I Love The World Cup

 This particular version, while hugely problematic due to its occurring in Qatar for a myriad of reasons including the government's penchant for hateful intolerance, human rights problems, the despicable corruption that led to a tiny but wealthy nation with virtually no soccer culture being chosen by FIFA to host the World Cup despite the lack of infrastructure and proper climate to host a summer-time tournament, has had an awful lot of really brilliant soccer (albeit, a lot of my favorite brand which is underdog and upset soccer).

I am delighted that the host nation lost all three of their matches, and were embarrassingly and appropriately dispatched from the tournament before any other team, and we now sit an hour before the kick-off of the US Men's National Team final group stage match against Iran.  It's a simple proposition for the US - we win and we move on to the knock-out stage tournament of the top 16 teams.  We are ranked higher and truly are better than Iran's team, and we haven't won a match yet (just 2 draws), so if you can't win at least one of your group stage matches, then really, you don't deserve to move on.

I've got high hopes, and although it now looks like we'd most likely be matched up against the Netherlands in our Round of 16 Match (unless Wales win their match against England that kicks off at the same time or we win by more than 4 goals today and England - Wales ends in a draw), the Dutch have seemed a bit beatable this tournament so it wouldn't necessarily be the death sentence it might have been in other years for us.

To enhance the tournament, I've been listening to After The Whistle, a World Cup podcast with Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard from Ted Lasso) and Rebecca Lowe (an NBC Premier League commentator).  The two make a superb pairing with a British expat who talks about football professionally, but is an unabashed partisan for England on this show and an American fake soccer coach who used to live in and learned to love soccer in The Netherlands and is rooting for "The Guys" (his term for USMNT) and has a side thing for the Dutch.  It's a good listen...

But for now, it's all about this match this afternoon, and getting through.  I'm not usually a rah-rah fan for the US teams in Olympic or other competitions, but at the World Cup, because we are Underdogs, but I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN (is that still a chant that we do??)

Forest are Magic! (or, So Long and thanks for all the Fish)

Source: fourFourTwo.com

Lower tier football fandom from across the pond has been a work in progress these last many years... I've been a fan of international soccer since 1990, when I was in Germany with my family during Italia '90 (the first World Cup Final that the United States had qualified for in my lifetime {and in fact the first time within the living memory of almost all Boomers!}).  The US fared poorly in that tournament, but West Germany ended up winning, and we were staying in West Berlin on the night that Germany qualified for the final.  There was an impromptu parade of joy and humanity that lasted all night, and I remember waking up in our hotel room, brushing my teeth on the balcony and looking down on the Ku'damm the next morning as the festivities continued, and some German fan who'd been partying all night raised his beer can to me.

The concept of club soccer first occurred to me, I think, on my visit to Nottingham, England nearly a decade later, when I had a stopover at the start of a spring break in Europe, and we watched a match out at the pubs. It's only now, 23 years later, that I'm realizing the match on TV had to be a Notts County affair (because Forest didn't have a match that mid-week that I was in town).  Watching a fan base come together over soccer felt different, because of the limited chances and scoring within a match, so I decided to become a fan of Nottingham Forest, and they were subsequently relegated from the Premier League a couple months later.  Following a Premier League team in 1999 and into the early 2000s was hard enough, but lower tiers - forget about it, so yahoo.sports.co.uk became a near constant tab on my computer for the next decade or so, repeatedly refreshing the browser during big matches to get score updates.

Meanwhile, I spent the remainder of that football season in Münster, Germany, which is Borussia Dortmund country, so I selected them as a Bundesliga club that I would follow, although I was never as invested in their success. But I did enjoy their success, and when their bad-ass manager, Jürgen Klopp, moved into the Premier League in 2015, I decided I should be a Liverpool fan for the Premier League - because clearly, Forest were still a long long away from top flight competition, and as much as I was enjoying following Forest's progress (now on Twitter instead of Yahoo), Liverpool had matches I could actually watch on a regular basis.  

Just a couple years later (at the start of the 2017-2018 season), ESPN+ started to show matches from the lower English leagues, so for the first time, once every 4 or 5 weeks, I got to watch a Nottingham Forest match.  It was also the first season under the new ownership of Greek oligarch Evangelos Marinakas (he bought it from Kuwati oligarch Fawaz Al-Hasawi in May 2017), and in just over five short (long, long, long) years - we are back in the Premier League!

And so it is, that I have to say goodbye to a "favorite" team.  While my selection of Liverpool was fairly arbitrary - a coaching hire - I've come to appreciate their fan base (not least here in Milwaukee!), and to cheer alongside them.  Thus, my (sub)title - which I now understand to be a malapropism - Scousers (people from Liverpool, but also more specifically Liverpool FC fans) are named after a local stew called scouse (or originally lobscouse), which I mistakenly thought had fish in it, but instead is a beef (or lamb) stew that is traditionally eaten while out to sea!

So, while I have been a lousy under-performing fan of Liverpool and Dortmund (and don't even get me started on Minnesota United FC!), I've been here for some years now of Nottingham Forest, and watching nearly every match these last several years on iFollow and ForestTV (with full, elaborate, BBC Nottingham radio commentary from Colin Fray).  The Garibaldi Red Podcast has also been a huge friend since it started in early 2020 - just before the world went bonkers, and I hope you will follow along with me at Three Lions Pub in Shorewood, or wherever we land to watch matches: MKE_nffc on twitter...

Bears-Giving (Bears-Taking)

 I had thought to post two new posts on Thanksgiving Day - the first a diatribe on the failure of modern society; and the second about the Chicago Bears, who no matter how lowly they may be just now, I was pretty sure, would win that day... and so they did, but as always, disappointingly.

I watched the finale of the Minnesota Loons' 2021 Season the same day the Bears pissed away a perfectly good chance to beat the Baltimore Ravens sans Lamar Jackson.  After that miserable game, I considered including the traditional "end of season" consumption for the Bears along with my Loons one on the Arfives, but at the last moment did not...

And now, after a single lowly win versus a winless opponent, the Bears find themselves technically one game back out of a playoff position.  And sure, they are behind in almost all of the tiebreakers at present, but as Hub Arkusch points out, that is in large part because two of the Bears' (merely 4) wins are against AFC teams, so if they wind up tied for a playoff spot at the end of the season, they will need to win some (probably most) of their remaining games that are all against the NFC, so tiebreakers would improve.

Now, neither Hub nor I think that is necessarily going to happen, or even very likely, but hell, it's the NFL.  I stopped making picks on fiveThirtyEight's Football Picks Contest after week 6, and my lead over their algorithm has increased significantly!  The NFL is weird this year (weirder than most years), and bad teams are beating better teams with frequency.  So why not us?

Sure, there are currently technically only two teams in the NFC that are in a worse position, the Seahawks (3-7) who the Bears have a matchup against upcoming, so technically an inferior opponent... and the aforementioned Lions who have yet to win a game, but did manage a tie (against the .500 Steelers, who might get to be the first ever .500 team in a season with an odd number of games {and also another team who the Bears almost beat, and admittedly [as in admitted by the NFL after the game] should have beaten had there not been a few mistaken calls by officials late in the game}).

So... Why Not Us? (And I know, I know, factories of sadness, and all that... I promise, I won't get my hopes up.  Unless... we beat Arizona at home on Sunday.  Then our chances to make the playoffs leap from 2% where they stand now to 9% {according to fivethirtyeight}, but then again, what the frak do they know!?)

GOBEARS!!!

0 - 4 (well there goes that...)

 It's halftime at Old Trafford (well, I'm at the Colonel, but Liverpool are at Old Trafford), and the visitors are up by 4 first half goals.  Nottingham Forest on the other hand have lost earlier this morning 0 - 4 home at The City Ground.  It's Forest's first loss under Steve Cooper who came on as the new gaffer after a historically horrendous start to their season, which found them dead last in the league, and in the relegation zone.

It's a proper football Sunday with the Packers playing at noon, and the Bears facing a tough match-up in Tampa Bay later on this afternoon.  (And, it the span of starting this post, Liverpool have scored again to give Mo Salah a well-deserved hat trick and disturb the synchronicity of the concept of the 0 - 4 post...

Regardless, I wanted to take the brief 0 - 4 moment to reflect on where things stand from my own sports fandom after a Bucks championship, and a disappointing end to a 4th consecutive playoff season for the Brewers.

Despite the loss today, this is the first run of play from Forest since I have been following them when I've felt unapologetically optimistic about the team.  Coming off the the high of 2 extra-time goals by Lyle Taylor to win at Bristol City midweek, we knew that we would eventually have to lose a game:

So too the Bears, who have inspired little but misery, despair and disappointment over the past 35 years, are generating some optimism this season having won the games the were supposed to have won while losing to 3 superior opponents.  They stand at .500 and might just have an upset within them today against an inflated Buccaneers team.  While this season is clearly not their year to win a championship, I've got an open bet for them to make the playoffs that I feel pretty okay about.

In fact, in my first year of online sports betting*, I have a few remaining open bets that will take me well into the black for my overall history.  It's a strange sports moment for me, finding myself feeling fairly positive about the overall direction and prospects of all of my teams.

*Unfortunately, my ability to place bets is limited by the finickiness of United States geography and civics, whereby, I am permitted to make bets online when I find myself within the boundaries of the state of Illinois, but not Wisconsin, so the only time I make sports bets has been when I find myself taking one or other of my parents to various medical appointments either at Northpointe wellness facility in Rockton or dropping them in Beloit, and then quick like crossing state lines while waiting for them to finish.

first!

I've been a fan of the Chicago Bears football club since nearly as long as I can remember.  But not quite.  I remember very early in my life thinking that Franco Harris was the awesomest football player ever.  I also remember declaring at some point early on that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were my team (I think because of the sweet creamsicle color featured on the magnetic helmet that generally sat in last place on the standings board on my wall.  I was actually wooed some years later by the same phenomenon when I briefly decided that the Florida Marlins would be my baseball team as I hadn't been much of a Brewers fan since the early 80s Ben Oglivie days).

I've come by most of my fandoms earnestly: the Bears were selected when I was very young because we got to go and see their training camp in the summers in Plattville, WI where my mom was completing graduate coursework between school years.  Their winning a Super Bowl in my formative years helped, but that bandwagon jumping has been paid off dearly for suffering through decades of painful disappointment and false hope.

Being a fan of the Chicago Bears is (what I long thought was) a uniquely painful experience.  It's not the perpetual basement dweller syndrome of someone like 20+ years of Brewer's baseball (until the playoff drought ended in 2008 in our first season as 10-pack ticketholders and actually once more becoming a Brewer's fan).  Rather, the pain of the Bears is that they consistently show promise and hope - brief spurts of success, only to come crashing back down and making you feel dumb for even getting engaged in it all again.  As I said, i thought this fan experience was unique to the Bears, until I found it again taking up a fan interest in my now favorite sports franchise: Nottingham Forest Football Club.  

A few years ago, I made a very conscious decision to 'get into' club football.  I've watched a lot of international soccer over the years (World Cup, Euro tournaments, US National Team qualifiers and tournaments), but beyond vaguely "choosing" the Chicago Fire as the closest MLS team who I've gone to see a couple of times at Soldier Field and Borussia Dortmund as the "local team" I chose when studying in Germany, I had no loyalties.                  

*   *   *

26 July 2020 - 11:07am CDT

As loyal readers and frequent checkers of this site will know (I see you when you all drop by!), I frequently 'post-date' the most recent post.  Whereby, I start to write a post, and set the date and time of publishing the post at the moment I started writing it, even if (as often happens) I don't finish the post until days (or sometimes even weeks) later.  My thinking with that is that I want to preserve the moment of the original idea, and generally when I finish the draft the post is still the newest on the site (because I don't write here that often).  On many occasions, I don't ever finish the post, and may years later publish and add a dated post script like this one.

The reason I needed to add one to this post is because, like the posts where several years have passed before I get to publishing them I have fundamentally changed between their writings and I no longer inhabit the same world I did when I started writing this post.  I started this post planning to write about fandom, elective, absorbed and inherited.  For the last couple years, my favorite team in all of sports has been Nottingham Forest F.C. 

The post was going to be about how I had selected a team who managed to supplant the lowly Bears as purveyors of heartbreak.  Best described, I think, by Nottingham native, Phil Juggins, who I met a couple of times back when NFFC were last in the Premier League when I visited Nottingham on my spring break from Uni Muenster.  As I dug in to the history of Forest, I found them to be a team that tended to break fans down with flashes of promise and success followed by epic failure.

And then it was Wednesday, and omfg, I've never felt so broken from a sports result.  The Double Doink was nothing compared to Wednesday.  Wednesday will be a historical moment... but it will pass, and will become a part of the groundwater of being a Forest supporter.  I'm sure I am not the only fan of NFFC and the Chicago Bears, but we few are loyal union members of the factories of sadness that are City Ground & Halas Hall.

But maybe next season will be our year...

EPIC (bad) Game Day

Few things in day to day life are worthy of being described as "epic".

Hangovers - to be sure.  A few times I've gone to a good man's home in Waukesha for Epic Game Day (and sometimes have played board games that fit the epic description).  There's a company that calls itself "Epic", but I don't think that it really is all that epic...

Today was an epic sports day for me, and it went so so badly...  Almost all of my selected sports teams were playing today - and they all failed to win.

My night ended with the end of this season's road for Minnesota FC, who a short time ago lost their first ever playoff game.  The Loons are in only their 3rd year of existence as an MLS team.  I started following them closely during the summer of 2018, when I started following a number of European Clubs closely - checking fixtures and watching games when they are available for tv consumption.

A few hours earlier, my Chicago Bears played a craptastic game and lost badly to fall to 3-3 for the season.  In a classic Bear's move, the team suddenly came to life and scored 2 TDs in the final 2 and a half minutes (and even appeared to grab a second onside kick) even though the game was fully out of reach at that point...

I've written of my Bears fandom, but never I think, specifically, about how completely they are the absolute worst fucking team to be a fan of ever with the way they give and take and seem like they're something and then pull a rug out from under and then totally suck, but show signs.  The Double Doink was pretty much the moment my entire Bear fandom had been leading up to for most of my life... and now this.

Prior to the Bears barf-fest, my Liverpudlians failed to win.  They did tie, but meh - now that we win so often, it's a bit of a let-down (though we were somewhat lucky to equalize...).  And, although it was available on ESPN+, I missed the earlier Nottingham Forest match - which we lost to fall out of the top spot on the table.

Beautiful Day for the Beautiful Game

It’s been a great NYC workday capped off with some Champions League action at Smithfield Hall NYC. Liverpool is in action and up early in the semis* vs. Porto. Tottenham is batting Manchester City  nil nil on an adjacent tv.

The capper, though, is that ALSO adjacent is a big screen showing my favorite football club, Nottingham Forest in their long-shot quest to qualify for promotion playoffs today in a mid-week match against Sheffield Wednesday. (Unfortunately just now down 1-0). 

Best of all is that I’m next to two Brits in kits for Sheffield Wednesday and there are several Forest supporters nearby.

*oops, that is the quarters!

some things i'm thinking...

First of all, i've decided today that google is scary. Perhaps not scary in the dark, evil Giant way that Microsoft is scary, but when i logged into gmail today google asked me:


Would you like to...
Add to calendar
dinner""Betsy" and "Je...
Thu Jun 26, 2008


Now this may night seem frightening in and of itself, but all they had to go on was an email i'd written to 'the boys' about playing some golf. A sampling of that email reveals that there doesn't seem to be enough info for a computer to realize i've got something scheduled:

"We will likely be in town Thursday early-ish (i'm thinking around 4-5), but i think we're having "dinner" with "Betsy" and "Jeff", which likely takes thursday off the table (unless somewhere has glowBall golfing or i can sneak out of the commitment)..."

That's all there was, but it was enough for google to ask me if i'd like to pencil betsy and jeff in. What does this mean, you may be asking yourself. Well, it means google is now a sentient being and will soon be taking all of us over... hopefully for the better.

***

In other news, Turkey just lost the first Euro 2008 semi-final and they played a hell of a match. Outplaying Germany early on, taking an early lead, appearing to come back AGAIN. They had an amazing tournament, man what a fun final that would have been, but UEFA & the German national team had other storylines in mind. Surely there's better coverage elsewhere, but let me be the 3rd to say, bravo Turkey... i'll wear my soccerJacket with pride... when it's not so hot out.

***

And then some kudos to ABC... for their lineup last night. Wipeout was everything i dreamed it could be. Brooke rightly pointed out that the final round wasn't funny anymore, but adding in a small amount of skill to this 'MonkeyBall but for Real' game was a fair price to pay. Then I Survived a Japanese Gameshow was a bit to drama-y and 'you're-fired-y' for my taste, but still a fairly enjoyable experience. Well done with the cheap summer fill ins. I think they were mostly leftover from when the network was afraid of a neverending Writer's strike, but still... ABC gets a dribbling single that probably should have been an error.

Oh Yeah, Eu-Ro

Who's got Euro 2008 fever. This guy (& andy, evidently who made multiple soccer-related phone calls on day 2 of the tourney). Generally i have a fairly moderate interest in the tournament and don't really pay attention until at best Round 2 & often just the semis & finals, but this year feels different.

Perhaps it's that the first (lame) SeegerOlympics point of the year is up for grabs, or that I have an extremely low key temp job with outstanding high speed internet so i can watch the games online, but whatever it is, i'm hooked. Not since i'm pretty sure i saw Chris Rogers in a bar in Bratislava watching the Euro 2000 semi-finals have i been this invested in the outcome...

Of course my rooting interest is conflicted by the SeegerOlympics pick... I always sort of want Germany to win, but my tourney pick was Portugal who won their first match soundly and are playing in a little under an hour.

In fact, i've made a couple picks against my better judgement (or against my rooting interest, perhaps in fact with my better judgement) these last few weeks... When we didn't go see the Tubes last week Andy & i made NBA finals picks. Now, i think i can safely say that i care less than almost anyone who would call themeselves a sports fan who wins the finals this year, but I thought it would be the Lakers, even though my very minor rooting interest would be for KG & therefore with the Celts... So, go Kobe, i guess... & go Portugal, really?

Fandom is a bit of a sticky thing for me... I mean, aside from the really obvious ones (Brewers to win the NL Central & da Bears) i have a lot of problems with finding fandom... Even this Friday, when we go to the Brewers/Twins game i feel like i'll want to wear my Brewers t-shirt & my Twins hat... Who am i cheering for? a 2-1 split? When i watch an MLS game i really can't figure out who i want to win... Having a local team helps, sure, but i can't say with any real sense that i was a Bucks fan when Chad Jorgensen gave me a ticket to a game, nor do i really care if the Omaha Royals were winning or losing (minor league baseball is an even more complicated fan situation, because when the players you root for get too good, they leave town)...

So, i guess go Portugal, go Germany (but boo Andy), go Sweden (because your fans throw their beers into the air every time you score) & go watch some Euro 2008...

Weeks in Review

It has embarrassingly been a month since my last post on Roman Numeral J, and while i want to apologize to my faithful readers who've been reading the same mildy-drunken post of july the 4th for 4 weeks (sorry rssl, sorry Ci), i say in my own defense... it's been a slow last couple of weeks, so i've had trouble finding topics to talk about. Nonetheless, that's what blogging's for, right? writing about meaningless daily occurrences.

My Ulyssian epic begins just two short days after you last heard from me. On July 6th, andy, daveT & i cruised down to the Rockford airport for an Allegiant Air flight to Las Vegas, Nevada. After a couple gin & tonics on the morning flight i was ready to hit the Strip at a full sprint. We met tim at our hotel, The Imperial Palace, and wandered the nearby casinos. The Minneapolis foursome arrived late that night & i continued wandering with them until 4:30 in the morning. From $1 Margaritas at the Casino Royale to $2 drinks of any kind at Barbary Coast, we found our section of the Strip very accomodating. It was a Bachelor Party, so i forwent sleep in favor of good times & woke up with the early room that had retired before holliday, davewake, gilkerson & JP had arrived. Around 9 or so we hit the mediocre ImpPalace pool and then were off to the races again, cruising the strip, winning money, losing money, losing money. All in all, the weekend in Vegas was a pretty damn good trip. I drove a Hummer, saw the lovely American spectacle that is Las Vegas, and met some good life-long friends (shout out to Kylie!). Sadly, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so details necessarily must be few and far between. So, after a late-saturday night (3:30 am or so) which almost culminated in a fist fight with a drunk guy we got on a plane at 6am and headed home...

...arriving just in time to watch the World Cup final at home with my parents & andy. While the outcome was immensely disappointing, and Zidane's head-butt inexplicable, i am glad i got home to see the game.

The next week began lazily enough, making a few last minute plans, and Thursday night hoardes of people began arriving in the small hamlet of Clinton along with a lovely large RV from Finnegan's in Beloit. The RV Extravaganza was about to begin. We toured several local bars, karaoke'd at Rockin' Roger's (especially Grant), peed in an enormous urinal at the Boar's Nest (in a confederate flag-themed bathroom). Then i almost left my credit card at Sud's in Beloit & we ended up in the loft at the Hog Cabin. The evening was a blast, fun had by all, and afterwards i slept in the RV.

The next night was another extravaganza of sorts. The Rehearsal on the Green started out with Pastor Tom talking... a lot. First we talked through what the ceremony would be like. Then we walked through what the ceremony would be like (with continued talking about what it would be like), then we talked some more about what it would be like. Tom continually referred to the Miron's reading of a dialogue from Posession as a "dramatic reading," which we thought wasn't entirely accurate, but turned out to be right on. After the actual rehearsal we went out to Turtle Greens golf course for dinner & golfing. I hit what might be my best golf shot of all time teeing off on hole number one, a long straight hole with the road directly off to the right (behind a thin tree-line). My tee shot floated to within maybe 20 yards of the green. On the trip down to my ball, everyone took a few more shots (jackie taking one at the photographer, nearly nailing him in "his childhood"). My second shot, which was meant to be a lofting chip instead line-drived directly to the right, through the tree-line and perhaps over the road. The ball was lost, but i found another one, chipped over the green then picked up my ball and called it quits. I should have ended with my drive, but i got greedy. After a lovely dinner we headed to the Beloit Inn & i put the "finishing touches" on my slide show for the next evening.

The next day was kind of exciting. On Saturday, July 15th, i got married. And that was pretty cool. The entire day is in something of a blur, partially due to the excitement, and partially due to the heat-stroke induced by outdoor photography in july. Brooke & i both agree that it was fun, but that it might have been more fun if it had been somebody else's wedding. We constantly felt like we were missing out on lots of good times because we had 'obligations'. We did manage to get a fair amount of dancing in, both took part in the limbo competition & had a chance to harass the DJ for playing crappy music a few times each. I hope everyone had as good a time as i did (or better). In the end, there was little wine left over, seemingly no beer, and suit-coats were recovered from Club Impulse.


We bolted the next day & headed to Chicago before flying early Monday morning to Cancun Mexico for a weeklong honeymoon in Puerta Aventuras. We had a blast exploring Mayan ruins, swimming in the ocean, drinking, eating, and eating at our 'All-Inclusive' resort. The resort actually got a bit old after about a day. There is only so much swimming, snorkeling, kayaking and laying on a beach you can do in one place, but the food was excellent, the booze was free & our massuese Ernest had magical fingers. In the end we owned 1 hammock, 1 sea-shell lamp, 5 bottles of tequilla and some postcards of mexican art more than we arrived with. It was a great week, but we were happy to be home & now i've landed myself back in Omaha and am currently looking for gainful employment.

So, that's what went on while i was away. Now i am returned, hopefully with abandon. Looking for work, pining for school, and doing ok as long as i stay in the AC as often as possible...

Stomach-y

It's halftime of the U.S./Ghana game. A must win. Italy is winning their game (which is what we need), but we're down 2-1, not holding up our end. In our own defense, the penalty kick awarded Ghana in stoppage time looked pretty questionable, but we do look like we're controlling most of the pace of the game. Still. I'm feeling pretty queasy. When the U.S. equalized late in the first half off a beautiful pass from the all-but-invisible DeMarcus Beasley to Clint Dempsey i was running around Jackie's apartment like a madman, only to be crushed by a go-ahead goal by Ghana.

Thanks, Jackie for letting me come to your place to get my soccer fix.

Bad Hair Day

In the last couple days, i've remembered the joy of being between books. I clambered through the last of my graduate reading (Jane Jacobs' The Nature of Economies) just to be able to put it up on the 'last five' and then on Sunday i started looking for a new book to read. I love the feeling of being moments away from starting a new book. I scan my shelves, book shops and libraries, trolling through every bit of reading material i can find, knowing that i could choose from anything. Generally, i even take some pauses, reading a magazine article or two, picking up a book and looking at the font. I really like the feeling of 'about to start'. The book i finally selected was Umberto Eco's illustrated novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, which thus far is a blast, a sort of allegorical argument of book-knowledge versus personal/emotional knowledge.

On a completely different subject... We saw The Da Vinci Code today, which was pretty good... very Ron-Howard-y & felt a lot like i'd seen it before a couple years ago when i read the book. More than anything, though, it just felt like a cheap knock-off of National Treasure. No, all in all, it was pretty much what i expected, and i wasn't disappointed thereby. No overkill on the zooming/spinning shots that Ron Howard is so fond of, sometimes interesting cinematography, and the same 'damn good story' that Dan Brown told poorly... My only 'complaint', which isn't even a complaint, is the Tom Hanks Apology tacked on to the end, a sort of "can't we all just get along" for zealots and atheists alike... All in all, a pretty ok movie.

And finally, as most of you know, the U.S. was embarrassed in their first World Cup Match on Monday. We looked terrible. Two more games against Italy & Ghana. A difficult task, and we likely need two straight wins to advance... But we shall see. Keep the faith, America.

Graduated Colandar

After taking a seven-day vow of silence, Roman Numeral J is back. On Friday at approximately 3:45pm the University of Chicago awarded me with a Master's Degree in the Humanities and the promise of great things to come...

I am completely finished. And hoping to keep going... endlessly. I never want to give up schooling. I will just plan to continue collecting degrees of various ... degrees until the world comes to an end (zombie-related or otherwise).

The same day as i was released from university life the World Cup started... so instead of being glued to my books & laptop, i'm hooked on ESPN & ABC... The World Cup is the only world-stage type event in which i find myself cheering for the U.S. With most sports we're so self-assured and self-absorbed that i hate US, but with soccer, we're actually underdogs... and it's such a wordly sport that we could never become dominant & generally suck, so it's fun to actually root for us...

Go US. Go Us, go us.

It's a bird, it's a plane..."that's an omen."

Today, i was biking to my soccer game - sadly my last soccer game of the season, Sparkle Motion's over-achieving reign of mediocrity came to a crashing end today with a 2-0 playoff loss. As i approached the fields, through a parking lot, i was going over a speed bump when a bird dropped from the sky, dead not 10 feet in front of me. I looked around for a confused hunter, stalking the alleys of Chicago for pigeons, but saw no one. Then there arose what seemed to be a bird scuffle, in mid-air. A pigeon (looked related to the recently fallen dirty dove) was chasing a larger black bird around, squawking at him. So, i assume the black bird was the guilty party (unless the pigeons are equivalent to the Hyde Park police in bird world & every time a crime is committed they go around harrassing any nearby black birds).

Anyway, i took the fallen bird at my tires as a bad sign, but i'm hoping it was an omen pointing to our playoff loss, rather than my final 36 hours until the thesis is due. I think if it was supposed to be an omen for my thesis, the bird would have gotten back up after a couple moments & begun awkwardly, but persistently trying to eat up all the other birds in the world. Though, now that i think of it, i haven't seen a bird for a couple hours.

"...but i feel like this."

Whenever i have a cold, i feel like a walking cliché. My nose is shiny & red, my eyes watery... I sneeze constantly. My problem with illness, i think, is that i don't believe in it... My process of "getting sick," which generally happens over the course of two or three days, starts with an odd tickle that i assume is the result of a middling night of drinking or too little sleep and instead of maybe getting a better nights sleep, resting up for a day or getting juiced on vitamin C, i challenge the cold to take me down... I take some Nyquil & drink more, wear fewer sweaters on chilly days and sleep as little as possible. I don't ever really believe i'm getting sick until i'm deep in... And to top it all off, i'm really lousy at actually being sick... Because i'm a whiny little bitch...

Anyway, after a long Friday of academic conferencing (starring Judith Butler & crazy cool Jazz poetry) & moderate drinking followed by a chilly (& rainy) Saturday afternoon of soccer* (followed by another evening of beer & wine at the kids' place {thanks guys--good times}) i am fully under the spell of a miserable malaise. And that sucks. So, i'll sign off groggily & grouchily...

*My 'good goalkeeper' hoax was revealed Saturday, when i let 3 goals by in the first half... Although i kept them scoreless in the second half, my poor performance (which included 1 goal hitting my hands and trickling on past into the goal) cost our team the victory. We tied 3-3 & while a tie isn't a loss, it is a tie.

Who's Keeper?

I am pleased to tell you all that Sparkle Motion, MAPH's IM Soccer team, is now 2-0 after a big win today... For a second week in a row, i was put in as Keeper because nobody else wanted to do it. The Keeper is a position i do not enjoy, but, unfortunately for me, i seem to be pretty good at it (allowing 1 goal in 3 halves of play thus far this season). Unfortunately, the better my performance, the more likely it is i am to remain in goal, and the more my teammates will begin to think of me as 'the keeper'. To keep things interesting, i find myself 'accidentally' kicking the ball straight to opposing team members while i'm out of goal or admiring particularly well-placed shots, instead of actually trying to stop them, only to have them glance off the post. I have no actual skill at keeping, but my luck has kept me in goal, and looks like it will for the remainder of the season...

& Now for something Completely Different...

Last night (i know a two-topic blog entry... very confusing) I went to a screening of some short films by avant-garde filmmaker Jennifer Reeves. Particularly of interest were two of her hand-painted films, very much in the tradition of Stan Brakhage & then she showed 2 Brakhage films that she had accrued in a trade (trading 2 of her films for 4 of Brakhages, frankly, i think she got the better deal)... Neither of the films are on the By Brakahge DVD, so they were both entirely new to me... "Coupling" was particularly amazing, consisting, mainly, of two fleshy-colored squiggles moving about & seeming to shake the frame... Hmm... good stuff.