As much as I feared it would suck, Lucky Louie is actually funny (even if it is a little rough around the edges). On the one hand you have the "blue collar" characters of Louie's wife, his boss and his weed-dealing best friend, where "blue collar" basically means coarse and not very likable. That's in contrast to Jerry Minor's buttoned-up black neighbor, who actually works surprisingly well as a foil in the first episode.

Somewhere in the middle is Louie himself, who has made a career out of "honest" comedy while keeping a fresh, smart perspective. I was worried that the abrasiveness of some of the characters would overshadow the fact that Louie's comedy is much more than crudeness passing off as honesty. It's smart and has a heart, and fortunately that still came through in the first episode.

The setup is so old school that it feels weird: a sparse set, a live audience, all shot on videotape. But once you get past the lack of slickness, it's genuinely funny, and has plenty of winks and nods to Louie's standup.

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In case you haven't noticed, the fact that I depart for Germany on Friday is having a massive effect on where my mind is these days. Fortunately, even the US media is riding the wave of World Cup hype so lots to talk about. Bryan Curtis offers an interesting article on the intellectualization of soccer in the US.

Soccer has become a favorite pastime of the American intellectual. "Many people would say that soccer is the latte or the Subaru of the sporting spectrum," says Matt Weiland, who, with Sean Wilsey, is co-editor of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, a new compilation that reads like a roll call of the soccer intelligentsia.

There's a lot to what he writes and I'm exhibit A of the general hypothesis, especially that about soccer fandom being a reaction to the growingly obnoxious coverage of US sports here. But I'd also say he misses a couple more nuanced aspects of the sport's appeal. It is certainly a cosmopolitan-feeling thing to follow European sports in general, and even more so when your social circle has a significant international bent. Go to an Ivy League school or work at a big consulting firm and you inevitably run into a lot of smart people who aren't American. The best way to immediately relate to any of them? Show you know something about soccer, especially their country's soccer. They may not be huge soccer fans themsevles, but they probably have a basic appreciation for the sport which they don't see everyday in America.

This is why foreigners love me.

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More Shaq genius. This time he describes his planet of origin:

"I don't know the name of the planet;. The files were destroyed. Actually, my mother originally told me I wasn't born, I was found on a train."

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Grand National is Rupert Lyddon and Lawrence Rudd, who combine to make pop music that sounds like a chill mixture of New Order, Police and disco. Download the awesome "Drink to Moving On" over at No Frontin'. For more of a Police feel, check out:

Grand National / "Daylight Goes" (Yousendit left-click)

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When the Yeah Yeah Yeahs new album Show Your Bones came out months ago I remember thinking the new stuff floating around sounded better than what I had heard from their more critically-acclaimed debut LP. I never got around to picking up SYB but then when I was at Newbs the other day they were playing some stuff off of it and I said fuck it and picked it up. It's good top-to-bottom, especially the last three songs. My fave is the album closer:

Yeah Yeah Yeahs / "Turn Into" (Yousendit left-click)