an introduction to some formula one drivers by turning them into verbs

Say you live in a tourist town, like I do.  You’re stuck on a crowded sidewalk filled with vacationers who amble, looking in windows, enjoying the sun, infuriatingly unaware that people, like you, actually live in this town and need to go places and do things.

You have options.

You might MALDONADO your way to the front, a messy fracas involving elbows akimbo and ruthless footwork.  (KOBAYASHI-ing results in similar injury to the malingering tourists, but without the malicious intent:   rather, you zero in on your target,-- say, the next corner,-- with such furious intent that your peripheral vision is nullified and you cast yourself forward with  such reckless speed that collateral damage might easily include friends and pit crew alongside your enemies.)

BUTTONing is subtler process, in which you ease up behind two tourists, wait until the one behind goes to pass the one forward, taking advantage of the awkward moment to zip beyond both.

If you decide to VETTEL, you will sidestep the problem entirely by walking off the track into the street and circling around the crowd.

GROSJEANing is the boldest choice, requiring great exertion and hours of practice.  To GROSJEAN, you send yourself hurtling into the air over the heads of the tourists, an awesome spectacle which often involves everyone in the vicinity crashing into walls.  It is not recommended if you are on your way to work or to do anything that cannot wait while you recuperate in hospital.

luis suarez and the joy of carrying liverpool's considerable darkness

Poor Brendan Rodgers has been embarrassed by his players telling truth in public. The question on his mind is not so much why Luis Suarez went all Italian to get the penalty against Stoke in October, but why did he feel compelled to talk about it?

The answer is both obvious and sort of endearing: this player cannot comprehend why it might matter. Suarez is an on-pitch sociopath in that way that children are sometimes, in the way of Adam and Eve in the Garden, with no inkling of right or wrong. There is only winning, which is pleasant, and losing, which is repellent. We all got a very good introduction to him during the World Cup with his obviously deliberate handball against Ghana. It was a calculated risk, entirely unethical, and he was red-carded off for his troubles, but, most crucially, it worked, since Asamoah Gyan missed the ensuing penalty chance, leading directly to an Uruguayan advance. What kind of a lesson does such success teach a developing child? A bad one, as evidenced by his subsequent crowing over the event (see "My handball was the real Hand of God!") .

Shadow-carrying is a dynamic more easily traced in football than in real life. Most teams have a designated shadow-man, but rarely is he a striker. (I am excepting, of course, Italians, who all carry trickster capabilities and thick, dark edges on their ethics with an exhausting consistency. Something in l’acqua, I guess.) The fellow is more likely to lurk in the defense or the back of the midfield. One of the oddities of Rafa Benitez’s legacy at Liverpool is Lucas Leiva. Where the rest of us saw a fairly useless Brazilian kid, Benitez saw potential, and bulked him up, rebuilt him to inherit the mantle of Liverpool’s shadow-bearer. After Sami Hyypia’s exit, Xabi Alonso took on the role (and must have impressed, since he showed up at Real Madrid in a darker, more calcified version). After Alonso’s exit, Leiva was up, and has proved far worthier than his pre-warrior persona would have suggested possible.

The first Clasico I ever saw was at the Bernebeu, and back then Real Madrid was packed with golden men: Roberto Carlos, Beckham, Iker Casillas, Raul, Zidane, Ronaldo, Robinho. Had this team been a wrestler in the WWE, it’d have been the strong-jawed guy with flowing, blond hair who fought for the love of a good, buxom woman. And there, in the midst of the shining men, was Pablo Garcia. The announcer called him, straight out, Real’s hitman. He looked like one. Tarantino would have cast him as such, with his gorilla-like bulk and weirdly false-looking hair, and he went to work, giving Deco a cut on the temple with an elbow, skillfully managed so the linesman could not see it, and finally getting slapped with a yellow for picking up Oleguer bodily and throwing him. (Garcia, incidentally, is also from Uruguay.)

Now that you mention it, what about a team like Barca? How does a side with a reputation for the luminous and beautiful apportion its share of the shadow? Sergio Busquets very quietly holds a lot of it, discreetly drawing and delivering fouls in the midfield. Then there was the match at Sevilla in September in which Cesc Fabregas made a calculated decision that only amoral behavior would win the day and took the burden fully on his own shoulders. Not only did he manage to have Gary Mendel red-carded off for a head-butt which didn’t quite connect (but the effects of which he sold magnificently), he also scored two of Barca’s three goals, one delivered off a handball from Thiago. Instead of celebrating his second goal, you see him howling. I scrawled on the front of my DVD, “Cesc is like a dark force of nature here." He will always be hated in Sevilla now, and I believe that’s hard for a such a player, who seems, --dangerously,-- to care what the world thinks.

But back to Luis Suarez, who cares not one whit, not for any of us, just so long as he wins: Brendan must stop the hypocrisy. Liverpool (a team I love, by the way) has always run rough-shod and tumbling over all comers to its victories. If you look back to one of the Scousers’ all-time great moments, at Istanbul in 2005, that unbelievable comeback to victory over an unmistakably superior AC Milan side, you’ll see it all began with a sacrificial foul from Sami Hyypia. The first half had seen the Liverpudlians scraping and chasing the smooth Milanese with no glimpse of joy. Even after the half, Milan kept easy control of the reins until around the 50th minute, when Kaka launched into an unstoppable run up the center of the pitch. A fourth goal seemed inevitable, and then the unthinkable happened: Hyypia stuck out his foot and brought the midfielder down hard. It might have been a red-card crime, but Hyypia walked away with a warning, and somehow, through that window of opportunity, the Zen descended and Liverpool enjoyed some ten minutes of grace during which the Football Gods smiled and everything went their way. After that, it was back to scrap and struggle, but persistence and hard work held true, and the Reds came away with a very roughly earned trophy.

The point is, Suarez has not just shown his colors, but wears them proudly, and he's following a long-standing Liverpudlian tradition. Everyone knew who he was when he was hired, but the British press is (sometimes breathtakingly, to yankee eyes) ruthless towards its footballers. The fact that Pep Guardiola is rumored to be hankering for Suarez from his golden-feathered eyrie atop Germany should be a pretty fair sign that he’s worth his keep.

Regardless, he’s not going to get any nicer.