Category Archives: England

Like the diminished parent of an emancipated teen, England occasionally earns our ire, respect, or appreciation, but usually an emotionally complicated mix of the three. They might have drowned in beer once, but we’re still not going to broil the flavor out of all of our food, Limeys.

Let’s Talk About Why Ewan McGregor Hasn’t Been Nominated for an Oscar Yet

Posted on March 7, 2021 | 1 comment

“Is there a ’37 Dresses, but with Oscars’ joke to make here, or is that an obscure reference even for us?”

~Our Research Staff

Ewan-McGregor

Here’s a sentence you didn’t expect to read today. Let’s talk about Ewan McGregor.

Specifically, Ewan McGregor’s ability to star in, and anchor, both blockbuster films as well as critical darlings, without putting enough attention on himself to warrant award recognition.

Consider this. The 49-year-old British actor’s first onscreen appearance was 28 years ago. In that time, he has 91 credits to his name, won a Golden Globe for his work on Fargo‘s third season, and has two additional Golden Globe nomination alongside three Emmy nominations.

But he’s never once been nominated for an Academy Award.

For 99% of actors, this is not exactly surprising. There are plenty of actors who are household names, with plenty of credits, who have never even sniffed award season. But give us a moment to call bullshit.

How Has Ewan McGregor Not Gotten an Oscar Nomination?

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Posted in England, Obscure American History, Re-Awarding the Academy Award for Best Picture (1970-2009), Strange America

British Sandwiches, Ranked From Best to Worst

Posted on July 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Oh God, we have to talk about British food again?”

~AFFotD’s Resident Food Critic

food spread

We all know the stereotypes about the English when it comes to food. British food is bland, boring, weird, bad, and their teeth are snaggled as fuck. Granted, the teeth thing has nothing to do with their cuisine, but any time you have the opportunity to make a British dentistry joke, you make it, ‘cause that country’s got some broke-ass grills.

Now, it’s never good to encourage or propagate stereotypes…except for the fact that, as we’ve previously established, British food absolutely adheres to these stereotypes.

That isn’t to say that all British food is bad, or that they haven’t contributed some important culinary traditions to America. On the contrary, they’re responsible for one of the best portable meal options that Americans have at their disposal—the sandwich.

Yes, referred to by some as the Britain’s most noteworthy creation, Americans have the English to thank for all their best bread-laden treats. Jimmy Johns, Jersey Mikes, yes, even Subway for those among us lost their taste buds in a fireworks accident, none of these lunch and sometimes sad, lonely dinner options would be available to us if not for the motherland to our east.

Truly, the existence of sandwiches (for America to, naturally, improve upon) is a gift, and to return the favor, we are here to list an extensive list of British sandwiches, ranked from their best offerings to their saddest, most pathetic. Because if we wanted to write an article just about good British food, well, that article would have to be real fucking short, wouldn’t it?

British Sandwiches, Ranked From Best to Worst

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Posted in America Fun Fact of the Day, England, Insulting Foreigners

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AFFotd Presents: America’s Attempt to Understand Cricket

Posted on July 16, 2015 | 1 comment

“The shit is this?”

~AFFotD’s Sports Ambassadors

cricket

We all know there are only four sports that really count—football, basketball, baseball when you’re drunk, and hockey when your team is in the playoffs.  Many try to convince America otherwise, but they’re misguided people who get excited about sitting down for two hours to watch 22 people run around without scoring a single goal, so you can cram your “soccer is the most popular sport in the world” shit right where the sun don’t shine.

Now, sure, every once and a while we pretend we like soccer, usually when our team is doing good, or when we randomly decide to expose FIFA corruption for reasons totally unrelated to them not giving us a World Cup since 1996, so we can at least sympathize with the people who have been brainwashed since birth into thinking that people kicking a ball to each other repeatedly on a giant field is entertaining, but we can’t say the same for what is apparently the second most popular sport in the world—cricket.

Cricket is bullshit.  But we don’t know anything about it.  So we’ve decided to try something new—we will comb through the Wikipedia page for the sport, and try to explain to you the rules, as far as we can understand, so you can learn how truly stupid the sport is.

AFFotd Presents:  America’s Attempt to Understand Cricket

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Posted in England, Insulting Foreigners, The Rest of Them

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The Greatest Culinary Crimes Perpetrated by the British

Posted on June 9, 2015 | 14 comments

“I’m sorry, there’s no one here with that job title.”

~AFFotD’s Cultural Sensitivity Officer

british flag

America has always had an uncomfortable relationship with England, sort of like a second husband trying to be polite to his wife’s ex when he comes by to take his kid for the weekend.  Like, we’re friendly enough, but deep down we kind of suspect they resent us for taking what they once had.  We don’t say this to make any larger point about England and America, or even their alliance and history throughout the years, because nothing about this post is going to be diplomatic, smart, or even particularly well-informed.  We’re here to make fun of British food.

We talk about food a lot here, and for good reason—America is a land of delicious and largely unhealthy delicacies, and frankly we think it’s a little rude for you to respond to our eager descriptions of insane fried foods with something like, “Dear God, according to your cholesterol levels you should be dead,” Doctor Fredricks.  And we make fun of other countries a lot here, because we think America is the greatest and we kind of get defensive when people imply otherwise.  Oh that’s great, Switzerland, your country is the happiest in the world, well fuck off we have nukes and guns we’re better than you FOOTBALLLLLL.

Ahem.

More to the point, considering how often we talk about American food in all its wondrous incarnations, it’s important to remind ourselves that light cannot exist without darkness.  American food is the light.  British food is…well there’s a reason we make fun of British food.  This is the reason.  These foods are the reasons.

The Greatest Culinary Crimes Perpetrated by the British

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Posted in America's Greatest Fun Facts, England, Insulting Foreigners

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The Fenian Brotherhood: Invading Canada, From America, For Ireland

Posted on January 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

“Ha ha, guys, what are you doing?  Come on, stop that.”

~American and Canadian Forces, 1866

fenian

For years, we’ve treated Canada like our polite, little brother to the North.  They’re friendly, they send over some comedians we like, and excluding the time they killed the Baldwin family in the South Park movie, they’ve been an adequate ally and neighbor.  We tend to forget that they’re technically still a Commonwealth of England, with the Queen on their currency and everything, but we don’t really care about that, since we’ve not really had a beef with England since they burned down our White House and we were forced to replace it with a much more kickass presidential residence.

Now, while Canada has never really done anything wrong by us, England does have its fair share of people pissed off at them.  Like, say, the Irish.  Oh yeah, the Irish have a very sticky history with England and, well, there’s no nuanced way to say this so we’ll just spit it out—a bunch of Irish Americans invaded Canada as a “fuck you” to England, which is just about the closest we as a nation has come to invading Canada since the early 1800s.  So that’s a thing, a thing that happened, in history.  Let’s talk about it.

That One Time the Fenian Brotherhood Kept Invading Canada From America

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Posted in 19th Century Factoids, England, Strange America, The Rest of Them

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Wherein AFFotD Scoffs at the Attempts of British Tabloids to Critique America’s Culinary Practices

Posted on September 24, 2014 | 7 comments

“Guys, we need to be better.  We need to do better.  We should have jumped on these limey bastards the moment this garbage was published!  I know it was around the Fourth of the July, and I know we spent the next three months blackout drunk, NO EXCUSES!”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief, Johnny Roosevelt

 union jack

Listen here, faithful readers.  When we started this website, we had one very important goal—find a way to get free alcohol sent us to while breaking a few financial laws by listing ourselves as a tax-exempt non-profit.  But once you make a name for yourself, and it’s all, “Oh, Johnny Roosevelt, start a newsletter” this and “you know the internet is a thing now, people need to hear from you” that, and we have to deal with mission statements and being sober enough to press a button that says “Publish.”  It’s all very hard work, and we blame our Editor-in-Chief—we wouldn’t even exist today if he hadn’t stuck his nose where it didn’t belong.

watergate johnny roosevelt

Um, if anyone asks, we were, uh…doing some undercover investigations.  Yeah.  That’s it.

We mention this because, lately, we’ve been focusing a lot on “this alcohol is crazy” or “woahhh easy there, M&M flavors!” but we’ve been ignoring one of our founding principles.  Making fun of foreigners.  And in these increasingly divisive times, shouldn’t we be focusing less on what makes all of us different, and focusing more on making fun of what makes people in like, goddamn Europe different?  Have you ever seen lederhosen?  Ridiculous!

And while we were examining our past with an eye fixed firmly on the future (read as—a night where you sorta end up in one of those melancholy drunk moods) we stumbled across this little article from the British tabloid/reason-for-hundreds-of-lies-your-facebook-feed-has-told-you, Metro.  The article in question?

metro title

Oh you cheeky buggers.  Wait, no, that’s the quaint British way of saying what we really think.  Let’s Americanize up our reaction to this article just a tad.

You motherfucking sons of cockrashes.

There we go.  That’s much better.  Anyway, it’s been a while, so time to take apart this argument, one by one.  Because, Jesus, if we wanted to take food advice from the Brits, we don’t have a way to finish that analogy because no one in the history of cuisine, since the dawn of man where we as a species realized that cooking food makes it less likely to carry disease, has anyone ever wanted to take food advice from the Brits.

gordon fucking ramsey

Well, sure, okay, but yelling doesn’t count as advice.

Anyway, let’s take this article to pieces.

Wherein AFFotD Scoffs at the Attempts of British Tabloids to Critique America’s Culinary Practices

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Posted in England, Insulting Foreigners

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The Ten Longest Films Ever Made

Posted on August 21, 2013 | 1 comment

“Man, and I thought Lord of the Rings was too long…”

~American Film Critics

lady clock

We like our movies like we like our sexual encounters—brief, anonymous, and preferably ending with you sobbing uncontrollably while watching Ryan Gosling kiss another woman.  Whether we’re watching Nicholas Sparks play out his latest sexual fantasy of star-crossed lovers being separated for 50 years by dire circumstances only to die of cancer the day they’re supposed to meet again, or someone gave Michael Bay $150 million to be the pyrotechnic version of Bamm-Bamm Rubble, American films are the world’s primary source for laughter, entertainment, and taking a brief respite from our bleak, miserable lives to watch Brad Pitt casually eat something while pretending we’re his friend.

There was a time when epic sagas were the norm in Hollywood, which is why Ben-Hur is over three-and-a-half hours long, and also why most of us never saw Ben-Hur once we were informed that the film was 212 boobless minutes.  Nowadays, we like our movies shorter, more action-packed, and Anne Hathaway naked-ier.  Yes, we’ll sit through the occasional three hour opus, but that’s about as long as we’re able to physically sit still without our ADD kicking oh hey look there’s a bird.  Besides, we can’t waste all our free time watching a single movie.  We have things to do.  There are bars literally just outside the theater, taunting us.

Yes, we know how to squeeze $200 million into a handy 90-minute package, but we’re America.  We invented, perfected, and then perverted everything you know and love about modern cinema.  Other countries don’t quite get the hint, which is why you see places like China making 14-hour films.

And that’s not even one of the ten longest films ever created.  Since we at AFFotD are public servants, we’re going to save you the trouble of knowing which impossibly long films to avoid by listing off the ten films with the longest running time.  And since we can’t imagine a world where people make day-long movies without something terrible and dark having happened in their childhood, we will also inform you what life-ruining tragedy must have happened to the countries of the world that would actually sit through these exercises in torture.

The Ten Longest Films Ever Made

 Die hard

Because if you’re going to stare at a movie screen for 14 hours, you’d better damn well be watching all the Die Hard movies.

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Posted in England, France, Strange America, The Rest of Them

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AFFotD Summer Olympics Viewing Guide

Posted on August 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

“J-I-N-G-O and Jingo was his name-o!”

~Olympics!

Every two years, Americans gather around their television sets to root for a bunch of sports that are either stupid but fun (Winter) or largely stupid (Summer) with the single goal of flipping the bird to every other country while saying, “We’re better than you in every possible way.”  The Olympics are beautiful, and the closest we can come to Manifest Destiny without the ACLU being all up on our asses.  It also helps remind us why China is a terrifying force who we have to defeat, lest they get cocky and we find ourselves in a Red Dawn situation.

As the Summer Olympics come and pass, and everyone spends two weeks pretending to care about gymnastics, running, and swimming, we are here to give you a handy guide of what American sports you should enjoy during the Olympics, and which sports you should avoid at all costs.

AFFotD’s Official Summer Olympics Guide

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Posted in China, England, France, Miscellaneous America, The Rest of Them

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England’s Five Greatest Foes (Apparently)

Posted on May 31, 2012 | Leave a comment

“Do not fuck with me, England.”

~George Washington

George Washington is a lot like Gizmo from Gremlins.  He’s a good guy that you don’t want to be on the bad side of, and we’re only assuming that he doesn’t like getting wet.  While we’re at it, we’re just going to assume that the both of them hated the British as well.

Well, now we at least know that the Brits are still terrified of Washington.  According to a recent poll run by the National Army Museum of the UK to determine who was Britain’s greatest foe of all time, Washington came out in first place.  While we wonder who decided to come up with the short list of enemies (Hitler, for example, seems strangely absent) we are pleased that our European allies still go to sleep at night with nightmarish visions of Washington’s wooden teeth and laser vision.

As much as we applaud Washington’s place as the badass of all badasses, as journalists (ha!) it is our sworn (?) duty to delve as deeply into this issue as possible.  So, it’s time to begrudgingly compare Washington to the rest of the people England considers their sworn enemy to see if the honor is anything worth getting excited over.

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England’s Hot Dog Stuff Pizza: Would You Like a Side of Nitrates With That?

Posted on April 12, 2012 | 3 comments

“What…no.  How?”

~AFFotD Food Critic, John Goodman

Every so often our readers will alert us to something that deserves the attention of the average American.  This can be an article, a Wikipedia entry of some sort, or one time it was just a piece of parchment with the words “I love you Jodie” scribbled over and over in blood.  Seriously, John, get over it, she’s not even into dudes.

What we’re trying to say is, sometimes we’re given an article that says, in its headline, everything we would be able to say on the topic.  But does that stop us from going ahead and writing on that topic anyway?  No, of course not, this is America, to us redundancy is just a word that we don’t understand because it has more than three syllables in it (is it, like, a type of cheese?)

The article in question comes from Gizmodo, and states succinctly, “I can’t believe this hot dog stuffed crust pizza isn’t American.”  We can’t either, Gizmodo.  But now we need to know everything that we could possible know about…

England’s Hot Dog Stuff Pizza:  Would You Like a Side of Nitrates With That?

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Posted in England, Pizza Pizza

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