Deadwood

After a long 13 years, the final chapter of Deadwood aired tonight.  A show that's definitely in my top 10 of all time - great characters and some of the best, albeit profane, dialogue to ever grace the TV screen.  I haven't watched the finale - mainly because, unbelievably, for a show that I love so much, that inexplicably only ran for 3 seasons, and which I actually own the first two seasons of on DVD, I don't think I've actually watched the third season at all.  I only realized this today.  I can't believe it somehow passed me by or that I never got round to it.  So now I need to watch the third season before I watch today's finale.  Great, add that to the list... 

Observation

Was the year I was born in - 1976 - the worst year ever for music?  Judging by the quality of the YouTube clip I just watched of the 30 best songs of the year, undoubtedly.  Most of the songs were shockingly bad.  Seems like 1976 was the apex of the awful disco tune.  Perhaps it was just the compilation I happened to come across - so some further YouTube dives are warranted.  This was the best song of the 30:

And I think this is only because I like the Red Hot Chili Pepper's cover of it in the 90's.

Electric Cars

Very, very slowly, I am starting to see more electric cars on the road.  Perhaps it is a city thing – where electric cars and their somewhat limited range (100 miles before recharging?) are manageable.  What I do know is that there are more and more parking spaces dedicated to electric cars and their recharging stations, including in my work garage.  Work has started to send out regular surveys to see if anyone has or is thinking about buying an electric car, with the idea of probably taking away even more regular parking spots – just great for us average joes.  I have no immediate desire to get an electric car – they are still too expensive (the cheapest are still about double what I paid for my new car).  But if prices come down, extremely unlikely under the least environmentally-friendly president ever, then I wouldn’t say no.  I will say that I will never get a Tesla.  I hate Elon Musk, and refuse to have anything to do with any of his products.  I mean I REALLY hate him – just a total dick and douchebag.  I think about that Thai soccer team that got stuck in the caves, and he used it as a publicity stunt for his products – then when one of the divers criticized him and his useless submarine, without evidence he called the diver a pedophile.  Nice guy.

Mood

First day back at work after a long weekend, with a nightmarish week ahead of me.

Pollen

There is so much pollen flying about, that it looks like my driveway is covered in a light dusting of snow.  I have absolutely no idea where it comes from, but I'm just thankful that I'm not suffering from any kind of allergies at the moment.  That will come in a month or two.  I'm not sure whether this photo does it justice.

Green Lake

Not how I want to spend my Memorial Day weekend - woke up at 5 am this morning feeling absolutely dreadful, including some dry retching.  And then have been feeling awful all day - with a lingering headache.  I don't know whether I ate something that disagreed with me (although I haven't had anything out of the ordinary) or yet another bad reaction to blood pressure meds (I started a new medication on Friday).  But I wanted to do a hike today, but obviously didn't want to do anything too strenuous - so went for a Seattle classic that I haven't done for a while (although a quick search of my blog reveals that it wasn't as long ago as I thought), the Green Lake loop.  I used to do this all the time when I lived in the neighboring Greenwood neighborhood - a flat 3 mile loop around Green Lake in North Seattle.  And always tons of people - today was no exception.  At least I didn't experience painful leg cramps like I have been suffering from recently - that bodes well for the new medication, and for doing another hike tomorrow (though, again, probably something not strenuous and fairly local - I have no desire to get stuck in holiday traffic). 

A First

Well I guess it had to happen sooner or later, but for the first time in the Greater Seattle area (and indeed for the first time anywhere for me) I actually saw someone wearing a Trump cap.  It wasn't one of those infamous red "Make America Great Again" cap, but a camouflage one with a big American flag and the word Trump emblazoned across it.  To be honest, I was quite surprised to see someone wearing one in the liberal bastion that is West Washington.  Must take some guts, since I've got to imagine that it does cause some staring and some comments - I know I wanted to say something (I wish I carried around a little bell with me, then I could have followed them around chanting Shame, Shame, Shame and ringing the bell!).  But if I was going to see someone wearing something like this, I would have put money on it happening where it did - in Walmart.

Employee morale

On a Friday before a long weekend – it’s Memorial Day on Monday, a rare bank holiday for us – we normally get an e-mail telling us we can leave early today.  And, as I write this about 1.15 pm, have we had this e-mail yet?  Have we heck.  Other departments have been told they can leave early, but we have been left behind by either an indifferent or a cruel upper management in our department.  So much for employee morale.

And, as I write this at 1.30 pm, I’ve just been sent a meeting invite for a meeting at 2 pm.  On a Friday afternoon before a long weekend.  Really?  Who the heck does that?  I don’t care how urgent it is – I’m not going to even think about whatever it is you want to discuss in this meeting until I’m back in the office next week.  Some people are just amazingly inconsiderate and/or lacking common sense.  I have already switched off at work for the rest of the day.

By the way, I have edited this blog post to use the word “heck” instead of another word I would prefer to use.

Fortune

I had a fortune cookie today that told me “You are compassionate and fun-loving”, conclusive proof once and for all that these fortunes are baloney.

Post Mid-Life

Although I’m “only” in my 40’s, I feel like the ravages of old age are really catching up to me recently.  Particularly on the physical side, though I’m hardly in the best of mental health either – I almost take the fact that I suffer from depression for granted now, though I don’t think I’m anywhere near as depressed as I have been in the past.   On the physical side, it starts with taking medication for my high blood pressure, the side effects of which are really causing me issues.  I’m about to start a new medication, as I just cannot tolerate the one I’m on now as the leg and feet pain/cramping it causes is giving me fits.  My main forms of exercise are walking/hiking and table tennis, and when the medication is hampering my ability to do both of those then I am not in a good place.  This couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time – I’ve had to bail on the work step challenge as I can’t get anywhere near 10,000 steps a day at the moment, and although I’m still in the work table tennis tournament I am severely hampered by my pain and discomfort.  And just when I was in the form of my life and probably the #1 seed entering the tournament – typical for something like this to happen just before my best ever chance of winning a trophy for the first time EVER in my life.  I suspect this will be one of many changes to my blood pressure medication as the search for the most tolerant but most effective drug continues on – medication I’m going to be on for the rest of my life.  The other disheartening sign of old age is my increasingly thinning hair – the number of hairs I seem to be shedding is quite alarming at the moment, and my scalp is becoming increasingly visible under my hairline.  No buzz cuts ever again – I need to keep my hair relatively long in the hope that it provides some kind of cover.  Before long, I suspect I’m going to have a comb over like an old man.

Free Seminar

In light of having nothing better to write about, let me post a photo I took from a flyer I got a few weeks ago.

I don’t know what peaked my interest enough to warrant taking a photo, maybe the dramatic imagery?  Note, I didn’t attend.  I don’t think I’ll get answers for “an uneasy world” from the Bible, and particularly not Bible prophecy.  But I did like the increasingly alarmist titles of the 3 seminars: Earth’s Future Foretold, An Image To The Beast, On The Road To Armageddon.  Yikes!

Postmortem

As expected, some of the reviews of Game of Thrones last episode, and indeed it’s last season, have been scathing.  And having reflected on it, I do think the last couple of seasons have been really disappointing.  I don’t think it’s enough to change my mind that this is one of the best TV shows of this decade – many of the earlier episodes and seasons are outstanding - but the ending has been anticlimactic, in much the same way that Lost was a decade before.  It’s interesting to note that as soon as the series went beyond the book material, the drop off in the quality of writing, plotting and pacing was significant.  I’ve owned the books for some time, but never started to read them – mainly because I didn’t want to compare or spoil the TV show – but now I’m finally in a position to start them, and it will be interesting to compare and contrast.  Unfortunately, I fear that George R R Martin will probably die before he has a chance to finish them.  Similarly, I saw a theory that the show changed for the worse when it moved away from sociological storytelling (a focus on larger society) to psychological storytelling (a focus on the individual)– a really interesting, if somewhat over intellectualized, theory that probably has some truth to it.  In many ways, I have some sympathy with the producers that the last season has felt so rushed – this is a huge show with a huge cast who I’m sure wouldn’t want to commit to lots more years for another 2 or 3 seasons that the show probably needed.  So in many ways the show has been a victim of its own success.  But that’s not going to stop me buying the box set, and indeed I’ve already pre-ordered the “Complete Collector’s Set” for the princely sum of $250.  That’s a lot of money for something that, much like other box sets I own, I’ll probably never get round to watching…

GoT S8E6

And so it ends.  I'm writing this first paragraph about an hour before the episode starts.  Hoping that the series goes out with a bang rather than a whimper, not going on any other websites since the episode has already aired on the East Coast and I don't want any spoilers, and in a somewhat distracted frame of mind since over the weekend I've binged 8 of 10 episodes of the fifth season of Bosch, I'm just watching the 9th episode right now and I desperately want to watch the last episode tonight.  Bosch is definitely one of those great underrated extremely bingeable police shows.  But back to Game of Thrones - I shared my predictions about the finale to my colleagues this week, one obvious and one less so.  The obvious - the mad Queen is going to be assassinated.  Not sure by who - could be Arya, could be Jon, could be Tyrion.  My money is probably on Jon, but not totally sold on that.  The less obvious - though something that I'm definitely not the only one to predict - is that no one will sit on the Iron Throne at the conclusion, it will be destroyed and the Seven Kingdoms will rule separately.  Let's see.  I'll write again in about 2 hours time....

I'm now watching the finale - a few comments.  How the heck did so many Unsullied and Dothraki survive the Battles of Winterfell and King's Landing?  That seems highly improbable.  Jon Snow, you stupid,naive fool - you don't know anything.  But you killed Dany, as you had to.  Nice touch of the dragon then melting the Iron Throne, but where it went with the body who knows.  A Yara Greyjoy sighting!  Plus sightings of other people who I recognize but don't remember their names!  Sam's suggestion of a democracy was hilariously laughed down - that was funny.  Bran the King!!!!!!   Come on now.  And when was he ever called Bran the Broken before?  And Sansa Queen of the independent North - again, as it had to be.  And Jon Snow back to the Night's Watch - a nice echo of the early seasons.  I'm glad I visited Dubrovnik before Game of Thrones - I bet it is overwhelmed with tourists and fans now.  Attempted joke at George R R Martin's expense - unnecessary.  The new "council" is hilarious.  We're not going to end on a soppy montage are we?  Oh no.  Not sure I come away from the finale entirely satisfied - solid, but just unspectacular and for the most part too predictable.  I'm not going to sign the online petition for them to remake the last season, as millions of others have done and will continue to do so, but I can understand why you would do so.  I look forward to reading the online backlash now in the coming days. 

Shock

When you're taking medication for high blood pressure, it doesn't do your blood pressure any good when you get sent a bill for close to $700 for your doctor visits.  I'm hoping that it's just because they haven't got my insurance info - as I have absolutely no intention of paying that much just for them measuring my blood pressure a couple of times.  The very fact that they billed me that much says plenty about the american healthcare system - for all its flaws, be grateful for having the NHS.

Fire

An eventful morning.  I was sitting in my cube working away, and suddenly started seeing all this smoke outside my window.  Then the smell hit – something horrible-smelling was burning.  Was wondering whether something untoward had happened in the lab on our ground floor, but there hadn’t been a fire alarm or anything.  Eventually, with everyone else, went to the break room overlooking Lake Union and saw all the smoke billowing from some boats moored on the lake just a block away from our office.  It was a boat fire (apparently it started on a private pleasure boat, and also spread to a commercial vessel and pier) .  Loads of fire engines and fire fighters, loads of hoses and lots and lots of smoke – some very dark and heavy.  Briefly went onto the roof – nope, that was a mistake – absolutely stank.  Then popped outside to see all the activity – but only managed to get a load of smoke into my clothes and now I really stink (probably with something toxic and unpleasant).  You could hear all the news helicopters circling – this is definitely going to make the local news this evening.  Even got asked a few questions by a reporter who had just turned up – he was asking about an explosion, but there definitely wasn’t one as I would have heard it.  You know it was bad when a firefighter was just giving out breathing masks to me and other onlookers.  I didn’t take any decent photos – but I might try to “borrow” some from the internet:

Ooooh medication's what you need

Started a new, and stronger, blood pressure medication over the weekend – and not happy at all about some of the side effects I seem to be experiencing.  Not entirely unexpected as my body adjusts to the new medication – but I’m suffering from fatigue and, perhaps most alarmingly of all, leg muscle cramps.  This is really hindering my ability to do things – it was painful for me just to walk to the sandwich shop yesterday, and today my feet are aching after a few games of table tennis.  I’ve already kind of given up on the step challenge – it’s just not happening.  Maybe because I’m on a diuretic I need to drink more water to avoid muscle dehydration, and maybe I need to have at least a banana a day to keep my potassium levels up – but something is amiss, and if it affects my ability to walk and hike then I am very concerned.  Not good.

Devolution

I have intentionally cut back on my political posts in this blog – I’ve already been accused of being too negative, and anything regarding politics is extremely unlikely to be positive in the current climate.  But I do have to say something about some recent developments – the likes of which are quite profoundly scary to me.  It seems like the US is heading in entirely the wrong direction.  Just today I’ve seen stories about abortion banned in Alabama, massive anti-vaccine rallies in New York, the continued refusal of the President (and his cronies) to release his tax returns, environmentally-friendly language removed from mission statements regarding public land, escalating tensions between Iran and the US, and the White House refusing to combat online extremism.  This is not the country I want to live in – and I don’t think it’s the country most Americans want to live in – when seemingly  logic and commonsense is thrown out of the window.  And the scariest thing of all?  I think the President is going to win a 2nd term.  In my opinion, the only viable Democratic opponent to Trump who is going to win those all-important swing states in the election is Joe Biden – but I just see too much opposition to him within the Democratic party.  Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.  So I predict another 4 years of this fool in charge – just great.

Free Solo

Watched the documentary Free Solo today.  About a free solo climb (no ropes!) and free solo climber.  Highly recommended if you haven't seen it - a lot more interesting than it sounds, I can understand why it won an Oscar.  Reminded me a bit of Grizzly Man, but (SPOILER ALERT!) with a happier ending.  I'll never understand why someone would want to intentionally put themselves at risk to climb up 3000 feet of a near vertical cliff face without rope.  Makes for a fascinating insight into that kind of mindset - and particularly how it affects the people around them.  And yet more confirmation of what a boring and unfulfilling life I have lived.

GoT S8E5

The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones.  Only one to go after this.  Ever (discounting any spin-offs/prequels!).  That makes me sad, but maybe it is for the better.  As I watched the episode, I enjoyed it as a spectacle – it maybe might even be the best episode of this series.  Certainly I found the battle more engrossing and visceral than the Battle of Winterfell – the advantage of actually having it well lit!  But on reflection, ultimately too many flaws in this episode – as with much of this season – to overcome.  From the sudden total ineffectiveness of crossbows, the Iron Fleet and the Golden Company, to the very predictable destruction of King’s Landing and rise of the “Mad Queen”, to the fan-service Cleganebowl, to the somewhat anticlimactic death of Jamie and Cersei in the collapsing rubble.  I don’t think I have the same level of frustration and disappointment with this last season, and particularly this last episode, as many other online recappers seem to have – but I have been trying to think about what is lacking.  I think a big one is that the element of surprise has gone – everything seems very predictable, and almost everything I’ve predicted for this last season has come to pass.  The shock and horror of something like The Red Wedding seems like a distant memory – but something like that is what we have been missing for the last few seasons.  And I think the other big problem is the pacing.  I seem to remember this was a big issue for me in the last season, and as we rush through this truncated final season the momentous big pay-offs do not land as hard or as satisfying as they should.  We needed better character development, more nuance, more satisfaction when things actually come to pass or not.  My somewhat poor analogy is when I first drove up to Seattle from California – there were 2 ways to do it.  You could take the I-5 interstate – the most direct and the most boring.  Or you could take your time and enjoy the sights and views from routes 1 and 101 on the coast, and inland detours to places like the Redwood National Forest and Oregon Caves National Monument.  This last season has felt like we are on I-5, when ultimately one of the best things about Game of Thrones over the many years has been its distractions and detours.  Shucks.

TV Habits

My DVR is currently about 50% full with 65 recordings, and another 12 scheduled for tonight.  How sad is that - that is way too much TV that I will probably never get round to watching all of.  And a lot of those programs are really a waste of both my DVR space and my time if I ever get round to watching them - including a lot of episodes from series that then got cancelled - but I still don't have the heart to delete them (yet!).  I won't bother listing all the shows here - nobody really cares, but I'm also a little bit embarrassed by some of the junk I'm watching.  There is one noticeable exception - I'll recap Game of Thrones tomorrow...!

Deception Pass State Park

With the hot weather, I fancied doing a walk by some water today - so I made an early morning drive north to Whidbey Island and Deception Pass State Park.  This is the most visited state park in Washington - and one I have been to and driven through several times before.  But I decided to do a hike that I hadn't done before, round some rocky headlands - Bowman Bay, Lottie Point, Lighthouse Point, Rosario Beach and Rosario Point.  And got to be honest, this hike might be one of my favorites.  About 5 miles, not entirely flat but no major elevation changes, and some great views - if it isn't foggy!  So much for the local weather forecast yesterday for clear blue skies - a marine layer had come in and so all the shore was foggy and only started to clear up by the time I was done.  But I have no regrets over getting there early - avoided the crowds and pretty much had the trails to myself, and by the time I left there were no free spots in the car park.  I will definitely do this hike again - maybe on a clear and crisp autumnal or winter morning.  Some moody photos below:

Hot

We’re currently in the midst of a heatwave here – temperatures up into the mid-80’s (Fahrenheit – about 30 Celsius).  I might even be wearing shorts for the first time this calendar year tomorrow!  The problem is that I am once again reminded of the issues that my house has when the temperature warms up – notably how hot it gets upstairs, and how the house develops a somewhat unpleasant smell.  I think it might be time to buy one of those window AC units – the couple of hundred dollar outlay will probably be worth it if I can get a decent night’s sleep in a cool bedroom on those hot summer days.  As for the smell, I have no clue.  Since it’s a musty kind of smell, I’m guessing it’s some kind of mold or mildew that “activates” when it’s hot – but I can’t find the source.  I doubt my landlord will bring in some kind of mold specialist to locate (and fix?) the issue – but I think I have to ask, especially if it gets worse.  At the least, I think I need to improve the air circulation in my house.  Time to retrieve my portable fans from wherever I stored them over winter.  And maybe invest in an indoor air purifier as well.  If I ever buy my own home, it is going to be modern with central heating and AC.

Steps

The most recent work step challenge has started this week.  I don't have a Fitbit, Apple Watch or any sort of wearable tracker to measure my steps, so instead I'm using my iPhone.  The problem is that I don't always have my phone on me - for example it's not in my pocket when I'm at home, most of the time at work, or playing ping pong - so I think I'm seriously underestimating the number of steps I'm taking.  I think I'm doing over 10,000 steps a day so far, even though my iPhone says I'm not.  Here are a few photos from some random walks I've taken in the afternoon/early evenings this week:

Ajax 2-3 Spurs

Lightning strikes twice!  Not quite as emotional as yesterday, but just as dramatic and just as unlikely.  I thought Spurs had a better chance than Liverpool of progressing, but not after they went 2-0 down.  So I stopped following the game and went for a walk instead.  By the time I got back and checked the score, they somehow had scored 3 goals - including one at the death - to miraculously get through.  Feel bad for Ajax - but a great advert for football and a much needed strong showing from the Premier League teams in Europe this year.  I'm happy for Spurs - another team I don't actively dislike, mainly because I do actively dislike Arsenal, but I feel the final is Liverpool's to lose. 

Liverpool 4-0 Barcelona

I didn't see that one coming - my oh my.  The game was on the telly at the Mexican place I went with a couple of friends for lunch today - I noticed it was 1-0 but didn't really pay much attention to it.  Honestly, didn't think Liverpool had a chance in hell.  Got back to the office and went to a meeting before I eventually had a chance to check the final score on the BBC website - good grief.  And I'm writing this now as I'm watching a full replay of the game this evening and mightily enjoying it (and thank god Suarez doesn't play in the Premier League any more as he is a real <category A swear word>).  I confess to having a soft spot for Liverpool - after all they were the team I supported as a naive prepubescent glory fan.  I don't think they're going to win the league - though they haven't folded yet like I expected they would - but I think they deserve to win the Champions League after this. 

GoT S8E4

Well, I missed the Starbucks cup that made it into this episode.  For a show that costs so much to make, that is an embarrassing oversight.  When I inevitably buy the blu ray box set, I wonder if that cup will be edited out.  I quite liked this episode – any episode with more Tyrion and Varys is never a bad thing in my books.  Much like how easy it was to kill the Night King in the last episode, it was remarkably easy to kill a dragon with one of those giant crossbows.  Implausibly easy.  I enjoyed the drunken victory celebration/wake, and then the scheming, plotting and sense of intrigue and impending doom in this episode.  I don’t think Dany’s storyline is going to end well – we are definitely hurtling towards a “Mad Queen” situation.  It felt like we said goodbye to a few secondary characters who should really have died in the battle, but the best and most interesting confrontations are still on the table – The Hound vs The Mountain, Jamie vs Cersei, Dany vs John, and I would particularly enjoy Tyrion vs Varys if they choose to go that way, plus Arya and whoever she is after (Cersei? – with any number of contenders for who wants to kill Cersei, I would be almightily surprised if she survives another episode).  With only a couple of episodes left, I want and expect more bloodshed and some key character deaths next week

2nd Biggest Televised Sport

An interesting article I read recently with an American viewpoint on a specifically English/British "sport":

Darts for Darts’ Sake

How a pub game became the second-biggest televised sport in England … and maybe soon America

It was just after 7 p.m. in an arena in Birmingham, England. The light was low. The crowd was murmuring. A song came over the loudspeaker. It was “Shut Up and Dance.” On cue, middle-aged men rose from communal tables. With one hand, they held giant plastic cups of beer above their heads. With the other hand, some pointed a single, ecstatic finger toward the ceiling. They began to dance.

Throughout the night, they would rise from their tables to dance again and again. To “Sweet Caroline.” To “Ice Ice Baby.” To Tina Turner’s “The Best.” To Pitbull.

An anthropologist who saw white men dancing so unashamedly would guess that one of two things had happened. Someone turned on a low-numbered SiriusXM channel. Or else the men were watching a niche sport that has conquered British TV and is now moving to colonize the world, including America. The men had come to watch the darts.

Darts, as its Vince McMahon–like impresario Barry Hearn likes to say, is a world-class sport that’s played at a party. As “Shut Up and Dance” wafted through the arena, Michael Smith climbed onto the stage. Smith’s face is as round as a dartboard. He has black hair cut into a mohawk. His nickname is “Bully Boy.” But as he stood at the foot of the stage, he kissed his hands and received the audience’s applause, like a tenor who was about to burst into song.

Smith’s opponent was a hulking Serb named Mensur Suljovic. Suljovic’s nickname is the “The Gentle.” But beneath his fixed, ebullient smile, there is a tireless worker. As Suljovic told me, “I never go on holiday … ever.”

Smith and Suljovic began to play darts. The Gentle aimed at the highest-value part of the board, then threw a 20, another 20, and a treble 20—scoring 100. Pretty good. Bully Boy walked up to the toe line, or oche, and put all three of his darts in treble 20. “Onnnnnne hundred and eighty,” the caller, Russ Bray, growled into a microphone. Bully Boy had gotten the maximum score.

The funny thing about attending a darts match is that you can hardly see the darts. The dartboard was mounted on a stage at Arena Birmingham. The players stood just under eight feet away. Even fans in the best seats tended to watch the action on video screens. “How many are here—8,000?” said Keith Deller, the 1983 world champion. “Maybe 1,500 might be proper dart fans. The rest are just coming out for a night.”

“The whole perception of the sport changes from a pub game, where people in this country especially look down their nose [at it]. Working class people having fun. It’s not really allowed in Britain, you know?” —Barry Hearn

The fans in attendance weren’t the only fans, of course. Darts—like its American cousin, the World Series of Poker—is a product of the “magic of telly.” Onstage, Smith and Suljovic were surrounded by 11 Sky Sports cameras, including a jib that rotated above and around them. Two cameramen prowled through the crowd hunting for fans in funny costumes.

On the live Sky broadcast, viewers had watched Smith and Suljovic walk to the stage on a green carpet, flanked by security, like boxers walking to the ring. In fact, the carpet terminated in the middle of the arena. Smith and Suljovic had walked to the end of the carpet, waited there for their cues, and then made their televised walk.

“It’s two men throwing from 8 feet at a board, generally at treble 20,” said Rory Hopkins, a longtime Sky Sports producer. “You do need to have every trick in the book.”

Dart players are about the most effortlessly authentic athletes in the world. (“I didn’t feel meself tonight,” one said apologetically, after turning in a poor performance.) But the sport’s journey from the English pub to U.S. television is a story of fierce creation. The imagineering it required is reminiscent of 1980s WWF. Darts is infused with so much animal showmanship that it almost feels American.

Here in the U.K., darts runs on TV on Thursday nights—a night when the Premier League doesn’t play. From that safe harbor, it has flourished. In 2018, the World Darts Championship final was watched by 1.4 million British viewers and another 2.7 million Germans. Last year, BBC America’s Thursday Night Darts netted around 1 million viewers a week on linear TV; in January, the network awarded darts the prestigious post–Doctor Who slot on New Year’s Day. The surest sign that there’s money to be made from darts is that American viewers can find more than a dozen Professional Darts Corporation events (the U.K. Open, Brisbane Darts Masters) in the Sears catalog of sports offered by DAZN.

It’s probably an overstatement to say darts is Europe’s second-most popular TV sport behind soccer. Which means Barry Hearn says it all the time. Hearn, who is a scenery-chewing 70 years old, is one of Britain’s most fully realized sports promoters—think Dana White with a better tailor. Two weeks ago, I went to visit him at his office, which is located in a Georgian mansion in Essex, east of London. The cabbie who left me at the doorstep said, “Come to see His Majesty, have you?”

Hearn sat behind a desk in what used to be living room. Out the door, there was a picture of him with Don King, and a note from Rupert Murdoch, scribbled in the heat of a rights negotiation, which began, “Hearn—Get fucked …” Hearn spoke of his favorite topic, which is the overwhelming success of Barry Hearn.

“I’m a commercial animal,” he said. “I’m the best in the world at what I do, I think. Well, I know. But I hope other people think.”

Hearn has tentacles in TV sports like boxing (his company promotes Anthony Joshua), tenpin bowling, and snooker, which was running on British TV last week. In 1997, Hearn walked into a tavern in the town of Purfleet to watch a darts tournament. Through the cigarette smoke, he could see a mass-participation sport being played by oddly endearing blokes—the raw materials of a hit. “Fuck,” Hearn thought. “I can smell the money.”

According to historian Patrick “Doctor Darts” Chaplin, the first darts match appeared on the BBC in 1937. But after a TV heyday that stretched into the ’80s, darts slipped into obscurity. In 2001, Hearn bought the Professional Darts Corporation. With the help of Murdoch’s newly created Sky Sports, he set about refitting the sport for the modern age.

Hearn’s up-from-the-pub transformation of darts is similar to the one he underwent himself. (He was quick to point out that he was speaking to me in an unposh, East London accent.) Removed from its working-class trappings—but with its players still radiating working-class chic—darts could become something like England’s NASCAR.

“The whole perception of the sport changes from a pub game, where people in this country especially look down their nose [at it],” Hearn said. “Working class people having fun. It’s not really allowed in Britain, you know?”

“It’s very accessible, isn’t it?” said John McDonald, a stage announcer who is the Michael Buffer of darts. “You can’t go in your garden at home and go, ‘C’mon honey, go long!’ and throw a ball and expect her to dive through the hedge and catch it. You can easily go in the kitchen, put a bull up, and have a little chuck.”

The Professional Darts Corporation could sell out an arena in London every week. But Hearn learned from the WWE that there’s value in tending to fans in Tulsa and Columbus. The event I attended in Birmingham would be followed by stops in Manchester, Sheffield, and Leeds.

In the ’70s and ’80s, darts was dominated by shambling characters like Jocky Wilson, who polished off a half-dozen pre-match vodkas “so that I can play my best.” Today, the men (and a few women) who compete at darts are a more streamlined, professional class. “They’re just robots,” said Deller. “It’s all about money now. I bet if you asked the top 20 ‘Do you love darts?’ about 12 of them might say no. It’s just a job.”

Thus, the characters must be amplified, if not created, by TV. The first thing Hearn mandated is that every darts player should have a catchy nickname. “Bully Boy” and “The Gentle” compete with Rob “Voltage” Cross, a former electrician. The Scotsman Peter Wright is “Snakebite.” Daryl Gurney, who has a profile like Jay Leno’s, is “SuperChin.”

“It’s actually quite insulting to call someone SuperChin, I think,” Hearn said. “But he loves it.” Gurney agreed. “I’m not a spice boy,” he told me.

“When you look at a darts player, you see someone who may well live in the street next to you—but they’re good.” —Barry Hearn

Like pro wrestlers, darts player also have walk-on music that’s picked by a committee of sponsors, managers, and league higher-ups. After joining the tour in 2016, Cross walked on to the stage to Electric Six’s “Danger! High Voltage.” After a huddle with the powers that be, Cross now comes out to Arrow’s “Hot Hot Hot,” a song everyone can sing along to.

The hits of the ’80s, the ’90s, and today have pulled darts toward a culturally unchallenging, family-friendly atmosphere like the WWE’s Hulkamania era. Beer that flowed freely in darts 40 years ago has been removed not just from the stage but the media room, as well. Darts has cheerleaders, but last year the PDC evicted the “walk-on girls” that accompanied the competitors to the stage.

Poker’s TV producers marketed Phil Ivey and Johnny Chan as sharks that could relieve a mark of his money. Hearn pitched the PDC’s dartsmen a bit differently. They are proper gents. “When you look at a darts player, you see someone who may well live in the street next to you—but they’re good,” Hearn said. Last November, when fans complained that Welshman Gerwyn “The Iceman” Price was indulging in gonzo celebrations during matches, he was fined a whopping 21,500 pounds.

As with wrestling and poker, darts’ rough edges have been sanded down so carefully that it’s a shock when the sport’s old rowdiness sneaks back in. Last year, at a tournament in the city of Wolverhampton, someone let out some horrific farts on stage during a match. To the delight of the British press, the players blamed each other. Asked for comment, Hearn deadpanned, “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this.”

As a TV sport, darts has a major problem: Nothing much happens. The “action” is as Martin Amis once described it: “solid thunks followed by shouted numbers against a savage background of taunts and screams.” When Sky Sports producers show an instant replay, they’re more likely to show a player celebrating than throwing a dart. The open-mouthed fist pump is more electric than the actual sport.

“We create the show in many ways,” said Dave Clark, one of Sky Sports’ hosts. Some of the tricks will be familiar to any American who watches too much ESPN. Sky Sports’ broadcasts begin with computer-generated darts flying through the air, their points emerging tumescently from the barrels.

Before each match, Sky shows a graphic of the two competitors standing in profile. Then, they turn their heads toward the camera and cross their arms. The shot owes something to the UFC. But with their plain black slacks and regular-guy physiques, darts players look more like two salesmen competing to win this year’s Toyotathon sales event.

The effect of such production values is to convince viewers at home they’re watching a big-time sport. “Sometimes that belief can be generated by you just telling them over and over and over again until in the end they believe you,” Hearn said.

The darts matches I watched moved briskly and clocked in at about a half-hour—a nod to distracted millennials, Hearn said. The game is fairly simple: Each competitor starts a “leg” with 501 points. The first to whittle that number down to exactly zero wins—and the dart that takes them to zero must land in the outer, “double” ring or in the bullseye. Sky puts the winning combinations on screen so mathematically-challenged viewers can follow along.

Long ago, the Beeb invented the classic darts shot: a split screen that shows the player and the board. Sky and others have added nifty flourishes. If the competitor throws two treble 20s, as Bully Boy did, Sky will execute a Robert Altman zoom toward the board to see if the player can land the coveted 180.

Watching from the U.S., I found that Sky’s directors had an uncanny ability to anticipate which the part on the dartboard the player would target. In Birmingham, I went to the Sky truck and found Deller, the former world champion, sitting next to Rory Hopkins. Officially, Deller is a “spotter.” But he’s more like the wizard of darts. His job is to figure out which part of the board the players are aiming at and tell the director, so that Sky’s camera shot arrives on your screen a split second before the dart.

“We’d probably get away with anyone else not turning up,” Hopkins said. “If he didn’t turn up, we’d be in a lot of trouble.”

Deller had a sheet of paper next to him on which he’d scrawled out Smith and Suljovic’s tendencies, which helped some. Otherwise, Deller relied on the muscle memory of an ex-champion or watched the players’ eyes. When he saw Bully Boy drop his eyes from treble 20 to treble 19, Deller yelled “Down!” and Sky’s director took a shot of the bottom of the board. The comedian Stephen Fry was so mesmerized by Deller’s talent that he once asked to watch him in action.

The final trick darts producers figured out was how to make those dancing fans into characters on the broadcast. It was the legendary darts announcer Sid Waddell who described a darts show as a combination of Christians being fed to the lions and the Munich beer festival.

“When you analyze the viewing habits of darts fans, approximately one-third of their time is spent actually watching the darts,” Hearn said. “Two-thirds is spent socializing, drinking, gambling.”

Hearn added: “Andy Warhol said everybody wants to be famous for 15 minutes. Darts fans want to be famous for two seconds.”

In the style of wrestling and the NFL, Sky Sports sends its cameras hunting for fans dressed as French fries, as traffic cones, and as Freddie Mercury. (Spotting me with a notepad, “Freddie” demanded I bump knuckles with him.) The promotion distributes blank signs (the sponsor’s name is handily printed at the top) that fans can scribble jokes on when they get to the arena. Sky shows the ones with the funniest quips.

There’s a deep and knotty psychology to darts that’s only hinted at on the TV broadcast. Backstage, I asked James “The Machine” Wade what it was like to win a match on television. “It’s a bit like being the unpopular boy at school and you have a slight bit of success in life,” he said.

And to lose?

“You feel like the bullied kid at school again,” he said.

For the final match in Birmingham (slotted in the viewer-rich, 9 p.m. hour), I pushed away four empty beer cups and took a seat at a communal table near the stage. The competitors were Wade and Dutchman Michael “Mighty Mike” van Gerwen. Van Gerwen sits at the top of the Premier League standings, if not the entire sport. But Wade played very well, taking a lead of seven legs to five. (The night’s matches were best of 14.) Van Gerwen had to win the last two legs to force a draw.

It was a wonderful half-hour watching sports. From a seat in the crowd, the sound was far richer than it is on TV. It meant something when a fan stopped his boozy conversation to turn to the stage. But the way darts has transformed itself for TV is so all-encompassing, so clever, that part of me wished I was watching on telly, or on my phone.

At his office in Essex, Hearn surveyed the more than 100 countries where darts is now shown on one device or another. “This world’s changing too fucking fast for an old man like me,” he said.

“I doubt that,” I said politely.

“I doubt that, as well,” Hearn said. “I’m just saying it to hear you say it.”

Cardiff 2-3 Palace

Honestly, I would have been okay if we'd lost 14-0 if it gave Brighton a better chance of going down.  But as it is, another away win and mid-table respectability.  Not bad.  Glad that there were some truly bad teams in the Premier League this year.  My conclusion is that Palace are a solid team and no pushovers to anyone - good at counter-attacking, but still lack a decent and reliable striker.  And need to be a better home team more deserving for one of the better home atmospheres.  But sorry Cardiff, sorry Huddersfield, sorry Fulham - you all sucked and you all deserved to go down.

Poisoned Apple

The company whose customer service I hate the most, with a passion, is Comcast.  But a close second is Apple, and I’ve had to deal with them recently.  For some reason, yesterday evening the Podcast app on my iPod Touch started crashing a few seconds after I open it.  And now it does it every time – and I can’t listen to anything.  This is an absolute disaster – I rely on listening to podcasts on my commute and at work, and will probably cancel my road trip this weekend if it’s not working.  So I spent a few hours on a chat service with Apple support late last night, and a further hour on the phone with them at work this morning – getting transferred from one service advisor to another, speaking to technical support people higher and higher up the chain, and trying all kinds of fixes and workarounds, but still not restored things to how they were.  And because they reset my iPod, I think I might have lost all my saved progress on all my other Apps as well.  This is a disaster.  For example, all my hard-earned progress on Angry Birds Pop has now gone.  And we are talking hours and hours and hours of gameplay.  Tragedy.  I think this might be another sign that I need a new iPhone, and if so then I should use that to start listening to podcasts and suchlike rather than some antiquated iPod Touch.

Avengers

I snuck out of work this afternoon to watch Avengers: Endgame.  I say snuck out, but I did tell my manager I had to pop out this afternoon.  But considering the film is 3 hours long, plus the time to get to and from the cinema, I may have slightly undersold exactly how long I was going to be away from my desk!  Was it worth it?  I don't know - I mean the film was alright and everything, but not exactly special or memorable.  But since it's a Marvel film, I'm not exactly expecting Oscar material - we are talking overblown spectacle.  But glad I watched it on the big screen - and at least now I don't need to avoid all the internet spoilers any more!

A New Month, A New Me

I’m very conscious that I’m not getting out or going away as much as I’d like, so I’ve started taking some steps to address this.  For example, I’ve booked a room in a motel in East Washington for Saturday night so that I can take a drive and do some hikes out there over the weekend.  This probably won’t be the only weekend overnight stay I plan this month.  And I’ve just informed my manager that I want to take a week’s holiday in the first week of June (trying my best to fit that in between timelines!).  Next thing to do is to decide how to use that time – I’ve got some ideas (namely things I want to see and do in Oregon – but would consider going further afield to somewhere like Yellowstone) but I want to make some definite plans and soon, otherwise I am prone to doing nothing and wasting those precious vacation days.  That week should work out well because I think it is just before US schools break up for summer, so I’m hoping it will be the best combination of decent weather but not horrific crowds.  I’ll probably be proven wrong on both counts.