I don’t listen to the BBC nearly as much as I’d like. I get the world news on NPR every couple of days, and I’ll always watch a Monty Python if it comes on the tele, but for the most part, the vast expanse of BBC programming remains a mystery. But I should listen more. Not only does the BBC have a tremendous amount of great content online, but the interface of the site is very nice and the site is extremely user-friendly. Which all brings me to the fact that I happened upon a great little show last night called Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off. I’m sure there are going to be many a BEEB fan out there who knows this show well, that me saying I’ve never heard of it is like someone saying they’ve never heard of the Simpsons, but hey, what can I say. I’m an American. I’m focused. But anyway, the show is about a sort of British doofus who travels around and files little audio dispatches about the people he meets and the places he goes. In special under-stated British fashion it is subtle, but often clever and hilarious. I urge you to give it a listen.
British Airways Bans Snoop Doggy Dog & Friends
So obviously this is old news in the celebrity gossip circuit, but I’m spending a day catching up after a week of being under the weather. West coast rapper, Snoop Doggy Dog and his posse have been placed in the dog house by British Airways after a recent scuffle in London’s Heathrow Airport. Apparently some of Snoop’s entourage couldn’t get into the British Airways’ exclusive first class lounge because they were riding on economy class and things got out of hand when they tried to force themselves into the lounge. The brawl that took place involved some 30 people where seven police officers received cuts, bruises and minor injuries. When commenting on the reason the airlines decided to offload the party and refuse travel, Richard Goodfellow, a spokesperson for BA said, “That sort of behavior will not tolerated.”
Good for British Airways and bad dog, Snoop Dog! To say that the rapper and his crew should have known better is just an understatement. Grown men causing that kind of fuss over hanging in an exclusive lounge is just plain silly. See USA Today for further details.
World's Oddest Museums
Ah, the great museums of the world: the Louvre, the Met,
the Hermitage, the Sulabh International Museum of
Toilets. What? You’ve never heard of the toilet museum? And you call yourself cultured. Pshaw.
OK, I’d never heard of it either. Nor several of the other rather odd museums mentioned in this piece by Jason
Volker. Volker covers a lot of territory, spanning the globe in search of the weirdest places that people have
collected weird things and put them on display for (let’s admit it) weird people.
Also making the
list is the Meguro Parasitological Museum in Japan, and the
British Lawnmower Museum in Lancashire, the kind of place that Monty Python
fans would most definitely feel at home. So next time you’re in India, drop in on the toilet museum. I’ve always
wondered where all the toilets in India went.
Ancient Viking Festival Recreated for May Day on Isle of Man
BBC.com is reporting that a battle between the Queen of Winter and the
Queen of Summer is to be the highlight of the May Day celebration on the Isle of Man. The fight is apparently
based on an old Norse custom.
The festival, called "Laa Boaldyn," apparently has its origins in the
Celtic calendar. However, "the battle itself is actually a Norse custom which was absorbed into the
traditional May Day celebrations of the Manx people," said Nicola Tooms, Assistant Curator for Manx National
Heritage.
Sounds pretty interesting. If we were still living in England, I might have nagged my
English husband to go take in the celebrations — however, he tells me that it always rains on May Day in England, so
it might have been a hard sell.
Germans Say Nein to Brits
The invasion of Germany begins later this year
with the start of the World Cup, and who are the Germans most afraid of? The
Brits.
Ah, what a delightful turn of history that reflects the shift in perceptions. At the root of the
story here is the desire of some to build housing for visiting soccer, um, football, fans in Germany for the world’s biggest sports event. That makes
sense, right? Lots of lots of people are coming, after all, to cheer on their favorite teams. But it turns out that
residents in various small German villages in the countryside are saying NIMBY (not in my back yard) to the idea of
having fans come to their peaceful places and have expressed specific fear of hordes of hooligans who they say…I
kid you not…might damage their pine tree through singing and chanting.
The oddest part to me is that
the British fans were to be housed in what is being termed a “fenced encampment” near the local race track
in the village of Iffezheim.