Sunday 13th May was a pretty epic day for English football. Sometimes living so far away from home means I can become a bit disconnected from English culture, that is not the case with the Premier League though. You can watch it anywhere and with the invention of the internet you can discuss it with people worldwide on services like Twitter or even stream BBC radio coverage. It was truly wonderful to listen to that last day of the 2011/12 season, I won’t go into the details but I feel that it is best summed up by this tweet from the phenomenon that is Danny Baker.

Football. Fucking football. Imagine not being into it. Those poor, poor half-alive bastards.

— Danny Baker (@prodnose) May 13, 2012

What I had missed out on was actually watching Sergio Aguero’s winning goal. Imagine my delight when a friend sent me a YouTube link to it with commentary that sounded very familiar.

The man you can hear there, making an amazing moment even more sensational, is Juan Manuel Pons. El Bambino, as he is known, is an Argentinian football commentator who works on FOX Sports’ Latin American Premier League coverage. He has built up quite the reputation because of the unusual way he calls goals.

Not content with simply yelling out “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL” like so many of his Latin contemporaries he often sings a little song too. These odes are pretty amazing and he goes to some lengths to bring them to the public, for the regular goalscorers he will even bring records to sing along to. Although if an unexpected player grabs a goal he does have to think quickly to come up with something.

I remember the first time I watched the Premiership in Colombia. It was a game between Arsenal and Southampton that had a rather unexpected result, Rory Delap had managed to score twice. The first goal was greeted in a normal fashion but by the time Delap had bagged the second El Bambino had thought of something. He repeatedly said “Ro-ry-De-lap” while rubbing the microphone. As you would expect, this grabbed my attention. For the rest of that highlights package I gleefully awaited each goal, if only to see what he would do.

Until I watched the clip above I had half forgotten about that commentator and as a fan of odd goal commentary I was so glad to find him again. I have searched YouTube high and low for examples of his work and I hope you enjoy this playlist as much as I do.

I woke up the other day to be shocked by the news that one of my favourite British TV shows, QI, has caused quite a brouhaha here in Japan. It was from a section of the program were they discussed a double atomic bomb survivor who they introduced as ‘the unluckiest man on earth’.

The offending clip is here:

I, probably like most British people watching, giggled a bit and then got on with the rest of my life. This clip though made the Japanese embassy in London complain to the BBC. The Japanese news agencies have since got hold of this story and it has become big news here. Most of the news reports are filled with words like ‘disgraceful’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘despicable’.

I have tried to talk about it with a number of Japanese people and there seems to be widespread disbelief that people would make a joke about such a thing as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It seems that the problem is that old chestnut, the cultural misunderstanding. This is also the first time such a thing has really had such a big effect on me too as I laughed at the show myself. In Japan all talk, or at least jokes, about the atomic bomb attacks are pretty big taboos. Such jokes make people here very uncomfortable and cause great offence. I feel if the BBC (or the British in general) had known this they wouldn’t have included it in the show.

However as a British person I think the cultural misunderstanding goes both ways. For a start most Japanese think that the BBC is just a respectable news channel much like NHK. The main problem though is a misunderstanding of British humour. In particular black humour, in which topics and events that are usually treated seriously are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Maybe this could be called ‘telling things like they are’. Most of the jokes in that clip are about how bad British railways are anyway, the self deprecating part of British humour that only puts down the person them self (or at least the country the person is from).

The Japanese aren’t the only ones to have had these problems though, given the reaction to Ricky Gervais’ hosting of the Golden Globes.

While the BBC should be more careful about Japanese sensibilities and maybe they will not make the same mistake again, could this also be a great opportunity to teach the Japanese about British culture? It will go begging though. The news channels here are just spreading disdain and other words beginning with ‘D’ rather than having an intelligent conversation on the subject.

Personally I’ve learnt a lot from this incident but I’m not sure who else has.

You have got to admire a character design like Lum’s. The fact she is usually only wearing a tiger striped bikini is bound to draw attention for a start. Couple that with the green hair, horns and knee high boots and you have rather an iconic character.

She is one of the main characters in a manga and anime which started in the 1970s called Urusei Yatsura. The plot mainly revolves around Lum (an alien) and Ataru (a letch) who she fell in love with after he foiled her father’s attempt to take over the world. He did this by beating her in a game of tag. Lum is basically sweet and innocent but also has a very hot temper and being an alien can shoot electricity out of her hand. This comes in handy to keep poor old Ataru in check because being a pervert at heart he is generally trying to get with every lady that moves.

As you can probably tell by now the plot is pretty barmy but it is a fun series which interestingly has often been described as a Japanese version of The Simpsons. Not, I think, because they are particularly similar in tone or set up but because of the enduring popularity they have even years and years down the line and also because they are both chock full of cultural references.

American culture is pretty well known abroad so The Simpsons is not a problem for British audiences, Urusei Yatsura on the other hand can become almost impenetrable to foreigners. So much so that the company that localised Urusei Yatsura for the USA had to provide extensive liner notes for the series explaining references and why they chose to translate the many puns in the show the way they did.

For its run as a TV show Urusei Yatsura generally stayed at the level of ‘fun and charming hijinks’ for the majority of the time. However there were also a series of movies made back in the eighties and the second of which was directed by a certain Mamoru Oshii. If the name doesn’t ring a bell he is the man who directed the Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor films and also live action stuff like Stray Dog. If you haven’t seen these films I can tell you that they definitely cannot be described as ‘fun and charming hijinks’.

So for a brief moment Urusei Yatsura became a philosophy driven art house film about the nature of dreams and reality, the difference between a sweet dream and a nightmare and whether our dreams will make us truly happy. It is a great film, the kind that has to be watched a few times to work out and just about as far from the original show as you can get. I implore you to check it out, it’s called Beautiful Dreamer. If only The Simpsons Movie had dared to do a similar thing. Apparently the original author of the manga did not like Oshii’s interpretation of her creation and he never got the chance to create another film with these characters, which is a shame.

Earlier I noted that this anime is a hard one to translate, this is true to the extent that Animeigo, the US distributor, did not even attempt to make an English dubbed version. Over in the UK though, the BBC did give it a go. You probably never heard of it because it was given the title Lum the Invader Girl and shown as part of a ‘Japan week’ on the now defunct channel BBC Choice. The voices were provided by Anna Friel and Matt Lucas, two fairly famous actors in the UK and I think Lucas did a good job, really capturing the spirit of the original Ataru.

The BBC dub wasn’t a great success though, they only dubbed the first 3 episodes and their definition of ‘translation’ was very very loose. In the great British tradition of dubbing foreign shows such as The Magic Roundabout and Monkey, the script was largely thrown out the window and they seemed to more or less make it up as they went along. They added in references to stuff like Pokemon, Millwall Football Club and The Archers, what they produced was actually quite amusing despite hardly being true to the source.

Judge for yourself:

This wasn’t the show’s only flirtation with British popular culture though. A lo-fi band, once described as the most indie band in the world by NME chose to call themselves Urusei Yatsura. They happen to be one of my favourites and I feel were criminally ignored with only one UK top 40 single to show for their efforts.

Click on this picture for the song they did a Peel session for and which is perhaps their greatest (also note the UY references in there):

Out of the ashes of that band 3 of the members have recently formed a new band, Projekt A-ko. Please give them a listen too.

Who would have thought a girl in a tiger striped bikini could have such a big effect on people?

Please note: This was written last week literally hours before Kevin Keegan announced his resignation, I was so unhappy and disappointed that I sat on it for a week. It is still kinda relevant (maybe), so I’m publishing it anyway.

I came home on Tuesday night to get the shock of my life, I turned on my Mac and loaded up the BBC website like I had a million times before but this time I was greeted with a headline that made my heart skip a beat. It went something along the lines of “Keegan in Crisis Talks”. The moment I read this nothing else mattered, I was straight onto the forums of the internet searching for answers.

Unfortunately all I found was confusion. “I hope it’s not true”, they said. “I just can’t believe it”, others cried. It seemed that no real facts were available on the whole of the net. I could work out that the rumour began life on Sky Sports and snowballed after.

“I hope it isn’t true, I just can’t believe it!” I thought to myself.

“BREAKING NEWS: Keegan leaves Newcastle”, the BBC website had updated itself. I almost shed a tear, a friend of mine sent me the message, “It’s official KK is out. Fuck newcastle, I’m supporting Man City.” and my heart was broken for the second time in only one week.

I then read further, “Kevin Keegan has left Newcastle BBC sport understands.” Understands! What the devil do they mean ‘understands’? Well, whatever shady character made them understand this was talking out of his arse. Just before I went to bed that night, dejected and unhappy, Newcastle Utd released an official statement clearly stating that Keegan had gone nowhere.

As I write this he is still there now and while only a fool would claim that everything is rosy at St. James’ Park, media coverage was way off on this story.

I’m disappointed with the BBC, it seemed like they were just trying to beat Sky with getting the news out first only to make a major slip up. It didn’t help that inside this b.s article it stated, “Newcastle have picked up only 4 points from their first 3 games”. Considering those games included Arsenal and Manchester Utd away and don’t know what they were expecting. It’s 1 point more than I thought we would have at this point and I’m mister optimism.

I used to praise the BBC website to high heavens, now I don’t think I will ever trust them again. Presenting gossip and rumour as fact was once the domain of the likes of Sky now the BBC have seriously fallen from grace in my eyes. A shame. I was going to link to the offending article on the BBC website but they have since updated it to cover their tracks, it’s as though they are ashamed to admit their mistake.

This whole story has done more than uncover the lack of professionalism at Newcastle but also the BBC should take a long hard look at themselves.

Still bricking it over what’s going to happen to Kevin though. DON’T GO KK! :(

I was listening to the latest Pods & Blogs podcast from the BBC and they were discussing the results of googling your own name and the privacy issues related to it. This prompted me to google for my own name because I hadn’t done it for a while. Other the expected results such as this very website, I also found a post on an internet forum, by a man that has never met me, which describes me as “goofy”.

I may need to explain: Many years ago (well, two) Sports Interactive, the developers of the Football Manager series of games invited people to send in their name and a photo which then could be used as a Regen player. Regen players were players that appear in the game with random stats which replace the real players as they retire. I sent in my photo and luckily got chosen to appear in the game, although, whenever I turned up in my game, I was always awful.

Now, however, I’ve discovered this was not true all the time,

I’m playing as chelsea and in 2009 i am beginning to get the benefit of chelsea’s current “sign every 12 year old campaign”. There’s a striker called “Shaun Hickox”, 17 and English labelled the next Geoff Hurst who has a really goofy looking picture and came through my youth team. When i got him in the batch of players my assistant says he looked like “one of the best of his generation” which i’ve never seen before. His stats are reasonably average but he seems to score every time he plays – including announcing himself on the first team at 17 with an fa cup hat trick in my b team vs qpr… He’s an absolute gem!
Rob McK

It’s nice that I have fulfilled my footballing potential in one reality at least (even if it’s a virtual one) and being called “goofy” is better than “ugly”, I guess.

I’m an absolute gem :)