Good for me, but maybe not for football

ESPN has been broadcasting the European Cup* in the USA ever since the country hosted the 1994 World Cup. This has meant that we get to see one match per matchday.

This season, though, the European Cup has switched to Fox Soccer Channel, with a huge increase in coverage. Now, on days when European Cup matches are played,** we get three or four matches a day. Now, this is great for me, though I'm not so sure Lisa and Paul would agree--today I'm hoping to watch Fiorentina v Lyon, Debrecen v Liverpool, Barcelona v Inter Milan and Arsenal v Standard Liège; then tomorrow there's AC Milan v Marseille, Real Madrid v FC Zurich and Manchester United v Besiktas.

But I've got to take the switch from ESPN to FSC as a bad sign for football in America. Really it can only have happened because ESPN must have decided they don't want European Cup football--I can't believe FSC could have had anything close to the resources to outbid ESPN if the Worldwide Leader in Sports had decided to make a fight of it. After all, I'm not sure if there's a basic cable package left in the United States that doesn't include ESPN, whereas we have to pay a $5 monthly surcharge on top of our digital cable package to receive FSC. ESPN, on my cable box, is channel eleven; FSC is channel 725.***

But the weird thing is, as they have lost the European Cup, ESPN have added spotty coverage of the Premier League, on the occasional Saturday and Sunday and--those weeks when there's a Monday night match--on Monday afternoons. I find it ... confusing. The Premier League might well be the world's most watched domestic football league, but I still wouldn't have expected it to compare with the European Cup--the most prestigious club sports competition on the planet. Besides, ESPN aren't even getting the Premiership's marquee matchups, like the Man United-Liverpool derby last month that was watched by one out of every twelve human beings alive today. Instead they show Manchester City v West Ham United and Aston Villa v Man City--both of which were rather entertaining matches, but neither of which, I think, are the sort of fixtures that have TV viewers flocking to you like Barcelona v Inter Milan or Juventus v Bayern Munich.

And ESPN have clearly been investing in their football coverage--they've poached several Sky Sports presenters in the past couple of years, their analysts on their Premiership matches are known English football personalities (including Kevin Keegan), and for the European Championship last summer they even had Andy Gray. (Though I'm sure he was only available because England's failure to qualify for the tournament led to less investment in its coverage by Sky.)

So I guess I just don't know what to make of it. Is this a good sign for football in America, or a bad one?

I

*Yeah, I still say European Cup rather than Champions League. Suck it. It's a cup competition, its winner is considered the champion of Europe, and the cup itself is inscribed with the words Coupe de Clubs Champions Européens.

**Six Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the group round from September to December, and then two Tuesdays and Wednesdays per round for the knockout rounds from February to May.

***As a side note, I find "channel 725" to be an exceptionally living-in-the-future phrase.

Identity manoeuvres

When my friends talk about to people who don't know me (which they apparently do with unsettling frequency), they usually describe me, amongst other things (I assume), as British. I describe myself to others as British.

But of course, I'm not British. Or not just British, anyway. Not even mostly British. I'm mostly American. I've lived in the United States since 1987. And when I go to England, I'm not really British for most purposes; I'm much more considered American. I suppose if I travelled outside the United States and the EU, I'd be some weird Anglo-American hybrid. Canadian, I guess.

That British part of me is very important to me, and it's a part I'm at pains to preserve. It would be very easy to lose touch with it, living in northern Virginia and not really having any contact with any Britons other than my parents, so I have to make sure that I go to the effort necessary to keep those elements of Britain that are important to me or that I like a lot in my life.

For the most part, Britain and America can coexist perfectly happily in my life; so long as the British is there, I don't worry that the American being there too is somehow going to edge it out. I love barbecue; eating barbecue doesn't somehow stop me drinking Ribena. I'm a big fan of American football; that doesn't stop me also loving proper football. And if I have a son who thinks the sport the Florida Gators play is called "soccer", and who throws his hands above his head whenever Manchester United score and shouts, "Touchdown!"? Well, them's the breaks.

Sometimes, though, I don't get that luxury. There are times when I don't get to have both; I have to choose. In such instances, unless I have a marked preference for the American, I'll almost always choose the British one. The best example of this is probably the area of language. Probably most people who read this blog have noticed words like humour, theatre (when I'm talking about a place where plays are performed, of course; a place where movies are shown is a cinema), learnt, alphabetise and aluminium. I don't use these words because I think British English is any better than American English*; I use them because it's a way of keeping touch with where I'm from.

The irony, of course, is that nowadays my spelling is probably much more "British" than you'll find in Britain, since the Internet age has led to the merger of a great many of the old differences in our common language.

Anyway, I'm not sure where I go from here, so I guess I'll just sign off. Cheerio.

I

*You ever want to poke the bear, you should see how friggin' annoyed I get when people claim that British English is somehow older than American English (as a way of claiming precedence for British English).

Of course, your first thought is, "What's happened to him that THAT's what he thinks to say?"

Paul doesn't like it when Lisa and I argue. He stands off to the side and tries to talk over us: "Okay, okay, okay guys, calm down, calm down." Today when we were having an argument, he actually stood in front of Lisa (she was sitting on the floor, I was stood in the doorway on the far side of the room) to block our views of each other so we couldn't see each other's faces.

Afterwards (the argument concluded, of course, with us deciding to follow the course of action Lisa wanted, but with the unspoken acknowledgment that my view was the correct one), he told us he doesn't like it when we fight.

Lisa and I explained that we don't like it when we argue either, but that sometimes people who live together and see each other so much have to argue about certain things.

"Yeah," he said. "Like sometimes I have to argue with Dora and Diego, because they hit me a lot."

I

Giving lonesome thanks

When we first moved up to Maryland in 2004, the only people we knew within a day's drive were Nikki and Lee, who were living in Philadelphia at the time. Lee and I had been each other's groomsmen; Nikki had been one of Lisa's bridesmaids, and Lisa Nikki's maid of honour. And now Lee is our son's godfather.

So it was logical, therefore, that we started spending Thanksgiving at each other's places. We tried to alternate who visited whom, though we weren't always able to do that if the presence of family coming up necessitated having dinner at one or the other of our homes.

Last year we continued that, even though we now live a lot further apart than we used to--us in northern Virginia, Nikki and Lee in South Carolina. We still have one entire state we have to drive through to get to each other, but it used to be Delaware; now it's North Carolina. The big problem arising from this is that Lee works retail, and therefore has to work the day after Thanksgiving every year. Spending Thanksgiving a seven-hour drive from home is therefore not really something he can do, so now it pretty much has to be us going to them.

Only this year, we have a twelve week old baby. Who does not like the car. (Whose dislike of the car was reaffirmed rather vocally when we drove a mile down the road last night to a high school football game.) So we just can't do it. It's a shame, but we'll be spending Thanksgiving at home this year.

Though the good thing about that is that now we don't need to worry about a turkey. So we'll be having grilled chicken for Thanksgiving dinner. And as the one who's done most of our cooking lately, I for one am excited.

I

Cynara

An anecdote, and a musing. Anecdote:

A few weeks ago AMC ran a marathon of Ronald Colman movies, and I taped a few. The first two were Raffles (1930) and Cynara (1932). The two are totally unrelated films--Raffles is (unsurprisingly) a retelling of the adventures of AJ Raffles, a popular character in British literature of the period (created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law, EW Hornung), a gentleman cricketer who leads a double life as London's most celebrated catburglar. Cynara is about a highly respected barrister embroiled in scandal when he conducts an affair with a shopgirl.

And yet, the two movies feature the same cast, in pretty much the same roles, at least in terms of social dynamic. Colman is the protagonist in both. Kay Francis is his fiancee in Raffles and his wife in Cynara. Wilson Benge plays his valet in both films. (And I find it fascinating that Warner Brothers assembled a British cast for the male parts but had no problem with the women being American and speaking with American accents. Vagaries of the studio system, I suppose.)

And the musing:

Spoilers for Cynara

What really struck me about Cynara is how the morality of the situation is presented. As I said, it's about a highly respected London barrister, deeply in love with his wife, who has an affair with a pretty shopgirl while his wife is away, eventually leading to scandal and public disgrace.

Now, the affair is certainly considered wrong, and utterly unacceptable. When it becomes public knowledge, Colman finds his career destroyed and has to relocate to South Africa. His wife separates from him--though she does not fall out of love with him or consider ending their marriage.

But it's not actually considered, from the audience's point of view, a stain on Colman's character in any way. He doesn't seek out a mistress--his friend drags him out to a restaurant against his protestations the night his wife leaves for Italy, and then it's his friend who insists they move to the table where the two pretty young women are sitting. When the girl Doris gives him her address, he even waits till she's out of sight, then rips it up, and only ever runs into her again through the connivance of his friend.

And his passion for Doris in no way dims his devotion to his wife. When, inevitably, Doris starts asking about her, he says, "You have to understand--she's part of me."

"But aren't I part of you too?"

"Well of course you are!"

He is, quite simply, in love with two women--but he is equally, and completely, in love with both.

Nor is Doris a character I'd particularly expect to find in fiction nowadays. She's a sweet, innocent girl, but she knows exactly what it means to have fallen in love with a married man. She has no illusions of what future she can expect--she's not waiting or even (so far as we ever know) hoping for him to leave his wife. She promises, right at the outset of their affair, to go away quietly whenever he needs to put her away. They both know exactly what sort of relationship they're entering into, and they enter into it like it's the most natural thing in the world.

It's a fascinating look at another time.

I

November rains

It's raining today. It's beautiful.

Once Paul goes down for his nap--assuming Abby lets me--I'm going to brew a pot of tea and sit out on the balcony and enjoy it. Because the rain, while beautiful, means only one thing--the beauty will be gone tomorrow. It's autumn in a nutshell, I suppose--a fleeting instant of breathless beauty, but an instant only because that beauty is itself a moment of death, of passing away. After the rains, tomorrow or the next day, all the leaves will have been washed away into a rotting carpet over the ground, and the trees will stand stark and bare, ready for the winter.

In a month or two, of course, we'll get our first snowfall, and that too brings with it surpassing beauty. Lisa and I have at times talked about returning to Florida, and what we miss of life there. Florida's a lovely place to live--Florida girls, in their Florida girl tank tops, are an aspect of the local climate I miss dearly--but honestly, in all the years I lived there, I don't recall ever once looking out my window and being brought up short by the beauty I could see, like I do two or three times a year in Northern Virginia.

I

Paul of Babel

It started with Big Ben.

When we got to London, Paul was immediately fascinated by Big Ben. That first day, as we walked round Westminster, Big Ben always had to remain in sight. (Bizarrely, he renamed it "Big Ben's Mum".) Two days later we went on the London Eye, and Paul spent the whole flight with his nose pressed against the glass, watching the clocktower across the river.

Then, when we returned home to Northern Virginia, we made two or three drives through DC into southern Maryland our first few weeks back, and all of a sudden, he was just as fascinated by the Washington Monument. The highlight of Abby's birth, for him, was when his grandpa took him up to the top of the Washington Monument the day before Lisa's induction. Still he asks, when we're driving around Woodbridge, in what direction the Washington Monument is.

Then the other day he was playing with the London playset my mother bought him at Hamleys, and he brought me Nelson's Column. "Dad," he said breathlessly, "is this . . . the Washington Monument?" (I'd like to point out that the Washington Monument is square and Nelson's Column is circular.)

"No, that's Nelson Column. Nelson's Column is in London."

"No, it is a Washington Monument! It's London's Washington Monument!"

He is, simply, fascinated by towers. Clearly, he's going to be an architect. A very wealthy and successful architect.

(Or else, I guess, a tour guide at a monument of some sort.)

I

In memoriam

Sabrina suggests a post about what TV shows I wish hadn't been cancelled. At the moment, of course, the big one on my mind is Dollhouse, whose cancellation Fox just announced last week. I suppose it's not surprising, though; the show only very barely got renewed, and it's been performing pretty dismally since then--albeit, unlike before its first season premiere, I don't think I've seen a single promo for the show on Fox.

It's a shame because I really do think it comes just as the show is hitting its stride. The first season finale, I think, represented a big step up in terms of the show's storytelling, and since then you've really been able to see the characters and the situation evolving. The chemistry between Topher and Adele is almost enough to turn me into a shipper. (Almost.)

But Dollhouse is far from the only show I think got taken before its time. It's not even the only Joss Whedon show I think got taken before its time--and I'm not particularly a fan of Joss Whedon.

Firefly. I'm going to say that I think Firefly was the greatest single-season sci fi show ever, though I'm open to suggestions of ones I might have forgot. I thought they did such an incredible job with world creation, from the Old West motif of the frontier worlds to the 20s-&-30s-British-Imperial-Shanghai aura of the crowded, more settled worlds. It had character; it had humour ("It's like something out of science fiction." "You live in a spaceship, dear."); it had a lost soul as a hero--always something that's going to draw me in. Rarely does a science fiction show--or any show, for that matter--do so well at hitting the ground running, finding its stride almost straight away without a settling in period.

Farscape. Easily my favourite show on the list--in fact, one of my top three or four TV shows ever. And unlike the others here, Farscape did get a decent run: four full seasons before the axe fell, its cancellation even giving rise to one of my second-ever favourite cliffhanger.

But oh how I miss it. A year after the original show's cancellation, Sci Fi's new management produced a four-hour miniseries to wrap up all the show's loose ends. Even despite the obvious attempt to compress a whole season's worth of storyline into two nights, I had such fun watching it, because it really was Farscape--it had all of Farscape's intelligence, its action, its humour; its refusal to conform to expectations; its continual ability to ensure that none of its characters are ever wholly what they seem, and that every time we think we've got one of them pinned down, they wriggle away from us and reveal some whole new facet of their nature.

But it was a fun mixed with a pretty hefty dollop of wistfulness, because I knew I'd never get to have that fun--at least, not for the first time--again.

Robin of Sherwood. I've talked about my love of ITV's 1980s Robin Hood retelling before, as recently as last week. I don't need to do much of that again here. It had an authenticity to it--a realism both in its look and feel, and in its storytelling and its characters--that no other Robin Hood I've ever seen has. And it was groundbreaking--know that Saracen character, such as Morgan Freeman's in Prince of Thieves, who's become ubiquitous in Robin Hood retellings? Every time you see one, he's a homage to Robin of Sherwood. Three series, totalling 26 episodes, are far, far too little.

Wonderfalls. Wonderfalls ran for about four episodes, and until recently I thought Lisa and I were pretty much the only people who had watched it. It's an urban fantasy following Jane Tyler, an Ivy League philosophy graduate who ends up in a dead-end customer service job. One day, inanimate animal figurines begin talking to her, telling her to do seemingly unreasonable things. Once she starts doing so, the unintended consequences from these actions always have a way of ensuring that people's seemingly insoluble problems get solved. I'm sort of torn on Wonderfalls--it was a great show and Lisa and I were both sad to see it go, but there were already indications that it might end up telling the same story every week.

Family Guy. I'm just going to come out and say it. Family Guy hasn't been funny since it came back. Before its cancellation, it was hilarious. Since then? Well, it started off with a really funny line in the teaser to its first new episode, where Peter listed off the name of every show Fox had premiered and then cancelled since its cancellation (including Firefly and Wonderfalls), but after that, quite simply, I haven't laughed. Maybe it's that my tastes changed, but I don't think so. I think Stewie being a mad genius bent on his mother's murder was funny. I think Stewie being a closet homosexual is not funny. I think the paedophile character is not funny. I think the constant bits about how everyone finds Meg repellent to be, well, repellent. I wish it hadn't been cancelled; but I think beyond that, I wish that once it was cancelled, it had stayed that way.

And that's it. That's my list. If there's a theme to it, I guess it's Don't get attached to good shows on Fox.

So have I missed any? What shows do you most regret getting cut down before their time?

I

Yet another reason why small children and paste don't go together

Paul has an eye infection.

It's really mild. There's no itching, just watering and redness and a snot-like residue. We called Kaiser, and the nurse said she'd phone in a prescription for eyedrops.

Except when we got to the pharmacy, it turned out not to be eyedrops. It turned out to be eye paste.

Let me say that again. EYE PASTE.

Have you ever tried squirting paste from a tube along the inside of a three-year-old's lower eyelid?

It is easily the worst experience I've ever had as a parent. Every dose (and there are three a day) ends with him screaming and screaming, his wrists no doubt in pain from me having to pin them down, and wild thrashing of his head from side to side. He won't let me calm him. It's awful.

Lisa has something of an easier time, when she's home to do it. (Thank God for the weekend.) She's always been able to get him calmer than I have.

Tomorrow is our last day. As of this writing, we have five doses left to apply--three by me. And I'm dreading them.

I

The writing groove

I want to hear how you do manage to write while taking care of two littles! Does it involve lots of plan and structure, or a willingness to improvise? (I mostly manage at naps and after bedtime, but I always like other ideas.)

That was from Melissa, in response to my solicitation for post ideas for NaBloPoMo.

It's an especially apropos question right now, because November marks Lisa's return to work after her maternity leave, so we're establishing a regular routine for me to be at home alone with both children. And a critical part of that has been coming up with some way to give me time to write for the first time since Abigail's birth.

So Lisa and I sat down last week and came up with a schedule. What we ended up with was fifteen hours a week, spread from Friday to Monday. It's not perfect, and it's not really quite enough--but it's a big step up from when my only writing time was Paul's two-hour nap on a weekday afternoon. Not only does it give me (a bit) more time than I was getting then, but it also concentrates that time into much larger blocks, making it possible to pick up some momentum.

That time, I should note, is just for what I'd call proper writing--writing for professional publication. No blogging gets done during that time. Blogging gets fitted in during the day (preferably the morning). Usually it's when Abigail's napping and Paul is playing in his room or watching Dora the Explorer. It's not that I have a particularly easy time writing posts while I have to keep at least half an eye on a small child, it's that the blogging just can't be so important as to take away from the proper writing.

Though I do wonder if that's the reason why I still feel like I have to grind out these blog posts. NaBloPoMo, forcing daily writing, was supposed to get me back into the groove. To get the creative juices flowing again. That hasn't happened yet. These posts are still a chore. I wonder if shifting them to the actual dedicated writing time, when Lisa has the kids and I'm off somewhere quiet and undisturbed, would make writing them easier and more beneficial.

Mommy Melee also makes a great point this morning about our imaginations needing some decent input before it can give us a quality output. For far too long Odalisque has sat there on this blog's sidebar at the left of your screen under "What I'm reading"--far too long, considering I haven't even picked the book up since, I think, Abby's birth.

It's time to start greasing the wheels with some good input again. I'm working on the thriller at the moment, I tend to read thrillers. I'm still only halfway through the collection of the complete Ian Fleming short stories that was released to coincide with Quantum of Solace. Then I have an Alan Furst waiting to be read. Movies, too--seeing The Third Man for the first time gave me a pretty intense rush of I want to write something just like that, though I failed to capitalise on it.

And I guess that means now, I also have to carve out some reading time.

I'm very interested in how everyone else fits their writing in around their kids and their jobs. How do you guys find time to write?

I