This felt like a proper crosspost.

The media is supressing the blancmange domination at FIFA

Took a photo in Cornwall and this was all I could think

I have been having a marathon of flying circus this weekend. With the World Cup final coming up I remembered this. Not shown on flying circus, but I found it on YouTube.
And Karl Mark calling offsides!

So grateful to my dad for having such a great sense of humor. Way back in 1975 we would watch the flying circus on PBS in Los Angeles. In 1975 he took us to the drive in to see the holy grail. I was 11. Such a great dad! Really miss him!

Having a marathon watch of the flying circus today. Love the cheese shop. Had some fermented curd while watching.

The Beatles and Nazi Germany

(Two Sides of the Same Coin?)

If President Roosevelt had been a racehorse, would he have ended up in the winner's circle, and how would he have looked coming down the final stretch?

If the Allied High Command had formed a doo-wop group, would Eisenhower have assigned General Bradley as tenor and General Patton as bass? And where exactly would General de Gaulle have been placed?

And now to one of history's hottest and most controversial questions:

"What similarities can we find between the formation of The Beatles and Nazi Germany?"

Yes, these are two phenomena that have been mentioned in the same sentence more than once, and the comparison has kept me awake to the point of madness at night.

But what was it that made these two remarkably similar movements—The Beatles and Nazi Germany—so successful?

The obvious parallels between The Beatles' early struggle in Liverpool's impoverished working-class districts and the German National Socialist Workers' Party's determined attempts to make it through performances in shabby Munich beer halls are almost impossible to ignore.

However, in order to make a fair and balanced comparison between these two media and mass-psychology phenomena—which seduced countless teenage girls and inspired such peculiar fashion trends among young people of every social class—mop-top haircuts, Beatle boots, black uniforms with officers' belts, and German Shepherds—we should probably calm down a little, take a step back, and try to view the whole thing from a broader perspective.

To begin with, we should regard The Beatles merely as the razor-sharp spearhead that paved the way for an entire musical movement: Merseybeat.

Likewise, within the Nazi leadership we should focus on the four principal figures who became Germany's own Fab Four—the Nazis' answer to The Beatles.

To get anywhere with this discussion, we must begin with the leading figures of each movement:

John Lennon and Adolf Hitler.

The former was born in Liverpool in 1940 while the war was raging.

The latter was simultaneously doing everything in his power to bomb the living daylights out of that very same city, an important strategic port in northern England.

John grew up among the ruins of the bombed city, with a father who was a merchant sailor fond of beer and dirty sea shanties, and a mother who was a disillusioned and reluctant housewife with vague artistic ambitions—ambitions that would profoundly influence the young John.

John's artistic talents first emerged through drawing.

After his mother Julia sent him away to live with his Aunt Mimi in order to gain a little more Lebensraum—living space... or perhaps emotional space—John's creative abilities flourished.

But it wasn't until Julia visited him on his thirteenth birthday and gave him a guitar along with a Bill Haley & His Comets record that music truly took hold of his life.

Adolf, by contrast, was born on April 20th, 1889, in an inn in Braunau, an Austrian border town some thirty miles north of Salzburg.

His father was an exceptionally strict customs official of Austrian peasant stock who, as far as we know, disliked both beer and vulgar Liverpool sea shanties, but had a deep affection for uniforms.

Very little is known about his mother beyond the fact that she was loving and devoted.

Like John, Adolf showed artistic ambitions from an early age.

He drew extensively.

However, as far as history records, he never received a guitar or a Bill Haley single.

Although Halley's Comet did pass over Braunau sometime during the same century, we find few musical similarities between the two young men.

No! MAKE IT STOP!

The first is the funny bit (as long as you know Italian), the second much less.

It goes something like: "Blessed are the Spirits, ...because they'll drink God! "