TV and Radio

There is a war waging on late night television here. It is an ice cream war. Stephen Colbert started by getting the chance to design his own Ben and Jerry's flavor. We gave it a go the other week as it was $1 off in the local supermarket (still $4, but hey you've got to treat yourself now and again). It was decent and I think I favored the caramel swirl a bit more than the waffle pieces; it is though, long gone. We're yet to try the flavor by Jimmy Fallon (his late-night TV competition-cum-ice cream nemesis), but our alliance lies more naturally with Colbert, mainly because he is on an hour earlier at 11.30pm and we (well, normally, I, since K has usually passed out by then) usually catch his half hour of amusing satire. Staying up until 1.30am to watch Fallon does seem a bit much, even if you don't have a job to go to the next day.

Last weekend was the season premier of Celebrity Apprentice. As you may well know, the "boss" of this nonsense is Donald Trump (no relation to former Somerset off spinner Harvey). Obviously Alan Sugar is bad enough, but I feel like the BBC and the "celebrities" involved have the decency to sod off after one program. Not so here, 18 contestants are set to battle it out for, what I'm sure, will feel like forever. On the two hour premier they were to design sandwiches and sell them for a lot of money. The men didn't do all that well, but one of them (that hosts a program about motorbikes) had a friend that donated $300,000, so they won pretty easily. Simple as that. In the boardroom, when Casandra from Wayne's World treated the competition with the contempt that it deserved, saying she wasn't too bothered if she was brought back into the boardroom, the music changed and the sense of trying to turn something very innocuous into major drama was trying very hard to be played out. Trump of Orange gave her a stern talking to and she tried her best to look like she took him seriously. I'm not too keen to see how the guy that was second on Pop Idol a few years ago and the old Incredible Hulk fare in the next weeks, so that's it for me. Sorry the Trump family.

Finally, I've been a bit slow to try our local radio here in Columbus. The alternative station is called CD101 and can be found on 102.5 FM--confusing eh? I found out that they have a show called Independent Playground on Sunday and Thursday nights where only bands from independent labels get played. I gave it a go and there were some good choices; sadly, though, I couldn't tell you who these people were as there was no DJ telling the listeners what he or she had just played. I did later find out that they list each track online as it is played, but I kind of find it hard to believe that everyone in central Ohio was listening online and I was the only one listening on an actual radio. Could be wrong, though.

Mardi Gras and Theatre

So, we had a pretty fun weekend here in Columbus. Friday was my first opportunity to experience some sort of Mardi Gras celebration. Three or four New Orleans expats hosted the party and even threw in some pretty tasty fare: grits, gumbo, greens, and grillades. Those that new the score knew to wear beads and a mask. We were kind of in the know, but didn't really have any sufficiently tacky looking beads. Instead we made masks from an old cereal box. I was fairly happy with mine, though the fumes from the purple dry-erase marker pen may have had some sort of unwelcome effect on K's head.

Saturday brought us our first trip to the Garden Theatre in the Short North area of town. The building had opened back in 1920 and since then has served many purposes, including a movie theatre, a strip tease house, a home for prostitutes and a local church. We were here to see a performance of the "The Marvelous Wonderettes". As the main auditorium is still undergoing renovations and the temperature inside was pretty similar to the temperature outside, the smaller "Green Room" was used for the show. The first half of the show was centered around four girls and their 1958 high school prom where in between a bit of a story there was a whole lot of singing! It was a fun time, and after the intermission we were moved forward ten years to their 10 year high school reunion. There was a bit of audience interaction, but we thankfully managed to avoid getting up on stage for an awkward dance....

We rounded off the weekend by getting to Michael's Goody Boy Diner, which if you're going to eat somewhere on the strength of a sign alone, surely this place is a strong candidate. I had a pretty hefty Greek omelette and wasn't in too much need of much else to eat. Kristen thought the speed of service wasn't very diner-esque, but they were good enough to extend their brunch time past 2pm for us; might go somewhere else for our belated Valentines day meal, though.

Zambia, Champions of Africa

This has nothing to with America or me really, but it does have a whole lot to do with the underdog winning out.

Ivory Coast were very much favorites to win the Africa Cup of Nations before the tournament started and in all likelihood they were going to have to beat Ghana to win the title. Ghana only made it to the semi's where they were knocked out by Zambia. Zambia may have struggled to get out of a group containing Senegal and the co-hosts Equatorial Guinea, but get out they did and two weeks later they've won the whole thing...

Feel free to skip through the penalty shoot-out above. My personal favorite moments are the following:

00:30 - The Ivorian keeper lay out some sort of towel behind the goal line, and then nearly tripping over his own feet in an effort to save the first pen.

2:15 - One of many moments of audible singing from the players.

3:11 - The Zambia keeper's save being disallowed for him moving off the line. This not happening again.

8:15 - The Zambia keeper taking their fifth pen and calmly slotting it into the corner like it's no big thing.

10:25 - One of the best pens ever, top left, keeper no hope.

11:45 - Didier Drogba engages in a bit of sportsmanship before Zambia's seventh, no worries, slots into the corner, 7-7.

13:40 - £120,000 a week Kolo Toure having his pen saved.

14:45 - More singing.

16:00 - The hugely foreheaded, £90,000 a week Gervinho firing wide.

17:02 - Frenzied prayer.

17:15 - TP Mazembe's Stophira Sunzu, possibly on as much as £3,500 a week (a lot for a team from the Congo) scores the winner.

Herve Renard the French coach of the Zambian team spent a couple of months managing Cambridge United in their last season in the football league in 04-05. This is his first title. Good on him and his lucky white shirt he wore for every game of the competition.

The Super Bowl and Ace of Cups

Last night was my first Super Bowl in America experience. It was a good one. I chose to start watching the broadcast just an hour before the game itself actually started, knowing full well that there was probably a good 3 1/2 to 4 hours of entertainment to come.

Kristen was more excited about the first of the commercials to be broadcast. This didn't take long and in amongst a few for movies that are coming out in the next 3 or 4 months there were a good couple for Doritos (our fave above). This particular commercial struck a chord as we've recently been having a similarly massive dog roaming our street. In the last few days it has worked out how to get over the gate that is supposed to keep it locked away. Its owners don't seem too bothered and the neighborhood cats are being kept on their toes.

By the time half time came around, we sorted ourself some beers and hot wings. We didn't quite comply with the many commercials, in that our wings were vegetarian and the beer wasn't Bud Light; we were happy with our selection though. The half time show was impressive more for all the putting up and taking down of the stage than for Madonna's gyrations and MIA's finger to the millions.

After one pretty amazing catch for the Giants, they got down the field and scored giving the Patriots just under a minute to work their way all back down the other end. With the last play of the game Tom Brady put up the hail mary pass, but it couldn't be completed and the Giants went away as "World Champions". (I know that there aren't many other nations that play the sport, but it still grates just a little bit, doesn't it?)

We started our weekend with a double header at our favorite local venue Ace of Cups. The highlight of Friday's big bill of bands and DJ's was Cleveland's Bill Fox. I can't think of a good way to describe his folky gruff, so you can listen to him here instead and read an article about his reclusive ways in a McSweeney's piece about him here. On Saturday night we were dancing to some mostly 60's tuneage at "Heatwave" an all vinyl night the cool kid from school DJ's at. We've been a few times before, but they were queuing around the block to get in when we left, having still not been able to dance to Donovan's "Mellow Yellow."

Communion and Pizza

Take a look at the image above. What do you think it is? That's right, it's a handy, all-in-one, germ-free communion solution. If you look closely you can see the wafer in the top of the film, and more clearly below, the blood, so to speak. After a bit of church-hopping before Christmas, we tried a branch of Vineyard Columbus that is within walking distance. The first week we didn't know about the communion trick, on Sunday we were smarter and picked up some as we went into the hall. I actually took an extra (above), but don't worry: I'll use it next week. Can't be having a reputation for stealing from the church.

Today the temperature has been somewhere around 42 deg F. Last week it was around 15, which in europe is about -9 C. Seems that it can't make its mind up; we had snow and ice last week and torrential downpours today. We wrapped up and got out a bit last week, which was good. On Friday we went to see a play at the University Arts center ("The Wex"). It was an Argentinean play and as a result, had English subtitles on boards either side of the revolving stage.

Almudena Crespo

The play followed the lives of four different people over the course of ten years. As the stage revolved, each quadrant played out one person's life. There were only four actors, so when they weren't playing themselves they had jumped into another quadrant to play another character in someone else's life. If they weren't doing that they were narrating! It was pretty impressive stuff, but between reading the subtitles, concentrating on which story line was which and trying my best not to be embarrassed by all the making-out (they were 4 passionate characters), it was kind of a tiring experience.

The day previous we stopped by the Gateway film Center to see something called "The other F word".

It was pretty much about old Southern Californian punk rocker type chaps that become fathers. It was decent and pretty moving in places and gave me some new found respect for Flea from Red Hot Chilli Peppers and the lead singer from Pennywise. We decided to walk home afterwards and reward ourselves with a slice of pizza from Mikey's Late Night Slice. I went for the pizza of the week and very much enjoyed the dijon ham and cheddar topping.

This and That

View from Brooklyn bound Q train of Brooklyn Bridge and lower Manhattan.

This update has been a while coming. No good reason really: trying to find a job, K actually using the computer for her studies. Since the last update we have survived Christmas celebrations in the Christmas city, a few days in New York, and looked after two dogs.

During our time in Bethlehem we were lucky enough to be in the middle of the Christmas cookie bonanza that is undertaken every year, though maybe for the last time this year. Check above to see about half of the plates that were delivered to friends and family. Each plate is made up of 12 different varieties baked by K's mom over a period of a lot of days. Of course we helped out by eating the leftovers, but were later informed there are still more to eat...

Regular readers will be well aware of challenges with finding good cheese here in the US. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas though without a few different bits and pieces to pick through. Fortunately Wegmans in Bethlehem did a pretty good job of providing some Welsh Cheddar, Stilton, White Stilton with Cranberries and some sort of creamy Brie for around about $25. A good chuck of this was washed down with a slightly smoked local Porter.

Since our last visit to New York, another section of the High Line had been opened. It was good to get a sense of some different bits of the city from a few floors up. Pictured above is a view uptown featuring part of an installation based on dazzle camouflage used in World War One.

New Year's Eve was spent at Maxwell's in Hoboken in the company of Ted Leo, Sharon Van Etten, a comedian named Kurt, and a bunch of good friends. It was a fun night and the New Jersey natives went suitably crazy when Ted encored with a couple of Misfits covers. Our walk to and from the venue was spent playing New Year's Eve bingo, wherein points were collected if you spotted sequined NYE dresses, girls walking barefoot while carrying their high heeled shoes, trampled streamers, 2012 glasses, and dropped pizza. Sadly, the "girl crying walking barefoot having lost her friends earlier in the night" box wasn't ticked, missing out on a good 50 points.

Also, weird: it's called Budvar everywhere else in the world, but in America and Canada you are to refer to it as Czechvar. Even though the Budvar name was around five years before Budweiser started knocking out their American lager, this is the way things stand.

For Joff: pictures of the dogs we hung out with for a weekend while their owners were out of town. (Luna on the left, Sylvia on the right.) 12 bags of poo later, we're still not sure we're ready to be dog owners, but they're very lovely.

And finally, winter has arrived in Columbus, and what better day for an appointment at a temping agency in a hard to get to bit of town? Turns out that the usually (I'm assured) reliable(ish) number 5 bus service didn't arrive at 1.13 PM today and after waiting 30 minutes in the snowy windy mess, I had missed my appointment. Thanks, Columbus, and your shitty public transport system

Christmas Sports

Jerome Simpson plays for the Cincinnati Bengals. His method of getting into the end zone to score a touchdown against the Arizona Cardinals, was pretty unusual, but definitely worth a look above.

No Boxing day football for me this year. What we did get though was a three NBA games in a row and a big local derby in the NFL between Green Bay and Chicago Bears... on Christmas Day. Have to say I was pretty surprised that there was so much going on on Christmas Day. I kind of gave some of the basketball a go, but to be honest, I'm not really having it. You can't really deny the fact that someone leaping from 6 yards out to dunk a ball as hard as they can through a basket is pretty fun, but just strolling around taking it in turns to score doesn't really have me on the edge of my seat.

Green Bay, with a metro population of around 300,000 are pretty much the best team around at the moment. I love the fact that with the smallest metro population in the NFL they are more than likely to win back to back Superbowl's and that their local rival (Chicago) has a population of just under 10 million. Green Bay beat Chicago 35-21. Chicago did though, with two of their quarterbacks injured had a chap that a few weeks ago was coaching high school football and hadn't played NFL football for 4 years. He did a pretty good job considering, and may have earned a contract for next year. Good one Josh McCown.