A Quick One on the No Kings Protests

I went to the protests against Trump's military parade and general agenda this afternoon, because I thought it was important to be part of it, rather than sniping from social media and whatever. I also just wanted to see what it would be like: we've had some protests in Palo Alto and Mountain View and Los Altos in the last couple of years, but never anything too big.

Honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect, but this was by far the biggest protest I've seen in the Peninsula, even if it was pretty small compared to the march against the Iraq War I attended in London back in 2003. It certainly beat the protest I joined briefly in 2017 in response to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, as well as the various protests calling for an end to the war in Gaza more recently. The one protest I've seen lately that was comparable - but still nowhere near as big - was the one at all the Tesla showrooms a couple of months ago, which protested Elon Musk's DOGE activities.

For this one, I went with my dad to stand along a stretch of El Camino in Mountain View, and we were among the hundreds of folks holding flags and signs and eliciting honks of approval (usually) from people driving past. It was all pretty calm, with just about everyone who joined in being pretty chill and good-humored about it. Most of the drivers along El Camino, as I mentioned, were supportive, but one guy did shout something incomprehensible as he drove past, and another guy rode by on his bike in a MAGA hat. But the only organized counter-protest was a couple (literally two) anti-abortion rights protesters across the street from the main group.

This was good, because I was a little worried about agents provocateurs causing fights or looting, or about crazy assholes driving their cars into the crowds. I was also a little apprehensive about my dad and his partner walking around and potentially getting targeted by Nazi thugs, but it looks, as I say, like everyone was pretty chill.

I'll also admit, it was kind of moving to join in with the crowd and see people standing up for constitutionality and rule of law: a friend of mine suggested that the folks protesting down here tend to be self-ingratiating and disingenuous, which is hard to argue with, given how many older white folks there were. But he also appreciated that they were actually out there, whether or not they're in it for the long haul. And notably, while the crowd where I was skewed heavily older and whiter, there was definitely a range of ethnicities and age groups represented.

That was more true as I left the protest and drove into Palo Alto, to see what things were like there. The protesters were still out along El Camino until Los Altos, and then petered out until I got to the Stanford Campus, where the protest had taken route on all four corners of the intersection there. That crowd also seemed to venture further into the heart of Palo Alto, down Embarcadero, which was even more impressive: Palo Alto doesn't really seem like it'd be into the protests, but folks came out.

In terms of what's next, who knows? Things will happen regardless of what a bunch of people in the Peninsula do, but as I say, it's nice that they came out for this. At the very least, it'll give our elected representatives, both in Sacramento and in Washington, an idea that people want them do something about this mess of an administration. Though with the handcuffing of elected officials like Senator Alex Padilla, I think they've gotten the message on their own.

Europe's Top 4 Leagues and PSG

Much as it pains me to say it, congratulations to Paris St Germain for becoming the first French team to win the Champions League since Marseille in 1993. I don't know if they were particularly on form tonight, if Inter were particularly off, or whatever, but 5-0 is a pretty emphatic victory. Especially when you consider that PSG got here by beating a bunch of English teams, while Inter got here by beating this season's German and Spanish champions. One would have expected more of a fight from Inter, but clearly their age told, especially when up against epochal talents like Kvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desiré Doué, plus all the other great players PSG have built into this team.

It's easy to be dismissive, but maybe a little unfair. Yes, the French league is ridiculously uncompetitive: PSG have won the last four titles, plus eight of the last 10, and they didn't lose a game this season until they'd guaranteed the title. This is after the period a few years ago when Olympique Lyonnais won seven titles in a row.

It's also easy to be dismissive of a team that's so transparently become a petrostate's sports washing project, and that spent the last decade pursuing the Galactico model. They paid a record fee for Neymar Jr, brought Lionel Messi in from Barcelona, and snapped up Kylian Mbappé in time to see him blossom into one of Europe's finest players and see his transfer fee and influence shoot up. As a result, it was easy to enjoy the sight of them dominating the French league but always falling short in the Champions League, sometimes embarrassingly so.

But credit where credit is due: the management at PSG have abandoned the Galactico thing, allowing those three huge-name players to leave (some with better reputations than others, it must be said), and then giving coach Luis Enrique the latitude to actually build a team. I haven't watched much of PSG this season, but when I have, Kvaratskhelia has been particularly eye-catching for his runs up the flank, and I think he has a genuine claim to being Europe's most exciting young player. Kylian who?

I don't know if I've changed my stance about France's position at the top of the UEFA coefficients. I continue to maintain that there's a Top 4 leagues (England, Spain, Italy and Germany), which are typically closer to one another than they are to the chasing pack - though currently England is so far ahead that I might need to revise this statement. France has the fifth-highest coefficient, but it's farther from Germany, in fourth, than it is from the Netherlands in sixth, or than Germany is from Italy in second place.

French teams haven't really performed very well in Europe, historically, as evidenced by the fact that today's result is only the second time a French team has won the highest European trophy. No French team has ever won the Europa League (or its predecessor, the UEFA Cup), and PSG is the only French club ever to win the now-defunct Cup-Winners' Cup.

PSG is helped along by its owners' financial clout, much as Manchester City has benefited in the Premier League - although curiously, they also found it difficult to win the Champions League until fairly recently, when they, too, beat Inter in the final. This is why I say, there's no Top 5: it's just a Top 4 plus PSG.

Would it be good if French teams won more stuff? I suppose, if it meant more than just PSG winning European trophies, or at least getting to semifinals of major European competitions. But I wouldn't like to see a situation where England, Spain, Italy, Germany and now France are all getting oversized Champions League presences. 

Under the previous rules, before the Champions League switched to the league format in the fall, the top 4 countries got four spots each, guaranteed, which accounted for fully half of the teams participating in the competition at that level. Accordingly, the group phase typically featured teams from more countries but then the knockout phase would only ever feature teams from the Top 4 and PSG. Maybe a Dutch or Portuguese team would slip in there, usually because an Italian team would slip up somewhere, but certainly no Eastern European teams.

I don't see this state of affairs changing anytime soon. The other traditional French powers just can't seem to compete with PSG's money, and they can't seem to get their acts together in Europe. But although today's result isn't exactly a win for teams from countries outside the Top 4, it does at least mark the first Champions League win from a team that isn't English, Spanish, Italian or German since 2004.

Although now that PSG has its trophy, I wouldn't mind seeing an Italian team win it again, for once...

The Europa League Penalty

Like most fans of the Premier League, I watched dumbfounded this season as Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur flailed through two achievements that don't normally go together. The first and more prestigious is reaching the Europa League final, but the second was doing that while being the two worst teams in the English top flight that didn't get relegated.

Watching them play against one another on Wednesday, 21 May, made me think again about the long-held tradition that playing Europa League matches on Thursdays drags a team's league performance down. It's usually blamed on the shorter rest time compared to teams in the Champions League (which is on Tuesdays and Wednesdays), or on the fact that the travels to away matches are longer - there are more Eastern European teams in the Europa League, so you might find yourself drawn against a side from Kazakhstan and effectively be playing in Asia.

Another possibility was that because the teams that usually play in the Europa League aren't as rich as the Champions League teams, they might have less chance to rotate out players who are as good as their normal starters. It's also fairly common for some clubs de-prioritize the Europa League or domestic cups by fielding academy teams (Arsenal used to do this quite a bit with the EFL Cup, if I recall).

In any case, as I always do when I have a question like this, I built a spreadsheet to see what the numbers suggested. I took the English Premier League teams that have participated in the Europa League in the past 10 seasons and calculated their average points per game in the Premier League for each of those seasons. I then compared their averages in seasons when they were in the Europa League with seasons when they weren't. I also included participation in the more recent Europa Conference league, because those games are also played on Thursdays. Once I had the average points per season and points per game in UEL (UEFA Europa League) and non-UEL seasons, I calculated the averages across all the teams.

There are 13 teams in total, but not all of them have point totals/averages for every season, because some were relegated from the Premier League during that 10-year period. Frankly, those relegation seasons tended to come with such low point-totals that they may have skewed the numbers a bit. At the other end of the scale, a number of teams (Leicester City, Chelsea and Liverpool) have won the Premier League at least once in the same period, which presumably also skews the numbers.

In the end, I can report that there doesn't appear to be a UEL penalty, at least in the years I'm looking at. Average points per game across all 13 teams was 1.5, regardless of whether they competed in the Europa League or not. If you add one decimal place, UEL seasons on average had 1.53 points per game, while non-UEL seasons had 1.48. With regard to total points per season, the 13 teams accrued an average of 58.1 points per season that they played the Thursday games, against 56.3 points for the seasons where they didn't.

That's right: playing in the Europa League was associated with better league form.

I don't need to tell you that correlation doesn't equal causation, so I'm not saying that playing in the Europa League made the teams have better seasons. But I also don't observe clear drop-offs in points during the seasons where the teams did participate.

To take one example, Burnley's single Europa League season (2018-19) saw them reach 40 points, or 1.1 points per game. In the season right before and the season right after, they earned 54 total (1.4 per game), but two seasons before playing in Europe, Burnley had also racked up just 40 points during the season. Two seasons after playing in Europe they picked up just 39 in total (a little over 1.0 per game), and then the season after that were relegated after getting 35 points, or 0.9 per game.

Wolves make for another interesting example. Like Burnley, they played in the Europa League just once during this period (2019-20), but that season they ended up earning their highest points tally since getting promoted back to the Premier League, with 59 (1.6 per game). The season before, which was their first in the top flight, they earned 57 points, or 1.5 per game, and the season after they got just 45 points, or 1.2 points per game. In every subsequent season Wolves have earned between 1.3 and 1.1 points per game, and have not played in Europe.

The bigger teams fared a little worse. In seasons where they didn't play the Thursday games, the representatives of the so-called Big Six accrued an average of 1.9 points per game, compared with 1.8 points per game where they did play in the Europa League. Also FYI, the teams included in those numbers are Manchester United, Spurs, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea; Manchester City was the only Big Six team not to play in the Europa League during this period.

Liverpool suffered the biggest drop, going from 2.2 points per game in non-UEL seasons, as against 1.9 in UEL seasons. This result is skewed by the fact that Liverpool played just three UEL seasons, of which one (2015-16) represented their lowest points-per-game average during this decade; in among the non-UEL seasons are the two seasons where they won 2.6 points per game (2018-19 and 2019-20, the latter of which they won the league). Liverpool's most recent UEL season (2023-24) saw them get 2.2 points per game, but this season, where they won the league they got 2.3.

Arsenal also suffered a drop in UEL seasons, registering 1.8 points per game vs 2.0 in non-UEL seasons, and Tottenham's UEL points per game are 1.7 vs 1.8 for non-UEL seasons. Manchester United's points per game are the same across the decade (reflecting the years of drift post-Alex Ferguson), while Chelsea actually sees better points per game in UEL seasons (1.9) as against non-UEL seasons (1.7).

So what accounts for the discrepancies, both in the general sample and in the Big Six teams?

For the smaller teams, points totals and points-per-game may be skewed by the presence of historically bad seasons in which they got relegated. Southampton, Burnley, Leicester and Aston Villa each suffered at least one relegation in this period, and of those, Southampton, Burnley and Leicester managed to get relegated twice. Southampton's first relegation season of the period saw them net 25 points across the season (0.7 per game), and their second, which was this season, got them 12 points (0.3 per game), which is the second-lowest points total in Premier League history. Villa's relegation in 2015-16 saw them earn a pretty dismal 17 points overall or 0.4 per game.

And while none of the big teams got relegated in this period, they did have a few stinkers. Chelsea amassed just 44 points, or 1.2 per game, in 2022-23, as they recovered from the forced sale from former owner Roman Abramovich in response to the Ukraine war. But Manchester United and Spurs have them beat this season, with 42 and 38 points overall, respectively, or 1.1 and 1.0 points per game. 

The big teams skewed things in the other direction, by the way, mainly by having really good seasons. Leicester, Chelsea and Liverpool all won the title during these years (Liverpool twice), which suggests some good points totals, but even when they didn't win some of the big teams racked up good points totals. There were seven seasons in which a team amassed over 80 points without winning the league, and four of those were non-UEL seasons. All of the four times that a team won over 90 points (Liverpool in 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2021-22, Chelsea in 2016-17) were non-UEL seasons for those teams.

Coming back to the original question, it seems clear that their extended runs in the Europa League aren't sufficient to explain Manchester United or Spurs' low points totals this season. A more likely explanation for both is severe injury crises, where a great many key players were unavailable for large parts of the season. The other problem, though less quantifiable, is the dysfunction in the backrooms of both clubs: Spurs are run by Daniel Levy, who tends to be quick to sack managers but reluctant to buy players, while Manchester United is in the middle of a decade-long quagmire relating to servicing their primary owners' debt incurred in buying them, plus a new minority owner who seems even less inclined to spend than the majority owners. United's dysfunction has extended to selling off a load of players who promptly pull up trees at their next clubs, which implies that morale and management are both in the dumps.

This is all to say that, while the achievement of contesting a major European trophy puts at least some lipstick on the pig that the 2024-25 season has represented for both clubs, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur need to look to other factors to explain this year's dismal form. While they may do marginally worse in seasons where they play in the Europa League, they won't have this excuse next season. 

But at least Spurs can look forward to playing in the Champions League. Hopefully they strengthen the team enough for it.

Andor Season 2: The Best Star Wars of All

I've been trying to formulate my thoughts on the second, and final, season of Andor since I finished the last couple of episodes earlier this week. The first thought that came to mind was that it may well be the best Star Wars offering of all, including the much-hallowed original trilogy.

Perhaps that's overblown. Andor and the original films represent very different things, based on the times when they were made and the audiences they were aimed at. Moreover, they're connected by Rogue One, which is my favorite of the new Star Wars movies but has its own problems. Still, I want to explore these ideas in this blog, and I'm gonna need to spoil the hell out of the show to do it, so you can catch that after the jump.

Congrats to Liverpool as 2024-25 Premier League Champions

It doesn't feel like it should be a big deal, but Liverpool winning the Premier League does feel exciting in a way that a league title hasn't in a while. This is only the second time in the past eight seasons that a team other than Manchester City has won the Premier League, and Liverpool won that other time too. BTW, for the completists: if you look at the previous decade, you also get Chelsea's win in 2016-17 and more importantly, Leicester's in 2015-16 (how long ago that must seem for Leicester City fans...).

This reminded me a lot of Liverpool's previous title win, during the 2019-20 season. Leaving aside the impact of the pandemic on that season, Liverpool spent basically that entire season at the top of the table, and it was similar this season. Last time round, they didn't seem to lose a match until the teams returned from the Covid-induced break, but by then it was pretty much already in the bag, to the point that they recorded the earliest win, in terms of games left to play (seven).

This year's Liverpool didn't sweep the league quite so commandingly, winning with "only" four matches left to play. They also seemed to stumble a few times, though for all that they had the odd inopportune draw or loss, second-placed Arsenal was never able to capitalize on those mistakes. Liverpool are currently 15 points ahead of Arsenal, and 20 points ahead of Newcastle, who are currently in third place. 

Much of the commentary on Liverpool's win has focused on the fact that it was masterminded by the new manager, Arne Slot, in his first season at Anfield. Taking over from Jürgen Klopp, Slot hasn't tinkered much with the team, bringing in only one player of note (Federico Chiesa, whom I'd like to see have more of a role in future). This has led to some commentators suggesting that this win belongs to Klopp, but I disagree. 

Klopp was a good manager but not quite the revolutionary genius that some seem to have made him out to be - he may have masterminded Borussia Dortmund claiming the Bundesliga, but by the time he left that team they were clearly on their last legs, and out of ideas. English commentary talked a lot about Klopp's "heavy metal" brand of gegenpressing football, and while this style of play kept Liverpool in among the top teams of the league, it also burned players out easily. 

It's impressive, therefore, that Slot got such good results out of the same group of players, but with a less frenetic style of play. Klopp may have assembled this team, but Slot is the one who got the best out of them, and so he deserves full credit for the title win.

The question that remains, then, is what Slot does next season. He's managed to hold onto two of the side's key players, Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk, after a season-long drama of whether they'd sign new contracts. Keeping them at Anfield next season is definitely a positive, but whether they succumb to age next season or the season after, their knees and reflexes will go sooner rather than later. It'll be interesting to see if he can maintain this balance next season, getting the best out of this group of players, or if he'll be forced at some point to perform a major overhaul.

The question came up on Football Weekly of whether this is the start of a dynasty at Liverpool, but apart from how well Slot can build a team, the answer will depend on what the rest of the teams do next season. Manchester City had an absolute mare this year, and it'll be interesting to see if Pep Guardiola is able to rebuild his team into challengers, or if he's now become the problem keeping them from winning. 

Same with Mikel Arteta at Arsenal: I sometimes think he's a bit too much of a whiner, but it's undeniable that he did well to pull Arsenal out of its post-Arsène Wenger, post-Unai Emery doldrums. He's definitely brought in a number of good players, but I don't know if he's had the tactical nous to properly fill the positions where he's lacking cover, mainly a good striker. Next season will be the most important, I think: if he can't strengthen the side enough to challenge for the title, then it'll probably be time for Arsenal to find a new manager.

I'm not too interested in whether any of the other so-called "Big Six" will do well, with one exception: Ruben Amorim has presided over Manchester United's worst campaign of the post-Alex Ferguson era, but he seems to eke out the odd result here and there. He got hamstrung by being hired mid-season (because the Manchester United hierarchy can't seem to organize a piss-up in a brewery, given that they should have fired Erik ten Hag at the end of last season), but it'll be interesting to see if he can rebuild the squad for next season. Or if he'll even be given enough time to do so.

I'm slightly more interested in the prospects of other strong teams outside the traditional big names, specifically Newcastle United, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa. Newcastle have generally had a good season, their win in the EFL Cup balancing out some inconsistent league performances, though as I said, they're currently in third place. Forest have been the big surprise of the season, sitting in third place for large parts of the season and only recently falling away; I'm still hopeful they can at least qualify for the Champions League next season, even if that'll probably be a poisoned chalice for them. And finally, Aston Villa did well to get to the Champions League quarterfinals, so if they can strengthen and make their league performances more consistent, they should challenge for Europe again... though it'd be fun to see someone from outside of London, Manchester and Liverpool challenge for the title again.

The league's not quite over, as the European places are still up for grabs, at least third through fifth. And if either Manchester United or Spurs win the Europa League, they'll be in the Champions League next season, despite lying closer to the relegation places this season. But overall, with Liverpool's win and the relegation places sewn up, most of the drama is done now. It'll be interesting to see if Liverpool rest on their laurels for the rest of the season, or if they come out ready to play again - that'll be the real test of what kind of manager Arne Slot turns out to be.

Daredevil Born Again Mostly Sticks the Landing

When I previously wrote about the show, I was three episodes in and we'd just seen the culmination of the White Tiger storyline, along with a tease of things to come in the shape of the assailant's Punisher logo-bearing shirt. Since then we've gotten the real thing, and in a fairly prominent role, as well as hints of the wider Defenders and/or MCU continuity. I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out, but if you haven't seen it yet, be warned of spoilers ahead.

Paul McCartney's Photography at the DeYoung Museum

I spent yesterday afternoon up at Golden Gate Park with my dad, since we had the day free and wanted to get out of the house. The plan had originally been just to drive up, walk around the park and have a snack at the museum cafe. But since my dad has a membership to the DeYoung Museum (as well as its sister museum, the Legion of Honor), we decided to have a look around the galleries a bit.

The main exhibit we checked out was the collection of Paul McCartney's photos from the Beatles' early tours, including their visits to Paris, New York City and Miami. McCartney had been experimenting with photography for a while and had brought his camera along to take some candid backstage photos as well as some artsy compositions of the Beatles and their friends and well-wishers. Along the way, the pictures also depict the preparations for the band's arrival in America, press events, the famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, and the band in relaxation mode in various places.

The backstage snaps are all pretty interesting: there are shots of band members goofing around their dressing rooms, along with shots of other performers who were touring with the Beatles, such as Cilla Black. In the sequence showing the band's visit to Paris, there are studio snaps of them hanging out with local musicians who were recording work for other bands or for the re-recordings in other languages of the Beatles' own songs. You also get glimpses of various band members' partners at the time, like Cynthia Lennon and Jane Asher, whom Paul was dating at the time.

Most of the photography is in black and white, but it bursts into brilliant color for the section showing the Beatles in Miami. That section is pretty much all vacation snaps, depicting the band swimming, lounging by the pool or fishing on boats. Everyone looks impossibly young and the Fab Four in particular seem delighted to be trading the environs of rainy northern England for the swanky parts of Miami in the summer.

One of the things that was fascinating about the exhibition was seeing my dad's reaction to it. He was initially skeptical about it, thinking it wouldn't be that interesting, but he ended up enjoying it a lot, especially seeing again the decor and names of that period, when he himself had been a teenager. At the end, when we ventured into the gift shop, he was moved to buy a double CD compilation of Beatles songs from the period (for my part, I bought Help!).

The other thing that struck me was how of their time the shots of the Ed Sullivan performance were. John, Paul and George are standing in a line, dressed in suits, each carrying their guitars and bouncing up and down slightly as they play. It's the iconic shot of them, and the pose that countless bands imitated in those initial years as other artists and impresarios aimed to capitalize on the Beatles' success. But it's also very, very different from how artists present themselves these days.

As I write this blog, I'm listening to an album by Beady Eye, the band that Liam Gallagher formed after the breakup of Oasis. Liam was particularly drawn to Beatles iconography, but it's hard to imagine a more different image from the clean-cut and purposely non-threatening Beatles than Liam Gallagher, who once stalked up and down the stage at the BRIT Awards in big puffer jacket, inviting people to fight while his brother Noel gave the thank-you speech for their award win.

That's not to say that Liam's bad and the Beatles were good. I just find it funny to see the original pose from their performance that gave rise to, as I said, so many imitators but also to so many reactions against that image. The Rolling Stones started out looking similar to the Beatles, but soon leaned into Mick Jagger's physicality, while The Who also initially ran around in blazers and ties but would end their sets by destroying their instruments.

In a world of Mick Jagger or Morrissey slinking around the stage and flaunting their sexuality, and Beyonce or Lady Gaga putting on elaborate choreography and costuming, it's quaint and kind of sweet to see those four young guys from working-class Liverpool, looking so self-conscious in their suits as they bounce around on TV. Just like the playbills depicting Sylvie Vartan and Johnny Halliday, or the interior decor of Pan-Am airplanes circa 1964, they're images from a bygone world, and it's great that this exhibition captured them so well.

The exhibition is on at the DeYoung until July of this year, so if you're in the Bay Area and have a free afternoon, it's worth checking out. And if you're not in the Bay Area, I'm sure it'll come to your city sometime soon, if it hasn't already. It's definitely worth a look, especially if you're a big Beatles fan like me.

Thoughts on Star Trek: Prodigy (with Spoilers)

Just finished Prodigy last night, and wanted to set down some thoughts. The first being, it's nice to see that it did get picked up somewhere after Paramount Plus cancelled it and dropped it from its platform. It was a bit slow going at points, but in the end it came good, with an emotional ending to the second season and nice tie-ins to the rest of Trek. Anyway, there are probably going to be some spoilers, so catch my more detailed thoughts after the jump.

WTF Italy

I wasn't following these Nations League matches very closely, but I feel compelled to share this one, because of the general WTF-ness of the whole situation. The second German goal has made the rounds on the news and podcasts, because of the absolute insanity of the Italian team getting so caught up in their own BS that they get taken by surprise by Germany's quickly taken corner.

While Italy's second-half fightback can be taken as a positive, you have to ask whether they'd have mustered up the courage to do it if they hadn't let in that comedy goal. Apparently Donnarumma's a good goalkeeper, but I feel like I rarely see it, and he certainly doesn't demonstrate a lot of tactical nous here.

Moise Kean seems like the goal threat that Italy's needed for years (you know, since about 2018), but again, he's had a weird career and I think he's had fewer call-ups to the national team because of his skin color. He certainly doesn't seem to have had a good time of it at big teams like Juventus.

This just all makes me think of the shocking displays Italy's graced us with at World Cups since winning in 2006, as well as the incredible collapse at last year's Euros. If Italy keeps letting in goals like this, how do they expect to qualify for 2026?

Though, on the other hand, maybe they're just getting a jump on being banned from entering the US next year...

Daredevil Born Again Is Off to a Good Start

Once again I'm breaking my rule about not writing a post about a show that I'm currently watching. But I've been considering the first three episodes of Daredevil: Born Again, and I'm interested to capture this moment and see where the show goes.

Obviously, I'm covering big spoilers, which come after the jump, so don't read on if you don't want to know what happens.

Captain America: Brave New World is a step, but only a step, in the right direction

I decided to snag a random day off, and while I ended up wasting half of it at the gym and then a good quarter at the doctor's office (because things happen at random, don't they), I also found the time to go to the theater to watch the latest Captain America movie.

As I say in my headline, it's a step, but it remains to be seen if it's enough of a step. Spoilers for the whole movie after the jump:

Now That's What I Call All of British Music: The Britpop Years

My project to listen to (almost) all of the biggest UK rock bands from the 60s to now continues, and in recent weeks I've hit a big milestone that I was looking forward to, namely I've reached the Britpop era.

Because I listen to all of a given band's discography, I've gone through several bands and artists that were releasing material in the 90s, some of which swirled around what the Britpop bands were doing. For example, David Bowie was getting recognition again at that time, even as he experimented with other genres and styles, like electronica. Then there were the bands who came just before Britpop, like the Madchester/baggy scene (notably the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays), or the likes of the Beautiful South, Saint Etienne and the Lightning Seeds.

BTW, speaking of electronica, I've already explored the strand that was most closely associated with Britpop, the genre called big beat, which for my purposes consisted of Fatboy Slim, the Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy. And what's most fascinating about big beat is that my way in was through Fatboy Slim, aka Norman Cook, who was previously a member of the Hull indie band the Housemartins. While Cook went on to become one of the biggest names in electronic dance music, his former bandmate Paul Heaton spearheaded the Beautiful South, bringing things back to 90s guitar rock.

These bands, like the Beautiful South, were all in rotation on MTV Europe during the summers when I'd go to Italy, and they played between the videos that I was really looking forward to, those from Blur and Pulp. That's why it's kind of poignant to reach Blur and Pulp's discographies, because I'm reminded of how new and fresh they felt when I was just discovering them, and it also reminds me of how hard it used to be to find certain music.

It wouldn't be fair to say that it was impossible to hear these bands here in the US. Before the mythical summer of 1995, when I first saw the videos for Blur's Country House and Pulp's Common People, I'd already heard Girls and Boys and Underwear on my local alternative rock station, Live 105, but the visual component turned out to be so important for imprinting on my brain. As I've mentioned before on this blog, Country House (despite being reviled by a number of reviewers at the time) was bright and breezy and irreverent, in contrast to the dour fare I saw on American MTV at the same time. Common People was also a blast of fresh air, with its 70s sartorial stylings and bright colors.

When I got obsessed with Blur (moreso than with Pulp), I was fascinated by the diversity of musical styles on their albums as well as the aesthetics of their singles. To the End, from the Parklife album, features on its cover a rose lying on top of a gun with a silencer, evoking James Bond. End of a Century, also from Parklife, features a painting of a starship resembling the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. 

I wasn't picking up these singles at the time, though I'd likely have seen posters for some of them when I started visiting London. But the real impact is seeing them now and imagining how it would have felt to see them back then. It's the same with Pulp's songs from 1995 or so - in addition to remembering how I felt about certain songs at the time, I also find myself thinking about they must have sounded to other people.

The aims of the British rock listening project were initially to get acquainted with the discographies of the Kinks and then of The Rolling Stones, and subsequently to work my way up to music from beyond 2006 or so, which is about when I stopped being current with new music. But one of the other benefits has been to contextualize a bunch of bands I was listening to when I was in high school, such as Peter Gabriel or the Pet Shop Boys. 

Now that I'm at the Britpop years, I'm getting to do the same with an even bigger, more important chunk of my musical background, and I'll be at it for a while: after Blur there's Oasis and Elastica and Sleeper and all the other lesser-known bands that made up the scene, or at least orbited around it. Without getting too caught up in nostalgia, it'll be fun to revisit those times, and fill in any gaps in my musical knowledge of the era.

Thoughts on the Super Bowl at around halftime

Thoughts on TV Writing Classes

I've been looking for evening classes for a while, to get me either out of the house or to help improve some skill that's important to me. And then last summer/early fall I started seeing ads on Facebook for TV and film writing classes at UCLA.

Because I'm not quite on the verge of moving to LA, I was glad to see that these classes through the UCLA Extension are mostly offered online. I started off with an Intro to TV Writing course, which consisted of six weekly sessions on Zoom. As the name implies, it was an introduction to how TV is generally written, both 30-minute comedies and 60-minute dramas. Each week we had to watch an episode of one or more specific shows, then compare them with the scripts or write our own beat sheets summarizing the various plot lines going through each episode.

It was in this way that I got introduced to Barry, on HBO, and Severance, on Apple TV Plus. I've sort of fallen off with Barry, but I want to get back to it soon, while for Severance I'm currently taking advantage of Apple's promotion to get a month of Apple TV Plus for free, so that I can catch up on the first season and watch the second season. I'm even considering keeping the subscription for an extra month, so I can get to the end of Season 2.

After that, I decided to keep on doing it, so I found an Intro to 60 Minute Drama class, as that's more in line with the kind of TV I'm interested in. That's a ten-week class, so I'm still in the middle of it, but so far it's pretty interesting. Where the previous class talked a lot about theory and the business, this class drops us straight into the plotting aspect - early on we had to choose a show for which to write a spec script, and every week we've been refining the idea for our spec. Because I don't watch loads of network TV, and most of the stuff I've watched lately is more of a limited series than an ongoing (stuff like Agatha All Along and the Penguin), I opted for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

It helps that SNW is episodic rather than serialized, so I don't have to worry about fitting into something so tightly plotted - although a couple of classmates are tackling shows like House of the Dragon, which I found too intimidating (apart from the fact that I'm not watching it).

At any rate, I've enjoyed coming up with a story for my own episode of SNW, and at the same time figuring out the B and C stories, and determining how they fit into the overall whole. Because SNW's episodes are mostly self-contained, it's easier to watch them to piece together how that interplay works, and then try to replicate that in my own story.

We also have to give feedback on classmates' work, so I get to examine storytelling from that angle, too - looking at what works and what takes me out of the story. A couple of other people are doing SNW stories too, so I've mostly commented on theirs, but I've also given comments on a few other shows, though some of the ones that I don't watch are tough to find comments for.

With regard to the teaching, I think it's pretty good so far. For this week's assignment I had some questions for the instructor, and she got back to me with some helpful comments quite quickly. That meant I ended up submitting my assignment a few days early (we have a deadline every Friday), and so I can do other stuff, like this here blog.

Another thing that's been helpful about this class is that, while it seems focused on network dramas with ad breaks, the format that it teaches is still relevant for shows on streaming services, which typically don't have ads. It's one of those things that feels very "duh" when you see it, but it's been a revelation to see how act breaks work, especially with the need for a good cliffhanger to keep that audience there from act to act. This is a relic of network TV, when viewers might use act breaks as an excuse to flip to other channels, but it's still relevant when you're competing against whatever they're looking at on their phones.

I don't know if it'll lead to a TV writing job, since I don't know what the prospects are for a 45-year-old with no experience, but I'm also looking at it as an opportunity to improve my storytelling in other media. The main thing I'm taking from it is plotting out my main plot and subplots, from start to finish, and then plotting the story by putting them together. I figure that any skills that improve my writing should be transferable to whatever form I'm writing in, whether it's TV, movies, prose or comics. It's also given me a taste for deconstructing books and shows that I like, to see how they're telling their stories.

And yeah, if it does end up leading to a Hollywood writing career... that's not such a bad outcome, is it?

Thought of this song today, no particular reason

 

England's Weird Problem with Ireland

One of the books I'm reading at the moment is The Song Rising, the third in Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series. I met Shannon at a Super Relaxed Fantasy Club evening in London back in 2018, and ended up checking out her books after that, starting with the (then) standalone Priory of the Orange Tree, and eventually moving on to her ongoing series. I wasn't sure at first if it was the kind of thing I'd be into, but as I got further into the first book I became gradually more hooked.

It's not exactly urban fantasy, though it takes place in London and features spirits, psychics and otherworldly beings. It's also not exactly science fiction, even though it's set in a future fascist dystopia and features a certain amount of advanced technology. It's an interesting mix of those two genres, with Victorian/Edwardian trappings and a heavy debt to penny dreadfuls and the culture of London gangs.

Another thing that's struck me, several times as I've read the previous books in the series but most forcefully again as I've read this current book, is the Irish through line permeating the books. It makes sense when you consider Shannon's name, and her protagonist, Paige Mahoney, but a key theme in the series is the ongoing anti-Irish prejudice displayed by the ruling entity, Scion, as well as normal people surrounding Paige. This all made me think of the weird relationship the English have with the Irish, something I observed as a foreigner to both cultures, but which I'm sure Shannon has experienced firsthand growing up in London.

I first moved to the UK after my final year of university in Göttingen, Germany, where among other things, I got interested in Ireland. That's the year that I got into the Pogues, Brendan Behan and James Joyce, as well as general Irish history, all washed down with copious amounts of Guinness and other stouts at my local Irish pub. Part of it was my ongoing obsession with the works of Northern Irish comics writer Garth Ennis, but I think I was just fascinated by meeting actual Irish people for the first time, whether a crowd of kids from Dublin or the manager of the Irish pub, a guy named Mick. I made friends with Mick and with the Irish exchange students, took a class on the history of the Irish Free State (1916-1921) and ended up going on a trip to Dublin, Galway and Belfast, which was super fun.

All this Irish-ness gave me a certain perspective, not to say bias perhaps, when I moved to London at the end of that academic year. For a while I hung out with the brother of one of my friends from Göttingen and some of his Irish pals, and otherwise I absorbed how the English viewed their neighbors from across the Irish Sea.

This was the aftermath of the Good Friday Accords, which essentially put an end to the decades-long emergency in Northern Ireland, although in those months when I was newly in London tensions erupted again in Belfast. Luckily they didn't ruin the Accords, but it's been clear ever since that the various sides are always at least a little mistrustful of one another.

As I say, I had a certain perspective on the Troubles and the English response to them, whereas for my peers at my first job, there in Southend in Essex, I suppose various IRA atrocities were still alarmingly fresh in mind. I remember being shocked by a case where some Irish people suspected of IRA connections had just been gunned down, and being equally shocked when my flatmate at the time justified it saying that the UK had been on such a high alert because of the IRA; incidentally, this is why trash bins are so difficult to find in public places in London, especially on the Tube.

There were other examples, like when a friend rebuked me for referring to Derry instead of Londonderry. He claimed that only Irish republicans called it Derry, but my experience had been rather that only the English used the other name; in my experience in Belfast even the Protestants called it Derry. Or, most hilariously, when another friend suggested that the IRA had been engaged in a genocidal war against the English, which seems... a bit much.

And moving on from my own circle of friends into the wider culture, a travel book named McCarthy's Bar came out around then. Written by a comedian named Pete McCarthy, it was about a trip he took in Ireland, in which the hook was that he went to every pub he could find that had his name on it. Notably, it features the following line: 

"Each 17 March brings to a head the inability of the English middle classes to deal with the Irish Problem, in the sense that Ireland is a problem because it exists."

I still remember that line, despite only having read it once over two decades ago while skimming the book in the local Waterstone's on my lunch break, because it squared so totally with my own experience. That line McCarthy wrote went on to talk about how celebrations of St Patrick's Day always brought out the English patriots, or nationalists rather, who got annoyed at celebrating a patron saint of Ireland instead of their "own" Saint George (though these folks would doubtless get annoyed if you suggested that George wasn't, himself, English).

That all took place in the years 2002-2004, when we were still less than a decade off from the Good Friday Accords. But there were more recent indications of the weird attitude of the English (though I think at least the Scots, if not also the Welsh, are guilty of some of this too) during the whole Brexit tomfoolery. Because of the unique and weird status of Northern Ireland, Brexit threatened to either re-erect a physical barrier between the Republic of Ireland and the North, which would have been a violation of the Good Friday Accords; or it would have put up a hard border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the island of Britain, which was seen as effectively ceding the North to the Republic.

Neither option was palatable, so the ruling Tories went for a third option. Some suggested that the Republic of Ireland should also leave the EU, while others, most notably former Home Secretary Priti Patel, rather astonishingly suggested using food shortages to pressure the Republic to accede to British demands over the movement of goods between the south and the north. The point about the food shortages is particularly galling in light of the history of the Irish famine of the 1850s, in which about half the population emigrated or died, all because the English not only refused to provide aid but also continued exporting food from Ireland.

While it may be unfair to tar all the English by association with their absolute stupidest person (Priti Patel, to be clear, though she has a lot of competition these days from the likes of Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch and Boris Johnson, among far too many others), it's notable that someone felt able to say the not-very-quiet part out loud like that. As the commentary I linked to suggests, the British and the Irish worked well together and learned more about one another while they were together in the EU, but it's depressing that this kind of boorishness was so ready to come back to the surface once the Brexit negotiations got serious.

All of this is to say that I appreciate that touch in Samantha Shannon's Bone Season novels, in which the English nationalist overlords are particularly anti-Irish. It's not something you're as likely to see in an English writer's dystopian vision, but I find it notable that Shannon has made it such a key part of her story. It's a shame that these prejudices persist, even among people that you'd normally consider reasonably progressive or enlightened, and it seems a shame that these attitudes will only harden the longer the UK is estranged from the EU.