Republican donors are royally PO’d at the party’s Florida office. And not only because they couldn’t stop the Sunshine State voting Democratic in this year’s election: they’re annoyed that the party spent more than $45,000 on a trip to London last summer.

As any man jack worth his hanging chads knows, pretty much the entire planet

was pumped for an Obama victory: the Economist’s Global Electoral College map revealed a great Blue planet out there, and London hosted pro-Democrat rallies and election night victory parties. So what were the GOP goons doing here if not picking up non-existent votes? Well, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel isn’t sure, but it has released a detailed breakdown of their expenses, including $40,000 worth of accommodation at the Sheraton Park Tower in Knightsbridge, meals at such quintessential English restaurants as Planet Hollywood, TGI Friday’s and the Hard Rock Cafe, and a whirlwind tour of sights including the Tower of London and Buck Palace. Oh, plus $236 of “office supplies” at Harrods. WHSmith not good enough for them?

Staying with our tenuous London – Florida theme: a travel company is encouraging US students to forgo the Sunshine State for the usual Spring Break shenanigans and come to The Smoke instead. While a February week on Florida’s beaches means wet T-shirt contests, all-night parties and getting laid with all the nonchalant ease of shooting fish in a barrel, London at that less-than clement time of year involves downpours and grey skies. But it’s all about the culture, innit? The “London Spring Break tour” involves sightseeing trips, a daily continental breakfast and a pre-paid weeklong Oyster card.

Somehow we can’t quite seeing it topping the topless displays of bacchanalian excess in Fort Lauderdale every year.

Image by BohPhoto

Tonight marks the climax of nine months’ eager anticipation since we broke the news to you that the NFL was coming to town. Two days ago we secured a ticket via the final sale we mentioned last Tuesday and we can’t wait for the action to begin at 5pm. If you’re catching the game on TV (Sky Sports live, or BBC2 highlights at 10:50pm), you’re in plenty of company. The game is being carried in 215 countries by 39 broadcast partners in 21 languages, including much of the US itself as can be seen from this map. Wherever you’re watching, here’s a few things to keep an eye out for:

1. The Four Giant Aces

If form holds true this game will be dominated not by either quarterback or a swashbuckling runner, but by the New York Giants defenders tasked with enabling the Dolphins signal caller to taste turfburger. Our own commentors have previously proposed that the play of the lumbering blokes on either team’s front line is something akin to the Batley Townswomens’ Guild’s re-enactments so beloved of Monty Python, but the folks at the fabulous Football Outsiders site would beg to differ. The Giants have devised a way to make use of all four of their aggressive Defensive Ends (of which there would usually only be two on the field at any given time) to terrify the opposition passer:

The key to the Four Aces package isn’t just the speed of the Giants’ ends. If Strahan [Michael - he of the deodorant ads] and company just tried to beat their respective blockers to the outside, then opponents would kill them with delays and draw plays or fan their pass protection to the outside. The Four Aces have been successful thus far because each lineman possesses a great combination of athleticism, technique, and discipline…

By the end of the night you will know the names Jason Tuck, Mathias Kiwanuka and Osi Umenyiora, who incidentally has a British passport as he spent his early life just three miles from Wembley. And Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes is from Scotland.

2. The Dolphins Tribute Team

If you buy an official programme, don’t bother reading the Dolphins squad profiles. Given printing deadlines we’re confident there’s lots about quarterback Trent Green (possible career ending concussion three weeks ago), star running back Ronnie Brown (season ending torn knee ligament last weekend), stalwart wide receiver Chris Chambers (recently traded to San Diego) and sundry others who are still in various states of ill repair back in Florida. We feel most sorry for long-serving crucial linebacker Zach Thomas who, after an almost legendary number of game-related concussions didn’t make the flight here because of whiplash he suffered in a minor car crash on the way home from last Sunday’s game. Freshly signed running back replacement Samkon Gado allegedly couldn’t make it because he couldn’t get his passport together in time, not usually a problem during game week. The man taking Green’s place as the quarry of the Four Aces goes by the name of Cleo Lemon. Good luck with that, Cleo.

Picture of the Dolphins cheerleaders in town this week via Free-ers’ Flickr stream.

3. The Dolphins Putting Up A Plucky Display

It’s technically their home game, though frankly having started the season with seven losses out of seven they’re probably delighted to be playing a few time zones away from their dispirited regular crowd in front of thousands of dedicated Dolphins fans who are thrilled simply to be able to see them (and 3,500 making the trip from Miami – those staying behind can watch at Dolphins stadium as well as enjoying entertainment including “field and locker room visits and British food”). The Giants, in contrast, are on a roll after a tricky first couple of matches and are probably somewhat exasperated to have to break off for a quick 8,000 mile round trip just when they were finding a groove. The traffic round here isn’t helping them, either. If the Giants beat the jet lag the Dolphins problems could begin with trying to get back into the country on Monday.

4. TV Coverage Less Smooth Than Usual

As Rachel Cohen points out in USA Today, there could be communication problems between experienced producer Barry Landis and the roughly twenty British technicians he hires to assist his team of eight. His presenting team did a run through yesterday, which would be unheard of in the States, to help the locals get the hang of snaps, sacks, dropbacks and flags.

“Historically, they’re very eager to learn,” Landis said in a phone interview from London. “Sometimes it’s almost better that way. They don’t get to overthinking it.”

The visitors, meanwhile, will have hopefully worked out where all the buttons are on their UK consoles and headsets. If the man charged with muting the on-pitch mics just after the two lines collide hasn’t we could be listening in on some very technical commentary on the state of the game.

Read our report on the event itself here.

The word ‘awesome’ used to mean jaw-on-floor and full of awe. It’s a definition that’s on the move, last seen passing the ‘hmm, yes, that’s rather good’ mark and creeping towards an ‘OK, thanks’ retirement home for decrepit adjectives.

We’d like to pull it out of retirement for one last mission – to describe the twin Nasa rovers, still rolling across Mars, and this awesome (yes, we said it) documentary, which finally uses the Imax medium in a non-cheesy way.

Spirit and Opportunity have now been on the Martian surface for almost three and a half Earth years. That’s fourteen times their shelf life. They’ve covered 11 miles, climbing mountains and dipping into craters. They show few signs of stopping any time soon.

The 40 minute film covers the background to the missions plus lift-off, landing and first year or so of operations. The launch sequence, although mostly computer generated, is frighteningly real. The giant screen and close perspective take you right up to the Delta II as it climbs from the Florida coast. But it’s the sound system that most impresses. The rumbles and blasts vibrate in the chest as the various rocket stages ignite and separate. The landing is also spectacular. There was a definite gasp from the audience as the giant airbags inflated, bringing the landers to a bounce-and-roll stop on the Martian plains.

The footage and animation are interspersed with shots of the control room. A den of anxiety, with scientists, engineers and planners mopping brows and chewing nails. Careers hinge on a ludicrously complicated series of events all happening flawlessly without human interference. Principal Investigator Steve Squyres looks like he’s going to retch.

It all went perfectly, of course, and the rovers continue to send back impressive data and imagery. The later stages of the film showcase some of the dusty panoramas and early results. And this is where the movie is a victim of the rovers’ success. Since the piece was made a year and a half ago (and showing to US audiences for some time), the six-wheeled geologists have sent back even grander vistas from the mountains of Gusev and the craters of Meridiani.

Roving Mars, unusually for an Imax film, is a story well-told and well-paced. Eye-candy and technical detail are perfectly balanced to make this informative as well as visually impressive. Anyone jaded with space exploration will enter the auditorium thinking ‘OK, thanks’ and leave shouting ‘Awesome’.

Roving Mars opens at the BFI Imax on 4 May. (May the Fourth be with you.)

Keep saving those air miles. Alan Watts from Harrow is about to swap his for the ultimate upgrade – a ride into space.

Mr Watts, manager of an electrical engineering firm, has accumulated over 2 million air miles on Virgin jets. And that’s enough to qualify for a free trip on one of Richard Branson’s fleet of space ships, due to enter service in 2009.

I saved up my flying club miles to go round the world with Virgin Atlantic – with this journey to space, I’ll get to see the curvature of it too! It’s going to offer the best view in the world, and I can’t wait to make history. The nearest I’ve come to space before was going on the Space Mountain ride in Florida.

There’s something so wonderfully British about using discount vouchers to book a trip into space. Let’s hope he remembers to take his cucumber sandwiches and weak lemon drink.

Meanwhile, we’ve been inspired to take our Nectar points more seriously. We’re going to give up the idea of trading them in for a George Foreman grill, and hold out for a similar space-age offer.

Those who hate both Big Brother (daily, all the time, C4/E4) and the World Cup might well have entertained thoughts of entering a house of peace, and taking holy orders. Potential bonuses include: no more trying to find things to delete because Systems Administrator tells you that you’re over your mailbox limit; no more deadlines; no more £3.50 pints of beer; no more floating in a sea of sweat on the Tube; no more robot phone calls telling you that you’ve won a holiday in Florida; and no more boss shouting at you. Digging vegetables and praying doesn’t sound too hard, either. In some ways, then, we envy the three participants in The Convent (Wed 9pm BBC2), who are going on a break from modernity – in front of the cameras, of course. It’s a simple but brilliantly effective format, as anyone who watched The Monastery last year will remember, and a life inside isn’t as easy as a flippant TV columnist might have you think. We’re a bit fed up with BB at the moment, for a variety of reasons (the plinth task was cardboard boxes redux but less interesting, Goldengate is dull, dull, dull, and we haven’t had a chance to vote for Mikey yet) – we expect it’ll pass soon, don’t worry – and The Convent‘s contemplative air, with the focus on inner development rather than how a given action wil play in the tabloids is pretty refreshing. Why don’t the BBC put it on one of their digital channels 24 hours a day? It’d be better for us than a diet of BBC3 ‘comedy’, for sure.

There are a couple of thought-provoking (but not dull) documentaries this week for the more serious-minded among us. Two we’ve got an eye on are My New Home (Thur 9pm C4) and China (Tue 9pm BBC2). In the first, we follow three children whose families have arrived in the UK from places rather less salubrious and, indeed, conducive to stayng alive and not being tortured. TV Troll is, believe it or not, a real softy when it comes to stories of brave children having to learn to adapt to strange and difficult circumstances, so we’ll be watching this with a box of tissues to hand. Readers of the xenophobic hatepapers – and the hopeless Home Office – should be forced to watch this until they understand that immigration isn’t about numbers, but about real people. China is pretty self-explanatory: a meaty BBC doc that aims to give us a snapshot of life and goings-on in this huuuuuuge and diverse country. Watch, and be thankful you live in a country where you can watch TV that asks sharp questions without fear of a knock on the door in the night followed by years in a prison camp.

If you’d like slightly lighter watching material, and we can’t really blame you, this week’s Horizon (Thur 9pm BBC2) should be a good candidate. Subtitled Genius Sperm Bank, it looks at what happened to the women who availed themselves of sperm popsicles from Robert K. Graham’s jizz storage facility, donated by, well, clever people (IQ 180+). Graham sounds like he was a bit of a crack-pot eugenicist. Read his book here – it’s a big PDF, beware; random extracts: “Man has substantially freed himself from natural selection without adopting a viable alternative. As a consequence, he has become an evolutionary derelict. The direction of his drift is, if anything, downward”, “those with more limited minds are more likely to make sex their major concern”. It’s the kids we’re most worried about – imagine the pressure of growing up with parents who had bothered to seek out the cleverest man-juice they could! If you got less than gold at the Physics Olympiad, it’d be tears at bedtime.

Moving from the documentary to the hysterical, Category 6: Day Of Destruction is a made-for-TV movie from 2004 that dramatises the destruction of a major US city (Chicago) by a hurricane unparalleled in its ferocity. Hmm. Seems a bit unnecessary now, really. Also, the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale goes from 1-5, so we’re thinking that a category 6 mega-mega storm is a bit like Gillette adding yet another blade to one of their razors, i.e. a triumph of semantics over common sense. What the hell, we’ll watch this with our feet up – nothing like seeing millions of dollars’-worth of CGI ripping skyscrapers to bits.

Trust Channel Five. They go to great lengths to try and shake off their “films, football and fucking” tag, then make a documentary called The Secret Life Of Elizabeth I: Revealed (Wed 8pm Five) all about how the Virgin Queen was no such thing and was probably doing it with Ye Englande Footeballe Elevene every night. All of them at once, what’s more. Yawn, heard it all before. We’d rather they stuck to making more stuff like The Singing Estate (Sun 8pm Five) which, though formulaic and labouring under the bog-standard reality TV arbitrary deadline – can’t we have a fly-on-the-wall where we can see talent emerge in its own time, without lots of frantic editing and references to big days drawing ever closer? – is gripping and wonderful. We can’t wait to see the final performance – just like we cannot WAIT to see how Grace justifies herself to Davina on Friday night (BB, Fri 8.30pm/10pm C4). Just cross your fingers and hope she doesn’t walk before then, OK? Don’t deny us our pound of flesh, Gracie dearest. There’s a love.

]]>

Those who hate both Big Brother (daily, all the time, C4/E4) and the World Cup might well have entertained thoughts of entering a house of peace, and taking holy orders. Potential bonuses include: no more trying to find things to delete because Systems Administrator tells you that you’re over your mailbox limit; no more deadlines; no more £3.50 pints of beer; no more floating in a sea of sweat on the Tube; no more robot phone calls telling you that you’ve won a holiday in Florida; and no more boss shouting at you. Digging vegetables and praying doesn’t sound too hard, either. In some ways, then, we envy the three participants in The Convent (Wed 9pm BBC2), who are going on a break from modernity – in front of the cameras, of course. It’s a simple but brilliantly effective format, as anyone who watched The Monastery last year will remember, and a life inside isn’t as easy as a flippant TV columnist might have you think. We’re a bit fed up with BB at the moment, for a variety of reasons (the plinth task was cardboard boxes redux but less interesting, Goldengate is dull, dull, dull, and we haven’t had a chance to vote for Mikey yet) – we expect it’ll pass soon, don’t worry – and The Convent‘s contemplative air, with the focus on inner development rather than how a given action wil play in the tabloids is pretty refreshing. Why don’t the BBC put it on one of their digital channels 24 hours a day? It’d be better for us than a diet of BBC3 ‘comedy’, for sure.

There are a couple of thought-provoking (but not dull) documentaries this week for the more serious-minded among us. Two we’ve got an eye on are My New Home (Thur 9pm C4) and China (Tue 9pm BBC2). In the first, we follow three children whose families have arrived in the UK from places rather less salubrious and, indeed, conducive to stayng alive and not being tortured. TV Troll is, believe it or not, a real softy when it comes to stories of brave children having to learn to adapt to strange and difficult circumstances, so we’ll be watching this with a box of tissues to hand. Readers of the xenophobic hatepapers – and the hopeless Home Office – should be forced to watch this until they understand that immigration isn’t about numbers, but about real people. China is pretty self-explanatory: a meaty BBC doc that aims to give us a snapshot of life and goings-on in this huuuuuuge and diverse country. Watch, and be thankful you live in a country where you can watch TV that asks sharp questions without fear of a knock on the door in the night followed by years in a prison camp.

If you’d like slightly lighter watching material, and we can’t really blame you, this week’s Horizon (Thur 9pm BBC2) should be a good candidate. Subtitled Genius Sperm Bank, it looks at what happened to the women who availed themselves of sperm popsicles from Robert K. Graham’s jizz storage facility, donated by, well, clever people (IQ 180+). Graham sounds like he was a bit of a crack-pot eugenicist. Read his book here – it’s a big PDF, beware; random extracts: “Man has substantially freed himself from natural selection without adopting a viable alternative. As a consequence, he has become an evolutionary derelict. The direction of his drift is, if anything, downward”, “those with more limited minds are more likely to make sex their major concern”. It’s the kids we’re most worried about – imagine the pressure of growing up with parents who had bothered to seek out the cleverest man-juice they could! If you got less than gold at the Physics Olympiad, it’d be tears at bedtime.

Moving from the documentary to the hysterical, Category 6: Day Of Destruction is a made-for-TV movie from 2004 that dramatises the destruction of a major US city (Chicago) by a hurricane unparalleled in its ferocity. Hmm. Seems a bit unnecessary now, really. Also, the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale goes from 1-5, so we’re thinking that a category 6 mega-mega storm is a bit like Gillette adding yet another blade to one of their razors, i.e. a triumph of semantics over common sense. What the hell, we’ll watch this with our feet up – nothing like seeing millions of dollars’-worth of CGI ripping skyscrapers to bits.

Trust Channel Five. They go to great lengths to try and shake off their “films, football and fucking” tag, then make a documentary called The Secret Life Of Elizabeth I: Revealed (Wed 8pm Five) all about how the Virgin Queen was no such thing and was probably doing it with Ye Englande Footeballe Elevene every night. All of them at once, what’s more. Yawn, heard it all before. We’d rather they stuck to making more stuff like The Singing Estate (Sun 8pm Five) which, though formulaic and labouring under the bog-standard reality TV arbitrary deadline – can’t we have a fly-on-the-wall where we can see talent emerge in its own time, without lots of frantic editing and references to big days drawing ever closer? – is gripping and wonderful. We can’t wait to see the final performance – just like we cannot WAIT to see how Grace justifies herself to Davina on Friday night (BB, Fri 8.30pm/10pm C4). Just cross your fingers and hope she doesn’t walk before then, OK? Don’t deny us our pound of flesh, Gracie dearest. There’s a love.

]]> http://londonist.com/2006/06/tv_troll_wont_s.php/feed 0 http://londonist.com/2006/04/the_americans_a.php http://londonist.com/2006/04/the_americans_a.php#comments Fri, 07 Apr 2006 09:50:28 +0000 sizemore http://londonist.com/?p=3208

Good sense finally overcame irrational fear yesterday as parents of the Fort Myers High School pupils voted to let their children risk their lives right here in Lononistan:

American pupils are to be allowed to take part in London’s 2007 New Year parade after a ban over safety fears was overturned. Florida officials stopped Fort Myers High School pupils taking part over fears of “trains blowing up” in the wake of the 7 July bombings. But organisers protested and pupils’ parents overruled the decision on Thursday night, voting 87% in favour.

Our favourite American of the moment Herb Wiseman, a modern Confucius, had already uttered such deep proclamations as “we don’t have trains blowing up in America”. And a jolly good thing too as Londonist has a soft spot for the American train system after spending five weeks Amtraking from coast to coast, doing our best to get to know the place up close and personal.

It’d be easy to list all the horrible things that can happen to you in the US as British officials did when this silliness first made the press, but in all honesty we’ve travelled to America many times and always had nothing but a great time. We’re happy that these kids now have the opportunity to come here and get to know our city first hand instead of buying into and repeating the nonsense of dickwads like Wiseman.

Perhaps there’s still hope for the States to wake up from its fear driven, self destructive isolationist stance… Travel does indeed broaden the mind.

As long as you’re not doing it from inside an armour plated humvee.

Previously:

Won’t somebody please think of the children marching bands?

A place where terrorism has happened

When a school band from Florida decides to pull out of London’s 2007 New Year’s Day Parade you may think the correct reaction would be a shrug of the shoulders and perhaps a “who cares?” before moving onto bigger things, but it seems that Ken’s ‘Take no shit from anyone’ stance has begun to rub off:

School officials in a Florida county said they were concerned about terrorism when they decided to keep a high school band from marching in a London parade, and now British officials are telling travelers that Fort Myers is no safe haven, either. Local officials fear that the dispute could cost Lee County, where Fort Myers is situated, millions in lost tourism dollars.

Insert image of Nelson from The Simpsons pointing and laughing here.

Parade officials in London planned to issue a statement to the media warning British travelers about Fort Myers’s crime and homicide rates, Lee County’s record number of traffic deaths in 2005 and the danger of “catastrophic hurricanes.”

Yeah, terrorism’s a worrying distraction in a country where a child is killed by a gun every three hours.

The hot dead schoolgirl comes to us from the awesomeness that is Zombie Pinups – your one stop source for beauty and braaaains

Sharon Stone was pretty cool in Sam Raimi’s The Quick and The Dead and erm… Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, but that’s about it. More famous for her undercarriage than her ability to deliver a line, she’s about to rekindle her career with Basic Instinct 2, which has just finished filming in London. That must bring back fond memories of her time with Steve Guttenberg as she’s playing across from acting behemoth Stan Collymore.

We’d buy tickets now if we could.

Shazza is in the news again this morning (well South Florida dot com anyway and probably a couple of tabloids too by now) as it turns out that she’s a trifle scared of terrorists. Used to acting as strong women though there was no way she was going to run to some big strong man for protection… she moved in with Elton John instead.

Apparently the terrified actress felt safer staying at the Rocket Man’s $12 million mansion in sleepy Windsor, Berkshire following the recent terrorist attacks. Now everyone was a little edgy after the blasts and perhaps after a few weeks of rubbing shoulders with ordinary Londoners on the tube (safe from autograph hunters because let’s face it – would anyone really recognise her from the navel up?) she felt worried just like the rest of us.

What’s that you say? According to the Mirror you read in the dentist’s waiting room last month she’s been a tad reclusive?

she has insulated herself, Roan, five, and 10-week-old Laird, from the outside world. Rather than cook she prefers to order in and is a takeaway fan of Carlton Tower’s Rib Room and Oyster bar. She also uses a company called Room Service to deliver to her door. Shopping comes from Harrods and is taken up by her security team. A chauffeur – non-smoking at her request – drives her to Pinewood Studios or central locations such as the Natural History Museum, the Gherkin tower, and Canary Wharf.

Oh well… at least she’ll be VERY safe for the rest of the shoot and we’d hate to see anything happen to her before she goes up to collect her Razzie once the film opens.

The above pic is an original illustration from Jane Austen’s ‘Basic Instinct’