our table manners (well, OK, I’ll give you that one), and our politics (whatevs), but do not accuse us of being anti-Brit. Not so long as random Yanks stop one in shops to ask one to say ‘orange’. If only we Americans could be a bit more anti-British so I could stop having to watch all those fucking whodunits on PBS. Nobody cares who did it so get over it. I’d like to see a vast oil slick approaching the coast of Fife and see how well they take it. Never mind deporting Mexicans, we should be deporting the English. Let them take their PG Tips and go.

@Benedick: Wait, table manners? Don’t they eat with the fork in the left hand and the knife in the right, like all the other fooking barbarians on the continent? I half jokingly explained to my father-in-law that we put down the knife and picked the fork up in the right hand because it was a custom to show we weren’t about to attack our hosts. He just assumed it was because we were all so fat and lazy that we didn’t need to eat as quickly as the euros.

ADD (Sport): Argentina may be up one goal already against Nigeria, but WTF with the Pancho Villa mustache look, Diego? Although I must say, he’s looking reasonably fit these days.

Watching paint peel

Picking lint out of my navel

Listening to my stepmother sound like a dumbass

TJ/ You guys would be fucking disgusted and disheartened to see how NOLA’s 9th Ward looks today. It’s a ghost town gone back to nature. Have sent pics to zee edeetorz. And no one down here parle le francais. Especially me.

Geez, this anti-soccer rant has got me seeing Mann Coulter on the Not the MSNBC Ad. I miss the “Meet Russian ladies” ad.

I can’t really diss soccer since I love baseball and enjoy watching curling… Something about glass houses, I guess.

@ManchuCandidate: 2 points for the Manchurians, dude.

@Nabisco: It’s more the open mouth thing I object to. And it really is impossible to enjoy well-cooked food if you’re going to use your fork like a harpoon. Not you personally but you know what I mean.

Anyhow, have fun with Sport. I’m rooting for Benelux.

@Nabisco: I’m listening.

@Dodgerblue: They replaced her with a dude for the Argentina-Nigeria match. Resting for the Clash of Colonialists, one hopes.

@Nabisco: One hopes for some more scoring. And no more ties. You call this a championship, with ties? Let them play till they drop, then tear off their shirts so SFL will be happy.

@Benedick: And it really is impossible to enjoy well-cooked food if you’re

…in England.

@nojo: You know what’s funny? I’ll tell you what’s funny. Food is better there than in the States. What was available in the shops was always better but now the restaurants are way ahead. Even outside London. Of course it costs an arm and a leg but it’s good.

You know what’s cheap? I’ll tell you what’s cheap. Champagne.

The neighbor informs me that they were lining up at Shakespeare’s Pub four hours ago for today’s match. I’m three or four blocks away, so we’ll see whether I can hear the goals from here.

Of course, this being soccer, might be another hour or two.

@Benedick: Visited some friends on the West End last summer – physician/architect couple, so you know, totally posh neighborhood – and we ate a delightful organic chicken the evening of arrival with great wine, and then lunched at a delightful, sun-drenched cafe in the little shops-on-the-green place where you go to catch the Tube. Expensive as all get out, and Ma Nabisco’s friend had a heck of a time finding a parking place where her Mini Cooper would fit, but I was sold when I saw what looked like real cobblestones outside the tobacco shop.

I just reminded myself that it was probably all gray and cold and rainy every other day of the year, and that the chimney sweep probably charged an arm and a leg for his services.

@Benedick: @Nabisco: Don’t forget: All it takes is a little ash from Iceland to shut down food imports and reduce the Sceptred Isle to choosing between blood sausage and black pudding (wait, there’s a difference?) once again.

@Nabisco: Stinque trivia question: What does “posh” mean?

@nojo: Emaciated Spice Girl.

@Nabisco: The city has become so pretty and so very different from when I lived there. I think they even upgraded the weather. I took a friend to lunch in South Ken. Very modest neighborhood Indian, but clean and very good service. We had lentil curry with fixins, a glass of wine each and he had a dish of ice cream. Came to 44 pounds. I was used to it by then but cannot begin to comprehend the prices. I just reckoned everything was in dollars – still expensive by our standards – and hammered the plastic. And rents and the price of flats is simply beyond my powers of comprehension. Like NY they got monetized by the bank deregulation, which is even more extreme there, and boy does it show.

But I sure miss me that good champagne. All french wines were much cheaper than here. Plus I got to be waited on by snotty Limeys. Win-win.

BTW. We say ‘in’ the West End. Your English friends will be impressed and won’t have to deplore your American ways after you leave.

@nojo: Port Out, Starboard Home. The cooler cabins on the old P&O line ships to India.

You know what else I love? I love Safari 5. I love it! My fave browser evah.

Steve Jobs. Is there nothing he can’t do? *sigh*

@Benedick: You win!

I love language.

@flippin eck: God, I used to love black pudding! Yum yum yum. Blood and oatmeal with big chunks of pig fat to juice it up. Spicy and delicious. Blood sausage is I think the same thing made in a narrower casing. So really it depends on just how thick you want the sausage to be and what you think you can get your mouth around. Some like the really fat ones and some like them slimmer and longer. Of course, pudding is cut in slices to be served with fried eggs, fried bacon, grilled kidney, fried bread, fried tomatoes, and maybe a smidge of liver. Strong black tea with thick-cut toast and marmalade. Hard to beat for all around deliciousness when eaten of a Sunday morning in a railway hotel to build up one’s strength after the exertions of the night before.

@ nojeThis is a lot of fun. The old London lingo of villains, pansies and slags – now almost gone.