DJ Matt+Gabe’s Jewish Deli, aka Matt Merkin, is spinning tonight in Oakland at downtown hangout Ruby Room. Considering this kid sports a borderline unhealthy Prince obsession & a fancy/comprehensive record collection, it’s pretty much guaranteed this will be a good time.

Festivities start at ten, with Oakland all-star DJ Zachariah kicking off the evening. I know I’ll be there, greyhound in hand. Et tu, Brute?

Deets can be seen on the flyer below:

My generation. Twisted, toiled. A collective of dreamers, sleepers, activists, non-winners, no-getters. Glued to the screen. Hyper, dissatisfied. My generation. Constant, evolving. Sitters. No direction thinkers. My generation. At home, homeless. A crass collection of every drug that was ever had. The strong stench of smug. Hope, hopeless. My generation. Rolled sleeves. Fashionable. Late. Clueless. Excuses, useless. Lack of manners. Bag of hammers. Running amuck. Debating. Flailing. Cocaine. Blogging. Alcohol. Shopping. Facebook. Stalking. Pirates on a sinking ship. No commander. Sending their own to the plank. My generation. Three dogs. No kids. Swimming in loans. Heirs to pathetic thrones. Parent’s debt. My generation. Vote or die. Don’t and live. Living loud. Hug it out. My generation. Whitman’s nightmare. Bukowski’s spit. Slime. Grime. Beggars. Without calculation. Talking. Talking. Talking. Comment. Post. Like. Add. Defriend. Block. Join. Subscribe. Unsubscribe. Anything but actually doing something. Something. Anything. My generation. Mentally obese. Plastic surgery. Everything made simple. Microwaves. DVR. No moral compass. Pompous. Dead poets. No society. My generation. Jersey Shores. Distraught. Disillusioned. Apathy. Nothing clear. Nothing dear. Easily amused. Xbox. Wii. Playstation 3. Reality TV. Movies in 3D. My generation. So dumb it’s funny. So bad it’s good. Racists. Hedonists. Pseudo-hippies. Trying to create their story. Conscious of life’s timeline. Missing deadlines. Hipstamatic. Asking about salary. Jobless. Majoring in social science. Liberal arts. Complaining. My generation. No smiles. Fake laughs. Shake hands. My generation. Study abroad. Return. Forever cultured. Applause. My generation. Fatally flawed. Cause without effect. Hours and hours to reflect. Staring at ceilings. Jumping from buildings. Never believing. In themselves. My generation. Definition of failures. Spoiled. Faux artists. My generation. The worst there ever was. The best never to come. My generation. Bow out gracefully. Beaten down graciously. My generation. Be real. What generation?

—-

Easy To Leave.

Cold stoics
Rise like dead poets
Who are lost at sea
Who are hard to please

Broken bells
Ring like ocean swells
Who pause to crash
Who despise their craft

Orange pills
Melt like exhausted thrills
Who came just to please
Who came just to leave

Closed doors
Isolate old deserted stores
Who wait for guests
Who hedge their bets

Rootless trees
Sting like angry bees
Who strike without cause
Who live without laws

Fractured tracks
Break like shattered backs
Who tear themselves apart
Who end before they start.

Cold poets
Die like chained stoics
Who are found at ease
Who are just too easy to please.

—-

Hardly.

Hardly ever comes a time
I battle within civility
Words tend to explode from my mouth
Tend to get the best of me
The rest of me
Is a test of me
I feel like im in custody
Waiting for a sulky judge
To sentence my instability
The will in me
Is clear and free
Enough to raise every hair
Of the people standing next to me
Stand next to me
Believe in me
Raise your glass
Oh everything is infamy
When nothing, no nothing, is blasphemy
You’re teasing me
Oh how you’re teasing me
With ideas of geography
Where the land breaks in half
Connecting the absent ability
To sleep with me
To sing with me
Higher than the highest trees
Sharper than the sharpest sting
Softer than the softest seas
Lovelier than the love you bring.

Villa Cola – Lost Days from EMMYLAND on Vimeo.

Words by Kevin Duffel

Bring out the megaphones and shit! London synth pop darlings, Villa Cola, are back! But be prepared—by synth pop, we’re not talkin’ cheesy new-wave four-to-the-floor stomps, canary yellow Dockers paired with candy red glasses, and keytar wails aplenty.

More Berlin than Pet Shop Boys, the UK three piece kick off their new EP, She, with lead single, “Lost Days”—an infinitely catchy number with a mechanically slow, brooding bass line that steadily pulses beneath dreamy, ethereal vocals and swirls of sparkly, spacey synths. It’s like Cocteau Twins fucked Joy Division, and then gave head to Psychedelic Furs. Or something like that. (Pardon me, naysayer; I never claimed to be too good with references.)

An ode to the regretful loss of old friends and times long gone, vocalist, Ranya Dubé, penned the lyrics to Lost Days shortly after legendary Sex Pistols manager Malcom McLaren fell victim to cancer, infiltrating the front page of every major English newspaper—and subsequently every pair of British eyeballs—in the process: “[The story] was on the cover of every newspaper in England. In one of them, there was a picture of Vivienne Westwood kneeling, putting flowers by his grave. There was a quote below of her saying, ‘When we were young, I fell in love with Malcolm; I thought he was beautiful and I still do. The thought of him dead is really something very sad. We hadn’t been in touch for a long time.’” Ranya continues, “To me, it just seemed like she regretted so much never seeing him again and that’s what this song is about.”

This scene of Vivienne Westwood at former lover Malcom McLaren’s grave was the main inspiration for ‘Lost Days’

Musically, the tune is equally well thought out. Arranger and co-writer Paul Bateman saw production through from start to finish. Heavily interested in glo-fi bands like Animal Collective, Gold Panda, and Washed Out, Bateman meticulously tinkered with sounds—often ones drenched in reverb—until he found the perfect fit: “I put a really shitty sounding reverb on the vocals, which came from a guitar amp plugin in Logic. It gave it a really dirty sound that set the tone for the rest of the song. By the end of it, it didn’t turn out sounding particularly gritty but most of the time things change as they develop.” And develop they did. “The melodic side came from me listening to The Beatles and hearing how the production would add things that wouldn’t necessarily be there if it was just straight guitar music. That’s where the idea for the orchestral strings comes from.”

So while Miss Westwood might have lamentably fallen out of touch with Malcom McLaren, Villa Cola have created two and a half minutes of such auditory delight that you’d have to be deaf to resist coming back for more. Actually, scratch that. The accompanying video, produced and directed by Emmyland in conjunction with the band, will surely do the same for your eyes as the song does for your ears. Only a literal vegetable can fall out of touch with this one.

Both of the band’s EPs can be downloaded for free by clicking here.

I find the notion of a $9 bowl of cheesy noodles to be simultaneously horrifying and fantastic. Won’t lie and say I’m not gonna try the place. but I will do so resentfully.

After all, gentrification makes me skeptical. But I’m a freaking sucker for mac n’ cheese.

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Just move here with a fresh face and a college diploma? Get fired from your shitty retail job by the only one there who takes it seriously? Finally decide to tell your boss at the café what you really think of her paintings, or your boss at the bar what you really think of his goatee-rock band? Well, whichever way, your ass is out of a job and this is the guide for you.

First though, a couple ground rules:
• Never, ever, under any circumstances, use the phrase “funemployment.” Not even ironically. Unless you’re really serious about letting people know the real you…in which case you might just want to go the extra mile and get “dickhead” tattooed on your forehead.
• Don’t talk to people about how miserable it is to be unemployed. Everyone already knows. Talk about something interesting, like the weather. Or Sports!
• Don’t mention a job interview you have coming up, especially if you’re “totally sure you’re in already.” This is a sure-fire way to embarrass yourself and ruin any momentum you might have. Plus it leads to at least a week of the following interaction:

Concerned friend: Oh hey man, whatever happened with that interview at _______?
You: I don’t know dude, I thought it was in the bucket.
CF: shit, that sucks man….
You: yeah…well something’ll turn up soon (forced smile followed by looking down into empty pint glass followed by silence).
CF: yeah…yeah of course man. Oh, hey I gotta get going, I have, you know, work tomorrow.

Anyway, your first goal is probably a new job. Good for you! Well that’s smart, and honestly, I don’t have much else to say about it. If I knew how to get you a job, I’d be reclining in my chair of baby seal leather, lighting cigars with thousand dollar bills instead of putting up “blog posts.” The only advice I have is to lie and Lie and LIE and never look back. The old “fake it ‘til you make it” maxim has never been truer than it is for those of us in our 20s and out of a job. And, If you do end up getting found out and fired, it’s only ’cause you sucked at doing your job and you shouldn’t have been there anyway. Blam- order is restored.

Now that we have the basics out of the way, here’s a quick guide to enjoying your Oakland Funemployment!

Things To Do & Places To Go

Big Long’s: Nestled unassumingly in the back corner of the Rockridge shopping center is the Cadillac of drugstores. Lose your favorite Egyptian Sun God incense holder? You’re covered. Same goes for fishing gear, sparkly twine, fake owls, dollar cologne and Dickies jumpsuits. They’re open 24 hours and if you’ve got a quarter from before 1965, the Topdog in the front has a 25¢ dog for you.

Move To San Francisco: just kidding!

Become a Renaissance Man: This can take many forms, and it’s up to you. Find something you’ve always wanted to do. Maybe that’s unicycling or becoming a graphic designer, maybe its impersonating police officers or toilet-training a cat. Doesn’t matter. The important thing is to take this time away from the rat race to grow as a person.

Build a dark room: The materials are easy enough to come by and your roommates will be pleasantly surprised by your ingenuity when they come home from their “job” to find that the apartment’s only bathroom is full of red light, chemicals and, um, black and white photos of barbwire fences (shallow depth of field, obvi) and close-ups of your grandma’s knuckles. Everyone loves surprises.

Join a muay-thai gym: Sitting around all day responding to various craigslist ads with variations of “my interest in the growing data-entry field is perhaps matched only by my professionalism, reliability and punctuality” is disheartening. It’s emasculating and what’s more, it destroys your interpersonal skills. In this poverty, isolation, and Ancient Age fugue, you forget the all social niceties which allow you to interact like a decent, fun human being. In two weeks time, you’ve become Kasper Hauser, making fun of blind women, ruining friendships and almost getting stomped out by five dudes for smacking a tinted Mercedes Benz because it almost ran you over, because you were turning illegally onto 14th from Broadway on your bike, because instead of dinner, you were drinking brass monkeys and watching Allen Iverson highlight reels. Hypothetically. Anyway, have you ever seen Ong Bak? Yeah dude. That could be you in, like, a week.

Start A Blog: Just don’t try to explain it to your parents. In fact, don’t even mention it to them. That particular avenue dead-ends with you yelling “fuck” a bunch of times, your old man misquoting some Tom Brokaw bullshit about the “Greatest Generation” and your mom pouring another large glass of white wine in the kitchen. Just tell them you’re back in school taking phlebotomy classes or something; meanwhile, you’re editing pictures of cats into 90s movie posters.

Start A Band: What’s that? You don’t play an instrument? You’re tone-deaf? Did that stop Yeats from writing poetry?! Or Ulysses S. Grant from winning the Civil War?? Or somethingsomethingSexPistolssomething?! Next to grad school, having a band is one of the most time-honored and American ways to put off adulthood.

Better Living Through Photoshop: You don’t have a job to go, you might as well learn how to use a computer. Like Algebra II or a foreign language, the trick to picking up Photoshop is to find a way to make it relevant to your daily life. For me, that was making parking permits and fake “free sandwich cards” for a Berkeley deli run by pony-tailed jocks who always overcharged me on breakfast burritos. Just think of all the press passes, prescriptions and more now at your fingertips. EXTRA PLUS: one day you will be able to get an office job with these very skills.

Learn to Live Off the Land: No, I don’t mean “urban gardening.” I have no beef with that, it’s just that having a garden requires initiative, responsibility and a can-do attitude. If you had any those things, you wouldn’t be in this spot in the first place. No, what I mean is free pizza. What’s that, dad? Pizza doesn’t grow on trees? Thanks! Like The Truth, though, The Pizza Is Out There. In the dumpsters, at your local Lanesplitter at closing time (used to be, anyway), and in your friends’ living rooms.

Hustle: Remember that part in the Pimp The System video where he’s holding up the money AND the pizza?! Get off facebook and get yours. A month of getting turned down by progressively shittier jobs is bad for your ego. You begin to embrace the fact, internalize it even. “I’m gonna live on ketchup and shitty beer,” you tell yourself while copy-pasting the same typo-filled cover letter into another email. Cut that shit out. Do some jumping jacks or get laid or go down to Mosswood and hustle the dudes on the court. If you need a Woody Harrelson to your Wesley Snipes, gimme a call. Warning: the last part is an awful idea.

Ancient Age: The best thing to happen to “going to a bar” since “having a job and disposable income.”

Elve’s: This lil place at MLK and 32nd is the kind of place where you can eat your weight in ribs for less than the cost of a bottle of Tums. Oh, and dollar burgers.

Develop a Crippling Drug Problem: You’ll be amazed at how your appetite disappears, and consequentially, your need for a food budget.

Bakesale Betty’s: Look at this sandwich! Before I moved here, I was planning on joining the merchant marines or becoming an astronaut. That’s how good this sandwich is- it made me give up space travel. Yeah, yeah, it’s expensive, but if you wink at the girls behind the counter the right way, you can get a free strawberry shortcake.

Your Friend Who Works at a Pizza Place: Duh. Just remember to Avoid The Noid.

Golden Gate Fields Dollar Day: Dollar Entry. Dollar Beer. Dollar Hotdogs. Placing a bet here is more complicated than the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, so you don’t have to worry about losing all your money on the horsies. Last time I was here, I sat between diplomats from the Raiders Nation pouring beer on each other (he called the horse “blud”) and downtown secretaries in cowboy hats doing poppers in the stands. On the off chance you figure out how to place a bet, it’s a short drive to the Hotsy Totsy, where you can continue your losing streak with free shuffleboard.

Uncle Dougie’s: Uncle Dougie is a badass. I can’t speak to the actual restaurant because I’ve only been to his cart. Once, Uncle Dougie gave me a plastic bag of fried chicken for free. He has pink hair. Go eat there. Oh, and sometimes he gets grabby…

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I know that The Office had a two part x-mas special and yes, it was actually kind of funny–but you need to get out more often. Sure, Oakland is scary, but so is getting old.

We are going through a revival process here at Serious ‘Stache, and part of that is going to include an up-to-date list of the latest shows and events in the Bay Area. We wanna keep you in the loop, so you don’t end up spending your weekends holed up like that crazy cat lady across the street.

Until then, get jealous, because this is what you missed at Copland on Friday Night:

A dance party at an old Shooting Range in Oakland is the way to enjoy December. Fair warning: the AUDIO IS HELLA LOUD. Thanks Paul for the video:

If you want to hear a nice studio version Watch BELOW! The boys be going HAM. all. the. time.

GIRLS from Jason Canepa on Vimeo.

RBM Soundcloud. SONGS ARE FREE TO DOWNLOAD. For now at least.

Latest tracks by R&BMILLIONAIRES

Billy Joe explained the night pretty well via twitter

“I had the craziest dream last night about a girl, who was turned into a swan, but her prince falls for the
wrong girl … and she kills herself.” –Natalie Portman as Nina

And I had the craziest dream last night that I was Mila Kunis with a giant black swan tattoo on my back
eating out Natalie Portman for what seemed like eternity; if only I were so lucky.

Darren Aronofsky left me hot and bothered with his new psychological thriller BLACK SWAN. The movie
and trailer are faded into action with the quote written above which is dictated by Natalie Portman.
From the opening scene through the end of the movie, it becomes each person’s individual opinion as to
whether or not the entire production is a dream or a clear premonition of the crazy transformation that
Nina (Natalie Portman) is faced with.

The script, about a prim and proper ballerina determined to earn the role as the lead swan in SWAN
LAKE whom canoodles with the dance teacher to get it, is more or less unoriginal; however, throw in a
lesbian sex scene, a creepy dance- mom, an overtly sexual dance teacher and a black swan and it begins
to make way for the disturbing production that Aronofsky first introduced to audiences at the Venice
Film Festival.

Nina is a pure, talented ballet dancer (white swan) who becomes a sly and tarnished soul (black swan)
after feeling threatened by the new ballet dancer, Lily, from San Francisco (Mila Kunis). She knows that
if she is to hold down her spot as the star role, she must apply a deadly persistence.

The dual personalities that make up the characters of Nina and her mother (Barbara Hershey) are
signature of Arronofsky’s direction. Nina’s mother frighteningly resembles the refrigerator-obsessed-
diet-pill-obsessed mother in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM; always a glossy blank stare and smirk of estranged
satisfaction. Throughout the movie the mother refuses to let go of her daughter’s youth and manages
to get away with sleeping on the love chair by her twenty-something daughter’s bed every night;
frankly, this becomes a problem when Nina cuts her masturbation session short after the surprising
presence of her mother catching Z’s right beside her- the fastest I’ve ever gone from turned on to
completely nauseous.

The cutting-edge cinematography and captivating special effects will cause audiences to jump, cringe,
cry and want to touch themselves. And with pristine performances by Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis,
Winona Rider (yes, she’s in the movie), and Barbara Hershey, no audience member will leave unsatisfied
and unbothered.

We will mostly be playing tribal guarachero, cumbia, and other latino style dance musica. Read more about us hereeee, putos.

Here are some of the remixes we have made
ANIBAL VELASQUEZ PONYLOCO REMIXXX by PONYLOCO

Mezcla cumbia PONYLOCO remix by PONYLOCO

Si me quieres PONYLOCO remix by PONYLOCO

Yea it might rain, but its probably going to be the last real party you attend until new years.

4 loko – OUT
Carlo Rossi Sangria – IN

PONYLOCO FRIDAY
NOV. 19th
2523 MLK jr. way Oakland
LOCOS Only

$3 to keep the crackheads away.
FREE if you use ‘Serious ‘Stache’ as the password.

When I was in college, I spent the spring semester of 2005 in Barcelona. I lived a few blocks from Camp Nou, FC Barcelona’s stadium, and my interest in professional soccer zoomed from casual to intensive. I swooned over the political history of the club – it had defiantly remained a lone bastion for Catalan identity under fascist Franco – and its trademark style of “total football” – where every player save the goalie is expected to be involved in the offensive flow of the game. This mesmerizing display of concentrated athleticism was a game I had never seen before.

That semester I traveled to Italy for my spring break. (The idea of vacationing from Spain is bizarre, isn’t it? College!) One evening, entirely by accident, I ended up at a bar in a small town on the Amalfi Coast. It was the weekend of the Champion’s League final and AC Milan was playing Liverpool FC. To this point I had no vested interest in either team, and I had been in Europe just long enough to find both Brits and Italians obnoxious. I figured that because I was in a bar in Italy, I would be expected to cheer along for AC Milan. I was fine with that.

Except that I had forgotten to account for the fact that British tourists are everywhere. The only bar in the small town on the Amalfi coast was filled to capacity with pink-cheeked, sunburned, singing, shouting Liverpool fans.

It worked out nicely though – they assumed I was a Liverpool fan and had walked into the bar to see the match. I played (sang) along. Good thing too: the match was incredible. AC Milan was up at halftime, 3 to 0. In soccer this is a blowout. The announcers at halftime described it, insofar as Liverpool was concerned, “Mission Impossible. I think it’s done and dusted, unless we’re about to see the most miraculous half of European football ever.” Which is exactly what happened.

Have 11 minutes to spare? Check out this mini-film by a Liverpool fan on the game. It’s hilarious and touching at the same time – and it’s at nearly 600,000 views.

Or just continue reading: Liverpool scored a quick goal to open the second half, and their captain and hometown boy Steven Gerrard did the up-and-down “Let’s Do This!” arm flapping. Two minutes later they scored another one, and then converted a penalty kick to tie it up. The score remained tied through overtime, and then it was time for penalty kicks, which, apropos of nothing, pretty much suck to watch for everyone. (They’re not a true indicator of a better team and they’re an arbitrary way to decide a game.)Liverpool won it on penalty kicks, coming from allllll the way back to become the Champions of Europe, and I was hooked on the soccer club.

This was not the first time I had enthusiastically followed a team coming back from a 3-nothing deficit. The year before (2004) my beloved Boston Red Sox (for proof of my fandom check my Livejournal from 2003)had come back from a 3-game deficit to beat the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. Greatest. Comeback. Ever. Ask history.

In the process of doing so, they helped establish a personal rule of mine: if a sports team comes back from a 3-nothing deficit in a Championship game or series, I thusly consider myself a supporter of that team. (Which means I am also a big fan of the 1942 Maple Leafs, the 1975 Islanders, and the 2010 Flyers. Clearly I play fast and loose with rules.)

One of the sweeter parts of the Red Sox’ World Series win – besides it being their first in 86 years – was the group of people that accomplished it. Only two years earlier they had been purchased by a one John Henry (white commodities broker, not black railroad-spike-hammering folk hero), who, upon taking over, promised to end the Sox’ long championship drought, and to do it in short order. Owners are always promising this sort of stuff, but for some reason everybody believed him. The guy just exudes quiet competence. He had the balls to hire a 28 year-old boy wonder (Boston native Theo Epstein) as General Manager, who then had the balls to hire the most red-necked, mind-blowingly-unintelligent, fantastically-talented 25 baseball players ever. Their collective idiocy became their trademark – and I’ll always believe it ultimately helped them. They were actually stupid enough to believe they could come back from 3 games down on the Yankees. And they did.

History lesson over. A quick check on Barca in 2010: yep, just fine. This year they’re a little worn out post-World Cup (7 of Spain’s starting 11 play for Barca), but they’re still where they need to be, beating energized challengers like Valencia. Am I nervous about Real Madrid? Yes. Do I think we’ll still beat them? Yes.

A quick check on Liverpool: SCREECHING BRAKES NOISE. Liverpool is flat on its face. This analogy works on a literal level as well because when one is flat on one’s face (i.e., lying on the ground after having just lost some kind of physical contest) one can’t see in front of oneself, which may be Liverpool 2010’s problem – they have a paltry 9 goals in 9 matches.

The signs were there coming into this season: they finished seventh in the league last year, had enormous financial debt and cowboy owners from Texas, but they still had Pepe Reina, Steven Gerrard, and Fernando Torres. But, again, the flat-on-their-face thing. If the season finished today, they would be relegated, which is the soccer way of saying, “You’re literally so bad you’re not allowed to play in the league next year. Go to the minors and work some shit out, you embarrassments.”

It’s been a dark, hopeless, out-of-body season for Liverpool fans thus far. Their fans were screaming, pleading, begging to get out from under the weight of the cripplingly inept owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett. Hicks and Gillett were responding with “Fuck off.” Liverpool fans responded by spitting in the face of Hicks’ son-slash-employee at a pub in Liverpool.

Then, suddenly, after a whole lot of boring stories about team management trying to overthrow team ownership via legal proceedings, the fans’ prayer was answered. John Henry and his brainiac minions, the owners of the Red Sox, stepped in and acquired the club out from under Tom Hicks.

So, wait. What? My baseball team owns my soccer team? What does that mean?

For starters, it’s a continued globalization of sport – which is something we’re all ambivalent about, no? This is not the first time a rich American has purchased an English Premier League team, but this is the first time a competent rich American has purchased an English Premier League team.

There are immediate reasons for me not to like this merger. Is it really necessary for Red Sox fans (crazy, passionate, pretty annoying) and Liverpool fans (crazier, more passionate, more annoying) to inbreed? I am dreading certain conversations and accusations about this acquisition, like the bandwagon one. “No, seriously, I liked Liverpool before the Red Sox bought them.” (And yes, I know “the Red Sox” didn’t buy them; I’m assuming context here.)

What’s more, previously I liked Liverpool because of a personal history with them. Now, am I obligated to? Are all Red Sox fans obligated to? Does it work in reverse? Did Red Sox Nation just add a million-plus Scousers to their populace? Are more fans necessary for a franchise already inundated with bandwagon-pink hats?

What about everyone else? A blogger for ESPN touched on this. He’s a Yankees fan and a Manchester United fan. (Continue the algorithm to find he likely also roots for the Lakers, the Patriots, the Red Wings, Goldman Sachs, and Gravity.) He’s lucky – he merely has to hate Liverpool even more now. But what about Yankees/Liverpool fans? What about Red Sox/Man U Fans? Bill Simmons, New England Sports fan extraordinaire, talked about it too–

“By the way, what should I do here? My baseball team (the Red Sox) just bought an English Premier League team (Liverpool), only I already picked an EPL team (Tottenham Hotspur). Do I have to switch? I’ve only been seriously following Tottenham for 15 months. I’ve never been to a game at White Hart Lane. I’ve never worn a jersey. It’s not like I have any real ties to them — it’s just a team I randomly picked to follow. If the Red Sox play up the Liverpool connection, play exhibition games in Fenway, make special jerseys and hats that tie both teams together … I mean, it’s going to be tough for me to root for a different team than what will basically be The Red Sox If They Played Soccer In England And Had Even Crazier Fans.”

Are we at the beginning of a world of Super Owners? In thirty years will we all just be rooting for Super Franchises? Will each Super Franchise have one hat, one jersey, one logo, one tattoo?

“I’m a big Jerry Jones fan.”
“Oh, man, great year for you. The Cowboys are killing it.”
“So are the New Zealand All Blacks.”
“But neither’s even doing nearly as well as the Cameroonian Men’s Soccer Team!”
“Which he also owns!”
“That was my point!”
“Bingo!”
“Here we go!”
ETC.

For what it’s worth, I’m taking a wait-and-see approach. We don’t know how much Henry will play up the Red Sox-Liverpool connection, or to what degree these kinds of takeovers will continue. However, as a fan of Liverpool FC, I’m cautiously pleased about Henry taking over. He has a brilliant history as a businessman and franchise owner. He is measured and pragmatic, but not overly cautious. He knows his own personal strengths and does a consummate job in hiring the “right people.”

Importantly, he’s financially shrewd. This is significant in a league whose collective debt is 3.5 billion British pounds sterling. John Henry can be expected to introduce – or at least contribute to – a new model for EPL success, one that relies on cost-effective player development, much as he has done with the Red Sox. Some shorthand this as “Moneyball,” the name of the Michael Lewis bestseller which detailed Billy Beane’s successful methodology for managing and staffing the Oakland A’s. Henry and Co. have applied Bean’s practices with three times the financial resources and found great success.

It may take a few seasons for Liverpool to challenge for a spot in the top four again, but they will be a fascinating few seasons for us true nerds as we witness Henry’s methodical re-construction of a franchise. At the least, Henry has earned my patience.

So then: over/under on how long it takes for the Steinbrenners to get jealous and purchase Manchester United?