Inspirational Lubricant Du Jour: Sunday, Bloody Mary Sunday

In case you don’t want to take Jean Louise’s word for it, go ahead and listen to this careful and nuanced description of the current weather situation in NYC:

Talk about deft use of figurative language. You’ve got hyperbole (“91,000 damn degrees”) and metaphor (“Please bring the devil from hell and have him sit his ass-crack on Earth”), not to mention effective use of repetition (“Shit! Shit. Shit.). If I owned an HVAC company, I would already have calls in to my factories informing them to change the lowest setting from “Cold” to “Power Ranger.” Hell of an opportunity there, people.

Compounding the uncomfortable weather situation for me personally is this fact: life can be tough when you’re not working as much as I’m not working. One has to find ways to fill whole days and nights worth of empty, free time. There are only so many shows on Netflix, you know? Recently, I’ve been noticing a trend in the activities I’ve been using to pass the endless, pesky, interminable swathes of free time I have. I thought I’d share that trend because sharing things other probably don’t care about is what keeps the internet alive. Also, I’m apparently in the habit of late of organizing my posts around bullet points or lists of things, so let’s keep that going just for the hell of it.

Put simply, I’ve been getting a lot of mileage of late out of stuff that is reeeeeeally British. I’m an admitted Anglophile, but my summer this far has been Brit-heavy even by my own standard. So, if you’re looking to get a little more of the old country in your life, check this stuff out. Here’s what I’ve been digging on, chaps:

Reading Wolf Hall: A historical fiction novel about Henry VIII and his fucked up approach to being a King. We’re in the 1530s and King Henry could give a shit about what the Church says about marriage, preferring his own views on sex, death, betrayal and probably ponies. In other words, it’s like Game of Thrones but with real people. Add in that it’s extremely well-written and you’ve got a winner. That’s right kids, English royalty is just as fucked up as you thought it was and it’s been that way for thousands of years. Bully!

“Tudor? I barely even know ‘er!”

You might wanna just stay in there, kid, where it’s all warm and not inbred.

Reading Shakespeare: The weekly homer pick. But I was inspired by my man Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing that was super modern and super great!. See it immediately. My Shakespeare-hating friends be damned. Dude was as good at writing about people and relationships as anyone ever and that shit holds up.

Watching The Open Championship: Here’s the Tom Mooney pick. I don’t always watch golf, but when I do I watch The Open Championship (formerly called “The British Open.”) It’s different than most other golf tournaments because the mantra behind it is basically “You think you’re a good golfer? Fuck you. Try this shit on for size.” The course is always absolutely punishing and you can almost picture a cohort of whisky-soaked Scotsmen sitting in a stone dungeon, cheersing every time someone hits a shot into the 12-ft tall rough. The people who run it actively want you to fail, so it’s just like most approaches to public education. Sadface. Besides: mostly middle-aged dudes aiming for highly unlikely athletic achievement! And everybody’s got an accent! Best possible golf-watching scenario.

Watching BBC’s Sherlock: Eureka! Benedict Cumberbatch, in addition to having the most British name ever, is delightfully weird and strange both in the way he looks and the way he portrays the eponymous Mr. Holmes. The show, which features Martin Freeman as Watson, is setup in mini-series form and is extremely entertaining.

“HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLMES!”

That’s it for now, chaps. Until next week, I’m going to go ponder whether the “Chap” or the “Lad” is the better British equivalent of the Bro. After all, I need to be prepared to run Brocast UK once the Brocast Empire goes International. I need to do some research into the matter, but here are a couple of images to ponder in the event that any of my fellow Brocasters want to weigh in:

The “Chap”, to whose way of life an entire UK publication has been dedicated for many years.

British “lads.” Much to my chagrin, I think we have a winner.