REPORT FROM LONDON

by Turk Murdock, European Correspondent at Large

(photo: self portrait byTurk Murdock)

MAY 1, 2012
THE CROWN, 108 BLACKFRIARS RD
(NOTE: The Crown is a public house in London favored by expats for showing American baseball games.)

Have been waiting interminably for press credentials to cover Olympic Baseball and Softball in London.  Don’t know what the hold-up is.  May have been some rude remarks made to Brit Cricketers a few days ago.  Now waiting to see International Olympics Committee press liaison while discreetly sipping Jameson’s from SF Giants 2011 Championship commemorative flask.   

I have been trying to get an IOC Es (sports-specific) accreditation since April of 2010 but have heard nothing from these Eurotrash blowhards.  My phone calls always seem to end up in the hands of lesser kommisars with accents so thick as to be unintelligible. Now I’m going face-to-face with these officious bastards and I’m not leaving until I’ve got my passes to every goddam baseball and softball game on the roster!

Later: Waiting and waiting. I’ve popped “down the pub” three or four times and refilled the flask twice or maybe three times – or four.  Keeping it cool, though. A few well-timed mutters of “sodding this”  and “bloody that” helps me blend in with the locals. Finally after - like forever - I’m summoned to the front desk where I am met by a stunning blonde for whom the word svelte was spit out of God’s mouth and an absolute ringer for Number 6 (portrayed by Tricia Helfer) in the “reimagined” Battlestar Galactica television series, 2004 – 2009.  Without saying a word, she hands me a packet of documents which I assume are my press passes and moves away in one of those graceful, slow-motion shots from a perfume commercial.

In a slight haze for one reason or another, I turn to find myself face-to-face with a uniformed thug straight out of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (2000 U.K. crime thriller directed by Guy Ritchie). Out of a mushy, Cockney grumble, I make out something about “closing time” and “make for the exits.”  Feeling good about finally getting my goodies, I decide not to give him my usual anti-authoritarian “aggro” and head out for celebratory drinks.

MAY 2
LONDON, SANI HOTEL (voted “London’s worst hotel” on TripAdvisor.com)
261 UXBRIDGE ROAD, SHEPHERD’S BUSH
Wake up in my crackerbox hotel room with the usual cuts, bruises and a splitting headache.  I don’t know what it is about Brits and other foreigners but they just piss me off and my evenings here have consistently ended in an “argy-bargy” bar fight of one kind or another. Vicodin, Xanax, bloody marys and black coffee soon have my head back on my shoulders and, with relish, I open my IOC packet.  [CUT TO: SOUNDS OF INCOHERENT RAGE, LOUD BANGING, GLASS SHATTERING, MULTIPLE EXPLETIVES]

TO BE CONTINUED