Granted, the English side is pretty poor at this World Cup, but Germany didn’t need help from the referee to win. They got it anyway, and the Three Lions will head home after losing 4-1. The calls in this match were about as bad as it gets. Just dreadful stuff and FIFA is the only governing body in sports that would tolerate it.
Meanwhile Argentina continues to impress. They are winning on charisma and hokum, but it has worked so far. They’re going to need to play defense to keep winning, but that wasn’t a problem today against one of the most overrated teams Mexico has ever fielded.
Other observations you didn’t necessarily need to complete your day:
I enjoy Ramen noodles a little too much for a grownup who can afford something slightly better.
My Publix has motion sensor lights in the refrigerated section. If you walk the aisle quickly you feel like Randall Flagg.
I have — just now — perfected the bachelor dinner. Shame this didn’t come to mind during the bachelor years. (It does not include Ramen noodles.)
Editing down a voiceover I thought of how people always find that they sound different than they think they do in recordings? I think I enunciate differently too.
Ran a 7:45 mile this evening. Rewarded myself with 10 very casual miles on the bike. If I could shave another minute off the run I’d be at my best ever time.
If I could shave another minute off that time I might have a heart attack.
It is time once again for YouTube Cover Theater where we explore various songs by one artist as performed by several different YouTube musicians. Today’s covered artist is Ryan Adams.
Dominic Hazell covers Magnolia Mountain:
Two Dollars Out the Door plays Rescue Blues:
Misti Mayhem has produced an album, which would ordinarily disqualify her here, but it was funded by fan donation. And this is a really nice take on To Be Young:
Give every day people a little equipment and the opportunity and they are liable to impress more often than not, that’s why we have YouTube Cover Theater. Be sure to come back next week for another installment, or make an artist suggestion in the comments.
weekend / World Cup — Comments Off on Only in the World Cup 26 Jun 10
Only in the World Cup can Hungarian officials make us fear international relations over the last century or so. Only in the World Cup can Michael Imperioli finally become a household name. Only in the World Cup can Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger be united at last.
There’s a part of you, admit it, that saw that and thought the universe has been leading to this moment — creation, evolution, the spoken word, the written word, representative government, song and, finally the commercial enterprises of the mid 20th Century — where Jagger and Clinton would sit together and … well, who knows what they talked about. Who wants to know?
That all of existence survived this pairing is the only evidence I have that the idea is incorrect. That culture was able to continue on is the only evidence that we, as a people, now have too many entertainment options before us.
Imagine if Elvis had sat with John Kennedy at the 1962 World Cup in Chile. See? Entirely different response on every level, thoughtful, visceral and primordial.
Anyway, once again the officiating was spotty. Once again did Ghana win. Once again the depth across the American roster shows itself to be suspect. Once again we can only wistfully say “Close. But not there yet.”
Jozy Altidore is taking criticism, but the man plays an incredible game. You just have to know what you’re seeing. A handful more like him, or a team full of folks built like him, and the U.S. will change the way the game is played. The team, as they are composed to do, have some promise, have fine heart and give great effort, but they are finite. That should take nothing away from what they’ve done here, having demonstrated marked progress over the last few tournaments, but they just aren’t there yet.
There is disappointment in this 2-1 defeat, yes, but ultimately this day was coming. They were escaping too narrowly, having chance favor them even when fair play did not. The notions of spirit and never-say-die are celebrated, iconic and nice for the pathos, but ultimately logos wins out and this team just ran out of the opportunities they needed.
But, oh, how they delighted us.
I hope they gave their boots to their raucous fans, I hope they did. They’d given them everything else.
It is a bitter, brutal game, and for some team still surviving the tournament it will only grow worse.
Only in the World Cup would a showing in the final 16 be simultaneously enough and not enough.
Friday / World Cup — Comments Off on Friday already? 25 Jun 10
I broke an 8-minute mile on my 1.5 mile jog this evening. One more arbitrary threshold crossed. My best mile was in high school, and will never be duplicated. These most recent workouts, though, carried me through a mile of running and under eight minutes, which is something I haven’t seen since college, on either count.
To celebrate I biked 10 miles. My last mile was a pure sprint, where I got down to 2:08. That’s a personal, lungs burning, legs aching best.
Someone asked if I’m training for a triathlon. No. The dirty little secret: I love swimming. Love the water. I couldn’t swim a straight line to save my life. I don’t need to run over people any more than I wish to be ran over, so I’ll stay away, but thanks. Besides, that I’ve just reached a little over a mile of jogging will keep me out of any races for some time. But, still, I’m flattered.
Brazil and Portugal … I hate to say battle it out … OK, they conceded that neither team felt the need to press and, thus, ended in a draw. Ivory Coast, who deserve better than to go home early, beat Korea DPR 3-0. Spain topped Chile in workmanlike fashion. If that team comes alive Spain will be tough to beat. Switzerland and Honduras flail their way through 90 minutes to another scoreless draw. They’ll both depart the tournament very dissatisfied, I think.
And now the Round of 16 begins tomorrow. No more ties, now the desperation comes. Now the nationalistic dreams and passions will be on display for when leather meets nylon it will mean only joy and sorrow. Those first efforts in group play, so calculated and cautious, give way to derring do and success, or timidity and defeat.
Hey, if the commentators can overstate things, so can I.
What a day. The US win and two other important, meaningful World Cup games and history on the grass at Wimbledon. This was a great day to be a sports fan. First, read this.
Soccer defies that. It is opera on a field. Not the Italian variety where a series of humorous misunderstandings yield mildly sexy results, but German opera—Klingon opera. Plenty of tridents. Sheets of rain. Thunderbolts cascading from the sky. In the background armies march through the mud, toward each other. Patterns converge in a rumble, pressure building until it’s unbearable and someone falls over, a spear jutting out from his breastplate.
[…]
The USA’s narrative has been bootstraps. College kids rescuing the program, batty goalies with an American flag fetish, Paul Caliguri, and so on. Tom Friend just published a lengthy story on USA 1990 third-string goalie David Vanole that’s veritably dripping with half-truths dedicated to shaping that narrative. The USMNT is the 1980 hockey team spread over twenty years, because that’s the way we want it.
We don’t roll around on the ground. If we fall over, we probably just fell over. We run and and run and run, and late, when everything is stacked against us in a game where it’s just so hard to finish the job, we do it Puritan style: ugly effort. A minute into stoppage time, the ball’s just lying there and it’s all about who will get there first.
The defensive shakeup for the Americans didn’t hurt, though it came to resemble an open scramble, as much of a track meet as you ever wish to see on the pitch. The Algerians are just begging to give this game away, but the referee has, again, interjected.
There are too many dives, too many questionable calls. This game is a microcosm of the entire tournament. Though a purely representative challenge at midfield would be both symbolic and useful in a game that is starting to grind. Ian Darke asks about our nerves; he’s really telling us that his are shredded.
Clint Dempsey is bloodied. The man is bleeding, marching down the field. Ultimately he is fed a ball in the box and he and the goalkeeper maul one another. Dempsey goes into the net, Landon Donovan takes the rebound and … well, the announcer for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation calls it best:
Soccer is a communal game. If you’re watching at home you aren’t really seeing everything. Check out a big game in a crowd. Like Spencer Hall, who live-blogged the game. With others you can know the frustration, the elation, the relief and joy. In the 90th minute, plus three, the United States went from going home early (a big disappointment) to winning the group (something they haven’t done since 1930’s inaugural World Cup).
And then there was Wimbledon. I’m not a big tennis fan, but watching a piece of history is something I’ll tune in for. The John Isner and Nicholas Mahut match became easily the longest tennis match ever. In fact, today this set alone became the longest match ever. So I have a new proposal: When the tiebreaking game reaches 25-25 we start pulling strings out of the rackets.
Serves dominate. Both players are exhausted. Volleys are rare. Oddly, neither tennis player have fallen, grabbed their ankle and rolled around in anguish while covering their smiling face.
Someone is updating Isner and Mahut’s Wikipedia pages as their death march continued past the nine hour mark. Nine hours! The grass on the Mahut-Isner court has been worn down. And is now growing back. There’s no real at-this-rate of progression in this match any longer. It is stasis and progress rolled into a singularity. Is the hadron collider on?
We’re beyond the point where one of these guys is secretly admitting to himself — and the Smurfs sitting on the net because they must both be delusional — that they hate tennis. I compiled a list of things I’ve done for long stretches of time than this tennis match: slept, studied, breathed. That may be about it.
I’m secretly cheering for Isner, who just looks out on his feet, to pull out the American Gladiators tennis cannon. And then, finally, Mahut surrenders to the darkness. The crowd is chanting for more, but they will have to wait until tomorrow, day three of this epic contest. Records have been crystallized, frozen and shattered in the wake of this pull of equal forces. Neither of them know it yet, but these two young men will be forever attached to one another. I hope they get along.
Meanwhile, as Wimbledon stops for the night, there are two excellent finishes simultaneously in the World Cup between Ghana/Germany and Australia/Serbia. The U.S. will face the Ghanaians for the second consecutive World Cup. And if the ride is finished here this team will have done a lot for the game at home. But you have this feeling that they might be able to ride their spirit just a little farther, yet.
I had to call someone this morning for business purposes. Perhaps calling first thing was my mistake. The man on the other end was bemused as I stumbled through the most convoluted explanation of the situation. I re-started the story two or three times before I got it right.
That man would have never guessed I once talked for a living. Today I scarcely believe it myself.
Three soccer games today. Portugal vs. Korea DPR, where the Portugese routed their opponents, 7-1. Two different styles clashed when Chile faced Switzerland. It got chippy, a Swiss player was sent off early and the South Americans were able to capitalize on yet another poor officiating decision.
One of the changes I’d like to see in the game — long famous for its few alterations — is an ad hoc ruling on players taking dives. I’d create a three-panel commission that watched each game after it was resolved. If they vote that you faked your stumble you don’t play in the next game. That would fix the simulation. That would help solve a great many of the officials’ problems.
Maybe the issues are the same in other sports. The athletes are now bigger, faster and cunning, and thus more easily able to fool a lone official. The television angles are better, replay exposes all. Even if those aren’t the problems we’re seeing at this World Cup, they are the things we are seeing in this World Cup. It certainly would have changed things in the Chile game.
The third game was Spain vs. Honduras, which David Villa made academic early in the second half. You’re beginning to see why Spain are the World Cup favorites.
Went to buy cat food today. The young lady at the cash register was holding a snake, as if on display. I have nothing against snakes, but this can’t help their sales with many of their customers. Someone didn’t think this through.
And then I realized I hadn’t eaten much today, so I sought out Cajun. I sat on the porch of the local Cajun place, sweating, listening to Zydeco and eating beans and rice and various other things offered in a spicy denomination.
When feeling famished, stuffing one’s face is a bad idea. I’d ordered something the waitress said she’d never tried. She later asked me if it was good — it was — but I felt and looked so miserable when I answered that I wasn’t very convincing.
Spent the rest of the evening preparing a long social media presentation. I’m putting three previous programs together to make one long talk. This will be for a summer class at Alabama in which I’m guest lecturing. If the students are even still talking to me by the end of the session I’ll be pleased with the outcome.
The last honeymoon photo barrage: I have finished, finally, editing pictures from our epic adventure. There are 409 photographs in the gallery. That doesn’t count the two slideshows from Borghese and the Spanish Steps elsewhere on the site or the panoramas. It also doesn’t count the videos, which I have still to produce. There’s about an hour’s worth of footage there.
But a lot of pictures. I decided such an epic project needed its own splash page. So, check out the new honeymoon page. All the pictures are ordered chronologically in relation to the location and where that visit landed in our trip. So you’ll see four different sections of Rome pictures. We spent three days in Rome and then took our cruise. After the trip we had another day in Rome, hence the four sections.
During the trip there are pages for each of our excursions and a section for photographs from the ship itself. Off to the side you’ll see the panoramas. Hopefully this will all be self-explanatory when you see the page. Do visit.
