The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Tuesday, February 2

Hi, all!

I have to say, I feel a little bit bad that all of the memories I have of Gedson Fernandes’ time at Tottenham are either irrelevant events or things one would not like to consider accomplishments.

Ramble of the Day

I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I am cursed with the ability to get any song at all stuck in my head. Part of this curse means I have a pretty decent memory of songs, even if I haven’t heard them in a while. I don’t consider that a particularly special thing I can do; songs are designed to catchy, after all. Maybe a little too catchy — I searched my memory for different phone numbers I remembered because they’re in catchy songs, and there are a lot.

Some are straightforwardly memorable — take the joint and separate jingles of Cellino & Barnes. For a little more than three decades, Ross Cellino and Stephen Barnes had a very successful personal injury firm with offices in New York and California, but what made them iconic was the firm’s jingle. The pair broke up and created their own firms, Cellino Law and the Barnes Firm, both with their own jingles. Cellino’s jingle is a normal enough, but slightly jarring performance of its phone number: a high-pitched woman sings eight hundred five five five fifty five fifty five. Barnes’ jingle is very similar, but a little brighter and more concise: call one eight hundred eight million.

Nothing, though, beats the original Cellino & Barnes jingle and its banal performance of its all eight phone number. It gets points for becoming a meme, too.

Those are pretty easy to remember, and I found the true test for both song writers and my own memory to be remembering a normal phone number that clearly has no pattern to it. I can’t tell you who deserves the credit for me remembering it, but there are two I distinctly remember. The first is a horribly tacky, beach-themed commercial from Optimum, a cable and internet provider, that played all the time when I was a kid. I remember it so well — one of the opening lines is a man singing watch a lot of channels, whenever you’re able, followed by HD is free! The number comes when a woman chimes in for the chorus: eight seven seven three nine three four four four eightI

The other song is one I remembered for the first time in a very long time. I knew only two things about it: the phone number mentioned in it, and that it was from a Bollywood film. Which film? I didn’t know — I never sought out this film, but it was a pretty popular song when during one of my trips to India as a kid. Who was in the movie? I didn’t know that either. The name of the song? I had not clue, because I most certainly caught this song multiple times, but only in passing. I thought I knew the lyrics that followed the phone number mentioned, but it turns out I didn’t.

A quick Google gave me the information: “Hello” from the 2007 film Speed (a remake of the 2004 American film Cellular), which I’ve never seen and probably will never see. The chorus of this song is in English, and I’ve queued this video that point. (If you accidentally watch the scene leading into the song, the guy in the sweatshirt makes a joke asking his friend not to get kidnapped before his upcoming wedding.)

It is pretty remarkable that not a single other detail about this song stuck with me, but I could recite the number perfectly in song more than 13 years later, like I’d just heard it. Like I mentioned, not even the words after the number. Again, I don’t know to whom the credit belongs, but I’m inclined to believe it’s songwriter Mayur Puri — my sisters also remembered the number and not another detail about the song.

I have to imagine, though, after listening to this song ... twice? for this Hoddle, I’ll have it stuck in my head for the rest of the day because I’m cursed to do so.

tl;dr: If you stick a phone number in a song, even one as random as one from a Bollywood movie I had to Google to know anything about, I will most likely remember it.

Stay informed, read this: Fawnia Soo Hoo on the few Black designers that make it as costume in movies and tv, and the Black Designer Database that aims to change that for InStyle

Links of the Day

Liverpool’s Joël Matip will miss the rest of the season with an ankle injury.

Barcelona and Lionel Messi said they’d take legal action against Spanish newspaper El Mundo after a story it published about Messi’s contract.

Transfer updates: The Guardian’s recap of deadline day deals and news

A longer read: Jerome Pugmire on the latest in Ligue 1 and Ligue 2, as the search for a tv deal hits another stumbling block for the Associated Press