The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Monday, August 3

Hey, everyone!

I watched In Bruges yesterday, so it made sense to bring this one back to attention. Feels a little more appropriate now than it did a little while ago, doesn’t it?

Ramble of the Day

Here’s a random story from a couple of years ago that I just remembered. I was out with a friend on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, first checking out some of the new exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When we got out, it was close enough to dinner time that we decided to look for some. We settled on looking for pizza, and being the wandering type in a city that has a very good pizza reputation, we decided to just walk until we found a pizza place we wanted to eat at. It took about 15 minutes for the cloudy sky to do what it was threatening, and a downpour began. We ran into the first place that looked halfway decent, and it was a Wahlburgers, the burger chain owned by brothers actors/singers Mark and Donnie Wahlberg and their chef brother Paul.

I wasn’t that far removed from watching episodes of their reality show Wahlburgers, chronicling their business and personal relationship, when I had nothing else to watch. I was eventually rewarded by seeing the episode where Mark and Paul go to White Hart Lane, but that’s a Hoddle for a different time. As a result, I had a certain amount of interest but not necessarily expectations — as long as it wasn’t terrible, I’d be fine.

I immediately remember that they didn’t have fries listed on the menu and that I didn’t order any, though I’m sure they would’ve brought me some if I asked. Anyway, the more significant thing is that I saw a burger on the menu that i was pretty interested in it — grilled chicken, caramelized and crispy onions, lettuce, and honey-garlic mayo — but it was called Jenn’s chicken sandwich, and I hoped it wasn’t named after Donnie’s wife Jenny McCarthy, well-known anti-vaxxer. (The only reason I remember the sandwich is because it’s still on the menu.) I didn’t have a backup prepared in case it was, but I asked the waiter if it was the case. He said it wasn’t, instead named after someone who won a contest, and I very audibly said in relief, “Oh, good.”

I remember little else about the meal outside of the conversations I had with my friend and remembered the time with some amount of frequency as the time I lightly disparaged Jenny McCarthy in a Wahlburgers. I hadn’t bothered to check in on the establishment since, only finding out in the process of working on today’s Hoddle that the place shut down less than six months after I went because of health violations, so it’s probably best I never went back.

tl;dr: A story about how I lightly disparaged Jenny McCarthy in front of a waiter at a since-closed Wahlburgers.

Stay informed, read this: The Guardian interviewed 50 Black people in the U.K. age 13 to 26 for a series called Young, British, & Black on being leaders during the latest stretch of anti-racism protests

Links of the Day

Germany World Cup winner Bendikt Höwedes retired after a 13 year career.

Sheffield Wednesday will start the next Championship season with a 12 point deduction as punishment for financial irregularities.

Eddie Howe left Bournemouth after the team was relegated from the Premier League.

Barcelona plans to discipline Arthur after he opted to stay in Brazil instead of participate in the team’s upcoming Champions League run.

Transfer updates: Napoli signed Victor Osimhen from Lille; Lille signed Sven Botman from Ajax, Burak Yilmaz on a free, and Eugenio Pizzuto from Pachuca

A longer read: Rory Smith interviews Dortmund trio Erling Haaland, Gio Reyna, and Marcus Thuram and their respective fathers Alfie, Claudio, and Lilian on the family business of football for The New York Times