Drink Amongst Yourselves

I was very glad to be able to read bloggies tip du jour even though I have no idea what it means.

So, how about them Blue Jays? 4th place and LOVING IT!

Fuckers.

U.S. Open update (Benedick, this is that British-created sport with the shorts and the wooden racket and yellow ball that’s sort of like ping-pong): Rafa and Roger play their semi-finals this morning, most likely setting up for a fantastic final tomorrow, and in the women’s singles, the Danish Caroline Wozniaki goes up against unranked Belgian Kim Clijsters. Both Wozniaki and Clijsters have been a treat to watch this year.

But I will be playing futbol today and may miss all of the tennis.

SanFranLefty: I was reading your commentary last night about old ladies in the Heights not liking Serena because of the whole “she’s black” thing. I must say that I’m torn, however.

Lou Pinella (Mismanager, Cubs) gets in the face of an ump and throws out a number of f-bombs. He gets tossed. Ozzie Guillen (El Jefe, White Sox) bests him by swearing at an ump in two different languages. Getting no credit for degree-of-difficulty, he gets tossed. Soccer Player Nos. 1-100 shouts at ref because the ref didn’t buy the horrible dive the player just executed. Yellow/red cards galore. Serena gets all pointy and shouty and sweary. And she shouldn’t be asked not to remain?

Odd thing is that she could have waited until the end of that game (two or four or six points away anyhow) and lit up the line judge on what would have been her own time at that juncture.

@chicago bureau: Oh, I totally think Serena should have been tossed – if she had done that earlier in the game, I think she should have been tossed and not just penalized a point.

I guess my point was more that I was upset because it feeds into the “the blacks don’t understand tennis” and “Venus has no class or respect for the game” meme that the biddies were saying last week at the Y. (I made myself feel better, though, as I “accidentally” kicked one of them when we were doing the step portion of the class. I have long legs, she shouldn’t have positioned her step platform so close to mine…) It isn’t right, but the Williams sisters are held to a higher standard of behavior, because even 15 years after their debut, apparently there are still people who think they’re girls from the Compton ghetto who shouldn’t besmirch the tennis courts.

On a totally unrelated note, but since you are the Chicago Bureau maybe you know this Chicago fact – did you know that Valerie Jarrett spent four years on The Farm?

@Benedick: Jets in Houston – 1 pm. CBS. New QB Mark Sanchez to start – we got him from USC and he’s very exciting. For you, hot photo here.

SanFranLefty: You got yr Stanford Magazine this week, I trust.

Notable: the picture on the second page of the article shows an oversized American flag in her office — so large that the corner touches the floor. And at Stanford, she stayed in the black-themed house and was a participant in divestment rallies. But also: she was born in Iran. EVERYTHING IS EXPLAINED!!1!

blogenfreude: But remember, Benedick — Sanchez is from U$C. Million dollar arm. Ten cent head. You watch.

(And no I am not bent out of shape about THE Ohio State University losing last night to those clowns.)

BTW: Props to bloggie, who said this in — February?

blogenfreude 11:18 am • Wednesday • February 11, 2009

@chicago bureau: He’ll end up in Minnesota.

(He = Brett Farve)

And Brett Favre (traitor) starts at 1 pm in Cleveland, where he will be humiliated. And the Giants start in DC against the Redskins, the team that killed off my dad. Fuck the Redskins and their midget owner.

@SanFranLefty: It’s still sport. And the Serena brouhaha tends to confirm my conviction that Sport is bad for the character. I have a repulsive cousin who tried to turn pro at the boink-boink Sport and used to come here to go to ‘farms’ to work on her backhand. Mind you, she was repulsive before she played tennis so I suppose I can’t really blame that.

@blogenfreude: Quite a nice picture but what’s that he’s holding? Some kind of Nike cell-phone?

@chicago bureau: Right. And the head is so important when playing American football.

Here in Chicago — it’s Colts / Jags, so we’ll be keeping tabs on Peyton Manning (laser, rocket arm), as well as Farve. G-Men and Redskins on the late game before those other two teams go on Sunday Night Football.

Incidentally, in the CBS pre-game, there was a report on a rumor that some investors want to relocate a team — the St. Louis Rams, perhaps — to London. Huh?

@blogenfreude: I’m watching this game for the Favre-hate.

BTW, Brad Childress (Minnesota coach) is already fucking up his play-calling at a mid-season level. He called for a short kickoff to start the game and gave Cleveland incredible field position as a result.

@Signal to Noise: Please keep updating – I can’t change the channel … Sanchez is calming down and making plays.

@blogenfreude: keep me informed. I don’t have that game and Sanchez is a USC boy, so I’m pulling for him.

so far it’s 3-3. Neither team looks like they enjoy the concept of being in the red zone. And Thom Brennaman is getting on my nerves.

@Signal to Noise: Jets a 6 yard line … 4th and 5, going for 3 …

3-0 Jets, 15 yard penalty against Jets on kickoff. Neither team got into enemy territory until 13 mins in. Defenses are working hard.

Vikes in red zone after good punt return. 1st and goal at 3. Adrian Peterson in end zone for six.

running out now. called to be social. will be back by afternoon game for sure.

At SFO waiting for flight to Victoria BC. No shortage of bars with football on TV.

Sanchez to Stuckey for 6 – 10-0 Jets. Texans humiliated in Texas. I. Love. It.

@blogenfreude: I think I picked the Jets today but I’m not happy b/c I thought the Texans were actually going to put two and two together and be decent this year.

@Dodgerblue: just hope they don’t show the Niners game.

@Signal to Noise: Anything that hurts the people who elevated GWB to the governor’s mansion pleases me. Is it too late in the season for a hurricane to trash the place?

@blogenfreude: you’re not gonna be able to get me to say anything nice about Houston. Austin, Dallas, even parts of desolate West Texas, I had fun in — but Houston is just there.

Brittfarr and co up by 9 on the Clowns as the 4th gets started.

oh, and if any of you had week 1 in the Donovan McNabb injury pool, please go cash your ticket at the counter.

@Signal to Noise: Shame we can’t jack up Austin and move it to just above Westchester County NY.

@blogenfreude: Austin wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t in Texas.

god must hate cincinnati in order to let Kyle Orton nail a Hail Mary at the last second.

GO BRONCOS!

Nil-nil score in my soccer game, in case you were wondering. We were playing a team of high schoolers, the average age of my team is 38. I had two great shots on goal – one to the upper right corner that if it had been an inch to the left would have been a great goal, but alas it hit the bar and ricocheted back over my head.

No injuries, which at this point, is all my team hopes for with each game.

@Dodgerblue and chicago bureau:

U$C’s ex-quarterback may have “Million dollar arm. Ten cent head,” to quote CB, but Uuk-lah’s quarterback apparently has a glass jaw.

Oh, and @Those looking for sport, the US Open women’s final just started.

@SanFranLefty: Westwood QBs are made from papier-mache in a secret back room by Slick Rick Neuheisel and Norm Chow, and last about as long. If the Bruins make it half a season with their original starter it’s a minor miracle.

NOTE: Chicago, you traded for an erratic, gunslinging sulking mess of a quarterback. Enjoy the maddening INTs at inappropriate times that we in Denver got used to with both Cutler and Jake Plummer before him. 3 picks and the half isn’t even over.

Oh do I have a sport story. Prom Junior is playing soccer, and he wanted to be on his leagues travelling squad, but there were so many kids that went out, they created an A and a B travelling squad. Junior is on the B travelling squad, and today was the first game, an away game against kids in another town.

This is the under 10 division, and these kids have been playing on league teams skilled, not so much, big scrum around the ball all the time, last year. In three weeks, the coaches on this team of done wonders, gotten them to stick vaguely to their positions, and pass, instead of booting it in the general direction of the other goal whenever it gets close, so yay. Junior is the goalie, because he has an absolute fearlessness born of naivete, he will throw himself on any ball in the box, regardless of whether someone is about to boot it. He usually scares the offensive player away with his suicide tactics.

So we awake, breakfast, full of enthusiasm, and drive 50 miles, from our native burgh, which I will call “Workingmanville,” and find the fields in the host town, which I will call “Richy Rich Horsey Town.” I call it that because all the tract mansion developments we pass on the way are set up so that each tract mansion also has a barn and several paddocks around it, and nice horsies standing around. There was a polo match going on about a half mile down the road, true fact. Their sidelines, tall blondes wearing jewelry, and wall street dads, some smoking cigars. Our sideline, walmart all the way.

We find out the opposing team has been playing together for 3 years.

We had exactly 8 players, no substitutions, they had, I don’t know, a multitude.

We could not get the ball into their side of the field, at all, but for the first 10 minutes, we keep them from scoring. Junior had some nice saves, it was good, but then the first goal, and then, our boys started to tire, and the rout was on. Oh, the humanity.

When it got to be 6 to 0, they let up, and started to just turn it into a training session, their boys were obviously told not to get even close to our goal, if they crossed the line, they would pass it back to their defensive guys and just pass back and forth. Our guys, huffing and tired, just ran around after them.

Oh well, sport, they learned that its all about teamwork and effort and trying your best, right?

I was thinking of Meatballs, and the stirring speach, “It Just Doesn’t Matter.”

Oh, and the only game that matters is college football, and the University of Florida Tebows demolished another sacrificial lamb, so I got that going for me, and in the game, he scored a rushing touchdown that made him the 3rd place all time rushing TD leader in SEC history. But he’s a quarterback, not a running back.

I am torn about tebow, a home schooled bornagain, but, well, he just seems to be a good kid, stayed for his last year, with nothing at all left to prove, could have cashed in millions.

My understanding is that on the 7th day, God rested, and let Tebow finish creating the Universe.

@Promnight: How’s Prom Jr. doing? That’s not a great experience. I hope he’s not too bummed, but frankly it’s good for kids to lose from time to time. Not everybody is a winner all the time.

But, only 8 players on the field? And where the hell were at least three other kids plus a few subs? Organize car pools, it will make your life better. A friend of mine’s husband coaches their son’s soccer team, after he started swinging through East Austin to pick up their ringers for the car pool which ensured they had 11 kids on the field, things picked up.

And that game sort of sounds like my game today. The high school girls had us running in circles with their energy and stamina. Except we had better ball skills (for fuck’s sake, I’ve been playing soccer 12 more years than most of these girls have been alive, my team has been playing together for more than 10 years) and we’re smarter players, and even though they had 8 subs, we did a lot with our 2 subs, and kept them off our goal and actually took shots on them, but playing on a plastic turf field in 90 degree south Bay heat sucks the life out of you. The soles of my feet got burned through my cleats and three pairs of socks.

I’m a big fan of grass, in all areas of life. Especially soccer.

@SanFranLefty: He’s gonna be okay, he melted down after a bad call, he had the ball covered, had it in his hands, but they didn’t blow the whistle and someone kicked it out of his hands into the goal, getting a bad call on top of a shellacking, and then his teammates started to give him some criticism, but he’ll recover. It wasn’t losing, it was his teammates getting on him, as if, maybe they should get the ball downfield for a few seconds might have helped.

Totally missed sport this weekend as I was away turkey hunting. I am now in at least a three year losing streak. I call to the birds, they call back, but they don’t come in. I did hike several hours each day and got in some map reading and compass work. Spent a good weekend with some fine people. Head a bear in the brush.

@Promnight: In another season or two, they’ll realize that a fearless goalie is the most valuable person on the pitch.

@redmanlaw: If you got to play with your GPS, then it wasn’t all lost, right?

ADD: Kim Clijsters proves to all 30-something women that they can come back to Sport after getting pregnant, gaining 80 pounds, and having a kid. And the kid she beat has a sweet smile and a sweeter attitude. I didn’t know who to cheer for in this match, I liked both of them so much, and I have no dog in a Belgium-Denmark fight.

Caroline Wozniaki thanking the crowd in English, Danish, and Polish has made me love her all the more.

@Jamie: I have no idea how the 49ers pulled that game out of their ass and beat the Arizona Christ-o-fascists. Didn’t bother to watch except a few minutes at the neighborhood bar when I was walking by.

Signal to Noise: The words “hot mess” go well with Jay Cutler, methinks.

@SanFranLefty: classic “offense feeds off of great defense” game for SF. Obviously the players have bought in with Mike Singletary.

@SanFranLefty: GPS? Please. I was rockin’ the Silva plus a Brunton Type 26 with a USGS quad map.

@chicago bureau: hot messes don’t have double chins.

I’m now debating who really crapped their diaper the most from under center this Sunday: Cutler or Jake Delhomme down in Carolina.

Delhomme: four picks, one lost fumble, 72 yards passing total, yanked at halftime for the Elder McCown Brother, and solely reinserted when Josh was hurt and then yanked for Matt Moore again. This, if you take such liberties, made for nine picks in his last two games — because no one forgot that 5 INT abortion against Arizona last season — AND he got Carolina to give him a five-year contract extension!

Cutler: four picks (should have been five but for Tramond Williams’ stone hands), one TD — after an entire off-season hyped as “The One” when any Denver fan could have warned Chicago that he had a tendency to merge both Brett Favre and Jake Plummer’s bad tendencies at the most inopportune times. Actually gave the entire Broncos fanbase a nice, pleasant shot of schadenfreude even though Denver is a complete shitshow on offense now.

I got a toss-up.

@redmanlaw: You want or need USGS quad maps of any spot in the western United States? I have a source who could hook you up with wholesale prices, or hell, rip a tear in a corner of a map and it’ll cost pennies.

@SanFranLefty: “Fell off a truck” or pre-1964 editions? (Good for guitars and rifles, not so good for maps.) There’s a great little travel store around the block from me called Travel Bug where I go for my quads and ice coffee.

@redmanlaw: Fell off the vehicle coming back from the field.

@SanFranLefty: I blame Kanye.

@SanFranLefty: There’s a fishing writer named John Gierach* who once wrote that he loved hearing someone was “out in the field” when trying to reach biologists or whatever.

“Trout Bum”, or the book that encapsulates my philosophy, “Fly Fishing Small Streams”.

@redmanlaw: Ever read First Fish, John McPhee’s historical love note to the shad? A rather dull act of fishing, but the annual tourney is a hoot.

I listened to Sport on the radio yesterday, in between plumbing work and kid-shuttling. I did turn on the end of RFed’s match in time to see his awesome between the legs return for point against Djokovic. Ma Nabisco pointed out that Fed looks like a less cartoonish Tarentino.