Sports / Newsmaker
Beckham comes to America
(AP)
Updated: 2007-07-11 09:29
LAS VEGAS _ The English have been gaga over David Beckham for years, for
reasons not yet fully understood in America.
David Beckham arrive for the British F1 Grand Prix at the Silverstone
race track in central England July 8, 2007. [Reuters]
The short version is Beckham, along with being the master of many
hairstyles, has a special talent for kicking a stationary soccer ball
just where he wants it.
That's big stuff in England. Ordinarily, though, it might not cause much
of a buzz among the beautiful people of Tinseltown.
But the beautiful people are nothing if not adaptable, especially when it
comes to their own. Who would have thought just a few months ago that
they would have cared so much about what happened to poor Paris Hilton?
Beckham, you will soon find out, is nothing if not a beautiful person.
He's got a beautiful head of hair, a beautiful wife, and a beautiful $22
million (euro16 million) home in Beverly Hills.
Among his neighbors are his beautiful best friends, Tom and Katie.
He's also got a beaut of a contract and endorsements that will pay him
untold millions to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy, a minor league soccer
team of sorts that plays in a league that is major in name only.
Beckham begins earning that contract on Friday when he'll be introduced
at the Galaxy's home field, and the perfect media storm begins to brew. A
few days later, his wife's trip to America will get more prime-time U.S.
television coverage than the Beatles did when they first came over.
An hourlong special called "Victoria Beckham: Coming to America," will
chronicle a rich and famous wife who gives up her rich and famous life in
London to live a rich and famous life in Beverly Hills.
The former _ and future _ Posh Spice will be shown doing things most
soccer moms do, like developing her signature line of clothing,
sunglasses and perfume.
But that's merely the beginning.
On July 21, ESPN will wave the pompoms for three hours cheering Beckham's
arrival in a show that will include everything except a concert by the
Spice Girls. Adidas will run constant commercials featuring Beckham and
NFL star Reggie Bush, and Motorola will pay him millions to sell phones.
Americans, whose willingness to fall for hype has never been
overestimated, will undoubtedly be entranced by it all.
And then Beckham will actually play a game.
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1 comment:
Hi, just want to share this article with you. Happy reading :)
When in Rome, why not let the Romans teach you?
In Huangshan (黄山) southern Anhui province in Eastern China, Fu Shou-Bing logs on to the computer in the public library near his village. Since discovering ECpod.com (http://www.ECpod.com), the retired High School Chemistry teacher has been logging on almost every day to the English-Chinese teaching website. Sometimes he cycles the 25 miles home, cooks himself a simple lunch of rice and stir-fried vegetables with salted fish, often returning once again to the library and his new hobby in the evening.
ECpod.com boasts an educational website that teaches members conversational English or Chinese (no "this is an apple" stuff here) via video clips contributed by other members. After a vetting and often transcribing process by language tutors commissioned by the site, the clips are available free of charge in YouTube fashion. The twist? Members film each other in everyday activities, hoping other members will learn not just their native tongue, but also cultural innuendos lost in textbooks and more conventional means of language learning.
"One member filmed himself cooking in his kitchen. We got a few emails asking what condiments he used," says a bemused Warwick Hau, one of the site's more public faces. One emailer even wanted to know if she could achieve the same Chinese stir-fry using ingredients from her regular CR Vanguard (华润超级) supermarket. "We often forget our every day activities may not be as mundane to people on the other side of the world," Hau adds. Another such clip is "loaches" - a Chinese mother of 3 filmed her children and their friends playing with a bucket of loaches - slippery eel-like fish the children were picking up and gently squeezing between their fingers.
Lately the members have also begun to make cross-border friends and contacts. The ECpal function works much the same way sites like Facebook.com and MySpace.com work - members can invite each other to view their clips and make friends. And it has its fair share of juvenile humor as well. “Farting Competition” features two teenagers and graphic sound effects. Within several days, the clip was one of the most popular videos that week, likely due to mass-forwarding by the participants’ schoolmates.
For other members keen to learn more than the fact juvenile humor is similar everywhere, there are many home videos featuring unlikely little nuggets of wisdom. “The last thing I learned from the site is why you never find green caps for sale in China”, says Adam Schiedler one of the English language contributors to the site. Green caps signify cuckolded husbands, particularly shameful in China as they are a huge loss of face. Adam vows not to buy any green headgear for his newfound friends.
The subject matter of the videos often speaks volumes about its contributors. Members choose their own content and film the clip wherever they please, some of their efforts drawing attention to rural surroundings and the quaint insides of little homes otherwise not seen unless you backpack your way thru the tiny dirt roads and villages along the Chinese countryside.
Idyllic countrysides and cooking lessons aside however, ECpod marries the latest video sharing technology with the old school way of teaching a language - from the native speakers on the street. It's a modern, more convenient alternative to spending 6 months in China. And why not let the Chinese teach you?
Visit http://www.ECpod.com
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