Flaggots

Warning: this post contains an unhealthy amount of metaphors.

It's difficult being English. I sat down today and watched the film Eurotrip for the first time. Like every other comedy I've been meaning to see, it was absolutely awful (when a comedy fails to make you laugh or give a monkeys what happens to the main characters you know you're in trouble). But, it did highlight a good ol' English trait: 'soccer hooligans'.

In the film, two American teens travelling from America wind up with a rag-tag bunch of East London thugs who, of course, like everyone else from England, support their local team Manchester United. The gang, led - in an Oscar worthy performance...- by Vinnie Jones, tear round Europe callously punching Frenchmen and even assaulting the Papal escorts in the Vatican City (yep, this film really is terrible).

So it explains how the rest of the world sees us. A bunch of beer-fuelled louts who are incredibly passionate about football, so much so that we're ready to assault random strangers in the name of a victory.

So what a fucking disgrace it is, to see 11 Englishman tip-toe off the pitch in Bloemfontein after being outclassed, outgunned, and out-committed by a battle-hardened set of Germans.

There's no point in analysing what went wrong. There's no point pondering why Lampard and Gerrard still refuse to work together as though they are water and electricity respectively. There's no point discussing if Fabio Capello wasn't to wear 3D glasses to every England game, maybe he'd realise they were shit and not 'geeveeng a guud pairformence'.

The fact of the matter is we were terrible from day one. 'Oooooh we played well in the qualifiers' cried most people, giving their reasons why England might win the tournament. Unfortunately, these very naïve, mentally retarded people forgot that we played Kazakhstan and Andorra, two nations who probably have more dodos in their country than proper footballers.

Then Capello decided he would pick his team based on form rather than general class. You forget the wise old proverb - like many such proverbs, probably originated from a Marvel comic somewhere - 'Form is temporary, class is permanent'. Take for example, two of the goalscorers from German team. Miroslav Klose has scored three times in the last Bundesliga season, yet has scored just one shy of that total on the big stage in South Africa. Same with Lukas Podolski, who has netted the same number of goals all season for FC Köln. So here we are, getting spanked by a team made up of 'out of form' players. Players, whom had Capello been managing, probably would have been left at home to tend to their frankfurter farms (surely one exists SOMEWHERE).

But oh no! Capello was not to pick from class, as he decided to bring Emile Heskey, who is just about as useful as a hitchhiker with no thumbs. Or a vampire who lives in a curtain-less house. Or Scooby Doo without Velma. The only reason we took Emile Heskey was to show the poor South African children who live on the outskirts of District 9 (it is real, honest) that 'hey, life could be worse'. The wise ol' prophet Alan Shearer has always maintained that 'Heskey makes players around him play better'. Correction. Emile Heskey is SO BAD, he makes the players around him LOOK better. Hell, he could happily slot into the Dog and Duck FC and make the 40-year old striker with a pacemaker and a wooden leg look like Pele.

But, lets not shoot the largest target. It's easy to blame Capello. This is the man after all, who has won everything wherever he has been. Unfortunately as England manager, he has been lumped with a team of individuals who get bigger stage fright than a 6-year old child playing Joseph at the Christmas nativity play. Bar David James and Ashley Cole, the 21 other England players have been nothing short of diabolical. These (as one woman from Essex described them) ''undred faasend paand supastarz' have been quite simply, outplayed. Whether it was by the Americans, who were confused by the concept of a ball game played with the feet; the Algerians, who now have to go back home and sell camels to make ends meet; or the Slovenians, who are still fighting some kind of race war with men with names like Milsoveic.

And to top England's big pile of shit of with a sparkler you see in a tacky cocktail, there are the idiots at home who go St. George crazy, or as I like to call them, Flaggots. These are the people that, would it not be health hazardous when eating their half-time kebab, would paint red crosses on their teeth. Houses adorned with tacky red paint, flags attached to cars like they are ambassadors on foreign soil. Don't get me wrong, there's being patriotic and that, but when it's so obvious we're terrible, the jingoistic attitude displayed by many mentally inept England fans was a little bit embarrassing. It's like turning up to a swimming gala with the tightest Speedos and the most orange goggles, and then getting beat in the breastroke by a man with one leg who got the bus to the pool. We shouted, we painted and we believed. All we did was waste our breath, paint and mental activity.

So there we are, why it's difficult to be English. Because when the chips are down, we only ever have ourselves to blame. Oh and maybe Sepp Blatter, whose refusal to adopt goaline technology is frighteningly similar to when my granddad thought adopting the internet in his home would be like letting Satan into his front door. Now the old man never leaves eBay. Call me a traitor, but I just didn't care about this World Cup as much as I did before. I tried to hope. But the thing was, I just didn't believe. And that's probably what the 11 players who walked out to face the Germans today thought. It would explain why they played like a team of Stevie Wonder's...

'How can I be lost, if I've got nowhere to go?'

The little note I hid for next years resident :)

Warning: Daniel is away, Gay Daniel will be writing this post (hence why it's so emotional and down-right philosophical)

It is, in reality, a long way from Kent to Essex. It's taken me a good 6 hours to move back the contents of my uni shoebox to mi casa in lovely sunny Essex. While it may be my little uni shoebox, I'm gonna miss that little Alcatraz-like room.

It was the 20th September 2009 that I slapped my speakers (a sign I've moved anywhere) on the desk of room 412D in Liberty Quays. There was a chair, a mattress that Indian children in the slums of Delhi would have complained about, some shelves, a nicely finished en-suite and carpet made out of either tumbleweed or pubes. But, after whacking a few of my things in there, it became my little university retreat. A slice of independence away from sheltered life back in Essex.

Miss (I hope it's still 'Miss) Fox and the Metallica guys adorned the walls, Angus Young guarded the bathroom door, and pictures of friends stared back at me every time I sat on my computer. Then there was all the little random things on my pin board that I'd assembled from uni. Stupid little drawings and letters that when I took them down, really hit me that I'd finished my first year of Uni. Hell, once my walls were bare, I just wanted to give the keys back and be done with it, because 412D was no longer my little piece of heaven.

I wouldn't say my emotions were running high after I'd packed up and put the last stray bottle cap in the bin. Even if I was, the man-sized tissues were deep in the boot of my dad's car so there would have been no hope anyway.

I couldn't quite believe the amount of stuff that had come of the room. Watching my parents remove contents of drawers, shelves and stuff hidden under my bed was like watching a child play with a Russian doll. Then my dad proved his prowess at Tetris by somehow slotting it all into two cars. And then working out where it all fit back in my room. I don't believe in magic, but wondering how all the stuff fit in the shoebox and not my room at home had me questioning whether some form of witchcraft was at hand.

So it's Southend for the summer, highlighting why the location of my university lodgings is so shit. Even from my own window, I get to admire the 'shanty town' of Gillingham. And it wouldn't let me leave without giving it's own goodbye. 3am last night, two drunk guys across the road hugging, when all of a sudden one hits the guy round the face. Cue clichéd drunken conversation such as 'I thought you loved me man' and 'mi casa es mi casa' (the cultural ignorance there is nothing short of astounding).

It's only once I think back to all these little things that I realise I am going to miss that room. The little things that have made me laugh, cry, smile. It's been an awesome first year at Uni, and after all the shenanigans that went down, I knew I had a place to rest my head (unlike Jesus).

R.I.P 412D

For Arguments Sake

I have a huge amount of respect for my colleagues at Uni. Especially the foreign ones. Not only have they had to learn the lingo, but also learn it to the point where they're pretty much better at English than me.

It was even one of the 'aliens' who inspired me to start this blog. Sara Malm's blog is a feminists dream and one that makes me laugh quite a bit.

BUT

I can't help but thoroughly disagree with the post on the Harry Potter themepark in Orlando Florida.

I get the argument. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a new themed area in Universal's Islands of Adventure, a theme park that opened in 1999 and has since had absolutely nothing done to it. The same rides have sat there for a decade and there has been very little in updates or new rides.

So they went a bit mental, and decided to recreate JK Rowling's imagination into an area tucked away at the back of the park. Well, as tucked away as much as you can when you've got roller coasters, Hogwarts Castle and the village of Hogsmeade to accommodate.

Anyway, the argument is that Harry Potter is British. Quintessentially. In the same way as tea and scones is British. In the same way Churchill is British. And the same way football hooliganism is very British. So, why is this theme park 3,000 miles away from where many Brits think it should be?

The Americans know how to do a themepark. Look how many Brits, every year, escape the mundane nonsense of Britain and head to Disney World, Universal, SeaWorld and Busch Gardens in Florida and Disneyland, Universal and Six Flags in California. The Yanks take care with their parks. The scenery is beautifully done, parking is organised, and there is a real sense of occasion everytime you set foot in an American themepark. Parades, characters in suits, a clean environment. A British themepark has none of these things. Parades? Only the queue to get a refund on horribly overpriced tickets. Characters in suits? I suppose you could class the teenagers who are working for the summer as characters. A clean environment? I've walked round Thorpe Park before and was convinced I was actually in a landfill site.

The second thing the Americans have is imagination. Some of the rides at Universal are pioneers in ride technology. And the reports coming from Orlando about the 'top-secret' Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride have only reaffirmed this notion that the Yanks but far more grey matter into coming up with ride ideas. When we make a ride, we take the American idea, and make it slightly worse, simply because we can't be bothered to invest the same amount of money or effort into making these rides (compare the stats of Thorpe Park's 'Stealth' and the original design of Cedar Point's 'Top Thrill Dragster').

Now for a little history lesson for my final point. In the mid '80's, the Walt Disney Company were drawing up plans to bring their themepark to Europe and had a number of sites which could potentially locate 'EuroDisney'. One site was East London, more specifically, Barking and Dagenham. Yes, the old derelict crumbling Ford plant was put forward (more out of wild hope than expectation) as a potential site for Disney's park. Fortunately for the good of mankind, Disney realised that Disneyland Paris had a slightly better ring to it than 'Disneyland Dagenham' and placed their park at the heart of Europe in a picturesque setting of the Parisian outskirts.

And this all means what exactly? Essentially, having a Harry Potter themepark in Britain would be like building the worlds most powerful car and then attaching one wheel to it. We'd ruin it. We'd take it for granted, build a castle, fill it with a few portraits and then accountants would step in and we'd have to leave it at that. Who would come to it anyway? Britain's tourism is dire in comparison to that of American or France. No one would come and then Hogwarts really would look like ruins (small in-joke for die-hard Pottermaniacs). When I was in Orlando last year, they'd nearly finished building Hogwarts castle and it looked fantastic. The American's have taken our baby and treated it with care. The amount of money and research that has gone into it is nothing short of staggering. Both JK Rowling and Stuart Craig (production designer on all the Potter films) have both been heavily consulted every step of the way.

Like everything good on Earth, it's a British idea that's taken forward by the Americans. Lets not forget, the Potter films are all made by American companies. Can you imagine a Potter film made by the BBC? It'd be downright shit and you'd inevitably have Graham Norton as Dumbledore.

And besides, Orlando has sunshine. Who looks out of their window on a rainy day and thinks 'fucking prime themepark weather'?.

Case closed.