Tuesday 22 December 2009

Monday 21st December 2009 - Sporting Puns

          It's the first day of winter, the solstice, the shortest day.  It got here just in time, in the aftermath of the big storm: quite a trailer.
          I have to plan tomorrow's trip over the mountains to West Virginia and on to Kentucky.  Although the meteorologists here are quite reliable, there are so many storm systems coming from so many places, and, of course, the Appalachians will have a big effect.  I can just about make it to Charleston (about 435 miles, according to Dulcie,  who counts the actual road miles), and I've been there before, so I know which motel, and where it is.  But I'm worried I might get caught in the mountains by the weather, so I have to swot up on Cumberland, which is about half way, in the Maryland panhandle, the long narrow bit that stretches out west.
 
          Someone left the New York Daily News in the naked ladies bar.  They have a quite splendid sporting pun headline.  The NY Jets (football) did a bad job last night, and look doubtful for the "playoffs", the most important part of the season.  Technically, it's not actually over, yet: they could still make it.  There coach is a very fat man, and he says they can't do it, so the headline was "The Fat Man Sings".  It is the assumption that the readers will catch the cultural allusions that make it so interesting.
          It reminds me of the Eric Cantona pun.  Cantona is French, and used to play for Leeds United.  When he did something clever, the Leeds fans would chant "oo, ah, Cantona".  The week after he went to Manchester United, Leeds had to play Chelsea.  When the teams came out, the Chelsea supporters chanted "oo eh Cantona", which is French, and almost a pun, and just as clever.
 
           This eulogy for redneck sports fans was brought on by the presence, later that night, of two young men who claimed to be Harvard and MIT.  They were amusing themselves (and, let's be clear about this, nobody else) by taunting one of the sports fans.  Him being grown-up, and them being callow, he was mostly right.  His points were too complex for them, so they could only understand him in the context of stereotype-satire.  He was very generous.  I decided, charitably, that they couldn't possibly be MIT and Harvard, not unless those august institutions have stopped checking candidates manners before they let them in.     

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