Fox’s Own Goal: Arsenal v Manchester United
This morning will see the American coverage of the English Premiership momentarily escape its ghettoized confines of cable when Fox shows the game between Manchester United and Arsenal.
Scheduled as an amuse-bouche before the main course that is the NFC Championship game, this will be the first English league match to be broadcast live on a major US network and follows on from the (relative) success of Fox’s live broadcast of the last two Champions League finals.
Just as those two games saw some basic attempts to explain the game to novice viewers, to make the unfamiliar seem familiar, Fox has felt the need to bring in a friendly face to explain the beauty of soccer* to an audience that is, perhaps understandably, more interested in the Giants taking on the 49ers. Clearly there’s no need to merely settle for as eloquent an analyst as former USA international Eric Wynalda when you can have the thoughts of this famed sports pundit.
Yep, it’s old Captain Bastard himself – Piers Morgan. Network chiefs in the US seem to be viewing Piers Morgan as a polymath. Not only has CNN been wheeling him out during the recent Republican primaries under the mistaken belief that he can provide searing political analysis, Fox is now working on the misapprehension that Morgan’s constant goading of Michael Owen on twitter is the work of a mind filled to the brim with sporting insights - to think I didn’t push him into oncoming traffic when I had the chance.
*For those British readers who get all het up when I use the term “soccer” rather than “football”, please note I do so for the following reasons: 1) on a blog of this nature it avoids unnecessary confusion; 2) “soccer”, as detailed in a previous post, is not an Americanism; 3) the usage of soccer is frankly not that unusual back in the UK as evidenced by Gillette Soccer Saturday hosted by Jeff Stelling and if it’s good enough for Jeff Stelling then it most certainly is good enough for me.
Tipping: an American love affair
“I’ve only got a twenty. Do you have any smaller bills?” asked the wife this Saturday as we found ourselves sat on the side of I-205 while traffic sped past us.
“No. Why?”
“For the AAA man when he comes.”
“Wait, we’re meant to tip the AAA guy?”
“We’re not meant to, I just thought that we could. So do you have anything smaller?”
“Of all the things I’m worrying about at the moment,” I said casting a glance at our car’s blown tire, “tipping the AAA guy, when he finally decides to show up, is not one of them.”
“So you’ve got nothing smaller then?”
“No, no, I have not.”
Interlude: part 2
So as we complete another full orbit of the Sun I find myself stuck in a Holiday Inn near Albuquerque International Sunport. A particularly rambunctious party full of equally rambunctious partygoers seems to have taken over the hotel. As I can’t bring myself to watch more than a few minutes of Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin count in the New Year from Times Square, I thought that I would pen a brief post linking to my favourite Culturally Discombobulated posts of 2011. Links are below, if you find yourself stuck in a room in the Albuquerque airport Holiday Inn miserable with life as others are loudly happy then you may find these links of some use.
Resting Places and Starting Points
Interlude
Glossing over the whys and hows I haven’t posted anything on Christmas, I had planned to do a post for Christmas period and yet amid the making of mince pies and the mulling of wine this little space on the web has remained blank. Here instead are some links, first to some half-baked thoughts I wrote on Christmas elsewhere and second to an older post from here.
Same lyrics, different melodies
R.C. Willey
The marketing department at R.C. Willey was at a loss to explain why the launch of their UK stores had been met with such derision.
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