They're everywhere, I tell you

On my way out of the Underground this evening, I was confronted by a most distressing sight. Four youths dressed in crimson tracksuits with ALABAMA emblazoned in a graceful arc across the back. Amazing. In a residential backwater of London. Also disturbing. There goes the neighbourhood...

-0-

On closer inspection, I noticed that the color wasn't quite the Alabama regulation red, and the kids didn't look like Alabama fans. Knock-off Alabama outfits clearly. Still, why Alabama? That can't be right. Kids these days....

-0-

I looked again and the letter resolved themselves into their proper configuration. ALBANIA. Four youngsters in tracksuits that read Albania. That actually makes much more sense.

-0-

Still, did I tell y'all I went to the cemetery open day near my house? (Yes, I know my life isn't as jet-set as it used to be). I met a man who worked for a custom coffin company. And do you know, he went to Alabama? We talked a little SEC trash and he tried to sell us a casket.

Hey at least it wasn't Tennessee

Top Gear is a British auto show. Un-PC, irreverent and with a host - Jeremy Clarkson - who at best might be described as curmudgeonly anti-America. It's probably the top auto show on British tv. And it's kinda funny.

Recently the Top Gear lads went to Alabama. Just for the heck of it, they painted slogans like "Country and Western is Rubbish" and "I'm Bi" on each other's cars and then drove around to see what would happen.

They don't get the warmest of welcomes at one small town gas station. (You know things are bad when a town's own resident calls his home a "hick town" - and when the gas station owner says "I'm callin' the boys!") Cripes.

Jeremy Clarkson finishes the piece with "I'm doing something I thought I'd never do; make a run for the border."

He didn't say which way he was headed. Perhaps he was about enter the Greenest State in the Land of the Free.

Watch the hijinks ensue (via YouTube)...

Hat tip to fellow Southerner and American expat Kathy at What Do I know?

It was all probably just a cultural misunderstanding. Sweet Home Alabama is actually one of the most welcoming states. (Don't let those bullet holes in the "Welcome to Alabama!" sign fool you. Most people keep their guns on safety there.)

Truthfully though, you don't tug on superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, and you don't mess around with cultural iconography... Jeremy might think it's cool to poke fun, but I'd like to see him do something similar in the nastier neighbourhoods of Glasgow wearing the wrong color football strip, or why doesn't he go to certain neighbourhoods of Birmingham still reeling from recent terror arrests with a car painted up with "The Prophet was a pedophile".