arsenal vs. barcelona

It's not really the Brits I love, it's the idea of them I've acquired from fiction and film over the years. Tut tut, hip hip, hush hush, stiff upper lip, cheerio, good show and all that rot. It started with Ronald Coleman - what a gentleman, what a voice! - and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and moved on to Errol Flynn and Cary Grant. They were good guys with good manners, at least in the movies, refined and fearless at the same time. For some reason I was taken with their restraint, " I do say old man, please don't get up or I shall be forced to knock you down again" as opposed to the welcome of violence exhibited by American stars like Cagney, Bogart, Edward G. Robinson through Eastwood and on to Stallone, Bruce Willis and all the current action heroes. "I'll knock your block off" "Go for your gun" "Bring it on" "You want a piece of me?" "Go ahead, make my day." I suppose it is really just a choice of which fantasy world I'd prefer to live in, that of P.G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie or that of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett. I'll take the former by a long shot. Even their evil doers do so with class and style. Blair is certainly head and shoulders above Bush in that category. Shakespeare, Dickens, Christie and Wodehouse in that order have all played their parts in making me an anglophile, and recently Dick Francis, but it is the movies I think that were most telling( even though, when I write I can channel P. G.'s voice, but unfortunately, not his talent.) And now when my anglophileness is fully in place, the movies still nurture the condition. Think Dudley Moore as Arthur, what a sweet character. Or Emma Thompson or Anthony Hopkins in any period piece. They are always complex, complicated, even haunted characters, frequently stick-up-their-butts kind of people as Americans would describe them, but always mannered and polite. What can I say, it appeals to me because conversely, they, the Brits, can also be funny. Has there ever been a more laugh-out-loud show than Fawlty Towers? What about Monte Python? And wasn't Benny Hill the British Milton Berle? There can be great nuance and subtlety in English humor, think Peter Sellers in any movie other than the Pink Panther series or great slapstick, think Peter Sellers IN the Pink Panther series. All great, funny stuff.

But alas and alack, (thank you Shakespeare) I digress. What I am here to talk about is sports, namely today's UEFA Champions League Championship Futbol Match between England's Arsenal team and Spain's Barcelona team. Guess which one I'm rooting for?

Wrongo baseball breath! It's Barcelona in a rout. You know, something like 2 to 1. My man Ronaldnino, who by the way, has just become the highest paid athlete (endorsements and other outside income included) surpassing David Beckham another soccer player, and Michael...something German sounding, a race car driver, is unstoppable. Go Barsa! (A side note to that highest paid list is that Michael Jordon is still in the top ten and he hasn't played basketball for what, five years?)

So Love and Chin up, That's a good lad, Be a Sport eh what and Alrighty then.