.... In my mind and soul there are a million things that are great about United Kingdom.
Film: From Ken Loach to Ridley Scott, Ken Russell to David Lean, Nicolas Roeg to Terry Gilliam, from Alfred Hitchcock to John Boorman, from James Ivory to Alan Parker and so on, and so on.... From rock legends: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones... From literature giants to the mavericks of pop culture, to the science innovators and social changes breakthroughs. Yes, many of them were British. And we have to be really grateful to them.
In my heart I was feeling that Britannia was more than a...hospital, Mr. Bean's predictable "Chariots Of Fire" green-boxed pure Americana (in a sense that was an Oscar awards ceremony sketch on a low- ratings night), and Paul McCartney's synced out playback of "Hey, Jude")...Arctic Monkeys are a good band for live concert but limited (phew! I was afraid they are going to pull an auto-tuned Katy Perry dressed in black beret uniform stripping to an English pub waitress). They are certainly not the epitome of UK culture...
And last night I triple-checked out legends Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour were alive, kicking, rockin' and still playing music...And, sorry pals, Mr. Bean's humor is so passe camp pantomime compared to the Monty Pythonesque sarcasm, ethos and ergography. And, sorry chums, modern Britain is a buzzing mosaique of many cultures, a hot, burgeoning amalgam of many histories, cultures and religions. Not the low-life garden of kitch.
...But hey guess what? I am a foreigner. I am no British. The Great British, in the unfathomless darkness of their deep-rooted misery of a has-been Empire knew and know better... Αnd they were supported by an amnesiac in the last phase of this wide-spread disease IOC President Jaques Rogue who was puffing up relentlessly their kitchy, fish-and-chips, post-industrial rev borrowed-up, phone-hacking, LIBOR-manipulated scandalous feathers conveniently omitting the historical facts: When the Hellenic civilization invented the Olympic Games more than 25 centuries years ago, their ancestors, inhabitants of the land, we are now forced to call Great Britain, were chasing down wild animals in the darkness of their forests, munching, devouring, gulping, ripping off their flesh into chunks and pieces, and drinking their warm blood while they were alive, and kicking... The blood of the others!