FROGLEGS

… but I feel physically unable to let this one slide.

I have a lot of friends who are Brits. And Brits are pretty proud about the fact (in their perception) that they have the best music in all of Europe, probably the world. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, loads of bands (the list could be very long) that have left a mark on the popular music stage have come from the Isles…

But this just in: A single made by a small blue frog with homosapien male genitalia and overlaid on the “Beverly Hills Cop” theme tune has just made number 1 on the UK charts! I am speechless. I rushed to see who the little blue dude beat out… maybe it was a mistake, a misprint. Maybe the Spice Girls had reemerged from their sinister hibernation and upset the scales… Maybe there was just nothing good out on the singles market this week. But no! This past week, the single dubbed “Axel F” made by “Crazy Frog” outsold COLDPLAY four to one!

And this in the same week that Virgin Radio listeners voted “Wonderwall” by Oasis to be the #1 UK Single of all time… Dear dear. Isn’t that the song with just 4 chords in it that everyone with at least 6 fingers (between both hands) can play?

You Brits haven’t got a leg to stand on, I’m afraid! You may have some decent music, but your tuneful taste is in the gutter! Your countrymen have voted with their wallet and made a RINGTONE your number one song of the week. Chilling.

;-P (tongue in cheek)

As I mentioned in my last post, Jim broke his wrist the day before yesterday and had to have corrective surgery last night. He’s home now and on the mend…

Yes!!! I’ve been a Liverpool FC fan ever since a friend from St. Helens introduced me to English Premiership football back in 1995. He taught me to love the Reds no matter what, never cheer for Man U (no matter what) and always have a great time watching football.

Last night was purely magical. Jim has been in the hospital with a broken wrist (he’s fine, been operated on and should be discharged this morning), so all our grand plans to go down to the irish pub in the centre of town had been completely mucked up. But nevermind… While Jim was in surgery , I nipped across the street to a dingey little bar with what can only be called a glorified mini-TV that was barely colour. At any rate, I could see well enough to watch Milan go up 3-0 at half time. Crap!

But the second half brought great things from Rafa Benitez’s boys. I saw all three second half goals go in, but then had to leave to try and get in to see Jim when he came out of surgery. Extra-time was excruciatingly suspenseful as I tried to check the score on stupid WAP on my mobile phone which was only updated 10 minutes after the fact. But I called good buddy James Bullock who was in a pub in Liverpool just as Jerzy Dudek stopped Andriy Shevchenko’s sudden death penalty and heard the ensuing pandemonium… I knew we were champions of Europe.

There are a lot of good lessons in all this:

1. Good on you Stevie Gerrard for sticking with the club when others (wink wink Michael Owen) went elsewhere because they “needed to win some titles”… Hey Michael, how many trophies did you win this year with Real Madrid? Bet you’re slapping your forehead and exclaiming “D’oh” a la Homer Simpson. Betcha would’ve liked to help the Red’s to their 5th European Championship!

2. The best banner in Istanbul:

No small toffees for feast tonight

Kopites party with Turkish delight

Jose, Sir Alex… London press

All choking on sweet success

Money, not love, is your drive

But tell us… Can you count to five?

Man U’s inevitably going to be bought out by an American mogul who knows jack all about football and Chelsea’s bought the Premiership with Russian mafia money. In a day when football is becoming big business, its refreshing to see a team beat all others in Europe that really had no proven megastars (sorry folks, until last night Gerrard was no megastar) and who most people (including myself) had written off for this season because their squad didn’t have enough quality. Precisely because of that, people are already deriding Liverpool’s European triumph because “really they aren’t that good… they’ve just gotten lucky.” All I can say to Jose, Arsene, the English press and Sir Alex is: Can you count to five?

3. Where there is belief, there is a way.

I have to admit that at halftime I had pretty much given up hope. Milan ran right over us and I just couldn’t see us bouncing back. How many times this year had we scored 3 goals in a game??? Good grief, when a winger (Luis Garcia) is your top goalscorer there is something wrong upfront (bye bye Milan Baros, you need to go somewhere where you’ll be motivated every week, not just when you feel like it). But then I remembered that AC had gone up 3-0 at the weekend in the Serie A and had ended up drawing to Palermo (who?) and thus giving up the league title. Surely we were better than Palermo… Surely there was a way… And there was! When that third goal went in, I scared the living daylights out of everyone in the bar as I jumped up, nearly knocked the table over and whooped with joy. Yes!!!

“You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.”

Anyone feel the pinch?

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

I would LOVE to hear what you all have to respond to that question!!!

Might as well kick this little series of with the best that I have to offer (outside of Heather obviously). Jim is an Englishman who came to Sevilla about 3 summers ago (is it really 3? Seems like 1!!!) to lead a 24-7prayer short term mission team. While he was here, he felt like Sevilla might be a place where he could hang around for a while… so he did! He came back the next winter and started learning Spanish.

Since then, he’s grown to be part of our family and I honestly have trouble conceiving of life here without Jim in it. He’s probably the best mate a guy could ask for. He like exercise, computers, football, movies, music, cooks well and is pretty easy going. Ladies, he’s single. Leave requests for his number in the comments! Any ladies feeling like they want to move to Seville will get preference. he he he…

He cooked an absolutely fantastic indian curry extravaganza for my birthday for which I’ll be forever grateful. It took him the better part of three days to cook 5 dishes plus poppodums. One of the things I like most about Jim is that he doesn’t do anything half-way. He has to really throw himself into it or just not do it at all. Three days to cook a meal! Wow!

He’s recently taken a TOEFL course and started teaching english as a second language at a local academy. Before that he worked at a local bar in which he was the only heterosexual male in the place. He had some stories to tell (no offense)!