TransAtlantic Fan

New photos available from sporting events on either side of the pond. First some pictures from the epic day I spent at Fenway waiting for 5 hours for them to finally call the game vs. the White Sox because of rain. Laurie, Mike, Amrys and I slowly moved to better and better seats as people gave up and left the park. Alas it was to no avail since they never restarted the game.

The second set is from the Charlton-Wigan football match I went to last weekend with Javier, Shailen and Xiayi from work. It was a good group because the guys are knowledgable but willing to put up with my ignorance since none of them care that much about these particular teams (or English football in general, since they're Spanish, New Zealander and Chinese, respectively).

We got lost in London (Charlton is in East London) on the way there so it took us 3 hours instead of 1.5 to get there from Oxford. Thankfully we had left early (planning to stop for lunch) so we arrived 5 minutes before the 3PM kickoff. Unfortunately this meant lunch was in the form of the grimmest burger I've ever had sold by some woman with a stand in her front yard around the corner from the stadium.

The match was fun to watch, although the second half was somewhat boring. Charlton took a 1-0 lead on a cross to the striker who headed it in late in the first half. Wigan's a pretty miserable attack team so Charlton just shut them down with stiff defense after the break. It was different from watching any American sporting event because the action essentially never stops. A fifteen minute break between halves is about all you get to go chug a beer (you're not allowed to bring beers back to your seat) and pee.

I think watching football is a slightly different social experience than baseball or American football. There's the same hooligans chanting and supporting the local team to gross extremes, but there are other traditions that are different, like singing. The teams all have these long songs (some with multiple verses etc) that the crowds all sing together during the game. It's a bit more complex than just screaming "LET'S GO RED SOX!" Plus there are a lot more teams per capita than at home (not all in the Premiership league, but the other leagues are followed pretty strongly) so lots of people have season tickets and spend every Saturday with the same group of rubes at the Stadium.

There & Back Again

I've returned to the UK after two relaxed weeks in the USA. It feels weird now, because everything here is familiar (people, places, habits) but I still feel like I left my "real" life back in Boston. It will also take an adjustment to get used to being completely separated from everyone in Boston because there's no impending visit or return trip looming. For my first few months here I had 4 different visits and a firm date for the next trip back. Now I've got Salt Lake City at the end of October, then probably another trip home at Christmastime, but nobody's scheduled to come visit in the meantime.

Americana

I think this (courtesy nytimes.com) is what Europeans envisage when they think of Americans...

Embarrassed

I have been recommended several times to read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, a set of "young adult fiction" books set in part in Oxford. Being without anything to read lately I wandered down to the local library on Saturday to see if I could get a copy. The Headington branch of the Oxfordshire Library System is typical of small-town sub-branches: two or three rooms in an old brick building, big kids section, lots of crappy romance novels.

The only available copy of the first book in the series, Northern Lights, was a large-print edition in the children's fiction section. I tracked it down and then stood sheepishly in line behind a guy taking out about 400 books about Billy the Big Red Fire Engine for his two 4 year old daughters. I must've been showing my discomfort because the librarian behind the desk which came up to my knees (presumably so little kids could see over it) gave me a smile and said conspiratorily, "This one's well worth venturing into the children's section."

Ed.

My boy Tom Friedman backs me up today, while trotting out one of his favorite horses:

We also need to spotlight the "excuse makers," the former State
Department spokesman James Rubin said. After every major terrorist
incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism,
Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These
excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists
and also deserve to be exposed. When you live in an open society like
London, where anyone with a grievance can publish an article, run for
office or start a political movement, the notion that blowing up a
busload of innocent civilians in response to Iraq is somehow
"understandable" is outrageous. "It erases the distinction between
legitimate dissent and terrorism," Mr. Rubin said, "and an open society
needs to maintain a clear wall between them."

Evidence

Pictures of Am & Scott's visit are now online. Scott's photos are travelling across the ocean as we speak. Once he receives them you should expect maybe a half dozen scanned and posted to the interwang some time in 2007.

If you're in the mood to laugh at me, start with this one.

Commies

Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, is a retard. In a BBC interview this week he said,

"Under foreign occupation and denied the right to vote, denied the
right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work for three
generations, I suspect that if it had happened here in
England we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves."

When asked if he denounced the London bombers (what kind of lame-ass question is that?) he also denounced:

"those governments which use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their
foreign policy, as we have occasionally seen with the Israeli
government bombing areas from which a terrorist group will have come,
irrespective of the casualties it inflicts, women, children and men."

What is wrong with him? It isn't three generations of repression by white guys that's fueling this culture war. It's 50 generations of repressive Sultans followed by 3 generations of repressive white guys, followed by 2 generations of repressive monomaniacal dictators and religious fanatics. How can someone get elected to public office if he relies so heavily on trite anti-establishment repartee?