The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Wednesday, May 2

Hey, Hoddlers!

I wonder what Kieran Trippier and Mousa Dembélé are talking about.

Ramble of the Day

I have a confession to make. I have watched a fair bit of HGTV (Home & Garden Television, for those unaware) in my time. Naturally, I have opinions about most of the shows on the channel, and they can be summed up quickly: Almost all of them sucks and the hosts are not personable at all. That, though, is not the point of today’s ramble.

I will talk about two of HGTV’s best programs, in my opinion: House Hunters International, and its inferior sibling, House Hunters, which covers house hunting in the United States. Watching House Hunters was already a drab experience. International embraces the travel aspect of its characters and locations, showing off the nice sights and sounds of a foreign city. The home looking is just as interesting, and the tension between the house hunters is frequently more evident on different continents. House Hunters has all of that, but in a diluted package. Looking for a home in Richmond, Virginia just does not compare to Freiburg, Germany.

Now imagine trying to watch a bland couple looking at uninteresting houses in the suburbs of Houston, Texas right after watching the first episode of The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes on Netflix. I did this. It made House Hunters even more miserable instead of just the usual tolerable but easy to tune out show it is.

The first episode is about people who live in unique houses surrounded by mountains. There was one in California built out of a plane, one in Arizona that made the residents poor, one in the Swiss Alps that had a great view of the clouds, and one that I cannot stop thinking about. It was a house on New Zealand’s South Island with views I will not even bother to describe. As much as I dislike the idea of staying in a place where I had no neighbors in case of emergency, the views from that house were unbelievably beautiful. The construction itself is also incredible, especially since they tried to build it so it would not disturb the views for anyone looking straight at it from a distance. Here’s a slideshow of the construction, which I encourage you to take a look at.

Now that you’ve looked at that house, remember that boring house hunting trip in Texas? That’s what I put on right after I saw this home. Imagine my disappointment. I sat there for 12 to 15 minutes just thinking about how awful that episode of House Hunters was. It pales in comparison, though that is not exactly House Hunters’ fault. I just have no idea if I will be able to watch House Hunters again.

(Note: I almost wrote “enjoy House Hunters again” instead of “watch House Hunters again,” but I do not think I have ever enjoyed House Hunters.)

tl;dr: How I made HGTV worse than it already was for myself.

Links of the Day

Harry Kane thinks it’s easy to pick on English footballers, and that’s why he’s been the target of some over the last few weeks.

Marcelo admits to the handball that probably should have led to a penalty for Bayern Munich in their Champions League match with Real Madrid.

David Squires asks this question in his latest cartoon: “What is football, if not for dreaming?”

Today’s longer read: an introduction to Nestor El Maestro, the English coach who is about to win the league in Slovakia by Lukas Vrablik for The Guardian