The AP reported this morning that French striker Thierry Henry joined the New York Red Bulls today, and is scheduled to see his first action with the team on June 22 when the Red Bulls face the English Premiership squad from Tottenham Hottspur FC.

Naturally, the Red Bulls website is lousy with all things Henry at the moment. I’m going to act like a real fanboy and link you to some of the items, like this pretty stylish t-shirt.

I’d say Henry’s arrival is a pretty good opportunity for the newly co-opted soccer fans in the metro-NY area to keep the World Cup fervor going. I have tickets for the August 14th match between the Red Bulls and Landon Donovan and the LA Galaxy.

Check out this behind-the-scenes video from the team’s site of Henry’s recent Red Bulls photo shoot.

(Screenshot via NewYorkRedBulls.com)

Guardian writer Steven Wells is all perturbed that us ugly American don’t know the difference between Cricket and Croquet.

This is is tiffed-off face.

Wells claims that the first Cricketeers that came to the U.S. back in the 1800’s were a band of salty, arrogant, muttonchop whiskered bastards look like they’ve stepped straight off some hell-bound pirate ship. They look like they gouge their own mother’s eyeballs out with a rusty cutlass for thruppence.

So if it was Davy Jones who brought us cricket, where could we have gone wrong?

I’ll offer Wells this theory on how things went astray…

I believe it was Dennis Leary who said it best when he said: The French gave us the croissant, and we turned that thing into the croissanwich.

I can only assume that England gave the French cricket and they turned it into croquet. And then the French gave it to us around the same time that pizza joints invented the delicious potato croquette, distracting most of the population for a time from even knowing that either of these games existed.

Thus, cricket and croquet get meshed in people’s psyches… and like most French imports both get treated nonchalantly (just like pasteurization and braille).

In fact, English people should feel bad for us! Cousteau gave you folks the aqualung, and Jethro Tull proved that to be pretty bad ass, did they not?

To his credit, Wells can’t help but admit that croquet is thriving in this country…

As you read this, young Americans are playing eXtreme croquet, colossal croquet and mondo croquet.

Mondo croquet… traditional croquet rules, played with a bowling ball and sledgehammer.

The 11th Annual Mondo Croquet World Championships will indeed take place July 27 at High Noon in Portland Oregon.


It happens during the Mad Hatter festival, so if you go apparently Wonderland dress is encouraged.