Nobody is interested in my underpants.

Originally uploaded by gooblar.

I love the French. They don't fuck around.

Gabbo Fabbo; Krusty Rusty

Originally uploaded by gooblar.

Hey all! Look! Photoblogging! Oh, the possibilities make me positively giddy. I apologize for my silence since I left your fair shores; that's all over now. Much posting will occur (and that means from you too) from now on.

A brief(ish) rundown of stuff since I left the states:

* Because I'm a stupid, stupid fuck, I put my iPod in my checked baggage. In fact, in the front pocket of a shoulder bag, unprotected by anything. And, of course, it broke. Technically, the thing still works, as music does play. But the screen is almost totally incapacitated, so I can only see about 1/16 of the total area. So, really annoying. And only myself to blame. To change the shuffle on and off is like walking through a maze blindfolded. aargh.

* I've played in 4 (four) poker tournaments at the club since i've been back. Results:

1) Sunday afternoon £10 No-Limit: finished 7th, winning £20 (breaking even, because I re-bought once).
2)Sunday afternoon £10 No-Limit: finished 3rd, winning £145 (profit of £125).
3)Tuesday night £5 Pot-Limit (craziness--157 entrants): finished 19th (the top 18 got paid out; loss of £15).
4)Tuesday night £5 Pot-Limit: finished like 135th or something (loss of £10).

So, up £100 in 2 1/2 weeks. not bad.

* In my attempts at school work, I've been reading alot. Roth's The Professor of Desire and The Facts. Now Deception. A chapter from A. Scott Berg's biography of Charles Lindbergh, about his anti-Semitic, and sorta white supremacist political acts at the beginning of WWII. Working my way through James Atlas's biography of Saul Bellow, which is hella good. Biographies sort of rule. Oh yeah, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which was really very good. Still haven't finished my goddamn chapter, and am beginning to suspect that I have some Freudian-like wish to never quite finish it, so I can never quite move on the the next thing. I have, though, edited my MA dissertation down to half the size, with the idea of submitting it to a journal. So, at least something.

* This British "summer" sucks. I've got a cold.

* Maybe Contreras would be more comfortable if his family was actually out on the mound with him when he pitches against the Red Sox. Just a thought.

It's opposite day all the time!

For the life of me I can't understand tv execs. Perfectly good shows are dumped into their laps all the time, and because of what can only be gross incompetence they get run into the ground and taken off the air too quickly. To make matters worse these great shows get cancelled while absolute crap (Fox, I'm looking in your direction) gets to stay on and even gets picked up for additional seasons!

Case in point, Keen Eddie and Firefly, (again, thank you Fox, for cancelling two great shows without even airing the whole season). Keen Eddie I knew about from the beginning. It was supposed to be one of those summer shows that Fox has started doing and then they either go nowhere (like Keen Eddie) or get picked up (like the OC). For the life of me I can't figure out why Keen Eddie was cancelled. It was an American dolt (no relation) of a cop stuck in England with quite possibly one the hottest people to ever walk the face of the Earth. Hilarity! Sexiness! Brits! No matter, no room for great scripted comedy when there's reality tv like Trading Spouses to be had! Luckily, there was so much support for the show that Bravo bought the rights and then aired the whole season.

Firefly is a show I'm rather new to. The reason I'm new to it is because Fox did a horrible job marketing it when it was on. I remember seeing the commercials and thinking "I don't know what the hell this is, but it looks kinda like Farscape". Turns out not so much, what it really is is a western set in space, horses and gunslingers and everything. I know that sounds dumb on the surface, but if you think about it most sci-fi is really just a western with technology, so it works a lot better than you might think. Anyway, Firefly was slotted to replace Dark Angel, which angered people for reasons passing understanding. I've seen Dark Angel, and for the life of me I can't understand how it stayed on the air as long as it did. If that wasn't enough of a disadvantage, the show was on Friday nights, and the episodes were shown out of order. Talk about setting up to fail. Anyway, the clamoring from the great unwashed masses to see Jessica Alba in skin-tight outfits again was so great that they pulled Firefly and put Dark Angel back on. But we may get the last laugh yet.

I watch about 4 hours of tv a week, and these morons are defintely part of the reason. Luckily someone invented DVD's ten years ago so Johnny-come-lately's like me can still check these shows out. And if you like whitty cop shows or really good sci-fi, I suggest you guys check them out as well.

Keen Eddie on DVD
Firefly on DVD